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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6299739" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think this is true. Many a D&D player had had his/her PC drink a cup of ale, and purchase some ale for a friendly NPC, before ale was rendered into a "game construct" (eg via the drunkenness rules in Gygax's DMG at p 82-83 - which are hardly complete in their coverage of the matter).To give another example - the GM is describing the scenery as my PC walks down a dungeon corridor. The GM says "you see a pool of water in front of you". I reply "OK, I am going to look for a loose bit of stone on the dungeon floor, and if I find some I will throw it into the pool to test if it is an illusion or not - if it's an illusion then there'll be no splash." That situation can be resolved without the dungeon floor or the loose bits of stone on them having to exist as "game constructs", nor the rules for throwing pebbles into ponds and ponds splashing as a result. That can all be resolved simply by reference to the shared fiction. And has been, at countless tables since the game was first invented.There is even an example of this in Gygax's DMG, p 99, in which the character uses a pole to poke the limed-over skeleton of the abbot, although there are no game-mechanical rules for poking things with poles. The GM's key, on p 96, refers to "the remains [being] disturbed in any way", but states no rules for adjudicating an attempt to disturb. It is resolved by reference to the fictional situation (ie a pole is the sort of thing you can use to poke something that is in water). The GM's key also states that the requirement to grab a dislodged object from the fast-flowing stream is "to hit vs AC 4" - and on p 99 Gygax describes this as "the value the DM has decided is appropriate to the chance of grasping". What does "appropriate" mean here? Gygax doesn't tell us, but the strong implication is "appropriate relative to the overall fiction" which on p 96 is described as "the current of the stream carrying it . . . at 6" speed".Of course they're not depictions of actual things. The descriptions of orcs, routinely produced in the course of play, are descriptions of imaginary things.And of course they are to be gamed. You can game an imagined situation. White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors are the poster-children for this - to work out how to deal with the ziggurat room, for instance, a player first has to imagine a ziggurat room with water trapped behind glass on every second level, and then think "Aha! Glass can be broken, and hence the inverted ziggurat flooded, drowning the monsters." It's quite unlike Chess or Go, which does not require mediating the moves via an imagined situation.It may not be of the players' making, dependant on circumstances. (Sometimes it may be of the players' making - eg a player invents a new monster, has his/her PC breed one, and then the monster, due to a random roll as for a Clay Golem, turns on that PC.)But it is certainly of someone's making - typically the GM's. And the players access it via imaging the relevant ingame situation. If they couldn't, they would not be able to declare moves. For instance, how can a player declare for his/her PC  "I walk north down the corridor" without imaging a corridor with an opening in a northerly direction?No. You used the phrase "short-circuiting of gameplay". I replied to that. And as I said, when I see posters on this board complaining about "short-circuiting of gameplay", they are most often complaining about 3E/PF "rocket-tag", which is a result of how SoD works in that system (upwards scaling save DCs + high hit point totals relative to save bonuses, leading to an optimal gaming strategy being the bypassing of hit points altogether via SoD).The contrivances I was talking about are, for instances, 4e's healing surge mechanics, which engender a dramatic rather than naturalistic pacing in combat resolution. I have never seen these described as a "short-circuiting of gameplay". They are part of the gameplay. The point of the gameplay is to have a certain pacing.Gygax wasn't ignorant of the significance of pacing, although he was not so interested in it for dramatic as for practical play purposes. For instance, he refers to it on pp 61, 62 and 85 of his DMG).I'll ignore all these remarks which frankly display an ignorance of actual 4e play. (It's not as if you can't find dozens of actual play discussions on this thread that illustrate the strategic significance of healing surge depletion. And the "videogamey" comment, besides being flat-out edition-warring, displays a very limited imagination, as if nothing could be significant in the outcome of a fight other than resource depletion.)Instead, I'll focus on the point actually relevant to the discussion about simulations vs game:Healing surge mechanics absolutely create contrived outcomes. That's their point. The contrived outcome is, roughly, this: at the opening of a 4e combat encounter the monsters/NPCs, which have more hit points and do more base damage than the PCs, will push the PCs onto the back foot. (First act.) Then the PCs will draw upon their greater depth of limited resources, stabilising their situation and getting ready to turn the tide. (Second act.) An important component of these deep but rationed resources are those abilities that unlock healing surges and hence undo the damage inflicted by the monsters/NPCs, allowing the PCs ultimately to hold the line and prepare to come back. Finally, the PCs (typically) will come back and win. (Third act.)That is a contrivance - a mechanic that reliably (if not universally) produces a particular pacing in combat, for dramatic effect. (In practice, there is more to a well-framed 4e combat then what I have described, but what I have described is part of it. See, for instance, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">these</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog" target="_blank">posts</a>.)But it is not a "short-circuiting" of game play. It is a deliberate feature of gameplay, much as the difference in the number of ogres encountered on the 1st or 4th level of a dungeon, per Gygax's Appendix C, is a contrivance for deliberate gameplay purposes.What have theatre games got to do with anything? Games like Burning Wheel, or HeroWars/Quest, or Marvel Heroic RP, or Fate, or Maelstrom Storytelling, are not "theatre games". Nor is 4e. The whole point of Forge narrativist design is to have games that reliably produce dramatic stories without the need for collaborative storytelling, or thespianism, in the style of theatre games. As to whether or not Gygax was confused, he wasn't confused about one thing - absolutely crucial to playing D&D is forming an imagined conception of a fictional situation - eg "My character is standing in a dungeon corridor that runs north and south." If you can't do that, you can't play the game.As to roleplaying being about "social roles", that might be one usage of the phrase in the social sciences, but in my view it has little bearing on D&D play. There are no social roles of magic-user, cleric, fighter etc. As Gygax conceived of them they are playing pieces, not social roles. As Gygax explains, "The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class" (PHB p 18). They bring with them suites of player options, and rule out other options. For instance, class determines which equipment (both mundane and magical) can be used and hence in this way (as in other ways) determines what sorts of "moves" can be made.I know you are fond of talking about different classes involving exploring the "magical system", the "clerical system", the "combat system" etc but there is no actual textual support for this in the rulebooks, and the systems for action resolution and for earning XP are consistent across all the classes (with the possible exception of the monk's chance to stun/kill and the assassin's ability to assassinate, and at higher levels SoD spells, all of which provide somewhat novel mechanical ways to earn XPs for defeating monsters).</blockquote>

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