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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6335142" data-attributes="member: 42582">In AD&D - at least Gygax's AD&D, which is what the Giants' players are playing - these are not mere flavour text. They are also rules text. How do we know that an elemental is a hard-to-control denizen of another plane? Because in certain circumstances it will turn on its conjurer. How do we differentiate a cold wand from a fire wand? Because the former can freeze water and the latter ignite timber.In your reply to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] I can't work out what your word "this" is referring to.Here is the sentence that I said was a mischaracterisation of 4e: "the "math works" 4E approach also divorces the story distinctions from the mechanical nuance." The story distinctions are not divorced from the mechanical nuance. They result from the mechanical nuance - whether this is the nuance of keywords, the nuance of action economy, the nuance of skill descriptions, or the interaction of all these things plus other mechanical elements.The mode by which story distinctions are derived from mechanical nuance is, of course, different from (say) Rolemaster or Runequest. (It's not terribly different from Gygax's AD&D, though.) But there is no divorcing of one from the other. That is what I am saying is a mischaracterisation.Gygax's AD&D utterly takes this for granted. Read the closing pages of his PHB (before the Appendices). He talks about how "skilled players" play the game - including, for example, making effective selections of spells, equipment and the like.Movies and books don't write themselves! They are authored, and when they are being authored then chance and decision-making come to the fore.The trick with an RPG is to (i) reconcile the contributions of multiple authors, and (ii) bring it about that all the participants, even the GM, are surprised by the outcome. It turned out that it took around 30 years of RPG design to solve this particular puzzle. (Prior solutions generally solve (i) by putting the GM in charge, but thereby fail to solve (ii) - the GM, being the decider, is not surprised.)I need to know what and who the PCs are. This doesn't require mechanical definition, though - natural language descriptors can do the job, and if the system is good then the mechanics that the players choose for their PCs will give effect to those natural language descriptors.Whose imagination? If you are saying that the GM being like a player means imagination is not required, are you saying that players don't (have never?) needed to use their imagination? But the GM does?In any event, a GM who plays monsters as the players play their PCs is in my view misplaying. The players' job is to advocate for their PCs. They should be pushing for their PCs. Whereas the GM's job is to frame and oversee the resolution of the ingame situations. The GM should be controlling NPCs and monsters so as to drive the game forward by putting the right pressure on the right player at the right moment. This is a very different job from that of a player, and a GM who doesn't do it well will lessen the overall quality of the play experience.How do you learn who the villain is?I'm not really seeing the connection between "story and imagination" and "rooms being barren". If you mean that rooms aren't described (as far as furnishings, architectural and decoration style, etc) I haven't noticed 4e adventures to be wildly different from adventures for other editions. Can you give examples?But for me the bigger point is that, when I think story, I don't think "Eclavdra keeps her spare capes in the second drawer of her tall boy." Of the original WotC 3E modules there are two that I have used and enjoyed: Speaker in Dreams, and Bastion of Broken Souls. With the former I cut out a lot of the cruft (random and/or pointless encounters). With the latter I ignored the stupid dungeon crawl at the end, as well as all the "so-and-so always attacks" nonsense. What I liked about both is that they had strong thematic hooks: in the former, a baron held hostage to a Cthulhu-esqu cult; in the latter, an ancient pact among the gods that is bringing doom to the world, and can only be resolved by treating with a banished god who was exiled precisely for his objection to the pact in the first place. Room descriptions don't figure in my memory of either scenario.If I am trying to work out what happened in a gaming session I don't want a story. The events of any session - boring or gripping, the most dramatic player decision-making or the worst railroad of all time - can be reproduced as a passable story by a half-decent writer. When I read an actual play report I am looking for a report of the play - who decided what, and for what reason, and how did it affect the resolution of the game.From those play reports I can tell that I'm not the only person who has found ToH a tedious thing; and I can tell that I'm not the only one who has played with a group that likes to deploy its resources effectively when the GM is pouring on the pressure.I have less and less idea of what you mean by "story". But anyway, you can read any of my many actual play reports on these boards to work out what I enjoy in FRPGing. (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?355600-Session-report-(Apect-of)-Vecna-defeated-demon-bargained-with" target="_blank">Here</a> is the most recent one.) The simplest summary would probably be "PCs who are on a collision-course with the gameworld's mythic history". Though I can also enjoy smaller-scale political games too.What you describe as "really liking tactical play" I think is actually enjoying the rules working. If the rules don't work then the GM has to make up outcomes. At which point the GM is not going to be surprised, and also the players have lost the ability to determine what happens in the game.3E has basically nothing to offer me as an FRPGer. The fact that you see it and 4e as largely equivalent, whereas I see that one is well-suited for me while the other is hopeless, suggests even more that by "story" and "imagination" you mean something very different from what I mean in the context of RPGing.I have no real idea what you mean by this, other than you seem to be implying that my game (or someone else's game a bit like mine?) is shallow.I rely on NPCs and monsters to make things interesting and memorable because I think conflict is more dramatic than exploration. I don't find rooms - be they "barren" or rich in wallpapers and architraves - to be all that interesting or memorable. In 30+ years of RPGing, when I try to bring to mind a memorable room the only two that come straight to mind are the opening corridor of ToH, and the flooding vampire room that I used in my 4e game (adapted from the FR Sceptretower module, I think combining a couple of different rooms into one). What I remember are things that happened, primarily to PCs but often involving NPCs.I don't see how that is a "crutch", as opposed to playing the game. (And I also don't see why monsters and NPCs, or conflict more generally, so often on these boards gets equated with combat.)</blockquote>

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