D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[pemerton]

I remember I became frustrated in 4e when the urgency of the in-game fiction for the characters did not carry through to the players - so they would declare rests often and refresh their abilities. It forced me to design every combat encounter challenging enough to warrant their rests. I'm curious, did no one else experience this or have a problem with it?

I haven't had this problem at all. As the referee, I have the authority, within the rules, to frame the PCs into situations of conflict and challenge. If I think the players are being slack, I use that authority!

In your game, what was happening at the table - what did you say to the players when they declared their rests? Or (turning from metagame to ingame), if the ingame situation was urgent but the PCs were sleeping all the time, why didn't the cultists sacrifice the prisoners (or whatever)?

Sure, they have a reason to make haste (in-game fiction), but is there a possibility of failure. Are your players aware of this - do they even fear failure? i.e. are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste. Where/what are those limits where you say they have just taken too long? How do you measure them?

I'm a bit puzzled by the questions.

What do you mean by "possibility of failure"? Do you mean - did the players know that the prisoners might be sacrificed? Yes, they did - as I posted upthread, because of their less-than-fully-brave approach to fighting the cultists (ie turtle at the front entrance and defeat-in-detail their way in), one of the prisoners was killed. And did this affect the players? Yes - they changed their tactics, and made safeguarding the prisoners a higher priority.

I also don't understand why you ask "are the consequences heavy enough to actually warrant the characters making haste", when you open the passage with the statement that the PCs hav a reason to make haste. That statement answers your question!

If you are asking whether the players have a reason to have their PCs make haste, the answer is that they do - namely, they want their PCs to successfully save the prisoners! I don't have any trouble getting my players to engage the ingame situation. And I've never had any trouble managing the backstory together with my scene-framing so as to keep the pressure up!

Leaving aside the use of skill challenges to ration rests (such that resting isn't under the player's sole control), my players know that if they try to rest while they still have resources left then I'm likely to frame them into some conflict that makes them draw on those resources. By pushing on with their goal, they get to take charge of the direction of the campaign, rather than hand the initiative to me.

If time passing bears no consequence then yes, it will be less of a tool to inject dramatic tension. You can argue that certain adventures are more predicated for the use of time but not that time is an imprecise resource measure that it lacks the ability to impose dramatic tension.

Time will not create dramatic tension if the players aren't in control of it.

For instance, if the players know that the GM is working with a clock, but they can't see the clock, and can't control or perhaps even tell how much their actions cost them on the clock, then I don't think there will be much tension.

At most there is gambling - gambling that spending time now to eg build up resources will not be the trigger for the GM declaring that the clock has reached midnight.

can you tell me why a SC focused on time creates dramatic tension for your players to save a bunch of unknown NPCs from being sacrificed by a bunch of cultists, but your players will not find the above 'losses' dramatic enough in campaign-arc which takes time into account.

This question was not directed to me. But one answer might be, becaue a skill challenge allows the players both (i) to see the clock and (ii) to know what effect their decisions are having on the movement of the clock.

In other words, a skill challenge gives the players the requisite information to generate tension.

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As a rough example, information that might be gained by taking the left side of the passageway, which could lead to easier exploration throughout the remaining dungeon. This is all dependent if one is actually utilising a map.

If I am following a map of the ToEE then going left or right can make quite a difference - in terms of alliances made, enemies fought, further options to investigate, treasure found, information obtained, prisoners freed...etc

<snip>

the PCs take a decision to investigate a corner or everything left so as to mark off that they have investigated the left side of the map - that to me is strategic decision on their part - they do not need to be more informed!

I'm not sure who is following the map - the players, or the GM? I'm assuming that you are referring to a GM who is drawing upon a pubished map for the module.

If the players don't know which path has the information, then choosing to go left or right is simply a gamble. If the players don't know what is in the dungeon, then choosing to clear the left side rather than the right is also a gamble, and strikes me as essentially an aesthetic or perhaps a record-keeping decision. It doesn't seem very strategic - what is the strategy? (If the module has been designed with a clear "spine" to the dungeon, and with the left and right sides each being somewhat balanced and self-contained, that would be a good reason for the GM not to swap stuff around on a whim, but that reason doesn't have much to do with illusionism.)

If the players couldn't know which path has the information, or couldn't know whehter or not it is rational to clear the eft side first, because the game (or perhaps just their PC builds) doesn't provie them with the requisite scrying, rumours etc, then the choice could never be anything but a gamble.

There are some playstyles where that sort of gambling is the main point of play, but that's not how I personally approach the game.

Illusionism would mean that everything is done covertly - whether it be on a die roll, a map or adjusting hit points of monsters during combat.

