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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6579697" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p><strong>Long Reply to Saelorn</strong></p><p></p><p><strong><u>Narrating combat powers</u></strong></p><p></p><p>The fiction is read off the mechanics. You don't need a translation manual - or, at least, I don't.</p><p></p><p>For instance, if your power has the keyword "fear" and pushes targets, using it will show you what is happening in the fiction: your enemies recoil in horror!</p><p></p><p>The fighter PC in my game has a power that dazes. It was used a couple of times in our last session. What does it represent? In his case, hitting things hard with his hammer! How can we tell? Because (i) it does quite a bit of damage (from memory, 6d8 or even 8d8 + 20-something before buffs), and (ii) <em>how else would a hammer-wielding fighter be dazing Lolth</em>?</p><p></p><p>I don't understand this. Sometimes when you hit with a sword, you roll a 1 for damage. Sometimes you roll a 6. Sometimes the damage roll of 1 is a fatal blow. Sometimes the roll of 6 is not.</p><p></p><p>There is no "detail" which explains how you got there. There is no rule in D&D that tells you what a fata 1 means, compared to a non-fatal 1 or for that matter a non-fatal 6.</p><p></p><p>In the case of the two powers you mention, one inflicts a full stun the other a condition that is a strict sub-set of the effects of stun. Clearly the first is (temporarily) disabling the enemy more seriously than the second.</p><p></p><p>What the actual maneouvre looks like is left as an exercise for the players, much like the difference in damage rolls.</p><p></p><p>I don't know - you're the author of those powers, so you tell me!</p><p></p><p>Do you have actual examples from the rules that you're concerned about?</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><u>Time as a factor in framing and resolution</u></strong></p><p>These questions seem to be rhetorical.</p><p></p><p>If they are not, here is the answer: because it's fun.</p><p></p><p>An early guidebook I read (in 1984) was the (non-TSR-endorsed) paperback "What is Dungeons & Dragons?" In it's discussion of dungeon design, it talked about "freeze-frame" vs static rooms. In a freeze-frame room, the GM's description has the PCs entering in the midst of some interesting event (the prisoner about to be tortured or sacrificed was an example in the book; the dinner scene in G1 is an example [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] gave upthread).</p><p></p><p>Because it is fun for the PCs to resolve heroic confrontations.</p><p></p><p>If you mean that the GM can make things up, sure. But that's not the sort of robustness I was talking about.</p><p></p><p>Dungeon time-management, in Gygax's AD&D or Moldvay Basic, does not rely upon the GM making things up. There are rules that allocate movement, exploration and combat to turns, and that lead to wandering monster checks every so many turns.</p><p></p><p>Of course you can. Just like Gygax and Moldvay have codified systems for moving, for searching, and for fighting.</p><p></p><p>I gave a range of options beyond "mere colour". It might be the players gambling aginst the GM's secret timeline, or the players gambling against the GM's roll of the dice to see how much time is taken.</p><p></p><p></p><p><u><strong>GM "neutrality" and introducing new content into the fiction</strong></u></p><p>You have not responded to my repeated comments about this.</p><p></p><p>If the players ask how long the queue is at the bread shop, or the potion shop, or whatever, <em>what is the "neutral" answer</em>? Different answers have potentially huge implications for the dynamics of play (eg if the timeline is 1 hour, and the queue is half-an-hour long, then the players are probably going to have to skip the acquisition of bread, or of potions).</p><p></p><p>How does the GM decide? Saying "without bias" does not describe a method for making a decision. Saying "by extrapolation from what is known about the gameworld" leads to the questions (i) who decided the prior state of the gameworld, and how, and (ii) how is the gameworld description possibly rich enough to support such extrapolation?</p><p></p><p>To me, this gives rise to so many questions.</p><p></p><p>First, how do you now that the PCs probably won't get stuck unless there's a festival on?</p><p></p><p>Second, how do you resolve the "probably"? In my life many improbable things happen. The world is made up of improbable events.</p><p></p><p>Third, how do you know there is a festival going on?</p><p></p><p>Fourth, if the GM answers question 3 (eg by looking at a calendar for the gameworld) then how was it decided that the cultists would strike on <em>this</em> particular day?</p><p></p><p>These decisions have a big impact on the resolution of the action, and as far as I can see the GM has to make all of them, with little or no mechanical support. Hence my remarks upthread about the impact of GM-fiat on resolution.</p><p></p><p>And what sort of world is it where you never bump into old acquaintances by chance, because that is never a likely thing to occur? My answer - it is a Spartan world of the sort that I have described upthread.