D&D General Skill challenges: action resolution that centres the fiction

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the reason that SC's work for some and don't work for others is because they are the solution to a problem/desire only experienced by some groups. The main problem/desire they seem to solve is the need for a pre-determined & closed point of success to a series of skill checks used to obtain a goal. Outside of you need X successes before Y failures they don't really bring anything else to the table that can't be provided by a DM calling for skill checks and letting the fiction flow from what the resolution is organically.

It seems the want and/or need for this is driven primarily by having a DM/group who is not able to bring a series of checks to address obstacles to an organic length & resolution (based on the resulting fiction) that is agreeable to the group without some kind of hard delimiter... (or the need to have official rewards based on said delimiter, though I would say this is secondary). Honestly I thought I didn't really get SC's at first but the more I tried to get them, the more I realized I didn't fall into this group and was trying to make use of a tool that didn't really present an advantage for me and my group, but instead hit me with constraints that ultimately felt unnecessary and worked against the adaptability and possible resulting fiction of my players solutions and ingenuity.

Yeah, but there's another dimension to it. When, as GM, I'm looking at the situation and saying to myself "well, fictionally I could always just say you got out of the mine", say after a couple checks. OTOH my SC framework says "no, no, there need to be 12 successes here, or 3 failures" and now I'm going to keep building. I mean, I'd probably never, in 5e, bothered to come up with the mine carts, or the goblin jumping across, or whatever.

 

[pemerton]

What is the mechanical process that is used to decide when combat is resolved? If you say zeroing out of hit points then it would mean no NPC or monster can surrender, run away, etc.

The mechanics for resolving a combat, in D&D, canonically involve attack and hit point rolls. In WoTC editions they also involve positioning. In TSR editions they also involve morale.

Is this surprising or contentious? Hence, as I posted

This element of finality is the way in which [skill challenges] resemble the basic method D&D uses to resolve combat. Instead of the GM deciding when the situation is resolved, a mechanical process is used to do this.

I guess if someone resolves their D&D combat primarily via GM free narration rather than the use of attack and hit point rolls, positioning, morale, etc they might not be familiar with what I've called the basic method D&D uses to resolve combat. But I doubt that you're such a person! Given your positing history, I'm pretty confident you're familiar with these mechanical procedures that the D&D rulebooks set out for resolving combat.

 

[Aldarc]

"In a skill challenge, your goal is to accumulate a certain number of successful skill checks before rolling too many failures. Powers you use might give you bonuses on your checks, make some checks unnecessary, or otherwise help you through the challenge. Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter."

Your goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (usually in the form of successful skill checks) before you get too many defeats (failed checks).

Its has already set the method to resolve the problem, because it is designed with the resolution first. in mind, that is how bad and contradictory that system is as written.

It's not the resolution that is defined first, but, rather, the stakes and possible consequences of success and failure. The actual resolution is determined through the process of play.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In certain situations I will use a SC, I have even posted my versions of them on here. They are a tool for me - like Skill Checks in 3.5e, Fail Forward, Yes but...etc
I'm just curious though, for the crowd with the style play to find out how does that line up with pre-planned SC?

 

[clearstream]

Alright, so here is my takeaway of your above:

* Regardless of game, GMs are always oriented toward unraveling and discovering (this is a large area of disagreement).

So I don't agree with either of the above bullet-points and I folded that lack of agreement into my Starting Point > Obstacles Array > Endpoint model above. Some games and techniques require a GM be oriented toward unraveling and discovering. Some are absolutely the inverse (the GMs aren't discovering or unraveling...if play is, in any quantity outside of extreme exception, unmoored from what the GM already knows, then something has gone wrong).

I can clarify my meaning here. When I say "always oriented toward unraveling and discovering" I don't mean anything beyond those words, and I do mean what is contained in those words. First, I don't mean that the GM is doing nothing but unraveling and discovering: they are doing those things, and other things at the same time, or interleaved. Secondly, I mean both words fairly literally.

