What is "player skill?"

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 3:28 am

What counts as "player skill" in a tabletop RPG? Different games test different kinds of skills--math skills, visual memory, reaction time, long-term planning, et cetera. What skills do TTRPGs test? What skills should they test?

I think that in the old-school D&D playstyle, the most important player skills, i.e, those being tested the most heavily, are, in no particular order:
0) Being able to read the DM's mind
1) Thinking "outside the box" to solve problems
2) Oregon Trail-style equipment planning (remembering to bring pitons and flasks of oil can mean the difference between victory and disaster)
3) Remembering to take certain actions that have to be declared explicitly ("I check the door for traps," "I take off my armor before I go to sleep")

Conversely, a 3/4e playstyle emphasizes/tests:
1) Ability to evaluate the worth of character abilities and traits when they are being selected (at creation and level-up)
1b) Math skills (if you can't calculate things like your expected average damage, you can't accurately compare options)
2) Knowledge of when and how to use character abilities to achieve best results
3) Thinking "outside the box" to solve problems

I'm sure there are skills I'm leaving out (on both lists). And there are things that are subsets of other things; "rules mastery" in 3.5e is required to evaluate ability values, but "rules mastery" is super-general and is therefore not listed as its own skill, because it's divisible into smaller pieces.

The thing we have to consider when designing a game is what skills we want to see tested.

My experience is that most players think the best part of TTRPGs is "thinking outside the box," i.e., emergent gameplay, which you encourage by giving players the power to do stuff and leaving enough room for them to do stuff you didn't originally think of doing while providing adequate guidelines so that DMs can adjudicate the results. Casting grease on somebody's shoes so they have to save or fall every round no matter where they go is awesome. Hamfisted bullshit that makes doing creative things ineffective or less effective is bad. Page 42 of 4e's DMG laying out that cinematic stunts should quite frequently do less damage than your regular powers is lame. So that's definitely a skill that needs to be tested in any TTRPG.

But there are things that I think definitely shouldn't be skills. "Read the DM's mind" is just as dumb as "your character will be better than everyone else's if you have the patience to dumpster-dive through thirty splatbooks to find the best options."

So what skills do TTRPGs test? And from a design perspective, what skills should they test, and how do we design games to do so?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 4:19 am

Wow. What about things like teamwork (the ability to make group decisions with the other players), or compartmentalization (in the form of the ability to separate in-game information from out-of-game information)? If you put further emphasis on the actual roleplaying part, you have skills like empathy (the ability to put yourself into fantasy situations and evaluate a different range of possibilities and futures based on that extrapolation) that are totally key.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 4:49 am

Hurm... there are two topics here.

1. That players can be skilled At a TTRPG. I agree with this and I agree that the roleplaying aspects of the game need to be taken into consideration.

2. That a TTRPG has to TEST the players in any way is something I do not agree with. TTRPG's are a cooperative storytelling medium... so, if there's one thing that a player needs to bring to the table... it's the ability to interact with the story in a positive manner.
All the game needs to do is hand the players the tools to do that.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:05 am

Maj wrote:Wow. What about things like teamwork (the ability to make group decisions with the other players), or compartmentalization (in the form of the ability to separate in-game information from out-of-game information)? If you put further emphasis on the actual roleplaying part, you have skills like empathy (the ability to put yourself into fantasy situations and evaluate a different range of possibilities and futures based on that extrapolation) that are totally key.

Interesting that you note comparmentalization; while I feel it is a valuable skill for making the game more enjoyable, in earlier editions the opposite skill was often useful (metagame knowledge)...you were actually expected to figure out stuff like "trolls are killed by fire" or "what spells work on what golems", and then continue to use that stuff for your future characters.

K · Post by K » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:15 am

I'd argue that 4e is a good example of a system that doesn't want you to think outside the box. It basically locks down all knot-cutting.

1e-2e also relied heavily on player knowledge of monsters and spells where 3e and 4e does not.

