D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

Malmuria · Oct 25, 2021

Manbearcat said:
Situation framing and consequence handling is one of the primary responsibilities of GMing across all games. The only areas where situation framing is offloaded onto system or player is in a scenario like Dogs' Initiation Conflict (where the player authors the situation framing - "a kicker" - and the GM merely plays the antagonism) or an "ask questions and use the answers" scenario in PBtA games or in a high level D&D spellcaster's repertoire ("I'm using this divination spell for recon and now I'm using this teleportation spell; boom - we're in the Baron's chambers and he's totally not ready for us") or something like an Adjuration Ritual in 4e (we're exorcising this demon-possessed Paladin so integrate the SC mechanics with the combat mechanics) etc.

In Blades, players have lots of input on situation framing when it comes to Scores via what transpires in Information Gathering and the approach to the Score. What transpires in Info Gathering (both the fiction and how that fiction turns into an Engagement Roll and the attendant result) + Score type + Detail + Engagement Roll constrain the GM significantly in their situation framing (see my post above that depicts that winnowing of decision-tree).

Across all Story Now games, whether they're Sorcerer or My Life With Master or whatever, they have the following in common when it comes to situation framing:

* You're playing to find out. What is happening right now is not something that was scripted. There is no plot. So this conflict and this obstacle isn't Story Before. Its an emergent consequences, spun out of following the breadcrumbs of all prior play + fidelity to the game's principles.

* Everything that is onscreen is about the premise of play, which is about one dramatic need or another of a PC or the PCs at large. There is no table time devoted to conflict/theme/premise-neutral content. Something is always at stake and that something orbits one or more PCs.

* These games are pretty much exclusively table-facing from premise to procedures to system architecture that facilitates the flow from situation framing > player orientation > player action declaration > resolution > consequence.

So where/how does GM authority over situation get constrained in D&D?

* When the conflict resolution mechanics generate finality (see the conversation of "win cons" which you appear to disagree with) such that the honored output of the conflict must feed directly into subsequent framing. You've killed the dude? The dude's dead. You've opened the portal and entered it to get into the Feywild? You're there. You've saved the daughter and the father? They're grateful and now you can parley with mechanical advantage (and remember above...they're going to be relevant to some PC dramatic need). Etc etc.

The dudes' not dead. You're not there. The father and daughter hate you and/or they're aren't relevant to PC dramatic need.

All of those are badwronguttercrap Story Now GMing. They're against the rules, principles, agenda, ethos of play.

* When the conflict resolution mechanics and action resolution mechanics are table-facing so when they generate finality, everyone at the table knows for sure that the GM is honoring the output of the conflict (which then must feed directly into subsequent framing).

* When play is formalized such that PC dramatic need is what play orbits around (eg Quests + Theme in Heroic Tier of 4e).

* When players actually have resources to call upon that outright dictate to the GM (rather than just influence) what the framing will be. "I have this Ranger ability that lets me bypass this perilous journey...so we're not trekking, we're at the town/tower/cabin/portal (whathaveyou)." "I'm adjuring the possessed Paladin...we aren't killing him." "I'm reconning and then porting us into the sanctum of bad guy x." "I'm whipping out Tiny Hut so we've got an LOLExtended Rest please and thank you." "When I'm in trouble from the law and on the run, the salt-of-the-earth folks hereabouts will take us in...we head straight for that big barn where the farmer is milking the cows..."

Etc.

Each of those things individually constrain or circumvent GM authority over situation framing. Together, they work in concert, to winnow a GM's decision-space further.

Thanks for the excellent summary. a few small questions about 4e (I'm sure these have been debated endlessly somewhere, but a cursory google search did not suggest that 4e deviated strongly in including some 'standard' dnd elements):
• I suppose, within the above framework, there is no point to there being random encounters, in general? That is, where nothing is at stake except simulation (or, at most, a timer)?
• When is it ok for a gm to skip to the next scene? I would think, for me anyway, that's the part that would feel like dm fiat
• What kind of preparations do PCs need to make, and what can be hand-waived or determined after the fact (I'm thinking of inventory, in particular, but also information, scouting, etc). Is it all resolved via skill challenge?

