D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Manbearcat]

This is one area where I definitely seeing things differently from @Manbearcat. I see Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, and Sorcerer style snowballing as categorically different from the closed scene resolution of 4e skill challenges, Cortex action scenes, Dune conflict scenes and Dogs in the Vineyard conflicts. Mainly because it (snowballing) serves to prolong and change the nature of the conflict rather than to resolve it. It produces fallout not related to the stakes of the conflict. That's a huge distinction to me.

Yeah, we definitely don't agree here.

4e Skill Challenges can create fallout not related to the stakes of the conflict, its just typically very 4e D&D related fallout. For instance, all the below have downstream effects unrelated to the stakes of any given conflict:

* You lose a Healing Surge or 2/3.

* You spend 1/2 or 3/10 of your Coin to resolve a check(s).

* You spend requisite Coin to resolve a Ritual.

* You spend a Daily (or 2) to resolve a Skill Challenge.

* You're afflicted with a longterm Disease/Condition.

* The Ritual you're using to resolve a Skill Challenge complication is its own nested Skill Challenge with adjacent fallout.

* A complication in a Skill Challenge becomes its own nested Skill Challenge or a combat. In the course of that, you marshal (and lose) a lot of resources to resolve it.

* A complication in a Skill Challenge is a threatening obstacle that you would rather tame/redeem/help/recruit (a Bear, an animated sword with a guilty conscious, a man-at-arms who has lost his virtue/way/temper, a raging elemental that was summoned but then killed its master and is now loose...these were all Companion characters in my games that were gained via nested Skill Challenges as outgrowths of other Skill Challenges where the players decided to tame/redeem/help/recruit rather than simply resolve and bypass as obstacles) and therefore a nested Skill Challenge goes underway to determine if they become Companion Characters.


I'm sure there are more, but if I compare this to Dogs, there is a lot of overlap on the Venn Diagram of fallout. There are areas that are absolutely missing that are specific to Dogs (eg the emotional consequences and the ablation of self that occurs due to decisions and resolution in Dogs), but there is overlap. I mean, even there you can sub Disease/Condition for an emotional one and create a track for resolving it (eg "despair).

So that (the emotional consequences + ablation of self in Dogs...Long-term Fallout is the difference here...4e doesn't have an equivalent of downtiering existing Reltionship/Trait die or adding a perma d4 or erasing a belonging or damaging your coat and downtiering it) + the fact that Dogs conflict resolution is just meatier (cognitively and emotionally), more toothy (the system interactions are more potent and the stakes of the interactions are higher) + Dogs non-lethal combat conflict resolution is just plain more fun (at least in my opinion).

But I find the "these things are fundamentally different so they should be separated near the top of the taxonomical hierarchy" to not be persuasive. Yes, separate them as you move down the taxonomical hierarchy as they speciate into different things for sure...but top 1/3 of it? I don't see it.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Campbell

It just occurred to me that you appear to be comparing each move made in PBtA/FitD (and its own attendant structure and fallout) to the Skill Challenge framework that governs Win/Loss Con of the specified thematic stakes. I agree with this aspect of things; the structure and engine of individual moves in PBtA/FitD are absolutely different than the Skill Challenge (again, in both form and function).

No disagreement there. But that isn't the comparison that I'm drawing upon. I'm comparing Clocks (a framework that governs Win/Loss Con of the specified thematic stakes) to the Skill Challenge framework. Again, yes, the engine and structure of the micro-moves made to get there are different. 4e's engine and structure of micro-moves basically doesn't have the 6- result...all the results are basically a soft move version of 6- on a failure and 7-9 on a success until you get to the final micro-move that cements the Skill Challenge...upon which time you'll have an actual 10+ or a hard move on a 6-. That is a significant difference in the engine of the micro-move structure (and that isn't the only one) and a perturbance in the cognitive workspace inhabited and managed by the participants at the table (both player and GM).

Like I said in my above post, really what we're contending with is a disagreement of "when does the speciation occur." My contention is that its lower on the taxonomical hierarchy than you and others are insisting (which, so far as I can tell, you're putting the speciation basically at the top).

@AbdulAlhazred , you're quoted text above says that you're looking for discussion on these things! There are a few posts for you to interact with!

