DnD 5E and FATE Accelerated

[jack]

DnD 5e

A while back I bought the 5e DnD ("DnD Next" or "DnD") player's handbook and just now have been reading through it. I actually really like it.

It reminds me of 3.5 but streamlined, with a few of the good aspects of earlier editions and 4e. That's about what I wanted out of DnD!

Many of the combat rules are simplified a bit, but look about equally balanced. Progression is simplified -- feats are more powerful, but optional, you can take them instead of a stat increase. Thus they do more to define your character and less to "here's a feat-tree you have to take".

There's no separate saves, you make a "dex save" or "con save". Your character has a single proficiency bonus which scales with level from +2 to about +5, which is added to everything you character is good at (weapons they're proficient with, skills they're trained with, etc).

They've added some fluff to the front page of the character sheet (personality trait, ideal, bond, flaw) and a suggesting for getting temporary mechanical advantage when your flaw comes into play. I have ideas for those bits up, to focus people further on the bits that actually come up in play (whether they matter mechanically or not).

The classes and races are similar to 3e -- there's the classic races (human, elf, dwarf, halfling) and further races (tiefling, dragonborn, gnome, half-orc) which don't automatically exist in all settings.

Like 4e, all spellcasters have a few infinite use cantrips which function as their standard attack options. I like that all characters have something specific to do in combat. And like 4e, fighter has some abilities beyond "hit it with my axe" to bring into play in combat -- although not many, I think that could be beefed up.

It reverts to generally winging the exact physical layout rather than using a battlemap. Which I like because combat is simpler and faster. Although I admit, it does remove some of the good effects in 4e, that there were many more tactical options for the party to work together, other than "we all hit it repeatedly".

The general power level is flatter between 1st level and 20th level, even more so than 4e. I think this is probably good, since it's almost impossible to balance things at both ends, but it does potentially mean less variation. But it has good effects that a character a few level higher than you" feels like "an adventurer like you, but more experienced" not "a demigod". And that there's less artificial scaling where every PC gets regular stat boosts to increase to-hit and damage-per-second and armour-class -- as does every monster.

It seems like, 1st level is really a tutorial level (although actually, I'd like an EVEN SIMPLER introduction for some newbies) where characters all have stuff they can do, but some of the key class features kick in at second level (eg. rogue has backstab damage at first level, but gets a free disengage/hide action from second which is nearly as class-defining). 4th or 5th feels like a typical point for experienced 3.5e players.

In addition to flattening the power level, the magic-item economy is gone. The classes are designed to be balanced mostly as-is, with a minimum amount of gold and almost no magic items. So you can run a low-magic campaign where the only magic is PC and NPC spellcasters, and add a magic sword for effect when it seems dramatic, not assume that everyone is carting around cartloads of +1 stuff else they're unplayable.

I think it could sensibly by used to run either an old-school "kick in the door and take as much treasure as you can before you die" session or a "mostly about roleplaying with some combat" session which are the sorts I enjoy the most.

4e is probably better for tactical combat -- I like that in theory, but never find it works well for me in practice.

Has anyone actually tried 5e?

FATE core and FATE accelerated

I've also been following a couple of people's suggestions and reading about FATE. IIUC it's based on ideas from FUDGE, based on a very freeform mechanics-light structure. Ideal for "here's a wacky idea about X" or "here's an existing setting (Dresden Files) with clear flavour but vague on specifics, can we adapt that to a game" and producing setting and character sheets with minimal write-up and no need to spend ages trying to balance PC activities.

Basically it sounds really fun if you want an adventure without tactical combat at all (there's still some tactics, but not based primarily on characters specific abilities).

Although some people apparently flounder if they're used to DnD -- there's definitely a "everyone should choose things that are appropriate, not always what would be most effective for the character". (Like Dogs-in-the-Vineyard, it seems it's more fun to pick character traits which come up about half the time -- but some people find it hard to resist arguing that they ALWAYS apply.)

