I'll break this off, because it could turn into its own discussion, and I don't want to derail the other thread.
Quote from: Steerpike
Quote from: sparkletwistIf the speech was really that good, you probably should never have rolled at all, or, if the speech was good but the roll was bad, a "Yes, but..." outcome seems to introduce far more interesting possibilities.
This is an excellent point, and a great way of handling cludgy social mechanics! Do you have any examples of "yes but..." social scenarios?
So, you (the player) make a brilliant speech, the other players love it, the GM loves it and even gives you a +2 or something on your roll for being so awesome, and the roll is made and... you fail. Big time.
What now?
Maybe
the outcome is sabotaged by means beyond your control, like your appeal for peace made to the Blorpian ambassador
would have been great had you remembered that in the East Blorpian dialect that she speaks, the word you think means "peace" actually refers to some extremely perverse and taboo sex act. Or the king and his audience found your speech highly compelling, until his sniveling and snarky ass of an advisor points out a completely nitpicky factual error that undermines your entire point.
Another possibility is
you get what you asked for, but not necessarily what you want, like the crazy evil genie who grants wishes completely literally. If you asked for a "ton of money," you get a pile of gold bricks fall on you. More abstractly, this could "pay it forward" to future bad effects: Everyone loves your motivating, jingoistic speech! The kingdom is galvanized for war! Too bad the war will turn out to be an utter disaster and bring unrest and ruin upon the land.
Finally, and sort of related to the previous two,
something else bad happens. Like, you make the speech, it's a huge success, but you're so busy putting your all into making a rousing speech you don't even notice the assassin that is coming up behind you to stab you in the back, so he gets to make an attack without even a chance to detect him.
As an aside, the Asura stunt system is full of this kind of stuff, because the idea is that the stunt happens
as described, no matter what the dice say. However, the mechanics still govern the flow of the game. This means if your stunt describes cutting off a guy's head, and you roll a critical miss, the head still comes off-- but the guy is still alive and making a retaliatory attack. The GM is encouraged if not outright compelled to be as creative and sadistic as possible at this point.
Whoops! I just posted a response to SP in the other thread, but you summed it up way better here anyways :P
Quote from: Steerpike
Quote from: sparkletwistIf the speech was really that good, you probably should never have rolled at all, or, if the speech was good but the roll was bad, a "Yes, but..." outcome seems to introduce far more interesting possibilities.
This is an excellent point, and a great way of handling cludgy social mechanics! Do you have any examples of "yes but..." social scenarios?
To go back to this since I realize I never got around to answering it, I personally love "yes, but..." scenarios. FATE (and Asura!) pretty much thrive off this stuff. I can't say I have the most experience with them, but a few examples might be, say, a player giving a powerful speech before an audience (rolls poorly despite some awesome roleplaying) BUT! maybe some nemesis or rival happens to burst into the end of it and tries and spin things on their head. The player still "succeeded" on the social roll, but the failure resulted in the story taking an unexpected and likely unfavorable twist for the player (or, at least the PC; I generally have a lot of fun when this stuff happens as a player).
You could also have it that a player is trying to convince some law officer that they're innocent of a crime and, as they deliver a clever and convincing bluff (or speak truthfully) they botch the roll, have it so that though the officer is convinced of their innocence, some form of evidence shows up that compounds his original bluff so that the player will have to jump through some further hoops to wiggle themselves out of this one.
Generally anything that isn't so much "You failed" and more "Nice try, but you're not out of the woods yet..." is better, in my opinion. I hate telling players they missed all their attacks or that they failed their skill checks, but when you take a failed roll and turn it into a monkey wrench to throw at them, it's usually more engaging and fun. Some things are certainly going to remain Pass/Fail, but I think that less reliance on those makes for a better game.
I cleaned it up. :grin:
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."
Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."
I get your point, but that is an oversimplification. Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences." A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap. Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall. and so on. So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.
Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium
Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."
I get your point, but that is an oversimplification. Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences." A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap. Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall. and so on. So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.
Very true. In the past, as a D&D GM, I used to make a lot of rolls for silly and trivial things, that, if the players wanted to, I should've just let them do it. What FATE and other systems have taught me is that the best times to roll are when success and failure are both interesting. In PF, a failed acrobatics check that ends in death is
not an interesting scenario. However, that doesn't mean if they choose to walk along the tiny ledge of a 700 foot high cliff they shouldn't make a check, but rather than equating failure to immediate death have it that there are some low roots or branches they can brag hold of. Maybe they're in loose soil and can only hold for a moment. Maybe there's enough footholds in the cliffside to attempt to climb back up. Those situations provide tension and liven up the game in otherwise simple encounters. That's something I find really useful when GMing.
