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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8302891" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't understand the last three sentences.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>The posited scale for measuring these skills is <em>achieved character level</em>. 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. <em>Theme </em>plays basically no role in classic D&D; it is pretty crucial to The Green Knight.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know why you are using <em>skilful </em>and <em>unskilful</em> as attributes of players, as opposed to attributes of play (or even of approaches to play, but you seem to have left that behind).</p><p></p><p>I mean, we can do that too - it's widely acknowledged that [USER=7015759]@Rob Kuntz[/USER] 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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Are these conjectures based on actual play experience? Are you able to give examples that illustrate what you have in mind?</p><p></p><p></p><p>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 <em>Make a hard move which follows on a recently prior soft move </em>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 <em>any decision</em> will <em>not </em>follow from a recently prior soft move; and even of those decisions which <em>do </em>follow from a recently prior soft move, only some will be <em>hard</em> moves.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8302891, member: 42582"] 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 [I]achieved character level[/I]. 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. [I]Theme [/I]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.) I don't know why you are using [I]skilful [/I]and [I]unskilful[/I] 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 [USER=7015759]@Rob Kuntz[/USER] 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. Are these conjectures based on actual play experience? Are you able to give examples that illustrate what you have in mind? 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 [I]Make a hard move which follows on a recently prior soft move [/I]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 [I]any decision[/I] will [I]not [/I]follow from a recently prior soft move; and even of those decisions which [I]do [/I]follow from a recently prior soft move, only some will be [I]hard[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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