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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5834975" data-attributes="member: 54877">Now that is precisely too far. It's simultaneously claiming positive ground for 3E that it doesn't own, but also nailing it too hard in other ways. I'd say that there are a wide range of things 3E can do, and the quality is all over the place--sometimes in surprising ways. There are things you can do with other games you flat can't do with 3E--and I don't even need to go to something as esoteric as Forge or other niche games to say that. Heck, there are whole realms of things you can do with GURPS out of the box that 3E would have a difficult time of even if you expanded 3E to mean "any possible d20 variant that has been made or even could be made or tweaked." OTOH, some of what 3E (and its close kin) does well is not solely the province of a good DM. You can, for example, run a pretty mean dungeon crawl or wilderness expedition or similar adventures in, say, the 5th to 10th level range, and it will work quite well. (Exact level range may vary. Side effects include extreme surprise. Consult your physician if problems persist.)  Likewise, 4E has a wider range than its critics give it credit for, in part because it absolutely nails a couple of things so well, that a lot of people don't even try to branch out. Running a good "indie narrative" style in 4E is akin to running a good intrigue game in mid-level 3E--it is far from perfect, but if you know what you are doing, it isn't a totally awful fit, either. The bigger difference is the uncertainity of what the respective versions do well. 4E claims less ground and is more accurate in the claim (i.e. doing X well). (Though it is far from perfect here, giving the two mutually incompatible threads of advice that are presented as one in the original DMG.) 3E claims more ground, and really does cover more ground, but is a little more free with its claims than are warranted. And of course, in this respect, both are far superior to any version that came before, which all rather implied ground that was covered but left you mostly on your own to puzzle out where it goes off kilter--and frequently to deal with the consequences after you got blindsided. 4E is like a guy that told you he had 10 years experience running a crane. When you hired him, you found out, yep, he can do that really well--and also could handle a few other machines in a pinch. Plus, he plays a mean harmonica in the company band. 3E is guy that told you he could run most heavy equipment, including specifically a crane, bulldozer, road grader, and dump truck. Turns out he does pretty well with three of those, but was a bit "ambitious" on the fourth. OTOH, you also found out he could run a chainsaw and fix electrical wiring in a pinch, which made up for it. 1E was this really handy guy that could do this wide range of abilities, some quite esoteric, once you gave him enough time. But the day he started, he was learning everything on the job. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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