Actual play examples - balance between fiction and mechanics

[pemerton]

Rather then x successes before y failures, it was x successes before y rounds.

Prof, nice example.

I've done this before - in stopping a ritual while fighting some cultists, every round in which the lead cultist got to progress the ritual (I can't remember what this required - maybe an Arcana check as a minor action?), a failure accrued. After two failures, the first of the two sacrificial victims whom the PCs were there to rescue died.

In my case, the players didn't fully appreciate how tight a clock they were on until the first victim died. At that point they pulled everything out (killing cultists, destroying the magic circle even at the risk of OAs, etc) and the cultists didn't get a chance to progress the ritual any further!

 

[pemerton]

WIth respect to pemerton's examples in this thread

<snip biographical details>

both examples snap my suspenders of disbelief pretty hard.

we don't enjoy most modern games for precisely the reasons you list.

<snip>

But mainly, verisimilitude is a moving target. I don't have to hit "rightness". I just have to hit close enough, while avoiding hitting "wrongness," and everything works.

I'm an academic lawyer and philosopher. One of the fields I teach and research in is political and social philosophy. By ordinary standards, and even academic standards, I'm fairly well read in historical sociology and the theory of world history (think Marx, Weber etc as the classical authors, and the Frankfurt School, Marshall G Hodgson or Raymond Geuss for more recent authors in the same tradition).

I therefore find the legal, social, economic and religious set-ups of worlds like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and their ilk very hard to take seriously. The whole point of games in these settings seems to be to explore the settings, but the settings have, for me, close to zero plausibility (actually, in the case of FR, I'll go all the way to zero).

But other fantasy worlds which are equally absurd in sociological terms - Middle Earth, for example, or REH's Hyborian Age - I can forgive much more easily. This is becaue each of those worlds offers something else up as salient, with the sociology falling into the background. In the case of Tolkien it is the moral struggle expressed via epic fantasy. In the case of REH it's the study in the psychology of an epic individual, expressed via sword-and-sorcery fantasy. And of course, both Tolkien and REH also offer up exciting, engaging stories to which the sociology is just a backdrop.

In the two skill challenges I described, there is a sense in which I see the psychology of a bear, or the behaviour of a hot spring, as a backdrop. The real action is with the PCs. The sorcerer could have tried different ways of dealing with the bear. He could have ducked round the corner and hid (the PC is a bit of a stealth machine). He could have tried some sort of trick to lure it outside (he is also a bit of a bluff machine). But instead he tried to cow it with a display of awesome chaotic power. This tells us something about that PC. For me, it also reflects on the discussion of "anger leads to hate" on one of the cognate threads to this one. I don't particularly care for a game with alignment mechanics or dark side points. If it's really true that anger leads to hate, then let's actually see that happen in play. The encounter with the bear is just part of an experiment, if you'll let me call it that, in which we find out whether a person can master the power of chaos, or whether, ultimately, the chaos will master him.

Likewise with the dwarf knocking stones from a bathing pool to block a spring. Not that long ago, I was looking at that part of the Iliad where Achilles fights the river Scamander. I hadn't had that in mind when I was making notes on the water weird, but when it then came up in play I quite enjoyed the idea of the fighter hurling himself into the water, resisting its surge and then plugging its source. Correcting for the fact that this was all narrated in a pretty easy-going fashion among friend sitting at a dining table covered in barbecue remnants, it had a bit of an epic fantasy feel. In the real world it would be absurd. But no more absurd than the hobbits of the autarkic Shire enjoying a material standard of living comparable to that of an England that was a centre of world trade and production. In both cases, the absurdity is a backdrop to some other, more salient, purpose.

4E "solves" this problem by saying that everyone can participate. It then adds a new but related problem by heavily framing things such that everyone is strongly encouraged to participate equally.

<snip>

I'm not sure about pemerton's motivations, but I know some of the things that I do which resemble his approach are largely in order to make the game fit what the players want to do anyway--and very conciously with letting it flow and adapt as the players change their priorities over time.

