NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6111038" data-attributes="member: 4937">I want to note that at this level, this isn't different from anyone else in the thread.  Everyone has agreed that if you have IC resources to travel across the desert without difficulty, that you should be able to cross the desert without difficulty.  Much of the initial argument can be seen as framed around the fact that many posters felt that Hussar did not have the IC resources that he claimed he had.   Reread the early arguments from that context.   Once it was established that Hussar didn't in fact have the resource he claimed - the centipede was not in fact an 'I win button' - then the focus of the argument has shifted, as lead by pemerton, that it shouldn't and doesn't matter whether Hussar has the IC resources but only that he wants to skip the scene.  So one initial question might be, "Had the PC's not had Peerless Exploration or had been unwilling/unable to spend the resources on it, would you have thought about running it differently?"  This suggests to me a lot of confusion about the stakes of the conflict in this thread.   If you think that we could certainly have had fun with an action scene in the badlands on the first go through, then you and I don't seem to have much in the way of disagreement.  I don't necessarily like the way you mechanically resolve things for the reasons I outlined earlier, but we are otherwise largely on the same page.I don't think any of that follows, and in practice I'm positive that it usually doesn't follow.   Let's say we engaged in a game mechancially resolved as I have described, and what you are here calling "serial world exploration".   Suppose that there are two cities located across a body of water such that they are two days sea travel apart, and suppose that the PC's for whatever reason are frequently making this journey.   It doesn't follow that because on one journey we resolve events hour by hour and in great depth with much RP and description of color, that  we will do so on any subsequent journey.  Nor does it follow that because we have been treating this journey as a transition scene for the last 30 trips, saying only, "You get on the boat and make the journey from Aa to Bee.  The journey is uneventful, and you arrive in the morning two days later.", that on the 31st trip we might suddenly switch to something more eventful and spend several sessions again on the journey.   In other words, I flat out deny that "serial world exploration" does not involve hand waves, truncation by summary, transition scnes and so forth.   In every game occuring in the real world, the GM and players frequently employ cutting to the relevant action.   There is a false contrast that some are trying to draw here between "cutting to the action" and "not cutting to the action".   The contrast isn't over the technique of "cutting to the good stuff", but over where you think the good stuff is to be found.   And even in a game of "serial world exploration", there isn't a default assumption that "the good stuff" is found in the mundane details of travel.   Rather, the assumption being made is, "Travel isn't always or maybe isn't even usually mundane.", and that certainly it is within the bounds of reason to see travel through the infinite Abyss (on or off of the back of a gigantic centipede) as being at least potentially non-mundane.So you are claiming that an action scene in the context of a journey is an anathema to 4e?  Just how firmly do you intend to hold to that particular claim before I bother trying to attack something which seems so obviously a strawman.   Seriously, do you really mean that???  To a certain extent I feel you contrast is nonsense.  I don't expect anyone at a table to have an agenda of 'serial world exploration' or 'scene based action' game.   I expect players to have agendas like 'challenge', 'fellowship', 'fantasy', 'empowerment', 'narrative', etc.  I expect to be able to accomodate players with different agendas provided that there agenda is sufficiently complex and broad and that they are willing to table it for short durations while some other players' agenda is at the fore.  Likewise, I don't expect to run only a 'serial exploration game' or a 'scene based game', but to bounce back and forth between serial and scene techniques as they are suited to the narrative being created.</blockquote>

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