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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6231061" data-attributes="member: 42582">I mean having more considerations relevant to action resolution than simply the roll of a die.Examples of mono-dimensional action resolution system: 3E skill checks or classic D&D ability checks; or saving throws in any edition. Resolution depends upon nothing but the result of a modified die roll.Examples of multi-dimensional action resolution in any edition of D&D: an attack, which invovles both an attack roll and, on a hit, a damage roll, the effect of which is itself depend upon another factor, namely, the enemy's remaining hit points.And in most D&D combats a single attack does not resolve the overall challenge, either because there are multiple enemies or enemies whose hit points cannot all be ablated with a single attack. So as well as to hit roll and damage roll we also have the action economy in play, which is basically a mechanical system for determining the relative frequency of attack rolls. And the outcome of the combat is a result of the interaction of all these rolls. Debuffs, forced movement and the like introduce further dimensions into action resolution, particulary (in 4e, at least) combat resolution.The reason I am focusing on the battle captain who grants his/her allies free attacks is because this is an example which doesn't deal with modifying a particular die roll - which is a fairly straightforward matter - but rather with the action economy - which all editions of D&D intend (whether or not they succeed) to balance fairly tightly. This is as true of D&Dnext as it is of any other version of D&D - look at the design around multiple attacks, and the care with which these are treated in the multi-class rules. (The analogue for spellcasters is spell damage scaling - which increases output by increasing effectiveness rather than granting multiple actions - which is also treated carefully in the spell descriptions and then in the spells by level charts for various classes and multi-classes.)When you look at 4e you can see that it has multiple dimensions of player resource interacting with the multiple dimensions of combat resolution: for example, some encounter powers increase effectiveness (damage rolls and/or debuffs). Others confer benefits in the action economy (eg a warlord power that, on a hit, lets an ally make an attack). If the whole resolution of the game is reduced to making d20 attack rolls with modifiers all this mechanical space is collapsed, and certain archetypes can no longer be expressed (the battle captain among them).D&Dnext uses differing degrees of rationing for casters - with its cantrips, its daily-use spells, its short-rest recovery options for certain spells, etc.The notion that a D&Dnext GM will allow the battle captain archetype simply by requiring (say) a CHA check against a certain DC I find bizarre: "Make a DC 17 CHA check as you attack, and if you succeed all your friends can attack too, for free." Wouldn't that break the game, and make something of a mockery of the Haste spell? But if this sort of ability isn't allowed, then we have no battle captain. The problem is the lack of other rationing schemes for this sort of messing with the action economy.As you describe it, your fate pool seems to grant a bonus to dice rolls made for certain sorts of actions, and is rationed in some way. (Presumably the fate pool recharges at some rate, either per session or per heroic victory or something similar.) I don't see any resemblance between that sort of mechanic and Marvel Heroic RPs rules for affecting multiple targets, which depend entirely on the fact that resolution in MHRP is not based on a simple die roll, but on relatively complex dice pool manipulation. (And that certain characters have abilities - rules, not rulings - that permit their players to change the composition of their dice pools in ways that open up certain opportunities but also increase certain risks.)What I am asking for has nothing in particular to do with very clear, very defined rules. It is to do with the scope of particular mechanics.Allowing a player to make two attack rolls rather than one (whether by wielding two weapons, or shooting two arrows at two oncoming orcs) is - everything else being equal - doubling that player's effective output. It is like letting them take two turns. Every edition of D&D since AD&D has treated this as a matter to be addressed in a careful fashion - AD&D fighters get multiple attacks, 3E PCs get multiple attacks based on BAB and feats, 4e PCs get multiple attacks based on powers used.If you allow this sort of change to the action economy to be introduced simply via a penalty to a die roll - eg take -2 to hit in order to make two attacks - you are inviting the game to break, either by setting the penalty so high that the player is nerfed, or by setting the penalty so low that the option becomes overpowered. It's a bit like the "take a -4 penalty to chop of the enemy's head" option: against a foe who would require more than two hits to kill, this option is just superior to making a normal attack, as in two attack rolls at -4 you are more likely to land your killing blow than you are to kill the enemy by making two unmodified attacks for normal damage.The fact that many RPG players aren't particularly good at mental arithmetic around probabilities just increases the issues here. What you call "the tricky part" is, from my point of view, the only part, and in a system where the only dimension of resolution in play is bonuses and penalties to dice rolls then there is no solution. (As I already mentioned, 3E's two weapon combat rules provide ample evidence for this, were it needed.)To say that the option is switched on or off at the will of the GM - which some parts of your post seem to imply - is simply to add GM control over outcomes to broken mechanics, which - for me at least - is the worst of the 2nd ed AD&D experience. Why bother to have mechanics at all, as opposed to free narration of outcomes negotiated between players and GM?I'm not really seeing how it's not. If options that significantly change the players' mechanical effectiveness are to be toggled on or off at the will of the GM rather than by reference to "objective" conditions  - either metagame conditions or PC fictional positioning - then I don't see how it's not a railroad.It's something of a tangent, but what you describe here is not a very apt summary of Ron Edwards's analysis of RPGing agendas.The most gamist version of D&D is classic D&D. Re-read the last few pages (before the appendices) of Gygax's PHB, and reread his many references to "skilled play" in his DMG: the whole point of Gygaxian D&D is for the players to "step on up" and show that they have what it takes to beat the GM's dungeon. Earning treasure and XP is not an inherent part