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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8448366" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is incredibly strange to me. Throughout the 4e era I improved my 4e play by engaging with the analysis and discussion of RPGing in general, and other games that had relevant things to say - Burning Wheel (the best advice on scene-framing play I know), HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling (both excellent for skill challenges, because pioneering RPGs for closed scene resolution play) being some of the main ones.Analysis of RPGs in general also helps. For instance, <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">this</a> from Ron Edwards basically sets out the essence of 4e's mechanics and anticipates every flashpoint in the Edition wars:But if Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes . . . * Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what. * Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion. * More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.In virtue of having thought about RPGing that adopts this sort of approach, I was able to write the following bit of advice to the prospective players in my 4e game, some time towards the end of 2008 or in early 2009 (sblocked for length; the references to 3E D&D and RM reflects the main systems the members of the group had been playing up to that point):[spoiler]<h4>Relationship Between Game Mechanics and Gameworld</h4>Unlike 3E or Rolemaster, a lot of the 4e mechanics work best if they are not treated as a literal model of what is going on in the gameworld. So keep in mind that the main thing the mechanics tell you is what, mechanically, you can have your PC do. What your PC’s actions actually mean in the gameworld is up to you to decide (in collaboration with the GM and the other players at the table).Some corollaries of this:<h4>Character Levels</h4>Levels for PCs, for NPCs and for monsters set the mechanical parameters for encounters. They don’t necessarily have any determinate meaning in the gameworld (eg in some encounters a given NPC might be implemented as an elite monster, and in other encounters – when the PCs are higher level – as a minion). As your PC gains levels, you certainly open up more character build space (more options for powers, more feats, etc). The only definite effect in the gameworld, however, is taking your paragon path and realising your epic destiny. How to handle the rest of it – is your PC becoming tougher, or more lucky, or not changing much at all in power level relative to the rest of the gameworld – is something that will have to come out in the course of play as the story of your PC unfolds.<h4>PC Rebuilding</h4>The rules for retraining, swapping in new powers, background feats etc, don’t have to be interpreted as literally meaning that your PC has forgotten how to do things or suddenly learned something new. Feel free to treat this as just emphasising a different aspect of your PC that was always there, but hadn’t yet come up in the course of play.<h4>Skill Checks and Power Usage</h4>When you make a skill check (especially in a skill challenge), use a feature or power, take the second wind action, etc, the onus is on you to explain how what you are attempting works in the gameworld. (Where a feature or power has flavour text you may use that flavour text or come up with your own.) Feel free to be dramatic.Inadequate explanation which leaves everyone at the table scratching their heads as to what is going on in the gameworld may lead to a -2 penalty, or even automatic failure of the attempted action, depending on the circumstances.[/spoiler]I have no doubt at all that general familiarity with at least some of the variety of possible approaches to RPGing, gained from reading different RPGs and moreso from reading around The Forge, helped me with the above. Reading The Forge also significantly improved my RM play, in part by helping me appreciate ways in which RM differs from RQ even though - at a certain level of generality - both are very similar purist-for-system/"process simulation" RPGs. For instance, both use attack vs parry as part of their combat resolution. But in RM parry is a player decision-point about round-by-round allocation of overall available effort; whereas in RQ it is a roll against a fixed target number with no comparable decision point. This difference matters hugely in play. Now the only person I've ever seen make this particular point about those two systems is me: but I couldn't have identified and articulated it but for my reading of Edwards, and his discussion of the way different systems open up different sorts of decision-points that enable players to inject their own priorities from "outside" the unfolding in-fiction logic.Another example, not about 4e D&D or RM but about Classic Traveller, which I've certainly posted in threads you've participated in: my approach to GMing in my current Classic Traveller campaign is heavily influenced by reading and discussing Apocalypse World - treating all the little subsystems as "moves" in the AW sense, and treating "if you do it, you do it" as the basic principle of play. And without wanting to embarrass him my saying it yet again, it is [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] who has helped me most with this, by pushing me to see what differentiates AW and BW as systems (roughly, AW is follow-the-fiction + "if you do it, you do it" while BW is scene-framed + "say 'yes' or roll the dice" + intent-and-task + "let it ride"). Appreciating those differences also sharpens my sense of the BW techniques, which helps my BW GMing and play and also makes it easier to bring those techniques into other systems where they are highly appropriate but not fully spelled out (eg Prince Valiant; Cthuhu Dark).A final example: I recently watched  video where Ron Edwards says some critical things about BitD. I'm not familiar enough with BitD to form a view as to the merits of his criticisms: but it did prompt me to reflect further on Agon - another John Harper game with very intricate and overlapping resource and advancement tracks, which I have just started playing. That helped me identify possible stress points in Agon play, which I can handle and overcome by being aware of them and approaching them a certain way in my GMing.And a concluding more general point: as an academic researcher I publish in a few fields. But I attend seminars and try to keep track of general developments in many more: being aware of what is happening in the general discipline is something I regard as essential to avoiding narrowness, parochialism and ultimately methodological error in my own fields. RPGing isn't something I approach as seriously as my work!, but I still find the same basic principle applies.</blockquote>

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