Actual play examples - balance between fiction and mechanics

[pemerton]

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.

CuRoi, thanks for the reply. I used to GM more like this when I GMed Rolemaster - although because RM PCs have a very long skill list compared to D&D PCs, sometimes skill rolls would also be made using relevant skills, and I would factor the effects of those rolls into the mix.

One thing that led me to 4e was the attraction of a more structured approach for handling these sorts of situations. So, to an extent, I've deliberately broken away from some of my past GMing practices.

One thing I like about the structured approach - and it resonates with things that I'd heard from others, and was one of the things that attracted me to it - is that there are clear multiple points at which the players can have input and try creative stuff, namely, every time there turn comes up in the challenge and they think about how to respond to the situation that I'm describing to them. So the structure helps guarantee a type of dynamism to the interaction at the table.

Before adopting a structured approach I'd had trouble getting this sort of dynamism - it was more a case of the players saying what their PCs do, and then me adjudicating it in a single step.

Do you have any tricks for getting this sort of dynamism with your approach? And to go back a step, do you care about this sort of dynamism, or are you happy to just adjudicate the players' plans in a single step?

 

[CuRoi]

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.

Yeah, I should have been more clear there. In a previous thread I ended with a similar aside and it was taken poorly. I think I tend to always tack on some not-quite fleshed out ideas that the previous post has inspired and I just throw it out there for consideration without giving it enough time to solidify.

I guess what I meant was, the appearance was such that while every character did use a different approach, they were all able to accomplish the same task. In earlier editions, if you have an angry bear, the Druid and/or Ranger is the "go to guy". Now it sounds like with the fact that everyone has some training in every skill and, as long as the player can rationalize the power use, they can apply their class powers to any given scenario. Keep in mind though, I gave 4e several tries around release and subsequently stopped playing, so I am no expert on the system.

At any rate, it just seemed odd to me that with 4e they try very hard to define combat roles, but as far as the outside of combat roles, they leave it wide open. Not saying whether its a good or bad approach, just saying its different than how I think of things. I'm perfectly ok with the old method of spotlighting players for things they want to be good at and making sure everyone gets their chance to shine apart from the party. As opposed to trying hard to make sure everyone is always involved. While "fair" it seems to dilute character development a bit too much IMO.

 

[CuRoi]

Do you have any tricks for getting this sort of dynamism with your approach? And to go back a step, do you care about this sort of dynamism, or are you happy to just adjudicate the players' plans in a single step?

Well...I'm not sure I've ever broken it down that way. Its hard for me to put it in that respect.

As a side note - I don't run extremely structured games to begin with. I sit down with a map, several plot threads, a host of monsters and NPCs whose motivations and intentions I have already considered and then I just...go. I build the "adventure" as we go and as the party does stuff which I can only sometimes anticipate. Basically, we tell a collaborative story and when rolling for combat, skills and the like seems appropriate, we just do it. Sometimes its a solo project, others, its a group effort.

For group efforts, I sometimes resolve it as multiple individual efforts, sometimes as a single roll. A Serenity game I ran comes to mind. The players were wanting to break into an Alliance computer system and gather some information. The group had an expert in covert skills and a computer expert working on the problem. The computer expert nailed the set difficulty while the covert expert failed. They got the information, but tripped a hidden security program on the way out of the system (they found that out later, heh). Other times, I require players to pick a task leader (say for a diplomacy check in 3.5 DnD) and all other rolls are just an "aid another".

Most often though, it's a open format where we are telling a story and I'm asking for rolls when the PCs do something that sounds like it needs one. One time my players wanted to drain a pond (long story) and I let them set about trying. They had no magic to really get it going and no one even had a shovel. I set easy DCs, estimated progress and the amount of water in the pond, and I made them roll for every foot or so trench digging - it was to illustrate how unbearably long this was going to take. They got the picture and moved on. I could have just said "ok the day ends and your tired and you have diverted a portion of the pond" from one roll, but I figured the PCs didn't want to spend the next week doing manual labor and I was correct : )

I approach everything as a narrative, from combat to skill checks, so the whole session flows in a dynamic fashion I guess. As tasks come up, they are dealt with and sometimes it's a single roll, others its a longer process. So I retain dynamism simply by keeping the story flowing and reacting to the player's creativity on the fly. I simply make sure to go around the table and say "ok, so what are you doing during this time?" so everyone gets a chance to act if they aren't all pursuing a group effort. At the same time, I don't feel everyone necessarily has to contribute to every challenge, so I don't think its necessary to find ways for players to be involved; I just look for opportunities to let every PC shine.

 

[Nagol]

G'day [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],

A question for you: the fighter was able to use Come and Get It because it is effectively a narrative/metagame instrument in your eyes.

Assume a wizard had the exact same power as a Vancian daily defined as the literal shifting of creatures to the Wizard, but with the same game text.

Would he have been allowed to use in the same way as the fighter?

If yes, how would the narrative justify its use and if not, how do you justify to the players that the fighter player can do extra cool stuff and the wizard player can't with identiacal powers? In other words, how much of an advantage is gained at your table for is shifting from explicit in-game resolution to a narrative/meta-game resolution?

 

[Piratecat]

Honestly both 3E and 4E have downplayed meaningful player input. The difficulty of resolving most situations should depend on the approach and methods undertaken by the players.

