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The roots of 4e exposed?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7464942" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>No. But knowing that you're in a skill challenge does help make decisions about what resources to expend (eg if I have a limited-used Nature buff, I might not use it on the first check if I'm still sussing out the fiction), and it helps you know what the payoff is for succeeding.</p><p></p><p>It also establishes a context for making choices about how to engage the fiction: if its a complexity 5 skill challenge, for example, then I know that my first few moves aren't going to win it for me, but will help lay the groundwork for later, likely more decisive, checks.</p><p></p><p>It will affect pacing, which is what I said ("It's purely about pacing"). But it won't affect game balance. Nothing comes unstuck if the players nova. No one dominates and no one gets overshadowed.</p><p></p><p>If the players choose to hoard their daily resources then the GM is free to respond to that as s/he thinks appropriate given the mood and expectations of the table, and what would be consistent with the logic of the fiction. That could range from reward/flattery by telegraphing an encounter that will allow the players to profit from the planned expenditure of their carefully conserved resources, to taunting/teasing by pushing them at every turn with adverse actions by NPCs and framings of situations that would be oh-so-easy to deal with by expending a daily, but become hard or costly (in story terms) when dealt with without such expenditure.</p><p></p><p>This sort of flexibility, and capacity for unfolding spontaneity of pacing and framing without needing to be concerned about intra-partiy balance, is (in my view, and based on my experiences) a big part of what makes 4e the most suitable version of D&D for any sort of "story now"-type RPGing.</p><p></p><p>But putting everyone on the same resource recovery suite is a <em>huge]/i] difference from any other version of D&D. And it removes the need to worry about balance in terms of the "adventuring day" (look how often that comes up as a topic of discussion on the 5e boards!).</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The short answer to the second question is No, there's no map that the GM knows and that the players learn about through play as one of the goals of play. That's not to say that there's no map; nor even that there's no map that (at the start) only the GM knows. But learning the map isn't a goal of play. If the players don't already know it (because the GM has shared it with them), then picking it up in the course of play is a side effect of other stuff going on. Eg in the Underdark phase of my 4e game I had a rough map sketched that located some of the key features that I thought might be interesting, and I didn't show it to the players from the start. But it wasn't used as part of the adjudication of action resolution - the PCs' movement through the Underdark was a mixture of free narration and skill challenges, and the map simply acted as a sort of "aide memoire" to help me narrate appropriate flavour. When I needed to change or interpolate stuff to support the unfoding ficiton, I did so.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>In my 4e game, the overland map that I used was the one from module B10 Night's Dark Terror, and I shared it with the players from the start. Likewise in my Greyhawk-located Burning Wheel game, when the PCs are moving from place to place we all look at the map to work out where they're going, and it provides a source of flavour to support narrations (eg place names; "You journey for 5 days through the desert before arriving at the foothills"; etc). The players don't "discover" it, and they doubly don't discover it by working out how it is affecting the resolution of declared actions.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>As to the first question, the exploration aspect is about discovering what comes out of play, or learning in play what the implications or significance of some setting element is - not players discovering stuff that the GM has already established.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7464942, member: 42582"] No. But knowing that you're in a skill challenge does help make decisions about what resources to expend (eg if I have a limited-used Nature buff, I might not use it on the first check if I'm still sussing out the fiction), and it helps you know what the payoff is for succeeding. It also establishes a context for making choices about how to engage the fiction: if its a complexity 5 skill challenge, for example, then I know that my first few moves aren't going to win it for me, but will help lay the groundwork for later, likely more decisive, checks. It will affect pacing, which is what I said ("It's purely about pacing"). But it won't affect game balance. Nothing comes unstuck if the players nova. No one dominates and no one gets overshadowed. If the players choose to hoard their daily resources then the GM is free to respond to that as s/he thinks appropriate given the mood and expectations of the table, and what would be consistent with the logic of the fiction. That could range from reward/flattery by telegraphing an encounter that will allow the players to profit from the planned expenditure of their carefully conserved resources, to taunting/teasing by pushing them at every turn with adverse actions by NPCs and framings of situations that would be oh-so-easy to deal with by expending a daily, but become hard or costly (in story terms) when dealt with without such expenditure. This sort of flexibility, and capacity for unfolding spontaneity of pacing and framing without needing to be concerned about intra-partiy balance, is (in my view, and based on my experiences) a big part of what makes 4e the most suitable version of D&D for any sort of "story now"-type RPGing. But putting everyone on the same resource recovery suite is a [i]huge]/i] difference from any other version of D&D. And it removes the need to worry about balance in terms of the "adventuring day" (look how often that comes up as a topic of discussion on the 5e boards!). The short answer to the second question is No, there's no map that the GM knows and that the players learn about through play as one of the goals of play. That's not to say that there's no map; nor even that there's no map that (at the start) only the GM knows. But learning the map isn't a goal of play. If the players don't already know it (because the GM has shared it with them), then picking it up in the course of play is a side effect of other stuff going on. Eg in the Underdark phase of my 4e game I had a rough map sketched that located some of the key features that I thought might be interesting, and I didn't show it to the players from the start. But it wasn't used as part of the adjudication of action resolution - the PCs' movement through the Underdark was a mixture of free narration and skill challenges, and the map simply acted as a sort of "aide memoire" to help me narrate appropriate flavour. When I needed to change or interpolate stuff to support the unfoding ficiton, I did so. In my 4e game, the overland map that I used was the one from module B10 Night's Dark Terror, and I shared it with the players from the start. Likewise in my Greyhawk-located Burning Wheel game, when the PCs are moving from place to place we all look at the map to work out where they're going, and it provides a source of flavour to support narrations (eg place names; "You journey for 5 days through the desert before arriving at the foothills"; etc). The players don't "discover" it, and they doubly don't discover it by working out how it is affecting the resolution of declared actions. As to the first question, the exploration aspect is about discovering what comes out of play, or learning in play what the implications or significance of some setting element is - not players discovering stuff that the GM has already established.[/i] [/QUOTE]
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