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

[Ovinomancer]

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?

Your question is vague. Do you mean must rules that have been agreed to must be upheld in play for skilled play to occur -- then, yes, they must absolutely be so. Failure to do this removes the players' ability to predict and manipulate the game effectively.

If, instead, you mean, "can rules be altered prior to play, a la house rules?" Then the answer is maybe, depends on the set of rules. If, for instance, you're playing B/X, and the GM says, "hey, I don't want to track all those things, so I'm not using wandering monsters, torches last as long as I say they do (but that'll be a long time), and I don't care about rests or even worrying about exploration turns, let's play," then you've cut most of the meat from the system and this will impact skilled play. If it's "I think torches should last 6 turns," then I don't think you've made a huge difference, here. There's a range of possibilities. However, once agreed to, these must be enforced in play or you're moving away from skilled play.

This isn't to say that there's a requirement of perfect, all-the-time, adherence. But it should be a priority, and happen much more often than not.

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

The lead post doesn't assume that Skilled Play and Story Imperative driven play are automatically at odds. Sometimes they are at tension and, to use the ambulance vs rest of traffic analogy upthread, the ambulance (whichever that is for the given table at that particular moment) gets the right-of-way.

It states that there are key aspects of various D&D play that either Skilled Play or Story Imperative driven play are sensitive to to (the Long Rest recharge in 5e being one of them).

What do you guys feel about these examples @clearstream , @prabe , @Bawylie and anyone else who would like to answer?

1) Players bringing whatever the eff character they want to into play. Let us say its AD&D and everyone is allowed to "bring in PCs from their other games." Everyone comes in with PCs that are 18s and 18/00 Strength (what luck!).

Play isn't sensitive to that?

2) Let us say that we're playing 5e and its a social conflict using the Social Interaction rules. The GM either didn't write down any IBFTs for the NPC or they wrote them down yet they're not good at the performative aspects of play so they do a terrible job at conveying the "Pictionary" portion of play here. The players are frustrated and can't suss out the IBFTs as a result and therefore can't leverage them to improve their odds of attaining the necessary Charisma check to attain the NPC as an asset.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

3) Its 4e D&D and the GM is utterly terrible at running Skill Challenges (no "change the situation", no thematic coherency, "Fail Forward" and "Success With Complication" is either nonexistent or poorly executed). At the same time (or conversely), the players at the table aren't creative or proactive at all. They have no idea how to appropriately leverage the shared imagined space and their characters assets to drive a compelling thematic scene skillfully.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

4) Its 3.x D&D and the entire table has chosen either Druid, Cleric, or Wizard. Alternatively, that same table has decided to play all Fighters.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

5) Its AD&D or 3.x or 5e and the GM is rolling everything behind the screen. The GM is doing this so they can strategically fudge rolls to ensure a particularly trajectory of play stays online. Or maybe the GM is executing Deux Ex Machina to ensure an NPC stays relevant. Or maybe the GM is making up backstory and leveraging it so they can deploy blocks against powerful spellcaster moves that would dramatically reframe key situations and wrest control of the trajectory of play from the player(s) back to the GM. Or maybe they're doing all 3!

Play isn't sensitive to that?

---

Its been brought to my attention that this may just be a case of "5e is sensitive to the Long Rest recharge" being controversial. That is entirely incidental to my point/question in the lead post (about play priorities being at tension and subordinating one to another when that collision occurs), so lets remove it.

Those are 5 new things where the structural integrity of play (and therefore the play priorities that undergird that play) might be perturbed or outright compromised. At this point I just want to establish whether people think various forms of Skilled Play or if story trajectory (forget 5e and AD&D's GM Storyteller Imperative for a moment) is sensitive at all to various dynamics. We can build out from there.

Do you guys agree with any of those 5 above?

Disagree on all 5? Is TTRPG play not sensitive to any systemization or technique or character building etc (and I'm not talking about people being gross/mean/cruel)?

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

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.

No, not a boardgame. When my cousin introduced me to D&D back in '84 I believe his exact words were "its like a boardgame but with your imagination."

