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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imban" data-source="post: 4528904" data-attributes="member: 29206">I guess I'll throw in my hat here. I find that I can roleplay better when I've made the character I wanted to make. If I end up making a guy I don't like because of the system, or didn't make a character at all, it's hit or miss whether I'll feel like playing him for more than a session or two. 4e isn't actually bad about this, but 3e was better, partially as a result of having 500 or so books. 2e was worse than 4e, though, and I'd play that again any day.Also, well... having room for the act of roleplaying aids roleplaying. Talking in character, deciding what your character would do, and so on. Roleplaying, at least for me, does not have 'stage directions' - I don't know what my character's going to do for sure until play starts, things happen, and I make choices. This gives me a bit of a problem with how a lot of skill challenges are written in 4e - it feels hard to convey that you can specifically use Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight in this skill challenge, and if you use Insight it opens up History because you have the specific insight that he was a general in a major war in the past, without just saying that and, when someone uses it, giving them 'stage directions' as to what that skill means they're saying. Or just not roleplaying it.I mean, I guess you could just have them pick and use skills as they'd think they'd be useful, but some of the "primary skills" in these skill challenges are kind of... arbitrary, and thus not conducive to being discoveed in play.(Of course, not all skill challenges are alike, especially the ones you write up at home.)Also, just as a comment, the break between 2e and 3e is almost entirely systemic. They stopped support for several 2e settings in the process, but in a lot of ways 3e clung very closely to 2e in setting and "meta-setting" material. I mean, heck, between 1e and 2e in FR, two editions that didn't change very much, they had gods walking the planet and blowing each other up. Between 2e and 3e, a huge mechanical change... a few years passed. 3e and 4e, not so much.</blockquote>

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