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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5159062" data-attributes="member: 42582">Celebrim, I agree with you that there is a deep divide. I disagree that it turns on "ego gamers". Rather, I think it turns on attitudes to what counts as fun in playing a game.I also think that this is central to your discussion with Obryn about success vs participation.I think the more modern sorts of RPGs are designed for players who want to play the game by (i) engaging the game mechanics, and thereby (ii) changing the imagined ingame situation. Hence the particular irritation for those players of mechanics which deprive them of actions - because they lose the chance to engage the mechanics.But such players may still be quite willing to endure PC failures - it's just that those failures should be ones which open up new opportunities to engage the mechanics and thereby affect the gameworld. Examples would include being taken prisoner, or being driven out of town by an angry mob. This sort of PC failure is also a player failure in one sense - the game didn't go where you were trying to take it - but not in another sense - I'm still playing the game I want to play by engaging the mechanics and thereby affecting the gameworld. But the latter doesn't strike me as ego-gaming. It's just a particular preference about what I look for in a game.A game like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth has no real equivalent to D&D status conditions, but it would be strange - in my view, at least - to describe either as an RPG aimed at ego gamers. Both are games that let the players continually engage the mechanics to affect the gameworld - even relationships and equipment are brought into the sphere of game mechanically mediated character abilities. I think it would be correct to describe both as RPGs that would not satisfy a player with traditional Gygaxian preferences. (4e is a funny game in the way that it deliberately mixes old and new style - and it has some problems as a result, especially in the skill challenge mechanics but also in the way it puts a large burden on the GM to handle monsters causing status effects with care. Rolemaster, with its need to call an OB/DB split round-by-round, also has a little bit of the new mixed in with the old, but I suspect this was fortuitous rather than deliberate - an attempt at a simulationist mechanic also produced a mechanic that is reasonably compelling for the more modern-oriented player.)Or consider the difference between those who prefer M:TG, and those who prefer traditional wargames. Players of the former are hardly being pandered to as ego gamers, given that every game has at most one winner. But it's obviously a very different gameplay experience from a traditional wargame. I would expect a game like 4e to be more fun for the typical M:TG player than for the typical traditional wargamer.What a pen and paper RPG does offer that neither Donkey Kong nor M:TG does is an opportunity not only to engage the mechanics, but by doing so to shape a dramatic, compelling, shared imaginary world or storyline. And modern RPGs, with their changed approaches to participation etc, reinforce this distinguishing feature rather than reducing it.And if the above sounds like its influenced by reading Robin Laws game texts and Ron Edwards essays, well that's because it is!</blockquote>

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