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

[loverdrive]

I also feel the need to point out that "Story Imperative" and "Just Playing The Game Imperative" (let's don't delve deeper into what the hell Skilled Play is supposed to mean) are at odds only in D&D and games with similar midschool approach to design and authority distribution (say, Pathfinder, GURPS, Savage Worlds or even World of Darkness despite what White Wolf tries to sell you).

In Apocalypse there's no such conflict, because Just Playing The Game leads to Cool Story -- there's nothing anyone at the table can do within the rules that would lead to a boring or anticlimactic story. On top of that, the players are supposed to treat their characters as protagonists who do exciting naughty word.

In Умер Мужик (I'm gonna run around all over the internet screaming about this game now, I love it to hell and back) there's no such conflict, because Just Playing The Game measn creating a Cool Story (or, in this case, heartbreaking and tragic story).

In D&D there can be such conflict, because sometimes Just Playing The Game leads to a weird boring story and "story juice" gets unused -- like when the characters curbstomp the Big Bad without breaking a sweat, or when Son of Rorke who must prove himself to his father to even deserve a name, gets killed in one hit by Klarg, so all the internal and external conflicts just get resolved in most boring way with an unlucky dice roll. Combine that with the players who are supposed to take as little risks as they can... Yeah.

 

[prabe]

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?

Sure the game is sensitive to that. Kinda. I think your ... refinement "Let us say .." is something of a worst-case scenario, and I think the DM can plausibly still challenge the characters. I'm pretty generous about stats in the 5E campaigns I run, and I haven't had any difficulty challenging the PCs. If they punch a little above their weight class, so what?

I mean, if you're setting out to run through a published AP-type book, you'll probably need to adjust everything ... but I don't do 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?

Of course, play is sensitive to (sub)optimal GMing. In this case the GM has made things harder for their players by not understanding/knowing/recognizing their (the GM's) weaknesses. Probably should have had the players just roll their Insight checks rather than try to roleplay it out.

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?

Again: Yes, play is sensitive to (sub)optimal GMing. It's also sensitive to (sub)optimal play. That is approximately a tautology.

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?

Yes, it's sensitive to that. Again, it's more of a problem if the GM is trying to run published material and/or not experienced enough to come up with material to suit the party.

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?

Again, again: Yes, play is sensitive to (sub)optimal GMing. Whether those are literally poor choices for the table, though, arguably depends on the table.

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.

I'm pretty sure I haven't said "5E [or a situation therein] is sensitive to Long Rest recharge" is controversial. I absolutely agree it can radically alter a situation. Where I disagree is, I don't believe that sensitivity makes for conflicts between "Skilled Play" and "Good Story." In other words, I believe I am disagreeing with your lead post.

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)?

Yes, play is sensitive to all those things. Some people will prefer games that are more systematized; other will prefer games that are less. Some tables will seem like ALL SKILLED PLAY while others will look to be ALL STORY ALL THE TIME.

The thing is, it's not a dichotomy: It is not literally either ALL SKILLED PLAY or ALL STORY ALL THE TIME. It's a continuum. And all the things that go into that continuum--all the things that make a game ALL SKILLED PLAY or ALL STORY ALL THE TIME--are themselves continua. Many games that seem to be in the middle of the main continuum, if you look at the contained continua, are in fact close to the ends of those continua, but in ways that average closer to the middle.

At tables that aren't all the way to either end of the continuum, it seems probable (and in my experience it's almost certain) that SKILLED PLAY and STORY heterodyne, there's a feedback loop. As the players play, they build and react to the story; as the story emerges, the players respond.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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

No, this has been asserted, but you nor anyone else has made the case. If I want the game to hinge entirely on my choices in play and the result of the mechanics (strong skilled play agenda) how can this possibly align with manipulation of the game to force story outcomes (strong curated play agenda). And note the later doesn't require railroading -- I can manipulate the game so that an encounter is exciting and challenging onstead of being trivialized and not force an outcome (railroading is the continued forcing of outcomes).

It's been claimed that these don't conflict, but I don't see how that's possible -- they have divergent expectations of how the challenges can/should be framed.

Can you compromise, so that I mostly want skilled play but accept occasional curation or vice versa? Sure, but this is a compromise between different objectives and not a statement they don't differ. If they didn't I wouldn't have to compromise.

 

[clearstream]

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 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?

Gamefulness is a term used in game studies to mean play that incorporates rules. (All kinds of caveats should be on that definition!) So to be playful can be met in many ways that don't amount to being gameful (although being gameful is always also playful, in some sense). IIRC I first encountered the term in Salen and Zimmerman's "Rules of Play".

