Challenge the Players, Not the Characters' Stats

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

And I will say they do know it. Otherwise such ridiculous assertions wouldn't be made about game prep being "role-play". If you are "playing the role" of the game prepper in real life that means you are also engaged in the act of role-playing? But when you play the role of a baseball player, or doctor, or dentist in real life you aren't? By their definition, you have to allow this to be so. I mean really. When I use a Rand McNally map in my RPG session, how on earth does the cartographer become a role-playing participant in my game? I believe the GNS answer is: when you use NAR rules you are playing the role of a storyteller. It's the only functional way to include non-role-playing actions as role-play.

I agree with you that taking narrative control beyond describing/determining the actions of your character is not playing the role.
But I still believe it is a valid part of Role-Playing Games.

 

[howandwhy99]

I agree with you that taking narrative control beyond describing/determining the actions of your character is not playing the role.
But I still believe it is a valid part of Role-Playing Games.

It's valid in all the ways you don't want to "win" by role-playing your character. IMO, that's why so few ever want to use them in combat "storytelling".

 

[Delta]

Which is perhaps the biggest success of Edwards and his cronies to date. My estimation is that they set out to destroy role playing games and replace them with something else that was called the same thing. They may very well have succeeded.

Personally, I think that's a fairly stunning observation.

 

[justanobody]

In the way discussed in the DMG. There are three basic steps, the second having two components.

First step: The level of the skill challenge (which has been predetermined by the GM) tells us the DCs for Easy, Medium and Hard skill checks.

Second step: Any given skill check suggested by a player must be classified as Easy, Medium or Hard. This is done by the GM (presumably most GMs would accept input from their players) and is determined by a combination of (i) the GM's intuition as to how easy the task described by the player would be in ingame terms, and (ii) the GM's view as to how much s/he wants to reward and encourage players having their PCs attempt that sort of task. (This second component is a metagame consideration, not an ingame matter - one example of how a GM can take this thing into account is given on p 42 of the DMG, in the discussion of a PC using an acrobatic manoeuvre to push an ogre into a fire).

Third step: The GM may vary the DC by +/- 2 based on the degree of flamboyance, enthusiasm, cleverness etc of the player's description of her PC's action. (This overlaps to an extent with (ii) in the second step above, but I think (ii) is concerned with a more generic question about a generic sort of activity being undertaken by PCs in the campaign, wheras the +/-2 seems to be more about responding to the strengths of a particular player's narration/roleplaying).

That's not a mechanical process, but in a cooperative playing group I think it's a reasonably tractable one.

So the DM is just making things up and givings bonuses to die rolls. There is no real way to quantify those actions, except by DM fiat.

I think I see where you're going, but please let me know if I'm missing the point.

I think you're saying one can role-play to the GM instead of the modeled reality. Your example is: breaking the 4th wall in order to appeal to the GM while still acting. My objection is: it doesn't matter if the character breaks the 4th wall. In role-playing or improv acting, you, the player, are the one making the decisions for him. You are the one who is choosing to ask the GM to change the modeled reality. The character cannot do this for himself.

Here's an example from Magic: the Gathering. If I improvisationally act as "the master wizard, Karl" who is the Controller of the realms (or whatever that role is) that that game is modeling, I can turn to the judge watching the competition, all the while staying in character as Karl, and say "My realm of trusty warriors doth need the rules changed to win fairly."

Now that must be the geekiest thing I've written in years, but hopefully it illustrates how acting in character doesn't change the reality of the Player being the one asking for a rule change - no matter what game rules are used or fictional reality is being modeled.

Its close enough for me to what I think I was trying to say before my train of thought jumped the tracks, ran over a hot dog vendor, and into the public swimming pool.

The roleplay doesn't really alter the game rules. When challengeing the character stats, you are only asking the player to make the correct die rolls for the correct skills.

When challenging the players, you are asking for all that extra roleplaying and interaction outside of just the die rolls that makes the game fun.

So Tigger had his failed acrobatics skill die rolls, and then needed DM [narrator] intervention because otherwise the story was stuck. Not always a bad thing, and the die rolls go unseen within the world, but as players we all know that they are there, and you CAN do without them with strict roleplay and have the die rolls to fall back on should you fail at roleplaying through when you challenge the player. Challenge the stats, and you really only have the die rolls to go on, because you already decided that the stats would be the determining factor on whether you would pass or fail the challenge.

