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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1653963" data-attributes="member: 10201">OtE doesn't, by design, really reflect tactical play in the usual sense. It's more about strategic play.I think my real point, in the context of this thread, is that if you are working with a heavily gamist system, and want great flexibility, you'll need great complexity. But let me borrow a bit from the description of Kriegspiels:IOW, you don't need a heavily gamist system to support tactical play. After all, my roommate engages in some seriously-tactical exercises without any "rules" whatsoever as part of her military training.  All you need to do is adopt a simulationist model, and you no longer need all those rules. [n.b.: i'm not saying that simulationism is superior to gamism, or that simulationist games never have complex rules--just that flexibility-without-complexity for tactical situations is easily achieved with a simulationist paradigm, while a gamist paradigm, IMHO, necessitates a link between flexibility and complexity (and a narrativist paradigm doesn't really support tactical situations).]Which, btw, gets me back to Four Colors al Fresco. I've actually been wrestling lately with the question of whether it's really a simulationist or narrativist model. I used to call it "pure" narrativism. But now i'm thinking it's more accurately described as either a hybrid, or even more on the simulationist side. One piece of evidence: it most definitely *does* support tactical play, and quite well--certainly as well as my experiences with D&D3E. It just does it in a completely different manner, mechanically.Agreed: it wouldn't be the same game anymore. Which was part of my point: i think that asking for "D&D3E, with all the flexibility and tactical options, but less complexity" is a lot like asking for "a ham sandwich, except without the bread, and hummus instead of ham". But i'm not convinced it wouldn't be "D&D" any more. After all, those who wanted detailed tactical play were managing it with OD&D, just by adding the detail in through simulationist, rather than gamist, mechanisms. Or, put another way, if that's what you want, it'd be a lot less effort to switch game systems than to 'fix' D&D3E to do it.Those are all pretty good, and i think go a long way towards simplifying the game. But haven't you eliminated options with every one of them? How are those eliminating complexity without eliminating flexibility? I only kept the last one because i have specific comments: i really like it in some ways, and hate it in others. I've been wrestling with a way to have D20 System cleanly scale with power level, so that anybody sufficiently less powerful than the PC just becomes a mook (i.e., one-shot kill), without having to designate them specifically ahead of time, and without ditching hitpoints. I've so far resisted using the damage save, but it accomplishes pretty much the same thing--i just think that hitpoints are integral to the feel of "D&D", so i want to retain them. I think it represents exactly the sort of "paradigm shift" in the mechanics that i was saying would be necessary to really make a difference in complexity without killing flexibility, unlike the rest of your suggestions, which are definitely just "cleaning up" the existing mechanics. It's also the one of your suggestions that i think would have the biggest positive impact (at the "cost" of a fundamental shift in how the game plays).</blockquote>

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