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

[chaochou]

@chaochou , thanks for coming into the thread with a great post.

Thank you!

My play is generally not as aggressive in scene-framing as you describe - there is occasional "downtime", for instance, in which the players take stock and the PCs, as narrated by their players, do things like check their inventories and look around their physical environment.

Ha! Maybe I'm getting old, but I've found I have less and less patience for planning, shopping, arguing, all that stuff that players will do. I'm running Diaspora (FATE) at the moment and if that starts I give the players, I dunno, five minutes while I drink beer and smoke a cig and then say 'Either something happens here or we're moving on...' If they're genuinely arguing about a course of action, they say their piece and get to roll, using all the mechanics available to them - Skills, FATE points, aspects, the works. Then (hopefully) I have an idea of where the winner is going with their thinking and I'm into that scene.

I take downtime as a GM, sometimes mid-scene. Experience has taught me to give scenes thought, when setting them, when talking with my players about stakes and outcomes or even just having to think for a bit about an NPCs goals and motivations. If that means spending a few minutes I take the time.

FATE is also interesting because of the interplay of Aspects and Compels. The player gets a chance to reject the compel. If they accept they know I can go in no holds barred, but I think the fact that there is that negotiation before gives it a lighter touch than, say, Apocalypse World - where you just dump a PC right into a horrible dilemma with no apologies.

But yeah, overall, I think I described the technique on the aggressive end because that's how I roll

And when closing scenes, I have a bit more give-and-take than you describe. For instance, if the player insisted that they were going to buy a new gun, I would probably back up to that - but my preference would be for the ruleset itself to minimise the mechanical significance of buying new guns, and hence to minimise the incentive for players to do that sort of more exploratory play in pursuit of mechanical advantages.

I agree about the rules preferences. I'm the same. Personally, I won't back up. I just say "Yeah, you bought a gun. So, what about this rattlesnake?"

Your "scouting for the rattlesnake" example is interesting.

My intention was to show one (common) type of resistance to scene-framing. That is, you get a counter-offer from the player of a different scene. I've met (and played with) plenty whose motive for doing so is to re-frame themselves into a 'better' position - that is better from the point of view of succeeding in overcoming the problem or not encountering it at all.

That's where I was trying to go with the stuff about a scene-framing style not being a vehicle for showboating competency. It's a vehicle for showcasing characterisation, I think.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's an illustration, so here's a few points from my experience. Written down it looks easy. At the table it is not. If you play a FATE game, where 5 players each have 10 Aspects, you may have 50 goals and flaws and problems competing for time and if you've got 2 ideas for each of those then you've got 100 possible scenes before play even begins. Then people start interacting with each other and NPCs and before you know it you've got thousands of potential directions to take play.

Excellent example snipped. And just to clarify, if you play a FATE 3 game like Spirit of the Century or Dresden Files. There's a reason FATE Core has cut the aspects to IIRC 6 - one "High Concept" aspect, one Weakness, and four other aspects. (Seven plus or minus two is a useful rule).

This is why games written to this style (Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World and it's spin offs like Dungeon World and Monsterhearts, FATE to some extent, Dogs in the Vineyard for sure) don't tend to penalise failure particularly hard. Failure simply imforms the next scene. Jason Morningstar games like Fiasco and Shab Al-Hiri Roach don't penalise failure at all. Compare with D&D, RQ, Traveller, where failure is usually measured by limb loss and bodycount.

Absolutely. If you don't fail in a game of Fiasco, something has gone really, really weird somehow. (For those who don't know, Fiasco is a two hour long or so games about heists and plans that go catastrophically wrong).

If you say 'What do you do now?' you are not playing using scene-framing.

Clarification: If you say 'What do you do now?' you may be playing using scene framing - but if you are you are expecting the PCs (as in Leverage) to pick up some of the actual scene framing. Also having the whole scene fall apart round the Grifter or the Thief (usually) and then turning to the Mastermind and asking what they do is a decent scene frame for the Mastermind's next scene.

 

[Manbearcat]

From what I can tell, Maelstrom Storytelling is little different to Amber Diceless and the resolution system is mostly a prop; such games need better advice than normal ones because that's all they have. Over the Edge would quite simply appear to be ten years ahead of its time. It's also gone OGL and I mean to check that out at some point. Both I'd call definite precursors. OTE, like 4e, appears to be missing the other strand I consider distinctive of much modern RPG design - and that Storyteller actually has. Instead of giving people points for drawbacks you give them a bennie each time they indulge. Which means you can, as in both FATE and Cortex Plus, have characters with aspects/distinctions that can be situationally both positive and negative.

That's a very good point and very key for player buy-in. I've actually houseruled my 4e game to address this. Our mechanic is predicated upon pre-coordinated (and agreed upon) thematic drawback material for players such that when they address it in play (could be in any manner of conflict) and handicap themselves, they will accrue a future bonus; a reroll, some kind of specific bonus, or an AP to do something specifically laid out in their character creation...akin to the level 11 Paragon Path abilities.

