Today, we have the second column from EN World columnist Ari Marmell. To comment on this article, please click here.
[imager]http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/am.jpg[/imager]DM ex Machina
I have a confession to make1. Despite the fact that I've been working as an RPG writer since late 2000, and playing RPGs since 1983, I'm really not all that interested in "gaming theory." I don't follow the Forge or subscribe to their theories or definitions, I'm not really into the experimental indie games, and I'm not interested in innovative mechanics for their own sake.2 Obviously, I want everything I work on to be interesting both mechanically and in terms of game-play, but I prefer to judge on a case-by-case basis, rather than labor under any Overarching Theory o' Everything.
On the other hand, over the past two years, I've been learning a new system for both professional and personal use.3 And in so doing, I've pretty much by default been thinking about--yep--some RPG theory. Specifically, the notion of "agency."
If you’re anything like me, you get at least a faint twinge of dislike any time your DM brings in an NPC to save you from a bad situation.4 I understand that sometimes it's necessary--the DM is introducing an important NPC, or else he's realized that he badly miscalculated the difficulty of a certain situation and, since it was his own mistake, is taking steps to prevent a TPK. I understand that, and thus I do my best to tolerate it--but it still drives me nuts. I want to succeed or fail based on my own actions, and my own luck. 5
It's part of the same feeling, I think, that causes most players to object when the DM takes control of their characters, or has the PCs sitting on the sidelines while the NPCs kill the villain. It's all about agency.
Dictionary.com defines agency 6 as "a means of exerting power or influence; instrumentality". In other words, it's an individual's ability to influence or affect his own circumstances.
I firmly believe that it's the sense of personal agency that causes players to become involved in, and to care about, the events of a game session. Success or failure is less important than the sense that "Hey, I made a meaningful choice, or at least had the chance to."
This, of course, is news to almost none of you. I think anyone who's played for any length of time is aware of this, even if they haven't really given it any thought. So what's my point? What am I getting to?
Two words: Skill challenges.
I can see through my monitor that some of you are starting to turn away at this point. I'd ask you not to. Even if you're playing Pathfinder, or an earlier edition of D&D, I think you'll find the suggestions below to be useful.
I think the creative motivations for adding skill challenges to D&D should be commended. It's a notion that, in theory, works for all sorts of players. For people who want the immersive RP, it encourages DMs to include more such scenarios into their adventures, and to give them a greater impact on the success or failure of said scenarios. For people who prefer just to roll, it gives a mechanical framework for accomplishing non-combat goals.
But it was a new framework to D&D, and I don't think I'll offend anyone at WotC when I say that a lot of people feel it needs tweaking. There have been a lot of threads on various forums about exactly that. I think, however, that even those threads have been a bit off-target, because ultimately, the problem with skill challenges isn't mechanical7. It's conceptual.
Boiled down to their absolute simplest, combat and skill challenges are the same, right? Players rolling dice to determine success or failure. And yet, lots of people feel that skill challenges are "just die-rolling," whereas combat is far more interesting.
Why? Agency.
It may sound heretical or foolish to say, but the rolling of dice is, on a conceptual level, ancillary to combat. What matters most--and what usually occupies the most time--are the choices. Do I move here or there? Do I cast this spell or that one? What sort of attack do I make? Who do I attack? Is it worth not making an attack this round so I can heal Mongo before he bleeds out like an ice cube in a bonfire? Do I risk the opportunity attack from the orc next to me so I can shoot the wolf who's turning the wizard into hors d'oeuvres?
Choices. Meaningful choices. The DM has set a goal--in most cases, kill or be killed--but how you go about achieving that goal is all you.
And that, I think, is where skill challenges (and, for that matter, traps and hazards with specific listed countermeasures) fall down. Where's the fun in a situation where your only meaningful options are "Roll either Diplomacy or Intimidate"? If it's a one-roll check, that's one thing, but for a whole scene? Is it any wonder that at least some players drift out?
And yes, the DMG specifies that the DM should allow for multiple secondary skills, to expect for the PCs to try funky or creative solutions, and to allow them to do so. But it's a passing mention--one that's only emphasized in a smattering of the published skill challenges--and, more to the point, it presents such creative uses as a lesser option. It makes them less effective or harder to use than the skills the DM has already identified as "primary," since they cannot, in themselves, grant successes. Essentially yes, they're permitted--but they'll never do as much good as the ones the DM (or author) decided on ahead of time.
