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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 1758043" data-attributes="member: 5724">The individual issue is with a player, but when publishing for the market, the issue is one with the game. At an individual table, anything goes. In a supplement, that's not the case.And you're absolutely correct about any system concerned with balance. The fewer rules, the easier to role-play. The more rules, the more limited the role-playing options.To be utterly silly, if there were rules about how far you could spit, and I wanted my toothless old geezer to spit a bit farther than what the rules alow people without teeth to spit (for some obscure role-playing reason) i'd be confronted with the rules regulating the role-play. The more extensive and expansive the rules set the more rule-regulated the role-play becomes. And as you point out, this is regardless of system.For a more realistice example, think about jumping across a pit. Before jumping rules, I could assign the success of the action based upon the probablity of what I wanted to happen. Now with the rules, I have to determine the size of the pit based upon a mechanic. If I want the PC to succeed 60% of the time, there is a certain size I have to make the pit. And the player can meta-know their exact probablity of success. This player knowledge of probability of success with a "rules-heavy" system vrs. my saying, "You think you have a slightly better chance of succeeding than failing" inevitibly leads to role-playing based upon the rules-created reality. And my plot must be served via the rules, rather than via the plot.Yes.People expect mechanical balance now. Something that has cool factor and balance is better recieved by the market than something that has cool factor without mechanical balance.I'm not saying role-playing is difficult in 3.X. I'm saying it's less easy than in a system with less rules. The players know less about their chances of success and failure, providing me with more ability to manipulate the plot to serve my (and the groups) fun.joe b.ps. and Buzz, if you could would you take me off the Chicago Games day mailing list? We're not going to be able to make the one coming up and we're heading off to India in November so the chances of making another date is pretty slim...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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