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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4460718" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not necessarily. They may be intended to distribute some sort of power among the players in the real world, which power is then used to specify the details of the fictional reality.Such mechanics can be called "metagame mechanics". D&D has had them at least since the 1st ed DMG (3 examples: arranging stats for one's PC rather than just rolling in order; the explanation of hit points; the explanation of saving throws).What does a saving throw represent in 1st ed AD&D? The answer given in the 1st ed DMG is, in effect, "don't think about it that hard" - or, more precisely, treat the saving throw as fortune in the middle, which is to say, depending on the nature of the threat, the class of the PC, and the success or failure of the save, narrate what happened as seems to make sense in the gameworld ("the fighter toughed it out", "the magic-user's attempt to subtley manipulate the magic failed", etc).I don't think it remotely follows from this aspect of the 1st ed saving throw rules that the game had no in-world logic. It's just that that logic is supplied not by the mechanics, but by the narration the players engage in to explain the results delivered by the mechanics.(The fact that, in this respect, 1st ed AD&D saving throws were very different from those in 3E, which are more-or-less fortune at the end simulationist mechanics, seems to be forgotten by many people who criticise 4e.)Many of the contentious 4e mechanics - healing surges, daily and encounter powers, etc - are obviously not meant to simulate anything at all. It doesn't follow that, in playing the game, a rich fantasy world is not created, explored and (if you like) simulated. It's just that this is done more by the players (exercising the power allocated to them by the mechanics), and less by the mechanics, than is the case in a game like Rolemaster.This raises a question - what counts as game design? I am inclining more and more to the view that thinking of the design of the game as including only the character build, action resolution and reward mechanics is to think too narrowly.Both 3E and 4e clearly treat encounter design as an integral aspect of the game - while in the strict sense a precursor to play rather than the play itself, it nevertheless needs to be strongly supported if the play of the game is not to suffer. To compare with some other RPGs: both RM and HARP suffer (IMO) from offering no support at all for encounter design, thus requiring the GM to wing it.In a party-based game like D&D, party composition is also crucial to the playability of the game. The 4e rulebooks (both PHB and DMG) expressly tackle this issue to a degree that far surpasses any earlier edition of the game. That is an improvement in game design. I'm not sure it is best classified as mechanics first or flavour first, but if I had to put it in one or the other of those baskets, I'd put it in mechanics first (the goal is playability, and the flavour of the party of PCs can be build around that).</blockquote>

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