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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5634447" data-attributes="member: 54877">Not quite. What I said was that I see the pattern in 4E, and I see patterns in other versions. To the extent that you can argue that these patterns affect the narrative, I see the effect in all versions. That is not, and has never been, a claim that the patterns in 4E are identical to the patterns in prior versions. They are not. In fact, with the exception of certain 1E/2E more or less exact rules, I'd say the patterns are always different. You seem to have assumed that I don't see the pattern, because not having seen it was necessary for some kind of enjoyment. My point was that, except for a brief ramp up period in 1981, I have always seem the patterns. Heck, I also saw them in Fantasy Hero, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc. What can I say? All people are prone to see patterns (it being an important survival trait for humans), but I'm somewhat more likely than most to see them in things that are models (as opposed to, say, spotting hidden things in real life, which uses different pattern recognition skills). Having seen the patterns has not affected my enjoyment. The pattern is something that is absorbed--and then having been aborbed, is subsumed in the fiction. Most of the people I have gamed with do some form of this. It probably also isn't an accident that we have preferred more structured poetry. (A sonnet sings because you write it in a prescribed form. I particularly like the Italian scheme. Making it work requires, however, that you come to terms with the form.)  Now, if you want to say that 4E being transparent makes it harder to obscure the patterns... Well, I can't argue with that. It was a specific design goal of the edition, and largely realized in the product. The insight that I gained from your post was not that the patterns were there. I'd always known that. The insight was that apparently some people value opaqueness in models as a means to enjoying the model. This had not occurred to me in the context of this discussion. It's an alien way of thinking from my perspective.</blockquote>

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