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<blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 5762827" data-attributes="member: 9053">As I look at the controversy this article has generated, I see another conflict between sandbox and plot based campaigns, plain and simple.For those who run games with at least some shell of framework of a story, I think the idea Matt has presented is an excellent one. If you can work out the major plot/story points of an adventure, you can better prepare individual encounters and make your setpieces more interesting: you can create the encounters to make better use of 4E's dynamic battlefields by putting together terrain powers, making better maps, and choosing monsters that work together.If the players go &quot;off card,&quot; you're in no worse shape than if you didn't do any of this work, and still have a series of interesting encounters to run eventually, even if you don't use them in the current game.When I run a convention scenario, I do exactly this sort of thing, and it tends to structure play in a game with a time limit very well. It's especially useful for timing the pacing of the game.Now for a sandbox player, all of what I've said is an anathema to their whole play style, and so this practice would seem to be less than useless. The point, I'd say is that the card setup isn't for you if you run a completely sandbox game. That's fine, but it also makes comments less useful, since if you run that kind of game, you won't use this system by default.What this article continues to convince me, is that if Matt ever designs his own RPG, I'm pre-ordering it right away, since his playstyle seems to be very similar to my own. So get that kickstarter going, pronto!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SteveC, post: 5762827, member: 9053"] As I look at the controversy this article has generated, I see another conflict between sandbox and plot based campaigns, plain and simple. For those who run games with at least some shell of framework of a story, I think the idea Matt has presented is an excellent one. If you can work out the major plot/story points of an adventure, you can better prepare individual encounters and make your setpieces more interesting: you can create the encounters to make better use of 4E's dynamic battlefields by putting together terrain powers, making better maps, and choosing monsters that work together. If the players go "off card," you're in no worse shape than if you didn't do any of this work, and still have a series of interesting encounters to run eventually, even if you don't use them in the current game. When I run a convention scenario, I do exactly this sort of thing, and it tends to structure play in a game with a time limit very well. It's especially useful for timing the pacing of the game. Now for a sandbox player, all of what I've said is an anathema to their whole play style, and so this practice would seem to be less than useless. The point, I'd say is that the card setup isn't for you if you run a completely sandbox game. That's fine, but it also makes comments less useful, since if you run that kind of game, you won't use this system by default. What this article continues to convince me, is that if Matt ever designs his own RPG, I'm pre-ordering it right away, since his playstyle seems to be very similar to my own. So get that kickstarter going, pronto! [/QUOTE]

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