Anatomy of Failed Design: Skill Challenges

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I love how, when caught red-handed talking out of your ass, your response is, "I never said that and let's change the subject."

Poor subject change, too. The Dave Arneson entry you isn't actually clear on the timing of Blackmoor vs. D&D rules (as opposed to the published version of the game). And whether Blackmoor existed as a setting before Arneson's first houserules is irrelevant anyway. After all, an early version of Greyhawk (called The Great Kingdom) also predates D&D, and Ed Greenwood was writing stories set in the Forgotten Realms nearly two decades before selling the setting to TSR.

Anyway, this was a conversation about the history of the rules, and you were caught red-handed asserting that D&D rules were improved by bringing in rules from the game it was derived from. You pass yourself off as the world's foremost expert on everything, especially gaming, yet you get major points about gaming history wrong, including the name of the game's creator.

[Psychic Robot]

Blackmoor predates D&D.

The original Blackmoor began life in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become D&D.

And this has nothing to do with you being completely ignorant of the history of D&D.

[Doom]

I almost think someone's hacked TD's account to make him look stupid or something; he was one of the few Gleemaxians that said relevant things, but this, and his insistence in the face of all rationality on the claim that 'hundreds of thousands means more than a million' kinda makes me wonder if he's on drugs, or hacked.

That, or he got used to the "ze4lots are never wrong" paradigm, and forgot that in legitimate forums you actually have to know what you're talking about.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm pretty sure it's the latter. The only reason that TD has ever seemed reasonable is because he can call down the hordes of 4e defenders and the mods on anyone who calls him on his nonsense. Those VCLs can pretty much get any thread locked on a whim.

[RandomCasualty2]

I almost think someone's hacked TD's account to make him look stupid or something; he was one of the few Gleemaxians that said relevant things, but this, and his insistence in the face of all rationality on the claim that 'hundreds of thousands means more than a million' kinda makes me wonder if he's on drugs, or hacked.

Yeah, that was the dumbest argument I've ever seen him make.

[Red_Rob]

Greg Arneston... classic. Claiming to be an authority on the minutiae of early DnD rules whilst being incapable of remembering the authors name.

However, is the idea that skill challenges could be more complex necessarily unworkable? Apart from the foot-in-mouth moment, he does have a point that combat is made more fun (to a point) by making it more complex (i.e. tactical).

The way i see it skill challenges either need to be more complex, so they have some meaningful choices and therefore some strategy, or simplified until you basically remove them and just have skill rolls to bypass individual obstacles and teaparty the rest. At the moment they're stuck in this no-mans-land of being complex enough to require lots of rolling but simple enough that the way to proceed is always too obvious.

[Spaghetti Western]

Greg Arneston... classic. Claiming to be an authority on the minutiae of early DnD rules whilst being incapable of remembering the authors name.

However, is the idea that skill challenges could be more complex necessarily unworkable? Apart from the foot-in-mouth moment, he does have a point that combat is made more fun (to a point) by making it more complex (i.e. tactical).

The way i see it skill challenges either need to be more complex, so they have some meaningful choices and therefore some strategy, or simplified until you basically remove them and just have skill rolls to bypass individual obstacles and teaparty the rest. At the moment they're stuck in this no-mans-land of being complex enough to require lots of rolling but simple enough that the way to proceed is always too obvious.

I'm beginning to set my tent up in the camp of those who say do away with "skill challenges" all together. You could still have skills but instead of being a the square puzzle piece you put in the square hole they would just be another tool that players use similar a sword or any other character resource. This would probably require redoing many skills etc but would maybe a better way to go.

[MartinHarper]

Story Challenge

Aim: reward plausible creativity, without making the DM say "no" to dumb creativity. Separate story failure from mechanical failure.

Procedure: DM describes situation. Each player rolls a d20. Each player uses their d20 as a modifier to a skill/stat check of their choice. They then use this check to describe how they help solve the problem, or how they make the problem worse. The final player uses their check to describe how the problem is finally overcome, or isn't. The DM then awards a portion of the available xp based on how believable the overall story is.

Example:
DM: You need to sneak into the zombie-infested city. Story Challenge!
Players: *groan and roll dice*
Barbarian: well, I got a 1. So... Wisdom check of 2: I go up to the gates and start killing zombies until their are none left.
Cleric: I got a 15. Diplomacy check of 22: When Barb announces her plan, I manage to convince her that we should see what the Rogue thinks before charging in.
Rogue: I got a 12, but I won't use it yet. My plan is that we all dress up like zombies to get past the guards.
Ranger: I got a 4, so I'll use a 6 in History to remember that there's a cemetery on the North side of the city.
DM: With a 6? Must be a famous cemetery.
Rogue: It sure is. So we all go round there, and then I'll use my 12+8=20 in Bluff to make us all awesome disguises and kick-ass zombie impressions. We walk right up to the necromancer's HQ without anyone being suspicious.
Players: brains! brains!
DM: Yes, that all happens. The ranger's part was a bit ropey, so I'll only give you 200xp for that story challenge.
Players: *whine at the Ranger and/or the DM*

[Josh_Kablack]

So to further elaborate.

Splork the burble of net ball girls plus fifty albomarginatus climate hanger.

Well I certainly can't argue with that.

[RandomCasualty2]

Story Challenge

Aim: reward plausible creativity, without making the DM say "no" to dumb creativity. Separate story failure from mechanical failure.

Separate story failure from mechanical failure? Wait... what?

