D&D 4E 4e skill system -dont get it.

[Celebrim]

So: unless the players are challenged, instead of the characters being challenged, there's no point?

For me, absolutely. I imagine that there are some less competitive people out there that feel otherwise, but as far as I'm concerned a game that doesn't challenge player skill in particular ways is utterly boring.

It tells you the outcome. It does not resolve any conflict or player goal...It has changed. If you get a success, it is going to bring you closer to your goal; if a failure, away...In 3e, I can climb all the walls I want, make successful checks each time, but unless I climb the right wall (as deemed by the DM), I'm not making it out of Sembia.

I think in practice unless D&D has granted sufficient narrative control that players can create things that weren't there before, that you'll find that this hasn't changed one bit.

No, it's definiately not true in 3e that the result of a skill check will resolve a goal. Look at what you wrote above: "A climb check can help you climb a wall; it can't tell you whether climbing the wall is useful."

In 4e, it is explicit that the skill check is useful. In 3e, it is not.

In your example, you defined the challenge as 'Climb this wall to be welcomed into the manhood of the Bear Tribe'. Assuming that is something you want to do, then a climb check is explicitly useful whether this is 3e or 4e. The DM has defined climbing the wall as useful, and now a climb check can help you climb the wall. Hense, you know that a climb check is useful, and since the results of the skill check are clearly defined you know X number of successful skill checks will get you to the top of the wall. In 4e the same scenario runs in the exact same way - you know X skill checks will get you to the top of the wall and you know that this is useful. Being a 'skill challenge' doesn't change anything except to the extent that the DM may or may not allow different skills (perception, nature, etc.) to count for some number of the successes needed to climb the wall (though it would be really wierd if no climb checks were needed to get to the top). But then again, the 3e DM may or may not have ran the scenario where successfully spotting or finding the easiest path aided the ascent depending on how much detail he put into the scenario and how willing he was to except player propositions like, "Can I spot an easier way up the cliff?". So again, nothing has changed.

It has been very nice talking to you. Thanks for the information. However, this conversation seems to be breaking down. You seem to insist on drawing distinctions that don't seem to me to be real. We are repeating ourselves to each other, and it seems unlikely either of us will learn anything further from the other one.

If you want to have the dice and rules resolve conflicts instead of DM fiat, you'll need to do that.

I very much doubt you'll do away with DM fiat, but keep living the dream.

 

[LostSoul]

It has been very nice talking to you. Thanks for the information. However, this conversation seems to be breaking down. You seem to insist on drawing distinctions that don't seem to me to be real. We are repeating ourselves to each other, and it seems unlikely either of us will learn anything further from the other one.

No probem! I've enjoyed our exchanges. I think there must be some fundamental difference in the way we approach the game that has us going round in circles. But it has been a lot of fun!

 

[pemerton]

I think concieving things which aren't related to action resolution as rules unnecessarily constrains the way the game is played, and it tends to force DMs (and often players) into saying 'no' to perfectly valid ways of playing with the rules set.

The petty and pedantic part of me wants to say that the above sentence depends for its truth upon taking "rules set" to have your preferred narrower meaning, and thus, as a reason in favour of giving "rules" that meaning begs the question.

I nevertheless see your point (I think), but I worry a little about the contrary situation - that some groups find themselves trying to do things with particular RPG systems that those systems just won't sustain, because the systems are written assuming that certain rules (= guidelines) are being used, but do not quite have the gumption to call these out as rules rather than as (mere) guidelines. The guidelines are therefore departed from to the detriment of the play experience (compared to what might be achieved using a different system with rules adapted to delivering the desired play experience).

So I'm not as worried as I get the sense that you are that D&D is becoming a little more precise in identifying the sort of play experience its designers feel confident that it can deliver.

I think I would like a more concrete example.

A simple one that comes to mind in the context of D&D: "playing my alignment" is a cloak for all sorts of anti-social behaviour at the gaming table which, once alignment is not part of the game system, is stripped away. The player is exposed as simply choosing to run a character in a manner that is annoying for everyone else at the table.

Obviously, I could have made 'cooler descriptions' if I wanted to. But I'm not sure that 'cooler descriptions' is really the heart of where Lost Soul is going with his argument. He seems to be aiming more for 'who has narrative control' than 'are people being expressive'.

