Story-Level Skill Challenges and Building Player Choices
Posted 10th December 2008 at 06:36 PM by Radiating Gnome
In my previous blog, I talked about the differences between Scene- and Story- level skill challenges -- and I mentioned the idea that a key ingredient is player choice. Building those choices well -- and making interesting choices for our players -- is an important part of building good challenges.
In a Scene level challenge, as I said, the choices tend to be much more tactical -- climb the wall, bluff the guard, or hide under hay in a wagon to get into the fortress. Players have, in the core rules, lots of ways to get a feel for what they can try and how successful they may be.
In Story-level challenges, though, it's much harder for the players to make those sorts of choices because decisions and choices need to be made based on the setting and story much more than they do on the game rules. Suddenly we are asking players to make these choices based on what they get from the DM, not what they get from the books.
And that's why, when I read Mike Mearls writing about skill challenges and recommending that we "start early" so the players have more options, I start to see potential problems waiting in the wings. It's not black and white, there's a whole lot of gray area between scene and story level challenges, but moving back away from the Scene level, to open up more options, moves players away from choices based on their abilities as defined in the rules and towards choices based on the setting and story.
So, the important question I'm trying to get to is "How do you build Story-Level Skill Challenges Well?"
Let them do the math
This is a very important point, something that is really, really easy to miss, but it can make a big difference. For example, lets imagine this bit of dialog:
He did that because it's easier for the DM to prepare for three choices (and he can probably guess which one the players will choose given the way he framed the choices) and because it's actually easier to give the players this distilled information in this way.
Now, consider this slight variation.
Of course, that's not perfect. But the trick is to give the PCs bits of observable information, not conclusions. Don't tell them the inn has been set on fire by brigands, tell them that the inn is burning, with fires growing in both the barn and on the second floor, and the flames are spreading very quickly. Let them come to their own conclusions.
Avoid Blocks of Exposition
Here's the ideal I think we all want to be driving towards:
The trick is trying to give the players tons of backstory and setting information without boring the snot out of them. And, don't get me wrong, it's not easy. If your players are like mine, you'll see their eyes glaze over before you get to your second sentence of prepared text description of a room or scene. That's not all players, of course, but it has been my experience that because we don't engage players enough on this sort of story level, and they don't need the information in the setting and backstory information to make the sorts of choices that will be important in the next scene (because those choices will be based on the rules and their character's abilities, not on the setting or story), there is no need for the players to pay attention.
So, how do you deliver information without exposition? In small bites, over time. As you get started with new settings and NPCs, you're going to need to feed your PCs the information they need, as the DM in the second example does, but as your campaign matures, the players should start to build up enough information about the world that they can start to fill in some of the details themselves. With that in mind, I'd suggest that you structure your campaign so you keep important NPCs -- allies and enemies -- around for a while, rather than disposing of them after a single scene or adventure. While you're doing that . .
1. Give each NPC a passion or interest that sets them apart, even if you're not sure what use that will be down the line. We read a lot of advice about giving our NPCs quirks and details like a lisp or a scar to help distinguish them -- and those help -- but it's hard to imagine how that might prove useful to the players down the line. But give the king a passion for hunting, give the Steward a hunger for cash, and give the captain of the guard a grudge against the PCs, and you've got fodder that can prove useful down the line.
2. Don't be subtle. Remember, this is a detail you're hoping that the players will remember weeks from now. You could remind them, sure, but it's more fun for them and for you if they remember on their own, so don't mess around with these details. Don't give more than one to an NPC, and be more obvious than you think you need to be.
3. Let them do the math. Once again, you need to engage the players by giving them information that asks them to come to their own conclusion, rather than feeding them the conclusion. It doesn't have to be a big leap, but asking them to connect even a few simple dots will cement the detail in their minds. So, in roleplaying the King, don't have the king walk around saying "Boy, I just love to hunt. Don't you love to hunt? I wish I could hunt every day." Instead, have him introduce the players to his master of the hunt, who is the most well-dressed and equipped NPC in the king's retinue. And show the PCs his hounds, in their kennels, where his dogs live on the same food that he feeds to his servants. You give them a detail they can observe, and leave them some room to figure out that the king loves to hunt.