FrogReaver · Oct 25, 2021

pemerton said:
A sandbox, as I understand it and as I believe @Manbearcat understands it, depends upon the GM establishing a relatively large amount of setting/backstory in advance. The players, in play, declare actions - especially actions of the form We go to such-and-such a place and We look at such-and-such a thing - and in response to these declarations the GM (i) provides the players with information that the GM takes from their notes, and/or (ii) frames the PCs into scenes/situations that were latent in those notes, but become "activated" in virtue of the PCs turning up at, and/or looking into, that place.

That sounds to me more like a static sandbox, where much sandbox play today is more focused on creating a living sandbox - where the world lives in a sense without PC input and the PC's then discover and can intervene in the world to shape it going forward as they discover these places and people in the game.

Maybe part of the problem is that you and him are too narrowly defining sandbox?

pemerton said:
The best-known model/example of this sort of thing is a classic map-and-key dungeon, and the quintessential example of an action declaration that triggers the "activation" of a situation hitherto latent in the GM's notes is We open the door - what do we see?

Yea, a map and key dungeon is not what I really think of when I think of sandbox. It's a much different kind of experience than what I'm contemplating.

It does meet the static sandbox definition though.

pemerton said:
Another feature of this sort of approach is that the pre-authored backstory provides answers to action resolution beyond the activation of hitherto latent situations. Eg if the GM has described a table, and the players say We look under the table to see if anything is hidden there, the GM generally responds to that action declaration by reading of their notes. (Because notes often run out, especially for minor details, many GMs have a range of techniques used for off-the-cuff extrapolation eg random charts to see what is in a kitchen drawer, or making something up with the goal that it be colourful and entertaining - eg Under the table you see some crudely scratched graffiti - "Shagrat sucks goat b___s" - but not be misleading or confusing vis-a-vis the rest of the fiction the GM has prepared in their notes.

I'd say creating details via improv is a requirement of any rpg play, because notes are finite and the possibilities are infinite.

pemerton said:
Now @Manbearcat has said that he is running 4e No Myth. No Myth is normally used to describe an approach to RPGing that puts situation and characters first, and relies on extrapolation from these, as they combine in framing and in resolution, to establish backstory and setting. And I'm guessing that's how Manbearcat is using the phrase in this thread. And this is clearly quite different from a sandbox approach.

I suppose I must ask, how is a living sandbox not putting situation and characters first? That's the part that makes me question how different a living sandbox and story now actually are. The only difference I'm seeing are 1) in what mechanicsms they use to create the backstory. (Sandbox being DM authority and preauthoring and Story now requiring some improv and likely a mechanical process to produce the backstory when it is needed.

pemerton said:
As I stated earlier in this post, Manbearcat has made it pretty clear what principles are governing his approach to framing scenes. 4e has super-robust mechanics for resolving the actions that players declare for their PCs once a scene is framed, whether via combat or non-combat (skill challenges in this latter case). My view is that 4e is at its mechanically weakest (which is not to say that it is any weaker than any other version of D&D, and I think clearly stronger than AD&D or 3E in this respect) when combat and non-combat intersect, because the maths does not integrate perfectly. But I know from experience - having read Manbearcat's extensive posts about his 4e play, and having played 4e with him as GM - that he has developed various ways of coping with this weak point of the system.

That makes it sound like 4e doesn't support that style out of the box.

pemerton said:
I think the way in which 4e's combat resolution produces outcomes without GM fiat is fairly clear. Skill challenges seem to be more opaque to many people - in my experience, mostly those who have not encountered the idea of "closed scene resolution" in other RPGs like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP, DitV, etc.

A skill challenge puts two constraints on a GM. (1) Until the requisite number of successes or failures has been achieved, the GM is obliged to narrate consequences that keep the challenge alive. (2) The GM's narration of consequences must respect the fact that any given check is a success or a failure. It is through the operation of these two constraints, as actions are declared and resolved and the situation unfolds, that new fiction is established and complications and revelations unfold. They are outputs of the resolution process, not inputs as they are in resolution that draws upon pre-authored setting/backstory.

