D&D General On Skilled Play: D&D as a Game

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, but part of what I am saying here is that if a player who "find it more enjoyable to imagine the story of being that person" but the GM wants to force their "cleverness" it sometimes sometimes happens by the GM ignoring character sheets. Not always of course. When it does happen the GM usually invokes "for the story" willing to sacrifice player agency for it. This results in them bein g story tellers instead of GMs. Its basically the number one reason that players start complaining about being railroaded. I am not saying its 100% bad 100% of the time, only that GMs have to be careful just as much as Players when it comes to metagaming ... and that meta gaming buy players can push the GM to meta game while metagaming by the GM can push players to metagame both in an attempt to mitigate type of play they don't what.

Yeah, there are a lot of variations in how things can break down or work in a sub-par way. The root of it is always some variation of granularity of detail WRT the dungeon, or some disagreements or lack of expertise about how things should play out in a given situation 'in reality' (or maybe even in terms of knowledge of genre, say how exactly a fireball works in a specific situation where players have a pre-existing understanding that is not shared with the GM or something like that).

Or else the dreaded 'differing agendas' where the players maybe don't WANT to meta-game, but the GM's setup is based on assuming they will, etc.

Actually, the history of D&D kind of recapitulates what is probably the most common trajectory. Players enter the game with the assumption that heroic fantasy of some variation is on the agenda, but it isn't in early classic D&D... At least not as-written. At best you can only do it at high level after you 'gain skill' (and mostly as a caster, or with casters being an integral ingredient to it). So, with each retelling of the game (edition/supplement/modification) the rules first slip in the direction of providing 'skills', which are an attempt to enable story telling by letting the players do stuff they cannot accurately describe or gauge the difficulty of.

Then comes the addition of 'DM Force' (already present in Gygax's explanations of how he GMs in 1e DMG). That is the initially ostensible neutral referee role becomes more 'game facilitator' and then 2e explicitly labels the GM as a story teller. Now the game is incoherent, because the rules are derived from, and the process is built around, basic skilled play GM describes the dungeon.

That leads to more attempts to add rules for everything, until you have 3.x, and finally someone designed 4e, a story game which can basically still be played in a 3.x-ish way, but frustrates people who want to do that. Then the trend finally breaks, 5e is basically 2e-redux, just as incoherent as ever! sigh.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know dungeon world enough to say for certain, but I'm fairly sure there are underlying mechanics for your actions and whether they succeed or fail.

Well... the model is pretty different. There are 'moves', but DW (PbtA generally I assume) is truly fiction first. Players don't get to say "I'm using Hack & Slash", they have to describe their actions in terms of the fiction. There is also very little player-facing rules structure. There are no 'turns', 'initiative', or anything like that. The player states what his character does, and the GM determines whether or not anything needs to be resolved, and if failure would be interesting. If so he determines which move covers the action and asks for a 'check'. There are very few modifiers to checks. PC's ability score mods might apply, and maybe something like 'hold' (representing the effect of a spell or an advantage gained from preparing beforehand, etc. usually specifically called out as a consequence of another move).

That being said, MOST of the time it is pretty clear what move will be used, if I cast a Sleep spell at an orc, you can be pretty sure the move is 'Cast A Spell' (a wizard-specific move). Still, there is no notion of difficulty, nor really of anything like 'advantage' or 'disadvantage'. The dice roll is there to determine strictly whether the move resulted in a negative consequence (either spelled out or a GM move), a success (player gets their new fictional positioning) with consequences/drawback, or if they advance the fiction exactly as intended (and maybe get something extra at times, or get the best possible result). This is less a test of skill than it is a way of making the evolution of the story uncertain, though not ENTIRELY. Certainly there is common sense skill involved, and DW has gear, etc. which can provide options or fix problems.

While the game has quite a bit of fictional exposition - it's not necessarily fictional exposition that can be acted upon in ways to nearly guarantee success. If so then those diegetic actions in dungeon world fail the 'skilled play' part of my description. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To continue from above... Eh, I think there are VERY clearly 'better' and 'worse' moves for a given player to make at a specific point. A wizard PC would not normally try to melee an orc. Players recklessly bashing through doors and making a lot of noise will probably find that the GM's moves will consist of rapidly (that is in fictional time) escalating the amount of attention that monsters pay to them, or springing some traps on them, etc.

