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

[pemerton]

if you're scene framing, it's my understanding that you will have decided the details of the lock ahead of time depending upon what you've already decided about the purpose of the scene.

but what if you don't know what that lock is going to be?

In scene-framing play you wuld set the DC when the scene is framed, as part of the broader GM task of modulatig pace and theme.

This is why scene-framing play needs a system that makes this job easy (eg HeroQuest revised pass/fail cycle; 4e DC-by-level chart; Marvel Heroic Doom Pool; etc).

 

[Manbearcat]

How do I know, except for the second example which can be decided beforehand by the DM, which role the lock will play?

However, if you're scene framing, it's my understanding that you will have decided the details of the lock ahead of time depending upon what you've already decided about the purpose of the scene.

That being said, there is overlap. It's possible for the lock to fall into multiple categories, and it's also possible that the lock could change categories depending upon how the scene plays out.

Very well said. The lock is a prop, just like the monsters, the traps, the environmental hazards are a prop. The entirety of the encounter is what's important. The DM has already made that determination for these things based on the level of challenge he wants to put the party through in that particular encounter.

The two above replies by Johnny3D3D and D'karr are excellent. A lock will always be a prop contrived as a source of pressure to entangle the PCs with adversity and force a decision-point upon them. In order for it to be legitimate adversity or a legitimate source of pressure, than it must be an "of-level" challenge, otherwise its superfluous and/or color. If you put a lock somewhere just for color then you're not even going to deal with the mechanical resolution of its defeat/circumvention.

I am somewhat disinclined to bring it up, but consider "the gorge" from several months ago (I'm pretty sure most everyone here participated in that thread). "The gorge" and "the lock" serve the exact same purpose in a framed scene:

- "You're on horseback with pursuit breathing down your neck. As an arrow swooshes by the head of your horse it unnerves the great beast causing it to veer wildly. You jerk hard on the reins, barely keep yourself in the saddle and the horse under your control but you remain upright. As you crest the final hill, greeting you is a vast gorge."

- "As you attempt to quietly slink down the hallway, you hear the sounds of a sentry's footsteps echoing of the worked stone, clearly heading in your direction. As you reach for the nearest door, your stomach sours when it is clearly locked."

How do you deal with this new source of pressure that is adversely affecting your ability to achieve your sought end (whatever the stakes are in the scene)?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Having finally got up on this excellent topic, a comment: When a group mixes scene-framing and resource management, the "game" seems to settle down over time. Changing elements (players, system, adventure, character choices, etc.) tends to unsettle it for a time.

I typically run a pretty hard-core sandbox in most ways, but use scene framing for "glue" and tension. You could think of what I do as almost entirely reactive scene framing within the parameters of what the players are doing in the sandbox. This is with a long-time group and a very well-established (but possibly atypical) social contract. For example, the players know that information from NPCs is going to be all over the place as far as useful or not, true or not, etc. It's up to them to manage the "knowledge" resource, and they will probably wind up in fatal situations if they don't. That's one kind of resource that works very well with scene framing at times.

So when we started 3E (already very used to this style), we floundered for a bit. As the players settled down with their characters, and a few swapped outright, we got our feet under us and had some fun. We had one short and two very long campaigns with 3E/Arcana Evolved, only hitting a snag when the higher-level stuff made it too much work for me to continue our style.

When we used 4E, we played it not like 3E, but like Burning Wheel in D&D terms at first, and only later shifted back to playing traditional D&D with it. That worked well too, though it is a different game. Only Gardmore Abbey really resulted in something analogous to what we were playing earlier--not least because it was the first really excellent published adventure for 4E--from our perspective--that we found--and being published let me uphold the "sandbox" side more easily.

Now trying Next, we see the same pattern. Caves of Chaos was ok, but definitely had some stuff to work out as we settle in with the system. We skipped Blindingstone entirely as a mostly 2E style dungeon-crawl which is practically the anti-adventure for our style. Isle of Dread, however, is perfect. We started that with a huge scene frame--"Bam, you are there, and here is how it happened, and how it ties into your earlier characters, and why you care"--not one of the options in the module, but one that grew naturally out of what we had done before. The frame was complete railroad to establish quite clearly the parameters of what is now almost a complete sandbox. In that sandbox, I'm using the default wandering monsters and 4E/BW style scene framing.

If another group has a style that they like, and they like it all the time, and it doesn't fit a given system, then that "unsettled" period will never be overcome to make that system worthwhile for them.

 

[JamesonCourage]

In general, yes - though I think chaochou is right that details of particular GMing practices matter.

Agreed.

