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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7524290" data-attributes="member: 42582">Plenty of people have run sandbox 4e. They just don't use minions in the way we've been discussing in this thread. (Woah! Who would have thought that 4e could be modular too?)I personally don't think 4e is terribly well suited for that sort of RPGing - I think it doesn't get the best in the system. But it's no skin of my nose if others want to play 4e games like that.As to whether there can be 4e modules - plenty were published (and many of them featured minions and solos). I don't think many were terribly good, but for that reason I didn't use them. Selling modules is probably important for WotC's commercial success; it's irrelevant to whether or not I want to run a game using the system.I think 4e works best for <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333786-Pemertonian-Scene-Framing-A-Good-Approach-to-D-amp-D-4e" target="_blank">scene-framing play</a>, which makes maximum use of its strong features such as a focus on the encounter as the site of drama, and skill challenges as a non-combat resolution system, and also draws on the rich cosmology which is there in the default fiction. In that sort of play there is no "neutrality" in framing situations. To quote from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">Paul Czege</a>:"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. . . . [W]hen 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.The idea isn't to create a "neutral" puzzle for the players to solve. It's to present a situation that will force consequence-laden choices, where the consequences are significant not as moments of resource depletion, or mechanical failure, but because of what happens in the fiction and why the players (as their PCs) care about that.</blockquote>

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