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

[Ovinomancer]

That's one way, or if the players obsessively retreat and rest and so on unless prepped (DMs can fight this with clocks etc. but there are limits and ultimately if the players play this way and the DM is having to throw clocks at them to stop them, probably you need a different DM or different players).

This isn't a 5e problem -- it's a game goals mismatch between players. This is a problem if the game is 5e or Monopoly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This isn't a 5e problem -- it's a game goals mismatch between players. This is a problem if the game is 5e or Monopoly.

???

Sure, but it's a specific one that comes up in 5E, and is exacerbated because the design is different to previous editions, where this sort of thing was less antithetical to the design/balance (where design/balance was even present).

 

[Ovinomancer]

???

Sure, but it's a specific one that comes up in 5E, and is exacerbated because the design is different to previous editions, where this sort of thing was less antithetical to the design/balance (where design/balance was even present).

The problem has nothing at all to do with 5e, though. It's a mismatch between player expectations of what play will be, which just happens to occur, in your example, in a game of 5e. If you have players that disagree about what play should be while doing Monopoly, you have have a similar argument -- "Every time I play Monopoly with my friends, they keep making silly trades of properties to try and get one of every color, and it's very frustrating to me!" It's not a 5e specific problem, it's a problem of players not having their play goals aligned.

 

[S'mon]

That's one way, or if the players obsessively retreat and rest and so on unless prepped (DMs can fight this with clocks etc. but there are limits and ultimately if the players play this way and the DM is having to throw clocks at them to stop them, probably you need a different DM or different players).

Ah, I use the 1 week long rest ever since I realised this, so the PCs don't want to LR too much.

 

[FrogReaver]

I just want the designers to firm up the differences between ability checks vs. ability saves.

There are several instances in the rules in which a player "resists" an effect with an ability check rather than a save, and this confuses me.

Grapple, for instance. Why isn't that a Strength or Dexterity save to overcome/resist? Some argue that it's because it's an opposed contest... but if the one resisting the grapple succeeds they don't get the option to reverse the grapple and turn their grappler into their grapple...ee?

Fix that and make it obvious when to make an ability check, when to make an ability saving throw, and specify which cases the PC may NOT use an associated or relevant skill or tool proficiency. More than once I've had a GM tell me to "Roll Strength, but without any skill or tool proficiencies, just straight up Strength" WTF

Presumably so you can add athletics to your check.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The problem has nothing at all to do with 5e, though. It's a mismatch between player expectations of what play will be, which just happens to occur, in your example, in a game of 5e. If you have players that disagree about what play should be while doing Monopoly, you have have a similar argument -- "Every time I play Monopoly with my friends, they keep making silly trades of properties to try and get one of every color, and it's very frustrating to me!" It's not a 5e specific problem, it's a problem of players not having their play goals aligned.

???

I literally explained how it was a 5E problem.

If you want the long version, it's because 1/2/3E, D&D was heavily preparation-based and encouraged preparation, and didn't aim at a specific number of encounters/day to balance classes, instead typically expecting players to pace their groups themselves. Modern players expect some significant class balance - they expected this in 2000 even which is why LFQW and the class tiers became such a meme - unfortunately for reasons unknown (AFAICT) WotC decided to balance classes on the assumption of 6-8 encounters/day which conflicts pretty hard with the old "choose your own pace" approach or even 4E's simple encounter/daily structure.

It's notable that it's not just old players having this issue either. New to RPGs people have it too, and new to RPGs DMs.

 

[Necrozius]

Presumably so you can add athletics to your check.

Yeah I get that... but there are so FEW chances to use Strength saves in this game (plenty to use Athletics). Shrug.

 

[clearstream]

I'm not clear on what you mean by "skillful play" so I'm not going to agree or disagree. I don't really follow your second para, here, in that I'm not sure where you think there's a problem or issue -- what you're saying here does make it clear to me what you think is in opposition.

Skilled play is simply leveraging the system to achieve the player's goals.

What do you include in "system"?

 

[Ovinomancer]

???

I literally explained how it was a 5E problem.

If you want the long version, it's because 1/2/3E, D&D was heavily preparation-based and encouraged preparation, and didn't aim at a specific number of encounters/day to balance classes, instead typically expecting players to pace their groups themselves. Modern players expect some significant class balance - they expected this in 2000 even which is why LFQW and the class tiers became such a meme - unfortunately for reasons unknown (AFAICT) WotC decided to balance classes on the assumption of 6-8 encounters/day which conflicts pretty hard with the old "choose your own pace" approach or even 4E's simple encounter/daily structure.

