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="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4977907" data-attributes="member: 80487">I can't speak for Derren as to his/her particular issues. I can guess that the relevance to this thread would be that players tend to have access to greater "character abilities" in higher-level games (which some people oppose to "dark, gritty worlds").As a general principle, that it is better to challenge a player's skill than to have outcomes determined independently of that is pretty much a truism in the world of games! Managing chance can be part of that skill, of course.It's pretty widely agreed in theory that an RPG player's will should (perhaps with rare exceptions such as a mesmerizing spell) not be infringed upon in choosing a character's actions. However, it's a practical and an aesthetic question just where the line between character ability and player volition lies. For instance, what should be made of "mental abilities" such as intelligence, wisdom and charisma scores?In all my experience prior to 3e -- which mostly involved "character skill system" games, starting with Traveller and RuneQuest -- the emphasis was on challenging the players rather than "challenging the characters" (which is rather a euphemism, really). What I read in the 3e books was still consistent with that tradition, but apparently players in the 2e era had already begun to overturn it.D&D of course had gone into the 1st Advanced and "BECMI" editions without any systematic treatment of such matters. Dungeons quite often tested the players' cunning, and included clues and even jokes that depended on real-world knowledge. So, it's a pretty radical change when D&Ders start to hold forth that dice rolls ought to replace such traditional features. It would not be quite as startling in the context of some other games.</blockquote>

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