IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 2A: Welcome to Ptolus

In which the darker side of Ptolus proves to be an addicting experience and the services of many are divided across shopping trips both past and present…

At the beginning of the campaign journal for this session, Tee shares the revelations she gleaned from reading through the Delver’s Guild membership papers. This is actually something that was resolved between sessions. In fact, I’ve still got the original e-mail from Tee’s player:

One thing that should probably be added to the journal is the matter of the ID papers.  Everyone took their set that says they are members of Ptolus (I’d imagine that Tee would either keep Agnarr’s for him, or explain to him what it means so he can hold it himself) and the rest of the papers were placed in the secret compartment of Tee’s trunk, and the trunk was then locked (Tee now carrying the key with her instead of leaving it in her room).

I’m not sure what happened with the Delver’s Guild papers officially, though I would imagine that they were distributed and not locked up with the ID papers, as presumably they are not falsified. On a side note – Tee would have read through her set of Delver’s papers (you said there was a packet of information) and probably gone through the ID papers that night, to see all of the things we were “members” of, to try to keep a mental list in case they were needed later, and to see if we were all members of the same things.

I’ve found it can often be quite useful to end a session at the point just before the players are going to engage in a lot of “down time” activities. These activities can then be resolved at length, in detail, and at leisure through e-mail or other means. This conserves table time, allows for more detailed explorations of certain aspects of the campaign, and can also keep the players engaged in the campaign between sessions.

This particular e-mail from the player was prompted by an e-mail in which I sent out the campaign journal for session 1 and asked all of the players to, “Please take a look through it and let me know if you feel anything was misrepresented
or anything important left out.”

This is another aspect of keeping a detailed campaign journal: The process of review not only helps to keep the record accurate, it also helps to reinforce the players’ memories of the session for future reference.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to convince the players to actually read the campaign journal. So I’ve taken to secretly docking their XP by 50% whenever they don’t do it.

(No, not really. That’s just my way of seeing whether or not any of them are reading these essays. I’ve found that if players don’t want to engage in a campaign, you can’t force them to do so through punishments. You need to keep adding carrots and trying different techniques to see what will stick. And what sticks will often change over time.)

My poor inbox (which was already wallowing under an inundation of holiday e-mails I have been unable to keep on top of) has been getting hit hard this morning with people asking me what I think of the freshly announced 5th Edition of D&D.

Short answer: I don’t really think anything about it. We know absolutely nothing about it, after all.

Slightly longer answer: According to ENWorld, the news was leaked to them in “early winter last year” and, at that time, the game had been “under development for some time” (to the point where they had a rough rules draft ready for playtesting by the press).

From this, it’s pretty easy to conclude what was already obvious when Slavicsek left the company and they started cancelling products: The Essentials product line was deemed an immediate failure by WotC . (Just as the early release of the Essentials rulebooks in 2010 told you that 4th Edition, as a whole, had failed.)

LOOKING AHEAD

I’ve said in the past that I currently don’t see a winning business strategy for WotC with a 5th Edition. Unsurprisingly, nothing I’ve heard in the last three hours has changed that opinion.

It should be relatively self-evident that the goal of a 5th Edition at this juncture is to re-unify the D&D customer base. (All the talk of “unity” in the announcement, of course, only confirms this.) But for all the talk about a “public playtest” and “asking D&D fans what they want in a new edition”, I’m not really seeing the mechanism by which 5th Edition solves WotC’s problems.

WotC, ultimately, faces an immutable truth: No reboot edition of an RPG has ever succeeded unless there is clear, deep, and widespread dissatisfaction in the existing customer base. And, as far as I can tell, there is no such dissatisfaction in the 4th Edition customer base. The biggest gripes they seem to have (if any) are the mini-revision of Essentials, the lackluster DDI support, and the lack of printed supplements. None of those complaints suggest a deep dissatisfaction with the system itself (quite the opposite, in fact).

Of course, there is widespread dissatisfaction with 4th Edition among players of previous editions. But that doesn’t actually help WotC.