I think that's a mistake, in terms of emphasis, and I prefer not to run skill challenges that way. Very simply, once the PCs know what they're trying to accomplish, their job is to tell me how they're doing it, with few if any preconceptions--and almost no prior decisions as to what will or won't work--on my part. Now, I don't pretend this idea is original to me. It comes in part from friends, in part from stuff I've seen online, and possibly--I honestly don't recall--in part from some suggestions put forth in 4E playtest material.
In one of the first 4E games I ever ran, the PCs were attempting to rescue the children of a town from a band of redcaps (Feywild goblins). These redcaps were lairing in the sewers beneath the town--sewers that didn't actually exist in the real world, as they were part of a Feywild planar overlap with the real world. So once the PCs had killed the Big Bad and had the kids in hand, the sewer (of course) began to disappear.
The skill challenge was to herd this band of panicked kids back through the winding passageways of the sewers and to the exit, before the entire thing vanished from the mortal world. And during that skill challenge, I saw:
At no point did I tell any of my players what they had to roll, and several of the skills they decided to use, I'd never have thought of including in advance. Every single action they took was their own decision. And every skill they wanted to use, I let them--if they could explain to me why it was useful in that situation. And that's the key to making this work--a reasonable, believable explanation.
Does that mean all skills are equally useful in all circumstances? Of course not. The Insight check and Religion checks didn't gain them any successes--but I decided they granted a substantial bonus on the next Diplomacy or Intimidate check, and if the players had suggested different uses for those skills, uses that seemed to have a more immediate impact, who knows? I might have allowed them to grant successes.
And some skills might not have been useful at all; I'm hard pressed to think of a way that the PCs could have used Streetwise under the circumstances. But if someone had tried and offered a convincing reason, I'd have considered it.
The difference? Agency. It was the players deciding what their characters were attempting. They had choices to make that weren't limited to options I'd determined with in advance: What skill do I use? They had creative/tactical decisions to make: How can I best make use of what skills I have? Would I rather keep using a tactic that I know works, or try to come up with more creative options and possibly face easier DCs, or gain the DM's "creative thought" bonus? (Obviously, they have to know there is such a thing, but I strongly recommend it.)
Of equal importance, it reduces or even eliminates the "This is Bob's scene, because he's good at Diplomacy, so the rest of us will stand back and twiddle our thumbs for half an hour" hurdle. It guarantees everyone a way to participate, gives them a reason to do so, rather than hang back in fear of adding to the collection of failures.
And damn if it didn't work. Not only was everyone as emotionally involved in this challenge as they'd been during any combat, but when one of the PCs badly failed a check and they lost one of the kids, the players were actually upset at me.8
Yet the actual mechanics--roll a skill against a DC set by the DM--hadn't changed in the slightest. It was all about who was making the important decisions.
There's nothing wrong with the DM designing a skill challenge where he expects certain skills to be used, or where certain skills are the obvious choice--just like the DM might design an encounter where, perhaps due to terrain and positioning, he expects controllers and ranged strikers to be more effective than melee combatants. If you're trying to convince the duke to lend you an army, Diplomacy almost has to play a part. And, similarly, this isn't about making all skills equally useful in all situations, any more than all attacks are useful against all opponents. If the skill challenge is about climbing a cliff during a hurricane, Thievery is just not likely to help. But just like a good DM wouldn't prevent a melee combatant from meaningfully contributing to the aforementioned fight if she found a way to do so, a good DM shouldn't prevent a PC from fully contributing to a skill challenge with an unanticipated skill. This is about giving every PC an opportunity not only to contribute, but to decide how to contribute.
I think every good DM knows that s/he needs to let the players have an effect on the adventure, and to make meaningful choices. But I don't think a lot of DMs apply this knowledge on the small scale, to things like skill challenges (or other grouped skill rolls, for systems that don't use the skill challenge framework). I know that, until relatively recently, I often failed to do so. Yet I've seen firsthand just how big a difference it makes, for the players to really feel like they're doing something, rather than just rolling whatever die they've been told to roll, or using whatever skill seems to be the DM's preferred option.