 

[pemerton]

From what I can tell, Maelstrom Storytelling is little different to Amber Diceless and the resolution system is mostly a prop.

In my view that review is very misleading about Maelstrom. It's not remotely diceless - it has freeform descriptors (a bit like Over the Edge) that are used to build a group dice pool (via a mixture of default pool constituents, plus "burning" descriptors to add additional dice to the pool - "burning" is like a call-on in BW, ie once per session). There are also rules for burning a descriptor to do a "Quick Take" - ie a subscene that can produce a local outcome within the scene even if the overall outcome goes the other way (eg we got beaten up by the muggers, but at least I managed to hide the crucial document up the downpipe by succeeding on my quick take). A successful quick take can also add dice to the pool (eg my quick take to light the signal fires succeeds, so guards come running which gives us bonus dice to hold off the barbarian assailants).

Also Maelstrom's not about "follow the plot" either - it's one of the earliest overtly player-driven games.

If the skill challenge rules in the 4e DMG were presented with half the clarity of Maelstrom's scene resolution system - including a more explicit modelling of secondary skills on Maelstrom's quick takes - then the 4e reception might have been very different.

 

[Argyle King]

@Johnny3D3D You're familiar with Comic Books or Storyboarding, yes; Plotting out a story in a sequence of events and boxed scenes?

Scene-framing focused gaming is basically the real time, pro-active practice of that. Maybe that is helpful and has some explanatory power for folks? I mean, folks may not like it as it throws their expectations of temporal resolution and scene transition access/granularity into flux. Nonetheless, that is basically the design intent and how it works out in play.

And again, its spectra on a continuum. The entire game doesn't have to be that. There can just be interludes.

I am familiar with Comic Books and Storyboarding. However, those are mediums which have a set beginning and a a set sequence of events which lead to the end (which is also preset.) While there certainly are certain points of interest which I highlight when running a rpg, it's not up to entirely me how the story progresses. As DM -an out of game entity- I prefer to have as little of a hand in the workings of the in-game events as possible because it's not only my story; it's the shared story between myself and the players. The world might be one which I created, but I don't (nor feel I should) dictate how the pieces must or should move and instead prefer to let those pieces (including the ones controlled by the players) move and function in such a way that seems natural to them. As DM, I am as objective as I feel is possible. When I control the actions of an in-game piece, I do my best to do so from the viewpoint of that piece; without giving said piece knowledge it would not have.

note: I'm not saying that doing otherwise is wrong; it's just strange to my way of thinking. The reason I fell in love with rpgs is because they allowed me to enjoy the kind of stories I enjoyed in comics, books, movies, and video games without being bound to things like plot protection for specific characters or what was deemed appropriate for certain styles of stories. I was able to think outside of the boxes which framed the scenes on a comic book page.

edit: To give a more relevant post, I'll also say that while I can see the merit in Pem's way of running 4E, I'm not convinced it would fix the things about 4E which were problems for me (which is what I gather as the premise behind the thread.) I think it's a good method, and I agree that it's probably a good way to handle things. I'm just not sure that method would have an impact on the areas I had trouble with when running 4E.

 

[pemerton]

OTE, like 4e, appears to be missing the other strand I consider distinctive of much modern RPG design - and that Storyteller actually has. Instead of giving people points for drawbacks you give them a bennie each time they indulge. Which means you can, as in both FATE and Cortex Plus, have characters with aspects/distinctions that can be situationally both positive and negative.

In Maelstrom Storytelliing, PCs have "weak descriptors" (ie flaws) which can't be invoked to add dice to the pool, but can be used for a quick take (an example in a sidebar uses "painfully shy" to hide the key to the safe during a robbery - "I am so painfully shy that the thugs don't pay me any attention as they rough up my boss").

A player can reduce injury to his/her PC as a consequence of failed resolution by downgrading descriptors into weak descriptors (eg I was courageous, but after being mauled by dogs I'm now nervous around animals - but at least they didn't kill me!).

 

[Manbearcat]

I am familiar with Comic Books and Storyboarding. However, those are mediums which have a set beginning and a a set sequence of events which lead to the end (which is also preset.) While there certainly are certain points of interest which I highlight when running a rpg, it's not up to entirely me how the story progresses. As DM -an out of game entity- I prefer to have as little of a hand in the workings of the in-game events as possible because it's not only my story; it's the shared story between myself and the players. The world might be one which I created, but I don't (nor feel I should) dictate how the pieces must or should move and instead prefer to let those pieces (including the ones controlled by the players) move and function in such a way that seems natural to them. As DM, I am as objective as I feel is possible. When I control the actions of an in-game piece, I do my best to do so from the viewpoint of that piece; without giving said piece knowledge it would not have.

