D&D General Skill challenges: action resolution that centres the fiction

[Manbearcat]

That is a problem solved for a long time, which is just using mechanics to describe the problems at hand, its what statblocks have been used for, and are still used for. Using mechanics to detail problems seperate from the actions/resolution of it, leads to having a toolbox to manage problems themselves, letting solutions be open ended. If you design around the idea that the players must do X to do something, or have to do X things, you will always either end up doing way too much, or railing them into a handful of solutions, this is not good.

Also i know thats not the OP's intent, but when your playing around with mechanics that are designed with this play in mind, its always the end result you get, my point is, skill challenges are simply not good. Its why whenever I see most people using them, It always works better in theory then in practice, and requires a lot of on boarding, because it is something designed with a specific engagement of the players in mind.

"That strength is that skill challenges centre the fiction in the process of action declaration and resolution."

If you're designing your challenges around what your players might do, you're just setting yourself up for wasted prep, or railroads.

This is such awful design, its always easier to design your challenges around describing the environment and let your players figure out how to solve it, there is no need to force them into doing stuff a X amount of times, or designing around the player's actions themselves, they can solve the issue in 100 ways, just use the mechanics to describe the problems.

Given that I’ve run 1000s of hours of play that employs the sort of game tech that are Skill Challenges, I can say for that your contention above “that they’re awful design” and “they don’t work” is just fundamentally not true.

I think the first issue is when you say “if you’re designing your challenges.”

This sort of game tech is there in large part to resolve noncombat challenges without prep (and/or to insure play against GM’s with preconceptions of play or “designs upon play” that they attempt to impose during play)! You’re not designing anything! You’re just running the game and rolling with whatever direction it goes!

The other reasons for things like Skill Challenges or Dogs in the Vineyard/Cortex+/Blades in the Dark Clicks etc Closed Scene Resolution (and dozens of other games) is for exactly what I’ve written above:

1) To ensure the opposite of railroading! When a GM has an encoded, table-facing scene budget with defined Win Con/Loss Con parameters and inviolate principles and procedures that govern resolution…the GM doesn’t get to just decide “this scene is over/still online” by fiat. System will answer that question by binding the GM’s play and overtly signaling that to the table.

2) To create dynamic situations that evolve over time to create premise-coherent fiction and interesting and consequential decision-points are und the gamestate (this last point feeds back into point (1) above about denying arbitrary GM fiat over “scene online/scene over” because you always know for certain what the status of the gamestate is).

 

[FallenRX]

Given that I’ve run 1000s of hours of play that employs the sort of game tech that are Skill Challenges, I can say for that your contention above “that they’re awful design” and “they don’t work” is just fundamentally not true.

I think the first issue is when you say “if you’re designing your challenges.”

This sort of game tech is there in large part to resolve noncombat challenges without prep (and/or to insure play against GM’s with preconceptions of play or “designs upon play” that they attempt to impose during play)! You’re not designing anything! You’re just running the game and rolling with whatever direction it goes!

The other reasons for things like Skill Challenges or Dogs in the Vineyard/Cortex+/Blades in the Dark Clicks etc Closed Scene Resolution (and dozens of other games) is for exactly what I’ve written above:

1) To ensure the opposite of railroading! When a GM has an encoded, table-facing scene budget with defined Win Con/Loss Con parameters and inviolate principles and procedures that govern resolution…the GM doesn’t get to just decide “this scene is over/still online” by fiat. System will answer that question by binding the GM’s play and overtly signaling that to the table.

2) To create dynamic situations that evolve over time to create premise-coherent fiction and interesting and consequential decision-points are und the gamestate (this last point feeds back into point (1) above about denying arbitrary GM fiat over “scene online/scene over” because you always know for certain what the status of the gamestate is).

Oh no Progress Clocks and such from blade in the dark are good, but those are pretty different from skill challenges, as they are used and resolved in a much different way, seperate from focusing on action resolution and more of a measure of something, usually time,, that is a smarter way of going about it, as its not expecting players needing to do X input to get X output or expecting an action to go in or out, and thats how they engage with a problem.

