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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5644271" data-attributes="member: 957">For me, I absolutely enjoy "world building" and "game prep" as a huge part of the fun.  And since I actually sit at the table and play about once every two weeks, having a lot more chances to enjoy my hobby is a big value.However, I do certainly agree that the "at the table" times are the focus, the most important and the greatest fun.Which leads to...Here I think you are presenting a lack of understanding of what fans like me want and experience.The idea of "served dishes" is alien.  And I say that with full understanding and acceptance that my settings and the world around the characters are preset in a much more solid form than yours.  But the story is still about the characters and how THEY interact and change the setting.  I've commented before about how one of the most awesome things about being a world building RPG DM is seeing players interact with and change it in ways I never would have thought of.The ingredients are there.  But all the players (including the DM) are creating the dishes from those ingredients.  I certainly find it interesting that you specifically contrast RPGs as being distinct from the experience of novels and movies since we recently had an exchange in which I specifically described how "feeling like I'm inside a novel" was the standard of measure.But, just like reading a novel, I have no idea where the story is really going to go.  We are inventing the details as we go along.  We are serving all sorts of unexpected dishes.And perhaps as DM I have a good idea of where the story is headed.  Maybe you can compare that to reading a novel a second time.  You still "feel like you are inside", but you have more knowledge.  But, that isn't really right because the players are the focus and the energy and they can drive events in a wildly different direction.  It is like you can play the same module 5 times with 5 different groups.  And 3 or 4 times will probably look a lot alike, but the other times are wildly different.  You don't know what is coming.I don't know if I'll try to defend RPG settings.  And I don't know if I would even claim that my awesome games would not be total DREK if actually written and marketed as fiction.  But the experience at that time of playing feels like some of the best fiction ever, and being IN it and being a driving force OF it is what makes it "the best" or even better than most novels.It is clear from your comments that you are not seeking that same result.  And it is clear that 4E was not intended to focus on that same result.  4E is encounter driven and player controlled narrative driven so that the world is invented around them as they go. Nothing wrong with that but it is a very different thing.Agreed very much there.  It is like trying to add ice skates and throwing the ball through a hoop to baseball.  They may all be great sports with huge fans, but trying to equate them is flawed and trying to blend them is absurd.Asking which is therefore better is also silly.Asking the title question of this thread, maybe one way or the other IS better at THAT.</blockquote>

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