The Gaming Den

PhoneLobster wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:it is not therefore true that their choices and inputs do not matter.

A search check. You are talking about a search check. For some bonus fluff no less.

A search check simply to notice some fluff the GM thought might be nice is a choice that matters and lets players influence the game?

Do you ever get tired of being such an intellectually dishonest piece of shit? I mean, like ever? You fucking quoted the part I just bolded and you still went off on a half baked rant that was entirely predicated on "choices" being the only thing I was talking about. Fucking hell. This is why I keep you on ignore and only read your posts from time to time. Because you're a lying piece of shit and you aren't good at it.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Do you ever get tired of being such an intellectually dishonest piece of shit? I mean, like ever?

The post I replied to had you opening with an ad hominem argument.

You responded to the mere suggestion that skills much like Knowedge star treck trivia are NOT "choices" on par with all other choices in an RPG with... well... with your typical ad hominem freak out.

Because that's all you really have. Because you are the bastion of intellectual honesty.

You are offering a false dichotomy. It's possible to fail every Knowledge (Star Trek) bullshit check and for the story/game to continue. The characters are still alive - they'll just have to do something differently than they otherwise would.

Let's use an example from a relatively simple game premise. We have a mystery (who killed our friend) and we have a number of ways of trying to find an answer. Some of those possible ways will fail. For example, we could try to track the killer from the body. It'd be possible to fail the Track check either at the beginning (can't find any trace) or after heading through town and crossing a busy boulevard in heavy traffic. Just because one avenue of investigation is closed due to a failed check doesn't mean that other avenues are not still open. Perhaps after attempting to track the murderer they decide to cast speak with dead on the murder victim. Perhaps the perpetrator of the crime will decide they're 'getting too close' and try to have them assassinated (leading to additional clues).

We know that the game will continue until the players decide that they no longer care about the investigation or they resolve it. Interruptions and unexpected setbacks should be part of the game... But sometimes the first avenue does work - if the ranger is really good at tracking and his wolf companion has scent, maybe they succeed and track the murderer back to his hideout 2 minutes into the game. That's also okay... There may be other complications at that point, but the character that invested resources into tracking and succeeded will feel good about their contribution.

If the GM has decided in advance that either the party will succeed (or fail) at a track check regardless of investment and/or ability level it's just a story about what the GM wants to have happen and the player contributions don't matter. Heck, even deciding to TRY tracking is a player decision.

Now, I'm not opposed to a 'success threshold'. If you want to say 'you auto-succeed on any check that taking 10 would allow you to succeed on', you can just reveal tracks and hidden doors that are 'easy' to find and that content isn't TRULY gated - I mean, it could be if the player(s) in question are at a penalty for some other reason, but having certain content automatically available because the PCs invested resources into character abilities isn't a bad thing...like at all.

deaddmwalking wrote:You are offering a false dichotomy. It's possible to fail every Knowledge (Star Trek) bullshit check and for the story/game to continue. The characters are still alive - they'll just have to do something differently than they otherwise would.

Generally, when criticizing something as a false dichotomy you don't prove your point by offering an example which was actually explicitly one half of said false dichotomy.

To outline the "dichotomy" again, either you have (to some degree) "failed star trek trivia check GAME OVER! (or at least bad things/genuinely less/worse content/actual meaningful consequences etc...)" OR you have "star trek trivia checks don't really matter". The second one does not rule out you failing every star trek trivia check ever, because you can because it doesn't matter.

PhoneLobster wrote:To outline the "dichotomy" again, either you have (to some degree) "failed star trek trivia check GAME OVER! (or at least bad things/genuinely less/worse content/actual meaningful consequences etc...)" OR you have "star trek trivia checks don't really matter". The second one does not rule out you failing every star trek trivia check ever, because you can because it doesn't matter.

I see goalpost shifting - if you're going to change your position at least admit that you've done so.

