Big Skills

[deaddmwalking]

The love letter example is not mine, so I don't know why you'd want to gate that content, but I can certainly think of reasons. If the letter offers insight in how to defeat one or both of the antagonists, you might not want to make it a 'gimme' but still give a non - zero chance that the party find it - especially if they're trying to 'shortcut' the encounter. Maybe it leads to a curbstomp which you wouldn't necessarily want for every encounter, but those can be rewarding sometimes. In the event that the gated content offers neither advantage nor additional narrative options, there's probably no reason to gate it - but if it does, it probably should.

[hogarth]

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.

Not necessarily. Different players can find different things interesting. For instance, player A might get his rocks off having an in-character conversation with an NPC to try to get a piece of information while player B might prefer to skip that bit and flip a coin instead. So there isn't a consensus answer to the question "Is taking a shortcut fun?"

(We discussed some of this in an earlier thread)

[K]

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.

Or you know, maybe you did. Maybe the swamp was going to be totally fucking epic and the players still decided not to go to the swamp. Maybe they flew over it, or went to the mountains, or fucking whatever. Because a cooperative storytelling game has more than one person presenting inputs. The flip side is that one of the players could really want to run around in the swamp for whatever reason, and the other players or the MC could veto it. Because again, it's a cooperative storytelling game and no one idea necessarily dictates the direction of the story no matter how cool the idea seems to the person who has it.

-Username17

And gating content through player choice is fine, but doing it on a dice-roll is not.

Now, I know you want to pretend that I'm all against player choice because that's a straw-man you can "win," but the actual argument here that is that skill checks are a terrible method of gating content because either you:

1. Aren't actually gating content, either because you give them the content later in some other form, or the player's skill was so high they never were going to fail and the whole check was just a waste of everyone's time,

OR

2. You do actually gate content on a random roll, punishing for the DM and players in order to justify bad and lazy design for skills. Players lose content randomly and DMs lose prep time on that content and adventures are just somewhat worse for no good reason.

Fundamentally, how can you argue that skill checks are NOT opposed to player choice? If I want to Search the undead's lair, I've clearly stated my desire to find stuff there like the love letters that explain the backstory. The game in not improved by just saying "hey, I know you want this fluff, but fuck you because we worship dice here... suck on my pretty dice..."

Explain to me why not getting the undead love letters makes for a better game. Tell me exactly how people are going to be jazzed when they see the d20 come up a 1 and say, "gosh, this is a great game and I'm so glad that we just missed whatever the DM prepared for that roll, if anything at all because we aren't even aware if there was something to find here."

And do your best to not fall back on some abstract about how people need to fail sometimes, or some abstract argument about gating, or some new abstract argument that doesn't handle the love letters example here. The Nirvana fallacy does little to address why the party should be denied the letters.

[Username17]

And gating content through player choice is fine, but doing it on a dice-roll is not.

Now, I know you want to pretend that I'm all against player choice because that's a straw-man you can "win,"

No. The point is that choices made during the game, resources spent during character creation, and good and bad rolls made by the player are all player input. They all influence the course or potential course of the story because it's a cooperative storytelling game.

If you accept that player choice can influence story path, you also have to accept that player die rolls can influence story path. The only alternative is to play Amber Diceless, and that's actually more disempowering rather than less.

Fundamentally, how can you argue that skill checks are NOT opposed to player choice?

Because you're still going to want your character to try to do things that are in the penumbra of things that they may or may not be able to do. And the only ways to handle that are to either roll a fucking die or to have a big argument with the MC where they either let you do it or shoot you down. So long as dice are rolled and bonuses are added, there is a semblance of fairness, your character may succeed at things you try to do, and you can make meaningful and informed choices. If the MC simply decides what happens with no roll, then we're back to bears and the only skill that matters is your OOC felatio.

And do your best to not fall back on some abstract about how people need to fail sometimes, or some abstract argument about gating, or some new abstract argument that doesn't handle the love letters example here. The Nirvana fallacy does little to address why the party should be denied the letters.

Uh... process still matters. If you kill a dragon because you rolled to hit and rolled damage and the dragon died, that's significantly cooler than if you had no die roll and the MC just said "And then your character killed a dragon! Yaaay!" Getting something without effort or die rolling is fucking patronizing. I would rather fail to get some content and move on to tell stories about things my character actually fucking did than have the DM patronize me and read me his fucking fanfiction that he wrote without my input. Is that so hard to understand?

