Mearls' Legends and Lore (or, "All Roads Lead to Rome, Redux")

[LostSoul]

You're the one who linked to the thread where Czege (and others) argue that the GM should take control over PC decision-making away from the players in order to aggressively frame scenes. If there's some screwed up Forge definition of "railroading" which makes that anything other than railroading, I don't really care.

I see what you're saying. Strong scene framing can take choices away from players. I've experienced that; one of the guys I play with tends to be too aggressive for my tastes, and I have to ask him to stop at points.

That doesn't mean strong scene framing necessarily leads to a bad play experience. If the choices taken away are ones that the players don't care about (to use hyperbole - How much fibre did you get today? Did you brush your teeth? Which sock do you put on first?), and skipping over them presents players with more opportunities to make choices they do care about, it's a good thing.

I also keep seeing refrences to play bogging down... IMO, this should be controlled by the players and DM not by the rules of the game, since the rules of the game can't tell you what parts of a game your players will be interested in or want to approach with more detail and what parts they will want to gloss through.

This ties into the above, I think. The game does (its best) to control pacing through action resolution and the economy of the game. (I'm using "economy" to mean how changes happen to PCs - HP loss, regaining spells, levelling up, etc.)

Action resolution: In regular 4E you use the character's Passive Perception to determine if traps or secret doors are found. In my hack, the player has to describe his character's action in order to find traps or secret doors. This means that the pacing at the table gets changed - I need to ask the players to describe their actions as they wander about through a dungeon. In regular 4E you don't spend (some would say waste) that time.

Economy: I have a whole bunch of rules in my hack that change how character resources are refreshed. Basically, you have to go back to town and interact with NPCs. In regular 4E you simply say, "We take an Extended Rest." That changes the pacing of the game; in my hack you're forced to head back to town, maybe running across wandering monsters, and you have to interact with NPCs; in regular 4E you can handwave this.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around this, but I think that's how some rules control the pacing of the game.

Anyway, to tie this into the above - if the choices that are skipped over due to strong scene framing don't have any impact on action resolution or the economy of the game, then you can skip over them without taking away meaningful player choice.

If every trap triggers based on my Passive Perception, it doesn't matter if I'm tapping the ground with a 10' pole, so there's no need to spend time asking about such things. You skip past that and go right to the point where action resolution and/or the game's economy kicks in.

 

[Umbran]

Ok, I think those are enough conditions since this isn’t suppose to be a detailed or in-depth encounter but a quick overland travel scenario to get to wherever they are going. Now let’s construct my scenario. I think 3 non-combat challenges and one combat challenge will round this out nicely.

Four entire encounters? For something that "isn't supposed to be detailed or in-depth"? I'd call that a mismatch between stated objective and solution.

Not that it wouldn't make a fine gaming session, but it would make a fine entire gaming session, and wouldn't be what I'd call "quick".

 

[Raven Crowking]

Four entire encounters? For something that "isn't supposed to be detailed or in-depth"? I'd call that a mismatch between stated objective and solution.

I wouldn't call that detailed or in-depth, and I can easily imagine more than four encounters for the entire process. I would, further, recommend Wildscape to 3e DMs who wish to add more depth simply and easily.

Not that it wouldn't make a fine gaming session, but it would make a fine entire gaming session, and wouldn't be what I'd call "quick".

Either your sessions are shorter than mine, or your resolution takes longer. Those four encounters could easily play out in half an hour in my game, taking longer only if circumstances (i.e., player choices) warrant.


RC

 

[Imaro]

Four entire encounters? For something that "isn't supposed to be detailed or in-depth"? I'd call that a mismatch between stated objective and solution.

Not that it wouldn't make a fine gaming session, but it would make a fine entire gaming session, and wouldn't be what I'd call "quick".

I called them encounters, but I just as easily could have called them scenes... I really feel like your being pendantic here since an "encounter" has no set timeframe... but whatever.

Second, My whole point was that player and DM interest will actually determine length devoted to each scene...thus each "scene" will be as long or as short as those at the table want it to be.

 

[Beginning of the End]

For example, suppose that the players want their PCs to travel overland through swampy river country. There is a chance that they will have trouble getting rest, and might end up exhausted. But equally there is a chance that, with skill and luck, they will get through it well.

Depends. What's the actual action that we're resolving?

The easiest solution, of course, would be: "Make a Survival check."

Instead of being outrageously rude to someone posting detailed accounts of his playstyle and the actual play of his games, I would find it more interesting to hear about your actual play experiences.

That's nice. I'd find it interesting if you'd stop posting tautologies and getting the rules of both 3E and 4E blatantly wrong while actually answering some of the simple and reasonable questions which have been posed to you.

Did you try 4e combat and not see the dynamic I describe?

You have yet to explain what that dynamic has to do with the topic at hand. If you want this conversation to continue, prove that you have the ability to participate in good faith by explaining that connection.

 

[Umbran]

Either your sessions are shorter than mine, or your resolution takes longer.

Possibly both. I run on weeknights, and I have six players. So, my sessions aren't long, and things can take a while. I don't think my arrangement is terribly rare, though.

Those four encounters could easily play out in half an hour in my game, taking longer only if circumstances (i.e., player choices) warrant.

Ah. Well, for my group, skim a little of the top for me to describe things, and that'd be giving each player maybe a minute per each scene to interact - that's inclusive of time for them to think, communicate, maybe look something up, and me to adjudicate what happens.

