D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

[Scribe]

Reynard out here trying to drive all the content creation with these threads.

I just wanted to note that for me its a 2 way street. 'Player Skill' depends on the 'GM Skill' to appropriately describe, key, and especially telegraph, to allow for the players to even demonstrate skill, responsiveness, and creativity.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I think “player skill” as a jargon term has accumulated too much baggage to lead to productive discussion. It’s a lot like “dissociated mechanics” or even my pet “goal and approach.” There’s a valuable concept that the jargon term expresses, but people have very strong feelings about the jargon term that end up distracting from any useful discussion about the concept.

How I’ve recently started thinking about the fundamental ideas here is that players decide, characters act. The success or failure of an action (assuming that both are reasonable possibilities) should be determined by the rules governing the character and their capabilities. But, the character has no ability to make decisions about what actions to perform when; that has to be on the player. The player makes choices and declares actions, then the DM uses their judgment to decide what rules (if any) are most appropriate to use to determine the action’s results, relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die as factors influencing that determination.

When people talk about “skilled play” positively, they are usually advocating for leaning more into the “player decides” aspect of the above play pattern. When people talk about it negatively, they are usually hilighting the information gap between the player and their character, that can make it difficult for the player to make meaningful decisions, and/or common DMing pitfalls related to the player decision points, such as expecting an unreasonable degree of specificity in the player’s action declarations.

Part of what is implied by "Skilled Play" is that the player choice can, when the player is clever/prepared/creative enough in their choices, they can fully bypass the "relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die" entirely. You want to avoid using the rules, because using the rules means you are leaving something up to "luck" rather than "skill".

Its the reason that player skill proponents often hate Skills and Feats - they give a single prescriptive way to resolve uncertainty through application of game mechanics, rather than leaving a rules gap that the GM can fill in with a yes-or-no judgement.

 

[AlViking]

Depends on how you define player skill. I've never really cared for things like math puzzles for example. I am not my character and if Alex is playing an intelligence 20 wizard but Alex has a hard time with adding much less math puzzles. Meanwhile Kim is playing a barbarian who's intellect usually rises to the level of asking "Smash now?" but in real life loves math puzzles. I don't feel like I'm being fair to either player.

Meanwhile there are plenty of challenging things that player skill matters quite a bit. Everything from combat tactics to guiding social interactions to effectively using character spells, skills and other build options. I want the character that is being played to mean something even if I don't want a "I roll persuasion to convince the guard to let me in" style of play.

So I try to do a mix. If there's a chase scene or escaping the collapsing tower, I'll frequently give them ideas on abilities that might be useful but also let them know there are options and do my best to describe scenes with enough detail to allow for improvisation. If there is an arcane word puzzle, I'll give them a bit and if they seem frustrated or stuck I'll ask for checks to give them hints or direction. With social encounters it's a matter of asking for things like insight or investigation checks if I think it's something the characters should be able to determine. But there is still quite a bit of skill in, for example, a social encounter on what topics or issues they raise even if I never expect a player to be a thespian.

 

[Koloth]

One term that could be used to define a skilled player is Munchkin. Skilled at designing a character to get maximum benefit from the resources available. I doubt that is what is being discussed here.

Skill could be recognizing that a combat isn't winnable. Something a lot of newer players don't get as most modern combats assume that the PCs will win. Pretty sure there has been at least one discussion on this topic.

Skill could be managing party resources so that the party can accomplish several encounters without several players crying "But I am not at full power, we NEED to rest!" This one seems to be a vanishing skill.

Skill could be coming up with creative solutions to problems and encounters. This one depends a lot on the GM describing the scene and being open to 'out of the box' ideas. Ideas that fail often lead to the most memorable situations if the GM can properly manage the fail. Same for really successful ideas.

 

[loverdrive]

I think it's all too common case of people mostly correctly identifying their feelings, but being atrociously bad at determining their causes.

Dungeon crawling allows for skill expression. A better player consistently wins, while worse players consistently lose, but the root of it isn't in some macguyvering shenanigans, or big brain plays.

It's in the process itself: dungeon is a casino. Every door is a slot machine, where you might get a jackpot (a treasure room), or a Space Quest-style literal annihilation beam, or anything in-between. A skilled gambler knows when to stop betting, a skilled dungeon crawler knows when to leave the dungeon, while a bad dungeon crawler runs into the danger and always moves towards the heart of the dungeon (and dies like a dog in the process).

If you cannot leave the dungeon because you actually need a Very Specific Thing at the end of it — or, outside of the game, because GM worked on it and it'd be rude to walk away without seeing their fun setpieces — this whole thing breaks. You cannot make a dumb choice to leave if you cannot leave, and you cannot make a smart choice to press on if you are forced to press on.

Exploration turns add another dimension to consider: time. A skilled dungeon crawler knows what side tunnels to explore, and which aren't worth the risk of wandering monsters. Without it, there's no reason to not search every room top to bottom — which then is annoying for everyone, so GMs stop hiding treasure to deter wasting real-life time on looting — which means being smart about what to search doesn't matter.

Anyway -- much is often made of "player skill" and "OSR" and how modern games are just button mashing. I don't really buy this as a generational divide: I think people in the 70s could rely on their character sheets, and I think people now can get creative.

