this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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me_irl
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How is getting better at something with practice a fantasy?
In fantasy it's easy and guaranteed. You pay a pittance to learn from an expert who you met randomly for an instant boost. You get better just by doing something 1000 times and your skills likely will never degrade.
In reality, you tried something and failed without learning much new. You watched tutorials that did not help, or you tried making something work and all you got was a headache and an ugly mess. You are stuck with projects/progress due to external factors that you don't know how to (or can't) fix currently. 1000 iterations probably doesn't mean as much skill improvement as you wish it did and you also lose proficiency because you did not have the time/reason to engage those skills.
I can just say "I spend the down time practicing" instead of "I spend the down time on social media".
When you're a level 1 D&D player and you want to sneak past the goblin guard, the GM asks you to roll stealth, you roll, hold your breath, get 12 add your +3 and 15 is enough to sneak by. When you're level 20 you're sneaking past ancient dragons with ease.
In a sense you're actively developing your "stealth skill" the entire time you're playing the game by using it repeatedly in encounter after encounter.
I think the difference is that it's a game and the GM is trying to make it fun and appropriately challenging. Even at the low levels, you're going on exciting adventures. In real life, your guitar playing skills might start with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It's an appropriate level of challenge, but it doesn't feel all that exciting when you succeed because you realize just how simple it is, and what a gulf in quality there is between you and a competent guitar player. Often you only start to feel competent after years of practice.
Imagine how bad a game D&D would be if skill checks were realistic for the first 5 levels. So, instead of swinging a sword at a goblin, you'd have to first swing a stick at a wooden training dummy, and 1 every 20 swings you'd fail so miserably at it that you'd injure yourself.
Morrowind's accuracy system when starting the game, especially if you built your character wrong (or just are using something you're not built for). Misses don't add to skill either, so you will continue missing for a long while.
Though you don't injure yourself, instead you die because you can't even fight a worm (because you miss more than you hit).
Fair, but IMHO level 1 characters are more like guitarists who finally feel confident, and level 20 are like Jimi Hendrix. We skip past the part where the character would be an incompetent NPC.
Yeah, you get to skip the hard part of learning and jump right to the part where it starts to get fun.