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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5208934" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, sort of. There is a bit of a gamy feel to the way its presented at times and they really tried hard to nail down effects of powers and such so they have specific defined effects. OTOH there is a much greater emphasis on narrative flexibility and creating a cinematic feel. One might say older editions were aiming at a modestly simulationist game that tried to give you rules for the way the fantasy world works. 4e is a toolbox for simulating action movies instead. It eschews all pretense that the world works in an internally consistent way and gives you a good game experience. The authors explicitly expect the players to make up their own interpretation of how the mechanical actions are explained in terms of the game world. So for instance each power has a line of 'fluff' that you CAN use to describe it, but the fluff doesn't explain how the effect works or imply anything. Now and then the players may find themselves wondering how to describe a mechanical effect in a given situation, but given that its a magical world there's always SOME way to do it. For instance you can knock an ooze prone with a power. Obviously it can't fall on its back, but you can always describe it as being hit in a vital spot or something and so 'prone' in that context can mechanically represent &quot;the ooze is hurting and has to get its act together&quot;. 95% of the time you can just take the default fluff and go with it though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5208934, member: 82106"] Yeah, sort of. There is a bit of a gamy feel to the way its presented at times and they really tried hard to nail down effects of powers and such so they have specific defined effects. OTOH there is a much greater emphasis on narrative flexibility and creating a cinematic feel. One might say older editions were aiming at a modestly simulationist game that tried to give you rules for the way the fantasy world works. 4e is a toolbox for simulating action movies instead. It eschews all pretense that the world works in an internally consistent way and gives you a good game experience. The authors explicitly expect the players to make up their own interpretation of how the mechanical actions are explained in terms of the game world. So for instance each power has a line of 'fluff' that you CAN use to describe it, but the fluff doesn't explain how the effect works or imply anything. Now and then the players may find themselves wondering how to describe a mechanical effect in a given situation, but given that its a magical world there's always SOME way to do it. For instance you can knock an ooze prone with a power. Obviously it can't fall on its back, but you can always describe it as being hit in a vital spot or something and so 'prone' in that context can mechanically represent "the ooze is hurting and has to get its act together". 95% of the time you can just take the default fluff and go with it though. [/QUOTE]

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