What does a GM always discover?

• What players say
• What the say in response to what players say, that they would not have said otherwise
• What the dice say (the outcomes of any random processes in the game)
• What happens, were it not for what the players said, they said, and the dice said
• What we hold true now over and above what we held true prior to those sort of events

Nothing about being moored to something you know necessarily gets in the way of the above discovering. What might GM unravel? I mean unravel in the following (actually quite literal) senses

• Untangling, e.g. when helping the group say who is doing what / is capable of what
• Straightening out, e.g. when properly applying the game text
• Clearing up, e.g. helping the group get clearer on how things stand in their game (fiction + system)
• Resolving, e.g. guiding the group to use the mechanics, and helping interpret / narrate the results
• Working out, e.g. helping understand puzzling elements, and their implications for play

Again, I think nothing about being moored to something you know gets in the way of the above.

Arbitrary fiat doesn't have to be "harmful" (in fact, it might be necessary for some forms of play) and the orientation of player :

* (I already talked about the value judgement above, but I'm going to talk about the actual process of play here) GM Fiat that is systemically and principally unconstrained (whenever you see me use "arbitrary", this is how I mean it...unbounded by narrowing game text constraints, driven by personal whim) is necessarily harmful to play.

I think - and please correct me if I am mistaken - that when you write "arbitrary GM-fiat" you mean in the case where it is not constrained by system or principles. Where that trips me up is that when I think about the similar practice, I am in fact assuming the case where it is constrained. Something I probably see differently from others is that I count an agent as having "fiat" even if they exercise it within boundaries, provided that within those boundaries they are unconstrained. Anyway, it turns out we're not applying the term to the the same behaviour or practice.

I also get tripped up on phrases like "necessarily harmful to play", but I think that can be easily untangled. As you know, I see freeform play as holding high virtue - fast-flowing, intensely engaging, highly responsive to player choices. Therefore I'm backed into a corner if one is going to say that...

"unbounded by narrowing game text constraints, driven by personal whim) is necessarily harmful to play."

Fortunately, that's not all you say!

Some games and techniques require a GM be systemically and principally constrained such that their decision-making cannot be mistaken for unbounded, personal whim (while in the middle of play or upon review or even in their own head!).

This I can get onboard with. Some "games and techniques" - indeed yes! Some very fruitful and enjoyable games and techniques, well worth playing. If that is the "play" we're saying is harmed, then okay!

At every moment their thinking is anchored to/captured by multiple constraining parameters (along multiple, often converging, axes). Whereas other games and techniques rely upon the GM being unconstrained and work their way artfully through play by feel and whim. They aren't incorporating various parameters of constraint in their cognitive workspace. They're just "doing their thing."

Would you agree that there are unfruitful limits in both directions. I feel like overly-constraining play can be harmful to it, just as much as going so far freeform that there is no purchase for players in the fiction.

The Conflict Matrix model I composed above relies upon agreeing with my directly above paragraph and disagreeing with the two bullet points above (which was my takeaway of your position).

To sum up, I think my argument in the first bullet does no harm to the matrix. Really, the matrix requires and produces very much the discovering and unravelling that I am picturing. The second bullet then seems like a case of meaning different things by the same term, with probably a touch of reflex on my side born out of my love of freeform RPG.

 

[clearstream]

It's not the resolution that is defined first, but, rather, the stakes and possible consequences of success and failure. The actual resolution is determined through the process of play.

I was thinking about @FallenRX's concerns about railroading. (A term that unfortunately continues to be used widely here and elsewhere.)

Suppose a GM prepared an SC and funnelled players into it. Well, that would be railroading: it's all worked out. The PCs are just rolling dice and perhaps appending narrative description. But this is not what I think the OP is going for. The SC is reverted to as a technique when the circumstances in play call for it. It's not all worked out, it's only established when in system terms the situation will count as resolved (just as combat is resolved by "ticking down" the hit points of foes.)

