D&D 4E Reconciling 4e's rough edges with Story Now play

[pemerton]

@andreszarta

Thanks for the link upthread to the Vincent Baker blog post. I've just finished reading through the comments. There's a lot in there that's interesting; here's one exchange that seemed relevant to this thread:

Vincent Baker: If we collaboratively address theme for three sessions in the middle of a campaign but not for the whole campaign, we weren't playing Narrativist the whole time, just for those three sessions. It's very important to note that it takes significant time to address theme: one character decision, one scene, is VERY RARELY sufficient. . . .

Narrativism, Simulationism, Gamism - they operate at a time scale you can generally measure in hours. They are not present in moment-to-moment decisions.

Thor Olavsrud: If it's impossible to isolate discrete decisions made in moment-to-moment play and determine whether they support one of the three CAs (and I don't mean to dispute your assertion that it's not), how can I possibly design rules that help make moment-to-moment decisions reliably create theme over the course of play?

Vincent Baker: Passionate character, turning point, fit opposition, rising conflict across a moral line, crisis, resolution. That's how.​

So in the case of 4e, how do we do this?

Passionate character requires using the right bits of PC build. I'm on record as saying that rangers and halflings are weaker, here, than (say) tieflings and warlocks. I'm prepared to accept that maybe someone could build a passionate halfing archer, but I've got my doubts.

Turning point - in 4e I think this most naturally comes from the setting rather than from the character's inner life. In my campaign it began as "order" (humans, settlements, victims of slavers) vs "the wild" (slavers, gnolls, threats to the human settlements, etc) and that gradually shifted to the Dusk War (is it here? and what does it mean?).

Fit opposition - I think Goblins, Gnolls, Duergar, Drow are great. I think kruthiks, Kobolds, swordwings and many fey are a bit weak. At least, they would require shifting one's conception of the turning point quite a bit from how the setting speaks to me by default.

Rising conflict across a moral line - this is the hard bit in D&D, I think. For D&D-ish epic fantasy, where it is the setting rather than the character's inner life that seeds conflict, I really have one well I keep going back to draw from (and these days I think of it in terms of Wagner's treatment in the Ring Cycle) - mortal choice in the context of the divine plan. I think 4e provides the material for this - see the creatures I mentioned above, the Dusk War, etc. And the ancient, and also recently fallen, empires, which record the working out of the divine plan so far and provide material for that rising conflict across a moral line.

On the other hand, every time a dragonborn NPC turns up to whom Arkhosia means nothing; every time the Nerathi ruins are mere colour but don't feed into some sort of choice about how the characters are oriented towards the working out of the destiny of things; the rising action across a moral line gets diluted, and we drift from story now into a type of high-action sim, or maybe some colourful gamism.

The 4e books - monster manuals, setting supplements, in my view the whole idea of the Draconomicon, etc - are full of this sort of crud that will undermine your "story now" play if you let it. The players have to build their passionate characters, but as GM I think you have to constantly be on the lookout, making sure you avoid this stuff that will just get in the way (even if it looks really fun and colourful).

I'm not saying things can't be done with it - because of some backstory (I can't recall now if I made it up or took it from a sourcebook) about the Raven Queen having reached a pact with some aberrant stars to hide her name, the star spawn took on a thematic resonance in my game that they don't necessarily bring by default. And maybe in someone else's game dragons could do that. But I'd still caution against getting sucked into the depths of the Draconomicon. (Open Grave and Demonomicon don't pose the same immediate risk, because the link between undead and demons (on the one hand) and the mortals-vs-divine-plan rising conflict across a moral line (on the other) tends to scream off every page.)

