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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7749538" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I definitely have some sympathy for this position (not because I hold it personally).  Players like yourself and  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=23935" target="_blank">Nagol</a> have been very consistent on this point throughout many conversations over the years.  If a gamer has strident Sim priorities and/or they have Sim priorities localized to their D&D play, then 4e's genre-logic and scene-based considerations/techniques (dramatic arc, escalation, narrative causality, fail forward) are going to be problematic, no doubt.  And if you try to eschew all of these fundamental components to 4e scene-based play and smuggle in Sim priorities/approaches in their stead, the game is going to push back very hard.You're likely going to end up with boring, stale Skill Challenges where the situation doesn't change dynamically (or much at all), no dramatic arc arises, and it looks/feels like "an exercise in dice rolling."Our conversation many years ago (it was a good one) regarding "the gorge" is probably the benchmark for the dissonance you're ascribing to the game experience for you (and others like you).  When your mental framework is predicated upon one very particular paradigm and your decision-points (and their outcomes) are anchored to a very different paradigm, its going to be "jarring."  4e's designers could have done a better job illuminating this in the first DMG.Here are my thoughts on this.  There are various components that made people decry 4e for MMORPG mechanics.  Top of the heap was:Defender Control/Marking The problem with this position is that the Marking//Defender Control mechanics in 4e work precisely zero like MMORPG mechanics.  1)  Mechanically, MMORPG tanks are afforded target control by two distinctive means; (a) Extremely high Threat generation that allows them to gain top position (and stay there) of a creature's Threat List and (b) various Taunts that temporarily rearrange that Threat List to place the tank at the top of the Threat List.2)  Mechanically, 4e Defenders are afforded target control by way of a catch-22; attack me or suffer a very bad penalty (-2 to hit and I attack you).  That looks exactly like a host of M;tG cards/keywords/play combos.  One of the fundamentals of that game is managing and deploying the pervasive catch-22 decision-points.Rationing (you've mentioned)While there is some superficial overlap here, my sense is that it is this way because SO MANY games (MMOs, CRPGs, card games, board games, TTRPGs, even sports) have time/unit-centered rationing of deployable resources.  On account of that, the position of "MMORPGs have rationing too" doesn't  do enough heavy lifting to convince me.  Further, while they have cooldowns on various schedules, MMORPGs aren't scene-based games (in the way TTRPGs are).  You don't find 1/scene mechanics in there.  You do find 1/scene mechanics in scene-based TTRPGs, in sports (eg Challenges per half) and in some card games (but sub "hand" for "scene").  Cooldown refresh in MMORPGs isn't centered around fictional positioning (because the fiction isn't relevant) whereas in 4e and other TTRPGs, it is.GenreThis one is unmistakable (as I mentioned above).  4e's genre and themes has a ton of overlap with DIablo and God of War in particular and surely plenty with WoW (which is difficult not to do given its a massive "world on fire-ey" trope).[HR][/HR]But, to your point, there is enough shallow evidence (which shouldn't be particularly convincing when the collective evidence is examined forensically) for someone to come to the false positive of "4e is/was a tabletop MMORPG" if they aren't particularly rigorous in their examination (or if they were part of a smear campaign).</blockquote>

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