Skill Challenges Open Thread

[Manbearcat]

How does that work?

The primary way this is done is with the activation of opportunities (1s rolled in an opponent's dice pool) by The Watcher (GM) or one of the players. Players get Plot Points when the GM activates an opportunity to grow their doom pool (or step up current dice). Players can spend Plot Points to activate opportunities from GM dice pools.

Obviously, the more dice being rolled, the more opportunities for 1s there will be. This is especially so when players or GMs decide to make sub-optimal decisions (when the fiction triggers an opening) and deploy weaker resources with lower dice values (d4s are outright weaknesses). This will present the other side with more opportunities for accruing Plot Points or growing/augmenting the Doom Pool.

The whole of it puts players and the GM in a position where they must prioritize conflict escalation and values/relationships/the importance of specific outcomes. Doom Pool growth means the future becomes more ominous. Doom Pool expenditure means the stakes are getting raised big time right now. Plot Point expenditure means "this is important enough to go all out." Plot Point hoarding means "I'm willing to gamble and possibly take this on the chin because I'm not as invested in this as I am in that...or that potential thing down the line."

And the Reward Cycle of Milestones plays into this because you're inevitably going to have (assuming proper/deft GMing) going to have more opportunities to trigger your big Milestones (10 xp) with major fictional consequences at stake - incentivizing allowing the GM to grow the Doom Pool (such as Collossus's "When you either sacrifice yourself for your allies or find yourself to be the last hero standing.").

Dogs in the Vineyard has this sort of game tech (Cortex+'s engine is a modernized Dogs in certain ways). Burning Wheel and PBtA (Dungeon World of course!) has it with xp on failures (which encourages the deployment of suboptimal resource deployment thereby putting relentless gamist optimization at tension with the basic reward cycle).

 

[Manbearcat]

How does that work?

Got a second here and I thought of another quick way to explain it using 4e infrastructure. Imagine the following:

1) Healing Surges are a fungible heroic resource for augments. They can be "cashed in" by players during any conflict at the following rate of exchange:

a) 1 = 1d4
b) 2 = 1d8
c) 3 = 1d12

This "heroic die" gained by cashing in the HS(es) can be used any time you roll a d20 against a target number (attack roll, saving throw, skill check, etc).

2) If the PC fails at the effort (roll modified by "heroic die" does not meet or exceed the target number), the GM gains the same "heroic die" that the PC used, or steps up an existing "heroic dice" in their pool by one (eg from d4 to d8). The GM's dice pool serves as a latent resource/danger to be leveraged/realized in the future (to augment a target number/DC or a their own d20 vs target number roll) as they see fit.

This "Doom Pool" ups the threat level/danger/urgency/stakes and the fiction should reflect those ominous portents.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Got a second here and I thought of another quick way to explain it using 4e infrastructure. Imagine the following:

1) Healing Surges are a fungible heroic resource for augments. They can be "cashed in" by players during any conflict at the following rate of exchange:

a) 1 = 1d4
b) 2 = 1d8
c) 3 = 1d12

This "heroic die" gained by cashing in the HS(es) can be used any time you roll a d20 against a target number (attack roll, saving throw, skill check, etc).

2) If the PC fails at the effort (roll modified by "heroic die" does not meet or exceed the target number), the GM gains the same "heroic die" that the PC used, or steps up an existing "heroic dice" in their pool by one (eg from d4 to d8). The GM's dice pool serves as a latent resource/danger to be leveraged/realized in the future (to augment a target number/DC or a their own d20 vs target number roll) as they see fit.

This "Doom Pool" ups the threat level/danger/urgency/stakes and the fiction should reflect those ominous portents.

I guess the real challenge is being able to tie that back to the fiction. Certainly there's a MECHANICAL upping of stakes. In some ways it might not be hard, 'Blastron' gets pissed and lets loose with even more lethal disintegrato rays than before, etc. Sometimes it can be pretty easy even if its less tangible. You angered the natives when you made the ploy to frame the Evil Doctor, and now he can whip them up to a frenzy so they come after you like never before!

 

[Manbearcat]

I guess the real challenge is being able to tie that back to the fiction. Certainly there's a MECHANICAL upping of stakes. In some ways it might not be hard, 'Blastron' gets pissed and lets loose with even more lethal disintegrato rays than before, etc. Sometimes it can be pretty easy even if its less tangible. You angered the natives when you made the ploy to frame the Evil Doctor, and now he can whip them up to a frenzy so they come after you like never before!

Yup! That is right on the money. What you've written above is precisely the sort of thing that should follow.

Once a GM develops the mental framework required to (a) conceive how genre-coherent escalation of events might occur (oftentimes second or third order consequences/fallout of current happenings) and then (b) deftly telegraph/foreshadow those clues/ominous portents to players (with just enough ambiance, color, and agency-providing information upon which action declarations can be made), proficiency is only practice, practice, practice away!

The same thing takes place in 4e under the current Skill Challenge rules, it is just that the mechanical infrastructure doesn't have a dynamic feedback. You've got your chosen level which gives you your DCs. You've got your chosen complexity which gives you your # of Secondary Skills available as augments (1:1 for complexity), # of successes required, # of Advantages (C3 and above), # of Hard DCs you must pass (C2 and above). The only feedback involves (a) the impact on the adventuring day (resources spent/lost and possibly the escalation or introduction of new encounters) and (b) story fallout. Those are great feedbacks though, so 4e's noncombat conflict resolution does a fine enough job (much better than any of its predecessors or its successor in my opinion) without the dynamic intra-framework feedback.

