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

[clearstream]

I think you're not understanding what is happening in the example above because (a) there are several resources involved above, (b) the there is no GM fiat involved and (c) this is the navigation of a singular decision-point before action resolution (so it necessarily won't have action resolution involved) though it does weigh (i) the implications of using a resource to open up the move-space and (ii) the prospective downstream results (odds of success, odds of complication/cost, what kind of complications/costs) of operationalizing those next move(s) that have been newly opened up (which involve action resolution and its potentialities).

The resources involved:

• The Fighters Hit Points.
• The Cohorts HPs (or, much more likely, their life and status as being a present asset to the party in this conflict).
• Spending Hold on a Discern Realities move to open up move-space and get an attendant benefit (take +1 forward when acting upon it).
• Adventuring Gear.
• Hold spent on Defend.
• The loss of an important weapon vs the loss of an important potion.
• The Wizard's Hit Points (and possibly their life and status as being a present asset to the party in this conflict).
• The Wizard's move-space to deploy Protective Counterspell against the BBEG Wizard's AoE.
• The Wizard's individual Spells being staked in Counterspell attempts.
• The Ranger's and Ranger's Companion's Hit Points.
• The Ranger's ability to possess the move-space available to freely deploy their beefy Ranged damage.
• Several areas where relationships (bonds) and ethos (Alignment) would trigger (or not) xp at End of Session.
• The potential cost to relationships and to perception of self if certain moves are deployed (or not).
• Precious positioning and loss of the ability to deploy the apex damage of Team PC (eg the Fighter being in optimal position to melee AoE).
• Action economy and sunk cost (if you make this move and spend this resource, you're closing yourself out to this alternative).

I think I've caught it all (I'm working off memory and don't have time to read the entirety of the post again)?

Does it make sense how all of those things are resources to be weighed?

Where are you seeing GM Fiat (there is none...so what you're seeing is likely missing some system context)?

No wait! I am saying - for the sake of argument imagine a version of your example that did not have those things. What does that thought experiment tell us about the role of those things? I think it tells us they serve a validation purpose. Please read my post again.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Manbearcat

From your post, I'm not seeing the relationship between choices have consequences and skilled play.

First, I think we're agree that there is some RPGing where the former is not true (ie choices don't have consequences). That's probably a sufficient condition for there being no skilled play in that RPGing. (And we can weaken the strength of the generality: there is some RPGing where consequences are fairly feeble, and hence there is not much room for skilled play. A lot of 2nd ed AD&D would resemble this, especially out of combat.)

Second, I think we agree that the former doesn't entail the latter: that is, that the fact that choices have consequences isn't a sufficient condition of the RPGing involving skilled play. The former is true in Prince Valiant - choices certainly have consequences! But I don't think Prince Valiant supports skilled play in any meaningful sense beyond engaging sincerely with the fiction.

Perhaps more controversially, my view is that the fact that a system depends on choices about resources doesn't necessarily make it about skilled play. My poster child for this is 4e daily resources: 4e players have to make choices about these, and those choices ramify through into play and the outcomes of play; but I think the degree of GM control over framing and resulting rest schedule is such that players don't get to manifest much skill in those choices. Rather, by making these resource choices players get to (i) show their gumption, and (ii) exercise a degree of initiative over the fiction (this depends on good faith GM framing, similar to Burning Wheel in some ways).

My understanding of @AbdulAlhazred's point is similar: that if the GM is going to be applying pressure come what may (via framing and/or consequence narration) then players can't use skill to avoid or even really minimise that pressure, which is very different from the notion of "skilled play" at work in the Gygaxian tradition.

I'd be interested in your response to these thoughts, and how you see them bearing (if at all) on your DW example.

I agree overwhelmingly with your above post, and I agree with some of those thoughts on 4e (particularly how non-framing aspects of system, eg Milestones and the % of the overall Team PC gastank is in the "Encounter Tank" and how deeply synergies can be brought to bear, mollifies the game's sensitivity to Daily Refresh).

