Skill Challenges : invisible ones ?

[Rune]

He's the only poster on here refusing to understand or accept this. In fact refusing to understand or accept anything until there's no reasonable way he can argue against it.

If you google his activity on this site you'll see he's invariably tied up in arguments and disagreement. And I can't find more than a couple of posts in his feed where he isn't actively disagreeing with someone.

At least that's how it's seeming to me. I guess time will tell...

Goosfrabba, Surfarcher. Nothing to get worked up over. Maybe Hussar comes around to another style of play someday, maybe not. Doesn't matter. It's all good if it's fun. It's just a game, after all.

You seem like you've got a good handle on your own game, and really, that's what counts. Have fun and don't worry about it.

 

[Hussar]

Wow, tone down the antagonism a notch here please.

Look, I'm not saying that you are wrong. I thought we were discussing here. Or does discussion to Surfarcher mean only agreeing with what you said?

The example you gave, as I understood it, was linear. You start at the town and have to find the moon gate. You start out with a skill check to get the direction which leads directly to the crevasse which leads directly to the moon gate. The only non-linear part of this is when you arrive at the moon gate.

Since your example did not actually include any other possibilities, I assumed there was none. My bad I suppose. If I fail at the crevasse, I arrive at the gate too late. If I succeed spectacularly well, I arrive early. But, it's linear in that in both cases, I still arrive at the gate.

Now, if failure resulted in me going somewhere else, then it would not be linear.

Since we're getting all RAW about this, then answer me this: Where in the RAW does it state that skill challenges should be hidden from the players? Where in the RAW does it state that you should not inform your players of the existence of a skill challenge?

There's really no need to get fussy here. I'm simply asking questions. I'll admit that my experience with skill challenges is limited, so, I'm basing this a lot off of gut reaction. I have no problems with being wrong. But telling me that I'm just too gamist to understand isn't helping your argument.

So, again, I will ask, what is gained by hiding mechanics?

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, I wonder if group plays a role here. My group is made up of DM's. I mean, we all DM at one time or another and have done so for quite a few years. We don't have any player only players at all, so, we're all fairly cognizant of the rules (although, to be honest, in my case, my grasp on 4e mechanics is not as good as it could be).

But, anyway, I wonder if that makes the difference. Since we're all DM's, we know the mechanics well enough to recognize what's going on pretty much from the start.

For those who prefer invisible skill challenges, are you the sole DM in your group, or maybe there is only one other DM in the group and most of the players are player only?

That might account for some of the differences in experience. IME, often differences in play experiences have far more to do with the group than the mechanics.

 

[mneme]

I think definitely worth toning down the antagonism a few notches.

FWIW, here's another pov:

I don't really care whether skill challenges are hidden or not. I'll generally never state "you are in a skill challenge, and need X successes before Y failures with Z primary skills" -- but I'll answer in the affirmative if asked, and generally give transparent-ish answers even if I never use the key words (and make it clear that actions have weight). OTOH, I can generally always tell when I'm in a skill challenge as a player.

Skill challenges, at their root, are a reframe of the conflict resolution concept (from narrative games like Prime Time Adventure, Dogs in the Vineyard, Mouse Guard/Burning Wheel, and Fate/Dresden) into D&D. You've got a defined goal -- prevent war from breaking out, find out who the murderer is before they kill again, get the king to let you into his dungeon -- with both a defined success criteria and a defined failure criteria, and the skill challenge mechanic's purpose is to keep track of how close you are to both sides; to frame your success and failure rather than making them completely arbitary on the whim of the GM. The GM can still make judgements on whim--but even so, putting things into a framework helps her be fairer and puts her on a sounder footing when doing so, just like running combat by the book means that when you try to drop the curtains over the beholder you're facing, the GM has a better idea of what the parameters are.

As such:

The advantage of stating that you're in a skill challenge is that it makes the weight of what people are doing obvious, and puts players on an even footing regarding knowing they're progressing towards a goal. Yes, there are challenges that have multiple possible goals where the players have to pick one (or more) sometime during the challenge, multiple parallel challenges where the players have to decide which goals are the most important (actually, that sounds kinda fun) but can accomplish multiple goals, etc--but that's the basics.

