D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Thomas Shey]

I am not 100% clear on the distinction you are making here.

That's because I didn't entirely finish my train of thought. "Fair" in the way I was using it above is about not favoring some players over others, or actively trying to make things harder on any player than it should be. "Fair arbitration", on the other hand, is about trying to see outside your own expectations. They aren't particularly related, and its entirely possible to be either without the other.

(I've skipped the rest of your post because, fundamentally, I don't think many GMs are exceptionally good at fair arbitration in the absence of a good framework, and the fact some people prefer to do things on the GM/player level doesn't actually say anything about that other than they find the degree that true more acceptable than dealing with a rules based approach. It doesn't really say anything about the overall quality of the former in the wild).

 

[Guest 85555]

That's because I didn't entirely finish my train of thought. "Fair" in the way I was using it above is about not favoring some players over others, or actively trying to make things harder on any player than it should be. "Fair arbitration", on the other hand, is about trying to see outside your own expectations. They aren't particularly related, and its entirely possible to be either without the other.

I think in terms of fairness across the different players, that is again something where people sometimes use the fact that its an ideal, not really an attainable state (you are constantly striving for it with the aim of being as fair as you possibly can), to say we should just throw our hands up and not try or that any effort to be fair shouldn't be taken seriously. But I definitely think there is a difference between a GM who is visibly favoring one player over another, a GM who is unconsciously but clearly favoring one player over another, and a GM who strives to be fair to all players, even if biases occasionally creep in because they are human. This is something referees have to struggle with in sports as well. The aim is to check those biases, and some do do this better than others.

 

[Guest 85555]

They're still about trying to play the character in a way to get them to their goals, whether short or long term. Its that, frankly, a lot of OSR proponents want to write off actually using the mechanics as a lower form of skill so they don't want to acknowledge proper use of mechanics is skilled play, and reserve that for what they consider the "proper" way to play.

First off, let me say, I don't think it is helpful for people to be dismissive of a style jus because it isn't something they enjoy. So I don't agree with OSR people who are dismissive of skilled play that applies to the mechanic side (I will tackle this more below but I personally always like to have one or two such players in my group because it helps me find the boundaries of the system)

I don't think they write off mechanics. They simply don't want the mechanics to be the driving focus. I think someone who say likes a dungeon crawl with puzzles, wants to have as much of a direct line as they can between themselves and that puzzle unmediated by mechanics where it is feasible. The aim of skilled play in the style I am talking about is really a lot less about getting the character to their goal, and more about letting the player experience the fun of solving the puzzle, of thinking through and strategizing. Sometimes mechanics will be a factor. But I used to play a lot of 3E with heavy emphasis on builds, on system mastery, etc., and that kind of using the system to achieve the goals of the character or your goals of character concept, or even your goals within the scenario, I think is scratching a slightly different itch. There the fun is the puzzle of the mechanics themselves and getting them to do what you want (and by the way I am not knocking this style, I engaged it for many years and think there is a lot of value in learning how to master a system like that). But OSR play is much more focused on simpler versions of D&D than 3E or pathfinder. Skilled play is a lot less about players mastering those mechanics and using them to achieve things and more about the choices you make in the setting itself. That is one of the reasons why rulings are important. Obviously it doesn't mean mechanics aren't important. They still play a crucial role. A player who is a spell caster and understands a spell well enough to creatively apply it is using the mechanics for skilled play. So I don't want to say there is this hard, unbreakable wall between the styles. There is just a different mentality and a difference in where the fun is being found I think (which is fine, there is nothing wrong with these differences). It is just a distinction worth making because I think two different schools of thought are getting folded into skilled play (and this matters because if you took a typical 3E or pathfinder player and put them in an OSR game, told them it was skilled play (but they thought that had to do with mastery of the mechanics and getting mechanics to help you achieve your goals, while in reality it was the kind of OSR style play I am talking about, you are going to have confusion). If both camps are using the same term to mean slightly different things, or even emphasizing different aspects of skilled play, I think that is okay. But the distinction can be important.

In terms of writing off skilled play. I am not a fan of writing off the different styles. They just aim for slightly different things. I don't see skilled play that is focused on scenario as better than skilled play focused on mechanics. The latter is actually very difficult. I know because I had to learn how to play to that style while GMing 3E. It was like learning how to do a new form of math quite honestly. So I don't underrate how much of a challenge it can be, nor do I underrate how engaging it can be once you unlock that and learn to make it work for you as either a GM or player. At the same time, skilled play in the OSR sense also requires effort and developing a sets of skills. They feel very different in practice though. And of course, most games aren't monolithic. Been in plenty of sessions where both were present. They aren't mutually exclusive. In one of my own campaigns I have both. I have players who thrive on mastering the system end of things, and learning to make the mechanics and abilities work for them (and I encourage and reward that). However I have characters who are more exploration or socially oriented and are good at doing that through the setting (and of course I also have players who can do both, though I think most people do seem to be stronger in one or the other in my experience). It is still helpful to be able to make this distinction though because even when I have both types of players, and engage both styles in the same campaign, it is helpful to know how players might respond (in terms of being interested) to different elements I might include in a session.

