Challenging the player rather than the character

[Crazy Jerome]

I mean besides the opening encounter and a final confrontation with the BBEG, aren't all encounters in D&D optional, given that this isn't a railroad module?

Everything is optional in that sense, even the opening encounter and final confrontation. However, some things are more optional than others.

It is exactly the same way that having a shiny new 4E fighter with 20 Str is optional. As is 18. And then also in many campaigns 16. And you might even make a case for a 14 in the right situation. They are all options. The lower the Str goes, the less "optional" having a higher one becomes.

 

[Raven Crowking]

We had an absolute blast. It was probably the most enjoyable session we had so far this year.

When the dust has all settled, this is the only metric that matters.

 

[LostSoul]

Neither do I, but the thing is, it is a tool that is sooooo easy to misuse, and in so many ways. While what I posted was one example, I've seen it numerous ways. Most commonly: DMs who don't let players play their PCs stats. You know, like Average Joes playing super geniuses but who can't RP being smart, so all that in-character intellect is effectively nullified. Or expertise in specialized skills, like Survival when the player's a city slicker.

Sometimes, the best way to avoid the pitfall of tool misuse is to lock the tool away.

I'm with nnms on this one; it's easy to use "metagaming" properly without any problems. In a player-challenge game, your character's intellect is a resource that you have to manage appropriately. If you make mistakes that your character wouldn't have, that's too bad; that's the whole point of the game. You want to make the choices that determine success and failure, you don't want to see what a guy with +15 Survival would do in this situation.

This technique is not appropriate to all games, obviously, but that doesn't mean that it's never a good technique.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=59248]mneme[/MENTION]
I guess I see a players character sheet as a menu of what they want in the game. If I see a character with high intelligence trained in multiple knowledge skills, the Linguist feat, and an academic background there's a good chance they want puzzles (of some form) in the game. I haven't met a player yet who would bring this type of character to the table then get angry or bored because I threw out a puzzle which challenged the players.

Part of the issue may be that we conveniently catalogue our encounters as "puzzle" or "combat" or "roleplaying" when it's far more interesting to have these things happening together. And that way you reach the widest audience without the puzzle feeling tacked on.

I guess as a last resort you could fade to black. "I don't know how I solved it but the dice say I did. Let's come up with something later?" >)

And completely unrelated...Is your handle the sound Nemo makes when trying to say "anemone"?

[MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION]
Your point about optimizing is unrelated. If the DM is presenting multiple avenues to "win" an encounter, then they can do it with a puzzle such that there is a preset "answer" the DM has, but it's not the only answer. So it's optional in the same sense as every other encounter. Puzzles is no different.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Your point about optimizing is unrelated. If the DM is presenting multiple avenues to "win" an encounter, then they can do it with a puzzle such that there is a preset "answer" the DM has, but it's not the only answer. So it's optional in the same sense as every other encounter. Puzzles is no different.

Maybe the way some people run it, but not the way I run it. That is my point. You need not fight the BBEG and beat him. But the way most games are structured and played, the players are going to try their darnedest and pull out every trick or resource at their disposal. That is "optional", but in most minds' that is "defacto required". Now, since I'm often throwing a lot of tough stuff at the players (at least collectively), I do try to avoid "defacto required" as much as possible. But there are real consequences to opting out too often.

With puzzles and other explicitly player-challenging tasks, I still make them challenging, but the consequences of opting out are rarely severe--and never severe without the players having multiple ways to solve it. Solving such a puzzle makes the overall challenge of the adventure moderately less severe, while opting out leaves the status quo.

Thus back to my analogy with Str. It is generally agreed that a fighter needs to start with at least 16 or 18 Str, before racial adjustments, or be behind. (The variance depends a lot on the campaign where this fighter will play, I think.) So a 20 is a true option where you sacrifice some other stuff if it is worth it to you. But you don't have to do it. My puzzles are like that 20. The 16 or 18 minimum is also an option, in that if you know what you are doing and the campaign is right, you can go lower than that. But you just made it tougher on your self, and you will have to make it up elsewhere or run real risks. Most challenge I put into a game is like this.

I like to do things this way because I nearly always set up the difficulty such that partial failure is well nigh unavoidable. You can stop the goblins, recover the critical sword, prevent the messenger ambush, and--if you really get lucky or pull out the stops, save the local farmers. Meanwhile, the some crops will get burned and horses stolen and maybe a few druids slaughtered. You could have saved them, but not them and all that other stuff too. I simply don't like solving a puzzle to be on that same plane, because my guys would take the party getting TPK'd because they couldn't solve a Sphinx riddle a lot better than it leading to innocents getting torched.

 

[mneme]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]

My handle is pronounced "nemay" with an optional dipthonged m on front -- exactly as the "mn" is pronounced in "mnemonic".

 

[pauljathome]

As for hardness for riddles, if 4 10 year olds can manage it most of the time, I expect as much from people in their 20s and 30s that regard themselves as intelligent:
YouTube - Knightmare: Season 1 - Episode 1 (Part 2/3) [HQ, HD & 16:9]

As I said, in my experience it can be VERY difficult to determine how difficult a riddle can be. 10 year olds are a LOT better at solving some riddles than intelligent adults.