Of course, if you're going to plant these sorts of seeds, you're going to need to keep settings and npcs around for a while -- if you adventure in a totally new location, with new NPCs every week, it's harder to build up these sorts of details unless you do so on an organizational level (an order of knights, a guild of thieves, a coven of witches, all that seem to keep turning up). So, part of the recommendation here is to think about keeping your settings and NPCs around for more than a single session.
So, How Does This Relate to Skill Challenges, Exactly?
We need to roll back to the idea of these sorts of Story-level Skill Challenges. Rather than putting the PCs in front of a scene and say "now you have to talk the guards into letting you in to see the king" we are being asked to back up and present the players with "You need to talk to the king, what do you want to try to get to see him?"
And, I think that's a good idea, but I'm arguing that it's hard to do well, and the more we pull back away from the scene, the less we have in the core rules to help us. And I'm recommending that you don't plunk a couple of pre-digegsted and prepared choices in front of the players, but that you give them observational sorts of information that they can use to make their own judgements. And I'm recommending that you plant seeds in your campaign that you can hope will pay off later.
But, seriously, how the heck do I do that? And once I do, I'm going to be opening up a whole flood of new ideas and options that my screwball players are going to come up with -- how do I handle that as a DM? How do I prepare?
That, I'm going to have to leave until my next blog entry.
In a Scene level challenge, as I said, the choices tend to be much more tactical -- climb the wall, bluff the guard, or hide under hay in a wagon to get into the fortress. Players have, in the core rules, lots of ways to get a feel for what they can try and how successful they may be.
In Story-level challenges, though, it's much harder for the players to make those sorts of choices because decisions and choices need to be made based on the setting and story much more than they do on the game rules. Suddenly we are asking players to make these choices based on what they get from the DM, not what they get from the books.
And that's why, when I read Mike Mearls writing about skill challenges and recommending that we "start early" so the players have more options, I start to see potential problems waiting in the wings. It's not black and white, there's a whole lot of gray area between scene and story level challenges, but moving back away from the Scene level, to open up more options, moves players away from choices based on their abilities as defined in the rules and towards choices based on the setting and story.
So, the important question I'm trying to get to is "How do you build Story-Level Skill Challenges Well?"
Let them do the math
This is a very important point, something that is really, really easy to miss, but it can make a big difference. For example, lets imagine this bit of dialog:
DM: "Well, guys, you need to find a way to get in to talk to the king. You could probably go talk to the captain of the guard and convince him to take you to see the king, you could figure out where he goes hunting and wait for him in the woods, or maybe you could bribe a servant to get you into the palace."That works -- it gets the job done, the players have decided where to go next. But it's boring, and no one is going to remember it. The problem is that the players have not had to work at all to make that decision -- they're only engaged mentally with making the decision on the most basic level, and they are not given the opportunity by the DM to come up with solutions that the DM may not have considered. There are, after all, many more than three ways to get in to see the king, but because of the way the DM framed the situation, he artificially created a set of three choices.
Player: "Well, we have good stealth, so lets go wait in the woods."
He did that because it's easier for the DM to prepare for three choices (and he can probably guess which one the players will choose given the way he framed the choices) and because it's actually easier to give the players this distilled information in this way.
Now, consider this slight variation.
DM: "Well, guys, you need to talk to the King. You know that the king likes to hunt, that he goes to the temple once a week for mass, that the household servants are resentfully underpaid, and that the captain of the guard, who controls who gets in to see the king, hates you for that thing you did last week. How do you want to get in to see the king?"In this case the DM has provided the same basic set of limited options, but he's done so in a way that offers the players information that they have to interpret to get to their actual choices. This does open up the field of options -- for example, lets say the players still latch on to the hunting idea and want to use that as a way to reach the king. Because the DM didn't suggest "you hide in the woods" they still have a ton of creative options available to them. They could start to spread rumors about a white stag, hoping to get the king to come out to a place they indicate in their rumors. Or they could set up one of the party members as a famous huntsman from another country, come to visit. That starts to bring in other skills and ideas, and it gives the players room to create and shape their options that they did not have in the first case.
