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<blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 6320811" data-attributes="member: 6777052">There are already games with mechanics that are closely defined in the way that CPRGs are defined - and need to be defined to function - but they have the drawback that the closer they are defined, the less scope there is for imaginative play. Ultimately, you can't do anything in the game that the designer hasn't anticipated. CPRGs are fun, but sooner or later they get boring.It seems to me, that 5e has consciously chosen to face in the other direction - to provide just enough structure to form a platform for play, but then to let the mechanics fade into the background and let imaginative play take over. That's what PnP games are good at, and that's where they are pitching their stall. They have designed the opposite of a CPRG.Inevitably, giving players the freedom to play imaginatively entails giving them the freedom to fail to play that way. Were it otherwise, the freedom would be an illusion. Most people can be whacky and creative sometimes but not necessarily all of the time. Sometimes, people just do boring things because they've run out of ideas. We don't want the game to grind to a halt if that happens. So the game, as a platform, has to accomodate the boring moments as well as the creative ones. The game has to suggest but not to command.From what I've seen, on the basis of the playtest and the previews so far, I believe they have got it right. We'll know more in a week or two, when we actually start playing 5e <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="BoldItalic, post: 6320811, member: 6777052"] There are already games with mechanics that are closely defined in the way that CPRGs are defined - and need to be defined to function - but they have the drawback that the closer they are defined, the less scope there is for imaginative play. Ultimately, you can't do anything in the game that the designer hasn't anticipated. CPRGs are fun, but sooner or later they get boring. It seems to me, that 5e has consciously chosen to face in the other direction - to provide just enough structure to form a platform for play, but then to let the mechanics fade into the background and let imaginative play take over. That's what PnP games are good at, and that's where they are pitching their stall. They have designed the [I]opposite[/I] of a CPRG. Inevitably, giving players the freedom to play imaginatively entails giving them the freedom to fail to play that way. Were it otherwise, the freedom would be an illusion. Most people can be whacky and creative sometimes but not necessarily all of the time. Sometimes, people just do boring things because they've run out of ideas. We don't want the game to grind to a halt if that happens. So the game, as a platform, has to accomodate the boring moments as well as the creative ones. The game has to [I]suggest[/I] but not to [I]command[/I]. From what I've seen, on the basis of the playtest and the previews so far, I believe they have got it right. We'll know more in a week or two, when we actually start playing 5e :D [/QUOTE]

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