4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[S'mon]

And combat is just another option which could happen but doesn't have to. 4E made it quite clear that combat is the core of the game and that if you didn't want combat you should gtfo. It even goes so far that they stopped even trying to simulate a world to make combat "better".

I think Wyatt has a lot to answer for.
There is definitely a problem with what Justin Alexander calls the "My Precious Encounter" model of 4e adventure design. It's noticeable running Dungeon Delve, some of the Delves like #11 (demon attack in city then sewers) have a fairly naturalistic design that works great; the players were using the logically-there terrain to great effect. Eg the flaming exploding zombies crawled out of a storm drain into the town square, a PC pushed one back into the drain so that it hit the ground in the sewer system where it exploded harmlessly. Conversely the Temple of the Dawn in Dungeon Delve #12 has an overwrought assembly of too many magic circles, altars, statues, flaming icons, magic walls of fire or corpses etc - it kinda makes sense in context since it was built by a mad dragon with delusions of godhood, but in play it feels overwrought and stagey. When the PCs had actuallly fought Emerald Dawn earlier IMC it had been on and around an old watch tower with no 'film set' stuff, that worked much better.

More importantly - many of the best and most intense episodes in my 4e campaigns have been where combat did NOT occur. The scene where the deva Paladin Shawna Carter talked Ice Fang the white dragon down from attacking the battered party was quite breathtaking. I've learned that when running 4e published adventures you need to treat the 'delve format' fights as only one possible outcome, no matter how many pages are dedicated to them. I've been on the lookout for published adventures that support this - P2 Demon Queen's Enclave is good this way; Thunderspire Labyrinth also has some potential.
It's a shame the terrible Delve Format gives the impression YOU MUST FIGHT 30 ENCOUNTERS TO COMPLETE MODULE - it's terrible design, and completely unnecessary. The typical 4e adventure works best IME if the PCs avoid or non-violently resolve 1/3-1/2 of the encounters. Ignoring any 'attacks immediately' text about half the time, and have 1/4-1/3 of monster groups initially elsewhere (so available for later use, as wandering monsters, etc), seems to help a lot.
Learning all that was a fairly tough experience, though. I don't blame people who gave up with Keep on the Shadowfell.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

If you ask me, non-combat has always been an afterthought in any edition as far as the rules go. Most editions don't reward the use of skills in place of combat. The success of a skill vs an attack is largely the discretion of the DM as opposed to defined by the rules, and by and large most use of skills comes down to "make a roll: determine success on chart, move on." This is largely true in any edition. Social and Exploration has long been the domain of player and DM fiat where RP reigns without the need for much structure, rules or complexity.

Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's not. But it's pretty common in every edition of D&D.

Agreed on all counts. I think the reason that skill challenges never really wowed me is that they're essentially just a variation on "make a roll, determine success by chart, move on." In a SC, you're basically just making more rolls. (Although maybe this is one of those 4e things that requires the insight of practice, which I never bothered to pursue.)

On non-combat failure throughout editions: I'm going to quote Old Geezer of rpg.net, who was a player at the table of Gary Gygax himself; "It all started when Gary did a sh*tty job of explaining thief skills." Non-combat play, much like multiclassing, is one of those things that no edition has managed to pull off really well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The typical 4e adventure works best IME if the PCs avoid or non-violently resolve 1/3-1/2 of the encounters.

That describes my own personal take on FRPG gameplay in general. On either side of the screen, if the party can come up with a way to overcome the encounter/obstacle without combat, I'm generally cool with that.

In S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, if we could have convinced those police robots to "go on a pilgrimage to Mecha", I'd have been overjoyed.

 

[S'mon]

This is, in fact, the way it should be done. But you simply have to acknowledge that this is not what the original DMG told the DM to do. And the Essentials rulebook was even more explicit: "When choosing a DC from the table, the Dungeon Master should use the level of the creature performing the check..."

I think page 42 provides the raw material necessary to make a really great tool. But it's like a screwdriver without a handle that the manufacturer tells you should be used to pound in nails: Incomplete and broken for its intended application. Add a handle and use it in a completely different way than the designers tell you to, though, and you've got something that's useful.

This is a problem that consistently plagued 4E products. As another random example, Dungeon Delve was a good sourcebook for small, mini-adventures. But WotC/Slavicsek said that the intended function of the book was to deliver a megadungeon that could support play as a shared universe for a large pool of players. And in terms of achieving that goal, Dungeon Delve is a giant WTF.

