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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8282366" data-attributes="member: 16814">You keep making this observation, but you're not backing it up except to say you can do it.  I don't see how.  Please elucidate.  How can I both want my play to be the determiner in how a scenario plays out AND want the GM to manage that scenario so that it has proper pacing and challenge?  I mean, the former says it's about my play while the latter says it's about the GM modifying things regardless of my play, right?  These things are in contention.Now, what I think you might be going for is that this contention might be balanced for a given table -- that there's an amount of "my play determines things" that's sufficient and also an amount of "the GM will manage play to produce proper pacing, challenge, and climatic excitement."  Sure, but you're not mixing these but balancing them -- you can't be doing one while you're doing the other, it's either/or.  I've already said this can be done, pointing to WotC APs, which have interesting swap points between modes of play in them.  Take Curse of Strahd, as I believe that's already been used in this thread.  Curse has a huge amount of pacing balancing going on alongside challenge balancing.  If you run this as presented, players will wander in certain parts of the sandbox until they're tough enough to start wandering other parts at which time they'll be pointed there.  Yet, there's no real way to determine what area you're in using skilled play -- scouting doesn't really work and divinations are off the table and NPCs are unreliable sources of information.  You're really relying on the GM to point you in the right direction.  But, once you've arrived at a location of interest, the game swaps back to semi-skilled play imperatives -- maps are provided and well keyed with information.  DCs are set.  Bits of interest are set.  The players can absolutely engage in these areas with skilled play.  And then it's back to story management.The final fight with Strahd is mostly story management, though -- the circumstances of the final showdown will largely be up to the GM and not what the players have accomplished.So, yeah, sure, you can mix and match, and even come up with something that works and is coherent, but it's by swapping, not by merging the two approaches.</blockquote>

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