You did not give any qualifiers when presenting the specific dichotomy that DDMW demonstrated to be false. You did not say "Either passing Knowledge (Star Trek Trivia) unlocks a blue option or it doesn't matter", you said "Either failing Knowledge (Star Trek Trivia) is GAME OVER or it doesn't matter".

Here was the original dichotomy:

PhoneLobster wrote:But in the end content gate keeping skills have only two choices.
1) The gate keeping skill is actually functionally worthless window dressing that doesn't really do anything. Eventually the content just happens anyway.
2) Fuck you, you guys failed a star trek trivia check, go home THE GAME IS OVER!

And here you restated it:

PhoneLobster wrote:edit: And search is, compared to many "content gatekeeper" bullshit skills one of the big ones. In the end the argument actually DOES eventually get to the territory "You failed a Knowledge(Star Trek Trivia) check, GAME OVER! Yes/No".

The state "Failing your Knowledge (Star Trek Trivia) roll means you cannot use options that depend on Star Trek trivia" was never on your pair of options.

A successful Star Trek Trivia test will tell the players that the elves they're dealing with are actually Vulcans. This will allow them a shortcut a good chunk of the adventure, and will allow the Rogue to use that phaser he pick-pocketed off of one of them. It will also tell you that Vulcans can Rage like a Barbarian during Pon-Far and that they have touch-range psionic attacks.

PL are you just against skills in general or is your rant about having gated content at all? If it's not one of those two things I really can't make heads or tails about the point you're even trying to make otherwise.

erik wrote:

K wrote:In a game like DnD, combat is literally the only place where making checks make sense because the results of those checks always mean that you get the content (the fight). The skills that interact with setting either work to restrict player action and engagement or are just shams concealing meaningless rolls.

Da fuck?

K, you're being a bit near sighted. There's plenty of instances where a skill check can be helpful, and yet not meaningless for it to either be missed or obviated later. Like mechalich said, skill checks can result in gating where you get access to an alternate option with successes, and can have fun options even with failures.

A search check for a secret entrance can give you the ability to bypass a fight with a gate keeper monster. You still have the ability to fight the monster, but you have an alternate route. That isn't a meaningless check, and players aren't cheated if they fail to find it.

A search check might reveal treasure somewhere, and if you don't find it then, you will stumble upon alternate ways of discovering the treasure later. But it would have been helpful if you'd found it sooner. It isn't meaningless to succeed on the check earlier, and players aren't cheated if they only find it later.

A diplomacy check with the bird king can give you winged mounts to get somewhere and avoid a crappy swamp, or you can trudge through with a bayou guide and fight some giant alligators.

A gather info check may reveal that the guard for the wizard's tower leaves an illusion to sneak off at midnight for a quickie with his succubus girlfriend. Otherwise you need to either fight him or sneak through otyugh infested sewage to come in from below.

It goes on and on and on.

The thing about your post that I found interesting was that it reveals how little you value your content.

Clearly, you didn't spent any time coming up with interesting and fun and memorable things for your swamp if a single check means you get birds to fly over it. The guard and gate-keeper monster were obviously going to be rather boring speedbumps that you spent little time statting out or thinking about if a check or two allows the players to avoid them completely.

In fact, the only content that seems to be worth it is the treasure, and in that case you've already decided the whole skill check system is enough of a failure that the PCs need multiple chances to get the treasure.

Real gating is not about whether a combination of pre-game character design and dumb luck happened to result in a successful roll, but is the result in actual choices made. If the players avoid the swamp because they'd rather explore the mountains, then that's a justified reason to deny them the swamp content or the mountain content.

Denying them either as a result of a roll is just railroading by a different name. Giving them the content regardless of the roll is railroading too.

Now, I could see skill system without rolls where skills choices are binary gates for options, but then you are left with the issue that many of the player choices happened in chargen before the game was even played.