</p><p></p><p>As I've remarked, then notion of "neutral arbiter" really has no work to do here, for all the reasons I've given.</p><p></p><p>A further question is, Why would the PCs want fresh food? Does your game have a scurvy table? If trail rations are enough to avoid fatigue penalties, then just eat them! (Another victory for the Spartan world!)</p><p></p><p></p><p><u><strong>Setting DCs and calling for checks</strong></u></p><p>Are you really telling me that you can't see how that is just making stuff up? After all, boats were invented, and made by people, thousands of years before locks and bells ever were!</p><p></p><p>Who is "I" in this sentence. If "I" is a player, how do you know your best guess is pretty close? What if your GM takes the view that making a boat is actually much easier than casting a bell or engineering a lock?</p><p></p><p>Or what if the <em>player</em> believes, with a degree of plausibility, that making a boat is easier than casting a bell, but the GM doesn't agree?</p><p></p><p>Part of the issue here is that what counts as 'complex' is dependent upon knowledge, tools available etc. Because I am educated and literate and am trained in the use of Arabic numerals, doing simple arithmetic causes me no trouble. For illiterate mediaevals the story was very different. The GM, in deciding whether something is easier or harder than casting a bell, has to determine <em>what it is</em> that makes casting a bell hard or easy in his/her gameworld.</p><p></p><p>For me, that does not produce a better play experience then the GM setting a DC from a table.</p><p></p><p>But real-world verisimilitude is exactly what you relied upon - you guestimated the complexity of a boat compared to a bell.</p><p></p><p>And how do the GM and player end up on the same page? What methods do you use to achieve this?</p><p></p><p>How so? How do I know if you're going to set the DC above or below a bell?</p><p></p><p>My first question, then, is why are we wasting time on this at the table?</p><p></p><p>My next question is, why can't the GM just say yes? Let the player's PC have his/her boat!</p><p></p><p>If we think it's important to the game that the PC have a chance of just not getting a boat, why can't we assign a chance of failure (say, on a 1 on a d6 you can't build a floating boat no matter how hard you try)?</p><p></p><p>Obviously there are other mechanical approaches to resolving boat building, but there's nothing inherently wrong with either of the two that I mentioned.</p><p></p><p>To me, that suggests that you're not familiar with the system.</p><p></p><p>I mean, I don't know how to achieve tasks in PF, but that's because I've not read the book very closely.</p><p></p><p>You don't "see" combat roles. You experience them. (Or make a monster knowledge check and learn the powers.)</p><p></p><p>As for level, that's no different from any version of D&D - how can you tell, just from the GM's description, what level some NPC that you encounter is?</p><p></p><p>In play I use a range of devices to communicate the relevant information to my players. My default is to tell them the level of the opponent.</p><p></p><p>Suppose the answer to that question is No. Why does it matter?</p><p></p><p>I mean, in my game Zeus might have 400 hit points, and in your game 200. In my game lances might do d8 damage, in your game d10.</p><p></p><p>In my game Greyhawk might be 100 miles from Verbobonc, in your game it might be 50 miles.</p><p></p><p>What is the perceived importance of uniformity here?</p><p></p><p></p><p><u><strong>Skill check outcomes and skill challenges</strong></u></p><p>There are at least two ways in which I find this confusing.</p><p></p><p>First, D&D has always had a core resolution system in which the fiction has to be read off the mechanical outcomes, namely, combat. No matter how brilliant a player's plan to kill the dragon in one blow, this isn't possible - you can't drop an 88 hp red dragon to 0 hp with a single blow of a longsword. (In AD&D even a dragon-slaying sword only does 3d12 damage.)</p><p></p><p>Second, a skill challenge cannot be resolved any other way than clever ideas. How do you think players get to make skill checks, other than describing the clever things their PCs are doing?</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure how you are envisaging the game being run. Is it that the player says "I try and build a boat", then the GM says "Ha ha! That's a complexity 5 challenge, all on Nature (in which the PC is untrained), and No TAKEBACKS!"</p><p></p><p>When you run combat encounters, do you tell the players how many hit points the enemies have? Do you tell them if the bar patron their PCs are picking a fight with is a 1st level thief or a 10th level fighter? Framing a skill challenge is no different - in that different GM's use different techniques on different occasions - but if you've solved the problem of transparency for combat challenges in your game, then I don't see why you think you can't solve it for skill challenges?