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

[pemerton]

Unrewarding doesn't remotely go far enough.

Sure. I just didn't want to hurt the feelings of anyone who tried it.

 

[Manbearcat]

Sure. I just didn't want to hurt the feelings of anyone who tried it.

"Trying Wandering Monsters in 4e is pain your highness (and deserving of hurt feelings). Anyone who says different is selling something."

 

[Manbearcat]

Let me TLDR my thoughts on this in as pithy and clear a way as possible:

The idea that ball sports and combat sports more tightly encode the governing aspects of playing/refereeing is fundamentally not true. All 4 below are truisms:

1) it is absolutely more difficult to abide by most ball and combat rulesets than it is D&D.

2) It is absolutely more difficult to referee most ball and combat rulesets than it is D&D.

3) It is absolutely more difficult to judge most MMA fights than it is to referee or play D&D.

4) It is absolutely more difficult to maintain a social contract in pick-up sports than it is in D&D (the amount of strife and dysfunction a the social level...even amongst friends (!) is extraordinary in pick-up sports...and "testosterone dump" isn't even close to the exclusive causal answer to that...its how rules fail to govern collisions and corner cases and misperceptions).

Consequently, I'll take refereeing a D&D game all day long to trying to referee an NFL Football game or a Sunday afternoon pickup basketball game or to judge a 5 round MMA Fight.

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

I think you're exaggerating the difficulty of combining physical activities and thereby inventing new sports: ice hockey, water polo, all the various codes of football, including the deliberately blended "international rules" that has been played between Australian and Irish teams; etc.

And as I already posted, wandering monsters for 4e don't seem like a very good idea at all to me.

 

[Campbell]

Games like Torchbearer, Dungeon World, Legend of the Five Ring Fifth Edition, and The One Ring show that you can successfully elements from different sorts of games into something new. That's the key though. A blending of styles produces something new that is distinct from its influences. Dungeon World does not represent the best of Apocalypse World and the best of D&D combined into a singular game. Rather it makes tradeoffs and hard design choices that leaves you with something that is really like neither. It's awesome at being Dungeon World, but fails utterly at being B/X or Apocalypse World.

I would make a similar claim for the way Pathfinder Second Edition combines elements of skilled play with elements of more modern takes on D&D. It offers something new. Not a best of both worlds type situation.

 

[pemerton]

@Campbell, can you say more about The One Ring in light of the point of your post just upthread?

 

[Manbearcat]

Games like Torchbearer, Dungeon World, Legend of the Five Ring Fifth Edition, and The One Ring show that you can successfully elements from different sorts of games into something new. That's the key though. A blending of styles produces something new that is distinct from its influences. Dungeon World does not represent the best of Apocalypse World and the best of D&D combined into a singular game. Rather it makes tradeoffs and hard design choices that leaves you with something that is really like neither. It's awesome at being Dungeon World, but fails utterly at being B/X or Apocalypse World.

I would make a similar claim for the way Pathfinder Second Edition combines elements of skilled play with elements of more modern takes on D&D. It offers something new. Not a best of both worlds type situation.

Yeah, I've seen Dungeon World compared to B/X before.

I'm like...what? I don't understand how anyone could have run a Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawl...and run a game of Dungeon World and felt like these games are even the same lineage let alone remotely actually being similar.

Torchbearer...absolutely (though still...not remotely the same game). Dungeon World? No...not even close. To me, Dungeon World feels like if you took D&D 4e, excised the extremely tactical demanding aspect of play and minutiae, retained the key word relevance in the deeply embedded thematics, turned all of play into Skill Challenges, amped up the Thematic Skill Play leveraging aspect (including skillfully using gear and managing decision-points in cost/complication), and PBtA-ified the whole thing.

That...is not B/X...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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).

It is certainly intangible and you cannot actually demonstrate that it is shared or going on in everyone's heads, or that everyone exists, or that you exist, etc. I don't think shared fiction is really an abstraction though, it is just intangible. As such it is infinitely mutable and has no fixed character. I think we might consider whether this is part of the reason why process is so important in RPGs.

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.

So, let me make this a bit more concrete. What you are saying is that you see a strong parallel between, for example, invoking powers during combat turns in a 4e combat and deciding which moves to make, and then basically unleashing some 'kata' in effect that operationalizes that move? OK. I mean, I'm FAR FAR less deep into anything you can call martial arts, but sure, the concept is probably known to all. You do something 10,000 times and it becomes burned into your motor planning system. And sure, you do plan and make decisions in a melee. I know that is the normal experience in say sparring in SCA, or a Judo practice, which I've done (mostly many years ago I might add, but still).

Still, yes, D&D combat is fairly abstract. I mean AD&D COMBAT, which was really what I was talking about, is PARTICULARLY abstract, with 1 minute rounds and whatnot. I mean, maybe it doesn't feel that abstract, but it is described that way. Clearly there IS a level of abstraction. I guess you can say "well, it feels like I can explain the D&D combat as well as I can an actual MA bout." OK. I mean, I'm not sure that really changes much. My analysis really has more to do with the profound difference, you roll dice in combat, classic D&D says "show me what you did" EVERYWHERE ELSE. So clearly there are different paradigms.

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.

Well, OK, this is a reasonable point, perhaps. I don't know. I think there's still a sense in which a D&D game is a commitment and its hard to just say "I'll play by someone else's agenda for the next year." Or maybe more practically, you DON'T play by someone else's agenda for a year, people resist that and end up playing their way, most of the time. Maybe that means some other group, whatever.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

You guys have very different experiences playing these games than I do, because for me what we're discussing as 'Gygaxian Skilled Play' is seamless with the dimensions of the game that are being rejected.