Has anyone actually tried any of the editions of FATE?

Comments

[seekingferret]

These days 5E is my go-to system when I'm DMing. I like that it's less complex than 3.5 or 4E, but it has clean, elegant, modular rules the way those systems do. More than any other rpg system, I feel like I can use it without being a 5E DM- the players have their special rules on their character sheets, and I can just make whatever adjudications I need to on the fly and feel comfortable that the rules will accommodate me. I don't have to worry about the balance being ridiculously out of whack, I don't have to worry about missing a tiny but critical combat rule, I don't have to worry about being rules lawyered to hell and back if I make up a house rule on the fly, the system just backstops good gameplay.

I agree that 1st Level is a tutorial level, so unless I'm running something long term and I know the players want that first level experience, I tend to jump players to 2nd or even 3rd level to start, because that's when the interesting character choices happen.


As to FATE, it's not my system of choice, but it's the goto one-shot system for a friend of mine, so I've played it a fair amount, in SOTC and DFRPG, as well as homebrew settings. As you say, it works reasonably well when you're playing in a setting where the genre tropes are clear and everyone understands them.

But there is a class of competent D&D player I've seen completely choke on FATE, as in, they're completely incapable of generating useful FATE aspects, and consequently don't have any fun at all playing FATE. I'm not sure why this is.

[rysmiel]

I don't have to worry about missing a tiny but critical combat rule, I don't have to worry about being rules lawyered to hell and back if I make up a house rule on the fly, the system just backstops good gameplay.

Ah, OK, that makes sense in context. (Nobody who's going to rules-lawyer the decisions I as DM make in the interests of flow, fun and good story is welcome at my table.)

As to FATE, it's not my system of choice, but it's the goto one-shot system for a friend of mine, so I've played it a fair amount, in SOTC and DFRPG, as well as homebrew settings. As you say, it works reasonably well when you're playing in a setting where the genre tropes are clear and everyone understands them.

I've only seen it in use in a DFRPG context and never played, but the impression a little kibitzing left me with is for it having mechanics for the sort of storytelling elements that I am used to thinking of as working only if they arise organically, so I think it would be sufficiently alien to the way my brain works to be hard for me to have any fun with. (Like Java.)

[damerell]

One says that, but there is a common enough case where the player intends to do X at some critical moment, the rules say they can do X, they work towards doing X, the GM doesn't know that and thinks they can't do X, and when this discrepancy emerges there is probably going to be a conversation about it.

[rysmiel]

This would be why one tells players considering joining one's game that DM decision always overrides RAW in it.

Also encourages them, if they are working towards some specific goal X, to tell me appropriately far in advance before investing time and energy in it.

[jack]

Ah, thank you, that's really useful. It sounds like 5e is about how I hoped!

And FATE sounds at least, at least from the PoV of someone else with a DnD background.

I know what you mean about choking on FATE -- I've not seen it, but I know I tend that way a bit: when I'm used to specific mechanics, it's hard to let go and do whatever seems cool or narratively appropriate, I need to exercise those skills to get them up to speed.

[rysmiel]

Progression is simplified -- feats are more powerful, but optional, you can take them instead of a stat increase. Thus they do more to define your character and less to "here's a feat-tree you have to take".

The coarser granularity here is one of the things I found less appealing about it, fwiw.

There's no separate saves, you make a "dex save" or "con save".

I like that being official, though; that was one of the things I house-ruled leaning on a lot very early on in my time as a DM.

The general power level is flatter between 1st level and 20th level, even more so than 4e. I think this is probably good, since it's almost impossible to balance things at both ends, but it does potentially mean less variation. But it has good effects that a character a few level higher than you" feels like "an adventurer like you, but more experienced" not "a demigod".

