D&D 5E Behind the design of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons: Well my impression as least.

[Imaro]

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION] and [MENTION=61529]seebs[/MENTION] ... I'm not saying that you guys are wrong for liking SC's and I get it you wanted a formalized way to award XP for non-combat stuf... What I'm saying is that I personally didn't need it, so for me I find SC's in the formal sense uneccessary.

 

[the Jester]

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION] and [MENTION=61529]seebs[/MENTION] ... I'm not saying that you guys are wrong for liking SC's and I get it you wanted a formalized way to award XP for non-combat stuf... What I'm saying is that I personally didn't need it, so for me I find SC's in the formal sense uneccessary.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

The best skill challenges were ones initiated by the players, to be honest. "Let's talk this guy into x" could be worth xp instead of just killing him. I liked that. Did they need a formal straightjacket to implement? Not once the DM got good at them. Is it possible to adjudicate those situations without using a SC? Sure. But having some good guidelines, for the first time ever in D&D, was nice.

 

[Imaro]

And there's nothing wrong with that.

The best skill challenges were ones initiated by the players, to be honest. "Let's talk this guy into x" could be worth xp instead of just killing him. I liked that. Did they need a formal straightjacket to implement? Not once the DM got good at them. Is it possible to adjudicate those situations without using a SC? Sure. But having some good guidelines, for the first time ever in D&D, was nice.

The one good thing for me that came out of 4e SC's was that reading the different one's presented in various sources definitely expanded my thinking as to the breadth and design of non-combat challenges.

 

[LostSoul]

When I speak to SC's I am talking about the pre-determined x successes before Y failures, set difficulties and lack of opposed rolls as well as the general structure of high level abstraction most of the ones I've seen use. This is a structure, at least by your statement above, which you seem to have dropped. In fact I'm finding it a little hard to discern what the difference between your method and just free-form roleplaying it with appropriate skill checks (my method) exactly are. Are we just talking past each other or do you make use of the actual SC structure?

The general structure of x successes before 3 failures. The DC is set by the NPC's Will Defense (not necessarily but I can't think of a time when that wasn't the case); the number of successes needed is set by the Reaction Roll. The main benefit is that there's a lot of compromise between PCs and NPCs and the results usually end up being unexpected.

My thinking is that you don't need to make checks/use skill challenges when the environment can be detailed in depth. At that point you can just rely on player-declared PC actions andd DM judgement calls. If the environment or map is too abstract, then I think you want to make checks. So when I write up a dungeon room with a secret door, I'll write something like "Close inspection of the room reveals a loose stone in the fireplace and a draft coming from under the west wall; pushing the loose stone while pushing on the wall opens a secret door." I don't do that for wilderness hexes because they are too abstract - if you want to hunt or forage, just make a check; I don't know where all the plants/game are in the hex. I believe that NPCs are also too complex to detail in that way, so I use the skill challenge structure to deal with them.

 

[seebs]

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION] and [MENTION=61529]seebs[/MENTION] ... I'm not saying that you guys are wrong for liking SC's and I get it you wanted a formalized way to award XP for non-combat stuf... What I'm saying is that I personally didn't need it, so for me I find SC's in the formal sense uneccessary.

I would agree that they weren't necessary. I just note that they were the first real attempt at providing concrete rules for non-combat encounters that actually covered difficulty and reward.

 

[DaveDash]

I would agree that they weren't necessary. I just note that they were the first real attempt at providing concrete rules for non-combat encounters that actually covered difficulty and reward.

I'm rather unhappy actually that this wasn't covered in more detail in the DMG. These basically no guidelnes at all for creating and awarding experience for non-combat encounters. It's basically just story driven 'wing it'.

Even 3rd edition had a system for building and rewarding XP for hazards at least, based on their EL.

 

[Hussar]

But then what are we discussing when we say SC? If the structure is thrown out the window then we're basically saying skill checks however you want to do them, which I have no issue with but then there's no distinction in calling them SC's specifically...

EDIT: I mean isn't it the structure that creates the finality that many find are one of the SC's greatest benefits?

