# Challenge the Players, Not the Characters' Stats



## joethelawyer (Oct 7, 2008)

i was reading a post over on GROGNARDIA i believe, and came across this (cut and pasted from a larger post):



"The crux of it, though, is this: _challenge the player, not the character's stats_. That's probably the single most important difference between old school and contemporary roleplaying games. I think that it's at the root of why most old schoolers have an instinctive hatred of skill systems in RPGs. Skill systems often imply not just what your character can do but also what he knows. That creates both a powerful separation between player and character knowledge but also creates the expectation that a character's knowledge ought to be able to give the player the solutions needed to solve in-game puzzles, tricks, traps, etc."


that one section "_challenge the player, not the character's stats"_  sums it up for me in terms of what i like about older style play over the new systems which, with a rule for everything, makes it harder to do so.

that's also my answer to the thread which asks what is missing in 4e, or the thread asking if someone would play 4e if necro games managed to bring a 1e feel to it.  if someone could make 4e into a game where player skill counted for far far more than character stats and abilities, then yes, i would play and like 4e.  

as it is now, my group plays a heavily houseruled version of 3.0, not even 3.5, which makes 3.0 more like 1e.

anyhow my 2 cents.  i have never seen a statement which so clearly articulated my position on the differences between the editions that the one i quoted above. i thought it might make for interesting discussion.

this blog posting lead to an interesting discussion within my gaming group, and i thought it might do so here as well. please no edition flame wars.

the esact link to the blog/article is here:

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/gygaxian.html


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## TwinBahamut (Oct 7, 2008)

I don't think that quote works at all.

4E _is_ about challenging the player's skills. After all, isn't one of the most widespread sentiments about 4E that it is more tactical, and that it punishes bad tactics and rewards good tactics much more than previous editions?

Certainly, the exact quote you refer to is much more a criticism of 3E's "everything is covered by its own skill" mentality, than it is a criticism of 4E. After all, 4E doesn't have a rule and skill for everything, and it is much more reliant on compromise and interaction between DMs and Players in that regard.

Honestly, I don't think there is such a simple way to explain the differences between different editions, and looking for an single, easily identified "root problem" is nothing more than a wild goose chase. The differences between editions are far too complex for that.


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## malraux (Oct 7, 2008)

Doesn't player skill affect how well you use your character's skills?  Certainly screwing up the usage of your character's abilities will hurt you in any game I've played or run.


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## WayneLigon (Oct 7, 2008)

It's a good definition and distinction. It's the primary reason I dislike old school gaming and grognards in general; to me, it's a limiting factor in what I can do. I play a game to be something or someone better than myself; smarter, stronger, or more charismatic, etc. In other words, to possess abilities that I do not.

To me, 'challenge the players' just sounds like legitimized metagaming, or as was so often the case, an exercise in frustration.


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## justanobody (Oct 7, 2008)

I would prefer to have my analytical skills challenged that just compare numbers on a page and some dice. While you can't lift things for your character, you do all the thinking for them.

I think that quote nails it, and the ages of gaming can be equated to just that. Do the players want to be challenged, or want their playing piece tasked for the job at hand?

To me that is what the roleplaying is all about. Combat is where you get to chuck the dice, or draw chits.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 7, 2008)

If the entire focus of a challenge is on challenging the player, what is the point of having a character at all? If switching from one character to another has no appreciable difference in the encounters, as all encounters will be directed towards Brendan and not Kelleshan or Arqos or any of my characters, then what's the point in making a character?


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## justanobody (Oct 7, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> If the entire focus of a challenge is on challenging the player, what is the point of having a character at all? If switching from one character to another has no appreciable difference in the encounters, as all encounters will be directed towards Brendan and not Kelleshan or Arqos or any of my characters, then what's the point in making a character?




Because you [Brendan] cannot lift the imaginary portcullis, and run down the imaginary corridor to fight the imaginary dragon at the end. Argos can. BUT, Argos does exactly what you can think for him to do. Does he lift the portcullis, or find another way? Does he run down the corridor or sneak down it, or look for a secret passage around the dragon to the treasure? Argos cannot decide these things for himself, the player must decide for him.

So no matter what, you are always and only every truly challenging the player unless you leave the entire game to random chance and a roll of the dice.


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 7, 2008)

I don't think "challenge the players" works. Basketball and Chess challenge players. That's not what distinguishes O/AD&D from 4E. However I will add a little information to the mix.

Role play is something pretty much all kids do. It's an instinctual form of play that develops cognitive skills related to developing a strong theory of mind and useful social negotiation skills.  Even once skills are fully developed the simple pleasure of role play remains with many people into adulthood.

It's like tag and basketball in that way. We engage in physical play as children to develop our neuromuscular system but it's still fun when we're all grown up.

You know who knew that?  John Eric Holmes. The guy who wrote the D&D Basic Set. Also known as (trivia points!) Dr. John Eric Holmes, Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.  That's right, old school D&D was written by a guy with a M.D. in Neurology with published papers on what role play is, how we do it, and what makes it fun.

Monte and Mearls are smart guys, but they aren't published neuroscientists.

I am not a neuroscientist either, so I'm not going to sit here and "explain" how or why old school D&D is better.  I don't fully understand it myself.  But it was heavily influenced by a guy who really, really knew (far vigorously than I probably ever will) what a roleplaying game is, and needs to be, and (more importantly) what it should not be.

Just food for thought.


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## D'karr (Oct 7, 2008)

That is all fine and dandy until your DM introduces a puzzle.

Sure you can think for your character and tell him to go left or right, jump over that pit or raise that portcullis.  But as soon as your Wizard has Genius level intelligence, and you do not, the limitation of that play style shows how lacking it can be.


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## Psion (Oct 7, 2008)

I think you should challenge the players AND the characters.

A major part of the enjoyment of RPGs AFAIAC is the "enabling fantasy" aspect. We* play heroic characters in RPGs in part because they do things we can't do that we find interesting or cool. It defines why you want to be a particular character class/skillset. You play a magic-user/wizard/etc., because you think casting spells is cool/enabling. You play a thief/rogue because you think skulking about is cool/enabling, etc.

* - We in this case representing a significant subset of the RPG hobby.


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## Mouseferatu (Oct 7, 2008)

I reject the entire dichotomy. RPGs aren't an "either/or" situation.

Do I challenge the characters? Yes, every time I run a combat, pit them against a skill challenge, or have them pick up a die in any way, shape, or form.

Do I challenge the players? Yes, every time I introduce a mystery plotline or require them to solve a problem based on a clue I dropped six games ago (and yes, I do that), every time I run a combat--since they have to decide tactics--and every time I pit them against a skill challenge, since they have to decide which skills to use, and how.

Riddles? Players first, but if it's going to stop the game dead, resort to dice. Ditto puzzles, though I don't use puzzles very often.

AFAIAC, the game _doesn't happen_ without challenges to both. The notion that you must pick one or the other, or that any given edition disallows one or the other, is utter nonsense. One edition may do so _differently_ than other editions, and that might not be to everyone's tastes, but that's not the same thing at all.

Edit: And it looks like Psion beat me to at least part of my point.


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## MerricB (Oct 8, 2008)

What Psion and Mouseferatu said. 

Cheers!


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

Are we talking about eliminating all skill rolls, or only some types of skills.  Because the argument that "your character does the heavy lifting, you do the heavy thinking" implies that there is still a need for a rule defining certain traits that in no way could pass from the player into the game world.

Take sneaking: You can say "My character sneaks past the guards", and if the player has a good idea of what's in the area that can be used as cover you could possibly require them to state what they are hiding behind.  But how do you adjudicate how silently they walk?  Without a Sneak skill you either can't or you have to give a player such a detailed knowledge of their character's body and the surface they'll be walking over and then hope they know something about how walking silently works and the whole process becomes "describe the physics".

You can make similar arguments for many skills: players can't pick a lock when they aren't actually holding the pick and feeling how the mechanism is moving, they can't make a disguise without knowing how all the parts look fitted together.  I can't see how to adjudicate these actions without a mechanical system that reflects the interior of the game world.


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## jdrakeh (Oct 8, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> If the entire focus of a challenge is on challenging the player, what is the point of having a character at all?




Well, while this is a little fart-fetched, I was thinking in the same vein. If a character's Intelligence and Wisdom are not to be tested in actual play, then why were these things hard-coded into many games as stats with rules for testing them in actual play? 

I often hear the idea espoused that 'old school' games were about challenging the _player_, but certain elements of the games (such as hard coding character intellect in the rules) suggest that this argument reflects less truth in game design than it does departure from the RAW at individual tables. 

This being the case, it seems to me that what many people promote as 'old school' today seems to be less about using rules as written or any inherent mechanical superiority of older systems and more about personal interpretation (or deliberate ignorance) of said rules.

[Edit: That said, I'm of the mind that challenging _both_ the players and characters seems to be the best (i.e., most entertaining) route for me and, indeed, the kind of play that most game are designed to facilitate.]


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 8, 2008)

D'karr said:


> That is all fine and dandy until your DM introduces a puzzle.
> 
> Sure you can think for your character and tell him to go left or right, jump over that pit or raise that portcullis.  But as soon as your Wizard has Genius level intelligence, and you do not, the limitation of that play style shows how lacking it can be.



Lacking? I guess that depends on what you're looking for. 

A person who is exercising their theory of mind muscles by pretending to be someone else will often find rolling d20+Int+1/2 level to be lacking.

A person who playing at negotiating a contract for release with the raiders who took them captive will often find rolling d20+Chr+1/2 level to be lacking.

If you fail a Str check to Open Doors, do you want to roll an Int check so the DM can tell you to use the statue of the Baron Crozy as a battering ram, or would you rather figure that out yourself? There's no wrong answer to that question, but it is the difference (I think) between Old School and the style of play you are suggesting.

---

As for the puzzle the DM handed you, please don't take it literally.  It's an abstract representation of the puzzle your 18 Int character is actually solving. The real puzzle is much harder, but the DM has scaled it down for you to present an equivalent level of difficulty.


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## D'karr (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> There's no wrong answer to that question, but it is the difference (I think) between Old School and the style of play you are suggesting.




Since I wasn't suggesting any style of play what did you think I was suggesting?

As far as I can remember D&D has had some form of ability checks (Opening Doors, Bonuses to Resist Magic, To Hit adjustments, and Adjustments to Reactions, to name a few.)  So what is so far-fetched about using those "numbers" for the conflict resolution that cannot be accounted for by the player's natural abilities?

I'm sorry if I'm not getting the "funny" in your "humor."


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 8, 2008)

D'karr said:


> Since I wasn't suggesting any style of play what did you think I was suggesting?



It seemed to me you were advocating a style of play where a puzzle could be "solved" with an Int check.




D'karr said:


> As far as I can remember D&D has had some form of ability checks (Opening Doors, Bonuses to Resist Magic, To Hit adjustments, and Adjustments to Reactions, to name a few.)  So what is so far-fetched about using those "numbers" for the conflict resolution that cannot be accounted for by the player's natural abilities?



What part of a word puzzle can't be solved by the player's natural abilities?  Open Doors and Reflex Saves are useful to have mechanics for.  Things the player can interact with socially or verbally not so much.


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## D'karr (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> What part of a word puzzle can't be solved by the player's natural abilities?




If word puzzles were the only type of puzzle ever encountered maybe, maybe your suggestion that character abilities should not "influence" the outcome would fit.  However, there are quite a bit more puzzles than those.

I'll just agree to disagree, the discussion is pointless.


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## Minigiant (Oct 8, 2008)

I don't think "challenge the players" or ""challenge the character" works alone. When I play an RPG, I take on the character's abilities, knowledges, and physyque.  "Challenge the players" is legalizing metagame. "Challenge the character" is just dice rolling. The player chooses what the characters do, but it's up to the characters to actually do it, if they are even able to. You have to do both.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> If you fail a Str check to Open Doors, do you want to roll an Int check so the DM can tell you to use the statue of the Baron Crozy as a battering ram, or would you rather figure that out yourself? There's no wrong answer to that question, but it is the difference (I think) between Old School and the style of play you are suggesting.





thats a perfect example of what i am talking about as a main difference.  i am not trying to say one style of play is better than the others, just saying the distinction drawn in the article i quoted sums up the difference better than any other explanation i have ever been able to articulate.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 8, 2008)

Minigiant said:


> I don't think "challenge the players" or ""challenge the character" works alone. When I play an RPG, I take on the character's abilities, knowledges, and physyque.  "Challenge the players" is legalizing metagame. "Challenge the character" is just dice rolling. The player chooses what the characters do, but it's up to the characters to actually do it, if they are even able to. You have to do both.




what does metagame mean?  i've seen the phrase used but never quite got it.


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## Umbran (Oct 8, 2008)

I want characters to be able to do things the players cannot.  It does not matter if that is swinging a sword, talking the nose off a brass monkey, or working a calculation of arcane formulae to an inevitable explosive conclusion - these are all things that need some sort of system to stand in for the player.

I have fond that challenging the stats properly means that you do challenge the player - if you make success based on stats questionable, the player will do their best to help things along.  On the other hand, if I challenge the player directly due to lack of stats, and the player fails, then is it a _personal_ failure, rather than an in-game failure, which doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.  I am not interested in making my players feel stupid or otherwise inadequate.

So, you may use what system you want, I would like some stats to work with, so I can be open and clearly fair, without risking cheesing off my friends.


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## Lord Xtheth (Oct 8, 2008)

I kind of agree and kind of don't.
I hate it when I roleplay with people and I hear things like "I seduce them" (Roll dice) "I got a 23"
or
"I force the door open" (roll) "I got a 5"
It realy bugs me when that happens. When I DM I hate even more when I ask people to continue with some kind of description of what they're doing and they stare at me blankly, like rolling the dice WAS what their character did.

On the other hand, I've been in the position where I hadn't the faintest clue what the "win" to a challenge might have been so I resorted to rolling dice. 

I can see valid points for both sides of the scenario here and both are equily true for any edition of any game with any amount of rules.


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## nightwyrm (Oct 8, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> what does metagame mean? i've seen the phrase used but never quite got it.




The use of player knowledge for making decisions as opposed to restricting yourself to using only character knowledge.  An example would be having your PC immediately using fire or acid on trolls even though your character have never encountered or heard of trolls before.


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## Umbran (Oct 8, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> what does metagame mean?  i've seen the phrase used but never quite got it.




"Metagame" broadly means "using knowledge of/that you're playing a game within the game itself".

Wikipedia: Metagame

For example - when the player's memorized the Monster Manual, and uses that information to make choices for a character that's never seen a particular monster, that's metagaming.  

It isn't always a bad thing.  Say you're playing a one-shot adventure.  If the player chooses to be reckless, because they know they'll never play the character again, that's metagaming, but can be a lot of fun for everyone involved if there's some agreement on it.  Or, knowing when to take (and when to let someone else take) spotlight time is a metagame thing, and is a valuable skill at the table.


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## Runestar (Oct 8, 2008)

I don't see how the 2 can be meaningfully separated.

The whole point of stats is to properly delineate just what your character can and cannot do. Make an athletic check to vault over the pit. Make an attack roll to see if you hit the pit fiend. Make a diplomacy check to see if you can get on the baron's good graces. And so on and so forth. 

There is a very huge difference between what a PC can do, and what the players thinks he ought to be capable of achieving. Which is what makes stats all the more important, IMO. You are not your character, so a clear line has to be drawn in the sand.


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 8, 2008)

Umbran said:


> For example - when the player's memorized the Monster Manual, and uses that information to make choices for a character that's never seen a particular monster, that's metagaming.



In high school my friend Jon did that. Carl (the DM) de-metagamed the situation by requiring that all his characters spend at least three Non-Weapon Proficiencies on Monster Lore. 

As I recall we all thought that was pretty funny.




Umbran said:


> On the other hand, if I challenge the player directly due to lack of stats, and the player fails, then is it a _personal_ failure, rather than an in-game failure, which doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.



We play games in a real-world consequence free environment in order to learn.  Learning is intrinsically fun, for anyone who hasn't had the fun of learning burned out of them by, um, less than ideal teaching practices.  Failure is a learning experience, even more than winning is some times. Ergo, failure at a task can be just as fun as winning at the task, from a certain point of view.

Winning is cool and exciting, but losing a pretend battle (rather than a real war) doesn't have to be un-fun.


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## RFisher (Oct 8, 2008)

One of a couple of phrases from the Grimm Studios podcast that stuck with me today:

The PC is a _vehicle_ for the player.

I can’t move at 70mph; but in my car, I can. My car can’t negotiate a maze-like parking lot; but my car with me behind the wheel can.

I don’t care if it is old school, new school, or middle school. That’s what I prefer.

And yeah, I prefer not to have intelligence or wisdom as a stat. When a game has them, I tend to view them as something much narrower than the plain meaning of the terms—or even what the game text describes them as.

As far as 4e goes, I haven’t played it enough yet to comment on how it supports or hinders my preferences in this area.


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## RFisher (Oct 8, 2008)

Runestar said:


> You are not your character, so a clear line has to be drawn in the sand.




Here’s the thing, though: When people try playing without the clear lines—as long as they don’t have too much immaturity in the group—they are often surprised to find that they really didn’t need them.


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## Cadfan (Oct 8, 2008)

In a game that's so frequently about combat, I'd say that increasing combat options and the benefits of tactical play, while reducing the importance of a strong character build by trying to eliminate the potential for overly sub-par character builds, would be a major step towards challenging the player rather than the player's stats.

I'm going to forego discussing how the basics of gaming haven't really changed, and coming up with a plan to save the city from the orc army is basically the same in 4e as it was in 1e since its all freeform player/DM roleplaying.  I'm just going to talk about combat itself.

I can't really find a nice way to say it, so I'll just say it- I think that early edition D&D combat, viewed in a vaccuum, is terrible.  Its all the fun of scratching off a lottery ticket, or repeatedly pulling a slot machine lever.  I had some good times with earlier editions of D&D, but those good times almost exclusively occurred when we found ways to get around or ignore the combat system.

So many roleplaying games seem to be lacking the "game" part to me.  Or rather, they make the classic Ameritrash error (MerricB knows what I mean by this, the rest of you can go to BBG and look it up) of assuming that, if you're simulating something cool, you must be having fun, without stopping to pay attention to whether the simulation itself is a _fun game_.  Having a fun game is a key aspect of challenging the player rather than the character's stats.

You can denigrate it all you like- but rather than say that 4e is like a boardgame now, I'd say that 4e *combat *is like a _good_ boardgame now, and earlier editions were often like poor ones.

I'm probably kicking off an edition war here even though I don't mean to.  Read above again, I really enjoyed my Rules Cyclopedia D&D, I just thought the combat was poorly written once I had the chance to see a broader spectrum of gaming.


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## Henry (Oct 8, 2008)

RFisher said:


> The PC is a _vehicle_ for the player.
> 
> I can’t move at 70mph; but in my car, I can. My car can’t negotiate a maze-like parking lot; but my car with me behind the wheel can.
> 
> I don’t care if it is old school, new school, or middle school. That’s what I prefer.




A thought just occurred to me: Your car might have a GPS system. You might not be able to navigate while driving for squat; however, thanks to your GPS, you can act like you're a lot more capable than you really are. Same thing with allowing mental stats on a character - though I drive the character's conscience and morals, he doesn't have to act as dumb as I really am; he can be as slick as greased snail slime in an oil barrel, though it's my decisions that make him succeed or fail.

That said, I get the idea of "character as vehicle only"; and it's certainly one thing that separates older D&D from newer D&D. I was mentioning this week the old "Be Aware, Take Care" article from Lew Pulsipher of Dragon Magazine to someone; that article describes old-school play much better than I could come up with on my own. Great article, very fun.


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 8, 2008)

Ultimately a good game and a good DM will challenge the player and the character. Skills have thier place but should never stand in for a description of what a character is doing. Skills help in the resolution of numerous tasks but are a very poor substitute for descriptive narration.

A player should not be punished for not being the greatest public speaker. If his or her character has skills in that area then a good skill skill roll will polish what the player actually says. It shouldn't mean that the player gets to mumble " I inspire the crowd" and roll a die. The player should still convey his or her message clearly. The die roll is to represent the character's delivery of what the player said.

When it comes to riddles or puzzles these can be a lot of fun completely without skill rolls. Its important that the solution to these puzzles be information that the characters have or is relevant to them. Challenging the players to remember something that both they and thier characters know can be a great exercise in using the old noggin. A riddle with an answer based on some out of game knowledge is pointless to the game world and the characters so why use it? 

For situations like searching its easy to mix in character skill with player cleverness. If good descriptions of key things to search are given and the player just says " I make a search check" perhaps it takes longer to find and a wandering encounter might interrupt. If the player actually listens and searches specific areas perhaps the goodies are found quickly and maybe (gasp) without a die roll. 

Characters having skills and sbilities that the player's don't is a good thing and kind of the point of roleplaying. The reality is that its the players at the table, and not the characters that need to be involved and engaged in what is happening. If a player can't even be bothered to descibe the actions of his or her character then why come to the table.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

I'm with Henry: having a GPS (and let's make it one of those really cool models that speaks directions) means that either you can have a navigator when you're not any good at it, or if you can navigate reasonably well you at least have a backup.

Game mechanics can exist both to allow a player's character to carry out something that they, the player, can't quite manage or just to be a backup in case the player gets stuck.


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## MerricB (Oct 8, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> So many roleplaying games seem to be lacking the "game" part to me.  Or rather, they make the classic Ameritrash error (MerricB knows what I mean by this, the rest of you can go to BBG and look it up) of assuming that, if you're simulating something cool, you must be having fun, without stopping to pay attention to whether the simulation itself is a _fun game_.  Having a fun game is a key aspect of challenging the player rather than the character's stats.




Interesting analysis. 

It's worth noting that the 4e DMG _specifically_ calls out how to challenge players rather than the characters in its discussion of puzzles (page 82). Although it gives a sidebar to aid players who want their high-intelligence characters to have a bonus, the main point of that section is to challenge the player.

Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a discussion of the skills/roleplaying divide; I wish there was.

Cheers!


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 8, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> You can denigrate it all you like- but rather than say that 4e is like a boardgame now, I'd say that 4e *combat *is like a _good_ boardgame now, and earlier editions were often like poor ones.
> 
> I'm probably kicking off an edition war here even though I don't mean to.  Read above again, I really enjoyed my Rules Cyclopedia D&D, I just thought the combat was poorly written once I had the chance to see a broader spectrum of gaming.




Although I agree because I think previous editions of D&D weren't designed to be boardgames at all* (and hence it's no surprise they make lousy boardgames), I'd love to know your thoughts on what RPGs have fun, easy to visualize combat not requiring a hex grid like 3E/4E.



*Combat was designed to not need a board, so it had to be spatially simple.


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> I'm with Henry: having a GPS (and let's make it one of those really cool models that speaks directions) means that either you can have a navigator when you're not any good at it, or if you can navigate reasonably well you at least have a backup.



What if you're playing a game where navigating is part of the challenge to the players?  Wouldn't that be a bit like playing basketball with a vacuum-hoop that just sucked the the ball in if you got it within 10' of the backboard? e.g., not as fun _because _it's not as challenging?

The only point I'm trying to make here is that superficially similar games can be fundamentally different games under the surface.  If you're playing for different kinds of challenges than a tactical boardgame has to offer than an Int check or a simple Chr roll to solve your PC's problem defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place.


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## Cadfan (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> Although I agree because I think previous editions of D&D weren't designed to be boardgames at all* (and hence it's no surprise they make lousy boardgames), I'd love to know your thoughts on what RPGs have fun, easy to visualize combat not requiring a hex grid like 3E/4E.



Feng Shui is a great example.  Its solution is about as different from 4e's solution as you can get.  But fundamentally its a solution to the same problem- that its not that fun to roll dice until somebody wins, even if the dice represent something interesting.  4e's solution was to make the interface in which the dice exist (the board game) fun, by allowing for more diverse and more important player input.  Feng Shui's solution was to redirect your attention as far away from the dice as possible by encouraging and rewarding cool combat descriptions.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> I'm with Henry: having a GPS (and let's make it one of those really cool models that speaks directions) means that either you can have a navigator when you're not any good at it, or if you can navigate reasonably well you at least have a backup.
> 
> Game mechanics can exist both to allow a player's character to carry out something that they, the player, can't quite manage or just to be a backup in case the player gets stuck.




Isn't that why the game is not played 1-on-1, but the DM has a whole group of people to solve the problem at hand. So one person that isn't apt to the situation to resolve it can rely on the other players?

It isn't that every player or character must be able to do everything. That is why the game has a group of players.

Your GPS situation is not really rules to help the player who got stuck in traffic, but it is another player that offers a solution to a problem. Just as if you had someone sitting beside you in the car reading the map and directions to you. Add two people in the back seat to watch out either side to help find the road you are looking for and then you have a party of people working towards the same task.....


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## joethelawyer (Oct 8, 2008)

MerricB said:


> Interesting analysis.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




here's how our group handles the skills/roleplaying divide.  

we had to come to a compromise, balancing my interests in old school play, the guys who like 3rd edition as is, and the guy who plays dnd like his character is a magic card.  he utters not a single word the whole game.

the group is composed of new players and old timers.  the new player doesnt say jack diddly.  doesnt roleplay. he doesnt get the concept i dont think.  to him the game is a magic game, his character's stats and abilities vs. others' stats and abilities.  

we have one guy who would rolelay all day every day and never swing an axe, even though he is a cleric of the dwarven god of battle.  i am more like the dwarf than like the magic card game player guy, although my night isn't complete unless my wizard chucks a fireball at someone.

my brother and i alternate dm'ing. he plays a samurai when he isn't dm'ing, and likes to roleplay.  

basically for the roleplaying skills, we dont use most of them. to ask the dm if the dm is bluffing him and base it on a die roll is kinda dumb.  same with intimidate. if you want to intimidate someone the player has to stand up and say something badass-sounding.  same with the dm.  basically we killed off bluff, sense motive, intimidate, and innuendo.

the dm takes into account the players who have knowledge skills, or diplomacy, or gather information, because sometimes the players dont have the ability to know that sort of info, whereas the characters would.

if the players have some special knowledge of the game, like they memorized the monster manual, they are forced to put skill points into the "i've been reading the monster manual since 3rd grade" skill.

the traditional thieves skills based on dex are done as written.

i think the discussion though goes to feats and spells as well. 

by having detailed spell descriptions describing exactly what a spell does or doesnt do, you limit spell use creativity.  basically a lot of the old creative tricks i used to do with spells have been ruled out in 3rd ed through the detailed descriptions.

as for feats, they took the place of creativity in combat.  we never used a grid in ad&d.  it was description of the battle through a narrative. is had to be described well, so all players understood what they could or couldnt do. players back then used to try and do cool moves.  jump off of here to stab them there, land on this, pushing it into them, while riding it down into the combat, etc.  i dont see so much of that anymore since the feats give a character a certain set of moves that they can do which will guarantee damage will be done, or more attacks will be gained. the other more creative stuff we used to do doesn't give such a guarantee.  why take a risk and do somehing that might not work, that no one ever heard of, when you can do old reliable cleave or manyshot?

plus with a grid sometimes you cant do certain things.  what i mean is, with the older editions, a player would describe what he wanted to try, and if the dm had in his head a different setup to the combat scenario, but the player's move sounded cool as hell and would be the stuf you would talk about over a beer the next day if it worked, he would change the scenario in his head and allow the move. just base it on a dex or strength check or something.


anyhow, thats my 2 cents for now.  thanks to the guys who told me what metagaming is.


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## Remathilis (Oct 8, 2008)

I've spoken to this before, coining the term "Avatar" vs. "Persona" playing. 

Avatar play is exactly that; the PC is a vehicle of which the PC is challenged via proxy. Persona play assumes the character is a challenged, and the player is responsible for dictating how that character reacts. 

A classic example is the Tomb of Horrors. Many of the traps in the ToH cannot be affected by the character's action. There is no skill, save, check, or AC that can save the PC, purely it is the player telling the DM the "correct" answer in the time allotted to do so. 

The biggest flaw (and many have pointed out) to Avatar play is that it reduces the character to a mere puppet. If I'm not a wizard, my intelligence score can be a 3 or 18 and it doesn't affect the way I played him. Ditto charisma. I could be the smoothest bard with a 25 charisma, but if I can't convince the DM, my smooth talk fails. 

By contrast, Persona play has the problem of personality (and personality conflicts) can get in the way of the game. The classic "whats my motivation?" with characters come up, and inter-PC conflicts can derail the whole game. 

Personally, I perfer Persona play. To the point that playing avatar play is akin to playing a video-game; I'm merely controlling a character rather than playing him.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 8, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> The biggest flaw (and many have pointed out) to Avatar play is that it reduces the character to a mere puppet. If I'm not a wizard, my intelligence score can be a 3 or 18 and it doesn't affect the way I played him. Ditto charisma. I could be the smoothest bard with a 25 charisma, but if I can't convince the DM, my smooth talk fails.




the guy in our group who loves roleplaying has that dwarven cleric i mentioned above.  he has a 7 intelligence.  he makes it a point to never let his dwarf say any words of more than 2 syllables.  he also doesnt say more than 5 word sentences.  he was once cursed with having to rhyme everything he said.  it made it interesting as hell. 

i never let him live it down that my familiar has a higher intelligence than him.


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## Henry (Oct 8, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Add two people in the back seat to watch out either side to help find the road you are looking for and then you have a party of people working towards the same task.....




Continuing the "vehicle" analogy, they've got their own cars to worry about, they're not in yours. You could follow their lead, but why do that if you could put a GPS in your own car? Your artificial sense of direction isn't as good as their natural gift of directions, true, but it does help make up for the deficiency you yourself have. I have family members who have a terrible ability to follow directions, and one could say, "if you keep helping them or giving them a GPS, they'll never learn" - it doesn't change the fact that they aren't getting where they want to go. Giving them the artificial means to navigate themselves empowers them to do things for themselves, and have more fun in the short term.

That said, I can see value in both - getting someone to do more for themselves, so they can learn to be better at it, as well as giving them an aid to empower them more quickly so they can start having some fun now. 

Me, I like it best when the players who CAN do certain things (solve a puzzle, fast-talk, orate) help the players who can't, and let it come off that the skilled CHARACTERS are the ones doing the action; so, even though Verys the Bard is the one making the poetic allusions suggesting that the king's family had godlike beneficence, Bob at the table is helping Mike, who plays Verys, to come up with this little piece of baffling bull-puckey.


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## Umbran (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> We play games in a real-world consequence free environment in order to learn.




We do?  Always?  Funny, but I think the first-person shooter video game usually is real-world consequence free, but not exactly big on the learning.

Maybe you do.  Not all players do all the time.  Sometimes, we (general we, human beings) play games in a real-world consequence free environment to have fun and engage in fantasy, with no burden of learning implied or desired.  



> Learning is intrinsically fun, for anyone who hasn't had the fun of learning burned out of them by, um, less than ideal teaching practices.




I think you should stop speaking for others, now.



> Winning is cool and exciting, but losing a pretend battle (rather than a real war) doesn't have to be un-fun.




Sometimes, whether it is fun or un-fun is _not in the GM's hands_, pr predictable.  If Joe has had a bad week at work, he really may not be in the mood to be personally challenged, fail, and have the character he's been playing for three years die because he, personally just wasn't quick on the uptake.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

@ Henry:

Exactly. There should be very few places where only Verys is allowed to answer unless you have some anal retentive Sphinx asking a quesiton of a single character. The entire party should be participating to solve it.


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## Henry (Oct 8, 2008)

justanobody said:


> @ Henry:
> 
> Exactly. There should be very few places where only Verys is allowed to answer unless you have some anal retentive Sphinx asking a quesiton of a single character. The entire party should be participating to solve it.




You might be misunderstanding me: I'm saying that Bob is helping Mike come up with Verys' answer, because it's Verys who is supposed to be the eloquent one, not Dumb Krunk, who is the Dwarf Battlerager that Bob is playing. So if that sphinx is asking only Verys, Bob is contributing, too, because Verys is smarter than both of them put together, on paper.

On the other hand, if Mike is trying to decide if Verys is going to sleep with the barwench and help wreck her marriage, or if Bob is deciding if Dumb Krunk will spit on the King in the Audience Hall, then that's each player's call. It's up to them to make the choices that will doom their character or save them, rather than dooming their PCs based on whether Mike is a quick-witted guy or not.

It's really an age-old debate: I've been seeing it ever since the only thing you had to gauge smoothness on was a Reaction Adjustment and a Max Number of followers.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

And then came comeliness....

I would be telling Bob to play his own character at that point. Play your own character, not someone else's is the rule.

Remember that even the dumbest character can have a moment of genius too.

I just don't think many things should revolve only around a single player. The whole door that required an elf or theif in the party really chapped my hide.

Another reason characters should not wandere off from the party alone, or they deserve to get caught up in something that they shouldn't be trying to handle. DMs of the past were supposed to tell players or parties when they were trying to face hopeless situations, not turn them into cake-walks for them.

DM: You get a feeling that walking down that alley might not be a good idea.

It works for challenges and undeveloped regions as well.


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## Lanefan (Oct 8, 2008)

Henry said:


> You might be misunderstanding me: I'm saying that Bob is helping Mike come up with Verys' answer, because it's Verys who is supposed to be the eloquent one, not Dumb Krunk, who is the Dwarf Battlerager that Bob is playing. So if that sphinx is asking only Verys, Bob is contributing, too, because Verys is smarter than both of them put together, on paper.



If Verys asks for help or somehow gets the rest of the party involved, then well and good.  But if s/he doesn't, and the rest of the party don't know what's going on (let's say only Verys can understand the Sphinx) then help from the other players (in or out of character) gets smacked down fast and hard.


> On the other hand, if Mike is trying to decide if Verys is going to sleep with the barwench and help wreck her marriage, or if Bob is deciding if Dumb Krunk will spit on the King in the Audience Hall, then that's each player's call. It's up to them to make the choices that will doom their character or save them, rather than dooming their PCs based on whether Mike is a quick-witted guy or not.



However, if Bob can help Verys with the Sphinx, it's a pretty short slide down the slope to have Bob "help" Verys in other ways; in other words, you can quickly end up with people part-playing characters not their own.  And that, believe me, gets messy.

Lanefan


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## Delta (Oct 8, 2008)

D'karr said:


> But as soon as your Wizard has Genius level intelligence, and you do not, the limitation of that play style shows how lacking it can be.




Your limitation is very specifically the preferred play style for people I introduce 1E vs. 3E to for the first time. Or maybe I just play with geniuses (which is possible). 


But the other thing I see is that for new players (the older ones I introduce), a greater amount of technical lingo is a barrier to entry. "I run over and hit that guy with my mace," they're all over that. "I use my at-will power to Amber Dragon Whipsaw," or whatnot, immediately turns them off. So the more they have to learn & utter technical keywords to get stuff done, the greater distance between them and their role, and the more resistant they are to the experience. 

i.e., On a continuum, "Player language space" more good, "Technical language space" more bad. YMMV.


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> I've spoken to this before, coining the term "Avatar" vs. "Persona" playing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



In Forge terminology Persona is called "actor stance", but Avatar is distinguished between "Author stance" and "pawn stance". In Author stance, the player players the PC from outside rather than from within, but narrates the emotions/desires/etc of the PC so as to retroactively justify the decision made.

Assuming that everyone at the table is agreed that pawn stance is bad (because it's not really roleplaying, and we're all here to play an RPG, right!), then any challenge to the character is also a challenge to an author-stance player, because the player has to come up with an ingame rationale for the behaviour of her PC which is satisfactory to the rest of the table. Interestingly, though, the challenge to the player is not the same as the challenge to the PC - it is a sort of metagame challenge, to come up with a good story.

If a player has adopted Persona/actor stance, then any challenge to the character may or may not be a challenge to the player, depending on what device is used to work out the character's response to the challenge - game mechanics unmediated by player choices (eg I roll my to hit, I roll my diplomacy skill, etc) don't challenge the player, but once those game mechanics require the player to make choices (eg I choose to charge, drawing the AoA from X so I can flank Y) then the player will be challenged as well as the character. The more simulationist the mechanics, the more the challenge to the player will be the same sort of challenge as that faced by the character (eg a tactical challenge).

I agree with Cadfan that an interesting game, even one that is intended to be played in actor/Persona stance, benefits from requiring interesting choices of the player, rather than just roll, roll, roll . . .

I also think that it is a mistake to confuse the issue of challenging the player vs challenging the PC with a quite different issue, which is whether the action resolution mechanics should be highly structured with an important role for mathematics and/or dice, or rather should be based primarily on a players' ability to spin a plausible tale of why her PC succeeds. It seems that most people prefer some version of the structured approach for combat, but that there is a signficant split over whether social conflict should be resolved using maths and dice (eg as in 4e's skill challenges or HeroWars's extended contests) or via player tale-spinning ("Here's what I say to the Duke . . . pretty persuasive, wasn't it!").



Henry said:


> You might be misunderstanding me: I'm saying that Bob is helping Mike come up with Verys' answer, because it's Verys who is supposed to be the eloquent one, not Dumb Krunk, who is the Dwarf Battlerager that Bob is playing. So if that sphinx is asking only Verys, Bob is contributing, too, because Verys is smarter than both of them put together, on paper.





Lanefan said:


> If Verys asks for help or somehow gets the rest of the party involved, then well and good.  But if s/he doesn't, and the rest of the party don't know what's going on (let's say only Verys can understand the Sphinx) then help from the other players (in or out of character) gets smacked down fast and hard.



I tend to prefer Henry's approach. But given that it obviously involves metagame thinking, it fits better with an author-stance rather than an actor-stance approach to playing one's PC.



Henry said:


> However, if Bob can help Verys with the Sphinx, it's a pretty short slide down the slope to have Bob "help" Verys in other ways; in other words, you can quickly end up with people part-playing characters not their own.  And that, believe me, gets messy.



I've never had this problem, but I can imagine that it could be a problem. I think if the general approach of a group was actor/Persona stance rather than author/(motivated-)Avatar stance, then the problem could come up more readily, as it would become ambiguous who was the "actor" for Verys - whereas multiple authorship doesn't threaten a particular PC's ownership of Verys in the same way, as it would still be that player who, after the metagame discussion has come to an end, would actually make the final call as to what Verys does/says.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 8, 2008)

I have always tried to play within the confines of my characters stats and abilities.  Sometimes that means I can do things in character that I can't do in reality, like do a head shot on a moving target from a moving platform with a 80lb test composite shortbow at 100yds, or designing a computer virus on a Mac that will take down the computers of an alien starcraft.

Sometimes, however, it also means that I can't do things in character that I can in real life...like regurgitate the weaknesses of every critter in the 1Ed MM from memory.

In one case, I (the player) had an epiphany about the puzzle of symbology that was being constructed by the DM by the 5th adventure in a campaign just as we were breaking down the game for the evening.  I did so so thoroughly that it would have revealed the campaign's overall metaplot...skipping ahead perhaps a year of gaming.  Due to RW events, we couldn't game again for several weeks, and by that time, I forgot the structure of clues I had once assembled in my mind, and asked the DM to remind me.

He said no.

I said that, while it had been months of RW time- long enough for me (the player) to forget my insight- only 8 hours had passed in game, so I (the PC) wouldn't or shouldn't have forgotten what he figured out.

His response was that it was highly unlikely that my PC (whose mental stats were lowish) would have figured out the mystery in the first place, at least with the events up to that point.

He was right.  While it was possible that he (the PC) could figure it out, I knew that part of why I solved the puzzle was because of my personal RW knowledge.  I used knowledge and mental skills my PC simply didn't have.

So, to shorten an already long post, I'd have to say that even though I've been playing for 30+ years, I've always favored challenging the PC than the player.  Going the other way has too many potential pitfalls.


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## Delta (Oct 8, 2008)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> In one case, I (the player) had an epiphany about the puzzle of symbology that was being constructed by the DM by the 5th adventure in a campaign just as we were breaking down the game for the evening. I did so so thoroughly that it would have revealed the campaign's overall metaplot...skipping ahead perhaps a year of gaming. Due to RW events, we couldn't game again for several weeks, and by that time, I forgot the structure of clues I had once assembled in my mind, and asked the DM to remind me.
> 
> He said no.
> 
> ...




Personally, I would call that whole long situation a pretty big "pitfall" to my gaming enjoyment. I would much rather just collapse PC/player knowledge and avoid the whole debate in the first place. It's precisely those complicated (and OOC) in-vs-out of game debates that are the single biggest drag on my playing a role and enjoying it.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 8, 2008)

Lanefan said:


> However, if Bob can help Verys with the Sphinx, it's a pretty short slide down the slope to have Bob "help" Verys in other ways; in other words, you can quickly end up with people part-playing characters not their own.  And that, believe me, gets messy.




Bob doesn't help Verys; Bob helps Mike.

Bob has no control over Verys.  Mike always has the final say over Verys' actions, so there's no part-playing involved.  But Bob can offer advice and sugestions to Mike, which Mike can take on or ignore as he sees fit.

As long as Bob doesn't cross the line, and start _dictating_ Verys' actions - as long as Mike is always in control - there's no messiness.

-Hyp.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 8, 2008)

Delta said:


> Personally, I would call that whole long situation a pretty big "pitfall" to my gaming enjoyment. I would much rather just collapse PC/player knowledge and avoid the whole debate in the first place. It's precisely those complicated (and OOC) in-vs-out of game debates that are the single biggest drag on my playing a role and enjoying it.




Not me- there are some things I know that my PC shouldn't, and vice versa.

I like to think I do a good job of keeping them separate, but having those mechanical elements- stats, skills, etc.- in existence to help reinforce those boundaries between the player and the PC.

Not that those boundaries always exist, of course.  Sometimes I do play PCs that are but thinly veiled alter-egos, or paragons of what I aspire to be IRL.

Usually, however, there are huge areas in which Player and PC knowledge simply don't overlap.  When the PC has the skills I don't, its nice to be able to depend on a simple skill check.

After all, in a very real sense, its like magic or other surreal/supernatural/high-tech campaign elements.  I'd hate to go into combat slinging only the spells I (the player) know- far better that I can use my PC's spell list.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 8, 2008)

Delta said:


> Personally, I would call that whole long situation a pretty big "pitfall" to my gaming enjoyment. I would much rather just collapse PC/player knowledge and avoid the whole debate in the first place.




But does that mean you have to leave the room if your character falls unconscious?

If another PC moves up to the corner at the end of the corridor, do you have to put your hands over your ears and chant "LA LA LA!" while the DM tells him what he sees?

Otherwise, you may become privy to knowledge that your charcter has no way of knowing... and if PC/player knowledge is collapsed, your character is now able to act on that knowledge despite not being present at the location it was revealed, or not being able to see it for himself...

It's where you end up with Krunk the Barbarian 'inventing' gunpowder, because the player read a book detailing the process.  Or knowing the vulnerabilities of a particular devil because different PCs met them in the last game.

-Hyp.


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## Fenes (Oct 8, 2008)

I'm generally with Umbran on this. 

I "challenge" PCs, not players. Players decide what their characters want to do, stats and rolls decide how the chosen course of action is done. How detailed the chosen course of action is varies from "my character tries to use the annual market's foot race as a distraction by engineering a betting scandal to incite a riot, which will draw off the guards so we can sneak into the dungeon" to "I sneak past the guards".

My group separates pc and player knowledge - like in last session's scene when every player knew (from the charm spell's save rolls) that there's a disguised fiend acting as a spy within the party's midst, but no PC saw through the disguise yet, or had cause to suspect something.


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2008)

Fenes said:


> I "challenge" PCs, not players. Players decide what their characters want to do, stats and rolls decide how the chosen course of action is done. How detailed the chosen course of action is varies from "my character tries to use the annual market's foot race as a distraction by engineering a betting scandal to incite a riot, which will draw off the guards so we can sneak into the dungeon" to "I sneak past the guards".



This is also a challenge to the player, if the player has to come up with the plan (ie is not just allowed to roll the PC's "planning" skill and have the GM tell her what the optimal plan is).


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## Fenes (Oct 8, 2008)

pemerton said:


> This is also a challenge to the player, if the player has to come up with the plan (ie is not just allowed to roll the PC's "planning" skill and have the GM tell her what the optimal plan is).




If the player comes up with the plan, good. If he doesn't, or doesn't want to, he can roll, and I give him a plan. I do not expect or even force players to plan if they do not want to. Not that any of my PCs ever manages an optimal plan.


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## Walknot (Oct 8, 2008)

Fenes said:


> If the player comes up with the plan, good. If he doesn't, or doesn't want to, he can roll, and I give him a plan. I do not expect or even force players to plan if they do not want to. Not that any of my PCs ever manages an optimal plan.




Yep.  You can have your cake and eat it too here.  You *can* play 4e like MtG if you like, and what's wrong with that?  And, if you find the rules lite enuff, then you can practically ignore them and RP to your heart's content.

Another tip from our group.  In many cases your players as a group have more knowledge than any one player, so if you are not too hard-headed, then your character can benefit from the collaboration.  It gives a nice occaision for group RP'ing.

For instance, say you are playing a Wiz with high INT, like a genius.  Now I am not a genius.  Even our whole group is not a genius.  But nonetheless when the Wiz needs to make a decision that shows off his INT, then you can ask the group and get some pretty good ideas to RP with.  Try it you'll like it!


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

TwinBahamut said:


> 4E _is_ about challenging the player's skills. After all, isn't one of the most widespread sentiments about 4E that it is more tactical, and that it punishes bad tactics and rewards good tactics much more than previous editions?



This tactical challenge is not a roleplaying challenge though. You could program a computer to give you the best tactical solution. A roleplaying challenge on the other hand is a social challenge (among the players) that no computer program is able to solve.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

WayneLigon said:


> It's a good definition and distinction. It's the primary reason I dislike old school gaming and grognards in general; to me, it's a limiting factor in what I can do. I play a game to be something or someone better than myself; smarter, stronger, or more charismatic, etc. In other words, to possess abilities that I do not.
> 
> To me, 'challenge the players' just sounds like legitimized metagaming, or as was so often the case, an exercise in frustration.




You roleplay a game to do-live things with other people (your friends) you do not have the chance to do our life. The roleplaying experience is developed in this social environment.
What you are describing instead is called "fantasizing".


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> If the entire focus of a challenge is on challenging the player, what is the point of having a character at all? If switching from one character to another has no appreciable difference in the encounters, as all encounters will be directed towards Brendan and not Kelleshan or Arqos or any of my characters, then what's the point in making a character?




The point of having characters is a point of contract that players sign among them so that this can be based on explicit rules. Since a roleplaying game is a social game this better be made explicit by the rules so the need for different characters.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

Mouseferatu said:


> I reject the entire dichotomy. RPGs aren't an "either/or" situation.
> 
> Do I challenge the characters? Yes, every time I run a combat, pit them against a skill challenge, or have them pick up a die in any way, shape, or form.
> 
> ...




If it is a roleplaying game it is not a sum operation (this AND this). It should be the same thing. In a roleplaying game the character challenge is the same as the player challenge and the challenge is always a social decsion -what I/my character decides to do inside the group.
What you are describing here is not a roleplaying game. It is rather a mish mash of different games: a board game(tactics), a knowledge-logic game(riddles) or a game of observation (clues).


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> You roleplay a game to do-live things with other people (your friends) you do not have the chance to do our life. The roleplaying experience is developed in this social environment.
> What you are describing instead is called "fantasizing".



Except, of course, if your only option is to play online with complete strangers.

Not everyone gets to have the best-case scenario.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> Are we talking about eliminating all skill rolls, or only some types of skills.  Because the argument that "your character does the heavy lifting, you do the heavy thinking" implies that there is still a need for a rule defining certain traits that in no way could pass from the player into the game world.
> 
> Take sneaking: You can say "My character sneaks past the guards", and if the player has a good idea of what's in the area that can be used as cover you could possibly require them to state what they are hiding behind.  But how do you adjudicate how silently they walk?  Without a Sneak skill you either can't or you have to give a player such a detailed knowledge of their character's body and the surface they'll be walking over and then hope they know something about how walking silently works and the whole process becomes "describe the physics".
> 
> You can make similar arguments for many skills: players can't pick a lock when they aren't actually holding the pick and feeling how the mechanism is moving, they can't make a disguise without knowing how all the parts look fitted together.  I can't see how to adjudicate these actions without a mechanical system that reflects the interior of the game world.




What one needs to know regarding say sneaking is what one needs to know to roleplay by taking decisions: so his risk and what is at stake (chances of success -and what success means- and consequences of failure)


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> What if you're playing a game where navigating is part of the challenge to the players?  Wouldn't that be a bit like playing basketball with a vacuum-hoop that just sucked the the ball in if you got it within 10' of the backboard? e.g., not as fun _because _it's not as challenging?



I'm so bad at basketball that I'd take your offer of making the game easier.  For some people some things aren't challenges, they're just hard and boring.  And they're boring because they don't challenge peoples' real skill.

No amount of advice is guaranteed to help me solve a puzzle: my skill is creative description, not puzzle solving.  But if I have something I can roll that will make the DM give me the answer I can take that and make an interesting description of how my _character_ figures out the solution.

If you want to challenge the player at first, fine.  But if they're not any good at it then either stop expecting it out of them or give them a way to change it to whatever skill they _are_ good at.  Otherwise what's the point.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> What one needs to know regarding say sneaking is what one needs to know to roleplay by taking decisions: so his risk and what is at stake (chances of success -and what success means- and consequences of failure)



I'm sorry, I don't understand you.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> Except, of course, if your only option is to play online with complete strangers.
> 
> Not everyone gets to have the best-case scenario.




If by online play you intend online descriptions (messaging) of the gameplay decisions roleplaying requires so that all participants can see and share, then this is equally valid in theory IMO as messaging qualifies for practically any information one may need to transmit. If by online play you mean decide how to move and click your programmed sprite (MMOs), I do not think this qualifies as roleplaying.


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## timbannock (Oct 8, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> If the entire focus of a challenge is on challenging the player, what is the point of having a character at all?




Play Paranoia; you'll see why having very little disconnect between player and character might be a fun twist!

Though that's the exception, not the rule, and I agree with the original intent of your question.


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## Mallus (Oct 8, 2008)

I prefer RPG campaigns that do all of the above; challenge the player through their characters ("What would Conan do?"), challenge the characters directly ("Hey look, a puzzle"), and challenge the characters directly (so the players can experience being faux-awesome). 

And I'm perfectly happy if the game uses different task resolution systems at different times in order to accomplish this (ie, sometimes negotiations are handled by a skill check w/modifiers, sometimes solely by talking, and other times solely by roll).


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## Fenes (Oct 8, 2008)

Mallus said:


> I prefer RPG campaigns that do all of the above; challenge the player through their characters ("What would Conan do?"), challenge the characters directly ("Hey look, a puzzle"), and challenge the characters directly (so the players can experience being faux-awesome).
> 
> And I'm perfectly happy if the game uses different task resolution systems at different times in order to accomplish this (ie, sometimes negotiations are handled by a skill check w/modifiers, sometimes solely by talking, and other times solely by roll).




I hate puzzles. They are one of the surest ways to get me to stand up and leave a game.


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## Mallus (Oct 8, 2008)

Fenes said:


> I hate puzzles.



That's fair. 



> They are one of the surest ways to get me to stand up and leave a game.



What if you friends did enjoy the occasional puzzle? Wouldn't you cut them a break and let them have their fun?


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

pemerton said:


> This is also a challenge to the player, if the player has to come up with the plan (ie is not just allowed to roll the PC's "planning" skill and have the GM tell her what the optimal plan is).




Players have to only come up with the stuff that influence their relations with the other players (through PCs).


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## Fenes (Oct 8, 2008)

Mallus said:


> What if you friends did enjoy the occasional puzzle? Wouldn't you cut them a break and let them have their fun?




Sure. I might even buy them a magazine full of riddles and puzzles. But as  DM I won't spend time coming up with a puzzle. If the mysteries to solve are not enough then they are out of luck - I'll not present them with some "solve this mathematical riddle".

And as a player I'll not deal with puzzles. Let me character roll int, wisdom. whatever, and be done with it. I rarely get to play as it is, I'll not waste the time trying to solve a puzzle.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> I'm sorry, I don't understand you.




I am sorry I see I do not express myself clear enough. I was saying that the only thing that matters for players to know is what their characters think their risks and opportunities are so that their choices are socially meaningful to the rest of the team, since each member of the team is dependent on the rest of the members.    
It never has to resort to physics: just economics. This is what roleplaying is about: economy, not pure physics. Of course economy takes into consideration the results of physics: but it need not analyze physics themselves.


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## TerraDave (Oct 8, 2008)

Yes:



MerricB said:


> What Psion and Mouseferatu said.
> 
> Cheers!





But also, the thing that bothers me systemically about statements like the one in the OP is that they _seem_ to be about older version of D&D. 

But older versions of D&D are not free-form, story telling, make this up as we go along games. They have rules for stuff. Including "skill like" activities. And in older versions of D&D, some charecters (not players, charecters) work better then others. Often much, much better. 

I think in the drive over the last 20 years to make rules for skill like activities more consistent, and to give players cases where they can "be there own sage" and access world info they as players wouldn't know, just make the game better.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> If by online play you intend online descriptions (messaging) of the gameplay decisions roleplaying requires so that all participants can see and share, then this is equally valid in theory IMO as messaging qualifies for practically any information one may need to transmit.



I was making a comment on the "face-to-face with friends" method.

From experience I know online play with only text takes a lot out of social interaction.  Having a mechanic to determine how well one negotiates is very useful.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> I am sorry I see I do not express myself clear enough. I was saying that the only thing that matters for players to know is what their characters think their risks and opportunities are so that their choices are socially meaningful to the rest of the team, since each member of the team is dependent on the rest of the members.
> It never has to resort to physics: just economics. This is what roleplaying is about: economy, not pure physics. Of course economy takes into consideration the results of physics: but it need not analyze physics themselves.