What im talking about is the very much player-action resolution-oriented 4E-styled Skill challenges that a lot of people seem to pedal those are awful, and will directly lead to the opposite of the resolves your describing because they are centered around how players engage with it, instead of designing based on describing the issue itself. That type of skill challenge is something far more designed, then the simple extended skill checks/Progress clocks we are talking about here.

I think throwing all of those mechanics under the Skill Challenge banner is bad, because Skill Challenges are a very specific type of thing, that is usually always terrible. This is a terminology issue, i feel.

 

[clearstream]

to insure play against GM’s with preconceptions of play or “designs upon play” that they attempt to impose during play)!

denying arbitrary GM fiat over “scene online/scene over”

I think where I most diverge from some others here is that I don't have this same sense of worry or antagonism about GM. They're just another participant whose role is differing but equal to others. They hope to unravel, discover and enjoy.

Acknowledged that there are traditional modes of play that perhaps rightly (and certainly fruitfully) precipitated resistance. I feel though, that cultures of play have moved on.

Well, perhaps you did not intend that how it reads?

 

[Manbearcat]

Oh no Progress Clocks and such from blade in the dark are good, but those are pretty different from skill challenges, as they are used and resolved in a much different way, seperate from focusing on action resolution and more of a measure of something, usually time,, that is a smarter way of going about it, as its not expecting players needing to do X input to get X output or expecting an action to go in or out, and thats how they engage with a problem.

What im talking about is the very much player-action resolution-oriented 4E-styled Skill challenges that a lot of people seem to pedal those are awful, and will directly lead to the opposite of the resolves your describing because they are centered around how players engage with it, instead of designing based on describing the issue itself. That type of skill challenge is something far more designed, then the simple extended skill checks/Progress clocks we are talking about here.

I think throwing all of those mechanics under the Skill Challenge banner is bad, because Skill Challenges are a very specific type of thing, that is usually always terrible. This is a terminology issue, i feel.

You’re going to have to explain a bit further how you feel the following is different than “Achieve x Win Con (your required successes) before y Loss Con (failures which is your opposition’s success)” is functionally different from:

Dogs in the Vineyard: “Achieve x Win Con (Exhaust your opposition’s dice pool so they can’t See your Raise and have to Escalate, when they don’t want to, or Fold) before Y Loss Con (the inverse).”

Blades in the Dark Racing Clocks or Tug-of-War Clock: “Achieve x Win Con (tick your clock full or achieve the zenith of the ToW Clock before your opposition ticks their clock full or achieve the nadir of the ToW Clock) before y Loss Con (inverse).”


Now you don’t have to convince me that Dogs Conflict resolution doesn’t absolutely dust 4e Skill Challenges (as far as I’m concerned it’s the greatest conflict resolution design period). But fundamentally, in all 4 of those situations depicted above you’re talking about Success before Failures and Evolving Gamestate Married to Evolving Fiction.

How are you disagreeing with the above?

 

[FallenRX]

You’re going to have to explain a bit further how you feel the following is different than “Achieve x Win Con (your required successes) before y Loss Con (failures which is your opposition’s success)” is functionally different from:

Dogs in the Vineyard: “Achieve x Win Con (Exhaust your opposition’s dice pool so they can’t See your Raise and have to Escalate, when they don’t want to, or Fold) before Y Loss Con (the inverse).”

Blades in the Dark Racing Clocks or Tug-of-War Clock: “Achieve x Win Con (tick your clock full or achieve the zenith of the ToW Clock before your opposition ticks their clock full or achieve the nadir of the ToW Clock) before y Loss Con (inverse).”


Now you don’t have to convince me that Dogs Conflict resolution doesn’t absolutely dust 4e Skill Challenges (as far as I’m concerned it’s the greatest conflict resolution design period). But fundamentally, in all 4 of those situations depicted above you’re talking about Success before Failures and Evolving Gamestate Married to Evolving Fiction.

How are you disagreeing with the above?

both of those things actually represent something that describes or is meant to represent the scenario in question, as a description, separate from the actions the players are supposed to take to engage with it.

