D&D General On Skilled Play: D&D as a Game

[EzekielRaiden]

First, name one thing I'm asking for permission to do in those statements. Second, while the DM has the power to say no I can't do any of that, I have also been strident in declaring that doing so would be a violation of the social contract, so the DM simply will never do that.

If the DM is saying no, doesn't that mean you were asking permission and had it denied? If you're declaring, how can the DM just "say no"?

And yes, the social contract matters a lot. But people keep comparing violations of the social contract for rules-heavy things (e.g. "Roll perception" "I got a 2" "You see nothing") to obeying it for SP-like play. That's part of why I'm drilling on this. It's frustrating to see such comparisons.

There is nothing there which asks a question or permission. Nothing. I'm simply being thorough in my declarations to him about what I am doing to search. Why leave it to a roll when I don't have to?

See above. If you are declaring, it simply happens, the DM can't say no. If you are not doing things that simply happen, you are implicitly asking, "Am I allowed to do this thing?" And the DM always, always has the power to absolutely veto. This is exactly why I had such a problem with your strident insistence that DMs have total, absolute power, beholden to nothing whatsoever. I even tried to invoke the social contract with you, and you rejected it before.

 

[Maxperson]

If the DM is saying no, doesn't that mean you were asking permission and had it denied? If you're declaring, how can the DM just "say no"?

I explicitly said that the DM ISN'T saying no. He can't without breaking the social contract.

And yes, the social contract matters a lot. But people keep comparing violations of the social contract for rules-heavy things (e.g. "Roll perception" "I got a 2" "You see nothing") to obeying it for SP-like play.

I don't really understand what you are saying here. How is rolling a 2 and seeing nothing a violation of the social contract? That just seems like a poor roll where you'd probably see nothing.

See above. If you are declaring, it simply happens, the DM can't say no. If you are not doing things that simply happen, you are implicitly asking, "Am I allowed to do this thing?" And the DM always, always has the power to absolutely veto. This is exactly why I had such a problem with your strident insistence that DMs have total, absolute power, beholden to nothing whatsoever. I even tried to invoke the social contract with you, and you rejected it before.

If the only way the DM can say no is to violate the social contact, then it's irrelevant to game play. DMs just don't do that and keep a game going for more than a session, so there's no point in even considering it.

And no, I didn't reject it re: the social contract. I rejected the argument that the DM cannot say no. He can, but it violates the social contract if he does so in a place where the rule/common sense don't support him. We agreed that it was a violation. We disagreed that the violation meant that he could not possibly say no. He can as he has the power granted to him by the game. He just won't, because it violates the social contract. In any case, we have already been over this part before and it's not really applicable to this discussion anyway, so we might as well drop it.

 

[Voadam]

You are likely already familiar with the underlying concept, even if the term is new. A degenerate use case, like a degenerate strategy, is one that technically uses the rules/structures/paradigm as presented, but in a way that violates the intent or spirit of play.

Gotcha.

Then I don't think direct social interactions in an OSR less crunchy social rule set is such a degenerate use case at all.

It is the intent and spirit of the game for players to do direct social interactions for fun and for specific ends.

In a more crunchy system like 3e on it would depend on the intent of the system. A game with a diplomacy/persuasion skill check mechanic can be intended for social interactions to always be defined by the mechanic, or the mechanic can be intended to be used only when direct social interaction does not on its face resolve the action satisfactorily, or it can be intended to be used only in second person abstracted situations like "I spend the week trying to persuade them of X". Usually this specific intent and spirit is left undefined in such D&D systems so that individual groups can adopt whatever application of the mechanics best suits their tastes.

 

[Krachek]

The DM has the option to roll or not for any event in a game.
Once he decide to roll, he should flow with the result, otherwise better not roll at all!
Failure in persuade or other charisma check can lead to very interesting situation.

A players who see a failure in charisma check can blame the DM for the high DC, or the luck for the bad roll, or the others players to not give him boost.