But still how do you adjudicate the case of "sneak past the guard" without a mechanic for replicating what happens in the game world?


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

TerraDave said:


> I think in the drive over the last 20 years to make rules for skill like activities more consistent, and to give players cases where they can "be there own sage" and access world info they as players wouldn't know, just make the game better.




I think the errors of new school is making explicit rules for some artificially abstract skills such as searching, spot, bluff... while it should be limited in making explicit rules only about skills that players understand the specific type or kind of information-knowledge one needs to have to possess the ability the rule implies : example of desired rules for skills are history, languages, perform or thief abilities.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> But still how do you adjudicate the case of "sneak past the guard" without a mechanic for replicating what happens in the game world?




I am saying you only need one mechanic: the mechanic that gives you the risks. This means knowledge of the odds of failure (chances) plus what happens if you fail in regards to what choices you may have in this case (weight or importance of the event of failure).


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## Delta (Oct 8, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> But does that mean you have to leave the room if your character falls unconscious?
> 
> If another PC moves up to the corner at the end of the corridor, do you have to put your hands over your ears and chant "LA LA LA!" while the DM tells him what he sees?




No, I don't (which was precisely my point). Maybe you should present your recommended process instead of ridiculing mine.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> I am saying you only need one mechanic: the mechanic that gives you the risks. This means knowledge of the odds of failure (chances) plus what happens if you fail in regards to what choices you may have in this case (weight or importance of the event of failure).



I'm sorry, I still don't get it:
Are you saying it doesn't matter how well the sneaking past the guards goes?
Are you saying you should only have a skill that tells your character (or you, the player) how well the action _might_ succeed or fail but not one that tells you how well it _does_ succeed or fail once the choice is made?


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> I'm sorry, I still don't get it:
> Are you saying it doesn't matter how well the sneaking past the guards goes?
> Are you saying you should only have a skill that tells your character (or you, the player) how well the action _might_ succeed or fail but not one that tells you how well it _does_ succeed or fail once the choice is made?




I am saying that you do not need to know the physics. What needs to be known is what is at stake for the members of the group, members' choices and the results. It may matter how well the sneaking past the guards goes, it may not. This will depend on what is at stake. If there is/there are a point/s of relief regarding your risk, then this/these point/s is/are at stake. If time or something else to sneak past matters then time or that something else is at stake too. These things you need to know. The next thing to be made known is choice and eventually the result.
Sometimes what will be known is only results. This is the DM time or setting only input time.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> I am saying that you do not need to know the physics. What needs to be known is what is at stake for the members of the group, members' choices and the results. It may matter how well the sneaking past the guards goes, it may not. This will depend on what is at stake. If there is/there are a point/s of relief regarding your risk, then this/these point/s is/are at stake. If time or something else to sneak past matters then time or that something else is at stake too. These things you need to know. The next thing to be made known is choice and eventually the result.
> Sometimes what will be known is only results. This is the DM time or setting only input time.



So you are saying the player needs to know what happens if they succeed or fail.

But how do you know _if_ they succeed or fail?  From your final sentence you seem to be saying that this is purely the DM's decision.  But why in this instance?  Why not all the time?  Why do impartial rules exist for some actions but not others?


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## TerraDave (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> I think the errors of new school is making explicit rules for some artificially abstract skills such as searching, spot, bluff... while it should be limited in making explicit rules only about skills that players understand the specific type or kind of information-knowledge one needs to have to possess the ability the rule implies : example of desired rules for skills are history, languages, perform or thief abilities.




We kinda have two issues, and the second part of my post was this: Older versions of D&D also had those rules! You could just go into a room, roll to see if you found traps and secret doors, and move on. Just like now. There where also rules for social interaction...the difference was that those rules were ad-hoc and inconsistent, and did have gaps: two ways to listen at a door, but unclear how you could try to see things at a distance. 

On the flip side, you can still play out exploration and social interaction with a more detailed skill system, though how skills should work in that context can sometimes be a little unclear. I will concede that. (though again, this was also true in older versions of D&D)


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> So you are saying the player needs to know what happens if they succeed or fail.
> 
> But how do you know _if_ they succeed or fail?



They also need to know the odds. After knowing these players make meaningful choices. If they eventually make choices that need to be decided by the chances they are aware of they roll dice that serve as the generator of randomness that give the answer of what eventually happened. This could very well mean that they get to know something new, they were not exactly sure beforehand how it affects them (enter experience points). Of course the answer or better the result dice give at some point certainly influences the reason the dice could be used again. 

EDIT:clarification



SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> From your final sentence you seem to be saying that this is purely the DM's decision.  But why in this instance?  Why not all the time?  Why do impartial rules exist for some actions but not others?




No, I was talking about a different thing. I was saying that what the DM announces are things that players can only accept and not interpret regarding the social contract among the members of the team.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

TerraDave said:


> We kinda have two issues, and the second part of my post was this: Older versions of D&D also had those rules! You could just go into a room, roll to see if you found traps and secret doors, and move on. Just like now. There where also rules for social interaction...the difference was that those rules were ad-hoc and inconsistent, and did have gaps: two ways to listen at a door, but unclear how you could try to see things at a distance.
> 
> On the flip side, you can still play out exploration and social interaction with a more detailed skill system, though how skills should work in that context can sometimes be a little unclear. I will concede that. (though again, this was also true in older versions of D&D)




Perhaps one needs to introduce characteristics such as character relation to the subject (ie what he is trying to observe-explore) plus the resources a character may dispose for the event. So one makes a roll reflecting the chance of resources at disposition for the event versus a target number that reflects his familiarity with the event. "Resources" could be influenced by situations such as stress-pressure, interest.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> They also need to know the odds. After knowing these players make meaningful choices. If they eventually make choices that need to be decided by the chances they are aware of they roll dice that serve as the generator of randomness that give the answer of what eventually happened. This could very well mean that they get to know something new, they were not exactly sure beforehand how it affects them (enter experience points). Of course the answer or better the result dice give at some point certainly influences the reason the dice could be used again.



So sometimes dice need to be rolled.  And in that context it's better to have a modifier to the roll in some form, which is the point of the skill.  The roll represents the element of chance inherent in the game world regarding an action, and the modifier represents a character's ability to modify that chance.


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> So sometimes dice need to be rolled.  And in that context it's better to have a modifier to the roll in some form, which is the point of the skill.  The roll represents the element of chance inherent in the game world regarding an action, and the modifier represents a character's ability to modify that chance.




No you certainly do not need a modifier, nor can you say it is better to have one. Modifiers you are talking about are tools some systems may need to function properly by their design. Another system of a different design might not use modifiers yet be equally or even more functional.


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## Wolfwood2 (Oct 8, 2008)

My view is, challenge the players.  The abilities of the character are the tools that the players use to meet the challenge.  I would never, ever tell a player, "Your PC isn't smart enough to come up with that plan."  If they are using their character's abilities to meet the challenge, then their solutions will play naturally to their area of strengths anyway.

A player with a strong-but-dumb character as his tool will naturally seek ways to applies his character's strength to a problem.  Whether it be solving a mystery (find someone who knows what's up and beat it out of them), getting past a puzzle (figure out a way to bash my way through), or resolving negotiations (speak with deeds, not words), they can be as smart as they like in using their dumb character to solve the problem.

The important thing is to try something.  Come up with something.  Be creative, be imaginative.  Don't just ask for a skill roll.  Tell me what the skill roll is intended to do.  A player can roll a PC's Stealth to sneak somewhere, but it is on the player to determine where they are sneaking and what they hope to accomplish from doing so.

And if you're not creative, can't think on your feet, and have trouble coming up with ideas, then I wonder....  Why am I playing with you?


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## Korgoth (Oct 8, 2008)

I have little interest in challenging the character. The character doesn't exist and isn't very interesting.

The player... that's the guy who showed up at the table for a game. He's the one I'm going to challenge.

The stats on the sheet don't represent the things that the player can represent. For example, a high Intelligence just means that the character picks up in-game skills quickly, etc. A high wisdom means that he has good willpower, empathy, etc. A high charisma means that you can sometimes get away with a gaffe, and your henchmen default to a higher loyalty level. You absolutely don't get to roll those to get out of playing the game: making tactical decisions, solving riddles/puzzles and knowing the right things to say.

In fact, I can enumerate the things I expect the player to do:

- make tactical decisions in combat
- solve puzzles, riddles and problems
- know the right things to say and say them well
- come up with creative solutions to complications
- manage available resources correctly

The game is a challenge to these skills. If you don't know how to talk to other human beings, you can't hide in my D&D game! You have to learn how to talk to people to succeed. If you can't make reasonable tactical decisions, you may suffer in combat (or your underlings may suffer after you get them chewed up). If you can't solve a riddle or think your way past a trick... why are you dungeoneering again?

Now, from the looks of it, 4E does some of this better than 3E. There's this terrible notion of 'skill challenges', which are just a dicefest, but at least the game explicitly challenges tactics and resource management.

I'm just not interested in which player is going to have hot dice tonight. If I were, we could play Yahtzee or Farkle. I'd rather see who has hot brain cells tonight. And that means running their persona through that gauntlet of deadly weirdness called the dungeon.

I have no problem requiring the player to use his real world knowledge. I don't care if Thorax the Barbarian has no knowledge of circuitry or magnetism. I care if _you_ have that knowledge. As far as 'explaining' why Throax can have such flashes of insight... I don't know or care. Maybe he's an idiot savant or something. Thorax might not know such things, but he probably doesn't bathe or wipe his behind with paper, either. I still expect the player to do those things.


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## Zanticor (Oct 8, 2008)

On the discussion on what part of the game should be challenging I think the ony answer can be the creativity of the girls and guys sitting around the table. Sometimes that should be a question about what is the best tactical sollution to a battle, sometimes it is about what the crazy dwarf they are playing would actually do when the king insults him. But the real challenge of d&d game is always for the players to move the game forward by not just responding to the challenges of the DM but adding their own creativity. That means the DM should not only focus on challenging his players to the max but also on leaving room for the the players to challenge eachother and the DM.


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## MrMyth (Oct 8, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> that's also my answer to the thread which asks what is missing in 4e, or the thread asking if someone would play 4e if necro games managed to bring a 1e feel to it. if someone could make 4e into a game where player skill counted for far far more than character stats and abilities, then yes, i would play and like 4e.




Here is where I grow confused at your point. What about 4E prevents someone from running a game based on puzzles and creative solutions, or challenges focused around player skill? Many aspects seem to reward player skill, in fact - the greater emphasis on tactics in combat (over the 'stats (and pre-buffs) are the be-all and end-all' approach of 3.5), the encouragement for characters to take creative actions (and a useful system for the DM handling such stunts), and the removal of spells that functioned as 'insta-solutions' to all problems. 

I mean, the quote itself is a reasonable preference... I just don't see how this is missing from 4E in any way. To be fair, the only other editions I've played were 2nd Ed and 3rd Edition, so there might be something unique to 1e that I'm not familiar with... but I find the game more geared towards player choices (over character abilities) than ever before.


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## Mallus (Oct 8, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> I have little interest in challenging the character. The character doesn't exist and isn't very interesting.



Sure... but the goal in that isn't to challenge or create interesting play, it's to allow the players to feel like he or she is good at stuff they actually aren't, and I think there should be place for that in a game about pretending to be mighty warriors and powerful wizards.


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## estar (Oct 8, 2008)

The use of skill rolls for a random element is the biggest reason I use Character Stats and Skills. There are two benefits here. First you can make characters that considerably better or worse in various areas. Second even the best fail at trivial tasks and worst succeed at impossible tasks. Third it allows a player to judge the odds for the situation. In the above example what William decides to do when he needs a 8 or better will be very different than if he needed a 18 or better (using a d20), plus he doesn't have to try to guess what going on in my head.

Rather then just a single roll I break the action down into its components  because that helps with immersion. Immersion is an important goal for me when running my campaigns. Most players like to be immersed into the character and setting they are playing.

Most actions however don't need a roll even if there is an applicable skills. If the character is under stress or there are consequences for failure then Skill rolls are called for. 

I blog more about the issue here Bat in the Attic: Old School Essence


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

MrMyth:

Probably the default assumption of 4th edition that you don't need to play through a skill challenge, but can just roll the dice through it, and then IF every party member fails you would need to worry with thinking through it.

The rules give option, but it is up to player to pick which option to use, and tell me how new younger players will look at it? I have seen a few that just say things like "What skill do I need to roll for" when faced with a skill challenge, before even given any information about it.

Why should the DM ever describe a challenge, when all you need is some number to combare a series of die rolls to?

How much of 4th now can be done by JUST rolling dice?

Nothing that is achieved by rolling dice challenges the players nor the character, it only challenges the player luck.

While it may be better to have story related puzzles, there is nothing that says you can't have logic puzzles to challenge the player int he game and have them somehow be something else in the story, or even the exact same logic puzzle in the game.

The player thinks for the character, so take the entrance to Moria "Speak friend and enter".

Frodo, not Gandalf solved the puzzle. Which would you figure to have greater knowledge based stats about magic doors, dwarves, elves, etc? Gandalf who has been around, or Frodo who has only heard some stories from Gandalf's visits and Bilbo's stories.

Maybe Frodo got a lucky roll of the dice, or the player just had an idea that transcends the characters stats.

4th edition relies heavily on stat management and dice rolling to make the game easier and more streamlined. It doesn't mean you cannot include the other things, but they are not given to the players as option for those new to the game are they?

What are the rules in the PHB for skill challenges? What is in the PHB are the player expectations, and what is in the DMG is where a disconnect can happen if the same type of information is not given to both. The DM could likely forget the PHB doesn't explain as much about the game as the DMG does.

One reason I like the Rules Cyclopedia. A single book for all players so everyone knows the same information about the game, and the players just have to hold knowledge they shouldn't use in reserve with the player will power.


Mallus said:


> Sure... but the goal in that isn't to challenge or create interesting play, it's to allow the players to feel like he or she is good at stuff they actually aren't, and I think there should be place for that in a game about pretending to be mighty warriors and powerful wizards.




If I am playing and given a puzzle to solve, and want to actually solve it and another player rolls some dice to get us past it, without letting me enjoy solving the puzzle, I will get up and leave the game not to return. They can do thing they normally couldn't but not at the expense of other players enjoyment of the game.


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## Dausuul (Oct 8, 2008)

(deleted for being in the wrong thread )


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## Mallus (Oct 8, 2008)

justanobody said:


> If I am playing and given a puzzle to solve, and want to actually solve it and another player rolls some dice to get us past it, without letting me enjoy solving the puzzle, I will get up and leave the game not to return.



What I'm suggesting is to compromise. Sometimes do it your way, other times, do it theirs.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 8, 2008)

Delta said:


> No, I don't (which was precisely my point). Maybe you should present your recommended process instead of ridiculing mine.




My process?  I keep player knowledge and character knowledge separate.

If Verys falls unconscious, and then it is revealed that Krunk is a doppelganger, and then Verys wakes up?  _I_ know Krunk is a doppelganger, but Verys doesn't.

If Krunk goes up to the corner and looks around it, and sees an army of werewolves, _I_ know there's an army of werewolves around the corner, but Verys doesn't, so Verys doesn't immediately start loading silver bullets.

If the DM mentions King Royalia, whom I've never heard of, I can ask "Does Verys know who that is?", because even though I don't know, Verys might.

You suggested that you _don't_ keep player and character knowledge separate.  To me, that means that either a/ Verys knows Krunk is a doppelganger because you do, or b/ the DM has to ensure that you don't know Krunk is a doppelganger until Verys does.  Anything else requires keeping player and character knowledge separate.

-Hyp.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> No you certainly do not need a modifier, nor can you say it is better to have one. Modifiers you are talking about are tools some systems may need to function properly by their design. Another system of a different design might not use modifiers yet be equally or even more functional.



How does a system model comparasons of skill if it doesn't have a mechanical way of modifying the random element that the dice roll represents?


Korgoth said:


> If you don't know how to talk to other human beings, you can't hide in my D&D game! You have to learn how to talk to people to succeed. If you can't make reasonable tactical decisions, you may suffer in combat (or your underlings may suffer after you get them chewed up). If you can't solve a riddle or think your way past a trick... why are you dungeoneering again?



So you're saying people should never join an activity because they might be required to do something which they just cannot manage no matter how often they are made to try?  I completely agree with that idea, but it's a hopeless dream.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

Mallus said:


> What I'm suggesting is to compromise. Sometimes do it your way, other times, do it theirs.




The problem is that I like puzzle solving and is a reason I enjoy RPGs. If someone else solves it before me, then that is fine, but if dice do it that will make me very unhappy.


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## tomBitonti (Oct 8, 2008)

justanobody said:


> MrMyth:
> The player thinks for the character, so take the entrance to Moria "Speak friend and enter".
> 
> Frodo, not Gandalf solved the puzzle. Which would you figure to have greater knowledge based stats about magic doors, dwarves, elves, etc? Gandalf who has been around, or Frodo who has only heard some stories from Gandalf's visits and Bilbo's stories.
> ...




Actually, Hobbits had a fondness for riddles.  Gandalf was more learned, certainly, but Frodo had a better practicality at solving riddles.  Frodo's insight, in opening the door, was to figure out that the question was in fact a riddle.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Actually, Hobbits had a fondness for riddles.  Gandalf was more learned, certainly, but Frodo had a better practicality at solving riddles.  Frodo's insight, in opening the door, was to figure out that the question was in fact a riddle.




Being no riddle/puzzle solving stat then it means that the possible lower INT/WIS character came up with the answer outside the confines of the stats.

Meaning that even a low INT/WIS character can surpass a higher INT/WIS character at times when the actual situation would be something more prone to be known by the lower INT/WIS character.

If not even fully solved, just the random idea gave Gandalf the power to accidentally open the door by saying "friend" in elvish when Frodo asked what it was to see if there was more to the riddle than what may have been written or if the elvish word for "friend" was the actual password for the door.

They worked together since it was a riddle Frodo (wasn't it really Merry that did it in the book?) neede the knowledge about the magical doors from Gandalf, and the actual word itself.

So they shared in solving this riddle.


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## Mallus (Oct 8, 2008)

justanobody said:


> If someone else solves it before me, then that is fine, but if dice do it that will make me very unhappy.



I quote the Rolling Stones; "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need".


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> How does a system model comparasons of skill if it doesn't have a mechanical way of modifying the random element that the dice roll represents?




The modifiers you are talking about factor to the odds. The dice is just a way of deciding the result of the odds. Dice do not represent the random element: dice decide the result of a random element you are already aware of. Mechanics do factor to the odds. One type of such a mechanic is one that uses modifiers. There are different mechanics to factor to the odds though.


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## justanobody (Oct 8, 2008)

Mallus said:


> I quote the Rolling Stones; "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need".




I quote Keith Richards (Captain Teague): "The code is the law." ~bang~


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> There are different mechanics to factor to the odds though.



Such as what?  (I'm having trouble with "factor to the odds".  What does that mean?)


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## xechnao (Oct 8, 2008)

SilvercatMoonpaw2 said:


> Such as what?  (I'm having trouble with "factor to the odds".  What does that mean?)




With "factor to the odds" I am talking about an established rule system that influences choice by dictating certain standards regarding risks (in theory this may include all possible standards except the one that ultimately dictates the PCs behavior regarding his relations with the other PCs of the group)
There is a pdf around the internet (dont remember where) that has an extensive analysis of various commercial games that use different systems. To give you some examples, there are systems that use tables or other systems that use dice pools -then there are many kinds of dice pools regarding how they work.


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## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 8, 2008)

xechnao said:


> ……there are systems that use tables or other systems that use dice pools -then there are many kinds of dice pools regarding how they work.



When I used "modifier" I meant in the sense that it is anything that changes the probability of the outcome when dice are rolled.  Dice pools do this, and I assume most table-based systems do this as well in some fashion.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 8, 2008)

I am late to the party, so I hope I don't repeat to much.

While _Challenge the Players, Not the Characters' Stats_ sounds neat and catchy, I think it doesn't really help us.

Particularly, I do not think a skill system is at odds with this.

If you wanted to challenge the character stats in an RPG, you just would set high DCs. But that is not what we do in any game. 

In a way, you always create various "puzzles" the players have to solve with the tools given to them. Sometimes, that's really just their ability to solve a word-riddle, and has no bearing to character statistics. Other "puzzles" can be the mini-game of optimizing a character, or coordinating the party to use the optimal combination of attack powers and tactical positioning to defeat their fictional opposition.

I think the "old school" approach is not really defined by the idea that you challenge the player, it is more defined by the fact that you focus on more "direct" puzzles. Stuff like "which lever to pull" or a word-puzzle, but also by hearing the NPCs words and discover the lies in his words. 
"New School" doesn't encourage this as much, since the desire is to role-play a fictional character whose mental abilities, skill-set and even personality might differ from that of the playing character.
If you want to play a character really different from you, you can't just rely on your own abilities. 

That's why we use mental ability scores and skills, but also spells. So the nature of the puzzles change, involving the new sub-systems. A very simple example: You don't have to know which lever to pull, but if your party has no one with the Thievery Skill, maybe the Wizard player should remember that he has a wizard spell (or a ritual) that might help him here. 

Many RPGs contain a certain degree of "resource management" that is a puzzle in its own right. D&D (even "old school") always had its spells for most of this. Many classical D&D spells are "game-breakers" because they solve a puzzle. A simple spell like _Detect Evil_ can make an investigation a lot easier, while a _Knock _spell avoids solving the "find the right key"-puzzle, and a_Find the Path_ can avoid all that little and large legwork required to get to your intended location. But while you avoid the "classic puzzle", you get a new one - which spells do you prepare today? Do you cast this spell now, risking that you need it later?


Still, in any case, both old and new games work best if you still challenge the players. You might give their PCs skills, spells, feats or powers, but in the end, they are just tools the player has to use.

The only case where we really get into a "callenge the stats" scenario is if the player would not make any decisions, and just roll dice. It is possible to get there - imagine a 3E or 4E like combat system that abstracts movement and positioning and replaces it with a "Tactics" skill roll - and remove all spells, powers and combat options. Suddenly it's a game of luck and statistics. But even then, there might be a hint of "challenge the player" - if the player could build that character on his own, "system mastery" might help him to select those options that work best. 

I think these extremes show one thing what people like about "old-school" - you are "closer to the action". It's not enough to make a stealth check to hide. You need to describe where and how you want to hide. "I turn the lamp so that it blinds anyone entering the room, and hide behind the door." This feels a lot closer to the game world then "I roll 24 on Stealth. I am wearing an Elven Cloak, so as long as I have concealment and don't attack or move, I stay invisible, so even if he beats my roll, he can only hear me, and I use my daily "Ninjas Hiding" power so I can reroll my first failed check."

What people like is entirely a personal preference. I can see the appeal of "old school gaming", but I am more in the "new school" faction where I want to solve the puzzle of using the right character abilities, since I want to have the feeling of being someone else then me. And if it is me to pull levers or come up with a clever ghilie suit in swamp instead of my character, I don't feel like that.


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## El Mahdi (Oct 9, 2008)

MerricB said:


> What Psion and Mouseferatu said.





I hope I'm not too late too the party either, or repeat too much what others have said.

I agree with what *Psion* and *Mouseferatu* said also (in the posts just above Merrics).  You should challenge _*both*_ the players and the characters.  Obviously the game is meant for the enjoyment (and challenge) of the players, but there's a reason the "character" has stats.  If no challenges are actually geared toward challenging the character, then of what use is an Intelligence score, a Wisdom score, a Charisma score, or any Skills that use them.  If challenging the player is the only thing that matters, than you may as well throw these parts of the game out, since they no longer serve any purpose.


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## jensun (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Probably the default assumption of 4th edition that you don't need to play through a skill challenge, but can just roll the dice through it, and then IF every party member fails you would need to worry with thinking through it.



This is not the default assumption.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

Then what is? Can you not just roll the dice through skill challenges?


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## Cadfan (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Then what is? Can you not just roll the dice through skill challenges?



That works exactly as well as rolling a bunch of d20s and asking if you won the fight, before you know who or what you're fighting.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> That works exactly as well as rolling a bunch of d20s and asking if you won the fight, before you know who or what you're fighting.




What is the minimum a PC needs to do to succeed/win a skill challenge?


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 9, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> The crux of it, though, is this: _challenge the player, not the character's stats_.



Yeah, frankly, I couldn't dislike that style of play more. If playing Fourth Edition means I won't be playing with people who like that style of game, that's fantastic news for me.

When I play a roleplaying game, I want the game to be about my *character*'s experience in the world - not about testing my problem-solving skills. I don't give a damn about whether or not I can answer a riddle or think *my* way out of a sticky situation, because *I* am not there!

That sort of stuff just bores me to tears in a roleplaying game. If I want my own skills to be challenged, I'll play a video game.


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## Cadfan (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> What is the minimum a PC needs to do to succeed/win a skill challenge?



Exactly the same thing a PC in 3e needs to do to succeed/win a challenge that involves the use of skills.


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 9, 2008)

mhacdebhandia said:


> Yeah, frankly, I couldn't dislike that style of play more. If playing Fourth Edition means I won't be playing with people who like that style of game, that's fantastic news for me.
> 
> When I play a roleplaying game, I want the game to be about my *character*'s experience in the world - not about testing my problem-solving skills. I don't give a damn about whether or not I can answer a riddle or think *my* way out of a sticky situation, because *I* am not there!
> 
> That sort of stuff just bores me to tears in a roleplaying game. If I want my own skills to be challenged, I'll play a video game.




To me, that extreme is just as bad as challenging the player only. Why show up? Just generate a list of attack, damage and skill rolls and have them applied for your character as the situations occur. Same effect.


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## Freakohollik (Oct 9, 2008)

Here is difference that causes the argument.

In a 4e adventure against the suggested ELs, you can expect that you'll survive anything you encounter. Sure there is the supposed "tactical play", but my experience with the game has been that its really easy to choose actions that win the battle. If you accidentally do some boneheaded things, you can change tactics and win, but you'll end up resting earlier. In that way the tactical play doesn't actually change the long term results.

In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.




mhacdebhandia said:


> Yeah, frankly, I couldn't dislike that style of play more. If playing Fourth Edition means I won't be playing with people who like that style of game, that's fantastic news for me.
> 
> When I play a roleplaying game, I want the game to be about my *character*'s experience in the world - not about testing my problem-solving skills. I don't give a damn about whether or not I can answer a riddle or think *my* way out of a sticky situation, because *I* am not there!
> 
> That sort of stuff just bores me to tears in a roleplaying game. If I want my own skills to be challenged, I'll play a video game.




Are you saying that the game should not use player skill at all? If you don't want your skill to factor in at all, you'll have to have your DM make all decisions for you. In fact, you don't even need to be involved at all.


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## MerricB (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> In a 4e adventure against the suggested ELs, you can expect that you'll survive anything you encounter. Sure there is the supposed "tactical play", but my experience with the game has been that its really easy to choose actions that win the battle. If you accidentally do some boneheaded things, you can change tactics and win, but you'll end up resting earlier. In that way the tactical play doesn't actually change the long term results.
> 
> In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.




I'm sorry... how are 4e and 1e different again? Certainly, 4e doesn't have that "Oops, I'm dead" all the time from single bad actions, but you can certainly have your PC die from stupid play. Nor is every encounter an assured win (see Irontooth). If you assume that all 4e adventures use APL=EL encounters, you're dead wrong.

Cheers!


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## Cadfan (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.



So what you're saying is, 1e is what Paranoia would be if it didn't realize it was a farce.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> Exactly the same thing a PC in 3e needs to do to succeed/win a challenge that involves the use of skills.




Which is what?


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 9, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> So what you're saying is, 1e is what Paranoia would be if it didn't realize it was a farce.




Ok...............THAT is funny. You sir, get a cookie. And XP.


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## RFisher (Oct 9, 2008)

Something I thought was odd about 3e.

The unified mechanic and skill system tended to encourage moving everything more towards challenge the PC.

Except combat. By lowering the level of abstraction, it encouraged moving combat more towards challenge the player.

You know, I used to criticize D&D and AD&D as being too combat-focused. Going from 3e to classic D&D, though, classic doesn’t feel nearly as combat-focused to me as it used to. In fact, using the Basic and Expert rule booklets made me realize that classic is really more adventure-focused (or maybe “delving-focused”).

I wish I knew how to explain to people who played classic D&D combat as just stand-up hp attrition that it can be more than that (and without DM fiat). If you have rules for moving, you can apply tactics.

One of the things I like about classic D&D combat is that simply a basic knowledge of tactics will serve a player well, while in 3e the player really needs to master the rules as well.

But, I’ve really wandered off-topic now.



Henry said:


> A thought just occurred to me: Your car might have a GPS system.




You know, I was going to put something in there about how the cars of today and the near future are going to kill that analogy. (^_^)


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 9, 2008)

RFisher said:


> Something I thought was odd about 3e.
> 
> The unified mechanic and skill system tended to encourage moving everything more towards challenge the PC.
> 
> ...




Well said. You get a cookie and XP too.  Thats a noticeable effect about older/ newer editions. The focus of the newer rulesets (including 3E) is on the powers and abilities of the characters AND monsters. Older editions focused more on the adventure itself. Abilities were something that characters and monsters used to achieve thier goals.


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## pemerton (Oct 9, 2008)

xechnao said:


> Players have to only come up with the stuff that influence their relations with the other players (through PCs).



I don't know if I quite understand this. Are you saying that, in the end, all that counts in roleplaying is the state that player 1 is able to engender in player 2 by way of her action at the table? That is true, I guess, but it is a little too abstract to differentiate RPGing from other games, from pleasant conversation, from argument etc.

And I'm also not sure about the "through PCs" bit. There are all sorts of ways I can influence the shared understanding of the players of an RPG other than by calling actions for my PC. As one example, I can give another player a suggestion as to what her/his PC might do.



Mallus said:


> I prefer RPG campaigns that do all of the above; challenge the player through their characters ("What would Conan do?"), challenge the characters directly ("Hey look, a puzzle"), and challenge the characters directly (so the players can experience being faux-awesome).



I lilke this distinction of the different sorts of challenges. Good stuff.

I think I like the first sort of challenge the best, although in a slight variant: How can I use my PC to achieve goal X? Which is not quite "What would Conan do?" but more about shaping the character in the course of play.



Wolfwood2 said:


> My view is, challenge the players.  The abilities of the character are the tools that the players use to meet the challenge.



I think Mallus is right that a mix of challenges is probably most enjoyable (at least for me), but I think that this is the sort of challenge I'd like to be most prominent in the mix.



Zanticor said:


> On the discussion on what part of the game should be challenging I think the ony answer can be the creativity of the girls and guys sitting around the table. Sometimes that should be a question about what is the best tactical sollution to a battle, sometimes it is about what the crazy dwarf they are playing would actually do when the king insults him. But the real challenge of d&d game is always for the players to move the game forward by not just responding to the challenges of the DM but adding their own creativity.



I like this too. Especially because sometimes the creativity won't necessarily involve me playing my PC.


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## Cadfan (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Which is what?



Presumably you believe you know, since you thought we might be enlightened by your earlier lengthy post.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> Here is difference that causes the argument.
> 
> 
> In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.
> ...





thats funny as hell, man. but was true all too back then.  player skill was critical.

one thing i remember also was the thorough room searching we did.  it wasnt just roll a d20 and and your search skill vs. a dc.  our dm made us look in every nook and cranny. 

PC: "i open the door of the chest.  i pull out the drawers, all the way.  i look behind the drawers. i look to see if there are false floors in the chest. i move the chest to see if there is anything under it. i tear apart the bed and bedding ripping it all to shreds."

DM:  in all that time, the bad guys just jumped your greedy asses and got the surprise on you.  oh, you didnt heal after that last fight in your haste to loot?  hmm.  your loss.  fireball incoming!!!  roll your saving throws losers!"

the game was often a battle between the dm and the pc's, the dm trying to kill the group, and the group trying to live to fight another day.

i admit i haven't played 4e.  i just read the books.  to the extent that the skill system is better/different than 3.x, i have no first hand knowledge. to the extent that there is still a detailed skill system taking the place of what we used to do without the use of a skill system, then it goes to my position that 1e is different than later editions for the reasons i stated in the OP.  4e may be better or more realistic than 3e was.  i dunno.  i just know that they are both different than 1e in that they both have a skill system taking the place of what we used to do without one.  in other words, making it a challenge to the character rather than to the player.

i do appreciate the various viewpoints and want to thank everyone for not letting this interesting discussion degenerate into a BS editions war thread.

the player v. character differences dont just go to the skill systems though.  i think there is something to be said for some aspects of the feat system in 3.x and the tactical aspect of some powers in 4e taking the place of what used to be creative moves players just made up on the spot, which the dm would just assign a random dex or str check to roll against to determine success.  i feel that the in depth detailing of what spells can and cannot do has the same effect of limiting their creative use.  

thanks for the discussion guys.


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## pemerton (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Probably the default assumption of 4th edition that you don't need to play through a skill challenge, but can just roll the dice through it, and then IF every party member fails you would need to worry with thinking through it.



Where do you get this from?

DMG p 72, first sentence under the heading "Designing a skill challenge":

More so than perhaps any other kind of encounter, a skill challenge is defined by its context in an adventure.​
DMG pp 74-75, under the heading "Running a skill challenge":

Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. . . You describe the environment, listen to the players' responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results...

You can also make use of the "DM's best friend" rule to reward particularly creative uses of skills (or penalise the opposite) by giving a character a +2 bonus or -2 penalty to the check. Then, depending on the success or failure of the check, describe the consequences and go on to the next action...

In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn't expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth . . .

However, it's particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, "Can I use Diplomacy?" you should ask what exactly the character might be doing . . . Don't say no to often, but don't say yes if it doesn't make sense in the context of the challenge.​
This text is not identical to that found in the HeroWars rulebooks on the running of extended contests, or in other RPGs which feature mechanically comparable conflict-resolution mechanics. But it's pretty similar.

I'll admit that the text on pages 74-75 is a little bit ambiguous as to who has narrative rights, initially suggesting that they lie with the GM and then suggesting (via the idea of a +2 bonus, and the use of alternative skills) that these rights are shared by the GM with the players. But this infelicity doesn't at all suggest that the skill challenge is just a dice-rolling exercise.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

pemerton said:


> However, it's particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, "Can I use Diplomacy?" you should ask what exactly the character might be doing . . . Don't say no to often, but don't say yes if it doesn't make sense in the context of the challenge.​




what our group would do in this situation in our weird 1e/3.0 hybrid that we houseruled would be for the dm to tell the player "you cant just use diplomacy and roll. if it is a speech you want to make, you have to stand up, take on you character's voice and physical bearing and mannerisms, and make the speech to rally the troops. the diplomacy skill, as well as the quality of the speech you give will affect its success. i'm not telling you which will weigh more heavily--the speech you give and your ability to act it out in character or the diplomacy skill score--or what the dc is."


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## Freakohollik (Oct 9, 2008)

MerricB said:


> I'm sorry... how are 4e and 1e different again? Certainly, 4e doesn't have that "Oops, I'm dead" all the time from single bad actions, but you can certainly have your PC die from stupid play. Nor is every encounter an assured win (see Irontooth). If you assume that all 4e adventures use APL=EL encounters, you're dead wrong.
> 
> Cheers!




I'm not interested in debating the corectness of the GROGNARDIA quote as I already know how I like to game, and know I won't change anyone's opinion. I just want to show where I think it came from, since I don't think the skill system is a good example. Since I have a similar view on 4e, I thought I could explain the reasoning behind the quote. My mistake for not saying that more clearly.

I'm saying that its a lot easier to survive in 4e than it is in 1e. Also that the 4e adventures don't require the paranoia/player skill that the 1e adventures required. The player skill that 4e focuses on is the tactical combat, where as the player skill required by 1e is the caution of dungeon navigation since once you were in a 1e combat, it was mostly luck.

My experience, and I suspect that of GROGNARDIA, with 4e is that the tactical combat doesn't really take much player skill. If there is no skill required for combat, and now no dungeon navigation skill required, there is little skill left.

I doubt you'll agree with me about 4e tactical combat requiring little player skill, so I won't go into a lot of detail about why I think that is the case. But my general thought is that to die due to poor player skill you'd have to do something really really stupid, where as in previous editions much less stupidity was required to die. Thus reducing the importance of player skill to survive.


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## MerricB (Oct 9, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> one thing i remember also was the thorough room searching we did.  it wasnt just roll a d20 and and your search skill vs. a dc.  our dm made us look in every nook and cranny.




Indeed. Many of the people here experienced that sort of adversarial DMing... and have sworn off it. DM vs player isn't really that much fun for many people. "Can I guess what the DM is thinking?" is truly an awful way of playing the game.

The hybrid system which I prefer can be described as: If you specifically say you look under the rug, you find the treasure without a check, otherwise you need to make a DC 20 Search check to find it.

It is certain that for some skill challenges, although they can be resolved just by rolling dice, you can't abandon all thought. For instance, the Negotiation example in the DMG has all Intimidate checks immediately fail, and the first successful Diplomacy check has the Duke mentioning something that, to an alert player, allows a History check. The lines of where you put roleplaying vs. rolling are very, very much up to you.

Cheers!


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## MerricB (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> But my general thought is that to die due to poor player skill you'd have to do something really really stupid, where as in previous editions much less stupidity was required to die. Thus reducing the importance of player skill to survive.




The problem is that you can easily reverse that: skill didn't matter as much in 1e because even if you were smart, you could die from an unlucky roll.

I've seen enough deaths in 4e to say with confidence that it can be quite a deadly system if you want it to be, and that the deaths _have_ come from stupid player actions for the most part (staying and fighting too long... or getting cut off from the rest of the group).

Cheers!


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## Delta (Oct 9, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> You suggested that you _don't_ keep player and character knowledge separate. To me, that means that either a/ Verys knows Krunk is a doppelganger because you do, or b/ the DM has to ensure that you don't know Krunk is a doppelganger until Verys does. Anything else requires keeping player and character knowledge separate.




Yes. Thank you for the direct reply this time. Almost all the time I will choose (a). Presumably other members of the party tell Verys as soon as he wakes up, anyway. Anything else is too complicated to bother with, IMO. Which is just reiterating my prior post.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

i dont know if this will help explain anything about my point of view on combat and feats and powers and detailed spel descriptions affecting combat in limiting creative tactical options, but i'll give it a shot.

i dont like chess.  while i find it give a person a great opportunity to develop tactical thought processes, i believe it also is limiting in a sense.  i understand that in the game certain pieces have certain moves. but i feel frustrated that i cant move my pawn 4 squares to get the queen sometimes.

in a real world situation, i love trying to figure out a way to do the impossible, or improbable, and be creative to the extreme and surprise someone in how i achieve something.

i like that same flexibility in dnd. to the extent that certain skills, feats, powers, and spells give a player predetrmined tactical moves, with predetermined results in some instances, i feel limited.  

i feel in the older style of play, the shorter les definitive spell descriptions left more to the imagination in what you could do with them. the social skills especially were non existent, social interactons were a matter of how the player pulled it off in their acting ability.  the feats and didnt exist obviously.  

i feel that with feats, and i guess with powers (since i never played 4e, correct me if i am wrong here)  you get certain tools in your batman utility belt that you can pull out.  since their effects are predetermined and their utility a matter of some predictability, it dis-incents people from making up their own wacky combat maneuver or creative spell use. the predictable becomes the safer route.  also, the bad guys are using the same moves against you.  it makes sense to counter a known move with another known move. you feel they are supposed to be balanced against each other in some way.  

i like making up the tools in the utility belt as i go along.


dunno if that made any sense. its midnight here and i'm tired.


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## MerricB (Oct 9, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> dunno if that made any sense. its midnight here and i'm tired.




It makes sense. To a very large extent, in 4e you can play in that style if the DM's prepared to referee in such a manner. That's what page 42 is for; it frees up the players actions whilst giving guidelines for the DM to prevent them becoming overwhelmingly good.

It should be noted that you can be very creative even with the powers as written; combinations of powers or terrain can give quite surprising results even without going beyond what's on the page, but the option to do so is there for those creative enough to use it.

Note that I knew many a player in AD&D who _only_ ever hit the enemy with the sword, since it was the only manuever the books described. For such players, the basic 4e combat manuevers are liberating and allow more variety!

Cheers!


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

MerricB said:


> The problem is that you can easily reverse that: skill didn't matter as much in 1e because even if you were smart, you could die from an unlucky roll.
> 
> 
> Cheers!




i like that aspect of it. makes it more realistic. hell, i could walk down the street and get hit in the head by a rock from a guy mowing his lawn and die on the spot. unlucky roll.  gives it a bit of spice to me to have the save or die/unlucky roll in spite of all the precautions a player takes in there.  

i had a paladin 13th level who died from a disintegrate spell a few months ago.  save failed, and he had high modifiers.  i think there was like a 90% chance to make the save, and he didn't.  oh well.  we have a policy of no resurrectons in our game, so he was gone for good.


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## Freakohollik (Oct 9, 2008)

MerricB said:


> The problem is that you can easily reverse that: skill didn't matter as much in 1e because even if you were smart, you could die from an unlucky roll.




The skill in 1e was finding ways to avoid having to make those rolls. The most obvious ways to do this were to avoid combats or to gain an advantage before the combat (knowledge of the enemies and surprise mostly).

The perceived lack of required player skill in 4e comes from those elements of player skill no longer being required.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

MerricB said:


> It makes sense. To a very large extent, in 4e you can play in that style if the DM's prepared to referee in such a manner. That's what page 42 is for; it frees up the players actions whilst giving guidelines for the DM to prevent them becoming overwhelmingly good.
> 
> It should be noted that you can be very creative even with the powers as written; combinations of powers or terrain can give quite surprising results even without going beyond what's on the page, but the option to do so is there for those creative enough to use it.
> 
> ...





ahh.  i do see your point then when coming from the perspective of "you mean i can do more than just swing??!"

i guess the other aspect of it for me is that i prefer a narrative/descriptive form of combat, without miniatures and grids.  depending on the group i play with, the only time we resort to grids is when the number of combatants is so large that we cant keep track of it in our collective heads.  the limitation to me is that if something is on a grid, it's pretty much set in stone what you can do to a certain extent.  

for example, if it is narrative, yet some aspect of the combat has not been verbalized/described in detail by the dm yet, the player can announce a creative action which the dm can agree to let the player try, even though it goes against whatthe dm had in his head but hadn't yet verbalized.   

the dm usually lets the player take a chance and make the move if it's success would have been the topic of much talk over beers the next day.  the dm would just asign it a dex or str check or some combination of the two with appropriate dm determined difficulty modifiers. this way the player's actions go more towards creating an interesting story of the fight, rather than just rolls and how many natural 20's the player rolled.


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## Filcher (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> My experience, and I suspect that of GROGNARDIA, with 4e is that the tactical combat doesn't really take much player skill. If there is no skill required for combat, and now no dungeon navigation skill required, there is little skill left.




My anecdotal (and only that) experience is the opposite. Groups of players that don't have the skill to play as a team get waxed in the tough encounters. It's a different skill, true (less about paranoia, more about knowing team tactics ala chess), but it is a player skill all the same, I'd say. 

I love me a 1E game but the "save or die contact poison on the inside of the cloak" trick, was often arbitrary.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> The skill in 1e was finding ways to avoid having to make those rolls. The most obvious ways to do this were to avoid combats or to gain an advantage before the combat (knowledge of the enemies and surprise mostly).
> 
> The perceived lack of required player skill in 4e comes from those elements of player skill no longer being required.





well said.  especially the PERCEIVED lack part. its a perception based on the edition's component parts.  if as merricb says it doesn't have to be played that way, then i'm glad it allows that flexibility.  a good group of dm and players can always turn the lemons of any system into lemonade, i always say.

i guess thats what necromancer games says they will be bringing to the table with their most recent announcement, huh?  more tools to do what we have been talking about here?


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 9, 2008)

Delta said:


> Yes. Thank you for the direct reply this time. Almost all the time I will choose (a). Presumably other members of the party tell Verys as soon as he wakes up, anyway.




One of the other PCs was in a different room, you were unconscious, and the one who saw him change is the one he just killed.

So every player at the table knows the PC is a doppelganger, but none of the characters do.

-Hyp.


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## Delta (Oct 9, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> One of the other PCs was in a different room, you were unconscious, and the one who saw him change is the one he just killed.
> 
> So every player at the table knows the PC is a doppelganger, but none of the characters do.




Are you asking me a question? Has this ever happened in your games? If I present what I would do in this hypothetical situation will you be satisfied, or will there be more scenarios I get quizzed on after that?

I'll be frank: You pick on a lot of people with this nonstop Socratic grilling. If you're interested in a mutual give-and-take I'd be happy to cooperate. But I don't think anything I say is going to change your gaming habits. If you've chosen me to target in this thread I would just as soon skip it; it's upsetting after a few cycles.


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## Fenes (Oct 9, 2008)

Delta said:


> Are you asking me a question? Has this ever happened in your games? If I present what I would do in this hypothetical situation will you be satisfied, or will there be more scenarios I get quizzed on after that?
> 
> I'll be frank: You pick on a lot of people with this nonstop Socratic grilling. If you're interested in a mutual give-and-take I'd be happy to cooperate. But I don't think anything I say is going to change your gaming habits. If you've chosen me to target in this thread I would just as soon skip it; it's upsetting after a few cycles.




Not a hypothetical question, an example from my last session: As a DM, I have a disguised Erinnyes approach a PC and apply a charm spell on him (Will Save failed). I explain to him that his PC now sees the NPC as his best friend. But he doesn't see through the disguise, nor does any other PC see through it, nor is there any action that would appear suspect - the spy is acting nicely for starters. All the players, however, know that it's a spy, and that it is the erinnyes.

How do you handle this?


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 9, 2008)

Delta said:


> Has this ever happened in your games?




The exact situation with the doppelganger and the unconscious player?  Never.

A situation where a player is privy to knowledge his character has no way of being aware of?  All the time.

From the thief PC who pockets a gem out of sight of the rest of the party, to the invisible PC who gets knocked unconscious-and-dying, to the blinded PC who wants to place a spell _in that group of enemies over there_, to the scout who gets in trouble where the other PCs can't see him, to the player who's accidentally read spoilers for a module online, to the player who recognises a magic item or monster from the manuals that is unfamiliar to the PCs, to the player who rolls a failed Will save or Spot check... there are countless situations where the player can learn something that his PC does not know about.

-Hyp.


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## IceFractal (Oct 9, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:
			
		

> As for the puzzle the DM handed you, please don't take it literally. It's an abstract representation of the puzzle your 18 Int character is actually solving. The real puzzle is much harder, but the DM has scaled it down for you to present an equivalent level of difficulty.



I use this solution all the time, and it explains quite a few things.  

Did you really think the Doomsday Scrolls would be sealed with a simple logic puzzle?  Of course not, it's actually a multi-dimensional locking mechanism that requires advanced spatial knowledge to even perceive correctly.  But since Bob's character is a meta-genius, he explains the essence of it and you get to solve this small puzzle instead.

Your arguments were good, but not "professional negotiator" quality - and even that probably wouldn't be enough to convince the high council to do what you're asking.  But luckily, your character is a master of diplomacy, so let's assume that this 10-minute negotiation represented hours of expert wheeling and dealing.

"Not having to be your character" doesn't need to mean "not doing anything but rolling".  And IMO, it'd be pretty dull if it did.


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## IceFractal (Oct 9, 2008)

> My experience, and I suspect that of GROGNARDIA, with 4e is that the tactical combat doesn't really take much player skill. If there is no skill required for combat, and now no dungeon navigation skill required, there is little skill left.



I would say it has equal or greater _tactical_ skill - picking what to do within a combat, but less "strategic" skill - picking how and when to enter combat.  

In some cases, there's a direct trade-off.  For example:
* Buffing Spells: If they last a while and take an action to cast (3E style), then there's more strategy in scouting and knowing about a fight ahead of time.  If they're one-round boosts (4E style), then there's more tactics in deciding exactly when to use them.
* Deadlyness: If a battle can be over in a few rounds, then getting there's more strategy in getting the jump on your foes and establishing an initial advantage.  If battle always takes a while, there's more time to use multi-round tactics.

Is that a feature or a downside?  Depends on the group.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> Here is difference that causes the argument.
> 
> In a 4e adventure against the suggested ELs, you can expect that you'll survive anything you encounter. Sure there is the supposed "tactical play", but my experience with the game has been that its really easy to choose actions that win the battle. If you accidentally do some boneheaded things, you can change tactics and win, but you'll end up resting earlier. In that way the tactical play doesn't actually change the long term results.
> 
> In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.



Death is just one consequence of failure. Having to rest early because of bad tactics is another type of failure. 

If you use Death too often, it cheapens its meaning. Easy Deaths is what made spells like Raise Dead so important over the editions. It turned character death just in another type of "rest early". (Sometimes "rest early to prepare the Raise Dead spell", sometimes "let's get home so we find another trustworthy-enough looking fellow". 

You might say "resting early" is not a real failure, because the consequences for the player are minimal. But so is the death of a character. You just wait for the raise dead or roll up a new character. You can still continue playing the game (and this might be one of the bigger differences to other games - losing doesn't mean you have to stop playing.), you're just using a changed or different game piece.

Bad decisions can lead to earlier rest, it can lead to another complication, it can lead to a failure in an character/adventure goal, or it can lead to death.
All these are valid failures. An EL = PL encounter in 3E or its 4E equivalent is the kind of encounter where bad decisions should lead to an earlier rest. It is a failure because the players notice that they screwed up and that they have to do better. Of course, if they even lose a PC, they will know that they screwed up even worse , but that's not a requirement to make the player aware of failure or success.


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## xechnao (Oct 9, 2008)

pemerton said:


> it is a little too abstract to differentiate RPGing from other games, from pleasant conversation, from argument etc.




This is why I said through the PCs. PCs are a contract you make with the rest of the group that connect you with a standard that is crucial for the roleplaying game. Important thing is that this standard works which means that the group can connect with it.



pemerton said:


> There are all sorts of ways I can influence the shared understanding of the players of an RPG other than by calling actions for my PC. As one example, I can give another player a suggestion as to what her/his PC might do.



But that would be out of contract, out of the roleplaying experience.


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## MrMyth (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Probably the default assumption of 4th edition that you don't need to play through a skill challenge, but can just roll the dice through it, and then IF every party member fails you would need to worry with thinking through it.




I'd say that is a pretty faulty assumption! The entire point of a skill challenge is to have a situation you can resolve in a fast-paced, dynamic fashion, with characters trying different things to accomplish their goal, and the DM deciding what skill and DC and effect each attempt involves. 

Now, yes, you can just have folks choose their best skill and roll some checks. But I don't think that is by any means the ideal of how the system is supposed to work. 



> Why should the DM ever describe a challenge, when all you need is some number to combare a series of die rolls to?




...because describing a challenge and making it interesting and exciting is one of the highlights of the game?

You could just as easily ask why players, in a free form situation resolved by RP instead of dice, should ever bother to come up with creative answers or actions, when the DM is going to decide whether they win or lose based on his own judgement anyway? 



> How much of 4th now can be done by JUST rolling dice?




But the complaint being made here isn't that 4E has the _option_ of rolling dice for success - you seem to be saying it _forces_ that upon people. Which is simply absurd - you can just as easily run a puzzle or roleplaying encounter without ever involving the dice. The success of the puzzle would come down to how smart and creative the players are, the success of some diplomatic negotiations would come down to how smooth-talking the players are. If that is what your group finds best, it is 100% supported by the 4E rules system. 

And if your players instead want to check and see if their characters have ancient knowledge to help them solve a puzzle, or can make diplomacy checks to resolve the situation instead, 4E also supports that. 

Are you saying that your desire is to remove the skill system from D&D entirely? To make it so that the only knowledge a character has is what knowledge the player has? To ensure that the smooth-talking player of a Charisma 6 dwarven barbarian is a far more successful negotiator than the socially-awkward player of a Charisma 20 elven paladin? 

I'm not saying that is inherently wrong - if a group wants to emphasize more on player skills, that is just fine. But you seem to be suggesting the system should enforce that, instead of allowing each group to determine what option works best for them. 



> While it may be better to have story related puzzles, there is nothing that says you can't have logic puzzles to challenge the player int he game and have them somehow be something else in the story, or even the exact same logic puzzle in the game.




Again, 4E has no problems with this view. The section on puzzles is _right next to_ the section on skill challenges in the DMG! And while a smaller section, it covers everything that needs to be covered and gives valuable advice for running such events. 



> 4th edition relies heavily on stat management and dice rolling to make the game easier and more streamlined. It doesn't mean you cannot include the other things, but they are not given to the players as option for those new to the game are they?




How are they possible not given as an option to the players? If a DM has a door with a riddle to open it, and one of the players figures out the riddle, do the rules at any point say that the player has to roll a die to figure out the riddle? Do they say that if he does not do so, but solves the riddle by looking at it carefully, he is somehow not allowed to use that information in the game? I see absolutely nothing that says this, nor even implies this. And, as mentioned above, the DMG even includes an entire section on puzzles that outright says otherwise. 



> What are the rules in the PHB for skill challenges? What is in the PHB are the player expectations, and what is in the DMG is where a disconnect can happen if the same type of information is not given to both. The DM could likely forget the PHB doesn't explain as much about the game as the DMG does.




The PHB has no rules for skill challenges, just a few brief mentions of them. What is has is a section on skills, and what they can be used for. What it has is an opening chapter that talks about the roleplaying nature of the game, with quotes like: "You have almost limitless control over what your character can do and say in the game." 

Indeed, the first 'mention' of skill challenges in the PHB is in the initial mention of non-combat encounters: "Sometimes you overcome noncombat encounters by using your character’s skills, sometimes you can defeat them with clever uses of magic, and sometimes you have to puzzle them out with nothing but your wits."

