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

[pemerton]

Sure, sometimes the mechanics can provide a safety net, but they can also have a negative impact on skilled play. The more mechanics that are available, especially for things like searching, the more likely the GM is to lean on those without a lot of consideration. That can make it more difficult to to engage in the kind of action declaration and adjudication that really makes skilled play hum.

<snip>

An example that works to illustrate this, if we want to step back from searching for a moment, is classic swashbuckling action like swinging from a chandelier. The more crunch you have, the more discrete and defined rolls and whatnot, the more obstacles can be placed in front of a character who decides to declare that action.

I don't think the second paragraph that I've quoted has much to do with skilled play. I'm not aware of any evidence that swashbuckling chandelier-swinging was a big part of Gygax's RPGing, and his rulebooks don't offer any advice on how to adjudicate it (and the rules for thief-acrobats don't really help in this respect).

Conversely, I still have a clear memory of a Rolemaster session where one PC with good physical skills was beneath the deck of a ship but jumping up through a hatch to release arrows like a jack-in-the-box. The rules about how high the character could jump were clear enough, and it was easy to apply his Acrobatics skill as a percentage of his available bow attack bonus (a standard technique in RM). I found Rolemaster more apt to support this sort of thing than AD&D (of course 4e D&D was better again for it, but 4e is hardly a low-crunch game!).

Turning to the first paragraph, searching/perception does seem to occupy a special role in skilled play, because central to skilled play is the players learning the truth about their PC's fictional circumstances, which has been pre-authored by the GM, by declaring actions for their PCs that will oblige the GM to reveal that truth as part of the narration of the outcome. If you make that too cheap, then the "skill" is lost and it just becomes a lottery (or a give away). But what is key to this is not the way action declarations are resolved, but what is required as part of their framing. AD&D is replete with "perception checks" - rolls to find secret doors, to listen at doors, to find traps, etc - and the actual play report from the ToH convention (by a clearly very experienced skilled player) expresses irritation with how those were adjudicated in that game (which tells us that they were hardly anathema back then). But I search the room is not generally treated as a sufficiently precise action declaration to trigger a check. I think it's hard to specify, in the abstract, the requisite degree of granularity, but it's closely correlated with received understandings of the level of detail the GM is to use in the map-and-key. So I search the lock for traps is specific enough, as is I search the west wall for secret doors - because it is understood that doors are detailed at least down to the granularity of their latching mechanisms, whereas door-free walls are not generally detailed beyond their existence in 5' or 10'-long lengths.

3E D&D's skill system is often put forward as a contrast with skilled play, but as far as I can tell the underlying issue is not the existence of a skill system, but the particular approach to framing and resolution that seems to have become typical in 3E. A number of 3E's skills seem not to require the player to actually commit his/her PC to a move within the fiction, and rather just serve as "reframing" devices - using Perception checks to just oblige the GM to tell the player more details about the situation; using Diplomacy to reframe the situation from one with a neutral or hostile PC to one with a friendly NPC; etc. This is completely at odds with skilled play, because it's about bypassing rather than engaging the fiction.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sure, sometimes the mechanics can provide a safety net, but they can also have a negative impact on skilled play. The more mechanics that are available, especially for things like searching, the more likely the GM is to lean on those without a lot of consideration.

Sure, bad mechanics can have a negative impact on skilled play. They can also have a positive impact on play or do you drop e.g. the combat rules entirely? After all the principle that more mechanics devalue "skilled play" means that freeform should be the one true way, right? Or is this not so and (a) a balance is a good thing and (b) the quality of the mechanics matters as well as the quantity?

The mechanics can also have an extremely positive impact on the game as a whole. When mechanics aren't available for things like searching the game frequently devolves into tedious SOPs that might have taken skill to put together but are just rote things to follow that could be carried out by anyone, and to asking long and tedious amounts of questions of the DM that mean that searching a room in-game takes longer than it would in real life because no DM is skilled enough to describe all the details of an intricate room in a relatively small amount of time. It all depends on what you value.

That can make it more difficult to to engage in the kind of action declaration and adjudication that really makes skilled play hum. In effect, the players can be constrained by the mechanics as easily as supported by them. Obviously this isn't always the case as we're indexing GM style and table expectations, but it's certainly an issue, one I know I've seen in many games over the years.

