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Post by Probie Tim on Jun 8, 2017 6:47:16 GMT -8
The other day on Twitter, some Dude was posting about player skill in OSR D&D-esque games. Pretty much, Dude was saying that since there aren't any real character skills in these games, yet his character knows different things than he does, failing at something because HE doesn't know what to do is unsatisfying.
I thought this would be a GREAT topic for discussion here at OSR Central.
So first, let's take a moment and talk about what is meant by "player skill". Basically, this is referring to the player's ability to RP the character taking actions to solve puzzles or search rooms or what have you. Instead of:
"I search the room." "Ok, make your search roll." "Let's see... that's 1d20, plus 2 for my search bonus... I got an 18!" "Ok, you find a bag in the corner just behind the bed that contains 100gp."
You wind up with something a little more narrative and interactive. For instance:
"I search the room." "Ok, where are you starting and what are you doing?" "Well, first I'm going to give it a cursory once over, just meander around the room a bit, look at whatever furniture there is, and pay specific attention to anything which looks like it's been moved recently." "Ok, this looks to have once been a bedroom. There's a chest of drawers in one corner, and in the other corner there's a bed. There are some scuff-marks on the ground right by the bed's legs, which could indicate that the bed's been moved." "Ah ha! I'm going to carefully grab the corner of the bed and slide it in the same direction the scuff-marks indicate it's been moved." "Excellent, in the space you've opened between the bed and the wall, you can see a leather sack previously hidden by the bed. It contains 100gp."
(Yeah, I rushed to the 100gp because I was tired of typing out the example, heh.)
So... I don't think the issue is as much "the player not knowing what to do" as Dude thinks. It's more an issue of the player considering his character concept and abilities, and then describing the steps his character would take to do the thing based on the character concept and abilities. Which results in the GM and the player working together to describe the scene using those steps.
In addition, I think player skill includes things like, "would my character really know that or not?" It may be amazingly obvious to the player that the bookcase is hiding a secret door. But if the player is taking on the role of a meathead barbarian, good player skill would be knowing that searching the bookcase wouldn't be something his character would do. I mean, come on, books? A meathead barbarian? On the other hand, were he playing a super intelligent wizard, NOT searching the bookcase first would not be good player skill.
I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
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Post by uncommonman on Jun 8, 2017 8:29:24 GMT -8
If you as a player lack the knowledge the character you play have it is in some cases impossible to "do the right thing", that's where the GM needs to step in and help.
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Post by Kainguru on Jun 8, 2017 8:32:53 GMT -8
A related aside/anecdote: way back 'in the day when ADnD wasn't an edition' I had a Player with a Ranger. Knowing the next few sessions would involve intense outdoor survival against extreme elements, that Player took it on himself to go to the library (that thing before we had an Internet) and read up on various survival techniques used by the armed forces. He then threw these techniques at me when things looked dire and party survival was in doubt - I gave him kudos for such ingenuity and XP. It wasn't in the books or the rulings but it made narrative sense that a hard core survivalist (Ranger) would know these things. It also let the story progress and the Ranger define his valued niche in the party. Sometimes we have to move beyond the mechanics and the rulings and go with what makes sense. The Player might know things his/her PC could not and vice versa plus sometimes the PC knows what the Player knows because the Player has taken the time to find out. It's this aspect of TTRPG's that lend themselves so well to being educational aides - as the games have become more mechanistic or 'hand waving' narrative, I believe, they have lost much of this positive aspect to the hobby. Story/Narrativist vs Simulationist should be a spectrum not a binary and a sweet spot found somewhere in the middle - a third option Aaron
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Post by The Northman on Jun 8, 2017 12:13:33 GMT -8
I could be wrong, but wasn't this presented as one of the options in addition to NWP's?