OTOH, I agree that the GOAL of the game, that is the GM's agenda at least, includes putting the PCs under pressure. That is going to happen, guaranteed, unless the GM is failing to play correctly. So, regardless of how clever the players are, they are going to be in hot water soon. It is more like the players get to choose their poison, they can't really avoid trouble altogether. IN THEORY players in a Gygax dungeon COULD, though I'm pretty sure Gygax would say that the proper response to that would be to add more difficult elements to the dungeon (or ones which negate the players tactics, etc.). A while back I stated that the OD&D and DW agendas might not be so different in practice, this is what I meant.

Part of the problem I keep coming back to is the attempt to separate 'skilled play' as something generic apart from any particular game. I don't think that is correct. Skilled play as a detailed non-generic concept very much depends on the game context that it's being spoken of. That's why trying to play certain RPG's via what's being termed 'skilled play' here may actually result in very unskilled play for those games.

I don't think anyone would argue otherwise. Plainly if you start throwing molotov cocktails around your starship in Traveller that will not prove to be skilled play... However, I think we can still recognize a Traveller equivalent to a dungeon (though Traveller has a slightly different agenda than early D&D). In fact, isn't the VERY FIRST Traveller module basically a dungeon? It is, IIRC, a derelict starship, filled with nasty stuff!

That is: the game system and player goals are prerequisites before we can actually talk about skilled play. It's why I keep saying that talking about 'gygaxian skilled play' doesn't make alot of sense outside a 'gygaxian game'. Whereas it does make some sense to talk about what elements of 'gygaxian skilled play' are also present in the skilled play of other games.

I think Gary could have applied exactly the same formula to other games. In fact I think Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World do pretty much exactly that (granted that the tone is pretty absurdist in GW overall). Boot Hill could be played that way as well, though it tends to devolve down into a skirmish game. I agree that the Dungeon of D&D is a sort of paragon of this concept however.

 

[pemerton]

Part of the problem I keep coming back to is the attempt to separate 'skilled play' as something generic apart from any particular game. I don't think that is correct. Skilled play as a detailed non-generic concept very much depends on the game context that it's being spoken of.

<snip>

the game system and player goals are prerequisites before we can actually talk about skilled play. It's why I keep saying that talking about 'gygaxian skilled play' doesn't make alot of sense outside a 'gygaxian game'. Whereas it does make some sense to talk about what elements of 'gygaxian skilled play' are also present in the skilled play of other games.

it would be sad if we couldn't break down this idea of Skilled Play to track its developmemt to its modern incarnation of character optimization, and combat encounter tactics.

Understanding them as a product of "Skilled Play" and ongoing efforts to solve problems within that design space, feels pivotal to the overall discussion.

I agree with FrogReaver here. Which means that I don't feel that talking about character optimisation and combat tactics in modern versions of D&D and similar RPGs is part of this particular discussion.

To elaborate: one of the members of my group is strong in optimisation mathematics - I met him when he was doing a Masters in the field, but he quit that and went on to be a financial analyst instead, and now lives in a very nice house in a very nice suburb of Melbourne! When our main game was Rolemaster, he played a fighter-type. He had spreadsheets that had calculated local optimums for various sorts of strategies vs various sorts of opponents (like trying to take down certain categories of opponents in a single swift strike; defending against multiple foes; etc).

That's certainly a type of skill, and it worked - his character was ferocious in combat, and deploying the optimisation strategies was a part of that.

It's just that this has very little to do with what Gygax called "skilled play".

In the same campaign two players advanced their positions by making choices about relationships with significant NPCs. That's a type of player skill too, but different from both spreadsheet optimisation and from Gygaxianism.

 

[Voadam]

In the same campaign two players advanced their positions by making choices about relationships with significant NPCs. That's a type of player skill too, but different from both spreadsheet optimisation and from Gygaxianism.

What do you see distinguishes that from skilled play?

I thought that players choosing to avoid some monsters, being ready to fight when necessary, stategically engaging some monsters, making alliances with others, and pitting fractious enemies against each other were types of clever player thinking tactics to get through the challenges in skilled play style.

I thought that talking to monsters was part of the dungeon dynamic that players could handle skillfully or not.

