See, I wouldn't call THAT a 'detail'. Its not something that 4e provided for out of the box, but there are rules for BEING blind. Obviously the narrative implications are beyond pretty much any general RPG rules, though I could imagine something very specific (IE a class modeling a cult of blind oracles or something like that, pretty specific but not too far-fetched). Anyway, its not really a detail. Personally, using 4e or its ilk, I would see this kind of thing as a collaboration between the DM and the player, not something imposed by pure chance, though it could start out with a chance circumstance.
Oh. It is just a detail to me. But one with a big impact (thus my initial example of a player death for lack of a rope). I have no idea what will happen in the long term, so keeping track of these details (details to me, anyway) can lead to extremely interesting situations, and ones that we wouldn't have seen if not for mechanics and tracking.
I just cannot comment on your system, its unknown to me. Classic skill systems don't work that way. Some games have fairly extensive lists of skills and circumstances, usually within areas thematically linked to the setting or game system/genre. Most provide a smattering of 'DCs' for the most commonly encountered situations and that's it. However, 4e in particular provides a pretty firm foundation for setting other DCs. Its quite possible to play 4e 'by the book' (especially the RC) and have practically every DC come down to a known number with a variance basically between moderate and hard being the uncertainty factor (not small, but manageable). MOST DCs will be known pretty much exactly.
I think this might be true (I'm not familiar with the RC) for standard "heroic adventuring in D&D" stuff. That is not my standard style of play these days (even if there's some crossover).
I'm going to tackle these one at a time, for clarity. Sorry if this seems tedious.
4e Skills: See above, they're as nailed down as most anything gets in RPGs IME. The fact that 4e usually has clearly ONE specific skill with fairly well-documented effects for any given check situation makes it more deterministic than many systems. It is definitely more so than 3e in any of its standard forms where just deciding which skill applies is a highly doubtful operation in many cases.
Better than many skill systems? Undoubtedly. Most nailed down? Strongly disagree. I think you can get a lot more nailed down... but, then again, see the list of things I wrote my RPG has rules for that D&D doesn't even really attempt (I left out all the stuff where they overlap, but mine goes more in-depth).
Skill Challenges: Two things. First no other D&D-like system has them at all (well, SWSE if you count that, no doubt someone will point out another) but the point is SCs should be compared with what? Entropy! They're INFINITY% more empowering because the alternative is random die rolls until the DM feels happy declaring success or failure. As others have pointed out, at least they provide a defined endpoint at which the DM has to get off the pot and declare something has happened.
I basically agree. But the GM is in control of how hard they are, still. What skills can be used in them. When to begin them (he can just keep the infinity rolls) and what the end goal is. None of which I see as empowering to the players.
Again, I think that the system is a good idea. It's one that I think is a good addition to the game. I just don't find it particularly empowering to the players.
'Subjective' DCs: Again, nobody has a DC for everything, and 4e's DCs are no more or less subjective than those of any other system. They should be relatively consistent as well, though that isn't really assured.
I meant the whole "Subjective vs. Objective" thing; you know, DCs that level with the characters. The GM has the power to set the DCs, leading to players asking "how hard is it?" instead of just knowing from the book and taking action (without GM oversight). The GM determines what is or isn't possible, leading to players asking "can I do this?" instead of just knowing from the book and taking action (without GM oversight). Etc.
If the players decided what the DCs were (Easy, Moderate, or Hard), what they could do ("it seems genre appropriate to me, so my Epic level Druid is going to use Nature to cause an earthquake!"), etc.,
that would be player-empowering. But by leaving all of those decisions to the GM, this isn't the case.
Stunts: Again, 4e's alternative here is entropy! 3e, 2e, 1e, every other flavor of D&D of which I'm familiar has NOTHING beyond possibly a suggestion that the DM use skills and make up some DCs and usually some of the example DCs for the skill system will be something you eyeball (Acrobatics for example in 3e lists some DCs that you'd probably base off of). 4e at least says "here's what the DCs should be for something you think is challenging to a level X PC, and here's how much damage should result when its an attack". Again, this is so many light years beyond most any other RPG that it HAS to be pretty empowering by comparison.
Okay, I keep getting "this is more than other D&Ds had" as a response, and I want to make it clear that I'm talking to game design generally, and not "is 4e better in these areas than past editions." I think it definitely is better in some areas than past editions (including with things like skill challenges and stunts).
