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

[Mannahnin]

"It does little to attempt to simulate anything either. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity. This is not to say that where it does not interfere with the flow of the game that the highest degree of realism hasn‘t been attempted, but neither is a serious approach to play discouraged. In all cases, however, the reader should understand that AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously."

Some parts of D&D definitely were designed to conform to elements of the real world. If you dig into it, a lot of the basic math around pieces of it does confirm to real world sources, though often consciously simplified for ease of play as Gary suggested. I remember people breaking down the Jump numbers from 3rd ed, for an example. Travel distances in various editions were based on real life sources. The functional ranges of bows were originally imported from Chainmail, which in turn based them on historical sources. Of course, bows are a conspicuous example of an early mistake in this regard (applying ranges for effective fire at formations of soldiers to fire at individuals), which has been carried forward into the highly unrealistic ranges (or rather, lack of to hit penalties) of D&D bows to this day.

But yes, while trying to ground the game in reality where possible for greater verisimilitude and ease of player engagement with and envisioning the imaginary space, ease of play was the intended greater priority.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Building on this - when you read Gygax's rulebooks and especially his DMG, you can see in so many places how decisions that have been made by him in the course of adjudicating and preparing for an "evolving" game are presented as frozen/locked in completely devoid of that "ecological" context.

Which I think is quite weird, and in some ways self-defeating. Rather than give us his solutions to his problems - ear seekers, lurkers above, 100 rules for opening doors, guidelines on how NPC MUs will never teach spells, etc - it would be better to identify possible pressure point of play, and places where the GM is likely to need to exercise control. And then encourage each GM to find his/her own approach and way of handling things.

I know the previous paragraph is a bit unrealistic in that it is calling for a degree of self-conscious reflection that is unlikely in the early days of an activity. (Though in some ways Tunnels & Trolls has more of this than Gygax, and was written not that much later.) But it's a bit odd that things are still frozen all these years later.

Yeah, that was why 4e was such a breath of fresh air, because it simply reopened all those things to examination again. The rather ill-advised, IMHO, process of 5e stuffing them all back in the box again pretty much ended MY interest in D&D, as such.

Anyway, @Maxperson is attempting to build a case that this is all some cogent principle having to do with 'opposition', but I don't buy it. In fact it seems to me to be more geared towards engaging more of the material more reliably, and avoiding letting the players too easily decode solutions. You have to roll dice to fight, that makes fighting dangerous in an irreducible way! So it is something to avoid. If it was 'solved' without dice, then in effect it would become rote, either the goblin cannot be defeated, by your character at least, or else its defeat becomes simply a matter of saying the right thing, and that is either arbitrary (I lunge), or rote (I analyze his style for weaknesses and make the killing blow my experience indicates). OTOH rolling dice to see if you fell into the pit is no good, because YOU MIGHT NOT. If you have a 10' pole and use it, then there's some sort of fictional interaction with the pit, if you fall in, there's interaction, if you rolled a Perception check and avoided it, well, that was just color. Likewise with the searches, etc. It is just a factor of how much material the GM needs to generate in order to make things enough of a puzzle to achieve his agenda. This also works when you consider reaction rolls. If the PCs could simply pick up allies by saying the right thing, it would be A) arbitrary, and B) pretty quickly unravel the dungeon puzzle, since having 20 Orc allies would make things pretty easy (in level 1).

 

[Krachek]

No. It's not. It's better to take extra time in an areas likely to have hidden treasure than to miss the treasure because you went with a roll and missed it.

Then he's incompetent. If he can't even be bothered to know where the treasure that he hid is hidden, I don't want to be playing in his game anyway.

A skilled players over years should have a complete list of what to do for Doors, chest, empty room, secret doors, pit, stairs and the like.

Is it skilled to play start a litany of all known case each time?
Look at hinge,
Look at the lock,
Look at the Door top, door bottom,
Check for glyph,
Check for cord,
and all others case of trapped door you ever met in your career of players.
And hoping that the DM notice your efforts and avoid you a roll.

Skilled play seem more like a Result mania than skill.

 

[Maxperson]

A skilled players over years should have a complete list of what to do for Doors, chest, empty room, secret doors, pit, stairs and the like.

Is it skilled to play start a litany of all known case each time?
Look at hinge,
Look at the lock,
Look at the Door top, door bottom,
Check for glyph,
Check for cord,
and all others case of trapped door you ever met in your career of players.
And hoping that the DM notice your efforts and avoid you a roll.

Skilled play seem more like a Result mania than skill.

What do you think skill is? It's not invent something new every time you sit down. When you get a job, you get skilled by repetition and learning.

 

[billd91]

A skilled players over years should have a complete list of what to do for Doors, chest, empty room, secret doors, pit, stairs and the like.

