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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7166861" data-attributes="member: 996">Edit: I feel like this post is just going to look confrontational and ranty, so I'm going to re-state my conclusion, at the start here, in the vain hope of heading that off:Theories about RPGs, their systems and 'styles,'  seem to inevitably fall into the trap of taking elements that make up the roleplaying experience, separating them out, isolating them & declaring certain pairs of them to be mutually exclusive, when in fact, they're all not only compatible, not only synergistic, but vital.So, yeah, this is just another 'why can't we all just get along' rant.   Further Edit: And, my apologies to Ilbranteloth for unleashing this in a quote of his post, really, any post in this thread could have touched it off, including some of my own. There's certainly been a lot of plaintive whingeing over 'immersion' starting promptly in 2008, and continuing until the h4ters were done dancing and spitting on 4e's grave (so still going on, really).It's just 'realism' and 'simulationisn' wearing a different pair of jackboots, with which to stomp on anyone who wants to actually play a game or tell or story, or exercise their own creativity or find their own fun in any way that deviates from the immersionist's vision.  Because your precious immersion can be shattered by any build decisions (race, class, feats, backgrounds, etc), and any in-play decisions, and any mechanic, it gives you a pretext to dictate what & how other players play, and what rules the DM uses.  As such, it's a dangerous concept to lend any credence to, at all.  Unfortunate for anyone for whom it is a real creative agenda, who is actually able to pursue it individually yet still co-exist with others' creativity, that it gets abused that way and can't help but be rife for such abuse by it's very nature.  But there it is. For me, "Immersion" as a concept, is fatally tainted.  If the same positives (and there /are/ positives, I've experienced them, myself, in the past), can be articulated and worked towards /without/ putting undue restrictions on anyone/everyone else, maybe some related concept could be rehabilitated and put to good use.Maybe. Beg to differ.  5e's DM-Empowerment approach to the rules lets the DM wishing to run an immersive game take resolution, and thus direct engagement with the rules, behind the screen.  It's ideally suited for a hypothetical non-pathological take on the concept.  Min-maxers were extremely well served by 4e</blockquote>You wouldn't know it by the vitriol of the 3.5/PF faction of the edition war.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Of course, in a sense, 4e did accommodate min/maxers (optimizers or powergamers) very well, in that they could pursue their preferred style without wrecking the game for anyone else at the table no so deeply inclined to system mastery, because it was such a robustly balanced game (by D&D standards, really, objectively, it was barely-adequate).  OTOH, in another sense, it was very frustrating to them, because it offered mostly meager rewards for deep system mastery, relative to obvious build choices, and, where more rewarding loopholes were found, they were often quickly closed by a subsequent update.   There have also been some quality sand-boxxy adventures.  But, really, those of us who like less directive, more improvisational play use published adventures, if we use them at all, just for inspiration - it doesn't matter if they're linear or not. I wouldn't say they support that, so much as they suffer from it, as it grinds the game to a halt and can be dreadfully frustrating unless the rules are very neatly laid out, impeccably indexed, and paragons of brevity & clarity.3.x's solution was to incentivize knowning the rules inside-out with rewards to system mastery, 4e's to have clear/consistent rules & print the out the relevant ones right on the character sheet, and 5e's to have the DM ruling on everything, all the time.   DM-facing rules were treated as a sort of inner mystery, yes.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  The effect was not unlike that which 5e goes for. I'm not so sure all those things /make/ a playstyle.  The design - and even presentation - of a ruleset, for instance, can permit, encourage, punish or even reward some of the elements that make up a particular playstyle.  3.5 lavishly rewarded system mastery, which is a component of some styles and potentially irritating to others (at least, when it's lavishly rewarded).  Classic D&D seemed to fall into a few recognizeable 'styles,' though they weren't called that back then, based mainly on the DM's attitude:  "Monty Haul" and "Killer" probably being the most recognizable. That's how I'd feel about it, too.  But, if we take liking a tactical game a little differently, as disliking the strategic side of the game, then it makes a little more sense.  In a sandbox, there is more potential for a strategic element, where do we go next and to what end and how do we try to accomplish that end, ultimately, while in a linear game, it's easier to focus just on the next challenge, and even only during the next challenge.That's not how it's being couched, but I could see that maybe having something to do with it.   [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]?  Am I completely off base? And the theories, after having seen too many of them, and having seen them twisted to various agendas, aren't worth much, and almost always seem to fall into the trap of taking elements that make up the roleplaying experience, separating them & declaring them mutually exclusive, when in fact, they're all not only compatible, not only synergistic, but vital.[/QUOTE]

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