Player skill vs character skill?

[John Dallman]

Very experienced players can still be more effective than moderate experienced players (especially with some classes) with the same characters but I'm just arguing the gap narrows with moderate player skill. Which I think in a cooperative game is a good thing.

There is another form of skill, which is skill in operating as a team. This was forcibly brought home to me on Saturday, watching a different party in the Avalon campaign. They are 6th-8th level AD&D, having played together since first level. A couple of the players have been playing for decades, but haven't learned how to organise a party.

They're still acting as individuals, without any anticipation of what the others are likely to do, or appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are being very brave and noble in the difficult fight they are half-way through (against 5HD water-breathing trolls, in a marsh) but they aren't thinking about what they're doing. They aren't self-organising, and they don't have a leader who can organise them. They need one badly.

 

[zakael19]

Just want to reiterate that I'm not sure I've seen the concept of "player skill" show up as a desired aspect of play outside of like "mastering the basic rules" anywhere besides OSR-esque play these days. I don't think it's terribly applicable to skills-rich or ability-roll focused games, those are interested in adjudicating chances of failure via dice rolls or abilities. The skill a player shows is knowing when to like, say something that should prompt a GM to go "yeah, give me a ..."

I see that as very different from "lets put our heads together and figure out how we're going to use the random stuff we have + a couple of rare spells + the environment to narrate something at the GM who goes 'yeah, that works and here's how...'" that I see stressed in all the OSR/NSR games these days.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Agreed.

The entire intention for puzzles etc in D&D games was to engage in player skill. Early D&D was more focused on player skill and I do miss it at times. There has been a dramatic shift to more narrative play with character builds used to circumvent player skill.

I get that it can be no fun if the players cannot figure out the puzzle which is, perhaps, the main reason for it. It is supposed to prevent the type of DM that will use lack of player skill against the players.

It can be a fun type of game. But early D&D didn't have Perception and Investigation skills which is where things get more murky. Even in early D&D we would sometimes perceive the disconnect though because of ability scores. Why does my 18 Int Wizard struggle with this fairly simple logic puzzle just because the players are not up to it? You can look the other way, justify it because the character is having a bad day, etc. but it's sometimes stretching...

It comes back to what should be player skill and what character skill. It's ok to have logic puzzles be player skill if you set that upfront and are ok with the little bit of disconnect if you have smart characters but not as smart players... It is more problematic if you have character abilities that overlap as then they become either trap options or you have a weird either/or/both situations.

I don't think the move to character ability (more skills, etc.) was primarily to prevent DM's using lack of player skill against them. I think it was a move to make it more congruent between character abilities and tasks. But D&D never came up with the equivalent of combat (move, select target, which ability) player skill so it has become for many only character skill which is perhaps not great either.