So, given that players are told, right off the bat, that they can solve problems through skills _or_ creativity_ or _player intelligence, I'd say there is nothing about the system that prevents a DM from running puzzles and creating obstacles that challenge player skill rather than character skill. 
 


> If I am playing and given a puzzle to solve, and want to actually solve it and another player rolls some dice to get us past it, without letting me enjoy solving the puzzle, I will get up and leave the game not to return. They can do thing they normally couldn't but not at the expense of other players enjoyment of the game.




Then I'd say that group has a significant disconnect in what players want out of the game. Some players will want to be able to use character knowledge to help them get past an especially challenging puzzle, particularly one that might occupy them for a large amount of time without any success at solving it. Other players might live for such challenges. 

If you have a group that has players interested in different things, that doesn't mean one player's area of enjoyment is _wrong_ - it just means that either the DM needs to be more careful about what puzzles he puts in the game, or one of the two needs to find a group more suited to their style of play. Honestly, 4E indicates that your style of puzzle-solving is more of the default - it recommends only allowing skill checks to gain hints, and only when the players are having trouble solving it. While it does have a section on solving puzzles entirely through skill challenges, thats the optional system, not the default one. 

In the end, given that 4E allows for a campaign to be run that suits each player, I'd certainly say you can't place the failing on the system. Or rather, you can, but only by saying that the other players idea of fun is _incorrect_ and that the system shouldn't allow for it - which is simply an absurd point of view, and one that game design is better off without.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Where do you get this from?




That is great for the DM as it is the DMG they would most often read. How about the players and something from the PHB?



> Whatever the details of a skill challenge, the basic structure of a skill challenge is straightforward. Your goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (*usually in the form of successful skill checks*) before you get too many defeats (failed checks). It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face.




Basically comparing some die roll to a table is all you need to do and succeed the correct number of times for these challenges. That is just challenging random chance and the character stats.

I could just draw for high card from a poker deck against the DM if that is all I wanted from an in game challenge.


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## D'karr (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> That is great for the DM as it is the DMG they would most often read. How about the players and something from the PHB?




Since the DM is the one "running" the skill challenge the instructions on how to run them are placed in the DMG, where they are needed.

The players will figure out how the skill challenge is going to be run from the DM.  Each skill challenge is different and even the same skill challenge run by two different DMs might be run differently.  Yes, they are that flexible.  It is up to the DM to let the player's know what to expect.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

Yet the PHB says you only need a few dice rolls to pass or fail the challenge based on stats.

I know what DMs should or shouldn't do, but new players don't get that information from the PHB. It gives them the instructions for being a player, and those instructions say you need only to roll dice. That is challenging the stats.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

double post. delete


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## Freakohollik (Oct 9, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Death is just one consequence of failure. Having to rest early because of bad tactics is another type of failure.
> 
> If you use Death too often, it cheapens its meaning. Easy Deaths is what made spells like Raise Dead so important over the editions. It turned character death just in another type of "rest early". (Sometimes "rest early to prepare the Raise Dead spell", sometimes "let's get home so we find another trustworthy-enough looking fellow".
> 
> ...




These are good points. To have a meaningful failure that affects the players, something big has to happen ingame. Death is the most obvious answer to this, and it is what the game has been using. Its rare that adventures include other ways for meaningful failures. A lot of that pressure is in the DM.


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## Remathilis (Oct 9, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> H
> In a 1e adventure, if you do something stupid, you're dead. If you try and explore every room the dungeon, you're dead. If you often leap before you look, you're dead. The best way to survive 1e adventures is lots of caution, divination, henchmen, listening at doors, sending in henchmen, and so on. Luck is also very helpful. How to survive is not spelled out to you on your character sheet. You have to use your player skill to figure out a strategy to navigate the dungeon.




So the best way to survive a 1e Dungeon is to hire a small battalion of mercenaries, send them in to raid the dungeon and die searching for every last c.p., then have the survivors haul the treasure they found back to you so you could get the XP value for it?


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## Cadfan (Oct 9, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> So the best way to survive a 1e Dungeon is to hire a small battalion of mercenaries, send them in to raid the dungeon and die searching for every last c.p., then have the survivors haul the treasure they found back to you so you could get the XP value for it?



Yes, basically.  A great many hazards were incredibly dangerous and the only way not to end up rolling a dice and hoping for a number that meant you didn't die was to convince/force someone/something else to walk down the Completely Innocuous Hallway while you waited behind a lead shield to see where the spinning blades come out of the walls.


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## Freakohollik (Oct 9, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> So the best way to survive a 1e Dungeon is to hire a small battalion of mercenaries, send them in to raid the dungeon and die searching for every last c.p., then have the survivors haul the treasure they found back to you so you could get the XP value for it?




Thats true in any edition. The best way to survive a dungeon is to not enter it.


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## jensun (Oct 9, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I could just draw for high card from a poker deck against the DM if that is all I wanted from an in game challenge.




You still actually need to describe what you are doing and play out the scene and the passage you quoted but didnt bold makes that clear.



> It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face.


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## justanobody (Oct 9, 2008)

jensun said:


> You still actually need to describe what you are doing and play out the scene and the passage you quoted but didnt bold makes that clear.




But it offers nothing to do that. It only offers ways to roll the dice to succeed. A DM could give a lengthy detailed account of what is seen and heard int he area for some skill challenge, and the players need only roll the dice to pass it all with no real effort. That is the problem with challenging the character stats. So again I ask why should the DM waste their time and effort if the player can avoid anything and rely solely on the character stats to resolve the challenge?


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> A DM could give a lengthy detailed account of what is seen and heard int he area for some skill challenge, and the players need only roll the dice to pass it all with no real effort.




The players need only roll the dice to pass it all with no real _fun_.

Like you say, just rolling the dice to succeed isn't fun.

_So why do you assume the players will do it_, since they're playing to have fun as well?

It might not make a difference to the mechanics of the skill challenge, whether I say "Diplomacy check - 17!", or "I try to convince him we need to get in... Diplomacy check - 17!", or play out a scene where I put forward arguments and debate with the NPC over the urgency of letting us through, based on my check of 17.

But it makes a difference to the play experience.  So why would I pick the option that leads to boredom, when I can instead pick the option that leads to fun?

"The player can avoid anything", you say.  But as a player, I don't _want_ to avoid everything... I want to experience it!  I don't go to a movie, look at the poster, and go home; I go to the movie and watch it.  I don't go to a D&D game, roll a die, and go home; I go to a D&D game and _play the game_.

-Hyp.


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> To me, that extreme is just as bad as challenging the player only. Why show up? Just generate a list of attack, damage and skill rolls and have them applied for your character as the situations occur. Same effect.



Because the character isn't just the stats written on the character sheet. Their personality traits exist in my head, as I imagine them; how the character *reacts* to situations or *acts* on their goals is more important in the actual course of the game than how big of a bonus they have to a Hide check.

I guess the thing is this: while I enjoy playing _D&D_ from a mechanical point of view, because it's a fun game of action-adventure, what actually *happens* in the game is way more interesting to me when it's a story about characters having to make hard choices or struggling to achieve their goals than when it's a story about whether or not the characters get through a dungeon or manage to solve a mystery

The reason it's intensely boring to focus the game around challenging *my* problem-solving skills is because I consider "solving problems" and "overcoming challenges" to be *completely secondary* tools that we use in service of a story that is about the, well, character of the player characters.

Likewise, there's no point to the game if it's focused around the way *I* would react in a given situation, because I don't find that interesting; I don't game to find out how *I* would deal with someone murdering my brother, I game to play through the story of my character dealing with someone having murdered his brother - if for no other reason than that my character's way of dealing with that situation is way more likely to produce an entertaining narrative! "I leave it to the cops to solve the crime and become very frustrated and depressed if they can't" isn't really a great story, you know?


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## El Mahdi (Oct 10, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> Yes, basically. A great many hazards were incredibly dangerous and the only way not to end up rolling a dice and hoping for a number that meant you didn't die was to convince/force someone/something else to walk down the Completely Innocuous Hallway while you waited behind a lead shield to see where the spinning blades come out of the walls.




I believe that's a different game than _D&D_, perhaps _D&C_ (for Dungeons & _Cowards_).  D&D is a game of heroes, in any edition.  Heroes face dangers, they don't cajole, coerce, or pay someone else to face it for them.  What's the point of playing a game as a hero, if a player is too afraid to let their _make believe_ character face a _make believe_ danger?


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> So again I ask why should the DM waste their time and effort if the player can avoid anything and rely solely on the character stats to resolve the challenge?




"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."

This is pretty clear that if you don't *think* of ways your character's skills can be used in the challenge, then you can't use them. If you can't use a skill, because you didn't think of a way to use it, then you can't just rely on your character's stats to resolve the challenge.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

El Mahdi said:


> I believe that's a different game than _D&D_, perhaps _D&C_ (for Dungeons & _Cowards_).  D&D is a game of heroes, in any edition.  Heroes face dangers, they don't cajole, coerce, or pay someone else to face it for them.  What's the point of playing a game as a hero, if a player is too afraid to let their _make believe_ character face a _make believe_ danger?




Well, that method of playing was supposedly quite common back in the early days of the game, and there are many posters on these forums that still view it as an acceptable gameplay style (and as long as it makes them happy and have fun, then it is).

While I would argue that buying up henchmen so they can soak up all the traps in a dungeon isn't fun, I wouldn't think of claiming that it's not D&D.


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## El Mahdi (Oct 10, 2008)

mhacdebhandia said:


> Because the character isn't just the stats written on the character sheet. Their personality traits exist in my head, as I imagine them; how the character *reacts* to situations or *acts* on their goals is more important in the actual course of the game than how big of a bonus they have to a Hide check. . .




I agree with this part 100% (and only this part).  The character (of a character) is determined by the player.  How he/she reacts is determined by the character.  The _*limitations*_ of how well a character can perform tasks and challenges _is determined by *stats*_.  Neither one is more important than the other, both are necessary.


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

Freakohollik said:


> Are you saying that the game should not use player skill at all? If you don't want your skill to factor in at all, you'll have to have your DM make all decisions for you. In fact, you don't even need to be involved at all.



I'm saying that the question of whether or not my character could get out of a dungeon deathtrap isn't particularly interesting or relevant to the kind of experience I want from playing _D&D_.

Having my character survive experiences like that because I was quick-witted enough to figure out how he could escape isn't important to me at all; I am, in fact, perfectly happy to use the rules of the game to determine whether or not my character has the skills to survive, because as far as I am concerned the challenges of the game only matter inasmuch as they provide colour for the story of my character's adventures in the world.

To continue the example from my previous post - dungeon deathtraps spice up the story of my character's pursuit of his brother's killer, but they're not the reason I play the game. In fact, I *prefer it* when the rules of the game add the element of chance or risk to the question of "does he get out of danger?", because it's a way to add complications to the story that neither I as a player nor the DM can foresee. I don't mind it when my characters fail, because I don't think it ruins the story; some stories end in failure and tragedy, and I find them just as interesting.

(I think it's incumbent upon the DM to make all challenges matter - a random encounter that ends in my character's death is boring, but if the villain lures my PC into a deathtrap and my character can't escape, that's fine! It was an organic part of the story; had I succeeded it would have been part of my character's struggle to catch the villain and make him pay.)

If, instead, the game was "old-school" and turned on *my personal ability* to think of a way to get my character out of a deathtrap, that completely eliminates that spontaneity, and replaces it with a test of my personal problem-solving skills that I find pretty damn uninteresting. It's not even that I'm bad at solving problems! It's just not exciting - I don't enjoy it even a tenth as much as, for instance, dealing with an unforeseen setback on my character's quest for justice. It's more interesting to me to figure out how my character will come to terms with an ally's betrayal than to figure out how I, the player, should talk my character out of an arrest warrant.

I don't game to have my real-life skills tested. I game to create a fictional character and put them through hell and high water as they try to pursue their goals or deal with their problems. The mechanics of the game are a welcome, sometimes spontaneous facilitator, but the actual *challenges* around which those mechanics are arranged are only important for providing that spontaneity - they're not at all important in and of themselves.


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## El Mahdi (Oct 10, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> Well, that method of playing was supposedly quite common back in the early days of the game, and there are many posters on these forums that still view it as an acceptable gameplay style (and as long as it makes them happy and have fun, then it is).
> 
> While I would argue that buying up henchmen so they can soak up all the traps in a dungeon isn't fun, I wouldn't think of claiming that it's not D&D.




Fair enough.  You're absolutely right.  I did come across that way a bit.

However, I am with you on this.  For me, I can't imagine having fun playing this way, unless it was some kind of a _Fantasy Sports_ type game where the players aren't there character, but instead manage characters as proxies.  But that still seems incredibly boring and uninspiring to me.


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

El Mahdi said:


> I agree with this part 100% (and only this part).  The character (of a character) is determined by the player.  How he/she reacts is determined by the character.  The _*limitations*_ of how well a character can perform tasks and challenges _is determined by *stats*_.  Neither one is more important than the other, both are necessary.



Yeah, basically. I think it's boring when the game says how strong my character is, and by extension, how much he can lift and how hard he can hit an orc - but not how smart the character is, and by extension how good he is at solving problems and how good he is at using magic learned from books.

I'm happy to let the dice and my character's mechanical attributes determine whether or not I talk my way past a guard, because to me "does he talk his way past the guard?" isn't the interesting question. In fact, the element of risk there is the only interesting part - I wouldn't feel any sense of achievement if I convinced the GM (playing the guard) to let me in, and I wouldn't feel a sense of failure if I didn't; I just honestly don't really care whether *I* can do that or not - but when it's not up to me, when it's up to the dice and my character's skills, and there's a chance I'll fail and that will throw new complications in my character's path? That's what I enjoy.

Not to mention that it's *way* more interesting when I play characters who don't have my own real-life persuasive abilities, in either direction - either more or less silver-tongued than I really am.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> The players need only roll the dice to pass it all with no real _fun_.
> 
> Like you say, just rolling the dice to succeed isn't fun.
> 
> ...




Why present it if some don't find challenges of a non-combat nature fun? It just seems like an attempt to give everything an option to roll dice to solve when someone can't do it their self as the player.

How it is presented makes it look like that is all that is needed, and in many places it tells you to skip things that would seem less fun and more like work.

I understand the want for some to not do every puzzle to have some way to succeed, but there doesn't need to be those puzzles then, and there is always other players that could do it. It seemed designed as though only a single player would ever be involved in a skill challenge, so that there should be a way for a non-puzzle oriented person to be able to get out easy.

There are other people for that. So you rarely need to challenge the character stats, and that is what combat does. There needs to be some place for challenging the player without the need of dice.

We know it is there, but as written, it could easily be taken the wrong way by someone new.

They see skill checks to resolve a skill challenge, they think that is how it should be done. Surprisingly, some people still follow instructions these days, and those people seeing the PHB as such may get the wrong idea about them.

This is why I say challenge the players, and let them decide how to use their own abilities, and the character stats to overcome the challenge presented. Don't design something aimed towards some in game statistic.

@The Little Raven:

"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."

Let us change the wording slightly in conjuction with the rules for skills.

"It’s up to you to *pick the correct skill to roll for* to meet the challenges you face."


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

I think a great deal of my play style, described _ad nauseam_ above, is contingent upon the fact that I don't pretend I *am* my characters when I roleplay. I don't game for escapism and I don't try to immerse myself in my PCs. I participate in the story of their adventures by determining - based on their established personality traits and goals - how they act in the situations that arise at the table. I play them according to the personality I invent for them - I don't want to pretend I *am* them. Quite often, they're people that I would hate to be, since I don't always play paragons of virtue!

I game to entertain others and to be entertained by what happens to my characters. That doesn't mean they have to succeed - sometimes failure is more interesting! I care about what happens, but that doesn't mean that I want to see my character go from strength to strength, victory to victory - I want the story to be interesting, and that can just as easily mean my character dealing with setback after setback and loss after loss.


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> There needs to be some place for challenging the player without the need of dice.



Do you think this is *absolutely true* of all games of _D&D_, or is it just the way you prefer to play?


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> "It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."
> 
> Let us change the wording slightly in conjuction with the rules for skills.
> 
> "It’s up to you to *pick the correct skill to roll for* to meet the challenges you face."




That's changing the entire nature of the statement, not just the wording. The book flat out says you need to think and figure out *how* to use your skills to successfully navigate a challenge, and the wording change you are trying to impose on it seems geared only to support your preconceived notion that you only have to pick a skill to succeed.

What the book actually says and what you claim it says are two entirely different things. If you're not going to accept the fact that the book doesn't say what you claim it does, then there's no point in continuing this discussion with you.


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## El Mahdi (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> "It’s up to you to *pick the correct skill to roll for* to meet the challenges you face."




I would say that concept even extends to _character creation_, where selecting the right skills the character needs to know, to meet the challenges you face, is also part of the challenge.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

Using skills is rolling a skill check technically. Picking the right skill to use is thinking how to use your characters skills to meet the challenges.

Yes character creation has a lot of it. Some times it is used in optimization of crunch, and others for optimization of character. That is why you really shoUldn't challenge the stats because you really never know what will be gained  before hand unless you make the challenge on the spot and check the character rigurously right before making it.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Picking the right skill to use is thinking how to use your characters skills to meet the challenges.




No, it's only part of the equation. Just saying "I use Athletics" doesn't tell me what you're using it to do, since you can do several things with it. That's like just saying "I solve the puzzle." It tells me, at a most basic level, what you want to do, but it doesn't give me the particulars that actually make it a feasible attempt at success.

As has been quoted from the book, multiple times, you have to think of *the ways to use your skills to meet the challenge, not just figure out which skill to use*.


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## AllisterH (Oct 10, 2008)

joethelawyer said:


> what our group would do in this situation in our weird 1e/3.0 hybrid that we houseruled would be for the dm to tell the player "you cant just use diplomacy and roll. if it is a speech you want to make, you have to stand up, take on you character's voice and physical bearing and mannerisms, and make the speech to rally the troops. the diplomacy skill, as well as the quality of the speech you give will affect its success. i'm not telling you which will weigh more heavily--the speech you give and your ability to act it out in character or the diplomacy skill score--or what the dc is."




Ok, I got to ask....

Why would you make the PLAYER do this for Diplomacy (and I assume for other social skills) but I'm hazarding a guess that you didn't for physical skills such as jumping over a pit?

re: Player vs Character
Er, people DO realize that the 4e DMG explicitly talks about challenging the player instead of the character in designing encounters via puzzles, riddles on pgs 81-84.

How is it that 4E doesn't handle DM vs player (instead of DM vs character) situations when the DMG gives more help on the subject than either the 2e or 3e DMG? Hell I think it gives more guidance than those two DMGs COMBINED....

Did even the 1E DMG discuss this (I'm pretty sure it did, but I can't remember the pages...


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## RFisher (Oct 10, 2008)

MerricB said:


> Note that I knew many a player in AD&D who _only_ ever hit the enemy with the sword, since it was the only manuever the books described. For such players, the basic 4e combat manuevers are liberating and allow more variety!




It just seems to me that making them understand that they can do more would be better than giving them 4e.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

RFisher said:


> It just seems to me that making them understand that they can do more would be better than giving them 4e.




Well, since there is no mechanical differentiation between "I slash him with my sword." and "I wade into the fray, seeking out the hobgoblin commander and striking him with a mighty blow from my father's blade!" in any previous edition, one would argue that you couldn't *do* more, you could just *describe it differently*, which is possible in 4e... which actually provides mechanical differentiation, which allows you to actually *do* more, especially with the DMG page 42.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> No, it's only part of the equation. Just saying "I use Athletics" doesn't tell me what you're using it to do, since you can do several things with it. That's like just saying "I solve the puzzle." It tells me, at a most basic level, what you want to do, but it doesn't give me the particulars that actually make it a feasible attempt at success.
> 
> As has been quoted from the book, multiple times, you have to think of *the ways to use your skills to meet the challenge, not just figure out which skill to use*.




That is for people in the know correct, but those just picking up the book are offered little to go on otherwise. The only thing that is really required is to pick the correct skill, and roll to see if you fail or succeed. It isn't fun for me, but that is what comes from challenging the character stats.


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## RFisher (Oct 10, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> Well, since there is no mechanical differentiation between "I slash him with my sword." and "I wade into the fray, seeking out the hobgoblin commander and striking him with a mighty blow from my father's blade!" in any previous edition, one would argue that you couldn't *do* more, you could just *describe it differently*, which is possible in 4e... which actually provides mechanical differentiation, which allows you to actually *do* more, especially with the DMG page 42.




And this is exactly what frustrates me. I can’t figure out how to explain that you *can* do more, not *just* describe it differently. That the simple mechanics of the classic D&D system is sufficient to apply tactics.


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 10, 2008)

Remathilis said:


> So the best way to survive a 1e Dungeon is to hire a small battalion of mercenaries, send them in to raid the dungeon and die searching for every last c.p., then have the survivors haul the treasure they found back to you so you could get the XP value for it?




Yes.  But surviving isn't the goal.  

“Every man dies - Not every man really lives.”

Living is the goal.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> That is for people in the know correct, but those just picking up the book are offered little to go on otherwise.




Uhhh... what? Someone picking up the book *and actually reading it* will read where it says that you must come up with the way of using your skill to be able to apply it to a skill challenge.

You become a person "in the know" by reading and retaining the information in the book, which any person, new to the game or an RPG veteran, can do.



> The only thing that is really required is to pick the correct skill, and roll to see if you fail or succeed.




You are flat out wrong.

*"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."*

How many times do you have to read that before you accept that it says exactly what is written: It's up to you *(the player)* to think *(use your brain)* of ways you can use your skills *(description of the action you wish to use the skill to perform)* to meet the challenges you face.

Your claim that all you have to do is pick a skill and make a roll just ignores the facts.



> It isn't fun for me, but that is what comes from challenging the character stats.




Well, of course it isn't fun... and that's exactly why that's *NOT* what the book says.


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 10, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> DMG page 42.




Not to pick on The Little Raven, but I think the fact that people keep referring to page 42 kind of high-lights the problem.  My 4E DMG has 221 pages.  Which means that page 42 is outnumbered 220:1.

Now quantity isn't everything. But it ain't nothin' neither. We've got 220 pages of "rules for stuff" and 1 page of "ignore all that crap; do what's fun."  Feels like an afterthought to me, not a design principle.


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## joethelawyer (Oct 10, 2008)

Quote:
     					Originally Posted by *joethelawyer* 

 
_what our group would do in this situation in our weird 1e/3.0 hybrid that we houseruled would be for the dm to tell the player "you cant just use diplomacy and roll. if it is a speech you want to make, you have to stand up, take on you character's voice and physical bearing and mannerisms, and make the speech to rally the troops. the diplomacy skill, as well as the quality of the speech you give will affect its success. i'm not telling you which will weigh more heavily--the speech you give and your ability to act it out in character or the diplomacy skill score--or what the dc is."_




AllisterH said:


> Ok, I got to ask....
> 
> Why would you make the PLAYER do this for Diplomacy (and I assume for other social skills) but I'm hazarding a guess that you didn't for physical skills such as jumping over a pit?





we do it that way because to us that's fun.  and i noticed it gets more fun after a few beers in us.    whenever we get to one of those moments where the conversation or speech mattered, we have to "roleplay it out" which is a phrase we use which means we have to stand up and act in character as if we were on a stage in a play and make the speech, or engage in dialogue.

not everyone can life the 500 lb gate or jump a 20 foot pit, and since the basement we play in doesnt have those in stock, it makes it harder to act those things out.  but everyone an get up and make a speech to rally the troops or denounce demon princess to her face just before engaging in combat with her.  you may make a jackjass of yourself while sayng it, or screw it up, but thats the sort of thing we look forward to so we can bust that guy's balls for the whole week until the next time we play and someone else gets put on the hot seat.

thats just the game we like to play.  to us its fun.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> You are flat out wrong.
> 
> *"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."*




Well I must have been doing it wrong for decades and must be crazy for enjoying doing it the wrong way.

Again that little passage tells you nothing but to know which skill to use when, and not how, or how in depth you need to. the bare minimum for a skill challenge is to make a few die rolls for the skill checks.

Are you trying to deny that a skill challenge _can_ be overcome and passed by JUST making the required number of successful skill checks?

When posed with a problem like the door to Moria would you use your Diplomacy to pass it? Would you use your Acrobatics? Would you use Arcana?

The simplest way to *use the skills to meet the challenges you face* is to use the correct one for the skill check.


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## tomBitonti (Oct 10, 2008)

So... this whole debate is bringing up a problem that I've had with 3E (and which 4E has continued, hence 4E is not the _fix_ that I was looking for.)

Here is a filtering question: Playing 3E _or_ 4E, if a player with a movement of 30' (or 6 squares) asked to stretch that to 35' (or 7 squares), would you allow it, say, with a -2 to actions until the beginning of their next turn, or would you simply disallow it?

I understand that the game is about saying _yes_, but I hazard that few would allow this modification.  The rules simply don't allow it, although, the modification does not seem to be completely unreasonable.  (My read of the rules is that you have to run to go at all further than your base movement, which is a big step up from a hustling on a single move.)

Here is another filtering question: You are chasing an airship, and a rope tied to and trailing the ship moves past you.  You ask the GM to be allowed to grab the rope, as a kind of AOO, as it moves past you.  Would you as GM allow that?

This gets to a modification of the original question: What did 4E leave in that you would prefer had been left out?

To close, allow me to make an observation and ask a third question: As a rules system, 4E attempts to be complete, so that, if this is your group's play-style, that once initiative is rolled, the options are exactly as set by the game rules.  There is a part of the game that is designed to enhance the play experience by providing much simplified rules.  Now, that leads to a question, which is, are the new simpler rules enabling, in that you can learn them quickly, and move past them to creative play and out-of-the box type thinking, or are the new simpler rules restrictive, leaving no options except those which are allowed by the rules?  I'm thinking that a lot of excitement (or lack of excitement) about 4E can be traced to how one answers this question.


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## FireLance (Oct 10, 2008)

MrMyth said:


> But the complaint being made here isn't that 4E has the _option_ of rolling dice for success - you seem to be saying it _forces_ that upon people. Which is simply absurd - you can just as easily run a puzzle or roleplaying encounter without ever involving the dice. The success of the puzzle would come down to how smart and creative the players are, the success of some diplomatic negotiations would come down to how smooth-talking the players are. If that is what your group finds best, it is 100% supported by the 4E rules system.
> 
> And if your players instead want to check and see if their characters have ancient knowledge to help them solve a puzzle, or can make diplomacy checks to resolve the situation instead, 4E also supports that.



Exactly. What I like about the 4E skill challenge framework is that after setting the number of successes required to overcome the skill challenge, you can allow some or all of them to be gained through player ability instead of character ability.

A player that is able to partially solve a puzzle might be able to score one or two successes, making it easier the PCs to finish to the job by lowering the number of successful Intelligence checks required.

A player that delivers a compelling speech or reveals a critical piece of information during a negotiation might gain one or more successes without needing to make a check of any kind.

In this way, player skill can help the PCs succeed at challenges without necessarily (although it can if you want) overriding the need for character ability.


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## Korgoth (Oct 10, 2008)

RFisher said:


> And this is exactly what frustrates me. I can’t figure out how to explain that you *can* do more, not *just* describe it differently. That the simple mechanics of the classic D&D system is sufficient to apply tactics.




I think maybe a lot of new schoolers approach games like computer programs, and they're the computer? You have a certain set of instructions and you have to follow them. If something is allowed then it's allowed; if something is not allowed then it's not allowed. If something is not addressed then you just ignore it... you could type the full text of Plato's _Politeia_ into a chess program and chances are nothing would happen because the program is set up to move chess pieces on a virtual board, not consider whether justice is the highest virtue. Likewise they look at OD&D and see that there's no rules for tripping someone, so they assume that means you can't do it.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Now, that leads to a question, which is, are the new simpler rules enabling, in that you can learn them quickly, and move past them to creative play and out-of-the box type thinking, or are the new simpler rules restrictive, leaving no options except those which are allowed by the rules?  I'm thinking that a lot of excitement (or lack of excitement) about 4E can be traced to how one answers this question.




software and video games and other electronic devices of hte past have been lacking due to the restrictions the software has in taking in the D&D ruleset. MMOs try the best they can to offer many of the things a PnP RPG can, but like your dangling rope, has nothing really defined as to what it can do.

With the digital push the need for a more easily coded and readily understandable ruleset by all has given birth the 4th edition.

While this may allow for emulation of the ruleset in computer medium, it also tends to prevent the free-form abilities of the past generations of the game.

So what you lose to restrictions, you gain to universal rules with 4th edition.

The question then would be, is that what you want from a game?


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## Delta (Oct 10, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> ... there are countless situations where the player can learn something that his PC does not know about.




Since you didn't address my primary concern in post #142 (or the other two questions), I'll assume that our interaction is done here.


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## mhacdebhandia (Oct 10, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> I think maybe a lot of new schoolers approach games like computer programs, and they're the computer? You have a certain set of instructions and you have to follow them. If something is allowed then it's allowed; if something is not allowed then it's not allowed. If something is not addressed then you just ignore it... you could type the full text of Plato's _Politeia_ into a chess program and chances are nothing would happen because the program is set up to move chess pieces on a virtual board, not consider whether justice is the highest virtue. Likewise they look at OD&D and see that there's no rules for tripping someone, so they assume that means you can't do it.



No, don't be ridiculous.

We look at O_D&D_ and see that there are no rules for tripping someone, so we are aware that we'd have to ask the GM how to do it, and (in many cases) we're frustrated that the answer can be different each time, depending on how long it's been since the last time. We're also (in many cases) dissatisfied that the answer we're given is inconsistent with other "special actions". We're also (in many cases) not too happy with the possibility that the GM isn't skilled enough to give an answer which meshes well with the rest of the system, or which represents the specific maneuver we had in mind, or whatever else.

The preference for having rules that cover a broad variety of situations is *not* a preference for being told what we can do - it's a preference for the game having been designed to allow for consistent, appopriate mechanical simulation of what we might want to do.

Sure, with a good GM you don't need those consistent, appropriate rules provided to you, but why *shouldn't* the game help groups with less-gifted GMs out? Why *should* the game expect the GM to do that work at the table, instead of concentrating on the story elements of the game? People who favour an old school, "the GM makes a call and we go with it" approach moan about players not trusting their GMs, but the fact is that some GMs aren't skilled enough to provide consistent, appropriate mechanical patches on the fly, so why shouldn't the game help them out with rules and guidelines that do that work for them?

I mean, Fourth Edition does this really well. It has rules for a bunch of things, and then it has flexible guidelines for anything else you might want to do, scaled to various levels of play and various levels of difficulty. Those rules provide a consistent, appropriate-for-the-general-circumstances way to do something the rules don't cover, with enough built-in flexibility that the GM still has the ability to decide that it's actually quite hard to drop a flaming pot of oil on a hydra's head from your flying carpet.


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## RFisher (Oct 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Here is another filtering question: You are chasing an airship, and a rope tied to and trailing the ship moves past you.  You ask the GM to be allowed to grab the rope, as a kind of AOO, as it moves past you.  Would you as GM allow that?




This brings up a different issue. I prefer to run combat in a more continuous rather than discrete manner. e.g. If both sides charge, they meet in the middle rather than the side with initiative covering the whole distance while the other side is frozen until their “turn”.



Korgoth said:


> Likewise they look at OD&D and see that there's no rules for tripping someone, so they assume that means you can't do it.




Yeah, but that’s not really salient to the point I’d like to make. Tripping isn’t tactics. As I understand it. Somebody who has actually been to a military academy, enlighten me. If I take a class on tactics, are they going to teach me tripping? You don’t need a tripping rule—printed or _ad hoc_—for tactics.

Tactics is about holding positions, maneuvering, taking advantage of terrain, concentrating/coödinating your attacks, protecting your vulnerabilities, reconaissance, flanking, &c. You can do all that stuff with the classic D&D rules without any _ad hoc_ or house rules.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Here is a filtering question: Playing 3E _or_ 4E, if a player with a movement of 30' (or 6 squares) asked to stretch that to 35' (or 7 squares), would you allow it, say, with a -2 to actions until the beginning of their next turn, or would you simply disallow it?
> 
> I understand that the game is about saying _yes_, but I hazard that few would allow this modification.




I've had a couple of GMs grant a +2 Awesome Bonus to speed for creative use of a grappling hook 



			
				Delta said:
			
		

> Since you didn't address my primary concern in post #142 ...




I addressed _mine_, which you thoughtfully quoted above - that assuming player knowledge <-> character knowledge falls down in all manner of situations.

-Hyp.


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## pemerton (Oct 10, 2008)

xechnao said:


> This is why I said through the PCs. PCs are a contract you make with the rest of the group that connect you with a standard that is crucial for the roleplaying game.



This is one way of RPGing. But look at what Christopher Adams (mhacdebhandia) is posting in this thread - there are other ways of playing RPGs in which the PC is not the player's vehicle, but rather the player's tool. And in that sort of RPGing it is very common to connect with the other players independently of one's PC (ie the play is comparatively metagame heavy).


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## pemerton (Oct 10, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> Not to pick on The Little Raven, but I think the fact that people keep referring to page 42 kind of high-lights the problem.  My 4E DMG has 221 pages.  Which means that page 42 is outnumbered 220:1.
> 
> Now quantity isn't everything. But it ain't nothin' neither. We've got 220 pages of "rules for stuff" and 1 page of "ignore all that crap; do what's fun."  Feels like an afterthought to me, not a design principle.



Page 42 doesn't say "ignore all that crap." So the problem you describe doesn't arise in quite the way you present it.


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## pemerton (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> That is great for the DM as it is the DMG they would most often read. How about the players and something from the PHB?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



As others have posted, it looks like you're just ignoring the bit where it says "It's up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."



justanobody said:


> But it offers nothing to do that. It only offers ways to roll the dice to succeed. A DM could give a lengthy detailed account of what is seen and heard int he area for some skill challenge, and the players need only roll the dice to pass it all with no real effort.



Well, the player would have to go to the effort of _thinking of a way his/her PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge_.



justanobody said:


> That is for people in the know correct, but those just picking up the book are offered little to go on otherwise. The only thing that is really required is to pick the correct skill, and roll to see if you fail or succeed.



Well, the GM is given all the info in the DMG. The players, who presumably are posed the challenge by the GM, will be given all the scene-setting and narrative support required. They will then "pick the correct skill" (as you put it) by _thinking of a way his/her PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge_. This looks like roleplaying to me, and it also looks like a challenge to the player.



justanobody said:


> Again that little passage tells you nothing but to know which skill to use when, and not how, or how in depth you need to. the bare minimum for a skill challenge is to make a few die rolls for the skill checks.



The passage says that you have to _thinking of a way your PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge_. That is part of the bare minimum. Your statement of the bare minimum therefore seems to be too truncated.



justanobody said:


> Are you trying to deny that a skill challenge _can_ be overcome and passed by JUST making the required number of successful skill checks?



Yes. The skill checks have to be using appropriate skills. This is a roleplaying issue.



justanobody said:


> When posed with a problem like the door to Moria would you use your Diplomacy to pass it? Would you use your Acrobatics? Would you use Arcana?
> 
> The simplest way to *use the skills to meet the challenges you face* is to use the correct one for the skill check.



But which of Diplomacy, Acrobatics or Arcana is the correct skill? You (the player) tell me (another player, or the GM).

Using Diplomacy: "Remember that time we were visiting the Wizards' Guild in Greyhawk? And I was buttering up that Burglomancer specialist? She told me a heap of old magical passwords - I try them all." The player rolls Diplomacy (probably at a hard DC - it's a pretty far-fetched story!) to see if this is true.

Using Acrobatics: "As the Watcher in the Water writhes about with its tentacles, I dodge at the last minute so it smashes into the door and breaks it." That might be a hard DC as well.

Using Arcana: "I speak a spell of opening". Medium DC. Or "I speak a spell of recall, to remember all the passwords and riddles I've learned over the years". That's more interesting and more clever- let's say a Medium DC with a +2 circumstance modifier.



justanobody said:


> Why present it if some don't find challenges of a non-combat nature fun? It just seems like an attempt to give everything an option to roll dice to solve when someone can't do it their self as the player.



If some don't find non-combat challenges fun, they shouldn't play a game with skill challenges. Skill challenges are a mechanic for those who do find non-combat challenges fun. They are very obviously influenced by the conflict-resolution mechanics of games like HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth, etc. The DMG makes it abundantly clear (as my earlier post indicated) that this is how they are to be played. No part of either the PHB or the DMG text generates any contrary implication.

In fact the DMG says to skip stuff that you don't enjoy. So if you don't enjoy non-combat challenges, don't inlcude skill challenges in your game.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 10, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Well, the GM is given all the info in the DMG. The players, who presumably are posed the challenge by the GM, will be given all the scene-setting and narrative support required. They will then "pick the correct skill" (as you put it) by _thinking of a way his/her PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge_. This looks like roleplaying to me, and it also looks like a challenge to the player.



Actually, the Skill Challenge system is a hybrid of storytelling and game-playing with no role-playing whatsoever.  You might act a little in between, but there is no role-playing going on here.  Instead, this method is a game where one results in having to narrate their game choice selection to fit with the GM's story.  As it is impossible to tell stories or to narrate while role-playing (or GMing for that matter), players stop playing when using this system.  

To illustrate, in the Skill Challenge game you choose any one of your skill "choices" and narrate what that choice means in the "story" the [strike]DM[/strike] Storyteller is jointly telling with you.  It takes skill to come up with those stories, but the actual success or failure has nothing to do with your story, but it does have to do with your choice.  The choice options are pre-determined by the Storyteller to have greater or lesser potential of success and the overall success (# of total success/failures needed) has absolutely nothing to do with the story at all.  It's just judged "tougher" or "weaker" by the Storyteller based on how it difficult he wants the challenge to be.  This of course has nothing to do with role-playing or role-playing games either, but that's perfectly fine.  There is nothing wrongbadfun with that.  Please merely understand that folks who like role-playing will not like it when such a thing is called "role-playing" so innaccurately.

In an RPG with skills, one can open a door without a skill check by turning the knob, hack it down with some attack rolls, make several diplomacy checks to convince voices on the other side to open the door, or even roll to disbelieve the door is there at all.  All these myriad of methods involve different amounts of potential checks, target number difficulties, successes, or failures as the role-players are being tested by a real world with real people and objects - not telling a story where the results need only be thematically interesting.  



> Yes. The skill checks have to be using appropriate skills. This is a roleplaying issue.



In a game like this I think you mean it's a realism issue, not a role-playing one.



> But which of Diplomacy, Acrobatics or Arcana is the correct skill? You (the player) tell me (another player, or the GM).
> 
> Using Diplomacy: "Remember that time we were visiting the Wizards' Guild in Greyhawk? And I was buttering up that Burglomancer specialist? She told me a heap of old magical passwords - I try them all." The player rolls Diplomacy (probably at a hard DC - it's a pretty far-fetched story!) to see if this is true.
> 
> ...



All 3 of these are wonderful examples of narration for folks playing storytelling games.  Again, in a RPG not a one of these examples would be acceptable.



> If some don't find non-combat challenges fun, they shouldn't play a game with skill challenges. Skill challenges are a mechanic for those who do find non-combat challenges fun. They are very obviously influenced by the conflict-resolution mechanics of games like HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth, etc. The DMG makes it abundantly clear (as my earlier post indicated) that this is how they are to be played. No part of either the PHB or the DMG text generates any contrary implication.



The 4E DMG is clear in its related design, it's just the design is one confusing storytelling games with RPGs.  For an RPG, it is an ill fit.  Bad design.  The works you mention that it is supposedly derivative of are games which mix both RPG gaming with Storytelling.  I would gather quite unknowingly.  I think Justanobody wants to play an RPG that has RPG elements and is arguing for such.  Saying Storytelling game elements are enough to satisfy him won't work.



> In fact the DMG says to skip stuff that you don't enjoy. So if you don't enjoy non-combat challenges, don't inlcude skill challenges in your game.



Again, telling someone who enjoys D&D to not have anything but combat encounters if they don't like to play a storytelling game is disingenuous.  As I mentioned above, there are countless ways to role-play characters outside of combat, if you are using a RPG system.  Using the skill system without the misguided design of the "Skill Challenges" system would be a far better answer for any wanting to play the game as an RPG.


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## Fenes (Oct 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Here is a filtering question: Playing 3E _or_ 4E, if a player with a movement of 30' (or 6 squares) asked to stretch that to 35' (or 7 squares), would you allow it, say, with a -2 to actions until the beginning of their next turn, or would you simply disallow it?




I don't really use a battlemap, so in my case this would either be a yes, or a sort of check, or a "no" if I deem it too far.



tomBitonti said:


> Here is another filtering question: You are chasing an airship, and a rope tied to and trailing the ship moves past you.  You ask the GM to be allowed to grab the rope, as a kind of AOO, as it moves past you.  Would you as GM allow that?




Yes, of course. Reflex save, or AoO, whatever seems appropriate.


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## Mallus (Oct 10, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> As it is impossible to tell stories or to narrate while role-playing (or GMing for that matter), players stop playing when using this system.



Huh?

Everything the DM says that describes the fictional setting, characters in that fictional setting, and there actions qualify as _narration_. What definition of _narration_ are you using? 

Related to that, how are people adopting fictional personae and maneuvering them though scenes in a fictional setting not, well, generating _fiction_ ie telling stories? 



> This of course has nothing to do with role-playing or role-playing games either, but that's perfectly fine.



Can you give an example of how a Skill Challenge, or more generic skill usage could qualify as role-playing, under your you definition of RP. 



> Please merely understand that folks who like role-playing will not like it when such a thing is called "role-playing" so inaccurately.



I love role-playing, but I honestly have no idea how you're defining the act, other than 'far more narrowly than I do'...

Can you give a quick definition?


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> Huh?
> 
> Everything the DM says that describes the fictional setting, characters in that fictional setting, and there actions qualify as _narration_. What definition of _narration_ are you using?




I am not howandwhy but this is my interpretation of the difference:

As you say, whenever the DM is *describing* the fictional setting, characters in that setting and relating the perceivable effects of thier actions it is all *narration.*

Whenever the DM is *interacting *with the PC's from the perspective of an NPC or creature, that is *roleplaying*. 



Mallus said:


> Related to that, how are people adopting fictional personae and maneuvering them though scenes in a fictional setting not, well, generating _fiction_ ie telling stories?




Generating fiction and telling stories are related but not identical. If the DM and players roleplay throughout the session they are generating fiction. The end result of that roleplaying session may result in a story or at least a part of one.

 Purely telling stories on the the other hand can be achieved by the DM and the players narrating thier actions. Using dice or other means of resolving these actions impacts the story that is being narrated. This also results in a story or a part of one.

In storytelling you are guiding your fictional persona through challenges and scenes.

In roleplaying you are reacting to stimuli and events as percieved by your fictional persona

Thats the major difference as I see it and neither one is wrongbadfun.


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## xechnao (Oct 10, 2008)

pemerton said:


> This is one way of RPGing. But look at what Christopher Adams (mhacdebhandia) is posting in this thread - there are other ways of playing RPGs in which the PC is not the player's vehicle, but rather the player's tool. And in that sort of RPGing it is very common to connect with the other players independently of one's PC (ie the play is comparatively metagame heavy).




What Christopher says is not something different really. If you think about it, eventually it is the same thing. Actually I think what he is advocating for stands for roleplaying while what he is advocating against is another game entirely: not a roleplaying game.


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## Mallus (Oct 10, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> As you say, whenever the DM is *describing* the fictional setting, characters in that setting and relating the perceivable effects of thier actions it is all *narration.*
> 
> Whenever the DM is *interacting *with the PC's from the perspective of an NPC or creature, that is *roleplaying*.



So narration is exposition and role-playing is dialog? Thanks, that I can understand. 

But I suspect howandwhy means something else, because he states "it's impossible to narrate while GM'ing". From my prospective, GM'ing is mostly the act of narration. Player's state intended actions, GM's narrate the results and consequences. So I'm curious how howandwhy's using the word.   



> If the DM and players roleplay throughout the session they are generating fiction. The end result of that roleplaying session may result in a story or at least a part of one.



Agreed -- with the caveat the session always results in all or part of a story. How can it not? 



> In storytelling you are guiding your fictional persona through challenges and scenes.
> 
> In roleplaying you are reacting to stimuli and events as perceived by your fictional persona.



Aha... okay. This helps a lot. I view these acts as the same thing. Or rather, I can't imagine how you can honestly draw a distinction between them during play. When I'm running a character, I'm consciously aware of both guiding my fictional persona and experiencing things as my fictional persona (as I'm also aware that I'm a guy eating delicious saag paneer, seeing as my group usually orders great Indian take out on game night...). 

In the end RPG's are just another act of writing to me, so as much as I may enjoy 'getting into the character', the awareness that I'm also the author is never far from the front of my mind. 



> ... and neither one is wrongbadfun.



Hey, more agreement, sweet...


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> We've got 220 pages of "rules for stuff" and 1 page of "ignore all that crap; do what's fun."




220 pages is about building a campaign. Page 42 is about players wanting to do actions that they don't have solid rules for, it is absolutely not "ignore the rest of the book," as nothing written on that page invalidates the encounter building formulas, the rules for diseases and poisons, templates, or anything else you claim it tells you to ignore.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Well I must have been doing it wrong for decades and must be crazy for enjoying doing it the wrong way.




This has nothing to do with what we're talking about. The topic at hand is not how you have been doing things, it's about how you claim the PHB says one thing when it most certainly says something entirely different.

You: All the PHB says is that you have to pick the skill.
Us: _"It's up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."_ It explicitly states that you have to think of ways to use your skills, not just pick a skill.
You: Well, if we reword it to say what I say it says, then it says what I say it says.



> Again that little passage tells you nothing but to know which skill to use when, and not how, or how in depth you need to. the bare minimum for a skill challenge is to make a few die rolls for the skill checks.




If that what you claim it says, then you have not actually read it. And if you have read it, then you are not comprehending what the words actually say.

"It's up to you to think of *ways you can use your skills* to meet the challenges you face."



> Are you trying to deny that a skill challenge _can_ be overcome and passed by JUST making the required number of successful skill checks?




Not trying. Flat out denying, because unlike your claim, mine is actually backed up by the text in the book.



> When posed with a problem like the door to Moria would you use your Diplomacy to pass it?




If you can come up with an acceptable way to use it, I might give it a shot. However, just saying "I use Diplomacy" isn't thinking of a way to use the skill.



> Would you use your Acrobatics?




I doubt backflips would impress the door.



> Would you use Arcana?




Perhaps. Depends on what the description of the action to be performed with Arcana ends up being, and how appropriate it is to the situation.



> The simplest way to *use the skills to meet the challenges you face* is to use the correct one for the skill check.




Which completely ignores the actual text in the book that tells you, flat out and with no ambiguity whatsoever, that it is up to you to think of ways to use the skill. You do know that "ways" in that sentence is a synonym for "method," which is the "how" of using a skill, right?


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## Irda Ranger (Oct 10, 2008)

RFisher said:


> This brings up a different issue. I prefer to run combat in a more continuous rather than discrete manner. e.g. If both sides charge, they meet in the middle rather than the side with initiative covering the whole distance while the other side is frozen until their “turn”.



I would be interested to hear how you handle initiative.

Oh, and by the way, I've fleshed out your injury table at Dragonsfoot in the Classic D&D forum. I'd love to hear what your experiences with it have been.


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## Lacyon (Oct 10, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> I would be interested to hear how you handle initiative.




I have no idea how RFisher handles initiative, but one way of allowing a "meet in the middle" init sequence can be found here.


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## MrMyth (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> While this may allow for emulation of the ruleset in computer medium, it also tends to prevent the free-form abilities of the past generations of the game.




I have to really object to this statement - nothing about the rules is _preventing_ the ability to run free-form roleplaying challenges and scenarios. That is simply outright incorrect. While I disagreed with your previous claim - that the rules _discouraged_ such activity - I could see how you could get that impression. 

But there is absolutely nothing stopping a DM from running a free-form puzzle or social event. 

You ignored my previous post, in which I discussed the fact that the DMG has guidelines for running such free-form puzzles - and, indeed, the default is to have them driven by player skill (as you like it) rather than by character skill. One of the earliest quotes in the PHB indicates the same thing - some non-combat challenges you overcome through your character's skills, some require creative solutions and clever uses of magic, and some require your wits alone. That seems to be telling the players quite directly that skill checks alone don't solve everything! 

Now, let's take a step back from 4E itself. The issue at hand, honestly, is one that has long been debated about by roleplayers. 

Should a character be limited by the capabilities of the player?

We don't require the player of a powerful fighter to be able to swing a sword with skill and strength in real life - should we require the player of a diplomat to genuinely be a smooth talker and skilled negotiator, or can he resolve such skills with a simple roll? 

I've seen players fall on both sides of the fence, and if that is how they prefer to play, than there is no one to say that they are wrong. The rules themselves allow for both - nothing in the rules says that if a player gives a rousing and brilliant speech, you have to force them to roll a die for it to count. Nothing in the rules says that if you confront the players with a devious and intricate puzzle, and one of them instantly sees the solution, you have to force them to roll a die for their character to claim the same knowledge. 

But what you do have is different opinions among players - and the biggest disruptions that arise from this are when a player and a DM view things in a different fashion. 

I've seen a DM who required the player of a rogue to fully detail every action his rogue was taking in any attempt to disarm a trap, and if anything is out of place, the rogue sets off the trap regardless of what he might roll. 

For some, this is great - the challenge is to the player, not the character. The player needs to think up every way the DM might have trapped the doorway and come up with a reasonable solution to avoid setting it off. But for others... well, the player of the rogue _simply is not as knowledgeable as his character_. He doesn't have any experience with traps. He can't predict how the DM has trapped the doorway, or what slight mistep he might make to allow the DM to screw him over. All he knows is that his character is supposed to be good at traps... and yet, because of how the DM is running it, the rogue fails at it every time. 

Either method is a valid one... as long as everyone at the table is happy with it. And on such a fundamental question, there is always going to be disagreement. You yourself gave the example of a puzzle where you wanted to solve it with your personal skills... but another player wanted to solve it with a roll, and when he did so, it detracted from your enjoyment of the game. 

No one was playing incorrectly. You just had different goals, and that specific table was, apparently, not suited to your playstyle. That isn't an issue with the rules - that is an issue with the group you were playing with. 

For myself, I like to combine the two elements. For a social situation, I am likely to run a skill challenge with rolls being the deciding factor (assuming characters choose the right skills to use in the right fashion.) But using skills _well_ will merit bonuses on those checks. If someone makes a Diplomacy check, and gives a brilliant and rousing speech in person, they'll get a +2 bonus to the roll, or more. If someone thinks up a creative skill use, like making a History check to remember some famous deed of the kings, on which they can compliment him to win his favor - then I might give them an extra success if they are able to pull it off. 

On the other hand, for a puzzle or riddle, I'm likely to let player skill be the deciding factor - they need to actually solve the puzzle to proceed. But if players are having difficulty, I will let them make rolls to gain clues and hints - not an outright answer, but some extra bits of info that might steer them in the right direction. 

That's my personal preference, and people I play with seem to largely agree with those methods - and that is the important part. There is no single right way to run such things, and the rules allow for the entire spectrum, from resolving challenges through countless rolls to resolving challenges through free-form roleplaying. 

What matters is that you are using the right method for your group - and that isn't something the rules can decide for you. 

They most certainly don't have any element that actively _prevents_ you from playing the way you desire. Claiming that anything about 4E stands in your way from sitting around the table and roleplaying having dinner with the king, without ever rolling a single die... well, such a claim is simply wrong. Roleplaying is entirely determined by the people at the table, and nothing in the 4E rules changes that.


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> But I suspect howandwhy means something else, because he states "it's impossible to narrate while GM'ing". From my prospective, GM'ing is mostly the act of narration. Player's state intended actions, GM's narrate the results and consequences. So I'm curious how howandwhy's using the word.




In my own opinion I don't see it that way exactly. I will go so far as saying that its impossible to narrate while roleplaying, and as a GM I switch between the two as the situation demands.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 10, 2008)

Cadfan said:


> So what you're saying is, 1e is what Paranoia would be if it didn't realize it was a farce.




Not exactly.

In Paranoia you die even if you get the information you need, because it's above your security clearance.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 10, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> Not to pick on The Little Raven, but I think the fact that people keep referring to page 42 kind of high-lights the problem.  My 4E DMG has 221 pages.  Which means that page 42 is outnumbered 220:1.
> 
> Now quantity isn't everything. But it ain't nothin' neither. We've got 220 pages of "rules for stuff" and 1 page of "ignore all that crap; do what's fun."  Feels like an afterthought to me, not a design principle.




Actually, page 42 is referenced pretty frequently by the DMG as well, especially in the sections on skill challenges and creating your own monsters. The reason I know what everybody means by "page 42" at all is because I go look at it way more than I do any of the other 220 pages.

I'm not going to say "page 42 is the DMG, the rest is commentary" but there's a decent larger section that's just examples of specific applications for the stuff on page 42.

Here's something I've done with the stuff on page 42.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 10, 2008)

tomBitonti said:


> Here is a filtering question: Playing 3E _or_ 4E, if a player with a movement of 30' (or 6 squares) asked to stretch that to 35' (or 7 squares), would you allow it, say, with a -2 to actions until the beginning of their next turn, or would you simply disallow it?
> 
> I understand that the game is about saying _yes_, but I hazard that few would allow this modification.  The rules simply don't allow it, although, the modification does not seem to be completely unreasonable.  (My read of the rules is that you have to run to go at all further than your base movement, which is a big step up from a hustling on a single move.)




