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

[pemerton]

It’s not a given that every game is about fun.

Many games are about skill or competition.

If the 5e D&D combat rules - including the way they take as inputs various outputs of decisions around various character build elements - are not about skill and competition than they seem poorly designed!

 

[pemerton]

"Story" in an RPG is emergent in my view

TSR and WotC have published many modules in which "story" is not emergent but is presented as ready-to-go. Examples include the DL modules; the 3E modules Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, Speaker in Dreams, and Bastion of Broken Souls; and the 4e module Death's Reach. I'd be surprised if nothing similar has been published for 5e.

 

[pemerton]

I also take exception to the idea that skilled play is about flexing creativity foremost. To me, it's about managing resources and leveraging the game systems, often with creativity. But, creative solutions alone do not produce skilled play without the pressure and leverage of a good resource management game and the leveraging of game systems. Honestly, if I can roll for effect X, and bring sufficient resources and fictional management to improve my odds or force an automatic success on that roll, this is the essence of skilled play for me when iterated over the whole game.

Rolemaster isn't especially rules light, but features skilled play.

It's certainly true that RM is not rules light! At least in my experience, though, I don't think it features that much skilled play in the strictest sense. It has elements that in principle contribute to skilled play, like detailed spell durations, encumbrance rules, etc. And it has intricate rules that, at least in some cases, correspond to the fiction and hence allows for a high degree of operational optimisation. But it has a tendency to mandate checks - through a much more sim-ish version of if you do it, you do it - which excludes full-fledged skilled play.

Of course it's a matter of degree and focus. As far as recoveries are concerned, it does allows the sort of skilled-play approach (eg through the use of transportation magic) that @Manbearcat refers to in his OP, and hence generates the risk of bad pacing/story-anti-climax that is identified in the OP. But it's not full-blooded Gygaxian in its orientation.

To link this directly to the OP and @hawkeyefan's question about what might skilled play look like in 5e?, I would say that one thing RM and 5e have in common - at least at mid-to-upper levels of play - is that they give players a fairly high degree of control over framing if the GM is not prepared to manipulate/leverage off-screen fiction to retake control. This is the result of control over resource recovery, use of extradimensional spaces or transport magic, and in RM some aspects of its divination magic. So skilled play in those systems - while perhaps not constituting full-blooded Gygaxianism - certainly encompasses exercising that sort of control. A contrast here is with systems where the GM has much stronger control over framing and hence that does not become an avenue for players to engage in skilled play: eg 4e D&D (given its well-known "nerfing" approach to non-combat magic), Burning Wheel (no teleport spell in that system), Prince Valiant (no player-side magic at all other than possible bonus weapons), Cortex+ Heroic, and (I think) PbtA.

 

[clearstream]

I don't follow. Are you saying that "skilled play" and "story", as goals, never conflict in the context of 5e? Or sometimes don't conflict? Or something else? And what is the relevance of 5e minimising the impact of or need to demonstrate skilled play? Does this mean that story can be prioritised? Or something else?

Something to draw your attention to is that the context of game qua game or D&D as game has been used for SP. For there to be a separation then between game and story such that the OP's dilemma arises, there must be a tautological assumption that story is ruled out from game (or that we are speaking of game only to the extent that it excludes story). My general view is one of gameful-narrative: I think game is a form of story... one we have not as yet mastered.

There are then some disconnected assumptions about how limited and constraining a ruleset is, and how suitable it is for SP. An idea that tighter rules equate to greater SP. I think this can only amount to an idea that more enforceable rules equate to greater SP, which is a matter of human limitations and one may experience greater SP in VTTs such as Fantasy Grounds.

But still, if we resist the urge to divide game qua game out from narrative, then we can't properly answer the OP's question. Hence I feel a better way to frame SP is in game-as-boardgame... which raises a second obstacle to answering the OP because by now (and even, in my experience, back then) we are very far past such constraints on our RP gaming! SP can't produce conflict with our gameful-narrative while it sits in a context that excludes it: the OP's question answers itself, and we find we can have no opinion on the matter.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't follow. Are you saying that "skilled play" and "story", as goals, never conflict in the context of 5e? Or sometimes don't conflict? Or something else? And what is the relevance of 5e minimising the impact of or need to demonstrate skilled play? Does this mean that story can be prioritised? Or something else?


