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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5892814" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that D&D has always had exceptions to simulation. Saving throws in pre-3E D&D (as described by Gygax in his DMG) - 3E changed this, and made them simulationist (Fort, Ref, Will). Hit points. I see 4e's AEDU, at least for martial PCs, as extending the same metagame sensibilities that gave us classic D&D saving throws, and hit points, to the realm of "active" rather than just "passive" action resolution.I'll elaborate a bit, then - not to try and convert you (!), but to explain the dynamics of what I'm talking about.Recently in my 4e game, the 5 PCs went through a busy day that took multiple sessions to play out. Here's just a list of the encounters that took place before the PCs got an extended rest - the PCs started the day at 14th level and reached 15th part way through (after encounter (f), I think):a) Comp 2 L14 skill challenge (as a result of which each PC lost one encounter power until their next extended rest); b) L17 combat; c) L15 combat; d) L7 combat; e) L13 combat; f) L15 combat; g) Comp 1 L14 skill challenge; h) L16 combat; i) L14 combat; j) L13 combat; k) Comp 1 L15 skill challenge; l) L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall); m) L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).Now, encounters (g), (h), (i) and (j) took place with no short rest between them - ie on the same suite of encounter powers - with one modest exception that I will explain.Encounter (g) was the party sorcerer being pursued on his flying carpet by hobgoblin wyvern riders, and trying (and failing - 3 fails before 4 successes) to escape them.Encounter (h) was the other PCs going to the rescue of the sorcerer (who crash landed about 100 yards from the other PCs) with the excpetion of the paladin, who stayed behind to guard the PCs' tower and gear from the hobgoblin phalanx that suddenly swept down from the hills. The culmination of (h) involved the hobgoblins loosing their pet chimera.Once all the opponents of (h) were dead, but the battle with the chimera was still going on, I told the players that they could see something in the distance, red and fiery, and apparently getting bigger quite quickly. And I put a die down on the table with a "3" face-up. Now the players knew that their tower had, on an earlier occasion, been visited by a fire drake, and they quickly formed a hypothesis as to what was coming. Which incentivised them in their fight with the chimera. Then, in the same round that I turned my countdown die to "1", I also gave the players an unusual choice: as a standard action, they could regain two encounter powers or spend two healing surges. All, I think, or all but 1, chose to regain two powers - which meant they didn't attack the chimera - which meant it was still standing when the dragon arrived - which complicated the first round or two of encounter (i).Encounter (j) occurred after the dragon had been defeated. The PC chaos sorcerer commenced an attempt to harness the chaotic elemental energies he felt were escaping from the dragon. By focusing the energies in a vortex of chaos (preparatory to imbuing himself with them) he attracted the attention of nearby mooncalves. In this encounter, the PCs had (from memory) 3 healing surges between them. And defeating the mooncalves ended up turning on making the right choices about which healing abilities to use when on whom, given that they were short on surges, short on healing abilities, and had one surgeless healing item that would suck a daily item use (we use pre-errata magic item rules). In short, it turned on making hard choice about the deployment of mechanical resources.And for my group, at least, these sorts of situations - encounters which force hard choice after hard choice - generate emotional intensity and pressure. The stakes are real and vivid. The players don't have to imagine that they are under pressure, because they really are under pressure - a mis-call on the proper deployment of a power can spell the difference between success or failure. (Of course the game will go on if a PC dies, but in quite a different direction from what the players expected or were, at the time at least, hoping for.)In the early encounters ((a) through (f)), where the resources are reasonably plentiful and the stakes therefore lower, the pressure isn't quite the same (although in my view it's to the credit of 4e's design that even in these encounters it is still fairly easy, as a GM, to create pressure). But once the players realise that the PCs are under attack by hobgoblins on wyverns - and there's a second front (the phalanx, which was backed up by ogres) - and they brought a chimera - and the firedrake is returning - and now the sorcerer's gone and conjured up some mooncalves - the pressure mounts. There is pressure in the fiction. And the mechanics, which apply a pressure of resource management to the players, generate a corresponding pressure at the table.There are many ways, I think, that I could try and set out the differecne between an RPG like 4e and a board game. But probably the most obvious, to me, in this context is the nature of the stakes. In the RPG what is at stake is a product of, is generated by, gets its significance from, the shared fiction. A board game, at least for me, just can't generate the same emotional investment in the stakes as (for example) encounter (j), in which the party is at the end of its tether, yet has to fight on, because the chaos sorcerer couldn't restrain his desire for power. Or encounter (h), in which the paladin is left to singlehandedly hold off a phalanx of hobgoblins while the rest of the party try to save the sorcerer from the assault by wyvern riders.In a boardgame there is no protagonism. Whereas in an RPG like 4e, manipualting the mechanics is what mediates the fiction to the players and allows them to exercise their protagonism, to push their PCs through the fiction.</blockquote>

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