Your story contribution may sound cool to you in your head. I'm sure it does. But however cool you think it is, or even how cool it actually is, it's not worth shitting all over the agency of the other players. It's not worth announcing that all roads lead to Rome and we're all on rails so hard you'll never escape. It's not worth saying that we're going to do a pre-rendered fucking cut scene that is going to be identical no matter what the characters did, what the players rolled, or what abilities the players chose for their characters to have. It just fucking isn't.

-Username17

[K]

The love letter example is not mine, so I don't know why you'd want to gate that content, but I can certainly think of reasons. If the letter offers insight in how to defeat one or both of the antagonists, you might not want to make it a 'gimme' but still give a non - zero chance that the party find it - especially if they're trying to 'shortcut' the encounter. Maybe it leads to a curbstomp which you wouldn't necessarily want for every encounter, but those can be rewarding sometimes. In the event that the gated content offers neither advantage nor additional narrative options, there's probably no reason to gate it - but if it does, it probably should.

You've run into the essential problem that all of the actual examples of using skills in a game like DnD actually suck.

If you want there to be a chance to find boss-crippling information, then a skill check is a shitty method to do it because you as the DM have already decided to include that option. If you want to give players information, a Knowledge check is shitty because you might be either wasting their time with information they don't need that you have to improvise or potentially keeping information away from them that they actually do need on a failed roll. If you want people to jump over a pit, you don't want it to be a death sentence for some or all of the party on failed rolls.

Sadly, the only skill in DnD that works reasonably well is Spellcraft. The information you get is concrete because you either figure out the spell used or don't, but knowing which individual spells were cast probably doesn't matter too much. Learning a new spell as a Wizard is exciting and the mechanic is not subject to MTP, and being forced to wait a level before a retry is not too tedious.

I think the only real argument for DnD-style skills is that DnD is supposed to be a game of comic failure. You are supposed to fail Climb checks and fall out of trees. You are supposed to flub up Diplomacy checks and the friendly elves are then going to snub you. You are supposed to only get part of the story because your miss Search checks and Knowledge checks, so you are always blundering into situations you don't understand. You are supposed to misread scrolls with UMD and turn your friend into a statue.

It's all Dungeons and Mr. Bean.

[K]

And gating content through player choice is fine, but doing it on a dice-roll is not.

Now, I know you want to pretend that I'm all against player choice because that's a straw-man you can "win,"

No. The point is that choices made during the game, resources spent during character creation, and good and bad rolls made by the player are all player input. They all influence the course or potential course of the story because it's a cooperative storytelling game.

If you accept that player choice can influence story path, you also have to accept that player die rolls can influence story path. The only alternative is to play Amber Diceless, and that's actually more disempowering rather than less.

Fundamentally, how can you argue that skill checks are NOT opposed to player choice?

Because you're still going to want your character to try to do things that are in the penumbra of things that they may or may not be able to do. And the only ways to handle that are to either roll a fucking die or to have a big argument with the MC where they either let you do it or shoot you down. So long as dice are rolled and bonuses are added, there is a semblance of fairness, your character may succeed at things you try to do, and you can make meaningful and informed choices. If the MC simply decides what happens with no roll, then we're back to bears and the only skill that matters is your OOC felatio.

And do your best to not fall back on some abstract about how people need to fail sometimes, or some abstract argument about gating, or some new abstract argument that doesn't handle the love letters example here. The Nirvana fallacy does little to address why the party should be denied the letters.

Uh... process still matters. If you kill a dragon because you rolled to hit and rolled damage and the dragon died, that's significantly cooler than if you had no die roll and the MC just said "And then your character killed a dragon! Yaaay!" Getting something without effort or die rolling is fucking patronizing. I would rather fail to get some content and move on to tell stories about things my character actually fucking did than have the DM patronize me and read me his fucking fanfiction that he wrote without my input. Is that so hard to understand?

Your story contribution may sound cool to you in your head. I'm sure it does. But however cool you think it is, or even how cool it actually is, it's not worth shitting all over the agency of the other players. It's not worth announcing that all roads lead to Rome and we're all on rails so hard you'll never escape. It's not worth saying that we're going to do a pre-rendered fucking cut scene that is going to be identical no matter what the characters did, what the players rolled, or what abilities the players chose for their characters to have. It just fucking isn't.

