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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 5294792" data-attributes="member: 463">Pemerton:>>S'mon, thanks for a series of very thoughtful replies!<<You're welcome <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />>> Whereas D&D, without further specification, leaves open such questions as (i) the significance of court intrigue, (ii) whether cardinals are allies or enemies (in Conan normally the latter, but in Forgotten Realms or published Greyhawk often the former), (iii) whether action is mostly urban, mostly wilderness or mostly underground, (iv) whether fame is desirable or not for PCs (ie will it bring them social power and rewards, or just attract pickpockets?), etc.<<You see, in an exploration-based game these are all questions that can be answered through (a) exploration of the setting (finding out), and (b) Player determination (making it so through PC actions)And that's an approach I often find very enjoyable.  There are supports though - eg in standard D&D the Ally/Enemy status of Cardinals is largely determined by the Alignment system. Where the action is can be player choice or established by the GM. >>The range in literary terms is slight. The range in player expectations about the game is, in my view, still fairly broad. My own experience, as well as what I see on these boards and what I used to see in Dragon, tells me that signing up for a game of D&D leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which would be answered if I signed up for a game of musketeers.<<I think this is somewhat true, partly due to genre drift and acquired incoherence over time, partly because the open, exploratory nature of OD&D lent itself to going off on a wide variety of tangents.>>Agreed. The lack of fit between those rules and the apparently intended game (at least as bad as 1st ed OA, maybe worse)  is one reason why 2nd ed AD&D is one of my least favourite RPGs of all time.At least in my own experience, I can know what I'm getting into if I sign up for a 2nd ed game - namely, a game in which the GM tries to railroad me into and through a story, participation in which via my PC is barely supported by the rules (whether character build, action resolution, or reward).<<Ugh.  I tend to agree; even though I never converted fully to 2e I ran some crappy games in that era, probably influenced by Dungeon Magazine, and eventually left D&D for several years. >>My personal impression of 3E is that the character build rules want to be Rolemaster, but the reward system and the action resolution system (or at least its spells and hit point components) want to be 1st ed AD&D. An unstable combination, in my view.<<Nicely put, I agree strongly.  Is the non-combat-skills system mostly just fluff, or is it there to support a broad range of play?  3e is the only system where I've seen a PC open a baker's shop and expect me to keep running her PC in a game of Bakers & Breadsticks.>>At least in my view, merely knowing I was playing in a 4e game wouldn't necessarily answer all the questions that are answred when I sign up for a musketeers game.<<Agreed, although the 4e default seems a bit clearer than 3e maybe; it's save-the-world dungeon adventures in a 'points of light' high fantasy setting.</blockquote>

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