The "Mearls on Many Things" thread is on it's own track, but a brief check didn't seem to cover the thing puzzling me, namely, Mearls says in responce to a question in the interview:
Q: There’s a big thread on ENWorld about the math behind skill challenges. There’s been experience that shows that they work, but the math to prove that they are broken seems solid.
A (Mearls): Skill challenges are interesting, since they are not reflected in the written rules as they were intended. They started as more “combat” with intiative, etc., but eventually moved them to be more freeform. They were intended as more of a framework, not strictly mechanical. When planning a non-combat encounter, try to come up with options, different ways to play out while not stopping the game. (i.e. don’t build in a roadblock if they don’t succeed at the skill challenge.)
They want to address different ways to handle it without errata-ing. That might make it into a future DMG. Here are ways to do things differently, not “these rules are different.”
Okay ... and why exactly are the skill challenges not refelcted in the written rules as intended? I mean DnD 4E had a fairly long development process, so why did no one notice that the intention was not reflected in the final product? Why didn't Mearls notice? Seems kinda important. And if the intention was thwarted by the version that was printed in the rules, why not post errata showing the true intention of skill challenges? Mearls only seems concerned that they not be called errata.
And what does Mearls mean by "here are ways to do things differently, not 'these rules are different.'" I mean are they the same rules or not? Can the rules really work differently but not be different? He seems to be saying that what the designers intended with 4E regarding non-combat encounters failed to reach print in a form that could be understood or do what they intended, yet this is ok because you can use the same rules to achieve different results more like what they intended but without changing the rules or correcting any error or poor writing, as long as you buy the DMGII. WTF?
I thought "Skill Challenegs" were a major portion of the new edition and a key part of game play, yet this sure sounds like they were dealt with haphazardly and that the design team was indifferent to how they appeared in the final printing of 4E.
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Part of the misunderstanding may come from the fact that the Mearls on Many Things thread is a recap of a live Q&A session, and the person transcribing it may not have perfect recall. For example, Mearls may have said something to the effect of "when we started designing skill challenges, we had a different goal, but we shifted focus over time" and that came out in the notes as "skill challenges didn't look the way they had intended."
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Okay ... and why exactly are the skill challenges not refelcted in the written rules as intended? I mean DnD 4E had a fairly long development process, so why did no one notice that the intention was not reflected in the final product? Why didn't Mearls notice? Seems kinda important. And if the intention was thwarted by the version that was printed in the rules, why not post errata showing the true intention of skill challenges? Mearls only seems concerned that they not be called errata.
And what does Mearls mean by "here are ways to do things differently, not 'these rules are different.'" I mean are they the same rules or not? Can the rules really work differently but not be different? He seems to be saying that what the designers intended with 4E regarding non-combat encounters failed to reach print in a form that could be understood or do what they intended, yet this is ok because you can use the same rules to achieve different results more like what they...
The official statement is that the rules went through a number of re-vamps and thus the intention was somehow lost in the process of production. In other words, through the many edits and changes the end result was not what everyone thought it was. They thought they had it right and they were wrong.
As to why no one noticed...well, I can only assume they had so much on their plate that this fell through the cracks. Things like this happen and while it is unfortunate that it took place at the launch I think the mistake was an honest one. These guys were probably so overworked by the time those books went out the door I can see a few pages getting screwed up.
I think the skill challenge rules will be the same at their heart. They are not as screwy as they look when actually used in game, so long as you play within the spirit of what was written. There is this weird disconnect between the math and the actual use in game. I think that has to do with how GMs approach the skill challenges.
And that is probably how they are going to handled in the DMG 2. They will give examples on how to best make the rules work the way they were intended.
I am not certain why this isn't coming out in official errata. That does strike me as odd.
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Part of the misunderstanding may come from the fact that the Mearls on Many Things thread is a recap of a live Q&A session, and the person transcribing it may not have perfect recall. For example, Mearls may have said something to the effect of "when we started designing skill challenges, we had a different goal, but we shifted focus over time" and that came out in the notes as "skill challenges didn't look the way they had intended."
Exactly.
I say he's obsfucating.
IMO (of course), heres the catch.
They flipped open Pandora's box and then got distracted and did not realize what they had done. I think their still grappling with that and I serously doubt they've really come to a full realization of what they have done and what they should do about it.
Thing is this mechanic - if taken through to its full potential is extraordinarily powerful. Its got uses that potentially profoundly effect how we play this game and the design concepts that underline how we play this game. I'll try and throw a curve ball at you to illustrate what I mean.
OK I design an adventure and in that adventure my players (well their characters really) have to infiltrate a morgue and steal the body of a nobleman. They need to do this without being caught and they need to do it in such a manner that the Nobles missing body won't be discovered for many hours and their good, they can't hurt the innocent staff at the Morgue. Maybe they need the Body as part of a scheme to infiltrate a local Ball or some such.
OK so lets consider first how we would have handled this in most editions of the game. Prior to 3.X I think the whole scene could be done but it'd not be easy. Without a robust skill system such a scenario would be pretty difficult. It'd probably be handled by DM adjudication and some spells but the DM would be really off the reservation here with little support from the rules as is.
In 3.X the answer seems rather obvious. I essentially have two options. I can mostly hand wave this and insist that the Rogue give me a lock pick check to break in, make one move silently check to get to the body and make a second one, maybe with penalties to abscond with the body. Note that fundamentally I can do exactly this in 4E as well. Not bad but its not really all that exciting either, Seems a rather simplistic way to adjudicate something as interesting as the scenario I describe (even if I do say so myself). The whole resolution would take, what, two minutes? If this is a minor scene or the players just pulled this whole idea out of their collective butts then this is a good solution for the poor harried and deeply confused DM (wha... what? You want to steal the murder victims body? Umm... err...OK). However if its part of a well crafted plot line then this is not at all satisfying.
The second alternative is to go the whole nine yards. A good example of this is Dungeon Adventures The Andurian Job (an absolutely excellent adventure, BTW). In this case I'd design my morgue, I'd make a map, I'd stat up the NPCs etc. OK that can be a great solution, but is it a good solution here? Lets assume that if you blow this and the staff catches the PCs their going to raise a ruckus but they can't really fight. However the PCs can't fight them either (their good PCs) so if the staff catches the PCs then the gig is up and the PCs are going to run away.
Well with this on the table it starts to seem overdone to include this whole Morgue scene. Its a lot of work to design and maybe worse yet its a lot of work to resolve. I suppose I should just face the music and deal with the fact that a huge amount of the impact of this scene only comes out in a few of the actual events. The idea is compelling when its first put in front of the players. It'll probably make them sit up and take notice. There is some interesting stuff going on when they sneak past the staff and finally we have loads of room for some fun and humour as they hustle the dead body out the door and into the night.
There is some good stuff here but is it really worth creating a whole mini adventure around? Especially since this is really just one scene thats in turn part of a larger adventure. They need the body of the Noble to do something else thats far more germane to the story. Reality is if I do this the old fashioned way its going to take an hour and a half of precious game time to resolve and most of that time will not be focused on the actual exciting bits of this scene. It'll be in the more mundane stuff that could have half the players falling asleep. The truth of the matter is, stripped down, this whole scene is simply one encounter and it can't even resolve into combat. Its not worth this kind of time either in DM prep or in real life game time.
Thats were resolving this as a Skill Challenge comes in. As a Skill Challenge I really don't need a map of the whole complex, I don't need stat out the staff in detail (its more important that I know what they are doing and what a few key skills of theirs are). I'd have to put a fair bit of work into something this complex but nothing compared to doing a whole map and encounter key. Also a Skill Challenge will focus this onto whats actually interesting about this encounter rapidly jumping to the good bits and will take a reasonable amount of time to resolve. Ten to twenty minutes probably. A satisfying encounter.
The Curve Ball:
My players recognize that I'm setting them up for a Skill Challange and say "whoa...hold up there screen monkey." We want to infiltrate this Morgue. I ain't doing no Skill Challange".
OK were do I go from here? I've got no map and no material to run this as anything but a Skill Challange and I believe as the DM that a Skill Challange is the best way to handle this encounter.
Now the DMG suggests my answer to something like this is to say yes but I think a much more compelling answer is...
"No!".
I mean I'm the DM and this falls under adventure prep and adventuring pacing right? But on the other hand can I even do this? I mean by convention the DM has the power over everything else in the world - but not the characters. The players have power over the characters.
We have just entered some twilight zone of reverse narrative. I've taken the power away from the players and forced them into a scene thats going to be played by my rules. Sure my players can refuse to participate in the Skill Challenge but only if they decide not to try and infiltrate the Morgue. If they want to infiltrate the Morgue they must do so via the method I have designed and not through the traditional method - even though the traditional method still exists and I could have designed this as a full blown mini adventure.
