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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6567817" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't know why you say "it sounds like . . .".I mean, if I'd described a character killing an orc with an axe, you wouldn't ask "What was the role of the axe? It sounds like you'd already agreed that by rolling an attack roll he could kill the orc!"The session in question was about 3 years ago, so my memory is not perfect. My best guess at reconstruction is that the player stated a desire on the part of his PC to concentrate the energy, that I asked him how he planned to do this, that he indicated he would use Cyclonic Vortex to suck it in, and that I then called on him to make an Arcana check to determine whether or not it worked (probably at +2 for using an Encounter power - that is an established ratio of resource-expenditure to bonus at our table, derived from a rules suggestion in the DMG2).Notice how this leads to a GM-driven game - the real action results not from the player's desire to make an item, but the GM's decision that the heart of a firedrake is needed.This is no different in the episode of play I described. The player is playing his character. One of the things his character is doing is making a magic item by using his Cyclonic Vortex to suck in and focus chaotic energies.That is not to say that there are not interesting differences in playstyle. But the distinction between playing a character and not playing a character isn't sufficient to capture them.For instance, what I think you want to point to here is that, in my game, the player was able to make it true that, in the fiction, magic items could be made by focusing chaotic energies, which hitherto no one knew to be a truth of the fiction. The bounds of fictional possibility weren't set by pre-established game rules.That is a form of player empowerment (and it relates to the discussion upthread between me, [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) that 4e is expressly intended to support.4e doesn't have the concept of "shifting attitudes by a category". It does have utility powers that affect social situations, mostly either by granting a bonus on a check or by allowing substitution of one skill for another. (Eg at one stage a PC in my game had a "Charm Person" spell, which let him use Arcana in place of Bluff once per encounter.)In the context of RPGing, I can't see how that translates to anything but a GM-driven game.Personally, I - as GM - want to find out what happens without having to choose what comes next. Hence my preference for systems which reliably generate dramatic events without any of the participants having to make choices about what exactly those events will be. (Rather, they make more local and particular choices, and the events emerge out of the intersection of those choices.)</blockquote>

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