Of course, that's not perfect. But the trick is to give the PCs bits of observable information, not conclusions. Don't tell them the inn has been set on fire by brigands, tell them that the inn is burning, with fires growing in both the barn and on the second floor, and the flames are spreading very quickly. Let them come to their own conclusions.
Avoid Blocks of Exposition
Here's the ideal I think we all want to be driving towards:
DM: "Well, guys, you need to talk to the King. How are you going to get some time with him?"What's different about this one? The DM didn't need to give the players any information to help them decide what their next move, they already knew the information they needed. Of course, that information came to them from the DM, but it has probably been delivered over the course of several encounters and scenes that have already taken place. The further back the player has to go to find the key piece of information that he needs to come up with the solution for the situation they're in, the more they feel like they've created something new and interesting in the story.
Player: "Well, we could just go up and talk to the captain of the guards, but he doesn't like us much. Bribery might work, but there's a good chance we'll get caught, and money is tight anyway. How about we arrange to accidentally encounter him in the woods when he's out hunting? Can we manage that?"
The trick is trying to give the players tons of backstory and setting information without boring the snot out of them. And, don't get me wrong, it's not easy. If your players are like mine, you'll see their eyes glaze over before you get to your second sentence of prepared text description of a room or scene. That's not all players, of course, but it has been my experience that because we don't engage players enough on this sort of story level, and they don't need the information in the setting and backstory information to make the sorts of choices that will be important in the next scene (because those choices will be based on the rules and their character's abilities, not on the setting or story), there is no need for the players to pay attention.
So, how do you deliver information without exposition? In small bites, over time. As you get started with new settings and NPCs, you're going to need to feed your PCs the information they need, as the DM in the second example does, but as your campaign matures, the players should start to build up enough information about the world that they can start to fill in some of the details themselves. With that in mind, I'd suggest that you structure your campaign so you keep important NPCs -- allies and enemies -- around for a while, rather than disposing of them after a single scene or adventure. While you're doing that . .
1. Give each NPC a passion or interest that sets them apart, even if you're not sure what use that will be down the line. We read a lot of advice about giving our NPCs quirks and details like a lisp or a scar to help distinguish them -- and those help -- but it's hard to imagine how that might prove useful to the players down the line. But give the king a passion for hunting, give the Steward a hunger for cash, and give the captain of the guard a grudge against the PCs, and you've got fodder that can prove useful down the line.
2. Don't be subtle. Remember, this is a detail you're hoping that the players will remember weeks from now. You could remind them, sure, but it's more fun for them and for you if they remember on their own, so don't mess around with these details. Don't give more than one to an NPC, and be more obvious than you think you need to be.
3. Let them do the math. Once again, you need to engage the players by giving them information that asks them to come to their own conclusion, rather than feeding them the conclusion. It doesn't have to be a big leap, but asking them to connect even a few simple dots will cement the detail in their minds. So, in roleplaying the King, don't have the king walk around saying "Boy, I just love to hunt. Don't you love to hunt? I wish I could hunt every day." Instead, have him introduce the players to his master of the hunt, who is the most well-dressed and equipped NPC in the king's retinue. And show the PCs his hounds, in their kennels, where his dogs live on the same food that he feeds to his servants. You give them a detail they can observe, and leave them some room to figure out that the king loves to hunt.
Of course, if you're going to plant these sorts of seeds, you're going to need to keep settings and npcs around for a while -- if you adventure in a totally new location, with new NPCs every week, it's harder to build up these sorts of details unless you do so on an organizational level (an order of knights, a guild of thieves, a coven of witches, all that seem to keep turning up). So, part of the recommendation here is to think about keeping your settings and NPCs around for more than a single session.
So, How Does This Relate to Skill Challenges, Exactly?
We need to roll back to the idea of these sorts of Story-level Skill Challenges. Rather than putting the PCs in front of a scene and say "now you have to talk the guards into letting you in to see the king" we are being asked to back up and present the players with "You need to talk to the king, what do you want to try to get to see him?"
