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

[Campbell]

The stuff you mention can absolutely matter. And you still cannot escape subjective preference based calls. This is collaborative storytelling and people will bring their preferences in it and they will matter, no way around it. It feels to me that pikeople try to use technical jargon and buzzwords, to obfuscate what's actually happening at the table. Like when @Campbell says 'think what feels true' (none of it is true, you're still creating fiction) or 'advocate for the NPCs' or 'advocate for the world' these are still all just ways to describe creating a good story. Or when people say to take account what challenges the beliefs of the characters' or to come up with 'interesting thing,' these again are just aspects of creating a good story. The GM will make subjective calls, those calls will be influenced by their idea of a 'good story' (in a broad sense there is no way around that, nor there need to be and it is silly to pretend otherwise.

Here's how I see it : Not all RPG play is collaborative storytelling. For instance when I play 5e the group I play with is absolutely engaging in collaborative storytelling. We're all mindful of the direction the story is going in, what each other's character concepts are, spotlight balancing, and the trajectory of their individual stories. We lean into plot hooks. The whole jazz. Critical Role style stuff.

The group I play Vampire and Infinity with is entirely different. There's none of that stuff going on. The players pretty much just play out the agendas of their individual characters. There's no concern for what the story is going to look like. The GM just provides honest antagonism. The focus is entirely on feeling what our characters feel and advocating for them. The entire focus is on the experience of being our characters in those tense moments. It's not collaborative storytelling even if I occasionally can sit back and enjoy the narrative.

It's actually not all that different from my experience with the gym. Right now I'm training for aesthetics. When I go to the gym I'm not concerned with expressing strength through lifting heavier weights in the same way a power lifter would. If strength was my concern I would have a training program focused on strength. Instead my focus is on building contractile tissue so my shoulders, chest, and upper back look bigger and my waist looks smaller. In order to do so I am concentrating on time under tension, mind muscle connection, and exhausting the muscle. If I approached my training with the same mindset I used to bring to power lifting it would be far less effective.

Still over the course of doing this body building program I'm still getting stronger and pushing heavier weights. I'm not concerned with getting stronger. It's just a side effect of putting on muscle. It's a fringe benefit rather than the point of the endeavor. In fact if I want to pursue my current goals optimally I have to exercise restraint and discipline when the urge to express my strength pops up.

The opposite is also true by the way. A peaking program would give minor hypertrophic benefits, but allow me to express strength much more easily. I would also have to be very disciplined about rest and volume. Making sure I was as fresh as possible for max effort work.

 

[pemerton]

I have no doubt that it can feel cinematic, but a scene--however much time it takes, and however much it might reveal about the character/s in it--is not a story. There might be a narrative to it, yes, and pacing, but it's not a story.

<snip>

If you're playing to experience a structured story the game generates, then the game rules are curating the fiction. In either event, the players are pretty much just along for the ride.

<snip>

Both of those games talk a lot about story that emerges from play, and the story that emerges in play, IME, isn't anything like structured fiction, even in PbtA or Fate.

<snip>

I don't think it's unhelpful at all to point out that a game built to generate a specific shape of fiction is removing the ability of the people around the table to decide the shape of the fiction. If following the rules of the game generates a specific form or structure of story, the game is curating that--and maybe it's worth looking at how.

Narratives absolutely emerge. Structured stories less so.

Upthread I referred to a story with a recognisable structure - rising action, crisis/climax, resolution/denouement. This does not require a 3 act, or 5 act, or any other structure of that sort (and Robin Laws has a brief but nice discussion of this point in the HeroQuest revised rulebook). It does require something meaningful to be at stake - so that there can be pressure during the rising action, and then a crisis in respect of it, and some sort of outcome in relation to that.

Playing ToH as it is written won't deliver that. All the time spent discussing how to navigate around the pits; what sort of object to poke into the various doorways and portals; who should be the one to pick up the <whatever is salient in the current room>; etc, etc, etc; will make that sort of thing impossible. Most of the action declaration will carry no thematic weight; nothing will be at stake besides the "technical" success of a manoeuvre, and in some cases whether or not a character dies because a wrong guess was made or a wrong conclusion drawn about the correct technical solution.