So why are you playing games that are a poor fit for what you want to do? I wouldn't use Call of Cthulhu rules for a Marvel Superheroes game or vise-versa. This has nothing to do with the weight of the rules and everything to do with tone.

An example that works to illustrate this, if we want to step back from searching for a moment, is classic swashbuckling action like swinging from a chandelier. The more crunch you have, the more discrete and defined rolls and whatnot, the more obstacles can be placed in front of a character who decides to declare that action.

The more defined rolls can be placed in front of a character. But that doesn't mean the more defined rolls will be placed in front of a character. I think we'd all agree that 3.X has more rules than 5e - but there is nothing stopping the 5e DM asking for exactly as many and exactly as tough rolls as the 3.X DM - rolls that map onto the 3.X ones.

Indeed I'd go further and say that if we're talking about what can be done rather than what's good practice at least the 3.X player can meaningfully point to the rules and say "it should be this hard"; someone in an old school or 5e system can get ridiculous DCs or ridiculous numbers of rolls.

And an irritating DM in either system is going to point out that the chandelier was never meant to hold the weight of a human anyway and the whole thing comes down.

It can become less about what the GM thinks is reasonable and more about just applying mechanics A and B (or whatever) as stated by the rules.

Most of what the rules are is a framework that the designer thought was reasonable and the player and DM both agreed to. So all you really get here is "It can become less about what person A thinks is reasonable and more about what person B does".

The extent to which this is a problem is a function of how the specific rules set in question was designed. Some systems are really poor at mechanizing complex physical actions in combat that escape the mechanization provided by the rules.

So don't play games you know to be bad. This is not an argument against crunchy rules. It is against playing badly designed games - or games that don't fit what you want to do.

In many cases game systems mechanize at the level of individual actions, so one roll to jump, one roll to swing, and perhaps another to attack the guard (just as an example). Once you have to roll three separate checks there it's almost a certainty that it isn't worth doing based on expected chances of success, even if the GM sets easier DC or what have you.

Agreed. But it's not just systems that do this, it's also GMs. It's not about level of crunch so much as individual biases.

Again, this isn't to say a GM can't rule differently, or make a better choice, of course they can, but they're often working against the rules to do so, which makes it a less common response than perhaps we might like.

But there is absolutely diddly squat in your average rules light game that wasn't designed round swashbuckling (or even some that were) that says not to do this - most of them just have simpler resolution mechanics. And GMs can and do rule this way. This is why we have discussions about action and task resolution - a subject largely orthogonal to weight of the rules.

 

[Fenris-77]

@pemerton - I used that example simply to illustrate how sometimes a crunchier game game can take an action and complicate its deployment. The same sequence of events would equally apply to even basic search roles. In BX, for example, you declare and the DM adjudicates (basic searches, not traps) but there's no mechanic involved. Once you have a skill involved then that's (often, or usually) what the GM will use to adjudicate. So even if you search the dresser for the letter, you only find it if you make the roll (depending on the GM, of course).

I'm also not trying to claim that crunch obviates skilled play, I don't think that's true. What crunch can do is obfuscate skilled play, at least in some circumstances.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Neonchameleon - I personally don't play games that don't fit what I want to do, I was speaking generally. Lots of groups don't really play much beyond D&D, or aren't aware of the plethora of choices they have in terms of different systems with different game play expectations. So when all you have is a hammer...

I was also pretty clear that the GM is obviously an integral part of the equation in all my examples.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

FWIW, I think a lot of people tend to misunderstand early D&D.

For example, this is what Gygax actually said here at enworld about how he DM's:

BTW, when I am DMing AD&D, I tend to ignore rules that get in the wat of the flow of the game. When I have said so before an audience, there have always been some audience members who expressed shock, not to say horror and disbelief. I aon't a rules lawyer, and I believe my own advice--ignore and change as the DM sees fit to make the players' involvement intense and the game be a compelling experience.

...

Many a PC has been killed in mu campaign, but all those losses were because of very bad luck or like play. I have never set out to eliminate a PC in my campaign, only for special events at cons where the participants expect to have that happen. When a player is distraught aboyt such a loss, I empathise strongly...

