the game's design goal should be about guiding GMs to be creating interesting problems.
I agree that this is a reasonable goal for the game's design. I think that "interesting" here has some sort of connection to "balance", in so far as two ways in which a problem can
fail to be interesting is if (i) it is obvious to the players that, within the parameters of the game, they have no way of solving it, or (ii) it is obvious to the players that the game-mechanical contribution that some of them are able to make towards solving the problem is irrelevant (or worse, non-existant).
This seems to me to leave a fair bit of room for potential house ruling. One house rule that I use in 4e is to allow a player to spend an action point during a skill challenge to make a secondary skill check in response to another player's failed check, as an immediate interrupt. This addresses both (i) and (ii) above: it increases the mechanical capacity of the players to resolve the problem, and it increases any given player's capacity to meaningfully contribute to the resolution of the problem.
This can happen by design by creating clear limits and rewards to player characters for the GM to handle. Why for the GM? Simply because players are not meant to handle their own limits or rewards while both limits and rewards have to work in tandem with each other if they are to work at all for the game to take place.
4e does this in more detail than any other mainstream RPG that I'm familiar with - encounter building guidelines, reward guidelines, rules for quest XPs and milestones, etc.
This is another place where there seems to me to be scope for house rules. For example, I give out total treasures in my game equal to the level-appropriate treasure parcels, but mix and match in various ways, and give out a lot of the cash parcels as magic items and ritual reagents instead. I also do a mixture of GM-chosen items, player "wish list" items and existing item upgrades. Part of my goal is to maintain balance in magic items among the players. Part of my goal is to increase verisimilitude - it is easier on the verisimilitude front to boost an existing item than to place yet another unransacked trove of goodies in the carrion crawler cave.
This on contrast to Wotc which seems to think that it is not about GMs but about players. It tries to offer the "problem" directly to players by focusing its design goals on player character building. Why? IMO because this way it is easier to commercially succeed towards selling product as a tabletop rpg.
Obviously WotC have an interest in selling books. But I think that this description of the theoretical implications, for the game, of their publishing strategy is flawed.
First, character building is often not about "addressing a problem" - it is typically a prelude to addressing a problem. Even where it can look like an immediate addressing of a problem - eg by choosing the Demonskin Adept paragon path I am immediately complicating things for my PC, by making some sort of connection to demons a very front-and-centre aspect of the character - the real action in addressing that problem will come out in play. 4e is no different in this respect from any other RPG.
Second, 4e is pretty typical of modern RPGs in making character build an important part of the game. Character build matters to games like HeroQuest, Dying Earth, Burning Wheel, etc. What distinguishes 4e is that character build is based neither on free-from descriptors (HeroQuest, chunks of Burning Wheel) nor a fairly pithy list of skills and attributes (Dying Earth, other chunks of Burning Wheel) but on long lists of feats and powers. This is obviously a design feature that supports WotC's publishing strategy. But at least in my experience, it doesn't get in the way of addressing problems through play. In fact, one feature of the 4e character build rules actually facilitates addressing problems through play while also helping WotC sell more books, namely, the retraining rules.
Personally, I find this a tricky area to house rule in. Like someone upthread (Nifft, mabye) said, it is easy enough to ban a few feats or powers that are obviously broken or otherwise unnecessary (like a lot of people, I don't allow the Expertise feats). And I had houseruled Careful Shot to be the same as the now-errata-ed version a long time from the beginning of the discussions about its mathematical inadequacy compared to Twin Strike. I also have created a few new feats, but with pretty simple bonuses. But I haven't tried designing new complex conditional feats, or new powers. I don't even design many monsters or monster powers, as I find the MMs have (so far) given me most of what I need.
But I think a lot of other 4e players and GMs are pretty comfortable house ruling monsters, powers, feats etc. I don't think it's especially hard in 4e, and I think the system is robust enough, and the basic design parameters clear enough, that it's going to be hard to wreck the game doing this sort of thing. And if a power or feat ends up being underpowerd, a player can always retrain into something better.
