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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bodhiwolff" data-source="post: 4759349" data-attributes="member: 71196">I think that a lot of the suggestions people are making are well-intentioned, but miss the mark. When Rob Heinsoo and others first looked at the design decisions for 4E, they felt that 3E had taken the simulationist aspects of gaming in a good direction, had taken it about as far as it could go, had resulted in a wonderful game, but simply replicating that would be a mistake.  How could you build a better 3E D&D when 3E did what it did so well? (all this is paraphrasing what I heard him say at a couple of seminars earlier this month on this topic) So instead, they designed 4E to be different. The roleplay aspects were completely and absolutely old-school simplified, back to their 1E roots.  The place where you need rules is combat.  The place where you don't need rules is roleplaying and non-combat. Anything which adds to the technical complexity of non-combat stuff is getting away from the 4E game design, I believe. Moreover, if you read the DMG, Wyatt did a wonderful job of describing "how to dungeon master" and how to design stories, etc.  It is, frankly, a much better "how to" guide than earlier DMGs were.  It returns right back to the 1E style of storytelling and roleplaying -- namely, everything is non-mechanical, is based on DM/Player interaction, and is completely open-ended. Now, the problem is that most people don't *read* the DMG, and in their adventure design they skip over all of the non-combat encounters.  There is nothing stopping a 4E game from having *just* as much story, character, and non-combat roleplaying as a 1E game -- nothing, save the skill, enthusiasm, and work put in by the players and the DM. So anything which reminds DMs to add these elements is a good thing.  Any tool which helps DMs design better stories, and reminds them to implement all of the numerous non-combat options, is a good thing. But rules or systems to codify that non-combat game?  I'd hate to see us start down that path.</blockquote>

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