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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8998864" data-attributes="member: 42582">Picking up a bit more on this caring about others' contributions issue that [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] has raised:In 4e D&amp;D, at least as I've experienced it, the characters are painted in fairly broad strokes. The game makes it easy to locate a character inside certain pretty clear fantasy tropes and themes - Dwarves who took their freedom from the giants; magical Elves (Eladrin) who travel between the&nbsp; lands of the Fey and the mortal world; incarnate immortals (Deva) who carry with them all their memories of their past lives; etc.The creative contribution - again, as I've experienced it - tend to be not in the subtlety or nuance or beauty of the characters as such, but rather in the way the player orients their character towards those various tropes and themes and the conflicts and choices inherent in them.So caring for others' characters means caring about and engaging with those choices.This has implications for GMing methods. For instance, if the GM preps material, or establishes consequences of actions, which pre-empt or run over those player choices about how their PCs are oriented towards, and engaging with, those tropes and themes and so on, that is not really caring about and engaging with those player choices. It's disregarding them.The 4e rulebooks don't have super-clear instructions about what GMing methods will work instead of those more typical ones. But luckily for me, when I was GMing 4e, I had read some other RPG rulebooks that did give me suitable advice (HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel being the mains ones).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8998864, member: 42582"] Picking up a bit more on this [I]caring about others' contributions[/I] issue that [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] has raised: In 4e D&D, at least as I've experienced it, the characters are painted in fairly broad strokes. The game makes it easy to locate a character inside certain pretty clear fantasy tropes and themes - Dwarves who took their freedom from the giants; magical Elves (Eladrin) who travel between the lands of the Fey and the mortal world; incarnate immortals (Deva) who carry with them all their memories of their past lives; etc. The creative contribution - again, as I've experienced it - tend to be not in the subtlety or nuance or beauty of the characters as such, but rather in the way the player orients their character towards those various tropes and themes and the conflicts and choices inherent in them. So [I]caring for others' characters[/I] means [I]caring about and engaging with those choices[/I]. This has implications for GMing methods. For instance, if the GM preps material, or establishes consequences of actions, which pre-empt or run over those player choices about how their PCs are oriented towards, and engaging with, those tropes and themes and so on, that is not really caring about and engaging with those player choices. It's disregarding them. The 4e rulebooks don't have super-clear instructions about what GMing methods will work instead of those more typical ones. But luckily for me, when I was GMing 4e, I had read some other RPG rulebooks that did give me suitable advice (HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel being the mains ones). [/QUOTE]

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