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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5785075" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a fairly common view point, but it still surprises me.I haven't got my Moldvay Basic book ready-to-hand, but it's description of fireball is along the following lines: a 20'R ball of fire explodes, doing 1d6 per level damage to creatures in the radius.That is almost identical to the 4e spell description - yet people talk as if Basic D&D, and other forms of classic D&D, were these fonts of creativity, and 4e the greatest anchor on creativity yet devised! And this despite page 42, and the discussion of the use of powers in skill challenges in DMG2, and the discussion of damaging objects in the DMG, all of which not only take for granted, but offer guidelines for the GM to adjudicate, creative and open-ended uses of magic (and other abilities) by a PC.I'm generally sympathetic to your posts in this (and other) threads, but I don't agree with your equation, here, of "mechanically governed resolution" with "combat".I mean, 4e has a mechanical system for resolving out-of-combat encounters - namely, skill challenges - and some of the major changes between 3E and 4e (like the skill training and progression rules, the DC by level chart, etc) are all about making those non-combat encounters mechancially balanced, so a GM doesn't need to regulate the roleplaying and its outcomes in the sort of way the OP is advocating.I'll add a fifth possibility - they were following the rules of the game, in a style of play in which the main responsibility for regulating player agency lies with the players rather than the GM, and in doing this discovered that the mechanics are at odds with player self-regulation. Hence the description of "playing with one hand tied behind one's back".This is a completely unreasonable description of games in which GM force is not a significant component of action resolution.Consider this <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361.10" target="_blank">quote from Paul Czege</a>:Let me say that I think your "Point A to Point B" way of thinking about scene framing is pretty damn incisive. . . There are two points to a scene - Point A, where the PCs start the scene, and Point B, where they end up. Most games let the players control some aspect of Point A, and then railroad the PCs to point B. Good narrativism will reverse that by letting the GM create a compelling Point A, and let the players dictate what Point B is (ie, there is no Point B prior to the scene beginning). . . My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about. "Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. . .  I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . .  I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.This has been a more useful guide for me, in GMing 4e, than most of the hundreds of pages of GMing advice produced by WotC for the edition. It has nothing to do with "pushing monsters around and speaking in funny voices". It is about framing situations, and maintainig the pressure, while the players try to resolve those situations via their PCs without GM force hindering or governing that resolution.</blockquote>

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