D&D 4E Towards a Story Now 4e

AbdulAlhazred said:

. In fact, where in 4e the fact that many skills were relegated to fairly niche uses was a bit problematic, I think it is a lot less so in Story Now kind of play.

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I think within skill challenge contexts 4e very much opened up how individual skills were used but there was some default assumptions that undermined that flexibility, which I do think was hmmmm less than desireable.

How about this one there is no difference between acrobatics and athletics (one is just style of the other) I was thinking of the old use an attribute based on the situation ie Athletics is skill at body mobility and Acrobatics is too. Nobody needs or will have both and will flavor their actions according to the story they want but...

If the activity emphasizes long durations Con is used with Athletics. If precision is emphasized Dex is used, I potence/speed is significant then Strength is used.

AbdulAlhazred said:

In fact, where in 4e the fact that many skills were relegated to fairly niche uses was a bit problematic, I think it is a lot less so in Story Now kind of play.

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Well, personally, I didn’t think 4e had much in the way of problems with its skill set up.

In 4e noncombat conflict resolution and stunting, there are only a few relevant parts to action resolution and micro-story-progression when it comes to characters:

1) Can this PC realize their archetype through play (conflict framing > action resolution > story output)?

2) Through the realization of that archetype, can the PC meaningfully and with reasonable parity contribute to overcoming obstacles and the ultimate propulsion of story.

Without a doubt, the answer to those two questions are yes.

The three primary pieces of machinery that make this possible are:

* Each class getting their archetypal schtick as standard issue (eg Arcana for Wizards, Athletics for Fighters) and these being broadly applicable. These are the abilities that are going to be deployed the most for each archetype.

* Most other skills being broad-descriptor.

* The system maths, conflict resolution framework, and GMing directives (eg interesting decision points > action declaration & resolution > change the situation & Fail Forward).

Once you can answer yes to 1 and 2, you’re basically massaging fringe cases that you aren’t happy with (eg making Religion Wis because Clerics, giving Fighters another Skill, bundling non-archetypal skills that aren’t turning out to be broad enough for your table.

As far as other Story Now games go, the designs are versatile and robust that they can handle a few open descriptor PC abilities with broad application (Cortex+) to tightly focused playbooks (PBtA) but broad resolution mechanics to focused PC dice pool adds but broad pools (Dogs and the like) to games with very, very narrow skills or skills where PCs suck (but get used a lot). A lot of that is the games general premise (your PC is going to be miserable mostly), reward cycle paradigm (PC progression via resolution failure and or fallout), other adds to increase prospects of success (typically in exchange for some cost/risk/fallout - Devils Bargain in Blades) or GMing directives.

Does that engage with your question I. The way you were looking for?

Sorry, I haven’t read your thread. I’ll try to catch up on it here in the next few weeks. Looks interesting!

AbdulAlhazred said:

Leadership is basically there to provide for situations where you want people to FOLLOW ORDERS or for situations where you would ask "what is the best way to motivate these guys" or something like that. In 4e Diplomacy sort of got drafted to be an ersatz leadership, but the two things are very different. Someone who's diplomatic is not particularly adept at leading. They represent two distinct approaches to solving problems.

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In my campaign set aboard a pirate ship, I'd often have skill challenges that would include the option of using various CHA skills to give orders and/or maintain morale. Diplomacy could give a rousing "I'll level with you men" kind of speech, Bluff a histrionic or manipulative one, Intimidate to motivate at the rope's end, even Streetwise to get them motivated with hope for profit or advancement...

Garthanos said:

I think within skill challenge contexts 4e very much opened up how individual skills were used but there was some default assumptions that undermined that flexibility, which I do think was hmmmm less than desireable.

How about this one there is no difference between acrobatics and athletics (one is just style of the other) I was thinking of the old use an attribute based on the situation ie Athletics is skill at body mobility and Acrobatics is too. Nobody needs or will have both and will flavor their actions according to the story they want but...

If the activity emphasizes long durations Con is used with Athletics. If precision is emphasized Dex is used, I potence/speed is significant then Strength is used.

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OK, well, assuming you have to choose one of STR, CON, DEX (or 2 of them, etc.) then that would already determine how you choose to solve problems. One could then argue that skills like Athletics shouldn't exist at all. Of course that would throw a wrench in things in terms of depicting how training is a useful thing. You could simply increase the character's STR to reflect 'Trained Athlete'. Its definitely a question that is worth thinking about.