WPM is more gonzo, and so will produce some more moments of amusement, but otherwise will play basically the same.

To say that that sort of play does not produce story in the sense described above is not to criticise it. I enjoy running, and cycling, not competitively but just as a thing to do, and neither of them produces story in the sense described above either! Nor does solving crosswords, something else I sometimes do. Nor does playing most board or cardgames Nor does posting on ENworld, but I spend my leisure time on that as well!

Conversely, there are RPGs which can - via various system features including allocations of authorial responsibility and resolution techniques adopted - reliably deliver story of the sort described above. The suggestion that players in these games are just along for the ride strikes me as a claim that can only be based in ignorance. is that your claim? To me it would seem particularly odd given that in any thread when someone posts about the techniques that are used to achieve this (and we've seen it in this thread) those who are mostly familiar with D&D and D&D-adjacent RPGs respond with Then why would you even need a GM if the players get to do all that stuff?

But anyway, a simple example of acquiring equipment can draw the contrast.

* In B/X, AD&D, 3E or 5e, the default way to acquire equipment is to look up its cost on a chart, compare that to the money tally on one's PC sheet, deduct the former (cost) from the latter (tally) and write the equipment on the list on one's sheet. Occasionally the GM might say that something isn't available. There is no rule that tells us if and when a check might be called for, on what basis, etc.

* In Burning Wheel, the default way to acquire equipment is to declare an action, on Resources. Either the GM says 'yes', in which case the player just writes down the new equipment; or if the desire to acquire the gear implicates a (player-authored) Belief in some way then the GM sets an obstacle (the gear list in BW has obstacles, not prices) and the player makes a check to find out whether his/her PC can get the gear, or not; and whether anything adverse (eg dropping in Resource rating) flows from the attempt.​

On the first approach, acquiring gear is primarily an exercise in accounting. There is typically no tension or release. There are no established parameters on when a check might be required, let alone how that might or should relate to what matters to the player in the situation.

On the second approach, there is no accounting unless it is a consequence of the check (either dropping in Resources, or improving if the check meets the requirements for ability improvement); and either the GM just says 'yes' and a quick change is made to the sheet, or there is a moment of tension leading to climax and resolution. BW relies on a couple of devices to modulate between success and failure - one is a variety of difficulties over the course of play, another is the players' choices about when to invest additional "fate point"-type resources into their checks. This is different from the PbtA reliance on a probability spread, or the HeroQuest revised use of difficulties modulated up or down based on the number of prior successes/failures; but it does the job.

Of course there are probably few RPGing moments where the purchase of gear is the pinnacle of excitement. But I think the contrast between the above two approaches is still illustrative. D&D's approach encourages the virtues of accountancy: careful planning, calculation and optimisation. BW's approach makes planning and optimisation hard, and encourages a focus on what is at stake (in dramatic/thematic terms) and on how hard the character, as played by the player, wants to commit to owning a piece of gear.

Denying these system differences, and many others like them, just seems silly to me.

 

[clearstream]

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.

It might be a bad idea to put multiple large subjects in one post, but I will go ahead and put three

1. One puzzling element relates to which mechanical moves (use of 10' pole, unseen servant, fireball, Charisma (Persuasion) are in or out? It has been said a few times that the filter isn't the mechanic itself, but - perhaps - some principle agreed among the players. It seems important, and yet I haven't yet found anything by Gygax about it. He seems more on the side that players should employ every resource at their disposal to mitigate danger - that the rules are there to be used.

Based on what others have said, it feels like the principle is - do not skip grains of engagement with the fiction or imagined space through use of game mechanics. Some mechanics are disliked when the player doesn't need to explain how they work - I persuade the Queen. I reach a conclusion similar to one you discuss - that combat cannot be "skilled play" - on those terms. Yet I doubt Gygax felt combat could not be conducted skillfully, so something is up.

