D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Lanefan]

What is the antecedent to "those games"? I talked about different types of games, and it's not clear which set you are referring to here.

Sorry - was referring to the games where, as you put it, "There is not the same sort of emphasis on "skilled play" and "play to win" in games like Stonetop or Torchbearer or Fate because these games are more interested in dramatic story beats."

To which I responded "Yet even in those games doesn't playing your character with integrity come first, even if doing so leads to less drama and-or a less engaging story?"

Now we're caught up.

 

[Lanefan]

Really? I mean, it's just giving the writer the name of a world and the name of a character. Or are you assuming that 'set on the world of Akrayna' also comes with some sort of lore bible for that world?

Yes. Same as saying "Set in the Forgotten Realms", or wherever.

 

[soviet]

Yes. Same as saying "Set in the Forgotten Realms", or wherever.

OK, but that's not a match for the example, which was 'players say they want to interact with giants, so the GM goes and creates a stack of material on giants, therefore the players and GM have collaborated'. The equivalent there would be that the player creates the stack of lore on giants, which is expressly what's being argued against.

 

[pemerton]

if a publisher instructs a writer to write a book about a particular subject, was that piece a collaboration between the publisher and the writer?

I've never written to commission in this fashion; but I've contributed plenty of academic work to edited collections, where the editor has invited me to write on a particular topic. Like @Vaalingrade, I wouldn't see that as a collaboration between editor and author.

 

[pemerton]

If I'm writing a website, someone does the overall design and layout, someone codes the HTML and the front end, I work on the back end code that makes it all work. We're all collaborating on the same project even though we have different responsibilities.

OK. I don't quite see how this relates to playing a RPG.

That's why I chose an example - being inspired or prompted to write a poem - that seemed to more closely resemble the idea of being inspired or prompted to write setting lore.

The only collaboration that I see us missing is that they aren't adding minor cosmetic scenery or inconsequential NPCs.

Huh? So do your players add non-cosmetic scenery and consequential NPCs?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Suppose A and B are in love. And B is a poet. B then writes a poem about A, prompted by B's experiences with A.

I don't think it's typical to describe this as a collaboration between A and B. Like, I don't think we normally say that Dylan collaborated with Sara (or, if you prefer, Joan Baez) when he wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.

Can you say a bit about how the RPG case - of the GM authoring something prompted by a player's interest - involves collaboration?

Well, I believe the example was from @Crimson Longinus . But I agree in principle.

 

[pemerton]

When it comes to SC, do you as DM struggle sometimes to come up with x number of tests (skill checks) required for the SC difficulty that you have selected?

First, an explanatory prelude:

There's an idea in the 4e DMG that the complexity of a skill challenge is also a reflection/expression of its difficulty for the players. But I don't think that that idea is correct: I think the complexity of a skill challenge is more like a reflection/expression of its "weight" or significance in the unfolding fiction. I think this alternative view of complexity becomes clearer in the 4e rulebooks when the Essentials Rules Compendium introduces the idea of "advantages", which are roughly proportional in number to the complexity of a skill challenge, and that ameliorate mechanical difficulty.

This prelude underlies my answer to your first question: what the mechanical complexity of a skill challenge requires is for the GM to narrate consequences, and reframe the unfolding situation, in such a way as (i) to keep the situation "alive" and unresolved, while (ii) allowing for success or failure in the overall challenge to be a tenable result of any check being attempted that has the mechanical possibility of producing that outcome. As the tests unfold, the GM has to bring things towards a resolution while both honouring individual successes and failures, reframing on this basis for the next check, and being ready to bring the overall challenge to its appropriate conclusion.

In my experience, the challenge isn't therefore to come up with X number of tests, but rather to modulate the way the fiction is unfolding in order to meet constraints (i) and (ii): and (i) on its own is easy; it's the combination with (ii) that can be quite demanding on a GM.

Can/Do players provide assistance with possible ideas for these tests?

Absolutely. In this respect I follow p 179 of the 4e PHB:

Whatever the details of a skill challenge, the basic structure of a skill challenge is straightforward. Your goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (usually in the form of successful skill checks) before you get too many defeats (failed checks). It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face.​

Page 259 of the PHB is also relevant:

In a skill challenge, your goal is to accumulate a certain number of successful skill checks before rolling too many failures. Powers you use might give you bonuses on your checks, make some checks unnecessary, or otherwise help you through the challenge. Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter. Then you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail.