Really well stated. I routinely give the players ad hoc bonuses or penalties in skill challenges for clever ideas, good roleplaying or bad decisions. I occasionally give automatic successes for really brilliant tactics or roleplaying. I want to reward my players for thinking on their feet, and it seems to pay off.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Maybe they were playing "Good Trainer/Bad Trainer"?

Also, the Dog Whisperer, aka Cesar Milan, frequently advices "discipline first, then affection", so the combination of intimidation followed by soothing might actually work, though, to be fair, I don't believe Cesar every tried to discipline an unruly pooch with a dagger full of lightning.

Intimidate followed by soothing might work, although bears are not pack animals. But unless the encounter described took far longer than it seemed to have (in game time), I don't think this applies.

(Also, wouldn't the dagger full of lightning trick make Cesar Milan "the Dog Crisper"?)


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

No. The DCs would be the DC regardless of who was present and tried. If the location were more exotic then that location may have a higher or lower DC, but nothing with relation to the characters present.

A difference that is major, IMHO, and illustrates "fiction-first" as opposed to "rules-first".

In addition, it seems as though how various attempts actually interact with each other is ignored in the "6/3" scheme (various arguments that trying to frighten and soothe a creature at the same time is perfectly logical aside).


RC

 

[Stormonu]

I don't think this is quite fair. I've described in some detail the way in which the players are trying to make sense of their situation, and have their PCs respond to that situation in ways that make sense.

This wasn't directed as a slight against you, but to try and rephrase what Raven Crowking is getting at with "fiction first". Another way to put it is that you appear to be allowing you players to take an action and then explain how that action was possible in the situation -actions aren't denied, they are simply expained away or glossed over. Raven and I seem to prefer a stand of where the situation dictates what is possible and not - there are simply some actions that won't work (unless the player can convincingly explain how it would). Your is a permissive approach, the other is a restrictive approach. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, its simply a matter of play style (f'ex, how both sides would handle attempts to trip an ooze).

 

[Krensky]

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.

The game runs a few different scales. The typical unit is the scene, which has a vague, amorphous relation with actual time in game or real world. A single room could be a scene, or a whole dungeon could be depending on the narrative needs. Most abilities and effects are X times per scene. The game also makes use of Combat (a lot of combat abilities are X times per Combat) and Adventure. It also uses the Session as the unit for refreshing Action Dice. A very few spells and other effects use 'actual' time rather then 'dramatic' time. The bonuses from a nice, filling breakfast and a cup of coffee or tea (+1 to Fort and Ref saves, respectively) last eight hours, for instance. Granted, you also only get to benefit from one meal and drink a day, so it evens out. Well, except for pech (read hobbit). The self-mobile black holes get the benefits from two meals. Consumables also spoil at the end of an Adventure, so the PCs can't stockpile gourmet food or potions or whatnot.

Now a skill task, as I said, can show up in three or four forms (depending how you count). One of them (the Precision Task) is timed. Meaning that the PCs need to gain X successes before Y rounds pass. The example in the books is that the PCs, likely due to the Thief and Soldier getting bored with the Sage and Explorer puzzling out the runes in an ancient crypt's antechamber set something off. So now it's flooding with poison gas. (How Gygaxian. )

So now they need to succeed in three Investigate checks to manipulate the rune mosaic they were studying. If they can make three Investigate checks of increasing difficulty before 10 rounds pass, they escape. If they fail a check, they have to start back over because the mosaic resets itself. If they fail to beat the clock, well, they're probably still upright so they could try something else to escape, but things look pretty grim. I think the example in the book is lethal.

 

[TheFindus]

This wasn't directed as a slight against you, but to try and rephrase what Raven Crowking is getting at with "fiction first". Another way to put it is that you appear to be allowing you players to take an action and then explain how that action was possible in the situation -actions aren't denied, they are simply expained away or glossed over. Raven and I seem to prefer a stand of where the situation dictates what is possible and not - there are simply some actions that won't work (unless the player can convincingly explain how it would). Your is a permissive approach, the other is a restrictive approach. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, its simply a matter of play style (f'ex, how both sides would handle attempts to trip an ooze).

The concept of the 4E skill challenge allows for both types of play. The DM sets the level and complexity of the skill challenge. That is the factor to set the XP by. It is the DMs basic assumption of how complicated the handling of the scene generally speaking is.
The rest, what skills to use and what the DCs are, can and should be modified by what the DM thinks how good the player's idea is and what works and what doesn't. Modifiers to throws, as a bonus or a penalty, automatic successes even, are all possible. DMs are actually encouraged to use those. And all of this deals with the road players can take to handle the situation. That can even lead for an easy solution of a generally more complex skill challenge if the player's ideas prove to be very insightful, interesting and useful. So even though the complexity of the skill challenge demands, say, 6 successes, it is completely valid to move the players faster up that scale with automatic successes or low DCs because the DM is fond of their ideas; effectively making the skill challenge easier.

The good thing in my opinion about the skill challenge ruleset is, well, that it is a ruleset. I do not think there was a ruleset for things like this in former editions of DnD (please correct me, if I am wrong). So DMs have guidelines to follow, which allows for transparency. Which is always a good thing.