Well, it's not as if none of us on this thread have ever crossed (virtual) paths before!
In case either of you has forgotten, I'm the 4e-GMing Friend of Ron Edwards (The Shaman's terminology - it abbreviates FoRE). By "heroic protagonism" I mean character- and situation-focused narrativist play. This is, roughly, play in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs - both as part of their backstories and over the course of actual play - and the GM's job is to frame and resolve situations which engage with this thematic material, whether by reinforcing it, challenging it, or otherwise forcing the player to use and develop it. Other terminology that I've used to express the idea is that the players, in building and playing their PCs, create hooks that the GM is obliged to follow (this is sort of the opposite to the standard D&D approach).
From time to time I've also borrowed from another poster (I can't remember who) the phrase "just in time GMing" to describe this approach - the point of this phrase is to make clear the contrast to exploration-based play. In my preferred game, the role of the GM is not to create a world for the players to explore (using their PCs as vehicles) but rather for the GM to create and shape situations that engage the players' thematic concerns (as expressed via their PCs). The gameworld is therefore created on a "just in time" basis, in response to those expressed thematic concerns.
Here is a link to an actual play thread by me. And here is a quote from Paul Czege that I trot out from time to time, and that captures this sort of approach (although I think he is a lot more hardcore than I am - my sort of narrativism is really pretty vanilla in comparison, and mostly my game is fairly typical party play):
Let me say that I think your "Point A to Point B" way of thinking about scene framing is pretty damn incisive. . .
I think it very effectively exposes, as Ron points out above, that although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
How does it feel? I suspect it feels like being a guest on a fast-paced political roundtable television program. I think the players probably love it for the adrenaline, but sometimes can't help but breathe a calming sigh when I say "cut."
There are two points to a scene - Point A, where the PCs start the scene, and Point B, where they end up. Most games let the players control some aspect of Point A, and then railroad the PCs to point B. Good narrativism will reverse that by letting the GM create a compelling Point A, and let the players dictate what Point B is (ie, there is no Point B prior to the scene beginning).
I think it very effectively exposes, as Ron points out above, that although roleplaying games typically feature scene transition, by "scene framing" we're talking about a subset of scene transition that features a different kind of intentionality. My personal inclination is to call the traditional method "scene extrapolation," because the details of the Point A of scenes initiated using the method are typically arrived at primarily by considering the physics of the game world, what has happened prior to the scene, and the unrevealed actions and aspirations of characters that only the GM knows about.
"Scene framing" is a very different mental process for me. Tim asked if scene transitions were delicate. They aren't. Delicacy is a trait I'd attach to "scene extrapolation," the idea being to make scene initiation seem an outgrowth of prior events, objective, unintentional, non-threatening, but not to the way I've come to frame scenes in games I've run recently. More often than not, the PC's have been geographically separate from each other in the game world. So I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. I'm having trouble capturing in dispassionate words what it's like, so I'm going to have to dispense with dispassionate words. By god, when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. We've had a group character session, during which it was my job to find out what the player finds interesting about the character. And I know what I find interesting. I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. And like Scott's "Point A to Point B" model says, the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.
How does it feel? I suspect it feels like being a guest on a fast-paced political roundtable television program. I think the players probably love it for the adrenaline, but sometimes can't help but breathe a calming sigh when I say "cut."
4e supports this sort of play well. In fact, my view - which I've been articulating on multiple recent threads, some of which either or both of you has participated in, such as this one - is that this is what 4e was desgined to do. 3E does not support this style of play particularly well - for example, it has no mechanism whereby the player can set the thematic tone of the game and oblige the GM to engage it (cf Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies in 4e, not to mention classes like the Warlock, the Avenger or the Invoker), and its mechanics favour scene extrapolation, and hence exploration, over scene framing (cf skill challenges, not to mention the whole approach to combat encounter design and resolution, in 4e). (And here's another recent thread in which playstyles were discussed, in which I talked about the difference between thematically-driven play and other playstyles.)