I just meant as the game's framework (zooming in without focus on the in-between transitions) and pacing (the lack of temporal granularity and accounting for moment to moment detail - specifically in the scene transitions). I didn't mean from an authoring perspective. They aren't GM plot railroading or dictatorial authoring of fiction like comic books or storyboarding. Scene-framed gaming brings about fiction that emerges from the interface of DM pressure, player decision points, fortunes, mechanical resolution of the conflict and the interface of all of those things within narrative context.

 

[pemerton]

Ha! Maybe I'm getting old, but I've found I have less and less patience for planning, shopping, arguing, all that stuff that players will do. I'm running Diaspora (FATE) at the moment and if that starts I give the players, I dunno, five minutes while I drink beer and smoke a cig and then say 'Either something happens here or we're moving on...'

I sympathise with your lack of patience, but I'm still running D&D and the inventory stocktake is a tradition that's pretty hard to let go of! And the game also assumes the PCs will acquire items by building them within the fiction - and this takes a bit of time to sort out the accounting.

I would say this sort of thing happens in my game every two to three sessions, and fills maybe half-an-hour of a four-or-so hour session when it happens.

Environmental exploration and narration is a bigger part of my game than that, but not (I think) by traditional D&D standards. Maybe on average half-an-hour to an hour per session - but often that will be in the context of a skill challenge, so probably about half the time the exploration will be part of an attempt by the players to leverage fictional positioning to advantage in resoving the challenge.

Personally, I won't back up. I just say "Yeah, you bought a gun. So, what about this rattlesnake?"

Deft! I have to remember to handle it this way next time this sort of thing comes up.

 

[pemerton]

As DM -an out of game entity- I prefer to have as little of a hand in the workings of the in-game events as possible because it's not only my story; it's the shared story between myself and the players.

Scene-framed gaming brings about fiction that emerges from the interface of DM pressure, player decision points, fortunes, mechanical resolution of the conflict and the interface of all of those things within narrative context.

I agree with Johnny3D3D that it's the shared story between GM and players, and think Manbearcat is right about how scene-framed play produces this.

The upshot is that I therefore differ from Johnny3D3D in respect to the GM's role. I take a very active role, as GM, in the workings of the ingame events - namely, they conspire to continually place complication and antagonism in front of the PCs! That's my contribution to the story. The PCs then respond to those complications and that antagonism. That's the players' contribution.

Without active GMing to create those complications/antagonism (to refer back to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s posts early in the thread, putting things in front of the PCs because they're cool/fun), there wouldn't be any story other than a bare sequence of events, because there would be nothing of significance for the players to respond to and to engage via their PCs.

That's why (as per my example upthread) when the Raven Queen worshipper enters the catacombs, the default is that Orcus cultists are present - instant story!, not just in the sense of a sequence of events, but in the sense that a protagonist (the Raven Queen-worshipping PC) has confronted his/her nemesis (Orcus and his cultists) and some engaging confict between them has ensued.

 

[Argyle King]

I agree with Johnny3D3D that it's the shared story between GM and players, and think Manbearcat is right about how scene-framed play produces this.



Without active GMing to create those complications/antagonism (to refer back to @S'mon 's posts early in the thread, putting things in front of the PCs because they're cool/fun), there wouldn't be any story other than a bare sequence of events, because there would be nothing of significance for the players to respond to and to engage via their PCs.
.

I disagree.

There are other pieces already moving in the world. Those pieces have their own agendas. As such, I disagree that there wouldn't be complications and antagonism without a direct set up on behalf of the DM. In terms of D&D, I've had to learn some amount of framing because the 'encounter' as a design element is something which is tied to the system, and I'm require to make things more linear than I'd normally prefer.


Still, I don't find that framing helped with the problems I had in 4E. In fact, the problems I had with 4E were that scenes I tried to create were too easily broken by the way the world worked in relation to how the PCs function. A previous example I used in a previous thread is an encounter in which the PCs were moving across a chasm in a gondola (the type suspended from a cable; not the boat.) A second gondola carrying enemies were moving toward them. I expected it to be a cool scene, but it quickly became anti-climactic because of how easily PCs were able to destroy not the enemies, but the gondola they were in.

I did fully expect that attacking either the gondola or the cable carrying it would be a tactic used. It's a tactic I did want to be valid, so I didn't say no when a PC asked if they could attack the craft and the cable. I simply didn't expect for it to be so easy so as to render the entire encounter; the entire scene moot and uneventful. I wasn't expecting a perfect model of physics either; I understand that D&D has always been abstract. As a DM new to 4E at the time, the numbers I found when I tried to reference what it should take to destroy the gondola (or the attached cable) were abysmally low in comparison to what the PCs were able to do even with at-will powers.

I don't see how more framing would help with that, but I'd be open to suggestions.