Quote from: Seanchai;388500My point is that the rules for Skill Challenges are pretty damn flexible. There's nothing about what Pseudoephedrine described that can't, using the RAW, be a Skill Challenge if that's how the DM set up the Skill Challenge.

Seanchai

Mearls has also gone on record that he runs them completely stealth, occasionally asking for a check but never telling the player what it's for, so by the end of a scene he has an overall tally.

Quote from: CRKruegerKind vs. Degree. You can be the big roleplayer of your Chess club because you name all the pieces and use voices when you move, that doesn't mean you're immersing deeply in roleplaying a character.

You mean like how Arneson used to do with lots of games before he applied the concept to Chainmail?

From what I've read of early documents (and talking with people who actually were part of Gygax' group or lived near them) "roleplaying" wasn't the first (or only) choice for what to call these games.  I feel like a lot of people (esp during the story/character/plot movements coming from AD&D 2e campaigns and White-Wolf) retroactively applied the actual definition of roleplaying onto the hodgepodges these games existed as back then.

Also, how does the old-school concept of "challenge the player, not the character" apply, then, if the goal is total immersion in a character?  The statement seems rather direct to me -- you're not asking someone to make a best guess as to what their character would be capable of, but asking the player very directly to solve a problem presented in the game.  If someone deliberately did something stupid because "it's what my character would do, he has a 6 intelligence", especially in a dungeon-environment, that's not going to gel well with the assumed play style.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388478I'm glad I'm not the only person who had that feeling reading Pseudoephedrine's rambling story. Skill challenges don't work that way, but the choice he was describing - the choice to just keep running (making another Endurance test) or try to pull out something crazy - was very much an in-character choice. The character knew he was sneaky (had a high Stealth) and also knew he couldn't keep running forever (had a low Endurance). No inputs into that decision were outside the character's experience, nor were they outside the logical expectations of the world.

But yeah... skill challenges aren't opposed rolls, nor do individual characters fail them on their own. The team successes / failures obviously weren't being tracked, and the entire situation doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to any skill challenge rules that were ever actually printed.

-Frank

What Frank said. A skill challenge pools successes across multiple characters, so using Skill Challenge Rules As Written the whole group adds their Endurance checks together to see how far they run (Group Hug everybody!).
You can duplicate this in 3.5 by getting 6 monks to Grapple each other, and then have each move the entire Grapple on their turn...but attempting this as an actual tactic in 3.5 is something that should provoke righteous DM spanking, rather than being the actual default rules.

Quote from: Seanchai;388500My point is that the rules for Skill Challenges are pretty damn flexible. There's nothing about what Pseudoephedrine described that can't, using the RAW, be a Skill Challenge if that's how the DM set up the Skill Challenge.

For example, on page 85 of the DMG 2, there's a section for group check.

Seanchai

And frankly, what Pseudoephedrine describes is a perfectly associative mechanic.
As well as being a damn good bit of gaming drama.

Quote from: Just Another User;388469Two things, one, skill challenges don't works that way, (unless Mike Mearls put out yet another variant) but that is not really important here.

:rolleyes:

Skill challenges work any damn way the group pleases. This particular one wasn't even much of a departure from the framework as laid out in the DMG.

I notice that the only people here insisting that skill challenges must work a particular way, or else I'm not doing it right are people who don't play 4e.

QuoteSecond. this is not an example of dissociative mechanic, actually that is a good example of an associative mechanic, you roll endurance checks to see if you keep running, if you fail you get tired and start losing ground, if you succeed you gain ground, there is an almost perfect correspondence between the mechanics and what actually happen in the game world, hence associative mechanic, hence immersion. Q.E.D.

Yes, I agree it's a mechanic that assists immersion. That's why my story is prefaced with a short statement that it demonstrates the use of what is widely being bandied about as a "disassociative" mechanic to enhance immersion. It was, should you read the post carefully, part of a discussion about whether certain mechanics are inherently "disassociative" or not.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388478I'm glad I'm not the only person who had that feeling reading Pseudoephedrine's rambling story. Skill challenges don't work that way,

:rolleyes:

QuoteBut yeah... skill challenges aren't opposed rolls, nor do individual characters fail them on their own. The team successes / failures obviously weren't being tracked, and the entire situation doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to any skill challenge rules that were ever actually printed.

