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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CuRoi" data-source="post: 5489772" data-attributes="member: 98032">I recall an earlier discussion we had on skill challenges. Again, I have to say it's a case of a skilled DM turning water into wine. (or flip it around to wine into water - I'm not trying to make a qualitative judgment here). You seem concerned that WotC isn't pushing what YOU believe the system to be capable of. Bluntly, I think that's only because you can personally make the system support that capability, not because the system is naturally capable of it.  I always have to be careful, becasue this is not a rant against 4e on my part. It's a fun game, I see its merits, love some things they did, etc. Its weakness is precisely that I cannot use that system to craft an open ended story the way I craft them. So despite its merits, I'll never play it. An example I gave in another thread also comes to mind. A player desperately wanted to do something similar to Iron Tide and claimed it wasn't possible in a 2e or 3e because it wasn't spelled out to the letter how you would do it. Therefore, 4e was a superior product.  My repsonse is precisely the opposite - BECAUSE it isn't spelled out to the letter in previous editions, as the DM I can craft some way for that player to achieve the results they want. In 4e all you have that does something like Tide of Iron is - Tide of Iron. It all boils down to the DM being able to work on the fly (which I prefer) and while 4e is "Easier" on the DM from a rules perspective, it isn't IMO easier on the DM from a story perspective.  If you have found ways to massage the system into a grand, thematically deep collaborative story building system, hey, more power to you. But the fact of the matter is, 4e truly is a game centered around dungeon delving / skirmishes. That is precisely why it may seem to you that WotC is presenting it as such in their products. The amazing thing is many people will think I have intended this as a slam against 4e, and truthfully its not meant as anything of the sort - just an observation. I loved 1e and most of those adventure modules were dungeon delving mine car rides where the DM was told explicitly what to do and what not to do. I of course always ignored those instructions and let things derail. Can you do the same with 4e? I'm sure you could, but frankly, there are too places where I want rules but there are none or places where I don't want rules and they are in abundance, so it's not worth the effort.  I think they wanted to do many things to try to expand the player base for DnD. Lower entry level requirements for DMs was one. DMing is frankly a talent (a rather useless one at that but a talent nonetheless) and not everyone can do it. With 1e, 2e, and 3e, I have seen many over-crowded games because "nobody wants to DM". So, they decide to spell it all out, require less work for the DM, and don't make the DM have to improv so much. Once that's done, perhaps you increase the number of DMs which will increase sales and presumably your player base. Consequently, you may leave old salty free-form DMs with a feeling of having their hands tied. I also think they may have intentionally wanted to divorce the collaborative story idea - or at least let 4e boil back down to the "dungeon delving, skirmishing combat fests" that made up many early DnD modules. Because this tackles another assumed complaint people have with RPGs - lack of time to play them. You know, it's hard to get a group of working, college attending, child raising people to agree to a set time and place each week and sit still for 5 hours. So if they have a skirmish based game they can get people in and out of the door in 2 hours tops, then thats good. Spell out what exactly needs to be done for "winning" combats, spell out what exactly needs to be done for "winning" non-combat stuff and again, presumably more people can find time to play. I think both of those things were considered when designing 4e, and they both make perfect sense to me on some level. However, the end result is not a game I'd move to. I'd probably back-track to 2e frankly before I moved to 4e - and again this is all just my humble opinion.</blockquote>

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