Well, the Run action only buys you two more squares of movement in 4E, so moving an additional square? Yep, that's Run, not Walk.



			
				tomBitonti said:
			
		

> Here is another filtering question: You are chasing an airship, and a rope tied to and trailing the ship moves past you.  You ask the GM to be allowed to grab the rope, as a kind of AOO, as it moves past you.  Would you as GM allow that?




Uh, yeah. You can ready any action, and making a grab is a standard action, so you can ready a "grab the rope" action in response to the rope moving into grab range.

You couldn't make a grab as an opportunity attack on the rope, since those are limited to basic melee attacks without special feat bonuses, so you'd have to spend a standard action before the rope moved past you in order to ready the grab. If there were a situation where you only had one round to grab onto the rope before the airship was gone and couldn't ready an action, I'd house-rule that you could retroactively burn an action point to have readied that action.


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## justanobody (Oct 10, 2008)

pemerton said:


> But which of Diplomacy, Acrobatics or Arcana is the correct skill? You (the player) tell me (another player, or the GM).
> 
> Using Diplomacy: "Remember that time we were visiting the Wizards' Guild in Greyhawk? And I was buttering up that Burglomancer specialist? She told me a heap of old magical passwords - I try them all." The player rolls Diplomacy (probably at a hard DC - it's a pretty far-fetched story!) to see if this is true.
> 
> ...




You cannot use diplomacy on a door. You are just going to talk it into opening? Well this door the proper password does open it, but other than that no amount of discussion with the door, trying to anger it, or make it afraid of you will not. I would look at a player trying to use diplomacy on an inanimate object and reply simply: "Are you stupid?"

Acrobatics might be a bit more feasible, but it seems maybe the door was built with intent to prevent things from getting in so easily. We are talking about dwarves that fashioned the mines and everything else within them, do they would not make something so easily broken by something that lives right outside the door. While you could jump about dodging tentacles, there is nothing that says your acrobatics will even cause the tentacle to reach the door, or fly in that direction, assuming it was making a smashing attempt at you int he first place.

Arcana would allow you to read the magic runes to begin with. After that you would really need to solve the riddle. If Arcana provided that the runes and door were magicked by elves, then maybe you would try the elvish word for friend to open the door.

Still you just need to pick the right skill. Obviously arcana is the right choice, or best choice for opening a magical object, and if you don't go into depth of what word to use, you can still just make a few arcana checks and get past the drivel that this riddle is and get inside the door quicker without having to screw with some riddle.

That is why the skill checks were added to the game in this fashion for those that don't want to wait, but takes away from other players who might want to try to solve the riddle. Also as a DM it undermines the effort put into creating such if a player can just skate by with rolling some dice. The only person who could end up happy on all accounts is the one that rolled the dice to beat the DC for the skill checks, if that is how the door was opened. The other players and DM are left with little entertainment. I know a few people that would do just that, because they don't like puzzles or riddles, or non-combat.

That is why you shouldn't challegene the stats to allow those types of players to take something away form others.

Say your group has two heavy combat lovers, one shy person that likes riddles, and 2 people that like chitting and chatting with the locals. You have enough people to attempt the tasks without the dice, so work the group mechanic more than the roll mechanics. Leave out the roll mechanics save for the very last resort, and make it clear int he book, that the roll mechanic is there for the very last resort, but other things should be tried first.

We know this to be true, but a lone person coming into D&D thinking they know what they are doing, only to be given a whole PHB worth of explanations and errata might not be too happy that the book didn't tell them this to begin with and made it appear you only needed to roll dice. It could completely change their outlook at the game and have it be something they may not enjoy after all when not done as presented in the book.

I prefer to err on the side of caution with these things in regards to new players, and even older or lazy ones.

Again, a single player need not be the one to complete the skill challenge so you can challenge the players, and rely on the other people in your group of players more than the dice.



			
				howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> I think Justanobody wants to play an RPG that has RPG elements and is arguing for such. Saying Storytelling game elements are enough to satisfy him won't work.




When combined with the rest of your post to define the storytelling aspect, I think that RPG elements is what he wants also, or he would be playing Vampire LARPs. 

You don't roll dice to get the merchant to bring his prices down using diplomacy skill. I as the DM am the merchant right now, so convince me why I should lower my prices. Haggle with me. Entertain the DM as much as the DM entertains you as a player. Don't make the DM just someone that looks up rules in the books, and rolls for you enemy during combats. Let the DM enjoy the game too.



			
				80% of the thead roughly said:
			
		

> ways you can use your skills



Anyone spouting this off, please try using something else to defend your position. I assert that picking the skill to roll for IS a way to use the skill. Otherwise you are not using the skill, but it is just sitting record with any modifiers on your character sheet. It is a minimalist approach.

Please provide me with several examples from the PHB that tell otherwise how to use your skills without rolling dice to complete a skill challenge. Every passage I read keeps including "skills checks", which is dice rolling. Where does it describe the non-dice rolling method to complete a skill challenge?



MrMyth said:


> I have to really object to this statement - nothing about the rules is _preventing_ the ability to run free-form roleplaying challenges and scenarios. That is simply outright incorrect. While I disagreed with your previous claim - that the rules _discouraged_ such activity - I could see how you could get that impression.
> 
> But there is absolutely nothing stopping a DM from running a free-form puzzle or social event.




It is all about how the system works. Powers target defense. Inanimate objects don't have these will defenses, or whatever to use these powers. There is no equivalent for every power in the form of a ritual. The rules don't even allow for it. Don't you think that maybe Gandalf would have tried blasting the door down if he were a frustrated D&D player's character? He didn't in the stroy because he thought the dwarves to be alive inside, and didn't want to destroy their property. Hindsight is of course 20/20 for both the read and the characters of the story after that point.

It is how you can approach the situation or challenge, with what is provided. The nature of codifying everything in a format where you have a rule for everything with little to no give on certain thing means you have fewer choices to take when trying to do something.

It is like the old debate about using Magic Missle on a door. Some claims it works because it does damage to the target, while others claim being magic in nature their is no physical force to damage the door. Now there are more things like that in 4th, which limits the things you can try in challenges. The more you have defined, the less there is to do freely.

Why couldn't you open a door with a fireball in NWN? Because it wasn't programed as such and building were indestructible objects such as most inanimate objects. You could with a good scripter cut some fire wood form a tree, but the tree will remain you cannot cut it down, climb it, etc. D&D shouldn't have restrictions on what you can try like a computer does, because a computer does not have the capabilities of the human imagination.

That same fireball in PnP could easily blast away a door. This is why you have less when you define more. Tell me how you can use the new fireball outside of combat and for some skill challenge using it with its stat block, and the way powers work?


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## Mallus (Oct 10, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> I will go so far as saying that its impossible to narrate while roleplaying, and as a GM I switch between the two as the situation demands.



I'd call that a switch between 1st person limited and 3rd person omniscient narration... but I suspect, in practical terms, we're talking about the same thing.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 10, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Anyone spouting this off, please try using something else to defend your position.




No. You flat out claim the book doesn't say exactly what that passage says, and then provide zero evidence for that claim (and even go so far as to intentionally reword our evidence to support your claim). It is written proof that our claim is correct and that your claim is wrong.

It would be like me saying "3e requires you to roll for hit points at 1st-level" and then when people quote the 3e PHB where it says that you use maximum HP at 1st-level, I dismiss it because it contradicts me by saying "Use something else for your defense."



> I assert that picking the skill to roll for IS a way to use the skill.




And your assertion is wrong. Saying "I use Nature to succeed." says nothing about the method by which you are using Nature to meet the challenge. All it says is that you have selected a skill, but you have not actually thought about the ways in which the skill is used to meet the challenge.



> Where does it describe the non-dice rolling method to compelte a skill challenge?




It doesn't because skill challenges are specifically designed to use a series of skill checks in order meet a challenge, if the players can present an acceptable method of using the skill for that challenge.

You keep making these claims about only having to pick a skill and roll, but you have provided exactly zero evidence that the books say that. One of the basics of debate is that when you make a claim, you back up that claim. You have not done that, you have merely dismissed the evidence that other people have presented. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but everyone is not entitled to their own facts.


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## MrMyth (Oct 10, 2008)

> It is all about how the system works. Powers target defense. Inanimate objects don't have these will defenses, or whatever to use these powers. There is no equivalent for every power in the form of a ritual. The rules don't even allow for it. Don't you think that maybe Gandalf would have tried blasting the door down if he were a frustrated D&D player's character? He didn't in the stroy because he thought the dwarves to be alive inside, and didn't want to destroy their property. Hindsight is of course 20/20 for both the read and the characters of the story after that point.




The FAQ, I believe, mentions allowing powers to target inanimate objects if the DM feels it is acceptable. Even within the core rules, this is precisely what page 42 is for - letting you handle situations the rules don't directly address! If the DM feels you don't even need to make a check, that is simply works, than the rules are also fine with that - check out the advice on 'saying yes' on page 28 of the DMG. And hey, if you want even more guidance, check out the rules for damaging objects on page 65 of the DMG. 



> It is how you can approach the situation or challenge, with what is provided. The nature of codifying everything in a format where you have a rule for everything with little to no give on certain thing means you have fewer choices to take when trying to do something.




Except 4th Edition _specifically_ has made attempts to step away from "if the rules don't say it, is doesn't work." DMG page 28, page 42 - these are all about letting people try actions not codified in the rules. The PHB doesn't go into as much detail with this, but right from the start says: "You have almost limitless control over what your character can do and say in the game." 

Even in the rather codified skill rules in the PHB, you have the section on "Acrobatic Stunts" which basically tells players they can try almost anything they can think of. 
 


> Why couldn't you open a door with a fireball in NWN? Because it wasn't programed as such and building were indestructible objects such as most inanimate objects. You could with a good scripter cut some fire wood form a tree, but the tree will remain you cannot cut it down, climb it, etc. D&D shouldn't have restrictions on what you can try like a computer does, because a computer does not have the capabilities of the human imagination.




And, interestingly enough, 4E is not a computer game - and is run by a DM who not only _is capable_ of saying "Yes" to non-codified actions, but is even _encouraged_ to by the core rules. 

You are inventing restrictions that just aren't there. 



> That same fireball in PnP could easily blast away a door. This is why you have less when you define more. Tell me how you can use the new fireball outside of combat and for some skill challenge using it with its stat block, and the way powers work?




Option 1: Use the rules for damaging objects on page 65 of the DMG. A wooden door has a 5 Reflex and 20 hp - the wizard makes his standard attack with a fireball and sees if that is enough to take the door out. 

Option 2: Use the rules for breaking down doors on page 64 of the DMG. A wooden door is DC 16 to break down - simply have him make an Intelligence check instead of a Strength check to break it with magic instead of brute force. 

Option 3: Use the guidelines for 'Actions the Rules Don't Cover' on page 42 of the DMG. Choose an appropriate check for the PC to make - which could be an attack roll to blast the door down, an Arcana check to direct the magic properly, or a Dungeoneering check to identify the door's weaknesses. Assign a DC - perhaps you feel blasting a wood door with fire should be an easy task for a level 5 wizard, and so give it a DC of 13 (or 18, if you decided to have him use a skill for it.) Have him make the chosen check against the chosen DC, and if successful, the door is blasted down!

Option 4: Say, "Heck, you're willing to unleash a ball of fire against a simple wooden door? Sure thing - your power blasts it into so much kindling!"

Option 5: Say, "Hmmph. You thought it would be easy, huh? You unleash the spell, little realizing that the damp dungeon air has saturated the wood over the centuries. After your blast, the walls are scorched and a few flames lick feebly at the door, but it stil stands in your path."

Oh, and if this is being done as a skill challenge (say, to escape a castle), if any of the above result in the door being burnt down, I'd award 1 success towards the completion of the skill challenge - or possibly more, depending on the circumstances. 

4E allows for many different approaches, and gives a wide variety of guidelines for resolving actions and rewarding player creativity. Where, precisely, do you feel it actively _restricts_ or _discourages_ any of the above solutions I proposed? And if it does not - what more do you want the system to do - what solution do you think _should_ be an option, but somehow isn't?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 10, 2008)

Mallus said:


> Huh?
> 
> Everything the DM says that describes the fictional setting, characters in that fictional setting, and there actions qualify as _narration_. What definition of _narration_ are you using?



Wow.  Okay, I think you are confused possibly by adhering to what I like to call "The Big Muddle" which inarticulately confuses a number of things including role-playing, acting, game playing, and storytelling.   If you actually look up the definition of Narration you'll see that it means: (here's one way of putting it)







			
				The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 said:
			
		

> The act of telling or relating the particulars of an event; a recital of certain events, usually in chronological order; rehearsal.



From the way you are describing it, it would seem like every manner of speech is a narration, which of course isn't true.  There are many modes of discourse where narration is only one, one which is the relation of events or a series of events.  In an RPG, this only happens if you (or the GM) role-plays a character who then tells a story.  The actual act of role-playing isn't telling a story at all.  No more than you or I are telling stories simply by existing.  



> Related to that, how are people adopting fictional personae and maneuvering them though scenes in a fictional setting not, well, generating _fiction_ ie telling stories?



Well, first, role-players are not adopting fictional personae, they are taking on a hypothetical role.  They do not move through "scenes" in the same way you or I do not move through scenes in real life.  Just because we are taking action hypothetically does not mean we are creating fiction.  Of course, fiction has more than one meaning, so that may be the source of the confusion.  Not all imaginings (thinking) are fiction as fiction relates to story, but they do qualify as fiction under one definition of the word.  A lie is another kind of fiction under this definition, but that doesn't make all lies or falsehoods stories.



> Can you give an example of how a Skill Challenge, or more generic skill usage could qualify as role-playing, under your you definition of RP.



To be clear, this is not my definition of role-playing.  It is the one used by most English speakers outside of the RPG hobby (and by those not confused by the definition of "role-playing" within).

Skill Challenges, as Pemerton correctly shows, are not role-playing challenges, so I cannot show you how their usage could qualify as such.  Skill use can be.  If you go back and read my previous response, you'll see examples of both.



> I love role-playing, but I honestly have no idea how you're defining the act, other than 'far more narrowly than I do'...



If you are caught up on the Indie confusion, you may be including all acting, improvisational or otherwise, with role-playing.  Perhaps all theatre game playing as well.  But, of course, acting is not role-playing or we'd never need two words for it.  This may be one of the major points of confusion in that community.



> Can you give a quick definition?



Here's another dictionary definition:







			
				Random House Unabridged Dictionary 2006 said:
			
		

> role-play·ing        /ˈroʊlˌpleɪɪŋ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rohl-pley-ing] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
> –noun
> 1.	a method of instruction or psychotherapy aimed at changing attitudes and behavior, in which participants act out designated roles relevant to real-life situations.
> 2.	the modifying of a person's behavior to accord with a desired personal image, as to impress others or conform to a particular environment.
> [Origin: 1940–45]



Again, I think you're confusing acting and/or storytelling with role-playing.


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## pemerton (Oct 11, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Actually, the Skill Challenge system is a hybrid of storytelling and game-playing with no role-playing whatsoever.  You might act a little in between, but there is no role-playing going on here.  Instead, this method is a game where one results in having to narrate their game choice selection to fit with the GM's story.  As it is impossible to tell stories or to narrate while role-playing (or GMing for that matter), players stop playing when using this system.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The 4E DMG is clear in its related design, it's just the design is one confusing storytelling games with RPGs.  For an RPG, it is an ill fit.  Bad design.  The works you mention that it is supposedly derivative of are games which mix both RPG gaming with Storytelling.  I would gather quite unknowingly.



I think we've had this conversation before. I tend to believe that if it calls itself a roleplaying game, if it is played by people who call it a roleplaying game and themselves roleplayers, if it is sold in shops and on websites that specialise in selling roleplaying games, then it is a roleplaying game. So HeroWars, The Dying Earth and 4e D&D all count as roleplaying games. (Just as rugby and American football count as football even though the contact between foot and ball is pretty infrequent.)



howandwhy99 said:


> In an RPG with skills, one can open a door without a skill check by turning the knob, hack it down with some attack rolls, make several diplomacy checks to convince voices on the other side to open the door, or even roll to disbelieve the door is there at all.



This is also true in 4e D&D or HeroWars. What is different in those games from (for example) Runequest is the action resolution mechanic.



howandwhy99 said:


> All these myriad of methods involve different amounts of potential checks, target number difficulties, successes, or failures as the role-players are being tested by a real world with real people and objects - not telling a story where the results need only be thematically interesting.



Again, this is true of 4e etc (although I'm not quite sure what you mean by the roleplayers being tested by a real world - the door is not real, it is a fiction, while the roleplayers are real and they are not confronting a door, they are playing a game). But I agree in 4e and similar games the mechanical resolution of the conflict is influenced by metagame notions of "thematic interest".



howandwhy99 said:


> I think Justanobody wants to play an RPG that has RPG elements and is arguing for such.  Saying Storytelling game elements are enough to satisfy him won't work.



I'm not doing any such thing. I'm just refuting his assertion that the bare minimum for playing a skill challenge in 4e is to roll some dice and add up successes and failures - as if the flavour text doesn't matter. The flavour text (i) is a crucial input into the action resolution mechanics, and (ii) is a very significant part of the point of playing the game.



howandwhy99 said:


> Again, telling someone who enjoys D&D to not have anything but combat encounters if they don't like to play a storytelling game is disingenuous.



I didn't say this either. I said that a person who doesn't like non-combat encounters shouldn't use skill challenges in his/her game.

It is also true that someone who does like non-combat encounters, but doesn't like narrativist play, shouldn't use skill challenges either. But this doesn't entail that playing a skill challenge requires nothing but rolling dice.


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## pemerton (Oct 11, 2008)

justanobody said:


> You cannot use diplomacy on a door.



I didn't say that you could. I said that a PC can use diplomacy on a Burglomancer (a species of wizard I coined for the purposes of my post), and that when confronted with a door might remember something that Burglomancer told him/her which would be useful to open the door. In the skill challenge, the player explains how and when the diplomacy was used, as I illustrated in my example.



justanobody said:


> You are just going to talk it into opening? Well this door the proper password does open it, but other than that no amount of discussion with the door, trying to anger it, or make it afraid of you will not. I would look at a player trying to use diplomacy on an inanimate object and reply simply: "Are you stupid?"



The only person in this thread who has suggested using diplomacy on a door is you. I showed how a player might have his/her PC use diplomacy to contribute to a skill challenge involving a door - by retroacively using diplomacy on a person who has the requisite knowledge of how to open the door.



justanobody said:


> Acrobatics might be a bit more feasible, but it seems maybe the door was built with intent to prevent things from getting in so easily.



Hence, in my example, the PC acrobatically dodges the Watcher in the Water, a very strong creature, so that the Watcher's tentacles hit the door.



justanobody said:


> While you could jump about dodging tentacles, there is nothing that says your acrobatics will even cause the tentacle to reach the door, or fly in that direction, assuming it was making a smashing attempt at you int he first place.



I don't understand what you mean by "there is nothing that says your acrobatics will even cause the tentacle to reach the door." To use the language of the PHB, the player has thought of a way that his/her PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge faced. It is now up to the GM to set a difficulty (as per the DMG, and as a number of skill descriptions in the PHB note). The dice roll will tell us whether or not the tentacle actually hits the door. As a mechanical system, that is not terribly different from when a player says "I try to slice the goblin with my sword", the GM determines the AC, and the dice roll then tells us whether or not the PC's attack succeeded.



justanobody said:


> Please provide me with several examples from the PHB that tell otherwise how to use your skills without rolling dice to complete a skill challenge. Every passage I read keeps including "skills checks", which is dice rolling. Where does it describe the non-dice rolling method to complete a skill challenge?



Like combat, it requires dice rolling (well, the DMG canvasses alternatives to dice rolling, but dice rolling is the norm). But it is not just dice rolling, any more than combat is dice rolling. In combat I also have to have my PC move, choose who to attack, choose what power to use to what effect, etc. In a skill challenge I have to choose which skill to use, and the onus is on me as a player to explain what my PC is doing in using that skill.



justanobody said:


> That is why the skill checks were added to the game in this fashion for those that don't want to wait



Is this a claim about the purpose of skill challenges? What is your evidence for it? There is no textual evidence. And the designers have expressly mentioned the influence of indie games (eg HeroWars/Quest) on their design. And those games are not intended to be used for resolving conflicts through a few quick dice rolls. If you don't want non-combat encounters, just skip them.



justanobody said:


> Say your group has two heavy combat lovers, one shy person that likes riddles, and 2 people that like chitting and chatting with the locals. You have enough people to attempt the tasks without the dice, so work the group mechanic more than the roll mechanics. Leave out the roll mechanics save for the very last resort



That's one way to handle differences among players in a gaming group.



justanobody said:


> make it clear int he book, that the roll mechanic is there for the very last resort, but other things should be tried first.



This is not how 4e is written to be played. Like other games with similar conflict-resolution mechanics, these mechanics are not an alternative to the game. They are the game.



justanobody said:


> We know this to be true, but a lone person coming into D&D thinking they know what they are doing, only to be given a whole PHB worth of explanations and errata might not be too happy that the book didn't tell them this to begin with and made it appear you only needed to roll dice.



I don't know it to be true. In fact, I think it's false. Also, you seem to be suggesting that the only alternative to 1st-ed AD&D style play is rolling the dice with no narration. You seem to be disregarding that there is another sort of play (which HowandWhy calls "storytelling") which is what the DMG and PHB actually talk about. 



justanobody said:


> Entertain the DM as much as the DM entertains you as a player. Don't make the DM just someone that looks up rules in the books, and rolls for you enemy during combats. Let the DM enjoy the game too.



The skill challenge mechanics assume that the GM, like the players, will enjoy seeing how the players use their PC's skills to solve the challenge (eg they are looking for things like the burglomancer story).



justanobody said:


> Still you just need to pick the right skill. Obviously arcana is the right choice, or best choice for opening a magical object, and if you don't go into depth of what word to use, you can still just make a few arcana checks and get past the drivel that this riddle is and get inside the door quicker without having to screw with some riddle.



If this is your idea of how to run a skill challenge, I don't think you've really seen what sort of play the system is meant to support (and which the rulebooks describe in the passages I've quoted upthread). Do you regard HeroWars and The Dying Earth in the same dismissive way? It's one thing to say you don't want to play those games. Fair enough. I don't really want to play old-school D&D. But I don't need to mock it by way of misdescription.


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## outsider (Oct 11, 2008)

I haven't read most of this thread, so I don't know if this has been touched on yet or not.

The problem with "challenging the players, not the character's stats" is that it basically boils down to convincing the DM to let you do something.  If there's no stats/rules for something, it all comes down to DM fiat.  Personally, I always found it incredibly annoying wasting time trying to convince my DM that my character should be able to accomplish whatever I was trying to accomplish at the time.  When the rules are clear cut, I know whether or not I can do something, and how likely I am to succeed, meaning I can choose another course of action if my odds don't look good.

The old school feel, to me, was always "challenge the players to persuade you to let them do things", and it was frequently frustrating for me.  Player empowerment is a -very- good thing.


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## justanobody (Oct 11, 2008)

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you mean by "there is nothing that says your acrobatics will even cause the tentacle to reach the door." To use the language of the PHB, the player has thought of a way that his/her PC can use his/her skills to meet the challenge faced. It is now up to the GM to set a difficulty (as per the DMG, and as a number of skill descriptions in the PHB note). The dice roll will tell us whether or not the tentacle actually hits the door. As a mechanical system, that is not terribly different from when a player says "I try to slice the goblin with my sword", the GM determines the AC, and the dice roll then tells us whether or not the PC's attack succeeded.




I can type a lot, but not read a lot sorry, so this is what I have to respond to for now. Maybe more later...

The player can attempt to do things that may including trying to aim the tentacle at the door, but I would make that more than one check or a very high DC meaning the actuality of it happening would be very low possibility. Odds are they can jump aobut good enough, but if they don't push in the right direction at the right moment then the tentacle will not go that direction. It also leads to the other point that the tentacle just might not reach the door. There is nothing saying it is long enough. So even bouncing around the right way and causing the tentacle to go towards the door, may mean that the effort is wasted due to not being able to connect with the door with enough surface contact to do anything by piss off the thing whose tentacle it is.

The more complex the action the less likely the chance of success. Remember called shots from older editions?

I don't recall where, but an sure it was stated that the player need not be the one solving puzzles and the option for rolling dice to get out was a way to not hinder those players from playing that could not perform/act/whatever to do these skill challenges. So certain players don't look dumb to others, or there is unfair portions of the game that only certain types of people can play in....Something along those lines.


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## RFisher (Oct 11, 2008)

Irda Ranger said:


> I would be interested to hear how you handle initiative.




Winning initiative indicates having just a bit of an edge.

Both sides charge. They meet in the middle, but the side with initiative gets to resolve their attacks first.

On the other hand, initiative can get trumped by the situation. e.g. Nim and Rod encounter each other at 30 feet. Nim has a crossbow ready. Rod charges to attack with his axe. Even if Rod won initiative, Nim would get a chance to shoot before Rod can hit with his axe.



> Oh, and by the way, I've fleshed out your injury table at Dragonsfoot in the Classic D&D forum. I'd love to hear what your experiences with it have been.




I have mixed feelings about it.

I think we actually only got one injury off of it the entire campaign. I’m not sure that that PC losing an arm was more fun than if she’d just died. Somehow it just didn’t _feel_ right for B/X D&D to me.

The other opportunity to use the table, I ended up not using it because the damage was coming from banshee shrieks instead of physical attacks. One player who really like the injury table suggested substituting “mental injuries”, but I balked in the moment. I think that could work, though.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 11, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> The actual act of role-playing isn't telling a story at all. *No more than you or I are telling stories simply by existing. *




"[T]he fundamental unit of time isn't a moment, it's a story, and the string that holds time together isn't the mere proximity of moments but our interest in the story."

--David Weinberger in "Small Pieces Loosely Joined", p. 59, paraphrasing Martin Heidegger

I believe the phrase is "checkmate".


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## Korgoth (Oct 11, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> "[T]he fundamental unit of time isn't a moment, it's a story, and the string that holds time together isn't the mere proximity of moments but our interest in the story."
> 
> --David Weinberger in "Small Pieces Loosely Joined", p. 59, paraphrasing Martin Heidegger
> 
> I believe the phrase is "checkmate".




"If we can hit this bullseye all the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!"
- Earth's Greatest Space Hero

Also, if quoting Heidegger ever constituted a "checkmate", Hitler would have won and postmodernism wouldn't be a load of baloney.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 11, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> Also, if quoting Heidegger ever constituted a "checkmate", Hitler would have won and postmodernism wouldn't be a load of baloney.




Yeah, the problem with elegance is that it only works if everybody can see the wires. Anyway.

"Small Pieces Loosely Joined" is a rather seminal work about the sociology of the Internet, and how cultures that have relied on face-to-face interaction for thousands of years are somehow moving fairly seamlessly over to using the Internet, which is ultimately just a bunch of dots on a screen.

Given that everyone here is posting on an Internet message board and not going, say, psychopathic from exposure to such an alien social experience suggests that there's something more to human interaction than just two people standing face to face. (And if you have multiple browsers or multiple tabs open, sweet Jesus son you are in _many places at the same time_. Even though you can only manage serial attention, you can keep up a decent parallel presence because humans are also really good at saving stories for later, as evidenced by, uh, every serial novel ever.)

Heidegger addressed these questions in "Being And Time" as technology began to transform Germany, converting the world into "resources". So as technological progress goes "boink" and suddenly there's this YouTube thing, the stuff he had to say about the nature of existence becomes even more pertinent than it was back in the day.

Hitler quoting him doesn't magically invalidate him, any more than Hitler quoting the German microbiologist Henle Koch magically invalidates his work on developing the germ theory of disease.


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## Delta (Oct 11, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> ...the stuff [Heidegger] had to say about the nature of existence becomes even more pertinent than it was back in the day.




I dare say it's _twice_ as pertinent!

Although 0 x 2 = 0.


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## Korgoth (Oct 11, 2008)

Delta said:


> Although 0 x 2 = 0.




Only in your petit bourgeois patriarchal logocentric eurocentric phallocentric nondialogic imperialist-hegemonic cryptonormative oppressive master narrative.

Whatcha gonna do about that, fascist?


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## Delta (Oct 12, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> Only in your petit bourgeois patriarchal logocentric eurocentric phallocentric nondialogic imperialist-hegemonic cryptonormative oppressive master narrative.
> 
> Whatcha gonna do about that, fascist?




Warning: I actually have a degree in philosophy, with a focus on postmodernism. 

But Heidegger can still go jump in a lake. I have yet to see anything from him other than incoherent snake-oil. (Or, "nonsensical pseudo-propositions", per Rudolf Carnap). He single-handedly gives philosophy a bad name. Like this:

Heidegger: "Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger#Reception_by_analytic_and_Anglo-American_philosophy


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## Korgoth (Oct 12, 2008)

Delta said:


> Warning: I actually have a degree in philosophy, with a focus on postmodernism.
> 
> But Heidegger can still go jump in a lake. I have yet to see anything from him other than incoherent snake-oil. (Or, "nonsensical pseudo-propositions", per Rudolf Carnap). He single-handedly gives philosophy a bad name. Like this:
> 
> ...




1. I have two of them! Working on #3....

2. I was just teasing, throwing up a wall of goofy rhetoric for the fun of it.

3. Heidegger totally needs to jump in a lake.  In fact, I'm not sure how that whole autochthony deal is much different than that other guy's "Blood and Soil" deal when you get down to it (not implying anything about violence, just that the notions seem cut from the same cloth).

No, the whole thing about reality being a tale that is told, facts are all just interpretations, etc. - we already had Protagoras, and Aristotle already shot him down. Next!


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## Delta (Oct 12, 2008)

I'm down wi' dat.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:


> I think we've had this conversation before. I tend to believe that if it calls itself a roleplaying game, if it is played by people who call it a roleplaying game and themselves roleplayers, if it is sold in shops and on websites that specialise in selling roleplaying games, then it is a roleplaying game. So HeroWars, The Dying Earth and 4e D&D all count as roleplaying games. (Just as rugby and American football count as football even though the contact between foot and ball is pretty infrequent.)



I'm not saying 4E isn't a role-playing game.  I'm saying Skill Challenges don't include anything that could be termed role-playing by dictionary definitions.



> This is also true in 4e D&D or HeroWars. What is different in those games from (for example) Runequest is the action resolution mechanic.



Right, you can use skills in 4E to resolve actions.  Just not the Skill Challenge system where storytelling rights are resolved instead.



> Again, this is true of 4e etc (although I'm not quite sure what you mean by the roleplayers being tested by a real world - the door is not real, it is a fiction, while the roleplayers are real and they are not confronting a door, they are playing a game). But I agree in 4e and similar games the mechanical resolution of the conflict is influenced by metagame notions of "thematic interest".



The door is a fiction like an idea is a fiction.  And it is real as much as any idea is real.  It isn't a fiction as one defines fiction in relation to a story.  An imaginary door (or any imaginary object for that matter) in and of itself is not a story.  An imaginary door can be used in the telling of a story, but when using it in role-play this never happens.  As you cannot tell a story through role-play.



> I'm not doing any such thing. I'm just refuting his assertion that the bare minimum for playing a skill challenge in 4e is to roll some dice and add up successes and failures - as if the flavour text doesn't matter. The flavour text (i) is a crucial input into the action resolution mechanics, and (ii) is a very significant part of the point of playing the game.



I think he's saying rightly that the storytelling element could be removed from the Skill Challenge system and the game playing would not change.  What story you tell only becomes important if the DM changes the difficulty checks because of it.  Saying the DMG requires one to tell a story alongside playing the Skill Challenge game/element is technically correct and by the book.  It's only significant if you want to tell stories.  It isn't significant to those wanting to role-play those portion of the game and not tell it as a story.



> I didn't say this either. I said that a person who doesn't like non-combat encounters shouldn't use skill challenges in his/her game.



True.  I take back my assertion.  It is possible Justanobody is using the Skill Challenge system mistakenly thinking he is still doing combat.  Or is using it and is unsatisfied because he does not like _any kind_ of non-combat play.  I suspect differently, but you are right here.



> It is also true that someone who does like non-combat encounters, but doesn't like narrativist play, shouldn't use skill challenges either. But this doesn't entail that playing a skill challenge requires nothing but rolling dice.



I think you're right here too, but please understand this can be confusing to people used to role-playing out of combat.  When role-playing, there are no rules for the players to follow other than: "role-play your character", the dice have nothing to do with what the players do.  Where in a storytelling game the rule is "tell a story", but only when the dice (or some other mechanic) give you authority to do so.  It can be confusing when a single game switches back and forth between these two actions.  Especially one with a history of traditionally just role-playing.


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## RyvenCedrylle (Oct 13, 2008)

Part of the issue, I believe, lies in the way statistics are defined. Strength, Dexterity, Health, Body, whatever – this is never a roleplaying problem. The player’s physical body does not interact with the in-game portcullis, and so we don’t have a problem adjudicating this with a die roll. It DOES become a problem with Wisdom, Intelligence, IQ, Mind, etc as the player’s physical mind IS interacting with the in-game puzzle. It’s easier to play a character dumber, more foolish or less charismatic than yourself. It’s a LOT harder to play one more intelligent, diplomatic or broad-minded than yourself. Sure, that’s why we do this in the first place – to tell stories about people who aren’t us – but at some point, the character’s mental and social capacity must be accounted for mechanically.

I have two ways of dealing with this disconnect. The first is to allow checks to gain hints. The player must solve the puzzle, but his 18 INT character can make a skill check to get a hint, given some period of time. Remember, geniuses don’t always understand everything instantly! The high INT score just means they get there, and is not indicative of the speed in which they get there. Similarly, the high CHA character making a Diplomacy check doesn’t bribe the guard off the bat, but the player may be nudged toward the amount of money needed to actually bribe the guard.

The other option is fact introduction. Here, the player makes a skill check against an abstract difficulty to actually create an in-game fact. Let’s use the old ‘we need troops from the Duke’ example. The PCs are stuck; they have no idea what to say or do to get what they need. At some point, a player says ‘I bring up the safety of the illegitimate son he’s got hidden with a peasant woman out on a frontier town.’ Did I, as a DM, know the duke had an illegitimate son? No, but the player’s bard DID in fact know that regardless of player or DM intent! I set a DC for the probability of that even being true and the player rolls Bardic Knowledge. Bam – instant solution! Both the player’s mind and the character’s statistics were used to solve the problem at hand. Obviously, you need mature players that aren’t going to try to make every NPC into a lich and threaten to blow his cover, but given a good set of players, this is a great way to involve both the player’s imagination and the characters’ mental statistics in a positive and memorable way.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I think he's saying rightly that the storytelling element could be removed from the Skill Challenge system and the game playing would not change.  What story you tell only becomes important if the DM changes the difficulty checks because of it.  Saying the DMG requires one to tell a story alongside playing the Skill Challenge game/element is technically correct and by the book.  It's only significant if you want to tell stories.  It isn't significant to those wanting to role-play those portion of the game and not tell it as a story.



I think we might have different notions of what the "game playing" is in 4e (or other games with "storytelling" aspects).

It's not quite true that the only effect the story has on the mechanical aspects of skill challenge resolution is (as you say) the GM changing DCs because of it. The story also opens up the use of skills.

But more importantly, the interest to the participants in the game turns on the story which is hung upon the mechanical skeleton of the skill challenge - just as the interest to the participants in the game of a combat encounter turns upon the story which is hung upon the mechanical skeleton of the combat mechanics (what makes combat interesting is not just moving numbers around from column A to column B, but the fact that this is my PC fighting for her life against these evil monstrosities!).

If you strip away the story and just roll dice as per the mechanics, I think you'll have a pretty boring experience. But this is not how the game is intended to be played.

True.  I take back my assertion.  It is possible Justanobody is using the Skill Challenge system mistakenly thinking he is still doing combat.  Or is using it and is unsatisfied because he does not like _any kind_ of non-combat play.  I suspect differently, but you are right here.



howandwhy99 said:


> It can be confusing when a single game switches back and forth between these two actions.  Especially one with a history of traditionally just role-playing.



Maybe. 4e's integration of an abstract, narrativist/story-telling skill challenge mechanic, with a detailed combat system that is in some ways abstract but quite different in the way it plays out, is new. But the idea of a game that combines roleplaying in your sense (which the D&D rulebooks call "exploration") with mechanically-structured storytelling is not new. Besides other RPGs that have been around for several years (eg HeroWars, The Dying Earth) there is the example of D&D itself, which has combined roleplaying with mechanically-structured storytelling in combat (at least since 3E, but to a significant extent in AD&D and classic DE&D as well).


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## GlaziusF (Oct 13, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> 1. I have two of them! Working on #3....




Well then, I'm sure you've come across Hume and Mill's writings on induction, and Kuhn's on the nature of the scientific process. 

What is science, but the search for a useful fiction? 

Both those words are important - 'useful' to have some standard of evaluating new ideas - 'fiction' so that if those new ideas prove more useful than the old ones there's no shame in discarding them. That's why Dalton's atomic theory took off and Democritus's died in its cradle - there weren't any problems that Democritus's was particularly good at addressing, but Dalton put his out at a time when chemists were struggling to come up with equations for chemical reactions. *You *try coming up with some when all you have to work with are mass ratios. Hope you like long, seemingly arbitrary, decimals! But with this new atomic theory, not only do you get to toss out your giant unwieldy fractions and replace them with simple integer ratios, but you can actually imagine what's going on inside the reaction!

I don't buy into Heidegger's more animistic theories, but the idea that the human filter on reality, whatever reality is, is story-based is more than just empty theories.

Seriously.

Okay, let's say you've got some graduate mathematics students and you give them a simple logic problem: "Cards should only have vowels on one side if there's an odd number on the other side. Turn over only as many cards as necessary to ensure that this rule holds."

Then you give 'em four cards: one with a C, one with an E, one with an 8, and one with a 9. They should only turn over the E (to make sure there's an odd number) and the 8 (to make sure there's no vowel), but half of them on average tend to honk the problem, either by also turning over the 9 or by flipping it over but not the 8.

Replace the logic problem with a story about postal regulations that ends with "envelopes should only have a pink stamp if they're unsealed" and give them envelopes that match the problem conditions (blue stamp, pink stamp, sealed, unsealed) and almost all of them get it exactly right.

This is Wason's selection task, performed by graduate math students at Berkeley who should know by now the basics of logic. Why does the story work when the logic problem doesn't? Perhaps because people don't actually think logically, even when they say they do?

I'm not going to try and defend any random pomo statement you drop in front of me. Why should I? If you're trying to find examples of a perceived reality that support a story filter and you're the one who came up with the filter in the first place, it's going to be a little too easy for you. Can you say "confirmation bias", kids? I knew you could. Most pomo is just an extension of the principle first articulated by Hume that you can just make up whatever kind of crazy crap you want to inside your head. Rewind time? Sure. Unmelt ice? No problem. Have an angel carry the Earth around the Sun, spinning it like a basketball? Go right ahead. Pomo is just harder for you to sanity check on your own because you're the one who made it up, and it's not exactly easy for outside observers either, unless they discard it all on principle. The guy who spoofed a pomo publication board by railing against the Euclidean tyranny of _e _is a great example of this.

But deconstruction works, too. _Reservoir Dogs _was a deconstruction of film noir. _Watchmen _was one of superhero comics, one so powerful that pretty much anything unreadably edgy in the 1990s was based on it. But along with deconstruction there's reconstruction, consciously telling a story based on the things that you want to go into it. _Astro City_ shot for this after _Watchmen_, and succeeded in award-winning ways.

I'm not trying to say that there's no such thing as objective reality. At the very least it's proven a very convenient assumption for thousands of years and there's no compelling reason to give it up. 

But I am saying that people by default engage the world in terms of stories, and if you're trying to create a fictional world, they'll engage that in the same way.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

RyvenCedrylle;4505562The other option is fact introduction. Here said:
			
		

> I think this is just the sort of thing that 4e's skill challenge mechanics (and also some of it power mechanics) have in mind (eg per my example upthread of using Diplomacy in the Gates of Moria skill challenge).
> 
> But I think this sort of play is (on the whole) disliked by those who favour the more 1st ed AD&D-ish "challenge the players" approach.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The player can attempt to do things that may including trying to aim the tentacle at the door, but I would make that more than one check or a very high DC meaning the actuality of it happening would be very low possibility. Odds are they can jump aobut good enough, but if they don't push in the right direction at the right moment then the tentacle will not go that direction. It also leads to the other point that the tentacle just might not reach the door. There is nothing saying it is long enough. So even bouncing around the right way and causing the tentacle to go towards the door, may mean that the effort is wasted due to not being able to connect with the door with enough surface contact to do anything by piss off the thing whose tentacle it is.
> 
> The more complex the action the less likely the chance of success. Remember called shots from older editions?



Well, if the GM is not prepared to let this sort of thing work, then 4e probably won't play very well. Conversely, if the GM is running the skill challenge in the way the DMG suggests, what answers such questions as "Is the tentacle long enough" or "Does it hit the door" is the player making a successful Acrobatics check (or not) at the specified DC.

I'm reminded of a Purple Worm thread a few weeks ago, in which the OP complained that his/her wizard PC got swallowed by the worm in the first round, and Lost Soul's response was "Why didn't the Rogue dive down the worm's gullet to save the wizard?" - noting that the base DC for an Acrobatic stunt in the PHB is 15. The OP's response was, in effect, that that sort of thing was too gonzo to possibly work.

For skill challenges to work as a mechanic, the GM has to be prepared to set feasible DCs for gonzo (or at least near-gonzo) ideas. Otherwise the idea of incorporating all the PCs into the encounter won't work (eg the ranger with Acrobatics but no Arcana or Thievery will have nothing to contribute to the Moria skill challenge).


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## RyvenCedrylle (Oct 13, 2008)

Pemerton - 

No snark intended here - I guess what I'm not following is, in my example, why do you say the players aren't challenged?  (" ..disliked by those who favour the 'challenge the players' approach")  There was a problem, they invented a solution, roundabout as it is.  Having been a player since AD&D myself (I started very young), this feels 'old school' to me.  Is it because the players made their own success instead of figuring out what the DM wants them to do?  While there is a time and place for puzzles that are basically 'guess what the DM is thinking,' too many can become very railroad very fast, IMHO.


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

@pemerton: The DM is told one thing, the players another. This is not conductive of good design. The players need only beat the numbers. The DM must have those numbers there. The players CAN just ask for the numbers and skip all else to the loss of other players if but one doesn't feel like waiting through some challenge description.

There lies the problem. It is more a group problem, but it is still a problem that the game allows. When one player can disrupt the enjoyment for others by playing the rules, that is the problem.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 13, 2008)

My posts are getting eaten, but here's a quick repeat of my response:







pemerton said:


> I think we might have different notions of what the "game playing" is in 4e (or other games with "storytelling" aspects).
> 
> It's not quite true that the only effect the story has on the mechanical aspects of skill challenge resolution is (as you say) the GM changing DCs because of it. The story also opens up the use of skills.



It is true a DM could include a new skill, based upon a player's story of it, into the pre-designed Skill Challenge. 



> But more importantly, the interest to the participants in the game turns on the story which is hung upon the mechanical skeleton of the skill challenge - just as the interest to the participants in the game of a combat encounter turns upon the story which is hung upon the mechanical skeleton of the combat mechanics (what makes combat interesting is not just moving numbers around from column A to column B, but the fact that this is my PC fighting for her life against these evil monstrosities!).



I think your making an error on what "story" is and missing at least one playstyle preference.  First, you're continually making the error of calling all imagined items as "story".  This is a confusion you can easily resolve by checking the definitional difference between the two.  To put it simply, not every idea == story.  

Secondly, take a non-hobby rpg like the Model U.N. game for an example.  Players can enjoy the debate portion of the game without caring that they are playing as U.N. Representatives or not.  It's the same as someone who is equally pleased with playing D&D combat as he is with playing DDM.  He's there for the combat system, not the fact his figure might mean anything more than that.  The rest is just unimportant.  And that's okay.



> If you strip away the story and just roll dice as per the mechanics, I think you'll have a pretty boring experience. But this is not how the game is intended to be played.



As above, it's still a legitimate way to play the game.  And again, it isn't story that they are interacting with just because the object interacted with is held as an idea vs. an idea represented on a game board.  Story comes about with the retelling of those actions, not the taking of them themselves.  That's the error of confusing all existence with telling a story.  No one talks that way and there are defined modes of discourse explaining why not.



> Maybe. 4e's integration of an abstract, narrativist/story-telling skill challenge mechanic, with a detailed combat system that is in some ways abstract but quite different in the way it plays out, is new. But the idea of a game that combines roleplaying in your sense (which the D&D rulebooks call "exploration") with mechanically-structured storytelling is not new. Besides other RPGs that have been around for several years (eg HeroWars, The Dying Earth) there is the example of D&D itself, which has combined roleplaying with mechanically-structured storytelling in combat (at least since 3E, but to a significant extent in AD&D and classic DE&D as well).



Two things: 
1. Could you please point me to where the 4E books list role-playing as "exploration"?  I imagine it's just another Ron Edwards, Indie community-based confusion on their parts.  I don't think anyone should blame them for that.

2. You make assertions that 3E and pre-d20 D&D both have storytelling instead of role-playing in portions of their combat systems.  Could you provide details?  I'm not recalling any off hand.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The players need only beat the numbers.



I think this has been done to death. The PHB says that you, as a player, must "describe your actions and make checks" (p 259 LHS) and that "It's up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face" (p 179 RHS). That is in no way equivalent to saying that "the players need only beat the numbers". Apart from anything else, a player's description of his/her PC's action, and a player's thoughts about applicable skills, will help determine what the numbers are (per DMG pp 74-75).


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> It is true a DM could include a new skill, based upon a player's story of it, into the pre-designed Skill Challenge.



In fact, as I just posted in my reply to Justanobody, the player's story is relevant to determining the DCs for the skill challenge - and it is a core feature of the skill challenge mechanic that a player can introduce a new skill based on his/her story of what is going on, what has gone on, and what is possible in the gameworld.



howandwhy99 said:


> I think your making an error on what "story" is and missing at least one playstyle preference.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's the same as someone who is equally pleased with playing D&D combat as he is with playing DDM.  He's there for the combat system, not the fact his figure might mean anything more than that.  The rest is just unimportant.  And that's okay.



I don't think I'm ignoring that preference overall (perhaps in my earlier reply to you I may have). I'm just saying that, if you are playing a game with players who have that sort of preference, you are probably better off not including non-combat encounters (including skill challenges) in the game. Skill challenges are (on the whole, making what I hope is a permissible generalisation) for players who are not equally pleased playing D&D combat or DDM.



howandwhy99 said:


> it isn't story that they are interacting with just because the object interacted with is held as an idea vs. an idea represented on a game board.



I agree with this. But I think for many participants in an RPG the interest in combat is the story that hangs upon the mechanical elements. And I think if this is _not_ what an RPGer finds interesting, than the skill challenge mechanics are probably not for her/him.



howandwhy99 said:


> Story comes about with the retelling of those actions, not the taking of them themselves.  That's the error of confusing all existence with telling a story.



I think we've had this conversation in the past also. I agree that not all ideas (what I'm calling "fictions", given that they are not ideas of real things) are stories. But I don't agree that all stories are retellings. Some stories are the original tellings. I think a lot of (by no means all) RPGing is the original telling of a story. For example, when a player says "My guy swings his sword at the orc" that is the first telling of a story about some PC attacking an orc. Not a nobel-prize winning story, but a story nevertheless.

I don't think that wargamers or DDM players are telling stories - that's one typical difference, I think, between a wargame and an RPG. Likewise with respect to Magic the Gathering or Monopoly (which is why I find discussions about RPGing in 4e that begin with references to Monopoly particularly unhelpful).

I know you don't regard a lot of RPGing as storytelling. I've hypothesised above that this is because you limit the notion of "story" to retelling, and exclude the first telling. If this is wrong, then I don't know what your reason is for denying that a lot of RPGing is storytelling. (Is it because you have tighter strictures on what constitutes a story? eg a certain sort of plot, or thematic content, or tightness of authorial intention?)



howandwhy99 said:


> Could you please point me to where the 4E books list role-playing as "exploration"?



This wasn't meant to be a contentious point. The 4e books distinguish three modes of play: exploration, combat encounters and non-combat encounters (PHB pp 9-10). Exploration includes "interacting with the environment" outside the context of an encounter (PHB pp 262-263). So a lot of what many people call roleplaying - eg saying (in character) "I go up to the door, calling out 'Anyone home?'" and, once the GM tells you that a gravelly voice replies "Yes", continuing "I say 'We come in peace'", etc - falls under the notion of exploration in 4e.

Exploration, in this sense, has nothing in common with what Ron Edwards/The Forge call "exploration" (ie the metagame priority of imaging/learning about the fictional world of the game).

However, the PHB goes on to say that non-combat encounters will "focus on skills, utility powers and your own (not your character's) wits", which means that some of what I was trying to get to with "roleplaying" above would also constitute a non-combat encounter (eg the example I gave above is probably on the verge of becoming a non-combat encounter, which may be resolved via skill challenge or the player's wits, depending on the way the table prefers to handle these things).

I hoped that the notion of "roleplaying" in play in the previous few paragraphs was something in the neighbourhood of what you meant by the term (my own usage is a bit broader, including what you are calling storytelling).



howandwhy99 said:


> You make assertions that 3E and pre-d20 D&D both have storytelling instead of role-playing in portions of their combat systems.  Could you provide details?  I'm not recalling any off hand.



Just one example: no version of D&D has had full-fledged hit-location/critical rules of the Rolemaster/Runequest sort, which means that storytelling has always been required to determine what sort of injuries anyone suffers in combat, and (consequently) to describe what the healing of those injuries consists in.

Unlike in a skill challenge, however, that storytelling normally does not feed back into the mechanics (eg it does not open up or close off mechanical options like which skill is useable). I wouldn't be surprised if the game has been played in ways which allow it to feed back in, however - that would fit with the free-formish nature of action resolution in pre-3E D&D.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

RyvenCedrylle said:


> I guess what I'm not following is, in my example, why do you say the players aren't challenged?  (" ..disliked by those who favour the 'challenge the players' approach")
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Is it because the players made their own success instead of figuring out what the DM wants them to do?  While there is a time and place for puzzles that are basically 'guess what the DM is thinking,' too many can become very railroad very fast, IMHO.



I agree that you're challenging the players. That is why in my first post in this thread I identified this sort of thing as one of the ways in which a game can challenge the players, and in my later post I identified "fact introduction" as how I would use Diplomacy in the Moria gate encounter.

But by "challenge the players" approach I meant those who agree with the OP. As far as I can tell, by "challenging the players" they mean not the sort of thing you talk about, but rather a module like White Plume Mountain or The Tomb of Horrors, where (i) there is no overt metagame (whereas in your example of the players getting to make stuff up abouot the gameworld there is a various obvious metagame, as what the players are doing in no way corresponds to what their PCs are doing), and (ii) there are no action resolution mechanics like skill checks (a la Runequest, Rolemaster, Wilderness Survival Guide, 3E etc) or skill challenges (a la 4e, HeroWars/Quest, The Dying Earth etc) - rather, the player describes what his/her PC is doing and the GM adjudicates it.

I agree with you that the sort of play I've just described can become very railroad very fast if the players and GM are not on the same page.

But equally, I have to acknowledge that a lot of posters on this forum don't seem to like the metagamey sort of play which allows players to make skill checks for fact introduction. They only want the skill check to reflect the PC actually doing something in the gameworld (or else, as with the OP, they don't want skill checks at all). And a recent thread on Saying Yes had a lot of outrage about the passage on p 28 of the 4e DMG, which involves a player engaging in fact introduction" with respect to the challenge suffered by, and reward received by, his PC (so slightly more extensive fact introduction than the sort you talked about).

The best actual-play examples of fact introduction in the context of 4e that I've seen on these boards are posted by Lost Soul. A recent one, which involves a skill check just like in your example, is here. But I think what he is describing here is exactly the sort of thing a lot of people seem not to like about 4e.


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## Delta (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Just one example: no version of D&D has had full-fledged hit-location/critical rules of the Rolemaster/Runequest sort, which means that storytelling has always been required to determine what sort of injuries anyone suffers in combat, and (consequently) to describe what the healing of those injuries consists in.




See OD&D Supplement II: Blackmoor.


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:


> I think this has been done to death. The PHB says that you, as a player, must "describe your actions and make checks" (p 259 LHS) and that "It's up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face" (p 179 RHS). That is in no way equivalent to saying that "the players need only beat the numbers". Apart from anything else, a player's description of his/her PC's action, and a player's thoughts about applicable skills, will help determine what the numbers are (per DMG pp 74-75).




Never even noticed that on page 259. Probably because you would expect the skill challenges information to be located in one place with the header Skill Challenges.

PC X: I use my diplomacy skill. ~rolls dice~

The whole point of adding the skill challenges system was not to encourage people to think there way through skill challenges, but to allow people who were not good at that something to do to get past them.

Again I don't think that was even needed. That is what you have other players for. I don't recall who stated it that way, but the "beat the numbers" system was created to allow shy or non-RPG heavy players to do thing they could not before.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> PC X: I use my diplomacy skill.




DM Y: "All right.  Describe your actions."

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> DM Y: "All right.  Describe your actions."
> 
> -Hyp.




PC X: (In his best Charlie Brown adult voice) Wah-wah-wah-wah wah-wah-wah wah wah wah-wah.

Not every player will know how to even begin with diplomacy.

PC X: I talk them into/out of "it".


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The whole point of adding the skill challenges system was not to encourage people to think there way through skill challenges, but to allow people who were not good at that something to do to get past them.



I asked upthread what your evidence for this claim is. I'll ask again now - what is your evidence for this claim?

