# If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?



## S'mon (Mar 23, 2019)

I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?


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## Giltonio_Santos (Mar 23, 2019)

I believe that should be a persuasion roll for the NPC, with a base DC of 10. You can decrease the DC to something as low as an automatic success (DC 0) if characters are in friendly terms, or increase it up to a DC of 20 if the interaction happens under an atmosphere of strong hostility.

EDIT: I would also apply the PC's insight skill as a negative modifier to the persuasion roll. Insightfulness should make you more adept at detecting sincerity.


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## GlassJaw (Mar 23, 2019)

If a PC asks to roll Insight against an NPC telling the truth, I say "you don't suspect he's lying" or "he seems to be telling the truth" - something along those lines - regardless of what the PC rolled.


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## GlassJaw (Mar 23, 2019)

Giltonio_Santos said:


> I believe that should be a persuasion roll for the NPC, with a base DC of 10. You can decrease the DC to something as low as an automatic success (DC 0) if characters are in friendly terms, or increase it up to a DC of 20 if the interaction happens under an atmosphere of strong hostility.
> 
> EDIT: I would also apply the PC's insight skill as a negative modifier to the persuasion roll. Insightfulness should make you more adept at detecting sincerity.




The only time I roll a social skill for an NPC opposed by a PC is Deception. A player is _always _the final arbiter as to whether their character is persuaded or intimidated.


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## iserith (Mar 23, 2019)

I likely don't set a DC. The character succeeds, no roll, perhaps because the truthful NPC exhibits no body language, speech habit, or change in mannerisms that suggest a deception.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 23, 2019)

This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 23, 2019)

iserith said:


> I likely don't set a DC. The character succeeds, no roll, perhaps because the truthful NPC exhibits no body language, speech habit, or change in mannerisms that suggest a deception.




This. If an NPC is telling the truth, they exhibit no signs that they are lying, therefore there is no uncertainty if a PC attempts to discern whether or not they are lying by observing their behavior.



Elfcrusher said:


> This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.



And this. When an NPC lies to a PC, I roll for the NPC against the PC’s passive Wisdom (Insight). On a failure, I tell the PCs what they notice - for instance, that the NPC is having difficulty maintaining eye contact and their brow has a faint glimmer of sweat or something. On a success, I let the NPC’s statement stand on its own. In either case, it is up to the player whether their character believes they are being lied to or not.


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## jgsugden (Mar 23, 2019)

This is the way I do it:  

When a PC attempts to use a skill without spending an action, they generally do so "passively", meaning they add 10 to their skill and use that as the result (with a +/- 5 for advantage/disadvantage).  If they take an action to perform the skill, they get to roll a d20, but their "passive" score is a floor for their result unless there is time pressure or other challenges that make things difficult.

When a player wishes to sound convince someone they are being honest, they may roll deception or persuasion rolls.  For persuasion, sounding sincere when telling the truth is DC 15 or the observers passive insight, whichever is lower.  For deception, the DC is the observer's passive insight.


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## TaranTheWanderer (Mar 23, 2019)

Insight is great for noticing if an ally is charmed and acting strangely.  If you know the person, you get advantage on your passive check or roll. 

Regarding the OP:
If a PC is unsure whether an NPC is being honest but that NPC is actually being honest, I roll the dice behind the dm screen and then Tell the player the truth that NPC seems to be sincere.  I don’t even bother looking at the dice roll.   I like adding that little bit of uncertainty.  The fact that they are asking for a roll shows they are suspicious.  Either the player will learn to trust the NPC (because of in game actions)or they won’t but I won’t just tell him, “oh yeah, he’s totally trustworthy.”


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## Charlaquin (Mar 23, 2019)

TaranTheWanderer said:


> If a PC is unsure whether an NPC is being honest but that NPC is actually being honest, I roll the dice behind the dm screen and then Tell the player the truth that NPC seems to be sincere.  I don’t even bother looking at the dice roll.   I like adding that little bit of uncertainty.




Query: It would seem to me that not looking at the die before announcing the result would remove the uncertainty that you roll the die in order to add; is this a bug or a feature of your approach?


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## 5ekyu (Mar 23, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?



I dont. Insight checks can give you intentions (I use it as disposition), signs of deception, etc. 

If the target is not being deceptive, then I generally assign it as a DC based on circumstance and using the persuasiveness of the speaker usually between 10-20. Someone who is **bad** at social stuff may well give off signs/tells of lying even when they arent. 

Any failed ability check can yield a setback, after all.


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## Ristamar (Mar 23, 2019)

As a DM, I prefer to roll Deception vs Passive Insight if I feel an NPC may be giving signs (s)he's not being entirely truthful or genuine. If a PC presses or revisits the NPC's deceptive key points or has information/evidence that could help expose deception, I may roll with disadvantage or grant advantage to their Passive Insight, respectively. 

In short, it's not a skill that players have to actively roll during a conversation.


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## Imaculata (Mar 23, 2019)

Insight isn't a lie detector, and neither is sense motive in older editions. 

When an npc lies, you generally can't tell, unless the DM decides that the npc exhibits a remarkable behavior. And if that be the case, a player can ask wether they can tell what this behavior means... and then (possibly) you roll insight against the npc's deception to determine what it means, but not wether the npc lies. The players may be able to deduce some things that give them a clue regarding whether the npc is telling the truth, but it is still up to them to interpret it how they wish.

For example, an npc might be throwing a suspicious look at someone else at the bar. Determining what that means would require an insight check. 
Or, an npc may be making a secret gesture at another npc, again, roll insight.
Or, an npc may be acting a bit skittish or nervous. Determining why he is acting this way, if this can be determined by just looking at him, may require an insight check.
Or, an npc may be bluffing, and the players may ask to check this with an insight check... but maybe it is impossible to determine, that is up to the DM.

Generally speaking, when I have an npc lie to my players, he does so in a way that is not obvious to them at all by any means... unless he is really bad at it, and I want him to get caught.

*Example of insight from play:*

DM: While talking to the barmaiden, you notice one of your companions is looking a bit agitated.
Player: Can I tell why she is behaving this way?
DM: Roll insight.
Player: 15!
DM: She seems to be a bit jealous, and about to pick a fight with the bar maiden.
Player: I do not intervene and just enjoy the show.
*
Example of lying from play:*

Npc: One word and I will rain hell down on you and your friends. You are on my turf now, and me and my pals have you vastly outnumbered, surrounded and are better armed. You would do well to lay down your weapons, if you value your lives.
Player: Can I tell if he is telling the truth?
DM: He seems to mean what he says. What are you looking for specifically?
Player: Can I tell if other people in the tavern are on his side?
DM: Make an insight check.
Player: 15!
DM: You notice everyone in the bar is watching you and your friends carefully, and a few shady characters in the tavern seem to have their hands on a weapon tucked underneath their cloak. It seems he is not alone, but whether your party is also outnumbered, you do not know.


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2019)

nvm


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Elfcrusher said:
> 
> 
> > This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.
> ...




There appears to be some confusion, you agree with Elfcrusher but then in your example, you provided lying clues thereby treating the Insight skill as a detect lie check. I do understand that you took the "detect lie roll" behind the DM screen which is a step in the right direction, but players will always know a person is lying if you're offering up clues.




			
				5ekyu said:
			
		

> Any failed ability check can yield a setback, after all.




This I believe yields a better result.
Whether the NPC is telling the truth or lying, any failed roll (behind the DM's screen against passive Insight) provides a complication/setback in the fiction.


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## Iry (Mar 23, 2019)

I use Passive Insight and adjust my description of what the NPC says based on that, sometimes mentioning more details to a specific player who has a really high Passive Insight. Then I leave it up to the players to decide, which may or may not include more intense grilling if they think the character is suspicious. I never mention if they are lying or not in absolute terms.


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## Iry (Mar 23, 2019)

Sadras said:


> There appears to be some confusion, you agree with Elfcrusher but then in your example, you provided lying clues thereby treating the Insight skill as a detect lie check. I do understand that you took the "detect lie roll" behind the DM screen which is a step in the right direction, but players will always know a person is lying if you're offering up clues.



I don’t want to speak for Charlaquin, but those are indicators of the speaker feeling emotions. Not necessarily that they are lying.


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## Sadras (Mar 23, 2019)

Iry said:


> I don’t want to speak for Charlaquin, but those are indicators of the speaker feeling emotions. Not necessarily that they are lying.




Charlaquin specifically states "when the NPC lies to a PC I roll". An observant player would notice this pattern is usually followed by lying indicators (upon failures). When it is the truth the DM does not roll. I dunno, I could be mistaken but to me that seems like a bit of a give away.


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## Iry (Mar 23, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Charlaquin specifically states "when the NPC lies to a PC I roll". An observant player would notice this pattern is usually followed by lying indicators (upon failures). When it is the truth the DM does not roll. I dunno, I could be mistaken but to me that seems like a bit of a give away.



I assume the DM is rolling either way. Could be their Deception/Persuasion check, a Knowledge check, a Saving Throw, or even the Deception/Persuasion roll of a third party to see what this NPC believes.

But the bigger takeaway is that averting eyes and sweating is not a reliable indicator that someone is lying.


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## Bitbrain (Mar 23, 2019)

In my game, if the NPC is telling the truth and the PCs suspect that they are lying, then it is a DC 5 insight check.

Unless your character is paranoid, then the DC is increased to 15.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 23, 2019)

Of course, at times I have asked something like "what would convince your character they were telling the truth?" Or maybe something like "Will this die check convince you they are being truthful?"

If they said "nothing" or "no" then no roll occurs.


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## AkaKageWarrior (Mar 23, 2019)

I don't see why not to use insight checks.
DM info can vary depending on the roll result - which the DM should do. 
Possible info: 
- you can't tell
- npc seems nervous (which can mean a lot)
- npc is lying
- npc is telling the truth
This depends on the insight vs persuasion or deception roll.

And always give out the info so that the PCs can't be sure...


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## TaranTheWanderer (Mar 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Query: It would seem to me that not looking at the die before announcing the result would remove the uncertainty that you roll the die in order to add; is this a bug or a feature of your approach?




That’s funny.  It’s an expression.  I just don’t care what the dice result was.  I give the player the correct answer but don’t tell them whether they succeeded or failed their insight.   They’ll either be satisfied or it will feed into their own paranoia.  I leave it to them to play their character however they want.


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## FrogReaver (Mar 23, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?




If the NPC isn't trying to lie then no roll, simply say there are no signs they are lying.  That said, not all NPC's that lie should allow for an Insight check to determine it either.  Sometimes their lie is just so good that they tell it so well that no amount of insight is going to be able to determine it's a lie.


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## Henry (Mar 23, 2019)

I would say that a minuscule chance exists for a PC to misread an NPC, even if they are telling the truth. It’s possible, especially if the NPC is normally a very smooth liar. My spot-ruling would be “if the person is familiar to you, it’s an automatic success. In any other circumstance and the NPC is trying to be actually truthful, it’s a DC 5 check.”

And of course, the DC is secret (as well as the roll, depending on DM style).

That way, someone trained in insight is highly unlikely to fail, but there exists a small chance that the very uninsightful might misread the person.

I thought about using “passive deception,” but that’s just too high of a chance, especially for something like that.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 23, 2019)

Sadras said:


> There appears to be some confusion, you agree with Elfcrusher but then in your example, you provided lying clues thereby treating the Insight skill as a detect lie check. I do understand that you took the "detect lie roll" behind the DM screen which is a step in the right direction, but players will always know a person is lying if you're offering up clues.



No, no. I made a “lie without being detected roll” on the NPC’s behalf, and provide the clue only if that roll fails. Unless maybe you are suggesting that the fact that I rolled a die behind the screen is the clue? In which case, eh. I don’t see that as a big problem. NPCs lying is not the only reason I roll things behind the screen. If the player wants to make that inference, that’s their prerogative. I’m not in the business of policing “metagaming.”

I’m also really big on telegraphing (or “giving players clues.”) My DMing philosophy is that my job is to provide players with the opportunity to make decisions as they think their characters would do. And in order to do so, players need information. The more information they have, the better they feel when their decisions yield good results, and the more accepting they are of their decisions yeilding bad results.



Sadras said:


> This I believe yields a better result.
> Whether the NPC is telling the truth or lying, any failed roll (behind the DM's screen against passive Insight) provides a complication/setback in the fiction.



Well any failed check should always provide a setback or a complication; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t meet all of the requirements for an action’s results to be determined by a check, at least by the way I prefer to run 5e. But I also prefer that every check to be tied to something the character is actively doing. Granted, “I try to see if he’s lying by watching his behavior” is a valid action, but I see it as something the character is doing continuously throughout the course of conversation, not as something they are doing in a specific moment. When you are suspicious of someone, you continuously bwatch them for signs of deception while they are speaking with you, you don’t analyze individual statements to see if they’re lies. Therefore, I feel that a passive check is the best way to adjudicate this, at least for me.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 23, 2019)

TaranTheWanderer said:


> That’s funny.  It’s an expression.  I just don’t care what the dice result was.  I give the player the correct answer but don’t tell them whether they succeeded or failed their insight.   They’ll either be satisfied or it will feed into their own paranoia.  I leave it to them to play their character however they want.




Ah, ok. My mistake, I thought you meant it literally.


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## TarionzCousin (Mar 23, 2019)

S'mon said:


> If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?



It doesn't matter if my PC's succeed or fail at their roll(s). They'll believe the NPC is lying if they want him/her to be lying. /SMH


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## Oofta (Mar 23, 2019)

I just let them roll, and then tell them something along the lines of "They seem to be telling the truth".  Or maybe "They're a bit nervous, but you're not sure why" depending on the situation.


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## Harzel (Mar 23, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> Insight isn't a lie detector, and neither is sense motive in older editions.
> 
> When an npc lies, you generally can't tell, unless the DM decides that the npc exhibits a remarkable behavior.




And how does the DM make that decision?  To me, it seems that is exactly what the Deception skill is intended for.



> And if that be the case, a player can ask wether they can tell what this behavior means... and then (possibly) you roll insight against the npc's deception to determine what it means, but not wether the npc lies. The players may be able to deduce some things that give them a clue regarding whether the npc is telling the truth, but it is still up to them to interpret it how they wish.
> 
> For example, an npc might be throwing a suspicious look at someone else at the bar. Determining what that means would require an insight check.
> Or, an npc may be making a secret gesture at another npc, again, roll insight.
> ...




While autofailure is, in the abstract, always one possibility, personally I don't think it makes a very good default independent of circumstances.  Can you give any additional insight (haha) as to why you do this?



> unless he is really bad at it, and I want him to get caught.




Ok, I assume this is somewhat lighthearted and you really mean that you think he _would_ be caught (regardless of what you might want), otherwise it certainly sounds a bit railroad-ish.  Is your procedure in this case to rule an autosuccess or is this the case that you mentioned above in which the NPC would exhibit a 'remarkable behavior'?



> *Example of insight from play:*
> 
> DM: While talking to the barmaiden, you notice one of your companions is looking a bit agitated.
> Player: Can I tell why she is behaving this way?
> ...




I don't understand the distinction between being able to tell if the one NPC is "telling the truth" and being able to tell whether other NPCs are "on his side".  To me, these both seem to be instances of being able to discern something about an NPC's mental state.  What is it that causes you to treat them differently?


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## Satyrn (Mar 23, 2019)

If the NPC was a terrible truth teller, I'd set the DC as 10. If he was a great truth teller, it would be a 20.


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## Satyrn (Mar 23, 2019)

But seriously, if I was setting the DC for an insight check to determine if the NPC was telling the truth, I'd set it at my default.

Anytime I set a DC, I start at 10, raising it only if it strikes me as a particularly difficult task. 

If the person in question was an inveterate liar, that'd get me raising the DC to 15. Or if we're talking about a situation where lying is the expected norm and truth-telling is in short supply, like in a game of poker or Big Brother.

For an inveterate liar in the Big Brother house, the DC would be 20.


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## Satyrn (Mar 23, 2019)

An inveterate liar playing poker in the Big Brother house is not telling the truth. No roll is needed to figure that out.


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## Inchoroi (Mar 23, 2019)

GlassJaw said:


> If a PC asks to roll Insight against an NPC telling the truth, I say "you don't suspect he's lying" or "he seems to be telling the truth" - something along those lines - regardless of what the PC rolled.




Yep, this is how I do it. I also pre-roll all the NPCs deception rolls (unless I absolutely have to roll them during a session, when they surprise me with a question), so the players aren't tipped off by my rolling. Because of this, unless the roll assigned to that specific information for that PC is beaten by a PCs passive Insight or they make an active Insight check against it, they'll never know whether or not one of my NPCs has been lying to them.

Well, until its too late, anyway.


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## ad_hoc (Mar 24, 2019)

GlassJaw said:


> If a PC asks to roll Insight




I remind the player that they are to describe what they are doing and then the DM adjudicates.

There is no 'roll insight' in 5e.

If the player wants their character to study someone then adjudication is the same for everything else. success, failure, or random outcome.


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## MarkB (Mar 24, 2019)

GlassJaw said:


> If a PC asks to roll Insight against an NPC telling the truth, I say "you don't suspect he's lying" or "he seems to be telling the truth" - something along those lines - regardless of what the PC rolled.




Which is going to totally mess with the mind of the player who rolls a 5.


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## Hussar (Mar 24, 2019)

On a successful roll, I'll straight up tell the players that the NPC appears to be telling the truth.  Only problem is, how do the players tell a successful roll vs a fail, which would also give the same answer.

Solution?  Roll in the open.  Let the players know that they succeeded.  Let them know that they failed.  A fail doesn't mean that the NPC is lying, just that the players don't know either way.  A success, in my mind, should be an actual success.  All this equivocating or "letting there be leeway for error" is just a player screw job AFAIC.

I mean, you don't do that for any other roll do you? 

 "You think you hit, but, you might not have.  You maybe did 15 damage, but, you can't really tell." 

 "You figure that you climbed that wall, but, you cannot be sure."  

 "You think you are following those tracks, but, hey, until you actually do follow them, maybe you're wrong."

Yeah, I'm not big on playing silly buggers to try to increase difficulty.  If the players succeeded on an Insight check, then, well, they succeeded.  They discern the "true intentions" of the target creature.  Seems straightforward to me.  If they succeeded in an insight check, then they know that the NPC isn't lying to them.  Note, that doesn't mean that the NPC can't be wrong and still deceive the PC's in some manner.  But, why bother having a decent Insight if all it does is give me "probably right" answers?


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?




I ask the player what the character is doing to determine whether or not the NPC is telling the truth and then determine the DC based on the approach.


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## Imaculata (Mar 24, 2019)

Harzel said:


> And how does the DM make that decision?  To me, it seems that is exactly what the Deception skill is intended for.




That seems to be a narrative decission to me. Some npc's are good liars and you can't tell that they are lying, some are bad liars and you might be able to tell, and some are terrible liars and no check is needed. There are auto-fails, auto-successes, and a few edge cases. For the most part, I lean towards auto-fail. I assume that all my npc's are competent and try their best to lie. If the players want to find out if they are lying, they have to catch the npc's on falsehoods or inconsistencies in their story, rather than a lucky dice roll. To me that is far more exciting roleplaying wise.



Harzel said:


> While autofailure is, in the abstract, always one possibility, personally I don't think it makes a very good default independent of circumstances.  Can you give any additional insight (haha) as to why you do this?




Nice one.  I do this because I want my players to actually pay attention to what an npc is saying. I want them to remember what they know about the story and use that to determine lies and falsehoods. When a person lies, just like in real life, you usually can't tell. But what a player can do, is pay attention to what an npc says, and to subtle cues that are given while he says it. 

When a player searches a room,  I ask them _what_ they are looking for. If they want to disable a trap, I ask them _how_ they want to disable it. I do the same with social checks. You can't just tell a person is lying, but perhaps you can tell if he's nervous? Or whether the things he says are factual? The player needs to state an approach, and then I determine if it's an auto-fail, auto-success or a dice roll.



Harzel said:


> Ok, I assume this is somewhat lighthearted and you really mean that you think he _would_ be caught (regardless of what you might want), otherwise it certainly sounds a bit railroad-ish.




Some npc's are just terrible liars, or the thing they are trying to lie about is so painfully obvious, that the players would be fools to believe it.



Harzel said:


> Is your procedure in this case to rule an autosuccess or is this the case that you mentioned above in which the NPC would exhibit a 'remarkable behavior'?




I would have the npc show a remarkable behavior, or act him out in a way that makes it painfully obvious that he's lying. I'd have the npc misspeak for example, and almost blurt out something he didn't mean to say. Or perhaps the npc simply cracks under enough pressure by the players, and confesses to lying. Either way it's an auto-success.



Harzel said:


> I don't understand the distinction between being able to tell if the one NPC is "telling the truth" and being able to tell whether other NPCs are "on his side".  To me, these both seem to be instances of being able to discern something about an NPC's mental state.  What is it that causes you to treat them differently?




In my opinion, you can't read lies, but you can read emotions, gestures, looks. How those clues are interpreted is up to the players. I always expect my players to state an approach to what they are trying to achieve, and then I decide if the outcome is in doubt.

So when an npc says he has the players surrounded, I don't want my players to say "Can I make an insight check to tell if he's lying?". Instead I want them to say something like "Does it look like he has a lot of allies in the bar?" or "Do I see other people with weapons?" or "Does the npc seem nervous?" or "How does the rest of the tavern respond to these threats?"

Depending on the stated approach, the players may have to make an insight check, but it might as well be a perception check, or no check at all.


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## GothicEmperor (Mar 24, 2019)

If I have a Deception stat, I use the passive deception. Else, the normal procedure of selecting DCs.
I don't stat out most NPCs, so mostly the latter.


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## Swarmkeeper (Mar 24, 2019)

GlassJaw said:


> If a PC asks to roll Insight against an NPC telling the truth...




Slight point of order here...  I've found the game works best as intended:  the players don't call for rolls - the DM calls for a roll only if there is a chance of success or failure and there is a meaningful consequence to failure to the PCs' actions.  So like this:


Bawylie said:


> I ask the player what the character is doing to determine whether or not the NPC is telling the truth and then determine the DC based on the approach.




Of course, with no meaningful consequence of failure, I'd go with this:


iserith said:


> I likely don't set a DC. The character succeeds, no roll, perhaps because the truthful NPC exhibits no body language, speech habit, or change in mannerisms that suggest a deception.




And keep in mind:


GlassJaw said:


> A player is _always _the final arbiter as to whether their character is persuaded or intimidated.



Indeed, the player has every right to roleplay their character as naive or paranoid.  No specific die roll needed to do so.

And more good advice on these themes here:


Imaculata said:


> ...If the players want to find out if they are lying, they have to catch the npc's on falsehoods or inconsistencies in their story, rather than a lucky dice roll. To me that is far more exciting roleplaying wise.
> ...
> When a player searches a room,  I ask them _what_ they are looking for. If they want to disable a trap, I ask them _how_ they want to disable it. I do the same with social checks. You can't just tell a person is lying, but perhaps you can tell if he's nervous? Or whether the things he says are factual? The player needs to state an approach, and then I determine if it's an auto-fail, auto-success or a dice roll.
> ....
> So when an npc says he has the players surrounded, I don't want my players to say "Can I make an insight check to tell if he's lying?". Instead I want them to say something like "Does it look like he has a lot of allies in the bar?" or "Do I see other people with weapons?" or "Does the npc seem nervous?" or "How does the rest of the tavern respond to these threats?"




Not to say any of this is simple - after years of DMing 5e, I'm still working to master this style of play.  Players at our tables (especially those with habits from older editions) still try to "press buttons" on their character sheet, invoking a skill mechanic while asking to roll OR even just rolling and announcing a result.  That's not just on them, though.  I need to strive to do better at setting the scenes and awarding auto-successes for clever play to keep the positive feedback loop going - then the players will more often tell me approaches and goals rather than grabbing dice first and asking questions later.


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## Hussar (Mar 24, 2019)

I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  I've honestly never played this way.  We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.

Maybe I'm just too gamist in my approach.


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## Blue (Mar 24, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.




We have skills to notice things hidden and to put together clues, I'm unsure why a skill to read someone's emotions are bad.  Characters can be more (or less) skilled at reading others just like they can be more or less skilled at noticing a pickpocket.


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## SkidAce (Mar 24, 2019)

I don't "stop" them from making skill rolls, I just ask them what they are doing and why.

Because when they say "I want to see if he is lying" the answer may be obvious upon inspection, like looking in a box for a cat...

So I say "no roll needed, he is lying his butt off" , OR I say "its hard to tell, go ahead and roll".


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## Jer (Mar 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  I've honestly never played this way.  We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.




Yeah - my players are always asking whether or not they can make this check or that check.  The games with kids especially - they want to roll dice and they keep looking for ways to use their skills.  With the kids I insist that they not just make a roll but that they propose what they want to do - "I want to use my Insight to..." or "I want to use my Athletics to..." - and then I'll tell them whether or not they just succeed without having to roll, or if I want them to roll, or if what they're proposing is impossible so it won't matter how they roll (the kids are actually pretty good at not proposing impossible stuff for their characters though - much better than the guys I gamed with back when I was their age tbh).  

The table I've been playing with for going on two decades now (yeesh) used to do the same kind of "look through the skill list to propose an action and a skill for it" when they wanted to do something.  Since we switched to 13th age, which doesn't have skills but has the more looser idea of backgrounds, they're more likely to just propose what they want to do first and give me an idea of which of their character's backgrounds suggests that they should get a bonus to the roll.  Even though it's basically the same thing, it's more fun for me because it's more fun to hear their stories about why their background should apply rather than arguments over whether Perception should work for this instead of Investigation or whatever because they have a higher Perception score. (I do have the one player who really tries his best to shoehorn his highest background into every check just like he'd always try to figure out some way to use his best skill for every check - no worries when I tell  him no, but that's part of the fun for him, and honestly it's fun to hear him rattle off bizarre stories of why his background should apply even when he's clearly just trying to get that extra bonus on his roll).


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  I've honestly never played this way.  We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.
> 
> Maybe I'm just too gamist in my approach.




I wouldn’t say you were too “gamist” but that’s largely because I find no value in Forge-waffle. 

Apart from that, when I played (for a very limited time) 1st edition, my DM did ALL the rolling except damage dice. Now I was 8, and that’s fair. But he rolled everyone else too (his brothers) and they were 9 and 12. In 2nd, I remember rolling to hit and making ability checks when asked to by the DM. 

But it wasn’t (in my experience) until 3rd edition that players started asking to make skill checks. And they often short-handed their play down to “I roll to seduce” rather than actually take an in-game action. At the time, I played that way and didn’t mind. But when I started DM-ing 3rd ed games, I did mind. (I’d DM-ed in 2nd, but not 3rd). And it was jarring. 

4E sort of doubled down on player declarations by attaching powers to them. Fair enough, that’s how that game played. But it did make an effort to go back to the basic conversation of the game wherein a scenario was posited and the DM asked what you do about it. Now, what you did was play a card that had a name, description, and effect, so we had “I use White Raven’s re-arrange deck chairs and shift my allies around while attacking the goblin for 3W+STR damage and half that if I miss.” 

Bringing us to 5th. Now (again, in my experience) 3rd and 4E were a little bit “button-pushy” insofar as players seemed to interact more with the game system than with the adventure scenario. That’s not all bad, and there are some outstanding innovations in those games. 5th took those, and went back to a more 2nd edition play experience with recent/modern system updates. Very neat. 

But the biggest change comes here: 3rd and 4E told the DM what to set the DCs at (or otherwise included them in the ability/skill descriptions or wherever else). 5th says the dice are neutral arbiters, tools the DM can use to determine outcomes, but not required to. It lays out “a middle path” that rewards clever use of players talents and assets and also rewards paying attention to the game so that some things don’t need a roll at all. In other words, DM adjudication is back in a big way for 5th. And since it is now a co-equal component in action resolution, it is only right that judgments be fair, consistent, and informed when adjudicating a player’s action. 

As to fair, consistent, and informed that brings us to your point. You’ve always played some other way where players can declare skill use. You’re surprised that today some DMs say players aren’t allowed to make these rolls. Well, in order to be fair, consistent, and informed we’ve adapted/adopted some practices or rules of order that empower players while avoiding ambiguity and bias. 

Anyway the whole thing has shifted from 3rd & 4E’s “can you roll higher than this number?” to 2nd & 5th’s “what do you do about all this?” And that shift suggests a different answer than “I throw dice at it until it’s gone.”


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## Arvok (Mar 24, 2019)

I added a new post with the quote to which I was responding.


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## Arvok (Mar 24, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.




I disagree. While I favor role playing over roll playing, being able to determine when someone is lying is a skill that can be learned. Police, especially detectives, tend to get better at reading when someone is being deceitful the longer they do their jobs. Some of that is due to an increased level of suspicion, but there are some fairly common signs when someone is lying. They aren't foolproof, but they do help.

That being said, if you don't like using the Sense Motive skill in your game that's your prerogative that's fine, but there is some basis in reality for having it as a skill.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  I've honestly never played this way.  We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.
> 
> Maybe I'm just too gamist in my approach.




Same here.  I don't require a player to state "I'm looking through the text to see if I recognize anything from my studies" instead of saying "I do a history check" if it's clear they're talking about the texts.

Sometimes I'll ask for more detail, sometimes I'll just give them the information I was going to give them anyway.  If they roll exceptionally well I may add a little extra "flair" and details that isn't really important to the story but that's just something I add on the spot for color.  If a history check isn't important or not appropriate I'll simply ignore the roll, make up some obscure fact or ask them what they're trying to accomplish.

While I encourage people to state things in-character, I don't see a need to treat every action like Jeopardy where things have to be said using the correct structure.  No need for a wording gestapo if the intent is clear.



Bawylie said:


> I wouldn’t say you were too “gamist” but that’s largely because I find no value in Forge-waffle.




I've got to ask. Forge-waffle?


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Arvok said:


> I disagree. While I favor role playing over roll playing, being able to determine when someone is lying is a skill that can be learned. Police, especially detectives, tend to get better at reading when someone is being deceitful the longer they do their jobs. Some of that is due to an increased level of suspicion, but there are some fairly common signs when someone is lying. They aren't foolproof, but they do help.
> 
> That being said, if you don't like using the Sense Motive skill in your game that's your prerogative that's fine, but there is some basis in reality for having it as a skill.




I was an investigator for 12 years and now I supervise a team of investigators. Civil/insurance fraud, generally, sometimes criminal. Our ability to “detect” lies is no better or more reliable than a coin toss. The very best of us are right 55% of the time. 

We know when people are lying after we compare statements given to other records and witness accounts. I’ve never once used “sweat on the upper lip” or “touching their face” or “not making eye contact” to determine the veracity of anything. 

I have seen anger, nervousness, calmness, and other demeanors in the course of interviews and trials. I have seen people stare wide-eyed at their lawyer after every question, before answering, hoping for some direction. What does that tell you? I’ve seen people get enraged over questions about their dog’s injuries and not care at all if they’re accused of lying about their own. What does that tell you? I’ve seen people sincerely testify to things that are outright wrong or insane - but they believe them to be true. What does that tell you? 

In my opinion, insight isn’t a lie detector. In my games, I try to use it as an opportunity to fill-in-the-blank or perhaps add two-and-two. A flash of insight might be something like “NPC is adamant in their position, animated and louder than a conversation between two people should be. It’s almost performative. But who is the intended audience?”  Or maybe “They show clear signs of inebriation, the exaggerated signs of inebriation you see when sober people are mimicking drunkenness.”
Or “they’re uninterested/bored with the conversation.” 

Anyway, just my 2 cents on it. Insight gives something, sometimes something useful, sometimes something interesting, but it’s on you to do something with it. It doesn’t detect lies or truth. Unless you want it to, then heck go wild. But even those of us whose job it is to determine lies and truth don’t get it from cold-reading.


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## iserith (Mar 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  I've honestly never played this way.  We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.
> 
> Maybe I'm just too gamist in my approach.




The D&D 3e and D&D 4e rules explicitly encouraged players to ask to make rolls and for the DM to be open to it. So if you play in a D&D 4e game that I run, ask for all the rolls you want!

D&D 5e, however, has nothing like that in its rules. The player describes what he or she wants to do, that's all. (Or at most can ask if a particular skill proficiency applies to an ability check the DM has already called for.) The DM then decides if a mechanic applies, which is when there's uncertainty as to the outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure. Those two elements must be present for there to be a roll, otherwise it's just outright success or outright failure.

If the DM can decide that the character automatically succeeds on a task, then that's a far better outcome than taking a chance on a fickle d20. One worth striving for, I'd say, which means in such a game the smart play is not to ask to roll but to describe what you want to do in such a way that you remove the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. In doing so, you're setting up a situation where the DM _can't_ call for a roll which is far more reliable than rolling, if success if your goal. Further, players that are striving for this outcome tend to be more engaged and descriptive, delving into the environment for any edge they can get. I'd say that's a nice byproduct of the system.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

So for the people that say that only the DM calls for skill checks (which I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm not going to tell you how to run your game), I have a question. How do you handle it?

Personally, I may ask for clarification and encourage people but ultimately I don't care.  So how would you handle the following

Player: "I make an athletics check to climb the wall and get ___."
DM option 1: "Okay, you climb the wall without a problem." Whether or not they really needed the athletics check.
DM option 2:"I'm sorry, that doesn't work, you must state your answer in the form of a question what your character is trying to do."
DM option 3: stare at player blankly.
DM option 4: ?

I really am curious.  Because different people play for different reasons, different people are comfortable with different styles.  I had one guy who was a lot of fun, but would _never_ do anything but state what check they were rolling and would only rarely speak in character.  It just wasn't his thing.  Why is that a bad thing?


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> So for the people that say that only the DM calls for skill checks (which I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm not going to tell you how to run your game), I have a question. How do you handle it?
> 
> Personally, I may ask for clarification and encourage people but ultimately I don't care.  So how would you handle the following
> 
> ...




“Bad” suggests a value judgment that I’m not making. So I decline to defend a position I haven’t taken. 

My choice is DM option 4. “Hold up with the dice for a second. Why are you making an athletics check? You can just climb without a check, at half your movement rate. Asking to make the check is essentially asking for the opportunity to fail. Would you like to fail here?”

Comes down to this, though: it depends on what this cat is trying to do. If they want to climb further than their movement speed would allow per the rules, that may well be a check. If they want to climb just to get 15 feet up a wall, there doesn’t need to be a check at all. And if they have something else in mind altogether, it’s on me to figure out what it is they want to do before I set DCs for it. I don’t want to be in a position where we’re negotiating what happens after a roll. “But I rolled a 20! Surely that means I can spider-man where ever I want to go!”

If all he wants to do is climb, “don’t roll for that. You climbed the wall, now what do you do?” 

We’re (I’m) not asking for checks at all unless:
a) I don’t know what will happen as a result of this action and would like a neutral arbiter to decide the outcome
b) this action can succeed
c) this action can fail
d) there is some cost or consequence such that this action can’t be repeated indefinitely until it succeeds. 

If an action can’t succeed, I don’t need a check. If an action can’t fail, I don’t need a check. If an action can be repeated over and over until it eventually works, I don’t need a check. Why would you want one in any of these cases?


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## MechaPilot (Mar 24, 2019)

I don't set a DC for that.  I make the player roll, and no matter what the roll is I say the same kinds of things I do when the player rolls badly to insight check an actual lie:

1) he doesn't appear to be to be lying.
2) he's speaking fairly confidently and without pause.
3) he maintains consistent eye-contact throughout.
4) his body-language seems relaxed, and he doesn't shift about much.
5) his gesticulating is fairly animated, and he seems emotionally invested in what he's saying.
6) his posture is very meek, and he isn't making much eye-contact; it's hard to tell if he's being dishonest, or if he's just afraid of you.
7) there don't appear to be any cracks in his velvety smooth demeanor; he's pretty hard to read.

That kind of thing.

I feel like it's important to do that so that players don't notice a difference between knowing someone is telling the truth and knowing they're lying.


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## iserith (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> “Bad” suggests a value judgment that I’m not making. So I decline to defend a position I haven’t taken.
> 
> My choice is DM option 4. “Hold up with the dice for a second. Why are you making an athletics check? You can just climb without a check, at half your movement rate. Asking to make the check is essentially asking for the opportunity to fail. Would you like to fail here?”
> 
> ...




I would add that the player is _obligated_ to describe what he or she wants to do, just like the DM is _obligated_ to describe the environment and narrate the result of the adventurers's actions (among other things). Describing what he or she wants to do is _the player's role and responsibility_ in this game. I think it's just fine to encourage players to live up to their responsibilities and say what they want to do (approach) and what they hope to achieve (goal).

Does this mean a flowery description delivered with incredible acting chops? No, but I would say asking to make an ability check is _not_ a description of what the player wants to do. At best it just implies an approach to a goal and leaves the DM to fill in the blanks. In many games, this means the DM says what the character does which is stepping outside the bounds of the DM's role in the game. I'd argue in many cases it creates a further burden on the DM and sets the stage for disputes about what the character does if the player objects to what the DM established. If the player doesn't shirk his or her responsibility, then this can't happen.

Even if an argument for personal responsibility doesn't work, then another argument is that the PC is likely to be more successful by avoiding a fickle d20 wherever possible. I never, ever ask to make a roll in games in which I play. In pickup games outside my own circle, I often encounter groups where players ask to make rolls. My characters are head and shoulders more successful than theirs because I work to remove uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure rather than take a chance on a d20. So if a player is concerned with achieving success more often than failing, then it's a good strategy to avoid that roll whenever possible.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> “Bad” suggests a value judgment that I’m not making. So I decline to defend a position I haven’t taken.
> 
> My choice is DM option 4. “Hold up with the dice for a second. Why are you making an athletics check? You can just climb without a check, at half your movement rate. Asking to make the check is essentially asking for the opportunity to fail. Would you like to fail here?”
> 
> ...




I'm not saying anyone is making a judgement call and honestly I don't understand why this is a touchy subject.  I've just never really gotten clarification on how people run this, or even why they care.  

So for me, if an action can't succeed if they roll the dice it doesn't matter if the result is 30 or more.  There is no 5% chance to climb the wall because it's a perfectly smooth or magic wall and they need to find a different alternative.  So I don't negotiate either:  if I've already determined that there is no chance of success or failure the attempt is still made.  

But I don't see any real difference if someone rolls and says "I do an athletics check of 30 to climb the wall" vs "I try to climb the wall".  Conversely if they roll an athletics check and get a 0, I may let them know they climb the wall anyway and that no check was necessary.  Hopefully I've described the scene well enough that won't happen.

To put it a slightly different way: from the PC's perspective they are trying to climb a wall.  The way we express that attempted action via the rules is an athletics check.  Whether or not it was even possible to climb the wall may be unknown to the PC at the time they make the attempt (especially when magic/illusion may come into play).  

So let's say I've set up the scene where the party has been temporarily split up, and each come to a different section of a wall of an ancient keep.  I'd be okay with any of the following.
PC 1: Rolls the dice "I make an athletics check 20 to climb"
PC 2: "Looking around, do I see anything unusual about the wall, or any way up that I may have missed at first glance?"
PC 3: "This keep is well known, can I make a history check to see if I remember anything?"
PC 4: "Hmm, my athletics isn't great, maybe this rock soft enough to make handholds for climbing." picks up dice "Do I get advantage on an investigation check because of my background?"

And so on. Each PC is doing their best to get over the wall using what they know they're good at.  How would you run it differently?  Why would it matter if the skill check they're trying isn't necessary?

Or throw in an additional twist.  The wall looks smooth, but is really pock-marked with holes that's covered by a glamour.  Anybody could climb it if they wish but the PCs don't realize that.

Again, I'm curious how other people run this.  I don't think one way or another is "right", "wrong" or "bad" but I'm always looking at different ways of doing things to see if it's something I can learn from.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> So for the people that say that only the DM calls for skill checks (which I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm not going to tell you how to run your game), I have a question. How do you handle it?
> 
> Personally, I may ask for clarification and encourage people but ultimately I don't care.  So how would you handle the following
> 
> ...



Generally, when a player asks to make a check or just makes one on their own, my response is, “I’m hearing that your goal is to [blank]. To know how best to resolve your action, I also need to know what your character is doing to try to achieve that goal.” In this specific example, the player did state a goal and approach, kind of - I can glean from their phrasing that their goal is to get to the top of the wall and their approach is to climb it. If the wall has sufficient hand and footholds, I’d probably say something like “I actually wouldn’t have called for a roll there, you can climb at half your speed.” If the wall is not easily scalable, I might say, “you are unable to find purchase on the smooth marble with your hands and feet alone. Next time I’d appreciate it if you just tell me your goal and approach and if you need to make a check I’ll ask you to.”



Oofta said:


> I really am curious.  Because different people play for different reasons, different people are comfortable with different styles.  I had one guy who was a lot of fun, but would _never_ do anything but state what check they were rolling and would only rarely speak in character.  It just wasn't his thing.  Why is that a bad thing?



Whether or not someone is speaking in character really doesn’t matter to me. First person narration is not necessary for my method, all I need is a goal and an approach. In your early example, a goal and approach was actually stated, so I would consider it a perfectly valid action, the only faux pas was anticipating an Athletics check and rolling it before I could adjudicate the action. And it’s not a bad thing to not want to speak in character, or to prefer to state what kind of skill check you want to make.

I have encountered situations like this before, where a player’s preferred style of announcing intent to action and my preferred style of action resolution don’t mesh, and the solution is always to have a talk about it person-to-person. In fact, in my current campaign I had a player push back against my request for an approach when she wanted to check a door for traps. I have my usual response of “I am hearing that you want to determine if there are any traps that might be sprung by opening the door, what does your character do to try to determine that?” and she said “umm... something my character would think of as someone proficient in thieves tools that I wouldn’t?” Sensing some tension, I asked for a Perception check, narrated her character giving the door a thorough visual examination, and told her she didn’t find any evidence of traps (the door wasn’t trapped).

After the game, I talked to her and said that my preference as a DM is for a The players’ choices to be the primary factor in determining success and failure, and for the dice to be a tool to resolve actions with uncertain outcomes. And I said that I consider it part of my job as DM is to give the players the information they need to feel confident make those decisions - I told her the door wasn’t trapped, but if it had been, I would have tried to Telegraph that in a way that would have given her a clue about how best to go about trying to detect it. I also reassured her that I understand she’s not an expert trapsmith, and neither am I, so I will always do my best to take that into account and interpret actions generously - I don’t need a detailed account of every move she makes, I’m not waiting for her to say the “wrong thing” so I can spring a gotcha on her, I just need to know generally, is she just visually examining the door, is she pressing on it, is she sliding something under the cracks, etc. because I don’t want to make assumptions about what her character is doing that might not match up with what she’s envisioning.

She was very understanding, and since then we have had no further issue. In fact, since that conversation, she’s gotten really creative about how she describes searching for traps.


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I'm not saying anyone is making a judgement call and honestly I don't understand why this is a touchy subject.  I've just never really gotten clarification on how people run this, or even why they care.
> 
> So for me, if an action can't succeed if they roll the dice it doesn't matter if the result is 30 or more.  There is no 5% chance to climb the wall because it's a perfectly smooth or magic wall and they need to find a different alternative.  So I don't negotiate either:  if I've already determined that there is no chance of success or failure the attempt is still made.
> 
> ...




Here’s how it’s different if I’m your DM. Same setup with the glamoured Wall. 

PC1: I’m going to climb it. 
DM: ok, how? Free climb? Use your climber’s kit? It looks pretty smooth to you. 
PC1: ok I’ll use my climber’s kit and sink a piton in first as a base. 
DM: great, using your climber’s kit you ascend the wall. As it turns out, it’s not nearly as smooth as it seems to be and you move up rather quickly. Unusually quickly, considering the appearance. 

PC1: It’s an easy climb, guys.
PC2: Hang on. Unusually easy, he said. I want to find out more.
DM: ok what do you do to find out more?
PC2: Can I roll arcana?
DM: Well, what are you doing so that arcana applies? Describe how that comes into play.
PC2: Gotcha. Ok I’m looking for signs of spell craft, feeling for traces of magic, that sort of thing. 
DM: Sounds good. Go ahead and roll intelligence (arcana) or (investigation) since you’re actually feeling. If you get a 15, you’ll know what’s up exactly. If you get a 10, you’ll have an inkling. 
PC2: I’ll use investigation then. (Rolls). I got a 17. 
DM: OK, feeling the Wall, your fingers find numerous purchases, like handholds. It seems someone has put some sort of illusion to hide the handholds. Why, you cannot guess. 

PC3: someone enchanted this for a reason. I wonder if there are traps. 
PC1: I just climbed it fine!
PC3: Yeah, but you’re an expert climber. I’m going to check for traps. Magical and mechanical. 
DM: How, exactly?
PC3: you said it’s got an illusion, so I know just looking at it won’t work. I’ll have to poke around with my tools to see if there are any triggers. 
DM: Alright make an Intelligence check and you can apply either investigation or your thieves kit bonus. If you get a 20 and it’s trapped, you’ll find the trigger and be able to bypass it. If you get a 15, you’ll find the trigger, only. Less than that and you risk setting off any traps. 
PC3: Ok I have double proficiency with the kit, so I roll a 22. 
DM: There is indeed a magical trap. Some of the handholds magically close, trapping any climbers. 

Or whatever. 

But note that anybody who just climbed without stating an approach would’ve been caught by the trap. Since I don’t want to use my players’ ignorance against them, I make sure to always ask how they’re doing something, so that I don’t inadvertently trick them or they don’t unknowing stumble into something. They always have to choose to. We’re not going to backtrack to “I would’ve used my kit!” “But you didn’t say so!” “But I would’ve!” And so on. I’m just going to ask, so we’re all clear. 

It’s my job to give your character a fair shake. I want to avoid ambiguities that result in a bum deal. I once had a dm tell me I couldn’t draw my sword because I’d left it in a dungeon 2 weeks ago (when I dropped it to administer healing). Apparently because I didn’t say I picked it up after, my character didn’t notice it was missing for 2 weeks. Now that’s bull crap. That’s not every dm, either. But it sure as hell won’t be me. I’m gonna clarify with you before the roll.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Here’s how it’s different if I’m your DM. Same setup with the glamoured Wall.
> 
> PC1: I’m going to climb it.
> DM: ok, how? Free climb? Use your climber’s kit? It looks pretty smooth to you.
> ...




You seem to be conflating "gotcha" DMing with rolling a skill check vs declaring intention.  If PC 1 states "I'm going to attempt to climb the wall" vs rolling and athletics check to climb the wall, my response will be the same.  If they're alone as I specified in my scenario the PC may be trapped.  If they're together I'll tell them that as they start to climb it's significantly easier than expected; it's up to them to let me know if they stop climbing.  

For me, rolling and stating what skill you're using is enough to tell me what you are attempting as a PC 90% of the time.  That 10% of the time where it's not?  I'll ask for clarification.  But neither approach has anything to do with adversarial DMing.  

I don't see what not having your sword has to do with anything.  I would no more tell a player that they didn't have their sword than tell them they die of constipation because they never mentioned using the latrine.


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## iserith (Mar 24, 2019)

Getting back to telling truth from lies, here's how I view this as a DM: *A lie in a social interaction challenge is similar to a trap in an exploration challenge.* If you're telegraphing traps in an exploration challenge, you should be telegraphing lies in a social interaction challenge. Players engaging with NPCs and always trying to discern their truthfulness is the same as players searching for traps everywhere - they are trying to avoid gotchas. Consistent telegraphing takes that away since a truthful NPC will not be telegraphing lies.

So, if an NPC is lying, telegraph it by having the NPC give information that contradicts information the PCs have previously gathered. Have them change their mannerisms, display body language, or the like. The players may think, based on the DM's description, that this NPC is probably lying. Just like they may think the scorched floor in front of the dragon statue suggests that the statue is probably trapped. Rather than give away the game, all this does is invite further exploration and social interaction - searching for and figuring out the trap or trying to see what the NPC is lying about and why - to verify their assumptions. Which is what we want, right?


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## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You seem to be conflating "gotcha" DMing with rolling a skill check vs declaring intention.  If PC 1 states "I'm going to attempt to climb the wall" vs rolling and athletics check to climb the wall, my response will be the same.  If they're alone as I specified in my scenario the PC may be trapped.  If they're together I'll tell them that as they start to climb it's significantly easier than expected; it's up to them to let me know if they stop climbing.
> 
> For me, rolling and stating what skill you're using is enough to tell me what you are attempting as a PC 90% of the time.  That 10% of the time where it's not?  I'll ask for clarification.  But neither approach has anything to do with adversarial DMing.
> 
> I don't see what not having your sword has to do with anything.  I would no more tell a player that they didn't have their sword than tell them they die of constipation because they never mentioned using the latrine.




I’m not conflating those things but now that you bring it up, doing it this way does have the added benefit of AVOIDING gotchas. 

So there’s another compelling reason, if you’re looking for one. 

As for the sword, I’m sure you can work out why it’s relevant that what’s said and done in game is an important part of play. If not, assume I rolled a diplomacy check to convince you. My reasons don’t matter. I 20’d my diplomacy check.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I’m not conflating those things but now that you bring it up, doing it this way does have the added benefit of AVOIDING gotchas.
> 
> So there’s another compelling reason, if you’re looking for one.
> 
> As for the sword, I’m sure you can work out why it’s relevant that what’s said and done in game is an important part of play. If not, assume I rolled a diplomacy check to convince you. My reasons don’t matter. I 20’d my diplomacy check.




Sorry, it didn't work. A 20 is not an automatic success which is something I've stated repeatedly.  I don't care if people roll a 20 if there was no chance of success.  From a narrative perspective they tried to do something _they _thought had a chance to succeed and it didn't no matter what the result was.  If the PC does a religion check to recognize a symbol, it doesn't matter what they roll if no one has ever seen it before.  The PC still wracked their brain trying to remember what they had been taught.  That to me is much better than me telling the player what their PC can or cannot attempt.

So I'm still baffled as to why it matters or why people get insulted/mad when I try to get clarification.  Or how your answers address my question.


----------



## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry, it didn't work. A 20 is not an automatic success which is something I've stated repeatedly.  I don't care if people roll a 20 if there was no chance of success.  From a narrative perspective they tried to do something _they _thought had a chance to succeed and it didn't no matter what the result was.  If the PC does a religion check to recognize a symbol, it doesn't matter what they roll if no one has ever seen it before.  The PC still wracked their brain trying to remember what they had been taught.  That to me is much better than me telling the player what their PC can or cannot attempt.
> 
> So I'm still baffled as to why it matters or why people get insulted/mad when I try to get clarification.  Or how your answers address my question.




Who is telling the player what they can or cannot attempt? And who is insulted or mad?

I think I might see the source of your confusion. I’ll let you two work it out.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Who is telling the player what they can or cannot attempt? And who is insulted or mad?
> 
> I think I might see the source of your confusion. I’ll let you two work it out.




I just don't understand your responses, or how the game actually plays any differently.  And yes, I get the impression my questioning bothers you, why else the digs/insults?  What does "I'll let you two of you work it out" even mean unless you're saying I'm somehow contradicting myself?  

If a PC picks up a die rolls a 20 and says "I use athletics to climb the wall" I may tell them that it doesn't work because the wall is simply smoother than it looks, or what looked like decent hand-holds crumble.  How is that any different than "I try to climb the wall using my climbing gear" and you responding that it doesn't work other than the player wasted a roll of a D20?


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## Satyrn (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry, it didn't work. A 20 is not an automatic success which is something I've stated repeatedly.  I don't care if people roll a 20 if there was no chance of success.  From a narrative perspective they tried to do something _they _thought had a chance to succeed and it didn't no matter what the result was.




I feel like you just inadvertantly zinged yourself.

 [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] jokes about he - the real life human poster - rolling a 20 on his check to explain* himself, and you responding by saying he had no chance of making you understand . . . it's the kind of post I'd make in your shoes. 



*Yeah, technically, he said "convince" instead of "explain" but still . . . comedic license on my part.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I feel like you just inadvertantly zinged yourself.
> 
> [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] jokes about he - the real life human poster - rolling a 20 on his check to explain* himself, and you responding by saying he had no chance of making you understand . . . it's the kind of post I'd make in your shoes.
> 
> ...




Hey, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I'm dense.  But there's still the repeated assertion that if you allow rolling first a 20 is an auto-success (I've never said that) and that somehow the conversation we're having has anything to do with a DM requiring you to state everything you do such as picking up your sword.  Or that the DM can't simply ask for clarification if intent is unclear. That letting people roll first changes how the flow of the game is significantly changed.

I'm just not seeing the connection.  If this is simply a matter of preference and style, that's fine.  Say so.


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## Arvok (Mar 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I was an investigator for 12 years and now I supervise a team of investigators. Civil/insurance fraud, generally, sometimes criminal. Our ability to “detect” lies is no better or more reliable than a coin toss. The very best of us are right 55% of the time.




