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

[Maxperson]

We are almost in 50 AG (after Gygax), I think some concept like skilled play can evolve.
You have well describe the origin of the concept, but what do we do with it in 2021?

Gygax left TSR in 1985. We're nowhere near 50 AG. Heck, 40 AG isn't for another 4 years.

 

[Campbell]

So in OSR style skilled play the game is not a contest between the players and the GM. It's a contest between the players and the prepared scenario. The GM, like a war game referee, is supposed to strive to be a neutral arbiter of the rules and play the world/scenario with integrity. They are not supposed to play gotchas. Killer DMs are just as unwelcome in a skilled play environment.

 

[pemerton]

I'm leery of the concept of 'skilled play' as described here, because I think RPGs have evolved past their initial Gygaxian origins and the best ones are no longer about what those old-school games focused on.

<snip>

A fairly common 'win condition' for exploring dungeons back in the day was the goal of liberating all the treasure that the DM had secreted in the dungeon when designing it. It makes sense why PCs would want to do this -- heading into dungeons in search of treasure was pretty much the point of the game back then -- but as soon as the DM accepts this as a competition, with the players 'winning' if they find all the loot and the DM 'winning' if significant caches of loot remain undiscovered, then the arms race begins. The DM hides treasures in secret compartments, in secret treasure rooms, behind impassable obstacles, in rooms at the end of miles-long passages that can only be traversed by creatures the size of mice, on the Ethereal plane, in other extra-dimensional spaces. Eventually you get to the point where you can only find the treasure by passing through the dimensional portal that can only be reached if you're swallowed whole by the tarrasque.

I could see someone saying 'yes, exactly, that's what I'm talking about -- player skill is the players learning how to defeat their DM's plans to hide treasure from them and extract maximum loot from every dungeon'. But what does this mean for campaigns that don't do this? Are those players somehow 'less skilled' because they don't have to jump through all the hoops that the old-school DM requires of his players? Is a game where SOP-style door opening tactics aren't required less satisfying than one that does?

Is a game where you don't have to tap ahead of you with a ten-foot pole when walking down every dungeon passage, somehow a game where 'player skill' isn't as important? Does this mean that games that focuses more heavily on 'player skill' are necessarily less fun?

My feeling is that players have developed the concept of 'player skill' as a justification for going through these kinds of hoops, to make them feel as if they're doing something well by doing these things that don't actually need to be done at all to play a satisfying and engaging RPG. And while I can accept that there are people who recall that style of old-school play who either miss it in modern play or deliberately choose to play older games (like OSR games) that feature it, it doesn't surprise me that this style of play has been deliberately de-emphasized in modern RPGs to help them appeal to a larger cross-section of potential RPG players.

Based on the above, and taking those implications to their logical conclusions, I say that 'skilled play' in the Gygaxian sense doesn't really exist. It's just your DM being a dick and then, when you complain about it, responding with 'git gud' and you end up agreeing with him.

I don't agree with your conclusion: I think that Gygaxian "skilled play" is a real thing, and it's different from (say) playing Apocalypse World well.

What I think your post does point to, though, is a basic instability in skilled play: there is a strong element of "ecological development" as you describe; but that doesn't generalise well outside the circumstance within which it evolved. Yet a widely-played or commercial RPG depends on exactly that sort of generalisation!

We can see that with (say) Lurkers Above. When Gygax uses one for the first time, it's a clever response to the approach being taken by players in his game, it keeps them on their toes, and it drives them to improve their play. But when I (as I did) use a Lurker Above in a dungeon that I design and run in the mid-80s, which doesn't have any of that context or baggage, what does it bring to the game? Not a lot.

Likewise for many of the more baroque pit traps, sloping passages, door tricks, etc.

I think this is a difference between skilled dungeoneering and (say) crosswords, or competitive sports, which TSR didn't fully solve in the period when it still treated skilled play as a thing.

 

[Umbran]

So in OSR style skilled play the game is not a contest between the players and the GM. It's a contest between the players and the prepared scenario. The GM, like a war game referee, is supposed to strive to be a neutral arbiter of the rules and play the world/scenario with integrity. They are not supposed to play gotchas. Killer DMs are just as unwelcome in a skilled play environment.

Tomb of Horrors, dude. From the original skilled-play GM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One of the things I find very interesting about the "skilled play" discussion is different opinions about what qualifies as "skilled play."