Good description cousin. Not quite there though. "Imagination" is necessary but not sufficient.

D&D requires a shared imagined spaced. If dungeons were boardgames, there wouldn't be a PC role of mapper.

4e Skill Challenges can't be played on a board.

Perilous journeys and climbs up savage mountain faces, Indiana Jones esque chases from collapsing temples, parleys with the king's chamberlain for audience with the king (and on and on and on) are all played in the shared imagined space. Players are leveraging fictional framing in making action declarations. Players are trying to wrest control (from either the GM or another player) of that fictional framing so that they can "open up the move-space" for their character.

Its likely that all D&D combat can basically be captured by "this is a boardgame and the Skilled Play that is an outgrowth of this play is predicated exclusively upon boardgame dynamics." But the shared imagined space (and the attendant leveraging of the fictional framing of that space) separates D&D from a boardgame.

 

[tetrasodium]

The lead post doesn't assume that Skilled Play and Story Imperative driven play are automatically at odds. Sometimes they are at tension and, to use the ambulance vs rest of traffic analogy upthread, the ambulance (whichever that is for the given table at that particular moment) gets the right-of-way.

It states that there are key aspects of various D&D play that either Skilled Play or Story Imperative driven play are sensitive to to (the Long Rest recharge in 5e being one of them).

What do you guys feel about these examples @clearstream , @prabe , @Bawylie and anyone else who would like to answer?

1) Players bringing whatever character the eff character they want to into play. Let us say its AD&D and everyone is allowed to "bring in PCs from their other games." Everyone comes in with PCs that are 18s and 18/00 Strength (what luck!).

Play isn't sensitive to that?

2) Let us say that we're playing 5e and its a social conflict using the Social Interaction rules. They either didn't write down any IBFTs for the NPC or they wrote them down yet the GM is not good at the performative aspects of play so they do a terrible job at conveying the "Pictionary" portion of play here. The players are frustrated and can't suss out the IBFTs as a result and therefore can't leverage them to improve their odds of attaining the necessary Charisma check to attain the NPC as an asset.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

3) Its 4e D&D and the GM is utterly terrible at running Skill Challenges (no "change the situation", no thematic coherency, "Fail Forward" and "Success With Complication" is either nonexistent or poorly executed). At the same time (or conversely), the players at the table aren't creative or proactive at all. They have no idea how to appropriately leverage the shared imagined space and their characters assets to drive a compelling thematic scene skillfully.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

4) Its 3.x D&D and the entire table has chosen either Druid, Cleric, or Wizard. Alternatively, that same table has decided to play all Fighters.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

5) Its AD&D or 3.x or 5e and the GM is rolling everything behind the screen. The GM is doing this so they can strategically fudge rolls to ensure a particularly trajectory of play stays online. Or maybe the GM is executing Deux Ex Machina to ensure an NPC stays relevant. Or maybe the GM is making up backstory and leveraging it so they can deploy blocks against powerful spellcaster moves that would dramatically reframe key situations and wrest control of the trajectory of play from the player(s) back to the GM. Or maybe they're doing all 3!

Play isn't sensitive to that?

---

Its been brought to my attention that this may just be a case of "5e is sensitive to the Long Rest recharge" being controversial. That is entirely incidental to my point/question in the lead post (about play priorities being at tension and subordinating one to another when that collision occurs), so lets remove it.

Those are 5 new things where the structural integrity of play (and therefore the play priorities that undergird that play) might be perturbed or outright compromised. At this point I just want to establish whether people think various forms of Skilled Play or if story trajectory (forget 5e and AD&D's GM Storyteller Imperative for a moment) is sensitive at all to various dynamics. We can build out from there.

Do you guys agree with any of those 5 above?

Disagree on all 5? Is TTRPG play not sensitive to any systemization or technique or character building etc (and I'm not talking about people being gross/mean/cruel)?

