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

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would say this was a bit of a different issue where many DMs emulated the 'form' of deadliness, but not the 'function'. Creating a deadly maze where it takes skill to achieve victory (loots) is one thing. Creating a maze where you deploy DM rulings and gotcha! elements to reap a high murder threshold of PCs, but don't really provide meaningful skilled challenges is another thing. Obviously this is a "bad DM" argument, but it was a really frequent and easy pit trap to fall into. I'd say 50% of starting DMs back in the early days immediately fell into that trap. I can even remember it being pretty much the first thing I figured out about DMing, you could be devious, but you had to be on the player's side in a sense, always making sure to give them a way through.

This is also my problem with ToH, the demi-lich part is 100% nonsensical, there's no way to know how to solve it.

Oh, and to extrapolate on that a bit, this is of course why high-level play falls apart. Just TRY to find a way to thwart Questioner of All Things. I mean, sure, you can do it, but it requires some rather silly brute force, like the entire city full of beholders (which still failed to kill us or completely stop us from looting them, though we never got the 'big prize').

 

[Garthanos]

I would say this was a bit of a different issue where many DMs emulated the 'form' of deadliness, but not the 'function'. Creating a deadly maze where it takes skill to achieve victory (loots) is one thing. Creating a maze where you deploy DM rulings and gotcha! elements to reap a high murder threshold of PCs, but don't really provide meaningful skilled challenges is another thing. Obviously this is a "bad DM" argument, but it was a really frequent and easy pit trap to fall into. I'd say 50% of starting DMs back in the early days immediately fell into that trap. I can even remember it being pretty much the first thing I figured out about DMing, you could be devious, but you had to be on the player's side in a sense, always making sure to give them a way through.

This is also my problem with ToH, the demi-lich part is 100% nonsensical, there's no way to know how to solve it.

gotcha and happen chance was the rule of the day.- from ear mites and similar unavoidable traps used to punish people for using those procedural lists to purely random senseless dungeons (even the whole idea of punishing the players by taking away goodies and other things was a gygaxism even if his fans deny it). And icing on the cake the dm can just claim "the dice did it".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

gotcha and happen chance was the rule of the day.- from ear mites and similar unavoidable traps used to punish people for using those procedural lists to purely random senseless dungeons (even the whole idea of punishing the players by taking away goodies and other things was a gygaxism even if his fans deny it). And icing on the cake the dm can just claim "the dice did it".

Well, yeah, you are right to point out that EVEN GARY fell to the urge to put gotcha! elements into his games. I think you can sort of look at it in his case as trying to deal with the inevitable consequences of his play style. It certainly wasn't ignorance. It is still kind of crappy, though. And I think that is the real reason why we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them. I mean, I didn't even run a D&D game between about 1993 and 2008, basically. Played in a few now and again, but that was about it.

When I started running 4e it was, to some degree, a "hey, nostalgia, lets have some fun with this" and I even recall discussing with some of the players before we started if we could even make D&D style play work with Healing Surges in the game, lol. @Gilladian was like "just play it by the rules and see what happens". So after a couple sessions then I was like "hey, this is a stealth Story Now game!"

 

[Manbearcat]

If I had to pin down the various forms of Skilled Play in the D&D I've GMed it would be:

AD&D: Optimizing rote dungeon crawl SOPs for dealing with traps + optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies").

Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawls: Managing the Exploration Turn/Rest/Light economy + skillful Exploration turns and (basically) Group Checks
+ avoiding needless combats + maximizing the encumbrance/equipment loadout/treasure weight ratio minigame.

RC Hexcrawls: Optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies") + skillful Exploration turns and (basically) Group Checks.

3.x: Class and build choice minigame (pick Druids, Wizards, Clerics) + optimizing recon/surveillance for optimizing spellcaster loadout and refresh for everything else (obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, sustain "heavies", sustain yourself, buff everyone to the teeth).

4e: Optimize Team PC synergy in combat while optimizing movement/forced movement/control/hazard and terrain interactions to shut down the pivotal components of Team Monster/battlefield synergy + Off-turn actions + Skill Challenge creativity in action declarations and Skill Power/Utility deployment.

5e: Optimizing spell loadout/deployments (to obviate obstacles, render combat rounds after rd 1 moot, synergize skill augments, trigger/protect Long Rest) + Range combat and Bonus Actions + Getting your GM to "say yes" as much as possible + play the "Wheel of Fortune" Social Conflict well.

 

[pemerton]

yeah it might be more useful to think of Skilled Play as moving on and being inclusive from more than that, even if not everyone likes the solutions equally a lot of our current mechanics were developed inter-textually with this idea of skilled play, to further develop the concept and move past the problems of it as we've identified in this thread.