You do realize that 55% is about what you'd expect from the 5e rules? If you're both proficient in the relative skills (Insight for the investigator, Deception for the liar), it would take someone with a 14 or 15 Wisdom ('genius level' wisdom) to be 55% accurate against someone with a 12 or 13 Charisma (above average but not all that exceptional). Or, to put it another way, an investigator with equal ability scores (Wis vs. Cha) would need to be 5th level to be 55% accurate detecting lies against a 1st level liar.

Real world lie detecting doesn't tell people for certain if someone is lying, it only gives the investigator a good or bad feeling about whether or not to believe him. The game equivalent would be the DM rolling the die for you, asking what your modifier is, then telling you "he seems to be telling the truth" or the opposite. In the real world you don't know if you rolled a natural 17 or a 2.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 24, 2019)

Can we not have another one of these threads, please? I think it’s _very_ well established at this point that some of us prefer for our players to state a goal and approach and not make any checks unless prompted to do so, and others find that preference completely baffling. I think those of us who prefer this method have been as thourough as we can be in explaining the reasons we do it this way, we have done so repeatedly, and all it ever leads to is hundreds of pages of whatabouts and argument over who’s “gotchaing” who. It’s fine if you don’t like our way of running the game, what exactly do you think you’ll gain from this line of inquiry that you didn’t the last time a thread got derailed by it?


----------



## Bawylie (Mar 24, 2019)

Arvok said:


> You do realize that 55% is about what you'd expect from the 5e rules? If you're both proficient in the relative skills (Insight for the investigator, Deception for the liar), it would take someone with a 14 or 15 Wisdom ('genius level' wisdom) to be 55% accurate against someone with a 12 or 13 Charisma (above average but not all that exceptional). Or, to put it another way, an investigator with equal ability scores (Wis vs. Cha) would need to be 5th level to be 55% accurate detecting lies against a 1st level liar.
> 
> Real world lie detecting doesn't tell people for certain if someone is lying, it only gives the investigator a good or bad feeling about whether or not to believe him. The game equivalent would be the DM rolling the die for you, asking what your modifier is, then telling you "he seems to be telling the truth" or the opposite. In the real world you don't know if you rolled a natural 17 or a 2.




I think, if you want to take that position, then the insight check is determining the character’s certainty that the NPC is lying/truthful, but says absolutely nothing about whether that NPC is lying or not. 

I’ve seen that in play. It works. I just don’t care for that, particularly, because I think it’s up to the player to determine what the character thinks and how they feel - not the dice. But, I mean, it’s not a hill I’m dying on. I just don’t care for it.


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## Oofta (Mar 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Can we not have another one of these threads, please? I think it’s _very_ well established at this point that some of us prefer for our players to state a goal and approach and not make any checks unless prompted to do so, and others find that preference completely baffling. I think those of us who prefer this method have been as thourough as we can be in explaining the reasons we do it this way, we have done so repeatedly, and all it ever leads to is hundreds of pages of whatabouts and argument over who’s “gotchaing” who. It’s fine if you don’t like our way of running the game, what exactly do you think you’ll gain from this line of inquiry that you didn’t the last time a thread got derailed by it?




Sorry about that.    I guess I keep thinking there's a simple answer, and there's not.  

As far as the OP, there's really no way of knowing 100% someone is telling the truth as they know it without magic.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry about that.    I guess I keep thinking there's a simple answer, and there's not.




No worries  I get the frustration of wanting to understand someone else’s perspective and just not being able to. I try to explain myself as best I can when prompted to do so, but there seems to be some fundamental disconnect that is preventing mutual understanding. It sucks, but experience so far has only shown me that this topic leads to fighting.


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## Greenstone.Walker (Mar 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This is yet another reason why using a skill to "detect" truth or lies is a terrible idea.




Agreed, which is why Wisdom\Insight is about intentions, not truth. A WIS roll won't tell you if what the NPC says is the truth or not, but it might tell you if the NPC believes it is the truth.

_"With your Wisdom, you see that the NPC is sweating slightly, and his eyes keep darting off to the side every time you ask him a question. Looks dodgy."

"With your Wisdom, you see that the NPC is maintaining eye contact with you and not hesitating to answer your questions. You are confident that she is not decieving you."
_


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## Hussar (Mar 25, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> “Bad” suggests a value judgment that I’m not making. So I decline to defend a position I haven’t taken.
> 
> My choice is DM option 4. “Hold up with the dice for a second. Why are you making an athletics check? You can just climb without a check, at half your movement rate. Asking to make the check is essentially asking for the opportunity to fail. Would you like to fail here?”
> /snip
> ...




Just as a point.  There is no autofail of skill checks in D&D and never has been.  Let me repeat that.  There is, and never has been, any autofail roll for skill checks in D&D.  I notice a lot of DM's in various editions don't realize that.  "A one always fails" right?  No.  Not on skill checks.  So, if I can climb without a check, then I can climb with a check and there is still no chance of failure.  

As to why would I want a check in these cases - well, until I attempt the action, I cannot know any of these things can I?  So, to me, it's just a skill check.  Nothing changes if I roll the check.  So, what's the problem?


----------



## Bawylie (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Just as a point.  There is no autofail of skill checks in D&D and never has been.  Let me repeat that.  There is, and never has been, any autofail roll for skill checks in D&D.  I notice a lot of DM's in various editions don't realize that.  "A one always fails" right?  No.  Not on skill checks.  So, if I can climb without a check, then I can climb with a check and there is still no chance of failure.
> 
> As to why would I want a check in these cases - well, until I attempt the action, I cannot know any of these things can I?  So, to me, it's just a skill check.  Nothing changes if I roll the check.  So, what's the problem?




I hear you. Once I ask for a roll, I don’t count a result of 1 as an automatic fail. 

But there are things that cannot succeed on their own merit regardless of a result of the die roll. Just as there are no automatic failures, there are no automatic successes as a result of a check. 

But before we ask for a check, we determine whether or not a proposed action is possible, or if it can’t possibly fail. Let me give you an example - no matter how hard a character tries, they can’t seduce a stone. They may put on their finest clothes, deliver their very best pickup line, and put on enough charm to make Aphrodite blush, but the stone will never be into it. So we don’t need a check of any kind. 

Once we accept there are some actions that don’t need checks because they cannot possibly succeed, we acknowledge also that there are some that cannot possibly fail. Very little will prevent a character from opening an unlocked, unguarded, unwarded door. 

You can jump an inch without a roll. But you’ll never jump to the moon no matter what you roll. 

Naturally those are absurdities to illustrate the point. I think there’s no real debate at these extremes. “You can’t jump to the moon or seduce a stone” isn’t controversial. But there are likewise other things that are more reasonable but still can’t succeed. No matter how thoroughly you search my sofa, you won’t find any coins (I already got them). No matter how hard you look for a trap that isn’t there, you cannot find it. And nobody will ask for a dexterity check for tying your shoes. Nor would anyone reasonably ask for a strength check to climb a knotted rope down 10 feet. 

There’s no auto-fail for skill checks. But there’s no entitlement to one either. That’s a judgment call, and therefore belongs to the DM.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I was an investigator for 12 years and now I supervise a team of investigators. Civil/insurance fraud, generally, sometimes criminal. Our ability to “detect” lies is no better or more reliable than a coin toss. The very best of us are right 55% of the time.
> 
> We know when people are lying after we compare statements given to other records and witness accounts. I’ve never once used “sweat on the upper lip” or “touching their face” or “not making eye contact” to determine the veracity of anything.
> 
> ...




Thanks for injecting your personal experience... but I think it's fair for the game to go for genre over reality and let a good insight-type skill do a little more heavy lifting than you see in the reality you experience.

But I do agree with much of your approach to the skill. I also take it less as a direct lie detector and more as a person-reading skill, whether they're evasive, hiding something, giving off a tell, being sincere, or anything else.


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## Bawylie (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Thanks for injecting your personal experience... but I think it's fair for the game to go for genre over reality and let a good insight-type skill do a little more heavy lifting than you see in the reality you experience.
> 
> But I do agree with much of your approach to the skill. I also take it less as a direct lie detector and more as a person-reading skill, whether they're evasive, hiding something, giving off a tell, being sincere, or anything else.




Fair enough.

The text of the game: 
“Insight. Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such 
as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.”

My reading is definitely not the only interpretation. There is a reading of that text that does enable truth/lie detection and there probably ought to be space enough for genre considerations.


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## Hussar (Mar 25, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> /snip for examples that really don't speak to the issue
> 
> There’s no auto-fail for skill checks. But there’s no entitlement to one either. That’s a judgment call, and therefore belongs to the DM.




Firstly, since we both agree that there are no auto succeeds or auto fails, what is changed by a player rolling before asking?  If the task was impossible, it remains impossible.  If the task was very easy, it remains very easy.  Rolling beforehand changes nothing.

However, the notion that a player is not "entitled" to a skill check is something I strongly disagree with. 

Earlier examples from [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] regarding his player would cause me, as a player to do nothing but grind my teeth.  You don't ask me to describe my actions before I attack and I can certainly roll an attack roll without your permission, nor do you ask me to describe my actions before casting a spell.  So, what's wrong with, "I'm trained in investigation - I check for traps"?  The idea that somehow that makes me an "entitled" player is something I strongly object to.

And, as a DM, I have zero interest in gate keeping player skill checks.  They can roll any time they want.  Frankly I prefer it that way.

To me the fact that [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s very polite requests for why doing it your way helps the game were completely stonewalled and people immediately got defensive demonstrates that perhaps folks are a bit more controlling while sitting in the DM's chair than they think they are.


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## Bawylie (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Firstly, since we both agree that there are no auto succeeds or auto fails, what is changed by a player rolling before asking?  If the task was impossible, it remains impossible.  If the task was very easy, it remains very easy.  Rolling beforehand changes nothing.
> 
> However, the notion that a player is not "entitled" to a skill check is something I strongly disagree with.
> 
> ...




I think that argument relies on reading my intent. As for whether anyone else feels defensive, I couldn’t say. 

As for attacks, I do ask that you give a reasonable statement regarding your intent. You’ll need to have specified, at minimum, which target. “I attack the nearest goblin with my sword” is perfectly sufficient. As we’ve discussed before. And there are situations in which no attack roll would be required. 

Same for casting a spell. I do need to know what spell you’re casting and presumably on whom. 

Maybe I don’t understand your point though: how are you casting spells or attacking without saying what you’re doing? Is it like, “16 fire damage to these guys - unless they make saves”? And “that dude takes 4 slashing”? 

There’s nothing wrong with “I’m trained in investigation - I check for traps.” That states a clear goal “I want to find traps.” I merely want to know HOW you go about checking, as well. That way I know if you automatically find it, stumble across it, stumble across it and set it off, or don’t find it at all because the way you’re doing it can’t work (looking for an invisible trap, for example).  

I don’t want a die roll before I set a DC. Knowing the result of your roll before I decide how hard of a task it is might very well seem unfair. Particularly if I decide it’s one higher than what you rolled. But if I tell you what the DC is first, you don’t need to question whether I’ve decided fairly and you can opt out. “Hang on, i didn’t know that would be that difficult and I wouldn’t take that kind of risk.” Fair enough. 

Or likewise maybe I’ve misunderstood what you intended. Clarifying before the roll benefits the player and encourages intelligent decisions and calculated risks. 

Can’t do that after a roll though. What’s done is done.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Earlier examples from @_*Charlaquin*_ regarding his player would cause me, as a player to do nothing but grind my teeth.



That’s fine. I’m open to the possibility that not everyone’s preferred play style will mesh with mine. If you don’t like the way I run the game, no one will force you to play at my table.

Also, it’d be “regarding her player.” No big deal, but just so we’re clear.



Hussar said:


> You don't ask me to describe my actions before I attack and I can certainly roll an attack roll without your permission, nor do you ask me to describe my actions before casting a spell.



I don’t ask you to describe your search for traps either. I ask you to state a goal and an approach. An attack in combat has that built in - your goal is to kill your target, and your approach is to use your weapon. That much is pretty easy and uncontroversial to infer. However, in order to properly adjudicate the action, I do need you to tell me what target you are attacking and with what weapon. Likewise, it is pretty easy and uncontrovetsial to infer that when you say “I check for traps,” your goal is to discern whether or not trap are present. It is not so easy or uncontroversial to infer what you are doing to make that determination. Are you just looking with your eyes? Are you touching anything? Are you using your hands or a tool? I don’t need specific details, but I do need to know generally where you are searching and how you are searching it, just like I don’t need to know specific details of your attack, but I do need to know generally what you are attacking and with what weapon or spell. 



Hussar said:


> So, what's wrong with, "I'm trained in investigation - I check for traps"?



Knowing that you are trained in investigation does not help me understand what your character is doing to investigate, which I need to know in order to determine the results. Just as knowing that you are proficient with martial weapons doesn’t help me know what weapon you are attacking with.



Hussar said:


> The idea that somehow that makes me an "entitled" player is something I strongly object to.



I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bawylie was suggesting by saying “players are not entitled to a roll.” That sounds to me like the literal meaning of the word “entitled.” That is to say, I think he was saying “the rules don’t grant you the authority to decide when the success of your own character’s action should be determined by way of a dice roll,” not “you are an entitled person if you want to roll dice.”



Hussar said:


> And, as a DM, I have zero interest in gate keeping player skill checks.  They can roll any time they want.  Frankly I prefer it that way.



No one is gatekeeping skill checks. We’re just saying that it is the DM’s role to decide when the result of a character’s action requires a dice roll to determine its success or failure, nor the player’s. If you prefer to allow your players to decide that the results of their actions will be determined by way of a skill check whenever they want to, that’s fine. You do you.



Hussar said:


> To me the fact that @_*Oofta*_'s very polite requests for why doing it your way helps the game were completely stonewalled and people immediately got defensive demonstrates that perhaps folks are a bit more controlling while sitting in the DM's chair than they think they are.



Who stonewalled Oofta? It looked to me like their respectful questions received respectful answers. After giving my own answer, I requested that we not let this thread devolve into another 100+ page argument about our preferred resolution methods, because I foresaw a post like yours coming soon.

No one is saying you’re DMing wrong if you let your players make checks whenever they want. What’s it to you that some of us don’t do that? You run your games the way you like, and I’ll run my games the way I like.


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## Hussar (Mar 25, 2019)

Fair 'nuff I suppose.  Probably reading too much into this anyway.  It was meant as an off the cuff remark that I was surprised that DM's do this.  Just something I'd never run across.


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> “I check for traps,” your goal is to discern whether or not trap are present. It is not so easy or uncontroversial to infer what you are doing to make that determination. Are you just looking with your eyes? Are you touching anything? Are you using your hands or a tool? I don’t need specific details, but I do need to know generally where you are searching and how you are searching it, just like I don’t need to know specific details of your attack, but I do need to know generally what you are attacking and with what weapon or spell.




This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps.  My PC is.  Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling?  I don't deal with horses on a regular basis.  Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse?  Not so sure.

So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach?  As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?"  As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear.  That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.

Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days.  Carry on.


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## Sadras (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities.../snip




My wife and I recently adopted such cat. It skittishness I suspect is partly a result of having bounced around to no less than 5 homes in her 2 years of life. After having her 5 months, I can attest the DC decreases but the skittishness remains.


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## Hriston (Mar 25, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?




I wouldn’t be inclined to ask for an ability check in this situation. Assuming the NPC isn’t trying to hide its true intentions from the PCs, and the player makes an action-declaration along the lines of trying to discern those intentions by observing its body language, speech patterns, manerisms, etc., I’d tell the player s/he doesn’t notice anything that would indicate the NPC is lying. To me , this is analogous to a PC trying to notice a creature that isn't trying to hide. Of course, I'm not going to ask for an ability check to notice a creature that's standing out in the open. It's the same for an NPC that isn't trying to hide its intentions. 

I think the description of the Insight skill supports this interpretation with the two examples it gives of its use, i.e. "searching out a lie" and "predicting someone’s next move". Both of those examples involve discovering hidden intentions rather than those that are willingly divulged.


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## Caliburn101 (Mar 25, 2019)

This is a fun one...

… just think about it...

… have the player roll, and no matter what they roll, say "They appear to be telling the truth."

No DC needed!


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## DEFCON 1 (Mar 25, 2019)

The number is 6.75.


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## Hussar (Mar 25, 2019)

Something that occurs to me that maybe is shaping my POV, is that I play online.  And have done so for a long time.  Which means that players can roll dice to me (the DM) without knowing the results of the roll.  Fantasy Grounds, for example, has the Dice Tower, which means that anything rolled in the tower is only visible to the DM.

So, yeah, of course my players are going to drop dice without me asking.  They don't know the results anyway, so, may just as well.


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## S'mon (Mar 25, 2019)

Hriston said:


> I wouldn’t be inclined to ask for an ability check in this situation. Assuming the NPC isn’t trying to hide its true intentions from the PCs, and the player makes an action-declaration along the lines of trying to discern those intentions by observing its body language, speech patterns, manerisms, etc., I’d tell the player s/he doesn’t notice anything that would indicate the NPC is lying. To me , this is analogous to a PC trying to notice a creature that isn't trying to hide. Of course, I'm not going to ask for an ability check to notice a creature that's standing out in the open. It's the same for an NPC that isn't trying to hide its intentions.
> 
> I think the description of the Insight skill supports this interpretation with the two examples it gives of its use, i.e. "searching out a lie" and "predicting someone’s next move". Both of those examples involve discovering hidden intentions rather than those that are willingly divulged.




I don't request an ability check. I'm talking about case where player requests Insight check vs truthful NPC.

If I give a check on request I either say "You don't get a read on them" (Fail) or they notice signs of lying (if lying) or trustworthiness (if truthful). 

I don't say "You believe them" if a lying NPC succeeds on a Deception check vs Passive Insight, or "You don't trust them" if PC fails Insight check vs truthful NPC Passive Deception.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps.  My PC is.  Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling?  I don't deal with horses on a regular basis.  Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse?  Not so sure.
> 
> So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach?  As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?"  As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear.  That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.
> 
> Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days.  Carry on.




I agree with you, generally. I think it's a bit ridiculous for a DM to expect a player to have the expertise their PC has, particularly with respect to something technical like trap finding and disarming. However, I would like players to interact with the room more than, "We search the room for traps." Let me know where you're searching, what order you're searching in, how thoroughly you're digging in - taking your time or being hasty because of the risk of someone else coming in the chamber - that sort of thing.


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

Hriston said:


> I wouldn’t be inclined to ask for an ability check in this situation. Assuming the NPC isn’t trying to hide its true intentions from the PCs, and the player makes an action-declaration along the lines of trying to discern those intentions by observing its body language, speech patterns, manerisms, etc., I’d tell the player s/he doesn’t notice anything that would indicate the NPC is lying. To me , this is analogous to a PC trying to notice a creature that isn't trying to hide. Of course, I'm not going to ask for an ability check to notice a creature that's standing out in the open. It's the same for an NPC that isn't trying to hide its intentions.
> 
> I think the description of the Insight skill supports this interpretation with the two examples it gives of its use, i.e. "searching out a lie" and "predicting someone’s next move". Both of those examples involve discovering hidden intentions rather than those that are willingly divulged.




But then aren't you broadcasting that the NPC is telling the truth?  Because the only other possibility is that they have such a high deception check that you're automatically going to fail which is extremely unlikely.

Which is why I would personally ask for a roll and then respond "they seem to be telling the truth" which is my normal go-to whether or not the NPC is telling the truth.  Because the alternative is basically saying "you know they're telling the truth".

EDIT: To put it another way: a PC can always try to do something, even if there is no chance of success.  To me the roll of the dice is the game mechanic of the PC attempting something.  I don't always do this, sometimes I just say "no you can't lift that rock" but if the outcome is uncertain from the perspective of the PC, I do.


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## Sadras (Mar 25, 2019)

_PC:_ My character steps forward, planting left foot firmly into the ground securing his position, and swings upwards and with tentative concern for accuracy, aiming such that the fine masterwork long sword's blade should connect between the 3rd and 4th vertebra on the right side of the orc, taking care to ensure that the flesh meets the blade a third of its length in from the tip and that the force of the blow is increased in enthusiasm due to it being wielded in two hands, and that the hands are safely guarded in steel gauntlets to limit the kickback from the blow, and while performing this my character with much bravado and a tone of disgust, will exclaim loudly, beyond the sound of battle, a meaningful and intimidating "A-ha!"

_DM:_ Roll 1d20 and add your attack modifiers.    

_PC:_ I forgot, after my exclamation, I will use my free use of interact with the environment/object to spit with ferocity on the orc, catching him in the face, using up any movement if need be to ensure the spittle reaches target.

_DM:_ A-ha.

_PC:_ Exactly!


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## Hriston (Mar 25, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I don't request an ability check. I'm talking about case where player requests Insight check vs truthful NPC.
> 
> If I give a check on request I either say "You don't get a read on them" (Fail) or they notice signs of lying (if lying) or trustworthiness (if truthful).
> 
> I don't say "You believe them" if a lying NPC succeeds on a Deception check vs Passive Insight, or "You don't trust them" if PC fails Insight check vs truthful NPC Passive Deception.




By "player requests Insight check" am I correct in understanding you to mean that the player declares his character is attempting to determine the true intentions of the truthful NPC? If so, is there a situation in which you wouldn't "give a check on request"?


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## S'mon (Mar 25, 2019)

Hriston said:


> By "player requests Insight check" am I correct in understanding you to mean that the player declares his character is attempting to determine the true intentions of the truthful NPC? If so, is there a situation in which you wouldn't "give a check on request"?




Yes that's what I mean.
Situation in which I would not give a check - I might give an auto success if it's blindingly obvious. I might (rarely) not give a check if for some reason the truth can't be down, eg they're using Insight vs a pre-programmed magic mouth or other artificial voice - the check might tell them it's a programmed voice, but probably not if the voice is lying. Normally though I default to say-yes-or-roll.


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## Swarmkeeper (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fair 'nuff I suppose.  Probably reading too much into this anyway.  It was meant as an off the cuff remark that I was surprised that DM's do this.  Just something I'd never run across.




Which is at least somewhat surprising, since it is RAW (PHB p 174, emphasis mine):
[SECTION]An ability check tests a character's or monster's innate talent and training in an effort to overcome a challenge. *The DM calls for an ability check* when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.[/SECTION]
That said, I totally missed - or at least did not fully absorb - this passage when I started DMing 5e.  I let players self-assign rolls which seemed ok as some of them had more RPG experience than I did and what did I know about D&D after not playing since 1e - but something just didn't feel right during our games for many months.  I didn't recognize the solution until I started reading stuff from Angry  and getting solid advice from folks here like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION], [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION].  Our games have gone from usually fine to consistently very good.  And it has had a lot to do with my DM approach to dice rolls.

Please don't misunderstand - I am in no way saying you are doing it wrong - if your group is having fun, you're doing it right!  But you might give this way a try for a one shot or three to see how it feels for you and your group.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> I agree with you, generally. I think it's a bit ridiculous for a DM to expect a player to have the expertise their PC has, particularly with respect to something technical like trap finding and disarming. However, I would like players to interact with the room more than, "We search the room for traps." Let me know where you're searching, what order you're searching in, how thoroughly you're digging in - taking your time or being hasty because of the risk of someone else coming in the chamber - that sort of thing.




Yes, and as DM, I want to limit the amount of assumptions I'm making about what the character is actually doing. For one, it's not my role as DM to say what the character does and, for another, I don't want to create a situation where the player may object to what I establish (e.g. "I didn't say I was moving toward the dragon statue..."). If a player states a clear goal and approach that takes into account the environment the DM just described, we neatly avoid any of these issues. What's more, the player may well be able to avoid rolling the dice with a good action declaration that results in automatic success which is more desirable than leaving your fate to a swingy d20.

Nobody is saying that anyone has to be an expert in anything. That is a ridiculous assertion with no basis in reality that gets trotted out in every related discussion and is thoroughly shot down every time. We should ask the people who keep making this assertion why they keep doing it. Because I'm starting to suspect it's not just a simple misapprehension.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps.  My PC is.  Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling?  I don't deal with horses on a regular basis.  Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse?  Not so sure.
> 
> So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach?  As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?"  As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear.  That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.
> 
> Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days.  Carry on.



This is essentially what the player in my example took issue with, which is why when I talked to her after the game, I told her I know she’s not an expert trapsmith, and neither am I, I will do my best to take that into account and interpret her actions generously. As well, I pointed out that I consider it my job to give the players enough information to be confident in making their decisions. If there’s a trap to be found, I will telegraph it in such a way that you should be able to determine a decent way to detect it. I’m not asking for every detail of your search so I can spring a “gotcha” on you when you say the wrong thing, I just need to make sure that our mental pictures of what your character is doing agree. I don’t want to incorrectly assume what your character is doing and end up in an “I never said I was touching it!” argument.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Caliburn101 said:


> This is a fun one...
> 
> … just think about it...
> 
> ...



Why have the player roll if the result isn’t going to affect the outcome? Seems like this would undermine the players’ confidence in the consistency of your world’s responses to their actions.


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## Hriston (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But then aren't you broadcasting that the NPC is telling the truth?  Because the only other possibility is that they have such a high deception check that you're automatically going to fail which is extremely unlikely.
> 
> Which is why I would personally ask for a roll and then respond "they seem to be telling the truth" which is my normal go-to whether or not the NPC is telling the truth.  Because the alternative is basically saying "you know they're telling the truth".
> 
> EDIT: To put it another way: a PC can always try to do something, even if there is no chance of success.  To me the roll of the dice is the game mechanic of the PC attempting something.  I don't always do this, sometimes I just say "no you can't lift that rock" but if the outcome is uncertain from the perspective of the PC, I do.




To me, there's no uncertainty here, so I'm not going to spend time rolling just to make it seem uncertain to the players. The NPC is making its true intentions known, so no ability check is needed.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Something that occurs to me that maybe is shaping my POV, is that I play online.  And have done so for a long time.  Which means that players can roll dice to me (the DM) without knowing the results of the roll.  Fantasy Grounds, for example, has the Dice Tower, which means that anything rolled in the tower is only visible to the DM.
> 
> So, yeah, of course my players are going to drop dice without me asking.  They don't know the results anyway, so, may just as well.



In addition to generally running games in person, another difference in how we DM is that I don’t hide the results of my players’ dice rolls from them. Generally, I find that the more information players have, the more confident they feel in their decisions, the more rewarded they feel when their decisions yield positive results, and the less cheated they feel when their actions yield negative results. When I call for a check, I always tell the players the DC, and when it’s reasonable to do so, I tell them the potential consequences if they fail. For example, “That’ll be a DC 10 Dexterity check to cross the rope bridge. If you fail, you’ll fall off,” or “That’ll be a DC 15 Dexterity check with your Thieves’ Tools to disarm the trap, on a failure you’ll spring it.” Then I give the player the opportunity to back out. The reason being, I want characters to succeed and fail primary based on the players’ decisions. Telling the player the odds and the potential consequences allows them to make an informed decision instead of a blind guess, so success feels like you made a smart choice and failure feels like you took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off, instead of success and failure seeming random.

I always strive to provide the players with opportunities to make decisions as they imagine their characters would,  and to empower them to make those decisions confidently. I’ve found that when I do so, protestations about not having the same expertise as the character tend to disappear.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Firstly, since we both agree that there are no auto succeeds or auto fails, what is changed by a player rolling before asking?  If the task was impossible, it remains impossible.  If the task was very easy, it remains very easy.  Rolling beforehand changes nothing.
> 
> However, the notion that a player is not "entitled" to a skill check is something I strongly disagree with.
> 
> ...



To me, coming from a perspective of many different RPGs, not just different variations of dnd, the idea that referencing your character traits and aptitudes when communicating your character's choices is somehow going to cause new failure chances is staggering.

I refer back to comments like the one where the GM said an athletics roll for a climb means a chance of fail but if they just ask to climb it succeeds. Other comments also come up around these of it bring "good strategy" to not ask for rolls cuz rolls might fail, rolls must have a fail chance (which seems to backdoor in the "1 is failure" non-rule.)

For my gang, mix of decades long together and new players, we get both types of descriptions and a lot more in the range between. Success/fail is determined the same, regardless of how the player words the effort and whether or not the say "stealth check or not.

But for some, it sometimes seem like the process of these things seem to take on their own life and not be a means to get to the results.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t want to incorrectly assume what your character is doing and end up in an “I never said I was touching it!” argument.




Arguments over things like this usually underscore, to me, exactly how much players don't know about the technical aspects of searching thoroughly and finding traps. In order to do a thorough search, *you're damn well going to have to touch things!* I always assume a visual inspection would precede really digging in. And if your searching check was good enough to find any traps that would have been triggered by touching them, you're golden - I'll take that into account. If it's not, then too bad. You'd have never gotten to the point of finding a more deeply laid trap or the goodies protected by the trap without a bit of touching anyway.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Why have the player roll if the result isn’t going to affect the outcome? Seems like this would undermine the players’ confidence in the consistency of your world’s responses to their actions.




Because there may still be other information they can glean from the situation other than just whether or not the speaker seems sincere. Plus, there may be some people who never seem sincere even when they are. And from the player perspective, that using their skills to analyze someone's mood, truthfulness, etc is pretty  much always uncertain.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Arguments over things like this usually underscore, to me, exactly how much players don't know about the technical aspects of searching thoroughly and finding traps. In order to do a thorough search, *you're damn well going to have to touch things!* I always assume a visual inspection would precede really digging in. And if your searching check was good enough to find any traps that would have been triggered by touching them, you're golden - I'll take that into account. If it's not, then too bad. You'd have never gotten to the point of finding a more deeply laid trap or the goodies protected by the trap without a bit of touching anyway.




If that’s the understanding up front, that works too.


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## Hriston (Mar 25, 2019)

S'mon said:


> Yes that's what I mean.




Then why the semantics, if by "give a check on request", you mean the same thing I do by "ask for a check"?



S'mon said:


> Situation in which I would not give a check - I might give an auto success if it's blindingly obvious. I might (rarely) not give a check if for some reason the truth can't be down, eg they're using Insight vs a pre-programmed magic mouth or other artificial voice - the check might tell them it's a programmed voice, but probably not if the voice is lying. Normally though I default to say-yes-or-roll.




Well, to me, a Wisdom (Insight) check represents an attempt to notice clues that hint at someone's intentions that would otherwise be hidden. This NPC isn't trying to hide its true intentions, so this isn't so much an auto-success as it is analogous to searching for a secret door on a section of wall where none exists. It's entirely appropriate for the DM to reply, "You don't notice anything," without calling for a check of any kind.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps.  My PC is.  Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling?  I don't deal with horses on a regular basis.  Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse?  Not so sure.
> 
> So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach?  As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?"  As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear.  That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.
> 
> Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days.  Carry on.



"How do you get the horse to settle down and behave?"

You are NOT the only one.

"I scream at the horse to shut the f up, stand there and behave!!!"

vs

"I slowly, calmly approach it, offering an apple, no quick moves."

Are these two results gonna get the same DC to an animal handling check? Or are GMs asking for "How do you..." really just rewarding players with knowledge of how to deal with horses?

Obviously, this is an example but the most common examples across games has come from social encounters where what the player says and how the player says it often trumps the character abilities - "by removing uncertainty" is just another form of "you pass the check."

If my ranger gets assigned foraging, I likely dont need to provide much detail beyond "I go out foraging" - well unless I find something interesting or fail the check and get setback.

If I get assigned "keep the horses from freaking out due yo the storm maybe i do. 

To each their own.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Arguments over things like this usually underscore, to me, exactly how much players don't know about the technical aspects of searching thoroughly and finding traps. In order to do a thorough search, *you're damn well going to have to touch things!* I always assume a visual inspection would precede really digging in. And if your searching check was good enough to find any traps that would have been triggered by touching them, you're golden - I'll take that into account. If it's not, then too bad. You'd have never gotten to the point of finding a more deeply laid trap or the goodies protected by the trap without a bit of touching anyway.



To me these examples simply highlight lack of communication and common framework between gm and players. 

If a gm has as a rule in his game that investigation requires touching, why wasnt it given that way yo the players.

BTW I do not expect my players to actually be informed about the technical aspects of trap finding. They are not in real life active burglars.


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## akr71 (Mar 25, 2019)

If you are the DM, and your player wants to see if their character can pick up on your NPC, why set a DC at? If _you _know the NPC is being truthful, and the player _really _wants to roll, let them and just tell them "You believe the person is being truthful."

Some would say that if there are no outward signs of a lie, then no roll is necessary, but players like to roll. Also, if the NPC is still new to them and the players aren't sure if it is friend, foe, or other, a little bit of mystery is good thing.

If the NPC is trying to convince the characters of something, a persuasion or deception roll on their part might apply (depending on the NPC's motives).


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Because there may still be other information they can glean from the situation other than just whether or not the speaker seems sincere.



Seems like if that were the case, the result of the roll would affect the outcome...



billd91 said:


> Plus, there may be some people who never seem sincere even when they are.



Sure, but then I’d think the result would be that they seem insincere regardless of the result of the roll and we’re back to the question of why call for the roll unless its result can affect the outcome?



billd91 said:


> And from the player perspective, that using their skills to analyze someone's mood, truthfulness, etc is pretty  much always uncertain.



This, I think, is one of our fundamental differences. I don’t want my players to feel uncertain about the outcomes of their actions. This, in my experience, is what leads players to actually _want_ to make checks. They see the numbers on their sheet as more reliable than their own mental picture of the fictional world, so they would rather push the “check for traps” button and risk failing because of a low roll than declare an approach with any degree of specificity and risk failing because they couldn’t accurately predict how the world would respond to their actions.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

akr71 said:


> Some would say that if there are no outward signs of a lie, then no roll is necessary, but players like to roll.




Not mine! Trying to roll is not a great strategy for success.


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "How do you get the horse to settle down and behave?"
> 
> You are NOT the only one.
> 
> ...




I guess I just assume my players aren't complete idiots that will purposely doing something to guarantee they don't succeed.  If a wild bear looks like it might attack, maybe charging at it yelling would be the best choice.  Maybe standing your ground being careful to not look it in the eye is best.  In reality I know it depends on the type of bear (if black the former, if grizzly the latter, if polar just kiss your ass goodbye  ).


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

Taking a slightly different example, there are times when I wouldn't call for a roll (or ignore any roll made even if it's a 20).  The wall is smooth with no handholds whatsoever, the boulder is too big to lift, etc.  Sometimes I don't call for a roll simply for expediency.

But there are other times when I will because while the outcome is pre-determined by me as a DM, it is not and should not be from the perspective of the PCs.

For example, the PCs suspect there is a secret door in a room.  I know there is none, and nothing is going to change that.  However, uncertainty can be very important to the story.  If I just say "there is no secret door" I've taken away all uncertainty.  If I say "he's telling the truth", I've given them a 100% guarantee that (barring magic) they're telling the truth.

This is the way I've always run things since back in my AD&D days.  Sometimes a little 
paranoia/questioning tells a better story.  After all, when I look for my keys that 
I _know_ I left in the kitchen, there's always going to be that lingering doubt that maybe I just didn't check thoroughly enough.  At least until I find the keys in the bathroom.

The uncertainty factor is something commonly used in TV/Movies/Fiction.  The mystery sometimes shows you who dunnit and the story is all about how they get caught.  Other times, the identity of the culprit (or even if there was a crime) is hidden from the viewer.  If the PCs are left uncertain whether or not the NPC is lying, they may still be a suspect.  That's part of the fun of solving a mystery.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I guess I just assume my players aren't complete idiots that will purposely doing something to guarantee they don't succeed.  If a wild bear looks like it might attack, maybe charging at it yelling would be the best choice.  Maybe standing your ground being careful to not look it in the eye is best.  In reality I know it depends on the type of bear (if black the former, if grizzly the latter, if polar just kiss your ass goodbye  ).



I wont get into whether my players or yours are idiots, but am pretty sure I have a handle on whether or not their characters are, especially at things they are proficient at. That's why I dont get too bogged down with asking players to describe "the right way to do..." the things their characters know well and they dont.

As you observe - aggression is the right approach for some animal handling checks against some types even subtypes but the wrong one against others. What do I gain by requiring the player *and me* to both know that and be on the same page by changing around their DCs on that description as opposed to letting "Andratti has a +7 in Animals" cover it?


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Sure, but then I’d think the result would be that they seem insincere regardless of the result of the roll and we’re back to the question of why call for the roll unless its result can affect the outcome?




An appropriately insightful read of the speaker would enable the PC to realize that the shifty guy actually seems to be sincere in this case. Insight helps a PC read someone's intentions, mood, and so on. And that should be able to see sincerity through an insincere reputation or veneer as much as it can see insincerity on a liar.



Charlaquin said:


> This, I think, is one of our fundamental differences. I don’t want my players to feel uncertain about the outcomes of their actions. This, in my experience, is what leads players to actually _want_ to make checks. They see the numbers on their sheet as more reliable than their own mental picture of the fictional world, so they would rather push the “check for traps” button and risk failing because of a low roll than declare an approach with any degree of specificity and risk failing because they couldn’t accurately predict how the world would respond to their actions.




That has not been my experience. My players scrutinize NPCs or search for traps regardless of whether I tell them the results with or without a die roll.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Taking a slightly different example, there are times when I wouldn't call for a roll (or ignore any roll made even if it's a 20).  The wall is smooth with no handholds whatsoever, the boulder is too big to lift, etc.  Sometimes I don't call for a roll simply for expediency.
> 
> But there are other times when I will because while the outcome is pre-determined by me as a DM, it is not and should not be from the perspective of the PCs.
> 
> For example, the PCs suspect there is a secret door in a room.  I know there is none, and nothing is going to change that.  However, uncertainty can be very important to the story.  If I just say "there is no secret door" I've taken away all uncertainty.  If I say "he's telling the truth", I've given them a 100% guarantee that (barring magic) they're telling the truth.



If the players suspect there is a secret door in the room, they describe their search for it with a goal and an approach, and without calling for a roll you tell them they don’t find anything out of the ordinary, that only tells them that their approach had no chance of turning up evidence of a secret door, not that there is no secret door. They can always attempt a different approach. That said, I’m personally not super interested in speding a long time adjudicating attempts to search a room for something that isn’t there. I prefer to telegraph that when there is something to be found.



Oofta said:


> This is the way I've always run things since back in my AD&D days.  Sometimes a little
> paranoia/questioning tells a better story.  After all, when I look for my keys that
> I _know_ I left in the kitchen, there's always going to be that lingering doubt that maybe I just didn't check thoroughly enough.  At least until I find the keys in the bathroom.
> 
> The uncertainty factor is something commonly used in TV/Movies/Fiction.  The mystery sometimes shows you who dunnit and the story is all about how they get caught.  Other times, the identity of the culprit (or even if there was a crime) is hidden from the viewer.  If the PCs are left uncertain whether or not the NPC is lying, they may still be a suspect.  That's part of the fun of solving a mystery.



Sure, I get that. There are definitely times when keeping certain information hidden can enhance the experience. Those are the times when I make checks behind the screen.


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> If the players suspect there is a secret door in the room, they describe their search for it with a goal and an approach, and without calling for a roll you tell them they don’t find anything out of the ordinary, that only tells them that their approach had no chance of turning up evidence of a secret door, not that there is no secret door. They can always attempt a different approach. That said, I’m personally not super interested in speding a long time adjudicating attempts to search a room for something that isn’t there. I prefer to telegraph that when there is something to be found.




Maybe I just like paranoid players.  However, as I stated, I don't expect someone to describe details of how they're trying to accomplish the task at hand.  But let's say they're searching a prison cell for a secret door, thinking that might be how people keep disappearing.  There's not much ambiguity of room content (if there was there may be some feedback on my part).  The PCs are competent at searching.  If they have to sweep the straw back on the floor to find the secret door, they're going to do that even if I forgot to mention the floor was covered in straw.

I don't play "if you don't describe things the way I expect you to describe them you fail" and the players know that.  Therefore if they say they're searching the room, I may ask if they sweep back the straw but they will never fail because they don't say they aren't moving the straw even if I did add it to the description.  So if they search the room, they search it.  If they try to avoid fighting the bear, they do so without having to describe how.

If I say "there is no secret door" they know there's no secret door.  Sometimes that's okay, sometimes it's not.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> An appropriately insightful read of the speaker would enable the PC to realize that the shifty guy actually seems to be sincere in this case. Insight helps a PC read someone's intentions, mood, and so on. And that should be able to see sincerity through an insincere reputation or veneer as much as it can see insincerity on a liar.



Again, sounds like the result of the roll can affect the outcome, then.



billd91 said:


> That has not been my experience. My players scrutinize NPCs or search for traps regardless of whether I tell them the results with or without a die roll.



I may not have communicated my point effectively here. I don’t mean to say that players stop searching rooms when I tell them what they do or don’t find without a roll. I mean to say that when I give players as much information as possible - telegraphing traps, telling them DCs and consequences of failure, not asking them to make rolls when the result won’t change anything, etc., I find that the tendency to ask to make skill checks disappears. When my players can confidently predict the potential results of their actions, they are more keen to try to avoid introducing the random element of a die roll into the resolution of their actions. Like I said, since my talk with the player who initially didn’t like being asked to describe her approach to searching for traps, she has gotten quite creative in the approaches she now describes. She has caught onto the fact that, the way I run the game, her understanding of the fictional world and her ability to predict how it will respond to her actions is more reliable than the dice roll. She’s no longer worried about her character having a better understanding of how to look for traps than her, because she knows with confidence that the world behaves in a logical and consistent way, and if she describes something that makes sense to her as a reasonable way to detect something hidden, she has a better chance of that working than a contextless d20 roll will give her.

Like Iserith, my players don’t want to make checks. A check has a risk of failure and failure results in complications, where a goal and approach that makes sense in their brains is more likely to just work, and less likely to cause a setback if it doesn’t. In the event that I determine their approach has a chance of failing at achieving their goal and a consequence for failing to do so, I give them the DC and the consequences as a warning. As if to say, “if you go through with this action, these are the odds of success and this is what will happen if you fail. Are you sure you want to do that?” That gives them the chance to weigh their options, maybe consider spending Inspiration, casting Guidance, working together, or coming up with a different approach that might not be so risky.


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## Hjorimir (Mar 25, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?




Disclaimer: I didn't read this entire thread. 

I let the player know what they think. I don't let them know if they were successful or not. I think it's a good roll to make on behalf of the player (like old school hidden detect trap rolls).


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Like Iserith, my players don’t want to make checks.




It's amazing to me that more players don't think this way.

I suspect it's due in part to DMs not having any meaningful consequences for failing, which is a prerequisite for there being a roll in the first place. If it rarely costs you anything to fail, you may as well just offer up half an idea and ask to roll.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's amazing to me that more players don't think this way.
> 
> I suspect it's due in part to DMs not having any meaningful consequences for failing, which is a prerequisite for there being a roll in the first place. If it rarely costs you anything to fail, you may as well just offer up half an idea and ask to roll.



That’s probably part of it, but I think the bigger issue is players not being able to accurately predict the results of their actions. A lot of players are used to a situation where their approach to achieving a goal has no visible impact on their chances of success. They might describe an approach they think is sure to achieve their desired goal, such as climbing a knitted rope to get to the top, only to be asked to make a check, not told the DC, get a lowish result, and get told something like “you don’t get very far on your first try.” They’re left scratching their heads because they’re not sure why they failed to climb the rope beyond the low number on the die, they don’t know if they would have had a better chance if they had done something differently, if they would have had a worse chance had the rope not been knotted, and nothing about their situation seems to have changed as a result of their roll.

This undermines their confidence that the game world will behave in a logically consistent way. They get the impression that, at the end of the day, the d20 roll is all that really matters, and their approach just introduces the possibility that the DM might tell them to make a check with a skill they’re not as good with. They turn to their stats instead of their decisions as a more reliable way to influence their chance of success, and instead of thinking about “what can my character do to have the best chance of success?” they think about “what skills do I have the best chance of success with?” instead of describing an approach that they think will lead to achieving their goal, they state their goal and announce that they want to make a check using the skill they have the highest bonus with that seems reasonably applicable to the situation (note that my player who wasn’t comfortable describing an approach to searching for traps at first pointed to her proficiency with Thieves’ Tools, rather than Perception or Investigation.)

Now, to be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that anyone here would necessarily handle the above rope climbing scenario the way I described above. It is not my goal to set up a straw man about anyone’s DMing style. It’s actually an example of the kinds of calls I often made as a new DM.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I may not have communicated my point effectively here. I don’t mean to say that players stop searching rooms when I tell them what they do or don’t find without a roll. I mean to say that when I give players as much information as possible - telegraphing traps, telling them DCs and consequences of failure, not asking them to make rolls when the result won’t change anything, etc., I find that the tendency to ask to make skill checks disappears. When my players can confidently predict the potential results of their actions, they are more keen to try to avoid introducing the random element of a die roll into the resolution of their actions. Like I said, since my talk with the player who initially didn’t like being asked to describe her approach to searching for traps, she has gotten quite creative in the approaches she now describes. She has caught onto the fact that, the way I run the game, her understanding of the fictional world and her ability to predict how it will respond to her actions is more reliable than the dice roll. She’s no longer worried about her character having a better understanding of how to look for traps than her, because she knows with confidence that the world behaves in a logical and consistent way, and if she describes something that makes sense to her as a reasonable way to detect something hidden, she has a better chance of that working than a contextless d20 roll will give her.




Definitely not my style. I'll telegraph certain things, like when PCs are heading for an area that's particularly dangerous (like the lair of a powerful monster they aren't powerful enough to survive), but if I telegraphed most traps, what would have been the point of hiding them in the first place? That said, I don't usually toss them about randomly like a deranged Grimtooth - they sit in likely-enough places. I also definitely don't tell them most DCs or consequences unless the consequences are obvious (falling off a cliff, for example). I will tell them if the task looks easy or hard (or even impossible given their current state) and I'll tell them if steps they take to mitigate risks are improving their odds, but I'm content to leave their understanding of exactly what their odds are obscure.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Definitely not my style. I'll telegraph certain things, like when PCs are heading for an area that's particularly dangerous (like the lair of a powerful monster they aren't powerful enough to survive), but if I telegraphed most traps, what would have been the point of hiding them in the first place? That said, I don't usually toss them about randomly like a deranged Grimtooth - they sit in likely-enough places. I also definitely don't tell them most DCs or consequences unless the consequences are obvious (falling off a cliff, for example). I will tell them if the task looks easy or hard (or even impossible given their current state) and I'll tell them if steps they take to mitigate risks are improving their odds, but I'm content to leave their understanding of exactly what their odds are obscure.




In my view, the point of hiding traps in dungeons and then telegraphing their presence is to give players something cool to interact with. To me, the primary appeal of D&D is getting to make decisions as you imagine you or a fictional character would in various fictional situations. I put traps in dungeons because some players want to live out that scenario of being Indiana Jones seeing the skeleton and realizing that he needs to stay out of the light, trying to avoid disrupting the pressure plate the idol is on by getting the sand bag to just the right weight. They don’t get to do that if I don’t describe the skeleton, or if I just have them roll Dex + Thieves Tools to disarm the rolling boulder trap.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> if I telegraphed most traps, what would have been the point of hiding them in the first place?




It rewards players who pay attention to the DM's description of the environment, draw reasonable conclusions, and engage with it accordingly.

It cuts down on players searching everything methodically as they try to avoid random traps. 

It avoids the perception of the trap being a "gotcha." Even if the PCs don't pick up on the clues and wander right into it (which happens sometimes no matter how obvious it is), they can at least look back and go, "Oh, right, we should have picked up on that."

Picking up on the possibility that there's a trap in the environment is just the _beginning_ of the exploration challenge. It sets up the game, but does not give it away. The PCs still have to find it, figure out how it works, and then avoid or disarm it. Anywhere in that interaction, things can still go wrong.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

Bringing my last post back around to the central topic, telegraphing performs much the same role in social interaction challenges. If you're telegraphing the NPC's truthfulness (or lack thereof), the same applies:

It rewards players who pay attention to the DM's description of the social interaction, draw reasonable conclusions, and engage with it accordingly.

It cuts down on players trying to "Insight check" every NPC they meet to suss out lies. 

It avoids the perception of the untruthful statements being a "gotcha." Even if the PCs don't pick up on the clues and take the NPC at face value to their own detriment (which happens sometimes no matter how obvious it is), they can at least look back and go, "Oh, right, we should have picked up on that."

Picking up on the possibility that there's a lie in the conversation with the NPC is just the _beginning of the social interaction challenge. _It sets up the game, but does not give it away. The PCs still have to discover what is being lied about, why the NPC is covering up the truth, and then what to do about it. Anywhere in that interaction, things can still go wrong.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> In my view, the point of hiding traps in dungeons and then telegraphing their presence is to give players something cool to interact with. To me, the primary appeal of D&D is getting to make decisions as you imagine you or a fictional character would in various fictional situations. I put traps in dungeons because some players want to live out that scenario of being Indiana Jones seeing the skeleton and realizing that he needs to stay out of the light, trying to avoid disrupting the pressure plate the idol is on by getting the sand bag to just the right weight. They don’t get to do that if I don’t describe the skeleton, or if I just have them roll Dex + Thieves Tools to disarm the rolling boulder trap.




And for some situations, the presence of the skeleton might make sense. But what about other situations as when an area gets more maintenance or nobody has gotten that far? What telegraphed the pedestal trap Indy attempted (but failed) to disarm? Nothing other than his own suspicions. A DM telegraphing that strikes me less as giving them the Indiana Jones experience than leading them around by the nose. 
I'd rather players make a cogent assessment of where a trap is likely to be in those circumstances rather than telegraph it. And they can do that by saying "Oh, that pedestal is too easy. I'll bet it's trapped. I'm gonna search it," rather than saying "I search the room for traps." Then, they can take pride in making the appropriately shrewd decision of when to search rather than me leading them to it.


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## Satyrn (Mar 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> It rewards players who pay attention to the DM's description of the environment, draw reasonable conclusions, and engage with it accordingly.
> 
> It cuts down on players searching everything methodically as they try to avoid random traps.
> 
> ...




I've been using two distinct flavors of traps in my megadungeon.

1 Puzzle Traps. These are the traps that the players come across while exploring the dungeon, like an arch in a passageway that guillotines anyone passing through. These are always obviously a trap, but they're meant to be a puzzle. If the players want to pass safely, they have to figure out how to bypass or disarm it. I leave figuring out how to do that up to the players, but stone shape is a ready ever-useful spell in a dwarven ruin. If they can't figure it out, there's probably another way around, or they can suck up the pain or make some other choice.

2 The Gotcha. And yeah, I absolutely use these, but they're always on loot chests. And the players know that a loot chest might have a deviously hidden trap. Not every loot chest though. So failing to discover a trap doesn't mean there is no trap, and the fun (for me at least and hopefully the players too), is in the players choosing to risk opening the chest knowing there's a known unknown. Because they can always just leave the chest alone if they don't want to take the risk, they're buying into the gotcha.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I've been using two distinct flavors of traps in my megadungeon.
> 
> 1 Puzzle Traps. These are the traps that the players come across while exploring the dungeon, like an arch in a passageway that guillotines anyone passing through. These are always obviously a trap, but they're meant to be a puzzle. If the players want to pass safely, they have to figure out how to bypass or disarm it. I leave figuring out how to do that up to the players, but stone shape is a ready ever-useful spell in a dwarven ruin. If they can't figure it out, there's probably another way around, or they can suck up the pain or make some other choice.
> 
> 2 The Gotcha. And yeah, I absolutely use these, but they're always on loot chests. And the players know that a loot chest might have a deviously hidden trap. Not every loot chest though. So failing to discover a trap doesn't mean there is no trap, and the fun (for me at least and hopefully the players too), is in the players choosing to risk opening the chest knowing there's a known unknown. Because they can always just leave the chest alone if they don't want to take the risk, they're buying into the gotcha.




For #2, I would not really call it a gotcha if there has been an expectation set that loot chests commonly have traps on them.


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## Satyrn (Mar 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> For #2, I would not really call it a gotcha if there has been an expectation set that loot chests commonly have traps on them.



Well, I'm kinda calling it that ironically, but they definitely - intentionally - can resemble what gets derided as a gotcha in every way except for that.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> And for some situations, the presence of the skeleton might make sense. But what about other situations as when an area gets more maintenance or nobody has gotten that far? What telegraphed the pedestal trap Indy attempted (but failed) to disarm? Nothing other than his own suspicions. A DM telegraphing that strikes me less as giving them the Indiana Jones experience than leading them around by the nose.



