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<blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 4032319" data-attributes="member: 319">This whole thing reads to me like this:&quot;Ok, people. We've had a talk, and decided to give you our permission to make ad-hoc decisions when creating NPCs and monsters. It's ok now. Just pick from the table. Or pick whatever feels right, and don't worry about the unimportant details - just make them up, if you have to... Uh... come to think of it, you will have to, because we're not giving you any rules for it - isn't that so much easier?&quot;Now, with that out of my system... I've never actually had a problem before with simplifying overcomplicated rules, or deciding whether the extra effort required to use advanced rules made the game more fun and was worth it. My players don't especially care whether it was a &quot;professional designer&quot; that made the call, or I did - as long as it was consistent. I've never wasted any unnecessary effort figuring out a 3.5 NPCs craft skill level, either.On the other hand, creating new rules because the game failed to make provisions for something is a lot more difficult than ignoring unnecessary complexity, and I've come across plenty of RPGs which had gaping holes in the ruleset - and, worse yet, had a design which made it very difficult to use their core mechanics to fill those holes. So this impression I get from 4E (which is regularly reinforced by posts like the one referenced in this thread) that the designers decided to concentrate only on the &quot;important things&quot; and pretty much ignore everything else doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmu1, post: 4032319, member: 319"] This whole thing reads to me like this: "Ok, people. We've had a talk, and decided to give you our permission to make ad-hoc decisions when creating NPCs and monsters. It's ok now. Just pick from the table. Or pick whatever feels right, and don't worry about the unimportant details - just make them up, if you have to... Uh... come to think of it, you [i]will[/i] have to, because we're not giving you any rules for it - isn't that [i]so much easier[/i]?" Now, with that out of my system... I've never actually had a problem before with simplifying overcomplicated rules, or deciding whether the extra effort required to use advanced rules made the game more fun and was worth it. My players don't especially care whether it was a "professional designer" that made the call, or I did - as long as it was consistent. I've never wasted any unnecessary effort figuring out a 3.5 NPCs craft skill level, either. On the other hand, creating new rules because the game failed to make provisions for something is a [i]lot[/i] more difficult than ignoring unnecessary complexity, and I've come across [i]plenty[/i] of RPGs which had gaping holes in the ruleset - and, worse yet, had a design which made it very difficult to use their core mechanics to fill those holes. So this impression I get from 4E (which is regularly reinforced by posts like the one referenced in this thread) that the designers decided to concentrate only on the "important things" and pretty much ignore everything else doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. [/QUOTE]

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