Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6226993" data-attributes="member: 59082">This wasn't my intention for talking about Excalibur at all, or what edition is best for simulation the feel of it. Rather I was looking at the quotes around the "secret that was lost," which in the context of RPGs is the experience of imagination - and how to best inspire and evoke that, not the feel of the movie itself. I very much agree.Again, you're taking what I wrote too concretely, too literally. I'm using "detailed descriptions" as an isomorphic analogy - not as a one-to-one comparison. I am saying that the density of rules systems in 3e and 4e is similar to they detailed descriptions in more recent fiction, that it "fills the space" in a similar way.Yes, but that's pretty similar to almost any edition of D&D, any RPG really. The question is, how is this process done, and that's where the specific rules come in. But the AEDU system is a good case in point, because it provides pre-made packets for the player to use without having to envision their own maneuver within the mindspace of the world. The focus is on the battlemat and the player looks at their list of powers and decides which one to use. It is a further abstraction away from the Theater of Mind in which the player envisions themselves as the character in the situation and then acts directly, which must then be translated into rules. I feel that 4e, by and large, has it the other way around - players chose which power to use, which then was translated into imagination. The problem, though, is that it was very easy to stay within the world of abstract rules and not enter "imaginative immersion." I'm not saying that it isn't possible to have a richly imaginative experience with 4e, but that it is more difficult than it could be because of the way that the rules guide the experience of imagination. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. The form of the rules largely defines, or at least guides, the experience of the game. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people, on forums or in real life, talk about how 4e is like playing two games, the "old version" of D&D when you're in the Theater of Mind, and then combat, in which you switch to a battlemat game of tactics and 4e essentially becomes an augmented war game. I know that some have had success incorporating Theater of Mind into combat, but by and large the medium of 4e combat has made it very difficult for many/most to do so.I did enjoy it for awhile but, as I said above, I found that I missed the "old school" approach of Theater of Mind.People often cite page 42 as if it somehow negates all of the other pages of 4e in which a very different paradigm is fostered. The problem detractors of 4e often have with the game is that they (and I, to a large extent) feel that it has it backwards, it has put the proverbial cart before the horse. The "cart" is the AEDU power system, which is a lot of fun for what it is, but is a very specific and tightly focused approach, and one that makes other approaches and styles difficult. The "horse" is the core resolution system coupled with page 42.What I'm hoping to see with Next is that they put the cart back behind the horse, and then you can pick and choose which cart to attach to your horse. So we have:Horse - simplified d20 core mechanic, page 42-esque free style play, classic D&D tropes and feelCart(s) - modular options and rules sub-systems for different game styles (e.g. skills, powers, advanced combat, etc), variant D&D tropes and feelI'm not sure what you mean by "experienced" or how you differentiate it form "imagined." I see imagination as a form of experience.I'm not following you. Can you explicate this further?I actually really liked healing surges and felt that they "fixed" hit points because they clarifed that they are not "body points" but are more of an abstraction that combines stamina and the ability to avoid real (bodily) damage. I hope that 5e provides for them as a variant rule; if not, I might slot it in.</blockquote>

Verification