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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9590231" data-attributes="member: 2067">One of the points I'm advocating for is that it is substance. Not just presentation and preference. That being worth doing means it is doing some work in the play of the game.It is pretense, but so are many things of substance in the game. Monster stats themselves are a pretense. It takes work to get in the head of your PC. It's effort deployed regularly in the play of the game, an action demanded of the player. A fully baked (&quot;reified&quot;) game element makes that a little easier, a little smoother. It allows and encourages me as a player to pretend to be my character rather than being a player controlling a character. A longsword dealing consistent damage when wielded by a hobgoblin or a conjuring spell referencing an actual creature help that. When a game abandons that, it's not just a stylistic choice about presentation. It's doing a worse job at helping you play your PC. That tradeoff might be worth it (there is something to be said for simplicity - a lot of '24 monster stats do that), but it is a tradeoff where the game is choosing to do something worse in exchange for doing something else better. It's not just how something looks, it's how it behaves at the table.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 9590231, member: 2067"] One of the points I'm advocating for is that it [I]is[/I] substance. Not just presentation and preference. That being worth doing means it is doing some work in the play of the game. It is pretense, but so are many things of substance in the game. Monster stats themselves are a pretense. It takes work to get in the head of your PC. It's effort deployed regularly in the play of the game, an action demanded of the player. A fully baked ("reified") game element makes that a little easier, a little smoother. It allows and encourages me as a player to pretend to be my character rather than being a player controlling a character. A longsword dealing consistent damage when wielded by a hobgoblin or a conjuring spell referencing an actual creature help that. When a game abandons that, it's not just a stylistic choice about presentation. It's doing a worse job at helping you play your PC. That tradeoff might be worth it (there is something to be said for simplicity - a lot of '24 monster stats do that), but it [I]is[/I] a tradeoff where the game is choosing to do something worse in exchange for doing something else better. It's not just how something looks, it's how it behaves at the table. [/QUOTE]

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