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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dkyle" data-source="post: 5898139" data-attributes="member: 70707">But I'm not content with simply having differences with the personality and background the players come up with. I want differences in what the characters can do.It's not the be-all, end-all, but it's the root of the players' narrative power, at least in DnD-style games. The options available to the player for interacting with the world are best defined by mechanics. The alternative is DM fiat, and that is not acceptable to me.Of course. But what we can do plays a big role in what we decide to do.I think the answer to this is... we see RPGs quite differently.First, there's no such thing as rules "getting out of the way". The DM does not need permission from the game designers to use DM fiat. But a good DM, in my opinion, favors using the rules the players know and understand as much as possible.Second, no, I do not think the DM is the "the world". Not in my preferred way of playing RPGs."The world" is an intangible thing, floating in the minds of not just the DM, but the players too. The mechanics are the physics of the world, and provide a common basis for understanding it, for the players and DM. They allow the players to know what they can do with their characters, without having to constantly ask the DM "may I do this".Basically, I want success or failure in any situation that comes up, to rely as much as possible on the well-defined mechanics that the players can leverage as the see fit, that operate as they expect (to the limits of their knowledge of the world).Well, it seems we have very different ideas of what "roleplaying" is. Balesir's response to this is very much in line with my perspective.Consistent DM fiat just becomes homebrew rules mechanics. Whether rules come from a published book, or were invented by the DM ultimately doesn't really matter. Heck, the main campaign I'm running currently is, outside of the One-Roll-Engine-style die rolling, almost completely my own invention. The important thing is whether the players understand the mechanics a priori, and can use them as tools to accomplish their goals, with a clear understanding of what determines success or failure.But the problem with this is I love optimizing my characters. I am a powergaming optimizer, and proud of it. This is basically the only aspect of RPGs that I feel DnD 4E does better than any other RPG, so without it, I'd rather play any of a myriad of indie-RPGs.I don't want optimization gone. I want it to be a fully legitimate way to play the game, that doesn't break it. Because I firmly believe that optimization is 100% roleplaying. We're playing adventurers who routinely put themselves in life or death situations. They'd be daft to not seek out every advantage available to them!Telling me to "play to the spirit" of the game, and choosing less effective options, is simply metagaming. Does my character know what the "spirit" of the game-world he exists in is? On what basis is he choosing to be less effective than he could be, putting him and his companions at greater risk? If the rules don't fit the "spirit" of the game, then they are bad rules.Now, as I said, 4E wasn't perfect. However, outside of some pretty clearly malfunctioning combos that got errata'd, and high Epic play, optimization is a legitimate way of playing, that doesn't simply break the game. When I was playing 4E, I could go into the character builder, play around, build the best character I could out of the options available to me, and still play at the same table as the players who just wanted to pick the most obvious options at each level. I'd have a bit of an edge, overall, but mostly just have some neat tricks my character could do. Nothing even remotely close to what would happen if I did the same in 3.5.</blockquote>

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