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On Skilled Play: D&D as a Game
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8289885" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think there is more to it than what you've described here. [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has noted one aspect of that in his post upthread about 4e: in 4e the space of decision-making and challenge doesn't fundamentally change over the course of play; whereas exactly that sort of change was fundamental to Gygax's conception of the game.</p><p></p><p>Now as I've already posted in this thread, I happen to think that Gygax's approach breaks down quite a bit once the game starts being published on a mass-basis, so that new players don't get to experience the evolutionary and developmental process themselves but <em>begin</em> by consuming Gygax et al's fully developed <em>results</em> of that process. But that is a problem with publishing that TSR never really solved which doesn't undermine the basic point about what it is that constitutes Gygaxian skilled play</p><p></p><p>A fundamental tenet of player-side moves in DW (or AW) is that <em>if you do it, you do it</em>. And the moves are resolved via a roll that - as a deliberate feature of mechanical design - is kept within certain bounds of probability for its resolution. (4e D&D aspire to the same sort of design, though uses more convoluted methods to get there.)</p><p></p><p>Straight away that marks out the absence of Gygaxian skilled play. You can't reduce the odds of failure to zero. And partly for that reason, the system provides <em>no incentive at all</em> to play in such a way as to minimise complications. Rather, it's designed to ensure that complications arise at nearly every turn!</p><p></p><p>You can see the same point emerging in the "fair trap" thread. In the sort of game where the Gelatinous-Cube-in-a-pit-under-a-Damocles's-block would figure, if the block actually drops and Cube actually sprays everywhere the players are losing. Whereas in a game like DW or for that matter 4e, it is taken as a given that those sorts of fantastic scenes are part-and-parcel of play and the game infrastructure is set up to ensure that they occur.</p><p></p><p>(I feel I need to emphasis that this is <em>not</em> a criticism of DW or 4e D&D, either of which I would cheerfully play in preference to serious Gygaxian dungeon-crawling.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8289885, member: 42582"] I think there is more to it than what you've described here. [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has noted one aspect of that in his post upthread about 4e: in 4e the space of decision-making and challenge doesn't fundamentally change over the course of play; whereas exactly that sort of change was fundamental to Gygax's conception of the game. Now as I've already posted in this thread, I happen to think that Gygax's approach breaks down quite a bit once the game starts being published on a mass-basis, so that new players don't get to experience the evolutionary and developmental process themselves but [i]begin[/i] by consuming Gygax et al's fully developed [i]results[/i] of that process. But that is a problem with publishing that TSR never really solved which doesn't undermine the basic point about what it is that constitutes Gygaxian skilled play A fundamental tenet of player-side moves in DW (or AW) is that [i]if you do it, you do it[/i]. And the moves are resolved via a roll that - as a deliberate feature of mechanical design - is kept within certain bounds of probability for its resolution. (4e D&D aspire to the same sort of design, though uses more convoluted methods to get there.) Straight away that marks out the absence of Gygaxian skilled play. You can't reduce the odds of failure to zero. And partly for that reason, the system provides [i]no incentive at all[/i] to play in such a way as to minimise complications. Rather, it's designed to ensure that complications arise at nearly every turn! You can see the same point emerging in the "fair trap" thread. In the sort of game where the Gelatinous-Cube-in-a-pit-under-a-Damocles's-block would figure, if the block actually drops and Cube actually sprays everywhere the players are losing. Whereas in a game like DW or for that matter 4e, it is taken as a given that those sorts of fantastic scenes are part-and-parcel of play and the game infrastructure is set up to ensure that they occur. (I feel I need to emphasis that this is [i]not[/i] a criticism of DW or 4e D&D, either of which I would cheerfully play in preference to serious Gygaxian dungeon-crawling.) [/QUOTE]
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