-Username17

Dice rolls aren't player input. They just aren't.

When I cast a spell in DnD, that's input. If I say "I cast Wall of Stone," then that's a thing I did that I want to be reflected in the game. The DM can then tell me if that wall is strong enough to trap the monsters in the cave or not, and we did that without resorting to Amber Diceless with rules for wall Hardness and HPs and the damage numbers on the monsters. We did that in DnD and it works.

If I say, "I Search the room," then making me roll for that is giving me a a fairly large chance to NOT have input or choice. My input is being ignored on a failed roll. Some characters like Rogues get their input ignored by the mechanic of skills, but the Wizards always find the magic treasure because they cast Detect Magic.

Then fact that I rolled a die does not make that results more meaningful than casting a spell. Foiling a nighttime ambush with a Spot roll does not feel better than foiling it with an Alarm spell. Both are gating meaningful player choices, but the player with Spot had a chance to have his input ignored.

DnD skills ignore the player's contribution to the story some of the time, and that's a shit design.

[Kaelik]

The point is that . . . good and bad rolls made by the player are all player input. They all influence the course or potential course of the story because it's a cooperative storytelling game.

If you actually believe this, you are delusional. The results of dice rolls are not player input, they are random input. Some things need random inputs, some things don't. But it would be a hell of a lot better conversation if we talked about which things needed random inputs than trying to claim that the totally random result of things that are literally designed to ideally completely remove all influence the person rolling could ever have on the result, is "player input"

Because you're still going to want your character to try to do things that are in the penumbra of things that they may or may not be able to do.

Which is a great reason to have dice involved sometimes, but a terrible argument for why they need to be involved all the time.

Remember this thing from earlier? "resources spent during character creation" There is no good reason why people can't just buy the "Search" ability using whatever resources are used to buy that ability, and then automatically find the letters.

Hell, maybe someone buys "secret doors" and they find the room, or someone buys "secret compartments" and they find the false room. Or maybe they only have one of those abilities, and they find the door but not the compartment, or maybe someone bought X-Ray Vision, and they find both, or what the fuck ever. And hey, at the end of the day, maybe it is in Auran anyway and they can't read it.

Unless of course they roll a DC 27 read Auran check!

[Username17]

Dice rolls aren't player input. They just aren't.

The results of dice rolls are not player input, they are random input.

Go ahead and design a game where the players don't get to roll dice and the MC just tells them whether they succeed or fail. Go ahead and fucking try. See how well that goes down.

Players rolling dice is empowering. Take that away and watch what happens. Just. Fucking. Watch.

If you think players will be as invested in a game where they don't get to roll dice and shit just happens according to the whim of Mr. Cavern, then you are wrong. Full stop. Amber Diceless exists, and there is a fucking reason that it has never and will never be a serious contender for most popular RPG.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Dice rolls aren't player input. They just aren't.

The results of dice rolls are not player input, they are random input.

Go ahead and design a game where the players don't get to roll dice and the MC just tells them whether they succeed or fail. Go ahead and fucking try. See how well that goes down.

Players rolling dice is empowering. Take that away and watch what happens. Just. Fucking. Watch.

If you think players will be as invested in a game where they don't get to roll dice and shit just happens according to the whim of Mr. Cavern, then you are wrong. Full stop. Amber Diceless exists, and there is a fucking reason that it has never and will never be a serious contender for most popular RPG.

-Username17

Frank, are you really this dumb, or are you just lying because you literally have no argument at all?

ome things need random inputs, some things don't. But it would be a hell of a lot better conversation if we talked about whether things needed random inputs than trying to claim that the totally random result of things that are literally designed to ideally completely remove all influence the person rolling could ever have on the result, is "player input"

Here, I'll design a game in which players don't roll dice right now.

It's called 3e but with a computer that spits out random numbers based on simulating dice. It's already a thing that exists and people play. Because most people are aware that they have no fucking control over the dice, because it is not their input to the game, it is the totally random input that arbitrates some but not all contests.

