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

[clearstream]

2. Your analysis is bizarre for a simple reason- if something exists, then it seems odd to say that (for example), "I'm not sure that a game can be truly difficult on those terms{.}" Simply put, if other people are telling you that they engage in a modality of play, it is borderline dismissive for you to assert that. It would be similar to someone saying, "Oh, you're one of those people that does everything with skills, right? Glorified button masher. How can a game be difficult on those terms?" I mean ... that would betray a profound ignorance of an entire modality of play, and be kind of insulting.

Hmm... to the first part of that, I would suggest that to be difficult, and to be difficult gamefully, are two different things. That's non-pejorative: there is no special virtue to gameful over non-gameful difficulty. To the second part, I would say that posters to this thread have presented many different takes on SP.

Were you saying - "SP exists" - then I'm suggesting that it does not exist pinned out clearly, like a collector's butterfly. What exists is a cloud of rather similar ideas sharing a label. To suppose that the entire form and implications of ideas have been articulated with certainty (or even clarity) by their holders flies in the face of experience. There is nothing unusual - nothing at all bizarre - about teasing out the form and implications of ideas. It continuously arises in philosophy, and ludological ideas are especially slippery.

3. Finally, as I already stated, skilled play is mode of play that was emphasized early on, but that didn't mean that there wasn't (for example) role play, optimization, or any number of other ways of engaging with the game.

I feel you made that clear at the outset. It is a slightly unfortunate label, given there is no desire to say that "skilled play" means that this mode of play is skilled (no quotes) and other modes are - by implication - not skilled! But more importantly, to talk about it I think we did need to grasp the nettle of what was not meant. What could be considered skill in play (again, no quotes) without amounting to "skilled play".

There was at no time any assumption that you were excluding other modes or putting one above another. (I remember misapprehending your intent in another thread, and I have held that misapprehension firmly in mind when reading this thread.)

 

[pemerton]

From what I can tell, skilled play means "negotiating with/manipulating/persuading the DM to rule in your favor using lateral thinking/fictional positioning/logical reasoning."

I think there's a slightly cynical edge to this (introduced especially by "manipulating") but it's basically right. In the D&D context, though, we have to talk about the content/topic of that "lateral thinking" and "logical reasoning" - the focus is very much on geography, architecture, and certain physical actions. In principle the sort of approach you describe might be used for a politically-focused RPG, but that wouldn't be much like Gygaxian D&D!

 

[pemerton]

Is "Skilled Play" Prescriptive or Descriptive? I would certainly describe my group's character optimization to be a form of skilled play, in that it is a skill they earned through practice and experience, and the game rewards them for that skill with greater ability to solve problems, and with survival. It takes commitment and study to learn the theory, and combinations that offer power in the game space in crunchy option heavy games. My personal favorite, Pathfinder 2e frames this in such a way that timing the use of abilities, and managing action economy, take judgement-- so even without any kind of Macguyver-plans the there is skill being expressed through play.

While I understand that this is different than what is conventionally meant, my takeaway from this thread so far is that the boundaries of skilled play are being set prescriptively by sensibility, rather than the presence of skill in play.

It's a label used to describe an actual tradition of D&D play. The sort of thing you describe for PF2 is present also in 4e D&D, and in Rolemaster. But it is not an important component of "skilled play" in the Gygaxian or OP sense.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

It's a label used to describe an actual tradition of D&D play. The sort of thing you describe for PF2 is present also in 4e D&D, and in Rolemaster. But it is not an important component of "skilled play" in the Gygaxian or OP sense.

Right, I'm challenging the purpose of the distinction-- keeping them separate may be arbitrary rather than justified.

 

[pemerton]

Were you saying - "SP exists" - then I'm suggesting that it does not exist pinned out clearly, like a collector's butterfly. What exists is a cloud of rather similar ideas sharing a label.

What are the boundaries of impressionism? Or film noir? Or team-based ball sports?

I think "skilled play" as a tradition in D&D play has as much meaningfulness as any other label used for a particular tradition within a larger practice. Do you have a copy of Gygax's PHB, and if so have you read his discussion of "Successful Adventures"?

I'm suggesting that it can then only be playing the game as a game if there are subsequently or contextually mechanical effects.

The main effects of any player "move" in a RPG is a change in the shared fiction. That's what RPGing is about, most fundamentally. Sometimes the agreement of participants to change the fiction is driven by a mechanical process of resolution ("The orc reaches zero hit points - it's dead!"). Sometimes it is not ("I walk across the room and open the door".)