I agree! That’s why not all telegraphing is skeletons. Something like that is a great tool to introduce the players to a certain type of trap for the first time. Now you know to be on the lookout for shafts of light. After that, I can start using more subtle context cues. Maybe the next trap of the same kind doesn’t have a skeleton, but the shafts of light are still clearly visible. Maybe the next one doesn’t have visible shafts, but it’s in the same kind of hallway as the previous two (and with high enough passive Perception you might spot the seams in the walls that the blades swing out from). Etc.



billd91 said:


> I'd rather players make a cogent assessment of where a trap is likely to be in those circumstances rather than telegraph it. And they can do that by saying "Oh, that pedestal is too easy. I'll bet it's trapped. I'm gonna search it," rather than saying "I search the room for traps." Then, they can take pride in making the appropriately shrewd decision of when to search rather than me leading them to it.



I absolutely agree! The idol on the prominent pedestal is a pretty decent telegraph on its own, especially if there have already been pressure plate traps earlier in the dungeon. I might leave open the possibility of noticing the unmortared scene between the base of the pedestal and the ground as well with a high enough passive Perception. If the players suspect a trap and decide to try searching it, I’ll need to ask how they intend I search, because the result is going to be very different if they, say, slide a dagger into the seam vs. if they start visually checking the walls for any suspicious features, or if they press down on the pedestal to see if it gives.


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## billd91 (Mar 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I absolutely agree! The idol on the prominent pedestal is a pretty decent telegraph on its own, especially if there have already been pressure plate traps earlier in the dungeon. I might leave open the possibility of noticing the unmortared scene between the base of the pedestal and the ground as well with a high enough passive Perception. If the players suspect a trap and decide to try searching it, I’ll need to ask how they intend I search, because the result is going to be very different if they, say, slide a dagger into the seam vs. if they start visually checking the walls for any suspicious features, or if they press down on the pedestal to see if it gives.




I'm not going to push them on that - figuring out that the pedestal is the focus is enough for me. Anything more than that gets into the technical element of the trap that neither of us is qualified to deal with and I'm not going to require them to try. That's where the PC's expertise takes over.


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## ParanoydStyle (Mar 25, 2019)

It's 15.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

billd91 said:


> I'm not going to push them on that - figuring out that the pedestal is the focus is enough for me. Anything more than that gets into the technical element of the trap that neither of us is qualified to deal with and I'm not going to require them to try. That's where the PC's expertise takes over.




That’s cool! We just prefer different levels of detail in those situations. I should also clarify that I am taking into account the fact that neither I nor the players really have been he necessary techno expertise here. I have no idea how a trap like that would actually work, beyond the basics that if there isn’t enough weight on the pedestal it sinks in and the boulder drops. It might as well work by magic for all I know. As such, I’m going to be generous with my adjudication. Does pushing on the pedestal work? Hell if I know, but my limited understanding is that the pedestal can sink in and the trap is sprung when there isn’t enough weight on the pedestal, so that seems like a reasonable approach to me. I’d probably say that the player can make a DC... 10 Dex check to find out if the pedestal can depress, without setting off the trap. On a failure, any pressure-sensitive trap will be triggered. If the player wants to suggest a skill or proficiency that might apply, I’m open to that. And the player is under no obligation to follow through with that action if they decide the risk is too great.


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## Hussar (Mar 25, 2019)

Heh, thinking about it, how does that pedestal trap work?  It _sinks _ if there isn't the right amount of weight on it?  Hang on, how exactly do you do that?

Which, in my mind, is why I generally don't futz too much on the details.  Too much risk of making stuff that, under a bit of scrutiny, doesn't actually work.  I remember running the World's Largest Dungeon years ago.  One of the most egregious examples of what I see as "describe what you do" play was in a room description where it actually says something to the effect (it's been a number of years, I could get the exact quote if you really want me to), PC's who state they are looking at the ceiling have a chance of noticing the darkmantles hidden there (DC whatever).  Those who don't are automatically surprised".

Yeah, I don't play that way.  If you say you are looking around the room, that includes up.  So, yeah, to me, simply saying, I look for traps in the room is perfectly fine.  I'm not interested in any more detail than that.


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## iserith (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh, thinking about it, how does that pedestal trap work?  It _sinks _ if there isn't the right amount of weight on it?  Hang on, how exactly do you do that?




Magnets.



Hussar said:


> Which, in my mind, is why I generally don't futz too much on the details.  Too much risk of making stuff that, under a bit of scrutiny, doesn't actually work.  I remember running the World's Largest Dungeon years ago.  One of the most egregious examples of what I see as "describe what you do" play was in a room description where it actually says something to the effect (it's been a number of years, I could get the exact quote if you really want me to), PC's who state they are looking at the ceiling have a chance of noticing the darkmantles hidden there (DC whatever).  Those who don't are automatically surprised".




Players who state they are staying alert to hidden danger while traveling the dungeon and don't turn their attention to other tasks that distract from that effort get to apply their passive Perception when the DM determines surprise.



Hussar said:


> Yeah, I don't play that way.  If you say you are looking around the room, that includes up.  So, yeah, to me, simply saying, I look for traps in the room is perfectly fine.  I'm not interested in any more detail than that.




Where in the room are you looking? Do you move about the whole chamber freely? Is there any feature of the room as describe that you're careful to avoid? Are you using any items in your search? How long do you take to perform this task?


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## robus (Mar 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry about that.    I guess I keep thinking there's a simple answer, and there's not.




As we have covered this in other threads and I do feel like there has been a simple answer for some time (Iserith, for example, is able to sum it up in a paragraph or less) I have to wonder why it isn't accepted as a simple answer?

Now you may not like the answer (and that's fine) but to keep asking for it to be explained and complaining that there's never a simple answer seems more like a desire to not understand?

In our games the player simply states an adjudicatable  goal and approach. What are they trying to achieve and through what mechanism. "I want to get to the top of the wall by climbing it". "I want to tame the horse by offering it some hay". "I want to break through the door by kicking it in". The DM then takes those inputs and decides whether it succeeds, fails, or is uncertain (where failing has some meaningful consequence). For example, failing to break down the door might cause the occupants to be alerted.

That's all. Is that simple enough? Please let us know where any confusion might lie. Again, you may not like this way of handling player actions and that's fine. But it's really not complicated, just different from how earlier editions have run it (or so I understand).

To bring it back to the OP, "I want to determine if the NPC is telling the truth" cannot be adjudicated because there is no approach declared. The player could have said "by studying their behavior", "by reading their mind", "by casting zone of truth". The first might be resolved by the DM declaring that the NPC seems like they're being completely honest, no obvious attempt at deception. The others would be handled in the appropriate manner for those spells/abilities. But without an approach a goal has no way to be resolved.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh, thinking about it, how does that pedestal trap work?  It _sinks _ if there isn't the right amount of weight on it?  Hang on, how exactly do you do that?
> 
> Which, in my mind, is why I generally don't futz too much on the details.  Too much risk of making stuff that, under a bit of scrutiny, doesn't actually work.  I remember running the World's Largest Dungeon years ago.  One of the most egregious examples of what I see as "describe what you do" play was in a room description where it actually says something to the effect (it's been a number of years, I could get the exact quote if you really want me to), PC's who state they are looking at the ceiling have a chance of noticing the darkmantles hidden there (DC whatever).  Those who don't are automatically surprised".
> 
> Yeah, I don't play that way.  If you say you are looking around the room, that includes up.  So, yeah, to me, simply saying, I look for traps in the room is perfectly fine.  I'm not interested in any more detail than that.




I don’t think most people would consider the “If the players don’t say they’re looking at the ceiling, they’re automatically surprised” to be at all reasonable. I certainly don’t. I want a goal and an approach to _actions they take_, but I don’t require that degree of specificity, and I certainly wouldn’t expect players to specify that they’re looking up when they’re just exploring the dungeon.


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## Oofta (Mar 25, 2019)

robus said:


> As we have covered this in other threads and I do feel like there has been a simple answer for some time (Iserith, for example, is able to sum it up in a paragraph or less) I have to wonder why it isn't accepted as a simple answer?
> 
> Now you may not like the answer (and that's fine) but to keep asking for it to be explained and complaining that there's never a simple answer seems more like a desire to not understand?
> 
> ...




What do you want me to say?  I don't see a difference between "I make an athletics check 15 to climb the wall" as being significantly different than "I want to get to the top of the wall by climbing it".  In both cases the player has made their intended action obvious.

I just don't see why people care.  Either they can climb the wall or they can't.  If they can climb the wall but require an athletics check I'll ask for one if they didn't give it to me already.  If the wall can't be climbed, it can't be climbed no matter what they roll.  If they didn't need to roll an athletics check to climb the wall in the first place then they just wasted a roll and I'll probably let them know there were enough hand-holds that anybody could climb it.

I can see that for some DMs knowing the number before they decide the DC could be problematic, it's never been an issue for me.  As far as not requiring a roll for things that are auto-succeed or failure I've posted quite a bit on that.  Sometimes I don't want the players shouldn't know it was an auto success or failure.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> What do you want me to say?  I don't see a difference between "I make an athletics check 15 to climb the wall" as being significantly different than "I want to get to the top of the wall by climbing it".  In both cases the player has made their intended action obvious.




I was hoping you'd to say that, yes, the answer is simple, and you just don't like it!


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Which, in my mind, is why I generally don't futz too much on the details.  Too much risk of making stuff that, under a bit of scrutiny, doesn't actually work.  I remember running the World's Largest Dungeon years ago.  One of the most egregious examples of what I see as "describe what you do" play was in a room description where it actually says something to the effect (it's been a number of years, I could get the exact quote if you really want me to), PC's who state they are looking at the ceiling have a chance of noticing the darkmantles hidden there (DC whatever).  Those who don't are automatically surprised".




WotC, IMHO, pulls this crap way too much in their published adventures. It's not only unpleasant for the players, it makes more work for the DMs as we try and figure out ways to telegraph some hint that there's some overhead trap.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

robus said:


> I was hoping you'd to say that, yes, the answer is simple, and you just don't like it!




If by that you mean that I'm more flexible on how my players let me know what they're trying to do, and that I don't expect them to utter some magic phrase or know how to accomplish a task their PC knows how to accomplish, then yes.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If by that you mean that I'm more flexible on how my players let me know what they're trying to do, and that I don't expect them to utter some magic phrase or know how to accomplish a task their PC knows how to accomplish, then yes.




And this is why I think you're deliberately trying to misunderstand our position and pretend it's more complicated than it is. We're really not wanting players to jump through magic hoops, we just want them to clearly communicate an action through their goal and approach. You seem to assume that we have a predetermined phrase that the player must utter to pass our test (or expert domain knowledge that no one could reasonably expect). Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply want to the players to engage with the game world through their imagination rather than relying on the options listed on their character sheet.

Ah well, I tried...


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## Immortal Sun (Mar 26, 2019)

I think the inherent problem is that "knowing the NPC is lying" relies on two things that aren't checks:
Does the NPC know their statement to be a lie?  (lets assume for the moment they do)
Does the PC possess sufficient information to determine it to be so?

Quite simply, there may _not_ be a DC to know for certain that a statement is or isn't a lie.  The players may simply lack the appropriate information to determine it either way.  It's why I don't set DCs for NPC statements to be determined to be truths, lies, or otherwise.  I have the players roll their own checks based on the information they have or the beliefs they hold, basically against themselves to determine _if they believe_ the statement from the NPC.

How do I determine that?  Well, frankly it's character-specific.  

And personally, it's far more fun when players/PCs _don't_ know things 100% and they have to form beliefs and opinions on things based on incomplete or erroneous information, or their guts.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

Going to take these out of order:



Charlaquin said:


> I don’t think most people would consider the “If the players don’t say they’re looking at the ceiling, they’re automatically surprised” to be at all reasonable. I certainly don’t. I want a goal and an approach to _actions they take_, but I don’t require that degree of specificity, and I certainly wouldn’t expect players to specify that they’re looking up when they’re just exploring the dungeon.




Well, considering this was a published module, and even WotC modules have had this sort of thing, I'd say that at least some people think that this is reasonable.  You wouldn't see it in published modules if no one thought it was reasonable.

Now you see why this sort of thing bothers some people.




iserith said:


> /snip
> Where in the room are you looking? Do you move about the whole chamber freely? Is there any feature of the room as describe that you're careful to avoid? Are you using any items in your search? How long do you take to perform this task?




Really, really don't care.  But, [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], we have an example of at least one DM who seems to think that the module was reasonable.



robus said:


> And this is why I think you're deliberately trying to misunderstand our position and pretend it's more complicated than it is. We're really not wanting players to jump through magic hoops, we just want them to clearly communicate an action through their goal and approach. You seem to assume that we have a predetermined phrase that the player must utter to pass our test (or expert domain knowledge that no one could reasonably expect). Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply want to the players to engage with the game world through their imagination rather than relying on the options listed on their character sheet.
> 
> Ah well, I tried...




The reason we think this is because we've seen examples of exactly the kind of thing you are talking about in numerous sources - both anecdotally and published adventures.  It's not exactly a rare thing IME.  Lots of DM's do this.  So, when you advocate for a DMing style which, in my experience at least, leads to frustration, wasted time and far too many arguments at the table, you can't really be surprised that you get some push back.  It's not that we're being disingenuous or arguing in bad faith, it's that we've seen what sometimes happens when DM's get that fixated on details and minutia, and it ain't pretty.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The reason we think this is because we've seen examples of exactly the kind of thing you are talking about in numerous sources - both anecdotally and published adventures.  It's not exactly a rare thing IME.  Lots of DM's do this.  So, when you advocate for a DMing style which, in my experience at least, leads to frustration, wasted time and far too many arguments at the table, you can't really be surprised that you get some push back.  It's not that we're being disingenuous or arguing in bad faith, it's that we've seen what sometimes happens when DM's get that fixated on details and minutia, and it ain't pretty.




Sure, but that's entirely different from claiming that it doesn't have a simple answer. All systems can be abused and ungenerous, pixel bitching, nit-picky DMs that want people to jump through their hoops are trouble no matter what approach they choose. My commiserations, I would also be mad if I'd had that bad experience. 

However I am surprised that, given the relative novelty of this approach, you've both (I'm assuming) had such a history of bad experiences? Is this from similar approaches in other RPGs? Or was it something inflicted on you recently by malicious DMs running 5e?

Edit: I reread your piece and remembered that you'd mentioned anecdotes and such, and also the published adventures. Now I would like to consider myself one of the first in line to raise pitchforks and torches against the published adventures, but one thing I've not had issue with is them imposing this style of DMing on me. Far from it, in fact. In my experience they love to set DCs for skill use regardless of what the player might declare, so something that would actually go in favor of your preferred approach?


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Really, really don't care.




So are you okay with the DM just establishing what your character is doing? Or does he or she have to ask questions of you until what you want to do is clear enough to adjudicate? How does that work in practice? If a player only gives me a goal (search for traps), I don't have an approach (how the search is conducted) and thus I can't decide if there is certainty or uncertainty to the outcome or a meaningful consequence of failure.



Hussar said:


> But, [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], we have an example of at least one DM who seems to think that the module was reasonable.




I assume you mean the author of the adventure you referenced?


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

robus said:


> And this is why I think you're deliberately trying to misunderstand our position and pretend it's more complicated than it is. We're really not wanting players to jump through magic hoops, we just want them to clearly communicate an action through their goal and approach. You seem to assume that we have a predetermined phrase that the player must utter to pass our test (or expert domain knowledge that no one could reasonably expect). Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply want to the players to engage with the game world through their imagination rather than relying on the options listed on their character sheet.
> 
> Ah well, I tried...




Sorry if my answer was crankier than I intended, it's been a day. 

My point is simple: if someone rolls first and tells me they're using an athletic check to climb the wall, they've communicated what they want to do.  I encourage RP and engagement including not relying on dice to solve problems, but I don't require it.

I guess I just don't expect people to play "my way".  I've enjoyed playing with people that view the game as an excuse to hang out, roll some dice and eat some junk food.  They put up with roll playing when they have to, but I don't push it.  Telling them every time they rolled and told me what skill they were using would have just annoyed them.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

robus said:


> Sure, but that's entirely different from claiming that it doesn't have a simple answer. All systems can be abused and ungenerous, pixel bitching, nit-picky DMs that want people to jump through their hoops are trouble no matter what approach they choose. My commiserations, I would also be mad if I'd had that bad experience.
> 
> However I am surprised that, given the relative novelty of this approach, you've both (I'm assuming) had such a history of bad experiences? Is this from similar approaches in other RPGs? Or was it something inflicted on you recently by malicious DMs running 5e?
> 
> Edit: I reread your piece and remembered that you'd mentioned anecdotes and such, and also the published adventures. Now I would like to consider myself one of the first in line to raise pitchforks and torches against the published adventures, but one thing I've not had issue with is them imposing this style of DMing on me. Far from it, in fact. In my experience they love to set DCs for skill use regardless of what the player might declare, so something that would actually go in favor of your preferred approach?




Nope, been playing since the 80's.  Nope, your approach is neither new, nor novel.  It's been around for a long time.  And, yup, IME, it leads to ungenerous, pixel bitching, nit-picky DM's.  But, as far as setting DC's, sure, no worries.  And, since I'm not interested in the minutia, yeah, I have very few problems with published modules.  Works for me.



iserith said:


> So are you okay with the DM just establishing what your character is doing? Or does he or she have to ask questions of you until what you want to do is clear enough to adjudicate? How does that work in practice? If a player only gives me a goal (search for traps), I don't have an approach (how the search is conducted) and thus I can't decide if there is certainty or uncertainty to the outcome or a meaningful consequence of failure.




Yup.  No problems at all.  I trust that the DM will choose things that are more interesting and isn't interested in playing mother may I, so, he (or in most cases me since I DM more than I play) will simply take the most advantageous interpretation.  You say you search for traps, you find them (presuming you succeed of course).  Where, how, don't care.  The consequence for failure?  Trap goes off.  Or, you don't know if that NPC is lying.  Or you fail to change the NPC's attitude.  Whatever.





> I assume you mean the author of the adventure you referenced?




No, I meant you.  You flat out stated:  "Where in the room are you looking? Do you move about the whole chamber freely? Is there any feature of the room as describe that you're careful to avoid? Are you using any items in your search? How long do you take to perform this task?"  Which means that if the PC's don't state they are looking at the ceiling, you would have no problem with the monsters gaining surprise.

Or am I wrong in this interpretation.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yup.  No problems at all.  I trust that the DM will choose things that are more interesting and isn't interested in playing mother may I, so, he (or in most cases me since I DM more than I play) will simply take the most advantageous interpretation.  You say you search for traps, you find them (presuming you succeed of course).  Where, how, don't care.  The consequence for failure?  Trap goes off.  Or, you don't know if that NPC is lying.  Or you fail to change the NPC's attitude.  Whatever.




As DM, I prefer not to play the characters for the players. That's not my role in the game as prescribed by the rules.



Hussar said:


> No, I meant you.  You flat out stated:  "Where in the room are you looking? Do you move about the whole chamber freely? Is there any feature of the room as describe that you're careful to avoid? Are you using any items in your search? How long do you take to perform this task?"  Which means that if the PC's don't state they are looking at the ceiling, you would have no problem with the monsters gaining surprise.
> 
> Or am I wrong in this interpretation.




You are wrong in this interpretation. The questions I asked were in reference to your declaration of a goal to find traps. I may need to know the requested information with reasonable specificity to decide whether your approach to the goal is successful, unsuccessful, or if there's an ability check.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> As DM, I prefer not to play the characters for the players. That's not my role in the game as prescribed by the rules.




Meh.  Not a big deal.  The character made a check, the DM adjudicates.  I don't need to delve much deeper than that.  




> You are wrong in this interpretation. The questions I asked were in reference to your declaration of a goal to find traps. I may need to know the requested information with reasonable specificity to decide whether your approach to the goal is successful, unsuccessful, or if there's an ability check.




Why?  "I search the chest for traps" is good enough.  Heck, I search the room works for me.  I'm not going to go any deeper than that.  I simply, completely don't care.  My approach is, "My character is a professional adventurer.  He's doing whatever is reasonable for a professional adventurer to do.  Please interpret the situation as such."  So, no, you don't need any more information.  You might want it.  You might prefer it.  Fair enough.  But, you don't actually need it.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Why?  "I search the chest for traps" is good enough.  Heck, I search the room works for me.  I'm not going to go any deeper than that.  I simply, completely don't care.  My approach is, "My character is a professional adventurer.  He's doing whatever is reasonable for a professional adventurer to do.  Please interpret the situation as such."  So, no, you don't need any more information.  You might want it.  You might prefer it.  Fair enough.  But, you don't actually need it.




The rules lay out who gets to say what and a standard for reasonable specificity, particularly in regards to searching for hidden objects. I might be less concerned with that and more open to players asking to make ability checks if I wasn't playing D&D 5e. It would certainly be appropriate for D&D 3e and 4e as the rules encourage it. But those are different games.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

Yeah, not going to get bogged down in a RAW discussion based on a single line from the rules which are, in my mind, most certainly not meant to be comprehensive.  So, feel free to lump my approach in with house ruling if it makes you feel better.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Nope, been playing since the 80's.  Nope, your approach is neither new, nor novel.  It's been around for a long time.  And, yup, IME, it leads to ungenerous, pixel bitching, nit-picky DM's.  But, as far as setting DC's, sure, no worries.  And, since I'm not interested in the minutia, yeah, I have very few problems with published modules.  Works for me.




Wow, that’s quite unfortunate. Well I’m glad you’ve found an approach that let’s you still enjoy the game. I’ve, surprisingly it seems, not yet ended in that inevitable state despite running an almost 3 year long campaign, but I’ll keep an eye out for it, only a few sessions remaining though...


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, not going to get bogged down in a RAW discussion based on a single line from the rules which are, in my mind, most certainly not meant to be comprehensive.  So, feel free to lump my approach in with house ruling if it makes you feel better.




The standard set forth and the rules for How to Play are certainly longer than a single line. Taken as a whole, it informs us what the game expects which in turn informs my approach.

I wouldn't call what you do house-ruling. It's just an approach I find works better with other games like D&D 3e or D&D 4e. And neither of our approaches for D&D 5e would work well with, say, Dungeon World. Different games demand different approaches in my view.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 26, 2019)

I've played both ways...let's call them @_*iserith*_'s way and @_*Hussar*_'s way...and still do.  In fact, I would say I end up at tables who play Hussar's way more often, with people who blurt out "Can I make a (insert skill) check?"

Here's how I see the two approaches contrasting:

Hussar's way has the advantage that it's straightforward and quick.  The players don't have to try a bunch of different things.  "I check for traps" gets resolved quickly.  On the other hand, the 'challenge' for the player (if you can call it that) is simply to remember to invoke items on the character sheet.  In the case of traps, the interaction with the fiction is the same every time: "I check for traps."  If there's variation, it's solely in the DM's narration: "Yeah, you look up at the ceiling and you see...."  (This might be followed by a similar thing for disarming it: you roll Disarm, or whatever, and succeed, and the DM narrates: "Using a 10 foot pole, you snag the trip wire and...)  Note that the DM is, in a small way, taking control of the character: "You look up..." "You use a 10 foot pole...".

Iserith's way, on the other hand, can suck down a lot of game time as players try 8 things, instead of invoking 1 skill.  This can take even longer _when there's no trap_.  On the other hand, it asks players to engage with the fiction by invoking actions in the game world, not items on a character sheet.  In general, I think a sign of a game going well is when the players are doing things that don't require any knowledge of the rules.  "I look up at the ceiling" doesn't require knowing anything about the rules.  And it doesn't require the DM to take over the character, unless you count "You see a tripwire" as loss of agency.  (In which case I don't really want to have debates with you.)

I (perhaps obviously) prefer Iserith's approach, even when I want to shout at my players "THERE'S NO TRAP CAN WE KEEP MOVING!?!?!?!"  But I don't think it's intrinsically superior; it's just a gaming style I find more enjoyable.

Also, you can combine the two approaches:
"Characters who search the area will find the trap with a successful DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation) check. Players who look specifically for traps get advantage on the roll. Players who state they study the ceiling find it automatically."

EDIT: I'll add one thing...

Using either approach, I think it's important to minimize making the 'correct' actions/choices be gates to progress.  Looking up at the ceiling (or looking for traps) should make it easier to achieve success, but only in a minor way.  If there was some foreshadowing/clue that looking at the ceiling is a good idea, the benefit to doing so can be commensurately larger, but failure to do so still shouldn't be show-stopping.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> What do you want me to say?  I don't see a difference between "I make an athletics check 15 to climb the wall" as being significantly different than "I want to get to the top of the wall by climbing it".  In both cases the player has made their intended action obvious.



I can only speak for myself here, but in this specific example, I don’t consider it significantly different either. I can tell from context that the player’s goal is to get to the top of the wall and the character’s approach is to climb it. As I said before, the only faux pas here is anticipating an Athletics check when that may not have been called for. Which isn’t a big deal by any means, I would just adjudicate the result and politely add, “next time please just tell me your action and I will tell you if you need to make a check.” That’s why I chose the phrase faux pas - a minor misstep of etiquette.



Oofta said:


> I just don't see why people care.  Either they can climb the wall or they can't.  If they can climb the wall but require an athletics check I'll ask for one if they didn't give it to me already.  If the wall can't be climbed, it can't be climbed no matter what they roll.  If they didn't need to roll an athletics check to climb the wall in the first place then they just wasted a roll and I'll probably let them know there were enough hand-holds that anybody could climb it.



I care because it’s putting the cart before the horse. Instead of telling me what their character does and allowing me to adjudicate the outcome, it’s an announcement of how they think the actuon should be adjudicated that forces me to try to guess what their character might be doing that they want me to adjudicate in that way. It’s a complete reversal of player and DM roles.



Oofta said:


> I can see that for some DMs knowing the number before they decide the DC could be problematic, it's never been an issue for me.  As far as not requiring a roll for things that are auto-succeed or failure I've posted quite a bit on that.  Sometimes I don't want the players shouldn't know it was an auto success or failure.



I don’t really like the terms “Auto success” and “auto failure,” personally. It implies that a check is the default method of task resolution, and that under certain conditions the check can be bypassed. Personally, I don’t view task resolution that way. The default means of task resolution in my games is using a human brain to determine the most logical outcome of the action, and checks are a backup for when the outcome cannot be easily determined.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I've played both ways...let's call them @_*iserith*_'s way and @_*Hussar*_'s way...and still do.  In fact, I would say I end up at tables who play Hussar's way more often, with people who blurt out "Can I make a (insert skill) check?"
> 
> Here's how I see the two approaches contrasting:
> 
> ...




As an aside, in terms of speed, I'll put my group's games up against any other game and approach without hesitation. Some people reported that the two-hour _text only_ sessions I posted a few years back as examples of play had more content than four hours of their in-person sessions. We've even been able to compare our progress on published adventures to actual play podcasts and we outpace them by wide margins for the same play time. I am very focused on the pace of the game and using our time wisely. There is a lot more to achieving that than what's under discussion here, but it is in part due to strongly defined roles (player and DM) and adherence to the "middle path" technique for adjudication (a balance of ruling outright success or failure and calling for ability checks).


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## Charlaquin (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The reason we think this is because we've seen examples of exactly the kind of thing you are talking about in numerous sources - both anecdotally and published adventures.  It's not exactly a rare thing IME.  Lots of DM's do this.  So, when you advocate for a DMing style which, in my experience at least, leads to frustration, wasted time and far too many arguments at the table, you can't really be surprised that you get some push back.  It's not that we're being disingenuous or arguing in bad faith, it's that we've seen what sometimes happens when DM's get that fixated on details and minutia, and it ain't pretty.



And this is why some of us get very weary of these arguments. In your mind, I’m a guilty of being gotcha DM until proven innocent. I could also share horror stories about DMs who who give no fictional context and basically force the players to interact solely in terms of mechanics because they don’t have enough information about what’s going on in the game world to act otherwise. Or about DMs who make wild assumptions about your character’s actions and then spring consequences on you for the things _they_ decided you were doing based solely on the type of check you made, and then argue about “you never said you did” or “you never said you didn’t.” But I prefer to give people I’m talking to the benefit of the doubt.

Bad DMs are going to DM badly. Just because you’ve had some bad experiences with DMs requiring overly specific details that they then use as anmo against you doesn’t mean all DMs who prefer a goal and an approach rather than an announcement of what kind of check the player is making are like that. These conversations might be more fruitful if you did t assume the worst in people who have a different approach than you.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I've played both ways...let's call them @_*iserith*_'s way and @_*Hussar*_'s way...and still do.  In fact, I would say I end up at tables who play Hussar's way more often, with people who blurt out "Can I make a (insert skill) check?"
> 
> Here's how I see the two approaches contrasting:
> 
> ...




This, I think, puts it about as well as can be put.  There are definitely advantages to either way.  And disadvantages too.  For myself, obviously I prefer the former approach to the latter, and, I think [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] nails it, precisely because of pacing issues.  Does the DM from time to time take over the character?  I suppose.  But, to me, that's just bog standard narration.  No different than what a DM does in combat when he says something like, "You swing your sword mightly and hack that orc's head off!"  Does anyone have an issue with the DM doing that? 

Player says, "I want to do X, I make Y check, Z score".  To me, that's more than enough information to narrate an action.  It's what we do in combat, and, frankly, I don't really have a problem with it out of combat.

Then again, I tend to come from a very gamist background, heavily spiced with years of narrativist games.  The whole simulation approach where a goal of play is parity between player declarations and PC actions has never been something I've enjoyed and I tend to avoid games that focus on that.  Even going all the way back to our AD&D 1e days, the thief player just said, "I pick locks, 37, do I open it?"  Traps were a bit different since the DM had to roll those.  But, it would almost always be the player initiating checks (such as they were) and rarely the DM.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> And this is why some of us get very weary of these arguments. In your mind, I’m a guilty of being gotcha DM until proven innocent. I could also share horror stories about DMs who who give no fictional context and basically force the players to interact solely in terms of mechanics because they don’t have enough information about what’s going on in the game world to act otherwise. Or about DMs who make wild assumptions about your character’s actions and then spring consequences on you for the things _they_ decided you were doing based solely on the type of check you made, and then argue about “you never said you did” or “you never said you didn’t.” But I prefer to give people I’m talking to the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> Bad DMs are going to DM badly. Just because you’ve had some bad experiences with DMs requiring overly specific details that they then use as anmo against you doesn’t mean all DMs who prefer a goal and an approach rather than an announcement of what kind of check the player is making are like that. These conversations might be more fruitful if you did t assume the worst in people who have a different approach than you.




To be honest [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], it's a lot less about the "gotcha" element and far more about the "Why am I pissing about describing for the 237th time how I look for traps on a chest" thing.  It gets old really, really fast.  If you do dungeon crawls, and I do, you're likely to have dozens of rooms/chambers.  Each of which is likely going to get searched at some point.  Having to repeat myself dozens of times because the DM wants more than "I search the room" just makes me want to blow my brains out.

I've played the way you're talking about.  I can see the attraction for a certain kind of player but, I'm very, very much not that kind of player.  Very little would cause me to check out of a game faster than this.  Not that it's bad or that you're a bad DM or badwrongfun or anything like that.  Not at all.  But, because it would bore me to tears.  I would be a terrible player at this table.  I'd be that bad player futzing around on my phone while the rest of the group plays because, fifteen minutes into the session, I'd be completely checked out.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> To be honest [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], it's a lot less about the "gotcha" element and far more about the "Why am I pissing about describing for the 237th time how I look for traps on a chest" thing.  It gets old really, really fast.  If you do dungeon crawls, and I do, you're likely to have dozens of rooms/chambers.  Each of which is likely going to get searched at some point.  Having to repeat myself dozens of times because the DM wants more than "I search the room" just makes me want to blow my brains out.



This is one of the advantages of telegraphing. Searching every room, in my experience, is something that players do when they don’t have enough information to reliably discern what is or isn’t worth searching.



Hussar said:


> I've played the way you're talking about.  I can see the attraction for a certain kind of player but, I'm very, very much not that kind of player.  Very little would cause me to check out of a game faster than this.  Not that it's bad or that you're a bad DM or badwrongfun or anything like that.  Not at all.  But, because it would bore me to tears.  I would be a terrible player at this table.  I'd be that bad player futzing around on my phone while the rest of the group plays because, fifteen minutes into the session, I'd be completely checked out.



That’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. I feel similarly about games where every single room it’s “I search the room. 14.” “I search the room. 21.” “I search the room. 9.” room after room after room. I play D&D to make decisions as I imagine my character would do, not have a bunch of exposition read at me based on the results of a random number generator.


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## S'mon (Mar 26, 2019)

If a player has said they're scouting, I definitely give them Passive Perception vs stuff on the ceiling. If they say they're focused on the ceiling specifically then at least Advantage (or +5) to spot stuff on the ceiling, but Disadvantage (or -5) for stuff on walls & floor.

Re the cloakers though, if they are above the archway & drop the moment PCs enter the room, I can see why the WoTC adventure says auto Surprise unless PCs are specifically looking up. There are still ways to negate this, such as Alertness feat (can't be surprised) or Barbarian reflexes (rage & act while Surprised). And 5e Surprise doesn't necessarily give Advantage on its first attack, the cloaker still has to roll Stealth vs PC passive per. So it's not as unfair as it might appear IMO.

I once had a giant snake over a doorway drop on first PC entering - automatic Surprise - poor snake, the PC had Alertness, won Init, and killed the very _surprised _snake before it could even attack!


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## Caliburn101 (Mar 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Why have the player roll if the result isn’t going to affect the outcome? Seems like this would undermine the players’ confidence in the consistency of your world’s responses to their actions.




If there is no roll, then the player knows that there is no chance of deception. That's meta-knowledge avoided by making the roll necessary.

Always remember that no matter how well or badly the player rolls, the NPC could have rolled a 1...


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

S'mon said:


> If a player has said they're scouting, I definitely give them Passive Perception vs stuff on the ceiling. If they say they're focused on the ceiling specifically then at least Advantage (or +5) to spot stuff on the ceiling, but Disadvantage (or -5) for stuff on walls & floor.
> 
> Re the cloakers though, if they are above the archway & drop the moment PCs enter the room, I can see why the WoTC adventure says auto Surprise unless PCs are specifically looking up. There are still ways to negate this, such as Alertness feat (can't be surprised) or Barbarian reflexes (rage & act while Surprised). And 5e Surprise doesn't necessarily give Advantage on its first attack, the cloaker still has to roll Stealth vs PC passive per. So it's not as unfair as it might appear IMO.
> 
> I once had a giant snake over a doorway drop on first PC entering - automatic Surprise - poor snake, the PC had Alertness, won Init, and killed the very _surprised _snake before it could even attack!




They weren't cloakers actually, they were darkmantles.  Not sure why I felt OCD enough to correct that.    Also, I'm not sure why WotC got brought into this.  This was from the World's Largest Dungeon (3.5e) from AEG games.  Totally 3rd party.  Someone else mentioned WotC modules having the same sort of thing though.

Like I said, things like what you're describing are things that bug me in a game.  I'm looking around.  My character has a pretty high perception score (or spot or whatever your system uses).  If you say X you get bonus Y but penalty Z is a losing bet, most of the time.  I mean, using your examples, why would I do that unless there was some reason I knew there were monsters hanging on the ceiling beforehand?  It's just as likely that something will come up from the floor, so, it's a wash.  

Actually, thinking about it, in 5e, there really aren't any monsters that hide on the floor particularly, so, why wouldn't players just always look up?  Odds are they are going to be right more often than wrong.  And since there's no bonus or penalty horizontally, it's a free advantage that works most of the time.  

Thinking about it, that's why it bugs me so much.  It's just so easy to game the system.  Or rather, game the DM.  And, frankly, often, DM's are not very good at judging odds.  Like I said, there are far, far more things that drop on you in ambush in a dungeon than hide on the floor.  So, unless there's something wonky about the floor - pools, water, watnot - you're far better off looking at the ceiling.  Judge your DM.  How often does he/she drop a pit trap in a hallway?  Never?  Great!  Keep your eyes on the ceilings boys, free bonuses for everyone.


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## S'mon (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Thinking about it, that's why it bugs me so much.




Well you're renowned for being bugged. 
Some of what bugs you seem reasonable IMO - excessive pixel-bitching GMs. Some of it looks more like regular playing the game - if you take out all player skill from the game you might as well play Progress Quest.

The case where I apply it is if the monsters are aware the PCs are entering the room (light, noise etc) and drop on them as they enter. I think the 5e Surprise mechanic handles this well - if the PCs win init they aren't actually 'surprised' by the time the creatures attack them. If the creatures fail Stealth check then they don't get advantage on the check. It's not like 1e Surprise with 1 attack routine per segment of Surprise.


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## S'mon (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Actually, thinking about it, in 5e, there really aren't any monsters that hide on the floor particularly, so, why wouldn't players just always look up?  Odds are they are going to be right more often than wrong.  And s*ince there's no bonus or penalty horizontally, it's a free advantage *that works most of the time.




If you read what I wrote, I said disad vs walls & floor.

This basically only happens if the PCs have reason to suspect stuff will drop on them from above as they enter the room. Which happened IMC recently - using 'detect evil' the PCs detected some zombies on a ledge over the entrance waiting to drop boulders on them, and negated the trap.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If by that you mean that I'm more flexible on how my players let me know what they're trying to do, and that I don't expect them to utter some magic phrase or know how to accomplish a task their PC knows how to accomplish, then yes.



Let me try an example.  There's a door that has a contact poison on the handle.  For whatever reason, the players are suspicious of the door and are checking for traps.

The two methods you're contrasting here are asking for a roll vs stating an approach and goal.  Let's start with asking for a roll.

"I search for traps.  I got a __."

Firstly, this method requires a fixed DC fir the trap.  This is a somewhat arbitrary DC based more on the needed challenge rather than anything hapoening on the fiction.  That's not bad or wrong, just hiw it is.  Many (most) published adventures set DCs this way.

So, a the check result is compared to the DC.  I'm pretty sure we'll all agree what happens on a success -- the poisoned handle is discovered!  But, what happens on a failure?  That's murky.  Some tabkes will offer "you find nothing" and wait for further actions that may engage the trap.  Others might deckare that the poison was touched, which sets up the "I didn't say I touched that!" argument.  The failure options are either 'nothing' or assuming actions on the PC's behalf that are harmful.  And, this is perfectly fine if the table agrees the GM has this authority over PC actions.  Not my preference, but perfectly fine.

Now, the goal and approach method.  This method modifies DCs based on declared actions, so already a difference, and also generates different outcomes based on deckared actions.  It is, however, not pixel bitching except in a very degenerate form.  Let's look at two example approaches:

1) "I carefully examine the door visually to see if there are any traps."

With this action, the GM will probably determine the outcome is uncertain.  A DC will generate based on what the GM thinks is a good representation of noticing the contact poison by visual inspection.  A roll is then called for. On a success, the result is_ indistinguishable from above_ -- the trap is discovered!  On a failure, though, the range is limited.  The result is "you don't notice anything."  Touching the poisoned handle is not a possible outcome.  This is difference.

2) "I check for traps by carefully and slowly opening it, feeling for catches or triggers."

This plays out a bit differently.  The GM could determine this directly engages the trap without a roll and move there.  I'd, personally, set the DC as above and call for a roll, but I go with the assumption PCs are competent.  A success would notice the poison before grasping the handle, so same as above.  A failure, though, does not involve the GM assuming action from the PC -- tge handle has been grasped.

So, then, goal and approach work the same as asking fior a roll in success conditions (usually, there are corner cases), but in failure conditions they usually operate differently -- one establishes failure conditions from the approach declared, the other leaves it up to the GM.  Neither is inherently superior.

Now, to address the complaint you make about pixel bitching more directly.  Yes, goal and approach in a degenerate form is pretty much pixel bitching.  If you, as GM, are looking only for the magic approach phrasing, you're doing the bad.  But, as in all things, comparing how you play, with your principles and guidelines robust and intact, to a degenerate form of another's play, you will always look good by comparison. 

Goal and approach is used in a principled manner not to create the need for specific approaches, but to reduce the need for GM assumptions.  Done in a pricipled manner, goal and approach is very lenient on approaches, as I show above in the example where there's still a roll for an approach that appears to go straight at the trap.  The priciples here is "don't be a dick" and "assume PCs are competent."  I use goal and approach because I want to give the player the authority to say what their PC does -- I don't want to assume or narrate PC actions, I want to narrate outcomes.  This doesn't make my method superior to yours, it just makes it superior for my table. I believe yours works for your table just as awesomely.

Also, both of the approaches above were lifted straight from my last session.  No contact poison traps, though.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

S'mon said:


> If you read what I wrote, I said disad vs walls & floor.
> 
> This basically only happens if the PCs have reason to suspect stuff will drop on them from above as they enter the room. Which happened IMC recently - using 'detect evil' the PCs detected some zombies on a ledge over the entrance waiting to drop boulders on them, and negated the trap.




Ah, sorry, missed that.  Reading to quickly.  

Then, honestly, it really is a suckers bet.  Again, unless the PC's know that there are enemies above them for some reason, there's no reason to specify looking up.  Far, far more things are going to try to surprise you on your level (I mean altitude, flat plane, same  elevation - grrr, English hard sometimes), so, again, unless you have a really specific reason, no one is going to do that.

In the World's Largest Dungeon example, there was no telegraphing and no real reason for the PC's to even think to ask about "looking up".  Isn't, "I'm opening the door carefully and looking around, Perception 15" good enough?  To me, the simple fact that you made a check means that you are looking up.  That's part of "looking", isn't it?

Either way, whenever DM's start messing with the odds, most of the time, it's just not worth it.  I'm taking disadvantage on a much more likely avenue of attack to gain advantage on a less likely one?  Why would I do that, barring, as you say, flat out knowing that there's something above to be looked at in the first place?  This sort of thing happens with skill checks all the time.  The risks almost always outweigh the rewards.  To the point where, given the option, I wouldn't take it.  It's simply not worth the risk.  

Again, barring knowing that there's something above us to watch for of course.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

I just want to echo @_*Hussar*_ on something.  Describing exactly what my PC does is tedious, boring and frustrating in many situations.  For example, I had a DM let slip that we missed a significant amount of treasure because we hadn't specifically stated that we searched under the mattress of the bad guy's bed when we searched his room.

I know some people say not going to that level of detail is "the DM telling the player what their PC does" but it's unnecessary in my games.  Unless there are extenuating circumstances, a player telling me they search the room is enough.  Depending on circumstances I might clarify how thoroughly the room is being searched.  Do they care if they leave evidence or are they tossing it?  Are they doing anything special before opening the the chest, etc.  I'll even assume they're checking for traps unless they're in a hurry.  So most of the time?  Just searching the room is all I want so I can go on to the fun stuff.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I just want to echo @_*Hussar*_ on something.  Describing exactly what my PC does is tedious, boring and frustrating in many situations.  For example, I had a DM let slip that we missed a significant amount of treasure because we hadn't specifically stated that we searched under the mattress of the bad guy's bed when we searched his room.
> 
> I know some people say not going to that level of detail is "the DM telling the player what their PC does" but it's unnecessary in my games.  Unless there are extenuating circumstances, a player telling me they search the room is enough.  Depending on circumstances I might clarify how thoroughly the room is being searched.  Do they care if they leave evidence or are they tossing it?  Are they doing anything special before opening the the chest, etc.  I'll even assume they're checking for traps unless they're in a hurry.  So most of the time?  Just searching the room is all I want so I can go on to the fun stuff.



Yup, that's crappy, and also you continuing to insist that goal and approach is pixel bitching.

If you say you're searching the room, then, yes, I'll ask how.  But, you've already told me your goal, so why would I ignore that?  If you say, "I move furniture and turn things ovet," tgen I don't ask for a roll, you find the treasure.  If you say, "I do a quick visual once over," then I take that into account with treaure under the matress and your goal of searching the room, set a high DC (because a quick glace has a small chance of discovering matress money), and ask for a roll.  But, I do NOT suddenly ignore the stated goal of the action.

You seem to be insisting that those asking for a goal and an approach then totally ignore the goal and focus on solely on the approach.  Why do you assume we're asking for irrelevant things?


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Let me try an example.  There's a door that has a contact poison on the handle.  For whatever reason, the players are suspicious of the door and are checking for traps.
> 
> The two methods you're contrasting here are asking for a roll vs stating an approach and goal.  Let's start with asking for a roll.
> 
> ...




Whereas I just cover goal and approach based on "how quickly are you going through the area?"  Describing what they're doing at every door, every opening, every hallway is boring.  Even if I broadcast that a door is "different", a simple "I search for traps" is good enough because I assume the person doing the searching is trained in how to do the search safely.

So all they have to say is "I think this area could be trapped and dangerous so we move cautiously".  For me, that's good enough to tell me that they're being careful.  If the game centers around a killer who's setting up traps for their victims and I want to build tension I may call for it but that is far and away the exception.

Of course different people play for different reasons.  I'm not much of a dungeon crawl guy, and I rarely use traps.  I don't have enough time to play the way it is so I focus on what's fun for me and my group.  What's fun for you may be different.


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## Imaculata (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This is just a minor pet peeve of mine and I may be the only one who has this problem, but I personally am not trained in removing traps.  My PC is.  Why should I go into details of how I'm disarming the trap any more than I would describe the methods I'm using to calm a horse with animal handling?  I don't deal with horses on a regular basis.  Ask me how to approach a skittish cat and I might have some possibilities, but a horse?  Not so sure.
> 
> So when it comes to traps, how the **** would I know the best approach?  As a DM, I may say something like "in order to disable the trap it looks like you need to insert your hand into this hole, do you do it?"  As a DM, I try to avoid "gotchas" so I start with the assumption they're just looking and build a scene with the character if it's not clear.  That doesn't change whether they're investigating a trap or looking at an old book.
> 
> Anyway, it's just a pet peeve and one I've had since my AD&D days.  Carry on.




This is why I feel that it is my duty as a DM to provide my players with such knowledge, when appropriate. The players state their general approach, such as "_I open the trapped chest while standing behind it and with a stick_". And if the player misunderstands the mechanics of the trap, I clarify, and allow them change their mind as often as they wish, until of course I have made my final ruling on the outcome.  

A player may try an approach to disarming the trap that their character would know to be fatally flawed, and then I tell them this and allow them to do something different. A player does not need to be extremely detailed in his description, and you don't need to be an actual trap expert. Just a general description of your approach will do, and where information is lacking, you are free to ask me for more info. I also often ask for further details myself as well, such as "_Who is standing in the corridor when so-and-so tries to disable the trap?_". Sometimes such a question may be irrelevant, but it is such an easy way to get players to panic (I can be a bit of a troll).

Honestly though, the way I make rulings on traps is very fair towards my players. I always make sure they are properly informed about the situation, and I take extra care to not presume what their character do.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I just cover goal and approach based on "how quickly are you going through the area?"  Describing what they're doing at every door, every opening, every hallway is boring.  Even if I broadcast that a door is "different", a simple "I search for traps" is good enough because I assume the person doing the searching is trained in how to do the search safely.
> 
> So all they have to say is "I think this area could be trapped and dangerous so we move cautiously".  For me, that's good enough to tell me that they're being careful.  If the game centers around a killer who's setting up traps for their victims and I want to build tension I may call for it but that is far and away the exception.
> 
> Of course different people play for different reasons.  I'm not much of a dungeon crawl guy, and I rarely use traps.  I don't have enough time to play the way it is so I focus on what's fun for me and my group.  What's fun for you may be different.



So, you require a standard approach and then question why others ask for an appriach?  I don't get it.  If there wasn't a standard approach, what would you do?

There's some additional principles behind goal and approach that may help here.  They are "don't ask for a roll if there are no consequences for failure" and "telegraph danger."  The first quickly dispenses with no trap situations and prevents the dreaded "metagaming" when there is (because a failure will have a consequence).  The second tells players ahead of the interaction that there's simething to interact with.  Let me give you examples from my last session.

The scout is moving through a dungeon known to have traps, and so is being careful.  He comes to a long corridor with two doors on the walls at the midpoint.  Nothing special.  As he approaches the doors, he does not notice either the scratches in the floor in front of the doors or the lip of a pressure plate just beyond due to using darkvision (his passive was below threshold but would not have been with bright light).  He did not stop to examine the doors, but pressed on, stepping on the plate and causing the doors to snap into the hallway and seal it closed at the halfway point.  This illustrates goal and approach in a natural play method.  The goal was to scout for dangers, the approach was to move cautiously with no light source.  The result was a failed perception test and the triggering of a trap.  A different approach would have had different results.  I use thus example because I'm pretty sure you'll recognize it from your own play.

The second instance was a staue of a man with a shark's head with an open mouth.  A closer approach revealed the mouth had a cavity behind it that you could reach into, but, due to the height of the statue, you couldn't see into it.  The statue blocked a secret door and the catch was a handle in the back of the staues throat.  The "trap" was that the statue was unsteady and attempting to climb it would cause it to topple.  The two PCs investigating declared one climbed on the other's shoulders for a better look, and so saw the catch clearly.  They then reached in to feel if there was a mechanism that would cayse the mouth to close.  There wasn't (no consequence for failure) , so I said so.  The catch was pulled and the secret door revealed.  They entirely bypassed the "trap" by approach.  

My player felt confident that his PC reaching into the mouth of the statue was not going to be a gotcha because he knew I resoect both goal and approach.  It was risky, yes, but I wasn't going to gotcha trap him without a roll that honored both his approach and his goal.  Had there been a trap, I would have lowered his DC for finding it due to getting right in there where the mechanism would be, but that would have balanced with the trap going off on a failure.


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## Rya.Reisender (Mar 26, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?



If an NPC is telling the truth, I tell my player "It seems he's telling the truth". No DC needed. The player might still not be sure because if he was lying, there's a chance I'd say the same thing if their Insight was too low.

I think this is the best way to handle it. The higher their insight is, the more "sure" they are that I tell them is the truth which is a perfect reflection of what the skill means in the first place.


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## Hussar (Mar 26, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> This is why I feel that it is my duty as a DM to provide my players with such knowledge, when appropriate. The players state their general approach, such as "_I open the trapped chest while standing behind it and with a stick_". And if the player misunderstands the mechanics of the trap, I clarify, and allow them change their mind as often as they wish, until of course I have made my final ruling on the outcome.
> 
> A player may try an approach to disarming the trap that their character would know to be fatally flawed, and then I tell them this and allow them to do something different. A player does not need to be extremely detailed in his description, and you don't need to be an actual trap expert. Just a general description of your approach will do, and where information is lacking, you are free to ask me for more info. I also often ask for further details myself as well, such as "_Who is standing in the corridor when so-and-so tries to disable the trap?_". Sometimes such a question may be irrelevant, but it is such an easy way to get players to panic (I can be a bit of a troll).
> 
> Honestly though, the way I make rulings on traps is very fair towards my players. I always make sure they are properly informed about the situation, and I take extra care to not presume what their character do.




In my experience, this just leads to players using magic to overcome everything because magic, unlike skills, doesn't require any DM adjudication.  They know what they are going to get if they use a mage hand to open a chest or whatever.  And I really don't want that.

On a side note, if someone would like to quote this and ask why @Ovinomancer has me blocked.  I honestly have zero idea where that came from and I wonder if he was experimenting with blocking in another thread and forgot to change it off.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> On a side note, if someone would like to quote this and ask why @Ovinomancer has me blocked.  I honestly have zero idea where that came from and I wonder if he was experimenting with blocking in another thread and forgot to change it off.




You can message them, I believe. I did when someone else had blocked me (unbelievable right?  ) and they removed the block.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh, thinking about it, how does that pedestal trap work?  It _sinks _ if there isn't the right amount of weight on it?  Hang on, how exactly do you do that?
> 
> Which, in my mind, is why I generally don't futz too much on the details.  Too much risk of making stuff that, under a bit of scrutiny, doesn't actually work.  I remember running the World's Largest Dungeon years ago.  One of the most egregious examples of what I see as "describe what you do" play was in a room description where it actually says something to the effect (it's been a number of years, I could get the exact quote if you really want me to), PC's who state they are looking at the ceiling have a chance of noticing the darkmantles hidden there (DC whatever).  Those who don't are automatically surprised".
> 
> Yeah, I don't play that way.  If you say you are looking around the room, that includes up.  So, yeah, to me, simply saying, I look for traps in the room is perfectly fine.  I'm not interested in any more detail than that.



Ye olde "you didn't say you looked up?" is a classic from certain old gaming days or styles.

Thst kind of thing I have seen lead to a page or pages long laundry list of "door procedures" to avoid all those kinds of things.

Heck, it's not even that old.. one of the opening 5e modules has charscters pursuing a troupe of raiders, finding out an smbudhbis set for them and then iirc has the line "if the players state they are watching for the ambush, they get advantage on the spot check " parsphrasebof course but its right back to "did you say you look up style of gaming.

