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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7091437" data-attributes="member: 42582">Certainly conflict between the PCs and . . . obstacles . . . whether those are NPCs or inanimate aspects of the gameworld.Dramatic need + obstacles/challenges/complications => conflict. That's what makes the game unfold, rather than just hand around in stasis, with nothing for the PCs (and hence the players) to do. And if the external conflict generates internal conflict (the sorts of choices I've just been discussing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]), or conflict among the PCs that forces hard choices to be made there too, well so much the better.(Intra-party conflict is obviously tricky. As I approach the game, a certain onus falls both on GM and players to manage this carefully, especially in a system like D&D that presumes pretty tight party play. The conflict has to be enough to drive action, without being so great as to cause a split. I wonder what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s thoughts are on this.)I want at least this much competition: if I (as GM) am playing a NPC/creature who wants to hurt a PC, I want to be able to do that without having to hold back. I, the GM, have no particular desire that the PCs lose; but their opponent does, and I want to be able to express and give effect to that in my play of that opponent.Not all systems allow for this: or, at least, if played this way they will produce what I would regard as an unacceptably high level of player defeats. (Low-level AD&D played in a non-dungeon crawl context I would regard as Exhibit A in this respect.)I prefer ones that do. 4e combat handles this, by building a certain sort of "softballing" into the mechanics (PCs have depths of resilience and capacity to project power that NPCs/monsters lack). (It doesn't really arise in 4e non-combat, because skill challenges don't involve mechanical opposition, only narration in the form of framing, and then re-framing in light of consequences.)BW handles it quite differently, by building in a range of non-death defeat consequences, and by embracing "fail forward", so that PC defeat isn't (straightforwardly) player defeat.MHRP has some issues with this, in virtue of the way the Doom Pool works. I'm still getting the hang of it. The dominant online advice is "Sometimes the GM should softball the Doom Pool", but I have doubts about that for the reasons I've stated.(Note: the distinction between framing and resolution matters to the above. Framing is, for me, a metagame process, and I do that based on the principles I've discussed above. But when the actual conflict is being resolved, once the situation is framed and the competing actions being declared, I don't want to have to metagame.)</blockquote>

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