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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4479456" data-attributes="member: 2067">Forked from: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showpost.php?postid=4477845" target="_blank"> Interesting Gamist vs Simulationist View </a>I stumbled recently on <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GameplayAndStorySegregation" target="_blank">something</a> that helped me understand this a little bit better. I'm especially a fan of this quote:4e has become quite a bit more like the "JRPGs" than D&D has historically been. This is the siloing, in a nutshell: gameplay and story are kept on either side of a wrought iron fence made of tigers.What this means, practically speaking, is that you get things like Aeris's death in a world filled with potions that bring the dead back to life. Or plots that run on rails that, no matter what option you choose, THOU MUST undertake the quest. In 4e D&D, you get copious amounts of hand-waves, plot devices, and snarky "you're taking the game too seriously!" condescension (that last, admittedly, more from message board posters than from the books themselves). I like a game where the mechanics and the story work hand-in-hand. 4e lost some of that, in its zeal to silo everything away. Now we have mechanics that do their thing, but no context, no real effect, for any of them. I can raise the dead, heal the wounded, blast fire from my fingertips, and slay an army of soldiers, but, for all intents and purposes, that doesn't matter one whit outside of the context of killing things and taking their stuff.I don't like that. That's not a game that helps me tell a story or play a role. That's a game that helps me kill things with flare, but CRPGs do that better. Killing things with flare is important, but it shouldn't force the story to play second fiddle. They should reinforce and advance each other -- my ability to kill things with flare should inform the story that I tell, and vice-versa. As it is, there is such a deep disconnect, that it is hard for me to enjoy it.This mostly is a problem as a DM, because as a DM, I am in the biggest story-creation mode. I want the game to inform the story, and I want to be able to have my story inform the game. But everything exists in a vaccuum. Nothing affects anything else. There are no consequences, no ramifications, for a monster, or an ability, or a particular rule. Likewise, there are no consequences or ramifications in the rules for a particular villain, a particular plot point, or a particular storyline. If I'm an ooze, I can still be tripped. If I'm a quadriplegic blind man on a skateboard, I can still use my class powers. So, do you think there's some meat, here? Is this a more useful way to look at the game than G/S/N wordvomit? Does this reflect anyone else's problems with 4e? If someone is a fan of 4e's hard siloing, do you not need or want the game and the story to go hand-in-hand? Why not? What are you doing that I'm not?Discuss and debate! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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