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Post by Kainguru on Jun 8, 2017 14:30:13 GMT -8
It was before the Wilderness Survival Guide existed . . the days of yore. To be fair it may have existed but had yet to hit our FLGS in what amounted to living in the Tatooine of the Gaming Universe. We waited months for Dragon magazine and sometimes years for rulebooks . . . and when they did come in they sold out fast as the supply would be very small (ie: a few copies would get a timely release at an exorbitant mark up because they had been air freighted in eg: but last months Dragon at 2-3x the RRP or wait 3-6months and pay RRP) I mean we were at the arse end of the Universe within Oz, trips to Melbourne and Sydney were joyous affairs spent finding the FLGS and getting all the 'new' stuff Aaron
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Post by zoomfarg on Jun 8, 2017 17:12:52 GMT -8
I think this topic is super interesting. It's one of the major reason I value OSR influence on the hobby, even if I tend not to play it. This topic reminds me of the "what are social skills for" debate (listed as a dead horse topic on the website). Of course, the second, OSR style description sounds more fun and engaging. Yet I don't want go to to med school to play Dr. House. He definitely knows tons of things that I, the player, don't know--things which go beyond critical thinking about searching a room. So what's a good approach to playing Dr. House? I'm reminded of a saying: If we're being chased by a bear, I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun *you*. So maybe you don't have to know as much as Dr. House, just more than your GM? Side note: This is similar to why I like Zelda more than Skyrim
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Jun 8, 2017 17:58:22 GMT -8
Yet I don't want go to to med school to play Dr. House. He definitely knows tons of things that I, the player, don't know--things which go beyond critical thinking about searching a room. So what's a good approach to playing Dr. House? The Perception example is a good one Probie Tim, but zoomfarg's line above is more what I was thinking about. I don't have any wilderness survival skills (being a Cub Scout in the middle of a big city kind of sucks), but still want to play a ranger. I don't have any medical training, but still want to play a doctor. I'm not smooth at all, but still want to play a PUA vampire douchebag. All these characters know things that I, the player, do not. That is where mechanical things like Skills, Talents, and Distinctions come into play. Giving my character proficiency in Survival means they know how to find water, shelter, and food when stranded in a desert. High ranks in Knowledge: Medicine means my character can clean wounds, perform minor surgery with the right tools, and possibly identify illnesses based on symptoms. Having a Presence + Manipulation dice pool of 10 with a specialty in Seduction allows my character to smooth talk his way into anyone's pants, especially when he turns on the Majesty. Those numbers and dice on my character sheet allow my characters to do things that I, the player, have no idea how to do or skill at doing. But relying only on the dice leads back to the example of searching a room @iamtime first brought up. "I search for tracks. *roll* That's a 17 with my proficiency bonus." "Intelligence 3 plus my 5 ranks in Knowledge: Medicine is 8. *roll* That's five successes, so you recover 2 lethal and 1 nonlethal damage." "I sweet talk that frat boy at the bar. *roll* My successes are twice his Willpower, so I can convince him to do pretty much anything. I lead him out back." Doing a bit of real world research into the topic as Kainguru suggests is great. (I know what libraries are too, buddy.) But I also don't think it should be necessary. Requiring it pushes things too close to the sphere of "work" for my tastes, and I don't think people should have to work for their entertainment.
