Monte Cook's first Legends and Lore is up

[Crazy Jerome]

This is kind of like the same insulting question people ask when they are upset about the change from negative to positive AC. "Is it really that hard to subtract?" Maybe you shouldn't be playing D&D blah blah blah.

It's not about big number vrs small number, it's about knowing during a game what is statistically significant or not. 11 is bigger then 10 but is it really more of a challenge?

For some (myself included) it's just easier to think in terms of overall categories. Expert is more difficult then Hard.


In the end, I'm not arguing that it's a better system for those that like numbers, or that' it's a better system for those who don't.

I'm saying (and what I think the whole thing is about) is that it's a more diverse system then concentrating on one at the expense of the other.

Both "sides" can use the system without feeling like they're being told the style they want to play in is not the "correct" one.

Very much this. For the majority of the players at our table, can they compare their chance to hit with the ballpark of the monsters' defense, get a rough percentage, and make informed choices on which attack to use? Why yes, they can. Can they do that quickly, while concentrating on the parts of the game they find enjoyable. No, most of the time, they cannot.

Yet, translate those odds into words, and they can rapidly make informed decisions: "You've got a solid but not great chance of pulling X off, and it will hurt the monster medium hard, and also give you Y. You've got a bit lesser chance to hit with Z, to hit the monster hard, but it is all or nothing." I see a player get paralyzed, I ask them what they are considering. Then I translate it into those kind of terms, as fairly as I can. They nearly always make the decision within five seconds.

And D&D, being ususally linear in the odds calculations, is a fairly benign form of this. You should see the same people working with Fantasy Hero, when the value of +1 to +3 shifts radically based on the location of the 3d6 roll. Oy!

I've studied this a lot. And one thing I've noticed is that people who are wired this way don't get much better at the ordinal calculations, even with practice. Given practice with a given game, what they do is internalize the math into rules of thumb. "Hey, I know that this at will attack works pretty well in these situations, because if I work the math out, or someone does it for me, that's what I'll find." Then they run off of instinct and experience. So you get people who, to the casual observer, seem to be doing the ordinal calculations very rapidly. They make the same exact decisions that you would make, 95%+ of the time. The outliers can be rationalized away as choices made for other reasons. However, switch them to a different system, and they have to build up again from scratch their rules of thumb.

Given the relative ease of learning odds on a linear scale with a d20, I don't think D&D versions should do things radically different to compensate for this kind of thinking. But given that there are a lot of people who do so think, it would be rather, well, blind, for the designers of the game to blow off the issue entirely. There are a lot more people who don't readily do ordinal calculations, than there are people who are, say, color-blind, or highly offended by certain borderline content, or any number of such issues that get at least modest attention.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Very much this. For the majority of the players at our table, can they compare their chance to hit with the ballpark of the monsters' defense, get a rough percentage, and make informed choices on which attack to use? Why yes, they can. Can they do that quickly, while concentrating on the parts of the game they find enjoyable. No, most of the time, they cannot.

Yet, translate those odds into words, and they can rapidly make informed decisions: "You've got a solid but not great chance of pulling X off, and it will hurt the monster medium hard, and also give you Y. You've got a bit lesser chance to hit with Z, to hit the monster hard, but it is all or nothing." I see a player get paralyzed, I ask them what they are considering. Then I translate it into those kind of terms, as fairly as I can. They nearly always make the decision within five seconds.

And D&D, being ususally linear in the odds calculations, is a fairly benign form of this. You should see the same people working with Fantasy Hero, when the value of +1 to +3 shifts radically based on the location of the 3d6 roll. Oy!

I've studied this a lot. And one thing I've noticed is that people who are wired this way don't get much better at the ordinal calculations, even with practice. Given practice with a given game, what they do is internalize the math into rules of thumb. "Hey, I know that this at will attack works pretty well in these situations, because if I work the math out, or someone does it for me, that's what I'll find." Then they run off of instinct and experience. So you get people who, to the casual observer, seem to be doing the ordinal calculations very rapidly. They make the same exact decisions that you would make, 95%+ of the time. The outliers can be rationalized away as choices made for other reasons. However, switch them to a different system, and they have to build up again from scratch their rules of thumb.

