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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6067083" data-attributes="member: 27160">It's probably a mix of all the things you mention, but I think there's a perception that D&D is "the vast majority of (fantasy) roleplaying" and that "the rest" consists of a thin and tattered fringe of minority, amateur efforts that are too difficult, too splintered, too complex or whatever else to be worth the (overestimated, I think) expense and effort to get into. Thus D&d is "it", so "it" has to cover all the bases desired.Now, I know - and I guess you know - that there are a whole array of professionally produced, slick, imaginative and exciting games out there that cover all sorts of bases really well. But, from the point of view of a gamer who is maybe not as "hardcore" as either of us and who really knows only one system, I can see how it might appear pretty intimidating. Possibly the best/only thing we can do to help is to run as many "minority" games as we can, with as open access as we can give, to help those worried gamers get at least a taste of life "beyond the pale".It's hard to pin down exactly what the defining point of "coolness" is, but part of it is the player agency through clear, open, functionally complete and shared rules. That is, the GM may choose to modify some aspect of the rules if it better fits the game their table is playing, but the GM doesn't have to modify the rules - especially not on the fly - because the rules are either unclear or incomplete, or because one player or character category dominates to the detriment of others' fun if they don't.As a 4e DM I don't study the character abilities - either those available in the books or those my players have picked - at all. I get to see them in play, obviously, but I don't need to know what the characters can do in order to present fun and challenging situations to the players. Nor do I need to judge corner cases or elastically defined rules text all the time in play. I just study my NPCs and Monsters, and focus on having them act sensibly - and intelligently if they are intelligent - in trying to achieve their own ends and make the PCs' lives difficult <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />Rather than having to juggle all the disparate parts in order to wrestle the game into working smoothly, I just push in one, design-supported direction, and fun and stories just happen. I think that's the best way I can put it - I don't have to wrangle and dodge to get fun, engaging play to emerge any more with D&D when I play 4e. That play just happens when I press in the right direction. For me, all the best systems work that way - it's just that the direction you need to push can be different from one system to another.</blockquote>

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