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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 5172088" data-attributes="member: 85641">I think this is exactly right. Turd-proofing a game system is probably futile and certainly pointless. But even well-intentioned gamers and DM can run into problems if they have different playstyles or are looking for different things out of the game.  Obviously some level of incompatability is unbridgeable, for example, if one players want to play a detailed hotal management simulation set in an intraplanar way station, and another wants to play a wuxia-army of darkness hybrid set in a fantasy analogue to ancient china, it seems unlikely that they will arrive at a middle ground that satisfies both of them, or that a system could be designed which could fully cater to both in a satisfying way. But I don't think that is particularly common, especially when playing D&D. But a much less extreme scenario, which I think is very common, is for many players to be on the same page in terms of wanting to play more or less traditional heroic high fantasy/sword and sorcerery adventures, but to simply have different ideas about what that entails and how that should be accomplished. So you have guys who, very reasonably, imagine primarily that their heroic adventurer is a grade A badass and want to represent him as such, so they try to build him in such a way that he can kick as much ass as possible (e.g. by hitting a lot, and hitting very hard). And you have other players who, also very reasonably, want their heroic adventurer to be effective in combat, but have other non-combat related aspects of his persona which they consider just as crucial.  These are different (and both pretty common) approaches to playing D&D, but in the right system, they don't have to yield such vastly different results that these two players can't play with each other and have fun together. If the guys who want to play super badasses can build characters who hit somewhat more often and somewhat harder than other characters, while never truly eclipsing less combat-oriented characters; and if the less combat oriented characters have options to flesh out their character in ways that are interesting to them without being turned into an inneffectual gimp, then I think in many cases these two players can arrive at a happy medium in which they're both getting some of what they want out of the system, without breaking other people's fun or making the DM's life hell. This is more or less the goal of 4e. I think there are legitimate arguments as to whether it succeeds (I enjoy it, but I know many people who find its less granular approach to skills and non-mechanical approach to character quirks and non-adventuring abilities to be unsatisfying), but I don't think that you can simply say 4e is a result of attempting to proof the game against jerks out to intentionally ruin other people's fun. Good people and legitimate playstyles can still end up running into problems if the system isn't built to accomodate them all.</blockquote>

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