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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 4274224" data-attributes="member: 9391">I was kinda unclear a few pages back so I figure I'd take another crack at it. (I was responding to some of the "rules must have a sense of wonder" comments, which were sort of more about 4e in general and not about not using a DM screen when you're teaching the game.)This is all just my opinion, of course.Every roleplaying game has this thing in it where you go from an intent for your character to take an action to consulting the rules to determining a result and then describing what actually happens in the in-game fiction. Some people call this IIEE - Intent, Initiation, Execution , Effect -- but there's no need to use the fancy label."I attack. (roll 15) Hit, 8 HP damage, orc is dead" is one example of this. (Yes, we all know this is dull and the 'wrong' way to play, but it follows all the steps in a very boring fashion.)A half-hour roleplayed conversation is another example of this, a lot of the time. I'm not as clear where the rules come in in this case, these are often DM adjudication. There's still that IIEE process going on.So the point I was trying to make is that you always, in any roleplaying game, have to make a little mental hop from the rules results to the in-game fictional description of events. In D&D 3.x, it was a really small hop, because the rules were worded in a way that mixed mechanics with describing the fictional world as if it were real. In 4e, it's a slightly larger hop, but it's still smaller than in a lot of other games. So basically, the Effect part at the end -- where you convert mechanics into description and everybody sort of pictures the thing as "really having happened" in the fictional game world -- is different enough in 4e that a lot of people don't consider it easy and natural to do. I agree that it's harder -- a lot of the rules are like "Okay, this happens", and what that means in the game world depends on a lot on your table and how they want things to be pictured in their heads. My point, long as it's taking me to get to it, is this: If you make the "IIE" part really transparent, at least while you're learning the game, the last "E" part is easier to grapple with. If everybody at the table totally gets that the rules say "Paladin hit kobold and bloodied him", then when they get the cool GM description of how that looks in the game world, they can kinda start getting a good consensus on how rules results -> fictional outcome look for this campaign.</blockquote>

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