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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6243123" data-attributes="member: 6688937">A good question. My first reaction was &quot;By how people approach it, because the GNS theory was aimed at describing play.&quot; However, that's not sitting very well with me. Additionally, the game doesn't exist in a vacuum, different groups will come at it with different capacities as well as interests. If the game does something well, but that's being ignored by a good portion of its audience...how much/or what kind of credit does it deserve for that?Personally, I doubt that any of the three poles of GNS is a refined enough descriptor/measure/characteristic to make or break a game or judge its relative sales (and vice versa). All gamism, to whatever degree, is not created equal. So if you take Star Fleet Battles, and re-skin the ships as characters and monsters...do you suddenly have a better gamist D&amp;D? I wouldn't think so.I mean, the most gamist guy I know is rabidly anti-4e. Not because of any of the issues we've been discussing here, but because he feels its fundamentally wrong (more importantly &quot;not D&amp;D&quot;) for a Kobold to ever have more than single-digit HP. He utterly despises the idea of reskinning or levelling monsters up or down (even though he admits having no problems with eight different varieties of 1e orcs at different HD from various sources). For him (and to a lesser degree some other folks I know) its simply that 4e uses some of the same things he's used to, but does it &quot;wrong&quot; in either calibration or quality...He's one of those that considers 4e to be an excellent skirmish game, but simply &quot;not D&amp;D&quot;.Additionally, there's mechanical fiddliness. Which applies to some degree to both WotC editions. For him, and even myself to a degree, 4e characters seem like a lot of work and fiddly bits for the gain that you get. 3e has a similar problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to feel very bad that way until you get to the 7th-10th level range (variable with class, and items).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 6243123, member: 6688937"] A good question. My first reaction was "By how people approach it, because the GNS theory was aimed at describing play." However, that's not sitting very well with me. Additionally, the game doesn't exist in a vacuum, different groups will come at it with different capacities as well as interests. If the game does something well, but that's being ignored by a good portion of its audience...how much/or what kind of credit does it deserve for that? Personally, I doubt that any of the three poles of GNS is a refined enough descriptor/measure/characteristic to make or break a game or judge its relative sales (and vice versa). All gamism, to whatever degree, is not created equal. So if you take Star Fleet Battles, and re-skin the ships as characters and monsters...do you suddenly have a better gamist D&D? I wouldn't think so. I mean, the most gamist guy I know is rabidly anti-4e. Not because of any of the issues we've been discussing here, but because he feels its fundamentally wrong (more importantly "not D&D") for a Kobold to ever have more than single-digit HP. He utterly despises the idea of reskinning or levelling monsters up or down (even though he admits having no problems with eight different varieties of 1e orcs at different HD from various sources). For him (and to a lesser degree some other folks I know) its simply that 4e uses some of the same things he's used to, but does it "wrong" in either calibration or quality...He's one of those that considers 4e to be an excellent skirmish game, but simply "not D&D". Additionally, there's mechanical fiddliness. Which applies to some degree to both WotC editions. For him, and even myself to a degree, 4e characters seem like a lot of work and fiddly bits for the gain that you get. 3e has a similar problem, but for some reason it doesn't seem to [I]feel[/I] very bad that way until you get to the 7th-10th level range (variable with class, and items). [/QUOTE]

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