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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6147858" data-attributes="member: 17106">It does. And this is an important point. There are two big differences (with 4e). The first is that these are different games with different expectations. The term "fighter" in a D&D context carries certain expectations with it, as do a laundry list of other terms. Not that expectations can never be violated, but they are important.The other is that the Cortex games are simply better. Because there are no pre-existing expectations to the contrary, they are free to create mixed in-game/metagame characters, as long as they do it well. And their implementation is much simpler and more direct. When I read a Cortex game ability, I can tell what it will do mechanically, and I can tell what it represents (whether it be the character's aptitudes, or some less tangible factor). They're not wasting space and spreading out abilities over hundreds and thousands of pages of rulebooks; everything has a purpose. And everything is explicitly costed, without a confusing resource management scheme or restrictive class and level-based structure to obfuscate that.The problem when these conceptual arguments get conflated with 4e is that it'd effectively a built-in straw man. Metagame mechanics (and even systems that don't make a metagame/in-game distinction) can work. Tactical games can work. A gamist competitive approach and approach to PC balance can work. Thing is, when I think of those things, I don't think of 4e. I haven't read everything that WotC ever wrote about 4e, but to me the idea that 4e is "tactical" or "gamist" or "storygame" or "balanced" etc. etc. is not so much what the designers were thinking, they're more excuses that someone came up with well after the fact for things that were written by people who didn't know what they were doing at the time. So I think it actually makes more sense to talk about MHRP than about 4e, because the former is at least a reasonably well-executed version of what it is.Thing is, the inclination doesn't strike me. That's not what I'm looking for in a D&D game.To extend a parallel discussion, why make life so hard for the DM and the players? There's all this talk about balancing character options, which I see occasionally being an issue in play but not that often. As a DM, I can fix balance issues. But what comes up more often is questions about what the rules mean, and what's going on in this shared reality we've created. When a player asks "what does this feat mean? Is it something I trained for? Is it natural talent?" or "what does my character feel when he's using this ability?" or "how am I 'out of rage'?" I need to have an answer! Simply having game mechanics and letting the DM (or players) figure out what they mean in the game world whenever the "inclination strikes" is not an acceptable solution to me. It's what  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] would call "lazy design", in my view.Perhaps we should coin a new term for "Mother, what am I?" style play?</blockquote>

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