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<blockquote data-quote="Garthanos" data-source="post: 7827957" data-attributes="member: 82504"><p>My responses are all over the board and all are in detail ignorant of the B/X version.</p><p></p><p>Player teamwork? Classically always seemed like a spell caster going blink the party is now fully escaped from the scenario and basking at home or some other extreme effect because I pushed the win button. That is often a feature of spells in early edition and they brought it back in 5e. Of course only casters get those buttons or extreme benefits, because flank teamwork. But non caster abilities...nope cannot do it.</p><p></p><p>When we discuss character skills vs player "skill" as I said without very clear systematised effects it becomes playing the DM not the game which is what I seen in AD&D - that said I suppose its possible the same kind of clarity could be done that is done for combat ... i am not thinking it has been.</p><p></p><p>I do not have the nature skills (or atleast incredibly few) of my character I am not a fine singer nor expert swimmer and the procedural elements I seen brought int to AD&D came off eventually as memorizing or reciting from this laundry or shopping list to me I do not see any of that as functionally playing a role other than the role of "me", it is good when you can have things which help create the illusion of connectivity between my "game choices" and "game world effects", for instance am I direct or deceptive.. or analytic or just shooting from my gut am I taking a lot of risk to gain advantage later or now am I exploiting something now - and similar general choices and with actual methodical means, that might be one way of letting me influence the details of something neither I nor the DM really do not know.</p><p></p><p>Are you going to ask the player how his character swims which stroke for use in a storm and decide his character is going to drown because he didnt pick a side stroke attempting to get to that island, which btw takes very little energy? No that doesnt make too much sense.</p><p></p><p>And while me trying to guess the things the DM sees as important is never avoidable it happens in every version of the game (including those skill challenges) I think its better to reduce than encourage too much. I am utterly dependent on what the dm OR system provides with regards to what I see and even what the character can understand as important I can be given resources but when it gets down to it my game choices really just need to be symbolic of real choices of the characters in part because we cannot really know the details without being the character. Excess pretence that is the player being "tested" is just excessive pretense to me. AND its usually presented with a very haughty we are better than you attitude - not to mention gygaxian adversarialism... ooh you forgot to listen at the door this time shame on you die or you listened one too many times die from ear mites. </p><p></p><p>There is a certain amount of proxying of game for character success too, but unless that is regulated in interesting ways the higher abstraction can avoid tedium of laundry list behaviors.</p><p></p><p>A skill challenge is a structure for DM tracking progress towards a difficult to achieve goal and it encouraged DMs to make certain that some single spell (or even single skill) wasnt being allowed overwhelming benefits in the big picture, like a teleport trivializing what might be an interesting set of choices and skill applications. It is indeed mostly a back end element of the game a tool for DMs but it also in general encouraged thinking about how those character skills might be leveraged multiple ways while allowing them to be significant. I actually didnt start 4e till after they had ironed out some core elements of the mechanical kinks in skill challenges.</p><p></p><p>It tied advancement of the characters to challenging of the characters (with yeah that does your skill application make sense to us mixed it) and served as a basis for advancing characters (giving out experience points) for something other than greed or killing its how difficult is the adversary (in this case not a being). 2e actually implied with a grab bag of experience sub systems some sort of way to give experience for this non-combat stuff but to me it really wasn't really very clear and often seemingly utterly arbitrary *(you saved the princess here is some XP... how many shrug... some.) Oh and earlier than that you saved the princess this is the gold reward..and the XP to make sure that is what you do, but make it a barmaid you saved and meh. </p><p> </p><p>I do not know the edition you are talking about and i have actually heard some positives but I am not familiar with a procedural approach that ends with positive results instead of tedium.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Garthanos, post: 7827957, member: 82504"] My responses are all over the board and all are in detail ignorant of the B/X version. Player teamwork? Classically always seemed like a spell caster going blink the party is now fully escaped from the scenario and basking at home or some other extreme effect because I pushed the win button. That is often a feature of spells in early edition and they brought it back in 5e. Of course only casters get those buttons or extreme benefits, because flank teamwork. But non caster abilities...nope cannot do it. When we discuss character skills vs player "skill" as I said without very clear systematised effects it becomes playing the DM not the game which is what I seen in AD&D - that said I suppose its possible the same kind of clarity could be done that is done for combat ... i am not thinking it has been. I do not have the nature skills (or atleast incredibly few) of my character I am not a fine singer nor expert swimmer and the procedural elements I seen brought int to AD&D came off eventually as memorizing or reciting from this laundry or shopping list to me I do not see any of that as functionally playing a role other than the role of "me", it is good when you can have things which help create the illusion of connectivity between my "game choices" and "game world effects", for instance am I direct or deceptive.. or analytic or just shooting from my gut am I taking a lot of risk to gain advantage later or now am I exploiting something now - and similar general choices and with actual methodical means, that might be one way of letting me influence the details of something neither I nor the DM really do not know. Are you going to ask the player how his character swims which stroke for use in a storm and decide his character is going to drown because he didnt pick a side stroke attempting to get to that island, which btw takes very little energy? No that doesnt make too much sense. And while me trying to guess the things the DM sees as important is never avoidable it happens in every version of the game (including those skill challenges) I think its better to reduce than encourage too much. I am utterly dependent on what the dm OR system provides with regards to what I see and even what the character can understand as important I can be given resources but when it gets down to it my game choices really just need to be symbolic of real choices of the characters in part because we cannot really know the details without being the character. Excess pretence that is the player being "tested" is just excessive pretense to me. AND its usually presented with a very haughty we are better than you attitude - not to mention gygaxian adversarialism... ooh you forgot to listen at the door this time shame on you die or you listened one too many times die from ear mites. There is a certain amount of proxying of game for character success too, but unless that is regulated in interesting ways the higher abstraction can avoid tedium of laundry list behaviors. A skill challenge is a structure for DM tracking progress towards a difficult to achieve goal and it encouraged DMs to make certain that some single spell (or even single skill) wasnt being allowed overwhelming benefits in the big picture, like a teleport trivializing what might be an interesting set of choices and skill applications. It is indeed mostly a back end element of the game a tool for DMs but it also in general encouraged thinking about how those character skills might be leveraged multiple ways while allowing them to be significant. I actually didnt start 4e till after they had ironed out some core elements of the mechanical kinks in skill challenges. It tied advancement of the characters to challenging of the characters (with yeah that does your skill application make sense to us mixed it) and served as a basis for advancing characters (giving out experience points) for something other than greed or killing its how difficult is the adversary (in this case not a being). 2e actually implied with a grab bag of experience sub systems some sort of way to give experience for this non-combat stuff but to me it really wasn't really very clear and often seemingly utterly arbitrary *(you saved the princess here is some XP... how many shrug... some.) Oh and earlier than that you saved the princess this is the gold reward..and the XP to make sure that is what you do, but make it a barmaid you saved and meh. I do not know the edition you are talking about and i have actually heard some positives but I am not familiar with a procedural approach that ends with positive results instead of tedium. [/QUOTE]
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