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

[clearstream]

When it comes to skilled play (of the fiction) I think I am mostly okay with elevating that type of player skill over other types of skill because RPGs are at heart games played in a shared fiction. If there is any core skill that applies across all RPGs it is reasoning about the fiction and making moves based on that reasoning. At heart the medium is an extension of historical war gaming which likewise highly valued the players' ability to reason about the scenario. I think we pretty much lose the essence of the medium when the details of the fiction become less important to play.

When you bracket "of the fiction" in connection with skilled play, do you mean the shared imaginary world in which game action takes place? And do you have in mind players making choices and DM extemporising outside of, or in ways that might even have a determining role upon the outcome of, the designed game mechanics that are represented in RAW? I am wondering if you feel that the telling stories part of RPG can be skillful?

You spoke above of the virtue of greater concord among the players. On my mind in this thread is that this is more a matter of what others have called agendas, principles and techniques, than it is of mechanical game RAW. I think some of those agendas, principles and techniques are represented in the written material, and some are brought in by players.

If we believe that a suite of agendas-principles-techniques are effective in producing cohesion among a cohort of players playing a game, then it seems to me that we must believe that an alternative suite will lead to a different cohort playing that game in a different way from the first group. Thus we believe that one game can be played in different ways depending on suite chosen, unless we have a suitability-thesis that stipulates that a game-artifact will be more suitable for some suites over others. An issue here is that the interpreted parts of the game-artifact are usually crucial (the rules!) and there is ample evidence of players grasping, enacting and upholding rules in different ways. So one problem to resolve is whether a stable identity can be assigned to game-artifact? Or possibly a stable-enough-identity (although I am suspicious any time it is proposed that some features of a thing be overlooked, as science has shown repeatedly that glossed-over features can turn out to have significant ramifications).

 

[clearstream]

I agree with you that skilled play is a matter of agenda.

I am burningly curious to know if @Ovinomancer agrees with that?!

 

[clearstream]

I expect BW play to generate those consequences. When they're happening, on the one hand I can't say I relish it - my character is being put through the wringer! - but on the other hand it's part of the point of play. So I don't see it as a loss condition in the way that going into Moldvay's dungeon, putzing around, losing some hp to a random encounter with some fire beetles, and then leaving with basically no treasure and hence no XP would be.

If the definition of skill is given meaning (only) within a given game design with a known agenda that is oriented to by players, then can one at that point conflate "skilled play" with skilled play because the only possible definition for skillful play is going to be one where Gygaxian Skilled Play and skilled play means the same thing?

Yes, I know @Manbearcat and possibly @Ovinomancer have made this point. I am wondering what you think?

 

[pemerton]

If the definition of skill is given meaning (only) within a given game design with a known agenda that is oriented to by players, then can one at that point conflate "skilled play" with skilled play because the only possible definition for skillful play is going to be one where Gygaxian Skilled Play and skilled play means the same thing?

Yes, I know @Manbearcat and possibly @Ovinomancer have made this point. I am wondering what you think?

I don't quite know what you mean by a given game design. I think everyone agrees that whatever counts as skilled play will be relative to how the game plays - its mechanics, it processes of play, etc.

I've already made multiple posts in this thread that identify a non-Gygaxian game that demands skilled play. The Green Knight is not a remotely Gygaxian game, but is one where the loss condition is clear (reach 20 Dishonour before completing the scenario) and where skilled play, with a high degree of author stance (in the Forge sense of that phrase), is necessary to avoid that loss condition.

 

[clearstream]

I don't quite know what you mean by a given game design. I think everyone agrees that whatever counts as skilled play will be relative to how the game plays - its mechanics, it processes of play, etc.

I've already made multiple posts in this thread that identify a non-Gygaxian game that demands skilled play. The Green Knight is not a remotely Gygaxian game, but is one where the loss condition is clear (reach 20 Dishonour before completing the scenario) and where skilled play, with a high degree of author stance (in the Forge sense of that phrase), is necessary to avoid that loss condition.

EDIT We might be talking past one another. We agree that there can be skilled play in non-Gygaxian games. And I am suggesting that we can form a construct for skill within each context. I think you are agreeing with that when you say "whatever counts as skilled play" right?

I then suggest that said contexts comprise -

• game as artifact (the written rules and guidance, any components) typically it is reasonable to call this the game as designed (the given game design... this specific game, as designed)
• agenda/principles/techniques that may have informed the design
• agenda/principles/techniques that players orient to in playing the game (per @Campbell sharing orientation)

Often elements of agenda/principles/techniques are expressed in the game as artifact in the form of statements as to how to use the other parts of the game. Which obviously envisions that those parts could be used in different ways. Often players bring with them agenda+principles+techniques to the game which might be the same as, modifying to, overwriting or additional to those expressed in the game. The skill construct has meaning within a context and might not span other contexts. Although we should be (and are) able to find useful commonalities. (These ideas are not conflicting.)