If you've had little luck with skill challenges so far--or are playing a different system, but are interested in running a non-combat scene where PC capabilities still have a major impact--I'd encourage you to give it a shot, explain to your players what you're doing, keep an open mind when it comes to what they want to try, and see what happens. 9
1 Dear ENWorld: I never thought this sort of thing would happen to me...
2 I'm thinking of starting a betting pool on how long it takes for someone on teh interwebs to quote this out of context, saying "Ari Marmell doesn't care about mechanics!" Anyone want to participate? I've got my money on "7 seconds."
3 Yeah, there was a small RPG released a little over a year ago. A few of you might have heard of it in passing.
4 If you're a lot like me, you're sitting at home in your underwear right now, writing a column about player agency in RPGs. But please don't tell me if you are; that's just creepy.
5 Well, okay, and the actions and luck of the other players. Bunch o' attention-hogs, stealing my spotlight...
6 After nine other definitions, granted.
7 Not saying the numbers are necessarily perfect. I'm saying that, for purposes of this discussion, they're irrelevant. Numbers can be tweaked.
8 That's "upset" in the RBDM sense, not in the "I actually want to hurt you outside of the game" sense. I think.
9 Since completing the first draft of this column, I've had the opportunity to read through the section on skill challenges in DMG2. I think they've done a great job of improving on the skill challenges, of further emphasizing the need to allow creative solutions, of showing them as far more than just collections of skill checks, and even increasing the degree of player agency. They've clarified or eliminated nearly all of my prior objections—except, unfortunately, what is ultimately my primary issue: that I feel making skill challenges more freeform needs to occur at a baseline, fundamental level. As long as skill challenges predefine "primary skills" that are the only way to gain successes, then "outside the box" thinking continues to be a less effective, and therefore a less attractive, option.
Click here to comment on this article.
[imager]http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/am.jpg[/imager]DM ex Machina
I have a confession to make1. Despite the fact that I've been working as an RPG writer since late 2000, and playing RPGs since 1983, I'm really not all that interested in "gaming theory." I don't follow the Forge or subscribe to their theories or definitions, I'm not really into the experimental indie games, and I'm not interested in innovative mechanics for their own sake.2 Obviously, I want everything I work on to be interesting both mechanically and in terms of game-play, but I prefer to judge on a case-by-case basis, rather than labor under any Overarching Theory o' Everything.
On the other hand, over the past two years, I've been learning a new system for both professional and personal use.3 And in so doing, I've pretty much by default been thinking about--yep--some RPG theory. Specifically, the notion of "agency."
If you’re anything like me, you get at least a faint twinge of dislike any time your DM brings in an NPC to save you from a bad situation.4 I understand that sometimes it's necessary--the DM is introducing an important NPC, or else he's realized that he badly miscalculated the difficulty of a certain situation and, since it was his own mistake, is taking steps to prevent a TPK. I understand that, and thus I do my best to tolerate it--but it still drives me nuts. I want to succeed or fail based on my own actions, and my own luck. 5
It's part of the same feeling, I think, that causes most players to object when the DM takes control of their characters, or has the PCs sitting on the sidelines while the NPCs kill the villain. It's all about agency.
Dictionary.com defines agency 6 as "a means of exerting power or influence; instrumentality". In other words, it's an individual's ability to influence or affect his own circumstances.
I firmly believe that it's the sense of personal agency that causes players to become involved in, and to care about, the events of a game session. Success or failure is less important than the sense that "Hey, I made a meaningful choice, or at least had the chance to."
This, of course, is news to almost none of you. I think anyone who's played for any length of time is aware of this, even if they haven't really given it any thought. So what's my point? What am I getting to?
Two words: Skill challenges.
I can see through my monitor that some of you are starting to turn away at this point. I'd ask you not to. Even if you're playing Pathfinder, or an earlier edition of D&D, I think you'll find the suggestions below to be useful.
I think the creative motivations for adding skill challenges to D&D should be commended. It's a notion that, in theory, works for all sorts of players. For people who want the immersive RP, it encourages DMs to include more such scenarios into their adventures, and to give them a greater impact on the success or failure of said scenarios. For people who prefer just to roll, it gives a mechanical framework for accomplishing non-combat goals.
