How much of the anti-4E sentiment is actually justified?

[Plebian]

More like, it's an awesome place where we create super weapons and murder each other, and it's everyone for themselves with constant shifting alliances based on the issue of the day.

But yes, we are idealistic, in that we believed by building ourselves under the sea, we could avoid trash like you.

but, alas, all you did was reinforce the negative qualities of the worst of you while still claiming utopia and trying to enforce your vision of utopia through dishonest methods

[Username17]

Plebian, I find your trolling annoying. While browsing the Something Awful Forums, I found this:

ProfessorCirno posted:

The Trollman comments read like some sort of bizarro version of Atlas Shrugged where the horrible "basketweaver" parasites try to interfere with the glorious power gamer Randian supermen.


I am Frank Trollman, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a fan not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

'No,' says Wizards of the Coast, 'he's getting an MMO.'
'No,' says Mike Mearls, 'it should be "balanced"'.'
'No,' says Ed Greenwood, 'it needs more prostitutes.'

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...

The Gaming Den.

A place where the wizard would not fear the nerf,
where the TRUE fan would not be bound by petty logic,
where the great would not be constrained by the small.

And with the sweat of your brow, The Gaming Den can become your forum, as well.

Could you perhaps adjust your trolling to be similarly funny? That would heighten my enjoyment of your input.

Wow, that's pretty funny actually. I mean, it's almost exactly the opposite of what I stand for, but it is frickin hilarious.

I mean, in reality I produce my stuff open source and for free and reject the ownership by authors of their products - including ownership by me of things I have personally written. Meaning that if you wanted to cast me as a futuristic dystopian philosopher villain you'd do better with Sheng-ji Yang or L. Bob Rife. But the segment was well done and I applaud the creativity of it.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

More like, it's an awesome place where we create super weapons and murder each other, and it's everyone for themselves with constant shifting alliances based on the issue of the day.

But yes, we are idealistic, in that we believed by building ourselves under the sea, we could avoid trash like you.

but, alas, all you did was reinforce the negative qualities of the worst of you while still claiming utopia and trying to enforce your vision of utopia through dishonest methods

You mean dishonest methods like going to other forums, trolling them, getting banned, registering a new account, and continuing to troll them?

Or dishonest methods like. Enjoying our own game and not interacting with people on other forums at all.

I mean, you are literally claiming that we Rapturians are evil bastards because we are trying to force the US to absolve it's government and become our slaves by the process of leaving them alone and never talking to them.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

Nope but I do need to know that one pound of food is what I need to sustain myself for the day. I need prices for one should I need to buy one. I need stats for chickens should I want to kick one. Yes it does enhance my gaming experience to know that the rules are consistent and that SHOULD i care enough to pay attention to a general detail such as stats, ability/world interaction and consistency, and similar *general* things that general rules should cover.

What you want isn't an RPG, it's life. We already have that.

I mean, you are literally claiming that we Rapturians are evil bastards because we are trying to force the US to absolve it's government and become our slaves by the process of leaving them alone and never talking to them.

Bad metaphor. You're being told that the splicing you're doing is harmful to you, and that in a less collapsed society, the big daddies might not be the best way to go.

[Plebian]

Or dishonest methods like. Enjoying our own game and not interacting with people on other forums at all.

if you were only mature enough to say "well I don't like 4e but at the same time I don't feel the need to claim that it is not D&D/failing/preventing RP/preventing player agency/whatever batshit claim of the day" there would be no issue, but you attempt to justify your over-the-top dislike for a tabletop by just making shit up

I mean, you are literally claiming that we Rapturians are evil bastards because we are trying to force the US to absolve it's government and become our slaves by the process of leaving them alone and never talking to them.

actually I'm just running with the idea where you claimed the idea of TGD being Rapture was cool, which is a horribly stupid thing to support because Rapture was nothing but an abject failure and I'm not sure why you would say "hell yeah we are the Rapture of TTRPGs that is so cool!" when you're obviously aware of what it was

Nope but I do need to know that one pound of food is what I need to sustain myself for the day. I need prices for one should I need to buy one. I need stats for chickens should I want to kick one. Yes it does enhance my gaming experience to know that the rules are consistent and that SHOULD i care enough to pay attention to a general detail such as stats, ability/world interaction and consistency, and similar *general* things that general rules should cover.

why do you need stats for a chicken just to kick it? what's to stop you from just saying "I kick the chicken, it is dead because it's a goddamn chicken"? why do you need to know what a person needs to eat? are you not a person that this kind of thing is foreign to you?

also no tabletop, ever, will approach anything like a uniform application of real-world physics or realism, but stopping short will give you things like the Peasant Railgun in 3e, where a copper piece can travel across the world in under a second but will still only do 1 damage when thrown by the guy at the end. so it's better to let the players use their own experience with real world affairs to extrapolate the real-world effects.

