[WotC's recent insanity] I think I've Figured It Out

[BryonD]

Put up or shut up.

It didn't take long to get back to the start of this loop. There have been *hundreds* of threads covering the point. I don't choose to play the game of "they didn't happen if no one admits it, therefore start everything over again for the 101st time."

Explain in detail how the rules in 4e impede your roleplaying

Never said they do. Actually, I said EXACTLY the opposite. I said that NO game can interfere with roleplaying. BUT, some games work with it much better than others and I (and a very significant number of others) choose to play those.

without taking single sentences out of context and claiming them as proof that they mean the reverse of what the paragraph in question is trying to say. Out of combat 4e has a rules light system, somewhere between OD&D and 3e in complexity with an additional light mechanical resolution system added for extended and complex actions and solely under the DM's discretion.

Google for a prior thread in which I discuss Andy Collins comments on the root design idea of 4E.

And for the record, I didn't take anything out of context.

 

[pemerton]

Yes, it is. That's how it comes into existence in the first place.

It's an "encounter", remember, in the WotC-speak sense of the term!

This doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, a skill challenge is an "encounter", in the sense of the 4e rules. In HeroQuest it would be called a "contest". I don't see what follows from this, other than a trivial point about terminology.

I still don't see where this issue of "excuses" comes from. Repeating some of my rules quotes:

you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail . . .

it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation​

This is not about "excuses". This is about engaging the ingame situation and the player explaining what the PC is doing. If the player does not describe an action that makes sense in the gameworld (ie "in the adventure and situation"), then no skill check can be made and no success accumulated.

That says it all, which is the problem.

This is like saying "The problem with HeroQuest extended contests is that a certain number of success points must be accumulated by side A before they are accumulated by side B" - that's not a problem, it's just the rules structure. Yes, it's not a free-form resolution system. My earlier post said as much. But what is the objection to structure? And why is 4e uniquely vulnerable to this objection, and (for example) HeroQuest and Burning Wheel immune? Alternatively, if the contention is that HeroQuest and Burning Wheel also impede roleplaying because they have structured non-combat action resolution, then it strikes me as to laughable for words! (Of course, there are other features to HQ and BW which might be seen to set them apart from 4e - but structured action resolution isn't one of them.)

"When you use a skill, you make a skill check."

I think that sums up the problem: you don't resolve the action the character takes in the game world; you use a skill and make a skill check.

<snip>

Interaction with the game world isn't required, and that has an effect on the game: unexpected outcomes aren't going to happen, players will have a hard time paying attention to the game world, and smart or cunning plans aren't any more effective than saying "I roll Diplomacy".

Consistently with the rules text I've quoted here and upthread, I think that interaction is required. You don't get to make your skill checks except as the mechanical expression of the enacting of your smart/cunning plan.

I think it's a matter of resolution ("using a skill") and then coming up with something to fit what just happened versus having your character attempt some kind of action and then resolving that action - which may or may not require using a skill.

<snip>

I think that 4E should have taken steps to make sure that skill checks followed the latter process.

Again, based on the rules text I've quoted, I think that 4e has taken these steps. (In practice, of course, there's a degree of tail-wagging-dog, insofar as a certain type of player will always attempt to describe actions that suggest the use of skills in which his/her PC is strong. In this respect 4e does not differ from many other RPGs - it encourages players to try to draw on the strengths of their PCs when engaging a situation.)

Players use a skill and make a skill check against a set DC based on their level.

I agree that this introduces complexities, in that the benefit of the cunning plan, as far as DCs go, can't be greater than a +2 circumstantial modifier. But a cunning plan should have other benefits eg facilitating the use of skills that are better for the party, or meaning that the resolution of the challenge leaves the PCs in a more advantageous ingame situation than otherwise they might find themselves.

It seems that this was the idea behind Skill Challenges from WotC; otherwise I don't think they would have spent the time in their modules to detail what characters are doing when they make a specific skill check. They would have detailed the opposition, its disposition and methods and left it up to the group to work out.

Now this I can't rebut - I personally chalk it up mostly to poor adventure design by WotC, and also a failure to follow through on the promise of their system. But even the modules at the back of the original HeroWars rulebooks suffer from this to some extent, in that they try to anticipate the likely actions on the part of the PCs, and indicate how those would play out in the context of the scenario in question. In the HeroWars adventures this is more explicitily presented as guidelines/predictions than "here's how it will play out", but that also reflects a more general difference between 4e style and the style of other RPGs. 4e is deliberately written in a way that is (I assume) intended to make it more accessible. It also adopts some traditional D&D-isms, of writing the rulebooks as if they (to an extent at least) themselves part of play - whereas HeroWars in both its modules and rules text is much more clear that it is talking to players and telling them how to play a game, with the actual game occurring only when play itself takes place.

