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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5718903" data-attributes="member: 42582">Unless I've misunderstood, Matt James has implemented what upthread I described as a trivial house rule - namely, slowing down the recovery of expended healing surges.LostSoul does the same in his 4e hack.I don't particularly share JC's preference - or, rather, I'm quite happy with a game (like 4e) that doesn't go further. And I don't follow BryonD's suggestion that the story not going further than this is stupid. Aragorn never suffers an injury that requires further attention. Nor does Boromir, except when he dies. Nor do Gimli or Legolas, despite fighting in several serious battles. I think the outcomes of either (more-or-less) fine, or dead, fit a certain fantasy genre quite well. And I'm quite happy to play a game that falls within those limits.As for Conan wishing things - of course it is not Conan who makes himself survive by wishing. It is the author who wishes Conan to survive, and so writes the story that way. Likewise in a game with surge-style mechanics. It is not the PC who expends metagame resources. It is the player. Of course you'll get absurdities if you don't maintain this distinction, and assume that it is the PC who is exercising the privileges of author stance - I mean, the very idea is incoherent!In my game the focus is the characters, and the situation that they are engaged in. "Plot" is emergent from that - no one is playing the game with the intention of generating a plot. I, as GM, am focused on setting up situations that engage the players by putting pressure on their PCs. My players are focused on getting their PCs through those situations (and draw upon metagame as well as PC resources to do so).(This is the main point of the blog I linked to in my earlier reply to BryonD - a good RPG of the sort I like should generate an engaging plot without any participant having that be his/her job description. For me, that's the essence of good narrativist RPG design.)Whereas my players would, I think, see it as applying conflict resolution mechanics in a fair way. That is - until the enemy has actually won the challenge, it would be cheating for me to deem that s/he takes the best route regardless of what the players (and their PCs) do. Just as in a combat I can't narrate the NPC's deadly aim and trajectory until after the dice are rolled, so likewise in a chase.</blockquote>

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