D&D General "Player Skill" versus DM Ingenuity as a playstyle.

[MerricB]

Why are there ten-foot poles in the equipment lists?

Because players asked for them in the games when they worked out they were the solution to problems like concealed pit traps.

But by including them in the rules, the designers spoiled the answer for future gamers.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why are there ten-foot poles in the equipment lists?

Because players asked for them in the games when they worked out they were the solution to problems like concealed pit traps.

But by including them in the rules, the designers spoiled the answer for future gamers.

That's why you make the passages 5 ft. wide instead of 10 ft. wide.

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, yeah. I view resolving problems with rolls the same as combat. To me, both are fail states. You didn’t sufficiently engage your creativity and/or interact with the fictional environment enough to avoid using the dice. Stack the fictional odds so much in your favor via player creativity that you don’t need to roll. To me, it’s “I don’t want to think, so I’ll roll instead.”

In some games it's to do with when players want to do their thinking. Do players want to do their thinking when they're in the problematic fictional situation. Or do they want to do their thinking in charop. And of course, it's not a dichotomy.

To lean on the notion of pawn stance, one can review questions like - are four pawns best, or three pawns and one bishop? Players can cunninngly conceive character configurations to cromulently confront complex challenges.

 

[clearstream]

Man, some real gems in this quotation (I know these aren't your words). Stuff like: "When all the players had all of the rules in front of them, it became next to impossible to beguile them into danger or mischief." Wow, it's almost like having to actually adjudicate honestly and fairly, rather than being able to pull a fast one whenever you like it, actually pushes DMs to think and work rather than being able to handwave away any player effort they like!

I do feel there are good arguments for rules being binding on all and open book. Although I do recall one early game of SPI's DragonQuest in which the GM insisted folk read only their own character mechanics. That drove suspicion, distrust and ultimately moral conflicts between the Black Mage and the Ensorceler.

On the other appendage, I'm a fan of some sorts of ultralight and freeform: forms of play that put principled negotiation above preagreed rules.

I will genuinely never understand this complaint. Getting annoyed because not keeping your rules in a black box means the players can call you out for BS? I just don't feel any sympathy for that. Of course folks are going to bristle at accountability when they've not been subject to it before. Accountability sucks when you're used to doing whatever you like, whenever you like.

This part feels speculative. Putting the rules in a black box for the sake of playfully preserving puzzles (what is it with alliteration this morning?) is very different from keeping rules secret for the sake of breaking them. It could be, I grant you, but it is not necessarily so (and in my experience, it's rare... vanishingly so among informed and experienced player cultures.)

 

[clearstream]

No. I'm criticizing DMs who think it's impossible to challenge players unless they hide the rules of the game from those players.

A fleeting thought that amused me on that: how about when the challenge is to deduce the rules?

The troll is given as an example. The rule is "regenerates hit points unless damaged by fire." If I know that rule up front, the challenge changes... most likely diminishes. I feel like there are valid concerns about the potentially arbitrary nature of a one-rule challenge like that. It could be more interesting with a couple of entangled rules, that interacted in a trouble-creating way, such that through observing behaviour one could - under pressure - puzzle out how to solve it. But in any case, where the challenge is to deduce the rule one can scarcely divulge that rule.

Digressing, something I ever more strongly want to advocate is a principle of charity: conceding each mode of play its best possible version. The recently deceased philosopher Dennett described that as "the best antidote [for the] tendency to caricature one’s opponent".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Putting the rules in a black box for the sake of playfully preserving puzzles (what is it with alliteration this morning?) is very different from keeping rules secret for the sake of breaking them. It could be, I grant you, but it is not necessarily so (and in my experience, it's rare... vanishingly so among informed and experienced player cultures.)

During last game, one of the PCs turned around only to find the killer clown standing behind them with a knife raised.

What I cheating or was I playing by the rules? No way for the players to tell.

In fact, I was playing by the rules. I had been moving the stealthed clown in the GM layer (online game) all the while the party were standing around having a discussion. It was keeping to cover. I checked everyone's passive perception. No one could detect the clown until it was right behind the PC with it's knife.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

By Gygax did. Gotcha monsters where his stock in trade. And Gygax has a lot of fans. You are going to have a hard time arguing that playing D&D this way is wrong.

A monster's stats are not the rules of the game.

A fleeting thought that amused me on that: how about when the challenge is to deduce the rules?

The troll is given as an example.

