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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4442798" data-attributes="member: 710">Are you sure that's what they say, or that's what you feel they did? Because they certainly did want to go away from some simulation aspects and henceforth "verisimilitude", but did they also want to avoid rules that just exist for role-playing?Hmm...Maybe you are right. Craft (Basketweaving) certainly is only usable for simulation or role-playing (or rather: to give some role-playing color to your character by mechanically representing a part of his "personality". The skill itself is not needed for actually role-playing out your character). Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight are mechanics that are useful for conflict resolution and role-playing, and stayed.I began to like the DFE or blackbox approach more and more during the initial reveals of 4E. It feels more goal driven and helps you achieving exactly the result you want. Using simulation feels more and more just like going a long-winded road.As an example - A 3E character at 12th level might have several buffs (let's include magical items) active on himself, typically for the entire encounter or several hours. Effectively, the actual numbers that define this character in play are the buffed statistics, not the unbuffed. So, why not just cut the chase and create a system that automatically creates the buffed version of the character? (That's basically what Iron Heroes does).Of course, there are some cases where the unbuffed state matters. For example during an ambush at night, or if the buffs are being dispelled.An "effects driven" approach would be to define these stats the other way around. Dispel Magic might just cause the character to become "weakened". In an ambush situation, the attackers might automatically deal extra damage and get an attack bonus. (Or again, the victims are just weakened)The end results will look very similar, but from a gameplay perspective, the simulation approach gives you a lot of work to arrive at your typical state, and have you reverse that work in an atypical state, while the effects driven approach gives you only work when in an atypical state. To some degree I can understand that it doesn't feel "right" on a philosophical level (or from the verisimilitude point of view) to go this approach, but is it really worth bogging the game down for that? The more you have to simulate, the more complex is running or playing the game. You get bogged down in details. While from an outside perspective, everything might make sense, but while playing the game, you are not immersing yourself in your character and his thoughts, you're busy doing the math for your character. I don't feel closer to my character when I recalculate my attack bonus and damage after taking some strength damage, even though this nicely simulates how my character is losing strength. It makes sense, but do I _feel_ it while I am (re)running numbers? People have different views on this - they value different parts of the game experience. If running numbers is required to make the game world simulation work, so be it. If you can't map every part of the game model to the game world, or vice versa, the game just doesn't feel like it's really about that fictional world. In the end, both sides might see that if the rules don't follow their mental model, they will lose their immersion - they will be reminded that it's just a game, nothing more.</blockquote>

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