D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

[Micah Sweet]

As a tangent, the most annoying part is that the word "meta" when used in RPG context is completely divorced of any broader definition of the word.

Having a meta game, as in, some understanding of what options you are likely to encounter, is crucial for any skill-based game featuring extensive customization. Card games work only because there's like 3-4-5 good decks in a given format, Warhammer works only because you mostly know all the army lists you are going to encounter, etc, etc.

I guess in some sense, that's using information outside of the game in the game, but nowhere outside of RPGs people ever think it's a bad thing.

RPGs really are a different beast from cardgames and war games though. People think differently about metagaming for a reason.

 

[Older Beholder]

For me the real skill is in roleplaying a character that's fun and entertaining for everyone at the table, including the DM and the other players.

 

[loverdrive]

I wonder if a big part of this "skilled play" debacle is just a natural consequence of deficiency and anemia of roleplaying theory.

Chess theory, fighting game theory, card game theory, Team Fortress 2 6v6 theory, you name it, aren't concerned with endless taxonomy of games like RPGing theory is. It's all about how to actually play the damn games, which is practically non-existent in RPG circles. As a result, nobody understands what is actually going on, and makes silly, goofy and buckwild decisions, be it as a player, as a gamemaster, as a designer or a forum commenter.

---

So. Here's mine. Like in all games, here's micro- and macro- level. Micro is an encounter, a puzzle*, a heated negotiation, all the moment-to-moment things in the game. Macro level, at least in dungeoncrawling, is what I described upthread: considering what risks you should or should not take, routing, securing alliances with factions, etc.

Like in all games, players obsess over the micro, thinking that's where The Game lies – and like in all games, they are wrong. For obvious reasons, the micro-level is much more visible to everyone involved – it can be trivially observed in other games – how people place undue importance on combos in fighting games, or headshots in Counter-Strike, or literal micro in RTS games.

Due to lack of development of any Actual Theory, game design and analysis is caught in the same trap. See: creeping complexity of both general rules and specific abilities; synergies between options; "way of the moose head" cargo-cultism of OSR people; etc; etc.

Don't get me wrong: micro-level isn't worthless, but it isn't sufficient for an interesting game. Good gameplay is created when players have to interact with both. Short-, mid- and long-term gameplay loops are exactly that.

Macro-level gameplay of dungeon-crawling got eroded over time, [em]culturally[/em], because it's mostly invisible to the players: all the fun, exciting parts of the game are remembered at micro-level, but the macro-level decisions that made the situation possible in the first place evaporate from memory and exploration turns, or wandering monsters, or torches burning out start seeming like pointless inclusions.

They disappear and people feel like something is missing, but because they only think of the micro, they try to compensate in unproductive ways, be it by placing more and more emphasis on tactical combat or on "combat as war" smekalochka shennanigans.

* – now I wonder, why the hell are puzzles in RPGs predominantly take form of riddles and not, like, adventure game-style item puzzles? That'd make more sense from every angle.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Even within spaces like TCGs and Warhammer where this (correct) definition of “the metagame” is relevant, a lot of people don’t even know that definition. An alarming portion of people in competitive gaming communities think “META” is an acronym meaning Most Effective Tactic Available, and just use it to refer to the strongest option within the metagame, or occasionally to any metagame-viable option. You especially see it in competitive video game spaces, like any time a League of Legends player says such-and-such character “is the meta.” At first I thought they meant the character was so dominant that they “are the meta” in the sense that practically the entire metagame is people playing the character in question. But no, they just think “meta” means “best.”

In fairness to those LoL players, there is a way in which the correct definition gets used so frequently, that it begins to get used in a more efficient way which treats the word as a state of being rather than an evolving space in which characters can be located.

That is, "This character in the current game has some quality or benefit such they're a defining element for player choices overall" is a long thing to say, and I'm not really sure how to summarize it too much more succinctly. "This character is meta" was originally meant to communicate this. It doesn't have to be the single most effective tactic available, or any other such nonsense faux-etymology for the word, just needs to be of such prominence and import that it has an unusual, dramatic effect on the metagame.

Of course, then people use it full-on casually for "this character is stronger than I think they should be", but I'm beginning to believe that technical terms never survive contact with the general public.

 

[AnotherGuy]

For me the real skill is in roleplaying a character that's fun and entertaining for everyone at the table, including the DM and the other players.

Elevating the roleplaying engagement of everyone else at the table is invaluable.

 

[Charlaquin]

In fairness, I don't think I've heard the phrase "goal and approach" before, so perhaps the baggage isn't as big? But yes, what I'm hearing in this thread and the previous definitely points in that direction.

Huh. Kind of surprising, as there have been many hundred-plus page arguments about it here on ENWorld. It’s how I summarize my preferred method of action declaration and resolution - the player describes what they want to accomplish (goal) and what their character does to try to accomplish it (approach) in reasonably specific terms, and the DM determines if that approach has a chance of succeeding at achieving the goal, a reasonable chance of failing, and meaningful stakes, and calls for a roll if all of the above are true, otherwise they narrate the results. For some reason, a lot of people on these forums are extremely averse to that play pattern, and insistent on both asking me a million questions about why I prefer it, and also taking every answer I give as a direct attack on their own play preferences.

The other phrase doesn't have baggage, it IS baggage. The fact that its creator has now had to tie himself in a knot, explaining how no no no you don't understand this system I like that does this is actually amazing, is simply proof that it was always baggage from the word "go".