For example, when I want to cast Wall of Ice, I just cast wall of ice, and there it is, and when I want to speak Auran, I just speak Auran, and the words are spoken. Because it is totally acceptable to say "some things the PCs always get to succeed at, without rolling dice."

I take great pleasure in informing DMs that I don't have to roll spellcraft because I would succeed on a 1 on identifying a 9th level spell being cast, so I just automatically win and they have to tell me the spell being cast. Because I would rather just succeed than have a chance of succeeding on Certain kinds of actions.

But sure, keep lying about how dice are player input, and not specifically inputs designed for the sole purpose of not coming from anyone at the table.

[PhoneLobster]

Remember this thing from earlier? "resources spent during character creation" There is no good reason why people can't just buy the "Search" ability using whatever resources are used to buy that ability, and then automatically find the letters.

Hell, maybe someone buys "secret doors" and they find the room, or someone buys "secret compartments" and they find the false room. Or maybe they only have one of those abilities, and they find the door but not the compartment, or maybe someone bought X-Ray Vision, and they find both, or what the fuck ever.

It might be worth diverting for a moment to cover some "ways these skills could work that are not shit".

And... that's one of them. Auto success opt in at character creation/advancement works pretty OK. The GM has a significant amount of warning if no one can find things with searching, presumably content isn't wasted. To the degree content is wasted (or in that case more accurately effectively declared unwanted by the players) it is an actual player choice for no one to bring "search" to the party.

But it's not the only way it could work.

You could still bring a roll mechanic to the table... as long as those checks that mattered were auto-success as in your described methodology.

You could still bring a roll mechanic to the table... as long as you were NOT rolling to find/not find but instead rolling to see WHO (definitely) finds the stuff.

You could still bring a roll mechanic to the table ... as long as you were NOT rolling to find/not find but instead rolling to see HOW someone (definitely) finds the stuff.

There are ways to make this sort of thing better there are multiple ways to make this sort of thing better. But first you have to acknowledge that there is a problem here that could be improved upon.

[angelfromanotherpin]

That's basically Gumshoe. It's not great.

[deaddmwalking]

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. Choosing to roll is a player input. Investing resources into the relevant ability is a player input.

I don't think 3.x style skills are the way to do it. Personally I'm fine with assuming players are always taking 10 on Perception or Search checks to allow 'auto-detect' of certain content. But if there is reason to have a DC high enough that no one succeeds on a 10 or better, there is a non - zero chance that the content is missed. That's okay. Just like missing an attack roll is okay. Determinism is bullshit and I reject it outright. As a player I want my success to be based on my inputs and the investment of my character resources. When I cast a spell I generally want it to work, but I accept that there is a non - zero chance of failure. Achieving the right balance of success and failure is important.

The chance of failure as a justification for providing meaning to success is valid. As a player you want to believe that 'the average party' would fail where you have succeeded. Smart play helps you stack the odds in your favor. The goal is to create a situation where victory seems remote but is actually achievable.

There are lots of ways to potentially change skills, but removing all chance of failure isn't one of them.

[MGuy]

I don't feel that dice are player input. Dice rolling, card drawing, etc are enhance the game in specific ways but the act of rolling a dice (or whatever generates the random number) is not player input. Bonuses, penalties, the kind of dice rolled, when the dice get rolled, etc, things like that are player inputs. That kind of dice rolling = player input at least tells me where all that bullshit "diplomacy can't happen without a random roll" shit comes from. So this has been educational. I basically agree with Kaelik that a discussion about what should and shouldn't be rolled is one that we should have.

I'm also coming around to PL's train of thought. I believe discussions have already been had on here about the difference between abilities that 'do' things and ones that are fluff. PL has made the case (to me) that things locked off via the search skill either have to be unnecessary in the long run or mere fluff and thus search would be more of a background ability and not very valuable beyond that. Even with all the attempts at counter arguing I am starting to see that I'd actually have no real problem if just by having Search Ability on your character sheet and simply declaring 'I search' is all the license someone should need to find all the hidden goodies.

So as far as that's concerned I don't see a problem. I 'do' think that having the ability to roll for stuff is important to the game but I think focusing on just Search is hampering the discussion. What kind of things, skills or whatever, 'need' to have rolls?

[PhoneLobster]

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. Choosing to roll is a player input. Investing resources into the relevant ability is a player input.

