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

[HomegrownHydra]

This is a discussion about D&D as a game, metagaming the game aspect, and focus on player based challenge, is it not?

Yes, but are you responding to something that was said in this thread?

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, but are you responding to something that was said in this thread?

Not one specifially. Just the spirit of the discussion itself.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Ok, I just wanted to be clear I wasn't missing something before I post my thoughts on the discussion your comments sparked.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Forum

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That's the famous thread of people arguing about how many days there are in a week. If people can argue about the number of days in a week, is there anything that cannot be argued about?

Wow. Not only was someone arguing about the number of days in a week, but what's really hilarious is that after the guy left the thread there was an absolutely furious, vicious, nasty argument about if working out every other day means you workout 3.5 times per week.

"It averages out to 3.5 times per week."
"but yer not doing half a workout you idiot!!! Ahhhh!!!"

That pretty much sums up the internet.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

The thing is.

If D&D is a game, then there must be a win state.

Many D&D fans do not like the concept that you can win at D&D.

You can't say you hate builds and optimization if D&D is a game.

Having fun might be a goal of the players, but it's not typically a direct goal of the game. Rather, the goals are dictated by the rules, which should (ideally) result in fun.

In other words, the win state in Super Mario Bros isn't to have fun. It's to get to the next stage (which ultimately culminates in beating the game). Achieving these win states results in what we refer to as "having fun".

So this discussion relates to something very fundamental about RPGs that is different than most traditional games. Playing an RPG is like when an adult plays around with a small child, such as when they wrestle or chase each other. When you do so you can easily "win" versus the little kid, so if the kid "wins" it's because you purposely let them win. So the game isn't really about trying to see who wins, its about you pretending like you are trying to win but really holding back so the child feels like they have a chance of winning while still being challenged.

RPGs are like this. No matter how skilled the players are or how powerful their PCs are within the fiction, the DM can easily win because he or she has essentially infinite power. That's why you get the infamous "rocks fall, you die". So if the players win it's because the DM let them win. It's not like in blackjack where the players have a legitimate chance of winning without the dealer purposely going easy on them.

Some will surely say that they create scenarios without the PCs in mind and leave it up the players to figure out how to deal with them. But you aren't really creating the scenario in a vacuum. You know what PCs in the game you are playing (whether that's D&D or something else) are capable of at least in a general sense and create with that in mind. So you present obstacles that will provide enough challenge to be interesting but not so much it's frustrating or impossible. Take the Tomb of Horrors. That's an absolute meatgrinder that is far more difficult than a typical scenario a DM would use. Yet it was still designed for it to be possible for PCs to survive. Gygax could have easily created a module that was truly impossible for a D&D character to survive but he didn't.

So tying this into skilled play and how Snarf Zagyg has said that it depends even more heavily on the quality of the DM than other play styles. Creating an RPG scenario is like doing an Easter egg hunt. Just as when playing around with a small child, with an Easter egg hunt you want the kids to "win" so you create an appropriate challenge for them. When the kids are 2- and 3-years old you put the eggs out in the open and low to the ground so they can easily see and reach them. As they grow up you put more effort into hiding them and place them higher up, but still make them easy to get.

To maximize fun for the players, as the DM you try to create scenarios that hit the sweet spot for difficulty. You want the loot and traps to be hidden well enough that the plays have to look for them, but not so hidden that they never find any loot and are always caught in the traps. With play styles that emphasize PC mechanical abilities, this is easier because you're dealing with concrete mechanics. For instance, "hiding" loot and traps is really about setting a DC that it will determine if a skill check will succeed. So you have an objective measure of how well hidden it is relative to the PCs.

With skilled play, finding that sweet spot is a harder because you have to really understand the players' metagame abilities and approaches and cater to that. And as they get more skilled (and get to know your tendencies), you need to adjust in order to increase the challenge accordingly without making the players feel like you are using cheap gotchas.

So the Super Mario Bros analogy is both similar and very different to D&D. It's similar in that video game designers can make the game as easy or hard as they want, but try to hit that sweet spot. It's very different because the players of Super Mario Bros don't have to deal with the designers adjusting the game as the players become more skilled. If someone plays for a hundred hours and memorizes everything, the game doesn't change so that the player needs to alter their approach.

