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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5498174" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here are some ways the rules incorporate, or open the door, to thematic content:*If I choose to play an eladrin, I am playing a PC who straddles two worlds - the mundane, mortal world, and the magic otherworld of faerie. This in and of itself brings into play the thematic questions "What is the relationship between these two worlds?" and 'What is my response to being of these two worlds?" *If I choose to play a warlock, I am playing a PC who has made a pact with some otherworldly and/or esoteric source of power. This in and of itself brings into play the thematic questions "What is my relationship to the source of my pact? What justifies me in having made such a pact?" *If I build a fighter with the power Come and Get It, every encounter that I use that power I have to answer the question "How did it come about that my foes suddenly converged on me, and then got chopped by me?" By answering that question the player is able to inject thematic content directly into the game via the behaviour of opposing NPCs.Core 3E has, as far as I'm aware, nothing analogous to the eladrin. The closest it comes to the warlock is the paladin or monk, but because the game includes GM-arbitrated mechanical alignment the thematic content is in the hands of the GM as much as, if not more than, in the hands of the player (an idea that I develop in greater detail <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/299362-why-i-dont-like-alignment-fantasy-rpgs.html" target="_blank">here</a>). 3E has no mechanics comparable to Come and Get It (in fact, the presence of Come and Get It in 4e is one of the main differences adduced in criticisms of 4e - I agree that it's a difference, but for me it's a reason to prefer 4e over 3E).Here is an example of how 4e has rules that support both pacing and theme:*The 4e combat rules are such that, early in a combat, the monsters will tend to win, wheras somewhere about halfway through the PCs, through drawing on their deeper but more conditional resources (action points, daily powers, healing surges, greater battlefield control, etc) will come back and (typically) win. If the encounter is more than a level or so above the party level, it is likely that in the course of the combat at least one PC will drop unconscious and have to be revived as part of the PCs' come back.This dynamic of pacing is a deliberate feature of 4e's design. It is achieved by features such as giving PCs but not monsters (other than solos and elites) action points, and powers at the level of daily powers. It is achieved by giving monsters more hit points, but PCs healing surges and greater access to temporary hit points, which access is conditional in various ways, requiring skillful manipulation of the game's action economy. It is achieved by giving PCs better capabilities in movement and control, but which again are often able to be accessed only conditionally (eg movement as an immediate action in resopnse to an attack) and again which require skillful manipulation of the action economy, as well as sound judgement in relation to battlefield positioning and terrain.3E does not have this. There is nothing like second wind in 3E. Healing potions aren't a very effective substitute, because they take a standard action to use. Movement by non-spellcasters in 3E is discouraged by the full attack rules. The death and dying rules of 3E have a different (and less dramatic) pacing dynamic than those of 4e.Finally, 3E - at least at mid-to-high levels - favours scry-teleport-ambush as the optimal mode of combat, with save-or-die/suck spells being used to shut down the opposition as much as possible. To the extent that, in a 3E combat, the tide of combat is running the monsters' way rather than the PCs, something is going wrong. Whereas 4e has combat mechanics in which the PCs picking themselves up off the mat and turning the tide is the norm. This is dramatic. It's exciting. And because it requires the players to engage a life-or-death situation using their PCs as vehicles to turn the tide, it opens the door wide to the expression by the players of thematic ideas as part of their resolution of the combat.Here's another example:*A player plays a ranger. That player likes the idea of being a rugged wilderness guide, who helps the party survive in the wilds. Resolution of overland travel by way of skill challenge permits this PC to realise this role, and make a real difference (Does the party succeed in getting an extended rest? Does the party lose healing surges from exhaustion or not?), without having to actual play out all the minutiae of looking for tracks, describing the terrain, describing the layout of the camp, etc.What I've just described supports both pacing (ie avoidance of minutiae that bog the game down in the minutiae of exploration that don't contribute any engaging thematic content) while nevertheless permitting the player in question to realise his/her vision of his/her PC - including having to actually stake things on the PC's talent as a wilderness guide (because failures in the skill challenge will cost the party).In 3E I don't know of any mechanic for telescoping overland travel in this way. It's either go through all the minutiae and resolve it via scene extrapolation, or it's GM handwaving.As for DCs and non-simulationism (you call it gamism, but I'm talking here about narrativist play, not gamist play):*In the aforementioned skill challenge, how hard is it for the ranger to successfully lead the party to safety through the wilderness? Page 42 gives me an answer to that question without having to work out minutiae such as the details of the terrain. *The PCs are walking down a corridor in an old tomb. They notice a niche in the wall, holding a statue of Orcus (3 of them are divine casters associated with the Raven Queen, so naturally the statue is going to be an Orcus statue). The paladin decides to use Religion to determine whether or not the statue has any supernatural properties. What's the DC? Page 42 gives me a simple answer to that question. Having determined that the statue contains powerful necromantic