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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6240106" data-attributes="member: 5143">I think I just did, one post up.&nbsp; Although I'm willing to accept that all methods of playing D&amp;D are valid ones, I'm not willing to concede that non-combat games are anything but non-standard.&nbsp; D&amp;D needs a baseline standard because otherwise it will have no focus at all.&nbsp; If you say &quot;D&amp;D is about pretending to be elves and Dwarves, everything else is optional&quot;, not only would you still have a portion of the D&amp;D audience getting angry because they don't &quot;pretend&quot; to be anything...but you'd have a game that needs to support every single genre, every single playstyle, and all possible interactions.&nbsp; You'd need a grand unified theory of everything that exists in real life and even more stuff that is just made up.That's impossible.&nbsp; A game needs focus.&nbsp; If you say that D&amp;D is a game about beating up monsters and taking their stuff, at least now you have a focus for what rules to make and what rules are important to the game:How do you beat up the orcs?&nbsp; What kind of stuff do they have?&nbsp; What do you do with the stuff after you get it?&nbsp; What benefits do you get for killing them other than items?Which, non coincidentally is where the rules of D&amp;D have focused on since the beginning:Combat/Monsters, treasure/magic items, adventuring/worldbuilding, XP/Levels.And that scares me like crazy.&nbsp; The last thing I want the game to do is concentrate on the non-combat parts of the game.&nbsp; It would make my games fall apart since concentrating on them means not caring about combat balance, not caring about being able to properly judge and guess difficulty of monsters, not having interesting things to do in combat for some classes, etc.I want the non-combat parts to exist, but I want the rules and the effort and focus of the game to be on the combat since it is the part that needs it the most.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 6240106, member: 5143"] I think I just did, one post up. Although I'm willing to accept that all methods of playing D&D are valid ones, I'm not willing to concede that non-combat games are anything but non-standard. D&D needs a baseline standard because otherwise it will have no focus at all. If you say "D&D is about pretending to be elves and Dwarves, everything else is optional", not only would you still have a portion of the D&D audience getting angry because they don't "pretend" to be anything...but you'd have a game that needs to support every single genre, every single playstyle, and all possible interactions. You'd need a grand unified theory of everything that exists in real life and even more stuff that is just made up. That's impossible. A game needs focus. If you say that D&D is a game about beating up monsters and taking their stuff, at least now you have a focus for what rules to make and what rules are important to the game: How do you beat up the orcs? What kind of stuff do they have? What do you do with the stuff after you get it? What benefits do you get for killing them other than items? Which, non coincidentally is where the rules of D&D have focused on since the beginning: Combat/Monsters, treasure/magic items, adventuring/worldbuilding, XP/Levels. And that scares me like crazy. The last thing I want the game to do is concentrate on the non-combat parts of the game. It would make my games fall apart since concentrating on them means not caring about combat balance, not caring about being able to properly judge and guess difficulty of monsters, not having interesting things to do in combat for some classes, etc. I want the non-combat parts to exist, but I want the rules and the effort and focus of the game to be on the combat since it is the part that needs it the most. [/QUOTE]

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