Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Skill challenges: action resolution that centres the fiction
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 8739226" data-attributes="member: 6690965"><p>So, I think we can summarize the difference in agency we're discussing pretty simply. In a skill challenge framework a players the following two points of agency:</p><p>1. Which skill they're rolling</p><p>2. Which difficulty they're rolling against.</p><p></p><p>Those might be limited in various ways by the situation, and depending on the structure, they may also get:</p><p></p><p>3. Spend resource to ignore roll.</p><p></p><p>I'm proposing that players should additional have the agency:</p><p></p><p>4. Adjust number of rolls until victory.</p><p></p><p>And that this is best achieved by leaving victory undefined until the player decides they've achieved it, and by limiting resolution to each individual roll.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You don't necessarily know, but you're certainly going to do your best to manipulate any situation to cut down on risk as much as possible. Consequences are intrinsic to actions, the primary cost being time, and other consequences following naturally in reaction to events. And yes, conservative is a fine descriptor of the sort of play I'm after. Players are trying to be efficient and effective with their resources, but you know, face a whole fantasy world full of problems and will be forced to expend them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Not knowing I don't have any agency to improve my situation does not actively improve my agency, and merely makes whatever game I'm playing more frustrating. Now the player has to play a meta-game to figure out what game they're in, and then attempt to optimize for that.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The math is not hard on these, and more to the point, in a sufficiently well designed system there is no functional difference between trying to optimize your chances of success and engaging with the fictional state. Your character, it can generally be assumed, is competent, wants to survive, and has the goals you've given them. Optimizing their chances of success is exactly how one engages with the world.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My entire point has repeatedly been that skill challenges are a low-agency game, and that limited agency is less enjoyable than a higher agency state for a given specific kind of enjoyment. You could argue that reading a book for example is the lowest possible form of engagement on that scale, as you cannot influence the events at all, while writing a book is the highest possible, because no event can occur beyond your agency. Roleplaying games can occupy this delightful middle space where you have complete control over 1 competent individual inside an otherwise open-ended setting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 8739226, member: 6690965"] So, I think we can summarize the difference in agency we're discussing pretty simply. In a skill challenge framework a players the following two points of agency: 1. Which skill they're rolling 2. Which difficulty they're rolling against. Those might be limited in various ways by the situation, and depending on the structure, they may also get: 3. Spend resource to ignore roll. I'm proposing that players should additional have the agency: 4. Adjust number of rolls until victory. And that this is best achieved by leaving victory undefined until the player decides they've achieved it, and by limiting resolution to each individual roll. You don't necessarily know, but you're certainly going to do your best to manipulate any situation to cut down on risk as much as possible. Consequences are intrinsic to actions, the primary cost being time, and other consequences following naturally in reaction to events. And yes, conservative is a fine descriptor of the sort of play I'm after. Players are trying to be efficient and effective with their resources, but you know, face a whole fantasy world full of problems and will be forced to expend them. Not knowing I don't have any agency to improve my situation does not actively improve my agency, and merely makes whatever game I'm playing more frustrating. Now the player has to play a meta-game to figure out what game they're in, and then attempt to optimize for that. The math is not hard on these, and more to the point, in a sufficiently well designed system there is no functional difference between trying to optimize your chances of success and engaging with the fictional state. Your character, it can generally be assumed, is competent, wants to survive, and has the goals you've given them. Optimizing their chances of success is exactly how one engages with the world. My entire point has repeatedly been that skill challenges are a low-agency game, and that limited agency is less enjoyable than a higher agency state for a given specific kind of enjoyment. You could argue that reading a book for example is the lowest possible form of engagement on that scale, as you cannot influence the events at all, while writing a book is the highest possible, because no event can occur beyond your agency. Roleplaying games can occupy this delightful middle space where you have complete control over 1 competent individual inside an otherwise open-ended setting. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Skill challenges: action resolution that centres the fiction
Top