Omegonthesane wrote:I see goalpost shifting

I note that while you quoted a lot of text you didn't quote the text directly after my, original, "dichotomy" that specifically stated there are minor variations of both states but ultimately everything boils down to either good option or bad option.

"GAME OVER!" has always been about simply being the clearest and simplest example of "BAD OUTCOME/CUT CONTENT". If there is no measurable consequence for a failed search check, if there is no player predictable outcome for a successful search check, it doesn't matter. But if you want to make it matter then there must in fact be "bad outcome" for your failed search check.

PL are you just against skills in general or is your rant about having gated content at all? If it's not one of those two things I really can't make heads or tails about the point you're even trying to make otherwise.

I have a lot of things to say about a lot of skills in general. But the specific point I have here is about gated content skills.

They are generally bullshit fairy tea party skills of utterly unpredictable worth. They should not be valued on the same scale as Tumble let alone given the pretense of being of equal "choice" value to any other choice in the game, like, say the ability to shoot lightning bolts.

You can argue about what to do with bullshit minor "skills" of unpredictable bullshit fairy tea party value. You can argue about exactly which skills qualify as such. But certainly some of them do, they should probably still be in your game in some form, but if you pretend they are of equal choice value to avoiding attacks of opportunity or shooting fucking lightning bolts then that is the path to some very bad game design.

So my argument is about appropriate identification, segregation and valuation of the bullshit options. Content gating skills like search and knowledge are among the definitive bullshit options and inappropriate valuation of such skills leads to game design disasters like, infamously, the d20 Star Wars Tech Specialist, the poster child of literally pretending the shittiest skills of d20 are actually choices of equal value to the ability to shoot actual lightning. Or, for that matter, a gun.

K wrote:Denying them either as a result of a roll is just railroading by a different name. Giving them the content regardless of the roll is railroading too.

It sounds like your definition of "railroading" is meaningless here - railroading if players use skills, railroading if players don't use skills...

K wrote: Now, I could see skill system without rolls where skills choices are binary gates for options, but then you are left with the issue that many of the player choices happened in chargen before the game was even played.

So player choice is...bad?

And I think skills without rolls would be called "powers" or "abilities". A skill system fundamentally needs to have players rolling, with a chance of success/failure.

PhoneLobster wrote:ultimately everything boils down to either good option or bad option.

The wharrgarbl is strong in this one.

No, it isn't just good thing or bad thing. There is room for an infinite amount of grey in the middle. I already gave examples of something where players might prefer the outcome of a skill check, and it is still not terrible to fail.

You can pick a lock, or failing that you can bash it down and be noisy. These are both valid options, and some groups will just cut straight to the bashing even with an able rogue available.

K wrote:Clearly

No, not clearly. I can make things entertaining with either route. Each option can have memorable fights, but ones that players might not want to battle if they're saving their resources for a specific foe. Some groups don't care who they fight, others want to focus on their macguffin or nemesis.

K wrote:Denying them either as a result of a roll is just railroading by a different name. Giving them the content regardless of the roll is railroading too.

Gibberish.
How is that any different than saying that combat rolls deny results? Failing in combat is exactly as much railroading as failing a skill check.

Diplomacy can so be a gated content skill. If you make your pitch to the elves about how a. Alliance against the BBEG is in everyone's best interest, you might succeed or you might fail. If you succeed you gain an ally, you fight 5he BBEG and the story continues. If you fail, you have to find another way to defeat the BBEG.

Now, maybe you could have done that, too, but I don't see either as a bad outcome and I definitely don't see either as 'game over'. The game continues with a new set of options because of the success or failure.

When you kill an enemy, you also change the game state. You can't question a dead enemy (caveat - usually) so if you choose to kill your opponents before questioning them, you are choosing to gate content ź you're not going to get that particular info dump.

It's a good thing that choices lead to different choices and you can't ways go back. In a computer game you get to play each quest from all sides, playing it over and over to find all the branching pathways. In a TTRPG, you make decisions and they affect how things turn out and you don't get to find out what would have happened if...

