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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 5870908" data-attributes="member: 9298">I have some words on this. Optimization is something that I think can be complete game-breaking if some players are doing it and other's aren't. To me this has to be one of the basic decisions of the campaign decided by all before you begin play. Knowing your players/DM is part social skills, which is something people need to have before they sit down to play D&D, and part meta-gaming which should be avoided when possible. The meta-gaming aspect of knowing your other players is for poker, or euro board-games, not D&D. Preparation, Lorekeeping and Strategic Gaming are the staples of D&D. If the are missing, I might argue that its not D&D. Obviously they all have a range of how deep you can go into each one, and DMs should customize their game to their players when possible, but these are the GAME parts of role-playing game.  These are what differentiate the game from interactive storytelling. Aggressive Roleplay? I'm not even sure I 100% understand what you're getting at with this one.  I think campaigns work better if PCs have backstories, motivations, and DMs provide character hooks in the adventures, but that doesn't mean "and now we interrupt the campaign to go on a completely unrelated sidequest to visit Red's grandmother".  If players are "aggressively" stealing the spotlight, that's bad.  But they should "aggressively" respond to character hooks.  I think the problem is that the definition of aggressive/meek will change depending on how much of a wallflower the player is. And that brings us to :Puzzle-solving. This is where we went wrong I think. I despise the mentality of "my character is super-intelligent or super-stupid so there is no way this puzzle should be a challenge for me."   Unless your intelligence is a 40 or a 3, you would always have a chance to figure it out and always have a chance to fail.  If the puzzle is attached to some high-end vocabulary or magic theory or music-based (and you're a bard) yes, you should get hints that you as player might not know. But you shouldn't get the answer. Puzzles are as much a part of D&D as preparation, lorekeeping and strategy.   Yes, there are puzzles in older editions that made no sense or break verisimilitude. They were no different than two predatory monsters living in connecting rooms or traps that would be almost impossible for the dungeon residents to avoid. The problem wasn't the monsters, the traps, or the puzzles...its the way they were used. Puzzle-solving whether its riddles, keys/doors, traps, map-reading or something else is a player skill that is once again what separates a GAME from a STORY. And I fully believe that turning puzzles into strictly character challenges instead of a mix of character and player challenges was where the industry started to go wrong. And yes, you can do whatever you want at your table. If everyone at your table hates puzzles, by all means take them out.  But the books should encourage them as player challenges.</blockquote>

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