</p><p></p><p>And why would the GM frame the hermit druid PC into an urban chase scene with tool-stealing thieves? (How would that even happen, if you're making the boat on the shore of your wilderness lake? How does the action shift from the lake-side to the town?)</p><p></p><p>As I said, I'm really having trouble working out what sort of play experience you are describing or imagining.</p><p></p><p>The player explains what his/her PC is doing to help resolve the situation, and the GM (typically with input from the player) determines what skill is to be checked.</p><p></p><p>First, how is this different from your lunch example? If it's OK for the GM to determine, via reasonable inference from the known state of the gameworld, how crowded the market is, then why isn't it reasonable for the GM to determine which skill is tested by a particular sort of activity. (Question: do lumberjacks normally look more like weightlifters, or more like mountain-climbers? In my admittedly limited experience more like weightlifters, so I'd be inclined to go with Athletics over Endurance.)</p><p></p><p>In other words, I don't understand why you are outraged by the possible use of a technique that you yourself seem to endorse.</p><p></p><p>But second - and this goes back to the point about clever ideas - the player is expected to declare actions that leverage his/her PC's strengths. So if your player is strong in Endurance but not Athletics, then declare actions that rely upon Endurance (eg you roam around the woods collecting fallen timber and taking it back to your base; as opposed to declaring actions to cut down trees); or, if your PC is a druid, then declare Nature checks and/or use your magic to get some beavers to help you cut down trees; etc.</p><p></p><p>What do you mean by "related to the crafting"? If you have to chop wood to build your boat, that's related to the crafting.</p><p></p><p>Again, I'm really not following your conception of how the challenge is being run. It might help if you related your questions and concerns to actual play reports of skill challenge framing and resolution. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?301282-Actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-and-mechanics" target="_blank">Here</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?309950-Actual-play-my-first-quot-social-only-quot-session" target="_blank">is</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324955-Whelm-reforged-as-Overwhelm-and-other-recent-skill-challenges" target="_blank">a</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog" target="_blank">handful</a>.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, one point of "for the sake of drama" is that this is how the game becomes interesting. Another is that this is how the game becomes non-Spartan.</p><p></p><p>No. The players declare actions (for their PCs) that are relevant to resolving the situation. Checks are made and resolved. Progress is made and/or failures incurred.</p><p></p><p>Again, I think it would help if you enaged with actual play examples of skill challenges.</p><p></p><p>To me, this makes as much sense as saying that, in 3E, a Craft check isn't something the players have control over, but rather is imposed by the DM in response to the PCs trying to accompish a task.</p><p></p><p>In other words, it's kind-of true, but mostly misleading, because not addressing any of the actual play that is involved in action declarations and action resolution.</p><p></p><p>Why did you, as GM, decide that the cultists would capture the prisoners? Or decide that today is a festival day? Or decide that the queue at the potion shop is long or short?</p><p></p><p>Why did Gygax decide that the orcs in the lower level of the Hill Giant steading are in revolt?</p><p></p><p>GMing involves making decisions. One important element of decision-making is to introduce dynamic elements into the game, with which the players can then (via their PCs) engage.</p><p></p><p>If the players don't want their PCs to encounter traps, don't enter dungeons. If they don't want their PCs to meet monsters, don't leave home. If they don't want to have to resolve skill challenges, don't get into any situations that involve drama, or tension, or the prospect of meaningful failure.</p><p></p><p></p><p><u><strong>The overall point of fantasy RPGing</strong></u></p><p>I don't see why that is clever at all.</p><p></p><p>If my PC is Conan, then how will I get the water spirit to give me aid? Or turn the stone to mud? I think I'll take my chances at sneaking and confronting, thanks very much!</p><p></p><p>Also, these things you describe are entirely elements of the mechanical system. In D&D, as traditionally presented, magic has no chance of failure. So of course, if I can kill the general by casting an auto-win spell rather than fighting him/her, why wouldn't I? But as soon as you change the spell system - say, spell-casting has a chance of failure which will kill the caster, or conjuring and dealing with spirits creates a risk that they'll carry you off to be a slave on their other-dimensional homeland, then maybe sneaking and fighting become the better bet. (This relates to my reply to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] upthread.)