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

[clearstream]

TFW your mentions are all about other people using you as a proxy for there own argument instead of addressing your points which either already answer the question being asked or directly refute it. Like where I said that there's absolutely skill in telling stories, and mention examples of such, but say that the goal of telling good stories cuts against skilled play only to be mentioned as someone that thinks that telling stories doesn't involve skill.

It sounds like you are working from an unstated gamist agenda.

@clearstream -- you jump so quickly between word uses that your arguments end up largely as confusing gibberish. Skilled play is not skill, even though they share the word skill.

I have pointed to the thread that coined the label. In that thread, I (and others) raised a concern with the word choice. The OP of that thread had understood that there was likely a need to disambiguate right from the outset. If you have an issue with the label, please take it up with those who coined it.

Skill at making baskets is not skilled play in an RPG. The error you're making here is that you're putting telling a story as a goal, noting it takes skill, and then saying that this is skilled play. At no point do you look to see if it matches the given definitions of leveraging the system to achieve player goals within the scope of the game. If I'm just enforcing my story, even skillfully, I'm not leveraging the system to achieve player goals within the scope of the game. Thus, while this is a demonstration of skill, it's not skilled play.

With a gamist agenda, that may well be true. It won't be true in all contexts. The error you are making is excluding telling a story from proper RPG play. Or to put it another way, you are presenting one skill-construct as being the only possible skill-construct in RPG. I disagree with that view.

 

[clearstream]

To be clear, I don't remotely hold the position that your tastes (or the tastes of Participationist players who make up a massive cross-section of TTRPG space) are to be sneered at.

I know. I had hoped to convey that I knew. Evidently that attempt failed

I simply wanted to call out that I don't believe rudderless design aids an immersion-play paradigm.

 

[Umbran]

Skilled play is not a catch-all that contains all efforts, it's a specific approach to games that delivers.

So, broadly, skilled play is leveraging the mechanic to support player goals, right?

Why cannot game mechanics be leveraged to support the player goal of story? I can see how it can be difficult for a player to leverage the mechanics of D&D for story. But Fate, or Cortex, or PbtA games all seem primed and designed for skilled story play.

 

[clearstream]

So, broadly, skilled play is leveraging the mechanic to support player goals, right?

Why cannot game mechanics be leveraged to support the player goal of story? I can see how it can be difficult for a player to leverage the mechanics of D&D for story. But Fate, or Cortex, or PbtA games all seem primed and designed for skilled story play.

The view I have reached is that in each context of play there can be a skill-construct. "Skilled play" (note the quotes, not my label) is probably better termed "Gygaxian skilled play" and refers to the skill-construct in the B/X and similar context of play. Agenda, principles and techniques orient player use of game-as-artifact. So the context is all those elements (and might not be derivable from game-as-artifact alone).

A skill-construct only has meaning within that context, so that in a story-interested context, skilled story play is possible even though story play would not be skillful in other contexts. Skill-constructs can share features, but just because they do so doesn't mean that it is right to suppose one can say everything about what is skillful within a construct based only on those features.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So, broadly, skilled play is leveraging the mechanic to support player goals, right?

Why cannot game mechanics be leveraged to support the player goal of story? I can see how it can be difficult for a player to leverage the mechanics of D&D for story. But Fate, or Cortex, or PbtA games all seem primed and designed for skilled story play.

The inversion of input to output. If the output of the process is an input to the decision making, then you're not really leveraging the system. The system can very much allow for this, encourage it even, but this fundamentally disables the ability to leverage the system to achieve a goal. The system isn't being leveraged, here -- I'm not applying it to my problem in any way -- because the system just says "sure, make up a cool story beat right here and do that."

The general argument having been addressed here, I don't think that the games you've listed actually do this. In Fate, skilled play is about bringing your aspects to bear for success and good use of your Fate points (spend them willy-nilly, refuse complications to regain them, or just don't use them and you'll have issues with the system). The GM just outright deciding what happens next, even if it makes for a great story, isn't leveraging these system tools at all -- it's just the GM doing the thing.

Similarly, in Cortex, the Doom Pool is a player facing mechanic and can be (and must be) managed for skilled play. The GM has to decide how to use it, and has leeway, but cannot just "tell a story" and ignore it. It's a constraining mechanic available to the players for manipulation. As such, Cortex doesn't fall into the using the mechanics to tell a story bucket, either.

And, as for PbtA games, well, I also disagree. Skillful play here is very much constraining the GM's ability to tell you a story. It's a tad anathema to the system, even.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It sounds like you are working from an unstated gamist agenda.