My examples could apply to any system, really. They may not apply to "traditional" D&D as much, but, then again, this is a new edition-- the perfect time (at least if WotC were smart) to kill some sacred cows and bring in mechanics that roleplayers nowadays like to see.
Quote from: Weave
Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium
Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."
I get your point, but that is an oversimplification. Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences." A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap. Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall. and so on. So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.
Very true. In the past, as a D&D GM, I used to make a lot of rolls for silly and trivial things, that, if the players wanted to, I should've just let them do it. What FATE and other systems have taught me is that the best times to roll are when success and failure are both interesting. In PF, a failed acrobatics check that ends in death is not an interesting scenario. However, that doesn't mean if they choose to walk along the tiny ledge of a 700 foot high cliff they shouldn't make a check, but rather than equating failure to immediate death have it that there are some low roots or branches they can brag hold of. Maybe they're in loose soil and can only hold for a moment. Maybe there's enough footholds in the cliffside to attempt to climb back up. Those situations provide tension and liven up the game in otherwise simple encounters. That's something I find really useful when GMing.
That would make for an exciting encounter indeed!
And it's true that you can probably find a way to keep most failed rolls from meaning failure without hope of recovery. Make a fail a setback, and give them a way back from there. In a social situation, a failed bluff means they see through you. Maybe that makes them more hostile, and you have to diplomacy your way out of trouble, or come up with an even better lie about WHY you lied. Or maybe you could make a perform check to try and pass it off as a bit of new-wave interactive theater.
Saying the right thing in the wrong way is very, very common.
RPing a good speech and rolling low, represents that.
Rolling also helps mitigate problems with players who may not know exactly the right thing to say but are playing the party's face. Think about it from the opposite angle - There's no thought or obtuse questioning given to a fat, out-of-shape player role playing as super buff Conan-type character who wants to rip a door off its hinges or smack the troll with his sword. The same should be true for the introverted role player playing a suave 007 type character sweet talking the princess or inspiring soldiers before battle.
As with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one.
Quote from: Elemental_ElfAs with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one.
That's one of the few things I actually liked seeing with 4e: that They put forward the tables for success in a social encounter, where it's a series of something like 5 checks. Each success moving you up the scale in how well things go, each failure moving you down.
That and the suggestions about questions to answer while building a character's persona.
I had an odd moment with a player in the last session I ran. IIRC it went something like this...
Him: I want to Persuade the guards to let us in.
Me: Okay, what do you say to them?
Him: ... I was kind of hoping my Persuade skill would take care of that.
To be honest, I was kind of shocked at his line of thinking, especially as he had so far been very keen on speaking and acting in-character (it was only my second session with him)
Anyway, I told him that he still had to come up with some form of argument as to why they should be let in, the Persuade roll would just determine whether the guards were convinced by it or not.
Basically, this seems like a diametrically opposite line of thought to the one you started this thread with, so I thought it might be worth throwing into the mix.
As for your ideas for yes-but failures in the original post, I love them. They're one of those concepts that you feel should have existed all along, and seeing them written out just codifies something you may have been subconsciously wanting or trying to do all along :)
And in response to people being against nothing-happens failures (or at least non-social ones), I don't think they're as terrible as they might at first seem, at least not as long as the pace of the game is quick so the player doesn't have to wait too long for another chance to do something cool. There's also a big difference between describing a mechanically nothing-happens failures as "You miss" and describing the same event as "You swing at him, your sword tracing a glittering steel arc, but he brings up his shield and - THUNK! - your blow hits only wood and hide" or whatever.
Quote from: Elemental_ElfRolling also helps mitigate problems with players who may not know exactly the right thing to say but are playing the party's face. Think about it from the opposite angle - There's no thought or obtuse questioning given to a fat, out-of-shape player role playing as super buff Conan-type character who wants to rip a door off its hinges or smack the troll with his sword. The same should be true for the introverted role player playing a suave 007 type character sweet talking the princess or inspiring soldiers before battle.
The thing is, though, the idea of playing a role playing
game is that there is still an element of player skill. It's something of a necessity when dealing with something where there are rules, challenges to be overcome, and whatnot. Honestly, nothing in an RPG is completely glossed over, so there's no reason socialization needs to be. Players who learn the rules and intricacies of the system well and build well-optimized characters are going to have more going for them than players who do not. Obviously, in combat, physical skills are glossed over because it's not a physical game, but player skill is not entirely removed from combat, either. A player who has sound grasp of the game's combat tactics is going to do better than a player who does not. When searching for things, players who are active and inquisitive and know what kinds of questions to ask are probably going to do better than ones who don't. So, along the same lines, socially speaking, players who are able to get into their social roles are probably going to do better. They don't have to be
as good as the character, obviously-- not nearly. There's a lot less pressure, for one, just messing around with friends in a game between actually being in some tense social situation. The GM is likely to grant a lot of leeway, too, but it's always good to have an idea what the player is trying to do, in just a general sense.