Basically, the current D&D customer base consists of three broad groups:

(1) 3rd Edition players (either using the original rulebooks or having migrated to Pathfinder). These players, almost by definition, have said, “We’re happy with what we’ve got.” Which isn’t to say that many of them, including myself, aren’t open to new experiences. But the only way WotC can appeal to them en masse is to restore classic 1974-2008 D&D gameplay to 5th Edition.

(2) Unfortunately, restoring the classic gameplay of D&D is almost guaranteed to alienate the existing 4th Edition players.

(3) Finally, you’ve got a relatively small contingent of old school players. These guys are inherently even more conservative than the 3rd Edition players and, frankly, it’s impossible to publish anything new that will appeal to them en masse.

Honestly, I think the most likely outcome is that WotC will produce a game which attempts to return to classic D&D gameplay. But in an effort not to lose their existing 4th Edition players, they’ll try to strike a compromise between the two. The result may or may not be a great game, but commercially it will almost certainly fail: 3E players will reject the 4E elements and stick with the best-supported RPG in history. 4E players will reject a return to “wizard win buttons” and other spherical cows (which will presumably be even less true in 5E).

Things get worse when WotC cancels DDI support for 4th Edition (which seems likely) and creates another group of disenchanted customers who feel alienated and betrayed. Without an OGL to fall back on, a large percentage of this group will exit the game industry entirely.

Basically, my prediction here is that WotC will split their existing 4E fanbase (to one degree or another). They will pick up a relatively insignificant portion of the 3E and OSR fanbases. In short, WotC produces a 5E which performs even worse in the marketplace than 4E.

Things that could mitigate this doomsday prediction:

(1) WotC starts mending fences in really meaningful ways. Specifically, they need to look long and hard at some of the really unpopular decisions they’ve made and work to reverse them: Put previous edition PDFs back on sale. Make Dragon and Dungeon available in print again (even if it’s just POD).

(2) Reach out aggressively for new customers. I don’t know exactly what form this takes, but if WotC can find a way to replenish their customer base with new players then the continued schisming of the RPG marketplace won’t be as significant.

(3) Part of that, however, might be revamping the core products and methodology of your product line. Finding a way to truly abandon the proven failure of the supplement treadmill burnout cycle would also help.

(4) Restore the OGL.

There are also, unfortunately, a lot of things WotC could do that would make things worse.

WHAT WOULD I LIKE?

In an ideal world, I would like the version of D&D that became a missed opportunity in 2008. I talked about it a little bit here:

That’s the missed opportunity here: WotC had the chance to polish and improve Classic D&D; to take the next step with the game. Instead, they side-stepped and gave us New D&D instead.

Meanwhile, Paizo couldn’t make those changes with Pathfinder while simultaneously stepping into the void vacated by WotC.

In short, keep the core gameplay of D&D, fix the handful of problematic abilities at low levels, revamp high level play so that it doesn’t fall apart. Grab the utility of page 42 without the railroading advice and implement a cleaner/quicker system for creating monsters and NPCs.

I would also:

• Look to the OSR and reintroduce game structures that have been slowly stripped out of the game for the past 30 years.
• Embrace the D&D core sets strategy I’ve talked about previously featuring a stripped-down system very similar to what Legends & Labyrinths looks like.
• I would re-introduce the AD&D brand name to produce a Player’s Handbook, a Dungeon Master’s Guide, and a Monster Manual. These would be 100% compatible with the D&D product line. (If you’ve got a D&D module, you can run it in AD&D without conversion. If you create a monster with AD&D, you can run it in D&D. If you’ve got a D&D character, you can start using the AD&D character creation rules any time you level up. And so forth.)
• I’d go back to Dancey’s concept of “evergreen” products and try to make it work by focusing my actual supplement line on opening up new game structures. For example, I wouldn’t produce a book of “rules for ships”. Rules for ships are worthless unless you have a game structure that involves being on ships. What needs to be developed is a game structure for “being pirates” that’s as effective as the game structure for “being dungeoncrawlers”. Pull that off successfully and you’ll have created an entirely new market for adventure products.
• I’m hoping that I can buck the burnout pattern of the supplement treadmill by locking adventure content, rule content, and physical goodie content together into the boxed sets. If that doesn’t pan out, I’d just turn the boxed sets into limited editions and cycle them out of print.
• I would probably do everything in my power to avoid publishing splatbooks like Complete Warrior or Arcane Power. These books are not only the metastatic cancer of the supplement treadmill, but they make it actively more difficult for people to embrace non-“core” classes because the non-core classes never receive the same support. I’d rather have people reach for new experiences rather than glutting and then sating themselves on the supplement treadmill for fighters and wizards.
• Bring back the OGL if the legal department will let me get away with it.

