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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5911257" data-attributes="member: 2067">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. <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=";)" />). If you are very sandboxy, you might have stats for the guards already.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. 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. 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. <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=";)" />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. <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=";)" /> 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. 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. 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.</blockquote>

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