NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8626295" data-attributes="member: 42582">Elaborating on my post 393, and also of relevance to 395:It is easy to underestimate what is involved in leaving resolution open at the moment of framing and action declaration.If the action declaration is I look inside the safe to see if the jewels are there and the GM has notes saying that they're not, and uses those notes to say what the PC finds in the safe, then the resolution was not open.If the action declaration is we sail to the island and the GM (via prep, or via a random events roll, or whatever) says that the PCs' vessel is washed away to a different shore, then resolution was not open.Etc.That's not to say that "story now" can't use prep, or freeform narration of consequences, because not every action declaration is an expression of protagonism. Some is just going back-and-forth with the GM to establish framing, stakes etc. A crucial skill for story now GMing is to recognise when the stakes have shifted, such that we are no longer at that preliminary stage, and now the player's protagonism (and the PC's corresponding dramatic need) is engaged, and hence the resolution has to be open and its time for the action resolution mechanics to do their thing.This is relevant to 4e D&D and player-authored quests, because 4e's scene-framing approach, and its use of skill challenges for non-combat resolution when the stakes are significant, allows open resolution. Whereas D&D's more traditional reliance on map-and-key/prep-style resolution makes it much harder to leave resolution open.</blockquote>

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