:rolleyes:

These sorts of silly comments don't even deserve rebuttal.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388479Actually, I love the session-story, and those particular skill mechanics are not dissociative, since they don't include any metagaming.  It sounds like an epic rundown/escape....the part I'm talking about is not subjective, since there is an absolute, black-and-white litmus test.
The skill checks in question are not requiring metagaming/out-of-character thinking and they are not reducing in-game logic.  So they are not dissociative.

I love the whole hectiv chase thing, well designed.  And the way you tried to find other answers...

It's because of experiences like this that I'm not convinced that mechanics have any sort of inherent "disassociative" or "immersive" features. We take skill challenges and fiddle with them all the time, as we do with combat, and the other mechanical features of the game. Nor is this unique to 4e - we do the same sort of thing with pretty much any and every system we play. What that fiddling does is help us to immerse.

But the same mechanics, in another group, would only serve to deprive them of their immersion. Try asking anyone who's played D&D 3.x extensively how they handle the "holding a knife at a non-helpless hostage's throat" situation, and you'll find that different groups have widely varying ways of handling it.

Quote from: Peregrin;388501From what I've read of early documents (and talking with people who actually were part of Gygax' group or lived near them) "roleplaying" wasn't the first (or only) choice for what to call these games.  I feel like a lot of people (esp during the story/character/plot movements coming from AD&D 2e campaigns and White-Wolf) retroactively applied the actual definition of roleplaying onto the hodgepodges these games existed as back then.

You are conflating 'role playing' with 'amateur thespian hour'.  As an accountant by day, charging into a group of heavily armed thugs intent on killing you would be the last thing on your mind.  Dorgan the Fighter, however, would not think twice about yelling a battle cry and engaging the unruly mob.  Role playing.  Or maybe Dorgan is a bit more retrospect, and circles them while the main party distracts them.  Also roleplaying.

QuoteAlso, how does the old-school concept of "challenge the player, not the character" apply, then, if the goal is total immersion in a character?  The statement seems rather direct to me -- you're not asking someone to make a best guess as to what their character would be capable of, but asking the player very directly to solve a problem presented in the game.

In a manner consistent with the character.  An engineer would have clear ideas how to disable just about any device the DM can concoct.  However, playing as the woodland bound Druid, they would limit their input to forestry or related subjects.  Roleplaying.

QuoteIf someone deliberately did something stupid because "it's what my character would do, he has a 6 intelligence", especially in a dungeon-environment, that's not going to gel well with the assumed play style.

If it was consistently harmful to the point of disrupting the game, you would be correct.  On the other hand, while difficult, making less than smart decisions would be exactly what would be expected from such a player.  Roleplaying.  It doesn't always involve winning or even getting the best possible outcome.  Sometimes, it means things don't go as well as planned.

from what Pseudoephedrine writes it does seem like the chase scene was more like a pre-skill-challenge use of skils, in this case very similar to the chase system used in say James Bond 007, that to the new skill challenge system as written.
Effectively here each PC was asked to make a skill check to increase range and the umber hulks make one to decrease range and if range got beyond '8' they escaped. To say that this was an implementation of the skill
-challenge system RAW does seem to be stretching it as has been said in skill-challenges the focus on the whole group pooling sucesses and the lack of an opposed role to remove sucesses do seem to be reasonably essentail. Now that is not to say that skill-challenges are inherrently wrong or that this is not a way to make good use of them but I for one have been running chases like this since about '83 so I don't think you can tie it directly to the skill challenge system rather it is a system a lot of folks have used that looks a bit like skill challenges. In exactly the same way I have been using very similar systems for stuff like crafting and the like for as long. You know, okay to make this sword you need to make 3 skill checks for the blade using metalworking then you need to make a lertherworking check for the scabbard, if you get a critical sucess that counts as 2 checks or you can have 'fine' quality. If you get a criitcal failure then the blade is flawed and you need to reforge it..... Now that sounds like an associative use of skill-challenges but its not really its just a bloody obvious way of using skills that has been a part of just about every RPG game since the early 80s.
I think where the skill-challenge causes people to get annoyed is where its used for stuff that was previously roleplayed out, maybe with a roll in the background, such as bribing a guard, or where its used to solve stuff that would previously have been the players thinking round a problem which now becomes a few dice rolls. so the classic 'there are 2 doors, one speaks the thruth one always lies. behind one is a dragon the other is a portal to freedom which one do you open.' if this becomes a skill-challenge where the PCs need to amass 8 sucesses using a range of spuriously linked skills then its a bit shit.
just my opinion of course.

