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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5084536" data-attributes="member: 80487">Barastrondo, death does not appear to me quite terribly hard to find; I have had a 4e character come within one point of it in one round, and seen another character buy the farm thanks to "friendly fire".But that's not really so much of a 'consequence' if (as suggested in the 4e DMG) a replacement character is going to be of "party level", whatever that happens to be whenever it happens to get built.Heck, considering how comprehensively the 'build' dictates factors, it's close enough to automatic resurrection! (YMMV on the 'identity' question, of course.)What get ditched are consequences with which one might actually have to deal. The 'encounter' gets turned into an isolated game. Alignment is essentially moot, and relationships with NPCs -- henchmen, hirelings, followers and subjects -- have been ripped out. Decisions matter less and less in everything from what happens in the imagined world, to how rapidly characters gain levels. What choices get offered are by design often -- and increasingly, in the shift from 3e to 4e -- trivial.The very basic concept that it's a game is undermined at every turn.Might it someday occur to the "New & Improved" crowd that this truism goes both ways? What is not going both ways is the carrying out of programs to replace "inferior" forms of fun (e.g., D&D, WHFRP) with what a faction of people -- who have not wanted for other games, more to their tastes -- happens to prefer. So be it, but can we at least keep the rationale real? The existence of "old school" D&D (or WHFRP, or whatever is next to the scaffold) was no oppressive force preventing people who preferred Ars Magica, Champions, Rifts, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, or whatever, from playing their games!</blockquote>

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