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

[Manbearcat]

I literally just copy and pasted your list, bolding the first part of the lines that I intended. I added nothing. I hewed mightily to the list you provided by copying... nay, faithfully carved it in pixels formed from the parched myelin sheaths of my dying synapses.

Nevermind. Disregard that exercise. I’m not going to try to clarify again.

I’ll engage directly and specifically in the coming days with your enumerated list that you’ve written in your post above.

 

[pemerton]

This is an odd line of questioning. It's like, when I describe an apple as sweet and tart, nice snap to the bite, and roughly spherical in shape, you ask, "sure, but what about how much oranges it has in it?"

The definitions given to you for SP all reference leveraging the system, ie, the mechanics, of the game. There's no suggestion that mechanics are in or out in this definition, or that you pick and choose which mechanics count. It's if you can leverage the mechanics of the system, alongside resource expenditure, alongside creative thinking that make the definition. There's never been, as far as I know, an argument that any given set of type of mechanic is excluded.

Now, you might have a set of mechanics that do not support skilled play. If a mechanic is "flip a coin for every action the player declares. On heads, what the play wants happens. On tails, the GM says what happens.," and this is it, then it's very hard to leverage this because you cannot influence how it turns out. Play here cannot be skilled because I can't really do anything to affect play. However, the moment you add, "and each player has 3 re-flip tokens per session to spend on a re-flip of the coin, which they can use after seeing the result of the flip," well, now we're in skilled play land, because I have resources and can use them to leverage the mechanics in important to me situations. It's not perfect, but when and how I use my tokens is not germane.

But, at no point, is there a consideration of which mechanics in a system are to be considered for skilled play. It's the system holistically that enables or disables such play.

I think that, in this post, "skilled play" is being used similarly to how @Manbearcat uses it in the OP: that is to say, with an ordinary language meaning along the lines of play that exemplifies technical skill.

@clearstream is getting a bit confounded, I think - but also doing some confounding too - because in D&D/RPG tradition there is a somewhat jargonistic use of "skilled play" to mean the sort of play associated with Gygax (and for White Dwarf aficionados, Lewis Pulsipher). "Skilled play" in this jargonistic sense is about play of the fiction in a fashion that is exemplified by the play of modules like B2 (getting the tribes to turn on one another), X2 (puzzling out the interrelationships among the Amber family members; solving riddles; etc), and of course S1 and S2 (so many tricks and traps of all degrees of outre-ness). In this latter usage, mathematical or "picking from lists" optimisation of the sort that is important in (say) 3E D&D PC building - which requires skill in the ordinary language sense but isn't about granular engagement with the fiction to work through a pre-authored trick/trap - doesn't count as skilled play; whereas as per my post just upthread, a game with little of that technical skill involved might still evince Gygaxian skilled play if it does focus n that sort of play of the fiction (T&T is a candidate example; and I reckon some Classic Traveller play over the decades has also looked a bit like this).

I think once the fact that there are two somewhat overlapping but not identical uses of the phrase "skilled play" is made explicit, the confounding should all be dispelled. (Maybe that's too optimistic? But I hope not.)

It sounds like any mechanic can be SP or not SP, depending on whether it engages with the fiction or lets players skip doing so? Based on other posts, I believe that play must also engage with the game's mechanical state, such as character positions on a shared map? Right? And player acts that aren't covered by game mechanics are still SP so long as they also engage granularly with the fiction. Is that all correct? As a player, I can't just say "I persuaded the priest" because that would be akin to rolling Charisma (Persuasion); instead I have to say how I persuade the priest. It would still be SP if I were then asked to roll Charisma (Persuasion) - or make an attack roll, or a Strength check, etc - and at that point it wouldn't matter that I have some mechanical advantage on such checks.

This seems like an attempt to characterise Gygaxian/Pulsipherian skilled play.

It seems OK, but has some components that I personally think are a bit distracting.

For instance, is the location of the PCs on a map a mechanical state of affairs? In 4e D&D combat resolution, the answer is yes: the "battlemap" is a shared physical entity on which the participants move tokens as part of the process of action declaration and resolution. But in classic D&D play (OD&D, AD&D, B/X) the map is not shared, it is secret to the GM; and so the location of the PCs is at least arguably a purely imagined state of affairs with the GM's copy of the map as much as anything an aide-memoire for the GM to help keep track of and adjudicate the fiction.

While I think the issues raised in the previous paragraph can be interesting to explore, and would feed into a consideration of what is the role of mapping in classic D&D and T&T and similar dungeoneering play, it doesn't need to be resolved to make sense of the idea of Gygaxian skilled play.

