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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4554535" data-attributes="member: 710">Hmm, I think I am getting RC explanation.Smart Play means using rule mechanics and game-world elements to succeed at a task, preferably with the least resources expended.Satisfying Play depends on your desires from a game. Playing smart might be one, but there can be others - playing the character you envision (I'd like to play a charismatic Fighter), or being immersed in the game world (the world is going on everywhere, so I must choose where to affect the world and when. The world feels "real").Smart Play and Satisfying Play can be at odds. For example, in 3E, playing a charismatic Fighter grants you no real benefits, and if you're using a (stingy) point buy character creation method, it's not smart play to spend a lot of points on Charisma. ---Satisfying play in operational or sandbox play usually means that you want to affect the sandbox as continuously and often as possible. The PCs want to avoid the passage of time where they can't affect anything going on the world. The typical thing that avoids the PCs affecting the world at all is resting to recover injuries or lost resources.So, handling resources well is satisfying play. Avoid resource expenditure, gather a lot of resources. And all of this over a long play. It is satisfying in a a sandbox to ensure that you expend little resources and manage them well so you can affect the sandbox continuously, and don't spend long time to recover resources.A game where instant healing is provided after 6 hours of rest, there are no long-term resources to be handled. This means the effect of smart play are not visible on the sandbox scale, because the party is ready every day to go on their adventuring trip. In essence this means smart play and satisfying play are not the same. It doesn't matter how smart you play, you can't affect your goals. In a way you might say: "Great, so you can act all the time. That's great, right, that's what you wanted!" But the thing is - you wanted to work for this. It was supposed to be a challenge to ensure that you got to act in the sandbox. And now, it's just handed to you. In a combat/encounter focused game, it is as if success was guaranteed, and all your opponents fall over dead if you choose to engage them. There is no threat, no challenge, and the entire game is meaningless. ---For experimental game design purposes only, here's my gamist sandbox mod for 4E (draft version): Every character has 4 sandbox points. You can spend an extended rest and one sandbox point to recover all your healing surges, hit points and all your daily powers, and reset all action points to 1. If you don't spend a sandbox point during your rest, you regain only enough hit points to get you to your bloodied hit point value. Each extended rest you don't spend a sandbox point, you regain one sandbox point.</blockquote>

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