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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5491109" data-attributes="member: 54877">[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I'm not really disagreeing with any of your last post, but I will say that while there is a distinction between my concern and KM's, there is also a correlation between them.  Specifically, when someone is of a "more simulationist" bent than the game system supports, on some particular point, then the objections are rooted in dislike of metagaming construct and a mismatch between the player's view of the simulated reality and the perceived flow from the narrative mechanic to the simulated reality.   Gee, that's dense text!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> Some people dislike CAGI because they don't like metagaming constructs (or don't like them in their D&D).  Some people dislike it because they think it is not something that the fighter could do each encounter via mundane techniques--no matter how highly trained.  And for that matter, some people dislike it because they don't care for the idea of "once per encounter" as a rough pacing mechanism, and CAGI is their poster child for that dislike.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> But my experience is that most people expressing dislike at CAGI dislike it for a rather vague mishmash of all of those reasons--not infrequently inconsistently held and highly informed by their view of how melee combat works in real life, and then adapted to D&D.  (I'm not talking about the dislike of anyone discussing it carefully.  I'm talking about the way it frequently gets pulled into "venting" asides or outright rants, albeit more elsewhere than here.)   If it were only one of those things, then it would be easy to deal with.  It is the being wedded to the view of the simulated world while dragging the other stuff in, that makes it hard to see clearly, and thus deal with.  For example, single objections and simple, obvious solutions (not always easy, mind): 1. Don't like metagaming constructs -- 4E is full of them.  Either systematically take them out/replace them, or if that is more work than is warranted, play something else. 2. Don't like the artificialness of the encounter pacing mechanic -- replace with a recharge option, or if that is too much work, play something else. 3. Doesn't map to the view of reality of the game world -- change your view of the game world to fit the mechanic, or change the mechanic to fit your view of the game world.  (It would really not destroy the effectiveness of CAGI, which is a very good power, to limit it to opponents with a melee weapon in hand, for example--and having done that, there are no good "reality" objections to it solely on such grounds.) I believe it was C. S. Lewis that said the issue with most bad critics is not that they were critics (contra Teddy Roosevelt) or lack in the insights or logic that they brought to their criticism, but rather that their criticism assumed that the work should have been written the way they would have written it--their premises, their preferences, their world view.  It is one thing to be critical of the author's premises, preferences, and world view--it happens.  It is another thing to write such criticism of his works without first bothering to get his premises, preferences, and world view clear in your own mind.   Game consumers, of course, shouldn't be held to as tight a standard as a critic of a written work, at least not until they get to the point of publishing a body of criticism.  But I don't really see how anyone expects to get anything out of any version of D&D, much less adapt it to their world view, until they have a reasonably clear idea of what world view that version of D&D implies (or range thereof).</blockquote>

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