PL is anyone else having that valuation conversation with you? The conversation I'm reading is about whether or not 'gated content' should exist and whether or not skills should determine it. K just lost me with his last "Damned if you do Damned if you don't" point and I don't see anyone else arguing with you about the value of skills compared to other skills.

K wrote:Now, I could see skill system without rolls where skills choices are binary gates for options, but then you are left with the issue that many of the player choices happened in chargen before the game was even played.

I've been thinking about this, in conjunction with the Fallout discussion earlier.

Why couldn't you set up the skill system such that it was no longer "add your ranks to a d20 roll against set DCs," and instead make it "if you have X ranks in Y skill, you can just do Z."

So instead of, say, search giving you bonuses to a roll to find secret doors, why can't you just say, "if you have at least 5 ranks in search, you automatically find secret doors if you spend 5 minutes looking for them."

It takes on the binary gating aspect without it being solely relegated to char gen.

Is there something shitty about that idea that I'm missing?

GnomeWorks wrote:

K wrote:Now, I could see skill system without rolls where skills choices are binary gates for options, but then you are left with the issue that many of the player choices happened in chargen before the game was even played.

I've been thinking about this, in conjunction with the Fallout discussion earlier.

Why couldn't you set up the skill system such that it was no longer "add your ranks to a d20 roll against set DCs," and instead make it "if you have X ranks in Y skill, you can just do Z."

So instead of, say, search giving you bonuses to a roll to find secret doors, why can't you just say, "if you have at least 5 ranks in search, you automatically find secret doors if you spend 5 minutes looking for them."

It takes on the binary gating aspect without it being solely relegated to char gen.

Is there something shitty about that idea that I'm missing?

No, but if you go back and look at TGD past, you can find tons of people saying that is literally impossible and would destroy the game because you would know whether or not you could jump over a random death drop every time, and therefore you could never have tension again.

erik wrote:

K wrote:Clearly

No, not clearly. I can make things entertaining with either route. Each option can have memorable fights, but ones that players might not want to battle if they're saving their resources for a specific foe. Some groups don't care who they fight, others want to focus on their macguffin or nemesis.

If you are OK with players skipping part of your adventure on a die roll, it's clear that you didn't spend a lot of time on it and it wasn't good enough that they needed to see it. It's almost certainly pretty shit because you put almost no thought into it and just improvised something.
(I mean, your first idea for swamp is "giant alligators." That does not inspire confidence.)

There is a place for shit content. Lots of players really don't give a fuck what they fight or if the game delivers a novel experience, but that doesn't mean that a well-designed game should deliver shit to people when there is no advantage to doing that.

I'm asking you to imagine a game where you didn't settle for improvised shit. You came up with a good idea and you wanted there to be a good chance that players saw it. Heck, you might even be a little put out if they chose to go a different direction and miss it even though you'd accept it because without player agency there is no fun.

In that game, you would not allow DnD-style skill checks.

K wrote:Denying them either as a result of a roll is just railroading by a different name. Giving them the content regardless of the roll is railroading too.

Gibberish.
How is that any different than saying that combat rolls deny results? Failing in combat is exactly as much railroading as failing a skill check.

Combat is a series of choices AND the results of checks average out and are rendered meaningless over time. Skills are binary and failure locks away content.

That being said, skills also need to have a high chance of failure to feel relevant, where combat almost always results in player success. In a very real way, DnD combat is designed for the rolls to not matter because the overall odds are so stacked in the player's favor even when the individual rolls have a high chance to failure.

MGuy wrote:PL is anyone else having that valuation conversation with you? The conversation I'm reading is about whether or not 'gated content' should exist and whether or not skills should determine it. K just lost me with his last "Damned if you do Damned if you don't" point and I don't see anyone else arguing with you about the value of skills compared to other skills.

