Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Gimby]

Right. Let's play "guessing game". After all, it doesn't really matter what we're doing -- so why should we even know?

"Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!"
"First you are swathed head to foot in the intestines of fresh killed owls."
"We go to the image expander; there we will explode the ghost to the macroid dimension."
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."

"I rolled an 18!"
"For what?"
"How do I know?"

No, it's not. It's similar to a DM who keeps secret the fact that he's "fudging" or "railroading". Or a DM who's so stoned he has no more idea of what's going on than the players have.

Ludicrious hyperbole isn't really making your point.

The above is as reasonable as saying that a situation thats addressed by a skill challenge in 4e was covered by playing Mother-May-I in 1e.

Lets take the example of avoiding bandits on the way back from Castle Greyhawk.

In both cases the party makes a plan. Lets say they are going to avoid the bandits by travelling away from the roads near areas where bandit ambushes are expected.

What is now in question is *whether or not they can execute this plan*. Different games approach this in different ways. You can take the strategy game approach of plotting out the group's movement and the bandit's positions and see if they interact. You can declare by fiat that the plan succeeds or fails. You can ask for a single roll.

The skill challenge approach is to get the players to use their character's skills in an attempt to execute their plan. The players must use their best judgement to determine which skills are appropriate.

So an example of play might be:

Players: We want to avoid the bandits on the road back to town.
DM: Ok, how do you plan on doing that?
Players: We'll travel away from the roads near ambush spots.
DM: Ok, I'll run this as a skill challenge!
<DM creates skill challenge with difficulties based on the abilities of the bandits, their dispositons and the quality of the plan - a plan to avoid bandits by say, dressing up as an undefended merchant caravan is going to fail whatever you do. This is a decent plan as the DM knows the bandits are really only watching the road, so its an easy challenge>
DM:You are on the road from Castle Greyhawk, the morning sun burning away the mists as you face the day's travel. Player A, how are you helping perform your plan?
Player A: I'm going to try to remember where the town's history say bandits lurk on this road, or where there were famous attacks. Rolling History!
DM: Ok, thats a success - you remember that bandits used to ambush people in Dead Man's Valley and the Singing Wood, so be sure to avoid those. Wracking your brain takes some time and keeps you a little distracted from the road. Player B?
Player B: I'm going to keep a sharp lookout for bandits! Perception.
DM: Ok, success! You keep watch, wary for bandits. Player C?
Player C: I jump really high in the air looking for bandits, bouncing along! Acrobatics!
DM: You sure? Thats pretty silly and doesn't really apply to your plan at all.
Player C: Sure! its my best skill and must be applied at all times!
DM: Sorry, thats a failure. Kicking up lots of dust from the road and bouncing about is only going to attract the attention you are trying to avoid. Player D?
Player D: I'm going to scry on the Dead Man's Valley, looking for bandit activity.
DM: Ok, you perform the short ritual and get a picture of the famous ambush spot. Theres no sign of bandit activity there, so you can probably save some time and go down it. Thats a success. Anyone else?
Player B: I pray to Pelor to watch over us. Religion.
DM: Well, Pelor watches over you but thats not going to help you avoid bandits, so thats not relevant.
Player D: I help Character A keep watch, Perception.
DM: Success, with the two of you watching nothing shoud get past you. Ok, challenge succeded- <proceeds to quickly narrate the days travel, passing down Dead Man's Valley but avoiding the Singing Wood where bandits are spotted - pausing to let the characters give C grief for being an idiot and for D and A to have a theological arguement over lunch>

So, simple skill challenge there where the DM didn't tell the players the skills needed ahead of time and based entirely on what the players wanted to do. Tell me, whats so awful about it?

 

[AllisterH]

But he is a player, right? A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS player? So he's not too shy to turn into a cross between Sun Tzu and Patton as soon as the DM says, "Roll initiative."

It's not an audition for Masterpiece Theater. I am not eager to sit through a thespian performance by someone whose fantasy is to have social skills --

From my PoV, you're actually arguing FOR skill challenges here Ariosto.

D&D has always handheld/provided options so that the player who doesn't know his Sun Tzu from Mary Sue knows what to do in a combat situation. There's weapons, feats, spells, HP etc.

All of these "combat" information help a player become "effective" in D&D battle even if they've never even participated in so much as a pillow fight.

I think the issue is that for MANY a player, when it came to non-combat situations, the game just said "act it out/describe how you would do it" and that's it.

The equivalent in combat would be something more akin to the narrative style of combat in say an Indie game like "Sorceror".

