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Difference in Exploration & Skill Challenges
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8377757" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>I'm not sure I agree with your distinction, or that it's terribly significant. To me, both are player challenges. The first involves solving the problem with your character's abilities and the resolution mechanics. The second is solving the problem with your abilities and no formal resolution mechanics. As such, I'm not sure this is an actual difference in pillars of play, because I'm not sure the second even sits inside the rules of the game and isn't actually a different game being tacked on in an ad hoc manner. Now, let me be absolutely clear I'm not disparaging this, I think it's fine to do this, but I think it does bring up questions on the meta level of which game you're playing where. The meta is how these two different games compliment or provide inputs into each other.</p><p></p><p>In other words, I think you have the start of an interesting point here, but I think it's not about pillars of play in 5e, but about how we can switch between different games inside the same concept place. Like how you could play a Star Trek game, but switch to Starfleet Battles for ship-to-ship combat. Some games build this shift into their rules, having entirely different resolution systems for different parts of the game. I think it's worthwhile to note that when this happens you aren't playing the same game, but rather related games that have inputs into each other. And I think this is important because, outside of those interfaces, what happens in each is a black box to the other parts -- what happens in the puzzle solving part has no bearing at all on how the skill challenge operates, for instance. It can only ever affect it via the input into starting fiction, and, usually, these shifts don't directly interface, but instead go to an intermediary point where one is solved to get to the place the next begins. The middle point is fixed (often). I've started considering this for other games recently, so this is serendipitous. My thinking started with something Ron Edwards said in a podcast last month about Blades in the Dark that I violently disagreed with, but kicked off a chain of thought where I tried to consider his point of view and reconcile it (I still disagree) but it pointed out that Blades has completely separate pieces that really only have interfaces between them. These are well interfaced, but, honestly, you could use an entirely different downtime resolution system and it wouldn't impact how the other pieces work except at the input interfaces, which you can easily modify.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps it's the system engineer in me, but I see these as completely separate processes that have handoff inputs -- there's no feedback, just forward -- and then, perhaps, iterate as needed. As such, you can change the process so long as you keep the interface. For instance, if you replaced the puzzle parts with another skill challenge, this doesn't perturb the rest of the game at all. The outputs are the same -- you solve or do not solve the puzzle, it takes X time, Y resources are spent. These change, sure, but they change per iteration (ie, a different table doing the same adventure will have different values, it's not dependent on the challenge, per se, but the resolutions), and the next part just takes that and moves forward.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8377757, member: 16814"] I'm not sure I agree with your distinction, or that it's terribly significant. To me, both are player challenges. The first involves solving the problem with your character's abilities and the resolution mechanics. The second is solving the problem with your abilities and no formal resolution mechanics. As such, I'm not sure this is an actual difference in pillars of play, because I'm not sure the second even sits inside the rules of the game and isn't actually a different game being tacked on in an ad hoc manner. Now, let me be absolutely clear I'm not disparaging this, I think it's fine to do this, but I think it does bring up questions on the meta level of which game you're playing where. The meta is how these two different games compliment or provide inputs into each other. In other words, I think you have the start of an interesting point here, but I think it's not about pillars of play in 5e, but about how we can switch between different games inside the same concept place. Like how you could play a Star Trek game, but switch to Starfleet Battles for ship-to-ship combat. Some games build this shift into their rules, having entirely different resolution systems for different parts of the game. I think it's worthwhile to note that when this happens you aren't playing the same game, but rather related games that have inputs into each other. And I think this is important because, outside of those interfaces, what happens in each is a black box to the other parts -- what happens in the puzzle solving part has no bearing at all on how the skill challenge operates, for instance. It can only ever affect it via the input into starting fiction, and, usually, these shifts don't directly interface, but instead go to an intermediary point where one is solved to get to the place the next begins. The middle point is fixed (often). I've started considering this for other games recently, so this is serendipitous. My thinking started with something Ron Edwards said in a podcast last month about Blades in the Dark that I violently disagreed with, but kicked off a chain of thought where I tried to consider his point of view and reconcile it (I still disagree) but it pointed out that Blades has completely separate pieces that really only have interfaces between them. These are well interfaced, but, honestly, you could use an entirely different downtime resolution system and it wouldn't impact how the other pieces work except at the input interfaces, which you can easily modify. Perhaps it's the system engineer in me, but I see these as completely separate processes that have handoff inputs -- there's no feedback, just forward -- and then, perhaps, iterate as needed. As such, you can change the process so long as you keep the interface. For instance, if you replaced the puzzle parts with another skill challenge, this doesn't perturb the rest of the game at all. The outputs are the same -- you solve or do not solve the puzzle, it takes X time, Y resources are spent. These change, sure, but they change per iteration (ie, a different table doing the same adventure will have different values, it's not dependent on the challenge, per se, but the resolutions), and the next part just takes that and moves forward. [/QUOTE]
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