Alternatives to map-and-key

[TheSword]

I get that. Makes sense. These add a lot of depth to NPCs. Make running NPCs much easier and give the PCs lots or interact with.

So much so that I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive with Map&Key or Events. Rather they would enhance any structure they are used in.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Although I occasionally play RPGs without any sort of map, it's typically limited to sessions, not entire games/campaigns.

In my experience there are some key ingredients in RPGs that most players miss if they are not present:

• Character advancement. E.g. getting more powerful with experience.
• "Magic" items (they don't have to explicitly be magic, but items that grant powers beyond baseline for the character that possesses them)
• Maps. The more elaborate and detailed the better.

Not that other people don't have other preferences...and maybe some people who "don't like RPGs" would like them if they met some other criteria...but I think it's safe to say that all the people I have played with, ever, share the above preferences.

 

[Argyle King]

That sounds like it is in the neighbourhood of map-and-key? Though I'm not sure if video games really compare to RPGs - I don't think there's coordination of fiction in the same way, as there is not the creation of a shared imagined space.

I know you're familiar with D&D 4E, so a Roguelike might be similar to an encounter deck, but the map would also be randomly generated. Though, once a piece is generated, it is there and it exists.

You might know the starting point and the end "win" condition, but everything in between would be generated as you play.

There are not pre-defined scenes at all, but "scenes" might grow from how generated pieces of content interact and/or how the players choose (or choose not to) interact with something.

Making up an example as I'm typing:
Let's say you create an encounter deck based upon the concept of a dragon lair in a cave system. After the PCs enter, the first area is randomly generated to include a group of goblins. Maybe the players interact with the goblins and decide to just ignore them after it is determined that they are not initially hostile and are just a group with their own motivations that don't currently intersect with the PC mission at all. So, the PCs move on and are lucky (or unlucky enough) to generate the dragon encounter right away in the second area. The PCs win. The group may decide to continue exploring, but let's say they don't...

The previously generated goblins still exist, and they decide "hey, the dragon is dead... let's go find the hoard." This occurs independently of the PCs.

Though, maybe later on, the PCs need to engage in a skill challenge to ask a goblin king for safe passage through an area. Perhaps it turns out that the king is one of the goblins from that earlier adventure, who got rich from the loot left behind that the PCs chose not to seek out.

That last part isn't necessary, but I'm trying to illustrate that once a generated element is given life in the game world, it may continue to have agency and evolve by interacting with other generated pieces, even if the PCs aren't around.
Later, when/if the PCs again encounter that generated game piece, the components of the piece may have changed from interacting with other in-game elements.

 

[FrogReaver]

There is no "shorter path". The idea of a skill challenge is to establish a degree of "weight" to the attempt to achieve some overall goal. The complexity of the challenge shapes pacing - eg complexity 4 or 5 means this thing won't be resolved quickly - and hence degree of focus/attention that play will give to the overall stakes of the challenge. Within the challenge, the GM's job is to narrate consequences that respond to each check, while keeping the challenge alive until the final resolution.

1. What does the GM base his decision to require 3 successes before 5 failures instead of 5 successes before 7 failures. Deciding one vs the other seems a bit arbitrary?

2. Every action the PCs take is of equal weight to resolving the skill challenges and thus isn’t contextual to the specific PC action chosen.

3. The generated fiction isn’t contextual either. If less successes ‘should’ otherwise get them to their goal then the DM is mandated to invent a reason it doesn’t simply because it’s a skill challenge.

To me this is trading strict mechanical structure for less fictional structure, less fictional grounding.

 

[Umbran]

1. What does the GM base his decision to require 3 successes before 5 failures instead of 5 successes before 7 failures. Deciding one vs the other seems a bit arbitrary?

It is a measure of difficulty. The wider the gap between needed success and failures, the more likely failure is.

Another factor is how many PCs are involved. If the number of successes you need is lower than the number of PCs, for example, then not everyone is going to be able to be effective in the test.

2. Every action the PCs take is of equal weight to resolving the skill challenges and thus isn’t contextual to the specific PC action chosen.

In the basic form of this, what you try to do has to at least be plausibly effective. If trying to convince a Senator to vote as you want, doing push-ups at him probably won't help.

But, once the general idea is in place, there's variations. Maybe some actions seem more effective, and will be worth more. Or maybe it is a longer-term clock, and we are talking about entire scenes that support the goal, instead of round-based actions.

3. The generated fiction isn’t contextual either. If less successes ‘should’ otherwise get them to their goal then the DM is mandated to invent a reason it doesn’t simply because it’s a skill challenge.

This isn't used for all goals. If the GM has framed a thing that can be addressed wit a single PC action, it's kind of a challenge-design failure. Much as a single one-hit-die goblin doesn't pose much of a combat challenge to 12th level characters most of the time.

To me this is trading strict mechanical structure for less fictional structure, less fictional grounding.