Sure. But the two aren't entirely distinct. If the net consequence of being expressive, from the point of view of action resolution, is nothing - I still just roll the d20 - then the game itself gives me no particular incentive to be expressive. I may of course choose to be expressive nevertheless, but that expression does not ramify into the game itself.

On the other hand, in a framework in which the degree and content of my expressiveness is actually relevant to the evaluation of my skill check - for example, it helps determine whether or not it makes a legitimate contribution to resolution of the challenge, and perhaps the degree of that contribution (by helping settle the difficulty of my check) - then I have a good reason to be expressive. By being expressive I am actually shaping the gameworld.

I don't see a real difference between, "the player describing what action the PC performs" and "the player describes how his or her PC does something that contributes to the success of the party in relation to the challenge...and the GM and other players then build on that description in resolving the rest of the challenge". What distinction are you trying to make?

My original sentence contained, where you have elided, the following parantehtical elaboration: "which requires describing not just the action but various of its consequences, plus elements of the gameworld context in which it occurs". This is what I am trying to say is new. I think my previous paragraph elaborated it a little bit. As opposed to simply declaring a check (taking it to be evident how it will contribute to his or her PCs attainment of a desired goal) a player is encouraged to explain how the check will lead to success, by becoming more involved in shaping the context of the challenge.

Of course, inventive play is possible in a more traditional skill system (RQ, RM, 3E). But (to draw a connection to Lost Soul's notion of "succeeding at 100 checks and yet failing overall") I think in those traditional skill systems it is assumed that the checks are simply interacting with a pre-planned set of possibilities determined by the GM. Success or failure conditions are under the GM's control (eg, to refer back to Harr's example, the GM will have set the difficulty of cutting the rope and the consequences - perhaps as a set of % chances - of doing so and having the trapped body fall to the ground).

I see the "skill challenge" model as giving the players much more scope to determine the success conditions, because (i) if we know that 6 successes are enough, whatever exactly they consist in, and (ii) the players get to choose which skills to use (provided they make a narratively plausible case as to relevance) then inventiveness and a rich player engagement with the broader context is unleashed without the players having to worry that their PCs will fall foul of the GM's predetermined matrix of possibilities.

can you have a skill challenge in a traditional dungeon, with a map and encounter descriptions?

I can see why you ask this - I think that Lost Soul is probably right to say yes, and that you and Mallus perhaps wrong when you suggest not. Picking up your subsequent response to Lost Soul:

I think in practice unless D&D has granted sufficient narrative control that players can create things that weren't there before, that you'll find that this hasn't changed one bit.

The player doesn't have to be able to move things around in the gameworld, in order to bring it about that climbing the wall leads to Escape from Sembia. Assuming that the gameworld is not described down to the last detail (eg the location, movement, spot check and initiative of every guard is not pre-determined at every moment of gametime) then the player, with a successful athletics check, could look at the GM's map of Sembia and explain which walls are being climbed and which rooves traversed in the course of the PC making his or her way out of the city. If some of those ways go past places which are known by the GM to have guards, then (depending on the degree of success, perhaps, and what else is going on with other player's checks) one would know that either those guards weren't looking very hard, or were outrun, or that the PC successfully jumped out-of-sight, or whatever.

This may count as "creating what was not there before" (eg an inobservant guard rather than an eagle-eyed one) but that does not seem detrimental to the gameworld in terms of the elements it is made up of - no more than a successful combat might have created a dead guard rather than a living one, albeit via something a little less FiTM).

In the case of the dungeon crawl, I don't think it will be about a more abstract dungeon with the players giving rise to secret doors or not. I think rather it will be about the players and the GMs jointly working with what is there in the dungeon. For example, if the PCs are looking for a way out, and a player makes a Search check as part of the challenge, but there are no secret doors in the dungeon, then the PCs instead find a small crack in the wall - or perhaps, if the players are more inventive, a faded diagram drawn on the wall in chalk - and then subsequent skill challenges build on this result (eg Dungeoneering to enlarge the crack, or Decipher Script to interpret the chalk map, or whatever).

