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

[Guest 85555]

It was more or less intended to. As I've said before, my perception of this approach has always been its as much about playing the GM as playing the game, and I consider that a process that very strongly favors people who are good at getting in the GM's good graces, and if I need to tell you why I consider that problematic, I suspect its not worth the trouble.

Well, we just disagree here, but I think you are seeing evil where it is not

 

[Guest 85555]

The DM cannot have intimate knowledge of how every NPC will react to everything the players do as many NPC's just aren't that developed. So deciding on the fly without fictional basis or mechanical basis becomes the DM providing the illusion that his world is more detailed than it actually is, that this NPC is more detailed than he actually is. But as with all illusions, they are prone to breaking and when they do they tend to lead to very unsatisfying results.

No one expects the GM to have fully fleshed out every NPC who comes up, because some might come up the the never imagined. Most games I've been in with this approach, the players are fine with the GM fleshing out that detail on the spot. It isn't considered illusion for the GM to expand the world as the players explore it if they are exploring an area in finer detail than is mapped (say going door to door in a city) or going beyond the frontier. Obviously the GM won't have every single inhabitant fleshed out or written up. When I am playing skilled play if we wander into an NPC the GM makes up on the fly, that is fine, it can still be skilled play as long as the GM decides on basic characteristics of the character (this is one of the reasons why you would take notes as a GM during play: a new NPC comes up, and you jot down key details about their personality, history, family, goals, etc before the exchange starts). And you don't have to do that for every single character. If you want you can, but most players probably don't expect a random fruit vendor to be given those kinds of details. I mean we all understand what the GM is doing. I don't find it a problem to know something was made on the fly, or even that it might not be as detailed as it first appears. It is after all just a game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

OSR play is based on early D&D play. Early D&D didn't really play that way.

Uhm, it very much did, because for the most part OD&D didn't have anything much but combat and magic mechanics; there were a few dungeon-specific specific sort of one-off rules, but most of them didn't relate to character abilities outside of, perhaps, race. Go look at OD&D and ask the question "what do you need to do to climb that cliff face?" and you'll discover (at least outside the always complicated thief skill question) that it has no answer for you, and not even much suggestion how to derive an answer.

All kinds of people came up with all sorts of ad-hoc or house rules based on attributes or class/level, or outright creating primitive skill systems, but they were just that--homebrews of one sort or another. Those that didn't were essentially either going purely by narrative or doing completely ad-hoc die rolls of some strip (the ever popular "roll a D6 and get a 3 or better", say.)

So I wouldn't say that's a necessary component of OSR gaming. Just one some games are trying to push the envelope on. Personally, I think pushing to far in that direction is probably going to be detrimental to OSR. The DM cannot have intimate knowledge of how every NPC will react to everything the players do as many NPC's just aren't that developed. So deciding on the fly without fictional basis or mechanical basis becomes the DM providing the illusion that his world is more detailed than it actually is, that this NPC is more detailed than he actually is. But as with all illusions, they are prone to breaking and when they do they tend to lead to very unsatisfying results.

IMO. For this reason, there's always going to be a place for rolling skill checks to determine certain NPC behavior.

I think so. You think so. But its abundantly clear that at least a non-trivial part of the RNR crowd (which is not identical to OSR, but there's considerable overlap) believes that doing that sort of thing is a virtue. Some of them have said anything else essentially binds their hands.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, we just disagree here, but I think you are seeing evil where it is not

I didn't develop the opinion yesterday, or in a vacuum. If that's not good enough for you, its not.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Like I said, it depends on the game. The use of social skills, especially in place of it being the weight of what the player says to the NPC, tends to be contentious in the OSR. Some people do use skills like that, many don't. Some use them in skillful ways to get around this issue.

In terms of 1E and 2E though, there isn't a bluff skill in those systems. You could have a CHR check for a reaction adjustment, and you may be able to find something in skills and options for it (which came late int he 90s and wasn't embraced by everyone). You may also find some optional NWP in one of the complete books. But the closest thing to a proper social skill I can think of in the 2E PHB (at least the 1989) one was Ettiquette, but that was basically a knowledge skill (you rolled and the GM told you what you new in terms of what might be expected in the social situation you were in). Maybe 1E has something, but I can't remember it if it did.

