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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6588717" data-attributes="member: 82106">Exactly, so it is MEANINGLESS TO THEM. How do they even know that the choice HAD consequences? Its just like they rolled a d6 and either the villagers died or they didn't, that's utterly un-engaging to players, utterly. I can't even imagine how anyone could think of that as good DMing/Adventure Design. And it makes ZERO difference if this came about because of random die rolls, DM Illusionist machinations, or some player's mistaken 'gut feeling'. Its an inferior result, we can all see that, nobody on your side even is trying to defend it. So what I don't get is how can you defend the process which produces that as its frequent end result? The honest truth is that DMs never could defend that. E Gary Gyxax couldn't defend it and didn't practice it. DMs bend things. I don't care if [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] thinks of himself as some sort of Bodhisattva of 'process-sim' DMs he's still creating a situation in which interesting things will happen and when he has to make a decision, all things being equal, he's always going to make it the more interesting one. There will always be some friend of the PC who will show up at the jail with a hacksaw, the marketplace will always be empty enough that the PCs can grab food and still make it to the sacrifice in time, etc. Now, maybe once in a while he doesn't do this, but there's likely some other ulterior reason for that, and in any case an exception doesn't disprove the validity of the hypothesis.This is why we ended up with idiocy like AD&D 2e which talked all about character, story, plot, and etc, and gave you nothing but a set of rules suitable to a dungeon crawl or wilderness hex crawl, with a few crumbs thrown on top about how you might, with DM fiat, make a magic item! Anyway, I think we all agree, 4e stands head-and-shoulders above that in the coherence department. That is really the central thing about 4e, the 'good thing' from which pretty much all else flowed. It consciously understands what sort of game it is and its built around making that understanding work. WotC hamstrung that with a lack of understanding of genre and tone which lead to some brick adventures, and some of the presentation in 4e was flawed, but as a system it is a huge step up from any previous edition.Now, I don't care so much for 5e, but I think it at least shares some of that consciousness. The one thing 4e managed to leave behind was a legacy of actually paying some attention to the design of the game as a game, which hadn't really been done in a long time (3.x certainly never did it, nor 2e, 1e was perhaps inadequate to what it was ultimately tasked with, but it could be said that its core agenda was pretty well-served by its mechanics in most ways).</blockquote>

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