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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5619121" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here are some extracts from the Alexandrian's essay:Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. <snip> In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that's entirely accidental. <snip> The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world). <snip> There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project. <snip> In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game. So why can I see the benefit of the Wushu-style trade-off, but am deeply dissatisfied by the trade-offs 4th Edition is making? Well, the easiest comeback would be to say that it's all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don't like the tactical wargaming. That's an easy comeback, but it doesn't quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games. My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the roleplaying of roleplaying games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story. <snip> There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn't actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you're playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.It's got it all: 4e is primarily/overwhelmingly a tactical wargame/skirmish game. It's mechanics impede roleplaying. Unlike other (not merely so-called) RPGs, 4e does not produce stories, or permit the player to engage with the PC through story.Is anyone really telling me that this isn't edition-bashing!?What is the actual purpose, in RPGing, of encounter and daily powers? To produce combats which have dramatic pacing. Does the 4e implementation of these class features succeed at that? In my experience, yes. In the experience of some others, apparently not. A serious discussion of 4e's power design, from the point of view of the relationship between player, character and narrative, would ask why it is that some but not others get this experience from the mechanics. (You might talk about encounter design; or party composiition; or tolerance for fiddly mechanics; or the approach that the GM takes to page 42; or any other of the myriad factors that can effect how the game plays at one table or another.)It may be, of course, that some - perhaps many - RPGers don't particularly care for a game in which combat is a, if not the, principal mode in which the expression and resolution of conflict takes place. (Presumably these people don't care for superhero comics either, or Arthurian legends - or maybe they bring different aesthetic preferences to RPGs from those other forms of storytelling.) A moment's glance at the 4e rules will reveal that 4e is not the game for them - the rules make it obvious that combat will be a principal - perhaps the principal - mode of expressing and resolving conflict.But this has nothing to do with whether or not 4e is a tactical skirmish game, to which the accretion of any roleplaying is a mere accident.</blockquote>

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