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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5616553" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, maybe we read different forums. I haven't seen anyone say there was 'no difference'. I think there are a wide variety of opinions on what the differences are and what significance they have.I guess I would need a citation on that. I think the idea that someone designed the mechanics in isolation from what narrative concepts they were intending to model is frankly preposterous. It might hold some amount of water if we were talking about a totally generalized system like GURPS that was designed from the ground up to support almost any genre. Even then at some point the designers had to look at what concepts they needed to support, make sure the core rules allowed them to be implemented, and implement a 'player facing' layer of the game that mechanically related the concepts to the mechanics, as well as providing fluff. In the case of 4e the relationship is MUCH tighter than that. Again the idea that someone, to take a random example, designed the mechanics of the Warlock class and then after the fact decided "Hey, this will make a great caster that operates by making a pact with a powerful being!" just doesn't wash.Yes, and what I said was that the story came first, and then I picked the mechanics that would be useful for resolving the things that came up in that story. There are a variety of points at which these decisions happen. First I'm going to conceive a type of game I want to run, then I'm going to look around and find a system that easily supports that type of game, then I'm going to create material for the game I'm going to run, adventures and setting and whatever. During that process I will decide which game mechanics I can use. Generally the system will offer most of that off the shelf if it is even remotely appropriate to the genre and style of play desired. The players will then do something similar to come up with characters to play. Then as we play out our story we will use the mechanics to help us resolve what happens and track how the world and the characters effect each other. We may make up new mechanics, refluff existing mechanics, change some mechanics, delete or ignore others, etc. The mechanics are just a tool. We don't start out with a set of mechanics and just play a game and try to figure out how to explain them. I don't think you're really understanding my point. That is as likely a failure on my part to explain it coherently as anything else. I agree, the system matters, but that is because some systems make some things easier to do. Role play HAPPENS, the system may or may not have some rules that indicate that certain RP decisions effect the mechanics (like say alignment in older D&D or the character development mechanics in Mouse Guard). 4e happens not to have such mechanics on the basis that they tend to restrict player options or whatever. D&D in general never was big on that. This is a respect in which mechanics could impact RP. I just don't see that people are 'not accepting those differences'. Personally I don't think there's a way to 'rate' games in any hard and fast way. That doesn't mean I don't find some systems better or worse to use for certain games. I don't think ANY serious posters here have ever asserted that all systems are equal.Honestly though, there is a pretty strong subtext to your posts. It reads like 3.x was a good tool for role play and 4e is mostly only good for hack-n-slash. Personally I think the opposite. 4e maps the tropes of the fantasy genre with a great deal more fidelity to the mechanics IMHO. Conan is a perfectly viable concept in 4e (the non-magical fighter type who kicks butt using superior physical prowess, weapons, and his wits). A Conan type character in 4e is truly functioning mechanically as advertised. He's a worthy adversary, a mighty warrior hero who can overcome any kind of adversary. You can't even get close to that in 3.x. Any half decent caster or monster with more than trivial magical capabilities will make short work of such a character. Intrigue and mystery? As straightforward in 4e as it could be in any system. Any character can be decently stealthy etc almost trivially. All characters have a core of valuable skills to apply. Casters don't dominate all problem solving, etc. Sure, you can do it in 3.x, but you have to work at it quite a bit more in my experience. This is all obviously my opinion, but I think you're off base in your assessment of the two systems. I'm happy to politely accept that everyone has their opinions and that's cool. OTOH I just don't agree with some of them.</blockquote>

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