</p><p></p><p>In 4e, there's no general <em>mechanical</em> reason to favour seeking the aid of the spirit, or turning the stone to mud, rather than sneaking and fighting. (Indvidual PCs might have mechanical strengths that point one way rather than another.) These choices become choices about story, flavour, and what sort of people the PCs are, rather than about expedient manipulation of the spell-casting system. To me that is a major strength of 4e.</p><p></p><p></p><p>For me, personally, the main point of playing RPGs is not to apply the system so as to minimise risk.</p><p></p><p>As [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] stated upthread, the game you describe has basically no appeal to me.</p><p></p><p>It is the Spartan world generalised to the whole of play: not only a Spartan world but Spartan characters (who, when the rubber hits the road, have no motivation but risk minimisation) who, if they encounter a non-Spartan situation, do their utmost to render it into a Spartan one.</p><p></p><p>I don't understand. You can look up the DC-by-level chart. You can look at the skill challenge rules, which include guidelines to the GM on setting difficulties.</p><p></p><p>But I also think you are approaching the question in a very different way from how 4e is oriented. (And this related to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s post upthread, and my reply not far above this post.)</p><p></p><p>You are wanting guarantees, in advance, that things will work out a certain way. The focus of 4e play is not on planning. It is on the resolution of the scene in virtue of things done during the scene.</p><p></p><p>So it's all about jumping in feet first, responding to and pushing the narrative, and <em>relying on the system design</em>, and the many player resources that it provides, to make sure that you can meet the DCs that come your way.</p><p></p><p>Outcomes are often not transparent, in the sense of predictable in advance. That's intended to be a virtue of the system. For instance, alluding to my earlier play example posted upthread (and elaborated <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?435239-PCs-vs-Demonweb-Pits-%28continued%29" target="_blank">here</a>), who would have thought that an assault upon Lolth would end up in a fight with Pazuzu? This is the non-Spartan world!</p><p></p><p>The point is that the <em>process</em> of resolution is transparent, in the sense that the players can know what their options are, and can see how their choices are producing outcomes in the fiction. Pazuzu turned up because a player had his PC call upon that demon lord. That happened because the player was looking through his PC sheet trying to think of a way to stop Lolth discorporating, knowing that he needed to do something at free-action speed - and decided to call upon Pazuzu to help him externaise rather than internalise the life-saving power of his Ring of Tenacious Will.</p><p></p><p>The player may not have though to ask Pazuzu for help if I hadn't reminded him of how he got the ring (which was a couple of years ago in the real world). Poking players, to encourage them to make bold choices, is (for me) a very important part of my job as GM.</p><p></p><p>Where is the illusion?</p><p></p><p>The players know the game rules. They can see what the GM is doing, and why. There's no trickery or deception involved!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6579697, member: 42582"] [b]Long Reply to Saelorn[/b] [B][U]Narrating combat powers[/U][/b][U][/u] The fiction is read off the mechanics. You don't need a translation manual - or, at least, I don't. For instance, if your power has the keyword "fear" and pushes targets, using it will show you what is happening in the fiction: your enemies recoil in horror! The fighter PC in my game has a power that dazes. It was used a couple of times in our last session. What does it represent? In his case, hitting things hard with his hammer! How can we tell? Because (i) it does quite a bit of damage (from memory, 6d8 or even 8d8 + 20-something before buffs), and (ii) [i]how else would a hammer-wielding fighter be dazing Lolth[/i]? I don't understand this. Sometimes when you hit with a sword, you roll a 1 for damage. Sometimes you roll a 6. Sometimes the damage roll of 1 is a fatal blow. Sometimes the roll of 6 is not. There is no "detail" which explains how you got there. There is no rule in D&D that tells you what a fata 1 means, compared to a non-fatal 1 or for that matter a non-fatal 6. In the case of the two powers you mention, one inflicts a full stun the other a condition that is a strict sub-set of the effects of stun. Clearly the first is (temporarily) disabling the enemy more seriously than the second. What the actual maneouvre looks like is left as an exercise for the players, much like the difference in damage rolls. I don't know - you're the author of those powers, so you tell me! Do you have actual examples from the rules that you're concerned about? [B][U]Time as a factor in framing and resolution[/U][/b][U][/U] These questions seem to be rhetorical. If they are not, here is the answer: because it's fun. An early guidebook I read (in 1984) was the (non-TSR-endorsed) paperback "What is Dungeons & Dragons?" In it's discussion of dungeon design, it talked about "freeze-frame" vs static rooms. In a freeze-frame room, the GM's description has the PCs entering in the midst of some interesting event (the prisoner about to be tortured or sacrificed was an example in the book; the dinner scene in G1 is an example [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] gave upthread). Because it is fun for the PCs to resolve heroic confrontations. If you mean that the GM can make things up, sure. But that's not the sort of robustness I was talking about. Dungeon time-management, in Gygax's AD&D or Moldvay Basic, does not rely upon the GM making things up. There are rules that allocate movement, exploration and combat to turns, and that lead to wandering monster checks every so many turns. Of course you can. Just like Gygax and Moldvay have codified systems for moving, for searching, and for fighting. I gave a range of options beyond "mere colour". It might be the players gambling aginst the GM's secret timeline, or the players gambling against the GM's roll of the dice to see how much time is taken. [U][b]GM "neutrality" and introducing new content into the fiction[/b][/U] You have not responded to my repeated comments about this. If the players ask how long the queue is at the bread shop, or the potion shop, or whatever, [i]what is the "neutral" answer[/i]? Different answers have potentially huge implications for the dynamics of play (eg if the timeline is 1 hour, and the queue is half-an-hour long, then the players are probably going to have to skip the acquisition of bread, or of potions). How does the GM decide? Saying "without bias" does not describe a method for making a decision. Saying "by extrapolation from what is known about the gameworld" leads to the questions (i) who decided the prior state of the gameworld, and how, and (ii) how is the gameworld description possibly rich enough to support such extrapolation? To me, this gives rise to so many questions. First, how do you now that the PCs probably won't get stuck unless there's a festival on? Second, how do you resolve the "probably"? In my life many improbable things happen. The world is made up of improbable events. Third, how do you know there is a festival going on? Fourth, if the GM answers question 3 (eg by looking at a calendar for the gameworld) then how was it decided that the cultists would strike on [i]this[/i] particular day? These decisions have a big impact on the resolution of the action, and as far as I can see the GM has to make all of them, with little or no mechanical support. Hence my remarks upthread about the impact of GM-fiat on resolution. And what sort of world is it where you never bump into old acquaintances by chance, because that is never a likely thing to occur? My answer - it is a Spartan world of the sort that I have described upthread. As I've remarked, then notion of "neutral arbiter" really has no work to do here, for all the reasons I've given. A further question is, Why would the PCs want fresh food? Does your game have a scurvy table? If trail rations are enough to avoid fatigue penalties, then just eat them! (Another victory for the Spartan world!) [U][b]Setting DCs and calling for checks[/b][/U] Are you really telling me that you can't see how that is just making stuff up? After all, boats were invented, and made by people, thousands of years before locks and bells ever were! Who is "I" in this sentence. If "I" is a player, how do you know your best guess is pretty close? What if your GM takes the view that making a boat is actually much easier than casting a bell or engineering a lock? Or what if the [i]player[/i] believes, with a degree of plausibility, that making a boat is easier than casting a bell, but the GM doesn't agree? Part of the issue here is that what counts as 'complex' is dependent upon knowledge, tools available etc. Because I am educated and literate and am trained in the use of Arabic numerals, doing simple arithmetic causes me no trouble. For illiterate mediaevals the story was very different. The GM, in deciding whether something is easier or harder than casting a bell, has to determine [I]what it is[/I] that makes casting a bell hard or easy in his/her gameworld. For me, that does not produce a better play experience then the GM setting a DC from a table. But real-world verisimilitude is exactly what you relied upon - you guestimated the complexity of a boat compared to a bell. And how do the GM and player end up on the same page? What methods do you use to achieve this? How so? How do I know if you're going to set the DC above or below a bell? My first question, then, is why are we wasting time on this at the table? My next question is, why can't the GM just say yes? Let the player's PC have his/her boat! If we think it's important to the game that the PC have a chance of just not getting a boat, why can't we assign a chance of failure (say, on a 1 on a d6 you can't build a floating boat no matter how hard you try)? Obviously there are other mechanical approaches to resolving boat building, but there's nothing inherently wrong with either of the two that I mentioned. To me, that suggests that you're