Bend, dont break.

[I'm A Banana]

That's not true, though (unless you have very extreme contrasts of build between a multi-target blaster and a single-target striker). In general, variations in the number of monsters will effect the dynamics of play and pacing, but not the balance between PCs.

That's not really true. A striker is contributing a LOT more to a battle against a solo than they are to a battle against a bundle of minions. A defender does better in the same circumstance, generally (wardens get around this a bit, but they still have to be adjacent to the critters). In a battle against brutes or artillery, Leaders shine bright, and in a fight against masses of creatures, most controllers do well (with their area-effect abilities).

Furthermore, if you had unreactive encounters in 4e, you'd just have much easier encounters where the party could nova, flee, and nova again. It undoes all of 4e's careful pacing of recovery and attack. So while the players may remain the same, the game itself looses a sense of urgency and challenge, and results in "press A" gameplay, where there's no real outcome to affect, you just need to press a button (or roll a dice) to get to the predetermined endpoint.

I don't think unreactive is especially advanced - Gygax, in his DMG, presents reactive encounters as sophisticated GMing.

As to why? The sorts of story reasons given by other posters.

I am not sure I buy the reasons why, and I don't know that "when the party gets healed, so does the party's opposition" is especially advanced -- certainly less complex than trying to keep track of all the changes.

Or to put it another way - I have a good handle on RPGing based on scene-framing, but I don't really get RPGing based on "adventure-framing". It seems to give the GM a lot of authority over plot.

Is there something here that I'm missing?

The DM isn't telling the players that they must go down a certain path or cannot deviate from the direction. He's just saying, "To accomplish this, you need to go through X, Y, and Z. If you don't go all the way through, you don't get to accomplish it."

To put it in more classic sandboxy design, rather than have a "random encounter table" for when the party enters a forest, you have a single Adventure in that forest (which may or may not be made up of random parts). This adventure may promise great power and rewards, but you can always pass it by if you're not interested in any of that. It's only that, to get to that power and reward, you're going to need to tackle it all at once. You don't get to go into the forest, eliminate half of the threats, run away to the village, rest up, and return to the thing in the same state in which you left it. It is going to change in reaction to your activities.

At this stage, I'm still sticking to my hat-eating commitment: if, when D&Dnext is released, we really see things like rogue's wooing kings and poisoning guards' food as equal alternatives to charm person and combat, I will eat my hat!

It's a fair skepticism. I can't be sure that it's going to happen, either. But I can see a motif in which it is viable, and I would really want that to happen.

An early blog post from Monte mentioned that they can compare the effects of Charm Person to combat damage, which makes me optimistic. The Three Pillars structure really advocates for making these things interchangable. These are little tidbits, nothing conclusive, but they show a similar way of thinking about the problem.

 

[pemerton]

The DM isn't telling the players that they must go down a certain path or cannot deviate from the direction. He's just saying, "To accomplish this, you need to go through X, Y, and Z. If you don't go all the way through, you don't get to accomplish it."

To put it in more classic sandboxy design, rather than have a "random encounter table" for when the party enters a forest, you have a single Adventure in that forest (which may or may not be made up of random parts). This adventure may promise great power and rewards, but you can always pass it by if you're not interested in any of that. It's only that, to get to that power and reward, you're going to need to tackle it all at once.

I'm not thinking in sandbox terms, but in terms of player authority over plot. If the connections between events and situations are predetermined (as in, a necessary condition of Z is Y, and of Y is X, etc), the GM's authority seems very great.

Suppose the adventure is "rescuing the slaves". What do you do if the players decide to pay the slavers, with an agreement to redeem the slaves in 30 days time, rather than fight them and rescue the slaves on the spot? Paying the slavers seems part of the same adventure, in one sense, but is separated by 30 days in game. How is that handled in this structure?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not thinking in sandbox terms, but in terms of player authority over plot. If the connections between events and situations are predetermined (as in, a necessary condition of Z is Y, and of Y is X, etc), the GM's authority seems very great.

It's just task-nesting. Party wants to accomplish a given (significant) goal, they just need to accomplish not one, but several tasks, and if they quit early, their progress doesn't remain when they come back.

Players still determine what their goals are for themselves. DMs just set challenges, as they always have, between the party and the goal. Adventure-designs structure gives a handy accounting of how much they must accomplish to reach the end.

Suppose the adventure is "rescuing the slaves". What do you do if the players decide to pay the slavers, with an agreement to redeem the slaves in 30 days time, rather than fight them and rescue the slaves on the spot? Paying the slavers seems part of the same adventure, in one sense, but is separated by 30 days in game. How is that handled in this structure?