OSR skilled play has a lot of foundations: white box, variations of basic, AD&D, etc. And every OSR game is going to be a bit different. There is not reason you can't have an OSR game with Bluff in it. You certainly can. But when you look at general GM and play advice on skilled play, the norm in the OSR seems to be what I am talking about. But even if you think I am wrong on that front, it remains an important distinction. Even if it were say just a small portion of the OSR or the small portion of gamers overall, this is a type of skilled play you see talked about, and it puts the emphasis on the player pitting their mind against the setting, the player pitting their mind against the NPCs, with as much direct meaningful interaction with those things as possible. In all games you may need to resort to rolls, but the goal here is for the skill to be based on what the player is deciding to say, where they are deciding to look and examine, and how, etc. I would argue that type of skilled play is different from a type of skilled play where the emphasis is on skillful use of the mechanics.

There is not general advice, though -- you're promoting a phantom. There's almost no advice on how to run these scenes in some games, and very good advice in others -- advice that generally suggests using the mechanical parts of those systems. And, this play is absolutely not at all confined to OSR, or even definitional of it. What it does, somewhat, define is early RPG systems where Free Kriegsspiel approaches were the norm because the systems were building to catch up. But, even, then, games like Traveler had mechanical systems to govern these things. There are vocal proponents of this approach in 5e. This isn't OSR related at all really.

But, to the main point, it's also not skilled play. Skilled play is leveraging the system to achieve player goals within the scope of the game. Doing an improv scene with the GM is not leveraging the system -- it's sidestepping it. That you can do this with skill is well and good, and I'm not about to argue it cannot be done with skill as improv acting is very much a thing you can have lots of skill in, but it's not leveraging the system. This is detectable because this doesn't interact with the system at all, it's entirely outside the game system. You have inputs into the improv scene from the system (maybe) and the outputs possibly feed back into the system, but this function of acting out with the GM and having the GM then decide what their character does here is not within the system of the game (it's possible it is, but I'm not familiar with that system, and it's not any OSR or legit OS game I'm aware of). You're stepping out to do a thing, and that thing is, as I said, so dependent on the individuals involved that its going to be idiosyncratic to a large degree.

Meanwhile, knowing that you can leverage your build choices with a skill or check system, and use play to leverage additional improvements to make that better, is very much skilled play. And, to a large part, some of this can look similar to your proposed version. The difference is that the player can see going in what the decision structure will be and can play to that. If it's just the GM deciding how well you acted your part, then the player cannot see the decision structure, and cannot make good moves to improve it. Unless we're going to outright state that social manipulation of the GM is part and parcel of this, because that's the only real tool a player has to deploy into an opaque decision making framework.

 

[Umbran]

Sure. But being a game covers alot of space. A game where players rolled a d20 and then highest d20 narrated everything for the next 2 minutes would be a game. The players would still be telling a story and have a risk of not getting what they want. You could even overlay some resources they could spend to increase their chances of getting the highest d20.

Yes. And there are games out there that are, in fact, pure cooperative storytelling games, in which individual players do not take on a role. "Once Upon a Time" comes to mind as an example.

However, the games we are talking about do have players taking on a specific role. I'm just talking about thinking about "role" as in "narrative element in the story" rather than tactical role, or actor's role.

I think often what your character would do and what the best story development for me here is often the same thing. It's when they aren't and how that situation gets handled where the criticism lies.

I think we largely agree.

This was, in fact, why I brought up the Reluctant Hero. Typically, what a Reluctant Hero would do in an adventurous situation is... go home, farm his land, and raise a family. The end. Interesting story development for a Reluctant Hero often calls for things the character themselves would not want to do. Story-focused play allows a player to arrange for things to force the hero to act.

I view Combat more as a challenge based mini-game for many RPGs. If a game was setup where all you did was go through a string of combat encounters I wouldn't view that an RPG.

