Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5525872" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, this is all good. Personally I don't find things like pemerton's library example to be too hard to pull off. I think eamon is right that there probably are too many different powers in 4e. I think pools of powers would have been smarter design, and maybe they also should have been less 'balkanized' into so many different levels. The old 9 level spell level system was good that way, it limited the number of different bins that had to be populated with unique spells. I think it is interesting to look at Matt James' discussion of Themes and layered design on that point.Tony hit it really well on the whole genre thing. I agree that you're really never going to make more than the barest illusion of a consistent world. My experience was always that mechanics applied at that level rarely made a lot of sense. They might work in a given situation but then they'd be way off in the next situation. There are some arguments in both directions here. Things like Domain rules might be useful inspiration for some DMs, but I think they really should exist strictly as guidelines. I recall the old stronghold rules from AD&amp;D. Honestly, while they suggested an interesting possible arena of play, they never really worked. They didn't, and couldn't, take into consideration the nature of the individual character, the details of the setting, etc. By making them rules attached to the class they created an awkwardness in the way the system worked. Truthfully I can remember very few situations playing AD&amp;D where we even bothered with them. At best they were suggestive and I think would have been much better written as a set of DM guidelines in the DMG that just explained the concept and provided some parameters for what might work well.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5525872, member: 82106"] Yeah, this is all good. Personally I don't find things like pemerton's library example to be too hard to pull off. I think eamon is right that there probably are too many different powers in 4e. I think pools of powers would have been smarter design, and maybe they also should have been less 'balkanized' into so many different levels. The old 9 level spell level system was good that way, it limited the number of different bins that had to be populated with unique spells. I think it is interesting to look at Matt James' discussion of Themes and layered design on that point. Tony hit it really well on the whole genre thing. I agree that you're really never going to make more than the barest illusion of a consistent world. My experience was always that mechanics applied at that level rarely made a lot of sense. They might work in a given situation but then they'd be way off in the next situation. There are some arguments in both directions here. Things like Domain rules might be useful inspiration for some DMs, but I think they really should exist strictly as guidelines. I recall the old stronghold rules from AD&D. Honestly, while they suggested an interesting possible arena of play, they never really worked. They didn't, and couldn't, take into consideration the nature of the individual character, the details of the setting, etc. By making them rules attached to the class they created an awkwardness in the way the system worked. Truthfully I can remember very few situations playing AD&D where we even bothered with them. At best they were suggestive and I think would have been much better written as a set of DM guidelines in the DMG that just explained the concept and provided some parameters for what might work well. [/QUOTE]

Verification