My first goal is to frame scenes that encourage maximum participation by all the players - I've GMed games in the past where the spotlight moves around, and am enjoying trying something different from that at the moment.

My second goal is to see how the players express their PCs, and to try to frame scenes that permit, or even encourage them, to explore the limits of what they're prepared to have their PCs do, even (or especially) when this introduces tensions with what has happened in the past, or what the other PCs want now.

Examples: the dwarf (who is a multi-class cleric of Moradin, is a proponent of no-nonsense common sense, and is of the view that people make their own fates) frequently comes into disagreement with the three Raven Queen cultists. One of the Raven Queen cultists, though, has recently retrained from multi-class cleric of the Raven Queen to multi-class invoker - and as an invoker predominantly serves Erathis, Ioun and Vecna (his theory being that knowledge depends upon civilisation, that some knowledge is what it is only because it is secret, and furthermore that all knowledge in the end is forgotten and so becomes secret by default - his only objection to Vecna is that Vecna confuses secrets as a means with secrecy as an end in itself). This same PC, who is also the only one of the PCs who has committed vengeful executions (in one case, in fact, something closer to vengeful murder), is constantly on guard against the chaos sorcerer slipping into demon worship.

I felt the skill challenges I've described here, as they were resolved, let various aspects of these personalities - and the tensions between them - come out, even if in comparatively modest ways.

 

[Nagol]

I actually said something about this upthread:

To date, I haven't felt any balance concerns in respect of this. Because magic is magic, I've found in practice that it's versatility tends to compensate for the lack of metagame powers.

The way different classes have different narrative/metagame structures drive to the same ability structure was something that turned me off the character design. Wizards have a definite in-game justification/restriction on encounter/daily use whilst Fighters "only see the enemies grant that opening once" until something resets the effect set my teeth on edge. It seemed the game was forcing players to interact at different levels of the game structure for little purpose.

It's interesting that you're turning this split into a virtue. Is "magic" so much more versatile/special than the martial abilities?

Personally, I am leery of having players play at such different layers because I don't read player satisifaction/discontent well and it is easy to give the impression of imbalance even when I believe it doesn't exist.

 

[Kannik]

Erp. My assertion is that 4e encourages a rules-first over fiction-first playstyle, where "fiction-first" is intended to mean "fictional versimilitude of setting", not "story".

Haha, what a tangled web gets woven when story vs fiction vs narrative vs etc all can be confused for each other and are defined differently by different individuals. } I was using fiction- and story- somewhat interchangeably.

I would fully agree that, for story-first gaming, 4e offers a number of compelling options. Moreover, I would argue that "rules-first" gaming makes it easier to also be "story-focused" than "fiction-first" does, because versimilitude often requires that the "story" bow to the fictional "reality" presented.

To be sure I am clear in my mind: you are defining a fiction-first game as one of a world created whole cloth, full stop. PCs are dropped into that world, and adventure (hopefully) ensues.

A rules-first game you are defining as one where the PCs are dropped into an adventure and the world is created to support that adventure.

Is that accurate?

peace,

Kannik

 

[Raven Crowking]

No.

I am defining a fiction-first game as one where, when a dichotomy between rules or the logic of the fictional world, the fictional world takes precendence. The rules are forced to fit that logic, or are discarded.

I am defining a rules-first game as one where the the converse is true. The rules are applied, and then the logic is made to fit the results.

 

[pemerton]

It's interesting that you're turning this split into a virtue. Is "magic" so much more versatile/special than the martial abilities?

Personally, I am leery of having players play at such different layers because I don't read player satisifaction/discontent well and it is easy to give the impression of imbalance even when I believe it doesn't exist.