Quote from: Elemental_ElfAs with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one.
I mostly agree with this. I'll just clarify (and I think this is what you meant, anyway) that I think that it's not so much that picking up the dice and throwing them multiple times is the important thing, but rather that there is a flow to the encounter with players having more input, with chances for there to be changing tactics, reversals of fortune, retreat for one side or the other if things go badly, and so on.
I think the Asura nugget where sometimes things have to happen exactly as a player described
yet still fail somehow is a great sort of mental calisthenics. It seems like it would force you, as the GM, to come up with some crazy outcomes which bring in interesting elements from "outside" the situation, when then could become part of the story in their own right, so failed rolls actually embellish the fiction by introducing new ideas. Is this anything like how it has turned out in practice?
I think Apocalypse World is potentially a great source of inspiration, partly because it has graduated degrees of success (instead of binary success/failure, there is a miss at 6 or less, a hit at 7-9, and a really solid hit at 10+, where the whole point of the 7-9 range is "yes, but", a technical success that also introduces complications or flaws), and partly because a lot of the outcomes involve someone (sometimes the player, sometimes the GM) making difficult choices. This setup encourages actions to have a wide range of possible outcomes which are built into the rules, not just "you succeed/you fail, now figure out how".
If you were going to generalize a similar setup in a system-neutral way, it might look like this:
QuoteWhen you make your demands at the lordsmeet (or whatever), roll [blah]. On a result of [really good], choose four of the following:
- the majority of lords present support your proposal
- you don't make any powerful new enemies
- you don't have to give up a major concession to get your way
- you build onto your reputation as a competent and effective leader
- your style impresses some lord who takes an interest in fostering your career
- a fight doesn't break out over your proposal
On a roll of [barely good enough], choose two of the above.
On a roll of [sadtrombone], your proposal fails; the GM can make as hard a move as desired.
This kind of thing does a whole scene in a single roll, but it's not a binary succeed/fail thing; there are multiple parts that suggest all sorts of interactions and force players to prioritize, and all the things that don't get chosen introduce new elements to the fiction. If a player rolls the moderate success and chooses to have a majority support their political initiative and chooses not to make a powerful new enemy in the process (reasonable choices), the GM immediately gets to complicate that outcome by dealing with what the player's major concession had to be to get that done, what they did to screw up their reputation in front of all the assembled rulers, and the cause and outcome of the fight that broke out over the player's idea. That's all fuel to lead to more story elements, more conflicts, and more branching rolls like this one.
Quote from: Luminous CrayonIs this anything like how it has turned out in practice?
Kind of. In all honesty, in what little Asura has been played (not enough!), there have not been any truly crazy outcomes coming out of nowhere, largely because there have been few
chances for such things to happen. Players have always been a little more modest with their stunts than I hoped. I'm not sure if it's because it's kind of a weird paradigm that people who come from the dominant D&D-ish gaming school of thought (a school of thought I largely used to belong to, I admit!) just haven't internalized enough to have it come up in during a game of something like Asura, or if they're afraid of what kind of crazy and deadly thing I'll come up with to throw at them if they get too audacious. If it's the second one, then that fear is probably because the players might not have internalized the more "narrativist" approach Asura takes to the consequences of failure-- it's all about keeping things
interesting, and just saying "rocks fall, everyone dies" isn't interesting.
Quote from: Luminous CrayonThis setup encourages actions to have a wide range of possible outcomes which are built into the rules, not just "you succeed/you fail, now figure out how".
I like this approach, too. While I don't have any experience with Apocalypse World, I definitely like other systems (like FATE! or Asura, of course) that make an effort to tell you not just whether or not you succeeded at an action, but how well you succeeded. I've noticed that d20 occasionally makes an effort to include stuff like "if you beat the DC by N, something else happens," but it always feels like a weird afterthought because that notion isn't well-embedded into the system with the potential for "degree of success/failure" type things to happen to you on every roll.
I'm not a particular fan of making a rather metagamey list like that and essentially working that out outside of the roleplaying framework, but I definitely like the
idea, and I believe that a similar thing could be achieved somewhat more organically through the use of maneuvers and consequences in a more FATE-like system. It would add a lot of depth to social combat, allowing for more than "you win, you get everything you want" and "you lose, gtfo" which is what a d20 Diplomacy roll often turns into.
