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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5802631" data-attributes="member: 42582">I was struck by this passage:On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs.  Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.” Everything was fun and fast and fluid. I didn’t feel like the game got bogged down at any time during our session, even when we had a few rules questions for Monte. Things just happened and they flowed with the story and the story was awesome because we made it that way.All this is good to hear, but how much does it contrast with someone's normal game of D&D? I mean, I think that my gaming group creates some (moderately) awesome stories in a fun game. It's probably not as fast and fluid as Monte's game, but he gets paid to do this stuff, whereas I'm just doing it in my spare time every second or third Sunday!I'm also curious about the half-orc fighter trying to be a leader of sceptical and savage orcs, because my 4e game currently has a similar situation, in which the PC with the lowest social skills - the dwarf fighter - is also the party leader. I've been pleasantly surprised with how 4e handles this (via skill challenge mechanics). The fact that the PC is not charismatic matters, but the player (and the group) is nevertheless not penalised for having his PC take up this role. 4e is not the only RPG to have this sort of design - Burning Wheel does too, for example, although it achieves it through different mechanical techniques from 4e's.Classic D&D, in my experience, doesn't handle this well - unless the GM fudges the action resolution mechanics (which is not something I'm a big fan of), the player and group will tend to suffer. I wonder how D&Dn rewards (or penalises) this sort of "playing to one's weaknesses"?</blockquote>

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