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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6289901" data-attributes="member: 42582">The second quoted paragraph puts additional parameters on the situation which weren't in your initial description. Though what the function of a look out is is not always clear - if the runner is a goblin, and s/he comes back with a Balrog, what are the players expected to do, or to have done?I also think the contrast between "bad luck" and "stupidity" is not always clear cut. If the PCs are on their last legs, and the final NPC runs away, are the players stupid for deciding not to give chase? Or sensibly taking advantage of their good luck, because they know that had the NPC hung around, s/he probably could have killed a PC or two?If an encounter is interesting - preferably in both story/dramatic terms and in mechanica/tactical terms - then I'm happy to frame it and see what happens. (Including a TPK if that's the upshot - I don't fudge my dice rolls.) That includes with the escaped NPC - but if the game is 4e, then typically play will be more interesting if the encounter is framed "Just as you get your breath back, you see XYZ coming towards you" - and so the players, in resolving the encounter, have full access to the suite of mechanical resources that helps make the game interesting - than framing a mechanically less challenging encounter that the players have to resolve without access to their interesting abilities.And as I said, if the runaway's reinforcement encounter doesn't seem like it would be interesting, I can just decide that the escaped NPC hides in a cupboard. That's not particularly unrealistic, and doesn't seem like any sort of "bending over backwards" to me.I agree with your first quoted paragraph, though I think maybe we have different views as to what extent this is a virtue of the system.I'm not sure I agree so much with the second, although it's hard to individuate "DMing styles" with technical precision.But is it a radically different GMing style to have the reinforcements turn up 3 minutes later at mechanical strength X or 5 minutes later at mechanical strength 2X? I'm not sure that it is, but in 4e those two different choices make quite a difference for how the game is likely to play out at the table.I'm not sure the "run away" option is so radically different in 4e either. In classic D&D if the reinforcement turn up and the players have their PCs run away, there are the evasion rules to resolve that. (Which to me, at least, are rather sympathetic to the players even at a modest concession to verisimilitude.) In 4e, the same thing could be resolved by way of a short-ish skill challenge. As long as the players are aware of that mechanical possibility (eg because the GM tells them if they ask, or because they know how the GM handles attepts to flee at that particular table) then that is a reason to think that the rest-interrupting encounter with the reinforcements could be interesting, and even perhaps a fun change of pace.To me it's all about knowing the system, and the tools that it provides to make resolving the fictional situation you want to frame interesting rather than tedious. I personally haven't found that 4e makes this especially difficult for a GM, nor that it constrains options noticeably more than other systems.I also think, whatever the system, it's important to distinguish player experience from character experience. The 4e DMG2 makes this point nicely when it notes that, if a consequence for failure is the PCs getting ambushed in the night, then (everything else being equal) the players are likely to enjoy resolving the fight even though the characters, obviously, would rather not have been attacked. That's why, when it comes to the run away NPC and the interruption of a short rest, I think it is more helpful to think in terms of table experience than simply in in-world, in-character terms.</blockquote>

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