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

[Crimson Longinus]

@Ovinomancer your example was like one vague sentence or something like that. I extrapolated. There was no facts to change so nothing was changed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer your example was like one vague sentence or something like that. I extrapolated. There was no facts to change so nothing was changed.

Sigh. If I added a dragon to yours and showed how the dragon just results in an unsatisfying death of the PCs then I haven't changed your example because you didn't preclude that in the few sentences you provided? Come on, let's not do this.

 

[pemerton]

I'm proposing that what it is to be a game as game never necessarily excludes what it is to be a story.

OK. I'm not sure whose view you are proposing this contrasts with.

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.

In the context of the OP, a key impetus for the conflict is that players have some control over the circumstances in which their PCs confront the obstacles. If players have no such control - that is, if the GM gets to decide when/how the players confront obstacles, with what resource suite available, etc - then the conflict the OP points to doesn't arise.

A RPG which exemplifies that second sentence is Prince Valiant: the GM has sole control over both framing and recovery.

A RPG which comes fairly close to exemplifying that second sentence is 4e D&D: the GM has the bulk of control over framing and a lot of control over extended rest recovery. In 4e, the core of the players' decision-making about how to overcome obstacles is within the context of the encounter. There are some constraints on GM authority, arising from a mixture of convention and in-fiction logic. For instance, if the players conserve a daily resource in encounter A, then they get to carry it forward to encounter B; conversely, if they expend it then the GM has a degree of power to present encounter B which the players will have to confront without that daily resource. But if an encounter in which the daily is used is the epic climax, and there is no in-fiction rationale that would preclude an extended rest, then the players may reasonably factor the likelihood of an extended rest into their decision-making about the use of daily resources.

But in the sort of situation the OP raises, the 4e GM is pretty free to deny the extended rest (through various ways of manipulating the fiction) and force the players to proceed on the strength of their remaining daily resources plus encounter powers. This is not the hosing in 4e that it might be in other versions of D&D because of the balance of character effectiveness across the two categories of resources (daily and encounter) in 4e. I take @Manbearcat to think that the pressure is greater in 5e (and in AD&D and 3E) because of the centrality to resource recovery and hence character effectiveness in those systems of long rests, and because in those systems the players also have more capacity to control the pacing of rests and recovery independently of the GM; and of course long rests - taking longer in the fiction - create more scope for the GM to manipulate/adjust the fiction "off screen" (as many posts in this thread have suggested s/he should do).

 

[pemerton]

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".

This is true. It's a bit sad, though, that we're still having to make this distinction nearly 20 pages into a thread that pretty clearly draws the distinction (by implication if not expressly) in the OP!

 

[cbwjm]

I'm of the opinion that if the players ask for a long rest and, through skilled play or whatever, there is no reason why they cannot have a long rest, then they get a long rest, story be damned. If I've set up the final battle well enough then it should be a decent battle at any rate.

 

[clearstream]

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.

Typically in games, skilled play is that play that brings you nearer the win condition (or pushes your opponents further away) or maximises your score. One way I have heard it put is that a utility function is defined and skilled play is play that achieves an optimal maximum under that function.

One objection I've read a few times in this thread might boil down to asserting that RPG doesn't contain a win condition, i.e. there is no agreed utility function to achieve an optimal maximum on.

Each of those examples above, however, seem to me to have meaning only if we're assuming - contrary to the objection - that there actually is an agreed win con or score to maximise. Do you see what I mean? What do you think? Have you also got win cons or score assumptions that need to be attached to each of your cases?

 

[Manbearcat]

Typically in games, skilled play is that play that brings you nearer the win condition (or pushes your opponents further away) or maximises your score. One way I have heard it put is that a utility function is defined and skilled play is play that achieves an optimal maximum under that function.

One objection I've read a few times in this thread might boil down to asserting that RPG doesn't contain a win condition, i.e. there is no agreed utility function to achieve an optimal maximum on.

