Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 2412084" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, here's my more relevant comment. As some of you know, Akrasia was the DM/CK for my gaming group for slightly more than a year. Obviously, he and I have some differences of opinion about what we like in our games. However, we were able to play together just fine. In hashing this out offline, I sent a comment to him trying to explain that I think is relevant to the rules-light vs. rules-heavy argument. I liked how it came out, so I decided to post it here.I have a confession to make that I haven't before now: I REALLY wanted to like Castles & Crusades, because the prep time for 3e is daunting for me as well. However, as both a player and a DM, I find C&C to be "incomplete." I guess this comes down to personality types. I prefer giving detailed descriptions of things that I know about. Let me make the point by way of an example.As an improv actor at the Ren Faire, I have to "extemporize" things ALL the time. If I have to make it up out of whole cloth, I stink at it. But give me something to hang my creativity on and I can be really creative. I grant this is just me. I have friends who are perfectly good at coming up with bits out of thin air. Not all of them are as good at incorporating new things as I am, but that's why we work well together.For me and my form of creativity, the 3e rules provide that "hook" I need for MY form of creativity. By contrast, the C&C ones fall short. However, I'm terribly frustrated by all the "balancing" and "stacking" issues - I've mentioned I hate the 3e magic system, right?That's why I'm looking forward to Iron Heroes. I know Mearls has addressed the spell system and "magic items as power-ups" issues. The Feat Mastery System and the skill groups should make feat and skill selection a lot more straight-forward. And some of the things he's added to the game are about giving people (both players and GMs) more "hooks" of the kind I like to have. That all sounds like it will really appeal to me. Of course, for those who prefer making things up with less guidance, it's probably not the system for them.And that's what I think this debate comes down to - personal taste vs. what people can work with. I think it's better for a game to provide rules that a gamer can choose not to use rather than to come out with fewer rules than people want, unless you're trying to market to a smaller niche of gamers. If someone doesn't want or need that many rules, they can chop stuff out. However, if you want more rules, they're already there and you don't have to put a lot of work into developing them, balancing them and so on. If there's something the game doesn't address, someone can come up with a mechanic for it and market it as an add-on.I hope that 4e, if/when it materializes will be complete but modular. You'll be able to buy it, and use everything in the books as is, but there'll be lots of side notes that if you want to remove A, then you should take out B as well, and so forth. Sort of "rules complete" with notes for how to remove rules in balanced ways. Want a different magic system? Take out the default one and use one of several alternatives. Sort of setting it up so that d20 is the OS and it comes bundled with a suite of "software" that you can uninstall with ease. Then the OGL market really takes off as companies make money developing and marketing "programs" that run on the d20 OS.Personally, I think that'd be the ideal.</blockquote>

Verification