Of course when I was DMing the rules were highly flexible and nor necesarily what was written in the books...

James Ward, recounting going through D1-D3:
We discovered a highly magical area with some type of dais. The Drow and Drider guards were quickly dealt with. Gary described the portal in wonderful detail. None of us were going to make any mistake in dealing with this thing. We started testing it using the same tests that we used for the demon mouth in TOMB OF HORRORS. We tied a rock to a rope and threw it in the hole. We could easily pull the rope back. We stuck a staff with a bit of raw meat on the end in the hole and again easily pulled it back. A small cage with a living plant and a mouse went in and came out healthy and fine. We had a wizard with a teleport spell. He memorized our area and we tied a rope to his middle and he walked through the portal. We easily pulled him back and he described a cool metal chamber with a metal door in the distance. We were filled with wonder and just had to check it out ourselves. Here is where we made the bonehead mistake.

We all jumped into the portal; came out on the other side; and began exploring.

Gary got up from his DM chair and asked me if I had my Metamorphosis Alpha starship Warden material. I said I did and he urged me to go and get it. I thought this was a strange request, but I went and got it. When I came back Gary was sitting in my chair with a character sheet in his hand. He told me to sit in his DM chair. I felt very uncomfortable sitting in Gary's chair. For years that chair represented the all-powerful DM. At first I was very unsure of DMing this group.

Gary explained to all of us that we had just been transported to the starship Warden.

Also ...
Gary's beat them all for interesting encounters and fun puzzles. He never consulted his rules, while running a game, except for handing out experience points.


Despite the joy some of us get from quoting the arcane rules in AD&D at each other, the fact of the matter is that the game itself, as played, was much more loosey-goosey.

 

[Campbell]

One way a game can support skilled play of the fiction is through its mechanics. You make engaging with the mechanics require strong fictional positioning or use the rules to enable negotiation over the fiction. You make engaging with the fiction a requirement of using the rules rather than letting the rules be an escape valve.

 

[pemerton]

One way a game can support skilled play of the fiction is through its mechanics. You make engaging with the mechanics require strong fictional positioning or use the rules to enable negotiation over the fiction. You make engaging with the fiction a requirement of using the rules rather than letting the rules be an escape valve.

Right. This is what I was trying to get at with my discussion of how some key parts of 3E's skill system seem to be about evading the fiction, by way of reframing, rather than actually engaging with it.

 

[pemerton]

In BX, for example, you declare and the DM adjudicates (basic searches, not traps) but there's no mechanic involved.

In B/X (unlike in AD&D) any character has a 1 in 6 chance to detect a trap. Thieves have their own (higher? I'd have to pull out my copy) chance. There is also the chance to hear things at doors; this is also part of AD&D.

The fact that B/X and AD&D have "search/perception" checks for doors and traps but not for strange markings at the base of the statue isn't deliberate design. It's an oddity of the evolution of the subsystems.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Quite the opposite. It was dependent on player skill, which was not necessarily rules-dependent.

I guess I don't understand what entirely rules-independent "player skill" means then, other than moving into some degenerate cases ("mother-may-I" or "learn to second-guess your DM," each of which has been implicitly or explicitly rejected in this thread.)

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I don't see Gygax as a paragon of this play style. An early innovator, certainly. His game is one that, based on what I know, I would consider somewhat meta. Aiming to challenge the players, expecting them to use whatever knowledge was available to them, not just their characters. As far as I'm aware his players were on board with his play style. As I said, it's only bad if you're inconsistent or you players aren't on board, which to my knowledge, doesn't describe Gygax's style.

I can only go off what impressions I've gotten from others. As for the "players on board" thing, I find that that is quite a bit more slippery than a simple binary. It's entirely possible to actually dislike the system you use, but be completely oblivious to that fact because you don't know about alternative methods. (I should know. That's what happened to me with 3e.)

DM: The room has a bookshelf, a bed, a bedside desk with drawers, and wall sconces with candle holders.

Player: I search the room.

DM in a system with a crunchy system: Make a search check.

DM in less crunchy system and no search mechanics: How? What specifically do you check out and how?