 

[pemerton]

I thought that players choosing to avoid some monsters, being ready to fight when necessary, stategically engaging some monsters, making alliances with others, and pitting fractious enemies against each other were types of clever player thinking tactics to get through the challenges in skilled play style.

I thought that talking to monsters was part of the dungeon dynamic that players could handle skillfully or not.

Agreed.

In the same campaign two players advanced their positions by making choices about relationships with significant NPCs. That's a type of player skill too, but different from both spreadsheet optimisation and from Gygaxianism.

What do you see distinguishes that from skilled play?

Because the choices were not made in relation to a dungeon. Both were about relationships in the colloquial, romantic sense. Both unfolded over sessions (in fact, years) of play and levels of PC development. In one case the player invested heavily in aspects of PC build to secure the relationship. And the relationships paid off in thematic story terms, not remotely in the sort of tactical or strategic fashion you describe above.

 

[Manbearcat]

Perhaps because TTRPGs, unlike sports and dramatically moreso than card games, are pure abstractions and thus contain no parts that cannot in principle be modified or combined? I mean, if we look at other forms of pleasurable activity, particularly ones where the rules and content are abstract even if the experience or process is not, you totally do see people combining stuff, constantly. Fusion cuisine. Music that blends styles together, or re-interprets a classic of one genre in the style of another (like electro-swing covers, an example I personally like). Genre mashups. Some of that is just because people like the distinct parts and want to bring them together. But it's definitely also sometimes the result of disparate interests meeting in the middle and finding something that satisfies all involved--some bands develop their distinctive style from precisely that.

Or perhaps it's because, unlike literally any of the above things, committing to an RPG campaign is a pretty big deal? You're talking about doing the same thing on a (semi-)regular schedule. This isn't "we'll play golf next week, George, this week we're playing basketball." It's "we'll play richly-detailed, self-consistent characters next year, George, this year we're playing SP." There's a hell of a lot more reason to advocate for getting at least some of the things you value most, because you may be waiting for a very long time if you don't--or you may get (unintentionally) excluded. I've been running the same game for over three years now (with the occasional off week or break). If I had had a friend to whom I'd said, "Hey man, this is a narrative-focused game, we'll play something SP-focused next time," I think they would be understandably upset that they'd waited three years with no sign of a new game happening.

Going back to the other issue: I still don't get how this isn't "about SP" @pemerton. It just seems like common sense to me that, if you have a friend you think might not be on board but that you would like to be on board, you'd think about what can be done. That's thinking about SP, what makes it tick, what parts of it are "optional" vs "mandatory," what the rationale was behind including certain elements, etc. Thinking about the "why" of SP, and if possible, taking that knowledge and making it more accessible to those who wouldn't necessarily mesh well with it. And it seems to me pretty likely that in any given group of 3-5 players, having someone among them not be totally absolutely 110% committed to SP seems...reasonably probable?

I mean, it's not like Actor is the only player archetype unlikely to be enthused by this style. Hardcore simulationists--and I know for an absolute fact there are such players on this very forum--are likely to find certain elements of SP distasteful, since SP wears its gamist leanings on its sleeve. Are those elements absolutely required, or optional? Can they be altered or replaced with something that fulfills the same rationale, but which would be palatable for those who really need to feel like there's a "real world" being run without bias or artificiality? If these elements are not optional and cannot be meaningfully altered, you've found clear lines where you can tell your simulationist (or actor) friends, "This is how this game works, it's what we're here for. If that isn't for you, we wish you good gaming elsewhere. If you can stomach that, great, we can have a good game together."

This just....seems like the thing to do when you're wanting to work with your friends to achieve the group's common interests (everyone enjoying the shared activity to some extent, everyone getting to see the things they like). Even if you don't have a suspicion that one or more people in the group might not be immediately 100% on board, you think about the ways that what your offering may or may not fit your specific group, and how you can make it fit better. No game is perfect, no style is perfect. Plumbing the depths of what makes that style tick, what it NEEDS vs what it just often has, etc. just....seems like the thing to do if you want to get the most enjoyment out of the things you choose to run.

I'm going to tag @AbdulAlhazred here as some of my reply touches on his own reply to me.

