Non-Combat Fun

One of the inspiration-worthy new ideas in 4E is the skill challenge. Technically it's not very new, since clever DMs have been doing similar things for years, but this time it's clearly defined and encouraged in the main rule set.

Basically, a skill challenge is a defined moment when players need to succeed in a series of skill checks to achieve a result. Certain types of skills are encouraged, but players can come up with creative ways to use any of the 17 core skills.

So if the main challenge is escaping from the city guards, players are encouraged to use Athletics to run or Perception to find a shortcut, but if a player with the History skill wants to try to remember a story from their books about how the king escaped 100 years ago, the DM is encouraged to let him roll for it.

This may sound like the same skill checks that RPG games have encouraged for years, but there are some subtle differences that make this iteration feel natural.

How does it work? First, the skill challenge defines a clear moment in time in which skills matter. When the DM tells the players that a skill challenge has begun, they know what to do.

They don't have to wander around the world talking to all the NPCs or trying to manipulate every object the DM mentions -- the moment is presented to them, and they can be creative within that box.

Published modules can define discrete skill challenges as a way to structure to that annoying time between combats.

When the moment starts, every player is involved in an easy-to-understand way. Every player can check their character sheet to see which skills are likely to apply. Skill challenges generally incorporate familiar activities (talking, climbing, escaping, etc.) so players can make educated guesses on which skills to use.

Even if they don't have any obvious skills, they can start brainstorming creative uses for their other skills. And the DM is encouraged to reward creativity by allowing outside-of-the-box ideas to roll for success.

The math helps here, too, as all players get flat bonuses to all skills as they gain levels, so everyone is at least vaguely competitive in all skills, unlike previous editions where rolling an untrained skill was a guaranteed failure.

This structure doesn't adapt perfectly to video games. Creativity is hard to code for, so allowing players to make up solutions on the spot is not really possible when code takes the place of a DM.

On the other hand, this structure takes the infinite expanse of non-combat interactions and boils them all down to 17 skills. Seventeen is easier to code than infinity.

A video game could recreate the basic concept by having skill actions which are used in certain situations, and giving each one a positive, neutral, or negative effect based on each challenge situation.

But that's borrowing the shell, not the soul, and still means up to 17 times the content. Taking the soul in this case means setting up clear non-combat moments when the player has a set of tools he knows how to use, and giving each of those tools a meaningful result.

A good non-combat design should provide a clear context in which it encourages the use of certain tools, but rewards use of non-suggested tools in some cases. If players are in a climbing moment, but try to use their attack to destroy a wall instead of climbing over it, it shouldn't work every time, but it should work occasionally.

Sure, this may require building content that players might never see, but the players who do see that content will appreciate the game for it. And if done carefully, interesting non-combat encounters can be built out of the same tools as normal play, making the cost much lower. Careful construction of non-combat moments can make them as fun and interesting as combat.