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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7381264" data-attributes="member: 42582">I will repost the context of my post to which you replied: So your examples of pretending to flap your arms and fly to the moon to scare people, or of playing a crazy PC who (wrongly) believes s/he can do that, are not to the point. The first is some sort of Bluff or Performance check; the second is not an action declaration at all, but just narrating the crazy behaviour of your crazy PC. And if you jump into the volcano as a heroic sacrifice, then - ispo facto - you're not trying to survive!So I'll try again: the assertion that there are no limits on action declarations in a RPG can be useful for explaining to a boardgame player the idea that the "flavour text" - ie the shared fiction - actually matters to resolution; but it's not useful when people who already know how RPGing works are trying to analyse the techniques of play in a serious fashion. Thus, if a player of a 1st level PC declares, in D&D, "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" - that is not a permissible action declaration. The rules of the game require the GM to ask "Which one?" - or perhaps (especially in AD&D) to roll a d10 to see which one the PC attacks. There is a genuine contrast with, say, HeroWars/Quest, or Cortex+ Heroic, where "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" is a permissible action declaration for any PC who - in the fiction - is wielding a sword.If a player of a 1st level PC declares, in D&D, "I flap my arms so as to fly to the moon", the GM is entitled to reply "You can't do that", and even "You know you can't do that" - where the second person pronoun refers to both player and PC. There is a genuine contrast with, say, Toon, where (without knowing the game that well) I imagine this may well be a permissible action declaration.A really famous example of an impermissible action declaration in many D&D games is "I get my hired alchemist to concoct a compound of charcoal, sulfur and saltpetre" - because in many campaigns that would be a genre-breaker.And I haven't even canvassed impermissible action declarations for reasons of propriety and good taste.The constraints on action declaration that I referred to, and which [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] responded to, are primarily constraints related to genre and taste. If the players don't want to play a silly game, then they can refrain from declaring silly actions. If everyone understands that, in this game, holy swords are not just found for sale at local markets, then declaring "I go to the market to by a holy sword" is an impermissible action declaration.As I indicated in my first post on this particular point, the GM's framing of the situation is also a relevant constraint. Burning Wheel sets a difficulty for finding a modest amount of loot in a dungeon (from memory, it's an Obstacle 3 Scavenging check to find 1D of cash); but for obvious reasons if it's established in the fiction that the village the PCs currently are in is impoverished, and its inhabitants starving, then the Obstacle for a Scavenging check that will turn up gold in said village is obviously going to be higher than that (after all, there can't be any gold that's easy to find, as the starving inhabitants would have found it!)I'm not interested in debating the semantics of "reward".In Gygaxian D&D, a session of play could - if the players play poorly, or get unlucky - result in virtually no XP earned: the PCs are bested by or flee from wandering monsters, and fail to find or scavenge any loot. Earning XP is not a guaranteed outcome of playing the game; it is a reward. And a significant goal of play is to earn that reward so as to boost you character. As Gyagx makes amply clear in his DMG, having a high level PC is a mark of skill as a player. He allows for the "artificial" rolling up of high level PCs, to get a one-off experience, but he doesn't approve of it as the principal mode of play. The game is about starting at low level and working your character up.In 4e, having a high level PC isn't a mark of skill. Assuming the PCs was started at 1st level, then reaching high level is a sign of having played the game. The XP system functions as a pacing mechanism: as levels are gained, the PCs become mechanically more complicated, gain access to certain mechanical abilities (with fictional correlates) that are "level-gated" (eg flight, invisibility, domination, stun, long range teleport, planar travel, etc), and - most importantly - the fiction escalates through the "tiers of play".I guess if you really enjoy mechanical complexity, and feel for some reason that it would be cheating just to build yourself a 12th (or whatever) level PC, then you get a reward for playing the game. But it seems obvious to me that the "reward" for playing 4e D&D isn't that your PC gets more mechanically complex. The main rewards are (i) a wargaming-type enjoyment of tactical combat, and (ii) a RPG-type enjoyment of a rich shared fiction that you are helping to establish.4e offers both (i) and (ii) as much at 1st level play as at 30th, so you don't need to level up your PCs in order to enjoy those "rewards". It's the progression through the "tiers of play", the basic story of D&D - from confronting goblins to confronting Orcus - that the XP system achieves.I think this reconceptualisation of the function of the XP mechanic is an innovative bit of game design. I think retaining the language of "reward" was a mistake, though. That word doesn't help players new to D&D understand what's going on, and it confuses players already familiar with D&D, by misleading them into thinking that the XP system is meant to work more-or-less as it did in Gygax's D&D, when it doesn't.</blockquote>

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