The disadvantage is that it breaks immersion, and can risk players with bad habits going into "skill challenge mode" when that's not necessary the way you're running the challenge (eg, you're running things properly, rather than sticking to your planning sheet, and letting plausible things work regardless of whether you (or the encoutner designer) thought of them in advance.

The advantage of never actually stating you're in a skill challenge is that, again, it keeps you in story mode--and that frankly, it's not really necessary; what's important is accurately representing the amount of urgency and risk involved in a situation; as long as you do that -either- via the mechanics or via story-level description, you're being fair, but since the story is the point (particularly in skill challenges), you're better off sticking to story as much as you can just because it's more fun.

The disadvantage is that it can make challenges that are intended to be short considerably longer, as players fumble around in the dark not realizing there are easy or plain answers to things; the more "skill challenge" signals you bring to bear (either in the story or explicitly), the clearer to the players this is that 1. There is a goal, they're not just free roleplaying, but there is Stuff going on, and that 2. This isn't just a game of "read the GM's mind"; instead there are things the characters can do that will help (or possibly, nearly anything the characters try could help). Moreover, there's a big risk in keeping things under the surface -- illusionism.

To avoid the question -- illusionism is the GMly practice of presenting an illusion of player choice when the truth is that there's nothing of the sort. Present 3 doors, make it seem like which the players choose is important, but in truth whichever door they go through will result in the same answer. When the players kill your "main villain" in the first encounter and he was supposed to get away, decide he wasn't the main villain after all to keep the story on track. When the players refuse the first quest you hand them and decide to make their own way, decide they end up in the same dungeon you were trying to lead them to, even though it's in the opposite direction. That kind of thing.

The problem with illusionism, fundamentally, is that it means that what the players choose doesn't matter. It's easy to think it doesn't matter--that it's just "keeping the story on track", but that means that there's "a story" that the GM controls--and whether they know it or not, if the players ever find out the whole truth they may find themselves asking (quite reasonably) why they were bothering to show up at all and being presented the -illusion- of helping create a story, wheras the truth was that the GM was following a script and they were just being lied to.

Getting back to skill challenges, the risk of not exposing that they're going on (just as it's the risk of making GM rolls behind a screen) is falling into illusionism and having the PC/player actions not actually affect what's going. It's much harder to do this when at least some of the mechanics and frame of a skill challenge is exposed, as they players are aware that they are in a matter of some import, and aware of how close they are to failure (where the story swings one way) or success (where it swings another). But it's far to easy, when hiding the fact that they're in a skill challenge at all, to not merely keep immersion going but also remove the whole point of being in one -- or at least of the players being able to make intelligent decisions in that context.

 

[surfarcher]

Wow, tone down the antagonism a notch here please.

Look, I'm not saying that you are wrong. I thought we were discussing here. Or does discussion to Surfarcher mean only agreeing with what you said?

Nope. But when someone only disagrees and disregards a lot of what I'm saying... And keeps up that pattern. Well that person tends to read argumentative, to say the least. In those circumstances I generally feel a compulsion to check up on their history.

I'm happy to be wrong and have no qualms about eating humble pie, should I prove so.

The example you gave, as I understood it, was linear. You start at the town and have to find the moon gate. You start out with a skill check to get the direction which leads directly to the crevasse which leads directly to the moon gate. The only non-linear part of this is when you arrive at the moon gate.

It was an example of how it could play out. I put some effort into indicating that it would be driven a lot by the players and that I adlib quite a lot.

Whatever the players come up with I'll react to and build on. It's a very dynamic approach and I can't predict what the result will be, because I can't predict what they'll try. The outcome of their success or failure is as dictated by their actions as by the result of any check they might make.

Since your example did not actually include any other possibilities, I assumed there was none. My bad I suppose. If I fail at the crevasse, I arrive at the gate too late. If I succeed spectacularly well, I arrive early. But, it's linear in that in both cases, I still arrive at the gate.

Arriving at the gate too late is one possibility. By no means the only one. Still it's the most likely because the players are actively trying to achieve a goal they have taken on. So if they find a crevasse impassable, for example, they'll likely try to find a way around it. At a cost of time.