 

[Campbell]

@Manbearcat

I suspect we run very different games of Blades and Apocalypse World. I do not see either as fundamentally conflict resolution games. The rules of the game tell us what happens in the fiction, but they don't resolve conflicts or questions of stakes. They keep the momentum of the action moving forward, but they are designed to clarify rather than resolve the stakes. I don't see clocks as related to win and loss conditions at all. I see them as fundamentally representative of fictional things. So when players declare actions in my Blades games it's almost always without regard for the particular clocks in motion. I'm transparent about the clocks, but I see them as a way to communicate information about the fiction we curiously exploring together.

I guess score one for flexibility!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess I just see a kind of important line-in-the-sand here. I'm not particularly attached to scene based resolution, honestly; its based on a set of priorities that I only intermittently share. I'm more interested in having resolution that involves the same degree of engagement for other important elements of a game than combat (and this is not to be interpreted as me disliking combat; I just want things like research, hacking and construction when they're part of the game to have the same depth to it (and do so without engaging with it being a failure state). Whether its scene or individual attempt resolution is, honestly, mostly irrelevant to me; it just happens to be that a lot of games that do this also lean into scene resolution, but that's not the part I care about (and I don't think there's anything intrinsic to the process I'm talking about that makes that so, its just that a lot of designers who are forging into these happen to be interested in both).

IMHO the only time something needs 'resolution' is if there is some defined conflict. My rule for HoML is as follows: There are three criteria to designate a challenge.
1. There must be a single fictional plot line which unifies the action. That could be location, opponent, etc. which opposes the PCs.
2. The PCs must have a definable goal.
3. There must be definable consequences for failure.

So, why does 'research' necessarily require adjudication? I mean, it MIGHT, but there is no inherent reason, because I wouldn't be approaching 'game as simulation of world'. In the later approach, which is common in D&D for example, the research MUST be resolved with some mechanic, because that is "the law of the world" regardless of any meaning to it in larger terms. In HoML if the wizard is just researching something that he can use later, perhaps, it is just an interlude. These can produce results, but it is more like "I spent my money, I got my stuff." There seems little need to roll dice for that...

I kind of do see most clocks that way; they just serve some other purposes (suspense and setting timing a way that's player-facing) that has some virtues, but I don't see them as fundamentally interesting in the way I'm talking about (which doesn't mean they can't be made interesting, but it requires a lot more mechanical handles involved in process to do so).

What do you mean by 'fundamentally interesting'? What determines if something is 'interesting' to you?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Maybe you don't need multiple ways, but I think for my desires I want them, as otherwise its a bit too easy for the processes to become just the same with a different coat of paint (there's some irony here, as this is something I've seen direct at effect based power system, where it never felt that way to me, but there were always enough moving parts in that so that it doesn't feel so). That doesn't mean you shouldn't work from the same first-principals to design your different methodologies (the way Marco Chacon set up his build-a-subsystem think in JAGS worked fine as far as I could tell), but I don't think having a single generic process works for me.

Yeah, I am an IT Architect/Developer, so I find that I prefer universalizable systems. If 2 things are based on a common set of 'interfaces', then they can each work in a system. That creates a 'universal language' in which things can be 'mixed together' and simplifies the mechanical process of play. It also allows for a trait called 'closure', where a thing can be replaced by the results of a process which produces the same outcome.

An example: 5e has a poor design (IMHO) around 'saves' vs 'attacks'. This creates 2 separate classes of things which are BASICALLY THE SAME, but cannot mix together or substitute for each other! A 'fire attack' won't be more difficult against a target which has a bonus to saves against fire! This just makes no sense at all, and thus either 5e items/spells/etc exhibit this weirdness OR ELSE they all have to have some 'patch language' which papers over this difference. It is bad design, pure and simple. It adds nothing materially to the game, but makes it more complicated in several ways (likewise an attack bonus won't make saves against an identical type of effect more difficult even though that would be perfectly logical).

