D&D 5E Allow the Long Rest Recharge to Honor Skilled Play or Disallow it to Ensure a Memorable Story

[Ovinomancer]

Some things are always undefined and GM has to make decisions on the fly. And their narrative preferences will affect those, there's no way around that.

The GM makes choices, yes. However, arguing that because the GM makes choices that all choices are therefore the same is not a strong argument. The GM can make a choice on a new element called for by play by sticking as close to established things as possible or they can make a choice that does but makes for a better story. The former is pretty neutral but the latter is for story curation. You can establish a range here, it's not just "the GM made something up, so that's it, it's all the same."

Looking to the OP example, for instance -- the GM can decide to not make anything new up or they can decide to make up new things. The choice isn't the part that makes the difference between the priorities, it's what choice you make.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The GM makes choices, yes. However, arguing that because the GM makes choices that all choices are therefore the same is not a strong argument. The GM can make a choice on a new element called for by play by sticking as close to established things as possible or they can make a choice that does but makes for a better story.

This doesn't need to be either or. Make up a thing that fits the established things whilst making a good story.

The former is pretty neutral but the latter is for story curation. You can establish a range here, it's not just "the GM made something up, so that's it, it's all the same."

There is no 'neutral'. You make up a thing. It takes the 'story' to the direction of your made up thing.

Looking to the OP example, for instance -- the GM can decide to not make anything new up or they can decide to make up new things. The choice isn't the part that makes the difference between the priorities, it's what choice you make.

But that's not how it often is. There is something 'empty' or undefined and GM has to make up something. If they don't make up anything, there is no game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This doesn't need to be either or. Make up a thing that fits the established things whilst making a good story.

I think we're stuck on the scale of the made up thing and when a thing needs making up. If I my players are asking after a candlemaker and I don't have one detailed in my town, but there's space available in prep and it makes sense, then I can add this and make up a shopkeeper.

If, on the other hand, my players have maneuvered the BBEG into a solo engagement at a serious disadvantage, making up sudden reinforcements (which is also available to GMs) because it makes a better story is not at all the same kind of thing.

There is no 'neutral'. You make up a thing. It takes the 'story' to the direction of your made up thing.

Again, this seems to be speaking to a specific scale of ad libbing. The candleshop example doesn't really take the "story" in a new direction, or if that counts as a new direction then we need a different term to denote a major change in direction.

But that's not how it often is. There is something 'empty' or undefined and GM has to make up something. If they don't make up anything, there is no game.

Well, that depends on a lot of things about how the GM approaches the game and what the scope of the game actually is.

I can play 5e as a series of short campaigns of a half-dozen sessions that deal with specific objectives and it's still 5e. And that are very conducive to reasonably tight prep so that the need to make up things is rather limited and easily contained. Or, I can have a fully open ended game where I'm expected, as GM, to make sure it all works. This isn't conducive to tight, or even loose prep, and the game is very sensitive to what the GM makes up in play. For reference, I'm more towards this latter than the former, so I very much understand how story curation works at my table and I embrace it quite often. On the other hand, I have clear flags for when we're shifting into "dungeon" mode and things move toward skilled play. As I've said, you can switch between things.

And, now that I've said that, it also depends on when in play you're making the choice to introduce new things. You can switch between imperatives, you just can't serve both at the same time.

 

[clearstream]

Whoa, talk about hiding the pea! Has this been your argument the whole time? When you say 'there's not conflict between A and B' in the future, I'm to immediately understand that this is because A and B are incompatible and you can't mix them, so trying to is a complete error. And, since you can't mix A and B, A and B are never in conflict.

My argument the whole time has been with the construction of a supposed dilemma -

So the question in the poll is, in the above situation, do you prioritize Skilled Play (the players have defeated the obstacles before them and done all the things that would reasonably allow for a Long Rest Recharge...BUT...the story is going to suffer for it because the climax is going to be anticlimactic)

If you are choosing on SP, then you are not judging on the basis of climax.

OR do you prioritize your responsibility with the Storytelling Imperative (you execute the block by using move x, y, z, which you can always reasonably extrapolate because of your unilateral access to offscreen/backstory, and deny the Long Rest Recharge because you deem the Storyteller Imperative as the most important priority here)?

If you are choosing on SI, then you do not care about the long rest recharge: there is no problem in sight here.

The OP asks you to feel troubled about choosing based on SP because of concern for a non-SP goal, or troubled about choosing on SI because of concern for a non-SI goal. Each choice only takes the form of a dilemma when judged by the standards of the other context.