First thing. No. The player is never actually choosing to roll. They aren't choosing to fail. They are choosing a successful action and RISKING a failure. That is not the same thing.

BUT, perhaps much more importantly... second thing, lets just look at the opening of that paragraph there again and check it for basic sanity...

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random.

NO SANITY DETECTED!

[deaddmwalking]

Rolling the dice is roll+ability. If you don't add an ability, it is random. If your fighter has a +12 attack and your wizard has a +2 attack it is not 'random' which attack hits, though each attack has a random element.

If the rogue has a +12 search and the rest of the party has a +2, it is not ransom which character finds things, but all searches include a random element.

@Mguy - I'm not defending the specific implementation of 3.x skills, but surely you agree that are some tasks that characters of sufficiently high level always succeed at while some tasks a character of sufficiently low level should always fail? While a high level character may have a chance to succeed when grappling a frqgon, grappling a basic goblin is in 'auto-win' territory. You wouldn't want that same character to auto-win versus the dragon. As threats increase you maintain a chance of failure. Low-level characters can't 'just do' the same thing high level characters do. Adding a modifier to a roll is generally a good way to represent those differences. A big modifier means you can't fail an easy task, while a small modifier may mean you can't succeed at a difficult task.

Perhaps you can start by considering what types of things you can fate with a search check and whether you'd be comfortable with 'auto-success both as a DM and a player .

[PhoneLobster]

Rolling the dice is roll+ability. If you don't add an ability, it is random. If your fighter has a +12 attack and your wizard has a +2 attack it is not 'random' which attack hits, though each attack has a random element.

If the rogue has a +12 search and the rest of the party has a +2, it is not ransom which character finds things, but all searches include a random element.

Oh I see now. You don't know the actual meaning of the word "random".

Like. At all.

[MGuy]

Rolling the dice is roll+ability. If you don't add an ability, it is random. If your fighter has a +12 attack and your wizard has a +2 attack it is not 'random' which attack hits, though each attack has a random element.

If the rogue has a +12 search and the rest of the party has a +2, it is not ransom which character finds things, but all searches include a random element.

@Mguy - I'm not defending the specific implementation of 3.x skills, but surely you agree that are some tasks that characters of sufficiently high level always succeed at while some tasks a character of sufficiently low level should always fail? While a high level character may have a chance to succeed when grappling a frqgon, grappling a basic goblin is in 'auto-win' territory. You wouldn't want that same character to auto-win versus the dragon. As threats increase you maintain a chance of failure. Low-level characters can't 'just do' the same thing high level characters do. Adding a modifier to a roll is generally a good way to represent those differences. A big modifier means you can't fail an easy task, while a small modifier may mean you can't succeed at a difficult task.

Perhaps you can start by considering what types of things you can fate with a search check and whether you'd be comfortable with 'auto-success both as a DM and a player .

I could agree with everything you said without changing my current position. What I just said was that the method of random number generation does not equal player input, that search (specifically, so don't then go and talk about other skills/checks) is not worth rolling for, and that perhaps talking specifically about this particular skill is actually handicapping the conversation. I even straight up mentioned that Bonuses, penalties, and other things ARE examples of player input, just not the method of generation or the act of generating the number that you'd apply all your bonuses/penalties/etc to.

None of that means that there aren't things that could have numbers assigned to them so that leveling up makes you better (skill or otherwise). I'm fine with a low level rogue searching a place being able to find all the mundanely hidden love letters that a high level rogue searching a place could fine. This would not offend me, and I really can't think of a situation where I would be offended without arbitrarily assigning new abilities to search or mystifying the shit out of how high level things are hidden (which would then require the appropriate upgrade in Search to do basically the same shit).

I think there is an argument for the use of numbers and ranks and all that good shit but the search skill seems to be a shitty place to draw that line. Whatever higher level search tricks you might want to add to gate off lower level people you could really just say "At level X you can find glow charms things through walls" or something like that.

[Miniature Colossus]

Rolling the dice is roll+ability. If you don't add an ability, it is random. If your fighter has a +12 attack and your wizard has a +2 attack it is not 'random' which attack hits, though each attack has a random element.

If the rogue has a +12 search and the rest of the party has a +2, it is not ransom which character finds things, but all searches include a random element.

Oh I see now. You don't know the actual meaning of the word "random".

