It seems to me that 4e is built more around the encounter than the day
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For those of us who prefer the passage of time being the measure of resources the encounter based measuring of resources feels artificial.
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It is also that same encounter based usage of resources that makes it feel like a boardgame to us
"Yes" to the first sentence, "tastes vary" to the second and third.
I've GMed a lot of Rolemaster, where resources for melee PCs tend to be per-encounter (lighter injuries can be healed quickly by magic once PCs reach mid- to high levels, and special combat moves - Adrenal Moves - work on a type of encounter reset), and where spellcasters tend to have sufficient resources (in terms of opportunities to ensure spell recovery) that they can turn their spell points into a quasi-per encounter resource also. So I find that 4e's resource management suits me well - the healing surges and dailies, offset to an extent by milestones, do just enough to anchor the encounters into a larger sense of the passage of ingame time. (And the associated metagame aspect of resource management.)
the game wants everybody to share in every aspect of those encounters.
This is true, although the "every aspect" idea needs to be handled with care. In the second of the three actual play reports that I linked to, you'll see that the resolution of the social skill challenge turned very signficantly on the fact that the dwarf PC was both the centre of the social action (being the party's military leader in a town that they had entered as military heroes) but socially unsophisticated (having low skill bonuses in social skills, and hence being easily manipulated in conversation by rival NPCs).'
So "sharing" needn't mean "equally mechanically capable of winning". I think of it as something to "it making a difference that the PC was present in the scene".
We want adventures that are based around a scenario, not scenarios that are based around a series of encounters.
I'm not entirely sure what "scenario" means here. I tend to think of the overall plot of the campaign as emerging from the choices made by the players (via their PCs) in the encounters those PCs find themselves in. And I frame those encounters so as to make sure that story-driving choices will have to be made by the players. Where it will end up is often hard to guess in advance.
(This is a GMing approach that works better with 4e than a game like Rolemaster, for various reasons that I've posted in the past but won't bore you with here! It's an approach that I started developing when I started GMing Oriental Adventures in 1986, but have got better at under the influence of Forge-y GMing advice - both literally from reading stuff at the Forge, but also from the manuals for other games like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling and the Burning Wheel. The 4e DMGs have received a lot of praise, but I think they could be significantly improved by looking at what these other games have to offer. I don't think I could GM 4e as I do if I had only its manuals to rely upon.)
It can also make the classes seem very samey, that which class you play does not matter in a number of significant ways.
Obviously you're not the only person I've seen post this. Because a metric for same-iness is a bit hard to settle on via internet discussion, it's hard to know whether we differ in experience or in metric! Still, I think this is the one point where (if I may say so) I think there may be a difference of opinion as opposed to a mere difference of taste.
I personally find a big difference between (for example) a PC who uses elemental/energy AoEs, a PC who uses archery, a PC who attacks multiple foes with a polearm, and a PC who locks down single foes with a sword (the examples are drawn from my own game). But perhaps others do not, or have players who build PCs that are less different.
In the non-combat sphere I also find the PCs in my game quite different - there is the holy knight whose purity (rather than his physique) is his strength, the athlete wapriest, the acrobat/scout devotee of the Raven Queen, the ritualist scholar, and the magical assassin/trickster who wields the power of chaos by wearing the skins of demons - but perhaps others run games where these sorts of differences don't become relevant in play, or again perhaps they have players who build PCs that are less different.
when you're using mechanics which are dissociated from the game world, your mechanical decisions -- the act of playing the game -- isn't roleplaying.
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I'm generally a fan of story games which feature lots of dissociated, narrative control mechanics. I think it's the sheer pointlessness of 4th Edition's dissociated mechanics that turns my taste against it so thoroughly.
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When people talk about how "shallow" they find 4E or that it reminds them of a video game, I think they're generally struggling to figure out why large chunks of the system simply don't play like a roleplaying game. (And this is because large chunks of the system isn't.)
It's long been held that roleplaying is something that happens outside of the mechanics of the game. That whole "roleplayer vs. rollplayer" thing. But that's not actually true. The gameplay of roleplaying games has always featured mechanical decisions which are simultaneously character decisions: The act of making the mechanical decision is an act of roleplaying.
4E moved away from that. And it's one of the major problems people have with it.
I'm not trying to tell anyone what game they should or shouldn't like. After all, I don't particularly 3E, whereas many posters on this board (including [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) do.
And I can explain why I don't like 3E. For me, it is because I look at the game and see an incoherent mix of gonzo (eg hit points, many of the spells) and gritty (eg the skill rules). If I want gonzo I have what I find to be better systems (eg 4e). If I want gritty I have better systems too (RQ, RM or for a more modern experience BW). But I'm not interested in playing what strikes me as an incoherent hybrid.
So I don't mind others explaining what they don't like about 4e, even in fairly robust terms. Including that they cannot achieve their desired immersion while playing it.
What tends to frustrate me is the repeated suggestion, or sometimes (as in your post) the apparent assertion, that a game with metagame mechanics (or, at least, with 4e's metagame mechanics) is not roleplaying. As if fortune-in-the-middle is fine for Maelstrom Storytelling, or HeroWars/Quest, but suddenly takes on a whole new heretical and shallow - heck,
pointless - character when incorporated into a gonzo fanatsy RPG.
I mean, there is no functional difference between 4e's dying mechanics and the resolution of a combat via extended conflict in HeroWars/Quest - the narration of injuries can't be fully settled until the conflict is over. I've never seen anyone suggest that this makes HW/Q not be a RPG. Why is 4e different?
for me it really does boil down to associated and dissociated mechanics: When you're using mechanics which are associated with the game world and with your character, your mechanical decisions -- the act of actually playing the game -- is roleplaying.
OTOH, when you're using mechanics which are dissociated from the game world, your mechanical decisions -- the act of playing the game -- isn't roleplaying.
On
the last big "dissociated mecahnics" thread - a few months ago now - I posted the following episode of play:
A PC paladin was subject to an effect from a human transmuter - turned into a frog and therefore unable to attack or use powers until the end of the transmuter's next turn. The player of the paladin therefore missed a turn in the combat - he didn't want his frog-paladin to move - and muttered about not liking it very much while the rest of the table made jokes about not stepping on the frog as the other PCs moved in to confront the transmuter and her flunkies.
The transmuter's next turn duly ended, and the paladin was the next character in the turn sequence. I told the player of the paladin that his PC turned from a frog back to himself. The player then declared his action, which was to move into melee range with the transmuter. And he said, in character, something to the effect that the transmuter was now going to get it (while laying down a Divine Challenge as a minor action). The transmuter replied something along the lines of "I don't think so - after all, I turned you into a frog!". And without pausing, the player of the paladin responded (in character), "Ah - but the Raven Queen turned me back." And the paladin then proceeded to beat up the transmuter.
This is just one example of a player using the mechanical outcomes of the game - in this case, an effect ends according to the game's timing rules - to inhabit and roleplay his character - expressing his conviction of faith in his god (and also making it true, in the fiction, that his god
had turned him back - so he was able to exercise narrative control without ever departing from in-character play).
The mechanics of the NPC power ("baleful polymorph") are "dissociated" from the gameworld, in the sense that the mechanical description of the power
does not explain why, in the fiction, it comes to an end at the end of the NPC's next turn. As the example shows, this had no impeding effect on roleplaying.
The posts I linked to upthread have more descriptions of the 4e mechanics in actual play. I don't think that they reveal any absence of roleplaying either.
