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13 décembre 2016

I have trouble wrapping my head around the notion of player skill as a specific element of the OSR gaming experience.

I have trouble wrapping my head around the notion of player skill as a specific element of the OSR gaming experience. I believe most rpg test some player skills, but I am probably just misunderstanding the whole thing. Care to help?

22 commentaires:

  1. Player skills are used when players solve an actual puzzle instead of doing so through their character and dice rolling.

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  2. Precisely, when people discuss player skill, that's just what Bastien Wauthoz said. Minimaxing your character is a skill, so is manipulating other players or trying to double guess the intrigue through infoirmation laundering etc.
    All those are also player skills, and they are probably not what people are discussing in OSR gaming discussion.

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  3. In addition to things like explicit puzzles or riddles I've also heard it used to describe creative problem-solving.

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  4. I've seen a lot of DCC games turn into weird puzzle room / Apollo 13 type scenes where players try to figure out a way to defeat a purple worm using a chicken, a rake, and a bag of night soil. Lateral thinking is definitely a player skill in those games!

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  5. The disconnect I have is that I don't really see how choosing which bar to lift and how far to disarm the trap (and rolling for STR ?) on one hand and choosing who you talk to and what you offer them (and rolling for CHA, under Persuade, your Manipulation+Subterfuge pool or +Hot) on the other are really different. But I believe the first one would fall under the OSR player skill label and not the second.

    I guess most rpg call for some level of puzzle solving at the player's level, hence player skill.

    What am I missing?

    Is it that OSR call more often for it, has fewer other rpg-components (acting, story, ...)? And so is it more a question of quantity, emphasis and general usage in the game?

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  6. I'm not super familiar with the OSR, but the sense I get is that engaging the conventional mechanics (like combat mechanics, or a "roll to disarm" ability) is seen by many OSR people a sign that you haven't cleverly manipulated the situation in a way that lets you get what you want through superior skill. If you offer a compelling bargain that the frost giants would realistically accept they do accept it -- the skill is coming up with the proposal that they would seem likely to accept.

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  7. So the skill in question would be to be able to navigate to avoid the mechanicals rules, which might be quite unfavourable?

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  8. That's the sense I get. Or at least that's one flavor of OSR, I don't know if every OSR devotee feels that way. And I don't think they'd frame "avoiding the mechanical rules" as their goal, that's more a heuristic that they're not doing it wrong. From their POV they're deeply investing in the fictional situation and treating the sense of shared vision of what's happening as real enough to be a reliable arena of play.

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  9. To toss in a wrench, I see this in pbta games with some fantastic players. They'll know the triggers to the moves and simply avoid those, letting them stay in the fruitful void.

    Same thing?

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  10. I witnessed this avoidance too. (I am not too sure about the fruitful void.) But I don't know. It feels different, but is it?

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  11. William Nichols I don't think "fruitful void" is the right term to use there. My take on things* is that if people are playing PbtA games correctly** avoiding the moves generally results in bad results for the characters. PbtA is kind of the opposite of the OSR is this respect -- the moves are "safe harbors" where you have some control over how the situation will advance, and you often get good results when they happen. If you "look to the GM" to see what the result of something unconventional is the GM will make a move, which will often be bad for the character, e.g. in AW it's likely that scarcity or the general hostility of the world will impact them in some way.

    * a nontrivial number of people would disagree with me about how AW games work
    ** a lot of people misunderstand how AW games should work, and simply play via existing habits, etc., so to the extent that a group is playing it the same way they would an old-school RPG you'll get similar results to them explicitly playing an old-school RPG.

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  12. Gherhartd Sildoenfein At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'm agreed that lots of games involve player skill, but frequently they're about different things. You could do a Fiasco dungeon crawl, in which case particular traps would probably be resolved by the audience holding up a die, and the 'player skill' is in creating an awesome setup, setting good scenes, improv instincts, etc.

    In an OSR context, the same trap might be a free-form role-playing challenge where disarming or bypassing the trap safely relies on the players successfully discerning through Q&A with the GM, and describing clever, persuasive or just lucky approaches for using what gear they have. Die rolls may result (e.g. save vs. poison if you set off the trap) but the idea is to avoid these.

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  13. Dan Maruschak There are a couple things here, and i think they are different. I don' wanna threadjack, so Gherhartd Sildoenfein , if this isn't fruitful, lemme know.

    In pbta, there's "look to the MC", sure, and that's as hard as move as the MC wants. But, notice, look to the MC is a player facing move. It just doesn't involve any dice rolls.

    There's also something like "Keep talking and engaging the players and MC, without ever quite hitting the trigger for the move", where the MC is not obligated -- and is maybe not even permitted! -- to make a move.

    YMMV, but that second is some cool stuff I've scene. I think it is similar to figuring out how to avoid rolling in OSR, and maybe is even similar skills of, well, gaming the GM.