4E skill challenges are meant and designed to be engaged in a very specific way, a very distinct mode of play focused on how the players resolve it not on mechanically describing the situation the players are actually in, just focused on how to resolved it, this is of the highest of importance, as it changes how players fundamentally engage with the mechanics in question, and why those mechanics actually feel good to use and not absolute terrible like 4Es.

Its why im saying, you need to break that terminology, these systems are something quite different then what 4E considers skill challenges, which are legit awful.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes. I think that when they described skill challenges and listed possible skills for the challenge they really undercut how challenges should work. The focus should be on the player proposing an action in response to the situation, what skill to use is secondary and will be based on what they want to do. IMO when you try to codify that into a write up it's hard to get across how much you need to embrace it as a tool for improvisation to get the full value out of the system. It's too easy to turn it into just a set of boring dice rolls if you don't have that challenge-action-result back-and-forth at its core and kind of make the dice rolls secondary to that.

Right, I stopped codifying them that way pretty early on, myself. Players just propose actions, and the GM describes a skill/ability that will apply, though negotiating those determinations works pretty well. Once that is settled you can just get on with it. The one thing that has to be understood is that the GM is no longer 'scripting' the challenge in the same sense, it could turn out to be 'about' something rather different than was envisaged at the start! That's OK though, the players should be starting out with describing their goal. In fact, tying them fairly tightly to quests is a whole other trick that WotC missed, and honestly one that only really dawned on me in more recent times, though in a sense it is 'just there in the rules'.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think where I most diverge from some others here is that I don't have this same sense of worry or antagonism about GM. They're just another participant whose role is differing but equal to others. They hope to unravel, discover and enjoy.

Acknowledged that there are traditional modes of play that perhaps rightly (and certainly fruitfully) precipitated resistance. I feel though, that cultures of play have moved on.

Well, perhaps you did not intend that how it reads?

I don’t know how you read it, but I intended it exactly as as I wrote it.

1) There is a play that exists where GMs have preconceptions and they intend to map those preconceptions onto the gamestate and fiction by imposition.

2) There is a play whereby the process of (1) (the imposition of a GM’s preconceptions upon gamestate/fiction) is neither transparently codified in the text of play nor inferable by the players. The experiential quality of this for the players is “arbitrary GM fiat.”

---

Let’s come at this another way. Any given conflict is an obstacle course with a starting point + an endpoint + an array of intervening obstacles. What is an easy analogue for this in life? A hole of golf.

Alright. A hole of golf has:

* A tee box (starting point).

* A pin location on a green (an endpoint).

* An array of intervening obstacles (fairways, rough, sand traps, out of bounds, burs, trees, etc).


Now you can configure the realization of this “hole of golf” in TTRPG terms in a myriad of ways. But someone or some system process is deciding on each element…and they’re doing it at some time (pre-play or during play):

STARTING POINT

* The GM can preconceive and prescribe the starting point before play.

* A non-GM player can prescribe the starting point (either via GM prompt or system procedure) during play.

* The play itself can naturally evolve from one end point to generate a new, emergent starting point during play.

ENDPOINT

* The GM can preconceive and prescribe the endpoint before play.

* The GM can pronounce that the conflict has reached its endpoint “by feel” and declare a winner.

* System declares that the conflict has reached its endpoint by codified Win/Loss condition and declare a winner by following its procedures to their conclusion.

OBSTACLE COURSE

* The GM can preconceive and prescribe the array of obstacles before play.

* The GM can move through an improvised array of obstacles “by feel” without budgetary/procedural constraint.

* System procedures and budgetary constraints guide and bind a GM in their improvised generation of the array of obstacles.

---

I would hope that the following matrix of construction of Tee Box > Fairways + Rough + Bunkers + Trees + Dogleg or not (FRBTD for short) etc > Green and Pin Placement…

* The GM preconceives and prescribes Teebox before play + GM improvises array of FRBTD “by feel” without budgetary/procedural constraint + GM pronounces when the Green is hit and how close to the Pin the player is and calls the hole done with a “close enough.”

is VERY different from:

* A prior holed out Pin leads naturally to a new Teebox + System procedures and budgetary constraints guide and bind a GM in their improvised generation of FRBTD + System declares that the conflict has reached its endpoint because (a) we’re at the green and (b) someone has hit the pin placement and hold out.


