Sorry for taking so long to respond to this Kraydak, but you and Hong post way too early in the morning for me...
Kraydak said:
Lemme try to use an example. Thogg the barbarian is an ass-kicker by nature. The edition doesn't matter, ass-kicking is what he does. Now, in 3.X, Thogg is (frequently!) confronted with situations where ass-kicking is non-optimal or even counterproductive. Thogg cannot always repond to situations with ass-kicking, and an outside observer would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that he chooses the ass-kicking option more often than the average, and that he chooses it even in cases where it is a poor (hopefully not catastrophic) choice.
I think you probably could be a bit clearer here by stating whether this is a player preference, chosen character personality, or simply a specialized character build... All three have a similar result, but there are pretty significant differences between them for a discussion about roleplaying potential. That said, I
think I understand what you mean.
In 4e, going by Rodney's blog, the goal is that Thogg gets rewarded for choosing ass-kicking as his choice.
Actually, Rodney said something more along the lines of "we will not penalize a sub-optimal choice so much that it impossible".
This requires the circumstances be such that ass-kicking is, in fact, a productive option. An observer of 4e would determine that Thogg is an ass-kicker by noting that Thogg *encounters* an unusually large number of situations where ass-kicking is a good option, but given the set of encounters Thogg has, he won't be choosing ass-kicking an unusually large number of times.
This is where my reading of everything and your reading differ completely. The idea behind 4E is more that you can try to make your shtick work where it could not work in 3E, not that the DM tailors more encounters in which your shtick works.
Let me phrase this a bit differently...
Let us assume that Thogg's party is put into a situation where they need to resolve some kind of tricky diplomatic issue. 3E basically assumes that such a task will be resolved entirely by characters who have put skill points into social skills or have social class features. Thogg, who only likes ass-kicking, has nothing to do, since ass-kicking is useless. 4E assumes that, if the player is creative, he can find some way to make his ass-kicking more applicable to the diplomatic situation (though probably at lower effectiveness than usual), but at the same time he has the alternative of using a less-optimized skill and participating in the negotiations directly (because of the new skill system). In 3E, Thogg has no viable options (and thus no way of roleplaying through the mechanics), but in 4E, Thogg has several viable options (if a bit sub-optimal), one of which is ass-kicking.
As such, I interpret things in the exact opposite way that you do. In 4E, Thogg will have more places where he can
choose to kick ass, and the choice is not forced upon him based on circumstances.
Again, going by the blog, 4e's design philosophy takes away roleplaying options from play, and puts them into character creation. Strange that an edition that explicitly tried to silo abilities to get character breadth seems to have an additional philosophy that rewards strong specialization. 3E's Thogg will be forced by circumstances to use his (poor) non-ass=kicking skills more than 4E's Thogg will be able to justify using his (better) non-ass-kicking skills.
At this point, you seem to be arguing a few different, slightly contradictory points, so I am getting confused again.
In your second paragraph, the important thing you dislike seems to be that 4E forces the DM to make situations in which Thogg can kick ass. In your third paragraph, you complain that 4E does not force a character to use sub-optimal skills. Both points seem very different than your original idea that 4E removes the ability of characters to choose their own goals (which is what I originally objected to). As such, can you please clarify your position somewhat? I am not sure what I am arguing against anymore.
Oh well, time to bring in what you said to hong.
Kraydak said:
But, you see, the history check, or even worse the acrobatics (crowd gathering check) or *especially* the halfling hiding in a saddlebag check *were* silly. In 3e, those ideas would have been nixed because they were silly. In 4e, their silliness is ignored, which to me means redefining the world to allow the characters to use their schtick, even if it doesn't make sense. Which circles back around to my argument.
I don't think this argument is applicable. Your decision that they were silly, and thus not useable in the game, is entirely your own subjective view as a player and/or DM. A DM who would nix such ideas in 3E will probably still do so in 4E. Meanwhile, as a DM myself, I would not have had a problem with those actions even in 3E. They may be silly (as in a bit humorous and off-the-wall), but that is no logical reason to nix them. If there is a thriving marketplace, there are likely crowds and saddlebags that the PCs can interact with. If there is a sewer, there is likely something mentioned about it in a history book the PC might have read in his spare time.
Thogg in 3e, btw, wasn't an ass-kicker because when it came to non-asskicking situations he did nothing. It was because in *potentially* asskicking situations, he always chose asskicking (and heck, he chose that in even the most marginal of cases). In non-asskicking situations, he did whatever an ass-kicker would choose to do in circumstances where ass-kicking is contra-indicated. I have *no* complaint over boosting the options available in such circumstances. In fact, I approve. That is irrelevant to the situation at hand. In 3e, the character defined the *response* to the situation. If 4e is going to be different (which the blog implies), the only way for that to work is for the situation to be defined *for* the character. A case of cart before the horse.
This just makes me even more confused regarding what I said above, but I think this is a matter of you interpreting things wrong.
There is no indication whatsoever that 4E tells DMs to tailor encounters to match the abilities of the PCs. All they are doing in 4E open things up so that players have more ways of responding to a situation.
Anyways, I think you should move on from the Thogg example... The vagueness of "ass-kicking situations" and "non-ass-kicking situations", and you assumption of an absolute distinction between the two (which I don't necessarily agree with), might be confusing the discussion more than helping it. Maybe we should use an example of a character who specializes in certain skills, instead?