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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5835413" data-attributes="member: 957">I would say you are taking a HIGHLY charitable spin on what Mearls said there.But whatever, I'll simply stand by my explanation as both a fair assessment of what he said and also an accurate representation of 4E in general.Go ahead.  They said all kinds of things.  You''l get no argument from me.  Spirit of the Century is completely unrelated to the point.  WotC wants D&D to be vastly more popular than it is and we are talking about whether or not 4E can do a wide range of things.  Saying you can turn your back on 4E and play a different game offers nothing to either of those points beyond effectively being a concession.Whatever. "Medium" and "wide" are relative terms that mean nothing without context.  I already agreed that GURPS does more than either edition, so saying that again adds nothing to the conversation and saying it the first time offers nothing to help understand how 3E was so much more popular than 4E and how 5E can learn from that to be more successful.  And, again, I already completely agreed with your personal opinion.  I'm not disputing it and further, I'm endorsing it.  To you, and a lot of other people, 3E sucks.  That is a fact.  That fact changes nothing whatsoever in my point.Hell, I'd even honestly say that if you just polled 4E fans about 4E and you just polled 3E fans about 3E then you would get a result that suggested that 4E is vastly better than 3E.  This comes back to the niche appeal of 4E.  If you are in that niche 4E is awesome.  I really grok that point and if you continue to feel the need to restate that then you are not grokking my point.But the important point is that if you took a nose count of the 4E fan group and then sliced off that many people from the top of the 3E fan group the 3E poll would start looking a lot more like the 4E poll.  And 3E would still have a significant fan base left over that were not as dedicated, but still found quality tools to make it their game of choice.I'm really talking about core.  You can call out some crap WotC 3X splats.  I won't even begin to dispute that.  And I won't offer an opinion on WotC 4E splats.  You said that the monk is "the load".  Either admit that isn't a truism or admit your are saying my experience doesn't exist.Now you are just playing word games.  3E will let you screw up and provides a lot of freedom and added value for those who don't.If you want to call it "greased rungs" then I'll just say that I can handle the grease and that the game is better for having it.  Yes, I'll agree that someone may slip on the grease.  But they can learn how to deal with the grease next time and then we BOTH know how to avoid it and we BOTH have a better system that isn't shackled by beign worried over not putting grease where it is needed just because someone may slip at first.But "safety net" and "greased rungs" are just differently slanted analogies for the same point.  Shrug.  OK.  It is no skin off my nose if you don't see the relevance of the market reality.  I mean, I'm sure for the right price I could pay WotC to make 5E be exactly custom fit to my personal specifications.  It would fail on the marketplace but if I thought my personal opinion was all that counted, I wouldn't care.I was making predictions about 4E when it came out.  And, yes, I wasn't shy about my personal preference.  But I was also talking about market appeal from the beginning.  There were a lot of 4E fans telling me how clueless I was and how 4E would take over everything once it got rolling.  And yet here we are.  I still have my own personal gaming preferences and I also still have my assessments of what will and will not work on the market scale.  And I'm not hung up on thinking one has too much to do with the other.You are taking your assessment of 4E and Mearls words and filtering them to only apply to your personal experience.  Which is fine.  But don't do that and then turn around and think it applies to overall success.Again, you insist on a lot of things that MUST happen in 3E and I'm saying they don't.  The monk is not "the load".   The greased rungs are there for a reason.I agree that 3E expects the DM to go tuning instruments.  That is part of the greatness of it.No, you are just trying to bait and switch what your previous position was with a new position you feel more comfortable defending.You position was that "the monk is the load", amongst other examples.  You are saying my game does not exist.  That is not a mischaracterization of your position.Case in point right there.  I said that 4E fans reject the rules/DM synergy.  There you go.  I personally completely reject this point of view.  On the high end a rule set that is designed to support a really good DM will be free to achieve a lot more without being burdened by the presumption of propping up the DM. On the low end, quality DMs grow on systems that challenge and push their boundaries and expectations.  They don't grow when the system tells them they don't have to.  Again, we had a healthy strong community of great DM that grew up playing 1E, OD&D, whatever.  It was complex system that gave us what we have.We already talked guitars.  Go take a $100 beater from a pawn shop and put it in Satriani's hands.  It will sing.  But he still plays his custom Ibanez.  The final product comes from a synergy of the skill of the artist and the quality of the tool.Again, every bit of this may be completely true for you personally. I think there is a difference between a steeper learning curve for the beginner and lack of "reward".   Personally, I'd say the 3E reward is far higher, but I guess if you only looked at it from an "instant gratification" point of view, then I would agree with you.But setting aside the irrelevant debate of my opinion vs. your opinion, the market opinion isn't hard to see.</blockquote>

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