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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pbartender" data-source="post: 4290664" data-attributes="member: 7533"><a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/garygygax1.php" target="_blank">Oh really?</a>And I quote: [bq]This goes all the way back to Gen Con 1 with a fellow by the name of Jerry White from Portland, Oregon, as I recall. He brought a bunch of 40 millimeter Elastolin figurines done by Hauser. I started playing and got hooked. Jeff Perren happened to collect quite a few of those same scale miniatures and he had gone and set up rules for them. Henry Bodenstadt ran a gaming shop business out in New York, he had got his “Siege of Bodenstadt” game into Strategy & Tactics magazine at that time published by Chris Wagner. This was what really hyped the 40 mm figurines.Playing games with those miniatures and a castle, hooked me completely on such gaming, so Jeff Perren came to Lake Geneva and I had a sand table in my basement. He brought in his 40 millimeter Elastolins and his set of rules where one figure equaled 20 men, and we both had a heck of a time, but he lost interest later. And he left the rules with me and I said, “I will expand these, they need to cover more historical settings.” I turned two pages of rules into about four. And then I figured it would be a lot more fun to play man-to-man and make those weapons count. So I wrote up a set of man-to-man rules, then rules for jousting, and finally a fantasy supplement with dragons, heroes, magic swords and spells; and eventually those were published as Chainmail.So it was really Jeff Perren who was the inspiration (laughs). Well, the real inspiration was the Elastolin figures. Well when you were one-for-one in most areas, you had an Elastolin figure…so the player would control any figure on the table that was his. And each one would take two hits to kill or whatever. Dave Arneson up in the Twin Cities started a Chainmail campaign where all the players each had one figure and he brought that style of game down to Lake Geneva to show me. I said, “Wow, that’s really cool”. So out of his inspiration, I created the D&D rules.[/bq]- E. Gary Gygax, 20 July 2004.In other words, D&D was originally invented by taking Chainmail and turning it into "Ye Olde Delta Fourse".But that's beside the point.Now, I don't necessarily disagree with you here, but I think there's an entirely different cause to the problem.In previous editions, there simply wasn't the multitude of options when it came to playing...  especially in combat.  You moved, you attacked or you cast a spell.  If you wanted to do something fancy, like swinging on a chandelier, you moved and attacked and simply used your imagination to describe it so it sounded cool.  (I know, I know, that's a simplification, but bear with me, here.)In 3E, we suddenly had all these abilities and feats and skills and actions for practically everything you wanted to do -- especially so, once the splat books started coming out.  I think a lot of players came to rely on defining their characters by what they could do, based on the basic flavor text included with the abilities and feats and skills and such, instead of doing what we did in earlier editions...  Using our imaginations to explain flavor-wise how the abilities and feats and action are working.4E, as far as I can see so far, had tried to come back to that a little.  You can see it many of the non-combat rules, where the rulebook says something like, "Here are some loose guidelines, but it's up to the DM to figure out the details. Ask him."My point is that there's no reason you can't let your imagination run wild in 4E. Just get rid of all the flavor text from the rulebooks, keep the mechanics the same and describe the effects the way you want.You want a magicky fighter?  Then go make a Fighter, dabble a little is Wizard, and describe all the special side effects of his exploits as the results of his magic, rather than physical prowess.  So long as it doesn't affect the way the rules actually work, why not?Why can't a Rogue's Stealth skill be due to some mysterious magic spell of ninja semi-invisibility, rather than any innate talent or skill?</blockquote>

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