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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7716716" data-attributes="member: 42582">I took the claim at face value - that, in the context of D&amp;D, &quot;winning&quot; by faithfully implementing a strategy you read about online is boring.In the context of the &quot;classic&quot; playstyle, I would relate this back to the importance of fictional positioning. The more that resolution depends solely on engaging the fictional positioning (eg surfing unhinged doors down the frictionless corridor in White Plume Mountain), then the less significant &quot;build&quot; becomes and hence the more the gamist &quot;pressure point&quot; becomes not pre-reading and pre-learning but cleverness in the moment with respect to the fiction (hence, also, the reason that reading the module&nbsp; - let alone someone else's play report about it - is, in effect, cheating).My take on the XP bonus for good prime requisites is that it is meant to enforce a modest degree of genre fidelity (stronger characters are more likely to be turned into fighters). Once you have AD&amp;D-style allocation of stats rather than stats rolled in order, this function becomes largely redundant (because if you want to play a MU you can stick you good stat into INT, and if you really want to play a strong wizard what's the harm?) and probably the rule should be dropped - an early case of D&amp;D cargo cult-ism about rules, where the rule lingers on even though its rationale has faded.It's not new. The OP knows it's not new, because - as [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has pointed out - he was advocating against that sort of &quot;story&quot; play back in the late 70s and early 80s.I think the OP is making a claim about trends - that more contemporary gaming has the &quot;participationary&quot; rather than &quot;challenge&quot; focus. I don't know enough about contemporary games to have a view. I barely know enough about contemporary RPGing to have a view about the little niche of gaming. But - following on from my recent exchanges in this thread with [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I would tentatively assert that one feature of 5e might be argued to be a rather low degree of lethality (comparable, let's say, to 4e, and not, say, to Moldvay Basic) packaged in such a way as to make the game feel more like the classic experience than 4e is ever going to (for instance, by packing that non-lethality into targeted class abilities like Spare the Dying, Revivify, etc rather than making it overt in each PC via the Second Wind/other healing surge/death-and-dying rules).Which probably makes it better suited for the AP-type experience of a combo of &quot;tourism&quot; and &quot;challenge&quot; than 3E/PF, which has the continual rocket-tag threat of high lethality. Clever design by WotC.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7716716, member: 42582"] I took the claim at face value - that, in the context of D&D, "winning" by faithfully implementing a strategy you read about online is [I]boring[/I]. In the context of the "classic" playstyle, I would relate this back to the importance of fictional positioning. The more that resolution depends solely on engaging the fictional positioning (eg surfing unhinged doors down the frictionless corridor in White Plume Mountain), then the less significant "build" becomes and hence the more the gamist "pressure point" becomes not pre-reading and pre-learning but cleverness in the moment with respect to the fiction (hence, also, the reason that reading the module - [I]let alone[/I] someone else's play report about it - is, in effect, cheating). My take on the XP bonus for good prime requisites is that it is meant to enforce a modest degree of genre fidelity (stronger characters are more likely to be turned into fighters). Once you have AD&D-style allocation of stats rather than stats rolled in order, this function becomes largely redundant (because if you want to play a MU you can stick you good stat into INT, and if you [I]really[/I] want to play a strong wizard what's the harm?) and probably the rule should be dropped - an early case of D&D cargo cult-ism about rules, where the rule lingers on even though its rationale has faded. It's not new. The OP knows it's not new, because - as [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has pointed out - he was advocating against that sort of "story" play back in the late 70s and early 80s. I think the OP is making a claim about [I]trends[/I] - that [I]more[/i] contemporary gaming has the "participationary" rather than "challenge" focus. I don't know enough about contemporary games to have a view. I barely know enough about contemporary RPGing to have a view about the little niche of gaming. But - following on from my recent exchanges in this thread with [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I would tentatively assert that one feature of 5e might be argued to be a rather low degree of lethality (comparable, let's say, to 4e, and not, say, to Moldvay Basic) packaged in such a way as to make the game [I]feel[/I] more like the classic experience than 4e is ever going to (for instance, by packing that non-lethality into targeted class abilities like Spare the Dying, Revivify, etc rather than making it overt in each PC via the Second Wind/other healing surge/death-and-dying rules). Which probably makes it better suited for the AP-type experience of a combo of "tourism" and "challenge" than 3E/PF, which has the continual rocket-tag threat of high lethality. Clever design by WotC. [/QUOTE]

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