Chapter 5 describes the sorts of things you can attempt with your skills in a skill challenge. You can use a wide variety of skills, from Acrobatics and Athletics to Nature and Stealth. You might also use combat powers and ability checks.​

I think it can be helpful for the GM to give the players some idea of their options: this is part of the framing process. That could be mentioning skills, or obvious in-fiction possibilities, or both. It can also be provocative, reminding a player about what might be at stake: eg, after narrating a NPC saying something at odds with a PC's interests, "Do you respond? Or do you let <so-and-so NPC's> declaration go unchallenged?"

But all of this I regard as facilitative, not directive.

Here's an example from actual play:

The PCs erected a magic circle around the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, in order to prevent anyone from entering it and potentially learning her true name (backstory here); then rested; then scried on the tarrasque, which they knew to have recently begun marauding in the mortal world, identifying its location and noting that it was being observed by maruts.

<snip stablock and intervening events>

Upon arriving at the tarrasque's location they found the tarrasque being warded by a group of maruts who explained that, in accordance with a contract made with the Raven Queen millenia ago, they were there to ensure the realisation of the end times, and to stop anyone interfering with the tarrasque as an engine of this destruction and a herald of the beginning of the end times and the arrival of the Dusk War.

(Why the Raven Queen wants the Dusk War has not fully come to light, other than that it seems part of her plan to realise her own ultimate godhood. One idea I had follows in sblocks.)

[sblock]With Ometh dead, it seems possible that those souls who have passed over the Bridge that May be Traversed But Once might be able to return - repopulating a world remade following the Dusk War and the restoration of the Lattice of Heaven.[/sblock]

I wasn't sure exactly what the players would do here. They could try and fight the maruts, obviously, but I thought the Raven Queen devotees might be hesitant to do so. I had envisaged that the PCs might try to persuade them that the contract was invalid in some way - and this idea was mentioned at the table, together with the related idea of the various exarchs of the Raven Queen in the party trying to lay down the law. In particular I had thought that the paladin of the Raven Queen, who is a Marshall of Letherna (in effect, one of the Raven Queen's most powerful servants), might try to exercise his authority to annual or vary the contract in some fashion.

But instead the argument developed along different lines. What the players did was to persuade the maruts that the time for fulfillment of their contract had not yet arisen, because this visitation of the tarrasque was not yet a sign of the Dusk War. (Mechanically, these were social skill checks, history and religions checks, etc, in a skill challenge to persuade the maruts.)

The player of the Eternal Defender PC made only one action in this skill challenge - explaining that it was not the end times, because he was there to defeat the tarrasque (and got another successful intimidate check, after spending an action point to reroll his initial fail) - before launching himself from the flying tower onto the tarrasque and proceeding to whittle away around 600 of its hit points over two rounds. (There were also two successful out-of-turn attacks from the ranger and the paladin, who were spending their on-turn actions in negotiating with the maruts.)

The invoker/wizard was able to point to this PC's successful solo-ing of the tarrasque as evidence that the tarrasque, at least on this occasion, could not be the harbinger of the end times whom the maruts were contracted to protect, because it clearly lacked the capacity to ravage the world. The maruts agreed with this point - clearly they had misunderstood the timing of celestial events - and the PCs therefore had carte blanche to finish of the tarrasque. (Mechanically, this was the final success in the skill challenge: the player rolled Insight to see what final argument would sway the maruts, knowing that only one success was needed. He succeeded. I invited him to then state the relevant argument.)

As you can see, that last check leaned heavily into the player's proposed action, plus the fiction of that particular PC (a Deva invoker/wizard Divine Philosopher and Sage of Ages with unrivalled knowledge of both the past and the future), plus the fact that this was the final roll (either the Nth success (I can't remember the complexity of the skill challenge) or 3rd failure), to help manage the way the situation worked out.

Here's another example:

The PCs have recently entered a town which is under increasing pressure from hobgoblin and allied raiders. The town is ruled by a Patriarch of Bahamut and a Baron. The PCs are still getting the lay of the political land.

