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.