Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8448631" data-attributes="member: 1465">There is clearly a huge difference between groups! I can accept if part of the D&D fanbase plays the game as just combat, with the rest being filler between combats. I don't buy that this is the majority however. It might seem the majority because since they are the most interested (obsessed?) with rules, they often endlessly dominate online discussions. IMHO they also more or less divide between not caring/wanting out-of-combat rules at all, or instead wanting lots of rules to turn everything non-combat into combat-like.Pretty much all games of D&D I've run or played since the beginning almost 30 years ago had combat AND non-combat situations. Never felt to me like social interaction, investigation and exploration aren't challenging. Of course if the DM doesn't care or runs them poorly,or the players demand to fast-forward them, they can end up being too-easy or non-challenging: self-fulfilling prophecy. But to be honest, exploration is my favourite pillar, and I've seen more DM running non-challenging combat than exploration. In fact, a significant share of those players who like only combat actually just like a "shoot'em up" version of it i.e. non-challenging combat!That said, for me the exploration phase is challenging when it requires thinking in-character, and rules tend to work against that. The more rules you have to represent and resolve a situation, the less you think in-character and the more you instead think in terms of those rules, like "if I use this ability here I get this bonus there". This can be a reasonably satisfying resource-management challenge but the game is already full of those and I don't feel I need even more, especially because they reduce the need to think in-character.Already the most basic single-roll mechanic has that problem, the proverbial "I check for hidden doors" dice roll. It can totally bypass any in-character thinking when applied bluntly. Of course then your exploration is boring! But switching to skill challenges doesn't make it a bit more interesting to me. So I don't add more rules, the only "technique" I use is ask the players to try more immersion and then call for dice rolls only as a way (a) for me to resolve something I am myself undecided for, and (b) make players feel good about using some bonus they invested into.</blockquote>

Verification