Given the relative ease of learning odds on a linear scale with a d20, I don't think D&D versions should do things radically different to compensate for this kind of thinking. But given that there are a lot of people who do so think, it would be rather, well, blind, for the designers of the game to blow off the issue entirely. There are a lot more people who don't readily do ordinal calculations, than there are people who are, say, color-blind, or highly offended by certain borderline content, or any number of such issues that get at least modest attention.

Ummmm, quick, which is bigger 13 or 14? Which is bigger Difficult or Hard? This is PURELY a matter of a player needing to know that bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Thankfully even 3e managed to achieve that miracle that TSR couldn't manage for 20 years. There's nothing else to it.

What things could you want to be able to do here with ranking skills? You might want to know if character A or B is better at X, the answer is the one with the bigger skill bonus. You might want to know which is a more difficult check, the one with the higher DC. That's all there is to it. EVERYONE in the world knows basic ordination CJ, EVERYONE. Find a D&D player who cannot answer the question "is 9 smaller than 10?" correctly 100% of the time. I'm going to wager you will have a hard time finding that person.

Now, use names instead of numbers. First of all you now only get to have something like 5 or 6 names instead of a limitless spread of possible numbers. Secondly everyone has to remember if Difficult is better than Hard or Master is better than Expert or whatever. That's not making anything easier for anyone.

Your skill bonuses are written on your character sheet. When the DM says "make a DC20 check" you know exactly what chance you have to do that. I've got a +5 skill bonus, I need to roll a 15. BING! Nothing about the DM saying "It is an Expert level task" makes that easier. I'm a "Journeyman", what does that mean to me? I have to go look on some chart somewhere and find out that indeed I STILL need to compare a DC to a bonus.

I think you underestimate the reasoning capability of players.

 

[Greg K]

I think a lot of it has to do with player psychology and finding a sweet spot between two schools of thought.

You have players that like the idea of "skilled play." They enjoy thinking up solutions in real life and having the DM determine if they are good enough to work in game. (These people also tend to hate the idea of skill points and DCs and rolling for skills etc...)


Then you have people who hate the idea of "skilled play" and feel that if a PC can do something there should be rules involved and a target number to beat. (These people tend to feel that not having a skill system just feels like "mother may I.")


So even though the current system COULD accommodate the two styles the fact that it in all ways is geared towards the target number playstyle ends up turning off the former players: The system Monte describes seems to want to split the difference.

It speaks to both crowds- it's an underlying target number driven system, but gives heavy thought about how to work with "skilled play." The idea being a given group can choose the best way to use the system to suit their own style/tastes.

(That's what I'm getting out of it anyway.)

Well, even 3e has mixture of both- the problem is information is scattered.

You had the rolls. However, they applied to a 5x5 area and the character had to be within 10' of the area. Searching the wrong area, turns up nothing regardless of the roll.

By being more specific about where your character was searching and circumstances there is an additional bonus. While +2 is a recommended standard, the modifier to the roll could be +2 to +20 (see DM's best friend in the DMG).

Taking more time, you could take 10 or 20 to search that 5x5 area.

At this point it sounds like all about die rolling. However, finding the secret door does not mean you found out how to open it. The opening mechanism could be elsewhere in the room or some other location as described in the section under doors in the DMG that discusses having special requirements to open them.

The example of special requirements to open a door given in the DMG is having the players determine a correct sequence of lever manipulations and the maneuvers being elsewhere. The mechanism for opening the door, however, could simply be the pulling the sconce, removing a book from a shelf, sitting in a chair adding weight to press on a pressure plate, or manipulating a gold tooth in a statue. Therefore, performing the required action is an automatic success regardless of the die roll or requiring a die roll.

