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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6058980" data-attributes="member: 22424">I've now read this article (which was fascinating, by the way), and I don't think it's as simple as that, though it's hard for me to express exactly why.The key thing, I think, is that it is actually the very thing that I love about 3e that also frustrates me to no end, and that is specifically that wonderful, glorious, broken math. It is precisely the way that the game was so joined up and (apparently) mathematically rigorous that first attracted me to the game, and as I dug further into the game it only impressed me more.It was only with several more years, and many many hours, of further experience with the system that I came to recognise that it was fundamentally flawed. And, worse, that it was flawed in such a way that it cannot be meaningfully fixed. (If you will, it's like the Leaning Tower of Pisa - leave it alone and it will eventually collapse; fix it, and it loses the very thing that makes it interesting.)By contrast, 4e seems to have more robust math at its core, and may actually possess the mathematical rigour that 3e promised. But it never showed me the connections that made it up - all I see in &quot;Page 42&quot; is that they've worked out what the right answers should be and presented those, without &quot;showing the working&quot;, or even giving any impression that the working even exists.It does nothing for me where 3e did. More importantly (for the purposes of this discussion), it does nothing from me in &quot;Melvin&quot; terms where 3e did.(Conversely, my experience with people at the &quot;Vorthos&quot; end of the scale is that they look at 3e, get promptly turned away by the math, and go play some other system entirely. Though 4e is also unlikely to be their system of choice, since both games require carrying a weight of system that they tend to reject.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6058980, member: 22424"] I've now read this article (which was fascinating, by the way), and I don't think it's as simple as that, though it's hard for me to express exactly why. The key thing, I think, is that it is actually the very thing that I love about 3e that also frustrates me to no end, and that is specifically that wonderful, glorious, broken math. It is precisely the way that the game was so joined up and (apparently) mathematically rigorous that first attracted me to the game, and as I dug further into the game it only impressed me more. It was only with several more years, and many many hours, of further experience with the system that I came to recognise that it was fundamentally flawed. And, worse, that it was flawed in such a way that it cannot be meaningfully fixed. (If you will, it's like the Leaning Tower of Pisa - leave it alone and it will eventually collapse; fix it, and it loses the very thing that makes it interesting.) By contrast, 4e seems to have more robust math at its core, and may actually possess the mathematical rigour that 3e promised. But it never showed me the connections that made it up - all I see in "Page 42" is that they've worked out what the right answers should be and presented those, without "showing the working", or even giving any impression that the working even exists. It does nothing for me where 3e did. More importantly (for the purposes of this discussion), it does nothing from me in "Melvin" terms where 3e did. (Conversely, my experience with people at the "Vorthos" end of the scale is that they look at 3e, get promptly turned away by the math, and go play some other system entirely. Though 4e is also unlikely to be their system of choice, since both games require carrying a weight of system that they tend to reject.) [/QUOTE]

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