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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Okay. Perhaps " analysis" was a poor word.

You can evaluate things about game rules. That's what I mean by "objectivity" there; the rules objectively tell you what can and can't happen. And, for a situation, you can determine what a character would do, based on their behavioral patterns and logical extrapolation--I've had plenty of people I know straight-up tell me that they can "hear" the character speak to them, or otherwise intuitively "know" what a character would and wouldn't do given an established situation.

A story that you're currently writing can go anywhere you want. Literally. There are no rules, not even the suggestion of rules, because that would be formulaic writing, and truly formulaic writing is almost always bad. Even logical extrapolation isn't useful, because taking that level of authorial control means changing the very inputs to that logical extrapolation; you cannot simultaneously control the logic and have the logic limit or guide your behavior. I don't see how there can be a "best direction" in the way that there can be an optimal mechanical action or a logical roleplay action, for exactly the same reason that there can't be a "best direction" for a meal or a composition or a dance. There will always be numerous equally-valid ways to reach exactly the same end, and even more numerous ends of varying similarity.

And if you can't just go anywhere you want...you're being restricted by some kind of rules. What are these rules, that exclusively constrain the story, but have absolutely no impact on what mechanical actions you can take, nor on what roleplay actions you can take? I would welcome seeing such a thing, as it would be highly revelatory.

• 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.

Yes. But those are stories that already exist. Evaluating a text that has already been put out. How do you evaluate a text that doesn't exist, because you're currently making it? You can't even avail yourself of the death of the author, because you are the author currently living the text.

 

[pemerton]

I feel like two different concepts are being boxed together under skilled play here. I see skilled play as more about play against the environment, the scenario, the puzzles, etc during the game session. It is stuff like figuring out how to get around traps, how to negotiate with potentially lethal monsters, not stepping on the bricks that explode you to atoms.

This is a very classic D&D way of framing skilled play.

The Green Knight uses quite a different skill set, as I tried to describe upthread.

 

[pemerton]

The point wasn't about the Reluctant Hero specifically. Replace that with the Trickster, the Parental Figure, the Natural Leader, the Grizzled Veteran, or what have you.

My point wasn't about the Reluctant Hero specifically. It was that if it is understood that the character conception is to be preserved or reinforced by the process of play, then I think that speaks against a high degree of conflict.

 

[clearstream]

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.

I'm making a quite pedantic point here. Suppose that a DM overrides every player choice except one: can that one free choice be made more or less skillfully? I think it can. Now suppose that a DM overrides only those things that would lower the degree of challenge, i.e. they exercise force in a way that demands more skill from their players? Then in this case, force is leading to greater, not lesser skill.

I don't know how others here define DM force, but I think where a DM changes the outcome of a roll is an example. Suppose I roll that there will be a random encounter, and I roll that the encounter will be kobolds, and this will be an uninteresting encounter that will not tax the PCs - they won't even need to tap expendable resources - so I decide to skip it. Have I reduced skill? Well, in skipping it I saved some time so in our session we were able to fit in an additional challenge that evoked more skill from the PCs.

If I somehow sum skill across the session, wasn't the skill greater because I forced the roll to be no encounter? Another obvious case is where I see that the written module low-balled the encounter size so I add another foe or two on the fly. Did I reduce skill here by forcing a change upon the written material?

And let's think of less overt cases of DM-decides. It's easy for me to think of examples from play where I or another DM decided something in a way that evoked more skill from our players, and where we could have decided something else instead, which might have evoked less skill. When we reflect on the ideas of coaching, practice, tutorial, tests, challenges, handicapping, it seems to me very obvious that DM-decides, even right up to DM-force, can elevate or diminish skill along whatever dimensions the group is choosing to care about.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm making a quite pedantic point here.

I don't agree with your method; averaging over the session time does not demonstrate more skill, it simply causes the challenge-per-minute to rise. That is, this is like saying that you drain more total water out of a pool by draining it with a larger pipe. You don't. The total amount of water is fixed: however much was in it to start with. An Olympic swimming pool contains only as much as it contains. Using a bigger pipe just means less waiting for it to become empty.

Offering fewer minutes of content outside the intended focus does not make the minutes that are the intended focus more intense or superlative. It just means you "waste" less time on activities that aren't the focus.