Skill challenges are another great example of WotC failing to execute.

I agree on all points - setting DCs in the DMG is generally ambivalent whether it keys off PC level or challenge level, but Essentials in places actually explicitly says to key off PC level. Dungeon Delve is actually a great product for constructing sandboxy campaigns with lots of player choice what to do, but bears no resemblance to the Gygaxian-Greyhawk style shared universe megadungeon the intro talks about.

Skill challenges are a mechanic in search of a rationale. All the effort to fix them just showed they were fundamentally unncessary, and potentially harmful, to game play. Certainly the game needs non-combat XP, but Quest Awards and DMG2 Roleplay Awards are ad hoc systems that work far better for that.

 

[pemerton]

Mostly DSA but also Shadowrun or Traveller.
You have a situation and the PCs are let lose to solve (or ignore it). If they encounter a point where skill checks are needed then they are appropriate for the task and

The RPGs that I know best that fit this description are Classic Traveller, Runequest and Rolemaster. In standard terminology, they would be classified as process simulation, or purist-for-system simulation, games.

Traveller quite overtly has a strong world-exploration element; so do some iterations of Runequest. Rolemaster can also be played that way, but it has certain mechanical features - in particular, points in action resolution where player decisions about resource allocation and risk-vs-reward can be driven by metagame considerations rather than "I am my character" considerations - that also make it well-suited to be drifted towards story-oriented play.

not scaled for levels (4E) or story significance

That you draw this contrast is interesting; in 4e, "level" is a measure of "story significance". That is, for 1st level PCs, 30th level challenges do not have any immediate story significance. They may be there in the background, waiting, but they will not be encountered by 1st level PCs. Conversely, for 30th level PCs 1st level challenges have no story significance. If they figure at all in the fiction, they are not points for the application of the action resolution mechanics, but simply to be narrated through.

What 4e does, by combining level scaling with a pre-published package of story elements (very roughly, kobolds at the bottom, drow in the middle, and demon princes at the top), is ensure that a generice 1st-to-30th campaign will be one in which the heroes experience "the story" of D&D. To that extent it's not about world exploration or storyline exploration, because the basics of the world and of the storyline are predetermined. (Somewhat similar to HeroWars/Quest, in which the Gloranthan Hero Wars provide a pregiven backdrop to the events of play.)

The Dark Sun campaign materials provide an interseting published example of how the basic mechanical framework, including scaling, can be adapted to support a game that unfolds against a different story backdrop. Chris Perkins Iomandra campaign (that he discusses in his column on the WotC site) shows another, unpublished, example. And I'm sure 4e GMs all over the world make changes - minor or major - to make the story backdrop fit their and their groups' particular conceptions of what the story backdrop of D&D should be.

But whatever the backdrop, the basic 4e framework means that it will have a direction and an escalation - start out small and local, grow to be big and cosmological (whether that's demon princes or dragon tyrants) - which distinguishes 4e from a process sim, world exploration game.

4E made it quite clear that combat is the core of the game and that if you didn't want combat you should gtfo.

Combat is the preeminent mode of confict resolution in 4e, yes.

It would not be impossible to run a combat-free game of 4e, resolved using just the skill mechanics, but I would wonder why you'd bother. Your PC sheets and monster descriptions would be carrying a lot of unnecessary payload. That said, I doubt that I am the only GM to have run combat free sessions of 4e. It's non-combat conflict resolution mechanics are pretty robust.

Yes there were skill challenges, but they were broken, as was the skill system in general and lead to mindless dice rolling depending on what skills the DM uses for the challenge.

I don't think this is true. I refer you to the threads I linked to above, as well as this thread.

I think it's implicit that what the PCs are facing is assumed to be dramatically appropriate for their level.

Yes.

4e DMG pg 42 is clear that the idea is that the DCs scale with character level. It says "A quick rule-of-thumb is to start with a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (medium), or 20 (hard) and add one-half the character's level."

Yes, but I think it is taken for granted that the narration of the fiction of the challenge will be appropriate.