I would say the same thing about any mechanic can be SP or not SP. What is key to Gygaxian skilled play is engaging the fiction: the players make moves by engaging the fiction at a conventionally-established level of appropriate granular detail, and the results of those action declarations are determined by extrapolating from the fiction. Again, look at the "fair trap" thread for examples of that sort of thing being talked through in great detail! It's kind-of secondary to that, and even a bit arbitrary, that D&D traditionally interposes checks/dice rolls between some declarations and extrapolations, and not others. Why does AD&D require a dice roll to extrapolate from the muscled fighter hurls himself, shoulder first, at the stuck door to the door bursts open, surprising the ogre behind it. but not to extrapolated from the wily thief pokes the floor ahead of her with a 10' pole, depressing the pressure plate and harmlessly trigger the trap? There's no a prior reason why the latter doesn't require a DEX check of some sort (with failure meaning the prodding is ineffectual, or trigger the trap inadvertently or whatever); this is just how D&D happened to evolve based on what made sense to Gygax et al back in the early 1970s! And as I already posted, there are some cases where there is no clear answer within the scope of the rules as to whether or not a check is needed to extrapolate the fiction - like shooting a fire arrow at a nearby static target.

Notice that even @Ovinomancer's coin-flip mechanic could be part of Gygaxian skilled play if the trigger for using it was to determine an extrapolation where the system dictates that the participants (or perhaps the GM as lead participant) is not allowed to extrapolate purely naturalistically. D&D saving throws, especially at low levels, and T&T saving rolls made on Luck, are rather close to this! What creates room for skilled playing those systems isn't the presence or absence of some version of a coin toss at key moments, but rather that those key moments are elements in a larger process of the participants working with the fiction at quite a granular level.

Here are some resolution systems that contrast with that sort of approach: the whole of a 4e skill challenge; determining, in any version of D&D combat whether or not the declaration of I attack the Orc with my sword results in a win or loss for the PC; resolving interstellar travel in Classic Traveller (which requires multiple throws to determine that no drives fail and that the jump is successful, but at no point require the player of the Chief Engineer to decide the degree to which s/he is going to overload the flux capacitor in the warp drive while shifting all power to the nuclear dampers!).

But in each of the above there is room for at least a little bit of skill in a non-jargonistic, ordinary language sense of cleverly leveraging the game mechanics: in any version of D&D with a cleric in the party we can decide that now is a good time to use the Bless spell (I can;t remember if 4e D&D has a clerical Bless spell but it has a paladin daily Wrath of the Gods that occupies a similar decision-space) to help expedite our victory vs the Orcs; in a 4e skill challenge there is the scope to deploy various limited resources like rerolls, augments and the like at crucial moments; and even in Classic Traveller - which has very little mechanical resource deployment of the D&D sort - there is scope to do better or worse in allocating a limited suite of available personnel to various starship operation functions (eg Do we put this character with Engineering-2 and Gunnery-1 in charge of the drives or in charge of the triple laser turret?).

 

[clearstream]

So the question in the poll is, in the above situation, do you prioritize Skilled Play (the players have defeated the obstacles before them and done all the things that would reasonably allow for a Long Rest Recharge...BUT...the story is going to suffer for it because the climax is going to be anticlimactic) OR do you prioritize your responsibility with the Storytelling Imperative (you execute the block by using move x, y, z, which you can always reasonably extrapolate because of your unilateral access to offscreen/backstory, and deny the Long Rest Recharge because you deem the Storyteller Imperative as the most important priority here)?

After the cruel and pointless deaths of a thousand pixels, I start to believe that -

1. The term Skilled Play has complex contents, but let us call it a mode of RPG play: SP-mode
2. The term Storytelling Imperative also has complex contents, but let us call it a mode of RPG play: SI-mode
3. The scenario in which a choice is meaningful, requires that a group be conducting their play in a blend of SP-mode and SI-mode, because
   1. Were it only SP-mode, the DM would not perceive any choice to make, and likewise SI-mode
4. Other modes of play are not ruled in or out: the OP simply requests they be discounted in order to focus on their specific concern

At root, the question asks whether a DM blends SP-mode with SI-mode at their table, and if they do - and thus may run into conflicts - which they favour? I believe one crucial difficulty is as to those complex contents: what really is SP and what really is SI? What separates them and what connects them. For example, SP is concerned with shared fiction or imagined space, and SI is concerned at least with shared fiction. What separates them. Possibly the idea of curation or authorial intent. Whatever the case, a second difficulty is to become clear on how the modes are blended?

