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

[loverdrive]

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?"

And there are procedures to check both for doing their job badly.

Other than that, the laws and rules that they operate on are well known. The spectators at a basketball match can see the fouls with their own very eyes, and even if some reason the referee wouldn't face any repercussions, everyone will know that this match was naughty word. A lawyer can see that a trial was naughty word the same way.

In D&D, who knows how the dungeon is supposed to look like? Who know where the traps are and how they work? Only one person. The GM.

This doesn't mean that poking at things with a 3m pole (let's name things properly, not like americans) can't be fun. I just doubt that it can actually be a real, genuine test of players' skills.

 

[Campbell]

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.

If we're because we value the challenge of play this is a bit like winning a close football game because the refs were on the take or winning a boxing match because the other fighter took a fall. The win felt good when we thought it was clean, but now that we know it was not it was not skill that prevailed. Video games, especially the Mass Effect series pull this stuff all the time where it's impossible to lose, but because you can move your character around and shoot you feel like you are doing something. It feels real bad to me.

 

[Krachek]

One game our DM tell us that from now it will be assume that our character are paying attention, and we will be require roll only when real danger arise.
Dungeon crawl have never been so fast and interesting since then.
No more the same litany to describe that you look for traps or enemy at each door, floor step or new room.

 

[Voadam]

I think there is a value to being more narratively descriptive than "I search for traps, 13."

I think things like the following are fun:

Player "I go up and poke the chest in the otherwise empty room with my spear because its probably a mimic. If its not I will check the chest carefully for traps before opening it."

DM "OK, when you go up you trigger the concealed pit in front of the chest."

 

[Shiroiken]

That's why you don't use a 10' pole.

Instead, you tie the bard up to a 30' rope, and have him jump up and down (pressure plates!) in front of the party.

You just need a large supply of bards.

Nobody in our group would play a bard, so we had to charm an orc.

Not kidding, but my group has been known to take surrendering humanoid prisoner, and turn them into "torch bearers" up in front of the party.

The player skill in a character-skill focused game is in making an effective character. It's a bit like winning MtG by having a better deck. A really good deck doesn't need a lot of skill at the table to win, just a good deck, knowledge of how to use it, and not getting hosed by the shuffle.

Deckbuilder games are a really good example, but it includes both types of player skill. Building a great deck is the same type of skill as building an effective character. However, the knowledge of how to use it (something many owners of "internet decks" fail to full understand) is the same type of player skill the OP refers to. If you were given a pregen character that was charop, your player skill would still matter to properly play it.

I don't understand why players in these descriptions don't have a standard process written down and given to the DM.

I don't get it either, but I've been working with my group to standardize a lot of things. We've got a standard watch, various marching orders, and the like. Unfortunately a lot of times people just do whatever they want, even if it messes up the plan (i.e. LEROY JENKINS).

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I think there is a value to being more narratively descriptive than "I search for traps, 13."

I think things like the following are fun:

Player "I go up and poke the chest in the otherwise empty room with my spear because its probably a mimic. If its not I will check the chest carefully for traps before opening it."

DM "OK, when you go up you trigger the concealed pit in front of the chest."

Even when running a skill system like 5e I tried to tell the players that if you describe something that removes doubt you can avoid the dice. There is a key on the back of one of the drawers in desk. You tell me you are going to take all the drawers out and search them, or physically check the depth of the chest to see if there is a false bottom, etc, I'm not going to have you make a search check. But if you say I'll search the chest and roll a 1 well you may have just missed that key. Does that give the more clever players an advantage over others that may have a more statistically sound PC? In many cases yes it does. But we are players playing a game and clever play should be rewarded.

 

[DemoMonkey]

I think things like the following are fun:

Player "I go up and poke the chest in the otherwise empty room with my spear because its probably a mimic. If its not I will check the chest carefully for traps before opening it."

DM "OK, when you go up you trigger the concealed pit in front of the chest."

Ok, think that through. What are they going to do the time after that?

And when the pressure plate in from of the chest triggers the spear trap in the ceiling, what are they going to do after THAT?

All you are doing in that case is starting an arms race. This will result in one of two things; Paranoid timid pixel-bitching players, or (to borrow the apt term above) the Leroy Jenkins Effect. Where players just assume you are going to GOTCHA! them no matter what you do, so fine, just bring it and lets move on.

Skilled play needs to be meaningful; you need to assume at a certain point that they do all the obvious things, and that doing the obvious things works most of the time, and that non-obvious challenges are where you need to test them. And in order to test them, there has to be some element of the environment that you describe that would allow them to make a smart play (or not) or some circumstance that means they CAN'T do the SOP.

 

[ph0rk]

The player skill in a character-skill focused game is in making an effective character.

I'm sure others have commented on this, but there is much more to it than that.

A skilled player can take any randomly-generated character from dndbeyond and do things that make a DM that was expecting a particular fight to be "hard" tear their hair out.

Making a versatile character is a sort of skill, but it is the sort of skill you can google (so, in a way, its really more like rote knowledge).

Working with what you have in a new situation effectively? That's something else entirely.

 

[Campbell]

In any RPG skilled play of the fiction is still going to matter a great deal (unless railroading is a thing), regardless of mechanical depth. By definition lateral thinking skills are still going to play a large part in success or failure.

 

[MNblockhead]

When I think of skilled play, especially in 5e, it is much more about preparation and combat and not so much about tapping everything with a 10' foot pole. Passive checks and skill checks, and not requiring as many skill checks for things that a character is proficient in, keeps the exploration phase moving at a nice pace.

Skill in the exploration phase is more about having thought ahead about where you were going to be exploring, conducting some intel, prepping your spells, and equipping yourself properly. Knowing when to sneak versus charging ahead. Being willing to try other approaches than combat, such as diplomacy and avoidance.

Combat, of course, is where player skill can really shine. Skilled players can can make "deadly" encounters based on the 5e DMG encounter building rules far from dangerous by knowing their PC abilities and spells backwards and forwards, knowing how to manage their resources, knowing how to work together, and. by making use of terrain and positioning,

With my regular campaign, I have to plan combat carefully to make it a challenge. I find that when I run games for players outside my normal group, I tend to kill PCs regularly if I don't tone things down.