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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5480399" data-attributes="member: 27160">I won't claim to be surprised, but this is fine - it supports a play style you don't like, no problem there.  I cited it simply as an example that confining resolution authority to the GM is not the only way to ensure that resolution authority is not in the hands of the one who chooses and/or the one who faces the challenge.Very simply I meant to say that if you have more than two players (i.e. more than one GM and one 'player', if you have a GM) then you have more choices than "the GM" to handle resolution authority without having a player handle resolution authority for their own/their character's challenges.  Simple logic of numbers, is all."Mother-may-I" is a rather dismissive simplification, but in essence, yes.  To put it in a more nuanced way, the GM's beliefs, knowledge, mood, biases, social relationships and internal picture of the setting and situation of the game will inevitably colour their judgements and choices.  They will first of all colour their view of how the action develops in the fiction, and then both as a result of this and independently they will colour their judgements about the results of actions in the fiction.  If players are given incentive to "beat" other elemets ('challenges') in the fiction using their own guile, skills and luck, they will be naturally impelled to try to understand and relate to the GM's beliefs, mood, biases, etc., since a clear understanding of their situation will tell them that this is the most likely way to achieve their aims.I find this "game" somewhat divisive and tedious - possibly because I have played with a fairly stable group of players (though not all play at one time) for many years.  I see two ways to avoid this situation happening:1) Have some external reference that decides most points of judgement.  This does not have to totally nail down everything, but it should at least enable the players to understand a framework that allows them to predict judgements for the majority of cases without the need to examine the GM's predilictions or mood.  This framework is sometimes called "the rules".2) Encourage some focus of play other than the players using their own guile, skills and luck to overcome in-game challenges.  That is not to say that in-game challenges will not happen - characters having goals and meeting resistance in reaching them is a natural part of any interesting setting - but that the players will not be invested in using their own minds and wills in overcoming them to any great degree.I fit your "challenging players to think outside the box" in the second of these, even though that might seem strange.  It involves asking players to find interesting new areas to "explore", rather than asking them to formulate effective (and possibly novel) strategies within a strictly defined set of rules.As I say above, this seems to me to be "challenging the players to explore new concepts" rather than "challenge them to beat in-game challenges".  It can be fun and is a very valid way to roleplay, but it's not what I mean by "challenge-based play", which is much more akin to challenging someone to a game like chess, with fixed rules within which novel strategies, or simply effective old strategies, might be applied.I think that, if you want to encourage this sort of thing, you would be better served to approach the play differently than D&D.  I'm speculating, but I'm guessing that challenging the players to "guess what the GM would like" and then making clear that "the GM would like out-of-the-box solutions like this and this" could work, to a degree.  But then all the bulk of the D&D rules are doing is being dragged along as baggage; the core of the game is (a) the GM will reward you for having ideas like this, (b) the xp/level and character powers stuff in these books is the material that will be used to reward you.  If that is the case, why not jettison much of the D&D system and focus on the game you want to play?Fairly clearly I beg to differ <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I agree that 4E is not completely without issues - what system is?  But let's look at the ones you list:Treasure in 4E is, to my mind, part of the levelling process.  There is a "standard" rate at which characters are expected to gain treasure, treasure is (or, rather, was until the ill-conceived - in my view - 'Rarity' system came along) in the control of the players, within the confines of resources (money) and powers (Ritual casting).  Treasure I see therefore as a character attribute, similar to powers and feats.  Items are part of the "armoury" that the players have to overcome the challenges that comprise the game.Correct; they are the way that the players control the extent to which they "step up".  Nothing stops them from being wusses and chasing the "five minute workday".  But, with possible explanation and some clarity of vision, they might find that it is more fun to "step on up" to further challenges before they recharge once more.It's easy to see xp and levels as the reward system in 4E, but I think using it as such is problematic.  Play at level one has to be fun; play at all levels has to be fun.  Saying "you might get some neat payoff after being bored and frustrated for a few weeks" is never going to be a good sell to a prospective group.  So make play at all levels fun, and add milestone rewards - brilliant!Levels are also, as I pointed out in a discussion with pemerton, a form of "step on up".  So, you succeeded in manipulating those paltry powers to achieve victory - try now with these powers and resources as well!  The real "fun" comes not from the rewards, in the end, but from the exhilaration of "stepping on up" to (escalating) challenges as a player (not as a character).Yes - see the last point!  'Dying' is a failure - and it should be undesirable - but the real reward is not from the levels or the treasure, it's from the play of the game itself (which is actually true of all modes of play, but that's an aside).The focus of the game, here, is not the game world, or the characters themselves - it is the player's interaction with these things to face down challenges.  If they fail, so be it - failure is an inevitable part of facing challenges - but they should be allowed to pick themselves up and carry on, because it is, at the end of the day, only a game.As I noted above, I had/am having a discussion with pemerton in another thread.  Between you, you are advocating the other two clearly identified focusses for roleplaying besides Gamism as being "most viable" for 4E D&D.  As an advocate of the third focus, I naturally believe you are both wrong, but I do enjoy hearing your arguments and responding to them!  So far, though, I think I have more cogent reasons for believing that 4E is primarily suited to supporting 'Gamist' or "challenge based" play, and that when playing in other modes the best option is to redesign the rule system from scratch - possibly retaining some of the D&D colour and 'genre details'.  I think it's very sad that the controllers of the rights to that colour and genre detail are unlikely to develop another roleplaying game using them.  This leaves us with D&D either (a) not satisfying many of its players who would rather play with a different focus but love the colour and genre details, or (b) D&D being modified in ways that, the designers think, will better support the other foci, but will in fact just compromise its utility for 'Gamist' play.</blockquote>

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