I think for these sorts of reasons, the question is very interesting.

 

[clearstream]

Nevermind. Disregard that exercise. I’m not going to try to clarify again.

I’ll engage directly and specifically in the coming days with your enumerated list that you’ve written in your post above.

I'd really value that - thank you I will rest here until you have the chance to write next.

 

[pemerton]

Hang on?! So you are saying SP is only about engagement with the DMs fiction? Maps, rules, pieces - all that boardgamey stuff - is discounted? Is that really right? On surface that does not fit well with what others have said. The boardgame word in particular was introduced by another poster... which is why I was also using it. I don't see how B/X can be a good example of a system that supports SP, if the boardgamey stuff doesn't matter to SP.

I'm simply trying to find terms for what people seem to be describing and confirm back with them what I understand they are presenting. For example, they describe a "fiction" - so far as I know in RPG fiction is received as language. Player moves are given as language, as regards the fiction. Or do you mean to include something else by "fiction"? Is it that player moves are given in some other way, in connection with it?

It's quite traditional in RPGing for the fiction to be presented - both by players and GM - as drawings. For instance, a player might sketch out a dungeon room as s/he understands it to look based on the GM's description, and then point to where the various PCs position themselves while one pokes the floor or opens the chest or whatever else.

Language is obviously not unimportant - it's the main way humans communicate after all! - but it doesn't seem terribly crucial as a focus of discussion.

D&D - and hence RPGing in general - inherits its use of maps and tokens from wargames. Some wargames are sophisticated boardgames, but some are not - they allow the players to directly engage the fiction in their resolution. On any given occasion of the use of a map and tokens in RPGing, do we have a closed mechanical system like a boardgame (let's say chess is the paradigm here) or do we simply have aides-memoire for the shared fiction? This is a topic on which so much ink was spilled during the 4e era it threatened to drown the universe! But is probably a bit orthogonal to getting a handle on what Gygax means by skilled play.

Do you have access to Gygax's DMG and PHB? If so, have you read the section in the PHB (beginning around p 109, I think) on Successful Adventures? And have you looked at the lists of tricks in Appendix A of the DMG (random dungeon generation) and Appendix H (tricks)? I think reading these parts of those books closely, with an open mind, and then looking through the "fair trap" thread, and then re-reading those bits of Gygax, will be much more conducive to grasping Gygaxian "skilled play" than looking for an abstract definition.

And if you want to grasp the difference between a RPG which does or doesn't make room for skilled play in the other, less jargonistic, sense of its use in this thread, compare any version of D&D for which a SRD is available to Cthulhu Dark (which is a 4 page PDF you can Google up pretty easily). You will quickly see why Cthulhu Dark has basically no scope for skilled play of the sort the OP in this thread talks about. (I think at least some versions of Wuthering Heights might also still come up on a Google search, but it's about 10 pages rather than 4.)

If you've considered these various examples and illustrations but are still unsure what various posters are getting at when they talk about skilled play, it would be helpful for you to say so explicitly. As we could then hone in on what it is that you're unclear about.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

After the cruel and pointless deaths of a thousand pixels, I start to believe that -

1. The term Skilled Play has complex contents, but let us call it a mode of RPG play: SP-mode
2. The term Storytelling Imperative also has complex contents, but let us call it a mode of RPG play: SI-mode
3. The scenario in which a choice is meaningful, requires that a group be conducting their play in a blend of SP-mode and SI-mode, because
   1. Were it only SP-mode, the DM would not perceive any choice to make, and likewise SI-mode
4. Other modes of play are not ruled in or out: the OP simply requests they be discounted in order to focus on their specific concern

At root, the question asks whether a DM blends SP-mode with SI-mode at their table, and if they do - and thus may run into conflicts - which they favour? I believe one crucial difficulty is as to those complex contents: what really is SP and what really is SI? What separates them and what connects them. For example, SP is concerned with shared fiction or imagined space, and SI is concerned at least with shared fiction. What separates them. Possibly the idea of curation or authorial intent. Whatever the case, a second difficulty is to become clear on how the modes are blended?

I think for these sorts of reasons, the question is very interesting.

Furthermore, the conflict only exist if SP and SI require different outcome, and they often don't. That's the angle from which a lot of people challenged the dilemma in the OP. Usually there are a number of possible outcomes for each situation that can satisfy SP criteria and (probably even wider) selection of outcomes that can satisfy the SI criteria. So usually there is enough overlap that you can select an outcome that satisfies both, so the conflict doesn't exist. In the case of the OP a lot of people argued that relatively easily winning the final battle is not necessarily dramatically unsatisfying, so there's no conflict. Just let them have their easy win and add narrative trappings to make it feel dramatically appropriate; both imperatives satisfied.

