Challenge the Players, Not the Characters' Stats

[RFisher]

I would be interested to hear how you handle initiative.

Winning initiative indicates having just a bit of an edge.

Both sides charge. They meet in the middle, but the side with initiative gets to resolve their attacks first.

On the other hand, initiative can get trumped by the situation. e.g. Nim and Rod encounter each other at 30 feet. Nim has a crossbow ready. Rod charges to attack with his axe. Even if Rod won initiative, Nim would get a chance to shoot before Rod can hit with his axe.

Oh, and by the way, I've fleshed out your injury table at Dragonsfoot in the Classic D&D forum. I'd love to hear what your experiences with it have been.

I have mixed feelings about it.

I think we actually only got one injury off of it the entire campaign. I’m not sure that that PC losing an arm was more fun than if she’d just died. Somehow it just didn’t feel right for B/X D&D to me.

The other opportunity to use the table, I ended up not using it because the damage was coming from banshee shrieks instead of physical attacks. One player who really like the injury table suggested substituting “mental injuries”, but I balked in the moment. I think that could work, though.

 

[GlaziusF]

The actual act of role-playing isn't telling a story at all. No more than you or I are telling stories simply by existing.

"[T]he fundamental unit of time isn't a moment, it's a story, and the string that holds time together isn't the mere proximity of moments but our interest in the story."

--David Weinberger in "Small Pieces Loosely Joined", p. 59, paraphrasing Martin Heidegger

I believe the phrase is "checkmate".

 

[Korgoth]

"[T]he fundamental unit of time isn't a moment, it's a story, and the string that holds time together isn't the mere proximity of moments but our interest in the story."

--David Weinberger in "Small Pieces Loosely Joined", p. 59, paraphrasing Martin Heidegger

I believe the phrase is "checkmate".

"If we can hit this bullseye all the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!"
- Earth's Greatest Space Hero

Also, if quoting Heidegger ever constituted a "checkmate", Hitler would have won and postmodernism wouldn't be a load of baloney.

 

[GlaziusF]

Also, if quoting Heidegger ever constituted a "checkmate", Hitler would have won and postmodernism wouldn't be a load of baloney.

Yeah, the problem with elegance is that it only works if everybody can see the wires. Anyway.

"Small Pieces Loosely Joined" is a rather seminal work about the sociology of the Internet, and how cultures that have relied on face-to-face interaction for thousands of years are somehow moving fairly seamlessly over to using the Internet, which is ultimately just a bunch of dots on a screen.

Given that everyone here is posting on an Internet message board and not going, say, psychopathic from exposure to such an alien social experience suggests that there's something more to human interaction than just two people standing face to face. (And if you have multiple browsers or multiple tabs open, sweet Jesus son you are in many places at the same time. Even though you can only manage serial attention, you can keep up a decent parallel presence because humans are also really good at saving stories for later, as evidenced by, uh, every serial novel ever.)

Heidegger addressed these questions in "Being And Time" as technology began to transform Germany, converting the world into "resources". So as technological progress goes "boink" and suddenly there's this YouTube thing, the stuff he had to say about the nature of existence becomes even more pertinent than it was back in the day.

Hitler quoting him doesn't magically invalidate him, any more than Hitler quoting the German microbiologist Henle Koch magically invalidates his work on developing the germ theory of disease.

 

[Delta]

...the stuff [Heidegger] had to say about the nature of existence becomes even more pertinent than it was back in the day.

I dare say it's twice as pertinent!

Although 0 x 2 = 0.

 

[Korgoth]

Although 0 x 2 = 0.

Only in your petit bourgeois patriarchal logocentric eurocentric phallocentric nondialogic imperialist-hegemonic cryptonormative oppressive master narrative.

Whatcha gonna do about that, fascist?

 

[Delta]

Only in your petit bourgeois patriarchal logocentric eurocentric phallocentric nondialogic imperialist-hegemonic cryptonormative oppressive master narrative.

Whatcha gonna do about that, fascist?

Warning: I actually have a degree in philosophy, with a focus on postmodernism.