 

[FireLance]

As I have said in other threads and in my blog:

To me, skill challenges strike a middle ground between a very free-form problem-solving approach which is almost entirely dependent on player skill/DM adjudication (e.g. solve this mystery) and a very mechanical, rules-defined approach to tackling common (but specific) problems (e.g. opening locks, noticing secret doors, finding and removing traps, following tracks).

Properly used, the skill challenge framework can give you the best of both approaches. An inventive player can come up with creative solutions to the skill challenge, or novel ways to use the skills he is good at, and the DM can allow the use of those skills to score successes, or even award successes without the need to make a skill check. On the other hand, a player who is more comfortable working within a fairly well-defined framework can simply run through his character's list of trained skills and pick one that seems appropriate to the challenge.

... if you are inclined to allow player skill and creativity to solve problems in your games, the presence of the skill challenge mechanic should not prevent you from doing so. Feel free to allow players who come up with good ideas to overcome skill challenges without rolling for skill checks - just as if the skill challenge mechanic did not exist.

If you want to give clever and creative players an advantage, but are not prepared to let them solve the problem without rolling dice, then the granular nature of skill challenges (in that a certain number of "successes" are required before the skill challenge is overcome) allows you to reward good ideas with more successes if the PC makes the skill check, or even automatic successes (less than the total number of successes required, if you do want the PCs to make some skill checks).

Of course, none of the above is very useful if you are faced with a bunch of players who just go through their PCs' skill lists and roll dice. Under such circumstances, a DM who wants to encourage more imagination and out of the box thinking from the players should start hinting that such approaches would be more advantageous, and then actually reward the players' attempts, perhaps erring on the side of generosity, at least at first, to encourage more of such creativity in the future.
​

 

[Ariosto]

Tell me, whats so awful about it?

Tell me what makes it a 4e "skill challenge".

What makes the critical difference from playing out a situation in any of myriad other "skills-based" RPGs?

We both know what that is. You ought to, anyway, if you're going on about how grand it is.

What it is not is the design paradigm of 1st ed. AD&D. If it is your concept of essential "game balance", then of course in that sense AD&D was not designed for "game balance".

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, simple skill challenge there where the DM didn't tell the players the skills needed ahead of time and based entirely on what the players wanted to do. Tell me, whats so awful about it?

It is far worse (IMHO) than:

Players: We want to avoid the bandits on the road back to town.

DM: Ok, how do you plan on doing that?

Players: We'll travel away from the roads near ambush spots.

DM: How, exactly? You are currently on the road from Castle Greyhawk, the morning sun burning away the mists as you face the day's travel.

Player A: Do I know where bandits lurk on this road, or where there were famous attacks?

DM: You remember that bandits used to ambush people in Dead Man's Valley and the Singing Wood, because there is plenty of cover there. Of course, that's no guarantee -- the bandits are likely to know this as well!

Player B: I'm going to keep a sharp lookout for bandits!

DM: Ok, but that sort of goes without saying! You keep watch, wary for bandits.

Player C: I jump really high in the air looking for bandits, bouncing along!

DM: You sure? That's pretty silly, and likely to kick up lots of dust from the road. It's also likely to tire you out, leaving you fatigued if you do encounter any bandits!

Player C: You're right. Never mind.

Player D: I'm going to scry on the Dead Man's Valley, looking for bandit activity.

DM: Ok, you perform the short ritual and get a picture of the famous ambush spot. Theres no sign of bandit activity there right now.

Player A: Of course, we still don't know where the bandits are, so we're still going to have to pick a route.....

etc.

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The "skill challenge" as presented assumes a few odd things, such as that using one's perception where there are no bandits somehow tells you something other than that you see no bandits at your current location. Why is it less silly to make a Perception check before picking a route than it is to bound along like a giant grasshopper? IMHO, they apply equally as presented -- which is to say, not at all.

Why would a player even imagine that bounding would help? Because his reading of the skill challenge formula suggests that it would!

Moreover, let us assume momentarily that the DM knows where the bandits are. Presumably, then, scrying on their location reveals the bandits, and scrying elsewhere does not. If you know where the bandits are, they should be relatively easy to avoid. Why bother with the "skill challenge"? If you know where they are not, that knowledge can help you pick your route, but why would the PCs not have to still pick their route?

"If they're not at Dead Man's Valley, they're probably in the Singing Wood. We cut off the road there to the east, giving the Singing Wood a wide berth."

Again, if the bandits are in the Singing Wood, why bother with the rest of the "skill challenge"? If they are not, how did the scrying actually help the PCs?

This just smacks of the "quantum states" approach that 4e seems built around. The bandits are in/not in the area you pass through based on your skill checks.