It becomes important when people, who define Illusionism - and paint it negatively, and ascertain that their decisions exclude any form of illusionism when to others the Illusionism in their decisions is so evidently displayed.

What decisions? If yu mean decisions about maps, can you be clearer whose decision you're talking about? Or are you talking about a hypothetical decision? In which case, can you spell out more about the hypothetical so I can understand what is going on.

The first extended exploration skill challenge that I ran was based in the Night's Dark Terror scenario. I had a map of a woods (from that module), and I had a list of events that would occur on successes or failures (again, constructed by reference to the module). The events were more-or-less in the order they would occur, but some were noted as being feasible only in a certain part of the forest, or only at a certain time of day, and so if one of them came up in a fictional context that wouldn't permit it to occur (PCs at the wrong place or the wrong time) I would just move to the next on my list.

In the context of this skill challenge, the players' decision to have their PCs travel to this or that part of the woods had only modest implicatons for what they might encounter. And they were never going to find the goblin lair they were looking for (the fortress of the Wolfskulls) until the conclusion of the challenge. (This was much like the module, which had all these other events/encounters built in as preludes to finding the Wolfskulls.)

That didn't mean that I paid no attention to where they went on the map, because that did have a modest effect on encounters ( the idea being to preserve the integrity of the backstory - eg you won't meet Viper goblins unless you're in the general vicinity of the Viper lair). But those decisions about where to go weren't very meaningful. They were colour. The real action was in successfully engaging with the various events that the challenge through up, thereby allowing the players (and PCs) to collect information and show what they were made of, until they got the clues they needed to head to the Wolfskull fortress in the SE of the forest.

No illusionism. The players knew they were looking for the Wolfskull lair. They knew that this required gathering information and following leads - which they were doing. They could see how their dice rolls for the challenge were either helping them (by taking them to new encounters with helpful or at least useful beings) or hurting them (failures with consequences like a horse throwing a shoe, or losing some gear along the trail).

Given that they knew nothing about the forest other than what they were learning from progressing through the skill challenge; and given that the inhabitants of the forest had no placement, in the fiction, outside the stipulations of the skill challenge (which reflected some geographical considerations, as I've noted already); no choices were subverted or undermined by using the skill challenge structure rather than a more traditional encounters-placed-om-a-map-which-the-players-explore structure.

 

[Manbearcat]

Do you mean that I have explained each corridor in detail or that they are distinct? If I am following a map of the ToEE then going left or right can make quite a difference - in terms of alliances made, enemies fought, further options to investigate, treasure found, information obtained, prisoners freed...etc
I don't require high level resolution for that decision to be important. Furthermore what do you mean by informed? Again in ToEE the PCs take a decision to investigate a corner or everything left so as to mark off that they have investigated the left side of the map - that to me is strategic decision on their part - they do not need to be more informed!

Let us say that you're playing a dungeon exploration game and the point of play is:

"Find your way out of this maze."

A maze is a complex branching puzzle map whereby the solver must deduce the correct route to the exit. If the GM fudges the maze map such that decisions to go left or right are inconsequential because "All Roads Lead to Rome" (out of the maze), and he does it covertly while maintining the pretense of "complex branching puzzle map whereby the solver must deduce the correct route to the exit", then that is illusionism.

Now let us say the dungeon exploration game's point of play is:

"Mindfully explore this trap-infested ruin, ration resources skillfully, and leave after scoring as much treasure as possible "

If the pretense is that the players will be (a) assimilating information (which includes geographical - map - information) conveyed to them by the GM and then (b) making strategic/tactical decisions (eg how best to avoid danger and score treasure) with that geographical information as a legitimate input into their thinking, then covertly fudging the map would absolutely fall under illusionism.

If not the DM who/what else? I can only think of a map that is laid out in front of them.

That might be the case if there is a physical prop in play (eg the players gained the map via NPC or exploration and the GM physically presented the prop.

I'm might have missed a step how you got to this scenario. Illusionism would mean that everything is done covertly - whether it be on a die roll, a map or adjusting hit points of monsters during combat.

I was just being clear and extrapolating:

1) Illusionism is just covert GM force.

2) Overt GM force in some situations and at some tables may be ok if the players don't mind.

3) I don't think the overt fudging of a map falls under 2 (Overt GM force being ok). I can't think of too many cases where players wouldn't outright walk (assuming the premise of play is exploration of objective fantasy locale and player agency in observing, via GM description/resolution, orienting, deciding, and acting is on the menu/the main course). Overt GM force with a map renders such agency completely null. In such a scenario it is tantamount to "rocks fall, you die."


