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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6231601" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think part of what makes "aspects" (FATE) or "assets" (MHRP) work in such a flexible way - so they can cover everything from Emboldened by the Battle Captain to Standing on High Ground to My Blade Has Been Sharpened Really Sharply - is the overall abstractness of resolution systems.D&D has always had non-abstract positioning, and hence non-abstract movement, and hence has always had limits on the abstraction of its action economy, including the idea of "turns" which correspond not just to metagame-level opportunities to do stuff, but to the actual passage of time in the fiction, and which reflect the capability of the character to move around and do stuff during that time frame.The 4e warlord is really all about exploiting this less-than-fully-abstract element of the combat mechanics: characters led by a warlord exercise more control over the battlefield, and in the non-abstract positioning systems and turn system this means they get more movement (ie move as free action), more attack rolls (ie attack as free action), etc. And it is because of the potential of these free actions to break the game that the rationing - via encounter and daily powers - becomes key.Given this, reducing "battle captain inspiration" to something like a +1 to hit or a +5' of movement - and even this would require some rationing device - would be to really etiolate the warlord concept. There would no longer be that sense of dominating the battlefield. Whereas in MHRP, at least, the bonus can be big - being rationed by way of being an augment generated in place of an action for direct effect - and can be narrated in a way that incorporates both positioning and actual attack effectiveness. (And I am assuming that FATE would work similarly.)I think there are different, orthogonal issues at play here.Rules light vs rules heavy is one. Games like MHRP (and FATE) show that rules light games can still be comprehensive and robust.In D&Dnext, it could be a simple as a token that every player gets when they roll initiative - and each player can spend their token to let a single player (oneself or another) take an out-of-turn action provided that the spending player makes a successful check that reflects some appropriate action in the fiction. So the player of the thief makes a DEX check and then spends their token for a bonus attack as they distract their foe with sand in the eyes. The player of the fighter makes a CHA check and then spends their token to grant an ally a bonus attack for being inspired by the battle captain. Etc.Given that I came up with this idea off the top of my head while typing this post, I'm happy to concede that it could use some refinement. But I think it shows that it is possible to have simple rules, that are no obstacle to immersion, that in fact encourage imaginative play, but that allow a lot more breadth of play than simply bonuses or penalties to d20 rolls. And this possibility is completely independent of whether characters are built via power selections in the 4e model.You could also use this sort of approach to eliminate a whole lot of spells, especially if you also allow the token to be spent to deprive an enemy of an action. You then replace spells like Slow, Haste, Power Word:Stun etc with a check by the caster and the expenditure of a token.In the absence of mechanics, it seems to me that we have only GM fiat. To put it by reference to the slogan "say yes or roll the dice", if there are no dice to be rolled then either the GM "says yes" - ie the players get what they want - or the GM "says no" - ie the GM decides that the players don't get what they want.For all sorts of reasons I don't find that very satisfying. I recognise that my view is not universal. But I don't see how this is easily described as anything but the GM deciding what story will be told. If the players would like the story to go differently, where is their opportunity to bring that about other than by persuading the GM?By "Gygaxian gaming" I mean the sort of RPGing advocated by Gygax in his PHB and DMG. It is (in Forge terminology) gamist, or "step on up", RPGing. The players show their mettle by beating the referee's dungeon. Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain and the like are classics of this genre.Railroading is not a threat in this sort of play, because the GM has no story agenda that s/he is pushing. And story is not an important focus of play - the fantasy aspects of the game provide colour (as they also do in Talisman and Magic:the Gathering) but also provide fictional positioning which matters to action resolution (quite unlike a board game or a collectable card game). But there is nothing of thematic relevance in the fantasy elements. For instance, playing a paladin in this style of game isn't about playing through the moral challenge of being a knight templar. It's about playing a character who is (i) powerful but (ii) under a handicap because certain moves that are open to others are off-limits to you.It would be wrong to say that in this style of game the DM's power is absolute. For instance, the DM does not have unlimited power over backstory - thsu, a DM who simply redraws dungeon corridors, or adjust dungeon inhabitants, so as to undermine the strategy and tactics the players have formulated in reliance upon their scouting, detection magic and the like is (in this style of play) flat out cheating. Of course, if those changes have an in-fiction explanation - say, a teleporter device - then the DM is not cheating. But this shows it is not railroading but overly adversarial GMing which is the threat to the functionality of this sort of play. You can see it lurking beneath the surface, but not very far beneath the surface, in Gygax's DMG (with the advice on earseekers), in his MM (lurkers above, trappers, mimics, earseekers, rot grubs, gas spores, etc) and in Dragon and White Dwarf magazines of that period. Not to mention the Tomb of Horrors.Unlimited DM power, even to the extent of fudging monster hit points so as to keep them alive, or fiating player attacks so as to stop them killing "special" NPCs, is a product of AD&D 2nd ed rules texts (and similar era rules text in White Wolf books - the so-called "golden rule").I'm not very good at GMing Gyagaxian D&D, and not all that keen on playing it either. But I would prefer it to 2nd ed style based on unlimited GM power in the interests of "the story".I prefer a game in which the players can make meaningful choices as to how their PCs engage the gameworld without relying upon the GM as the sole mediator of whether or not those choices have an effect - and if so, what effect - on the ingame fictional situation. I have two main reasons for this preference: (i) I want the players to play a major role in shaping the outcome of ingame events; (ii) I do not want the conflict of interset, as GM, of having to both establish the adversity that confronts the PCs, and deciding whether or not they are able to overcome it. For me, systems which do not satisfy constraint (ii) - ie systems in which the GM decides to "allow" things or not based on whether or not they are "good for the story" - are insipid and uninspiring. Whether or not they involve roleplaying, they all fall under the broad notion of the GM deciding what story will be told.That's not in disupte. I'm not saying that you should like 4e. I'm just denying that it's a game which is a threat to imagine, or has caused imaginative play to become "a secret that was lost". By empowering players in the ways I have described in the previous paragraph, I find it produces more imaginative play than any other fantasy RPG I have GMed.</blockquote>

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