However, I think where AA's thoughts (and perhaps yours if you also subscribe to those thoughts) falls flat is I've seen him express a sentiment of "in PBtA systems, Complications are going to arise whether Team PC acts or doesn't act so, effectively, the GM has mandate (or maybe even responsibility) to just Soft Move the game into (basically) oblivion (meaning GMs have unbridled framing and re-framing authority by just looping soft moves ad nauseum) if they wish. Consequently, the Skilled Play signal (that is the player's ability to actually wrest control of the gamestate presently and future states downstream of this present gamestate) is effectively muted because of the GM's authority and responsibility to endlessly erect obstacles in the course of merely running the game."

Or, put another way, "Fill their lives with danger by weaponizing the soft move in an infinite loop (with brief interludes of Hard Moves and a tacit acknowledgement of the impact of their 33 % 10+ moves...which really don't matter because remember to weaponize that soft move infinite loop!) until you're bored or you feel like the scene is played out and then just rinse repeat until end of session!"

With respect, I don't know who is running his Dungeon World games or where this interpretation of DW or PBtA games at large is coming from (if indeed my reading is correct)...

But my god. That is as incorrect a reading as I could possibly imagine. Its just fundamentally not true. That is basically as Calvinballing of PBtA GMing as I could imagine...a sort of GMing that would be so ham-fisted if operationalized and so deeply detached from the aggregate of the game's principles and structure (and all the things that spin out of that), that I can't imagine even sitting for that GM for more than a moment. I mean...maybe my reading is wrong, but that looks to operationalize a kind of PBtA GM Force that effectively obviates player input into the fiction that is really on par with the most brunt deployments in AD&D 2e.

The GM depicted in the "infinite soft move loop" paradigm is NOT:

Playing to Find Out What Happens
Following The Rules
Making Moves That Follow
Begin and End With the Fiction

And they're probably NOT:

Asking Questions and Using the Answers (because the sort of structured conversation that stems from following the play procedures would reveal the degenerate, Skilled Play-killing "initiate operation Soft Move Endless Loop" paradigm happening...if it hasn't been exposed already)

I don't know how one reads that sort of authority and play structure from the text and I can't imagine how one feels like they could deploy it (in spite of all of the relevant aspects of system and structure that push back against it) in a manner sufficiently covert so as to not induce an immediate walk-out.

So my TLDR version is this: That reading of PBtA games is fundamentally incorrect and I can't imagine trying to operationalize it in play. GMs don't have the authority and don't have the means to just Soft Move the game into whatever gamestate they feel is best served by their will at the moment. Its just not the way the games are written and if they're being played that way by people, its because something has gone wrong in the reading and the holistic application of the ruleset that is akin to the whole "Skillchallenges are just an exercise in pointless dice-rolling and incomprehensible fiction" debacle that we (including AA!) worked so hard to push back against and clarify!

The integrated structure of play, the authority distribution, the profound constraints and limits of power on GMs, the table facing nature of play, and the robust PCs (including the resources they can martial) make this (imo degenerate-play producing) reading of PBtA games basically a non sequitur.

EDIT - I'm sorry this sounds like a rousing rebuke (because you're both my pals), but I can't disagree more stridently. I'm just stunned...floored at the text interpretation (and trying to imagine the horror of the play it would produce!). I'm hoping I've made a wrong turn at Albaquerque and I'm reading you both wrong here somewheres! Ready and willing to stand corrected on a misread!

 

[clearstream]

@Manbearcat

From your post, I'm not seeing the relationship between choices have consequences and skilled play.

I feel here we also hit the confound between the label and the implication. Say "skilled play" is a label without other implication - merely a tag for grouping some collection of commitments under? Then we could expect that play can be "skilled play" without being skilled. In this sense, I find the label somewhat obstructive to the discourse.

On the other hand, if we want to say that "skilled play" is necessarily skilled, then we need to have some commitment to what skilled is. Our expected position is that skilled is many things, and some (but not all) of those things are necessary commitments for us to count our play "skilled play"

So then @pemerton's post: I share those concerns, and have proposed that commitment to rolls, structured modifiers, and resources is enough to validate player skill. Maybe it isn't... but if not, what is?