If players stating their characters performing specific actions, can be a requirement to open a secret door and, therefore an automatic success, there is no reason that it cannot be applied to other things (e.g., automatically, finding a scroll, map or letter in the cap of a bedpost if the state they are removing the cap). A successful search or perception check of an area might simply reveal clues leading the characters to the mechanism (e.g., disturbed dust in front of a book on a shelf, scratches or worn down area on the cap of the bedpost, etc.) and require the players to have their characters perform the correct action to succeed.

Then again, one may just stumble upon the mechanism to open a secret door.
"We need a torch. Greenwald removes the one in the sconce". Door opens
"You said there is a chair? Ok, Talia sits in it to catch a breather". Door opens

 

[darkwing]

Oh, one more thing: DM's (and adventure designers) must learn to be content with PCs not finding every secret in the game. If there's a secret door, it may well go unfound, and that's just the way it is. Otherwise, there's no point in bothering with Perception skills (or secret doors, or whatever) at all - if the DM insists that the PCs find these things anyway, they're better off just telling the players about them outright.

By default the players should find the secret door (with some prodding from the DM to help them along if necessary). That's why rolling dice is so messed up. If they can't find it then it doesn't exist and shouldn't be included. More specifically the players shouldn't be forced to spend skill points a certain way in order to experience content (whether it be a secret room or a knowledge check for background story). That's just lame.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, even 3e has mixture of both- the problem is information is scattered.

You had the rolls. However, they applied to a 5x5 area and the character had to be within 10' of the area. Searching the wrong area, turns up nothing regardless of the roll.

By being more specific about where your character was searching and circumstances there is an additional bonus. While +2 is a recommended standard, the modifier to the roll could be +2 to +20 (see DM's best friend in the DMG).

Taking more time, you could take 10 or 20 to search that 5x5 area.

At this point it sounds like all about die rolling. However, finding the secret door does not mean you found out how to open it. The opening mechanism could be elsewhere in the room or some other location as described in the section under doors in the DMG that discusses having special requirements to open them.

The example of special requirements to open a door given in the DMG is having the players determine a correct sequence of lever manipulations and the maneuvers being elsewhere. The mechanism for opening the door, however, could simply be the pulling the sconce, removing a book from a shelf, sitting in a chair adding weight to press on a pressure plate, or manipulating a gold tooth in a statue. Therefore, performing the required action is an automatic success regardless of the die roll or requiring a die roll.

If players stating their characters performing specific actions, can be a requirement to open a secret door and, therefore an automatic success, there is no reason that it cannot be applied to other things (e.g., automatically, finding a scroll, map or letter in the cap of a bedpost if the state they are removing the cap). A successful search or perception check of an area might simply reveal clues leading the characters to the mechanism (e.g., disturbed dust in front of a book on a shelf, scratches or worn down area on the cap of the bedpost, etc.) and require the players to have their characters perform the correct action to succeed.

Then again, one may just stumble upon the mechanism to open a secret door.
"We need a torch. Greenwald removes the one in the sconce". Door opens
"You said there is a chair? Ok, Talia sits in it to catch a breather". Door opens

Right. I think if you read the section in DMG1 on searching it pretty much envisages this kind of scenario, which makes the most sense. Unfortunately DMG1 particularly, and 4e in general, seems to be a bit blind to explaining THEORY. I think it is kind of a typical issue with documentation, the people writing it are so knowledgeable that it never occurs to them that someone reading what they've written assumes you understand that it would be ridiculous to have a secret door nobody finds or whatever. The people playtesting are either also experienced gamers or they simply don't even know enough to question their own ignorance. They can see how the 'find a secret door' procedure WORKS, but they aren't focusing on more theoretical game play style conceptions. You just don't undcover this kind of thing until someone with different conceptions or who is new to the whole topic tries to design a dungeon with secret doors in it.

This kind of issue never really surfaced with say AD&D simply because the game was SO vague about these issues that nobody even paid attention to that, or if they did they just came up with a way to play that seemed to work for them, or lived with it since there were 1000 other issues that were more pressing. 4e, by dealing with more important issues has left a lot of this stuff on the table, though clearly the developers understood the issues they were so second nature to them that they just didn't even recognize them as such.