Now, which other skills would fall by the wayside with such a move? All three of the 'physical' skills, but I think the rest would remain. I guess you could eliminate Insight and Perception and just call them 'Wisdom', but again you lose a certain nuance in terms of some people are observant, others are insightful.

I guess I decided that I would arrest the fall down that slippery slope at the same point that the 4e devs chose, basically.

Tony Vargas said:

In my campaign set aboard a pirate ship, I'd often have skill challenges that would include the option of using various CHA skills to give orders and/or maintain morale. Diplomacy could give a rousing "I'll level with you men" kind of speech, Bluff a histrionic or manipulative one, Intimidate to motivate at the rope's end, even Streetwise to get them motivated with hope for profit or advancement...

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Yeah, and the 4e devs might have felt like those covered everything, and that Leadership is just 'charisma', but I think that might be a perspective you'd shed quickly if you were exposed to the military! Leadership IS a skill, it can and is taught and learned, and even people with relatively little 'CHA' can be reasonably effective leaders (as with anything natural talent coupled with training is the golden combo). So, I decided I'd make it a skill of its own.

However, I think its very reasonable for those other skills to be available as alternative approaches. This is where players get into story telling, and maybe employing a practice or something like that. 'Inspiring Ballad' might allow you to use History instead of Leadership, 'Stirring Rhetoric' might allow for Diplomacy, 'Blustering Bully' might get you Intimidation, etc.

AbdulAlhazred said:

! Leadership IS a skill, it can and is taught and learned, and even people with relatively little 'CHA' can be reasonably effective leaders (as with anything natural talent coupled with training is the golden combo). So, I decided I'd make it a skill of its own.
.

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Obviously, superior leadership got a whole class.

Tony Vargas said:

Obviously, superior leadership got a whole class.

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Yeah, I kept the warlord.

From the melee training thread:

AbdulAlhazred said:

Here's my total list, which contains both practices and rituals in your parlance.
...
1 Engineering Procedure Engineering, Martial Alarm ...

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Engineering?

I'm just wondering: I'm assuming this is from HoML, and I guess it indicates you added an Engineering skill. Why Engineering, and how many other skills did you add?

Seems the answere was in this thread...

AbdulAlhazred said:

4e's skill system is pretty much fine. I did note that there were a couple of rather obvious things missing. Leadership and Engineering being the obvious additions. I got rid of 'dungeoneering' as being rather D&D-specific. In any case we often used it to stand in for an Engineering skill, so that seemed like a decent tweak.

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So, - Dungeoneering, + Leadership, + Engineering.

I don't see Engineering covering things like Kruthics & Gelatinous Cubes &c, let alone Abberations in general, but OK...

AbdulAlhazred said:

OK, well, assuming you have to choose one of STR, CON, DEX (or 2 of them, etc.) then that would already determine how you choose to solve problems.

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I think you misunderstood what I meant maybe or maybe not.

it might mean you want to take the long haul if you have high CON... but does that mean you can always choose to do so?

It means you do athletics better when you can repeat and retry and take a longer time to finish ... generally where failures are allowed.

Something allowing few or no repeats requires the precision.

Something time dependent needs bursts of performance.

I actually thought of advantage working that way... ie when you are at a disadvantage you are forced to use a less favored method.

Tony Vargas said:

From the melee training thread: Engineering?

I'm just wondering: I'm assuming this is from HoML, and I guess it indicates you added an Engineering skill. Why Engineering, and how many other skills did you add?

Seems the answere was in this thread...
So, - Dungeoneering, + Leadership, + Engineering.

I don't see Engineering covering things like Kruthics & Gelatinous Cubes &c, let alone Abberations in general, but OK...

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Yeah, I see what you mean, but Nature CAN cover those without any kind of stretch. I mean, Dungeoneering WAS basically 'nature applied to underground areas', and then usually the extension was made something like "well, underground areas are often constructed, so it also covers underground construction" and then extrapolated to "all construction" since nothing better was available for that.

So, Nature can cover natural cave stuff, and Engineering can cover all sorts of things dealing with construction and such.

I can see why a game who's roots are in dungeon crawls ended up with Dungeoneering. I think that HoML is just a bit less focused on that genre specifically. I would say that the 'stuff dwarves know' is kind of 'dungeoneering' in the small. I have that as a dwarvish racial boon, though non-dwarves could take it as well to represent spending a lot of time hangin' with their stubby colleagues....