D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[EzekielRaiden]

That is a major point.

I, as a DM, hate the concept of "fail forward". If your failure will made you arrive at the same place I wanted you to arrive in the first place, then you actually remove a lot of consequences from the player's decisions. Sure, you can add some stuff to what was planned in the first place, but for the players, they see what they see. They don't know that you changed the next encounter to have two extra hobgoblins and a magic crystal. They only see the encounter they found out.

[Sblock]Er...that's...not what Fail Forward is usually taken to mean? That is, every time anyone has presented the concept to me, it's that failure presents a clear or understood cost, but does not bring the game to a screeching halt. E.g. you fail the Search roll to locate the secret entrance to the thieves' guild base. Congratulations: you found the door...after six hours of searching. But in your banging, bumping, and noodling around, you alerted the thieves to your presence, and they've skeddadled into the streets...along with the crown jewels you promised to bring back to the king. Now, instead of having a simple fight on your hands, you've got to do this the hard way--locating each piece individually and winning it back, whether by force, wit, or cold hard cash.

That's "fail forward." The adventure continues--everything is always moving in a forward plot direction--but a Serious Consequence happens right now as a result of your failure. What you're talking about sounds like...I dunno, "deferred failure"? "Oh, you succeed just fine, but SURPRISE there are ten times as many thieves as you expected BECAUSE REASONS."

In, for instance, a videogame, fail forward works because when you replay the game you can actually notice the differences. This don't happen in RPG because you only play each scenario once. That is why I believe SC are flawed. Because once you codifies the success and the failure, I believe the players should be aware of what they are risking ("This will decide if you will arrive at the temple before the villains"), or in their heads they will just roll dice for the sake of rolling dice. And doing this will put them into the SC mindset where improvisation goes to die.

Well...of course? Knowing what you're risking is perfectly compatible with both Skill Challenges and "fail forward" methods. It just means that "you search for 30 seconds and find nothing at all, what do you do now?" is no longer the default response to a failed search check to find a secret door, or "you ran as hard as you could but the bad guys got away and you have no idea where they are" is no longer the default response to a failed athletics check to see if you can catch the bad guys. Instead, it's (as said above) you waste precious time, or inform your enemies of your presence (losing the benefit of surprise), or arrive exhausted (in 4e, -1 healing surge; in 5e probably something like "the enemy gets an off-initiative turn to act first"), or "one of the hostages is already dead." Failure creates a clear, non-metagame cost, which is explained to the player(s) up front; you just don't make the plot come to a screeching halt because the players can't seem to roll above 5 to save their lives on a check they ABSOLUTELY MUST PASS in order to continue.[/Sblock]

Edit: And this is what I get for immediately responding to a post without scrolling down and seeing the rest of the discussion. My apologies for dragging this back into discussion. You've said you're done, and I respect that, so I'm spoilering my response--read it if you want, but you don't have to.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This I can agree with. As I said, my problem is with the basic concept of the fail forward philosophy. Actions and dice rolls having consequences is not fail forward, is just the basic of the game. Anyway, I think this has arrested long enough, and I'll stop derailing the thread.

Well, perhaps we're abusing the thread's purpose, but there have been MANY long digressions on interesting side topics of 4e, so I don't feel like we're really bothering anyone.

As I say, I think the SC framework, in and of itself, is simply a convenience. If I was playing, say, 2e, I could write up an adventure, and have a section "shoot the rapids and beat the bad guys to the cave". As DM I'd have to decide the whole structure of this thing, since 2e lacks any sort of subsystem that would help here. I can obviously use NWPs and characters can employ spells and class features of whatever sort, and ability score checks (though 2e lacks an actual rule for these). I then have to decide what sequences of checks will produce was sorts of plot complications, what will advance the scenario, what will create difficulties, etc. Then I have to, at run-time, adjudicate all the crazy stuff the PCs ACTUALLY do, which will probably crush all this planning anyway.

In 4e I have a structure to follow, lets say I decide its complexity 5, so there's 12 successes required before 3 failures, with the PCs getting 6 advantages. 8 moderate DCs, and 4 hard DCs should normally be used. The DM will then designate roughly 7 skills that can contribute, 3 secondary and 4 primary. In the example given the primary skills might easily be Athletics, Acrobatics, Nature, and Endurance for instance. Now the DM could simply run this without further prep, beyond nailing down the details of what the PCs are facing and what their resources are (IE they have a boat, some rope, and 2 oars or whatever and they need to navigate past 3 dangerous points and try to keep the barrel full of dried fish with them). Different levels of success COULD be specified, but aren't needed. The DM could explicitly decide certain powers/rituals/etc can help in certain ways, and he can designate which advantages represent specific actions and are available, which checks are hard/medium/easy (group) checks, etc etc etc.

