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

[pemerton]

The bolded section is just wrong. I have no idea what you mean by "when a conflict is over" without the framework of a skill challenge or timer. Whatever is happening is happening, and if a player wants a particular outcome, they have a bunch of actions available to change the world to their liking. A conflict ends when the PC has gotten the thing they wanted, or it is no longer possible for them to get the thing they wanted.

This is the thing I keep talking about, where the PC sets the victory condition, and gets to change it whenever they want. They decide what it is they want, and then spend their available actions to get to that point. The story of a given campaign is the ex post facto stringing together of that PC chasing each of those goals and recording what happened from point A to point B along the way.

More to the point though, removing the GM from resolution is the primary goal of such a system. Actions have discreet effects and consequences, so you can figure out what happens by plugging a PC choice into the mechanics for resolving that action, and be handed a result. Then you reevaluate the state of the world, any other parties that can take actions do so, and you repeat. Continue until everyone is dead or the PC has gotten whatever it is they wanted done.

The bolded bit of your post is the explanation of the bolded bit of @Manbearcat's that you have said is wrong.

Or in other words: in the approach you are setting out, it is the GM who decides the elements of the fiction, the causal relationships between those elements, the "state of the world" after each action is declared and resolved.

Return to the castle infiltration example:

A PC bribes an off-duty guard to learn the password: Does the guard know the pass word? Has the password changed since the guard was last briefed?

The PC dresses up as a guard: How strict is uniform compliance in this castle? What accents are regarded as foreign or otherwise suspicious?

The PC enters the castle: Is there someone in the castle who recognises the PC from when they were shopping at the market two days ago without a disguise?

Meanwhile, another PC scales the castle wall on the "lightly guarded because impregnable side": Is a guard looking in their direction? If they throw a rock over the wall to make a noise and distract the guard, does it land on someone's head, thus raising the alarm rather than causing a distractions? When the PC wants to drop down into the courtyard having scaled the wall, is there anyone there who might notice them?​

On the approach you're describing, the GM has to make decisions to every one of those questions, and each one of those decisions has a big effect on the players' chances of having their PCs succeed. On a skill challenge approach, the skill challenge resolution settles them all. (And similarly in other closed-scene resolution frameworks.)

 

[niklinna]

Your acting like the terms of success isnt something the DM arbitrarily made up beforehand using skill challenges, in fact i trust this even less, because how the heck are you making up terms for success or how long it would take, before i ever even put forward a solution as a player, what kinda of nonsense is that.

Mm, no, I'm not acting like that. I've pointed out several times that skill challenges needn't be scripted—once again, I have pointed out that such a take is, at best, a misinterpretation of skill challenges. Skill challenges needn't have specific win/lose conditions either set in advance or set in stone. I haven't said those can only be set by the GM. I have said they can change with the fiction—in the very post you just replied to, in fact.

4e skill challenges at core specify number of successes and number of failures for win/lose conditions, and have some other details that could have been explained better, and some that have set bad precedents and been poorly interpreted. Other systems that do something essentially the same are more up front about being highly dynamic, GM- and player-driven, and transparent to everyone at the table.

I also have this terrible dislike of this super weird mistrust in the DM, and its equally to me as nonsensical, you mistrust the DM to make judgment calls in the moment but you trust him enough to make terms of success and resolution before anything solution by the players was put forward? What kinda crap is that?

I don't mistrust the DM, but if everything is transparent, things are just smoother and I don't have to poke around in the dark just to figure out what needs to be done. As for the "crap", that's something your imagination came up with, not mine.

 

[clearstream]

Alright, at this point I'm going to describe the opening situation (the topographical features, distance and terrain, between the Druid and the Ankheg's territory in the Weald). The player will then tell me how they're proposing to surmount this obstacle. If the Druid has the Overland Flight Ritual, then they spend the 100 Coin and make a Nature check to determine Overland Speed. I'd go with 24 or lower and that is 1 Success (the lowest rate) and 25 + and 2 successes. Its an auto-success regardless as they're investing in this resource (and did at character build) precisely to surmount this kind of obstacle. It just depends on if its 1 or 2.

