Again, there may be some cross purposes here. I'm not talking about the italicised flavour text - I mostly don't pay attention to it, and most monster powers don't have any.
I'm talking about the story implied and expressed by the mechanics.
Exactly.
I'll refer again to the example of the chained cambion: it imposes an effect on two adjacent PCs whereby they take psychic damage if they don't both begin and end their turns adjacent. What is psychic damage? Suffering. So the effect of that ability is that the two PCs suffer - are in sufficient anguish perhaps to collapse and die - if they are separated. At the same time, it makes the players suffer, and experience frustration and resentment, because of the limit put on their PCs (a limit that only really works in gridded, highly mobile combat - but 4e combat is, by default, gridded and highly mobile). What more could you want to produce a story about a cambion, chained for some reason, resentful at being chained and telepathically broadcasting that resentment and anguish to the PCs?
Now one of the many weaknesses in the 4e rulebooks is that they don't talk enough about keywords in this respect. In the main discussion of keywords, keywords are explained simply in mechanics-to-mechanics terms (like the M:tG rules). Only in the discussion of damaging objects (a somewhat obscure part of the DMG) do they talk about the crucial role of mechanics in mediating between mechanics and fiction (eg the reason that a fireball sets combustibles on fire is because it deals damage having the [fire] keyword).
But once you overcome that deficiency in the rulebook, you can see how the keywords and effects of powers express a fiction which doesn't need flavour text (hence my reference to the absence of need for GM patter). The fiction inheres in the way the mechanics are resolved at the table.
A simple non-combat example: why can the wizard power Icy Terrain be used to freeze a puddle? Not because of its name - that's just fluff. Not because of its flavour text - that's more fluff. But because it deals [cold] damage.
As I said, that's a simple little example. But once you get multiple examples in combination (for the typical PC and the more interesting NPCs and creatures) and once you get more mechancially intricate stuff like the Chained Cambion, it gets quite a bit richer. For example, I don't need flavour text to tell me that the PCs who have been psychically shackled will experience anguish if they are separated - that's inherent in the damage they would take being psychic damage.
I'm with TwinBahamut on this. That's never been my argument - I think that a signficant strength of 4e as a game is the setting that it brings with it - but also there is quite a bit of reflavouring that is possible within the parameters set by the mechanics. A Chained Cambion could fairly easily be reflavoured as the victim of some sort of curse, for example (ie the "cambion" bit, as opposed to the "chained" bit, isn't doing a lot of work in the monster's mechanics).
I want the story (and to a lesser extent the background) to emerge from play in a way that integrates player and GM contributions, rather than creating antagonisms or GM predominance. I see this as being the primary role of the mechanics.
Here are some examples that come easily to mind of mechanics that support this sort of thing:
*Any system of lifepath PC generation (RQ, Traveller, Burning Wheel, etc);
*The +5 to poison saves and second wind as a minor actionin that a dwarf enjoys in 4e, which express th inherent toughness and resilience of a dwarf without the need for the sort of GM fiat the Endurance features in the playtest seems to require;
*The need, in any edition of D&D, to mechanically resolve whether or not a given combatant dies in combat (ie there is no process for mere stipulation by GM or player).
*The +5 to poison saves and second wind as a minor actionin that a dwarf enjoys in 4e, which express th inherent toughness and resilience of a dwarf without the need for the sort of GM fiat the Endurance features in the playtest seems to require;
*The need, in any edition of D&D, to mechanically resolve whether or not a given combatant dies in combat (ie there is no process for mere stipulation by GM or player).
One consequence of this approach is that it makes choice of system, by the group, an important precursor in determining what sort of story might emerge out of play.
I think that the degree of GM power over adjudication is a tricky issue. One of the best discussions I know of it, from an RPG book, is in Burning Wheel. HeroQuest is also not too bad, but it's resolution mechanics are a bit more abstract than D&D, so the advice is perhaps a bit harder to apply.
My issue with the GM simply adjudicating whether or not a person fleeing in fear from a wight falls down the pit, when that flight is not epxressed mechanically as forced movement, is that it makes the stakes of the combat highly contingent on the GM's adjudication, and gives the player very little control over them.
I would contrast this with the role of GM adjudication in a skill challenge. The GM in a skill challenge could also declare, as a consequence of a failed check, that a PC falls down a pit (I've actually done this on one occasion). But the skill challenge mechanics mean that the player can always try and recover - via susbequent appropriate checks - and achieve his/her goal for the challenge. So dropping the PC down the pit via adjudication doesn't, of necessity, close things off for the player (and therefore not for the PC either). (This is very close to HeroWars/Quest style adjudication, by the way.)
Whereas, in D&D's combat mechanics (both 4e, pre-4e and the playtest) there is no analogous structure that keeps things mechanically open once a PC falls into a pit. The mechanics don't have that "N successes before 3 failures structure". They are built on a different model. And within that different model, I think it hinders player agency for the GM to be making unstructured and somewhat unpredicatable calls about the consequences of NPC and monster attacks (such as having someone fall down a pit).
I hope I've made it clearer what my views are. It's not about GM adjudication - and if you look at any of my actual play reports on the General or 4e boards you'll see that I do a lot of adjudication, via skill challenges, page 42 etc.
It's about mechanical structures that preserve player agency - be they the page 42 damaeg and DC guidelines, or the "you can't lose until you fail 3 times" structure of skill challenges, or the forced movement rules to regulate who does and doesn't fall into pits when running in fear from a wight.
What I find to be the upshot of these sorts of mechanics is that, as a GM, once you frame the scene you don't have to hold back. You can push as hard as the mechanics allow, and the players can push back, and interesting stuff arises out of it. Whereas without those sorts of structures ("How much damage should this do?" "How likely should it be that so-and-so falls into a pit?" "How many retries am I meant to permit?") the game tends to turn into one in which the GM's decisions override the agency of players in deciding what actually occurs in the play of the game.
Should two hobgoblins try to flank, or fight shoulder-to-shoulder? What about two goblins?
4e answers that question mechanically (goblins should flank to gain advantage and thereby bonus damage, hobgoblins should fight shoulder to shoulder and thereby increase there already strong AC via their phalanx mechanic). And thereby engenders a story (about vexing, flanking goblins and about warlike, martial hobgoblins). Other stuff - further development of the situation by the GM, responses to the situation by the players - can then be hung off this.
If the mechanics are "flexible" on this issue, what is the point of having the different sorts of humanoids at all? What do they contribute to the game, other than providing a suite of opponents of escalating hit points and attack bonuses?
Sure. But the upshot of that is that people who like games where mechanics yield story - which is at least a noticeable subset of the 4e players on these boards - don't get a game that supports their playstyle.
Which was the point of my original post on this thread.
