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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4297768" data-attributes="member: 5143">I think you already know this, but this is heavily influenced by DMing styles and through that adventure writing style.Pretty much the entirety of 4e is designed assuming the DMing style and adventure writing style that the people at WOTC have been using since the beginning of 3e.  Probably before that.The idea being that you design an adventure in terms of encounters strung together by a plot.  Some encounters are more open ended than others, but they are all "scenes" in the story.Sometimes the scenes are directly related to the story, sometimes they are interesting color to add on to it.For example:Encounter 6: The fight with the barbarian to cross the river on the PCs way to the evil bad guys towerEncounter 4: The tavern (A role playing encounter where the PCs can interact with anyone in the tavern, short description of the people in the tavern and their personalities.  Unlikely to have any combat as the PCs are heroes and mostly good or neutral aligned, they won't kill random NPCs for fun, cause that's evil.  So no combat stats are provided.  Just a list of things that the NPCs know that might be helpful for their quest and the storyline if the PCs ask.)With at least a vague idea of the order that things will happen in.  Where the vast majority of things are related to the overall quest the PCs are on and assuming the PCs will stick to their quest and specifically look for clues or paths to reach the end.This falls apart in groups that insist on doing the "odd" thing JUST because it can be done.  The group that says "I want to kill the blacksmith because he looked at my funny."  I've always pointed out to groups that it was pretty evil to do such things and I don't allow evil aligned PCs.But 4e has been built around this principle.  That DMs are planning their games in this fashion.  So, when the PCs get to the bridge, you know it is going to be a fight with the barbarian in 99% of all cases.  The PCs walk up, not knowing that there is a barbarian there.  The barbarian sees them and then attacks and a battle ensues.  There is no way for the PCs to make the barbarian their ally.  He hates them with a passion.  He won't negotiate with them, he has sworn a blood oath to kill them, etc.His role in the adventure is to provide a bit of tension to the "scene" where they attempt to cross the bridge.So, given that 4e has pretty much been designed for that DMing style from the ground up, perhaps its best to attempt to change your DMing style to the one the game supports best.  I know you don't find it natural, but DMing style is also something learned and something that changes.I know I used to be more about "Let the PCs do whatever they want and see what happens."  But it ended up in so many games becoming aimlessly wandering narratives that mostly consisted of fist fights in taverns and urinating on beggars in the streets, while at least half the players asked me if anything interesting was going to happen in the game and getting annoyed at the other players for taking the game so far off track.I know if someone suggested killing the blacksmith in town, even if I didn't say anything, one of the other players would certainly say, "Why are you killing a blacksmith?  How does that help us accomplish our goal of stopping the evil archmage from enslaving the land?  Just pay the man the 5 gold out of the 5000 you have in your pocket and deal with it and don't be so cheap."So, I know I never need combat stats for the random NPCs around.  Even if they do attack them, the default status in 4e is that all NPCs are killable in one hit, and don't have any combat training, so assume they are AC 10 with no pluses to hit.</blockquote>

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