D&D General "Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think we're getting a tad too verbose here...

Obviously we have different views. I think that 5e's rules are largely in the same vein as 3e and AD&D rules, they exist to RESOLVE SITUATIONS. There is no consideration of story or agency of players there. Players can pick what their PC does, and the rules are there to arbitrate what the world does, and how 'fortune' turns out, what 'powers' PCs have, and that's it. The rules are not there to help you build a story. They are just as likely to squash the story as to further it. The rules of DW, not just the principles (and nobody is disputing what they are or that they exist) are designed around making it happen.
And, in general, principles are fine, and games often espouse them, but they are really rarely going to have much impact if the rules are are not coherent with them. I really never looked at this thread you mentioned with the disaster DW game, but I am 100% sure that if I went through I could redline the rules violations. It may well be that they aren't very apparent to people who haven't learned the principles of the game in all cases, but I think they do exist.
There's also another set of rules in DW, which is the "how do you make the world" rules. Again, I don't know what the thread has in it, but I'm guessing the only way to "run DW like 5e" is to ignore those pretty thoroughly (given that 5e allocates ALL fiction entirely to the GM and DW has a specific rules process that includes player generated setting and fiction).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm absolutely certain, and was when I posted, that abandoning SCs was something you'd be just fine with. I'm a bit surprised that you don't have a similar mechanic for an action declaration that cuts through to the quick and can end in an early success, though -- that seems like following the mechanic is more important that following the fiction which surprises me. Still, there's not reason why you cannot prevent exit on the success side early, the fiction is very fluid after all and another complication can be presented.

I suppose, though, that if you have a principle of play that Skill Challenges must be completed according to the mechanics, then, sure, the meta will require this. I don't think that's at all necessary to have functional and effective skill challenges, but that's the fun of principles -- they can differ and you can still have lots of fun. I'm in a phase where I'm strongly in favor of principles being explicit, so they can be examined, improved, and iterated as needed to achieve maximum fun.

I really think that they're just an attempt to iterate on complex skill checks. That's what they look like -- instead of just rolling the same check and adding until you get to the DC, you must pass multiple checks of different kinds to get the required number of successes. Seems a direct and natural iteration, with nothing at all to do with enabling story game play. That it does so is the accident.

It isn't so much that I am 'against' abandoning an SC, there is just little reason to do it if you are working them at a more 'PLOT' level and not getting so wrapped up in the details of a specific sequence of events.
In terms of 'action mechanic which cuts through' I do have the concept of "Pay to get an automatic success" which you can invoke when dealing with rituals. That isn't quite "succeed on the whole challenge" but it is often enough to put you over the top. It allows a player to really say "this is important to me" and showcase their character's abilities (IE you can have your barbarian do a classic Conan and defeat some challenge with super agility and strength). The PC MIGHT do that anyway, but dice can be fickle and in a really crucial situation it is pretty dramatic to say something like "I tear free of the ape's grasp and leap to the rescue of the princess" Well, there went a few lingering wounds and a lot of surges, but you did it!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think we're getting a tad too verbose here...

Obviously we have different views. I think that 5e's rules are largely in the same vein as 3e and AD&D rules, they exist to RESOLVE SITUATIONS. There is no consideration of story or agency of players there. Players can pick what their PC does, and the rules are there to arbitrate what the world does, and how 'fortune' turns out, what 'powers' PCs have, and that's it. The rules are not there to help you build a story. They are just as likely to squash the story as to further it. The rules of DW, not just the principles (and nobody is disputing what they are or that they exist) are designed around making it happen.

Yes, I don't even really understand what you're trying to say, here. I just ran a Blades in the Dark game yesterday evening, and we definitely resolved some situations in play. Further, while it's been a few months since we last played 5e (but will be returning next month), we've built some story via rolls in 5e just fine. I do not understand what distinction you're trying to make here -- it really just reads like you dislike 5e and like DW more than an actual discussion of play objectives and tech.