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Post by Probie Tim on Jun 8, 2017 18:14:24 GMT -8
The Perception example is a good one Probie Tim, but zoomfarg's line above is more what I was thinking about. I don't have any wilderness survival skills (being a Cub Scout in the middle of a big city kind of sucks), but still want to play a ranger. I don't have any medical training, but still want to play a doctor. I'm not smooth at all, but still want to play a PUA vampire douchebag. All these characters know things that I, the player, do not. And you don't have any magic skills, but you still want to play a magic-user, and you don't have any assassination abilities, but you still want to play an assassin. Those things should all be built into the class with game mechanics for them. Generally speaking, I think, "player skill" refers to those things for which there are no game mechanics. Like searching a room. For things with mechanics, "player skill" can still be used for narrative purposes; an awesome description of the magic-user waving his arms about and chanting obscure words, the ranger slinking through the underbrush unseen to track tonight's dinner deer, or the doctor pulling off that awesome surgery to the amazement of everyone in the gallery. Keep in mind, I'm not putting myself out there as an authority on the subject of "player skill" or how it applies unilaterally across OSR games. I thought it was a good topic for a discussion because I'm interested in what everyone else has to say. So my responses may be wrong, and I'm not afraid to admit it. That said, I can say that I do not rely solely on "player skill" for things where game mechanics exist. You want to search a room in a dungeon? Tell me how you're doing it. You want to cast a spell? Make your spellcasting roll (or whatever mechanic there is). You want to stitch up your buddy who just had his stomach cut open? Make your surgery roll. But as I said above, "player skill" can be synonymous with "narrative description" in those circumstances where mechanics exist. You may not have survival skills, but I bet you've seen enough on TV (or read about them in RPG books, heh) to describe it a bit. You may not have medical skills, but I bet you've seen enough E.R. or Grey's Anatomy to describe what's going on enough to sound cool. *shrug* Just my $.02.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Jun 8, 2017 18:49:57 GMT -8
Generally speaking, I think, "player skill" refers to those things for which there are no game mechanics. Like searching a room. For things with mechanics, "player skill" can still be used for narrative purposes; an awesome description of the magic-user waving his arms about and chanting obscure words, the ranger slinking through the underbrush unseen to track tonight's dinner deer, or the doctor pulling off that awesome surgery to the amazement of everyone in the gallery. As I'm only just starting to dip my toe into the OSR pool and started gaming with systems that had skill systems, where do you draw the line between game mechanics and no game mechanics? That's not meant to be a challenge, but an honest question. Also, I was in no way saying you were wrong about anything. This is an interesting topic, we just might have different definitions on "player skill".
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Post by Probie Tim on Jun 8, 2017 20:16:36 GMT -8
Also, I was in no way saying you were wrong about anything. Right, right, I just wanted to make sure it was known I'm not speaking from a position of authority. where do you draw the line between game mechanics and no game mechanics? Well, I'm looking at Swords & Wizardry Complete, 3rd printing as my base. So when I quote rules-n-shit, that's where it's coming from. So. If a Magic-User wants to cast a spell, there are rules for how that works. There's a game mechanic that every day he must memorize his spells, and once he casts one it disappears from his mind. There are specific rules about how many spells he gets per day, and what happens when each spell is cast. When the Magic-User wants to cast a spell, he says, "I want to cast this particular spell", the rules for that spell are followed, and the spell is cast. There is no, "Awesome! How are you casting the spell? Are you drawing thaumaturgic symbols on the ground? Invoking the name of powerful demons? C'mon, Magic-User player, tell me!" Well, I mean, there might be, but it's largely flavor at that point. But I digress. Similarly, if a Ranger wants to track an orc through the woods, his player (or the GM, if it's that kind of game) looks at page 22, sees that he has a 90% chance minus 10% for each day of age of the tracks, and rolls percentile dice. Again, flavor text may be applied ("Ok, the Ranger ducks into the underbrush, slowly moving through it... he spots broken twigs and flattened grass which help him stay on the path.") but it's just flavor. The GM isn't making a ruling based on how well the player describes the tracking. I know it seems silly that I'm explaining these mechanics to you. But go with me here. Now try to find "how to search a room" in that book. Or a "spot hidden" class ability. Or way to make perception or notice rolls. Those words don't even appear in the index, and Wisdom - a common ability for this type of stuff - is only described as "common sense". There isn't a game mechanic for it. This is where the GM gets to adjudicate his black, little heart out. He could, very easily, make up a quick mechanic: "oh, uh, sure, make an... Intelligence check. No, Wisdom. Yeah, roll under your Wisdom on a d20..." but as you noted that's kinda boring. So that's when, I think, you'd turn to what we're calling "player skill" and enact the room search from my first post. There's no game mechanic to speak of. So, much like when two people are RPing against each other, the GM listens to what the player says, and reacts accordingly. That's the "player skill" mechanic, heh. Of course, in my case, that's somewhat muddied because I use dice rolls even at that point: describe what you want to do, roll a die, and the better your roll the more you'll get out of what you described you're doing. But that's just my particular GM style: I like to use dice rolls to help me adjudicate. I don't know if that actually answered your question or not, but that's how I see it.