Like. At all.

This is a bit of a linguistic thing though. From a mathematicians point of view anything with a random element is random itself, but for some reason a lot of people use the word random to refer to what mathematicians would call uniformly random. This can sometimes lead to seemingly inane statements like "dice are not random" since most dice don't have an exactly equal probability of landing on all sides.

But it does bring us to the question of whether changing the probability distribution counts as player input, and I would say it depends. For distributions that get sampled a lot, i.e. rolls that get made a lot, it will in general be possible to tell the difference between different distributions. So in combat it will probably be noticeable that someone has a bigger bonus to attack than others and that person will probably feel that his or her choices in character creation made a difference.

So one problem is that some things may only be rolled a couple of times during an entire campaign and even if those few times are very valuable it can be difficult to see the difference in proficiency between characters. I get the feeling this is what happens to some knowledge checks a lot of times. Search skills usually don't have this problem though since they tend to get rolled a lot. In fact they get rolled so much and have such importance that they become almost mandatory, and if it is mandatory can it really be considered player input? Also, a lot of games encourage GMs to make hidden spot checks, and it is questionable whether or not this random element contributes to the players fun or if they can even see the difference.

Ultimately though one must ask the question of what the game is supposed to be about. Is it supposed to be about the players going around making (and whiffing) search checks all the time? Maybe not, and as such it would be completely acceptable to remove the random element from this so the players can continue to the parts that are more interesting. If one is of the opinion that random elements make for more fun then that is where you should put them.

[Lokey]

Absurdly literal interpretation is probably the culprit. I'm pretty sure when Frank says "roll the dice" he means the dm making stuff up portion of the game is over and we're into agreed upon mechanical systems resolving the game situation.

Kaelik's post should be put into some kind of hall of fame.

[DSMatticus]

That kind of dice rolling = player input at least tells me where all that bullshit "diplomacy can't happen without a random roll" shit comes from.

Surprise, MGuy's primary contribution to the diplomacy topic is still deliberately refusing to understand everyone he disagrees with. We have PL for that, MGuy. Let him do his thing.

I'm also coming around to PL's train of thought. I believe discussions have already been had on here about the difference between abilities that 'do' things and ones that are fluff. PL has made the case (to me) that things locked off via the search skill either have to be unnecessary in the long run or mere fluff and thus search would be more of a background ability and not very valuable beyond that. Even with all the attempts at counter arguing I am starting to see that I'd actually have no real problem if just by having Search Ability on your character sheet and simply declaring 'I search' is all the license someone should need to find all the hidden goodies.

PL's argument is fucking dumb. Here it is:
1) Campaign-ending autofails are bad. (Agree.)
2) To prevent campaign-ending autofails, you need multiple paths to progress the story. (Agree.)
3) It doesn't matter which path you take - or what ability you use to get there - because they all progress the story. (Fuck you that's dumb.)

So the idea is that because you can't just end the campaign if the players fail a search check, you have to add ways for players who failed the search check to progress the story, and therefore the search check never mattered to begin with. But that's fucking wrong, for two really obvious reasons that anyone with a shred of open-minded honesty about this topic could hammer out immediately:

1) Not all states which "progress the story" are equal to one another. The PC's goal isn't to see what happens next, it's to write what happens next. While it is absolutely true that "the show must go on," the next episode is being written by the PC's successes and failures. The story can't end because the PC's failed a search check, but it can change because the PC's failed a search check.

2) It actually does matter to the PC's how they solve problems. I didn't roll up a beguiler because I wanted to watch problems be solved by everything except illusions. I rolled up a beguiler because I wanted to solve problems with illusions, and most of my contributions to the story will be trying to do exactly that.

PL's argument is that as long you're going forward, does it really matter where you're going, or even what the scenery looks like along the way? Um, yes. Yes, it does. Everyone at the table is going to give a shit about at least either the journey or the destination, and most are going to care about both.

Search, specifically, is a fairly minor and arbitrary skill. You either put ranks in it or you didn't, and the d20 roll itself is wider than the range of DC's you will typically see during actual play. That makes it unsuitable to be the single point of access to a major story branch. If you made search a binary have-or-have-not, it would still be unsuitable to be the single point of access to a major story branch. It's just too small and unengaging a minigame to be a major fork in the road. If there were a game in which combat were resolved in a single skill check by a single character (and the skill were so broken it could range from autofail to flip a coin to autosuccess), then combat would be a bullshit minigame to use for a major fork in the road too.

