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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4942575" data-attributes="member: 4937">Unfortunately, that doesn't make your essays as a whole any clearer.To which I can only respond, "Hogwash."  Dramatically speaking, climatic encounters are always against 'overwhelming odds'.  This is true in movies, in books, and in video games because it makes for good drama.  Chase scenes are staples of cinema, so the good director always gives the hero plenty of oppurtunity to be chased by something which he doesn't want to face directly if he can help it.  It doesn't matter if we are talking Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or the Bourne Identity, there are always moments when the hero overwhelms the opposition, moments when retreat is the better part of valor, and moments where the hero is given no choice but to face overwhelming odds.  But even more than that, since you might argue that such battles are still within the realm of 'level appropriate', I think every campaign needs at least point where a previously overwhelming threat returns just so the now more experienced PC's can mop the floor with it.  I also think every campaign needs a few points where running away is the only reasonable option.   These moments are very cinematic.It sounds to me like you are quite deliberately suggesting that the DM squash any chance of following cinematic conventions.  Your definition of 'cinematic' is increasingly divorced from the one you provided when you referenced 'cinematic conventions'.  I think we get a really good clue to what your real definition of 'cinematic' is later on.I agree that 'cinematic' has nothing to do with scale.  I'll happily accept 'epic' to mean 'large scale'.  Are you certain that to your mind 'cinematic' has nothing to do with scale?Wait a minute, didn't you just say that 'cinematic' had nothing to do with scale??  Allow me to organize the information I have.Snoweel doesn't like E6 because its not 'cinematic'.Snoweel doesn't like 'grim-and-gritty' because its 'dull'Snoweel doesn't believe mundane hazards have a place in RPGs.Snoweel does like Exalted.Snoweel likes Exalted because he does like fighting "ancient dragons and demiliches and armies of demons."  (This isn't 'dull').Snoweel admits that E6 can provide balanced encounters, but seems hesitant to suggest that in E6 this includes 'ancient dragons, demiliches, and armies of demons'.  Could it possibly be that Snoweel rejects E6 and likes Exalted because he equates 'cinematic' with 'epic'?  Hmmmm.Hmmmm.Sidebar:  My full respects and gratitude to you for your service.  It's not unnoticed in the USA which country is the only country to stand with us in every conflict since WWI, nor is it unnoted that when their was talk about deploying our troops to East Timor, the Aussies manned up and said, "This is our backyard.  We'll handle it."  Advance Australia Fair.Sidebar 2: Personally, I hated the movies but found the books exciting and richly interesting.  I could never get past the inane turnip eating scene, or Arwen warrior princess, or the dimunition of Frodo's character, or the dwarf tossing, or the fifth time Aragorn fell off something and we got a slow motion closeup of his unconscious form, or the vertical exagerration of the CGI so that everything looked like a technicolor movie with the credits rolling, or...  Well, suffice to say that I found the books to be one of the great works of epic literature, and the movies retarded matinee popcorn fluff.You never truly know unless you beat it.  That's life. Well, the smart ones learn that living heroes are much more heroic than dead ones.  They run from every unknown threat unless they have a compelling reason not to.  Or at the very least, fall back, regroup, and reassess.One thing to keep in mind is that the NPC's are in the same boat.  They don't know how threatening the PC's are either, and they generally assume the worst (which, if you think about it, is pretty close to correct).  This creates a strong cinematic feel, among other things that the villains occassionally get a chance to talk, and the PC's have strong reasons to talk with them.If doing so helps them achieve some goal, then, "Yes."  If this is just some random threat, then probably not if they want to live a long time.  Yes, and generally, its a more cinematic reason than, "Let's kill things and take their stuff."Hope it can't run fast?  Hope that it would rather eat the ponies?  Hope that it isn't willing to fight to the death either?  Often that depends on the result of a bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate check. Not at all.  How many of your NPC's survive encounters?  Maybe its not my NPC's that are stupid unrealistic and uncinematic?Because you've had bad DMs?  It's certainly not the case that my level appropriate enemies wildly charge up and fight in a beserk rage to the death either.  Besides which, there are quite a few things that never show mercy regardless of the level of the PC's - zombies, ghouls, gelatinous cubes, man-eating plants, giant spiders, purple worms, etc. aren't exactly amicable dungeon dwellers.  In part I just see this as a matter of taste.  Snoweel likes big epic wildly fantastic escapist fair, not because there is something wrong with Snoweel, but because apparantly Snoweel has had oppurtunity to be the mundane hero and can't romaticize that any more or at the very least, doesn't want to relive in a game what he's done in real life.  That's fine, but I don't see how that means E6 does 'cinematic' poorly and 4e does it well.   It just means that maybe 4e (and Exalted) does big epic over-the-top wildly fantastic escapist fantasy better than E6, to which I would agree.</blockquote>

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