The whole point of rolling is to see if you succeeded or failed in the story. If you separate the two, then rolling is pretty much pointless.

[MartinHarper]

The whole point of rolling is to see if you succeeded or failed in the story. If you separate the two, then rolling is pretty much pointless.

I meant separate story failure (whether you succeed or fail in the story) from failure at the challenge (in this implementation, whether you spun a good ad-hoc story or not) and hence from character rewards.

[RandomCasualty2]

I meant separate story failure (whether you succeed or fail in the story) from failure at the challenge (in this implementation, whether you spun a good ad-hoc story or not) and hence from character rewards.

Your version just honestly sounded like you couldn't fail, and then you get XP for making up some random justification for your checks. Honestly if you're going to do things that way. I'd call it something else (definitely remove the word "challenge", because this isn't challenging at all), and just call it "montage mode" or something, where you make up some kind of bullshit to skip ahead in time through parts you don't want to actually play out.

Also, you probably shouldn't hand out XP for that.

[Korwin]

In the new SW Saga book 'Galaxy of Intrigue' there is a Skill challenge system.
I hope its something new under the old name... yeah its a dim hope...

[Edit:]
Autors: Rodney Thompson, Eric Cagle, Gary Astleford

[Username17]

In the new SW Saga book 'Galaxy of Intrigue' there is a Skill challenge system.
I hope its something new under the old name... yeah its a dim hope...

[Edit:]
Autors: Rodney Thompson, Eric Cagle, Gary Astleford

Superficially, it appears that they have done another set of minor overhauls to the Skill Challenge system, essentially making this the, what? Fifth official patch to the Skill Challenge rules? I'm not holding my breath, the basic terminology seems about the same in the previews.

But just to keep track:

• The Original Skill Challenge Rules. The PCs could not possibly win a challenge, so aside from all the obvious math fail, this never should have gotten out of even a one-through playtesting.
• The now infamous "Give everyone +8 to all tests" patch. Players were now essentially incapable of failing, and the more complex challenges that were worth more XP were proportionately easier.
• The Phased Challenge Rules. Which are exactly like the normal challenge rules, except that you go through them in three stages where each stage one player picks a skill and everyone else aids it - and it may or may not be a different character or a different skill each time. Extra confusing, but basically had no effect at all on any of the core problems of the system.
• The DMG Errata. Vast reduction in DCs, players could skate through any challenge as long as they remembered to have one PC use their good skill over and over again, and while higher complexity challenges were "harder" it was pretty much only in the sense that if you roll more dice it is slightly more likely for three d20s to come up 1s.
• The DMG 2 Branching Challenges. Just like the phased challenge rules, and therefore ultimately meaningless to the core system problems. But now instead of writing just three challenges to cover one challenge, you now write seven or even more. Huge increase in DM workload for what is apparently no payoff at all.
• The SAGA version, whatever it is.

And that's not even including the unofficial patches like Mearls' rants about Skill Challenge Hit Points (never fully implemented), non-participation penalties, Action mandates, or Obsidian. And this turd is nineteen months old. That's a lot of turd polishing to deploy in such a short time.

This tells me two things:

• They are developing the Skill Challenge rules using the Monkeys with Typewriters model.
• The demand for a functional set of rules to do "roleplaying stuff" is actually very high.

-Username17

[Archmage]

The demand for a functional set of rules to do "roleplaying stuff" is actually very high.

This makes me wonder what kind of design goals the 4e designers are setting for the skill challenge system. I can't for the life of me figure them out.

It seems like the idea is to make skills more valuable in a concrete way, making them comparable to combat prowess--in an ideal skill challenge world, Skill Focus would be worth as much as Expertise. A series of skill tests should ultimately be the same as a series of attack rolls.

They want to require "everyone to participate" as opposed to just letting you help a more skilled character, though, which means everyone has to dedicate character resources to being good at skill challenges. Which means that you really do have to split yourself between both--you can't actually be a "skill-focused" character versus a "combat-focused" character.

[Josh_Kablack]

They are developing the Skill Challenge rules using the Monkeys with Typewriters model.

But Frank, the infinite monkey theorem has been debunked

[IGTN]

They are developing the Skill Challenge rules using the Monkeys with Typewriters model.

But Frank, the infinite monkey theorem has been debunked

Are you saying that just because something has been debunked, WotC can't rely on it?

[shadzar]

The demand for a functional set of rules to do "roleplaying stuff" is actually very high.

This makes me wonder what kind of design goals the 4e designers are setting for the skill challenge system. I can't for the life of me figure them out.

The design goals, were to have a system of rules, so that everyone could play all parts of the game. Those who may basically inept at certain things would not feel left out when they come up.

Someone said, the system was made for allowing you to give an idea of what you are trying to do, and then you can just roll dice, without having to be a diplomat and rely on your own abilities to sway the DM or other players to whatever you were doing.

You didn't have to be smart enough to figure out the puzzle key in order to pass it, so long as your character can do it somehow that need not be explained the actual puzzle.

That way you don't have to fumble through the things, and you can quicken the game by having a ready ruleset there to bypass roleplaying at the player level, and let it be handled at the character level.

10 year old Timmy, can play his expert diplomat bard, without even knowing what it takes to persuade a leader of a country to see things his way and it works in the game without Timmy having to throw a tantrum because he cannot figure out how to express what he is trying to say or do in the situation because of his lack of personal experience.

That is basically the design goal of skill challenges.