Starfox said:
Player agendas are important, and can truly clash. I have some people I like to play with, but who really do not fit in the same game group. And like in the discussion here, I would be hard pressed to get these players to admit they have an exclusive agenda - they'd each say they just like to play role-playing games, but mean entirely different things when they say this. The problem is that, the more you try to squeeze their different agendas into one single game, the more they react to things they like and not like, and the more exclusive they become. Which means one game cannot cater to both.
I don't
think my experience in playing universally with groups that are more invested in having a good time and hanging out with friends than in having the One True RPG Experience (whatever that might be to them) is that unusual, but perhaps I've been spoiled. I've encountered strong preferences on occasion (one of my recent playtest players had a huge, near-exclusive love for 1e D&D), but never someone so bent on having their way that they can't tolerate other people enjoying themselves, as long as they get some of what they want, too.
Player agendas matter, and they can clash, but people are pretty damn flexible, and a game isn't going to solve your social issues. I mean, I can never play a true Planescape game with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] , but I'm not going to cry too much about it -- there's a lot of other things I WILL play with him, and we are a pretty good match 95% of the time! And nothing in his preference stops me from looking for a group to play PS with!
And that isn't about Planescape, really. It's all about us not being jerks to each other (He gave a kind-of-PS game a try, after all!). It's about me recognizing his strong preference and accepting it, and him recognizing my strong preference and accepting it. Game rules won't mediate those Athasian-dolphin-infested waters.
You can cater to multiple clashing agendas as long as those with those agendas recognize and respect that other people have other agendas that are just as worthy of being met. Kind of basic human empathy, really. The stakes are really quite low in our make-believe elf games: spend 10-15 minutes of your precious time not being the center of attention to let Jane be, and she'll do the same for you.
If that's pushing the envelope of acceptability, I'd challenge you to step outside of your comfort zone.
Km, I think our Dark Sun game sheds some light on your idea. My character has a strong intimidate score. I've used that more than a few times to end fights.
And it typically feels very anticlimactic when I do.
How do you avoid that with you Sam character? What's the difference?
Well, the pithy response is "design that use of Intimidate better."
Seriously, it's the equivalent of four successful sneak attacks in terms of HP's, when it works.
But lets be precise about how that scenario might look to get more concrete and not so much theory:
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Say we're in a fight in Dark Sun with a creature that should be a fairly epic fight -- like, a Silt Horror is attacking the ship we hired to explore the Sea of Silt. Now, the DM is convinced they want to spend an hour or longer on this fight. Big epic creature, big epic challenge. I'd personally question the need for this time-sink in the first place, especially for most games, but lets put it as a given: it's gonna be a LONG scene.
Lets additionally posit that this is a sandbox-style game: the DM is designing this challenge to be agnostic to what the characters actually are, maybe even before the characters are created.
Because of the Three Pillars, the DM, even without PC's made, has a good idea about the kind of encounter this should be: if D&D characters can be good at Combat, good at Interaction, and good at Exploration, and this is a big, epic fight that is supposed to challenge the whole party for an hour, then it should challenge the party in Combat, in Interaction, and in Exploration.
So the DM begins crafting the encounter. He gives the thing HP, AC, attack and damage. He imagines it rising up out of the silt to try and capsize the ship and hit things with its infinite tentacles, and he imagines that a Combat-loving character would leap in and start beating that thing up. Cool!
It's a wild beast, so for an Interaction character, it might not be the juiciest challenge -- not exactly a critter made for conversation! But because it's an epic, hour-long scene, and the DM knows that D&D is a game that features the Three Pillars, he wonders about how he might include some NPC's. Perhaps the PC's ship isn't the only one caught in the tentacles of the Silt Horror! Any PC's strong on the Interaction pillar could use those NPC's by using their own powers and abilities: the NPC's cold be come a ragtag army fighting with the party with a little inspiration, or they might be encouraged to flee so that the heroic PC's could handle them, or maybe they can be manipulated into being juicier targets for the Silt Horror than the PC's, enabling the PC's to gain the edge for a time! That sounds cool -- the PC who wants to play the hero that persuades people can do that in this encounter, too. Now the encounter with the Silt Horror is happening just as the PC's stumble upon a Silt Horror attacking a ship -- turns out the noise and commotion attracted another one that attacks the PC's ship as they pass nearby! The DM can use hypothetical 5e rules like Morale or Leadership to adjudicate this, and is supported by 5e ideas like dirt-simple combatants (if you have a crew of 20, you don't need to spend 5 minutes on each member of the crew).
The DM could have gone another route. Perhaps the party's ship has NPC crew members. Perhaps a group of silt pirates tries to take advantage of the party's ship. Perhaps the DM decides that he's not that interested in adding NPC's to the encounter, and decides that it's OK that the thing doesn't last an hour because of that. But the addition of NPC's makes it More Epic and better designed, too!
