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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5628638" data-attributes="member: 27160">There may very well be some GMs who won't want such rules, but I run 4E as close to "by the book" as it gets and I'm very happy doing so, so I don't think "no one will want to DM" is entirely accurate.It depends heavily on the style of game I want to run.  D&D has always, to my mind, been primarily suited for "challenge play".  This is a little like setting a crossword for the players to solve, I think - the challenge is there for the players to take up and beat by their own skill and fortune.Crosswords (and similar things, like sudoku, chess puzzles etc.) are set by "GMs", and yet they have very fixed rules.  As a crossword designer, I would get to pick and choose words as I liked and set clues according to my own imagination and tastes, and yet if I broke the myriad rules (e.g. if I used a made-up word, if I set the word "palimpsest" to fit in five spaces, if I gave a clue for "15 Accross" in a puzzle with only 12 horizontal words, etc., etc.) I would be (rightly) flamed for my dreadful crossword setting.I see D&D (as opposed to other RPGs that suit other styles, such as GURPS, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu and so on), especially 4E D&D, as very fine for this focus of play.  When running 4E I get to choose the monsters, the terrain, the overall situation (how the challenges fit together and what the overarching goals are) and the monsters' tactics during play - but I don't get to choose how the player characters' powers work, or how the combat rules work, and so on.  This works very well, and I have great fun doing it. If you choose to play monsters without selecting them, without designing the terrain and without using any coherent tactics or injecting any personality into the foes the PCs face, that's your prerogative.  I do none of these things and it seems to work fine.  Even though I restrict my choices in-game to matters of tactics and characterisation, I seem able to carry on without undue feelings of powerlessness.</blockquote>

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