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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5835507" data-attributes="member: 54877">I think you are both wrong.  <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" /> A good game should be designed to work for the person just picking it up, with little or no outside help.  Then it should also reward continued exposure and attention as one moves past the beginner stage.  It should explain how it works clearly, but not patronize the reader.  That's actually a difficult thing to pull off consistently, even in a novel.  It's even more difficult in a mix of flavorful color and technical writing--which, let's face it, is what game rules are. Nevertheless, that is what a good game needs. Whereas, with fan preferences, the problem is, and always has been, that the preferences are all over the place.  This is why you can, for example, say with a straight face and believe it that there is "little support" for roleplaying in 4E while others, with different preferences, find that the skill system and skill challenges to be the best mechanical support for roleplaying yet introduced to D&D (and also preferences all in between those two poles, as well).   What the heck is "support for roleplaying?"  For some people, it is a mechanical widget that has a name that maps directly to some activity in game, so that if they have that thing on their character sheet, they can spin from there.  For these people, not having a "bard" class or the equivalent is an impediment to roleplaying.  For other people, support is having a consistent mechanical underpinning for how to resolve interaction.  For yet others, it is the mechanics getting out of the way so that the roleplaying will commence.  And that doesn't even get into the game advice telling you how to use whatever is there, in the several different styles in which it could be used.</blockquote>

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