Put Those Dice to Work
Skill Challenges Part 2 Looks at ROLLplaying vs ROLEplaying
In the previous entry in this series, I talked about what skill challenges are and touched on a couple of the myths surrounding them. Today, I want to focus on one particular game-play approach that people seem to associate with skill challenges, though in reality, it has nothing to do with them at all.
The complaint is that skill challenges just turn non-combat encounters into a bunch of dice rolling. This is no more the case than saying that combat is nothing but a bunch of dice rolling. In fact, there is a lot more dice rolling during a combat encounter than there is in a skill challenge.
Much of D&D involves the party doing things other than combat. They might be exploring a dungeon, talking to townsfolk, solving a puzzle, or any number of other things. In these situations, the Dungeon Master will present the party with opportunities to make decisions. Which passageway should we take? How can I best earn favor with this citizen? Where have I seen these runes before?
How we approach these situations comes down to the question of, are we testing the characters or the players?
With this in mind, let’s take a look at this notion of ROLLplaying vs ROLEplaying…
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What’s The Difference?
When roleplaying, the expectation is that the player and the character are one and the same. When the party faces a challenge, the players need to figure out a solution to that problem. It is possible that the entire situation could be played without ever rolling a single die. The DM is the ultimate arbiter of how the players did.
Consider this example…
The town guard approaches the party. The cleric steps forward and says, “Seven blessing good sir. I wonder if you might help us. This group of miscreants just ran past us without care for life or limb. It was all we could do to avoid them. They ran off in that direction.”
The DM then decides if this was enough to convince the guard to move along. This may or may not involve a dice roll.
Here, the player fully embraced their character and showed the DM what they were doing by acting out the exchange.
By contrast, rollplaying separates the player from the character. The game situations are designed to test the characters. The players use their character abilities to execute a strategy. Dice rolls are used to determine success or failure.
Looking at that same example…
The town guard approaches the party. The player tells the DM what they want their cleric to do. “I would like to try and convince the guard that the people they are looking for ran down a nearby alleyway.”
The DM will likely ask the player to make a Bluff check against the guard’s Insight to see if the ruse was successful or not.
The player did not need to try and improvise a piece of dialogue. They knew what they wanted their character to do and summarized it for the DM. The character stats and dice rolls were used to determine success or failure.
These two styles are equally valid and not mutually exclusive. It is possible to use both styles at the same table, even within the same encounter, and by the same player. The important thing is to focus on what the character was able to do regardless of the player’s abilities to improvise.
The Controversy
There are some who draw a hard line between these two approaches. They would NEVER allow a player to simply say what they want their character to do. And they would probably kick the player out if they presumed to say something like, “I would like to roll a Bluff check to try and trick the guard.” Gasp!
These game tables value the full immersion. They want the players to be tested. If the players cannot figure out how to solve the problem, then they do not solve the problem. Simple as that. No dice rolls in the world will save them.
And for those that want to play this way, excellent. You do you. If that is what your table enjoys, then I am in no position to tell you otherwise. And, by the way, there is nothing in 4th edition that forces you to play your game any differently.
Personally, I am more open to the other style. I believe that the game should be testing the characters more than the players. My feeling is that I have created a character who has lived their life in this world and has knowledge and skills that I, the player, do not possess.
My wizard has studied ancient tomes for the past ten years. I have not. It is likely that my wizard will have knowledge of the world that I do not. It is perfectly reasonable that when we are presented with a door containing ancient runes, my wizard will know what they mean even though I do not.
That does not mean I never roleplay. There are many situations where I might come up with the perfect thing to say. If so, then I say it. But there are also times where I know there is a good chance my character would know the right thing to say, even when I do not. In those cases, my character stats and the dice can decide the outcome.
For a comparison, let’s think about this in terms of a combat encounter. We use dice all the time to adjudicate combat. Most tables are perfectly fine with a player’s action being no more descriptive than, “I swing my sword.” But, for some reason, we have a different bar when it comes to non-combat encounters. Outside of combat, we expect everyone to deliver prose like Ernest Hemingway.
Final Thoughts
Consider this. We seem to easily accept that our rogue gets sneak attack and we get to roll more damage. Dungeon Masters do not, generally, tell the players, “If you cannot come up with a really impressive description of your rogue performing their sneak attack, then you do not get the extra damage.” Sometimes the player might have such a description, but it is not required nor expected. You have sneak attack. Cool. Extra damage. Why does non-combat have this arbitrarily high bar to clear?
And my final point. Rollplaying is particularly welcoming to the new player. Imagine playing your first game and everyone around you is using special voices for their characters and always improvises dialogue. If the table expects the same from you when you’ve never done this before, then that is a lot of pressure. This isn’t to say you will never get to that same comfort level, but we often forget that this game can be awfully intimidating for someone who is just starting out. Just letting a player use their dice can be quite a relief.
And there is nothing wrong with tables that do nothing but rollplaying. It is a legitimate way to play the game and if that is what you enjoy, then lean into it and have fun.
Around this point, you might be asking, how does all of this relate to a series on Skill Challenges? Honestly, it doesn’t. Except, it is a reason some people give for why skill challenges don’t work. During a skill challenge, you can ROLEplay or ROLLplay however you want. There is nothing in the rules that dictates one over the other.
In the next post, I will cover how the skill challenge rules evolved from Keep on the Shadowfell2 to Halls of Undermountain.
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When I’m Playing I naturally do both… my character says what they are doing & saying then I ask the DM if I can roll say a Bluff or Diplomacy check. I think 4e is great at doing this… anybody still saying you can’t Roleplay in 4e is beating a dead troll. If you know how to Roleplay from Basic or 3e you can apply all your knowledge to 4e PLUS there are actually listed Skills that cover nearly anything your fantasy character might try to do in the game. So you can say what you are doing and the DM can say you did it or that you need to role the Bluff check to do it and even to what degree (DC) you are successful. Or you can just ask if an Arcane check is available to read the runes on an map the party came across.
You can roleplay just as little or as much with 4e as any other role playing system, it has a fleshed out array of skills, no different from 3.5 or 5 and 5.5 24 whatever, You have to let players use there characters social skills, otherwise it would be like asking another player to cast a fireball, because there character can. What a character can or cannot do should me measured by the character not the player. A few of my players aren't as charismatic as some of there characters are supposed to be and i don't hold let their limitations inhibit their characters, that defeats the whole purpose of playing out a fantasy.