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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7804388" data-attributes="member: 42582">Because - as I explained in my post - those things are decided by me, the GM, as one aspect of making decisions about pacing and framing.For instance, I decided that the relieving army arrived at the castle when it did because that suited the dramatic needs of play. I decided that the fleeing fiance arrived ahead of the relieving army, but only just, in order to raise the question of whether they would lower the drawbridge to let her in, or leave her to her fate, or - as it turned out, somewhat unexpectedly - to rescue her by climbing down to her on a rope outside the castle wall. (Had the drawbridge been lowered then I would have called for competing Battle command rolls to see whether it was able to be raised before the enemy force arrived.)What do you mean the drama unfolds from there? If it's all being done in the mechanical fashion you suggest, then there is no guarantee that drama occurs at all. For instance, if the players spend X time debating whether or not to lower the drawbridge, and then decide to, measurement on the GM's clock might determine that there is no way of lowering it and raising it in time to avoid the enemy force taking advantage of it. And so the dramatic decision-point in fact evaporates - instead of the dramatic decision-point the game consisted of the effluxion of time by way of debate.Ron Edwards made the general point over 15 years ago in <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/" target="_blank">two</a> <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/3/" target="_blank">essays</a>, where he describes the exploration-type approach as follows:In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book. The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).<a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">Paul Czege</a> also has a nice discussion that relates to this: [A]lthough roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. 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. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. 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. My Prince Valiant game is (I'm certain) more laid-back than anything Paul Czege has ever run; but the basic points hold true. For instance, in deciding whether or not the smitten knight and the lady he is rescuing are able to make it from the castle to the coast (where they hid in a lighthouse to await the outcome of the battle between the castle's and the relieving forces) I did not worry about a map. Or a precise distance. Prior play had established that the distance from coast to castle was not too hard to cover mounted at night, and so the player's action declaration for his PC could certainly stand. (This is a geographic analogue to keeping NPC personalities somewhat unfixed, allowing retroactive justifications of how matters unfold.) What did matter was the Stealth check, because this resolved the dramatic focus of the action declaration, namely, did they avoid being seen?This seems orthogonal to the assertion that [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] and I are making. I've GMed <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/session-report-the-mausoleum-of-the-raven-queen.484945/" target="_blank">dramatic tomb-raiding sessions</a>. Insofar as they were aimed at establishing drama and compelling the players to make hard choices for their PCs, they didn't use the sorts of techniques that Moldvay and Gygax talk about.</blockquote>

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