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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5494137" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think these quotes suggest that I may have failed to properly communicate my point.I can't speak for nmns, but I am not saying that "3E is hard, 4e is easy". I am saying that 4e - unlike 3E, and like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, and similar indie RPGs - is designed to enable the GM to frame strong situations to engage the players.This means that it does not give PCs abilities that consistently make the optimal path for the players to choose, when confronted with a situation that the GM has framed, the sidesteppping or defusing of that situation - thus, no rapid teleport, no powerful mind reading, no Find the Path or comparable divination, no rapidly-cast-and-long-lasting domination.So in fact, in order to frame credible challenges, I don't need to know what powers my players have given to their PCs. All I really think about when designing challenges is what roles those PCs occupy in various respects - combat roles, trained skills, etc - and (more importantly) what the various interests of my players are in respect of the story of the campaign.I also can run this sort of game. I have GMed high level D&D and high level Rolemaster. The point is that it is limiting. Once powerful divination is available, there are no mysteries. (Of course NPCs can respond with Mind Blank etc. But what does this add to the game, other than making GMing it more tedious? If I want my NPCs to be unscryable, I won't worry about Mind Blank - I'll defuse the underlying problem.) Once rapid (combat-speed) teleport is available, there are no challenges of distance or location. (Of course as a GM I can shut this down with D1-3 style "mysterious magnetic forces", but again I'd rather tackle it at the source.) Once rapid (combat speed) and long-lasting domination is available, there are no challenges of negotation.A game with these spells present can still present other challenges. I have GMed sessions of Rolemaster where the bulk of the session has consisted in working out complex plans of long chains of spell casting in order for the PCs to succeed in a scry-teleport-ambush assault, or in a complex infiltration mission taking place under the cover of sequential time stop spells (the ultimate in stealthy espionage!).But it is nice also to run a different sort of game. I find it interesting that you say that you don't have planned or scripted scenarios, and yet your "pit the PCs against foes". That, to me, suggests a degree of scripting - namely, the GM has scripted who shall be the PCs' foe.I don't run scripted scenarios. And - contrary to what you suggest about 4e in what I've quote - 4e does not lend itself to scripted fight scenes. (I don't see why you would think that excluding teleport-ambushes means fights are pre-scripted. There are a lot of RPGs, including fantasy RPGs, where combat is an important part of the game and teleport-ambushes generally aren't feasible. Low-level D&D would be one obvious example of such a game.)You seem to be running together what, upthread, I tried to distinguish, namely, situational authority and plot authority. As I said upthread, 4e is designed to confer strong situational authority upon the GM. That is, the GM is in charge of framing scenes. It is up to the players to resolve them, using their PCs as vehicles. And as the quote from Paul Czege indicated (although he was not talking about 4e) this does not involve scripting.A concrete example from actual play in my game: having raided a hobgoblin fortress, and having fought their way in through multiple entraces and past a number of guards and a small beholder, the PCs have forced the hobgoblin archers to retreat to a room deeper in the fortress. The PCs themselves decide to stop to regroup and have a short rest. They retreat into a room and discover two duergar hunkering down in there.That is the basic situation, as framed by me (the GM): two duergar hunkered down in a room in a hobgoblin fortress that the PCs are invading. What I also know, which the players at this point don't, is some more backstory: (i) the duergar are slavers, and are here in the fortress arranging payment for a group of slaves that the bulk of their group are already in the process of taking back to the duergar's underground hold; (ii) it is of little concern to the duergar whether or not the hobgoblin fortress is assaulted, provided that they don't get hurt and they don't lose their commercial investment in the slaves.The players obviously had a range of options as to how they tackled this situation. They could have attacked the duergar straight away. They could have talked for a bit and then fought. Or they could have negotiated - which is what in fact happened. So the encounter ended up being resolved solely as a skill challenge, with the outcome - unexpected to both players and GM at the start of the situation - that the PCs contracted with the duergar to ransom the slaves for a downpayment of 100 gp on the spot and a further 300 gp to be paid over in a neutral city in a month's time.This has nothing to do with scripting or "rigidly defined modules". But this sort of scenario can't unfold in a game in which the players have access to mind reading and domination. Or probably even teleport without error, for that matter, which would permit teleporting into the duergar hold and then teleporting out with the slaves.So far from being a "rigidly defined module", this is a paradigm example of collaborative storytelling. And it also obilges me to, at some time in the future, frame at least a couple of new scenes - namely, the ones in which the PCs travel to that neutral city and arrange to pay the ransom.I've frequently posted that 4e is not particularly suited to "world exploration" play. It is better suited to situation-driven play, in the sort of way that I've been talking about in my past few posts.Interesting, because I can't see that clearly at all. The outcome of each combat and each skill challenge is likely to have a pretty signficant impact on what happens next, and the framing of any susbequent scene (in Paul Czege's terms, the point B of situation 1 is likely to have pretty big implications for the point A of situation 2). So working it out in advance, as anything other than a sketch of likely possibilities, is pretty hard. In the quote I cited upthread, Ron Edwards talks about using a relationship map to support on-the-fly scene framing. I personally use a mixture of backstory which includes not only relationships but gameworld history, plus some geographical maps, plus a reasonable degree of confidence that I know what my players like.In your description of a 4e railroad, you again seem to be running together situation and plot authority. If I frame a situation, of course one option is for the players to walk away. Sometimes this is literal: for example, having seen the duergar in the room, the PCs could have shut the door. Sometimes it is figurative, or happens at the metagame level - the players could just say that a particular situation is boring and going nowhere and they want it over.But the solution to this sort of problem isn't to give the PCs access to abilities like teleport and Find the Path. First, if this was the solution then it would follow that games which don't have such abilities - includingt low-level D&D - are flawed. Second, the solution - as Ron Edwards is quoted saying upthread - is to frame situations that are worth anyone's time. That is how I play my game - I frame situations that are worth my players time, and they play their PCs and resolve them. It has nothing to do with plowing through meaningless railroaded combats in the way you describe.</blockquote>

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