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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4136916" data-attributes="member: 4937">I can see that being the case for some systems, but D20 was a pretty broad middle ground generic rules medium simulationist system that could support all different sorts of play.  And even 1st edition D&D, when you get down to what individual campaigns were actually like, supported a broad variation in theme, tone, and style of play.  If the participants where happy, I have a hard time telling them that they are playing wrongly and would be happier in a different system.And certainly that's no way to market your product.Well, except to the extent that they seem to be saying, "If you aren't playing the game in the way that we've identified as our core experience of play, then you shouldn't be playing our game at all.", I agree.  For these purposes, I don't see an important distinction between "playing my alignment" and "playing my character".  I don't see how one can be a 'cover' for anti-social behavior and the other not, nor can I see how you can call it a 'cloak' for anti-social behavior if that anti-social behavior is not actually apparant.  It seems to me that if the player is being annoying, he's exposed as being annoying regardless of what variation of "I'm just playing my character" he choses to use.But I've seen no evidence of a mechanic in 4e that rewards expressiveness any more than 3e rewards expressiveness.  I don't see anything that looks like the mechanics in Exalted designed to reward a particular sort of expressive, stylized, player proposition.  I just see the more universal metarule of 'expressiveness as a means of entertaining/manipulate/wearing down the referee and hense gaining the referee's favor/acquiesence' that has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with human sociality.  I don't see how you can claim that.  Propositions of that nature - including expressing the propositions intentionality - are reutinely offered in any kind of emmersive play.  For example, a player wanting to persuade a noblemen to provide the party with aid is probably going to play the role of his character in first person, and then finally at the pitch 'earn' a diplomacy check which he hopes will have some positive modifier based on the suitability and expressiveness of the role play, plus the extent to which through the roleplay the player has provided in game context showing why that it is in the noblemen's best interest to help the PC.  This is true all the way back to 1st edition, and the only difference is that the various subsystems have been more or less unified into the skill system.Likewise, I've argued extensively over the intricasies of how a search check is best resolved in play, and while not every DM has agreed with me, I think a reasonable case can be made that specific propositions like "I search for a hidden panel behind the painting by stripping the plaster off with my axe" involve search tasks of lower (perhaps even trivial) DC than general propositions like "I search the room [5' square at a time]."   Likewise, the proposition, "I search the desk." has a different meaning than, "I search the desk but don't yet open any of the drawers."  This is particularly clear if opening the drawers carries some consequence (sets of a trap, releases a creature, reveals nothing because the clue is in a drawer).  Hense, a player which provides in game context for how he is searching is influencing the skill system even in 3e. But of course, it is up to the game master's discrestion how many successes or failures are required to terminate the skill challenge in a failure or success state.  Do you really think that the game master is required to declare the stakes ahead of time?  I don't think you've really gotten as far away from a game master's predetermined matrix of possibilities as you think you have.  If in fact players are given narrative control to invent and create new features of the landscape, then that is a first step.  For example, if 'escaping the guard' in a city street allows a player to use a jump check to create the circumstance in which the jump check would be applicable (a large wagon blocks the street), then we've entered in to narrativist terroritory.  If that's not true, if the DM can say that a jump check isn't applicable to escaping because the street isn't that crowded then we haven't moved a wit from 3e.  But even if we have moved abit, we still haven't moved far from a preplanned set of possibilities.  To really claim that we have, not only do we need the players to have the ability narrate the situation, but they need the ability to set the stakes of the overall scene - for example we might need some sort of bidding system that would allow the player/game master to negotiate the stakes of the scene from '6/4 escape/captured' to '8/8 death/escape with the princess'.  And that's not even getting into the problem that this is merely a subsystem, and hense not generally applicable to 4e play as far as I can tell.I disagree.  Once you move the system back to what you describe, its fundamentally identical to 3e and all of LostSoul's complaints of not knowing how many checks are required, or whether any particular check is contributing to success comes right back.  You might as well play out the scene of running and jumping over the rooftops of Saerloon or Selgaunt (boy that brings back memories) in 3e fashion.  Additionally, most of your examples try to evade the problem by giving players a different class of narrative control that in my opinion opens up an even bigger can of worms - players dictating to the game master how NPC's will behave.  Interestingly, I've seen players try to excercise this sort of narrative control as far back as 1st edition.  I remember one player who was fond of constructing elaborate ambushes and the like where he would 'fish' the DM for how the NPC would behave and try to argue that logically NPC's would have to fall into his trap, and if the DM disagreed, then he'd try to rearrange circumstances until the DM would concede that the plan would work.  The thing is, he'd try this with every single proposition in the game.  Essentially, he always wanted to have a 'mindslaver' because if he got to run the NPC's as well, there was no way he could ever lose.  And even though he was a very very good RPer, he was simultaneously one of the most annoying players I've ever played alongside.What's particularly problimatic with being able to dictate to the DM how the NPC's react is that the skill challenges aren't opposed rolls.  The DM would essentially being getting no say at all beyond, "No.", and as a DM, "No." is my least favorite word.  I'd rather tell a player just about anything but, "No."  Before as a DM I'd concede the right to control the NPC's to the players, I'd first have to have a symmetric system where depending on the outcome of some sort of auction, the players were conceding to me somewhat how thier characters would react.Traditionally, D&D has never felt the need to explain formally where narrative authority lies.  In practice, the boundary has been "The DM cannot tell the players how to play thier characters, and the players can't tell the DM how to run the world.", but I've seen lots of cases where DMs or players reutinely challenged this and tried to overstep thier bounds.  I foresee not just problems in explaining the limits of DM narrative authority, but player narrative authority.  If the limits of player narrative authority are not defined, you are creating a system where the rewards of being DM are insufficient to bear the costs.  I've seen alot more campaigns end because the DM wasn't being rewarded for his time, than I've seen end because the players thought the DM wasn't rewarding them for showing up.I can tell you right now, that the system that you describe where in a player has the expectation that he can dictate NPC behavior to me is not one I'd be willing to referee.  I've seen too many game masters suffer through having that sort of player at thier tables without having systems that explicitly encourage it.Yes.  I find it really odd that a player would demand narrative control over the game world, but balk at any sort of narrative authority by the game master which runs contrary to the player's wishes.  I think that's a recipe for a system that creates complete dysfunctionality at any table even remotely prone to it.</blockquote>

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