Are we really ready to deal with the idea that the DM can, in the interests of story, take the narrative away from the players? I mean we've seen narrative theft in the past (usually in big speak aloud text) but I can't remember it ever having any positive points in its favour.
There are now, at least some of the time, two ways of playing the game.
So who decides how we play?
My players recognize that I'm setting them up for a Skill Challange and say "whoa...hold up there screen monkey." We want to infiltrate this Morgue. I ain't doing no Skill Challange".
OK were do I go from here? I've got no map and no material to run this as anything but a Skill Challange and I believe as the DM that a Skill Challange is the best way to handle this encounter.
Now the DMG suggests my answer to something like this is to say yes but I think a much more compelling answer is...
"No!".
I mean I'm the DM and this falls under adventure prep and adventuring pacing right? But on the other hand can I even do this? I mean by convention the DM has the power over everything else in the world - but not the characters. The players have power over the characters.
How is this situation different from any other occasion in any other game wherein the players try to go somewhere that the DM has not prepared in sufficient detail?
How is this situation different from any other occasion in any other game wherein the players try to go somewhere that the DM has not prepared in sufficient detail?
Because I'm arguing that its a perfectly reasonable response for the DM to say "No. You are not allowed to make this choice for your character."
In every other case I can think of the DM enters into negotiation mode when his players go off the beaten path. Maybe, even probably, they agree to play along to keep the game moving but there was never any real game rules implications that they did not actually get to control their players destiny. They just choose to be nice to the DM.
This is different, how the players interact with the world just became subject to the DMs whim.
This is different, how the players interact with the world just became subject to the DMs whim.
I want to expand on this.
Always before, in every edition of D&D, the rules were essentially a physics based model. Now, by this I don't mean realistic, I mean that the rules told us how things functioned and they always functioned the same way. If I shot an arrow then there were rules that told me how to do that. We have seen some slight slippage in this regard in 3.X and in other parts of 4E. Specifically we see this in Action Points, were interestingly enough, the power to control the story, normally the DMs prerogative, is taken from the DM and given to the players. They are given the ability to break the physics model of the rules and do special stuff.
The whole Skill Challange sub system changes that. We've, potentially dramatically, moved away from the physics based model of how the game worked and, at least some of the time, into some other kind of model. One were the physics based rules are mostly skipped over in the interest of getting to the good bits. Its essentially as if a cinematic based rules system exists on top of the physics based model and its the DMs prerogative to decide when the game enters into cinematic mode - to the point of telling the players that they are no longer allowed to utilize the normal physics based rule system.
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Not only that but it sounds as if, for the skill challenge, the DM is basically playing with himself. Sure the players provide the modifier and maybe roll the dice but the story is written. There is no chance of variation beyond succeed or fail. It may as well be boxed text, or a 'if success turn to page 89' type of Endless Quest book.
That doesn't sound like anything that encourages RP.
*I don't have much knowledge of 4E so my opinion could be off.*
Not only that but it sounds as if, for the skill challenge, the DM is basically playing with himself. Sure the players provide the modifier and maybe roll the dice but the story is written. There is no chance of variation beyond succeed or fail. It may as well be boxed text, or a 'if success turn to page 89' type of Endless Quest book.
That doesn't sound like anything that encourages RP.*I don't have much knowledge of 4E so my opinion could be off.*
I disagree. In my example about infiltrating the Morgue we face three possible options, two of which don't involve skill challenges.
Option #1: DM mostly hand waves this and we resolve things by having the rogue make a Open Locks Roll and two Move Silently rolls. There is only a tiny amount of RP in this, instead its pretty much dice rolling. The entire encounter is dealt with in two minutes or less.
Option #2: The DM designs the whole encounter involving maps and statted up Morgue staff. Since the PCs won't interact with the Morgue they might RP a little among themselves (especially during planning) but the vast majority of this fairly drawn out encounter is mechanics based since it fundamentally deals with the physics model of the game. No idea how many rolls are involved but probably a lot. The entire encounter takes between an hour and an hour and a half to resolve.
Option #3: Its a cinematic skill challenge. In this case its really almost nothing but role playing. There are no physics based rules here as the whole design of the encounter skips over the physics except insofar as one makes skill checks to handle obstacles that are essentially being dealt with abstractly. No map is in play and no miniatures are on the table since they are not part of the mechanic to resolve this scene. Some dice are being rolled but, we are probably talking about maybe ten rolls to resolve a scene that takes between ten and twenty minutes of game time. Its mostly the players talking among themselves and describing what they are going to do.
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The second alternative is to go the whole nine yards. A good example of this is Dungeon Adventures The Andurian Job (an absolutely excellent adventure, BTW).
Woohoo! I'm glad you liked it!
Actually I was just coming in here to post something actually on topic.
I'm willing to bet that their original intent with the skill challenges, or perhaps one of their original intents with the skill challenges, was to create new options IN combat. I realize that this is contrary to what Mearls says, but here's why I say it: Bill Slaviczek.
Bill designed one of my favorite games of all time; TORG. In TORG there was a built in system that IIRC was called 'skill challenges.' at the least it was called something like that. Skill challenges were situations that required you to achieve a number of successes using one or more skills to accomplish a task, and they used the initiative system of the game. The deal was though, that you were generally trying to do this while a fight was going on.
One example I remember was the PCs are in an ancient temple surrounded by Nile Empire Stormtroopers who are shooting at them and occasionally charging at the temple. The huge stone temple door is off it's rollers, which are now jammed. so the PCs need to unjam the rollers, lift the door onto the rollers, and then close the door.
While bullets fly over there heads.
Other than the fact that 4E skill challenges don't seem to take place in combat, a lot of the mechanics are pretty similar to TORG, taking into consideration that the underlying system is pretty different.
So either Bill tried to transpose that system to 4E and development took it out of combat, or someone else designed 4E skill challenges and Bill modified them to look more like his TORG version. I'm betting he wanted to run them within combat, and that's how I plan to run at least some of them.
Note if you will that the first published Skill Challenge for 4E (afaik) is the one in Dungeon that can be added to KotS, written by Bill Slaviczek.
I also want to point out that the Skill Challenge system is not always a cinematic based one. In fact I don't think the designers actually realized they were creating a duel system - one in which a cinematic sub system exited on top of the physics based model. The Skill Challenge system is actually more of a continuum.
I'll throw out a couple of examples to show what I mean.
In one instance the players are talking to the Duke. They want him to send troops to guard the Pass and they have to convince him that he wants to do that. I think its exactly this kind of a situation that the Skill Challenge Mechanic was designed to address. This is fundamentally still perfectly part of the physics based model of the game. Its merely a sub system to resolve negotiations. A more complex version of the diplomacy check we see in 3.x.
A second example is semi cinematic. The Town militia has arrived on the scene and the PCs need to make a fast exit pronto. Essentially its a chase. Here the Skill Challenge Mechanic is being utilized as a stand in for the physics based rules - we don't have adequate rules to cover what happens in a chase so we slot in this mechanic and it serves as our rules. Again its little more then an addendum to the physics based underpinning of the D&D rules. But here we are now half way to the cinematic system as this mechanic obvously focuses on the good bits - the exciting parts of the chase.
Its only when we get to something like my Morgue example that we have moved into the existence of a full fledged cinematic sub system that exists on top of the physical system that underpins the rules and thats because we actually have rules for dealing with infiltrating a Morgue. The DM is just choosing not to use them and presumably forcing the players to give them up, for this scene anyway, as well.
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In TORG there was a built in system that IIRC was called 'skill challenges.' at the least it was called something like that.Dramatic Skill Resolution.
:-)
(Sorry, nothing to add to the main discussion. Your mention of Torg just set off my Torg Remote Alert Sensor and I had to come and see what was being said...)
Right you are! Sorry if I keep setting off your sensor!
Part of the misunderstanding may come from the fact that the Mearls on Many Things thread is a recap of a live Q&A session, and the person transcribing it may not have perfect recall. For example, Mearls may have said something to the effect of "when we started designing skill challenges, we had a different goal, but we shifted focus over time" and that came out in the notes as "skill challenges didn't look the way they had intended."
Why speculate on what Meals may or may not have said and listen to the interview itself. Link to mp3
Cogent analysis, Jeremy.