If we got my “perfect edition”, would it make 5th Edition a success? Unfortunately, no. I believe it probably would have been a huge success in 2008 (particularly if released under the OGL) when the D&D trademark would have helped transition existing players to it.

But in 2011, at least half of WotC’s former market no longer has any loyalty to WotC or the D&D trademark. There is no easy mechanism for leveraging those players into a new edition, which means that you’re competing not only with their existing investment (of time, money, and experience) but with the most expansive library of support material ever produced for an RPG.

Tagline: Return of the Eight is pathetic. The first Greyhawk product since the line was canceled, it suffers from trying to fill the needs of two diametrically opposed extremes.

This is the first time I really ripped a product to shreds. As a reviewer, there really is something incredibly satisfying about flaying a terrible product. In fact, you can easily see that some reviewers get so addicted to the hit of ripping into stuff that this becomes all that they do.

Hopefully, I’ve managed to keep a more balanced head on my shoulders over the years. But I’m also clearly not one of those namby-pambies who think reviewers should adhere to the already dubious maxim that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”. If there is any profession where that maxim almost intrinsically does not apply, then it’s reviewing. I think you should be deeply suspicious of any reviewer who never has a bad thing to say.

Personally I looked forward with great anticipation to the return of the Greyhawk setting to the TSR line-up. When the line was canceled several years back I was among the protesters who thought this a bad idea. Greyhawk was your all-around “typical AD&D campaign world”, with good cause since it was one of the first. Its loss meant that you had very atypical settings (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc.), the super-powered Forgotten Realms, and the legend-oriented Dragonlance setting. Besides, there’s a lot of interesting stuff on Oerth – it may not have sold well in comparison to TSR’s other settings, but that might have had something to do with the fact that unlike the “three supplements a month” Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk was never adequately supported after Gygax’s departure from the company. Properly supported it would definitely, I thought (and continue to think), be a strong part of TSR’s line-up.

So when Peter Adkison and Wizards of the Coast announced that Greyhawk was to be brought back from the dead and properly supported I thought it was a great idea. When the product line was finally announced, I began looking forward eagerly to Return of the Eight, the first new Greyhawk product to be released since the line was canceled.

Having now read Return of the Eight I am bitterly disappointed, and have many unanswered questions, such as:

Why restart the Greyhawk setting with a module? Why use such terrible artwork? Why abandon all sensible lay-out? Why railroad the PCs? Why have caricatures for NPCs? Why abandon all logic in the final act? Why have an anticlimax? Why is there an elevator? But above all else…

What were they thinking?

WHAT YOU GET

Return of the Eight is a 64 page module written by Roger Moore. It begins in the city of Greyhawk a year after the end of the Greyhawk Wars. There’s a bunch of weird politics involved here, but you need a Greyhawk sourcebook which hasn’t been printed in half a decade in order to make sense of it all, so let’s cut to the chase: The Circle of Eight was a group of powerful wizards dedicated to fighting the good fight (these are the Good Guys). At the end of the Greyhawk Wars Ivid V (the Former Bad Guy) convinced one of the Eight (a bloke named Rary) to assassinate two other members of the Eight (Otiluke and Tenser). Simultaneously all of Tenser’s cloning material was destroyed, so he was really, really dead – there was no coming back this time. The really powerful wizard Mordenkainen even confirmed it through divination.

