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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5559462" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]: The <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5557410-post411.html" target="_blank">thread on General where you linked to Story Games</a> got closed, but I wanted to follow up on your links, which were interesting. They also took me back to the Lumpley Games posts about character sheets and currency that I haven't thought about for a while.Naturally enough I'm of the view that 4e does have fictional positioning - both in combat and out of it - but it makes some featuers of the fiction more salient than others. The example I gave on that other thread, of the DC to spot the markings on the prone snake's back, is a fairly uninteresting example. Skill checks, page 42, some aspects of cover and difficult terrain, some aspects of movement and tactical location, etc are more front and centre in the game. One of the posters on the positioning thread suggested that nothing in 4e requires fictional positioning to feed into skill challenge resolution, but again I don't really think this is right. Or, at least, I'm curious: how do groups work out what is going on in a skill challenge, what each roll means, and thereby what the outcome is, if they don't rely (at least in part) on fictional positioning?The currency stuff, on the other hand, I'm less confident about. I think a lot of the currency rules in 4e play (at least my game) are unstated and ad hoc. For example, one of the PCs in my game is a Warpriest of Moradin. Given this positioning, he was able to use both his polearm fighting abilities and his Diplomacy and Intimidate skills (both elements of effectiveness) to get some dwarf warrior NPCs to become his followers for a little while (new positioning, plus some new effectiveness and resources). In a fight with a hobgoblin-controlled Spirehorn Behemoth the behemoth used its Trample attack to take down a number of these NPCs (who, mechanically, are minions) - which meant that the behemoth won't have the trample avaiable to hurt the other PCs (so the NPCs became a resource, which was spent) but also makes the Warpriest someone who led his followers into defeat (further positioning, which has implications for the effectiveness of his Diplomacy in future dealings with the dwarves). Most of these currency rules aren't there in the rulebooks - it's my adjudication as GM, constrained by my sense of what the shared fiction permits or mandates.Any thoughts on how to unpack this more coherently (whether in general, or in relation to 4e)?</blockquote>

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