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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5467150" data-attributes="member: 42582">Lanefan, by "gamist" I mean the Forge sense - where the RPG is about competition between the players, or by the players together against the situation set up by the GM, or both. The shorthand slogan for this is "step on up"!AD&D XP is gamist in this sense - only those players who "step on up", who use steel and wits to rob the monsters, get XP. Merely faffing won't earn you XP.Wherease 4e XP is not gamist in this sense - you don't have to "step on up" to earn XP, you just have to spend time at the game, and even if you faff around or fail at the skill challenges you'll still get XP.The features of the system that I think are what you are calling "gamist" - ie just another cog in the mechanics - I would tend to call "metagame". Again, I'm following Forge terminology here.Having sorted out a translation manual for the technical terms, I want to actually disagree with one thing you said. The treasure doesn't come out of the realm of the story. It's not as if loot suddenly appears from nowhere in the PCs backpacks. They find it, or are given it, or steal it, the same as usual. It's just that the opportunities for this to happen are shaped to a significant extent by the metagame pacing concerns.This feature of 4e is yet another reason why I really do think that - apart from a few broad mechanical devices like AC and hit points - it is a completely different game from AD&D. I'm not directly setting out to persuade you not to play 4e as written, but having seen the sort of game you describe - big parties, NPCs as well as PCs, competition between PCs, quite a bit of PC death, some of that death caused by intraparty treachery at the end of an adventure, etc - I would say: if this is what you are wanting from your RPG, 4e would have to be tweaked a bit to deliver it.That said, 4e isn't boring. And it's not without conflict. It's just that the interest isn't in the adventuring as such. It's in the changes to the PCs, and the gameworld, that result from the adventuring.  It's about adventuring as a means to some other story-related end, rather than an end in itself. In that way 4e might owe something to 2nd ed (hesitant as I am to admit this, given my deep deep dislike for 2nd ed). But without the railroading - because it gives the GM and players the tools to build the story together on the fly.</blockquote>

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