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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Croesus" data-source="post: 5249655" data-attributes="member: 35019">The core issue with requiring system mastery (or simply providing significant rewards for it) is that it segregates players based on the amount of time they have and are willing to invest in the game. In a way, time plays the same role that money plays in CCG's. All things being equal, the player with the most cards will have the best decks.  This works fine for competitive games, as most CCG's are. Similarly, the RGP player who invests the most time will have an advantage over players who invest less. But as another poster has said, RPG's are at their core cooperative. Many players simply haven't the time, or lack the interest in devoting the time required, to master a system. It seems to me that any system which unduly rewards a player for mastery, or alternately, punishes players for lack of mastery, undermines the cooperative aspects of the game.Of course there are ways to work around such things, but in my experience they are generally restricted to the "rules masters" arbitrarily limiting the impact of their mastery. For example, in Champions the best player may intentionally design sub-optimal characters so as not to outshine the other characters. That can be frustrating for the player who invests so much time, yet has to hold back for the sake of the group.I think 3E went too far in rewarding and encouraging rules mastery. That said, I probably wouldn't enjoy a system that didn't reward rules mastery to some extent - in the end, the players have to have some control over the game, or what's the point?BTW - I wonder if, from an economic standpoint, publishers benefit more from a game that encourages high rules mastery. After all, the minority who will invest such time are likely to also invest dollars, which means sales. Of course, if the game is so esoteric that only 12 people know how to play it, there won't be much of a market. But from a sales perspective, rules mastery (up to a point) might be a good thing. Food for thought.</blockquote>

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