That's kind of the least appealing thing about what I have heard of 5e to me. Perhaps it is overweening ambition, but I have always most naturally thought in terms of campaign running from "novices just starting out who would likely lose a fight with a log" through "veteran adventurers" and "significant political figures who still handle the high-end quests personally" to "legends who will be remembered for millennia", though pretty much every D&D-type system goes off the rails when you get into the last third to quarter of that arc anyway. Though that said, the part of my brain that does that is the same part of my brain that does fiction and writing fiction's a sight more important to me now and for the foreseeable future.

[jack]

Thanks!

The coarser granularity here is one of the things I found less appealing about it, fwiw.

Hm. I think it might be something like, I'd like the process of making a character unique by specific minor abilities that they have on tap, different to other characters with the same sort of mechanical build.

But a lot of the time in 3.5, there's a LOT of "these feats you must take if your group is optimised at all or your character just won't be effective" that don't have a lot of flavour justification, like "Power attack -- as you become a more skillful swordfighter, you can do more damage to people" which seems like it should apply to everyone. And a LOT of feats which provide small mechanical bonuses which you have to remember at various times. Like a board game. And I like doing that if I've time to get good at it -- if we've juuuuuust defeated some goblins, and I want to see, next session, can we improve our techniques and do better? But most of the time I DON'T have time to become good at it, it's just an endless vista of "here's 100 feats from the source book and 500 feats from other books you don't have and you can't wing it or it might be unbalanced, choose some, and if you choose wrong you may look greedy or stupid". Like, I might like to work up to that, but I've honestly not played enough to do so.

And I know some people don't have that problem because they play a tactics-heavy game and do know the pros and cons of various minor advantages. And some people don't have that problem because they don't focus a lot on combat and it doesn't matter if characters are optimised. But it felt more accessible to me.

I guess maybe, it's not the granularity, I'd like it if there WERE smaller feats that provided a _specific_ minor ability, but I liked that feats were less of a gotcha.

[rysmiel]

I think it might be something like, I'd like the process of making a character unique by specific minor abilities that they have on tap, different to other characters with the same sort of mechanical build.

I can certainly see the point of that, but (at risk of being grammatically irritating) I'd query the relevant scale of "unique". I mean, it would seem to me that how much needs to go into that for making a fighter feel unique in a party of four fighters of the same general build is rather different from how much needs to go into that for making a fighter distinct in your classic party of one fighter-type, one cleric-type, one sorceror-type and one skill-monkey. I have tended to favour the latter both for story reasons and... for all that I dislike excessive minmaxing, the choice between four characters who can each hit for on average ten points and one character who with a bit of thought and synergies with the other very different characters' skills can hit for an average of sixty points does seem to come out good on a pure combat-mechanistic front too.

But a lot of the time in 3.5, there's a LOT of "these feats you must take if your group is optimised at all or your character just won't be effective" that don't have a lot of flavour justification, like "Power attack -- as you become a more skillful swordfighter, you can do more damage to people" which seems like it should apply to everyone.

Indeed, and some of that feels to me very much like throwing all sorts of different mechanistic fixes at the very fundamental 2e issue with combat-types scaling linearly and wizards scaling quadratically such that they are way weaker for the first few levels and ridiculously much stronger at high level. (Like "give wizards lots of fairly low-level buff spells so that when they're at a point that they are tossing big destructive evocations around in combat that's not in competition with resources for them to power up fighters", and "for Desna's sake have all fighters take one level in an arcane spellcaster class at some point so they have true strike available for key moments.")

And a LOT of feats which provide small mechanical bonuses which you have to remember at various times. Like a board game. And I like doing that if I've time to get good at it -- if we've juuuuuust defeated some goblins, and I want to see, next session, can we improve our techniques and do better? But most of the time I DON'T have time to become good at it, it's just an endless vista of "here's 100 feats from the source book and 500 feats from other books you don't have and you can't wing it or it might be unbalanced, choose some, and if you choose wrong you may look greedy or stupid". Like, I might like to work up to that, but I've honestly not played enough to do so.

