Challenging the player vs the character

In most role playing there's going to be some conflict, some challenge (for other thoughts see here). But who is challenged, who overcomes the obstacle? There are four ways I see to deal with challenges in role playing.

First, we can challenge the character but not the player. The character's abilities are used to overcome the challenge. In a sense, the characters aren't real, so they cannot be challenged. However, similar thinking shows us that challenges in the fiction aren't real either! We pretend that it exists in the same way we pretend when we watch a movie or read a book. If the challenges aren't real and are directed at imaginary people then what is there to do for the players? When challenge is aimed at the characters, players make choices. This speaks a lot to what I was talking about last week in player ability vs character ability; when the ruleset takes care of how the character deals with all kinds of challenges, then the game is not about figuring out how to overcome the challenge. In this mode, role playing is possibly not a game. The game could be very dramatic (humor is another notable direction the game could take), in which hard decisions are made for the characters who are in situations with no good solution (I should say that I see a challenge as something that can be solved in some way). This will be boring if the challenges are roadblocks, if there are other ways or complications exist, this may still be rewarding play, but situations where there is a solution are boring because then you just roll some dice to either get out of the situation or not. That is the crux of the issue from last week; if we want to challenge the player we don't want stats for things like intelligence because we'll put all the challenges on the character. We need to recognize what we want.

Second, we can challenge the player with the same challenge that is presented in the fiction. This is "role playing it out", this is challenge-based adventuring, this is actually whipping out a chess board in the middle of role playing, this is solving puzzles in dungeons, this is coming up with strategies to solve your problems. I perhaps deride this method, even though I have some fond memories of it from playing AD&D. This thread on Story Games touches on some of the social contract issues of this style of play, the biggest for me is that it's very important for the GM to do a good job acting as the players' eyes and ears and make sure everyone has the same idea of odds of success for various strategies. That's all well and good but now it's story time!

I didn't really think about it at the time but when I played AD&D a big part of the game was puzzle solving. Not actual puzzles, but figuring out nifty solutions to problems. Probably my favorite was borne out of us going through the equipment list and penny counting to get us the little things that would help us later on. Once, all the characters were in various places in a market square and one character was getting arrested or taken in by some thugs. He begs pardon for a moment and attaches a bell to his tunic. I ask the DM "can I hear that?" and he says "yes!". Another time I was stopped by a guard (man, the establishment was out to get us! I may have been somewhere I wasn't supposed to be...) who asked me for my papers. I promptly reached into my bag and pulled out some random piece of paper with a seal on it and thrust it in his face. This being D&D and the guard obviously not being able to read, he sent me on my way. Another AD&D game we were all playing like 10th level wizards with bad-ass magic items. We were fighting golems of some sort (I think there were kind of a theme in that game) and I don't know what happened exactly but the players figured out how to defeat them easily and the DM said "yes!" happy that we had found his solution. I think that was characteristic of a lot of my play back then, finding the solution the DM had come up with.

Not all of my stories are off success though. Sometimes when the player gets challenged he fails. I had an AD&D spell-thief (I have fond memories of that kit) and I was sneaking into a mage's room in the inn from the roof through the window. Somehow I had managed to lose a boot. In the process of getting in I put my un-booted foot on the sill and got myself electrocuted by the magical trap. I was so mad. Spell-thieves are awesome at detecting magical traps and I had forgotten to check! If I had remembered I totally would have been able to get around it and I think I argued that I might have noticed the trap (this is why I understand why Burning Wheel's Instincts exist). It was my job as a player to suss out there was a trap or at least check, and I failed. In a D&D 3.5 Dark Sun game I was a smooth talking Psion who was trying to get a barkeep to show me the entrance to the undercity. We discuss him giving me access (we know it's somewhere in his establishment). Eventually I leave without what I want (my character's skills don't come into play), but ready to plan a way to sneak in. The DM comments to me that he just wanted me to bribe him, I may just have shrugged back but I knew that he wanted me to bribe him (he wasn't being very subtle), but I didn't know how much was appropriate and didn't want to guess. Here we had a disconnect. There was a part of a challenge, how much to try to bribe the barkeep, that the DM directed at me that I wanted directed at my character so I could make use of his formidable social skills.

Third, we can challenge the player with a different challenge than that which is presented to the character, but that represents the challenge to the character. Look at miniatures based combat; the challenge to the character is the actual fighting, while the challenge to the player is moving well and making use of the character's abilities. In Dread no matter what the challenge to the characters, the challenge to the players is to play Jenga. Larps often use rock-paper-scissors. Giving the player a different challenge affords us two things. First, we can include challenges that we could not otherwise (assuming the constraints of non-contact tabletop play), we can replace fighting with a tactical miniatures game. This allows us to include types of challenges that player can't actually overcome in the fiction while still challenging the player. Mouse Guard's conflict system is awesome for stuff like this, as it can turn a rough journey through the wilderness into a tactical game to challenge the players. Second, we can include challenges that the players do not want to overcome themselves. This is exemplified by social interaction of characters. Sure, the players can argue with each other or the GM, but maybe some players aren't as good at arguing and want to give their characters a fair shake. So we replace the challenge of convincing someone with Mouse Guard's conflict system again, or with playing a hand of poker, or whatever. But we must be aware of how the challenge we now present to the players will affect play. Is this new challenge something we want? If some players are not good at tactical miniatures games then maybe that isn't a good fit, or maybe they just don't enjoy them. Larps use rock-paper-scissors as a die replacement, ignoring the fact that you can play it as a game (yes, I'll back this up sometime). But as long as we are conscious, this can be very powerful. I'm a big fan of Dread even though I haven't gotten to play it yet.

Fourth, we can challenge the player with a challenge not connected with a challenge in the fiction. This is perhaps best paired with the first method, as then both the players and the characters are challenged but the challenges are unrelated. This is how Narrative or Story Now games exist as games. In Shadows the challenge is how to spend your tokens and negotiate with other players about their tokens in order to get what you want. One of the challenges in Burning Wheel is to engineer situations for your character so you can get the kind of test you need for advancement. This method also includes character creation in a lot of systems. In the fiction the character simply exists, but to bring that about is a challenge to the player to get the best build for the character he wants to play.