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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5588398" data-attributes="member: 27160">Sure - I put the brackets on intentionally. Newer D&D is, however, much more up front about what the designers tried to design it to do well.  I think this is a good thing.Stories are an emergent property; in all but the most dysfunctional playstyles, no-one knows up-front what the story will turn out to be. Ending up with a neat story is, of course, fun - but it can happen with pretty much any playstyle. Techniques to focus specifically so as to get a "good" story most (or, at least, more) of the time are almost completely alien to D&D. That doesn't mean that players won't want (or even expect, despite no real idea of how or why) a "good" story out of D&D, but it isn't a minute-to-minute concern in actual play. The rules structures and elements simply don't exist to allow that in D&D. Generally, as a result, there is a vague idea that the DM should "make it so" - even though one person making a story happen that is supposed to be generated by collaboration with others is a confused and illogical desire.No system prevents players wanting, or trying to achieve, whatever play style they desire. Most (including all editions of D&D) don't even try to. But better systems will have a clear vision of what they want to support, as a play mode. When D&D was "the only game in town", many people, with many different preferences, played it even though it did not support their style well because it was that or write your own system. As more and more systems have been written, those who found that their preferred style was better supported by another system or systems drifted away to the system that suited them. I therefore regard this "schism" in D&D players as just a natural development of there being more than one actually different form of even D&D to play, now.It has nothing to do with the "Right Way to Play", it has merely to do with what the game primarily supports. D&D has always primarily supported "challenge busting" style play; the latest editions are just honest about that. That doesn't mean there will be no stories - stories are simply the way human minds organise a mess ov events after the fact in order to relate them to others in a easily comprehensible manner; the story will emerge from the action of play, not be a focus during it.Supposing, firstly, that by "gamist" we mean the same thing, and supposing that the epitome of all RPGs should mix in support for all styles, it seems to me that getting a game that is fully competent at just one style is a pretty good start. The next step after that is not mixing in more, but getting a game that is truly good at another style. And then another. And then you may be able to mix them. Trying to churn up everything together, when you have no tried and proven model for what works for the elements individually, seems hopelessly optimistic, to me."Just a game"? Betraying your prejudices a little, there, I think <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The folk I play with are mostly fans of games of all types. D&D is, perhaps, the top end of the complexity scale, but it is also the top end of the "open-ended and fascinating" scale, so that evens out.Most cardgames and boardgames are far too short-term and ephemeral, for me. They are fun, but not the more satisfying sort of fun I gat from longer-term games. Decisions don't have repercussions over several sessions, which is a feature I like. Campaign miniatures wargames (as opposed to one-off battles) and some very few strategic computer games come close, but the cooperative-social nature of the RPG makes the social side much better with them than with either of the alternatives.So, D&D does offer me more - it offers persistent, strategic gameplay with a strong social element. If that's "just a game" to you, then you are welcome to eschew it.Yup, this is pretty much my point. D&D has always been primarily a resource management game centred around combat. I played from Original (brown booklet) through Basic and "Advanced" D&D before realisisng that it wasn't really giving me what I thought the medium was capable of. I didn't really understand what I wanted, at that point - but I though a more "realistic" system might do the trick.Around 30 years later, and after playing hundreds of game systems (some briefly, some for extended periods) I have at least a passing idea of the fun "buzz points" I can get out of roleplaying games. And I have some ideas about how to approach getting each of them, from a rules perspective. 4E D&D hits most of the right buttons for a "gamist buzz" - which is to say the players concentrating on beating the challenge and giving out kudos amongst themselves for neat tactical moves and clever "gotchas" that arise from the logic of the rules. It's certainly not perfect, even for this. I wish there was a coherent non-combat challenge system that allowed the same kind of focus and "buzz", but I don't really want other in-play focus elements added in, because they will compromise what is there now.Another type of focus is the "Thematic" focus. The "buzz" here lies in coming up with characters with 'interesting' needs or "issues" to resolve - and then addressing those issues in an interesting way. Systems that involve resource management - especially of a resource that indicates by its exhaustion the character's death - are really unhelpful to this focus of play. GM control of the scenes and "encounters" of play are really unhelpful for this focus of play. My overall conclusion is that a number of rules elements that make D&D 4E as good as it is as a "gamist" supporting RPG would need to removed or changed to make it a good "narrativist" supporting RPG. In other words, making D&D more narrativist will make it less good at what I value it for. It will, necessarily, be a compromise.D&D is not "only a monster combat game", but it is "primarily a monster combat game".Storytelling will always arise as an emergent property - Thematic focus has never been well supported by D&D for reasons I explained above.Simulation you can do with any system (or without one at all), but any "exploration focus" game has to be specific to a particular game setting, almost by definition. D&D chooses to be "generic" to some extent in its setting; if it is to have rules firm enough, consistent enough and balanced enough to support "gamist focussed" play, then also being flexible enough to support a range of settings exploratively is mind-blowingly hard.Political intrigue and desert survival - you can do those as challenges in a gamist game, easily.  4E handles them, albeit not that well; as I said above, I wish it had a better, while still gamist, resolution system for non-combat encounters.Before you can even recognise the system you want, I suggest that you need to figure out what the "key strands" are in your "ideal" mode of play, and figure out how they could be supported individually. Then, and only then, will you be able to see if a system that supports them all simultaneously is even possible, I would suggest.If you make the story you will inevitably experience it, but to experience it you do not need to have made it. "Experiencing" a story is simply a side effect of roleplaying - whatever the focus of its play. Or of reading a book. Or watching a film, or watching a play - or just living from day to day.No, I wouldn't say combining play focusses in one game, or supporting them with one system, can never be done. I would suggest, however, that having a suite of systems, each of which supports one focus of play really well, would be a far better starting place for developing the "ultimate system" that supports them all than where we are now. Until we understand what supports the various strands that we wish to include, making a system that "just does it all" is going to be hit and miss, at best.I might say the same of your point of view - but at least both of us allow that we may be wrong <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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