NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8218537" data-attributes="member: 82106">I wasn't saying anything really about non-combat being 'filler'. I was saying there are a lot of combats in bog standard "maze full of rooms with monsters" D&D which are filler. They don't contribute to excitement or plot, so they should be elided in some way. Now, this may or may not also apply to some kinds of non-combat 'stuff', but that is more up to the participants as to which things they want to focus on there. I mentioned travel montages and research montages, DMG2 discusses this sort of stuff. However, they COULD be parts of SCs. Obviously a dangerous journey can be a whole adventure too, it really depends on what you want to focus on.And this is where we start to get outside the realm of what traditional D&D even knows how to talk about. That is we get into the area of narrative play, of concepts like "play to find out" and framing scenes around what the players want to focus on. You won't find a lot of advice or game structure in 4e which is really aimed at this, though there are a few bits. I would point to Quests and Wish Lists as two areas where players are asked explicitly (or suggestions are made if you prefer) on direct player input to game content. You might also include slightly less direct things like PC build choices (picking the ED 'demigod' says something for example). If you look at how other games, like PbtA flavors handle this you can see some more rigorous principles and techniques being explicated. I would advise emulating the spirit of something like Dungeon World in terms of constantly moving things forward, create momentum and tension, etc. 4e is much better at handling these techniques than 5e is, for example.[USER=7029921]@meltdownpass[/USER] has a good point, which is that 4e is pretty good at nearly guaranteeing comprehensible odds and predictable ranges of outcomes for player decisions. This encourages the players to move forward and take risks. They understand the relationship between what they are risking and what they are likely to achieve. Elements like treasure parcels play into this (rewards are predictable). Also the SC system itself is a significantly important part of this, as it guarantees that a fixed number of successes WILL produce achievement of a goal. In a game like 5e there is no such guarantee, the GM could simply present any arbitrary number of hoops for the PC to jump through by making checks before the goal is reached. All of these things help produce a game of forward momentum. It lets you play the odds in an intelligent way, like a football coach plays the odds when he decides it is time to pass on 4th down, or not.</blockquote>

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