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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 5492673" data-attributes="member: 83293">If a DM can't use a variety of interesting situations because the players have access to "cancel situation" buttons for them, then yes, they are limited to a smaller subset of situations.  I played a diviner from the moment 3.0 came out until he was quite high level.  The DM quickly become limited in that any situation that could be resolved by knowing a pieces of information was going to be instantly resolved by one of my spells.  The DM was forced to compensate by avoiding any situation where mystery was involved.  My ability to just make a declarative statement about what spell I was casting and utterly deflate the challenge limited his options when it came to what situations he presented to the players.In 4E, I actually don't have to know the capability and text of all the powers they might have.  People could show up to a game with a character I've never seen before and the odds of them deflating any situation with the use of a spell is astronomically low.  There are moments when a player will use something to meet a good portion of the challenge or give them a serious boost towards resolving a situation (and everyone cheers at the effective use of an ability) but never to the point that we repeatedly encountered in 3.x.   And that's with the DM being ignorant of the specific powers chosen by the character.  Imagine if the DM took a cursory glance at the character sheets before designing a situation.Are you starting to get what Heinsoo was talking about yet?  You tried to make it mean that 4E handles only a scripted approach and that Heinsoo believed improv DMing was bad.  And then you tried to equate the players not having crazy session destroying abilities as limiting possible DM skill because they're not forced to compensate for spells and abilities that deflate a given challenge.Not everyone is you.  You responded to the Heinsoo quote by specifically saying that you were one of the exceptions he talked about.  Given that, can't you see how there might be issues with running 3.x for a large number of DMs who are of lower skill level than you?  While your response might be for them to get better and be more like you, that's hardly going to help them run a good game tomorrow night.  A much better suggestion is to find a system that doesn't limit their choices in terms of challenging situations and require massive amounts of compensating for the player characters abilities.Improv DMing is so much easier in 4E than 3.x.  And can be accomplished by DMs of a range of skill levels when using that sytem.  Your earlier assertion that it's for running scripted games where players can't have meaningful impact on the story is just plain wrong.  It certainly works for those who want to use it that way, but that doesn't mean the conclusions you read into Heinsoo's words are at all accurate.</blockquote>

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