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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Incenjucar" data-source="post: 5803961" data-attributes="member: 6182">Older editions often actively punished you for playing yourself rather than your character, except usually when it comes to puzzles. One of the major differences between 4E and previous editions is that 4E almost exclusively lets you play whatever however, and the challenge was using that character to navigate the world - a story game.In previous editions, part of the game was actually the challenge of playing the character. You were usually given a lot of heavy restrictions and made to deal with them in the game. Playing a dwarf? You get challenged by your limited access to magic, cultural stereotypes, and your limited range of class options. Playing a paladin? Oh man, you have a whole list of extra challenges you have to deal with in the game. Paladins are like hard mode.In 4E, you have almost none of these challenges, and instead your character is mostly handed to you for you to do with as you will, and your challenges are strictly dealing with the world through that character. This can be terrible for people who enjoy the extra mini-games of portrayal, but for the people who only care about participating in the story, it's generally fantastic. Granted, people can challenge themselves or each other to the old mini-games, and divine characters are rarely entirely free of it, but it's not a default or even suggested aspect of 4E.Personally, I don't care for the mini-games. I enjoy D&D as a storytelling game where I write my part of the script, rather than an extended Whose Line is it Anyway? game where I have to match my story to an outside declaration of what is correct. I do, however, think those mini-games are what a lot of people consider real role-playing, though I argue that it's specifically role-playing as a challenge. If this in fact the case, then it's understandable why some people consider each new edition to be further and further from "Real" D&D - the game has been more and more about role-playing as a choice and less and less about role-playing as a challenge.</blockquote>

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