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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8237656" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think getting swept up in play is important. Related but not identical is a visceral sense of what is going on.Two examples I thought of reading your posts:* In <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/prince-valiant-actual-play.654732/" target="_blank">our Prince Valiant game</a>, the PCs had ridden north of the town of Castle Hill to confront a knight - "the best in all Britain", Sir Lionheart - who was blocking the road north, not letting anyone pass who was unable to beat him in battle. The two PC knights were defeated. The third PC asked for a joust, but the proud Sir Lionheart declined to joust with a mere squire. To which the PC responded, "Fine, I'll just continue on my way then!" and tried to pass Sir Lionheart and continue along the road. This called for a Presence vs Presence check, which the PC won - and so Sir Lionheart knighted him so that he could joust and perhaps succeed where the others had failed. The new knight then defeated Sir Lionheart (mechanically, by spending a certificate to Kill a Foe in Combat - the player chose killing and not merely knocking senseless because he intuited, from Sir Lionheart's personality as portrayed by me, that Sir Lionheart would which to continue the fight on foot if unhorsed, and the player knew that his PC had no chance of winning that fight). * In <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/session-report-against-the-frost-giants.358025/" target="_blank">our 4e D&D game</a> the PCs in their flying Thundercloud Tower were assaulted by a dragon-riding frost giant. At one point the dragon, temporarily blinded, was hiding beneath the tower so that it couldn't be attacked by the PCs. The PC magic-user (played by the same player as the squire in Prince Valiant) conjured his imp (minor action), had it fly down to the base of the tower (move action), activated his third eye (another minor action: the imp has the Eye of Vecna in it, though now no longer under Vecna's influence, and when the invoker activates his 3rd eye he can see through his imp's eyes and has LoS and LoE from there) and then spent an action point to attack with Thunderwave (encounter power as a multi-class wizard), the plan being to blast the dragon out from beneath the tower, so the ranged strikers could attack it, and to blast its giant rider off the back of his mount so he would take 25d10 or so falling down to the bottom of the Glacial Rift. The plan didn't work, because the to hit rolls failed despite pumping multiple reroll and roll-boosting resources into them.One of these is a mechanically simple game. The other is mechanically intricate. But both produced compelling and vivid fiction. The participants get swept up in it. Patterns of "possibility" (ie sensible ways for the story to unfold) emerge, and are crystallised through action declarations and resolution. For me, this is what RPGing is about. It's highly immersive, in my view. But I wouldn't say that exploration (or learning, discovering, etc) the gameworld are very big parts of it. But there is definitely discovery of the fates of the protagonists!</blockquote>

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