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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5634189" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with the general thrust of this, but voted No. I'll try to explain below.I agree with the last sentence of this, but not with the first sentence.This is interesting, but I don't entirely agree - in part because I personally find that too much exploration (particularly exploration without context, a la Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain) can be tedious, but also because I think it's not about "It's not about combat, it's about these other things" but rather "It's not about combat, because combat is a means rather than an end in itself". I agree that the end in question is heroic fantasy adventure.I agree with this (although I'm not sure the "journey" metaphor is quite how I'd put it).I think that D&D (and especially post-classic D&D) is about heroic adventure, in which combat is a principal (perhaps the principal) means of resolving conflict. In that respect it resembles a lot of adventure fiction (Arthurian legends, REH, 70s and 80s Marvel comics, etc). But it is not about combat - or, at least, need not be.At a certain point in the early-to-mid-90s the X-Men and their spinoffs changed, so that instead of the combat being a means of conveying conflict and its resolution, the fighting became the focus of the story - the thing that it was about. This creates a marked contrast with (for example) the Death of Phoenix, or episode 150 and the beginning of Magneto's redemption, or the "From the Ashes" fight between Scott and Ororo for leadership of the team. (I personally think that this change was a decline, but then I'm a sucker for the cheap sentimentalism of the classic Marvels).I think that D&D, with the very same character build and action resolution mechanics, can be played in either sort of way - combat as means, or combat as end. The difference is determined not by mechanics, but by other aspects of play like scenario design, preferences and motivations of the participants, etc.This inference is unsound. Most of the activity of a hunter might involve searching, tracking, stalking etc. But hunting isn't "about" those things. It's about killing an animal (for food, at least in the paradigm case). Those things are means to an end.Of course, over time, the means - if they loom very large relative to the end, and if they have a certain fascination of their own - can come to replace the original end as ends in themselves. Arguably, this is what happens in the decline of Marvel comics in the 90s. I'm sure there's an analogue to this in the case of hunting, also, although whether it would count as a decline would depend on other considerations (and political ones that might tend to violate the board rules, so I'll leave them alone).There seems to me to be a lot of evidence that, from early in its history, D&D was vulnerable to changing into a game that is about combat. For those groups who are happy with this, no problem. For those who (like me) would experience this as a type of degeneration, prophylactic measures are called for to keep the means in check. I'm happy to talk about the measures that I use in running my game - they have to do primarily with scenario design and scene framing, but also to do with how I, as GM, adjudicate the action resolution mechanics.(One might reasonably ask - Why not switch to a game where the means don't pose this danger, of swallowing up the end - say HeroWars/Quest? The answer, for me and my group, is that we enjoy D&D's fiddly bits.)I can only explain my own thought process (which, I must admit, was not kneejerk, as I spend way too much time on these boards pontificating about these very questions!). I thought, What is D&D about. And answered: heroic adventure, and the conflicts that drive such adventure. How does combat fit in? Its a principal mode of expressing and resolving conflict. Is the game about combat, then? No - no more than the X-Men, or Spiderman, or The Incredible Hulk, at least in the 70s and 80s, were about combat. No more than John Boorman's masterful Excalibur is about combat. (The X-Men is about liberation politics. Spiderman is about overcoming personal inadequacy. The Hulk is about the Freudian theory of the mind - Doc Samson is analyst first, fighter distant second, despite his muscles and green hair! Excalibur is about destiny, loyalty and the romance of divinely-ordained monarchy. Other critics may have different views, of course.)Teriffic comment. One of many reasons why my partner has zero interest in roleplaying (or playing CCGs, for that matter) is the excessive need to track niggly details.But this one I don't agree with, sorry, at least as far as 4e is concerned (I think it is true of AD&D). In 4e - assuming that the GM is following the encounter design guidelines - gaining levels doesn't make the PC more powerful in any mechanical sense, as the DCs and defences and hit points all scale (a real contrast with AD&D, where gaining levels, especially between 1st and 4th or so, makes a huge difference to survivability of a PC).A PC might, of course, become more powerful in the fiction from gaining levels, but a GM could equally have that PC become more powerful in the fiction by doing non-combat stuff. 4e leaves all this in-the-fiction stuff pretty wide open (although some loose mechanical parameters are imposed by the notions of Paragon and Epic tier - but the XPs to achieve these can be earned via skill challenges, quests, or DMG2 "roleplay" XP, as much as by fighting).</blockquote>

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