That makes a lot of sense, and I am sure I am thinking of this much more from a DM than player perspective; I definitely do have the drive for squeezing rulesets for interesting and effective outcomes, but that's far more likely to lead me to nuclear terraforming in Civ III than to thinking about RPGs.

(Incidentally, I am now 224 years into kittengame thanks primarily to the mention of it on your idle-games post a bit ago, and enjoying exploring the ruleset interactions and optimisation space of that immensely.)

And I know some people don't have that problem because they play a tactics-heavy game and do know the pros and cons of various minor advantages. And some people don't have that problem because they don't focus a lot on combat and it doesn't matter if characters are optimised. But it felt more accessible to me.

It certainly sounds so, yes. I shall be interested to see how your experience playing it works out.

[jack]

That's really interesting. I guess something like, potential reasons for feats include:

#1. Balance classes at high level by giving fighters essentially obligatory level-ups.
#2. Create more variety in characters -- a reason to play a whip-fighter rather than a trident-fighter.
#3. More options for optimisation and synergy.

I agree #1 was necessary, but it's not desirable it was necessary. I know *about* it but never played consistently enough to recognise the problem of my own experience. Likewise, I quite like the idea of "wiz, rogue, fighter, cleric", so I think having different sorts of fighter is superior but not necessary to enjoy the game.

I thought that's what _you_ were saying -- if not, how did you use feats, why do you care if feats are granular (or if they exist at all)?

I definitely do have the drive for squeezing rulesets for interesting and effective outcomes, but that's far more likely to lead me to nuclear terraforming in Civ III than to thinking about RPGs.

Likewise -- I love exploiting systems, but most of the time doing that isn't the most enjoyable part of a multi-player game. It's noticeable in magic -- I love the IDEA of discovering a deck which combines lots of previously-ignored cards into something surprisingly unbeatable. But when I actually play, having a tense back-and-forth where both decks do interesting things is usually more fun.

I shall be interested to see how your experience playing it works out.

Thank you, I'll report back if I actually manage to get a game going :)

[seekingferret]

You might also be interested in Legend, a 4Eified remix of 3.5 designed to solve this problem of 3.5 by creating a bunch of balanced, mix-and-matchable level progressions. http://www.ruleofcool.com/ It's a free download on that page.

[rysmiel]

I have visitors for the next week or so but will likely check that out shortly thereafter; thanks for the recommendation.

[jack]

I like that being official, though; that was one of the things I house-ruled leaning on a lot very early on in my time as a DM.

Oh yes, I forgot how it worked in 3.5, there was a one-to-one mapping from con/dex/wis to fort/reflex/will save -- but they were called something else. In 4e, they made each save depend on the better of two abilities, which stopped being a one-to-one mapping. That was good in some ways (it gave you more flexibility to depend on different core attributes) but bad in others (that basically everyone was reasonably ok, there was rarely a drawback of having _bad_ saves).

Having a con/dex/wis save seems to make more sense. You can still get bonuses to it. And IIRC they also have an str/int/cha save (which is used by some things but not much yet). That seems more rounded, albeit more complicated.

[jack]

That's kind of the least appealing thing about what I have heard of 5e to me.

I would basically never have time for a lev-1 to lev-20 campaign, although I wish I had been able to at some point. I like the possibility.

But someone pointed out in 3.5e, it's not so much like "level 1 is Pippin, level 20 is Aragorn", it's more like "level 1 is Pippin, level 5 is Aragorn, level 20 is Manwe wrestling Morgoth personally".

But Pippin->Aragorn seems plenty for 95% of epic journeys. Pippin->Manwe is beyond most people's conceptual scope, difficult to cram into a setting without breaking the settting, and the mechanics which are fun for modelling "Manwe wrestles Morgoth" are often _different_ to the mechanics that are fun for modelling "Pippin wrestles gollum", not just "the same, but everyone does +200 damage".