Full disclosure here. I don't think any of this is going to be persuasive to you (either of you I suppose), but not because I don't find it persuasive. Rather, given the framing of what you've said above is revealing (at least to me) a profound orientation difference between you guys and myself with respect to these two pastimes. I don't know why that is (in fact, I find it completely confounding my ability to even think how I might further approach this conversation with you guys), but hopefully it will be made clear with what I write below.

1) On abstraction:

I don't know which of these two orientations toward the material we're talking about is more odd to me, but I'm just handling this in order. (a) I don't remotely see how one could perceive TTRPGs as pure abstraction and (b) I certainly don't see how one could draw this sort of stark contrast between TTRPGs and (say) a grappling session or a game of basketball.

Yes, D&D broadly has a series of abstraction to facilitate play:

Hit Points
(Classic) Saving Throws (but not 4e Defenses)
To Hit Roll
Armor Class

...and the like.

4e has some specific abstractions:

(1st iteration) Come and Get It
Daily Powers
Skill Challenges (and every piece of conceptual machinery that undergirds them including GMing techniques)
Streetwise

...and the like.

And there are other abstractions that are typically in the form of either (i) resources (like Stress in Blades) or (ii) Traits/Relationships (like in Dogs) that can be martialed in dice pools to bring to bear in conflicts. And Fortune in the Middle resolution is an abstraction until the fiction sures up what happen (upon which time it ceases to become an abstraction).

But that doesn't make TTRPGs abstractions broadly and it certainly doesn't make many/most (depending upon the game) facets of mechanical architecture or certainly play procedures abstractions. And if the "shared imagined space" of a TTRPG is considered an abstraction, then we're right on the precipice of the reality that all human perception and mapping onto the medium of reality is effectively an abstraction of our idiosyncratic neurology (which is the reason why eyewitness testimony is so heterogenous and so often unreliable).

My experience and then recounting of a sparring session in BJJ or a game of basketball is always going to experience some level of "drift" (often significant) when compared to my opposition. Its a simple matter of course. Even if we profoundly limit sparring to "gi > knee on belly > attack/defend cross collar choke or brabo choke or baseball bat choke." I've limited the play/move space dramatically, yet the experience and the recounting of what happened in even a 10 minute session where we each take turns attacking/defending is going to be significant. The same thing applies to basketball when you've limited the play/move space dramatically. There is so much happening at the rote level and at the creativity level (again, even within a constrained play/move space) that our neuromuscular responses are operationalizing things in a way that the only way we can be absolutely sure about what happened is if we're filming and playing it back. In fact, this is has become mainstream in sport/martial arts (to better acquaint yourself with your cognitive loop during physical interactions in order to better train the mind and refine technique...because "you're not piloting the ship" the way you think you are in the moment).

The sensory experience of this is very similar to mapping a shared imagined space and marshalling abstract resources/resolution machinery for what are actually concrete interactions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this is one of the reasons why every time I see someone say something like 4e's combat system is metagame nonsense, my immediate response is "wow, this person is an almost virtual lock for having little to no experience with combat sports or relatively high level/competitive ball sports...because this is amazingly similar to what the sensory experience is like!" The reliance on heuristics, automaticity, and rote behavior is what the reality and experience of these things are...and in a great many ways its kindred to 4e combat and Dogs conflicts and elements of Blades Scores.

2) If we're assuming "campaign" as the standard/buy-in for TTRPGing, then the standard/buy-in we should be assuming "season" for sports, "weekly game" for cards/boardgames, and "school" for martial arts.

I mean, to be quite honest, the "pick-up" experience for sports/card games/martial arts in my life makes up probably less than 10 % of the play. Outside of basketball/tennis and the stray game of Monopoly/Risk, I'm playing an entire season worth of baseball/football (which is pretty much the only way you're playing it), my Spades and Poker games were weekly, continuous affairs when I was playing, and no one is involved in a martial art without it being a lifestyle and belonging to a school.

The idea that TTRPGs should be assumed to be campaigns (rather than the stray game of Sorcerer or My Life With Master or a Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawl or a one-off of MHRP/CoC or a 3/4-off of Mouse Guard/Dogs/AW) yet these other things should be assumed to be merely "pick-up" play or "one-offs" is not something that makes a lot of sense to me. D&D and its derivatives (including DW and Torchbearer) and games like Blades assumes a 3 month+ campaign. But I'm not sure that its something that should just be assumed and I'm 100 % certain that these other experiences should just be assumed to be low buy-in/no committment/pick-up affairs.

