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

[LostSoul]

It was a very good thread (and hopefully more good to come). Unrelated to the crux of the thread though, I would still like to hear "deep immersionists" (as Crazy Jerome likes to call them) thoughts on this post and AbdulAlhazred's expansion here.

I don't think I'm a "deep immersionist", so maybe this is wrong. But this is my take:

In deep immersion, you feel what the character feels. If the PC is afraid, so are you. If you're not afraid and the PC is, then there's an issue. Anything that disrupts that one-to-one relationship between your feelings and the PC's is ruinous to the game.

Come and Get It - or even Serpent Steel Strike - is strange to you, because if you did it once, you feel like you should be able to do it again, given the same stimuli (which you and the character are experiencing together). If you can't, that immediately breaks your immersion, which is why you're there to begin with. I would imagine that systems that have this possibility would look unsatisfying to you, and if they exist throughout the text instead of in isolated incidences, then you're not going to look on that system as one you want to play.

To be clear: I've never particularly valued this in RPGs. I like to get emotionally invested, but as a player, not as a PC - otherwise I'd never be able to play the PCs that I do. (My PCs do things that I would never do.) I want RPGs to challenge me as a player, emotionally or intellectually, but I don't feel the need to connect one-to-one with my PC in order to do that.

edit: What I want from immersion - what I think of immersion - is the ability to picture the scene in my mind's eye, and leverage what I see into mechanical resolution. I don't need to be emotionally connected to my PC; I need to be emotionally or intellectually connected to the decisions I, as a player, have to make, but those don't necessarily have to be the same ones my PC is making.

 

[pemerton]

This type of thing is basically why I am wary of DM-sets-the-characters-up-to-be-awesome play, it seems very boom or bust and stressful to DM

That doesn't look like scene framing to me - where is the open-ended resolution? It looks like a player and GM have already conspired to determine how the scene should resolve. I don't necessarily object to that sort of thing, but it should be jointly narrated as a cut-scene - it's more like collective storytelling than traditional RPGing, because the player is no longer engaging the situation via his/her PC and the action resolution mechanics.

I actually did try to kill his character.

<snip>

This fellow interposed his PC between any evil thing he could find, and I certainly did my best to help him, even as the cavern was coming down around them. Lady luck is fickle though, and he basically steamrolled through everything. He was disappointed at first, but after the session, we were talking about it and decided that it actually made for an even more interesting arc for his character.

It reinvigorated his interest in playing that character

<snip>

I think the framing I used was obvious and a bit contrived, but I didn't force any actions and things more or less unfolded organically.

In D&D, where (as far as I know) there are no abilities that allow a player to kill his/her PC as part of resolution, what you describe here is exactly what the scene-framed approach should look like. The player wanted pressure; you applied it. If the resolution turned out a bit differently from what everyone though it would, well that's the point!

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], interesting post.

When I play (not that often these days!) I do like to immerse in my PC. But that requires me to feel what the PC feels, and this can require metagame mechanics. Eg if I want to feel anxious as my PC would, I need the GM to make me anxious, and that might require metagaming (eg my PC can feel the dragon's breath, the GM emphasises how many dice of damage it will do if I fail my saving throw).

From this perspective, daily and encounter powers can help immersion because they allow you to play your PC's response to pressure in a way that models the extra effort your PC would be making - and when you're out of them, you feel the same desperation your PC would feel as s/he realises the situation is hopeless!

 

[S'mon]

From this perspective, daily and encounter powers can help immersion because they allow you to play your PC's response to pressure in a way that models the extra effort your PC would be making - and when you're out of them, you feel the same desperation your PC would feel as s/he realises the situation is hopeless!

Yeah, I am a very very immersion-valuing player, much like Bedrockgames really. This means I don't get much from story-creation third-person author-stance games. As a player I want to stay in actor-stance at all times. But I find the 4e ruleset much more immersive than prior editions of D&D, at least for "I am an Action Movie Hero". Come And Get It is ripped straight from Hong Kong cinema, right? The post-errata CAGI with its Attack Vs Will maps perfectly to my vision of what my PC is doing, and should be able to do. In general, I find the 4e PHB Fighter immensely satisfying to play. Immersion is a big part of that.

I don't think scene-framing attacks or prevents actor-stance you-are-there immersion; it just means 'you are there' in the scene, not 'you get up in the morning, what now?'.

 

[S'mon]

This type of thing is basically why I am wary of DM-sets-the-characters-up-to-be-awesome play, it seems very boom or bust and stressful to DM: http://critical-hits.com/2013/02/05/worst-session-ever-part-1/

If a player asked me if we can kill off their character tonight I would say "I don't care if you kill off your character, why are you asking me?" and this whole fiasco would have been avoided

Critical Hits is always useful for examples of Really Bad GMing. Unfortunately they are usually in the 'advice' columns!
I think the CH GMs, in reacting against the Viking Hat "You are my playthings, Muar Har Har!" GMs of yore, managed to find an equally dysfunctional approach at the other extreme, the "servant GM" whose job is to cater to the players and ensure they're always awesome; and if they're not, he's personally failed. It ends up like the Twilight Zone episode where the dead gangster finds 'Heaven' where he can never lose a game, never fail to pull off a crime, always gets everything he wants - and finds he's really in Hell.