Another example (of Closure): In my game a challenge (a 4e SC basically) produces a result, failure, success, complete success. A check also produces the same outcomes, failure, success, complete success. A challenge can REPLACE A POWER IN A RULE. Thus ANY place where you can put a check in my game can (at least mechanically if not narratively) be replaced by a challenge. Challenges also have a DV (difficulty value, like DC in 4e) and so do checks. Thus we know what the DV of the checks in a challenge is (barring some sort of modifying situation), and this also supports replacing checks with challenges (you can go the other way too, a challenge could be replaced by a single check). EVERY other rule in HoML will work perfectly when you do this. That is the power of closure, universal language.

And if you want subtle distinctions and 'handles' on which you can distinguish things, then tags (4e keywords essentially), at least in my design, present that. You don't need multiple different incompatible subsystems to do that. You can simply design a tag which applies a specific handling for pretty much anything anywhere. You want 'Undead' to be impossible to backstab? Well, write it into the backstab rule! Or the Undead rule that goes with the tag, whichever. You can have infinite distinctions of any degree (it could get unwieldy if too many of them interact I suppose, but that seems like a 'spherical cow' kind of problem to me).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is one area where I definitely seeing things differently from @Manbearcat. I see Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, and Sorcerer style snowballing as categorically different from the closed scene resolution of 4e skill challenges, Cortex action scenes, Dune conflict scenes and Dogs in the Vineyard conflicts. Mainly because it (snowballing) serves to prolong and change the nature of the conflict rather than to resolve it. It produces fallout not related to the stakes of the conflict. That's a huge distinction to me.

Yeah, I can see where you are coming from with this comment. That is not really a concern IMHO. I mean, yes, an SC could 'resolve' something (by the success of the party). OTOH it can exactly snowball you further into adversity! Same with the individual checks within that SC, 2 fails puts you in a pretty 'snowballed' position. You are down to hanging by a thread at that point (and the fiction should reflect that).

Of course, 4e is a bit less than stellar in terms of explicating its process and agenda, probably because IMHO it had to pretend to still be 'trad' D&D.

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, I am an IT Architect/Developer, so I find that I prefer universalizable systems. If 2 things are based on a common set of 'interfaces', then they can each work in a system. That creates a 'universal language' in which things can be 'mixed together' and simplifies the mechanical process of play. It also allows for a trait called 'closure', where a thing can be replaced by the results of a process which produces the same outcome.

An example: 5e has a poor design (IMHO) around 'saves' vs 'attacks'. This creates 2 separate classes of things which are BASICALLY THE SAME, but cannot mix together or substitute for each other! A 'fire attack' won't be more difficult against a target which has a bonus to saves against fire! This just makes no sense at all, and thus either 5e items/spells/etc exhibit this weirdness OR ELSE they all have to have some 'patch language' which papers over this difference. It is bad design, pure and simple. It adds nothing materially to the game, but makes it more complicated in several ways (likewise an attack bonus won't make saves against an identical type of effect more difficult even though that would be perfectly logical).

Another example (of Closure): In my game a challenge (a 4e SC basically) produces a result, failure, success, complete success. A check also produces the same outcomes, failure, success, complete success. A challenge can REPLACE A POWER IN A RULE. Thus ANY place where you can put a check in my game can (at least mechanically if not narratively) be replaced by a challenge. Challenges also have a DV (difficulty value, like DC in 4e) and so do checks. Thus we know what the DV of the checks in a challenge is (barring some sort of modifying situation), and this also supports replacing checks with challenges (you can go the other way too, a challenge could be replaced by a single check). EVERY other rule in HoML will work perfectly when you do this. That is the power of closure, universal language.

And if you want subtle distinctions and 'handles' on which you can distinguish things, then tags (4e keywords essentially), at least in my design, present that. You don't need multiple different incompatible subsystems to do that. You can simply design a tag which applies a specific handling for pretty much anything anywhere. You want 'Undead' to be impossible to backstab? Well, write it into the backstab rule! Or the Undead rule that goes with the tag, whichever. You can have infinite distinctions of any degree (it could get unwieldy if too many of them interact I suppose, but that seems like a 'spherical cow' kind of problem to me).

One concern for-human-implemented processes that could motivate preferences like @Thomas Shey's is that of feel. Irrespective of outputs, it matters - when a human is the one implementing the mechanisms - what the process itself feels like.

