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

[loverdrive]

And an important part of poker, for many people, is the risk and the reward. Yes, sometimes people get together and play "penny poker" or they can practice no-stakes poker against a computer opponent; but there is something fundamentally different about playing poker when there are actual stakes involved.

Oh, good old gambling. See you in Monaco.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"If you need to explain how you search, saying "I use procedure 2G in the SOP manual" won't fly with the dm. They'll ask you to explain it again."

I don't doubt your experience, I can only say mine has been the contrary.

I mean, they may deliberately stage an encounter so the SOP doesn't work, or actively screws you. But make you repeat it? No, haven't seen that.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Oh, good old gambling. See you in Monaco.

Naw. Monaco is for F1.

VEGAS BABY!

 

[loverdrive]

Naw. Monaco is for F1.

VEGAS BABY!

You're right, Vegas is for babies (=

Now, on the actual topic of the skilled play and challenges to be overcome.

Can there be a real challenge if the person controlling the opposition is both aware of what I'm doing and unconstrained? I can see a challenge in besting someone in chess, or winning a Flames of War tournament, or something like Dark Souls or Rasputin song in Beat Saber.

I don't know if I could call a game or chess, where my opponent can just pull new pieces outta their ass and place them whatever they please a real challenge. If I win, the only reason for that is... I was allowed to win. Same can be said of Resident Evil 4 with its dynamic difficulty.

Even with that "impartial judge" stuff, the GM is the one who built the damn dungeon — the only reason there's no another trap that can't be detected by looking up, down and all around without shouting a very specific incantation first is simple. It's not there because the GM didn't put it there. They could, and I'd be rolling 3d6s again. There's nothing to stop them from doing that other than their mercy.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Even with that "impartial judge" stuff, the GM is the one who built the damn dungeon — the only reason there's no another trap that can't be detected by looking up, down and all around without shouting a very specific incantation first is simple. It's not there because the GM didn't put it there. They could, and I'd be rolling 3d6s again. There's nothing to stop them from doing that other than their mercy.

Naw.

Look, if you want to appeal to human fallibility, sure.

"Even though judges are supposed to be impartial, they can just say you're in contempt and put you in jail, so why bother with judges, amirite?"

"Even though the referee in the basketball game is supposed to be impartial, they can totes just call one side for fouls and not the other, so why bother with referees, amirite?"

At a certain point, you either recognize you are playing a social game that involves other people and that we all live under assumed norms and a social contract or you don't. It's that simple.

The level of trust people have with each other is, in the end, their own call and independent of the system.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Players always survive because DMs let them.

One of the marks of a good DM is that they can make you forget that while you are playing, so you feel like you really "beat the game".

A feeling of illusory triumph releases the same amount of dopamine as a real one.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Players always survive because DMs let them.

One of the marks of a good DM is that they can make you forget that while you are playing, so you feel like you really "beat the game".

A feeling of illusory triumph releases the same amount of dopamine as a real one.

I remember that there was a person on the threads here who once recounted the following:

They played with a DM in some version of D&D (maybe 3? Don't recall). Anyway, they had an amazing game. They thought it was just wonderful. One of the, if not the, best game of D&D ever.

Later, they realized that the DM was totally making the numbers up behind the screen. In other words, the player had constructed a character painstakingly with bonuses and certain AC and so on, and the DM would just look at rolls and basically think, "Eh, high enough" without any clue what the numbers needed to be.

The person was angry; retroactively, this became the worst game of D&D ever.

I've always thought that the story was fascinating in a lot of ways. I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, but I do think it is relevant to what you are saying.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Yeah, part of the burden of being a DM is that it's like being a magician. You can't reveal what's behind the curtain to anyone else not in The Club.

It's a small price to pay for making your friends happy though.

 

[Krachek]

DM may ignore dice at any moment during the game.
That can assure the success of clever ideas and failure of gross ones.
That’s well written in 5ed DMG.
So DnD can be as hard or easy as DM want to!

 

[transmission89]

snip

Instead, it's a desire to have stakes and consequences that matter to skilled play; not just narrative consequences that matter to roleplay.

Thank you. A much better framing of what I was trying to say in a more hamfisted way. A natural crit from me!