In your locked gate scenario, what contribution to success does the player indicate is going to arise from opening the gate? Well, to what extent is the GM prepared to help him or her out by providing some material for the players to work with? It seems appropriate for the GM to tell the player, upon his or her PC successfully opening the gate and proceeding through it, that it leads to a dead end. In response to that, it seems open to the player to explain how this nevertheless constitutes a success in the skill challenge: as the party head off in the opposite direction from the dead end, the gate (cunningly left open) creates a false trail that leads the guards away from the real direction of escape and lulls them into a false sense of security, thinking that they have the escapees trapped.

If the players can't come up with some such explanation, then (having failed at the narrative challenge) the PCs don't get the benefit of a succes.

This is another illustration of what I mean by "describing not just the action but various of its consequences, plus elements of the gameworld context in which it occurs."

But if there are really changes in who has narrative control, that's actually a difference. I'm just not convinced that there are actually changes in narrative control.

In one sense I might agree with you: if there is no net change in narrative control, then it becomes less clear how (if at all) the 4e system differs from the 3E one.

My feeling, however, from what I've read, is that there is intended to be a difference and that narrative control is therefore being redistributed. An earlier paragraph indicates why I think this must be so - it cannot be otherwise if (i) a small and pre-determined number of successes is sufficient and (ii) the players get to choose to any significant extent which skills will be used to achieve those successess.

I worry a little that the DMG may balk at the hurdle of explaining how it is meant to work, however. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong in this respect - traditionally D&D has had a lot of trouble expressly stating any limits on the GM's narrative authority, but maybe another sacred cow is going to be slaughtered.

I imagine that there are some less competitive people out there that feel otherwise, but as far as I'm concerned a game that doesn't challenge player skill in particular ways is utterly boring.

This relates back to my exchange upthread with Stormbringer. I agree with Lost Soul that a challenge for the PCs need not be the same sort of challenge for the players (without necessarily saying I would be happy with his particular pantry-kitchen fridge example - everyone draws the limits slighly differently! - although it is slightly odd that one might balk at this, yet takes for granted that when one's PC swings at the drow's head the GM may reply that you actually hit the drow in the foot).

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Coming in late to the conversation. Could someone tell me where to find the info about the whole skill thing, and negotiation of results on skills (I haven't looked over a whole bunch of 4th ed stuff).

If skills move from task resolution to conflict resolution (ie the difference between "did I succeed my attempt to do the skill, tell me the result" and "I succeed at the skill, the situation the skill was trying to achieve is resolved") then I'm out of 4th. I strongly prefer a traditional approach to that - and all this is second hand to me, so I'd like to check what is known myself.

 

[Harr]

Coming in late to the conversation. Could someone tell me where to find the info about the whole skill thing, and negotiation of results on skills (I haven't looked over a whole bunch of 4th ed stuff).

Mhoram, read over the first and second pages of this thread. The info is all there and in links stemming off from there.

If you're simply looking to actually use the system in a real game and have some fun with it, don't try to read any further than that. At that point the conversation veers off into abstract theorizing and 'debate for the pure sake of debate' that is going to confuse more than help anyone looking to actually put this thing into practice.

If on the other hand, you are looking to debate and talk about it by all means feel free to read the entire thread and submerge yourself into an ocean of theories and what-ifs and I-thinks and might-bes. Nothing wrong with that of course Everyone's free to talk.

I just would encourage people to actually try playing it outside your own head, and see what happens; instead of endlessly imagining what it logically makes sense to you that it would end up being like... take a little risk and see what it actually is like.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Mhoram, read over the first and second pages of this thread. The info is all there and in links stemming off from there.

Thanks - I'll do that.

If on the other hand, you are looking to debate and talk about it by all means feel free to read the entire thread and submerge yourself into an ocean of theories and what-ifs and I-thinks and might-bes. Nothing wrong with that of course Everyone's free to talk.

I did a lot of that in previous years at RPGnet. I really nailed down what my playstyle preferences are. It helps me when looking at new systems to see if I would enjoy them or not.

In direct reference to the concept of a skill check telling you if you succeed at the problem the check is supposed to represent... I play from an immersive point of view, and as much as possible I don't want to know any thing that my character doesn't know. If he doesn't know that making that skill roll will mean he wins, then I, as a player do not want that information. I don't want to be given the info what success means, until I succeed, as my character would not have that info.