It's weird reading through that post, because, uh....from what I can tell, this makes 4e a classic-culture game: one concerned with game balance, constructing "fair" challenges, making the process of play itself entertaining and engaging. The focus, of course, is on the battlemap rather than the overworld, but otherwise that's the only "culture of play" that really fits. (Consider the number of pro-4e DMs who cite that 4e means they don't have to "pull punches" when throwing stuff at their players.) There are certain "storygame" elements as well, e.g. having mechanics that are themselves the story for a class or race, but otherwise that style is a bit outside 4e's scope. Yet, if I were a betting man, I would absolutely bet real actual money that most "classic culture" players would be apoplectic at the suggestion that 4e is a continuation of, or participant in, their culture of play. (I am not a betting man, so I won't. But that sounds like a bet that you can't lose.)

I'm not going to add anything here other than I agree with @pemerton 's assessment that he put forward (though I do disagree with his conception of 4e Skilled Play and its consequences on play a bit, but I don't have time to push back against that right at this moment!).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think some stacked quotes happened in there, @Manbearcat so I'm going to try to respond to the high-level stuff rather than response-in-detail as I normally do.

For me, things like cuisine, music, and TTRPGs are "pure abstraction" because the rules/instructions only exist at a pretty high level. They may be very good at generating specific emotional/sensory experiences (e.g. a perfect authentic cadence feels like an ending, even to someone who doesn't know anything about classical music composition), but the rules are pretty much divorced from anything but incredibly basic practice (e.g. you still have to cook things, but I can make "stir fry" in an ordinary steel-and-copper skillet even though that's NOT how "true" stir fry "should" be made).

A sport, on the other hand, is almost always tied to very specific, very physical tools--a particular ball shape/design, for example--and specific permission for how one may interact with those physical tools. E.g., only goalies can touch a "football" with their hands, being "off sides" is a bad thing, holding a basketball for too long is a bad thing, etc. It's significantly more difficult to blend baseball with basketball, where the tools are entirely distinct and the rules for interacting with them could hardly be more different, than it is to blend Italian cuisine with Chinese cuisine even though the "physical tools" (meats, vegetables, starches, sauces, etc.) are still extremely distinct.

TTRPGs involve very few distinctly physical tools: some type of random-number generator (often dice, but digital tools are common these days, and other games use cards, spinners, or coins), pen and paper for recording information, sometimes movable pieces and maps to put them on (but not always, TotM is really big these days). As a result, much more like music than like a sport, the "rules" of the experience are mostly "abstract," in that they correspond either entirely or almost entirely to manipulations of the ideas that lead to the emotions/sensations, rather than manipulation of the physical practice itself.

My example of an electro-swing cover is useful: "electro" refers to changing the instrumentation, which changes the timbre and tonal color of a piece (I grant this is pretty physical), but "swing" refers to stylistic flourishes and composition choices, which exist completely independently of what instrument you play it on, or even if you play the piece at all. I see the difference between "SP" and "storygame," between "simulationism" and "gamism," in a very, very similar light. Not perfectly identical, I grant, but the similarity is significant and practical. Much of what makes a game an "SP" experience lies in things that I would call pretty abstract, like the design of the random-encounter tables. These are things that can easily be combined with other styles--e.g., you could quite easily make "wandering monster" tables for 3e, 4e, or 5e, despite these often being seen as wildly divergent from "SP" play at the outset.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think some stacked quotes happened in there, @Manbearcat so I'm going to try to respond to the high-level stuff rather than response-in-detail as I normally do.

I fixed it. Sorry about that.

A sport, on the other hand, is almost always tied to very specific, very physical tools--a particular ball shape/design, for example--and specific permission for how one may interact with those physical tools. E.g., only goalies can touch a "football" with their hands, being "off sides" is a bad thing, holding a basketball for too long is a bad thing, etc.

<snip>

These are things that can easily be combined with other styles--e.g., you could quite easily make "wandering monster" tables for 3e, 4e, or 5e, despite these often being seen as wildly divergent from "SP" play at the outset.

I'm pulling these two out because I think they cut right into the meat of our differences. I'm going to start with the bottom first.

