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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5614278" data-attributes="member: 10479">I guess Pathfinder is a good gauge for what constitutes "different enough."  I did not pick up the PF core book when it was first released though I played in a few games and ran the Free RPG Day adventures prior to this year (though I ran them using 3.5E).  About a month ago a long time gaming group in the area asked me to jump behind the screen for their PF game because their regular GM was moving out of town.  I've grabbed the core PF PDF, some monster cards off the PFSRD site, and have been spending time using that site and the PDF to bring myself up to speed,  It seems significantly different.  Of course, if WotC was going to build off the 3.5E engine rather than the 4E engine (which is even more removed already from 3.5 than PF, as anyone would agree), they'd either have to go in whole new directions or just build on the PF engine.  I don't expect we will see that.One way to build off the previous engine that I have experimented with is to focus more on RPGing during charatcer creation.  I've often heard people compare any contemporary RPG that uses or makes provisions to use minis as drifting from the realm of RPGs into the combat minis games territory, along the lines of DDM with only a vaneer of RPGing tacked on.  I've seen it, certainly, at gamestores, gamedays and conventions.  Even in discussions with folks who were involved and who agree with what I poiint out as having been the manner in which they play, they will flat out say that the way they play the RPG is RPGing.  Personally, one combat after another, after another with the only characterization being that one player tells another to watch his back.  I swear I watched a three hour combat game, played using RPG rules, where this was absololutely the only thing even approaching RPing.  A bystander might even argue that it was the player not the character but let's leave well enough alone.  Some folks claim the problem lies in the heavy fcus on combat rules, often making up the bulk of the rules in any RPG system.  I think it begins earlier than that in how character creation is presented and how it functions.  I think there are ways to fix that that do not focus on core mechanics so much as on presentation and characerization.  These articles don't make me believe they understand the spirit of RPGs let alone how to fix what they seem to now believe they have broken.</blockquote>

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