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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5471066" data-attributes="member: 42582">Hussar, I think Pawsplay's response to this captures the mood of a lot of those who don't enjoy 4e because of it's non-exploration aspects.Here is a restatement of the point in your post (as I understand it):*Many earlier games have metagame aspects to character creation (eg wizards can't use armour in order to balance them with fighters).*Earlier editions had metagame encounter build guidelines and treasure-placement guidelines, although over the course of 3E and 4e these have become tighter and more integrated into the character creation rules.*4e also adds metagame aspects to action resolution (especially out of combat), and integrates these tightly with the encounter-builiding guidelines.As we go down this list, we hit stuff that is, apparently, more and more inimical to exploration-based play.Whereas metagame at character build doesn't both exploration players so much - they're happy to roll 4d6 and assign, for example, because you as a player should get to choose your exploration vehicle. (We could add more descriptors here - the sort of exploration in question is something like gamist (in the Forge sense), that is, is challenge-focused exploration. Hence the desirability of getting to choose your vehicle. Whereas in a purely sim game like classic Runequest or Traveller, your character build isn't metagamed either.)The role of metagame at the encounter-building stage is a subject matter of debate among proponents of the exploration game (this is part of what is going on in sandbox vs AP discussions). It's also interesting to notice how 2nd ed playstyles can more-or-less cohabit the same mechanics as this type of exploration-based play. Metagamed character generation, instead of building my exploration vehicle, instead becomes the building of my story vehicle. And encounter design, instead of becoming about the GM building a world of challenges to be explored, becomes the GM's contribution to the story building.But metagame-heavy action resolution kills both playstyles dead. It is the deathknell to exploration, because suddenly the question of whether (for example) the river was hard or easy to cross depends not only on the nature of the river and the resources the PCs bring to bear, but also on whether or not the skill challenge still has one more complication to be injected, or whether it's already been resolved (in which case the GM narrates the river running low, or a bridge having been recently repaired, or whatever).And metagame-heavy action resolution also tends to kill of functional 2nd-ed style play - if the metagame power is in the players' hands (eg high powered action/fate points), then they can break away from the GM's story, while if the metagame power is in the GM's hands, then we have the worst sort of fudging-driven railroad.So 4e is a modest change only to those who are playing neither exploration challenge games nor 2nd-ed style "story" games.Given that, in my impression, a good chunk of ENworld seems to think that these two approaches to play exhaust the space of RPGing (anything else is boardgaming, mini-skirmishing or WoW), it's no wonder that they see 4e as not only something they're not interested in, but as a radical departure from RPGing as such.(And for the sake of clarity: I don't think either Raven Crowking or Pawsplay is unaware of other approaches to RPGing, even when they don't personally care for them. But sometimes on these boards it's like posting as if the only thing that happened in the past 15 years of RPG design is d20.)</blockquote>

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