not familiar with the system. I mean, I don't know how to achieve tasks in PF, but that's because I've not read the book very closely. You don't "see" combat roles. You experience them. (Or make a monster knowledge check and learn the powers.) As for level, that's no different from any version of D&D - how can you tell, just from the GM's description, what level some NPC that you encounter is? In play I use a range of devices to communicate the relevant information to my players. My default is to tell them the level of the opponent. Suppose the answer to that question is No. Why does it matter? I mean, in my game Zeus might have 400 hit points, and in your game 200. In my game lances might do d8 damage, in your game d10. In my game Greyhawk might be 100 miles from Verbobonc, in your game it might be 50 miles. What is the perceived importance of uniformity here? [U][b]Skill check outcomes and skill challenges[/b][/U] There are at least two ways in which I find this confusing. First, D&D has always had a core resolution system in which the fiction has to be read off the mechanical outcomes, namely, combat. No matter how brilliant a player's plan to kill the dragon in one blow, this isn't possible - you can't drop an 88 hp red dragon to 0 hp with a single blow of a longsword. (In AD&D even a dragon-slaying sword only does 3d12 damage.) Second, a skill challenge cannot be resolved any other way than clever ideas. How do you think players get to make skill checks, other than describing the clever things their PCs are doing? I'm not sure how you are envisaging the game being run. Is it that the player says "I try and build a boat", then the GM says "Ha ha! That's a complexity 5 challenge, all on Nature (in which the PC is untrained), and No TAKEBACKS!" When you run combat encounters, do you tell the players how many hit points the enemies have? Do you tell them if the bar patron their PCs are picking a fight with is a 1st level thief or a 10th level fighter? Framing a skill challenge is no different - in that different GM's use different techniques on different occasions - but if you've solved the problem of transparency for combat challenges in your game, then I don't see why you think you can't solve it for skill challenges? And why would the GM frame the hermit druid PC into an urban chase scene with tool-stealing thieves? (How would that even happen, if you're making the boat on the shore of your wilderness lake? How does the action shift from the lake-side to the town?) As I said, I'm really having trouble working out what sort of play experience you are describing or imagining. The player explains what his/her PC is doing to help resolve the situation, and the GM (typically with input from the player) determines what skill is to be checked. First, how is this different from your lunch example? If it's OK for the GM to determine, via reasonable inference from the known state of the gameworld, how crowded the market is, then why isn't it reasonable for the GM to determine which skill is tested by a particular sort of activity. (Question: do lumberjacks normally look more like weightlifters, or more like mountain-climbers? In my admittedly limited experience more like weightlifters, so I'd be inclined to go with Athletics over Endurance.) In other words, I don't understand why you are outraged by the possible use of a technique that you yourself seem to endorse. But second - and this goes back to the point about clever ideas - the player is expected to declare actions that leverage his/her PC's strengths. So if your player is strong in Endurance but not Athletics, then declare actions that rely upon Endurance (eg you roam around the woods collecting fallen timber and taking it back to your base; as opposed to declaring actions to cut down trees); or, if your PC is a druid, then declare Nature checks and/or use your magic to get some beavers to help you cut down trees; etc. What do you mean by "related to the crafting"? If you have to chop wood to build your boat, that's related to the crafting. Again, I'm really not following your conception of how the challenge is being run. It might help if you related your questions and concerns to actual play reports of skill challenge framing and resolution. [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?301282-Actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-and-mechanics]Here[/url] [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?309950-Actual-play-my-first-quot-social-only-quot-session]is[/url] [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324955-Whelm-reforged-as-Overwhelm-and-other-recent-skill-challenges]a[/url] [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog]handful[/url]. Anyway, one point of "for the sake of drama" is that this is how the game becomes interesting. Another is that this is how the game becomes non-Spartan. No. The players declare actions (for their PCs) that are relevant to resolving the situation. Checks are made and resolved. Progress is made and/or failures incurred. Again, I think it would help if you enaged with actual play examples of skill challenges. To me, this makes as much sense as saying that, in 3E, a Craft check isn't