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Message: <blockquote data-quote="payn" data-source="post: 9257256" data-attributes="member: 90374">Over the years the game has moved from a survival sim to a post Hickman plot driven adventure story game. Surviving a day in the desert or a night in the tundra are boring in their own right. Simple survival and fortune collecting is no longer the expected experience. Though, if there are stakes involved suddenly its a lot more interesting. Get through the desert/tundra quick enough and you will be able to impact events A,B,C. Struggle and you may only get a chance to interact with a few or maybe not any. Suddenly, there are stakes involved and things get a lot more interesting.Yeap, I think a lot of it is because D&D adventure design has never leaned into exploration and social rulesets. The Paizo adventure paths do this consistently, with of course mixed results. Though, the key to these subsystems working, and being integrated to the rulesets, has come from their demonstration via AP and organized play scenarios. It takes more than simply providing rules, you need good examples, testing grounds, etc... for GMs and players to engage. That is why, to me, Pathfinder is the exploration Indiana Jones fantasy RPG, and D&D is the monster hunting game with potential for more. You have two competing philosophies over time to thank for that. Rulings over rules, and the opposite. To be frank I dont know exactly what the middle would look like. I have a feeling both adherents of the philosophies would be disappointed. I do think being armed with knowledge of how the rules works is important as a player, though, the more ruleset laid down the more they can be gamed as well. I dont have the best answer on this one I have been aiming for the middle as a GM for most my gaming life. The best years I had were with PF1 and the adventure paths introducing interesting rulesets for exploration/social pillar as they relate to the adventure. I think D&D, for better or worse, has become that casual monster hunting game that can be more, but isn't motivated to be more. YMMV.</blockquote>

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