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

[Manbearcat]

I want to be clear we are talking about the same thing here... What is the mechanical process that is used to decide when combat is resolved? If you say zeroing out of hit points then it would mean no NPC or monster can surrender, run away, etc.

There are several depending upon the objective of the combat and the fiction surrounding it:

* Ablate Team Monster HP to 0.

* Force the Enemy Leader to Surrender (mechanically).

* Get to location x on the battlemat with y squares between you and Team Monster or before round n.

* Protect NPC Standard and Minion so they survive 4 waves of enemies.

* Survive 6 rounds until reinforcements arrive and take your spot on the wall so you can withdraw to the motte.

* Survive the enemy while you complete the Ritual/Skill Challenge to Close the Gate or Open the Gate and go through.

* Fight off your possessed friend's attacks while you exorcise him from the demon within him (Adjure Skill Challenge).


Plenty, plenty more. There are plenty of transparent win/loss cons to establish for combat outside of "get enemy HP to 0."

 

[Pedantic]

I feel that I should specify my preferred resolution system is specific skill actions that are laid out in skills themselves. I am not a big fan of Dogs, the Apocalypse World line or Blades in the Dark, in case there's any confusion there. My stance is that something like 3e's skill descriptions was on the right track and needed to go further, until a fairly exhaustive list of "what skills do" was specified in player facing materials.

I'm not sure if I'm getting my point about gameplay and player agency wrapped in some other discussion about preferred skill systems, it's a long thread, please forgive me.

This gave them a huge bonus to their Intimidate check (which they were trained in but they had no Cha bonus) to try to get them a much needed success when things were swinging against them in the SC. They failed their check. This is an escalation to violence. As such, they know this beforehand that this is turning into a nested combat where they have to physically cow these Gnolls (who are now drawing weapons themselves) in order to get back to the Social Conflict.

So, specifically in the 4e context, I absolutely agree that utility abilities that modified skill checks were a great addition to an otherwise quite limited system. The ability to spend resources to influence the outcome of a given check meaningfully improves player agency, and such abilities should be more common in all resolution systems.

However, that doesn't actually have anything to do with skill challenges. In fact, you've invoked a few commonplaces entirely outside of skill challenge systems to make this situation more interesting. Notably that drawing a weapon will presage armed conflict (a totally reasonable evaluation of the fictional state, and something I would also adjudicate similarly without a skill challenge framework). That means, unless you'd just happened to have gotten that player to roll the final failure before X successes on that particular check, you're actually abandoning the skill challenge framework, in favor of "do skill check, evaluate fictional state, offer next action declaration" which I would argue was the default before skill challenges were added.

 

[Imaro]

There are several depending upon the objective of the combat and the fiction surrounding it:

* Ablate Team Monster HP to 0.

* Force the Enemy Leader to Surrender (mechanically).

* Get to location x on the battlemat with y squares between you and Team Monster or before round n.

* Protect NPC Standard and Minion so they survive 4 waves of enemies.

* Survive 6 rounds until reinforcements arrive and take your spot on the wall so you can withdraw to the motte.

* Survive the enemy while you complete the Ritual/Skill Challenge to Close the Gate or Open the Gate and go through.

* Fight off your possessed friend's attacks while you exorcise him from the demon within him (Adjure Skill Challenge).


Plenty, plenty more. There are plenty of transparent win/loss cons to establish for combat outside of "get enemy HP to 0."

And included in those many are non-mechanical/non-preset ones... correct?

 

[Manbearcat]

I feel that I should specify my preferred resolution system is specific skill actions that are laid out in skills themselves. I am not a big fan of Dogs, the Apocalypse World line or Blades in the Dark, in case there's any confusion there. My stance is that something like 3e's skill descriptions was on the right track and needed to go further, until a fairly exhaustive list of "what skills do" was specified in player facing materials.

I'm not sure if I'm getting my point about gameplay and player agency wrapped in some other discussion about preferred skill systems, it's a long thread, please forgive me.



So, specifically in the 4e context, I absolutely agree that utility abilities that modified skill checks were a great addition to an otherwise quite limited system. The ability to spend resources to influence the outcome of a given check meaningfully improves player agency, and such abilities should be more common in all resolution systems.

