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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5835310" data-attributes="member: 87792">Actually having looked the original quote up, it's option 4.  You are mis-summarising Mearls.  What the actual quote was was <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/01/09/wizards-announce-new-dungeons-and-dragons-an-inside-look-at-the-game/2/" target="_blank">“In some ways, it was like we told people, ‘The right way to play guitar  is to play thrash metal,’” says Mearls. “But there’s other ways to play  guitar.”</a>This does not mean that Thrash Metal is all 4e can do.  Or that Mearls thinks that Thrash Metal is all 4e can do.  It means that Encounters, Keep on the Shadowfell, and Scales of War were geared to Thrash Metal - and that's where most people got their introduction.  It's like the designers of 4e were superb instrument makers who also put out beginners primers for how to play - and the primers all spoke about thrash metal and used almost all their examples as Thrash Metal.Now kindly don't twist Mearls' words to mean something they don't.  I'm going to take what you wrote as a good faith representation of what was actually said - and get very disappointed when, as here, that proves not to be the case.And besides.  Do you want me to dig up what WoTC was saying about 3E before 4E was released and treating that as the Unquestionable Word?If I want to play chamber orchestra music, I have Spirit of the Century.  And that, to me, is the point. And to me the point is that 3.X covers a medium range.  For a genuinely wide range I have GURPS 4E.  And the critical point to me is that 3.X does it badly.  To take one example, by the book NPC design rules are a nightmare.  Yes, you can change this behind the screen.  But I don't have to.Not at all.  The right DM can make any game rock.  I've dealt with a DM that made Rifts rock - and for all its faults, 3E is a much better designed game than Rifts.  However that people can make a game rock despite the system doesn't mean that the system takes the credit.  It means that the DM rocks.I don't care about a safety net.  What I care about are greased rungs and a fraying tightrope.  And 3e has both those.I believe my assessment of 3E is a lot more accurate than yours either of 4e or of a simple statement by Mearls.You really aren't giving yourself enough credit here.  I have never said it is impossible to have a fun 3e game.  However 3e requires that the DM go round tuning most of the instruments personally.   For the seventeenth (or however many) times, you are mischaracterising my position.  I am saying that a good DM can make any system rock.  I am saying that with the right DM, probably even F.A.T.A.L. would be a fun game.  Rifts certainly is.I hope that it isn't.  Because if it was we'd lose some great games like Dread or Fiasco.  And I think that's where our essential disagreement lies.  If you want to run a game of gritty fantasy you'll reach for D&D 3.X.  I'll go for either WHFRP 2e or WHFRP 3e, or possibly GURPS.  (Probably WHFRP 3e as I find the mechanics inspiring).  And both of us would make the right decision here.  With your ten years of DMing you'd do a better job with 3E than you would with WFRP 3E.  With my range of experience I'd do a better job of WHFRP 3E.Agreed.  However a quality DM is not part of the 3E ruleset.  It should therefore not be factored in to assessing how good the game system is.  If anything, needing a quality rather than an average DM is a strike against 3E - quality DMs don't grow on trees.What needs factoring in is IMO two things.  The first is what can be done by an average or novice DM (and it's here that 4e is one of the best games I've ever seen), and the second is how much it reward any given amount of time put in to it - something which is very hard to measure.  You've put a hell of a lot of time in and got a lot of reward out.  I am not disputing that.  And 4E in my experience caps out at the amount it rewards you by putting the time in relatively early.On the other hand 3E really does not reward low amounts of time or novice DMs, and while it's still at the levels it supports you, 4e does.  But when 4e stops rewarding extra time I can always jump to a new system (I'm DMing both 4E and WHFRP 3E campaigns at the moment).  Of course learning a new system has significant overheads.  And, having both systems on my bookshelves and having run and played both, I can't help but think that GURPS 4E would be more rewarding to sink vast amounts of time into than D&D 3E is.  It's a bigger and more encompassing and flexible system.And for the record you can run a good intrigue game in 4E at least as easily as you can in 3E.  But absolutely this. And if your PCs are approaching the game that way no wonder you have trouble.  There's a significant difference between a close burst attack with a sword (mechanically almost always friendly for one) and a close burst attack using elemental damage (which hits everyone).  And IME most people describe what they are doing before rolling.  (And if they don't I tell them to describe what it does until they learn).This.  If I'm paying someone for rules I expect them to have done a professional job.  And if I'm producing them I expect to have enough pride in my work to not cause glaring issues in someone else's game.I wish I knew why.</blockquote>

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