D&D 4E Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e

[LostSoul]

Could you expand on what you mean by challenge-based games? I have an idea of what you mean but I don't want to be cross-talking.

Sure. What I mean by "challenge-based" is that the players are using the role-playing method to overcome challenges as the purpose of getting together and playing. The important choices the players make - the ones they really care about - are about overcoming challenges. The players want challenges and they want to see if they can overcome them. Other stuff is nice, of course, but this is why you're there.

Does that make sense?

 

[D'karr]

Does that make sense?

Absolutely makes sense, and I would say "Heck Yes", scene-framing can be used. To great effect too, I would think.

In the scene-framing you are setting up each of the "possibly escalating" situations in which the players role play their "approach" to "solving" the presented challenge. Each of the scenes is a challenge in itself at some level. With each "scene", or the outcome of each "scene", you are kind of determining the "entry" basis of some other scene, maybe not the next one. You are determining whether the tension is escalating, and whether the next scene leads closer to the desired goal.

I would think that this would also allow for a very free-form type of gaming session. The kind were the character sheet is very rarely referenced because the skills that are being used are not on the sheet - things like "political affiliation, past lovers, nemesis, etc."

The goals of the characters might not involve combat at all, because combat might "break" the challenge. Imagine a group of characters trying to infiltrate a very powerful organization with which they have an enmity. Combat might be the least thing you want to do, because it doesn't advance your goal of infiltrating it.

The player's goal is to face challenges whether they overcome them or not. The character's goal is to face that challenge and overcome it because the alternative "worldwise" might not be acceptable. This gives a lot of freedom to the DM to explore these challenges. I can see scene-framing being a very good tool in the DM arsenal for that type of game.

 

[Manbearcat]

Here's something I was wondering about:

Can pemertonian scene-framing work for challenge-based games?

I originally thought no, but I read something about 10 pages back by @Balesir that made me question my assumption.

So, do you guys think it can work? If it can, are there any differences in how you use it?

There we are! A new line of discussion and an interesting question!

I'm assuming you're referring to step on up agenda. Working off of that assumption, I certainly believe that it can and I think pointing at WotC's board games is an example of its execution. When you play those games, you're playing through an adventure while not moving out of pawn stance. You're playing your pawn, or pawns, and running the gauntlet of a contrived series of challenges toward a prescribed ultimate conclusion. Within the medium there are enough fortunes (dice rolls, encounter/event cards, tile topography and arrangement), decision-points wrought by pressures (your pawn/hero's action and exploration phase), and other moving parts (adventure specifics) such that the overall challenge, and the ultimate challenge, is a confluence of each scenes' impact on the whole.

If I were to compose a strict step on up challenge-oriented product, one would assume that thematic content is irrelevant. What is relevant?

1 - Scene-challenge budget parameters to establish preconceived difficulty level.
2 - DM pressure administration based primarily around "what is challenging" rather than primarily around "what is genre-relevant or thematically-intensive".
3 - Explicit rules for mechanical resolution of micro-conflict resolution within the scene; eg action economy, fortunes, deployable resources, etc.
4 - Explicit conditions for success/failure of scene-resolution.
5 - Explicit advantage/disadvantage propagation into the next scene and beyond arising from the resolution of the prior scene(s).
6 - Guidance on framing/composing the introduction of subsequent scenes as an emergent product of prior scene(s)-resolution.

That is pretty similar to scene-framing from a story now agenda. The primary differences being:

1 - Pressure administration interests (challenge instead of genre/theme).
2 - Step on up needs more explication versus story now as the primary/sole medium for resolution of the game are the hard-coded rules rather than the rendering of the rules upon the shared imaginary space and the facilitation thereof. Pawns need clear and present orders to execute. They don't need a compelling narrative to wax philosophical about or take measure of their place in the world (shared imaginary space).

There is, of course, a sliding scale here. I'm just outlining the absolute, far end of the spectrum. TTRPGing will generally always be somewhere to the left/right of that (depending on where it is!). 4e hybridizes step on up with story now and folks play at varying locations on that spectrum

 

[timASW]

I strongly disagree with this statement. My earlier post about hard and soft styles was with a mind toward techniques I would use, and there most certainly are times when you do want your enemy to follow you. Even in a broader scope, if we're talking army level strategy, there are times when you want the enemy to commit to something. In a one-on-one confrontation or a skirmish involving a small group, some of the same concepts can be used. That doesn't require leaping around or being a duelist; some of the techniques I'm familiar with (and have used) involve grappling and using your opponent's momentum and strength against him.

You can WANT your enemy to follow you all you like. You cannot however FORCE him too. All you can do is back up so he has to follow you if he wants to attack at medium or close range. Thats all you can do. In order to force a confrontation you must come to them.