 

[MichaelSomething]

So the Super Mario Bros analogy is both similar and very different to D&D. It's similar in that video game designers can make the game as easy or hard as they want, but try to hit that sweet spot. It's very different because the players of Super Mario Bros don't have to deal with the designers adjusting the game as the players become more skilled. If someone plays for a hundred hours and memorizes everything, the game doesn't change so that the player needs to alter their approach.

looking for some skilled Mario play??

 

[Fanaelialae]

So this discussion relates to something very fundamental about RPGs that is different than most traditional games. Playing an RPG is like when an adult plays around with a small child, such as when they wrestle or chase each other. When you do so you can easily "win" versus the little kid, so if the kid "wins" it's because you purposely let them win. So the game isn't really about trying to see who wins, its about you pretending like you are trying to win but really holding back so the child feels like they have a chance of winning while still being challenged.

RPGs are like this. No matter how skilled the players are or how powerful their PCs are within the fiction, the DM can easily win because he or she has essentially infinite power. That's why you get the infamous "rocks fall, you die". So if the players win it's because the DM let them win. It's not like in blackjack where the players have a legitimate chance of winning without the dealer purposely going easy on them.

Some will surely say that they create scenarios without the PCs in mind and leave it up the players to figure out how to deal with them. But you aren't really creating the scenario in a vacuum. You know what PCs in the game you are playing (whether that's D&D or something else) are capable of at least in a general sense and create with that in mind. So you present obstacles that will provide enough challenge to be interesting but not so much it's frustrating or impossible. Take the Tomb of Horrors. That's an absolute meatgrinder that is far more difficult than a typical scenario a DM would use. Yet it was still designed for it to be possible for PCs to survive. Gygax could have easily created a module that was truly impossible for a D&D character to survive but he didn't.

So tying this into skilled play and how Snarf Zagyg has said that it depends even more heavily on the quality of the DM than other play styles. Creating an RPG scenario is like doing an Easter egg hunt. Just as when playing around with a small child, with an Easter egg hunt you want the kids to "win" so you create an appropriate challenge for them. When the kids are 2- and 3-years old you put the eggs out in the open and low to the ground so they can easily see and reach them. As they grow up you put more effort into hiding them and place them higher up, but still make them easy to get.

To maximize fun for the players, as the DM you try to create scenarios that hit the sweet spot for difficulty. You want the loot and traps to be hidden well enough that the plays have to look for them, but not so hidden that they never find any loot and are always caught in the traps. With play styles that emphasize PC mechanical abilities, this is easier because you're dealing with concrete mechanics. For instance, "hiding" loot and traps is really about setting a DC that it will determine if a skill check will succeed. So you have an objective measure of how well hidden it is relative to the PCs.

With skilled play, finding that sweet spot is a harder because you have to really understand the players' metagame abilities and approaches and cater to that. And as they get more skilled (and get to know your tendencies), you need to adjust in order to increase the challenge accordingly without making the players feel like you are using cheap gotchas.

So the Super Mario Bros analogy is both similar and very different to D&D. It's similar in that video game designers can make the game as easy or hard as they want, but try to hit that sweet spot. It's very different because the players of Super Mario Bros don't have to deal with the designers adjusting the game as the players become more skilled. If someone plays for a hundred hours and memorizes everything, the game doesn't change so that the player needs to alter their approach.

There's a lot of truth to this. That said, a DM could simply run a premade module without adjusting it. At that point the designer (who has probably never met the players) could not know the capabilities of the party, and therefore could not design challenges specifically to that end.

I think a lot of DMs approach D&D more like someone who wrestles with one arm behind their back, but takes it seriously, so that the child has a fair shot of winning. If the DM uses both arms the child has no chance, but with one arm the child actually has a fighting chance. The one arm is the DM creating scenarios that are in some sense fair. This fairness will vary wildly by playstyle, but I think it exists in most styles (maybe not for something like a one shot character funnel).

With regard to Mario, I think that distinction has to do with static versus dynamic difficulty. Mario is an old game on a cartridge. Its difficulty cannot change (unless someone were to come along and alter the code). Even programs that have "dynamic" difficulty typically are limited in this sense, because computers are dumb. All they can do is follow a set of pre-written instructions, meaning they can only be as dynamic as the programmer is able to anticipate the situations it will encounter. And how much work the programmer is willing to put in writing instructions for those scenarios. Whereas human being are generally quite adaptable; able to improvise when faced with unanticipated scenarios.

