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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6012460" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't think so.</p><p></p><p>Not uniquely unsuited. But not the vehicle I personally would choose.</p><p></p><p>The hard-coding of spells is not an issue, for the reasons you give. But I think the intra-encounter resource siloing is. At least in my experience, it promotes the scene/situation/encounter as the focus of play. For example, it tends to confine the mechanical consequences of action resolution to the scene, as adjudicated in accordance with metagame priorities - whereas exploratory play, traditionally, extends those consequences across "scenes", which are adjudicated via ingame causation (and hence, in a sense, aren't really scenes - thus my inverted commas).</p><p></p><p>The disease track is an exception to this, and thus it makes sense that you're referred to it. Rituals are another exception. My own feeling is that a version of 4e that heavily emphasised these aspects of its action resolution would have a different feel from "straight out of the books" 4e - and you might want to toy with the gp cost of rituals, which is high enough, at present, to discourage them as the principal means of action resolution. But I don't want to imply that I think it couldn't be done.</p><p></p><p>But I still feel that, at least in the hands of me and my group, the other parts of the system - the scene framing, the intra-scene resolution orientation, etc - would tend to assert themselves, naturally pulling the game back more in the direction of the editorialised style that you identified.</p><p></p><p>I invoked those modules to (i) try and convey the playstyle I had in mind - which I think I've succeeded at - and (ii) to try to explain why I think it's not entirely mechanics neutral - which I'm still working on! The key for me is the importance of metagame - 4e puts it right up there, I think, whereas exploratory play tries to subordinate the role of metagame in action resolution as much as possible.</p><p></p><p>The 4e modules I know - about half-a-dozen of them - are completely different from those modules, not entirely lacking in exploration but not relying on it to feed into action resolution. (They're also very railroady as written - as per my exchange with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] above, you need to tear them apart and pull out the useful maps, story elements, situations etc but disregard the pre-packaged plot and pacing that they present.)</p><p></p><p>This is true, but it seems to me that, at a certain point, if you're mostly doing "auto-successes" then you may not need the skill challenge framework anymore.</p><p></p><p>I've only done one straight "auto-success/auto-fail" skill challenge - the "interview" with Vecna that opens the Tower of Mysteries in Thunderspire Labyrinth. As the module presents it, the assumption is that the PCs will answer Vecna's questions by sprouting random stuff by making successful knowledge checks; whereas in my game the PCs actually told Vecna stuff that had just recently taken place, about their encounter with Kas and their return of his sword to him. I treated most of this stuff as auto-successes, but when they fudged or hedged or revealed to Vecna that they'd done stuff he didn't approve of (like give Kas back his sword) I treated it as auto-fail.</p><p></p><p>In this case the skill challenge framework still worked, because I had mechanical consequences (loss of encounter powers and healing surges) that were to be applied based on the number of failures relative to the number of successes at the end of the challenge. But in White Plume Mountain, I'm not sure how I would frame the consequences in such clear metagame terms. As written, at least, the module seems to assume that you either cross the super-tetanus pits, or you don't. I'm sure it could be reworked to reflect a skill challenge style - and parts of ToH too (eg moving through the magic arrow sequence of doors, or exploring the coloured globes, might lend themselves to a skill challenge framework) - but that wouldn't lead to the originally intended experience, I don't think.</p><p></p><p>Well, I run 4e as I (tried) to run classic D&D. But I was never good at GMing in the (WPM, ToH) exploratory style, and never particularly enjoyed it either. I went through a brief phase of trying to run D&D that way, under the influence particularly of Lewis Pulsipher in White Dwarf (and, to a lesser extent, the more light-hearted Roger Musson), but my players didn't care for it and I gave up the attempt - feeling a bit of a failure at the time, but in retrospect moving towards a firmer grasp of what I enjoyed and had to offer as a GM.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I'll finish this post with a second-order reflection: we seem to be refuting, by empirical example rather than theory, the claim that 4e only supports a single narrow playstyle!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6012460, member: 42582"] I don't think so. Not uniquely unsuited. But not the vehicle I personally would choose. The hard-coding of spells is not an issue, for the reasons you give. But I think the intra-encounter resource siloing is. At least in my experience, it promotes the scene/situation/encounter as the focus of play. For example, it tends to confine the mechanical consequences of action resolution to the scene, as adjudicated in accordance with metagame priorities - whereas exploratory play, traditionally, extends those consequences across "scenes", which are adjudicated via ingame causation (and hence, in a sense, aren't really scenes - thus my inverted commas). The disease track is an exception to this, and thus it makes sense that you're referred to it. Rituals are another exception. My own feeling is that a version of 4e that heavily emphasised these aspects of its action resolution would have a different feel from "straight out of the books" 4e - and you might want to toy with the gp cost of rituals, which is high enough, at present, to discourage them as the principal means of action resolution. But I don't want to imply that I think it couldn't be done. But I still feel that, at least in the hands of me and my group, the other parts of the system - the scene framing, the intra-scene resolution orientation, etc - would tend to assert themselves, naturally pulling the game back more in the direction of the editorialised style that you identified. I invoked those modules to (i) try and convey the playstyle I had in mind - which I think I've succeeded at - and (ii) to try to explain why I think it's not entirely mechanics neutral - which I'm still working on! The key for me is the importance of metagame - 4e puts it right up there, I think, whereas exploratory play tries to subordinate the role of metagame in action resolution as much as possible. The 4e modules I know - about half-a-dozen of them - are completely different from those modules, not entirely lacking in exploration but not relying on it to feed into action resolution. (They're also very railroady as written - as per my exchange with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] above, you need to tear them apart and pull out the useful maps, story elements, situations etc but disregard the pre-packaged plot and pacing that they present.) This is true, but it seems to me that, at a certain point, if you're mostly doing "auto-successes" then you may not need the skill challenge framework anymore. I've only done one straight "auto-success/auto-fail" skill challenge - the "interview" with Vecna that opens the Tower of Mysteries in Thunderspire Labyrinth. As the module presents it, the assumption is that the PCs will answer Vecna's questions by sprouting random stuff by making successful knowledge checks; whereas in my game the PCs actually told Vecna stuff that had just recently taken place, about their encounter with Kas and their return of his sword to him. I treated most of this stuff as auto-successes, but when they fudged or hedged or revealed to Vecna that they'd done stuff he didn't approve of (like give Kas back his sword) I treated it as auto-fail. In this case the skill challenge framework still worked, because I had mechanical consequences (loss of encounter powers and healing surges) that were to be applied based on the number of failures relative to the number of successes at the end of the challenge. But in White Plume Mountain, I'm not sure how I would frame the consequences in such clear metagame terms. As written, at least, the module seems to assume that you either cross the super-tetanus pits, or you don't. I'm sure it could be reworked to reflect a skill challenge style - and parts of ToH too (eg moving through the magic arrow sequence of doors, or exploring the coloured globes, might lend themselves to a skill challenge framework) - but that wouldn't lead to the originally intended experience, I don't think. Well, I run 4e as I (tried) to run classic D&D. But I was never good at GMing in the (WPM, ToH) exploratory style, and never particularly enjoyed it either. I went through a brief phase of trying to run D&D that way, under the influence particularly of Lewis Pulsipher in White Dwarf (and, to a lesser extent, the more light-hearted Roger Musson), but my players didn't care for it and I gave up the attempt - feeling a bit of a failure at the time, but in retrospect moving towards a firmer grasp of what I enjoyed and had to offer as a GM. Anyway, I'll finish this post with a second-order reflection: we seem to be refuting, by empirical example rather than theory, the claim that 4e only supports a single narrow playstyle! [/QUOTE]
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