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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3816515" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I said, strategy is not just about per-day abilities. As it happens, I mostly GM Rolemaster, which has a mixture of per-day (spell points), per-encounter (this is roughly true of sustaind Adrenal Moves) and round-by-round trade-off (attack vs parry) resrouces. The per-day resources have rather little interesting effect on player strategy - when they are running low they turn invisible, fly high into the air, conjure a platform and rest until they get PPs back. It is, in fact, a rather tedious part of the game.The interesting strategy in the game consists in cultivating alliances, trying to turn enemies against one another, plotting out the sequence of missions they want to engage in (eg do we assault X straight away before they know we're coming, or do we free Y from demonic control first to give us a place of safe refuge?).  This is also not true. For example, if the PCs lose a combat then that could have very great significance for a future combat (eg the future antagonist knows the PCs are coming, or has reinforcements, or will retreat to take shelter with the foe who was not defeated, or . . .)Being a civilian rather than a soldier my life involves little of either in the literal sense. In the metaphorical sense it's hard to say: I make many short-term decisions and long term decisions, but very few of them involve resource management. (My bank already decided those for me when it set the interest rate on my mortgage.)I agree that strategy can involve role assumption. But I don't see how there is a great deal of role assumption in deciding to run away and rest because the magic-user is low on spells.I agree that introducing per-encounter resources introduces a new dimension into the game, and does downplay, if not completely remove, the operational dimension of play. I have posted about this at great length in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=206309" target="_blank">another thread</a> (the one that OP referred to), espcially <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3813196&postcount=1344" target="_blank">here</a>, so won't repeat those ideas in any detail. I will just say, however, that certain pretty standard fantasy adventure plots and themes become more playable if per-day resources are not the only ones available.I don't see that resource-management within the context of an encounter is any less role-infused than resource-management across encounters. Both require a sound knowledge of the mechanics and a sound intuition as to what the future might bring.Furthermore, an interesting feature of most pure-per-encounter systems is that they involve Fate Points/Hero Points which are earned by the PC engaging in partiuclar ways with certain plot/thematic elements chosen by the player, and which can be spent in pursuit of those same elements. When tactical decision making is being shaped by the acquisition and expenditure of these sorts of Points, a high degree of roleplay is taking place.For many players, not really. It's an exploration game, but what they want to explore may be some particular plot or theme, not life as such. In particular, given that players come to the table to have fun playing a game they often do not want adversity for their PC to amount to adversity for them!Operational play of the sort you are defending also has a tendency to make players miss turns: the wizard misses a turn when s/he has no spell to cast, the rogue misses a turn when s/he is guarding the exit, etc. For many players, this is an unhappy feature in a game - they don't just want to know that their PC is contributing to the party's success, they also actually want to do something at the table. The introduction of per-encounter resources is intended to reduce the amount of such "turn-missing".In that case, I suspect that you will find 4e at least as little to your taste as 3E. Do you play primarily OD&D, 1st ed AD&D or Moldvay/Cook D&D (if I've understood your preferences correctly, it seems like one of these would be the best edition of D&D for you)?In a system with highly developed character build and action resolution mechanics (like 3E, or RQ, or RM, or indeed most roleplaying systems that I'm familiar with) there seem to be basically two ways of going: either character build is constrained by what is played out in-game (this is how RQ does it - skill improvement depends on getting ticks, which depend upon using the skill in game) or else character build is taken to be indicative of what is happening in-game, although it may not have been played out (so we infer that the PC has been studying Orcish in her spare time, because she now has a skill rank in it when she didn't before). GMing a game which takes the second approach, it seems to me that it is up to the player to explain how, in-game, the PC acquired the new skill/feat/ability score.The second approach probably leads to a greater degree of mechanical balance between PCs, but as you identify it also does require taking a different attitude towards the simulation-relationship between what actually happends at the table, and in-game events.It should probably also be noted that, for someone who preferes the first approach, the character progression rules in D&D, with automatic combat skill improvement, only make sense on the assumption that the gameplay mainly involves combat. This is one way in which D&D can be experienced as limiting by some players of the game.I couldn't think of a better reason for tossing an element of a game's mechanics than that people no longer want to play that sort of game. What else would a company that designs and sells games base its decisions on, except its perception of the game-playing tastes of its likely customers? Are you suggesting that they have some sort of duty of fidelity to the game as such?</blockquote>

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