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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 5474097" data-attributes="member: 984">Exactly.  It pays to distinguish between the system itself and how WotC presented it.  And it is an issue that comes up quite universally with all RPG rule systems, when to Rule as Rule, and when to Rule 0.  Especially for something as framework-y as SCs, they needed a far better discussion of how to use (and abuse) them (and how not to use them) than was presented originally in the books.  I got my gut feel for them from reading a report on an SC used by one of the WotC DMs in a game held during 4e’s launch.  Including a few scenarios and examples showing how the SC framework can be used in a myriad of ways would have proved useful, methinks.  It’s why I don’t begrudge SCs nor think they are a poor mechanism, nor even see them as eliciting one style of play vs another.  To get to your second point, of how will a DM ever know to move on from the rules to create the fantastic (and here I’ll switch that to GM for this applies to many rule/game systems) I say one big thing:  lead by example.  Be for something, rather than against something.  By sharing our stories, sharing how we run things, sharing the good times we have, sharing those awesome moments, sharing the scenarios we developed, how the players handled them, how we handled them, the in-game RP moments, sharing all of those it lets novice GMs (and heck, experienced ones too!) and players see other ways of approaching things, gives them ideas to try, new directions to ply and opens up the breadth of experiences.  And that’s just cool.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I saw this effect on my group too – I’d throw out “crazy thing happens!” and they’d go “how is that possible?” as opposed to “yikes!”  Just the fact that again DM stuff doesn’t need to be designed by the same rules as the PCs let them get back into a 1e and in-world mindset and we’re back to “yikes!”  All that said, I still find (and it shows up) that using SCs hasn’t straight-jacketed things at our table.   4e has greatly had the effect of the world coming forward, and the rules going into the background.  After a few combats, of course.  Things were very meta- at the beginning as everyone was figuring out their new characters (albeit no worse than when we started this game in 3e at 16th level, oy).  Now combat flows very well, and is very flavourful.  My group has always been a very tactical group to begin with, mind you, so I’ll put in my own YMMV.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I don't know what ultimate rules transparency may be, but I can say that our 4e fights have gotten more rules transparent than our 3e fights.  Likely not as transparent as our 1e/2e fights, but it’s been so long I am hesitant to make any comparisons given the groups were different, our ages and experience were different, and so on.  peace,Kannik</blockquote>

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