[EDITED As often happens the way you wrote your post felt on surface like disagreement, when after rereading it twice I see it was agreement. Or if not I am sure you will clarify ]

 

[Manbearcat]

I am burningly curious to know if @Ovinomancer agrees with that?!

Given the context of all you have seen me wrote on this subject, what is it that you believe I am saying here that you think @Ovinomancer would disagree with?

So far as I can tell, he and I and @darkbard (to speak to commenters in these threads) are pretty much 100 % in agreement surrounding skilled play and surrounding all of the entangled issues in these threads.

Curiously, it’s @pemerton and @Campbell and @AbdulAlhazred where the daylight exists between my position and theirs (which is fascinating as I consider a Monty Python sketch in my head of all of the interlocutors we collectively disagreed with over the years on so many things, swilling their cup of wine in one hand while twirling their evil mustachios with the other and throwing their heads back to the sky in raucous, villainous laughter!).

 

[clearstream]

Given the context of all you have seen me wrote on this subject, what is it that you believe I am saying here that you think @Ovinomancer would disagree with?

You perhaps describe a separation between "first principles that underwrite the design and the play of the game" and "principles that undergird individual moves made by the participants". You clarify (and maybe I am reading this incorrectly) that when it comes to agenda you are "talking about the founding document/mission statement... upon which a gaming edifice is erected".

I don't know if he believes a player needs to know (or be signed up to) the agenda in order to play skillfully. If not, then perhaps he would not agree that skilled play is a matter of agenda. At least not solely. Maybe you didn't mean solely?

Curiously, it’s @pemerton and @Campbell and @AbdulAlhazred where the daylight exists between my position and theirs (which is fascinating as I consider a Monty Python sketch in my head of all of the interlocutors we collectively disagreed with over the years on so many things, swilling their cup of wine in one hand while twirling their evil mustachios with the other and throwing their heads back to the sky in raucous, villainous laughter!).

And do you agree that it was fair in my previous post to suppose that you had in fact stated the point

the definition of skill is given meaning (only) within a given game design with a known agenda that is oriented to by players, then can one at that point conflate "skilled play" with skilled play because the only possible definition for skillful play is going to be one where Gygaxian Skilled Play and skilled play means the same thing

Your comment on ambiguating, for example? I ask because if so it would seem that I am leaning toward your views more than @pemerton's, but who knows really given the capacity we all seem to have for grasping a meaning opposite a poster's intent! (I can hear a Pythonian "I don't" pipe up in the background.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

These - griefers, and cheaters - are degenerate cases. (1) They're not approaches to play that universalise; they depend upon there being other game participants who are playing sincerely. (2) They are not sincere attempts at playing the game. They're more subtle versions of accidentally-on-purpose knocking over the board if you're losing a game of chess. If we're studying the psychology of those who participate in games, and the sociology of gaming circles, then they're interesting case studies. But if we're asking about the play of games from a broadly critical perspective (which takes as a given the normative underpinnings of the shared human activity of playing a game together) then I don't think they're relevant. I mean, I don't think it's a meaningful musicological critique of the length of a Wagnerian opera that the longer the music goes, the more likely someone in the theatre is to cough or fart.

There is an interesting tangent here on cheating in tabletop RPGs and it being a significantly different case than cheating in card games. There are, for example, RPGs that actively tell the GM to fudge the rolls which is in my experience universally a sign of the game rules not doing what is intended. And there are cases where the rolls get discarded because there is a massive mismatch between what the players (including the DM) want to do (in such cases normally tell engaging stories with friends, moderated by the rules) and what the rules present them with (instant death out of nowhere).

 

[Manbearcat]

You perhaps describe a separation between "first principles that underwrite the design and the play of the game" and "principles that undergird individual moves made by the participants". You clarify (and maybe I am reading this incorrectly) that when it comes to agenda you are "talking about the founding document/mission statement... upon which a gaming edifice is erected".

I don't know if he believes a player needs to know (or be signed up to) the agenda in order to play skillfully. If not, then perhaps he would not agree that skilled play is a matter of agenda. At least not solely. Maybe you didn't mean solely?



And do you agree that it was fair in my previous post to suppose that you had in fact stated the point


Your comment on ambiguating, for example? I ask because if so it would seem that I am leaning toward your views more than @pemerton's, but who knows really given the capacity we all seem to have for grasping a meaning opposite a poster's intent! (I can hear a Pythonian "I don't" pipe up in the background.)

I meant the type of skilled play will be a byproduct of the creative agenda the game is devised around (therefore inextricably wedded to it).

