D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

[billd91]

Why are the rules different for finding secret doors than finding traps? What is the design philosophy and intentional mechanical abstract that supports this difference?

Or is it possible that it is based completely on Gygaxian whim and we should not take it seriously, like, at all?

Design philosophy?!? I'm pretty sure there was no prior design philosophy for this kind of thing - just accretions of subsystems. So, I guess you could chalk up the difference to divergent evolution - the secret door rules evolved in one way first (based on d6 rolls). Then the thief, a class based on a different mechanic (d100), was added. And all effort was spared in reconciling the two.

 

[Umbran]

It is a very different game then the Push Button play:

Mod note:
So, this looks like an intentional attempt to insult folks who disagree with your preferences, while perhaps clinging to a shred of plausible deniability.

If you want to continue in this discussion, stepping back from the insults would be a good idea.

 

[Desdichado]

I think a major issue we face when discussing "skilled play" is simple: skill at what, exactly?

It won't be the same from game to game, or playstyle to playstyle. The play skills that will get me through the Tomb of Horrors are not the play skills that will get me through a boffer-style live-action game.

Much of the assertion that newer game designs prevent skilled play are mistaken - they just call for play using different skills

You don't just parse the words skill and play. Skilled play is very well known to the people who are fans of it, and they know exactly what they mean by the term. The idea that we don't understand what the entire tournament module scene even meant is not true at all.

People who aren't fans of the playstyle trying to redefine it by simply parsing skill and play and saying we don't know what skills they mean aren't fans of the playstyle, and therefore probably have little to offer on the subject anyway other than that they aren't interested in it.

 

[Umbran]

You don't just parse the words skill and play. Skilled play is very well known to the people who are fans of it, and they know exactly what they mean by the term.

Yeah, a week later you want to try this?

There is more in gaming and on Oerth than is imagined by your philosophy.

The idea that games take skill is not owned by one particular game or playstyle. There is skilled play of Chess, and skilled play of Go, and they are different skills, and the Chess masters don't get to claim there is no skilled play of Go.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, a week later you want to try this?

There is more in gaming and on Oerth than is imagined by your philosophy.

The idea that games take skill is not owned by one particular game or playstyle. There is skilled play of Chess, and skilled play of Go, and they are different skills, and the Chess masters don't get to claim there is no skilled play of Go.

Of course, but none of that is encapsulated in the term "skilled play." Just because you don't know or don't acknowledge the definition of it doesn't mean that there isn't one, or that it means more than just skilled + play. Skilled play in the context of D&D is a pretty well-defined playstyle, and there are actual treatises that I've seen out there describing exactly how it works. The fact that you're trying to talk about skilled play of chess or Go means that you clearly have no idea what skilled play is in context of D&D, or refuse to acknowledge the definition of it as put forward by the proponents of that playstyle who literally coined the term to describe the way that they play. Your examples aren't elucidating other than elucidating the fact that you've completely wandered into non sequiturs either through ignorance or stubbornness.

And no, I'm not a fan of the playstyle either, so I'm hardly trying to defend it. It's just galling to see this kind of pedantic obtuseness ensure that nobody can have a discussion about it either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Design philosophy?!? I'm pretty sure there was no prior design philosophy for this kind of thing - just accretions of subsystems. So, I guess you could chalk up the difference to divergent evolution - the secret door rules evolved in one way first (based on d6 rolls). Then the thief, a class based on a different mechanic (d100), was added. And all effort was spared in reconciling the two.

Yeah. As I note, I won't speak of AD&D or the Basic offshoot (as I never played or GMed them), but OD&D was heavily lacking in subsystems outside of combat, and what was there was pretty ad-hoc in apparent design. The early stuff was all "roll a D6 and get X", then the thief comes along and suddenly does everything with percentages (though there'd been a couple uses of that earlier, for the same reason--it allowed finer distinction than a D6 did). But coherence in design was apparently not viewed as an at all important element there.