D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[clearstream]

Well, the concepts of Story Now and Story Before definitely do originate from the Forge.

Accepted. I'm referencing them only as received here on these forums, where to me they looked like symptoms (or perhaps putative cures) of a tension between TTRPG and CRPG.

 

[Weiley31]

Please don't undermine my threads by taking them hard off-topic like this. If my thread does not interest you then please refrain from posting. If you'd like to discuss superheroes, there's a forum for that somewhere.

Ketchup is good but I'm more of a Cheesecake person myself.

 

[S'mon]

Computers certainly do Paizo 'adventure path' type play well. They can do bounded sandbox play pretty well too. They really struggle with spontaneous social interaction - the average GM is vastly superior at playing an NPC than a computer can ever be. And of course GMs can respond better to player input in building the campaign in the direction the players want, rather than pre-scripted. Computers are getting better at this but they have a long way to go.

Human GMs benefit from having simple tools to call on, like DC checks. They don't do well with complex systems unless those are called on frequently and made a centrepiece of play, like combat in 3e-4e-5e D&D.

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, there are some systems in play to mitigate that. For your Mountain example, a reasonable penalty for failure would be a level of exhaustion, and that's equally debilitating to a 1st-level character or a 10th-level one.

I personally think it's weird that the journey from apprentice to archmage, or from sword-for-hire to lord-of-the-realm, makes you so much better able to withstand going toe-to-toe with a balrog (hit points) but doesn't affect your ability to scale a mountain (exhaustion levels).

I know there's a tradition in D&D play of exploiting this, like Tucker's kobolds end-running around hp and saving throws, or a 3E-era Grease spell end-running around levels by using a skill check rather than a saving throw. But to me that seems like exploiting break points rather than presenting a coherent conception of the fiction and the use of the mechanics to engage these.

 

[S'mon]

I personally think it's weird that the journey from apprentice to archmage, or from sword-for-hire to lord-of-the-realm, makes you so much better able to withstand going toe-to-toe with a balrog (hit points) but doesn't affect your ability to scale a mountain (exhaustion levels).

Well the GM gets to decide whether scaling a mountain involves hp loss or exhaustion levels. Maybe there's a CON save involved. I generally think it's a good thing that the GM can use different metrics depending on the desired feel. Exhaustion levels are good for keeping thirst or cold a threat at all levels, which makes sense for some genres.

 

[pemerton]

Well the GM gets to decide whether scaling a mountain involves hp loss or exhaustion levels. Maybe there's a CON save involved. I generally think it's a good thing that the GM can use different metrics depending on the desired feel. Exhaustion levels are good for keeping thirst or cold a threat at all levels, which makes sense for some genres.

I find it weird that a character who can go toe-to-toe with a balrog should be worried about hunger or thirst or cold. We all know that Beowulf can hold his breath for as long as he needs to to fight the monster at hand!

 

[clearstream]

That's not definitional, and no, it wasn't forced on you. I was unable to respond to that thread for a few days, and when I returned it had died down, so I didn't respond, but I noted that you had continued to persist to holding onto bits that weren't necessary as if they were. Skilled play doesn't require the system to be improvise, it requires that the player be able to improvise new ideas and apply them within the system. IE, skilled play means that the players have to use their smarts and improvise new strategies and approaches, but not that the system be able to extemporaneously adjudicate out-of-system rules. Skilled play can absolutely exist in games where that is the case -- like D&D, where the GM can go outside the provided system to adjudicate an action not presented within the system. But, this is not necessary. You can have skilled play without ever once altering the system, or being allowed to alter the system. Skilled Play in Blades in the Dark, for instance, while different from B/X, never requires interpreting the system into something new. Likewise, you can have skilled play in a CRPG. I mean, at the surface, making a set of characters that compliments vice one that all are the same and are very niche will have major impacts in how well you can progress the game. This is part and parcel of skilled play -- creatively leveraging the system to achieve player goals.

I'd like to understand something better. Are you saying that for you, "skilled play" is a synonym of skillful play? It contains no other content.

I ask, because in other threads some categories of skillful play seemed to be rejected. A common example is where a player adroitly manages and exploits the numbers on their character sheet. No matter how skillfully they might do that. If that is right, then "skilled play" seems to exclude at least some play that can be skillful.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is why D&D for anything outside of combat is merely narrative improvisation and agreement. The DM improvises narrative events... the players improvise narrative actions that agree with those events and then add to them with what they choose to do... then the DM agrees with those narrative actions and colors the results by having a die or two rolled for a "skill check" to vary up the results positively or negatively. Those rolls then impact how the DM chooses to improvise the next step of the narrative event. And then the cycle continues until both DM and players all improvise a conclusion together. That's really the only way D&D handles non-combat action and activities. Improvised story between DM and players, and the occasional mechanic thrown in merely to avoid requiring the DM to unilaterally decide which narrative actions had positive results or negative results. Let the fickle finger of fate decide and all the players agreeing to go along with it.

It would be pretty trivial to significantly improve on what D&D does outside of combat though.

All they really need is a slightly different skill resolution system actually built-in (with the current approach as an optional one in the DMG), with, y'know, some actual guidance and suggested ways to adjudicate things. Like most TT RPGs have. Especially modern ones. Like some OSR RPGs have, even. I mean, god's sake, Worlds With Number, an OSR game, has a vastly superior skill system and general out-of-combat rules to 5E, and even that's nowhere near where you could get with a more sensible redesign.

It could easily be done in a largely backwards-compatible 6E too because it's entirely player-facing. I think it would give people a generally better and more consistent experience, and make D&D even more accessible than it already is. The one concern would be messing with streamers like Critical Role but they'd adapt in a heartbeat to this sort of change, and probably roll with it to great effect.

As an aside, whilst people are discussing "skilled play" out of combat, in-combat 5E already backed off on it, relative to 4E. 4E was probably the most "skilled play in combat"-oriented mainstream TT RPG I've ever seen (arguments could be made for certain editions of other games, but I can't offhand thing of one which had more tactics and less just build-reliance than 4E - though the TRPG/SRPG Children of Zodiarcs shows a way you could probably do it in a TT RPG if you wanted to go even harder).

 

[FrogReaver]

I'd like to understand something better. Are you saying that for you, "skilled play" is a synonym of skillful play? It contains no other content.

I ask, because in other threads some categories of skillful play seemed to be rejected. A common example is where a player adroitly manages and exploits the numbers on their character sheet. No matter how skillfully they might do that. If that is right, then "skilled play" seems to exclude at least some play that can be skillful.

Char-gen optimization is a skill but it's not really 'play'. I would say that fact makes Char-gen optimization logically excluded from skilled play.

If you mean using character sheet abilities efficiently and effectively - then that is definitely a skill that comes up in play - and failing to do so well enough can definitely lead to failure to achieve your goals in most games.

 

[FrogReaver]

As an aside, whilst people are discussing "skilled play" out of combat, in-combat 5E already backed off on it, relative to 4E. 4E was probably the most "skilled play in combat"-oriented mainstream TT RPG I've ever seen (arguments could be made for certain editions of other games, but I can't offhand thing of one which had more tactics and less just build-reliance than 4E - though the TRPG/SRPG Children of Zodiarcs shows a way you could probably do it in a TT RPG if you wanted to go even harder).

Interesting. Outside of optimizing party tactics and character build optimization I always found playing through 4e combat to have a rather low skill ceiling - as in high skilled play mattered very little in the outcomes. What tended to matter most was the character builds.