NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5465806" data-attributes="member: 27160">It's not imminent, I agree <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  But several of the statements I hear from Mike Mearls lead me to thing that's the way he thinks - he wants to make D&D "the best RPG for everyone".  While that is understandable on a commercial level, it flies in the face of what the 4E designers originally seemed to realise - that different RPGs can be good at different things, but trying to be good at everything is doomed to failure through dilution and conflicted aims.This, too, is a symptom of the idea that a "perfect RPG" is possible that will be best at everything, I think.  Gamers as a whole have to get hold of the idea that roleplaying gaming includes several mutually exclusive 'root goals' or 'fun factors', and different people prefer different ones of these.  There is nothing wrong with this - diversity is a good thing.  Furthermore, expecting everyone to share your own preferences for "fun factor", and desiring every game to support it, is unreasonable.  RPGs are not all seeking a single, unified "dimension of fun", so the differences between them do not amount to one game seeking it well and another seeking it badly.  Many games pursue their own, chosen "factor of fun" very well, while being totally different from other good games (because their design aims are different).  If we understand that, tolerance of "other games" becomes easy.  Part of my unease with Mike Mearls et al is that (presumably for commercial reasons) they don't acknowledge this - they want to 'sell' their own brand as "the best one" - when there is no such thing.But why should I have to fix it myself?  I agree with those who see this as poor overall product quality maintenance.  I actually want errata and changes/additions to maintain the corpus of the game data at a high level of utility throughout, for both DMs and players.  And I would be happy to pay for it, in fact.I personally take this as a "feature" of D&D4E, not a bug.  D&D has always been best suited to "challenge play" (i.e. DM sets up challenges and adjudicates the players trying to overcome them through their PCs) because of the experience point and character "improvement" (level) systems.  Because of this, designing the rules to be operable without modification is entirely desirable.  I am not suggesting that those who want to modify the rules should be hindered in doing so* - but it should be possible to run without modification and have no worries of "brokenness" in doing so, IMV.* This is one objection I have to the Character Builder move to online, in fact - I think it does exactly this.</blockquote>

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