The PCs entered the town as heroes, having saved an affiliated village from being destroyed by hobgoblins. They were lauded by the Patriarch, and invited to join the Baron for dinner that evening.

<snip account of conversation with NPC>

Two revelations had the biggest immediate impact. One involved the PCs' principal enemy. This is the leader of the hobgoblins, a powerful wizard called Paldemar (but called Golthar in Goblinish). The PCs learned that in the town he is not known to be a villain, but is apparently well-thought of, is an important scholar and astrologer, is an advisor to the Baron, and is engaged to the Baron's niece. The PCs (and the players) became worried that he might be at dinner that evening. This was a worry for two reasons - (i) they didn't really want to fight him, and (ii) they know some secrets about an ancient minotaur kingdom that he does not, but has been trying to discover. One of those secrets involves a magic tapestry that the PCs carry around with them (becaue they don't have anywhere safe to leave it).

The second revelation was that the Baron was prophesied to die that night. The paladin had already sensed a catoblepas in the swamps outside the town, and had sensed it approaching the town earlier that day. The priestess explained that a year ago the Baron had been visited by a catoblepas, as a type of forewarning. And the cultist explained that the uprising had taken place today in anticipation of the Baron's imminent demise.

After learning these things, the PCs cleaned up in the cultists' bathroom and then hurried off to dinner.

The dinner
The PCs arrived late, and were the last ones there. On the high table they could see the Baron, and his sister and brother-in-law, and also Paldemar, their wizard enemy. They left their more gratuitous weapons - a halberd for the dwarf and a longbow for the ranger - with the dwarf's herald - an NPC dwarf minion called Gutboy Barrelhouse - and took their seats at the high table. Gutboy was also carrying the backpack with the tapestry.

The PCs also noticed a series of portraits hanging behind the high table. One had a young woman, who was the spitting image of a wizard's apprentice they had recently freed from a trapping mirror - except that adventure had happened 100 years in the past (under a time displacement ritual), and this painting was clearly newly painted. Another, older, painting was of a couple, a man resembling the Baron, and a woman resmembling the rescued apprentice but at an older age.

About this time the players started talking about the skill checks they wanted to make, and I asked them what they were hoping to achieve. Their main goal was to get through the evening without upsetting the baron, without getting into a fight with Paldemar (which meant, at a minimum, not outing him as the leader of the hobgoblin raiders), and without revealing any secrets to him. In particular, they didn't want him to learn that they had found the tapestry, and that it was in fact 15' away from him in Gutboy's backpack. But it also quickly became clear that they wanted to learn about the people in the portraits, to try and learn what had happened over the past 100 years to the apprentice they freed, and how she related to the Baron's family.

This whole scene was resolved as a complexity 5 skill challenge. It ran for more than an hour, but probably not more than two. The general pattern involved - Paldemar asking the PCs about their exploits; either the paladin or the sorcerer using Bluff to defuse the question and/or evade revealing various secrets they didn't want Paldemar to know; either the paladin or the wizard then using Diplomacy to try to change the topic of conversation to something else - including the Baron's family history; and Paldemar dragging things back onto the PCs exploits and discoveries over the course of their adventures.

Following advice given by LostSoul on these boards back in the early days of 4e, my general approach to running the skill challenge was to keep pouring on the pressure, so as to give the players a reason to have their PCs do things. And one particular point of pressure was the dwarf fighter/cleric - in two senses. In story terms, he was the natural focus of the Baron's attention, because the PCs had been presenting him as their leader upon entering the town, and subsequently. And the Baron was treating him as, in effect, a noble peer, "Lord Derrik of the Dwarfholm to the East". And in mechanical terms, he has no training in social skills and a CHA of 10, so putting the pressure on him forced the players to work out how they would save the situation, and stop the Baron inadvertantly, or Paldemar deliberately, leading Derrik into saying or denying something that would give away secrets. (Up until the climax of the challenge, the only skill check that Derriks' player made in contribution to the challenge was an Athletics check - at one point the Baron described himself as a man of action rather than ideas, and Derrik agreed - I let his player make an Athletics check - a very easy check for him with a +15 bonus - to make the fact of agreement contribute mechanically to the party's success in dealing with the situation.)