There are squad-level tactical wargames, in which you don't take on the role of a particular warrior. The classic Advanced Squad Leader, for example.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think so. You think so. But its abundantly clear that at least a non-trivial part of the RNR crowd (which is not identical to OSR, but there's considerable overlap) believes that doing that sort of thing is a virtue. Some of them have said anything else essentially binds their hands.

This is true, but it's very important to note that this is not at all a bad thing or a lesser thing. It's an extremely valid approach and it clearly delivers play that is desirable by those that use it. When I point out why I do not believe this to be skilled play, this is not any kind of judgement statement about the worth, use, or enjoyability of this approach. It just doesn't align with using the system because it's decidedly outside the system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is not general advice, though -- you're promoting a phantom. There's almost no advice on how to run these scenes in some games, and very good advice in others -- advice that generally suggests using the mechanical parts of those systems. And, this play is absolutely not at all confined to OSR, or even definitional of it. What it does, somewhat, define is early RPG systems where Free Kriegsspiel approaches were the norm because the systems were building to catch up. But, even, then, games like Traveler had mechanical systems to govern these things. There are vocal proponents of this approach in 5e. This isn't OSR related at all really.

It pretty clear that parts of the Old School community consider it to apply to older versions (and how much older can be fraught) of D&D and nothing else. Runequest is too new-fangled for them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is true, but it's very important to note that this is not at all a bad thing or a lesser thing. It's an extremely valid approach and it clearly delivers play that is desirable by those that use it. When I point out why I do not believe this to be skilled play, this is not any kind of judgement statement about the worth, use, or enjoyability of this approach. It just doesn't align with using the system because it's decidedly outside the system.

I'm much more willing to be critical of it because, bluntly, there are a lot of really negative things that can derive from it that are essentially impossible to address because the GM can hide behind the black box that is his decision making. It can all too easily breed favoritism and a situation where, if you don't know how to present things in a way the GM will accept them (since he isn't required to take your view as meaning anything) you can't get anywhere outside of the few areas where he accepts mechanical involvement.

 

[FrogReaver]

No one expects the GM to have fully fleshed out every NPC who comes up, because some might come up the the never imagined. Most games I've been in with this approach, the players are fine with the GM fleshing out that detail on the spot. It isn't considered illusion for the GM to expand the world as the players explore it if they are exploring an area in finer detail than is mapped (say going door to door in a city) or going beyond the frontier. Obviously the GM won't have every single inhabitant fleshed out or written up. When I am playing skilled play if we wander into an NPC the GM makes up on the fly, that is fine, it can still be skilled play as long as the GM decides on basic characteristics of the character (this is one of the reasons why you would take notes as a GM during play: a new NPC comes up, and you jot down key details about their personality, history, family, goals, etc before the exchange starts). And you don't have to do that for every single character. If you want you can, but most players probably don't expect a random fruit vendor to be given those kinds of details. I mean we all understand what the GM is doing. I don't find it a problem to know something was made on the fly, or even that it might not be as detailed as it first appears. It is after all just a game.

Since we are going to take this a step further, let's look at how this works in play.

The player decided he wanted to bluff the guard and said X to the guard. The GM is deciding after knowing what the player is attempting what details he will add to the guard and which of those are ultimately going to determine whether the player succeeds or fails.

Since those details were determined after the player attempted his bluff, the player had no concrete information to base his action declaration on. All the player could do was to try to guess before the action declaration what details the GM will fill in on the fly and ultimately use to determine the guards reaction and then try to frame the action declaration accordingly. That's not the kind of skilled play that OSR is about as I understand it. OSR is about attempting to use the established fiction to have your characters act in ways to guarantee you accomplish your goal. Things like, there's a pit trap we know about on the map, let's get the orcs attention and lure them into it and then shoot our bows at any survivors till the group of orcs is dead. In the bluffing the guards case, there's no fictional details prior to the 'PC bluffing' to base any decision on. So even if we resolve the guard bluff with no skill checks, it still won't be OSR skilled play.

I just don't think that being able to predict the DM's moves makes something OSR skilled play.