You are damned if you use skills to lock out content, and damned if you use skills to just pretend to lock out content but secretly toss it in anyone.

Both options are bad for different reasons. I explained above.

MGuy wrote:PL is anyone else having that valuation conversation with you?

People seem very specifically to be disagreeing with specific things I've said. And in some cases everything I've said. And, as part of the appropriate valuation thing I'm certainly in disagreement with things other people have said like how they think the "choice" to succeed/fail at a search check is equivalent to ANY choice in an RPG... so... yes?

I don't think anyone has necessarily specifically disagreed with the conclusion that appropriate valuation (of largely valueless skills) is the solution, but since I think they've basically disagreed with every single point leading to that conclusion... yes the conversation to some extent is happening. The valuation bit is just either less interesting or just going right over the heads of posters who actually think content gate keeping skills can either have genuine consequences that aren't bad, or no consequences without somehow also becoming definitively inconsequential.

erik wrote:Gibberish.
How is that any different than saying that combat rolls deny results? Failing in combat is exactly as much railroading as failing a skill check.

Let's approach this one really simply by altering a combat failure scenario until this is true.

GM: Bob, I suddenly require you to make a swording check for your character.
Bob: I rolled real high and got a total of 26.
GM: Sorry Bob. Turns out the DC was maybe 27 all along totally.
Bob: Damn it.
GM: Your character now has to go home for the rest of the adventure.

There's at least one difference between that and how combat actually works. See if you can spot those differences.

Do you allow gated content through branching choices? If you absolutely avoid gated content, and so the players get every bit of content you create, how is it not railroading?

virgil wrote:Do you allow gated content through branching choices? If you absolutely avoid gated content, and so the players get every bit of content you create, how is it not railroading?

This is a good question someone should answer.

The answer is relatively easy though.

You let actual player choice branch your content access. If the players directly say "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot it is a silly place" that is all well and good.

If everyone maybe actually wanted to go to Camelot, but it requires a successful roll/coin flip, and the roll/coin flip fails, and no one gets to go... that is bad.

If everyone wanted to go, but it requires at least 20 search skill to even have a chance of finding it and no one happens to have a search higher than 19... that is bad.

If NO ONE wants anyone to go to Camelot, even the GM, but finding the road that bypasses it requires a search check the group fails, or that the group cannot succeed in... that is bad.

It is especially bad when the group wants to go to Camelot (but fails to) AND there is a lot of prepared Camelot material, OR when the group wants to AVOID Camelot (but fails to) AND the prepared content was something else and not Camelot.

What about the content that's more granular than Camelot? At what point can the content be gated by dice?

virgil wrote:What about the content that's more granular than Camelot? At what point can the content be gated by dice?

It's a Goldilocks argument where Camelot is clearly too big, and some content is minor fluff that is actually also too small to "gate".

Generally "content" would need to be "just right". Variation in challenge or rewards generated by failed or successful character actions needs to remain within level appropriate guidelines for challenges or rewards, that isn't a large margin.

Prepared content is unfortunate to waste without some pretty good excuses and "players that would have preferred to interact with that content but rolled poorly on a content gating check" is not a good enough excuse. But your good excuse requirements probably start somewhere vague and unclear around about the level of major set piece fights and larger individual NPC write ups. You know stuff which takes time to prepare, but which has the biggest resulting pay off in improved game play.

Some of those things might be re purposed (though that ultimately renders them, you know, not actually gated out at all), but it might be better if "gating" events instead of outright skipping such things simply altered the way characters interacted with them, within level appropriate challenge and reward limitations, they get a (level appropriate) advantage/disadvantage or alternative approach to a set piece combat, that sort of thing.

