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

[pemerton]

Wheel of Fortune and Pictionary and Crossword Puzzles and Portal (inferring patterns/relationships + integrating with knowledge-base after examination and interaction and then solving the puzzle) absolutely require skill. There are clearly people who are better and worse at these types of games

<snip>

These games rely upon deeply structured, deeply coherent, deeply integrated puzzles where patterns/relationships can be inferred after both (a) GM foreshadowing and (b) interaction with/prompting the obstacle for more information.

Counter to what has been expressed, there are a LOT of obstacles/aspects of the imagined space that haven’t been pinned down/firmed up/granularity rendered even in very high resolution sandboxes. And characters are going to invariably bump up against them a fair bit (like the afformentioned guard).

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.

Skilled play in this sense often involves interacting with say the leader of one faction of orcs in the dungeon in order to pit them against another faction or another type of creature (so forming an alliance or finding some kind of shared goal). So this doesn't just have to be about bluffing a guard: this can be about involved negotiations with a group of monsters. And that does take skill, and it isn't something that usually gets left to die rolls in a typical OSR session (mechanics can certainly come up; for example the GM, if he or she is uncertain about how an orc chief might respond could call for a roll of some kind, but ideally the orc chief is responding to the specifics of what the PCs are saying because that is what makes the interaction skilled in this way of playing.

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

I've bundled these quotes together because I think they all bear upon what I believe is a fundamental limit in classic D&D play: that once the scope of the fiction moves beyond a rather narrow and somewhat stereotyped scope - the dungeon, its architecture and geography which itself follows some well-known conventions (levels and all those imply; doors and staircases of various sorts; etc) - the notion that the player is cleverly engaging the established fiction becomes increasingly strained.

The classic version of negotiating with an Orc leader to pit factions against one another itself relies on some pretty radical simplifications: that the leader is motivated by treasure (always a staple in classic D&D), or has some other point of leverage that can be learned from prior engagement with the fiction (discovering a clue in the dungeon, or picking up a rumour at the inn, etc). It's because the leader lacks nuance as a character that skilled play is feasible.

If the situation becomes as @FrogReaver descirbes (which is what I take @Ovinomancer also to have in mind) then we no longer have the player ascertaining and then leveraging the fiction. We're much closer to something like a 4e skill challenge or Burning Wheel Duel of Wits, except that the GM has the liberty at each point to decide whether or not the player's efforts further the PC's goals or not. To me, that really doesn't look like skilled play in the Gygaxian sense.

 

[pemerton]

There is a general issue for us in this conversation. We speak about skill as if we know what it is, when really only the vaguest skill-constructs have been put forward. We have not formally defined the dimensions or factors of skill. We haven't identified canonical sets of tasks and found their predictive strength. We haven't discussed expressed skill versus latent skill versus mastery. We haven't established any scales. Unless tasks are formalised and presented uniformly to an entire cohort, its near futile to rank them. We can't even be sure what skills our tasks are stressing until we have subjected large cohorts of players to them.

I don't understand the last three sentences.

I can tell you what the skills are in Gygaxian D&D, and have done so - in this and related threads. The most important skill is imaginative reflection on, and extrapolation of, certain features of the setting: architecture (especially doors, stairs, floors and ceilings), geography (especially levels but also gross shape/layout) and which monsters guard which treasures. Other relevant skills are resource management, both at the planning stage (gear and spell loadouts) and during the course of an expedition. Patience and planning are virtues; rashness and spontaneity are, on the whole, liabilities.

The posited scale for measuring these skills is achieved character level. This scale is imperfect, for obvious reasons - luck can be a factor in character survival; and a lack of integrity in GMing ("killer" or "Monty Haul" GMs) will undermine this scale pretty drastically. Still, it's clear that this is what Gygax intended character level to reflect, and his game rules are full of admonitions addressed to preserving the integrity of this scale.