Resource allocation is a skill across all editions. Reading the pacing of the adventure is a subskill of that because it let's you know how far you can push things.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:28 am

While I feel so strongly about the model where pre-game math, reading comprehension, and optimization skills are emphasized over the model where mind-reading, exhaustive gear listing and stating the obvious are emphasized that I am willing to resort to violence in defense of that preference; in the abstract I think I would prefer it over both models if TTRPGs were designed to test and reward success of player skills in entertaining the other participants.

Saxony · Post by **Saxony** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:45 am

K wrote:Reading the pacing of the adventure is a subskill of that because it let's you know how far you can push things.

Can you explain this one?

K · Post by K » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:26 am

Saxony wrote:
K wrote:Reading the pacing of the adventure is a subskill of that because it let's you know how far you can push things.
Can you explain this one?

It's the thing where you figure out how many encounters you actually have to do per day and how many can wait until tomorrow when you have full resources. Being able to do more encounters per day by rationing resources is a skill, but the companion skill is just doing as few encounters per day as possible.

Sometimes it's reading the DM, but often it's reading the adventure narrative or just using abilities (ie. Rope Trick).

Saxony · Post by **Saxony** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:34 am

K wrote:
Saxony wrote:
K wrote:Reading the pacing of the adventure is a subskill of that because it let's you know how far you can push things.
Can you explain this one?
It's the thing where you figure out how many encounters you actually have to do per day and how many can wait until tomorrow when you have full resources. Being able to do more encounters per day by rationing resources is a skill, but the companion skill is just doing as few encounters per day as possible.

Sometimes it's reading the DM, but often it's reading the adventure narrative or just using abilities (ie. Rope Trick).

Understood.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 7:42 am

I'm a little disappointed, because until two years ago what you describe as the old-school D&D style is how I played 3.5. Since then I've had a free form 1e campaign and a 3.5 campaign that ran very close to your outline, ironically it was ran by an old-school DM.

In all the campaigns I've played in your chances for success where greatly improved by being able to read the DM's mind. This seems to hold up for other RPGs in general. An important variation on this is being able to predict what your team-mates will do in a given situation. So being able to predict player actions and outcomes is a very vital set of skills.

One skill that I wish was less necessary was system mastery. A lot of players don't seem to have the time or inclination to lurk the CO boards looking for insight. If the game requires you to put in a dozen hours of homework to make an effective character, and it's marketed as an easy to pick up and play game that is going to be a problem.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:14 am

Rules-heavy "balanced" RPGs test your ability to combine optional abilities in a way that the designers didn't predict (or seek cross-character synergies). The internet has made this a function of your ability to know what google is (even providing arguments you can use on the DM to get it into the game).

Rules-light "improvisational" RPGs test your ability to entertain the DM, where your fun is inversely proportional to how much of a dick the DM is when he's trying to entertain you. Not being a dick is a DM skill that takes many years to learn.

Ideally, rules-light games benefit from anything that helps the DM to not be a dick (like putting the player in charge), and rules-heavy games benefit from not letting any options combine, ever (so you can have a bot play them and save yourself the time).

K · Post by K » Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:23 am

I'd agree that system mastery shouldn't play the heavy role that it does in so many games. I mean, in the ideal world someone should be picking a character concept because it feels cool and fun, and not because it's the best or there is a hidden assumption in the game that someone is the cleric.

I personally love knot-cutting and thinking outside the box, but I've resigned myself to the sad fact that I am often the only one at the table doing it.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:02 am

I like there to be the option to think outside the box, without that being required (for those days where I'm half-asleep at the beginning of the game and it's only getting worse from there).

I'm also very much a fan of system mastery being one of the big skills: it means I can be good at the game just by reading up on it and figuring some things out - making a good build and picking decent choices from there. If there has to be one thing that's going to determine whether or not you're good at the game, I'd rather it be that (as I don't suck at that) as opposed to reading the DM's mind or knowledge of real world history/military procedures.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 12:06 pm

Maj wrote:Wow. What about things like teamwork (the ability to make group decisions with the other players), or compartmentalization (in the form of the ability to separate in-game information from out-of-game information)? If you put further emphasis on the actual roleplaying part, you have skills like empathy (the ability to put yourself into fantasy situations and evaluate a different range of possibilities and futures based on that extrapolation) that are totally key.

