A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[shadzar]

Have you ever, at any point, run or played in a 4th Ed game?

I don't have 6 hours to waste on a single combat.

Have you ever, at any point, actually read through the 4th Ed rulebooks?

PHB, DMG, and MM when they first came out and used my own "greasy gamer fingers" to read them.

Borrow them when I want to remember something from them I don't have saved form the DDI articles. Why I asked for the page numbers cause I won't go looking for it.

Skill challenges get used when you're trying to do something that's more complicated than a single roll against one person's skill. Generally I would only use them if several players were doing different things with one end purpose in mind, and if there was some likelihood that failure would have consequences for the group. Without a specific situation in mind, it's hard to come up with concrete examples for a skill challenge.

If multiple people are all trying to got hold of information about a group and then come back and compare notes on what they've found out, that might be a skill challenge, if they're trying to do so without attracting attention. The more successes they have, the more information they get. Each failure increases the chance that they've attracted unpleasant attention, which might mean they get attacked or that the people they're investigating are waiting for them.

So you use them in response to a player attempted action or sequence, rather than a design for some non-combat encounter?

I could actually see THAT as a reason for skill challenges to offer direction to accomplish that. But not as a "design a non-combat encounter" approach.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I don't have 6 hours to waste on a single combat.

Uh-huh.

 

[shadzar]

Oh, that's simple - to make it conceptually easier for the GM to build skill-based encounters or challenges, and reward PCs for completing them. That's all. Ultimately, they're really just a GM-aid, much like the guidelines for building combat encounters or a particular strength.

As I just said, I can see the "here is some guidance, now design your 'thing' and let players figure it out without you as a DM even trying to figure a solution for it".

That is a good tool, Point to 4th 15/luv..whatever.

But as someone else mention the "design a non-combat encounter' I would ignore it. I would just design things and let the players figure it out however, and IF I need to use the skill challenges, then and only then employ them, not have the encounter built around using them.

Sounds like a good system for resolution, but poor one for creation of, non-combat "encounters".

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But as someone else mention the "design a non-combat encounter' I would ignore it. I would just design things and let the players figure it out however, and IF I need to use the skill challenges, then and only then employ them, not have the encounter built around using them.

Sounds like a good system for resolution, but poor one for creation of, non-combat "encounters".

It is roughly equally good for both ways, but probably not for the same DM, and certainly not at the same time. You can't totally remove personal preference and other DM skills from the mix, after all.

In my case, I very rarely use prepared skill challenges except when using them to supplement a combat encounter (which I do a lot, with 7-9 players typically at the table--another monkey wrench that makes my experience different than the norm).

Other than that, skill challenges are for me a more abstract tool in practice than they are presented in game. I no longer even think about "X is a skill challenge" or "Y is just a few skill rolls". The though process is more along the lines of, "Hey, everyone is interested in this, several people are using different skills, there is something at stake. We are in a skill challenge. Record successes and failures!" Or, "Hey, I'm just asking for the same skill checks. I should resolve the action and get on with the next thing."

One of the rather underappreciated bits of skill challenges as actually implemented is that they do use those same skills, and how this lets you move seamlessly in and out of skill challenges on a dime. Got a prepared skill challenge that is getting a little boring? Just call those three skill checks so far successful skill checks and forget the challenge. Those first two skill checks revealed info that sent the players off on a wild tear? Hey, turn it into a skill challenge and give 'em some XP for it.

In fact, the only house rule we have with skills at the moment is something we just started trying to help reinforce this dynamic in a large group, without making massive changes. We are uniformly charging a cumulative +5 DC penalty to each successive skill check of the same type done by the same person for a given goal. This applies for straight skill checks and skill challenges alike. Coupled with a "Let it Ride" mentality from Burning Wheel, this says that every skill check matters, but the players have a vested interest in varying them as much as possible.

When we did it by the book, the artificialness of "everyone doing something" in the skill challenge was off-putting. Now they regulate player participation to suit themselves, and it just flows. We'll see if it causes bad side effects.

 

[shadzar]

Those first two skill checks revealed info that sent the players off on a wild tear? Hey, turn it into a skill challenge and give 'em some XP for it.