We can contrast this skill set with those traits that are required by other games. For instance, T&T does not punish rashness and spontaneity to the same degree, and seems to make a willingness to take risks something of a desideratum. On the whole this seems to make T&T more lighthearted than D&D, and perhaps downplay the relevance of skill.

Upthread I posted what the relevant skills are for The Green Knight. They are different from the Gygaxian skill set except at the most abstract level of description (both involve sound calculations and good imagination about the fiction). The salient fiction is very different - scenes and tropes of Arthurian/romantic fantasy - and hence the way that players have to think about it is very different. Theme plays basically no role in classic D&D; it is pretty crucial to The Green Knight.

There is no scale for measuring skill in The Green Knight, but comparisons are clearly possible: I GMed two sessions over two days last weekend, and the skill of one group was clearly and notably greater than that of the other: they were able to reason much more systematically about managing their Dishonour scores; and they were better able to anticipate and work with the tropes and resulting scene elements.

I can also tell you what a canonical task is for Gygaxian D&D: White Plume Mountain or Ghost Tower of Inverness. And I can tell you what a canonical task is for The Green Knight: the scenario included in the game's rulebook. If you survive White Plume Mountain and collect some or all of the swords, you have played with skill. If you survive The Green Knight without reaching 20 Dishonour, you have played with skill. (In both cases, there is the possibility of extreme luck enabling survival without skill. But a group will notice if they are continually rolling maximum values on their dice, and hence surviving on the basis of such luck.)

what counts as skillful for each cohort can only be a statement about the ranking within that cohort, and that will suffer confounds around practice effects, subjective difficulty, access and fatigue, entangling of factors, and performances across cohorts. A fairly unskillful player might seem quite skillful, in the right cohort.

I don't know why you are using skilful and unskilful as attributes of players, as opposed to attributes of play (or even of approaches to play, but you seem to have left that behind).

I mean, we can do that too - it's widely acknowledged that @Rob Kuntz was and presumably still is) a very skilled player of classic D&D; and it's certainly acknowledged by me that I'm not (I can plan gear and spell loadouts well enough, but lack the patience when it comes to the actual play and am not that good at lateral thinking about doors and furniture). But we are not likely to get rankings as reliable as (say) those of widely played and professionalised sports. But that hardly seems a necessary precursor to talking about what skill consists of in that RPGing which emphasises it.

For RPGs with strong character mechanics, such as 5e, we have the peculiar problem that the more skill a player has in one area of the game, the less they will likely need in another. For RPGs with strong in-the-moment mechanics, like DW, we will likely have the problem that the more skillful the DM is, the more skill the players can express, and conversely the less skillful the DM is, the less skill the players can express.

Are these conjectures based on actual play experience? Are you able to give examples that illustrate what you have in mind?

In many of your posts you seem to be saying that when a DM is guided to decide a certain way (obliged, you sometimes term this) then this is in character the same as upholding a formal written game mechanic (hard crunch) and doing exactly what that mechanic concretely directs. (Say doing 5 damage to the foe because the written mechanic says roll damage now and you roll a 5, so you do exactly 5 to the foe.) I believe that these two things are in character different, and that the former allows scope for essentially any decision (your group may not recognise some decisions as valid, but another very well might).

I don't know what you mean by "allowing scope for essentially any decision". Taken at face value, it's just false: for instance, a rule which says Make a hard move which follows on a recently prior soft move does not allow scope for essentially any decision, because there will only be finitely many recently prior soft moves, and (ignoring for the moment the technical oddities of counting the number of elements in sets with indefinitely many members) most of the decisions in the scope of any decision will not follow from a recently prior soft move; and even of those decisions which do follow from a recently prior soft move, only some will be hard moves.

