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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8412899" data-attributes="member: 42582">I tend to associate those sorts of remarks with critics of 4e. I don't think of it as a wargame because I don't really think of it as trying to simulate outcomes which are knowable as correct or at least plausible via an independent standard (ie of military expertise).My go-to example for this is the paladin at-will Valiant Strike, which gives a bonus to hit equal to the number of adjacent foes. This is completely different, in its system-to-fiction relationship, from (say) the rules for grenades in Classic Traveller. The purpose of the Traveller grenade rules is to produce outcomes, when a grenade is thrown, that are recognisably accurate or at least plausible based on actual knowledge of what happens when a grenade is thrown at a group of soldiers.The purpose of the power Valiant Strike is to make it true, in the fiction, that the paladin is valiant. And how does it do this? By giving the paladin player a reason to be in there among the foes, fighting valiantly!So I see it as very different from a wargame.Now, if by wargame we don't mean a game that will model the outcomes of military engagements but just mean using the rules effectively to produce the outcome you want, then that's true of 4e but it's also true of Burning Wheel or even as light a game as Prince Valiant. When 4e is described as a wargame simply on this basis, the contrast I see is with games where the players can't impose their will on the fiction via their play: ie pretty standard 2nd-ed AD&D or AP-ish railroading. And I certainly do agree that 4e contrasts with that. But so does Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant. But not by being wargames in any stricter sense.I would agree with this. But I do think combat has a privileged place in 4e D&D. More of the game system is devoted to it; it looms large on a PC sheet; both the mechanics and the default fiction of the game posit violent confrontation as the ultimate crucible. In this way it resembles 4-colour super hero comics. But that doesn't mean it is about combat. The climax of the typical Hulk story involves Hulk smashing while railing against puny Banner - but the stories are about the conflict of ego (Thunderbolt Ross), id (The Hulk) and superego (Banner) with Doc Samson as the therapist trying to manage the relationships between the three of them. When the X-Men fight Magneto (at least in the better versions, eg issue 150 or the first film) the stories are about what approach to take in inclusion/liberation politics. The different sides just happen to express themselves by punching one another!So I think 4e, at least at its best and referring to the default fiction, is about the cosmological struggles that form the backdrop to the game and recur and play out during the game: order vs chaos; civilisation vs the primal and the primordial; the gods vs the Abyss; the place of goodness within such a struggle; etc.The following <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">quote from Ron Edwards</a> on how to do scene-framing is (in my view) highly apposite to 4e, although Edwards gave it as advice on an actual play thread for a different RPG (I've quoted it many times on these boards, and I'm sure the first was in one of these sorts of discussions back in the 4e days!): If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well. It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the S[hard]I[maginary]S[pace] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.This <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">description of the "standard narrativistic model" by Eero Tuovinen</a> is also relevant:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).</li> </ol>The above is how Burning Wheel works, how Prince Valiant works, and how - at least for me - 4e D&D worked.When one of the players in my game wanted to reforge the artefact Whelm (a warhammer) into Overwhelm (a honking great two-handed hammer called a mordenkrad) I framed it as a skill challenge:4e uses a "treasure parcels per level" framework for the awarding of treasure and magic items, so there are no worries about deciding whether something like this has been made "too Monty Haul" or "too killer DM" - you just run the encounters as per the standard pacing rules (whether XP-per-encounter + XP-per-level; or the option of dropping the common term (ie XP) and just doing encounters-per-level) and keep track of the treasure awarded.A different example: when the Raven Queen devotees went out into the woods about town looking for remnants of the Orcus cultists the PCs had defeated in town (a player-authored quest; this fits under Edwards' rubric of "taking suggestions") I framed them into <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/underdark-adventure-with-demons-beholders-elementals-and-a-hydra.330383/" target="_blank">the discovery of an Orcus temple</a>. Which spun off into a long underdark saga.That is story before, not story now. 4e will (in my view) push against that at every turn, because the GM has to cabin the players' action declarations or negate the consequences of action resolution. This is potentially feasible in 5e D&D out-of-combat, because the core resolution process there is player declares action, GM tells them what to roll and/or what happens next. But a system where the resolution framework is very clear about how players are able to impact the fiction via their action declarations - which is typical of "story now" oriented systems - would not be a good fit.DW is not a scene-framed game; it is a PbtA if you do it, you do it game. I think I posted upthread on the contrast between those two approaches.On 4e and "leaving blanks", here is an old post of mine:"Just in time" GMing is my formulation of "no myth" (and I may have picked it up from an earlier poster in the thread), which is a concept that DW borrows from but did not invent.</blockquote>

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