Just like in combat - if there is something obvious on the map from the player perspective, but the character would have no way of knowing that info, I make my combat decisions based on his knowledge, even if suboptimal.

Not saying other ways of playing are any worse (or better ) but that is just my approach.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

For me, absolutely. I imagine that there are some less competitive people out there that feel otherwise, but as far as I'm concerned a game that doesn't challenge player skill in particular ways is utterly boring.

*Raises hand*

Not arguing with you, but just shouting out as a player that has said in the past "I want my characters to be challenged, not me!"

I don't play boardgames or card games at all because I am the least competitive person I know. I get no thrill from winning, but I do get annoyed at losing, so I play RPGs - one of the very few games you can play non competitively.

I don't play for challenge but character immersion.

Differing playstyles and all that. Mostly posting so that your " I imagine that there are some..." line is moved from imagining to reality. We do exist.

Edit: I will note that because of this, I tend towards genres where character death is generally not a part of genre emulation - 4 Color Supers, Space Opera, High Fantasy.

 

[Celebrim]

I nevertheless see your point (I think), but I worry a little about the contrary situation - that some groups find themselves trying to do things with particular RPG systems that those systems just won't sustain, because the systems are written assuming that certain rules (= guidelines) are being used, but do not quite have the gumption to call these out as rules rather than as (mere) guidelines. The guidelines are therefore departed from to the detriment of the play experience (compared to what might be achieved using a different system with rules adapted to delivering the desired play experience).

I can see that being the case for some systems, but D20 was a pretty broad middle ground generic rules medium simulationist system that could support all different sorts of play. And even 1st edition D&D, when you get down to what individual campaigns were actually like, supported a broad variation in theme, tone, and style of play. If the participants where happy, I have a hard time telling them that they are playing wrongly and would be happier in a different system.

And certainly that's no way to market your product.

So I'm not as worried as I get the sense that you are that D&D is becoming a little more precise in identifying the sort of play experience its designers feel confident that it can deliver.

Well, except to the extent that they seem to be saying, "If you aren't playing the game in the way that we've identified as our core experience of play, then you shouldn't be playing our game at all.", I agree.

A simple one that comes to mind in the context of D&D: "playing my alignment" is a cloak for all sorts of anti-social behaviour at the gaming table which, once alignment is not part of the game system, is stripped away. The player is exposed as simply choosing to run a character in a manner that is annoying for everyone else at the table.

For these purposes, I don't see an important distinction between "playing my alignment" and "playing my character". I don't see how one can be a 'cover' for anti-social behavior and the other not, nor can I see how you can call it a 'cloak' for anti-social behavior if that anti-social behavior is not actually apparant. It seems to me that if the player is being annoying, he's exposed as being annoying regardless of what variation of "I'm just playing my character" he choses to use.

On the other hand, in a framework in which the degree and content of my expressiveness is actually relevant to the evaluation of my skill check - for example, it helps determine whether or not it makes a legitimate contribution to resolution of the challenge, and perhaps the degree of that contribution (by helping settle the difficulty of my check) - then I have a good reason to be expressive. By being expressive I am actually shaping the gameworld.

But I've seen no evidence of a mechanic in 4e that rewards expressiveness any more than 3e rewards expressiveness. I don't see anything that looks like the mechanics in Exalted designed to reward a particular sort of expressive, stylized, player proposition. I just see the more universal metarule of 'expressiveness as a means of entertaining/manipulate/wearing down the referee and hense gaining the referee's favor/acquiesence' that has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with human sociality.

My original sentence contained, where you have elided, the following parantehtical elaboration: "which requires describing not just the action but various of its consequences, plus elements of the gameworld context in which it occurs". This is what I am trying to say is new.

I don't see how you can claim that. Propositions of that nature - including expressing the propositions intentionality - are reutinely offered in any kind of emmersive play. For example, a player wanting to persuade a noblemen to provide the party with aid is probably going to play the role of his character in first person, and then finally at the pitch 'earn' a diplomacy check which he hopes will have some positive modifier based on the suitability and expressiveness of the role play, plus the extent to which through the roleplay the player has provided in game context showing why that it is in the noblemen's best interest to help the PC. This is true all the way back to 1st edition, and the only difference is that the various subsystems have been more or less unified into the skill system.

