Mustrum_Ridcully said:
Imagine you had to run this scenario, and you wanted to give the players a lot of options. This would have to mean you have to basically have the whole layout of the city prepared, possibly including guard patrol routes and so on - or randomly determine what kind of obstacles or skill checks they have to face.
Or, you could just 'wing it', responding to the various propositions the the players make and creating content as needed. This is almost exactly like having a skill challenge, sans the arbitrary tally of abstract successes and failures.
Or, you could use a narrative map instead, in which various decisions moved the party between preplanned scenes and challenges. That you wouldn't have to have the whole city layout prepared (much of which would go unused anyway). And you could combine that with 'winging it' when or if the party went off the map.
Or you could really mix it up and use a combination of random encounters, a game map, a narrative map,
and winging it - which is what most DMs are doing after they've been on the job for a couple of years.
All of which is really quite reutine. In a typical city escape challenge, you have some rough idea of the physical layout of the city and the hazards of escaping it (are thier natural obstacles?, is it on an island?, is it walled?, does it have regular patrols?, does it have streets or canals?, how big is it?, how deep within the city are the players?, what section of the city are they in?, etc.) You have some idea of the demographics of your campaign and the city in particular (what level are typical guards in my campaign world?, what races inhabit the city?, what resouces do the pursuers have?). So you respond to the PC's propositions and set the challenge according to what they do. If they want to flee, well then you improvise a chase scene, possibily with a couple prepared (or at least preimagined) chase scenarios. If they want to fight, well then you improvise some combat. If they want to talk, then you improvise that. Perhaps they end up doing a bit of everything.
The only problem with it is that it makes a lousy system for handling a tournament encounter because it doesn't communicate to the end GM user exactly how you wanted the encounter to play out. It's too abstract. It leaves too much up to GM judgement. It is not going to be played out consistantly between groups.
Enter the skill challenge system.
The latter is already very close to a skill challenge, but the skill challenge eliminates the randomness of what you do and replaces it with "narrative control by players".
In other words, its alot like 'winging' it.
Mechanically, that's just that they get to choose their skills on their own. But in terms of the roleplaying experience, this feels very different - since it's you are who is choosing the skill you use, you get (but also have to) explain how you use it, leading to a more interesting story being told.
How is this any different than what we have now? If someone tells me, "I want make a history check", they are going to have to tell me what they want to learn. If they don't, they don't do anything. If you want to jump, you have to tell me where you are jumping.
In fact, in the extreme, as it is the players don't really need to know how the skill system works. They could simply say, "I want to do this.", and I could handle it behind the scenes as a skill check. In that way, you'd be gauranteed to have a role playing experience where you explain what your character is doing in the game world rather than just explaining the rules you are using.
Off course, if you're not interested in the storyteling/roleplaying part, you don't have to do that, but you shouldn't complain then that the system feels lacking role-playing wise.
Uh huh. You of course are perched on the RPG high ground looking down at all of us mere hack and slashers.
