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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6602258" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><a href="http://archive.hbook.com/magazine/articles/1970s/dec71_alexander.asp" target="_blank">Here </a>you are.Three things about the essay appeal to me with respect to clarifying 4e best practices:1)  The genre clarity in and of itself.  Specifically, the expectant role and nature of heroism in Romantic Fantasy.2)  The nature of attachment to the genre by the participant.  High/Romantic Fantasy inclines us toward an emotional attachment that may be difficult to undress under examination.  Nonetheless, it is a very real (perhaps even child-like...not to be mistaken for "childish") quality within us that seeks out the mysteries of the genre's appeal.  Hence, why you see ardent 4e advocates pursuing emotional inhabitation of PC and only considered with the PC's perspective on the causal logic of the world insofar that the player (not character...player) has the requisite agency to make informed action declarations.  That agency will require play to meet their genre expectations as much, if not more, than it will require play to meet their internal consistency/causal logic barometer.3)  The emergence of tropes/characters by the mysterious will of the creative process, which is something of an entity unto itself with its own volition.  While the author is never totally absent, the creative process must be allowed its authorial agency to surprise and satisfy with "what comes next."   4e, like all scene-based games, is best played pedal to the medal in this fashion.  Cast off your "desperate insecurities from not knowing what is going to happen next" or how this all comes together.  It will work itself out through the will of the game's play procedures married to the agency of the players.  They'll surprise you with their own ideas of "what comes next" or "how this comes together" (just as Alexander discovered the trajectory of 'heard a voice in the back of his mind, plaintive, whining,                self-pitying' in the midst of innocuously going about his day).  You won't have to worry about forcing things.  Just keep putting interesting, genre-coherent and continuity-driven, conflict-charged scene-openers in front of them and they'll do unexpected, awesome things with that thematic pressure you've put on them.  Follow their lead to wherever things go and by the power of that "mysterious creative process" you'll surely end up somewhere unexpected and more satisfying than if you saw it coming.This is actually one of 4e's strengths to be honest.  With its outcome-based design and its transparent metagame,  each component has little to no mystery with respect to what it produces unto itself and where it fits in with the other system components.  Further, being broad-descriptor-based, so much of the system is abstract and malleable.  Healing Surges are heroic mojo.  The Skills are broad areas of proficiency.  The Disease Track is "stuff that sucks for PCs and has lasting effects."  The Skill Challenge system is a generic conflict resolution system meant to create dramatic flow and climax (rising action, falling action, denouement) for genre-coherent, non-combat action scenes.  The Rest mechanics are just a metagame recharge system with mutable fictional positioning that can be shaped for the need of the session, the adventure, or the entirety of the campaign.  The DMG2 has more and better advice on flexing each of the components I mentioned above in order to achieve various tones, lethality, and genre expectations.  The key issue here is telegraphing, transparency, and commitment to social contract.  The players in my game have pretty much full knowledge of the metagame.  They know that every/single micro-failure in an SC will cost them an HS (loss of heroic mojo) and a macro-failure will cost the entire group an HS.  The players in my game know if the Extended Rest mechanics will require something specific at the metagame level to achieve them and what that associates to within the fiction.  That way, they can take strategic initiative and make informed action declarations (player agency) such that they aren't suddenly jarred by what appears to be (or outright is) a game of arbitrary or adversarial goal-post-moving (eg "Calvinball").  If I made opaque "metagame adjustments" out of the blue, and it negatively affected player agency, I would expect players to be unhappy and confrontational about it.  I would hope they would be because that means they're invested in the thematic interests of their characters, their ability to advocate for them, the impact of that advocating on the trajectory of play/emergent story, and they believe it is my job to always observe those interests and maximize their agency to affect their sought ends.</blockquote>

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