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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5636534" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think that's part of why Mearls has been advocating for "dials." Not everyone is a fan of 4e combat. Personally, I think it's too detailed and fiddly for what I need combat to do in my games. It's a good system, it's just VERY CONCERNED with details that I don't care about, personally. Not everyone is a fan of 4e noncombat. Personally, I think it's not detailed enough, and too abstract for what I need exploration and interaction to do in my games. It's not a bad system, it's just not at all concerned with details that I find vital, personally.From WotC's viewpoint, there's gotta be a way for me and you to both be giving them money. Neither of us are likely to change our likes and dislikes -- I'm not suddenly going to accept rituals and skill challenges as super awesome ideas, and you're not suddenly going to be OK with a more abstract combat system. We both are willing to spend money on things that support our style of play, and unwilling to spend money on things that don't. So for WotC to get both of our moneys, it needs to give us both what we actually want. And that's incompatible in one rule system. It needs to give us modularity so that you can plug in 4e's combat system and I can plug in some awesome social skill system, and a third person could use both, and a fourth person could use neither. Providing all of that is the only way WotC will get both of our dollars. Something I think has been learned well by WotC: You can't tell people what is fun for them. Saying "X is fun, Y is boring, here's rules for X!" is just going to piss off the people who have a LOT of fun with Y. It's the essence of badwrongfun, a judgement on someone else's delightful four hours of imaginary elf time. Your best bet is to say "X is fun, here's rules for X! Y is fun, here's rules for Y!" That's also a tremendous undertaking, if you're going to provide rules for AAA-ZZZ. D&D is about a lot of different things for a lot of different players, and the designers can't effectively dictate what the game is about to the groups (and hope to make a profit). The GROUPS dictate what their games are about to the DESIGNERS. If the designers don't provide that, they don't sell very much, because as Gygax famously said, we don't actually need any rules to do this thing. We WANT rules, oh yes we do, we loves them. But we don't need them. And if WotC won't give them to us, we'll go to retroclones, or to Pathfinders, or to other games, or just stop buying books altogether, maybe even retire, leave the hobby, and do something else with our time.</blockquote>

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