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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 5547042" data-attributes="member: 54629">I've had an epiphany. I think this whole scheduling conflict and perceived betrayal thing is just a sideshow to the real issue. And yes, I realize that several posters have already suggested that.Anyway, it's finally clicked that much of my misery stems from my dissatisfaction with the d20 system. I miss a lot of the random little flourishes that older games had but which the developers of the d20 system worked very hard to eliminate. D20 combat in particular is too predictable and too "safe" for my tastes. I want a bit more randomness. More bad stuff happening on a natural 1 and more extra-awesome stuff happening on a natural 20. I hate how in SWSE you have to take a feat just to be able to push someone or to give your grenade the concussive blast that it really ought to have built-in. I know that all of this was designed to "streamline" the game and "speed things up", but I realize now that for me, it's taken a lot of the fun out of combat.My players mostly just go "I attack and deal damage". They don't ever take the abilities that let them do creative or interesting things, and they never ask if they can try to do those things without having those abilities in the first place. When the rules even allow for trying something untrained, there are generally massive penalties attached (-5 or -10), which just puts my players off ... and yes it would put me off too.Last night I read through that "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" that Water Bob posted. That really spoke to me. I think what I want is something in between. I want more randomness, but I don't want to do away with all the dice rolling on the players' parts. So like I want there to be a chance that someone might lose their grip on their weapon when they get knocked over, but at the same time I'd give them a chance to avoid having it happen by making a DC 10 Strength check or something. I want combat to be more dynamic, more dramatic, more exciting! It's just too "safe" and boring for me now. Perhaps 4e has had a more dramatic effect on my RPG tastes than I would've thought, and perhaps it's because I recently started playing it again that I've finally come to realize that. 4e combat is much more interesting because it's practically never about just dealing damage. There's almost always some extra little effect, whether it's forced movement or a status effect or teleportation or whatever, and all of that adds up to make things so much more interesting than in previous d20 games.And this leads into some of the conflict that's been going on between the players. I hinted before about house rules being an issue. I think the three players I griped about earlier are more or less happy with the way the system works, but I am not. I think I am heading down a different path than they are. Our tastes are diverging. What we want out of an RPG is changing, but we're not going in the same direction. In the case of Player #1 and me, I would say we're headed in the exact opposite direction! He's come to hate house rules on principle (partly because he doesn't like not being able to look a rule up in his official rulebook), whereas I generally can't stand to play without them. He's come to despise pre-plotted adventures, whereas I still think they're a viable way to play an RPG.So this is probably why I've found myself wanting to push those players out of the group. It's not just because I feel like they've betrayed me by choosing to go and play Pathfinder. It's because I don't know that I can continue to game with them when my preferences are so different to theirs. And the other thing, which goes back to my gripe about their poor e-mail communication, is that I honestly don't know exactly how for or against my zany ideas some of them are because they won't tell me! They're all obviously willing to put up with my ideas, because they all keep showing up, but I can tell that some of them don't like them, but they won't tell me that to my face, or if they do, they won't (or admittedly maybe can't) tell me why. What they do instead is avoid the stuff I've changed or ask if they can swap it out if it's something they've already taken for their character. And while I can understand that, and am perfectly willing to let them do that, I find it frustrating that they won't tell me. While I might be guilty of being a bit passive-aggressive myself at times, it's definitely a reciprocal thing. They're just as passive-aggressive, if not even more so.And so the thing is: while I accept that not everyone has to like the things that I like or play the way that I play, I think I've reached the point where our varying tastes have become incompatible. Whew!For the record, this is all pretty stream of consciousness. It helps me to formulate my thoughts by writing them down and posting them. Just thought I'd mention that before people start jumping on me again ...</blockquote>

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