Contrast to the assumption of competence (or just basic sentience) where you assume that after learning an ambush is ahead they are looking out for it.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> They weren't cloakers actually, they were darkmantles.  Not sure why I felt OCD enough to correct that.    Also, I'm not sure why WotC got brought into this.  This was from the World's Largest Dungeon (3.5e) from AEG games.  Totally 3rd party.  Someone else mentioned WotC modules having the same sort of thing though.
> 
> Like I said, things like what you're describing are things that bug me in a game.  I'm looking around.  My character has a pretty high perception score (or spot or whatever your system uses).  If you say X you get bonus Y but penalty Z is a losing bet, most of the time.  I mean, using your examples, why would I do that unless there was some reason I knew there were monsters hanging on the ceiling beforehand?  It's just as likely that something will come up from the floor, so, it's a wash.
> 
> ...



Item 17 on door procedure checklist - before entering look up.

Check!


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## seebs (Mar 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This. If an NPC is telling the truth, they exhibit no signs that they are lying, therefore there is no uncertainty if a PC attempts to discern whether or not they are lying by observing their behavior.




This isn't how humans work. Most people exihibit some "signs that they are lying" if they're nervous, even when being 100% truthful. Also, people misread body language all the time. It's absolutely possible to mistakenly think someone is lying.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Let me try an example.  There's a door that has a contact poison on the handle.  For whatever reason, the players are suspicious of the door and are checking for traps.
> 
> The two methods you're contrasting here are asking for a roll vs stating an approach and goal.  Let's start with asking for a roll.
> 
> ...



Specifically regarding this...

"So, a the check result is compared to the DC. I'm pretty sure we'll all agree what happens on a success -- the poisoned handle is discovered! But, what happens on a failure? That's murky. Some tabkes will offer "you find nothing" and wait for further actions that may engage the trap. Others might deckare that the poison was touched, which sets up the "I didn't say I touched that!" argument. The failure options are either 'nothing' or assuming actions on the PC's behalf that are harmful. And, this is perfectly fine if the table agrees the GM has this authority over PC actions. Not my preference, but perfectly fine."

Those options sound a lot like declaring that a failure can have two outcomes, not just one. 

It's almost like saying that a failure on an ability check can be either "making no progress" (you find no traps) or some progress with a setback determined by the GM (you found a trap but you tripped it.) 

As such, I would say that in 5e, that "agreed authority" to make such a call by the GM is given in the PHB under ability checks where it specifically states that a failure on an ability check gives the GM both those options. 

"Otherwise, it's a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the DM." PHB Chapter 7 using Ability Scores 

Now, if it's me, I might decide for some traps that trip while searching is still better than just walking into, grabbing the handle etc ("makes progress") and give the save advantage under the "actions that helped" category. 

But, just saying that in explicit RAW the authority to have the different resolutions for a failed trap check is already there. It can be in the same game, same table not needing different tables. 

Meanwhile, the describe it sure doesnt prevent table differences. One table might have some or all who know the grizzly vs brown bear aggression response. Another might.


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## 5ekyu (Mar 26, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> This is why I feel that it is my duty as a DM to provide my players with such knowledge, when appropriate. The players state their general approach, such as "_I open the trapped chest while standing behind it and with a stick_". And if the player misunderstands the mechanics of the trap, I clarify, and allow them change their mind as often as they wish, until of course I have made my final ruling on the outcome.
> 
> A player may try an approach to disarming the trap that their character would know to be fatally flawed, and then I tell them this and allow them to do something different. A player does not need to be extremely detailed in his description, and you don't need to be an actual trap expert. Just a general description of your approach will do, and where information is lacking, you are free to ask me for more info. I also often ask for further details myself as well, such as "_Who is standing in the corridor when so-and-so tries to disable the trap?_". Sometimes such a question may be irrelevant, but it is such an easy way to get players to panic (I can be a bit of a troll).
> 
> Honestly though, the way I make rulings on traps is very fair towards my players. I always make sure they are properly informed about the situation, and I take extra care to not presume what their character do.



Honestly, I cant remember the last time I saw someone posting about their GMing and saying anything like

"Honestly though, the way I make rulings on ABCD is very unfair towards my players."

Just sayin'


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> So, you require a standard approach and then question why others ask for an appriach?  I don't get it.  If there wasn't a standard approach, what would you do?




General approach is something we discuss.  What does the slow and cautious approach mean both in terms of time and effort.  What the standard "default" approach is, clarify that even passive checks will be at disadvantage if they're rushing.  I may go into more detail the first time or two for different environments, but it doesn't take long to establish a standard baseline.

So we, as a group, make that decision once and if there's ever any question or uncertainty about how the PC would approach the situation I ask for clarification.  Same as any other skill based challenge.  Like I said, I find constantly having to remind the DM that I'm checking for traps (much less specifically _how_ I'm checking) to be boring.  As I've said before if the player suspects something might be trapped, I assume their PC is suspicious and will take precautions whether or not there is a trap.  If that includes a dice roll, I don't see why that would cause the world I've built to crumble it just means the PC acted on their suspicion.

I play the game to slay dragons, win the damsel's heart and get shiny bling.  I'd simply rather spend my time on social interactions, discussing clues, fighting monsters than describing how I search a room so I'm sure to mention that I search under the mattress.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> This, I think, puts it about as well as can be put.  There are definitely advantages to either way.  And disadvantages too.  For myself, obviously I prefer the former approach to the latter, and, I think @_*Elfcrusher*_ nails it, precisely because of pacing issues.  Does the DM from time to time take over the character?  I suppose.  But, to me, that's just bog standard narration.  No different than what a DM does in combat when he says something like, "You swing your sword mightly and hack that orc's head off!"  Does anyone have an issue with the DM doing that?




Yes, I do have an issue with the DM doing that. A player gets to do one thing in this game, broadly speaking: Describe what he or she wants to do. The DM should not be doing this for them in my view and that includes combat. So when I DM, I describe the impact of the attack on the orc, to use your example, but I will not describe the character swinging the sword in any particular way. That's the player's role and responsibility.

As for pacing, I see no impact on that with the approach the rules suggest, and as I stated my games run circles around others in terms of content covered over the course of a session. But that's due to a number of factors, not just how fast we're resolving tasks.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> General approach is something we discuss.  What does the slow and cautious approach mean both in terms of time and effort.  What the standard "default" approach is, clarify that even passive checks will be at disadvantage if they're rushing.  I may go into more detail the first time or two for different environments, but it doesn't take long to establish a standard baseline.
> 
> So we, as a group, make that decision once and if there's ever any question or uncertainty about how the PC would approach the situation I ask for clarification.  Same as any other skill based challenge.  Like I said, I find constantly having to remind the DM that I'm checking for traps (much less specifically _how_ I'm checking) to be boring.  As I've said before if the player suspects something might be trapped, I assume their PC is suspicious and will take precautions whether or not there is a trap.  If that includes a dice roll, I don't see why that would cause the world I've built to crumble it just means the PC acted on their suspicion.
> 
> I play the game to slay dragons, win the damsel's heart and get shiny bling.  I'd simply rather spend my time on social interactions, discussing clues, fighting monsters than describing how I search a room so I'm sure to mention that I search under the mattress.



I agree, constantly telling the DM I'm checking for traps to avoid gotchas does sound boring.  I'm glad we agree.  It doesn't happen in my game, either.  Did you think it did?

I also play for the same reasons and find all of my play centers on interesting encounters driving thise goals.  Did I say something to make you think otherwise?

I ask these questions because instead of engaging the clear examples I provided of play at my table, you seem to rather say that you play differently and then list ways our game are the same in terms of playgoals and interests.  Yet, your issue is about play style, not play goals.  So, I remain confused as to why you keep asking how I and others play, but then when shown pivot to complaints about things that aren't happening at our tables and ignore the examples of play.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Like I said, I find constantly having to remind the DM that I'm checking for traps (much less specifically _how_ I'm checking) to be boring.




Surely this can be handled by Passive Perception or Passive Investigation if it's an action your character is performing repeatedly? If you've declared that you're constantly looking for traps while exploring the dungeon then that's what you're doing, no need to keep declaring it. If you stop doing it for some reason (an encounter for example), then you just have to declare that your character goes back to trap checking. The cost of this of course is that you might be vulnerable to being surprised by monsters (or that your speed is halved because of your caution).

But there's no need to keep declaring an ongoing action in 5e.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> To be honest [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], it's a lot less about the "gotcha" element and far more about the "Why am I pissing about describing for the 237th time how I look for traps on a chest" thing.  It gets old really, really fast.  If you do dungeon crawls, and I do, you're likely to have dozens of rooms/chambers.  Each of which is likely going to get searched at some point.  Having to repeat myself dozens of times because the DM wants more than "I search the room" just makes me want to blow my brains out.




What this sounds like to me is that the DM isn't presenting compelling content. Just a lot of repetitive chests and chambers. That would make me bored as well, regardless of how actions were adjudicated. Some DMs aren't great at presenting exploration challenges.



Hussar said:


> I've played the way you're talking about.  I can see the attraction for a certain kind of player but, I'm very, very much not that kind of player.  Very little would cause me to check out of a game faster than this.  Not that it's bad or that you're a bad DM or badwrongfun or anything like that.  Not at all.  But, because it would bore me to tears.  I would be a terrible player at this table.  I'd be that bad player futzing around on my phone while the rest of the group plays because, fifteen minutes into the session, I'd be completely checked out.




At the risk of seeming too confident, I bet you wouldn't do this in my games. You wouldn't have time to as you'd be too busy boldly confronting deadly perils to pick up your phone. You may bristle at being asked not to make unprompted rolls, but then you may quickly see that success without a roll is better than leaving it to chance, especially when you get hit with the meaningful (often painful) consequences of failure every time you don't hit that DC. You may then notice that the approach is no slower than what you're currently doing and in many cases faster (and the game experience overall is faster).


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> They weren't cloakers actually, they were darkmantles.  Not sure why I felt OCD enough to correct that.    Also, I'm not sure why WotC got brought into this.  This was from the World's Largest Dungeon (3.5e) from AEG games.  Totally 3rd party.  Someone else mentioned WotC modules having the same sort of thing though.




I will never defend an adventure module as being perfect (I find them frequently terrible), but I haven't seen anything like that in the WotC adventures I've read (granted, I've not read them all). I'd be curious to see any citations if anyone knows of any.



Hussar said:


> Like I said, things like what you're describing are things that bug me in a game.  I'm looking around.  My character has a pretty high perception score (or spot or whatever your system uses).  If you say X you get bonus Y but penalty Z is a losing bet, most of the time.  I mean, using your examples, why would I do that unless there was some reason I knew there were monsters hanging on the ceiling beforehand?  It's just as likely that something will come up from the floor, so, it's a wash.
> 
> Actually, thinking about it, in 5e, there really aren't any monsters that hide on the floor particularly, so, why wouldn't players just always look up?  Odds are they are going to be right more often than wrong.  And since there's no bonus or penalty horizontally, it's a free advantage that works most of the time.
> 
> Thinking about it, that's why it bugs me so much.  It's just so easy to game the system.  Or rather, game the DM.  And, frankly, often, DM's are not very good at judging odds.  Like I said, there are far, far more things that drop on you in ambush in a dungeon than hide on the floor.  So, unless there's something wonky about the floor - pools, water, watnot - you're far better off looking at the ceiling.  Judge your DM.  How often does he/she drop a pit trap in a hallway?  Never?  Great!  Keep your eyes on the ceilings boys, free bonuses for everyone.




Check out the trapper in Volo's Guide to Monsters for a floor-lurking monster.

Whether it's a darkmantle on the ceiling or a trapper on the floor, I'm resolving it the same way because I value consistency and the rules of the game help with that: I'm telegraphing the threat of hidden monsters, perhaps even these ones specifically. I'm asking the players what they are doing, generally, as they travel the dungeon. If they say they are staying alert for hidden dangers (as opposed to drawing a map, foraging, tracking, navigating, or any task that is at least as distracting as those), then surprise is determined normally and their passive Perception applies. If they are performing a distracting task other than staying alert for hidden dangers and aren't a ranger in favored terrain, then the character is automatically surprised when the darkmantle or trapper attacks. They made a decision to take the risk of not being alert in exchange for performing some other (presumably useful) task.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

I don't have time to respond in detail, but I'm just stating my preference and how I run the game.  If a player says their PC is doing something, if it's clear that the PC would take action _X_ using skill _Y_ I will ask for a roll even if I know the outcome will not change because the player is attempting something that will automatically succeed or fail.  Why?  Because from the PC's perspective the outcome was uncertain which is all that matters.  If there is no roll, the player knows there was no reason for the PC to attempt the action in the first place.

I'm not saying anyone else is playing gotcha, or calling for rolls or unnecessarily detailed description of what the PC is doing.  I have had DMs that were very much into gotchas.  So the trap went off because we didn't specifically state we checked the door for traps, we had no chance to see the creature because we didn't state we were looking in the correct spot.  In other cases they required us to be very specific on how you were searching a room after a vague description so we didn't find treasure because we didn't specify we looked under the mattress.

In other words, I don't need to make a medicine check to know that the horse is dead.  Or wait ... do I have to state that as "carefully examine the horse to see if it's a corpse by checking to see if it still has a heartbeat"?


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I don't have time to respond in detail, but I'm just stating my preference and how I run the game.  If a player says their PC is doing something, if it's clear that the PC would take action _X_ using skill _Y_ I will ask for a roll even if I know the outcome will not change because the player is attempting something that will automatically succeed or fail.  Why?  Because from the PC's perspective the outcome was uncertain which is all that matters.  If there is no roll, the player knows there was no reason for the PC to attempt the action in the first place.
> 
> I'm not saying anyone else is playing gotcha, or calling for rolls or unnecessarily detailed description of what the PC is doing.  I have had DMs that were very much into gotchas.  So the trap went off because we didn't specifically state we checked the door for traps, we had no chance to see the creature because we didn't state we were looking in the correct spot.  In other cases they required us to be very specific on how you were searching a room after a vague description so we didn't find treasure because we didn't specify we looked under the mattress.
> 
> In other words, I don't need to make a medicine check to know that the horse is dead.  Or wait ... do I have to state that as "carefully examine the horse to see if it's a corpse by checking to see if it still has a heartbeat"?




No, quite simply it's my job as GM to describe the horse as dead.  I don't see how that's even something that should be rolled for.

As for uncertainty, I addressed this above.  If the task is such that there's no consequence of failure then it isn't something I need to generate uncertainty, I have plenty of interesting things to get to.  Take a possibly trapped door, for instance.  If I have players roll, and they roll poorly, and I say "nope, nothing" what play follows?  The players are now hesitant and perhaps ask to check again.  For a door that is not trapped I'm now burning playtime with player uncertainty about an untrapped door.

If it's trapped and they roll badly, then something happens the players would rather not happen.  A wandering monster check, maybe, or the trap activates, or something else, but the players aren't now in a metagane place going "aha, there's something up with this door," because they're already _dealing with the fallout of the something._ I never hit the dreaded metagame because all rolls have consequences for failure.  The need to roll to create player uncertainty and avoid the metagame just doesn't even factor in my play.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> No, quite simply it's my job as GM to describe the horse as dead.  I don't see how that's even something that should be rolled for.




"If an NPC's horse is dead, what's the Medicine DC to know the horse is dead?"

After all, the horse is lying (on the ground).


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> No, quite simply it's my job as GM to describe the horse as dead.  I don't see how that's even something that should be rolled for.
> 
> As for uncertainty, I addressed this above.  If the task is such that there's no consequence of failure then it isn't something I need to generate uncertainty, I have plenty of interesting things to get to.  Take a possibly trapped door, for instance.  If I have players roll, and they roll poorly, and I say "nope, nothing" what play follows?  The players are now hesitant and perhaps ask to check again.  For a door that is not trapped I'm now burning playtime with player uncertainty about an untrapped door.
> 
> If it's trapped and they roll badly, then something happens the players would rather not happen.  A wandering monster check, maybe, or the trap activates, or something else, but the players aren't now in a metagane place going "aha, there's something up with this door," because they're already _dealing with the fallout of the something._ I never hit the dreaded metagame because all rolls have consequences for failure.  The need to roll to create player uncertainty and avoid the metagame just doesn't even factor in my play.




I was assuming uncertainty from the perspective of the PC.  Uncertainty from the perspective of the DM doesn't matter to me.  Also, it was just a joke.

But in any case the horse is still dead, and there isn't really anything new here.  Have a good one.


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## robus (Mar 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> "If an NPC's horse is dead, what's the Medicine DC to know the horse is dead?"
> 
> After all, the horse is lying (on the ground).




So Insight then?


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## WaterRabbit (Mar 26, 2019)

So despite claims to the contrary, you cannot tell if a person is lying just through body language unless you have a baseline of their behavior to compare it to -- and even then, it isn't certain.  You can tell if someone is under a cognitive load based upon their body language, but it is generally not possible to tell why.

So baring magic like a Zone of Truth, and Insight check should not be able to determine if someone is telling the truth one way or another.  And even Zone of Truth provides a large amount of wiggle room.  The only way to be certain if an NPC is telling the truth is to confirm their information.  Overtime, you can then determine if an NPC is trustworthy or not.  

So, the DC for a "truth" check for an NPC that is a stranger to a player should be very high -- like DC 30 or something.  Generally, I prefer to create ahead of time a chart that reflects the amount of information a check gives (insight, history, investigation, etc).

Check 5 or better gives x
Check 10 or better gives y
Check 15 or better gives z
etc.

Even if the PCs don't make a check it give you as the DM a better idea as to what information an NPC has they can impart.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I was assuming uncertainty from the perspective of the PC.  Uncertainty from the perspective of the DM doesn't matter to me.  Also, it was just a joke.
> 
> But in any case the horse is still dead, and there isn't really anything new here.  Have a good one.



Do you only read part of my posts?  I directly addressed the uncertainty statement, but your response is devoid of any recognition of that, instead just repeating your initial point.  It's very difficult to try to explain a playstyle if the person who asks doesn't bother engaging the explanation.  Do you really wish to try to understand, or is this all performative?


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> So despite claims to the contrary, you cannot tell if a person is lying just through body language unless you have a baseline of their behavior to compare it to -- and even then, it isn't certain.  You can tell if someone is under a cognitive load based upon their body language, but it is generally not possible to tell why.
> 
> So baring magic like a Zone of Truth, and Insight check should not be able to determine if someone is telling the truth one way or another.  And even Zone of Truth provides a large amount of wiggle room.  The only way to be certain if an NPC is telling the truth is to confirm their information.  Overtime, you can then determine if an NPC is trustworthy or not.
> 
> ...




While I agree that in the real world you are correct, the rules state that "Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move".

Just another example of D&D being over-simplified.  Personally I use insight as more of a vague feeling rather than a lie detector, but that's not following the letter of the rules.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Do you only read part of my posts?  I directly addressed the uncertainty statement, but your response is devoid of any recognition of that, instead just repeating your initial point.  It's very difficult to try to explain a playstyle if the person who asks doesn't bother engaging the explanation.  Do you really wish to try to understand, or is this all performative?




I understand you, I just don't run my games like that and I don't see what value it adds to the game.  

Horse. Dead.  Time to move on.


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## WaterRabbit (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> While I agree that in the real world you are correct, the rules state that "Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move".
> 
> Just another example of D&D being over-simplified.  Personally I use insight as more of a vague feeling rather than a lie detector, but that's not following the letter of the rules.




The question really is should insight be better than the 2nd level spell ZoT?  That is subject more to DM interpretation.  Also the DC is set by the DM, so a DC 30 for a stranger aligns with the general rule for Insight.


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## iserith (Mar 26, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> The question really is should insight be better than the 2nd level spell ZoT?  That is subject more to DM interpretation.  Also the DC is set by the DM, so a DC 30 for a stranger aligns with the general rule for Insight.




After reading the spell, it looks to me like _zone of truth_ performs a somewhat different function than a task to observe mannerisms and body language to determine a creature's true intentions. You may even be likelier to get a more evasive response or no response at all from a creature in a _zone of truth_. _Zone of truth_ probably enhances but does not replace mundane attempts to get at the truth. So I don't really see it as a trade-off that needs balancing.


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## Satyrn (Mar 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> "If an NPC's horse is dead, what's the Medicine DC to know the horse is dead?"
> 
> After all, the horse is lying (on the ground).




Me (playing Barbarian Joe): I smack the horse with my club. I know it's dead NOW.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> The question really is should insight be better than the 2nd level spell ZoT?  That is subject more to DM interpretation.  Also the DC is set by the DM, so a DC 30 for a stranger aligns with the general rule for Insight.




There's a fairly common trope in fiction of "the human lie detector" and some people probably are slightly better at it than others.  

However, in my games the only 100% sure-fire way of knowing whether someone is lying is magic.  Even then, as you stated there are frequently ways of skirting the truth if using zone of truth.  People also remember things incorrectly all the time as well so you probably need hard evidence to be certain.  False memories are easily created - see the "lost in the mall false memory" study.

Telling the players that they don't need to bother with an insight check because the person is telling the truth makes insight far too powerful for my game.  Which is why I would go with the old standby "They seem to be telling the truth".

Adjudicating interrogations can be tough, but I agree with your concept of getting more based on DCs.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I understand you, I just don't run my games like that and I don't see what value it adds to the game.
> 
> Horse. Dead.  Time to move on.



This started because you asked, and continued because you kept misrepresenting the playstyle.  I'm more than willing to concede different strokes, and all that, but I'm skeptical you actually understand given your repeated complaints about things that aren't even a  factor in my play.  Still, provided we skip further performative credulity, I'm willing to let the horse lie.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This started because you asked, and continued because you kept misrepresenting the playstyle.  I'm more than willing to concede different strokes, and all that, but I'm skeptical you actually understand given your repeated complaints about things that aren't even a  factor in my play.  Still, provided we skip further performative credulity, I'm willing to let the horse lie.




If my player states something along the lines of "I don't believe them, I think they're lying. Can I make an insight check?"  I will let them even though I know the NPC is telling the truth.  I also won't ask for any more clarification of what they're doing, to me it's obvious.

It's my understanding that you would not have them roll because you know the NPC is telling the truth.  Perhaps you've somehow "broadcast" that they're telling the truth.  You may also object to them asking to make a specific skill check (sorry, I don't remember everything you've said).

If that's misrepresenting what you would do, I apologize.  If it's not, then I understand what you're saying I just don't run my game that way.


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## Imaculata (Mar 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> In my experience, this just leads to players using magic to overcome everything because magic, unlike skills, doesn't require any DM adjudication.  They know what they are going to get if they use a mage hand to open a chest or whatever.  And I really don't want that.




If the players are going to use magic to overcome my traps, they are using up some of their resources, which is okay in my book. Besides, not all traps can be overcome that easily with magic, and magic should feel useful to the players.



5ekyu said:


> Honestly, I cant remember the last time I saw someone posting about their GMing and saying anything like
> 
> "Honestly though, the way I make rulings on ABCD is very unfair towards my players."
> 
> Just sayin'




You haven't seen me posting about how I balance my combat encounters then, I presume. 
Honestly though, it is very unfair. I always pick monsters at least 2 CR's higher than what is reasonable. I first throw a bunch of easy encounters at them to completely drain them of their resources, before dropping them into a double boss fight with two powerful foes that are 4 CR's higher than they should be, with a bunch of minions that are 2 CR's higher than appropriate for their level.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If my player states something along the lines of "I don't believe them, I think they're lying. Can I make an insight check?"  I will let them even though I know the NPC is telling the truth.  I also won't ask for any more clarification of what they're doing, to me it's obvious.
> 
> It's my understanding that you would not have them roll because you know the NPC is telling the truth.  Perhaps you've somehow "broadcast" that they're telling the truth.  You may also object to them asking to make a specific skill check (sorry, I don't remember everything you've said).
> 
> If that's misrepresenting what you would do, I apologize.  If it's not, then I understand what you're saying I just don't run my game that way.




Yes, I'd have to say you broadly misunderstand the playstyle.  Firstly, I wouldn't adjudicate that statement at all.  It's not the player's position to suggest mechanics, but the DM's.  It's the player's prerogative to declare actions, and "make an Insight check" is not an action.  I prefer clear goal and approach, so I can fairly adjudicate the action.  I'll touch on this more in a moment. 

Secondly, what I as GM know about the situation does not result in no check.  My job, as GM, is to take the player's declared action (preferably with clear goal and approach), and then determine if the outcome is automatically successful, automatically fails, or is uncertain.  If uncertain, my job is to call for an appropriate check and set a DC.  Then, after that is determined, I narrate the results and the play cycle begins again.  To do this, I have a few core principles:

1.  Assume the PCs are competent -- this means no stupid gotchas because the player didn't precisely state an approach that the PC wouldn't do.
2.  Don't be a dick -- this relates to 1, but also means I'm not looking to make PCs (and their players) look bad in my game.  It's a heroic game, they should be heroes.
3.  Don't ask for a check if there is no consequence for failure -- this is a bit more nuanced than a first read would seem.  It doesn't mean automatic success, although it could, it also means don't waste game time asking for checks that will just be repeated until successful.  If you ask for a check, and it fails, something bad should happen as a result.  If you can't think of anything, or if nothing bad fits the situation, you can just narrate taking a few  moments and succeeding.  
4.  Foreshadow danger/conflicts-- this doesn't mean I need to set things up sessions in advance, but if there is a danger or conflict, don't hide it.  If the NPC is lying, describe their behavior so that it clues the players in that something is wrong here.  If there's a trap, describe a difference in the scene that indicates danger -- odd scratches, discolorations, ash, previous victims, etc.  If you do this, you will not waste time with players being uncertain and acting paranoid by checking everything for gotchas.

Following the above, I cannot resolve your question at all.  This is because: 

A) there's a lack of an action declaration involving a goal and approach.  I have a goal, but how are they doing this?  Insight is a mechanic, not an action.  This can be as simple as "I observe them for signs of lying" to more complicated, or even well off the insight path such as, "I yell at him I think he's lying and he better start telling me the truth!" prompted an Intimidate check.

B)  there's a lack of fictional positioning to the example to allow me to successfully adjudicate what's at stake.  Is the person the player's are questioning going to help the players?  If so, then a failed check may result in them becoming angry at being questioned and withdrawing their assistance. ("I see you don't believe me.  Fine, I shall take my business elsewhere.")  Perhaps the players are risking loss of face because this is a prominent personage and they're in public? ("<GASP>  [PC NAME] just insulted the Baron's son by suggesting he's lying!"}  Or, maybe, this person is a run of the mill merchant and nothing is at stake, in which case, sure, I just narrate a success so we can move to more interesting scenes (and I make a note to not frame scenes lacking importance).  But, there's none of this in the example, so I can't say.

To sum up, I ask for approach and goal not because I'm looking for a magic phrase to win the puzzle I've set, but because I need those to properly decide what mechanic applies and to narrate the outcome in a compelling manner regardless of success or failure.  What I know as GM is not the determining factor, it's an input into the matrix.  

I try very hard to frame the PCs into conflicts, ie. situations where there's something at stake.  We elide the stuff that's not at stake.  For example, during downtime, players can buy anything they want from the PHB at book cost and sell anything they have and 50% value, they just need to inform me they are doing so.  But, if they want a better price, they can find a seller/buyer and negotiate one, but then run the risk of a higher cost due to shortages or even running afoul of the authorities (Surprise! Stolen goods!).  If I ask for a roll, there's a consequence for failure.  In this regard, it's always best to find a way to not have to roll (which is pretty easy most of the time).  For shopping, one PC has established a good relationship with a merchant by doing favors for them, and so they automatically have a 25% shift in cost in their favor by going to this merchant, but that merchant's stock is determined randomly and will only buy 1,000 gp of merchandise a week.


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## Oofta (Mar 26, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, I'd have to say you broadly misunderstand the playstyle.  Firstly, I wouldn't adjudicate that statement at all.  It's not the player's position to suggest mechanics, but the DM's.  It's the player's prerogative to declare actions, and "make an Insight check" is not an action.  I prefer clear goal and approach, so I can fairly adjudicate the action.  I'll touch on this more in a moment.




You've been clear on that. Just like I've been clear that I disagree.  I don't see why it would be a big deal, the player has communicated what their intent is.  I would no more say "no you can't say what skill you are using" any more than I would tell them they couldn't use a specific skill.  

To be clear: I don't care if that's what the rules say, if someone asks to make skill check _X_ or if they can use ability _Y_ I allow it.  The only exception is if they are trying to do something totally inappropriate.  For example there's no way an strength (athletics) check is going to allow them to read a magic book.  On the other hand they may be able to justify using Intelligence to do an intimidate check because they know that the NPC is going to be influenced by a superior intellect (although I'd ask for some clarification on details on what they're saying).  



Ovinomancer said:


> Secondly, what I as GM know about the situation does not result in no check.  My job, as GM, is to take the player's declared action (preferably with clear goal and approach), and then determine if the outcome is automatically successful, automatically fails, or is uncertain.  If uncertain, my job is to call for an appropriate check and set a DC.  Then, after that is determined, I narrate the results and the play cycle begins again.  To do this, I have a few core principles:
> 
> 1.  Assume the PCs are competent -- this means no stupid gotchas because the player didn't precisely state an approach that the PC wouldn't do.
> 2.  Don't be a dick -- this relates to 1, but also means I'm not looking to make PCs (and their players) look bad in my game.  It's a heroic game, they should be heroes.
> ...




Yep.  Still get it. Still disagree.  If the NPC was lying, the players know I'd ask for an insight check opposed by the NPC's deception check (potentially with a lot of modifiers).  If I don't ask for the insight check, the player knows the NPC is telling the truth.  The consequence of automatic success is that the PCs have the ultimate truth detector.  

As far as "I observe them for signs of lying" vs "I think they're lying can I make an insight check", in either case they've declared that's what they are doing.  They just didn't phrase it like you wanted it.  



Ovinomancer said:


> B)  there's a lack of fictional positioning to the example to allow me to successfully adjudicate what's at stake.  Is the person the player's are questioning going to help the players?  If so, then a failed check may result in them becoming angry at being questioned and withdrawing their assistance. ("I see you don't believe me.  Fine, I shall take my business elsewhere.")  Perhaps the players are risking loss of face because this is a prominent personage and they're in public? ("<GASP>  [PC NAME] just insulted the Baron's son by suggesting he's lying!"}  Or, maybe, this person is a run of the mill merchant and nothing is at stake, in which case, sure, I just narrate a success so we can move to more interesting scenes (and I make a note to not frame scenes lacking importance).  But, there's none of this in the example, so I can't say.




Why does it matter?  The player has communicated that they don't believe the NPC is telling the truth.  They're studying them closely, paying attention, whatever an insight check means to that player.



Ovinomancer said:


> To sum up, I ask for approach and goal not because I'm looking for a magic phrase to win the puzzle I've set, but because I need those to properly decide what mechanic applies and to narrate the outcome in a compelling manner regardless of success or failure.  What I know as GM is not the determining factor, it's an input into the matrix.




Except you just said that you wouldn't accept anything phrased as "I think they're lying can I make an insight check".

I'll just repeat one last time. To me, making a skill check is the game mechanic implementation of the PC trying to do something.  It's not my job to tell them they can't attempt to climb the sheer wall even if I know they cannot succeed.  

Back to the OP.  I don't to tell my players either directly or by omission of an opposed skill check that an NPC is telling the truth.  I may tell them the NPC seems honest.  I may remind them they have no reason to doubt this PC.  But let them know with 100% certainty that the NPC is telling the truth?  Nope.  Not my style.

So can you stop accusing me of just not understanding your position?  I get where you're coming from.  I'm not even saying I wouldn't enjoy playing at your table because I have no clue.  I understand your position, I just disagree.  If that bothers you so much you can always block me like Iserith did because I would never agree that his style on this subject is the one true way.


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## Swarmkeeper (Mar 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Except you just said that you wouldn't accept anything phrased as "I think they're lying can I make an insight check".




It would seem you really don't fully grasp what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is saying if you think that is an example of "magic words" (or perhaps "anti-magic words" as it were).

Try this:

https://theangrygm.com/five-simple-rules-for-dating-my-teenaged-skill-system/

I know from reading your posts that you are perfectly happy with your way of running things so perhaps you won't bother giving it a chance.  But really, I'm just trying to share something that I've found valuable and that might actually give you (or someone else) insight into running 5e in a way that isn't relying on ingrained habits from older versions of the game.

And no, the irony of quoting Angry is not lost on me when I'm trying my best to be nice.  He's certainly a big jerk in his presentation and comment responses (that's his shtick after all) but his logic for running games successfully is pretty tight, IMO.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You've been clear on that. Just like I've been clear that I disagree.  I don't see why it would be a big deal, the player has communicated what their intent is.  I would no more say "no you can't say what skill you are using" any more than I would tell them they couldn't use a specific skill.
> 
> To be clear: I don't care if that's what the rules say, if someone asks to make skill check _X_ or if they can use ability _Y_ I allow it.  The only exception is if they are trying to do something totally inappropriate.  For example there's no way an strength (athletics) check is going to allow them to read a magic book.  On the other hand they may be able to justify using Intelligence to do an intimidate check because they know that the NPC is going to be influenced by a superior intellect (although I'd ask for some clarification on details on what they're saying).



This confuses me.  You've asked why we run the way we do, and asked for us to explain it to you (apparently again), and here you are treating this as if I'm trying to convince you that my way is better.  I'm not.  I'm answering your questions with how I would run them.  If you feel the need to insist that your way is better, you can do that without me.  

For the record, I also allow off ability skill checks.  There's a _conversation_ happening at my table, where the skill used is negotiable via the approach.  The players aren't locked into the first thing they say, and they're welcome to petition for a different use if they think it better fits their approach.  But, I call for a check, they don't ask for one.  They don't want to, because failing a check means a consequence they don't want.





> Yep.  Still get it. Still disagree.  If the NPC was lying, the players know I'd ask for an insight check opposed by the NPC's deception check (potentially with a lot of modifiers).  If I don't ask for the insight check, the player knows the NPC is telling the truth.  The consequence of automatic success is that the PCs have the ultimate truth detector.



I don't understand this.  Are you attributing this outcome to my style, or yours.  It seems odd that you would play this way, given your previous statements, and I certainly don't have this problem, so either you're misunderstanding (again) or I'm very, very confused by what you're trying to say here about your play.



> As far as "I observe them for signs of lying" vs "I think they're lying can I make an insight check", in either case they've declared that's what they are doing.  They just didn't phrase it like you wanted it.



Well, it is a ridiculously simple example, so complaining that I'd except simple approaches seems like a Catch 22.  The approach does not always need to be complicated.  However, I'm going to disagree with you that "I roll Insight" is equivalent to "I observe for signs of lying."  The outcomes are limited by the latter to what can be observed, while the former may involve back and forth testing or the like.  I don't know what you mean your character is doing by "I roll Insight."  Perhaps, at your table, there's an assumption that "I roll Insight" means "I observe for signs of lying," but I don't have that assumption.  The character could, for example, engage in a probing line of questioning, looking to find inconsistencies in the story, and that would be an approach that also calls for an WIS (Insight) check but has a very different range of outcomes than observing for tells.  Approach matters to outcome.  I get that you disagree, but I also think you're stuck on resolution of the mechanics, not actual possible outcomes, because if you really think that the possible outcomes between "I observe for signs of lying" is the same as "I engage in a probing line of questioning," then we're at a hard impasse in the ability to communicate.

I think that when you say "I disagree" it's shorthand for "I don't play that way."  That's fine, but it's not really disagreement, and it's orthogonal to understanding the points I'm making.




> Why does it matter?  The player has communicated that they don't believe the NPC is telling the truth.  They're studying them closely, paying attention, whatever an insight check means to that player.



The range of possible negative outcomes does not matter to you?  So, you'd be fine with "GASP! They've insulted the Duke's son!  Call the Guard!" as an outcome to observing a merchant for tells?  I doubt it, which means you either didn't read what I wrote and have reflexively kneejerked a response to the first line, or you're really not understanding what I said at all.  Which, do you think?




> Except you just said that you wouldn't accept anything phrased as "I think they're lying can I make an insight check".
> 
> I'll just repeat one last time. To me, making a skill check is the game mechanic implementation of the PC trying to do something.  It's not my job to tell them they can't attempt to climb the sheer wall even if I know they cannot succeed.



And here you demonstrate that you've failed to understand anything at all.  Firstly, I _never _deny an action declaration.  The authority to declare actions is solely in the player's arena.  Your character can attempt to scale the sheer wall all you want -- you will fail automatically if it's beyond your ability.  Where you think that I refuse to allow such an action declaration is beyond me.  What I do is deny any _request to make a check_.  Requiring a goal and approach is not magic phrasing -- I'm not looking for anything specific at all for how the player wishes they're character to try to resolve the issue. They don't have to guess the perfect approach key to fit my solution lock. I need the goal and approach so I can determine what mechanics apply and also what fictional outcomes are possible.  I, quite often, don't even have a solution to a challenge in mind when it's posed to the players -- their goals and approaches will shape the story moving forward not because it achieves my pre-planned outcomes but because they change the fiction with their approaches and goals.  A merchant lying might actually be a result of an approach and goal, not the challenge.    

Take the sheer wall, for instance.  "I roll a climb check" is roughly equivalent to an approach of just physically climbing, so, yes, these are pretty close.  But, if I ask for an approach instead of just nodding and narrating failure to the climb check, the player may be prompted to provide a more detailed approach, like, "I break out my climbers kit and climb the wall by pounding pitons in as handholds."  Okay, that changes things, that's possible, but it will be slow and noisy.  I have options other than assuming and narrating failure to an asked for check.  The player may succeed, in which case they realize their goal, or they may fail, which now, because of fictional positioning, gives me options from "you slip and fall halfway up and barely catch yourself, but your arrows are falling out of your quiver.  What do you do?" to "you reach the top alright, but the noise and time you spent pounding in pitons means there's three guards waiting for you, roll initiative."  The amount of things I'd have to assume for the player to get to either of those results from "I roll a climb check" is huge and abusive, but such results are quite easy to achieve from a stated goal and approach. 

For me, the fiction is malleable to the goal and approach.  There isn't treasure hidden under the mattress waiting for the perfectly phrased approach to be found, but rather they're treasure hidden in the room somewhere and the approach to searching for it will find it on a success in a location that makes sense for the approach -- if you search under the bed as your approach, and succeed, well, then, there was treasure hidden under the mattress, aren't you the lucky one!  If you fail, there's something much nastier under the mattress and no treasure.  Or the treasure isn't under the bed, but the time you took looking means there's a wandering monster check.  There's a consequence to failure.  If there isn't, if the dungeon is clear and we're mopping up details, then "I search the room" finds treasure and we move on to more interesting events.



> Back to the OP.  I don't to tell my players either directly or by omission of an opposed skill check that an NPC is telling the truth.  I may tell them the NPC seems honest.  I may remind them they have no reason to doubt this PC.  But let them know with 100% certainty that the NPC is telling the truth?  Nope.  Not my style.



I don't, either, as you continue not to understand.  If the honesty of the NPC is trivial, then I'm not wasting time on it.  If it's not, then there's a consequence for failure that will be based on the fictional positioning and the approach.  In other words, if it's in automatic success, nothing was at stake so why should anyone at the table care if there's no uncertainty.  If people at the table care because something is at stake, then _something is at stake for the roll_.  There's no need to worry about metagaming and player uncertainty because it does not even come up -- it's either trivial and elided, to the benefit of play, or it's not and something is placed at stake, which means a success is a success (goal realized) but a failure changes the fiction in a negative way and the uncertainty doesn't matter because play has moved on from that point to a worst situation.




> So can you stop accusing me of just not understanding your position?



As soon as you actually understand we can move past this.


> I get where you're coming from.



You do not.


> I'm not even saying I wouldn't enjoy playing at your table because I have no clue.  I understand your position, I just disagree.



You do not understand, and your disagreement is based on you playing a different way, not disagreement with how I play. How could you disagree if you don't even understand it?


> If that bothers you so much you can always block me like Iserith did because I would never agree that his style on this subject is the one true way.



That's just plain whingy.  Be better.

Look, I don't care if you play differently from me.  As I remarked to someone else, three years ago I played pretty much exactly as you do now, and made many of the same arguments you're making. I did not understand other playstyles (maybe ask me sometime how Blades in the Dark plays, it's even more different) at that time.  I agreed with you quite a bit.  But, over the last three years, I've had a breakthrough in understanding and changed my play habits.  Not because they're better, they're just different, but because this play fixes a lot of the issues I've had and really never could diagnose because I lacked the understanding.  That doesn't mean you're wrong, or misinformed, or whatever, you're not.  How we play games is pretty idiosyncratic to groups of players, and that's outstanding.  I'm ecstatic that you play differently and enjoy it, and I fully understand your play (because it was recently mine).  I get it, I really do -- the necessary shift in core concepts to grasp the difference in playstyles is hard; it involves altering some very sacred cows.  It was very good for me, and it's good for some others that also really enjoy playing this way, but it's not universally good.  So, you do you, but if you keep asking why other people play the way they do and then get huffy because you feel the explanation is attacking your play... well, that's really on you, man, not us.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> What this sounds like to me is that the DM isn't presenting compelling content. Just a lot of repetitive chests and chambers. That would make me bored as well, regardless of how actions were adjudicated. Some DMs aren't great at presenting exploration challenges.
> 
> 
> 
> At the risk of seeming too confident, I bet you wouldn't do this in my games. You wouldn't have time to as you'd be too busy boldly confronting deadly perils to pick up your phone. You may bristle at being asked not to make unprompted rolls, but then you may quickly see that success without a roll is better than leaving it to chance, especially when you get hit with the meaningful (often painful) consequences of failure every time you don't hit that DC. You may then notice that the approach is no slower than what you're currently doing and in many cases faster (and the game experience overall is faster).




I can honestly say you are too confident.  I've played in your style before.  I've done it.  Honest.  I've given it a whirl and I'm not interested.

Just as a comparison, in my last session, 3 hours and we ran 4 combats, 5 social interactions and several explorations.  Granted the characters are only 3rd level, so that makes combat faster, but, this is also online over voice, which is almost always slower than tabletop.  Just for reference, I'm doing the tail end of Chapter 3 (____ Manor) and the first two encounters of Chapter 4 of Dragon Heist (Autumn).  Oh, and we leveled up characters in the middle of that.

So, no, you can be as confident as you like.  I am equally confident that no, you are not running at our pace.  

------

So, here is a list of my issues with your style of play and why I don't do it.  Note, this is purely my opinion and is not meant to apply to anyone else but me.


Changing DC's based on player statements results in the players not being able to predict how their skills work.  @Ovinomancer's example of the poisoned door is a perfect example of that.  The results I get have nothing to do with the skill I use but rather whatever narration I give as a player.  Which in turn, results in gaming the DM rather than playing the game.

It places the DM squarely into the spotlight.  Since the DM must judge the quality of the narration (is it plausible or not, is it a good idea or not) and that judgement is based solely on the DM's knowledge, it makes the DM much more visible than I'm comfortable with as a DM.  I don't want my players asking me how to do something.  I want them to just do it.

Many DM's, myself included, are very poor at judging risk/reward.  If the reward is less than the risk then there is no reason to do it.  Yet, almost every time, DM's will put risks in place that are greater than the possible reward, making it a suckers bet.  Which in turn results in the players simply stopping engaging those systems in favor of systems that they can control - i.e. spells.  It's something that always flies straight up my nose.

And, with all due deference to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], it runs too slowly for my tastes.  It bogs the game down in minutia that I am totally not interested in.  I don't care that there's a contact poison on the handle of the door.  I want to know what's behind the door.  To me, that's the interesting part.  So, bypassing the trap as quickly as possible is a win in my books.  Resulting in the player saying, "I check the door, X Investigate, do I find anything?".


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> It would seem you really don't fully grasp what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is saying if you think that is an example of "magic words" (or perhaps "anti-magic words" as it were).
> 
> Try this:
> 
> ...




I hadn't read that before, and just skimmed it now, but, yes, it appears to be in the same line as my play.  Thanks!


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

Just read that Angry DM blog you posted [MENTION=6921763]DM Dave1[/MENTION].  Needless to say, no, not interested.  The first rule turned me off and the rest just went completely downhill from there.  Fun read, but, unusually for me since I usually do agree with Angry, here I think he totally missed the mark.

Locked door with something chasing?  Players just tell me the skill they are using.  End of story.  Picks the lock or bashes down the door.  No need to tell me how or what they are doing.  Player Diplomacy's the guard and gets a 26?  Fantastic, they get past the guard.

When the player is throwing dice at a problem, the player is telling you that the player has zero interest in engaging your game element and just wants to move on.  You can put as much lipstick on the pig that you like, but, at the end of the day, I prefer to listen to my players and move on to the stuff they actually want to do.


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## jgsugden (Mar 27, 2019)

How about this: The Insight DC to tell that someone is telling the truth is 20 minus their persuasion score.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> And no, the irony of quoting Angry is not lost on me when I'm trying my best to be nice.  He's certainly a big jerk in his presentation and comment responses (that's his shtick after all) but his logic for running games successfully is pretty tight, IMO.



The Angry GM is like the ultimate embodiment of that Big Lebowski quote “you’re not wrong, you’re just an .” He’ writes some of the best, most practical GMing advice I have ever read. But he is a real dick about it.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

jgsugden said:


> How about this: The Insight DC to tell that someone is telling the truth is 20 minus their persuasion score.




A quick and easy way to do it.  I like it.  Perhaps adjusting the DC based on how big the truth is.  "My name is X" is probably pretty low but, "I'm here from the future to tell you how to stop Baron Von Evilton" is probably a tad higher.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I can honestly say you are too confident.  I've played in your style before.  I've done it.  Honest.  I've given it a whirl and I'm not interested.
> 
> Just as a comparison, in my last session, 3 hours and we ran 4 combats, 5 social interactions and several explorations.  Granted the characters are only 3rd level, so that makes combat faster, but, this is also online over voice, which is almost always slower than tabletop.  Just for reference, I'm doing the tail end of Chapter 3 (____ Manor) and the first two encounters of Chapter 4 of Dragon Heist (Autumn).  Oh, and we leveled up characters in the middle of that.
> 
> So, no, you can be as confident as you like.  I am equally confident that no, you are not running at our pace.




My last session included 5 combats, 6 separate exploration challenges, and 3 social interactions in 3.5 hours over Roll20 and Discord. The characters are 5th level. It included one PC leveling up mid-session. (The others leveled up at the end of the previous session.)

Asking players to perform their role and responsibility in the game (and the DM doing the same) does not slow the game down by any great degree.



Hussar said:


> So, here is a list of my issues with your style of play and why I don't do it.  Note, this is purely my opinion and is not meant to apply to anyone else but me.
> Changing DC's based on player statements results in the players not being able to predict how their skills work.  @Ovinomancer's example of the poisoned door is a perfect example of that.  The results I get have nothing to do with the skill I use but rather whatever narration I give as a player.  Which in turn, results in gaming the DM rather than playing the game.





Skill proficiencies work as expected - as insurance against failure when you fail to achieve outright success. The goal is to remove uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. If you can't do that for whatever reason, then your abilities and potentially skill proficiencies come into play.

You're not gaming the DM here. You're paying attention, engaging with the environment, and trying to mitigate risk by avoiding rolling a fickle d20.



Hussar said:


> It places the DM squarely into the spotlight.  Since the DM must judge the quality of the narration (is it plausible or not, is it a good idea or not) and that judgement is based solely on the DM's knowledge, it makes the DM much more visible than I'm comfortable with as a DM.  I don't want my players asking me how to do something.  I want them to just do it.




We're performing the role of the DM as described by the rules of D&D 5e. I don't know what you mean by players asking the DM how to do something. My players take action. They don't ask for my permission.



Hussar said:


> Many DM's, myself included, are very poor at judging risk/reward.  If the reward is less than the risk then there is no reason to do it.  Yet, almost every time, DM's will put risks in place that are greater than the possible reward, making it a suckers bet.  Which in turn results in the players simply stopping engaging those systems in favor of systems that they can control - i.e. spells.  It's something that always flies straight up my nose.




You don't get better at something by not doing it.



Hussar said:


> And, with all due deference to @_*iserith*_, it runs too slowly for my tastes.  It bogs the game down in minutia that I am totally not interested in.  I don't care that there's a contact poison on the handle of the door.  I want to know what's behind the door.  To me, that's the interesting part.  So, bypassing the trap as quickly as possible is a win in my books.  Resulting in the player saying, "I check the door, X Investigate, do I find anything?".





It's not any slower. Or at least my game's not.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> The Angry GM is like the ultimate embodiment of that Big Lebowski quote “you’re not wrong, you’re just an .” He’ writes some of the best, most practical GMing advice I have ever read. But he is a real dick about it.




He and I don't get along, haven't for years. But we agree on a number of things. When people who don't like each other agree on something, it's maybe worth paying attention to.


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## Charlaquin (Mar 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> He and I don't get along, haven't for years. But we agree on a number of things. When people who don't like each other agree on something, it's maybe worth paying attention to.




I think his attitude (and his politics, which he used to be much more public about on Twitter than he has been lately) turns off a lot of would-be patrons. Like me, for example. I appreciate his advice enough that I would pay for it, but I find him distasteful enough as a person that I don’t want to give him money.


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## Bawylie (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Just read that Angry DM blog you posted [MENTION=6921763]DM Dave1[/MENTION].
> 
> When the player is throwing dice at a problem, the player is telling you that the player has zero interest in engaging your game element and just wants to move on.  You can put as much lipstick on the pig that you like, but, at the end of the day, I prefer to listen to my players and move on to the stuff they actually want to do.




If that’s how you feel, and that’s how your players primarily interact with your game, what does that tell you?


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> My last session included 5 combats, 6 separate exploration challenges, and 3 social interactions in 3.5 hours over Roll20 and Discord. The characters are 5th level. It included one PC leveling up mid-session. (The others leveled up at the end of the previous session.)
> 
> Asking players to perform their role and responsibility in the game (and the DM doing the same) does not slow the game down by any great degree.




Excellent.  That's great.  That has not been my experience.



> Skill proficiencies work as expected - as insurance against failure when you fail to achieve outright success. The goal is to remove uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. If you can't do that for whatever reason, then your abilities and potentially skill proficiencies come into play.
> 
> You're not gaming the DM here. You're paying attention, engaging with the environment, and trying to mitigate risk by avoiding rolling a fickle d20.




That's your goal.  Not mine.  Removing uncertainty is very much not a goal when we play.  



> We're performing the role of the DM as described by the rules of D&D 5e. I don't know what you mean by players asking the DM how to do something. My players take action. They don't ask for my permission.




They can't.  They can't do anything without your permission because they are not allowed to make skill checks until you ask them for one.  So, it is actually impossible for your players to unlock a lock (for example) without first asking you for a skill check.  Or describing their actions in such a way that you judge it sufficient to not need a skill check.

For me, they just tell me, "I unlock the lock, 25" and poof, the lock is open, presuming they beat the DC.  No further information is needed by me from the players.  



> You don't get better at something by not doing it.




ROTF.  There's an entire industry based on people's inability to calculate odds.  It's called gambling.  The inability of people to calculate risk/reward is very nearly universal.  I've already demonstrated it once here with the "look at the ceiling nets you advantage on stuff on the ceiling but disadvantage everywhere else" example.  





> It's not any slower. Or at least my game's not.




Fantastic for you.  Can you not at least accept that other people do not have your experience?  So, again, IME, doing it your way results in a slower game that causes me to completely check out of the game.  Maybe in your game I wouldn't.  But, if it requires that I must play at your table to achieve this Nirvana of play, then, well, it doesn't help me much does it?

Believe me.  I've done it your way.  I've played it your way.  I don't like it.  I don't like it for the four reasons I listed.  Your counter ideas don't really answer the problems.  Mitigating randomness is NOT MY GOAL.  So, stating it as a solution doesn't really help does it?  And, frankly, mitigating randomness by gaming the DM is not something I'm interested in.

Because, no matter what you do, you are front and center of your players.  You have to be, because the only way to mitigate randomness is to convince you, the DM, that my idea is good enough.  I am not interested in that kind of play anymore.  Been there, done that, found it not to my taste.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

"If that bothers you so much you can always block me like Iserith did because I would never agree that his style on this subject is the one true way."

For the record, this poster was blocked for doing exactly what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is taking him or her to task for now and stating I was saying things I did not say. I very patiently gave him or her the opportunity to reverse course on that. The poster did not and apparently has not.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> If that’s how you feel, and that’s how your players primarily interact with your game, what does that tell you?




That tells me that me and my players have virtually zero interest in this sort of minutia because we find it boring as hell.

Unlocking the door, finding the trap, talking our way past the guard?  That's the minor stuff that's in the way of the good stuff.  That's the filler that we use to set story beats.  It's not the plot, it's not the story.

"Hey, remember that time I unlocked that chest" is a gaming story told by no one ever.

I have to admit, I found the 4e advice of "get to the good stuff" to be pretty much straight up my alley.  Futzing about with a bunch of details bores me to tears.  I am simply not interested.  

Doesn't make me right or you right or anyone right.  There is no right or wrong here.  I'm not proselytizing here.  I don't think my way is better.  It's better for me.  Sure.  But, my personal preference in no way connotes quality.