Besides the standard skill checks, other strategies were used to defuse the tension at various points. About half way through, the sorcerer - feigning drunkenness with his +20 Bluff bonus - announced "Derrik, it's time to take a piss" - and then led Derrik off to the privy, and then up onto the balcony with the minstrel, so that Paldemar couldn't keep goading and trying to ensnare him. At another point, when the conversation turned to how one might fight a gelatinous cube (Paldemar having explained that he had failed in exploring one particular minotaur ruin because of some cubes, and the PCs not wanting to reveal that they had explored that same ruin after beating the cubes) the sorcerer gave an impromptu demonstration by using Bedevilling Burst to knock over the servants carrying in the jellies for desert. (I as GM had mentioned that desert was being brought in. It was the player who suggested that it should probably include jellies.) That he cast Bedevilling Burst he kept secret (another Bluff check). But he loudly made the point that jellies can be squashed at least as easily as anything else.

While fresh jellies were prepared, Derrik left the table to give a demonstration of how one might fight oozes using a halberd and fancy footwork. But he then had to return to the table for desert.

Around this time, the challenge had evolved to a point where one final roll was needed, and 2 failures had been accrued. Paldemar, once again, was badgering Derrik to try to learn the secrets of the minotaur ruins that he was sure the PCs knew. And the player of Derrik was becoming more and more frustrated with the whole situation, declaring (not speaking in character, but speaking from the perspective of his PC) "I'm sick of putting up with this. I want Paldemar to come clean."

The Baron said to Derrik, "The whole evening, Lord Derrik, it has seemed to me that you are burdened by something. Will you not speak to me?" Derrik got out of his seat and went over to the Baron, knelt beside him, and whispered to him, telling him that out of decorum he would not name anyone, but there was someone close to the Baron who was not what he seemed, and was in fact a villainous leader of the hobgoblin raiders. The Baron asked how he knew this, and Derrik replied that he had seen him flying out of goblin strongholds on his flying carpet. The Baron asked him if he would swear this in Moradin's name. Derrik replied "I swear". At which point the Baron rose from the table and went upstairs to brood on the balcony, near the minstrel.

With one check still needed to resolve the situation, I had Paldemar turn to Derrik once again, saying "You must have said something very serious, to so upset the Baron." Derrik's player was talking to the other players, and trying to decide what to do. He clearly wanted to fight. I asked him whether he really wanted to provoke Paldemar into attacking him. He said that he did. So he had Derrik reply to Paldemar, 'Yes, I did, Golthar". And made an Intimidate check. Which failed by one. So the skill challenge was over, but a failure - I described Paldemar/Golthar standing up, pickup up his staff from where it leaned against the wall behind him, and walking towards the door.

Now we use a houserule (perhaps, in light of DMG2, not so much a houserule as a precisification of a suggestion in that book) that a PC can spend an action point to make a secondary check to give another PC a +2 bonus, or a reroll, to a failed check. The player of the wizard PC spent an action point, and called out "Golthar, have you fixed the tear yet in your robe?" - this was a reference to the fact that the PCs had, on a much earlier occasion, found a bit of the hem of Paldemar's robe that had torn off in the ruins when he had had to flee the gelatinous cubes. I can't remember now whether I asked for an Intimidate check, or decided that this was an automatic +2 bonus for Derrik - but in any event, it turned the failure into a success. We ended the session by noting down everyone's location on the map of the Baron's great hall, and making initiative rolls. Next session will begin with the fight against Paldemar (which may or may not evolve into a fight with a catoblepas also - the players are a bit anxious that it may do so).

This is the most sophisticated skill challenge I've run to date, in terms of the subtlety of the framing, the degree of back and forth (two major PCs with whom the PCs were interacting, with different stakes in the interaction with each of them), my concentration on evolving the scene to reflect the skill checks and the other action while still keeping up the pressure on the players (and on their PCs), and the goals of the players, which started out a little uncertain and somewhat mixed, but ended up being almost the opposite of what they were going into the challenge.

This shows not only how the players' declared actions shape the events of the skill challenge as it resolves; it also shows how the players can shape the goal and hence the outcome of a skill challenge, as it unfolds.