 

[Balesir]

It seems like even your technique still devolves down to the 20 questions thing. I don't really see where skill 'ranks' is in any way required to make it work, just note on your location description "Searching the head - DC10 Dungeoneering: You find a loose tooth which appears to be a lever connected to something." or alternately "Searching - DC20 Dungeoneering or DC10 Dungeoneering if the PC specifically searches the head..."

Hmm, not quite - I think I'm undercommunicating because I'm posting to both the WotC boards and here...

What I mean is something more like this (and note I'm still just brainstorming, not presenting a fully formed system suggestion): over the area or object(s) searched, the player may select up to 1/4 of the whole to "focus" on. This part of the search area gets a +2 modifier; the rest of the search area gets -1. Two of these foci may be "stacked".

Thus, if the characters are searching a room with a raised area taking up 1/4 of the room, and with a large statue on the raised area. A searcher could choose to focus on the raised area within the room, and on the statue's head on the statue itself. The result would be:

- for features hidden on the statue's head: +4 (double focus)
- for features hidden on the rest of the statue: +1 (area focus, but object un-focus)
- for features hidden around the rest of the raised area: +2 (area focus)
- for features hidden in the rest of the room: -1 (area un-focus).

If the statue is not on the raised/focus area, you get:

- for features hidden on the statue's head: +1 (object focus, but area un-focus)
- for features hidden on the rest of the statue: -2 (double un-focus)
- for features hidden around the raised area: +2 (area focus)
- for features hidden in the rest of the room: -1 (area un-focus).

And so on. You choose one part of the search to focus on - you can't choose to focus on it all.

Edit: realised I didn't answer what "ranks" has to do with this; it doesn't. Since I regard them as effectively giving different names to numbers, and thus pretty irrelevant, I don't see the value of discussing them. I realise some folk are intimidated by numbers, but I'm not really clear how using abstract names that are simply imprecise helps counter this.

 

[delericho]

By default the players should find the secret door (with some prodding from the DM to help them along if necessary). That's why rolling dice is so messed up. If they can't find it then it doesn't exist and shouldn't be included. More specifically the players shouldn't be forced to spend skill points a certain way in order to experience content (whether it be a secret room or a knowledge check for background story). That's just lame.

Then you can never have a secret door. You can never have a riddle. You can never have a mystery.

Sure, you can make it look like you have these things, but you don't really - the DM is just going to give away the answer anyway, so why bother.

That is not a game I want to play. It most certainly is not a game I have any interest in running.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Ummmm, quick, which is bigger 13 or 14? Which is bigger Difficult or Hard? This is PURELY a matter of a player needing to know that bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Thankfully even 3e managed to achieve that miracle that TSR couldn't manage for 20 years. There's nothing else to it.

What things could you want to be able to do here with ranking skills? You might want to know if character A or B is better at X, the answer is the one with the bigger skill bonus. You might want to know which is a more difficult check, the one with the higher DC. That's all there is to it. EVERYONE in the world knows basic ordination CJ, EVERYONE. Find a D&D player who cannot answer the question "is 9 smaller than 10?" correctly 100% of the time. I'm going to wager you will have a hard time finding that person.

Now, use names instead of numbers. First of all you now only get to have something like 5 or 6 names instead of a limitless spread of possible numbers. Secondly everyone has to remember if Difficult is better than Hard or Master is better than Expert or whatever. That's not making anything easier for anyone.

Your skill bonuses are written on your character sheet. When the DM says "make a DC20 check" you know exactly what chance you have to do that. I've got a +5 skill bonus, I need to roll a 15. BING! Nothing about the DM saying "It is an Expert level task" makes that easier. I'm a "Journeyman", what does that mean to me? I have to go look on some chart somewhere and find out that indeed I STILL need to compare a DC to a bonus.