And on the topic of people not believing the 6 second round has only one or two meaningful attacks. They should really watch some skilled sparring, or professional kickboxing or MMA sometime. Theres often MORE then 6 seconds while people circle and feint without anything meaningful at all happening.

A pro MMA fight is 15 minutes at the non championship level. Thats 150 rounds in D&D terms. Let that sink in. 150 rounds of D&D combat..... they regularly go to decision.

If real fighters are really fighting in short, abrupt bursts before separating and circling rather then standing there and windmilling away until one guy falls down (and anyone who knows military combat knows thats how it works on a large scale as well) why would it be such a stretch of the imagination that there might be only 1 or 2 meaningful attacks in a 6 second D&D round ?

 

[timASW]

We know this. I am getting pretty tired of your constant repetition of why you don't like 4e. I know it already. If you don't have anything constructive to say please stop posting in this thread.

And how would you take it if someone told you "we know why you like 4e, so if you dont have something negative to say about it why dont you get out of the thread? "

 

[Argyle King]

You can WANT your enemy to follow you all you like. You cannot however FORCE him too. All you can do is back up so he has to follow you if he wants to attack at medium or close range. Thats all you can do. In order to force a confrontation you must come to them.


And on the topic of people not believing the 6 second round has only one or two meaningful attacks. They should really watch some skilled sparring, or professional kickboxing or MMA sometime. Theres often MORE then 6 seconds while people circle and feint without anything meaningful at all happening.

A pro MMA fight is 15 minutes at the non championship level. Thats 150 rounds in D&D terms. Let that sink in. 150 rounds of D&D combat..... they regularly go to decision.

If real fighters are really fighting in short, abrupt bursts before separating and circling rather then standing there and windmilling away until one guy falls down (and anyone who knows military combat knows thats how it works on a large scale as well) why would it be such a stretch of the imagination that there might be only 1 or 2 meaningful attacks in a 6 second D&D round ?

I believe I'll simply have to agree to disagree.

My opinion is that I can (and have) used leverage and momentum to make an opponent move in a way they didn't want to. Sometimes, the way they didn't want to move has been toward me. It wasn't a contest intended to control their will, but a contest to control the movement of their body.

As for the military and the comments about the six second rounds... I'm not really sure what to say other than to say my former profession involved the military and combat arms. Even with not being in nearly the shape I once was, I'm confident that I can generate more than 1 attack in 6 seconds. I'll give you that MMA might function differently; however, I feel it's important to point out that there are some rather significat differences between MMA rules and a combat in which I'm attempting to main, disable, or kill the enemy. Most notably, it's worth mentioning that there are fight ending attacks which are banned from being used in a MMA* contest. Thirdly, what constitutes a meaningful attack can be debatable; a lot of attacks such as jabs aren't necessarily intended to do damage, but they are meaningful because they set up other things (which is actually something that a lot of 4E powers model quite well.)

*For some examples, go back and watch some of the classic UFC tournaments before it became more regulated. At one point in time, it was allowable to be able to take your opponent to the ground and nut-punch him into submission. Even then, there were still moves which weren't allowed; moves which would be allowed in a combat environment by virtue of there being no rules.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], I think you can do challenge-based scene framing, but probably not Gygaxian-style challenge. So it would play less like classic D&D and more like Tunnels & Trolls (as best I understand that game).

What I mean by this is that, as scene-framing play inevitably has some element of "no myth" to it (for the sorts of reasons we talked about a while ago on the essentialness to skill challenges of some abstraction in the situation), so the parameters of the challenge aren't going to be pre-ordained. Which makes Gygaxian/Pulsipherian "skilled play" - lots of planning, inspecting, scrying etc - unworkable.

I would expect the challenge to be more "wahoo" and focused on the moment of resolution (in the past, I have described [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s approach to 4e as "light gamism"). The GM keeps the scene alive, and keeps poring in new complications (ie amping up the challenge) until either the PCs (and hence the players) have lost, or there is nothing more interesting to be done with the scene, and so we move on to the next challenge.

There are elements of this in my own 4e GMing - for instance, I'll often mention the level of an encounter either to chide the players for having such a hard time with it, or to let them know that they took on something really hard and won. I think this sort of thing could be fairly easily generalised to be the main point of play. (I think this sort of transparency would be important, I think . The players would need to know that the reason more goblins (say) are turning up is because the GM is amping up the challenge to see how hard s/he can push the players.)

Does that make any sense?

 

[LostSoul]

That makes sense. I didn't think of it in terms of amping up the challenge in the current encounter, I was thinking about how you'd frame the next scene based on the PC's choices in the previous one.