Sorry, @AbdulAlhazred and [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]. Out of time. I'll respond to your posts soon when I am able.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's a huge difference between a protagonist and a PoV-character, though. I think that's one of those conceptual buy-ins that 4E expects from the players, because they really hit you over the head with the protagonism :-/

I disagree, every character is a protagonist, at the very least they've got their own little part of the story. Maybe they're a bit player but they have a story. The rules of drama always apply to any story.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Does it count as fighting if you snipe them from the other side of the river? In essence, combat in this game mode becomes a kind of a puzzle - how to defeat the monsters without engaging them in combat.

If the monster can jump across the river or teleport or shoot fire at you, or something else you didn't account for, then fighting it out is your penalty for failing to defeat the monster outright.

But that is a VERY narrow sort of play. I'd certainly include this sort of thing WITHIN a campaign, maybe there's a story-arc of 'against the odds' that carries the group through low level, but it never lasts. Its never the be-all and end-all of the game. This was the real problem with early D&D, it didn't really provide for much else than the 'puzzle approach' to things unless you played to high levels, which was designed to take years (albeit you could certainly speed that up).

4e, and to a lesser extent 3e and even 2e before it, moved away from this as the dominant paradigm. Rafts of hireling spear chuckers were de-emphasized and more robust and heroic characters become the norm. There's a reason for that, because players get tired of being nothing but puzzle solvers or rats scuttling around in the underbrush. Sometimes they want to stand up and cut a bloody swath to the evil wizard's tower and put paid to it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From my own experience and what I've gathered here, entering a Skill Challenge isn't something that the players have control over. It's imposed by the DM, in response to the PCs trying to accomplish a task, where the DM wants to make things complicated. The DM decides that this task carries a certain amount of narrative weight, so the PCs will need to overcome X number of level-appropriate challenges in order for the outcome to be suitably dramatic.

As was explained to me above, the DM might decide that 6 successes are necessary, and then starts allocating those among the various sub-tasks that come up. You need to gather raw materials for that boat? The DM decides to spend a challenge on that in order to invoke uncertainty here; it can be a medium DC or a hard DC, but whatever the DM decides to spend, it will eat up the designated amount of drama budget and reduce the number of further complications might arise.

Declaring a Skill Challenge is a purely antagonistic move by the DM, against the players, via Rule of Drama.

Its the same as every other encounter or challenge in a game. The DM doesn't HAVE to present any challenges at all, he could just say "Ok, you wander in the dungeon for 5 hours and pick up the following loot..." or whatever. Doubt it would be a popular game. Given that the DM IS going to make things challenging, then its only a question of HOW, and is it going to be dramatic or what.

The other thing is, an SC is no more compulsory than other encounters. If the PCs can opt out of a combat encounter, albeit at the cost of removing some options from the table, then so can they do the same with an SC. Maybe the goblins are invading the town, you can go to the goblin lair and fight the goblins there, seek an audience with the goblin king, or try to sneak out of the area and alert the Duke to send his men to try to drive off the goblins. 2 of those are probably at least one SC, and probably some combat as well, but the players aren't forced to take on any one given SC. Even if they sneak out of town, maybe they decide not to sneak when the goblin patrol comes near, maybe they just leap out of the hay pile and take 'em instead. There's always some choice, unless the game is a total railroad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

These are really about colour and developing the persona of a PC. As you say, they're not abilities that need to be rationed. If they confer a minor mechanical benefit once or twice over 30 levels of play, that's hardly going to break the game!

Right, and I'd note that even in 4e often you spend a feat to get access to something along these lines. Most of those feats are considered 'sub-par', but there are tons of them out there and its not a big deal for a character to burn one slot on something like that. Usually the main difference being there's a well-defined specific effect spelled out, even if its one that will very rarely come into play.

Just as a note, in my own system these are considered 'minor boons' and aren't regulated in a formal mechanical way. The characters acquire them by purely narrative means and they aren't rationed. I guess there could be tables where that approach wouldn't work, but IME it should be sufficient to ask the players to try to respect the story at least a little bit and not for instance sit in the inn for months just picking up trivial skills.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That said, if what @AbdulAlhazred described upthread is correct - that there is a Perform skill that is separate from Instrument proficiencies - then I find that confusing. If I want to play my guitar nicely, which one do I use?

Right, I ran into 3 types of stumbling block with the 5e skill system:

1) was the overlap between tool proficiencies and skills where it is entirely unstated whether Performance allows you to play an instrument or if you actually need a tool proficiency to do that.

2) The problem with skills that were entirely abstract and thus never map to any concrete action, such as Investigation.

