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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6134856" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>All I can say is that IME games in which the players participate in at least some ways in defining the world are far deeper and richer games than ones where they just sit and listen to the DM tell them how it all is and do nothing but react to that. The "create a bit of difficult terrain" power is minor but it is a perfectly good illustration. For one thing it removes a great burden from the DM. When my character suddenly runs down some ally in the town should we have to rely on the DM to create a cool scene filled with chickens, laundry, a fruit stand, a low shed roof that a character could scramble up onto, and 5 other things that suddenly became relevant in this otherwise unremarkable ally? I don't think so. What's wrong with 6 heads working on that instead of just one? The guy with this power can say "Hey, there are 5 cages full of chickens stacked on a handcart by a door, I tip them over". You've instantly gained a little depth and detail that you lacked before. This doesn't derail things like exploration, each character can do it now and then at the cost of a power use or whatever. </p><p></p><p>I'm not sure which of Wreccan's things people were looking at, but IME at least MOST of the time things aren't so formal. However, Terrain Powers (which are actually in DMG2, though Wreccan wrote about them) CAN be quite handy. If I have a large setpiece that I've developed then it makes quite good sense to just anticipate the PCs and set up some TPs ahead of time. They are just basically 'solidified page 42'. This is an illustration of a major theme of 4e, to move work into the setup phase of the game in order to make table time quicker and easier. It also allowed for a way to create libraries of TPs that can be reused. I think its reasonable to consider which things you really need though. Not every little piece of terrain needs a power and not every improvisation PCs perform needs to be elaborately thought out and balanced against other powers. Most of the time its sort of a one-shot thing and basically just a skill use and big deal. Some DMs will lean more heavily on skills than others too. I've seen some that use them constantly for a lot of things, and others that pretty much play a style where the PCs mostly just use powers. 4e is like any other D&D, there's a lot of ways to play it and none of them is wrong.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I dunno. I don't get this 'bullet time' thing. I ran a game last night. It went about 3 hours. The entire action took place in a single (rather large) room. There was exploration, lots of skill use, a bunch of RP, and a sort of running fight that went on for a good part of the evening. I guess you could have called it a "3 hour fight", but a really wide variety of different things happened. In game time it was probably only a few minutes, possibly with a few breaks for negotiation, but it sure wasn't boring. The players were doing what they wanted to do, the plot was moving rapidly forward, new toys showed up, amusing annecdotes were manufactured to be repeated in future sessions, etc. I could have spread things out over more space, and more time, but it didn't really matter. Just because 4e might have you living in the world time of a single 'encounter' for a good while isn't especially bad. I find it is just better to go with the flow of a game, do things how it wants, and then pump it up to 11 and see what happens. 4e works well that way. Personally I found it hard to pump AD&D up that way, and I haven't seen it really happen in DDN so far.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6134856, member: 82106"] All I can say is that IME games in which the players participate in at least some ways in defining the world are far deeper and richer games than ones where they just sit and listen to the DM tell them how it all is and do nothing but react to that. The "create a bit of difficult terrain" power is minor but it is a perfectly good illustration. For one thing it removes a great burden from the DM. When my character suddenly runs down some ally in the town should we have to rely on the DM to create a cool scene filled with chickens, laundry, a fruit stand, a low shed roof that a character could scramble up onto, and 5 other things that suddenly became relevant in this otherwise unremarkable ally? I don't think so. What's wrong with 6 heads working on that instead of just one? The guy with this power can say "Hey, there are 5 cages full of chickens stacked on a handcart by a door, I tip them over". You've instantly gained a little depth and detail that you lacked before. This doesn't derail things like exploration, each character can do it now and then at the cost of a power use or whatever. I'm not sure which of Wreccan's things people were looking at, but IME at least MOST of the time things aren't so formal. However, Terrain Powers (which are actually in DMG2, though Wreccan wrote about them) CAN be quite handy. If I have a large setpiece that I've developed then it makes quite good sense to just anticipate the PCs and set up some TPs ahead of time. They are just basically 'solidified page 42'. This is an illustration of a major theme of 4e, to move work into the setup phase of the game in order to make table time quicker and easier. It also allowed for a way to create libraries of TPs that can be reused. I think its reasonable to consider which things you really need though. Not every little piece of terrain needs a power and not every improvisation PCs perform needs to be elaborately thought out and balanced against other powers. Most of the time its sort of a one-shot thing and basically just a skill use and big deal. Some DMs will lean more heavily on skills than others too. I've seen some that use them constantly for a lot of things, and others that pretty much play a style where the PCs mostly just use powers. 4e is like any other D&D, there's a lot of ways to play it and none of them is wrong. Anyway, I dunno. I don't get this 'bullet time' thing. I ran a game last night. It went about 3 hours. The entire action took place in a single (rather large) room. There was exploration, lots of skill use, a bunch of RP, and a sort of running fight that went on for a good part of the evening. I guess you could have called it a "3 hour fight", but a really wide variety of different things happened. In game time it was probably only a few minutes, possibly with a few breaks for negotiation, but it sure wasn't boring. The players were doing what they wanted to do, the plot was moving rapidly forward, new toys showed up, amusing annecdotes were manufactured to be repeated in future sessions, etc. I could have spread things out over more space, and more time, but it didn't really matter. Just because 4e might have you living in the world time of a single 'encounter' for a good while isn't especially bad. I find it is just better to go with the flow of a game, do things how it wants, and then pump it up to 11 and see what happens. 4e works well that way. Personally I found it hard to pump AD&D up that way, and I haven't seen it really happen in DDN so far. [/QUOTE]
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