If you're saying "wow" because you think I left those things out, I made a thread precisely because I knew there were things I hadn't thought of and wanted to get more input.

Incidentally, empathy and acting/writing skills (for tabletop or text-based RP, respectively) were actually left off the list initially because my experience is that play groups can't agree as to whether those are skills RPGs should be testing. Because while I think half the fun of RPGs is the improv acting aspect, the idea that players should be rewarded for being better actors is hotly contested.

Hieronymous Rex · Post by **Hieronymous Rex** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 2:29 pm

I hate pre-game character optimization so much I would be satified only if it ceased to exist. I want to get into the game, not spend an entire "session" generating a character. Just make the classes good in and of themselves, and player's wouldn't need to optimize.

3) Remembering to take certain actions that have to be declared explicitly ("I check the door for traps," "I take off my armor before I go to sleep")

This doesn't square with the old-school practice of SOPs (as discussed in the Mearls thread). This seems more like a thing that Shadzar is used to, less than a common experience, but I can't say for sure.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 3:41 pm

As long as some builds do better than others, optimization will be possible. And good old social shaming to keep the "munchikins" in place doesn't seem to work anymore.

So, what happens in most games is the developers nerfing the game-breaking stuff with FAQs/erratas and the playerbase dealing with everything else on their own. With the wide access to splatbooks on the Internet, all the knowledge is there to be used.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 3:45 pm

I'm only a good optimizer when compared to people who think Magic Missile is better than Color Spray, but I still don't think optimization should be written out of a game. Nor should clever SOP's, for that matter. One of the most awesome things to do is to take a band of new (or coddled) players, start them at low level, and then throw vicious traps and ambushes at them (with sub-optimal but non-lethal results) until they learn the value of rearguards, setting the watch, etc. etc. They grow more experienced with their characters. It's fun to watch.

Hieronymous Rex · Post by **Hieronymous Rex** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 4:37 pm

I still don't think optimization should be written out of a game. Nor should clever SoP's, for that matter. One of the most awesome things to do is to take a band of new (or coddled) players, start them at low level, and then throw vicious traps and ambushes at them (with sub-optimal but non-lethal results) until they learn the value of rearguards, setting the watch, etc. etc.

I meant that I dislike optimization with regards character options (classes, feats, skills, etc.). I would rather all of the player's skill to be directed to things that occur during the game (e.g. SOPs, tactics, clever applications of abilities).

Then again, I'm not sure that you were responding to me.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 4:52 pm

I was, and that's exactly the kind of character optimization that shouldn't be written out. Deciding to perfect one skill over another is a perfectly valid character choice, and so is gaining advantage by optimizing builds.

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:32 pm

K wrote:I'd argue that 4e is a good example of a system that doesn't want you to think outside the box. It basically locks down all knot-cutting.

I don't consider knot-cutting and thinking outside the box to be the same thing at all. Thinking outside the box is about manipulating elements that are specific to that adventure or coming up with logical ideas that go beyond the rules. It's not canned combos you can use in multiple adventures that are just plain overpowered like Scry & Teleport.

In many ways the newer editions of the game cut down on thinking outside the box because of how the skills work. Social skills alone cut out a great deal of out-of-box thinking, because you no longer get a good benefit for thinking up good bluffs or cons. Instead it just emphasizes thoughtless derp gaming where you replace thinking with rolling dice to make magic happen. Some groups don't even require you to tell what your character is even saying. Social skills are designed to help keep people within the box.

1E/2E had the most out of the box thinking, because in that edition, it was actually commonplace to prod around with 10 ft poles to look for traps, find ways to set traps off safely and so on. You would routinely do stuff that would actually go beyond the mechanics or ignore them entirely. In 3E/4E, you're just looking at making some skill checks to find the traps and make them go away, which is firmly grounded inside the box. If you're just using established mechanics, you're not thinking outside the box.

