Supporting the "Three Pillars" Combat, Exploration and Roleplay equally?

[jshaft37]

In order to equally support the Three Pillars, is it necessary to create a more robust rules system for exploration and role playing? If so, what type of rules could be helpful?

At the least, in order to support more interesting exploration and role play, I believe the DM should be supplied with a toolset to help guide these aspects of play.

Maybe there's another approach that would be a boon to the system?

Dragon Age RPG has some interesting mechanics for social and exploration skills and various stunts that seem to boost some aspects of these pillars. I'm sure there are other systems that I'm not familiar with that have rules and guidance covering these pillars that work great too.

FWIW, I DM two games that are ~75% exploration and role play, but I can help but notice that my PCs have character sheets full of combat options, but the other pillars have always seemed to have been largely glossed over. The ideas behind rituals and skill challenges were steps in the right direction, but I don't feel they have been implemented or ingrained into the system well enough to be fluid.

Maybe we don't need rules for the other two pillars, since they are, at their core, shared storytelling. I mange to use these pillars primarily in my games without much rules guidance, but I can't help to wonder if additional rules or tools would open up exploration and role play to even greater possibilities.

 

[Sunseeker]

My feeling is that exploration and social is where the vast majority of the "role play" comes in, and combat is the primary domain of "roll play". IMO, "role play" should be more rules lite, to facilitate great imagination and creativity, as opposed to "well the skill says I ask really nicely, so I ask him nicely."

 

[BobTheNob]

My feeling is that exploration and social is where the vast majority of the "role play" comes in, and combat is the primary domain of "roll play". IMO, "role play" should be more rules lite, to facilitate great imagination and creativity, as opposed to "well the skill says I ask really nicely, so I ask him nicely."

Yes and no. This is almost exactly what 4e was and the thing I really wanted was a cool framework to encourage creativity, not just a loose "here is some numbers, make it up as you go along".

I think of FATE. Between aspects, fate points and narrative injection they had a framework for doing role-play which gave player really cool tools to work with. At the same time Im reading through Fanstasy craft at the moment and they have done alot to create interesting classes that are non combat, and loaded them up with interesting options for getting things done. These games have really opened my eyes that a skill system is just a starting point for interesting Role-playing mechanisms.

Yes, allow free role-play, but give players tools to get the job done that are fun to use. When you define the tool players have to role-play with as a short list of skills, well, that likes stone-age sharpened rocks when we need nailguns.

The Role-play tools we have seem to have done very little real growth of concept in the past 20 years where combat options have just grown and blossomed the whole time.

If we say, for 5e, that a skill system is enough, well, I for one will be very disappointed.

 

[billd91]

There's an interesting interplay between ideas in game design here, I think. Leaving things open, taking a rules-lite approach, allows for the greatest degree of freedom, I believe, in the execution and thus the greatest potential t handle anything that comes the referee's way. That's one reason I believe there has often been relatively little rule support for both social interaction and exploration. The potential uses that these could be put to are so wide and varied. Applying rule structure would restrict those options - box them in - like we usually see in combat.

Combat is also usually pretty varied, but if you look at the options available based on the rules, you realize that they put the characters in a set of boxes and restrict what they can do. Even 4e's tables on Page 42 serve that purpose. Sure, you can try a lot of actions, but you're boxed in to the results those actions can achieve. You don't get as boxed in when the rules give you less structure to limit you.

On the other hand, player behavior needs to be taken into account. The surest way to get players to behave a certain way is to include structures on that subject area. There's a recent article on The Alexandrian that delves into this: Game Structures – Part 10: Incomplete Game Structures. Include a structure and, sure enough, players will find a way to use it even if the end result is actually limiting rather than liberating. I suspect it's partly because the players feel their actions in that area will be predictably rewarded due to the structure, rather than have to rely on wheedling whatever they can get out of the DM. (So I wonder how much this plays into the idea that D&D is about "Killing things and taking their stuff" or is nothing more than a "combat game".)

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes and no. This is almost exactly what 4e was and the thing I really wanted was a cool framework to encourage creativity, not just a loose "here is some numbers, make it up as you go along".

I think of FATE. Between aspects, fate points and narrative injection they had a framework for doing role-play which gave player really cool tools to work with. At the same time Im reading through Fanstasy craft at the moment and they have done alot to create interesting classes that are non combat, and loaded them up with interesting options for getting things done. These games have really opened my eyes that a skill system is just a starting point for interesting Role-playing mechanisms.

Yes, allow free role-play, but give players tools to get the job done that are fun to use. When you define the tool players have to role-play with as a short list of skills, well, that likes stone-age sharpened rocks when we need nailguns.

The Role-play tools we have seem to have done very little real growth of concept in the past 20 years where combat options have just grown and blossomed the whole time.

If we say, for 5e, that a skill system is enough, well, I for one will be very disappointed.

I guess its just how we look at things, i dont feel I need "tools" to be creative with. To me, combat is much more about "here's what u need to do, here's how you do it.". While social and exploration were more along the lines of "what do you want to do, tell me how you did that.". When I DM, social creativity gets a lot better results than combat creativity, in combat you use the mechanics to be creative, think of it like LEGOs. In social, you come up with how to woo the king all on your own, think of it like sculpting. You have a few simple tools, but you aren't locked into a system or a specific structure or way the blocks must come together.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In order to equally support the Three Pillars, is it necessary to create a more robust rules system for exploration and role playing? If so, what type of rules could be helpful?