Yeah. Having each player make a series of skill checks against a time limit to personally accomplish some goal (whether it be "escape" or "build a boat" or whatever) is a very reasonable way to do things, and people have been doing that to resolve events for a long time.

That's not what Skill Challenges are though. Skill challenges use, you know, the skill challenge mechanics. If you're just going to make stuff up and end up using functional subsystems that DMs have been using for 30 years in lieu of the actual mechanics in 4e D&D, why use the 4e terminology?

-Frank

Quote from: Seanchai;388438Probably because that's just what's happening. You've got the classics going on here: neologisms/jargon, theories that don't explain what's actually happening and seen at the gaming table, pronouncements about what is and what is not a roleplaying game, et al..

We humans use the same basic pattern over and over to attack that which we dislike, fear, or don't understand.

Your theory seems to run aground on the fact that I have an entire closet full of games featuring dissociated mechanics; have recommended multiple games featuring dissociated mechanics in this very thread; and have even bluntly stated that dissociated mechanics are not innately good or bad.

But, no. You're probably right. I'm a vampire and dissociated mechanics are my sunlight.

(Which must be why I'm sparkling.)

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;388447But whether a rule promotes disassociation or not is highly contextual based on the experience.

I'm not really sure what "promotes disassociation [sic]" is supposed to mean. It doesn't seem to have any meaning in terms of dissociated mechanics.

QuoteHere's an example from a 4e game I was in where what you might think of highly "disassociative mechanics" (...) The skill challenge was that each round, everyone rolled an appropriate skill (Endurance and Athletics, mainly), as did the hulks. We needed to build up 8 successes of difference to have gotten far enough away. Each round, the difficulty of the check went up as we got more tired. If the hulks catch up to the number of successes you have, they catch you and Bad Shit [tm] happens.

Actually, that looks like an associated mechanic to me. It depends on exactly what the "Bad Shit [tm]" would be, but assuming it's just a variant on "the umber hulks catch up and can do nasty shit to me", I'm not seeing anything particularly problematic.

As I mentioned in my playtesting 4th edition essays, written around the same time as the original dissociated mechanics essays, skill challenges work well when they're boiled down to nothing more than complex skill checks:

Quote from: Playtesting 4th EditionWhat it really boils down in the final analysis is that complex skill checks are a useful mechanic. In other words, when you have a specific task defined by a concrete goal and a single method of success -- such as disabling a trap, disarming a bomb, or playing a game of Chess -- that is best modeled as a sequence of discrete actions, the basic formula of X successes before Y failures is a useful way of representing that mechanically. Even the S-curve probability distribution works well for these types of scenarios (it becomes a feature instead of a bug as skill trumps luck in larger and more complex tasks).

You can even get away with generalizing this to some extent: For example, you can use this structure to say that you can disable a magical trap by making Arcana checks, Thievery checks, or by dealing damage to the structure of the trap. By allowing these disparate checks to all feed into a single complex skill check, you facilitate cooperation in a way that's far more dynamic and interesting than just using the Aid Another action.

The example you're citing here doesn't impose any of the innate or emergent dissociated behaviors of the greater skill challenge system. (In fact, as others have noted, that doesn't actually seem to follow any of the many different rules WotC has published for skill challenges.)

