D&D 5E Toxicity in the Fandom

[Thomas Shey]

So, I'm finding that this idea that skill challenges are this bizarre thing that no one could ever understand to be rather overblown. DM says something along the lines of "Here's the situation, what are you going to do to help resolve that problem?" Players make their cases, and roll their dice, and the situation is resolved. No gaming the system to any large extent, very engaged players, and a ton of fun around the table.

I understood it perfectly well. Its function and design were very clear. It just felt unusually disconnected and abstract. But I won't claim that's anything but a perceptual issue--but I'm not sure its was a rare perceptual issue.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I understood it perfectly well. Its function and design were very clear. It just felt unusually disconnected and abstract. But I won't claim that's anything but a perceptual issue--but I'm not sure its was a rare perceptual issue.

I guess WOTC was wrong to assume that DMs would provide the connection and straction themselves? Would thirty pages of explaining every minute detail help?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nah, just tell the DM to ask their DM.

 

[pemerton]

To me, it was an area of the game that either needed more polish, or at the very least, a little more light shed onto it, to explain the hows, whys, and whens, so to speak.

I guess WOTC was wrong to assume that DMs would provide the connection and straction themselves? Would thirty pages of explaining every minute detail help?

It's possible to write better advice for skill challenges than WotC did.

Just as one example:

In the RC example, the players fail the challenge. The final check, which they fail, is Streetwise, to try and work out what is happening in an abandoned building. The consequence of failure is that some NPCs, who earlier in the challenge the PCs had successfully Intimidated away, come back with reinforcements to beat them up.

That's a subtle narration of failure: it's not a working-out of the downstream consequences of knowing or not knowing about the shop; rather, it's the introduction of a new complication that draws on material and narrative trajectories established earlier in the resolution of the skill challenge.

But the rulebook doesn't explain at any point what is going on: what I've just typed is more explanation than the rulebook gives!

 

[pemerton]

The forest-

The scenario is that, somewhere in the forest, the locals have encountered a creature they describe as a "demon". It hasn't hurt anyone yet, but they are afraid, and have asked us to investigate. The DM apparently decided that this search would be a good time to perform a skill challenge. When he mentions the skills involved, it struck me as odd that we were even rolling- we had a character who, if we listened to their advice, would let us overcome any of the obstacles that didn't include a combat.

On the other hand, if the rest of us urban-minded characters ran around trying to "help", we might hinder the course of the skill challenge! I (and the other players) felt that this skill challenge was simply unnecessary as a result. If the Ranger was by himself, he could accomplish all the tasks easily, so, in this caser, the rest of the party really only existed to complicate matters.

I don't really have a clear picture of what you're describing. What situation did the GM frame? What obstacles confronted the PCs? How were they being resolved? What was each PC doing, in the fiction, that was resolved at the table as a check?

 

[James Gasik]

I don't really have a clear picture of what you're describing. What situation did the GM frame? What obstacles confronted the PCs? How were they being resolved? What was each PC doing, in the fiction, that was resolved at the table as a check?

Now my memory of the event is a bit fuzzy, since we're talking over 10 years ago, but as I recall, he said "ok, now for a skill challenge" and I asked him "what for?". To which he replied, "to find a path through the forest and avoid any potential dangers while you track the demon".

To which I replied, "can't Hayes (our Ranger) do all that? I mean, he's a Ranger, that's his deal isn't it?"

Everyone else chimed in with "yeah, that makes sense". The DM said "but don't you want to contribute?"

Me: "not if we'd do more harm than good, we trust Hayes."

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's possible to write better advice for skill challenges than WotC did.

Just as one example:

In the RC example, the players fail the challenge. The final check, which they fail, is Streetwise, to try and work out what is happening in an abandoned building. The consequence of failure is that some NPCs, who earlier in the challenge the PCs had successfully Intimidated away, come back with reinforcements to beat them up.

That's a subtle narration of failure: it's not a working-out of the downstream consequences of knowing or not knowing about the shop; rather, it's the introduction of a new complication that draws on material and narrative trajectories established earlier in the resolution of the skill challenge.

But the rulebook doesn't explain at any point what is going on: what I've just typed is more explanation than the rulebook gives!

That's a great explanation; when I said I knew there were counter-examples to bad skill challenges, I was thinking of you.

In a layman's book, though, I expect you'd want to avoid the term "narrative trajectories".

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess WOTC was wrong to assume that DMs would provide the connection and straction themselves? Would thirty pages of explaining every minute detail help?

There's no reason to be snarky about it. Its not a coincidence that most games that have an element that comes up a lot in the game will have dedicated (albeit related) subsystems to handle it; because the subsystem attaches enough connective tissue to make it feel like a thing unto itself rather than just a generic resolutions system.

Edit: And to make it clear, I don't think this can, in practice, be done for every possible use of something like skill challenges. But there are least needs to be (as Pemerton more or less suggests) more guidance to applying the "flesh" to what is otherwise a very skeletal system.

 

[pemerton]

Now my memory of the event is a bit fuzzy, since we're talking over 10 years ago, but as I recall, he said "ok, now for a skill challenge" and I asked him "what for?". To which he replied, "to find a path through the forest and avoid any potential dangers while you track the demon".

To which I replied, "can't Hayes (our Ranger) do all that? I mean, he's a Ranger, that's his deal isn't it?"

Everyone else chimed in with "yeah, that makes sense". The DM said "but don't you want to contribute?"

Me: "not if we'd do more harm than good, we trust Hayes."

To me, and without wanting to be too rude to your GM, that sounds awful. Just to begin with, there seems to be no framing at all. What's the fiction?

 

[pemerton]

That's a great explanation; when I said I knew there were counter-examples to bad skill challenges, I was thinking of you.

