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Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7630259" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - just adding to what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted, which I fully agree with (except to add that 1st ed AD&D also started heading in the same direction in the post-DL era).</p><p></p><p>The Forge isn't trying to explain your experience with CoC vs V:tM, and why you found them similar or different. It's offering an analytic vocabulary for talking about RPG design, and some features of RPG play. It's no more "confusing, inveigling or obfuscating" than is a chemist who tells you that coal and diamond are the same stuff, or Newton who tells you that an object falling to earth and a planet orbiting the sun is the same physical phenomenon, or an anthropologist who tells you that reigious practices among neolithic people and grief counselling in its contemporary Californian manifestation play the same social function.</p><p></p><p>If you're not interested in that sort of analysis then that's fine, but as far as I can see it doesn't give any reason to complain about it. It's not like Ron Edwards dropped by your house and told you that yuo had to read his essays or else he'd steal your dice!</p><p></p><p>For my money, it's sufficient evidence that The Forge's analysis is largely sound that Ron Edwards, in an essay published c 2003 predicted, almost down to the last full stop and comma, the features of 4e that generate visceral hostillity from simulationist-inclined players (again I'm using "simulationism" in The Forge sense), which is the majority of RPGers, more-or-less from the moment it was published.</p><p></p><p>In any event, the sorts of differences in the feel of play that I tend to see discussed on these boards - like degree of "search-and-handling" required (compare, say, grappling in 3E to searching for a secret door in AD&D); or whether players have authorial power over aspects of the fiction that doesn't correlate to their PC's exercise of causal power in the fiction (what The Forge calls "director stance"); or whether metagame mechanics are prominent or minimal more generally; or whether PC build is a column A, column B approach (eg race and class) or something else, or is stat+skill based or something else, or is level-based or something else - have no bearing on whether a game facilitiates narrativist, simulationist or gamist play in The Forge sense. Againm that's typically because the discussion on these boards nearly always assumes a broadly simulationist goal of play. (Sometimes you see openly gamist goals advocated, but those posters often get dogpiled for being "power gamers" and even the gamist posters on these boards tend to have a healthy simulationist aesthetic often inspired by the similar combination of S with G found in Gygaxian AD&D.)</p><p></p><p>Now the previous paragraph isn't saying that such matters are unimportant. Nor that The Forge has nothing to say about them. But if you want to learn about a chemist's account of the difference between coal and diamond you wouldn't look in the index under "Elements" or "Periodic Table". You'd look for their account of allotropes, of the relationship between molecular and bonding structure one the one hand, and reflectivity and hardness on the other, etc.</p><p></p><p>So if you want to talk about the difference in feel between (say) CoC and V:tM, look to The Forge's account of IIEE, or of colour and setting and situation, or various forms of participationism. Not to its account of GNS.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7630259, member: 42582"] [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - just adding to what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted, which I fully agree with (except to add that 1st ed AD&D also started heading in the same direction in the post-DL era). The Forge isn't trying to explain your experience with CoC vs V:tM, and why you found them similar or different. It's offering an analytic vocabulary for talking about RPG design, and some features of RPG play. It's no more "confusing, inveigling or obfuscating" than is a chemist who tells you that coal and diamond are the same stuff, or Newton who tells you that an object falling to earth and a planet orbiting the sun is the same physical phenomenon, or an anthropologist who tells you that reigious practices among neolithic people and grief counselling in its contemporary Californian manifestation play the same social function. If you're not interested in that sort of analysis then that's fine, but as far as I can see it doesn't give any reason to complain about it. It's not like Ron Edwards dropped by your house and told you that yuo had to read his essays or else he'd steal your dice! For my money, it's sufficient evidence that The Forge's analysis is largely sound that Ron Edwards, in an essay published c 2003 predicted, almost down to the last full stop and comma, the features of 4e that generate visceral hostillity from simulationist-inclined players (again I'm using "simulationism" in The Forge sense), which is the majority of RPGers, more-or-less from the moment it was published. In any event, the sorts of differences in the feel of play that I tend to see discussed on these boards - like degree of "search-and-handling" required (compare, say, grappling in 3E to searching for a secret door in AD&D); or whether players have authorial power over aspects of the fiction that doesn't correlate to their PC's exercise of causal power in the fiction (what The Forge calls "director stance"); or whether metagame mechanics are prominent or minimal more generally; or whether PC build is a column A, column B approach (eg race and class) or something else, or is stat+skill based or something else, or is level-based or something else - have no bearing on whether a game facilitiates narrativist, simulationist or gamist play in The Forge sense. Againm that's typically because the discussion on these boards nearly always assumes a broadly simulationist goal of play. (Sometimes you see openly gamist goals advocated, but those posters often get dogpiled for being "power gamers" and even the gamist posters on these boards tend to have a healthy simulationist aesthetic often inspired by the similar combination of S with G found in Gygaxian AD&D.) Now the previous paragraph isn't saying that such matters are unimportant. Nor that The Forge has nothing to say about them. But if you want to learn about a chemist's account of the difference between coal and diamond you wouldn't look in the index under "Elements" or "Periodic Table". You'd look for their account of allotropes, of the relationship between molecular and bonding structure one the one hand, and reflectivity and hardness on the other, etc. So if you want to talk about the difference in feel between (say) CoC and V:tM, look to The Forge's account of IIEE, or of colour and setting and situation, or various forms of participationism. Not to its account of GNS. [/QUOTE]
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