Each of those examples above, however, seem to me to have meaning only if we're assuming - contrary to the objection - that there actually is an agreed win con or score to maximise. Do you see what I mean? What do you think? Have you also got win cons or score assumptions that need to be attached to each of your cases?

I do.

Great post.

I’ll respond tomorrow...errrr today?

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

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.

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 think there are some - even many - posters who seem to be asserting that skilled play should be allowed to run its course. Of those, many then go on to give advice which is, in effect, that the GM engage in story curation. Here's an example:

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.

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.

***********************************************

I think "story curation" comes in different degrees. The story curation of (say) DL, or Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, is quite extreme: in effect the whole sequence of events of play is laid out in advance. I personally do not really enjoy that sort of RPGing. But I think it must be quite popular given that WotC continues to sell variants on it via its APs.

But there is a more limited form of "story curation" or "story imperative" which is relevant to the OP. For instance, in 4e D&D there is no rule (and at least as the books present themselves, not even an express or implicit principle) that precludes the GM having full regard to the current state of the PCs (eg what resources do they have available?) in framing a situation. The GM can step things up (raise a creature/NPC in level; add more elements into the encounter) or step things down as s/he thinks is appropriate. This is something I did frequently in GMing 4e.

Burning Wheel has some points of resemblance but also some points of difference. The points of resemblance are (i) that the GM has (by far) the strongest authority over the framing of scenes/situations, and (ii) the GM is therefore able to do so having regard to the current state of the PCs (and the Adventure Burner/Codex, in its GMing advice, talks about how the GM can manage framing in order to maintain an appropriate degree of challenge). But here's a point of difference: far more than 4e D&D, Burning Wheel has an "objective" component to how difficult certain challenges should be, how powerful certain beings should be, etc. (This is part of why 4e tends towards gonzo whereas BW tnds towards grounded or even gritty.) This "objectivity" puts some limits on how much the GM can adjust the fiction to make it meet story imperatives. But there are other techniques that are central to BW (eg "fail forward" adjudication of resolution outcomes; benefits to PC improvement that can flow from having one's PC attempt tasks while at less than full strength; the focus on player-authored PC Beliefs as the starting point for all scene framing; no expectation of "neutral" refereeing by the GM) that help ensure that the possibility @loverdrive identifies (of "just playing the game" leaving "story juice" unused) is unlikely to come to pass.

These features of 4e and of BW make me say that, as systems, they prioritise story imperatives over "skilled play", at least as far as resting/resource recovery is concerned. Skilled play is, however, an imperative within scenes/situations. 4e to an extent and BW very strongly have no room for anyone, during the resolution of a scene/situation, to substitute story imperatives for playing the game in accordance with the rules for action declaration and resolution.

Suppose you move away from 4e/BW-ish play, in the direction of classic D&D - eg more "neutral"/"naturalistic" approaches to the elements of framing and to locating the PCs in the world and relative to the obstacles they will face; more emphasis on extrapolation of the fiction to move from situation to situation rather than a strong sense of "scenes" that the GM frames; more game elements that care about the ways in which the PCs move from scene to scene (eg spell durations; recovery cycles); a greater expectation that the GM will draw extensively on unrevealed elements of the fiction to not only feed into framing but to determine the resolution of declared actions; etc. Then I think it becomes less likely that "just playing the game" will produce a satisfying story, because all those changes (i) encourage players to try and take control of scene framing, and the players' have "skilled play" incentives in that respect (eg to go into every encounter at full strength) and (ii) make certain sorts of minutiae (eg how many rations do we have left?) important to play even though they are pretty immaterial to a lot of satisfying stories. This is what produces the tension the OP is pointing to, and that @loverdrive has reiterated in the quote above.