And finally, Resolution - the mechanical system will help make this collaborative, rather than "GM decides". But you have to be prepared to follow it where it leads. Big picture: let the players change things - the world, the planes, rulers, whether this Goblin shaman remains sworn to Maglubiyet, etc. Minutiae: follow the PbtA idea (which is also in BW and Torchbearer) of descriptive and prescriptive, even if this means changing PC sheets in ways the rules don't contemplate. Eg the human wizard multi-class invoker paragon path divine philosopher in my game, upon dying and being restored to life, was revealed as a deva invoker multi-class wizard paragon path divine philosopher, and in due course Sage of Ages. The rebuilt PC was mechanically legal, and closely emulated the old PC in many ways; but there is no rule of the game permitting this sort of rebuild. In due course I let his Sage of Ages stuff work with his invoker bits even though they're not Arcane because it would be pointless not to. When the PCs in our game chose themes (around 20th level - they weren't a thing in the rulebooks when we started) I designed two custom themes and adapted a third (Devil's Pawn) to make it a manifestation of the PC's Book Imp familiar.

Anyway, those are some thoughts prompted by reading Vincent and interlocutors!

 

[andreszarta]

I don't think I've seen Detect Secret Doors in play. I like your idea of using it to convert, say, a successful Dungeoneering check ("this seems like a place where secret doors might be") into an auto-success on Perception ("yep, and here it is"). The rulebooks have some examples of one skill check opening up another in a skill challenge, but this is a bit distinct because of its "director stance" nature.

Yay! Then in that case I think I get it. .

Anyway, those are some thoughts prompted by reading Vincent and interlocutors!

Brilliant!

in my view the whole idea of the Draconomicon, etc - are full of this sort of crud that will undermine your "story now" play if you let it.

Can we talk a little bit more about this? Do you mean stuff like this?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@andreszarta

Thanks for the link upthread to the Vincent Baker blog post. I've just finished reading through the comments. There's a lot in there that's interesting; here's one exchange that seemed relevant to this thread:

Vincent Baker: If we collaboratively address theme for three sessions in the middle of a campaign but not for the whole campaign, we weren't playing Narrativist the whole time, just for those three sessions. It's very important to note that it takes significant time to address theme: one character decision, one scene, is VERY RARELY sufficient. . . .​

​

Narrativism, Simulationism, Gamism - they operate at a time scale you can generally measure in hours. They are not present in moment-to-moment decisions.​

​

Thor Olavsrud: If it's impossible to isolate discrete decisions made in moment-to-moment play and determine whether they support one of the three CAs (and I don't mean to dispute your assertion that it's not), how can I possibly design rules that help make moment-to-moment decisions reliably create theme over the course of play?​

​

Vincent Baker: Passionate character, turning point, fit opposition, rising conflict across a moral line, crisis, resolution. That's how.​

So in the case of 4e, how do we do this?

Passionate character requires using the right bits of PC build. I'm on record as saying that rangers and halflings are weaker, here, than (say) tieflings and warlocks. I'm prepared to accept that maybe someone could build a passionate halfing archer, but I've got my doubts.

Turning point - in 4e I think this most naturally comes from the setting rather than from the character's inner life. In my campaign it began as "order" (humans, settlements, victims of slavers) vs "the wild" (slavers, gnolls, threats to the human settlements, etc) and that gradually shifted to the Dusk War (is it here? and what does it mean?).

Fit opposition - I think Goblins, Gnolls, Duergar, Drow are great. I think kruthiks, Kobolds, swordwings and many fey are a bit weak. At least, they would require shifting one's conception of the turning point quite a bit from how the setting speaks to me by default.

Rising conflict across a moral line - this is the hard bit in D&D, I think. For D&D-ish epic fantasy, where it is the setting rather than the character's inner life that seeds conflict, I really have one well I keep going back to draw from (and these days I think of it in terms of Wagner's treatment in the Ring Cycle) - mortal choice in the context of the divine plan. I think 4e provides the material for this - see the creatures I mentioned above, the Dusk War, etc. And the ancient, and also recently fallen, empires, which record the working out of the divine plan so far and provide material for that rising conflict across a moral line.