Nagol, I think this could very much be a group-specific thing. My group consists of long terms players (the least experienced has been RPGing for 12 years), many of whom have known one another for a long time (I've known them all for over 15 years), who are very easy-going at the table, and happy to house-rule where balance or common sense suggests it is needed. As far as both player and GM input is concerned, there is a lot of mutual trust.

I think this might help explain why I haven't encountered any difficulties in the fact that the player of the fighter PC has more metagame mechanics than does the player of the wizard.

To be honest, if I was worried about balance in the non-combat use of powers, I'd be worried that wizards and some other magic-using classes perhaps have a bit too much flexibility. But at least in my game, this hasn't come up. (In part this may also be because the wizard is so obviously not optimised for combat, and is instead built as a knowledge/ritual monkey - for example, of his 7 feats one is Skill Training in Dungeoneering and one is Deep Sage - that any edge out of combat is just seen as part of what he does.)

 

[CuRoi]

First off - this is a great thread and I would game with any of you guys if given such an opportunity.

Pemerton- I hope you don't feel you are getting to "raked over the coals". While I expressed incredulousness re. each players actions which ultimately led to "calming the bear down" for instance, I did so only to point out what would happen at my table.

I'm also getting a bit lost with the story versus narrative versus rules approaches (now being tossed aorund with the gameist, sandbox, hack n slash, etc. etc. tags). So I'm going to focus on fiction and mechanics from here on out...

4E "solves" this problem by saying that everyone can participate. It then adds a new but related problem by heavily framing things such that everyone is strongly encouraged to participate equally. (They've backed away from this since launch, however.) Which is really rather funny, when you consider that the player types discussed in the initial rules go out of their way to emphasize how some people will not be terribly into certain parts of the game.

If they have backed off that approach then I might enjoy 4e a bit more. It all boils down to a player feeling like they are contributing to the overall game I suppose - or how "Special" a player is. I get that. I guess with the way I run my games though, I never saw it as a problem that needed to be solved. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight either individually or acting as a team.

In 2e, everyone could be "special" by filling a role required by the party (which pigeon holed your PC). In 3e everyone could be "special" by cherry picking books and making a sometimes toxic cocktail of feats, classes and the like (which alienated other PCs and was counter to the idea of an adventuring group). In 4e everyone is special cause, well, thats just how it is so you better like it (which creates a fairly homgenous sort of feel...its like communist gaming or something).

Again, not saying its a bad approach. As has been shown by the great examples here, it is an interesting way to directly involve every player in every situation. I just don't feel it's necessary to do that for my style. In fact, it can throw quite a few wrenches in the works for how I run things.

I once gamed with a group where one player wanted to roll for everything that happened, whether his PC was around or not or trained or not. Later I figured out he was cheating on his dice rolls, but his insistence to run around rolling untrained skill checks and consistently showing up PCs that had invested in those skills alienated everyone in the group. (True, the cheating was the bigger problem but thats in a different thread...)

Pretty soon everyone started doing the same and it was like Night at the Roxbury anytime an NPC strolled into the scene. I don't need 5 players mobbing someone with their dice for me to advance the story; in fact if anything it slows the game to a crawl and can make for a very disjointed session.

Even with some sort of structure and allowing players to fill in the blanks as they see fit, it still seems to divorced from reality for my tastes. The bard going to have a pleasant talk with the local magistrate to get information while the barbarian threatens to rip his limbs off if he doesn't give said information and the mage shooting magic missiles dangerously close to his head, just doesn't add up in some sort of non-combat "math" IMO. I may already know that either threats or diplomacy will get absolutely nowhere with this magistrate base don the fiction. I also know based on the actions the players take, it WILL change the course of the story. So encouraging the Barbarian with zero or poor social skills to involve himself in every attempt at negotiation just because "he can", is probably going to create animosity with anyone the PCs run into. I'm not sure how a rigid "challenge" system accounts for that.

All that said, I never -discourage say the uncharismatic Barbarian from interacting with people. It all becomes a matter of roleplay. The players have fun with it enjoy having to compensate for their fellow players flaws when he expresses his "opinion" to the magistrate.