Two places this kind of conflict has come up in the past:
transition between regular combat and mass combat (if you use a mass-combat subsystem)
transition between regular combat and abstracted combat (if you allow trivial combats to be abstracted away)
Looking at how you and other GMs have handled these in the past may help with this situation. They share the quality that GM and players may disagree about which rules-set should be in use, and the two sets are unlikely to produce the same results. (In my experience, for most mass-combat rules the players are best off not using them whereas the GM is best off using them, so there's definitely a potential conflict.)
The current case is more striking because the rules aren't just different in detailed outcome, they're different in style and intent. When I've played with that dichotomy before it's been quite difficult. I envision my characters one way for a cinematic game and a different way for a physics-based game; if the game switches back and forth it's hard to cope. Cinematic characters should avoid repeating their tactics, should prefer flashy over drab, should emphasize displaying personal style, and should improvise rather than planning too much. If there's a chance that my cinematic characters will suddenly be thrown back on physics, they have to change their strategy for no PC-apparent reason. Similarly if I made physics-based characters and they are suddenly using cinematic resolution.
Myself as a player, I'd argue hard against the skill challenge for the Morgue, because as far as I can see it means that the GM has thought of all my possible approaches in advance--that's disappointing to me. My immediate thought on hearing the Morgue scenario was to solve it with Disguise and Bluff or Suggestion or Charm, but if that didn't occur to the GM, I have much more chance in a detailed physics resolution than in a skill challenge.
Mary
Jeremy:
From a DM standpoint (I'm about 90:10, DM and player) I wouldn't be comfortable resolving the morgue body snatch as a skill challenge either. I think that's the sort of thing you play out. In theory, you could resolve almost anything in a 4E game with a skill challenge if you wanted to go that route and set up the challenge, but in my personal opinion, the morgue "encounter" wouldn't be the sort of thing I'd use a skill challenge for. For something like that, I'd have a quick sketch of the place and know who, if anyone, was around. Then I'd have the players play it out. I think I'd prefer it as both a DM and player. Just my 0.02.
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Actually I was just coming in here to post something actually on topic.I'm willing to bet that their original intent with the skill challenges, or perhaps one of their original intents with the skill challenges, was to create new options IN combat. I realize that this is contrary to what Mearls says, but here's why I say it: Bill Slaviczek.
Bill designed one of my favorite games of all time; TORG. In TORG there was a built in system that IIRC was called 'skill challenges.' at the least it was called something like that. Skill challenges were situations that required you to achieve a number of successes using one or more skills to accomplish a task, and they used the initiative system of the game. The deal was though, that you were generally trying to do this while a fight was going on.
One example I remember was the PCs are in an ancient temple surrounded by Nile Empire Stormtroopers who are shooting at them and occasionally charging at the temple. The huge stone temple door is off it's rollers, which are now jammed. so the PCs need to unjam the rollers, lift the door onto the rollers, and then close the door.
While bullets fly over there heads.
Other than the fact that 4E skill challenges don't seem to take place in combat, a lot of the mechanics are pretty similar to TORG, taking into consideration that the underlying system is pretty different.
So either Bill tried to transpose that system to 4E and development took it out of combat, or someone else designed 4E skill challenges and Bill modified them to look more like his TORG version. I'm betting he wanted to run them within combat, and that's how I plan to run at least some of them.
Note if you will that the first published Skill Challenge for 4E (afaik) is the one in Dungeon that can be added to KotS, written...
I think you are probably right here. In fact, everything about the way they read seems to indicate that was the original intention. Traps provide a seperate and yet related proof of this assumption. Most traps interact with combat or operate in a combat-like situation. Disabling a magic crossbow turret is a complexity 2 skill challenge, for instance. Of course, as you state, skill challenges can used for a whole host of in-combat obstacles as well. And most in-combat challenges can be resolved in multiple ways. This all follows the expressed design intention of making everyone feel important in combat.
At some point I think someone said "let's apply this out of combat" without thinking about the consequences of such an action. Maybe they did get distracted or they lost track of time. In any case, they never properly addressed the issue. In combat, action points, buffs from items, character powers, and other random sources insures the math works out for the most part. Though there are still some roadblocks that make me think more changed than just the intention of skill challenges. But out of combat the math is even more out of whack.
Since starting my 4e campaign I have used skill challenges in only a few non-combat situations. For example providing a powerful herbal treatment to a dying woman was a tricky and dangerous procedure. Thus the event was a skill challenge that anyone could participate in. Knowing what I know about the math I have used the Obsidian skill challenge system found at ENWorld.
I don't like to take that much control out of the hands of my players so situations like the "Duke neogtiation example" from the DMG are always roleplayed. The morgue raid would be a breaking and entering scenario, fully mapped. It might have some skill challenges in it but the whole encounter would be played out at the table.
Yeah, the 'it's an entire encounter sub-adventure side-quest thingie, but since it's not combat we'll do it in ONE DIE ROLL' aspect really was hard to swallow for me.
actually, depending on the encounter design paradigms it's be between 2 and 23 die rolls modified by...well whatever the DM has decided can modify it. In fact even saying its can only be 23 die rolls is mistaken since its perfectly possible to have embedded sub themes.
Lets say I'm a really on the ball DM and I figure there is a good chance that my players are going to use some kind of a charm ability and use that to distract the NPCs in my Morgue B&E example. I might have an embedded mechanic that deals with whether or not the charm type spell works and what it means for the rest of the Skill Challenge if it does or does not work.
Theoretically the limit is only the DMs imagination but in reality its more limited then that. Its a mechanic thats best used either as an adjunct to the rules where no rules (or no satisfying rules anyway) exit - such as a chase scene (we can use the physics based mechanics for a chase but it'll feel very inauthentic). As the actual rules for dealing with certain types of encounters such as a more complex negotiation type system or as a kind of intermediary step between an encounter that won't be very interesting if its just resolved by hand waving but is not interesting or complex enough to justify a full blown sub adventure in its own right.
actually, depending on the encounter design paradigms it's be between 2 and 23 die rolls modified by...well whatever the DM has decided can modify it. In fact even saying its can only be 23 die rolls is mistaken since its perfectly possible to have embedded sub themes.Lets say I'm a really on the ball DM and I figure there is a good chance that my players are going to use some kind of a charm ability and use that to distract the PCs. I might have an embedded mechanic that deals with whether or not the charm type spell works and what it means for the rest of the Skill Challange if it does or does not work.
But you're still taking a whole lot away from the players. You know how apt players are to come up with things you didn't think of. I wouldn't, as a player, want this run as a skill challenge. Who knows what kind of things the players might want to do if you actually play it out.
But you're still taking a whole lot away from the players. You know how apt players are to come up with things you didn't think of. I wouldn't, as a player, want this run as a skill challenge. Who knows what kind of things the players might want to do if you actually play it out.
actually, depending on the encounter design paradigms it's be between 2 and 23 die rolls modified by...well whatever the DM has decided can modify it. In fact even saying its can only be 23 die rolls is mistaken since its perfectly possible to have embedded sub themes.Lets say I'm a really on the ball DM and I figure there is a good chance that my players are going to use some kind of a charm ability and use that to distract the PCs. I might have an embedded mechanic that deals with whether or not the charm type spell works and what it means for the rest of the Skill Challange if it does or does not work.
Sure - and if its interesting or exciting enough then go the physics based route. My main reason to consider a skill challenge here is that the physics based route is a lot of work thats likely to take significant time to resolve. The entire scene simply has little chance of really being seen as fun and exciting to the players when we are getting down to the nitty gritty of maybe counting squares.
I think you'd get this feel if you actually started to put it together for part of an adventure. The idea of swiping a nobles body from the morgue while the staff remain blissfully unaware sounds good at first blush. But the reality is its not enough to justify a full blown mini adventure. At its essence its an encounter not a mini adventure, it just happens to look like an adventure.
Oddly enough it probably justifies the full blown treatment if it involves tricking the NPCs in some manner, which is to say if it involves directly interacting with them, which is a major disconnect, one way this works and another way it probably does not.
If it is just a B&E then we get to a point where there is not enough to hold the players attention between the interesting parts.
Maybe another example. Ever read the adventure A Hot Day in L'Trel? Very interesting read. One of the most exciting events in the adventure is more or less the starting scene. Big canister of Alchemists Fire or some such explodes on a bone dry city and the entire place goes up in flames and the PCs are in the middle of it. Great theme for an adventure. I ran it recently converted to 3.5. Lets just say it reads a lot better then it plays. The PCs running through the fire and saving peons from burning buildings and such falls apart once we try and model it with a really detailed system. Takes to long and each encounter within the blazing inferno does not hold ones interest for as long as it takes to resolve them mechanically.
