Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6662047" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, first of all I'm not sure I agree with you about that. There are a number of different levers to move in terms of tone/mood, and how they interact is not always THAT straightforward. Nor in a level-based game would it really be possible for a single tone to be set merely by some DCs because characters ALWAYS progress, even in 5e, and that would imply that the tone/mood would be inconsistent in a fairly jarring way.I think 4e is most well-adapted in general for a 'fantasy superheroes' type of game. However, you can generate different tone/mood by changing the fiction associated with the DCs. If you want a darker sort of game, then you'd probably use 'grittier' DCs, that is you would hold back the growth of the fiction into the fantastical as the PCs level up. You could create more of a whimsical or a mythic tone with a game that grew the fiction quickly and extended it up to a rather ridiculous type of extreme at epic (something like the bragging stories of Celtish myths where heroes swallow lakes and etc). Now, you could also push 4e down into less heroic genre paths. It can do an S&S type of story reasonably well, though maybe epic tier graduates outside of what you normally find in that genre. It has certainly been used for Science Fantasy, and a certain type of Military Space Opera, with some new classes and etc of course. These things might or might not include differences in fiction relative to DCs (where its even comparable). I don't think 4e is a good system for true 'gritty' low fantasy, procedural crawling, high realism empire building, or a number of other such genre where limited character agency and perhaps casual death are high on the agenda.Yes, I know, all 'sandbox' adherents vehemently claim the same thing, and yet their player's still progress the ladder of lower to higher level challenges, graduating through areas where all, except possibly a few for color or hook reasons, adhere to a specific value that represents the 'level' of that adventure, as much as they try to deny that such a thing exists. Funny how that works.</blockquote>

Verification