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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7757747" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree that the inability to edit is a big part of RPGing. Another big part, which I think helps compensate for the inability to edit, is the fact that the audience members are the creators. So there is scope to take pleasure in the process of doing it, which is a big thing that the audience of a jazz session or improv comedy don't have.I think this is a real site of tension between D&D-as-wargame and D&D-as-"story".To try and explain what I mean, I'll come at it like this: Have we reached 20th level yet? Iin 2nd ed AD&D, 3E or 5e - in 4e the question would Have we reached 30th levelyet?) If not, then it's no secret that more encounters are coming. If the game is a mega-dungeon type dungeon crawl, or a hex crawl (ie the two classic modes of D&D-as-wargame), then the players can exercise quite a bit of control over when and where those encounters occur (although there are still the wandering monster dice). But if the game is anything that's more typical to the past 30-odd years of D&D play, then it will be the GM who exercises predominant control over when and where those encounters occur.(It was a recognition of this that drove 4e to a balanced-by-encounter paradigm, where "daily" (ie long rest) resources are only a modest part of a party's capacity for action (both doing stuff and staying power). It's only when a party is at rock-bottom both of surges and dailies that a 4e GM has to wonder whether or not yet another encounter would be fair to the players.)I think doom pool mechanics are interesting - I GM Marvel Herioc RP/Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy, which uses a Doom Pool to help regulate the way the GM is able to escalate an action scene - but that's not the only way to do it. Heroquest Revised has a pass/fail dynamic in which DCs are set in part in relation to how many successive successes the PCs have experienced (the more successs, the higher the difficulty); and 4e manages this through a fairly strict correlatin of encounters to XP to levels and treasure parcels.So while I agree with you that some players regard GM management of pacing, and - as part of that - of coincidence, as railroading, I actually don't think it's a very coherent perspective unless the game really is being played as a wargame.(5e further complicates it by having mixed party resource recovery suites - long rest and short rest - which put pressure on the GM to ultra-manage the pacing of the "adventuring day", in the interests of fairness, while puting pressure on the players to maximise their control of the rest cycle, in the interests of mechanical efficacy. I think this is a real tension in design and so don't find it at all surprising how often it seems to come up in threads on the 5e board. I don't really know how a 5e GM is supposed to give a satisfying play experience under those conditions if the players aren't just on board to be railroaded.)I see what you're saying, but there are also lots of elements of contemporary D&D that are not well-suited to wargaming (and I think the short-rest/long-rest thing is one of them). I think it's as much about legacy play culture as legacy system elements.</blockquote>

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