And then what I'm seeing, as in the other quotes above, is that we preserve story imperatives not by changing some basic techniques - eg like who gets to frame scenes; who gets to manage resource recovery; etc - all of which involve abandoning "naturalism; but rather by doubling down on the GM's authority over unrevealed backstory. In the context of the OP I think that is absolutely what @Manbearcat would consider a strong favouring of storytelling over skilled play priorities.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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!

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.

To build on my post just upthread: whether skilled play and satisfying story are in opposition, or rather are on the same side, depends on game design and techniques.

In traditional D&D they are in opposition, because the players are given levers to manipulate - that include scene-framing levers and resource recovery levers - which encourage them to make decisions that undercut satisfying stories. While I don't think that RM is a full-on "skilled play" game in the Gygaxian sense, I agree with @Ovinomancer that it does exhibit this particular trait, and even more than D&D encourages it (because the relative benefits of nova-ing in RM are even greater than in D&D, mostly due to the way its crit rules work).

If the GM then resorts to his/her control over the fiction to meet the storytelling imperatives, this tends to negate/"dishonour" the significance of the players' skilled play.

On the other hand, some of those other systems I mentioned just upthread (D&D 4e; Burning Wheel) handle the tension more systematically by way of a clearer allocation of authority over different parts of the fiction. They make it much clearer that the players can't use their (PCs') resources and abilities to manage fundamentals of recovery and scene-framing; so there the GM has open authority to have regard to storytelling concerns. On the other hand, these systems also make it clearer that when players' declared actions are being resolved, it is "skilled play" - ie the working out of those action declarations via faithful and sincere application of the rules and principles - that rules the day, and no participant has any authority to block any of that by reference to storytelling concerns.

A cost of those systems is that - as far as I can tell - many RPGers don't like their avowed repudiation of "naturalism" in framing scenes, establishing the parameters and the outcomes of action declaration, etc. But of course embracing that naturalism leads the OP tension to re-emerge! (As it does in 5e D&D in a way that it didn't in 4e D&D.)

A system that is even less naturalistic than Burning Wheel or 4e D&D is Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic: it more tightly regulates the GM's ability to introduce opposition/challenges via its use of the Doom Pool. The OP tension doesn't really arise in this system at all, because so much is dictated by the system rather than relying on participant decision-making. (The GM still has authority over recovery, via deciding when to move to another Action Scene rather than a Transition Scene; but this does not produce any tension, because there is no skilled play the players can engage in to try and manage this.) 13th Age, with its rule of to rest before 4 standard encounters, suck up a campaign loss! is also quite non-naturalistic.

Again, I think the non-naturalism of these systems will be disliked by many RPGers; hence for those RPGers who like "naturalism" and dislike these more rigid procedures and allocations of authority, the OP tension will still be there.

 

[pemerton]

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?"

In my previous two posts just upthread, I've been assuming that the game works as intended - eg that it is deliberately "naturalistic" in its approach to the scope and resolution of action declarations, to the way scenes are framed/extrapolated, etc. And trying to explain how, as I see it, the tension you point to in your OP can be obviated (by some approaches) or not (by other, more "naturalistic", approaches).

If the game is not well-designed, or generates consequences in actual operation that aren't intended or foreseen by the designers, then we're in another realm. In 4e D&D this might happen if a class is designed which doesn't bring the right degree of "oomph" into encounter-level resolution. (Some people thought the Vampire was a class like this; I've got no personal experience to make that judgement.) In 5e this might happen if players are able to exercise so much control over scene framing and the rest cycle (eg via legacy magical effects that haven't been sufficiently analysed/rewritten) that the sorts of control the GM has to exercise over the fiction in order to preserve story imperatives become so ludicrous or obviously artificial that the whole point of the "naturalistic" approach is undermined.

But I don't think our OP needs there to be these sorts of problems in order to get off the ground. All it needs is games that deliberately do not strongly parameterise player powers/authority/responsibilities vs GM ones in respect of scene framing, recovery and the like - instead approaching these in a "naturalistic" way.