When it comes to handles, as a nitpick I don't agree that it is "logical" that a strong save against fire be connected with being harder to hit with a fire attack, for spaces that are arbitrary and imagined. It may seem more reasonable to me, and it may fit better with my imagined fiction, but it is no less logical that test_q is declared a private space and has no bearing on test_v. (So that interactions tagged 'foo' can matter or not matter depending on the test, rather than being committed to always mattering.)

You may be using "logical" as a synonym for parsable, efficient, or normative. If so, I agree that it could be more parsable, efficient, and normal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Campbell

It just occurred to me that you appear to be comparing each move made in PBtA/FitD (and its own attendant structure and fallout) to the Skill Challenge framework that governs Win/Loss Con of the specified thematic stakes. I agree with this aspect of things; the structure and engine of individual moves in PBtA/FitD are absolutely different than the Skill Challenge (again, in both form and function).

Although, if you take advantage of it, the 'closure' of SCs (an SC can sub for a skill check) does allow for some rather more elaborated process in 4e's model. However, even a complexity 1 is a lot more elaborate than a single move in PbtA/FitD, generally speaking, so there is difference there. PbtA doesn't really have much 'taxonomy', there are just 'moves'. Beyond that it has 'downtime', 'dangerous journey', and 'adventuring', each of which has its own specific 'stuff'. They are a bit like SCs in a sense, but not really, as you note below. FitD OTOH has MORE structure than 4e, which has only 'free play' (which can include simple narrative as well as checks), encounter, and possibly DMG2's vignettes, though those seem pretty disconnected from the rest of the system. Encounters then have sub-types of 'combat', 'challenge', and 'puzzle' (which is free-form narrative play in a restricted scene with a defined goal). FitD seems to have 'score', and 'move' (which has more process than a check in 4e) and then the various downtime/preparation/fallout stuff. So there's a lot that could be parsed there, but I think nothing in FitD is quite as simple as a 4e check.

No disagreement there. But that isn't the comparison that I'm drawing upon. I'm comparing Clocks (a framework that governs Win/Loss Con of the specified thematic stakes) to the Skill Challenge framework. Again, yes, the engine and structure of the micro-moves made to get there are different. 4e's engine and structure of micro-moves basically doesn't have the 6- result...all the results are basically a soft move version of 6- on a failure and 7-9 on a success until you get to the final micro-move that cements the Skill Challenge...upon which time you'll have an actual 10+ or a hard move on a 6-. That is a significant difference in the engine of the micro-move structure (and that isn't the only one) and a perturbance in the cognitive workspace inhabited and managed by the participants at the table (both player and GM).

So, that's an interesting analysis. I mean, as I understand it, there can be many clocks in FitD, running at different scales. I guess some of them are strictly related to the score, and roughly correspond to the 4e SC tallies. So, 4e checks definitely COULD be quite complicated. A check can burn resources (IE you take HS loss), or you could STAKE resources (IE I use a Daily Power to achieve success). 4e rules are vague here in that there's no guidance on what the valence of a power or other resources are (IE should a Daily being expended in a relevant fictional way produce an automatic success, or do you use Page 42, or what). Those aspects can be more refined (and in HoML's version of SC rules there is some guidance on that). In my game I also repurposed rituals. Instead of simply being a more open-ended 'power' with a cost, they specifically allow you to recast a fictional situation such that you can use the attribute or skill associated with the ritual to perform a check.

So, if the party needs to cross a raging river, and normally that might involve Athletics, or Nature, or Survival depending on your approach, you could pay your ritual component cost and invoke Summon Spectral Mounts, and now it is an Arcana check instead. I think this is sort of implicit in 4e, but again not really spelled out. Powers might be implied to work similarly, but I sort of feel like allowing At-Wills to be used that way kind of wrecks the system! Certainly a GM might accept the possibility that Magic Missile (a Wizard At-Will) might accomplish task X and thus bring various bonuses and a different ability score into scope, it certainly shouldn't be something you can simply pull out of your hat all the time (and there are some cantrips that sure would fit that bill pretty often). Anyway...