Obviously the 4e SC can potentially derail in certain cases depending on the capabilities of the PCs and the situation, but it is a lot more nailed down in terms of PROCEDURE and the DM's job should be easier. Its easy enough that ad-libbing this sort of SC isn't terribly hard. There are additional benefits, you now know how much action equals an encounter worth of XP and treasure, something that isn't obvious with older systems or if you simply avoid SCs.

I'd argue that the SC is the beating heart of the 4e skill system too. Because skills themselves are so general in nature, its the SC system that fleshes things out. There's no 'farming' skill, but a guy with Endurance, Nature, Athletics, and a bonus to checks involving domestic plants and animals (+2 to checks related to them, or perhaps just undefined advantages, see PHB2 p189 sidebar). Thus to really have 'farmer' mean something in the game, you'd want there to be an SC that involved farming elements, which would be the place where the farmer would shine. He'd likely have most of the primary skills and access to advantages and bonuses that the other PCs might lack. Thus the non-existence of a farmer skill in 4e is of no real consequence, whereas in 3e its lack effectively meant that farming, per se, couldn't come up in any mechanical sense in the game, and its existence meant that everyone else was SOL if it did come up (whereas in 4e they just have to muddle through the SC, and in fact probably won't be seriously disadvantaged by the lack).

Now, all of this is taking advantage of RC level SC/DC rules, and PHB2's background system. The presentation in DMG1 on day one was kind of a mess. Its a pretty slick system now with some real implications for 4e adventure design and DM convenience, if you ask me.

The question of the nature of failure really isn't IMHO that germane, nor limited to SCs. After all, in my example, the traversal of the river is going to be necessary in either 2e or 4e for the adventure to continue to the caves. In either case the game allows for either some sort of 'fail forward' scenario where the conflict is only partly resolved by the SC/checks (IE the PCs arrive but simply in better or worse condition and ahead or behind team monster) or some absolute stopper sort of consequence where the adventure cannot continue and play goes off in some other direction (or even ends entirely with the drowning of all the PCs if you want).

 

[MwaO]

In 4e I have a structure to follow, lets say I decide its complexity 5, so there's 12 successes required before 3 failures, with the PCs getting 6 advantages. 8 moderate DCs, and 4 hard DCs should normally be used. The DM will then designate roughly 7 skills that can contribute, 3 secondary and 4 primary. In the example given the primary skills might easily be Athletics, Acrobatics, Nature, and Endurance for instance.

Here's where I think I should point out the nature of the DM knowing their players. In general, I tend to do four things:
I base DCs on what I know my players are capable of achieving. If the PCs have low levels of say physical skills, I either make it clear that I expect them to somehow be able to achieve relatively difficult DCs or I set the DCs based on those skills when it is obvious a skill challenge requires it.

I tend to throw in really easy DCs or even auto-successes into my skill challenges - just because a party is high level, they can still find a 10' cliff to climb or an easy lock to pick - it just isn't the focus of the challenge. It helps the PCs understand how far they have come and also reduces the sense of treadmill scaling challenges. A routine poison needle trap that almost killed the Rogue at low level that makes a return in Paragon allowing the

I try to make sure that when I design a skill challenge for my group that each PC has something interesting to do. And if the skill challenge doesn't provide that, then I'll redesign it. That's a huge problem with skill challenges in mods as they basically tend to assume that a party with all basic skills is there.

Finally, I think about how the party might fail forward. So as an example, to use the rapids as an example. If the party isn't doing well, maybe a combo of perception+dungeoneering sees a tunnel to crash into rather than be dragged underwater. And that tunnel might have some interesting bits of information as a consequence of 'failing' to get to the destination on time. Or they get dragged underwater and miss out on that bit of info, but instead manage to save themselves by finding some ancient boat wreck, with a skeleton who has a sigil ring on its hand. Which when they get to the city, they can find out belonged to some minor noble house. Which could then lead to the knowledge that the heir was murdered by a usurper many years ago and get the PCs involved in some political intrigue. Etc...

 

[Manbearcat]

Regarding Failing Forward:

Recently, we've had quite an extensive thread here for general reference on the technique. As it applies to 4e, the technique is required to be deployed on every single SC where a micro-failure has occurred. All micro-failures must be "forward". "Forward" does not mean failure of the PC's task (eg Atheltics to climb the face of a mountain). It means failure of the player's intent; "climb the face of the mountain in order to improve my situation." That last part is central. While you may climb the face of the mountain just fine, the situation must change adversely with respect to you realizing your aims. This could be (a) losing precious resources, (b) pursuit gaining, (c) prey putting distance between you and them, (d) some new danger/complication becoming manifest, etc. A new decision-point arises and the fiction evolves with renewed urgency, escalated peril, or impending doom.

