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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6859766" data-attributes="member: 42582">Of posters on this board, I think the one who has the most to say about similarities between GMing 4e and GMing DW is  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].On the player/PC build side, I would point to class/character abilities that are designed to deliver thematic/archetypical outcomes rather than model ingame causal processes. (In 5e terms, stuff like (say) action surge or second wind but more of it, with greater width and depth.)On the GM side, I would point to the whole orientation towards framing "entry points" rather than outcomes, and "playing to see what happens".I also think it is a bit misleading to say that "a Dungeon World GM has almost unlimited authority to interpret the dice results". That doesn't convey how DW is meant to be run. (And saying the same thing about a 4e GM adjudicating a skill challenge would be similarly misleading.) The GM is expected to interpret the dice results having very close regard to the fictional positioning of the character, the broader fictional context, the player's stated intent for his/her PC, the thematic/genre context, etc, always pushing towards conflict and towards clear stakes that speak to the players' (and PCs') expressed concerns.Another fantasy RPG that resembles DW in this sort of way (and hence whose GMing advice is very helpful for 4e!) is Burning Wheel. The key stricture that BW states for GMs is lifted straight from another Vincent Baker game, Dogs in the Vineyard, and is expressly labelled "Vincent's Admonition" (see eg BW Gold, p 72):  say yes or roll the dice. Luke Crane glosses it in this way:When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.That is good advice for 4e too, in my view. (Though 4e uses very different conventions for setting DCs/obstacles, which make it much less gritty than BW.)In the last sentence, should the third occurence of player read character?When I talk about player agency, I mean the ability of the player to shape (or "impact") the shared fiction. In some D&D games, the player has little such capacity - s/he can decide the feelings of his/her PC, and perhaps choose clothing, hair colour, etc, but the way the rest of the fiction unfolds is determined (either in advance, or in play) by the GM. (In the Alexandrian's node-based design variant of this, the player might get to decide the sequence in which a series of predetermined fictional events unfolds, and thereby perhaps change the peripheral colour of some of those events, while not changing their core content or significance.)In another <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?479509-6-8-encounters-day-how-common-is-this" target="_blank">recent thread</a>, I tried to explain an idea around a certain sort of very limited player agency, in which the players get to choose the sequence and rate of resource expenditure over the course of play, but not much else (see around post 262ff, and the comparison of certain play approaches to solving sudoku or crossword puzzles). In other D&D games, the players have a lot of capacity to change the fiction that goes beyond their characters - not primarily by abilities around backstory introduction (which, as I posted upthread, is fairly uncommon in D&D) but via action declaration for their PCs. I would describe this as the players having a lot of agency. I think classic Gygaxian D&D featured this sort of player agency, although the fictional situations that were in play were very narrow and somewhat artificial in scope (the dungeon). I think 4e is also well-suited to play in which players have this sort of agency.Some approaches to "GM empowerment" can be an obstacle to this sort of agency, because if the GM cannot be bound by the outcomes of player action declarations for their PCs, then the players can't really impact the fiction - all they can do is try to persuade the GM (which is the "social agreement for resolution of conflict" that Luke Crane expressly eschews in the passage quoted above).It's hard to convey what is distinctive about 4e in this respect - but its depth of player resources, and its tight guidelines on setting DCs and adjudicating consequences, encourage a very different approach to improvised actions from traditional or even 3E D&D. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333786-Pemertonian-Scene-Framing-A-Good-Approach-to-D-amp-D-4e/page2&p=6074197&viewfull=1#post6074197" target="_blank">This old post</a> talks about this:As  [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] pointed out in that thread (I think - or another thread around the same time), in 4e imposing an ad hoc d10 of damage (at 1st level) or an ad hoc 4d12 (at 30th level) is not the sort of punishment that it would be in other versions of D&D. For this sort of reason, that follows from the extent of player resources, the GM can be far more loose, and in many respects more permissive, in setting stakes for checks and finding out what happens.I think 5e, at least from say 3rd level or above (once PCs aren't so fragile) might be amenable to being drifted in this sort of direction, but its resource structure (asymmetric across classes both in recovery times and in reliance on GM adjudication between spells and non-spells) could make it harder. I'm sure that  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or S'mon could speak more to this if they have the time and inclination.EDIT: This seems relevant to the topic of player agency:To my mind, I don't see how it could be otherwise: if succeeding on a check doesn't result in the player (and PC) achieving the desired outcome, then what was the check for?The question is not strictly rhetorical - I think there are various answers that can be given.What I think 4e has in common with DW, BW and similar games, though, is that the whole point of a check is to determine whether the fiction changes in the way the player wanted (if the check succeeds) or some other undesired way (if the check fails, and hence the GM gets to narrate the unhappy outcome).As for "Yo, no way the King can beat my DC! He has to hand over his crown, queen and kingdom!" - that is all about framing checks. What is within the scope of a Diplomacy check? What is within the scope of an Athletics check (eg what is the DC to jump from the earth to the moon)? 4e doesn't answer that question directly - it is left for the GM and table more generally to establish organically. In my game, at 16th level, I allowed an Endurance check by the player of the dwarven fighter/cleric to test whether the PC could stick his hands into a forge to hold an artefact steady as the artificers tried to grasp it with their tongs so as to reforge it. The rulebooks don't set a DC for that: rather, they tell us (in broad terms) what it means to be a mid-paragon tier PC, and I as a GM then extrapolated at my table by reference to those broad terms in conjunction with the details of our play.Is it a permissible check for a 1st level PC to try to persuade a King to hand over crown and kingdom? No - the description of the tiers makes that pretty clear. What about a 21st level PC? Depending on the details, a check may not even be required - the GM might just "say yes" because, in the fiction, it makes no sense that the king would even think about saying no to a demigod.To my mind, that's pretty much the opposite of "codified results", accept for the basic principle that once the check is framed, then if the roll is a success the desired outcome occurs.LostSoul had a good post, a while ago now, on this particular feature of 4e:</blockquote>

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