In some approaches to play, this would be what weather predicting skills/magic are for - but that would only work if the GM used and stuck to weather charts.

I have a weather system, and ways to predict the weather will skills. But even then, I'm not sure carrying around stuff you need counts as "meaningful resource management" when you might get 2-3 days of advanced warning.

I think this is right. Resources can be meaningful - but they shape story and tactics, not difficulty/pressure, which the GM is deliberately keeping at a high level as the basics of the approach.

That's about the conclusion I came to. Thanks for helping me understand that. I think that helps me puts things into a more clear vision of "strong scene framing". As always, play what you like

And when I GM I can feel players who concern themselves with 'resource management' are kinda working against me as a GM. If a player wants to search the sewers for a missing girl maybe I get an idea that I'll frame it like this: "So, you've been searching for an hour when there's a fizzle and pop as your torch burns out. Suddenly you hear a dreadful wailing echoing through the filth..."

You can see that if beforehand the player had said: "Okay I buy 20 torches and a mile of rope and I tie one end of the rope to me and the other end to the sewer grate and I buy..." they are denying me options in how to move the action forward by limiting the scenes I can frame.

But what will happen is they simply change the way I frame it, so it goes like this: "Okay, so deep into the sewers you suddenly feel a horribly strong pull on the rope and then it goes slack, like something huge just cut through it..."

In other words, preparation, planning, buying stuff - it's all besides the point. Finding the girl in the sewers is a test of character (as in belief, will, determination, bravery - just how important is the missing girl to you?) far more than a test of resources or planning. This is why I said earlier that I consider scene-framing a method of showcasing characterisation.

Right, where people buying the 20 torches and the rope are doing that so that when the first scenario happens (which it now won't in your game), they feel rewarded for thinking ahead and planning. But, you avoid that for the reasons you list (it's about a test of character), and denying them an "easy win" means you can crank the tension up, which is part of the play style you prefer. It makes perfect sense to me. Thanks for talking about it, it's been interesting so far (sent some XP to you and pemerton, for anyone watching, since it can't be seen; I appreciate productive conversation!). As always, play what you like

 

[Libramarian]

Good question. My approach is challenge-based (Gamist) by default, but use of scene-framing reduces or at least alters that. I think this ties into the "Combat as Sport" idea - if you have a framed scene with open resolution, then players can deploy skill and resources within the scene to seek a successful resolution, as in the sporting arena.
But framed scenes are I think antithetical to the "Combat as War" strategic style, which I think is what most people think of as D&D Gamist/challenge-based play. This is the style where long term issues such as resource management, exploration etc determine the game content, not thematic or story concerns.

So I think scene framing allows for a certain sort of Gamist Combat-as-Sport play, but not so much the long-term strategic Gamism.

I'm thinking now that CAW is just better for challenge-based play than CAS. Which is to say that I kind of agree with those who read the thread about that dichotomy and thought that it was implicitly disparaging 4e by associating it with CAS. I think it kind of was. CAS sucks.

It's not as if any version of D&D is anything but a game/sport. So instead of war versus sport it's more like (american) football vs. flag football. One is the real version, one is the wimpy version.

It sounded at first like CAS had something to offer that CAW doesn't in terms of precisely balancing a "boss battle" to be suitable lengthy and challenging, but you know I don't actually find that type of encounter hard to achieve with AD&D.

I find the difficulty of replying to both this, and an earlier post by @Johnny3D3D , is that I can't speak for other people's games. I can only know what is happening at a table that I'm at. I'll try and illustrate:

A 1st level party are stood at the entrance to a deep, dark cave. And one player says to the GM "Do we have any idea what's in here?"
And the GM says "Well, now you mention it, you overheard the innkeeper last night talking about a vicious troll that lives in these parts."

Now just writing that down we have no idea what the GM is doing. But at 2 extremes they could be:

a) sticking fastidiously to notes and maps and giving truthful intel about a troll.
b) lying through their teeth simply to create tension, uncertainty and fear about the grim fate lying in the darkness

I would say that (a) allows resource management. We can, as a party, leave in a hurry and re-prepare to attempt to battle a troll.
I would say that (b) means little to nothing in terms of managing resources. It's tension and pacing dressed up as information.

This example of play is a little odd (I would never just give them memories like that, it's the players responsibility to ask the innkeeper and remember/note their info, and they would have to decide how reliable it is likely to be based on various clues) but your point makes sense to me. I want to point out though that just because the DM is doing (a) doesn't mean that their game lacks tension. IME there is plenty of tension in classic D&D resource management play. The difference seems to me to be that the game itself supplies the tension (death w/out resurrection = lose all your XP, rather than allowing players to make a new character of the same level as in 4e) so the DM doesn't have to work it up with set dressing. (Though they can still do that to good effect, of course).