Quote from: Luminous Crayon
If you were going to generalize a similar setup in a system-neutral way, it might look like this:
QuoteWhen you make your demands at the lordsmeet (or whatever), roll [blah]. On a result of [really good], choose four of the following:
- the majority of lords present support your proposal
- you don't make any powerful new enemies
- you don't have to give up a major concession to get your way
- you build onto your reputation as a competent and effective leader
- your style impresses some lord who takes an interest in fostering your career
- a fight doesn't break out over your proposal
On a roll of [barely good enough], choose two of the above.
On a roll of [sadtrombone], your proposal fails; the GM can make as hard a move as desired.
This kind of thing does a whole scene in a single roll, but it's not a binary succeed/fail thing; there are multiple parts that suggest all sorts of interactions and force players to prioritize, and all the things that don't get chosen introduce new elements to the fiction. If a player rolls the moderate success and chooses to have a majority support their political initiative and chooses not to make a powerful new enemy in the process (reasonable choices), the GM immediately gets to complicate that outcome by dealing with what the player's major concession had to be to get that done, what they did to screw up their reputation in front of all the assembled rulers, and the cause and outcome of the fight that broke out over the player's idea. That's all fuel to lead to more story elements, more conflicts, and more branching rolls like this one.
This is awesome, LC! I may steal this (or make up something similar)
I dunno if I'd call the AW system "metagamey", especially in any kind of pejorative sense, but then again I don't really like that term in any context. Every system draws the window, through which players can interact with the events of the game, in a slightly different spot. Which is fine. (If using game mechanics to make choices about where plot elements go next is "metagamey", then it's hard to get more metagamey than straight-up FATE.) And anyway, it's very easy to frame the above (hastily constructant, somewhat flippant) example as an in-character choice, where a expert negotiator character chooses some outcomes over others by what he or she chooses to say and to not say. (In fact, this is one of those examples where characters can be experts without requiring players to be experts; a player can still make a complex, nuanced, deliberate change to a situation without necessarily having to know a bunch of in-world diplomatic minutae personally, which can be very nice and very powerful. But none of this is really the point; if you like the general idea of branching outcomes in that system but disliked letting players select from the buffet, you could always use much less complicated moves than that example, or just let the GM make the selections.)
Anyway, different strokes, blah blah, I really have no intention of derailing this thread just because I have a bit of a gamecrush at the moment, etc.
One interesting thing about FATE and maneuvers and consequences and all that is how resistant most players seem to be to the idea of "taking the reins", even in a small way. In games I have run and have played in, I think a lot of the most interesting aspects of that system (har har, no pun intended) get underutilized because players are either scared to go there, or don't realize that they can. FATE can accommodate a million different situations and outcomes; players can do almost anything with it, but in my practical experience it seems like they often do not do so.
I am still diagnosing the problem, but I think that it boils down to FATE's system being, at times, a.) a little too general, and b.) a little too granular.
To the latter, I think social conflicts in FATE often have a lot of the same problems as combat, because they're played like combats, with all the blow-by-blow and complex tactics that you get in FATE combat, just like combat in most systems. Discussions and negotiations and intimidations and interrogations can take a hellaciously long time and leave PCs surprisingly weakened, drained, and exhausted of their resources. Maybe more interesting is that social conflicts "feel like combats", even when they're not supposed to.
You can use that system in FATE to describe, say, sincerely trying to win over a person, gain their trust, turn them into a friend or ally. To do this as a social conflict, you use social "attacks", maneuvers, and all the things that would be analogous to HP, injuries, and victory if this were a physical combat, only you use social versions of those things.
So sometimes you get this weird result where the person who has just been "won over" actually just feels like they've been demolished in social combat (because, in a game-mechanics sense, that's what has actually just happened.) So there's often a big disconnect between what the character is supposed to feel and what a player might actually feel, and this causes tension in the game events-- maybe the character is supposed to feel befriended and act loyally, but the player feels defeated and seeks payback.
This whole topic is pretty freaking complicated, really.
:offtopic:
Right, it was the "picking from the buffet" sort of thing that bothered me. It felt like it was disconnected from the stream of RP and in-character talking, and would result in a lot of discussion between players and GM about what would happen that was entirely abstracted, and outside of the narrative that was developing. You could pick that you managed to do these things, but you wouldn't have the faintest idea how your character did it. That's what I meant by "metagamey," I guess, though I'm sure there are better and less vague ways of putting it.
Anyway.