My understanding is that even in the very oldest incarnations of Dungeons and Dragons one would have a notion of being good at some things and bad at others, and hew towards solutions to problems that use one's talents-- the fundamental distinction between a 'thief' and 'fighting man.' Something clearly and obviously present in the tradition of war games that, through chainmail, the game was descended from. The notion of simulating elements through statistics, those strengths and weaknesses defining the viability of differing approaches, and the players learning from experience/game rules what they're good at and how to succeed?

I hate to break the illusion, but whether the meta centers on clear knowledge of simulation game rules, figuring out the sort of things your buddy thinks are reasonable, studying character options, or some other procedure, it all comes down to the same basic premise of identifying the rules of the game and how they affect the 'metagame' and optimizing your own play to seek the greatest degree of victory. That is the essence of 'Skilled Play' being discussed, the distinctions being made beyond that are entirely arbitrary and not particularly cogent. Which is why I want to break it down, because this becomes about including something, which is the sense of interacting with your environment to gain advantages as an aspect of Skilled Play, rather than it's totality (even within the concept of a single game), but with a healthy coexistence with other aspects of Skilled Play.

Even 4e players who had never played another TTRPG in their short, high school aged lives still engaged in what you're talking about, I know this because I started in 2010 under those exact circumstances. I have distinct memories of players casting fey step to get to the other side of locked doors by peering through the keyhole for line of sight, and of announcing a door, and solemnly telling my players that "SUDDENLY, the door continues to be a door" after they poke at it, trying to discover if it might be trapped, and making molotov cocktails to throw down underdark pits to smoke out foes.

This was concurrent, and often intermingled with their character optimization, and combat tactics as a skill set. Someone suggested 4e was 'classic' in terms of the six cultures of play, and I don't think that's a bad fit at all. It certainly fits how we played the games-- a series of challenges to be overcome, the rules stepped aside once combat was over and everything was entirely up to my discretion, full on descriptions of where they search and what they do to try and open doors, or remove gemstones from statues without incurring terrible ramifications.

In reality, I think it was the modern conventions and sensibility that turned those traditional skilled play people away, 4e had very different art, very different mechanics, you had the option to stand and fight with some degree of competence, you had elaborate character builds with lots of choices, you had eye popping anime esque martial maneuvers all over the place and a little power fantasy with minions, and explicit party roles that evoked MMO ones, and so forth. The milieu was so different from what they'd grown up with I see it as complete culture shock, because it totally was for me looking back after the fact, reading old ADND manuals, the Alexandrian, etc.

 

[Manbearcat]

You guys have very different experiences playing these games than I do, because for me what we're discussing as 'Gygaxian Skilled Play' is seamless with the dimensions of the game that are being rejected.

My understanding is that even in the very oldest incarnations of Dungeons and Dragons one would have a notion of being good at some things and bad at others, and hew towards solutions to problems that use one's talents-- the fundamental distinction between a 'thief' and 'fighting man.' Something clearly and obviously present in the tradition of war games that, through chainmail, the game was descended from. The notion of simulating elements through statistics, those strengths and weaknesses defining the viability of differing approaches, and the players learning from experience/game rules what they're good at and how to succeed?

I hate to break the illusion, but whether the meta centers on clear knowledge of simulation game rules, figuring out the sort of things your buddy thinks are reasonable, studying character options, or some other procedure, it all comes down to the same basic premise of identifying the rules of the game and how they affect the 'metagame' and optimizing your own play to seek the greatest degree of victory. That is the essence of 'Skilled Play' being discussed, the distinctions being made beyond that are entirely arbitrary and not particularly cogent. Which is why I want to break it down, because this becomes about including something, which is the sense of interacting with your environment to gain advantages as an aspect of Skilled Play, rather than it's totality (even within the concept of a single game), but with a healthy coexistence with other aspects of Skilled Play.

Even 4e players who had never played another TTRPG in their short, high school aged lives still engaged in what you're talking about, I know this because I started in 2010 under those exact circumstances. I have distinct memories of players casting fey step to get to the other side of locked doors by peering through the keyhole for line of sight, and of announcing a door, and solemnly telling my players that "SUDDENLY, the door continues to be a door" after they poke at it, trying to discover if it might be trapped, and making molotov cocktails to throw down underdark pits to smoke out foes.

This was concurrent, and often intermingled with their character optimization, and combat tactics as a skill set. Someone suggested 4e was 'classic' in terms of the six cultures of play, and I don't think that's a bad fit at all. It certainly fits how we played the games-- a series of challenges to be overcome, the rules stepped aside once combat was over and everything was entirely up to my discretion, full on descriptions of where they search and what they do to try and open doors, or remove gemstones from statues without incurring terrible ramifications.

In reality, I think it was the modern conventions and sensibility that turned those traditional skilled play people away, 4e had very different art, very different mechanics, you had the option to stand and fight with some degree of competence, you had elaborate character builds with lots of choices, you had eye popping anime esque martial maneuvers all over the place and a little power fantasy with minions, and explicit party roles that evoked MMO ones, and so forth. The milieu was so different from what they'd grown up with I see it as complete culture shock, because it totally was for me looking back after the fact, reading old ADND manuals, the Alexandrian, etc.

Very good post. I don't see anything in here that I disagree with.

I think "the meta changed" is really what much of the discussion is about (and what I tried to encapsulate in my first offering waaaaaaaaaay upthread). However, there is another conversation being had simultaneously about the original nomenclature of "Skilled Play" having an implicit "Gygaxian" appended to it.

But yes, every version of D&D has a meta. Sometimes its just "meta drift" (like 1e to 2e) and othertimes its "meta shift" (like AD&D or 3.x to 4e).