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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7726459" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think it can lead to confusion if what we are trying to talk about is game design and/or game play, but the conceptual framing we use is all drawn from the fictional "reality" of the ingame context.In 4e, for instance, there is no difficulty in having a combat resolved by (infiction) strategic rather than tactical considerations (like, say, diverting a river). That would generally be resolved using skill challenge mechanics.When someone says that 4e is "combat as sport", I think what they are trying to get at is that 4e's resolution system is mechanically "closed" - with considerations of the fiction being used to establish or inform mechanical elements of the closed resolution. This is true of its combat mechanics, and true of skill challenges, and is something that 4e derives from "indie" RPG design.Conversely, when someone says that AD&D is "combat as war", I think what they are trying to get it is that AD&D's resolution system involves much more direct adjudication of the fiction without that having to be mediated via mechanics, or expressed in mechanical terms.So in 4e, if I divert a river to flood an enemy encampment, that probably allows a Nature check in the context of a skill challenge that has as its goal the routing or destruction of enemy forces. Success on that check increases the prospects of said routing/destruction; failure indicates that something has gone wrong in my planning (which could be anything from miscalculating the hydraulics of the situation, through to Poseidon showing up to protect the enemy forces from the raging waters, depending on how the GM wants to adjudicate the failure given the broader context of established fiction, tier of play, etc).Whereas in AD&D, if I divert a river onto the enemy forces there is unlikely to be any mechanically structured process used to adjudicate the consequences, and its more likely that the GM will do his/her best to determine the prospects of success of the actual techniques I describe my character using (perhaps setting a % chance of success) and then directly adjudicating, within the fiction, the effect on the enemy camp of having floodwater pour through it.Neither approach demands more or less cleverness per se. The 4e approach is, I think, more rewarding for people who have imaginative ideas (perhaps drawn from familiarity with genre fiction) about how a problem might be resolved. The AD&D approach is, I think, more rewarding for people who want to work out in detail the effects that flooding river waters will have on pre-modern military encampments. I'm guessing a good number of wargamers fall into the second category, but I imagine a good number of non-wargamer RPGers might fall into the first category.This is certainly something that 4e-type/"indie"-type mechanics are meant to facilitate.And this is what the AD&D-type approach can degrade into, if the GM's unmediated adjudication of the fiction ends up turning on idiosyncratic judgements of plausibility rather than resting on a sound and shared understanding of the fictional situation (such as the hydraulics of diverted rivers).But I think the real merit of the 4e/"indie" approach isn't about avoiding this degraded version of an AD&D approach, but about achieving the affirmative benefits of mechanically closed resolution, which is primarily its tendency to yield something that is recognisable as a story (rising action, climax, denouement, etc) in a reliable fashion.</blockquote>

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