The character see the situation with questions and realism.
why he didn’t buy my honest proposition? Maybe he has a hidden agenda?
he should be intimidated, why he is so confident?
Lies don’t work with such a zealot, maybe good honest truth will work better!

Failure is not a stop to the story.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'll grant it's clean, but that's sort of a problem from the other direction: actual play IS messy, and it's the messiness that makes the question difficult (and interesting). It also gives us a perfect example of a flaw even in non-degenerate SP: the problem when no one at the table comes up with a solution, and thus play grinds to a halt. This is particularly apt in an equally-clean example: "Persuade the king to help you." If that's based purely on player skill, it may quite literally be the case that no one at the table is bold and charismatic enough to convince the king, even though convincing the king is fantastically important. Such cases are not uncommon; they may not happen constantly, but if you have a group of very shy people (e.g., mine) they'll crop up a lot more often than is acceptable.

But this is an assumption error, in my opinion.

See, if there is a bottleneck that can only be solved in one way, that isn't an issue with SP, that's a different type of problem. And that's not just an SP issue. It would be the same if it was a mechanical resolution system and you fail a roll (in a system with binary fails).

The reason I offer the SP hypo is because it allows someone to easily see that SP specifically allows for player knowledge, and not just character ability, which goes into the whole "metagaming" issue.

That said, in a true SP scenario, if you had the sphinx provide a riddle, then:
1. You could provide an answer based on player knowledge; or
2. You could go do other things, since it was an open world and the sphinx wasn't the end-all, be-all, and return after you've given it some thought; or
3. You could do anything else you could dream of to get by the Sphinx.

The (3) is important. Maybe you just watched an Episode of Star Trek and thought that out-logicing the Sphinx would work; or maybe you want to Holy Grail the Sphinx (African or European?). Perhaps you have a magic item you acquired that might be helpful, or maybe you use your gold at the local town to go and research the answer.

You aren't limited in any way, other than the ideas you come up with. You can endeavor to get by the Sphinx, or not. It's your choice.

(Same for your King- if the only way to continue is to persuade the King, that shows a lack of imagination on the part of whomever designed that scenario, and a lack of respect for the players.)

Yeah, that's...basically my position as well. Which is why it's hard for me to view it much as "skill," because it feels far too much like "know the right code-words to induce the DM to rule favorably rather than unfavorably."


I am generally not a cynical person; I just find that the cases people gush about look, from the outside, rather a lot like "manipulating" rather than "strategizing."

See, I'm going to mention this again. I recognize that "SP" is specific jargon used to describe a certain modality of play, and does not overlap with "skilled" in all senses, and does not mean that other methods of engaging with the RPG lack skill.

....BUT (and to paraphrase the Good Knight, Sir Mix-A-Lot, this is a YUUUUUGE But) when people are using terms like "code words" and "manipulating" (which are not being used in any technical or jargon-y way) to describe a modality of play, it begins to seem like ... well, like you are being needlessly denigrating without understanding, which I am sure is not your intent.

SP is not "manipulating" in the same way that having defined abilities is not "mindless button pushing," or story now is not "campfire wish fulfillment" or role playing is not "silly thespians who couldn't cut it in local theater."

See? It's easy to mock things you don't engage in, but at a certain point a lack of understanding of how other people do (or did) things begins to become a needless denigration of the way other people play. There are advantages (and drawbacks) of the various ways of engaging with TTRPGs, and what works for you and your table will not necessarily work for all tables, but it is helpful to try and understand different modalities of play on their own terms, especially given that these are usually continuums.

IMO, etc.

 

[pemerton]

The DM has the option to roll or not for any event in a game.

This isn't true in many RPGs. In versions of D&D, it's false for 4e in many if not most circumstances.

To repost myself on this point:

The main effects of any player "move" in a RPG is a change in the shared fiction. That's what RPGing is about, most fundamentally. Sometimes the agreement of participants to change the fiction is driven by a mechanical process of resolution ("The orc reaches zero hit points - it's dead!"). Sometimes it is not ("I walk across the room and open the door".)