You are free to judge based on descriptions on the internet. But, I would recommend actually playing a game with someone using it before you decide how grounded it is or isn't.

Don't have time, or don't wanna? Well, why bother passing judgement on it at all, then?

Also note... this is actually of the same form as combat, just with fewer pre-specified, specialized inputs. Combat is "Score X hit points of damage on the monster before it scores Y hit points of damage on you."

 

[Micah Sweet]

The post is about how latent scenes are established, and how latent scenes become "activated"/"triggered" and hence actual episodes of play. Player-driven map-and-key is one way of doing this (see eg Gygax's PHB). GM-driven map-and-key is one way of doing this (see eg a number of the mini-modules found in the City of GY boxed set). GM-driven "event-based" scenarios are another one (see eg the first part of the 3E module Speaker in Dreams, played as written).

As the OP says, these are not the only ways of structuring and progressing scenes/situations.

No it doesn't:
Notice the contrast drawn between "map-and-key play [that is] relatively player-driven" and "map-and-key play [that is] heavily GM-driven", and then the reference to "event-based scenarios" that closely resemble GM-driven map-and-key play in some respects.

Nothing is said about whether map-and-key play is usually GM-driven (and hence apt to be described as linear) or relatively player-driven. The OP is not a conjecture about how common some approaches to play are. It is describing and contrasting approaches to play.

Then what's the point of bringing up the linear/railroad talk?

 

[FrogReaver]

Don't have time, or don't wanna? Well, why bother passing judgement on it at all, then?

Why try to make it personal?

 

[Pedantic]

1. What does the GM base his decision to require 3 successes before 5 failures instead of 5 successes before 7 failures. Deciding one vs the other seems a bit arbitrary?

2. Every action the PCs take is of equal weight to resolving the skill challenges and thus isn’t contextual to the specific PC action chosen.

3. The generated fiction isn’t contextual either. If less successes ‘should’ otherwise get them to their goal then the DM is mandated to invent a reason it doesn’t simply because it’s a skill challenge.

To me this is trading strict mechanical structure for less fictional structure, less fictional grounding.

Skill challenges are better understood as a shared fiction generation exercise that allows for player contributions to be digested toward a given output, instead of a gameplay mechanism. The limited tactical space is the point; by not privileging any particular action declaration over any other the space for what actions can be declared is wide open.

If anything, "challenge" might be the wrong word. They aren't fundamentally about making good decisions to best achieve the goal, they're about structuring the fiction in service to whatever question is put at stake.

I've long had a criticism that SCs are a bad "game," because the impact of player decision making on achieving a goal is so low and limited, but that's not the design purpose that's being served here. If anything, it's the inverse; by roughly standardizing the impact of any given decision, there is no incentive directing the kind of actions players should take, and the resulting fiction can be significantly more varied.

 

[FrogReaver]

Skill challenges are better understood as a shared fiction generation exercise that allows for player contributions to be digested toward a given output, instead of a gameplay mechanism. The limited tactical space is the point; by not privileging any particular action declaration over any other the space for what actions can be declared is wide open.

If anything, "challenge" might be the wrong word. They aren't fundamentally about making good decisions to best achieve the goal, they're about structuring the fiction in service to whatever question is put at stake.

I've long had a criticism that SCs are a bad "game," because the impact of player decision making on achieving a goal is so low and limited, but that's not the design purpose that's being served here. If anything, it's the inverse; by roughly standardizing the impact of any given decision, there is no incentive directing the kind of actions players should take, and the resulting fiction can be significantly more varied.

Yea that’s along the same thought lines I’d had, though said much more eloquently.

My point was more that if someone wanted those decisions to be part of the challenge or have weight and impact more directly tied to the current fictional position then 4e skill challenges aren’t a great fit. They would actually be getting in the way of that kind of gameplay.

 

[Thondor]

If you discussing RPGs, and you're excluding D&D, its many variations, and games that play like it, I feel you really need to do so explicitly, and be aware that the discussion is no longer about "RPGs", but rather a fraction of such.

IMO, no discussion excluding D&D et al is a "general RPG" discussion. Such games simply occupy too big a slice of the pie to ignore implicitly.

So you're arguing that the concepts of norms shouldn't exist? No baseline from which to divurge? Convincing the entire community on that is going to be a tough road to hoe.

In a discussions like this that essentially asks the question "what are some uncommon / lesser known ways of doing X?" What exactly is the point of emphasizing the most common game? What's the point of weighing it so high?
The whole point is to talk about other approaches and methods.
In this context if we are assigning "weights" to the discussion of default methodology of play D&D (and similar) gets 1, world of darkness (all of the editions) gets 1, all fate system games get one, all pbta games get's one, probably all GMless story-games gets 1, all BRP games gets 1, etc.

Because the unit of measure is the number of default methods of play not "how many people play a particular way."

Anyway, I'm planning on leaving this particular point at that, to avoid derailing the discussion.