On the other hand, every time a dragonborn NPC turns up to whom Arkhosia means nothing; every time the Nerathi ruins are mere colour but don't feed into some sort of choice about how the characters are oriented towards the working out of the destiny of things; the rising action across a moral line gets diluted, and we drift from story now into a type of high-action sim, or maybe some colourful gamism.

The 4e books - monster manuals, setting supplements, in my view the whole idea of the Draconomicon, etc - are full of this sort of crud that will undermine your "story now" play if you let it. The players have to build their passionate characters, but as GM I think you have to constantly be on the lookout, making sure you avoid this stuff that will just get in the way (even if it looks really fun and colourful).

I'm not saying things can't be done with it - because of some backstory (I can't recall now if I made it up or took it from a sourcebook) about the Raven Queen having reached a pact with some aberrant stars to hide her name, the star spawn took on a thematic resonance in my game that they don't necessarily bring by default. And maybe in someone else's game dragons could do that. But I'd still caution against getting sucked into the depths of the Draconomicon. (Open Grave and Demonomicon don't pose the same immediate risk, because the link between undead and demons (on the one hand) and the mortals-vs-divine-plan rising conflict across a moral line (on the other) tends to scream off every page.)

And finally, Resolution - the mechanical system will help make this collaborative, rather than "GM decides". But you have to be prepared to follow it where it leads. Big picture: let the players change things - the world, the planes, rulers, whether this Goblin shaman remains sworn to Maglubiyet, etc. Minutiae: follow the PbtA idea (which is also in BW and Torchbearer) of descriptive and prescriptive, even if this means changing PC sheets in ways the rules don't contemplate. Eg the human wizard multi-class invoker paragon path divine philosopher in my game, upon dying and being restored to life, was revealed as a deva invoker multi-class wizard paragon path divine philosopher, and in due course Sage of Ages. The rebuilt PC was mechanically legal, and closely emulated the old PC in many ways; but there is no rule of the game permitting this sort of rebuild. In due course I let his Sage of Ages stuff work with his invoker bits even though they're not Arcane because it would be pointless not to. When the PCs in our game chose themes (around 20th level - they weren't a thing in the rulebooks when we started) I designed two custom themes and adapted a third (Devil's Pawn) to make it a manifestation of the PC's Book Imp familiar.

Anyway, those are some thoughts prompted by reading Vincent and interlocutors!

I'm not entirely certain what your criteria are for what adds or detracts from the 'moral line'. I found that 4e (basically inherited from previous generations of D&D) has a HUGE backlog of different thematic and lore possibilities and such. Even within the somewhat more focused scope of 4e vs earlier Great Wheel editions this can be a bit of a problem, yes. A lot of things CAN be used and can present some very nice support for 'moral confliction' and such, but you DO have to pick and choose. In my first campaign I pretty much left it open and kind of just grabbed stuff from across the spectrum as it struck me, often keying off something in character build/background.

It worked OK, actually. The campaign had a threat which I'd created (my version of a 'front' basically) that was a demon lord's machinations. Then one player decided to be a Starlock, so there was that whole sort of "plethora of icky other planar horrors with the trivial different backstories" thing, but we kind of kept the stars as more of a weird but unseen existential menace as opposed to something manifest. Later the character picked up a Hag Pact and then things got interesting, as a whole 'Hags vs Horrors' thing arose! Honestly, I think overall things kind of 'just worked', though you might consider that campaign more thematically diffuse than you prefer. Some epic vampires and a mysterious godlike being got hooked in, but I think it worked because each character had a very tight personal thing going. The thief had family issues, the wizard had a tragically flawed relationship with a paladin, the dwarf was trying to find his brother, the warlock had accidentally read his Dad's Necronomicon, and the cleric was a reincarnation of an ancient hero (whom everyone expected to be male, so sue her!).

Each of these conceptions arose, grew, and turned into new forms through play. The wizard (Eladrin) ran away from home, had various problematic family interactions, and then eventually met the Paladin. This was all great fun! And it got handily tied into more weighty themes like "when do you become responsible for someone else's actions because you didn't stop them" and such.