Hey, I've seen groups that are perfectly happy role playing a birthday party for a couple of hours.  They were having a great time.  I would rather chew glass than sit at that table, but, hey, fantastic for them.  My gaming time is extremely limited.  I don't want to do stuff that I don't enjoy.  I don't enjoy what you guys and gals are proposing.  I find it tedious and boring.  

You don't.  And that's fantastic.  I'm simply providing an alternate viewpoint, not preaching from the mount.


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## Bawylie (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That tells me that me and my players have virtually zero interest in this sort of minutia because we find it boring as hell.
> 
> Unlocking the door, finding the trap, talking our way past the guard?  That's the minor stuff that's in the way of the good stuff.  That's the filler that we use to set story beats.  It's not the plot, it's not the story.
> 
> ...




What’s the good stuff?


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> As an aside, in terms of speed, I'll put my group's games up against any other game and approach without hesitation. Some people reported that the two-hour _text only_ sessions I posted a few years back as examples of play had more content than four hours of their in-person sessions. We've even been able to compare our progress on published adventures to actual play podcasts and we outpace them by wide margins for the same play time. I am very focused on the pace of the game and using our time wisely. There is a lot more to achieving that than what's under discussion here, but it is in part due to strongly defined roles (player and DM) and adherence to the "middle path" technique for adjudication (a balance of ruling outright success or failure and calling for ability checks).




I don't doubt that, but I think it also takes a while for players (and DM) to make an adjustment.  I know when I introduce your version to players who aren't used to it, it does bog the game down.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Does the DM from time to time take over the character?  I suppose.  But, to me, that's just bog standard narration.  No different than what a DM does in combat when he says something like, "You swing your sword mightly and hack that orc's head off!"  Does anyone have an issue with the DM doing that?




I roll with it because it's common, but I can't say I really like it.

One DM I play with lets the player who gets the killing blow narrate it however he/she wants.  He doesn't announce that the monster is dead, he just smiles and says, "Describe it."  I like it because the player doesn't just narrate the attack, he/she also narrates the result.  It's a nice bit of inviting the player into what is traditionally (and staunchly defended by some traditionalists) the sole purview of the DM.



> Player says, "I want to do X, I make Y check, Z score".  To me, that's more than enough information to narrate an action.  It's what we do in combat, and, frankly, I don't really have a problem with it out of combat.




Except combat has rich, complex rules with lots of options.  Skill checks are...skill checks. It would be a fair comparison if every class had nothing but normal attacks and there was no such thing as distance or positioning. 

You seem to be ok with vanilla skill checks, and that's fine, but I don't find it very interesting to just repeatedly announce, "Can I tell if he's lying?" "Can I spot any traps?" "Can I use Animal Handling?"


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That's your goal.  Not mine.  Removing uncertainty is very much not a goal when we play.




So you've never had a character cast a spell or use a magic item that allows you to achieve success instead of attempt to do the same thing by "making a skill check?"



Hussar said:


> They can't.  They can't do anything without your permission because they are not allowed to make skill checks until you ask them for one.




They don't want to "make skill checks." Why would they?



Hussar said:


> So, it is actually impossible for your players to unlock a lock (for example) without first asking you for a skill check.  Or describing their actions in such a way that you judge it sufficient to not need a skill check.
> 
> For me, they just tell me, "I unlock the lock, 25" and poof, the lock is open, presuming they beat the DC.  No further information is needed by me from the players.




The player's role and responsibility is to describe what they want to do. The DM decides if that an ability check is required to resolve uncertainty as the outcome if there's a meaningful consequence of failure. Those are the rules of this game.



Hussar said:


> ROTF.  There's an entire industry based on people's inability to calculate odds.  It's called gambling.  The inability of people to calculate risk/reward is very nearly universal.  I've already demonstrated it once here with the "look at the ceiling nets you advantage on stuff on the ceiling but disadvantage everywhere else" example.




The more calls you make as DM, the better you get at making good calls consistently. As with any skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it. I think that may apply to poker players, too, right?



Hussar said:


> Fantastic for you.  Can you not at least accept that other people do not have your experience?  So, again, IME, doing it your way results in a slower game that causes me to completely check out of the game.  Maybe in your game I wouldn't.  But, if it requires that I must play at your table to achieve this Nirvana of play, then, well, it doesn't help me much does it?




If your assertion was that the approach I use is slower than the approach you use, all I've shown is that you're wrong to make a blanket assertion, not that other DMs' games are slower than mine. I know they are. I play in a lot of games.



Hussar said:


> Believe me.  I've done it your way.  I've played it your way.  I don't like it.  I don't like it for the four reasons I listed.  Your counter ideas don't really answer the problems.  Mitigating randomness is NOT MY GOAL.  So, stating it as a solution doesn't really help does it?  And, frankly, mitigating randomness by gaming the DM is not something I'm interested in.
> 
> Because, no matter what you do, you are front and center of your players.  You have to be, because the only way to mitigate randomness is to convince you, the DM, that my idea is good enough.  I am not interested in that kind of play anymore.  Been there, done that, found it not to my taste.




If you were able to look back at the playtest forums for D&D 5e both here and on the old WotC forums, you'd see me making the "gaming the DM" argument. I was very much for a similar style of play you currently prefer having been playing D&D 4e for 6 years up to that point and D&D 3.Xe for 8 years prior to that. But I came to realize that was simply describing a degenerate form of play which is all you and others are attacking in this thread, that nobody with whom you're engaging plays. It was me grasping at straws trying to cast the worst possible light on a playstyle I commonly saw in my AD&D 2e days. And though I ultimately lost that argument given the rules that were published, luckily, that's not the kind of playstyle the D&D 5e rules suggest adopting. And neither do the rules suggest playing this game as if it were D&D 3.Xe or D&D 4e either. So I do what I do now because that's what the rules suggest and my game has not suffered for it. I thus dropped the "gaming the DM" argument because it simply doesn't apply to the way I and some of the others here represent. It's a strawman and it's not a good look to argue against it.

As for mitigating randomness (or rather its effects), you don't spend Inspiration or otherwise seek out advantage? You don't make character builds to improve your odds of success? That's effectively the same thing. Some players just take that one step further and try to reduce that randomness to zero.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], by and large, most attacks are virtually identical.  There's very little differentiating skill checks from attacks, other than you need to roll a LOT of attacks vs few or even only a single skill check to resolve things.  But, looking at a single attack and a single skill check, there isn't a whole lot of difference.

----

 [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] - What is the good stuff?  I dunno.  Things like plot, characterization, building on themes, exploration, things that actually further the story, combat (I won't like, I likes me the hack), delving into themes, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

Unlocking that door?  Talking to nameless guard #27?  Searching the fifteenth chest for a trap?  Yeah, not the good stuff.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I don't doubt that, but I think it also takes a while for players (and DM) to make an adjustment.  I know when I introduce your version to players who aren't used to it, it does bog the game down.




Sure, some retraining is often required to undo the work of other DMs. That may be true of any change in playstyle. Apples to apples though, with players and DMs of either playstyle of more or less equal experience, there's no loss of speed. It's a bogus claim. How fast a session runs has very little to do with this and a lot more to do with player readiness.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 27, 2019)

Ok, there's no way I can catch up on even 4 more pages.  I have one more contribution and then I think I'd better bow out of this thread before it sucks down enough time to write a novel:

I am guessing that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] are coming from very different campaign/adventure structures.  Hussar has made a bunch of references to dungeon crawls with repetitive checks.  In which case his stance makes some sense.  Just taking lockpicking as an example, if the players encounter _lots_ of locked doors and chests in a game then, yeah, I can see why it might get tedious to feel like you have to run through the same checklist of actions every time. 

On the other hand, Hussar himself talks about getting through those rolls quickly to "get to the good stuff".  As he said, "nobody ever tells the story of the time the picked the lock."  My question would be: if picking locks isn't considered "good stuff", why even include it?  What value do all those locks add?  (I think that was [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION]'s point.)

I think [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach is probably different.  I suspect if there's a lock the players encounter, it can either easily be picked by one of the players, thus requiring no roll, or it can _not_ be picked by any of the players, in which case there is no roll, or it's a highlight of the plot, and the players have already obtained clues about this particular lock, so "roleplaying" through attempting to open it isn't a matter of blindman's bluff, running through everything the players can think of.  The players will say, "Oh, wait!  Remember we found that Thingamajig!  I bet that will help us pick the lock!"  And, presto...it does! No roll needed.

This example is weak, but do I think that structured this way it is quite conceivable that the players might, years later, fondly remember the time they successfully picked a lock.

That's it for me.  Good luck, all.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> So you've never had a character cast a spell or use a magic item that allows you to achieve success instead of attempt to do the same thing by "making a skill check?"
> 
> 
> 
> They don't want to "make skill checks." Why would they?




Oh, I don't know.  Maybe they're playing a class that focuses on skills perhaps?  Like a bard or a rogue?  What's the point of making skill checks irrelevant when a major portion of my character is centered around making skill checks?




> The player's role and responsibility is to describe what they want to do. The DM decides if that an ability check is required to resolve uncertainty as the outcome if there's a meaningful consequence of failure. Those are the rules of this game.




Ok, and, that, right there, is pretty much the reason we're not going to agree.  You can point to the rules until you're blue in the face.  I DO NOT CARE.  I really, really, really don't care.  Not even just a little tiny bit.  I absolutely, 100% do not die a fetid dingo's kidney what the rules state.  

So, stripping out a single line, that, IME, was included as a milksop to earlier edition players, isn't going to change my mind.  It really isn't.



> The more calls you make as DM, the better you get at making good calls consistently. As with any skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it. I think that may apply to poker players, too, right?




You'd think.  Unfortunately, doesn't appear to be true since we've got an example IN THIS THREAD from a very experienced DM which demonstrates that it's not that cut and dried.




> snip
> 
> But I came to realize that was simply describing a degenerate form of play which is all you and others are attacking in this thread, that nobody with whom you're engaging plays.
> 
> ...




Well, it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.  AFAIC, it's a duck.  And, since I don't like the play style you are advocating, I'm very unlikely to call it a swan barring some far more compelling evidence than, "Well, in my game, we do this".  

This is an old play style.  It's been around for years.  Fair enough.  It's obviously got its proponents.  I'm not one of them.  It simply isn't fun for me.  

And, the notion that the goal of the skill system is to eliminate the skill system isn't really helping your argument.  "We play this way so that we don't have to engage the mechanics of the game" is not exactly praising your play style to some one who has no issues with those mechanics.

I have no problems with the 5e skill system.  Or, nothing serious anyway.  So, proposing a play style where the stated goal is not actually using the system isn't going to score any points with me.

Again, I think the biggest issue I have here, or at least one of the bigger ones, is the complete unwillingness of proponents to admit to any flaws in the system.  I have no problems telling you the flaws in what I do.  It's shallow.  It's facile.  It skips over lots of stuff, including stuff that, potentially could be quite interesting.

Now, those are flaws that don't really bother me.  I don't care that I reduce that guard interaction to a 30 second die roll and move on.  Does not bother me in the slightest.  If the players actually wanted to interact with that guard, they would.  

IOW, I trust that my players will TELL me what they find interesting, rather than me trying to force every situation to be interesting by forcing the players to narrate in situations where they are really not interested.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, there's no way I can catch up on even 4 more pages.  I have one more contribution and then I think I'd better bow out of this thread before it sucks down enough time to write a novel:
> 
> I am guessing that @_*Hussar*_ and @_*iserith*_ are coming from very different campaign/adventure structures.  Hussar has made a bunch of references to dungeon crawls with repetitive checks.  In which case his stance makes some sense.  Just taking lockpicking as an example, if the players encounter _lots_ of locked doors and chests in a game then, yeah, I can see why it might get tedious to feel like you have to run through the same checklist of actions every time.
> 
> ...




Yes, certain aspects of the objections being voiced do seem to center more on the DM presenting boring content rather than how it's all resolved. I mentioned this in a post upthread. That's not an issue with the playstyle but rather the DM's content. I love dungeons. You will not be bored if I decide that unlocking multiple doors or chests is one of the challenges. They will all be unique and interesting.

As an example, in an adventure I adapted as a one-shot ("Secret Party House of the Hill Giant Playboy"), I wanted to play up chest interactions as a thing for that adventure because it had a very old school vibe to it. So I put six chests in the adventure location, each one unique, locked in particular ways, trapped in other ways, set in places that were interesting to get to, and containing novel and interesting treasures that were fun to pick over. I tend to run one-shots multiple times with different pickup groups and one of things that the players like doing is comparing notes after the game to see who did what. The chests came up in discussion again and again as the highlight of the game because I took the time to make that content _interesting_.


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh, I don't know.  Maybe they're playing a class that focuses on skills perhaps?  Like a bard or a rogue?  What's the point of making skill checks irrelevant when a major portion of my character is centered around making skill checks?




You'll definitely make ability checks if you're adventuring, especially since we're not spending a lot of time on things where there are no real stakes involved. In those situation, you can't always remove uncertainty and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. Having a good number of skill proficiencies makes it so that when you do have to make ability checks, you've got an edge.



Hussar said:


> Ok, and, that, right there, is pretty much the reason we're not going to agree.  You can point to the rules until you're blue in the face.  I DO NOT CARE.  I really, really, really don't care.  Not even just a little tiny bit.  I absolutely, 100% do not die a fetid dingo's kidney what the rules state.
> 
> So, stripping out a single line, that, IME, was included as a milksop to earlier edition players, isn't going to change my mind.  It really isn't.




You don't have to agree. That those are the rules is a statement of fact. And it's why I don't run and play this game as if it is some other game.



Hussar said:


> You'd think.  Unfortunately, doesn't appear to be true since we've got an example IN THIS THREAD from a very experienced DM which demonstrates that it's not that cut and dried.




All that shows is that one call was not perfect. It does not disprove my assertion that this is a skill that can be worked on.



Hussar said:


> Well, it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.  AFAIC, it's a duck.  And, since I don't like the play style you are advocating, I'm very unlikely to call it a swan barring some far more compelling evidence than, "Well, in my game, we do this".
> 
> This is an old play style.  It's been around for years.  Fair enough.  It's obviously got its proponents.  I'm not one of them.  It simply isn't fun for me.
> 
> ...




I'm not saying you have to like the playstyle under discussion. But I am telling you which of your assertions about it are completely bogus.


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

Iserith said:
			
		

> All that shows is that one call was not perfect. It does not disprove my assertion that this is a skill that can be worked on.




Kinda like how your claims that your games are not slowed down by your playstyle shows only that YOUR GAMES are not slowed down by the playstyle?  That claims that your play style will not ever result in slow downs so long as the DM becomes proficient in the style are somehow universal, but, pointing out examples in this thread don't mean that many DM's are not game designers and have a poor grasp of risk/benefit calculations?

Yeah, I'm going to take a page from [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] on this one.  Anyone who insists on the perfection of their game, (even your treasure chests are a testament to the wonder of your game) is just not going to make any sort of discussion meaningful.

You do you.  I'll do me.  We'll both be happy.


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## Imaculata (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh, I don't know.  Maybe they're playing a class that focuses on skills perhaps?  Like a bard or a rogue?  What's the point of making skill checks irrelevant when a major portion of my character is centered around making skill checks?




Characters with a specialisation in a particular skill will always have an advantage compared to characters that don't. But within the fiction of the game, there are situations where it simply doesn't make sense for a character to fail based on his stated approach. For example, if a character is unable to open a wooden box, and so he decides to smash it, obviously that will work. Why would you still need a skillcheck for that? I don't believe in making my players roll for something if the outcome for failure is identical to that of success. That is a waste of everyone's time, and it also devalues the act of rolling dice in my opinion. When players roll in my campaign, it always matters. When it doesn't matter, they don't roll any dice.

One of the players in my group has invested a lot in disabling traps. So when he needs to open a simple wooden box that is locked, why would I ask him to make a roll? He has such a high bonus on the skill, that he simply cannot fail at some DC's. It's an auto success basically, so what does rolling the dice add? We all know what the outcome is going to be before he rolls a single die. 



Hussar said:


> Ok, and, that, right there, is pretty much the reason we're not going to agree.  You can point to the rules until you're blue in the face.  I DO NOT CARE.  I really, really, really don't care.  Not even just a little tiny bit.  I absolutely, 100% do not die a fetid dingo's kidney what the rules state.




So does this entire argument just revolve around you using houserules?



Hussar said:


> Kinda like how your claims that your games are not slowed down by your playstyle shows only that YOUR GAMES are not slowed down by the playstyle?  That claims that your play style will not ever result in slow downs so long as the DM becomes proficient in the style are somehow universal, but, pointing out examples in this thread don't mean that many DM's are not game designers and have a poor grasp of risk/benefit calculations?




I think this is a bit of an unfair argument. Every style of DM'ing benefits from practice and repetition; you get better at it over time. So one example of a bad ruling is no indication that the style itself is bad. Speaking as someone who uses a similar style of DM'ing as @_*iserith*_, I've been getting a lot of compliments from my players lately over the way I make rulings. They've noticed a positive difference. I think that says something.


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## Sadras (Mar 27, 2019)

I find both approaches work well during a session as @_*Elfcrusher*_ mentioned they both have positives and that is what I take out of it. If I need some more nuance about an action declaration, I request the PC to provide me with some more details. The players generally pick up the die earlier than I'd like, but that is an inherent issue - players like their die. 

We have limited game-time these days and that (along with the PC's level) very much informs my preferred playstyle - so I'm not going to have 10 empty rooms (as an example of repetitiveness) that will need to be _searched_. There are shortcuts and I very much take them:
_Say Yes_ where there are no stakes, montage exploration...etc and the like. I'm only going to engage in meaningful descriptive action declarations where I believe them to be needed.

Sometimes I let them roll even with the "button press-type" action declaration, because should they roll, I might use that to inject some on-the-spot creativity in the fiction, something unscripted that might lead to something interesting.

i.e. They are searching an empty room (I have nothing planned), the player is eager to roll, I let them roll. They succeed, they find nothing, should they fail I inject a complication - As they examine the impeccably smooth wall slabs, a myriad incorporeal hands reach out from the wall in an attempt to touch the investigating PCs, the veil of illusion drops as the _wall_ reveals itself to be a writhing mass of incorporeal undead all seemingly bounded uncomfortably together in haphazard fashion....


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## iserith (Mar 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Kinda like how your claims that your games are not slowed down by your playstyle shows only that YOUR GAMES are not slowed down by the playstyle?  That claims that your play style will not ever result in slow downs so long as the DM becomes proficient in the style are somehow universal, but, pointing out examples in this thread don't mean that many DM's are not game designers and have a poor grasp of risk/benefit calculations?
> 
> Yeah, I'm going to take a page from [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] on this one.  Anyone who insists on the perfection of their game, (even your treasure chests are a testament to the wonder of your game) is just not going to make any sort of discussion meaningful.
> 
> You do you.  I'll do me.  We'll both be happy.




The speed of the game has very little to do with the aspect you're criticizing and, as I've already said, far more to do with player readiness. Which, interestingly enough, is in part improved by rewarding the players for being attentive via telegraphing.

I don't insist that my playstyle is perfect. It's just an excellent fit for D&D 5e because the approach is molded to the rules of the game itself rather than, say, playing the game as if it was some other game.

I do, however, insist that your specific criticisms are unfounded and mostly aimed at a degenerate form of play that is not being employed by the posters with whom you are engaging. If you'd like to rail against that form of play, please do because it does sound awful. Just don't ascribe it to anyone who's posting here, okay?


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## Hussar (Mar 27, 2019)

Immaculata said:
			
		

> So does this entire argument just revolve around you using houserules?




Yup.  I stated this before.  A couple of times I believe.  I'm only talking about my own personal games and I'm in no way trying to convince anyone that my preferred way of play is somehow superior.


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## Michael Silverbane (Mar 27, 2019)

So... To me, based on the description of what Insight allows you to do, a successful check can tell you not only if the person you're talking to is lying or telling the truth, but what their true intentions are, i.e. _why_ they are lying or telling the truth.  So, the interaction might be something like the following...

Player: Can I tell if this guy is telling the truth?
DM: Maybe. Make an Insight check.
Player: *result*
DM: <on success, and truth> The answers seem sincere and forthright. This weary citizen just wants the problem solved.
DM: <on success, and lies> The answers do not match up with known facts. Your interviewee is acting for someone else's benefit.
DM: <on failure, and truth> The answers seem incongruous. Your questions have put this commoner on edge.
DM: <on failure, and lies> The answers don't contradict anything you already know. This local wants the day to be over.


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## Imaculata (Mar 28, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't insist that my playstyle is perfect. It's just an excellent fit for D&D 5e




-And not just 5th edition. I feel your playstyle makes 3rd edition a lot better when applied to it as well.


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## iserith (Mar 28, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> -And not just 5th edition. I feel your playstyle makes 3rd edition a lot better when applied to it as well.




To be fair and so as not to take credit, it's not really "my playstyle." I'm just doing what the rules say to do. "My playstyle" is mostly to drink Irish whiskey and make up silly NPC names and ridiculous premises (stay tuned for one on Monday).

I'd have to read the D&D 3e rules again to distill out of there what approach best works with the rules. I imagine it's largely similar except that the mechanics are more "forward" on the player side. I played the game for 8 years, but back then I was doing what many DMs do - playing how I think D&D is played regardless of what approaches the rules of that edition by their design support. I learned my lesson the hard way when I switched to D&D 4e and found the game was not working as well is it could be. That's when I had the epiphany that I should be adapting my approaches to support the rules of the game, not using the same approach regardless of the game. (Learning Dungeon World helped a lot with this too.)


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## Chaosmancer (Mar 30, 2019)

Posting a few different thoughts from a long reading of this thread. 



WaterRabbit said:


> The question really is should insight be better than the 2nd level spell ZoT?  That is subject more to DM interpretation.  Also the DC is set by the DM, so a DC 30 for a stranger aligns with the general rule for Insight.




I'm curious, does anyone take Insight as a skill in your games? 

I've got a friend who I play with, sometimes he GM's and he also does not allow Insight checks to decide if strangers are lying to us. He says it is unrealistic because we don't know these people well enough to know that. 

I never take Insight when he is GMing, because it becomes a useless skill. We are traveling mercenaries who are rarely in the same town twice, let alone spending multiple weeks or months getting to know people in said towns. When the merchant says a bad crop means prices went up, is he gouging the newcomers to town or is this a plot hook? Sure, I can find out by asking around town, after I lose the extra 20 gold they charged us. This guy says he knows a secret way into the castle, is this a trap where 45 of the Dark Lord's guards are going to ambush us or the DM giving us a way in so we can continue the adventure? 

Yes, in real-life I'd have to use my best judgement, but the game gives us an ability to see through deception. IT's why when we try to lie to the guards, we need to roll to see if they believe us. Otherwise, how could this guard know that the signet I'm showing him doesn't belong to Archduke Archibald and I'm his agent traveling in disguise with a message for the Lady. I'm lying through my teeth, we stole this ring five sessions ago from the guy's manor, but I need to roll so the guard doesn't know I'm lying. By the same token, I should have the ability to know whether or not these shady folk saying they've come to help us are lying or not. 








Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, I'd have to say you broadly misunderstand the playstyle.  Firstly, I wouldn't adjudicate that statement at all.  It's not the player's position to suggest mechanics, but the DM's.  It's the player's prerogative to declare actions, and "make an Insight check" is not an action.  I prefer clear goal and approach, so I can fairly adjudicate the action.  I'll touch on this more in a moment.
> 
> A) there's a lack of an action declaration involving a goal and approach.  I have a goal, but how are they doing this?  Insight is a mechanic, not an action.  This can be as simple as "I observe them for signs of lying" to more complicated, or even well off the insight path such as, "I yell at him I think he's lying and he better start telling me the truth!" prompted an Intimidate check.
> 
> B)  there's a lack of fictional positioning to the example to allow me to successfully adjudicate what's at stake.  Is the person the player's are questioning going to help the players?  If so, then a failed check may result in them becoming angry at being questioned and withdrawing their assistance. ("I see you don't believe me.  Fine, I shall take my business elsewhere.")  Perhaps the players are risking loss of face because this is a prominent personage and they're in public? ("<GASP>  [PC NAME] just insulted the Baron's son by suggesting he's lying!"}  Or, maybe, this person is a run of the mill merchant and nothing is at stake, in which case, sure, I just narrate a success so we can move to more interesting scenes (and I make a note to not frame scenes lacking importance).  But, there's none of this in the example, so I can't say.




For 90% of skills, I have no problem with this approach. If you are trying to lie to get into the palace, I need to know some form of the lie you are trying to sell so I know how the guard responds. 

But, for insight... is there any other path than "I look for body language clues that they are lying."? 

I mean, if I'm going to declare someone is lying to me... I'm going to declare that, not use that declaration to figure out if they are lying. If I'm going to ask more questions to see if their story holds up and or if they contradict themselves, that's what I'm going to do. If I'm asking for insight, I want to know what my character's gut and observation skills are gleaning off of this individual. 

In this one skill, I really don't see how I could ask a player to give me more information, asking for the Insight tells me exactly what action they are taking because it is a sum of observations, not a multi-choice approach. At least, as long as I don't have super senses that can smell or hear a lie, like some super heroes I've heard of. 






Sadras said:


> i.e. They are searching an empty room (I have nothing planned), the player is eager to roll, I let them roll. They succeed, they find nothing, should they fail I inject a complication - As they examine the impeccably smooth wall slabs, a myriad incorporeal hands reach out from the wall in an attempt to touch the investigating PCs, the veil of illusion drops as the _wall_ reveals itself to be a writhing mass of incorporeal undead all seemingly bounded uncomfortably together in haphazard fashion....





One thing I want to add to this, sometimes when my players ask to roll for something and I didn't have something planned, if they roll really well I'll give them something extra. 

Just recently a player wanted to loot a room in a castle, it was the room for the maids so I wasn't planning on there being anything in there, but it made sense there could be something, and they rolled really high, so they found a box with keepsakes from the prince. Or sometimes, they find a nifty item like a magic wine bottle that pours out the type of wine you request. 

Failure probably would have netted them nothing (I do horrible enough things to them on purpose without me adding more, but I also sometimes add more because an idea strikes me mid-way through) but I like rewarding good rolls too, since nothing sucks more than rolling really high when it absolutely doesn't matter.


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## Arvok (Mar 30, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> So... To me, based on the description of what Insight allows you to do, a successful check can tell you not only if the person you're talking to is lying or telling the truth, but what their true intentions are, i.e. _why_ they are lying or telling the truth.  So, the interaction might be something like the following...
> 
> Player: Can I tell if this guy is telling the truth?
> DM: Maybe. Make an Insight check.
> ...




The way I understand it, Insight only tells you something about the speaker's sincerity--nothing about his veracity. If someone is telling you something patently false, but he believes it to be true, Insight won't be of any help. At its best, Insight is a lie detector, not a truth detector.

I might have missed something to which you were referring. This thread has gone on for a while and I haven't been able to keep up.


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## Yardiff (Mar 30, 2019)

The TV series "Lie to Me" with Tim Roth is probably a good example of how some see the Insight skill working (myself included).


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> For 90% of skills, I have no problem with this approach. If you are trying to lie to get into the palace, I need to know some form of the lie you are trying to sell so I know how the guard responds.
> 
> But, for insight... is there any other path than "I look for body language clues that they are lying."?



This presupposes that the only use of the skill is telling if someone is lying.  Imagine, for a moment, that you cannot just ask if someone is lying and then press the Insight lever for an answer.  How would you go about investigating to tell if someone is lying?  Do any of those things seem like they might implicate Insight?

To address your question directly, looking for body language may not always yield a good response.  If the target is not of your culture or kind, the difficulty is very high, and, with a consequence for any failure, the risk is also very high.  Might not be worth it.  Instead, you could engage in conversation and see if any of the story changes:  "I'll talk to her a bit and review details, looking to see if anything changes."  Bam, Insight check.  Or, "I want to see if I can find out what bonds the NPC has, so I'm going to try to get them to open up about what they care about."  Insight check to see if you successfully glean a bond, which can then be leveraged to find out if they're lying about something, depending on the bond.  Or trait, or ideal, etc.  Heck, even finding out that an Ideal is "I always serve myself first" can be a powerful indicator of certain lies.

There's tons of ways to use Insight that don't involve being a human (elf?) lie detector and also don't rely on studying body language.



> I mean, if I'm going to declare someone is lying to me... I'm going to declare that, not use that declaration to figure out if they are lying. If I'm going to ask more questions to see if their story holds up and or if they contradict themselves, that's what I'm going to do. If I'm asking for insight, I want to know what my character's gut and observation skills are gleaning off of this individual.



This is a perfectly valid way to play, and also one I saw when I played with skill use declarations as the norm after a failed Insight check.  The player already had an opinion and, instead of acting on that, used the "free" Insight check to validate.  Heck, it was often used as proof of a lie, which is weird to me now.  



> In this one skill, I really don't see how I could ask a player to give me more information, asking for the Insight tells me exactly what action they are taking because it is a sum of observations, not a multi-choice approach. At least, as long as I don't have super senses that can smell or hear a lie, like some super heroes I've heard of.



I think you're being unfairly critical of your ability to imagine things.  You're in a rut of thinking, is all, where the way you've been playing has become the way you think about the mechanic.  Step back, absolutely forbid "body language observation checks", and see what you come up with for how you could possibly use Insight.  It's a common thing for people to confuse how it is right now for how it ought to be, or could possibly be.  It takes a moment of setting aside what you already think you know and looking at the problem in a new light, and being open to that.  You might find you still prefer how you do it now (I think many do), but, then you'd know why you think that instead of just staying with the comfortable 'how it is nows'.

As always, how you enjoy playing is the best, most right, absolutely, irrefutably correct way to play -- for you!  How I play should really only be a curiosity.  Unless you like talking about how games are played, in which case, let's go!


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## iserith (Mar 30, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This presupposes that the only use of the skill is telling if someone is lying.  Imagine, for a moment, that you cannot just ask if someone is lying and then press the Insight lever for an answer.  How would you go about investigating to tell if someone is lying?  Do any of those things seem like they might implicate Insight?
> 
> To address your question directly, looking for body language may not always yield a good response.  If the target is not of your culture or kind, the difficulty is very high, and, with a consequence for any failure, the risk is also very high.  Might not be worth it.  Instead, you could engage in conversation and see if any of the story changes:  "I'll talk to her a bit and review details, looking to see if anything changes."  Bam, Insight check.  Or, "I want to see if I can find out what bonds the NPC has, so I'm going to try to get them to open up about what they care about."  Insight check to see if you successfully glean a bond, which can then be leveraged to find out if they're lying about something, depending on the bond.  Or trait, or ideal, etc.  Heck, even finding out that an Ideal is "I always serve myself first" can be a powerful indicator of certain lies.
> 
> There's tons of ways to use Insight that don't involve being a human (elf?) lie detector and also don't rely on studying body language.




Yes, these discussions always seem to revolve around Insight being used to resolve tasks to discern truthfulness, but the DMG has a structure for resolving social interaction challenges (DMG, p. 244-245). In that setup, the PCs are generally going to be trying to suss out ideals, bonds, flaws or hidden agendas which can then be leveraged to modify the NPC's attitude. When the attempt has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure, an Insight check resolves it. The NPC's attitude in turn is used to determine the DC for any checks related to the PCs getting the NPC to do something for them.

Given this setup, what you'll tend to see in my experience are the wise characters assessing things in the background while the charismatic characters do the talking. The wise characters share the insights with the charismatic types who use that to bend the chances of success in their favor. This way, there's more participation in the challenge. I almost always give my less charismatic characters Insight for this reason. Sometimes those characters set about trying to discern truthfulness, but the real advantage is in trying to get at those ideals, bonds, flaws, or hidden agendas.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 30, 2019)

Can't...stay...away...



iserith said:


> Yes, these discussions always seem to revolve around Insight being used to resolve tasks to discern truthfulness, but the DMG has a structure for resolving social interaction challenges (DMG, p. 244-245). In that setup, the PCs are generally going to be trying to suss out ideals, bonds, flaws or hidden agendas which can then be leveraged to modify the NPC's attitude. When the attempt has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure, an Insight check resolves it. The NPC's attitude in turn is used to determine the DC for any checks related to the PCs getting the NPC to do something for them.
> 
> Given this setup, what you'll tend to see in my experience are the wise characters assessing things in the background while the charismatic characters do the talking. The wise characters share the insights with the charismatic types who use that to bend the chances of success in their favor. This way, there's more participation in the challenge. I almost always give my less charismatic characters Insight for this reason. Sometimes those characters set about trying to discern truthfulness, but the real advantage is in trying to get at those ideals, bonds, flaws, or hidden agendas.




Yes, this.  In spades.  I mean, read the description of insight again:



> Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move.




Where in there does it say "know if they are lying"?  It doesn't.  It allows you to determine their intentions.  That's not the same as knowing if they are truthful.

This makes it harder (for the DM) to use well than other skills.  It might take some quick thinking on the DMs part to come up with something on the fly (which is why maybe it's a good reason to prep this kind of stuff as much as possible) but success at Insight should provide a clue to the motivations of an NPC, not act as a lie detector.

And, anyway, humans (and by extension other PC races) cannot detect lies in strangers.  A lot of cops think they can, but they are wrong.  We can glean clues that lead us to _suspect_ whether somebody is lying or not, but we can never _know_ with 100% certainty.  (And likewise for truth: we suspect, we don't know.)  Which means if we really wanted a "detect lie" skill it should be some kind of blind roll with the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.*

I could almost imagine/accept an Int based skill that you can use to _catch_ somebody in a lie, through advanced interrogation techniques.  But that could possibly give you false positives (e.g., the person is lying but has managed to avoid contradictions).  And, like a _friends_ spell, it would have a good chance of pissing off anybody you used it on.


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## Chaosmancer (Mar 30, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This presupposes that the only use of the skill is telling if someone is lying.  Imagine, for a moment, that you cannot just ask if someone is lying and then press the Insight lever for an answer.  How would you go about investigating to tell if someone is lying?  Do any of those things seem like they might implicate Insight?
> 
> To address your question directly, looking for body language may not always yield a good response.  If the target is not of your culture or kind, the difficulty is very high, and, with a consequence for any failure, the risk is also very high.  Might not be worth it.  Instead, you could engage in conversation and see if any of the story changes:  "I'll talk to her a bit and review details, looking to see if anything changes."  Bam, Insight check.  Or, "I want to see if I can find out what bonds the NPC has, so I'm going to try to get them to open up about what they care about."  Insight check to see if you successfully glean a bond, which can then be leveraged to find out if they're lying about something, depending on the bond.  Or trait, or ideal, etc.  Heck, even finding out that an Ideal is "I always serve myself first" can be a powerful indicator of certain lies.
> 
> ...




I guess a big difference here is I never want my skills to ask questions for me. 

Talking to an NPC and seeing if the details change is something I would declare I am doing, and I'd either be asking those questions live or I'd tell my DM I'm doing that thing and see what they tell me the results are. I would not want the success of that action to rest on an Insight check. Insight doesn't tell me if I asked the right questions, at least, not in my mind. Insight is the action of gaining insight into a person. 

And, to be clear, it can be used for more than lying. Insight into if a person is happy, sad, angry, ect, but I don't expect Insight to tell me if I asked the NPC a detail from their past that only they would know to prove they aren't a changeling. I just ask them that thing, it doesn't require a check. 


So, out of pure curiousity of our different styles, if you can't use Insight in reading body language and vocal intonation through observation, and you don't use it instead of actually asking the relevant questions, what is the use you find for Insight? 






Elfcrusher said:


> Where in there does it say "know if they are lying"?  It doesn't.  It allows you to determine their intentions.  That's not the same as knowing if they are truthful.
> 
> This makes it harder (for the DM) to use well than other skills.  It might take some quick thinking on the DMs part to come up with something on the fly (which is why maybe it's a good reason to prep this kind of stuff as much as possible) but success at Insight should provide a clue to the motivations of an NPC, not act as a lie detector.
> 
> ...




Yes, we can't do it in real life. But people do it all the time in fiction. 

That's what I want to emulate. And frankly, my DM's are not good actors. They can't precisely control every aspect of their delivery to give me subtle clues that the NPC is lying, and sometimes when they tell me "he's sweating a lot" it is a clue with many different interpretations. Insight can be used so the DM pulls back the curtain a bit and says "Your character is fictionally good at reading people, and with that unearthly insight you can determine this about the person" 

The dragon is scratching the floor tiles as you talk. I can tell a player this, but if they roll a high insight on I feel I'm okay to tell them whether the dragon is bored, has a nervous tic, or is about to rend the diplomatic party limb from limb and bath in their blood. They are free to interpret the action however they feel like without insight, but if they ask in the fiction if they can determine more, and they roll well, I feel like I should allow them to learn more.


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## Oofta (Mar 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Yes, we can't do it in real life. But people do it all the time in fiction.




While I don't go so far as to say that you absolutely 100% know that someone is telling the truth, I don't see a problem with saying that they seem to be truthful.  Or at least the truth as they know it.  To me, the rules "determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when *searching out a lie*" do say it can be used to determine whether someone is lying or not.  So if someone beats the deception check by 10 or more, they know the NPC is lying.  Less than that?  They know the NPC is hiding something and at the very least not being totally honest.  Of course someone telling the truth could also be hiding something.

That may be an over-simplification of real life, but D&D is full of that.


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## Hussar (Mar 31, 2019)

Heh.  It's somewhat ironic.  Folks in this thread have made a very specific point about how they are following the rules in the way they play.  Yet, when you actually point out what the rules say about the skill, then suddenly the rules don't matter quite so much.

Seems somewhat inconsistent no?


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## iserith (Mar 31, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  It's somewhat ironic.  Folks in this thread have made a very specific point about how they are following the rules in the way they play.  Yet, when you actually point out what the rules say about the skill, then suddenly the rules don't matter quite so much.
> 
> Seems somewhat inconsistent no?




Who are you talking about?


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## Hussar (Mar 31, 2019)

All the people who insist that Insight cannot tell the motivations of an NPC with a successful check.  It IS right there in the text of the skill.  But, apparently, we're allowed to pick and choose what "rules" apply.  It's perfectly acceptable, apparently, to claim that your play style is an "excellent fit" for 5e, while at the same time, not following what the text actually states.

Just pointing out the inconsistency.  After all, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], you spent considerable bandwidth arguing with me about this, but, are completely silent when people claim that Insight cannot detect falsehoods.


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## iserith (Mar 31, 2019)

Hussar said:


> All the people who insist that Insight cannot tell the motivations of an NPC with a successful check.  It IS right there in the text of the skill.  But, apparently, we're allowed to pick and choose what "rules" apply.  It's perfectly acceptable, apparently, to claim that your play style is an "excellent fit" for 5e, while at the same time, not following what the text actually states.
> 
> Just pointing out the inconsistency.  After all, @_*iserith*_, you spent considerable bandwidth arguing with me about this, but, are completely silent when people claim that Insight cannot detect falsehoods.




Unless I've missed something, I don't recall that @_*Elfcrusher*_ has made any significant "rules-based" arguments that inform his or her approach in this thread. He or she often makes ones based on his or her take on realism instead plus just general preference. And @_*Ovinomancer*_ suggests that Insight can be used for more tasks than determining truthfulness. Unless you're talking about someone else?

Just because some of us agree on the approach doesn't mean we all think of it the exact same way or arrived at the same conclusion by the same path. Please feel free to respond to or refute someone's assertions. But please do not lump us all together as if we perfectly agree or assert that any one of us has an obligation to say anything about our respective positions. We are individuals, not identity groups.


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## Guest 6801328 (Mar 31, 2019)

iserith said:


> Unless I've missed something, I don't recall that @_*Elfcrusher*_ has made any significant "rules-based" arguments that inform his or her approach in this thread. He or she often makes ones based on his or her take on realism instead plus just general preference. And @_*Ovinomancer*_ suggests that Insight can be used for more tasks than determining truthfulness. Unless you're talking about someone else?
> 
> Just because some of us agree on the approach doesn't mean we all think of it the exact same way or arrived at the same conclusion by the same path. Please feel free to respond to or refute someone's assertions. But please do not lump us all together as if we perfectly agree or assert that any one of us has an obligation to say anything about our respective positions. We are individuals, not identity groups.




Yup.

Honestly I can't figure out where [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] thinks the inconsistency or contradiction is.  I'm not you (@iserith).  Your explanations in this forum have helped me understand the game differently and have improved my DMing, but that doesn't mean we interpret things in exactly the same way.

The funny thing is that I read Hussar's (and others') posts and I think, "Yup, I could have written that once upon a time."


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2019)

Fair 'nuff I suppose.

I guess, I imagined posts like ones from you, or Immaculata or a few others talking about how you are following the rules of 5e in your play style, but, somehow allowing the player to know the true intentions of the NPC by using Insight isn't possible.  Could be I'm confusing different posters.  It's been a busy thread after all.

I'm pretty sure, though, that I've seen more than a few posters talk about how you cannot use insight as a lie detector.  I dunno, maybe I'm imagining things.  Funny how I get taken to task for not following the rules, but, others get ignored.

I mean, if we're going to cheese weasel rules lawyer the meaning of *"Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie* " as not actually knowing whether they are lying or not, then, well, it's pretty hard for me to take folks seriously when they insist they are following the spirit of the game.  The fact that you, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], see no problems with what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying says to me that you are more interested in being right than actually discussing this.  

Regardless of when the roll was called for, it shouldn't matter.  But, of course, in your style, you can avoid all this peskiness, can't you?  You can just not call for a roll, and, that player never has the chance to use the skill as it's written.  So, the players are nicely kept in their place.  Which leads, inevitably, to the players simply turning to the magic system, over which they have greater control, and ignoring the skill system as much as possible.  

Sorry, not interested in weaponizing the skill system at the table in order to force my interpretations on the group.  I'd much rather place the power squarely in the hands of the players and let them decide.  Makes for much greater ownership over the game at the table and much greater engagement from the players.  

But, hey, it works for you.  You do you, as was said to me earlier.  This is all just differing playstyles.  As always, play what works for you.  I'm just explaining why it doesn't work for me.


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## iserith (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fair 'nuff I suppose.
> 
> I guess, I imagined posts like ones from you, or Immaculata or a few others talking about how you are following the rules of 5e in your play style, but, somehow allowing the player to know the true intentions of the NPC by using Insight isn't possible.  Could be I'm confusing different posters.  It's been a busy thread after all.
> 
> ...




I think you got this all wrong. If you recall, I refused to call what you're doing "house rules" _even when you invited me to do so_. My position isn't and has never been that you're doing it wrong if you're not following the rules. My position is that I have an approach and that approach is informed by the rules, and that I work hard to make sure I'm not running or playing the game as if it is some other game. That's it. Nothing more than that. Every other post of mine of note is trying to refute erroneous assertions by people who I am trying very hard to imagine are discussing the topic in good faith.



Hussar said:


> Regardless of when the roll was called for, it shouldn't matter.  But, of course, in your style, you can avoid all this peskiness, can't you?  You can just not call for a roll, and, that player never has the chance to use the skill as it's written.  So, the players are nicely kept in their place.  Which leads, inevitably, to the players simply turning to the magic system, over which they have greater control, and ignoring the skill system as much as possible.




I don't call for a roll when there's no uncertainty as to the outcome and/or no meaningful consequence for failure. This isn't about "keeping players in their place." These are the rules of the game which define who gets to do and say what.

And it should be noted that, as DM, I have as much "power" over spells as I do ability checks. If I decide a spell can't be cast or doesn't work, then that's how it is. That's how this game works.



Hussar said:


> Sorry, not interested in weaponizing the skill system at the table in order to force my interpretations on the group.  I'd much rather place the power squarely in the hands of the players and let them decide.  Makes for much greater ownership over the game at the table and much greater engagement from the players.
> 
> But, hey, it works for you.  You do you, as was said to me earlier.  This is all just differing playstyles.  As always, play what works for you.  I'm just explaining why it doesn't work for me.




"Weaponizing the skill system?"

"Force my interpretations on the group?"

When did this become a power struggle between players and DM in your view? We each have roles as defined by the rules of the game. I don't intrude on theirs. They don't intrude on mine. We individually perform our roles and responsibilities to the best of our abilities and the game as a whole works just fine. Almost as if it was designed that way.

And as far as "greater engagement" goes, I think you'd be hard pressed to make an argument that your game - as described by you - is one of "greater engagement," especially when players are just throwing dice at boring content put forward by the DM to "get to the good stuff" as you previously said in your own words. That doesn't sound like "greater engagement" to me. Please feel free to describe how your previous observations square up with what you mean by "greater engagement" and "greater ownership" in this regard.


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## Bawylie (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  It's somewhat ironic.  Folks in this thread have made a very specific point about how they are following the rules in the way they play.  Yet, when you actually point out what the rules say about the skill, then suddenly the rules don't matter quite so much.
> 
> Seems somewhat inconsistent no?




I think that might’ve been me. 

I said I don’t think Insight can determine whether a statement is true or false. I see the text “determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting a next move...”

IMO, that means you might determine whether someone intends to deceive you, persuade you, intimidate you, seduce you, distract you, confuse you, cheat you, deal straight with you, or what they might do next - but I don’t think it means “you can tell that NPC’s statement is a falsehood/truth.”

I base that on personal experience but I acknowledge my interpretation here is a little strict. I think if it could determine what statements were lies, it would say so. And I think THAT because every time anyone asks Crawford a rule question, his answer is like “the rules say X so it does X. If it were intended to do Y it would say Y.” 

My opinion notwithstanding, it would still be a totally valid reading of the rules to say “insight can determine truth/lies.” 

I still don’t think it can, but what do I know? Maybe it’s better and more useful if it does.


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2019)

Iserith said:
			
		

> When did this become a power struggle between players and DM in your view? We each have roles as defined by the rules of the game. I don't intrude on theirs. They don't intrude on mine.




It has always been a power struggle.  Always.  From Day 1, there has been a tension between the power at the table between the DM and the players.  Every edition of the game and many other games beside have been written to address this tension.  3e took the tension and wrapped it up in the mechanics - taking the power away from both the players and the DM in an attempt to level the playing field.  4e went much further and tried to hand more power to the players by making the mechanics very predictable.  5e has swung back the other way by putting power back in the DM's hands with the whole "rulings not rules" approach.

Me, I prefer the players to have more control over the game than what 5e advocates for.  I do.  I want the players to be able to tell me what happens in the game when they try to do something, rather than the other way around.  My vision of the table is that the DM is first of equals rather than a more traditional pyramid approach which 5e pushes for.

Which means, I'm not going to approach the game the way you are.  The notion that the players should try to avoid skill checks because skill checks are too random, wouldn't occur to me.  Players should be trying to use their skills because successes let them tell me what happens in the game.  You rolled a fantastic persuasion check, congratulations. You get to tell me that you bypassed that guard that you were trying to talk your way past.

It's not a better/worse thing.  It's about me relaxing a lot of control over the game and placing it squarely in the hands of my players.


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## iserith (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It has always been a power struggle.  Always.  From Day 1, there has been a tension between the power at the table between the DM and the players.  Every edition of the game and many other games beside have been written to address this tension.  3e took the tension and wrapped it up in the mechanics - taking the power away from both the players and the DM in an attempt to level the playing field.  4e went much further and tried to hand more power to the players by making the mechanics very predictable.  5e has swung back the other way by putting power back in the DM's hands with the whole "rulings not rules" approach.
> 
> Me, I prefer the players to have more control over the game than what 5e advocates for.  I do.  I want the players to be able to tell me what happens in the game when they try to do something, rather than the other way around.  My vision of the table is that the DM is first of equals rather than a more traditional pyramid approach which 5e pushes for.
> 
> ...




I think it's a corruption of the design intent to view it as a power struggle. What a bleak viewpoint, too. The players and DM have separate roles, that's all. It's not about power, but a synergy to produce a fun time for everyone and an exciting, memorable story as a result of play.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2019)

This is getting more and more surreal.



Hussar said:


> I mean, if we're going to cheese weasel rules lawyer the meaning of *"Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie* " as not actually knowing whether they are lying or not, then, well, it's pretty hard for me to take folks seriously when they insist they are following the spirit of the game.  The fact that you, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], see no problems with what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying says to me that you are more interested in being right than actually discussing this.




Don't you think, if Insight was intended as lie detection, it would have read something along the lines of, "Insight decides whether you can tell if somebody is lying."  Why go through all the circumlocution of "determine the true intentions..."

Maybe, just _maybe_ it's because it's not intended as "lie detection".

Here's an example: you're talking to your mechanic, who tells you that your rotors are out of true by 3mm, but that there's not enough material left to resurface them so they'll have to be replaced, and it'll take about 5 hours to do all four of them, and with parts and labor that's going to be $1,300.

You succeed at your Insight roll and the DM tells you that he's hoping to make a lot of money off of you.  That's his "true intention".

Is he actually lying?  You don't know (not unless you succeed at an Arcana check involving brake rotors).  And you certainly don't know (as [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] says) if any one particular statement is a lie (the 3mm, whether or not they can be resurfaced, how long that should take, etc.).  Just that you're probably not getting a good deal from this guy.



> So, the players are nicely kept in their place.




Wow.  Just...wow.

I'll file that one under "complete and utter absence of comprehension."


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]- yup.  That's precisely what I'm talking about.  If I use magic, then I don't have to worry about the whole "Dm interpretation" thing.  A simple Zone of Truth and poof, it works.  To me, the fact that the skill specifically mentions "searching out a lie", and then the DM plays silly buggers semantic games, I'm pretty much checking out of the game.  No thanks.  I have no interest in playing a game where we have to define the word "the".  

And, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], this is why I see it as a tension between the control of the table between DM and players.  It ALWAYS comes down to this.  Every single time.  The table you or I find comfortable with will move that bar between the DM and the players to wherever we feel most happy.  But, that tension is always there.  It's a mistake to think that it isn't.

Players and DM's have the same role - to create a table and a game that is fun for everyone.  Full stop.  That is the only role anyone has at the table.  All that's left after that is deciding the details.


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## Imaculata (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fair 'nuff I suppose.
> 
> I guess, I imagined posts like ones from you, or Immaculata or a few others talking about how you are following the rules of 5e in your play style, but, somehow allowing the player to know the true intentions of the NPC by using Insight isn't possible.




I think that if Insight was a lie detector, it would literally say so in the rules. Instead, as you quoted so diligently, it says it can be used to find out the true intentions of an NPC. To me, that is something other than a lie detector.


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## iserith (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> And, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], this is why I see it as a tension between the control of the table between DM and players.  It ALWAYS comes down to this.  Every single time.  The table you or I find comfortable with will move that bar between the DM and the players to wherever we feel most happy.  But, that tension is always there.  It's a mistake to think that it isn't.
> 
> Players and DM's have the same role - to create a table and a game that is fun for everyone.  Full stop.  That is the only role anyone has at the table.  All that's left after that is deciding the details.




I see no tension. Everyone has the same goal, but different roles and responsibilities to perform in pursuit of that goal. It's laid out in the rules very clearly.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> I think that if Insight was a lie detector, it would literally say so in the rules. Instead, as you quoted so diligently, it says it can be used to find out the true intentions of an NPC. To me, that is something other than a lie detector.




I can't for the life of me understand how somebody would be unable to see the difference.  (Perhaps a failed Insight check?)

There's also this: if Insight literally works as a lie detector, it would be the only "skill" that represents something that doesn't exist IRL.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> I see no tension. Everyone has the same goal, but different roles and responsibilities to perform in pursuit of that goal. It's laid out in the rules very clearly.




I do understand Hussar's point of view, in the sense that _if you believe Insight is a lie detector_, then not allowing it to function that way, with a single roll, is akin to saying, "Yeah, sorry, your attack roll just means that you're in a good position to attack, it doesn't mean you actually hit him."

It's the underlying premise that is wrong.  (And if the rules actually said "allows you to detect lies" then it would be time for a houserule.)


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## iserith (Apr 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I do understand Hussar's point of view, in the sense that _if you believe Insight is a lie detector_, then not allowing it to function that way, with a single roll, is akin to saying, "Yeah, sorry, your attack roll just means that you're in a good position to attack, it doesn't mean you actually hit him."
> 
> It's the underlying premise that is wrong.  (And if the rules actually said "allows you to detect lies" then it would be time for a houserule.)




Hussar's words in his last post seem to indicate a deeper misunderstanding with regard to the DM-player relationship than how the DM interprets the Insight skill proficiency.

I will note, for the record, that Insight reads: "...you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie..." So I would say it's fairly used as a way to resolve tasks to detect the truthfulness of an NPC, but how precise it is will depend on the player's approach to the goal and the DM's interpretation of the rule relative to the situation.