What @loverdrive rightly points to are dissonances that can arise from spatchcocking narrative onto game, rather than emerging narrative as game. Your tension, then, is a feature of an unsuccessful marriage. I believe that is not necessitated: it is not inherent to game when played as game. SP and gameful-narrative are on the same side.

 

[Manbearcat]

In D&D there can be such conflict, because sometimes Just Playing The Game leads to a weird boring story and "story juice" gets unused -- like when the characters curbstomp the Big Bad without breaking a sweat, or when Son of Rorke who must prove himself to his father to even deserve a name, gets killed in one hit by Klarg, so all the internal and external conflicts just get resolved in most boring way with an unlucky dice roll. Combine that with the players who are supposed to take as little risks as they can... Yeah.

So the way the game is systemitized (which includes resolution mechanic procedures, authority distribution, where structure persists and where it does not, the form that structure takes, the litmus test for adeptness/skillfulness of participant roles, the principles that undergird the lot of it) will bring about various sensitivities?

So the outputs of a system that is sensitive to a particular pivot point might (might does not equal will...no one is or has claimed that) lead to (when that pivot point wrests control of play):

• fait accompli (there is no chance thing x is going to happen...or no chance thing x is not going to happen)
• "never could have seen that coming (in a bad way)"
• thematically impotent (if not incoherent) results
• tactically/strategically muted or outright disconnected (outputs muted/disconnected from inputs) results

So long as one accepts the outgrowth of that pivot point as the marriage of system intended + participant intended story product (and not arbitrary/unintended side effect of the sensitivity), then there is no such thing as competing priorities.

 

[Manbearcat]

Gamefulness is a term used in game studies to mean play that incorporates rules. (All kinds of caveats should be on that definition!) So to be playful can be met in many ways that don't amount to being gameful (although being gameful is always also playful, in some sense). IIRC I first encountered the term in Salen and Zimmerman's "Rules of Play".

I don't disagree with this at all. In fact, I've made this exact case on here many, many times; that "play" does not equal "game". EG Calvinball has no actual rules. The only rule of Calvinball is Calvin gets the results Calvin wants. That is definitionally "not a game" because whatever pretense to rules and authority distribution and therefore distribution of volition to affect the trajectory of play is just that...pretense. Hence, not a game.

Where I'm confused at is what work "narrative" does here. Is a "gameful narrative" one in which the byproduct of simply playing with integrity (meaning the rules have integrity which provides structure to the play and the participants follow those rules without fail) will yield "the story the rules intended?"

What room is there in this theory for "oops" in either the 1st order conception of the rules themselves or the 2nd order effect of their interactions or in the 3rd order effect of "crap...these rules and their interactions don't reliably create the sort of stories we intended to flow from play that is performed with integrity?"

What @loverdrive rightly points to are dissonances that can arise from spatchcocking narrative onto game, rather than emerging narrative as game. Your tension, then, is a feature of an unsuccessful marriage. I believe that is not necessitated: it is not inherent to game when played as game. SP and gameful-narrative are on the same side.

I believe this gets into my last paragraph directly above. Are you saying here that its not possible for that 3rd order effect to manifest as a result of any design?

 

[Manbearcat]

FYI, I saw the other thread last night and I posted this there. Because "what is Skilled Play" is in the cross-hairs, I'm cross-posting this here.

The below is about TACTICAL and STRATEGIC Skilled Play. It is not about THEMATIC Skilled Play (that is another axis of Skilled Play...where D&D mostly falls down except in the embedded thematic deployment of classes in D&D combat, 4e Skill Challenges, Themes/Paragon Paths/Epic Destinies and Quests, and the functional deployment of 5e Background Traits and 5e IBTFs + Inspiration). Thematic Skilled Play is not cosplaying FYI. Its aggressively playing the themes of your character to propel play through the vehicle of system. D&D doesn't do this great because overwhelmingly the system lacks the cogs and levers and fallout of their turning/pulling.

Also, Gygaxian Skilled Play is different and much more narrow than the broad use of Skilled Play (deftly deploying your cognitive horsepower/system understanding to navigate tactical and strategic decision-points to wrest control of the trajectory of play from other participants/system's unfettered byproducts).

If I had to pin down the various forms of Skilled Play in the D&D I've GMed it would be:

AD&D: Optimizing rote dungeon crawl SOPs for dealing with traps + optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies").

Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawls: Managing the Exploration Turn/Rest/Light economy + skillful Exploration turns and (basically) Group Checks
+ avoiding needless combats + maximizing the encumbrance/equipment loadout/treasure weight ratio minigame.

RC Hexcrawls: Optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies") + skillful Exploration turns and (basically) Group Checks.

3.x: Class and build choice minigame (pick Druids, Wizards, Clerics) + optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies", sustain yourself, buff everyone to the teeth).

4e: Optimize Team PC synergy in combat while optimizing movement/forced movement/control/hazard and terrain interactions to shut down the pivotal components of Team Monster/battlefield synergy + Off-turn actions + Skill Challenge creativity in action declarations and Skill Power/Utility deployment.

5e: Optimizing spell loadout/deployments (to obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, synergize skill augments, trigger/protect Long Rest) + Range combat and Bonus Actions + Getting your GM to "say yes" as much as possible + play the "Wheel of Fortune" Social Conflict well.

 

[Bawylie]

So the way the game is systemitized (which includes resolution mechanic procedures, authority distribution, where structure persists and where it does not, the form that structure takes, the litmus test for adeptness/skillfulness of participant roles, the principles that undergird the lot of it) will bring about various sensitivities?

So the outputs of a system that is sensitive to a particular pivot point might (might does not equal will...no one is or has claimed that) lead to (when that pivot point wrests control of play):

• fait accompli (there is no chance thing x is going to happen...or no chance thing x is not going to happen)
• "never could have seen that coming (in a bad way)"
• thematically impotent (if not incoherent) results
• tactically/strategically muted or outright disconnected (outputs muted/disconnected from inputs) results

So long as one accepts the outgrowth of that pivot point as the marriage of system intended + participant intended story product (and not arbitrary/unintended side effect of the sensitivity), then there is no such thing as competing priorities.

Interesting.
If that’s the frame of mind, what is the relationship between “arbitrariness/unintended consequences” and acceptance of die rolls as valid content-generators?

There’s an extent to which players have some effect on a die roll and maybe do what they can to improve their odds. Could that be seen as less arbitrary? Also, if the stakes of any pivot point are known to the players (who, let’s presume agree to proceed in acceptance of all potential outcomes), does the fact of their knowledge and acceptance of weirdo possibilities make those outcomes more legit?

per one of the examples, if you’re playing as Son of Rorke and you’ve got these expectations of making a name for yourself and you still choose (knowingly) to put Son of Rorke in a situation whereby he’s merked by Klarg, is that a failure of any kind? Did the system fail? Did the player? Is there tension between expectation of outcome and actual outcome? Is it all arbitrary? And can it actually be arbitrary if you know ahead of time that there’s like a 10% chance of an undesirable outcome so you go on ahead and do it.

Are “that sucks, but that’s how it goes” moments game system failures? Agenda failures? Or part of the game that we should reasonably expect to have to roll with?

 

[loverdrive]

per one of the examples, if you’re playing as Son of Rorke and you’ve got these expectations of making a name for yourself and you still choose (knowingly) to put Son of Rorke in a situation whereby he’s merked by Klarg, is that a failure of any kind? Did the system fail? Did the player? Is there tension between expectation of outcome and actual outcome? Is it all arbitrary? And can it actually be arbitrary if you know ahead of time that there’s like a 10% chance of an undesirable outcome so you go on ahead and do it.

It's a failure of the context around the system. Which I consider a part of the system.

It's a valid outcome, but undesirable one — because it majorly clashes with expectations, and since the book doesn't even try to set up correct expectations — it's on her.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ideally the conflict wouldn't arise. Why? Because the GM weaves a good story regardless of what the players do or what random outcomes the dice may produce. They control so much, they're one who describer most things, frame everything, so they have plenty of tools to do this. They do not force the game to some predetermined outcome, they forge a best possible 'story' with the elements they happen to have at the moment. Like in 'Once Upon a Time' if you draw an unicorn card then you have to do your best to forge a cool story that features an unicorn.

But yes, in practice ideal cannot always be reached, so such conflicts can happen. And for such occasions, there shouldn't be some inflexible 'prime directive' of 'always prioritise the story' or 'always prioritise the skilled play'. If anything, the prime directive must be 'prioritise the enjoyment of the players' and doing that requires knowing your players and reading the room. So yeah, basically the answer to the poll is 'do what you think your players would prefer.' As flippant as that may seem, that's what it ultimately boils down to.