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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 4827630" data-attributes="member: 3887">Out of curiosity, do you feel that AD&D combat put 'situation first'?Lately I've been thinking about the differences between 1e and 4e combat re: immersion and post hoc narration. In 1e combat is more abstract. Rounds are a minute long. You don't roll to resolve individual attacks, your roll to resolve one or more opportunities to do damage occurring during that minute, which is assumed to contain all manner of strikes, feints, and some degree of tactical movement. A lot of the tactical situation is glossed over. There's no opportunity for the player to react during that minute round. If the DM is good they might include some exciting color commentary describing the action during the round -- but it's pure post hoc narration (and a bad DM might simply rattle off "You hit, the orc hits, you miss"...). It's not so different than a 4e DM describing how a particular use of everyone's favorite fighter power --Come and Get It-- works. In both systems there's a dissociation between the game mechanics and the in-game events. In 4e it's because there's no description of the mechanisms behind certain powers. In 1e it's because of a time scale that makes precise tactical decisions/descriptions unimportant. Both systems rely heavily on post hoc narration.</blockquote>