Saying that a group might ignore such a rule is no different from saying that a group (or some member of the group, like the GM) might ignore rules about application of dice rolls. It's true, but doesn't tell us much about the system as presented by its designer.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am not here to debate you on whether this is skilled play or not. If you don't accept it takes skill, that is on you. I don't particularly care what you think about it. All I am trying to explain to you is there is a notion of skilled play, and a use of the term in the OSR, that is what I describe. You might not consider that to be actually skillful, but that is besides the point: it is a concept and term people use to describe a style of play where they think using your skill against the setting is the priority. And it is definitely a totally different thing from the system mastery conception of skilled play. I have played both ways quite a bit. If you want to debate if there is merit to the style of play I am describing, that is a whole other thing. I am just pointing to a real distinction that matters since people were folding both approaches into the term skilled play.

But you can take it or leave it. I am here to have fun talking about games, not get into heated debates over minutiae. My only point in bringing this up to the poster initially, was to let them know skilled play means something slightly different as used in the OSR and in similar styles. I only popped in here to make that point. And you have a history of baiting me and trying to get a rise out of me for some reason. If you have an issue with me, state it clearly to me. But I am not going to continue having an exchange with you about this particular issue beyond this point because I honestly don't care if you agree with me or not about these kinds of playstyle concerns and I already got one warning from our last exchange.

I am directly disagreeing that what you're describing counts as OSR skilled play unless the things I've listed as necessary are present: clear, transparent decision process and sufficient cues to the player to facilitate manipulation of that process by the player. These are things completely left out by your descriptions of play, so what you're talking about is just improv scenes where the GM can wield "no" whenever they want. This lacks the critical necessity of being leverageable because it's a black box.

So, no, adding "OSR" does not mean it gets a special definition of skilled play separate from everything else. Especially when you're nailing it to an approach that is not definitional to OSR and that is shared in quite a number of other games not OSR at all.

Now, that said, you can actually be very skilled at negotiating with your GM while acting as your character, zero arguments. But skill is not skilled play, otherwise skill at being disruptive would also count as skilled play. Skied play requires that the players leverage the system to achieve their goals. There's no system to negotiating with the GM, nothing within the game system I can leverage, it's just how well can I entertain/manipulate/negotiate the outcome with the GM. Now, of the GM has a clear decision process for this interaction, and those inputs are available to the players, then we're close to skilled play. This isn't, however, what you're describing. You're describing the GM deploying an entirely ad hoc approach, different for every interaction.

Again, I'm not at all saying this is a bad thing -- it's a very popular approach to play, and it quite often used. It's not skilled play, but that no statement on it's quality or use to any given table. Skilled play is not a universal good or necessary goal. I'm 100% fine with anyone telling me my current 5e game is not skilled play, because it isn't.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am directly disagreeing that what you're describing counts as OSR skilled play unless the things I've listed as necessary are present: clear, transparent decision process and sufficient cues to the player to facilitate manipulation of that process by the player. These are things completely left out by your descriptions of play, so what you're talking about is just improv scenes where the GM can wield "no" whenever they want. This lacks the critical necessity of being leverageable because it's a black box.

So, no, adding "OSR" does not mean it gets a special definition of skilled play separate from everything else. Especially when you're nailing it to an approach that is not definitional to OSR and that is shared in quite a number of other games not OSR at all.

Now, that said, you can actually be very skilled at negotiating with your GM while acting as your character, zero arguments. But skill is not skilled play, otherwise skill at being disruptive would also count as skilled play. Skied play requires that the players leverage the system to achieve their goals. There's no system to negotiating with the GM, nothing within the game system I can leverage, it's just how well can I entertain/manipulate/negotiate the outcome with the GM. Now, of the GM has a clear decision process for this interaction, and those inputs are available to the players, then we're close to skilled play. This isn't, however, what you're describing. You're describing the GM deploying an entirely ad hoc approach, different for every interaction.

Again, I'm not at all saying this is a bad thing -- it's a very popular approach to play, and it quite often used. It's not skilled play, but that no statement on it's quality or use to any given table. Skilled play is not a universal good or necessary goal. I'm 100% fine with anyone telling me my current 5e game is not skilled play, because it isn't.

