Actual play examples - balance between fiction and mechanics

[Krensky]

The temple is in ruins. The water weird is an elemental haunting.

Ok, so there's no story tied to the weird, it's just a monster there to be overcome. Is there a MacGuffin beyond the elemental, or is it just a danger of exploration?

Tell me more about the difference between "a good game encounter" and "an interesting story or plot beat".

"You know, I think I'll stick a water weird in the bathroom because it sounds cool, is level appropriate, and it fills out my XP track for the rate of advancement I want. Oh, and making it so the players need to use a skill challenge, sounds nifty too." I realize this probably is not the exact design path taken, but from what you presented (ie, striped of all context) it fits just as well as anything else. It is also the impression I get from you discussion about making it up as you go and treating adventure design issues in a more or less purely metagame fashion.

"Hmm... Well the temple is abandoned. I know it used to be inhabited by depraved aboleth worshiping cultists who slaughtered themselves through backstabbing and poor impulse control. The players have come to expect normal cultist things, so what sort of things might depraved cultists in a dormitory type environment come up with to kill off their roommates, or at least to get a sick laugh? I know, elemental assassins in the bathroom!" A little contrived, but I needed something that fits the conditions of water elemental in the bathroom.

"Ok, the PCs have been getting pretty roughed up so far in the Temple of Unpleasentness. It's been one down beat after another as the PCs survive, but haven't done much else. Ok, so let's through something simple with some humor to it. Ok, so as they explore this area they'll find a securable bathing complex. The PCs could use a rest. After some R&R roleplay, something in the water should jump the bathing PCs. Well, a water element makes sense and would be flavorful. Let's start with that." A bit weak, but again, I'm working with a odd (to my typical play) target condition.

Either the simulation (cultists using weird assassination methods) or the narrative (gratuitous hot springs scene goes bad) ones would be my typical methodologies, largely depending on how 'serious' the game I'm running is.

What is the difference between "a gamist construct" and making a judgement about "the needs of the scene"?

The gamist construct is centered around mechanical challenge and driven by mechanical priorities over dramatic ones. In this case, I'd determine about how long I want the PCs to have to take to move the rock in place based on the dramatic motivation of the scene and the layers goals relative to how long the encounter's taken, how much longer the player's will remain interested, and at what point I think the players will say: "Aw F-it. We want to get past this thing. Here's 4 action dice. We're buying a Flash-Forward. Let's move on to something else."

Now, typically I wouldn't stick them in a situation where something is trying to kill them while they have to flail around looking for the right set of conditions or actions (even if I choose one of their flailings on the fly rather then making them stumble onto the 'right' ones) in order to overcome the NPC I tossed into the scene.

 

[pemerton]

Nagol, thanks for the replies.

 

[pemerton]

"You know, I think I'll stick a water weird in the bathroom because it sounds cool, is level appropriate, and it fills out my XP track for the rate of advancement I want. Oh, and making it so the players need to use a skill challenge, sounds nifty too."

As I said in the OP, I was using a 3E module by Eden Odyssey Studios called Wonders Out of Time. I followed the module more-or-less as written - it had the bear, the water weird, a hidden stash of liturgical scrolls, and some ghosts.

The liturgical scrolls are key to my game, in two sense: first, 4 of the 5 PCs are divine class or multi-class, and the 5th (a sorcerer/cutthroat) is a member of a secret Corellon cult; second, they provide a solution to a question that came up in a previous encounter.

The ghosts are also fairly central, because 3 of the PCs are Raven Queen worhsippers.

I left in the bear - everyone likes an encounter with a bear! - and added some stirges for fun. And left in the water weird, to fill out a room and because I was curious to see how the players would handle it. Also, because it had the potential to flood out the whole temple, it added a bit of dramatic possibility to the temple exploration as a whole.

The gamist construct is centered around mechanical challenge and driven by mechanical priorities over dramatic ones. In this case, I'd determine about how long I want the PCs to have to take to move the rock in place based on the dramatic motivation of the scene and the layers goals relative to how long the encounter's taken, how much longer the player's will remain interested, and at what point I think the players will say: "Aw F-it. We want to get past this thing. Here's 4 action dice. We're buying a Flash-Forward. Let's move on to something else."