I'd add more to this, but, it's pretty much been covered. The "You need about this many successes before about this many failures" gave a nice baseline to start with. But, that is what it is - a baseline. I think the problem was largely in presentation, as DaveDash points out - not enough examples and the early 4e modules that included SC's were pretty lacklustre. Those two things resulted in people looking at the rules as a straightjacket and far too structured.

There is a big middle ground between formal, rigid, and rigidly adhered to structure - generally what we see in the combat rules forex and just free form your way through - generally what we see in 1e social interactions. I think the SC's were meant to sit in that middle ground, but, were not presented that way, unfortunately.

 

[the Jester]

I think the problem was largely in presentation, as DaveDash points out - not enough examples and the early 4e modules that included SC's were pretty lacklustre.

I just have to re-emphasize this bit: Most of the skill challenges published for 4e were just awful. I mean, look at the one in Keep on the Shadowfell were you basically have a "tell me your best skill" conversation with that undead knight. UGH- that was pretty much the exact opposite of a good SC. There were some, scattered throughout the edition's life, that were decent, but all the best ones I ran came from me and my players.

 

[aramis erak]

While there may well be more player movement, it's no more of an "issue" now than it ever was. Why, you ask?
Because all of this becomes utterly irrelevant as soon as you sit down at a table and ask how that table's DM runs her game; and that is one thing that has never* changed, the best (and IMO misguided) efforts of the RPGA over several decades notwithstanding.

* - exception: you now also need to ask "which edition", not so relevant 30 years ago.

Why?

The only thing that matters is whether you - just you, and maybe the others around your one table - are satisfied with the game and-or rules you are playing right then and there whatever it/they might be. The greater community, the greater game, boards like this: all are secondary to that game at that table, right now.

If my rules and edition are different than yours and both are different from what a third DM uses, etc., so what? Are you happy with what you've got going on at your table? If yes, who cares what everyone else is playing - it just doesn't matter.

Lan-"attempting rules unification in an edition designed to be kitbashed is the fast track to madness"-efan

So what? It means I now have to learn essentially 3 different sets of rules, rather than one. And, if any of those is part of organized play, and there are houserules, it's grounds for complaint, because part of the whole justification for organized play is the ability to drop-in and drop-out and not have to relearn the rules just because you switched tables.

Players now are also more likely to know Jerkface-DM is being Jerkface-DM and not just following the rules, and not making good calls about how he runs the game. Further, 90+% of GM's I've met do not tell players their house-rules; some of them don't even realize they've made house rules, especially in AD&D1E (where some DM's haven't even found all the supposedly core rules in the PHB... after 20+ years. I find something new in 1E PHB about once a year. Ignoring for the moment that printings 4 and 8 don't have the same content).

And with really fuzzy misinterpretable rules, the problem becomes identifying when your in houserules and or "GM pulling suff out of his derriere" territory.

Hell, in Traveller, many players aren't aware that pre-81 books have different weapon damages and ship building rules than post-81, at least until a guy with post-81 books tries to redo the "standard designs" in order to make a change on a player-owned ship...

Rules matter, as they define the universe as much as the fluff, perhaps more. (Play a D&D module, say, B2, with GURPS or Hero or Warhammer FRP, and each is a very different experience... the rules used by the DM strongly affect how capable characters are, and players should intuit most difficulties before the attempt.)

I don't play the DM; I play the rules. If the DM doesn't, I have a right to know, so I don't waste my time. The DM is the hardware the game runs on, he shouldn't be the game itself.

 

[Hussar]

aramis erak, I get what you're saying, and, up to a point, I think I might even agree with you. But, I think you're taking too strong a stand on this. 3e and then 4e went very, very overboard trying to standardise tables. 5e is very much a reaction against that direction. The whole idea of empowering DM's again, and making DM's take control, rather than relying so heavily on the rules or WOTC.

I mean, we've had 5e out for a few months now, at least the basic rules, and we still don't even have an official errata document. By this time in either 3e or 4e, we had several pages of errata issued. This time around, I really think WOTC is trying to release the game back into the wild and let it stand on its own. If you don't like something, change it.