Burning Wheel says to the participants (1) "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and (2) only say "yes" if its low or no stakes. So in BW there will be no agreed changes in stakes-laden fiction without a mechanical process - this is an express tenet of the game.

Gygaxian D&D rejects that tenet. As per @MichaelSomething's post not far upthread, a Gygaxian GM should be saying "yes" whenever the logic of the fiction - which (unlike BW) is already authored by him/her in the form of map-and-key - dictates.

As it happens I prefer (and its a very strong preference) BW to Gygaxian play. That preference rests on the fact that they are very different RPGing experiences, And the different approach to when the GM should say "yes" is a huge part of that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not 100% sure I've followed you here. I think the key feature of the single Diplomacy check is that we have elided fiction - eg what exactly did my guy say to the Court of Stars? - which by convention is meant to be adduced. Vincent Baker talks about this on one of his blogs:

Here's a quick resolution mechanism.​

​

1. We each say what our characters are trying to accomplish. For instance: "My character's trying to get away." "My character's trying to shoot yours."​

​

​

2. We roll dice or draw cards against one another to see which character or characters accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. For instance: "Oh no! My character doesn't get away." "Hooray! My character shoots yours."​

​

What must we establish before we roll? What our characters intend to accomplish.​

​

What does the roll decide? Whether our characters indeed accomplish what they intend.​

​

What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say? The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.​

3E, at least as played, seems to have a lot of us "never seeing the character actually poke around the room or say anything to the Court".

I don't think this difference from a "skilled play" approach detracts from your remarks I've quoted above about the limits and potential arbitrariness of the GM's adjudication of the fiction.

Yeah, I get you, but I think there's still simply a quantitative difference. In a 1 minute AD&D melee round we are told by Gary that, to paraphrase, many attacks and counter-attacks are launched, and the attack and damage rolls are described as simply a sort of summary of the whole minute of sword fighting, or perhaps the one significant instant within that minute if you wish. We elide fiction here because, basically we are out of our depth in any attempt to describe it. This also accounts for the argument about "shy people can be diplomats if you have a skill for that." You could equally say "people with no sword-fighting experience can be fighters if you have a skill for that."

So, there ARE two types of actions, something like BB/LG to lift the portcullis, there's no elision there, we get the whole story. Anyone is qualified to imagine exactly how you lift a gate, and understand the challenge at the most elemental level. Nobody at a game table is a sword fighter, or a diplomat. Even if you are a diplomatic and articulate person you lack the social and cultural referents, customs, habits, and access to subtle cues, which would be vital to realistically playing out something like that. You can, at best, explain to the GM what your character is trying to do, the basic strategy and tactics, and maybe play act a bit of it (more or less depending on just how granular the resolution is at that point).

Very few actions fall into the former 'no elision' category. A lot of those may not even warrant checks, they are ordinary or nearly ordinary actions, and/or things where there's no clear point to adjudicating them as failures, maybe because they are part of some larger task that either succeeds or fails of its own accord (IE I'm pounding in a spike to act as an anchor for climbing down the cliff, we can adjudicate this with the climb check, it doesn't require a separate 'pound in the stake' check.). Obviously MANY actions fall into a category of "we are eliding something that doesn't involve any consequential or interesting fiction" (IE picking a lock, nobody cares about tumblers and pins in a D&D game unless they're an actual locksmith).

