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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3913538" data-attributes="member: 2067">This convo is more than making strange bedfellows, it's practically lion-laying-down-with-the-lamb kind of stuff. Though I suppose that's in season. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I disagreed with you on the wisdom of the rust monster re-design. As I saw it, the only major hiccup was that the rust power magically went away, rather than (say) being removed with a skill check or something.But I agree with you that 4e appears to be setting a tone that necessarily limits, and specifically with regards to "monsters are only good for combat" mentality, which was my first hint that 4e might be hitting a few conceptual stumbling blocks.I like monsters that are good for combat. But I need my monsters to be good for MORE than just combat, too!I used the term "failure of imagination" in the Dryad thread, and I think it would be applicable here, too. If the designers take the rust monster and just jettison it because of some reductionist philosophy like that, they have had a massive and systemic failure of imagination.Which would probably explain most of these names they're coming up with, too.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Not only that, but it robs my ability as a DM to set that up in my world. D&D has let weird outliers quietly exist since 1e, and 3e, as you point out, was one of the first editions to really embrace the potential imagination of the player base. I feel like 4e may be a bit of a step back, where they tell you how you should play it so strongly that they won't support what's outside of their milieu.The problem crops up when you realize NO ONE PLAYS IN THE "CORE SETTING." The core setting for all editions has been largely implied, and a house rule here or there (no half-races!) changes it. DMs will ALWAYS put house rules in place. If 4e tells me "Humans are generally horse-breeders of the plains," one of the first things I'm going to want to do is have them ride giant turtles on Polynesian islands, I'm sure. 3e didn't mind that so much. Take the Ride skill, take the stats for a giant tortoise, take the warm weather rules and the swimming rules, and run. 4e might break to pieces if I do that.So it's not only work to remove, but it's also more difficult to change, or to use yourself for something different. The core of 3e went from Westerns to the Orient to Africa to the New World with only superficial changes (and those were some of my favorite products for the game, ever, period). The core of 4e can pretty much do only the core of 4e, which takes it back from the hands of the creative crew of the DM's and puts it back in Wizard's camp saying "We know what's best for you!"Ick.What's more weirding me out is not the new races (more options are better!), but the fact that they are so inextricably wed to the cosmology that it hurts to disentangle them. Take Eladrin Teleporting for instance. The claim is that they step into the Feywild to move. But if I don't use the Feywild in my game, I either nerf them or think of a different fluff. And if the fluff is more appropriate to another setting (Eladrin teleport because of cybernetic technology imbedded in their pancreas), it might interfere with the mechanics, giving me a worse cascade than 3e's ability damage!Compare with a more vague earlier-edition "eladrin can teleport" note, leaving the wheres and whyfores up to the individual campaign, it leaves it much more open-ended.What's slightly more upsetting to me is taking away the whole "The people who know your game best is your gaming group, we're going to give them tools to help them play the game they want to play" atmosphere for a "Our Way or the Highway!" kind of feel.If they define their own mythology, they, by necessity, define it in opposition to every other mythology out there. And sorry, Wizards, but you are not capable of knowing what kind of game my group likes better than me. You should be empowering me to deliver them the game they want, not telling me to deliver them the game you want me to deliver.A power of D&D's that it has always had, and something that defines it more against videogames than any nebulous concept of "non-linearality" is it's ability to be modded, altered, changed, re-arranged, broken, and re-built fairly easily. It's a Maker's game, a game made for tinkering it to your own style, for personalization. Wedding too closely the mechanics to their pet setting is one big fat "WARRANTY VOIDED IF OPENED" sticker on the thing. I still don't think the designers are myopic enough to do this. I still fear that it's going to have elements of it woven into the core rules.And no problem on the semi-neologism, RC! Though I think I got it from MMORPG's, so....grains of salt and all that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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