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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6031147" data-attributes="member: 6696971">This is really a great post and I'm in agreement with it from top to bottom.  This bit here mirrors my experience with 4e and my understanding of Narrativist agenda and preferences.  Our approach to gaming at this point is simple (and 4e caters to it extraordinarily well):-My players build archetypes that they enjoy to play.  4e allows extraordinarily deep, textured archetype creation with backgrounds, themes, a large payload of highly functional class features and wonderfully thematic powers that map to archetype.  Paragon classing continues this.  Further, if you tug on the multi-class rules a little bit (allow for free power selection from your multi-class after you've multi-classed), you can go further (with zero mechanical imbalance to be honest).  - These broad, round characters are expected to express  themselves through all manner of non-combat fictional scenarios.  The Skill Challenge mechanical resolution system and the Condition Track system are both enormously empowering to this end.  I can frame (and then we can play out) all manner of diverse, genre-relevant challenges and adversity that play out in-line with the thematic undercurrent inherent to these archetypes.  What is so wonderful about them is that our playstyle and thematic aims emerge from our interfacing with these resolution systems rather than through DM-force or implicit (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more), speakeasy, co-conspiring between my players and myself to achieve this.  Its liberating to push the system in the direction we want to go and the system doesn't just sit there and say "yeah, uhhhh...whatever"...it actively supports us.  Outcome-based mechanics are key here as you aim toward a theme/genre preference and you maintain that theme/genre preference pass or fail. - Obviously this is D&D so these archetypes need to have thematically- inclined tactical and strategic resources.  There is a reason that 4e gets labelled "just a tactical skirmish game".  That is not because it fails in other arenas, it is because it excels so dramatically at this end of the game (and unfortunately a lot of folks peddling that meme either haven't played the game or haven't played it with vigor or with a good GM/group that knows how to leverage the systems mechanics to play to theme).  We have a small group (3 players) and we are all extremely efficient in our handling of turns so our combats (with 10 enemies) can literally be performed in 20 minutes (5 rounds on average with a minute per turn for each of us).  We're all very good multi-taskers so intra-round tracking doesn't cause us to blink.  Epic, boss fights or mass combat skirmishes will go about 40 minutes.  And speaking of both of those, no combat system I've played performs as well as 4e in those two arenas (climactic boss fights and mass combats by way of swarm rules).  Beyond that, it is so amazingly easy to make dynamic, mobile, exciting combats and they almost never fail to live up to expectations.So then, the score:My players have the ability ability to create diverse, broadly proficient archetypes and these archetypes actually have firm, potent mechanical backing (both combat and non-combat).  In terms of resolution systems, I am empowered in framing genre/archetype-relevant scenes/scenarios/challenges (both combat and non-combat) and I have mechanical backing to this end that actually supports my efforts.  I can actually test my PCs with consistently genre-relevant tests that move/change the fiction as outcome-based consequences/complications emerge from their passing/failing of the trials.  Further, within the scope of those scenarios, my players have unprecedented capacity (specifically martial and specifically within D&D) to enter author and director stance and mold the micro-fiction toward our pre-selected coherent genre/theme from which the macro-fiction emerges.  So then, agenda:- Establish a genre and accompanying themes/tropes that we are going to explore.- Create genre-relevant PC archetypes whose thematic components are challenged.- Compose loose story and frame strong scenes/challenges that are theme and archetype relevant.- DM is empowered with firm, outcome-based mechanical backing so that I don't have to hold back or manipulate/force things toward maintaining theme/genre preference.- Players are empowered with author and director stance mechanics to dictate/impose upon the fiction.- Fiction emerges that is thematic and archetype relevant.I'm not sure how that is not Narrativist and I'm not sure how 4e's system doesn't yield support for that agenda.</blockquote>

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