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<blockquote data-quote="GlaziusF" data-source="post: 4461587" data-attributes="member: 74166">Here's the problem: you can do that in 3rd ed. Heck, when they release the druid class you can do it in 4th ed. Why the hell not. You have players who are okay with it, fine, go nuts.But let's assume you had some players who weren't okay with the idea of, say, driving two hours for the once-every-two-weeks game and spending the whole time being a spectator to somebody else's awesome thing. In 3rd ed and 4th ed it's just Mr. Awesome arguing with the Unwilling Cheerleaders. But before then the Unwilling Cheerleaders go up against Mr. Awesome and THE RULES, which is a much bigger psychological block. And even if the Unwilling Cheerleaders win that fight, you've acknowledged that THE RULES, which started out as being accepted in common, are now mutable if enough players make enough noise. Now in principle this isn't a bad thing. Democracy, right? But even if you make some new rules, piecemeal, that you all agree on, they're just temporary practical patches, and they may not work - or worse, they may undermine the entire rest of the original rules. So you make new patches as you go, and maybe your whole adventure collapses in on itself in a wonderfully perverse way, and you're left with either an unworkable system or you change your mind and then become in the players' eyes Sir Arbitrary the Unreliable. Somewhere in there I drove past something that looked kinda like a point, so here it is: THE RULES are the basis for the social contract among your gaming group. Fluff can't support something like that, no matter how much shellac you dip it in.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="GlaziusF, post: 4461587, member: 74166"] Here's the problem: you can do that in 3rd ed. Heck, when they release the druid class you can do it in 4th ed. Why the hell not. You have players who are okay with it, fine, go nuts. But let's assume you had some players who weren't okay with the idea of, say, driving two hours for the once-every-two-weeks game and spending the whole time being a spectator to somebody else's awesome thing. In 3rd ed and 4th ed it's just Mr. Awesome arguing with the Unwilling Cheerleaders. But before then the Unwilling Cheerleaders go up against Mr. Awesome and THE RULES, which is a much bigger psychological block. And even if the Unwilling Cheerleaders win that fight, you've acknowledged that THE RULES, which started out as being accepted in common, are now mutable if enough players make enough noise. Now in principle this isn't a bad thing. Democracy, right? But even if you make some new rules, piecemeal, that you all agree on, they're just temporary practical patches, and they may not work - or worse, they may undermine the entire rest of the original rules. So you make new patches as you go, and maybe your whole adventure collapses in on itself in a wonderfully perverse way, and you're left with either an unworkable system or you change your mind and then become in the players' eyes Sir Arbitrary the Unreliable. Somewhere in there I drove past something that looked kinda like a point, so here it is: THE RULES are the basis for the social contract among your gaming group. Fluff can't support something like that, no matter how much shellac you dip it in. [/QUOTE]

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