D&D 5E Why I think we don't need rules for exploration, just tools.

[Minigiant]

While it is true that many dms ended up using them this way (and most early examples in the books and modules were terrible), a skill challenge can actually be really cool. But you have to dispose of a lot of the clutter surrounding them, starting with the idea that a SC should have a list of skills that are applicable and how you use them. That part is up to the players! What makes a good SC is a dm willing and able to adjudicate that player agency and rule on DCs for their ideas of which skills to use and how.

None of this "I use Stealth to see if I know anything about the carving" stuff, obviously. More like "I know, I'll use Acrobatics to see if I can stabilize the rocking boat!"

The associated skill list was one of the bigger strike against skill challenges. If they were simply "Bet X successes before Y failures. Think up some advancements and setbacks." it could have when farther. It would have force players to thick more about what would make them succeed and fail and forced DMs to do the same. It would have been harder and suggestions would have been offered.

This is where the old D&D favorite, the random stuff d% table comes in. "Every bad thing that can happen scaling a mountain." 45-49. Angry dire goats. What do you do, Sir knight?

 

[howandwhy99]

Now in this thread I am lumping exploration and non-combat together. Also, this is of course my pure opinion.

I feel like actual rules for this are a waste of time. I feel like having tools and letting players decide what to do with them would be better. I know in my games the players like to come up with uses for what they have on hand whether it's skills, spells, or items. I find things like Skill Challenges from 4th edition to be an aweful attempt at this. Sometimes players will create instances that the DM didn't even plan just by using what they have and a little imagination.

Tools are like Legos^TM. They aren't a game. They are toys. The game designer creates a batch, tosses them into a container, and incorrectly labels them a game. The players build whatever they want out of the pieces.

That isn't game play, that's creation.

Creation is part of gameplay. Players might be considered to create tactics and strategies, but a game requires a pattern or structure for the players to have an achievable future objective within.

Rules for exploration, IMHO, are there to create and define the changing of the gameboard the players will explore. In this, they are every rule in the game; no sans combat, no sans "roleplaying". They are the code the players are attempting to decipher, if they are playing to master the game. The game structures these rules create are needed for players to actually discover and seek to comprehend a world rather than invent it.

I've been talking with others recently about how Dave Megarry's "Dungeon!" boardgame is a major predecessor to Dungeons & Dragons. I believe its design helps others to understand why classes with differing XP requirements and ability levels can be balanced against each other. In no small part it is the locations explorable on the Dungeon! game board that enable this. In D&D these challenges are far more complex, multi-layered, and not spatially separated (not necessarily), but are defined far more by separate class objectives according to class behaviors. Orc & Pie in a room can be about combat, magic, clericism, and thievery. And a mixed party can engage with all of it. Which leads back to Dungeon! as a cooperative game, a game without a rule for players to cooperate, but rather a design where cooperation is recognized as the most commonly successful strategy.

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

I think what the OP is getting at is that he doesn't want a defined rules procedure for exploration. I haven't looked at the 5e exploration rules that closely but I think they tell everyone to take a specific role and each turn (or whatever the time increment is) they tell everyone to roll for their role (lookout, searcher, or whatever). The 4e skill challenges are being lumped in since it imposes a structure on things like social interactions.

I think the tools he talks about are just individual skills or abilities of the characters, which he is fine with. He just don't want the structures or procedures.

At least that is my understanding of what he was trying to communicate.

You are absolutely correct.

 

[am181d]

The right way to handle Diplomacy:

1) role-play through just about every relevant social interaction
2) give advantage or disadvantage if the character does a particularly good or bad job relative to their Charisma score
3) roll and apply results judiciously

Also, if somebody is really uncomfortable with social interaction and prefers to mostly be quiet during role-play and rely on die-rolls, they shouldn't be playing a character with a high Charisma. Because they're undermining the role-play aspects for the entire group at that point. (Exception: if nobody likes the role-play elements, obviously that's something that can be arm waived by group fiat.)

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with exploration though!

 

[billd91]

The associated skill list was one of the bigger strike against skill challenges. If they were simply "Bet X successes before Y failures. Think up some advancements and setbacks." it could have when farther. It would have force players to thick more about what would make them succeed and fail and forced DMs to do the same. It would have been harder and suggestions would have been offered.

I don't think that's the biggest strike against skill challenges. It makes sense that not every skill under the sun would contribute to the success of a particular skill challenge. Although I might say that the DM laying out those choices to the players right at the start would probably be bad since it's better to have them figure out positive contributors for themselves or read the situation when they try a non-contributing skill and find it doesn't affect the situation.