I have no idea what you mean with this. I mean, I know what this means according to the Forge, and that's laughable, so however you're using it is just completely opaque to me. If you're going to tell me what it is I think, I'd appreciate if you could do so clearly. Actually, I'd appreciate it done not at all. I mean, I just got done saying that I'm not skilled play at all in my 5e games (or rather, I toggle, but the overgame is not at all about skilled play) and that I very much value the system because I can use it to tell a good story. What's gamist about this at all?

I have pointed to the thread that coined the label. In that thread, I (and others) raised a concern with the word choice. The OP of that thread had understood that there was likely a need to disambiguate right from the outset. If you have an issue with the label, please take it up with those who coined it.

You mean the quoted "skilled play?" Because you I didn't use quotes at all, and haven't, and am not referencing whatever thread you're talking about. You're the one that introduces concepts from other threads and then expects everyone to automatically know what's going on in those other conversations. Here's the thing, though, if you're bringing it in, you're responsible for it -- you can just punt it to someone else that used it elsewhere because you're the one using it here. And, again, my point had absolutely nothing to do with you doing this, I'm talking as used in this thread.

With a gamist agenda, that may well be true. It won't be true in all contexts. The error you are making is excluding telling a story from proper RPG play. Or to put it another way, you are presenting one skill-construct as being the only possible skill-construct in RPG. I disagree with that view.

Cool, I have no idea if it's true with a gamist agenda because I don't know what you mean by that and it doesn't appear to apply to me in any way. It looks like a label used to bin a person into an ignorable box rather than actually address the content of their argument.

 

[Umbran]

The view I have reached is that in each context of play there can be a skill-construct. "Skilled play" (note the quotes, not my label) is probably better termed "Gygaxian skilled play" and refers to the skill-construct in the B/X and similar context of play.

Given that I've advocated for that terminology myself, I'm with you there.

Agenda, principles and techniques orient player use of game-as-artifact. So the context is all those elements (and might not be derivable from game-as-artifact alone).

Okay. I tend to eschew a lot of the jargon you folks seem to enjoy, but I an reasonably certain that if we unpacked it, we'd find we agreement, such that I don't feel a need to unpack and make sure.

A skill-construct only has meaning within that context, so that in a story-interested context, skilled story play is possible even though story play would not be skillful in other contexts.

Fair. I think we'd find a practical issue in considering the context to be a clear-cut ,known, single-valued thing, but that's an aside.

 

[Umbran]

And, as for PbtA games, well, I also disagree. Skillful play here is very much constraining the GM's ability to tell you a story. It's a tad anathema to the system, even.

So... I'm bypassing the rest, because the most meaningful thing may be here - you consider story-based play to be "allow the GM to tell you a story"?

Because I very much don't. And if we disagree on that point, this becomes the central bit.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So... I'm bypassing the rest, because the most meaningful thing may be here - you consider story-based play to be "allow the GM to tell you a story"?

Because I very much don't. And if we disagree on that point, this becomes the central bit.

Okay, Umbran. Usually, if one detects an error in understanding in how one meant a term to be understood, then one could look back and see if they explained it or left it open to interpretation. As this is the case here, the correct solution isn't to berate the other poster for not guessing what you meant, but to take a moment and actually explain what you meant. I'll help:

@Umbran, what do you mean by "story-based play," and how did I miss the mark with my overview statement that the outcome of the process being the only defining input into the decision process makes skilled play moot?

 

[Campbell]

Absolutely! Ironically, I think I even said something recently to you and Campbell like "hey guys, if the opportunity to disagree with me arises, please aggressively take it!"

The only thing I wasn't expecting was for you guys to be so wrong!

More seriously though, it is quite interesting (your take here about actor stance and inhabitation affecting the way you look at RPGs more generally). Do you feel your position on this has changed over the course of the last few years after being informed by more recent play (Wuthering Heights, Traveler, Prince Valiant, The Green...Knight?), reading but not playing AW, and related ponderings?

Related, do you feel like your thoughts on your 4e play, and 4e play generally, have drifted (eg would you now bin it into Neotrad vs Gamist/Narrativist integrated hybrid)?

Speaking personally my thoughts on hybrid games is that they alleviate the tension between thematic and challenge oriented play somewhat, but I still am deeply aware of the internal tension I have between playing a game well and playing with integrity. It's possible I am smuggling in some of my own Nordic LARP sensibilities unconsciously. After all my interest in Story Now gaming is mostly driven by a desire to achieve bleed of those intense emotional moments that come from strong framing / scenario design.

I would say most of what I'm looking for (when not embracing my Step On Up drives) is Story Now in the Streets and Right to Dream in the Sheets. It's probably why I like games like Vampire 5th Edition, Exalted Third Edition, Infinity, Conan 2d20 and FFG Legend of the Five Rings as much as I like Apocalypse World, Masks, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Sorcerer. I get much of the same payoff. Exploration of character for it's own sake is deeply important to me in a way I'm willing to guess is less important to you.