 

[Guest 85555]

To consider the two methods truly distinct only makes sense if you insist on considering use of the mechanics entirely separable from what the characters decisions would be, and its not. Its not automatically any more than the OSR usage is (which, after all, is so disconnected from character traits in many cases the character might as well be a token; there's nothing intrinsically wrong with token play, but if, when deciding what your character is going to do you can ignore the nature of the character, claiming one method is more focused on the situation is kind of rich.)

But this is a style of play. I know plenty of people who essentially play themselves in RPGs and find the fun in putting their mind against the setting and its inhabitance. I often enjoy this style, where i am not really there to play a character as much as feel like I am there (there is a veneer of a character for sure, but the fun is mostly just being me in the setting: i.e. I am not acting more intelligent or less intelligent than myself, I am not pretending to have wildly different goals or motivations, I am just doing what I find engaging and fun). It isn't how I always play, but it is a way I sometimes play, particularly in skilled play campaigns. And sometimes it is me, with a little bit of extra personality, but I am still fundamentally the one trying to crack the puzzles. I call it the difference between being Sherlock Holmes (i.e. being in the shoes of the detective piecing together the clues) and simulating Sherlock Holmes (i.e. having a skill to reflect Holme's ability to use deduction, to spot details, etc). Both are perfectly fine ways of playing the game in my opinion. But they do produce very different experiences.

I don't think it is rich to say this is about focusing on the situation. I mean perhaps there is a more elegant and precise way to say it, but I think the point of what I am saying is broadly understood (and me saying that isn' meant to make it a zero sum game where you suddenly are no longer engaging the situation if you play in another style). It just means in this style of play, I want what feels like a somewhat unmediated experience of being on site in dungeon, in the murder mystery, piecing together the clues, finding the hidden bricks that trigger the trap. And I don't want those to come down to a roll so much as the choices I am making. Again it is just a style of play. You might not find it perfectly achieves what it sets out to do, and that is fine, but lots of people are happy with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think in terms of fairness across the different players, that is again something where people sometimes use the fact that its an ideal, not really an attainable state (you are constantly striving for it with the aim of being as fair as you possibly can), to say we should just throw our hands up and not try or that any effort to be fair shouldn't be taken seriously. But I definitely think there is a difference between a GM who is visibly favoring one player over another, a GM who is unconsciously but clearly favoring one player over another, and a GM who strives to be fair to all players, even if biases occasionally creep in because they are human. This is something referees have to struggle with in sports as well. The aim is to check those biases, and some do do this better than others.

I don't really disagree with any of this, but I think its much more common to find people who do a credible job at this end than do a credible job as a "fair arbitrator."

 

[Thomas Shey]

But this is a style of play. I know plenty of people who essentially play themselves in RPGs and find the fun in putting their mind against the setting and its inhabitance. I often enjoy this style, where i am not really there to play a character as much as feel like I am there (there is a veneer of a character for sure, but the fun is mostly just being me in the setting: i.e. I am not acting more intelligent or less intelligent than myself, I am not pretending to have wildly different goals or motivations, I am just doing what I find engaging and fun). It isn't how I always play, but it is a way I sometimes play, particularly in skilled play campaigns. And sometimes it is me, with a little bit of extra personality, but I am still fundamentally the one trying to crack the puzzles. I call it the difference between being Sherlock Holmes (i.e. being in the shoes of the detective piecing together the clues) and simulating Sherlock Holmes (i.e. having a skill to reflect Holme's ability to use deduction, to spot details, etc). Both are perfectly fine ways of playing the game in my opinion. But they do produce very different experiences.

I don't think it is rich to say this is about focusing on the situation. I mean perhaps there is a more elegant and precise way to say it, but I think the point of what I am saying is broadly understood (and me saying that isn' meant to make it a zero sum game where you suddenly are no longer engaging the situation if you play in another style). It just means in this style of play, I want what feels like a somewhat unmediated experience of being on site in dungeon, in the murder mystery, piecing together the clues, finding the hidden bricks that trigger the trap. And I don't want those to come down to a roll so much as the choices I am making. Again it is just a style of play. You might not find it perfectly achieves what it sets out to do, and that is fine, but lots of people are happy with it.