I think this hits a nail on the head for skill challenges in what some might view as making the system popular or not. I enjoy giving "role-playing" XP, but am not going to design it into specific places.

My "role-playing" XP if from the players entertaining me by coming up with this such as "how to seal a demon without using a PC sacrifice to do so". So I reward for the creativity and use of the character, its abilities, etc that entertain me and come up with ideas beyond what I might have come up with as a DM.

So depending on where you want to be awarded with or to award XP, might have the skill challenges play a part that I haven't been able to put into words yet until what you just said. One of those "feelings" you cannot describe, but you nailed it for me.

Which is probably why I would only use such as a resolution mechanic and use my own devices to award the "special" XP for all instances based on me, rather than the game. Be it coming up with a solution I didn't think of to some "puzzle", doing something the other players found very rewarding, etc; the DM XP rewards that are not present int he book. I still want to be able to award those where I want to give them, not be dictated in some fashion/system how to award them.

Likewise, I don't want just the set of XP defined in the book, or I would be playing a constrained and coded MMO that can ONLY offer those XP it is coded for. The reason I have a DM to decide things beyond the code and out of the box, that we can challenge each others imagination and "skills" with.

 

[Krensky]

It is also true that 4E is one of those things that some people aren't going to really grok until they do it for awhile. But if they don't see something attractive, they won't bother.

Wait, you're actually claiming that I can't understand how a fair to decent miniature skirmish game with a tacked on skill system that feels like the developers whipped it up as an afterthought works without playing it for a while?

The same skill challenge system that's essentially the complex skill check mechanics in Unearthed Arcana (and the SRD) and, well, pretty much every skill based RPG I've played in the past twenty years?

It's cool that you guys finally figured out how to run a complex skill check due to 4e's presentation, but there's nothing innovative or special about them. They're not even the best presentation of the concept I've seen. In fact, I'd say they're actually a pretty bad example of the concept, especially since they got the math so horribly wrong in the first place.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I still want to be able to award those where I want to give them, not be dictated in some fashion/system how to award them.

Sure. I don't like individual XP anymore. So I didn't make any distinctions there. And I give action points for entertaining and creativity, because I do want those to be individual rewards without messing up the XP progression.

This is a case of my preferred methods of rewards driving the way we use the mechanics, not the other way around. It just so happens that our preferred way leaves a spot open for the party doing something rather involved with skills that is worth group XP, which fits the skill challenge mechanics very well. If you do want to do that, then skill challenges would be, at best, a servicable kludge for something you could probably better handle in some other way.

 

[Imaro]

Imaro, I really think that this post captures the difference in perspectives very well.

I don't think our perspectives are all that different, I think however our interpretation of what we perceive is different.

I'm not really into the food metaphors, so I'll try and do it literally.

Uhm...ok.

On one approach to dimensional travel or heroquesting, what is really important is a set of solid rules dealing which "model" or "give effect to" the ingame reality of time travel etc. So I get a well-defind plane travel spell, rules for severing the silver cord, that sort of thing.

I don't know if 3E has all of this (I know its DDG and MoP, but not the later stuff), but obviouly it could. (So could GURPS.)

On another approach to dimensional travel or heroquesting, what is really important is a mechanical framework which allows the GM to set up open-ended by thematically-guided conflicts, allows this to be done in real time, and that supports the GM in resolving them at the table. A mechanic which, in virtue of the way in which it handles pacing, and the points at which it permits complication to be injected, and the way theme is able to be reinforced or tested through these factors (etc, etc) puts the players in control of theme rather than vice versa. (As well as its action resolution mechanics, 4e also has a crucial feature of its character build rules that supports this, namely, epic destinies as a guaranteed aspect of play leading to a player-focused endgame - very different from, for example, the old Immortals rules.)

This is what 4e offers, and what it is better at than 3E (and Planescape, etc). (And obviously HeroWars/Quest could do this also, and in some ways probably better than 4e - but like I posted upthread, my group also like the mechanical crunch of 4e combat - which HeroWars/Quest is lacking.)

It's not about what the mechanics model. It's about the fashion in which the mechanics set up and permit the resolution of conflicts.

