NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5466119" data-attributes="member: 54877">Our group was getting there, slowly, without the stuctured mechanics--well more accurately, with a mix of in-game assumptions, experience, and some house rules that hit around the edges of structure. And of course, sometimes we were getting that dynamism through the same old stuff that I started with in '81, when we caught lightning in the bottle at times, and wondered exactly why. In your actual play topic, there was an implied reference to skill challenges as teaching tools. I think that idea applies here, too. Some people really will happily and easily learn to swim faster if you just throw them off the pier, and pull them out if they get in trouble. And other people will learn much faster (and with a lot less trauma) if you maybe give them some lessons with a structure. Numerous activities follow this pattern. Training wheels on bikes spring to mind, for starters. Played as overly slavish to the structure, 4E skill challenges are going to be stilted. But a newbie GM, in an all newbie group, that benefits from that structure, if he does what the book says, will have a glimmer of something better. He will also have a language to get online and discuss his issues, and as greater understanding is achieved, will be able to let the structure become a tool instead of a pattern to always follow exactly. This may even allow the group to get over the initial learning curve without the game turning into one of those horror stories that we hear so much about. Perhaps this is why the material comes across as so poorly explained to some of us who have managed to get beyond that stage and nevertheless appreciate the structure. They've eliminated a lot of nuance in the text to keep the beginner from being confused. (I think they went too far, if that was the intent, but then I'm not a professional game writer, either.) For an experienced GM that has already navigated the initial learning curve, but isn't naturally predisposed to want to use structured tools, 4E could easily look like a set of training wheels on a motorcycle.</blockquote>

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