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The roots of 4e exposed?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7464304" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>A follow-on from the previous post: skill challenges, like similar resolution systems in other (mostly indie) RPGs, work on the premises (1) that the GM is responsible for framing scenes, but (2) that the <em>players</em> are responsible for the choices that will determine how those scenes turn out.</p><p></p><p>The significance of (2) is that it makes the scene, or encounter, the focus of play. There is no "<em>the</em> adventure" or "<em>the</em> story", because until a scene/encounter is resolved no one (player or GM) knows what the state of the fiction will be, and hence no one knows what the elements of subsequent scenes will be. 4e is very distinctive among editions of D&D in facilitating this sort of play because it doesn't rely on "the adventuring day" or a similar concept to balance asymmetric resource suites, attrition of resources, etc.</p><p></p><p>The significance of (1) is (at least) twofold. First, the players aren't framing scenes. This is different from Gygaxian dungeoncrawling or "sandboxing", which generally assumes that the players (via some form of GM narration) are confronted with a menu of options for their PCs to engage, and choose from that menu.</p><p></p><p>Second, it puts pressure on the GM to frame interesting scenes! Ron Edwards made <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?PHPSESSID=bhigq31frgmuam61ircngck3p4&topic=20791.0" target="_blank">some good comments</a> about this back when The Forge was a thing, in reply to a poster who was complaining that his players kept wanting to avoid the scenes he was framing, rather than engage with them:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational [=scene-framing] authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.</p><p></p><p>In other words, skill challenges will suck if the GM isn't establishing exciting, compelling situations that the players want to engage via their PCs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7464304, member: 42582"] A follow-on from the previous post: skill challenges, like similar resolution systems in other (mostly indie) RPGs, work on the premises (1) that the GM is responsible for framing scenes, but (2) that the [I]players[/I] are responsible for the choices that will determine how those scenes turn out. The significance of (2) is that it makes the scene, or encounter, the focus of play. There is no "[I]the[/I] adventure" or "[I]the[/I] story", because until a scene/encounter is resolved no one (player or GM) knows what the state of the fiction will be, and hence no one knows what the elements of subsequent scenes will be. 4e is very distinctive among editions of D&D in facilitating this sort of play because it doesn't rely on "the adventuring day" or a similar concept to balance asymmetric resource suites, attrition of resources, etc. The significance of (1) is (at least) twofold. First, the players aren't framing scenes. This is different from Gygaxian dungeoncrawling or "sandboxing", which generally assumes that the players (via some form of GM narration) are confronted with a menu of options for their PCs to engage, and choose from that menu. Second, it puts pressure on the GM to frame interesting scenes! Ron Edwards made [url=http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?PHPSESSID=bhigq31frgmuam61ircngck3p4&topic=20791.0]some good comments[/url] about this back when The Forge was a thing, in reply to a poster who was complaining that his players kept wanting to avoid the scenes he was framing, rather than engage with them: [indent]If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational [=scene-framing] authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. . . . It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hared] I[maginary] S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.[/indent] In other words, skill challenges will suck if the GM isn't establishing exciting, compelling situations that the players want to engage via their PCs. [/QUOTE]
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