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

[Maxperson]

What is skilled play? I would say that in a RPG, it’s getting better at role play! Getting better at living an adventure through a character.

That's not how it is being used, though. If you read this thread, you will see a few variations of what skilled play is.

 

[Maxperson]

Yup, we actually had it all documented in a little booklet called "Sniff & Listen", lol. We'd just hand it to the DM and tell him "unless we say otherwise, when we say 'Sniff & Listen' we're following this procedure, broken down by common situations, etc." A few DMs would try to balk, but we'd just get out the book and start down the list mercilessly the first few times, and pretty soon they got the idea. As our various parties leveled and got stuff, they would add their own modifications and addenda to the little book. IN GAME we had a "Delver's Society" and the book became its bible of SOP (it existed in a couple DM's worlds, admittedly kinda meta-game, but why not?).

Finally our one main DM started doing things like creating an entire dungeon out of Neutronium (perfectly immune to all magical and non-magical effects). Then when we sorted out how to get around all the hacks THAT prevented, he made a dungeon called CITY of the Beholders, which had literally limitless numbers of them in it. THAT we couldn't beat outright, although we did manage to loot a whole bunch of it (partly because we figured out how to steal some of the Neutronium and build a battle wagon out of it). He was/is a devious DM, but it is darn hard to totally thwart players that have really learned to exploit that kind of system.

After a while we went on to other games, lol.

LOL Yeah, I'm not into adversarial DMing and arms races.

 

[Krachek]

That's not how it is being used, though. If you read this thread, you will see a few variations of what skilled play is.

I see that there is some flavorful interpretation of the Skilled play concept.
But I still wonder why RPG would differ from other game for defining skilled play.
In a strategy game, skill is all about strategy, usually skilled play concern the main goal of the game.
Why in a RPG game skill is not related to Role play?
We can still rely and debate on definitions made 40 years ago, but it avoid us an interesting question,
What is it to be good at Roleplay?

 

[Lord Shark]

I get where you're coming from here. Reading Jim Ward's descriptions of the things they would do, the standard operating procedures they would develop, might have seemed fresh at the time (45 years ago). But decades later, there's a point where it crosses over into tedious pixel-bitching a lot faster than it used to. I don't have the time or patience for that anymore.

A few years ago, I DMed a group through a small dungeon where the first door was trapped. It wasn't even a very severe trap, just something that would knock off a few hit points ... but the party proceeded to treat every single subsequent door in the dungeon like it was an unexploded bomb. Even though none of the other doors were trapped. From an OSR point of view, perhaps I should have felt good that I'd "taught" them the "smart way" to play ... but in reality, all I'd succeeded in doing was turning the act of moving from one room to the next into a dreary chore as they ran through their precautions each time.

 

[payn]

A few years ago, I DMed a group through a small dungeon where the first door was trapped. It wasn't even a very severe trap, just something that would knock off a few hit points ... but the party proceeded to treat every single subsequent door in the dungeon like it was an unexploded bomb. Even though none of the other doors were trapped. From an OSR point of view, perhaps I should have felt good that I'd "taught" them the "smart way" to play ... but in reality, all I'd succeeded in doing was turning the act of moving from one room to the next into a dreary chore as they ran through their precautions each time.

As a GM I had a similar experience. It learn't me not to make the first room too interesting or you'll set expectations too high for the rest of the adventure.

 

[Dausuul]

What do you think skill is? It's not invent something new every time you sit down. When you get a job, you get skilled by repetition and learning.

If your job can be performed optimally by following the same rote steps every time... you probably ought to be looking over your shoulder for the machine that's going to replace you soon.

In a game where the system and the DM reward this approach, it does constitute skilled play. But in that case, either the DM or the system has failed to deliver a good game--at least where this bit of the game is concerned. The rote elements should be "automated" (that is, abstracted away) and the game refocused on meaningful choices. Skill should take the form of a deeper understanding of the ramifications of those choices, not memorizing lists of gotchas.

 

[Maxperson]

I see that there is some flavorful interpretation of the Skilled play concept.
But I still wonder why RPG would differ from other game for defining skilled play.

In an RPG, unlike in other games(presuming you mean board games), you can go beyond the set rules. In a board game, you can't get creative and do things that the rules don't cover. In an RPG you can.

In a strategy game, skill is all about strategy, usually skilled play concern the main goal of the game.

It's confusing, but skilled play isn't really about skill alone. There is skill involved in both skilled play and "unskilled" play. As @Snarf Zagyg said, it's probably not the best term, but it's what has been used and recognized for a very long time, so it's what we have to work with.

Why in a RPG game skill is not related to Role play?

That depends on how you define roleplay. If you're interpreting it broadly to be, "Playing a role," then skilled play as it is being used here is also roleplay since even though the player is being tested, it's via his character in the environment. If you're defining it as acting in character and interacting with NPCs and such, like actors do(though without a script), then it doesn't.

What is it to be good at Roleplay?

Again, that really depends on what you are defining as "roleplay."

 

[Maxperson]

If your job can be performed optimally by following the same rote steps every time... you probably ought to be looking over your shoulder for the machine that's going to replace you soon.

Sure, but that's not what I said. When you learn your job, you learn all kinds of situations and how to handle them. You learn the variations on those situations, where you might need to add or skip steps. In short, you become skilled at your job. I didn't say you had to repeat the same steps every time.

The rote elements should be "automated" (that is, abstracted away) and the game refocused on meaningful choices. Skill should take the form of a deeper understanding of the ramifications of those choices, not memorizing lists of gotchas.

In a lot of cases, yes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This really gets down to the core of the issue; the greatest strength, and weakness, of SP is the referee (DM). A DM that is adversarial, or arbitrary, makes for a terrible experience (just like a biased referee in a sports contest ruins it). A good DM, one that can inhabit different roles and understand that they will have different goals, and one that is accepting of player innovation (and happy to see players find new ways to succeed) is crucial.

In other words, you need a good DM to allow for great SP. Otherwise, it doesn't work well for the players. As I stated earlier, most of the "rules" for DMs that we see today are just codifications of "best practices heuristics" that were around during the 70s.

It'd be really nice, then, if conversations about it didn't always become "SP-like experiences with good to excellent DMs" vs "new-school-like experiences with mediocre to terrible DMs." Hence why I asked, earlier, for comparing apples to apples: frankly address the critiques of both sides, like going over what best practices are and why it's absolutely crucial for various parts of them to happen, OR presume each style is being run competently and examine what makes the two of them different. Because both of those conversations are interesting and enlightening, ideally for everyone involved. "SP-like experience done well" vs. "new-school-like experience done poorly" is neither, assuming everyone is participating in good faith. (Or just talk about it without making comparisons. Which, I admit, is a difficult thing to do, but if it were easy we would already be doing it.)

 

[Garthanos]

A skilled players over years should have a complete list of what to do for Doors, chest, empty room, secret doors, pit, stairs and the like.

Is it skilled to play start a litany of all known case each time?
Look at hinge,
Look at the lock,
Look at the Door top, door bottom,
Check for glyph,
Check for cord,
and all others case of trapped door you ever met in your career of players.
And hoping that the DM notice your efforts and avoid you a roll.

Skilled play seem more like a Result mania than skill.

I remember back in the 80s seeing people pull out their yellow notebooks with lists like that ahem cough cough cough.... I do not have proper words to explain how bleh that felt