Anything can be at odds with anything. Tortila chips covered in sliced fresh jalapenos salsa & cheddar cheese vrs a mojito for example. Aside from both being edible they have very little in common & are not normally anything to each other. That doesn't change the fact that I passed on making the loaded nachos this morning & didn't feel like eating after getting home from the beach where I happened to have a mojito with visiting relatives. I'm sure hat those nachos could go well with or feel like the wrong pairing for a mojito under certain conditions too. Skilled play & story get setup as being at odds where one needs to be chosen over the other to make it easier to assign value to one or the other but they can just as often be complimentary.

 

[Manbearcat]

Anything can be at odds with anything. Tortila chips covered in sliced fresh jalapenos salsa & cheddar cheese vrs a mojito for example. Aside from both being edible they have very little in common & are not normally anything to each other. That doesn't change the fact that I passed on making the loaded nachos this morning & didn't feel like eating after getting home from the beach where I happened to have a mojito with visiting relatives. I'm sure hat those nachos could go well with or feel like the wrong pairing for a mojito under certain conditions too. Skilled play & story get setup as being at odds where one needs to be chosen over the other to make it easier to assign value to one or the other but they can just as often be complimentary.

I don't understand how this helps. Of course anything can be at odds with anything. What are you saying? That no one should ever discuss when play priorities are not complementary and the implications that may have upon play?

So because traffic is overwhelmingly complementary and functional, no one should ever analyze when there is a crash and what the causal mechanisms of the crash were (and if there was a systemic element that undergirded that crash - eg a bad intersection or a blind turn or a 2nd order effect that amplified driving aggression here)?

I'm not clear what point you're trying to make above. If you wouldn't mind, finish the below sentence for me please:

When play priorities clash...

* there is no clash

* its impenetrable to analysis

* I don't give a crap

* I prioritize x because of y

* something else

 

[clearstream]

It states that there are key aspects of various D&D play that either Skilled Play or Story Imperative driven play are sensitive to to (the Long Rest recharge in 5e being one of them).

For the record, we're clear by now that the either SP or SI dichotomy is resisted, right?

1) Players bringing whatever the eff character they want to into play. Let us say its AD&D and everyone is allowed to "bring in PCs from their other games." Everyone comes in with PCs that are 18s and 18/00 Strength (what luck!).

Play isn't sensitive to that?

Gameful-narrative is sensitive to anything that happens in the game, including if players rock up with over-tuned characters.

2) Let us say that we're playing 5e and its a social conflict using the Social Interaction rules. The GM either didn't write down any IBFTs for the NPC or they wrote them down yet they're not good at the performative aspects of play so they do a terrible job at conveying the "Pictionary" portion of play here. The players are frustrated and can't suss out the IBFTs as a result and therefore can't leverage them to improve their odds of attaining the necessary Charisma check to attain the NPC as an asset.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

Gameful-narrative is sensitive to anything that happens in the game, including if players can't adapt to some information being obscured.

3) Its 4e D&D and the GM is utterly terrible at running Skill Challenges (no "change the situation", no thematic coherency, "Fail Forward" and "Success With Complication" is either nonexistent or poorly executed). At the same time (or conversely), the players at the table aren't creative or proactive at all. They have no idea how to appropriately leverage the shared imagined space and their characters assets to drive a compelling thematic scene skillfully.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

Gameful-narrative is sensitive to anything that happens in the game, including if players have no idea what to do.

4) Its 3.x D&D and the entire table has chosen either Druid, Cleric, or Wizard. Alternatively, that same table has decided to play all Fighters.

Play isn't sensitive to that?

Gameful-narrative is sensitive to anything that happens in the game, including if players rock up with identical characters.

5) Its AD&D or 3.x or 5e and the GM is rolling everything behind the screen. The GM is doing this so they can strategically fudge rolls to ensure a particularly trajectory of play stays online. Or maybe the GM is executing Deux Ex Machina to ensure an NPC stays relevant. Or maybe the GM is making up backstory and leveraging it so they can deploy blocks against powerful spellcaster moves that would dramatically reframe key situations and wrest control of the trajectory of play from the player(s) back to the GM. Or maybe they're doing all 3!

