NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3374964" data-attributes="member: 16574">I understand and appreciate that Mearls' job at WotC is to be a "rules-cruncher" more or less, and that it's therefore natural that he seemingly approaches everything (at least in his columns) from that perspective, and is always seemingly trying to tweak and enhance the rules to make D&D into a better skirmish-combat game, each adventure into a series of effective and playable combat set-pieces, but I must say I really hate the direction the game seems to be moving under his influence (not that it's his fault -- the game was clearly already heading that way before he was hired, which is presumably why he was hired -- Mearls is a symptom, not the cause), into a slick, high-powered, skirmish-level tactical wargame (DDM with a lot more options). I appreciate that for people who like that kind of game that they're probably making the game better -- smoother-running, better balanced, etc. -- but the fundamental disconnect, at least for me, is that I don't like that kind of game. Combat, to me, is probably the least interesting part of the game, to be avoided whenever possible, and when it does become necessary or inevitable to be gotten thtough as quickly as possible. My favorite D&D sessions have the constant threat of combat but, if played well, no actual combat at all -- the players use their wits to sneak past the monsters, or to negotiate with them, or to run away from them, or to use trickery to defeat them without actual combat (or at least melee) ever becoming necessary. Is this approach to play, where combat is always a looming threat but effective play has more to do with avoiding it than being good at it, that, in playing The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, you actually want to spend as little time fighting hill giants as possible, just hopelessly outdated and obsolete in the Mearls-D&D era?</blockquote>

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