And honestly, I don't feel like the 'big elisions' really need to be judged as throwing away Snarfian 'Skilled Play' either. Yeah, they elide things we just can't really fictionally describe very well. Maybe sometimes some players might have meaningful input there? Maybe? We can't really say though. I mean, even Gygax has a reaction roll system to use for how people get along when they try to talk/negotiate. I think the argument is often oversold. Yeah, there's a few cases like how we adjudicate searching a room where I can see the point. OTOH I assure you that almost any LEO will tell you that there IS DEFINITELY a skill to searching and finding hidden things! They will also assure you that you, civilian, DO NOT know this skill all that well, and while you could describe the actions taken when using it, you can't easily describe the experience factor. Thus you cannot really effectively RP the job of an experienced searcher, not completely.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And honestly, I don't feel like the 'big elisions' really need to be judged as throwing away Snarfian 'Skilled Play' either. Yeah, they elide things we just can't really fictionally describe very well. Maybe sometimes some players might have meaningful input there? Maybe? We can't really say though. I mean, even Gygax has a reaction roll system to use for how people get along when they try to talk/negotiate. I think the argument is often oversold. Yeah, there's a few cases like how we adjudicate searching a room where I can see the point. OTOH I assure you that almost any LEO will tell you that there IS DEFINITELY a skill to searching and finding hidden things! They will also assure you that you, civilian, DO NOT know this skill all that well, and while you could describe the actions taken when using it, you can't easily describe the experience factor. Thus you cannot really effectively RP the job of an experienced searcher, not completely.

Agreed, and this is why Gygax expressly disclaimed being part of the realism-simulation school.

It was designed to be a game. The primary principle was to have fun - something I am not sure I would ascribe to the actual process of searching for hidden things in a methodical fashion over the course of hours or days.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. This demonstrates a degenerate, but unfortunately difficult to manage, use-case for "pure" SP-like play: that the players may simply lack the necessary skill(s), and feel unable to learn them, or have an understandable aversion to doing so.

Again, I assert that this is the case for ALL 'resolution mechanics' in D&D (and games with similar structure). Nobody is willing or able to learn sword fighting, so the game has mechanics that measure sword fighting skill, etc. The question then becomes things like "why do you feel that searching is something everyone knows how to do?" I can assure you most people DO NOT know how to do a proper search! They know as much about that as they do about sword fighting (in either case you can imagine doing it to a degree, and actually do some relatively inefficient version of it).

The debates around the boundaries of SP then become quite easy to understand, because SP is merely a convention. It is "what Gary did" roughly speaking. Like all human beings he was quirky and did things for a complex variety of reasons which he only partly articulated and which contain historical accident, random chance, as well as some deliberate judgment we can analyze. Nobody is going to completely agree with it, its essentially got a heavy element of arbitrariness to it. Diplomacy doesn't violate SP due to some deep theoretical reason. It is just tradition. Heck, Gary used % dice for it, yet many SP advocates pour scorn on Diplomacy checks without even seeming to see the irony of that!

 

[pemerton]

OK, agenda is definitely another valid way to look at it. Of course that means we cannot really specifically state what is or is not Skilled Play in terms of actions and such. We would have to abstract play to the agenda, and then judge.

Agreed. I posted the same as your second and third sentences upthread.

Again though, there's always those factors of granularity, and lack of a fixed and fully defined fiction. Is it really not possible to say "My agenda is that the players deploy clever and elegant fiction-based problem solving approaches" incompatible with a player saying something like "We will fight the orcs in the thrown room because otherwise they will be able to reinforce the dragon when we attack it, but the dragon doesn't care if we kill the orcs, he's arrogant and doesn't value them as allies." Isn't that equally engaging the fiction in a clever way to solve a problem? It is just more abstract in that (depending on how you use the combat system in AD&D) it might elide some specific fiction and has a highly stochastic character.

I think Skilled Play is like 'pornography, we know it when we see it.' You'll never be able to define it so you can say for sure that a given example of play is or is not clearly within its bounds.

Again, this is why I think the received conventions are so important, together with their relationship to the notion of an "ecology" that I described upthread. Without that "ecology" the conventions become arbitrary and silly (eg why so many rules for doors but none for belts and braces? I mean, if your trousers fall down while swordfighting with an Orc that would be inconvenient at least!)

