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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5746648" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't really understand this. In particular, I'm not sure what you mean by "simulating fiction". To the extent that a game is being played as an RPG, the action resolution mechanics should be producing changes in the shared fiction. The question of (purist-for-system) simulation is about whether the action resolution mechanics themselveve model the causal processes of the fictional world.Imagine a rule that says - if there is conflict between two players as to what will happen in a scene, each rolls a d6, and the higher roll gets to narrate, but does not get to change any prior narration, nor to violate the expectations of genre or common sense. A rule like this could potentially be the kernel of an RPG (I'm thinking <a href="http://www.halfmeme.com/WFDrules.html" target="_blank">The World, The Flesh and the Devil</a>), but it obviously wouldn't be simulationist - the rolling of the d6 wouldn't correlate with anything taking place in the gameworld. What do you mean by "4e's fiction"? Each 4e game has it's own fiction, and I'm not sure how you know that none of them makes sense.I have no trouble following the fiction in my game, and nor do my players as far as I know. I've got a number of actual play threads on both the General and 4e forums that explain how the mechanics have produced that fiction.I'm not sure I follow this either, and to the extent that I do, I disagree.First, it sems to me obvious that the designers conceived of the idea of making PCs without a +15 bonus. They just decided not to make a game in which such PCs can be built. (There reasons, I think, were that they thought the existence of such PCs got in the way of smooth encounter design.)Similarly, Gygax conceived of priests using spears and swords (and his Greyhawk game contained such priests). Nevertheless, he published a game in which such PCs cannot be built (his reason, I think, being that cleric PCs with access to bladed weapons would be overpowered).Many players have conceived of wizards who don't memorise their spells, or who don't memorise them in the Vancian fashion (see Rolemaster, Runequest, Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, etc) but such PCs cannot be build in AD&D and not all of them can be built in 3E.4e is not unique in putting limits, via its PC build and action resolution mechanics, on the sort of stories that it supports. This doesn't show that there is anything incoherent in the fictions it produces, that that fiction fails to make sense.But it is a mistake to say that 4e heroes always get better at doing things. All that is true is that, as they go up in level, things are more likely to go their way. The rules leave it an open question whether this is because they are better, or luckier, or watched over by a supernatural being, or whatever. To put it another way, the rules leave it open whether to treat the +15 bonus as a PC ability, or as a player resource. (Like winning the 1d6 roll in my example RPG described above.)I don't know what you mean by "fictional positioning" here.4e permits heroes who are incompetent but lucky - this is one variant of the "lazy warlord" build (the so-called "princess warlord"). And the mechanics will not produce any outcome which contradicts the fictional position of the hero in question as incompentent.If the complaint is that 4e won't produce gritty stories about heroes, even epic heroes, who try but get unlucky at opening ordinary doors, that is true. But all that tells me is what I already knew, namely, that 4e is a game of ultra-heroic high fantasy. If I want a gritty fantasy game I'll play one of the many other systems that delivers it - Runequest, Rolemaster, HARP, Burning Wheel etc.</blockquote>

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