I've rarely had a player tell me my expression of fiction which I based on actions by the players and outcomes of their rolls was bogus. (I'm not coming up with anything at least...I'm sure its happened but not often.) In fact, most seem to really enjoy interacting with the game world as I present it. So, again, I really never had a problem to solve. The "skill challenge" solution seems to be solely implemented to satisfy the combat-centric crowd that 3e catered to (just stating an observation here, not looking to tunr on the flames) by offering a rules structure to follow where people can roll dice and read character sheets to solve every problem in the fiction.

In some sense though, I've always approached non-combat encounters in a slightly similar way to the 4e skills challenges, just without all the rigid framework. I need to remain fluid so I can react to whatever a player decides to do and I want that decision to include not only spells, attributes, feats and skills, but plain 'ol ingenuity that I can't quantify. The entire "roll X times for a success" mechanic seems to straight jacket that process a bit too much (as others have expressed).

 

[Nagol]

Nagol, I think this could very much be a group-specific thing. My group consists of long terms players (the least experienced has been RPGing for 12 years), many of whom have known one another for a long time (I've known them all for over 15 years), who are very easy-going at the table, and happy to house-rule where balance or common sense suggests it is needed. As far as both player and GM input is concerned, there is a lot of mutual trust.

I think this might help explain why I haven't encountered any difficulties in the fact that the player of the fighter PC has more metagame mechanics than does the player of the wizard.

To be honest, if I was worried about balance in the non-combat use of powers, I'd be worried that wizards and some other magic-using classes perhaps have a bit too much flexibility. But at least in my game, this hasn't come up. (In part this may also be because the wizard is so obviously not optimised for combat, and is instead built as a knowledge/ritual monkey - for example, of his 7 feats one is Skill Training in Dungeoneering and one is Deep Sage - that any edge out of combat is just seen as part of what he does.)

More likely just a difference in personalities. My group has been together a long time as well (25 years for the majority as a group; all of had gamed prior to that). I was shocked as a DM a very very long time ago with accusations of bias and favoritism. I have been (probably too) scrupulous ever since.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton- I hope you don't feel you are getting to "raked over the coals".

Not too badly - I get a lot worse in my day job!

I may already know that either threats or diplomacy will get absolutely nowhere with this magistrate base don the fiction.

There is no trouble incorporating this into a skill challenge - if a PC attempts Initimidate (for example) it fails. (Generally, in order to prevent an ambush of the players, you would want this sort of quirk to be learnable, whether by a prior Streetwise check to get the gossip on the magistrate, or an Insight check when you first meet him to intuit his personality.)

I also know based on the actions the players take, it WILL change the course of the story. So encouraging the Barbarian with zero or poor social skills to involve himself in every attempt at negotiation just because "he can", is probably going to create animosity with anyone the PCs run into. I'm not sure how a rigid "challenge" system accounts for that.

By doing just as you say - incorporating it into the story.

As an example, throughout the encounter with the bear the dwarf neither established a rapport with it, nor intimidated. He did get a little bit clawed by it, and it is part of the story that the bear still feels neither fear towards nor affection for the dwarf, and may try and eat him if the opportunity arises.

In practice, if I want all the players to engage a complex challenge, I try to make sure that I establish the fictional premise in such a way that all have something to do. For example, the party's last complex social interaction was with some witches, and the dwarf's contribution to that skill challenge was his showing as a pit fighter against some spiders living underneath the witches' house.

But in a less complex challenge (like the 6/3 challenges described in my OP) I'm a bit more relaxed, working on the theory that even if one player can't think of a way to do anything useful, and that PC is just standing there getting eaten by a bear or generating failures, it won't make much difference. The other PCs will be able to pick up the slack.

 

[pemerton]

did you check out the Jester's skill challenge I mentioned earlier?

I just posted something there responding to one of your comments.