 

[pemerton]

I feel that you're using incredibly narrow definition of a story.

Perhaps. Nevertheless it's been very important in the history of RPG design and play, both for better or worse (eg consider the 4e DMG advice to skip to the fun). I think it's at least plausible to suggest that right at this moment the most influential approaches to RPGing that are neither D&D nor D&D-adjacent are PbtA and Fate, and both of these approaches to RPGing have a concern with story in at least roughly the way I have characterised it - recognisably dramatic/thematic concerns producing a crisis/climax and then a resolution.

One can see it making its first published appearances in TSR material in the DL modules (eg the "obscure death" rule); in the original Ravenloft (the antagonist has recognisable, dramatically resonant motives); and really coming to the fore in the advice found in the 2nd ed AD&D core books.

Some stories are descriptions of real events, and thus cannot follow any specific structure, albeit the narrator may emphasise certain elements to create dramatic resonance (story is not just sequence of events, it is also how those events are described.) Story that doesn't follow a certain pattern doesn't stop being a story; it may be a boring or bad story, or perhaps it could be refreshingly surprising one. I feel the latter is what many of us want from RPGs.

I don't really feel the force of your contrast between typical story structure and "refreshingly surprising" story, and frankly I think the story structure of (say) a serious play through of Tomb of Horrors will be getting closer to Warhol's Sleep or Empire than to anything refreshingly surprising!

But in any event I stand by my assertion that not all RPGing is concerned with story in my sense, but a great deal is. And if you want it, getting it may come into tension with the technical play of the system. It's precisely this possibility that motivates the DL "obscure death" rule, for instance.

I do believe that story--or at least narrative--emerges from play, yes, but I think it's (at least mostly) only visible looking backward.

A typical 4e combat plays very much like a lengthy remake of a fight scene from Rocky or The Karate Kid or Zorro - the conflict breaks out, the protagonists find themselves set back/on the ropes/under pressure, then they dig deep into their reserves, sometimes literally get their second wind, and prevail.

This is not an accident. It's a feature of design, and we can point to the elements that support it - eg NPCs/creatures have most of their survivability front-loaded into hit points and have a good chunk of their offensive power loaded into at-wills (this also has the benefit of reducing the cognitive load of running them); PCs have a good chunk of their survivability located in healing surges that need unlocking through deploying resources and/or making moves, and have a good chunk of their offensive power loaded into limited-use abilities that require clever judgement to deploy well.

And it's not visible only living backwards. At least in my experience, it is felt on the way through.

A good 4e skill challenge will produce the same experience, though the system is less finely tuned here than in respect of combat and so is a little bit less reliable.

Moving beyond D&D variants, there are whole schools of RPG design dedicated to ensuring that the story is visible not just looking backward but in the moment of play. That's why they go under the label story now. My favourites are Burning Wheel (intense) and Prince Valiant (light); the most widely played - I think - is PbtA.

There's a difference between playing a game to go through a pre-planned story, and playing to generate a narrative.

A further difference is playing to experience a story in my sense, where that story (i) is not pre-planned and (ii) will emerge without anyone having to curate it.

In my experience, playing AD&D will struggle to deliver this without fairly heavy curation. (The version that gets closest, in my experience, is the original OA.) Given the close resemblance of 5e to AD&D for these particular purposes, I'm prepared to assert, with some but not total tentativeness, that the same is true of it.

Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant are different in this respect. And not by coincidence - by design.

Talking about foreshadowing in a TRPG seems kinda like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Yet it is widely discussed as a GMing technique. And the cover of I6 Ravenloft depicts Strahd brooding on his castle parapet.

Part of the rationale for the soft move/hard move approach of PbtA is to achieve the same effect as foreshadowing, but without the need to curate in respect of it.

If one is using "curation" that way, I think a GM who chooses the types of instigating events to frame into the fiction is plausibly curating the fiction, or the narrative, in such a way as to achieve a particular presentation or effect--but maybe without concern as to the result

<snip>

I think that's at the heart of the conflict in the OP, which I don't see: It's taking as a given that one can or should reproduce literary effects in a TRPG. Since I think it's not possible--and in fact I think it's a bad idea to try--because the media are so different, the conflict in the OP pretty much literally does not exist for me as a GM.

OK. But I think it would be silly to deny that no RPG designer or player has ever been concerned with it. The history of TSR publications from the DL modules through 2nd ed AD&D through 5e adventure paths shows that the biggest commercial publisher of RPGs thinks that achieving story in the sense that I am using it, which is the same as in the sense of @Manbearcat's "storytelling imperative", is an important thing.

