On the "D&D experience - all roads lead to Rome" thread, there has been some discussion of how the game mechanics of a system relate to the fiction - the imaginary envents that are happening in the gameworld.
I thought I'd start a new thread with some actual play examples of how this worked out in my 4e game yesterday and see what others think about the matter. (With apologies for some cross-posting from posts 227 and 229 of that other thread.)
The bear encounter
The scenario I ran yesterday (from the Eden Odyssesy d20 book called "Wonders Out of Time") called for a Large bear.
I wasn't sure exactly how many 10th level PCs would be facing it at once, and so in prepping I placed a single elite level 13 dire bear, rather than a lower level solo bear (a level 7 or 8 solo would be a rough XP equivalent), because I thought the slightly swingier high level elite would produce a more interesting range of outcomes across a wider range of possible PC party size. This is a case, then, of metagame considerations ("How will this play out at the table?") influencing my decisions about how to go about representing the gameworld in mechanical terms.
As it turns out, the whole party encountered the bear. I didn't want to do any re-statting on the fly, so stuck with the level 13 elite. They players decided that their PCs would try to tame and befriend the bear instead of fighting it. To keep the XP and pacing about the same as I'd planned, I decided to run this as a level 13 complexity 2 skill challenge (6 successes before 3 failures). That was another metagame-driven decision.
The ranger and the wizard made Nature checks. The ranger was adjacent, so reached out to the bear. The wizard, however, was at range, giving rise to the question - how does he actually calm the bear? Answer: he used Ghost Sound to make soothing noises and Mage Hand to stroke it. The sorcerer wanted (i) to back away so as not to get slammed in case the bear remained angry, and (ii) to try and intimidate the bear into submission. I (as GM) asked the player how, exactly, the PC was being intimidating while backing up? His answer: he is expending Spark Form (a lightning-based encounter power) to create a show of magical power arcing between his staff and his dagger, that would scare the bear. A successful Intimidate roll confirmed that the light show did indeed tend to subdue rather than enrage the bear.
Here we see that, while mechanics are important, engagment with the fiction is permeating the whole episode, and shaping the way that mechanical resources are deployed and that deployment adjudicated. In particular, it was in virtue of the fictional situation that the wizard player needed to find a mechanical means of using Nature at range, and that the sorcerer player needed to find a mechanical means of using Intimidate while backing away.
The water weird
The PCs were investigating a hot spring inside a temple bathhouse, and were attacked by a water weird. I had already decided, in my prep notes, to resolve this as a complexity 2 skill challenge ie 6 successes before 3 failures.
The PCs quicly discovered that psychic/Will attacks had no effect - the weird was animated water, with no discernible mind or body. So they decided to (i) try and destroy/move the water, using radiant and thunder attacks, and (ii) to try and plug the spring, by knocking stones down into it and using the thunder attacks to drive them home. (In my prep notes I'd expected the PCs to try and expunge the spirit, and had made some notes on how Religion and Arcana checks might play out. The idea of plugging the spring instead came as a surprise to me.)
The player of the dwarf set up the "plug the spring" idea. On his first turn he considered the situation as I'd described it, and thought "as a strong guy with a big axe my best bet here is to probably plug the spring". I, as GM, then suggested that (i) if he wanted to do that he had to knock off a lot of stone, so I would require him to expend one of his encounter close burst powers, and (ii) to get the stones in the right place would also require a Dungeoneering check. (This is roughly following the model in 4e DMG p 42.)
When the dwarf's next turn came round, the wizard and paladin had already picked up on his idea and done more stuff with the stone. He then went in for (what he hoped would be, and what turned out to be) the last big effort. The player knew what he wanted to do - use Come and Get it to "pull" the water away from the rocks, so he could push the rocks into the holes. I, as GM, suggested that what might make more sense is if, using his skill at timing his polearm strikes in relation to the fluid movement of the battlefield (as exemplified in part by this Come and Get It power), he waited for the water to surge up again and then pushed in the stone. The player liked that, and went for it. He made an Athletics check to keep his footing and act effectively in the water, and an attack roll to actually drive the stone home. Expending Come and Get It meant that the issue of timing was not a problem for that PC (Come and Get It in this context, as in many other occasions of use, acted as a sort of fate point - "my PC's timing perfectly matches the flow of battle" - then as a model of an ingame action like taunting or luring). His checks were successful, and so, as the water surged up over him, the dwarf pushed the rocks home with a sweep of his halberd. (If this check had failed, then the skill challenge as a whole would have failed and the whole temple been flooded by the surging water weird.)
