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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8278079" data-attributes="member: 42582">This description is too generic. When my group played a Wuthering Heights one-shot there was a lot of creativity and problem-solving (eg one of the players solved the problem of his PC being stuck in jail by starting a prison riot, during which he escaped).But the Wuthering Heights game was in no sense Gygaxian skilled play.To describe Gygaxian skilled play we need to identify the nature of the problem: broadly speaking, it is the puzzling geography and architecture the GM has created (the dungeon is the paradigm here), and secondarily it is the NPCs/creatures who populate that place and whose behaviour is often not self-evident but is (i) knowable and (ii) exploitable (the ogre in KotB is a well-known exemplar of this) or (iii) avoidable if not able to be turned from threat to opportunity (the evil priest in KotB is an example of this).Then we have to identify the sorts of player "moves" or action declarations that are central to solving the problem. These are (a) moves that oblige the GM to reveal information (searching, making "perception"-type checks, explaining how one's PC uses marbles or water to find the slope of a room, using a wand of enemy detection, etc), which help the players better grasp the parameters within which solutions must be found; and (b) moves that negate or avoid threats, or overcome obstacles, so that the notional reward - treasure - can be obtained without too much PC injury/death.Both the (a) and (b) moves are generally to be adjudicated having close regard to the fiction - GM's framing, and PC fictional positioning - but with implicit understandings as to what bits of fiction matter (I quoted some relevant passages from Gygax upthread - generally (eg) the shape of a room is deemed to matter, but (eg) the stitch on a NPC's boots is not). There are some moves where dice rolls play a bigger roll - some searching moves, some door-opening moves, much of combat - but even in those cases there is an underlying imperative to prioritise the fiction over the stipulation of abstract resolution procedures, or at least to apply the latter having regard to the former.Modules that really exemplify the way GM preparation for this sort of play looks are B2 KotB, X2 Castle Amber, S1 ToH, S2 WPM, C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness.Conversely, two modules that invites a lot of player creativity and problem solving but that have nothing to do with skilled play at all are OA3 Ochimo the Spirit Warrior and OA7 Test of the Samurai.EDIT: To elaborate the contrast with Wuthering Heights - the player's instigation of a prison riot was adjudicated via a roll on Despair, to determine whether he sincerely conveyed his socialist convictions to his fellow inmates. Fictional positioning mattered in the sense that he had to be in prison to get the opportunity to propagandise among other prisoners; but determining the consequences of his proselytising wasn't dependent in any fashion upon extrapolation from previously authored information about the prison, the mood of the inmates, etc. It's nothing like telling the GM you're rolling marbles along the floor to see if it slopes, or you're holding up a bit of tissue paper to try and test for drafts that would indicate the presence of a secret door.</blockquote>

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