It's notable that it's not just old players having this issue either. New to RPGs people have it too, and new to RPGs DMs.

No, you gave an example of player goal mismatch in a 5e game. It could easily have been the same kind of problem if the players want all combat and the GM is running a political game in a city with almost no combat. The problem is one you've encountered in 5e, but it's not actually a 5e problem. This is trivially shown in that other people do not have this problem while playing 5e, so it's not endemic to 5e.

What I think you're confusing is that 5e lacks structure to force the GM's desire for how they want the game to run on players dedicated to a different mode of play. This still isn't a 5e problem, because the idea that it's the system's problem when players are disagreeing how to play a game is rather silly. The problem you cite isn't a 5e one, it's a table problem, it's just showing up in 5e for you because your tables have a deeper issue while you happen to be playing 5e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, you gave an example of player goal mismatch in a 5e game. It could easily have been the same kind of problem if the players want all combat and the GM is running a political game in a city with almost no combat. The problem is one you've encountered in 5e, but it's not actually a 5e problem. This is trivially shown in that other people do not have this problem while playing 5e, so it's not endemic to 5e.

What I think you're confusing is that 5e lacks structure to force the GM's desire for how they want the game to run on players dedicated to a different mode of play. This still isn't a 5e problem, because the idea that it's the system's problem when players are disagreeing how to play a game is rather silly. The problem you cite isn't a 5e one, it's a table problem, it's just showing up in 5e for you because your tables have a deeper issue while you happen to be playing 5e.

I guess denial really isn't just a river in Egypt lol but okay.

I love this totally ridiculous idea that unless a problem is "endemic" to 5E it's "not a 5E problem". Talk about defensive. Plus the number of wildly inaccurate assertions about my table and what I'm thinking and so on are pretty fun.

 

[Nefermandias]

Interesting. Outside of optimizing party tactics and character build optimization I always found playing through 4e combat to have a rather low skill ceiling - as in high skilled play mattered very little in the outcomes. What tended to matter most was the character builds.

Used to be true in 3.5e.
In 4e, turn by turn decisions, positioning and resource management were way more important than character builds. Heck, I would argue that it's nearly impossible to "funk up" a build in 4e.

Watch the language, please.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What do you include in "system"?

I don't understand this question. A game system is the rules and necessary pieces to play that game. In Monopoly, it's the rules, the money, the property cards, the Chance and Fortune cards, the players (and their tokens), the dice, and the board. If you lack any part of this, you can't play Monopoly. Together, they make a game system.

RPGs usually include the rules of the game, the necessary artifacts of play (character sheets, reference tables, etc.), dice, players, tokens, maps, etc, etc.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I guess denial really isn't just a river in Egypt lol but okay.

I love this totally ridiculous idea that unless a problem is "endemic" to 5E it's "not a 5E problem". Talk about defensive. Plus the number of wildly inaccurate assertions about my table and what I'm thinking and so on are pretty fun.

Oh, I'm the last person you could call defensive about 5e. I'm usually attacked for discussing 5e in less than stellar terms.

And, no, I'm not in denial. The issue you're talking about is a table problem. It's a mismatch in play agendas between the players and the GM (who is also a player). What you're trying to say is a problem with 5e is that it doesn't have tools to paper over this table problem for the GM. That there's no rules or support for forcing the GM's preferred mode of play on the players, because 5e gives too much authority to the players to declare actions in the ruleset that thwarting those actions to the GM's preference would be obvious and damaging. For this to be a 5e problem, you'd have to claim that a goal of 5e is to enable the GM to leverage Force in a clandestine fashion to prevent this specific set of behaviors. I mean, I guess you can say this a problem with 5e, but I wasn't starting from the position that this was a desirable feature set.

So, in shorter form, if you want to force players to play how you want them to without being obvious about it, and want 5e to support this, then this lack is a 5e problem -- it won't do this for you.

But, behind that want is the fact that you, as the GM, have a different play agenda from your players. Expecting game systems to resolve this is, to me, quite silly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But, behind that want is the fact that you, as the GM, have a different play agenda from your players. Expecting game systems to resolve this is, to me, quite silly.

I love how you're making this personal and about me, when this is in fact not typically a problem at my table lol. If anything my players tend to forget they can rest and my love of adventures involving travel is what creates the problem when it does appear. It's also a problem I've seen and that others have complained about, and indeed a lot of people have dedicated a lot of space to addressing, and it's happening because of the 6-8 encounters thing.

