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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5524506" data-attributes="member: 82106">The fluff IS the story, the mechanics are only there to explain what happens. There's no story without fluff. Nor was for instance AD&D immune to being played in a purely mechanistic fashion. Also, personally, I'm not arguing against story driving mechanics. Again, I would ask for someone to point out to me the section of the 4e rules where it is stated that mechanics are independent of fluff. No such statement exists AFAIK. This seems to be a meme that arose after the fact. What I am really arguing is that once you have decided that the mechanics of say a given power, Spider Climb, is fully defined in a bounded fashion then you don't NEED specific fluff. You can use any consistent fluff, and the interaction of the fluff with the rest of the game world can define what happens, except unlike the AD&D Spider Climb my fluff is not constrained to be able to produce exactly the same effects all the time (IE a 2e AD&D caster can't cast spells requiring material components while affected by Spider Climb). My 4e version is more constrained in its actions on the world, but LESS constrained as a story element.But that would be a matter of interpretation, and if one of the rules fluffing is that you can't generally extend the mechanics in arbitrary ways then it isn't an issue. At least I CAN explain my spider climbing that way, the 2e wizard can't because the mechanics and fluff are now contradictory. Obviously there's a continuum here, a 2e MM can be described however you want, just like a 4e one can. Maybe someone can invent new fluff for 2e Spider Climb that ARE consistent, but it is much much harder and notice that it didn't actually add anything to the spell's avowed function. Well, I think one way is to make the fluff nominal and operate under the convention that the player's don't get to modify it in ways that allow them to do extra stuff without some kind of check. Thus for instance my wizard player wanted to exterminate jermlaine infesting vent shafts. Making a Stinking Cloud that would sink into the shafts was her solution. This required an Arcana check and several minutes of time. You get the cool creative uses of player resources. There can obviously be pitfalls still (player who browbeats the DM to allow egregious reworking of powers, magic is easier to rework than non-magic, etc). At least the DM is in the loop and not being cast into the role of naysayer (where in the old days it was mostly "no, the way I read this spell you can't do that").</blockquote>

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