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  14. To clarify:
    Gherhartd Sildoenfein In your example in your first paragraph BOTH of those things involve player skill. Maybe not EQUAL AMOUNTS though.
    Choosing which bar to lift is not mechanized so it's player skill (if choosing the wrong bar has bad consequences).
    Choosing who you talk to and what you offer them is not mechanized and so it's player skill (if choosing the wrong person or tactic has bad consequences).
    Both of your examples involve rolling something but the rolling part is not the skill part.
    (Though deciding which skill to roll on is a minor example of player skill)
    .
    Pierre M 's examples are also player skills but not necesarily the ones OSR games emphasize. Minmaxing especially because its not something that happens at the table, socially.
    -
    OSR games often have TONS of acting and story, they just don't cater to people who need mechanical support in order to have acting or story. Crucial difference to remember. the rules are not the game .
    -
    Avoiding unfavorable rules (or skills you're bad at) is definitely a player skill. IIf you suck at climbing, finding a way to not climb is smart and a skill.
    -
    Creativity of any kind is a player skill--but the OSR is usually talking about solving problems in character from GM info.
    -
    A great thing to look at in AW to see when player skill does not happen is the move "Discern Realities". That's not an OSR thing:
    The player's job is to discern realities from the info the GM gives them and take an action that takes advantage of said realities on its own terms (the tree monster is flammable, so I used fire). The idea of the character doing it and then getting an abstract bonus (+1 forward) is antithetical to encouraging player skill.
    -
    (Though OSR games are kind of all over the place and some are less interested in player skill--because any game inspired by old mechanics might be OSR )

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  15. While the AW and PbTA stuff is quite interesting, I'd prefer if we could focus on player skill and OSR. My bad for including that +Hot example.

    What I got so far is that player skill in this context means:
    - the player is using their wits to solve their character's problem or reach their character's objective,
    - this isn"t rule mastery, nor social/conversation skill, this applies to the fiction,
    - hedging your bets
    - rolls and character abilities might be tested to overcome part of the problem or to test whether the character achieves what they try, but they don't address the problem as a whole

    And : it isn't specific to OSR, but more frequent in OSR gaming. Central?

    Does it sounds right to you?

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  16. Thanks Zak Sabbath, that clarifies some things. Would you say stacking modifiers is an OSR player skill?

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  17. Gherhartd Sildoenfein yes, though to clarify:
    -Social/conversation skill can have elements of player skill. A Charismatic player is quite possibly more likely to be able to pitch to an NPC a thing that NPC is likely to care about while an uncharismatic player might be tongue-tied or unable to think straight while talking to an npc.
    -Deciding which thing to roll on can be player skill:
    Say I am trying to hit something but am bad at it, so instead of shooting an arrow, I drop a load of bricks on my target from a high wall (forcing the ogre to make a Dex save--which ogres are bad at, rather than forcing me to make a to hit roll, which I am bad at) then that could be player skill.
    Now you might fairly ask: doesn't this require rules mastery?
    Not necessarily: if I go "Ok, DM what would get rolled if I dropped a load of bricks on him?" (which I should do) and the DM tells me (which the DM should) then I have done it without rules mastery.

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  18. Gherhartd Sildoenfein Stacking modifiers can be a player skill, yes.
    For example, when I was consulting on 5e they had a mechanic where you couldn't go beyond "disadvantage" (couldn't get double disadvantage) and they did have a mechanic which gave you bonuses (and minuses) while drunk.
    Which meant that that early 5e was made so if you made a bad guy drunk and on fire he was actually better off than if he was just on fire.
    And I want to encourage players to get the bad guy drunk AND on fire.
    -
    If the stacked bonuses are just based on system mastery then that is still a kind of player skill but not the kind OSR games try to encourage. (It's "lonely fun")

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  19. I am very interested with this vision of minmaxing (or character building or whatever you want to call it) and bonus stacking as "lonely fun". In my experience these thinks are better off when worked together (eheh, combo), so I now very little of the cases where there could be isolating?
    Is it like cooperative board games where the player with the best game mastery tells the others what to do and is, ultimately, the only one to play ? What are the rpg mechanics encouraging this ?

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  20. Gabriel Gnouchaton You are confusing 2 things:
    -"bonus stacking" can happen any time. It is not necessarily "lonely fun"
    -Minmaxing requires consulting the book (reading) it is therefore done alone or at least not while talking to other people and requires system mastery. This is lonely fun. This is not encouraged in most OSR games.
    -re: Your third paragraph. Yes. This is not an OSR trait and, for example, having to decide at first level between "Disarming finesse" and "Advanced disarm" would be an example of a mechanic encouraging lonely fun (it is unclear fromt he name what the things are--you have to read to figure out what your pc is doing). The player must have a high degree of system mastery just to make that choice.

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