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The Best Thing from 4E
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6564792" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>OK, just to be clear, we both agree, a DM in ANY game can simply railroad events in any direction he or she sees fit, either by mechanical means (fudging dice) or narrative means (rearranging the goal posts). I would argue that even in your own RPG, which I have to imagine has a VERY long list of specific DCs that there are situational modifiers and questions of whether or not an action is feasible, what its actual results will be, how the NPCs react, etc. So IMHO the idea that this is system dependent is hard to justify. It may be that different systems are more or less encouraging different things, but you cannot fight City Hall, the DM wins every time.</p><p></p><p>So, of course its easy to run a railroady 4e game. What my friend the railroady DM did was often reinterpret the way something would work. So you'd assume that a particular spell would do X, but today it might do Y, something a little bit different. He'd explain it in terms of the situation, but somehow it was always a case of however it worked out made his plot work. You won't get away with that in 4e. Every power is very cut-and-dried, skills do quite specific things, etc. Of course there's a world of leeway for things outside of effect clauses and such to be fudged, but you can be pretty darn sure that in 4e when you use 'Rain of Blows' that a specific thing will happen. This is what people generally mean when they talk about the level of 4e player empowerment through control. </p><p></p><p>I get where you are coming from, but IMHO its an unachievable goal, and 4e, by setting down precise mechanics for things, did the achievable, which was to eliminate a lot of messy grey areas in PCs abilities. You may not be able to predict how many orcs will come through the door, but you can sure predict exactly what Hunger of Hadar will do to them! </p><p></p><p>And personally I find all the figuring out what DC something is at the table to be the easiest and most fun part of DMing. I don't have an agenda myself, so I just run that part of the game as it was designed to run. I found it the most effortless of games to run in that respect. In fact I went back and ran a CoC game and I was truly dismayed at how much more work it was than 4e, and CoC is a pretty simple system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6564792, member: 82106"] OK, just to be clear, we both agree, a DM in ANY game can simply railroad events in any direction he or she sees fit, either by mechanical means (fudging dice) or narrative means (rearranging the goal posts). I would argue that even in your own RPG, which I have to imagine has a VERY long list of specific DCs that there are situational modifiers and questions of whether or not an action is feasible, what its actual results will be, how the NPCs react, etc. So IMHO the idea that this is system dependent is hard to justify. It may be that different systems are more or less encouraging different things, but you cannot fight City Hall, the DM wins every time. So, of course its easy to run a railroady 4e game. What my friend the railroady DM did was often reinterpret the way something would work. So you'd assume that a particular spell would do X, but today it might do Y, something a little bit different. He'd explain it in terms of the situation, but somehow it was always a case of however it worked out made his plot work. You won't get away with that in 4e. Every power is very cut-and-dried, skills do quite specific things, etc. Of course there's a world of leeway for things outside of effect clauses and such to be fudged, but you can be pretty darn sure that in 4e when you use 'Rain of Blows' that a specific thing will happen. This is what people generally mean when they talk about the level of 4e player empowerment through control. I get where you are coming from, but IMHO its an unachievable goal, and 4e, by setting down precise mechanics for things, did the achievable, which was to eliminate a lot of messy grey areas in PCs abilities. You may not be able to predict how many orcs will come through the door, but you can sure predict exactly what Hunger of Hadar will do to them! And personally I find all the figuring out what DC something is at the table to be the easiest and most fun part of DMing. I don't have an agenda myself, so I just run that part of the game as it was designed to run. I found it the most effortless of games to run in that respect. In fact I went back and ran a CoC game and I was truly dismayed at how much more work it was than 4e, and CoC is a pretty simple system. [/QUOTE]
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