2. A secondary puzzle is the curated versus emergent story debate (or however you want to label those putative poles). Gygax writes that a DM should override anything that doesn't serve their ends. That seems at odds with a story being strictly emergent. For instance, in the OP, the emergent story is anticipated to trivialise the BBEG while the curated story seeks to preserve danger. From what Gygax writes it sounds like he would have allowed the rest AND preserved the danger... curation, effectively. I suspect the difference is in choice of imperatives. Is that right, or are there expected to be no such imperatives in "skilled play"?

3. Lastly (for this post) if Moldvay Basic is thought to support "skilled play" more effectively than 5e, will a game like Descent support it even more so? Seeing as it codifies campaign phases and such in even more detail?

 

[clearstream]

@Crimson Longinus

I disagree. I don’t see how your view is allowing for different priorities or the different kinds of play that result from focusing on those priorities.

And I feel your unwillingness to acknowledge motive as the relevant factor will prevent us from ever reaching agreement.

For me, what @Crimson Longinus is drawing attention to is the possibility that all modes contain imperatives. I read Gygax calling attention to an imperative for skillful DMing to offer surpassing challenge.

Running Tomb of Annihilation the other day, the characters were faced with numerous skeletons. Seeing as these must be of unwilling Omuan dead who were victimised by Acererak, I decided they had no free will - effectively automatons - and the players made good use of spirit guardians on that basis. Although I was attempting to present the scene neutrally, without any curated story imperative, I think I influenced it greatly in my choices. I have made choices about the rest rules that make attrition a larger factor in my campaign, so I wasn't too concerned that an easier or harder fight with the skeletons would diminish the overall lethality of the Tomb. Still, I could have well decided that these were warrior skeletons (and maybe should have, given other context) and had them fight shrewdly... increasing greatly the chance of a character death at that point.

I felt free from imperative, but perhaps I can never really - as a human - accomplish that? More importantly, if Gygax was an authority on "skilled play" his words present DMing imperatives.

 

[pemerton]

It might be a bad idea to put multiple large subjects in one post, but I will go ahead and put three

1. One puzzling element relates to which mechanical moves (use of 10' pole, unseen servant, fireball, Charisma (Persuasion) are in or out? It has been said a few times that the filter isn't the mechanic itself, but - perhaps - some principle agreed among the players. It seems important, and yet I haven't yet found anything by Gygax about it. He seems more on the side that players should employ every resource at their disposal to mitigate danger - that the rules are there to be used.

Based on what others have said, it feels like the principle is - do not skip grains of engagement with the fiction or imagined space through use of game mechanics. Some mechanics are disliked when the player doesn't need to explain how they work - I persuade the Queen. I reach a conclusion similar to one you discuss - that combat cannot be "skilled play" - on those terms. Yet I doubt Gygax felt combat could not be conducted skillfully, so something is up.

2. A secondary puzzle is the curated versus emergent story debate (or however you want to label those putative poles). Gygax writes that a DM should override anything that doesn't serve their ends. That seems at odds with a story being strictly emergent. For instance, in the OP, the emergent story is anticipated to trivialise the BBEG while the curated story seeks to preserve danger. From what Gygax writes it sounds like he would have allowed the rest AND preserved the danger... curation, effectively. I suspect the difference is in choice of imperatives. Is that right, or are there expected to be no such imperatives in "skilled play"?

3. Lastly (for this post) if Moldvay Basic is thought to support "skilled play" more effectively than 5e, will a game like Descent support it even more so? Seeing as it codifies campaign phases and such in even more detail?