 

[Hypersmurf]

So the DM is just making things up and givings bonuses to die rolls. There is no real way to quantify those actions, except by DM fiat.

4E PHB, p8: "Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master—you can’t play without one."

That's his job.

-Hyp.

 

[justanobody]

4E PHB, p8: "Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master—you can’t play without one."

That's his job.

-Hyp.

Don't bet on that!

Believe nothing you hear (read) and only half of what you see. - Samuel L. Clemons

 

[RFisher]

I think the term 'role-playing game' was coined as a way to describe a hobby that was evolving; the directions that evolution took the hobby may have taken it beyond the literal definition of the words that make up that term, but the hobby still falls under the umbrella of the term.

Even when it was first applied, I think it meant more than the individual words. And, yeah, this is far from unique to our hobby.

For example, “wargames” when applied to a hobby didn’t mean games about war. There were games about war that wouldn’t be considered wargames, and there were wargames that had very little to do with war.

 

[GlaziusF]

Here's a quick example for people still confused. It uses role-playing as defined in the dictionary and an example from outside the hobby, so we don't get confused by "Big Model" theory.

At a Medical School a professor decides to put her students through a role-playing experiment. She has been teaching them emergency medicine and ER protocols for weeks and now wants to see how well the students do in a simulated environment. She assigns each a name tag with fictional doctor names like, Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, and "Izzie" Stevens.

The professor takes them into the gymnasium where she has a mock up of a 10 car pile up. It is complete with dummies as accident victims and some other props. She could do this in a conference room with figurines and toy cars, but they have the space available and the gym seems easier.

But in that case the gym is intended as a complete simulation.

The interns are presented with everything they need to assess the situation. The cars are cars, the bodies are bodies. And their repertoire of actions is limited to the things that doctors can do with the tools they're simulated to have.

Pretty much any D&D scenario you might care to name is necessarily an incomplete simulation. There are things the player characters might see and be able to do that the DM doesn't describe. For example, the stated example of an improvisational move on page 42 - a rogue grabbing a chandelier overhead and swinging to knock an ogre up against a brazier. (The brazier will probably be obvious, the chandelier may be an undescribed but probable setting detail.)

Skill challenges are incomplete simulation write large. A DM who models crossing a trackless desert as a skill challenge could have a player use Athletics to climb up a ruined tower sticking out of the sand for a better vantage point, even though he didn't intend for there to be a ruined tower in the desert.

The students (and professor) are learning how good of doctors they are in such a situation. Just as D&D RPGers learn and better themselves at how good they are as fighters, wizards, clerics, etc. in fantasy world situations.

...

It is playing the game to skip the consequences of role-playing thereby causing your role-playing successes to be shallower and shallower in their importance.

Hahaha, what?

Nobody has ever done anything important by playing D&D. And that's just fine. Games don't have to be important.

 

[howandwhy99]

But in that case the gym is intended as a complete simulation.

The interns are presented with everything they need to assess the situation. The cars are cars, the bodies are bodies. And their repertoire of actions is limited to the things that doctors can do with the tools they're simulated to have.

Why is a physical simulation so determinedly different than a mental one? I understand that physical props are useful for immediate representation like pictures instead of words, but why couldn't the professor have used a map, drawn or mental?

Pretty much any D&D scenario you might care to name is necessarily an incomplete simulation. There are things the player characters might see and be able to do that the DM doesn't describe. For example, the stated example of an improvisational move on page 42 - a rogue grabbing a chandelier overhead and swinging to knock an ogre up against a brazier. (The brazier will probably be obvious, the chandelier may be an undescribed but probable setting detail.)

Skill challenges are incomplete simulation write large. A DM who models crossing a trackless desert as a skill challenge could have a player use Athletics to climb up a ruined tower sticking out of the sand for a better vantage point, even though he didn't intend for there to be a ruined tower in the desert.

If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?

The very definitions of the words Simulation or Model include "incomplete representation of". That doesn't change these into "shared narrational authority resolution" systems. A Player wandering the desert in the Outdoor Survival system (our OD&D system) could not say, "there is a ruined tower here my PC scrambles up." Nor is the determination of reality a "Stake" where the dice are used to adjudicate who gets to be "King of Determining the World". The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to? The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such. If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.

