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

[clearstream]

Great question! Building on what @ph0rk and @Campbell already said, I would answer like this-

First, please remember that in writing the OP, I was being descriptive, not normative. I am not advocating for any particular play style. Instead, I was looking at the origins of "skilled play" because I think that the assumptions inherent in it underlie a few conversations I see that keep popping up here.

Second, "skilled play" is jargon- a term of art. It is describing a certain approach to TTRPGs, and does not mean that other ways of playing are not skilled.

Third, it's not about combat (or not just about combat), so it isn't really about the "tactical" aspect of D&D. In fact, certain aspects of skilled play are very hard to translate from the origins of D&D through 5e, because of the differences (at least arguably) in lethality.

Now, I think that your question is incredibly interesting because it goes to an issue that I wanted to include in the OP, but didn't because of the Wall of Text issue I tend to have. Call it the "intelligence" debate. In early D&D (with skilled play), intelligence was often then dump stat. Remember- with skilled play and reliance on player knowledge, and the ability to solve puzzles and riddles (for example) with what the player knew, the character's intelligence didn't matter much.

Going away from the skilled play model to one where you are playing your character not just to your flaws, bonds and ideals, but also roleplaying to your abilities, can present a challenge when it comes to dumping mental statistics- which is why we can see debates between people who look for ways to validate skilled play (playing with a role-played high intelligence) despite having a character with a low intelligence.

But to answer your specific question- No. In a pure skilled play scenario, roleplaying would be seen as being subordinate to skilled play. You would try to come up with a RP reason for your skilled play, but you wouldn't do something "stupid" (aka, bad for the prospects of the party or your character) solely because of role-play reasons. Aspects of this continue today, when you still have tables acknowledge meta rules in D&D (like no PvP).

Does that make it more clear?

It makes sense to be looking at "skilled play" in the sense of a certain approach that bore that label.

Then the OP produced the title "1. What is Skilled Play? D&D as a Game."

So I'm not following your intent. Did you mean to stop at "...Play?" and not to raise the topic of "D&D as a Game."?

You can see that many posters - myself included - have gotten into the question of skill at game qua game. Did you intend that to be out of scope?

 

[Marc_C]

At my D&D Basic table in 1980 the players quickly developed behavioural routines to navigate the dungeon. It was very mechanical, procedural. Spending time trying to circumvent or deactivate a trap or solve a puzzle required a lot of discussion. It was a very slow process. Our typical gaming session lasted 6-8 hours we didn't mind. Skilled play is not something I would consider today when an average session is 2.5 to 3 hours.

Still, we dropped Skilled play after a while and started using Attribute role under checks for faster play and a more accurate representation of the character's Attribute scores. A fighter with intelligence 7 solving a complex puzzle because the player is very intelligent, while the 18 intelligence magic-user had no clue because the player is a regular guy didn't work for us.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

Thst CSN be taken too far. It's easy for a gm to leave players in a state of "uh I don't know what we are supposed to be doing here" and it gets worse when there is a module being run so players need to do something specific and just keep randomly wandering with every guess tgey make falling outside the scope of what they could have done

 

[Fanaelialae]

I enjoy skilled play, but I find it can easily become tiresome and tedious when taken too far.

A good implemention of skilled play is forgoing skill checks if certainty is not in question, such as in the aforementioned example of the player who checks behind a drawer and automatically finds the key hidden there.

A bad implemention, IMO, is withholding information from the players that would be readily obvious to the characters, such as the earlier example of the DM who neglected to mention that the hedge maze the PCs were in was only 3 feet high. I see that as equivalent to declaring that the PCs asphyxiate ~ 2 minutes after the game starts because the players never said they were breathing. Many such DMs, IME, think themselves quite clever, but I consider it to be simply pedantic.

Personally, I prefer to assume some base competence on the part of the PCs. This also eliminates the need for many procedures since many common sense procedures can just be presumed.

I think that if the DM is aware of something relevant, they should either volunteer that information, prompt the player with a question if their actions might impact their awareness, or simply ask for a check if there's uncertainty regarding whether they would notice it.

I also think that if you expect skilled play, that the DM should give careful thought to their design. I recall one time when my character was walking down a hallway and fell into a pit trap. He climbed up the other side and promptly fell into another pit trap. He climbed up yet again and fell into - you guessed it - another pit trap. Three pit traps in a row in the main thoroughfare through the dungeon. There were indications it was regularly traveled. There was no mechanism to disable them, or hidden routes around them. The dungeon was inhabited with living creatures. When I asked the DM how the heck these creatures went in and out of the dungeon he got annoyed at me for poking a hole in the logic of his "clever" trap. I thought it was certainly annoying, but a far cry from clever.

My point being that traps should have a logical placement that can be reasoned out. This largely negates the need to tap every square with 10' poles, except when in doubt. For that to be the case, the DM's design ought to be well considered. If it isn't, then something like a Perception check offers a mechanical opportunity to avoid the trap, because the DM failed to provide a logical opportunity for the trap to be avoided.