But it was a new framework to D&D, and I don't think I'll offend anyone at WotC when I say that a lot of people feel it needs tweaking. There have been a lot of threads on various forums about exactly that. I think, however, that even those threads have been a bit off-target, because ultimately, the problem with skill challenges isn't mechanical7. It's conceptual.
Boiled down to their absolute simplest, combat and skill challenges are the same, right? Players rolling dice to determine success or failure. And yet, lots of people feel that skill challenges are "just die-rolling," whereas combat is far more interesting.
Why? Agency.
It may sound heretical or foolish to say, but the rolling of dice is, on a conceptual level, ancillary to combat. What matters most--and what usually occupies the most time--are the choices. Do I move here or there? Do I cast this spell or that one? What sort of attack do I make? Who do I attack? Is it worth not making an attack this round so I can heal Mongo before he bleeds out like an ice cube in a bonfire? Do I risk the opportunity attack from the orc next to me so I can shoot the wolf who's turning the wizard into hors d'oeuvres?
Choices. Meaningful choices. The DM has set a goal--in most cases, kill or be killed--but how you go about achieving that goal is all you.
And that, I think, is where skill challenges (and, for that matter, traps and hazards with specific listed countermeasures) fall down. Where's the fun in a situation where your only meaningful options are "Roll either Diplomacy or Intimidate"? If it's a one-roll check, that's one thing, but for a whole scene? Is it any wonder that at least some players drift out?
And yes, the DMG specifies that the DM should allow for multiple secondary skills, to expect for the PCs to try funky or creative solutions, and to allow them to do so. But it's a passing mention--one that's only emphasized in a smattering of the published skill challenges--and, more to the point, it presents such creative uses as a lesser option. It makes them less effective or harder to use than the skills the DM has already identified as "primary," since they cannot, in themselves, grant successes. Essentially yes, they're permitted--but they'll never do as much good as the ones the DM (or author) decided on ahead of time.
I think that's a mistake, in terms of emphasis, and I prefer not to run skill challenges that way. Very simply, once the PCs know what they're trying to accomplish, their job is to tell me how they're doing it, with few if any preconceptions--and almost no prior decisions as to what will or won't work--on my part. Now, I don't pretend this idea is original to me. It comes in part from friends, in part from stuff I've seen online, and possibly--I honestly don't recall--in part from some suggestions put forth in 4E playtest material.
In one of the first 4E games I ever ran, the PCs were attempting to rescue the children of a town from a band of redcaps (Feywild goblins). These redcaps were lairing in the sewers beneath the town--sewers that didn't actually exist in the real world, as they were part of a Feywild planar overlap with the real world. So once the PCs had killed the Big Bad and had the kids in hand, the sewer (of course) began to disappear.
The skill challenge was to herd this band of panicked kids back through the winding passageways of the sewers and to the exit, before the entire thing vanished from the mortal world. And during that skill challenge, I saw:
- Diplomacy and Intimidate used to keep the kids moving in a halfway orderly fashion.
- Bluff and Religion used to reassure them that they would be okay, and thus make them easier to handle.
- Insight to determine which kids needed the most attention to keep from falling apart.
- Perception and Arcana to determine which parts of the sewers were likely to fade out.
- Dungeoneering and Perception to find their way back the way they'd come.
- Athletics to get the kids past obstacles, and to physically herd them together when the stragglers began to drift.
At no point did I tell any of my players what they had to roll, and several of the skills they decided to use, I'd never have thought of including in advance. Every single action they took was their own decision. And every skill they wanted to use, I let them--if they could explain to me why it was useful in that situation. And that's the key to making this work--a reasonable, believable explanation.
Does that mean all skills are equally useful in all circumstances? Of course not. The Insight check and Religion checks didn't gain them any successes--but I decided they granted a substantial bonus on the next Diplomacy or Intimidate check, and if the players had suggested different uses for those skills, uses that seemed to have a more immediate impact, who knows? I might have allowed them to grant successes.
And some skills might not have been useful at all; I'm hard pressed to think of a way that the PCs could have used Streetwise under the circumstances. But if someone had tried and offered a convincing reason, I'd have considered it.