Task-nesting and goal-shifting.

The players propose this scheme to the slavers. To get the slavers to agree, the party must make some interaction checks, and then must accomplish some mission for the slavers. A DM could use the same stat blocks and change the goal of the adventure to "Wiping out a garrison of freedom-fighters," which, when accomplished, earns the trust of the slavers and completes the adventure successfully -- the party's goals are met, and the slavers agree to the deal.

The DM may also just have the slavers agree (though it seems like a LOT to agree to!), and then have the party accomplish some mission to earn the gold to buy the slaves, or for whoever they had in mind to buy the slaves.

The DM can also use the 30 days as the slavers' recharge period, effectively just starting the adventure again in 30 days' time (when the slavers might try then to rob the party of the load of wealth they've brought to free the slaves).

The goal is to "rescue the slaves," but the party essentially just put an adventure in front of itself before it could achieve that goal, since they decided to delay it.

DMs have been doing stuff like this for 30+ years, this just gives a coherent framework to the activity, making it easier to do on the fly or for newbies or for lazy DMs.

 

[pemerton]

The players propose this scheme to the slavers. To get the slavers to agree, the party must make some interaction checks, and then must accomplish some mission for the slavers. A DM could use the same stat blocks and change the goal of the adventure to "Wiping out a garrison of freedom-fighters," which, when accomplished, earns the trust of the slavers and completes the adventure successfully -- the party's goals are met, and the slavers agree to the deal.

This sounds very much like reskinning writ large - isn't this the sort of thing that 4e is controversial for?

DMs have been doing stuff like this for 30+ years

But for the past 20 (or so?) years some of us GMs have been trying to work out a coherent theory of scene-framing. Which this seems a little at odds wtih. (Maybe?)

The Burning Wheel Adventure Burner has a concept called micro-dungeoneering ("micro" because the "dungeon" is a sketch map and a series of concepts, rather than the elaborately detailed grid maps and room descriptions of yore). It is a bit like your adventure-based design - the players are committed to entering the dungeon, they can't pull out (or rather, if they pull out, the adventure is over), the whole thing is (resource-wise, and speaking in 4e-ish terms) one big encounter/situation.

But the Adventure Burner is also pretty explicit that this is for one-off play, not campaigning (or one-off style - you could run the same PCs through multiple microdungeons, I imagine, but it wouldn't be like a "regular" campaign). And it is also clear that the GM will have a lot of authority over what is at stake in the micro-dungeon - the players have a duty to make their PCs "ready to go" into the dungeon. The players don't get to negotiate their own stakes like in a normal Burning Wheel game.

It's just task-nesting

I'm used to a GMing approach in which tasks are not tightly nested across scenes/situations/encounters - the way that one encounter resolves can significantly effect how other possible encounters might open up and be framed.

If a scene has to resolve a certain way for the subsequent scenes to open - if, in a sense, the content and framing of the subsequent scenes is settled before the first scene is even staged - I don't see how the players have much freedom to control the plot.

Here's my attempt to isolate my sticking point: the encounter as a unit of play is not arbitrary. It has a certain "naturalness" within a certain approach to RPGing, in which the GM controls scene-framing, but the resolution of scenes - and therefore the overall plot - is not determined solely by any one participant, but rather emerges out of the use of the action resolution mechanics as the players have their PCs engage the scenes.

The adventture seems to me too big a unit. An adventure contains a plot - a sequence of events, thematically or aesthetically linked. So adventure-based design seems to involve predetermination of the plot of the game.

I can see how the mechanics work. What I'm still missing is how the players, as well as the GM, are able to exercise control over the plot.

If the answer is, "whatever the players decide to have their PCs do coming out of scene 1, it will have to involve 2 more interaction scenes, 3 more exploration scenes and 3 fights before rests and rewards can be triggered", then I'm seeing a structure that is far more constraining then any of the alleged constraints found in 4e's design.

But maybe I'm misperceiving. Or maybe that's not the answer.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This sounds very much like reskinning writ large - isn't this the sort of thing that 4e is controversial for?

I don't know that 4e is so controversial for reskinning as it is for re-writing narration. Before the thing appears, it can be anything. After the thing appears, it should be consistent. But you also don't HAVE to reskin in this model (it's just the easy way out. ). If you are very sandboxy, you might have stats for the guards already.

But for the past 20 (or so?) years some of us GMs have been trying to work out a coherent theory of scene-framing. Which this seems a little at odds wtih. (Maybe?)

I don't believe it's so much at odds as it is just a broader context. What gives a scene its meaning is the context in which it is embedded.