There are plenty of other possibilities too, but they all depend on the PC actions.

All kinds of things could happen and I personally don't them in advance. At best I make some scribbly notes on what might happen.

Inspiration. Adlib.

Now, if failure resulted in me going somewhere else, then it would not be linear.

So you will force a result on your players not based on their actions? I call the railroading and it's not something I practice. If they choose to pursue a certain goal doggedly, I won't force them to miss it. Other things may happen along the way, but if they are determined to reach that goal and don't give up? Now if they give up on that goal and turn aside, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Since we're getting all RAW about this, then answer me this: Where in the RAW does it state that skill challenges should be hidden from the players? Where in the RAW does it state that you should not inform your players of the existence of a skill challenge?

Where does it say they must always be announced? Where does it it say you must always inform them?

There's really no need to get fussy here. I'm simply asking questions. I'll admit that my experience with skill challenges is limited, so, I'm basing this a lot off of gut reaction. I have no problems with being wrong. But telling me that I'm just too gamist to understand isn't helping your argument.

I'm basing mine of a lot of reading. A lot of research. A lot of discussion. A lot of feedback. And DMing more skill challenges than I can remember.

Going back over your posts you've asked one real question. Several times. Ignoring what people had answered. In fact, what they were saying before you first asked the question... Which I will answer yet again below. The rest of your "questions"... Well they kinda all read snarky and sarcastic. That could just be me tho. That's the tone I've been getting from all of your posts. It kinda seems like other folks take you that way on other threads too.

So, again, I will ask, what is gained by hiding mechanics?

And again I say "suspension of disbelief".

The fact is most player's change their mode of thinking the moment an SC is announced. Most players will literally start looking at their skills and thinking "My best skill is Diplomacy, can I use that to win this Skill Challenge?". It happens like clockwork! And that's not a problem as long as that's what your players want and enjoy. But a huge number of folks out there got bored of it quickly and loathed the result, so the system got a huge flogging out in public. There's a good reason WotC invested so much pagespace in DMG2 to SCs.

I prefer to encourage my players to think along the lines of "How can I best resolve this problem? How can we reach this goal? What would my character do?". And I find the best method of reaching that is by me putting a lot more work into framing the situation up

 

[surfarcher]

Y'know, I wonder if group plays a role here. My group is made up of DM's. I mean, we all DM at one time or another and have done so for quite a few years. We don't have any player only players at all, so, we're all fairly cognizant of the rules (although, to be honest, in my case, my grasp on 4e mechanics is not as good as it could be).

But, anyway, I wonder if that makes the difference. Since we're all DM's, we know the mechanics well enough to recognize what's going on pretty much from the start.

That could make a huge difference! Seriously tho, you should borrow someones copy of DMG2 and read the chapter on SCs. A lot of what I'm trying to say will click into place. And the rest will, hopefully, be easier to understand.

For those who prefer invisible skill challenges, are you the sole DM in your group, or maybe there is only one other DM in the group and most of the players are player only?

Yeah sole DM and it's been that way for oh 30 years now

That might account for some of the differences in experience. IME, often differences in play experiences have far more to do with the group than the mechanics.

If you have a really, really mature group of roleplayers then then announcing the mechianic, or not, shouldn't matter.

My personal preference would still be for playing the story, rather than the rules. But I'd go with what the majority of the group prefers.

 

[superpriest]

Hussar makes a lot of good points. The fact that every player is also a DM probably makes a transparent skill challenge run smoothly, because DMs know how players are supposed to complete them. It sounds like calling out the skill challenge works really well for your group.

I, however, do not announce skill challenges, because I find that, in my group, doing so shortcuts all sense of story, innovation, and fun. Unless the PCs are under time pressure, the group stands around while the best PCs for the job make a few rolls. When I don't announce the challenge, it's much more dynamic and fun.

Also, while you probably should read the DMG 2 section on skill challenges, it's nothing mind-blowing. No version of the skill challenge system is perfect. I use the rules as guidelines, adapting some parts of the skill challenge skeleton to whatever the situation calls for.

