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Legends & Lore 09/03 - RPG design philosophy
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6007478" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Except that the individual chess pieces don't have individual agency - in fact, some are literally pawns! (And all metaphorically are such.)</p><p></p><p>Each PC has to be a viable tool for a player expressing his/her agency (= protagonism) in the game. That is a fairly strong constraint, which PCs modelled on the variety of chess pieces would almost certainly fail to satisfy if mechanical effectiveness was even remotely relevant to gameplay (which it frequently is in D&D).</p><p></p><p>You describe these by reference to what happened in the fiction.</p><p></p><p>Here you seem to be talking about mechanics.</p><p></p><p>I think it is a potential mistake to assume that mechanical variations in resolution are the key to producing dramatic and rewarding differences in the fiction of the sort that you mention.</p><p></p><p>For example, in my own experience 4e is quite good at producing those differences, despite the similar mechanical frameworks for PC build and action resolution. Better than classic D&D, to be honest. But even for others who have had different experiences, it doesn't follow that mechanical differentiation of the sort you describe is going to produce ficitonal differentiation of the sort you seem to want.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6007478, member: 42582"] Except that the individual chess pieces don't have individual agency - in fact, some are literally pawns! (And all metaphorically are such.) Each PC has to be a viable tool for a player expressing his/her agency (= protagonism) in the game. That is a fairly strong constraint, which PCs modelled on the variety of chess pieces would almost certainly fail to satisfy if mechanical effectiveness was even remotely relevant to gameplay (which it frequently is in D&D). You describe these by reference to what happened in the fiction. Here you seem to be talking about mechanics. I think it is a potential mistake to assume that mechanical variations in resolution are the key to producing dramatic and rewarding differences in the fiction of the sort that you mention. For example, in my own experience 4e is quite good at producing those differences, despite the similar mechanical frameworks for PC build and action resolution. Better than classic D&D, to be honest. But even for others who have had different experiences, it doesn't follow that mechanical differentiation of the sort you describe is going to produce ficitonal differentiation of the sort you seem to want. [/QUOTE]
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