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

[tetrasodium]

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

Recognizing that the two are not at odds, can be complimentary, and need to be weighed based on many unrelated factors to decide what is best for the game whenever a choice needs to be made is why your noticing frustration over how it disrupts attempts to paint them otherwise. Painting them as being at odds where one can be decided over the other in isolation due to it being inherently better than the other makes it easy to declare one or the other less worthy of rules support or table time. That false dichotomy is still a false dichotomy though.

 

[Manbearcat]

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?

I'm going to answer your questions by talking about specific games and game situations (its difficult to answer your questions in the abstract).

1) Dogs in the Vineyard is my favorite TTRPG of all time. But that doesn't mean I'm unaware of how a particular design choice affects play. Similar to 5e, there is a "bounded accuracy" component of play that creates an extreme disincentive for the Dogs (these are gun-toting paladins meting out justice and upholding the Faith in a Wild West That Never Was) to escalate to guns against superior numbers (I'm not even talking profound superior numbers).

This can create a problem for play in my opinion. I want my Dogs to be bold, aggressive advocates of the doctrine. Unfortunately, the orthodox dice pool mechanics can disincentivize (say) a gunfight with cattle rustlers and sin-brokers when the Dogs are outnumbered. Now there are already disincentives to get into gunfights in the game and those disincentives will crystalize "who your character is...what they're willing to fight and die for." It doesn't need any more.

However, the game is designed so beautifully that there is a trivial answer for this. Lower the GM's dicepool when facing superior numbers. You can still make fights insurmountable after a very reasonable point. So I've done that. When GMing Dogs, this is the way I run it.

2) I've run probably just south of 50 games of Dungeon World. The most recent one I've taken on features @prabe and his wife. In the second session of play, things almost spiraled as his wife's PC jumped into this roiling cauldron of an abyss at the bottom of gorge. Poltergeist-like, it seemed to be spewing spirits into the material world. Due to a snowballing effect of action resolution gone south, the game almost abruptly ended. His wife made her Last Breath move and got a 10+ and this fundamentally changed the gamestate, the landscape of play, and the trajectory of the story.

Now like I've said above...I have run TONS of DW (and AW...and a few other PBtA games). No one can convince me that DW in particular wouldn't be a better game with FitD Position and Effect integrated into it and either a functional iteration of FitD's Stress/Complication Resist System or simply "Hold 1 at the beginning of ever session...spend Hold to turn a 6- result into a 7-9 result or turn a 7-9 result into a 10+ result."

My guess is in @prabe 's limited play he may very well agree with that latter amendment to DW's system (even if he's agnostic on the former because he hasn't played a FitD game)!

3) In one of my more recent Blades games, the Crew was a series of Con Men...the game was kind of like The Sting meets Rounders. Now Blades has all kinds of robust conflict resolution mechanics. However, that doesn't translate to being even functional, let alone good for even Genre Texas Hold 'Em. Forget about emulating the action tactical and strategic decision-points of Texas Hold Em...just the tropes and inhabiting the general feel of a Hold 'Em table.

So I had to iterate twice in order to make Genre Hold 'Em work out of Blades action and conflict resolution system and resource economy. The first time was just north of meh. The second time was better but well south of alriiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I'm not pleased with the present iteration and I'm not convinced at this point (though, I could be convinced by myself or someone else who conceives of and executes something brilliantly) that Blades can produce the sort of Genre Hold 'Em play that I personally would find acceptable (acceptable is a high bar for me). Meanwhile (circling back to 1), Dogs conflict system is fundamentally poker! It is built to be Genre Hold 'Em! But I can't just bolt that onto Blades. It won't work. At least not satisfyingly.

---

So to drive this all home. If a system doesn't reliably (reliably here means pretty nearly without fail) and coherently:

* produce the genre conflicts + pressure points + fallout that it intends...

and/or

* if the action resolution mechanics/resource economy + the tactical/strategic/thematic overhead doesn't facilitate the kind of decision-points and volition for the participants which are vital to coherent story outputs...

