The disparity just gets bigger and bigger in 4e.
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non-specialists sit out and play assistant to the specialists.
I've tackled this a few times already in this thread, but will sally forth again . . .
When you say "non-specialists sit out and play assistant to the specialists", are you intending that as (i) a statement of what actually (typically, usually) happens, or (ii) a statement of what you think would happen if rational players used the mechanics, or (iii) a prediction based on your own reading of the mechanics, or (iv) something else?
Because it doesn't fit my experience, and my players are fairly rational.
It's all about the stakes. Set up a situation in which the player of the dwarf fighter is more concerned about his/her PC not looking a tool to the NPCs than about whether or not, in the end, the party get's its way - and, as a GM, adjudicated that situation in a way which plays along with the player - and even a CHA-dump stat PC will start talking.
Or, run a 4/3 challenge in which the dwarf can both talk and do other stuff at which s/he might be better - say, physical stuff - and you might find that the player will try talking as well as physical stuff, because s/he has the capacity for a few failures in his/her back pocket.
None of what I'm saying is an argument against bounded accuracy - the scaling issues in 4e are well-known and make the maths for everything, including skill checks, harder than it needs to be.
But even with bounded accuracy the problem will still be there, because you'll still have dwarf fighters with CHA dump stats. If you want them to talk nevertheless, then (assuming anything like the current approach to stats and skills) you're going to have to frame situations and stakes in the sort of way I'm describing.
Consequences that aren't related to in-game, causal precursors (like failing a diplomacy check causing it to rain as the justification for why the attempt at diplomacy failed) are unnecessarily disruptive.
I don't think billd91 is speaking to what caused the Dwarf to fail the diplomacy check... instead he's speaking to the consequences that arose when the check is failed. He is saying the consequences of that failed check should in some way be connected to the action that failed.
The sorts of consequences that I and others are talking about
are connected to the action that failed. It's just that they're not causally connected to the task attempted. They're narratively or thematically connected to what it was that the player was hoping the PC would achieve by the check (@Manbearcat uses the phrase "fiction first" to convey this).
So a failed Ride check is narrated as a lame horse, or to encountering a yawning canyon - narratively/thematically connected to attempting to escape on horseback.
A failed Diplomacy check is narrated as rain which leads the NPC to retreat back under cover before the PC can convey his/her full message - narratively/thematically connected to attempting a successful, genteel negotiation with a dignatory.
What counts as the
limit of narrative/thematic connection (which, if violated, makes the game seem absurdist) is obviously highly sensitive to shared genre expectations, shared plot expectations, and past experiences at the game table. Everyone seems to agree that "Rocks fall. Everybody dies," is a bit too much. But there's a lot of space to be explored between purely ingame causal processes and "Rocks fall. Everybody dies."
I'm still not seeing what about SC rules support or enable this anymore that another system with a DM who chooses to layer fiction in a less "causal" style?
One advantage the SC offers is it controls pacing. Every situation will be resolved in (3/ # players rolling) to ((6+3)/ # players rolling) "rounds" of activity.
I'm starting to see why 4e sometimes necessitates non-causal relationships between actions and results... because the amount of times one can fail before failing the SC is 3, will always be 3 and that is an artificial limit as opposed to an organic one.
The second two quotes here are correct, and answer the first. What skill challenges supply is a pacing requirement, which then feeds back in to shape, constrain and guide the narrative requirements.
that is an artificial limit as opposed to an organic one
My feeling is that it's artificial in the same way hit points are - unlike in RQ, for example, you can't kill an NPC or monster in D&D, no matter how good your swing and how many your advantages (of position, timing, skill etc) until you cut through their hit points.
Duels of Wits in Burning Wheel are the same - no matter how devastating your argument, if you don't deplete the opponent's Body of Argument then the duel is not over.
(Of course, a standard answer is - until you knock off the last hit point, your swing simply
wasn't that good. Another standard answer is - until you knock off the last hit point, then no matter how good your swing, their parry/dodge/etc is just as impressive. Similar narrative devices have to be used with these out-of-combat techniques too.)
Now is this a good thing or not? That's for each group to judge. My own experience is that the pacing discipline provided by skill challenges, in conjunction with the emphasis on "genre logic" and narrative/thematic causation rather than ingame process causation, has produced far more interesting scenarios, with players exercising more imagination, situations heading off in more unexpected directions, and the game being more interesting. There have been negotiations with slave traders, dinner parties, interrogations, flying carpet escapes, and (yes, [MENTION=710]Mustrum_Ridcully[/MENTION]) reforgings of arteracts which I am very confident would not have happened within a process simulation framework (and I say this based on experience of GMing Rolemaster, a skill-rich process simulation game, for nearly 20 years prior to GMing 4e).
I'm happy to provide links to the actual play reports for some of these for those who want them, and haven't already looked at and followed the links on the "Why I like skill challenges" thread.
there's really no inherent reason why, given d20 skill checks, you couldn't invent the skill challenge framework yourself. Because it is merely a framework on top of those skill checks. Practically speaking, most people wouldn't, but it could happen.
Yes. There's no inherent reason why I couldn't work out, for myself, all the stuff about GMing that I've learned from reading Luke Crane, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, Robin Laws, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and others on message boards, in rule books, in essays, etc.
But somehow I doubt that I was ever going to work all that stuff out myself! In that respect, I'm one of the "most people" that you refer to!
This argument would be so much more convincing if it was in fact supported by the examples, advice or almost anything else in the actual DMG... but it's not. Even posters such as pemerton, who seem to argue for a similar interpretation of SC's as yours above, readily admit the DMG does not really support their claims
I don't admit that at all. In fact I deny it.
Read the example of a Skill Challenge in the Essentials Rules Compendium and DM's book (it's the same example).
It depends upon adjudication via narrative/thematic logic, not ingame causal logic. In particular, on the 3rd failed check the way the GM brings the challenge to a close, which is also a failure, is to have some thugs whom, at an earlier stage, were successfully brushed off by the PCs, turn up again and make trouble. But there is nothing about that third failed check which, in ingame causal terms, causes the thugs to turn up (eg it is not a failed attempt to sneak past them). The GM is applying metagame causation of the sort that I, Mancatbear and others are talking about.
My complaint has always been that skill challenges (including the examples of play) presuppose these techniques, but
nowhere does the rulebook explain them. The reader is left to derive them from the examples of play presented. But, given those published examples of play, plus the more abstract instructional text, plus the overwhelmingly obvious resemblance of skill challenges to systems from other games like HeroWars/Quest, I am in no doubt as to how skill challenges are intended to work, and that they were not conceived of, by the designers, as simply complex skill checks.
