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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 5926211" data-attributes="member: 83293">I think you've convinced me to a degree.  I like using the term RPG as board to the point of useless purely to be polite and to not get people to think I'm trying to say that they're somehow doing it wrong or not part of the hobby.  When it comes down to it though, we really can talk about moments when we are actively playing a role and moments when we are taking on a different role, like a narrator or tactical game player.Good point.And I also want some games to give me that experience and other types of games to give me an experience focused more on playing a specific character role. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It just suspends narration until after the fact.  Or retcons it.  Like when you have a warlord around in 4E.  You better not narrate a successful hit against a character as a serious wound, because if it gets better because a warlord yells at you, it probably wasn't a serious wound.  You need to suspend narration until after the encounter.This also plays into 4E slowing down if you try to tie every action into the fiction.  At first it seems colourful and interesting to describe every power every time you use it, but in the end, it doesn't actually impact anything and just slows down the game.  So it's probably best to not make any story descriptions whatsoever and just play out the tactical miniatures combat.  It'll go faster, still be enjoyable as a tactical exercise and you won't have to retcon anything.  Then just some up in story terms after the whole encounter is over.I wouldn't go so far as to claim they're not capable of understanding, perhaps just not willing?  Hopefully this will help:I think the oft repeated "What is an RPG?" type text that is in the front of so many games is a good starting point.  They almost always describe some sort of fictional play and then talk about why rules are good.  Like the whole "cops & robbers" example where you have rules to solve the "I shot you" "No you didn't" problem.So someone describes something, someone else describes something and you go on doing that until something someone describes mandates that the resolution mechanics be consulted to determine the results.  Then you continue the circuit of description.However, in the case of some games, the use of resolution mechanics will result in another decision being based off the previous mechanic-based decision, which then calls for another resolution system usage and you end up with situations of compound layers of decision making that is disconnected from the fiction.Then when the whole thing is resolved, you sort of have to find a way to shoe-horn the fiction around the final results.It's very jarring if the general approach is to describe what you do and then consult the rules to resolve that, rather than actively choosing to use a rules element and then use other rules elements that trigger off of that (even as part of a larger game mode procedure like combat) and then after it's all done, go back and describe everything, retconing as you need to in order for it to make sense.In playing a lot of Basic D&D lately, I'm inclined to agree.  I don't recall too many instances of decision making where the process was not directly associated with the decision a given character might make.  When I play and run 4E, I find myself surrounded by decision making based off of results of previous system calls rather than descriptions of the in game fiction.The problem is that the story can indeed be damaged.  I'm prevented from narrating a sword strike that drops a character to the game state of dying in 4E because a warlord might shout at them and prove my description of the sword stroke being a real injury to be a lie.Or it might make a sorcerer who is feeble in melee suddenly rush up to a fighter because the fighter's player pushed the "come and get it" button.Or it might make a player wonder why they can't do something more than once in a five minute period when they've just demonstrated that their character can do it.I don't think it's just focused on the final results.  The whole point is that if you concentrate on final results, you've already left a circuit of description approach, waited for the final compound mechanics to resolve and then forced the fiction to fit after the fact.</blockquote>

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