Nor did it become a dissociated mechanic once you guys started dickering over sight lines. There are all kinds of things that can break immersion, and I've got no problem putting "dickish DMing" or "needless rules lawyering" on the list.

QuoteWhile it was kind of important to the story at the time, and both are excellent roleplayers (they are in fact the best people at portraying RPG characters I have ever met, which is why I continue to RP with them to this day), it wasn't particularly immersive for me or my buddy Chris, who were just kind of sitting on our hands the entire time.

The length of that sequence actually seems quite irrelevant to the question of immersion: Since you weren't actually roleplaying your character during that scene, maintaining immersion through that sequence would be highly unlikely. (For much the same reason that actors who have immersion-like experiences onstage rarely have those moments continue while they're off-stage. It can be happen, but it's rare.)

Quote from: Peregrin;388501Also, how does the old-school concept of "challenge the player, not the character" apply, then, if the goal is total immersion in a character?  

I haven't seen anyone in this thread suggest that immersion is the ONLY goal a player can have in a roleplaying game. Nor is it the only way to roleplay.

In fact, several of us have been saying exactly the opposite of that.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;388509:rolleyes:

Skill challenges work any damn way the group pleases. This particular one wasn't even much of a departure from the framework as laid out in the DMG.

More power to you. Rule 0 is a great thing.

But it probably shouldn't be terribly surprising that analysis of the RAW isn't going to accurately reflect your self-admitted house rules.

JA: The probability distribution of this 3d6 mechanic in this Hypothetical RPG results in X, Y, and Z.

Pseudophredine: That's not true. We roll 1d20 instead of 3d6 and we don't see that probability distribution.

Well, duh.

To sum up: The example you posted of a "disassociative [sic] mechanic" was not, in fact, a dissociated mechanic. Unsurprisingly, it demonstrated none of the characteristics of a dissociated mechanic (since it wasn't one).

Your continued insistence that this is the sort of mechanic that we're referring to as "disassociative" [sic] despite the fact that everyone else in the thread is saying, "Nope. That's not dissociated." Is ludicrous. You are beating the crap out of a strawman you have concocted out of fancy and thin air.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388536YOU'RE NOT PLAYING IT RIGHT START PLAYING IT RIGHT I READ THE RULES AND YOU'RE NOT PLAYING RIGHT PAGE 42 SAYS SO!!!111

It may surprise you to learn, should a cure for your autism ever be found, that skill challenges are meant to be a framework adapted to specific situations by DM and PCs. They are similar in this respect to pretty much every other rule in almost every other roleplaying game. The skill challenge I described resembles other situations because it is not some radical break from those situations, but merely a flexible codification of possible ways to run those situations mechanically.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;388538I'm not really sure what "promotes disassociation [sic]" is supposed to mean. It doesn't seem to have any meaning in terms of dissociated mechanics.

Yes, it certainly doesn't, because as I've said several times, I don't think there are such things as dissociated mechanics, merely dissociated experiences. "Promoting dissociation" therefore refers to something dissociating one from being immersed in the game, rather than something that a rule can have as an inherent property.

QuoteActually, that looks like an associated mechanic to me. It depends on exactly what the "Bad Shit [tm]" would be, but assuming it's just a variant on "the umber hulks catch up and can do nasty shit to me", I'm not seeing anything particularly problematic.

If you would read either my post or the several following comments I have made on it, you would realise that the intent is to contrast the claim that skill challenges are "dissociative mechanics" (made on this thread by others, and which I believe is false) with the experience of using a skill challenge to promote immersion.

My intent, since I appear to have to not only state it, but restate it and restate it and restate it, is to contrast the claim that a particular kind of mechanic is dissociative with an actual play experience where the use of the mechanic was not because I believe my example shows the claim that the particular kind of mechanic is dissociative is false. The purpose of doing this is demonstrate that immersion and dissociation are not properties of mechanics or rules, but of experiences at the table, of which rules are only a secondary component.

QuoteNor did it become a dissociated mechanic once you guys started dickering over sight lines. There are all kinds of things that can break immersion, and I've got no problem putting "dickish DMing" or "needless rules lawyering" on the list.