Just a minute before I'm describing a new and different situation to them? That's a lot of context switching, which is a bit of a bane to player engagement. If it isn't something I intend them to sink their teeth into, I'd probably not present it. But maybe that's just me.

 

[Beginning of the End]

That doesn't mean strong scene framing necessarily leads to a bad play experience.

Completely agreed. There's nothing inherently wrong with railroading, and lots of people have great experiences in railroaded games.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around this, but I think that's how some rules control the pacing of the game.

I don't think anyone's disputing that the rules control and/or affect pacing. But:

(1) In general, I think GMs and players are better are effectively controlling pace than a set of simplistic mechanics will ever be. I'm not convinced that "everything should take exactly the same amount of time" or "every combat should be paced exactly like every other combat" are actually good examples of effective, dramatic pacing. It doesn't match my experience at the game table, and it doesn't match what effective, dramatic pacing looks like in any other medium, either.

(2) In specific, pemerton keeps claiming that this mechanically-controlled pacing has something to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material".

Not only am I failing to see the connection, but mechanically-enforced pacing seems to run completely contrary to the idea of GM-controlled framing. To take a simple example: Without ignoring the actual rules (which appears to be what both pemerton and Hussar advocate), you can't cut away from scenes in the way that Czege and Edwards argue for when framing scenes.

 

[Umbran]

Instead of being outrageously rude to someone posting detailed accounts of his playstyle and the actual play of his games, I would find it more interesting to hear about your actual play experiences.

I'd find it interesting if you'd stop posting tautologies and getting the rules of both 3E and 4E blatantly wrong while actually answering some of the simple and reasonable questions which have been posed to you.

And I would find it interesting if you two stopped with the head butting and stopped addressing the person, rather than the position.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Possibly both. I run on weeknights, and I have six players. So, my sessions aren't long, and things can take a while. I don't think my arrangement is terribly rare, though.

I run on weeknights, too! (Tonight as a matter of fact!) I run between 3-6 players, depending upon the session. There will be four tonight.

I also like to include a lot of description. Sometimes I am perhaps too chatty.

For me, the 1st encounter (“Across the Swamp Lands.”) would take maybe 5 minutes tops. I wouldn't even bother with initiative, just a general idea, and make the rolls from there.

The 2nd encounter (“The River”) would likely involve their coming up with a plan, making whatever rolls they needed to, and then moving on.

For me, these first two encounters wouldn't require any major context shift.

The 3rd encounter (“The Hermit’s Hut”) would probably take the longest, as this is the sort of interaction my players tend to enjoy. In fact, I would say that if any part of the sequence takes longer than I'd expect, it would be this one. OTOH, my players are pretty driven to get past the diversions and move on.

The 4th encounter (“Bandit Attack”) is described as an easy combat encounter, and so should take no more than 1-3 rounds in RCFG (and that only if the players are rolling poorly). How long combats take in your system of choice, and how much you need to look up to run combats, is definitely a factor.

But, seriously, would these four encounters go over an hour for you? Or eat up your entire session (assuming it is over an hour)? Even in 3e, I wouldn't expect this series of encounters to run too long.....and I found 3e combats to be snail-paced.

Obviously, YMMV.

Either way, though, it isn't a map with potential encounters strung along all possible paths, where the players need to micro-manage decision points, so it is hardly an in-depth or detailed series of encounters. IMHO, anyway.

RC

 

[LostSoul]

Completely agreed. There's nothing inherently wrong with railroading, and lots of people have great experiences in railroaded games.

Heh heh, yep.

I don't think anyone's disputing that the rules control and/or affect pacing. But:

(1) In general, I think GMs and players are better are effectively controlling pace than a set of simplistic mechanics will ever be. I'm not convinced that "everything should take exactly the same amount of time" or "every combat should be paced exactly like every other combat" are actually good examples of effective, dramatic pacing. It doesn't match my experience at the game table, and it doesn't match what effective, dramatic pacing looks like in any other medium, either.

(2) In specific, pemerton keeps claiming that this mechanically-controlled pacing has something to do with "character- and situation-focused narrativist play (...) in which the players build rich and compelling thematic material into their PCs (...) and the GM frames and resolves situations which engage with this thematic material".

Not only am I failing to see the connection, but mechanically-enforced pacing seems to run completely contrary to the idea of GM-controlled framing. To take a simple example: Without ignoring the actual rules (which appears to be what both pemerton and Hussar advocate), you can't cut away from scenes in the way that Czege and Edwards argue for when framing scenes.

1. I agree. I probably put more emphasis on how the game controls pacing than most, but that's been one of the things I've been working at in my hack so it's in my head.

Hmm... but now I'm thinking about how I originally started played D&D, back with B/X. I recall counting out every single turn: distance travelled, time spent, wandering monsters, checks for secret doors, and the amount of torch that got burned up. That's a specific form of game-controlled pacing, and I think it worked very well.

Maybe I disagree, then - I think games are better when they have clear and specific procedures for play. Of course, those procedures need to have a lot of "open space" in which to try interesting, creative things.

Anyway, that's an interesting subject of RPG design.

(Tangent: How do you determine when you make skill checks in 3.X?)

2. I'll let pemerton cover this.

Our main point of disagreement re: 4E is that I don't think 4E provides much support for narrativist play; I think it's a good example of play with a pre-determined theme or dramatic flow. Combat pacing is a good example: combat encounters follow a pre-determined script, PCs coming in apparently weaker than their foes, get knocked down a couple of times, but draw on their superior healing and staying power to come back and defeat the monsters in the end.