I'm not sure how important this is, but isn't the 2 successes advantage reserved for challenges of complexity 3 or higher? And then, one advantage can be offered for each success needed over six. That would make the result here always an automatic 1 success.

There were a few versions of SCs over the years. I took another glance at the books, but I can't find anything for that advantage below complexity 3.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure how important this is, but isn't the 2 successes advantage reserved for challenges of complexity 3 or higher?

@Manbearcat is allowing an automatic success for the ritual (DMG and DMG2) plus an additional possible success on a successful skill check.

 

[clearstream]

@Manbearcat is allowing an automatic success for the ritual (DMG and DMG2) plus an additional possible success on a successful skill check.

I understand the automatic success rationale. The game text I can find provides for additional possible successes on successful skill checks, but only for complexity 3+.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Okay, this is legitimate confusion on my part. You're suggesting that the failure states for skill challenges might result in other minigames irrespective of the larger skill challenge, which makes sense and is not a scale on which I'd considered the use of a skill challenge.

I don't think it really answers any of my concerns, but it's interesting. If you generalized the skill challenge structure away from resolution and up to adventure design, thus that your "failures" and "successes" aren't so much about individual roles but generic obstacles, I'd be more onboard. Though again, I don't know that I'd find the particular timing structure useful so much as restrictive.

I think we need to dredge up a lot of old 4e threads for you, sir. This is all roughly 2010 vintage stuff, maybe even 2009! The SC as a journey framework for instance, that was one of my EARLIEST innovations! I mean, its not like I was even close to the only one that thought of that one, I think there were a few articles floating around on that topic too. It was right about there that the whole 'framing the challenge' and 'zooming in and out' really thoroughly got in my mind and I started to realize that it is mostly a regulating and pacing mechanism. See, your thought about the SC and how it 'structures all challenges in the same way' or as @FallenRX seems to think 'removes the agency' is not too far off. Its not a weakness though, its a strength. Maybe you can get someone to run some 4e that knows how it is done, you'd learn something.

I really want to clarify that I don't like Blades, I've played it once, and found it profoundly disempowering, as the entire game is bent on pushing you toward increasing complication. I think there's a separate line of discussion contrasting SCs and BitD clocks, which is not a race I have a dog in, and if I had to pick, would probably push for skill challenges, as they at least don't include "success at a cost" as a possible outcome on every roll.

Of course BitD is a game ABOUT complications and relations, and about weaknesses and vices, and a place where the world is screwed and you play out your tiny little part in the very end of history (most likely, the setting doesn't really include any meta-plot). Its a niche game. Clocks and the whole position/effect setup works though, quite well. It can be generalized to a lot more than BitD. However, I do think it is a system that does episodic stuff best, overall. OTOH I haven't gone around and studied a lot of the 'FitD' variants that are out there. @Manbearcat could probably give you a rundown on some of them, lol.

When I played Blades, it captured exactly the inverse feeling I want from a heist, in that it eliminates the fun careful planning bit, and then sets up incentives thus that you can never actually benefit from having been prepared because the entire game is structured to keep sending you complications. I spent that whole game trying to figure out how not to trigger rolls.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Your acting like the terms of success isnt something the DM arbitrarily made up beforehand using skill challenges, in fact i trust this even less, because how the heck are you making up terms for success or how long it would take, before i ever even put forward a solution as a player, what kinda of nonsense is that.

I also have this terrible dislike of this super weird mistrust in the DM, and its equally to me as nonsensical, you mistrust the DM to make judgment calls in the moment but you trust him enough to make terms of success and resolution before anything solution by the players was put forward? What kinda crap is that?