Knot-cutting isn't thinking outside the box so much as it is just a cheesy style of play. It simply deals with focusing your efforts on purposely going to places you know the DM didn't spend time developing and avoid areas he did develop. It's just a dick move if you ask me.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:39 pm

Hieronymous Rex wrote:I hate pre-game character optimization so much I would be satified only if it ceased to exist. I want to get into the game, not spend an entire "session" generating a character. .

See, for me (and I suspect much of the pro-pregame optimization crowd) the appeal of pre-game optimization is that it is PRE-game. I don't need to wait for the next session to figure out a design - or even have a regular game ongoing. I can totally futz around with builds and various ability combos on my own time. If something works in an interesting way, I can save it for the next time I play such a game or just post it on the internet for general comment, and if it doesn't work then it's back to the drawing board with no embarrassment of failure in front of friends.

People who waste everyone else's session time doing basic parts of chargen need to be slapped. Sure there needs to be a little back and forth involving chargen questions like "hey what houserules are we using?" , "what classes do we need?" and "Is this legal in this game?" involving discussion between players and the MC - but unless things are very complicated, or a player is new to gaming in general, or the game is starting at relatively high level - then chargen should not be eating large chunks of group time. Even if some of those are true, at lot can be dealt with if people could just find the time to handle it via email, text, chat, phone calls or non-gaming social events before and between sessions.
.

Just make the classes good in and of themselves, and player's wouldn't need to optimize

"Just making the classes good" is a goal kind of like "fix the economy" that everyone is for in theory, but as soon as you try to figure out the details of how to actually do it, people start screaming and holding the country hostage.

People gnashed their teeth over the "overpowered" classes in Tome.
People gnashed their teeth over the "weeabo fightan magic" in Bo9s.
People gnashed their teeth over 4e's initial abandonment of 3e's open multiclassing (which does at least simplify the design task of making all classes comparable by reducing the number of class combinations ).
People gnashed their teeth over 4e's hybrid classing rules.
This very thread was spun of from a thread gnashing his teeth over what's gonna be wrong with 5e, which hasn't even been announced yet

Hieronymous Rex · Post by **Hieronymous Rex** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:26 pm

"Just making the classes good" is a goal kind of like "fix the economy" that everyone is for in theory, but as soon as you try to figure out the details of how to actually do it, people start screaming and holding the country hostage.

But being difficult doesn't mean that it's an untenable position. If in a given game all of the character options are good choices, there would be o need to metagame. Now, part of my solution would be to limit the fields of character creation (e.g. no feats; classes are meant to cover specific character concepts) to make designing balanced options easier, but that might not appeal to everyone.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:28 pm

Limited character customization strikes me as a flaw. If me and my friend Bob both want to play fire mages, there should still be some things which set us apart. You could have customizable class features like the Tome Monk, but that's just moving the feats into the classes.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:39 pm

Archmage wrote:0) Being able to read the DM's mind

total crock of S......

player skills are mainly the ability to contribute to the game in a positive way that no other person can but you in your unique combination of experiences and imagination.

-working well with others
-knowing what YOU want to do with the game
-understanding when YOUR needs dont outweigh those of the rest of the players
-ALL math at the grade-level of the required age range of the game (D&D being age 11 so 5~6th grade math)
-ability to speak and communicate what you wish to do when it is your turn
-patience and respect, so that when it is NOT your turn you are NOT distracting others
-problem solving
-analytical skills
-basic accounting, budget planning, comprehension of money
-humility
-planning in general since you will have to make decisions for later
-flexibility such that something planned can be altered due to changes in environment, be they game world related, or other player related
-ability to cooperate with others
-lack of "total competitive" nature

these are just a few that relate to D&D, and probably MANY other things....

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:55 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:in the abstract I think I would prefer it over both models if TTRPGs were designed to test and reward success of player skills in entertaining the other participants.

Ah, the Parinoia model.

There were also systems where advancement points were granted based on the general vote of the players at the game (only you couldn't vote for yourself).

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What is "player skill?"

What is "player skill?"

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