NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2280239" data-attributes="member: 4937">Heh.  You should have been here for the rule zero argument in the rules forum.   You would have gotten a kick out of all the people claiming that RPG's were about the rules - adventure and imagination be damned.   Or maybe not.  The very best RPers I've had the priviledge to referee were people who learned who to play the game a long time before they learned the rules.  To some people, that's a contridiction.   I doubt you see it that way, and I expect you'd be a very entertaining player or DM.-----Exactly.I don't see any reason why it must be either.  My point is a little more complex than that.   First, that the other companies are now mostly producing crunch as well, and if profitable publication becomes only a crunch contest its possible that WotC could lose out to a system that for whatever reason gamers found more compelling then D20/D&D.  For example, its entirely within the realm of possibility that Malhavoc's or Green Ronin's products could eventually depart from D20 to the degree that say 3rd edition Iron Lore or Blue Rose is not a D20 product.  What then is to stop future gamers, ten years from now from coming back exclusively for the non-D&D products?   To me what will really decide this is whether more gamers find 'Eberron' fluff more compelling than 'Diamond Throne' fluff or 'Aldis' fluff because its not the crunch that is the real strength of an RPG in the long run, precisely because RPG's aren't really about the rules but about the adventures.And the homebrewers out there are probably much more likely to stop being dependent on WotC for either crunch or fluff.   Certainly this was true to a large extent during 2nd edition, as many 1st edition gamers just more or less ignored the 2nd edition because it wasn't compatible with thier existing crunch or fluff.   In my own gaming of the time, about the only 2nd edition product that I remember influencing anyone's game was it was decided that 2nd edition dragons worked better than 1st edition ones.  Everything else was largely ignored.</blockquote>

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