of playing the game, but an accomplishment to which skilled players aspire. Hence, character level is something of a proxy for player skill.4e is not at all well-suited for Gyaxian gamism, because it takes for granted that treasure and XP will be "earned" simply for turning up and playing the game. The whole of the XP system in 4e is simply a pacing mechanism for escalating the story scope of the campaign: gaining levels doesn't make the PC more mechanically effective in play, as enemies also scale up, but does make the PC more narratively significant within the fiction (as s/he develops from a heroic character beating up kobolds to an epic character beating up archdevils). And treasure is accrued, in accordance with the parcel system, simply as a side effect of collecting XP by engaging encounters.4e can be played in a very different gamist style, which is all about showing off your mastery of your PC's moves to your fellow players (@Balesir on these boards is the main proponent I know of for this style of 4e play). Played in this mode, level gain in 4e does support gamist play to this extent: higher level PCs have more intricate ability suites, and therefore have greater scope for showing off clever (or bumbling) play.4e obviously is not a process simulation game (but no version of D&D is, although 3E has a thin veneer of this). But it can be played in a high concept sim style. Played in this fashion, I don't think 4e play would differ very much from mainstream PF adventure path play, except that the resolution mechanics being used are a little bit different. But in either style all the real authority is with the GM, and the only contribution the players make is to determine some of the micro-details of combat outcomes, or to determine whether certain NPCs like them or dislike them based on playing out some social encounters (all the really important social relations, like who betrays whom and who is whose nemesis will have been specified in advance by the adventure path writer).Narrativist play, in Edwards's sense, is also called "story now". The whole point of Forge-ist narrativist play is to avoid the sort of GM force that you are advocating for in this thread. Of all versions of D&D, 4e is I think best suited to narrativist play (though 13th Age is now offering another option along somewhat similar lines). This is not a coincidence - as Rob Heinsoo said before it was released, <a href="http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2008/03/05/dd-xp-interview-sara-girard-rob-heinsoo/" target="_blank">4e was influenced in its design by indie RPGs</a>, which is where most of the narrativist action is to be found.The features of 4e that support narrativist play are many. Perhaps the single most important two are (i) its focus on the encounter as the locus of play, in everything from action resolution to resource recovery, which means that play doesn't get distracted by or bogged down into exploratory details that are irrelevant to the dramatic stakes of conflict, and (ii) its provision of a suite of tools to the GM that allow challenges to be mechanically framed by reference to metagame concerns like pacing and challenge rather than ingame fictional terms. For a fuller discussion of playing narrativist D&D, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333786-Pemertonian-Scene-Framing-A-Good-Approach-to-D-amp-D-4e" target="_blank">this thread</a> is helpful - in post 21 I spell out some of my own ideas. Given that the OP in that thread found my presentation of GMing techniques to be a more accessible version (for D&D, at least) of Ron Edwards's techniques (not a coincidence - I've read Edwards pretty closely and have been influenced by him in developing my approach to GMing, although I started on my current path much earlier, GMing Oriental Adventures in 1986/87), and given that you seem comfortable with GM force whereas I am highly averse to it except in certain very well-confined pockets (like scene-framing and certain elements of backstory) I suspect that I am more narrativistically inclined then you are.I think the difference can be seen in the other extracts from your post that I quote here. What I described - mechanics to support the game by giving solid guidelines on mechanical difficulty and mechanical effect that, when followed, will deliver satisfying play - differs from what we had for 34 years prior, as soon as "satisfactory play" is allowed to range over preferences other than Gygaxian play in dungeon environments. You seem to concede this when you talk about "fudging" die rolls to improve the drama of a situation - this is a flat-out acknowledgement that the mechanics, when followed, don't deliver satisfying play. If they did, the fudging in the interest of drama would be unnecessary, because followig the mechanics would in and of itself produce drama!4e is certainly not perfect - for instance, it skill challenge rules, in part because they lack mechanically active opposition, rely heavily upon the GM's narration in order to maintain pressure and ensure good dramatic pacing. But for non-Gygaxian play that is, in its fictional content, recognisably D&D, it offers a pretty robust mechanical framework. And at least in my experience it encourages and rewards imaginative play.My personal experience is that reducing mechanical robustness (which needn't equate to mechanical "weight" - MHRP is mechanically robust, but it's rules can fit onto a single A4 page) does not increase imaginative play. If the players don't have a good sense of what their PCs can accomplish in the gameworld, and also have a sense that the GM is running a Gygaxian-style game or an even higher degree of adversarial GMing, then in my experience "rulings not rulse" tends to foster player turtling. If the players don't have a good sense of what their PCs can accomplish in the gameworld, but know that the GM has a clear conception of "the story", then rather than turtling the result in my experience tends to be a type of solipsistic play: the players leave all the "big picture" stuff to the GM, and focus on a type of self-cultivation of their PCs, both in "roleplaying" terms (what sort of hat does my guy wear, what is the name of his fencing style, etc) and in manoevre terms (various sorts of improvised flourishes and actions, like the two-arrow short agaist the orc, which express the personality of the character). But because the GM is ultimately determining how things unfold, these manoeuvres, even if resolved in mechanical terms, ultimately have little bearing on the unfolding of the game. The second style of play that I have described is the "illusionist" play that I associate with the heyday of AD&D 2nd ed, and which I see hints of in D&Dnext. It is basically the antithesis of what makes RPGing appealling to me as a leisure activity.</blockquote>

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