iserith
Magic Wordsmith
What issues?
What issues?
zedturtle
Jacob Rodgers
I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:
Shields!
When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.
Example: Wumbo has an Intelligence (Tactical Operations) of +6 and their Ship has a current Shield Strength of 10, meaning that the total shields' strength must add up to be 26. Anticipating an attack on the port side, they set Port-Bow and Port-Stern to 11 each, and assign only 1 point to the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern and Aft sections.
OR
Shields!
When you take this action, you try to anticipate your attackers' most likely targets and reconfigure the ship's shields to prevent damage. Make an Intelligence (Tactical Operations) check against your opponents' highest passive Dexterity (Targeting Systems). On a success, the ship has resistance to damage until the beginning of your next turn. If you succeed by 5 or more, the ship is immune to damage until the beginning of your next turn.
—•—
Now obviously those are two different kinds of rules and you'd never intermix those rule styles. But both rules consume the same resource (a player's action on their turn). One challenges the player to anticipate the attack position. The other challenges the character — the player is under no obligation to figure out where to reallocate the shields, but we figure that the character does do a good job if they succeed at the skill check.
—•—
* Of course our theoretical starship game uses a hex-grid for combat, because anything else would be barbaric.
To me those are both testing the charsacter examples.
One is z resource allocation that directly accesses the PC traits. The other is a check based one with more success-fail than resource spend but it still directly utilizes the charscter stats.
In short, no matter which of those you choose "who the charascter is" will matter to the outcome. If you put in the ships tactical officer or the ships cargo loading guy - it matters - because direct changes likely occur with the switch.
By the way, I see nothing st odds eith those two examples in same game, they could easily show different shield designs or training..
But a better kind of example would be having some sort of player-side puzzle to solve the "starship command codes" to turn off the other ship shields. If figuring out that code does not require PC stats, so that the cook and the cargo handler do not have different chances than the medic or the science officer, the results and solutions never touch "character."
zedturtle
Jacob Rodgers
In the first example, the player is allocating the shields for various locations. A player with better spatial/tactical awareness will do a better job than a player without those traits.
In the second example, the only thing the character is allocating the shields for various locations. The success of the allocation is based solely on the randomness of the dice roll.
In both cases, the player decides to take the action. But in the first example, the player also gets to determine the results.
But in the first example, the character's stats determines how much shielding there is. So the choices that led to those stats and the character stats themselves apply as do the choices made now. So it is a challenge that the character matters to.
perhaps this is party of the problem - the definitions of "challenge the character" does not include "no player choices".
Take "i cast wall of fog". that is an action that involves a character trait and an expendable resource and a choice to use it. No die roll is needed. The player chooses where to put it. So, whatever challenge led to needing or deciding to cast wall of fog challenged the player and the character. Its likely no other characters could do this, or at least relatively few, so "this character here" matters - even though no die roll was made.
Similarly, the character who needs to pick a lock might have auto-success, while others wont, as long as they don't try it when under a disadvantaged effect. So again, a combo of character stats and player choices.
Nothing in "challenge the character" says the player must be irrelevant - in a fight the player who chooses whether to to concentrate his attacks and where to move with a plan in mind will often fare much better than say someone who lets a random roll decide his actions - player choices will seriously affect the outcome as well as the character stats.
Now, if your example was such that there was no boost to shields from character stats *and* literally anybody can operate that console and assign the shields even if they had never seen a starship, then thats challenging the player directly - the character at work become irrelevant - any warm or cold body will do (and perhaps some non-bodies - it is scifi.)
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
I think the folks talking about "challenging the character" are mostly just confusing the concepts of "challenge" and "difficulty."
"Challenge" is a situation in which the player has to make decisions to affect an unknown outcome. "Difficulty" is how likely the undesirable outcome of that situation is to come to pass, often requiring tougher decisions on the part of the player to overcome the challenge. The better those decisions in context, the more difficulty is mitigated and the better the odds of a favorable outcome. The worse those decisions in context, the more difficulty is aggravated and the better the odds of an unfavorable outcome. The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge or, as in D&D 5e and ability checks, backup for when the proposed action has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.
In the case of your above example, the player is being challenged in both situations since the player has to make some decisions to affect an unknown outcome. With the "Shields!" option, the player is presumably choosing this action over other action options in the moment ("Fire Torpedos!" or "Fire Phasers!" perhaps) for reasons known to the player. Otherwise there is no choice here and thus no challenge to anyone, just random number generation if that. So, presuming there is a meaningful choice, the player is being challenged here. It's just that in the second "Shields!" option, it looks like the player just has less input. If there is no choice, again, there is no challenge - not to the player, and of course not to the character (which is just a tool for the player).
When some of you are talking about setting up situations that are tougher on the character or that are in line with the character's abilities, you're really just talking about making the tool that is the character less effective or more effective for the player to use to overcome the challenge. If you present a combat challenge with a fire-immune fire elemental to a wizard who has taken all fire spells, for example, you are not challenging the character - you are challenging the player and have made the tool by which the player can overcome the challenge less effective, thereby increasing the difficulty. If conversely you present a combat challenge with a bunch of fire-vulnerable mummies to that same wizard, you've made the tool by which the player can overcome the challenge more effective, thereby decreasing the difficulty. In either case, it is the player who is being challenged since it is the players' decisions that impact the outcome of the challenge.
Satyrn
First Post
Oh, hey, I've REPEATEDLY stated what works for me and mine and been very, very clear that I'm not in any way saying that it will work for you. I fully believe that folks should find a table that works for them and not try to proclaim any single way is better or not, regardless of how much it follows the advice of the game writers.
I've been reading that sentiment a lot lately
This needs to be a drinking game: Drink a mug of ale every time someone says something like "I'm just saying what I do; you do you."
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I've been thinking about these debates (this thread, and the Insight one). It occurs to me that both sides keep describing the most extreme version of the other side, e.g. it's "the player solves a multivariable calculus problem" vs. "the DM makes passive checks for the characters without ever asking the players for input". It's pretty hard to reconcile differences when you start with such a huge gulf.
Instead, what I've been thinking, is that the goal should be to come up with two variants of a scenario that are as close to each other as possible, but that one camp chooses version A, and the other camp chooses version B. That would help us identify where the actual disagreement is, and help both sides better understand the other side's position.
And there's [MENTION=6830534]zedturtle[/MENTION] (of course...he's got expertise in Diplomacy) doing just that.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I've been reading that sentiment a lot lately
This needs to be a drinking game: Drink a mug of ale every time someone says something like "I'm just saying what I do; you do you."
What if what they say is: "Well you might as well be playing tic tac toe if you want to totally eliminate the roleplaying and just make it a mindless boardgame, you loser. But no offense meant. I'm just saying what I do; you do you."
Do you still have to drink? Or maybe it's not a matter of "have" to, more like you need to.
Satyrn
First Post
Well no. Unlike my dungeon crawl campaigns, my drinking game is not like a mindless boardgame, and so you gotta judge the context of their actions. In your example, there is no hint of sincerity, so there's no need to take a drink . . . and I see I need to errata in that the phrase must be spoken with a modicum of sincerity. What amount of sincerity constitutes a modicum is left to the disgression of the the judge - this isn't a mind drinking game, after all!
But, uh, this is just how I play my drinking game. You're free to play it in whatever way works best for you.
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