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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9000292" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That...makes no sense at all given the extensive, byzantine rules we got even in the oldest of D&amp;D books. They were very clearly pushing to include some kinds of structure, and the early books make some pretty strident claims in that regard. If they were fighting this alleged fight, why did they break from it so readily, and why did they not make it unequivocally clear what they cared about doing? Why introduce tons of new spells, why create new classes like Thief and Cleric? These things clearly indicate a trend toward system from the very earliest stages of the game. Sure, it wasn't the same kind of &quot;a rule for everything and everything has its rule&quot; approach of 3e (which I've already criticized in this thread), but it was still a push away from &quot;genuinely absolutely no structure unless it's absolutely necessary.&quot; The Cleric was NOT added because of market forces. It was added because Sir Fang was stupidly OP and Gary wanted to bring him to heel.Clint_L can't see my posts, but I can say that you can absolutely use miniatures and terrain if you find it helpful. I often draw quickie maps in MS Paint for my players so they know the generalized positions of things. No gridlines, just...what does the arena look like, where are we at, where's the opposition at? Had to stop, one might say, in flagrante pugnato for family reasons last session, but I drafted up a map with shifting positions to make sure it was clear what was going on. For the future, I might use paint.net instead, since it has layers and will thus make editing easier.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9000292, member: 6790260"] That...makes no sense at all given the [I]extensive, byzantine[/I] rules we got even in the oldest of D&D books. They were very clearly pushing to include [I]some[/I] kinds of structure, and the early books make some pretty strident claims in that regard. If they were fighting this alleged fight, why did they break from it so readily, and why did they not make it unequivocally clear what they cared about doing? Why introduce tons of new spells, why create new classes like Thief and Cleric? These things clearly indicate a trend toward system from the very earliest stages of the game. Sure, it wasn't the same kind of "a rule for everything and everything has its rule" approach of 3e (which I've already criticized in this thread), but it was still a push away from "genuinely absolutely no structure unless it's absolutely necessary." The Cleric was NOT added because of market forces. It was added because Sir Fang was stupidly OP and Gary wanted to bring him to heel. Clint_L can't see my posts, but I can say that you can absolutely use miniatures and terrain if you find it helpful. I often draw quickie maps in MS Paint for my players so they know the [I]generalized[/I] positions of things. No gridlines, just...what does the arena look like, where are we at, where's the opposition at? Had to stop, one might say, [I]in flagrante pugnato[/I] for family reasons last session, but I drafted up a map with shifting positions to make sure it was clear what was going on. For the future, I might use paint.net instead, since it has layers and will thus make editing easier. [/QUOTE]

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