That "shaping" is obviously going to be not much of a thing in a low-complexity skill challenge. But I think for high complexity ones it is important, as it allows early actions to play a bit more of a "sounding out" and "setting up" role, setting the direction for things which are then brought home as the overall challenge resolves.

(In this example, the player suggesting the jellies as part of the dessert resembles "I punch the nearby dude", although more meta as it is an outright suggestion. I don't recall anyone at the table finding it controversial. It complemented, in an amusing fashion, the in-fiction discussion of a fight against gelatinous cubes.)

Here's a final example for this post:

When the Tower shifted into the Feywild the PCs (following the hag's directions) headed north. The invoker summoned them phantom steeds, in the form of giant flying dragonflies. (When the player mentioned the dragonflies, I suggested rainbow gossamer wings, but he wouldn't come at that. So the Feywild charged him 100 gp rather than 70 gp worth of residuum for the ritual.)

As the PCs were flying along, they saw an eladrin hunting party, with a displacer beast pack, below them in the woods. As they were turning about to investigate more closely, the eladrin feyknight whistled and called the drow sorcerer's dragonfly to him. (The mysterious magic of the Feywild!) Pleasantries, which included the drow prominently displaying his symbol of Corellon to prove his good faith (he is a member of a small drow cult of Corellon worshippers who seek to end the influence of Lolth and undo the sundering of the elves), revealed that the eladrin was a Marcher Baron, Lord Distan. (The PCs and players recognised that name, as someone who had kicked the hags out of their former home 20-odd years ago, leading them to taking up residence in their Tower instead.)

He invited them back to his home, where it quickly became clear that he didn't really want their company, but rather wanted them to help him with a problem - he was expecting a visit in a few days from his Duke overlord, but his special apple grove was not fruiting as it normally would.

This was an adaptation to 4e mechanics and backstory of the scenario "The Demon of the Red Grove" in Robin Laws's HeroWars Narrator's Book. The reason for the trees in the grove not fruiting is that a demon, long bound there, has recently been awoken but remains trapped within the grove, and hence is cursing the trees. Mechanically, this was resolved as a skill challenge. First the PCs had to endure the demon's three cries of "Go Away!" (group checks, with failing PCs taking psychic damage - the sorcerer, who is also a multi-class bard, was the most flamboyant here, spending his Rhythm of Disorientation encounter power to open up the use of Diplomacy for the check, which in the fiction was him singing a song of apples blossoming in the summer). Somewhere during this process the cleric-ranger and invoker both succeeded at Perception checks and could hear the high-pitched whistling of a song bird. And the sorcerer's Arcana check revealed the presence of the demon - an ancient and mighty glabrezu (level 27 solo, as I told the players in order to try to convey the requisite sense of gravity).

At this point I thought they would attack the demon, but they decided to speak to it first, to find out how it had got there and what it was doing there. With successful Diplomacy checks they learned that it had been summoned long ago during the Dawn War ("When Miska's armies were marshalling on the Plain of a Thousand Portals") by a powerful drow who had come into the Abyss, in order to ambush a strong and cruel sorceress. But the sorceress had defeated it and trapped it in the grove. When they asked it the name of the sorceress, it replied that the name had been erased from its memory - at which point the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen worked out the sorceress was his mistress, and the player of the drow worked out that the ambusher must be Lolth. They also learned that it had been woken a year ago by an NPC wizard who was, earlier in the campaign, a nemesis of the PCs, as part of his attempts to learn the true name of the Raven Queen.

They then debated whether to bargain with it, but doubted its promise that "My word is my bond." The player of the invoker decided to use the Adjure ritual - that works on immortal creatures only, so he used it to try and change the immortal magic of the Raven Queen that was binding the demon. Instead of being trapped in the grove, they wanted the demon to instead go forth and fight frost giants and formorians. A roll was made (with help from the paladin, the ranger-cleric (who is also a Raven Queen devotee) and the sorcerer (who hates the giants because they serve evil primordials and he serves Chan, a "good" archomental). Unfortunately the roll was not very high, which meant that even with the bonuses it didn't achieve a full success, so the demon is bound for a week only - and hence was quite cheerful as it flew off to the north to beat up on frost giants.