[MGuy]

That kind of dice rolling = player input at least tells me where all that bullshit "diplomacy can't happen without a random roll" shit comes from.

Surprise, MGuy's primary contribution to the diplomacy topic is still deliberately refusing to understand everyone he disagrees with. We have PL for that, MGuy. Let him do his thing.

Gonna admit, this part made me laugh. I'd say that you're like a liar calling someone else a liar but you go the extra mile of deliberately misunderstanding people you also agree with in order to go on odd rants. You won't even stop when the very person you agree with chimes in and tells a different story than you.

Snip.

Well PL could've corrected me if I were wrong about his position but I took his silence on the matter as confirmation that I'd gotten it right. I even asked him right out earlier if he was making an argument against skills in general and he clarified that he was not saying that. Why would you criticize me for deliberately misinterpreting what other people say but then go and ignore the part where PL specifically told everyone what he was saying.

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.

[DSMatticus]

This is a bit of a linguistic thing though. From a mathematicians point of view anything with a random element is random itself, but for some reason a lot of people use the word random to refer to what mathematicians would call uniformly random. This can sometimes lead to seemingly inane statements like "dice are not random" since most dice don't have an exactly equal probability of landing on all sides.

It's not really a linguistic thing. PL is just pretending to be stupid in order to fish for responses from deaddmwalking, because the longer deaddmwalking talks the more material PL has to misquote in order to make him look dumb. I mean, here, look at this:

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. Choosing to roll is a player input. Investing resources into the relevant ability is a player input.

This is a completely reasonable - and easy to understand - statement in context. Choosing where to allocate your character's advancement resources is an input from the player. Choosing when and how to use your abilities is an input from the player. The actual result of a die roll is random. The process is not strictly random, there are elements involved which hinge on deliberate decisions made by the player. So how did PL respond? He chopped off the last half of the paragraph so that it looked like deadmwalking had contradicted himself in the span of two sentences and then GENERIC INSULT 27:

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. [Where the fuck did those last two sentences go? You know, the ones that would completely change the meaning of the entire paragraph?]

This is why I have PL on ignore and deaddmwalking is an idiot for feeding him (not that I'm one to talk, it took me way too fucking long to put him on ignore). PL is a deceitful asshat. No one was actually confused by deaddmwalking's original point. It's not a complicated concept, and it's not being expressed with any significant amount of linguistic ambiguity... but PL saw the opportunity to chop off the last half of a paragraph in order to make it look stupider than it actually was and he took it - just like he's taken that opportunity every single time in the past, and just like he will continue to take that opportunity every single time in the future. PL is an asshole and you can't argue with him. You literally can't. He won't let you. He's going to strawman the very first words out of your mouth and he's not going to stop at any point. Deaddmwalking thinks the problem is that PL doesn't understand him, so if he just explains himself a couple more times it will get through. Deaddmwalking is wrong. This is what PL does. Put him on ignore, click through in MPSIMS if you like reading about Australia's horrifying politics and not-quite-as-horrifying wildlife.

[Kaelik]

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. Choosing to roll is a player input. Investing resources into the relevant ability is a player input.

This is a completely reasonable - and easy to understand - statement in context. Choosing where to allocate your character's advancement resources is an input from the player. Choosing when and how to use your abilities is an input from the player. The actual result of a die roll is random. The process is not strictly random, there are elements involved which hinge on deliberate decisions made by the player.

Except that part of the problem is that deaddm is just like the last time this came up, arguing that having a search skill you spend character resources in to be able to search deprives players of their agency as compared to having a search skill they can invest resources in and then roll on.

Which is of course, completely wrong. And that's the point, he has to take the part that has nothing to do with the dice at all, and is actually a player input, and then claim it is part of the dice, and therefore rolling is a player input to justify his ass backwards absurd desire for randomness over determinism in ALLL THINGS EVER.

I mean, in this thread, he complained about how he hates all determinism in games, and in the last thread, he complained that movespeeds being static is terrible and bad, and that all move speeds should be rolled.