Which brings us to today when, naturally, Tenser is going to show up again. The Circle of Eight is attempting to reform itself and the PCs have the dubious pleasure of making acquaintances with one of them (a chick named Jallarzi). Now things get complicated again and you need that out-of-print sourcebook again. The demon Tuerny is involved in a plot with the witch Iggwilv and her son Iuz the Old (these are the Current Bad Guys). They corrupt Jallarzi and make it appear as if she has betrayed the Circle of Eight. Why they do this is never really explained, because the only thing it seems to accomplish is to lead the PCs and the Circle right to Tenser’s Castle – which is where these three hope to open a gate to one of Oerth’s moons and bring through their army within quick striking distance of the defenseless City of Greyhawk. Needless to say, the PCs go to Tenser’s Castle, go through the gate, and beat the bad guys.

Did I mention that for another unknown reason the Current Bad Guys activated Tenser’s cloning machinery on this moon of Oerth and cloned him, only to alter his clone into an extremely ugly, mute, blue-skinned midget? No? Well, I won’t. It’s too painful.

THE LAYOUT

The first odd thing that struck me about this product was the lay-out. The text is a nice, reasonably sized font and the margins aren’t too bad (the left, right, and bottom margins average less than an inch – but the top margin is about 3″ for no particular reason except that it allows them to interchange three repetitive sets of graphics over and over and over again).

But then it gets weird. If you’ve ever seen a GURPS manual you know exactly what this text in this module looks like – two columns, one narrow and the other wide. Except that in Return of the Eight that narrow column isn’t a sidebar – it’s just another column. Yes, that’s right – it’s two column text, but for no apparently good reason the columns are different widths. (What’s even more confusing is that after the first five pages the side on which the narrow column is located switches – I’m assuming this was just a lay-out error that nobody bothered to notice or fix.)

I initially thought someone had discovered that their word processing program could vary the widths of two-column text and thought, “Whoa! Cool!” and just hadn’t thought things through. What I learned later on was that all of the Greyhawk product line was to be laid out this way in order to give it a “distinctive look”.

This is even worse. There is nothing “distinctive” about this look – it looks just like a GURPS book. Except that in a GURPS book it actually serves a purpose!

(This plan has since been dropped because TSR’s customers pointed out that it was a really dumb layout technique. It will still infect the first few Greyhawk products, however.)

THE ART

The art in Return of the Eight is atrocious. The cover is not only downright ugly it is flat-out stupid – depicting the short, blue midget we will learn is actually Tenser inside grabbing onto the skirt of a buxom woman fighter (at least she isn’t wearing a chainmail bikini) and a male fighter with his shield and sword raised against this tiny, pathetic, blue midget. Meanwhile in the background about two feet away from the male fighter is a ten foot tall demon with four foot fangs. HELLO?! I don’t think the blue midget is the biggest problem you’re facing at this moment.

The interior art is no better. The poses are stiff and are helped little by the fact that the subject matter is so utterly boring and atrocious.

THE RAILROADING

The plot focuses on several key points:

1. The PCs must meet Jallarzi, her friend Marial, her pseudo-dragon Edwina, and another wizard named Warnes Starcoat all in the same evening in an amazingly contrived sequence.

2. One of the PCs must be hit on the head by Edwina falling out of the sky, which will lead to them discovering she was attacked, which will lead them to Jallarzi’s Tower.

3. The PCs must explore Jallarzi’s Tower.

4. The PCs must must go to Tenser’s Castle (not that anything they discovered in Jallarzi’s Tower will actually lead them to go there – they will be informed by Warnes that it is “obvious” they should go).

5. The PCs must must go through the gate to Oerth’s moon (not that they will have any clue why this is important).

6. The PCs must must defeat the Current Bad Guys and thwart their plans (not that there is any way for them to know who the Bad Guys are or what their plans were until after it’s all over).

As you may have gathered from all the “musts” above this is a fairly contrived plotline. It is made worse by the fact that Moore doesn’t even bother in many cases with pretexts to carry the PCs from one event to the next – they are either forced into the encounter (it just happens – for example, Edwina hits them on the head with no if’s, and’s, or but’s) or a handy NPC will say “go this way”.