 

[Hussar]

Surfarcher, I agree with pretty much everything you just said.

Yeah, I rub some people the wrong way. Such is life.

Wasn't intending on being sarcastic or snarky. Just, IME, any time DM's decide to hide mechanics is almost always leads to frustrated players.

To me, the risk of frustration is greater than the reward of not breaking immersion. Frustration kills a game faster than anything, again, IME. So, I tend to really avoid anything that would result in the players getting frustrated. I include puzzles and mazes in this category as well.

A clarification though about this:

So you will force a result on your players not based on their actions? I call the railroading and it's not something I practice. If they choose to pursue a certain goal doggedly, I won't force them to miss it. Other things may happen along the way, but if they are determined to reach that goal and don't give up? Now if they give up on that goal and turn aside, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

I'm sorry, I'm not quite following. Are you saying that so long as the players continue to attempt something, they will always succeed? That so long as they continue to "doggedly" pursue a goal, they will always achieve that goal?

 

[Saeviomagy]

I, however, do not announce skill challenges, because I find that, in my group, doing so shortcuts all sense of story, innovation, and fun. Unless the PCs are under time pressure, the group stands around while the best PCs for the job make a few rolls. When I don't announce the challenge, it's much more dynamic and fun.

Part of a skill challenge is supposed to be that everyone takes their turn. If you're running a challenge then it's obvious mechanically. You even roll initiative. People don't get to sit out.

What surfarcher describes doesn't, to me, fit what a skill challenge is. It's a series of linked encounters plus some time tracking. You don't have rounds, you don't have initiative and you're likely to end up with the scenes dominated by classes who have lots of skills or who's powers are classified as 'magic' simply due to the fact that they're the people with the most straightforward solutions, and therefore the people who act on those solutions and resolve the scene first.

To me the entire point is to go around the table and actively encourage people to join the narrative. No, your cha 8 fighter can't sit out of the negotiations: think of a way to contribute! No, your 20 cha bard can't do the entire scene: let the others engage in it too!

I don't really see how saying "this is a skill challenge" suddenly devolves the entire thing into dry mechanics any more than "roll your X skill" (followed by 4 cries of "I assist!") does.

From my point of view, my least sucessful skill challenge was when I tried to conceal the challenge. Half the party basically sat back (with an air of resignation) and let the half with obviously and directly applicable skills solve it.

 

[surfarcher]

Surfarcher, I agree with pretty much everything you just said.

Yeah, I rub some people the wrong way. Such is life.

Been there, got the T-Shirt!

FWIW I unconditionally apologise for where I was being overly sensitive and, in my turn, snarky. Best we put that bit of this thread behind us

Wasn't intending on being sarcastic or snarky. Just, IME, any time DM's decide to hide mechanics is almost always leads to frustrated players.

Yeah I get that. I said a couple of times earlier in the thread that I always consult my players and constantly seek to improve all aspects of my games. To the extent I'll try and adopt things I don't personally like/enjoy and broach subjects potentially leading to that. Which I have done several times.

As things stand all of my players unanimously like SCs exactly the way I design and run them. Frankly it would be less work for me if I did it your way

To me, the risk of frustration is greater than the reward of not breaking immersion. Frustration kills a game faster than anything, again, IME. So, I tend to really avoid anything that would result in the players getting frustrated. I include puzzles and mazes in this category as well.

Yeah, there has to be a balance.

FWIW mneme goes an awesome job of highlighting the pros and cons and his post, IMHO, should be carefully read and considered... Especially with a view to this.

A clarification though about this:

I'm sorry, I'm not quite following. Are you saying that so long as the players continue to attempt something, they will always succeed? That so long as they continue to "doggedly" pursue a goal, they will always achieve that goal?

Um, no not quite. My apologies for being unclear. By goal I meant a static physical location.

I meant that if they doggedly pursue arriving at a physical location then they'll eventually get there, if they survive and if the physical location is intact at that later point in time. Well probably, assuming I don't decide there's a good reason they shouldn't But they'll have missed the window of opportunity. Maybe by a lot because they might get seriously sidelined.

Cheers!