Ok. Think what you want. Like I said not interested in debating you about this

 

[clearstream]

I don't understand the last three sentences.

The might be clearer for you from my more recent post, or maybe not

I can tell you what the skills are in Gygaxian D&D, and have done so - in this and related threads. The most important skill is imaginative reflection on, and extrapolation of, certain features of the setting: architecture (especially doors, stairs, floors and ceilings), geography (especially levels but also gross shape/layout) and which monsters guard which treasures. Other relevant skills are resource management, both at the planning stage (gear and spell loadouts) and during the course of an expedition. Patience and planning are virtues; rashness and spontaneity are, on the whole, liabilities.

This outlines how one might like to see the game played - what one cherishes. It can't wholly answer the question of whether players are being skillful. In the cases you outlined, you nominated various dimensions for skill. So we would need to model tasks in terms of those dimensions. That isn't as straightforward as it sounds.

The posited scale for measuring these skills is achieved character level. This scale is imperfect, for obvious reasons - luck can be a factor in character survival; and a lack of integrity in GMing ("killer" or "Monty Haul" GMs) will undermine this scale pretty drastically. Still, it's clear that this is what Gygax intended character level to reflect, and his game rules are full of admonitions addressed to preserving the integrity of this scale.

Character level has pros and cons. We're subjecting players to tasks of arbitrary difficulty (in some respects a good thing) by which I mean that we do not expect tasks to become monotonically more difficult with level. Notoriously early character levels tend to be more difficult. On our side is that the system is stochastic so a weaker player should stall at some random task where their ability fails to afford them enough protection, while a stronger player should go on. Luck isn't an issue here so long as the sample includes enough performances.

What is an issue is that as you point out we have no idea how well differing DMs enforce this scale. So we don't know the true difficulty of any of the tasks, and hence we don't know the true skillfulness of any of the performances. (Where true means something like - were all players in the world subjected to these tasks under DMs of constant ruthlessness.)

We can contrast this skill set with those traits that are required by other games. For instance, T&T does not punish rashness and spontaneity to the same degree, and seems to make a willingness to take risks something of a desideratum. On the whole this seems to make T&T more lighthearted than D&D, and perhaps downplay the relevance of skill.

Agreed that one can form intuitions about what one sees in different games. That is frequently (maybe almost always) confounded with goals and expectations in those games.

I can also tell you what a canonical task is for Gygaxian D&D: White Plume Mountain or Ghost Tower of Inverness. And I can tell you what a canonical task is for The Green Knight: the scenario included in the game's rulebook. If you survive White Plume Mountain and collect some or all of the swords, you have played with skill. If you survive The Green Knight without reaching 20 Dishonour, you have played with skill. (In both cases, there is the possibility of extreme luck enabling survival without skill. But a group will notice if they are continually rolling maximum values on their dice, and hence surviving on the basis of such luck.)

I had the thought to start a thread collecting canonical skills (or if you like, task types). It sounds like it would be possible and maybe worthwhile.

I don't know why you are using skilful and unskilful as attributes of players, as opposed to attributes of play (or even of approaches to play, but you seem to have left that behind).

Up thread I reached a view that skill-constructs had meaning only within each RPG context. Where influenced by you I counted contexts as including agendas+principles+techniques, and of course rules and the mechanics that arise from them. Therefore I moved on to questioning how one might approach divining skill?

Above you conclude that - "that really doesn't look like skilled play in the Gygaxian sense" - but I am questioning, does it look like skill in any sense?

Are these conjectures based on actual play experience? Are you able to give examples that illustrate what you have in mind?

Yes of course, and it is straightforward enough. The crispest example is charop in 3rd edition. If you build Pun Pun, the rest of the game can't possibly be taxing. Arguably, building Pun Pun obviates any skill in play after session 0. However, to build Pun Pun itself takes skill.

