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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 5646724" data-attributes="member: 48965">Again, I'm a little confused... what does the business side of the game being focused on adventure paths... have to do with the type of playstyle the rules push for? I've seen published adventures for narrative, gamist and simulationist play based rpg's, so I fail to see how PF being centered around AP's has any bearing on it's default playstyle. As to your second paragraph, again we disagree... with it's emphasis on balanced encounters & magic items, mechanically defined conditions & powers, etc. As well as it's focus on the encounter as the building blocks of a session of play I find 4e more firmly in the camp of Gamism as defined by the Forge than any type of Narrativism... especially concerning mechanics and what they push for. Overcoming the challenge of the encounter seems to be the focus in default play of D&D 4e. Now whether people find this satisfying or not (or change it to fit their own preferences is a different story.)   I play and run 4e occasionally, I prefer Pathfinder but I will play and run 4e... in fact I ran for the recent gameday in a strange turn of events at my FLGS where they were short on DM's... and the people I ran for greatly enjoyed it (though I improvised and added alot of my own stuff to the Neverdeath module.). The problem is that in doing this diagnoses you are conflating default playstyle (4e supports narrativism!!) with business focus (Pathfinder is centered around adventures!!). You are comparing apples and oranges.  As for the shifty thread... you're drawing a conclusion I never made as to the "burden" of creation for GM's. In that thread I was moreso arguing for the gamism focus of 4e. If you give me an ability called shifty that has a purely mechanical effect that could just as easily be described as something entirely different... and there is no description of what theactual power does... but it is balanced for the combat encounter to be a fair challenge against players of an appropriate level range... that is a focus on the mechanics not narrative of the game.  Simulationism vs. Gamism. 3E's focus was on taking how something in the game world should/might/would work, and then finding a mechanic to simulate it... 4e's focus was on creating mechanics that would be balanced and fun on the game side of things and then either vaguely justifying the mechanic with light fluff or leaving it up to the people playing the game to justify said mechanic's fluff side.  I disagree. They tend to complain about the delve format (not inherent to the mechanics of 4e), The number of combats in a given module (not a property of 4e), the linear choices (again not inherent to the nechanics of 4e), lifeless, cardboard feeling NPC's with non-sensical motiations (but they are built mechanically correct by the rules of 4e). You see these are problems with adventure design, not inherent to the rules of 4e. If a Patfinder adventure was written with these flaws it too would probably be criticized and disliked.  Incompetency with general adventure design... yes. As far as 4e and it's default playstyle... I would say no. Their adventures are very much based around overcoming the encounter with your cool bits.  I'm curious... Pathfinder's AP's all come with Player's Guides that allow one to tie backstory, classes, races, etc. into the AP... this would seem to be exactly what you mean by non-traditional module design... yet it's done with 3.5/Pathfinder rules. I am also pretty sure this same thing is also done in the Inner Sea World Guide... again with PF rules. So please explain to me how 4e is better,or any different, than PF in this area?  Oh I definitely think they took a Gamist approach from indie games because they wanted the game to be fun thus gameplay, in a mechanical sense, became the priority. In fact here's a few quotes pulled from the examples you supplied that seem to support my opinion...   Oh, and that quote from Mearls just says he looks at the ideas from the forge... not which if any, he chose to implement for 4e. EDIT: Ultimately I think that 4e and 3.5/PF support Narrativism to the same extent in that they basically leave it up to the individual DM and players to interject or not interject this as an important part of their particular game... what they do do however is give you a choice between a Gamist or Simulationist basis to explore these things with.  EDIT2:  Here's an interesting tidbit from wikipedia on the main conflict between Gamism and Simulationism play... Gamist-Simulationist friction<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perfect 'Balance' (in the sense of parity in character effectiveness, or a level playing field) is rarely compatible with the full complexities of a self-consistent imagined world. That is, Life is Unfair. For example, realistic swordfighting leads to a high-rate of wound-related mortality, while an unbiased presentation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien" target="_blank">Tolkien</a>'s Middle-Earth would make elves far more powerful than orcs or halflings. Resolving such imbalances requires either a manifestly artificial 'world', or metagame constructs such as hit points, level adjustments, etc. that distort a Simulationist aesthetic.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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