However, that doesn't actually have anything to do with skill challenges. In fact, you've invoked a few commonplaces entirely outside of skill challenge systems to make this situation more interesting. Notably that drawing a weapon will presage armed conflict (a totally reasonable evaluation of the fictional state, and something I would also adjudicate similarly without a skill challenge framework). That means, unless you'd just happened to have gotten that player to roll the final failure before X successes on that particular check, you're actually abandoning the skill challenge framework, in favor of "do skill check, evaluate fictional state, offer next action declaration" which I would argue was the default before skill challenges were added.

Trust me, it is not a surprise that you don’t like AW, Dogs, Blades (et al) and that you prefer discrete Task Resolution to Conflict Resolution.

With respect…what you’re saying makes no sense.

1) I’m not invoking things “outside of the SC system.” 4e is an integrated game engine. All of this stuff is married together. That is a sign of a well-designed game (all parts integrated).

* A Skill Power like the above is integrated with both Skill Challenges and Combats (Surrender action and mechanics to improve the action economy of that).

* Of course the fiction has to matter! That is fundamental to action resolution in TTRPGs and is one of the most common errors in SC handling (note my invoking the “4e SCs are just an exercise in disconnected dice rolling” refrain above… where GM framing and/or player action declaration and/ir consequence space ignores the immediate fiction or accreted fiction to this point…otherwise known as “user error” or “poor play”). The fiction (like pulling a sword in a social conflict) foregrounds stakes and consequence space for player actions and mechanical resolution! If you pull a sword when we’re “just talking” and the action fails? Guess what? We’re escalated to combat until you de-escalate the situation so we can get back to “just talking.”

That isn’t “ignoring the system” or “adding stuff to the system”! It’s precisely the opposite! Its using the whole, integrated system as it’s meant to be used!

 

[Manbearcat]

And included in those many are non-mechanical/non-preset ones... correct?

If there is conflict? Not detached from mechanical resolution No.

Mechanical gamestate meets attendant fiction.

If there is no conflict you’re just “saying yes”, vignetting/transitioning, and working toward conflict. Once you get to conflict it’s back to mechanical gamestate and attendant fiction.

 

[Imaro]

If there is conflict? Not detached from mechanical resolution No.

Mechanical gamestate meets attendant fiction.

If there is no conflict you’re just “saying yes”, vignetting/transitioning, and working toward conflict. Once you get to conflict it’s back to mechanical gamestate and attendant fiction.

There can be conflict in D&D and the end state can be wholly determined without mechanical resolution. If the PC's decide to surrender, what are the mechanics that have resolved the combat?

NOTE: I am not saying mechanics aren't used during combat... only that it's resolution is not always attained by using said mechanics.

EDIT: Also ... not sure why this even came up as it wasn't the main crux of my post. In fact it seems to support it except in that I don't agree combat has as rigidly defined win/loss parameters as SC's do.

 

[Pedantic]

Trust me, it is not a surprise that you don’t like AW, Dogs, Blades (et al) and that you prefer discrete Task Resolution to Conflict Resolution.

My point is more broadly that player agency is increased and the resulting gameplay a more mechanically interesting set of decisions the closer you map resolution to discreet actions.

With respect…what you’re saying makes no sense.

1) I’m not invoking things “outside of the SC system.” 4e is an integrated game engine. All of this stuff is married together. That is a sign of a well-designed game (all parts integrated).

* A Skill Power like the above is integrated with both Skill Challenges and Combats (Surrender action and mechanics to improve the action economy of that).

I don't think we're on quite the same page here. This might be clearer if I presented the counterfactual; how would this have been resolved if 4e was printed without skill challenges? The situation you presented (admittedly in the absence of the other actions taken before this fighter's action) is no different without a skill challenge framework. You made a quite reasonable judgement call that drawing a weapon makes the other party hostile, and the fighter failed a skill check to influence them, resulting in combat.

The situation did not require a skill challenge framework to resolve. The interesting decisions the fighter made (risking an escalation of tension to get a bonus to resolving it his preferred way) was not a product of the skill challenge system.

* Of course the fiction has to matter! That is fundamental to action resolution in TTRPGs and is one of the most common errors in SC handling (note my invoking the “4e SCs are just an exercise in disconnected dice rolling” refrain above… where GM framing and/or player action declaration and/ir consequence space ignores the immediate fiction or accreted fiction to this point…otherwise known as “user error” or “poor play”). The fiction (like pulling a sword in a social conflict) foregrounds stakes and consequence space for player actions and mechanical resolution! If you pull a sword when we’re “just talking” and the action fails? Guess what? We’re escalated to combat until you de-escalate the situation so we can get back to “just talking.”