something the players have control over, but rather is imposed by the DM in response to the PCs trying to accompish a task. In other words, it's kind-of true, but mostly misleading, because not addressing any of the actual play that is involved in action declarations and action resolution. Why did you, as GM, decide that the cultists would capture the prisoners? Or decide that today is a festival day? Or decide that the queue at the potion shop is long or short? Why did Gygax decide that the orcs in the lower level of the Hill Giant steading are in revolt? GMing involves making decisions. One important element of decision-making is to introduce dynamic elements into the game, with which the players can then (via their PCs) engage. If the players don't want their PCs to encounter traps, don't enter dungeons. If they don't want their PCs to meet monsters, don't leave home. If they don't want to have to resolve skill challenges, don't get into any situations that involve drama, or tension, or the prospect of meaningful failure. [U][b]The overall point of fantasy RPGing[/b][/U] I don't see why that is clever at all. If my PC is Conan, then how will I get the water spirit to give me aid? Or turn the stone to mud? I think I'll take my chances at sneaking and confronting, thanks very much! Also, these things you describe are entirely elements of the mechanical system. In D&D, as traditionally presented, magic has no chance of failure. So of course, if I can kill the general by casting an auto-win spell rather than fighting him/her, why wouldn't I? But as soon as you change the spell system - say, spell-casting has a chance of failure which will kill the caster, or conjuring and dealing with spirits creates a risk that they'll carry you off to be a slave on their other-dimensional homeland, then maybe sneaking and fighting become the better bet. (This relates to my reply to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] upthread.) In 4e, there's no general [i]mechanical[/i] reason to favour seeking the aid of the spirit, or turning the stone to mud, rather than sneaking and fighting. (Indvidual PCs might have mechanical strengths that point one way rather than another.) These choices become choices about story, flavour, and what sort of people the PCs are, rather than about expedient manipulation of the spell-casting system. To me that is a major strength of 4e. For me, personally, the main point of playing RPGs is not to apply the system so as to minimise risk. As [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] stated upthread, the game you describe has basically no appeal to me. It is the Spartan world generalised to the whole of play: not only a Spartan world but Spartan characters (who, when the rubber hits the road, have no motivation but risk minimisation) who, if they encounter a non-Spartan situation, do their utmost to render it into a Spartan one. I don't understand. You can look up the DC-by-level chart. You can look at the skill challenge rules, which include guidelines to the GM on setting difficulties. But I also think you are approaching the question in a very different way from how 4e is oriented. (And this related to [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s post upthread, and my reply not far above this post.) You are wanting guarantees, in advance, that things will work out a certain way. The focus of 4e play is not on planning. It is on the resolution of the scene in virtue of things done during the scene. So it's all about jumping in feet first, responding to and pushing the narrative, and [i]relying on the system design[/i], and the many player resources that it provides, to make sure that you can meet the DCs that come your way. Outcomes are often not transparent, in the sense of predictable in advance. That's intended to be a virtue of the system. For instance, alluding to my earlier play example posted upthread (and elaborated [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?435239-PCs-vs-Demonweb-Pits-%28continued%29]here[/url]), who would have thought that an assault upon Lolth would end up in a fight with Pazuzu? This is the non-Spartan world! The point is that the [i]process[/i] of resolution is transparent, in the sense that the players can know what their options are, and can see how their choices are producing outcomes in the fiction. Pazuzu turned up because a player had his PC call upon that demon lord. That happened because the player was looking through his PC sheet trying to think of a way to stop Lolth discorporating, knowing that he needed to do something at free-action speed - and decided to call upon Pazuzu to help him externaise rather than internalise the life-saving power of his Ring of Tenacious Will. The player may not have though to ask Pazuzu for help if I hadn't reminded him of how he got the ring (which was a couple of years ago in the real world). Poking players, to encourage them to make bold choices, is (for me) a very important part of my job as GM. Where is the illusion? The players know the game rules. They can see what the GM is doing, and why. There's no trickery or deception involved! [/QUOTE]
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