The skill challenge here begins in a manner heavily guided by me as GM, with the demon's three cries. But then the players took over, and established their goal (of trying to control the demon to send it on a rampage against their enemies in the Feywild).

Even in the GM-guided bit, though, you can see the example of the sorcerer player identifying ways to use his PC's skills, and also an encounter attack power, to help with the challenge.

 

[pemerton]

I'm very much a fan of table consensus and so yeah that works for me. It keeps the boundary pushers in check by the rest of the players who care about setting consistency and the integrity of the story without leaving it all in my lap as DM.

I posted my reply just upthread of this one, before reading this post.

I think that what preserves consistency and integrity of the fiction is clear framing and player investment.

The examples in my previous post, of discerning what argument would convince the maruts; of jellies as part of the dessert; of winged dragonfly phantom steeds on the Feywild; of singing a song of apples blossoming in the summer; all come from the players. They don't post any risk to the consistency or integrity of the fiction - in fact, to my mind, that would be a completely backwards way to try and think about what is going on.

They are contributions to establishing the fiction, and so to setting the boundaries of what is consistent with it.

If players aren't invested enough in the fiction to do this sort of thing, my default assumption is that the GM needs to work more on offering fiction that the players will care about and invest in.

 

[Pedantic]

What I was hoping to do was have a conversation around the various layers of challenge-based play in a ruleset possessed of complex decisions, some of which put the player's goals "rowing in opposite or orthogonal directions" or "rowing at different intervals/loops so trade-offs around immediate tactics and long-term strategy become paramount." I then wanted to use that foundation to discuss the implications of various forms of rule 0 or referee interpretation (in baseball, the Umpire's strike zone was going to be the analog for TTRPG GMing judgement, mediation, and unilateral authority).

I'll read you post in the coming days as time allows, digest where your headspace is, and see if I can't come up with a better means to discuss this stuff. I don't have time today and I likely don't have it tomorrow as well, but in the next few days.

Anyway, I appreciate it and I'm sorry for having you digest a bunch of foreign material (about baseball) and make a lengthy post about the same.

No worries. I'm usually coming at these things from a board gaming perspective. I've said a few times that I think the important differentiator between a classic game and a TTRPG really comes down to victory conditions; my view is that role-playing is best deployed as a means to establish victory/failure and the terms/timing of evaluation.

The question I'm always asking is whether or not any given gameplay would be good and interesting without the supporting fiction. If not, is that necessary to support the desired fiction? And then the most contentious: is that fiction good enough to justify a worse game?

I'm pretty open to pruning the scope of storytelling and/or doing significant setting surgery if it produces better and more varied opportunities for gameplay.

 

[Manbearcat]

Just curious
When it comes to SC, do you as DM struggle sometimes to come up with x number of tests (skill checks) required for the SC difficulty that you have selected?
Can/Do players provide assistance with possible ideas for these tests?

@pemerton gave you a full reply on Skill Challenge procedures, techniques, examples.

For reference, here are three current/recent PBPs with an endless supply of examples of Skill Challenges of every conceivable archetype and Goal (along with several embedded within combat). There are more in the past, but you’ll have to look those up!

The Slave and Her Sovereign

Alright, running a 4e No Myth (minimal setting at the outset and it will accrete and firm up as we play), Story Now game for @darkbard and @Nephis . Below is character information, Minor Quest, and rough setting information chosen by the players to help inform initial scene framing: CHARACTERS...

www.enworld.org

A Monk, a Wizard, and a Swordmage Walk into a Fallcrest; a 4e Story Now game

Alright @Grendel_Khan (Monk), @AbdulAlhazred (Wizard), @Campbell (Swordmage)...thus begins our PBP game! These three wanted the game to take place in 4e's default setting/cosmology of Nentir Vale et al, so we begin in Fallcrest. We're going to call this Wizard's Tower for the opening conflict...

www.enworld.org

Redeem the Past, Chase the Future. A 4e Story Now One Shot.

Alright, @zakael19 is interested in possibly running a 4e game for his home group, so I'm running a one-shot, solo PBP for him to help him get a feel of both sides of the effort; GM and player. This will be a solo game, so my combat encounter budgets will feature monsters/NPCs leveled down to 6...

www.enworld.org