3. I don't know Descent.

2. You can see that in his DMG Gygax is struggling with the limits of his own methods. At two points (in the Introduction, and in (I think) Conducting the Game), he talks about modulating dice rolls to ensure that results correlate to skilled play: so perhaps ignoring an affirmative wandering monster check; and perhaps treating PC death as maiming or unconsciousness instead. He does also say that the GM should not let the PCs win an encounter by fudging as that would be contrary to the precepts of the game; and that the GM should always give monsters an even break. So the overall posture is one of (i) recognising that random rolls can break the correlation of playing skilfully with doing well; and (ii) maintaining that victory must be the result of successful play, but that the GM can accommodate (i) by modulating content introduction and blunting the consequences for failure where that is purely the result of bad luck (ie GM dice rolls).

In the discussion of Conducting the Game he also talks about a different way of fudging rolls to modulate content introduction: eg if there is a part of the dungeon the GM thinks the players will enjoy, that is behind a secret door, the GM might declare the door automatically discovered. This is a move from contingent/emergent to more deliberate framing: I think it sits a bit uncomfortably with the basic logic of his approach, but shows that he was realising that GM control over framing can produce more interesting play. But I don't think he reconciled this with skilled play - eg by fudging the secret door check the GM gives the players "unearned" access to the treasures (= XP) in the special area.

1. I have responded to this multiple times in multiple threads. The key is making moves in the fiction. For reasons that are not explicable beyond convention, some of these require checks - eg opening doors - and some do not - eg poking things with poles. I even pointed to a cast that has no canonical approach - shooting a fire arrow at a nearby static object.

The contrast with, say, Passwall is clear. A STR check to open a door is part of the process of granular extrapolation of the fiction. Passwall allows the players to bypass granular engagement with some chunk of the fiction. Using Passwall well might be clever, but it's not a manifestation of skillfully engaging the fiction. That's one reason it's high level - there an implicit assumption that the player of a 9th level MU has already proven his/her mettle and is entitled to abilities like this spell that allow cutting to the chase rather than having to earn one's way into some particular area of the dungeon.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

When you say something like this...who do you think you're talking to? Me? Because you're not going to convince me of anything with this sort of statement. It not only doesn't remotely reflect the reality of the situation (how principled and proven structure imbues the "movespace" of the involved participants with clarity and explicit limits such that "going rogue" becomes something to be avoided) but it can't possibly be intended to convince me or the people who play games with me of something (no one who plays games with me will feel like their "dirty human intentions" or my "dirty human intentions" cease to propel play).

You're creating this ridiculously excluded middle of "bereft of creativity and utterly automated decision-tree navigation" and "(arbitrary - meaning unstructured/unprincipled) curation by fiat."

So who is this this intended for? Is there some audience in mind?

And do you have any sort of experience in your life with principled structure? If not athletics or martial arts or TTRPGs...somewhere else perhaps?



No one is arguing this position. Its like you're trying to A-Bomb all nuance here.

How about this. If "curation" is the hill you're intent on dying on, you can have it. Insofar as "curation" can be definitionally seen as "navigating a decision-tree and choosing one thing vs another thing", ALL games possess curation by EVERY participant because everyone is navigating decision-trees and choosing one thing vs another thing."

HOWEVER...

there is a significant difference between (lets call it) "structured curation" where a hefty chunk of your decision-tree is pared away by way of said structure (the constituent parts of that structure constrain the permissible "move-space") and "unstructured curation" or "curation by fiat" that does little to no paring away of your decision-tree (like your example above where you, Crimson Longinus as GM, are good with both (a) denying a player their success on their move they succeeded at - actionable intelligence - while simultaneously (b) giving them a complication - now you've got reinforcements...such that next time they will be damn sure to just kill that kobold rather than sparing the kobold and making a social move).

I'm assuming you don't agree with that...

or suddenly you can just automate-by-way-of-computer the remaining decision-tree because my position must be that any "dirty human intentions" involved in the navigation of the remaining decision-tree....is...bad...or something?

The computer thing is of course absurd for a reason, but you ignored my earlier less flippant answer on essentially the same point. Talking about limiting the move space is besides the point. Yes, I of course understand that you can do that. You however cannot eliminate it (and no one actually even wants to.) That's what I've been saying all along, it's not a binary, it's a continuum. GM is always doing the curating, it's just that in some styles they do a lot more of it, in some less; but they're always doing some of it!