energy, the paladin decides to cleanse it of that energy in the name of the Raven Queen. What's the DC? What's the benefit of success? What's the penalty for failure? Page 42 gives me simple answers to those questions too (benefit - +2 on next significant d20 roll; penalty - damage equal to a low normal damage expression).Rolemaster can't do this, because it has no generic rules for level-appropriate DCs and damage. It also doesn't support the non-simulationist idea that one scene can generate a bonus that carries over into another scene (like +2 for cleansing the statue) without worrying about what, exactly, ingame this represents - the player can decide, for example, whether it's the Raven Queen rewarding the PC, or alternatively can just treat is a metagame reward for engaging with the thematic content that has been brought to the table.To the best of my knowledge 3E is in the same position as Rolemaster in this regard.To an extent, of course it does. So does Runequest. But Rolemaster does moreso than Runequest, because each round in melee, and every time a spell is cast, the player must choose how much to stake on the attempt (in melee, that is by allocating points to attack and defence; in casting, that is by choosing how many spell points to spend and how much spell failure to risk).3E is, in this respect, closer to Runequest. Put somewhat crudely, character build decides what a PC will do in combat, and actual combat resolution is about doing that thing and hoping the dice come up high. 4e, on the other hand, is closer to Rolemaster. The more subtle action economy, the more varied range of powers (for fighters this is obvious; for wizards it's also true, somewhat paradoxically, because the overwhelmingly salient 3E option of spamming with the best save-or-suck/die spell is taken away), all make round-by-round decision making crucial.This is true of 3E damage. I don't think it's particular true of 3E grapple (because of the opposed checks, which make the resolution closer to Runequest in certain respects). For similar reasons I don't think it's true of 3E tripping.4e doesn't have rule 0. It does have a brief discussion of whether or not the GM should fudge rolls (p 15). My own play experience suggests there is no need to - the system is very robust, and won't give game-wrecking results simply in virtue of a string of high or low rolls.The Rules Compendium, page 54, has a heading "It's the DM's World", which goes on to talk about altering the core assumptions of the game in order to make "a unique, personalized world". This does not in any sense imply that, during the course of actual play, the GM has the authority to veto or oversee players' character-building choices.This is about social contract, and establishing what world the game is being played in. Like any other game, sensible 4e players would resolve this before starting to play together. (In my case, I emailed all my players telling them to build PoL PCs, that any Forgotten Realms stuff had to be refluffed as PoL, and that each PC needed to have a backstory including, at a minimum, (i) a reason to be ready to adventure, and (ii) a reason to be ready to fight goblins.)There is no suggestion that player choices about retraining, PP or ED selection, etc are subject to GM approval. (Retraining, by the way, is another feature of the game that differs from 4e, which facilitates the player in expressing evolving thematic concerns via rebuild of a PC.)Because it might have nothing to do with 5 obstacles. It might be 5 obstacles. It might be on obstacle, but with four resulting complications in the course of engaging with that obstacle. What those complications are is likely, furthermore, to depend on what has happened before in the course of resolving the skill challenge.This is like asking, Wouldn't an extended contest in HeroQuest 2nd ed, which requires getting 5 points for success, be just the same as having 5 obstacles? The answer in both cases is no.Well, if you run your skill challenge in such a way that when 3 failures have occured you can't explain what is happening in the gameworld, or what the rationale for the resulting fictional situation is, then you've got a problem, I agree. This would be like narrating an extended contest in such a way that when 5 points are accrued you can't explain how one side won and the other lost.Luckily for me, I avoid this. One way I avoid this, as indicated above, is by treating each check in the challenge not as a discrete obstacle, but as a response to a previously-narrated complication. (This also, by the way, further explicates the relationship beteen this sort of situation-driven narrative play and "just in time" GMing. It also resonates with Czege's comments about keeping the personalities of NPCs somewhat flexible in their original conception, so they can be developed an precisified as part of the process of introducing and resolving complications. In an overland travel skill challenge, the same idea applies to weather and terrain.)Well, I follow the advice in the DMG and the DMG2 and impose consequences for individual skill checks as the challenge unfolds. These can be both narrative consequences - if PC 1 has just successfully Intimidated an NPC, this may have implications for the range of options available to PC 2 hoping to use Diplomacy - and mechanical consequences - when I ran a "running out of the collapsing temple after you stopped the dark ritual" skill challenge, indvidual failed checks resulted in damage to that PC, as pieces of falling masonry were only narrowly dodged. First, this isn't quite correct. As discussed in various places (DMG 2 at least,  perhaps also the Essentials GM's guide) the short rest is first and foremost a pacing tool. Page 263 of the PHB describes it as "about 5 minutes long". The GM's guidelines make it clear that the GM is free to vary this in order to support encounter pacing.To give a concrete example: Suppose the PCs just finish fighting some orcs on a plain. They see another mass of orcs in the distance, charging towards them. The 4e rules do not encourage the GM to calculate the distance between the two groups, divide that distance by the pace of the orcs, and thereby determine whether or not a short rest is viable. They do encourage the GM to characterise the distance and the time in dramatic rather than literal terms ("You can see them bearing down on you as you quickly get your breath . . . ) and to allow the short rest (or, perhaps, to make it turn on a skill challenge in some fashion - perhaps a Complexity 1 skill challenge to briefly find some cover in the nearby hills, for example).