And, I think that's a good idea, but I'm arguing that it's hard to do well, and the more we pull back away from the scene, the less we have in the core rules to help us. And I'm recommending that you don't plunk a couple of pre-digegsted and prepared choices in front of the players, but that you give them observational sorts of information that they can use to make their own judgements. And I'm recommending that you plant seeds in your campaign that you can hope will pay off later.
But, seriously, how the heck do I do that? And once I do, I'm going to be opening up a whole flood of new ideas and options that my screwball players are going to come up with -- how do I handle that as a DM? How do I prepare?
That, I'm going to have to leave until my next blog entry.
Total Comments 10
Comments
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This is a great blog entry.
It's something I know I need to work on - my players seem to have problems remembering which NPC is which sometimes.Posted 11th December 2008 at 04:30 PM by Mathew_Freeman
- Man... your blog seems to sometimes be less of a blog, and more of a "this is how you DM a big-story, involved, majestic sweeping campaign". And it rocks! Do you need us to contribute ideas? Like your players, we'll need obvious requests if that's what you're interested in or hoping for. If you've pretty much got it under control, that's cool too. Either way, I look forward to the next entry. These are GREAT for someone who knows he'll be DMing in several months, and has lots of time to prepare and think.Posted 12th December 2008 at 02:15 PM by dammitbiscuit
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I'm glad it's helpful -- as far as I'm concerned, this is just sort of me thinking out loud.
But, I don't mean for this to just be useful for people who are thinking about a campaign they'll run in the future -- the next entry, which I'm working on, is going to be about creating a skill challenge without being able to count on the "ideal" situation, where your players remember NPCs and setting details that will help them come up with solutions on their own. After all, I think that's where most of us are -- but I think it's important to see the ideal at the end of the line so we know what we'd ultimately like to achieve someday.Posted 12th December 2008 at 03:21 PM by Radiating Gnome - I agree with pretty much everything you write here... But on the issue of how to give out observational information... Isn't the way to give this sort of information through the knowledge and streetwise checks?
I'm under the impression that the idea is that if you have something like:
The execution of that in game would be:Quote:DM: "Well, guys, you need to talk to the King. You know that the king likes to hunt, that he goes to the temple once a week for mass, that the household servants are resentfully underpaid, and that the captain of the guard, who controls who gets in to see the king, hates you for that thing you did last week. How do you want to get in to see the king?"
---
DM: "Well, guys, you need to talk to the King. How would you like to approach this? You can use your investigative and social skills to find otu more about the situation."
P1: "Ok, I use streetwise ask around the taverns and my street contacts for who knows any particular info about this king."
DM: "Sure, thanks to your high Streetwise roll you know that the king likes to hunt, specifically for deer in the osuthern part of the woods."
P2: "Can I make a Diplomacy check to chat up the guards and get some info?"
DM: "Of course.. hmm you rolled a bit low, so on chatting with the guard you find out that there's some kind of problem between the king and his servants, but you don't find out exactly what."
P3: "Can I make a Religion check if it's relevant at all?"
DM: "Actually in this case it is! Ok with that roll, you know that if the King wishes to appear in control and following tradition, he simply must visit Temple every single Tuesday morning, or people would start to talk."
P1: "Hmm, I think we should wait for him when he goes to Temple."
P2: "You sure? We all have decent nature checks, maybe we should go for the woods."
P3: "Yeah I agree with the woods"
P1: "Ah, ok woods it is then. We're going to the woods!"
DM: "Alright, as you settle into the trees to wait for the king..."
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Isn't this how it's supposed to be already? It follows from "starting the challenge earlier", in that why would you start with them knowing all that stuff when you could easily include a round for them to suss out all or part of the information by themselves?
Smashing info otherwise though, I can tell you're making some awesome challenges already for your players.Posted 13th December 2008 at 04:24 PM by Harr - I'm working on the next blog post which addresses a lot of the stuff you're asking about -- but what you're saying is right, I think, there are skill checks involved there.
It would be nice, though, to not have the players only connect on the generic "I make a streetwise check" sort of way -- I'd much rather have the players describe what they are doing as "I'm going to go ask around with my drinking buddies at the Grapes to see what they can tell me about the King". Yeah, that's mostly just window dressing, on the surface -- but it also means that they player at least remembered that there's an Inn in the city called the grapes and he has friends there. That speaks of a greater connection to the story and setting -- and that's hard to create, but I think it can be worked towards.