But again, if the players are only ever trying to suss out lies from NPCs, then I think that's a sign the DM needs to get better at presenting social interaction challenges and maybe stop having the NPCs lie all the time. Having lies be the only obstacle in a social interaction challenge is like having pit traps be the only obstacle in an exploration challenge - you can do better!


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## Oofta (Apr 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I can't for the life of me understand how somebody would be unable to see the difference.  (Perhaps a failed Insight check?)
> 
> There's also this: if Insight literally works as a lie detector, it would be the only "skill" that represents something that doesn't exist IRL.



Wait, D&D has to be _realistic_ now?  Did I suddenly gain a HP number I don't know about?  

While I may or may not run my game quite like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], it's his table and his ruling.  I'd be fine with his interpretation.  As far as tension between player and DM ... again not sure I'd state it exactly that way but I don't see anything where he's advocating an adversarial relationship.

But I agree to the gist.  The players are in control of their PCs and if they want to do a take an action represented by a skill check, in general they can.  If they ask to shoot an arrow at the moon, I'll point out that their PC knows they can't hit the moon.  If they insist on rolling anyway (or just rolled first) I'll simply point out that it does nothing.

Different strokes for different folks.  Different styles for different games.

P.S. Human lie detectors may not exist in real life, but they are a pretty common trope in fiction.


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## SkidAce (Apr 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> P.S. Human lie detectors may not exist in real life, but they are a pretty common trope in fiction.




Human lie "indicators" do exist in real life.  You just have to have the experience to build up the statistical probability and make a call as to whether you think a person is lying or not.

Its not perfect, but can work to build a bigger picture.  And by itself does not convict anyone.  

But most of us have had a friend that can't lie to save themselves, which is as an example of being able to read such indicators.

What we do with the decision we make is up to us, much like it would be up to our character after a skill roll.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Wait, D&D has to be _realistic_ now?  Did I suddenly gain a HP number I don't know about?




Utter logic failure.

I noted a pattern that all the skills (except one, if Hussar is right) represent normal things that people can do in real life.  I said nothing about _the entire rest of the game_.

Not sure if you are being disingenuous or don't understand the difference...?



> While I may or may not run my game quite like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], it's his table and his ruling.  I'd be fine with his interpretation.  As far as tension between player and DM ... again not sure I'd state it exactly that way but I don't see anything where he's advocating an adversarial relationship.
> 
> But I agree to the gist.  The players are in control of their PCs and if they want to do a take an action represented by a skill check, in general they can.  If they ask to shoot an arrow at the moon, I'll point out that their PC knows they can't hit the moon.  If they insist on rolling anyway (or just rolled first) I'll simply point out that it does nothing.
> 
> Different strokes for different folks.  Different styles for different games.




I think you (and Hussar) are making up/exaggerating differences here.

I wouldn't tell a player he can't shoot an arrow at the moon, nor would I tell him he can't make a dice roll.  However, I might _ignore_ the dice roll, even if he got a nat 20.

The same with lie detection.  If he asks "can I tell if he's lying" I might say, "I dunno...what do you do?"  If he then says, "I roll Insight!"...and rolls a natural 20...I might again ignore the result.

How are those two examples any different?  Is it because you think detecting a lie is always easier than shooting an arrow at the moon? 

Now, after playing together for a while, this player might learn that there's no point to saying, "I use skill X!" and rolling dice, and instead just describing what he/she does, and rolling dice when the DM calls for it.



> P.S. Human lie detectors may not exist in real life, but they are a pretty common trope in fiction.




So are Wuxia acrobatics.  So does a successful Acrobatics check mean you can run up walls and fly through the air, regardless of what the DM says?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 1, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I think that might’ve been me.
> 
> I said I don’t think Insight can determine whether a statement is true or false. I see the text “determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting a next move...”
> 
> ...



My general way of managing the rules varies.

If you ask specific detail of specific elements such as does magic misdile cause one concentration check or three and does thunderwave knock you prone and msny other cases you see sage asked about, i go to the text of the rules and that is what Sage does often.

But when it comes to "can you do this..." questions especially for the broad scope of intentionally broad an vague left-for-gm-define-on-fly, i get a lot less worried with the strict language and more concerned with the basics of the resolution system.

Is this possible? Is it not automatic? If both are yes, what traits are best to represent the check?

Obviously, there is more to it, but those basics cover the gist.

So when i see multiple folks partly quoting insight skill descritions, often cutting out the specific part about "searching out a lie" to convolute a non-lie detector feature for insight... It is amusing and would likely drive me from a table fast. After all, if they only allow tasks explicitly listed in skills to be tried with ability checks, thats a sure tell.

I mean, for me, i have to wonder what "searching out a lie" means in their games? Is it literally a search check, like,looking under the drawer for a note saying "bob is not telling the truth"?

Or are they saying their is no character skill that applies when trying to see if someone seems truthful? All characters equally goid or bad at that?

If there is a check, but its not insight, what is the relevant trait? Hey, is this a yse for Medicine skill?

Can you only get the intention to decieve for future statements, not current ones, letting insight clue you in if he is planning to  lie to you tomortow but not that he is doing it right now? 

Course for some, it might depend on how much of which crime tv drama episode the player mimics in his own statement to the GM. Did the GM most recently see the he-said-she-said SVU episode or the one where the detectives all stand outside the window saying "its obvious he is lying."?

But for me, my view is pretty simple, but it works for us, if the **character** is in discussion with another character the question of "do i see signs of deception?" is likely to get resolved using Charisma with deception/persuasion and Wisdom with Insight as the core factors in most cases. Sure there may be other factors and sure spells can help or just really dominate the question, Detect Thoughts seems bigger than Zone of Truth.

Ok, some of the above may be a little tongue-in-cheeky, but all in all at the end of the day, it is the end of the day. Or maybe its the beginning of the day and we were being lied to. Roll insight?


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## Oofta (Apr 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Utter logic failure.
> 
> I noted a pattern that all the skills (except one, if Hussar is right) represent normal things that people can do in real life.  I said nothing about _the entire rest of the game_.
> 
> ...




We've had this argument for a couple dozen pages now.  I don't care if someone says "I use skill X" as long as they are communicating their intent.  You, apparently, do.  It's a stylistic preference, and I still don't understand why you can't just accept we run the game ever-so-slightly differently.

As far as detecting lies, what does "determine the true intent of someone lying" even mean?  A logical interpretation is that their true intent is to deceive you.  Someone trying to deceive you _is _lying.

Now I generally phrase my response as "they seem to be telling the truth" or "It doesn't seem like their being completely honest" but that's just me.

As far as human lie detector, I'm not taking a stand one way or another on whether they exist in real life.  They exist in fiction so I have no problem with them in D&D if that's how someone wants to handle it.

P.S.  Chill.  The HP thing was a joke.  You know ... ha ha?  Friendly conversation not going into attack mode because of a difference of opinion?


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## Sadras (Apr 1, 2019)

Two sessions ago the characters with Insight (I used the passive for ease and speed) were informed that the individual they were conversing with seemed to be hiding something by the way he answered their questions and because he looked "uncomfortable" in the conversation, shifting often.
1 or 2 of them took the direct approach and attempted to push the individual into revealing all he knew as that was in his and his people's best interests. They failed their rolls respectively, forcing him to go onto the defensive and insist that he had told them everything he knew. A 3rd character, asked if he could have a moment alone with the individual and used his Insight (again passive) - I informed him that the individual was sincere but that his responses were odd, indicating perhaps some inner conflict. 

Through general roleplaying conversation and with a tempered approach, the PC was able to coax out of the individual the entire story. No diplomacy check was required. My players seemed to enjoy that.

I find that I have relied on passive Insight more so than other checks and a new player in another group pointed it out to me as he was concerned about the relevance of his Insight skill. That is probably a failing on my part and something I need to work on. I had not realised I had been doing that subconsciously.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> P.S.  Chill.  The HP thing was a joke.  You know ... ha ha?  Friendly conversation not going into attack mode because of a difference of opinion?




Ok, fair enough. It can be hard to infer tone in forum posts.  Caustic/snarky response retracted.

Back on topic, let's compare/contrast with Investigation for a moment.

Let's say that the PCs are trying to solve a mystery, and in one of the locations the DM has set up there is a document stuck on the bottom side of a drawer.

 @_*Hussar*_'s approach, taken to an extreme, wouldn't even require the PCs to leave the tavern.  It might go something like this:
DM: "Ok, what do you do?"
Player: "I make an Investigation check...24!"
DM: "Ok, you go across town and search an office, and under a drawer you find a document..."

I suspect that's not how Hussar or you would play it.  You would require the PCs to actually go to the office first, and _then_ maybe roll Investigation.  But if you do I might use Hussar's argument: you are "keeping players in their place" by relying on "DM interpretation" and "not allowing them to use the skill as it's written."  (Not because I believe in the argument, but to illustrate the fallacy.)  It's the same thing Hussar is arguing, right?  If they use the Investigation skill and are successful, it should mean they successfully investigated.

Here's the thing: it's perfectly valid to play that way.  Especially if you think the investigation is the boring bit that you have to get through before combat and looting.  (And, honestly, some adventures are so poorly written that I might be tempted to skip over the entire thing with a single Investigation roll.)

But even though it's valid, I think most of us believe this is abstracting the fiction too far.  That the PCs have to at least have the initiative to go to the office.  And also (this is important) the PCs _know there's an office_.  Right?  You don't just plop them in a city and wait for them to say, "I search every office in the city."  The DM has, at some point, introduced the office.

Now let's look at the document taped under the drawer: @_*iserith*_'s argument, taken to the extreme, would require a player to state: "I take out all the drawers and look at the bottoms."  And I think Hussar is making some assumptions that iserith would play it that way.  I suspect, though, that iserith would not require the players to state that action..._unless he had provided some sort of clue or signal that this is what they should do._  Just like the existence of the office.

*So What Good is Investigation?*
Q: So if players are required to state, "I look under the drawer", what's Investigation used for?
A: To resolve uncertainty.

Here is an example of how I might use it: The players have to solve a "needle in a haystack" search _with time pressure_.  I don't want to actually roleplay out searching the haystack, so I'll require a certain number of successes, and count the attempts.  Bad (or unfortunate) stuff happens at certain increments.  (Note that if there's no time pressure, I won't require a roll.)

I'll confess, I'll also use it when I just haven't prepared enough to plant good clues.

*What about Insight?*
I knew we'd have to get back to this eventually!

Well, it's just like Investigation.  If you plant clues, and the players know what to ask, they shouldn't have to roll Insight.  Why use some quasi-magic "detect lie" skill if the players have some piece of information which allows them to ask a question that will determine whether the NPC is truthful?

Otherwise, I might use it the way it's written, especially if I haven't prepared well: "He seems to be worried about what his boss is going to say about this."  "There's some other reason he wants you to go to the ruins."  "He just wants to get you out of his office."  "He's having a bad day and taking it out on you."  "He seems fixated on money."

*Using Skills versus Declaring Actions*
The reason I think the distinction is important is that if you start allowing players to just state, "I make an X check" you are essentially training them to stop thinking. Why put the clues together and realize you should look under the drawer when you know you can just make a skill check? And if the DM knows the players are just going to make a skill check, why put the work into creating the clues? 

*Summary*
While Hussar's play style is legal & valid, I think it's leaving a lot of fun & interesting gaming on the table.  It's qualitatively if not quantitatively the same as rolling Investigation from the tavern instead of first going to the office.  Yes, it does take more DM prep to do it iserith's way, and if that work isn't done then, yeah, all this stuff is "just the boring part before you get to fight something."


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## billd91 (Apr 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> <snip>
> 
> Now let's look at the document taped under the drawer: @_*iserith*_'s argument, taken to the extreme, would require a player to state: "I take out all the drawers and look at the bottoms."  And I think Hussar is making some assumptions that iserith would play it that way.  I suspect, though, that iserith would not require the players to state that action..._unless he had provided some sort of clue or signal that this is what they should do._  Just like the existence of the office.
> 
> ...




Ultimately, either approach can be bad when taken to extremes. Your summary points out that just asking for or allowing a broadly-defined roll short cuts some adventuring potential and characterization, but the extreme of the opposite approach is tedious pixel-bitching, shortcut by the DM pointing out (or telegraphing) which pixels to bitch (if the players are perceptive enough to catch the clue). Fortunately, I assume, most games are somewhere off the extreme ends of that spectrum.


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:
			
		

> Now let's look at the document taped under the drawer: [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s argument, taken to the extreme, would require a player to state: "I take out all the drawers and look at the bottoms." And I think Hussar is making some assumptions that iserith would play it that way. I suspect, though, that iserith would not require the players to state that action...unless he had provided some sort of clue or signal that this is what they should do. Just like the existence of the office.




Not quite.  As I understand it, the way this would be done would be, if the players simply stated they were searching the office, the DC would be X.  If the players stated they were checking out the furniture in the office, the DC would be Y.  If the players stated they were taking out the drawers and looking at the bottom, they would automatically succeed.

Is that a fair interpretation?  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]?  Where X>Y, so, stating a general approach will succeed less often than a more specific approach and a very specific approach will always succeed, presuming it's the right approach?

At least, that's how I'm interpreting what they are saying.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To me, it's not how I enjoy the game.  For one, you see interpretations like [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION], where they look at the rules and interpret things a very different way than I would (like when the skill specifically calls out being able to discern lies but the DM says, nope, that's not what it says, I'm going to get frustrated), which lead to, IMO, artificially inflating difficulty in the name of "challenging" the players.  

And, funnily enough, IME, these "interpretations" always go against the players.  The players can never jump more than is "realistic", the players never can do something that the DM thinks is unrealistic.  And, it's the DM's sense of realism that is the bar that is set.  It's not something I enjoy.  You have a character who, for some reason, has a super set of jumping skills, and scores a 25 or 30 on a jump score - that's a legendary level of success.  So, why not wuxia style jumping?


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## iserith (Apr 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Not quite.  As I understand it, the way this would be done would be, if the players simply stated they were searching the office, the DC would be X.  If the players stated they were checking out the furniture in the office, the DC would be Y.  If the players stated they were taking out the drawers and looking at the bottom, they would automatically succeed.
> 
> Is that a fair interpretation?  @_*iserith*_?  Where X>Y, so, stating a general approach will succeed less often than a more specific approach and a very specific approach will always succeed, presuming it's the right approach?




The rules lay out a standard of reasonable specificity to have a chance at success, but specificity is not necessarily a requirement for outright success or a change in the DC in all cases.

I will add that you will never find me arguing a position in D&D by comparing it to reality or realism. I want to be clear on that point so that you don't conflate my position with others.


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## Hussar (Apr 1, 2019)

Also note, that 5e does have a mechanic for "extended" skill checks - downtime activities.  Spend a week on information gathering and find the document, if the check is successful.  Depends on what level of granularity you want.


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## Oofta (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> *Using Skills versus Declaring Actions*
> The reason I think the distinction is important is that if you start allowing players to just state, "I make an X check" you are essentially training them to stop thinking. Why put the clues together and realize you should look under the drawer when you know you can just make a skill check? And if the DM knows the players are just going to make a skill check, why put the work into creating the clues?
> 
> *Summary*
> While Hussar's play style is legal & valid, I think it's leaving a lot of fun & interesting gaming on the table.  It's qualitatively if not quantitatively the same as rolling Investigation from the tavern instead of first going to the office.  Yes, it does take more DM prep to do it iserith's way, and if that work isn't done then, yeah, all this stuff is "just the boring part before you get to fight something."




I've had DMs that wanted me to describe how I searched a door for traps.  How the frick would I know?  I'm not a rogue.  I'm not trained in finding traps.  Besides if I describe how I carefully sprinkle talcum powder or use a small mirror on a stick to check that spot I can't quite see is _it's boring_. Not only to me, but to everyone else at the table.

Sometimes traps are more than just traps.  It's a puzzle you have to figure out (although I pretty much hate puzzles/riddles in most games as well).  Sometimes searching the office should be more than just searching the office.  For me, most of the time it's just either "you only have a moment to search" in which case they probably wouldn't find the note taped under the drawer unless they rolled extremely high or "the guards are nowhere in sight, do you want to take your time?"  In that case I may not even require a search check, or have them make one just to see how long it takes.  Sometimes I'll ask something along the lines of whether they're being careful to not leave a trace that they searched the room.

I would no more ask a player to describe how they are searching the room than I would ask them how they are cooking dinner.  Unless of course they (and the group) enjoy that kind of thing.

As far as "training them to stop thinking", I simply disagree.  I'm simply not forcing them to play "my way".  Sometimes interacting with the environment can be enjoyable, but most of the time it just feels like filler that does nothing to advance the story.  Frequently filler that only engages one person.  It has nothing to do with being a lazy DM, but the reality is that my time, and the group's play time, is limited.  I'd rather spend my time figuring out that the captain of the guard is really the baron's cousin and they've been conspiring together to steal from the merchants who have become more powerful while framing a political dissident and how to drop bread crumbs for the group to follow if they want.

When the player does an insight check it prompts me to think of a way to reward that initiative by uncovering something up with some subtle clue.  Maybe the guard is a bit nervous and glances in the direction the captain just came from.  Maybe I would have thought to do that without the request for the skill check, maybe not.  

For me, I just think describing your actions by asking to do a skill check is a perfectly fine shortcut the majority of the time.  When it's not, I'll prompt for details.

As far as what's fun, different people have different preferences.  When I judged for public games, my tables were always one of the first to fill up.  My games are very heavy RP and I've had people put up with me as a DM for years on end.  My style is just different than yours.


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## Greenstone.Walker (Apr 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I've had DMs that wanted me to describe how I searched a door for traps.  How the frick would I know?  I'm not a rogue.




That is an important question for GMs to ask, to avoid the following situation.

Player: I search the door for traps.
GM: As you touch it, contact poison seeps into your skin, make—
Player: Hang on, I never said I touched the door! That's not fair!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I've had DMs that wanted me to describe how I searched a door for traps.  How the frick would I know?  I'm not a rogue.  I'm not trained in finding traps.  Besides if I describe how I carefully sprinkle talcum powder or use a small mirror on a stick to check that spot I can't quite see is _it's boring_. Not only to me, but to everyone else at the table.




If you think what some of us are saying is as simplistic as this, you're not understanding it.  I'm certainly not asking somebody to know _how_ to search for traps in the general sense, but I might ask them to use previous hints and clues to know what to do in a specific case. 



> Sometimes interacting with the environment can be enjoyable, but most of the time it just feels like filler that does nothing to advance the story.




That's how I feel about "skill" rolls that require no thinking or narration.  Take the following:

Player: "I'll check the chest for traps with Investigation...I rolled an 18"
DM: "You find a poison needle trap."
Player: "I'll try to disarm it using my Thieves' Tools...I rolled a 21!"
DM: "You disarm it."

What was the point of ANY of that?  Literally the _only_ skill on display here is the player's ability to remember rules.  As Hussar says, this _should_ be rushed through because it's totally boring. Let's get to the fight!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> I will add that you will never find me arguing a position in D&D by comparing it to reality or realism. I want to be clear on that point so that you don't conflate my position with others.




I almost never argue from a basis of realism, either. 

 In this _particular_ case I'm just pointing out that to interpret the text to mean that you can "detect lies" would make it the only skill that doesn't map to a normal, mundane, real-world, non-magical (and non-supernatural, if Tony is listening) activity.  I'm not saying an ability should be realistic, but perhaps we can infer designer intent by comparing to others in the same category.

EDIT: What I will also argue here is that "lie detection" is a bad fictional device.  As bad as "detect alignment".  So many great story lines depend on the players being unsure of who to believe, who to trust.  If that can be circumvented with a simple skill roll...I mean, WTF...why not let players Intimidate bosses into surrendering?  "Hey, you rolled a nat 20, guess you don't have to fight the dragon after all; he'll give you his treasure!"


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## Hussar (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If you think what some of us are saying is as simplistic as this, you're not understanding it.  I'm certainly not asking somebody to know _how_ to search for traps in the general sense, but I might ask them to use previous hints and clues to know what to do in a specific case.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




But, how is that improved by insisting on the player providing extra narration?  How is "I do x, y and z" improving anything?  There's nothing wrong with a simple poison needle trap.  Gives the rogue a reason to be there, he gets to bypass the trap and we move on.  No worries.  If he failed, there would be negative consequences.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> EDIT: What I will also argue here is that "lie detection" is a bad fictional device.  As bad as "detect alignment".  So many great story lines depend on the players being unsure of who to believe, who to trust.




A conclusion one might draw here is that D&D 5e isn't as good as other games at creating those kinds of stories as written. It can be done, but I think D&D is better at... dungeon and dragons... than hardcore mysteries or the like.



Elfcrusher said:


> If that can be circumvented with a simple skill roll...I mean, WTF...why not let players Intimidate bosses into surrendering?  "Hey, you rolled a nat 20, guess you don't have to fight the dragon after all; he'll give you his treasure!"




It may seem like splitting hairs, but it's not the "skill roll" that is doing anything other than resolving the outcome of a task the players have described as wanting to do. And it's an ability check that the DM doesn't have to call for if he or she finds the outcome to be a failure. (It's a good idea to get out in front of the players here in these sorts of situations and establish certain tasks as being impossible while describing the environment.) In any case, the _task_ is what matters which is why we want player to say what they are trying to do and how they're going about doing it.


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## Yardiff (Apr 2, 2019)

Greenstone.Walker said:


> That is an important question for GMs to ask, to avoid the following situation.
> 
> Player: I search the door for traps.
> GM: As you touch it, contact poison seeps into your skin, make—
> Player: Hang on, I never said I touched the door! That's not fair!





The tables I've played at, this example would only happen on a failed check to find traps. Since contact poison on the door is a trap then a successful investigation would have spotted it.


Edit: Depending on the edition it would only happen if the investigator failed by 5 or more. Not sure of the rules in 5e.


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## Hussar (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I almost never argue from a basis of realism, either.
> 
> In this _particular_ case I'm just pointing out that to interpret the text to mean that you can "detect lies" would make it the only skill that doesn't map to a normal, mundane, real-world, non-magical (and non-supernatural, if Tony is listening) activity.  I'm not saying an ability should be realistic, but perhaps we can infer designer intent by comparing to others in the same category.
> 
> EDIT: What I will also argue here is that "lie detection" is a bad fictional device.  As bad as "detect alignment".  So many great story lines depend on the players being unsure of who to believe, who to trust.  If that can be circumvented with a simple skill roll...I mean, WTF...why not let players Intimidate bosses into surrendering?  "Hey, you rolled a nat 20, guess you don't have to fight the dragon after all; he'll give you his treasure!"




What's wrong with that?

One thing I loved in 4e was the fact that you actually COULD use intimidate this way.  Freaking fantastic.  Note, nat 20 has ZERO meaning in a skill roll, other than simply being high.  Obviously the DC to intimidate a dragon would be rather high, and, frankly probably impossible.  But, otherwise?  Love the idea of clearing out a bunch of mooks with an intimidate check.  

Then again, I love morale rules in D&D.  Use them all the time.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> One thing I loved in 4e was the fact that you actually COULD use intimidate this way.  Freaking fantastic.




Like D&D 5e, the D&D 4e DM determines if a skill check* is appropriate in a given situation and directs the player to make a check if the circumstances call for one. _Unlike D&D 5e_, however, D&D 4e suggests that the player often initiates a skill check by asking if they can make one. And almost always, according to the D&D 4e rules, the DM says yes.

A player _can_ attempt to intimidate the boss monster into surrendering in D&D 5e. The player just doesn't get to ask for a check and instead describes what he or she wants to do. And here is where trying to determine the boss monster's ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda (an action that may be resolved with an Insight check) is important since that is exactly the sort of leverage the character might want to coerce the enemy into doing as asked.

* Minor point: There aren't actually "skill checks" in D&D 5e. That term does not exist. There are ability checks and there are skill proficiencies that may apply to the ability check.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, how is that improved by insisting on the player providing extra narration?  How is "I do x, y and z" improving anything?  There's nothing wrong with a simple poison needle trap.  Gives the rogue a reason to be there, he gets to bypass the trap and we move on.  No worries.  If he failed, there would be negative consequences.




I have to ask: are you understanding the point that the rogue isn't just running through a list of random things to try? That on _this_ trap the player would have picked up hints/signals as to what to look for?  Because you keep portraying the playstyle incorrectly, and I can't tell whether you genuinely don't understand, or if you are intentionally trying to cast it in a negative light.

Or maybe I was wrong, and in the scenario I described you _would_ prefer that the party stay in the tavern and make one Investigation check, rather than having to go to various locations, look for clues, and maybe roll Investigation once they get there.  You know, the "do x, y, and z..." part that you dislike.

In any event, the point isn't to "provide extra narration" it's to give the player something to do, something to think about and solve, rather than simply remembering to make a skill check.  

Given a choice between:

"Wait a second...what was the poem again, the one we found in the journal?  I've got it!  Pull out the drawers and look on the bottoms!"

and...

"I roll Investigation...19!...what did I find?"

I'll take the first option every time.  If the only choice, perhaps because the DM didn't prepare something cool, is the 2nd option...why even bother with the check?  I say just let them find it.  

I played the old way for years: "I search for secret doors."  "Roll."  "17".  "Nope, you didn't find anything."  Over and over and over again.  And, you're right, it's the boring part.


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## Hussar (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I have to ask: are you understanding the point that the rogue isn't just running through a list of random things to try? That on _this_ trap the player would have picked up hints/signals as to what to look for?  Because you keep portraying the playstyle incorrectly, and I can't tell whether you genuinely don't understand, or if you are intentionally trying to cast it in a negative light.




Umm, I can't talk about what isn't there.  The example was a locked door.  The player checks it for traps before opening it.  This is pretty basic dungeon crawly stuff.  There were no other bits of information provided.  I cannot portray it in another light until you folks start actually ponying up real examples.  



> Or maybe I was wrong, and in the scenario I described you _would_ prefer that the party stay in the tavern and make one Investigation check, rather than having to go to various locations, look for clues, and maybe roll Investigation once they get there.  You know, the "do x, y, and z..." part that you dislike.




Depends on the scenario really.  I've certainly used both approaches.  If there's nothing really needed at these various locations and the papers are simply something they need to get move forward with the more interesting plan, then, sure, a couple of dice rolls and we're done.  Again, without more specific information, I cannot venture an opinion.  However, I will say that unlike you, I really have zero problem with either way.



> In any event, the point isn't to "provide extra narration" it's to give the player something to do, something to think about and solve, rather than simply remembering to make a skill check.
> 
> Given a choice between:
> 
> ...




Yeah, again, without further information, I'm not really able to venture a strong opinion here, but, like I said earlier, most of the time, these "what was the poem again" type puzzles bore me to tears.  I loathe puzzles and riddles.  And I'm using the word loathe here very intentionally.  I hate them with a passion.  If the DM requires me to remember esoteric bits of information in order to do things so I can finally use the skills my character has, I'm walking.  I honestly have zero interest in this game.  Give me the Investigate 19 game every time.

I'm playing a game because I like playing the game.  To me, you're just doing end runs around the game in order to make things more "interesting".  No thanks.  If I wanted to play that game, I'd play that game.  The game I'm playing has skills in it that let me do stuff.  So, no, I don't need the DM to "allow" me to make skill checks, and, any player at my table that is waiting on me to ask for them, is going to be waiting a really, really long time.

Be proactive or find another table.  You are not just a player.  You are every bit as responsible for the actions at the table as the DM.  You are every bit as responsible for creating this shared story and I invest you with equal authority to me as the DM when it comes to your actions.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I've had DMs that wanted me to describe how I searched a door for traps.  How the frick would I know?  I'm not a rogue.  I'm not trained in finding traps.  Besides if I describe how I carefully sprinkle talcum powder or use a small mirror on a stick to check that spot I can't quite see is _it's boring_. Not only to me, but to everyone else at the table.
> 
> Sometimes traps are more than just traps.  It's a puzzle you have to figure out (although I pretty much hate puzzles/riddles in most games as well).  Sometimes searching the office should be more than just searching the office.  For me, most of the time it's just either "you only have a moment to search" in which case they probably wouldn't find the note taped under the drawer unless they rolled extremely high or "the guards are nowhere in sight, do you want to take your time?"  In that case I may not even require a search check, or have them make one just to see how long it takes.  Sometimes I'll ask something along the lines of whether they're being careful to not leave a trace that they searched the room.
> 
> ...



"As far as "training them to stop thinking", I simply disagree. "

Yeah, to me, "thinking" and specifically "player thinking" should kick into high gear **after** they find the clue. It should not be the focus of how we resolve the character's effort to find the clue.

But this is a style thing for sure. I am not a GM who does a lot of puzzle rooms where most of the solving is player-side thinkery that bypasses the PC capabilities. Exact opposite in fact. If I throw a "puzzle" it's going to be one that directly ties in PC traits and reinforces the PC capabilities and requires or relies on the player figuring out how to apply/leverage those traits - not the player personal knowledge of a task. 

A good example is the movie I, Robot, where at key moments the unique traits of the robot are necessary to get thru certain "puzzles, most notably the characters extra tough alloys (immunity) to get thru a defense shield to unlock the weapon to kill the bad guy later. 

The player needs to know the traits of the character, think thru when and where they can help in relation to the  challenges but I do not make the actual how to of that is a puzzle in itself or really a player-side thing. 

But that's me. 

But turning


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## 5ekyu (Apr 2, 2019)

Greenstone.Walker said:


> That is an important question for GMs to ask, to avoid the following situation.
> 
> Player: I search the door for traps.
> GM: As you touch it, contact poison seeps into your skin, make—
> Player: Hang on, I never said I touched the door! That's not fair!



No, it's not. 

It's not needed to avoid that situation it's not even a particularly good one due to its consequences.

It teaches the player "its what I say not what the character knows or is good at  that drives the trap skill."

That tends to show used in play then lead to two tiers of skills. Ones driven by character traits and ones driven by player traits. Most classic example is social tasks where in some games the GM mostly treats it by what the player says, not character checks. 

That tends to show in play thst a checklist of things to declare unless pressures prevent it is the safest most successful route. A "door procedure" gets put in place which makes sure to put "poke ar fir with dagger" and " use glass to listen" before " listen at four to avoid those ear bug things.

But let's look at your door and traps.

First, long long long before the first trapped door, the notion of how ability checks and attacks are resolved **and that failure can have setbacks" should have been made clear. Should have been shown and well established that this can lead to bad stuff.

So, character is competent at traps and player says they check.

GM assumes the competent trap seeker is not an idiot. Assumes that will include knowledge of some trap types. Assumes "checking for traps" includes things like "is their contact poison" not "well, yuck yuck, let's just grab it yup" 

So the check is made, and if its successful, the poison was spotted and narrated as "you see some strange goo as you use your probe on the surface of the mechanism. Its definitely not just dust and grime. Possibly iocaine." Then you may describe a few options that the character would commonly know of for the player to consider.

What if it fails, well, since failure can be some success with setback and you have a skilled character, I go with "you begin searching but unfortunately, there was a poisonous residue early on  that you checked for and missed did not get all of. I need you to make a blah blah save, at advantage because you did avoid a direct full on dose of it due to your skills and caution in checking, before we move on to the rest." Here, the players sees the benefits of having declared check for traps (chosen to apply that character trait) even with a failure in the advantaged save but still suffers a setback and the door has not been cleared.

Meanwhile a character who just went on thru the door not looking for traps gets a full dose and trap. 

In between of course is the amateur untrained trap guy who can get any of these and more, depending on how much the GM decides the proficiency is or is not required. While many traps could reasonably require "thieves proficiency" to defeat or spot, I would not necessarily rule so for contact poison on a handle myself. 

So, see, "how is your experienced character doing his job" was not knowledge the **player** needed to know for us to resolve it. The player side only required them to decide "this is a spot where applying my traps skill might help out and makes sense." Then it's the game mechanics and traits that resolves it. 

Much like combat. Thry need to decide who to attack and what with, the when and where to apply their axe skill, but not how their character is getting around that armored hide and shield.

But that me, what works for us, not for everyone but to me the more you require player-side-know-howzstate-how for resolution of actions using character abilities the more problems you bring in - more than you solve.


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## Imaculata (Apr 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> To me, it's not how I enjoy the game.  For one, you see interpretations like @_*Elfcrusher*_ and @_*Imaculata*_, where they look at the rules and interpret things a very different way than I would (like when the skill specifically calls out being able to discern lies but the DM says, nope, that's not what it says, I'm going to get frustrated), which lead to, IMO, artificially inflating difficulty in the name of "challenging" the players.




It states "_When searching out a lie_" not "_to discern a lie_". To me this indicates that a straight up lie detector is _not_ the author's intent, but it can help you find clues to discover a lie (such as noticing subtle nervous ticks in a person's overall demeanor). Granted, the text leaves it some what open to interpretation, and I can see why some people may rule in favor of a lie detector. But our interpretation (Elfcrusher and myself) seems more in line with how other similar skills work in the game.

And what is narratively more interesting? To me, having to put the clues together is more fun than rolling a die and instantly knowing if someone's lying. Then again, fun is subjective.


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## Sadras (Apr 2, 2019)

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] raises some good points in his post - as well as that comparison to combat. 

Having said that, there are quite a few players that still enjoy an old tomb of horrors-like styled method of roleplaying where the players' words matter greatly. 

Some of us (presumably many) prefer the grey area in between. And some of us can expertly run separate styled games all of which would be discussed at session 0.

I'm easy enough (starved) to enjoy both styles.


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## Hussar (Apr 2, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> It states "_When searching out a lie_" not "_to discern a lie_". To me this indicates that a straight up lie detector is _not_ the author's intent, but it can help you find clues to discover a lie (such as noticing subtle nervous ticks in a person's overall demeanor). Granted, the text leaves it some what open to interpretation, and I can see why some people may rule in favor of a lie detector. But our interpretation (Elfcrusher and myself) seems more in line with how other similar skills work in the game.
> 
> And what is narratively more interesting? To me, having to put the clues together is more fun than rolling a die and instantly knowing if someone's lying. Then again, fun is subjective.




Well, I can't really see how you can "determine the true intentions of a creature" while being unaware that it's lying to you, but, hey, like I said, this sort of thing is not how I DM.  The players are already at massive disadvantages in nearly every situation.  This is a means to get information into the player's hands.  FANTASTIC.  Anything that gets more information into their hands and allows them to make decisions based on that information is a good thing, IMO.

Then again, I virtually never have anything that won't talk under interrogation.  You tell something that you'll let it go if it talks and, at my table, it'll sing like a bird.  The players know that and make a point of taking prisoners to talk to.  Because they know that a successful check will always give them some sort of success and I refuse, flat out refuse, to interpret rules in such a way to add disadvantages.

I mean, I have no idea why you would say that it "seems more in line with how other similar skills work".  How so?  Perception is pretty straight forward.  You make the check, you notice something, if there is something to be noticed.  It's not, "well, you notice a few clues that might point to something, but, might not".  It's, if you succeed in perception, "you detect the presence of something" (PHB 178).  A straight up Charisma check allows me to "Find the best person to talk to for news" (PHB 179)  There's nothing there to suggest that I have to describe how I do that.  I just do.

But, yes, I totally agree fun is subjective.  Totally get that.  What you're doing seems to really work for you folks.  And that's groovy.


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## Oofta (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If you think what some of us are saying is as simplistic as this, you're not understanding it.  I'm certainly not asking somebody to know _how_ to search for traps in the general sense, but I might ask them to use previous hints and clues to know what to do in a specific case.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The point is that it made sense to the story for there to be a trap but it's not a critical part of the story.  I'm also rewarding the rogue for investing in skills.  It's fast and simple so we can focus on the interesting parts of the story.  If the player (and the group) have fun going into detail, we have fun with it.  If they just want to roll dice we just roll dice.

Sometimes a trapped door is just a trapped door, sometimes a lock is just a lock.  You come across a chest in some random location.  Unless there's label on it saying "I'm trapped, please remove hinges first" I have no idea what you do. Since you never give real world details other than vague "hints and clues", we can only guess.  

As far as "what's the point", what's the point of: 
Player: "I attack the orc and get an 18" 
DM: "You hit"
Player: "I do 8 points of damage"​
Not every round of combat is that simple, not every trap is special.  I sprinkle in combat details on a regular basis especially for particularly cinematic moments, but just as often the interaction is as simple as that above.

I save detailed interactions to parts of the game that are engaging and fun.  Cop shows don't focus on (except in passing) the officer doing paperwork.  I don't focus on finding/removing traps, opening traps or climbing walls.    I don't expect players to remember "hints" I've dropped about every door in the entire world.  How would that even work?


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## Oofta (Apr 2, 2019)

Greenstone.Walker said:


> That is an important question for GMs to ask, to avoid the following situation.
> 
> Player: I search the door for traps.
> GM: As you touch it, contact poison seeps into your skin, make—
> Player: Hang on, I never said I touched the door! That's not fair!




I think [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] responded with better details, but the simple answer is "don't be a dick DM".  If you are, I'll walk.

After all I could also have
Player: "I look closely at the trap, leaning in to examine it.  I'm being careful not to touch it while rubbing my arm stub where we had to cut off my hand to stop the poison from last door."
DM: "Ha!  A needle springs forth and stabs you in the eye!  Not only do you take 20 points of damage from the poison but you're permanently blinded in that eye!"
Player: "Gah!  Not my good eye!"

I can play "gotcha" with whatever style of play you want.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 2, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> It states "_When searching out a lie_" not "_to discern a lie_". To me this indicates that a straight up lie detector is _not_ the author's intent, but it can help you find clues to discover a lie (such as noticing subtle nervous ticks in a person's overall demeanor). Granted, the text leaves it some what open to interpretation, and I can see why some people may rule in favor of a lie detector. But our interpretation (Elfcrusher and myself) seems more in line with how other similar skills work in the game.
> 
> And what is narratively more interesting? To me, having to put the clues together is more fun than rolling a die and instantly knowing if someone's lying. Then again, fun is subjective.



To me there is no way the very broad presentation of ability checks survives this degree of "did it exactly say you can do that? If not, nope" either as a representation of intent or playability.

Are your survival checks and wisdom checks completely limited by not only the list provided but a strict parsing of that text? Dexterity checks? Intelligence checks? Social checks?

Is what your takeaway for how 5e says about the scope to use ability checks "only strictly what is explicitly described here even down to how`?

"Your Wisdom insight check determines whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature..." 

Pause - the check determines... and the uncertainty is determining the true intentions- 

"such as when searching out a lie..."

Example in question is searching out a lie. 

At a very basic reading, you determine that this person is trying to deceive you, his intentions in this moment is to lie to you. 

But let's look later on...

The DM might ask you to make a wisdom survival check to follow tracks, hunt wild game, guide your group through, frozen wastelands, identify signs that owlbears live nearby."

In each of those, would you on a success give the **player** some clues  that the player then must use their own personal knowledge to solve? 

Does a successful guide thru frozen wastes check mean the player gets orienteering info to use in himself figuring it out? Dies the player need to then make their own personal "not freeze to death" decisiins given clues? Or does success mean the **character's skill** and the successful check mean the character makes the right use of the ingo?

For "signs of owlbears" do you provide some feathers and some pictures of footprints and rely on the player actually knowing what an owlbears track looks like for the player to figure it out? Or does the character see signs, read the signs and the **character** know owlbear?

More importantly, if a player is in an area without owlbears but with trolls, fo you decide that because strictly the skill references owlbears not trolls and so using that skill as a "troll detector" is not allowed?

That's just staying within wisdom and insight/survival.

The list of cases would grow with pretty much every ability snd skill if we chose to sometimes parse strictly and sometimes not, sometimes decide its *character succeed* and other times its *character waits for player to succeed*.

Me, player decides when, where, for what they apply the charscter trait, but the checks determine the character success and the results.

I have found over the years that creating two tiers of skills/traits/powers - in-player resolution and in-character resolution as core mechanic of system - leads to worse results that player application and character resolution across the board does.

So, I dont do that.


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2019)

Sadras said:


> [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] raises some good points in his post - as well as that comparison to combat.
> 
> Having said that, there are quite a few players that still enjoy an old tomb of horrors-like styled method of roleplaying where the players' words matter greatly.
> 
> ...




The DMG (and I) recommend the "middle path." (Or at least, the DMG suggests it has no downsides compared to other approaches. See DMG, pp. 236-237) In the "middle path," the DM balances the use of dice against deciding on success. By doing so, the players are incentivized to pay attention to the game world while also relying on their character mechanics, when necessary. Chiefly that's by choosing to engage in tasks for which the character has the best chance of success _if_ the player has to roll. If my character is good at finding traps, I'm going to be the guy who is really paying attention to the DM's description of the environment for clues that there is a trap, then putting my character in the best position to find them in hopes that I don't have to roll. But if I do have to roll, at least I've built my character to be pretty good at it and perhaps I have advantage or a lower DC due to my fictional positioning.

The other methods are relying on die rolls for almost everything or to use the dice as rarely as possible. In the former approach, the DMG says there's a risk that roleplaying diminishes because the players think their dice rolls, rather than their choices, determine success. In such a game, if my character is good at finding traps and the DM isn't into telegraphing, I'm going to just spam rolls at anything that might have a trap and hope I get lucky. In an approach that uses the dice as rarely as possible, the DMG says that, while this approach rewards creativity, no DM is completely neutral, favoring some players or approaches or directions for the game. Also, the game can slow down if the DM is hung up on the players describing the "One True Solution" to the challenge to the exclusion of all others. If I'm in a game like this, I'm going to be bored because I'm actually pretty bad at puzzles and coming up with the one solution that works to overcome the challenge is going to take me a long time (if I ever succeed at all).

Here's the thing though: I (and others, no doubt) practice the "middle path." But those who are debating me (or us, as the case may be) are asserting that we're trying to ignore the dice (as the DMG puts it). You can see it in the assertions they make ("gaming the DM," "magic words," etc.) and the examples they use. Which is not true, _from the DM's perspective_. While the _players_ should be trying to avoid rolling as much as possible (since the d20 is so unreliable), the _DM_ is balancing out the dice and calls for automatic success over time, chiefly because there are factors in the environment that cannot be controlled by the PCs and that introduce uncertainty as to the outcome of a task and a meaningful consequence of failure - which is when we call for a roll.

All that to say, what you're seeing in this thread are strawman arguments and statements of preference against approaches that myself and others do not employ. So one wonders what they're arguing about at all.


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## Sadras (Apr 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> Here's the thing though: I (and others, no doubt) practice the "middle path." But those who are debating me (or us, as the case may be) are asserting that we're trying to ignore the dice (as the DMG puts it). You can see it in the assertions they make ("gaming the DM," "magic words," etc.) and the examples they use. Which is not true, _from the DM's perspective_. While the _players_ should be trying to avoid rolling as much as possible (since the d20 is so unreliable), the _DM_ is balancing out the dice and calls for automatic success over time, chiefly because there are factors in the environment that cannot be controlled by the PCs and that introduce uncertainty as to the outcome of a task and a meaningful consequence of failure - which is when we call for a roll.
> 
> All that to say, what you're seeing in this thread are strawman arguments and statements of preference against approaches that myself and others do not employ. So one wonders what they're arguing about at all.




Agree.

Many argue from a point of "this happened to me", "bad DMs" and the like, but I usually take this with a pinch of salt for many of these stories are rooted in history and relate to when we were young and didn't know any better. Ofcourse exceptions exist (and I'm not here to discuss those)! Many of us here are 35+, we have outgrown (hopefully) the tyrannical DMing-shtick a long time ago. Online forums such as this and others, as well as podcasts and live youtube-games have helped train/mold a generation of players that previously didn't have this opportunity to share experiences and learn new techniques.


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## ParanoydStyle (Apr 2, 2019)

You guys are still talking about this? It's still 15.


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## robus (Apr 2, 2019)

ParanoydStyle said:


> You guys are still talking about this? It's still 15.




Ah, you’re new around here  This is a seasonable phenomenon, each year, in the Spring (for us in the north) the birds start to sing, the flowers start to bud and Enworld has the traditional player approach vs PC ability debate. It eventually peters out, and we’re almost there. But in summer we switch to the “high-level play is broken battle royale”


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> The point is that it made sense to the story for there to be a trap but it's not a critical part of the story.  I'm also rewarding the rogue for investing in skills.  It's fast and simple so we can focus on the interesting parts of the story.  If the player (and the group) have fun going into detail, we have fun with it.  If they just want to roll dice we just roll dice.




Fair enough.  Maybe our only point of difference is that I'll just tell the rogue he finds a trap (because he's good at it) but you'll make him roll.  I probably wouldn't actually put the trap there in that case, but whatever.



> Sometimes a trapped door is just a trapped door, sometimes a lock is just a lock.  You come across a chest in some random location.  Unless there's label on it saying "I'm trapped, please remove hinges first" I have no idea what you do. Since you never give real world details other than vague "hints and clues", we can only guess.




Yeah, I don't think you're understanding how this thing about hints and signaling works.  The above is not it, anyway.  No worries.



> As far as "what's the point", what's the point of:
> Player: "I attack the orc and get an 18"
> DM: "You hit"
> Player: "I do 8 points of damage"​




And look how many people complain endlessly that the fighter is too boring because he doesn't have enough special abilities.  I suspect that some of those people are the same people that think the game is played by looking at their character sheet and choosing abilities/actions/skills, not describing what they want to do.  But whatever.



> I save detailed interactions to parts of the game that are engaging and fun.




Me, too!  And if they're not engaging and fun I try not to waste time on them.  Like you said, table time is precious. 
 (Honestly it can be hard to re-train some players to understand they can stop searching for secret doors and detecting traps on every 5' square in the game.)



> I don't expect players to remember "hints" I've dropped about every door in the entire world.  How would that even work?




If you're genuinely asking:
1) You don't drop hints about "every door in the entire world": most of them are totally uninteresting.
2) The hints are interesting and significant so they either stick in their minds, or can be recalled when needed.
3) There's something about the special door that tells them they should stop and think.
4) Normal humans put 2+2 together.


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## Satyrn (Apr 2, 2019)

22.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 2, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Agree.
> 
> Many argue from a point of "this happened to me", "bad DMs" and the like, but I usually take this with a pinch of salt for many of these stories are rooted in history and relate to when we were young and didn't know any better. Ofcourse exceptions exist (and I'm not here to discuss those)! Many of us here are 35+, we have outgrown (hopefully) the tyrannical DMing-shtick a long time ago. Online forums such as this and others, as well as podcasts and live youtube-games have helped train/mold a generation of players that previously didn't have this opportunity to share experiences and learn new techniques.




certainly i would agree that we have generatioal differences at play in some cases but i would like to point out.

As far as i can see, everyone here is proposing methods of play and describing methods of play which all, everyone, represent The Middle Path as presented in the DMG. if i missed someone, then i am sorry but it seems to me that myself, oofta, hussaar and everyone else here is on board with the parts defined in The Middle Path a d describe using them.

*Balancing the use of dice against deciding whether or not a task succeeds - check.
Encouraging players to strike a balance between relying on bonuses and immersive efforts - check.
GM can decide auto-success  - yup (auto-fail too but that wasntl called out in the rule)
Good/bad plan - advantage or disad or otherwise influence outcome - check.
*

I have not seen anybody here posting any resolutions used in play that do not fit this model at all.

So, to me, this is not about "Are we using Middle path or not" but where we are deciding to place that "balance" between the two methods in actual play. 

For my games it tends to work like this...

*Balancing the use of dice against deciding whether or not a task succeeds - check.*
Outside of the obviously succeeding and failing cases like tie-your-shoes and jump to the moon, i use the auto-success rules in the DMG which let proficient character without disadvantage succeed automatically at easy or below. i also use the PHB defined "failure" to allow partial success with setback frequently to enable a middle ground between pass-fail. I will use passive checks to represent the long-term efforts and actually have a house rule for extended checks where skill should matter. In short, it is frewquent that the die roll is used as much for narrative determination as it is for just simple success-fail. "Your jump across the extra distance did not go as well as you had wished and you fell short, catching yourself on a ledge some 50' down on the cliff face on the other side. So, you did not fall into the pit and you are across but you took a little damage and now have to climb up a ways to get to the ledge."


*Encouraging players to strike a balance between relying on bonuses and immersive efforts - check.
*
Yup. Absolutely. Immersive and attentive tends to give you a lot more to work with, more ties to others you can call on, tons of opportuinties. When times for uncertainties come up, these will often lead to advantage or disadvantage. Did you interact with the shopkeeper, treat them well, or not, etc? these will matter when it comes time to talking them and others who know them into taking chances at your behest.

*GM can decide auto-success  - yup (auto-fail too but that wasnt called out in the rule)
*
Covered in the first bullet but yep. matter of fact, as i listed above i use the DMG rule for it to help show the benefit of proficiency as more than just a bonus. 

*Good/bad plan - advantage or disad or otherwise influence outcome - check.*

of course. the list for advantage and disadvantage broad cases  in the DMG is a good solid start and it focuses on "actions" and "plan" and "circumstances" - creating a pretty strong balance between those elements and the mechanics.

Sometimes, it almost feels like some folks want to claim "the middle path" as "their way" and even somehow include the rules that follow under using Ability Score (major header) as a subset of TMP.

But, from what i can see, almost everybody here is choosing a TMP option, just with sometimes widely varying ideas of where that *balance point* mentioned multiple times can be. 

To me, my way of thinking, the more i show my players that its me going to decide pass-fail for cases that matter and not their character stats c- both driven by their choices, especially if it is only for some stats for some characters more than for others, the less enjoyment we get in a game where very detailed specifics are chosen and "purchased" etc. if i am going to play a game where the "balance point" puts it at the point where " if we use the character traits, its worse for you" on any strategic sense, that game is gonna be a lot smaller and a lot less detailed and much more narrative based and such - like say ScreenTime or others.


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## Sadras (Apr 2, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> certainly i would agree that we have generatioal differences at play in some cases but i would like to point out.
> 
> As far as i can see, everyone here is proposing methods of play and describing methods of play which all, everyone, represent The Middle Path as presented in the DMG. if i missed someone, then i am sorry but it seems to me that myself, oofta, hussaar and everyone else here is on board with the parts defined in The Middle Path a d describe using them.
> 
> ...




You won't find any argument from me...but extreme examples have been used by either side at some point in this thread, despite this middle path utopia we are all in agreement of


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## iserith (Apr 2, 2019)

Sadras said:


> You won't find any argument from me...but extreme examples have been used by either side at some point in this thread, despite this middle path utopia we are all in agreement of




Yet another reason I don't like examples in forum threads.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 2, 2019)

Sadras said:


> You won't find any argument from me...but extreme examples have been used by either side at some point in this thread, despite this middle path utopia we are all in agreement of




Well, folks have been divided over "balance", often rather strongly,  and what it is since before the word existed, so thats not surprising at all.

Exactly. For my money the idea of trying to put labels on either side in a debate - be it "roleplayers" or rollplayers", "metagamer vs immersive", "We choose the middle path" vs "the other paths" etc etc etc usually serves to do little than to divide and dismiss. 

What matters much more than the label we drape ourselves in or plaster onto others is what happens in play and how the folks involve enjoy it or not. Actual results and outcomes so far outweigh the labels and theory that to me its almost at best pointless and usually counter-productive to grab for the label gun at every opportunity or option.

EDIT TO ADD: But on a related note, thats where the DMG presentation of the three paths IMo fails to be very useful at all. It provides two rather extreme examples and one rather broad undefined one with none of them having any rules suggestions or guidance within them. 

i think it would have been better to define three different paths, all equally playable - a heavy medium and light option for "checks" with some actual guidance for which of the options and a package of options to include in them. 

maybe check light uses the auto-success variants, the success at cost and uses the ability score/background proficiencies instead of the normal with optional rules for take-10 on the fly etc. That gives players and Gm a lot of pre-fab understood ways to see "dont need no roll here" and sets a higher bar for when a check is called for and even swaps the power of the success at setback to the player to a large degree.

meanwhile check heavy forbids passive checks and throwqs out the auto-success rules etc.

and middle path uses a mixture of them.

They then encourage you to pick and choose not just between the packages presented but the various parts to get to the campaign style you want between "checks" and "no checks".

 That would have been useful. It would have required little more than tagging many of the "role of the dice" options with a HML tag for which ones  of the three styles they felt it was appropriate for.

that would be what i call a guide's job, not just a list of options but more.

but thats likely me.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 2, 2019)

That was actually a pretty good post by 5ekyu.  Too bad I can't give him XP because he has me blocked.


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## Oofta (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Fair enough.  Maybe our only point of difference is that I'll just tell the rogue he finds a trap (because he's good at it) but you'll make him roll.  I probably wouldn't actually put the trap there in that case, but whatever.




I have a confession.  I generally only throw in traps if someone in the party has invested skills (particularly expertise) into disarming traps.  Then I throw in traps because I want them to feel like their investment is being rewarded.

In general, I avoid puzzles that can only be solved by the players and traps are frequently implemented as a type of puzzle.  In the same way that if I've set up a mystery, I'll give people an investigation or insight check if they seem stuck or are getting frustrated and give them a gentle push in the right direction.  Occasionally it's a hard shove because my clues weren't as obvious as I thought they would be.