(This emphasis on the drama of space and time, rather than its literalness, is also remiscent of the following passage from the rules of Maelstrom Storytelling:se "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game. ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.Of course, those remarks don't apply to 4e tactical combat. And my biggest single criticism of the 4e action resolution mechanics - oft repeated - is that there isn't enough guidance on how to integrate skill challenges and combat.)As for extended rests - in the most recent overland travel skill challenge that I ran, one consequence of failure was that the PCs failed to get an extended rest. The sequence of skill rolls was first a failure by the ranger, and then a success by the wizard, on a nature check. The narration was that as the party trudged through the swamp along the river, they had no luck finding a place to camp until the wizard spotted what looked like a slight rise of dryer land. They stopped there to rest, but had a fitful sleep tormented by insects and hence were barely rested when morning came.A system that more closely connects healing into the expenditure of ingame resources (like a wand of cure light wounds) or the performance of ingame actions (like recovering X hp per Y days of bedrest) makes it harder to manipulate recovery in this sort of fashion.Right. I can play this way to. I did so for close to 20 years running Rolemaster. It's a style of play that has many virtues. Strong pacing is, in my experience, not one of them. Too often you have to fight against the system, because there is no obvious alternative (other than GM fiat) to actually playing it all out via the minutiae of task resolution and scene extrapolation. Which is, by away, exactly what I see as implicit in the phase "make the face the difficulty of finding good shelter".  Of course, I did that too in my skill challenge - it's just that I resolved it in a different, non-simulationist fashion (as I've mentioned several times in this post and ad nauseum in other posts, there is a strong resemblance to HeroWars/Quest extended challenges).I don't know quite what you mean by "produce a narrative". By "narrativism" I'm meaning it in the technical sense coined at the Forge - that is, play which aims to engage with thematic ideas, and express them, in the course of play. (Edwards calls this "addressing a premise". My personal view is that his notion of what counts as an interesting premise is a bit narrow - he focuses too much on moral questions to the exclusion of aesthetics, for example. But I believe that he is a biologist, not a philosopher or literary theorist, so his narrowness here is pretty easily forgivable.)There is no conflict between tactical play and narrativism (although most Forge games lean away from 4e-style tactics - that's partially why my group plays D&D in preference to Forge games). As I've indicated above, tactical choices can be one way of engaging with and expressing thematic content. The range of options in 4e, both at the point of character build and at the point of round-by-round decision-making, certainly permit this in my experience. For example, meaningful options can include cowardice, expedience, courage, self-sacrifice, callousness, deceit and the like.Now of course all of that is possible in other games as well, but what is interesting about 4e is that a PC can be built and played so that making these sorts of choices does not require tactical trade offs. The game isn't perfect, of course, but most of the time a player does not have to worry about trading off thematic commitment against effectiveness, but rather is able to be effective precisely by expressing a certain thematic commitment. (The poster children for this sort of combat are of course HeroQuest - where relationships and other theme-bearing attributes function as augments - and The Riddle of Steel - where spiritual attributes give bonus dice. 4e is probably not as strong as those games in this respect, but as always in life there are trade offs. 4e also does things those games don't do.)Of course player style matters. As I've posted upthread, for many years I ran a vanilla narrativist Rolemaster game. I'm sure I could run a vanilla narrativist 3E game. But 4e has features that better support narrativism (and with rules like skill challenges, Come and Get It, healing surges, etc it's not entirely vanilla).Again, I'm puzzled as to why someone who agrees that 4e is different from 3E is so hostile to any actual detaild suggestion as to where the differences might lie.Well, as Ron Edwards has pointed out <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">here</a>, it's not particularly surprising that a given system might support both narrativist and gamist play (examples he gives are Tunnels and Trolls and Marvel Super Heroes). Both sorts of play involve grabbing hold of the game elements, and using them to do something rather than just exploring them.So, for example, skipping over minutiae can help get to the challenges without tedious preludes (works for gamism) or allow expression of protagonism without tedious preludes (works for narrativism). Building my PC to deploy a certain tactical ability can be an expression of cleverness (works for gamism) or - where the various abilities between which I'm choosing express different thematic concerns, like (for example) a self-heal vs an other-heal, or necrotic damage vs radiant damge - an expression of thematic concern (works for narrativism).What can I say - it sounds like you've had bad experiences with 4e. But I can assure you I've not done any major tweaking. Other than the two conditions on PC background that I stipulated for my group - not something that the DMG canvasses, to the best of my recollection - I'm just playing it according to the manual.</blockquote>

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