 

[clearstream]

I agree overwhelmingly with your above post, and I agree with some of those thoughts on 4e (particularly how non-framing aspects of system, eg Milestones and the % of the overall Team PC gastank is in the "Encounter Tank" and how deeply synergies can be brought to bear, mollifies the game's sensitivity to Daily Refresh).

However, I think where AA's thoughts (and perhaps yours if you also subscribe to those thoughts) falls flat is I've seen him express a sentiment of "in PBtA systems, Complications are going to arise whether Team PC acts or doesn't act so, effectively, the GM has mandate (or maybe even responsibility) to just Soft Move the game into (basically) oblivion (meaning GMs have unbridled framing and re-framing authority by just looping soft moves ad nauseum) if they wish. Consequently, the Skilled Play signal (that is the player's ability to actually wrest control of the gamestate presently and future states downstream of this present gamestate) is effectively muted because of the GM's authority and responsibility to endlessly erect obstacles in the course of merely running the game."

With respect, I don't know who is running his Dungeon World games or where this interpretation of DW or PBtA games at large is coming from (if indeed my reading is correct)...

But my god. That is as incorrect a reading as I could possibly imagine. Its just fundamentally not true. That is basically as Calvinballing of PBtA GMing as I could imagine...a sort of GMing that would be so ham-fisted if operationalized and so deeply detached from the aggregate of the game's principles and structure (and all the things that spin out of that), that I can't imagine even sitting for that GM for more than a moment. I mean...maybe my reading is wrong, but that looks to operationalize a kind of PBtA GM Force that effectively obviates player input into the fiction that is really on par with the most brunt deployments in AD&D 2e.

I don't know how one reads that sort of authority and play structure from the text and I can't imagine how one feels like they could deploy it (in spite of all of the relevant aspects of system and structure that push back against it) in a manner sufficiently covert so as to not induce an immediate walk-out.

So my TLDR version is this: That reading of PBtA games is fundamentally incorrect and I can't imagine trying to operationalize it in play. GMs don't have the authority and don't have the means to just Soft Move the game into whatever gamestate they feel is best served by their will at the moment. Its just not the way the games are written and if they're being played that way by people, its because something has gone wrong in the reading and the holistic application of the ruleset that is akin to the whole "Skillchallenges are just an exercise in pointless dice-rolling and incomprehensible fiction" debacle that we (including AA!) worked so hard to push back against and clarify!

The integrated structure of play, the authority distribution, the profound constraints and limits of power on GMs, the table facing nature of play, and the robust PCs (including the resources they can martial) make this (imo degenerate-play producing) reading of PBtA games basically a non sequitur.

Are you saying here that there is some sort of contract at play, and it is the terms of the contract that sustains skillfulness?

 

[Manbearcat]

No wait! I am saying - for the sake of argument imagine a version of your example that did not have those things. What does that thought experiment tell us about the role of those things? I think it tells us they serve a validation purpose. Please read my post again.

Oh I'm sorry!

I misread things very early on and my brain just exploderated.

So you're saying, take the play example and remove all system and structure that invest it with its volitional relationships (and everything that goes into that...how one wrests trajectory of play...why they do it...what are the costs of them doing this vs that...how that impacts gamestates downstream of this particular moment).

Basically turn play into totally unstructured freeform where there is no competitive integrity of rules/structure/constraints...where a player's role is basically reduced to making propositions about amending the gamestate to a state favorable to them and the GM can effectively Calvinball (because there is no structure, no rules to follow, no constraints on GM authority) the gamestate from here to there to there to here to there to whatever end they wish?

If that is indeed what you're saying, then absolutely 100 % there can be no Skilled Play. Calvinball is fundamentally the absence of competitive integrity...and the fundamental absence of competitive integrity is the death of Skilled Play.

This does not mean that people don't enjoy playing this way and it doesn't mean its an illegitimate way to play...it just means there are consequences on play priorities (to hew back to the other thread - the consequences are that (a) GM Storytelling Imperative is mandate and (b) players capacity to play skillfully is nonexistent).

 

[Manbearcat]

Are you saying here that there is some sort of contract at play, and it is the terms of the contract that sustains skillfulness?

Sub "contract" for system (which imbues play with many things...of which are structure, ethos, authority distribution, play loop, resource economies, incentive structures, and how all of this is integrated to serve premise/play priorities).