The existence and comparative success of PbtA and Fate as non-D&D systems shows that there are players of non-D&D RPGs who think that story is an important thing.

The tension to which the OP draws attention arises out of a particular clash, that can occur in some RPGs but not all due to details of system and technique, between the logic of technically skillful game play and the desire for story as more than just a sequence of fictional events.

I'd say that if the rules for a given game ensure a literary structure will emerge from play without the people at the table doing anything to make it happen (other than play the game by the rules) then the rules are curating the fiction to generate a story.

I think that would be a largely uhelpful thing to say. It's would be like saying that tossing a coin instead of making a decision is "letting the coin, or the rules of the coin-toss, make the decision". As a casual metaphor that's harmless enough; but of course the truth is that a coin-toss is an alternative to making a choice, not a particular mode of deciding (hence why we have integrity commissions for lotteries and casinos!).

The whole point of "story now" systems and the techniques that they rely on is to allow the story to emerge in the experience of play (not just in retrospect) without anyone having to think about it or curate it.

 

[pemerton]

I believed these comments to imply that the crucial difference between SP and a boardgame is that SP is boardgame plus imagined space or shared fiction.

What do you mean by "plus"?

I can tell you what @Manbearcat means when he says 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." He means what he says: D&D combat is basically a boardgame which is defined and resolved by a closed set of rules and moves. If this is true, then Moldvay Basic (for instance) would unfold in two distinct "phases" - the bit which is about the shared fiction and the players engaging that with the GM adjudicating/extrapolating from his/her notes in accordance with the rules and conventions of play; and then from time to time the bits which involve combat, which are boardgame like "interruptions" of the fiction-oriented play they are embedded in.

If this is true, then there is no Gygaxian skilled play in D&D combat.

For what it's worth, I am confident that Manbearcat would readily concede that his characterisation of D&D combat as a boardgame is a generalisation rather than a stipulation of a universal truth. In the context of Moldvay Basic, encountering an unrecognised type of dungeon slime and trying to find out whether fire is necessary to kill it or likely to feed it so it becomes even more fearsome might be resolved in part using the combat rules but clearly isn't boardgame play. And I can give example of 4e D&D combat which involve maps and tokens but are clearly more than boardgame play. Manbearcat is making a point about what is typical or paradigmatic to facilitate a focusing of thought and discussion.

So anyway, I know what Manbearcat is saying. What do you mean by "plus"?

 

[pemerton]

This is collaborative storytelling

I have done collaborative storytelling, using the excellent game A Penny for My Thoughts.

I would not characterise any of my RPGing as collaborative storytelling. And much of my RPGing I would not even characterise as collaborative story creation (eg my Classic Traveller play is a bit hit-and-miss in this respect; I've played a couple of sessions of AD&D over the past few years and they were completely story-free).

 

[pemerton]

Typically, if someone says "No, that dress is not exclusively red, it is also stitched with sequins" the implication is that the dress is "red" AND "stitched with sequins". Otherwise they would say that the dress is not red at all.

A dress is an object. It is not much like RPGing, which is a process.

A song might both be a song with rocky drums, and a song with poetic lyrics. It doesn't necessarily follow that the poetic lyrics are laid over the rocky drums; maybe they happen at different times.

This is why I asked what you mean by "plus".

is there any boardgame component to Skilled Play? Does boardgamey stuff matter at all, or is it discounted completely? Isn't B/X quite boardgamey? Weren't those tight mechanics something you earlier said were important or useful for Skilled Play?

Are you meaning "skilled play" in Gygax's sense? Do you mean "skilled play" as technical proficiency more generally? Or something else.

Chess is a boardgame that admits of skilled play. Backgammon is a boardgame that admits of some skilled play, but less than chess. Ludo and its variants (Headache, Trouble, etc) admit of less skilled play than backgammon (eg because of the rule about rolling the exact number to take your piece home). Snakes and ladders is a boardgame that admits of no skilled play.

As D&D was originally conceived, when combat breaks out we resolve that using a wargame ruleset (Chainmail to begin with; but then the distinctive single-figure vs single-figure d20-and-hit-points based rules that are still used today). @Manbearcat is characterising that as an insertion of boardgame-style play (with scope for boardgame-style skill) into a game otherwise based around a shared imaginative space, a shared fiction.

If that doesn't make sense, are you able to say what is confusing? Abstract definitions are no use here - we're talking about actual historical phenomena and traditions.