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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5552639" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, OTOH there are a few things that can be said about that. Campaigns where the PCs are spending a lot of the focus on things besides adventuring are a pretty small minority IME. Couple that with the fact that any such systems are going to need to be tweaked at least somewhat to the player's and setting's requirements and it doesn't seem to me that kind of material falls under the umbrella of stuff that a publisher like WotC either can or should provide. It certainly shouldn't be cluttering up core books. I highly doubt a 'Book of Mundane Pursuits' is likely to be an economically feasible project either. I'd also say that these kinds of things tend to be a "labor of love" situation. Someone or some group is very familiar with some sort of activity and they want to incorporate it into their RP. They are vastly more knowledgeable about this activity or sphere than the devs at any game design shop are likely to be. Thus they are infinitely more qualified to craft said subsystem for themselves, and rather unlikely to find something generic satisfactory.As for say 'intrigue' well, isn't that actually really well covered already? It is fundamentally an adventuring activity. It is going to rely on stealth, observation, persuasion, etc. All of these are core 4e skills and there are good solid rules for them and plenty of ways that players can tweak their characters to reflect any particular archetype they want. I think roles in that kind of adventuring DO already exist. I'm not convinced they should be formalized like combat roles are. You have some character who is the 'face', another that is the 'muscle', another that is the 'expert', etc. These are pretty natural classifications that arise out of the way the skill mechanics work. You can play against them as you can with combat roles, but in general the wizard is going to be the factual know-it-all, the paladin, bard, etc is going to be the negotiator and/or shmoozer, the fighter will be the muscle, and the rogue will sneak around spying on things. They can cover each other reasonably well, but maybe a super JoT bard aside they'll each have their place in the action.In terms of the actual mechanics of how something like 'intrigue' goes... I think that is far too vast a territory for rules to cover comprehensively. DMs probably most need some guidelines, plot ideas, NPCs, and maybe SC examples and other play examples more than anything else. While I wouldn't say the DMGs have provided a lot of that for intrigue specifically, it seems like some kind of resource book for that kind of stuff wouldn't be a bad idea. It could provide a few goodies for the PCs as well, no reason they can't use MORE mechanics there, but I don't think they need new subsystems. I might be able to see that being more required for say the Nautical themed campaign perhaps. So there can be cases where some added rules would be cool. I'd just keep it to a minimum personally.</blockquote>

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