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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5926298" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's even narrower than actor stance, I think. Actor stance is reconcileable with metagame boosts, for example - "I'll deploy my metagame boost now because my guy is trying really hard". It's not just stance, it's the process of reasoning. It's a repudiation of any metagame action resolution mechanic.What puzzles me is that some people think this can be reconciled with hit points. What do they think reasoning about hit points remaining (be they mine, my friends', my foes')corresponds to in the gameworld?(But see nnms below - suggesting that at least hit points don't interpose a very big gap.)Your last paragraph is interesting. I'm not sure it's true to my experiences, but I'm not going to say it isn't either. And I believe it as an expression of your own experiences. For me, hit points can be pretty "de-immersifying" in a pretty short space of time. "I'll charge those archers - I'm at full hp, so I can take whatever they'll shoot at me." It may not take very long to resolve, but clearly it is not the player reasoning about the ingame situation and acting on that.The other stuff I agree with completely. As soon as I learned about Rolemaster as an alternative high fantasy RPG to D&D, I jumped ship for all the same sorts of reasons that motivated Runequest.What I like about 4e is that it takes all the metagamey stuff inherent to D&D and, for me, makes it consistent and makes it work. As well as passive stuff (hit points, saving throws) we have active stuff (action points, encounter and daily powers, etc).I envisage that my 4e game will come to its conclusion in 2 or 3 years, and then I'm hoping my group will agree to play Burning Wheel for a bit at least. Which is somewhat RQ-ish mechanics (though on a different probability curve) but with "story game" stuff layered over the top.The sort of game that I don't want to play is one like 3E or (perhaps - certainly as you describe it) AD&D, which is a sort of unstable mixture of gritty/simulation and gonzo/meta.4e works for me as a type of ground-up story game. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5922402-post17.html" target="_blank">This recent post</a> is a good account of what I enjoy about 4e.I think this is a bit unfair. Contrary to what [MENTION=5]Mark[/MENTION]CMG suggested upthread, there's no correlation between metagame mechanics and railroading. From the point of view of control over the plot, things going or not going the player's way depending on what player resources are expended is no different from things going or not going the player's way depending on whether a die roll comes up high or low.</blockquote>

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