If your system has a skill in it that functions in such a way that players can just randomly fail to find the exciting boss fight your skill probably isn't working right. If your system has a skill in it that could result in players randomly stumbling into, carefully walking into, or sneakily ambushing the exciting boss fight. That is probably fine. Only one of those two examples involves an actual content gating mechanic. And it's not the OK example.

virgil wrote:What about the content that's more granular than Camelot? At what point can the content be gated by dice?

This would vary between group to group and GM to GM. GM's who are willing to either 1. prepare more content overall or 2. are good at simply winging it and creating new content on the fly can allow the dice to determine a higher level of outcomes than those who have limited prep abilities or really need to work out of a can.

It's also going to vary by system. In 3.X D&D generating decent combat encounters on the fly is hard, and becomes progressively harder the lower the system mastery of the GM (and to some extent the players) are. CRs in the book can't be trusted, a huge number of monsters are highly dependent on specialized combos, and spells and spell-like abilities have values of immense variance. Throwing together an encounter in oWoD or something like FATE is much easier and pretty much just demands setting a handful of numbers.

I did something I really didn't want to do. I read through all of PhoneLobster's posts again on the subject. I'm pretty sure it boils down to he and I disagree on what counts as 'gated content'.

I'm going to use his Camelot example. For the rest of this example Camelot is a floating cloud castle populated by chivalrous giants who go on quests.

If the party wants to go to Camelot, there are lots of valid reasons why they cannot. It is entirely appropriate for Camelot to be 'locked content' that they can't access easily or immediately. If the party is 3rd level, lacking access to flight makes Camelot generally inaccessible. But just as 'open locks' can make some content areas accessible, there are other skills that can 'unlock' Camelot. Having Wild Empathy means you can, through the use of a skill check, convince a Hippogriff herd to carry you to the castle. That successful skill 'unlocks' additional content.

If the content doesn't go away, the party would be able to access it later (say, when they are high enough level to fly reliably). Accessing the content early is a good use of a skill. The party gets a benefit from having invested in a particular skill in that they're able to access content that they otherwise might not be able to. If the party chooses not to invest in that skill, they will not be able to access the content early - at least in that manner. There may be other ways to access that content, but until they find such a way, that content is locked.

Now, I will agree that there are adventures that have important content that is accessible in only a single way, and failing to access it is usually a bad thing. That's the result of bad implementation, not necessarily an indication that gating is bad.

In nearly every conceivable scenario there are options that are on the table and options that are no longer available because of the PCs choices up to that point. A bunch of 'lawful-goody-two-shoes' probably aren't going to be able to pretend they're willing to switch sides to gain an advantage - but a 'morally-ambiguous' group might have that available as a potential gambit. Locking out the 'pretend to be bad guys' content doesn't cause the game to end. It means that the players have to select from a different menu of options.

Other skill checks should (and other content unlocking abilities) should work in generally the same way. Choosing a particular option should never lead to 'game over', which is a ridiculous shorthand for 'any bad thing, ever' or, to quote you exactly:

PhoneLobster wrote: "GAME OVER!" has always been about simply being the clearest and simplest example of "BAD OUTCOME/CUT CONTENT".

Trying something and it not working is usually 'worse' than trying something and it succeeding, but both can make the game more interesting. Always succeeding on the first try is not terribly interesting. If your 'shortcut' or 'knot cutting' ability doesn't succeed, then you get to do things the more difficult way. And just because the 'more difficult way' can be fun, doesn't mean that you want to use it all the time. It's good when sometimes players succeed and either get content they normally wouldn't or early access to content.

If I allow a skill check for the PCs to gain flying mounts I'm indicating that I'm open to them accessing content that wouldn't normally be available. There's still lots of ways I can make this bad. If the DC is always 1 higher than they rolled, then I'm not actually allowing content to be opened and I'm a bad person.

But gated content is not a bad thing. It is almost certainly a good thing. Your point that SOME CONTENT is locked UNNECESSARILY and makes the game LESS FUN is valid, but you've approached it in the most hyperbolic and ridiculous manner that your intended point was lost.