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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5472678" data-attributes="member: 18280">Then we seem to be getting somewhere.You forgot to ask the question!  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />Okay.  Keep in mind, as I said upthread or elsethread or both, that all games have fiction-first and rules-first elements.  They have to.  "I charge!" is a fiction-first narrative that then engages the mechanics, and causes the mechanics to come into play.  Indeed, that piece of fiction selects which mechanics come into play."I rolled six points of damage!" is a rules-first construct that the narrative must then conform to (i.e., whatever that damage means in that context delimits what happens in the narrative).And there is circularity.  One does play into the other.  "I swing my sword at him!" is fiction-first that engages the mechanics.  "I hit, and do six points of damage" is rules-first and re-engages the narrative ("The ogre still lives, and he swings his massive club at you!").So, in this case, you are right.  But let's take a step back, shall we?In Game 1, those rules are an attempt at verisimilitude.  The mechanics for the ogre (AC, hit points, chance to hit, etc.) are an attempt to model what an ogre should be like (in the view of the game designer and/or the GM).In Game 2, those rules are a meta-game construct.  The mechanics for the ogre are instead an attempt to model what should be a good challenge for the PCs (again, in the view of the game designer and/or the GM).In Game 1, the ogre is the same whether the party is 1st level or 20th level.  In Game 2, the ogre presents the same challenge whether the party is 1st level or 20th level.Can you see how approach affects outcome in this hypothetical example?  Because, if you can see the difference in this more extreme example, we can begin to break the difference down into more granular examples.  I accept that your threshold of granularity is different than mine (or others'); I am certain that there is a threshold where you cannot see a difference that I do.  I am just not certain that you are absolutely unable to do so.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As far as your bullette example goes, that seems to be fiction-first.  But then, no one to my knowledge has said 4e is "completely different" from earlier editions.  I, for one, have explicitly and repeatedly said that all games have elements of both "rules-first" and "fiction-first" mechanics.There is a lot of granularity involved, and different folks are going to have different thresholds as to where that granularity matters.  This discussion isn't a zero-sum game.RC</blockquote>

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