In 4e they created a game where they simplified the scope of the game to a board tactical game so that the GM does only have to play out the strictly similar encounter monster pawns and free-form what happens in between. They sort of made a game that does neither help nor creates difficulties for a GM due to the game's own design. While it wants to sell to roleplayers, I am not sure 4e, at its design level, wants to be a roleplaying game. It just wants to be an "encounter" game and offer inspiring fluff for GMs to want to GMer by their freeform capabilities.
I wonder whether this is based on much play experience with 4e. In my experience, (i) the "monster pawns" are not strictly similar in 4e, anymore than game elements are strictly similar in other RPGs; (ii) the playing out of exploration between encounters is slightly less free form than in other traditional RPGs, because of the interposition of the skill challenge mechanics for some of that (ie aspects of exploration become transformed into problems to be resolved game-mechanically); and (iii) I am pretty sure that the game wants to be a roleplaying game - both DMG and PHB have extensive discussions of roleplaying from both the player and the GM perspective, after all - and in using it as a roleplaying game I don't think I've been doing it wrong.
It's true that 4e doesn't have very robust mechanics that would link encounters via narrative logic of the sort found in more indie games like HeroQuest (with its pass/fail cycle, although DMG2 makes a half-hearted attempt to incorporate this into 4e). The most 4e has of this sort of thing is action points. But that is more than most traditional RPGs have. Traditional RPGs tend to link encounters either non-mechanically (ie via the emerging story) or via resource use-and-replenishing mechanics. In addition to action points, 4e uses both of these devices.
This is an area where 4e could probably be houseruled to advantage, but I haven't tried For example, I could imagine taking what the DMG2 says about the pass/fail cycle and trying to work it up into a more robust set of guidelines to interact with page 42. And I could imagine someone who was more interested in resource-linking than narrative-linking of encounters working out some long term rest and recovery mechanics. I think these could be pretty easy to implement (maybe modelled on the disease track) and unless the game feature a lot of timeline dependent adventures wouldn't be unbalancing.
You cant be possibly calling me for abuse on criticizing SC on their objective design merits.
While this deserves its own thread Mearls contribution has nothing to do with a solid skill challenge mechanic that any DM could just use and pull off what Mearls did. A GM and players can pull off themselves a full fledged combat encounter by just using only the provided rules of the game and understanding how they work. And they can do this in theory for many different encounters -the aspect in the design for achieving this sort of thing does exist- even if implementation sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.
I think it is generally accepted that the 4e rules do a better job of presenting the combat rules than the skill challenge rules. And I personally think that the skill challenge rules remain underdeveloped, especially when it comes to the combat/non-combat encounter interface. But I think your claim that no GM could successfully use the skill challenge rules as published is just false. I ran a successful chase-scene skill challenge in my second session GMing 4e. I just followed the rules stated in the books.
From the player’s point of view (PHB pp 179, 259):
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…
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.
From the GM's point of view (DMG pp 72–75):
More so than perhaps any other kind of encounter, a skill challenge is defined by its context in an adventure…
Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. . . You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results...
You can also make use of the “DM’s best friend” rule to reward particularly creative uses of skills (or penalise the opposite) by giving a character a +2 bonus or -2 penalty to the check. Then, depending on the success or failure of the check, describe the consequences and go on to the next action...
When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it…
In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth…
However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing … Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.
To me, this text makes it pretty clear that skill challenges are to play out similar to conflict resolution mechanics in games like HeroQuest, Maelstrom, Dying Earth, Burning Wheel, etc. Very different from what D&D has traditionally done, but hardly revolutionary, let alone unplayable (putting to one side issues of mathematical errors that were quickly errata-ed).
I already gave an example earlier of how I was able to house rule the skill challenge mechanics in a way that (to date, at least) hasn't seemed to threaten game balance.
