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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5437170" data-attributes="member: 42582">RC, I can understand why you're using somewhat vague and allusive language. Because it's somewhat vauge and allusive, I'm not quite sure I entirely follow it, but as far as I can tell it's not important that I do, because I agree with you that I'm not using the pattern of argument that you are interested in criticising.I do think AD&D had some elements where narration came after the dice. Besides the abstraction vs detail point I made in the post you've quoted from - which applies not just to AD&D but to heaps of other games - there is the description of saving throws in the DMG, which (as I recall it, at least) suggests that what the successful saving throw actually means - dodging, finding a ledge to cower behind, manipulating the magic, etc - can be worked out after we know that we need to account for a successful save.I think that 4e has similar elements - to an extent in to hit rolls, though maybe not any more than in earlier editions (what I've got in mind is that, if character A misses character B, we mightn't decide until after we know that whether A attempted a good blow but performed a bad blow, or whether A attempted and performed a good blow but B performed an even better dodge or parry) - but more obviously, and more notoriously, in relation to the ingame interpretation of hit point attrition.Even with 4e hit points, in my experience it doesn't normally come up until one of the thresholds that is not merely numerical is crossed - bloodied or dying. With bloodied, I tend to describe some blood being drawn, but not so much that recovery (whether by PC or NPC) would strain credulity. With dying - which only applies to PCs - I may describe the blow, but tend to avoid describing the injury altogether until the upshot has been resolved. (It's very different from GMing Rolemaster, where the crit charts state the gritty details of every blow struck!)As to following 4e - given you don't play it, you're not missing out on too much by not following it. There are the D&D-standard ever growing lists of monsters, spells etc, many of which are technically very clever but none of which is so thematically compelling that I'd say a non-4e player who doesn't look at it is missing out. And there are the D&D-standard ever growing campaign elements (in books like Underdark, The Plane Above, etc) which I would recommend for anyone looking to build an interesting fantasy campaign roughly along D&D lines, but which are hardly essential for that purpose.As for adventures - if you find any good ones, let me know! To date, Thunderspire Labyrinth (H2) and Heathen (from an early 4e number of Dungeon) are the only two that have really interested me, and both need extensive revision to be playable. I borrowed some maps from another (Scepter Tower of Spellgard, I think) but that's about it.After the time-travel exploration session I posted about I'm planning to use another vignette from that Eden Odyssey book. I've also got a series of feywild encounters planned to build on the witches storyline, should the players be so inclined, which if they play out as I think is likely will culminate in The Demon of the Red Grove (a scenario in the HeroWars narrator's book, about removing the demonic possession of a magical apple grove - a good feywild scenario, I think, which - because of the demon - can be given a Correlon vs Lolth tie-in).If the players instead press on to the city they were heading to, I've got some plans for an adventure that will mix bits of Heathen (4e) with bits of The Speaker in Dreams (3E) with bits of Night's Dark Terror (Moldvay/Cook D&D).Having GMed RM for so many years, I'm not at all troubled by the need to mechanically convert material to fit my preferred system (there is - or, rather, there used to be - quite a bit of stuff published for RM, but a lot of it was fairly ordinary, and it has never compared to the quantities of D&D stuff). What I mostly want in a published adventure is some sort of idea or theme that I wouldn't have come up with myself (and preferably that I can see ways of embellishing to make it better fit my game), and also interesting maps/locations (I can do these at a pinch, but am by no means an expert). Published 4e adventures tend to be lacking in the first, and surprisingly often are not even that strong in respect of the second.</blockquote>

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