The most important thing in supporting the 'Three Pillar' model is to make all classes capable in all three 'Pillars.' That way a DM is free to 'tell his stories' or 'let his campaign grow organically' in whatever direction, without having to always throw in some traps for the thief or quest of the Paladin or whatever the needs of some over-specialized class dictate to keep it involved.

Ideally, each 'Pillar' could use a distinct system, and the role played in each pillar could be a defining aspect of the character. For instance, currently there's talk of having theme as well as class and race. If class (obviously) strongly determines how a character approaches Combat, perhaps race could most-strongly determine how it Interacts, and Theme determine how it contributes in Exploration? It would be a tidy layout, at least.

I can help but notice that my PCs have character sheets full of combat options, but the other pillars have always seemed to have been largely glossed over. The ideas behind rituals and skill challenges were steps in the right direction, but I don't feel they have been implemented or ingrained into the system well enough to be fluid.

Rituals and Skill Challenges are definitely good ideas and could be improved and expanded upon. That's unlikely to happen, tough, given the all-editions mandate of 5e. More likely, rituals will be folded back into spell lists, allowing casters to pour all their resources into one pillar or another if they so desire, and skill challenges (heck even skills) vanish without a trace.

However much you try to develop rules for exploration and interaction, though, combat rules are likely to remain more complex and detailed, and in greater need of balancing, because combat is such a very high-stakes, high-drama aspect of the genre.

Maybe we don't need rules for the other two pillars, since they are, at their core, shared storytelling. I mange to use these pillars primarily in my games without much rules guidance, but I can't help to wonder if additional rules or tools would open up exploration and role play to even greater possibilities.

Combat could be run in a 'shared storytelling' mode, too - in some freestyle RPGs, it is. That would be quite a departure for D&D with its wargaming roots, though.

A really good non-combat system should evoke the tension and interest of the conflict being modeled, almost like a game within a game, with its own rules and strategies.

 

[BobTheNob]

I guess its just how we look at things, i dont feel I need "tools" to be creative with. To me, combat is much more about "here's what u need to do, here's how you do it.". While social and exploration were more along the lines of "what do you want to do, tell me how you did that.". When I DM, social creativity gets a lot better results than combat creativity, in combat you use the mechanics to be creative, think of it like LEGOs. In social, you come up with how to woo the king all on your own, think of it like sculpting. You have a few simple tools, but you aren't locked into a system or a specific structure or way the blocks must come together.

I never said I needed tools to be creative either. What I said was it is possible to come up with mechanics for non combat aspects that stretch well beyond skill rolls and still allow players to go in varying directions.

It just feels like "skill rolls" is so minimal and...uninteresting. Since we stopped playing 4e I have spent alot of time looking around at the way other systems got players off the combat spiral and into interesting, non-combat play, and I gotta say what D&D has done to date has been ... well, thin.

I have looked at FATE, Dragon Age, FantasyCraft and others (though those three are probably the best of the pack) and all of them just do more. Still plenty of room for creativity, but giving more than just skill rolls.

I once thought skills were enough. Dont think that any more, seen to many other good approaches and am convinced there are many many more good approaches yet to be thought up if people are just willing to step out of outdated traditions. Just feels lazy to say skills = "the best non-combat approach". Thats how we were thinking decades ago.

 

[Daztur]

You don't NECESSARILY need more rules to cover non-combat stuff, (although there's nothing wrong with that per se) so much as making sure that combat doesn't take a long time to resolve so that there's time left in a session to do non-combat stuff even if there's a few fights.

 

[Bluenose]

I never said I needed tools to be creative either. What I said was it is possible to come up with mechanics for non combat aspects that stretch well beyond skill rolls and still allow players to go in varying directions.

It just feels like "skill rolls" is so minimal and...uninteresting. Since we stopped playing 4e I have spent alot of time looking around at the way other systems got players off the combat spiral and into interesting, non-combat play, and I gotta say what D&D has done to date has been ... well, thin.

I have looked at FATE, Dragon Age, FantasyCraft and others (though those three are probably the best of the pack) and all of them just do more. Still plenty of room for creativity, but giving more than just skill rolls.

I once thought skills were enough. Dont think that any more, seen to many other good approaches and am convinced there are many many more good approaches yet to be thought up if people are just willing to step out of outdated traditions. Just feels lazy to say skills = "the best non-combat approach". Thats how we were thinking decades ago.

Passions, Traits, Relationships - things which you believe in, people who care about you - all things which can and probably should affect how you perform tasks where they're involved. Stunts for all sorts of skills, Aspects that can add bonuses, and so on. Though given the emphasis on incorporating ideas from all editions of D&D, I'm pretty certain they're not going to look outside D&D for ideas from other RPGs, no matter how valuable they might be.

 

[Minigiant]

Hopefully there are some optional rules for exploration and interaction to keep those pillars something more than simple and boring single skill rolls. Ways to make noncombat rolls exciting and thought provoking.