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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Odhanan" data-source="post: 3926178" data-attributes="member: 12324">What follows is a cross-board posting from OYT. I just thought it might be constructive to share it with the ENWorld community. Here goes:Alright. I've read Mike's comments with great attention and I am now going to address a few critical points, in my opinion. Before I do so, I'd like to precise that this is the kind of comments I was waiting for. They are constructive, well articulated and provide a clear insight into the design philosophy of the Fourth edition of the game. I was waiting for no less from Mike, and as usual, he delivered.That doesn't mean, however, that I agree with all he's saying here. There are a few key passages here, and I'm going to address them in order of appearance:I think this part shows a clear definition of what the input into a DM's or player's abilities ought to be on the part of the written game. Advice as far as game design is concerned is worthless. The only way to have an input on a group's enjoyment of the game is to codify intents into rules. This design philosophy is confirmed later on: "There are no mechanical elements that allow player input into story in 3e. In 4e, we have mechanics that have that potential: allow you players to make up their own quests."To encourage players to do something, it's better to have rules for it.I fundamentally disagree with this, from experience. Rules need provide some measure of fairness around the game table. They sustain the suspension of disbelief going on around the table by providing laws by which the actions in the game are resolved. No more, no less. By their very nature, rules are inhibitors of certain behavior. Rules frame. They don't open horizons unless the user knows what the intent behind the rule is, and understands from there how to use them, tweak them, change them, and build on them. We've seen a clear effect of this with Third Edition's feats. Many players and DMs out there have been repelled by them because they seem to be on/off switches: either you have the ability to power attack an opponent, or you don't; if you don't have the feat, you can't power attack an opponent. If you don't have the Acrobatic feat, that means you're character is not acrobatic. And so on. This of course is not true if the users choose to use some critical thinking and adjudicate situations based on circumstances and believability. But the rules are to be circumvented to achieve that enjoyment of the game.Which brings us back to the advice provided in a PHB and DMG. These are critical bits of information destined to provide the seeds of this critical thinking on the parts of players and DM. Advice, contrarily to what Mike suggests here, IS input. Players and DM then choose whether they want to follow the advice or not. Whether they build on it or dismiss it. What we've got here is the notion that since a part of the users of the game dismiss the advice, it isn't worth a damn in terms of input on how people play the game. I think this is a symptomatic generalization that demonstrates a leveling of the design of the game by catering to the lowest common denominator (those who don't follow the advice). I just can't agree with that.This design philosophy is also confirmed by the rhetorical question provided by Mike:Two claims here that I want to challenge: 1/ "I can't force people to be "good" players, and 2/ Styles of play of one table do not influence another table.You sure can't force people to be "good" players. The question of standard is important. Basically, Mike here tells us that there is no standard of what a "good" player is and there shouldn't be, because however you enjoy the game, it's the purpose of the game, and that's it. I think this is problematic on a design point of view. I too think you can't force anyone to use a game this or that way, but a game surely is designed around an idea of what sort of enjoyment it provides. Then, you can give advice on how to achieve the enjoyment the game is supposed to provide (which brings us back to the notion that advice is worthless according to Mike). I think a game is always more effective on an enjoyment level when it is designed around a notion of the type of fun it provides. If there is no definition of the type of fun the game's suppose to provide, then there is no target for the design. No thematic. No bull's eye.And that's not like the way other people play the game doesn't influence the way we are playing at home. It does. More so than ever, actually, with the internet, online games, no soon with DDI, and so on, but it has always been the case. First, there is the "common experience" provided by the game. With D&D's first incarnation, the pillar of this common experience was The Dragon. As far as we can reach in the history of modern RPGs, players and DMs have been sharing input and information about how to better their games. They've been thus creating the notion of what is appropriate, and what isn't at a game table (hence the "munchkins", the "monty hauls", and so many more extreme behaviors that have made their ways into the infamous ways of playing the game). It's part of the nature of the game to foster interaction between its participants, no matter how remote they are from each other.4E embraces this concept full speed by making DDI one of the four main integrated pillars of the edition. If there is interaction between the players of the game world-wide, there is the creation of this common wisdom, knowledge and experience of how the game can be enjoyed or not. The way some fraction of the users of the game end up playing the game does participate to the common pool of experience, which ends up influencing further designs of the game, and how the people playing the game understand it. It forges expectations on the player's part, which later can show up at my game table when I want to run a Greyhawk game and that a play wants to play a Golden Wyvern Ninja, for instance. It surely does impact my game, through the publications or through the people sitting at my game table. Negating that amounts to a dismissal of one of the biggest components of the game's history that motivated things like the publication of Advanced rules for the game so many years ago, or how a Fourth edition is now being published, for instance, and thus how many players playing the sort of game I enjoy will end up being interested or not in my games.This is confirmed by the rhetorical question "Do you want us to make a game that gamers want or do you want us to make a game that you want?" Ergo, the way other people play the game does have an impact on my own game.I would go on in my commentary, but I think I'd just turn round and round as the other quotes are just repeats of the same core arguments.What do you guys think?</blockquote>

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