I understand how skill challenges work. I don't understand how the stop DM fiat in anything external to them. Such as setting up the scene that ultimately resulted in the skill challenge.

pemerton said:
My view, which I stated upthread to at best modest acclaim, is this:

4e defaults to significant player authority over backstory - eg via player-authored quests. This sort of thing could, in my view, be fairly easily introduced into 5e D&D. But as I understand it, 5e does not have an analogue to skill challenge resolution; and as far as combat resolution is concerned, I think it is widely recognised that it's default is not as intricate as 4e D&D, which means it provides less support for the generation of fiction via the process of resolution. In both these respects, it's much closer to AD&D.

Therefore, I would expect No Myth 5e based on shared backstory authority and placing situation and character first to play fairly similarly to AD&D played in the same fashion. It will be a bit more rickety than 4e is, and probably at some points a bit more recourse to consensus rather than resolution mechanics to deal with that. And combat will be less of a source of compelling fiction than it can be in 4e.

And if someone were to aske me, what are the pressure points in 5e that are absent from both 4e and AD&D, I would have two answers: the first is that character abilities that do not just enhance stat/skill resolution, but seemingly rely on engaging with established background material - eg Ranger's Favoured Terrain; Folk Hero's Rustic Hospitality - become a bit trickier in no myth play without a skill-challenge like structure to feed them into; second, whereas AD&D and 4e both default to fixed DCs out of combat (either stat numbers or thief skill numbers or the like in AD&D; level-by-DC chart in 4), 5e requires the GM to set the DC.

Those pressure points needn't be fatal. But I think someone GMing No Myth 5 D&D would want to keep an eye on them.

I'm still not seeing how any of that doesn't ultimately run into GM fiat.

FrogReaver · Oct 25, 2021

Maybe it would help some to walk through a 'living sandbox'.

The DM defines the starting point, the factions in the world, the major locations, etc. Though, plenty is left blank to fill in later. The game is fairly open and players typically have wide latitude in creating their PC's backstory but it's not necessarily anything goes.

When the players start to play they there is not any overreaching goals imposed by the DM. The players decide what to do, who to help, etc. The GM generates conflicts behind the scenes that the players can learn about and possibly intervene in if they so choose. This can be one method of gaining favors to help facilitate their PC goals.

Based on what the PC's do or do not do, the world changes around them, etc (using with DM side mechanics for what is causing a change or weighting the odds).

Depending on what the PC's focus on, aspects of the world changing can be mere flavor or something they begin to deeply care about. Ultimately the PC's story is being driven by the players and what they want to pursue.

In that sense it's like story now. However, the mechanisms for determining what happens next rest purely on the GM and his hidden mechanics as opposed to a more player facing mechanical approach.

Manbearcat · Oct 25, 2021

Malmuria said:
Thanks for the excellent summary. a few small questions about 4e (I'm sure these have been debated endlessly somewhere, but a cursory google search did not suggest that 4e deviated strongly in including some 'standard' dnd elements):
• I suppose, within the above framework, there is no point to there being random encounters, in general? That is, where nothing is at stake except simulation (or, at most, a timer)?
• When is it ok for a gm to skip to the next scene? I would think, for me anyway, that's the part that would feel like dm fiat
• What kind of preparations do PCs need to make, and what can be hand-waived or determined after the fact (I'm thinking of inventory, in particular, but also information, scouting, etc). Is it all resolved via skill challenge?

No problem. Its late. I'm tired and preoccupied so not going to be able to get to this tonight.

I'll check back in tomorrow. If @Crimson Longinus hasn't responded to your post with an insightful breakdown of the above questions and a corresponding play excerpt to shed further light, then I'll throw some words at it that hopefully helps clarify things.

One other thought on "win cons" real quickly for you to chew on (was just talking about this to a few buddies).