I don't especially feel that the water weird was driven by mechanical priorities over dramatic ones. If the module hadn't mentioned it I wouldn't have added it. But given that it was there, I thought it might make for an interesting encounter (as described above). And I think it did. The player of the dwarf, in particular, got to develop and reinforce a few more aspects of his PC and his role in the party as a whole.

And "determining about how long I want the PCs to take" sounds to me like a similar pattern of reasoning to deciding that a 6/3 skill challenge will get the pacing about right. Or have I misunderstood you?

 

[CuRoi]

The newer editions didn't make us less creative. They simply gave us some extra tools with which to run our campaigns.

I agree...to an extent. I must say though that the more solidified the rules, the more I see players at the table telling DMs how things "must be" or DM's who are frightened to move outside the rules for fear of breaking something else (this is probably even more of a problem with 3e than 4e.)

From a 3e - 2e perspective (I haven't played much 4e) In the example above, as a DM, if I have three people trying to calm a bear, one's firing off spells, the other is approaching it with disembodied hands, and one is a wilderness "expert" trying an approach...all I can say is the bear will be eating good tonight. I don't think I need a degree in biology to figure out the bear will feel threatened by all the players trying to "rule it" into submisison. I refuse to suspend comon sense in my fiction just to cater to a rule

I do get the OP method of approach and I think it was creative, and very possibly a stellar example of 4e DMing (I haven't gotten into 4e much). It sounds like the whole group was enjoying it so it was probably the absolute best way to run the whole thing.

However, it seems from the description that while 4e may have solidified "combat roles" for the various classes (strikers, controllers, etc.) it has mostly erased "story roles" for the various classes in the spirit of "everyone can do anything".

 

[Krensky]

As I said in the OP, I was using a 3E module by Eden Odyssey Studios called Wonders Out of Time. I followed the module more-or-less as written - it had the bear, the water weird, a hidden stash of liturgical scrolls, and some ghosts.

That it was a module (rather then a book of encounters or something else) wasn't clear. In hindsight, it is, but that's always the case. Of course, I often find modules don't make much sense outside of their own weird set of rules.

And "determining about how long I want the PCs to take" sounds to me like a similar pattern of reasoning to deciding that a 6/3 skill challenge will get the pacing about right. Or have I misunderstood you?

Not really. It's a more immediate sort of pacing. If it takes too long, one of three things will happen:

The player characters will all die. - This is a problem because it's hard to have the whole party Cheat Death (also a mechanic) without resorting to really cheesy explanations. Granted, if it was a Dramatic Scene, that's one thing, but from what you're saying there's nothing there that justifies that.

The players will get really bored and scrape up the Action Dice to buy a Flash-Forward, skipping over the entire encounter. Forfeiting the rewards, but also escaping and getting the boredom over with.

The players will tell me its stupid and leave the game.

So I'm literally talking about how many rounds I think the players will tolerate balanced against how few rounds it will take for the appropriate dramatic tension. A good bit of this is predicated on that the encounter isn't working right (the PCs are walking all over the NPC because I designed it wrong or it's slaughtering them, because I designed it wrong) and I, for whatever reason, can't adjust the NPC on the fly or fudge it.

Granted, since they're not important scenes I probably would just pull the stats for a grizzly bear out for the first and a Water Elemental IV for the second, spec them to the party's Threat Level and run them as Special NPCs so they can stand up to a whole party with out much tweaking. The bear's an average threat, so the party shouldn't have much problem with it but it should have a good lick or two. The Elemental is at the low end of being a serious threat, so they'll have to pull some good tricks and work together, but should still come through. Bloodied and battered, but intact.

 

[pemerton]

Krensky, your comment about immediate pacing is interesting.

With the 4e skill challenge rules, it's fairly easy to compress the complexity of a challenge on the fly, provided that narration of the successes has left room for this. It's a bit harder to expand it, because success in a more complex skill challenge relies on the player's engaging the situation in a more sophisticated way, to build up advantages using secondary skills and the like, and the GM will have been less likely to cue this sort of engagement if s/he launched into the scene thinking it was only going to be a complexity 1 or 2 challenge.

4e doesn't have an official flash-forward option. If you wanted to introduce that sort of option, then the relevant currency would probably be healing surges.

You say that a flash-forward means the PCs miss out on the rewards. Does this include eg status and treasure rewards? And if so, does this mean that the resolution of the flash-forward has to be described in such a way as to rationalise the PCs not getting those rewards?