It is a bit like your adventure-based design - the players are committed to entering the dungeon, they can't pull out (or rather, if they pull out, the adventure is over), the whole thing is (resource-wise, and speaking in 4e-ish terms) one big encounter/situation...The players don't get to negotiate their own stakes like in a normal Burning Wheel game.

That sounds pretty similar. Though I don't know how BW does it, I don't know why the players wouldn't be able to change goals or drop goals or invent new goals mid-stride. The DM just needs to plop adventures down between the party and their goals, whatever those goals might happen to be, much like they've been doing since the days of fighting-men and magic-users and clerics looking for wealth and power.

I'm used to a GMing approach in which tasks are not tightly nested across scenes/situations/encounters - the way that one encounter resolves can significantly effect how other possible encounters might open up and be framed.

See, I think that's giving individual encounters too much weight. It's too much power in too small a space, generally. If an Assassin character kills a critter, or the Wizard blasts them, or the Rogue convinces them not to attack, that strategy is wildly overpowered, so it must be nerfed or forbidden. It eliminates the possibility of combat-as-war gameplay, and renders long-term resources largely irrelevant.

Those are prices that are too high to pay, IMO, for D&D, which was adventure-based before that term was invented.

If a scene has to resolve a certain way for the subsequent scenes to open - if, in a sense, the content and framing of the subsequent scenes is settled before the first scene is even staged - I don't see how the players have much freedom to control the plot.

There's only ever really two possible outcomes for any scene, and they're the same results that are possible on a die roll: success and failure.

Adventure-based design doesn't dictate your results.

It does lay out "victory conditions" for each adventure, but that's much like a DM setting a DC: you must do X to get Y.

X, in adventure-based design, is made up of encounters.

It's kind of just another layer for the cake.

Here's my attempt to isolate my sticking point: the encounter as a unit of play is not arbitrary. It has a certain "naturalness" within a certain approach to RPGing, in which the GM controls scene-framing, but the resolution of scenes - and therefore the overall plot - is not determined solely by any one participant, but rather emerges out of the use of the action resolution mechanics as the players have their PCs engage the scenes.

The adventure allows you to use each scene's resolution directly to influence the resolution of the overall plot. It enables you to allow one participant to dominate a brief scene, without allowing them to dominate the entire plot, since they won't be able to dominate each scene.

This is how character-based storylines usually work, too. Not every character in Macbeth contributes to every scene in Macbeth, but that doesn't mean that they are disposable. Rozenkrantz and Gildenstern dominate a scene, but they don't dominate the play, because their scene time is limited.

The adventure is a natural unit of time, too: it roughly corresponds to one session of gameplay. Scenes are smaller than that, so it takes multiple scenes to build a session, anyway. This just recognizes that bucket.

What I'm still missing is how the players, as well as the GM, are able to exercise control over the plot.

This is sort of heady game-design stuff, but...

Typically: the GM sets the stage -> the players state their goals -> the GM states the obstacle -> the players describe their actions, and attempt to succeed on their goals by overcoming the obstacle -> the GM describes the result, thus setting the stage again.

The size of the obstacle, I think, is key. The "adventure" corresponds to the "session" and thus has significant psychological gameplay oomph: it is what you accomplish in one instance of "playing D&D." Allowing your resources to drop over the course of the night, only to eke out a narrow victory at the end -- that's the dramatic arc in D&D, in one session. The scene is too small a unit of time for that. Everything becomes climax, and nothing can swing any scene in one direction or another "unfairly," No scenes can be just Rozenkrantz and Gildenstern joking around. They all need to be "I knew him, Horatio."

Climaxes only work when there's a build up. Stories exist as a composition of scenes. The scene itself need not be so controlled as the thing in which it exists.

If the answer is, "whatever the players decide to have their PCs do coming out of scene 1, it will have to involve 2 more interaction scenes, 3 more exploration scenes and 3 fights before rests and rewards can be triggered", then I'm seeing a structure that is far more constraining then any of the alleged constraints found in 4e's design.

What, exactly, the criteria are for a rest and reward is will depend on what obstacles the DM wants to put between the party and their eventual victory or defeat, and on what abilities the players have (a druid can turn a combat encounter with wolves into a social encounter; a bard might turn a fight with goblins into a talk; a rogue might turn a talk with a king into a spying mission; etc.).

The important part is to say that it takes more than one scene to get what you want. It is more than one fight with goblins, it is more than one conversation with the king, it is more than one walk down a lonely road. This is because sometimes, your characters will have abilities that kill all the goblins, instantly convince the king, and teleport you down that road, and that needs to be OK. It's OK for R&G to dominate a scene. Not every scene needs to be a climax.