The way I'm trying to use "win cons" (and the explanatory power I hoped they would have) is as follows:

Table-facing scene win establishing finality to a conflict which then encodes its "dna" into subsequent framing (if I activate the portal I'm in the Feywild...if I exorcise the demon from the Paladin King I'll restore the benevolent rulership of my allied kingdom...etc).

pemerton · Oct 25, 2021

FrogReaver said:
That sounds to me more like a static sandbox, where much sandbox play today is more focused on creating a living sandbox - where the world lives in a sense without PC input and the PC's then discover and can intervene in the world to shape it going forward as they discover these places and people in the game.

Maybe part of the problem is that you and him are too narrowly defining sandbox?

I don't know. What you're describing above is some fiction - ie there are things happening and then these people (the PCs) stick their bibs in and some different things happen.

I don't know of many RPGs that don't produce that sort of fiction. The DL modules produce that sort of fiction - there is a war/invasion going on and the PCs discover and intervene to stop it and on the way through discover people and places - but I can't imagine that the DL modules count as any sort of sandbox.

I've always understood a "sandbox" to be a description of a process of play, not just of some fiction. What is the process of play in a "living sandbox"? My best guess is that it is a version of what I described: the GM has notes about people and places, with situations latent in them, and depending on what actions the players declare that "move" their PCs through the sandbox, various situations are "activated".

FrogReaver said:
I suppose I must ask, how is a living sandbox not putting situation and characters first? That's the part that makes me question how different a living sandbox and story now actually are.

Again, I don't know because you haven't told me how a "living sandbox" as you are envisaging it actually works. But my guess would be that the "world that lives" is something the GM is writing up and imagining in their notes. And that a lot of action resolution is resolved by reference to those notes. Which would be backstory first. Situation would be next, as this is what occurs when the players have their PCs engage the backstory in such a way as to enliven latent situations. Character would seem to be last, given that the backstory and those latent situations are established independently by the GM.

FrogReaver said:
I'd say creating details via improv is a requirement of any rpg play, because notes are finite and the possibilities are infinite.

Perhaps. I think it plays a very small role in ToH or White Plume Mountain.

What is more interesting is what is the point of the improvisation? And what principles govern it? I gave an example of the graffiti under the table where the point is to give a non-boring payoff for the players' action declaration "We look under the table" and the main principle is don't introduce anything that will be misleading or confusing relative to the prepared notes. The upshot of (1) and (2) is a bit of colour. In No Myth play, the point of improvisation is generally to drive play forward by engaging players' evinced priorities/goals/aspirations for their PCs, and the principles are things like go where the action is, apply pressure, honour success and failure, and in 4e at least say 'yes' or roll the dice.

FrogReaver said:
That makes it sound like 4e doesn't support that style out of the box.

What style?

The first encounter I ran which mixed combat and non-combat was for 1st level PCs in my second session of 4e GMing, in Jan or early Feb 2009. I had the 3 core books and Adventurer's Vault.

What I said is that "My view is that 4e is at its mechanically weakest (which is not to say that it is any weaker than any other version of D&D, and I think clearly stronger than AD&D or 3E in this respect) when combat and non-combat intersect". That does not mean it can't be done. It's stronger than any other published version of D&D that I'm familiar with (I can't comment on 5e, though I would have my doubts about it), and I think most posters on ENworld would assert that they support mixing combat and non-combat "out of the box".

FrogReaver said:
I understand how skill challenges work. I don't understand how the stop DM fiat in anything external to them. Such as setting up the scene that ultimately resulted in the skill challenge.

@Manbearcat and I have been crystal-clear that 4e rests on a premise of GM authority over scene-framing. And we've talked about the principles that govern that: player-authored quests, player-evinced dramatic/thematic concerns, etc. In my 4e game, at PC gen, I issued two non-canonical but hardly revolutionary instructions: (1) please tell us something/someone that your character is loyal to; (2) please tell us what reason your PC has to be ready to fight goblins.

This is the standard approach to scene-framed, "story now" play.

FrogReaver · Oct 25, 2021

pemerton said:
I don't know. What you're describing above is some fiction - ie there are things happening and then these people (the PCs) stick their bibs in and some different things happen.

