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D&D Older Editions
The Best Thing from 4E
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6564985" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Awesome. I've been waiting for you to post a lengthy analysis of your jaunt into 4e for some time now. I'm glad you chose to do so as I respect your opinion and very much respect your sincere and earnest effort in running the game. This thread has been one of the few interesting threads to post in on here for some time and the direction of this conversation is now penetrating some mysteries of our silly hobby. Enough with the touchy feely crap!</p><p></p><p>So many of the posts that followed yours do a fantastic job of breaking down the issue in ways that I think illuminating. pemerton's post following yours captures my general position on things quite well. I think I'm going to take a different approach. Tomorrow or Saturday I'll break down a few play examples from the recent <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353102-Somewhere-else/page1" target="_blank">4e</a> game (playing IRL now) and current <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365637-The-Fey-the-Far-and-the-Ugly-Space-In-Between/page1" target="_blank">Dungeon World</a> game I'm running on here to display how the overt machinery and GMing principles of those game create transparent play procedures that are anathema to illusionism. I think play example analysis is typically more helpful than anything else.</p><p></p><p>First, very generally on system. If nothing else, illusionism GMing is enabled by <strong><em>GM latitude</em></strong>. Where does this latitude come from in RPGs? I would say it comes from a few sources working in conjunction:</p><p></p><p>1 - Opacity, incoherency, and/or too much open-endedness with respect to the resolution mechanics.</p><p></p><p>2 - The ruleset being silent, noncommittal, or nebulous on GMing best practices/principles/techniques. </p><p></p><p>3 - Instead of "first among equals" or "the GM is just another player", the ruleset overtly cites the "It's the GM's game" imperative as the most important and overriding facet of play (eg historical D&D rule 0 and WW's Golden Rule)...and then the ruleset backs it up with 1 and 2.</p><p></p><p>4 - Either the ruleset's designers or the greater culture surrounding the game takes a strident position of metagame aversion at the table.</p><p></p><p>5 - Setting or metaplot primacy rather than theme or player hook/premise primacy.</p><p></p><p>Any thoughts on that before I get go into play examples tomorrow or Saturday?</p><p><span style="font-size: 9px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 9px">** and just so we have clarity, I tried to convey in my initial post that I'm personally aware of people who enjoy tables that feature illusionism GMing and that some players are willing participants in it, acutely aware of what is going on. While I'm not a fan and I have spent a lot of thought (and words) on the subject, I can empirically back up your claim. </span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 6564985, member: 6696971"] Awesome. I've been waiting for you to post a lengthy analysis of your jaunt into 4e for some time now. I'm glad you chose to do so as I respect your opinion and very much respect your sincere and earnest effort in running the game. This thread has been one of the few interesting threads to post in on here for some time and the direction of this conversation is now penetrating some mysteries of our silly hobby. Enough with the touchy feely crap! So many of the posts that followed yours do a fantastic job of breaking down the issue in ways that I think illuminating. pemerton's post following yours captures my general position on things quite well. I think I'm going to take a different approach. Tomorrow or Saturday I'll break down a few play examples from the recent [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353102-Somewhere-else/page1"]4e[/URL] game (playing IRL now) and current [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365637-The-Fey-the-Far-and-the-Ugly-Space-In-Between/page1"]Dungeon World[/URL] game I'm running on here to display how the overt machinery and GMing principles of those game create transparent play procedures that are anathema to illusionism. I think play example analysis is typically more helpful than anything else. First, very generally on system. If nothing else, illusionism GMing is enabled by [B][I]GM latitude[/I][/B]. Where does this latitude come from in RPGs? I would say it comes from a few sources working in conjunction: 1 - Opacity, incoherency, and/or too much open-endedness with respect to the resolution mechanics. 2 - The ruleset being silent, noncommittal, or nebulous on GMing best practices/principles/techniques. 3 - Instead of "first among equals" or "the GM is just another player", the ruleset overtly cites the "It's the GM's game" imperative as the most important and overriding facet of play (eg historical D&D rule 0 and WW's Golden Rule)...and then the ruleset backs it up with 1 and 2. 4 - Either the ruleset's designers or the greater culture surrounding the game takes a strident position of metagame aversion at the table. 5 - Setting or metaplot primacy rather than theme or player hook/premise primacy. Any thoughts on that before I get go into play examples tomorrow or Saturday? [SIZE=1] ** and just so we have clarity, I tried to convey in my initial post that I'm personally aware of people who enjoy tables that feature illusionism GMing and that some players are willing participants in it, acutely aware of what is going on. While I'm not a fan and I have spent a lot of thought (and words) on the subject, I can empirically back up your claim. [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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