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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5735282" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's probably true.These days I only play with my own group, so my sense of the wider D&D community is derived from these (and similar) forums. And one thing that surprises me is how many people seem to be trying to make D&D deliver a game that would be more easily acheived using another system - particularly when I see people playing highly exploration-focused, somewhat gritty games, I wonder why they don't use Runequest or HARP or even something like The Burning Wheel.I think that's an area where mileages vary. My approach to my 4e game is basically what the Forge would call "narrativist" - Story Now, but with story being the result not of any one person (player or GM) aiming at story, but rather me (as GM) doing my job, of setting up engaging situations for the players, and the players dong their job of playing their PCs to the hilt in those situations.The DCs don't impede this, because the players aren't looking to the DCs to get their sense of the gameworld. They're looking directly at the fiction - the fiction that I'm narrating as GM, and that they create through their own endeavours at action resolution. And 4e is quite rich in this, in my view, because it has very evocative mechanics, for those who like that sort of thing - for example, in 4e a wight with a horrific visage gets an attack that inflicts psychic damage and pushes foes away - so the story is revealed not just through description, but through mechanical resolution of the action. It's really secondary to the play experience whether the wight's attack bonus or AC or damage roll is 1 point higher or lower - it's the keywords (psychic damage) and the effects (a fear-typed push) that define the fiction.In some ways its like HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling - the DCs (with their scaling) don't objecively measure the world, but rather set the relative difficulty for the PCs. But it's got the tactical crunch in combat that (at least some) traditional RPGers enjoy.I'm in no way saying it's the only, or even the best, way to set up DCs and scaling. I've GMed a lot of RM, which uses objective target numbers, and where PC bonuses really mean "mechanical progression" and not just "story progression". And if I was to start running a different game from 4e, it would probably be Burning Wheel, which uses objective target numbers as well, and in its GM guidelnes emphasises the use of objective target numbers to build immersion in the setting in the way that (I think) you have in mind.There's definitely more than one good RPG in this world!</blockquote>

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