Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grandpa" data-source="post: 5472810" data-attributes="member: 560">The article seemed to be geared towards DMs but it seems more a player issue with the dichotomy being less "DM ease" and more "player empowerment" vs. narrative immersion.Miniatures and grids are not easier for me as a DM because keeping enough rules in my head to parlay with a rules-lawyer is hard. I know I'm within my rights to bend the rules, but my desire to avoid doing so is because the rules empower players. Without concrete rules to adjudicate combat interactions, players are more subject to DM whim, and how much enjoyment they get out of it is strongly tied to how well the DM engages the players. A good DM will make players' ideas come to life and have interesting twists, and players will develop their character outside of play trusting that the DM will make those choices interesting. A bad DM, however, stifles both in-game and out-of-game creativity.In my experience, concrete rules dull the negative effects of a bad DM and the positive effects of a good DM. With concrete rules, players can still explore, exploit, and get creative with the boundaries set by rules both in and out of combat, and this can be fun regardless of the quality of your DM. The negative consequence is that it's hard to avoid speaking purely in "the language of rules." Outside of combat where things are relatively rules-free, the players are more likely to attempt creative actions, but in combat -- despite how much the DM insists that "you can do anything" -- players are encouraged to use the rules for success, and use nothing but the strictly defined system of powers to determine each and every action. Bringing narrative immersion back into combat is possible, but requires even-greater commitment and skill on the part of both DM and players to add flavor via rules, or slip narrative into every crack of an otherwise rules-heavy enterprise.For these reasons, if I could adjust anything in the core rules, it would first be to canonize the "Do Something Cool" mechanic used by several ENWorld DMs (example <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/244442-how-i-fixed-d-d-4th-edition.html" target="_blank">here</a>, under "Powers"). Making it explicit that players can substitute a valued resource (e.g., Action Point + Healing Surge) to do something cool gives players an "official" way to test the adjudicating skills of their DM and encourages creativity, but lets them ignore this part of the game if it yields poor results. Second, I would love to see a DMG focused on the philosophy and construction of the core rules, with lots of hows and whys from the designers, and advice on bringing balanced flavor to life through rules. From the community here, one of my favorite examples of flavor in rules is RangerWickett's monster design in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/297874-lolth-takes-rio-de-janeiro-drow-pantheon.html" target="_blank">Lolth takes Rio de Janeiro</a>.I would wager that some groups that dislike modern D&D struggle with rules killing the creativity they otherwise experience. But I prefer 4E because I know that players have an interesting playground of rules to enjoy while I get comfortable with my skills as a (new) DM, and get better at bringing narrative to life.</blockquote>

Verification