RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[pemerton]

Out of curiosity do you on occasion or often (it doesn't matter) and for whatever reason, add additional opponents during a combat encounter?

In 4e D&D, yes. Here's an example from actual play:

By misadventure, the PCs in my game have ended up in the Underdark. They are looking for the Soul Abbatoir, using a magical tapestry woven in an ancient minotaur kingdom as their map.

<snip>

As the PCs continue through the tunnels, I described them coming to a cleft in the floor, and got them to describe how they would cross it. The drow sorcerer indicated that he would first fly over (using 16th level At Will Dominant Winds) and then . . . before he could finish, I launched into my beholder encounter, which I had designed inspired by this image (which is the cover art from Dungeonscape, I think):

[section]

[/section]

I'm not sure exactly what the artist intended, but to me it looks as if the central beholder is hovering over a chasm, with uneven rocky surfaces leading up to it (archer on one side, flaming sword guy on the other). I drew up my map similiarly, including with the side tunnel (behind the tiefling) which on my version ran down into the chasm, and the columns, stalactites, etc.

I didn't use four beholders, only 2 - an eye tyrant (MV version) and an eye of flame advanced to 17th level and MM3-ed for damage. And also a 15th level roper from MV, introduced on a whim when the player of the wizard asked, before taking cover behind a column, if it looked suspicious. (Response to result of 28 on the Perception check before adding the +2 bonus for knowing what he is looking for - "Yes, yes it does!")

Anyway, the terrain was pretty awesome, though hugely punishing for the PCs. I managed to get both ranged strikers down the 200' drop into the stream below early in the encounter - the drow sorcerer made it back up (Dominant Winds again, using his Acrobatics to land on ledges on the cliff at the end of each movement) but the ranger-cleric, after getting about 120' back up on his flying carpet, got knocked back down to the bottom. He still ended up being pretty effective, though, shooting up at long range with Twin Strike.

I failed in my attempt (as an eye tyrant) to use my TK ray to impale the dwarf fighter on a stalactite, and then the PC invoker did that to me instead - twice - using a slide effect from his zone of darkness and cold (Shadowdark Invocation; I resolved the stalactite as 2d8+8 and immoblised (SE), which seemed OK for a 17th level situational but multi-use option). But I did get to petrify one PC (the drow sorcerer) and at one stage had 3 or even 4 PCs taking ongoing 2d20 from my disintegrate ray (paladin, fighter, sorcerer and invoker - all very close together, but maybe only 3 overlapped at once).

Besides reinforcing my fondness for the tactical mobility that 4e generates, it also taught me that 4e beholders are pretty brutal (and play more like control than artillery - especially in combination with the terrain, a lot of action denial). The player of the fighter, in particular, got rather hosed in the fight - moving in close, and therefore vulnerable to the central eye, which is a vs Will attack that limits attacks to At Wills (his Will is not terrible, but his AC and Fort are both better). Which meant he didn't get to use some of his more funky immediate actions, and took a long time, and some effective use of cover while the beholder was trapped in the zone, to get off his close burst that also triggers AoE healing and thereby kept both himself and the invoker in the fight.

This was a level 21 encounter overall, and got the PCs up to 18th.

If yes, how does that reconcile with the SC where it acts as a binder on the GM and it sets mathematical parameters for win or loss.

The way player-side abilities feed into a skill challenge compared to a combat encounter, in 4e D&D, is reasonably different. The latter are on a type of extended rest clock (daily powers, healing surges) that the former are not (or not to the same extent).

Stepping up the difficulty of a combat, mid-way through, puts pressure on the players to respond cleverly in the context of their daily resources.

The analogue, in the context of a skill challenge, is not to increase the mathematical complexity (which, especially if one is using the RC rules for advantages and so on, is as much about pacing as about difficulty) but to allow the in-fiction stakes to grow over the course of the challenge, so that the players feel more pressure to push the resolution of the challenge in their desired direction. (See the dinner party actua play just upthread for an illustration.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is obviously a difference between an action that has a defined fictional impact and one that doesn't. 5e's "climb at half speed, the DM may design an athletics check to allow for faster" and the 3e climb skill's fixed speed outcomes are not identical. I pointedly reject the notion of unlimited action space as the essential quality of an RPG. Practically speaking, generic resolution system like a SC or single-check resolution already consists of a discrete set of declarable mechanical actions regardless of variance in the attached fictional description. Even in my push for more bespoke actions, the set of things likely to be proposed in most games is significantly smaller than the "you can do anything!" that routinely gets suggested, especially once you start putting constraints of genre and tone on the game overall.