For intance, on page 64 of the 4e DMG is the following text and table:

When terrain requires a skill check or ability check, use the Difficulty Class by Level table (page 42) to set a DC that’s appropriate to the characters’ level. Some of the examples below show DCs for breaking down doors or opening locks, and also show the level at which a character should be able to break down the door with a Strength check of moderate difficulty. Thus, that level is a good rule of thumb for dungeon design. Don’t put an iron door in a dungeon designed for 10th-level characters unless you intend it to be difficult for them to break through. . .

DCs to Break Down Doors

Strength Check to		DC	Level

Break down wooden door		16	  3
Break down barred door		20	  9
Break down stone or iron door	25	 18
Break down adamantine door	29	 29
Break through force portal	38	  —

"The world changes with the PCs' level" can be addressed by providing tables of what common challenges (e.g. locks, doors, walls, etc.) of varying DCs represent in the real world or asking DMs who are concerned about world-building and simulation to reverse-engineer the real world situation from the calculated DC and to maintain consistency while doing so.

If you're willing to set the DC first and reverse-engineer what's happening in the fiction (i.e. instead of asking, "This vault is protected by a iron door. What's the break DC?" you ask "The break DC of the vault door is 25. What sort of door is it?") then a table like the following could help

Much like the table on p 64 of the 4e DMG!

when running 4e published adventures you need to treat the 'delve format' fights as only one possible outcome, no matter how many pages are dedicated to them.

<snip>

It's a shame the terrible Delve Format gives the impression YOU MUST FIGHT 30 ENCOUNTERS TO COMPLETE MODULE - it's terrible design, and completely unnecessary. The typical 4e adventure works best IME if the PCs avoid or non-violently resolve 1/3-1/2 of the encounters. Ignoring any 'attacks immediately' text about half the time

Yes. This is also the only way to treat skill challenges as presented by WotC - they are "GM's advice" on how to interpret and resolve likley player choices for their PCs. (And if you look at how Robin Laws' Narrator's Book for the original Hero Wars treats the extended challenges for its example scenarios, you can see how little change in terminology and presentation is required to make this crystal clear.)

Thunderspire Labyrinth alsop has some potential.

I have some advice on how to adjust this to improve its play here

 

[S'mon]

Certainly, some tensions are eternal, but 4e has seen a lot of development since 2008, and there are now potential solutions, if not necessarily official solutions, to some of the age-old complaints.

For example, "I can't play an archer fighter" can easily be addressed by adding an archer theme.

A high-DEX Slayer Fighter works pretty well as an archer, since he's adding double DEX bonus to damage with ranged basic attacks. Of course he can fight in melee too, take the melee training (DEX) feat and he doesn't even need good STR to do so.

 

[pemerton]

Skill challenges are a mechanic in search of a rationale. All the effort to fix them just showed they were fundamentally unncessary, and potentially harmful, to game play.

I radically disagree with this. Skill challenges are a complex scene resolution mechanic, functionally equivalent to BW Duels of Wits and HeroWars/Quests extended contest. Those systems aren't harmful to play - they are central to a certain sort of RPG play.

The mathematical fixes in 4e are a consequence of its steep scaling and its high level of variability in PC skill bonuses: Burning Wheel lacks the steep scaling, while HW/Q generally lacks the extreme variability (especially in the revised edition) .

 

[S'mon]

What 4e does, by combining level scaling with a pre-published package of story elements (very roughly, kobolds at the bottom, drow in the middle, and demon princes at the top), is ensure that a generice 1st-to-30th campaign will be one in which the heroes experience "the story" of D&D. To that extent it's not about world exploration or storyline exploration, because the basics of the world and of the storyline are predetermined. (Somewhat similar to HeroWars/Quest, in which the Gloranthan Hero Wars provide a pregiven backdrop to the events of play.)
...
But whatever the backdrop, the basic 4e framework means that it will have a direction and an escalation - start out small and local, grow to be big and cosmological (whether that's demon princes or dragon tyrants) - which distinguishes 4e from a process sim, world exploration game.

Yes. This is also the only way to treat skill challenges as presented by WotC - they are "GM's advice" on how to interpret and resolve likley player choices for their PCs. (And if you look at how Robin Laws' Narrator's Book for the original Hero Wars treats the extended challenges for its example scenarios, you can see how little change in terminology and presentation is required to make this crystal clear.)

I have some advice on how to adjust this to improve its play here

Story of D&D; Skill Challenges as GMing advice - great stuff as always P, thanks!
Thanks for the running Thunderspire link too, I'll check it out!

