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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7728270" data-attributes="member: 42582">To be honest, this makes me wonder whether you have any experience of, or even first-hand knowledge of, 4e.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?330383-Underdark-adventure-with-Demons-Beholders-Elementals-and-a-Hydra" target="_blank">Here is a link</a> to just one actual play post from my main 4e campaign. It describes exploration and fighting. You'll see that much (not all) of the fighting is itself "story", in the sense that the opposition between the PCs and their opponents isn't based purely on expedience but is groudned in the deep commitments of each.Upthread,   [MENTION=53082]Lord_Blacksteel[/MENTION] said that the "core loop" in modern D&D is rolling the d20. As a variant on that conjecture, I would say that the core loop in 4e is the same as the core loop in any "indie" RPG: the PC (and thus the player) is confronted with some obstacle to getting what s/he wants, and the player therefore has to declare an action for the PC that might overcome that obstacle. And rolling the d20 is central to resolution of those action declarations.RPGs can play in a similar fashion - as in, a necessary condition of a character dying abruptly is that it makes sense in the story. How that story is established is the key to this.4e actually comes closest to this style of RPGing, of any edition of D&D.This is one way to referee a RPG. It works well for PCs who are rootless wanderers with little connection to the campaign world and backstory. I think it will not tend to produce "story" in the standard sense of dramatic needs => conflict and rising action => climax and resolution.This sort of railroading is not the only alternative to the "site based" adventure design you describe. (Eg the actual play post I linked to earlier in this thread did not invovle either "site based" or "X, then Y, then Z-based" refereeing.We can't really talk about the "loops" in RPG play and design without looking at a reasonably representative range of ways that RPGs can work.When comparing RPGs to books, movies etc the comparison is not to post-writing consumption,. The comparison is to authorship.A book is not "static" for its author. It admits of the same range of variations as does a RPG.The challenge in RPG design, if the goal is to achieve the same sort of story as authors do in those other mediums, is to (i) reconcile the roles of multiple authors, and (ii) to find some way to deal with the lack of opportunity to edit/revise.The allocation of distinct functions to GM/referee and to the other players is a traditional way, in RPG design, to handle challenges (i) and (ii).Obviously if you take Paul Ming's pre-authored "X, then Y, then Z" approach you have given up on trying to deal with challenges (i) and (ii): there is a single author (the GM) and the author has already revised/edited the story in doing that pre-authorship. But that is not the only way to run a RPG intended to yield story.</blockquote>

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