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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nemesis Destiny" data-source="post: 5755567" data-attributes="member: 98255">I think what you're saying here speaks to the dichotomy inherent to the two game design philosophies that came together to create D&D in the first place. It's fairly evident that both Gygax and Arneson brought different ideas and priorities to D&D, but also, I think, in equal measure.So to me, saying that roleplaying adventurers exploring a world and collaborative storytelling are mutually exclusive as design goals, sells the game short. There is nothing to say that it can't do both, and IMHO, it does both fairly well. Or, at least it can. The rest is largely dependent on the group and their preferred style of play, I suppose.Without knowing the exact circumstances of the fiction involved with that particular scenario, at that particular table, sure it sounds silly. It doesn't have to, though. If one has already decided that a given power is ridiculous, one tends not to try very hard when describing its effects.If described properly, I can see ways in which even that scenario makes sense. Perhaps in this case CaGI represents a warrior feigning weakness, enticing even a lowly mage with a knife to want to come stick it in his belly during a moment of weakness.So I don't particularly expect my example explanation to make any more sense to you either, especially since your mind is already firmly made up.But here's the thing - CaGI, and powers like it, are basically like giving players 'narrative control cards' that they can invoke pretty much any time. They are not only free to, but more or less obligated to figure out how that interacts with the fiction of the game at any given time. This is not always an easy task. It speaks to why (at least in part), there are so many fewer DMs than players. A power like that basically turns the player into a DM for part of her turn, but the game gives only the vaguest guidance on how to do that (i.e. flavour text), and what guidance given isn't always going to fit what's going on. It can't - that would require far too much text for every power.So this is where the actual DM is needed - the DM needs to interpret how the player is playing their 'narrative control card', even if it isn't what they had in mind, and make it work the way the player wants it to in a given situation. Again, some DMs will have trouble doing this, with good reason - it isn't always easy.From personal experience though, when it works, it really works. Particularly if the end goal is not only exploring a fictional game world, but telling a collaborative story while you're doing it.Some groups or players won't like that, and that's fine. Some DMs don't like losing that control, even for a part of a player's turn. Some players don't want the responsibility. Some DMs don't want to have to come up with explanations when they player can't or won't either. That's fine - it just means that there are some elements of the game that they should avoid. The problem with that is, 4e isn't very good at explaining this, nor on giving advice on how to handle it.I just wanted to point out that I appreciate your civil tone in your post. It's very easy to go on the offensive about elements you find really jarring, and like some, to call it all nonsense. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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