[Editionless] Running adventures like skill challenges

[blargney the second]

It occurred to me that the D&D Facebook app is more like a skill challenge than a typical quest, which got me thinking. What if adventures were constructed like 4e's skill challenges? The party must achieve X successes before Y failures, depending on the difficulty of the quest. Individual tests consist of combat encounters, skill challenges, nested adventure challenges (side quests!), or anything else you or the players come up with.

The fun starts for the DM when you use the framework as a way of measuring the party's overall success on a given plot. What happens if the party kills the BBEG before they've achieved enough successes to win the quest? It means they're not done yet and the DM interprets the results in a way that continues the adventure: his elite squad is already attacking the town, he's just a second in command and they were misinformed, or he's a mere simulacrum. Conversely, they could defeat the villain without even fighting him by achieving enough successes to dismantle the apparatus of his plan.

-blarg

 

[Asmor]

It's not a bad idea at all, but it's also very much not D&D.

You could probably make a cool indie RPG out of the idea, though.

 

[blargney the second]

One of the reasons I got to thinking about this is that I'm a little fed up with highly linear modules that assume that the PCs succeed at each task in order. I'd rather let the players make their own laundry list, attempt those goals in whatever order they like, and have a built-in method for accomodating unexpected defeats or victories.

You can set up some tests as auto-successes (say the right thing to the right person) and some as auto-failures (let a certain time limit exprire). Other tests could add bonuses to future tests in the same challenge (rescuing a lizardman gives a +2 bonus on social skills with reptilians). And if the players do something remarkably brilliant or stoooopid you can assign a success or failure accordingly without the quest grinding to a halt immediately.

I realize that this method doesn't work for all adventures, but I can certainly see application for a wide variety of them.
-blarg

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Wasn´t there a system like that in Heroes of Horror? Where you had a certain amount of goals during a big battle, and could sway the way it went by achieving successes in certain actions? And there were shadings of this in Red Hand of Doom, too. I´d really like to see this used much more.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One of the reasons I got to thinking about this is that I'm a little fed up with highly linear modules that assume that the PCs succeed at each task in order. I'd rather let the players make their own laundry list, attempt those goals in whatever order they like, and have a built-in method for accomodating unexpected defeats or victories.

You can set up some tests as auto-successes (say the right thing to the right person) and some as auto-failures (let a certain time limit exprire). Other tests could add bonuses to future tests in the same challenge (rescuing a lizardman gives a +2 bonus on social skills with reptilians). And if the players do something remarkably brilliant or stoooopid you can assign a success or failure accordingly without the quest grinding to a halt immediately.

I realize that this method doesn't work for all adventures, but I can certainly see application for a wide variety of them.
-blarg

Basically, you're looking for a way to avoid "railroady" adventures, and also avoid the one cruicial scene that must be resolved or the adventure comes to a screeching halt. (Someimes, that's not even a scene - sometimes it is just a decision the party fails to make, like "Let's visit the Thief Guild and ask for more information there").

Instead, you define several scenes or hot spots that the party can visit. The only thing that the DM then needs to ensure is that the party becomes aware of these. And as a bonus, he should feel free to make up new scenes if the players have an interesting idea.
At that point, the party just has to resolve enough scenes successfully to get through the adventure.

I suppose the skill challenge part is not only the individual scenes that need to be resolved (and treating them like success/failure events), it is that you don't know beforehand how the adventure will be resolved. You have to interpret the results.

"Okay, the party successfully interrogated 2 suspects and 2 witnesses, driven off the Thief Guilds ambush, and found the hidden notes in the victims diary. That's 6 successes - enough to conclude the adventure. How do I interpet this to achieve this conclusion? Ah, the real killer wants that diary and knows that the guys that have it are also the ones most closest to him - he improvses a direct attack on the PCs. And since he feels to threatened, he won't be careful enough to make it at night - he wants to get it done now."

It might require some experience to have this work. It obviously doesn't fit all types of adventures. I am not sure it would be so helpful in a dungeon crawl scenario.