Essentially the Skill Challenge system can be used as a middle ground - a point between the DM hand waving something and asking for a few roles and the DM doing the whole thing following the physics based rules. Its also very good at dealing with situations (like the chase) were the physics based rules fail us. The catch is its fundamentally cinematic. It moves straight to the heart of the issues and asks the PCs to make a choices specifically regarding the most dramatic or critical components.
It can take us to places we have never really been before (the floor falls out of the room and your sliding down a complex slide with all sorts of twists turns and over hangs, make sure you get off the ride before it reaches its end - because its bad news at the very bottom) but it does so through a mechanic thats fundamentally different then what has gone before and its different in a way thats potentially disturbing to the basics of the game; it pulls away from the physics based concept that underpins the game.
I had lots of things to say to this point but after reading all these posts all I can add is......Wow
I can second that.
The "concensus" loosely seems to be that
- a) Mearls probably didn't say what the transcriber copied down so we can imagine he said all sorts of things, though people could listen to the MP3 and known for sure (as for me I'm taking the transcription on faith cause I'm on dial-up and my internet is freaking slow :-)
- b) everyone knows WotC/Hasbro had too much work to do so doing what they intended got lost along the wayside, but this is ok because they deserve slack
- c) Mearls & WotC/Hasbro are obfuscating and have a mysterious aversion to errata when everyone including Mearls & WotC/Hasbro admits they messed up and put the wrong version of skill challenges in print
- d) Even though it is not the skill chanlenge system they intended the accidental one is really powerful and will change your life as you know it ... descent into game design theory that seems interesting to a point but has little to do with what Mearls said (or did not say...)
you know ... a friend said the 1st rule of 4E is never talk about 4E, I'm beginning to think he is right ;-)
Perhaps futilely returning to my OP, it just seems really weird to me that if Mearls really said skill challenges as written are not skill challenges as intended, why is he admitting it publicly - and if he is why isn't it suitable for errata.
For a year I heard a lot of people here & elsewhere talking about the experience & professionalism of the 4E designers & WotC yet now Mearls and WotC seems to be saying "hey, we have you know like trouble putting what we intend in print and we admit that but if we do finally publish what we intended it isn't errata because ... we, um, don't make mistakes or something, next question please."
It makes me feel like, now that 4E appears to be a success, Mearls and WotC are going to be just as busy as they always are and so just as likely to have their intentions for each year's PHB & DMG fall through the cracks and some other set of playtest experiements get published because they can't pay attention to what is in the final product. At least it makes clear one reason for new core books each year.
Anyway, that's just my 2 cents for the internet, probably given public relations & legal reasons over at WotC there isn't any real "answer" to my concerns. So I can' argue with the thread morphing into a discussion of skill challenge systems, Dm vs Player game control, and physics. Anyway, interesting stuff Jeremy et al.
...still I'm with Crimson Jester ... "Wow"
Perhaps futilely returning to my OP, it just seems really weird to me that if Mearls really said skill challenges as written are not skill challenges as intended, why is he admitting it publicly - and if he is why isn't it suitable for errata.
I think the issue I'm pointing out here may be part of whats causing WotC to start getting contradictory and vague with their responses.
This is pretty much what I mean by them flipping open Pandora's Box. Here I've put forward my opinions on how we could use the Skill Challenge System and some of the other posters are pointing out how they think I've got to stop Mainlining Vanilla Bean Lattes before posting as I'm talking all crazy talk with some of these examples. As Steelspike points out - you can do anything with the mechanics as listed. I'm not even giving extreme examples IMO, though most of the posters seem to feel I've already gone to far.
OK well if we are talking about my homebrew vs. Alleynbard's homebrew then who really cares? We can happily go our separate ways and run the game however each of us wants to. WotC can't do that though - they need to decide who's 'correct'. Exactly what are the parameters - if there even are parameters. What should be in the New Dungeon Guidelines? What guides the creation of adventures for each of the campaign settings and for the generic modules?
****Mike Mearl Parody Follows****
So we catch up to Mearl's on some weeknight while he's desperately trying to decide what to do with this and he gives James Wyatt a call and says "I need to define what a Skill Challenge is. Have you used any recently as I'm trying to see how we are using them". Wyatt replies "Sure I used one in my last session. The PCs interrogated a Ghost using a Skill Challenge and it told them of a Dungeon and they went down it and killed some monsters and got some treasure. It was great".
So Mearls notes this down and gives Bill Slaviczek a call. He asks Bill if he's used the Skill Challenge System recently. Bill says "Oh yeah, it was fantastic I was really redlining the system in my last game. There was a huge orc ambush and the PCs were all in the middle of it and the walls fired spinning blades every round. Its was so cool."
Again Mearl's notes this down and he then decides to give his buddy Keith Baker a call. Keith loves the Skill Challenge System, maybe he can help. Well he gets Keith on the phone and asks about Skill Challenges. Keith responds "Oh yeah - I love the Skill Challenge System so much. Heck we don't even have many fights any more in my game. So we had a bunch last night and they were all great. The most interesting one was the last one. The PCs really needed to know how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin. It was really important for all sorts of cosmic in game reasons and my players (tricked out for Skill Challenges since they play in Keith's game) where able to prove, in a really tense scene, that far from the answer being seven, as was previously claimed, the real answer is nine. Man that was such an intense session!".
Well Mearl's hangs up on Keith after making some hasty excuses and says to himself "Angels on the head of a Pin? I am so f%*+ed."
****Mike Mearl Parody Ends****
So Modenstein17 want a job? 'Cause WotC needs to know what the correct answer is? What is 'truth' in a highly subjective mechanic. How exactly are Skill Challenges to be used? What are we allowed and conversely NOT allowed to do with them and this has to be set in stone for the rest of 4E. They need walls, at least for official material. If they don't build solid walls around this concept then the crazies like me and maybe Keith (I, of course don't actually know how far Keith is pushing this mechanic IRL - I simply suspect he's pushing it beyond WotCs expectations) can take this mechanic and run with it - to places were its likely rest of the 4E audience is not willing to follow.
No matter what they decide, though, some people are going to be unhappy. Its going to be to permissive or to restricting for some chunk of the fan base.
Hence I think if it was just working out the math we'd probably get a fix fairly quickly. I don't think the problem is really the math - I think the problem, for WotC is that they opened up the game in ways that they had never anticipated, had not even really thought of, becuase each of them carried their own preconceived ideas of what the mechanic was for with them into the design process. Its only when you start comparing notes and some of the guys creating Skill Challenges are a little on the 'you should be medicated' side of some conceptual divide that one realizes that ones preconceived notions of how this works does not line up with everyone else's. Every example in the DMG is pretty conservative - but they don't begin to encompass what you can really do with this mechanic. Now they are stuck and, I suspect, don't yet know what to do about it.
The "Mearls on Many Things" thread is on it's own track, but a brief check didn't seem to cover the thing puzzling me, namely, Mearls says in responce to a question in the interview:
Q: There’s a big thread on ENWorld about the math behind skill challenges. There’s been experience that shows that they work, but the math to prove that they are broken seems solid.
I like the idea of skill challenges. In or outside of combat. Can anyone explain what is meant by 'the math to prove that they are broken seems solid'? I don't think it has been addressed in this thread although about everything else has including astral physics.
Check out the discussion on ENWorld in which a mathematician dissects the maths behind skill challenges and shows why they are usually too difficult to win.
Bill designed one of my favorite games of all time; TORG. In TORG there was a built in system that IIRC was called 'skill challenges.' at the least it was called something like that. Skill challenges were situations that required you to achieve a number of successes using one or more skills to accomplish a task, and they used the initiative system of the game. The deal was though, that you were generally trying to do this while a fight was going on.
One example I remember was the PCs are in an ancient temple surrounded by Nile Empire Stormtroopers who are shooting at them and occasionally charging at the temple. The huge stone temple door is off it's rollers, which are now jammed. so the PCs need to unjam the rollers, lift the door onto the rollers, and then close the door.
While bullets fly over there heads.
[threadjack] ahhh, TORG. How I miss this game and the "Trinket Trilogy" that is alluded to above. Scribe, I've been jonesing for TORG players for 4 years now ... you don't happen to live in Connecticut, do you?
[/threadjack]O
Check out the discussion on ENWorld in which a mathematician dissects the maths behind skill challenges and shows why they are usually too difficult to win.
I think Baker blogged about this back on 6/15. Yes, it is difficult if you play it like any other combat. For a decent chance to beat it, the mechanics expect each player to have about a +4 circumstance bonus to whatever they're doing.
I really think Wizards was trying to incorporate something not a lot of D&D players are used to. After the fairly-simulationist 3.5, people began expecting hardcoded rules for everything. How long do I have to sleep? How often do I have to urinate? What's the DC to make myself throw up? [I actually got these questions...]