 

[pemerton]

while I do not need rules for roleplaying, it is nice to have rules as some sort of guideline for how to meaningfully quantify non-combat related rewards in a way that can interact with the rest of the game yet not break any assumptions the game has about what resources I should have available at certain levels.

In 4e, this is easy enough (in principle, at least) - some treasures can be associated with a skill challenge rather than a combat encounter.

In practice, it might be tricker to stage things like running a keep or a tavern as a skill challenge, given the assumptions that underlie 4e encounter design. On the other hand, if what is at stake in running a tavern isn't the sort of thing that could make for a skill challenge, then the amount of money at stake is probably not such that it is going to unbalance the game one way or another. For example, an extra 10 gp per game day for even a mid-heroic tier PC is not normally going to have any meaningful consequences for 4e game balance. (And if the ingame timeframe is such that large amounts of time are passing then we resort to plan A - over the course of a game year 10 gp per day would amount to an 8th level item, which can be duly handed over in lieu of the relevant parcel).

 

[LostSoul]

Consistently with the rules text I've quoted here and upthread, I think that interaction is required. You don't get to make your skill checks except as the mechanical expression of the enacting of your smart/cunning plan.

I concede the point. I think it would be better - stronger - if you couldn't proceed without that interaction - the DM would be left sitting there scratching his head when the player says, "I make a Diplomacy check", similar to having a player say "I attack". Well, who do you attack? How? Obviously that was a goal of mine when I wrote my hack for skill checks.

(As for cunning plans, I think that some of what's been written on Skill Challenges says that you can either make a secondary check to get a bonus on other rolls or even an automatic success. I recall the PCs in my game running into a wandering monster - a Skull Lord who was searching for the Black Tower of Vumerion. The PCs knew where it was; they told him, and the Skill Challenge ended right there, with no rolls. Of course that will have some effect later down the road.)

It reminds me of playing Burning Empires/Wheel. One of the players would often say, "I'm doing a Flank and rolling Tactics, ForKing in Hammer-wise" when we got into Firefights. I also had similar experiences with Duel of Wits; too often I'd see "Point; rolling Persuasion, ForKing in Noble-wise" or something like that.

I had a big "eureka" moment when I went through (as a player) a DoW where we focused on what the characters were saying. It was amazing. The outcome - and a big moment of character "growth" for my PC (he lost faith in mankind) - was based on the mechanical result and what the characters were actually saying, the latter being the focus. Unexpected results, but awesome ones, that really set up the climax of the game.

Since I had gone through that with BE/W, I knew how to handle Skill Challenges. (I think the BX games would be better if there was more focus on the in-game stuff, but that's just me. )

 

[Argyle King]

In 4e, this is easy enough (in principle, at least) - some treasures can be associated with a skill challenge rather than a combat encounter.

In practice, it might be tricker to stage things like running a keep or a tavern as a skill challenge, given the assumptions that underlie 4e encounter design. On the other hand, if what is at stake in running a tavern isn't the sort of thing that could make for a skill challenge, then the amount of money at stake is probably not such that it is going to unbalance the game one way or another. For example, an extra 10 gp per game day for even a mid-heroic tier PC is not normally going to have any meaningful consequences for 4e game balance. (And if the ingame timeframe is such that large amounts of time are passing then we resort to plan A - over the course of a game year 10 gp per day would amount to an 8th level item, which can be duly handed over in lieu of the relevant parcel).

It's doable, and that's actually a pretty good idea and a good example of how something like that can work. Though, I think what some people mean when they say D&D 4E impedes roleplay can be found in your solution. Eventually, your reward becomes and item or some other resource which is related to the encounter portion of the game. Hence what I've been saying in previous posts: I think if what someone wants is a game which does not revolve around the looting and level; if instead they want to ignore the ideas about encounters and skill challenges and play something else... well, they should.

It is my belief that a lot of the gripes people have concerning the current edition with D&D stem from trying to make 4E play like a different game. Then, instead of trying different games, there are complaints about what WoTC is doing with D&D. In the beginning, I would say this was understandable because it is also my belief that some of the preview material and early interviews were somewhat misleading. However, at this point, there have been plenty of articles, webcasts, and sidebars in books which talk about some of the ideas behind 4E. Can you play against those ideals? Yes. Can you modify 4E to work differently? Yes. Can you roleplay? Yes. I just think, if you go through all that and still don't feel happy, you might benefit from see how some of the other rpg systems work.

 

[Ariosto]

This doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, a skill challenge is an "encounter", in the sense of the 4e rules. ... I don't see what follows from this, other than a trivial point about terminology.

The terminology has meaning.

In old-fashioned role-playing games

Encounter -- An unexpected confrontation with a monster, another party,etc.

