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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4215071" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think of it less as an additional (external) constraint, and more as an emergent (internal) payoff: if I've build my character correctly then every time I make the correct tactical choice I also express the thematic point I was intending to.The first time I was really exposed to this way of approaching character build, action resolution and their capacity to interact in the interests of thematic expression was by an old friend of mine playing in an earlier RM campaign. His sorcerer (something like a 4e warlock) was extremely tactically effective, but virtually every action he took, and every skill on the character sheet, said something about the nature of human suffering (inflicting it, undergoing it) and how one might hope to be free of it. To put it in non-RM specific terms, it's a combination of choosing a theme that is apt to be expressed in challenge-oriented fantasy RPGing (ie love and friendship are probably not viable themes for this purpose, but honour and suffering are) and then having powers whose flavour and mechanics are able to, at the behest of the player who has built them into her/his character, deliver payoff in respect of that theme.It's a type of play that's a pleasure to GM, and when a couple of players are engaged in it it produces a very exciting (for me) and dynamic RPGing experience that mixes the best of gaming (ie working with the mechanics matters) and story payoff. It speaks to a gamist aesthetic (only gamers are likely to see a mechanic as making a thematic statement) but not necessarily to gamist priorities for play in the Forge sense.My problem is that RM (the main system I play with my regular group) has nearly as many features that militate against this style of play as support it (at low levels players have little mechanical control over the gameworld, at high levels play slows to the speed of treacle). So I'm hoping that once our current campaign ends (it's been running a long time and probably has a few months of life left in it) we can try something different - either modified HARP, or perhaps 4e.What attracts me to HARP (a moderately incoherent but easily drifted narrativist-inclined tweak of RM) or 4e over a more abstract action resolution system like HeroWars is that the greater degree of simulationism (eg in the way powers are characterised and resolved) creates a more robust scaffold during gameplay on which the players can hang their thematic concerns (eg the colour contributed by the mechanical resolution of the Warlord powers we've seen seems a lot richer in this respect than either 3E's Aid Another mechanics, or HeroWars AP-sharing mechanics). Of course, this also creates the possibility that the scaffold won't support the thematic concerns in question. We'll have to wait and see!</blockquote>

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