:ontopic:
I agree with you about FATE and its ilk. I think a lot of players are used to the Gygaxian paradigm, where the GM is entirely the "owner" of the game world and its events, and players are essentially just along for the ride. Personally, I prefer the "shared story" approach much more, as both a player-- because I feel more "empowered" and have more choices and chances for creativity-- but also as a GM-- because it allows those things, leading to more engaged players with more of a personal investment in the plot and game world as a whole. One thing that I really enjoy about FATE is that it allows the sort of hijinks that are all over fiction but often underrepresented in games, because it does things like incentivize playing character flaws and let players take a degree of narrative control to make sure their wacky plan comes to fruition.
Asura has a pretty detailed social combat system, inspired largely by FATE's, as well as Exalted and other systems with a detailed system for social combat essentially based on the one used for physical combat. For tense negotations, interrogations, and other strongly adversarial social situations, the level of fatigue that characters (and players!) experience is probably reasonable and desired. Treating these sorts of conflicts as "combat" isn't going to bother anymore. When the situation is not so adversarial, it becomes more difficult. The best answer I have been able to come up with is "Don't treat it like a combat if it's not really a combat," which is kind of vague and useless. The use of compels or the like could help a little, because this way the players are getting a mechanical reward they like rather than being ground down in nasty combat. Asura encourages the GM to skew descriptions of the world to what the PCs are experiencing, rather than being fully "objective"-- so if the bad guy is winning them over, he'll start to seem a whole lot nicer and better. Combined with a bribe of a SP (Stunt Point, bascially Asura's version of a Fate Point) the player will probably come away from it feeling as happy as the character. Of course, eventually, they'll find that they were being deceived-- but that's part of the point, anyway, and for the time being they don't feel like they were ground down in social combat.
Quote from: sparkletwistI think a lot of players are used to the Gygaxian paradigm, where the GM is entirely the "owner" of the game world and its events, and players are essentially just along for the ride. Personally, I prefer the "shared story" approach much more, as both a player-- because I feel more "empowered" and have more choices and chances for creativity-- but also as a GM-- because it allows those things, leading to more engaged players with more of a personal investment in the plot and game world as a whole.
Wholehearted agreement here.
Quote from: sparkletwistOne thing that I really enjoy about FATE is that it allows the sort of hijinks that are all over fiction but often underrepresented in games, because it does things like incentivize playing character flaws and let players take a degree of narrative control to make sure their wacky plan comes to fruition.
Preach. I actually think a system-neutral "how can you give more narrative control to players?" tips-and-tricks kind of thread would be pret. ty. boss.
[ooc]edit: once again, looks like I'm getting away from the thread's topic of social failure. oopsie! at least the rest of this post is about social mechanics in general; I'm going to leave it in but try to keep a tighter rein on my future replies here I guess![/ooc]
One thing that we found out the hard way in FATE is that, in a lot of situations, when you think you might want to use a social conflict you can just use an aspect compel instead.
Buddy of mine was running a Dresden Files RPG game and early on in the game he introduces a powerful Unseelie fae royal as a scary NPC, and this NPC wants the PCs to do something for her, and has some information they need as leverage. So my friend starts running this as a social conflict, with this NPC's goal being to get us to capitulate and agree to do her this favor, and everybody busts out the social attacks and defenses.
And it was the group's first social conflict, and the first conflict period, and the first conflict run by this GM in this system. So it was a pretty tedious slog! So at some point we stop and take stock and say, what are we doing here, Steve's got this aspect called "Deal with the Devil" or something, all about how that character believes it's sometimes necessary to let the ends justify the means and get into bed, so to speak, with some real creepers. So we're like, GM, how about you just compel this aspect on Steve and we get on with things? So we used compels for the initial hook (some other PCs were simultaneously compelled as well, if they had applicable aspects) and saved social conflict for situations with more appropriate stakes.
It's odd. I can't really think of other situations in other systems where "what rules do I use to portray this action?" is such a pressing question. You really need to set up an appropriate ratio between "how much time do we spend hashing out X?" and "how much do we, as players, actually care about X?" And I think that if there's one takeaway message I'd choose to generalize across all social rules for all systems, that would be it.
(The other takeaway message, the one I'd generalize across all
FATE games you might ever run, is that no one should ever try to run FATE without a sheet of paper in front of them with all your players' personal Aspects written on it. :yumm: )
After thinking about it a bit, it seems like that a "pick from the buffet" list like that could be just the thing to make 4e's skill challenges not completely stupid.
As it stands, they're a complete failure because the basic idea is and has been that everyone contributes "success" or "failure," so it makes no sense for anyone but the party member who is the best at whatever it is to participate.
However, what if a skill challenge instead worked something like this:
- The players and/or GM draw up a list like the example LC posted, listing the objectives that the characters are hoping to accomplish as part of the skill challenge. Each objective would have a skill associated with it.