Even odder to me is the transition between Act Two and Act Three – where the players leave Tenser’s Castle through a gate that takes them one of Oerth’s moons. Previously these PCs have been railroaded from one location and event to another, suddenly however there is no good explanation given for what happens. The gate in question is tucked in a back room of the keep and no particular importance is attached to it. In addition, Moore has gone out of his way to make it difficult to get through the gate – anyone entering the room is blown right back out again unless they really fight against it by the mysterious power of the gate. The problem here is that since the gate is not discussed as being important, no mention of dimension travel is made prior to this in the adventure, and the PCs are heartily discouraged from exploring that particular avenue. So why should they? My players said, “Right, Tenser the Mighty Magician doesn’t want us in there… let’s trust him.” After they had completely cleaned out Tenser’s Castle and were beyond irritation into downright frustration I eventually had to say, “Look, you’ve got to go through this gate so we can finish playtesting the adventure.” At which point we all commented how stupid it was to attach no importance to the gate and then make it nigh-to-impossible to get through, despite the fact that going through it is crucial to finishing the adventure.

It was initially pointed out to me that perhaps this was because the product line is being targeted towards “Old School” gamers who aren’t really interested in plots or character motivations, but just in dungeon-delving. I considered this awhile and then realized two things.

First, the “dungeons” (a Tower and a Keep) are pathetic for dungeon-delving – although there are several creature encounters that make no sense whatsoever. (How Tenser or Jallarzi live or lived in the places that are supposedly their homes is beyond me.)

Second, the plot revolves around highly complicated political intrigue that you need footnotes to figure out (particularly since the PCs will never be informed of what the hell is going on until it’s all over).

Perhaps it suffers from trying to be both — a story-oriented adventure, but with all the trappings of classic dungeon-delving. Whatever the case, it is among the worst examples of either I have ever seen.

THE MAPS

Now we come to another design flaw of the product – the location of the maps (as well as the occasional absence of maps).

First there is a map of the first floor of Jallarzi’s Tower inside the front cover, and a map of the second and third floors inside the back cover. These are very nicely done – detailed and highlighted in a style reminiscent of watercolors. On page 10 we have an exterior view of Jallarzi’s Tower, showing us what it looks like and how it all fits together – this little illustration tells us that the tower has six floors. We can only hope that the PCs never attempt to venture beyond the third floor because not only are no details of these floors provided, but no maps are either.

Moving onto Tenser’s Castle is where we begin to encounter serious problems. The castle and the approach to the castle are detailed in 8 maps scattered throughout the text describing various locations in the castle. This would be really handy… if whoever had placed the maps had done so with some relation to the text. Indeed, the order of the maps proceeds very naturally (1st through 7th floor, than the lower levels in order).

LOOK FOR THEM WHERE?

My other favorite trick with Return of the Eight is the manner in which they reference OOP products as if everyone had them. This feature of TSR’s modules (telling you where to find the complete write-ups for the monsters and NPCs they provide iterative stats for) is usually quite handy, allowing you to find out more information. I found it quite infuriating, however, when no useful information is given to me (requiring me to look it up if I am to use the creature or NPC in question) and the references point me towards:

Greyhawk Adventures. A 1st edition product that has been out of print for at least a decade.

The guide from the 1983 World of Greyhawk boxed set.

The Rogue’s Gallery. A 1980 product that no one has ever heard of.

Monster Manual II. A first edition product that has been out of print since 1989.

The oddest reference was to either The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (1995) or “The Dancing Hut”, from Dragon issue #83 (March 1984). Not only is it an odd reference, but it’s completely outside of Greyhawk.

The worst reference? D&D Original Set Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry. Although you could also look that one up in the first edition DMG as well.

There are other examples as well, but they usually aren’t so bad – pointing to products which were still produced just before Greyhawk went defunct, or which discussed the monster or NPC in enough detail that I did not actually need the reference. What puzzled me most was that the more likely it was that the reader would actually own the material in question, the more detail was given in the text. The more obscure the reference, the less information given.

LOOK UP AT THE SKY STUPID!

