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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5593982" data-attributes="member: 2067"><a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110614" target="_blank">It is free to the world</a>.It's a really interesting article, and I'm more than on board with what Mearls's ideas are so far.BUT, I gotta say, when I think 4e, I don't always think "abstract."Sure, it's abstract with regards to noncombat stuff. The whole "Powers and monsters can be whatever you fluff them as, guys!" and "You don't need mechanics for conversations!" and suchlike. But it's intensely detailed with regards to combat."Which square are you in? How many squares can you move? What's the size of your burst? Does this provoke an OA? What kind of movement is this? What about the action economy? What's your surge value?"3e was crazy detailed in this regard, too. "Tactics", from what I can tell, can never be "abstract." The moment you have abstraction, you're removing tactics from the equation, because you're making broad assumptions and making it easy to resolve, rather than the detail required when you're making tactical choices. There's no real concrete tactics in 4e outside of combat, but in combat, there's a LOT of tactics. Which means that, to my face, it can't be very abstract. I'd almost make the grid "Abstract" <-> "Detailed" and "Cinematic" <-> "Sandbox" instead. This would make 1e and 2e on the "abstract" side, though 1e would be "Sandbox" and 2e would be "Cinematic". 3e and 4e would both be "Detailed," and 3e would be more "Sandbox" than 4e. But any way you slice it, I'd definitely get on board with a D&D that can do it all no matter what. It sort of remains to be seen how 4e can even manage to do that, though.  What with all the hate over essentials even daring to challenge the ADEU hegemony, it seems kind of like the trufans already know what they want, and it's not anything other than what they've got. What do you think? I'm liking this series of articles very much, overall. <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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