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Post by ilina on Jun 8, 2017 20:27:39 GMT -8
skill systems give you a better understanding of what your character can do. but they are heavily minmaxable due to some skills being more valuable than others. like an Apothecary having more value than a tailor or hairdresser.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Jun 8, 2017 22:53:03 GMT -8
OK. I think I get what you're saying. For certain aspects of the game, casting a spell for example, the player's narration of how the character goes about performing the action has absolutely no effect on the outcome of that action. Describing your wizard's intricate hand gestures isn't going to grant you a bonus on your die roll to actually cast the spell. It it purely flavor. But for other aspects of the game, perception and searching especially, the player's narration of their character's action has a huge effect on the outcome of said action. Sometimes to the point where success or failure hinges entirely on that narration. Unless you say your character is looking under the bed, they're simply not going to find the magic ring. The tracking thing was muddying the waters for me a bit. Tracking is looking for clues like bent leaves, crushed blades of grass, turned stones, etc. which could be found by anyone if they looked in the right place. But where the skill comes in is knowing which of those signs indicate the passage of a creature and which are just the results of weather and natural phenomenon. Further muddying things for me was my PbtA mindset. Much like in OSR games (at least I think so), PbtA GMs are reminded that they are the senses of the PCs and are strongly encouraged to give the players honest information about their surroundings at all times. So that "searching the room example" in your first post could totally be a Dungeon World game. In those games though, Discern Realities, Assess a Situation, Investigate a Mystery, or whatever, are "put the pieces together" moves. They're not rolls to determine if you notice things, but rolls to represent your character making sense of the information they have that you, the player, wouldn't be able to do as you're not actually there. skill systems give you a better understanding of what your character can do. but they are heavily minmaxable due to some skills being more valuable than others. like an Apothecary having more value than a tailor or hairdresser. How valuable skills are really depends on the situation, the player, and the GM. I don't think that some skills are inherently more or less valuable than others.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2017 23:31:03 GMT -8
So I'll talk about some skill that ruined the game. The game was D&D. This was back in college. I had taken courses in geology and encouraged my friends to as well (fascinating stuff, excellent professor). All of a sudden, my friend starts asking the GM what type of stone the cave walls are made of and other such facts which have no meaning to the GM. A rock is a rock is a rock, right? Not so much. Imagine if instead of just trying to map a dungeon you were also trying to infer things about the dungeon itself based on all these angles and layers.
Well, the GM gets frustrated before long because, "its just a rock!" And you know what? He was right. There was no information to glean, because the GM had no clue about geology and hadn't planned this area with rock formations in mind. Similarly, any player with advanced knowledge beyond the GM will cause problems in time. Instead of trying to figure out how to play Dr House, imagine a real Dr House was at your table and playing a doctor. What a nightmare that would be. "He's going into cardiac arrest!" "Is he, because no one goes into a cardiac arrest because of a cyst." "...Jesus man. Would you just go along with it... please!?"
As far as player skill goes, I don't think that's even a good term for it. "I search the room" vs "I look under the statue" is a difference of granularity. If an issue comes up with a player being too general, prompt them for more information. "How are you searching the room? What are you looking for?"