Elfcrusher said:


> And look how many people complain endlessly that the fighter is too boring because he doesn't have enough special abilities.  I suspect that some of those people are the same people that think the game is played by looking at their character sheet and choosing abilities/actions/skills, not describing what they want to do.  But whatever.




I can't imagine how tedious it would be to have a high level fighter describe every blow in detail.

Like I said, sometimes "flair" is fine, encouraged even.  But every single swing of the weapon?  Repetitive boring snooze-o-rama.




Elfcrusher said:


> If you're genuinely asking:
> 1) You don't drop hints about "every door in the entire world": most of them are totally uninteresting.
> 2) The hints are interesting and significant so they either stick in their minds, or can be recalled when needed.
> 3) There's something about the special door that tells them they should stop and think.
> 4) Normal humans put 2+2 together.




I had flashbacks to this conversation the other day.  I'm a developer and without going into nitty-gritty details another developer kept stating that we should follow pattern "X" because it had been around a long time and it was "the best way to do something".

I kept trying to get him to show me (on our whiteboard) a simple example of his implementation because I didn't see what value it added in the specific scenario we were discussing.

I'm not saying you are saying your way is "best", but I keep asking for examples and I keep getting "what" and "why" but not "how".  What would a real world scenario look like?  Because I can see every once in a while the witch throws the bones and intones "beware the door with the carving depicting a smashed fey", but the majority of times that would be overkill.  If the owner of a chest is paranoid that his stuff will be stolen it may make logical sense for them to trap it.

So if my party is looting the room of a known rogue, they're going to be rightfully paranoid and searching for traps.  But there's nothing special about the closet door vs the chest vs the bureau vs that loose floorboard.

For me it's enough for them to say "we cautiously look for traps as we search the room".  I'll let them know it's going to take a while and then call for trap checks as appropriate.  But I didn't broadcast that it was the jewelry box that was trapped and I don't know how I would.  Or even if I did how I would handle it differently.

If I only used traps when it was so important to the story that I effectively told the party about it beforehand, I would almost never throw traps.  Why would anyone invest skills (much less expertise) in a game like that?

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear - an example or two of real-life scenario would be appreciated.  From anyone actually.


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## Sadras (Apr 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That was actually a pretty good post by 5ekyu.  Too bad I can't give him XP because he has me blocked.




Covered


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## pemerton (Apr 2, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?



This has the slightly weird result that a _more cunning/persuasive_ NPC is _more likely_ to seem insincere or at leat not to seem sincere.


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## S'mon (Apr 2, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This has the slightly weird result that a _more cunning/persuasive_ NPC is _more likely_ to seem insincere or at leat not to seem sincere.




Failed check result IMC is "You don't get a read on her" - she seems inscrutable, not insincere.


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## pemerton (Apr 3, 2019)

S'mon said:


> Failed check result IMC is "You don't get a read on her" - she seems inscrutable, not insincere.



I can see this, but it still seems a bit odd - shouldn't good CHA/Perception/Persuasion make it _more_ likely that the NPC can project an impression of _You read me as sincere_?


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 3, 2019)

Somewhat out of order to keep people's posts together. Multi-replying is easier than posting 3 or 4 times in a row. 



Elfcrusher said:


> Don't you think, if Insight was intended as lie detection, it would have read something along the lines of, "Insight decides whether you can tell if somebody is lying."  Why go through all the circumlocution of "determine the true intentions..."
> 
> Maybe, just _maybe_ it's because it's not intended as "lie detection".
> 
> ...




I think  I'm going to have to agree with Hussar on this one a little bit (and with how abrasive their being in this debate, I almost don't want to)

But, I don't know if I'd call this a bad use of the skill, or poor framing on the part of the GM.

See, by responding to an insight by telling me that the mechanic wants to make "a lot" of money, you are setting me up to believe he is lying to get more money. 

But beyond that, you are telling me his goals, and if I rolled to find out a merchant wants to make money, I'd probably ask the DM if they want me to roll for realizing water is wet while I'm at it. 

But what is their intent? Are they intent on gouging me for as much as I'm worth? Are they intent on providing the best service they can? 

Because that is what the player is likely asking anyways, is that price a real price or an inflated price. 

And frankly, why do this to someone anyways? 

I've had cars that needed to go to mechanics constantly, and I hate dealing with that sort of "toss a coin, you don't know" BS. Are you really advocating putting players through that just for the sake of realism? Is the best they are going to get from insight things like "The farmer doesn't want to die" "The merchant wants to make money" "The King thinks you should listen to him" 

The skill says it lets you figure out intentions. Is the mechanic intending to gouge me with false problems or inflated prices is a legit question, and your non-answer of "he wants to make a lot of money" means that we wasted our time, because I didn't need a skill roll to know that. 




Elfcrusher said:


> In any event, the point isn't to "provide extra narration" it's to give the player something to do, something to think about and solve, rather than simply remembering to make a skill check.
> 
> Given a choice between:
> 
> ...




See, that's great and all for when it is a major plot point. 

Spy game, the book of poems is a cypher telling them where the secret drop point is, and the spies having the same books of poems is the clue that led them to figuring that out. 

Very cool scenario. 


What clues did you seed into the world for Horse Trader #54 overcharging them for a riding horses? What series of events led to the clues the players will use when they randomly decide to search a traveling merchant's wagon that you only had pass by to deliver news of an orc presence to the south? 

Clues and breadcrumbs work great for major plot points. For minor stuff that your player's blindside you with, not so much. 

My players recently broke into an enemy castle to free it from the influence of a cult of Orcus. The criminal asked to search for valuables and loot the place. It makes perfect sense, it also makes sense there are hidden treasures in the royal chambers. Didn't plan on it though, because mostly the paladin and cleric keep him reined in and not stealing everything (players are fine with the dynamic, and they all loved him turning it on them). 

So, should I not have allowed him to search for treasures in the royal chambers? 

No, that seems a ridiculous answer. But, I also wasn't going to spend 10 minutes coming up with answers and deciding DC's only to have him roll a 1 (or a 2 or a 3, I know auto-fails are a houserule). So he rolled, and I decided based on his roll. It saved time and let him do something in character that made total sense.  


And I'll also add, a lot of my players don't have the mental space to remember all my clues. I'm lucky this semester to have a player willing to take notes we can refer back to, but we play in a weekly game and expecting someone to remember a clue that might have been given over 160 hours ago when they had an entire week full of other things to deal with.... Yeah, I'm only doing that for the big things in the main plot, it wouldn't make sense to try it any where else. 





Greenstone.Walker said:


> That is an important question for GMs to ask, to avoid the following situation.
> 
> Player: I search the door for traps.
> GM: As you touch it, contact poison seeps into your skin, make—
> Player: Hang on, I never said I touched the door! That's not fair!




Yeah, this is an important thing to avoid. 

But also, the reason why I prefer not to just let people roll without giving me some details is not just this, but also the fact that if a "master thief" never makes any mistakes then there are no teeth to those sorts of traps. 

You can't just have them trigger on players, and there is no fun if they never accidentally do something dangerous they regret, so sometimes you give them the choice of whether or not they do the potentially dangerous thing if it might mean a better chance at figuring out what the glowing artifact is.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 3, 2019)

I also want to reiterate something I said earlier, in terms of Quid Pro Quo between Player and DM. 


If the fighter wants to lie about having 40 armed soldiers waiting outside the cave to storm the bandit camp if they do not surrender, the Fighter will roll Deception. 

This is opposed by either a DC or the Bandit making a roll. 

The DC or the Roll would be determined by the Bandit's Insight or Wisdom. 

If the Fighter failed to beat that, the bandits will realize they are bluffing, AKA they were lying. 



Why then does the Fighter not get to Roll Insight when the Bandit Leader declares they have 80 bandits waiting in the caves to strike down a nearby town? If the Fighter succeeds on that Insight, why does the Fighter not get to say that they know the Bandit Leader is lying? 


Skills are equal between Player and DM, they must be used in the same manner for both parties.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can see this, but it still seems a bit odd - shouldn't good CHA/Perception/Persuasion make it _more_ likely that the NPC can project an impression of _You read me as sincere_?




Yes.  This is a great example of what I've been saying for years: a "good" system for detecting truthfulness would have positives, negatives, false positives, and false negatives.  You could never be sure.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I also want to reiterate something I said earlier, in terms of Quid Pro Quo between Player and DM.
> 
> If the fighter wants to lie about having 40 armed soldiers waiting outside the cave to storm the bandit camp if they do not surrender, the Fighter will roll Deception.
> 
> ...




For funsies, I'm going to rewrite this based on my understanding of the rules of D&D 5e:

The _goal_ here is to get the bandits to surrender and the _approach_ is by deceiving them into thinking the fighter has 40 armed soldiers waiting outside. The fighter's player _might_ roll a Charisma (Deception) check, if the DM determines the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. If the DM does decide an ability check is appropriate, he or she may assign a DC of his or her choosing or perhaps call for a contest using the bandit's Wisdom (Insight).

If the fighter's player fails the check, the bandits may realize they are bluffing _or_ the fighter may make some progress combined with a setback e.g. the bandit leader thinks the fighter could be telling the truth, but can't risk being wrong, so she orders her right hand thug to go outside the cave to verify the fighter's assertion. The DM turns to the players and asks "What do you do?"



Chaosmancer said:


> Why then does the Fighter not get to Roll Insight when the Bandit Leader declares they have 80 bandits waiting in the caves to strike down a nearby town? If the Fighter succeeds on that Insight, why does the Fighter not get to say that they know the Bandit Leader is lying?




The DM describes the environment as including a bandit leader who declares they have 80 bandits waiting in the caves to strike down a nearby town. The fighter's player, suspecting this is a bluff, describes that he or she wants to search out a lie (goal) by gleaning clues from his body language, speech habits, and changers in mannerisms (approach). The fighter's player might roll a Wisdom (Insight) check, if the DM determines the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. If the DM does decide an ability check is appropriate, he or she may assign a DC of his or her choosing or perhaps call for a contest using the bandit's Charisma (Deception). 

If the fighter's player succeeds in that check, the DM may say that the bandit is being untruthful. If the fighter's player fails in that check, the DM may say that the bandit leader gives nothing away and the search for the lie is unfruitful or the fighter may make some progress combined with a setback e.g. the bandit leader is being untruthful, but the bandit leader knows the fighter caught her in a lie, so she escalates the situation by declaring the parley over and demanding the PCs lay down their arms. The DM turns to the players and asks "What do you do?"

Regardless of success or failure on the check, the player always determines what his or her character thinks, does, and says. Therefore, even if the bandit leader is successful in hiding her lie from the fighter, the fighter's player can still choose to have the fighter believe the bandit leader is lying or not. It's up to the player.



Chaosmancer said:


> Skills are equal between Player and DM, they must be used in the same manner for both parties.




The adjudication process is the same, but many things can differ even in substantially similar situations.


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## S'mon (Apr 3, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can see this, but it still seems a bit odd - shouldn't good CHA/Perception/Persuasion make it _more_ likely that the NPC can project an impression of _You read me as sincere_?




Well in this case it was a 'used car salesman' slaver who the PCs had reason to distrust - they were supposed to be capturing her for a crime boss & bringing her back for torture and execution. IME high Deception IRL doesn't really correlate to a general impression of sincerity!


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## Hussar (Apr 3, 2019)

iserith said:


> /snip
> 
> Here's the thing though: I (and others, no doubt) practice the "middle path." But those who are debating me (or us, as the case may be) are asserting that we're trying to ignore the dice (as the DMG puts it). You can see it in the assertions they make ("gaming the DM," "magic words," etc.) and the examples they use. Which is not true, _from the DM's perspective_. While the _players_ should be trying to avoid rolling as much as possible (since the d20 is so unreliable), the _DM_ is balancing out the dice and calls for automatic success over time, chiefly because there are factors in the environment that cannot be controlled by the PCs and that introduce uncertainty as to the outcome of a task and a meaningful consequence of failure - which is when we call for a roll.
> 
> All that to say, what you're seeing in this thread are strawman arguments and statements of preference against approaches that myself and others do not employ. So one wonders what they're arguing about at all.




Hang on though.  You specifically stated that the goal of your style of play is to minimize die rolling.  That the purpose of the descriptions provided by the players was to ensure that rolling doesn't happen.

How is that a strawman to say that that's not a balanced approach?  To me, if your goal is to minimize die rolling, that's not the middle path.   I mean, heck, right in THIS QUOTE, you are stating that the goal of your playstyle is to avoid rolling as much as possible. 

Which, to me, means that the DM must judge when rolling is appropriate.  After all, the players can't.  So, if the player's goal is to minimize die rolling and the DM's role is the judge their attempts, how do you avoid gaming the DM?  Isn't the player's goal pretty much directly tied to how well they can convince the DM?

WHere's the strawman here?

 LOok, not every disagreement is a logical fallacy.  When someone actually takes your specific argument and can show that your specfic point leads to an undesirable (from my point of view anyway) outcome, how is that a strawman?  

Why can't folks actually come up with points without trying to score?  You say I'm misrepresenting you somehow.  I'm not seeing it at all.  Claiming that it only applies to a "degenerative" form of your playstyle doesn't really convince me when THE WHOLE POINT of your play style is to convince the DM that a die roll isn't necessary.


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## Hussar (Apr 3, 2019)

Would just like to say that there have been some really fantastic points raised in the past couple of pages.  And I sincerely mean that for both sides of the fence.  I know I come across as abrasive.  I can't help it.  I try to write in a pretty formal style which, I know annoys folks.  I've never been able to break the habit.

Anyway, the two examples above that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is using are really excellent IMO.  Needless to say, I would rule them slightly differently.   

In the first example, the fighter is trying to bluff the bandit king.  How this would work at my table would likely be (and, remember, I use Fantasy Grounds which allows players to make rolls that only the DM can see - it does speed things up considerably).  Note, it's also entirely possible that this would be done in first person, I'm not going to bother here just because it's quicker.  Imagine the in character speech happening.  Some of my players do, some don't.

Fighter - Ok, I tell the bandits we have a posse of 40 warriors outside, they must surrender.  ((Rolls on the Die Tower - cannot see the results)).

DM - ((Results are high enough to beat the bandit's insight)) - With disgust they lower their weapons and you take them prisoner.
DM - ((Results Fail)) - They see through your bluff and attack (honestly, probably the most likely outcome).
        ((Resuts Fail)) -  The Bandit leader commands one of his flunkies to go outside and look.  WHat do you do?  (an outcome that is only likely if I am having a good day and there is more information I want to get into the player's hands.  Possible, but, frankly, not likely)

Or, reverse situation:

DM - The bandit leader tells you that he has 80 bandits ready to strike the town if you don't surrender.  
Player:  I try to see if he's lying.  ((Rolls Insight))
Player 2 :  is there any way I can help here?  ((Not really)), Ok, I'll insight too.
DM:  ((Success)) You see through his bluff.  What do you do?
DM:  ((Fail)) You don't know.  What do you do?

IOW, the end results aren't all that different really.  Only real difference is, I let the players leverage their characters rather than their ability to tell me things like "by gleaning clues from his body language, speech habits, and changers in mannerisms (approach)."  Because, frankly, I have to assume that the if the player doesn't tell you these things, he will automatically fail, no?  He's not allowed to just say, "I use Insight".  He has to tell you _how _ he's using insight.  And, presumably, the player can't simply quote the PHB to you every time.  I highly doubt that that's acceptable after the third or fourth time.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Hang on though.  You specifically stated that the goal of your style of play is to minimize die rolling.  That the purpose of the descriptions provided by the players was to ensure that rolling doesn't happen.




As I point out in the part of the post you quoted, that is the _players'_ approach. As a _player_, one wants to position the character to succeed automatically. Or, failing that, gaining advantage and/or minimizing the DC and/or engaging in tasks for which the character has a good related ability score and skill proficiency. Why put your faith in a fickle d20 by asking to make checks (directly or indirectly) if success is your goal? That would be a terrible strategy.

The _DM_, by practicing the "middle path," balances ruling automatic success and calling for ability checks.



Hussar said:


> How is that a strawman to say that that's not a balanced approach?  To me, if your goal is to minimize die rolling, that's not the middle path.   I mean, heck, right in THIS QUOTE, you are stating that the goal of your playstyle is to avoid rolling as much as possible.
> 
> Which, to me, means that the DM must judge when rolling is appropriate.  After all, the players can't.  So, if the player's goal is to minimize die rolling and the DM's role is the judge their attempts, how do you avoid gaming the DM?  Isn't the player's goal pretty much directly tied to how well they can convince the DM?
> 
> ...




Here, again, you try to assert that what we're doing is the "ignoring the dice" method (as the DMG calls it) with all the "gaming the DM" and the "pixel-bitching" that comes with it. That's not the approach we're using as DMs. So when you criticize the approach as having those things, you're attacking a method we are not using.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2019)

Hussar said:


> IOW, the end results aren't all that different really.  Only real difference is, I let the players leverage their characters rather than their ability to tell me things like "by gleaning clues from his body language, speech habits, and changers in mannerisms (approach)."  Because, frankly, I have to assume that the if the player doesn't tell you these things, he will automatically fail, no?  He's not allowed to just say, "I use Insight".  He has to tell you _how _ he's using insight.  And, presumably, the player can't simply quote the PHB to you every time.  I highly doubt that that's acceptable after the third or fourth time.




So as you show in your second example, one player is trying to give the other player advantage on the Insight check via working together on the task (or at least tries to). That is reasonable behavior if you're trying to succeed.

Now take it one step further _as a player_: Before asking the DM to make a check (which is not supported by the rules of this game, but we can ignore that for now), try to remove the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence for failure so you don't have to roll at all. The DM can't call for an ability check if there is no uncertainty or meaningful consequence for failure. That may or may not be possible in this specific situation, but that is something the players are aiming for because, again, the d20 is nobody's friend - automatic success is more desirable if success at the least cost is the goal.

But, again, that is the _player's _goal. The _DM_ is employing the "middle path" approach. In the example I wrote, the DM calls for ability checks because the players have not removed the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 3, 2019)

Any time I see the phrase, "middle path" I automatically parse it as, "one true way".


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> See, by responding to an insight by telling me that the mechanic wants to make "a lot" of money, you are setting me up to believe he is lying to get more money.
> 
> But beyond that, you are telling me his goals, and if I rolled to find out a merchant wants to make money, I'd probably ask the DM if they want me to roll for realizing water is wet while I'm at it.
> 
> ...




I may have phrased it poorly, but I think there's a difference between a merchant/mechanic "wanting to make money" (which is obvious) and the player/customer realizing that this particular merchant/mechanic is being greedy.

So let me elaborate a little bit.

First, if this is just a normal transaction, and the NPC is just a shop owner with no other role to play in the adventure, then I'm going to signal that to the players so they don't waste time.  (And by "signal" I might mean something along the lines of, "He's just shop owner...he doesn't know anything.")

Now, I realize some people don't like that.  They want the platonic ideal of a sandbox, where every NPC is a roleplaying opportunity that may lead to adventure.  I don't like to play in games like that, and I don't run games like that.  Table time is too scarce, and from my experience it's usually one player who wants to engage in a deep conversation with every NPC while everybody else sits around and fiddles with D&D Beyond.   Also, I have very little interest in tracking copper pieces and haggling over prices.  Unless something is going to cost a significant chunk of a character's stash I tend to hand-wave prices: I don't make players account for every mug of ale and night in an inn.  So making skill checks (sorry, iserith, I meant ability checks with skill proficiency modifiers) to haggle over prices just doesn't interest me.

Ok, so with that out of the way, let's assume we're talking with an NPC who plays a more active role in the story.  Somebody who, depending on how the interaction with the players go, could affect the outcome.  And that's the core of it for me: _will this interaction affect the trajectory of the story in a meaningful way?_  If so, then the merchant's...let's say he's a merchant...the merchant's "true intentions" matter.  The players might, during negotiations (which itself, in my game, is a signal that this NPC is relevant) over a price for something, glean that he:
 - Wants to gouge them
 - Wants to be highly respected for his products/services
 - Enjoys haggling for its own sake
 - Is trying to rush them out the door
 - Is trying to keep them here
 - Doesn't want to do the work but won't say so
 - Is fishing for something other than money
 - Is lonely and just wants to talk

I lost momentum but with a little thought I could keep going.  Do you see how each of those "true intentions" could be a hint as to the 'truth' of what he is saying, without it being a true/false lie detector?  And maybe how using that clue as a basis to decide what to do next is a lot more fun than just rolling an 18, being told he's lying, and acting accordingly?



> What clues did you seed into the world for Horse Trader #54 overcharging them for a riding horses?What series of events led to the clues the players will use when they randomly decide to search a traveling merchant's wagon that you only had pass by to deliver news of an orc presence to the south?
> 
> Clues and breadcrumbs work great for major plot points. For minor stuff that your player's blindside you with, not so much.




Hopefully what I wrote above addresses those questions/points.



> My players recently broke into an enemy castle to free it from the influence of a cult of Orcus. The criminal asked to search for valuables and loot the place. It makes perfect sense, it also makes sense there are hidden treasures in the royal chambers. Didn't plan on it though, because mostly the paladin and cleric keep him reined in and not stealing everything (players are fine with the dynamic, and they all loved him turning it on them).
> 
> So, should I not have allowed him to search for treasures in the royal chambers?
> 
> No, that seems a ridiculous answer. But, I also wasn't going to spend 10 minutes coming up with answers and deciding DC's only to have him roll a 1 (or a 2 or a 3, I know auto-fails are a houserule). So he rolled, and I decided based on his roll. It saved time and let him do something in character that made total sense.




As I mentioned in a previous post, this is the perfect place to use straight up dice rolls.  I might do something like, "Ok, it's going to take a few successes with a high DC, and every attempt takes a few minutes, during which I am going to roll to see if the guards stumble upon you.  What do you want to do?"  It's not just make a roll, and if you succeed you find treasure, if you fail you don't.  There's no consequences to that, no trade-off. (And I think the core idea underlying all meaningful games, not just RPGs, is_ trade-offs._)

In fact, just in general I would say that if there's no downside to failing a roll, I would rather not have a roll.  In combat, missing your sword swing is bad.  At the very least there's an opportunity cost: you would have been better off taking the Dodge action.  Or spending Inspiration.  Or whatever.  

In fact, in the merchant example above I struggle with having any die roll at all, for exactly that reason.  I might simply give a clue to whoever has the highest Insight.  Or spread them around, if there are several clues.  Just because there's no cost to failure of an Insight check. (And consequences can help mitigate "Can I roll, too?" syndrome.)

(This is why I kind of like the idea of a "lie detector" sub-system/mini-game, using a combination of Insight, Investigation, Persuasion, and Deception, which is an intentional attempt to trap somebody in a lie.  It can be done purely mechanically, with dice, preferably over several rounds of rolling, and can give you a binary answer*, but it comes with a trade-off: you can easily anger the NPC.

*binary in the sense that you can determine he is lying, or be unable to determine he is lying, but maybe can't 'prove' he is telling the truth.)



> And I'll also add, a lot of my players don't have the mental space to remember all my clues. I'm lucky this semester to have a player willing to take notes we can refer back to, but we play in a weekly game and expecting someone to remember a clue that might have been given over 160 hours ago when they had an entire week full of other things to deal with.... Yeah, I'm only doing that for the big things in the main plot, it wouldn't make sense to try it any where else.




Yes, that's an issue.  I also have a couple of players who take notes, and I also email around a synopsis before each session.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Oh, and for those who would rather roleplay lie detection than simply make it a roll: give the players a piece of information that the NPC wouldn't expect them to have.  They can use that in conversation to find out if the NPC is lying.  If they are struggling, a successful Insight check could result in, "You realize that the NPC doesn't know that you know X..."

To address Oofta's concern: no, you don't give them bits of info for every single NPC in the game, so they can find out if the innkeeper is lying.  You save this for the NPC who's truth/insincerity is going to have impact on the story.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Any time I see the phrase, "middle path" I automatically parse it as, "one true way".



That certainly seems like a problem you should work on.


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## Bawylie (Apr 3, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Any time I see the phrase, "middle path" I automatically parse it as, "one true way".




The Middle Path, or the via media, is a philosophical and religious concept going back thousands of years. It’s the explicit rejection of dogma (and zealotry) and the embrace of moderation. The idea is to find a workable mode of operation among extremes without yourself becoming compromised by those extremes. 

So if you read it as “the one true way” you’re actually arriving at the opposite of its aim - that is the rejection of all such “one true ways.” 

You might say that IS advocating one specific approach over all others. But it’s not. It’s more like recognizing the wide space area between alcoholic and teetotaler and navigating between those extremes. There’s space between All Dice For All Actions and Never Roll Ever. Speaking for myself, I’m only looking to navigate that space in a way that is fair, avoids the appearance of being unfair, enables players’ decisions to influence outcomes more than dice rolls influence outcomes, and facilitated play. 

So insofar as it is One True Way, it’s a way that’s 10 miles wide with very few delineations. I don’t argue that you must play my way to the exclusion of all other modes of play. I’m only saying I found a path that’s reasonably effective, clear, direct, and safe. A middle path. 

The DC to determine whether or not I’m truthful about my position is null - no matter what you might roll, this is my sincere position. If you did roll for everything, even a negative result would be a success here.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

iserith said:


> The DM describes the environment as including a bandit leader who declares they have 80 bandits waiting in the caves to strike down a nearby town. The fighter's player, suspecting this is a bluff, describes that he or she wants to search out a lie (goal) by gleaning clues from his body language, speech habits, and changers in mannerisms (approach). The fighter's player might roll a Wisdom (Insight) check, if the DM determines the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. If the DM does decide an ability check is appropriate, he or she may assign a DC of his or her choosing or perhaps call for a contest using the bandit's Charisma (Deception).
> 
> If the fighter's player succeeds in that check, *the DM may say that the bandit is being untruthful.*




The only thing I would change here is that instead of saying, "he is being untruthful," I would reveal the bandit's "true intention": _he is hoping to convince the players to go away without a fight._


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh, and for those who would rather roleplay lie detection than simply make it a roll: give the players a piece of information that the NPC wouldn't expect them to have.  They can use that in conversation to find out if the NPC is lying.  If they are struggling, a successful Insight check could result in, "You realize that the NPC doesn't know that you know X..."
> 
> To address Oofta's concern: no, you don't give them bits of info for every single NPC in the game, so they can find out if the innkeeper is lying.  You save this for the NPC who's truth/insincerity is going to have impact on the story.




You can also run social interaction challenges as the DMG suggests and give NPCs an ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda. If the PCs work to discover those characteristics, they might be used in context to show the NPC is lying about something.


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## Oofta (Apr 3, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> That certainly seems like a problem you should work on.




Actually I kind of agree with [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION]. It sure seems like a lot (not all) people who are now claiming "middle of the road" are most likely to have made statements like



> If an NPC is telling the truth, they exhibit no signs that they are lying, therefore there is no uncertainty if a PC attempts to discern whether or not they are lying by observing their behavior.




Which sounds pretty "one true way" to me.  Maybe they aren't meant that way.

vs


> In my game...




Maybe people aren't as strict/absolutist as their postings make them sound.  But I get tired of being accused of misrepresenting what people do when they won't give examples when asked.

In addition, telling someone they're not allowed to their opinion is just tacky.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But I get tired of being accused of misrepresenting what people do when they won't give examples when asked.




I suspect that's directed at me.  I thought I had sprinkled several examples in my posts, but maybe you missed them.

Tell you what (if that _was_ directed at me): give me some parameters, as specific as you like, using whatever skill you like, and I'll give a detailed example.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 3, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Actually I kind of agree with [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION]. It sure seems like a lot (not all) people who are now claiming "middle of the road" are most likely to have made statements like
> 
> 
> 
> Which sounds pretty "one true way" to me.  Maybe they aren't meant that way.



That sounds like a problem you should work on.



> vs
> 
> 
> Maybe people aren't as strict/absolutist as their postings make them sound.  But I get tired of being accused of misrepresenting what people do when they won't give examples when asked.
> ...



Yes, it is shocking that people don't explicitly call out their opinion as their opinion every single time they post, especially in threads where asked opinions are asked for. I, sadly, expect your experience with this problem is rapidly coming to a middle.


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## Bawylie (Apr 3, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Actually I kind of agree with [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION]. It sure seems like a lot (not all) people who are now claiming "middle of the road" are most likely to have made statements like
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I agree that telling someone they aren’t entitled to their opinion is tacky. 

I understand that when someone disagrees with me, they’re not saying I’m not entitled to my opinion. They just think I’m wrong. Reasonable folks can disagree in good faith.


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## Oofta (Apr 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suspect that's directed at me.  I thought I had sprinkled several examples in my posts, but maybe you missed them.
> 
> Tell you what (if that _was_ directed at me): give me some parameters, as specific as you like, using whatever skill you like, and I'll give a detailed example.




Not entirely directed at you, but this has been a recurring issue.

Scenario 1:
The NPC is telling the truth. The player (for whatever reason) is suspicious.

How I'd handle it:
DM as NPC: "I don't know anything about the missing jewels"
Player: "I don't believe him. " Rolling dice "I get an 18 insight" 
     or: "I don't believe him, can I roll an insight?"
     or: "I don't believe him, does he look like he's trying to be deceptive?"
DM: ask for an insight roll if they didn't already give one.  DM rolls dice and ignores result responding  "They seem to be telling the truth"

In this scenario I don't care how the player declares what they're trying to do.  The intent is clear.  If they roll high enough I may give them some additional info that the NPC is nervous about something but not necessarily lying.  Low enough?  Maybe they believe the NPC is lying.  Depends on specifics.

Scenario 2:
The NPC is lying.

See above with appropriate results.  I never say "they're lying" it would be "they don't seem to be telling the truth" or "they seem to be hiding something.  Failed insight? "They seem to be telling the truth".

Scenario 3:
The door is trapped.  

If the PCs have declared ahead of time they're being cautious I'll ask for an investigation to find the trap.  In no way does that mean they grab the contact-poison covered door handle.  I may ask for checks now and then even on untrapped doors, depends on the game and mood I'm trying to set.

If the PCs are moving at a normal pace, I'll probably use passive investigation possibly with an increased DC.

If the PCs are moving quickly (i.e. bravely retreating from the ancient red dragon they just pissed off), they probably won't get a check.

If the door is not trapped but they still want to investigate it for traps, I let them.  The response will be "the door does not appear to be trapped".

Scenario 4:
Disarming a trap.

Most of the time I'll just call for a check.  Occasionally I'll make it more difficult and ask for details because it requires multiple actions or something that's potentially risky from the perspective of the PC.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Actually, I wanted you to be even _more_ specific.  Like, what is the setup?  What's the NPC lying about?  Why?  But, ok, you made it much easier than that.  (If requiring more typing, with 4 scenarios...)



Oofta said:


> Not entirely directed at you, but this has been a recurring issue.
> 
> Scenario 1:
> The NPC is telling the truth. The player (for whatever reason) is suspicious.
> ...




Scenario: they're talking to the estranged sister of an NPC they're trying to find, who claims not to have seen him in years.  
Clue: The DM let the heroes find a letter she wrote to him only months ago.

NPC: "No, I haven't seen him in 11 years, ever since (fill in backstory)"
Player (using clue): "And you haven't tried to contact him in all this time?"
NPC: "Oh, I've tried to contact him, all right.  Just a few months ago I sent a letter to an inn I know he used to frequent, hoping it would get to him.  Never heard anything back."

The fact that she didn't try to hide the existence of the letter should be a strong hint she isn't lying.  And now they have another clue, by asking her which inn she sent the letter to.

If the players get stuck, a successful Insight check might prod them with a clue to the clue.  "You notice she hasn't said anything about trying to find him, just that she hasn't heard from him."

EDIT: And I'll add that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is entirely right: the other way you could do this is to generate bonds/flaws/ideals/theoneI'mforgetting and on successful Insight checks reveal those, and should provide hints as to the situation.



> Scenario 2:
> The NPC is lying.
> 
> See above with appropriate results.  I never say "they're lying" it would be "they don't seem to be telling the truth" or "they seem to be hiding something.  Failed insight? "They seem to be telling the truth".




"Why would I try to contact that ungrateful wretch?"

(Again, Insight for a clue to a clue.)



> Scenario 3:
> The door is trapped.
> 
> If the PCs have declared ahead of time they're being cautious I'll ask for an investigation to find the trap.  In no way does that mean they grab the contact-poison covered door handle.  I may ask for checks now and then even on untrapped doors, depends on the game and mood I'm trying to set.
> ...




Going with contact-poison handle on a door for the setup.  I still don't know the overall scenario, but here are some hints that could have been dropped
 - On an earlier, similar door, you let them notice the contact poison automatically
 - There is a not-so-fresh corpse in front of the door, with a discoloured hand and froth coming out of its mouth.  Looks like it died in agony.
If this is an important/significant door, where they are likely to be cautious, the hints could have come earlier:
 - The players previously found a small "lab" table with a recipe for contact poison, and some ingredients, including something with a distinct smell (vinegar? ammonia? feces? purple worm slime?)
 - At the door, if somebody says they want to inspect the door, let them catch a faint whiff of vinegar.



> Scenario 4:
> Disarming a trap.
> 
> Most of the time I'll just call for a check.  Occasionally I'll make it more difficult and ask for details because it requires multiple actions or something that's potentially risky from the perspective of the PC.




There's too much unsaid here for me, but here are some variants:
 - If finding the trap was the challenge, then I'd let disarming be automatic if they propose anything remotely reasonable sounding.  ("Can I wash the poison off?"  "Sure.")
 - If finding the trap is easy and disarming the trap was supposed to be the challenge, then I would have used a clue similar to the poison scenario.
 - If there's time pressure...maybe they're being chased by something...then I'd use the roll, or multiple rolls, to determine how long it takes.  Maybe combat would even start, and there's the rogue, still making an attempt on each turn (and wishing he had taken the Thief sub-class).
 - I might even use a straight-up Thieves' Tools roll with some kind of consequences.  "If you just try to avoid the scything blades you'll make a saving throw.  If you disarm and succeed you succeed, but if you fail you'll have to make the same saving throw at disadvantage."

Again, the theme is trade-offs.  If there's no trade-off, then why roll?

This is what I find boring:
Player: "I'll check to see if the door is trapped."
DM: "Roll Investigation."
Player: "17"
DM: "You find contact poison on the doorknob."
Player: "I'll try to disarm it."
DM: "Roll Thieves' Tools"
Player: "8"
DM: "You blow it.  Make a save versus poison..."


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Now, I realize some people don't like that.  They want the platonic ideal of a sandbox, where every NPC is a roleplaying opportunity that may lead to adventure.  I don't like to play in games like that, and I don't run games like that.  Table time is too scarce, and from my experience it's usually one player who wants to engage in a deep conversation with every NPC while everybody else sits around and fiddles with D&D Beyond.   Also, I have very little interest in tracking copper pieces and haggling over prices.  Unless something is going to cost a significant chunk of a character's stash I tend to hand-wave prices: I don't make players account for every mug of ale and night in an inn.  So making skill checks (sorry, iserith, I meant ability checks with skill proficiency modifiers) to haggle over prices just doesn't interest me.
> 
> Ok, so with that out of the way, let's assume we're talking with an NPC who plays a more active role in the story.  Somebody who, depending on how the interaction with the players go, could affect the outcome.  And that's the core of it for me: _will this interaction affect the trajectory of the story in a meaningful way?_  If so, then the merchant's...let's say he's a merchant...the merchant's "true intentions" matter.  The players might, during negotiations (which itself, in my game, is a signal that this NPC is relevant) over a price for something, glean that he:
> .




I think covers a huge bit of it. 

Yeah, table time is precious, but my players get interested by some of the more obscure parts of the system sometimes. We've run afoul of the crafting system *so many times* because I have a cache of players who love exploring that system, despite how it does not work right per RAW (We've come up with a variety of HB options, but none quite right yet)

And so, sometimes they get interested in seeking out some random merchant, especially if I mention they are particularly quirky, and making it into a roleplaying moment. So I'm mentally prepared to have any encounter turn into a social encounter almost at the drop of a hat. 

Sounds like your tables have a much more established SOP and they don't end up committing to things quite so randomly, so for you them looking up a crazy old woman to buy chicken blood from her (seriously, they were super-impressed about that chicken blood for some reason) is a rare occurrence, while for me it happens often enough I try and account for it in my SOP, such as it is.


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## Oofta (Apr 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Actually, I wanted you to be even _more_ specific.  Like, what is the setup?  What's the NPC lying about?  Why?  But, ok, you made it much easier than that.  (If requiring more typing, with 4 scenarios...)
> 
> 
> 
> ...




A key difference to our approaches is that what _you_ know determines whether or not the players do an insight check.  As far as the players are concerned the letter could have been a forgery.  Or maybe she did write the letter but ensured it would never be delivered and she's just covering her tracks.

To be clear - I have back-and-forth conversations with NPCs all the time.  But in this scenario you aren't resolving a contest so the players now know she's telling the truth, at least about the direct answers she's given.

So to me, the specific scenario doesn't matter.  If the players think the PCs would suspect the NPC is lying, then the PCs suspect the NPC is lying.  The logical result of that would be to try to determine if the NPC is lying: an insight check.




Elfcrusher said:


> "Why would I try to contact that ungrateful wretch?"
> 
> (Again, Insight for a clue to a clue.)




I could see doing that. I may even call for an insight check or use passive values. 



Elfcrusher said:


> Going with contact-poison handle on a door for the setup.  I still don't know the overall scenario, but here are some hints that could have been dropped
> - On an earlier, similar door, you let them notice the contact poison automatically
> - There is a not-so-fresh corpse in front of the door, with a discoloured hand and froth coming out of its mouth.  Looks like it died in agony.
> If this is an important/significant door, where they are likely to be cautious, the hints could have come earlier:
> ...




What you find boring I find expedient.  Same as a fighter describing every single swing of the sword.  Sometimes it's as simple as a roll of the dice, sometimes it's not.

So a specific scenario?  Like the one I gave earlier.  The PCs are searching the house of Baron Von Uppity-Up who they suspect is really The Black Snake.  Mr Snake has a reputation of being paranoid, and is someone likely to booby-trap their house.

The group has no idea what specifically is trapped or how.  If anything is trapped.  What does that session look like in your game?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Oofta said:


> A key difference to our approaches is that what _you_ know determines whether or not the players do an insight check.




Not sure what you mean by "do an Insight check".

A) If you mean the players state they want to use Insight ("Can I roll Insight?" "And me, too?"), then here I'm totally with [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]: the players should state what they do and the DM will determine if an Insight check is called for.

B) If what you mean is that the DM calls for an Insight check, then I don't think I'm changing much.  If the players say, "I'd like to look at her body language and listen carefully to her words and see if I can get any clues as to whether she's being truthful" then I can either ask for an Insight check, or just decide to give them the clue, and say, "Well, all she's said is that she hasn't seen him, not that she hasn't heard from him, or tried to contact him..." and see if they take the bait.



> As far as the players are concerned the letter could have been a forgery.  Or maybe she did write the letter but ensured it would never be delivered and she's just covering her tracks.
> 
> To be clear - I have back-and-forth conversations with NPCs all the time.  But in this scenario you aren't resolving a contest so the players now know she's telling the truth, at least about the direct answers she's given.




Sure.  But as I've said before in many cases (including this one) I think games are more dramatic and immersive (in the sense that you feel what your character is feeling) if you never know with certainty if somebody is lying. 



> So to me, the specific scenario doesn't matter.  If the players think the PCs would suspect the NPC is lying, then the PCs suspect the NPC is lying.  The logical result of that would be to try to determine if the NPC is lying: an insight check.




Agreed.  I just don't think the result should be black & white.  (Note that even if you parse the description of Insight the way Hussar does, it most definitely does not say you should get clear, unambiguous answers.)





> So a specific scenario?  Like the one I gave earlier.  The PCs are searching the house of Baron Von Uppity-Up who they suspect is really The Black Snake.  Mr Snake has a reputation of being paranoid, and is someone likely to booby-trap their house.
> 
> The group has no idea what specifically is trapped or how.  If anything is trapped.  What does that session look like in your game?




Ok, you got me.  By a "specific scenario" I meant one trap (or one lie).  For the occasional trap I can make it a puzzle to solve instead of a straight dice roll.

My answer here is that I would just never run an adventure like this.  (At least, I would never _write_ an adventure like this.  If somebody like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] wrote it I would definitely take a look.)  D&D just isn't suited for interesting resolution of traps.  

And, as a player, if were in this adventure and it was literally just Investigation roll followed by Thieves' Tools roll, I would be bored stiff.  Either that or I would play something with high survivability and then storm through the house kicking open all the doors and smashing all the chests, and hope for the best.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I think covers a huge bit of it.
> 
> Yeah, table time is precious, but my players get interested by some of the more obscure parts of the system sometimes. We've run afoul of the crafting system *so many times* because I have a cache of players who love exploring that system, despite how it does not work right per RAW (We've come up with a variety of HB options, but none quite right yet)
> 
> ...




I don't always play with the same people, and within that group there's variance, so sometimes I still get the sort of thing you're describing.  I'm really not good at on the spot improvisation, but one thing I do is have NPC "roles" that need to be filled, and if the players do something unexpected then I can create an NPC on the fly who is going to fill that role.  Now the crazy old lady selling chicken blood fits neatly into my adventure, because she's the one who gives them that clue I was saving.

And sometimes I just have to do my best with the improv, fulfilling their need to explore.  But when they say, "I want to see if I can detect any signs that she's lying" I don't call for Insight and then say, "Not as far as you can tell" no matter what they roll.  I just shrug and say, "She doesn't seem to be doing anything suspicious...I mean, aside from being a nutty old woman who sells chicken blood."


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

I've been thinking more about how to handle a house _full_ of traps.  Now, this might piss off some of you, but here's how I might do that:

As my players describe where they look for traps I'll respond by describing a trap _in every location they look._

"Yup, there seems to be little holes in the ceiling.  Some look like nozzles or vents."
"Yeah, you can see suspicious squares all over the floor."
"If you look carefully and tilt your head, you see light glinting off of faint gossamer threads criss-crossing the room, but they disappear as quickly as you see them."
"The scything blade traps in the doors are so obvious it's almost an insult to your expertise."
"Oh, yeah, your Detect Magic goes totally haywire.  It's like staring at the sun, while tripping and listening to Pink Floyd."
etc.

No matter what they examine, I'll improvise a new trap.  (Sam Kinison as DM: "You want a sandbox!?!?!  HERE'S YOUR MUTHA$%#!ing SANDBOX!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!")

Maybe they look for a secret entrance into the place, and I'd put a master switch inside that (hopefully itself some kind of puzzle, but at least its only one puzzle to improvise.)  Send Invisible Servants running through?  I dunno, I'd have to see what they try, and then decide what the chances are of it working.


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## iserith (Apr 3, 2019)

I can't see all the posts in these exchanges due to blocks, but from what I can see in quotes or the like, it seems to me that players going straight to ability checks to resolve traps or social interactions is not so much an argument for expediency in play as it is an argument for the DM to not present boring or simplistic content the players would rather skip.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 3, 2019)

iserith said:


> I can't see all the posts in these exchanges due to blocks, but from what I can see in quotes or the like, it seems to me that players going straight to ability checks to resolve traps or social interactions is not so much an argument for expediency in play as it is an argument for the DM to not present boring or simplistic content the players would rather skip.




Really I think that's the heart of the disagreement.  Those arguing for straight ability checks either:
A) Don't think it's boring, or
B) Agree it's boring, but think it's somehow a necessary part of the game.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Not sure what you mean by "do an Insight check".
> 
> A) If you mean the players state they want to use Insight ("Can I roll Insight?" "And me, too?"), then here I'm totally with [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]: the players should state what they do and the DM will determine if an Insight check is called for.
> 
> B) If what you mean is that the DM calls for an Insight check, then I don't think I'm changing much.  If the players say, "I'd like to look at her body language and listen carefully to her words and see if I can get any clues as to whether she's being truthful" then I can either ask for an Insight check, or just decide to give them the clue, and say, "Well, all she's said is that she hasn't seen him, not that she hasn't heard from him, or tried to contact him..." and see if they take the bait.




I don't ban the words "I make a [insert skill] check" at my table.  If the intent is clear, I don't see why it matters.  If the intent isn't clear I'll ask for clarification.



Elfcrusher said:


> Sure.  But as I've said before in many cases (including this one) I think games are more dramatic and immersive (in the sense that you feel what your character is feeling) if you never know with certainty if somebody is lying.




This is where I get confused.  If someone is using deception it can be countered by a insight check.  Basic skill challenge 101.  So if a player is suspicious of someone and wants to make an insight check and no insight check is called for then they know the NPC is not using deception.

Then you say that the player should never know with certainty that the NPC is telling the truth which I agree with.  But if you didn't ask for an insight check there was no deception so they know the NPC is telling the truth but you say the player should never know ... and so on and so forth.  

Or are skill checks just irrelevant in your game?  Because you stated



Elfcrusher said:


> The fact that she didn't try to hide the existence of the letter should be a strong hint she isn't lying. And now they have another clue, by asking her which inn she sent the letter to.




So based on my understanding you would not ask for nor allow an insight check.  If a player says something along the lines of "I don't believe her, the letter could just be her covering her tracks."  Would you ask for an insight check then?  Would you just ignore them?  Tell them they have no reason to doubt her?

Because personally I'd be okay with "I don't believe her, the letter could just be her covering her tracks and I roll __ on an insight check."  I'd roll a D20, ignore the result and say "She seems to be telling the truth."



Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, you got me.  By a "specific scenario" I meant one trap (or one lie).  For the occasional trap I can make it a puzzle to solve instead of a straight dice roll.
> 
> My answer here is that I would just never run an adventure like this.  (At least, I would never _write_ an adventure like this.  If somebody like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] wrote it I would definitely take a look.)  D&D just isn't suited for interesting resolution of traps.
> 
> And, as a player, if were in this adventure and it was literally just Investigation roll followed by Thieves' Tools roll, I would be bored stiff.  Either that or I would play something with high survivability and then storm through the house kicking open all the doors and smashing all the chests, and hope for the best.




So traps are pointless in D&D for you?  People in your game should never invest in skills to find or disable traps?  

_Overuse _of mundane traps is boring.  Appropriate use of traps (even if resolved by a die roll) is very rewarding for some people who spend significant resources on being good at being the trap expert.  I want to reward people for the compromises and design decisions they made for their character, not just reward players that know how to describe solutions in a way that make sense to me.

In the scenario of investigating a paranoid trap-makers house I would use passive investigation everywhere and if someone was particularly suspicious (they find a chest or an ornate door to the lower level for example) then if they ask to do an investigation check (either "I do an investigation check" or "I look at it closely" works for me) then I'll either take their roll or their passive value whichever is highest.  If the PC's skill is high enough that there's no chance of failure I'll just narrate it as a little pat on the back.  "Because of your awesome skills you easily disarm every trap you come across."

Some traps would just be a simple roll.  I don't know why you think that would always be boring.  I think there can be a fair amount of tension even in a simple roll, not every action needs to be acted out.  Not every swing of the sword needs to be narrated.

On the other hand, it can be quite fun.  Let's say the check barely fails.  "You start to disable the trap and there's a slight clicking sound.  You realize that if you move a muscle there's a slab of stone that will fall on you, crushing you and blocking the passage. What do you do?"  Now it's a team effort/scramble.  Does the BDF use his athletics to try to push the stone back?  Does the rogue try to give instructions to the wizard on how to reset the catch that is still barely holding the stone?  Is there an inscription on the stone you can now see that could have religious meaning?  Do the other PCs just ask where to send his personal effects and wish him luck?  

Or the PCs discover a trap but it takes multiple people to disarm for some reason, or realize they just triggered a trap that's slowly filling the room with water, or the walls or going to slowly crush them unless their buddy Artoo-Deetoo at the control panel can disarm it first.  There are a lot of ways of doing it, but when I use traps it's rarely boring.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Really I think that's the heart of the disagreement.  Those arguing for straight ability checks either:
> A) Don't think it's boring, or
> B) Agree it's boring, but think it's somehow a necessary part of the game.




Or, as others have pointed out, think that negating the value of skills sets up a two-tier system.  If you're good at convincing the DM that your plan will work you never need to rely on skills which takes away a lot of the fun of the game.

If the checks were boring I wouldn't use them.  There are many campaigns where there's nary a trap in sight because it doesn't work for the group.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If you're good at convincing the DM that your plan will work you never need to rely on skills which takes away a lot of the fun of the game.




It’s not about the player convincing the DM.  It’s about the Player proposing an action based on the abilities, background, and proficiencies of their PC.  You know, role playing.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Or, as others have pointed out, think that negating the value of skills sets up a two-tier system.  If you're good at convincing the DM that your plan will work you never need to rely on skills which takes away a lot of the fun of the game.
> 
> If the checks were boring I wouldn't use them.  There are many campaigns where there's nary a trap in sight because it doesn't work for the group.




I don't think it's "negating the value of skills" you just don't actually roll the dice for them as often.  I will often tell somebody who has a high proficiency they succeed, without bothering to roll.  Or I'll pick the person with the highest Arcana or Perception or whatever to tell them something they know or notice.

And, yes, when there's uncertainty about the outcome, and the outcome matters, dice will get rolled.

Also, as DMDave says, it's not "convincing the DM", although it is true that the DM has to adjudicate.  But that's really no different that the DM setting the DC when playing by the straight "roll a skill" method.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> So based on my understanding you would not ask for nor allow an insight check.  If a player says something along the lines of "I don't believe her, the letter could just be her covering her tracks."  Would you ask for an insight check then?  Would you just ignore them?  Tell them they have no reason to doubt her?




Wait...Insight check for what?  The player didn't _do_ anything, he/she just stated his/her beliefs.  They are entitled to believe whatever they want.  (Which varies from some posters, who believe an Insight check must be made, and success/failure dictates what the character has to believe, regardless of what the player wants.)



> So traps are pointless in D&D for you?  People in your game should never invest in skills to find or disable traps?




I don't believe there _is_ such a skill in 5e.  



> On the other hand, it can be quite fun.  Let's say the check barely fails.  "You start to disable the trap and there's a slight clicking sound.  You realize that if you move a muscle there's a slab of stone that will fall on you, crushing you and blocking the passage. What do you do?"  Now it's a team effort/scramble.  Does the BDF use his athletics to try to push the stone back?  Does the rogue try to give instructions to the wizard on how to reset the catch that is still barely holding the stone?  Is there an inscription on the stone you can now see that could have religious meaning?  Do the other PCs just ask where to send his personal effects and wish him luck?




....aaaaaannnnd you just described what [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has been evangelizing.  Regardless of how you decide to adjudicate disarming the trap, once he fails all those options that you just listed are players taking actions based on the scene as described by the DM.  The DM can now either grant success, grant failure, or ask for a dice roll if the outcome is uncertain.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> It’s not about the player convincing the DM.  It’s about the Player proposing an action based on the abilities, background, and proficiencies of their PC.  You know, role playing.




Or it's about both RP which I have plenty along with appropriate use of skill checks that reward people for the decisions they've made while building their character. You now, balance and doing what people enjoy.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Also, as DMDave says, it's not "convincing the DM", although it is true that the DM has to adjudicate.  But that's really no different that the DM setting the DC when playing by the straight "roll a skill" method.




From the DMG that no experienced DMs ever seem to read:


"Consistency is a key to a believable fictional world."
The DM is "...someone who is impartial yet involved in the game..."
"...the DM is a natural fit to take on the referee role..."
"A player tells the DM what he or she wants to do, and the DM determines whether it is successful or not, in some cases asking the player to make a die roll to determine success."

So the expectation is the DM is a consistent, impartial (yet involved) referee who determines success or failure, sometimes calling for a roll. If the DM is fulfilling these expectations, he or she is not being "convinced" or "gamed" as some - _including myself once upon a time_ - call it. I just wish some would wise up and realize that concern describes a degenerate form of play, something to be avoided. The way to avoid that is to do this stuff above. And we don't need players pushing mechanics to achieve that goal.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Wait...Insight check for what?  The player didn't _do_ anything, he/she just stated his/her beliefs.  They are entitled to believe whatever they want.  (Which varies from some posters, who believe an Insight check must be made, and success/failure dictates what the character has to believe, regardless of what the player wants.)




Good grief.  Okay the player states "I study her closely looking for hints that she's not telling the truth."  Or they simply state "Can I make an insight check.  I don't believe her." Do you tell them they can't say those words?  You tell the player that their PC can't be suspicious and try to discern the true intentions of the PC by "gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms."  You know, make an insight check?



Elfcrusher said:


> I don't believe there _is_ such a skill in 5e.



Huh?  Investigation and thieves tools proficiency are not used to find and disable traps?  