I suggest that you look again at the DW rules -- the moves -- and not the principles it expounds on and see exactly how they'd work if you tried using them in a D&D style. Heck, pick one, I'll show you. Do I think DW works well like this? No, it doesn't work very well, but it does work. It's not the structure of the mechanics that makes it a story game, it's the principles of play that direct you how to use those mechanics. I think you've mixed the two up in your thinking and are having trouble separating the two things -- when you read the rules in DW, you're already thinking in terms of the appropriate principles, so they appear to work only one way -- as intended. This isn't the only way those can be approached.

And, in general, principles are fine, and games often espouse them, but they are really rarely going to have much impact if the rules are are not coherent with them. I really never looked at this thread you mentioned with the disaster DW game, but I am 100% sure that if I went through I could redline the rules violations. It may well be that they aren't very apparent to people who haven't learned the principles of the game in all cases, but I think they do exist.

Nope. There was a very good discussion by many familiar with DW in that thread, and it wasn't that the rules weren't applied, it's how they were being applied. The GM in that thread, for instance, didn't apply Defy Danger as expected by the principles of play, and so many things were much easier than expected. Further, they didn't grasp the nature of "play to find out" and had scripted dungeons a la D&D. This meant that the GM was exercising "no" in ways that thwarted the intended principles of play in the rules instead of letting the resolutions lead the fiction.

There's also another set of rules in DW, which is the "how do you make the world" rules. Again, I don't know what the thread has in it, but I'm guessing the only way to "run DW like 5e" is to ignore those pretty thoroughly (given that 5e allocates ALL fiction entirely to the GM and DW has a specific rules process that includes player generated setting and fiction).

Those are some of the principles I'm talking about. They're not rules, in that they're not actually enforceable or result in game changes when applied, but instead directions on how to think about the metagame -- how to build a world so that you can use the tech to achieve the objectives of play through this and other principles of play. For instance, "leave spaces" isn't really a rule, in that it doesn't tell me how or where to do this, but it does tell me why I should -- it enables other rules tech and the other principles enough space to create the play intended. It's a rule on how to use the rules. Metarule.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It isn't so much that I am 'against' abandoning an SC, there is just little reason to do it if you are working them at a more 'PLOT' level and not getting so wrapped up in the details of a specific sequence of events.

Oh, I disagree. It's uncommon that I would see a reason to do so, but the difference between scales isn't really that big of a deal. Dealing with an innkeep, trying to get a room for the night in a overcrowded inn can be just as effective as trying to ferret out the traitor in the King's court. And both may have a player declare an action that would cut to the quick of the situation and preemptively end the SC in a successful state. Again, not common, but I'm not going to rule it out, nor limit it to scope in any way.

In terms of 'action mechanic which cuts through' I do have the concept of "Pay to get an automatic success" which you can invoke when dealing with rituals. That isn't quite "succeed on the whole challenge" but it is often enough to put you over the top. It allows a player to really say "this is important to me" and showcase their character's abilities (IE you can have your barbarian do a classic Conan and defeat some challenge with super agility and strength). The PC MIGHT do that anyway, but dice can be fickle and in a really crucial situation it is pretty dramatic to say something like "I tear free of the ape's grasp and leap to the rescue of the princess" Well, there went a few lingering wounds and a lot of surges, but you did it!

Not the same thing at all, and autosuccess is something lots of systems do. 5e, for example, allows for autosuccess in a lot of ways. Paying a chit or token or metaresource for a success is similarly prevalent in many systems. This isn't the discussion.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, I disagree. It's uncommon that I would see a reason to do so, but the difference between scales isn't really that big of a deal. Dealing with an innkeep, trying to get a room for the night in a overcrowded inn can be just as effective as trying to ferret out the traitor in the King's court. And both may have a player declare an action that would cut to the quick of the situation and preemptively end the SC in a successful state. Again, not common, but I'm not going to rule it out, nor limit it to scope in any way.

Not the same thing at all, and autosuccess is something lots of systems do. 5e, for example, allows for autosuccess in a lot of ways. Paying a chit or token or metaresource for a success is similarly prevalent in many systems. This isn't the discussion.