As I say, maybe our character arcs didn't go as much towards the grand themes, although the fate of the world did eventually figure heavily in the story!

 

[pemerton]

Can we talk a little bit more about this? Do you mean stuff like this?

View attachment 282144View attachment 282145

Yep. When I read that, the only bit that grabs me is the stuff linking a storm to a dead blue dragon; but straight away that makes me need to ignore the life span stuff, because I want my blue dragon storm to be in the ruins of Arkhosia, maybe with its "widow" dragon still living there, and I see nothing to be gained by committing to how many 100s or 1000s of years ago it was that Arkhosia fell!

I think it worked because each character had a very tight personal thing going.

It sounds like it might have been less setting-driven and more character-inner-life driven than my conception of default 4e.

 

[chaochou]

Elements ... that allow players to make and express choices that impose their will on the shared fiction.

This concept of imposing will on the fiction was one that soured me on D&D back in about 1983 - it was clear that all the fiction was the product of the GMs will, as only the GM was empowered to make anything happen in the game.

It took a long time to find systems which did something different (because it took many years before they were written).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It sounds like it might have been less setting-driven and more character-inner-life driven than my conception of default 4e.

Maybe. I also set my game in my campaign world, which has a ton of junk in it from old campaigns of yore. This helps in one way, because I weed out a lot of 4e stuff that doesn't quite fit. OTOH it also brought in a lot of weird stuff, like the Paladin that the Wizard fell for was actually a PC from the 1990s! Well, he got trapped in a stasis chamber...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This concept of imposing will on the fiction was one that soured me on D&D back in about 1983 - it was clear that all the fiction was the product of the GMs will, as only the GM was empowered to make anything happen in the game.

It took a long time to find systems which did something different (because it took many years before they were written).

Indeed, the '80s was largely a wasteland for Narrativist style play. I mean, beyond the fact that (at least in my neck of the woods) none of us were actually smart enough to invent it back then. Probably there were a ton of wargamers in 1974 who felt the same way about the whole concept of RPGs when they saw D&D GOD I ALMOST THOUGHT OF THAT 10 YEARS AGO! But nope, didn't happen. I mean, Toon existed, it isn't really a narrativist game exactly, but it COULD have pointed the way... We played, but we did not make the leap.

 

[andreszarta]

I'm interested now to hear what tools are you porting for other games (if at all) to run the game towards your intended experience. I have read a lot of Burning Wheel mentions associated with this style over the years. Has anyone hacked beliefs into the system? Any other ideas from other games?

 

[pemerton]

I'm interested now to hear what tools are you porting for other games (if at all) to run the game towards your intended experience. I have read a lot of Burning Wheel mentions associated with this style over the years. Has anyone hacked beliefs into the system? Any other ideas from other games?

I found the BW discussion of framing, fail forward and let it ride, and related stuff - especially in the Adventure Burner (and now in the Codex) pretty useful.

I also found the discussion of how to run contests in HeroWars and then in HeroQuest Revised pretty helpful.

And I drew on the Maelstrom Storytelling discussion of "quick takes" to help me make sharpen my thinking about secondary skills in a skill challenge.

I wouldn't say that in any case I ported/hacked in a full-blown mechanic (like Beliefs). I did require each player, at the start of the campaign, to establish one loyalty for their PC, and to have a reason to be ready to fight Goblins - but this was purely to support me in framing/consequence narration, not any sort of mechanical thing.

Also, when we started a Dark Sun campaign, I used a version of "kickers" to establish initial framing. It worked pretty well!

TL;DR - for me it was more about GMing techniques and ways of doing framing and consequences, than mechanical hacks.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I am really enjoying this thread

But

I played 4e, and ran a bit of it (Scales of War for my kids)... And then started to shift my attention to Dungeon World et al when tney came out... And I feel like what I read in the 4e PHB and DMG (tbh, like many, I only read the DMG for the magic items) doesn't exactly support this play.