...then yeah, system is where you should be looking...

 

[prabe]

I've run probably just south of 50 games of Dungeon World. The most recent one I've taken on features @prabe and his wife. In the second session of play, things almost spiraled as his wife's PC jumped into this roiling cauldron of an abyss at the bottom of gorge. Poltergeist-like, it seemed to be spewing spirits into the material world. Due to a snowballing effect of action resolution gone south, the game almost abruptly ended. His wife made her Last Breath move and got a 10+ and this fundamentally changed the gamestate, the landscape of play, and the trajectory of the story.

Now like I've said above...I have run TONS of DW (and AW...and a few other PBtA games). No one can convince me that DW in particular wouldn't be a better game with FitD Position and Effect integrated into it and either a functional iteration of FitD's Stress/Complication Resist System or simply "Hold 1 at the beginning of ever session...spend Hold to turn a 6- result into a 7-9 result or turn a 7-9 result into a 10+ result."

My guess is in @prabe 's limited play he may very well agree with that latter amendment to DW's system (even if he's agnostic on the former because he hasn't played a FitD game)!

It might have a chance of putting the brakes on a spiraling situation, if my dice (and apparently my wife's dice are now my dice) weren't such an existential menace.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Recognizing that the two are not at odds, can be complimentary, and need to be weighed based on many unrelated factors to decide what is best for the game whenever a choice needs to be made is why your noticing frustration over how it disrupts attempts to paint them otherwise. Painting them as being at odds where one can be decided over the other in isolation due to it being inherently better than the other makes it easy to declare one or the other less worthy of rules support or table time. That false dichotomy is still a false dichotomy though.

Huh? There's zero attempt by anyone I'm aware of in this thread to say Skilled Play is a better or more desireable thing than curation of story. I think curation of story is the default today, but it's not "better."

I also still haven't seen a single iota of work or example showing how skilled play eadily meshes with curation of story (or story imperative, if you wish), just reoeated claims it does. Again, how do you align a desire for play outcomes to only be due to player moves and mechanical systems with a choice to change the gamestate because it would be more exciting in the moment? No one has answered this question.

Let's say my party has carefully navigated the dungeon while marshalling our resources well and discovered the secret room where we learned the BBEG's weakness and are now set to curbstomp him. This outcome will be anti-climatic -- we're set to blow through it in a single round and the BBEG's gonna go out like a punk. If the GM changes the encounter so that it's now a serious fight, with some neat twists, all because it will make it more exciting and climatic, these expectations are at odds!

I don't think either approach is more betterer, thry are just different. Personally, I'm in the curation camp for 5e -- I manage pacing and set things up to be exciting and fun as a GM. I don't have as much fun running a dungeon for skilled play. But I also don't think that makes my oreference better or that play agendas can't conflict. Of course they do, that's why games can differentiate themselves -- by supporting these over those.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Huh? There's zero attempt by anyone I'm aware of in this thread to say Skilled Play is a better or more desireable thing than curation of story. I think curation of story is the default today, but it's not "better."

I also still haven't seen a single iota of work or example showing how skilled play eadily meshes with curation of story (or story imperative, if you wish), just reoeated claims it does. Again, how do you align a desire for play outcomes to only be due to player moves and mechanical systems with a choice to change the gamestate because it would be more exciting in the moment? No one has answered this question.

Let's say my party has carefully navigated the dungeon while marshalling our resources well and discovered the secret room where we learned the BBEG's weakness and are now set to curbstomp him. This outcome will be anti-climatic -- we're set to blow through it in a single round and the BBEG's gonna go out like a punk.

But is it automatically anticlimactic? Cannot you as DM frame it in a manner that it feels thematically appropriate? The clever characters using the weakness of the enemy to take down the cocky villain. Or the characters expecting to face an immensely powerful monster find them as miserable and incoherent wretch covering in their lair like Hitler in his final days.