Yes, all of these things are essential as servants of the integrity of play (and for Skilled Play that is "who controls the gamestate and how that control of the gamestate is wrested from the participant presently in control of it and how the competitive integrity of that relationship is maintained.").

 

[clearstream]

Sub "contract" for system (which imbues play with many things...of which are structure, ethos, authority distribution, play loop, resource economies, incentive structures, and how all of this is integrated to serve premise/play priorities).

Yes, all of these things are essential as servants of the integrity of play (and for Skilled Play that is "who controls the gamestate and how that control of the gamestate is wrested from the participant presently in control of it and how the competitive integrity of that relationship is maintained.").

Could we go from there, to say that the contract with other groups who might be doing it differently is established in written words: most concretely in the form of game rules?

Do you see what I mean? AA's criticism could stand because - even if I know that my group is doing it right and my word it would be crazy wrongness to manage things the way AA suggests - one cannot be sure what other groups are doing. In the absence of shared references, one can't dismiss that another group will look at my group and say we are doing it wrong.

With shared references - game texts - on the other hand, we can mitigate that. And I propose this is done most powerfully by the game rules... because they are formulated precisely to have that power.

 

[Manbearcat]

Could we go from there, to say that the contract with other groups who might be doing it differently is established in written words: most concretely in the form of game rules?

Do you see what I mean? AA's criticism could stand because - even if I know that my group is doing it right and my word it would be crazy wrongness to manage things the way AA suggests - one cannot be sure what other groups are doing. In the absence of shared references, one can't dismiss that another group will look at my group and say we are doing it wrong.

With shared references - game texts - on the other hand, we can mitigate that. And I propose this is done most powerfully by the game rules... because they are formulated precisely to have that power.

I mean if you're saying "language written down encodes a contract which structures human interactions" and "wishy washy language or lack of encoding creates a vacuum that can be filled with misinterpretation or 'creative' reinterpretation"...then...sure?

Here is what I'm saying. This:

When to Make a Move

• When everyone looks to you to find out what happens (basically when you're framing a conflict)
• When the players give you a golden opportunity (when you've made a threatening soft move without immediate consequences and the players have ignored it)
• When they roll a 6-

+ Explicit Play Agenda and Principles that inform/constrain moves

+ All the way players can negate/block/or otherwise render GM moves not permissible

does not =

* Whenever and however the eff you want (its your gamestate and trajectory of play to share at your discretion!)!

 

[Manbearcat]

@Manbearcat

From your post, I'm not seeing the relationship between choices have consequences and skilled play.

Focusing on this, let me put 2 of the 4 Win Cons/Aspects of Skilled Play for DW I cited on the page prior:

So...Win Cons and Skilled Play in Dungeon World:

1) End of Session. Did play resolve a Bond, did play fulfill Alignment statement, did we discover something new and interesting about the world, did we overcome a notable enemy, did we loot a memorable treasure?

Each of these are micro Win Cons for a session. The aggregate of them (did we affirm most/all of them) is a separate micro Win Con.

2) There are inevitably going to be multiple conflicts in any given session. However, there is going to be a seminal conflict to the session that resonates with a particular player more than others and it is very likely that this will be a universal thing for all participants.

- Did I propel this conflict toward a satisfying conclusion via aggressively and thematically advocating for what I've loaded my PC with (and the game's default thematic loading in the playbooks)?

- Did I play skillfully in that aggressive thematic advocation via (i) managing the fictional positioning so as to open up the move-space for my character and/or one of my allies, (ii) once I opened up the move-space for myself or my allies was I able to marshal the resources and the moves necessary to wrest the trajectory of the conflict from our opposition (which is a combination of "the GM's say" + "the system's say"), and (iii) did I skillfully manage the decision-points (costs and complications, Dangers and Discoveries) inherent to the 7-9 results so that the game of "Spinning Plates" (inherent to DW and PBtA) doesn't "get away from me"?