Then Wizards saw the relative success of story-based games (I'm thinking Whitewolf here), and thought "Hey, that sounds cool! Let's work that in!" So, they did. They tried to work in skill challenges, which is half-way between story-based and skirmish-based. Within the loose framework provided, players are expected to roleplay and act as a team, while the DM is expected to play along and be generous with bonuses.
Then the release came. Players and DMs who had their hands held through 3.5 now faced a dilemma. "Wait... so I have to make up some stuff?" It just threw (still is) them through a loop. A mechanic that seems solid, but doesn't work unless the DM hands out bonuses like candy.
That, along with pg. 42 in the DMG, was a bold move on Wizards' part. I, for one, actually like it.
[Now, if anyone is actually having trouble with their players winning skill challenges, here's how you handle them. Did they roleplay their action well? Is it reasonable? Give them +2. Is someone helping with Aid Another? +2. Are they known [background] for doing this action well? +2. Hand out the bonuses like candy. The players will have fun because stuff is getting done. You should be having fun because they're having fun. Everyone wins!]
I’d like to start by saying thanks to everyone posting here – awesome thread!
My personal take on things is pretty biased, and I’m happy to admit it. I’ve been coming at RPGs as “cinematic” since my first exposure to them, it was one of the only ways I could wrap my young mind around the whole concept and them explain it to my friends. It’s just like a movie – but you’re the hero! This initial approach as, inadvertently, influenced the entire way I game.
When I first saw skill challenges, I was horrified. Simply put, they are trying to codify a cinematic approach to a situation. I am 100% on board with the goals, get everyone involved and able to participate, make it exciting etc., but, IMHO, it will always be near impossible to write rules for a subjective situation that requires guidelines instead. That’s what skill challenges should’ve been – guidelines – not a hard rules system.
As an example, in my last game session, the players were faced with an arcanely sealed puzzle locked vault door as a part of a raid on a temple treasury. The situation ended up with them trying to open it “against the clock”, trying to get out with the valuable (to the plot) loot from behind the door before their opponent could manifest inside the vault.
I can totally see how this could work as a skill challenge, but I could not bring myself to use one as it defeats it’s own purposes. One player concentrated on hiding and filling his pockets with other loot from the treasury. This is not possible in a skill challenge. Another cast divinations to help figure out the puzzle lock. This is not possible in a skill challenge. Another tried to gather up NPCs and ensure their safety. This would not have been constructive to resolving a skill challenge either.
The scene was very exciting and the very definition of cinematic, racing against the clock – everyone was on the edge of their seats. Okay, I could’ve used an additional time limit on the skill challenge (because accruing a number of failures is not the same as a time limit, in X rounds), but then the players would not have been able to do their own thing.
This really expands on what was said above, about taking the narrative out of whoever’s hands it should be in. If it was a skill challenge, the players/characters would have failed, or worse yet they would have succeeded, in a non-exciting series of rolls that took the action out of their hands.
The players should be able to do whatever they want – that’s the fun of an (PnP) RPG. Giving the designers of 4E full credit, I think what the skill challenge system should’ve been was a series of examples that showed how a number of skill checks and the consequences of those checks (succeed or fail) can be worked into the ongoing situation to increase participation (i.e. reminding the players they can get an answer from a non-traditional skill check, or other ability, roll) and run a scene cinematically.
Although, again IMHO, they then killed the potential in the idea by a) codifying it into a rules system, b) writing a series of rules that can only be played out with miniatures (seriously, how cinematic is staring at a bunch of crudely painted plastic standing in for orcs skeletons) and a battle mat, and c) removing almost all of the traditional non-combat elements of the skills and powers of your average D&D party.
I think that the original intention, lost somewhere along the lines, was simply to encourage DMs to say “Yes! That’s an awesome idea, you go ahead and try that!” Something that was sorely missing from the 3.X era.
Peace,
tfad
Check out the discussion on ENWorld in which a mathematician dissects the maths behind skill challenges and shows why they are usually too difficult to win.I think Baker blogged about this back on 6/15. Yes, it is difficult if you play it like any other combat. For a decent chance to beat it, the mechanics expect each player to have about a +4 circumstance bonus to whatever they're doing.
I really think Wizards was trying to incorporate something not a lot of D&D players are used to. After the fairly-simulationist 3.5, people began expecting hardcoded rules for everything. How long do I have to sleep? How often do I have to urinate? What's the DC to make myself throw up? [I actually got these questions...]
Then Wizards saw the relative success of story-based games (I'm thinking Whitewolf here), and thought "Hey, that sounds cool! Let's work that in!" So, they did. They tried to work in skill challenges, which is half-way between story-based and skirmish-based. Within the loose framework provided, players are expected to roleplay and act as a team, while the DM is expected to play along and be generous with bonuses.
Then the release came. Players and DMs who had their hands held through 3.5 now faced a dilemma. "Wait... so I have to make up some stuff?" It just threw (still is) them through a loop. A mechanic that seems solid, but doesn't work unless the DM hands out bonuses like candy.
That, along with pg. 42 in the DMG, was a bold move on Wizards' part. I, for one, actually like it.
[Now, if anyone is actually having trouble with their players winning skill challenges, here's how you handle them. Did they roleplay their action well? Is it reasonable? Give them +2. Is someone helping with Aid Another? +2. Are they known [background] for doing this action well? +2. Hand out the bonuses like candy. The players will have fun because stuff is getting done. You should be having fun because they're having fun. Everyone wins!]
Your making excuses for WotC that are unwarranted. For one thing they've gone so far as to say what they created was not what they had thought they had created.
Thats not to say that you can't get there from here - you can and in some ways its even interesting to do it Keith's way, by encouraging good role playing and good thinking by handing out circumstance bonus' like candy.
So its perfectly possible that, in this case, the fix is innovative and will improve the game but that was never WotCs intention, its an unintended side effect that just happens to, arguably, be positive.
This does not fix all the issues either. Aid Another is a crazy wild card in this mechanic. If we let Aid Another get its foot in the door then the correct answer is not to have one player use aid another to help the player with the best stat in the skill but to have all the players do it - thats a whopping +8 making the chance of failure pretty much moot. Most of the time Aid Another is a lousy addition to this mechanic as it adds lots of dice rolling for little added drama. Its cool if you can work it into some skill checks some of the time but more as a little twist to add some drama and not as something thats happening for every single check (boring).
Keith also simply does not address the fact that, mathematically, these are backward. The more 'difficult' challenges that are worth more XP are mathematically easier. If you'll pull any specific roll, on average, more then, say, 60% of the time then you'd rather do a challenge thats something like 16 successes before 8 failures. The more rolls you make the more your results average out. If your dealing with an 'easy' challenge like make 4 successes before 2 failures then luck is going to play a much bigger role. Its only if you have to get lucky in the first place that a smaller challenge is good since your much more likely to fluke out and roll 15+ on a d20 4 times with only one bad roll then you are to do so 16 times before making 7 bad rolls.
So the XP part of this mechanic only makes sense if the idea is that we usually fail these things - which is just crazy talk, there should always be a chance of failure but it should not be the norm - thats no fun. Again the system will work even here after a fashion - I mean its odd to get more XP for doing something easier but the adventure will still continue after this anomaly.
Another annoying issue with this is its mathematically to complex without any charts or something included. The only way for a DM to know just how hard his skill challenge is, is to break out a spread sheet or calculator and do some serous number crunching.
A better method would be to set the number of failures as something static. Another poster mentioned 4 as being a good number and I agree. If the Skill Challenges generally were between 2-16 success before 4 failures then it'd be a lot easier to work out or just guess how hard these actually are. I figure 4 failures would work 90% of the time in most Challenges and we could go with 2 or 6 or something only in extremes.
Oh and one final big knock against this method - Its only easy to adjudicate in my home game. For an adventure in Dungeon we can't really easily write out all the possible things that might be a circumstance bonus. So its unclear how this mechanic should be handled in official products - I mean supposing they ever actually give us adventures that involve more then fighting monsters and looting bodies. I'm still waiting for them to discover that Role Playing Adventures can have things like plots.
When I first saw skill challenges, I was horrified. Simply put, they are trying to codify a cinematic approach to a situation. I am 100% on board with the goals, get everyone involved and able to participate, make it exciting etc., but, IMHO, it will always be near impossible to write rules for a subjective situation that requires guidelines instead. That’s what skill challenges should’ve been – guidelines – not a hard rules system.As an example, in my last game session, the players were faced with an arcanely sealed puzzle locked vault door as a part of a raid on a temple treasury. The situation ended up with them trying to open it “against the clock”, trying to get out with the valuable (to the plot) loot from behind the door before their opponent could manifest inside the vault.