I've not looked at the higher levels, because I want to ease myself in with low-levels first, so I don't know if it works out mechanically, but the intent seems compatible with "epic journey from never-been-on-an-adventure to hero-of-the-ages", especially if the DM knows to stock the world so the players stick out about the right amount.

[rysmiel]

I would basically never have time for a lev-1 to lev-20 campaign, although I wish I had been able to at some point. I like the possibility.

I came pretty close in four and a bit years in secondary school, and while that was nominally weekly during term time, it was interspersed with other people's games in other generic fantasy settings, bits of Judge Dredd, quite a lot of Talisman and embarrassingly much teenage drama, so it probably took a lot less than half the sessions. And I know I'd manage it better now, I could probably have whacked more than 10% off the running time just by banning summoning spells. (Summoning a couple of small earth elementals to help fight a band of goblins slows things down a little. "This round I will summon a warrior angel with half a dozen special abilities, and next round a brass dragon with half a dozen other special abilities, and next round a titan with more special abilities again, to fight the Big Bad and his set of henchmen with all their special abilities" just turns into a quagmire.)

The first couple of Pathfinder Adventure Paths run level 1 to 20, at the fastest advancement rate 3.5 supports or the even faster default Pathfinder rate; the next few run 1 to 17 or so on the grounds that the very top end has relatively few players interested in it and also tendency to turn into a morass. I have looked through some of those and thought about them in detail, as both fomorian and zorinth are playing and/or DMing them with the sort of modifications that need a lot of thinking through.

But someone pointed out in 3.5e, it's not so much like "level 1 is Pippin, level 20 is Aragorn", it's more like "level 1 is Pippin, level 5 is Aragorn, level 20 is Manwe wrestling Morgoth personally".

That feels like a bit of an exaggeration to me; certainly the latter would feel more like the kind of thing you'd want to be a fair way into the old 2e Immortals rules (which I never got to DM) than your regular characters capped at level 36.

But Pippin->Aragorn seems plenty for 95% of epic journeys.

I suppose so. I'd like to be able to cap out at a Hercules or Cuchulainn scale, myself. Have rules that reasonably support "nigh-demigod cutting through army of mooks to reach arch-villain" without having to roll for each and every orc along the way, sort of thing.

Pippin->Manwe is beyond most people's conceptual scope, difficult to cram into a setting without breaking the settting, and the mechanics which are fun for modelling "Manwe wrestles Morgoth" are often _different_ to the mechanics that are fun for modelling "Pippin wrestles gollum", not just "the same, but everyone does +200 damage".

Agreed entirely with your third point, and I've yet to see a system that felt to handle that scale really well at all, let alone in ways that flow organically from lower levels; Eternity Publishing (which is one guy, who unfortunately seems to have named his company after how long it takes him to get anything done) has some very high-level stuff that feels to me just from reading like 70% of an excellent game. (The other 30% being either incomplete, or really really strange.) As for your first, I don't feel I have a sample size to judge either way; as for characters that powerful breaking the setting, that to my mind is what Outer Planes are for.

[jack]

Oh cool. I'm glad you had the chance to do a full-distance campaign (what was it like?) I'd certainly _like_ to, just not enough to devote more than a year to it, especially with the chance of people having to drop in and out.

Sorry, I think I am exaggerating a bit with the range of 3e, I think what you say is basically reasonable, but I think it made sense to narrow the range, and it's possible they've gone too far, but I still like that they have.

[ptc24]

I had a go at 5e; I never played 4e but it looked a lot like it was trying to be an MMO - a lot of very World of Warcraft-like stuff. 5e seems to have kept the good bits while not being quite so artificial. Which is good: if I wanted to play an MMO, I'd play one on the computer so it kept track of the paperwork.

The system seemed to work; the module that was being run was less inspiring. It felt a bit too much like a computer RPG in the Baldur's Gate style, but without the main-character driven plot to hold it together. Again, something where if I wanted to play a game like that I'd play it on the computer.

