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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PrecociousApprentice" data-source="post: 4243164" data-attributes="member: 61449">I can understand a level of immersion necessary, but why would you assume that there needs to be rules for looting armor? Make it up. For WotC, the name of the game is to design rules for things that are fun and common, give simple rules for adjudicating outside of the normal rules, and depend on a DM to make stuff up that is outside the norm. The first order of business is to cover things that are fun. Looting crappy kobold armor is not particularly exciting. It is a resource, so I guess there are people who will do it, but aren't there better things going on in the campaign?I have seen games destroyed by railroad GMs as well. I want nothing to do with them. I have also seen games destroyed by players that want to become miners instead of going on a great quest. I want nothing to do with them either. See you mistakenly assume that when I brought up narrative devices that I meant that the GM should have sole perogative for deciding the narrative. I hate that. I just also don't want to be bound slavishly to inconsistencies that the rules pump out, all in the name of "simulating" a living world independent of the PCs, and making the rules "consistent" between PCs and NPCs. I am mostly a player so I often side with giving players more narrative choice, but to create any sort of plot or feeling of discovery, you have to give at least some narrative choice to the GM. In a three way split of power between the players, the GM, and the rules, in my books the rules only get enough power to pre-emptively avoid arguments and to inject a degree of random chance. Rules don't create living worlds, great imaginations do. Rules create inconsistencies in living worlds. Good rules are flexible and abstract to avoid as many inconsistencies as possible.I very much agree with the first statement here. The rest doesn't folow from that though. 4e seems to be taking power from the rules and giving it to the players and GM. I will be interested in seeing how all the narrative devices that have been discussed here on EnWorld turn out, but from a lot of the guesses by a lot of people so far, it seems that there is a greater degree of freedom to approach problems in 4e than in any earlier edition. Skill challenges are likely a good example. I think that you get right at this with the last two sentences here. The ability to just roll with it is not within the rules. It is the ability of the play group to go beyond what is explicitly laid out in the rules, and enhanced by the tools that the rules give to step outside them. (Sounds kinda wonky, but I hope I have maid it clear enough.) I really think that "Exception based" will turn out to mean "freedom from emergent rules inconsistencies in game play."  I think that you have nothing to worry about. The unified mechainc is the set of rules that tell you how to accomplish anything that you may want. Then they added another level to this that they have called "Exception Based Design". This says, here is the generic ruleset, and then here is how we propose to do these common thematic things in a way that violates these rules. It does not follow that you can only do the exceptions. Just that you can use them as templates for how to go outside the rules. I think that this might be the heart of the matter. Many people do not like exceptions to the rules. It breaks consistency, making things appear less fair. The falacy there is that there doesn't need to be fairness between PCs and NPCs, because the NPCs don't really exist. There has to be fairness between participants, not imaginary constructs.EDIT:Very good points, but I think that I would rather just agree not to be so minutia based in my campaign decisons. I understand that it marginalizes some play styles. I just think that the majority of players (sorry, not able to back that up) would rather Do Fun Things than play merchants. Any merchant campaigns would be more fun anyway if there was an elemant of haggling and deal making anyway. Running a business is not fun, but pretending you do, making deals, making money, and ignoring all the frustrating crap, that sounds more fun. No need for explicit rules.</blockquote>

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