In a layman's book, though, I expect you'd want to avoid the term "narrative trajectories".

Sure. I wrote what I wrote in five or so minutes, without the benefit of an editor, and without planning to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of copies.

But the idea that events have a trajectory - a direction of motion, with threats and rising action and potential resolutions which might be good or bad for the PCs - is pretty central to the whole skill challenge idea. The 4e DMG does try to convey that, although it uses the word "story" more than I think is helpful.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

To me, and without wanting to be too rude to your GM, that sounds awful. Just to begin with, there seems to be no framing at all. What's the fiction?

Sadly this was my experience with skill challenges too.
I did never find a way as DM to imbed them in the story.
Sometimes I made and still make a pseudo skill challenge and ask everyone what they are doing and have some rolls and look how well everyone does.
But not in a round by round by round basis and not formally with x successes before y failures.

 

[James Gasik]

To me, and without wanting to be too rude to your GM, that sounds awful. Just to begin with, there seems to be no framing at all. What's the fiction?

Basically, he had fallen into a trap that a lot of DM's I knew in the 4e era had, and, to be fair, some adventure writers as well. Because 4e has Skill Challenges, there was a sense that you "had" to have Skill Challenges in an adventure. And while there were good Skill Challenges, there were also questionable ones (IMO, at least).

I fell into this trap as well a few times without realizing it. I would be converting an old Dragon magazine adventure for my group, or even just an "old school" style adventure out of whole cloth, when I'd pause and realize "oh, I don't have a Skill Challenge!".

Thus, rather than organically making it as part of the adventure, I would be adding it after the fact, and sometimes, this turned out to be rather clunky as a result.

I never stopped using them, and, in fact, I tried to get creative with them (there was an adventure where this portside town was being attacked by aquatic creatures- I had like 4 actual encounters, and then between them, I had a running Skill Challenge to represent the mass battle, and the total number of successes would determine the fate of the town. Of course, I underestimated my party, and they got the "golden ending", lol, since they didn't fail any checks, which, in retrospect, made me wonder why I had bothered!), but I no longer felt like I "needed" them, and that made my sessions run more smoothly.

Of course, when I decided to run White Plume Mountain, that's when I realized it was a bad fit for 4e- most of the exploration challenges weren't really an issue for my group, even my attempt to buff a lot of the encounters fell flat, and even when I explained the mechanics of the giant crab fight, they decided to go full strength against the crab and not care about bursting it's bubble- and sure enough, they won, despite the damage of the boiling water!

I threw in the towel after the Sir Bluto fight, where I realized I was going to need to go back to the drawing board on the whole adventure.

 

[gnarlygninja]

Note trolling is not the fishing term. The fishing term is trawling. Same pronunciation but not the same word.

Trolling has always been toxic.

You're actually confusing trolling with trawling here. Both are fishing terms, and to my eye the one that uses bait resembles the internet usage more than the one with nets.

 

[pemerton]

when I decided to run White Plume Mountain, that's when I realized it was a bad fit for 4e

I think a lot of work would be needed to convert WPM to 4e in a satisfactory way. I did run a session of WPM earlier this year, but using my own AD&D variant. The PCs beat off some wandering wights, but got hosed by the heat tunnel + ghouls combo. Until they came back with some animated dead, who were able to soak the ghoul attacks!

 

[Hussar]

I am a fan of 4e, and I regularly defend it against people who don't seem to understand what it was really about. But there were issues with skill challenges. Whether this came down to skill challenges that didn't need to be skill challenges, or skill challenges that were badly designed, there were occasions where I felt, as a player and a DM, that the mechanic sometimes bogged otherwise fun adventures down.

To me, it was an area of the game that either needed more polish, or at the very least, a little more light shed onto it, to explain the hows, whys, and whens, so to speak.

Now this I will totally agree with. It really wasn't explained very well and the initial DMG version of skill checks left a LOT to be desired.

 

[Hussar]

You're actually confusing trolling with trawling here. Both are fishing terms, and to my eye the one that uses bait resembles the internet usage more than the one with nets.

I stand (well recline casually actually) corrected.

 

[Ancalagon]

Aquaman was dumb as hell, too long, but tons of fun. Better than most MCU affairs. Also remarkably good trident-fight! Two thumbs up.

I agree! there also were a few shots that were really really well composed - strikingly beautiful.

 

[Eric V]

Now this I will totally agree with. It really wasn't explained very well and the initial DMG version of skill checks left a LOT to be desired.

DMG2 for 4e did a great job in Skill Challenge advice, IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. I wrote what I wrote in five or so minutes, without the benefit of an editor, and without planning to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of copies.

But the idea that events have a trajectory - a direction of motion, with threats and rising action and potential resolutions which might be good or bad for the PCs - is pretty central to the whole skill challenge idea. The 4e DMG does try to convey that, although it uses the word "story" more than I think is helpful.

I think understanding skill challenges requires a grounding in narrative convention and flow, and WotC has never been good at describing these things in their rulebooks, probably due to the oft-mentioned "marketing to 12-year-olds" issue.

 

[MNblockhead]

Regarding skill challenges, I never played 4e and learned about 4e-style skill challenges from a Matt Colville video where he spoke about how they could be used in 5e games. I really like them but I save them for special set-piece events. The most recent example I can think of is a escaping from a collapsing complex. Because the magic that held the place together was breaking down after killing the BBEG, there were magical vortices appearing, chunks of rock falling, creavases to get over, doors that got jammed shut. There were plenty of ways each character class could contribute, it was both smoother to run and more narratively satisfying than if I would have run it with just standard random-event tables and individual checks.

As for the main topic of the thread...toxic, trolls, flaming...I'm old enough to have grown up before internet culture. "Jerk" is still a fine term to explain rude people.