Makes it sound like you've already dismissed it before considering it

pemerton said:
I don't know of many RPGs that don't produce that sort of fiction. The DL modules produce that sort of fiction - there is a war/invasion going on and the PCs discover and intervene to stop it and on the way through discover people and places - but I can't imagine that the DL modules count as any sort of sandbox.

That's not the kind of fiction I'm talking about.

As an example.
PC Backstory is I want to take vengeance on my brother's murderer. 2 factions start to war. PC's learn of this and approach their preferred faction. The player makes it clear his PC isn't interested in gold but in information about the person and location of who killed his brother. The faction agrees to provide that information in lieu of gold if he will assist by helping to raid an important outpost. He assists, they provide the info and instead of continuing to help that faction he leaves to find his brothers killer. The faction war continues in the background with DM behind the scenes mechanics determining which faction comes out on top and the consequences of that. PC's probably hear news of this as they track down the killer. How is that player not driving the story?

pemerton said:
I've always understood a "sandbox" to be a description of a process of play, not just of some fiction. What is the process of play in a "living sandbox"? My best guess is that it is a version of what I described: the GM has notes about people and places, with situations latent in them, and depending on what actions the players declare that "move" their PCs through the sandbox, various situations are "activated".

Not really. In a living sandbox situations activate without need for the PC's. The world goes on without them so to speak.

pemerton said:
Again, I don't know because you haven't told me how a "living sandbox" as you are envisaging it actually works. But my guess would be that the "world that lives" is something the GM is writing up and imagining in their notes. And that a lot of action resolution is resolved by reference to those notes. Which would be backstory first. Situation would be next, as this is what occurs when the players have their PCs engage the backstory in such a way as to enliven latent situations. Character would seem to be last, given that the backstory and those latent situations are established independently by the GM.

*They need not be though.

The DM can have a general world in mind and modify it to incorporate PC backstory elements after receiving them. Say who your brothers killer is and his relationship to the various people in the world. To me that makes the game about your characters quest to avenge his brothers death and this was not something independently established by the GM.

Action resolution is going to be often determined by reference to notes. But the situations the characters find themselves in are of their own choosing - not independently established by the GM.

To me that would sound like character and situation first and backstory last. While backstory is important and is the means of action resolution, getting to the point where backstory really starts mattering is even more important for sandbox play. That is handled by players choosing what situation to act on and how they go about it which depends on their character and his strengths/weaknesses/motivations/goals. I don't see how sandbox play ever gets to action resolution without character and situation, which IMO makes them more important.

pemerton said:
What is more interesting is what is the point of the improvisation? And what principles govern it? I gave an example of the graffiti under the table where the point is to give a non-boring payoff for the players' action declaration "We look under the table" and the main principle is don't introduce anything that will be misleading or confusing relative to the prepared notes. The upshot of (1) and (2) is a bit of colour. In No Myth play, the point of improvisation is generally to drive play forward by engaging players' evinced priorities/goals/aspirations for their PCs, and the principles are things like go where the action is, apply pressure, honour success and failure, and in 4e at least say 'yes' or roll the dice.

In a living sandbox game it's also important to engage players priorities/goals and aspirations for their PCs. The principles of living sandbox play might be described as: Maintain the believability of the world, Don't wait on the PC's for events to start to unfold, Honor success and failure, Give PC's freedom to decide what to do and what to engage with, Provide plenty of events and factions and characters for them to potentially engage with.

pemerton said:
@Manbearcat and I have been crystal-clear that 4e rests on a premise of GM authority over scene-framing. And we've talked about the principles that govern that: player-authored quests, player-evinced dramatic/thematic concerns, etc. In my 4e game, at PC gen, I issued two non-canonical but hardly revolutionary instructions: (1) please tell us something/someone that your character is loyal to; (2) please tell us what reason your PC has to be ready to fight goblins.

This is the standard approach to scene-framed, "story now" play.

Instructions like that are not uncommon for living sandbox style play either.

Lanefan · Oct 25, 2021

Ovinomancer said:
What you, and apparently @Crimson Longinus, are missing, is that by establishing this information - by encoding the fiction of the scene in a transparent way - the GM can no longer just fiat declare the father and little girl eaten.