I have no problem with random encounter frequency being reduced through skill use....woodcraft, for example.....but the idea that a set encounter changes locations because the players decide to have their characters march down the King's Highway, and, hey, they made X successes before Y failures, sets my teeth on edge.

YMMV, of course.

RC

 

[billd91]

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The "skill challenge" as presented assumes a few odd things, such as that using one's perception where there are no bandits somehow tells you something other than that you see no bandits at your current location. Why is it less silly to make a Perception check before picking a route than it is to bound along like a giant grasshopper? IMHO, they apply equally as presented -- which is to say, not at all.

<snip>

This just smacks of the "quantum states" approach that 4e seems built around. The bandits are in/not in the area you pass through based on your skill checks.

I have no problem with random encounter frequency being reduced through skill use....woodcraft, for example.....but the idea that a set encounter changes locations because the players decide to have their characters march down the King's Highway, and, hey, they made X successes before Y failures, sets my teeth on edge.

YMMV, of course.

RC

I think we're laboring under an example of a skill challenge that isn't particularly good. Of course PCs are going to use perception to foil a potential bandit ambush. That's how the rules in general are applied when the ambush actually starts! So it's not really appropriate to use in a skill challenge to figure out what road to use to avoid bandit attacks.

A better challenge would probably involve using History (history of notorious bandit attacks), Nature (knowing good paths that avoid or reduce ambush terrain), Streetwise (getting info from the locals about recent bandit activity, some of whom may be working with the bandits and may unwittingly reveal some hints), and Bluff (giving the impression that you're far too dangerous for bandits to even try to attack, when you really might not be). Get enough successes and you can chart a course that keeps you safe from bandits. The skill challenge mainly gives the DM a chance to think out what might be helpful and allows him to jot down what sort of success level is necessary before he's willing to declare that the PCs have achieved their objective.
What a skill challenge won't do, in this case, is prevent the players from being uncreative or foolish in the tactics they use to try to meet and overcome the challenge. I could certainly see players in 1e declaring some of the same silly or useless ideas as the ones in Gimby's example.

On the subject of quantum states, that's not exactly new with 4e. I've been using "quantum" encounters since 1e and I still use them in 3.5. It's simply a tactic for reusing planned out resources you've got when PCs go whereever they want, particularly if they are following a particular plot line for part of the campaign and they get way off track or the DM wants to change the pacing of the campaign.

 

[billd91]

Tell me what makes it a 4e "skill challenge".

What makes the critical difference from playing out a situation in any of myriad other "skills-based" RPGs?

We both know what that is. You ought to, anyway, if you're going on about how grand it is.

What it is not is the design paradigm of 1st ed. AD&D. If it is your concept of essential "game balance", then of course in that sense AD&D was not designed for "game balance".

What makes it a skill challenge? Structure on the DM's end. That's about it. It's really not that different from other skill-based RPGs, nor is it all that different from the design paradigm of 1e except that it's got a defined set of tools feeding into it that did not exist in 1e rather than entirely ad hoc adjudications.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think we're laboring under an example of a skill challenge that isn't particularly good.

The problem is that yours is not particularly better.

The initial example used History (as does yours). Nature is an improvement, but how Streetwise is going to help you now that you are on the road, or how you are going to successfully Bluff bandits you haven't encountered is just more Grasshopper Bounding.

Moreover, the supposed strength of the "skill challenge" system is that the players get to use the skills thier PCs are good at, rather than (as in all other skill-based systems) the ones that obviously apply.

Appropriate knowledge-based skills (History, Nature, Local[?]) give the players the means to make informed choices. Everything else? Grasshopper Bounding.

Frankly, I fail to see anything that "skill challenges" are an improvement on from complex skill checks in 3e.

On the subject of quantum states, that's not exactly new with 4e.

The degree of reliance on quantum states -- and with it, the decrease in player choices being meaningful in determining outcomes -- is.

IMHO, at least.

YMMV.


RC

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

See, there's the problem with skill challenges in 4e: The plan determines nothing. It's just post-facto "narration", explicitly not meant to be any more than an excuse to let a skill play a part in the challenge. At best, it's a plausible rationale for whatever the dice dictate.

THE PLAN determines what skills the characters use to try to accomplish their plan. 1E Players: "We try to move steathily through the area to avoid contact with the bandits." -Plan. 1E DM: "Have the Thief roll Move Silently and the elf roll a d6. The fighter, cleric and wizard aren't very skilled at that, so..." [I don't remember how to adjudicate this by 1E rules, but by common sense I'd have to decide whether they succeed or fail.] 4E Players: "We try to move steathily through the area to avoid contact with the bandits." -Plan. 4E DM: "Each of you roll a Stealth check." [By the setup of my skill challenge if more PCs succeed than fail, then they have succeeded.]