I know I already asked about the Narrativist background text; but now I'd like to ask what 4e texts support this style of play? Hopefully they are among the texts I already have. Sadly I don't have any of the Essentials books (and probably won't seek those out...)

 

[pemerton]

I'd like to ask what 4e texts support this style of play?

The description of the the GM's role in the PHB (around p 8 or 9).

The stuff on player-authored quests (in the PHB and DMG).

All the stuff in the PHB and DMG that presents play in terms of encounters (either combat or skill challenge; there is also a nod to puzzles), plus the mechanics that support this (short rest recovery, the general absence of durations and healing times and the like that get in the way of framing scenes and treating the scene/encounter as the basic unit of play).

The tight relationship between encounters, XP earned, levels gained and hence treasure parcels collected (which also allows a complete decoupling of treasure from looting): these allow the game to be approached in a scene-framed fashion without anyone needing to worry about how that will impact progression, rewards etc.

The capacity the PC builds give to impact the fiction, especially via choices about when to "go all out" (daily powers; action points).

The approach to setting, which focuses on key tropes, themes and concepts (the ancient empires, ancient rivalries, the Dawn War, etc, etc), which anticipates DW's "draw maps, leave blanks".

Probably other stuff too, but the above is a start.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

The description of the the GM's role in the PHB (around p 8 or 9).

The stuff on player-authored quests (in the PHB and DMG).

All the stuff in the PHB and DMG that presents play in terms of encounters (either combat or skill challenge; there is also a nod to puzzles), plus the mechanics that support this (short rest recovery, the general absence of durations and healing times and the like that get in the way of framing scenes and treating the scene/encounter as the basic unit of play).

The tight relationship between encounters, XP earned, levels gained and hence treasure parcels collected (which also allows a complete decoupling of treasure from looting): these allow the game to be approached in a scene-framed fashion without anyone needing to worry about how that will impact progression, rewards etc.

The capacity the PC builds give to impact the fiction, especially via choices about when to "go all out" (daily powers; action points).

The approach to setting, which focuses on key tropes, themes and concepts (the ancient empires, ancient rivalries, the Dawn War, etc, etc), which anticipates DW's "draw maps, leave blanks".

Probably other stuff too, but the above is a start.

Awesome, thank you so much!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Since there's a bunch of Forge fans here, if you want a book about that era, it's on sale right now...

Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012

This book provides an introduction to the Forge, an online discussion site for tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) design, play, and publication active during the first years of the 21st century. The book offers an accessible account of the Forge’s development as a site of participatory culture.

link.springer.com

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I found the BW discussion of framing, fail forward and let it ride, and related stuff - especially in the Adventure Burner (and now in the Codex) pretty useful.

I also found the discussion of how to run contests in HeroWars and then in HeroQuest Revised pretty helpful.

And I drew on the Maelstrom Storytelling discussion of "quick takes" to help me make sharpen my thinking about secondary skills in a skill challenge.

I wouldn't say that in any case I ported/hacked in a full-blown mechanic (like Beliefs). I did require each player, at the start of the campaign, to establish one loyalty for their PC, and to have a reason to be ready to fight Goblins - but this was purely to support me in framing/consequence narration, not any sort of mechanical thing.

Also, when we started a Dark Sun campaign, I used a version of "kickers" to establish initial framing. It worked pretty well!

TL;DR - for me it was more about GMing techniques and ways of doing framing and consequences, than mechanical hacks.

Yeah, here's what I remember from my 1st 4e Campaign:
Dwarf Fighter - his brother and father are missing and he wants to find them. They are weapon smiths, his family business.
Eladrin Wizard - she ran away from home and wants to do stuff, this was the shallowest of the characters I would say,
Half-Elf Starlock - the son of a 'wizard' from the far south, he read his father's Necronomicon and accidentally became a warlock. He is looking for his mother.
Human Rogue - has a long backstory about her noble family who specialize in 'special ops', assigned to escort the last PC.
Human Cleric - brought up as an orphan by monks. There is a prophecy that she is 'chosen', but we don't know for what...