I think we mostly just have a very different approach to how we use challenges. I consider them to be a pretty 'strong' mechanic. That is, I am not going to generally have some very trivial thing that COULD be overcome with a single check or decision to be an entire SC. There could be a few edge cases where a low complexity challenge gets invoked at the 'margin' of the story. Maybe the inn keeper in question has some useful information, and developing a contact with that NPC is useful, so we run a challenge? However, if the challenge is such that it can be shorted-out in one move, is it really a challenge? Maybe it is better run as just RP.
And with the idea of challenges engaging the meta-play more, there is ALWAYS a change in the fiction during each 'move' of such challenges, so again questioning a bar keep seems a bit too static for that, unless maybe there's some elements like suddenly a halfling waiter whips out a poison dart and tries to off the guy before he says his piece! Now things can go a few ways, and it gets a bit more involved and steers the plot, some decisions about what is important (your new friend the inn keeper or catching that damned halfling) need to be made, etc.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think we mostly just have a very different approach to how we use challenges. I consider them to be a pretty 'strong' mechanic. That is, I am not going to generally have some very trivial thing that COULD be overcome with a single check or decision to be an entire SC.

Neither would I, and I'm not sure why you assume so.

There could be a few edge cases where a low complexity challenge gets invoked at the 'margin' of the story. Maybe the inn keeper in question has some useful information, and developing a contact with that NPC is useful, so we run a challenge? However, if the challenge is such that it can be shorted-out in one move, is it really a challenge? Maybe it is better run as just RP.
And with the idea of challenges engaging the meta-play more, there is ALWAYS a change in the fiction during each 'move' of such challenges, so again questioning a bar keep seems a bit too static for that, unless maybe there's some elements like suddenly a halfling waiter whips out a poison dart and tries to off the guy before he says his piece! Now things can go a few ways, and it gets a bit more involved and steers the plot, some decisions about what is important (your new friend the inn keeper or catching that damned halfling) need to be made, etc.

I agree, this is how you can use the SC framework to fullest benefit. I have a partially written post on how to use fiction-first skill challenges in 5e, as I believe they're a great tool. I'm not sure where you get questioning a bar, my example was trying to secure a room in an overcrowded inn -- a fictional situation full of fun, if not massively important, fiction. Do you make an enemy by getting someone tossed from a room? Does a thief take advantage of the situation? Do you find an unexpected ally by having to bunk with someone? I dunno, but I can play and find out just as well as an earth-shaking SC. Mine range all over -- and rarely to they do anything I'd anticipate.

On the other side, I also run Blades in the Dark, a game that ran with the concepts of DW and AW. So, I fully understand how those games run and what's needed to run them. And, for me, someone that's picked these games up fairly recently, the biggest difference isn't in the game tech or mechanics, but in how your directed to play them at a meta level -- the principles of the play. So very different from D&D.

 

[pemerton]

if the player group decides to do something completely unexpected... how do you handle that?

I apply the relevant adjudication framework. For instance, when the players in our Prince Valiant game wanted the bard/performer PC to disrupt a trial by making fun of the prosecutor and calling for the pet cat to be summonsed as a witness, I set a difficulty and called for a check using the appropriate skill (Poetry, from memory). The check succeeded and so the trial was delayed as the players wanted, and a party sent out to find the cat and bring it to the court.

From my point of view, a good system has a resolution framework - in the case of Prince Valiant, that's a general framework plus appropriate skills - to handle the sort of stuff that can be expected to come up given tone and genre.

In Classic Traveller, which doesn't have a general framework, I look to the various subsystems. Eg when the PCs had to escape fire from orbit in their ATVs, I adapted the small craft evasion rules.

If the skill challenge is 'supposed' to be the epitome of role-playing game design, then how should it be done?

Do you design skill challenges as a part of your prep? What if the players do something out of left-field... how do you handle a group not following what you intended?