It isn't mistrust at all. The only people I play in a game with are people I am pretty sure will be able to do a good job. I don't want SCs or whatever to 'protect me from them' I want them to free everyone up from having to worry about that aspect of play and get on with the interesting part.

 

[clearstream]

I’m struggling to understand the objections about skill challenges that don’t apply to more “organic” play. What makes play “organic”? Keeping things from the players? Concealing information in order to avoid committing to clear states of success or failure?

To my understanding the issue of inscrutability is orthogonal to what is intended by organic play.

Reading the arguments, I think play characterised as organic is that which assiduously follows player choices oriented toward the fiction, so that no system minigame can presage an outcome. Inorganic play would then be that in which a system minigame presaged an outcome which the fiction would be bent toward regardless. As others have noted, it's hard to say how inorganic play is precisely different from the usual state of affairs for roleplaying game as game. Seeing as we ordinarily accept that system will bend our fiction. I think that must be found in the treatment of player choices... the possibly implied inability to go off-piste.

And doing the opposite has been called railroading? Really?

I think what is being characterised as railroading is that there will be lists of applicable skills (primary and secondary) and a preset count of successes/failures, that will resolve the SC. That framework is put in place at the start of the SC. From there, it might be feared that regardless of what they describe doing, characters are on a railroad.

 

[Manbearcat]

Is this from DMG 1, DMG 2 or the Rules Compendium?

Late 2009 WotC errata shortly after DMG2 release which was released about about 11 months after core and about 12.5 years ago.

I understand the automatic success rationale. The game text I can find provides for additional possible successes on successful skill checks, but only for complexity 3+.

DMG2 p86

“A character who performs a relevant ritual or uses a daily power deserves to notch at least I success toward the party's goal.”

So 1 auto-success + 1 success for hitting the DC for amplified Eagle’s Flight.

 

[Pedantic]

The bolded bit of your post is the explanation of the bolded bit of @Manbearcat's that you have said is wrong.

Or in other words: in the approach you are setting out, it is the GM who decides the elements of the fiction, the causal relationships between those elements, the "state of the world" after each action is declared and resolved.

No no, this is very important. The GM decides the state of the world before each action is declared and resolved. The action then determines the resolution. It is generally not practical to detail an entire world all at once, so information is derived from the setting as necessary, but these decision are presumed to have occurred before players have made choices, and to exist in the absence of those choices. Actions have resolution processes, the world state post action resolution is derived as a result of that action.

NPC decision making is obviously a GM function as well, but they aren't fundamentally different actors than PCs, just less explicated.

Return to the castle infiltration example:

A PC bribes an off-duty guard to learn the password: Does the guard know the pass word? Has the password changed since the guard was last briefed?​

​

The PC dresses up as a guard: How strict is uniform compliance in this castle? What accents are regarded as foreign or otherwise suspicious?​

​

The PC enters the castle: Is there someone in the castle who recognises the PC from when they were shopping at the market two days ago without a disguise?​

​

Meanwhile, another PC scales the castle wall on the "lightly guarded because impregnable side": Is a guard looking in their direction? If they throw a rock over the wall to make a noise and distract the guard, does it land on someone's head, thus raising the alarm rather than causing a distractions? When the PC wants to drop down into the courtyard having scaled the wall, is there anyone there who might notice them?​

On the approach you're describing, the GM has to make decisions to every one of those questions, and each one of those decisions has a big effect on the players' chances of having their PCs succeed. On a skill challenge approach, the skill challenge resolution settles them all. (And similarly in other closed-scene resolution frameworks.)

Yes! Precisely! Those things matter, and PCs get to make a sensible decision to the best of their ability and information, in an attempt to better resolve the situation in their favor. You can make a decision that will result in a strictly better outcome. Approaching the wall from one angle may result in a completely extraneous extra check that risks failure, and it would have been fundamentally more beneficial to approach from the other side.

That choice becomes interesting, because there is a success and a failure state, and because the system is complicated enough that those are not obvious, except possibly in retrospect, and perhaps not even then.