- Each player gets to make one roll, against an objective of his/her choice. If they beat the DC, that objective is accomplished. If they beat the DC by +5 (or some other number, testing will determine this), they get a "bonus success," which is banked.
- After the rolling is all over, anyone who earned a bonus success can choose another objective that they accomplished along the way to accomplishing their main one, provided they can tell an amusing narrative about how they went about doing that.
It seems like this way the party skill monkeys will still be contributing a lot, but this way the guy who would have been doing nothing before now has incentive to at least try, also. It also allows some rational link between "what skills are being rolled" and "what the party is actually doing."
I strongly prefer mechanics that roughly map the decisions a player has available with the decisions the character has available, so for me the buffet option seems odd. I prefer more discrete tasks to be handled by a skill system, with the difficulty taking into account both the thing being said and the circumstances. For me, 3.5's bluff is the best I've seen this done. The task is easy to understand (the NPC believes the lie or doesn't) and the difficulty depends on the plausibility of the specific lie.
I think one of the failings of social mechanics is that they get designed to handle an action or encounter scale activity with little thought to how that integrates at the adventure or campaign scale. If there were concrete benefits to rallying support (or concrete penalties for being a dick) at the adventure scale, it would be easier to write for specific goals for encounters. Or if there were campaign-scale rules for acquiring and using social power, it would be easier to get those social type adventure goals written. Part of what makes combat work so well is how well it nests into so many adventure types, and part of what works about D&D's dungeon formula is how well it maps into the campaign theme of power acquisition.
For myself, I think writing the rules for social encounters on the assumption of mystery adventures tends to help. The concrete benefit of social checks (when you're making them) tend to be either subterfuge or interrogation. Mysteries, like combat, are one of those things that can be plopped down into a lot of contexts and people will tend to know what to do with them.
The other failures stem from the ambiguity of skills: When and whether to roll, failure that means nothing, the use of rolling to quickly determine success/failure with no real mechanical choice given, etc. The standard solutions (not rolling for basic tasks, penalties for failure or hp-style partial success options, and providing meaningful choices) all apply.
Quote from: sparkletwist
After thinking about it a bit, it seems like that a "pick from the buffet" list like that could be just the thing to make 4e's skill challenges not completely stupid.
As it stands, they're a complete failure because the basic idea is and has been that everyone contributes "success" or "failure," so it makes no sense for anyone but the party member who is the best at whatever it is to participate.
However, what if a skill challenge instead worked something like this:
- The players and/or GM draw up a list like the example LC posted, listing the objectives that the characters are hoping to accomplish as part of the skill challenge. Each objective would have a skill associated with it.
- Each player gets to make one roll, against an objective of his/her choice. If they beat the DC, that objective is accomplished. If they beat the DC by +5 (or some other number, testing will determine this), they get a "bonus success," which is banked.
- After the rolling is all over, anyone who earned a bonus success can choose another objective that they accomplished along the way to accomplishing their main one, provided they can tell an amusing narrative about how they went about doing that.
It seems like this way the party skill monkeys will still be contributing a lot, but this way the guy who would have been doing nothing before now has incentive to at least try, also. It also allows some rational link between "what skills are being rolled" and "what the party is actually doing."
This seems like it would solve not only your issue with AW giving "results out of nowhere" but also your (apparent) issue with 4E skill challenges being based on tallying up successes and failures that don't have a specific meaning.
Quote from: Luminous Crayonyour (apparent) issue with 4E skill challenges being based on tallying up successes and failures that don't have a specific meaning.
My issue with D&D 4e's skill challenges isn't so much that the successes and failures don't have a specific meaning (though that is a problem) but that the system's mathematics work out that so that it discourages what it was trying to encourage. The point of skill challenges, if I understand them correctly, was to have a way to model big challenges that the entire party would have to work together to solve, and to do so in a way that all of the players would feel involved and helping. Unfortunately, the way they actually worked out, the mathematically optimal way to pass a skill challenge is that the guy who is best at whatever skill is needed just rolls a bunch of times, while everyone else sits around and pulls out their smartphones, iPads and DS's. I think at some point they revised that so the guy who is best at it can't do it all, but then, you just make sure that the only people who can roll are the ones whose chances of success vs chances of failure are greater than the number of successes needed vs number of failures needed. It's still not interesting.
However, skill challenges are abstracted enough the "pick from the buffet" approach doesn't bother me much, so I believe doing something like this would allow for a much more compelling thing in actual play. The party would actually have to work together, decide who was going to tackle what task, and make some tough choices if they couldn't meet all of the objectives.