After the party had thus narrowly avoided all being drowned by the weird, the wizard performed a purify water ritual. I don't know if this was memories of AD&D on the part of the player, or just a spontaneous decision.
The decisions by the players in this skill challenge - and I've focused here on the player of the dwarf fighter - were determined by a mixture of thinking about the fictional situation, and looking down their character sheets to see what sorts of abilities they had to bring to bear. While the mechanics were informing the decisions here, I personally don't feel that they did so any more intimately than in (for example) Rolemaster, where players routinely scour the character sheets looking for an applicable skill or spell before deciding how to tackle a situation. A game with a much-stripped down character sheet (especially for fighters), like Basic, would play a bit differently here. I don't have enough experience with 3E to really make a comparison to that system.
And at some points the fiction was clearly the most important consideration: Why did the dwarf jump into the water? Because otherwise how can he manipulate the stones at the bottom of the pool? I think keeping the encounter embedded in the fiction in this sort of way is important to avoid the "dice-rolling exercise" problem.
One challenge in running these sorts of skill challenge is the following difference from D&D combat: Hit point attrition has a certain robust fictional content at a D&D table - everyone knows that we're wearing down the monster, even if the precise nature of that wearing down is a bit up for grabs. Whereas the ingame interpretation of successes in a skill challenge is much more up for grabs every time. Nevertheless, in these sorts of quasi-tactical 6/3 skill challenges I describe the results of successes in such a way as to give a general feel for how things are progressing, and also add a bit of quasi-mechanical commentary - "You feel like you've only just started" vs "You feel like you're pretty close to getting the job done" - to add an extra bit of infromation to the descriptions. So no one was shocked when the dwarf's last move turned out to be the success - even though they weren't 100% sure that it would be - just the same as if he'd struck the killing blow in a combat.
I thought I'd start a new thread with some actual play examples of how this worked out in my 4e game yesterday and see what others think about the matter. (With apologies for some cross-posting from posts 227 and 229 of that other thread.)
The bear encounter
The scenario I ran yesterday (from the Eden Odyssesy d20 book called "Wonders Out of Time") called for a Large bear.
I wasn't sure exactly how many 10th level PCs would be facing it at once, and so in prepping I placed a single elite level 13 dire bear, rather than a lower level solo bear (a level 7 or 8 solo would be a rough XP equivalent), because I thought the slightly swingier high level elite would produce a more interesting range of outcomes across a wider range of possible PC party size. This is a case, then, of metagame considerations ("How will this play out at the table?") influencing my decisions about how to go about representing the gameworld in mechanical terms.
As it turns out, the whole party encountered the bear. I didn't want to do any re-statting on the fly, so stuck with the level 13 elite. They players decided that their PCs would try to tame and befriend the bear instead of fighting it. To keep the XP and pacing about the same as I'd planned, I decided to run this as a level 13 complexity 2 skill challenge (6 successes before 3 failures). That was another metagame-driven decision.
The ranger and the wizard made Nature checks. The ranger was adjacent, so reached out to the bear. The wizard, however, was at range, giving rise to the question - how does he actually calm the bear? Answer: he used Ghost Sound to make soothing noises and Mage Hand to stroke it. The sorcerer wanted (i) to back away so as not to get slammed in case the bear remained angry, and (ii) to try and intimidate the bear into submission. I (as GM) asked the player how, exactly, the PC was being intimidating while backing up? His answer: he is expending Spark Form (a lightning-based encounter power) to create a show of magical power arcing between his staff and his dagger, that would scare the bear. A successful Intimidate roll confirmed that the light show did indeed tend to subdue rather than enrage the bear.
Here we see that, while mechanics are important, engagment with the fiction is permeating the whole episode, and shaping the way that mechanical resources are deployed and that deployment adjudicated. In particular, it was in virtue of the fictional situation that the wizard player needed to find a mechanical means of using Nature at range, and that the sorcerer player needed to find a mechanical means of using Intimidate while backing away.