Burning Wheel says to the participants (1) "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and (2) only say "yes" if its low or no stakes. So in BW there will be no agreed changes in stakes-laden fiction without a mechanical process - this is an express tenet of the game.

Gygaxian D&D rejects that tenet. As per @MichaelSomething's post not far upthread, a Gygaxian GM should be saying "yes" whenever the logic of the fiction - which (unlike BW) is already authored by him/her in the form of map-and-key - dictates.

As it happens I prefer (and its a very strong preference) BW to Gygaxian play. That preference rests on the fact that they are very different RPGing experiences, And the different approach to when the GM should say "yes" is a huge part of that.

 

[pemerton]

Right, I'm challenging the purpose of the distinction-- keeping them separate may be arbitrary rather than justified.

Well, I think it's very helpful. If I turned up to a game advertised one way and found out I was playing Gygaxian/Pulsipherian D&D I would be pretty irritated. Conversely, if I advertised my 4e game as "skilled play" and all these Gygaxians turned up they would be rightly irritated.

See my post just upthread for one attempt to capture the fundamental difference: 4e D&D isn't identical to BW, but it's much closer to BW than it is to Gygaxianism.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Well, I think it's very helpful. If I turned up to a game advertised one way and found out I was playing Gygaxian/Pulsipherian D&D I would be pretty irritated. Conversely, if I advertised my 4e game as "skilled play" and all these Gygaxians turned up they would be rightly irritated.

See my post just upthread for one attempt to capture the fundamental difference: 4e D&D isn't identical to BW, but it's much closer to BW than it is to Gygaxianism.

I'm not sure they would be justified in that, the distinction is entirely arbitrary and you can have both actively happening in the same time, I as the potential GM of this game, have no need to design or run by such constraints. Which is where the precriptivity and descriptivity come in, I think prescreptivizing "Skilled Play" as being exclusive of these other elements becomes more about gatekeeping than anything else because it attempts to define game styles by mutually exclusive elements, that aren't mutually exclusive to begin with.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We are almost in 50 AG (after Gygax), I think some concept like skilled play can evolve.
You have well describe the origin of the concept, but what do we do with it in 2021?

Sure, skilled play can evolve, but the way @Snarf Zagyg defined it, which is a perfectly good traditional definition, doesn't include anything that involves mechanics, except in a very incidental way (IE if the thief checks for traps, you use the mechanics for that, but he has to pretty much say exactly what he's checking). So it basically excluded all the ways that 'modern' RPGs handle things. I think a lot of us agree with you that players can demonstrate skill in playing modern RPGs, and that meets the criteria of 'plain English', but it doesn't match the technical definition, the jargon use of the term.

 

[Krachek]

Sure, skilled play can evolve, but the way @Snarf Zagyg defined it, which is a perfectly good traditional definition, doesn't include anything that involves mechanics, except in a very incidental way (IE if the thief checks for traps, you use the mechanics for that, but he has to pretty much say exactly what he's checking). So it basically excluded all the ways that 'modern' RPGs handle things. I think a lot of us agree with you that players can demonstrate skill in playing modern RPGs, and that meets the criteria of 'plain English', but it doesn't match the technical definition, the jargon use of the term.

As I follow this thread I get disappointed by the concept of skilled play.
Skilled play, a game, finally I understood that Skilled play was awarded when you ultimately bypass all game mechanics. Nice. Obviously in basic puzzle in fact it requires players skill, but otherwise players clever ideas are so bias evaluated by DM knowledge, common sense, tropes and others that I can hardly qualify those clever ideas as skilled. Maybe we could use consensual play, cooperative play, but skilled it’s seem odds.

 

[clearstream]

The main effects of any player "move" in a RPG is a change in the shared fiction. That's what RPGing is about, most fundamentally. Sometimes the agreement of participants to change the fiction is driven by a mechanical process of resolution ("The orc reaches zero hit points - it's dead!"). Sometimes it is not ("I walk across the room and open the door".)

That's true. It may be productive to think about some RPG mechanics as defining player fiat over the shared fiction (which is distinct from player influence over that fiction).

I'm not saying SP falls outside roleplaying. I am suggesting it falls outside gaming, if to be a game depends on system, rules, quantifiable outcomes. (The view of Salen and Zimmerman, and others.) There are challenges to that view, yet if we want games to be something we can positively speak about, then we must be able to count some phenomena as not games.

Based on all the above - I might propose SP is play, and it is role-play, and when it plays out as or within rules and mechanics, it is role-play gaming. I like the way it pushes attention toward how well players parse and respond to what is narrated, and explore what the author has in mind (or has recorded). It is respectful to the author. I accept separating "your play" from your materiel, playfully, but not gamefully.