I also like mechanics that have an amount of real time energy (pcs have to think somewhat quickly) and when success or failure can lead to a different position needing different skills.
Especially, I like it when pcs can be clever with failure and rescue a situation, and can maximize success the same way.
Quote from: sparkletwist
Quote from: Luminous Crayonyour (apparent) issue with 4E skill challenges being based on tallying up successes and failures that don't have a specific meaning.
My issue with D&D 4e's skill challenges isn't so much that the successes and failures don't have a specific meaning (though that is a problem) but that the system's mathematics work out that so that it discourages what it was trying to encourage. The point of skill challenges, if I understand them correctly, was to have a way to model big challenges that the entire party would have to work together to solve, and to do so in a way that all of the players would feel involved and helping.
As I understood them, the point of skill challenges was just to serve as a model for setting up a social "encounter" where the entire outcome was not decided by a single roll. A framework for salvaging situations by changing tactics, or pressing your advantage by keeping them off balance. That instead of just saying, "I used my skills at diplomacy to talk my way out of trouble," saying that "When I tried to talk the guards into letting me through (Diplomacy), they were hesitant, so I told them I was their new superior officer (Bluff), and threatened to put them in the stockade if they did not submit (Intimidate)." Of course, this also gives you an opportunity to slip up where you had been doing well.
Steerpike handled social failures really well during the short time I was able to play Fimbulvinter - even though I kept failing on the dice while trying to intimidate a Warg, if I came up with a new idea or way to approach the situation, he'd let me get another roll with some kind of modifier, such as boasting about killing a She-Troll with her ears as proof, bluffing/yelling about killing lots of Wargs, or outright getting really angry and trying to make them run out of fear. I thought it worked well, and was fun, as I got to mix the in game mechanics with out-of-character quick thinking and creativity - which seems to be what Vreeg and SH are mentioning.
Quote from: Señor Leetz
Steerpike handled social failures really well during the short time I was able to play Fimbulvinter - even though I kept failing on the dice while trying to intimidate a Warg, if I came up with a new idea or way to approach the situation, he'd let me get another roll with some kind of modifier, such as boasting about killing a She-Troll with her ears as proof, bluffing/yelling about killing lots of Wargs, or outright getting really angry and trying to make them run out of fear. I thought it worked well, and was fun, as I got to mix the in game mechanics with out-of-character quick thinking and creativity - which seems to be what Vreeg and SH are mentioning.
Oh, exactly.
You get it.
from the GS rulebook...
"Also, success and failure are not absolute situations. When a PC fails at a skill, it might just mean that they are now at more of a disadvatageous situation, but they can still roleplay and use other skills to try to change that position. Similarly, as the GM, play a success as an improved situation, so that the PCs are encouraged to roleplay and use more skills to increase their position.
...
The last piece of advice is to err in favor of roleplaying. If a PC is using the CC roll to avoid roleplaying, especially in a social situation, penalize them. Tell them that it wasn't believable if it wasn't. But on the other side, maker sure that superalative roleplay is rewarded. Skills are supposed to encourage roleplay, not used to avoid it."Skills, especially social skills, should be used by the GM to encourage roleplay and in-character play, not to use a rule to avoid the roleplay. Or at least, that is how I view this.
By the way, LC, congrats on the nuptials, and BTW, I always enjoy it when you have a gamecrush. You write a lot about it and it's always a good read.
Part of the problem with 4E skill challenges is that so much of their quality is in the writing. There are definitely good and interesting ones, but it's very easy to write a dumb, boring, bad one as well, and the gulf between the two extremes is vast and wide. The good ones tend to have more elements and tend to be more involved to write.
So on the one hand, you have cool stuff where one character has to climb the guarded cliff to attach a rope for the others, and those on the ground assist by spotting handholds and holding the enemy goblins (who are waiting at the top, throwing rocks down to disrupt the climber) at bay, etc. Or you have scenes where the group has to figure out how to use the storm giant's weather-controlling pipe organ to ward off the encroaching thunderclouds and/or elementals, and this involves someone playing the keyboard and others pumping the massive bellows, figuring out the knobs on the console, and stomping on the correct oversized footpedals.
Versus, of course, the ultra-lame "somebody has to rack up 4 Diplomacy successes to convince the duke of whatever, blah blah who cares", which one player will just sit there making all the checks in a row until it's over. Which is quick and simple to write, but dull and forgettable.
Quote from: Luminous CrayonPart of the problem with 4E skill challenges is that so much of their quality is in the writing.