I still maintain, however, that in the attempt to not call technically competent use of the game mechanics to reach your character's end "skilled play" while doing so with what you're talking about is, implicitly, an attempt to place a value judgment on what value there is in the two approaches. If one wanted to call one "player focused skill" versus "mechanics focused skill" I'd have much less issue with it terminologically, though I'd still stand by my opinion that its often less about what seems to work in-world and what seems reasonable to the GM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

(To not hide the ball and be more specific- immersion is very different from realism. People often mistake the two, and will complain about how something isn't realistic and therefore not immersive. But immersion is akin to the willing suspension of disbelief, not to modeling something realistically. Moreover, an immersive experience often requires a lack of realism- sounds that are not real, jumps in time in order to go over "the boring bits," and so on. As such, there are known techniques that work for most people. Unfortunately, conversations often get sidetracked by the individual experience, which can always vary.)

I find that a big problem is that people mean two entirely orthogonal things when they say "realism" or even "verisimilitude," and thus the conversation gets all tangled up, with both sides getting deeply confused by the other's position. "Realism"/"verisimilitude" is used for covering both what I call "groundedness" and what I call "proceduralism."

A "grounded" work is one that presents sensible, self-consistent consequences and which explains exceptional cases satisfactorily. Most superhero works are particularly non-grounded, which is why references to them get thrown around pejoratively in these discussions: superheroism has a lot of genre conventions that are maintained because, without them, the story becomes boring or ends far too quickly. Secret identities that don't get revealed despite the ease with which they could be, "rescues" of love interests that don't shatter their all-too-human spines, etc. Works like Watchmen and Kingdom Come attempt to provide a more grounded take while still being superhero stories.

Proceduralism, on the other hand, is about the predictability of outcomes. It doesn't matter if it's entirely ungrounded that gaining five levels causes a perfectly ordinary Fighter to be able to survive a 100' fall with nary a broken bone, or that a night's rest can take you from Death's door to being right as rain. What matters, for proceduralism, is that the process of going from any given initial state to the final state is clear, has its own internal logic, and avoids ambiguity, arbitrariness, or interruption of the causal chain as much as humanly possible. Events happen for specific causes, and a given cause either always produces a given event for a given context, or probabilistically sets a fixed range of outcomes for that context.

A superhero game can be perfectly procedural, without being particularly grounded at all. Conversely, a hypothetical noir detective game might be perfectly grounded, but especially non-procedural (e.g. I'd argue PbtA, Fate, and DitV care little about being procedural but are especially concerned about being well-grounded.) Fans of ultra-simulationist games value both groundedness and proceduralism extremely highly, and because of the common thread of "consistency" in both concepts, they often conflate the two despite them being orthogonal. To use your non-game example, time-skips are grounded but not procedural. By comparison, having a displayed timer ticking down, that never skips any time but which is not physically part of the world, is a procedural but not grounded technique of adding tension: the timer isn't attached to anything concrete, but does communicate to the audience that these events are occurring "in real time." (A Greek chorus, or a Shakespearean soliloquy addressing the audience, would be other examples of narrative tools that aren't very grounded but are procedural, showing the audience what's going on in order to heighten the experience.)

One of the unfortunate things that seems to have come out of a lot of RPG theorizing, is that you can think about role in the internalized/immersion sense ("Inhabiting the mind of my character, what is my next action?") or the tactical sense ("I am the tank in this party, my role in a fight is to soak up hits, so what is the optimal tactical choice for me here?") and folks say you are playing a role-playing game. But, if you think about role in terms of role in the fiction ("I am the Reluctant Hero, what is the best story development for me here?") and choose gameplay accordingly, you are suddenly not playing a role playing game, you are playing a storytelling game.

I'd like to dig into this more, because I'm not sure I see how the latter could be a "game" in the sense that I would use for an RPG. "What is the best story development for me here?" is...well, I just don't see it being subject to the kind of analysis that "what would this character do now" or "what is mechanically wise to do now" are. All three questions have some subjective elements, but I don't really see how it's even possible to have objective elements for the story-development one, whereas there are pretty clear (if contextual) limits on what a character might choose, and objective rules limits on how a character can mechanically perform.

Can you give some examples of how these story-direction things would work in a game-able, analysis-friendly sense? Or, failing that, why my expectation of gameability and analysis is mistaken? (I'd prefer the former but will accept the latter.)

It seems there's maybe a difference between "social gamesmanship" and "getting on the same page." Sorting through some arbitrarily large number of options and choosing one because you believe it'll appeal to the GM seems like the former; getting into a mindspace where the first thing you think of to do makes sense to you for your character to do it, and it appeals to the GM, seems more like the latter.

I dunno if that makes sense outside of my head, but your post got me thinking about it.

