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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6581421" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Just to be clear, this is but one reason.  The other reasons are many-fold and multi-faceted (of which most have been elaborated upon already).  Like many, my early days of GMing strived for process simulation (GMed Classic Traveller amongst other games).  The reason for this was because I figured that enhanced causal logic and internal consistency would correlate to enhanced player agency, table handling time, and immersion.  That turned out to not only be incorrect but the futility of striving for it actually became an impediment.  Meanwhile, relieving the extraneous (beyond what was absolutely necessary and possible) focus from the futile attempt at meaty process-sim improved all of those things (especially handling time) and others.  The focus could be recalibrated toward genre coherency/logic, emotional stakes, pacing, and consistent narrative dynamism.  We lost nothing of the absolute essentials of internal consistency and causal logic with the removal of the extraneous obsession with intensive granularity.  And we gained so much (we being myself and the people I GMed for).  We found that being devotees of intensive, granular process sim did nothing but suck the well of creativity dry because interesting, genre/coherent outcomes become 100 % subordinate to physical causal logic (which naturally contracts the range of potential  outcomes and dramatically - hehe? - so).That being said, I think there is an interesting aside here.  Some of this is bound up in mental frameworks.  The way people perceive, organize, and process new information is pretty central to the discussion (my table is composed of a physical scientist, a computer scientist, an engineer, and an accountant by training so trade/craft doesn't straitjacket/mandate/arise out of a tight coupling to mental framework).  I think I'll bridge from those possessed of the mental framework which requires high fidelity to granular process sim in their gaming vs mental frameworks which require only the bare essential necessaries of process sim + genre logic, to the current discussion for a moment.  I think the reaction to the way 4e reordered its presentation of information (people absolutely freaked out about this) rankled as many feathers as its reordering of the play agenda (from Gamist/Simulation to Narrative/Gamist).  I've always held that this is primarily due to (folks who are mostly or exclusively D&D) veteran players lashing out over their personal investment in their (perceived) hard-earned mastery of the necessary mental framework to easily perceive > organize > process the information in the books (even if they prior layouts were utterly disjointed, inefficient, or outright incoherent).  Making them recalibrate the way they groked the system's information caused a pretty volatile (to say the least) response.  Couple that with moving the creative agenda from gamist/sim to primarily Story Now with a lot of (truly) fun gamist trappings (and adjusting to/grooming the new mental framework required to meet those demand...unless of course you already possess it because you had played plenty of games that entailed that agenda before) and you have the perfect storm that was the 4e launch.   It is probably akin to people who play console games and they've been playing 2-3 games in a row with the specific controller layout and then this new game comes along and (RAGE) it has a different controller layout and requires you to recalibrate your mental framework.I would also say that "always push play toward conflict" rather than "skip the guards and get to the fun" and/or the DMG2 being the initially released DMG of the game (don't get me wrong...I think DMG1 was excellent) and/or the Dungeon World Gamesmastering section being in the initial 4e books and/or the designers being utterly transparent about these changes (as Heinsoo and Tweet were in 13th Age) would have helped things along.  Maybe they were concerned about being over explicit/transparent about the shift?  Maybe the editorial staff had a different view than the designers?  I don't know.  Regardless, they ended up taking it on the chin anyway and being raked over the coals for language that was perceived as actually more incendiary and dismissive than if they just would have used already established advice (always push play toward conflict vs "skip the guards and get to the fun").Alright, I'm done with my meanderings.</blockquote>

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