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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3795455" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you're probably right here - it's something in the neighbourhood of aesthetics. It's the pleaure of doing a complex activity well. If I understand Aristotle properly, he held this to be the highest form of pleasure. Whether or not that's right, I think it is a genuine form of pleasure for many people.I don't know about you, but I find this GM-ing style a bit lame (at least in D&D-type games - it has a place in Call of Cthulhu).So here is where I think I have to insist that the pleasure is not aesthetic in any narrow sense, ie does not result from the experience. Because, as you said in your post, I am not actually fighting a goblin - I'm sittting at a table rolling dice and doing maths. The pleasure I have in mind is that of doing the maths right, so that the PCs survive the encounter and can go on to do whatever it is they have to do.This sort of play depends, to my mind, on two things: the players have to enjoy the optimisation problem - I think this can be taken for granted as true of many game players, but not necessarily all; and the players have to have a reason to care about the PCs surviving the encounter. The latter is provided by non-mechanical thresholds of significance.If the non-mechanical threshold of significance is lacking, then the game will degenerate into a series of disjointed encounters, like a miniatures tournament (as RC suggested above). The analogue, in classic D&D, is a game which is just a sequence of mindless dungeon crawls. Because the dungeon crawls typically take longer, the alleged mindlessness may take longer to become apparent. So a game with per-encounter resources but without other thresholds of significance will become more tired more quickly, I think.This is where I disagree. The 3E system (in its core) does not give fighters a wide range of choices - the only trade off is between move and full attack. And when spell-casters choose, it is typically between casting devastating spells or else doing nothing. What is needed, to get the sort of play I am describing, is to give fighters more choices, and to give wizards more choices that are less impactful on play. The per-encounter model achieves this.But you would agree, wouldn't you, that they have a *shallow* bag of *very big* resources? - and that this combination is part of what can give rise to a 15-minute day. The per-encounter system is meant to smooth this out, I believe, in the way I've tried to explain in the paragraph above.But some things interfere more than others, I think. Pure per-day resource place constraints on adventure design that some (perhaps many?) gaming groups experience as signficant.Turning now to a slightly different topic:What about the following scenario: the encounter does not pose a significant chance of killing a PC, provided that the players manage their resources well within the scope of the encounter?If you think this makes no sense, then you will have to reject my arguments, and I think those of Jackelope King (but obviously he can speak for himself if I've got him wrong).But to me it is a real scenario, that I see quite frequently in games I GM, and I get the impression (from remarks on monster design, encounter design, character build rules, etc) that it is the sort of scenario the 4e designers are trying to support.The "archer with the tokens for various combat actions" is an example of the sort of design that I think supports this type of play. Another example I gave earlier was that of Adrenal Moves in RM and HARP.I don't agree that it has to be like this, because of the argument that I just gave. But what we can agree to disagree on, I think, is whether or not it is possible to get sustained playing enjoyment out of encounters where the risk is low, provided the players play well, and where playing well requires complex and contextually-sensitive decision-making.I would prefer to say, swaps one dimension of interest - operational play - to open up a new one - the sort of tactical play I've described above, and which I argue core 3E does not provide for because of its overly narrow range of choices for both fighters and wizards.But I do agree that per-encounter abilities make operational play difficult if not impossible (it all becomes about equipment, rather than inherent abilities). And I do agree it thereby removes a constraint on "story-based" play (while, for the reasons I have given, still allowing encounters to have mechanical interest). And as I said above, I think that without significant non-mechanical thresholds of signficance per-encounter play will become tired more quickly than operational, per-day driven, play.So we do agree that per-encounter resources take something away, namely, the possibility of satisfying operational play (again, I am assuming that equipment-management doesn't really cut it).But I don't agree that it will have to make encounters more dangerous, and I don't agree that it reduces the mechanical dimensions of interest - and for both of these my reason is the same, namely, that it makes possible a new dimension of interest that 3E, in its core form, does not really facilitate. If I'm wrong about this - either conceptually, or if 4e doesn't deliver on the concept, then obviously my position falls down in a screaming heap.Here is what I take to be the key passage from <a href="http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13745039&postcount=15" target="_blank">Wyatt's blog</a>:When you have the right balance between powers that refresh all the time and powers that are more limited, the game becomes more interesting. Strong power design also helps. When some of your powers are per-day, you're constantly asking yourself, "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?" When your powers are well-designed, you also ask the question, "Is this the right round to use this power?"In defending the rationality of per-encounter design, and especially its capacity to solve the 15-minute problem, I have been emphasising what Wyatt calls "strong power design", which means that there is no automatic answer to the question of what to do. Without this, there can be little mechanical interest in per-encounter play - it is just a question of starting from the top, rolling the dice, and hope you get lucky.I agree that mixing in per-day resources helps in some ways. Obviously it creates the problem RC sees, of just re-opening the prospects of a 15 minute day. Strong power design is crucial to avoiding that. But provided one has a reason to conserve resources, it introduces additional complexity, and therefore additional mechanical interest, into the play of an encounter.That need to conserve resources will come from non-mechanical thresholds of significance - as has always been the case (if there are no plot constraints - like honour or guards or wanderers or time bombs or whatever - then there is no reason not to rest and regain resources). What I think is interesting is that the introduction of per-encounter resources, by freeing up certain constraints on these other thresholds of significance, might make it easier to introduce a wider range of reasons for wanting to conserve resources.I should add, Gizmo33, that I don't feel we are that far apart in terms of the way we are looking at the pieces. But it may be that we do have different views about what can make for an interesting RPG experience.</blockquote>

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