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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4014347" data-attributes="member: 42582">Reynard, I agree more or less completely, and am a little surprised at some of the disagreement you're getting from people like Cadfan and Hussar.But there is a tension at any RPG table over who has narrative control. And 4e hands more of it the players, at the expense of the GM.I've actually posted about this a couple of times now in some recent threads, but I'll risk a repost:The major changes from AD&D to 3E were two: sophisticated character build rules, and sophisticated action resolution rules. The first set of rules gave players lots of options they hitherto had lacked, thus transferring narrative control in the game from designers to players. The second set of rules brought an end to the GM's special role in AD&D as an arbiter of action success via direct negotiation with the players. This transferred narrative control from the GM to the players. (And there have been a lot of complaints about this.)4e basically picks up where 3E left off - nearly every change from the previous editions is intended to transfer narrative control in one of these two directions. In particular, 4e:*consolidates those aspects of 3E which empower the players over the GM (like character build and action resolution mechanics); *further redistributes narrative control to the players, for example by: *making Demons, Devils and other monsters more immediately recognisable to the players, and gives them distinctive tacics (thus allowing the players to recognise a monster and take account of its known and distinctive tactics in their play choices); *rebalancing magic items and encounter build rules (to make players less vulnerable to accidentally unbalanced GMing); *introducing Second Wind rules and making APs core; *giving all PCs per-encounter abilities (which mean that players are no longer hostage to the GM's decisions about the overall passage of time in the gameworld); *introducing the PoL assumption that PoLs are safehavens until the players choose to trigger adversity (see sidebar, p 20, W&M); *transfers narrative control from the designers to the players and GM together (removal of mechanical metaphysics of alignment, which allows the gaming group to answer moral questions in their own way, during the course of actual play); *undoes imbalances of narrative controls between players (PoL eliminates a lot of campaign backstory, putting different players on an even footing in that respect).All of this facilitate gamist play, by stopping the GM and the game designers getting in the way of the players' pursuit of system excellence. Interesting, it also facilitates narrativist play, by making adversity in the game, and its resolution, something much more shared between players and GM in a potentially co-operative fashion, than something almost entirely under the GM's control (as was the case in AD&D to a significant extent).</blockquote>

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