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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tequila Sunrise" data-source="post: 4981962" data-attributes="member: 40398">*sigh* Really? You really think I somehow missed RP 101? I think I've been very patient through this discussion, but it's wearing thin. Fine, let's take a character that I played a few years back, by the name of Finn MacCool. In brief, Finn was born into a noble house. As a child he narrowly escaped the destruction of his House, which resulted in him having a phobia of death and an obsession with seeking out immortality. Fostered in secret by a loyal warrior, Finn learned the only profession available to him: that of a warrior. Having an aristocratic background and a preference for words over swords, he learned to speak charmingly as well as how to fight.Now, can we stop going off on these insulting tangents about the validity of fluff that's irrelevant to the discussion?If you like inventing house rules on the spot every time a player wants his character to be something other than Fighting Man #2430, and every time he wants to do something other than make a basic attack roll, by all means the earlier editions are for you. I call it limited, but you of course don't have to live by my word.Know what I did playing my very first 4e game? Wrote up an NPC cleric, refluffed as a bard, in about fifteen minutes. Know what I let a player do during last Sunday's 4e game, that 4e rules explicitly forbids? Moving through an enemy space. So no, I'm not trapped in the 'rules don't cover it, so can't be done' mindset. I'm focusing on mechanical options/rules because that's where I see the lack in earlier editions. Or more precisely, considering all the 2e splats I used to have, in roughly balanced mechanical options.You know that democracy (aka consensus) is the slowest and least efficient form of government, bar none, right?Only in the same way that our id is captive to cultural norms. A fuller rule set says 'You can be good at a few things of your choice. Use them to flesh out your character.' It provides you with a basic set of shared assumptions, a springboard for ideas while at the same time stifling the 'I'm good at everything!' syndrome. Now, if you like to throw all of that to the wind, that's cool too. I knew two brothers growing up whose parents didn't teach them how to eat with utensils because they didn't believe in rules, so the brothers just ended up learning when they visited friends.Why play an rp game if you're going to leave so much up to narration?1. I played a single session with a married couple who have the game and are fond of older editions. It ended with me (or the other character?) being teleported to who-knows-where by a randomly generated scroll. I may very well play again, if they can find time away from their kids.2. Other than D&D, I've played a month or two of pbp Exalted, which I'm actually using for the setting of my new D&D game. I ended up quitting because I just don't do well with the pbp format. Other than that, I played V:tM with a ST who didn't believe in rolling dice. Ever. Yeah, that lasted exactly one session.I can type all that into the chat log or shout it to other players if we're using skype or whatever, so in fact my WoW character can yell and foam at the mouth as well as my D&D character can. (In fact there's an argument that you only have to imagine the flying spittle, while in D&D you have to imagine everything.)I can also say that my WoW character can swing from a chandelier and do crazy stunts, just as I can say my D&D character can, but in WoW there are no rules for it so describing it means jack squat. There are also no rules for it in older D&D editions; so you have to depend on the DM letting you. That's a step up from WoW, but a step down from having actual guidelines and rules for such a stunt IMO.Please repeat: Patronizing other posters demonstrates a distinct lack of class. Individuality comes from description and rules.</blockquote>

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