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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5298374" data-attributes="member: 29398">I'll disagree with this; in that the examples you gave and how they resolved could very easily have gone exactly the same way in my old-school game...or gone completely differently; dependent almost entirely on the whims of the players at the moment. (in fact, the beheaded foes example looks *really* familiar! It's happened twice, so far...)  Remember, ExP is given for encounters defeated or avoided; and treasure is treasure wherever it comes from, so the reward system doesn't get in the way at all.  Alignment is another issue entirely; but even there, unless alignment is being used as a straightjacket there still should be some variability in how a PC or party might react to any given situation.Agreed that "the question of "what is an encounter" is up for grabs" in the older games, but keep in mind that in those games it doesn't matter very much; clear definition of An Encounter only matters in 4e where game mechanics use encounter as a timing mechanism. (side note: were I to ever sit down and re-design 4e this is something I'd fix, if for no other reason than it *really* seems to hamper good adventure design; 4e adventures all seem to want to proceed from one clearly-defined encounter to the next, rather than letting things flow naturally)Lanefan</blockquote>