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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snoweel" data-source="post: 4941319" data-attributes="member: 4453">I know what you mean. I first read 'cinematic' used that way in a GURPS sourcebook and it was confusing at first.But I've since gotten used to it and if you play around with Google you'll find plenty of other rpg discussions where it's used in the same way.'Dramatic' more implies the quality of tension in a particular moment.Again, I think you're confusing the power level of the protagonists with the structure of the adventures they participate in.Try and look at it this way: the levels of the characters alone is irrelevant to how cinematic - or not - an adventure or style of play is.However, if Gandalf really was a 5th level wizard then he would have been destroyed in 1 round by the Balrog.In truly cinematic play, an encounter like that would most certainly have been level-appropriate, because then the moment would have been sufficiently dramatic for an adventure's climax (see my use of the word 'dramatic'.)How is that a disagreement then?I said that fans of grim'n'gritty want to remove the adavntage to PCs inherent in most rpg systems. I thought it was implied that this was to increase immersiveness.After all, there is no inherent advantage to us, the protagonists, in real life. And it is often our mundane day-to-day troubles that thwart us. I assume replicating this daily struggle is the appeal of grim'n'gritty.Put it this way - the Fellowship of the Ring were NEVER going to fail due to dysentery or dehydration.Neither will any PCs in any game I ever run.The only way through the Misty Mountains led through Moria, where Gandalf encountered a Balrog (no save).Had he been insufficiently powerful to deal with it the story would have ended there.Any good campaign has multiple story arcs.The difference with sandboxing is that Gandalf and the Fellowship, faced with no other choice in the Misty Mountains, would have encountered the Balrog whether they were level 5 or level 25.I put it to you that any DM that allows a 5th level party to survive such an encounter is not playing the Balrog to character and therefore isn't really running a sandbox.</blockquote>

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