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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6196338" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have given interesting responses to this.My game is not as focused on the playes overcoming challenges as LostSoul's is, so I'd be less likely to implement (ii) as you've written it. The ony time my 4e game had a "TPK", I gave the players the option of choosing whether or not their PC died. One chose that - he wanted to bring in a different character - but the others wanted to keep playing the same characters, so in the next session they regained consciousness locked in a gobin prison cell (the TPK had been at the hands of supernatural forces summoned by the goblin hexer).The reason for the absence of other TPKs is that gien by Manbearcat - I rely on 4e's encounter building guidelines, and these have proved pretty reliable.When individual PCs have died - the paladin once, the wizard twice - I've worked through with the player the circumstances in which they can be raised or otherwise come back to life.When an encounter is actually taking place, I might introduce additional forces and complications, or not, depending on how things are unfolding both mechanics and story-wise. But that is not "being final aribter of events and outcomes". It's injecting more fictional material for the players to engage.This is an interesting issue. I think that, in the ideal of wargaming play, there won't be this sort of changing midstream. In indie play, I think it's expected that the GM will introduce compiclations as the scene requires.The 2e-ish approach counts as GM force, yes.In "indie" play, the PCs have performed an action - leaving the note to influence the witch - and an appropriate skill roll would be made. Success means they achieve their intention. Failure means something misfires or an external complication ensues.The GM roleplays the NPC in either case - the nature and consequenece of success will reflect the NPC personality, and likewise complications arising from failure. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?312367-Actual-play-another-combat-free-session-with-intra-party-dyanmics" target="_blank">Here is a link</a> to an example of what I mean.OK.Probably not.One that's explicit rather than implicit.By "mere colour" I mean colour or flavour that has no effect on actual resolution in the game. An example from 3E would be (non-valuable) spell components - these are colour, but they have no impact on resolution, which is governed simpy by whether or not the PC has a spell component pouch.  In my 4e game I have never asked the archer player to track ammunition, and the player has never done so - that's another example of ammunition being "mere colour".An example of something in 1st ed AD&D which can be mere colour is the description of the ranger's expertise at woodcraft - outside of the surprise and tracking rules this has no mechanical implications, and the secondary skill table in the DMG doesn't link secondary skills as a forester or trapper to being a ranger.But this could be changed from mere colour to something ore via GM force - ie the GM narrating outcomes differently for a ranger PC rather than a different sort of PC on the strength of this flavour text.In the context of 4e, I think your description of "reskinning" ignores the importance of keywords, many of which provide crucial anchors between mechanics and fiction and therefore are key to (not merely mere) colour: for instance, a fireball can burn things because it does fire damage; icy terrain can freeze a puddle or small pond because it does cold damage; etc. (The rulebooks don't do a particularly good job of bringing this out, but it is pretty clear in the discussion of affecting objects in the DMG.) So "reskinning" a fireball as an icestorm isn't just changing mere colour - it would also require changing the rules text, from fire damage to cold damage.What I meant by "visceral" colour and immersion, though, is a bit different. I'll try to illustrate by example. In CoC, the way I experience my PC's dissent into insanity is not by, myself, going insane or experiencing insanity. Rather, the GM provides rich descriptions of the PC's dreams, delusional visions, etc, and the player immerses in those and riffs off them. (At least in my experience, a thespian GM helps a lot with CoC.)In 4e (and the indie playstyle in general, at least as I understand it) the ideal way of experiencing the colour of the fiction is different. The experience of playing the game should itself give rise, in the player, to the emotion that the PC is experiencing. So if you want the game to be about the terror and uncertainty of combat, your combat mechanics should themselves cause terror and uncertainty - Burning Wheel aims for this with its action declaration rules.A very clear example in 4e is the Chained Cambion in MM3, which is a monster that experiences immense frustration of being bound, and therefore lashes out with psychic attacks. One effect it imposes is to cause 2 PCs to each take ongoing psychic damage unless they are adjacent. Here is the power description:Two enemies adjacent to each other in a close burst 5 are psychically shackled (save ends; each enemy makes a separate saving throw against this effect). While psychically shackled, an enemy takes 10 psychic damage at the start and the end of its turn if it isn't adjacent to the other creature that was affected by this power. Aftereffect: The effect persists, and the damage decreases to 5 (save ends).Because of basic features of 4e PC build, to be forced to stay adjacent to your ally is frequently a source of frustration - so when this effect is suffered by the PCs, their players themselves start to experience the frustration which is the emotion the monster is lashing out with. (In my own game this worked particularly well becaues the two PCs were a melee warrior and an archer who were on top of a crypt - which mean not only did one wish to close while the other stayed at range, but working out how to jump down from the crypt without getting seperated was a further source of frustration.)For a certain sort of player I think this monster could be non-immersive - because from the power description it is not really clear what is going on in the fiction, and it can seem very metagame-y, with its reliance on a mechanical notion of adjacency, the infliction of damage being linked to events in the initiative sequence, etc.But when I used this creature in my 4e game, it was hugely immersive - the players understand what is happening in the fiction because it is happening at the table - they are mentally and emotionally chained to one another, start (verbally) sniping at one another for not doing the best thing given the constraints their PCs are uner, etc. It was great.</blockquote>

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