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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6246422" data-attributes="member: 17106">I don't particularly disagree with any of that, except the "specific and limited" part. Any character can be played in this fashion, and any event can occur. I see no limits other than the processing power of the DM's brain. But no one ever said it was easy.Now, is some other paradigm of gaming any easier, that's a question.I can't say I've ever found shared narrative control easy, largely because of confusion and conflicting goals and roles. However, since I did not learn that way, I certainly allow the possibility that I am simply not very skilled at it.Which to me is a problem. I don't characterize such fundamental divides as playstyle differences. They're really different games. To me, D&D or any other rpg has to have clear roles for the participants.Thankfully 3e does that, and as a first generation gamer, I largely follow the books on this subject. That is, I learned Rule Zero by picking up a book and reading it. I don't think anyone who has the 3e books and can read could draw any other conclusion about this paradigm, and how it informs the entire system. Do other games, including other versions of D&D, specify differently, or not at all? Yes. If someone else wants to analyze that social contract that informs other versions of D&D, they are welcome to.To my mind, building a game that supports a different role for the players (and whatever DM/GM/etc. is posited, if any) is fine, but requires a page 1 rewrite. Since 3e was built explicitly with the assumptions of a strict player/character bond and an omnipotent and interventionist DM, it seems that when people try to play it with a different social contract it sometimes does not work well. This could lead to lengthy discussions about how "balanced" the game is, but I think that's missing the point.Well, there is a reason why I'm running CoC right now. But it is CoC d20, and thus is in some sense part of the 3e family. 3e, as constituted, has a lot of unncessary baggage. Since most of us started with 2e, there is a nostalgia factor that keeps us engaged in things like classes and spells. Frankly, I'm beginning to look at this as a collective character flaw among my group (and probably not just my group).To me, 5e ought to be exactly what I'm talking about, something fundamentally simpler and more generic.I don't see how any of this is at odds with immersion. In fact, I find that as a DM, focusing more in in-world phenomena and less on metagame agendas is very helpful to producing a naturalistic and emergent flow of events.Well, that's the box I was talking about. For example, all the talk of legislating in or out Save or Dies or other forms of quick and random high-lethality mechanics. It may be that some people really don't want these things and that there are very meaningful problems that can arise from their application, but legislating them out of the game removes reams of possibilities and completely changes the tactics. There are cases where getting what you want is not a good thing.And indeed, that's part of getting emergent events. It's not only the DM that decides whether the character lives or dies, or even the player. It's the dice. That's pretty scary, but it is emergent.If I stripped out the bits that I disliked, there wouldn't be a game left, honestly.To me, it's been a learning curve over the years with 3.5 revisionism. If I were starting again from scratch, I might start something else. But is there another system out there that's not only better for me than what I have right now but by enough to be worth making the transition? I'm skeptical of that.I would have hoped for 5e to be exactly that (and indeed I hoped for 4e to be that before its release), but I haven't seen my hopes fulfilled thus far.If. yes.That's probably the best argument for balance that I've heard. Darwinism. People will naturally do the best things that they can do, and the ones that get the best results will keep doing it. If there was a type of magic that only ever produced cantrip-level effects, no one would learn it, because it would be a waste of time. So it follows the magic that does exist must be worth the effort and opportunity cost for at least some people.I'm on board with that. I don't see people talking about balance much in practical terms like that though.If you look at how 3e handles class balance, it makes perfect sense on the naturalistic level.To me, that's happened in the D&D world we've been collectively imagining for the past few decades as well.</blockquote>

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