In your example . . . I would be paying a little more attention to the source of the information and what can actually be delivered from that source. So, the religion check result was:
This isn't really observational -- it's an interpretation. Practically mind-reading. Whomever is delivering this information to the players is telling the players what the King wishes, what the King thinks, and that's not strictly observational. Even if the King walked down the street and told everyone what his wishes were, that would only be what he SAYS his wishes are, which should probably not be confused with what his actual wises are.Quote:the King wishes to appear in control and following tradition, he simply must visit Temple every single Tuesday morning, or people would start to talk.
I can see two options here (that I'm talking about in the next blog entry in more detail) -- to either restrict the information gathered to more observational stuff:
Or you could invest a little more in this piece of information -- and this source. Interpretation is valid so long as the player can understand that it's the interpretation of the NPC, and not the grand truth as delivered by the DM. The person delivering this interpretation can have a dramatic influence on what is actually delivered . . .Quote:The King follows tradition and visits Temple every single Tuesday morning.
orQuote:Redgar the city guard scowls and spits. "The King wishes to appear in control, and to make everything look like things are stable, so he still makes his traditional visit to Temple every single Tuesday morning. No help for him there, though. Useless bugger. So I spend two hours standing outside the damn temple, rain or shine, every godsdamn Tuesday."
Those are gross examples of what you can do when you start investing the information with personality. That's not the right thing to do for every bit of information, obviously -- it would be exhausting -- but my recommendation is that if you need to deliver interpretative information to the PCs, that you do so with a clearly defined personality that helps the PCs understand the interpretation for what it is.Quote:Lidda, seamstress to a local noblewoman, titters and hides her mouth behind a cupped hand. "Its not like he has every be religious, you know. My mistress tells me that he goes there to watch the choir boys -- that he has always preferred boys, if you know what I mean. My mistress tried going at the same time, for a short time. She stopped suddenly, and we've never been back."Posted 13th December 2008 at 04:52 PM by Radiating Gnome - Hm, maybe the example itself is causing confusion. I didn't say that the king *wishes* to appear in control, I said said *if* he wishes to appear in control, he must go to church on Sunday. No mind-reading necessary, that's just religion for ya
. For ex, If I missed church on Sunday I can bet you money that I'd have neighbors asking concerned questions the next day. Then again, I'm Christian and live in a Christan community. I don't think you need to read minds to know that the king NEEDS to be seen at church every week; you just need to be a part of the community that judges him on it. You could say the king follows tradition - but that's just it. He's the King. He doesn't have a choice. He HAS to be there.
Still, point taken, and that temple stuff is just different points of view anyway, totally subjective thing. Maybe in another setting a king could have the option of whether he's religious or not.
On the calling for checks vs descriptions thing, I've never been able to get them do that, short of literally coming out and saying "You need to give me a description without mentioning any skill", which I did, and that didn't work out so well. I don't think the whole skill challenge mechanic encourages doing it either - actually I think it discourages it. If you know your action is going to be subsequently linked to a skill check, you won't be able to help looking at your skill list to choose your action in the first place, and then what's the point... unless the players don't know they're in a SC in the first place? I've seen some people proposing that on the forums.
Anyway I think we have very different styles of DMing... I keep everything strictly third-person and wouldn't touch talking like a narrator in a book with a ten foot pole! But still, the whole SC phenomenon is something that can help any kind of DM, I think.
I'd be interested to hear how you've dealt with the 'exponential branching' part of making the challenges. It's one of the things that always gets me when I prep... I will lay down a first scene, which can go three ways. Each of those three ways can go three ways themselves. Which is already starting to look like a lot of work. And I had hopes to do a three-scene challenge. And two challenges in that session. That's 54 branches right there.