And of course the story doesn't need to end there if it would feel like an unsatisfactory ending. Perhaps after defeating the villain they find out that their number one henchman had escaped with the main villains secret plans, or perhaps they find orders and it is revealed that the villain they had slain was working for some more powerful entity.

If the GM changes the encounter so that it's now a serious fight, with some neat twists, all because it will make it more exciting and climatic, these expectations are at odds!

I don't think either approach is more betterer, thry are just different. Personally, I'm in the curation camp for 5e -- I manage pacing and set things up to be exciting and fun as a GM. I don't have as much fun running a dungeon for skilled play. But I also don't think that makes my oreference better or that play agendas can't conflict. Of course they do, that's why games can differentiate themselves -- by supporting these over those.

Again, I feel that the amount of conflict is exaggerated. Most games run on some mix of both preferences and do not suffer major problems. And if there is a conflict, you can solve it case by case basis. What will be 'most fun' at the moment.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But is it automatically anticlimactic? Cannot you as DM frame it in a manner that it feels thematically appropriate? The clever characters using the weakness of the enemy to take down the cocky villain. Or the characters expecting to face an immensely powerful monster find them as miserable and incoherent wretch covering in their lair like Hitler in his final days.

And of course the story doesn't need to end there if it would feel like an unsatisfactory ending. Perhaps after defeating the villain they find out that their number one henchman had escaped with the main villains secret plans, or perhaps they find orders and it is revealed that the villain they had slain was working for some more powerful entity.

Well, for starters, you're advocating for story curation here, and those aren't bad ideas. But, the idea if I want my play to dictate, then I should have been able to discover the BBEG is a coward weakling hiding in his bunker and that's not what I discovered. I discovered a secret that let me bypass his power. Changing it as you suggest obviates my play -- the effort to find the secret, the risk, the time, etc -- and rewrites things so that the story is served. These things are at odds.

Secondly, if the only suggestion you have to address an example is to first change the example and then say that it doesn't show what I claim... I mean, I can change your example and show how it's wrong, too. This doesn't do anything.

Again, I feel that the amount of conflict is exaggerated. Most games run on some mix of both preferences and do not suffer major problems. And if there is a conflict, you can solve it case by case basis. What will be 'most fun' at the moment.

It's not exaggerated, it's just usually not paid attention to because, as I noted, story curation is, by far, the predominate mode of play these days in D&D. People don't usually encounter strong skilled play advocacy over story curation advocacy. Most GM advice given is along the lines of story curation. It's not better, it's just the current popular mode. In the Six Cultures article, it was the trad and neo-trad options. So, obviously, it's a fine and popular way to play.

So, the normal mode appears to be story curation (or story imperative) to tell a good story, with occasional compromises to allow for some loose skilled play. Like how Descent into Avernus has a string of opening encounters and situations that the GM is directed to handle in certain ways so that the story gets established and the story beats happen as needed, but this is interspersed with some rather shockingly brutal early dungeons (the Dungeon of the Dead Three, for instance, is brutal at the level suggested). This is done poorly, as there's no signposting or notice that the game mode has shifted from the GM curating to a straight dungeon crawl/let the dice fall, so it's a jarring shift if you don't always forefront story curation and run dungeons/combats with that in mind.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, for starters, you're advocating for story curation here, and those aren't bad ideas. But, the idea if I want my play to dictate, then I should have been able to discover the BBEG is a coward weakling hiding in his bunker and that's not what I discovered. I discovered a secret that let me bypass his power. Changing it as you suggest obviates my play -- the effort to find the secret, the risk, the time, etc -- and rewrites things so that the story is served. These things are at odds.

Secondly, if the only suggestion you have to address an example is to first change the example and then say that it doesn't show what I claim... I mean, I can change your example and show how it's wrong, too. This doesn't do anything.