I don't know what you mean by "allowing scope for essentially any decision". Taken at face value, it's just false: for instance, a rule which says Make a hard move which follows on a recently prior soft move does not allow scope for essentially any decision, because there will only be finitely many recently prior soft moves, and (ignoring for the moment the technical oddities of counting the number of elements in sets with indefinitely many members) most of the decisions in the scope of any decision will not follow from a recently prior soft move; and even of those decisions which do follow from a recently prior soft move, only some will be hard moves.

As the soft and hard moves are not specified, your group might well have a good grasp of what you will uphold as valid. Another group might have a very different grasp. There is nothing in RAW that proves the other group is mistaken. This is a general problem with the meaning for rules (that because TTRPG rules must be grasped, enacted and upheld by players, they are subject to meaning issues).

Saying that a group might ignore such a rule is no different from saying that a group (or some member of the group, like the GM) might ignore rules about application of dice rolls. It's true, but doesn't tell us much about the system as presented by its designer.

It is different however from roll d20, see 12, add written down modifier of +3, get 15, apply 15. As you perhaps are saying, it is a set with an infinite number of members.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've bundled these quotes together because I think they all bear upon what I believe is a fundamental limit in classic D&D play: that once the scope of the fiction moves beyond a rather narrow and somewhat stereotyped scope - the dungeon, its architecture and geography which itself follows some well-known conventions (levels and all those imply; doors and staircases of various sorts; etc) - the notion that the player is cleverly engaging the established fiction becomes increasingly strained.

The classic version of negotiating with an Orc leader to pit factions against one another itself relies on some pretty radical simplifications: that the leader is motivated by treasure (always a staple in classic D&D), or has some other point of leverage that can be learned from prior engagement with the fiction (discovering a clue in the dungeon, or picking up a rumour at the inn, etc). It's because the leader lacks nuance as a character that skilled play is feasible.

If the situation becomes as @FrogReaver descirbes (which is what I take @Ovinomancer also to have in mind) then we no longer have the player ascertaining and then leveraging the fiction. We're much closer to something like a 4e skill challenge or Burning Wheel Duel of Wits, except that the GM has the liberty at each point to decide whether or not the player's efforts further the PC's goals or not. To me, that really doesn't look like skilled play in the Gygaxian sense.

To me the key difference in negotiating with the orc leader is that there is pre-established fiction that justifies the orc leaders reactions to some degree. The rest is based on rudimentary stereotypes. It's at least a model that gives players some expectation of Orc Leader behavior even if that behavior isn't very realistic.

Those kinds of fictional details (other than rudimentary stereotypes) just aren't present in a typical bluff the guard scenario. It just seems there's not enough preestablished fiction to really base anything on.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok. Think what you want. Like I said not interested in debating you about this

Others are making similar points as mine, but you seem happy to discuss with them?

 

[FrogReaver]

The guard is part of the environment and the player isn't just going to be bluffing in a vacuum even if the guard has just be introduced. But this example is terribly problematic. It relies on an exceptional case: an NPC being invented on the fly.

I don't think the guard himself needs to be invented on the fly, just the important details about him. One can have a gate guard not generated on the fly with no other details worked out other than that.

Not all NPCs are invented on the fly. Many bluff attempts will be against known NPCs.

I agree this case is different but it's not the case that's causing contention.

And even if the NPC is invented on the fly, skilled play is going to involve the player asking the GM questions about the guard,

There's only so much information one can glean by looking at someone. The GM would rightfully provide very little worthwhile detail in this situation. A slightly better approach might be, 'is it known if guards of this city are normally fiercely loyal' (can rule out bribery). 'Is it known if they are particularly unwatchful' (can rule in sneaking). If the answers to enough of your questions is 'you don't know' then you are basically at square one again. You will have to interact with the current fiction to try and get more information, but those interactions can lead to bad results since trying to gain information about someone and the ways you try to do it can have their own points of failure.

Also, at the end of the day, it boils down to simply basing the guards reactions on stereotypes. Which seems to be the unspoken rule in the kinds of social interactions in this kind of play. Use stereotypes to fill the gaps for every detail that isn't explicitly different. Which does help make a playable game under this style - but there's cons there as well.

and feeling the guard out in conversation.