TLDR - Did my thematic aggression/boldness + management of the fiction to create Team PC "move-space" + resource martialling + 7-9 cost/complication/danger/discovery game of "Spinning Plates" get away from me or do I stay on top of it = the apex volitional force over the outcome of a conflict that was thematically satisfying (whether won or lost or even if terrible losses were incurred such a a treasured Cohort going down...yet going down memorably)?

So the management of that decision-point has the following play interactions/implications:

* Thematically Skilled Play. Am I managing my play such that my Bonds will be resolved, my Alignment will be fulfilled, my End of Session Questions affirmed? The Fighter is considering the implications on unfolding character and attendant fallout just like a player of Dogs would when they consider escalating from "just talking" and/or bringing in complicating Traits/Relationships/Things that are apt to produce fallout.

* Strategically Skilled Play. The player decided prior to hold off on using up their last Adventuring Gear for a higher stakes moment (which is manifesting now). That prior decision has impacts on the present gamestate; its opened up their decision-tree (move-space) such that they can even attempt the "swing across to the mezzenine and defend the Wizard so they can Protective Counterspell" gambit."

* Tactically Skilled Play. There are many aspects of their decision-tree that are attendant to this aspect of Skilled Play (too many to mention).

---

TLDR: I would say that the most skillful move to be made for the Fighter in this situation would be (and remember the skillful play prior to this moment that involved (a) saving the Adventure Gear for a higher stakes/leverage moment like this and (b) using Discern Realities and character build to amplify this downstream move):

Deploy the Adventuring Gear > Defy Danger Str + AG bonus to get to mezzanine > if 7-9 complication is losing polearm vs Potion choose to retain the Potion > martial the +1 forward from Discern Realities to Defend the Wizard > Spend Hold in order of priority "redirect attack to self" then "halve damage" then "deal level damage."

The net results interact the most favorably with every meaningful component of the game's premise (from thematic aggression to interacting with advancement scheme to optimizing odds of success for Team PC). That doesn't make it the de facto right choice and there is another configuration of choices that is still very skillful but not quite as skillful as this "script" (lets call it)...and the rest of the players at the table will invariably have some measure of input as well (hey, I can do this thing...martial this resource...make this move that better synergizes with what we want to get out of this gamestate transaction).

 

[darkbard]

Bracketing for the moment the degree and nature of skill involved in playing Dungeon World, this sets out the reasons why I think it's helpful to have a label for Gygaxian skilled play. For better or worse that sort of play is a real thing in RPGing, which continues to cast a significant shadow over the hobby due to its place in the history of RPGing. And so we need to be able to talk about it, if only to draw the contrast between it and the sort of RPGing we prefer.

To an extent I feel the force of what @AbdulAlhazred has said about this: even if the players "get it wrong", they won't lose the game.

In some ways, therefore, I see it as a bit like daily resource management in 4e. Or making a check in Burning Wheel. If you get it wrong you mightn't get the fiction that you wanted, but you don't lose the game. Which I think is a clear contrast with - say - White Plume Mountain.

A lot of this is part of much RPGing - eg Burning Wheel cares about this stuff; so does Rolemaster (though less coherently).

I think the key question is the one you brought up, I think in a later post: how does it bear upon winning or losing?

My PC in BW isn't a total dolt, but I don't play him as I would have to play my character to win at ToH. Because I'm relying on the principles and procedures of play to carry me through. I have more BW than DW experience, but I would expect DW to be closer to BW than to Gygaxian skilled play in this respect.

Like @Manbearcat, I am startled by your input here (same goes for @AbdulAlhazred; we so very often seem to come down on the same side on these issues). On the one hand, you seem to be agreeing with the argument of disambiguating GSP from a broader, context-dependent umbrella of Skilled Play. (Maybe I'm misreading you here?) Yet your posts here and subsequently seem to make SP hinge entirely upon Win Conditions that don't easily translate between systems.

I have already expressed my overall ambivalence with the term SP itself (hence, in part, my disambiguation of GSP) and the general bog of definitional arguments, but managing potential consequences towards desired fictional outcomes in a system that requires the GM to honor player success (as one example) certainly seems to fall within a larger umbrella of skilled play to me!

I don't have time for more now, but I am rather mystified by this seeming divide between you and AA on the one side and MBC and myself on the other.