It is in no means "Post-facto narration." The PCs plans directly result in how they deal with the bandits.

If you really want to test players' ingenuity at solving a problem, then -- I know this is a really wild idea! -- let them actually solve the problem.

Here's a even wilder idea! I AM! They determine a course of action - a plan - the skill challenge gives some examples of ideas they may come up with. These examples allow me to pre-determine how easy or difficult I think a plan will be instead of implementing it on the fly and to have a comparison point for plans that the players think of that I didn't, because ya know player do that sometimes.

Just play it out like anything else: Here's what you perceive; what will you do? Adjudicate on the basis of the particular circumstances.

It does play out like that! I don't announce I my game show voice "SKILL CHALLENGE TIME!!!" I set up the area, they hear rumors of bandits, what do you do? You are adjudicating on the fly. I've put preparation into my adjudication. Different methods. Same results.

The reason to mess with that straightforward process is definitely not to get the same result -- because the process is the key result!

The part of the process you consider key is still alive and well if a skill challenge isn't treating like a little side game. A skill challenge is nothing more than a semi-prepared adjudication framework. It is not meant to take the place of the process.

I have tried to convince you that how much you happen to like 4e "skill challenges" has nothing to do with whether AD&D1 was designed for game balance. How much you happen to like 4e "skill challenges" is not the topic of this thread.

Trying to convince me that I'm off-topic by continuing an off-topic discussion? Good plan. I'll accept that we've gotten off-topic.

One possibility is to present the skill challenge without revealing which skills are important. The Players choose their actions, then the DM has them roll skill checks whenever appropriate and conducts the number crunching secretly throughout the challenge. Skill challenges are simply a framework for making non-combat encounters run more smoothly and consistently.

Exactly. The Skill Challenge is a DM adjucation tool, not a player tool. That's why it's in the DMG, not the PHB. A good skill challenge will pass without the players ever knowing it took place.

Right. Let's play "guessing game". After all, it doesn't really matter what we're doing -- so why should we even know?

How is it a guessing game for 4E payers when apparently 1E players could figure out a plan without even a skill framework? The challenge isn't "figure out what skill the DM wants me to use," it is "figure out a plan that works." A good 4E DM will use a skill challenge that is open to many different reasonable player plans just like a good 1E DM who is open to many different reasonable player plans. A bad 4E DM (or badly written Skill Challenge) will stifle player ideas, only accepting his own ideas of what will work, just as a bad 1E DM will stifle player ideas, only accepting his own ideas of what will work.

No, it's not. It's similar to a DM who keeps secret the fact that he's "fudging" or "railroading". Or a DM who's so stoned he has no more idea of what's going on than the players have.

You typed the owl intestine passage and then accuse others of being stoned? How does a DM who has prepped for possible player plans in a given situation versus one that adjudicates players plans on the fly have "no more idea of what's going on than players have?"

I just want to know what in blazes he's talking about. Is he diplomatically offering a large sum of money for a little favor, or is he diplomatically asking for a handout just because ... well, just because? It makes a difference. If a dice-roll is called for, then the circumstances are going to affect the probabilities of different outcomes.

And still makes a difference under the current skill system and therefore the skill challenge structure.

I've been playing games with "skill systems" -- starting in my case with Traveller and RuneQuest -- over a span of 30 years. They had nothing to do with a 4e "skill challenge" and I want nothing to do with it.

No one said you had to have anything to do with skill challenges. I've said that from the start of this tangent. But your attitude towards them that I'm a somwhow inferior DM than you because I use them sparked this whole mess. And just because you've played a couple more years than me and played a couple of games I've not played doesn't make you some kind of mighty expert.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A skill challenge is nothing more than a semi-prepared adjudication framework. It is not meant to take the place of the process.

We can agree to disagree on this one. I think that it was, initially, meant to take the place of the process, but that WotC modified this subsequently when they realized that wasn't what players wanted.

Still, if you look at this thread (and others), it becomes obvious that (1) some DMs do announce skill challenges, and (2) some of the ideas as to how they should be resolved feed directly into the criticisms levelled against them.

I think, had the designers understood how much players would latch onto them, skill challenges would have been given a lot more thought upfront.

This is rather like prestige classes in 3e. They were, at first, for DMs. They were in the DMG, after all. But what did they become?

A good skill challenge will pass without the players ever knowing it took place.

This I would agree with.

The question I have, though, is how are skill challenges an improvement over complex skill use from 3e (in the UA)?

I can't think of any way, and I believe that the format causes more problems than it resolves. The example skill challenges that I have seen nearly all point in this direction.


RC