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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5993564" data-attributes="member: 3887">This is a nice, clear statement of the problem. Thanks.But my question is: doesn't this occur, and frequently, under a system like 3e/Pathfinder, too? My take is it's a product of any complex rule system where a character's success is closely tied to system mastery, ie at the player's skill at manipulating the rules-layer of the game. Think about it this way, the suggested situational modifier in 3e is what, +2/-2. In 3e terms, that's peanuts. Meaning the most significant portion of a character's chance of success comes from the player's ability to stack bonuses, find rules exploits, and to otherwise approach situations from a metagame, rules-first perspective, assuming they're actually interested in succeeding at in-game challenges. My experience with 3e and Pathfinder bears this out. Bonus stacking, combing the books for specific Feats, class abilities, magic items, and spells, and so on, are an important part of play, which all happen to reside squarely in the metagame realm. We certainly try to relate all the subsequent choices we make to our character's perspectives. But they do not originate there. The player needs to be willing to provide bridging fiction. If they don't, the two perspectives remain disconnected.Which isn't a criticism of 3e/Pathfinder. It just an aspect of play under that system, and my group finds reconciling the in-game and metagame decision-making process pretty damn entertaining (and this has been true under every system we've played). You don't have a similar experience with other rules-heavy games?It could just be me. I don't find switching between actor/director/pawn stances, as the need, or desire to do so, arose, to be problematic. It seems, for lack of a better, non-prejudicial term, like the normal way to play an RPG -- and I say this a someone who was primarily a DM, ie an observer of how other people played characters.I also don't find mechanical specifics to be particularly relevant when it comes to immersion. My own sense of character immersion is dependent on a) me creating an interesting fictional persona to play and b) the DM, with help from the other players, creating an interesting fictional world to explore/interact with, and, in the case of D&D --let's be honest-- set on fire with flasks of flame oil <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. The nitty-gritty of the task resolution mechanics and character ability modeling come in a very distant third (if they rank at all).</blockquote>

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