Once the situation is resolved in system terms, that generally flows into what happens next (just as after cutting down the ghouls, we're able to enter the tomb... or whatever.) I believe the risk exists of a dissonance where the acts don't really seem to sum to the resolution. This is where combat differs from SCs markedly: combat binds what sums up to resolution to the game world state. That would seem to suggest that the solution for SCs is to ensure that the implicated acts not be predetermined, but must follow a rubric that they add to the narration everything needed to bend the game world state toward resolution (i.e. requiring apposite description from players of what they do, and narrating results in the same direction.)

I believe @FallenRX also raised that concern. Does what I say cover it, or what are other thoughts on that risk?

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is where I found the style of game I and my players enjoy bumping hard against SC's. SC's strongly discourage skilled or clever gameplay because there is no reward for engaging in it if the DM sticks to the system.

I'm not sure they strongly discourage. Surely, like everything else it would be left to DM fiat which is something the more traditional style play advocates.

Instead, IME, it encourages one to engage in fictional bargaining with the DM as you try to justify a numerically good skill to use. This is where the feeling, again for me, that it's an exercise in rolling dice with little to no regard for the fiction comes in (In actuality it's little regard for what I call appealing or appropriate fiction). Instead of seeing logical or even narratively appealing fiction during SC's, I instead saw mildly annoying to totally absurd justifications for how a particular skill usage should be allowed during the SC.

From my experience it requires a great level of mastery to pull it off well, so that it doesn't seem like an exercise in die-rolling. I use SC very very sparingly and only when I think I have found narratively appealing fiction for their use which is entertaining, interesting and smart. And these days its always pre-planned and I have no issues with player innovativeness raking in some or all of the successes - as more often than not it usually costs resources which is fine.

 

[clearstream]

The point of a skill challenge is to marry fiction to mechanics, just like combat rules do. But this doesn't require much beyond, "You need to get a certain number of mechanical successes over failures, however you can justify it in the fiction." Which was pretty much the thrust of my post. Skills that don't apply well according to the fiction will have less effect or have higher success thresholds. There's no need to spend an entire page of an adventure module listing specific skills and how they apply (and especially not in what order), when that stuff is pretty much second nature to most players at the table in play. But the core of translating the fiction to the mechanics remains.

That's one place clocks can work pretty well - maybe better than SCs - as one can offer a different number of ticks attached to how impactful and successful each application of a skill is.

 

[clearstream]

I think the reason that SC's work for some and don't work for others is because they are the solution to a problem/desire only experienced by some groups. The main problem/desire they seem to solve is the need for a pre-determined & closed point of success to a series of skill checks used to obtain a goal. Outside of you need X successes before Y failures they don't really bring anything else to the table that can't be provided by a DM calling for skill checks and letting the fiction flow from what the resolution is organically.

It seems the want and/or need for this is driven primarily by having a DM/group who is not able to bring a series of checks to address obstacles to an organic length & resolution (based on the resulting fiction) that is agreeable to the group without some kind of hard delimiter... (or the need to have official rewards based on said delimiter, though I would say this is secondary). Honestly I thought I didn't really get SC's at first but the more I tried to get them, the more I realized I didn't fall into this group and was trying to make use of a tool that didn't really present an advantage for me and my group, but instead hit me with constraints that ultimately felt unnecessary and worked against the adaptability and possible resulting fiction of my players solutions and ingenuity.

I'm in a very similar place. I follow a different process of converging to resolutions that everyone agrees must follow.

I like 4e, and I like much of the thinking around SCs. I think they risk mechanistic play... but then revert to @Manbearcat's coment that it's all a game of craps if you strip out the improv part. I suspect clocks better cover the use case those who value a systemically mandated point of resolution have in mind, while also for various reasons working better for folk who don't have (or don't always have) that requirement.

 

[pemerton]

if anyone wants in example of what a skill challenge actually can look like in motion

You prompted me to reread the whole thing. I'd forgotten how close Thurgon and Lucann came to blows!