The things that you describe here seem to be ways of the GM adjusting the fiction to maintain a desired level of challenge (your 1st and 3rd dot points under 1; and your 1st dot point under 2). I don't really see how "cut scenes" are relevant here.

I really think that I'm not following your posts.

The two are not automatically at odds with each other. One does not preclude the other as keeps getting pushed&as wotc seemed to believe when making 5e

 

[pemerton]

The two are not automatically at odds with each other. One does not preclude the other as keeps getting pushed&as wotc seemed to believe when making 5e

They may not "automatically" be at odds. (Though for the reasons given by @Ovinomancer and @Manbearcat in this thread I tend to think that they often are.) But the question in the OP doesn't depend on any automaticity. It's enough that sometimes they are at odds.

For there to be a separation then between game and story such that the OP's dilemma arises, there must be a tautological assumption that story is ruled out from game

This claim is not true. The OP question arises provided that resource optimisation via rest, or some similar move by the players, will undermine pacing/drama. As I posted not far upthread, I think this is a special case of a broader notion of who gets to control scene framing. Skilled play, in the very specific Gygaxian sense and in the slightly looser way it's being used in the OP, has as one important component a high degree of player control over framing - by controlling recover cycles, where the PCs go and whom they meet, etc.

Whereas story imperatives tend to be supported by GM control over framing, as one aspect of control over pacing and drama.

if we resist the urge to divide game qua game out from narrative, then we can't properly answer the OP's question. Hence I feel a better way to frame SP is in game-as-boardgame

I don't really know what the bolded bit means. I know that Moldvay Basic, and Gygaxian D&D more generally, is not a boardgame because (unlike a boardgame) there is a shared fiction, which matters to framing and resolution.

As I've posted upthread and just above, the issue is not game vs narrative (whatever exactly that is) but control over framing/pacing and related matters like resource recovery.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's outside the play loop described in a process rule. The normal loop included adventure outside the dungeon.


You're conscious of the oceans of pixels spent on the far more defined rests in 5e, right? The B/X rule is incomplete.


Of course? You can point to the RAW supporting that, right?


So does 5e. If one wants rules, 5e has hundreds of them. Wandering monsters. Rest cycles. Spell durations. Encumbrance. Rations. The linchpin of SP as you put it appears to be that one process rule. This would mean that SP only occurs in the dungeon. Were that true, it would entail that the OP's scenario falls outside SP.


I'm not advocating SP for any version of D&D. My position is more on the side that B/X supports SP no better than 5e.

EDIT Concretely, I am denying the line you draw between tightly defined and SP. In part because if that line exists, the OP's question has no pertinence. If SP can only occur in D&D as boardgame, then there can be no tension between story and SP. Those modes inhabit different contexts.

Ah, okay, ypu're making tge argument that tightly connected systems do not produce necessary pressure on play to better reward skilled play. That's a position, but it would be much better served by actually showing how that happens rather than trying to argue that it fails because fewer words are spent define rests in B/X than in 5e. I mean, really? Rests in B/X aren't even the same kind of thing as in 5e -- they are a requirement to put pressure on play, not an ability recharge mechanic. Why you'd think B/X rests therefore need as much definition as the vastly more powerful (and skilled play pressure reducing) recharge rests, I'm not clear on. You might want to pivot, though, because this vector doesn't achieve your goal.

Edit: for those unfamiliar, in B/X after 5 turns of moving you must rest 1 turn or suffer a -1 penalty to all attack and damage rolls So, timing rests against the light clock and the wandering monster checks was a significant pressure point in play. They aren't at all like rests in 5e.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Think of yourself now, playing rules from back then. When we played, we didn't have such questions: were we constructing an SP experience now, we likely would! Players, as well as games, have evolved.

Back then however, Basic was not limited to the dungeon for us; not least because of all those pages in B2 on interacting with NPCs in the Keep, and then very soon after X1 took us out of the dungeon for extended hexploration.

