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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5498525" data-attributes="member: 18280">Hmmm.  Allow me to clarify.(1)  3e offered so many options that it was necessary to collate them and codify them into a single source for races, classes, feats, etc., as well as for optional rules from various sources that were "in play".  This included racial subtypes of my own creation, with racial levels that could be taken by those playing them.  The human racial subtypes were later published in Dragon Roots, if you have any interest in them as a 3e player.  That document also included the first version of the weapon skill rules I am now using in RCFG.(2)  You are cutting the size of the final document by half.  It ended up closer to 600 pages.(3)  I would say that the size of the document is an indication as to what could be done with that ruleset if one was willing to put in the time to research all the options out there, as well as to create some of one's own.  There is no doubt in my mind that the plethora of 3e materials allowed for more variation than the 4e ruleset does.  Indeed, my reading of the designer blogs suggests that reigning this in was a goal of the 4e design team.(4)  That said, the later work on RCFG is a stronger indication, to mind, of how 3e didn't "do it" for me.  And I credit the design blogs of the 4e designers for direct inspiration not only for making me re-evaluate the problems (IMHO) of 3e, but also to see what I liked and did not like about the direction of 4e.(5)  One of the things that those blogs did was convince me how much Gygax got right with 1e, and how little the designers understood why things were as they were in that edition.  Indeed, how little I had understood it until I started really taking it apart.  I had thought I'd never go back to 1e when I bought my 2e books.  Now I am not sure that anything I do (with RCFG or otherwise) will be anything more than a footnote to Gygax.  I truly didn't understand the brilliance of his work when I was playing it in the 80s-90s.(6)  The limitations of 4e are largely, IMHO, the limitations of the GSL.  I feel certain that 4e has been expanded in various houserules (ex. LostSoul's "fiction first" hack), but the limitations on the GSL make it harder to share those expansions.  Had Necromancer Games been able to put out their announced "4e Done Right", WotC would probably have gotten a lot more of my money.I can't take the credit for that.  It showed up on one of the designer blogs, back when 4e was still going to be a game with faster combat than 3e, and when monsters were going to flow organically from one encounter area to another.  I.e., back when 4e was still going to be published under an OGL.I also maintain that, if WotC stopped giving us the game experience they want us to have, and started to provide the game we wanted, they would do better.  And I am not just talking about the ruleset here; there are a lot of things one might be able to do with 4e that WotC simply doesn't seem interested in providing.There is no reason that 4e couldn't be providing "must have" adventures for players of other editions, or even other systems.  The biggest impediment, IMHO, is being married to the Delve format.  I know that I am like a broken record on this, but the Delve is not appropriate to all kinds of adventures, and if you only do Delve, you limit yourself to a narrow subset of what you can do.....or, at least, of what you can do well.My reading of the designer blogs suggests to me that the initial ideas being tossed around were far more open than the game that they ended up producing.  Moreover, it seems to me that the game they produced was specifically designed to use the Delve format.  In the end, it seems very much to me that we were told that D&D is what the Delve format supports well, and D&D is not what the Delve format doesn't support as well (again, from the designer blogs of the time).There is nothing wrong with having a core experience.  In fact, having a core experience is probably a good idea for any edition.  But, no, a core experience built around the Delve format is never going to do it for me.The first step toward getting me to try a newly reformatted 4e (Essentials II?) would be to ditch the Delve, and then use the tools provided to extend the range of what is (regularly) possible.There are some great ideas in 4e, buried (IMHO) in lackluster execution.  There is some great material in 4e modules, buried (IMHO) in a lackluster format that limits how the material is used.Maybe what 4e needs (for those who feel as I do) is an Unearthed Arcana to dig some of that material up, and let it see the light of day.Let me give one quick example of what I mean:  Healing Surges.The basic idea (if you want fighters to be more central to the game, they have to have some durability, represented by restoration of resources) is a great one.  It's so good that I've stolen the basic idea for my own "Shake it Off" mechanic.However, the idea of Healing Surges also encapsulates within it that the restoration of resources should be non-magical; i.e., that there is a benefit to the game in having a character type who is clearly non-supernatural.  Sadly, they either failed to understand that, or failed to carry it out.I would also say, IMHO, that the limitations on healing surges were not well thought out, preventing them from being as momentous in the game as they are in the fiction it emulates.  I am still working on how to resolve this problem for the Shake it Off mechanic.Finally, the whole set of healing RAW makes the system wonky (again, IMHO) for anything other than episodic play.I would contend that the system is like this specifically to meet the needs of the Delve format:(1)  The Delve format is episodic in nature, so making the game play episodic in nature helps hide the resulting A to B to C railroading implicit in the format.(2)  The Delve encounters require the party to be at strength for their balance, by virtue of their static framing.  This presented problems with 3e-era Delves; Healing Surges are intended to counteract this problem.(3)  The Delve format places undue emphasis on combat encounters, thus making "combat healing" important, because the healing takes place during the emphasized part of game play.There are many, many other problems with the Delve format.  I could write a 600-page document on why I dislike it.  All I am trying to establish here, though, is why I think (perhaps ignorantly) that ditching the Delve would cause the designers to be more creative with the materials already inherent in the edition, leading to more 4e products that would be worth buying for non-4e players and 4e players alike.YMMV, and probably does!  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />RC</blockquote>

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