But Heidegger can still go jump in a lake. I have yet to see anything from him other than incoherent snake-oil. (Or, "nonsensical pseudo-propositions", per Rudolf Carnap). He single-handedly gives philosophy a bad name. Like this:

Heidegger: "Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger#Reception_by_analytic_and_Anglo-American_philosophy

 

[Korgoth]

Warning: I actually have a degree in philosophy, with a focus on postmodernism.

But Heidegger can still go jump in a lake. I have yet to see anything from him other than incoherent snake-oil. (Or, "nonsensical pseudo-propositions", per Rudolf Carnap). He single-handedly gives philosophy a bad name. Like this:

Heidegger: "Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."
Martin Heidegger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. I have two of them! Working on #3....

2. I was just teasing, throwing up a wall of goofy rhetoric for the fun of it.

3. Heidegger totally needs to jump in a lake. In fact, I'm not sure how that whole autochthony deal is much different than that other guy's "Blood and Soil" deal when you get down to it (not implying anything about violence, just that the notions seem cut from the same cloth).

No, the whole thing about reality being a tale that is told, facts are all just interpretations, etc. - we already had Protagoras, and Aristotle already shot him down. Next!

 

[Delta]

I'm down wi' dat.

 

[howandwhy99]

I think we've had this conversation before. I tend to believe that if it calls itself a roleplaying game, if it is played by people who call it a roleplaying game and themselves roleplayers, if it is sold in shops and on websites that specialise in selling roleplaying games, then it is a roleplaying game. So HeroWars, The Dying Earth and 4e D&D all count as roleplaying games. (Just as rugby and American football count as football even though the contact between foot and ball is pretty infrequent.)

I'm not saying 4E isn't a role-playing game. I'm saying Skill Challenges don't include anything that could be termed role-playing by dictionary definitions.

This is also true in 4e D&D or HeroWars. What is different in those games from (for example) Runequest is the action resolution mechanic.

Right, you can use skills in 4E to resolve actions. Just not the Skill Challenge system where storytelling rights are resolved instead.

Again, this is true of 4e etc (although I'm not quite sure what you mean by the roleplayers being tested by a real world - the door is not real, it is a fiction, while the roleplayers are real and they are not confronting a door, they are playing a game). But I agree in 4e and similar games the mechanical resolution of the conflict is influenced by metagame notions of "thematic interest".

The door is a fiction like an idea is a fiction. And it is real as much as any idea is real. It isn't a fiction as one defines fiction in relation to a story. An imaginary door (or any imaginary object for that matter) in and of itself is not a story. An imaginary door can be used in the telling of a story, but when using it in role-play this never happens. As you cannot tell a story through role-play.

I'm not doing any such thing. I'm just refuting his assertion that the bare minimum for playing a skill challenge in 4e is to roll some dice and add up successes and failures - as if the flavour text doesn't matter. The flavour text (i) is a crucial input into the action resolution mechanics, and (ii) is a very significant part of the point of playing the game.

I think he's saying rightly that the storytelling element could be removed from the Skill Challenge system and the game playing would not change. What story you tell only becomes important if the DM changes the difficulty checks because of it. Saying the DMG requires one to tell a story alongside playing the Skill Challenge game/element is technically correct and by the book. It's only significant if you want to tell stories. It isn't significant to those wanting to role-play those portion of the game and not tell it as a story.

I didn't say this either. I said that a person who doesn't like non-combat encounters shouldn't use skill challenges in his/her game.

True. I take back my assertion. It is possible Justanobody is using the Skill Challenge system mistakenly thinking he is still doing combat. Or is using it and is unsatisfied because he does not like any kind of non-combat play. I suspect differently, but you are right here.

It is also true that someone who does like non-combat encounters, but doesn't like narrativist play, shouldn't use skill challenges either. But this doesn't entail that playing a skill challenge requires nothing but rolling dice.

I think you're right here too, but please understand this can be confusing to people used to role-playing out of combat. When role-playing, there are no rules for the players to follow other than: "role-play your character", the dice have nothing to do with what the players do. Where in a storytelling game the rule is "tell a story", but only when the dice (or some other mechanic) give you authority to do so. It can be confusing when a single game switches back and forth between these two actions. Especially one with a history of traditionally just role-playing.