What if the players do something completely unexpected. Do you design a skill challenge to handle it? How successful has that been? Do you ad-hoc skill challenges? How do you do that? Do you design the difficulty, primary skills, secondary skills, and the effect of each on the fly? How long does it take to do that? Do you design them ahead of time and force your players to play it out? Do you go more 'on the fly' and stop play for a bit to design the skill challenge on the fly ( designing difficulty, designating primary skills, secondary skills, and their effects) and have your players wait for you to be ready?

To be honest, I think skill challenges are just a formalized form of DM adjudication. It is a formalized form of DM rulings. I mean when you build a skill challenge, it is DM decisions to decide difficulty, primary skills, secondary skills and so on. I don't see the difference. GM rulings and GM designed skill challenges are for all intents and purposes the same.

The essence of a skill challenge is a situation in which the PCs find themselves, in which from both the narrative and causal points of view there is meaningful uncertainty that the PCs will get what they want. The GM has to decide how big a deal the situation is - that determines the number of successes required before 3 failures.

Managing declared checks, narration of consequences etc can all be done during play.

Here are links to two examples from actual play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@pemerton Frankly I would say that Traveler DOES effectively have a universal system. Anything a PC does is invariably resolved as a skill check, there really is no other 'in game' mechanic. Its true, it has a bunch of other 'referee side' charts and whatnot (and the chargen system, which players do see). However, those fall more under the rubric of "here's a random dice throw way to decide something, ref." In other words, yeah, they are systems, but clearly since referees aren't PCs they don't need to roll skill checks to decide the diameter of planets! The game would PLAY the same, technically, if those systems didn't exist or were entirely different, or if the only source of setting info was, say, a pregenerated environment.

I think this is an important distinction when talking about 'universal' sorts of mechanics, as it is really only those systems that adjudicate what happens when you play that are really under discussion in terms of being unified presenting an advantage. I see no advantage to 'back side' systems being 'universal' and I am not even sure what that would mean...

I'd also note that, D&D seems to have largely eschewed such systems in the last 2 editions. I'm not 100% sure about 5e, but 4e simply doesn't have anything like a "DM rolls some dice to decide..." and the DMG really has no charts of dice roll outcomes at all. Again, if it did, I wouldn't consider that to be a "not universal" feature of the system since it isn't part of resolution, just part of content generation. I think the only content you can generate in 4e at all are treasure parcels in the RC version of the rules, and even there it just species some "dice shaped" ranges of values for gold pieces in a parcel.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is an important distinction when talking about 'universal' sorts of mechanics, as it is really only those systems that adjudicate what happens when you play that are really under discussion in terms of being unified presenting an advantage. I see no advantage to 'back side' systems being 'universal' and I am not even sure what that would mean...

Mostly that they use the same die roll pattern at the least. There's no particular virtue to using percentile here, 2d6 there and 3d6 over there. Any minor benefit in fine control of probability in one over another is lost in the GM losing any good sense of probability he may have acquired about the most common resolution system used (or just forgetting what the other one is). About the only exception is that games that use damage resolution similar to other resolution are uncommon (though not unknown).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Mostly that they use the same die roll pattern at the least. There's no particular virtue to using percentile here, 2d6 there and 3d6 over there. Any minor benefit in fine control of probability in one over another is lost in the GM losing any good sense of probability he may have acquired about the most common resolution system used (or just forgetting what the other one is). About the only exception is that games that use damage resolution similar to other resolution are uncommon (though not unknown).

I suppose. I mean, I would consider that to be more "minor convenience" probably than anything else. I mean, a table that uses a single die (so it is a linear setup with each possible result having equal probability) might be easier for many to understand, I guess. Having grown up on systems that often use multiples of dice summed, I am not really challenged there, but...

Also, if you say "I don't want to own 20 different piles of dice of all sorts", well OK. I think that was the premise of systems like BRP way back when which has (almost) entirely %dice, which also kind of nicely map to percentages. I have to admit though, I kinda like piles of dice, lol.