Personally, I don't find a procedure like tapping squares with a 10' pole to be indicative of skilled play. At the point where it becomes a procedure, I think it stops being skilled play. There's nothing particularly skilled about writing on a sheet of paper that you will tap with a 10' pole, though the initial idea of doing so may have been indicative of skilled play. (Personally, I've never agreed with the idea of 10' poles. A 10' pole is going to be an awkward hazard in a cramped space. I'm extremely dubious that it would produce sufficient force to set off most pressure traps. You might detect a hollow if the lid is thin enough, but the noise of constant tapping would probably alert the entire dungeon to your presence in no time. It literally makes no sense to me, and doesn't seem like something any rational dungeon delver would do with regularity.)

I realize that this sounds quite critical, however I'm not accusing anyone of badwrongfun. These are simply my own opinions on the good and the bad regarding this approach to DMing. If you and your group enjoy something that I dislike, then by all means play as you like.

 

[clearstream]

A good implemention of skilled play is forgoing skill checks if certainty is not in question, such as in the aforementioned example of the player who checks behind a drawer and automatically finds the key hidden there.

A bad implemention, IMO, is withholding information from the players that would be readily obvious to the characters, such as the earlier example of the DM who neglected to mention that the hedge maze the PCs were in was only 3 feet high. I see that as equivalent to declaring that the PCs asphyxiate ~ 2 minutes after the game starts because the players never said they were breathing. Many such DMs, IME, think themselves quite clever, but I consider it to be simply pedantic.

The label - "skilled play" - that was applied in some times and places, relates to successfully second-guessing your DM. One can ask - was (or is) "skilled play" a worthwhile mode of engaging with RPG? For the reasons you outline, either not always or not particularly.

The "player knowledge and ability" referred to has narrow scope. It's not about skillfully wielding the game mechanics. Nor skillfully managing your presence at the table. Nor most other kinds of skill at D&D (as a game). It's knowledge and ability to second-guess the DM. In your example, to guess that your DM would believe it made sense to have three pits in a row. That is a metagame ploy, and the aspect of "skilled play" that is most interesting is just that - it takes place in the metagame.

 

[Fenris-77]

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

ToH is a tournament module and was designed as such. It's not a great example of a module designed for skilled play generally.

 

[clearstream]

ToH is a tournament module and was designed as such. It's not a great example of a module designed for skilled play generally.

If the intended meaning is that "skilled play" refers to a mode of engaging with RPG, rather than what one might call skillful play such as of game qua game, then ToH is a perfect example of what "skilled play" is about. A good potted definition might be - second-guessing the DM.

 

[Fenris-77]

Skilled Play doesn't need to be beaten to death as an idea. It's about player ingenuity to overcome obstacles, that's it. They can use stuff on their character sheet or not, that's immaterial. It's also not about 'not roleplaying', that's just nonsense. In a low mechanics environment (which is where skilled play originates) there's a game element past pushing mechanical buttons, an element where the players use their noodles to get stuff done. Why that needs to be a controversial idea is beyond me. The more mechanical buttons you add, and the less room the system in question leaves for player ingenuity, the less skilled play is an appropriate moniker for the game in question. It's not complicated,

None of the above has a whit to do with whether or not other styles of play also require skill, of course they do, but that isn't what we're getting at specifically in this case.

 

[Fenris-77]

If the intended meaning is that "skilled play" refers to a mode of engaging with RPG, rather than what one might call skillful play such as of game qua game, then ToH is a perfect example of what "skilled play" is about. A good potted definition might be - second-guessing the DM.

Um, no, the fact that it's a tournament module makes it different in kind than any other module that doesn't share the designation. I mean yeah, it's a skilled play tourney module, but it's not a good stick it into your campaign and see what happens module, because it wasn't designed to be that. In a tournament module there's no expectation of character continuation outside the module, and in the case of something as deadly as ToH, you're probably going hurt some feelings if you just drop it into a campaign.

 

[Arilyn]

Um, no, the fact that it's a tournament module makes it different in kind than any other module that doesn't share the designation. I mean yeah, it's a skilled play tourney module, but it's not a good stick it into your campaign and see what happens module, because it wasn't designed to be that. In a tournament module there's no expectation of character continuation outside the module, and in the case of something as deadly as ToH, you're probably going hurt some feelings if you just drop it into a campaign.

Yeah, didn't Gygax create ToH because his players were getting overly smug?
And Gygax strongly recommended that players not use their regular characters because of the deliberate design toward high lethality.

It was definitely created as a tournament module and then made available as a one off for interested groups who wanted to try their luck. And don't a lot of the player decisions come down to random chance, making it an example of a skilled play module dubious? I read it but never actually ran it or played through it, so I'm a bit hazy on the details.