I did not change anything, I suggested how to frame it (based your short description) and where to go from there. The characters still get to beat the villain easily because you they did the clever thing earlier. The point being that whilst easily beating the villain might produce a bad story, it doesn't necessarily need to be so.

Furthermore, the whole concept of 'story curation' seems a tad incoherent in a medium where the GM is source of majority of fictional facts and how to describe them. How could there ever be an 'uncurated' story in a RPG?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I did not change anything, I suggested how to frame it (based your short description) and where to go from there. The characters still get to beat the villain easily because you they did the clever thing earlier. The point being that whilst easily beating the villain might produce a bad story, it doesn't necessarily need to be so.

Furthermore, the whole concept of 'story curation' seems a tad incoherent in a medium where the GM is source of majority of fictional facts and how to describe them. How could there ever be an 'uncurated' story in an RPG?

No, you did change it. Framing is still the fiction of the game. If the BBEG is a coward weakling hiding in a bunker, well, then, he was always that. But, in the example I gave, we found secret knowledge about the BBEG that allows us to bypass his power -- which is saying that he has power to bypass. Why would a powerful foe, such that finding his secret provides a serious advantage suddenly have always been a cowardly weakling hiding in a bunker?

This is absolutely changing the example. It's not a bad idea, though, and it can easily work, but only if the players are more interested in engaging a fun story rather than having the story just be the record of what they did.

As for curation, curation doesn't mean that the GM cannot create things. What curation means is that the fiction is constantly monitored and maintained so as to deliver an intentional result. If I draw and key a dungeon, and then lock it down and only act to arbitrate the rules as the players engage with the dungeon, never adjusting things for better or worse but only in case of clear error, then I am not involved in curation. I'm not maintaining the fiction for a certain goal. If, on the other hand, I'm actively looking to change things as play progresses so it's a fun and engaging story, so that pacing feels good and the story has a satisfying feel and climax, then I'm absolutely curating the fiction.

When you curate an art exhibit, for instance, you make selections based on what theme you wish to present, and you organize the display for best impact of that theme, and you change things out that you find aren't working or if you find a better option. Same concept for the ficiton in an RPG -- you're managing for theme.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No, you did change it. Framing is still the fiction of the game. If the BBEG is a coward weakling hiding in a bunker, well, then, he was always that.

Umm, no. This is a result of the actions of the PCs.

But, in the example I gave, we found secret knowledge about the BBEG that allows us to bypass his power -- which is saying that he has power to bypass. Why would a powerful foe, such that finding his secret provides a serious advantage suddenly have always been a cowardly weakling hiding in a bunker?

My example assumes that the villain knows that the characters have found the way to bypass his power; he knows he's beaten and the characters are coming for him. They probably have previously destroyed most of his forces too.

Now if the villain doesn't know this, then I would frame it as him being cocky and gloating, and then it would be rather satisfying when the characters manage to pull the rug from under him.

This is absolutely changing the example. It's not a bad idea, though, and it can easily work, but only if the players are more interested in engaging a fun story rather than having the story just be the record of what they did.

It is a record of what they did described in manner that produces an engaging story.

As for curation, curation doesn't mean that the GM cannot create things. What curation means is that the fiction is constantly monitored and maintained so as to deliver an intentional result. If I draw and key a dungeon, and then lock it down and only act to arbitrate the rules as the players engage with the dungeon, never adjusting things for better or worse but only in case of clear error, then I am not involved in curation. I'm not maintaining the fiction for a certain goal. If, on the other hand, I'm actively looking to change things as play progresses so it's a fun and engaging story, so that pacing feels good and the story has a satisfying feel and climax, then I'm absolutely curating the fiction.

When you curate an art exhibit, for instance, you make selections based on what theme you wish to present, and you organize the display for best impact of that theme, and you change things out that you find aren't working or if you find a better option. Same concept for the ficiton in an RPG -- you're managing for theme.

