On Player Skills
Introduction
In the OSR/NSR/FKR circles there is a lot of talk about player skill. There has been lot of ink spilled about it, and yet I hadn't written about it before. I want to change it, by focusing on its use and acquisition.
What is player skill?
Player skills are the abilities held by a player that make them more fun at the table. Most people have a mix of them, some being better while some are worse than the average. Every person can, however, decide to become better at the skills where they identify deficiencies. The provided categories often overlap, and I made them just to make discussing specific parts of player skill easier.
Hard Player Skills
Real-world knowledge applicable to the types of games that you play. This can range from things like knowledge about medieval armaments or hierarchies, all the way to engineering knowledge that lets you flood a dungeon. They generally let you resolve specific problems by completely circumventing them, while creating a sense of versimilitude. This also includes things like tactics, organisation skills (marching orders save lives) and creativity.
Soft Player Skills
Real-world social skills (a rare thing in TTRPG players, although they may help you develop them). They allow you to resolve issues between other characters (as well as the players), negotiate with NPCs and convince the GM that your ideas are good. They also let you describe your actions better, bringing other players deeper into the world as well as preventing misunderstandings with the GM.
Good Habits
Things like bringing food, taking notes, being ready to act when your round comes. They are what makes a session seemless, stopping issues from making it less fun. They are characterized by being more willpower based, being easy to do once, but requiring effort to do continously.
System-Specific Player Skills
Knowledge of the rules of the system that you are playing; Being able to calculate THAC0, and remembering exactly what your spells do. They let you take the effort away from the GM, as well as making you able to do your part in your team's efforts more efficiently.
Setting-Specific Player Skills
Knowledge of the world in which you are playing. Knowing the names of places, social rules specific for cultures and what is expected of you. They let you exploit the world around you and change it, hopefully for the better. They also let you avoid breaking other's immersion, as well as helping the GM differentiate the setting from "Generic D&Dland".
Game-Specific Player Skills
Knowledge of how things work at your specific table. The inside jokes, the knowledge of past events, knowing what the GM likes and dislikes in plans and gambits. Each game is different in these regards, which sometimes makes onboarding new players difficult.
How to acquire player skill?
The methods depend on the type of skill - player skills are usually quite interpersonal, often requiring adaptation. Each type has different ways to acquire it.
Hard Player Skills
Read books. Do research. Before you start a session, spend some time reading books and watching videos about the type of things that may be useful in the world that it'll take place in. Learn about mongols when going to play in Glorantha. Brush back up on newtonian physics when going to play a game set on a space station. Watch videos about battle tactics used in the Punic wars, and why the Romans lost in Cannae. You can treat TTRPGs as a pretext to learn various weird things. Creativity comes when you have enough resources for it to use in your brain.
Soft Player Skills
Talk to people. Read shudders self-help books. But the good ones. I recommend "How To Win Friends And Influence People". Train your facial expressions in the mirror, try to tell tales to your friends and gauge their reactions to various methods used. Write poetry, so that you will understand your language better. Read up on how the military prevents communication errors while keeping their communications short.
Good Habits
There's only one way to build good habits - following them. It starts hard, but it gets easier every day. But you've got to do it every day. Remind yourself about how it makes the game much better. Encourage other members of the group to keep these habits too; it's easier to do good for others while they do good for you.
System-Specific Player Skills
Read the textbook. Take notes. Ask questions when you don't understand something. Experiment with how you play your character, try to use abilities in different ways to see if you can find unorthodox uses for them.
Setting-Specific Player Skills
Read the textbook (if playing in an official setting), try to understand how the people live in the world you're playing in. If the setting is unofficial, ask lots and lots of questions to the GM. As questions in general. Try to make connections to the world, as they are through what you learn how it works. Learn more about the cultures that your GM is basing the cultures in the game world. Learn more about historical materialism and how human societies form, so that you can apply it to the settings.
Game-Specific Player Skills
In this case, only the players who already know how your game works can help. Make a document explaining the in-jokes, explain what has already happened, and be patient to the new player. They'll soon become one of you, but that just needs time as they play with you.
Post scriptum
With this knowledge, you can make any textbook into a ttrpg textbook!
In my next post I'll talk about the various skills that GMs can use. There's overlap, but GMs need some more things. Or maybe I'll talk about something else, haven't yet decided. I am a chaotic rascall.