Adventurous Treasure Hunters

[cavalier973]

I'm pretty sure this idea has been proposed on other threads: Getting through the maze of corridors from one encounter area to the next could be handled as a skill challenge. Dungeoneering, Perception, Nature, History, Endurance could all be contributing skills.

If the DM is OCD enough, he could draw the maze as the skill challenge is progressing, adding false corridors and nonexistent doorways with each failure.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

I really like your ideas about the skill challenges as well as allowing only partial rests in the wild. This is something I want to put into my next game!

 

[Balesir]

I make all decision-points encounters. If they're not combat encounters, then they're challenges of some sort, or at the very least there's some exposition happening. I guess its possible that some very trivial decisions made without knowledge of significance could 'snowball', but I don't think that's generally good story design.

I think having some sort of challenge built into every isolated decision is good design, too, but I can acknowledge that some folk do simply like taking a gamble. That is, in the Forge sense, a valid source of Gamist buzz; simply make your choice and roll the dice (metaphorically or actually). So I will allow that some might find the inclusion of "take a punt" decision points "good design".

Even given that, I think there is room for "pure decision" boxes that involve a good level of information upon which the players must make a determination. You could call this a "challenge", in as much as it challenges the players' brains a bit, but it seems to me to be markedly different from encounters that involve leveraging the characters' capabilities with skill to optimise or select an outcome.

 

[Jessica]

(Branching from the 'Is the OSR Dead?" thread)
I'd like to go a little deeper into this and ask for further thoughts on this. What is it about 5th edition (and 1st/2nd for that matter) that makes it so amenable to the "adventurous treasure hunters" style of play, and what is it about 4th that works against it?

I think magic items play into this somewhat. Unless you use inherent bonuses then magic items are kinda required in 4e to stay even with enemies at higher levels. So I think there is already this perception that you are going to get magic items regardless at some point which is mostly a metagaming thing since your PCs themselves probably don't know this. With 5e, magic items aren't built into the math of the system so they are more of a bonus* which probably at a metagaming level is more of a believable adventure type in 5e for the player. Although I could see a 4e game with inherent bonuses do a sandbox-y treasure hunting campaign better than 5e did since 4e seems to have a more clearly defined list of things you can actually spend money on where as IIRC money in 5e tends to be used on rezzing or material components and anything other than that is kinda up to your DM to just make up stuff you can buy with the money you make.



*Not counting the existence of creatures who have resistance or outright immunity to non-magic weapons kinda requiring you to have a magic weapon unless your DM just doesn't throw those creatures at you or you have a spellcaster in your party who doesn't mind just concentrating on spells that make your weapons magical.

 

[cavesalamander]

I think magic items play into this somewhat. Unless you use inherent bonuses then magic items are kinda required in 4e to stay even with enemies at higher levels.

This provides motivation for exploration and treasure hunting. If the party's fighter needs that +2 sword, all the DM has to do is drop hints as to where they can find one.

 

[cavesalamander]

The second type of node is the "encounter box", and for a proper 4E sandbox they, too, should have several "exits", each one representing a possible encounter outcome.

From the perspective of a potential adventure-writer, this sort of node is all but impossible to plan for ahead of time. Each encounter might have a 'win, lose or draw' outcome assigned to it, but there will still be too many variables to account for. Adjudicating encounter outcomes at the table is the real art and science of DM'ing.

If an encounter's initial situation is set up well, and the DM is given adequate information with regards to the motivations of any NPCs involved (that troll just wants to eat something, anything!), then they should be able to arrive at a logical (entertaining?) outcome based on the party's actions.

(That is not to say that the outcome of this encounter won't have reverberations throughout the rest of them as well- if the party attacks the king during the peace negotiations, that's could require the DM to make a lot of changes!)

 

[Balesir]

From the perspective of a potential adventure-writer, this sort of node is all but impossible to plan for ahead of time. Each encounter might have a 'win, lose or draw' outcome assigned to it, but there will still be too many variables to account for. Adjudicating encounter outcomes at the table is the real art and science of DM'ing.

For combat encounters, in particular, and especially ones with objectives other than "kill all the monsters", you probably don't need to map the full range out in advance. Many of the options will be implicit (head back to town to heal up, or look for a campsite for an extended rest, or continue exploring further into the "site", or flee the victorious opponents and end up somewhere semi-random...)

For skill challenges, though, I think that, once entered into, there should be at least some (>2) defined ways out. Some will be extremely simple - the challenge is to get over an obstacle. You get over it or you get stuck in the middle or on the same side you started (whatever that means in context). Others may be more variable - like negotiations. Perhaps the foggiest of all will be player instigated challenges. Suppose they decide that the PCs will try to build an airship/spelljammer? That sort of thing can be great for a sandbox game - and 4E has the advantage that it often has existing game elements upon which you can base some sort of proposed mechanic. If a flying vehicle has a level as an Item, then that can serve as the basis for a level of Skill Challenge to build one.

Remember that it is sandbox style "adventures" that we are considering, here. Level equivalency is an extremely powerful tool in adjudicating such environments. I spoke of a "node structure", but I don't envisage that it will be totally mapped out in advance. Everybody misses some stuff that players can invent. But if you know the intended level of the area and relative power of the Item/Opposition in 4E, you can use level equivalency to morph the challenge into whatever it may become as it is played out.

 

[Campbell]

I don't really think it's a matter of what 4e doesn't support. It's that 4e basically can't help being dramatic and in your face. Combat situations massively zoom in and play out like an action movie with this falling and rising motion with hit points. Skill challenges represent this raising tension where actions become more and more critical as failures mount. The more procedural exploration bits can easily get lost in the shuffle.

 

[pemerton]

The closest I've come to "gritty" 4e is the "no extended rest in the wilds" thing - that rule has been enforced in the wilderness (with a skill challenge to find a nice place to rest), in the Underdark (with rests only in "civilised" places like Drow or Duergar holds), and in the Abyss.

It's not all that gritty.

This has been made especially clear by our current Burning Wheel game - that's a system that does involve failing hard, scrabbling for even meagre resources, and a sense of big trade offs between doing what you want to do, and doing what you have to do to survive. I don't think 4e has the right sort of mechanical systems to generate the same feel.