I can totally see how this could work as a skill challenge, but I could not bring myself to use one as it defeats it’s own purposes. One player concentrated on hiding and filling his pockets with other loot from the treasury. This is not possible in a skill challenge.
Why not?
There is nothing in the mechanic that says everyone must participate. Its balanced so that everyone usually can but there is no requirement. If your skill challenge involves defusing a bomb before the timer runs out then it may be a very good idea for some players not to participate in the bomb defusion and instead start scooping up valuables. Its conceivable that one player high tails it and the rest deal with the Skill Challenge.
Another cast divinations to help figure out the puzzle lock. This is not possible in a skill challenge.
Why not?
In the example with the Duke the players received a bonus to some of the checks if they reminded the Duke of his fathers old Oath. Another part of this example was not to use Intimidate - that equalled a automatic failure right there. Both of these are not simple rolls versus a skill.
I contend that this falls under the same sort of guidelines. I'm unclear what your divination was for or about so I can't work your specific example into this but for the sake of argument lets presume that the puzzle box has instructions on the bottom written in Japanese (err...I mean some arcane language). Reading these instructions could represent an automatic success for the challenge. You could read these instructions through the use of a skill like Knowledge Arcane - which would involve a roll, or maybe you have a spell or some such that bypasses the need for an actual skill check. Success in the Arcane Knowledge roll or the use of magic both lead to the same place - 1 success in the Skill Challenge to open the box...or anything else you can think of from benefits to other checks, information unrelated to the challenge at hand - or if the instructions are lies then a penalty to other checks or an automatic failure.
Another tried to gather up NPCs and ensure their safety. This would not have been constructive to resolving a skill challenge either.
As you say the PC is not participating in the Skill Challenge per se but they are participating in the drama. Nothing in the Skill Check mechanic would negate this as a reasonable course of action. If this where a bomb or the Orcs were coming then this would be a pretty good scene IMO. You've got a Skill Challange going on and some of the players, who could be helping are being forced to instead help innocents.
Sounds like a really good scene to me and forces the players to make interesting and difficult choices. Lets say the Puzzle Box is stuck in place and has loot (or at least the players think it does) but the Orcs are coming! Now you've set your players up with an interesting dilemma.
The more of them that participate in trying to open the box the more chance they have of pulling it off due mainly to their diverse set of talents since less characters in the challenge means less characters with training in the various skills needed to open the box. On the other hand the innocents need to be hustled out of here before the Orcs arrive. So do the players succumb to greed or decrease their chance of getting the expected treasure but insure they save the towns people? Sounds like a really cool scene to me. I'll have to make a Skill Challenge like this at some point for sure.
As I read over this thread, it seems that many people who are not happy with the skill challenge rules feel that way because they feel that the DMG is trying to codify and add structure to a scene that should be free-form and run without the restriction of "rules." Some have argued that it restricts the actions of the characters (e.g., they can't cast divination spells), and some have complained that they are too complicated to write up for published adventures, since the DM can't foresee all possible character actions.
It seems, in both these cases, that individuals are falling into the same trap that they accuse the writers of falling into. Those unhappy with the skill challenge seem to feel locked into a set of rules with very strict limitations and clear-cut restrictions to possible actions. Instead, I feel that the skill challenge rules allow for tremendous creativity, on the part of the players as well as DM.
As has been noted above, there is nothing that says that all PCs have to participate in the skill challenge, and, in fact, it might be dramatically appropriate that some not. As the DMG points out, skill challenges during combat require this kind of delegation of tasks. Further, I think DMs have to be creative with PC actions they hadn't thought of by granting anything from an automatic success for some actions (the divination spell that allows the PCs to know that it's the "green wire" that must be cut) to bonuses on other checks. If the PCs try something really wacky that you hadn't thought of, don't count its attempt as a success or failure toward the final count, but grant a +2 to some other roll. For example, in the negotation with the Duke, the bard PC might regale the Duke with stories of the party's exploits, impressing him and making him respect them further. You could rule that a successful DC 15 Perform check (say) grants +2 to all Diplomacy checks for the remainder of the challenge. A failure could have no effect, or he might think the PCs are overproud, and you could apply a -2 to Diplomacy. Etc.
Don't allow yourself to be locked into rules that don't exist and enjoy the flexibility of the system.
O
(STUFF)
I don’t think my example conveyed the full intentions behind them! :D
(And for the record, the puzzle lock was on the door to a vault so the PCs couldn’t take it with them. Puzzle boxes are very cool though. )
Skill challenges relate directly to skill checks, with other actions having an ‘automatic’ effect, based on the DM’s say so. Like the intimidate skill leading to an automatic failure in your example. This is the first area where the rules fall down – part of the mechanics for the system of skill challenges say “make it up”. It is personal preference, but from the point of view of running a game, I’d rather have a collection of rules I can use to adjudicate an action, rather than something like the skill challenge system, which is half hard rules and half “magical tea party” (I love the phrase! Always makes me smile! :D ).
I understand that many people might not be able to understand the division I’m talking about, as it is entirely subjective, but I can’t think of a good way of describing it. To me, the way things are presented in the White Wolf story teller books (old stuff – I’ve not read the new ones), makes for a much better ‘middle ground’ between using a rules system and a completely freeform diceless resolution mechanic. Which is what the skill challenge system is going for and why I feel it would have been better presented as a guideline rather than a sub-system within the core rules.
It would be much more useful to say “here is an example of how you could use the rules to simulate this situation”, “here is an example of how you could work skill checks into this situation” and “here is an example of how to involve all of the players in this situation”, than it is to say “here is system X, use to resolve things in this way”.
Which leads us nicely to:
It seems, in both these cases, that individuals are falling into the same trap that they accuse the writers of falling into. Those unhappy with the skill challenge seem to feel locked into a set of rules with very strict limitations and clear-cut restrictions to possible actions.
I do totally understand what you are saying here, Arcesilaus. However, what I am trying to say, is that the skill challenge is not useful to me as a means of resolution.
I already knew that I could use skill checks in lots of different ways and I already knew that I could ‘make up’ the results of a PC’s action. And in the act of codifying these two ‘facts of gaming’, the system fell apart and lost any usefulness it might have had, to me. Perhaps this is what Mearls was trying to say? :D
My argument comes the position of “% useful content”, “new exciting rules that help me run a better game” and “innovations in the rules system”. Skill challenges don’t work for me because they’re failing at these things I’m looking for, by, as stated above, covering old ground in a poor way.
Whatever you’re doing with skill challenges though – game on!
Peace,
tfad
As reguards the main statement by Mearls, it seems pretty clear to me. I guess let me take a jab at reframing it. When you publish "errata" you basically say "eh, we screwed up and you bought a worthless mechanic--here's the fix for free" leaving everyone with a hole in their books where the lame broken rule lives. I think his model (and I really kind of like it) is to leave the original rule in for people that like it, and Unearthed Arcana style occasionally produce an additional mechanic that can be used in addition to the old system. So now you get to pick. You have more tools in your toolbox, and nothing you bought before is "wrong". You can still use it.
I disagree. In my example about infiltrating the Morgue we face three possible options, two of which don't involve skill challenges.Option #1: DM mostly hand waves this and we resolve things by having the rogue make a Open Locks Roll and two Move Silently rolls. There is only a tiny amount of RP in this, instead its pretty much dice rolling. The entire encounter is dealt with in two minutes or less.
Option #2: The DM designs the whole encounter involving maps and statted up Morgue staff. Since the PCs won't interact with the Morgue they might RP a little among themselves (especially during planning) but the vast majority of this fairly drawn out encounter is mechanics based since it fundamentally deals with the physics model of the game. No idea how many rolls are involved but probably a lot. The entire encounter takes between an hour and an hour and a half to resolve.
Option #3: Its a cinematic skill challenge. In this case its really almost nothing but role playing. There are no physics based rules here as the whole design of the encounter skips over the physics except insofar as one makes skill checks to handle obstacles that are essentially being dealt with abstractly. No map is in play and no miniatures are on the table since they are not part of the mechanic to resolve this scene. Some dice are being rolled but, we are probably talking about maybe ten rolls to resolve a scene that takes between ten and twenty minutes of game time. Its mostly the players talking among themselves and describing what they are going to do.
This is an interesting puzzle. Here's my take on it---2.5.
