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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7597103" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's obvious that we look at this problem in a very different manner.&nbsp; I think we agree that there is a fairly sweet spot where there is a mixture of player agency and choice with character simulation of abilities, where the character's abilities are informing the player's choice and no one's choices in character creation are being invalidated and conversely no one is able to get away with purely gaming the system by, for example, as you suggested dumping charisma and trying to treat all social situations as a matter of pure player skill.But while we seem to agree over the sweet spot, we both are doing exactly the opposite in the pure cases - #1 and #2 - and yet we state that we have basically the same reasoning behind our opposite approaches.&nbsp; So either something is screwy about what we mean by pure player challenge and pure character challenge, or we have a hugely different perspective on what invalidates play.I understand that you don't want to see the chargen mini-game invalidated, but while I understand that, the risk incurred by invalidating player agency by taking their choices out of the equation seems to be vastly greater.Let's return to my hypothetical &quot;Choose Your Own Adventure Book&quot;.&nbsp; In it I defined two cases, one of which, pure player choice involves no reference to character ability, and the other pure resolution by character ability, involves no player choice.&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the two, which book do to you think makes a better game to play, the one where all the problems are of pure player choice (your #1) or all the problems are of pure resolution by character ability (your #2)?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7597103, member: 4937"] It's obvious that we look at this problem in a very different manner. I think we agree that there is a fairly sweet spot where there is a mixture of player agency and choice with character simulation of abilities, where the character's abilities are informing the player's choice and no one's choices in character creation are being invalidated and conversely no one is able to get away with purely gaming the system by, for example, as you suggested dumping charisma and trying to treat all social situations as a matter of pure player skill. But while we seem to agree over the sweet spot, we both are doing exactly the opposite in the pure cases - #1 and #2 - and yet we state that we have basically the same reasoning behind our opposite approaches. So either something is screwy about what we mean by pure player challenge and pure character challenge, or we have a hugely different perspective on what invalidates play. I understand that you don't want to see the chargen mini-game invalidated, but while I understand that, the risk incurred by invalidating player agency by taking their choices out of the equation seems to be vastly greater. Let's return to my hypothetical "Choose Your Own Adventure Book". In it I defined two cases, one of which, pure player choice involves no reference to character ability, and the other pure resolution by character ability, involves no player choice. Of the two, which book do to you think makes a better game to play, the one where all the problems are of pure player choice (your #1) or all the problems are of pure resolution by character ability (your #2)? [/QUOTE]

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