In 4e, an "encounter" is a game in itself, with objectives and rules set beforehand by the DM. (I am sure I read a very well written passage summing that up, somewhere in the 4e books, but I cannot find it just now.)

Basically, "an encounter" means what we wargamers call "a scenario".

In 4e, the DM defines "combat encounters" and "non-combat encounters". The DM determines that X number of dice rolls must be made in a challenge, from a particular menu of numbers, before the players get to do anything.

This is all thoroughly backwards relative to long established practice!

What is that practice?
(1) Find out what the players are trying to do.
(2) Assess the likelihood of success.

Depending on the situation, different resources may be applicable and probabilities may range anywhere from 100% to 0%.

 

[giant.robot]

This is all thoroughly backwards relative to long established practice!

What is that practice?
(1) Find out what the players are trying to do.
(2) Assess the likelihood of success.

Now the practice is:
(1) Find out what the players want to do
(2) Break up those actions into one or more ability or skill checks
(3) Assess the likelihood of success and assign a difficulty to the checks

This is no different to what RPGs have been doing forever. The DM doesn't have to pre-plan all the actions (and resolutions) in 4E any more than they need to in any previous edition. just because "encounter" are highly structured doesn't mean they need to be planned in excruciating detail and without any involvementbof the players and their actions.

In fact I think 4E's encounter and treasure building mechanisms make for great tools in building off-the-cuff encounters. The updated monster rules from MM3 go even further giving the DM a nice tool for creating whatever challenge she needs on the fly.

Another nice feature of 4E is when you model that complex action or series of actions the players want to do as a skill challenge the rules make it easy to make the rolls fair and to provide an adequate XP reward. This is especially useful for new DMs. Us old hats know how and when to dole out XP and other rewards.

The players' creativity may have let them avoid a combat encounter you had planned. A DM has an easy way to reward them without making them go through combat. A new DM that has previously only played D&D Encounters or some badly written modules may not immediately catc on that combat isn't the only avenue for characters to advance or be rewarded.

 

[LostSoul]

The DM determines that X number of dice rolls must be made in a challenge, from a particular menu of numbers, before the players get to do anything.

This is all thoroughly backwards relative to long established practice!

Isn't that exactly the same as having an AC and HP?

X number of dice rolls - damage vs HP
Menu of numbers - AC

I don't know where you get the idea that players don't get to do anything.

 

[Ariosto]

Now the practice is:
(1) Find out what the players want to do
(2) Break up those actions into one or more ability or skill checks
(3) Assess the likelihood of success and assign a difficulty to the checks

This is no different to what RPGs have been doing forever.

It sure as hell is different!

First, (1) is NOT "find out what the players want to do".
(1) is "design the 'encounter'."
(2) is tell the players what they're going to do.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, in Step 1 we have already established what is what; in Step 3, we are just settling details.

Isn't that exactly the same as having an AC and HP?

Is it exactly the same thing as having a shoe size and a hair color?

No. That things have qualities is not at all the same as that I am required to perform a particular action. It is not at all the same as every possible action requiring X multiple dice rolls to ensure a priori roughly Y probability of failure regardless.

In any RPG I've ever played, the only reason to make a "lock picking" or "pocket picking" or "banjo picking" or "nose picking" roll is because I'm trying to do that thing.

If I decide to shoot a Dark Troll, then I roll for that attack. If the shot kills the DT, then it's dead. If while it's not dead I decide to Hide and then Sneak and Pick its Pocketses, then Sneak back, that's probably several chances to slip up. If they all pass muster, then I've got what I've got; otherwise, I probably got caught! Maybe I'll try a line that warrants a Fast Talk roll at a plus or minus, or spend my time building longer lasting Persuasion.

Maybe I'll do something that calls for another roll, or for none at all.

Maybe at some point I'll try on its boots, or otherwise make an issue of its shoe size. Maybe I won't.

If it really makes no difference, then why pay cash money for it? Why champion and proselytize for it? If the new boss is just the same as the old, then wherefore the revolution?

 

[pemerton]

In 4e, an "encounter" is a game in itself, with objectives and rules set beforehand by the DM.

No. The goal is set by the players (though in practice the GM will have a likely goal in mind when designing an encounter - many GMs know their players well).

In 4e, the DM defines "combat encounters" and "non-combat encounters". The DM determines that X number of dice rolls must be made in a challenge, from a particular menu of numbers, before the players get to do anything.

This is all thoroughly backwards relative to long established practice!

So, like I said above, HQ and BW also fall foul of your critique - which to my mind is a reductio on your critique.

First, (1) is NOT "find out what the players want to do".
(1) is "design the 'encounter'."
(2) is tell the players what they're going to do.

This bears no connection to anything in my 4e game, or anything that I recall reading in DMG, DMG2 or DM's kit book.

It does resemble some 2nd ed AD&D railroads I played through.