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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9589805" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Well, see, a lot of experimental theater does do that kind of thing though. Brecht famously loved pointing out the artifice of his own plays within the plays themselves. Threepenny Opera ends with Mac the Knife stopping in the middle of his public execution to directly address the audience and say (paraphrasing, not the actual lines) “we all know in real life, I would just be executed here. But this is a fictional story, and I’m the protagonist, so that would make for a narratively unsatisfying conclusion. So, let’s all forget what we know would really happen and agree to enjoy the ending we want instead, because that’s what theater allows us to do,” and then the play resumes and the execution is halted and Mac gets a full pardon, which the crowd who had gathered to watch him be hanged celebrates quite boisterously. Lots of people hate that Threepenny Opera ends that way. Lots of people love it. It is not inherently good or bad, it’s just a choice, which audiences can and should draw their own conclusions about.As I’ve been saying, there are benefits and drawbacks to reification. We see in 3e a game that goes to such lengths to reify its mechanics that it becomes cumbersome, and we see in 4e a game that is so transparent about the true ludic nature of its mechanics that many players find it difficult to immerse themselves in. 5e has tended to fall somewhere between those extremes, and seemed to strike a balance that a very large audience found satisfying. With the 2024 revisions, we are seeing a bit of a shift towards less reification, and I think this is the root cause of a lot of the dissatisfaction we’re now seeing from a lot of people who loved early 5e.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 9589805, member: 6779196"] Well, see, a lot of experimental theater [I]does[/I] do that kind of thing though. Brecht famously loved pointing out the artifice of his own plays within the plays themselves. Threepenny Opera ends with Mac the Knife stopping in the middle of his public execution to directly address the audience and say (paraphrasing, not the actual lines) “we all know in real life, I would just be executed here. But this is a fictional story, and I’m the protagonist, so that would make for a narratively unsatisfying conclusion. So, let’s all forget what we know would really happen and agree to enjoy the ending we want instead, because that’s what theater allows us to do,” and then the play resumes and the execution is halted and Mac gets a full pardon, which the crowd who had gathered to watch him be hanged celebrates quite boisterously. Lots of people hate that Threepenny Opera ends that way. Lots of people love it. It is not inherently good or bad, it’s just a choice, which audiences can and should draw their own conclusions about. As I’ve been saying, there are benefits and drawbacks to reification. We see in 3e a game that goes to such lengths to reify its mechanics that it becomes cumbersome, and we see in 4e a game that is so transparent about the true ludic nature of its mechanics that many players find it difficult to immerse themselves in. 5e has tended to fall somewhere between those extremes, and seemed to strike a balance that a very large audience found satisfying. With the 2024 revisions, we are seeing a bit of a shift towards less reification, and I think this is the root cause of a lot of the dissatisfaction we’re now seeing from a lot of people who loved early 5e. [/QUOTE]

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