I think it is FAIR to say that we can generally use the definition of SP and classify some GAMES as being more or less exemplars of it. OTOH it isn't really an analytically useful definition. It works well in the terms that @pemerton stated, he can label a game as being SP-focused and say "I don't want to play that game." You can pick certain 'moves' and certain process of play and say they are (not) compatible with the idea of skilled play, but you will never be able to say with much certainty that a given bit of description of game play is exactly SP or not.

Right, I think you have hit on one of, probably THE, main reason why SP in the classic sense breaks down. That is that there is no complete and detailed world.

<snip>

Obviously we could simply claim that the GM can adjudicate every possible tactic, but what are the basis of his decisions? This is largely why D&D works fairly well in an old school mode when you are in the 'dungeon', but it breaks down pretty quick outside of that specific kind of play. @pemerton has often noted that B/X has problems with overland play for this reason.

I agree with all this!

The challenge is in defining some such set of mechanics. I mean, Saving Throws, and Hit Points, and to an extent ability scores, AC, etc. do produce some sort of mechanical underpinnings. You also have equipment lists, and other resources that your PC has (spells perhaps). These can all be managed. OTOH there really are few, if any, rules for how that management works (IE what damage do you take from a trap, the GM's key may say, but there's no other rule for that like 4e has). As I said before, this CAN work in terms of the 'dungeon' (a series of physical and mental challenges which are discrete and bounded, largely independent, and present themselves in sequence). It is MUCH harder and eventually impossible once you get into more complex situations like social situations, or even overland exploration.

<snip>

now you reach the issue of where 3e and 5e are at. That is, nothing tells us what the proper context and process is for when checks are required or what they signify in terms of change in the fiction.

<snip>

4e tried to add skill challenges for that purpose, but that requires unlinking the results of the check from the specific fiction related to what you were trying to do. That seems to be the point at which SP really gets broken completely. Systems like 3e and 5e do break it before that though, because of that lack of context for checks something like Diplomacy can be arbitrarily potent in the fiction and bypass enough detail (elision) that it trips most people's "this is not SP" trigger.

And this. At a certain point the adjudication ceases to be "free kriegsspiel"-style extrapolation of the fiction - which rests for its effectivness on a combination of expertise on the part of the adjudicator and consensus by all participants that the adjudicator's extrapolations are sound - and becomes just making stuff up. I'm a huge fan of making stuff up, but I want it to be structured/constrained in some fashion - 4e skill challenges are one way of doing that; so is Classic Traveller's framework for determining whether a character comes to grief while doing stuff in a vacc suit (that latter system does rely on consensus that a manoeuvre is "non-ordinary", but some examples are stated to extrapolate from, and so this is a fairly low bar to clear).

To go back briefly to the Court of Stars, upthread I referred to NPCs which are knowable and either exploitable or avoidable. As long as NPCs are essentially puzzles with one or two moving parts, and those moving parts are known by convention to be salient - like the evil priest in KotB, who is a threat that can be avoided via detecting evil or even by just declaring we keep an eye on him in case; or a NPC who can be bribed for so-and-so many GPs - then "skilled play" can handle them. We see this in the AD&D and Moldvay Basic evasion rules, which have every pursuing goblin or fire beetle apt to be distracted by discarded baubles or food. But as soon as we move into the realm of genuine interaction or negotiation, like the Court of Stars example or (say) negotiating a peace treaty between Keoland and Bissel, or wooing and proposing marriage, then in my view skilled play comes to an end precisely because puzzle-solving has come to an end. Play is still (hopefully) creative, and focused on the fiction, but the "solutions" are all about making stuff up and that is either unconstrained - in which case the players' skill doesn't really get them anywhere even if dice are occasionally rolled (as per your criticisms of 3E and 5e D&D) - or else is constrained via a "decoupled" resolution process (like 4e or Traveller's vacc suit rules or BW or PbtA or etc, etc, . . .) in which case the idea of resolution via extrapolation from the fiction without dice playing a roll has been abandoned.

Needless to say, for me it is that last-described approach to RPGing which I enjoy!