Can’t say I disagree!

This seems pretty reasonable to me, but I would add one further element: the strange idea that these things are zero-sum.

That is, using your Decisions vs Actions description, there is this incredibly strange notion amongst those who speak positively of "player skill", that any increase, any increase whatsoever, in the quantity, quality, or applicability of Actions necessarily means a proportional reduction in the quantity, quality, or applicability of Decisions, and vice-versa. A game which offers multiple, generally useful, quality things-a-character-can-do Actions, is somehow guaranteed to be a game where reasoning, resourcefulness, and creativity become completely irrelevant. Conversely, a game which offers few, generally niche, weak things-a-character-can-do Actions, is somehow guaranteed to be a game where reasoning, resourcefulness, and creativity are always present (and, moreover, richly rewarded).

I genuinely don't understand where this zero-sum assertion comes from. The two are orthogonal. Tic-tac-toe has just about the most constrained decision space possible, and creativity flat-out doesn't exist there (your only "creative" option is whether you intentionally permit the other player to win.) Similarly, several video games can offer enormously more and more effective options than many old-school TTRPGs, and yet be hailed for the degree to which smart player choices matter.

Yeah, it is pretty weird. On the other side, you also get opponents of this so-called “skilled play” style who seem equally opposed to any expectation whatsoever for players to make decisions about what their characters do, other than choosing which of the functions of their character sheet to invoke at what time. I, personally find myself in a position I am deeply puzzled is so uncommon, of thinking both things are important. Hence my recent liking to the “players decide, characters act” adage. It emphasizes that both the player’s input based on their understanding of their fictional positioning, and the character’s hard-coded mechanical functions, should be involved in the action resolution process. The player considers the fictional scenario, their character’s capabilities, and their goals, and decides on a plan of action for how to try and achieve those goals, with those tools. Then the rules governing the character’s statistics dictate how the outcome of that plan ought to be determined.

 

[loverdrive]

As another tangent, I find it baffling that two opposing teams, arbitrated by an Actually Neutral Referee are such an uncommon format of games.

Pretty much all the issues that drain skill from RPGs (unknown and unknowable monster composition; a player at the table with unlimited power who isn't actually trying to win among the main ones) just disappear into nothing if Team Monsters that is actively trying to screw Team Adventurers over is separated from the role of the GM.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wonder if a big part of this "skilled play" debacle is just a natural consequence of deficiency and anemia of roleplaying theory.

Chess theory, fighting game theory, card game theory, Team Fortress 2 6v6 theory, you name it, aren't concerned with endless taxonomy of games like RPGing theory is. It's all about how to actually play the damn games, which is practically non-existent in RPG circles. As a result, nobody understands what is actually going on, and makes silly, goofy and buckwild decisions, be it as a player, as a gamemaster, as a designer or a forum commenter.

Well chess, fighting games, and TF2 are all complete games in and of themselves. RPGs, despite “game” being in the name, aren’t really games. They’re game-creation engines. Adventures are games.

 

[Charlaquin]

In fairness to those LoL players, there is a way in which the correct definition gets used so frequently, that it begins to get used in a more efficient way which treats the word as a state of being rather than an evolving space in which characters can be located.

That is, "This character in the current game has some quality or benefit such they're a defining element for player choices overall" is a long thing to say, and I'm not really sure how to summarize it too much more succinctly. "This character is meta" was originally meant to communicate this. It doesn't have to be the single most effective tactic available, or any other such nonsense faux-etymology for the word, just needs to be of such prominence and import that it has an unusual, dramatic effect on the metagame.

Yeah, that’s the “this character is so dominant that the entire metagame is just them” definition that I thought people meant by saying “this character is the meta.” And, I’m sure at some of them probably were using it that way. Or sometimes people will describe certain weapons, builds, strategies, etc as “meta” (without the article) to express that it’s viable within the competitive metagame, or even partly definitional of the current metagame. But, again, in the competitive video game space, I find that those uses are exceedingly rare, compared to the people who straight up just treat it as meaning “the best” or “among the best”,

Of course, then people use it full-on casually for "this character is stronger than I think they should be",

or that.

but I'm beginning to believe that technical terms never survive contact with the general public.

Yeah, I mean that’s in the nature of language. It is both beautiful, and at times very frustrating.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As another tangent, I find it baffling that two opposing teams, arbitrated by an Actually Neutral Referee are such an uncommon format of games.

Pretty much all the issues that drain skill from RPGs (unknown and unknowable monster composition; a player at the table with unlimited power who isn't actually trying to win among the main ones) just disappear into nothing if Team Monsters that is actively trying to screw Team Adventurers over is separated from the role of the GM.

Oh, there's an extremely good reason for this.

Scheduling for a sufficiently-sized group of people becomes essentially impossible.

To have this succeed, you need to get between nine and thirteen people to all have free time on the same day, consistently, every week/fortnight/month/whatever. Just the scheduling alone is simply a nightmare. I've had difficulties just scheduling time for a single one-off event for myself and three other people, let alone something involving a long-term time commitment like a TTRPG.

Add in the general preference for "CvE" content and general dislike for "CvC" content (to riff off Lanefan's "Character vs Character" term), because CvC has a very bad tendency to produce hurt feelings, and you get a pretty solid case for why it is vanishingly rare.