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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5570443" data-attributes="member: 18280">Out of curiosity, do you think that there is anything odd that I cut & pasted that brief description from the post he was answering?  I.e., that the post where he asks for a definition is a response to the post containing the same?That seems to be an impression which, AFAICT, the remainder of your post (preceding this comment and after this comment) is actually addressed to.  Which is odd, because I can cut & paste the answer to this from a prior post, too:No, despite the above, we are not trying to shut down conversation which used terminology that might demonstrate that it is reasonable for someone else to not like whatever it is that the discussion is about.I am sorry that you have decided that criticism = "you have problems with how 4E treats, well, just about everything, as far as I can tell"; and I am sorry that your response to rational criticism is to try to ridicule it into being somehow irrational.Moreover, I am sorry that you (apparently) cannot grasp the concept of fiction.  I mean, watching television, going to the movies, or reading a book, must be difficult if you cannot grasp the concept of what this "mythical" fiction is.But, I don't take responsibility for that.Some methods of rules/fiction interaction tend to encourage role-playing more than others. I.e., the more the board becomes the fictional space (rather than the less it is a representative, if even used, of a shared fictional space), the more removed the characters become.Not only does the 4e ruleset seem to focus on the board more than any previous version of the game (unless you count 2e's Combat & Tactics, which I would claim has the same problem), but the arguments related to 4e consistently centre around the idea that the rules should take primacy over the fiction.When the statement of a character's action is intended to be both (a) what is occurring in the rules and (b) what is occurring in the fiction, as is the case with "I attack" or "I attempt to disarm", role-playing identification is reinforced.When the statement of a character's action is decoupled from what is occurring in the fiction, role-playing identification is to some degree disengaged as well. "I use power X. I miss, doing Y damage. Well, it isn't really a miss, or isn't really damage, is it?" or "I use power Z. The snake takes W damage and is knocked prone. How can it be knocked prone? Well, what I really did was flip it on it's back....."If you define "role-playing" as "colourful description" or "moving the shoe in Monopoly", yes, you can then say correctly, "and there is no differences based upon the ruleset."Likewise if you define red as blue, you can easily claim that the sky is most often red.But that doesn't mean that the sky is most often red, in general, nor does it mean that the problem people are describing vis-a-vis role-playing doesn't exist.  All it means is that you fail, willingly or unwillingly, to either understand the problem or to "see" it if you do.Thankfully, though, as I said upthread, the designers of the game seem to understand and see the problem!  Which might lead to a 5e that I would enjoy.YMMV, though.  Indeed, I would be surprised if it did not.RC</blockquote>

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