I think you are wrong. Skill challenges are included to give robust mechanical support for non-combat encounters of the sort found in RPGs like HeroWars, The Dying Earth, etc (roughly what one might call "contemporary" or "indie" RPGs). My evidence for this is (i) the skill challenge mechanics are very similar to the mechanics in these other games, (ii) the text I quoted upthread from the DMG on how to run a skill challenge resembles to a reasonable degree the rules text found in these other games, and (iii) the designers mentioned the influence of indie games on 4e design.

For players who don't like non-combat encounters, the solution is not skill challenges. The solution is *not to include those encounters in one's game*.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

Delta said:


> See OD&D Supplement II: Blackmoor.



I stand corrected. But I think the jist of my reply to Howandwhy still stands.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> PC X: I talk them into/out of "it".



For the (obvious) reasons you gave upthread, this won't work if the challenge is to open the gate of Moria. At that point, the player is going to have to tell some sort of story along the lines that I suggested upthread (ie about someone they once interacted with, who taught them a list of magical passwords).


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:


> For the (obvious) reasons you gave upthread, this won't work if the challenge is to open the gate of Moria. At that point, the player is going to have to tell some sort of story along the lines that I suggested upthread (ie about someone they once interacted with, who taught them a list of magical passwords).




No it definitely would not, but that was in regard to a more recent use of a diplomacy skill on an undefined challenge.

As for proof on the "beat the numbers" concept, that is proving longer to find as it has been near a year worth of stuff happened since the announcement, and I do not recall where it was. Possibly a podcast, that I currently cannot play. (Speaker fire, don't ask.)

I am still looking for that, but you are more than welcome to check the podcasts, while I scour the web for the text.

Maybe someone more organized with developer commentary will come across it before me.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> PC X: I talk them into/out of "it".




Ah!  Now we're getting somewhere.  You're no longer saying "I use Diplomacy"; now you're saying "I attempt to use Diplomacy in order to achieve this result in this fashion."

In similar fashion, consider a bottomless chasm in the middle of a dungeon.

DM: "How do you intend to cross?"
Player: "I use Athletics!"

This is not describing your actions; this is simply naming a skill.

"I use Athletics to try and jump over it!"
"I use Athletics to try and climb along the wall around it."
"It there anywhere I might attach a grappling hook, so I can use Athletics to swing over it on a rope?"

Now we have some - very basic, perhaps, but present nonetheless - descriptions of ways you are using your skill.

There's a difference between "I use Diplomacy!" and "I use Diplomacy to try and talk him into going along with our plan." 

You don't necessarily have to stand on your chair and make an impassioned speech in a French accent.  But you do, at the least, have to say _what action you are undertaking_, not just name a skill.

-Hyp.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:
			
		

> In fact, as I just posted in my reply to Justanobody, the player's story is relevant to determining the DCs for the skill challenge - and it is a core feature of the skill challenge mechanic that a player can introduce a new skill based on his/her story of what is going on, what has gone on, and what is possible in the gameworld.



None of which changes the fact that the system is storytelling and not role-playing.  For instance, my character says "To impress the king my PC goes to a specialty bakery store in the city run by elves from the Golden Forest.  He studies for six months watching how they make the tastiest foods.  Then he spends everything he has on purchasing a chef's kitchen and the supplies to bake a ...." ...on and on until he makes a Diplomacy check (or whatever check the DM says applies) to add +1 success or failure to the Skill Challenge total.  As I said before, this is storytelling, not role-playing.  The player succeeds because of his ability to tell a story, not perform an act.  The entirety of the story above could be totally improvised with no relation to the actual gameworld.



> I don't think I'm ignoring that preference overall (perhaps in my earlier reply to you I may have). I'm just saying that, if you are playing a game with players who have that sort of preference, you are probably better off not including non-combat encounters (including skill challenges) in the game. Skill challenges are (on the whole, making what I hope is a permissible generalisation) for players who are not equally pleased playing D&D combat or DDM.



Lets move on from this.  It would seem storytelling challenges are just as undesirable to such a player as a role-playing challenge.



> I agree with this. But I think for many participants in an RPG the interest in combat is the story that hangs upon the mechanical elements. And I think if this is not what an RPGer finds interesting, than the skill challenge mechanics are probably not for her/him.



I'm not sure why, but you seem to be misreading me here again.  Something imagined, fictive or not, is not a story.  The imagined thing is what the players are interacting with.



> I think we've had this conversation in the past also. I agree that not all ideas (what I'm calling "fictions", given that they are not ideas of real things) are stories. But I don't agree that all stories are retellings. Some stories are the original tellings. I think a lot of (by no means all) RPGing is the original telling of a story. For example, when a player says "My guy swings his sword at the orc" that is the first telling of a story about some PC attacking an orc. Not a nobel-prize winning story, but a story nevertheless.



I think we've come to a cruxes of the issue.  While the player is using narrative language to relate his PC swinging a sword, what is actually going on is the player is directing the GM to have his character swing his carried sword.  As much as the player has a visualized idea of what is happening in the play world within his own mind, it isn't that play world that is the actuality.  It's the one in the DM's head.  That's the imaginary space where the reality is happening (the true ideas exist).  To a storyteller it may seem like a player could make up whatever reality they so wished, but to a role-player (playing in an imagined placed) the external reality isn't possible for them to change.  They can only change it through the playing of a role.  Any other way and it becomes the playing of something else.  As you may recall I called this "God play".  Where several Olympian Gods play a game to hash out what happens and the PCs are fated to follow out their commands (without a free will of their own).



> I don't think that wargamers or DDM players are telling stories - that's one typical difference, I think, between a wargame and an RPG. Likewise with respect to Magic the Gathering or Monopoly (which is why I find discussions about RPGing in 4e that begin with references to Monopoly particularly unhelpful).
> 
> I know you don't regard a lot of RPGing as storytelling. I've hypothesised above that this is because you limit the notion of "story" to retelling, and exclude the first telling. If this is wrong, then I don't know what your reason is for denying that a lot of RPGing is storytelling. (Is it because you have tighter strictures on what constitutes a story? eg a certain sort of plot, or thematic content, or tightness of authorial intention?)



As clarify what I just said above, there is no first telling.  It is a doing.  And just as I, putting on my shoes in the morning or taking the dog for a walk, am not "telling a story", neither is anyone role-playing.  

I will admit a role-player could "act" while they are role-playing.  And that that acting could tell a story through portrayal, the story of the character's personality.  But that's really stretching it to include the game as a storytelling game.  And role-players certainly don't have to act to play an RPG.  Just as most every role-player doesn't act when role-playing non-hobby RPGs.



> This wasn't meant to be a contentious point. The 4e books distinguish three modes of play: exploration, combat encounters and non-combat encounters (PHB pp 9-10). Exploration includes "interacting with the environment" outside the context of an encounter (PHB pp 262-263). So a lot of what many people call roleplaying - eg saying (in character) "I go up to the door, calling out 'Anyone home?'" and, once the GM tells you that a gravelly voice replies "Yes", continuing "I say 'We come in peace'", etc - falls under the notion of exploration in 4e.
> 
> Exploration, in this sense, has nothing in common with what Ron Edwards/The Forge call "exploration" (ie the metagame priority of imaging/learning about the fictional world of the game).
> 
> ...



I wasn't trying to be contentious here, only wondering if you remembered the page number for my own reading. Thanks for that.  And for recounting what they wrote about.

My own definition of role-playing is the one in the dictionaries.  It's the one different from acting (theatre acting specifically).  And none of which qualify as storytelling unless you equate storytelling with existing.



> Just one example: no version of D&D has had full-fledged hit-location/critical rules of the Rolemaster/Runequest sort, which means that storytelling has always been required to determine what sort of injuries anyone suffers in combat, and (consequently) to describe what the healing of those injuries consists in.
> 
> Unlike in a skill challenge, however, that storytelling normally does not feed back into the mechanics (eg it does not open up or close off mechanical options like which skill is useable). I wouldn't be surprised if the game has been played in ways which allow it to feed back in, however - that would fit with the free-formish nature of action resolution in pre-3E D&D.



Like you've said before, we've already had this discussion.  I don't believe a DM/Referee ever gets to tell a story.  He merely relates back to those playing what is happening in the world.  (I'll get back to that point in a second).  As we've gone over before, the referee isn't a tyrant who makes can just say what goes.  If that were the case, RPGs would never have had rules in the first place.  

You point to an example where a referee needs to make a judgment call that lies outside of the rules.  That judgment call extrapolates from what the world actually is the rules are modeling.  And it carries over to the future when such a situation comes up again.  In the specific example you cite it would seem there is no clear designation of where the PC hit.  Honestly?  The Referee could say "it doesn't matter" and play could continue without concern.  But what happens if it does matter?  When it does matter is the only time rules are needed.  Personally, I feel a Player asking is what changes the focus of the game and makes things matter, so this is important to me.  In this case the DM (or the whole group if they wish to participate) makes a new house rule that unbiasedly determines where hits landed on a body.  If greater detailed healing is also desired by the group because of this, more house rules can be made.  The rules are there to remove the Referees "just saying what happens" from the game.  It's true, simulations are imperfect, but thankfully ideas exist beyond such limitations.  And can allow one to model what they know is real.

You might question this and say "but isn't he creating the world at some point even if he is using the player's input?"  For instance, what kind of healing does an elf need if his body is pierced?  Who gets to say what it is?  In my view, making up world content isn't telling a story.  It would be like saying the person who made up a boardgame or the rules of a sport was telling a story and every time house rules or rule changes were made to those the story told under them was being changed.  

Coming back to why a referee relating back to the player what is happening in the world isn't a story.  The relation is certainly using narrative speech, but it just isn't fictional narrative.  Just as you said Monopoly isn't a storytelling game, playing Monopoly with a group of blind people doesn't turn it into a "collaborative storytelling game" (or whatever they're calling RPGs currently).  Having to tell blind players what they rolled, where there pieced moved to, having them relate to you what they do - buy, pay, pick a card, etc. - none of this is collaborative storytelling.  Even though it occasionally uses narrative discourse, it isn't what grammarians term "fictional narrative".  To say otherwise would be like saying nearly every boardgame (or cardgame, etc.) is a storytelling game when played with the blind, but not with those who can see.  It doesn't make sense because the ideas "played with" are actual.  In boardgames the ideas are represented on a board, on cards, with dice.  In an RPG they are represented with maps, numerical descriptors, dice, and plenty more. 

If a DM could just _say_ what happened in the world, all of this stuff would be totally unnecessary.  As it's what actually models a reality vs. telling a story, it makes success in that world real.  Real in the same way as telling a Monopoly winner or a Magic: the Gathering winner that they tell a good story may be taken as an insult.  A RPG player doesn't win or lose because it is narratively interesting.  They win or lose because they _actually_ win or lose in the modeled world.  That's why role-playing is used in educational environments to teach behavior the world round and storytelling isn't.  It's a completely different kind of satisfaction from telling a good story.


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## pemerton (Oct 13, 2008)

HowandWhy, I don't have time for a long reply, but I think we have different views on the metaphysics of fictional worlds. I agree that not all uses of narrative grammar are storytelling in my sense (your blind boardgamers examples is a good one for making this point in this context). But I can't agree that the imagined gameworld of an RPG is something real, in which events are occurring, and the GM is simply describing those events (perhaps using narrative grammatical forms).

If I had to identify one crucial difference between blind boardgaming and RPGing, in this respect, it would be that the events in the real world (dice rolls, position of tokens on the board, etc) more-or-less mechanically determine the state of things with respect to the boardgame. But this is not true for the RPG gameworld. To get full determinism there you would have to appeal to the ingame causal laws of the gameworld - and these are fictions, many of which are unknown to anyone (quite unlike the rules of Monopoly).


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 13, 2008)

pemerton said:


> HowandWhy, I don't have time for a long reply, but I think we have different views on the metaphysics of fictional worlds. I agree that not all uses of narrative grammar are storytelling in my sense (your blind boardgamers examples is a good one for making this point in this context). But I can't agree that the imagined gameworld of an RPG is something real, in which events are occurring, and the GM is simply describing those events (perhaps using narrative grammatical forms).
> 
> If I had to identify one crucial difference between blind boardgaming and RPGing, in this respect, it would be that the events in the real world (dice rolls, position of tokens on the board, etc) more-or-less mechanically determine the state of things with respect to the boardgame. But this is not true for the RPG gameworld. To get full determinism there you would have to appeal to the ingame causal laws of the gameworld - and these are fictions, many of which are unknown to anyone (quite unlike the rules of Monopoly).




No problem.  It's good talking to you.  

My own opinion would be almost all games are attempting to simulate some idea beyond just their own interesting rule interactions.  In most cases game designers appear to be attempting to simulate real world interactions.  That's not inclusive to all games, of course.  But Monopoly certainly seems to be trying to simulate a place for players to be hotel tycoons.

And a Referee who acts arbitrarily instead of relating the game elements/world isn't a good Referee in my book.  That's the one who tosses the rules and does whatever he or she wants.  I'd say any time a Ref leaves the realm of agreed upon rules a house rule should be made and used (one that can be open for discussion with players) or they've overstepped their bounds.  

Nor do I consider building a game world (i.e. designing additional game content) telling a story.  It's just supplemental game materials, like expansion packs for boardgames.  This is why calling game content like modules or settings "story" just comes off as so wrong in my view.

I will agree this is a different perspective then what most RPGers in 2008 have come to hold.


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## Umbran (Oct 13, 2008)

I think folks discussing Skill Challenges, and trying to get at the original intent of the system, ought to look at the intro to the WotC Excerpts article by Bill Slavicsek.  Having room for role play is part of the intent.

I also think Keith Baker's got a relevant LJ blog entry.  Specifically: 

_"*Rewarding Flavor and Creativity*. In running a challenge, I'm not looking for the PC to say "I'm using Diplomacy." I want him to roleplay the scene. How's he making his case? Is he drawing on anything specifically relevant to his target? While I like this for color, it's called out as something that SHOULD be rewarded. In providing advice to the DM, page 74 of the DMG specifically notes that you can choose to reward creative action (or penalize the opposite) by applying a -2 to +2 modifier to the check. In some cases, I've specifically set up encounters where the player can get an even higher bonus if he brings up the right thing - but more on that later."_

Which is not to say you must use it a particular way, but that such use is pretty darned easy to work in.

I think far too much attention is being given to what the system "is", instead of what you can do with the system.  I've seen more than one admission that the Skill Challenge system is written a bit... stiffly, so that folks read it too strictly.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 13, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> None of which changes the fact that the system is storytelling and not role-playing.  For instance, my character says "To impress the king my PC goes to a specialty bakery store in the city run by elves from the Golden Forest.  He studies for six months watching how they make the tastiest foods.  Then he spends everything he has on purchasing a chef's kitchen and the supplies to bake a ...." ...on and on until he makes a Diplomacy check (or whatever check the DM says applies) to add +1 success or failure to the Skill Challenge total.  As I said before, this is storytelling, not role-playing.  The player succeeds because of his ability to tell a story, not perform an act.  The entirety of the story above could be totally improvised with no relation to the actual gameworld.




Because the DM isn't allowed to object to you doing things that contradict him, or for example taking SIX FREAKING MONTHS to make a single check in a skill challenge?

I call shenanigans.


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Ah!  Now we're getting somewhere.  You're no longer saying "I use Diplomacy"; now you're saying "I attempt to use Diplomacy in order to achieve this result in this fashion."
> 
> In similar fashion, consider a bottomless chasm in the middle of a dungeon.
> 
> ...




The thing is I wouldn't want to just roll the dice to get through it, so cannot grasp what someone who would would say. I would go into much more depth personally, but am sure that people will exist and get pissed when they are asked for more than to just roll the dice, because they may not like that part of the game. I know one personally that just wants to do things that take dice rolls, and sure he would take the easiest route.

Do you penalize those players by forcing them into trying something they don't feel comfortable with?

I would prefer them to not just roll the dice through and have other players help solve the answer, but given the option this person would just roll the dice and be done with it if given the chance so that others wouldn't even have a chance to solve it otherwise.



			
				AD&D DMG said:
			
		

> *1. Did the player actively get involved in the game?* A player who does nothing but tell one funny joke during the course of the game isn't really participating. *The DM should be careful, however, not to penalize players who are naturally shy. Involvement should be measured against a player's personality.*


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## Mallus (Oct 13, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> As I said before, this is storytelling, not role-playing.  The player succeeds because of his ability to tell a story, not perform an act.



How... I'm not sure I see the point in trying to draw a distinction between these two things (a distinction that you admit is lost on a lot of people). Both are role-playing, in the context of an RPG. Performing an act in a fictional space is the same as telling a story about the performance of that act. 

(Ouch, now my head hurts) 



> The entirety of the story above could be totally improvised with no relation to the actual gameworld.



If the DM and player agree that the event _happens_, then it de facto relates to the gameworld. "Relation to the gameworld" established through participant consent. 



> Something imagined, fictive or not, is not a story



Which doesn't change the fact that the events occurring inside the shared imaginative space of a role-playing game are best understood as being story-like ie, the actions of fictional, person-like characters in an imaginary, life-life place. 



> That's the imaginary space where the reality is happening (the true ideas exist).  To a storyteller it may seem like a player could make up whatever reality they so wished, but to a role-player (playing in an imagined placed) the external reality isn't possible for them to change.



Seeing as the 'external reality' in question is a fictional construct being sustained by mutual consent and is often, in practical situations, rather fluid, I'd say this isn't a particularly helpful assertion. 



> They can only change it through the playing of a role.



Unless, of course, the DM says otherwise. Are you really saying that anytime a DM gives (limited, localized) narrative rights to a player, it ceases to be a role-playing game? 



> Any other way and it becomes the playing of something else.



OK, that's exactly what you're saying. Where's the threshold? If the DM allows a player to shop for items without actually playing out the purchases, essentially letting the player narrate the event, does the game stop being an RPG? 



> And just as I, putting on my shoes in the morning or taking the dog for a walk, am not "telling a story", neither is anyone role-playing.



If you actually go for the walk, you're existing. If, instead, you create a _representation_ of the dog-walk, say in conversation or text, then your storytelling. Extending this, seeing as gamers are never actually _doing_ the things they're characters are doing, they are never _existing_ as their characters, and can be said, in the interest of brevity, to be telling stories about them. 



> And none of which qualify as storytelling unless you equate storytelling with existing.



If the existence(s) in question are fictional, then yes, I equate trafficking in them w/storytelling. 



> I don't believe a DM/Referee ever gets to tell a story.  He merely relates back to those playing what is happening in the world.



And how is that not storytelling, using the plainest, most theory-free definition of the word? 



> Just as you said Monopoly isn't a storytelling game, playing Monopoly with a group of blind people doesn't turn it into a "collaborative storytelling game" (or whatever they're calling RPGs currently).  Having to tell blind players what they rolled, where there pieced moved to, having them relate to you what they do - buy, pay, pick a card, etc. - none of this is collaborative storytelling.



Monopoly isn't a storytelling game because the action in Monopoly isn't sufficiently story-like. RPG's are story-like because they deal with person-like characters acting in life-like imaginary spaces. 

Now if these blind players were playing D&D, it most certainly would be a storytelling game. 



> That's why role-playing is used in educational environments to teach behavior the world round and storytelling isn't.



And that kind of role-playing isn't what's going on in most D&D campaigns (well, at least in any of the ones I've seen, read or heard of).


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## Delta (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Originally Posted by AD&D DMG




In your citation, you should include edition and page number. Most people interpret "AD&D" by itself as meaning 1E... and I'm pretty certain that quote is not 1E. See my sig for an example.


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## justanobody (Oct 13, 2008)

Delta said:


> In your citation, you should include edition and page number. Most people interpret "AD&D" by itself as meaning 1E... and I'm pretty certain that quote is not 1E. See my sig for an example.




AD&D Core Rules 2.0 Expansion WEBHelp folder.

How is that? I can go dig the book out and find the page if really needed after food has been depleted. The keyboard is crumb protected, but the book and closet is not.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 13, 2008)

justanobody said:


> The thing is I wouldn't want to just roll the dice to get through it, so cannot grasp what someone who would would say. I would go into much more depth personally, but am sure that people will exist and get pissed when they are asked for more than to just roll the dice, because they may not like that part of the game. I know one personally that just wants to do things that take dice rolls, and sure he would take the easiest route.
> 
> Do you penalize those players by forcing them into trying something they don't feel comfortable with?




I would personally say more than "I use Diplomacy to talk him around to my way of thinking"... but from an uncomfortable player, I'd probably accept it.  I wouldn't accept "I use Diplomacy".  I'd need to know what it is he's using Diplomacy to do.



> Involvement should be measured against a player's personality.




Sure.  And I see a standoffish, third-person, "My guy does X - I rolled 13" to be a bare minimum involvement in the game.  I don't need them to describe their argument, points, and counterpoints in loving detail.  But "I rolled 13" by itself is meaningless; it needs to be a 13 _in an attempt to achieve X_ in the game world.

X is important.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 14, 2008)

Sadly not all players will want to do that, and 4th allows for those other players to enjoy it. It is a roleplaying game, than CAN leave OUT as much roleplaying as possible.

Hopes are that those people will be drawn to 4th because they don't have to try to break through those boundries and can play without them even existing to allow more people to play. That is my understanding, even if I don't fully agree with the methods in doing so.

So while we may prefer people to do more than roll, that is all they really need to do, and a system is in place that spells it out unlike ever before. A boon for some and a bane for others it seems.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> So while we may prefer people to do more than roll, that is all they really need to do, and a system is in place that spells it out unlike ever before.




Except that what the system _actually_ spells out is "You need to do more than just roll".  4E states that.  In all those places everyone has been pointing out to you for several pages now.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 14, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Except that what the system _actually_ spells out is "You need to do more than just roll".  4E states that.  In all those places everyone has been pointing out to you for several pages now.
> 
> -Hyp.




DMG page 42....paraphrased....



> If the players find something un-fun, then don't force them to do it as written, and do what would be more fun for them.




Ergo: Players that only want to roll a series of skill checks with little else to pass the challenge should be allowed to.

There ARE people out there that do not like the heavy/any "RP" parts of an RPG including but not limited to D&D in its various incarnations.


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## RFisher (Oct 14, 2008)

Well, for what it is worth, when I _do_ use the typical skill-based system, I don’t care for dropping hints based on rolls or giving “roleplaying” modifiers to die rolls.

I expect the player to roleplay the setup. Good or bad—I don’t care. Awkward third-person narration just as acceptable as brilliant, eloquent in-character exchanges.

Then the dice are rolled. The awkward third-person narrative may succeed as if eloquent. The eloquent in-character exchange may fail as if awkward.

Then we roleplay the outcome.

I guess if the name of the game is going to be “challenge the character”, perhaps I go whole hog. (^_^)


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> DMG page 42....paraphrased....
> 
> If the players find something un-fun, then don't force them to do it as written, and do what would be more fun for them.




Isn't that good advice, though?

How can converting _un-fun_ to _fun_ ever be a bad thing for a game?

Now, I don't understand why someone would find 'just rolling a die' to actually be fun, and I think that if you have multiple players at the table with wildly divergent and contradictory ideas of what is fun, you'll be hard-pressed to satisfy everyone.

But do you object to the principle of "Do what will make people have fun, even if it means changing the rules"?  (In this instance, changing the rule that you can't just roll the die in a skill challenge, since the 4E rules do in fact require you to do more than just roll the die in a skill challenge _unless_ the DM changes them.)

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 14, 2008)

No, I am just saying that that allows for someone who doesn't like puzzles and such to just roll their way past them without having to fuss with anything more that which skill to roll for.

As a DM, that is why I would prefer to challenge the players because then you really have nothing to solely rely on on the character sheet for someone to just...

PC X: I passed my skill checks so we beat this challenge and can get on to the next thing.

While the DM is still talking, or the other players are trying to figure out this puzzle of sorts in the challenge.

It all boils back down to the idea that because some don't want to is good to include something to allow them to not have to and roll if that is all they want for these skill challenges, but they should rely on the other players during challenges just as they do during combats and such.

The DM is tasked with making sure the challenges fit both the story and the players enjoyment, so there is likely something that can work for both at the same time, and enough of them to accommodate all the players to have fun without resorting to the minimalist rolling method.

Everyone can get the same spotlight over time with challenges. even the shy person may be sparked interest in some kind of challenge and not need the rolls.

So when challenging the stats, why care if someone wants to just roll the checks with little extra effort?

If you want to not have to worry about the minimalistic method, then challenge the players in a way that they can succeed as a group using each of their strengths.

Again, as a player I would prefer to be challenged rather than Fumble the thief be challenged. Fumble has enough problems of his own I have to deal with than to worry about the numbers on his sheet all the time.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> No, I am just saying that that allows for someone who doesn't like puzzles and such to just roll their way past them without having to fuss with anything more that which skill to roll for.




Sure.  And if someone thinks that missing with his attacks is un-fun, then p42 means the DM is obliged to declare that he hits all the time.

If someone thinks that using his dailies every round is fun, but not using his dailies every round is not, p42 gives the DM no option but to accommodate him.

Sure, the PHB says that you can only use your dailies once per day, but it doesn't really mean it, because of p42.



> As a DM, that is why I would prefer to challenge the players because then you really have nothing to solely rely on on the character sheet for someone to just...
> 
> PC X: I passed my skill checks so we beat this challenge and can get on to the next thing.




Right, because anything else would be un-fun, so the DM _has _to allow it.



> So when challenging the stats, why care if someone wants to just roll the checks with little extra effort?
> 
> If you want to not have to worry about the minimalistic method, then challenge the players in a way that they can succeed as a group using each of their strengths.




What do you do if you want to challenge the players, but someone doesn't want to go to the effort of using his strengths?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 14, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Sure.  And if someone thinks that missing with his attacks is un-fun, then p42 means the DM is obliged to declare that he hits all the time.




Now you are just being silly.

You know good and well that the difference in your examples is that 42 is used to circumvent the rules, while mine with skill challenges was to use the rules, and allow varying types of players to have greater access tot he game and enjoy more parts of it rather than trying to plug 42 in as a cheat code for God mode.

Character name: IDDQD


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Now you are just being silly.
> 
> You know good and well that the difference in your examples is that 42 is used to circumvent the rules, while mine with skill challenges was to use the rules...




No, your example with skill challenges was to circumvent the rule that the player must describe how he is using his skill!

The rule says you must describe the ways in which you use your skill.

You're saying that due to p42, a player might have less un-fun if he doesn't describe the ways in which he uses his skill, _despite the rule requiring him to describe the ways in which he uses his skill_.

Which is fine... until you suggest that p42 means the 4E rules don't require you to describe the ways in which you use your skill.  It doesn't.  It means the DM might choose to - as you put it - circumvent that rule.

-Hyp.


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## pemerton (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> If you want to not have to worry about the minimalistic method, then challenge the players in a way that they can succeed as a group using each of their strengths.



If by "minimalistic method" you mean "skill challenge mechanics" then I don't think "minimalistic method" is a very good label.

Your posts suggest that you don't really have a sense of how skill challenges are intended to play. But it may be that you do have that sense, but are taking a different line in your posts for some sorts of "devil's advocate" reason.

Putting to one side HowandWhy99's views about the difference between roleplaying and storytelling, skill challenges are not an alternative to roleplaying. They are a particular sort of mechanical device for supporting roleplaying and player participation in the game. They have their origins in the design of various indie games such as HeroWars. These are not "minimalist" games in which players just roll dice - they are games that most people would regard as the antithesis to hack-and-slash. Skill challenges live in the same design space - not as an alternative to roleplaying, but as a mechanic to support a particular sort of roleplaying, in which the player exercises a greater degree of narrative control than has been typical in earlier editions of D&D (see eg the discussion upthread of "fact introduction").


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

pemerton said:


> If by "minimalistic method" you mean "skill challenge mechanics" then I don't think "minimalistic method" is a very good label.




By 'minimalistic method', he means "I rolled a 13".

Which _isn't_ the skill challenge mechanics, unless the DM has chosen to change the rules.  Which he, theoretically, might do if someone decided that the rules were un-fun, and that doing something that isn't the rules would be more fun.

-Hyp.


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## MrMyth (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Again, as a player I would prefer to be challenged rather than Fumble the thief be challenged. Fumble has enough problems of his own I have to deal with than to worry about the numbers on his sheet all the time.




I'm really confused about what point you are trying to make, justanobody.

Are you simply stating that you, personally, enjoy a game that focuses more on player skill than character skill? I'm sure no one objects to that feeling - you are free to enjoy the game in whatever fashion you wish! No one wants to take away your right to have a preference as to how the games you play in are run. 

But you seem, throughout this thread, to have been saying that 4E restricts that style of gaming - which it doesn't. You've given examples of how your enjoyment has been limited due to how the DM handled a puzzle, letting another player simply roll their way through it. Now, even aside from the fact that the DM was running it in a fashion that is _not_ the default in 4E, why in the world is that an issue with the system? Isn't that a concern for your table, the DM, and the other players? If the DM is running a different style of game than you prefer, he is the one to talk about it with. 

No one is going to object to the argument that 4E - or any game system - should support a wide range of styles of Roleplaying, from as dice-driven as possible to entirely free-form. But the very title of this thread indicates you feel it should only support only style of play. If that isn't the case - if you are ok with others playing as they wish, and leaving you free to do the same - then nothing more needs to be said. 

And if the goal of the thread was simply to start a discussion on these elements, and which different people prefer, than that is all well and good - though I doubt you'll find any consensus, since gamers are a rather diverse bunch, well known for having countless opinions on pretty much every single facet of the rules.

Edit: Just to clarify - I'm not trying to attack you here. I simply am genuinely confused about what you are trying to say, and looking for a bit of a summary of what you are arguing for.


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## justanobody (Oct 14, 2008)

Mostly you are wrong in a lot that I have said, but others will just twist words to their own means, so whatever.

Simply put.
-The rolling only for the proper skill does allow for more players to play the game. I apluad the approach.

-I prefer to challenge the players not the stats, and the players can work together rather than rely on a single player rolling dice to have to succeed.

-There is never a challenge that should be solely for a single player that does not offer them a way they are comfortable playing to overcome. This includes letting other players help, even if the challenge if towards the players more than the stats, or not.

Please note that PrCs were a DMs tool. This did not always work out that way becoming customary things for players to use, and likewise the skill challenges will not always work out as written in the books. People must be able to think ahead at what certain parts of the game can mean in certain situation if only hypothetical.

So read into what I said however you wish. I am done explaining it, and will only laugh when I see people come across the things I have ben trying to explain that will cause them problems.


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## Fifth Element (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> So read into what I said however you wish. I am done explaining it, and will only laugh when I see people come across the things I have ben trying to explain that will cause them problems.



Really, your points may be understood by a larger portion of ENWorld if you could reduce the condescension and dismissiveness in your posts. Just some friendly advice.


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## pemerton (Oct 14, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I prefer to challenge the players not the stats.



I like this as well. But there is not just one way to do this. When it comes to puzzles, I know of at least five:

Method 1:

The GM presents a puzzle to the players as something that their PCs have, in game, stumbled across. The players sit down and try to solve it. If they do so, they declare that their PCs have come across the solution in the gameworld. The game then progresses with the PCs having solved the puzzle. And the players were challenged - as a group they had to solve a puzzle.

Method 2:

Similar to method 1, except that each player takes the part of his/her PC during the course of solving the puzzle. This means that the clever player, who is playing an unclever fighter, does not contribute any more to the group's endeavours at solving the puzzle than his/her fighter would be able to contribute. Conversely, the less clever player, who is playing the 20 Int wizard, is not able to contribute as much as one would expect his/her PC to be able to, because that player is actually not as clever as the PC. If the group solves the puzzle, the game then progresses. And the players were challenged - as a group they had to solve a puzzle, and furthermore they had to do that within certain constraints on each member's contribution to the solution imposed by his/her PC's stats.

Method 3:

As method 2, except that the GM takes pity on the player of the wizard and allows him/her to roll Int checks to be given some clues. This lessens slightly the challenge for that player, but does not eliminate it. This method probably produces the highest degree of correlation between the challenge faced by the players and the ingame challenge faced by the PCs.

Method 4:

As method 1, but the player of the 20 Int wizard is also allowed to make Int checks as per method 3. This lessens the challenge for all the players, but does not eliminate it.

Method 5:

The GM presents a puzzle to the players as something that their PCs have, in game, stumbled across. The puzzle is then resolved as a skill challenge, with each player explaining what contribution his/her PC is making to the solution of the puzzle, and on the basis of that explanation making a skill check at a DC determined by the GM. (As a certain number of successes is achieved the GM may choose to give the players further information/clues about the puzzle which help them in deciding what further skill checks to make.) If the party succeeds at the skill challenge, then the PCs have solved the puzzle in the gameworld. The players were challenged, because they had to explain and narratively justify the skill checks that they made. This method probably produces the least degree of correlation between the challenge faced by the players and the ingame challenge faced by the PCs.


The 4e DMG canvasses the use of methods 1, 4 and 5 (page 81, the sidebar on that page, and page 84 respectively).

Personally, I can enjoy either method 1 or method 5. I'm less of a fan of either method 2 or method 3 (but if I found myself playing in a group that was inclined towards method 2 I would at least try and nudge them towards method 3). But I assume that there are some players out there who would strongly prefer methods 2 or 3 to method 1, because method 1 involves an interruption to the roleplaying by the players of their PCs. So if all I knew of a play group was that they like to challenge the players and not the stats, I wouldn't know whether or not I would enjoy playing with that group; and likewise for those players who prefer methods 2 and 3.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 14, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> Because the DM isn't allowed to object to you doing things that contradict him, or for example taking SIX FREAKING MONTHS to make a single check in a skill challenge?
> 
> I call shenanigans.



No, the DM can certainly "Say NO" to the players, if he decides to.  Some will "Say YES, but..." and make the players roll.  Either way the player is not role-playing his character, but telling a story.  

On the other hand, a DM who would say, "you can't dictate reality, you can only do what your character can do" (i.e. role-play) would never use the Skill Challenge system in the first place.  As it requires one to stop role-playing and play the role of a God/"author" instead.

EDIT: and if you read my previous post, you'll see I said the PC was referring to areas of the world the DM had never mentioned before - not contradicting what came before.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 14, 2008)

Mallus said:


> How... I'm not sure I see the point in trying to draw a distinction between these two things (a distinction that you admit is lost on a lot of people). Both are role-playing, in the context of an RPG. Performing an act in a fictional space is the same as telling a story about the performance of that act.
> 
> (Ouch, now my head hurts)



The distinction between role-playing and storytelling is well known outside the hobby.  Inside the hobby there are several people using an incorrect theory that is confusing them into believing the two are the same.  Storytelling isn't role-playing and you can't do both at the same time.  It's functionally impossible.  

To be clear, doing something is not necessarily equivalent to portraying something.  It's the difference between normal existence and theatre acting.  In your response, I believe you are confusing 1. action occurring in a modeled space with 2. collaborative storytelling.  Just because the action is being modeled on a gameboard you cannot see does not make unreal.  Yes, there is narrative discourse going on.  Yes, elements of it are imagined, are ideas, which fall under one definition of "fiction".  But no, there is no "fictional narration" going on.

I get this tweaks people's brains, but for decades most players understood this quite intuitively.  In the same way that the winners of 4E's combat system do not win because they "tell a better story", role-playing is the real success of playing a role in an actual reality.  That the dice rolling and rule following created a model of reality, which is attempting to recreate (emulate?) an imagined idea (the world), it does not mean the model isn't real because the emulated fiction isn't real.  This true in the same way playing a boardgame is real even though its' rules are trying to model a fictive reality.  

I mean, really, if it was all just a bunch of collaborative storytelling, no dice rolls or numerical descriptions would ever be needed.  The quality of the story would rule all.




> If the DM and player agree that the event _happens_, then it de facto relates to the gameworld. "Relation to the gameworld" established through participant consent.



Participant consent does not mean the action is role-playing.  In Skill Challenges, the players are taking authority over the reality of the world, not their merely their characters/roles.  In other words, they are telling a story and not role-playing their characters.  To take it one step farther, playing God is not role-playing or we will quickly find ourselves in the black hole of every game qualifying as a role-playing game.



> Which doesn't change the fact that the events occurring inside the shared imaginative space of a role-playing game are best understood as being story-like ie, the actions of fictional, person-like characters in an imaginary, life-life place.



Where you say story-like I think you should say life-like.  This modeled space is a real construction just like a boardgame representing things in life.  

Story is the relation of events real or imagined.  You cannot "take action" in a story because the storyteller isn't a character.  He's relating the actions of the characters.  In a role-playing game you are absolutely taking action.  In the exact same way a DDM player is taking action.



> Seeing as the 'external reality' in question is a fictional construct being sustained by mutual consent and is often, in practical situations, rather fluid, I'd say this isn't a particularly helpful assertion.



That's like saying, playing Doctor Lucky and making house rules up as you go beyond the elements the published rules focuson, then you're telling a story.  Almost all games are simulating something.  Sports are probably an exception, but most boardgames and cardgames likely count.  The reality in each is as solid as the rules create.



> Unless, of course, the DM says otherwise. Are you really saying that anytime a DM gives (limited, localized) narrative rights to a player, it ceases to be a role-playing game?



No, the overall game would be a hybrid between role-playing and storytelling.  Also, I'm not here to talk about game identity. I'm talking about actions real people take within a game.  You cannot do more than your character can without stepping outside your role (i.e. stopping the role-playing your character).  This seems immediately obvious to me.  Once you start dictating reality, your in God Mode (authoring a story).



> OK, that's exactly what you're saying. Where's the threshold? If the DM allows a player to shop for items without actually playing out the purchases, essentially letting the player narrate the event, does the game stop being an RPG?



No, this is not a player narrating an event.  It's an abstraction of role-playing, but if done too often and too broadly it certainly may no longer qualify as role-play.  That said, the player couldn't purchase the items at those prices if in he were in area with different prices.  Or if his PC was nowhere near a seller of those items.  To allow otherwise would be to metagame or cheat: to do something your character cannot functionally do in this case.

To clarify the point on being too broad or abstract:
Just as you can role-play being a stock trader by playing the market with an imaginary stock portfolio, you can begin role-playing so broadly as to no longer qualify as "role-playing a stockbroker".  Instead, you're just pretending you have money in stocks and seeing how much they went up or down.  The degree of modeling is simply not enough for most people to qualify it as role-play.  The same could be said of fantasy football being the role-playing of a team owner.  It probably isn't at all as very, very little of the role is modeled.  Of course, in neither case can you "just say" you won without leaving all of reality behind and simply telling a story.



> If you actually go for the walk, you're existing. If, instead, you create a _representation_ of the dog-walk, say in conversation or text, then your storytelling. Extending this, seeing as gamers are never actually _doing_ the things they're characters are doing, they are never _existing_ as their characters, and can be said, in the interest of brevity, to be telling stories about them.



You're right in the first and second sentences and wrong in the third.  Role-players _are_ doing the things their characters are doing.  Not to belabor the point, but just as a flight simulator doesn't mean you are actually flying, it does mean you are actually the one doing the flying that is simulated.  In a fantasy RPG, the players honestly and truly are not their characters, but they are taking on their roles.  The fantasy world simulator allows this to be real as much as the simulator is capable.  It is as much a storytelling endeavor as using a flight simulator is so (i.e. not at all).

If there were no flight simulator or fantasy world simulator, you definitely could say the participants were just telling stories about flying or being in a fantasy world.  But in order to not "just say this is so" we use the rules and make up house rules to cover the areas we want covered by our favorite RPGs games.  Check any House Rules forum for more proof on how story doesn't come into play when rules don't cover a situation.



> If the existence(s) in question are fictional, then yes, I equate trafficking in them w/storytelling.



You'll notice Pemerton above agreed that not all imaginings or the holdings of ideas (thoughts) is storytelling.  It seems like you believe the opposite.  All I can say is, no one outside of the Indie gaming community probably defines "story" in this way.



> And how is that not storytelling, using the plainest, most theory-free definition of the word?



Here was my phrase you're referring to:
"I don't believe a DM/Referee ever gets to tell a story. He merely relates back to those playing what is happening in the world."

Yeah, I tossed this one in there thinking I'd catch someone trying to call me on it.  Check my first response in this post.  It's the difference between using narrative discourse to refer to the real modeling of imagined ideas (fiction) and the rhetorical mode called "fictional narrative".

heh heh   I know it's tough.  The difference is in short:
Occasionally using narrative speech forms to talk about modeled fiction vs. collaboratively relating a fictional narrative.  
I completely sympathize with folks who believe The BIG Model because of this confusion.



> Monopoly isn't a storytelling game because the action in Monopoly isn't sufficiently story-like. RPG's are story-like because they deal with person-like characters acting in life-like imaginary spaces.



When you say, "the action in Monopoly isn't sufficiently story-like" I get confused.  What kind of boardgames, cardgames, wargames, whatever-games would it take to show this is not collaborative storytelling even with a "story-like" enough game?



> Now if these blind players were playing D&D, it most certainly would be a storytelling game.



So, is D&D Miniatures a storytelling game when played with the blind, but not the seeing?  



> And that kind of role-playing isn't what's going on in most D&D campaigns (well, at least in any of the ones I've seen, read or heard of).



As the activity is role-playing, it's educational.  Not to say other activities are not educational.  It's just in D&D the skills learned are rarely modeled well enough to aid in real life.  Combat would seem the best modeled activity, but I doubt it will help anyone in a real fight.  Learning how to face adversity, plan, and make decisions quickly are probably more likely learned skills in D&D.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 14, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> EDIT: and if you read my previous post, you'll see I said the PC was referring to areas of the world the DM had never mentioned before - not contradicting what came before.




The DM can have an idea of the world which he has not revealed completely to the PCs. He knows where the bugbears keep their hostages. The players do not. If the players try to "put" the hostages somewhere other than where the DM knows they are, that still contradicts the DM.



howandwhy99 said:


> To be clear, doing something is not necessarily equivalent to portraying something.  It's the difference between normal existence and theatre acting.




While a difference may exist for the actor, for the outside observer there is no difference between normal existence and theatre acting, aside from context. If an actor falls from the set onto the stage and breaks a leg, the outside observer only becomes aware that this is not acting but normal existence when the actor, or other actors, break context.



howandwhy99 said:


> In the same way that the winners of 4E's combat system do not win because they "tell a better story", role-playing is the real success of playing a role in an actual reality.  That the dice rolling and rule following created a model of reality, which is attempting to recreate (emulate?) an imagined idea (the world), it does not mean the model isn't real because the emulated fiction isn't real.  This true in the same way playing a boardgame is real even though its' rules are trying to model a fictive reality.
> 
> I mean, really, if it was all just a bunch of collaborative storytelling, no dice rolls or numerical descriptions would ever be needed.  The quality of the story would rule all.




Collaborative storytelling runs into disputes when different storytellers have different visions of how the same story will go. There needs to be a disputation resolution mechanism in place. For improv this is "say 'yes'". For D&D, this is random chance coupled with the accepted mechanics.



howandwhy99 said:


> Story is the relation of events real or imagined.  You cannot "take action" in a story because the storyteller isn't a character.




And so Tigger found himself stranded in the upper branches of the tree. It was very, very cold, and very lonely.

"Hey! Who's that talkin' up there?"

Who, me?

"Yeah, you!"

Why, I'm the narrator.

"Oh, really. Well, narrate me down from here!"


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 14, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> You are flat out wrong.
> 
> *"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."*
> 
> How many times do you have to read that before you accept that it says exactly what is written: It's up to you *(the player)* to think *(use your brain)* of ways you can use your skills *(description of the action you wish to use the skill to perform)* to meet the challenges you face.





The bit you are quoting does not say that it is up to the player to think of ways to use his skills within the context of the game world.  It could just as easily be read to mean that it is up to the player to think of ways in which he can select which skills to roll against.

There is also a real difference between selective glossing ("I pump him for information.  My X Skill check roll is Y.  What do I learn?") and using the player's brain to actually come up with the questions, as well as how best to ask them.  Mostly, physical skill checks (jumping a pit, for example) are glossed.  The purpose of a robust combat system is to provide for some physical checks that are not glossed.

Again, what you quoted could be read to endorse either.

Mind you, I think that 4e is really trying to strike a balance in this regard.  In principle, this is similar to what I am doing with skills in RCFG, and similar to how I read skills in 3e as well.  The player describes, and that description determines what check(s) are appropriate.  The bit you are quoting does not say this clearly, however.


RC


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 14, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> The bit you are quoting does not say that it is up to the player to think of ways to use his skills within the context of the game world.  It could just as easily be read to mean that it is up to the player to think of ways in which he can select which skills to roll against.




"I thought of a way I can use my skills!  I roll a d4, and if I get a 1, I use Diplomacy, a 2, I use Intimidate..."

That's not a way to use your skills.  That's a way to choose a skill.  Once you've chosen your skill, you're still left with having to think of a _way to use your skills_ to meet the challenges you face.

-Hyp.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 14, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> "I thought of a way I can use my skills!  I roll a d4, and if I get a 1, I use Diplomacy, a 2, I use Intimidate..."
> 
> That's not a way to use your skills.  That's a way to choose a skill.  Once you've chosen your skill, you're still left with having to think of a _way to use your skills_ to meet the challenges you face.
> 
> -Hyp.





You missed the distinction I made between glossing and actually using skills.

Most physical skills are glossed because the player cannot meaningfully engage in the campaign world in any physical way.  Combat is not as glossed because combat is both cereberal and physical.  Tactics are as important as outcome, and the player can interact tactically with the game world.  Tactics are not nearly so glossy, as a result, but the outcome is a die roll -- completely glossed.

"Thinking of ways to use your skills" in this context can be taken to mean nothing more than glossing.  I am not saying that this was what was intended; merely that it is not as clear as you seem to think it is.


RC


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> You missed the distinction I made between glossing and actually using skills.




I think glossing is acceptable (though only barely), as long as you are glossing over the details, but at least describe _the way you are using the skill_.

"I use Intimidate" doesn't tell us _how_ you're using Intimidate.

"I use Intimidate to get him to tell us what he knows" distinguishes this from "I use Intimidate to get him to 'forget' he saw us", or "I use Intimidate to ensure he'll spread the word of our arrival".  They're all glossing, but they're telling us what you're trying to achieve with the skill.

Obviously, in most cases, my personal preference is to avoid glossing except in trivial circumstances.  But I accept some people are more comfortable with it.

-Hyp.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> I think glossing is acceptable (though only barely), as long as you are glossing over the details, but at least describe _the way you are using the skill_.




Agreed.

But the implication was that the passage quoted said the same; it does not.  Or, if it does, it does not do so explicitly enough to avoid multiple readings (some of which are more consistent with other advice in the 4e books, IMHO).

RC


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## RFisher (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Storytelling isn't role-playing and you can't do both at the same time.  It's functionally impossible.




What if I role-play my character telling a story? (^_^)


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> But the implication was that the passage quoted said the same; it does not.




The passsage quoted says you have to come up with _ways to use your skills_.  You suggested a possible reading of this was that you have to come up with _ways to select which skill to use_.

That's different to coming up with a way to use a skill, but glossing over the details.  

-Hyp.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> The passsage quoted says you have to come up with _ways to use your skills_.  You suggested a possible reading of this was that you have to come up with _ways to select which skill to use_.
> 
> That's different to coming up with a way to use a skill, but glossing over the details.
> 
> -Hyp.





Yes, and I included both in my post.

The PHB doesn't describe skill challenges, leaving the player to decide how to get use out of his skills.  I stand by my statement that this is, within context, a possible reading of the text in question.

RC


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## Delta (Oct 15, 2008)

> *"It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."*




I also agree that every time this gets quoted, to me it parses as "you have to figure out what skill is relevant for a particular obstacle". I don't have 4E, so I don't have any more context than that, though.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 15, 2008)

Delta said:


> I also agree that every time this gets quoted, to me it parses as "you have to figure out what skill is relevant for a particular obstacle". I don't have 4E, so I don't have any more context than that, though.




Exactly.  This could have (and should have) been expanded upon if that is not what the designers meant.  Crom knows that there is room enough in those books to do it, what with all the white space and all.

Worse, taken in context with the rest of the 4e PHB, this is all too easy to parse that way.

Perhaps this is intentional...so that the "obvious" meaning of the sentence depends upon your starting view?  I don't generally credit game designers with that level of genius, however......


RC


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> "I thought of a way I can use my skills!  I roll a d4, and if I get a 1, I use Diplomacy, a 2, I use Intimidate..."
> 
> That's not a way to use your skills.  That's a way to choose a skill.  Once you've chosen your skill, you're still left with having to think of a _way to use your skills_ to meet the challenges you face.
> 
> -Hyp.






> "It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."




I am just curious. Is the PHB written for the characters to read or the players of D&D to read?

The players can use their skills to meet the challenge by picking one to roll for.

I ask any D&D character to please come forward and state how they read the PHB to mean.

When one does, I will concede on that the PHB was written for the players, and the players need only choose a skill.

Until a D&D character comes forward that has read the PHB I will stand by the book was written for the players, and the players use skills is by rolling checks. Anything else is roleplaying*, of which I have found very little rules for in the PHB upon my reading of it.

*Roleplaying, stroytelling, narrative, whichever you want to call it, I will save my opinions on that debate for a more appropriate thread.

So "I use diplomacy and rolled a 7" , is exactly how a player uses the skills since they can not talk to Smuggler Bob to convince him to lower his price on his wares. That is not using your skills as skills are defined. That is roleplaying.

"X successful rolls passes a skill check". That is how players use their skills.

There is a list of 11 or so and some with subsets in them, and all have modifiers and such. None give information on actually doing acrobatics and jumping around the room you, as a player are playing in, to show how you jump over the lava flow.**

** If you have a lava flow in the room you are playing D&D in, then please evacuate now. I don't wish to see or hear of anyone getting hurt trying a stunt like this.


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## RFisher (Oct 15, 2008)

Perhaps it is irrelevant. (And I don’t have the 4e DMG anyway.) But it seems to me that Wizards never expected the skill challenges section to be examined and debated the way they did—say—the combat system.

Isn’t this little more just a “hey, here’s roughly one way to do some stuff”?


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

RFisher said:


> Perhaps it is irrelevant. (And I don’t have the 4e DMG anyway.) But it seems to me that Wizards never expected the skill challenges section to be examined and debated the way they did—say—the combat system.
> 
> Isn’t this little more just a “hey, here’s roughly one way to do some stuff”?




More than a little, it is exactly that. Yet some refuse that a way other than their reading is even a viable approach.


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## The Little Raven (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Yet some refuse that a way other than their reading is even a viable approach.




This post has been nominated for "Most Ironic Post in a D&D Thread."


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 15, 2008)

The Little Raven said:


> This post has been nominated for "Most Ironic Post in a D&D Thread."




Like rain on your wedding day?


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Anything else is roleplaying*, of which I have found very little rules for in the PHB upon my reading of it.



It occupies a good chunk of chapters 1 and 2, and examples of PC personas are given in chapters 3 and 4.

Was there more of this sort of thing in earlier editions of the PHB. I don't know the 2nd ed one, but 1st ed AD&D had little on roleplaying (as opposed to an entirely metagame account of what is involved in preparing for a dungeon expedition) and the 3rd ed PHB has a little bit in chapter 6.


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

RFisher said:


> But it seems to me that Wizards never expected the skill challenges section to be examined and debated the way they did—say—the combat system.
> 
> Isn’t this little more just a “hey, here’s roughly one way to do some stuff”?



Id be surprised if they didn't expect a fair bit of examination, given that it is a big innovation for D&D, and is naturally going to be compared to the similar systems in other well-known and well-regarded RPGs from which it appears to be (more-or-less) derived.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I am just curious. Is the PHB written for the characters to read or the players of D&D to read?




Are you suggesting that the word "you" in the PHB always refers to the player, and never to the character?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Are you suggesting that the word "you" in the PHB always refers to the player, and never to the character?
> 
> -Hyp.




Usually when using the English language in instructional/technical manuals the word "you" addresses the reader of the book.