However, if you’ll note in one of my last posts, I also hold that you can focus on certain aspects of design (the balancing play at the Encounter/Scene level vs balancing it at the Adventuring Day level) and the design decision will inevitably build to different Creative Agendas (top down vs bottom up design). Ideally you’re doing both (you have a guiding mission statement/agenda and then you’re building out systems and integrating under that foundational premise) to avoid incoherency creep, but at a singular aspect of system level, your prospective agenda will invariably winnow based on such a design decision even if you haven’t thought of a foundational premise beforehand (but you do so to avoid incoherency when you’re building out each aspect of system and integrating/layering them).

When concrete agenda/foundational premise doesn’t exist at the beginning of design (to guide all subsequent design on doesn’t exist when your building out aspects of system and integrating/layering them,), your rudderless design will leave you apt to get lost on a sea of incoherency (yes I just engaged full snob mode and wrote that)…which leads to competing play priorities embedded in your moments of play…which leads to GM Force being the solution to those moments of play…which damages the competitive integrity of play…which undermines skilled play as a priority (see how I skillfully circled back to my prior post about Long Rest recharge vs anticlimax?! SKILLED PLAY IN FORUMING!).

 

[pemerton]

I am wondering if where you say "telling stories" that might extend to any time the DM decides what happens (rather than applying the outcome of game mechanics and parameters as written).

So, would you agree that a kind of extemporizing similar to and perhaps even part of telling RP stories extends to wherever the DM decides what happens next? Perhaps thinking of the following examples

1. DM overrides their rolls for a random encounter to choose a different, higher CR encounter
2. DM decides the trolls attack Agatha's mage and not Beatrice's fighter
3. DM decides to have the Count - an NPC - up the stakes in the negotiation by demanding a hostage
4. DM adds two strong foes to the hunt for the escaping characters, increasing the challenge (and consider the case where in parallel world B, the DM decides to reduce the number of foes by two, reducing the challenge)
5. DM decides the guards don't need to roll to notice the sneaking rogue (and consider the case where in parallel world B, the DM decides the guards must roll to notice the sneaking rogue)

Maybe that will do. I have thought most about 5e. It might be that similar examples can be easily found for games like DW. Should all of the above be excluded - obviate perhaps - from what is meant by skillful play?

1. is scene-framing/presenting a challenge. This wouldn't normally count as the GM "telling a story". Even Gygax suggests this is permissible - in his discussion of fudging a roll to detect a secret door "that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining." (DMG p 110) While I think that this pushes against the overaching logic of Gygaxian play - given the players a leg-up in finding a good bit of the dungeon - I think it fells well short of "telling a story".

2. is very localised framing. In AD&D it goes against the default rule of random determination of melee targets. In 4e, on the other hand, it's part of the GM's job to do exactly that sort of thing (4e PHB p 8): "The Dungeon Master controls the monsters and villains the player characters battle against, choosing their actions and rolling dice for their attacks." It's part of how the GM keeps the pressure up to the players.

3. is imposing a limited failure or additional requirements of fictional positioning on a player's check. Unless it is a consequence of a failed check or similar on the player's part, it seems like GM force to me. It may or may not contribute to the telling of a story.

4. depends on how the escape rules for the system work. In the systems I prefer it would be a scene framed on its own terms, and so the GM is at liberty to frame it as s/he thinks is appropriate (eg 4e PHB p 8: "The DM sets the pace of the story and presents the various challenges and encounters the players must overcome.").

5. appears to be the GM deciding that a player's action declaration fails automatically, and not just on the basis of fiction that the GM has already established though is keeping secret from the players (as is standard in map-and-key play). It's hard for me to think of a context where this doesn't constitute force. This seems like the work of a GM who wants to tell a story.

When you bracket "of the fiction" in connection with skilled play, do you mean the shared imaginary world in which game action takes place? And do you have in mind players making choices and DM extemporising outside of, or in ways that might even have a determining role upon the outcome of, the designed game mechanics that are represented in RAW? I am wondering if you feel that the telling stories part of RPG can be skillful?

Obviously I'm not @Campbell, but I've read a lot of his posts over the years.

Campbell is not positing the fiction as contrasting with the game mechanics presented in the rules. I think he largely agrees with the following remark made by Vincent Baker about the relationship between mechanics and fiction:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . .

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

If we believe that a suite of agendas-principles-techniques are effective in producing cohesion among a cohort of players playing a game, then it seems to me that we must believe that an alternative suite will lead to a different cohort playing that game in a different way from the first group. Thus we believe that one game can be played in different ways depending on suite chosen, unless we have a suitability-thesis that stipulates that a game-artifact will be more suitable for some suites over others.

Or unless we take the view that adopting a different suite of agendas-principles-techniques makes it a different game.