Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"

[Celebrim]

Yeah, to me this is a call for a more robust skill system. My preferred D&D-cognates definitely do a better job here than WotC 5e.

5e to me has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as 1e. So long as you stick to the designed primary game play loop of "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and take their stuff" or its more modern variation, "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and find the breadcrumbs" it probably plays fine - especially if you value quick and simple. My daughter for example loves 5e, but then again she is a hack and slasher that loves that old school game play loop. But the farther you depart from its envisioned gameplay, the more the rules not only don't help you but indeed the more become an actual hinderance. I admire the design and agree that its the perfect game for a lot of players, including a lot of new players, but it creates more problems for me than it solves. This is opposite the problem I had of going from 1e to 3e where I got new problems (multi-classing with spellcasters, saving throw math doesn't work, game is fiddlier than ever, cleric was overcompensated) and still had some old problems (class balance is still all over the place) but felt it was solving more problems than it created.

 

[Micah Sweet]

5e to me has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as 1e. So long as you stick to the designed primary game play loop of "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and take their stuff" or its more modern variation, "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and find the breadcrumbs" it probably plays fine - especially if you value quick and simple. My daughter for example loves 5e, but then again she is a hack and slasher that loves that old school game play loop. But the farther you depart from its envisioned gameplay, the more the rules not only don't help you but indeed the more become an actual hinderance. I admire the design and agree that its the perfect game for a lot of players, including a lot of new players, but it creates more problems for me than it solves. This is opposite the problem I had of going from 1e to 3e where I got new problems (multi-classing with spellcasters, saving throw math doesn't work, game is fiddlier than ever, cleric was overcompensated) and still had some old problems (class balance is still all over the place) but felt it was solving more problems than it created.

Yeah. My problem has always been that I don't value quick and simple.

 

[Celebrim]

I should have been clearer when I likened a RPG to a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You did a much better job explaining this issue. I am a player and the way you described things is pretty much how my DM runs his RPG sessions. He'll describe the scene the party finds themselves in and role-play the NPCs. All the while making us guess and leaving us with hints. And sometimes the hint is an 'evil' chuckle from him.

I agree on your description of the situation, but I'm not clear we are trying to prove the same points.

I think some people think that because they are playing a ttRPG they inherently have more agency than if they are playing a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and in reality unless the GM really works hard to grant agency, they inherently have less. And many systems to me seem to exist to further that misperception by making it easier to hide the rails from all participants, including sometimes the conscious realization of the GM himself. Tabletop RPGs heavily depend on illusion and the thing about illusion is that it makes it difficult to analyze what is really going on especially at an emotional level. You really have to step back and look at things.

I think in general few people actually disagree on what the experience of a good tabletop roleplaying session is like. There are a few outliers like people that want to play fairy chess with fog of war on an infinite game board, or who want to play that game where you pass around a story and add to it, or who want to play "Whose Line is it Anyway?" but most of those people play those things rather than RPGs if they have a choice in the matter. What we really end up disagreeing over is the theory of how you produce that experience. And one real sticking point is probably the most misunderstood term in all of gaming - "railroading" ("metagaming" is a close second).

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, to me this is a call for a more robust skill system.

shrug - I'm not playing "Serfs and Servants" or "Papers and Paychecks" or something. Mundane, everyday life isn't a major focus of play at my table, so those mundane life skills would be rules-bloat from my perspective.

 

[Micah Sweet]

shrug - I'm not playing "Serfs and Servants" or "Papers and Paychecks" or something. Mundane, everyday life isn't a major focus of play at my table, so those mundane life skills would be rules-bloat from my perspective.

Perfectly understandable. Of course, we don't have the same perspective, and I do want more and better skill rules.

 

[Celebrim]

shrug - I'm not playing "Serfs and Servants" or "Papers and Paychecks" or something. Mundane, everyday life isn't a major focus of play at my table, so those mundane life skills would be rules-bloat from my perspective.

Where you start running into problems is when you want to let players define the game they want to play or where you want to run a game outside the box. So lets say you have:

1) "Let's play a game where we are all pirates!"
2) (Inspired maybe by "Spice and Wolf" or "Lord Valentine's Castle" or "Station 11" or "Firefly") "Let's play a game where we are travelling merchants."
3) "Let's play a gritty survival game, like we are all stone age tribesmen!"
4) "Let's play a game set on floating asteroids in a vast nebula where we fly around on flying mounts!"
5) "Let's play a dynastic game where we are all feudal landholders who are vassals to the same lord."

