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="pemerton" data-source="post: 5725092" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=64209]Aberzanzorax[/MENTION], what I enjoy about 4e is the way it supports gonzo fantasy play of a narrativist bent.By "narrativist", I mean "narrativist in the Forge sense". This is, roughly, that the game produces thematically compelling play without it being anyone's job to achieve that.What the players have to do is build and play their PCs, pushing towards their character goals in the encounters that occur. What I as GM have to do is to build my encounters having regard to the players' thematic concerns (as revealed through the build and play of their PCs), and then to adjudicate those encounters in a way that keeps pouring the pressure onto the PCs (and, hence, the players) up until the encounter resolves.4e is (obviously) not the only game that supports this sort of play. And unlike the indie games normally associated with the Forge, I think that the range of themes it allows players to focus on is more traditional (and gonzo). But within those parameters, I find it does a great job. It allows pouring on the pressure with (in my experience) very minimal likelihood of a combat encounter fizzling (either for being too easy, for being boring, or for being a pointless TPK). And (with help from non-4e rulebooks plus [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] on these boards) I've learned how to run skill challenges in a way that keeps the pressure on.The game has a lot of support for encounter design and resolution, both prepared and just-in-time (monster stats by level, DCs by level, standard conditions, lots of pre-designed terrain, page 42, etc, etc). And (to link this back to the thread topic) its approach to healing, and its reliance on shared genre expectations rather than mechanics to mediate transition between encounters, makes a scene/encounter-driven approach to play easier than in a game like Rolemaster (or, I suspect, 3E - at least based on its rulebooks), which tends to make it much harder for the players and/or the GM to bring a scene to an end without violating the action resolution rules. (The same reliance on genre expectations rather than mechanics outside the context of actual action resolution at the table also makes it easier to introduce a range of gonzo fantasy story elements without having to worry about things like spell level, item prerequisites etc.)For the sort of play that I find support for from 4e - that illustrates what I mean by encounters or situations that "pour on the pressure" - see any of the links in my earlier post above, or my new thread on <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/313724-actual-play-pcs-successfully-negotiated-kas.html#post5724953" target="_blank">PCs negotiating with Kas</a>.</blockquote>

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