You're creating a distinction where no clear distinction exists in reality. The GM created the dungeon, they chose the themes there. And no preplanning is perfect, they need to improvise more stuff on the spot. They choose how to describe things, they choose how the creatures react, what they do, what they say. And it is absurd to think that when deciding how to do these things, the GM would not base these on what they think would be most entertaining. Even if they don't realise it, they will be doing so subconsciously, unless they're intentionally trying to run an unenjoyable game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Umm, no. This is a result of the actions of the PCs.

Not in my example it wasn't, so we're back to yes - you changed the example. Again, I'm not sure what the point is of changing the example and declaring victory. You have a new example, where the BBEG was turned into a weakling coward though some process of the PCs, but okay.

My example assumes that the villain knows that the characters have found the way to bypass his power; he knows he's beaten and the characters are coming for him. They probably have previously destroyed most of his forces too.

Ah, good, we've acknowledge that the example is changed and this is your new example. Cool. I guess if you build your example so that the villain can 1) find out, and 2) will react by being a coward and hiding then the players can leverage that in skilled play -- they can discover that he will react this way and they can discover the secret that will cause it. You'd have to plan this ahead of time, and then never take any actions to direct to this outcome and just hope it turns up in play. Maybe the players never find the secret. What you can't do, and still support skilled play, is change the scenario based on what the players do so that it tells a better story.

Now if the villain doesn't know this, then I would frame it as him being cocky and gloating, and then it would be rather satisfying when the characters manage to pull the rug from under him.

Likely, in a skilled-play scenario, you won't really have any time to roleplay the BBEG. I mean, maybe, but you certainly can't count on it.

And, again, to be clear, I have no problem with your ideas -- they are pretty good ones. I'm saying that they don't marry a curation of the story with the skilled play.

It is a record of what they did described in manner that produces an engaging story.

You mean changed. I'm not sure why there's this desire to claim that what happened in play can be altered to be more exciting but this isn't changing anything about what happened in play. You've already had to change my example to add things so that your story works. And, as I said, that's odd, because if you just change the example to match your conclusion then you're not really addressing the original issue. You've sidestepped it. It's an odd form of cherry-picking.

You're creating a distinction where no clear distinction exists in reality. The GM created the dungeon, they chose the themes there. And no preplanning is perfect, they need to improvise more stuff on the spot. They choose how to describe things, they choose how the creatures react, what they do, what they say. And it is absurd to think that when deciding how to do these things, the GM would not base these on what they think would be most entertaining. Even if they don't realise it, they will be doing so subconsciously, unless they're intentionally trying to run an unenjoyable game.

You keep saying there's no clear distinction, but you aren't showing that this is so. You're creating different play examples and saying these work (which isn't really clear, either) and so your idea is wrong. It's like I say 2+2=4, and you say, no, 2+3=5, I have no idea where you get four from. It's a little confusing.

And, yes, no planning is perfect. This isn't carte blanche to say that therefore any changes made are part of necessary ad libbing. You only need to create in direct response to an oversight or error in planning. The idea that you just ad lib a change to the BBEG because what the players did offers an opportunity you didn't see before is absolutely against the idea of skilled play. This is because you've now added fiction that, in the nature of fiction, was always true, but the players could not have discovered it. They could never have played in any way to find this new fiction you've created out, never have used it in a different way. Instead, it's just you as GM that has come up with this and all for the idea that it makes a better story. And, again, to be clear, this is perfectly fine and I do this stuff, too. But, it's against the idea of skilled play.

Why, if I may ask, is it so important to you that these two things not be in conflict? As I said, such conflict is what allows different games to stand out by what they support. This is true between tables in 5e and between game systems. Does everything have to be always compatible? What do you think you lose if skilled play and story curation conflict? I don't lose anything, and knowing the conflict lets me pay attention to it and not suddenly and jarringly shift between priorities.