Yes everything that exists should have general rules that should cover their existence. You know you CAN figure out how much a chicken needs to eat in 3E on a day to day basis right? The same as you can figure out how amuch a medium character needs to eat and drink to survive.

and this adds nothing but pointless complexity to the game. apart from player's needs there is pretty much no reason anyone would need, or even want, to know the basics of animal husbandry. trust me, farms are really goddamn boring and I don't play D&D to pretend to be a farmer worrying about if his chickens will have enough feed or if his turnips will survive the terrible turnip blight that's been going around.

Yes templating powers that basically have no difference between them other than the word there is bad. Classes, spells, and abilities can vary VERY wildly 3E but not so in 4E. This has been visited and revisited again and again. But even IF you are going to do that there should STILL be SOME rules adjudicating how your powers interact with the world. Even in rules light systems there are descriptions and fluff for how powers work. 4E can't even match RULES LITE systems in that aspect.

yeah, spells vary more in 3e because they're the dumping ground for everything cool a designer could think of, regardless of balance (thanks OGL), classes were the same for the same reason, and none of it added anything good to the game and only increased the benefits of system mastery. but 4e powers are varied in interesting and fun ways; I've played a good dozen classes and not one has felt like another to me because they all work, at the least, slightly differently. and some much more than slightly; Runepriests don't play like Clerics who don't play like Bards who don't play like Warlords who don't play like Shamans.

oh and 4e powers interact with the world in the exact way that they're written. if you use them inside an encounter they do what they describe, if you use them outside an encounter they do what they describe. same as 3e powers.

[MGuy]

@Doctor: What you want aren't rules its Cops and Robbers. See I can make baseless accusations too!

@Plebian: Having rules for how much you need to eat, being ABLE to stat up small animals (even if I don't USE those stats), powers having known and consistent effects none of these things are unreasonable. If you don't care to stat up a chicken you sure as hell don't have to but the rules SHOULD be able to allow you to IF it became important. If the DM is doing all the work, if your responses are "The DM can do it" for any but edge case things and not GENERAL statistic building then your system, in my eyes has failed to deliver on what 3E can already do.

You are not even trying to be reasonable. So I'm going to stop trying. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place so this is me giving up.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

You're asking for a realistic level of complexity, where realistic means able to accurately model the real world. This is not a reasonable amount of complexity to desire. Where the line is drawn is a matter of opinion, but I believe it's closer to 4E than 3E because for the statting up that farm animals recieve, none of those stats were useful for 99% of games. If you want to get absolutely every corner case, you're never going to stop working on the least interesting part of the game.

[MGuy]

I didn't say anything about realism. I'm asking for general coverage for general things. How much should a person need to eat in a day is something I'd like to know. But even if you don't need that you can focus on something more integral to the system. [Radiant] is a tag that is in a big portion of the game same as [Positive Energy] and the latter has more rule coverage than the other despite the concept being completely unrealistic and indeed not existing in this reality. That's not unreasonable at all to want.

Right now you are literally giving an argument that could be given about having rules about how far you can move in a turn.

Edited twice because some of what I put got cut off.

[CCarter]

No, there are no rules for chickens. If there were rules for chickens, would it enhance your enjoyment of the game? Do you also need to know the caloric value of the grain the chickens are eating to accept that the chickens don't starve?

I don't think you need to work out the caloric value of your chicken feed. It is nice if you would have an ecology of some kind rather than every monster just eating human flesh, though. D&D had much more of this in earlier editions ("Gygaxian Naturalism").

Sucky mechanics and much bad illustration aside, the 2E monster manual has huge numbers of adventure and world hooks with every monster, from ankhegs that were needed to keep fields fertile but sometimes eating farmers to exotic monster origins (mudmen due to eroding magic temples downstream) and hunting missions for magic item components.

EDIT: dammit extra quote tag.

[tussock]

actually, ... clerics can't "fall" in any edition so throughout time they could burn down their own temples, the paladin "fall" mechanic was never good for anything but antagonistic DMs abusing it to make paladins play the way they thought they should be played, and non-combat actions are every bit as encouraged in 4e as they were in any previous edition.

READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.

For serious. Clerics have always had a little note that all their shit goes away if the DM thinks they're offending the deity. There's even a rule in AD&D that you permanently become a Fighter of half your Cleric level if you do it deliberately. Of course, that was back when you lost a level for changing alignment, also in the DM's opinion. They were supposed to warn you, a lot, but still.

because you really should apply your criticisms equally or you're just being hypocritical

Hypocrisy and Truth are orthogonal concepts. One can in fact talk about all the bad shit in 4th edition D&D without mentioning the bad shit in Space Opera You might defend 4th edition by saying no published RPG has done better, but in this case you are wrong to do so. 4th edition designers have spoken about not wanting their power tags to mean anything, in the same way the monster's armour doesn't make up it's armour class any more. 4e stuff just is what it is, and no more, you can't use it for other purposes than the designers intended, and that's deliberate.

They think that's a good thing, for their "balance", but not everyone agrees. But to say that's not true is just plain wrong.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

I'll be honest, I could use a little more monster ecology, but "gygaxian naturalism" ignores the reality that nothing in D&D (or any RPG ever) exists outside of when it is being interacted with. It's needless complexity.

[Radiant] is a tag that is in a big portion of the game same as [Positive Energy]

This isn't true.

Right now you are literally giving an argument that could be given about having rules about how far you can move in a turn.

Except that that's a useful rule for resolving conflict. If you are given chicken related conflict enough to require specific rules for it, might I suggest finding less pedantic people to associate with?

[MGuy]

1) How isn't it true? Positive energy is in all the healing spells that heal HP and there's a whole plane of it. Radiant is a tag on a good number of abilities in 4E. If not equal I'd say Radiant might be more important than positive energy which would mean it deserves MORE rules coverage.

2) If "resolving Conflict" means "In-Combat" then I agree. But when I play DnD I can solve a number of "conflicts" without making an attack roll. A shame I can't do or expect that much of 4E without DM making up rules.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

1) How isn't it true? Positive energy is in all the healing spells that heal HP and there's a whole plane of it. Radiant is a tag on a good number of abilities in 4E. If not equal I'd say Radiant might be more important than positive energy which would mean it deserves MORE rules coverage.

Misunderstood what you wrote. Sorry.

2) If "resolving Conflict" means "In-Combat" then I agree. But when I play DnD I can solve a number of "conflicts" without making an attack roll. A shame I can't do or expect that much of 4E without DM making up rules.

You can!

[quanta]

Wow, that's pretty funny actually. I mean, it's almost exactly the opposite of what I stand for, but it is frickin hilarious.

I mean, in reality I produce my stuff open source and for free and reject the ownership by authors of their products - including ownership by me of things I have personally written. Meaning that if you wanted to cast me as a futuristic dystopian philosopher villain you'd do better with Sheng-ji Yang or L. Bob Rife. But the segment was well done and I applaud the creativity of it.

-Username17

To be fair, in practice Ayn Rand had a weird cult-like following. A bit odd given her actual philosophy, but not surprising given what philosophy is.

If I gather wind around myself as part of the move can I hold the power to cool myself off on a hot day? If I have a cold move can I sit still and keep my compatriots cool in the hot evening sun?

Is there a table of evaporative cooling or something I'm unaware of in 3e?

I don't need force to be different from whacking with a mace. [Force] moving stuff and hitting incorporeal is a fine explanation as long as its there because it tells me HOW it interacts with the world. Positive energy heals organic stuff negative energy does the opposite. Sonic damage damages scenery and creates sound. All those are explanations of what they do with the world and I can come up with creative ways to use them.

Only two of those changed as far as I can tell in 4e. Necrotic and radiant. And necrotic was always poorly defined to start with. Will using it damn your everlasting soul? No one fucking knows.

Nope but I do need to know that one pound of food is what I need to sustain myself for the day. I need prices for one should I need to buy one. I need stats for chickens should I want to kick one. Yes it does enhance my gaming experience to know that the rules are consistent and that SHOULD i care enough to pay attention to a general detail such as stats, ability/world interaction and consistency, and similar *general* things that general rules should cover.

You can't even guarantee a particular price for a pound of food in the real world. How much you need to eat will vary drastically with activity and body weight. Do you seriously need nailed down numbers for this shit? Granted, there are prices for food and basic supplies in 4e, but if the DM wants to tell you food is scarce wherever you are or you need to eat more because you weigh 300 lbs. that's completely sensible and fair.