Not really, no.
As is pretty well known, 4e combat (when an encounter is built following the guidelines in the DMG, and when it is resolved using the 4e action resolution mechanics including page 42 of the DMG) has a distinctive pace: the monsters start out very strongly, putting the PCs on the ropes, but at a certain point into the combat the tide turns, as the PCs' resilience - manifested paradigmatically but not exclusively by their healing-surge based abilities including second wind - kicks in. (Besides healing, there is also the capacity of the PCs to, over the course of a combat, increasingly dominate the tacitcal dimensions of the combat, like terrain and positioning, via the use of their superior powers in these respects.)
I don't know if 3E, suitably tweaked, could be used to replicate this - I don't think it's trivial, given that (i) drinking a healing potion is a standard action, and (ii) a fair bit of combat power is located in full-attack actions, which preclude movment, and (iii) the range of fighter builds that exert the battlefield control of a 4e defender is fairly limited. I'm pretty confident that 3E won't give this particular experience right out of the box.
(And that's ignoring a whole host of other considerations, like the fact that 4e is designed in all sorts of ways - from spell lists to encounter buidling guildelines - to make scry-teleport-ambush a tiny part of the game, whereas the design of 3E very strongly encourages scry-teleport-ambush as the optimal mode of play at mid-to-high levels.)
3E's grapple rules have a notoriously high search and handling time. This is a marked contrast with 4e's grab.
It's also pretty notorious that unless a PC is built as a grappler, grappling by high-level monsters becomes quite hard to deal with. (In part because of the size contribution to the grapple check, and in part because of the need for opposed checks, which aren't a part of the normal combat system.) I've got nothing against a system in which grappling a giant squid is a challenge even for a very experienced warrior - but in my view it doesn't sit very well side-by-side with the fact that the warrior in question can routinely walk away from 50' or 100' drops onto solid ground.
What you call an "artificial, pre-set limit" or "quantification and definition" - which are things that differ from ordinary skill checks, and hence open up options that can't be so easily achieved using ordinary skill checks in combination with scene extrapolation - is in fact crucial to my point. Skill challenges are, among other things, a device for framing and resolving scenes without having to play out all the details of scene extrapolation, whereas 3E has no comparable mechanic. They achieve this precisely in virtue of their structure, which governs the injection of complications into a situation by the GM, as well as the way in which players respond to those complications (via their PCs' skill checks).
3E, on the other hand, relies upon either scene extrapolation (which may permit protagonism, but is often tedious rather than heroic) or else GM handwaving (which may or may not be heroic, depending on what the GM narrates, but is the opposite of protagonism).
3E wizards, at mid-to-high levels, have a wide range of ways both to engage the scenes that the GM presents, and to step outside or reframe them (teleport and its ilk, terrain alterning spells, domination magic, divination magic, etc etc). Martial PCs, in 3E, have little or none of this.
A simple example: in 3E, a wizard - who's main schtick is not climbing - has access to the option of climbing without a chance of failure (via the Spider Climb spell). A rogue or fighter, however highly trained in Athletics skill, on the other hand, must always make a skill roll, and hence risk failure (unless the skill bonus is within 1 of the climb DC).
4e has all sorts of features that differ from this - rogue powers that grant invisbility with no need for a skill roll, powers that grant martial PCs climb speeds, etc. Not to mention Come and Get It - a favoured topic of discussion - which grants the player of a fighter limited but sometimes important narrative control over the behaviour of the NPCs, which control can then be used to reinforce the status of the fighter PC as a heroic protagonist.
Overall, the notion that 4e doesn't offer anything that 3E didn't is one I find remarkable - particularly coming from posters who I tend to think of as among those who frequently emphasise that 4e offers a different (and, for them, less desirable) gaming experience than does 3E.
This, on the other hand, I agree with almost completely. My only quibble would be that it is, perhaps, overly generous to the capabilities of both systems.
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