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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PrecociousApprentice" data-source="post: 4235969" data-attributes="member: 61449">Black box, white box, I'm the game with results.See, to me it boiled down to the fact that the two editions went about design from opposite ends of the game. 3e said that it wanted to have an amazing number of options for world/monster/PC design. Then everything that is 3e as we know it was an emergent property of this design. The 15 minute adventure day, the 14 class 15th level PC, CoDzilla....4e decided to design from the other end of things. There was a relatively specific output desired. Limiting the level of emergent properties was a design goal. They decided that at every level, they wanted a specific play feeling to be had. They wanted a certain amount of complexity, and didn't want further complexity to emerge. The the mechanics were designed to accomplish this. Some sacred cows were shoe horned into the system if they fit well enough, some were reconceptualized, and some were slaughtered. But it was output that mattered in the process.In science this has become relatively standard practice for modeling systems. Create as simple a model as possible that accurately models a system, and don't worry about as much of the how and why as you do the what. Models =/= reality, but they have value in getting results. Exception based design is just this process at a "fantasy system" level. "Reality" is the game fluff, the "model" is the game. Create a game that accurately models what your imagination wants, limit emergent properties (read excess complexities and game breaking combos) to a bare minimum. The result is that as a GM, your job is not to think "what can I create with these rules?" It is to think "I want this fluff in my campaign, what is the minimum number of game mechanics that I need to get this fluff." As an interesting asside, Ebberon is the consumate front end design product in regards to world building, and is why it is the perfect 3e world. The design premise was "Given the full 3e ruleset, what is the logical world that would encompass all the emergent properties of that ruleset. Very interesting. The implied PoL setting in 4e takes the opposite approach. The premise is "Given that we want this sort of feeling in our game, what are the elements of worldbuilding that would have to be included to achieve that?" The design paradigms are opposite, and the feeling will be relatively opposite.Which ruleset will appeal to which players? They both are toolboxes, but the toolboxes are designed to build different things. One is for creating emergent properties, and one is for output oriented design. Neither is superior, but I would say that those that prefer "D&Disms" are likely to like 3e, and those that have a specific design output in mind will prefer 4e. Either can be simulationist or not.</blockquote>

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