Likewise, I've argued extensively over the intricasies of how a search check is best resolved in play, and while not every DM has agreed with me, I think a reasonable case can be made that specific propositions like "I search for a hidden panel behind the painting by stripping the plaster off with my axe" involve search tasks of lower (perhaps even trivial) DC than general propositions like "I search the room [5' square at a time]." Likewise, the proposition, "I search the desk." has a different meaning than, "I search the desk but don't yet open any of the drawers." This is particularly clear if opening the drawers carries some consequence (sets of a trap, releases a creature, reveals nothing because the clue is in a drawer). Hense, a player which provides in game context for how he is searching is influencing the skill system even in 3e.

But (to draw a connection to Lost Soul's notion of "succeeding at 100 checks and yet failing overall") I think in those traditional skill systems it is assumed that the checks are simply interacting with a pre-planned set of possibilities determined by the GM. Success or failure conditions are under the GM's control

But of course, it is up to the game master's discrestion how many successes or failures are required to terminate the skill challenge in a failure or success state.

I see the "skill challenge" model as giving the players much more scope to determine the success conditions, because (i) if we know that 6 successes are enough, whatever exactly they consist in...

Do you really think that the game master is required to declare the stakes ahead of time? I don't think you've really gotten as far away from a game master's predetermined matrix of possibilities as you think you have. If in fact players are given narrative control to invent and create new features of the landscape, then that is a first step. For example, if 'escaping the guard' in a city street allows a player to use a jump check to create the circumstance in which the jump check would be applicable (a large wagon blocks the street), then we've entered in to narrativist terroritory. If that's not true, if the DM can say that a jump check isn't applicable to escaping because the street isn't that crowded then we haven't moved a wit from 3e. But even if we have moved abit, we still haven't moved far from a preplanned set of possibilities. To really claim that we have, not only do we need the players to have the ability narrate the situation, but they need the ability to set the stakes of the overall scene - for example we might need some sort of bidding system that would allow the player/game master to negotiate the stakes of the scene from '6/4 escape/captured' to '8/8 death/escape with the princess'.

And that's not even getting into the problem that this is merely a subsystem, and hense not generally applicable to 4e play as far as I can tell.

The player doesn't have to be able to move things around in the gameworld, in order to bring it about that climbing the wall leads to Escape from Sembia...

I disagree. Once you move the system back to what you describe, its fundamentally identical to 3e and all of LostSoul's complaints of not knowing how many checks are required, or whether any particular check is contributing to success comes right back. You might as well play out the scene of running and jumping over the rooftops of Saerloon or Selgaunt (boy that brings back memories) in 3e fashion.

Additionally, most of your examples try to evade the problem by giving players a different class of narrative control that in my opinion opens up an even bigger can of worms - players dictating to the game master how NPC's will behave. Interestingly, I've seen players try to excercise this sort of narrative control as far back as 1st edition. I remember one player who was fond of constructing elaborate ambushes and the like where he would 'fish' the DM for how the NPC would behave and try to argue that logically NPC's would have to fall into his trap, and if the DM disagreed, then he'd try to rearrange circumstances until the DM would concede that the plan would work. The thing is, he'd try this with every single proposition in the game. Essentially, he always wanted to have a 'mindslaver' because if he got to run the NPC's as well, there was no way he could ever lose. And even though he was a very very good RPer, he was simultaneously one of the most annoying players I've ever played alongside.

What's particularly problimatic with being able to dictate to the DM how the NPC's react is that the skill challenges aren't opposed rolls. The DM would essentially being getting no say at all beyond, "No.", and as a DM, "No." is my least favorite word. I'd rather tell a player just about anything but, "No." Before as a DM I'd concede the right to control the NPC's to the players, I'd first have to have a symmetric system where depending on the outcome of some sort of auction, the players were conceding to me somewhat how thier characters would react.

I worry a little that the DMG may balk at the hurdle of explaining how it is meant to work, however. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong in this respect - traditionally D&D has had a lot of trouble expressly stating any limits on the GM's narrative authority, but maybe another sacred cow is going to be slaughtered.

