D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

[pemerton]

There is some other advice given on playing one's character near the start of the 1e PHB that seems at odds with the "skilled play" approach advocated elsewhere and in favour of acting-in-character. In his foreword, Mike Carr describes the players as "actors and actresses" in a "fascinating drama". He advises players to "use your persona to play with a special personality all its own." On pg. 7 of the PHB even Gary Gygax writes that a player will become an "artful thespian". They will interact with other players "not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic!" I think it's fair to say that this is Gygax at his least Gygaxian!

Agreed. It seems like a concession to the sorts of approach that Pulsipher criticises. I think it's interesting in that it shows that Gygax/TSR was aware of this variety of approaches to play as early as 1978.

When Gygax gives advice to DMs his main concern is to avoid making things too easy for the players whereas Pulsipher warns against arbitrary, unpredictable DM-ing.

Interesting point.

I think that there are differences between Gygax's PHB and DMG which reflect developments in his thinking over time - this is (again) consistent with the fact that the hobby was growing and changing quickly from its inception.

The starkest example, in my opinion, is the DMG advice on "living" dungeons that react "logically" to PC incursions. If this advice is applied literally, then the advice in Successful Adventures becomes much less apposite, as that (latter) advice depends on the dungeon being relatively static, such that exploration/scouting will generate knowledge that can then, subsequently, be used to plan a successful raid. If the dungeon environment changes in response to the initial incursion, that makes the raid much harder to plan, and more hostage to the sort of unpredictability that Pulsipher warns against.