Instead, I think the defining quality must live in the evaluation of victory. Board games are closed, with defined end points established before they begin and established victory/loss conditions. RPGs allow the players to set the victory/loss conditions they'll be evaluated on, and allow play to continue past that evaluation with a new set of conditions.

Technically true, but they aren't a very good game. The optimization cases are (depending on how the GM presents the available checks) either trivial, or effectively random. Plus they have a quite small number of available actions, once you eliminate mathematically identical declarations. I don't think they're a revolutionary technology over free checks in that sense, but any structure at all does allow for more gameplay than the GM deciding moment to moment what actions are available.

I'm not sure what you would suggest as being, in your mind, 'better'. I have experience with several approaches:

Non-4e D&D as well as the majority of other classically designed RPGs - No structure at all, GM only reveals what is at stake and what the costs/benefits are after the fact, and can change their mind at pretty much any point.

'Move based' systems of a more classical nature - this could include 4e when played in a Trad mode (in combat at least, possibly OOC too). Here you get specific moves with varying levels of 'baked in' resolution process. It can go anywhere from 'whatever the GM says' to reasonably nailed down cost/benefit and resource play. D&D casters also fall into this category.

TB2 uses a set of 'conflict templates' - this sort of solution has been utilized in a number of fairly successful games. IME the templates are rather confining The TB2 version of this, specifically, does involve a modicum of strategy, though it seemed a lot more like a slightly more elaborate version of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' vs being anything really hardcore. So, this approach WORKS, in at least that incarnation as well as a few others I've briefly tried. OTOH it never feels really ideally matched to the fiction and the gamist part is generally rather simplistic. TB2's version got a boost from the other resource/move mechanics of TB2, but I always kind of felt like free-form conflicts would still have worked better overall!

Clocks - BitD obviously, which works pretty well overall. You have several mechanisms that get used in parallel here though, and I suspect a LOT of playtest went into getting the mix right.

4e SCs - I don't feel that these are any less solid in the 'game' department than anything else out there. You can complain, but optimizing your approach in 4e and in BitD are pretty similar and roughly equal in difficulty (though 4e is a bit less adept at ratcheting the pressure using purely mechanics than BitD). Still, run the way I run it 4e delivers a lot of pressure over the course of an adventure/quest.

PbtA (DW/AW/ST at least) - resource mechanics here are not doing a ton, they basically exist to be fiction the GM can key a move off of, or a player can invoke for a bonus.

 

[FrogReaver]

Technically true, but they aren't a very good game. The optimization cases are (depending on how the GM presents the available checks) either trivial, or effectively random. Plus they have a quite small number of available actions, once you eliminate mathematically identical declarations. I don't think they're a revolutionary technology over free checks in that sense, but any structure at all does allow for more gameplay than the GM deciding moment to moment what actions are available.

I’m confused how you envision ‘free checks’ allowing the GM to decide what actions are available.

I’ve played free checks a lot and never have had an experience with them I would describe like that.

 

[FrogReaver]

Nah you will simply have the same argument over fictional positions, etc. If you want to play boardgames that's fine but ALL RPG PLAY will come down to some determination in respect of fiction!

Then we must say that determinations made in respect of the fiction are not arbitrary.

SCs DO increase the internal integrity of game process by comparison to free checks.

Claimed again with no evidence…

They also allow players to reason about the process AS A GAME

Skill checks do as well.

and more consistently get adherence to defined stakes etc.

That solely depends on the implementation of the skill check vs skill challenges.

skill challenge type mechanics often leave the stakes on failure open, they usually do but don’t require the challenge structure being understood by players before hand.

These are all things that can be true if skill checks given a particular implementation.

The difference as far as 5e skill checks go is that the skill check details aren’t usually given to the players before they commit to act. But that isn’t the only implementation possible!

 

[Pedantic]

I’m confused how you envision ‘free checks’ allowing the GM to decide what actions are available.

I’ve played free checks a lot and never have had an experience with them I would describe like that.