Now we have any Combat character happy, and any Interaction character happy, but what about any Exploration character? The most obvious idea that occurs to our DM is....
silt storm. Now our Exploration character has to help steer the ship as it is being besieged by a silt horror and also ripped to shreds by wind and grit. Any Exploration character can help see through the storm, see the escape route, protect the ship, and maybe even shake the Horror off, or get a better place to attack it from, while riding great silt waves, and keeping the sails taught!
There's other things the DM could have done to make the environment part of the challenge, too. Perhaps instead of a silt storm, it's a hot day on Athas, and the Exploration-focused character has to keep everyone cool, find shade, make everyone some margaritas? Maybe some wildlife makes things difficult -- those kestrekels are feeding on the unconscious, making them hard to heal? Maybe the Silt Horror has a weak spot that an Exploration-focused character can find for their allies. Or maybe the DM doesn't want to bugger about with weather this time around, and so the encounter becomes shorter. But the addition of the environment certainly makes it More Epic!
But what if the party is all Interaction or all Exploration or all Combat? Well, the encounter can still be approached simply by cutting up tentacles, or getting the other ship to do so, or escaping through the driving silt...all of those still result in success!
Fortunately, the game can dovetail with this by having character types that are better at one pillar than another, though. This is Dark Sun, so we'll have Nobles that inspire the NPC's, we'll have Druids who pierce the Silt Storm, and we'll have Gladiators that chop at tentacles.
And if you had a noble who loved to Intimidate critters into submission, you'd be able to use that skill to actually intimidate NPC's into doing things that serve your purpose, rather than Intimidating a mindless beast to death halfway through a fight.
And now we have not just "
A wild silt horror appears!," but "Through the blowing, driving silt of the silt storm, you hear a loud creaking, cracking noise, followed by distant screams carried by the howling wind. As they grow closer, you can tell that something horrible is happening just beyond the limited vision of your ship....and then you see the tentacles....as they come down on the aft side....and violently tilt the ship, threatening to dump everyone into the silt."
That's an encounter that's worth an hour of your time, and one that everyone will find an interesting way to contribute to, regardless of which of the three pillars they find interesting. It's something that wasn't hard to design thanks to the Three Pillars (there's rules for morale, for persuasion, for inspiration, for silt storms, for vision, for ship navigation...and for a DM who wants to ignore those rules, there's ability checks), it wasn't something that required knowledge of the PC's. It probably took more effort to design than Three Orcs Try To Kill You, but it's an hour-long fight, it deserves more of your attention, and it still didn't demand much (take 20 generic Level 1 Humans, 1 Silt Horror, 1 Silt Storm, and stir).
So in this example, you wouldn't be able to anticlimax the encounter with Intimidate, because Intimidate doesn't work on big dumb animals (unless maybe you're a druid), because the game doesn't feel the need to give you superfluous combat things to do with your skills and your CHA modifier because you can use it just fine to intimidate the things it makes sense to intimidate in any challenge related to your Interaction skills.
Lets go another step, though, because not every fight is going to be with a big dumb animal, right? (Or, what if that druid was an Interaction druid who could tame big dumb animals?) Lets say you're up against a Sorcerer-King. Intelligent. Knows your language. Something that, in the world, would totally make sense for our Noble to intimidate into submission....hypothetically. Totally awesome fantasy heroic move in Dark Sun: "SUBMIT TO ME, HAMANU!" Lets say everyone else in the party is busy beating him about the face and neck. You're the only Noble in a party full of Gladiators (maybe your own gladiators!). They wanna kill the SK, but that's not really your goal -- you want to
rule over them. Incompatible goals, right?
Well, not really. All we're really doing is determining, once the encounter is over, who gets to decide what happens: you or your gladiators? It can be a big, hour-long encounter firing on all three pillars (Interaction: There's a rebellious mob! Exploration: The throne room is riddled with tricksy traps!), no problem. And, hell, who gets their way might get determined by who has initiative when the thing is over ("Do you kill him out of vengeance, or let him live knowing the Noble wants to make him bow?"), and it can end with a blow with a stone club from a gladiator, or maybe with a plea to be saved from the mob by the demoralized SK or even with the SK cowering in the corner, all his traps for naught.
Your Intimidate check has no bigger or smaller effect on the overall challenge than the Gladiator's attack roll. You're both contributing an action and a successful roll toward resolving this *your* way, and those work together to make sure that one way or another, the challenge is overcome -- the SK no longer poses a threat, becomes defeated, retreats into the ruins, starts licking the Noble's toes...whatever.
To bring it back to Samwise and the Dragon, maybe the final successful roll of the fight is Sam's
Diplomacy roll to persuade the dragon to flee combat and never come back. If Gimli's attack roll was the last successful roll, maybe the dragon would drop dead.
Or maybe you come up with an alternate rule to determine the effects of success. Maybe if more of Sam's skill checks succeeded than Gimli's attack rolls (or succeeded by a bigger margin), when Gimli strikes the last blow, the dragon flees with the last bits of its HP in tow. But to me that all seems like more work than is necessary for something that gets negotiated at tables all the time, even in-character, right now and in the past, without any special rules.
In the end, in both scenarios, you have a game where a good skill check won't anticlimax the fight because it's not worth more than other skill checks or attack rolls.
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