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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 5983276">I think the best approach is for designers to ask what is fun for most of our audience. The problem is there are a few areas where opinions are quite close but strongly divided so offering a change to please one group displeases another. In less mainstream rpgs with narrower audience this isn't a problem, you can easily design toward some sort of style, flavor and mechanical goal...with D&D the audience is so broad an overly focused system will only be able to appeal to a small section of players. So it gets a lot harder to say what is a good or bad mechanic in D&D. I bet if we posted the question "what is a fun mechanic and what is unfun mechanic?" here we would get lots of contradictory responses. And my guess is that the more controvertial mechanics would be very closely split 60-40 or even 50-50. If half the audience thinks healing surges are fun and half don't, that is a tough spot (because it may also mean that the pro-healing surge players feel having no heaing surges is unfun). If half the crowd loves vancian and half hates it, same think. Just look at the debates over how fighters should function and what makes them fun in play.</blockquote>