Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMZ2112" data-source="post: 5400959" data-attributes="member: 78752">There are two ways to achieve true personalization in an RPG.  The first is, in fact, to have an infinite number of rules.  The second is to have no rules.  Both of these games would not be any fun at all and I haven't ever said that they would.No game is perfect.  Even the best of them will require these three  things in some small measure.Agreed, but the DC for 'swing on rope then kick baddie' should be inferred from existing rules.  It shouldn't require a table for "all the junk we didn't bother to deal with."  There's no stated DC for it in D&D3, either, but there are a number of skills that could be used or combined to give the effort some meaning.  In D&D4, it's... an athletics check.  The same thing the character would be doing if they had to run particularly fast.  Color me unimpressed.  To put it another way, there's no way to get better at specifically swinging on ropes and kicking baddies in D&D4.  There's no way to get better at most specific things.  You've got your powers, at which you are automatically very good, and then you've got a set of immensely broad skills, at which you have two levels of capability.  Not what I'd call 'high resolution.'For the record, this is not a D&D3 vs. D&D4 argument, and I'm not trying to turn it into one.  D&D3 is just a convenient example of a system with what I consider to be a better balance of complexity.That's ridiculous.  Our actions define who we are.  ...I'm not getting into philosophy with you.That's not what I said.That's not entirely true.  As I said above, true personalization is possible in a system with no rules, but it is also possible in a putative system with an infinite number of rules.  The goal of good game design should not be to pursue one of these extremes, nor should it be to find a balance between them, which would serve no purpose.  The objective is to choose one of these continua and find a point along it where the mix provides optimal playability. D&D4 has chosen the 'infinite rules' route, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.  But I disagree with the point they've chosen.</blockquote>

Verification