Interesting thoughts. I like the name, "Mechanics Based Mentality". Our group hasn't called it such, but we have had debates about the merits of a skill system vs not.
I think my favorite method of blending these is backgrounds as 13th Age defines them. There are plenty of other systems that use similar ideas.
Your thoughts on 4e providing more RP opportunities is opposite of mine. The "powers" that everyone had rules the table. No one thought to do anything outside what was listed on the sheet, and that took time. As the number of powers increased with level, the Tyranny of Choice took over, and people began to take too long to find that one perfect power for the current situation.
I found a big shift in the Essentials era away from being trapped by powers. The presentation of 4e, Rob Schwalb has a great old post that I'll reshare later via archive and personal download since the site is gone now, of 4e's initial core books were very much "Mechanics Based Mentality." When my players, who were mostly young people whose 1st D&D was 4e, saw the Slayer build in the first Essentials book with its focus on Basic Attack, they suddenly had an awakening to the possibilities of play.
For me as a DM, page 42 of the DMG for 4e made it explicit that anyone could do anything. It and a 3x5 card of the math are all you need to run 4e forever. That information wasn't in the PHB though and the power presentation, the PHB looked more like a spreadsheet than a rule book, definitely fostered a mechanics based mentality.
I might write a discussion of that sea change between early and post-essentials 4e. Heck, it gives me an opportunity to expand on my "4e based Gamma World" is my favorite superhero RPG post from earlier.
Really love this article and can't wait to hear more about HoK. As an old school gamer who is brand new to 4e (I literally bought the four Essentials books off of Ebay last week), the only thing that really jumped out at me as being egregiously bad was the nonsensical "DC scaling by character level". I would love to see a version of 4e with essentially "fixed" DC numbers. Really looking forward to HoK
I re read through this AGAIN :) Great stuff :) I remember when 2nd Edition came out with the standardized NWPY system.. .we chose them... but the charcaters never used any of them really...
Feel free to steal what ever you like from my system - as detailed in my subsack as I post it.
Im checking out yours
Interesting thoughts. I like the name, "Mechanics Based Mentality". Our group hasn't called it such, but we have had debates about the merits of a skill system vs not.
I think my favorite method of blending these is backgrounds as 13th Age defines them. There are plenty of other systems that use similar ideas.
Your thoughts on 4e providing more RP opportunities is opposite of mine. The "powers" that everyone had rules the table. No one thought to do anything outside what was listed on the sheet, and that took time. As the number of powers increased with level, the Tyranny of Choice took over, and people began to take too long to find that one perfect power for the current situation.
I found a big shift in the Essentials era away from being trapped by powers. The presentation of 4e, Rob Schwalb has a great old post that I'll reshare later via archive and personal download since the site is gone now, of 4e's initial core books were very much "Mechanics Based Mentality." When my players, who were mostly young people whose 1st D&D was 4e, saw the Slayer build in the first Essentials book with its focus on Basic Attack, they suddenly had an awakening to the possibilities of play.
For me as a DM, page 42 of the DMG for 4e made it explicit that anyone could do anything. It and a 3x5 card of the math are all you need to run 4e forever. That information wasn't in the PHB though and the power presentation, the PHB looked more like a spreadsheet than a rule book, definitely fostered a mechanics based mentality.
I might write a discussion of that sea change between early and post-essentials 4e. Heck, it gives me an opportunity to expand on my "4e based Gamma World" is my favorite superhero RPG post from earlier.
Really love this article and can't wait to hear more about HoK. As an old school gamer who is brand new to 4e (I literally bought the four Essentials books off of Ebay last week), the only thing that really jumped out at me as being egregiously bad was the nonsensical "DC scaling by character level". I would love to see a version of 4e with essentially "fixed" DC numbers. Really looking forward to HoK
That's my major complaint with 4e as well. The whole "It's Easy for a 15th Level Character" assumptions were something I strongly disagreed with.
I re read through this AGAIN :) Great stuff :) I remember when 2nd Edition came out with the standardized NWPY system.. .we chose them... but the charcaters never used any of them really...
Maybe fire building ... ONCE