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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6659337" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sandboxing vs scene-framing is clearly an aspect of it. But I don't think it's all of it. I run 4e scene-framing. I run BW scene-framing. But the fact that one uses "subjective" DCs and the other uses "objective" DCs matters.To give another example that doesn't appeal to the "fate" idea, but does rely upon 4e's "looseness of fit": in 4e, when setting a DC for some situation, I look up the DCs-by-level chart, set a DC, and run with it. I will describe the situation in terms that help convey why it's as hard as it is (eg "You're flying your Thundercloud Tower down the Obelisk of Ice into the Elemental Chaos: make an Arcana check to maintain conrol!"). But I won't decompose the situation, either on the fiction side or the mechanical side, into its constituent elements of difficulty. (How much is the wind, how much the cold, how much the ambient waves of elemental chaos - whatever exactly that means - etc.)In BW, on the other hand, DCs are built up out of those constituent elements: the DC for such-and-such a task is set out in the skill description, and then there are rules for giving players advantage dice if appropriate, and rules for adding additional obstacle penalties (eg faffing around in the dark), etc. There is very little looseness of fit, less GM handwaving in respect of elements of the fiction, and a feel that is more gritty and less gonzo. The objective DCs do push the focus away from "How hard is this for the protagonists?" and onto "What are the gameworld elements that are at work here?"A passage from Maelstrom Storytelling nicely states the contrast, from the subjective DC side (p 116 of the rulebook):A good way to run [the game] is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. . . . A ten foot fence might seem really tall to one person, and a little tall to another. But if the fence is described as really tall instead of 10 feet, everyone gets the idea. In other words, focus on the intent behind the elements in the scene, and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or the emotional reaction to the scene, and in doing so it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It then is no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. In this way, the presentation of each element of the scene focuses on the difficulty of the obstacle, not on laws of physics. . . . [A] wide range of arguments can arise from saying that the chasm is 15 feet across. . . .  If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game. The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities. . . . Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.Conversely, "objective" DCs do tend to emphasise literalisms and "laws of physics", and encourage debates about whether or not a normal person can easily clear a 15' chasm. (Again, BW has mechanical devices outside of its DC-setting rules to help counteract this particular tendency. On the other hand Rolemaster, which unlike both 4e and BW it doesn't use fortune-in-the-middle for action resolution, and which lacks the other devices that BW includes, is especially prone to coffee-table-jumping moments.)That notion seems to be alive and well in this very thread!</blockquote>

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