That is, the DM would judge the actions of the PCs - in terms of how well the overcame the challenge - and then provide another challenge in the next scene. The consequences of the player's decision would affect the starting point of the encounter. Poor play = monsters set up behind barricades, ready to ambush the PCs, ready to exploit terrain features; good play = monsters surprised, sleeping, without arms or armour. The encounter budget would fall outside of this, I think, because you'd need to have a nice variety of challenges.

I don't know when you'd stop providing challenges. I guess you'd probably want to play it pretty close to the DMG's assumption of encounters per adventuring day. But then again - maybe you wouldn't stop! Maybe the PCs would have to overcome a challenge to get an Extended Rest. Interesting.

edit: It seems like my thought would work well with what you've describe. You amp up the challenge in the scene until it's been resolved, then frame the next scene based on the choices the players make, and repeat.

 

[Argyle King]

@LostSoul , I think you can do challenge-based scene framing, but probably not Gygaxian-style challenge. So it would play less like classic D&D and more like Tunnels & Trolls (as best I understand that game).

What I mean by this is that, as scene-framing play inevitably has some element of "no myth" to it (for the sorts of reasons we talked about a while ago on the essentialness to skill challenges of some abstraction in the situation), so the parameters of the challenge aren't going to be pre-ordained. Which makes Gygaxian/Pulsipherian "skilled play" - lots of planning, inspecting, scrying etc - unworkable.

I would expect the challenge to be more "wahoo" and focused on the moment of resolution (in the past, I have described @Balesir 's approach to 4e as "light gamism"). The GM keeps the scene alive, and keeps poring in new complications (ie amping up the challenge) until either the PCs (and hence the players) have lost, or there is nothing more interesting to be done with the scene, and so we move on to the next challenge.

There are elements of this in my own 4e GMing - for instance, I'll often mention the level of an encounter either to chide the players for having such a hard time with it, or to let them know that they took on something really hard and won. I think this sort of thing could be fairly easily generalised to be the main point of play. (I think this sort of transparency would be important, I think . The players would need to know that the reason more goblins (say) are turning up is because the GM is amping up the challenge to see how hard s/he can push the players.)

Does that make any sense?

I'm not sure if this would fall into that category or not, but one of the DMs I gamed with had an encounter in which there was a minion generator in addition to the BBEG. He didn't count the minions toward XP earned; they simply kept pouring out each round until the generator was destroyed via a skill challenge. It couldn't just be damaged because it was a magic portal which wasn't tangible, so we had to do arcana and religion checks to close the portal. The encounter had some similarities to how monster generators in the game Gauntlet worked. The complications pouring in were new creatures being spawned every round.

 

[Manbearcat]

That makes sense. I didn't think of it in terms of amping up the challenge in the current encounter, I was thinking about how you'd frame the next scene based on the PC's choices in the previous one.

That's what I was getting at with:

6 - Guidance on framing/composing the introduction of subsequent scenes as an emergent product of prior scene(s)-resolution.

That is, the DM would judge the actions of the PCs - in terms of how well the overcame the challenge - and then provide another challenge in the next scene. The consequences of the player's decision would affect the starting point of the encounter. Poor play = monsters set up behind barricades, ready to ambush the PCs, ready to exploit terrain features; good play = monsters surprised, sleeping, without arms or armour.

And this with regards to the above:

5 - Explicit advantage/disadvantage propagation into the next scene and beyond arising from the resolution of the prior scene(s).

The encounter budget would fall outside of this, I think, because you'd need to have a nice variety of challenges.

Yup. Agreed. Hence the starting point here:

1 - Scene-challenge budget parameters to establish preconceived difficulty level.

I don't know when you'd stop providing challenges. I guess you'd probably want to play it pretty close to the DMG's assumption of encounters per adventuring day. But then again - maybe you wouldn't stop! Maybe the PCs would have to overcome a challenge to get an Extended Rest. Interesting.

Pacing would be a primary concern given the likelihood of rechargable resources outside of scope of the scene. If all resources recharge based on scene then you're good to go. However, you're likely to have some form of extra-encounter resources (HPs, HSes, etc) even if you don't have Dailies. If you're just playing pure step on up, challenge-based play though, a hard and fast rule for daily recharges (3 encounters equals refresh Extended Rest capability?) is easily enough done; you're not concerned with in-world causal logic...you're concerned with the gamist interests of balance and a proper, functional, user-friendly challenge system.

That is, of course, on the far end of the scale. As you move away from that pure Gamist interest, in-world causal logic and/or thematic/genre logic and coherence become manifest, serving to create tension within your design framework.