D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[AnotherGuy]

I think it is almost always overstated.

I mean, you could detect a secret door by simply walking past it in 1E if you were an elf.

But many of us did not play elves and thus the Perception skill was being attentive to the GM's words.
Time moved slower, there were less distractions (cellphones)

 

[payn]

I think it is almost always overstated.

I mean, you could detect a secret door by simply walking past it in 1E if you were an elf.

Its interesting becasue this kind of ability is something that rankles a skill play GM. They complain about abilities, skills, and magic that allows skill play style items to be bypassed. Which is why there is likely a thousand traps behind the hidden door revealed by that elf. Again, the game can help skill play along, but its really a person that turns it to 11 on either side of the screen. As @AnotherGuy says, folks usually aim for some kind of middle, but some folks are mainly concerned with skill play itself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is a different sense of accomplishment when the player solves the riddle, discovers the secret door or negotiates a tricky social encounter than just button mashing the Intelligence ability, and Investigation and Persuasion skills.

Then...refuse to allow the players to do this? That's literally what I do whenever I GM Dungeon World....both because it's what the rules explicitly require, and because it's what I would always ask of my players whenever I am GM.

You cannot "Roll Perception". You can observe your environment. Sometimes, doing so just lets you know things--stuff, as my father would have said, "intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer." Sometimes, there's more under the surface, and when your actions represent an effort to perceive what is not casually observable, then you roll Perception.

You cannot "Roll Persuasion". You can interact with people. Sometimes, indeed most of the time, doing so just...continues the interaction, or achieves your goal. You don't need to persuade a shopkeeper to sell you items for the listed value of the item. Sometimes, however, you need to do or say more, and when you have done or said more, then you roll Persuasion.

I see absolutely nothing about old-school D&D which helps or hinders this. The only possible argument is a lack of gameplay in the first place, which (as you know) I don't consider a positive. It's not skilled play if you aren't, y'know, playing.

In 1e-2e the idea was players pay attention to the GM as they describe the location/situation and from clues within the description given, or the players' own ingenuity (which includes creative use of an ability/spell or item) the players solve or discover abc.

Players who elect to not pay attention to their GM earn the undesirable results of that choice.

In later editions the game moved further way from this style of roleplaying.

No. It's just that lazy GMing is a problem that becomes more obvious as D&D becomes more accessible.

EDIT: It also dealt with a conservation of resources.

This older style of play focuses on one's own skill (and knowledge), where it is viewed that the player is tested rather than the character. Some have affectionately labelled part of this style, especially when searching a room, as pixel-bi###ing.

Interesting. The vast majority of my experience with that term comes from computer adventure games (e.g. King's Quest/Space Quest/Fate of Atlantis etc.), where "pixelb!+@#ing refers to the game being a jerk to you and requiring pixel-perfect accuracy before it will let you proceed--"puzzles" that are only hard because they are infuriatingly pedantic, not because they are actually a challenge of any kind to the player. So it is...more than a little strange to me that the label would be adopted for something that is, or at least aspires to be, actually a challenge to the player in terms of reasoning, observation, or resourcefulness.

But to be fair, some GMs have found a nice mid-point between the two styles of play, thus getting the best of both.

I mean at this point all I've really gotten from this is that old-school fans think their game is somehow immune to lazy GMing, which is a humorous, but not particularly revelatory, mistaken belief.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Its interesting becasue this kind of ability is something that rankles a skill play GM. They complain about abilities, skills, and magic that allows skill play style items to be bypassed. Which is why there is likely a thousand traps behind the hidden door revealed by that elf. Again, the game can help skill play along, but its really a person that turns it to 11 on either side of the screen. As @AnotherGuy says, folks usually aim for some kind of middle, but some folks are mainly concerned with skill play itself.

If that "rankles a skill play GM", why was it included all the way back in 1e? It's not like we're talking about some weird obscure supplement or a late development in the wild and woolly days of Skills & Powers.

I was given to understand--based on the claim that old-school systems are about such play, and new-school ones are (somehow) antagonistic to it--that that would mean the oldest editions would do nothing baseline that could do this. Now I'm being told it goes all the way back to 1e at least, possibly earlier!

 

[Reynard]

But many of us did not play elves and thus the Perception skill was being attentive to the GM's words.
Time moved slower, there were less distractions (cellphones)

Are you suggesting that people actively made suboptimal choices in order to preserve the "player skill" aspect of the game?

I find that difficult to believe.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Are you suggesting that people actively made suboptimal choices in order to preserve the "player skill" aspect of the game?

I find that difficult to believe.

Indeed, everything I've heard about proper early-edition D&D is that making optimal choices was extremely strongly pursued. That's why the Cleric came into existence in the first place, because Sir Fang the Vampire Fighter had become unstoppable by exploiting optimal choices. That's why the ear seeker was created, to kill dead an ossified "standard operating procedure" that the players had developed which was reliably successful without requiring thought.

Which, in the context of the above posts, makes it sound like "skilled play" might just be a euphemism for "the GM inventing new reasons why our successful previous plans now suck, so we have to start thinking again". Which I definitely don't think is good for the game!

 

[AnotherGuy]

Are you suggesting that people actively made suboptimal choices in order to preserve the "player skill" aspect of the game?

I find that difficult to believe.

No gawds no!
I was just making passing commentary of the perception skill being considered a player skill not a character one...generally, exceptions like the one you mentioned obviously existed.

 

[payn]

If that "rankles a skill play GM", why was it included all the way back in 1e? It's not like we're talking about some weird obscure supplement or a late development in the wild and woolly days of Skills & Powers.

I was given to understand--based on the claim that old-school systems are about such play, and new-school ones are (somehow) antagonistic to it--that that would mean the oldest editions would do nothing baseline that could do this. Now I'm being told it goes all the way back to 1e at least, possibly earlier!

Tolkien, really. Humans had it rough(er) and elves and dwarves could do cool things. The game wasnt entirely top to bottom skill play focused, that was more an aspect folks grabbed onto. As more and more players wanted to move to the cooler stuff that elves and dwarves could do, skill play became less of a focus over time.

Its a general idea that some folks have decided to draw lines in the sand on. You are not going to get total consistency in design one way or the other. Folks make complaints or declarations of their preferences as if they are factual. Internet is gonna internet.

 

[Reynard]

I started a new thread about "player skill" FYI.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Tolkien, really. Humans had it rough(er) and elves and dwarves could do cool things. The game wasnt entirely top to bottom skill play focused, that was more an aspect folks grabbed onto. As more and more players wanted to move to the cooler stuff that elves and dwarves could do, skill play became less of a focus over time.

Its a general idea that some folks have decided to draw lines in the sand on. You are not going to get total consistency in design one way or the other. Folks make complaints or declarations of their preferences as if they are factual. Internet is gonna internet.

Fair enough. I guess, given how insistent and frequent the claims are, and how hard the lines have been drawn in the sand, I had thought there was more to it than "we ignored the stuff that didn't fit our perception back then, but have major issues with the stuff that doesn't fit that perception now."