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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3680685" data-attributes="member: 8158">I think if you've read enough web articles, forum postings, and podcasts, it is easy to get that very impression you state, because while they spend a lot of time saying things like "until the moment [the monsters] interact with the PCs, they’re in a state of stasis. And five rounds later, they’re done", they don't seem the cross over to other side of the fence  very often. Moreover, it's often with a sort of weird regret that they don't. Again, many times their advice to DM's is that focusing on deep storytelling instead of combat generally winds up being a matter of one's reach exceeding one's grasp. They may even feel badly saying it, but they believe it. Have you listened to any D&D podcasts? I think they're particularly noteworthy, because their Q&A format is to read each other questions on the spot, so the answers come right off the top of their heads. Check out the last couple of them. Oh, and the "Roll Initiative!" article from a few months back is also illuminating.EDIT--And I guess I'll wander off on a tangent for a second and explain that what I really love about RPG's is the way that it engages to so many different parts of the brain. It has that element of improvisational theatre that provides a very different form of stimulation than meticulously building the ultimate battle spell list for your evoker that accounts for every contingency, and that in turn is very different from the stimulation provided by that gambler's thrill of letting life-or-death stakes ride on the roll of a d20.Of course, that's the waterloo of gaming as well, because you wind up with folks looking for conflicting sets of stimuli. One guy comes to the table to shut off the problem-solving his brain for a few hours and just unleash the aggression that's pent up all week long, while another guy has been intellectually bored all week long and wants mental challenges. The impression I sometimes get from the developers--and it's happened with increasing frequency--is that they've lost some sight of the diversity of their player base, or worse, that they just don't think it's in their interests to appeal to it in its entirety.</blockquote>

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