This doesn't work for most folks as the challenge stops being "beating your opponents as your character" into "beating your opponents by halfway wishing the world into existence to win."

I'm not de-legitimizing this for those who want it. But it is absolutely a different thing than role-playing. At best, it's a hybrid of playing the PC and God. Nor could you play both at the same time. Either you are playing a role or you are telling a story. The only exception In character is telling the story of your PCs personality by Imrov Acting.

Hahaha, what?

Nobody has ever done anything important by playing D&D. And that's just fine. Games don't have to be important.

This is the difference between people jumping up from the table shouting, "WE KICKED YOUR BUTT!!" to "That was a good story we made."

It is my assertion success is as important to role-players as it is to wargamers and cardsharks. I think most every RPG company gets this when they strive for balance in their rulesets. It's not about appeasing complaining players who can't stand having a PC with less influence in any given situation) It's because they intuitively know that power to win is important in "games". IMO, it is as true for DDM as it is for simulations with scopes broad enough to be called RPGs/D&D.

 

[Hussar]

Why is a physical simulation so determinedly different than a mental one? I understand that physical props are useful for immediate representation like pictures instead of words, but why couldn't the professor have used a map, drawn or mental?

Because a map is an abstraction. The physical simulation, while obviously still an incomplete representation, is far, far closer to the actual reality than stick figures on a white board. Not all simulations are created equally of course. Some are far more detailed than others. The more detailed a simulation is, the closer it comes to actually being what is modeled. It's not a case of either/or, but rather a spectrum from reality to completely abstract.

If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?

The skill challenge is a simulation. You are attempting to simulate an event using rules other than the combat ones. Those rules allow the player, with the DM's permission, to affect minor changes to the scenery.

One does not preclude the other. The player must still succeed in the skill challenge or fail as the case may be. However, the parameters of the situation are not entirely in the hands of the DM.

The very definitions of the words Simulation or Model include "incomplete representation of". That doesn't change these into "shared narrational authority resolution" systems. A Player wandering the desert in the Outdoor Survival system (our OD&D system) could not say, "there is a ruined tower here my PC scrambles up." Nor is the determination of reality a "Stake" where the dice are used to adjudicate who gets to be "King of Determining the World". The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to? The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such. If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.

So, only the things you've written down before the game starts may be used? No DM may ever extemporize any details of the setting during play? That's ridiculous. DM's do it all the time. DM's are allowed to determine what is or is not in their world every second of the day. And, while changing an existing detail without justification is bad DMing, adding something certainly isn't. I may not say that there is a badger hole in the hill, but, it's not unreasonable to think that there might be one there.

Does it really matter who places that badger hole?

This doesn't work for most folks as the challenge stops being "beating your opponents as your character" into "beating your opponents by halfway wishing the world into existence to win."

I'm not de-legitimizing this for those who want it. But it is absolutely a different thing than role-playing. At best, it's a hybrid of playing the PC and God. Nor could you play both at the same time. Either you are playing a role or you are telling a story. The only exception In character is telling the story of your PCs personality by Imrov Acting.

This is a completely false assertion. The old 007 game back in the 80's had a hero point mechanic where you as the player could spend a hero point to add in setting elements that were in keeping with the genre. The game actually ENCOURAGED players to do so.

Trying to tell me that I'm suddenly not role playing simply because I have limited authorial control over setting elements that are not detailed by the GM is laughable.

This is the difference between people jumping up from the table shouting, "WE KICKED YOUR BUTT!!" to "That was a good story we made."

Again with the entirely false assertion. Do you allow players to make backgrounds for their characters? Why? You are allowing them to have limited authorial control over the setting, therefore they are no longer role playing. Heck, do you allow them to choose their race or class? How is that any different? If I choose to play an elf, I am affecting the setting. Thus, I must not be roleplaying?

It is my assertion success is as important to role-players as it is to wargamers and cardsharks. I think most every RPG company gets this when they strive for balance in their rulesets. It's not about appeasing complaining players who can't stand having a PC with less influence in any given situation) It's because they intuitively know that power to win is important in "games". IMO, it is as true for DDM as it is for simulations with scopes broad enough to be called RPGs/D&D.

But, even with limited authorial control, you still have success. At no point can you say, "I win" as a player. You might, at best, be able to give yourself a chance of winning, but, that's entirely up the DM and still not a guaranteed success.