In my view, Planescape is in fact the poster-child for this difference: metaplot-heavy, and a vehicle for exploring someone else's conception of the moral and metaphysical order of things - not for expressing your own through play.

And here is where we differ on a few things... First, I find it odd that at one point you admonish Planescape for being... "the poster-child for this difference: metaplot-heavy, and a vehicle for exploring someone else's conception of the moral and metaphysical order of things - not for expressing your own through play."

Personally... I would have to argue that the landscape in and of itself will always be someone else's conception of something, as there are default assumptions even in the corebook, and that through the decisions made by the players and their effects in game as well as those modifications or tweaks made to the assumptions of the game by the DM are themes within play created. This can just as easily be done in 3e, BECM or AD&D as it can in 4e so I'm sorry but you've stated what you feel is a distinction without giving any reason for why you believe 4e is better at this than any other edition.

I also find the claim that 4e's pre-packaged epic destinies are in some way better than 3e's Epic levels or BECMI's Immortals. (Especially since you admonish the Planescape setting for basically being someone else's creation) I mean these are other people's concepts of a Demigod or an Archmage. This isn't like Heroquest where you create your own attributes and thus really can personalize your own definition of what it is to be an Archmage or Demigod by the attributes you create. No it's picking a more powerful paragon path... just as Epic Levels are becoming a more powerful character/prestige class... just as becoming an immortal is...well you get the picture. I mean please expound on why all of a sudden hero-questing is new and improved in 4e, I'm not seeing any difference in the tools or what you do at those levels in any of these games. If anything 4e more rigidly defines what those epic levels are about than any of the other editions (and IMO, it's very tactical and gamist combat doesn't really seem well suited to the battles of myth and legend it seems would take place in heroquesting...at leats IMO.)...without any real added benefit to running that type of game that I can see.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

[MENTION=23905]kre[/MENTION]nksy, I don't know if you are part of those "some people" I mentioned, or not. Only you can answer that. I will say that the point being made about those people grokking 4E is far from limited to skill challenges.

 

[pemerton]

I find it odd that at one point you admonish Planescape for being... "the poster-child for this difference: metaplot-heavy, and a vehicle for exploring someone else's conception of the moral and metaphysical order of things - not for expressing your own through play."

For me this is not a peripheral point but the key point.

I would have to argue that the landscape in and of itself will always be someone else's conception of something

In Planescape, it is the moral/thematic landscape that is someone else's conception. Compare that to the Game of Making in The Plane Above - it is clearly left up to the players to decide what they think of Erathis's view that even evil things have to be made, and up to the players to decide whether Pelor's circumspection about the game is a misjudgement or not.

A related but important point here is 4e's approach to alignment and divine PCs (namely, a non-punitive one).

I also find the claim that 4e's pre-packaged epic destinies are in some way better than 3e's Epic levels or BECMI's Immortals. (Especially since you admonish the Planescape setting for basically being someone else's creation) I mean these are other people's concepts of a Demigod or an Archmage.

But they only come into play if the player chooses. And the player chooses what to make of them. This is the difference from Immortals.

This isn't like Heroquest where you create your own attributes and thus really can personalize your own definition of what it is to be an Archmage or Demigod by the attributes you create.

Yes and know. Unlike Issaries, WotC has big commercial aspirations. So instead of the free description of HeroQuest, they just publish huge lists of thematically compelling elements, and let the players buy them and choose one. There are a lot of Epic Destinies out there.

I agree with you that HeroQuest is, ultimately, probably a better narrativist gaming system. But 4e is much closer to that than to Planescape, in my view.

I mean please expound on why all of a sudden hero-questing is new and improved in 4e, I'm not seeing any difference in the tools or what you do at those levels in any of these games. If anything 4e more rigidly defines what those epic levels are about than any of the other editions

Well, I've tried in this post, and upthread, and also last year in this thread.

IMO, it's very tactical and gamist combat doesn't really seem well suited to the battles of myth and legend it seems would take place in heroquesting...at leats IMO.

Now I don't agree with this either, but I'll readily concede that this is just in the realm of taste. I personally find that, for my group and our preferences (and we're not averse to a bit of crunch with our combats), 4e delivers a pretty epic combat experience.