But its really not intelligence per se. Its more a very nebluous similarity in the way at looking at problems.

 

[nnms]

Hasn't challenging the players been part of D&D since the beginning?

It's definitely been moved away from over the last ten years or so. There's been a lot of trashing on anything that can be called metagaming. People often get in a huff when you say things like metagaming can be good. Or that it's okay to emphasize the G in RPG rather than the RP. As if a story focused, high immersion, roleplay dialogue heavy approach is objectively better than other forms of play.

I like the quote from Everaux on dragonsfoot.org: "We don't explore characters. We explore dungeons."

Though I do often change play modes even in a single session.

 

[The Monster]

I've got a strong distaste for player-puzzles, riddles, and so on. If a group likes doing that sort of thing, great, but I find it's way too easy to run it improperly. Almost every time I've tried it or had it run on me, the puzzle is either pointlessly easy or shuts down the session as the GM waits for the players to stumble on the answer. Granted, it's not fair to judge a tool by its misuse, but this is one tool I've seen work so rarely I don't even try it any more, and I confess it induces an eye-roll from me when it comes up. Again, if it works for your table, more power to you, go for it.

Intelligence is one of those traits (like alignment used to be) which seems to be seized upon by GMs to punish players - either 'you can't do that because your PC isn't smart enough' or 'just because your PC is a super-genius doesn't mean she can solve puzzles better than you can.' I call shenanigans on that kind of thinking, just a kind of 'gotcha' for the subpar GM.

I play characters in RPGs to explore different roles; sometimes the smart guy, sometimes the dumb guy, or whatever. It breaks the flow of the game for me when I sit there and solve an in-game puzzle when I'm playing my INT 8 fighter; it also breaks the flow when I can't solve it, so my INT 20 wizard sits there like a lump. While I'm not quite in the camp of 'RPing is irrelevant to stats & dice,' I do feel that the action in the game should be largely driven by the characteristics of the PCs, rather than the characteristics of the player.

I do confess that my group plays on Friday evenings, after we've all had a long work week (we're mostly in our late 40's); by that time, the brains are a bit fuzzy around the edge, and even tracking all the numbers and stats and conditions can get confusing (and half our group are people like computerists and physicists and the like, hardly alien to math). So my perception is influenced by that.

Again, if it works for you, great - this is just my opinion (even if that makes it identical with The Truth ). I don't like shrimp or coconut, either, but lots of folks love 'em, even put together.

When I run, the challenges I try to present are in-game situations; how to deal tactically with these foes and terrain; how to deal with various factions of NPCs; how to follow and resolve plot threads to best advantage. It makes the game more dynamic and interesting for me. It seems to work for me and my group, where riddles don't.

 

[pemerton]

4E, using the normal DCs, level appropriate encounters, hazards, traps etc., is basically Dungeons & Dragons on easy mode. My usual approach is to compensate for this with an engaging situation and giving players the plot authority. I've found though, that when people aren't necessarily warmed up for a lot of story based roleplay, engaging the players with challenges directly and playing the game on hard mode really demands their attention.

I don't know if I agree with the first sentence, but the second and third resonate for me. Variety makes for fun, at least in my view, and puzzle can be part of that fun.

It's definitely been moved away from over the last ten years or so. There's been a lot of trashing on anything that can be called metagaming. People often get in a huff when you say things like metagaming can be good. Or that it's okay to emphasize the G in RPG rather than the RP. As if a story focused, high immersion, roleplay dialogue heavy approach is objectively better than other forms of play.

I'm with nnms on this one; it's easy to use "metagaming" properly without any problems. In a player-challenge game, your character's intellect is a resource that you have to manage appropriately. If you make mistakes that your character wouldn't have, that's too bad; that's the whole point of the game. You want to make the choices that determine success and failure, you don't want to see what a guy with +15 Survival would do in this situation.

Another voice in favour of the proper use of metagaming. And not just in "challenge"-oriented play, but in building players and resolving situations in a way that is delibarately steered by and responsive to the thematic/aesthetic opinons of those at the table. To paraphrase LostSoul, in that sort of game you don't want to see what a guy with 20 INT or +15 Survival would do - you want to use that guy as a game element to make some sort of point about what it means to be a genius, or a hardbitten tracker, or whatever.

I guess I see a players character sheet as a menu of what they want in the game. If I see a character with high intelligence trained in multiple knowledge skills, the Linguist feat, and an academic background there's a good chance they want puzzles (of some form) in the game. I haven't met a player yet who would bring this type of character to the table then get angry or bored because I threw out a puzzle which challenged the players.

This tends to be my experience too.

Part of the issue may be that we conveniently catalogue our encounters as "puzzle" or "combat" or "roleplaying" when it's far more interesting to have these things happening together. And that way you reach the widest audience without the puzzle feeling tacked on.

I guess as a last resort you could fade to black. "I don't know how I solved it but the dice say I did. Let's come up with something later?"

Good advice.