That is, for example, @Snarf Zagyg explicitly excluded any form of "stuff on one's character sheet" (my phrase, not his) as skilled play. That idea, I find, is what is particularly old-school in nature: that you should never count any of the player-side rules as counting for "player skill," only monster-, situation-, and environment-side rules. That is, "player-side" rules are things you write on your own character sheet, while monster-side rules are components of a monster's statblock, environment-side rules are things that define how a physical place works or behaves, and situation-side covers basically all the other miscellaneous concealed rules of running the world.

It is generally a new-school (or at least newer-school) attitude to include some portion of player-side rules in what qualifies as "player skill." This is one of the things fans of 3rd and 4th edition value, albeit for very different reasons. 3.x/PF fans tend to value player skill WRT player-side rules by treating the player's skill as a filter: it is understood and even desired that most of the player-side rules are mediocre (or even intentionally bad), in order that the players who find good rules be rewarded with greater influence over the process of play. Player-side player skill, by this metric, is thus a matter of understanding the possibility space intuitively, choosing the right elements therein, and then applying those elements with cleverness (and, ideally, style). In effect, it is "Wizard-izing" D&D; the Wizard as a class has always been about knowing a vast amount of mostly-situational tricks, learning how to plan around which ones will be maximally useful, and then (when situations inevitably diverge from predictions) creatively re-applying the tools you have to the situation at hand. It's very self-focused (buffing others is less efficient than solving problems directly), mostly residing in medium- to long-term foresight.

Conversely, the 4th edition approach to player-side rules fostering player skill generally lies in creatively chaining building blocks together so that a strategy coalesces from them in any given encounter (whether or not it is combat-specific). In a sense, it is an exact inversion of the above process: you have a fixed set of generally-applicable tools, which you must leverage alongside your allies' tools, in order to overcome a challenge together. It is intentionally very group-focused: trying to play 4e in the "solving a problem is better than coordinating with an ally" approach is almost always going to go very badly, because the game was hard-coded to expect teamwork. Likewise, with a (mostly) fixed list of powers, chosen from a relatively small pool each time you get a choice, there's very little need for long-term foresight. Instead, you mostly look at short-term foresight, what doing something this turn can do for your allies next turn and such, rather than what you might use six hours from now.

I, personally, am more in the new-school camp. I don't, again personally, see all that much value in developing a "standard operating procedure" for how to not die to ridiculously lethal traps, and I don't see all that much skill in "memorize these statblocks and hope the DM doesn't alter them later to screw with you," which are usually held up as two of the more important parts of "player skill" in older editions. Part of the reason I don't see much in these things is the demonstrable DM-player arms race that results: players lose characters to being attacked by prepared monsters on the other side of a door, so they start listening at doors; DM ceases to be able to challenge players with encounters on the other side of a door, so she introduces ear seekers; players lose characters to ear seekers, so they start carefully checking every door and religiously (heh, punny) casting cure disease to ward off any potential seekers; DM invents some other gotcha mechanic for players to fall to and then memorize; lather, rinse, repeat. And it's not just ear seekers; cloakers, cursed items, black puddings, rust monsters, the aforementioned lurkers, darkmantles, even things I hadn't heard of before like "disenchanters" and "piercers," are all instances of "disrupt the players' SOP so they cease being so comfortable and smug about their survival." Even the classic troll is, in some sense, a monster of this vein: a puzzle that, once solved, must eventually be replaced with a new puzzle that is difficult or impossible to defeat until it is solved and thus invalidated, continuing the vicious cycle.

By that same token, I totally understand the old-school criticism usually phrased as some variation of "being unable to think beyond the sheet." That IS a valid concern. My problem with it is, mostly, that a LOT of people conflate "having many things on the sheet, which can potentially be useful," with "causing people to be unable to think beyond it." It's especially frustrating when some of these very same people will say that, and will then gush over the creativity of...casting a spell at a clever time, or using an item or combination of items in a clever way, when those things were taken from somebody's character sheet too. But even with those grumbles, I have to agree that it IS a risk, and you DO need to take steps to encourage your players to have an expansive interpretation of what they can do with the tools they have--whether those tools are "adventuring gear we bought," "magic items we have," "character abilities we can use," or whatever else.

As with the OP, I do not mean to disparage any style of play, and I totally see pitfalls and problem-cases for the style I favor.

