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Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6345671" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>There are some clear ways that RPGs constrain open-ended play. The big one is the rules. If there are things the rules won't let you do, that's less open-ended. The other thing that constrains you in an RPG are all those other considerations besides what's optimal for victory: what's in-character, what's expected in the genre, what's expected in the context of the group. They're 'soft' constraints, but they're there.</p><p></p><p> They're both examples of problematic or broken rules in some editions that were fixed in 4e. Summoning, in 4e, didn't break the action economy too badly, while in other editions it did. Polymorph was crazy-broken in early 3.x and still pretty problematic post-errata, while having drawbacks in AD&D (when Poly-Self only gave you movement abilities, and Poly-Other carried a non-trivial risk of character loss), and prettymuch a non-issue in 4e (largely cosmetic except as modeled by specific powers).</p><p></p><p>That's why it's important to remember that CaW/CaS was a product of the edition war.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6345671, member: 996"] There are some clear ways that RPGs constrain open-ended play. The big one is the rules. If there are things the rules won't let you do, that's less open-ended. The other thing that constrains you in an RPG are all those other considerations besides what's optimal for victory: what's in-character, what's expected in the genre, what's expected in the context of the group. They're 'soft' constraints, but they're there. They're both examples of problematic or broken rules in some editions that were fixed in 4e. Summoning, in 4e, didn't break the action economy too badly, while in other editions it did. Polymorph was crazy-broken in early 3.x and still pretty problematic post-errata, while having drawbacks in AD&D (when Poly-Self only gave you movement abilities, and Poly-Other carried a non-trivial risk of character loss), and prettymuch a non-issue in 4e (largely cosmetic except as modeled by specific powers). That's why it's important to remember that CaW/CaS was a product of the edition war. [/QUOTE]
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Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
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