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Message: <blockquote data-quote="1Mac" data-source="post: 5046205" data-attributes="member: 48998">I actually don't think this is true. Or in other words, I think your ideal is impossible <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=":)" />.If I understand you, "free play of the imagination" is a system which allows you to do anything in a given game world, given the realities of that world. That's a fine ideal, but any game system with any rules depth* is going to be biased towards certain kinds of actions, given the kinds of rules they focus on. A lot of games do this deliberately, but even a "universal" RPG is going to have to make choices that affect the kinds of actions that will occur in a system. An example is PC survivability: a system with hearty, robust heroes will encourage greater in-world confrontation, while something grittier will encourage confrontation avoidance.The consequence is that any RPG will support certain actions better than certain other actions. My limited experience with 4E suggests that it does a great job of supporting action-packed, over-the-top fantasy. It doesn't do so well with the old-school kind of fantasy where any trap can kill you. Nor does it do as well at supporting political games, or anything where encountering monsters and violent antagonists is not central (though I the inadequately-informed impression that it does a better job of that than any previous edition).My suggestion is that if you find you are not liking 4E, it is not because it fails to provide "free play of the imagination," for that is strictly impossible. Rather, it is that you don't like the kind of activities the rules encourage.*By this I mean anything that has deeper rules than Risus, a fun game with deliberately shallow rules.</blockquote>

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