If your goal is immersion (defined here as placing themselves in the mind of the character), then asking for more information is probably the best way to accomplish that. A thief looking for traps has a different mindset then one looking for treasure. Instead of thinking about what is hidden in a space, imagine they have a power: Detect X. As a GM, ask them what the value for X is. "So, whatcha looking for?"
You can take it a step further and ask them how they are looking for it. The how step is probably a good point to apply a modifier. If they choose a way that aligns with what is there, then that is going to help out a lot. It doesn't garentee anything though. How many times have we all looked in a cupboard for something that we know is there, and are unable to find it? Hence the modifier, not just giving it to them every time (though giving it to them may make sense sometimes). If they pick a method that doesn't make sense for the given thing they could notice, give them a negative modifier. After all, they might still spot it on accident.
If your player doesn't know what ther are looking for, just give them a general description of the space. If your player doesn't know how to look, talk it out with them. You are in a moment where you can screw the player (not the character), or you can help them learn. This is often a good time for a knowledge check (passive or active, I prefer passive).
As a GM, your job is description for a good chunk of gameplay. This includes what the character would know. So if there is a gap in player skill, the first place to look for the cause and solution is the GM. You can do this by peppering in such knowledge into your narrations as you go along or with interludes. Flash back and play out a little scene where the character learned to disarm traps and what to look for. You've enriched your game world and taught your player something they can use for their character going forward.
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Post by ilina on Jun 8, 2017 23:41:32 GMT -8
some skills are more valuable to an Adventuring Character than others. an Apothecary can make medicine and also treat wounds, a Tailor can make Clothes, a Hairdresser can cut and style hair.
in a typical campaign where i needed to travel on an adventure to achieve some goal. i would rather bring the person that can do something useful on the road. the Apothecary can make medicine or other alchemical goods in town, but on the road, they can treat wounds, identify herbs and minerals, and extra poisons. that is more useful in most adventuring situations than being able to craft or repair clothing or being able to cut and style other people's hair.
some characters are just better suited to the adventuring life. this can be as simple as the skillset they pursue. a Blacksmith or Carpenter is strong and hardy, and would likely make a decent warrior with a bit of training,
certain skillsets encourage certain attribute formations, and certain attribute spreads encourage certain attributes. a small waifish young girl would be a lousy warrior, but could actually be passable as a spellcaster, a doctor, a scholar or a rogue. in most cases, spellcaster and rogue are more likely.
the brawny linebacker would make a horrible rogue. but they could be a great warrior, a passable spellcaster, or a passable doctor or scholar.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2017 23:49:04 GMT -8
I got this idea from the Savage Worlds GM podcast, Full disclosure.
There are two kinds of checks. You have checks the players call for and checks the GM calls for.
When the GM calls for a check he sets the stakes of that check. Roll ____ to or because of ____. The player needs only roll the dice, since the situation has already been laid out.
When the player wants to roll the dice, they need to establish the situation for that roll. Rolling with no action in mind is masterbation. You don't roll perception to know what you sense. Thats not what that skill does. The GM tells you what you sense in any scene. Rolling perception is for when you are gathering more information through a specific method or action. "Can I roll Perception to see if we are being followed?" "How you are checking to see if you are being followed?" "I'll run the next red light and see if anyone else does too."
If I've learned one lesson from PbtA, Fate, Cortex+, etc it is to stop thinking in terms of rolls and start thinking in terms of actions. Too often we are jumping the shark to get a roll on the table when it's not time for that yet. In the above example I might have the player first roll their drive skill (since they are about to do something dangerous and want to come out of it unharmed). Then they might need to make a perceptioncheck, but I might also just let them know that the guy three cars back hops the curb and runs the light after they do.
Most times when players ask for a roll they are sharing intent with you. It's your job as GM to ask them how they intend to turn that intent into an action. I can't just assume that your character would run a red light to look for/lose a tail. That's stepping over the line. If the player doesn't know how to turn that intention into action, I'd say its time for a knowledge check or an interlude if their character would know that information.
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