But on the challenge itself - I like it. I've run similar sorts of challenges for overland travel, discovering monster lairs, and escaping from collapsing temples - although my notes are normally a bit more sketchy than his.

Most of the mechanical techniques used in the Jester's challenge - rituals counting as successes, various actions granting bonues, using dispel magic (an encounter utility power) to get a benefit, monster attacks as a complication, etc - are standard fare from the DMG and DMG2. I've used all these techniques, as I'm sure have many other 4e GMs. The one technique I don't think I've seen before is using the ghouls to dock successes. The variant on this that I have seen and have used is to have actions of monsters accumulate failures for the party unless the PCs deal with the monsters in some fashion (in the challenge I ran, they had to stop the NPC using a minor action to progress a ritual).

The Jester's skill challenge doesn't have any complications driven purely by metagame - the ghouls turning up can be rationalised as a natural consequence of hanging around in a haunted lake for too long - and it that respect resembles the two challenges I described in my OP. I would guess that the lack of metagame-driven complications is something that appeals to you.

In the Jester's challenge, the main way a fighter would participate would be by fighting the ghouls and swimming after them (using Athletics). A fighter in 4e is fairly unlikely to be trained in Insight, Perception, Nature, Arcana, Religion or History, and is unlikely to have access to rituals, or to the dispel magic power. This would make me hesitant to run the challenge as written for my group, because the player of the fighter in my game is one of the most engaged players, and I wouldn't like him having little to contribute until 5 successes are accrued, which (depending on how things play out, how the rituals go etc) could easily take quite a while at the table.

And related to this: my iimpression is that, to the extent that you have some doubts about the challenges that I described in my OP, it's more about the relaxed attitude to accomodating various attempted actions (via a relaxed approach to ursine psychology!) than about the skill challenge structure per se.

Of course, this links to The Shaman's gonzo point.

I think making a successful Knowledge skill check to remember something about bears or masonry useful to the task at hand is a great way to fold the adventurer's abilities into the final solution of the task, but while rationalizing whatever random the players come up with is fine for gonzo fantasy, I don't think it works very well in many games.

I don't agree that the OP is about "rationalizing whatever the players come up with." In both encounters there was serious discussion, among the players, about how to tackle the situations and what sorts of approaches might be viable. And I also injected my own vies on those matters.

But in the end I am quite happy to err on the side of gonzo, if it means the fighter has something to contribute to stopping the water weird, or the sorcerer has something to contribute to taming the bear. This is particularly so when GMing D&D - it hasn't come up yet on the "Roads to Rome" thread, I don't think, but one part of the D&D feel for me is a bit of gonzo fantasy. (Rolemaster is gonzo, too, but in a different way - the gonzo of RM is chopping arms of enemies, or being told by the 00 'E' Impact crit to "bring a mop", whereas the gonzo of D&D is mind flayers, gelatinous cubes, and fighters who can wrestle water weirds.)

The gonzo can go too far - I remember playing a 3E game in 2000, and one PC got caught in a "web" spell cast by another PC. The player of the first PC complained, and the other player - who was actually the person who introduced RM to me - replied "It's only D&D, get over it!" I take my 4e a bit more seriously than that - and my players take it at least as seriously as me - but perhaps not as seriously, when it comes to realism in action resolution, as I would take Classic Traveller or Runequest.

Of course, given that in overall thematic tone I run a serious game - mythic history and all that - it goes without saying that gonzo in action resolution has to fit with that. But wrestling a water weird and cowing a bear by wreathing yourself in lightning not only fit with the "mythic history" vibe, but build on it and push it forward through play!

Granted, the same could arise in any rule system. But a rule system can influence how likely these problems are to arise. IMHO and IME, anyway.

See, one person's problem is another's opportunity. As I've just said I don't mind a bit of gonzo, and if the rules and guidelines exert a little bit of pressure in that direction, I'm happy enough to be pushed, especially if this lets me get all my players involved in a scene.