Well, nor can she fiat-declare the father beats away the Kraken using a boat oar either. She still has to run the combat through, round by round (though unless the PCs intervene quickly, this process probably won't take long - a Kraken against those two sounds like a pushover for the Kraken all day long

).

Ovinomancer said:
The point of doing this isn't to put the mechanics first, it's to clearly establish how the fiction of this scene will operate and reduce/remove the fiat ability of the GM to just declare outcomes without it being blatantly obvious that they are doing so.

That's kind of like saying the technical manual for my car will tell me the best route to take to get from Vancouver to New Orleans.

The fiction of the scene would (ideally!) be played out round by round using the established encounter/combat mechanics, in honest good faith by the DM both if-when she's rolling against herself (i.e. playing out the combat between the boat occupants and the Kraken) and once the PCs get involved.

Another reason to play it out round by round is that while the players don't see the DM's die rolls they do - or should - get a play-by-play narration from the DM as things proceed; which may prompt the players to have their PCs intervene quickly or slowly or not at all, depending how things go.

In either case, while mechanics are used they're not narrated. What's narrated after a round worth of rolling is the father chopping off one tentacle while two others grab him and try to haul him out of the boat, meanwhile the daughter screams and hides under the thwart (and-or maybe inexplicably vanishes from view, if she uses her diminution ability/potion) and other tentacles flail away.

The problems only arise if the DM tries to speed things up by skipping the rolls and just improvising some narration of what she thinks might happen.

pemerton · Oct 25, 2021

Malmuria said:
There have been a few threads on related topics (GM authority, player agency, etc). I would say it is similarly harsh when others deploy particular (and not agreed-upon) theoretical frame to declare that a game, play style, or practice is, for example, zero agency

My recollection is that the zero agency remark was made in relation to a particular "play loop". And it was said because, in that play loop as it was being presented and articulated, (i) it appeared that the GM had the sole authority to establish any shared fiction, and (ii) there seemed to be no principles circumscribing that authority.

When examples were asked for which might show the play loop in action, and illustrate how shared fiction was established, the main on I recall is the fight on the plane, which didn't seem to contradict the "zero agency" remark - or, at least, it was utterly opaque how anything was going on there beyond the GM making stuff up in response to player prompts.

Malmuria said:
a few small questions about 4e (I'm sure these have been debated endlessly somewhere, but a cursory google search did not suggest that 4e deviated strongly in including some 'standard' dnd elements):
• I suppose, within the above framework, there is no point to there being random encounters, in general? That is, where nothing is at stake except simulation (or, at most, a timer)?

Burning Wheel says the following (p 242 of Revised):

There are no random encounters in a Burning Wheel game - "encounters" have a point and drive the overall conflict of the game forward.

My view is that the same advice is applicable to 4e D&D. WotC did not agree (at least not uniformly): some 4e modules include random encounters, and it was quite common to suggest an essentially pointless encounter as the consequence of failure in a skill challenge.

Malmuria said:
When is it ok for a gm to skip to the next scene? I would think, for me anyway, that's the part that would feel like dm fiat

In scene-framed play, an important part of the GM's job is to manage both the opening and closing of scenes. (This is important in any RPGing really - if no one ever "cuts" than eg everyone would have a very boring time while the PCs rest for 8 hours, or stride for days through the wilderness.)

From BW again (p 268 of Revised):

More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He (sic) has the power to begin and end scenes. . . . Most important, the GM is responsible for introducing complications to the story and consequences to the players' choices.

This is pretty applicable to 4e also, but 4e gives more structure than BW because it has the concept of "encounter" without Burning Wheel's scare quotes. From the PHB, pp 9 and 259:

Encounters come in two types.

* Combat encounters are battles against nefarious foes. In a combat encounter, characters and monsters take turns attacking until one side or the other is defeated.

* Noncombat encounters include deadly traps, difficult puzzles, and other obstacles to overcome. Sometimes you overcome noncombat encounters by using your character’s skills, sometimes you can defeat them with clever uses of magic, and sometimes you have to puzzle them out with nothing but your wits. Noncombat encounters also include social interactions, such as attempts to persuade, bargain with, or obtain information from a nonplayer character (NPC) controlled by the DM. Whenever you decide that your character wants to talk to a person or monster, it’s a noncombat encounter. . . .

