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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5023155" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, I'll point it out to you.Let's keep that in mind.  Let's consider what happens when you don't try to please everyone, and what that might mean.No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.  Emphaticly NO!!!!There is the problem.  The combination of those two ideas is deadly.The idea that it is 'always easier to ADD something into a rules set than to take it away' is so ludicrous on the face of it that I'm surprised you can say it and keep a straight face.  It is always easier to remove something from a rules set than to add it in if it is missing.   This is due to the very simple and obvious fact that removal is a much easier than to do than creation.  Destruction is easier than creation.  Creation is hard.   It's always easier to ignore a rule than make a new one or alter an existing rule.  It's always easier to ignore a rule than add a rule that doesn't exist.   Rules get ignored all the time without people even trying, but adding a rule IS hard.  If you don't like a spell, you can remove it.  If you don't like a monster, you don't have to use it.  If you don't like a magic item, you don't have to make it available.  If you don't like a class, you can drop it.  If you don't like a feat, it's gone.   But conversely, if you want to make a new spell, a new magic item, a new monster, or a new feat - that requires work.  That is 'hard'.  Now, for someone like me whose been gaming for nearly 30 years, I can imagine new monsters, spells, feats, and even classes but even then actually implementing these ideas is hard.   For a new player, and maybe even some old players, it might not only be hard to imagine and create new content - it might well be impossible.  Rulesmithing is hard.  Setting and flavor creation is hard.That's why we pay professionals to do it for us.Look, if it really was easier to add new rules in than it was to ignore existing ones, we wouldn't need anyone to make a rules set for us in the first place.  We'd simply do it all ourselves, because making new rules, inventing new content, and imagining new things would be easy.   We'd never pay someone to do that for us if it was easy.  In fact, some of us do in fact largely do that, buying only a few key books and then imagining all the rest according to my ideas.  But WotC's core customer base historically is not like that.  Instead, historically speaking, WotC's and TSR's core customer base bought EVERYTHING (or nearly so) and then picked and choose which of it was most appealing to them.   It's always been easier for the overwhelming majority of DM's and players (especially the paying kind) to drop or ignore content that they didn't like than it was to invent new content.  That's precisely why they were customers in the first place, so that someone would do the hard part of inventing, implmenting, and writing down all these ideas for them.  Then they did the easy part, which was ignoring what they didn't like.   Sure, some DM's managed a 'bad' mixture (meaning their players didn't enjoy it), but even so its still easier for a novice DM to evaluate someone else's ideas and pick and choose what he likes than it is to give them a blank peice of paper and say 'Make it up yourself'.  Game publishers are in the business of providing tools of the imagination.  If suddenly they've boxed themselves in a corner where they can't actually produce ideas that are imaginative (which I've been saying about 4e ever since the early previews), then they are sunk.  Some daring company that actually does print fun ideas, imaginative ideas, and creative ideas is going to end up with the fans and 4e is going to be left with a few people going, "But we're balanced!  We're oh so balanced!" who have utterly forgotten what 'balance' means.   Some daring company that actually trusts the DMs that are ultimately far more important to thier industry than even the local gaming retailers is going to be producing the game that the game referees want to run and which the players go 'Ooooohh...ewwww.. I want to be in that game.'I think people have utterly forgotten what 'saying, Yes' actually means.  It sure as heck never meant that powerful magic items and treasures weren't ought there waiting to be unearthed and claimed.   More importantly:THIS ISN'T SAYING YES, IT IS SAYING, "NO!".   How ridiculously twisted do you have to make a good idea like 'saying, Yes' so that it becomes, "Well, we have to say 'No' to these ideas because otherwise we'd have to say 'Yes'.  So you see, we're helpless to do anything but say 'No', because of our rule about saying, 'Yes'"Some people complain that I'm too verbose, and often rightfully so.  But let me tell you one of the reasons I write such lengthy posts.  It's because often there is this complex, and nuanced idea.  And because the idea is complex, and nuanced, it's hard to talk about in an easy manner, so people invent some sort of short hand way of talking about the idea like, "Say, "Yes""   That shorthand is not the whole idea; it's just a marker for the whole idea.  The real idea is naunced and complicated.  The phrase we use to refer to the idea, "Say, "Yes"" is not.  The phrase "Say, 'Yes'" is never meant to be taken literrally; it's just shorthand for the larger idea.   But over time, the larger idea, because it is hard to communicate gets lost.  People here about 'Say, "Yes"' and that's all they remember.   Pretty soon everyone is going around saying the short hand phrase as if that is the whole idea.  And often, by way of taking the short hand phrase literally, it becomes transformed to mean something that it never meant, so that for example, the phrase, "Too big too fail.", ceases to mean, "These corporations are so big they can't fail", and instead gets used to mean, "These corporations are so big that they cannot be allowed to fail."  That's why I always lay out my full thought in a desparate attempt not to be misunderstood as saying something more simplistic than what I'm thinking.  It doesn't always work, but I try and at least you can never accuse me of using the phrase, 'Say, Yes', to mean, 'Say, No'.No happy medium?  No happy medium?  Isn't that what balance actually is?*cry*  They blew it up.  First Dragon, and now D&D.</blockquote>

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