But it's all in the hands of the GM. Not the players. This empowers the GM to allow stunts that are mechanically viable, but it doesn't really empower the players as much. If page 42 had been included in the PHB, open to player use, competitive with (or better than) class powers, and not subject to GM permission, then I would say that it's player-empowering. As it stands, it definitely empowers the GM to allow or encourage stunts, but it doesn't really give players that power.
Yeah, obviously I just cannot possibly comment on this except to say that it would certainly be IMHO unworkable for a commercial game. Such a massive compendium of material has, in my mind, two effects. First it crushes the GM creatively in a vice of pre-imagined ways of doing things. This is immaterial of course for you because these are YOUR ways that work in your campaign to achieve your goals. I wouldn't find such a work useful simply because I don't want to have you telling me how the economics of a kingdom run, and I might well not want to do it in whatever way you have detailed.
Not trying to sell it
Although, as far as pre-imagined things being crushed go, my game is probably much more open than D&D. It's point-buy at its base (though right now I run it as a class-based game; I made balanced classes using the point-buy system), so you can get a lot more unique things than, say, D&D allows at its base.
Another note: the economy of kingdoms are still fairly abstract (though I know you only used this as an example because you don't know my system). I'm no economist. But yes, if you don't like the rules in any system, that would be a problem. I think this is why certain people play certain games and not others
Secondly how do you even find something in that mass? I wouldn't use it just from sheer awkwardness of trying to sort through and decide what section of that list a given situation in the game was applicable to and just FIND the rules. Yes, you can index and cross-index, and etc, but how do I even know what terminology you used for something? In a fairly small work of this sort, like the 3e skill list for example its not TOO hard to do that, but I doubt anyone but you could ever make it workable. It would certainly require a very large investment of hours of reading and many years of play to become facile with such a system.
I have a head for rules. If I read it, I'll probably remember it as long as I stay engaged with that system. And 320 pages is much, much more manageable for me than 1,000 pages of
base D&D (PH, DMG, MM), not counting all the other things that I'd want to use that other books have. How does anyone find anything there? Familiarity with the system, I'd imagine.
SO, in terms of a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of RPGs that are likely to be encountered out there in the world I don't think the 'massive list of everything possible' really has a lot of weight.
Agree to disagree, then
Honestly, I THINK I would find it as disempowering as it was empowering in the sense that if everything I can ever think of to do is already spelled out in there, with the implication that all the associated agenda and setting assumptions and etc is attached then I'm going to feel like I only have this one recipe to do the thing I want. Its exactly what people complained about with 4e powers, that having this hard fast list of powers that was what you could do made the game too rigid.
I could see rules as rigid, bad, worthless, or whatever, but as a player, I don't think I'd ever look at a rule that helped give me power and take it away from the whims of a GM and say that it was disempowering.
The saving grace of 4e, what made it all work, was the high quality of support for going outside those bounds, and the narrowness of the arena in which powers applied (combat pretty much).
Oooh, agree to disagree again. While 4e combat is fun, I find non-combat to be the part where I'm flailing the most as the GM, because there's no real support system compared to what I'm used to (and non-combat is about 90% of my other campaign).
Well, I didn't mean to imply anything about anyone's group. I only mentioned mine because it reflects on my experience as a GM. That is to say I have very collaborative and experienced players that I am close with and thus we can pretty much do anything with our game. I could unleash an unstoppable disaster in my campaign that wiped out all the PCs and the whole world without even a hope of averting it, tell them to roll up new characters, and they'd just be like "Oh, that's interesting, OK, where are you going with this!?" Yours may well be the same, it is often so with such groups.
They'd roll with it, but would definitely want to know what's going on. They'd accept me not telling them, though. Which I think is a good sign.
Yeah, I just don't have a problem with the level of clarity that 4e has. We all know how each other think. They can pretty much set their own DCs.
I just don't like assuming table dynamics when talking about game design. Like, I'm honestly glad that it works for your group so well (and the majority of posters in this thread, I'd imagine), but I've had players where that wasn't the case, even in 4e (the Warpriest's last 4e campaign before mine, the Monk's last 4e campaign before mine, my friend who played as a Cleric in one campaign before I ever even ran 4e).
If that last sentence of yours was a rule, then
that would be player-empowering. Some sort of system where they get to choose the DC (Easy, Moderate, or Hard), but there's consequences on each. Maybe Easy is "partial success" where the GM has the right to hold something back, tack on a catch, or throw in a complication. Moderate could be a standard success (you got what you wanted), while Hard would be great success (something extra, etc.). That'd definitely be more empowering to the players, in my opinion.