Step 1: Remove all components from the box.
~~~

Step X: Insert Tab A into Slot B.

Here the word is not used to conserve space, but the "you" is understood and not directly included in the instructions.



The Little Raven said:


> This post has been nominated for "Most Ironic Post in a D&D Thread."




Oh please explain how. Make sure you have read the entire thread.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Usually when using the English language in instructional/technical manuals the word "you" addresses the reader of the book.




And so do you feel that this is the case in the PHB - that the word 'you' always refers to the player, not to the character?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> And so do you feel that this is the case in the PHB - that the word 'you' always refers to the player, not to the character?
> 
> -Hyp.




I should hope so. Maybe the person who was delightful enough to count the uses of the word "fun" in the PHB would be so delightful to check the use of the word "you" in the PHB instructional segments.


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## MerricB (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I should hope so. Maybe the person who was delightful enough to count the uses of the word "fun" in the PHB would be so delightful to check the use of the word "you" in the PHB instructional segments.




Does Acrobat have word count? 

Cheers!


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I should hope so.




_Armor Class (AC) measures how hard it is for your enemies to land a significant blow on you with a weapon or a magical effect that works like a weapon._

Do people in your games worry about significant blows with a weapon being landed on the players?

_You can see a gnoll archer crouching behind a rock wall, but the wall makes him more difficult to hit, because the wall gives him cover._

Can players in your games see a gnoll archer?

_Close attacks include two basic categories of powers: weapon attacks that damage multiple enemies with one swing, and powers created from energy that flows directly from your body or an object you carry._

Have you seen players creating powers from energy that flows directly from their bodies?

_If you are trying to move across an unstable surface that isn’t narrow, you instead fall prone in the square you started in._

People fall prone a lot at your table?

_Whenever you use Insight, you’re making a best guess as to what you think a motive or attitude is or how truthful a target is being._

Why is there a skill for that, then?  Players can guess whatever they like, without rolling a die!

_You can use such a skill to remember a useful bit of information in its field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it._

How can the player remember something, unless the DM's already told him once before?

_When you ride a creature, you gain access to any special mount abilities it confers to its rider._

My living room's too small for that sort of carry-on.

_The result of your saving throw determines how close you are to death._

That's ominous!

Wouldn't all of these make more sense if, sometimes, the word 'you' in the PHB referred to the character instead of the player?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

MerricB said:


> Does Acrobat have word count?
> 
> Cheers!




Assuming you mean Adobe, and not a circus performer... I do not know that the reader does.

But the full version does/should have the ability to convert/save to ASCII text or RTF.

From there there are quite a few programs that can count the instance of a single word.

Assuming also, that you have a legal copy of the PHB in Acrobat readable form. You probably do since you guys sell them as PDFs....(with bookmarks too I hear.)


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Not sure how many characters per post you get, so since this is big I risked to err on the side of caution. Condense these two posts if they are back-to-back and need to be/can be.



Hypersmurf said:


> _Armor Class (AC) measures how hard it is for your enemies to land a significant blow on you with a weapon or a magical effect that works like a weapon._
> 
> Do people in your games worry about significant blows with a weapon being landed on the players?




Yes. Either form the DM or other players when they become annoying or disruptive.



> _You can see a gnoll archer crouching behind a rock wall, but the wall makes him more difficult to hit, because the wall gives him cover._
> 
> Can players in your games see a gnoll archer?




Harbinger or Underdark? One of those DDM sets if not the Chainmail or Pewter/lead/Raladium variants are clearly visible yes.



> _Close attacks include two basic categories of powers: weapon attacks that damage multiple enemies with one swing, and powers created from energy that flows directly from your body or an object you carry._
> 
> Have you seen players creating powers from energy that flows directly from their bodies?




Ever pissed a female gamer off? You don't have to see the energy to know and feel the heat and burning aimed in your direction.



> _If you are trying to move across an unstable surface that isn’t narrow, you instead fall prone in the square you started in._
> 
> People fall prone a lot at your table?




We love slap-schtick!



> _Whenever you use Insight, you’re making a best guess as to what you think a motive or attitude is or how truthful a target is being._
> 
> Why is there a skill for that, then?  Players can guess whatever they like, without rolling a die!




I feel the same way. There are plenty of useless component in the game that are not needed other than that provided you have a decent DM and players.



> _You can use such a skill to remember a useful bit of information in its field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it._
> 
> How can the player remember something, unless the DM's already told him once before?




I would figure he went to school and had parents. Maybe read a book?



> _When you ride a creature, you gain access to any special mount abilities it confers to its rider._
> 
> My living room's too small for that sort of carry-on.




Don't have pets or kids, eh?



> _The result of your saving throw determines how close you are to death._
> 
> That's ominous!




In this day and age it is even all the more true than ever. 



> Wouldn't all of these make more sense if, sometimes, the word 'you' in the PHB referred to the character instead of the player?
> 
> -Hyp.




Wouldn't they have made sense if the context of my previous posts were read rather than twisted?

Even better would have been to use proper grammar in the books so as not to confuse the reader [player] with the character?



> The result of your saving throw determines how close you are to death.




Do the characters roll dice? Do the characters throw something when they are about to die? The players of some games may throw a fit, but the character does what?

I would suggest to proper word the phrase instead for the reader as per technical writing guidelines suggest.



> The result of your saving throw determines how close your character is to death.




This properly addresses the reader with the proper context. It does not use the word "you" or instances of its other forms in different ways in the same sentence. When you make a substitution of another word, you should maintain the same substitution through your sentence rather than changing the words meaning midway through it.

"Your" indicates something belonging to the player now in both instances in the sentence, while before the variations of "you" was referring back and forth between the player and the character.

_After all of this are you still really trying to dispute that you need only roll the proper skill checks to pass a skill challenge?_


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> This properly addresses the reader with the proper context. It does not use the word "you" or instances of its other forms in different ways in the same sentence. When you make a substitution of another word, you should maintain the same substitution through your sentence rather than changing the words meaning midway through it.




Certainly.  But that's not how they wrote the PHB.



> "Your" indicates something belonging to the player now in both instances in the sentence, while before the variations of "you" was referring back and forth between the player and the character.




So let's apply the same transform to p179:
"It’s up to you to think of ways your character can use his skills to meet the challenges he faces."

"I roll Diplomacy!" is not a way your character can use his skill.  It's the skill he's using, but it isn't the way he's using it.

Given that the PHB (despite your disapproval) conflates the player and his character into the word 'you' - sometimes even in the same sentence - this is what is stated by "It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."



> _After all of this are you still really trying to dispute that you need only roll the proper skill checks to pass a skill challenge?_




Absolutely.  You also need to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Not my faults, but theirs.
I shouldn't have to guess their context. See response #1.
Pick the correct skill to roll. That is how you use what is written on your character sheet.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Not my faults, but theirs.
> 
> I shouldn't have to guess their context. See response #1.




Whether you're willing to or not doesn't change that _they didn't write "Roll a skill check to beat a skill challenge"_.

You need to _think of ways to use your skills_.  You need to _describe your actions and make checks_.

If you really can't determine whether "you" refers to the player or the character, ask someone else at the table.  It can't confuse _everyone_ in the room.

After all... you just demonstrated that you could correctly parse the sentence about the death saving throws, despite their fiendish attempts to baffle you with pronouns!



> Pick the correct skill to roll. That is how you use what is written on your character sheet.




That's how you make a skill check.  It isn't _ways to use your skills to meet the challenge_, and it isn't _describing your actions_.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

Please then tell me the quantitative way to use skills in the game.

Then tell me how to judge if that skill is passed or failed without using skill checks?


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Then tell me how to judge if that skill is passed or failed without using skill checks?




Where does "without using skill checks" come from?

p259 says "describe your actions _and_ make checks".

The checks are _necessary_, but they aren't _sufficient_.  A check by itself is meaningless, unless you've also described the action.

-Hyp.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

GlaziusF said:
			
		

> The DM can have an idea of the world which he has not revealed completely to the PCs. He knows where the bugbears keep their hostages. The players do not. If the players try to "put" the hostages somewhere other than where the DM knows they are, that still contradicts the DM.



In the Skill Challenge system, if I tell a story that the DM judges to overstep my "narrational authority", he doesn't allow it.  This doesn't mean I do not dictate reality beyond what my PC is capable of.  The system practically asks me to do so.  And, of course, whenever you do so, you are stepping outside the role of your character.  Whether you are role-playing the character or improvisationally acting the character, you the player are still stopping to tell the story.  You cannot do both.  The only thing that even comes close is when a PC casts a Wish spell, but even then the Referee must keep that action within the bounds of what is possible in the Wish spell rules.  That's what modeling reality means.  The character is doing this thing as directed by the Player (role-playing).  You cannot "just say" the world is the way it is without playing God with it.  



> While a difference may exist for the actor, for the outside observer there is no difference between normal existence and theatre acting, aside from context. If an actor falls from the set onto the stage and breaks a leg, the outside observer only becomes aware that this is not acting but normal existence when the actor, or other actors, break context.



True, but I like to believe that for the sake of sanity we use speech forms which don't include all things as storytelling.  Storytelling is almost always done after the fact.  All other ways it can only be when one is portraying (acting) - telling the story of a character's personality.  To think otherwise would be to accept "Wait a second, he was just _acting!_" is in every way identical to "Wait a second, he was just _being!_"



> Collaborative storytelling runs into disputes when different storytellers have different visions of how the same story will go. There needs to be a disputation resolution mechanism in place. For improv this is "say 'yes'". For D&D, this is random chance coupled with the accepted mechanics.



I believe what you're talking about here is a lot of what passes for "Narrative Role-play" in the Indie circles.  Of course, what you are really talking about is improvisational theatre acting.  That the Indie community does not wish to make a distinction between improvisational acting and role-playing does not mean real world definitions get to changes because of their preferences.  

"Disputation resolution mechanisms" are not the same as modeling a fictional reality.  To confuse the two would be to say 1. the rules used for round robin storytelling are the same kinds of rules as 2. D&D's rules, whatever edition.  Even if you go to bare bones TWERPS, what you have in RPGs are mechanics for modeling reality not ones for resolving narrative disputations between speakers.  

Seriously, go back to the blind people playing Monopoly.  The game is modeling a kind of reality (but one not broad enough to count as role-play).  Do you really believe the rules of that game are narrative disputation resolution rules?  Wouldn't all games' rules count as such then?  This gets back to the inaccurate "not story-like enough" objection where stories have to be about "people" and "worlds" to count as collaborative storytelling.



> And so Tigger found himself stranded in the upper branches of the tree. It was very, very cold, and very lonely.
> 
> "Hey! Who's that talkin' up there?"
> 
> ...



That's funny.  You made a character named "narrator" and put him in your story.  Isn't it odd how that "narrator" character hasn't kept on posting the story without your help?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

RFisher said:


> What if I role-play my character telling a story? (^_^)



You're right.   In another thread about the difference of role-playing and storytelling I made a point of giving this one exception.  Nice catch.




BIG EDIT:
Here's a funny story on how "story" might be confused with role-playing as so many are bringing up objections to stories not happening in their game.

Playing Baseball is not telling a story.  It is a game testing one's ability to play Baseball, to follow the rules to win.  Agreed?

But what about when a major leaguer dresses up as Mickey Mantle and improvisationally acts as if he were that guy?  All the while playing a real Baseball game?  

Now let's add on the telling of a story while in character, like "I remember when I homered one out of Fenway and into the parking lot, back when...."

True, this is a bit hard to imagine happening in the Majors, but I bet plenty of kids do it in sandlot.

The question is: Is Baseball actually a story game because, 
1. You can improvisationally act as another person while playing the game?
and/or 
2. You can tell stories while playing the game (whether you're engaged in 1. or not)

Of course the answer is no.  This isn't theatre.  You have to be good enough to hit homeruns yourself.  Pretending to be Mickey Mantle isn't going to help you with that (well probably it won't  )  Just as in role-playing, the challenge is in the doing of the thing.  Where as in acting, the challenge is in the portrayal.  Both are fun, just in different ways.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> That's funny.  You made a character named "narrator" and put him in your story.  Isn't it odd how that "narrator" character hasn't kept on posting the story without your help?




No that is called Breaking the Fourth wall.

The narrator was not a character int he story really but reading it to you, and the character talks to him or the audience removing himself from the world he is a part of.

Like when David would address the audience on Moonlighting (TV Series).

The actual story does had Pooh's friend Tigger talk to the narrator as a joke for the children it was intended for to show how Tigger had gotten himself into trouble by not listening to warnings.

How would you feel if your party Paladin started being acted as though he was addressing the DM directly, as thought in the D&D cartoon? The DM is not something the characters have access to. Tigger was metagaming to get out of the sticky situation.

Well....I forgot exactly where I was going with skill challenges explaining this but I will fix it when I remember after properly parsing the included links.

(I am sure it had to do with Tigger getting down as a skill challenge.)


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Please then tell me the quantitative way to use skills in the game.
> 
> Then tell me how to judge if that skill is passed or failed without using skill checks?



Your description of which skill your PC is using, and how s/he is using it, and how that use contributes to the resolution of the skill challenge, are all taken into account by the GM in setting the DC (this is explained in the DMG in the passages I quoted upthread). The skill check (a roll of the die) then determines whether or not a success or a failure is accrued.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

How does the DM measure those things?


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I believe what you're talking about here is a lot of what passes for "Narrative Role-play" in the Indie circles.  Of course, what you are really talking about is improvisational theatre acting.  That the Indie community does not wish to make a distinction between improvisational acting and role-playing does not mean real world definitions get to changes because of their preferences.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Seriously, go back to the blind people playing Monopoly.  The game is modeling a kind of reality (but one not broad enough to count as role-play).  Do you really believe the rules of that game are narrative disputation resolution rules?  Wouldn't all games' rules count as such then?  This gets back to the inaccurate "not story-like enough" objection where stories have to be about "people" and "worlds" to count as collaborative storytelling.



Just a brief response: the indie RPG community thinks that it is distinguishing the non-story-telling game of Monopoly from the story-telling game of RPGing (which you are labelling "improvisational acting") not in terms of activity performed (which, as you note, might sometime be indistinguishable) but in terms of purpose for which that activity is performed. That is, GNS distinguishes playstyles not on the basis of activity performed, but the metagame priority that drives that activity.

Now maybe this claim about metagame priorities is wrong (although I personally am sympathetic to it). But it does explain why the indie RPG types think they have an answer to your attempt at reductio via Monopoly as played by the blind.


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> How does the DM measure those things?



In the way discussed in the DMG. There are three basic steps, the second having two components.

First step: The level of the skill challenge (which has been predetermined by the GM) tells us the DCs for Easy, Medium and Hard skill checks.

Second step: Any given skill check suggested by a player must be classified as Easy, Medium or Hard. This is done by the GM (presumably most GMs would accept input from their players) and is determined by a combination of (i) the GM's intuition as to how easy the task described by the player would be in ingame terms, and (ii) the GM's view as to how much s/he wants to reward and encourage players having their PCs attempt that sort of task. (This second component is a metagame consideration, not an ingame matter - one example of how a GM can take this thing into account is given on p 42 of the DMG, in the discussion of a PC using an acrobatic manoeuvre to push an ogre into a fire). 

Third step: The GM may vary the DC by +/- 2 based on the degree of flamboyance, enthusiasm, cleverness etc of the player's description of her PC's action. (This overlaps to an extent with (ii) in the second step above, but I think (ii) is concerned with a more generic question about a generic sort of activity being undertaken by PCs in the campaign, wheras the +/-2 seems to be more about responding to the strengths of a particular player's narration/roleplaying).

That's not a mechanical process, but in a cooperative playing group I think it's a reasonably tractable one.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

justanobody said:


> No that is called Breaking the Fourth wall.
> 
> The narrator was not a character int he story really but reading it to you, and the character talks to him or the audience removing himself from the world he is a part of.
> 
> ...



I think I see where you're going, but please let me know if I'm missing the point.  

I think you're saying one can role-play to the GM instead of the modeled reality.  Your example is: breaking the 4th wall in order to appeal to the GM while still acting.  My objection is: it doesn't matter if the character breaks the 4th wall.  In role-playing or improv acting, you, the player, are the one making the decisions for him.  You are the one who is choosing to ask the GM to change the modeled reality.  The character cannot do this for himself.  

Here's an example from Magic: the Gathering.  If I improvisationally act as "the master wizard, Karl" who is the Controller of the realms (or whatever that role is) that that game is modeling, I can turn to the judge watching the competition, all the while staying in character as Karl, and say "My realm of trusty warriors doth need the rules changed to win fairly."  

Now that must be the geekiest thing I've written in years, but hopefully it illustrates how acting in character doesn't change the reality of the Player being the one asking for a rule change - no matter what game rules are used or fictional reality is being modeled.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Just a brief response: the indie RPG community thinks that it is distinguishing the non-story-telling game of Monopoly from the story-telling game of RPGing (which you are labelling "improvisational acting") not in terms of activity performed (which, as you note, might sometime be indistinguishable) but in terms of purpose for which that activity is performed. That is, GNS distinguishes playstyles not on the basis of activity performed, but the metagame priority that drives that activity.
> 
> Now maybe this claim about metagame priorities is wrong (although I personally am sympathetic to it). But it does explain why the indie RPG types think they have an answer to your attempt at reductio via Monopoly as played by the blind.



Again, role-playing and improv acting are different in the same way as asking "is this you or is this you acting?" This distinguishes between fundamentally different ways of being. Trying to equate all behavior with theatre acting may be what is confusing those gamers wanting to play theatre improv games instead of RPGs.

To clarify a distinction you made: I am not saying all RPGs are improv acting games.  I am saying RPGs are games with role-playing in them.  One can improvisationally act or not while playing them just as one can in any game.  To do so does not make those games "acting" games (much less RPGs).  See my baseball explanation above. 

Now, are you saying that when someone does NOT improvisationally act in an RPG (portray their character's personality) it is NOT a story-telling game? In other words, RPGs are telling a story when done "in-character', but not "out-of-character"?  This is a confusion I can understand as the in-character portrayal of a PC displays their personality.  That portrayal of personality would count as a story for me just as it would for anyone who watches acting on stage, TV, film, or other format.  But as I just said in the previous paragraph, that kind of improv acting can be added to any game.  If that's what it takes to be included as a storytelling game, you can relax.  The only rule you'll ever need to add to a game is, "Pretend you're another person while playing this game".  That rule is totally unnecessary to role-play.

Here's the big difference: Just as in the Mickey Mantle example for baseball, one does not _need_ to portray a personality to play a role in a game.  Baseball, and role-playing, work just fine without anyone pretending to be someone else.  In Baseball, you take on the role of a baseballer.  In an RPG, you take on the role of, say, a human fighter in a modeled reality.  Both the baseball field and the modeled reality are real.  If baseball were a game like Monopoly or another boardgame and modeled a fictional idea beyond just the rules, then we'd see things like bases called "stars, moons, planets" in other words, the components of whatever fictional reality we thought it modeled.  Typically, the fiction determines the design of these games just as it does when you add house rules to the design of an RPG.  The fiction isn't the "real" part, it's just the terminology one enjoys when playing - just as "hotel", "house", and "Jail" are terms referring to models of those fictional things in Monopoly.

If all we were doing was telling a story, all of this would be unnecessary.  You would not need to test the player's ability to do the role. [To bring everything back on topic]  You could "just say" that Mickey hit a homerun and we could move on with his actor's portrayal.



EDIT: In regards to meta-game priority making games storytelling games.  Perhaps my distinction between acting and role-playing (one you seem to refuse to see) is not swaying you for why RPGs are not storytelling.  From your explanation, it would seem any "intent" by the participant to tell a story, regardless of what the action may be, is what determines the "telling of a story".  To expand, I take you to mean here that theatre acting has nothing to do with making something a story.  You could not theatre act and yet have "intent" while doing an "non-theatre action".  And simply by having that intent the doing becomes the telling of a story.  That you can simply "live" in such a way as to tell a story vs. "living not to tell a story" acting be damned.  

This must be the the reason I keep hearing this Black Hole argument of "You can tell a story about it, so it's a story game".  But then, of course, you get crazy arguments like Monopoly _not_ being a story game.  Your "meta-game intent" priority rationale disqualifies any such thing as soon as I "meta-gamingly intend" to play Monopoly to tell a story.  Then it all counts.  Even when I say, "none of our group's RPG games are done with the 'intent" to storytell." I am correct here, as we don't have that "meta-game intent".  

This is a myth in my book.  Intent isn't a definer beyond normal acting and theatre acting.  To agree so means anything could be done without such intent and need to be re-termed for it.  The realities of all such "intent" termed actions/games would need to be re-addressed, so as not to confuse anyone coming in without such intent.  As I've shown above with "acting during a game" and "not acting during a game" this "Acting Intent" definer seems to have no bearing on titling normal activities.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Here's a quick example for people still confused.  It uses role-playing as defined in the dictionary and an example from outside the hobby, so we don't get confused by "Big Model" theory.

At a Medical School a professor decides to put her students through a role-playing experiment.  She has been teaching them emergency medicine and ER protocols for weeks and now wants to see how well the students do in a simulated environment.  She assigns each a name tag with fictional doctor names like, Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, and "Izzie" Stevens.  

The professor takes them into the gymnasium where she has a mock up of a 10 car pile up. It is complete with dummies as accident victims and some other props. She could do this in a conference room with figurines and toy cars, but they have the space available and the gym seems easier.  

With a stop watch she keeps time, but remembers to stop it when she needs to explain things so that the fictional reality gives more accurate results of students' response times.  As the scenario plays out (the role-play is being done) the "doctors" work hard to save the "patients".  What that entails is the test of the role-playing scenario.  The students (and professor) are learning how good of doctors they are in such a situation.  Just as D&D RPGers learn and better themselves at how good they are as fighters, wizards, clerics, etc. in fantasy world situations.

Now just because the student role-playing "Doctor Merideth Grey" starts talking like the character in the TV show (Grey's Anatomy), it doesn't mean the game just became a television episode or, more clearly, an improvisational theatre play.  It is role-playing because the student is succeeding based upon here ability to save "patients", not have Emmy Award winning nervous breakdowns.  She can do the same at the same time, but when it interferes with her ability to role-play it's getting in the way of scenario.  The professor or any fellow student could easily ask her to "get back on track" or whatever and address the difficulty of the game.  

Now what happens if the Professor stops the scenario and changes it?  If she decides to change the situation, "Let's say this patient lost 2 pints of blood, not 1.  What now, doctor?", then she's altering the game.  This isn't narrative authority as she is not saying how one may or may not portray their character.  Is this her "role-playing" because she is explaining the environment the students are interacting with?  Of course not.  Is she running the modeled scenario when she does this?  No, again.  She is redesigning the game.  As professor, she is the one in charge of the game and is using it as a teaching tool, so she redesigns the scenario to best test the students in a variety of ways.  

In a role-playing game played for amusement, it would seem the entire group would have to agree on altering the gameworld.  Because you cannot change the game without stopping role-playing and redesigning the game these redesigns are not the character changing the game.  They are everyone agreeing the game should be altered without role-playing to get from one game scenario to the next.  Essentially, you are skipping across across different game scenarios like skipping between adventure modules without successfully role-playing your way there.  It is playing the game to skip the consequences of role-playing thereby causing your role-playing successes to be shallower and shallower in their importance.


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## pemerton (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I am not saying all RPGs are improv acting games.



Yep, I realise that, but looking again at my post I can see how I generated a mistaken implication.

I was just trying to say what I think the indie-RPG ways is of distinguishing _their_ RPGs (which you say are not RPGs at all, but rather storytelling games) from blind-player-Monopoly, which you implied they are committed to labelling an RPG also.

They distinguish the two by appealing to different metagame priorities.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99, this is an interesting example and makes me understand more what you understand under the term of "role-playing". 

But that's just not what I understand or expect from roleplaying games like D&D, Shadowrun or Warhammer.

My goal is not this: 


> Just as D&D RPGers learn and better themselves at how good they are as fighters, wizards, clerics, etc. in fantasy world situations.




I want to tell the story of a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue (why do you not love rogues and lump them under "etc."?  ) engaging in adventures. And I want to do it in a "playful" way, using game mechanics to resolve conflicts in game. I like figuring out new and good tactics, but I am not necessarily interested in the idea of being an effective fighter in a fantasy world situation.

And I think while "role-playing" strictly defined might be what you describe it as, I think the context of "role-playing games" changes its meaning again to encompass more than that, and also includes the "story-telling" or "acting" aspects. Trying to narrow down role-playing games to exclude these aspects seems like a bad idea. Because people use RPGs for all these purposes, and most games support each aspect.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Yep, I realise that, but looking again at my post I can see how I generated a mistaken implication.
> 
> I was just trying to say what I think the indie-RPG ways is of distinguishing _their_ RPGs (which you say are not RPGs at all, but rather storytelling games) from blind-player-Monopoly, which you implied they are committed to labelling an RPG also.
> 
> They distinguish the two by appealing to different metagame priorities.



I don't think blind-player-Monopoly is a story-game or a role-playing game.  I think it's a boardgame that requires a lot of narrative discourse to pull off.  Neither role-playing nor storytelling is going on there.  I was using it as an example to show the Storytelling game qualifier didn't hold up as those games are, as you said, narrative authority resolution games, where boardgames are not.  They are modeled (usually fictional) reality games.  Just as RPGs are, but with less breadth.  

Playing only the DDM rules/combat rules when playing 4E one session does not make that session a wargame.  But that kind of confusion was what happened back in '74.  Most never think that way now. Now we have the opposite problem.  


Check my edit above, meta-game priorities don't redefine games without those priorities.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

I want to "retract" my last statement, or at least slightly change it: 
I am interested in a little of all of it. But for me the most unique property always seems to be the idea of telling a story together with others using a game. But considering the amounts of tactical combat my group usually engages in, it is certainly not the only aspect I like...


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> howandwhy99, this is an interesting example and makes me understand more what you understand under the term of "role-playing".
> 
> But that's just not what I understand or expect from roleplaying games like D&D, Shadowrun or Warhammer.



After 2nd Edition D&D and games like World of Darkness claiming they are "storytelling games" I can absolutely understand why there are a generation of gamers looking for stories in their games.  I say things like "You cannot role-play to tell a story any more than you can live to tell a story" because I believe I am expressing the truth.  I'm on board with you here to help anyone who wishes to tell a story or tell a better one.  I'm not here to claim badwrongfun or "that's not an RPG".  If it has role-playing in it, fine by me.  

(heck, even Burning Empires which seems to call 3 hours of generating a world "role-playing" in the same breath it calls, um, acting? out a character in a scenario for the last 30 minutes "role-playing".)

If 4E's combat system isn't telling a good story for you, scratch that itch for your kind of fun, than maybe narrational story rights are the way to go?  But the more the rules are something the players follow vs. rules the PCs follow to model a world, the less real successfully overcoming any challenges endeavored in that world will be.  IOW, "beating" the monster is not the same fun when you can "just say" you beat the monster.

But yes, you can absolutely mix elements of storytelling and role-playing in a game as 4E Skill Challenges and 4E combat do. 

Honestly, I don't have a beef with anyone who wants to do theatre acting, or story telling, or whatever.  I really don't have a problem with the Indie Community either.  My only issue here is the widespread repetition of false statements because of a obviously erroneous gaming theory.  

I mean, really.  Every "What is a Role-playing Game" website in the last 5 years has changed its' definition to:  *All RPGs are Collaborative Storytelling Games*.  If you do agree with my posts, I'd hope you see what hogwash this is.  
Not the people.  Just the claim.

I'll get to the rest of your post in a second.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I mean, really.  Every "What is a Role-playing Game" website in the last 5 years has changed its' definition to:  *All RPGs are Collaborative Storytelling Games*.  If you do agree with my posts, I'd hope you see what hogwash this is.



But I also wouldn't agree exactly with your points, either, even if I understand you better now (finally!) 

I think the big "problem" is in your critic at the above sentence is that you ignore the "Game" part. And that is important. In a way, the game is a "qualifier" changing what collaborative storytelling usually means. Collaborative storytelling alone wouldn't make an RPG, nor is an RPG just collaborative storytelling. It is a collaborative storytelling _game_. Roleplaying Games are not just role-playing, they are Roleplaying _games_.

There are certain "rules" involved in how you do this collaborative storytelling. A player might get control about the game world beyond the scope of his character or not, but he only gets control in the context of the rules.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I want to "retract" my last statement, or at least slightly change it:
> I am interested in a little of all of it. But for me the most unique property always seems to be the idea of telling a story together with others using a game. But considering the amounts of tactical combat my group usually engages in, it is certainly not the only aspect I like...



I seriously doubt you need rules to do this.  One person can simply say "Let's not have that happen, let's have this happen".  The others agree or not.  You work out what you want amongst yourself and go back to playing.  

This kind of thing happens during playing RPGs when making house rules or questioning the adequacy of the model to the environment all the time.  (or it did)  I certainly don't see why you couldn't agree amongst yourselves to "just say" what happens and skip those rules whenever desired.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> After 2nd Edition D&D and games like World of Darkness claiming they are "storytelling games"...




4E does, too.

PHB p6: "_The Dungeons and Dragons game is a roleplaying game.  In fact, D&D invented the roleplaying game and started an industry.

A roleplaying game is a storytelling game that has elements of the games of make-believe that many of us played as children.  However, a roleplaying game such as D&D provides form and structure, with robust gameplay and endless possibilities.

...

What makes the D&D game unique is the Dungeon Master.  The DM is a person who takes on the role of lead storyteller and game referee.  The DM creates adventures for the characters and narrates the action for the players..._"

If you say that D&D is not a roleplaying game because the way it is played does not match the definition of 'roleplaying' in the dictionary, I disagree... D&D is a roleplaying game, and if your dictionary contradicts that, your dictionary is in need of updating.

-Hyp.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But I also wouldn't agree exactly with your points, either, even if I understand you better now (finally!)
> 
> I think the big "problem" is in your critic at the above sentence is that you ignore the "Game" part. And that is important. In a way, the game is a "qualifier" changing what collaborative storytelling usually means. Collaborative storytelling alone wouldn't make an RPG, nor is an RPG just collaborative storytelling. It is a collaborative storytelling _game_. Roleplaying Games are not just role-playing, they are Roleplaying _games_.
> 
> There are certain "rules" involved in how you do this collaborative storytelling. A player might get control about the game world beyond the scope of his character or not, but he only gets control in the context of the rules.



That would be a reality creating game that you role-played within (presumably).  To me, that is mixing storytelling rights with role-playing.  A hybrid.  The game may be mixing storytelling in your book and therefore qualify.  But games that do not do this (almost every game ever published) wouldn't qualify as collaborative storytelling game then.  Just the one's mixing storytelling and role-playing (or not having the role-playing at all).  

Non-hybrid RPGs as I've called them earlier are games just as the "Grey's Anatomy" doctor role-playing scenario is a game.  The students are being graded on their role-played performance (not character performance).  Therefore, they succeed or fail based on their awarded grade.  Think XP.  

Some DMs don't even give XP and just raise levels "when they feel like it".  That's DM fiat in my book and the removal of world modeling rules.  But the reasons they give for their games still being games probably holds up: that their players succeed or failure through play.  Honestly, this makes any endeavor of skill a "game".  But "game" is broadly defined as to put "story" to shame.   I'm avoiding making any distinction there.

To say hybrid storytelling / RPG games are not hybrid RPGs is to think judging one's "portrayal of their character" is not also a hybrid.  It's two activities.  If it were baseball or Monopoly or Chess, it would be more easily distinguished.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> 4E does, too.
> 
> PHB p6: "_The Dungeons and Dragons game is a roleplaying game.  In fact, D&D invented the roleplaying game and started an industry.
> 
> ...



EDIT TOTAL POST.

Yes, this is a total misunderstanding of role-playing on whoever wrote this portion of the book calling it a storygame, DM's storytellers, and narrators of action.  The Big Model does not get to redefine "role-playing" just because D&D designers agree with it too.

I like you Hyp, but to agree with you is to say all the dictionaries in the world are currently wrong.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I like you Hyp, but to agree with you is to say all the dictionaries in the world are currently wrong.




I'm cool with that.

I think the term 'role-playing game' was coined as a way to describe a hobby that was evolving; the directions that evolution took the hobby may have taken it beyond the literal definition of the words that make up that term, but the hobby still falls under the umbrella of the term.  If the dictionary has not kept up with the way that umbrella has expanded, it is the dictionary that has fallen behind.

-Hyp.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> I'm cool with that.
> 
> I think the term 'role-playing game' was coined as a way to describe a hobby that was evolving; the directions that evolution took the hobby may have taken it beyond the literal definition of the words that make up that term, but the hobby still falls under the umbrella of the term.  If the dictionary has not kept up with the way that umbrella has expanded, it is the dictionary that has fallen behind.
> 
> -Hyp.



That's cool.  I'm actually a bit surprised no one has found at least one of the references I have online, which claims role-playing is a kind of theatre play.  I'm well on board that improvisational acting is one kind of role-play, but it certainly isn't every kind.  (as being able to play "in-character" vs. "out-of-character" nicely demonstrates)

The thing is, I play D&D (I assume you know which version) and we don't "tell stories".  I mean, I know we are role-playing, so does our game no longer count as an RPG because we're not storytelling (as _all_ RPGs are storytelling)?  I can't imagine why not.  

Apparently, 4E's using the Big Model definition, "evolved" or not, is leaving us out of the hobby.  Oh well. 

At least when we play our games I'm confident we're succeeding because we Players succeeded and the improv'd characters just came along for the ride.  And that's the way I like it.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> I'm cool with that.
> 
> I think the term 'role-playing game' was coined as a way to describe a hobby that was evolving; the directions that evolution took the hobby may have taken it beyond the literal definition of the words that make up that term, but the hobby still falls under the umbrella of the term.  If the dictionary has not kept up with the way that umbrella has expanded, it is the dictionary that has fallen behind.
> 
> -Hyp.




I agree with that. What might have been true has changed over the time. When the term was coined, nobody knew exactly where it would lead and what it could and would all encompass. 

In other words, "Roleplaying Game" is larger then just "Roleplaying" and "Game". Another example might be a word like "Television". Taken apart, it might be just "remote view(ing)". But that description is insufficient. Using the internet to read EN World doesn't make it television, even though we are looking at something that is far away. it doesn't even become television if someone posts an image of his role-playing game table here. On the other hand, when we're taking of television, we also expect "teleaudio", despite noise/sound or speech not appearing in the word "television" at all.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 15, 2008)

MerricB said:


> Does Acrobat have word count?
> 
> Cheers!




I don't think so, but paper-captured Acrobat can be saved as Word.

RC


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## Voadam (Oct 15, 2008)

Mouseferatu said:


> Riddles? Players first, but if it's going to stop the game dead, resort to dice. Ditto puzzles, though I don't use puzzles very often.




And if the dice don't give the PCs success?

Dice and game mechanics based on a character's stats don't solve the problem in this case. They just give a second chance for the riddle or puzzle to be solved if the players don't succeed at the challenge.

If the problem is that failure stops the game dead then neither challenging the players nor challenging the characters is guaranteed to solve the problem of possible failure since both can fail.

The true solution is to not have failure stop the game dead. 

The PCs don't solve the riddle revealing the safe passage through the rune covered floor in front of the treasure room? Then have the PCs go around another way, rig up a rope bridge to cross without touching the runes, gather abjurations to make it through unharmed when the runes go off, or take damage and curses etc. going through.


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## Stalker0 (Oct 15, 2008)

One thing I wish dnd had more of is the notion of "drama points"...similar to what is seen in the Buffy RPG.

Basically these are mechanics that let players "break" the rules in an organized way, such as having a key friend come in at the right time, the perfect clue just "happens" to fall into the player's lap, etc.

To me these are a good compromise between challenging the player and challenging the stats. A character with high stats might get more of these kinds of points, or might get more in a specific category, like "social" for high charisma. But its up to the player in how to use it. A "smart" character might get points that he can spend on solving puzzles, making it easier, but the player still has to solve the puzzle.


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## Korgoth (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Apparently, 4E's using the Big Model definition, "evolved" or not, is leaving us out of the hobby.  Oh well.




Which is perhaps the biggest success of Edwards and his cronies to date. My estimation is that they set out to destroy role playing games and replace them with something else that was called the same thing. They may very well have succeeded.

But I think that actual role playing games, the kind of games that Gygax and Arneson invented, have a place in the world. I don't think that the Forge will ever succeed in stamping them out completely. At least, not until the generation that grew up with role playing games dies off. Will "story games" last so long? I have my doubts.

The current ascendance of Forgeism would do the likes of Saul Alinsky proud, though. Change the categories with which people think and you can change their behavior without them even noticing. Now, as to whether Edward's model was intentionally subversive of mainstream role playing or that it just so colossally misunderstood it that it actually changed it is a matter of speculation, and I've already speculated on it (and given that D&D was singled out by Edwards for vilification is reasonable evidence).


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 15, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> Change the categories with which people think and you can change their behavior without them even noticing.




1E AD&D DMG, p9: "Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the _realism simulation_ school and the other as the _game_ school.  AD&D is surely an adherent of the latter school.  It does not stress any realism (in the author's opinion an absurd effort at best considering the topic!).  It does little to attempt to simulate anything either."

It looks like the "G" and "S" styles of "hobby games" were established as categories as early as 1979... so are the categories with which people think really being changed?

-Hyp.


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## Korgoth (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> It looks like the "G" and "S" styles of "hobby games" were established as categories as early as 1979... so are the categories with which people think really being changed?
> -Hyp.




Well, my point about Forgespeak is not that it uses new words, but that it uses old words in novel ways. Rewrites the dictionary, as it were.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> It looks like the "G" and "S" styles of "hobby games" were established as categories as early as 1979... so are the categories with which people think really being changed?
> 
> -Hyp.



Hyp, check Edward's latest undesignated rewrite of his Sim article(s).  Even he believes Gygax's D&D was a Sim game and his reference there was to what GNS terms might term "hyper"-simulated wargames.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> The current ascendance of Forgeism would do the likes of Saul Alinsky proud, though. Change the categories with which people think and you can change their behavior without them even noticing. Now, as to whether Edward's model was intentionally subversive of mainstream role playing or that it just so colossally misunderstood it that it actually changed it is a matter of speculation, and I've already speculated on it (and given that D&D was singled out by Edwards for vilification is reasonable evidence).



It isn't cool to assign intentions to people's words on the internet. It's hard to know the reasons behind their actions.

(though ironically, assigning intentions to your customers when you design "narrational resolution games" makes all the difference in the world)  

I'm still convinced their qualification for "narrative authority resolution" or "NAR" rules is meaningless when it comes to design differences in any other game's ruleset.  It's a scam to call any kind of rule design collaborative storytelling when used with "storytelling intent".  It's the whole, "if I 'intend' to play baseball to tell a story or improvisationally act when playing, then they are "story" or "theatre" games" schtick.  The real NAR design elements in those games' rulesets are world alteration rules "outside of role-play".  

And I will say they do know it.  Otherwise such ridiculous assertions wouldn't be made about game prep being "role-play".  If you are "playing the role" of the game prepper in real life that means you are also engaged in the act of role-playing?  But when you play the role of a baseball player, or doctor, or dentist in real life you aren't?  By their definition, you have to allow this to be so.  I mean really. When I use a Rand McNally map in my RPG session, how on earth does the cartographer become a role-playing participant in my game?  I believe the GNS answer is: when you use NAR rules you are playing the role of a storyteller.  It's the only functional way to include non-role-playing actions as role-play.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> Which is perhaps the biggest success of Edwards and his cronies to date. My estimation is that they set out to destroy role playing games and replace them with something else that was called the same thing. They may very well have succeeded.
> 
> But I think that actual role playing games, the kind of games that Gygax and Arneson invented, have a place in the world. I don't think that the Forge will ever succeed in stamping them out completely. At least, not until the generation that grew up with role playing games dies off. Will "story games" last so long? I have my doubts.
> 
> The current ascendance of Forgeism would do the likes of Saul Alinsky proud, though. Change the categories with which people think and you can change their behavior without them even noticing. Now, as to whether Edward's model was intentionally subversive of mainstream role playing or that it just so colossally misunderstood it that it actually changed it is a matter of speculation, and I've already speculated on it (and given that D&D was singled out by Edwards for vilification is reasonable evidence).



To me this sounds more like a crazy conspiracy theory. "Edwards has manipulated us to change how we think about RPGs and what we do with them." He hasn't. He has only coined some terminology and a model to describe RPGs. Whether this model is actually good I can't say, though I see some merits and some flaws. 
Those "narrative" elements we find in Indie games existed way before the Big Model and GNS entered the place. How long does Shadowrun use Karma (and did replacing the Karma Pool with Edge change anything)? What's Torg Drama Deck and Possibilities if not narrative tools to give the players the oppotunity to change the story told in the game? 

Believing that it was Edwards or the Forge behind this changes is ... well, wrong. He just tried to find words and categorize what happened in the different game systems. 

If you can't identify yourself with the games created today, it's not the Forgeismns fault. It's the fault of the market that prefers this stuff. If you're lucky, the markets taste will change again.



Korgoth said:


> Well, my point about Forgespeak is not that it uses new words, but that it uses old words in novel ways. Rewrites the dictionary, as it were.



Well, I might agree with that one based on the discussions on Circvs Maximvs - and after reading the Forge glossary that made me wonder where they did find all this strange words and their meaning. 

The biggest fault of the GNS is not that it tried to change our thinking, but it uses a confusing terminology and that its developer seems a little to full of himself (considering the claim that the Big Model is apparently "finished" - it's almost certainly not - no model of a real-world phenoma can ever be declared "finished"!)


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 15, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> And I will say they do know it.  Otherwise such ridiculous assertions wouldn't be made about game prep being "role-play".  If you are "playing the role" of the game prepper in real life that means you are also engaged in the act of role-playing?  But when you play the role of a baseball player, or doctor, or dentist in real life you aren't?  By their definition, you have to allow this to be so.  I mean really. When I use a Rand McNally map in my RPG session, how on earth does the cartographer become a role-playing participant in my game?  I believe the GNS answer is: when you use NAR rules you are playing the role of a storyteller.  It's the only functional way to include non-role-playing actions as role-play.




I agree with you that taking narrative control beyond describing/determining the actions of your character is not playing the role. 
But I still believe it is a valid part of Role-Playing Games.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I agree with you that taking narrative control beyond describing/determining the actions of your character is not playing the role.
> But I still believe it is a valid part of Role-Playing Games.



It's valid in all the ways you don't want to "win" by role-playing your character.  IMO, that's why so few ever want to use them in combat "storytelling".


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## Delta (Oct 15, 2008)

Korgoth said:


> Which is perhaps the biggest success of Edwards and his cronies to date. My estimation is that they set out to destroy role playing games and replace them with something else that was called the same thing. They may very well have succeeded.




Personally, I think that's a fairly stunning observation.


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## justanobody (Oct 15, 2008)

pemerton said:


> In the way discussed in the DMG. There are three basic steps, the second having two components.
> 
> First step: The level of the skill challenge (which has been predetermined by the GM) tells us the DCs for Easy, Medium and Hard skill checks.
> 
> ...




So the DM is just making things up and givings bonuses to die rolls. There is no real way to quantify those actions, except by DM fiat.


howandwhy99 said:


> I think I see where you're going, but please let me know if I'm missing the point.
> 
> I think you're saying one can role-play to the GM instead of the modeled reality.  Your example is: breaking the 4th wall in order to appeal to the GM while still acting.  My objection is: it doesn't matter if the character breaks the 4th wall.  In role-playing or improv acting, you, the player, are the one making the decisions for him.  You are the one who is choosing to ask the GM to change the modeled reality.  The character cannot do this for himself.
> 
> ...




Its close enough for me to what I think I was trying to say before my train of thought jumped the tracks, ran over a hot dog vendor, and into the public swimming pool.

The roleplay doesn't really alter the game rules. When challengeing the character stats, you are only asking the player to make the correct die rolls for the correct skills.

When challenging the players, you are asking for all that extra roleplaying and interaction outside of just the die rolls that makes the game fun.

So Tigger had his failed acrobatics skill die rolls, and then needed DM [narrator] intervention because otherwise the story was stuck. Not always a bad thing, and the die rolls go unseen within the world, but as players we all know that they are there, and you CAN do without them with strict roleplay and have the die rolls to fall back on should you fail at roleplaying through when you challenge the player. Challenge the stats, and you really only have the die rolls to go on, because you already decided that the stats would be the determining factor on whether you would pass or fail the challenge.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 16, 2008)

justanobody said:


> So the DM is just making things up and givings bonuses to die rolls. There is no real way to quantify those actions, except by DM fiat.




4E PHB, p8: "Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master—you can’t play without one."

That's his job.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 16, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> 4E PHB, p8: "Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master—you can’t play without one."
> 
> That's his job.
> 
> -Hyp.




Don't bet on that!

Believe nothing you hear (read) and only half of what you see. - Samuel L. Clemons


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## RFisher (Oct 16, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> I think the term 'role-playing game' was coined as a way to describe a hobby that was evolving; the directions that evolution took the hobby may have taken it beyond the literal definition of the words that make up that term, but the hobby still falls under the umbrella of the term.




Even when it was first applied, I think it meant more than the individual words. And, yeah, this is far from unique to our hobby.

For example, “wargames” when applied to a hobby didn’t mean games about war. There were games about war that wouldn’t be considered wargames, and there were wargames that had very little to do with war.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Here's a quick example for people still confused.  It uses role-playing as defined in the dictionary and an example from outside the hobby, so we don't get confused by "Big Model" theory.
> 
> At a Medical School a professor decides to put her students through a role-playing experiment.  She has been teaching them emergency medicine and ER protocols for weeks and now wants to see how well the students do in a simulated environment.  She assigns each a name tag with fictional doctor names like, Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, and "Izzie" Stevens.
> 
> The professor takes them into the gymnasium where she has a mock up of a 10 car pile up. It is complete with dummies as accident victims and some other props. She could do this in a conference room with figurines and toy cars, but they have the space available and the gym seems easier.




But in that case the gym is intended as a complete simulation. 

The interns are presented with everything they need to assess the situation. The cars are cars, the bodies are bodies. And their repertoire of actions is limited to the things that doctors can do with the tools they're simulated to have. 

Pretty much any D&D scenario you might care to name is necessarily an incomplete simulation. There are things the player characters might see and be able to do that the DM doesn't describe. For example, the stated example of an improvisational move on page 42 - a rogue grabbing a chandelier overhead and swinging to knock an ogre up against a brazier. (The brazier will probably be obvious, the chandelier may be an undescribed but probable setting detail.)

Skill challenges are incomplete simulation write large. A DM who models crossing a trackless desert as a skill challenge could have a player use Athletics to climb up a ruined tower sticking out of the sand for a better vantage point, even though he didn't intend for there to be a ruined tower in the desert. 



howandwhy99 said:


> The students (and professor) are learning how good of doctors they are in such a situation.  Just as D&D RPGers learn and better themselves at *how good they are as fighters, wizards, clerics, etc. in fantasy world situations*.
> 
> ...
> 
> It is playing the game to skip the consequences of role-playing thereby causing your *role-playing successes to be shallower and shallower in their importance*.




Hahaha, what?

Nobody has ever done anything important by playing D&D. *And that's just fine. *Games don't have to be important.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Oct 16, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> But in that case the gym is intended as a complete simulation.
> 
> The interns are presented with everything they need to assess the situation. The cars are cars, the bodies are bodies. And their repertoire of actions is limited to the things that doctors can do with the tools they're simulated to have.



Why is a physical simulation so determinedly different than a mental one?  I understand that physical props are useful for immediate representation like pictures instead of words, but why couldn't the professor have used a map, drawn or mental?



> Pretty much any D&D scenario you might care to name is necessarily an incomplete simulation. There are things the player characters might see and be able to do that the DM doesn't describe. For example, the stated example of an improvisational move on page 42 - a rogue grabbing a chandelier overhead and swinging to knock an ogre up against a brazier. (The brazier will probably be obvious, the chandelier may be an undescribed but probable setting detail.)
> 
> Skill challenges are incomplete simulation write large. A DM who models crossing a trackless desert as a skill challenge could have a player use Athletics to climb up a ruined tower sticking out of the sand for a better vantage point, even though he didn't intend for there to be a ruined tower in the desert.



If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?  

The very definitions of the words Simulation or Model include "incomplete representation of".  That doesn't change these into "shared narrational authority resolution" systems.  A Player wandering the desert in the Outdoor Survival system (our OD&D system) could not say, "there is a ruined tower here my PC scrambles up."  Nor is the determination of reality a "Stake" where the dice are used to adjudicate who gets to be "King of Determining the World".  The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to?  The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such.  If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.  

This doesn't work for most folks as the challenge stops being "beating your opponents as your character" into "beating your opponents by halfway wishing the world into existence to win."  

I'm not de-legitimizing this for those who want it.  But it is absolutely a different thing than role-playing.  At best, it's a hybrid of playing the PC and God.  Nor could you play both at the same time.  Either you are playing a role or you are telling a story.  The only exception In character is telling the story of your PCs personality by Imrov Acting.  



> Hahaha, what?
> 
> Nobody has ever done anything important by playing D&D. *And that's just fine. *Games don't have to be important.



This is the difference between people jumping up from the table shouting, "WE KICKED YOUR BUTT!!" to "That was a good story we made."

It is my assertion success is as important to role-players as it is to wargamers and cardsharks.  I think most every RPG company gets this when they strive for balance in their rulesets.  It's not about appeasing complaining players who can't stand having a PC with less influence in any given situation)  It's because they intuitively know that power to win is important in "games".  IMO, it is as true for DDM as it is for simulations with scopes broad enough to be called RPGs/D&D.


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## Hussar (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Why is a physical simulation so determinedly different than a mental one?  I understand that physical props are useful for immediate representation like pictures instead of words, but why couldn't the professor have used a map, drawn or mental?




Because a map is an abstraction.  The physical simulation, while obviously still an incomplete representation, is far, far closer to the actual reality than stick figures on a white board.  Not all simulations are created equally of course.  Some are far more detailed than others.  The more detailed a simulation is, the closer it comes to actually being what is modeled.  It's not a case of either/or, but rather a spectrum from reality to completely abstract.



> If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?




The skill challenge is a simulation.  You are attempting to simulate an event using rules other than the combat ones.  Those rules allow the player, with the DM's permission, to affect minor changes to the scenery.  

One does not preclude the other.  The player must still succeed in the skill challenge or fail as the case may be.  However, the parameters of the situation are not entirely in the hands of the DM.



> The very definitions of the words Simulation or Model include "incomplete representation of".  That doesn't change these into "shared narrational authority resolution" systems.  A Player wandering the desert in the Outdoor Survival system (our OD&D system) could not say, "there is a ruined tower here my PC scrambles up."  Nor is the determination of reality a "Stake" where the dice are used to adjudicate who gets to be "King of Determining the World".  The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to?  The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such.  If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.




So, only the things you've written down before the game starts may be used?  No DM may ever extemporize any details of the setting during play?  That's ridiculous.  DM's do it all the time.  DM's are allowed to determine what is or is not in their world every second of the day.  And, while changing an existing detail without justification is bad DMing, adding something certainly isn't.  I may not say that there is a badger hole in the hill, but, it's not unreasonable to think that there might be one there.

Does it really matter who places that badger hole?




> This doesn't work for most folks as the challenge stops being "beating your opponents as your character" into "beating your opponents by halfway wishing the world into existence to win."
> 
> I'm not de-legitimizing this for those who want it.  But it is absolutely a different thing than role-playing.  At best, it's a hybrid of playing the PC and God.  Nor could you play both at the same time.  Either you are playing a role or you are telling a story.  The only exception In character is telling the story of your PCs personality by Imrov Acting.




This is a completely false assertion.  The old 007 game back in the 80's had a hero point mechanic where you as the player could spend a hero point to add in setting elements that were in keeping with the genre.  The game actually ENCOURAGED players to do so.

Trying to tell me that I'm suddenly not role playing simply because I have limited authorial control over setting elements that are not detailed by the GM is laughable.



> This is the difference between people jumping up from the table shouting, "WE KICKED YOUR BUTT!!" to "That was a good story we made."




Again with the entirely false assertion.  Do you allow players to make backgrounds for their characters?  Why?  You are allowing them to have limited authorial control over the setting, therefore they are no longer role playing.  Heck, do you allow them to choose their race or class?  How is that any different?  If I choose to play an elf, I am affecting the setting.  Thus, I must not be roleplaying?



> It is my assertion success is as important to role-players as it is to wargamers and cardsharks.  I think most every RPG company gets this when they strive for balance in their rulesets.  It's not about appeasing complaining players who can't stand having a PC with less influence in any given situation)  It's because they intuitively know that power to win is important in "games".  IMO, it is as true for DDM as it is for simulations with scopes broad enough to be called RPGs/D&D.




But, even with limited authorial control, you still have success.  At no point can you say, "I win" as a player.  You might, at best, be able to give yourself a chance of winning, but, that's entirely up the DM and still not a guaranteed success.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 16, 2008)

Delta said:


> Personally, I think that's a fairly stunning observation.




Stunning like "The Moon Landing was a fake"? Or stunning like "Wow, so space and time are relative, but the speed of light is constant no matter what?"

I definitely point towards the first.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 16, 2008)

Hussar said:


> Because a map is an abstraction.  The physical simulation, while obviously still an incomplete representation, is far, far closer to the actual reality than stick figures on a white board.  Not all simulations are created equally of course.  Some are far more detailed than others.  The more detailed a simulation is, the closer it comes to actually being what is modeled.  It's not a case of either/or, but rather a spectrum from reality to completely abstract.