I think you underestimate the reasoning capability of players.

There is a huge assumption in all of your reasoning. Namely, that all choices will and should reduce down into a single number, this will model what we want to model, and doing so will not cause any kind of game play or handling issues.

It has been my contention from the very beginning of the Legend and Lore exploration of skills that a problem with existing D&D systems (3E and on) is that reducing down into a single number introduces all kinds of bad side effects, and the waffling around trying to escape those side effects causes more trouble than addressing them head on.

But even with that, in practical terms, your example leaves too much out. Quick, which is better, an attack that needs a 13+ to hit, does 1d8, and dazes (save ends) or one that hits on 14+, does 1d6, and dazes until the end of the attacker's next turn? You may be able to answer that off the cuff, but a lot of people will not. And that is about as easy as it gets, and doesn't even take into account the circumstances or what the rest of the party is capable of doing.

Now, I'll grant you that in 4E as written in a skill challenge, handled crudely and without regards to the ongoing story, it comes down to finding that higher roll. A success is a success is a success, right? Not in my game. Some successes are nice. Some are meh. Some take the narration where the players want it to go. Some, not so much. And surely, even crudely run, the manner of the successes can have some effect on the end narration (browbeating the mayor for his map, versus talking him out of it, versus stealing it, versus copying it and leaving it, versus doing without it, and so on, ad infinitum.)

If a designer is going to reduce a task down into a single check, then I will freely grant that communicating it through the relevant numbers is almost always the correct answer. (The exceptions are too esoteric to even apply to any version of D&D that would be acceptable to most players.) Even then, it is useful to at least provide a bit of a chart and explanation for what various likely odds mean, in both game and game-world terms. But sure, on the character sheet, put the number.

However, if you have seemingly intractable problem with modeling skills in a game, I suggest that revisiting the base assumption is the first order of business. (And as a related but here unsupported assertion, I'll say that the proposed musings thus far don't go far enough, because they only have two dimension to the check. You need at least three. But I suppose a discussion of that belongs in a forked topic.)

 

[Balesir]

But even with that, in practical terms, your example leaves too much out. Quick, which is better, an attack that needs a 13+ to hit, does 1d8, and dazes (save ends) or one that hits on 14+, does 1d6, and dazes until the end of the attacker's next turn? You may be able to answer that off the cuff, but a lot of people will not. And that is about as easy as it gets, and doesn't even take into account the circumstances or what the rest of the party is capable of doing.

Sure - I see the complication of this judgement perfectly. What I don't get is, how does removing the quantification from one element of the problem help? I mean, it's a tradeoff of higher damage from attack one against a marginal improvement in mean Daze effect in attack 2 - the utility of which will rely on (among other things) how many and what capabilities exist in the rest of the party. How will saying one attack is "hard" to hit with while the other is "difficult" to hit with help?

 

[KarinsDad]

By default the players should find the secret door (with some prodding from the DM to help them along if necessary). That's why rolling dice is so messed up. If they can't find it then it doesn't exist and shouldn't be included. More specifically the players shouldn't be forced to spend skill points a certain way in order to experience content (whether it be a secret room or a knowledge check for background story). That's just lame.

I totally disagree with this.

When I DM, I want there to be a lot of mysteries. Not just behind secret doors, but with many many many other game elements.

A secret door is no different than the secrets that the BBEG has floating in the back of his mind. Some, the players might find out about. Others, they won't.

The game feels more real if the DM doesn't hand out every little secret thing on a silver platter to the players and it can lead to other cool new campaign elements like "the mayor is now a zombie because the players didn't find the secret door a few weeks back and kill the undead foe behind it that zombie-fied the mayor".

Sure, the DM could fudge his world and still zombie-fy the mayor under a different pretext, but it just flows better if the cause and effect of campaign elements is partially due to the PCs being successful or not.

Without challenge, success, and failure, why bother using dice and playing the game at all? Why not just have everyone sit around and make up a group story? Kumbaya. Everyone wins that way.