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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7636613" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I’m not Campbell, but I’ll throw some words at this from GMing perspective.Its definitely true that most people almost surely enjoy the experience of games they like, and through their affinity they develop or have a natural aptitude for better play.Humans have pretty extreme neurological diversity, so I would say that it’s trivially true that cognitive predispositions and mental frameworks (be they inherent or earned through tenured environmental exposure) can make it less likely that people change significantly over time or pivot from one thing to another, and back, through the course of time.But that is as far as I’m willing to go.Different system tech absolutely enables inhabitation of an experience in ways that others can’t. Two easy examples of this:1) The Dogs excerpt I brought up earlier is just not doable in other formats. Actually playing through emotional warfare of reading a letter (the acuity-ablating, heart-tugging antagonism of a separated lovestruck couple) and finding out it’s actual impacts on the person in the field (who has a dangerous and difficult job that requires total commitment and attention-span), and how those impacts turn into a feedback loop that the character becomes beholden to...well, that is not something that any old resolution mechanics, PC build and reward cycle scheme, and GMing ethos can legitimately pull off.2) Look at the extreme disparity of how people perceived Fighter’s melee control mechanics in 4e (the catch-22 of Marking and Forced Movement specifically). I’ve been a martial artist and an athlete (ball sports, wrestling, jiujitsu) my whole life. No game tech I’ve ever seen captures the OODA Loop that a physical combatant/competition participant inhabits as they navigate their resident decision trees (be it the catch-22 game of body control/feints/transition progression in jiujitsu or playing halfcourt defense in basketball, both on-ball and off-ball, as you protect your hoop and your teammates).Yet look at the backlash by certain segments of the D&D community, relentlessly deriding this suite of abilities as boardgaming nonsense!——————If you think I have some inherent affection for these games and advocate for them because of some kind of unexamined “like” for them...then you’ve got it inverted. I like them precisely because of their design’s impact on play and have developed further affection because of my scrutiny and reflection of the play experience.</blockquote>

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