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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6676129" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't understand your reply.No edition of D&D has ever had any sort of algorithmic process for resolving the action declaration "I manipulate the forces of entropy so as to seal off the Abyss from the rest of the multiverse". That is always going to require the GM to exercise discretion in its adjudication (eg, at a bare minimum, what skill is to be tested?).In the actual play example to which I linked, I adjudicated the action declaration using the various mechanical resources the game system offered (eg rules for translating healing surge/hit point sacrifice into bonuses to checks; interpreting the "flavour" of the character abilities, such as Stretch Spell and Cloud of Darkness, that the player was having his PC invoke; etc).In what way is this meaningless? It was a real choice, made by the player in response to the fictional situation in which his PC was located, and it had significant in-fiction consequences for the PC and also at-table consequences for the player (permanent loss of two significant PC abilities).No one else in the campaign could have achieved what this PC did. As I explain in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?440504-The-Abyss-sealed-the-drow-freed-the-campaign-reaches-its-climax" target="_blank">the actual play report</a>, the Slaad lord of Entropy, Ygorl, had been trapped by the PCs inside the Crystal of Ebon Flame, hence control over entropy was arguably unclaimed by any other entity and hence available to be claimed by the sorcerer PC. Also, the player asked whether he could burn healing surges to gain a bonus to the roll by having his PC give of his very essence as a chaos mage.This is a unique being - a 29th level chaos sorcerer/demonskin adept/primordial adept/emergent primordial, the most powerful drow worshipper of Corellon and among the most powerful servants of Chan (Elemental Queen of Good Air Elementals). Killing Lolth, sealing the Abyss, and thereby freeing the drow to undo their sundering and rejoin their brethren singing the songs of old beneath the stars is the culmination of the character's labours from the bottom of heroic tier.I'm not seeing how it is meaningless.I'm not even understanding what the line is, as far as meaningfulness is concerned.I understand that you prefer a game in which protagonism has no bearing upon action resolution. But I am at a loss as to how that leads to the conclusion that action resolution in games that depart from your preferred approach is meaningless.My point is that Gygaxian D&D is roleplaying - given that it was the first instance of an RPG - and it doesn't abide by the strictures you set. The point of roleplaying in a Gygaxian game is not to immerse in anything, nor is simulation the preeminent goal (although immersion may be a byproduct of play, and simulation is an important consideration in the design of some game elements and systems, especially the way that ingame time and space are handled). The point of roleplaying in a Gygaxian game is spelled out in his PHB (pp 7, 18):The [non-GM] participants become adventurers by creating characters to explore the fantastic world and face all of its challenges . . . The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character classThe choice of role is a choice of approach to the game, and of means to meet the challenges which the game poses. Choosing to play a fighter is choosing a different set of means, and a different approach, to choice of a MU. It is not primarily about choosing an experience. Again, that is not to say that no experience will be had - as Gygax also says on p 7, "As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter." But "becoming" one's PC is not the point; adopting a role is a means to an end, and "becoming" that character is a byproduct of play.If you set out to define roleplaying in such a way that the first RPG doesn't count as one, don't you think your definition is too narrow?Counter-productive in respect of what? Not Gygax's game - he is the one who describes hit points and saving throws in this way!Not only is it conceivable that one might play AD&D in such a manner, it is actual that many have - by reading and applying the explanatory text in the rulebooks (eg DMG p 81).2nd ed AD&D uses more-or-less all the mechanics of AD&D unchanged. I'm not familiar with how it explains the relationship between hit point loss, or making a saving throw, and the fiction. (I don't think the PHB says much about these things, and I don't own and have never read the 2nd ed AD&D DMG.) But it's not as if AD&D was a non-RPG which 2nd ed then somehow turned into an RPG by discarding "vestiges" of something else! To look at it like that would be to stand the history of the gameform on its head!AD&D was one sort of RPG; 2nd ed AD&D was a different sort of RPG, though one using many of the same mechanics as AD&D.</blockquote>

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