So a physical simulation matters because it is closer to reality?  And a D&D game with greater detailed simulation is closer to reality as well?  This would seem to imply higher simulated games are not storytelling games.  Which would make sense when it comes to why DDM rules are not storytelling when used as DDM rules and obviously not storytelling when used in D&D4E.  It's obviously false because otherwise all simulated games become storytelling games.  You can't pick and choose what you want to count as stories. 



> The skill challenge is a simulation.  You are attempting to simulate an event using rules other than the combat ones.  Those rules allow the player, with the DM's permission, to affect minor changes to the scenery.
> 
> One does not preclude the other.  The player must still succeed in the skill challenge or fail as the case may be.  However, the parameters of the situation are not entirely in the hands of the DM.



So all "NAR" rules are simulations?  Or just Skill Challenges?  Which again begs the question of whether all simulation rules are storytelling rules.  Stories don't just get to be about worlds and people you know.  I'm betting it's because people have to narrate a sim, like in blind Monopoly.  How can that not be a story?

Also, the "parameters of the situation" are never entirely in the hands of the GM unlike your assertion above.  The point of dice and rules and maps are to make these judgment calls as few as possible.  Or does every game requiring Referees making judgment calls count as storytelling?



> So, only the things you've written down before the game starts may be used?  No DM may ever extemporize any details of the setting during play?  That's ridiculous.  DM's do it all the time.  DM's are allowed to determine what is or is not in their world every second of the day.  And, while changing an existing detail without justification is bad DMing, adding something certainly isn't.  I may not say that there is a badger hole in the hill, but, it's not unreasonable to think that there might be one there.
> 
> Does it really matter who places that badger hole?



I'm sorry if your Referees are "just saying" things are so in your games.  That they are doing this "all the time".  That sucks.  Tell them to follow the rules.  Adding a badger hole isn't a big deal, but if the badger hole is important to winning the game? Yes, you better roll.



> This is a completely false assertion.  The old 007 game back in the 80's had a hero point mechanic where you as the player could spend a hero point to add in setting elements that were in keeping with the genre.  The game actually ENCOURAGED players to do so.
> 
> *Trying to tell me that I'm suddenly not role playing simply because I have limited authorial control over setting elements that are not detailed by the GM is laughable.*



I've been backing up this assertion with real examples for several posts now.  "Just saying" I'm wrong isn't going to get you anywhere in real life.  Obviously you aren't playing the role of your PC if you are playing God with the world.  How can anything else not be considered laughable?  (see my Burning Empires & Rand McNally examples) 



> Again with the entirely false assertion.  Do you allow players to make backgrounds for their characters?  Why?  You are allowing them to have limited authorial control over the setting, therefore they are no longer role playing.  Heck, do you allow them to choose their race or class?  How is that any different?  If I choose to play an elf, I am affecting the setting.  Thus, I must not be roleplaying?



I don't know about you, but we generate PCs with dice rolls.  Deciding on a setting, PCs, equipment, and whatnot before you begin _playing_ is the same as any game prep.  No matter if the simulation is defined as role-playing or not.  I've already pointed out that "NAR" rule-based actions are essentially staccato setting creating that taking one out of the role of playing their character.   Not good if you like to immerse yourself in the character or the world.  (which is most role-players' intentions IMO)

However, "We Kicked Your Butt!!" can only happen in a game.  "Just saying" our PCs win while telling a story isn't winning at anything.  At best, it's winning at telling a good story, not _doing_ the things in the story.  Ditto for acting.    Using "NAR" rules, the best you can do is "win" narrational authority.  You're fighting the other Gods for fate control.  This is why actors and storytellers aren't thrilled when they "say" or "portray" a character beating up a room full of cowboys.  It's certainly nothing they did.



> But, even with limited authorial control, you still have success.



But not success like winning at a wargame, right?  Your warriors didn't beat his, right?


> At no point can you say, "I win" as a player.



This is why NAR games lose, IMHO 



> You might, at best, be able to give yourself a chance of winning, but, that's entirely up the DM and still not a guaranteed success.



Entirely up to the DM?  Are you serious?  Do you really believe the DM is GOD argument that the BIG MODEL uses to denigrate all real non-hybrid RPGs?  Or that Referees are "tyrants"?  

There is winning in role-playing.  You winning as your character.   Role-playing is not storytelling where the only win you can have is in telling a good story.  Where you, the player, are never in the characters place.  Where the player is just one of multiple narrators.  And never the character.  How on earth can this theory even claim it's a role-playing theory?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 16, 2008)

Here's a little something to help breakdown the different kinds of role-play. 

1. "Real" role-playing.  Like an occupation or profession.  Being in the role of husband or wife, father or mother.  This is playing a role in real life.  These things overlap of course in the same way a person who is a "firefighter" can ask his boss "what role do you need me in?" during a fire.  He's on ladder rescue.  That's his role.  Or another one, at least.  

2. Simulated role-play.  This is all the educational role-playing testing real people's real abilities. It's also RPG role-playing.  Not the GM, of course. He's running the game.  GM is a type #1 kind of role-play.  He's not actually in the simulation.  He's the one doing it.

3. Acting role-play.  Actors take on roles to express their character.  The improvisation needed differs from great to small depending on how much script is in place.  Perhaps it's just the description of a personality?  That will be hard for Mickey Mantle's actor when he needs to hit a homerun.  He needs set designers, directors, and more to really help out.  Of course, those people aren't actors #3 no more than they are role-playing in a simulated environment #2.  The do have roles in real life though #1.

Telling a "fictional narrative" only relates to role-playing when you are being a particular kind of #1, an author, or being an actor #3.  Of course, one can use "narrative discourse" in any role.  When acting it's the character telling a story while the actor performing the Play.  In #1 or #2 it's just normal discourse.  Like an author talking about his books or an actor out-of-character talking about his performance.  Or a D&D player telling the GM to have his character attack the bugbear.  

It's my assertion people want to play D&D to role-play as #2.  GMs fill a #1 role of running the game.  But don't get confused if we refer to ourselves collectively as #1 role-players.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Here's a little something to help breakdown the different kinds of role-play.
> 
> 1. "Real" role-playing.  Like an occupation or profession.  Being in the role of husband or wife, father or mother.  This is playing a role in real life.  These things overlap of course in the same way a person who is a "firefighter" can ask his boss "what role do you need me in?" during a fire.  He's on ladder rescue.  That's his role.  Or another one, at least.
> 
> ...



But it's not the only thing people want from a D&D game (or any other RPG). And some if it might even work against #2.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Obviously you aren't playing the role of your PC if you are playing God with the world.




Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and an NPC (portrayed by Bob, the DM).  Is Alan roleplaying?  Is Bob roleplaying?

Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and two NPCs (both portrayed by Bob, the DM).  Is Alan roleplaying?  Is Bob roleplaying?

Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and two NPCs (both portrayed by Bob, the DM), who are watching a horse race as they converse (described by Bob, the DM).  Is Alan roleplaying?  Is Bob roleplaying?

Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and an NPC (portrayed by Bob, the DM).  Alan also takes the part of his PC's cohort, who interjects from time to time with reminders (since Alan's PC is established as being fairly forgetful).  Is Alan roleplaying?  Is Bob roleplaying?

-Hyp.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 16, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But it's not the only thing people want from a D&D game (or any other RPG). And some if it might even work against #2.



Again, that's perfectly okay in my book. It's more "video-gamey" role-playing because either the model isn't really very realistic and/or you have elements in the game that have nothing to do with your character.  For instance, most MMORPGs don't include open spell creation because it would require players to shell script their ideas into the program code.  Also, some games have monsters running around with signposts above their heads.  Just like some RPGs include things like "fate points" you can spend as a player to win, but not as a character.  Not wrong, just different.



			
				Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and an NPC (portrayed by Bob, the DM). Is Alan roleplaying? Is Bob roleplaying?



Looks like fun. 

Alan is role-playing #2, while acting #3.  Bob is portraying the NPC through acting, he is not role-playing as defined under #2.  (this is because DMPCs don't work, you can't objectively test yourself as a player in a game you're refereeing (any kind of refereed game)).  Bob has rules for how his NPC can behave (act #3). Alan, the player, doesn't.  

(think bluff, sense motive, attitude adjustment, morale, etc.)



> Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and two NPCs (both portrayed by Bob, the DM). Is Alan roleplaying? Is Bob roleplaying?



Same as above with two roles acted.



> Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and two NPCs (both portrayed by Bob, the DM), who are watching a horse race as they converse (described by Bob, the DM). Is Alan roleplaying? Is Bob roleplaying?



Same as above, except now Bob the GM is simulating the environment watched even though he is acting out characters in that environment.



> Let's say there is an in-character conversation between a PC (portrayed by Alan, a player), and an NPC (portrayed by Bob, the DM). Alan also takes the part of his PC's cohort, who interjects from time to time with reminders (since Alan's PC is established as being fairly forgetful). Is Alan roleplaying? Is Bob roleplaying?



Alan is role-playing 2 PCs.  He has limited control over one.  

EDIT: Bob is just acting his one NPC, but see below too.  Forgot about his NPC here.

In some games Alan's control over the the activities of the Cohort would cover any obeyed orders when given from Alan's actual PC (the Batman to his Robin).  The DM would step in when required.

In other games, the limit on control would be less or even gone.  The cohort could be his full PC.  

Alan's #3 role-playing (acting) of his main PC as "forgetful" would be a result of Alan's intention of role-playing to act #3 (One of many intentions possible while role-playing in a simulation #2).  That's his prerogative.  As they say, "you can't tell someone how to role-play their character in an RPG".  Type #2 role-playing does not have rules for how to portray your character.

Alan playing his Cohort stepping in to remind his main PC of forgotten details means Alan can (depending on the degree of assistance he gives "himself" here) act #3 to limit his successful role-play #2 in the world, while still playing towards success overall.  As Alan gets to play 2 PCs (1 limited or not) to succeed as a team in the world, he can limit one when in discussion with each other and not hurt his actual chances of his success.  Playing the knowledge of two PCs, while only one player limits what they could do if run separately (2 player's abilities tested).  

In my other reading of your question, where the DM is stepping in as the cohort to help Alan (whether his forgetting is feigned or not).  Not Alan as the full PC cohort:
This is like any NPC interacting with a PC may or may not be assisting that PC.  The question is: Is the DM giving an objective portrayal?  Is he only using knowledge the NPC has?  Behaving as the generated character?

If not, the NPC may unfairly be played to assist Players who need help and this is the GM "bending the rules" to make their game play easier.  Just as if he were fudging the dice in the players' favor.  He's fudging the simulation in your favor.  This is your benevolent tyrant.

OTOH, the NPC may unfairly be played to hinder the Players who are doing something the DM doesn't like and is "bending the ruls" to make their game play harder.  He's fudging against you, portrayed NPC or dice roll.  This is your "Killer DM" tyrant. 

Either of these are called in the Big Model: 
Illusionism - the GM is warping the world without players knowing,
Participationalism - the GM is permitted permitted by the Players to warp the world.  

I believe objective portrayal of the simulated reality is best.  That's my preference though as it doesn't end up in "we won because the DM let us win".  This is "let us win or lose" just as in a court case where we are sentenced by a judge breaking the law.  Who really wants that?  

Well, maybe a judge judging the law referenced as unconstitutional or something else against the spirit of the law.  But no rule-based construct of justice (or rule-based construct of a fictional world) is going to be perfect.  

This is where I was in my last discussion with folks on this issue.  Saying all court justices "just say" whatever they want justice to be.



Here's my question.  Do you believe all RPGs collaborative storytelling games?  What about if all the participants are acting #3 within them?  What about if all are not?  Even the GM in this case merely describing NPC actions or never having NPCs to "act" anyways?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Again, that's perfectly okay in my book. It's more "video-gamey" role-playing because either the model isn't really very realistic and/or you have elements in the game that have nothing to do with your character.  For instance, most MMORPGs don't include open spell creation because it would require players to shell script their ideas into the program code.  Also, some games have monsters running around with signposts above their heads.  Just like some RPGs include things like "fate points" you can spend as a player to win, but not as a character.  Not wrong, just different.



I am not really seeing the video game similarity here. Unless you're speaking about cheat codes or editors. Narrative control is something we usually lack in scripted or "simulating" games. 

Crossing the desert in a videogame usually won't allow the player deciding that there is an oasis around somewhere. But a role-playing game with narrative elements - or just a DM that reacts to player input - would allow you to "add" one. Not necessarily change the nature of the desert, but defining that it exists where this was undecided beforehand.



> Looks like fun.
> 
> Alan is role-playing #2, while acting #3.  Bob is portraying the NPC through acting, he is not role-playing as defined under #2.  (this is because DMPCs don't work, you can't objectively test yourself as a player in a game you're refereeing (any kind of refereed game)).  Bob has rules for how his NPC can behave (act #3). Alan, the player, doesn't.
> 
> ...



In games that make narrative control part of the game rules, it is not "because the DM let us win". It is because you used your resources given by the game (be it character powers or narrative options for players) to "win".

But you always win only because the DM let you win. If the DM doesn't want you to win, he will create a real death trap. Sending you against monsters you can't beat, or presenting a fiendish trap you never could have figured out.




> Here's my question.  Do you believe all RPGs collaborative storytelling games?  What about if all the participants are acting #3 within them?  What about if all are not?  Even the GM in this case merely describing NPC actions or never having NPCs to "act" anyways?



Definitely all have the potential for them. The DM creates a setting that the characters will interact with. Solely by choosing the actions of their characters, player will affect what will happen in the game, and by thus, you have a story that is told and created not only by the DM, but also by the players, making it a story told collaboratively. 

It is not the only thing they did in this time, but it is what makes the experience of "beating challenge" so unique. You can beat challenges with Sodoku or Poker, too, but you tell a story while beating challenges when playing an RPG. It creates a unique relationship between the participants and the story. You didn't just tell some story you were interested - you "worked" to realize the story.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Why is a physical simulation so determinedly different than a mental one?  I understand that physical props are useful for immediate representation like pictures instead of words, but why couldn't the professor have used a map, drawn or mental?




Uh... a picture is worth a thousand words? The problem with a "mental simulation" is that in order to investigate it you have to explicitly ask the person whose simulation it is. As opposed to a physical simulation where to investigate it you use the same senses you use to investigate the world. Much less turnaround time on the latter.



howandwhy99 said:


> If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?




Combat simulations are, too. It's just that everybody comes to the table with a fairly large set of actions, and if there's a battle map, they have a pretty good picture of how they can use those actions. 

It's still up to people to make their mechanics make sense in the context of the gameworld, if they'd like, but there's no extra mechanical benefits.



howandwhy99 said:


> The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to?  The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such.  If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.




The dice aren't there to decide whether the tower exists. The DM does have right of first refusal if he doesn't want the tower there, but the check the player makes is to climb the tower and not pull it down on top of himself. To get a better view of the desert. To navigate it. To pass the skill challenge. Not to somehow determine whether the tower is there or not.


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## LostSoul (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> The very definitions of the words Simulation or Model include "incomplete representation of".  That doesn't change these into "shared narrational authority resolution" systems.  A Player wandering the desert in the Outdoor Survival system (our OD&D system) could not say, "there is a ruined tower here my PC scrambles up."  Nor is the determination of reality a "Stake" where the dice are used to adjudicate who gets to be "King of Determining the World".  The DM isn't allowed to do this, why would someone playing a PC in that world be able to?  The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such.  If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.




Players in D&D 4e do not have the kind of authority you're talking about, even during a Skill Challenge.  _Maybe_ the DM gives the players this authority in the game, but it's not a part of the RAW.

In 4e, a player might say, "Is there a ruined tower I can scramble up for a better view?"  He doesn't have the authority to say, "I spot a ruined tower and scramble up it for a better view."


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 16, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Here's my question.  Do you believe all RPGs collaborative storytelling games?




No... but I think a collaborative storytelling game where the players assume the parts of characters falls under the umbrella of Roleplaying Games.



> What about if all the participants are acting #3 within them?  What about if all are not?  Even the GM in this case merely describing NPC actions or never having NPCs to "act" anyways?




By "all are not", do you mean where the PCs actions are all described in the third person?

"My guy moves over here, and hits the goblin with his sword", "Regdar greets the innkeeper",
versus
"I run up to the goblin and hit him with my sword", "'Hail, good innkeeper!'"?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 16, 2008)

Narrative


Hypersmurf said:


> "My guy moves over here, and hits the goblin with his sword", "Regdar greets the innkeeper"




Roleplaying


> "I run up to the goblin and hit him with my sword", "'Hail, good innkeeper!'"?




But what does any of this have to do with challenging the players vs the character stats?


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## MerricB (Oct 17, 2008)

Don't forget Role Assumption: taking the role of the character and making decisions as that character, though not actually role-playing/acting out the persona in speech.

Cheers!


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 17, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> 4E PHB, p8: "Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master—you can’t play without one."
> 
> That's his job.
> 
> -Hyp.




4E PHB, p195 "This might seem strange advice for a _Dungeon Master's Guide_, but it's entirely possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master."

It seems this book is somewhat at odds with itself  BTW your quote appears on page 6.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 17, 2008)

ExploderWizard said:


> 4E PHB, p195 "This might seem strange advice for a _Dungeon Master's Guide_, but it's entirely possible to play D&D without a Dungeon Master."
> 
> It seems this book is somewhat at odds with itself  BTW your quote appears on page 6.




You're in the wrong book.  My quote appears on p8, but not of the DMG.  Your quote appears on p195, but not of the PHB.  p6 of the DMG has something similar to what I quoted from p8 of the PHB.

Note that your quote carries on to qualify that it's if you're only interested in combat that you can get by without a DM.

-Hyp.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 17, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Note that your quote carries on to qualify that it's if you're only interested in combat that you can get by without a DM.
> 
> -Hyp.




IOW, if you want to eliminate the DM's role, you can play 4Ed like an extremely detailed tabletop wargame?

Imagine that!


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 17, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> You're in the wrong book. My quote appears on p8, but not of the DMG. Your quote appears on p195, but not of the PHB. p6 of the DMG has something similar to what I quoted from p8 of the PHB.
> 
> Note that your quote carries on to qualify that it's if you're only interested in combat that you can get by without a DM.
> 
> -Hyp.




ROFL I typed PHB instead of DMG  oops!


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## pemerton (Oct 17, 2008)

Stalker0 said:


> One thing I wish dnd had more of is the notion of "drama points"...similar to what is seen in the Buffy RPG.
> 
> Basically these are mechanics that let players "break" the rules in an organized way, such as having a key friend come in at the right time, the perfect clue just "happens" to fall into the player's lap, etc.



The skill challenge mechanics provide something functionally in the neighbourhood of this - have a look at some of the actual play examples LostSoul has posted, for example, or the discussion of "fact introduction" upthread.


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## pemerton (Oct 17, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> If skill challenges are simulations, how can they be shared narrations, while combat simulations are not?



For what it's worth, 4e combat resolution also has narrativist dimensions (eg the Come and Get It fighter power, which allows a 1x/enc pull of foes within a certain radius towards the PC, and which therefore in effect empowers the player to 1x/enc specify how, in the gameworld, it comes about that those foes move closer to his/her PC).



howandwhy99 said:


> The DM has to base the existence of said tower or chandelier on his knowledge of what the world may hold or use whatever system is in place to determine such.



This is equally true in narrativist play, except that the logical relation will typically be one of consistency rather than entailment (which in any event is, in practice, unlikely to be made out given the paucity of detail about the gameworld). And the system in place to determine which of the various possibilities obtains (each consistent with the prior state of the gameworld, but all mutually inconsistent as extensions of that state) is one of game-mechanically-distributed stipulation.



howandwhy99 said:


> If you want to include said determination into a Skill Challenge dice roll, you've changed role-players into role-players plus world creators.



Yes, for a certain value of "role-playing". Of course, in my view "roleplaying", as used to describe the activity of playing an RPG, includes the act of stipulating the state of the gameworld when this takes place during the course of play.



howandwhy99 said:


> This doesn't work for most folks as the challenge stops being "beating your opponents as your character" into "beating your opponents by halfway wishing the world into existence to win."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



It's interesting that you seem to agree with Ron Edwards about the inconsistency of winning and storytelling. I think the tension between the two is not as great as you (and Edwards) are suggesting. For example, provided that the mechanics place certain constraints on narrative distribution, then there can still be a challenge in taking the story to where you want it to go (eg victory for one's PC). And overcoming that challenge might still be fun.

I also think that you are wrong in suggesting that roleplaying (in your sense) and narration are inconsistent speech acts. In many cases I think they are performed simultaneously. I'm reminded of Davidson's essay on Quotation (1979), in which he says (pp 80-81 in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation):

"I once resolved to adopt a consistent way of using quotation marks in my professional writing. My plan was to use single quotation marks when I wanted to refer to the expression a token of which was within, but double quotation marks when I wanted to use the expression in its usual meaning while at the same time indicating that the word was odd or special ('scare quotes'). I blush to admit that I struggled with this absurd and unworkable formula for a couple of years before it dawned on me that the second category contained the seeds of its own destruction. Consider . . . [my earlier remark that] Quine says that quotation '. . . has a certain anomolous feature'. Are the quoted words used or mentioned? Obviously mentioned, since the words are Quine's own, and I want to mark the fact. But eqaully obvious is the fact that the words are used".​
As Davidson notes, it is possible to both use a word and to mention it at the same time. Likewise, I think it is possible to both tell a story (ie occupy the authorial "god" role) and to play a role (ie occupy the protagonist role) at the same time - an example would be a player who says "I take a drink from my water-bottle, which of course I refilled before we left town." Here the players is both playing the role of his/her PC and occupying the authorial role.

This is why I think that Edwards is correct that no particular role (protagonist or authorial) is indicative of whether play is simulationist or narrativist. To work that out you need to look at what sorts of expectations and constraints determine what is done by any given player occupying any given role.


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## pemerton (Oct 17, 2008)

Me said:


> In the way discussed in the DMG. There are three basic steps, the second having two components.
> 
> First step: The level of the skill challenge (which has been predetermined by the GM) tells us the DCs for Easy, Medium and Hard skill checks.
> 
> ...





justanobody said:


> So the DM is just making things up and givings bonuses to die rolls. There is no real way to quantify those actions, except by DM fiat.



Well, if by "making things up" you mean reading certain numbers of a table in accordance with certain guidelines of the sort I discussed, and then allocating +/- 2 adjustments in accordance with certain guidelines of the sort I discussed, then I guess so.

On this understanding of "making things up" then that is equally the case for Classic Traveller, RQ or RM.

Of course, 4e differs from those games, but not in the GM having to make judgement calls. It differs in the guidelines. In RM etc the DC is a function of difficulty in the gameworld. In 4e the DC level (Easy, Medium or Hard) is a function of metagame desirability. Do you think the latter is more likely to be contentious than the former?


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## pemerton (Oct 17, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> 2. Simulated role-play.  This is all the educational role-playing testing real people's real abilities. It's also RPG role-playing.  Not the GM, of course. He's running the game.  GM is a type #1 kind of role-play.  He's not actually in the simulation.  He's the one doing it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's my assertion people want to play D&D to role-play as #2.  GMs fill a #1 role of running the game.





howandwhy99 said:


> I believe objective portrayal of the simulated reality is best.  That's my preference though as it doesn't end up in "we won because the DM let us win".





howandwhy99 said:


> But the more the rules are something the players follow vs. rules the PCs follow to model a world, the less real successfully overcoming any challenges endeavored in that world will be.





howandwhy99 said:


> There is winning in role-playing.  You winning as your character.



The best exposition of this playstyle that I know is by Lewis Pulsipher in an article collated into the Best of White Dwarf vol 1. The discussion in the 1st ed AD&D PHB of how to go about preparing for an adventure is located in the same paradigm, but is less explicit than Pulsipher. (Interestingly, the 1st ed DMG doesn't say all that much about what is involved in GMing this sort of play - I think Pulsipher is better in that respect.)

What is noteworthy is that, when Pulsipher published an article located within the same paradigm in 1983 (Dragon 79) it already seems to have been a more controversial presupposition about the aim of play (Forum response published in Dragon 81).

I'm personally not persuaded that most people play D&D (or other RPGs) in order to test themselves in the way that you suggest.


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## pemerton (Oct 17, 2008)

LostSoul said:


> Players in D&D 4e do not have the kind of authority you're talking about, even during a Skill Challenge.  _Maybe_ the DM gives the players this authority in the game, but it's not a part of the RAW.
> 
> In 4e, a player might say, "Is there a ruined tower I can scramble up for a better view?"  He doesn't have the authority to say, "I spot a ruined tower and scramble up it for a better view."



Well, the skill challenge rules don't expressly give the players that sort of authority. But page 28 has James Wyatt saying (in the sidebar) that "this is a game about imagination, about coming together to tell a story as a group . . . the players have a right to participate in telling that story—after all, they’re playing the protagonists!" So I would say the DMG is ambiguous on the point.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 17, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I am not really seeing the video game similarity here. Unless you're speaking about cheat codes or editors. Narrative control is something we usually lack in scripted or "simulating" games.
> 
> Crossing the desert in a videogame usually won't allow the player deciding that there is an oasis around somewhere. But a role-playing game with narrative elements - or just a DM that reacts to player input - would allow you to "add" one. Not necessarily change the nature of the desert, but defining that it exists where this was undecided beforehand.



You're right, I wasn't very clear there.  I see NAR rule games like RPG videogame rules because the frequently both require the player to stop playing the PC in order to use them.  Placing a desert is not role-playing in the same way turning on PvP status isn't playing your character either.



> In games that make narrative control part of the game rules, it is not "because the DM let us win". It is because you used your resources given by the game (be it character powers or narrative options for players) to "win".



I think I was mentioning this shortly above your post.  Typical RPGs challenge the player to win as their character.  NAR rules challenge the player to win as a storyteller (while perhaps sometimes winning as the character).


> But you always win only because the DM let you win. If the DM doesn't want you to win, he will create a real death trap. Sending you against monsters you can't beat, or presenting a fiendish trap you never could have figured out.



Don't let the wargamers find out they only win because the referees allowed them to.  DMs, referees, and judges of any ilk have to abide by the rules just as the players do.  They aren't kings.



> Definitely all have the potential for them. The DM creates a setting that the characters will interact with. Solely by choosing the actions of their characters, player will affect what will happen in the game, and by thus, you have a story that is told and created not only by the DM, but also by the players, making it a story told collaboratively.
> 
> It is not the only thing they did in this time, but it is what makes the experience of "beating challenge" so unique. You can beat challenges with Sodoku or Poker, too, but you tell a story while beating challenges when playing an RPG. It creates a unique relationship between the participants and the story. You didn't just tell some story you were interested - you "worked" to realize the story.



This is doing, not storytelling.  Any kind of game may have a fictional counterpart it is modeling.  Referencing that counterpart while playing the game doesn't mean playing those games is "collaboratively telling a story."  The fiction of Monopoly or Chess is every bit as valid as a story as that in D&D.  Even with no "referenced fiction", if referencing game elements is telling a story, Sodoku and Poker are storytelling games too.  You can't pick and choose what counts.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 17, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> Uh... a picture is worth a thousand words? The problem with a "mental simulation" is that in order to investigate it you have to explicitly ask the person whose simulation it is. As opposed to a physical simulation where to investigate it you use the same senses you use to investigate the world. Much less turnaround time on the latter.



All of this really doesn't matter IMO.  Physical mock ups are still RPGs.  Whether they be in gymnasiums or in World of Warcraft online.  Having to ask doesn't change the game into a storytelling game.  See here again.  
Specifically: "The difference is in short: Occasionally using narrative speech forms to talk about modeled fiction vs. collaboratively relating a fictional narrative."





> Combat simulations are, too. It's just that everybody comes to the table with a fairly large set of actions, and if there's a battle map, they have a pretty good picture of how they can use those actions.
> 
> It's still up to people to make their mechanics make sense in the context of the gameworld, if they'd like, but there's no extra mechanical benefits.



I think we're falling back into All Simulations games are NAR games.  If the only difference is having to reference the rules, then intent is all that matters.  I can intend not to tell a story with no visible change in play.  This is a false distinction IMO.



> The dice aren't there to decide whether the tower exists. The DM does have right of first refusal if he doesn't want the tower there, but the check the player makes is to climb the tower and not pull it down on top of himself. To get a better view of the desert. To navigate it. To pass the skill challenge. Not to somehow determine whether the tower is there or not.



Actually, I believe the dice are there to determine if the tower exists.   But that's my preference.  The player doesn't step out of the role to declare and still get to be claimed "in character" (i.e. role-playing).  I've been over this stuff before in this thread.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 17, 2008)

LostSoul said:


> Players in D&D 4e do not have the kind of authority you're talking about, even during a Skill Challenge.  _Maybe_ the DM gives the players this authority in the game, but it's not a part of the RAW.
> 
> In 4e, a player might say, "Is there a ruined tower I can scramble up for a better view?"  He doesn't have the authority to say, "I spot a ruined tower and scramble up it for a better view."



Hey LostSoul. I was only using that example in that response because it was what was suggested to me as a Skill Challenge answer.  I agree with your understanding on how it could be played as strictly skill challenges grouped with a rather weak overall difficulty goal (# of success / failures). 





Hypersmurf said:


> No... but I think a collaborative storytelling game where the players assume the parts of characters falls under the umbrella of Roleplaying Games.



I absolutely agree.  Just as theatre acting probably falls under the much larger term "role-playing".  However, this doesn't mean D&D is a theatre game or you are engaged in telling a story when you play it.



> By "all are not", do you mean where the PCs actions are all described in the third person?
> 
> "My guy moves over here, and hits the goblin with his sword", "Regdar greets the innkeeper",
> versus
> ...



Yep.  #3, playing a role on stage - Acting.  

And I think you answered this.  Just because one is playing in-character (acting) doesn't make the game a theatre game.  Just as in the Mickey Mantle example or for any other kind of game.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 17, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> You're right, I wasn't very clear there.  I see NAR rule games like RPG videogame rules because the frequently both require the player to stop playing the PC in order to use them.  Placing a desert is not role-playing in the same way turning on PvP status isn't playing your character either.



That might be true, but setting a graphic details or turning PvP status on is still something very different.



> I think I was mentioning this shortly above your post.  Typical RPGs challenge the player to win as their character.  NAR rules challenge the player to win as a storyteller (while perhaps sometimes winning as the character).
> Don't let the wargamers find out they only win because the referees allowed them to.  DMs, referees, and judges of any ilk have to abide by the rules just as the players do.  They aren't kings.



What rules do forbid me from sending a balor against a 1st level party? What rules forbid me to create a series of save or die traps that the party can't figure out? The "RAW" doesn't constrict the DM here, he doesn't have to cheat.
He has to follow the "informal" rules, the group contract to put up only challenges the party can beat (at least if they try hard enough - and if he doesn't overestimate the players abilities or their character abilities.)
Even 3E or 4E encounter building systems doesn't tell the DM it's a "rule" to only allow certain level ranges. It just advises them to stay within certain borders for best effect.



> This is doing, not storytelling.  Any kind of game may have a fictional counterpart it is modeling.  Referencing that counterpart while playing the game doesn't mean playing those games is "collaboratively telling a story."  The fiction of Monopoly or Chess is every bit as valid as a story as that in D&D.  Even with no "referenced fiction", if referencing game elements is telling a story, Sodoku and Poker are storytelling games too.  You can't pick and choose what counts.



Referencing game elements is not telling the story. But linking the game elements to story elements is the story. If you're just dungeon crawling "just because", yeah, there is little story to it. But if you're doing it to stop a cult of mind flayers that try to block out the sun, then you're telling a story. If you're convincing the mayor to send some of his best guardmen with you to fight the goblins, you're not just solving a problem, you're telling a story. 
And since you could have failed to convince the mayor, or decided not to ask the mayor, or decided to topple the mayor, the players decision change the story. That is what makes it collaborative storytelling. The DM might have put the mayor and the goblins in the game - but it was the players that decided how their characters would react to them.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 17, 2008)

pemerton said:


> For what it's worth, 4e combat resolution also has narrativist dimensions (eg the Come and Get It fighter power, which allows a 1x/enc pull of foes within a certain radius towards the PC, and which therefore in effect empowers the player to 1x/enc specify how, in the gameworld, it comes about that those foes move closer to his/her PC).



This is one of the more popular examples for disliking portions of 4E's combat system.  



> This is equally true in narrativist play, except that the logical relation will typically be one of consistency rather than entailment (which in any event is, in practice, unlikely to be made out given the paucity of detail about the gameworld). And the system in place to determine which of the various possibilities obtains (each consistent with the prior state of the gameworld, but all mutually inconsistent as extensions of that state) is one of game-mechanically-distributed stipulation.



Consistency under a referee or judge's discretion vs. player's gaming as Gods to the world is the difference.  Entailment is intended through game design to remove referee bias wherever possible.  Players who ask DMs to skip those rolls are asking for DM judgment to prevail over published game design.  Players who ask to design the world on the fly while playing, and then have that authority determined via a mechanic, are stepping out of character to win a different kind of game.  They are swapping storytelling for role-playing.  If "game-mechanically-distributed" rules are "NAR", then no game can not be called a storygame.  



> Yes, for a certain value of "role-playing". Of course, in my view "roleplaying", as used to describe the activity of playing an RPG, includes the act of stipulating the state of the gameworld when this takes place during the course of play.



For all values that qualify as "playing your character".  That's includes #2 & #3.  Adding storytelling into RPGs where it wasn't before does not redefine all RPGs that did not include it.  Removing role-playing type #2 from a game has historically made it a theatre improv game.  Getting rid of both 2 & 3 means you might FLGSs selling bicycle repair manuals under the heading RPG have redefined the hobby.  The act of telling a story isn't role-playing as any CRPG player can tell you.



> It's interesting that you seem to agree with Ron Edwards about the inconsistency of winning and storytelling. I think the tension between the two is not as great as you (and Edwards) are suggesting. For example, provided that the mechanics place certain constraints on narrative distribution, then there can still be a challenge in taking the story to where you want it to go (eg victory for one's PC). And overcoming that challenge might still be fun.



The problem is, you are not overcoming the challenge through role-play.  You are playing a narrative allocation game.  And as I've shown not all rulesets equate to narrative distribution.  Blind Monopoly, or any game's modeled fiction merely referenced by its players, must always become a storytelling game by that characterization.



> I also think that you are wrong in suggesting that roleplaying (in your sense) and narration are inconsistent speech acts. In many cases I think they are performed simultaneously. I'm reminded of Davidson's essay on Quotation (1979), in which he says (pp 80-81 in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation):
> 
> "I once resolved to adopt a consistent way of using quotation marks in my professional writing. My plan was to use single quotation marks when I wanted to refer to the expression a token of which was within, but double quotation marks when I wanted to use the expression in its usual meaning while at the same time indicating that the word was odd or special ('scare quotes'). I blush to admit that I struggled with this absurd and unworkable formula for a couple of years before it dawned on me that the second category contained the seeds of its own destruction. Consider . . . [my earlier remark that] Quine says that quotation '. . . has a certain anomolous feature'. Are the quoted words used or mentioned? Obviously mentioned, since the words are Quine's own, and I want to mark the fact. But eqaully obvious is the fact that the words are used".​
> As Davidson notes, it is possible to both use a word and to mention it at the same time. Likewise, I think it is possible to both tell a story (ie occupy the authorial "god" role) and to play a role (ie occupy the protagonist role) at the same time - an example would be a player who says "I take a drink from my water-bottle, which of course I refilled before we left town." Here the players is both playing the role of his/her PC and occupying the authorial role.
> ...



I haven't read more than a few snippets of Donald Davidson's work, but I have read a good bit of WVO Quine's which he is referencing here..  The issue that I have (relating to our discussion) is not Davidson's attempt to assign phrase attribution or his attempts at signifying either the performance or not of said phrase in a work referencing both.  My dispute is over specifically taking common sense language usage, like "telling a story" and attributing it to "taking action", while claiming it doesn't fall under theatre acting.  Yes, if you really want to claim all action includes expression, then you can start claiming all existence is telling a story.  If you want to claim all games including a player-directed avatar (thereby falling into Davidson's language logic problem) are role-playing games, you can do that too.  Yes, the difference between role-playing and playing a single avatar boardgame is a matter of degrees when it comes to defining RPGs in the english-speaking, language-creating community.  Does determining what is an RPG get confusing, as in computer RPGs?  Of course.  Everyone probably has a difficult time categorizing between Action, Adventure, and RPG computer games.  But no one would be so confused that using a cheat program to give your PC "God-Mode" is still "playing the role of the PC".  Cheating at role-playing games is cheating at playing the role, whether the rules allow include it or not.  Difficulties at attributing referenced expressions doesn't change that.  It's because we all have a very strong idea of what it means to be a person.  We know what taking on the role of another person means too.  And that surpassing the abilities of that person is no longer taking on their role.



pemerton said:


> The best exposition of this playstyle that I know is by Lewis Pulsipher in an article collated into the Best of White Dwarf vol 1. The discussion in the 1st ed AD&D PHB of how to go about preparing for an adventure is located in the same paradigm, but is less explicit than Pulsipher. (Interestingly, the 1st ed DMG doesn't say all that much about what is involved in GMing this sort of play - I think Pulsipher is better in that respect.)
> 
> What is noteworthy is that, when Pulsipher published an article located within the same paradigm in 1983 (Dragon 79) it already seems to have been a more controversial presupposition about the aim of play (Forum response published in Dragon 81).
> 
> I'm personally not persuaded that most people play D&D (or other RPGs) in order to test themselves in the way that you suggest.



I bought the 1-90 White Dwarf CD a couple of years ago for Christmas.  I don't agree with a lot of Pulsipher's writings, but he does understand role-play by its' fundamental attribute: learning in a role by taking it on one's self.  For the Forum response in question: (spoilered for length)

[sblock]I really must protest the general philosophy of the article "Be aware and take care" (DRAGON #79). The level of caution and precaution advised in that article may be conducive to efficient game-playing, but can only hinder good role-playing. For one thing, if I were to believe that the guidelines Mr. Pulsipher offers were of value, then they should be followed for every character. But these suggestions are so activity restrictive (You should always . . ., etc.) that I would end up playing the same character over and over. Worse yet, that character would be a paranoid, neurotically cautious, pessimistic cretin with a reputation
for irrational behavior. 

The "Whom do you trust?" section shows not only the paranoia of Mr. Pulsipher's characters, but a flagrant display of illogic. What happens when a character drinks holy water of the opposite alignment? Nothing, unless the character (or drinker) is somehow endowed with the power of an Outer Plane, or the Positive or Negative Material Plane. It's just not powerful enough to detect the subtle energies of Prime Material alignments.  And since they'd probably taste the same to everybody (though evils might find good holy water too sickly sweet, and goods might be a little more revulsed at the taste of evil holy water), you couldn't really tell by their facial expressions. And putting those manacles on that farmer would be more likely to make him distrust you. Or at least wonder whether or not he was better off in the dungeons of the Evil Count What's-his-face.

Magical sleeping bags? If it weren't for that, the section on camps wouldn't be too bad for a specific character. If this form of caution is in character for the fighter or whatever that you've created, then by all means go ahead. Otherwise, it's a bit too much like work. Besides, you could probably sleep in your armor, it'd just be incredibly uncomfortable. If your character will put up with this sort of self-abuse, fine. I believe most fighters would, unless they were in plate mail or weren't very adventurous anyway.

The section on "playing" the DM, while falling just short of cheating, is hardly in the spirit of the game. Using the tactics outlined here would cripple any chance of roleplaying on the players' parts. If the characters had a hard time with a given monster, they would probably comment on it to one another afterwards. If they had an easy time, they would be grateful to their gods.

They would not be constantly complaining about their lot to the all-powerful deity known only as .DM.. Anyway, it's fairly obvious to the DM whether or not the characters are having a hard time, based on damage taken, length of melees, etc. Carping about imagined hardships would put me off fudging in a minute, and if it kept up they might find themselves up against more than they can handle, so they can tell the difference in the future. I usually only kill people when they do something stupid and that fits the bill.

Lastly, and most importantly, the really good role-player is self-limiting. This means that if a certain action seems in character or simply the logical outcome of a given situation, then even if that action might hurt the character.s chances for survival slightly (I don.t expect ultimate sacrifices from anyone), the player will take that course of action. For example, if I was playing a fighter of near-barbarian temperament, and I thought this guy would be proud of and like to show off his battle-scars, I might have this character disdain clerical healing for all but the most grievous of injuries, so that he has natural scars to show off. Another example might be a Champions- style martial artist, who after a failed kick is struck by an attack. If it seems likely that the attack hit in the leg, the player might assume that using the legs for kicking would be quite painful and therefore inaccurate. The character might refrain from using his martial kick at least for the duration of the battle or until it can be tended to, settling instead for the lower-damage martial punch.

Let me make it clear that I am not completely opposed to Mr. Pulsipher.s article, lest people think that I prefer characters who charge blindly into danger with no precautions and as many limitations as humanly possible. Many of the ideas in the article were good ideas, but all of them should not be used by any one character or group. Adventurers should be as varied as any other group. Some will be cautious, maybe in the extreme, and others will be equally careless. The important thing is that they should be individuals, and their players should be concerned with role-playing, not milking any given situation for every last copper, while pursuing a paranoid obsession with minimizing damage. 

[I'm leaving off the name][/sblock]If you read that carefully, I bet you'd agree that much of the writer's actions could be called tyrannical.  I don't think he understands what being an objective Referee in a fair gaming environment means.  I would never hire him to judge at a tournament convention like the very popular Goodman's Games tournament, not to mention WotC's annual GenCon D&D tournament. 

I understand you believe role-player's don't want Pulsipher's kind of RPG.  Which is fine as I feel he talks far more about a particular style of play relevant mostly under his own GMing.  But to deny that RPGers do not want to test themselves in-character vs. "just saying" a good story for them to face?  I think you need to look at the behaviors of the 10's of millions of players of computer-simulated RPGs.  How many of those players engage in (the oft-misnomered) "RP" sections?  Do I understand many players do want to go through great adventures?  Yes, of course.  But the degree of challenge one wants to overcome to achieve it is a preference.  To claim it's all just telling a story or that all their games are "NAR" challenges is insulting to most RPGers IMO.

I believe, what we have now is a schism similar to what D&D faced with wargamers in the 70's.  Is D&D a wargame?  Yes, if you don't mind it being so broad in scope.  Do we call D&D, World of Darkness, GURPs, or Shadowrun Wargames?  No, because we are a separate community branched off of it.  RPGs didn't get to redefine wargaming because it didn't fit in the box anymore.   Indie Gamers and the Big Model believers don't get to redefine the tabletop RPG community because their games don't fit in it's box anymore.  I call them hybrids.  Distorting the actual, commonly used terminology of RPGs for over 3 decades doesn't change that fact.  It actually requires one to deny 10 million WoW players are role-players.  How on earth are you going to change people's use of the term outside the TTRPG hobby in the face of that?  What's happening instead is a line of ridiculous phrasings as I mentioned early in this thread (I believe it was this thread).  Things like "D&D is a form of literature" - Wikipedia.  "RPGs are a type of media" - another forum.   It's not rocket science, it's comical.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 17, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> That might be true, but setting a graphic details or turning PvP status on is still something very different.



I don't think we're going anywhere here as the difference you are referencing is only makes sense outside of role-play.  We both agree this isn't role-playing a character.



> What rules do forbid me from sending a balor against a 1st level party? What rules forbid me to create a series of save or die traps that the party can't figure out? The "RAW" doesn't constrict the DM here, he doesn't have to cheat.
> 
> He has to follow the "informal" rules, the group contract to put up only challenges the party can beat (at least if they try hard enough - and if he doesn't overestimate the players abilities or their character abilities.)
> Even 3E or 4E encounter building systems doesn't tell the DM it's a "rule" to only allow certain level ranges. It just advises them to stay within certain borders for best effect.



Game prep is not the same as running a game. This is one of the biggest leaps of logic the Big Model makes. Storytellers have to claim that designing a module is the act of role-playing because it's the specific element they must distort and redefine to qualify as RP.  "Creating the world" is not an in-character action.  Nor is it necessarily a desirable action for a GM.  Do some improvisationally create the world on the fly?  Yes, but I'd hope they were designing as playable a world as any module writer.  Do Players during a role-playing session get to create the world too?  Not if they want to consider that action "playing in the role".  Rather, they are gaming the world to win.  Their successes are that less meaningful.  More "NAR" rules means less meaningful in-character success.  It amounts to "just saying" you did something.



> Referencing game elements is not telling the story. But linking the game elements to story elements is the story. If you're just dungeon crawling "just because", yeah, there is little story to it. But if you're doing it to stop a cult of mind flayers that try to block out the sun, then you're telling a story. If you're convincing the mayor to send some of his best guardmen with you to fight the goblins, you're not just solving a problem, you're telling a story.
> And since you could have failed to convince the mayor, or decided not to ask the mayor, or decided to topple the mayor, the players decision change the story. That is what makes it collaborative storytelling. The DM might have put the mayor and the goblins in the game - but it was the players that decided how their characters would react to them.



You're still making the basic mistake that #2 role-playing is #3 acting "in character".  Again, if I play Chess not by calling out the "big piece to A4" but, "My King takes your Bishop" I am telling a story by your above definition.  But rationally, even that's too narrow for the "what counts as NAR rules design" designation.  "Referenced fiction" is not needed to tell a story by any of these qualifiers.  Doing qualifies.


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## justanobody (Oct 17, 2008)

MerricB said:


> Don't forget Role Assumption: taking the role of the character and making decisions as that character, though not actually role-playing/acting out the persona in speech.
> 
> Cheers!




Sure that isn't narrative?

"Francis the Fighter jumps over the pit to cling to the ledge on the other side."

While it isn't stated that Francis has succeed, but is the attempt, it is a bit more narrative that roleplaying.

I would say to bring it more to roleplaying it should be said like this:

"I have Francis the Fighter jump over the pit to cling to the ledge on the other side."

While they are both odd and hard to classify, it seems the second version is assuming the persona as an avatar at least, rather than the first where it assumes Francis is merely an object.

Again, totally unrelated and off-topic for challenging the players vs the character stats. Maybe a split or fork, or whatever for this can be made? I don't have the slightest idea how, but this is interesting side discussion that had gone way off track for the initial topic.


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## GlaziusF (Oct 17, 2008)

I'm going to get to a longer response going when I get home but I thought I should note this now.



howandwhy99 said:


> I bought the 1-90 White Dwarf CD a couple of years ago for Christmas.  I don't agree with a lot of Pulsipher's writings, but he does understand role-play by its' fundamental attribute: learning in a role by taking it on one's self.  For the Forum response in question: (spoilered for length)
> 
> ...
> 
> If you read that carefully, I bet you'd agree that much of the writer's actions could be called tyrannical.  I don't think he understands what being an objective Referee in a fair gaming environment means.  I would never hire him to judge at a tournament convention like the very popular Goodman's Games tournament, not to mention WotC's annual GenCon D&D tournament.




So, wait. Wait. 

The guy who's all "trust no one, drench all princesses with holy water, bind and gag all captives, THEY ARE OUT TO GET YOU" is the one with the fundamental understanding, and the guy who's all "dude, comprehensive paranoia isn't any fun and might send your DM the signal that you crave the very betrayal you're trying to avoid" is the one who doesn't get it?

If that's what you're saying, then color me the antithesis to your thesis.


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## pemerton (Oct 18, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Game prep is not the same as running a game.



True. But narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game.


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## justanobody (Oct 18, 2008)

pemerton said:


> True. But narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game.




While in the position of the DM, I never feel as though I am playing the game. I feel as though I am tossing out obstacles and story for others to enjoy.

When I want to play the game I move to the other side of the DM screen.

Alex Trebek never is considered to be playing Jeopardy is he?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 18, 2008)

GlaziusF said:


> So, wait. Wait.
> 
> The guy who's all "trust no one, drench all princesses with holy water, bind and gag all captives, THEY ARE OUT TO GET YOU" is the one with the fundamental understanding, and the guy who's all "dude, comprehensive paranoia isn't any fun and might send your DM the signal that you crave the very betrayal you're trying to avoid" is the one who doesn't get it?
> 
> If that's what you're saying, then color me the antithesis to your thesis.



Nice selective quoting.  As I mentioned in my post, neither is batting a 1000 here.  You can reread my point on the topic of this thread.  Cheating from either Referee or Player diminishes success for the team of players.  And storytelling isn't role-play success at all.



pemerton said:


> True. But narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game.



I feel we're merely repeating ourselves here.  As justanobody accurately points out, GMs/DMs/Referees/Judges - gamers were never so confused as to call them Players.  They run the game.  Don't confuse type 1 with type 2.


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2008)

So, if I'm understanding this right, DM's never role play?  By virtue of being the guy in the big seat, I cannot play a role in the game?

I kinda see what you're saying, but, I'm not really buying it.  While a DM might not be role playing 100% of the time, that's not the same thing as saying he never role plays.

I guess I just don't see the problem with mixing roles.  Sure, while I'm in narrative mode, I might not be role playing.  But, unless I'm 100% in that mode, there are times when I am role playing.  My problem with your model is that it's binary.  Either you are a role player or you are not.  I believe the roles (arrggh) can switch back and forth quite easily.


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## justanobody (Oct 18, 2008)

Me? I was just saying the DM isn't playing the game the same way as the players. He is the major narrator, while the players should be roleplaying more and narrating less.

But again, this has little to do with challenges....


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Me? I was just saying the DM isn't playing the game the same way as the players. He is the major narrator, while the players should be roleplaying more and narrating less.
> 
> But again, this has little to do with challenges....




Naw, was more directed at HowandWhy.  But, yeah, I'd buy what you're saying.  That's pretty true.  The DM will always be narrating more than the players.  But, players having minor narative control doesn't suddenly make them non-role players.

IMO.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 18, 2008)

Hussar said:


> The DM will always be narrating more than the players.  But, players having minor narative control doesn't suddenly make them non-role players.




An example from my game only today:

One of the players has a rifle with the Thunderburst property - once per day, his next shot becomes a Burst 1 centred on the target.

He was up in the rigging when pirates boarded their ship.  There were three of the generic pirates clumped around the leader of the boarding party, 'Big Axe' Van Helt.

"I lean out from my perch in the rigging," the player said, "and fire my rifle at the small keg of gunpowder one of the crew left out on the deck, now sitting near Big Axe's boot."

And he spent his Daily item power to create the Burst 1.

As DM, had I specified a keg of gunpowder?  Absolutely not.  If he'd tried the same trick _without_ a Thunderburst rifle?  I might have allowed something from p42 if he pulled off a skill check first... maybe.  But defining the cinematics to describe the mechanics he already had written down on his character sheet?  Hell, yeah!  I'm more than happy to let him 'remind' me about the keg one of my NPCs left lying around!

Now, did he role-play long enough to lean out of the rigging, stop role-playing, narrate the existence of the gunpowder, then resume roe-playing in order to shoot it?

Bollocks to that, I say.  He was role-playing while his character shot a keg of gunpowder.

-Hyp.


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## IceFractal (Oct 18, 2008)

It's not really a hard and fast line - most games fall somewhere between zero and total narrative control, rather than at either extreme, and narrating the "special effects" of mechanical abilities certainly isn't going to inhibit challenging the players.

But there is a real difference, in the state of mind you can approach a challenge from.  In a game with little narrative control, you can approach a challenge from the standpoint "I - the player - am going to do everything I can think of to overcome this challenge".  In a game with significant narrative control, you can't.


For example, let's say you're trying to find some incriminating documents in the office of a government official.  You could try to think where such documents would be hidden, or devise a plan to search quickly without trashing the room ... but if you have the narrative power, you can simple say "I lean back on a wall, accidentally hitting the hidden panel which opens to reveal the documents behind it."  This may not work automatically, but in many systems it has as good a chance of working as anything.

So you have to come at problem thinking "I need to solve this in a way that's interesting", which is for some people a step away from direct interaction.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 18, 2008)

IceFractal said:


> It's not really a hard and fast line - most games fall somewhere between zero and total narrative control, rather than at either extreme, and narrating the "special effects" of mechanical abilities certainly isn't going to inhibit challenging the players.
> 
> But there is a real difference, in the state of mind you can approach a challenge from.  In a game with little narrative control, you can approach a challenge from the standpoint "I - the player - am going to do everything I can think of to overcome this challenge".  In a game with significant narrative control, you can't.
> 
> ...




Yes, I think this is one of the real differences. In most games, though, you might not always be able to excercise this kind of control (or have to manage when you do it), which creates a different kind of challenge.

I wonder if there is not actually something that makes skills just a "crude" variant of narrative control. As a player, I don't know anything about the history of the Dwarven Kingdom of Bitterstone, so I roll Knowledge (History) to see if my character does. In a way, that is the mechanics given narrative control to the player - he decides that his characters knows something without having to figure it out himself - but the mechanic only allows it with a good dice roll and if he put a high enough score into his history skill.
Or does the mechanic just fall in line with certain goals of narrative play - like when I want to play a historian, I naturally want a mechanic that "guarantees" me that at some point in the game/story, it will be my character knowing something?

I think the big difference is not "Challenge the players, Not the Characters stats", but:
Challenges that require the players to pretend he was in the situation and think of what he would do, and Challenge the player so that he uses the tools given by the mechanics to succeed. 
But you will always have a mix of both aspects. Combat will always be partially motivated by "what would I logically do in such a situation?" and "what is the best thing to do according to the rules for combat?".


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 18, 2008)

Hussar said:


> So, if I'm understanding this right, DM's never role play?  By virtue of being the guy in the big seat, I cannot play a role in the game?
> 
> I kinda see what you're saying, but, I'm not really buying it.  While a DM might not be role playing 100% of the time, that's not the same thing as saying he never role plays.
> 
> I guess I just don't see the problem with mixing roles.  Sure, while I'm in narrative mode, I might not be role playing.  But, unless I'm 100% in that mode, there are times when I am role playing.  My problem with your model is that it's binary.  Either you are a role player or you are not.  I believe the roles (arrggh) can switch back and forth quite easily.



It's binary because it's true.  Things people can't do in real life, yet somehow manage to do, get called "magic" or "miracles".  It's playing God, plain and simple.  RPGs like Nobilis actually make sense when they use the "NAR" mechanics and put God playing reality right up front.

If it helps to understand it, try thinking about the DM's role in the game (#1, heh) from the perspective of the Big Model.  If role-playing is exploring, then the only time a GM gets to explore is when he's acting an NPC, type #3 role-play.  He's exploring their personality.  He can't rightly explore anything in the world as he is the encyclopedia for that world.  There can be no secrets from him (that the players don't keep by being the character).  He cannot tell a joke to himself.  He cannot solve a mystery, a riddle, or discover any aspect of the world by trying to "role-play" (#2) a DMPC.  It's the whole reason DMPCs do not work in RPGs.  

For full disclosure, if you do swap DMing duties in the same Campaign World it can be possible.  The party simply must explore different things in that world.  I assume this is pretty well known stuff?



Hypersmurf said:


> _snip_
> -Hyp.



As you can guess, I disagree.  Your Player is playing the model, which is normal as the referenced world doesn't really exist.  But as your example shows, some 4E combat mechanics aren't modelling anything in the world.  So the player is left lashing about for a good reason why it would make any sense at all in the imagined world.  Could that one aspect have been sensibly defined earlier?  Sure.  But using mechanics without any fictional world reference does not mean you're role-playing when trying to grab immersion back, that attempt to get back into character by any means possible, through playing God.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 18, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> But as your example shows, some 4E combat mechanics aren't modelling anything in the world.