 

[Aldarc]

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

I'm not entirely sure if this is true though, as there is a frequent framing in discussion of the setting as "the DM's world," which often imparts a sense to their arbitration that they know best because they are cognitively closest to the setting, often possessing some sort of hidden gnosis about their setting. So the arbiter is hardly different or neutral in regards to the setting. Your cracked-vase approach may lean towards neutral, but I don't think that we can necessarily take it as a given for the default state or prevailing approach even among OSR circles.

 

[clearstream]

I don't agree with your method; averaging over the session time does not demonstrate more skill, it simply causes the challenge-per-minute to rise. That is, this is like saying that you drain more total water out of a pool by draining it with a larger pipe. You don't. The total amount of water is fixed: however much was in it to start with. An Olympic swimming pool contains only as much as it contains. Using a bigger pipe just means less waiting for it to become empty.

Let's restate that: I am able to deliver a situation that demands more skill because we skipped the kobold encounter. Also, there is the matter of skill diversity. I might be able to demand a greater diversity of skills, by skipping the encounter. EDIT As I agree with you that more challenges of exactly same type and difficulty don't amount to more skill... and it was not my intent to build that into my example. I intended simply, given we had a way to know what skill was... i.e. to measure it.

Offering fewer minutes of content outside the intended focus does not make the minutes that are the intended focus more intense or superlative. It just means you "waste" less time on activities that aren't the focus.

Say I have 5 possible opponents, but can play only 4 games of Chess. In skill development in games, access to greater challenges correlates with development of greater skill. One example is that Korean teams dominated e-sports for a period because they had a more vigorous and more skillful meta. The fix was to give players from other regions access to that meta, and to bring Koreans into other metas. So that wasted time costs, in skill. If I can exclude an opponent far beneath my current Elo, in order to prioritise those who are ideally just above my Elo, my opportunity for expression and development of skill is maximised.

And what of the case where I added creatures? Or made whatever other decision that increased the skill needed to overcome the challenge?

 

[Guest 85555]

I'm not entirely sure if this is true though, as there is a frequent framing in discussion of the setting as "the DM's world," which often imparts a sense to their arbitration that they know best because they are cognitively closest to the setting, often possessing some sort of hidden gnosis about their setting. So the arbiter is hardly different or neutral in regards to the setting. Your cracked-vase approach may lean towards neutral, but I don't think that we can necessarily take it as a given for the default state or prevailing approach even among OSR circles.

That isn't what I said (the content of your posts here is certainly something people could debate but I wasn't making any kind of claim about the level of neutrality found among OSR GMs. I was responding to someone who was saying GMs should not be neutral, should not be distant (and I read their post as implying the position the GM should be rooting for the players: I could be wrong on that, but that was the assumption behind my response). In that post the person said something to the effect of the GM should heed the interests and desires of the players, and I was just pointing out there are players who want the GM to be neutral and to be distant and impartial. Now that doesn't mean there aren't tables where you have players who don't want that and are getting that. That can happen in any style

 

[Aldarc]

That isn't what I said (the content of your posts here is certainly something people could debate but I wasn't making any kind of claim about the level of neutrality found among OSR GMs. I was responding to someone who was saying GMs should not be neutral, should not be distant (and I read their post as implying the position the GM should be rooting for the players: I could be wrong on that, but that was the assumption behind my response). In that post the person said something to the effect of the GM should heed the interests and desires of the players, and I was just pointing out there are players who want the GM to be neutral and to be distant and impartial. Now that doesn't mean there aren't tables where you have players who don't want that and are getting that. That can happen in any style

Okay. This may be a case where I misunderstood what you meant by neutral and distant to the setting.

 

[Guest 85555]

This is a very classic D&D way of framing skilled play.

The Green Knight uses quite a different skill set, as I tried to describe upthread.

Sure. I am not saying this is the only set of conceptions that exist (or that they can't be blended). But they are often treated as two distinct concepts (i.e. OSR style skilled play of being challenged by the dungeon and pitting your wits against it, is a different focus from pitting your wits against the system of the game itself: and there is cross-over; you may need to use some master of the system to engage in OSR skilled play---just probably not at the level of optimization you found in say 3E). I am not familiar with Green Knight, so I can't really comment. But there certainly could be other ways of conceiving of this.