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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6299531" data-attributes="member: 3192">In order to engage with anything in D&D it first must be made to exist as a game construct. That's why all those 1000s of books exist with stuff inside them statted up. They exist on the game board, which is simply hidden from the players. Heck, the DM can even draw what the rules say the PCs sense in order to give the players a better idea of the layout. Calling a game component a "king" or "rook" doesn't make it a simulation. At best those labels are merely clues upon first encountering the game elements they refer to. But no one thinks D&D orcs were designed to depict this actual thing called an orc. That's crazy. They are game constructs to be gamed. Not representations to put on a show.Role playing is not portrayal of a personality. Nor it is subject to storytelling or actual being. Role playing is performing social roles as they relate to being a functional member of society. That counts for for acting or actuality. There is no pretension in D&D just like there is no pretense about the English language allowing us to functionally communicate with each other. D&D is a game, so it's an actuality and players don't pretend to play it.Clearly I'm not agreeing with Gygax's statement above. I think he was unclear on the issue, but his design speaks for itself as a game. There are plenty of other quotes where he didn't want D&D confused with theater games.You think a player losing the game and the game being over for them is a rule promoting a contrived outcome? Players lose in D&D. They can get in on the same campaign (game instance) by rolling up a new character, but level 1, zero XP. They start over.Of course if you are playing the same game again the player can go and get back their stuff (the dead or lost PC). But this has nothing to do with dismissing all game play up unto any point to tell a more dramatic story.No connection? Then we must be talking about something else. Your example is a game mechanic, a resource that can be gamed and doesn't create contrived outcomes. People don't like healing surges because it removes a great deal of the strategic, not tactical results of skirmish combat. It results in mindlessly repetitive videogame fights where how you fight is largely irrelevant both before and after the fact. It's a rule that removes the subtle nuances so carefully built into 4e combat once an "Encounter" is finished. As if all those nuances shouldn't affect how players play all the rest of the game on the D&D board. In classic D&D everything carries over from the first time the dice are rolled in a campaign to the last time. Everything in the rules is being tracked by the DM behind the screen. Sure, that the code is hidden from the players allows them to learn and be unrestrained for creative thought on what they might try. But that there is an actual game construct largely not of their making that is a pattern, i.e. gameable, allowing players to be actually succeed, be challenged, and become performers of awe-inspiring excellence. Think: great teams with profound personal proficiency in each of its members, but also as a whole. Unfortunately, all these role players aren't likely to be that great at storytelling or acting.</blockquote>

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