 

[Manbearcat]

@LostSoul Good post. The players at my table are exactly as you describe; its the 1st and 3rd person omniscient receptive bend that I was speaking of earlier.

I've always been a GM. I wonder if people who are predominantly, or solely, GMs out there are similar to myself due to having such a vast proportion of their experience within 3rd person omniscient perspective. We're constantly referencing the metagame, zooming in and out of perspectives. If I were to be a player at a game, there is no way I could possibly be a "deep immersionist"; the expectation of stance fluctuation would be inevitable for me. I'm not even a "deep immersionist" in real life (as odd as that sounds). Personally, I'm a very hyper-aware person in most of my dealings of life and have trouble just tuning into the moment and un-plugging from the "meta-implications" of what is going on before me. That mental construct is probably particularly conducive to GMing.

Of course, none of that even addresses the very "jarring" issues of gross abstractions and believability within the implied setting that I could never get past if I wanted to sit in actor stance trying to tether my perspective to a character in a world with dissonant physics (and I don't even mean with regards to magic existing). I don't think I could do it personally. Scene-framing and avoidance of sandbox, exploratory play (that would inevitably involve crossing paths with some of those things) would be better for me if I were to be a player.

 

[S'mon]

I've always been a GM. I wonder if people who are predominantly, or solely, GMs out there are similar to myself due to having such a vast proportion of their experience within 3rd person omniscient perspective.

Not me; I DM nearly all the time, but I'm very different - I'm a big immersionist; if I play I want and expect it to be immersive. When I GM, I'm seeing the mileu through the eyes of the PCs/players, and sometimes the NPCs/monsters; there's an empathic element in my GMing style, same as in my teaching style, which I think makes me a better GM and teacher.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

In D&D, where (as far as I know) there are no abilities that allow a player to kill his/her PC as part of resolution, what you describe here is exactly what the scene-framed approach should look like. The player wanted pressure; you applied it. If the resolution turned out a bit differently from what everyone though it would, well that's the point!

Good to know that I seem to have "gotten it" as far as scene framing goes.

In tonight's game I am also planning some scenes with varying degrees of pressure on the PCs.

The first one is more loosely "framed" because it is a fail-forward skill challenge with a relatively fixed outcome. The PCs are hunting down some demons who have captured an ally of theirs. The demons have a two-week head start, but the PCs are on horseback, and have an expert tracker with them. It will still be difficult, but one way or another, they will arrive at their destination. The success or failure of the challenge will mostly determine how "fresh" the group is when they arrive, and the amount of warning they get when the doo-doo hits the fan in scene 2...

...Which will be that their quarry has left a nasty surprise for them: a couple of goons and a demonic defence turret on a tower (tweaked and refluffed beholder). I think this will make for a pretty interesting tactical challenge. The fight is mostly just because I want to toss in a fight. I don't know where/how the PCs will proceed from there. They may pick up the trail, or they may make an assumption as to where the demons went. They may get their asses handed to them (captured as well), or they may be forced to retreat.

Any ideas on how to improve or not screw up the framing of these scenarios?

 

[Manbearcat]

@S'mon I should have been more clear. I think all tables, GMs, players expect the playing experience to be immersive. What I meant (and I assume "deep immersionist" implies this...I didn't coin the term and am just borrowing it) is there might be an expectation of no fluctuation in stance; eg. you inhabit your PC in first person actor stance and there can be (and should not be) any deviation from that. I don't derive that expectation from your posts, but I could be wrong.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has good ideas on how to run chase/travel skill challenges, using the disease track to help with exhaustion.

My only observation on this sort of stuff is that I think WotC's advice - if they fail the challenge, make the combat harder - is generally bad advice, for two reasons: (i) if the harder combat ends up being more exciting, then you reward for succeeding at the challenge is a more boring follow-up encounter; (ii) if the harder/extra combat ends up being just a grind/speedbump, then the penatly for failing at the challenge is a more tedious/pointless play experience.

I think it's better to use success/failure to modulate the stakes rather than modulate the actual fun of play. So if they fail in their bid to get to the demon tower on time, the stakes might be (say) rescuing the ally from imminent sacrifice; whereas if they succeed, then the stakes might be (say) infiltration, or even an easy/auto-rescue (depending how exactly you want to set it up) followed by additional intelligence gathering/surgical striking.

Not at all trying to prescribe anything here or disrupt your planning - just some thoughts!