For me, the difference lies in intent, and the tools you avail yourself with. With "social gamesmanship," the intent is "manipulate the adjudicator until she gives me what I want, knowing that some gestures on my part will not serve that end." The tools one uses, then, are outward-directed and manipulative (in a mild way, but still manipulative): one avails oneself of all things that will achieve this end, and no tool that is plausible to achieve it is off the table.

With "same-page thinking," the intent is much more self-directed or bilateral, "I will adjust my approach until the things I seek are compatible with what the adjudicator seeks." This leads to diplomacy rather than manipulation, where the goal is to reach consensus, not to get one's desired outcome and taking any plausible route to get there. This means you do not avail yourself of any tool that might get you what you want, but rather restrict yourself to those tools that the adjudicator would approve of you using.

It's a matter of what matters: getting what you want by shaping another's perceptions sufficiently, or making what you want compatible with what another already perceives.

*EDIT an exception is where no choice by players or outcome of mechanics is allowed to stick: the DM overwrites them all. I would exclude that from being RPG, seeing as it amounts to a monologue.

This strikes at the heart of my opposition to illusionism. An illusionist game is one where it really is a monologue, but the players are deceived into believing it is a game. Whatever does stick, does so only by the illusionist DM's sufferance; choices and outcomes not only can be but will be secretly overridden whenever and wherever the DM thinks they "should" be.

This is something referees have to struggle with in sports as well. The aim is to check those biases, and some do do this better than others.

I think the problem here is that a DM should have some biases. They're biased toward an entertaining experience, for example. A truly neutral arbitrator wants to be as distant from the specific emotional investments of their clients as possible, so they can render fair judgment between all parties. A DM, I would argue, should not be so distant, because the very fact that they CAN adapt to the preferences and desires of their players is vital to what makes TTRPGs great.

 

[Guest 85555]

I

I think the problem here is that a DM should have some biases. They're biased toward an entertaining experience, for example. A truly neutral arbitrator wants to be as distant from the specific emotional investments of their clients as possible, so they can render fair judgment between all parties. A DM, I would argue, should not be so distant, because the very fact that they CAN adapt to the preferences and desires of their players is vital to what makes TTRPGs great.

This is true but in the case of osr style skilled play what players want is a neutral and distant arbiter of the setting.

 

[Umbran]

I'd like to dig into this more, because I'm not sure I see how the latter could be a "game" in the sense that I would use for an RPG. "What is the best story development for me here?" is...well, I just don't see it being subject to the kind of analysis that "what would this character do now" or "what is mechanically wise to do now" are.

So? I think we'd need to establish what kind of analysis you mean, and that having "the same kind of analysis" is necessary. It seems to me that each form is open to different forms of analysis, not the same.

All three questions have some subjective elements, but I don't really see how it's even possible to have objective elements for the story-development one, whereas there are pretty clear (if contextual) limits on what a character might choose, and objective rules limits on how a character can mechanically perform.

So, note how you are requiring objective limits on story-development, but only clear and contextual limits on immersive approach? I find that questionable.

I submit:

• Analysis of tactical-focus is based in game theory. It is the only one of these that is objective, or has "clear" limits.
• Analysis of the immersive approach is based in psychological theory and acting critique - noting that most gamers are walking around with crappy understanding of psychological models in our heads, but whatever.
• Analysis of story-focus is best based in literary theory and criticism. Happy to open that to include TV/movie/media/verbal storytelling analysis.

It isn't like we never break down story choices into good and bad stuff, things that worked for us and things that didn't. There's tons of writing on this. Stories are totally open to analysis. It isn't quantitative, but neither is the immersive approach open to quantitative analysis.

Can you give some examples of how these story-direction things would work in a game-able, analysis-friendly sense? Or, failing that, why my expectation of gameability and analysis is mistaken? (I'd prefer the former but will accept the latter.)

I've already suggested analytical approaches for all three forms of focus, above. I don't think we've established that the immersive-focus is game-able, so I don't see why I need to establish that story-focus is game-able.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me, the difference lies in intent, and the tools you avail yourself with. With "social gamesmanship," the intent is "manipulate the adjudicator until she gives me what I want, knowing that some gestures on my part will not serve that end." The tools one uses, then, are outward-directed and manipulative (in a mild way, but still manipulative): one avails oneself of all things that will achieve this end, and no tool that is plausible to achieve it is off the table.

With "same-page thinking," the intent is much more self-directed or bilateral, "I will adjust my approach until the things I seek are compatible with what the adjudicator seeks." This leads to diplomacy rather than manipulation, where the goal is to reach consensus, not to get one's desired outcome and taking any plausible route to get there. This means you do not avail yourself of any tool that might get you what you want, but rather restrict yourself to those tools that the adjudicator would approve of you using.

It's a matter of what matters: getting what you want by shaping another's perceptions sufficiently, or making what you want compatible with what another already perceives.

Now all you need is a player who sees the distinction.