Encounters serve many purposes. They are the times when D&D is most like a game, rather than an exercise in cooperative storytelling. They are when you most often bring your powers and skills to bear, when the information on your character sheet is most important. Even so, they should advance the story of an adventure; a pitched battle should have a reason and consequences that relate to your overall quest.

In an encounter, either you succeed in overcoming a challenge or you fail and have to face the consequences. When an encounter begins, everyone has something to do, and it’s important for the whole group to work together to achieve success. . . .

When you’re making your way through a dungeon or across the trackless wilderness, you typically don’t take turns or make checks. But when you spring a trap or face a serious obstacle or hazard, you’re in a skill challenge. When you try to persuade a dragon to help you against an oncoming orc horde, you’re also in a skill challenge.

Encounters, in 4e, are bracketed by two other modes of play: exploration, and rest. From the PBH, pp 9-10, 260 and 262-63:

Between encounters, your characters explore the world. You make decisions about which way your character travels and what he or she tries to do next. Exploration is the give-and-take of you telling the DM what you want your character to do, and the DM telling you what happens when your character does it. . . .

Decisions you make as you explore eventually lead to encounters. . . .

A significant part of D&D adventures is exploration, which takes place between encounters. Exploration includes making your way through unmapped dungeon corridors, untracked wilderness, or a sprawling city and exploring the environment’s dangers and wonders.

Exploration usually involves movement . . .

A typical adventure environment is full of dangers, surprises, and puzzles. A dungeon room might hold a complex bank of mysterious levers, a statue positioned over a trap door, a locked chest, or a teleportation circle. Sometimes you need to cut through a rope, break a chain, bash down a door, lift a portcullis, or smash the Golden Orb of Khadros the Reaver before the villain can use it.

Your character’s interaction with the environment is often simple to resolve in the game. You tell the DM that you’re moving the lever on the right, and the DM tells you what happens, if anything. . . .

When you’re not in an encounter, you can take one of two types of rest: a short rest or an extended rest.

So generally the 4e D&D will frame scenes having regard to the priorities and principles I've outlined in posts upthread, and will end them when the combat and/or skill challenge is resolved. The management of rests and exploration in 4e is (in my experience) not wildly different from in other games (eg AD&D, Rolemaster, to some extent Burning Wheel) that feature these forms of play, except that the GM probably should keep a close eye on when exploration has led to a situation better resolved as a skill challenge. (A combat is probably more obvious.)

Malmuria said:
What kind of preparations do PCs need to make, and what can be hand-waived or determined after the fact (I'm thinking of inventory, in particular, but also information, scouting, etc). Is it all resolved via skill challenge?

Information and scouting can be resolved via exploration, or as part of a skill challenge. It will depend on whether or not there is opposition in the situation: if there is, it should be resolved as a skill challenge, as per the quotes above from the PHB.

Inventory is handled as is usual in D&D.

Lanefan · Oct 25, 2021

Manbearcat said:
Now, moving on to what you've written above:

The PC in question (this was a solo game with a Ranger and her Bear Companion) had just finished a Skill Challenge to navigate a brutal rushing river. She successfully arrived at the lake where she bore witness to a flatboat with said occupants getting attacked by said sea monster.

She spent 1.5 rounds (so roughly 9 seconds of in-game action) getting her vessel in position so she could make a broad jump leap (she was on a tiny raft that she made prior) to get into the flatboat of the father/daughter combo.

OK, so she was already on the water and close* to the rowboat to start with. That's quite different from how I imagined the scene as described - no distances were given (geography is important!) and so the picture in my mind was a party of PCs arriving at a lakeshore and seeing this attack happen out in the lake somewhere, within range of bowshot and some spells but not close enough for melee.

* - she had to be close as a raft isn't going to move very far in 9 seconds.