Yes everything that exists should have general rules that should cover their existence. You know you CAN figure out how much a chicken needs to eat in 3E on a day to day basis right? The same as you can figure out how amuch a medium character needs to eat and drink to survive.

You are aware if that I bother checking the made up numbers of 3e vs. various creatures I can guarantee some of them will be hilariously unreasonable or off, right?

Seriously, rules on how much animals need to eat are actually just guidelines.

Even in rules light systems there are descriptions and fluff for how powers work. 4E can't even match RULES LITE systems in that aspect.

Have you played Rules Lite systems? Even read them? I'm seriously wondering here. Because they run a march larger gamut of gaming styles than that covered by 3e and 4e. If we can even agree on what constitutes "lite".

Srsly tho, there are rules light systems literally based around arguing whether or not particular adjectives on your character sheet apply to a given situation. I think some of them are actually a lot of fun. But the way you sound about 4e, something like Lady Blackbird would probably give you an aneurysm. It's basically one step removed from magical tea party.

I didn't say anything about realism. I'm asking for genereal coverage for general things. How much should a person need to eat in a day i[Radiant] is a tag that is in a big portion of the game same as [Positive Energy] and the latter has more rule coverage than the other despite the concept being completely unrealistic and indeed not existing in this reality. That's not unreasonable at all to want.

Right now you are literally giving an argument that could be given about having rules about how far you can move in a turn.

It would be completely reasonable for certain types of games to lack rules about movement speed. Obviously, it would not be reasonable for D&D to lack rules for movement speed. But that's a different issue.

Quick though, in 3e, if I seal my enemies away in a 10-by-10 square room with a limited unrenewable air supply, how long will it take them to suffocate if

A) They are dire camels.
B) They are undead.
C) They are beholders. (Disintegrating eye poked out or something).
D) They are fiendish pseudonatural dire wallabies.
E) A baby dragon.

And I'd seriously argue this is a more likely scenario to occur in some games (like all the ones I run) than how many chickens I need to eat or what it takes to kill them.

And I think you could come up with answers in 3e, but it's going to take a calculator, and it's going to be really simulation breaking considering how as far as I can tell, you don't breathe any faster if you're digging compared to if you're sitting still. I also can't find the rules on how fast tiny or smaller or large or larger monsters breathe. Not saying they're not there, but I can't find them in the SRD.

[Kaelik]

if you were only mature enough to say "well I don't like 4e but at the same time I don't feel the need to claim that it is not D&D/failing/preventing RP/preventing player agency/whatever batshit claim of the day" there would be no issue, but you attempt to justify your over-the-top dislike for a tabletop by just making shit up.

Every time you post, it becomes more clear how retarded you are. Ignoring for the moment that I haven't made most of those claims, let's go through them:

1) not D&D. There is an obvious lack of continuity between 3e and 4e that didn't exist between 1e/2e/3e. That is true. No one is claiming that 4e is not literally D&D, in that it has the D&D name and license. But there is a certain amount of lamentation of that continuity break. That continuity break is real, and true, and whil I would not personally call it "not D&D" it is still a real thing that does exist.

2) failing. It is objectively true that 4e failed to meet several of it's design goals. It is objectively true that it does not sell as well as 3e. It is also objectively true that 3e failed to meet some of it's design goals. While how much those things matter is subjective, and how much sales are reflective of game quality is subjective, that 4e failed at X Y and Z is objectively true.

3) I don't think I have ever said "preventing RP" because it is lacking a fundamental component. "Preventing RP" of what? But yes, it is objectively true that 4e prevents some types of RP, just like 3e does. It's subjective as to which types of RP you are more concerned with.

4) 4e doesn't "prevent" player agency, any more than any ruleset prevents player agency (by declaring what is or is not allowed). But it does reduce player agency relative to 3e, since a 3e character could literally do every single thing a 4e character could + more.

Fundamentally, your claim about how we try to "justify" our dislike (whether it is over the top would be subjective, and not something you could actually judge, since you have literally never posted anything that wasn't a defense of 4e) demonstrates your confusion. It's not a justification to point to something that is true and that we don't like. It's a reason. People like things or not for reasons, and while those reasons are rooted in subjective preferences, they are still reasons. When I say "I want to have a character who can cause it to rain whenever he wants, or create a Tornado that rips up a building and 4e does not allow that" I am not justifying my dislike, I am explaining it.

actually I'm just running with the idea where you claimed the idea of TGD being Rapture was cool, which is a horribly stupid thing to support because Rapture was nothing but an abject failure and I'm not sure why you would say "hell yeah we are the Rapture of TTRPGs that is so cool!" when you're obviously aware of what it was

Rapture was an "abject failure" by your standards, and maybe by it's creator's standards. But certainly not by mine, and likewise, I don't care if TGD is a failure by your standards, I like it. Rapture may have been loved by, for example, Fountain, or The Plumber guy who gives you a Rocket launcher, because it provides things that you can't get elsewhere, and the comparative lawlessness of TGD offers lots of fun that can't be found elsewhere.

