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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5730094" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think a system can be designed to produce a degree of falling action.One way of doing it is HeroQuest's pass/fail mechanics (which are also discussed in 4e's DMG2 - Robin Laws essentially cuts and pastes the text from the revised HeroQuest rulebook - although no real effort is made to explain how this can work within the overall mechanical framework of 4e).Another way of doing it is the way 4e does it in combat. 4e NPCs and monsters have more hit points than PCs, and generally more severe at will damage, but no or very limited healing. PCs, on the other hand, have access to excellent healing (but it requires effort by the players in working the action economy) and access to bigger-hitting effects (but these often require effort in setting them up). At least in my experience, the effect of that is that as a combat progresses, the PCs are initially at a disadvantage - everything does go wrong as the monsters come out hitting hard and fast. But then, as the players manage to get draw on the greater depth of their PCs compared to their enemies, the tide of battle changes.Yet another way of doing it is the way 4e does it in skill challenges. A skill challenge requires X successes before 3 failures. That means that the situation cannot be resolved as the players want it to be until they have achieved X successes. Which means, up through the X-1th success, the GM will be narrating additional complications or pressures that require the players to continue to have their PCs tackle the problem - no matter how hard the PCs try, it seems that nothing goes right and that "evil will triumph". Only with the final success does the tide definitively turn.If an RPG is intended to deliver satisfactory story, but its action resolution mechanics can't achieve somewhat dramatic pacing unless the GM exercises fiat, then in my view the RPG has not been very well designed.I am a big fan of plot also, but prefer to play games in which it emerges in a satisfactory way out of the players and GM both engaging the mechanics in their respective ways (players: build and play your PCs; GM: create situations that will engage the players via their PCs). I am very hostile to the GM exercise of fiat over action resolution, both as a GM and as a player.</blockquote>

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