All things considered though, I would prefer that it had it and I would prefer the reward cycle to have been put together differently (as I have written above; putting xp rewards and story rewards at tension).

If I have time over the next few days, I'll throw a quick hypothetical play example out there of what a "Perilous Journey" Rules Compendium SC with the "4e Doom Pool" feedback I scrawled above would look like.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup! That is right on the money. What you've written above is precisely the sort of thing that should follow.

Once a GM develops the mental framework required to (a) conceive how genre-coherent escalation of events might occur (oftentimes second or third order consequences/fallout of current happenings) and then (b) deftly telegraph/foreshadow those clues/ominous portents to players (with just enough ambiance, color, and agency-providing information upon which action declarations can be made), proficiency is only practice, practice, practice away!

The same thing takes place in 4e under the current Skill Challenge rules, it is just that the mechanical infrastructure doesn't have a dynamic feedback. You've got your chosen level which gives you your DCs. You've got your chosen complexity which gives you your # of Secondary Skills available as augments (1:1 for complexity), # of successes required, # of Advantages (C3 and above), # of Hard DCs you must pass (C2 and above). The only feedback involves (a) the impact on the adventuring day (resources spent/lost and possibly the escalation or introduction of new encounters) and (b) story fallout. Those are great feedbacks though, so 4e's noncombat conflict resolution does a fine enough job (much better than any of its predecessors or its successor in my opinion) without the dynamic intra-framework feedback.

All things considered though, I would prefer that it had it and I would prefer the reward cycle to have been put together differently (as I have written above; putting xp rewards and story rewards at tension).

If I have time over the next few days, I'll throw a quick hypothetical play example out there of what a "Perilous Journey" Rules Compendium SC with the "4e Doom Pool" feedback I scrawled above would look like.

Interesting. I'm running a little D6 Space thing right now. D6 isn't a bad system, but it does lack these sorts of frills. I was definitely hankering for at least an SC system last night.

 

[Manbearcat]

In this sort of setup the loss of surges has to be understood to be a more long-term wearing down of the character's capacity to push forward. They can obviously rest many times during a long journey (and some successes might erase surge losses, maybe particularly secondary skill uses, or advantages). In your model that might represent holing up in Lothlorien for a month (Frodo manages to dazzle Galadriel, they come away one surge and some magical equipment to the good, this and the waybread can be traded later for a +2 here or there on some other checks).

I've been meaning to do another post on "Perilous Journey" Skill Challenges. When I do I'm going to focus in on (a) various modes of handling Extended Rests, (b) handling resource ablation, (c) handling making camp/finding shelter/foraging/scouting/navigating (and interesting complications in relation to those activities), (d) handling players using their own resources (including contacts and equipment) for bonuses (such as you mention above), (e) handling "in fiction" fallout when a macro-failure occurs.

Don't have time for that right now. However, I do have the time to refer folks to the beautiful resource for Dungeon World, The Perilous Wilds, that is absolutely applicable (like Dungeon World's general GMing advice and handling things from a "fiction-first" perspective). I now use these alternative rules for Followers, Perilous Journeys, Rangers/Companions (and an assortment of various other goodies) for my home Dungeon World game. So much of the content therein is applicable to running dramatic, exciting perilous journeys into the points of light wilderness locales of 4e.

 

[Aenghus]

IMO the major failing of the original skill challenge mechanic was making participation obligatory, being insufficiently clear in what was an appropriate situation for a skill challenge in terms of scope, and having a too narrow and rigid choice of relevant skills in many cases.

Now many printed examples of skill challenges shouldn't be skill challenges at all as they are too narrow and more appropriate to one or more skill checks. One sign of this is difficulty in coming up with interesting consequences for "failure", which is essential for the skill challenge mechanic.

Even printed skill challenges with an appropriately large scope tended to be too rigid in their treatment of skills and insufficiently dynamic in evolving the situation appropriately in response to the actions of the PCs.

All of which leads to players seeking to spam their best skills and desperately trying to avoid using their worst skills and hence the "spam your best skill" complaint about the skill challenge mechanic.

I want variant challenge mechanics that encourage all players to try to engage the situation in ways that don't make it counterproductive. Nobody wants to have the PC that dooms the skill challenge to failure by lacking a decent chance of positively engaging in it.

I personally think there's room for more specialised challenge mechanics for situations like chases, races and other time-sensitive tasks, where the hard time limit is supposed to be the dominating factor.

Dynamic skill challenges are inherently difficult to devise and run, I don't see any way of making it easy to reconnect the abstract mechanics to the fiction. If no-one involves cares much, everything can be kept abstract and low key, as zooming in is inappropriate. Not all skill challenges will seize the imaginations of the players, and the referee should note interest or lack or interest take appropriate action. IMO this "appropriate action" is to expand on material that interests the players and downplay material that doesn't. (The referee(s) have the right to enjoy the game as well, if they are really invested in material the players seem to be rejecting it may be time to discuss the issues out of character to try and resolve them honestly. )