Traditionally, D&D has never felt the need to explain formally where narrative authority lies. In practice, the boundary has been "The DM cannot tell the players how to play thier characters, and the players can't tell the DM how to run the world.", but I've seen lots of cases where DMs or players reutinely challenged this and tried to overstep thier bounds. I foresee not just problems in explaining the limits of DM narrative authority, but player narrative authority. If the limits of player narrative authority are not defined, you are creating a system where the rewards of being DM are insufficient to bear the costs. I've seen alot more campaigns end because the DM wasn't being rewarded for his time, than I've seen end because the players thought the DM wasn't rewarding them for showing up.

I can tell you right now, that the system that you describe where in a player has the expectation that he can dictate NPC behavior to me is not one I'd be willing to referee. I've seen too many game masters suffer through having that sort of player at thier tables without having systems that explicitly encourage it.

...although it is slightly odd that one might balk at this, yet takes for granted that when one's PC swings at the drow's head the GM may reply that you actually hit the drow in the foot).

Yes. I find it really odd that a player would demand narrative control over the game world, but balk at any sort of narrative authority by the game master which runs contrary to the player's wishes. I think that's a recipe for a system that creates complete dysfunctionality at any table even remotely prone to it.

 

[Celebrim]

Differing playstyles and all that. Mostly posting so that your " I imagine that there are some..." line is moved from imagining to reality. We do exist.

Well, I strongly suspected that you did.

There is nothing wrong with that. I'm just being very open about the fact that I play lots of traditional card games, collectible card games, modern and classic strategy board games, PnP and computer war games, and sports and tend to have been parts of gaming groups where this was true of everyone. Hense, a certain amount of player challenge is inherent in my reason for gaming. That isn't to say that I care nothing for emmersion or role play. If I did, I'd stick to games designed to be fair and competitive rather than playing RPG's, but it does mean that I'm willing to sacrifice a certain level of pure simulationism for the sake of what I consider important game play. I don't want to figure out the answer to the riddle by rolling against, "Knowledge (Puzzles and Enigmas)". I want to figure out the riddle. I'm willing to put up with a bit of well constructed 'pixel bitching' (as one opponent of this style of play calls it). I like adventure games. Heck, I like 'Humongous Cave' and 'Zork'. I'm willing to tolerate some DM fiat in exchange for resolving social interaction through elaborate in character conversations which depend on player wit and intelligence, rather than letting my character persuade the reluctant noblemen with a diplomacy check.

The good thing AFAIC is that traditionally, D&D has let each individual table resolve these question for themselves. The D&D rules typically take a very loose stand on these technicalities of play, so if you want to play D&D as high simulationism or D&D according to its gamist wargaming roots the rules would do little to get in the way. Whether that is going to change and some groups will no longer find thier preferred style of play supported in 4e remains to be seen.

Oddly, my principal complaint with 4e seems to be that its swinging too far toward 'pure player challenge' and away from 'emmersiveness'. So its highly possible that you'll be even less happy with 4e's emphasis on tactical board gaming than I am.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Well, I strongly suspected that you did.

There is nothing wrong with that. I'm just being very open about the fact that I play lots of traditional card games, collectible card games, modern and classic strategy board games, PnP and computer war games, and sports and tend to have been parts of gaming groups where this was true of everyone.

Oddly, my principal complaint with 4e seems to be that its swinging too far toward 'pure player challenge' and away from 'emmersiveness'. So its highly possible that you'll be even less happy with 4e's emphasis on tactical board gaming than I am.

Yeah. On of the things hanging around the theory threads on RPGnet did was help me figure out where my preferences for play were, in about 6 different ways. I know exactly what kind of game I like. Total Nar games give the shakes, and make me want to flee.

And while I hang around here, D&D will never be my primary game system - I am a complete devotee of the Hero system... but D&D is the first game I ever played, and I've played every edition (even if playing 2nd only last a month before I went back to 1st with houserules). My wife and I do solo play, and we did a fair amount of solo play with 3.x. I plan on getting 4th just to see what exactly the designers did - I love deconstructing game systems - and I'll likely get the PH to any edition of D&D just for nostalgia. And even if I don't like the system, I can always find nifty bits to translate into Hero (I have about 30 pages of feats adapted from stuff I liked in 3.x).

I really enjoy seeing what is coming out. I am looking forward (whenever all the classes and multiclassing rules come out) to play an archtype I never had a chance to in 3.x - Warlock/Monk (who need equipment, I can do it all myself!).