Why I Hate Skills

[Fenris-77]

My man, you are busy criticizing rules and mechanics you have no experience with. You don't get to play the badly designed card here.

I'll also point out that your rules as setting truth position is precisely the opposite of your newly stated intolerance for badly design rules position. Rather the opposite in fact - they literally can't both be your position as they are mutually exclusive. So, you figure out how to stop making entirely contrary statements and I'll go back to paying any kind of attention. Is good plan!

 

[Pedantic]

This all begs the question as to why you're making declarative statements about systems and playstyles you have no experience with.

What precisely are you talking about? I've made quite clearly opinion marked points about the design impacts of various choices, and primarily suggested the discourse around resource/logistical engagement doesn't turn on having/not having skills so much as a variety of other factors. I even agreed outright with someone describing the sort of play I'm implicitly advocating for as "a specific kind of gamist."

You seem to be accusing me of some kind of bad faith argument that I really don't think I deserve, and I'm not sure is meaningfully related to my points.

My man, you are busy criticizing rules and mechanics you have no experience with. You don't get to play the badly designed card here.

Excuse me? I have 25 years of RPG experience, I've played dozens of systems, I design board games, there's a stack of game design textbooks on the table next to me, I've been hanging around design forums, doing the pontificating about RPG design thing for decades. Feel free to disagree with my position on the merits, or even just on principle, but I am absolutely entitled to an opinion here.

I'll also point out that your rules as setting truth position is precisely the opposite of your newly stated intolerance for badly design rules position. Rather the opposite in fact - they literally can't both be your position as they are mutually exclusive. So, you figure out how to stop making entirely contrary statements and I'll go back to paying any kind of attention. Is good plan!

This is nonsense. I've tried to explain it a few different ways now, but these two points simply aren't in contradiction, and I have no idea why or how you are reading them that way. If the rules don't do what you want them to do, they are badly designed. If you want the setting to be other than it is, you need to design he rules to make it so; failing to do so is a failure of design, and means the setting is not as you envisioned it. What is the contradiction you're seeing?

My emphasis on requiring a stringent design standard is what allows me to hold the position they are formative of the setting. You can't have the latter if you don't believe the rules can be made good enough to provide setting information to the player.

 

[Fenris-77]

You also said you have no experience with encounter rolls or OSR games, which is what I was specifically talking about. That would suggest that you don't have anything to say about those mechanics.

And those points are in complete contradiction, that's we are having this little contretemps.

The encounter mechanics in OSR games aren't really in-setting logic, which is precisely the problem. OSR encounter mechanics do exactly what they are supposed to do, quite well generally, but with the downside that when you split the party they cease to make the same kind of sense. You want to say on the one hand that the rules are the setting (which is silly) and also the other hand you don't support bad rules. That bit is probably a given, no one with any sense supports bad rules. The problem is that OSR encounter mechanics aren't badly written - they do the job they are supposed to do very well. Provided that you don't split the party. If we were talking about another kind of game, one that wasn't laser focused on resource management as the core game play loop, your objections might hold more water.

Your position in the above reply relies on the reader assuming that you fully understand whatever you mean by stringent design standards and that when you say rules being 'good enough' that you have some kind of authority to make that distinction despite having no experience with the rules we are actually discussing. If you're a best-selling game designer (for some value of best) then maybe I'll grant you something there. I actually am a best selling game designer (again, for some value of best) of specifically OSR games, so I'm not working outside my metier here. How about you, since we're making claims to authority? If you want to make claims to authority you should back them up.

Further to that same point, if you actually are a game designer then knowing what games you design, what systems and what genres, might provide a valuable insight into your position.

Personally, I don't think that claims to authority get us very far. I don't actually think that the fact that I've sold a bunch of games on DTRPG means that anyone should take my opinion more seriously that anyone else's aside from what my words actually say. You seem to think that though. Perhaps I'm mistaken? If that's the case please explain your position on what exactly stringent design standards are in your opinion and why anyone should care.

 

[pemerton]

I also think that "the answer is not on your character sheet" thing is part of it. When the solution is on your character sheet...when a player is invoking an ability/spell/item that belongs to their character...then I think there is going to be a tendency to view the solution as an individual action. But when you're looking around the table saying, "What do we do?" it's going to tend to be more of a group solution.

I don't think I follow this.

At least in my experience, when playing AD&D with PCs of (say) 5th or higher level, then when the group looks around the table saying "What do we do?", most often the answer is something that is on someone's character sheet - typically a spell or a magic item; but perhaps some mundane piece of gear, or a large number of hit points, or a good saving throw vs poison.

What's a specific scenario in which OSR-style "grapple with the environment" is wedded to a longer, detailed skill list? Doesn't have to be a specific game, just an outline of a play procedure.

The specific game that comes to mind, for me, is Torchbearer. Rolemaster can also play a bit like this, but it's procedure of play is quite a bit less robust.

The method that TB2e uses - roughly speaking - is a cost for each check made ("the grind"); detailed skill resolution with "objective" DCs; every check that is failed generates a consequence (either a debilitating condition, or a twist which typically requires new check to be made. There's a bit more to it, but those are the basics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I agree with your point broadly, but I think we would call exactly the opposite things in that situation "meta-gaming." XD

Knowing the rules allows you to portray a character who lives in the setting. It is actively dangerous to leave your friends if you legitimately think people might try to kill you. All those details about movement and perception are precisely the sorts of things that allow you to make informed decisions, working with the same stuff your character can.

Expecting genre conventions to apply is precisely meta; you are not acting with the understanding a person in the world can have (unless they're some kind of meta-aware bard type, who understandings the dramatic consequences of screaming for help as a player character), but instead with your understanding of how a narrative must evolve in this kind of situation.

Exactly. I don't want to think in terms of story when I play my PC. They're in the world, and all they know (and all I can fairly act on IMO) is stuff that's also in the world.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So explain to me how encounter rolls are a setting truth (whatever that is). You need to step back from shizz like my desired setting truths too, that is some wonky and awkwardly pointed verbiage there my doode. My reading of your post is that you have some kind of fundamental misunderstanding about the terms you are using.

Encounter rolls double when the party splits, that's how most OSR rule sets work, either explicitly or implicitly. There's not a single in-setting reason why that should be the case as encounter rolls are a mechanical game balance thing, and only peripherally an in-setting sort of thing.

Not to my mind. Encounter rolls determine the diagetic likelihood of having an encounter in a particular area. Makes sense for the chances of an encounter to go up if split the party and cover more area.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not to my mind. Encounter rolls determine the diagetic likelihood of having an encounter in a particular area. Makes sense for the chances of an encounter to go up if split the party and cover more area.

That isn't even remotely what those mechanics are actually doing. You know it and I know it. We are gentlemen and lies do not become us. So, Princess Bride quotes aside, this is still some shaky analysis. The design of encounter rolls has nothing to do with diegetic anything. It has to do with appropriate pressure on resource pools. That's kind of entirely how OSR games work, mechanically speaking. It's explained in a vague way that might be called diegetic, but I don't think you want to go there given how strident your opposition has been to similarly tenuous diegetic connections for other things that you are happy to label as metacurrency.

Isn't it a pain when your chickens come home to roost?