 

[S'mon]

I'm thinking now that CAW is just better for challenge-based play than CAS. Which is to say that I kind of agree with those who read the thread about that dichotomy and thought that it was implicitly disparaging 4e by associating it with CAS. I think it kind of was. CAS sucks.

So, chess sucks? Boardgames suck? All points-balanced minis games like Warhammer suck?
I think the problem is not that CAS sucks, it doesn't, but that if you're playing 4e purely for CAS challenge, perhaps you might as well play a boardgame or the D&D minis game. As an RPG I don't think it works very well for purely Gamist play. What it does do well is more of a light dramatic style punctuated by interesting (CAS) combat.

I don't find that other iterations of D&D reliably deliver interesting boss-monster battles, though high level pre-3e it's fairly easy to make monsters and PCs robust enough that the fight should last a couple rounds. 3e is absolutely terrible though with the save or die/suck spell dominance, bathos is almost inevitable.

 

[Libramarian]

So, chess sucks? Boardgames suck? All points-balanced minis games like Warhammer suck?
I think the problem is not that CAS sucks, it doesn't, but that if you're playing 4e purely for CAS challenge, perhaps you might as well play a boardgame or the D&D minis game. As an RPG I don't think it works very well for purely Gamist play. What it does do well is more of a light dramatic style punctuated by interesting (CAS) combat.

I was taking it for granted that CAS is an RPG (originally an MMO) term, so I wasn't thinking of chess and boardgames as CAS and I don't think that they all suck. What I mean to say is...I think if you're a gamist and you want to play an RPG, then you want CAW. CAS paints 4e's player fiat and scene-framing facilitative features as gamist techniques (sport being a prototypically gamist thing), which makes them look bad, when they're mostly useful for how they facilitate story-based play.

Combat-as-Story would be a more useful concept than Combat-as-Sport, maybe.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION], on the combat-as-sport issue, you may be underestimating the way the dynamics of a 4e combat play out.

Now admittedly as a GM I'm looking to evoke story/theme when I frame and adjudicate a combat, but I can certainly see what [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] have in mind when they talk about a "light gamism" rather than my "light narrativism": there is a lot of scope for clever, exciting and amusing play within the constraints of 4e tactical combat.

It won't be White Plume Mountain, of course. It's not about pulling out a surprising trump card. It's about expert resource management (especially encounter resources) and handling the action economy well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In scene-framing play you wuld set the DC when the scene is framed, as part of the broader GM task of modulatig pace and theme.

This is why scene-framing play needs a system that makes this job easy (eg HeroQuest revised pass/fail cycle; 4e DC-by-level chart; Marvel Heroic Doom Pool; etc).

Well, one other thing that is worth pointing out, again I think, is that the sort of play Pemerton is describing very rarely inflicts hard successes and failures. In most cases if for instance the lock opening failed then something might happen such as it took long enough to open the lock that the bad guys devised some new problem to overcome (or escaped, etc). In my campaign when the cleric failed her athletics check to leap from her falling hippogriff to a ledge, instead of plunging 1000' off the floating castle to her death she ended up hanging by her fingertips with monsters poised to finish the job. That was a nice tense moment. You can use any skill system for this sort of thing, but I like the way the 4e one encourages a lot rolls, gives you SCs to generate more rolls and degrees of success with, etc.

 

[Mallus]

First -- excellent thread.

Second -- it occurs to me the majority of my old 3.5e campaign --Tales of CITY-- was conducted using "Pemertonian Scene-Framing". The adventures were written based on what the players told me they'd try to do next at the end of each session, with me adding in extra material trying to anticipate what else they might do/be interested in. I'd often create scene-sketches which ended up being ignored in favor of something I'd make up on the spot, because they went somewhere else. But this was easy, because the characters were so strong, interesting scenes/encounters wrote themselves.

Third -- it also occurs to me my rotating-DM 4e campaign used less PSF --at least when I was behind the screen- and I don't know why. I'll chalk it up to not recognizing the systems strengths as a DM (though I did as a player, perhaps I'm just dumb sometimes).

Fourth -- my current AD&D campaign uses a mix of both PSF and traditional site-based exploration play. Which works pretty well. PSF --at least my understanding of it-- is great for characterization-forward play, where the goal is to create interesting fictional characters (which is usually a big part of our campaigns), but that's... insufficient in an AD&D campaign, which greatly benefits from regular forays into game spaces where old-school resource-management is the focus.