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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5860490" data-attributes="member: 42582">The players in my game also earned Diplomacy XP in the last session, for negotiating their way past some guardian statues of Nerath.Demon Queen's Enclave is one of the more negotiation-heavy modules I've seen from TSR/WotC - although the skill challenges could be better detailed in my view.What game are you talking about here? 4e?If you're suggesting that a GM using a variety of encounter levels in a 4e game is breaking from the game-as-written in the same way as it would be to try and use Risk as a roleplaying game, I don't follow at all. Risk has no RPG mechanics - no interaction between fiction and system. Whereas 4e's rules are so transparent that setting encounters at higher or lower levels in order to achieve various sorts of consequences in play is trivial and indeed (I would have thought) expected. I've been doing it from day one - using varying encounter levels, for example, to achieve various sorts of pacing and dramatic effects.To set up a parallel comparison - in my game we don't use Expertise feats. So, in some technical sense, the PCs in my game are "+2" short on their attack bonuses. But the game keeps humming along, even at mid-paragon tier, using MM3 damage and frequently encounters of party level +2 or higher. Comparing this to converting Risk to an RPG is bizarre, in my view.I don't see why you link "numerical domination" to combat. Many RPGs - including but far from only 4e - have social conflict resolution mechanics, and the idea of numerical domination applies to them just as much as to combat.But if you are talking about non-numerical advancement - say, in Traveller, building up a trading empire - it seems to me that you are talking about the sort of story progression I was discussing upthread. In Traveller this sort of story progression is not linked to PC advancement. In classic D&D it is (you generally can't become a ruler until you reach name level) and in 4e it is. They're different games. But all RPGs, last time I checked.There are many possible design solutions for this. I assume that the particular one you have in mind is freeform roleplaying mediated by GM judgement calls.But if you're trying to tell me that Rolemaster is not an RPG because it has had social skills as part of its system since the mid-1980s, or that Burning Wheel is not an RPG because it has a social conflict resolution system (Duel of Wits) of comparable mechanical complexity to its advanced combat resolution mechanics, I don't agree.And I don't particularly see what any of this has to do with "treadmilling" or "running to stand still". Where is the standing still in a game which presupposes, as its basic story arc, a PC's progression from local hero to epic figure of cosmological importance? That game may not be to your taste, but that seems orthogonal to the issue.</blockquote>

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