This is really pretty typical stuff. We hadn't really sorted out the whole 4e process of play yet (also we had just PHB1, no backgrounds, no themes, etc.). This did work though. The Starlock was basically involuntarily pacted to SOMETHING, and he was often torn between the fun power he got from it, and the obvious horrible danger. That was fun, he just kept getting in deeper! The Dwarf had to choose between rescuing his brother and saving his country, a choice he wasn't very good at making! The Cleric had the most fun, but it was basically just getting decked out in the artifact-grade equipment of a long-dead hero, while constantly being told she was not upholding her 'monk' vows, that one turned a bit one-dimensional. The Wizard got into all sorts of rebellious boyfriend trouble and then got mixed up in Eladrin politics, which created some very fun allegiance problems.

I am not sure I would say this game really started out exactly 'story now', as I borrowed a bunch of old meta-plot from my '90s 2e campaign, but it all just ended up being thematic fodder, essentially, so it got there.

The other 2 long-running 4e campaigns were much lighter on prep and more driven by character build option extrapolation. The Elf bow Ranger pissed off the wrong people and got himself exiled from the tribe trying to help fix an incursion of ghost lycanthropes from the Shadowfell. The pixie wizard learned that there is more than humorous pranks in the real world (though I'm not sure pixies ever really learn). The other characters accidentally became a demon-worshipping cult when they stole a treasure from the pixies (and unleashed a bullywug plague to boot). They spent a whole bunch of the campaign after that trying to prove they weren't bad guys. There were a whole bunch of others. By the end prep was basically dead, I'd just show up with books and a few stat blocks I thought would work printed out. lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am really enjoying this thread

But

I played 4e, and ran a bit of it (Scales of War for my kids)... And then started to shift my attention to Dungeon World et al when tney came out... And I feel like what I read in the 4e PHB and DMG (tbh, like many, I only read the DMG for the magic items) doesn't exactly support this play.

I know I already asked about the Narrativist background text; but now I'd like to ask what 4e texts support this style of play? Hopefully they are among the texts I already have. Sadly I don't have any of the Essentials books (and probably won't seek those out...)

Well, think of a skill challenge as an encounter-level intent-focused resolution mechanism. First of all WITHIN the framework of an SC things work quite well in a Story Now kind of format, the PCs do something, someone makes a skill check, the story changes somehow, a success/failure/something gets tallied, and then the GM repeats the loop, describing any new/changed circumstance, etc. At the end you have either total success, success with some degree of complication/cost, or outright failure. I consider this whole thing to be narrativist at heart, with its 'try to say yes and roll the dice' structure, etc.

Beyond that, the characters themselves, naturally, have a pretty rich set of descriptors. I mean, you COULD say that about 3.x characters as well, but the 4e ones seem to be cleaner and better focused, and all of them are on a pretty equal footing in terms of narrative potency. You have keywords, which both the players and GM can use to associate things or key off of to drive situations, as well as all the feats, powers, rituals, class, race, theme, background, PP, ED, etc. Every one of those is tied into the overall lore, the framework of cosmic order and cosmic disorder that sits in the background and lets you throw up new story elements on the fly, and tie them to the characters very easily.

And the game is transparent. You know how encounters are constructed, you know what items are available and get to at least suggest how they will be factored in as a player. You can, and are encouraged to, author your own quests outright as a player. It is very easy to move narrative authority around in this game. The heavily scene-based architecture of play, with its 'skip to the fun part' ethos has a very PbtA kind of feel to it.

