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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5701204" data-attributes="member: 42582">I much prefer a game that works smoothly without the need for fudging. So far, for me, 4e has been such a game.Over the past few years I've been incorporating a lot of the GMing techniques found in games like HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel. These emphasise "failure as complication" rather than "failure as THE END".So far there's been one "TPK" in my 4e game: an ambush by undead (including a spectre with a dazing aura) disguised as refugee villagers, which the players were particularly easily suckered by because not long before they'd accientally killed a refugee thinking he was a bandit. In the game, the undead had been placed as a trap by a goblin hexer. When the PCs had lost the fight, I just asked the players who wanted to bring in a new character, and who wanted to keep going with the same character. All but one of the players wanted to keep the same character. And only one of the PCs - the paladin - was definitely dead (as in dropped below negative bloodied hit points "on screen").So I did it this way: the PCs (but for the paladin) wake up in a goblin prison cell, having been taken prisoner. Their is a drow in the same cell that they don't recognise (the new PC) and they can smell the smell of roasting half elf (the former PC whose player wanted a change). Meanwhile, the paladin - whose body has been laid out in a sacrificial pattern on an altar by the goblin hexer - suddenly regains consciousness, sent back by the Raven Queen to complete his mission in this world.I think this sort of fudging-free play needs robust mechanics - ie ones that produce the desired outcomes in play - and also mechanics that are flexible in their interpretation, especially for events that happen off-screen. 4e's non-simulationism helps here.</blockquote>

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