 

[Gorgoroth]

As a PC, when I know the door I'm beating down is tougher because I'm stronger now, it kind of ruins the benefit of levelling and I see the code behind the Matrix. //immersion lost.

I did love 4e optimisation for a while, precisely because it reminded me, as did the OP, of various RTS games (I make videogames for a living, so I end up wanting to play stuff other than CRPGs when I'm actually playing pen and paper with my buddies... wierd huh). The biggest problems with 4e have been well discussed in this forum, and it mirrors my experience. I remember the first 4e combat I had in that official module...the kobolds took seemingly forever to kill. This is something that should never have gotten through extensive and rigorous playtesting like is going on now for Next. Light skirmish battles should NOT play like big set piece end-game battles. I love minis too, but it was just insane the amount of time spent.

Had it been all chaps of my caliber of speed at my turn, (as a result of knowing my strategies well and general brainiac-ness...not to say other players weren't super smart, but I spent an inordinate amount of time reading the forums to know every twist and turn of my powers), we would have merely run into the issue that it's simply unfair to play a chess-like game like 4e, 4-6 against one DM. The DM would have to be a grandmaster at strategy to compete with us, and even then...good luck tweaking the monsters to not get p0wned. If the DM spends less time than the combined total of his players (or even one of them, like me), things would have been more even. But as it is in most games, there are players with various levels of strategic wit (especially in realtime), and there are broken or unbalanced combos even in a game that prides itself on balance-is-god (==fail...what a useless goal, IMO...don't nerf stuff into oblivion the first errata that comes out after the book is published...jeeez). As a consumer, Wotc p*ssed me off several times like when I purchased MP2 and they errata'ed SWS for rangers in exactly the same way they errata'ed SCS a few months earlier. It is beyond the pale of annoyance to feel like a pawn in their petty "publish OP power with the intention of 0-day nerf"-to turn a quick profit.

Also, some of the coolest stuff you can imagine happens in 3 or even 4-d...and 4e is strictly 2d where all the game takes place, on a 2-d battle grid. D&D in previous editions abhors ground-level focus starting at level 5 when a wizard can fly. It has massive implications to a game system where for all intents and purposes, you cannot leave the ground until level 21. I detested 4e when I realized my dragonborn would never fly. I stuck to it for a while, but it was dead and already a foregone conclusion...no matter how many GMs I played with at the local gaming store (many...) and the revolving door of other players...every time we'd try to run a 4e game the DMs would get tired of it and revert to Pathfinder. Every....single....time. 4e was a massive failure, let's not kid ourselves. I had some great times in it, but over three years of playing it compared with 1 year of PF, I had so much more fun creatively and story-wise, exploration, character creation-wise...that I had to admit to myself, 4e is a big waste of time, if you want to play an RTS play it on the computer, or a card-game play Magic. Other people on this thread have it right, it was more than likely a game designed to sell magic cards and force people to play with a battle grid. You cannot play 4e without a battle grid, and not nerf the players. PF plays fine with or without...the big end-game set pieces can use it to have fine-tuned control....of course it's not a perfect system and after reading the Next rules I realize how much I detest the Full Attack rule...ugh. I will never again play any RPG that forces a melee'r to be less mobile in combat lest he lost 80% of his damage per round compared to a caster that loses none of his effectiveness (and I love casters too...I just think that's not a fun rule for fighters to have to get Pounce to keep up their DPR)

 

[pemerton]

some of the coolest stuff you can imagine happens in 3 or even 4-d...and 4e is strictly 2d where all the game takes place, on a 2-d battle grid. D&D in previous editions abhors ground-level focus starting at level 5 when a wizard can fly. It has massive implications to a game system where for all intents and purposes, you cannot leave the ground until level 21.

The PCs in my game have had a flying carpet since level 15, the sorcerer has had Dominant Winds (at will flight) since level 16, and now, at level 19, the invoker has 1x/enc flight from his Rod of 7 Parts.

We stick a die (or dice) under the PC's token to represent vertical dimensions. Single-square diagonals help a lot with flying movement.

You cannot play 4e without a battle grid

I have, in combat encounters with only one of two enemies or groups of enemies, where the terrain is not complex. I just use distance notations on paper to keep track of who is how far from whom (single-square diagonals help a lot here too!).

I think some people play almost exclusively without a grid.