Play isn't sensitive to that?

Gameful-narrative is sensitive to anything that happens in the game, including if the rules are not upheld (which may in an extreme case suspend gamefulness).

 

[loverdrive]

I kinda think we need to separate "story that just happens to arise from events that happened" (which is just an unescapable thing -- I have many stories of playing wh40k or, say, finding myself in a tough place while playing Dishonored) from "story that consciously constructed with people taking intentional steps to improve that story" (which is a thing pretty much endemic to role-playing games).

The former just happens and obviously doesn't interfere with anything. The latter requires effort and sometimes gets in conflict with "just playing the game".

 

[Manbearcat]

I kinda think we need to separate "story that just happens to arise from events that happened" (which is just an unescapable thing -- I have many stories of playing wh40k or, say, finding myself in a tough place while playing Dishonored) from "story that consciously constructed with people taking intentional steps to improve that story" (which is a thing pretty much endemic to role-playing games).

The former just happens and obviously doesn't interfere with anything. The latter requires effort and sometimes gets in conflict with "just playing the game".

Good post (which I agree with...unsurprisingly!). I'm going to use it to address a few things.

@clearstream I knew the premise would be resisted and cries of "false dichotomy" would emerge before I even started the post. Like I've written above though. I don't see how there is anything approaching weighty theoretical support that the premise can be outright rejected as never_ever happening, I certainly know after probably 10,000 hours of GMing every brand of D&D (and skillfully GMing it) that it happens, and I know for a fact that the community-at-large has perceived this dating back to at least the 80s (and Dungeon/Dragon mags and I'm fairly certain White Dwarf before it...and in hobby shops and water cooler talk). So the evidence required to overturn those things are titanic.

Can you describe in a sentence what you mean by "gameful narrative"? I've never heard of the term. Unlike some on here, I'm not going to flip out an go ELITIST JARGON OMG I HATE YOU. I'm sure that collection of words has meaning to you. Perhaps it has meaning in some gaming subculture I'm ignorant to. And I'm perfectly willing to accept the term and your usage.

I just need to know what it means. Is it what @loverdrive is referring to (and pushing back against) directly above? Any narrative that spins out of participating in any game whether it is arbitrarily spun out, forced to spin out, or systemitized to spin out?

 

[clearstream]

I don't understand how this helps. Of course anything can be at odds with anything. What are you saying? That no one should ever discuss when play priorities are not complementary and the implications that may have upon play?

One can both resist a proposed dichotomy AND have a worthwhile discussion about circumstances that arise in play. A DM might attest to a player rest having a deflating consequence that no one enjoyed. Others might offer ways to have avoided or finessed that consequence.

It might be that one wants to say - such a deflating consequence is evidence of a fundamental dichotomy. That would be to resist a concept of greater or lesser success being possible along complimentary axes.

If you wouldn't mind, finish the below sentence for me please:

When play priorities clash...

* there is no clash

* its impenetrable to analysis

* I don't give a crap

* I prioritize x because of y

* something else

I like your list! You pithily state many of the positions I read (and I guess, put myself).

The first two work for me. Either there is no dichotomy, or if there is then there may be no possible analysis beyond stating a tautology, while SP is also a chimera lacking definition. I feel like if we had a really good definition of SP, we might be able to come back to and reassess your concern more profitably.

 

[Manbearcat]

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.

You're misunderstanding what pemerton is talking about above.

The sort of Story Imperative (which includes a particular brand of Story Advocacy/Curation and Finding the Fun and Intentful Spotlighting and all the techniques and system design that allow that) by GMs in a 5e game is not the same as the Play to Find Out agenda that AW GMs hew to (and all of the principles and systemization that allow for that).

A very simple example of this is "character-advocacy-driven Power Fantasy does not occur in AW." Just like it doesn't in Dogs in the Vineyard (Baker's first work which is kindred with AW in several key ways...yet also different in key ways). Yet, both games systemitize badass PCs at the beginning of play.