Regardless, I only brought up Mario to illustrate what a win state is.

 

[Voadam]

You can play D&D and not go for a win state.

My point is if you play D&D as a game and with skilled play, you are emphasizing the win state. By emphasizing the win state, criticism of focus on winning is hypocritical.

If the focus of your table is solving the puzzle, you are focusing on winning.

Not quite.

You are conflating skilled play to solve a puzzle with just getting past a puzzle.

If your desired fun is for you to solve the puzzle to win then criticism of game mechanics resolving the puzzle to win instead of you resolving the puzzle to win are not hypocritical.

If I want to skilled play think through a mystery as a fantasy Sherlock Holmes, to try to get information and discuss and work through the problem to come up with theories and possible solutions, it is not hypocritical to criticize a system for abstracting and eliding the parts I enjoy and resolving an investigation with character mechanics instead.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not quite.

You are conflating skilled play to solve a puzzle with just getting past a puzzle.

If your desired fun is for you to solve the puzzle to win then criticism of game mechanics resolving the puzzle to win instead of you resolving the puzzle to win are not hypocritical.

If I want to skilled play think through a mystery as a fantasy Sherlock Holmes, to try to get information and discuss and work through the problem to come up with theories and possible solutions, it is not hypocritical to criticize a system for abstracting and eliding the parts I enjoy and resolving an investigation with character mechanics instead.

The problem with ALL of this sort of discussion is that nobody will ever agree on how things should work in game. Is this a fair trap? Here we are getting into a debate about a trap. Now you could argue that the trap description is insufficient, etc. but it seems to me to be pretty consistent with material I've seen in the past, or keys I drew up for traps in my own dungeons in the old days.

As you can see, there is a wide diversity of opinion as to if this trap will even work! Obviously the DM can simply state that "yes it works, as advertised" and be done with it. The problem is, what interpretation did the players go by? To the extent that it differs from whatever the DM decided (or whomever designed the trap) there is a problem!

My response was that this problem is not such a big deal, because the players should simply reason that the DM is out to get them (the trap designer in the perspective of the PCs). So they better assume it works fine. This is OK, but in many cases this issue is going to cause real problems in play. That is, I've seen plenty of instances where it did. I think the explicit declarations of 'rule 0' are a reaction to this (IE we are told who's interpretation will be followed). Again, this kinda works. It certainly goes back to the "you need a skilled DM to pull this off" argument. I think you ALSO need one who has the trust and respect of the players. I think this DM needs to be "on their side" in at least some sense. Again, the wrestling with your child analogy seems apt here.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think this DM needs to be "on their side" in at least some sense. Again, the wrestling with your child analogy seems apt here.

I'm not sure how apt it is to be honest with you.

When you're running a dungeon (or any game to be honest), here is what the GM has to work with:

* What the point of play is.

* How play is structured.

* How well-developed the GM's skillset is.

* What resources the players can bring to bear against the obstacle.

* The GM's movespace.

* How much force the GM can bring to bear.


Now, hopefully, all of the stuff below the first bullet point is well-designed and integrated such that merely playing with integrity will result in the game feeding back naturally into that first bullet point.

If the game has some design issues (the GM's movespace isn't sufficiently focused or constrained, or the force they can bring to bear is unlimited, or the resources the players can marshal is insufficient to the task, or the structure of play easily unravels or just doesn't work, or the GM isn't particularly skillful or the players aren't particularly skillful, etc)...well, then you're going to have a problem.

But if all of that stuff is functional in the opposite direction, then GMs should be able to play aggressively because the system/rules/movespace gives the game purpose, shape, clarity, and constraint. The problem lies when it fails to do one/some/all of those things and I feel like the "wrestling with your child" analogy is an outgrowth of that presumption; "well you're the GM without any focused agenda, without any constraint on movespace or force that can brought to bear...if you're not letting loose the magical Kraken of Flying with a Demonic Rider on the level 1 seafarers then you're coddling them!"

That feels like an AD&D perspective mapped onto all games ever.