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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4282482" data-attributes="member: 42582">Shallow in what way?It's not mechanically shallow - there are a lot of character build options available, and action resolution mechanics at least as rich as 3E's. (It's mechanically far richer than 1st ed AD&D, to pick one well-known comparator).It's not shallow in the sort of roleplaying it supports. In fact, mechanical changes such as the new approach to damage and healing, the new approach to skills (via skill challenges) and the new approach to class design increase the space for sophisticated roleplaying. And the DMG is the first-ever core D&D rulebook to actually talk about such roleplaying and how one might go about it handling it at the table as a GM (eg pp 73-74 discussing the role of player narration in skill challenges, including in the use of secondary skills; p 28, in which James Wyatt gives an example of a player (his 9-year old son) adopting director's stance, and talks about how a GM can handle that).It's no more shallow in its concept of what the game might involve than any earlier edition of D&D, or other some-time popular games like Tunnels and Trolls. I'll agree that it's conception of the gameworld is more shallow than something like Runequest, but there's no evidence that Runequest's greater depth of concept has led it to flourish at D&D's expense. Furthermore, of all editions of D&D 4e seems perhaps the best suited for use in a game with a deeper, more Runequest-like tone. (Part of what leads to this is the changes to healing rules. A game system which encourages one to treat hit points as literal physical invulnerability and death as a mere mechanical speedbump - of which 3E is an example - automatically precludes a certain sort of depth. 4e, by treating hit points as plot immunity and leaving the narration of healing surges and extended rests up to the players and GM, provides the mechanical advantages of a hit point mechanic while also providing the narrative advantages of a Fate Point system.)And finally, to come at this from a slighly different angle - look at a module like Bastion of Broken Souls and then tell me how an RPG could be any more shallow than that: an adventure about the font of life itself degenerating into a hackfest against crystals on the Positive Material Plane. My impression is that 4e is automatically precluded from such shallowness simply by the way the powers of different monsters are designed, which means that thematic aspects of an adventure can't help but emerge in the very manner in which adversaries participate in combat.</blockquote>

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