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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5454689" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is the sort of thing I have in mind. What I'd want to add is that: if you really care about the minutiae of swashblucking or infiltrating, 4e probably won't do it for you. But if you care about the emotions of swashbuckling - you want a game where you will[ have to fight your pirate nemesis on the high seas - or if you care about the intrigue of infiltrting - you want a game where, whatever the secret truth turns out to be, it's not a banal one - then 4e is (in my view) a good system.And it's a good system because it lets the GM and players increase or decrease focus by mechanically engaging at the right level of detail (like I tried to explain in the post upthread) and it makes it easy for the GM to introduce new and responsive elements while assuring everyone at the table that the challenges won't be overkill or underkill (this is the encounter design stuff).There are other bits as well that I didn't mention upthread, like paragon paths and epic destinies. Every player has to choose what his/her PC's paragon path is - a GM who can't manufacture compelling situations out of this isn't worth his/her salt, in my view. For example: I had one player tossing up between Pit Fighter and War Priest. His PC found himself in an encounter with some witches, who said "So, you think you might be a pit fighter, do you?" and then dropped him in a pit full of giant spiders. At first he tried to take them solo, but then had to call in the rest of the PCs to save him. In the upshot the player decided to go Warpriest instead. (This isn't about railroading or steering the player. It's about setting up situations that make the player choose, and reflect upon those choices. Also, I'd already built the spider encounter, but introducing the "pit fighter" jibe was a spur-of-the-moment thing.)In yesterday's session I introduced some stuff to do with another PC who is getting ready to become a Demonskin Adpet: dreams of the Queen of Chaos, waking up with strange sigils burned on his demonskins and on the inside of his eyelids (Demonskin Adept has a class feature that involves self-blinding), the other mage PC sensing the chaotic power before he'd even noticed the runes, etc. At the moment this is all just flavour stuff and a tiny bit of intraparty tension, but when the PCs meet servants of Demogorgon and Dagon, as they are soon likely to, I will be able to push it a bit further.And then there is the planar stuff.In all sorts of ways, 4e seems to me well-designed - both mechanically and in its "vibe"/"atmosphere" - to support this sort of play. Agree with this 100%. This is why I'm complaining upthread that the rulebooks don't really tell you how the designers envisage the game being played.Because I read the interview with Rob Heinsoo I linked to above, and because I'm familiar with the rulebooks for a few indie RPGs, and because I read The Forge from time to time, I think I've got a pretty good idea of how the designers envisaged 4e working. (It's resemblances at various points to those indie games are really pretty obvious, in my view.)But with the exception of combat - which is covered in detail in the DMG - WotC don't tell you how to use all these tools they've provided. Worlds and Modules talks about the game function for a whole lot of creatures, but it's not core and was sold as a preview rather than a guidebook. And the DMG talks about making encounters meaningful, and about linking paragon paths and epic destinies to the fiction, but doesn't actually give any advice on how to do this.Did WotC think that they could trick people into liking the game? There is an idea that Ron Edwards mentions in one of his essays about a game that starts out simulationist/exploration-focuse, but over the course of play leads its players to discover the joys of, and engage in, the sort of character and situation focused play I'm talking about here. Edwards is pretty sceptical that this sort of game is possible. Maybe WotC thought, in effect, that 4e could be that gameL write sim-sounding rulebooks so as not to scare anyone off, but write a game that will work best when played in a non-sim fashion, and then rely on the players stumbling into that alternative approach.If that was their plan, though, it doesn't seem to have worked!</blockquote>

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