 

[Umbran]

I guess denial really isn't just a river in Egypt lol but okay.

I love this totally ridiculous idea that unless a problem is "endemic" to 5E it's "not a 5E problem". Talk about defensive. Plus the number of wildly inaccurate assertions about my table and what I'm thinking and so on are pretty fun.

Folks, don't make it personal, please.

If I may, I think I see the mismatch - you seem to be asserting that it is a problem seen in 5e. He seems to be asserting that this problem can occur in any game, and so is not a problem specific to 5e. This is important, in that the best solution for it is not specific to the 5e rules rules at all, but lies in setting of expectations among the players.

All the rest of this is head-butting that makes neither of you look particularly wise. So, you know, think on that.

 

[Imaro]

I just don't what sort of genre I'm meant to be thinking myself into where a character is tough enough to fight a balrog in melee but drowning is a serious risk.

Conan, Elric, Fafhrd and Gray mouser all can fight off and kill eldritch creatures and yet drowning is a serious risk to them...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I love how you're making this personal and about me, when this is in fact not typically a problem at my table lol. If anything my players tend to forget they can rest and my love of adventures involving travel is what creates the problem when it does appear. It's also a problem I've seen and that others have complained about, and indeed a lot of people have dedicated a lot of space to addressing, and it's happening because of the 6-8 encounters thing.

Generic yous. My bad.

 

[clearstream]

I don't understand this question. A game system is the rules and necessary pieces to play that game. In Monopoly, it's the rules, the money, the property cards, the Chance and Fortune cards, the players (and their tokens), the dice, and the board. If you lack any part of this, you can't play Monopoly. Together, they make a game system.

RPGs usually include the rules of the game, the necessary artifacts of play (character sheets, reference tables, etc.), dice, players, tokens, maps, etc, etc.

It wasn't a trap, I just wanted to check we were referring to the same thing. And I believe we are talking about the whole system, no exclusions. In another thread about "skilled play" I read posts such as the following (forgive lack of more context, these have been long threads) -

I think that an athletics check could be involved in skilled play, sure.

Just rolling an athletics check to kick down a door isn't skilled play.

Rolling an athletics check would surely be using the system and capable of efficiently leading to achievement of goals. The sentiment was mirrored in different ways by other posters. So something is going on there. Some distinction between using an available mechanic efficiently and effectively, and withholding from using those same mechanics because it would not be "skillful" to do so (even - or possibly especially - if they efficiently lead to achievement of goals!).

I'm reminded of Bernard Suits who said that

To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude].

What I felt is that under "skilled play" there are rules in play prohibiting use of more efficient means (available mechanics) in favour of less efficient, to make "skilled play" possible. The rules in question are not in the game system, they are brought to the table by the players.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Rolling an athletics check would surely be using the system and capable of efficiently leading to achievement of goals. The sentiment was mirrored in different ways by other posters. So something is going on there. Some distinction between using an available mechanic efficiently and effectively, and withholding from using those same mechanics because it would not be "skillful" to do so (even - or possibly especially - if they efficiently lead to achievement of goals!).

I'm reminded of Bernard Suits who said that


What I felt is that under "skilled play" there are rules in play prohibiting use of more efficient means (available mechanics) in favour of less efficient, to make "skilled play" possible. The rules in question are not in the game system, they are brought to the table by the players.

I realize you were simply quoting me in response to someone else, but I wanted to chime in and say that the intent is the opposite of your impression.

SP is intended to set the odds in your favor by eliminating the risks inherent to probability (assuming that your odds are less than 100%). This could be as simple as using a safety line while climbing a towering cliff, rather than leaving your character's survival to the vagaries of the dice.

 

[clearstream]

I realize you were simply quoting me in response to someone else, but I wanted to chime in and say that the intent is the opposite of your impression.

SP is intended to set the odds in your favor by eliminating the risks inherent to probability (assuming that your odds are less than 100%). This could be as simple as using a safety line while climbing a towering cliff, rather than leaving your character's survival to the vagaries of the dice.

Ah, maybe not the best post to pull out as we went into this sort of thing. In the case that - literally - kicking the door down is perfectly effective, then is it skillful to just make the ability check? Nothing further needed?

At the time, and now, that is what I was getting at. Do you recall the discussion of passwall? That using it might not be "skilled play" even if it was literally the most efficient way to achieve your goals.