Rounser answered the immediate question for me!
What I had in mind was how "Eurostyle" board games lay "theme" (what au courant D&Ders call "fluff") very superficially over the fundamentals of their design. Starting with the same abstract game, art direction could turn it as easily into one "about" any one of a number of subjects.
"Ameritrash" games, on the other hand, tend to start with a subject then attempt in some sense to model key features. What self-described wargamers are likely to consider a proper war game is a bit different from a merely "war-themed" game (although as with most such taxonomies things can get blurry at the edges).
There are other similarities in philosophy between 4E and the vogue in board games, but that is the most striking (and presently relevant) one.
What Gary Gygax meant by role-playing is utterly essential to play of old-style D&D. The question always posed to a player is, "What will you do?" That refers to the player acting as if "in the shoes of" his persona, seeing through its eyes.
The more "thespian" aspect of role-playing was something he apparently (and most old-time D&Ders, in my experience) considered at best a secondary consideration and at worst an intolerable distraction. (There are some perhaps subtle demarcations, which I won't go into now.) Even if one is inclined to hold that in higher esteem, I think the first aspect remains fundamental.
A hippogriff might as well "use magic" to fly, as it is an utterly fantastic creature. To reduce it somehow to something nonmagical seems to me rather contrary to the point of including it in the game in the first place.
That said, it does not follow that the magic of a heraldic/mythological beast falls under the rubric of "magic" in its technical, game-mechanical usage. The latter encompasses but a small portion of the realm of supernatural wonders.
It is from the role-playing perspective that martial powers and other aspects of 4E most strikingly stand out as magical. The criteria for "magicalness" need be no fancier than what common sense is likely to suggest, perhaps accounting for the kinds of intellect and knowledge a bit more common in the demographic of D&Ders than in the general public.
Some science-fictional things are "magical" in the sense of Clarke's Third Law, or in the sense of contradicting the laws of physics we currently know. Other things are highly implausible in other ways, and have obvious analogues in other fields of fiction.
What I had in mind was how "Eurostyle" board games lay "theme" (what au courant D&Ders call "fluff") very superficially over the fundamentals of their design. Starting with the same abstract game, art direction could turn it as easily into one "about" any one of a number of subjects.
"Ameritrash" games, on the other hand, tend to start with a subject then attempt in some sense to model key features. What self-described wargamers are likely to consider a proper war game is a bit different from a merely "war-themed" game (although as with most such taxonomies things can get blurry at the edges).
There are other similarities in philosophy between 4E and the vogue in board games, but that is the most striking (and presently relevant) one.
What Gary Gygax meant by role-playing is utterly essential to play of old-style D&D. The question always posed to a player is, "What will you do?" That refers to the player acting as if "in the shoes of" his persona, seeing through its eyes.
The more "thespian" aspect of role-playing was something he apparently (and most old-time D&Ders, in my experience) considered at best a secondary consideration and at worst an intolerable distraction. (There are some perhaps subtle demarcations, which I won't go into now.) Even if one is inclined to hold that in higher esteem, I think the first aspect remains fundamental.
A hippogriff might as well "use magic" to fly, as it is an utterly fantastic creature. To reduce it somehow to something nonmagical seems to me rather contrary to the point of including it in the game in the first place.
That said, it does not follow that the magic of a heraldic/mythological beast falls under the rubric of "magic" in its technical, game-mechanical usage. The latter encompasses but a small portion of the realm of supernatural wonders.
It is from the role-playing perspective that martial powers and other aspects of 4E most strikingly stand out as magical. The criteria for "magicalness" need be no fancier than what common sense is likely to suggest, perhaps accounting for the kinds of intellect and knowledge a bit more common in the demographic of D&Ders than in the general public.
Some science-fictional things are "magical" in the sense of Clarke's Third Law, or in the sense of contradicting the laws of physics we currently know. Other things are highly implausible in other ways, and have obvious analogues in other fields of fiction.