It is hard to really equate soft and hard PbtA moves with 4e check results. Check results must advance the fiction. PRESUMABLY failures advance it negatively, and could be basically either 'hard' or 'soft' in PbtA terms. PbtA simply lacks anything like the "skill challenge has failed, now for the wide plot consequences" thing. In this sense DW feels a bit mushy, because in principle you can hair split even a simple combat into a LOT of moves! SCs pretty much say "there are only going to be so many points of decision here." Of course 4e also has combat, which technically CAN go on forever in theory, but practically speaking it won't normally. At the very least a combat turn in 4e eats up your turn order resource and hands the ball to someone else. Technically speaking DW doesn't actually do that...

Like I said in my above post, really what we're contending with is a disagreement of "when does the speciation occur." My contention is that its lower on the taxonomical hierarchy than you and others are insisting (which, so far as I can tell, you're putting the speciation basically at the top).

@AbdulAlhazred , you're quoted text above says that you're looking for discussion on these things! There are a few posts for you to interact with!

Anyway, I'm with you on the overall taxonomy question.

So the more vital question is "What can you accomplish with one process vs the others, and WHY use one or another?" How do they relate to game agenda/principle/process design.

 

[Don Durito]

That would be a great discussion. I've been noodling about ways to evolve or re-imagine the SC process that my own game has inherited from 4e. I like the way things can produce a sort of flow, with incremental movement towards some final crisis point (that one check that either wins you the challenge or else you go down in ignominy). OTOH reliable delivery is not really guaranteed. The FitD version, for example, seems to be both better and worse in various ways. It seems like, as you are saying, what is required is a deft analysis of agenda vs identified characteristics of different methods and what various permutations will bring to the table.

It's worth having a look at Savage Worlds' Dramatic Tasks, if you haven't already.

They're basically an evolution of the skill challenge rules, but I found that adding in degrees of success, making the choice to aid other characters much meaningful and having a system for adding complications made the whole thing much more compelling than the 4e version.

And the inclusion of the metacurrency of Bennies also makes a big difference as well in that it introduces a resource management aspect and helps mitigate anti-climatic results (which I found were often an issue in 4e).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One concern for-human-implemented processes that could motivate preferences like @Thomas Shey's is that of feel. Irrespective of outputs, it matters - when a human is the one implementing the mechanisms - what the process itself feels like.

When it comes to handles, as a nitpick I don't agree that it is "logical" that a strong save against fire be connected with being harder to hit with a fire attack, for spaces that are arbitrary and imagined. It may seem more reasonable to me, and it may fit better with my imagined fiction, but it is no less logical that test_q is declared a private space and has no bearing on test_v. (So that interactions tagged 'foo' can matter or not matter depending on the test, rather than being committed to always mattering.)

You may be using "logical" as a synonym for parsable, efficient, or normative. If so, I agree that it could be more parsable, efficient, and normal.

Yeah, as I say, I see it in terms of connectivity. This was a huge problem with AD&D. Because it has all those wonky different VERY specific subsystems it is literally impossible to logically impose an advantage universally, or a disadvantage. Some things are d6 roll low, some roll high, some are other kinds of dice, and heck if you happen to be a Ranger then its a 3rd kind of die for the same thing! It is bonkers.

And I sense that most Indy game designers have sort of grokked this. I mean PbtA has a pretty small repertoire of different things, and it is rare to find a modern game (heck, even D&D) that doesn't cast everything into a common resolution framework governed by a single unified set of rules. I do still see player-facing as being a bit of a holdout area. However, for example, my most recent rewriting of HoML rules really only has one player-facing element that defines a character's capabilities, which are boons. That is your 'stuff', your training, etc. Characters, at a low level as entities are described by attributes, but you don't get this whole variety of different 'things' in my design like you do in 4e, where you have Race, Class, Powers, Feats, Rituals, PPs, EDs, etc.

All you can really have in HoML are boons and afflictions as a PC, technically. It makes things very 'flat' and writing actual rules that 'bite' very easy. I mean, technically for instance, the equivalent of a 'level drain' in HoML could literally say "You Lose a Boon" and that is all that is needed. Every other system implication and consequence is implicit in those 4 words. It would suffice for "I gave up/lost something" or "Something was Taken From Me" or 100 other situations too. The actually fictional and mechanical consequences of a specific instance are pretty open-ended though.

Admittedly, resources and general (fixed) attributes also still exist, but even boons can be classified as attributes, so things are really very universal.