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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9219901" data-attributes="member: 42582">I look at it slightly differently.I believe that I have played a wider variety of RPGs than [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER]. More simulationist RPGs - RuneQuest and Rolemaster, in my case; more Classic Traveller, which is the earliest RPG I know of to use AW-type "moves" (it is full of subystems of the sort when you do such-and-such, then make this roll that determines who says what about what happens next); more Burning Wheel, which in its PC build and inputs to action resolution is as compex and simulationist as RQ or RM, but in its actual resolution system is "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and "fail forward"; more Cortex+/MHRP and more Prince Valiant and more Agon 2e and . . . If [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] can only imagine playing 4e D&D in a way that produces absurd fiction, that's his prerogative. And I would advise him to find a different game. It is when I get told by others that my 4e fiction must be absurd, and that it is only by stepping over "cognitive gaps" that it becomes not absurd, that I disagree.I also disagree when I get told that AD&D's rules must imply that a high level fighter can be run through with a sword a dozen times without dying or even really having to slow down very much, even though I regard that as absurd fiction, and the author of the game - Gygax - includes explanations of the mechanics in his rulebooks which expressly state something else.I mean, I played Rolemaster up until the end of 2008 (a nineteen-year run of probably 3000 hours' play) and then picked up 4e D&D in Jan 2009. My head didn't explode, and nor did the heads of my players. People can tell that they are different games, which posit different relationships or ways of thinking about the connection between making a die roll and establishing the fiction. And of course they also found 4e very visceral - far more than AD&D - in the sense that it is a game where in combat with dragons you suffer ongoing burning damage, in combat with giants you get knocked about or knocked over, when someone clocks you over the head you might be stunned or dazed, when fighting a skill fighter with his polearm opponents find themselves wrongfooted and out-of-position and getting beaten down every time they try and do something, etc - all which seem highly verisimilitudinous in a way quite different from other versions of D&D.So TL;DR: what I disagree with is dogmatic assertions about how things have to be in RPGing in general; and that 4e D&D has to be absurd or contradictory or laden with "cognitive gaps" in a way that AD&D is not.</blockquote>

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