That's right. The experience of dissociation does not rely on specific mechanics, but is governed by a variety of other factors, one important one being what is going on interpersonally at the table (an argument or whatever else).

QuoteThe length of that sequence actually seems quite irrelevant to the question of immersion: Since you weren't actually roleplaying your character during that scene, maintaining immersion through that sequence would be highly unlikely. (For much the same reason that actors who have immersion-like experiences onstage rarely have those moments continue while they're off-stage. It can be happen, but it's rare.)

Audiences do have immersive experiences as well as actors. A lot of very good art is designed to create such experiences.

QuoteMore power to you. Rule 0 is a great thing.

But it probably shouldn't be terribly surprising that analysis of the RAW isn't going to accurately reflect your self-admitted house rules.

JA: The probability distribution of this 3d6 mechanic in this Hypothetical RPG results in X, Y, and Z.

Pseudophredine: That's not true. We roll 1d20 instead of 3d6 and we don't see that probability distribution.

Well, duh.

The problem is that you're understanding the skill challenge mechanics as laid out in the DMG as a rigid, inviolable system instead of a framework. The book itself doesn't claim that, nor have the developers claimed that, nor do the actual players of the game claim that. The only people who claim that appear to be people who are not playing 4e.

Frankly, nothing we did was a radical departure from skill challenges as laid out in the book. There was an initiative order, a variety of skills were available (though Endurance was the most important), and everyone participated. We used a relative scale for success rather than a static one, but it's unclear why one alternative radically changes the feel of skill challenges at the table while another does not.

QuoteTo sum up: The example you posted of a "disassociative [sic] mechanic" was not, in fact, a dissociated mechanic. Unsurprisingly, it demonstrated none of the characteristics of a dissociated mechanic (since it wasn't one).

Your continued insistence that this is the sort of mechanic that we're referring to as "disassociative" [sic] despite the fact that everyone else in the thread is saying, "Nope. That's not dissociated." Is ludicrous. You are beating the crap out of a strawman you have concocted out of fancy and thin air.

It would be helpful if you would read my posts rather than simply pretending to.

Quote from: jibbajibba;388529from what Pseudoephedrine writes it does seem like the chase scene was more like a pre-skill-challenge use of skils, in this case very similar to the chase system used in say James Bond 007, that to the new skill challenge system as written.

No, it is that the skill challenge system as written is not a radical departure from these kinds of prior uses.

QuoteEffectively here each PC was asked to make a skill check to increase range and the umber hulks make one to decrease range and if range got beyond '8' they escaped. To say that this was an implementation of the skill
-challenge system RAW does seem to be stretching it as has been said in skill-challenges the focus on the whole group pooling sucesses and the lack of an opposed role to remove sucesses do seem to be reasonably essentail.

Not in the slightest. There are all sorts of skill challenges that violate those "essential" features, both published and otherwise.  

QuoteNow that is not to say that skill-challenges are inherrently wrong or that this is not a way to make good use of them but I for one have been running chases like this since about '83 so I don't think you can tie it directly to the skill challenge system rather it is a system a lot of folks have used that looks a bit like skill challenges.

That's because, once again, there is no radical break between the two. The skill challenge system is a codified framework that you, or at least people who actually play 4e, are encouraged to tinker with and alter as you please.

QuoteIn exactly the same way I have been using very similar systems for stuff like crafting and the like for as long. You know, okay to make this sword you need to make 3 skill checks for the blade using metalworking then you need to make a lertherworking check for the scabbard, if you get a critical sucess that counts as 2 checks or you can have 'fine' quality. If you get a criitcal failure then the blade is flawed and you need to reforge it..... Now that sounds like an associative use of skill-challenges but its not really its just a bloody obvious way of using skills that has been a part of just about every RPG game since the early 80s.

Yes, which is why it is silly to get so angry about skill challenges and to make wild claims about how they prevent people from immersing themselves, etc.