The water weird
The PCs were investigating a hot spring inside a temple bathhouse, and were attacked by a water weird. I had already decided, in my prep notes, to resolve this as a complexity 2 skill challenge ie 6 successes before 3 failures.
The PCs quicly discovered that psychic/Will attacks had no effect - the weird was animated water, with no discernible mind or body. So they decided to (i) try and destroy/move the water, using radiant and thunder attacks, and (ii) to try and plug the spring, by knocking stones down into it and using the thunder attacks to drive them home. (In my prep notes I'd expected the PCs to try and expunge the spirit, and had made some notes on how Religion and Arcana checks might play out. The idea of plugging the spring instead came as a surprise to me.)
The player of the dwarf set up the "plug the spring" idea. On his first turn he considered the situation as I'd described it, and thought "as a strong guy with a big axe my best bet here is to probably plug the spring". I, as GM, then suggested that (i) if he wanted to do that he had to knock off a lot of stone, so I would require him to expend one of his encounter close burst powers, and (ii) to get the stones in the right place would also require a Dungeoneering check. (This is roughly following the model in 4e DMG p 42.)
When the dwarf's next turn came round, the wizard and paladin had already picked up on his idea and done more stuff with the stone. He then went in for (what he hoped would be, and what turned out to be) the last big effort. The player knew what he wanted to do - use Come and Get it to "pull" the water away from the rocks, so he could push the rocks into the holes. I, as GM, suggested that what might make more sense is if, using his skill at timing his polearm strikes in relation to the fluid movement of the battlefield (as exemplified in part by this Come and Get It power), he waited for the water to surge up again and then pushed in the stone. The player liked that, and went for it. He made an Athletics check to keep his footing and act effectively in the water, and an attack roll to actually drive the stone home. Expending Come and Get It meant that the issue of timing was not a problem for that PC (Come and Get It in this context, as in many other occasions of use, acted as a sort of fate point - "my PC's timing perfectly matches the flow of battle" - then as a model of an ingame action like taunting or luring). His checks were successful, and so, as the water surged up over him, the dwarf pushed the rocks home with a sweep of his halberd. (If this check had failed, then the skill challenge as a whole would have failed and the whole temple been flooded by the surging water weird.)
After the party had thus narrowly avoided all being drowned by the weird, the wizard performed a purify water ritual. I don't know if this was memories of AD&D on the part of the player, or just a spontaneous decision.
The decisions by the players in this skill challenge - and I've focused here on the player of the dwarf fighter - were determined by a mixture of thinking about the fictional situation, and looking down their character sheets to see what sorts of abilities they had to bring to bear. While the mechanics were informing the decisions here, I personally don't feel that they did so any more intimately than in (for example) Rolemaster, where players routinely scour the character sheets looking for an applicable skill or spell before deciding how to tackle a situation. A game with a much-stripped down character sheet (especially for fighters), like Basic, would play a bit differently here. I don't have enough experience with 3E to really make a comparison to that system.
And at some points the fiction was clearly the most important consideration: Why did the dwarf jump into the water? Because otherwise how can he manipulate the stones at the bottom of the pool? I think keeping the encounter embedded in the fiction in this sort of way is important to avoid the "dice-rolling exercise" problem.
One challenge in running these sorts of skill challenge is the following difference from D&D combat: Hit point attrition has a certain robust fictional content at a D&D table - everyone knows that we're wearing down the monster, even if the precise nature of that wearing down is a bit up for grabs. Whereas the ingame interpretation of successes in a skill challenge is much more up for grabs every time. Nevertheless, in these sorts of quasi-tactical 6/3 skill challenges I describe the results of successes in such a way as to give a general feel for how things are progressing, and also add a bit of quasi-mechanical commentary - "You feel like you've only just started" vs "You feel like you're pretty close to getting the job done" - to add an extra bit of infromation to the descriptions. So no one was shocked when the dwarf's last move turned out to be the success - even though they weren't 100% sure that it would be - just the same as if he'd struck the killing blow in a combat.
