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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5635422" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with this. AD&D was, in my view, intended to be about exploration, although of dungeons rather than cultures - it had the ecosystem guidelines (long lists of traps, tricks, hazard, random dungeon dressing etc, etc), the guidelines for maintaining a "caravan" (price lists with 10' poles, mules, mercenaries, torch-bearers, porters etc - and rules for the morale of the living items of equipment), lots of discussion about mapping (as per ThirdWizard's post upthread), etc.One thing I enjoy about 4e is that it has dropped this focus on exploration.Now if that describes your game, then I would agree that it probably is about combat (or, at least, combat + looting). But that doesn't describe any fantasy RPG I've played for more than 20 years.There is nothing in the D&D rules - and, in particular, there is nothing in the 4e rules - that requires or even tends to require that the motivation for combat, and for interaction more generally, be the mercenary one of killing things to loot them.It is true that AD&D, with its treasure types in conjunction with its assumption that treasure will be gained (both to make levelling possible, in 1st ed, and to make PCs mechanically viable, in higher levels of both editions), might encourage the mercenary style - because the rules don't suggest any other obvious way to dispense treasure.3E starts to change this, though, because of its wealth-by-level guidelines (and 3E OA expressly sets out the idea of treasure gained through reward and patronage rather than through looting).And 4e makes the treasure acquisition guidelines completely abstract - it makes no difference to the mechanical play of the game whether treasure is acquired as loot, as reward, or indeed is treated in a purely metagame fashion (every so often the PCs' enhancement bonuses go up 5 levels - although to do this you do have to break the parcels down into their underlying values - or use inherent bonuses).My 4e game features a mixture of items gained as rewards, looted from enemies, recovered from tombs and ruins, or introduced in a purely metagame fashion as described above.In my previous RM game, nearly all the items in the game were either inherited items, manufactured by the PC smith, or gifted by the gods.The conflict in my games - including the combat - is not generally driven by considerations of looting. There have been exceptions - I remember a mid-level Rolemaster party whose members were skint and didn't want to be. They knew where a well-endowed tomb was, and went of to raid it. The same party also made a practice, for a little while, of walking around detecing magic on NPCs, and then robbing those who appeared to have valuable magic items. This lasted for perhaps 5 or 10 sessions of play - then, the PCs' failed attempt at looting a particular group of NPCs propelled them into a different situation where the conflicts were driven by politics rather than private greed.So this was a game that was about looting for a little while - but then became about something else.When I think of my game being about combat, I think of a session or two where the successor-in-title of the above-mentioned party, which still had two or three members in common, got into arena fighting for a little while - there was an elf moon mage (sort of a ranger-bard) who was trying his hand as a martial artist, and an ogre fighter who (due to quirks of the RM damage system interacting with quirks of the racial features mechanics) was ludicrously resistant to damage from unarmed and from many animal attacks.Again, though, politics quickly reared its head and diverted the focus of play away from the arena.(Or I think of light-hearted one-offs, like the odd hour or two of Tunnels and Trolls. These are about combat, but I don't think of them as my serious RPGing.)At least for me, the bottom line is character + situation = conflict. This is what it's about. Combat is just the medium.</blockquote>

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