That isn’t “ignoring the system” or “adding stuff to the system”! It’s precisely the opposite! Its using the whole, integrated system as it’s meant to be used!

Then what is the value of the skill challenge, if you're going to evaluate the fictional state after any given action? How is the game meaningfully improved by having a skill challenge framework around the above interaction, vs. a different set of rules for resolving the situation?

To be completely honest, I am not entirely willing to yield "some fictional consequences obviously overwhelm the system" as a commonplace, because it is the source of many disagreements. The case you've presented I think is pretty clear, but the classic conceit of "clever gameplay" in D&D involving you know, flooding caves or dousing things in oil and lighting them up could easily fall into that same category, with some players claiming they should evade the system because their proposed action renders the skill challenge moot, and others suggesting the action is just another expression of a skill check inside the skill challenge framework.

 

[Imaro]

To be completely honest, I am not entirely willing to yield "some fictional consequences obviously overwhelm the system" as a commonplace, because it is the source of many disagreements. The case you've presented I think is pretty clear, but the classic conceit of "clever gameplay" in D&D involving you know, flooding caves or dousing things in oil and lighting them up could easily fall into that same category, with some players claiming they should evade the system because their proposed action renders the skill challenge moot, and others suggesting the action is just another expression of a skill check inside the skill challenge framework.

This is where I found the style of game I and my players enjoy bumping hard against SC's. SC's strongly discourage skilled or clever gameplay because there is no reward for engaging in it if the DM sticks to the system. Instead, IME, it encourages one to engage in fictional bargaining with the DM as you try to justify a numerically good skill to use. This is where the feeling, again for me, that it's an exercise in rolling dice with little to no regard for the fiction comes in (In actuality it's little regard for what I call appealing or appropriate fiction). Instead of seeing logical or even narratively appealing fiction during SC's, I instead saw mildly annoying to totally absurd justifications for how a particular skill usage should be allowed during the SC.

 

[Pedantic]

Rereading the discussion so far, I wanted to add some further clarity to my position.

I've used the phrase "a bad game" a few times, which I want to be very clear I'm trying to apply to the skill challenge framework itself and more specifically, to the mechanical decision making it presents to players. Not to 4e more broadly, or any particular roleplaying game system. Additionally, I mean something very specific by "bad" and "game" here. I'm talking about games in sense Sid Meier described as "an interesting series of decisions," where a game is an agreement to strive toward a victory condition by making a series of iterated choices and trying to select the option at each choice that most efficiently/effectively achieves the victory condition. "Bad" in the sense that the choices presented by the game framework are trivially easy, or don't have any impact on achieving victory.

My issue is with skill challenges as a mechanical framework to resolve player actions, and specifically to the gameplay incentives created thereby, and my use of the word "game" is an attempt to clarify my objections are about mechanical engagement with the rules. I don't have any strong objections to skill challenges as say, a pacing mechanism for improvisational roleplaying of non-combat scenes, but I don't think they lead to an interesting set of mechanical decisions to engage with.

Perhaps a broader discussion could be had if that kind of mechanical engagement I'm talking about is something that's expected and/or desirable in roleplaying games, but I certainly think it is, and further that it is possible to engender with skill resolution. Characters have goals, they want to achieve those goals as effectively/efficiently as possible, so a player making decisions for them will strive to make the best decisions they can. The part of my brain that wants to be an elf trying to save his village and the part of my brain that's engaged when staring at a eurogame board state exist in harmony. A skill challenge does not allow me to use the latter part, and I expect/want to be able to do so in the context of my tabletop roleplaying games.

 

[pemerton]

I mean, I'm not a big fan of any of those games. Detailed lists of specific skill actions is very much my preferred approach, but we're really into an ideological discussion of what TTRPGs are for.

OK, so your earlier posts about skill challenges being bad RPGing with low agency turns into I prefer GURPs and D&D 3E to anything else.

I think RPGs differ from board games primarily in that your objectives are unbounded, and player determined.

The second is not true for much RPGing. When I asked my friends earlier this year to play a session of White Plume Mountain - which they did - the objectives were not player determined. And I'm not the first GM in the history of AD&D play (or other versions of D&D) to have suggested a module in this way! Gygax gives an example of play in his DMG in which the GM, not the players, sets the objective of play.

What differentiates a RPG from a boardgame is primarily that fiction matters to resolution, and that (subject to some fairly avant-garde exceptions) most of the participants engage the game via controlling an imagined person within the fiction, and declaring actions for that person.