Grab some sewer map tiles, because they're grungy and have drains like a mortuary. Make a list of rooms you'd have in a mortuary. You might have an embalming room, a restoration room, a records room, and a room for preparing funerary goods and offerings--maybe a secret chamber that's a shrine to Orcus. There'd ideally be more. Name every room in the sewer map, so that each place is something cool. Take human rabble for the workers--none of them are particularly cool or combat worthy. Maybe have a flesh golem or something appropriate to protect the funerary goods vaults, since that place is full of the treasures the family wants to send with their beloved departed to the afterlife and needs a good guard. For each of the human rabble, have one per room have a special attack and an extra level bump or two. Make their special attacks be based on what they do for a job. The embalming guy might be good at manuvering bodies around the lab during his work, maybe, so if he and a cronie have a special that lets them push and pull a hero they're on either side of. That kind of thing. Maybe have a trap or two based on stuff you'd find in a mortuary, like a crematory or a gimble of surgical tools. No sweat. Not an exhaustive effort to stat out individual guys or make your own maps, since it's all stuff on hand or in the books. All the design is just brainstorming and common sense.
Then in comes the skill challenges. You get to the records room and want to find the room where the target's body is being worked on. The guy there is this fat, surly, petty person--and a bit of a slob. He's got his own system for filing everything, and laughs that you'll never find it. You can intimidate him, persuade him, bribe him, while other guys make perception checks, or better yet, insight checks, to figure out where the records are kept. If this succeeds, they know where they're headed. If they fail, they have to go room by room. You offer them the chance to skill challenge stealth their way from room to room, dodging assistants and distracting people, and whatever noncombat stuff. If they fail or say no, then pull out the sewer map and a mob of appropriate rabble. Maybe even have a few of them run off to call the town guard. You can either handwave the idea that they're killing innocent (if repugnant) hardworking town craftfolk--or you can turn this into it's own escapade, full of brushes with the law. Now maybe between trying stealth and turning entirely to the battlemap you might want to try another social skill challenge to get the mortuary workers to help the PC's out--again, bribery, persuasion, intimidation.
So it becomes like layers of the game. The game starts as all skill challenges, until it's time to get into the tactical nitty gritty, at which point you can pull out a map and minis. Rather than there being two systems at odds with each other and a DM who gets to push his players around and tell them how to play the game, it adds another level to the game.
Put another way. Say in 3.5 I look at this big dungeon and go, nah. I don't want to creep from room to room. I just want to make some rolls and get what I want and blow past the rest of it entirely. Same issue. As DM you either say "Heck no! I spent too much time designing every little room in this stinking dungeon, now get in there!!" or you develop a hybrid style, where maybe the skill challenges can get you a certain way on their own, but where both exist within the game as different levels of detail, and the story can freely bounce back and forth between the two.
Skill challenges relate directly to skill checks, with other actions having an ‘automatic’ effect, based on the DM’s say so. Like the intimidate skill leading to an automatic failure in your example. This is the first area where the rules fall down – part of the mechanics for the system of skill challenges say “make it up”. It is personal preference, but from the point of view of running a game, I’d rather have a collection of rules I can use to adjudicate an action, rather than something like the skill challenge system, which is half hard rules and half “magical tea party” (I love the phrase! Always makes me smile! :D )...
I'm sorry. I'm just not really following you. It sort of sounds like your trying to convey a 'feeling' of how well this works in your home game but that has a really hard time coming across in a message board.
That said its perfectly possible that what your doing in your home game has already encompassed the spirit of a Skill Challenge and you've worked out a system that works for you. If so then I can see how these rules won't help you.
From my perspective I like them partly because character class design is built with them in mind. All of my players will be able to participate in them if I design my Skill Challenges well - the rules have been designed so that this is so.
Of maybe more interest then that however is that the Skill Challenge Mechanic should work for a party composed of characters of which I do not have the foggiest idea except for their level. I don't need to design these for my players. A random professional adventurer can design them for any group so long as he knows their level. Though if there are less then 4 players or more then 6 it may start to strain the system. Parties smaller then four don't have as many players and therefore don't have as many trained skills - parties larger then 6 might enter a situation where smaller Skill Challenges are won or lost before every player that wants to gets a chance to take a turn.
This second part excites me because it expands the game at least in terms of published material. Currently we usually get two kinds of encounters. We get keyed encounters, usually monsters or traps and these are mostly a kind of combat encounter and we get background fluff. So the adventure designer pretty much writes up a tavern and includes some really interesting NPCs to interact with.
We get a handful of other types of encounters as well, puzzles, hazards, mysteries, negotiations etc. The Skill Challenge system is meant to address some of this type of encounter. Many of them don't work very well as a Skill Challenge but many of them do. My hope is we see a lot more interesting and interactive scenes in future published product. I love monsters and interesting NPCs but I've not seen enough of interesting hazards or intense negotiations as I would have liked. Most encounters have been either combat or NPC tells you X. These are great but there is more and I think we all know and love it when we have encountered such scenes in the past and they, for whatever reason, worked.
Essentially a Skill Challenge is a framework for designing an encounter thats not combat and yet still presents a chance of failure. One where many players participate and where actions can build on each other or act as synergies. A good one demands that the DM sit down and really think about the various components of the Skill Challenge, I suspect they'll start off simpler and a bit rough but will improve with the life of the edition. A DM that fails to anticipate player actions can still adjudicate them but its best if he or she tries not to miss player actions. My Morgue Robbing Example from way up the thread failed on a few levels but certianly on the fact that I only had a Skill Challenge if the PCs indicated they were going to do a B&E. If they were planning of bribing, bluffing or otherwise tricking the staff I had a whole different encounter on my hands - I should have recognized that but did not as I described the Skill Challenge.
My feeling is even if you don't use Skill Challenges you'll still benefit from their existance because they will present a lot of interesting non combat events in published material and you can go about adjudicating these interesting situations in your preferred method. In the end I feel we all win if we are getting interesting adventures that include scenes like the PCs trying to outrun a landslide.
Okay, I think if I can quote you out of order, I may be able to make myself understood. :D
That said its perfectly possible that what your doing in your home game has already encompassed the spirit of a Skill Challenge and you've worked out a system that works for you. If so then I can see how these rules won't help you.
That one! We’re already including everyone and letting the players try anything they want – and having whatever they try effect the situation. That’s pretty much what a skill challenge is for, so, like you said, it’s no help to me or my group.
It sort of sounds like your trying to convey a 'feeling' of how well this works in your home game but that has a really hard time coming across in a message board.
That’s what I’m trying to do. At first I thought I should quote the 4E books on skill challenges, then I realized that the whole point of this thread is that the books don’t say what was intended. ;D I’ll try to explain it again. :D
E.g. So you’re in the middle of a skill challenge. It’s Bob’s go and he’s all like, “Damn, my skills are all useless here. How about I try to use a divination?” The rest of the party agrees and then everyone turns to the DM.
Now, the skill challenge rules say, quite correctly, that if a player tries something that’s not a skill check, the DM decides how (if at all) this action effects the results of the skill challenge. This is no different from any other edition or even RPG. If you don’t know, make it up!
This is why the skill challenge system doesn’t work for us. It is comparable the combat chapter saying advising that when you hit your opponent, “make up the damage you deal.” The system only goes ‘half way’ and, as we were already doing everything presented in the half that doesn’t say ‘make it up’, the skill challenge system does not work for us.
This is why I said that a section of ‘guidelines’ on how to achieve the stated goals of the skill challenge system would have been much better (IMHO). If they had been well written, the guidelines could have served as pointers for years of g(a)ming. I’d rather have had more ‘open ended’ skill uses too, like the old White Wolf games. But this is all personal preference.
I hope that makes a bit more sense! :D
Peace,
tfad
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Are we seeing this the right way? I kind of see skill challenges, not as a way of abstracting the experience and changing it to a couple of skill rolls, but as a way to mediate how much xp to hand out for some challenging situations involving skills. Normally the only time you get xp in 3e for skills is when the rogue has disarmed a trap. The rest of the time it is all hack hack hack unless the DM wants to give out xp (like I do from time to time) for reaching certain milestones (note, this is a generic, not 4e specific, use of the term) in the scenario.
In one of the examples in the DMG, it talks about persuading the duke to do something and lists a series of skill checks. Now, you could just read out the skill checks and say "Away you go, get rolling" but I imagine most DMs would actually require a bit of roleplaying. But the crucial point is, you know how many xp to hand out now, and its not just about the rogue and his traps and DM being nice - there are rules for this now. This strikes me as the important point about skill checks. With the advent of skills in 3e the issue of abstraction was always there. But no one ever really said how to give xp for it.
Sorry if this is a rehash of someone else's comments - I didn't read all the posts as they are somewhat lengthy.