To be honest, I'm not sure the writing really matters that much in light of the severe mathematical problems with the whole thing. No matter what kind of fluff you put around it, the game mechanic is "Get X successes before you get Y failures" so that's going to be how the players are going to play it. The only player who should even pick up the dice is the one who has the highest rank in a needed skill, because, no matter what happens, you are either adding to column X or column Y-- so you want to make sure that the odds are in your favor to add to column X.
It's essentially going around and figuring out who is best at something and making that person roll. Everyone else just sits there, or does Aid Anothers if those are allowed. The only creative use of skills that comes about out of something like this is trying to talk the DM into letting you use whatever skill you're best at to do absolutely everything, because that's the only thing that makes any mathematical sense.
Quote from: sparkletwist
Quote from: Luminous CrayonPart of the problem with 4E skill challenges is that so much of their quality is in the writing.
To be honest, I'm not sure the writing really matters that much in light of the severe mathematical problems with the whole thing. No matter what kind of fluff you put around it, the game mechanic is "Get X successes before you get Y failures" so that's going to be how the players are going to play it. The only player who should even pick up the dice is the one who has the highest rank in a needed skill, because, no matter what happens, you are either adding to column X or column Y-- so you want to make sure that the odds are in your favor to add to column X.
It's essentially going around and figuring out who is best at something and making that person roll. Everyone else just sits there, or does Aid Anothers if those are allowed. The only creative use of skills that comes about out of something like this is trying to talk the DM into letting you use whatever skill you're best at to do absolutely everything, because that's the only thing that makes any mathematical sense.
The best fix I've seen for this is to remove penalties for failure and set a fixed round limit. Then there are no penalties for trying, but there's still a threshold at which failure occurs. You'd probably have to rejigger the difficulties math along with this, and it couldn't hurt to have checks able to mean multiple things (difficult or especially relevant checks extending the deadline, or some checks to interfere with opponents in an opposed-style challenge).
Quote from: beejazzThe best fix I've seen for this is to remove penalties for failure and set a fixed round limit.
Yes, I think something like that is good. I had a thought a few posts back to merge the skill challenge system with something like this list that LC posted (http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,209632.msg216568.html#msg216568) and have, like you mentioned, a fixed round limit. Essentially, the players and DM would figure out what the goals of the encounter were, and then start the skill challenge with that "shopping list" in mind. Everyone would take a shot at doing something, and every success would buy you one thing off the list. Maybe some way to get bonus items off the list if you beat the DC by a lot, too, but I'm not sure. Then, not only does everyone get involved, but the skill challenge can result in vastly different outcomes (with varying degrees of "success" or "failure") depending on what objectives players pursued and succeeded or failed at.
Quote from: sparkletwist
Quote from: beejazzThe best fix I've seen for this is to remove penalties for failure and set a fixed round limit.
Yes, I think something like that is good. I had a thought a few posts back to merge the skill challenge system with something like this list that LC posted (http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,209632.msg216568.html#msg216568) and have, like you mentioned, a fixed round limit. Essentially, the players and DM would figure out what the goals of the encounter were, and then start the skill challenge with that "shopping list" in mind. Everyone would take a shot at doing something, and every success would buy you one thing off the list. Maybe some way to get bonus items off the list if you beat the DC by a lot, too, but I'm not sure. Then, not only does everyone get involved, but the skill challenge can result in vastly different outcomes (with varying degrees of "success" or "failure") depending on what objectives players pursued and succeeded or failed at.
You could make a pretty standard chart with fail effects on one side, success on another, and difficulty numbers for entries. If the success/failure effects could be sort of standardized for social encounters it could work out well.
So player would propose actions, DM would determine success/failure effects, the skill to use, and the difficulty based on the chart and common sense, and then the player rolls.
I can only see this being easier to balance with 5e's flatter looser approach to skills.
See, now you guys got me thinking about this. I think I'd start with a standard difficulty chart (easy is x, medium is y, hard is z or whatever) and then a grid with failure and success modifiers. As in bigger potential failures might make tasks slightly easier while bigger potential wins might be harder. On one side of that grid would be (helps the group/helps individual/no effect) and on the other would be (hurts the group/ hurts the individual / no effect).
Then people would improvise tasks, and the DM would adjudicate success/failure effects and difficulties based on the proposed tasks using the above guidelines.
All this in a framework like was mentioned above (x successes in y rounds, or x successes before your opponents get x successes). Hurts the group fails could supply an alternate fail condition more like 4e skill challenges, but in this case statistically weaker characters could at least attempt tasks that would not hurt the group.
Individual success/failure would account for effects that only hit one member of the group, and no-effect-success is effectively a save. So if you're climbing and someone's dangling, there would be a "hang on" strength check with hurts the individual and no effect success.
That might be an ideal "skill challenge" formula.