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Of all the complaints about 3.x systems... do you people actually allow this stuff ?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5800654" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think I gave this as an examle upthread (or maybe in the other thread that is discussing this point at the moment?).</p><p></p><p>So yes, I agree.</p><p></p><p>I think a "no failure offscreen" approach also depends on clear metagame signals between players and GM as to what counts as <em>failure</em>. In a game like Burning Wheel, with its belief mechancis, these signals are sent explicitly - if the players all change their PCs' beliefs, such that none of them cares anymore about the princess, then it's time to kill the princess offscreen, because that is no longer a failure.</p><p></p><p>In a game like 4e, which does not have this sort of mechanic - only much looser mechanical devices for signalling broad orientations/affiliations, like god worshipped, paragon paths, etc - then the signals will often be sent more loosely. But if the players, in playing the game, show no particular inclination to hurry up and rescue the princess, then I would take that as a signal that they don't care about her anymore, and hence that having her die offscreen would not be a failure.</p><p></p><p>The connection of this point to the minions is that I might use the minions once or twice if play seems to have bogged down simply due to disorganisation/incompetence on the part of those at the table - this is the Raymond Chandler approach to reviving a flagging narrative - but wouldn't use them to try to push the players into caring about something that they have clearly signalled a lack of interest in.</p><p></p><p>This, I think, relates to the point about "metagame signals". The sort of game I like depends heavily upon them, whether explicit or implicit, and whether <em>merely</em> metagame (I as the GM say to the players, "Hey, can we stop the faffing about - what's your plan to rescue the prisoners, or have you given up on them?") or occuring ingame but having obvious metagame importance also (which would include your examples of giving the PCs information - because more important than the information given to the PCs, is the metagame prompt provided to the players).</p><p></p><p>Yes - and your other descriptions of my approach are all accurate too.</p><p></p><p>A final comment on the minions, resource sucking, and various techniques for dealing with the 15-minute day - different action resolution systems can be affected differently by a depletion in resources. So a fight involving injured PCs, in Rolemaster, can be more dramatic than one in which the PCs are uninjured - because injury is generally expressed as a numerical penalty, which lowers bonuses, and lower bonuses can produce longer combats (and in RM this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because RM is prone to combats that end in a round or two as someone or other is "critted out") and/or more dramatic choices (melee combat bonus in RM must be allocated, round-by-round, between attack and defence, and the less there is to allocate the greater the incentive to attack all out - which is dramatic - or to defend strongly until one's friends are able to help - which is less dramatic in the immediate instance, but can be the entree to dramatic rescues).</p><p></p><p>Another feature of RM is that magic use is on a spell point system, so even low spell point PCs can still perform their "signature moves", although perhaps only once or twice before running out of points. So a fight involving PCs who have suffered spell point attrition in earlier encounters isn't necessarily going to suffer in "showiness" because of that.</p><p></p><p>4e has a different dynamic.</p><p></p><p>In 4e, a fight is most reliably dramatic when the PCs are at full resources - because full resources is not just "bigger numbers" but a wider breadth of options (via the power system) - <em>provided that</em> the opposition is suitably powerful to soak those resources and still provide a challenge. (This is a refined version of the approach to 3E/PF encounter design using EL+3/4 challenges against which the party is <em>expected</em> to nova.)</p><p></p><p>A full-resource party against weak opponents is generally tedious in 4e (of course there can always be exceptions) because the combat will still take a while to resolve (due to the damage to hit point ratios), and resources are unlikely to be soaked - encounter powers will come back, and with surgeless healing, or encounter-power-based buffs on surged healing, no signficant damage soaking will take place.</p><p></p><p>A resource-weak party against weak to moderate opponents, on the other hand, can produce surpising results - it doesn't come up very often in my game, although may do so in my next session depending how a few things pan out, but the last time it happened we ended up with the sorcerer taking the front line to protect the threatened defenders. This can be dramatic, although also slightly comic.</p><p></p><p>And a resource-stretched party against strong opponents - which comes up most often when you run encounter in waves, minions preceding bosses, so that the PCs aren't just swamped by the opposition, but they don't get a short rest in between bouts - is perhaps the most dramatic version of the reliably dramatic encounter - all the party's resources will be deployed, surges will be spent, etc - but also perhaps the most likely to push towards TPK (again, I'm going to be exploring this space a bit in my next session, I think).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, the point of that long recounting of encounter structures in different systems is just to illustrate how system can shape the way a minion encounter can be expected to play out, and whether it will be dramatic or tedious (and so worth doing, all things considered), and can also shape the effect that resource attrition has on the drama of subsequent encounters. It's not a defence, or a criticism, of either RM or 4e - just continuing to make the point that playstyle, system, use of time in the game, etc, are all intricately related - so there is no "one size fits all", system and playstyle independent "fix" for the 15 MAD.