Act III, as already noted, takes place on one Oerth’s moons. The DM is cautioned multiple times and in great severity to not let the players in on this secret – do not tell them explicitly that they are no longer on Oerth, and only “let them slowly discover they are not” there.

My first reaction to this was: “If someone dropped me on a moon the first thing I’m going to notice is looking up into the sky and saying, ‘Hmmm… I wonder why there’s a big planet hanging up there instead of the moon I’m used to.’”

AN ELEVATOR?!

In Tenser’s castle there is an elevator. It is referred to as “The Great Lift”, but it is operated by pushing a button and it even has a chime. About the only thing that is missing is a set of bombs to take out the cables, and another set to take out the breaks if someone doesn’t pay a million dollar ransom.

Maybe the sequel to Return of the Eight will feature Teurny, Iggwilv, and Iuz planting a magical bomb on a chariot. If the chariot drops below 10 mph…

An elevator.

In a fantasy setting.

What were they thinking?

CONCLUSION

About the best thing you can say about Return of the Eight is that they were attempting to appeal to two very dichotomous groups of gamers – the role-oriented gamers and the hack-oriented gamers (and the latter should not be taken as an insult) – and they failed.

The worst thing you can say about Return of the Eight is…

What were they thinking?

This is an abysmal way to re-introduce the Greyhawk line (about the only thing I can figure out is that they though it would be “cool” to have product with the word “return” in the title to signal the “return of Greyhawk”). I have much higher hopes for future products in the line, but this is not a good start.

Stay away from this product. You’ll do nothing but waste $14 that could have been spent on something far more worth your while.

Style: 2
Substance: 1

Title: Greyhawk: Return of the Eight
Writers: Roger Moore
Publisher: TSR/Wizards of the Coast
Price: $13.95
Page Count: 64
ISBN: 0-7869-1247-2
Originally Published: 1998/07/29

I actually don’t mind a little science fantasy in my D&D fantasy. I’ve always been a fan of Tekumel and S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks currently appears in my OD&D hexcrawl campaign, for example. But I do tend to like it to possess a strong fantasy flavor (like Monte Cook’s chaositech, for example). And that elevator from Return of the Eight still sticks in my craw. I think the problem is that it’s such a wholehearted anachronism. I don’t have any problem with the idea of Tenser having a floating platform in the middle of his citadel — he is, after all, the creator of Tenser’s floating disc — but for it to literally be a modern elevator just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Awhile back I wrote “Treasure Maps & The Unknown: Goals in the Megadungeon“. This post is just a simple streamlining of an idea that was running throughout that essay:

If an RPG rewards you for a specific tactical method, that method will be preferred and sought out. For example, if the game rewards you only for combat, that provides a strong motivation to seek out combat. There will still be some strategic thought employed (as one differentiates between “challenges that can be overcome” and “shit that’s too tough for us”), but the tactical method being rewarded will be strong pre-selected.

If you shift the game’s reward to a strategic goal, on the other hand, then players are free to pursue any tactical method for achieving that goal. As a result, you game will be more flexible and, in my opinion, more interesting.

Actually, as I write this, I realize this principle probably applies beyond RPGs. For example, Chess provides only one reward (winning the game) and it only awards it when a strategic goal has been achieved (achieving checkmate). Imagine if Chess instead rewarded points based on capturing pieces. The entire focus of the game would be narrowed. And what if the game preferentially rewarded capturing pieces with your Rook instead of your Bishop? The focus of the game would become even more limited.

In a similar fashion,victory in Twilight Imperium is achieved when a player reaches 10 victory points. Virtually every reward in the game is a strategic one (which can be achieved using a variety of tactics depending on the circumstances of the game). The exception? One of the strategy cards gives the player picking it 2 victory points. This specific reward for a tactical method (“pick the Imperial Strategy card”) warps the game by “forcing” everyone to pursue that tactical method. The problem was so significant that Fantasy Flight Games completely revised the strategy cards in order to eliminate it in the first expansion pack for the game.

Technoir uses a simple core mechanic in which verbs are used to push adjectives onto characters. (For example, you might use your character’s Hack verb to push the adjective “exploited” onto a gunrunner’s security system.) That may look a little gimmicky, but it actually seems like a really slick little system.

