Alloran said:
Is the point of d20 a math game (which stats do what where and how well) or a roleplaying game? The obvious answer is roleplaying, as it is-in fact- a roleplaying game, but seriously. How many DMs have players that think the only point is to be the best at whatever they do?
It depends on both the players you have and what style of game you wish to create. One of the White Wolf books (I forget just which one) has a nice peice on 'playing-a-game' vs. 'telling-a-story'; you can play the same game, with the same characters, both ways just depending on what kind of mood y'all are in: D&D, and pretty much any other RPG, is flexible enough to do either at the drop of a hat. You can have sessions where every modifier is brought to bear, and some sessions where there is no combat at all.
If you wish to work the latter mechanically, it's easy. Just do it like a trap and mark off key points that they uncover or 'story points' that they get to. Some will be more difficult than others to accomplish. Give experience based on that. Say 'Convincing the Duke's daughter not to take up a life of crime as a masked hughwayman' is a CR5, whereas 'Getting information from the drunken guardsmen' is a CR2.
Or do like Call of Cthulhu d20 does it: you get XP for story goals accomplished.
Or just wing it, with an eye to how fast you want them to advance.
The key is in knowing your players. Some people will want a quantified answer for everything, want to employ every modifer and wring every bit of use from the combat system. Some are comfortable not using a grid and just sitting on the couch with stats written on a 3x5 card. D&D is a math game if you have a lot of players that
want it to be a math game. Otherwise, it's not.