 

[pemerton]

I don't, again personally, see all that much value in developing a "standard operating procedure" for how to not die to ridiculously lethal traps, and I don't see all that much skill in "memorize these statblocks and hope the DM doesn't alter them later to screw with you," which are usually held up as two of the more important parts of "player skill" in older editions. Part of the reason I don't see much in these things is the demonstrable DM-player arms race that result

Clever players can pre-empt the arms race, though - for instance by using detection magic or other techniques to anticipate the GM's next move. The previous sentence is an "in principle" point - I don't know how often that actually happens.

My problem with it is, mostly, that a LOT of people conflate "having many things on the sheet, which can potentially be useful," with "causing people to be unable to think beyond it." It's especially frustrating when some of these very same people will say that, and will then gush over the creativity of...casting a spell at a clever time, or using an item or combination of items in a clever way, when those things were taken from somebody's character sheet too.

Agreed.

That said, there is (I think) a point in the neighbourhood which is worth thinking about. If the clever deployment of things on the sheet doesn't require thinking beyond the sheet and its mechanical implications, that is different from thinking about the fiction and using something on a sheet (eg inventory) to make a move in the fiction.

That doesn't necessarily track the OSR/"new school" divide, though. Using Transmute Rock to Mud to trap some onrushing bugbears in the mud can be fun, but isn't any sort of out-of-the-box thinking. Whereas when the players in my 4e game used a Fire Horn to make ice more susceptible to fire, so that it could then be melted so as to form the basis for a water wall, I thought that was fairly clever play of the fiction (the fictional capability of the Horn; the fiction of the terrain) which wasn't any less because it was in the context of a skill challenge.

 

[clearstream]

1. What is Skilled Play? D&D as a Game.
To think of the difference, and make it simplified and clear:

The Sphinx asks the party, "I disappear when you say my name. What am I?"
Skilled Play: Does anyone playing (the players) know the answer?
Otherwise ... : Do you have something on your character sheet that would let you know the answer? Intelligence check?

The assumed model of play for early D&D was skilled play.

The Sphinx asks the party, "I disappear when you say my name. What am I?"
Skilled Play: Who has the highest Intelligence modifier? Okay, we can work together to give that roll advantage, and we might as well throw in guidance seeing as it's a cantrip. Is it worth using bardic inspiration? It might be more efficient to polymorph the sphinx into a mouse, right?
Otherwise... : Do something that would not seem skillful, such as... offer the DM cake?

In speaking of D&D as a game, can you articulate why you are not attributing skill concretely to how well players conceive and adapt strategy, apply effective tactics, and successfully execute via game mechanics. What is the skillful work - as you want to define it - to be done? Playing the game qua game? Or something else?

 

[clearstream]

So in OSR style skilled play the game is not a contest between the players and the GM. It's a contest between the players and the prepared scenario. The GM, like a war game referee, is supposed to strive to be a neutral arbiter of the rules and play the world/scenario with integrity. They are not supposed to play gotchas. Killer DMs are just as unwelcome in a skilled play environment.

The value of the question is not choosing between what counts as skill, it is to examine what skill might be.

 

[clearstream]

Metagaming has never been a "bad" thing in my view as it is precisely why I play the game: to challenge myself (the player) to overcome obstacles in the game. The modern game with its heavy reliance on character skill trumping all else has never held great appeal for me.

Playing a multi-session RPG game commits us to the metagame even if we were not committed in other ways.

In my view it's no longer worth debating whether the metagame exists, is impactful, ought be considered, and may be used - except to bring people up to speed, perhaps - the interesting discussion is on the forms and dynamics of the metagame, what is current, and where we are headed?

The metagame is one of the most crucial and least well explored aspects of gaming. Consider this assertion for example - no game exists outside a metagame in which it has meaning.

 

[clearstream]

Players always survive because DMs let them.

For some styles of DMing, that is true. Other styles play it straight: the DM chooses their tools - as it were - and refrains from both dropping in more tools, and from failing to use all of the tools that they chose.

Players then survive because they made choices and applied mechanics that were most likely to overcome the DM's chosen tools. One might counter that all games are designed for players to win. There are a couple of interesting ways to look at that. One way is to observe that the DM is a player... at the table along with everyone else. Another is to suggest that there can be a lose condition... a TPK being the obvious example. What a DM does after a TPK reveals where they stand.

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 great DM might set the challenge (chooses their tools, as I put it above) at just the right level, so that players can probably win, but not certainly. They can beat the game... but might not. Of course, what most carries a game are all the things that happen alongside that crunch. The motives and behaviours of NPCs, principally.