Is it skilled to play start a litany of all known case each time?
Look at hinge,
Look at the lock,
Look at the Door top, door bottom,
Check for glyph,
Check for cord,
and all others case of trapped door you ever met in your career of players.
And hoping that the DM notice your efforts and avoid you a roll.

Skilled play seem more like a Result mania than skill.

I get where you're coming from here. Reading Jim Ward's descriptions of the things they would do, the standard operating procedures they would develop, might have seemed fresh at the time (45 years ago). But decades later, there's a point where it crosses over into tedious pixel-bitching a lot faster than it used to. I don't have the time or patience for that anymore.

I'd rather my players exhibit skill by understanding what to focus on, understanding how events in the campaign related to each other (or don't), and overcome challenges rather than wade through that. And that's achievable via a happy medium between pixel-bitching and making a single d20 roll to "Greyhawk" the room.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

=

I get where you're coming from here. Reading Jim Ward's descriptions of the things they would do, the standard operating procedures they would develop, might have seemed fresh at the time (45 years ago). But decades later, there's a point where it crosses over into tedious pixel-bitching a lot faster than it used to. I don't have the time or patience for that anymore.

I'd rather my players exhibit skill by understanding what to focus on, understanding how events in the campaign related to each other (or don't), and overcome challenges rather than wade through that. And that's achievable via a happy medium between pixel-bitching and making a single d20 roll to "Greyhawk" the room.

Greyhawk the room.

I admit, I snorgled.

 

[Maxperson]

I get where you're coming from here. Reading Jim Ward's descriptions of the things they would do, the standard operating procedures they would develop, might have seemed fresh at the time (45 years ago). But decades later, there's a point where it crosses over into tedious pixel-bitching a lot faster than it used to. I don't have the time or patience for that anymore.

I'd rather my players exhibit skill by understanding what to focus on, understanding how events in the campaign related to each other (or don't), and overcome challenges rather than wade through that. And that's achievable via a happy medium between pixel-bitching and making a single d20 roll to "Greyhawk" the room.

Yeah. I don't have the patience for it, either. That's why upthread I said that I reserve the specific methods of searching for rooms where I believe that there is a high chance of something being hidden, and just do a general search the rest of the time.

 

[Krachek]

I get where you're coming from here. Reading Jim Ward's descriptions of the things they would do, the standard operating procedures they would develop, might have seemed fresh at the time (45 years ago). But decades later, there's a point where it crosses over into tedious pixel-bitching a lot faster than it used to. I don't have the time or patience for that anymore.

I'd rather my players exhibit skill by understanding what to focus on, understanding how events in the campaign related to each other (or don't), and overcome challenges rather than wade through that. And that's achievable via a happy medium between pixel-bitching and making a single d20 roll to "Greyhawk" the room.

I cant agree more, the 10 feet pole is great for a couple of game, but after 10 years, I think you should get rid of it! IMO I find more skilled to flow with the dice result, you don’t find nothing, your character already start to think aloud of possible reasons or possible other hiding places.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A skilled players over years should have a complete list of what to do for Doors, chest, empty room, secret doors, pit, stairs and the like.

Is it skilled to play start a litany of all known case each time?
Look at hinge,
Look at the lock,
Look at the Door top, door bottom,
Check for glyph,
Check for cord,
and all others case of trapped door you ever met in your career of players.
And hoping that the DM notice your efforts and avoid you a roll.

Skilled play seem more like a Result mania than skill.

Yup, we actually had it all documented in a little booklet called "Sniff & Listen", lol. We'd just hand it to the DM and tell him "unless we say otherwise, when we say 'Sniff & Listen' we're following this procedure, broken down by common situations, etc." A few DMs would try to balk, but we'd just get out the book and start down the list mercilessly the first few times, and pretty soon they got the idea. As our various parties leveled and got stuff, they would add their own modifications and addenda to the little book. IN GAME we had a "Delver's Society" and the book became its bible of SOP (it existed in a couple DM's worlds, admittedly kinda meta-game, but why not?).

Finally our one main DM started doing things like creating an entire dungeon out of Neutronium (perfectly immune to all magical and non-magical effects). Then when we sorted out how to get around all the hacks THAT prevented, he made a dungeon called CITY of the Beholders, which had literally limitless numbers of them in it. THAT we couldn't beat outright, although we did manage to loot a whole bunch of it (partly because we figured out how to steal some of the Neutronium and build a battle wagon out of it). He was/is a devious DM, but it is darn hard to totally thwart players that have really learned to exploit that kind of system.

After a while we went on to other games, lol.

 

[Krachek]

What do you think skill is? It's not invent something new every time you sit down. When you get a job, you get skilled by repetition and learning.

What is skilled play? I would say that in a RPG, it’s getting better at role play! Getting better at living an adventure through a character.