Something similar happens on micro-successes but with subtle, yet impactful, difference. A new decision-point will still arise for the players as the situation will yet again change. However, the fiction will have evolved such that (1) the player's intent has been realized and (2) "heroic narrative momentum" will be maintained or grown with respect to their positioning relative to the realization of their ultimate goal in the challenge.

Failures are just the "Good Guys HPs or Stress Track." Successes are just the "Oppositions HPs or Stress Track."

Managing these component parts and dynamically moving the situation along within the narrative structure of Exposition (establishing the situation and the stakes) > Rising Action (framing the PCs directly into the conflict) > Climax > Falling Action (these prior three are the Skill Challenge Framework) > Denouement (the post-resolution story fallout/implications) is where GMing skill lies in 4e noncombat conflict resolution.

 

[pemerton]

One of my biggest criticisms with D&D across the board is the lack of DM training on how to run a good game with the system you have. Most DMs just try to mimic what they have been shown by other DMs and that can be just down right bad. Also, if they do not understand how the system works, then they will not understand how to make the tools work and when they have to make a decision on the spot because a player throws a curve ball, it can end up going really bad.

In general I agree. The only exception I can think of is Moldvay Basic, which has excellent GMing advice in its chapter 8.

 

[thanson02]

In general I agree. The only exception I can think of is Moldvay Basic, which has excellent GMing advice in its chapter 8.

I am not familiar with this. Source?

 

[thanson02]

Regarding Failing Forward:

Recently, we've had quite an extensive thread here for general reference on the technique. As it applies to 4e, the technique is required to be deployed on every single SC where a micro-failure has occurred. All micro-failures must be "forward". "Forward" does not mean failure of the PC's task (eg Atheltics to climb the face of a mountain). It means failure of the player's intent; "climb the face of the mountain in order to improve my situation." That last part is central. While you may climb the face of the mountain just fine, the situation must change adversely with respect to you realizing your aims. This could be (a) losing precious resources, (b) pursuit gaining, (c) prey putting distance between you and them, (d) some new danger/complication becoming manifest, etc. A new decision-point arises and the fiction evolves with renewed urgency, escalated peril, or impending doom.

Something similar happens on micro-successes but with subtle, yet impactful, difference. A new decision-point will still arise for the players as the situation will yet again change. However, the fiction will have evolved such that (1) the player's intent has been realized and (2) "heroic narrative momentum" will be maintained or grown with respect to their positioning relative to the realization of their ultimate goal in the challenge.

Failures are just the "Good Guys HPs or Stress Track." Successes are just the "Oppositions HPs or Stress Track."

Managing these component parts and dynamically moving the situation along within the narrative structure of Exposition (establishing the situation and the stakes) > Rising Action (framing the PCs directly into the conflict) > Climax > Falling Action (these prior three are the Skill Challenge Framework) > Denouement (the post-resolution story fallout/implications) is where GMing skill lies in 4e noncombat conflict resolution.

I like that. That is a good way to put it.

 

[pemerton]

I am not familiar with this. Source?

I'm not sure what you mean by "source". I'm talking about the Moldvay Basic Set, which shipped with a reddish/purplish box and an Erol Otus dragon on the cover. Its publication date is around 1980 (I think my copy is a 1982 printing).

There is a good "Let's Read" thread here. There is a very nice discussion of Moldvay play here, from Luke Crane.

It's probably worth noting that Moldvay's GMing advice is aimed at the particular playstyle his Basic set supports: more-or-less Gygaxian dungeoneering, but with a tighter presentation of the procedural framework for such play, and a lot of the cruft cleaned out.

 

[thanson02]

I'm not sure what you mean by "source". I'm talking about the Moldvay Basic Set, which shipped with a reddish/purplish box and an Erol Otus dragon on the cover. It's publication date is around 1980 (I think my copy is a 1982 printing).

There is a good "Let's Read" thread here. There is a very nice discussion of Moldvay play here, from Luke Crane.

It's probably worth noting that Moldvay's GMing advice is aimed at the particular playstyle his Basic set supports: more-or-less Gygaxian dungeoneering, but with a tighter presentation of the procedural framework for such play, and a lot of the cruft cleaned out.

That is what I meant. Thank you!

 

[Manbearcat]

I like that. That is a good way to put it.

Thanks! A lot of folks have put in a lot of effort over the last several years to help fellow gamers grok noncombat conflict resolution generally and Skill Challanges specifically. its nice to hear that the effort moves a unit or two!