 

[pemerton]

However, it seems from the description that while 4e may have solidified "combat roles" for the various classes (strikers, controllers, etc.) it has mostly erased "story roles" for the various classes in the spirit of "everyone can do anything".

I guess this is a YMMV situation. I personally feel that there's a pretty big difference in "story role" between a ranger who "talks" to the bear, a wizard who uses cantrips to calm it down, and a sorcerer who intimidates it by wreathing his body and weapons in lightning. I'm not feeling the sameness.

 

[CuRoi]

A question to other GMs - especially those who don't like structured non-combat resolution (whether 4e skill challenges, HeroWars/Quest extended contests, etc): How would you adjudicate an attempt by your party to defeat a water weird by plugging the spring at the bottom of the pool containing it?

Well, if my players move outside the scope of the rules, I gladly follow. Sure, we will incorporate skills / powers that fit within a loose structure of rules, but since they are wanting to operate mostly from their own creativity and don't want to be to overburdened by rules at the moment we play it loosely. The group will generally talk it over together, come up with an idea of group resources made available by character sheets, the plot, the environment, and act out a plan. I adjudicate what happens and not every idea is a winner or will effect the ultimate outcome. There's very little difference to the approach you took, except I place "fiction first" as it were and weigh in my mind whether the outcome will be successful before I decide how long or how effective the various implementations will be.

I can't give you guidelines mainly because none exist Frankly, I don't want them in those instances. The buzz of people puzzling their way through some outside the scope of the rules challenge is music to my ears. If they ever got completely stuck in a rut trying to figure out how only the numbers on their sheet will always save the day, I'd need new players cause theyd HATE my games!

Bottom line is though - do what works for your group. Did your group like the outcome? Did they enjoy things? Well, stick with it if they did!

 

[Krensky]

Krensky, your comment about immediate pacing is interesting.

With the 4e skill challenge rules, it's fairly easy to compress the complexity of a challenge on the fly, provided that narration of the successes has left room for this. It's a bit harder to expand it, because success in a more complex skill challenge relies on the player's engaging the situation in a more sophisticated way, to build up advantages using secondary skills and the like, and the GM will have been less likely to cue this sort of engagement if s/he launched into the scene thinking it was only going to be a complexity 1 or 2 challenge.

This is one of the issues I have with the structure and presentation. My game has rules structured tasks of multiple sorts. Some are based on just breaking a large task down into smaller chunks of the same skill use. Some superficially resemble 4e's skill challenges, but can be both more complex and more free-flowing since they can be defined on the fly or pre-scripted with no real difference as long as the GM is up for it. Adding new steps is trivial, as is skipping over steps. These aren't structured as 2X successes before X failures, rather they are timed in some way. If the players have more successes then failures at the end of the time limit, the PCs win. Some of the parts may be mandatory, some optional and they may or may not have consequences of failure of each part. Lastly (and admittedly this involves pulling from an older version of the game) there are lead based skill conflicts like chases, seductions (romantic or otherwise), interrogations.

They all have different feels in play, and serve different dramatic purposes. Typically speaking, I run the first two as they happen, maybe a few minutes prep. The last I can run off the cuff too, but it's relatively obvious they're happening.

None of them provide XP though. Accomplishing them may acchieve objectives, which give you XP. There may be NPCs to overcome, which gives XP. The skill task by itself doesn't get you squat, other then what you get (in game) for succeeding in the task.

4e doesn't have an official flash-forward option. If you wanted to introduce that sort of option, then the relevant currency would probably be healing surges.

You say that a flash-forward means the PCs miss out on the rewards. Does this include eg status and treasure rewards? And if so, does this mean that the resolution of the flash-forward has to be described in such a way as to rationalise the PCs not getting those rewards?

Not necessarily, it depends how much the GM cares. Basically when the players get bored and tell me they don't care and want the scene over with, they give me (as GM) the right to narrate them out of it however I want. But since there's no risk, there's no reward. So no Reputation rewards, no XP, and no Treasure. Their reward is that they get to basically skip the rest of the scene and get to something interesting, without having to deal with any of it. So, yeah, the players can use it to save themselves from a TPK, but they don't get anything for it other then their survival.

 

[pemerton]

Krensky, another question: when you say that encounters/situations/challenges (I'm not quite sure which noun I should be using for your game!) "are timed in some way" do you mean real world time? Or in game time? I'm getting the impression of real-world time, but am not sure.