On crunch, fluff, and system necromancy

We're starting playing RPGs again this week - and I for one can't wait! It seems I've been handed the reins, although Dave has FantasyCraft ready to roll "whenever," but I've been struck by a thought:

My group likes crunch. We love rules, and stats, and rolling on tables. This may well be why the rules-light games (PDQ# etc) we've played have tailed off. I think this could also be why people don't seem too keen on Savage Worlds...

Getting it (back) together

It's been a while - sorry, but not much to report back on.

Plenty to be reading though - Tourq's got me thinking about modifying DnD to make it more like the epic fantasy we know and love, great ideas for zombies in Savage Worlds in Wrath Of Zombie by... um... WrathOfZombie, and this has got me all fired up for more Deadlands - when anyone turns up, that is...

Fleet's almost assembled, ready to play Starmada - just need to get some ships statted up.

Thoughts on 4e

I've been reading through NewbieDM's thoughts on helping your players in 4e, and it ties in quite nicely with my thoughts for fleshing it out a bit.

My group went way off 4e, mainly because of perceived power creep, lack of "depth", the generic nature of powers and the counterintuitiveness of skill challenges. If that's a word.

Maybe we were playing it wrong - I think a lot of bad feeling bubbled up from the progressively weirder race/class combinations being thrown in by a couple of players, simply as ways to max damage. Powers had cool names, but were never described. Skill challenges went wrong because players either a) has no skills as they'd maxed out for combat, or b) declared "I'm using my History skill to..." which just feels weird.

It does sound like things have changed, and maybe we were too harsh on 4e. In addition to reminding players of the things NewbieDM mentions, I'm considering:

* Limiting PCs to a maximum of 16 in any stat before racial modifiers?

* Getting players to describe their powers. "My sword bursts into green flames as I strike down the closest bugbear," rather than, "I use my Green Flame Blade on bugbear 3 - it is number 3 that's bloodied, right?"

* Giving generic XP rewards for any successful skill check in a skill challenge - making it a less formal process?

4e was the first tabletop RPG I ran - or indeed played - so I guess with hindsight we could have done things a little differently... Any thoughts?