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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6241144" data-attributes="member: 42582">My query with gamist 4e is: where is the challenge? The answer as I see it (from your posts, and from many earlier and lucid posts by [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]): in playing your PC well to overcome the encounters. The point of the transparent PC and encounter build then becomes to make sure the &quot;field of battle&quot; is as fair as possible, so all success or failure is due to the players' skill.Is this roughly right? If so, I see it as a fairly light gamism, because it's really not very demanding. Provided you're actually into the whole apparatus of mathematical manipulations as a passtime, I think you have to misplay pretty badly to lose.I don't agree with this, though. As you correctly noted, 4e could drop the level bonus to everything and yet play just as tightly as a tactical vehicle.The function of level in 4e, then, is to handle the unfolding of story elements: assuming that you use the monster stats as published, you start with kobolds and end with Orcus. Levelling is just not a gamist element at all, but a way of ensuring that the campaign tells the core story of D&amp;D. (This is the link to high concept simulationism; but as you know I think it can also support a type of setting-oriented narrativism.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6241144, member: 42582"] My query with gamist 4e is: where is the challenge? The answer as I see it (from your posts, and from many earlier and lucid posts by [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]): in playing your PC well to overcome the encounters. The point of the transparent PC and encounter build then becomes to make sure the "field of battle" is as fair as possible, so all success or failure is due to the players' skill. Is this roughly right? If so, I see it as a fairly light gamism, because it's really not very demanding. Provided you're actually into the whole apparatus of mathematical manipulations as a passtime, I think you have to misplay pretty badly to lose. I don't agree with this, though. As you correctly noted, 4e could drop the level bonus to everything and yet play just as tightly as a tactical vehicle. The function of level in 4e, then, is to handle the unfolding of story elements: assuming that you use the monster stats as published, you start with kobolds and end with Orcus. Levelling is just not a gamist element at all, but a way of ensuring that the campaign tells the core story of D&D. (This is the link to high concept simulationism; but as you know I think it can also support a type of setting-oriented narrativism.) [/QUOTE]

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