Everything else aside, I don't quite get how the two are in any way opposing ideas. There's a word for knowing what buttons to press and, more importantly, when. That word is "skill". How much depth of expression of this skill D&D allows for is another matter.

 

[Reynard]

I think “player skill” as a jargon term has accumulated too much baggage to lead to productive discussion. It’s a lot like “dissociated mechanics” or even my pet “goal and approach.” There’s a valuable concept that the jargon term expresses, but people have very strong feelings about the jargon term that end up distracting from any useful discussion about the concept.

How I’ve recently started thinking about the fundamental ideas here is that players decide, characters act. The success or failure of an action (assuming that both are reasonable possibilities) should be determined by the rules governing the character and their capabilities. But, the character has no ability to make decisions about what actions to perform when; that has to be on the player. The player makes choices and declares actions, then the DM uses their judgment to decide what rules (if any) are most appropriate to use to determine the action’s results, relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die as factors influencing that determination.

When people talk about “skilled play” positively, they are usually advocating for leaning more into the “player decides” aspect of the above play pattern. When people talk about it negatively, they are usually hilighting the information gap between the player and their character, that can make it difficult for the player to make meaningful decisions, and/or common DMing pitfalls related to the player decision points, such as expecting an unreasonable degree of specificity in the player’s action declarations.

I like this post. Thanks.

 

[Charlaquin]

Part of what is implied by "Skilled Play" is that the player choice can, when the player is clever/prepared/creative enough in their choices, they can fully bypass the "relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die" entirely. You want to avoid using the rules, because using the rules means you are leaving something up to "luck" rather than "skill".

Well, I did note that those rules come into play assuming success and failure are both reasonable possibilities (I’d also add that there should be meaningful stakes for success vs failure but opinions on that matter are more varied). If either success or failure is not possible, or even just not reasonably likely, then there should be no need to rely on the rules to determine the outcome, because there is only one reasonably plausible outcome.

I think this is at least theoretically true of both “skilled play” and of play where the intent is primarily to challenge the character. A DM who is trying to encourage the “skilled play” style may have a higher threshold for what constitutes a reasonable chance of success and failure, leading to success or failure without need for a roll to happen more often. But both playstyles do at least theoretically allow for success and failure without a roll.

Its the reason that player skill proponents often hate Skills and Feats - they give a single prescriptive way to resolve uncertainty through application of game mechanics, rather than leaving a rules gap that the GM can fill in with a yes-or-no judgement.

That’s certainly accurate of some “skilled play” proponents. Though I consider myself a “skilled play” proponent, and I don’t share this view of skills or feats. That’s because in my view, skills and feats only come into play when and if the DM determines that the character’s statistics are needed to resolve the action. They are, in effect, insurance against failure in cases where failure is possible but not guaranteed.

 

[Reynard]

Part of what is implied by "Skilled Play" is that the player choice can, when the player is clever/prepared/creative enough in their choices, they can fully bypass the "relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die" entirely. You want to avoid using the rules, because using the rules means you are leaving something up to "luck" rather than "skill".

Its the reason that player skill proponents often hate Skills and Feats - they give a single prescriptive way to resolve uncertainty through application of game mechanics, rather than leaving a rules gap that the GM can fill in with a yes-or-no judgement.

One of the issues with this, particularly when using the old school rules, is that much of it is driven if not by GM whim, by pure chance. At least skills and feats help weigh the chances in the character's favor. Much of the GM advice in old versions of D&D amount to "flip a coin" (or, rather, roll a d6 as a sort of yes/no oracle).

Part of it is clear communication between play(s) and GM, but there is also the issue that the GM is final arbiter and has their own biases, experiences and preconceptions. A player comes up with what to them is a perfectly reasonable plan of action, but the GM decides that they know better and boom, gotcha. What set DCs and the like do is help alleviate that very common, very natural problem.

Just by way of example: I was a US Army infantryman a lifetime ago and I carried a lot of heavy gear through a very unpleasant environment under stress (not combat stress, thankfully). I have an idea of how hard that is and what one needs to do to "survive" that situation. When a player suggests a plan obviously informed by a lifetime of action war movies, I am not going to give them the chance of success they think they deserve. Our conceptions of the problem and the solutions just vary too much. But if we are playing 3.5, I can just look up the DC for a Survival check to To The Thing. That isn't the player mashing the win button. They still came up with the plan. What it is doing is removing the bias (or, at least, leaning on the bias of the designers, but at least consistently).

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Part of it is clear communication between play(s) and GM, but there is also the issue that the GM is final arbiter and has their own biases, experiences and preconceptions. A player comes up with what to them is a perfectly reasonable plan of action, but the GM decides that they know better and boom, gotcha. What set DCs and the like do is help alleviate that very common, very natural problem.

Absolutely agree with that. But i think a lot of people like that bias and playing to their GMs whims rather than having to engage with rules.

 

[Reynard]

Absolutely agree with that. But i think a lot of people like that bias and playing to their GMs whims rather than having to engage with rules.

I am sure there are, but it just strikes me as an invitation to frustration to me (from either side of the screen).