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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 5985463" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I suspect you are correct that several of us run 4e in a very similar fashion.  I would wager that we do not precisely map content/genre preferences across our spectrum but my guess would be that the "feel" of our games/tables could be mistaken for one another due to the congruency of our delivery of mechanical infrastructure.As far as deviation from orthodox goes, I honestly cannot say for sure as I am extremely insulated from the gaming community at large.  I've never been to a convention nor do I frequent hobby shops.  So honestly, I don't know what mainstream 4e play is.  Is it 1e Gamist?  Is it encounters?  Is it some misshapen effort at the Gamist/Process-Sim styles of old?  Is it a "fiction first", "genre logic" Narrativist/Gamist marriage (my style and I suspect the others you mention above)?  No idea.  However, I do know that 4e can manage all of these styles, some better than others (the Gamist/Process-Sim being the most unwieldy given the RAW, Gamist/Narrativist mechanics).I absolutely believe that some of the lead authors of the 4e books knew EXACTLY what gaming style (Gamist/Narrativist) they were advocating with the mechanics and their editorializing within the ruleset.  However, I wonder if there wasn't some incoherency of vision with regards to those lead authors, their subordinates and their editorship.  At certain points they hit you over the head with blunt advocacy for that style...while at other points the tone is modulated significantly (for whatever reason - editing?...misunderstanding subordinates?).  I can (and predicted the backlash as I was reading it) understand how reading the 4e ruleset was a bitter pill to swallow for some, specifically the ardent process-simulators amongst us.  In truth, this was actually one of the things that appealed to me the most (not the fact that it may turn process simulators off...but rather, despite the flailing modulation, the honesty of intent and coherency of design was abundantly clear).  Prior to 4e, the chronology of my gaming career evolved as Gygaxian Gamist 1e > Some perverted marriage of Gamist/Narrativist/Sim in AD&D/2e (but what fun despite the derangement in style) > Rigid 3e Process-Sim > Maddening attempt to drift 3e to Narrative/Process-Sim > More Maddening attempt to drift 3.5 to Narrativist/Gamist > Full Stop.  I became increasingly familiar with collective storytelling mechanics and narrativist mechanical infrastructure (just as much of my own devising as reading) and over the years I had become extraordinarily dissatisfied with DnD's increasing (ly poor) effort at process-simulation.  At my table, when trying to pledge fealty to Process-Sim, the output and mood was underwritten by an agonizingly, borderline pathological, dogmatic devotion toward premeditated, ad-hoc and post-hoc rationalizing every moving part and moment so that it "made sense from a real-world, coupled cause and effect perspective".  Organic creativity was stifled as the demand for Process-Sim rationalizations became more fervent...while the mechanics that attempted to represent fidelity to the physical model increasingly became more transparently unworthy.  This is likely as much a failing of the style for my creative tastes as it is a product of my own obsessively analytical nature (and of my own players to a lesser degree).  The fact that 4e's design framework/mechanics, at least tacitly, was not genuflecting to the Process-Sim Gods immediately caught my eye and endeared itself to me.  What's more, the ruleset's design aims were exceedingly intuitive.  Perhaps it was because I had been drifting that way over the course of 20 + years.  Perhaps it was because the heroic fantasy that I had always wanted to conjure was finally within my grasp (as I could officially cast off my devout clergy robes of the Process Sim Church...and actually be supported in the effort by the system.).  Perhaps it was exposure to the spirit of the mechanics already (either those of other systems or of my own devising).  The answer is likely at the junction of all of those.  However, I think, as much as anything else, it is the fact that I no longer had to play the creativity-stifling premeditated, ad-hoc, post-hoc rationalization game constantly in an effort to maintain maximum internal consistency with a mechanical resolution model and a set of nebulous world physics that do not support me, but rather defy me, in that effort.</blockquote>

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