See above.

The rule is "regenerates hit points unless damaged by fire." If I know that rule up front, the challenge changes... most likely diminishes.

And if that's the only challenge the DM is relying on, then yes, I think that DM has started relying on crutches and gotchas rather than meaningful challenge.

Digressing, something I ever more strongly want to advocate is a principle of charity: conceding each mode of play its best possible version. The recently deceased philosopher Dennett described that as "the best antidote [for the] tendency to caricature one’s opponent".

Okay. I was literally quoting the actual text. If someone tells you it sucks that they can't pirate games because now they have to pay money for the games they want to play, is it uncharitable to say that they should've been paying for those games in the first place? Charity is important, I absolutely grant that, but it's not true that absolutely every statement merits that charity.

It is an outright caricature to imply that a game where players know all the rules is a game where it's at all "impossible" to challenge the players. Either the person saying that is engaging in completely unwarranted hyperbole, which does not merit being taken seriously, or they sincerely believe what they're saying, in which case they need to be told that they are deeply, deeply mistaken.

But, in the spirit of the request: How should I interpret the statement, "When all the players had all of the rules in front of them, it became next to impossible to beguile them into danger or mischief."? What does it mean to "beguile" players with ignorance of the game's rules? How does this statement differ from black-box adjudication?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A monster's stats are not the rules of the game.

So what are you worried about the DM keeping secret then? I only keep secret monster stat blocks (and only until the players find out) and information the PCs would no know. All the game rules are available. Some of the players don’t know them all that well, but that is one of the strengths of D&D, players can jump in without much knowledge of the rules, as I did 42 years ago.

Do you have evidence of DMs hiding rules from you?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So what are you worried about the DM keeping secret then? I only keep secret monster stat blocks (and only until the players find out) and information the PCs would no know. All the game rules are available. Some of the players don’t know them all that well, but that is one of the strengths of D&D, players can jump in without much knowledge of the rules, as I did 42 years ago.

Do you have evidence of DMs hiding rules from you?

There are numerous people on this very forum who have said, more than once, that they would prefer that players not even see their own character sheets--that the players just say things they wish to do, and the DM tells them what happens. Hence my phrases like "black box"ing the rules and the like. This is not some insane notion that only exists in my head. Real people want and pursue this, lamenting that player knowledge of the rules has made players "entitled" and other such nonsense.

It's been an undercurrent to D&D for about as long as there's been a thing called D&D. Fudging rolls, for example, is just another facet of that same idea. "Challenging" the players, not by actually giving them a puzzle they need to solve or a height they must reach, but by not allowing them to know how things work nor to connect their actions to the consequences that result.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There are numerous people on this very forum who have said, more than once, that they would prefer that players not even see their own character sheets--that the players just say things they wish to do, and the DM tells them what happens. Hence my phrases like "black box"ing the rules and the like. This is not some insane notion that only exists in my head. Real people want and pursue this, lamenting that player knowledge of the rules has made players "entitled" and other such nonsense.

It's been an undercurrent to D&D for about as long as there's been a thing called D&D. Fudging rolls, for example, is just another facet of that same idea. "Challenging" the players, not by actually giving them a puzzle they need to solve or a height they must reach, but by not allowing them to know how things work nor to connect their actions to the consequences that result.

This is very much not the Gygaxian playstyle that the OP is talking about, and it’s not done to catch the players out. The point is, the game should function the way the real world does, so if the player says what they do, the outcome is what you would expect in the real world. The rules are invisible, they are not hidden to catch players out.

Nevertheless, the rules are freely available on the internet for anyone to see, so you can’t actually play 5e this way. I expect what you have read is just aspirational.

There are some crpgs that keep rules hidden, or reveal them gradually, but this is done in the name of immersion, and ease of learning, not to try and catch out players.

Gotcha very much is Gygaxian, with everything designed to catch the players out especially if they do “sensible” things like listen at doors (a creature crawls into your ear, you are dead, ha ha). It’s not done by hiding the rules. It’s done by adding something to the world whenever the players develop a technique to avoid the last thing you added to try and kill them.

“Fudging rolls” isn’t done when the point of the game is to challenge players. It’s done when the point of the game is to tell an entertaining story. Since “challenge” is not the point in this type of game “cheating” does not matter. In The Hobbit Bard rolls a crit at the most dramatically appropriate time. Tolkien cheated. This is lampshaded in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!