QuoteI think where the skill-challenge causes people to get annoyed is where its used for stuff that was previously roleplayed out, maybe with a roll in the background, such as bribing a guard, or where its used to solve stuff that would previously have been the players thinking round a problem which now becomes a few dice rolls. so the classic 'there are 2 doors, one speaks the thruth one always lies. behind one is a dragon the other is a portal to freedom which one do you open.' if this becomes a skill-challenge where the PCs need to amass 8 sucesses using a range of spuriously linked skills then its a bit shit.
just my opinion of course.

Yes, I agree that would be fucking retarded. But you aren't required to run that as a skill challenge without roleplaying in 4e, anymore than you were required to handle it as a series of rolls without roleplaying in any other edition.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;388539I am a pig fucker who fucks pigs. Because I imprinted on Miss Piggy as a sexual ideal as a child and as I grew up I used actual living pigs as the vessels for my semen. Which is strangely unsatisfying, because I would rather that they were more like Miss Piggy and less like actual pigs. As is, they are pretty much 100% actual pigs.

Seriously dude, don't fake quote people. It's juvenile, it's insulting, and it's a waste of everyone's time. If you argue against someone, argue against what they are actually saying, not bullshit strawmen you create out of their words.

I never told you to stop playing the way you were playing or to adopt a by-the-book approach. What I said was that the system you described is a really old system for chases that far predates the word skill challenges, and does not follow the rules for skill challenges in any book. It doesn't follow the structure, it doesn't produce comparable results, it doesn't have the same action order, nothing.

I'm not telling you to play differently, I'm trying to get you to use words to mean what they actually mean in a discussion that has already been derailed repeatedly by having people Humpty Dumpty the language into unrecognizability. You can play however you want. But if you say you made "an attack roll" I am going to assume you rolled a d20 and applied your to-hit bonus to it and compared the combined result to a target's defenses. And not that you used some other mechanic from some other system such as making a maneuver selection and comparing it with your opponent's maneuver selection to determine whether your blow impacted them or not.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388545Seriously dude, don't fake quote people. It's juvenile, it's insulting, and it's a waste of everyone's time. If you argue against someone, argue against what they are actually saying, not bullshit strawmen you create out of their words.

Frank, you have done this already on this thread at least once. You have very little ground to complain when others do it back to you. You deserve little other than abuse and contempt for your dishonesty.

QuoteI never told you to stop playing the way you were playing or to adopt a by-the-book approach. What I said was that the system you described is a really old system for chases that far predates the word skill challenges, and does not follow the rules for skill challenges in any book. It doesn't follow the structure, it doesn't produce comparable results, it doesn't have the same action order, nothing.

Well since you seem to know, Frank, what action order did we use? I'm real curious, so go ahead and tell us all what my group did to determine the order of actions, based on the information I provided.

It's this kind of sophistic, pretentious, lying bullshit that really annoys me, Frank.

Once again, you don't appear to understand that the skill challenge system is a flexible framework. Everyone I've ever played the game with does, and the designers of the game appear to, so it appears to be you, and a couple of other guys who don't like 4e, who are the ones claiming that any departure from that system "doesn't produce comparable results"  (whatever that vacuous horseshit statement is supposed to mean).

QuoteI'm not telling you to play differently, I'm trying to get you to use words to mean what they actually mean in a discussion that has already been derailed repeatedly by having people Humpty Dumpty the language into unrecognizability. You can play however you want. But if you say you made "an attack roll" I am going to assume you rolled a d20 and applied your to-hit bonus to it and compared the combined result to a target's defenses. And not that you used some other mechanic from some other system such as making a maneuver selection and comparing it with your opponent's maneuver selection to determine whether your blow impacted them or not.

Frank, you really don't understand what you're talking about here.

Simply put, we altered the skill challenge system, as players of 4e are encouraged to do, to fit the specific circumstances we found ourselves in. We did not make some radical departure from the system, either. Your RAWBAW is irrelevant here. There's no confusion of terminology, except by a small group of people, yourself included, who stand to gain rhetorically by claiming that it is not a skill challenge despite having neither reason nor authority to do so.