Basic Reliable Habits

Running a session as an advanced beginner, we steadily amass a collection of procedures in which we begin to rely upon practiced responses; examples of these procedures include managing a combat, relaying a description of the player's surroundings for hour after hour without becoming tired, using exchanges with NPCs to relay exposition, awarding treasure, giving advice to players on game rules and so on. Massimiliano Cappuccio (Dreyfus is Right: Knowledge-That Limits Your Skill, 2023), describes our acquisition of these as "pre-reflective dispositions," in which we're predisposed "to intelligently perceive, interpret, decide and act in familiar 'ways or modes,' when facing familiar situations or tasks." With time, about 200 to 500 hours of in-session dungeon mastering, these procedures become ingrained, allowing us to handing these tasks reflexively, without needing to analyse each step. These emerge as automatic processing (Sweller); in essence, NPC-to-player speaking becomes so commonplace in our thoughts that we're able to engage in it without concern.

These, Cappuccio explains, enable us "to complete a task, produce some transformative effects, solicit certain reactions in the bystanders, or preserve an existing condition" as basic reliable habits, making us ready to cope with unfamiliar scenarios with a developed heightened awareness and preference for certain types of actions, cues or information relevant to the arisen problem. In essence, these form a toolkit that simplifies our decision-making, lifting us towards competency, even if we're unaware that this is what's going on.

As before, rather than explain what competency is, we're better off discussing how we get there. Basic reliable habits are merely a first step; they represent a break from what Cappuccio calls "instrumental" actions, which consist in bringing about a desired outcome regardless of the means employed to do it. To use Cappuccio's example, if I'm filling out governmental or medical forms, I'm supplying answers which have no skilful component, as the answers simply exist.

Continued on The Higher Path