I've read several posters position SP as addressing D&D as game. If your representation is right, that's not narrow enough: it's addressing D&D as boardgame. For that, 5e using the Fantasy Grounds VTT has been the tightest version that I have experienced. We didn't play D&D as a boardgame back then. No one I knew did.


What we found in the published adventures - and our own interests - moved the rules immediately out of D&D-as-boardgame. I suppose there must have been some niches in which players adopted what they saw as SP and stayed inside the dungeon. Outside of organised tournaments, I never once encountered them.

That doesn't diminish SP as a concept. It does argue against Basic D&D being equivalent to SP. It's silent on Basic D&D having the strongest valency to SP.


I follow your line of reasoning. Typically, the fewer and simpler rules in a game the more tightly defined the play can be. What I question though is the premise that tightly defined play == SP. So long as the context is gameful, a more generous rule set creates a greater abundance of opportunity for SP.

You - and maybe @Ovinomancer - seem to be suggesting that fewer rules and tighter process affords greater SP. I believe that more sophisticated rules covering more ground afford greater SP. I suppose that is in part because when I think about an SP-axis of play, I noticed it more in 3rd-edition onward. If I had to pick one version of D&D that most afforded SP, it would be 4e. Have you played much using a structured VTT like FG?

EDIT Further - as I added in my response to @Ovinomancer above - I am denying the line you draw between tightly defined and SP. In part because if that line exists, the opening question has no pertinence. If SP can only occur in D&D as boardgame, then there can be no tension between story and SP. Those modes inhabit different contexts. It is only to the extent that you allow them to share a context that the question in the OP can have any value.

Nope, you have my opinion incorrect. I made this point earlier, but I'll do it again. I don't think rules density is an important factor for Skilled Play, but rather rules structure that integrates across multiple subsystems to provide pressure on play. So long as that pressure is amenable to player manipulation, you're enabling skilled play. This can be a rules dense or rules light system. I think Rolemaster is a good example of a rules dense ststem that does a decent job of supporting Skilled Play. B/X is tremendous at it, and I wouldn't call it rules light, either. Calling any version of D&D rules light suggests to me that you haven't tried some really rules light systems! Now, most D&D is lighter than 3.x (including Pathfinder), so maybe that's the reason? Regardless, rules density is not a requirement for Skilled Play, in any direction.

 

[clearstream]

This claim is not true. The OP question arises provided that resource optimisation via rest, or some similar move by the players, will undermine pacing/drama. As I posted not far upthread, I think this is a special case of a broader notion of who gets to control scene framing. Skilled play, in the very specific Gygaxian sense and in the slightly looser way it's being used in the OP, has as one important component a high degree of player control over framing - by controlling recover cycles, where the PCs go and whom they meet, etc.

I agree that one might cast (or recast) the question in the OP to avoid tautological assumptions. However, the OP lists a "Skilled Play imperative that undergirds all D&D play since time immemorial (eg defeat each individual obstacle and the continuum of obstacles skillfully and be rewarded)."

The dilemma as presented, is that the table-facing aspects of play will in some cases necessarily conflict with story-teller imperatives. The table-facing aspects include at least individual obstacles and a continuum of obstacles. The story-teller imperatives include at least concern to deliver a climax. "Who gets to control scene framing?" seems like a valid question to me, albeit I'm not convinced it is the same question.

Whereas story imperatives tend to be supported by GM control over framing, as one aspect of control over pacing and drama.

Adherents of Apocalypse World have related to me at length that GM+ player control over framing delivers on story imperatives.

I don't really know what the bolded bit means. I know that Moldvay Basic, and Gygaxian D&D more generally, is not a boardgame because (unlike a boardgame) there is a shared fiction, which matters to framing and resolution.

Therefore you are resisting the urge, as suggested I'm proposing that what it is to be a game as game never necessarily excludes what it is to be a story. The OP's question asks if it could at least sometimes necessarily exclude? We need a concrete, shared definition of SP to give a compelling answer to that: at present SP is something of a chimera.

 

[clearstream]

Ah, okay, ypu're making tge argument that tightly connected systems do not produce necessary pressure on play to better reward skilled play.

In your latest, you introduce the idea of SP requiring some degree of "necessary pressure on play". What are your thoughts on the rules being upheld? Can there be SP when the rules are not upheld?