This is just the innately-biased "Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" re-applied. Yes, you CAN just resort to "make a skill check"....just as, in the less-cruchy system with no search mechanics, you can just answer the question without asking for more. You are complaining about a way the rules are used, which isn't actually in the rules themselves in EITHER case, giving one side credit and denying it to the other.

In less crunchy systems you generally roleplay out a social interaction giving your best shot in attempting to leverage what you know of the situation to get what you want, thinking through the situation and social dynamics for skilled play.

In a crunchy system you leverage your character's mechanics or defer to the character designed mechanically as a face if you want to get the best mechanical resolution you can.

In a degenerate usage-case, sure. But the degenerate usage-case for the less-crunchy system is that the IRL shy players (raises hand) defer to the IRL charismatic players, becoming disengaged from play because they know they'll never be as eloquent or dynamic as that player is.

Let's compare apples to apples, rather than apples to slightly dried-out oranges.

FWIW, I think a lot of people tend to misunderstand early D&D.

Absolutely! It's notorious for having been almost immediately become misunderstood as soon as the books started being read by people who never met or played with Gary or Dave or their gaming "lineages." But those misunderstandings are a really big part of D&D's history, and they heavily shaped the experience of play for many people under the auspices of what is called "skilled play" here and elsewhere. It's fine to argue that the thing can be done wrong or misunderstood. Yet when misunderstandings threaten to be comparable to, or (as I think applies here) even more common than, the correct understandings, it behooves us to consider both the "proper" or "intended" way and the way(s) that show up so frequently in practice.

And that's where tournament modules like Tomb of Horrors come in. People explicitly weren't supposed to use it in ordinary play. It explicitly wasn't supposed to be a "skilled play" challenge except in a very narrow, very context-specific sense. It was never intended for wide consumption and, realistically, should have faded from memory as that one weird killer tourney module Gary wrote. Instead, it was used in ordinary play. It was considered a demonstration of the need for skilled play in the generic. It was widely consumed, and is still frequently spoken of today, becoming emblematic of its era.

That dichotomy between what it is supposed to be and what it actually is, is fascinating! At least to me. It shows how--as I alluded to above--degenerate cases can happen even for well-designed things that explicitly tell you how to use them and why. Likewise, 3e skills aren't supposed to be used in the "roll perception"/"...I got a 4"/"you don't see anything," no-fiction kind of way; but the rules were very bad at communicating this, and as others have mentioned, if the results are equivalent or better when you disengage from the fiction compared to engaging with it, people will usually disengage because it's easier to do. This, too, is a dichotomy between how the game is supposed to work or intended to work, and how it works in practice--much like how 3e was supposed to be pretty balanced, but ended up being horrendously imbalanced, and giving players perverse incentives (like the aforementioned "it's better to solve a problem yourself" thing, or "always ruthlessly optimize your own personal performance" type stuff.)

Most importantly, these gaps between intent (or even explicitly-described function) and use-in-practice are the best place to look for how to improve a system. They tell you the places where things need attention, where your intent isn't panning out correctly or where two different goals are clashing. Every system will have these points of internal divergence, and such points are almost always where degenerate behavior and perverse incentives will arise.

 

[Maxperson]

I guess I don't understand what entirely rules-independent "player skill" means then, other than moving into some degenerate cases ("mother-may-I" or "learn to second-guess your DM," each of which has been implicitly or explicitly rejected in this thread.)

If you enter a bedroom, you can search the dresser with a search check, or independent of those rules you can...

1. Check the bottoms of the drawers for hollow bottoms. I used to pull them out and line them up side by side to see if any bottoms were visibly higher than the others. I also turned them over in case the underside was higher or lower, or if anything was stuck to the bottom as a hiding spot.

2. Check the back of the dresser by knocking on it to find any hollow areas that might be hiding treasure.

3. Reach up inside the empty drawer spots to see if anything was attached to the top of the inside of the drawer.

4. Look inside to see if anything was attached to the back behind the drawers.

5. Turn the desk over to see if anything is attached to the bottom.

6. Knock on the bottom of the dresser listening for hollow sections.

None of that is mother-may-I. You aren't asking if you can do anything, but instead telling the DM what it is that you are doing to find any treasure hidden within the dresser. Nor are you trying to guess/game the DM.