Or any number of other things where you have a major component to gameplay that isn't dungeon crawling where mundane every day life isn't so mundane and is in fact pretty dangerous and potentially fulfilling as an adventure fantasy.

And you might say, "Well, you are playing the wrong game.", but that implies that I know ahead of time exactly what game is going to emerge or perhaps more importantly, that the same long running campaign can't feature all of the above based on player choices at different points in the campaign. Because you know, I've been in a game that diverged across that many different types of gameplay in a single campaign/story without necessarily all of them being planned by any one participant (including the GM).

The problem isn't that I want to push "Papers and Paychecks" on my players, but that in the course of play I never necessarily know what the players are going to seize on as the fun of that moment and even in my own plans for the game there can be periods where I might really seriously care about the mundane everyday hazards of disease, heat exhaustion, and wear on the body from marching through terrain humans are ill adapted to in addition to "eaten by dinosaurs".

 

[Wolfpack48]

I get what you are saying. I just don't think you get what I am saying.

What I am saying is that from the player's perspective it is meaningful that he doesn't know that behind the scenes they have options A through D and that it is meaningful that the GM hides the rails by not explicitly outlining what the choices are.

But this change of experience is not necessarily a real change in the situation, and it doesn't invalidate what I am asserting which is that the choices the players have are always the ones provided by the secret keeper. In reality it's like playing a Choose your Own Adventure book where someone else is holding the book, reading it to you, and letting you guess what your options are or ask questions that may provide you hints as to what your options are. And in that situation you can't know if all choices lead to page 38.

No, I get what you are saying, this is how RPG scenarios have been made since AD&D, though perhaps not with such stark (and detailed) option listings at each stage of the adventure. I've seen various adventures say, "if the players do X..." with some ideas for how to handle, but I don't think it's inherently necessary to worry about every direction a scenario might go, and even think it might be self-defeating. (Of course, if the dungeon passage forks right and left, they have the option to go right, left, back where they came, or to make camp, but that's just the options they have in the "real world." I'm talking about larger decisions than this, say like "infiltrate the castle.")

A better way to do things is to detail the situation, the hooks, the background, the NPCs, any events, and then play out the hook scene for the characters, and then see where the players go with it. This way you're not too worried about whether the adventure goes a particular way, or trying to force a particular path. Now it is important to build really strong hooks and clues and events that lead characters to follow up on things, but if they choose to go about it in a different way, that's okay too. I actually dispute the need for the referee to come up with all the options, though I do believe it's good to carve a most likely path and have signposts leading in that direction. And be prepared to deal with anything arises in the sphere of the adventure. Maybe that's not too different from what you are proposing, but I think the subtle difference is important.

I actually have no issue with "railroad" adventures (I've refereed and played in many), but the "railroad" is generally the hook, or an important scene that offers a strong incentive to go in a particular direction. But after that players can do what they may. An example is one where all the PCs start in a lifeboat from a wrecked ship, and in the storm, they see an island and lighthouse. Pretty strong incentive to get to the island and participate in the adventure, but once they get to the island, they can do anything they want.

 

[Wolfpack48]

5e to me has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as 1e. So long as you stick to the designed primary game play loop of "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and take their stuff" or its more modern variation, "kick down the doors, kill the monsters, and find the breadcrumbs" it probably plays fine - especially if you value quick and simple.

There is nothing inherent in 5e (or any RPG for that matter) that requires this style of play. That's just what primordial adventures were like back in the day. I'm sure some people still like that style, but that's no indication of what a 5e player "must" do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is nothing inherent in 5e (or any RPG for that matter) that requires this style of play. That's just what primordial adventures were like back in the day. I'm sure some people still like that style, but that's no indication of what a 5e player "must" do.

It might very well be what the game supports properly, and the farther you get away from it the more heavy lifting you need to do, which I believe was that poster was suggesting. I'll very much suggest that there's such a thing as what tools a game does (and doesn't) supply for the job.

 

[Celebrim]

There is nothing inherent in 5e (or any RPG for that matter) that requires this style of play. That's just what primordial adventures were like back in the day.

I was playing and running games no later than 1982 and I assure you that even primordial adventures were more diverse than that and already by say 1984 or so I was running into problems where the game rules weren't supporting the sort of games I wanted to play very well - say what should the rules be for successfully rowing a boat through rapids. Remember, we were "playing at the world" and are inspiration was everything we had ever seen in an adventure or fantasy story from any media - TV, movies, or books.

I'm sure some people still like that style, but that's no indication of what a 5e player "must" do.

I'm not talking about what a table must do. I'm talking about how well the rules support a GM through a situation and how much the rules empower the player to take that as a valid way of playing.