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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6097561" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'd like to quibble with that.  D&D doesn't impose a play style by default.  It's rather silent on the issue of play style, which is one of the reasons that in practice there are so many kinds of D&D tables - even amongst ones using the same rules.  One of the advantages I've found in not imposing a play style is that the light casual gamer can often play at the same table as the very drama thespian gamer and be engaging the same game in different ways.  Or the same gamer can move between two different tables with the same or similar rules and play two very different game.For me it is a very open question whether hard mechanics intended to support drama actually encourage or detract from dramatic play.  I think the answer might well depend on the group, just as different groups argue over whether putting a morality flag like 'alignment' detracts from or enhance examination of morality or whether having rules for arbritrating social encounters add or detract from thespian style dramatic play.I'm not sure how I feel about that blanket statement, particularly because you yourself seem to ammend it to something more nuanced later when you note that as campaigns tend to 'mature' (in the sense of the campaign itself getting 'older') dramatic tension has a tendency to accumulate as players invest emotionally in aspects of the story or setting.   Maybe the lack of explicit rules for pre-linking your character to the setting or conflicts of the setting tend to mean that dramatic play is not from the outset assumed, but I don't know of an RPG that doesn't develop dramatic play in the hands of any reasonably mature gamer as the story advances.</blockquote>

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