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5800654, member: 42582"] I think I gave this as an examle upthread (or maybe in the other thread that is discussing this point at the moment?). So yes, I agree. I think a "no failure offscreen" approach also depends on clear metagame signals between players and GM as to what counts as [I]failure[/I]. In a game like Burning Wheel, with its belief mechancis, these signals are sent explicitly - if the players all change their PCs' beliefs, such that none of them cares anymore about the princess, then it's time to kill the princess offscreen, because that is no longer a failure. In a game like 4e, which does not have this sort of mechanic - only much looser mechanical devices for signalling broad orientations/affiliations, like god worshipped, paragon paths, etc - then the signals will often be sent more loosely. But if the players, in playing the game, show no particular inclination to hurry up and rescue the princess, then I would take that as a signal that they don't care about her anymore, and hence that having her die offscreen would not be a failure. The connection of this point to the minions is that I might use the minions once or twice if play seems to have bogged down simply due to disorganisation/incompetence on the part of those at the table - this is the Raymond Chandler approach to reviving a flagging narrative - but wouldn't use them to try to push the players into caring about something that they have clearly signalled a lack of interest in. This, I think, relates to the point about "metagame signals". The sort of game I like depends heavily upon them, whether explicit or implicit, and whether [I]merely[/I] metagame (I as the GM say to the players, "Hey, can we stop the faffing about - what's your plan to rescue the prisoners, or have you given up on them?") or occuring ingame but having obvious metagame importance also (which would include your examples of giving the PCs information - because more important than the information given to the PCs, is the metagame prompt provided to the players). Yes - and your other descriptions of my approach are all accurate too. A final comment on the minions, resource sucking, and various techniques for dealing with the 15-minute day - different action resolution systems can be affected differently by a depletion in resources. So a fight involving injured PCs, in Rolemaster, can be more dramatic than one in which the PCs are uninjured - because injury is generally expressed as a numerical penalty, which lowers bonuses, and lower bonuses can produce longer combats (and in RM this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because RM is prone to combats that end in a round or two as someone or other is "critted out") and/or more dramatic choices (melee combat bonus in RM must be allocated, round-by-round, between attack and defence, and the less there is to allocate the greater the incentive to attack all out - which is dramatic - or to defend strongly until one's friends are able to help - which is less dramatic in the immediate instance, but can be the entree to dramatic rescues). Another feature of RM is that magic use is on a spell point system, so even low spell point PCs can still perform their "signature moves", although perhaps only once or twice before running out of points. So a fight involving PCs who have suffered spell point attrition in earlier encounters isn't necessarily going to suffer in "showiness" because of that. 4e has a different dynamic. In 4e, a fight is most reliably dramatic when the PCs are at full resources - because full resources is not just "bigger numbers" but a wider breadth of options (via the power system) - [I]provided that[/I] the opposition is suitably powerful to soak those resources and still provide a challenge. (This is a refined version of the approach to 3E/PF encounter design using EL+3/4 challenges against which the party is [I]expected[/I] to nova.) A full-resource party against weak opponents is generally tedious in 4e (of course there can always be exceptions) because the combat will still take a while to resolve (due to the damage to hit point ratios), and resources are unlikely to be soaked - encounter powers will come back, and with surgeless healing, or encounter-power-based buffs on surged healing, no signficant damage soaking will take place. A resource-weak party against weak to moderate opponents, on the other hand, can produce surpising results - it doesn't come up very often in my game, although may do so in my next session depending how a few things pan out, but the last time it happened we ended up with the sorcerer taking the front line to protect the threatened defenders. This can be dramatic, although also slightly comic. And a resource-stretched party against strong opponents - which comes up most often when you run encounter in waves, minions preceding bosses, so that the PCs aren't just swamped by the opposition, but they don't get a short rest in between bouts - is perhaps the most dramatic version of the reliably dramatic encounter - all the party's resources will be deployed, surges will be spent, etc - but also perhaps the most likely to push towards TPK (again, I'm going to be exploring this space a bit in my next session, I think). Anyway, the point of that long recounting of encounter structures in different systems is just to illustrate how system can shape the way a minion encounter can be expected to play out, and whether it will be dramatic or tedious (and so worth doing, all things considered), and can also shape the effect that resource attrition has on the drama of subsequent encounters. It's not a defence, or a criticism, of either RM or 4e - just continuing to make the point that playstyle, system, use of time in the game, etc, are all intricately related - so there is no "one size fits all", system and playstyle independent "fix" for the 15 MAD. [/QUOTE]
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