I would argue instead that this is a strange thing to be calling an encounter or scene based game (FORGE-speak aside). Or, at least, a game in which the salient field of action is the encounter, as you suggested. If player choices drive the sequence of scenes/encounters, I would argue that the salient field of action is the narrative (or the sequence of scenes/encounters, if you prefer), not the encounter.
This would make the game similar to, say, Cubicle 7's Doctor Who RPG. Except, of course, that what one does in one encounter may well cause changes in subsequent encounters in that game, at least.
I don't know the Doctor Who game you refer to, but I agree that in a player driven game of the sort I'm describing it
has to be the case that what one does in one encounter can cause changes in subsequent encounters.
The nature of those changes, though, I think may tend to be different from in what I am calling exploration-based play (and I'm hoping to pick up under that description a fairly standard non-Dragonlancish AD&D, and Classic Traveller, as paradigms). In an exploration-type game, if in encounter
A I get lucky and kill the guards before they can retreat, then in encounter B the number of foes is reduced. Thus, trying to get in early, stealthily, cleverly etc is all part of the game (I think of this as one aspect of Gygaxian skillful play). Burgling the Medusa while she's out shopping would also be an example of the sort of encounter-changing dynamics that operate in this sort of game. The relationships between encounters, which the players affect through their PCs' choices, are primarily if not exclusively ingame causal relationships.
In the sort of game I called encounter/scene based, ingame causality of the sort just described is less important. As I said earlier, it
is important to maintain a consistent gameworld - but if a satisfyingly dramatic encounter requires that encounter
B have at least 10 foes, then if the players kill 2 guards earlier on before they can retreat it is legitimate as GM to replace them, provided there is a coherent story to be told about where the extra bodies came from. (What counts as coherent here will, of course, depend in part on what the players already know.) But it's not legitimate to make those sorts of changes to the encounter in such a way as to undo the signficance of what the PCs achieved. So, for example, suppose the PCs (maybe with a skill challenge as the resolution mechanism) persuaded the guards to surrender and go off and become peaceful forest dwellers. It's not legitimate for the GM to just ignore this and have the freed guards start massacring the first peasants they come across. So the players might still have a tough challenge ahead of them in encounter B, but they have secured their reputation as the converters of evil henchmen to the ways of peace. And
this should affect the dynamics - social, thematic etc - of subsequent encounters.
The sort of play I'm describing here is (as best I can tell) affirmatively advocated in the rulebooks for HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, The Dying Earth and The Burning Wheel. It is also canvassed in the DMG 2 for 4e, although not fully worked out in terms of its integration into particular aspects of the 4e mechanics (and in particular the combat/skill challenge interface). Unsurprisingly, that part of DMG 2 was written by Robin Laws, a co-author of HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth.
I call it encounter/scene based because Maelstrom expressly presents
the scene as the unit of play, and in 4e the comparable units of play are known as challenges or encounters. Of course in 4e as in the other games I mentioned there will be moments of exploration that link the scenes/encounters, but those moments are in a certain sense subordinate. I think it is Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard) who coined "Say yes or roll the dice!" In the sort of game I am describing, when the dice start rolling then we are generally in an encounter or challenge of some sort. And the preceding moments when "yes" was said are not unimportant, but they are a type of prelude to the action. (In fact in 4e and in HeroQuest there are some dice rolls that aren't full-fledged encounters - in HeroQuest these would be at least some simple contests, and in 4e these would be single skill checks that aren't part of either a skill challenge or a combat encounter.)
And as I said upthread, I think 4e-style SSSoD suits this sort of play better, because it locates the relevant choices, and the associated action resolution, at the point of culmination rather than in the preliminary stages.
(Interestingly, in some approaches to this sort of play, you could try to build prior actions into the resolution at the culmination - for example, in a skill challenge a player might make a Streetwise check to avoid being petrified not as part of the PC's immediate ingame interaction with the medusa's lair under the city, but to reflect prior knowledge and wits acquired by talking to the thieves who use the undercity for their smuggling. Using skill checks in this sort of rather metagamey way is not officially canvassed in the 4e rules, however.)
A game where the salient field of action is the encounter would contain a number of encounters, which the group may have a choice in the order they are played, but where the framework is so disconnected that there is nothing whatsoever to aid them in determining what choice should be made.
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As written, a number of modules display this sort of frame, including some of the older modules -- even some which are sometimes considered "classics". I am sure, if you are familiar with early or current D&D, you can think of a few.
That can be fun in a fast-paced game, if that is what you are into, but on the whole I think a more robust framework makes for a better game.
I agree with your last sentence. If my options were this sort of game or Talisman, I can see that it might be a toss-up, but I wouldn't be interested in this sort of game for serious play.
In this sort of game, the sense in which the encounter is the salient field of action is very different from what I had in mind - as I hope I've made clear (probably at excessive length!) above.