That was one line of discussion. The other is that I also resist the dichotomy, suggesting that what we ought be concerned for is to achieve gameful-narrative. Digressing into a thought that SP can't avoid gameful-narrative anyway.

What strikes me as really odd here is that I've been saying you cannot do story curation and skilled play and yet you've been stridently disagreeing with me. I mean, what?

What strikes me as odd is that you assumed I was disagreeing with you.

It may help to know as well that I am not taking any fixed positions here. I am exploring lines of reasoning on the OP's topic and related matters. If you are at all familiar with game studies then you will almost certainly have encountered researchers acknowledging games as complex and hard to define (which never stops anyone advancing a definition, even so!) I think games are play with rules and goals. They are played by entities external to the game itself, that enter the game. They are far more complex than linear media, which themselves have generated forests of theory. To have the opportunity to tease out pernicious threads with willing interlocutors is a gift, and a very great pleasure

 

[Manbearcat]

I’m super busy right now and I don’t have the time to make a post about Win/Loss Cons.

I might try to get it worked up tonight. I’m not ignoring the conversation, I just don’t have the time.

One thing I’ll say, and I intend to make a post about it, is that SITES OF SKILLED PLAY is not being fleshed out enough and I think that is instructive ( @pemerton discussed this with 4e and my post about the various Skilled Play includes that; controlling Extended Rest is noticeably missing from that!).

Story Now games have (a) different sites of Skilled Play and (b) ALWAYS have a rider on them (and a coherent rider that drives the action) of THEMATIC SKILLED PLAY. And as I mentioned upthread, Thematic Skilled Play is not Cosplaying (its interacting with the resource/cost/fallout game to achieve simultaneously a Skilled Play end and a Thematically provocative and coherent end).

Degenerate Story Now design would be design that ignores that (b) above. I think that is a relevant point in this thread.

So yeah, I think my next post will over this (a) (sites of Skilled Play) and (b) (Theme as coherent rider to and driver of (a) ). I’ll probably save the Win/Loss Con post for after that post (my guess is the first post is going to be very long with a lot of supporting play examples).

 

[Ovinomancer]

My argument the whole time has been with the construction of a supposed dilemma -

The issue being that you assume that dilemma in your argument. You've already said you cannot do skilled play and story curation at the same time, this is the foundational tenet of your position -- that it is an error if you do so. So, when other people say that there's a tension between story curation and skilled play, you jump in and so no there isn't because you can't mix the two? Why can't you mix the two? Because they are in contention with each other.

I mean, you're arguing with the basic tenet of your own statements, here. You cannot assume the two things are so antithetical that they cannot even exist at the same time and then turn around and argue that there's no conflict between them.

If you are choosing on SP, then you are not judging on the basis of climax.

Correct.

If you are choosing on SI, then you do not care about the long rest recharge: there is no problem in sight here.

Or rather, you can just change things so that there's no problem. Not changing things would be a problem, hence the conflict.

I mean, if you do not change things in a story curation mode, you have a failure -- you've failed to create the exciting conflict that this mode of play prizes if you do not adjust things to account for the rest.

This is the conflict here. You have a choice in the OP -- to change things or not change things due to the rest. If you don't, you're, as you note, holding to skilled play imperatives because the idea of changing things to make for an exciting climax is not the point. If you do, then you're curating the story, because you're discounting the play in favor of creating an exciting climax. You have to make a choice, and you cannot choose an option that supports both because they are in conflict with each other.

The OP asks you to feel troubled about choosing based on SP because of concern for a non-SP goal, or troubled about choosing on SI because of concern for a non-SI goal. Each choice only takes the form of a dilemma when judged by the standards of the other context.

This is suggesting that if I have skilled play priorities (or story curation) then there isn't a choice here. I'd argue that from a skilled play priority you're correct -- it probably wouldn't occur to change things if this priority is well internalized. However, from the other side, there is a choice, because the proper choice isn't obvious and you'd have to lay out the various options (as you conceive them) to best select, and that includes the do nothing. This is because story curation, but it's very nature, involves a cost/benefit evaluation -- what change effects the best outcome. The cost here is the option not selected which may have a better benefit. This is in the weeds, though.

So, sure, in a way you are correct, but the alternative is that we don't ever consider the other.

