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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5299880" data-attributes="member: 58197">Hmm.Before I address this, I want to clarify the point under discussion, because conversations about "storygames" and "narrativism vs. simulationism" tend to get lost in a fog of vague, ill-defined terminology.Your specific concern here, as I understand it, is the question: "What is the player's role in the game?" In other words, is the player supposed to see through the PC's eyes and manipulate the world through the PC's actions? Or is the player supposed to assume a more detached, "god's-eye view" and manipulate events in an abstract/metagame way?If I'm correct, you see a trend in 3E and 4E toward the latter (which I'm going to call "third-person gaming"), away from previous games which assumed the former ("first-person gaming"). Yes?From here on, I'm going to assume the above statements are correct. If they're not, disregard everything that follows.I didn't see any such trend previous to 4E. In fact, I would have said 3E was the apotheosis of the "first-person" approach, trying to be extremely rigorous about simulating the way the world reacted to the PCs' first-person actions.4E has definitely shifted toward the third person. (Like you, I'm hoping Essentials represents a turn back the other way.) However, I don't think it was a decision that "We think people will enjoy third-person better than first-person." Rather, I would say the 4E designers simply found it easier to make a third-person game--because in a third-person game, you don't have to worry about justifying your mechanics within the game world. You can foist off that job on the players.In a first-person game, if you want to introduce a power like every 4E opponent's favorite hobbyhorse, "Come and Get It," you then have to answer questions like "What the heck is this power doing, and why does it work on enemy wizards, who have no conceivable reason to wade into melee?"In a third-person game, you can shrug and say, "These are the mechanics. It's up to you, DM, to explain why the enemy wizard is doing this." When you're building a mechanically complex game from the ground up, it's very handy to be able to do that.(Which is not to say I agree with the decision to do it. I just understand why one would make that decision.)That said, 4E has not moved as far toward third-person as many people believe. You have to be willing to accept a few more <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaksFromReality" target="_blank">Acceptable Breaks From Reality*</a> (previous editions already had some major ABFRs, the XP system being probably the biggest), but you can still play it first-person. Come and Get It is an extreme example. Most powers work perfectly well from a first-person point of view.[size=-2]*Warning: TVTropes link.[/size]</blockquote>

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