Manbearcat said:
For someone who lives and dies on combat, 9 seconds is a trivial amount of time to evaluate the physical capacity of humans (combatants or other) in a life or death situation. I don't believe you're a martial artist. I don't believe you're active or reserve or discharged military. Maybe that concept is foreign to you as a result. But I am a martial artist of 27 years. I've been in dozens and dozens of enormously threatening situations. Being able to evaluate the capability of humans in fights for their life happens instantaneously. Not being able to do that (for someone like this Ranger) would be unbelievably anti-immersive.

Different experiences give different results, I suppose. It'd probably take me 9 seconds to figure out I was in a fight, never mind to do anything about it.

Manbearcat said:
But again...entirely beside the point. This is not about immersiveness or not.

For me it's about two things, somewhat connected: immersion (a goal to strive for now and then) and metagaming (which I'll generally fight tooth and nail whenever I encounter it).

Manbearcat said:
As for knowing whether or not a Tentacle is a 1 HP Minion vs a part of the HP pool for the actual Sea Monster?

That is a pretty big deal as well as it establishes genre logic expectations for the table at large. Can I do like what is done in typical high fantasy fic and cleave through the tentacles assailing the little girl and her father...thus making tactical decisions about my suite of abilities and action economy to enable their safety...or will my attacks on the tentacles do pretty much (I've got to chew through the giant monsters entire HP pool to get anything done because there are no rules for cleaving tentacles etc) nothing because of dumb, metagame, anti-immersive (you care about these things right?) D&D HP? constraints.

Unless you've fought a Kraken before, none of that information is going to become apparent in the fiction until you've started fighting the thing and found out by trial and error what works and what doesn't. Giving that info away at the table before the encounter even starts means you're outright telling the players to metagame when sorting out their approach; and while this might work for your table I'd posit it would be rather unpopular at many.

As to the bolded bit, I rarely if ever expect to be able to make these tactical desicions perfectly or with complete information, because it's rare that my character would ever have complete information. For all I-as-PC know, even if I've fought a Kraken before and learned then that one's tentacles were its weak point, this one I'm fighting now might have tough rubbery tentacles and its weakness is that it can't handle being stabbed in the eye.

All I can do is dive in, hope for the best, and learn about the foe as I go along.

Lanefan · Oct 25, 2021

Ovinomancer said:
I find the argument about immersion to be bupkis. And this is because this argument is about revealing mechanical details of non-PCs in the game and labels it as anti-immersive because this game stuff the PCs wouldn't know. But, this never stops to consider what this information is modelling -- it's not divorces from the fiction, it is the fiction. The girl's ability to scurry and dodge is the fiction, whether or not I describe this in flowery prose or if I just provide a statblock -- it's the same thing at the end of the day. The information I'm conveying isn't to the characters, it's to the player, so that they are situated in the same place as the characters with regard to the fiction.

That's just it, they're not situated in the same place as the in-fiction characters!

The characters don't know the girl has any ability to scurry and dodge, beyond that of any other little girl, until they see her do it. And when they see her do it her unusual dodging gets narrated at that point, after which the PCs can factor her ability into their tactics if they like.

By the same token, the characters don't know the Kraken's tentacles are one-hit wonders until they see one get chopped off unexpectedly easily. Once this happens, of course, this new info can (and very likely will!) change the PCs' tactics.

Ovinomancer said:
That makes the immersion argument one of approach, and even there I don't find it persuasive. This is because the approach that makes these claims isn't actually interested in situating the player into the fiction, but rather treating them like mushrooms -- kept in the dark and fed a diet of crap. Here, the only way for the players to actually situate is to either act blindly or to ask the GM to please give them some more detail, and that usually comes at a cost. If you ask a question, the GM may force a check and a wasted action to determine this detail. Bah, that's not immersion, it's just control.

The player should ideally have such info as the character knows and not have such info as the character doesn't know. And if the player's not sure if the character has some piece of info - or if the DM has left out a salient detail - there's nothing wrong with asking about it e.g. can I see if there's any gear in the rowboat or are the Kraken's eyes above the waterline or how far is the rowboat from shore; and sorting things like that wouldn't use up any actions even if it's uncertain (i.e. rolled for) whether the PC has the info or not.