<snip>

By and large, this seems to be a sticking point many of these threads return to, where the discussion is being perceived as in service to and policed by the terminology, rather than vice versa. Questioning these accepted bounds is rendered difficult, because they're perceived to be definitive (and therefore intrinsically truthful) rather than descriptive (and therefore subject to commentary, criticism, and debate.)

I don't think it's about terminology. It's about the phenomenon. The phenomenon that the OP in this thread describes is a real thing. And the issues with it are those that various posters - I would say most clearly @AbdulAlhazred, who is drawing on experience - have identified.

A post or a thread about how to deal with those issues while maintaining skill as part of play seems like it could be interesting. I don't see that terminology is a sticking point. The sticking point, it seems to me, would be articulating ways in which fiction remains important to resolution that don't just turn the game into Dungeon World or Burning Wheel!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well, yeah, you are right to point out that EVEN GARY fell to the urge to put gotcha! elements into his games. I think you can sort of look at it in his case as trying to deal with the inevitable consequences of his play style. It certainly wasn't ignorance. It is still kind of crappy, though. And I think that is the real reason why we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them. I mean, I didn't even run a D&D game between about 1993 and 2008, basically. Played in a few now and again, but that was about it.

So, here's the issue with discussing these matters (from my perspective).

Look at how the thread started. It was a specific exploration as to why certain topics continue popping up in conversations about 5e. Which is evident on this forum-
1. Lethality in 5e (this has a number of sub-topics, from whether or not each encounter should be appropraite to the party to hit point bloat to traps to level drain to save or suck)
2. RPing as opposed to metagaming. The interminable, "playing your intelligence" issues, player knowledge about monsters, etc.
3. Defined abilities (and skill checks) and when to use them. Again, the oldest D&D debate is probably the whole, "If you have a defined skill, does that then mean others can no longer do it?" which dates back to the introduction of the thief.

However, despite the narrow nature of the OP, eventually the thread became overran with people who:
A. Choose to argue with a common term ("SP"), despite the fact that not only was this issue noted in the OP, but has been repeatedly stated. It gets to the point of ridiculousness, as if any thread where someone want to discuss "Story Now," became enthralled to those who wish to argue that, "Hey, other modalities of play also can have story elements!"

B. Is largely continued by those who not only do not want to discuss the topic of the OP, but affirmatively state things like "we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them." I am happy that you found more rewarding play and processes! But hey- some people truly enjoy other play and processes. If you aren't curious about the topic of the OP and the relevance to 5e, and only want to say, "Hey, I didn't like that way of playing, and don't want to see it today," then it's not really fruitful to the topic. IMO. I was hoping to see people engage with the idea of how (if at all) SP as a modality of play was relevant to answering these questions in 5e.

3. Finally, it would be really, really nice if a thread that was started to discuss the continued use of SP concepts that arose in early D&D, and appears to be relevant to some extent in 5e, and ... use it to actually discuss those topics in the context of 5e, instead of turning everything into a referendum on story now, or agendas, or non-D&D games like Dungeon World.

Hey, people can discuss what they want to. But this is no longer a thread I am interested in, and I truly regret starting it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It'd be really nice, then, if conversations about it didn't always become "SP-like experiences with good to excellent DMs" vs "new-school-like experiences with mediocre to terrible DMs." Hence why I asked, earlier, for comparing apples to apples: frankly address the critiques of both sides, like going over what best practices are and why it's absolutely crucial for various parts of them to happen, OR presume each style is being run competently and examine what makes the two of them different. Because both of those conversations are interesting and enlightening, ideally for everyone involved. "SP-like experience done well" vs. "new-school-like experience done poorly" is neither, assuming everyone is participating in good faith. (Or just talk about it without making comparisons. Which, I admit, is a difficult thing to do, but if it were easy we would already be doing it.)

I apologize for not addressing this earlier, but I wanted to discuss this very briefly before (hopefully) exiting the thread. I am not sure how you got this from what you responded to? Here's what I wrote-

This really gets down to the core of the issue; the greatest strength, and weakness, of SP is the referee (DM).

Everything else I wrote was building on that. That's not "comparing" SP to other modalities of play and assuming they have bad DMs! Far from it. Instead, I was emphasizing something different- that traditional SP (as others define it, and as I use in the OP) has a notable strength, and weakness- the DM (GM). It requires a good to excellent DM to function properly, to have those heuristics that I have previously discussed. In the absence of a good DM, the game can be a mediocre, or even a terrible experience (the dreaded killer DM, or "respect mah authoritah").

