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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5573204" data-attributes="member: 54877">Listen to your intuition here, but don't make it determinant.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Seriously, you intutition is onto something here, but your options are not so limited as you portrayed.  4E (and any system built this way, for that matter) will work far better for many people if you make yourself play in the imagined space first, then apply mechanics.  This is not terribly hard to learn, but it is a consciously learned skill.  It might even slow down the game for a few sessions, but soon it will switch to produce the opposite effect. Might I also suggest, as both a training tool and fun in its own right, that you try applying the roleplaying after the roll.  That is, you want each player to do something like this: 1. Declare what they are doing, as much as possible totally in the fiction.  If necessary to keep this clear, don't even state the power used. 2. Mechanically resolve the stated action in the best way possible.  For awhile, make this an overt, group discussion, even at the expense of taking everyone out of the action.  It will get faster and less intrusive with practice. Page 42 will now be used naturally, instead of fighting the flow. 3. Narrate the results, including failures:  "Geoff slips as he charges, going down on one knee, and missing the orc by a hair."  Don't get picky about applying mechanical effects here (i.e. don't argue about "going down on one knee" being "prone"), but do impose some consistent group limits (i.e. you might decide that you can't be prone on the ground without also being "prone".) BTW, this is the way we played Fantasy Hero and 3E/Arcana Evolved, too.  It's just a lot easier in 4E, because of that same narrative flexibility that trips some people up.  It will not produce the exact same results as playing a more traditional game, but it will get people to stop looking at their character sheets all the time and imaging the action again.  It is a different kind of fun, but fully capable of being just as vivid as the older method.</blockquote>

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