1) Yes, you could add Wandering Monsters to 3e, 4e, and 5e. However, you aren't even close to systemitizing them in an integrated way at this point. You'll get nothing like the experience of Moldvay Basic's Wandering Monsters on play merely by "adding them." I've discussed this ad nauseum with respect to 5e. You have to have an Exploration Turn + Rest Turn + Light Clock scheme (i) matter to play such that the decision-tree navigated for all of the constituent parts have teeth both in the moment and downstream on the delve as a whole (each part has to be QCed for its role...if Equipment Loadout/Encumbrance is irrelevant and/or Light is trivial to attain/maintain and/or Gold/XP isn't a thing and/or trivial combats are easily resolved without attrition) at all, (ii) have sufficient stakes (that are measured and weighted at a system level), (iii) all of the units/moves involved (1st order durations, 2nd order considerations such as do I take this spell/move vs that one and what are the impacts) have to be QCed, and (iv) the whole exploration conflict system can't trivially be obviated (overwhelmingly via apex power in the way of Spells).

TLDR - "Adding Wandering Monsters" to 3.x, 4e, 5e is probably 5 % of the design work. You still have the entire integration process (which involves QCing the rest of the system for failure points...of which there are MANY in those 3 systems for the actual system purpose and experience of the Wandering Monster Clock). It would be like removing or changing the Light or Condition Clocks from Torchbearer. The 1st and 2nd order effects on the play paradigm are enormous.

2)

* And D&D Initiative governs who goes 1st.

* And D&D spells have Range, Duration, etc etc.

* And Blades in the Dark has a strict Stress Pool that must be managed and has rules for replenishing it and what happens if you burn through it on a Score.

* And Dogs in the Vineyard has rules for escalating conflicts and adding to your dice pool and adding Traits/Relationships/Things to Conflicts and determining Fallout.


I mean this is endless when it comes to TTRPGs. I could literally spend probably several hours just rattling "very specific, physical (insofar as they tightly encode and govern play interactions/collisions) tools" for TTRPG games that I've run in my life.

To use your "cuisine blending" example: I would say its trivially true that "TTRPG blending" is significantly more fraught enterprise than "cuisine blending" (I'm not a particularly accomplished cook, but I can identify coherent textures/flavor profiles and have them relatively accommodate each other in a dish or as a meal...meanwhile I'm extraordinarily accomplished as a TTRPG GM and hacker and I come up with off-the-cuff design instantiations in game that I'm intimately familiar with that I find relatively unpalatable). Simultaneously, I would say that "sport blending" and "mixed martial arts" have had enormous success (and a lot of games are actually born directly from the crucible of "sport blending").

Finally, sport has an enormous number of "squishy" subjectivity refereeing involved in it; the Block/Charge call in Basketball, the Catch, Personal Fouls, Defensive Holding, Offensive Holding, Defensive Pass Interference, Offensive Pass Interference (to name a few) rules in American Football, and combat sports_are_utterly_littered with them (before you even go to judging/scorecards!).

---

I've read and interacted with plenty of your posts in the past and you've never struck me as the "system doesn't matter" sort of poster. But what I'm reading from your last few posts feels very much like that.

Am I reading you correctly or are you saying something like "TTRPG system design/structure (including everything that it encodes, promotes, constrains) is significantly less concrete and significantly less impactful than the same design/structure is for something like Sport which doesn't strictly have a governing shared imagined space?"

I certainly don't agree with "system doesn't matter" but I don't even agree with the more nuanced, less strident second version.

Can you comment on that?

 

[pemerton]

To my mind, adding wandering monsters (TM) to 4e D&D would be likely to be unrewarding. 4e doesn't work particularly well if avoiding combat becomes an aim of play, given that combat is an obvious locus of play; but then if the players have their PCs engage the wanderers, instead of interesting combats you get boring ones!

 

[Manbearcat]

To my mind, adding wandering monsters (TM) to 4e D&D would be likely to be unrewarding. 4e doesn't work particularly well if avoiding combat becomes an aim of play, given that combat is an obvious locus of play; but then if the players have their PCs engage the wanderers instead of interesting combats you get boring ones!

Unrewarding doesn't remotely go far enough.

Try UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY DYSFUNCTIONAL AND NOT WORKABLE WITHOUT REWORKING THE SYSTEM AND PLAY PARADIGM FROM THE GROUND UP.

Now you're talking.