Other modalities of play try to cabin this issue in different ways- 3e, for example, provided more player-facing rules and skills. Other games will change the division of authority between players and DM. There are strengths and weaknesses to these other approaches as well. Arguably, 5e moved (at least slightly) back in the direction of the SP model with the 'rulings, not rules' model; I would say that this, although to a lesser extent than OD&D, creates the same DM-centric issue.

But I was not trying to compare a game run well with a game run poorly, and I am not sure how you managed to get that from what I wrote.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, here's the issue with discussing these matters (from my perspective).

Look at how the thread started. It was a specific exploration as to why certain topics continue popping up in conversations about 5e. Which is evident on this forum-
1. Lethality in 5e (this has a number of sub-topics, from whether or not each encounter should be appropraite to the party to hit point bloat to traps to level drain to save or suck)
2. RPing as opposed to metagaming. The interminable, "playing your intelligence" issues, player knowledge about monsters, etc.
3. Defined abilities (and skill checks) and when to use them. Again, the oldest D&D debate is probably the whole, "If you have a defined skill, does that then mean others can no longer do it?" which dates back to the introduction of the thief.

However, despite the narrow nature of the OP, eventually the thread became overran with people who:
A. Choose to argue with a common term ("SP"), despite the fact that not only was this issue noted in the OP, but has been repeatedly stated. It gets to the point of ridiculousness, as if any thread where someone want to discuss "Story Now," became enthralled to those who wish to argue that, "Hey, other modalities of play also can have story elements!"

B. Is largely continued by those who not only do not want to discuss the topic of the OP, but affirmatively state things like "we all eventually went on to more rewarding processes and games that enable them." I am happy that you found more rewarding play and processes! But hey- some people truly enjoy other play and processes. If you aren't curious about the topic of the OP and the relevance to 5e, and only want to say, "Hey, I didn't like that way of playing, and don't want to see it today," then it's not really fruitful to the topic. IMO. I was hoping to see people engage with the idea of how (if at all) SP as a modality of play was relevant to answering these questions in 5e.

3. Finally, it would be really, really nice if a thread that was started to discuss the continued use of SP concepts that arose in early D&D, and appears to be relevant to some extent in 5e, and ... use it to actually discuss those topics in the context of 5e, instead of turning everything into a referendum on story now, or agendas, or non-D&D games like Dungeon World.

Hey, people can discuss what they want to. But this is no longer a thread I am interested in, and I truly regret starting it.

Honestly, I thought a lot of the analysis has been useful in terms of doing what you're talking about. If you understand what the attributes and limitations, strengths, weaknesses, and reasons behind the various things that seem to make up Skilled Play as you describe it, THEN you can go in the direction of deliberate game design to get what you want out of, say 5e.

For example: What ARE the role of skills ala 5e? Can you include them? Do you have to remove that element from play? Are some of them better than others? Can you simply describe a specific process for using them which is amenable to SP? You do have to know what is NOT in your SP to do that, at least roughly.

Same with, say, resources. Some 5e classes almost completely refresh on a short rest. Others mostly refresh on a long rest. How does that play out in a classic delve? In a hexcrawl? A town adventure? You'd probably want to think about that. Again, it really helps to have understood what elements factor into the SP paradigm.

What about 5e's lack of exploration rules? Why have these rules not existed in any explicit form in D&D since 1989 (when 2e was published)? The last book to explain or even really define 'turn' was the 1e DMG! Many people still understand the reference, but even the 5e designers don't seem to have seen fit to provide turn-based underground exploration rules. Do you need them?

The role of traps. What really is the point of traps? How should they be deployed in a way that is interesting and not likely to turn out to be boring or annoying in play? Does 5e model traps in a way that is useful to SP or not? What about other editions?

And generally, what would profitably be brought over or adapted from other games, or added whole cloth, that would make SP work better in 5e?

Finally, are their concepts from Story Now type games that can be adapted? Many lessons were surely learned in game design in 40 years. 5e itself hardly epitomizes them. There may be some versions of SP that are still unexplored (at least in WotC D&D) that can benefit from looking at these types of game.

I thought those were all ideas and questions that benefited from the discussion.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Honestly, I thought a lot of the analysis has been useful in terms of doing what you're talking about.
(snip)
Finally, are their concepts from Story Now type games that can be adapted?
(snip)
I thought those were all ideas and questions that benefited from the discussion.

Not really. This is just a rehash of ... well, the same long conversations I am not interested in going on in other threads.

I don't want to "design" 5e. The OP has nothing do with game design, or adapting Story Now elements into 5e.

It was pretty clear and simple. I get that you (and others) want to have your specific conversation ... but it's the same conversation that you're having in other threads.

It's not the OP.

I don't have any control over what y'all are going to do, but it isn't what I was discussing ... at all.

 

[pemerton]

Related to the topic of skilled play: D&D General - Is this a fair trap?