Sure they are.  At its most literal, it's modelling a magical weapon that makes the projectile explode on impact.



> So the player is left lashing about for a good reason why it would make any sense at all in the imagined world.




I didn't see any lashing; all I saw was Awesome.



> Could that one aspect have been sensibly defined earlier?




It _was_ sensibly defined earlier, when the crewman left the keg of gunpowder on the deck.

We as players just didn't know it was defined earlier, until it was pointed out in that combat round.



> But using mechanics without any fictional world reference does not mean you're role-playing when trying to grab immersion back, that attempt to get back into character by any means possible, through playing God.




But when Assem leans out of the rigging and blows up Big Axe and his henchmen with his rifle, the player who's causing that to happen is being a roleplayer I'll sit down with any time.

-Hyp.


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2008)

HowandWhy, a question.

What is the purpose of this model?  If the model of roleplaying excludes elements like Hypersmurf's example, which most people would consider to be part and parcel to role playing, then what does this model actually tell us?

I guess I just don't really understand the point of a model that draws such stark distinctions in a system that is as muddled as roleplaying.  In any game, we narrate all the time.  "Krusk walks up the stairs" is narration.  I don't roll to walk up the stairs, nor do I ask the DM for permission to do so.  I simply make an event occur in the game world.  That's narration.  Yet, you would argue that this isn't role play? 

If that's true, then by this model, almost no one ever role plays.  If, at any time that you narrate, you stop role playing, then how much do people actually role play in this model?


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## IceFractal (Oct 19, 2008)

IMO, at least, there's quite a bit of difference between narrating _how_ something happens, and _that_ something happens.  Hypersmurf's example falls into the first category.  If the player _didn't_ have a Thunderburst weapon, and was still able to get the explosion effect by narrating the gunpowder into existance, it would be in the second category.

Simple example:
A) You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have a hammer and a chipped dagger.  
B)  You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have a blunt instrument and a small cutting tool - what exactly those are is up to you. 
C) You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have two tools.  What they are is up to you.

In A, your goal can be fully to escape the room.  In B, that's still true, with the exception of some fringe cases.  In C, you could just decide that one of your tools is a key to the door - so your goal must actually be to tell an interesting story about escaping the room.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 19, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Sure they are.  At its most literal, it's modelling a magical weapon that makes the projectile explode on impact.
> 
> I didn't see any lashing; all I saw was Awesome.
> 
> ...



I have no desire to badmouth 4E or its' design.  I think the hobby's better with Wizards' success and do not want to get into a debate about their game's merits.   For what it's worth, IceFractal does a nice job of explaining the difference between a system where the Player narrates the world, one that does its' best to model a world, and one where the model leaves the explanation up in the air - like using Chess rules in an RPG: you have to "skin" the player's actions in order for them to make sense in the imagined world.



Hussar said:


> HowandWhy, a question.
> 
> What is the purpose of this model?  If the model of roleplaying excludes elements like Hypersmurf's example, which most people would consider to be part and parcel to role playing, then what does this model actually tell us?
> 
> ...



I do not wish to build a model or RPG Philosophy.  Nor am I saying anyone should exclude certain types of playstyles, RPGs, or RPG designs.  I am as simply as possible trying to explain how certain terms are actually defined and how role-playing isn't the telling of a story, no more than living one's life is telling a story. Rules that remove one from role-playing exist because folks want a story where one can't possibly exist.  (Hence we get plotline adventures, world warping DMs, and more)  

The point you may have missed given your response (and this has been a lengthy discussion) is that Players never narrate what their PCs do because they are directing them.  Saying something, even in a narrative mode, doesn't mean fictional narration is going on.  All direction is successfully resolved as it would be under any game system.  But narrative authority is never resolved unless you have the power to be an author.  

As has been pointed out before, for Big Modelers there is no distinction between "NAR" rules and any other kind of game rules.  It amounts to "story enough" and "intent".  It's a confusion between playing an author/God to the world and playing a role.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 19, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I am as simply as possible trying to explain how certain terms are actually defined...




But I don't agree that your dictionary definition of 'roleplaying' encompasses what is meant by the term within the hobby of 'roleplaying games'.

The definition you are using is a lot more restrictive than the one used by roleplayers.  Over the last thirty years, they've taken the term, made it their own, and it now covers a lot more than your dictionary realises.

Consider, for example, dictionary.com's definitions of Martial Art:

_1. any of the traditional forms of Oriental self-defense or combat that utilize physical skill and coordination without weapons, as karate, aikido, judo, or kung fu, often practiced as sport.  

2.   Any of several Asian arts of combat or self-defense, such as aikido, karate, judo, or tae kwon do, usually practiced as sport. Often used in the plural. 

3. any of several Oriental arts of weaponless self-defense; usually practiced as a sport; "he had a black belt in the martial arts"  _

So, is Kendo a martial art?  It's not weaponless.  Is Savate a martial art?  It's not Asian or Oriental.

Or is the definition found at dictionary.com less inclusive than that used by people within the martial arts community?

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 19, 2008)

Why would you use dictionary.com in the first place?

martial art - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary



> Main Entry:
> martial art
> Function:
> noun
> ...




Sorry, I just hate that dictionary.com



> Role Playing
> 
> The act of putting oneself in another person's position in an attempt to see his or her point of view in a situation.




Isn't that what we all do?


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 19, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Why would you use dictionary.com in the first place?




The dictionary.com page for 'roleplaying' contains the same definitions howandwhy99 posted here.  I used it for consistency.

-Hyp.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 19, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Why would you use dictionary.com in the first place?



So, you're telling me I might also get better results if I do not use _howandwhy99_ definition? 

I have to agree with Hussar - if you define a term so narrowly that it doesn't work for how much most people use it, the definition is not useful. Language use changes over time and with the context you use them, and people understand them accordingly.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 19, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> So, you're telling me I might also get better results if I do not use _howandwhy99_ definition?
> 
> I have to agree with Hussar - if you define a term so narrowly that it doesn't work for how much most people use it, the definition is not useful. Language use changes over time and with the context you use them, and people understand them accordingly.



I've admitted theatre acting is one form of role-playing.  What I disagree with is the claim all RPGs are storytelling games.  Most of what people do in hobby TTRPGs is not theatre gaming.  In a thread about, "Challenging the Player, not the Character" I have to believe my definition has validity for certain types of role-play existing outside the storytelling practice.  

I think some of this stems from the D&D community originally dividing itself from wargaming, needing to call "in-character" play (or improvisational acting) by the term "role-playing".  It's inadvertently carried over to CRPGs which are all about role-playing.  I'm actually for a broader interpretation of the term than what is put forth in the Big Model and our hobby's traditional colloquial usage.  I also say it for my own preferences as you cannot win a storytelling contest in the same way you win a role-playing contest.  It is the storytelling definition which is narrow.  It has even caused folks in this thread to claim certain games aren't "real role-playing games."


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## justanobody (Oct 19, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> The dictionary.com page for 'roleplaying' contains the same definitions howandwhy99 posted here.  I used it for consistency.
> 
> -Hyp.




Ah. That makes perfect sense. I am so getting lost trying to find the content about skill challenges in this thread, I am missing many parts of posts.


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## pemerton (Oct 20, 2008)

IceFractal said:


> there is a real difference, in the state of mind you can approach a challenge from.  In a game with little narrative control, you can approach a challenge from the standpoint "I - the player - am going to do everything I can think of to overcome this challenge".  In a game with significant narrative control, you can't.



Agreed.



Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I think the big difference is not "Challenge the players, Not the Characters stats", but:
> Challenges that require the players to pretend he was in the situation and think of what he would do, and Challenge the player so that he uses the tools given by the mechanics to succeed.



Agreed, as per my taxonomy upthread.


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## pemerton (Oct 20, 2008)

justanobody said:


> While in the position of the DM, I never feel as though I am playing the game. I feel as though I am tossing out obstacles and story for others to enjoy.





howandwhy99 said:


> As justanobody accurately points out, GMs/DMs/Referees/Judges - gamers were never so confused as to call them Players.



Whether or not GMs should be considered to be playing the game depends in part on the GM's role - in the sort of play the possibility of which I am defending the GM is certainly not best described as a referee or judge. But in any event, when I said that "narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game" I had players (in the strict sense) in mind, not the GM. I was making the point that prep work is not playing the game, but narrating the gameworld in the course of play _is_ playing the game, and therefore in that respect does not resemble prep work (though in other respects it may resemble prep work eg both play a role in determining the state of the gameworld).



Hypersmurf said:


> An example from my game only today
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



Agreed. People can perform two speech-acts at once - both roleplaying and narration, in this case.



justanobody said:


> > Role Playing
> >
> > The act of putting oneself in another person's position in an attempt to see his or her point of view in a situation.
> 
> ...



Not necessarily. Some players of RPGs use the fictional person (the PC) as a device in the course of doing other things (eg tell a certain sort of story). For such players the point of view of the PC is an effect, not a cause; an output, not an input.



howandwhy99 said:


> What I disagree with is the claim all RPGs are storytelling games.



I don't disagree with this. What I'm asserting is that some RPGing is storytelling. And (but less emphatically) that all RPGing involves the creation of fictions in a fashion that is, in my opinion, qualitatively different from the sorts of fictions that are involved in a game of Monopoly, or even a game of Talisman or DDM.



howandwhy99 said:


> I am as simply as possible trying to explain how certain terms are actually defined and how role-playing isn't the telling of a story, no more than living one's life is telling a story. Rules that remove one from role-playing exist because folks want a story where one can't possibly exist.  (Hence we get plotline adventures, world warping DMs, and more).



I'm mostly interested in the "more" - world warping (or, as I'd rather put it, "world-determining") players!.

But I disupte the contention that no story can possible exist in an RPG. Leaving aside the question of whether or not an individual's living of his/her life can constitute a story (some philosophers of identity obviously think that it can, but I have no strong view one way or another), there is no doubt that RPGing can give rise to a story. I know this to be so because I've seen it happen. The first step do achieving this has to be to abandon the thought that roleplaying in an RPG has to invovle prentending to occupy a pre-specified role, and accept that it can be the creation of that role (ie the authorial creation of the PC) and (in some cases) can also involve the creation of other parts of the fictional world in which the PC resides.


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## pemerton (Oct 20, 2008)

IceFractal said:


> Simple example:
> A) You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have a hammer and a chipped dagger.
> B)  You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have a blunt instrument and a small cutting tool - what exactly those are is up to you.
> C) You are in a locked room <description here>.  You have two tools.  What they are is up to you.
> ...



I like your simple example.

What about a more complex example (a version of which actually came up in my campaign)? A Paladin has to find a way to bind an Elder Evil, and the player has to choose what his/her PC should do. There are at least 2 options:

a) Research a spell that will do the job.

b) Start working out the resources of her monasitc order (which have never really come into play before) and explain to the GM how she is able to found a branch of her order on the earthly side of the gate, which will then oversee the gate and make sure that it is not breached.

In AD&D or 3E the rules permit virtually any magical effect to exist, and thus option (a) is fully simulationist, or (in HowandWhy's terminology) a purely roleplaying option. Option (b), however, appears to have authorial dimensions to it, as the player is specifying aspects of the gameworld that previously were indeterminate, and explaining how they are adequate to the task.

My player adopted option (b). In telling me how his PC goes about setting up the order, I think that the player is both roleplaying (ie adopting the role of his paladin PC) and participating in the telling of a story (ie about the existence of a monastic order of paladins, and the foundation by his PC of a branch of it to guard the gate behind which is locked an Elder Evil). The challenge to the player was not simply like working out how to use a hammer and chipped dagger to escape the room. But nor was it just a matter of specifying that one of the PC's previously unspecified tools is a key. It was far more intricate than that. It is in the intracacy of the narration, and it's integration with what has gone before in the game and in the gameworld that both the challenge and the satisfictioin of play reside.


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## justanobody (Oct 20, 2008)

pemerton said:


> ~CRAP! I cannot figure out how to do this with so many internal quotes, so please refer to the original post by pemerton - signed: justanobody~




1- The players should at most, and I am not saying they should, but at most narrate their own character not the world.

The east river will not change directions because a player deems it so.

2- Role playing definition...

What? 

You have to look at things form the character perspective in order to see what the character could do in the situation. You could go grab a chainsaw to cut down a tree, but the character has to do it the old fashioned way with ax or hand saw. So roleplaying is both the input of the perspective form the character's POV, and the output in what the player does to act in the manner the PC would, either by speaking for him, or narrating the actions that the player cannot perform for the character.

Francis the Fighter: "So while you guys finish up here I am going to go to the tavern and have a few drinks."
Player of Francis the Fighter: "Francis walks off to the barracks to question the local militia."

There shouldn't be one without the other at all times, but work best together when the opportunity is present. In character is letting the story develop, and out of character is letting the players know what is going on, namely the DM to know what the player is wanting or attempting to do.

In the above example you get a full picture, while one or the other would leave out something of the "story".

Had the player narrated it all it might have worked, but not had the same effect on the story being told.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 20, 2008)

pemerton said:


> What about a more complex example (a version of which actually came up in my campaign)? A Paladin has to find a way to bind an Elder Evil, and the player has to choose what his/her PC should do.





Nice.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 20, 2008)

justanobody said:


> 1- The players should at most, and I am not saying they should, but at most narrate their own character not the world.
> 
> The east river will not change directions because a player deems it so.




I agree with this, but....

In pemerton's example, IMHO, the paladin isn't simply deciding to change the course of the east river, but is deciding that he will work with what tools he has within the campaign world to create a specific change.  This is, IMHO, no different than a character saying "I'd like to open an inn on the King's Highway, where I can rest between adventures and maybe make a little profit.  It would give me some respectability in these parts, I think.  My henchman, Rusty, can run the place when I'm away."

The DM then either handwaves the difficulties of setting up the inn/order ("Two years have passed, and the fledgling Order of Gateguards....") or plays through the complications as a new series of adventures.  Either way is A-Okay in my book.


RC


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## Lord Mhoram (Oct 20, 2008)

IceFractal said:


> IMO, at least, there's quite a bit of difference between narrating _how_ something happens, and _that_ something happens.




My way of looking at it, looking at what is there in the world and changes to it...

Are the changes in the world made by the player or the character.

Narrating in the "drama edit" approach allows the player to change the world by description.

Narrating in the "goes up the stairs" is more traditional - it isn't changing the world, just the character.

I prefer games/campaigns where the only changes that I, as a player, can have an effect on is through the actions of my character. If I, as a player, want things changed in the world outside of that, I talk with the GM outside of the sessions and explain what I am after, and if that fits with his world, and find out if that allowable, then allow him to set the specifics.


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## justanobody (Oct 20, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> I agree with this, but....
> 
> In pemerton's example, IMHO, the paladin isn't simply deciding to change the course of the east river, but is deciding that he will work with what tools he has within the campaign world to create a specific change.  This is, IMHO, no different than a character saying "I'd like to open an inn on the King's Highway, where I can rest between adventures and maybe make a little profit.  It would give me some respectability in these parts, I think.  My henchman, Rusty, can run the place when I'm away."
> 
> ...




I surely would not handwave setting up the inn, but wouldn't require the player to babysit it once operational. The inn would become a part of the world, but the player had to work to change it just like overthrowing the local regent to bring in a new lord that is more fair.

Even that east river can be made to move directions, but it needs depth into how it will happen rather than just saying that it happens because a player wants it to.

This inn requires funds to build, people to build, etc. So changes to the world can be made by the players, but through actions, not just words.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 21, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> But I don't agree that your dictionary definition of 'roleplaying' encompasses what is meant by the term within the hobby of 'roleplaying games'.
> 
> The definition you are using is a lot more restrictive than the one used by roleplayers.  Over the last thirty years, they've taken the term, made it their own, and it now covers a lot more than your dictionary realises.
> 
> ...



As I answered to Mustrum_Ridcully, I think I'm defining role-playing by a larger definition than currently used.  The act of "role-playing your character" is often referring solely to in-character or improvisational acting play.  I'm sure there are many definitions of role-playing, I simply disagree with both swamping the term as "collaborative storytelling" or redefining it to include out-of-role actions.  

In the definition of martial arts, are all of them arts for being martial?  I don't believe Tai chi chuan is, but I cannot think of any other.  Here we could say is a change of intent.  The forms are still somewhat martial, but performed for health reasons.  But could Tai Chi practitioners use those forms for combat?  Probably not nearly as well as most other schools.  I've never heard of Tai Chi combat competitions.  What do you think other martial artists would say, if the dictionary definition became: "Martial Arts are exercises for health and longevity" and then used as examples: aerobics, yoga, and jazzercise along with Ju-jitsu and Tae kwon-do?



pemerton said:


> Whether or not GMs should be considered to be playing the game depends in part on the GM's role - in the sort of play the possibility of which I am defending the GM is certainly not best described as a referee or judge. But in any event, when I said that "narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game" I had players (in the strict sense) in mind, not the GM. I was making the point that prep work is not playing the game, but narrating the gameworld in the course of play _is_ playing the game, and therefore in that respect does not resemble prep work (though in other respects it may resemble prep work eg both play a role in determining the state of the gameworld).



I know we've gone over this as Playing God or Playing a Role in the world.  You believe you can narrate (determine) the world by saying what it is alone, but all the while stay in-character.  I don't believe so.  I believe the term role-playing pretty much defines itself.



> Not necessarily. Some players of RPGs use the fictional person (the PC) as a device in the course of doing other things (eg tell a certain sort of story). For such players the point of view of the PC is an effect, not a cause; an output, not an input.



Yep, I don't see role-playing as a novelist attempting to see things through the eyes of his characters and then writing a believable story.  The success can only be a success of portrayal.



> I don't disagree with this. What I'm asserting is that some RPGing is storytelling. And (but less emphatically) that all RPGing involves the creation of fictions in a fashion that is, in my opinion, qualitatively different from the sorts of fictions that are involved in a game of Monopoly, or even a game of Talisman or DDM.



I'm pleased we agree, but as you know I disagree role-playing can be the telling a story unless it becomes theater.  It's the reason why D&D and most other RPG hobby games aren't called theatre or acting games in the first place.



> I'm mostly interested in the "more" - world warping (or, as I'd rather put it, "world-determining") players!.
> 
> But I disupte the contention that no story can possible exist in an RPG. Leaving aside the question of whether or not an individual's living of his/her life can constitute a story (some philosophers of identity obviously think that it can, but I have no strong view one way or another),
> _snip_



I used the world warping examples as they allow Players to remain solely role-playing.  

The definitions of philosophical story-telling intent in life, if true, would mean "story" as a label would become non-functional.  It wouldn't differentiate anything really.


> there is no doubt that RPGing can give rise to a story. I know this to be so because I've seen it happen. The first step do achieving this has to be to abandon the thought that roleplaying in an RPG has to invovle prentending to occupy a pre-specified role, and accept that it can be the creation of that role (ie the authorial creation of the PC) and (in some cases) can also involve the creation of other parts of the fictional world in which the PC resides.



Which all means, of course, you have to stop role-playing to tell stories.  I don't think we're disagreeing on this.  I think we're defining role-playing differently.  I am in the "Play your character/role" crowd.  And I believe you are more in the "any kind of make believe is role-playing" crowd.  But correct me if I'm wrong.  

I'm not sure where else I can go in this thread and still stay on topic, but if you have anything, I'll check back.


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## pemerton (Oct 21, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> Nice.



Thanks.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 21, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> I'm sure there are many definitions of role-playing, I simply disagree with both swamping the term as "collaborative storytelling" or redefining it to include out-of-role actions.




Someone goes fishing.

After an hour of standing by the riverbank, his line in the water, he goes to his cooler, grabs a beer, returns to his rod, and continues standing by the riverbank for another hour.

Then he goes home.

Was he fishing for two hours?  Or was he fishing for an hour, at which point he ceased fishing, did something else, and then resumed fishing for another hour?

I'd say that the act of grabbing a beer, while perhaps outside the literal definition of fishing, was something that occurred during the greater context of the activity of 'fishing'.

Similarly, if someone, while participating in the activity of 'role-playing', performs an out-of-role action, it doesn't necessitate them ceasing to engage in 'role-playing', performing the action, and then resuming 'role-playing'.  In similar fashion to walking and chewing gum at the same time, the out-of-role action occurs in conjunction with the role-playing, and if someone says "So you were role-playing all day?", he can in all honesty say "Yes", because he didn't cease the role-playing activity just to perform the out-of-role action.

-Hyp.


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## Terramotus (Oct 21, 2008)

I think it would be difficult to disagree more with the Original Poster.  When all you do is challenge the player, it ceases to become a role-playing game, and just becomes a game.  Like Magic: The Gathering.  Or Clue.

Obvious you can't (nor should you want to) elminate completely the player element.  That's what brings life to these imagined characters.  If nothing else, the character chosen is a reflection of the player.  It's much like a First Person Shooter that has a jiggle effect on the crosshairs to reflect your character moving, or to reflect natural hand shaking.  The character is the interface through which you play the game, and player skill is filtered through it.

But someone who is looking for the old-school "gotcha" gameplay, of dungeons, traps, obstacles, and cursed items placed in the world for no rational reason other than to cause trouble for the players will be extremely disappointed in my game, or any of the games around here that I know of, for that matter.  We don't go in for checking every inch of a dungeon for hidden doors, and tapping every inch of ground with a 10 foot pole to search for traps.

If I want to play a scholar, I shouldn't have to personally BE a scholar to play one in a D&D game.  Similarly, if I'm running a game set in the real life middle ages, I wouldn't allow a well-read player of a Mongol horseman to engage in philosophical discussions about Aristotle just because HE happened to know it.  

Do people who agree with what the guy from Grognardia wrote REALLY want a game where they try to haul some wood back to town and the DM hands them a piece of rope and a dowel and says, "Tie me a timber hitch or it doesn't happen?"

To bring that even closer...  I will sometimes tell my PLAYERS about some of the backstory of the world their characters are running in, or some tidbits about character motivations if it won't spoil future adventures, particularly if it's something they missed finding out about in an adventure.  This helps them get a better sense of their characters' struggles in the world.  However, this info is off-limits in-game.

I'd even go so far as to say someone who wanted to be challenged more as a player than a character would not be invited back to my game.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 21, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> Someone goes fishing.
> 
> After an hour of standing by the riverbank, his line in the water, he goes to his cooler, grabs a beer, returns to his rod, and continues standing by the riverbank for another hour.
> 
> ...



Of course, but no one's trying to claim eating Cheetos is role-playing.  Or throwing dice at the DM.  Integral to gaming? Maybe   But no one's trying to redefine these under "What is an RPG?".  I've said I call these hybrid games.  That's not a bad thing.  Same as Poker is not necessarily a bluffing game.  It's a game about statistical analysis _and_ the telling of lies and guessing of tells.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> What about a more complex example (a version of which actually came up in my campaign)? A Paladin has to find a way to bind an Elder Evil, and the player has to choose what his/her PC should do. There are at least 2 options:
> 
> a) Research a spell that will do the job.
> 
> b) Start working out the resources of her monasitc order (which have never really come into play before) and explain to the GM how she is able to found a branch of her order on the earthly side of the gate, which will then oversee the gate and make sure that it is not breached.



I think you're missing the pleasure of role-playing out how the player can succeed at this endeavor.  Researching a spell doesn't need to be "roll a die".  Nor working with your Order need be "tell me what your Order consists of", so you can "just say" a good explanation of your Paladin's success.  This is the Skill Challenge irrationality all over again.  Defining a part of the world so it makes sense with what has come before is a challenge, but it isn't a role-playing challenge.  You can't define the world in order to win and still be winning at role-playing.  This is what I meant by make-believe.


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## pemerton (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> 1- The players should at most, and I am not saying they should, but at most narrate their own character not the world.



Obviously we disagree. I think it is possible to have a functional RPGing playstyle in which players can also narrate/determine the state of the world.



justanobody said:


> The east river will not change directions because a player deems it so.



Well, if the east river is already known to have a certain geography in the gameworld, then neither player nor GM can simply deem it to be different. Whether the player or the GM is permitted to narrate the actions of a river dragon that change the flow of the river will depend on the details of the game rules (and other factors as well). In my view this wouldn't necessarily be absurd for a high-level Epic character resolving a skill challenge.
Wel



justanobody said:


> Role playing definition...
> 
> <snip>
> You have to look at things form the character perspective in order to see what the character could do in the situation.



I was focussing more on "would" than "could". In a certain sort of educative roleplaying activity (which I think HowandWhy takes to be the paradigm) the focus is on doing what one's character would do.

An RPG can take a similar approach - the character is (more or less) predetermined and the challenge to the player is acting out that character. But an RPG can also be about the player using the character as a vehicle to make some other (aesthetically interesting) point. So the question the player asks him/herself is not "What would my character do here?" but rather "What should I have my character do here, given where I want this story to go?"



howandwhy99 said:


> I don't see role-playing as a novelist attempting to see things through the eyes of his characters and then writing a believable story.  The success can only be a success of portrayal.



Are you agreeing here (at least roughly) with Just A Nobody? That is, are you thinking of the player primarily as a _describer_ of a _predetermined_ character rather than as an _author_ of a character whose nature isn't (fully) known until the course of play brings it out? If so, then I think that this is one way of RPGing but not the only way. I also think there can be "authorial" RPGing. (Is this a pre-modernist/modernist thing? Or am I wrong to deploy categories from literary criticism here? I'm sure there could be post-modernist RPGing as well, in which the fourth wall is constantly broken, but I don't think I'd enjoy it.)



howandwhy99 said:


> You believe you can narrate (determine) the world by saying what it is alone, but all the while stay in-character.  I don't believe so.  I believe the term role-playing pretty much defines itself.



I guess I have a more liberal notion of what is involved in "staying in character". It need not be role exploration/description in Just A Nobody's sense. But even when RPGing in an authorial fashion,  the PC is still, in some sense, the locus of the player's participation in the game (eg in the monastic order example upthread, the player is not just arbitrarily stipulating the world, but is doing it in terms of the relationship of various gameworld elements to his/her PC).



howandwhy99 said:


> The act of "role-playing your character" is often referring solely to in-character or improvisational acting play.  I'm sure there are many definitions of role-playing, I simply disagree with both swamping the term as "collaborative storytelling" or redefining it to include out-of-role actions.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think we're defining role-playing differently.  I am in the "Play your character/role" crowd.  And I believe you are more in the "any kind of make believe is role-playing" crowd.  But correct me if I'm wrong.



I think we're defining it different. I don't agree that any kind of make-believe is role-playing. I don't think that all RPGing is storytelling. I do think that some RPGing is storytelling. I don't know that I can give necessary and sufficient conditions for a gaming activity to count as RPGing - but a certain richness of story, combined with the notion of a particular PC as the locus of a player's participation in the game, even if not the limit of the player's participation in the game, might be sufficient conditions.


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## justanobody (Oct 21, 2008)

-Nope, the world if what the DM plays.

-Action is not narration. A PC can TRY anything they want, but that should not gaurante they get it just because they want it so.

-"What would my character do here?" is exactly the question that should be asked, yup.


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## pemerton (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> -Nope, the world if what the DM plays.
> 
> -Action is not narration. A PC can TRY anything they want, but that should not gaurante they get it just because they want it so.
> 
> -"What would my character do here?" is exactly the question that should be asked, yup.



Obviously these are statements of personal preference. Is that all that they are? I've tried to explain an alternative way of playing RPGs, and I can understand that you don't like it, but I'm not sure if you're also trying to deny that it exists/is possible.


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## justanobody (Oct 21, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Obviously these are statements of personal preference. Is that all that they are? I've tried to explain an alternative way of playing RPGs, and I can understand that you don't like it, but I'm not sure if you're also trying to deny that it exists/is possible.




Cancer exists, but I don't think it should. This is why I don't think D&D can be as popular as it was before because of how many different ways people want to play it and sometimes expect it to be the same way every time they play with someone else, and it hurts.

The law should be laid down in some form, and the RPGa tries to do so, to unify the game so people can move from game to game, but it will never happen outside of it. Too many people playing too many ways since 3rd and an insurge of people playing that never did before.

I wouldn't play in a game with many of those things, but nor would all people play in games the way I would.

Just something doesn't feel right about many things people say of how to play, or what the game is.

Again this all has little to do really with skill challenges. Have we totally taken this thread off track never to return, or is this stuff some kind of point to skill challenges, that I missed a dozen pages back when it started?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 21, 2008)

pemerton said:


> I was focussing more on "would" than "could". In a certain sort of educative roleplaying activity (which I think HowandWhy takes to be the paradigm) the focus is on doing what one's character would do.
> 
> An RPG can take a similar approach - the character is (more or less) predetermined and the challenge to the player is acting out that character. But an RPG can also be about the player using the character as a vehicle to make some other (aesthetically interesting) point. So the question the player asks him/herself is not "What would my character do here?" but rather "What should I have my character do here, given where I want this story to go?"



Actually, I was differentiating between would and could, (WWMCD "what would my character do"") acting and role-playing "what can my character do?"  The third option is storytelling, probably with some acting thrown in so it can be considered at least some kind of role-play, and maybe some modeled challenges to swap between the two forms.  Perhaps how far one is willing to go away from challenging the Player, modeling the role-playing challenges, is the matter of degree for your definition?  For me, they are two different things activities in one game.



> Are you agreeing here (at least roughly) with Just A Nobody? That is, are you thinking of the player primarily as a _describer_ of a _predetermined_ character rather than as an _author_ of a character whose nature isn't (fully) known until the course of play brings it out? If so, then I think that this is one way of RPGing but not the only way. I also think there can be "authorial" RPGing. (Is this a pre-modernist/modernist thing? Or am I wrong to deploy categories from literary criticism here? I'm sure there could be post-modernist RPGing as well, in which the fourth wall is constantly broken, but I don't think I'd enjoy it.)



I don't see many who would disagree with justanobody outside our hobby's community.  As I differentiated above, "predetermined nature" is only meaningful in acting (or perhaps through defining some personality characteristics as that kind of nature can be more and less defined).  Role-playing is all about what is possible for the Player to accomplish, while in the role. Telling a story that fits an accurate portrayal of what a PC can do is different than role-playing. 

Also, just because a portion of background is undefined (as in your Paladin example), it doesn't mean defining that background in the course of a gaming session is playing the character.  Perhaps that focus of attention is the boundary for what counts as "staying in character" by your definition?



> I guess I have a more liberal notion of what is involved in "staying in character". It need not be role exploration/description in Just A Nobody's sense. But even when RPGing in an authorial fashion,  the PC is still, in some sense, the locus of the player's participation in the game (eg in the monastic order example upthread, the player is not just arbitrarily stipulating the world, but is doing it in terms of the relationship of various gameworld elements to his/her PC).



There is no "authorial" role when role-playing.  You would have to go back to "me, authoring my choices in life" to fit the definition.  A Player telling a story with their PC as the focus and then fitting it into what other stories have come before is round-robin storytelling (with some assignation of characters thrown in).  It doesn't add up to "staying in-character" from a role-playing POV, but does from a storytelling POV.



> I think we're defining it different. I don't agree that any kind of make-believe is role-playing. I don't think that all RPGing is storytelling. I do think that some RPGing is storytelling. I don't know that I can give necessary and sufficient conditions for a gaming activity to count as RPGing - but a certain richness of story, combined with the notion of a particular PC as the locus of a player's participation in the game, even if not the limit of the player's participation in the game, might be sufficient conditions.



I think Illusionism and Participationalism are forms of storytelling in an RPG.  I think plot lined adventures admit to that style's popularity.   I think hybrid games mix the two activities for Players and may call themselves RPGs like Poker is often called a bluffing game.  Unfortunately, their "philosophy" used to count as role-playing completely role-playing games only confuses the hobby community by altering our vocabulary.  Further, I disagree with games calling themselves RPGs when they have no role-playing at all in them.  That's probably few of the Indie games, but at least we two can agree certain definitions of role-playing (a.k.a. storytelling) are inaccurate.  

I'm not really looking to plumb the depths of what qualifies as both storytelling & role-playing for your definition here.  By my own account, I think the two don't crossover (it takes an outside 3rd-party like a referee).  I assume it is a matter of degree for you like CRPGs discerning between an RPG (widely-focused simulation, MMORPGs), an Adventure game (probably participationalism here, like later Zelda games), and an Action Game (narrowly-focused simulation, like Duck Hunt).


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Again this all has little to do really with skill challenges. Have we totally taken this thread off track never to return, or is this stuff some kind of point to skill challenges, that I missed a dozen pages back when it started?



That is probably my fault.  I don't think the Skill Challenge system is a system for role-playing.  Sooo, we've entered a discussion of what enters into "challenging the player".  The test of coming up with a plausible story of what the character can do?  Or actually facing the challenge through role-playing the character (to what ever degree, with or without some abstractions like skill checks)?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Cancer exists, but I don't think it should. This is why I don't think D&D can be as popular as it was before because of how many different ways people want to play it and sometimes expect it to be the same way every time they play with someone else, and it hurts.



It hurts if everyone is a "True Wayer" and is unable to accommodate to a different play style or at least try it out sometimes. It doesn't hurt if people want some variety, and if different people can use different games.

Aside from maybe WotC position, D&D (4E) doesn't have to be the only game around that is being played. 

And comparing different play styles to cancer seems a little too much like hyperbole - it wasn't anyones play style that killed my uncle, it was cancer. 



Spoiler



I feel dirty for this cheap shot


. 



> The law should be laid down in some form, and the RPGa tries to do so, to unify the game so people can move from game to game, but it will never happen outside of it. Too many people playing too many ways since 3rd and an insurge of people playing that never did before.



The only way to adhere to only one play style is to exclude people from the hobby and shrink its audience? Sounds like a really _great_ idea.



> Just something doesn't feel right about many things people say of how to play, or what the game is.



I agree. It feels wrong if people say that certain play styles are invalid, bad for the game or even claim that the play style doesn't even work for the people that use it.



> Again this all has little to do really with skill challenges. Have we totally taken this thread off track never to return, or is this stuff some kind of point to skill challenges, that I missed a dozen pages back when it started?



Threads topics change, evolve, move around. The original discussion was "challenge the players, not the characters stats". Skill Challenges might have been used as an example for the latter, but as I'd like to point out - every game challenges its players. The distinction being made here is inappropriate. Tactical combat in 4E challenges the player, because he has to figure out how to use his character abilities. Skill Challenges challenge the player because he has to figure out which skills he should use and how he can explain it in a way that makes "sense" in the gameworld. 

I still don't know a catchy term for the real difference. Maybe using howandwhy99 strict definition of what role-playing means to him might fit. "Solving problems in character, pretending you where there and had no knowledge of the fact that it's a game". (Which is still not catchy enough, but I suppose any catchy definition would be imprecise.)
The alternate playstyle is more "Narrating how characters solve problems, using game mechanics and player goals for the game to tell a story".

And there is a wide spectrum in between. No edition of D&D ever was purely the first kind of game - otherwise, we wouldn't have game constructs that we need to use to solve certain situations (particularly combat).


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 21, 2008)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> snip



Mustrum_Ridcully and I may disagree on different things, but he is telling it straight here.  Don't let your preference for certain games or your beliefs about gaming stop you from trying any game out.  Any kind of game can be fun.

As I like to say, there is no badwrongfun when playing a game.  Only the _That's Just Wrong_ kind.  You know, ...like in F.A.T.A.L. ...or some of those Furry games.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> I surely would not handwave setting up the inn, but wouldn't require the player to babysit it once operational. The inn would become a part of the world, but the player had to work to change it just like overthrowing the local regent to bring in a new lord that is more fair.
> 
> Even that east river can be made to move directions, but it needs depth into how it will happen rather than just saying that it happens because a player wants it to.
> 
> This inn requires funds to build, people to build, etc. So changes to the world can be made by the players, but through actions, not just words.




No arguments here.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 21, 2008)

pemerton said:


> Thanks.




Hey, I call 'em as I see's 'em.


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## Krensky (Oct 21, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> In the definition of martial arts, are all of them arts for being martial?  I don't believe Tai chi chuan is, but I cannot think of any other.  Here we could say is a change of intent.  The forms are still somewhat martial, but performed for health reasons.  But could Tai Chi practitioners use those forms for combat?  Probably not nearly as well as most other schools.  I've never heard of Tai Chi combat competitions.  What do you think other martial artists would say, if the dictionary definition became: "Martial Arts are exercises for health and longevity" and then used as examples: aerobics, yoga, and jazzercise along with Ju-jitsu and Tae kwon-do?





Since Tai chi chuan literally translates as "supreme ultimate fist" (or a variation on the theme) and it was developed as a means of self defense in the early nineteenth century. It's (very) somewhat analogous to Akido. Modern instruction and modern forms tend to emphasize the spirituality and exercise aspects far more then the practical, but the style is still capable of being an effective defense. It's is a *different* defense then more typical hard or hard-soft martial arts, based on the premise that the best defense is to passively accept and redirect violent acts around the practitioner, rather then to block or intercept them. It's also worth remembering that tai chi chuan in combat or a martial floor display is much faster then the meditation and exercise routines. 

I think there's an analogy there that relates this back to the debate at hand, but I can't quite phrase it. Something along the lines of: Tai chi chun:Shaolinquan (the broadest and best known hard Chinese style)::narrative/storytelling:simulation/gamist. Or something.

As for myself, I'm in the camp of challenging both the stats and the player. Part of this is preferred playstyle, and part is one of my groups. One player is a salesman by trade, and a good one. He's probably the smoothest, most charming person I know. He alternates between playing smooth tricksters (himself, really) and oafish brutes. When he's playing a brute and tries to be suave and charming, he gets a bonus based on whatever his role-played and acted line of bs is, but he rolls the character's social skill. He rolls when he's playing a charmer, too.

On the other side of the table, I have a player who is extremely shy, a little socially awkward, and quiet. She likes playing charming, socially adept, Machiavellian tricksters and rogues. If asked to get up and do amateur theater, she'd refuse. Drama would probably occur, but having a player break down in tears and leave is not the sort of drama anyone wants. She gives a abstract of her character's goals, I give it a penalty or bonus based on it's impact on the target and she rolls.

If I just had them role-play/act, I'd have Gronk the 'Special' Barbarian (Low INT, WIS, and CHA) pulling off cons that make the Sting look amateurish, and I'd loose another player entirely. On the other hand, if I just rolled (which I admit I do some times for simple things like haggling with the bartender or whatnot) then we'd miss some of the better lines of BS from the salesman and the cunning logic and manipulations from the shy player.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 21, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Also, just because a portion of background is undefined (as in your Paladin example), it doesn't mean defining that background in the course of a gaming session is playing the character.




What if an aspect of the character's personality is undefined, but you cement it in the course of play?

For example, I haven't specified that my character is impatient and short-tempered before the first session.  But when Bob starts playing his wizard as a hemming-and-hawwing, dithering, indecisive person, I find that my character blows a fuse and yells at him to make up his mind.

I now know that my character has those personality traits, which will help me hew more closely to the personification in future.

Was I roleplaying at the point the character threw a tantrum, even though the ill temper wasn't nailed down before it happened?  I've effectively retroactively added it to the description of the character.

-Hyp.


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## justanobody (Oct 21, 2008)

Just to note there is a right way and wrong way to play D&D.

This of course varies from person to person, and determines what games and groups people play with.


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> Just to note there is a right way and wrong way to play D&D.
> 
> This of course varies from person to person, and determines what games and groups people play with.




You forgot the Max Power way........That's the wrong way, but _*faster*_!


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## justanobody (Oct 21, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> You forgot the Max Power way........That's the wrong way, but _*faster*_!




 What's that? Max out every skill, power, die roll and play like that?


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## Raven Crowking (Oct 21, 2008)

justanobody said:


> What's that? Max out every skill, power, die roll and play like that?




No, it's from The Simpsons.  Homer changes him name to "Max Power".  

I paraphrase by (questionable) memory:

Homer:  There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!

Bart:  Isn't that the wrong way?

Homer:  Yes.  But faster!


RC


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## pemerton (Oct 22, 2008)

howandwhy99 said:


> Perhaps how far one is willing to go away from challenging the Player, modeling the role-playing challenges, is the matter of degree for your definition?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I don't know enough about computer games to apply your examples to the "matter of degree" that is part of my notion of RPGing. But I think what you say above about the boundary of the focus of attention (ie it is primarily on or about the PC, even if it is not "playing the role" in your strict sense, such as narration of how a PC uses his/her skills to solve a challenge) is probably about right for what I think.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 22, 2008)

Hypersmurf said:


> What if an aspect of the character's personality is undefined, but you cement it in the course of play?
> 
> For example, I haven't specified that my character is impatient and short-tempered before the first session.  But when Bob starts playing his wizard as a hemming-and-hawwing, dithering, indecisive person, I find that my character blows a fuse and yells at him to make up his mind.
> 
> ...



Acting is an even more narrow kind of role-playing (type 3) and characters are more or less defined by personality there.  Scripts, specific motivations, as little as a mood description, whatever.  Those are unneeded in traditional "role-playing" (type 2) because you can choose to do whatever you wish (no one can say "you're playing your character wrong").  There needn't be any rules for character portrayal, but any rules a game wants to give shouldn't necessarily interrupt your ability to succeed in the role.  They may also be moving closer to theater games: defining personality in attempt to engender kinds of personality-based conflicts/situations.  But in those cases you still don't barter or bet or whatever to "win" narration rights.  You still only control your character.

In most games there are little to no rules on how to portray your PC, so Players may choose to act (#3) while role-playing (#2).  This is like playing baseball while dressed as Mickey Mantle (example is a few pages back).  It won't help you succeed, but you can certainly pretend you're him.  "In-character" and "out-of-character" play delineates this difference.



pemerton said:


> I don't know enough about computer games to apply your examples to the "matter of degree" that is part of my notion of RPGing. But I think what you say above about the boundary of the focus of attention (ie it is primarily on or about the PC, even if it is not "playing the role" in your strict sense, such as narration of how a PC uses his/her skills to solve a challenge) is probably about right for what I think.



I follow you.  I think that can exist without rules though.  And what D&D and other RPGs give us is a chance to actually be the characters we read about in books.  Rather than "just saying" we're the characters doing great things.  (The "NAR" rules vs. R-P game rules distinction again)


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## justanobody (Oct 22, 2008)

Raven Crowking said:


> No, it's from The Simpsons.  Homer changes him name to "Max Power".
> 
> I paraphrase by (questionable) memory:
> 
> ...



That explains why I never heard of it. 

Thanks for the clarification.


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## Voadam (Oct 22, 2008)

Krensky said:


> As for myself, I'm in the camp of challenging both the stats and the player. Part of this is preferred playstyle, and part is one of my groups. One player is a salesman by trade, and a good one. He's probably the smoothest, most charming person I know. He alternates between playing smooth tricksters (himself, really) and oafish brutes. When he's playing a brute and tries to be suave and charming, he gets a bonus based on whatever his role-played and acted line of bs is, but he rolls the character's social skill. He rolls when he's playing a charmer, too.




When he's playing an oafish brute and trying to be suave and charming, is he trying his damnedest to be suave and charming and relying upon the stats and die rolls to create the oafishness aspect of the character or trying hard to first person roleplay an oafish brute trying to be suave and charming?

I find the latter style more fun for myself and to see in others at the table.


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## WalterKovacs (Nov 15, 2008)

One problem with challenging the player not the stats.

Do you get the players to move your coach to prove if their character can succeed on their strength check? Have them race, or hold their breath, etc. Mixing things up is good, but ultimately a person isn't "punished" for not having his physical stats anywhere near the character's stats ... but not letting someone with tons of charisma and training in diplomacy be able to talk his way out of a sitution because the person playing them is shy [and, I can definitely see a motivation for a shy person to play someone that is completely unlike them] is punishing a player for playing against type.

In general, challenging the players keep them engaged. However, if you don't challenge the character's stats/skills ... you make the choices for stats and skills matter a bit more in the long run. People have complained about how INT can be an easy dump stat ... without the skills it gets worse. Part of this is mostly making sure the players know what to expect going in. It's not just "players only train in combat relative skills" abuse ... it's that, as a player, I would be annoyed to find out I made choices that my DM has rendered moot. Like someone that has taken a number of feats to improve their opportunity attacks finding out that the DM avoids OAs like the plague. Or in earlier editions, bringing a Rogue into a game and finding it's an undead heavy campaign.

Ultimately though, the important thing is that DM's and players know each others play styles, especially before hand. Most conflict or problems "with the game" come out of players and DMs having different play styles and not having made it clear ahead of time. Retraining is nice ... as it lets a player change something that isn't useful given how the group functions.


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## RyvenCedrylle (Nov 15, 2008)

WalterKovacs said:


> Do you get the players to move your coach to prove if their character can succeed on their strength check? Have them race, or hold their breath, etc. Mixing things up is good, but ultimately a person isn't "punished" for not having his physical stats anywhere near the character's stats ... but not letting someone with tons of charisma and training in diplomacy be able to talk his way out of a sitution because the person playing them is shy [and, I can definitely see a motivation for a shy person to play someone that is completely unlike them] is punishing a player for playing against type.




No, but this isn't a bad idea in theory.  A simple addition to the 4E Skill Challenge that helps 'correct' their use (besides the now-vaunted mathematical issues) are FTW (For the Win)! and FTL (For the Loss)! conditions.  These are automatic failures or victories that are completely based on player decisions rather than character skill.  

Example:  
_Price Haggling_
_Two PCs enter an alchemist's shop looking for various magical and alchemical components.  The PCs note, upon looking around, that the prices seem awfully steep!  They engage the alchemist in some friendly roleplaying conversation before getting down to brass tacks._

_Win Conditions:_
_Damage – none.  Fighting him brings the town guard._
_Skill Challenge – 4/2  DC 15 He is very proud of his store and will not take much crap from the PCs._
_FTW! - Name Dropping.  Mentioning “(So-and-so) said you had a good setup here” from an appropiate NPC at the GM's judgement nets the win._
_FTL! - Insults or Attempted Theft _


_Win – a 15% discount_
_Lose – a 10% markup; further argument results in being kicked out of the store_

Given that the _players_ know these conditions exist, it provides a challenge for them to find the 'shortcut.'  If the players fail, the characters can pick up the slack.


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## Mort (Nov 15, 2008)

RyvenCedrylle said:


> No, but this isn't a bad idea in theory.




If you're referring to linking physical chalanges with physical exerts for the player - well I can't disagree more. The player is not the character, why would D&D want to encourage players to only play characters similar to themselves?



RyvenCedrylle said:


> A simple addition to the 4E Skill Challenge that helps 'correct' their use (besides the now-vaunted mathematical issues) are FTW (For the Win)! and FTL (For the Loss)! conditions.  These are automatic failures or victories that are completely based on player decisions rather than character skill.
> 
> Example:
> _Price Haggling_
> ...




While used well this may be a good idea, the problem I see is the game degenerating into "guess what the DM is thinking?"


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## RyvenCedrylle (Nov 15, 2008)

Mort -

The term 'in theory' was supposed to cover the concept of a player acting out the character's action, not actually moving a couch. My apologies if I was too brief in my statement.

The point has been made several times in other threads that much of the fun or difference between later D&D and early D&D has to do with who holds narrative and world-control. Early versions have the players controlling only their characters in the DM's world. 'Guess what the DM is thinking' is a standard MO for these editions if you stop and think about it. You tell the DM what you're doing and he (or she) tells you what happens. If there's a rumor of a hidden treasure in the last room of the dungeon, you must 'guess where the DM thought' to have placed it to find it. Roleplayed negotiations require you to 'guess what the DM thinks' will be a satisfactory position or offer.

Later editions allow players to define facts and NPC's actions in the now shared gameworld (see the Fighter's "Come and Get It" or any 4E cleric trying to solve all skill challenges with Religion checks, for example) The DM doesn't need to decide where the treasure is in 3E or 4E - she just needs a DC for you to roll your Perception or Search against. You could even decide where it is so long as you pass the skill check. 

The FTW! and FTL! conditions recall some of that early DM-centric flavor for 4E Skill challenges. You're welcome to try to read the DM's mind to determine 'the right' (or 'a right') course of action to take. If not, you can still rely on your character's abilities to accrue enough successes to see you through.


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## Mort (Nov 15, 2008)

RyvenCedrylle said:


> Mort -
> 
> The term 'in theory' was supposed to cover the concept of a player acting out the character's action, not actually moving a couch. My apologies if I was too brief in my statement.




But that's just it - I think it's a bad application. Why should my character be benefited by my physical ability? 

For example, I know several ways of knocking someone down. If I'm playing a character (say a mage) who has no clue how, should my character get a bonus to his roll to try because I can show the DM exactly how he'd do it?

Because D&D is a game of words social applications are trickier - but the theory is the same. If I'm playing a cha 6 character, I shouldn't be talking my way past any guards or persuading mobs to my bidding, even if I, as the player, am a persuasive guy.



RyvenCedrylle said:


> The point has been made several times in other threads that much of the fun or difference between later D&D and early D&D has to do with who holds narrative and world-control. Early versions have the players controlling only their characters in the DM's world. 'Guess what the DM is thinking' is a standard MO for these editions if you stop and think about it. You tell the DM what you're doing and he (or she) tells you what happens. If there's a rumor of a hidden treasure in the last room of the dungeon, you must 'guess where the DM thought' to have placed it to find it. Roleplayed negotiations require you to 'guess what the DM thinks' will be a satisfactory position or offer.
> 
> Later editions allow players to define facts and NPC's actions in the now shared gameworld (see the Fighter's "Come and Get It" or any 4E cleric trying to solve all skill challenges with Religion checks, for example) The DM doesn't need to decide where the treasure is in 3E or 4E - she just needs a DC for you to roll your Perception or Search against. You could even decide where it is so long as you pass the skill check.
> 
> The FTW! and FTL! conditions recall some of that early DM-centric flavor for 4E Skill challenges. You're welcome to try to read the DM's mind to determine 'the right' (or 'a right') course of action to take. If not, you can still rely on your character's abilities to accrue enough successes to see you through.




Modern RPGs at least present a choice - The DM can gauge the playstyle of his group and adjust accordingly (more or less rolling for results to the taste of the players).

It also alows the DM to call BS on a player ocasionally. If Bob the player is constantly having his character Thelgar the oafish fighter (+ 0 search/and or perception) look under every nook, cranny floorboard etc. to find hidden stuff; the DM needs to have Bob roll in the open then based on the roll straight out tell him "Sorry Bob, Thelgar can't find squat!" whether it's under the floorboards or not (the player made a choice to not have a perceptive character and needs to see the consequences of that choice).


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## RyvenCedrylle (Nov 16, 2008)

Mort said:


> It also alows the DM to call BS on a player ocasionally. If Bob the player is constantly having his character Thelgar the oafish fighter (+ 0 search/and or perception) look under every nook, cranny floorboard etc. to find hidden stuff; the DM needs to have Bob roll in the open then based on the roll straight out tell him "Sorry Bob, Thelgar can't find squat!" whether it's under the floorboards or not (the player made a choice to not have a perceptive character and needs to see the consequences of that choice).




Fair enough. I am agreeable to this in the same context that you don't get a to-hit bonus in D&D by simply describing a unique or colorful combat technique. You DO, however, in Feng Shui. This hearkens back to earlier discussions of character as stand-alone entity or simply a vehicle for the player to enter the game world. I won't rehash that as we've all read through it already. 

Perhaps the Ghostbuster-esque moral of this thread is "Don't cross the systems!" 4E D&D is character as standalone. Games like Dogs in the Vineyard or Feng Shui are more character as vehicle. No game is ever truly one or the other, but most have given one distinct attention over the other. Pick the system that matches your character model. Eh?


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## Voadam (Nov 17, 2008)

Mort said:


> Because D&D is a game of words social applications are trickier - but the theory is the same. If I'm playing a cha 6 character, I shouldn't be talking my way past any guards or persuading mobs to my bidding, even if I, as the player, am a persuasive guy.




Challenging the character stats sure you can. Its just a -3 on the d20 charisma check. Success depends on the relevant stats, the DM set DC, and the die roll.

Low charisma characters can try just as much as high charisma characters.

If your concept is a guy who is not persuasive (say a half-orc with no people skills), that is something you can roleplay as a player regardless of actual stats.



> It also alows the DM to call BS on a player ocasionally. If Bob the player is constantly having his character Thelgar the oafish fighter (+ 0 search/and or perception) look under every nook, cranny floorboard etc. to find hidden stuff; the DM needs to have Bob roll in the open then based on the roll straight out tell him "Sorry Bob, Thelgar can't find squat!" whether it's under the floorboards or not (the player made a choice to not have a perceptive character and needs to see the consequences of that choice).




This seems to be a heavy emphasis of character concept and game reality through mechanic stats instead of through game play portrayal and common sense.

If a trap door is under a rug and my fighter with no search skill/perception pulls back the rug he needs to make a search check to see the trap door he uncovered?

I'd hate to have my game play actions negated by a DM calling for inappropriate rolls that lead to ludicrous results. "But you need to see the consequences of your choice to play a fighter" is not an argument to endear me to that style of game.


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## justanobody (Nov 17, 2008)

WalterKovacs said:


> One problem with challenging the player not the stats.
> 
> Do you get the players to move your coach to prove if their character can succeed on their strength check?




Yup. And if he doesn't tackle them too hard and they can get up from it then they can have their character try to do whatever....

There are two "sets" of stats. Everyone follow me?

Physical: STR, DEX, CON

Mental: INT, WIS, CHA

Challenging the players means you challenge them mentally with those stats and how they choose to put the physical stats to use.

This excessive hyperbole of trying to have people lift stuff is a bit silly and old over the years.

I really wish people would stop trying to move furniture and sit on it and play the game instead.

So when you challenge the players, it can involve those physical things, but not the players themselves doing these activities, but simply how there character would do it other than just "I make a strength check."

So what are they trying to accomplish with this check. It might succeed without even needing the check if worded correctly to give the DM the idea that it would.

This allows players to outsmart bad dice rolls.


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