No, I think the biggest knock as a whole was the race condition - X successes before Y failures - because it made success with any marginal skills or with characters who weren't clobbering the check DCs much harder. And that punished multiplayer involvement rather than promoted it.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Slightly modified:

The right way to handle Combat:

1) role-play through just about every relevant combat interaction
2) give advantage or disadvantage if the character does a particularly good or bad job relative to their combat skill
3) roll and apply results judiciously

Also, if somebody is really uncomfortable with combat and prefers to mostly be quiet during combat and rely on die-rolls, they shouldn't be playing a character. Because they're undermining the role-play aspects for the entire group at that point.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with exploration though!

Basically, all of role-playing is about a GM-moderated combination of stats and rules and dice-rolling to determine results. Most systems I play have the meta-rule "if it doesn't matter, don't roll the dice". If players are doing a bang-up job role-playing and failure would not be fun, they shouldn't need to roll the dice. They convince the prince, they find the cave, they defeat the brigands.

There's no strong reason to split into combat or non-combat -- even die hard rules-heavy, combat-focused D&D GMs have, I am sure, called a fight with words like "you've got this covered". If there is no reason to roll dice, don't -- in combat, exploration, roleplaying or anything.

I completely agree that this has nothing to do with exploration

 

[Incenjucar]

4E skill challenges are one of those things that works best when you don't put much effort and enforcement into it. I think people were so used to treating things as strict structures like classic D&D combat rules that they forget that you can have "fuzzy" action going on as well.

In my experience, the best skill challenges are those the PLAYERS come up with, and which the DM adjusts to on the fly, rather than a rigid set of actions and consequences which often will not fit what the players are doing. Setting the DCs for different actions (with adjustment for creativity) and the general "X successes before Y failures" in your head as the DM, but then reacting to the narrative instead of just the rolls, makes for some amazing stuff.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think that's the biggest strike against skill challenges. It makes sense that not every skill under the sun would contribute to the success of a particular skill challenge. Although I might say that the DM laying out those choices to the players right at the start would probably be bad since it's better to have them figure out positive contributors for themselves or read the situation when they try a non-contributing skill and find it doesn't affect the situation.

No, I think the biggest knock as a whole was the race condition - X successes before Y failures - because it made success with any marginal skills or with characters who weren't clobbering the check DCs much harder. And that punished multiplayer involvement rather than promoted it.

I never said the skill list was the biggest, just one of the bigger. I argree, the biggest problem with SC was how exploration and interaction single player/PC game of clubbing the DC with one skill and not team based of using tactics based on the situatiob like how the rest of the game treated combat.

I always dreamed of a conversational combat rules for D&D.
Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, and applicable Lores weilded a different weapons at the opponent's Insight/Sense Motive and Lore as their armors for their convictions. Thus everyone contributes if the math is written so they can if they wish.

 

[pemerton]

OD&D, AD&D, and Expert D&D basically have rules for three things: character generation, combat, and exploration. I absolutely want the latter. One of my major gripes with 3e and 4e is the abandonment of turn-based exploration, and one of things I love about 5e is the return of the same.

Skill Challenges were turn based exploration.

Skill challenges aren't turn-based exploration. They're conflict resolution within a metagame framework. They're pretty much the antithesis of traditional D&D-style exploration. I'm not a huge fan of traditional exploration, and I like skill challenges quite a lot. I don't know what Iosue's view of skill challenges is (if I've read it, Iosue, sorry that I've forgotten) but I can see why - given that he liked it in classic D&D - he would be glad to see turn-based exploration back.

Skill challenges were a process for turning interesting gameplay into a structured dicefest with a side helping of the minigame of improbable improv. If you can find a way to make your largest modifiers relevant to a particular dicefest then you can win.

There may have been some exploration prior to a skil challenge but once the true nature of the beast is revealed whatever was happening turns into anther episode of modifier madness.

For the sake of completeness, this isn't what skill challenges are like in my experience, but I agree with Exploder Wizard that they're not turn-based exploration.

 

[NewJeffCT]

The right way to handle Diplomacy:

1) role-play through just about every relevant social interaction
2) give advantage or disadvantage if the character does a particularly good or bad job relative to their Charisma score
3) roll and apply results judiciously

Also, if somebody is really uncomfortable with social interaction and prefers to mostly be quiet during role-play and rely on die-rolls, they shouldn't be playing a character with a high Charisma. Because they're undermining the role-play aspects for the entire group at that point. (Exception: if nobody likes the role-play elements, obviously that's something that can be arm waived by group fiat.)

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with exploration though!

I disagree strongly with not allowing a quiet person to play a social character. The game is at least partly about escapism and playing a fantasy hero, so I think people should be allowed to play what they want, unless it doesn't fit into the campaign (i.e., a dwarf in a world with no dwarves, a cleric of Pelor in Dark Sun, etc) . Would you also not allow a scrawny person to play a raging Conan-like barbarian? Or, maybe disallow a gamer with average intelligence to play a wizard with 18 intelligence? Or, how about the opposite? A person who is brilliant IRL to play Grog the half-orc barbarian with a 6 INT? What happens when Grog comes up with a brilliant idea at the table? Do you disallow it because Grog would never think of that?