That was one line of discussion. The other is that I also resist the dichotomy, suggesting that what we ought be concerned for is to achieve gameful-narrative. Digressing into a thought that SP can't avoid gameful-narrative anyway.

I'm not clear what you mean by gameful-narrative. I found your explanation of gameful to be a bit odd. "Gameful" means playing with rules, but that's space already occupied by "game" so I followed your reference. There is no mention of "gameful" in the work you cited, "Rules of Play" by Salen and Zimmerman. Do you have a better source?

Anyway, continuing with your explanation as given, gameful narrative would then be playing with rules and narrative? Not sure what narrative is doing here. Your earlier post seems to indicated that gameful narrative and emergent story are the same thing, but I'm not clear that this is so, or what new work this term is doing.

What strikes me as odd is that you assumed I was disagreeing with you.

Well, you've been aggressively responding to my posts and liking posts by others that are actually arguing for the combination of curation and skilled play, so it was pretty easy to go there.

It may help to know as well that I am not taking any fixed positions here. I am exploring lines of reasoning on the OP's topic and related matters. If you are at all familiar with game studies then you will almost certainly have encountered researchers acknowledging games as complex and hard to define (which never stops anyone advancing a definition, even so!) I think games are play with rules and goals. They are played by entities external to the game itself, that enter the game. They are far more complex than linear media, which themselves have generated forests of theory. To have the opportunity to tease out pernicious threads with willing interlocutors is a gift, and a very great pleasure

I might suggest being clearer on your positions, then, because it was actually shocking to get to the last sets of posts and find out that all your argument predicate the position of mine you keep responding to aggressively. Not hostilely, mind, but aggressively. There's a difference.

 

[hawkeyefan]

While I can't disagree, I don't think I like the idea that scenario writers would intentionally leave something that could either A) encourage (arguably) bad GMing or B) cause problems for a GM.

Well no written scenario is really going to be a perfect fit for all GMs. And I'm not sure what you mean by bad GMing; I know we discuss this kind of stuff a lot, so we may apply bad more broadly as we do, but to me the only truly bad GMing is when the GM is doing things against players expectations and what has been agreed upon.

Even a pure railroad where the players do little more than declare attacks in combat and roll to see what happens isn't bad at all if that's what everyone is expecting.

I think it'd be nice if 5E had more or better DMing advice in the DMG. I mean, the attitude of "And it harm none, do what thou wilt" is ... nice, but some specific advice on how to avoid some specific pitfalls that lead to some specific harms would be nicer.

Now this I absolutely agree with. I mean, I think that it's tough because they don't really commit that strongly to a set of procedures, so they'd have to offer multiple takes on good advice. If you want to run this type of game, do this....if you want to run that kind of game, do that!

But the general idea that they should offer more advise on how to GM, and how to actively promote what you want in play, and how to avoid the things you don't want to see in play, yeah, I absolutely agree.

Yeah. Knowing the table is definitely an advantage. The fact the two D&D games I'm running have been going a while makes me more comfortable that way.

For sure. It's funny because when 5E came out, it worked for me and my group. But largely because everything that it's missing was stuff we were already comfortable with providing ourselves. I didn't immediately realize how incomplete a lot of parts of the game really are....or if not incomplete, then poorly or vaguely defined.

Can the DM in B/X ignore Morale, or specify that some instance of ... I dunno ... orcs ... has a different Morale number? It seems plausible they could, but I never really played much B/X and I honestly don't know.

Even if 5E had Morale, the DM would be have the authority to alter or ignore it in any given instance (if the rest of the game were unchanged, I mean).

The DM in B/X could ignore morale rules, sure....but then they are making a conscious decision to ignore rules, and that will have an impact on play. They could also ignore encumbrance....and many did, and then didn't realize that having limited carrying capacity forced certain decisions on the players, which then in turn impacted other decisions, and so on.

So if we're talking about 5E and its "blank spots" where it leaves things entirely up to the GM instead of having mechanics or processes in place....this would be one of them. When does an NPC or monster retreat? If there is a mechanic in place, then it's the dice deciding, and the story is simply emerging from play. If it's the GM deciding, then there's really two ways of approaching it: 1) the Gm can decide based on the NPC/Monster's established motives/needs/wants, or 2) the Gm can decide based on what may be the most fun or memorable.

Neither 1 nor 2 is good or bad, except that they match or don't match the group's expectations of play. So there may always be risk that the GM can make a call that goes counter to the group's expectations....unless there are mechanics in place to make it a non-decision.