And yes, of course other participants contribute to the direction of the story too, and in different games the ratio of player/GM contribution may vary. This again is besides the point, no one is denying that either.

And if we must keep harassing that poor kobold, it is just example of the sort of skilled play where you need to mind your fictional positioning and takes appropriate actions instead of rolling well and declaring victory. It becomes perfectly apparent if you consider my breaking the door example (this is third time I mention it, but people keep ignoring it as it obviously proves them wrong.)

 

[pemerton]

For me, what @Crimson Longinus is drawing attention to is the possibility that all modes contain imperatives. I read Gygax calling attention to an imperative for skillful DMing to offer surpassing challenge.

<snip>

More importantly, if Gygax was an authority on "skilled play" his words present DMing imperatives.

Who in this thread has doubted that Gygax has a view about what a GM should do? @Campbell, @chaochou, @Manbearcat, @hawkeyefan and I have all posted about various principles/imperatives that might guide a GM.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've read the first 20 pages or so.

Here's my input.
Story is literally any fictional event and since D&D has no defined stopping point and no preset duration or ending for any of it's 'chapters' or for the overall 'work' itself then it really doesn't lend itself to story terms like climax very well - because there is always or can always be a next chapter. It's this continuous nature of D&D that IMO makes small snapshots of it's story nearly meaningless to analyze prior to the players moving on to a different campaign with different characters.

But if we insist on using story terms like climax which is really what I think @Manbearcat is talking about - He's asking do you prefer that players can skillfully achieve advantages that undermine would-be 'climatic' events.

It seems to me this notion assumes a relatively concrete precrafted scenario with precrafted contingencies. Which is surely 1 way to play D&D and a fairly popular one as far as I can tell. I think there can be a true conflict in this kind of scenario about whether the DM modifies his adventure or blocks the rest in order to ensure there is a proper climax or whether he allows the would-be climax to be subverted provided there's no precrafted contingency to adjust it back toward being a climax. In this kind of style, where the table is playing with the assumption of precrafted scenarios and precrafted contingencies then not giving the players their advantage would be 'unfair' on some level. But DMing doesn't always have to be about fairness either. Sometimes it can be about fun or providing a challenge or etc. I think fairness tends to be the most important but the others can be used mostly via illusion on occasion and they can make a better experience for it. So I can't really answer the OP because while I would tend toward what he terms skilled play being the priority, it's not such a priority that I'd never go a different route IMO.

But also, D&D doesn't have to be played with precrafted scenarios and precrafted contingincies. In other playstyles the BBEG can be loosely defined as strong but defeatable by the PC's and then that encounter gets instantiated only when the PC's arrive. There can also be contingencies that haven't been precrafted. So I think the question is a little loaded on unstated assumptions - which is another reason I can't actually answer the poll.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Hah, joking, completely. My point was more about the game being the player bit, and the story being ... something else. Once the scene is in play you need to play it straight, i.e. game. In the example @hawkeyefan gave, I would have added minions sufficient to make up the difference, but whatevs. If the encounter is big bad versus party and they're going to clean him, then they clean him. I might try to get creative, but I'm not going to negate or obviate player success to do so.

In that circumstance, I would have the villain attempt to run away. No one becomes a mid- or high- level villain with a mindset of “Oh, they surprised me...May as well just make my last stand here.”

 

[nevin]

I agree. I think if the players have that choice--attack by surprise while diminished themselves, or wait to attack until they were rested and ready and give Strahd time to prepare as well--then the decision might be a combination of weighing the odds and making the story of the final battle about whichever choice they make.

But if (in a different campaign) the players happen to go "combat as war" on Strahd, and do it well enough that the outcome is a curbstomp, I think they've made the story of the adventure about that, too.

I can't imagine a scenario where the party stops, rests, and the ensuing encounter with strahd could go well. He's got more resources to recover and summon to his aid. That in most cases would be the party killing themselves