Some people just want to live under the sea building gene tonics that are awesome. And so for me building my gene tonics in pursuit of the most enjoyable RPG, I am quite content.

[CCarter]

And I think you could come up with answers in 3e, but it's going to take a calculator, and it's going to be really simulation breaking considering how as far as I can tell, you don't breathe any faster if you're digging compared to if you're sitting still. I also can't find the rules on how fast tiny or smaller or large or larger monsters breathe. Not saying they're not there, but I can't find them in the SRD.

I googled 'SRD suffocation Size" and immediately came up with this...

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm

Slow Suffocation

A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. When a character falls unconscious from this nonlethal damage, she drops to -1 hit points and is dying. In the next round, she suffocates.

Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time.

To an extent large complex rules can be a pain in the butt, but these are (at worst) wasted page count. When I'm GMing I can ignore rules more easily than I can make stuff up on the go. As Kevin J. Anderson said with regard to novel writing - 'you can edit crap, but you can't edit nothing'. It is difficult to know whether a given rule will end up being important or not unless you work in a fairly constrained 'play space' of possible scenarios. At which point you're leaving what are possibly life-or-death decisions to the GM deciding to Tell A Story or flip a coin.

Though I'll likewise be honest and say I do enjoy (say) Tunnels & Trolls, where I can just say "chickens have a Monster Rating of 1" without needing a huge stat block for them.
Still, a 4E chicken has to NOT have stats to work - if you make it a minion for example, a super-fireball that destroys your village logically would leave many of the chickens alive due to minions taking no damage from misses.

[Sarandosil]

I don't have my books on me and I don't actually play 4e that often, but I'm pretty sure Wizards have invisibility.

Yeah it's a utility power. It's also rather useless, depending on how your GM rules things. It lasts for a single round and takes a standard action to sustain it longer. How that works out of combat I have no idea, but presumably anything you can't do with a move + minor action in combat you can't do while invisible. It's also got a short range so you can't cast it on someone else and have them go explore anything, effectively it's self cast only. And you can't use it to hide objects because presumably sustaining a power is conspicuous, though if you play in a setting where wizards don't cast by moving their hands around and chanting this isn't a problem. If you don't play in such a setting then you can't use it to stealth either since the disembodied chanting will give you away.

Edit: Actually I don't know of any rule that says you can't sustain a power if you aren't in range of it's effect, so that might be "ask your GM" too.

[MGuy]

@quanta: Any response that = "yes its there but the DM may disagree with it and change it" is irrelevant to any of what I said. The fact of the matter is those are just edge cases and as I've said, no you don't NEED to follow the rules but it is good for the game that they exist as long as the rules ~work~. It being "hard" or difficult" to calculate how long X creature to solve in Y size room is irrelevant and good for the game as long as the rules work to some degree. Now if you're arguing that knowing the rules for suffocating is ~bad~ then I can't help you because I completely disagree.

The examples of wind and cold keeping people cool are important in this case because there are no guidelines in 4E as to whether or not you can USE your at-will abilities constantly when not striking something. What's more no one has challenged the notion that the [Tags] and fluff don't mean shit so if they don't how can I know that I can do it? What's more there are rules for how cold and temperature works in 3E. I believe they are in Sandstorm and Frostburn (?).

However that small shit aside it is absolutely important that people KNOW how a basic part of the game interacts with the world.

[Doctor Kenny Loggins]

Still, a 4E chicken has to NOT have stats to work - if you make it a minion for example, a super-fireball that destroys your village logically would leave many of the chickens alive due to minions taking no damage from misses.

If you did this super fireball thing, would you be rolling for every person in the town? I submit that that would be an enormous waste of time for everyone involved.

[MGuy]

You wouldn't need to roll. Basic statistics gives you a % of chickens and other mooks that are likely to survive.

[Doom]

For what it's worth, I guess you'd have to make chickens non-minions with 1 hit point.

[shadzar]

why do you need stats for a chicken just to kick it? what's to stop you from just saying "I kick the chicken, it is dead because it's a goddamn chicken"?