*********

So something similar that I was reminded of recently is how in the Alien RPG, when a xenomorph or one of the other creatures acts on its turn, the GM rolls a d6 to determine the action it will take. So it may make an attack with its tail (which ignores armor) or it may make a bite attack (which can insta-kill!) or it may hiss threateningly (which may cause a PC to panic).

Having this mechanic in place allows the mechanics to be structured to have a variety of effects, and to take the decision from the GM. Otherwise, it's nothing but bite attacks all around...and then it's a GM being a bloodthirsty jerk! The die roll determining it absolves the GM of that.

Essentially, the idea is that the more a game says "this is for the GM to decide" then the more the GM is going to be curating the results.

 

[prabe]

Well no written scenario is really going to be a perfect fit for all GMs. And I'm not sure what you mean by bad GMing; I know we discuss this kind of stuff a lot, so we may apply bad more broadly as we do, but to me the only truly bad GMing is when the GM is doing things against players expectations and what has been agreed upon.

I was thinking specifically of inconsistency with prior facts or an established play-style, but that's not really any different. As you say in something I'm snipping, they'd really have to have several sets of advice, for the different playstyles they want the game to support.

It's funny because when 5E came out, it worked for me and my group. But largely because everything that it's missing was stuff we were already comfortable with providing ourselves. I didn't immediately realize how incomplete a lot of parts of the game really are....or if not incomplete, then poorly or vaguely defined.

I don't find it as incomplete as some of y'all do, but I gotta admit the game fit into my head from just about the first time I read the books. Clearly it matches my expectations and my understanding of what I want D&D to be.

The DM in B/X could ignore morale rules, sure....but then they are making a conscious decision to ignore rules, and that will have an impact on play. They could also ignore encumbrance....and many did, and then didn't realize that having limited carrying capacity forced certain decisions on the players, which then in turn impacted other decisions, and so on.

So if we're talking about 5E and its "blank spots" where it leaves things entirely up to the GM instead of having mechanics or processes in place....this would be one of them. When does an NPC or monster retreat? If there is a mechanic in place, then it's the dice deciding, and the story is simply emerging from play. If it's the GM deciding, then there's really two ways of approaching it: 1) the Gm can decide based on the NPC/Monster's established motives/needs/wants, or 2) the Gm can decide based on what may be the most fun or memorable.

Neither 1 nor 2 is good or bad, except that they match or don't match the group's expectations of play. So there may always be risk that the GM can make a call that goes counter to the group's expectations....unless there are mechanics in place to make it a non-decision.

I meant ignore Morale for a specific instance or something, which would change play but might be a legitimate scenario design choice.

So something similar that I was reminded of recently is how in the Alien RPG, when a xenomorph or one of the other creatures acts on its turn, the GM rolls a d6 to determine the action it will take. So it may make an attack with its tail (which ignores armor) or it may make a bite attack (which can insta-kill!) or it may hiss threateningly (which may cause a PC to panic).

Having this mechanic in place allows the mechanics to be structured to have a variety of effects, and to take the decision from the GM. Otherwise, it's nothing but bite attacks all around...and then it's a GM being a bloodthirsty jerk! The die roll determining it absolves the GM of that.

Essentially, the idea is that the more a game says "this is for the GM to decide" then the more the GM is going to be curating the results.

Isn't there something in PbtA (or maybe Blades) about the GM "disclaiming decision?" This sounds something like that--or a GM picking targets randomly or something, or maybe the Recharge mechanic on some monster attacks in 5E. I can certainly see picking the actions randomly if there's an insta-kill attack available.

 

[Campbell]

Disclaim Decision Making from Apocalypse World is mostly a reminder to ground your decisions in the fiction. It calls on the MC to just really consider what an NPC would do in the moment. It's basically obvious thing that would happen happens. The game is basically reminding you to be a referee.

 

[pemerton]

There is a massive difference between caring about the game's narrative and a storytelling imperative. Curation involves more than simply being emotionally invested in how things turn out. It involves actively letting story outcomes drive your decision making process.

<snip>

I often do care somewhat about the overarching narrative, but it should not be prioritized in the gameplay decision making process of either the GM or the other players if we are really pushing for skilled play.

Do you think my account of the parameters of various authorities/responsibilities in scene-framed play (eg BW, 4e D&D), and how this allows a shifting from story imperatives (managed by the GM) to a type of skilled play (driven by the players) makes sense?