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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6079960" data-attributes="member: 42582">OK.Exploitation of fictional positioning, and leveraging resources (both player and PC) to do that, is pretty central to a lot of RPG play: though it can serve different purposes in different styles, I think.But as my heated response to you signalled, I'm pretty fed up with this idea that somehow 4e is a fictional-positioning-free game. I'm prepared to believe, based on the evidence of these boards, that some people play(ed) it that way, but I don't know why they did. The rulebooks never say anything about that.I can't really comment on 2nd ed - my own personal view of it is very close to Edwards' line on The Forge, that it's an incoherent mess with mechanics suited to one thing being used to do something quite different that is itself barely grasped.Classic D&D, on the other hand (OD&D, AD&D, and at least one mainstream way of playing B/X) I think I get pretty well, though I'm not personally the biggest fan. And it relies heavily on this sort of one-upmanship between players and GMs. (I think that's why the tendency to adversarial GMing is built-in, though realisation of that tendency is not necessary in every case). It has some consequences, though - for instance, it affects replay value: once the players have worked out the clever/cheesy way to circumvent X (be X trolls, or the super-tetanus pits in White Plume Mountain, or whatever) you don't really want to do it again - you need to come up with some new X. I think it also requires a readiness to kill of PCs, suck their levels, wreck their gear, etc - if you're not prepared to conusme their resources (and in this style of play all those things are player resources for circumventing challenges) then you're not really challenging them, and the game will turn into your basic Monty Haul-ish super-cheese.One criticism I would make of AD&D compared to OD&D is that it has features in its rules that are actually at odds with its gamist purpose. For instance, all the guff in the AD&D fireball spell description will have been adjudicated, in the course of play, by OD&D GMs coping with creative/cheesy play by their players. Why are those adjudications now being written into the rules? Better to leave the rules free and flexible, and give new GMs advice on how to adjudicate creative/cheesy play. One result might be that fireball works differently at my table from yours, but I think that's got to be par for the course (just as in my 4e game upper paragon Acrobatics can be used to ride a flying carpet into a purple worm's gullet, but another 4e game might be much less gonzo in its deployment of p 42).This also relates to your question upthread - why D&D sim at all? Everytime the description of some game element - be it the fireball spell, the meaning of Lawful alignment, the content of the paladin's code, etc - gets written into the rulebook instead of being left simply as a product of one group's play experience, the pressure towards sim play increases, as play becomes less about playing fast and loose like the early players did, but rather slavishly adhering to their rulings and their adjudications in an attempt to recreate their experiences via karaoke. (I should add - this analysis, including the "karaoke" lable, draws heavily on Edwards.)By the time you get to 3E, I think much of the tenor has changed, adherence to canonical adjudications has become paramount among at least a vocal part of the community, and hence what was once clever is now considered just cheesy. Widespread internet communication makes a difference too - if I was the first D&D player in Victoria (my home state in Australia) to think of surfing the doors over the super-tetanus pits then that's clever, even if dozens of people have already done that in the US. Once I'm reading cheet sheets and advice blogs on the internet, not so much. Wahoo gamist play depends at least in part upon challenges that the players deal with being novel ones.I hope that makes some sense on the relationship between creativity and mere cheese.Nice. In 4e I'd call for an Arcana check as part of the adjudication. (What I'd do with the result of the check is a bit variable - but partial success plus damage to the caster tends to be my default these days for less than a Hard DC.)When a couple of PCs in my game recently were swallowed by a purple worm, the sorcerer raised a pillar of stone (the Heroes of Elemental Chaos utility) to force its jaws open. (The spell needs earth as a material component. When the player pointed out that the PCs had been pursing the worm for hours as it tunnelled through rock, I had to concede that there might be at least a teensy bit of earth inside its mouth.) This was a case where I called for an Arcana check, but the damage actually ended up being taken by the invoker who, concerned about excesses of chaotic energy, channelled it into his Rod of 7 Parts and ended up internalising the damage on a mediocre Arcana roll.Once the worm's jaws were open the sorcerer got a bonus on his Acrobatics to escape, and the invoker was able to teleport out (because an open mouth gave LoS to the outside).This is the sort of stuff that I think of as creative spellcasting, and I think 4e supports it as well as any other mainstream fantasy system (though it puts its own spin on it, eg with the DC and damage defaults that I'm using in my own adjudications).My solution to this is to go gonzo. In the "reforge Whelm into Overwhelm" skill challenge, the fighter got the final success in the challenge after Dungeoneering - to set up the forge; Diplomacy - to keep the dwarven artisans steady and focused on their task; and Arcana - to constrain the tremendous arcane energies - had been exhauseted, and prayers to Moradin had not helped (failed Religion - Moradin wanted to test the fighter's wortthiness, not just assume it!). Successful Hard Endurance check with a +2 from burning Fighter's Grit, and the PC shoved his hands into the forge and held the hamer down himself until the artificers could grasp it firmly with their tongs! (Remove Affliction was then used to cure the burns.)The ranger riding the carpet into the worm to help his swallowed friend is another example.I don't know any other way to balance martial with mid-to-high magical power.For me, the non-D&D games that have influenced me amd my 4e GMing are HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling and Burning Wheel (especially the Adventure Burner).Definitely.</blockquote>

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