The basic structure of what we're calling free checks is that a player proposes an action, and the GM makes the following determinations:

1. Is it possible at all?
2. How should it be resolved? (i.e. what kind of check, check difficulty, time, and possibly how many actions/rounds of resolution it will take)
3. What is the ultimate effect of the action? (how does the game state change on either failure or success?)

Generally the GM will make those determinations on an action by action basis, and not collectively for all available actions, but you can imagine a player putting forward several possible actions for feedback before committing to any one of them. Ultimately, the GM is thus designing the available interactions in any given moment of gameplay, perhaps prompted by the player's suggestions or the constraints of the game's resolution system.

Skill Challenges expand on that structure by allowing a fixed number of actions but not allowing/requiring the GM to design them in the moment (with some flexibility for the variance of difficulties by different skills, or later iterations that offered gameplay elements other than success for a given action declaration).

I'm advocating for a very large set of actions created by designers before play begins, with the intent that players will apply them to a broad set of situations in novel combinations.

 

[pemerton]

skill challenge type mechanics often leave the stakes on failure open

What examples of such mechanics do you have in mind?

 

[Lanefan]

The basic structure of what we're calling free checks is that a player proposes an action, and the GM makes the following determinations:

1. Is it possible at all?
2. How should it be resolved? (i.e. what kind of check, check difficulty, time, and possibly how many actions/rounds of resolution it will take)
3. What is the ultimate effect of the action? (how does the game state change on either failure or success?)

Generally the GM will make those determinations on an action by action basis, and not collectively for all available actions, but you can imagine a player putting forward several possible actions for feedback before committing to any one of them. Ultimately, the GM is thus designing the available interactions in any given moment of gameplay, perhaps prompted by the player's suggestions or the constraints of the game's resolution system.

Skill Challenges expand on that structure by allowing a fixed number of actions but not allowing/requiring the GM to design them in the moment (with some flexibility for the variance of difficulties by different skills, or later iterations that offered gameplay elements other than success for a given action declaration).

So, mostly a difference in level of granularity; where skill challenges bundle together some smaller elements into one resolution.

I'm advocating for a very large set of actions created by designers before play begins, with the intent that players will apply them to a broad set of situations in novel combinations.

And would players be limited to using only what's on this list of actions? If yes, this might not get much traction.....

 

[Pedantic]

So, mostly a difference in level of granularity; where skill challenges bundle together some smaller elements into one resolution.

And would players be limited to using only what's on this list of actions? If yes, this might not get much traction.....

Most players won't notice, especially if we're talking about a genre constrained game, like heroic fantasy. You can write a pretty comprehensive set of resolution mechanics that will cover what is likely to happen during play. If that still fails, then you're just back to the design question a free check system poses, just with the additional context of a bunch of already completed design work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The basic structure of what we're calling free checks is that a player proposes an action, and the GM makes the following determinations:

1. Is it possible at all?
2. How should it be resolved? (i.e. what kind of check, check difficulty, time, and possibly how many actions/rounds of resolution it will take)
3. What is the ultimate effect of the action? (how does the game state change on either failure or success?)

Generally the GM will make those determinations on an action by action basis, and not collectively for all available actions, but you can imagine a player putting forward several possible actions for feedback before committing to any one of them. Ultimately, the GM is thus designing the available interactions in any given moment of gameplay, perhaps prompted by the player's suggestions or the constraints of the game's resolution system.

Skill Challenges expand on that structure by allowing a fixed number of actions but not allowing/requiring the GM to design them in the moment (with some flexibility for the variance of difficulties by different skills, or later iterations that offered gameplay elements other than success for a given action declaration).

I'm advocating for a very large set of actions created by designers before play begins, with the intent that players will apply them to a broad set of situations in novel combinations.

I have serious concerns about the practicality of this...

 

[pemerton]

Most players won't notice, especially if we're talking about a genre constrained game, like heroic fantasy. You can write a pretty comprehensive set of resolution mechanics that will cover what is likely to happen during play. If that still fails, then you're just back to the design question a free check system poses, just with the additional context of a bunch of already completed design work.

I have serious concerns about the practicality of this...

My concerns are that - even if the list of actions/DCs/etc is written up - the whole thing still relies on "GM-as-glue", as per Harper's diagram.