Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5588321" data-attributes="member: 42582">On static vs tailored encounters - I use tailored encounters in my 4e game. HeroQuest revised edition has an entire action resolution and pacing mechanic based on tailored encounters (where the tailoring is relative to prior successes or failures by the PCs), which has influenced my approach to GMing 4e (and some of this stuff is cribbed by Laws in his sections of the 4e DMG2).Another published example of tailoring is The Dying Earth RPG, which describes monster stats expressly by reference to the average strength of the PCs in relevant abilities - this is building tailoring right into the NPC stat block!But tailoring is orthogonal to railroading. Tailoring has no implications for the players making meaningful choices in dimensions other than "how hard will this be". And it even permits meaningful choices of that sort in at least some cases - a Dying Earth GM can easily create a situation, for example, where going to place A will result in meeting two hostile creatures whose statblock is appropriately tailored, while going to place B will result in meeting only one such creature.What tailoring does presuppose is that the GM has a certain role in exercising situational authority - the framing of scenes.Tailoring vs static is relevant, therefore I think, to classic D&D: the advice that Gygax gives at the end of the PHB, for example, would make no sense at all if the GM was adjusting the difficulty of encounters in response to pacing concerns, PC strengths etc, because that advice is all about how good players should take responsiblity for getting their PCs into and out of the situations that are there to be found in the dungeon.Of course, in the DMG Gygax then goes on to instruct GMs on how they should exercise situational authority - for example, in his well known discussion of how various dungeon occupants might respond to a raid by the PCs. Implicit in this advice, presumably, is that the GM won't have the occupants repsond in such a way as to be unfair to the players and to the capabilities of their PCs - this therefore suggests a degree of tailoring even in classic D&D, as well as a possibility of play breaking down as the players exercise situational authority via "skilled play", the GM exercises situational authority in response via "rat bastard-ism", and the whole thing escalates and degenerates in the way that is exemplified in some early Dragon and White Dwarf discussions of tricks and traps.Again, though, this lurking incoherence in classic D&D strikes me as being orthogonal to railroading.</blockquote>

Verification