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Message: <blockquote data-quote="helium3" data-source="post: 3981063" data-attributes="member: 31301">I think the OP's got some good points. Some of your comments seem to be missing his point, though.A couple of posters have scoffed at the idea that Azeroth is somehow "deeper" than the Forgotten Realms and other D&D settings. I haven't played WoW for more than about 30 minutes (which I enjoyed, btw) so I can't comment on the "depth" of the world, but that's almost not the point.I'm not even sure if this was the OP's actual point, but how I'm reading that section of the post is that in some fundamental sense, everything in Azeroth (as in other non-generic games like Dark Sun) fits in with some sort of central "theme" that the world has. Everything that exists, is there for a reason. The designers of 4E, on the other hand, are intentionally trying to create a shallow world as the default setting for the core books. The intent is to leave lots of space for gamers to come in and fill in the blanks with their own material, but the actual result may be that 4E drives its players back towards a more war-gaming focused style of play. The current edition of D&D already does that unless you have a group that really tries hard to not let that happen.The OP is right on the money here. One of the things that turns potential players off of RPG's in general (and frankly I think there are A LOT more potential players out there than gamers are willing to admit to) is how much of a pain in the butt the game is to play unless you're willing to dedicate massive amounts of time to it.If WotC managed to do the DI right, they could make a lot of progress towards making the game accessible to folks that would normally be interested in playing an RPG. Unfotunately, I suspect they're going to royally screw it up.I'm not sure what the designers could do to encourage this sort of play experience, but I agree it certainly can make the game more interesting. In my experience, encounters where I've been able to hand one or more monsters to a player lacking a participating character have been far more exciting. I've never played in a game that was all about PVP though, and I think the posters that have responded with "why not just play DDM in that case" sort of have a point. This is key. Whether the other posters want to admit it or not, D&D is a game that implicitly requires technical mastery of the rules. The designers say they're going to downplay this requirement, but little of what I've seen so far seems to back up this claim. This is another place where the DI could help, as "noobs" could play the game remotely until they got the rules mastered to the point where they were ready to play in a "live" game. Again, too bad WotC is likely going to flub the whole thing.Some posters have scoffed at this idea but I think that the OP is absolutely right in this case. D&D is entirely about combat because the rules are entirely about combat, which means that most characters end up being one dimensional battle machines. Nothing else that a player could do in the game world really has any impact or importance because they lack the crucial ingredient that makes them relevant. They don't result in the player being rewarded with significant amounts of XP.In particular, I'll harp on crafting. As the OP points out, some MMO players are obsessed with crafting? Why? I dunno, the same reason that some people like to cook or assemble model airplanes I suppose. The problem is that in D&D, crafting is like a vestigial organ, it's there but it doesn't really do anything.In my idealized version of the rules there would be more complicated rules for the resolution of actions not-related to combat and the resolution mechanism might not even involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers. Then, in a little side-bar with the "variant rules" heading there would be some mechanics for how to resolve the situation with the role of a d20 (and for little to no XP.)Again, making specific items matter more would likely lead to a richer play experience that appeals to a larger group of people. The rules don't inherently support treating items as anything more than disposable trinkets and as a result, it doesn't happen without a lot of conscious effort on the part of the group.</blockquote>

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