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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodscanner" data-source="post: 5040858" data-attributes="member: 85965">This has been a really interesting thread, with quite a few posts I was really impressed by.  I always hate it when someone butts into a conversation and says "Hey, what you are really talking about is...", but anyway - many of the posts seem to be about "To what extent is it the responsibility of the game ruleset vs the DM/players to ensure that all the players get to participate meaningfully in the game for the majority of the time" It really reminds me of the discussions on the HERO boards, because with the HERO system it is so easy to design a character who is hugely effective in a narrow range of conditions, and then play to maximise these strengths (classically the player who takes all his powers with "do not work at night" and then ensures all adventures occur during the day. Or sulks in the corner ruining it for everyone). This is a difficult problem for referees to solve when the game system allows it, and variations on this theme seem to crop up fairly regularly in HERO discussions.  So, are we saying that "siloing" involves the game designers dividing the game into chunks that are expected to crop up regularly in the game (such as "combat") and using the ruleset to ensure that all characters are able to contribute to each of these chunks? In which case I think it is a good idea.  Having said that, a DM and players who trust each other and know each others' play styles obviously don't need this. Good for them, really. Some sets of players and DMs aren't so lucky, or want to play in pick up games like Living Forgotten Realms, and this allows them to be more confident that out of the box characters and adventures will interact in such a way that everyone will probably have a good time.  As for whether 4e does it too much/not enough, I don't know. At one extreme all characters are identical, or the system is so rules-lite that there is little rules based difference between them. At the other is something like "anything goes" Hero system. For my group 4e has helped us solve some if the problems that have annoyed us since 1st edition (and also created a few others). YMMV.</blockquote>

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