So, in terms of specific words that say "do this narrativist thing, this is a narrativist game" 4e doesn't really come out in so many words. There are bits here and there, but its not a game that is pushing an agenda, its just a game that plays exceedingly well when you look at it from a certain story now/narrativist point of view. And I cannot believe that was an accident. Its a very deliberate game in terms of designing to its goals, it didn't 'just happen' to work out this way. I'm also sure it was intended to work reasonably well as a neo-trad or trad sort of game as well, with the possibility for players to assume varying degrees of authority for different parts of what happens at the table. I mean, you can pre-plot entire story arcs if you want, along with exactly where the PCs builds will end up, etc. Or you can simply sit down at the table with zero myth and zero prep and 'see what happens' with total table transparency.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Well, think of a skill challenge as an encounter-level intent-focused resolution mechanism. First of all WITHIN the framework of an SC things work quite well in a Story Now kind of format, the PCs do something, someone makes a skill check, the story changes somehow, a success/failure/something gets tallied, and then the GM repeats the loop, describing any new/changed circumstance, etc. At the end you have either total success, success with some degree of complication/cost, or outright failure. I consider this whole thing to be narrativist at heart, with its 'try to say yes and roll the dice' structure, etc.

I haven't even read the rest of your post yet because my MIND JUST EXPLODED.

Here's why: This is exactly how I thought skill challenges worked, and how I ran them: You want to find out what's up with the rogue thieves guild faction? Ok, what do each of you do? Got it - bard you go chat some folks up at the tavern; fighter and druid, you go down to the docks and intimidate/rough up some sailors; rogue you try to infiltrate; wizard you go to the library to see if maybe there's a greater power behind things - Great! let's do some roleplay and then let's roll and see how it goes. Depending on the various outcomes, either you guys get what you want, you get what you want but there are some complications (there's a bunch of sailors chasing your fighter and druid across town and your wizard may be possessed), or you guys are pretty much hosed. After which I follow with of course: what do you do now?

So each player checks in with their intent, then we do a bunch of jump cuts to play out each scene and most scenes end up with a die roll which may lead to a cliff-hanger as I jump to the next scene - wash rinse repeat... And maybe we have some combats in the middle. Also the thing is - the players tell me what their characters do, not what skill check they are angling for. And then I'll tell them what skill check is required based on what the PCs do.

I didn't actually in my head think about whether the skill challenge is easy, hard, super challenging (or whatever the gradations are). But that framework seems like it would be helpful; and if I ever ran 4e again I might be more explicit in my head

But I can see how a lot of D&D'ers coming from 3e (which I never played) this may have not made sense to them. so, the reason my mind exploded is I never really understood why lots of people said they didn't understand skill challenges. Until today... until today

 

[Pedantic]

But I can see how a lot of D&D'ers coming from 3e (which I never played) this may have not made sense to them. so, the reason my mind exploded is I never really understood why lots of people said they didn't understand skill challenges. Until today... until today

Worse, such people (like me) found it very frustrating that they couldn't make function calls to specific skill usages, because previously the game was all about trying to find ways to leverage those to get what you wanted. Skills mapped to discrete actions, not to narrative approaches.

 

[andreszarta]

The Starlock was basically involuntarily pacted to SOMETHING, and he was often torn between the fun power he got from it, and the obvious horrible danger. That was fun, he just kept getting in deeper! The Dwarf had to choose between rescuing his brother and saving his country, a choice he wasn't very good at making! The Cleric had the most fun, but it was basically just getting decked out in the artifact-grade equipment of a long-dead hero, while constantly being told she was not upholding her 'monk' vows, that one turned a bit one-dimensional. The Wizard got into all sorts of rebellious boyfriend trouble and then got mixed up in Eladrin politics, which created some very fun allegiance problems.

Wow!! These all sound awesome.
I want to understand a bit more about how you as a GM managed the spotlight for all these storylines from a prep/procedure standpoint? Can you tell us a bit more about how many of these individual plots advanced within the same session? Was it that each session one of these threads got most of the spotlight, or did you jump around more freely? How closely did you follow the notion of "the party stays together"?

By the end prep was basically dead, I'd just show up with books and a few stat blocks I thought would work printed out. lol.