The difference? Agency. It was the players deciding what their characters were attempting. They had choices to make that weren't limited to options I'd determined with in advance: What skill do I use? They had creative/tactical decisions to make: How can I best make use of what skills I have? Would I rather keep using a tactic that I know works, or try to come up with more creative options and possibly face easier DCs, or gain the DM's "creative thought" bonus? (Obviously, they have to know there is such a thing, but I strongly recommend it.)
Of equal importance, it reduces or even eliminates the "This is Bob's scene, because he's good at Diplomacy, so the rest of us will stand back and twiddle our thumbs for half an hour" hurdle. It guarantees everyone a way to participate, gives them a reason to do so, rather than hang back in fear of adding to the collection of failures.
And damn if it didn't work. Not only was everyone as emotionally involved in this challenge as they'd been during any combat, but when one of the PCs badly failed a check and they lost one of the kids, the players were actually upset at me.8
Yet the actual mechanics--roll a skill against a DC set by the DM--hadn't changed in the slightest. It was all about who was making the important decisions.
There's nothing wrong with the DM designing a skill challenge where he expects certain skills to be used, or where certain skills are the obvious choice--just like the DM might design an encounter where, perhaps due to terrain and positioning, he expects controllers and ranged strikers to be more effective than melee combatants. If you're trying to convince the duke to lend you an army, Diplomacy almost has to play a part. And, similarly, this isn't about making all skills equally useful in all situations, any more than all attacks are useful against all opponents. If the skill challenge is about climbing a cliff during a hurricane, Thievery is just not likely to help. But just like a good DM wouldn't prevent a melee combatant from meaningfully contributing to the aforementioned fight if she found a way to do so, a good DM shouldn't prevent a PC from fully contributing to a skill challenge with an unanticipated skill. This is about giving every PC an opportunity not only to contribute, but to decide how to contribute.
I think every good DM knows that s/he needs to let the players have an effect on the adventure, and to make meaningful choices. But I don't think a lot of DMs apply this knowledge on the small scale, to things like skill challenges (or other grouped skill rolls, for systems that don't use the skill challenge framework). I know that, until relatively recently, I often failed to do so. Yet I've seen firsthand just how big a difference it makes, for the players to really feel like they're doing something, rather than just rolling whatever die they've been told to roll, or using whatever skill seems to be the DM's preferred option.
If you've had little luck with skill challenges so far--or are playing a different system, but are interested in running a non-combat scene where PC capabilities still have a major impact--I'd encourage you to give it a shot, explain to your players what you're doing, keep an open mind when it comes to what they want to try, and see what happens. 9
1 Dear ENWorld: I never thought this sort of thing would happen to me...
2 I'm thinking of starting a betting pool on how long it takes for someone on teh interwebs to quote this out of context, saying "Ari Marmell doesn't care about mechanics!" Anyone want to participate? I've got my money on "7 seconds."
3 Yeah, there was a small RPG released a little over a year ago. A few of you might have heard of it in passing.
4 If you're a lot like me, you're sitting at home in your underwear right now, writing a column about player agency in RPGs. But please don't tell me if you are; that's just creepy.
5 Well, okay, and the actions and luck of the other players. Bunch o' attention-hogs, stealing my spotlight...
6 After nine other definitions, granted.
7 Not saying the numbers are necessarily perfect. I'm saying that, for purposes of this discussion, they're irrelevant. Numbers can be tweaked.
8 That's "upset" in the RBDM sense, not in the "I actually want to hurt you outside of the game" sense. I think.
9 Since completing the first draft of this column, I've had the opportunity to read through the section on skill challenges in DMG2. I think they've done a great job of improving on the skill challenges, of further emphasizing the need to allow creative solutions, of showing them as far more than just collections of skill checks, and even increasing the degree of player agency. They've clarified or eliminated nearly all of my prior objections—except, unfortunately, what is ultimately my primary issue: that I feel making skill challenges more freeform needs to occur at a baseline, fundamental level. As long as skill challenges predefine "primary skills" that are the only way to gain successes, then "outside the box" thinking continues to be a less effective, and therefore a less attractive, option.
Click here to comment on this article.