The obvious solution is to have the different paths in one scene end up at the same next scene anyway. But then what's the point of that. Or you could change the dressing but the scene is the same anyway, ie, we're at the forest/temple/blacksmith/throne room with the king, and we have to convince him of X. If we were at any of the other places it would be the same convincing we'd have to do. This is an issue I have with Mearls's advice as well.Posted 13th December 2008 at 05:53 PM by Harr - Damn, read too fast, missed a detail. Very sorry to misquote you.Quote:Hm, maybe the example itself is causing confusion. I didn't say that the king *wishes* to appear in control, I said said *if* he wishes to appear in control, he must go to church on Sunday. No mind-reading necessary, that's just religion for ya .Posted 13th December 2008 at 05:55 PM by Radiating Gnome
- To be fair, my players respond that way most of the time, too. This whole series of blog entries is trying to lay out -- in my own mind as much as anyone elses (I'm perpetually dumbfounded that anyone reads this) -- what I think makes a good skill challenge, given the directions that the official stuff seems to be going (articles on the Wizards site, posts here on the forums, etc).Quote:On the calling for checks vs descriptions thing, I've never been able to get them do that, short of literally coming out and saying "You need to give me a description without mentioning any skill", which I did, and that didn't work out so well. I don't think the whole skill challenge mechanic encourages doing it either - actually I think it discourages it. If you know your action is going to be subsequently linked to a skill check, you won't be able to help looking at your skill list to choose your action in the first place, and then what's the point... unless the players don't know they're in a SC in the first place? I've seen some people proposing that on the forums.
As for delivering skill challenges w/out letting the players know they're in a challenge -- I'm not a fan of that at all. IMO, if you hide the SC superstructure from the players, then as a DM you're just using a rules system for something that in previous editions you would just decide. BY sharing the superstructure with the players we make it possible for them to play those scenes as a game the same way they play combat as a game -- and we can get the same sort of engagement. Theoretically.
I do drift back and forth between speaking in character for my NPCs and speaking as DM . . . not everyone likes to do that. The embarrassing truth is my NPCs all seem to have the exact same random inconsistent accent . . .Quote:Anyway I think we have very different styles of DMing... I keep everything strictly third-person and wouldn't touch talking like a narrator in a book with a ten foot pole! But still, the whole SC phenomenon is something that can help any kind of DM, I think.
I have a whole blog entry planned for the near future on ad libbing . . . . that's the way I think this needs to drift if we're going to keep the work load reasonable.Quote:I'd be interested to hear how you've dealt with the 'exponential branching' part of making the challenges. It's one of the things that always gets me when I prep... I will lay down a first scene, which can go three ways. Each of those three ways can go three ways themselves. Which is already starting to look like a lot of work. And I had hopes to do a three-scene challenge. And two challenges in that session. That's 54 branches right there.Posted 13th December 2008 at 06:03 PM by Radiating Gnome - The problem of communicating the vision you have in your mind as DM is a big one -- and well worth spending some serious time thinking about. And it's not just about skill challenges.
For example, in a recent session of my home game, my players faced an encounter where they were trying to get into a keep. The gate was closed and archers defended the keep from behind arrow slits. In my view, there were crenelated walls on either side of the gate house, and there were doors there that allowed entry into the gate house. Climbing the wall was an option I really expected my players to see and take advantage of.
But somehow between drawing the map, describing the scene to them, the whole table full of players missed the idea that the tops of the walls were open and they could probably climb the walls.
The first thing I have to do, thinking back on that scene, is to admit to myself that if the whole table full of players misses a key detail like that, it's my problem, not theirs. Then I have to seriously look at what I do to try to describe scenes to the players.
Now, that was a combat scene with a map and figures and some very concrete tools to help describe it to the players -- when you start to think about skill challenges, where the players depend entirely (or almost entirely) on your verbal description of the situation to discover options, then it really does seem important to pay very close attention to the way you present those details -- and to try to write them in a way that opens up possibilities rather than shutting them down.Posted 15th December 2008 at 01:52 PM by Radiating Gnome -
This is some great stuff. I've found that it's worth getting characters to think about their actions first, skills second.
"What do you want to do?" as opposed to "What skill do you want to use?"
You'll get things that can't neccesarily be covered by skills, but that's what you want -- if the players are making a good choice that leads them to a bonus or a free success, the players will feel rewarded and the story will benefit from it as well.Posted 8th January 2009 at 04:15 PM by gamefiend
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