Well it would seem we finally get an answer to the OPs question. Looks like they house ruled it. Thus disproving one of my more extreme theories (Fortunately I am good at building extreme theories and can readily come up with a replacement with just a little thought and a 750 word post).
This is an interesting puzzle. Here's my take on it---2.5.
Grab some sewer map tiles, because they're grungy and have drains like a mortuary. Make a list of rooms you'd have in a mortuary. You might have an embalming room, a restoration room, a...[...cool morgue attendants with unique abilities based on their speciality...neat traps...Golems...embedded skill challenges...]
I love your adventure outline Grim but I don't feel you've really skipped over much at all here. I can't believe you could run this in less then an hour. There must be at least five different encounters described in your outline.
Now maybe this really is the correct answer to my Morgue idea and not an over arcing Skill Challenge at all. I can buy that as a reasonable response especially considering some of the weak points others have pointed out in my idea of a Morgue as a Skill Challenge.
However this still leaves us back at square one. Either we have to do a full blown adventure with the scene or we need to pretty much hand wave it.
My current feeling is that were I screwed up in my example was deciding that the Skill Challenge had begun once the players choose to try and steal the body. I'm know thinking that I need to outline a couple of different possibilities. The PCs can indicate that they are going to talk with the staff. That might be one kind of Skill Challenge if they negotiate or something else if they are going to use a ritual or power to just take them out of the picture long enough to pull off their objective. However if the PCs indicate that they want to avoid staff and swipe the body undetected then they are back to my original idea. Its become clear that my players need to indicate to me that they are doing a B&E before I can go off half cocked and initiate the skill challange.
I also have to take into account that one skill challange could turn into another. For example my PCs want to do the B&E and they fail enough that they are caught by the staff. Well they could run away or they could use powers of some such to befuddle the staff that caught them. On the other hand they could simply try and negotiate and the B&E Skill Challenge is aborted while the Diplomacy one comes up - possibly with some kind of penalties since they were obvously caught in skull drudgery before they started trying to talk their way forward. I might say that they need two more successes to pull things off then they would have needed if they had just knocked on the front door instead of picking the lock.
Are we seeing this the right way? I kind of see skill challenges, not as a way of abstracting the experience and changing it to a couple of skill rolls, but as a way to mediate how much xp to hand out for some challenging situations involving skills. Normally the only time you get xp in 3e for skills is when the rogue has disarmed a trap. The rest of the time it is all hack hack hack unless the DM wants to give out xp (like I do from time to time) for reaching certain milestones (note, this is a generic, not 4e specific, use of the term) in the scenario.
In one of the examples in the DMG, it talks about persuading the duke to do something and lists a series of skill checks. Now, you could just read out the skill checks and say "Away you go, get rolling" but I imagine most DMs would actually require a bit of roleplaying. But the crucial point is, you know how many xp to hand out now, and its not just about the rogue and his traps and DM being nice - there are rules for this now. This strikes me as the important point about skill checks. With the advent of skills in 3e the issue of abstraction was always there. But no one ever really said how to give xp for it.
Sorry if this is a rehash of someone else's comments - I didn't read all the posts as they are somewhat lengthy.
I like that they give XP for these things but I think its missing some of the potential if we just view these as some kind of an XP tap for rolling a success on a few skill checks. I mean there is that as an element sure but we can do a lot more then just this with the mechanic, IMO.
As reguards the main statement by Mearls, it seems pretty clear to me. I guess let me take a jab at reframing it. When you publish "errata" you basically say "eh, we screwed up and you bought a worthless mechanic--here's the fix for free" leaving everyone with a hole in their books where the lame broken rule lives. I think his model (and I really kind of like it) is to leave the original rule in for people that like it, and Unearthed Arcana style occasionally produce an additional mechanic that can be used in addition to the old system.
[sarcasm]Plus it satisfies the directives of the faceless corporate masters above him to sell people things that previously were fixed for free.[/sarcasm]
I do agree that it's good to leave options on the table and provide new ones, and I agree with your analysis, despite the sarcasm.
So Nahualt gave another example of using a skill challenge as a cinematic scene that exists on top of the physics based model of the game.
He mentions this on a thread about the maze in Three Faces of Evil.
Essentially the idea is to use the mechanic to skip over the physical aspects of actually mapping out a maze. In this particular case there are interesting aspects as their are Kenku ambushing the players from secret doors through out the maze. Those that have read the threads regarding Three Faces of Evil will probably have found that this aspect of the adventure received some criticism from some of the people who ran it. Mapping mazes is long and boring in the first place - making it not a very exciting aspect of game night. Its also really hard to work the Kenku ambushes into the scene using the physics based rules.
Nahualt's innovative solution was to treat the whole maze as an abstract. Win the Skill Challange and you get through the maze. Fail it and your drawn into a major trap. Specific failed rolls could result in things like ambushes by the Kenku while successes allow the players to flush out their stalkers and counter their tactics.
This leads me to a couple of thoughts on the issue. One is, should we even bother mapping such mazes out in the future? In theory one could map it because we had a map in 3FoE but I'm wondering if in future we should just skip the maze map altogether and simply have the dungeon map show the routes to the maze and the exists from the maze but skip the actual maze itself.
Another issue that comes up with me is what to do about players that insist that they are going slow and mapping the maze? In this case in particular I figure I'd make the Skill Challenge needed to find ones way through the maze easier - i.e. you can make more failures before you fail the Skill Challenge but some how increase the severity of the Kenku attacks - because players going slow and concentrating on mapping are making themselves much easier targets for ambush.
I would think that one could consider similar mechanics for the mirror maze in Sodden Hold.
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So Nahualt gave another example of using a skill challenge as a cinematic scene that exists on top of the physics based model of the game.
He mentions this on a thread about the maze in Three Faces of Evil.
The concept of skill challenges is a really good idea. The biggest problem when it was first introduced in Dungeonscape in the form of encounter traps was just getting used to the idea. Once you did that, both as a player and a designer, you could really go just about anywhere with it. That maze example sounds pretty good. I used it in one of the LG cores for a bar fight as I sat contemplating what I wanted (a general brawl with every player being relevant) and what I did not want (a fight against a bunch of worthless thugs or the wizard just blowing the whole place up with one spell), and it just hit me that the encounter trap mechanic was perfect for that.
Unfortunately somewhere between that and 4E, when all the baffling complexity was stripped from the mechanic, so was all the spirit, and apparently all of the balance. As with many systems, this is yet another one where a bit, or even a lot, more complexity is better.
The concept of skill challenges is a really good idea. The biggest problem when it was first introduced in Dungeonscape in the form of encounter traps was just getting used to the idea. Once you did that, both as a player and a designer, you could really go just about anywhere with it. That maze example sounds pretty good. I used it in one of the LG cores for a bar fight as I sat contemplating what I wanted (a general brawl with every player being relevant) and what I did not want (a fight against a bunch of worthless thugs or the wizard just blowing the whole place up with one spell), and it just hit me that the encounter trap mechanic was perfect for that.
Unfortunately somewhere between that and 4E, when all the baffling complexity was stripped from the mechanic, so was all the spirit, and apparently all of the balance. As with many systems, this is yet another one where a bit, or even a lot, more complexity is better.
I feel we are still in the early stages of this. Still at a point where the designers, both amateur and pro, are trying to get their head around what we can do with this and what is and is not appropriate. I think there are aspects of the foundations of 4Es design that will make these, eventually, a significant part of our adventures.
Specifically the XP mechanic, the gain of 1/2 level in skills and the fact that all characters are trained in at least three skills. Taken together these mean that any skill challenge made by one DM, amateur or pro, can be played by any other party of the appropriate level and it will work. This, I think, is what bodes best for their eventual success. If a DM creates the maze encounter at Sodden Hold (which is, what, 9th level?) as a Skill Challenge he or she can be confident that all other DMs with parties of the the same level can participate in that Skill Challenge.
WTF?
My sentiments exactly. Along the vein of Mearl's comments and the comments of the OP, I also just read over the many many pages of errata for "4" and can't believe there's already this much crap wrong with "4."
What a shoddy quality assurance job. Thank goodness I didn't buy it.
I refer you to the 30 pages of errata I printed for the 1st print run of 3.0 PHB, DMG, and MM (all in small type). All RPG books have errata.
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I refer you to the 30 pages of errata I printed for the 1st print run of 3.0 PHB, DMG, and MM (all in small type). All RPG books have errata.
There is errata - "Oops, that is way more typos than we expected", then there is errata - "We forgot several tables", and then there is errata - "These special entries need to be revised, and this whole system is not really functional".
This is the last category, and it is of much greater significance than the first, and a different kind of major issue than the second.