3) The problem of lack of a knowledge. There is a tool proficiency for Thieves Tools, but no skill called 'Thievery' to inform the player of what they might actually KNOW about the subject or be able to do which doesn't involve tools (there is Stealth and Sleight of Hand which covers some specific things).

None of these were issues in 4e's skill system. 5e also, by having tool proficiencies as an open ended list and giving them considerable weight and not clarifying their relationship to knowledge, creates a sort of long-list skill system that implies general incompetency, which is a 3e-ism I am not super fond of.

 

[bert1000]

I just don't see how in your example of the Diaspora system you can really relate the narrative easily to pushing 'groups' along tracks. And even assuming this particular challenge was well suited to the narrative (maybe it is, we don't know much about the narrative) but is it really generalizable?

It was well suited to the narrative because it was constructed as such. The Diaspora system isn't a set X success/failure but rather you create a new map, relevant players, time limit, etc. specifically for each "SC" based on the narrative. Definitely a lot more work and could suffer from not working as intended (as each mini game would not be playtested...). The guidance is pretty rough on how to construct these things as well.

I really don't think it changes the actual play that much though. The tokens and track are just used to keep track of how far/close you are to the goal (instead of X success/Failure) and the maps end state can be interpreted in interesting ways to tell the story of what happened. So when you describe how the party takes a month to train the Workers union on weapons use and makes a Leadership check -- the check tells you how successful that effort was and the success level translates into movement of the Workers token toward the goal. The actual description of training the Workers wouldn't be different than a SC. The state of the map helps inform your next action as well.

The SC system is simple and dramatic, 3 strikes and you're out. It doesn't have an elaborate structure that needs to be somehow mapped onto something.

..

That's the thing with the SC system as-written, or many similar variations, its simple and generalizable. Stalker0's system also was pretty generalizable, but what I found was it wasn't materially a 'better mapping', they're all a BIT abstract.

You might be right in the end. It is powerful that SC are so simple. I wasn't putting up Diaspora as the ultimate evolution of SC, but I still think a few additional meaty options /choices during the SC would add to the experience.

Star Wars Saga did this in their version of SC but I found those additional options too small and fiddly. What I'd like are a few big generalizable options to give the player some variety.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In terms of balance, I'm guessing you just haven't had enough experience with the system to see that it's one of the most balanced systems out there, at least in terms of allowing a wide variety of realized character concepts to make meaningful contributions in all phases of the game.

I've only tried it twice at conventions. Once it was so modded by the GM that I didn't get a feel for it. The second time I got a clearer picture, and, while I expect 'one of the most balanced systems out there' is just an ardent fan's forgivable exaggeration, I didn't, as I said, see the kind of deep class imbalance that endorsement for 'versimilitude' or 'not being dissociative' or "modeling 'grounded human' capacity," would usually imply. Though, I could quite easily have missed it - it seems like a very GM-dependent kind of game, as rules-lite systems tend to be.

Anyway, congrats on finding a system you like - and people willing to play/run it - enjoy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was well suited to the narrative because it was constructed as such. The Diaspora system isn't a set X success/failure but rather you create a new map, relevant players, time limit, etc. specifically for each "SC" based on the narrative. Definitely a lot more work and could suffer from not working as intended (as each mini game would not be playtested...). The guidance is pretty rough on how to construct these things as well.

I really don't think it changes the actual play that much though. The tokens and track are just used to keep track of how far/close you are to the goal (instead of X success/Failure) and the maps end state can be interpreted in interesting ways to tell the story of what happened. So when you describe how the party takes a month to train the Workers union on weapons use and makes a Leadership check -- the check tells you how successful that effort was and the success level translates into movement of the Workers token toward the goal. The actual description of training the Workers wouldn't be different than a SC. The state of the map helps inform your next action as well.





You might be right in the end. It is powerful that SC are so simple. I wasn't putting up Diaspora as the ultimate evolution of SC, but I still think a few additional meaty options /choices during the SC would add to the experience.

Star Wars Saga did this in their version of SC but I found those additional options too small and fiddly. What I'd like are a few big generalizable options to give the player some variety.

Yeah, I keep hearing about 'Galaxy of Intrigue', but I've never actually come across a copy to give it a look. Many people said it was a better presentation than 4e, but I just don't know the details.

In any case, I think I'm fundamentally a lazy DM and I prefer KISS. I'd make a map if I thought it was the best way, and I don't see 4e's SC system as being an attempt to even say that WITHIN 4e it is the last word. The examples in DMG2 in particular were in some cases fairly significant hacks of the basic system. What Mearls has written about it was definitely along the lines of 'hack on this a whole bunch whenever you feel like it'. There were just some issues of framing they never quite addressed very well.