This circles us right back around to the same problem. If you don't know anything about the guard, then feeling him out in conversation and how you try to do that is just as likely to fail as the 'blind' bluff attempt.

Anything from asking the GM what kind of man the guard looks like,

I suppose if your world is premised on the idea that how a man looks defines the kind of man. Not a particularly normal premise IMO.

if he has any visible weaknesses or traits,

And if the answer is no simply because those aren't visible. No is going to be what happens with many of these questions. An impartial GM is going to ultimately conclude that very little information about a guards personality can be determined by watching a guard closely (and heck the very act of watching him closely may come with it's own set of negative consequences). So we are really left with stereotypes being the primary driver for non-named NPC behavior.

to chatting up the guard a bit before diving into the bluff.

Interaction of any kind comes with the same potential pitfalls of just bluffing him.

I am sorry but this is definitely something I see all the time being talked about as skilled play, and I see lots of conversations where OSR GMS and players complain about skills like bluff for this reason.

I get those complaints, but the answer to those complaints isn't to simply do away with those skills. It's to structure the game such that all NPC's introduced are people that the DM has at least mapped out enough to make many decisions about their behavior. That means fewer NPC's. Fewer big cities - or at least less interactive ones. Think Diablo style towns with 5-10 NPC's or towns where you just fast forward through. Which I think goes back to what @clearstream was saying about that particular mode of play primarily needing to be confined to a dungeon - where the whole adventure is premised on the internal dungeon and every NPC applicable to that adventure is present and defined within that dungeon.

 

[clearstream]

To me the key difference in negotiating with the orc leader is that there is pre-established fiction that justifies the orc leaders reactions to some degree. The rest is based on rudimentary stereotypes. It's at least a model that gives players some expectation of Orc Leader behavior even if that behavior isn't very realistic.

Those kinds of fictional details (other than rudimentary stereotypes) just aren't present in a typical bluff the guard scenario. It just seems there's not enough preestablished fiction to really base anything on.

I feel like I can identify (at least) three ways of thinking about skill in this thread -

1. The dimensions of skill can only be defined in terms of declared system (including pre-established fiction) and goals, regardless of RPGing context
2. As above, but declared system includes principles that don't tell us what a result is forced to be (a set with finite members), but guide as to what sort of form it ought to take (a set with infinite members, which ought to share similarities)
3. The dimensions of skill are whatever they are defined to be within each RPGing context

I doubt these ideas are clearly separated, and who knows, maybe I have expressed them fatally incorrectly. Anyway, what I feel about them is -

1. The matter of goals can work very nicely for 3., but to suppose that everyone must share an idea of what goals are valid, or even have goals that are commensurate, seems suspect; and on the other hand limiting to declared system and goals seems more a statement about the skill-construct within some RPG context, than all contexts
2. I find this view a little difficult to grasp, because it tries to bring into 1. something which seems expressly excluded from it
3. I find this view easiest to defend: if you would like to say that in your context(s) skill is defined a certain way, it seems consistent and useful to exclude other ways from that context

Where I think the 1ers run into problems is thrusting their definition of skill onto 3ers who don't happen to be 1ers. 2ers present an open question. Maybe what has to be imagined is an infinite set whose members take the form move+principle. The hitch is that much as people can quibble over rules, they can quibble over principles doubly so. Assuming however that the form move+principle is right, then it seems up to 1ers if they will let them in. We see disagreements right here before us on that score. I would probably suggest that rather than simply 1ers, there are 1.1ers, 1.2ers and so on: some happy to let 2ers in, others excluding them.

What is most confusing to me is how 2ers then go on to deny that other forms of move+principle can't be counted skill? Such as move+story_principle.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Others are making similar points as mine, but you seem happy to discuss with them?

Please see my above post and the previous posts if you don't understand. Not going there with you again