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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5498687" data-attributes="member: 386">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.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.</blockquote>

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