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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5460871" data-attributes="member: 42582">Imaro, I really think that this post captures the difference in perspectives very well.I'm not really into the food metaphors, so I'll try and do it literally.On one approach to dimensional travel or heroquesting, what is really important is a set of solid rules dealing which "model" or "give effect to" the ingame reality of time travel etc. So I get a well-defind plane travel spell, rules for severing the silver cord, that sort of thing.I don't know if 3E has all of this (I know its DDG and MoP, but not the later stuff), but obviouly it could. (So could GURPS.)On another approach to dimensional travel or heroquesting, what is really important is a mechanical framework which allows the GM to set up open-ended by thematically-guided conflicts, allows this to be done in real time, and that supports the GM in resolving them at the table. A mechanic which, in virtue of the way in which it handles pacing, and the points at which it permits complication to be injected, and the way theme is able to be reinforced or tested through these factors (etc, etc) puts the players in control of theme rather than vice versa. (As well as its action resolution mechanics, 4e also has a crucial feature of its character build rules that supports this, namely, epic destinies as a guaranteed aspect of play leading to a player-focused endgame - very different from, for example, the old Immortals rules.)This is what 4e offers, and what it is better at than 3E (and Planescape, etc). (And obviously HeroWars/Quest could do this also, and in some ways probably better than 4e - but like I posted upthread, my group also like the mechanical crunch of 4e combat - which HeroWars/Quest is lacking.)It's not about what the mechanics model. It's about the fashion in which the mechanics set up and permit the resolution of conflicts.In my view, Planescape is in fact the poster-child for this difference: metaplot-heavy, and a vehicle for exploring someone else's conception of the moral and metaphysical order of things - not for expressing your own through play.I agree that narrativist games more closely resemble high concept games than "classic style" games (what I've been calling "purist-for-system") in certain respects.But they also differ crucially. For me, the contrast between Planescape (high concept) and The Plane Above (narrativist, except for the Outer Isles stuff which is more high concept but can be mostly ignored, and probably will be in my game) marks just this difference.I've tried again to capture it in my reply to Imago.I've actually found purist-for-system more suitable for vanilla narrativist play than high concept, because while it has the sorts of problems with pacing and encounter design that I've mentioned upthread, unlike a high concept game it generally won't inject someone else's resolution to the thematic questions into the game. The fact that high concept games have already resolved the thematic issues, leaving the players at the table to explore that solution rather than develop their own, is for me the crucial difference.</blockquote>

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