Ah! This is the dream.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I haven't even read the rest of your post yet because my MIND JUST EXPLODED.

Here's why: This is exactly how I thought skill challenges worked, and how I ran them: You want to find out what's up with the rogue thieves guild faction? Ok, what do each of you do? Got it - bard you go chat some folks up at the tavern; fighter and druid, you go down to the docks and intimidate/rough up some sailors; rogue you try to infiltrate; wizard you go to the library to see if maybe there's a greater power behind things - Great! let's do some roleplay and then let's roll and see how it goes. Depending on the various outcomes, either you guys get what you want, you get what you want but there are some complications (there's a bunch of sailors chasing your fighter and druid across town and your wizard may be possessed), or you guys are pretty much hosed. After which I follow with of course: what do you do now?

So each player checks in with their intent, then we do a bunch of jump cuts to play out each scene and most scenes end up with a die roll which may lead to a cliff-hanger as I jump to the next scene - wash rinse repeat... And maybe we have some combats in the middle. Also the thing is - the players tell me what their characters do, not what skill check they are angling for. And then I'll tell them what skill check is required based on what the PCs do.

I didn't actually in my head think about whether the skill challenge is easy, hard, super challenging (or whatever the gradations are). But that framework seems like it would be helpful; and if I ever ran 4e again I might be more explicit in my head

But I can see how a lot of D&D'ers coming from 3e (which I never played) this may have not made sense to them. so, the reason my mind exploded is I never really understood why lots of people said they didn't understand skill challenges. Until today... until today

Right, I think the majority of classic GM-centered game GMs are simply going to look at it as a substitute for a combat, roughly speaking. And then they run into this problem, because a combat takes some arbitrary amount of checks to adjudicate, there's no fixed number. In essence it is like a clock, and you take a bit off it every time you hit. So there's this 'problem' where they've built a story, an SC, but now it has to go exactly a certain way, because they have essentially exactly as much story as there are successes required. Its kinda OK if there's a fail, they just say "OK, try again!" but then what happens when instead all the PCs decide to head straight down to the gang's headquarters and rough them up? Its a different narrative! The classic GM has to either railroad, or now figure out exactly how many successes to mete out, because he's making it all up, but it has to fit inside a certain plot 'box' that was this one encounter. I'm not saying it can't work, I think its still a pretty fair system, and quite good at anything where you can spin out the action, such as a chase.

But it really only comes into its own in a more story now kind of setup like you're saying. There was one 4e campaign that had a lot of action in 'pirate town' and a lot of it was along these lines. The party would split up, rejoin, try something, get in trouble, get out of trouble, and finally get what they came for, or sometimes they got run out of town (the Dragonborn Sorcerer was pretty much persona non grata in Pirate Town, he had to do an SC just to get in the gate!).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Worse, such people (like me) found it very frustrating that they couldn't make function calls to specific skill usages, because previously the game was all about trying to find ways to leverage those to get what you wanted. Skills mapped to discrete actions, not to narrative approaches.

Yeah, 4e doesn't REALLY worry about stuff like "do you know how to fletch arrows?" I mean, you CAN actually get that out of backgrounds, but you have to do a bit of deciding what exactly is worth a proficiency bonus from your background, can you actually fletch arrows, or are you more just a good judge of a fine arrow? But my feeling is most action-focused games are getting off into the weeds if you are spending much time on that sort of question. So, I think 4e is not really a game that is meant to deal with "an ordinary day in the life of" kind of stuff. That's also pretty typical of narrativist games, most of them 'bring you to the point of the action' pretty aggressively. So I think it was in terms of skills themselves that I first had the idea that 4e was this type of game, that they're more like 'knacks' or 'approaches' than actual skills and thus serve a radically different purpose than the 3.x ones. 5e puzzles me a bit, as it has a similarly short skill list, but lacks a lot of the rest of the narrativist traits. It almost feels like they might as well have gone back to the 3.x concept of skills. OTOH at least the short list is mechanically more robust.