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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5462194" data-attributes="member: 42582">But the player doesn't get to decide whether or not they achieve their goal.And the GM has to make that fit into the world.It is (in part) about whether the player is following the GM's hooks, or the GM following the player's hooks. 4e has more of the latter than any earlier version of D&D. That is part of the difference.Well, the reality of 4e is that it is non-simulationist in both character building, action resolution and encounter design. And for the reasons I gave upthread in post 246, this makes a difference to pacing, to the way players engage the challenges of the game, and so on. And heroquesting is an example of the sort of game that benefits from this - whereas simulationist mechanics, where the ingame reality rather than metagame considerations dictate pacing, and challenge levels, and where intervention in the past in order to change the future is either a matter of GM fiat or else mecanically spelled-out rituals, don't support this so well. 4e resembles Heroquest in the relevant respects. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to dictate to the GM what is relevant (by choosing Paragon Path and Epic Destiny) just as a HQ player does by chooing relationships and the like. Like a HQ player, a 4e player gets to choose how to engage situations, and thereby help frame them thematically in the game, via skill challenge mechanics.It's about what the players at the table make of it. This is what mythic play is about, in my view - to engage the game table.Because of the alignment rules - the GM gets to decide whether or not I'm evil, for example. Because of the lack of myth and history. Because of the metaplot. Look at Dead Gods, for example. As I read that module, there is no expectation that the players, via their PCs, will engage with the backstory and use that to change the gameworld. To me, at least, it reads just like a railroad.</blockquote>

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