Or is it? I could imagine an expedition to the Temple of Elemental Evil. If the players take out enough foes, the cultists might disband and give up their goals (for now - they will sure return for the next edition of the game )

 

[blargney the second]

Yeah, there's certainly some similarity to the system in Heroes of Battle. I feel the skill challenge system is a little more elegant though, if only because it has a "three strikes, you're out" component to it that's easy to remember. Also, I think being able to easily set the overall difficulty by raising or lowering the number of successes is a more intuitive mechanic than summing piles of victory points.

Finally, it's simple enough that it can handle scope from rescuing a cat in a tree to constructing a full-on war (with a little recursion).
-blarg

 

[blargney the second]

double post, please delete.

 

[blargney the second]

Instead, you define several scenes or hot spots that the party can visit. The only thing that the DM then needs to ensure is that the party becomes aware of these. And as a bonus, he should feel free to make up new scenes if the players have an interesting idea. At that point, the party just has to resolve enough scenes successfully to get through the adventure.

I suppose the skill challenge part is not only the individual scenes that need to be resolved (and treating them like success/failure events), it is that you don't know beforehand how the adventure will be resolved. You have to interpret the results.

Making cool scenes is one of my favourite things to do as a DM. The part I hate is trying to string them together ahead of time into some semblance of a plot when I have no idea which way my players are going to want to go or how they'll fare when they get there. I'd rather have an objective system I can use in-game to determine how they're doing, and then deliver appropriate scenes.

It might require some experience to have this work. It obviously doesn't fit all types of adventures. I am not sure it would be so helpful in a dungeon crawl scenario.

Or is it? I could imagine an expedition to the Temple of Elemental Evil. If the players take out enough foes, the cultists might disband and give up their goals (for now - they will sure return for the next edition of the game )

I can see using this system to make dungeon crawls more interactive. Room after room of unprepared monsters is a little uninspiring. You could use this to determine how the inhabitants are responding to the invaders. It's really just another tool like random encounter lists.
-blarg

 

[Draksila]

A lot of my better adventures were put together as flow charts; it worked in a similar vein. 'If PCs stop the sacrifice, go to Woodcutter's Confession... if PCs skip the Baron's funeral, go to Successful Baroness Assassination Repercussions' sorts of things. When I was reading over skill challenges, I actually found the concept similar to flow-chart plotlines.

Oddly, I pulled the idea initially from old Shadowrun sourcebooks talking about how to run decking missions. Wherever the idea comes from, though, it works rather well on your more interactive plots; murder investigations, political manuevering, timed search and rescue missions. I still use linear progression for treasure hunts and raids on villain lairs, but even in those cases you can set up a flow chart to simulate enemy alertness and responses to PC actions.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A lot of my better adventures were put together as flow charts; it worked in a similar vein. 'If PCs stop the sacrifice, go to Woodcutter's Confession... if PCs skip the Baron's funeral, go to Successful Baroness Assassination Repercussions' sorts of things. When I was reading over skill challenges, I actually found the concept similar to flow-chart plotlines.

Oddly, I pulled the idea initially from old Shadowrun sourcebooks talking about how to run decking missions. Wherever the idea comes from, though, it works rather well on your more interactive plots; murder investigations, political manuevering, timed search and rescue missions. I still use linear progression for treasure hunts and raids on villain lairs, but even in those cases you can set up a flow chart to simulate enemy alertness and responses to PC actions.

A lot of my better adventures were put together as flow charts; it worked in a similar vein. 'If PCs stop the sacrifice, go to Woodcutter's Confession... if PCs skip the Baron's funeral, go to Successful Baroness Assassination Repercussions' sorts of things. When I was reading over skill challenges, I actually found the concept similar to flow-chart plotlines.

Oddly, I pulled the idea initially from old Shadowrun sourcebooks talking about how to run decking missions. Wherever the idea comes from, though, it works rather well on your more interactive plots; murder investigations, political manuevering, timed search and rescue missions. I still use linear progression for treasure hunts and raids on villain lairs, but even in those cases you can set up a flow chart to simulate enemy alertness and responses to PC actions.

I like this idea of using flow-charts for "raids". It is a good way to also model stuff like the PCs retreating and being prepared for that eventuality (how does the enemy react - maybe add a "tracking patrol" encounter, or a "reinforced entrance" encounter to the chart.)