[seekingferret]

I never played 4e but it looked a lot like it was trying to be an MMO

I've seen that criticism a good deal, but I've never thought it was quite right. 4E definitely borrows a lot of mechanics from MMOs, but that doesn't mean it plays the same way. Even mechanics that are completely identical to MMO mechanics don't end up playing exactly the same when you're at the table, and there is a lot more to 4E than just the pure mechanics.

4E is definitely a system where you ought to use a computer to generate your character sheets, but I've never found managing powers at the table very difficult. And the real meat of 4E, as with any rpg, is in how it gives you tools to inhabit characters. Fights in 4E aren't just tactical, they're flavorful, and that endows a combat-oriented game with a lot of character heft.

[jack]

What did you like about the flavour?

I've only played 4e briefly, but some things I definitely liked, that fighters could be as interestingly specialised as wizards, that enemies were statted to be fun to play against, not to use the same system as PCs, that everyone's powers were clearly spelled out on the character sheet, etc.

But the things that bugged me were things that seemed to put mechanics front-and-centre and inhibit anything else. There was a low-level power that dropped an enemy through a portal to a hell-dimension, and then brought him back having suffered 1d6 damage less than a turn later. I was just like, how can you EVER do that and not think "well, maybe it would be more effective if I _didn't_ bring her back"?

And I loved the idea of minions, of streamlining combat against low-level enemies, but it's the sort of thing where your character loses out unless they choose powers based on specific knowledge of the game mechanics, which is hard to make flavourful.

[seekingferret]

I was just like, how can you EVER do that and not think "well, maybe it would be more effective if I _didn't_ bring her back"?

It's not that hard to make sense of that. Perhaps it takes magical energy to keep them in the hell dimension, and you're not so much bringing them back as stopping keeping them there. As soon as you release the portal, they revert back. There are ten other explanations I could come up with... the 4E powers are specific, but they're not THAT specific that they don't give you room to imagine how they work. My favorite 4E GM liked to ask his players after they first deployed a power, "What does it look like to you?"

What I like about 4E's powers in combat is that in earlier versions of D&D, there's lots of flexibility outside of combat, but once you're in combat, there's not all that much you can do but "I hit it with my axe". Ben Lehman had a post on G+ a while back where he argued that old school D&D was effectively a game about figuring out the most creative ways to avoid combat. And sure, there are many techniques you can use to make an old school D&D fight more dynamic. You can describe how when you're rolling your attack roll, you're really jabbing with your left hand, or swinging your axe over your head, or feinting to lure in your opponent and then counterstriking, but mechanically it'll always be the same. In 4E, by default, every move you make in combat is flavorful. Every move you make is a specific maneuver that is part of the larger story, and the more moves you make, the more colorful and interesting a fighter you are.

And that means that even the kinds of players who are purely gamist, tactical players, who are just into D&D for the optimization and the beating monsters and aren't that interested in advancing stories, are enlisted in the storytelling. They can't help it- the rules require them to do storywise interesting things.

The thing that gets people stuck on 4E, though, is the way the rules enforce a hard line between in-combat and out-of-combat. And that is a problem, and I think it's a rule that ought to be ignored. By RAW you get into the weird situation where you can cast an encounter power fireball that does X damage, but if you're not in combat and you need to get through an ice wall, you don't have any tools to apply. Every 4E DM, IMO, needs to figure out a set of adjudications for using encounter powers in non-combat encounters that actually works.

[rysmiel]

that enemies were statted to be fun to play against, not to use the same system as PCs

Heh. This may reflect our age difference, but the "hey, you can give character levels to monsters" innovation in 3e over the 2e "First you'll be up to fighting goblins, then orcs, then hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, trolls, and hill giants in that order. Theoretically you could have gnolls or people of lizard instead of the orcs but from the context that would pretty much require an understanding of the wilderness rules and nobody likes those. Dragons do come in different sizes, but that range goes from terrifyingly dangerous to really terrifyingly dangerous so do not expect to see one any time soon." paradigm was a real plus. I can see the point of having a streamlined mechanism for generating mooks and minions so that every 4th-level henchman of the 10th-level villain doesn't take as long to stat up as a PC, but you can do that within the broad ambit of 3e with things like Pathfinder's non-player classes.

