Skill as My Balls

I have a distaste for a lot of terms bandied about in the OSR sphere. Gameable Content is one. Another, apparently is "Player Skill." During yet another roundabout discussion on Farmer Gadda's server, Onslaught Six described the OSR mindset as "Challenge-Based Play", which I've described in the past as Mother May I. I quibbled at the idea that the OSR had a monopoly on challenge, as a proper fight in my beloved Fourth Edition could be quite challenging. 

After talk about whether or not that was Pushing Buttons on the Character Sheet and what Pushing Buttons Even Means, I've come to the conclusion that it is a term that, like all shibboleths made by artistic movements, ends up used as a way to diminish that which does not fall under its umbrella. (See the shit that happened to GNS Theory, lest anyone think I'm exclusively picking on OSR folks). 

To be blunt, I agree with excellent sport Serket of Fluorite Guillotine about how like...the term as used is too broad, and cultivates however unintentionally an idea that there is only one way for a player to be skilled. Long time fans of Magnolia Keep, however, know that we don't take kindly to overly broad definitions around these parts.

That's right motherfuckers, it's T-T-T-T-T-TAXONOMY TIME!!!

There is of course, more than one way for a player to be "Good" at a game because games are a diverse and manifold lot. A skilled player of my beloved His Majesty the Worm is not going to be the same as a skilled player of my beloved Draw Steel. (As an aside, His Majesty the Worm fucks so hard from just a writing and presentation level I think it is a worthy addition to any gamer's bookshelf. I'll do a full review at some point but trust me when I say you should buy it.) With that in mind, I'm hoping to subdivide 

Skill as System Mastery

One of the old OSR maxims is that The Answer Isn't On Your Character Sheet. I often see this described as "Pushing buttons on your character sheet," implying a thoughtlessness, carelessness, and general lack of immersion within the game world. 

To which my response is "Motherfucker who put the buttons there?"

Billy is a fucking chad

I'm normally a critic of ivory tower design. Cavegirl put together a great Twitter thread I can't find about how the design of 3.X, with its rewarding of players who read up on the system, kept an idea in their heads of how competitive everything was within different contexts. Toughness was invaluable to an elf wizard in a one-off adventure, while that same wizard might benefit more in the long term from metamagics and crafting magical items, and woe to whatever poor fool took Galley Slave. 

However, that's still a skill. 

When I was building my Warlord for a tragically short-lived 4E game, I had to have the skill to slap together a bunch of healing modifiers and recognize my teammates could carry the other parts, and also finding synergies and the like. It's not everyone's cup of tea (god I need more friends who find that their cup of tea), but it can be really enjoyable.

Skill as Tactics

Of course, building a character is one thing. Using them is another. This one I feel is pretty self-explanatory. The ability to look down at a map and try to figure out useful or efficient ways to go through encounters is also self-evidently a skill. People are good and bad at it. I'm pretty good at XCOM, but I'm nowhere near a Beaglerush or Zemalf. Obviously this kind of thinking applies to modern games like Pathfinder, Draw Steel, etc, but it can also just as easily apply to "Combat as War" games like most OSR fare-it just depends on what the state of the board is.

Skill as Reading The Word Picture

Speaking of reading situations! This is the one I am gonna have the hardest time describing, so I'm just going to borrow from Onslaught Six here:

We'll get into the whole "Challenge-Based" thing at some point, possibly in a future As My Balls post, but what Onslaught is describing here is the ability to put together the word-picture the referee is painting, make inferences from the environment, and verbally describe appropriate actions. This is the player skill described in a lot of OSR spaces and by old-DnD-heads. It is also very reliant on trust between player and referee in a way that modern sensibilities are much more adept at building than Ye Olden Days.

Kriegspiel is to my mind the ultimate expression of this kind of thing, being broadly "HUDless" from the perspective of the players. And it can absolutely be engaging to try and put together maps of where everyone is and what the fuck is going on. But it isn't my cup of tea.

Skill as Storytelling/Improv

In games with a "Writer's room" approach to creating a shared fiction, being quick on the draw and playing off of other people is often a great part of making sure everyone has a good time. During my first game of Scum and Villainy, for instance, I made the off-the-cuff suggestion "Hey, did my black-ops guy murder your political dissident's family?" And it turned into a huge thing, with the ghosts of the family haunting the ship and eventually the dissident leaving the ship with her robot girlfriend (love you Ashleigh we need to play together again). Offering up ideas for the GM, while it might break the objectivity of the world, can also promote a sense of camraderie and leadership. What better way to show a GM you like a setting than writing 2,000 words of fanfic about it?

Clearly communicating priorities and figuring out what people want from scenes is how you avoid situations where folks feel bad, which leads into...

Skill as Being a Good Friend

Show up on time. Talk to folks. Take an interest in what they're doing. Bring snacks. Make everyone at the table laugh with a stupid joke you've waited two weeks to get to whip out. Support each other. Don't generally be a narcissistic douchebag.. We don't typically think of these things as being "skills", but I'd argue they are the most important skills. Being able to trust that the other people at the table all want to have a good time has to be a two-way street, and mediating that and managing it is, obviously, the job of everyone.

If there is to my mind a true "Player skill," it's this one. It is, at its most basic, being skilled at play, the kind that we do from the sandbox in kindergarten to Wii Bowling in the nursing home, from Athas to Al-Qadim. Idk, Homo Ludens or something. 

Skill as Wrapping Up Your Blogpost

As always at the ends of these taxonomy posts, I want to stress again that I don't want to elevate one kind of skill over the others. Rather, I'm hoping to break the stranglehold the OSR sphere has on the term "Player skill" by acknowledging that there's more than one kind. If this post stops a circular argument by making people realize that they're working from different definitions, then I will have considered this a success.

When designing and running games, rather than deciding on a nebulous "Player skill," figure out the kind of experience you're going for, and be upfront about it. Running a Savage Worlds game for my dad and his work friends has a different vibe than playing Girlframe with the puppygirls in my discord. So be aware of it, and plan and play accordingly.

And hey, let's have fun out there.