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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5629983" data-attributes="member: 82106">@KMEh, yeah, I think we differ there. It seems to me if you look at rituals they ARE mostly useful for exploration purposes. I guess when I say 'narrative', maybe it would get the idea across better to use exploration, but then I tend not to be too stuck in the dungeon crawl paradigm, so I tend to see more things like intrigue, investigation, etc. Still, fundamentally those activities are a lot like exploration and fill the same conceptual space in the game. While the casting times are 'arbitrary' in the sense of an hour and 2 hours might not be meaningful distinctions that cannot be stated unequivocally. It really depends on what's going on. If the baron's daughter will be executed in 30 minutes then it is pretty important if it takes an hour to cast the ritual that will get you into the castle. There's no encounter related timescale that will work there, and there's a point to the hour casting time because it serves to define what your options are. Now, this is where pre-cast rituals would be interesting, or devices that allow you to perform quicker ritual casting (a scroll actually will work in this case).While rituals are mechanically like a skill check my point is that when a ritual is what you need, that's what you need. No skill check will teleport the party, raise the dead, scry on an enemy, etc. They are an option.Yeah, I wasn't trying to make an edition comparison except to the extent of contrasting them (or showing a lack of contrast). I think if you look at 3.5 you find that the two games spend about the same amount of resources on combat and non-combat for instance. The problem with pre-3.5 versions of the game IS exactly that hard separation. Fighter player sits on his hands until a fight starts, at which point the thief cowers in the back and hopes not to be noticed. It really doesn't work well at all. As for the encounter design stuff. I disagree with you I guess. I think in every single edition of the game there is a dependency on the DM to make good encounters and run them well. That's the most basic straightforward aspect of DMing there is. 4e is no different from any other edition here. You can make every sort of encounter in 4e that you could in earlier editions and make them all work, and it isn't hard to do (or again no harder than it ever was). The fact that 4e gave you an ADDITIONAL tool in SCs is a freebie. I utterly fail to understand how it can possibly be other than a net gain. Again, just as you would make good combat encounters you have to make good SCs. Now, it is perfectly legitimate to point out that one is easier to do and the support for it is a lot more polished than for the other, but clearly good SCs can be made, and just as clearly you could simply not use SCs and you've lost NOTHING over previous editions.SYSTEMS don't provide drama or tension. What 'system' in 1e AD&D provided drama and tension outside of combat? It isn't in any book I'm aware of. It doesn't come from books. It comes from the narrative. The rules provide resolution structures that give the players a device to use to move forward and resolve the tensions and play out the drama. All editions do that.This is why I say the mindshare thing exists at the level of resources within the system, not the resolution structures. I don't care how much you tinker with the rules, if 75% of what the player's see on their sheet and 75% of the build decisions they make, and 75% of the items they get relate to combat, then that is what will have their mindshare.</blockquote>

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