[damerell]

Re battlemap vs winging it: ISTR that 3e was much more winging-it, where 3.5e (with a view to videogames?) entirely formalised everything around an assumption that you would necessarily use a battlemap.

TBH, I mostly appreciated that. It's way easier to wing it with battlemap rules than vice versa, and also one of D&D's strengths has always been as a mix of roleplaying and tactical skirmish wargaming, which a battlemap formalisation is good for.

That said, I got caught by a case of "surely I can do X", as above - but with the rules against me. If you run away from the rest of the party, you don't actually get a head start, no matter how much you should reasonably have taken them a bit by surprise. Next round, whoever chases you gets the same move you did last round, and bingo! they caught you.

[jack]

ISTR that 3e was much more winging-it, where 3.5e (with a view to videogames?) entirely formalised everything

I'm sure you're right, I never played before 3.5e. But my impression was that the rules were written so you _could_ play 3.5e on a battlemap but lots of people didn't, whereas 4e really doesn't work unless you do.

It's way easier to wing it with battlemap rules than vice versa

I find it hard to compare. The advantage of battlemaps is that they avoid problems like "wait, how far away is she again" and "uh, so which way did you say the chasm goes again?" which are hard to avoid otherwise.

But I found playing with battlemaps had problems I really didn't like. That it can be hard to draw an interesting map on-the-fly, so if combat happens anywhere except a scripted encounter, it grinds the game to a halt while someone draws a map, you can end up with a map which isn't more interesting than "you run towards each other and keep hacking until someone is dead", and it's easy for the GM to make the same sort of scale mistakes which are harder to fudge, like "wait, I drew this a reasonable size room, I thought, but now the PCs can run anywhere in the house in less than one round".

That's partly my inexperience, but it's why I didn't like it.

I got caught by a case of "surely I can do X", as above

Oh dear, yes, that's really annoying. It makes me think of: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8406/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-are-you-sure-you-want-to-do-that

I can think of several ways that _could_ be adjudicated if everyone is on the same page (a full round run action, a surprise round, a skill-based chase scene), but the rules-as-written simply don't cover chasing at all well.

[rysmiel]

if combat happens anywhere except a scripted encounter

Ah, right. There's a difference in playstyle; I've never had any time for random encounters. I've probably spent embarrassingly many hours figuring out how many of what monsters could live in a specific space players were exploring and what they all ate and how they interacted in order to figure out some plausible-enough-for-me encounters for players on the way through that space from significant location A to significant location B, where less obsessive DMs would just roll on a random encounter table.

[jack]

I like your approach, but I didn't mean so much random encounters[1], as "the negotiation breaks down and someone draws a sword" or "suddenly the guard are swarming all over you" or "the players flee in an unexpected direction from the orcs and stumble into the swamp-beast's lair, where you didn't expect them to reach for four sessions" or whatever -- it's nice if the GM can combine bits of prep into something that works reasonably well on the fly, and it means there's much less pressure to stick to what the GM expected.

[damerell]

I don't know to what degree that's a function of the 3.5e rules and to what degree it's down to most of the players having played the much less battlemappy 3e rules.

And yeah, you can't win. No battlemap, hilarious misunderstandings of the terrain. Battlemap, you can't surreptitiously fiddle things.

When Andrew was running a modern-era spy game we always had a battlemap; PCs and NPCs were represented by upturned bottlecaps with a legend inscribed on each. This did impose the curious constraint that it was easier to have a fight scene near the end of the session when more beer had been drunk.

That's an interesting article, although (as you will gather) the really vexing cases are when the big reveal is a couple of rounds later.