Something in story telling called suspension of disbelief. While you know all things going on are not real, and you DO disbelieve them, the things must be given in a manner to suspend that disbelief in order to allow you to continue within the story, before you are jsut looking down on a dollhouse where you can see the hands actually moving the dolls around, rather than the dolls moving on their own.

If you can just kick a chicken dead, then it could easily extend into kicking a tarrasque dead, since you are telling a story anyway, you can do anything in it without bounds or rules.

This removes suspension of disbelief, wherein the player is assuming the role of the character in the story.

It is walking a thin line to know what is believable and what is not with ANY story, the better it is done, then to more that line is blurred so that you don't mind it being there and you can continue with the story.

Chicken Kickin' (TM), is an example of something that needs to be known something about, because the game allows you to kick other things, and you must have some sort of "balance" in how things react when kicked.

It doesn't require exact physics, but when you kick something you need to know how much damage it does, if in fact a kick can do damage, and that same amount of damage should apply to all things kicked in that manner, that are of the same "toughness"/fragility as the chicken.

What is the value range of a kick, and how many kicks does it take to kick a chicken to death? This is part of the attack/hit/damage system, and should be easily able to be written down for anything.

Maybe the chicken kickin' isnt for killing, but a sport for distance like "pumpkin chunkin", but the chicken must live. Seems like something a bunch of drunks at a tavern would to and make bets on....

note how you missed a part of that post that explained you query for you....

enhance my gaming experience to know that the rules are consistent

[Novembermike]

Are chickens statted up in 3.5? According to the SRD we don't have rules for them, so I guess we have the same problem in 3.5.

Something in story telling called suspension of disbelief. While you know all things going on are not real, and you DO disbelieve them, the things must be given in a manner to suspend that disbelief in order to allow you to continue within the story, before you are jsut looking down on a dollhouse where you can see the hands actually moving the dolls around, rather than the dolls moving on their own.

Didn't 3.5 have it set up so that a 20 lb dog could take out several commoners with basic weapons?

[Plebian]

why would you need rules for destroying a peasant village? that's the kind of thing that works just fine inside of a narrative without having to rollplay it.

which appears to be the issue; people want the ability to rollplay in 4e but dislike that there are not mechanics in place to tell them exactly how hard they kill a chicken or cool their body on a warm day. when these things are pointless rollplaying that will likely only ever interfere with actual roleplay because what you're asking for is to be told how you can roleplay, which imposes inconsistent limitations based on what physics your ideal designer wanted to import and which were considered too inane

Something in story telling called suspension of disbelief. While you know all things going on are not real, and you DO disbelieve them, the things must be given in a manner to suspend that disbelief in order to allow you to continue within the story, before you are jsut looking down on a dollhouse where you can see the hands actually moving the dolls around, rather than the dolls moving on their own.

If you can just kick a chicken dead, then it could easily extend into kicking a tarrasque dead, since you are telling a story anyway, you can do anything in it without bounds or rules.

yes, obviously because if you can say "I kick an inconsequential animal who will never be a threat to anyone to death" you can say "I kick a gigantic dinosaurcrabthing to death" because the two are totally equivalent in tabletop terms

It is walking a thin line to know what is believable and what is not with ANY story, the better it is done, then to more that line is blurred so that you don't mind it being there and you can continue with the story.

if I, personally, can kick a chicken to death I really do not feel the need to have rules regarding my heroic character doing it. just like I don't need rules for him shitting, or writing term papers, or cooking dinner. these are mundane activities I can do myself. I don't need a game telling me that it's possible for Bran, Slayer of Giants to do them.

[Wallacism]

why would you need rules for destroying a peasant village? that's the kind of thing that works just fine inside of a narrative without having to rollplay it.

Right on! I don't play a character if he can't insta-gib everything he sees. PROTIP: If you need rules for damage, your character isn't awsome enough.

if I, personally, can kick a chicken to death I really do not feel the need to have rules regarding my heroic character doing it. just like I don't need rules for him shitting, or writing term papers, or cooking dinner. these are mundane activities I can do myself. I don't need a game telling me that it's possible for Bran, Slayer of Giants to do them.

This plus a million. If I know enough chemistry to make Thermite and enough engineering to build ballistae, my character should too. It's not that hard guys. Skip that rolling crap, I'm gonna light some castles on fire. As for whether it works, see above re: rules for terrain destruction.
Ain't nothin' but a narrative thang! Holla.