The generation of those two golf courses (“the play of the TTRPG”) are very different things functionally (as a matter of course -“I’ll be here all week…don’t forget to tip your waiter”) and in the experience of the play.

Yes?

 

[Manbearcat]

both of those things actually represent something that describes or is meant to represent the scenario in question, as a description, separate from the actions the players are supposed to take to engage with it.

4E skill challenges are meant and designed to be engaged in a very specific way, a very distinct mode of play focused on how the players resolve it not on mechanically describing the situation the players are actually in, just focused on how to resolved it, this is of the highest of importance, as it changes how players fundamentally engage with the mechanics in question, and why those mechanics actually feel good to use and not absolute terrible like 4Es.

Its why im saying, you need to break that terminology, these systems are something quite different then what 4E considers skill challenges, which are legit awful.

I promise you I’m not gaslighting you…

But I have no idea what you mean above. I have zero idea what distinction you’re intending to draw between Dogs conflicts, Blades ToW or opposed Racing Clocks and 4e Skill Challenges with the words you’ve written above.

I can read the words…but I have no idea what you’re meaning.

Are you trying to say that 4e Skill Challenges (situation framing or decision-space for subsequent moves or gamestate evolution/consequences) have no fictional bounding/relationship? I mean…that is 100 %, categorically not true. I mean sure…run incorrectly it’s true…but the same goes for Dogs or Blades.

If you’re not saying that, can you help me out more? Do you have a play example in mind where you can contrast the procedural generation of play between Blades opposed Racing Clocks and a 4e Skill Challenge?

 

[Campbell]

I think where I most diverge from some others here is that I don't have this same sense of worry or antagonism about GM. They're just another participant whose role is differing but equal to others. They hope to unravel, discover and enjoy.

Acknowledged that there are traditional modes of play that perhaps rightly (and certainly fruitfully) precipitated resistance. I feel though, that cultures of play have moved on.

Well, perhaps you did not intend that how it reads?

It's not the people - it's the process. If we are here to tell a story together a process where on every action declaration a GM decides the difficulty, what happens on success and what happens on failure (often after the roll) because having that active hand on the wheel who can guide things where we want them to go can absolutely improve our ability to do so. If it's to highlight prepared setting material and we care more about that exploration than real tension about what happens next it's passable.

If we either care about victory earned through skilled play or having real palpable tension is to where things could lead it's hard to trust a process that puts all of the decisions to what happens next onto a single person's shoulders regardless of their intentions. It's not just that the GM might put their hands on the scale - their hands are the scale. No one can contain an entire world in their head. No one (myself included) is free from the temptation to arrange things this way or that way (often to the players' favor admittedly). It doesn't even have to come from a willful decision. It just comes naturally, particularly as the scope of play increases.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A big difference between 5e skill resolution and a skill challenge is that everyone in a 4e skill challenge takes a turn and declares an action for each round of the skill challenge while in 5e it is generally one PC declaring an action and getting a resolution.

The skill challenge focuses the group on "the group is doing X now, how are you participating?" which is a different focus from "I try to do x, what happens?"

Well, you can certainly play it that way. The original version of SCs published in DMG1 actually stated something like that, though I don't think it actually said everyone HAD to act, but that there was an initiative order (which implies some kind of round-like turn taking). There was a massive erratum of the SC rules maybe a month or two after release that obliterated that paragraph, along with fixing the number of failures to 3, regardless of complexity (in the original version it varied by complexity). Very few people seem to have really played by that 'first cut' of the system, though I suppose there were plenty of people who didn't notice the errata!

So, by the widely used/discussed version (which carried on into later books) there's no formal 'turn ordering' or requirement that a PC participate in an SC at all.

But of course critics who repeat the old "the best guy will just spam Skill X until he wins" are COMPLETELY missing the entire point of SCs, by like a country mile.