Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I don't know if "less sophisticated" is right. It's just bad play.
If we're thinking about White Plume Mountain as performance for an audience, then - at the point where we have to cross over the hanging discs - it might be amusing for me to suddenly lean into my PCs fear of heights. But if we're playing to win the tournament (and before I get dogpiled, yes I know S2 was never actually a tournament module but it would be well-suited to being one) then the player on our team who does that is just a spoiler. They've misunderstood the context of the activity we're all engaged in.
I don't think that discussion of tactical play in a RPG has to use the same analytic and evaluative vocabulary as the discussion of the portrayal of characters - where notions like shallow, sophisticated and the like do have purchase because we're engaged in aesthetic judgement. When it comes to tactics, I think relevant notions are more like clever, bold, overly cautious, etc.
Not sure I agree with that. I do think that complex tactical play is a more "sophisticated" approach.
Ok, I did just look up the definition, and found two:
"having, revealing, or proceeding from a great deal of worldly experience and knowledge of fashion and culture."
and
"(of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity."
Seems to me that the former applies to roleplaying, and the latter to mechanics/tactics.