What I find particularly notable about this is that it mechanically articulates and reinforces a procedure that I use almost constantly when I’m refereeing in virtually any system: When a player proposes an action with an uncertain outcome, the action is mechanically resolved using the rules of the game. Then I consider how that outcome has shifted the status quo and carry that knowledge forward as additional actions are proposed and resolved. I’m intrigued to see how a system that feeds directly into this process will perform in play: Will it piggyback it? Reinforce it? Interfere with it? Enhance it?

I’ll probably have more to say about Technoir once I’ve had a chance to actually play it, but my read-thru of the rulebook actually got me thinking about something completely different that I want to touch on today: Skill challenges in 4th Edition.

Technoir structures its core mechanic into Sequences using a very simple system of turn-taking. The trick to resolving sequences is pretty simple: Because adjectives are meaningful, the GM can use his common sense to know when a sequence ends (because the adjectives that have been applied will either result in the players being successful or unsuccessful in achieving their goal). This works because you can’t just slap adjectives on willy-nilly; you need to establish the proper vector by which the adjective can be applied. (In other words, you need to explain what actions you’re taking to achieve the objective.)

The result is that adjectives both arise naturally from the game world and also strictly describe the game world. As a result, sequences build organically and logically to unforeseen conclusions.

The system is, as far as I can tell, incredibly flexible and can be applied to almost any conflict (or what Technoir refers to as a “contention”): Hacking, seduction, combat, interrogation, tracking, chases, etc.

In other words, Technoir‘s sequences have the same mechanical goal as 4th Edition’s skill challenges (resolving discrete chunks of action in a structured format). But skill challenges are the polar opposite of Technoir‘s sequences:

First, whereas Technoir trusts the creativity and common sense of the players at the table to determine when a goal has been achieved (or thwarted), 4th Edition’s skill challenges hard-code a success-or-failure condition which is completely dissociated from the game world. Or, as Technoir puts it:

After any turn is taken and an action is performed, everyone at the table should look at what’s happening in the fiction. As I said before, there’s no score. You have to decide for yourselves when this ends. Each player should respect the adjectives that have been applied and removed and decide what her protagonist wants now — no matter what hse came into the scene wanting. You should do the same for your antagonists. You might find that one side got what they cam for and is done. Or that the two sides are now willing to compromise. Or that there are no good vectors for attacks any more. Look for new ways out of the situation. Maybe it’s time to stop rolling dice and cut to a new scene.

But if there is still something to contend over, go on to the next turn and play out the next action.

Technoir cares intimately and enthusiastically about what your characters have done, why they’ve done it, and what they’ve accomplished by doing it. 4th Edition’s skill challenges, on the other hand, don’t give a crap about any of that: If you haven’t rolled four successes yet, then your characters haven’t succeeded (no matter what they’ve achieved with those checks). And if you have rolled four successes, then your characters have totally succeeded (even if their actions haven’t actually achieved that yet).

Second, Technoir‘s system inherently gives freedom of choice to the players. They set their goals, determine their actions, and even demand their outcomes. (Of course, those demands may not always be satisfied.) Despite several years of constant errata and house rules attempting to soften 4th Edition skill challenge’s away from the rigid railroad presented in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, the system is still inherently antithetical to player choice. For example, here’s a key quote from the presentation of skill challenges in D&D Essentials Rules Compendium:

Each skill challenge has skills associated with it that adventurers can use during the challenge. (…) Whatever skills the DM chooses for a skill challenge, he or she designates them as primary or secondary. A typical skill challenge has a number of associated skills equal to the number of adventurers plus two.

Incredibly, skills that players want to use that the DM hasn’t pre-approved can never be considered primary skills and are automatically considered inferior (they can count for no more than one success and may not count for successes at all). By default, 4th Edition tells you that ideas originating from the players are not to be treated with the same respect as ideas originating from the DM. It’s hard-coded right into the rules.

The two approaches really are night and day: Technoir trusts the creativity of the players. 4th Edition shackles the creativity of the players.