Comments on: First Panic! Then Figure It Out http://d21-gaming.com/blog/2008/09/12/first-panic-then-figure-it-out/ Five veteran gamers, plus special guests, share their insights, rants, and raves about all things gaming, especially board games and RPGs. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:30:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Smite http://d21-gaming.com/blog/2008/09/12/first-panic-then-figure-it-out/comment-page-1/#comment-51651 Smite Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:53:31 +0000 http://d21-gaming.com/blog/2008/09/12/first-panic-then-figure-it-out/#comment-51651 Well, puzzles are kind of ditched into their own lonely pile in 4E. On the one hand, I think it's the first time they've ever even gotten mentioned in the rules at all, so that's something. On the other hand, when the rest of noncombat is being glossed into something supposedly zippy and fun (skill challenges), puzzles get short shrift. Notably, puzzles don't provide XP the way other encounters do. So I guess the presumption is that the success or failure will "pay off" in some tangible way somewhere down the road. This makes it more like role-played interactions (in a good campaign). You don't get XP for making a good Dipy roll with the guard, you get story advancement. I'm sure some people balk at puzzles because they so easily become choke points if you're stuck. Apparently getting stuck is now Sin Number One a DM can inflict on his party, so you have to provide alternate paths, I guess. Which means that the clever and/or lazy will try to circumvent the puzzle or just take their lumps on the "fail" side, because, the DM's not going to let them get stuck anyway. Consider the archtypical riddling sphinx. Fail the riddle and he kills you. If you're a commoner, that is. If you're a 15th-level bad-ass, you whupp the sphinx, and really don't care about the riddles at all. Hopefully maybe you're just low enough level that avoiding a bloody fight with a sphinx is incentive to try, but any "fail" that is that much of a potential threat, honestly has to be capable of pulling off a TPK, which is the ultimate choke point. Puzzles also go against many players' sense of the "epic". Consider the difference between Lord of the Rings, which we feel is All Grown Up, and The Hobbit, which has a much more childlike fairy-tale quality to it. With Skill Challenges, we can finally attempt to play out the sort of drama that Bilbo pulled with the Trolls by the fire. But putting his riddle contest with Gollum into a game context? Not so much. There's no story is Bilbo fails that one, which means it must have been a cut-scene, and not an actual encounter! Well, puzzles are kind of ditched into their own lonely pile in 4E. On the one hand, I think it’s the first time they’ve ever even gotten mentioned in the rules at all, so that’s something. On the other hand, when the rest of noncombat is being glossed into something supposedly zippy and fun (skill challenges), puzzles get short shrift.

Notably, puzzles don’t provide XP the way other encounters do. So I guess the presumption is that the success or failure will “pay off” in some tangible way somewhere down the road. This makes it more like role-played interactions (in a good campaign). You don’t get XP for making a good Dipy roll with the guard, you get story advancement.

I’m sure some people balk at puzzles because they so easily become choke points if you’re stuck. Apparently getting stuck is now Sin Number One a DM can inflict on his party, so you have to provide alternate paths, I guess. Which means that the clever and/or lazy will try to circumvent the puzzle or just take their lumps on the “fail” side, because, the DM’s not going to let them get stuck anyway.

Consider the archtypical riddling sphinx. Fail the riddle and he kills you. If you’re a commoner, that is. If you’re a 15th-level bad-ass, you whupp the sphinx, and really don’t care about the riddles at all. Hopefully maybe you’re just low enough level that avoiding a bloody fight with a sphinx is incentive to try, but any “fail” that is that much of a potential threat, honestly has to be capable of pulling off a TPK, which is the ultimate choke point.

Puzzles also go against many players’ sense of the “epic”. Consider the difference between Lord of the Rings, which we feel is All Grown Up, and The Hobbit, which has a much more childlike fairy-tale quality to it. With Skill Challenges, we can finally attempt to play out the sort of drama that Bilbo pulled with the Trolls by the fire. But putting his riddle contest with Gollum into a game context? Not so much. There’s no story is Bilbo fails that one, which means it must have been a cut-scene, and not an actual encounter!

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