[PhoneLobster]

Dice are not a strictly random inout. I mean, the actual roll of the die (between 1 and 20 on this check) is random, but that is the only part that is random. [Where the fuck did those last two sentences go? You know, the ones that would completely change the meaning of the entire paragraph?]

I don't know where they went. Maybe I don't know in the same fuller quote at the beginning of the same very short post you are accusing of selectively quoting that paragraph.

You know it IS OK to single out specific parts of entire paragraphs and lines of reasoning and point out they are wildly factually incorrect and insane.

What isn't OK, or I think a particularly likely to make you look smart is attacking a post for selectively quoting something... by selectively ignoring the bit where the same, rather short, post quoted and directly addressed the exact material you are accusing it of ignoring.

[DSMatticus]

Hey, MGuy, you asshole. Here is PL's first post in this thread. It is him responding to you. It is exactly the argument I credited him with.

Why would they roll a search check when there are no threats? Wouldn't they just take 10/20 instead?

What if everyone has shit search skill?

Should that campaign lack on background details, interesting clues and secret rooms. Just because no one brought Search?

What if they did bring search but due to the other demands of ability dependancy just can't be quiet as good at it as they might have been? Just because the group had entirely reasonable higher character build priorities than having a maxed out Int score? By exactly how much should the resulting campaign be deprived of interesting discover-able junk, fluff or otherwise because the group's best search guy invested the same amount of otherwise largely wasted better spent skill points but had no choice but to being only 11 Int? Instead of 14 Int? 18 Int? 20 Int?

In the end you want the vampire letters K outlined to be found. Somehow. At some point. Period. This can be with a successful search. This can be with an auto-success search. This can be after a failed search but with some other "er, no wait, aside from that, er, thing you didn't find HEY LOOK WHATS SUDDENLY RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN!" retroactive re-insertion moment.

But the end result is that Search doesn't matter and the players find the content regardless.

And this applies loosely in a lot of variant scenarios/methodologies. What? You "just re-purpose" and shoe horn in your content later? Well actually that's REALLY the same as the "wait, look, um, its another, suddenly much easier search check for, um, another thing" only with more waiting and extra work for less pay off. And it STILL means that the Search skill, and however much you had of it still didn't really matter.

Hell fuck it, you throw the content away. The players then free up time... which they spend interacting with more content. It's no longer the originally intended content, and risks being a bit worse and poorly planned, but hey, probably about the same and maybe if you are lucky flukes out to be better. But hey, you are still spending time adventuring vs opponents of give or take the same difficulty and getting loot of give or take the same value and Search still doesn't matter.

You can put content gate keeping skills in your game. You can have fixed or flexible (but always lets not forget bullshitty) DCs for them. You can include auto-success mechanics.

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!

There are minor variations on those themes, but one of them is a shitty option for shit GMs who are shitty people, and the other one has implications for the valuation of abilities in the design of your game system.

Here, look at this part.

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!

No, you're not done looking at it.

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!

Fuck you look at it again.

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!

One more time.

So the idea is that because you can't just end the campaign if the players fail a search check, you have to add ways for players who failed the search check to progress the story, and therefore the search check never mattered to begin with.

Oops, that last one was me paraphrasing him. Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter, because they're the same fucking thing. The big problem I have with PL (and PL has with understanding this debate) is right here:

In the end you want the vampire letters K outlined to be found. Somehow. At some point. Period.

No, you don't. You don't want that. Railroading is bad, end of story, and it should be totally possible for the players to just miss something. If your story breaks when the PC's don't X, then it's a bad story to try and tell in a collaborative medium - especially (but not only) a collaborative medium with random elements. The players might find the vampire letters in the exact way you expected. The players might find the vampire letters in a way you never expected. The players might never find the vampire letters at all. But the story needs to progress either way - it just needs to progress differently, and become a slightly or radically different story in the process. Being able to change the story is the defining feature of the medium.

There is a certain amount of pre-campaign negotiation that needs to happen to ensure the players aren't going to mutiny first session and do something completely different and make all of your preparation worthless from the word go. "Hey, we could try a campaign on ____. Would you guys get bored with that after just a few sessions, or what?" If they answer yes, that sounds boring, fill in the blank with something different until they say no, that sounds fun. When they say no, voila, run it. But they are not signing up to be guided through a series of linear breakpoints, and you shouldn't be trying to make that happen.