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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8412157" data-attributes="member: 71699">I think if Alexander had framed his discussion in terms of awkwardness in narrating imagined action that falls outside whatever normal language we have available to us, where that awkwardness can jar us out of suspension-of-disbelief, then I would feel sympathetic toward that view.That is exactly the problem you describe - you could not narrate 4th-edition combat in language that came easily to you. You would have needed to be provided new language to do it. Fast-flowing, easy role-play happens when we can lean into tropes. Our tropes... those normal to us. Perhaps you once tried Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne (EPT). EPT is a very different place from what we might be used to. That was what was wonderful about it!I suspect that when designers working into the mechanics concepts that are alien to their audience, they need to work doubly-hard to give their audience the tools they need for their fiction to work with and flow from those mechanics. IMO the 4th edition mechanics were a hugely valuable experiment in RPG design. Absolutely not the right experiment to conduct with a broad-audience, classic-fantasy RPG like D&D, but I appreciate that they tried it and expect that learning has and will continue to flow from that experiment for some time.</blockquote>