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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5500592" data-attributes="member: 42582">I made it pretty clear upthread that I'm using Forge terminology.What Collins talks about isn't about gamism in this sense. Being self-conscious about game elements as game elements is, probably, at odds with some sorts of simulationism (= exploration-based play). It isn't necessarily connected, though, to "step on up" play (= gamism, in the Forge sense).By narrativism, I mean a game in which the purpose of play is for the players and GM together to engage with and address thematic (moral, aesthetic) ideas in the course o play, and to express there own conclusions on these matters. If the gameworld or the mechanics already answer these questions (eg via alignment rules, dark side point rules, rules that tell us when a PC becomes evil and also tell us that evil PCs become NPCs, etc) then it doesn't serve this purpose so well.I think it's pretty apparent that 4e has two modes of action resolution - tactical/combat, and skill challenges. The text about movement rates, including movement rates for swimming and climbing, strikes me as being for the first. I'd hardly say that the various published examples of skill challenges that use Athletics skill in a way divorced from these tactical issues of movement rate are ignoring the rules. They're just taking place in the non-tactical mode. (As I said upthread - and it's something I've said many times before - the lack of guidance on integrating the two modes is the biggest weakness in 4e's action resolution rules.)As for using Arcana to "minionise" an NPC, this doesn't strike me as ignoring the rules any more than the recent module (I think in Monster Vault) that allows use of a social skill to inflict damage on an NPC. After all, 4e does have minions. And with a few exceptions (perhaps decrepit skeletons really are very decrepit) minion is a metagame status (this is obviously true for goblin cutters, human rabble and thugs, etc) - much like hit points. So imposing minion status via a skill check is pretty analogous to imposing hit point loss via a social skill check.In my mind, this is the sort of thing that page 42 is for.I'm not a big fan of the classic D&D paladin, for two reasons. First, because it's dependent on GM-arbitrated alignment descriptions, it is the GM's thematic conception that dominates over the player's. Second, the mechanics already answer the question "Will doing XYZ (various morally dubious actions) lead ultimately to corruption".The 4e warlock doesn't get mechanically tested, that is true. For me that is a virtue, because it leaves the field of interpretation and engagement open to the players and GM. Every time an infernal warlock uses a power, for example, s/he is drawing on the power of the Nine Hells. I think it's pretty obvious how a GM might use this to introduce thematic conflict into a game, and oblige the player of that PC to engage with that theme in some way as part of driving the game forward. (At present, I'm in a similar point in my game with a Chaos Sorcerer about to become a Demonskin Adept. And he's just retrained Diplomacy to Intimidate in order to support a rattling power. So he's providing his own answer to the question - Does chaos lead to corruption?).Well, I could equally say that there are some people who seem simply never to have had the good fortune of getting into a really good narrativist game, where play is driven by the thematic concerns the players bring to the table, rather than by the desire to explore a pre-given fantasy world.But I wouldn't know whether or not that's true, or whether the people to whom I'm imputing this (in)experience just have different tastes.I've always agreed with those who say 4e differs from 3E. I've frequently asserted that it doesn't do particularly well at supporting play where the main aim is exploration of a fantasy world that is, in some metaphorical sense, given prior to play. And I've always taken it for granted that this is because it contains a range of non-simulationist mechanics that many fans of 3E dislike: minions; Intimidate skill causing hp loss; healing surges as a non-simulationist method for handling recovery of hp both in and out of combat; skill challenges as an action resolution mechanic that makes the introduction of complications into a situation something divorced from considerations simply of scene extrapolation and ingame causal logic; classes like paladins and warlocks divorced from an alignment mechanic; etc. Certainly, these are the mechanics frequently criticised by those who say they don't like 4e because of its non-simulationist approach.So for me, the strangest thing about this thread is being told by many of those critics that, in fact, 3E handles non-simulationist play just as well as 4e, and that it either also possesses these mechanics, or can repiclates them just as well, and that their express existence in 4e makes no difference to the sort of roleplaying that 4e can support.</blockquote>

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