Elfcrusher said:


> ....aaaaaannnnd you just described what @_*iserith*_ has been evangelizing.  Regardless of how you decide to adjudicate disarming the trap, once he fails all those options that you just listed are players taking actions based on the scene as described by the DM.  The DM can now either grant success, grant failure, or ask for a dice roll if the outcome is uncertain.




Aaaannnnd I use a mix of tools to make the game enjoyable.  Sometimes a straight roll, sometimes a more complex scene, sometimes a roll with a setback that sets up a complex scene.

Besides Iserith blocked me because he doesn't like that I question what he says.  I've never blocked anyone, I doubt I ever will.  Different people have different opinions; even if I disagree with someone I'm still open to other people's opinions.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Huh?  Investigation and thieves tools proficiency are not used to find and disable traps?




Oh _those_ skills. They are used for lots of things other than finding and disabling traps. 

You made it sound like somebody specifically “invested” in finding and disabling traps, a la 3e. 

Besides, if you treat all skills the same way, then nobody loses out for “investing” in the wrong skill.


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## pming (Apr 4, 2019)

Hiya!

Players can request that...but I do the rolling, behind the screen, then tell them something. I base the DC on how good the NPC is at Deception. Typically I'll choose the Deception DC based on the details of the interrogation/question. I mean, if the PC's have an NPC dead to rights with his hand holding a cookie and crumbs all over his shirt, "Did you eat the cookies?" will probably have a pretty low DC. Like, maybe 4 or 5. But if the NPC is completely confident and the PC's have virtually nothing to go on, the DC is probably in the high-teens to low 20's (18 to 22 or so), or maybe even higher. 

Then I roll. If the Player beat the DC, I'll give him a REALLY strong hint, pretty much obvious: "You're pretty sure he's hiding something, and he gets visibly nervous to you when you mention the cookies going missing". But I NEVER say "Yeah, he's lieing". If the Player failed the DC, I'll either just say "Seems to be telling the truth", but if the Player failed miserably (by 10 points or more), I may give a slight hint the other way: "He seems to be telling the truth, but he did glance over at your half-orc hireling with a bit of a nervous look...". Or, of course, the other way around (so if the NPC is innocent, the PC might be told "He's definitely hiding something, and glances at your half-orc hireling..."...but what he's hiding may not be what the PC's are on about).

In short, Yes, but I roll in secret for the Player and I give a hint or strong hint. Ultimately it's up to the Player to decide what to do with the information. Making an Insight roll is not the same as casting _Detect Lie_.

^_^

Paul L. Ming


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh _those_ skills. They are used for lots of things other than finding and disabling traps.
> 
> You made it sound like somebody specifically “invested” in finding and disabling traps, a la 3e.
> 
> Besides, if you treat all skills the same way, then nobody loses out for “investing” in the wrong skill.




Yes, because thieves tools are so useful for ... um ... dentistry?  If someone has expertise in a toolkit or skill I try to reward them for it.

As far as "treating all skills the same" I have no clue what you're talking about.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yes, because thieves tools are so useful for ... um ... dentistry?  If someone has expertise in a toolkit or skill I try to reward them for it.




Um..._locks_?!?!?!  Maybe I've been playing wrong, but I've always let tools be applied to most/all locks, but relatively few traps.

In fact, upthread I thought I was being funny allowing Thieves' Tools proficiency to be used to "disarm" a poisoned doorknob, and since nobody commented I thought nobody noticed.  But maybe you didn't see anything wrong with it?



> As far as "treating all skills the same" I have no clue what you're talking about.




I was referring to the sentiment that it's not fair to not let people "roll skills" whenever they want to, after they had "invested" in them.  Since the only thing you can spend those points on is skills, if I treat all skills the same way then nobody can make a "bad investment".

I suppose you could argue that somebody chose the Rogue class in order to be a skill monkey, and if I don't "let them" use their skills they are being cheated.  I still give the rogues plenty to do (in fact I try to find things for everybody to use their proficiencies on) I just don't always ask for a roll.  Nine times out of ten I'll just let somebody with Thieves' Tools proficiency open a lock without having to roll.  (I'll sometimes say out loud, "Since you have proficiency..." just to let them know.)


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yes, because thieves tools are so useful for ... um ... dentistry?  If someone has expertise in a toolkit or skill I try to reward them for it.
> 
> As far as "treating all skills the same" I have no clue what you're talking about.



Thieves tools are good for use in weaving. "In fact, those are weaving tools used in knitting and stitching, not lookpicks at all. Would you like to see some of my pieces, guardsman? I am particularly proud of the stitching on this one. It's a fashion all the rage among the young ladies in Waterdeep. No, no, you hang onto that and if your sweetie likes it come by and see me for more. We are always happy to work with fine keepers of the peace like yourself."

According to my halfling who is very very good with her "weaving tools"...


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suppose you could argue that somebody chose the Rogue class in order to be a skill monkey, and if I don't "let them" use their skills they are being cheated.




They're cheating themselves if they ask to roll a swingy d20. Outright success is always better than rolling, if succeeding is your goal. Good ability scores and skill proficiencies are just insurance against failure in case you do have to roll (which you will frequently enough if you're the sort of adventurer who is boldly confronting deadly perils).


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yes, because thieves tools are so useful for ... um ... dentistry?  If someone has expertise in a toolkit or skill I try to reward them for it.
> 
> As far as "treating all skills the same" I have no clue what you're talking about.



Sometimes folks seem to think that if all of a set are treated the same, all skills treated the same, then there isnt a punished group.

I find that odd because class-by-class skills are varied in importance so, it's not like its just skill-vs-skill but its "four skills with expertise features" vs "two skills and action surge" etc.

Also, of course, some skills have direct in-combat gains where it's at least questionable whether the same degree of "talk your way to auto-success" happens. 

But yeah, when some folks boil it down to processed and outlooks passed to their players about how getting to the dice is the losing strategy or however they want to phrase it, the idea of choosing builds or characters where significant features are focused on expertise and the like become - well - not what I would refer to as "maintaining a balance" between the options.

I can imagine a fighter player being told up front they should be working to not have to fight to get a better chance of success because they might lose fights. 

But again, everybody has a different view of what balance is right for their groups.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> So as you show in your second example, one player is trying to give the other player advantage on the Insight check via working together on the task (or at least tries to). That is reasonable behavior if you're trying to succeed.
> 
> Now take it one step further _as a player_: Before asking the DM to make a check (which is not supported by the rules of this game, but we can ignore that for now), try to remove the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence for failure so you don't have to roll at all. The DM can't call for an ability check if there is no uncertainty or meaningful consequence for failure. That may or may not be possible in this specific situation, but that is something the players are aiming for because, again, the d20 is nobody's friend - automatic success is more desirable if success at the least cost is the goal.
> 
> But, again, that is the _player's _goal. The _DM_ is employing the "middle path" approach. In the example I wrote, the DM calls for ability checks because the players have not removed the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure.




See, that third paragraph is where I leave the train.  You are claiming "middle path" here, but, to me, it's the DM's judgement as to whether or not a skill check should be made.  And the reason he's forcing (not granting, because the players don't actually want a skill check) is because the DM isn't convinced that the players have removed uncertainty.  The only way the players can remove that uncertainty is to convince the DM.

Thus, we're right back to gaming the DM.  

And, frankly, the notion that the players and the DM are playing fundamentally different styles seems like a big warning sign to me as well that will, IME, lead to a lot of frustration at the table.  I prefer everyone at the table to be singing from the same hymn book and all playing the same style.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> I can't see all the posts in these exchanges due to blocks, but from what I can see in quotes or the like, it seems to me that players going straight to ability checks to resolve traps or social interactions is not so much an argument for expediency in play as it is an argument for the DM to not present boring or simplistic content the players would rather skip.




A slightly different interpretation might be:  The players know what they enjoy and will let you, the DM know it by actually engaging with it.  If they aren't engaging with it, move on.  Put the players in the driver's seat and react, rather than trying to present them with "interesting" stuff that, frankly, you're just guessing will be interesting.

If the player starts talking to the NPC?  Fantastic, play it out.  If the player just throws dice checks at the NPC?  Roll it out and see where it leads.  

The difference I see is that you, as DM, take a much more prominent role in the game than I do.  Which is fine, and it certainly fits with 5e's sort of "old school" appeal.  It's not what appeals to me though.  I'd much, much prefer to let the players take the wheel.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See, that third paragraph is where I leave the train.  You are claiming "middle path" here, but, to me, it's the DM's judgement as to whether or not a skill check should be made.  And the reason he's forcing (not granting, because the players don't actually want a skill check) is because the DM isn't convinced that the players have removed uncertainty.  The only way the players can remove that uncertainty is to convince the DM.
> 
> Thus, we're right back to gaming the DM.
> 
> And, frankly, the notion that the players and the DM are playing fundamentally different styles seems like a big warning sign to me as well that will, IME, lead to a lot of frustration at the table.  I prefer everyone at the table to be singing from the same hymn book and all playing the same style.




You might not have gotten to it, but I address the "gaming the DM" argument again in a post much later than the one you quoted above. 

You again suggest there is tension between the DM and the players. There is not. As I mentioned in the last exchange regarding your assertions of tension, here too everyone's working toward the same goal, each with their own synergistic roles and responsibilities.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> It’s not about the player convincing the DM.  It’s about the Player proposing an action based on the abilities, background, and proficiencies of their PC.  You know, role playing.




Umm, who is judging this "role playing" if not the DM?


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> They're cheating themselves if they ask to roll a swingy d20. Outright success is always better than rolling, if succeeding is your goal. Good ability scores and skill proficiencies are just insurance against failure in case you do have to roll (which you will frequently enough if you're the sort of adventurer who is boldly confronting deadly perils).




Yet, for some bizarre reason, one of the biggest bonuses rogues get is the ability to "take 10" (more or less) on skill checks.  It's not like this is a minor ability.  This is something only quite high level rogues get.

In your game though, as a player, that ability is largely pointless so long as I can "outright success".


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> A slightly different interpretation might be:  The players know what they enjoy and will let you, the DM know it by actually engaging with it.  If they aren't engaging with it, move on.  Put the players in the driver's seat and react, rather than trying to present them with "interesting" stuff that, frankly, you're just guessing will be interesting.




I must be good at guessing.



Hussar said:


> If the player just throws dice checks at the NPC?  Roll it out and see where it leads.




That's not the player's call in this game. It is in D&D 3e and 4e though.



Hussar said:


> The difference I see is that you, as DM, take a much more prominent role in the game than I do.  Which is fine, and it certainly fits with 5e's sort of "old school" appeal.  It's not what appeals to me though.  I'd much, much prefer to let the players take the wheel.




I strive to do what the rules prescribe - be a consistent, impartial (but involved) referee who judges success and failure and balances that with calling for rolls where appropriate. The players can take the wheel to the extent they describe what they want to do as they go forth into a world of sword and sorcery to boldly confront deadly perils. Together, each in our own roles, we aim for fun for everyone and the creation of an exciting, memorable story as a result of play.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See, that third paragraph is where I leave the train.  You are claiming "middle path" here, but, to me, it's the DM's judgement as to whether or not a skill check should be made.  And the reason he's forcing (not granting, because the players don't actually want a skill check) is because the DM isn't convinced that the players have removed uncertainty.  The only way the players can remove that uncertainty is to convince the DM.
> 
> Thus, we're right back to gaming the DM.
> 
> And, frankly, the notion that the players and the DM are playing fundamentally different styles seems like a big warning sign to me as well that will, IME, lead to a lot of frustration at the table.  I prefer everyone at the table to be singing from the same hymn book and all playing the same style.




When you DM, and a player says, "Can I make a (skill) check to see if I can (something)" how do you set the DC?  Does it vary based on how they go about it, or is the same DC regardless of what their character does in support of the declared action?


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yet, for some bizarre reason, one of the biggest bonuses rogues get is the ability to "take 10" (more or less) on skill checks.  It's not like this is a minor ability.  This is something only quite high level rogues get.
> 
> In your game though, as a player, that ability is largely pointless so long as I can "outright success".




If you like that ability, it seems we agree that doing whatever you can do (including attaining 11th level as a rogue) to mitigate the swinginess of a d20 is a good thing, right? If that's so, then we've made progress!

The good news is that any character can do that by trying to remove uncertainty and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. But, again, you can't win 'em all and sometimes you're going to have to roll. So this is a great class feature to have when you fall short of outright success, and not everyone can do that.


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## Ilbranteloth (Apr 4, 2019)

In real life, some people are naturally suspicious, even when telling the truth, or they have poor social skills, whatever. 

So Persuasion for telling the truth, Deception for lying. Insight to detect either. Most of the time it starts with an active check against Passive Insight, with advantage/disadvantage as appropriate for either.

If the PCs want to study them more closely, or question them, then they could roll. They’ll already know what their Passive Insight told them, so this is more of a confirmation.

In general I describe that they are pretty certain in their gut reaction if the PC rolls well. If they roll poorly (they fail), they are uncertain, and may be entirely wrong if they fail be 5 or more. 

The bottom line is I view Insight as your intuition, your gut reaction, a 6th sense to notice something isn’t quite right and is closely related to Perception. If they are treating it more like a interrogation, especially in regards to reason, then I’d use Investigation. Do the facts and statements make sense logically? 

I’ll generally allow the player to choose the better of Insight or Investigation, unless there’s some reason one or the other might not apply.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> I must be good at guessing.




Of course you are.



> That's not the player's call in this game. It is in D&D 3e and 4e though.




It's not a player's call in YOUR game.  I've been pretty clear that I reject the advice in the PHB and the DMG.  I mean, I've repeated it more than once.



> I strive to do what the rules prescribe - be a consistent, impartial (but involved) referee who judges success and failure and balances that with calling for rolls where appropriate. The players can take the wheel to the extent they describe what they want to do as they go forth into a world of sword and sorcery to boldly confront deadly perils. Together, each in our own roles, we aim for fun for everyone and the creation of an exciting, memorable story as a result of play.




What you see as rules, I see as advice.  Good advice for those that want to play that way.  Bad advice for those that don't.  I certainly don't see this as rules.  And, the notion of such a hard divide between player and DM roles is not something I enjoy.  I WANT the players to have as much control over the game as I possibly can give them.  I am not interested in having such a hard divide in roles.



Elfcrusher said:


> When you DM, and a player says, "Can I make a (skill) check to see if I can (something)" how do you set the DC?  Does it vary based on how they go about it, or is the same DC regardless of what their character does in support of the declared action?




Well, that's going to be a bit tricky to answer in the general.  In the specific of "is this NPC lying" it would be a contested roll.  Otherwise it's going to be based on the guidelines for DC in the DMG.  By and large the DC will be between 10-15 for nearly all checks (other than some very specific ones) for any character under 10th level.  

And, heck, I'll cop to sometimes it's just a "roll a d20 and roll high" sort of check.    Depends on what's at stake.  

But, as to the second question, is the DC the same regardless of what their character's do, yes, it's an absolute DC.  You can describe it however you like, but, frankly the DC isn't going to change.  To me, that's the only way to be fair and consistent.  I have one player who is utterly tongue tied when trying to talk to NPC's.  He just isn't very good at it.  And, really, he isn't terribly interested in the whole "funny voices" aspect of gaming.  While, OTOH, I have a player who really has the gift of the gab and can come up with excellent approaches very quickly on the fly.

Sorry, but, I refuse to penalize one or reward the other.  They both have the same DC to persuade that guard.  Maybe, if I'm honest, I'm a bit freer with Inspiration with the second guy because he makes me laugh more often (although, again, I encourage the group to award Inspiration rather than rely on me), but, hey, no one's perfect.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It's not a player's call in YOUR game.




It's not a player's call per the rules. The rules inform my approach.



Hussar said:


> What you see as rules, I see as advice.  Good advice for those that want to play that way.  Bad advice for those that don't.  I certainly don't see this as rules.  And, the notion of such a hard divide between player and DM roles is not something I enjoy.  I WANT the players to have as much control over the game as I possibly can give them.  I am not interested in having such a hard divide in roles.




We know. But _you_ made an assertion about the DM's role in _my_ game and I responded with what I'm _actually_ doing.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, as to the second question, is the DC the same regardless of what their character's do, yes, it's an absolute DC.  You can describe it however you like, but, frankly the DC isn't going to change.  To me, that's the only way to be fair and consistent.  I have one player who is utterly tongue tied when trying to talk to NPC's.  He just isn't very good at it.  And, really, he isn't terribly interested in the whole "funny voices" aspect of gaming.  While, OTOH, I have a player who really has the gift of the gab and can come up with excellent approaches very quickly on the fly.
> 
> Sorry, but, I refuse to penalize one or reward the other.  They both have the same DC to persuade that guard.  Maybe, if I'm honest, I'm a bit freer with Inspiration with the second guy because he makes me laugh more often (although, again, I encourage the group to award Inspiration rather than rely on me), but, hey, no one's perfect.




Oh my.  That seems like an incredibly narrow way of defining roleplaying.  So much so that I'm wondering if you misunderstood the question, or if I misunderstand your response.

There are LOTS of ways to narrate what your character does, without having to act it out or use funny voices.  Roleplaying works perfectly well in 2nd person.

So, no, I'm not talking about judging the quality of the acting, or ask if you, yourself, are persuaded. I'm talking about describing how one's character goes about doing something, and judging the likely effectiveness of that strategy.

Would you really give the same DC to find something hidden in a chest to a player who says, "Can I roll Investigation" and one who says "I'll look in the chest?"

Or the same DC to Persuade somebody to a player who says, "Can I roll Persuade" as opposed to one who uses known information about the subject to propose something that would likely persuade him?

Here's a specific example: you're using a published adventure and there is a locked chain.  The notes say it's a DC 18 to pick the lock, or DC 22 to break the chain.  A player thinks for a minute and says, "Hey, I'm going to go back to the room with that polished steel chariot axle, get it, and use it as a lever to break the chain."

Are you REALLY not going to give that person a lower DC?


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

Ok “roll everything” crew -

A hypothetical. You’re the DM. You’ve posed a scenario in which adventurers have to overcome some obstacle - let’s say give a password or something. Or punch in a combination.  Something like that such that there’s a right answer, wrong answers, and the ability to roll some check to bypass the obstacle. 

If I, a hypothetical player in this hypothetical scenario, guess the password/ combo correctly on my first try, are you having me roll the dice anyway? What if I’m correct but my ability check fails? 

What if I take an action in your game - a manifestly correct action by any reasonable account - and my die roll fails?


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh my.  That seems like an incredibly narrow way of defining roleplaying.  So much so that I'm wondering if you misunderstood the question, or if I misunderstand your response.
> 
> There are LOTS of ways to narrate what your character does, without having to act it out or use funny voices.  Roleplaying works perfectly well in 2nd person.
> 
> So, no, I'm not talking about judging the quality of the acting, or ask if you, yourself, are persuaded. I'm talking about describing how one's character goes about doing something, and judging the likely effectiveness of that strategy.




Yup, that right there? That thing I underlined?  I don't do that.



> Would you really give the same DC to find something hidden in a chest to a player who says, "Can I roll Investigation" and one who says "I'll look in the chest?"




Absolutely.  Why wouldn't I?



> Or the same DC to Persuade somebody to a player who says, "Can I roll Persuade" as opposed to one who uses known information about the subject to propose something that would likely persuade him?




Why would the DC change?  I might, if I'm thinking about it, give advantage, but, again, it's unlikely.  



> Here's a specific example: you're using a published adventure and there is a locked chain.  The notes say it's a DC 18 to pick the lock, or DC 22 to break the chain.  A player thinks for a minute and says, "Hey, I'm going to go back to the room with that polished steel chariot axle, get it, and use it as a lever to break the chain."
> 
> Are you REALLY not going to give that person a lower DC?




Ok, now, this is a bit different.  You've actually changed the parameters of the scenario by adding in the chariot axle (although, to be honest, the notion that the character would actually know that the axle was "polished steel" is exceptionally small.  There might be a chariot, but, it's very, very unlikely I would ever be that detailed in a description).  Using a tool to get advantage?  Sure.  That's pretty much par for the course.  DC doesn't change though.

Now, maybe you don't think the axle idea would work.  After all, maybe you can't get the wheels off the axle, or you, the DM, think that the chain is too tight to wedge the axle inside.  Does that mean that the player automatically fails?



> Bawylie
> 
> Ok “roll everything” crew -
> 
> ...




Why are you guessing random combinations.  Honestly, I probably don't even KNOW what the combination is.  The combination is whatever you decide it is AFTER you successfully make your check.  So, no, you could never guess the combination, since I, the DM, would never know what it is.


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## Sadras (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> You are claiming "middle path" here, but, to me, it's the DM's judgement as to whether or not a skill check should be made. And the reason he's forcing (not granting, because the players don't actually want a skill check) is because the DM isn't convinced that the players have removed uncertainty. The only way the players can remove that uncertainty is to convince the DM.
> 
> Thus, we're right back to gaming the DM.




Sure, in a sense, but the DM is the one designing/preparing the adventure. The players share no role in the design and preparation of adventures, therefore in such instances would the DM not be the most informed, especially over his/her NPCs or challenges being framed?

You have mentioned within this thread about the DMs and players being equal and yet players have the ability to _Say No_ when it comes to their own creations when they believe there is no uncertainty, but when it comes to the DM's NPCs or framing of challenges he/she appears not to be afforded the same latitude at your table.


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## pemerton (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> I can't see all the posts in these exchanges due to blocks, but from what I can see in quotes or the like, it seems to me that players going straight to ability checks to resolve traps or social interactions is not so much an argument for expediency in play as it is an argument for the DM to not present boring or simplistic content the players would rather skip.



Something like a decade ago on these boards I posted that the real function of Perception and Diplomacy in 3E is as a player-side reframing device:

*Perception*: The GM says "You see a room with XYZ," player makes Perception check, GM responds "OK, you see a room with PQR."

*Diplomacy*: The GM says "You see an angry person," player makesd Diplomacy check, GM responds "OK, you see a friendly person."​
That said, I think my RPGing involves more checks than yours. On the weekend I ran The Dying Earth, and the centrepiece of that system is back-and-forth checks to find out who persuades whom to do what silly thing. And in my Classic Traveller game I follow the game rules pretty closely, and they call for checks in all sorts of situations.

This may be a function of system, but it may also be that I prefer systems that lean more towards "say 'yes' or roll the dice" rather than the "Middle Way" approach you've described in this thread. (Whether fictional positioning within the situation _affects the dice roll_ is for me a system thing. In 4e, Prince Valiant, Classic Traveller and The Dying Earth, typically yes. In Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP, frequently no (because of the way dice pools are put together in that system).)

Where I would say my approach differs from the "reframing" approach is that I see these checks mostly as a way to evolve the fictional position within a framing, rather than to reframe. I'm happy to accept that this, and related notions like the stakes "evolving" or "crystallising" as opposed to just "changing", are matters of degree rather than sharp distinctions. I still think it's a real difference, though.

In D&D rulebooks, I think the 4e DMG's description of skill challenge adjudication is the best account of this sort of thing. But one thing it's a bit weak on is what I think is the most important feature of this way of GMing: that there be no predetermined expectation (or even menu of expectations) as to the resolution of the situation - so the dice results, rerolls when they occur, etc, can be followed where they lead.

That means that my approach doesn't lend itself well to eg "house full of traps" scenarios, or "get the info dump from the quest-giver" scenarios. Nor anything which involves working through a pre-established map/key/event-list/etc.

EDIT: I thought I'd give a very short example of what I mean about checks to evolve a situation and its stakes, with reference to something I recently posted in another thread:



pemerton said:


> The last thing I can think of as _dissapointing_ in a game session would be a year or so ago in Traveller: the PCs were in a domed city on a world with a corrosive atmosphere, with their ATV and some vacc suits. And I was pretty determined that I was going to get them out of the dome in their vehicle and suits to see what happened. And I did! - but in the course of that I discovered that the on-world exploration rules in Traveller are probably the weakest sub-system in the rulebook, bogging down with no guarantee of a resolution. I pulled out of it in the next session and the actual firefight in vacc-suits was excellent, including snagged oxygen hoses and shattered face plates and desperate crawling into air-locks and all the stuff that I'd been hoping for.



So the reason that the on-world exploration stuff _didn't_ work very well is that the rules tell you how to check for breakdowns, and terrain difficulties, and the like, but don't have a system for determining whether your get where you want to go and what it costs. (They assume that there is a map, and the players are calling directions, and the vehicle movement rate is applied. I don't like that approach in general, and in a sci-fi world-hopping game I think it's close to dysfunctional, though maybe good if the publisher has a lot of world map supplements to sell!)

What was good about the firefight was that the system supported tight resolution via checks at every point. Eg _I crawl up to the pillbox,_ which is a potentially risky manoeuvre in a vacc suit so triggers the check rule for that, check fails, so now something bad has happened (I narrated a snagged oxygen hose) and then as per the rules that triggers another, harder, check to escape the situation, that fails too, so now the hose has ripped off and the character only has the air that was still in her suit, and we resolve the consequences of that.

Or, after the pill-box is taken, the player of the smallest lithest PC declares _I squeeze through the slit_, and again that triggers a risky manoeuvre check, which fails and so his suit is wedged - he pulls himself through anyway and so leaves the bottom half of his suit behind, and so we apply the damage rules for corrosive atmosphere (which had to be extrapolated from the rules for vacuum but that wasn't too hard) and then he makes a decision, inside the pill box, about whether to try and mix-and-match suit (he has a top half, the dead NPC in the pill-box has a shattered faceplate but an intact bottom half) or go through the air-lock that I narrate as being in the floor of the pill-box - he opts for the latter, and (as best I recall) I say "yes" rather than calling for a check because the "atmosphere" drama seems done and now it's about getting the rest of the crew into the enemy base and how that's going to play out.

I would say that while checks are determining in-fiction success, at the table they're not just about, or even so much about, player _success_ but also/rather modulation of pacing/drama - is the situation getting hairier, or under control? (This breaks down a bit when what's at stake is PC death, which can happen in Classic Traveller. But in the example of play I'm currently describing, we never got there and so I didn't have to worry about it!)


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Ok “roll everything” crew -
> 
> A hypothetical. You’re the DM. You’ve posed a scenario in which adventurers have to overcome some obstacle - let’s say give a password or something. Or punch in a combination.  Something like that such that there’s a right answer, wrong answers, and the ability to roll some check to bypass the obstacle.
> 
> ...



Ok so, I am not a roll everything crew. I have yet to see anyone here who claims to be.

But i will tackle your question.

The situation you describe as one with a clear, pre-determined there is a right way, a one true way to best it without a check. 

So, if *I had posed that* and someone guessed the right thing in character then they guess it. If they then try it, then they get the results. 

But, what you describe is such a minute number of cases in games I run, it's not even a blip on the balance between the success determined by GM and the success determined hy action and dkill.

More likely to occur is that the guessing password is related to some in-game information that ties to both in-game blues and to some characters' proficiencies, class, background so that the "guessing game" is what they are left with if all else fails. In those cases, tho, its entirely likely that the random playing cards dealt me by the players at the beginning of the tun play a role in the solution rather than random guessing.

Another possibility to occur is that the key to a lock is somewhere and if you acquired the key the lock opens easily. That establishes a non-guessing pass automatically. But again, small number of cases.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Sure, in a sense, but the DM is the one designing/preparing the adventure. The players share no role in the design and preparation of adventures, therefore in such instances would the DM not be the most informed, especially over his/her NPCs or challenges being framed?
> 
> You have mentioned within this thread about the DMs and players being equal and yet players have the ability to _Say No_ when it comes to their own creations when they believe there is no uncertainty, but when it comes to the DM's NPCs or framing of challenges he/she appears not to be afforded the same latitude at your table.




I'm sorry, I'm not understanding you here.  For one, the players can have a significant role in the design of adventures in a more sandbox environment - after all they tell the DM they want to do X.  If the group says they want to go hunt griffons (for example), I'm going to be pretty sure to have griffons in their near future.  

Note, I don't mean that they are equal.  It's impossible in D&D to have equal roles.  But, there is a significant difference between, "The DM has 100% control over anything that the players can't directly do" and "The players have a fair bit of latitude when deciding to engage game mechanics".  

I'm not sure what you mean by the players having the abiltiy to say no.  Say no to what?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yup, that right there? That thing I underlined?  I don't do that.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Of course, there is a difference between "hidden in desk" and just "in desk."

Is something is " in the desk", its gonna be found pretty much by both parties since both are searching unless I get told at some point (by direct statement or our common parlance that someone is not looking in the desk. If there is any question, they get asked.  But the assumption of competence is that searching a room with a desk will include looking in the desk. 

After they get yo the desk, that's where the hidden or not kicks in and the DC or not. 

As for tools that help, that falls squarely on advantage by the DMG standards.

But, again, DCs are set based on the task in my game. Based on a consistent set of thrm that is explained to the players day one. One that is show in narrative descriptions. When they discover an out of whack dc with what we see DC they treat it in character as a clue.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

[MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] Thanks for a good post to spring off of to set up a question of balance that may help frame the discussion and differences.
.

In their post above a hypothetical case is put forth...
"A hypothetical. You’re the DM. You’ve posed a scenario in which adventurers have to overcome some obstacle - let’s say give a password or something. Or punch in a combination. Something like that such that there’s a right answer, wrong answers, and the ability to roll some check to bypass the obstacle."

In this case the GM has put a challenge before the party with both of the following presdnted:
1 An absolute correct answer - if I do this, if I say this literally in this case, I get thru. No checks, no character skills needed. Just pick/guess the right key/way AS PLAYER  and walk thru. There may even be more than one absolute answer - more than one just "choose the win."
2 A way to use a CHARACTER's skill check (ability check) to get thru. May be more than one way to "check the win." 

So, this is I think at part striking at the core of that "balance" the DMG mentions in its Middle Path and the others. 

How often do you have challenges that matter that are*:
 A only solvable by #1
B only solvable by #2
C that are solvable by either #1 or #2 
D Only solvable by  both #1 and #2 used in tandem

* Perhaps this is better expressed as "how often does our resolution process result in cases actually being solved by:" since that is what the players see in play and that shapes their views going forward. 

That is what to me some of the primary disagreements on playstyles here is deriving from- our different views of balance between those.

How we balance those, that set of spices, in the recipes of our games determines the relative value of skills and ability checks to other options. 

If our outlook as GM says there will be a lot of A & C, few if any B and a smattering of D, then we are setting that balance to one side of that path - one which says "the emphasize skills route is not that valuable. We may get to the point where to the players it looks like making a skill check is even "a bad choice" since there is so often a non-roll solution available it's really a case where actually using your character skill bonus is the consolation game, you already lost the auto-win.

So,  to me a key point is that #1 is not relating to a character trait and #2 brings players choices about who their character is, what they are good at and bad at into play more directly. 

As a result in my games for challenges that matter and involve ability checks, A is almost never a case I use, B is easily 50% of the ones I use and both C and D likely split the remainder relatively close. That's rough guess, not tabulated results. 

But it seems to work for us because it gives those who focused on being better at ability checks more than a second hand role - behind A - when their choices to  focus more on ability checks  is actually in the spotlight. 

This to me seems to balance how "focus on weapons and fighting and "focus on magic" works with how "focus on skills or ability checks does." In my games, during challenges where there are enemies, the "fighting guy" and the "caster guy" rarely if ever find that there is a " just choose the win way that puts their fighying and casting to the backup plan less likely to succeed. 

But, as I have said, each of us has our own place where we see "balance" and " imbalance" and to me I tend to judge it as described here.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Um..._locks_?!?!?!  Maybe I've been playing wrong, but I've always let tools be applied to most/all locks, but relatively few traps.
> 
> In fact, upthread I thought I was being funny allowing Thieves' Tools proficiency to be used to "disarm" a poisoned doorknob, and since nobody commented I thought nobody noticed.  But maybe you didn't see anything wrong with it?
> 
> ...




LOL, true.  Long day.  I guess I also had the impression that you would find locked doors boring too.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Since thieves tools come with pliers, wouldn't "disarming" the doorknob be simply using the pliers to open the door?

Again, since I pretty much never bother with this sort of thing, the player is 100% free to describe anything he or she likes after she's succeeded on the check.  Heck, if the player wants to Fonzie Bump the door open, I'm happy.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Ok “roll everything” crew -




Wait, there's a "roll everything" crew?  I thought there was a "roll as a last resort only if the DM asks for it possibly because the player can describe what they're doing without invoking the forbidden I make a skill check statement" vs the "use a mix, don't penalize people for preferring to use dice" crew.




Bawylie said:


> A hypothetical. You’re the DM. You’ve posed a scenario in which adventurers have to overcome some obstacle - let’s say give a password or something. Or punch in a combination.  Something like that such that there’s a right answer, wrong answers, and the ability to roll some check to bypass the obstacle.
> 
> If I, a hypothetical player in this hypothetical scenario, guess the password/ combo correctly on my first try, are you having me roll the dice anyway? What if I’m correct but my ability check fails?




How do they know the password?  If it's something I mentioned in passing two games ago, I'll just tell them what it was especially if in-game it was yesterday.  If I gave them the password/combination there is no skill check.  If it's something I've dropped clues about it's great if they picked up on it and remember. If not I may ask for intelligence check to see if they remember.

But just guess by sheer luck?  How would that even work in any game?


Bawylie said:


> What if I take an action in your game - a manifestly correct action by any reasonable account - and my die roll fails?




What kind of action?  You mean that action that I had envisioned as being difficult but then someone elegantly describes how they're doing it without really changing anything?  Just because they can describe in minute detail how to track a bear in the woods does not mean I won't ask for a survival check.

If you mean they just walk over to the other side of the room to use the hallway when I thought they were going to have to scale the exterior wall then there's no need for any check.  

In other words, if they are resolving the challenge in the same way someone would have solved it using a skill with no additional in-world mechanical advantage it's no different.  They still need to roll although I may reward inspiration.  If they come up with an alternate solution that bypasses the challenge then no roll necessary.

Social skills are a little different in certain cases.  I don't care if you're a silver tongued devil who makes a compelling argument or just say "I point out X, Y and Z", bringing up relevant details can affect the outcome.  While I encourage the former I don't force the latter.  I don't expect people to play my way.

In other words, I try to minimize player skill and emphasize PC skill in my games.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Since thieves tools come with pliers, wouldn't "disarming" the doorknob be simply using the pliers to open the door?
> 
> Again, since I pretty much never bother with this sort of thing, the player is 100% free to describe anything he or she likes after she's succeeded on the check.  Heck, if the player wants to Fonzie Bump the door open, I'm happy.




If invoking the Fonzie bump, I do break my general rule of using a player skill check.  They _must_ give a thumbs up and an "ayyy" or it doesn't work.  Sorry, but I have to draw the line somewhere.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Wait...Insight check for what?  The player didn't _do_ anything, he/she just stated his/her beliefs.  They are entitled to believe whatever they want.  (Which varies from some posters, who believe an Insight check must be made, and success/failure dictates what the character has to believe, regardless of what the player wants.)




BTW, you never answered my question.   If the player states "I study her closely looking for hints that she's not telling the truth.  I'm trying to glean clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms." what do you do?  Ignore them? 

If you ask for an insight check since that's the definition of the skill, what's wrong with them saying "I make an insight check?"

If you tell them they can't do that, how is that not telling them what their character does?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Going Retro the inquisitive in XGtE has this feature. Wonder if it has any impact on anyone who thinks there is no skill to detect lies? 

When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you develop a talent for picking out lies. Whenever you make a Wisdom (Insight) check to determine whether a creature is lying, treat a roll of 7 or lower on the d20 as an 8.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

pemerton said:


> That said, I think my RPGing involves more checks than yours.






pemerton said:


> This may be a function of system




My approach is informed by the rules of the system. We're talking about D&D 5e.

If we were talking about D&D 4e, I'd be arguing the other way. But we're not, so I'm not.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> /snip
> 
> What kind of action?  You mean that action that I had envisioned as being difficult but then someone elegantly describes how they're doing it without really changing anything?  Just because they can describe in minute detail how to track a bear in the woods does not mean I won't ask for a survival check.
> 
> ...




Pretty much this.  This is the stuff.  Just like I wouldn't penalize the player for not being able to talk as well as his character, I wouldn't reward that player for having knowledge that his character may very well not have.  

I really wish I could remember the actual quote, but, years ago, on these boards, a very wise poster once said something to the effect of, "The dice provide the direction, I provide the script".  So, yeah, most narration _follows_ die rolls, not precedes it.  Don't tell me how you're doing something, make the check first and THEN tell me what you did.  Because, frankly, until you roll, no one at the table knows what you actually did.

I treat out of combat pretty much the same as combat.  I would never grant auto success or failure during combat and I would never narrate an attack before the die roll.  Why would I do that out of combat?  You want to influence that NPC and bring him or her around to your way of thinking, roll first and THEN tell me what happens.  Or, I'll tell you.  Either way.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Pretty much this.  This is the stuff.  Just like I wouldn't penalize the player for not being able to talk as well as his character, I wouldn't reward that player for having knowledge that his character may very well not have.
> 
> I really wish I could remember the actual quote, but, years ago, on these boards, a very wise poster once said something to the effect of, "The dice provide the direction, I provide the script".  So, yeah, most narration _follows_ die rolls, not precedes it.  Don't tell me how you're doing something, make the check first and THEN tell me what you did.  Because, frankly, until you roll, no one at the table knows what you actually did.
> 
> I treat out of combat pretty much the same as combat.  I would never grant auto success or failure during combat and I would never narrate an attack before the die roll.  Why would I do that out of combat?  You want to influence that NPC and bring him or her around to your way of thinking, roll first and THEN tell me what happens.  Or, I'll tell you.  Either way.




Simply put, yup. At least as far as challenges that matter. 

That said, i do use the auto-success based on proficiency rule in the DMG. So, if auto-success in a challenge that matters hits, its due to character ability.

I once described it as "the player is the navigator (choosing the path and the direction and the destinations) but the character is the driver and so its the character's skills that mostly determine success and failure at the actual fiddly bits and events of the driving."


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I really wish I could remember the actual quote, but, years ago, on these boards, a very wise poster once said something to the effect of, "The dice provide the direction, I provide the script".  So, yeah, most narration _follows_ die rolls, not precedes it.  Don't tell me how you're doing something, make the check first and THEN tell me what you did.  Because, frankly, until you roll, no one at the table knows what you actually did.




According to the rules of D&D 5e, the DM describes the environment, the player describes what he or she wants to do, then the DM narrates the result of the adventurer's action. (Repeat.) This pattern holds regardless of the content in the scene - combat, exploration, social interaction. Combat is a bit more structured than the other two pillars, but that loop remains. If a roll occurs, it happens after the player describes what he or she wants to do. The DM calls for this roll when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure with an eye toward balancing calls for outright success with appropriate checks, if that DM follows the "middle path." If failure is indicated, the result can be straight-up failure or progress combined with a setback.

I find games run more smoothly when everyone at the table plays by the intended play loop. If a player physically cannot offer a goal and approach sufficient to communicate to the DM due to some personal hardship or challenges, then accommodations rightly should be made. But it does not take a smooth-talker, mechanical engineer, or weapons expert to be successful at D&D. Even the most flowery or technical language still gets boiled down to a goal and approach which is adjudicated accordingly.


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## SkidAce (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I can imagine a fighter player being told up front they should be working to not have to fight to get a better chance of success because they might lose fights.




Funny note:  Some guy named Sun Tzu said something similar about winning before even fighting.  

/grin


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: I guess we just play differently then.  I don't want to force my players to be glib actors, but I do want them to solve problems using their own noggins, probably because that's what I like, too. I like that little thrill of, "Heh...I just figured out something cool."  

Think Zork, not WoW.

But, yes, you're right: that is testing the player, not the character, maybe not in acting ability but in thinking ability.  I'm ok with that.  And I guess in that regard the people I game with are different than the people you game with.



Oofta said:


> BTW, you never answered my question.   If the player states "I study her closely looking for hints that she's not telling the truth.  I'm trying to glean clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms." what do you do?  Ignore them?
> 
> If you ask for an insight check since that's the definition of the skill, what's wrong with them saying "I make an insight check?"
> 
> If you tell them they can't do that, how is that not telling them what their character does?




Sorry, I think I responded to that post from my phone, and just answered part of it.

No, I don't ignore them.  It depends on the situation.  I might just say, "You don't pick up on anything special."  I might, if that character is good at this sort of thing, give away a clue to her motivation without requiring a roll.  Or I might, if I think the outcome is uncertain, ask them to make an Insight check (or possibly an Investigation check if there's a tiny spot of blood on her collar, or a History or Religion check if her necklace is of specific and significant origin, or....etc.).

The answer I would _not_ give is, "You think she's lying" or "You think she's telling the truth."  I give a hint, and let the player decide what his/her character thinks.

And, actually, let me now amend all that (and my previous posts) with the following: everything I have been describing is what I _aspire_ to.  I still sometimes/often get caught off guard by my players, or I'm using a published adventure that just uses straight-up skill checks, and my response is "Uh....uh....give me an Insight check."  But I hate doing that, and I feel like I've let down my players.  I think it's an inferior solution. I won't call it straight-up _lazy_ because just DMing itself is a bunch of work, but it's not _excellent_ DMing.


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## SkidAce (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, as to the second question, is the DC the same regardless of what their character's do, yes, it's an absolute DC.  You can describe it however you like, but, frankly the DC isn't going to change.  To me, that's the only way to be fair and consistent.  I have one player who is utterly tongue tied when trying to talk to NPC's.  He just isn't very good at it.  And, really, he isn't terribly interested in the whole "funny voices" aspect of gaming.  While, OTOH, I have a player who really has the gift of the gab and can come up with excellent approaches very quickly on the fly.
> 
> Sorry, but, I refuse to penalize one or reward the other.  They both have the same DC to persuade that guard.  Maybe, if I'm honest, I'm a bit freer with Inspiration with the second guy because he makes me laugh more often (although, again, I encourage the group to award Inspiration rather than rely on me), but, hey, no one's perfect.




I do tend to agree with this position though, as I do not want to penalize anyone for things their character could do better than them.


However, do I change the DC if someone thinks to play to the NPCs flaws or motivations?  Yes.  Is that penalizing the player who doesn't figure out things well?  Maybe....

Contradiction?  I dont know.

All I know is this, we try to steer a middle course on such things, and if someone is getting treated unfairly, we all as players notice and address it.  Then we continue playing. 

There is absolutely no way we can consistently separate players from characters, and many times no one cares whether we do.


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## SkidAce (Apr 4, 2019)

Why is my signature all jacked up and no longer a URL?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I really wish I could remember the actual quote, but, years ago, on these boards, a very wise poster once said something to the effect of, "The dice provide the direction, I provide the script".  So, yeah, most narration _follows_ die rolls, not precedes it.  Don't tell me how you're doing something, make the check first and THEN tell me what you did.  Because, frankly, until you roll, no one at the table knows what you actually did.




I don't think this actually conflicts with what we're saying.  In fact, I strongly believe in "roll then narrate" AND "narrate then roll".  And I'm not sure I can explain exactly where the line is between the two, but (as I love to say) the existence of dawn does not disprove the difference between day and night.  If a players said, "I'm going to pretend to stumble, then pick up sand and throw it in the bandit's eyes, then attack while he's distracted!" I'd let him roll, and if he hits he's free to describe that as being successful (roll-then-narrate).  If I've introduced a particularly challenging monster that I've described as having especially sensitive eyes, and described the fine, powdery sand, then I'm going to give him advantage (or something) on the roll (narrate-then-roll).

One thing I don't believe you have answered, Hussar, is my hypothetical scenario about the players that just want to sit in the tavern...in the sense that they don't actually narrate where they go and who they talk to and what they search...and just want to roll Investigation to solve the mystery without having to describe any actions on their part.  I'm intentionally choosing an extreme case, of course, but that seems to fit the description of how you play: you aren't requiring the _players_ to figure out likely leads, you are letting their _characters_ do it.

I don't think you would actually do this (would you?!?!) and if not, why not?

Is it possible we play the same way, but we just draw the line in different places?

EDIT: And maybe the difference, now that I think about it, is that the players are free to embellish the world with descriptions of their own, but doing so will not gain them mechanical advantages.  If they want to use the descriptions provided by the DM they are more likely to gain the advantage.  That probably doesn't provide a definitive answer in all cases, but it's closer.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> If you like that ability, it seems we agree that doing whatever you can do (including attaining 11th level as a rogue) to mitigate the swinginess of a d20 is a good thing, right? If that's so, then we've made progress!
> 
> The good news is that any character can do that by trying to remove uncertainty and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. But, again, you can't win 'em all and sometimes you're going to have to roll. So this is a great class feature to have when you fall short of outright success, and not everyone can do that.




Floating this back up in hopes that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] will respond to it. Because if we can agree that reducing the impact of a d20 is a good thing as a player, then we might actually get somewhere.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> According to the rules of D&D 5e, the DM describes the environment, the player describes what he or she wants to do, then the DM narrates the result of the adventurer's action. (Repeat.) This pattern holds regardless of the content in the scene - combat, exploration, social interaction. Combat is a bit more structured than the other two pillars, but that loop remains. If a roll occurs, it happens after the player describes what he or she wants to do. The DM calls for this roll when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure with an eye toward balancing calls for outright success with appropriate checks, if that DM follows the "middle path." If failure is indicated, the result can be straight-up failure or progress combined with a setback.
> 
> I find games run more smoothly when everyone at the table plays by the intended play loop. If a player physically cannot offer a goal and approach sufficient to communicate to the DM due to some personal hardship or challenges, then accommodations rightly should be made. But it does not take a smooth-talker, mechanical engineer, or weapons expert to be successful at D&D. Even the most flowery or technical language still gets boiled down to a goal and approach which is adjudicated accordingly.




You keep repeating that this is "according to the rules" as if anyone actually cares.  It's rather frustrating to be honest.  Number one, I certainly don't consider this sort of thing to be rules.  Advice?  Sure, but actual rules?  Nope, not in the slightest.  Please stop with the appeals to authority.  You like the way you play and that's fantastic.  You can please stop trying to prove that it's the "right" way to play.  Because, frankly, if your only real defense of your playstyle is "Well, that's what I think the book says", well, that's not particularly convincing at all.



Elfcrusher said:


> [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: I guess we just play differently then.  I don't want to force my players to be glib actors, but I do want them to solve problems using their own noggins, probably because that's what I like, too. I like that little thrill of, "Heh...I just figured out something cool."
> 
> Think Zork, not WoW.
> /snip.




See, I would rather chew glass than play games like Zork anymore.  I hated them at the time and I loathe them now.  I mean, if you're trying to convince me that you're not descending into pixel bitching, well, invoking Zork is the wrong way to go.  

Given the choice of the two, I'd much rather my game compared to WoW than Zork.  I would not consider that an insult in the slightest.  To the point where if a player at my table actually told me that my game reminded him of Zork, I'd probably hang up my DMing hat on the spot.  

Gimme hours of Fortnite over any text based adventure or Sierra Quest game any day of the week.  Granted, to be honest, I've never played WoW.  Never got into the whole MMO thing.  But, for any sort of online game?  Gimme a first person shooter every time.  Heck, even offline, I tend to go with the mindless stuff a lot more than puzzle games.  It's why I loved Baldur's Gate.  They never bothered with trying to make you figure stuff out.  You just adventured and progressed.  None of this, "Well, you didn't find this widget, so, you just wasted the last five hours of game play".


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See, I would rather chew glass than play games like Zork anymore.  I hated them at the time and I loathe them now.  I mean, if you're trying to convince me that you're not descending into pixel bitching, well, invoking Zork is the wrong way to go.
> 
> Given the choice of the two, I'd much rather my game compared to WoW than Zork.  I would not consider that an insult in the slightest.  To the point where if a player at my table actually told me that my game reminded him of Zork, I'd probably hang up my DMing hat on the spot.
> 
> Gimme hours of Fortnite over any text based adventure or Sierra Quest game any day of the week.  Granted, to be honest, I've never played WoW.  Never got into the whole MMO thing.  But, for any sort of online game?  Gimme a first person shooter every time.  Heck, even offline, I tend to go with the mindless stuff a lot more than puzzle games.  It's why I loved Baldur's Gate.  They never bothered with trying to make you figure stuff out.  You just adventured and progressed.  None of this, "Well, you didn't find this widget, so, you just wasted the last five hours of game play".




Well, there you go.  I think we've uncovered the root of the disagreement.

Happy gaming!

(FWIW, I've sunk hundreds of hours...actually hundreds of days...into WoW.  It was entirely the social aspect that kept me, though.)


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> You keep repeating that this is "according to the rules" as if anyone actually cares.  It's rather frustrating to be honest.  Number one, I certainly don't consider this sort of thing to be rules.  Advice?  Sure, but actual rules?  Nope, not in the slightest.  Please stop with the appeals to authority.  You like the way you play and that's fantastic.  You can please stop trying to prove that it's the "right" way to play.  Because, frankly, if your only real defense of your playstyle is "Well, that's what I think the book says", well, that's not particularly convincing at all.




I'm not proving my way is the "right" way, nor disproving other people's way, nor appealing to authority. I'm explaining why the approach I employ is used in the first place - because that's what the rules say to do. "How to Play" rules aren't advice. It's, perhaps not surprisingly, _how the game is meant to be played_. I'm also not "defending" my playstyle since my playstyle isn't actually under attack, right?


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I don't think this actually conflicts with what we're saying.  In fact, I strongly believe in "roll then narrate" AND "narrate then roll".  And I'm not sure I can explain exactly where the line is between the two, but (as I love to say) the existence of dawn does not disprove the difference between day and night.  If a players said, "I'm going to pretend to stumble, then pick up sand and throw it in the bandit's eyes, then attack while he's distracted!" I'd let him roll, and if he hits he's free to describe that as being successful (roll-then-narrate).  If I've introduced a particularly challenging monster that I've described as having especially sensitive eyes, and described the fine, powdery sand, then I'm going to give him advantage (or something) on the roll (narrate-then-roll).
> 
> One thing I don't believe you have answered, Hussar, is my hypothetical scenario about the players that just want to sit in the tavern...in the sense that they don't actually narrate where they go and who they talk to and what they search...and just want to roll Investigation to solve the mystery without having to describe any actions on their part.  I'm intentionally choosing an extreme case, of course, but that seems to fit the description of how you play: you aren't requiring the _players_ to figure out likely leads, you are letting their _characters_ do it.
> 
> ...




Why not?  5e comes with downtime activities.  If the players came to me and told me, hey, this is what we want to do - can we just resolve this in a couple of rolls after a week of downtime, great, go for it.  Why would I force them to dance through my adventure?  

Now, I'd probably be pretty annoyed that I've dropped all sorts of adventure hooks and the players are completely disinterested in it, but, let's ignore the obvious issues of table mismatch for a moment.  We'll presume the table is happy and healthy, but, they simply don't want to do this investigation thing.  Ok, great.  

I mean, we do this with all sorts of things - abstract away buying magic items in 3e is a perfect example.  5e does it through downtime.  In our current Dragon Heist game, the players actually literally sat in their tavern while their factions went out and gathered information for them.  They leveraged their faction memberships and asked the factions to chase down various leads while they stayed home and ran their tavern.  

I let time pass and then presented them with the findings.  

So, yeah, to answer your question, I honestly have zero problem with letting the players abstract away an entire scenario (in this case it would be tracking down witnesses to a crime, talking to survivors of that crime, checking with law enforcement, and a few other goodies as well - I'm being deliberately vague because spoilers.  Chapter 3 Fireball of Dragon Heist if you know the adventure).  I presented them with the information after the fact and they proceeded from there.  Did I roleplay out contacting each faction contact, then roleplay out the investigations?  Nope, not in the slightest.  They abstracted it, I gave them the results.  

Now, in this specific case, no rolls were needed, but, again, I wouldn't have a problem if they made some sort of checks.  Perhaps a Charisma check or something.  Heck, they have Faction Scores.  A check modified by that would have worked as well, had I thought of it at the time.  I didn't think of it, but, in retrospect, that would have been a better idea.  A check results in various levels of the faction being motivated to help, which in turn results in various bits of information becoming available.  Ah well, will do better next time.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'm not proving my way is the "right" way, nor disproving other people's way, nor appealing to authority. I'm explaining why the approach I employ is used in the first place - because that's what the rules say to do. "How to Play" rules aren't advice. It's, perhaps not surprisingly, _how the game is meant to be played_. I'm also not "defending" my playstyle since my playstyle isn't actually under attack, right?




Ok, you may not mean it that way, but, from where I'm sitting, it's exactly how you sound.

"I'm doing what the rules say.  You aren't.  I'm playing the way the game is meant to be played.  You aren't."  How is that not directly telling me that I'm wrong?  

And, sorry, the DMG has always been full of advice.  Some of it great, some of it less so.  Every DMG has been full of advice on "how to play the game".  But, advice isn't rules.  It's just advice.  It works for you and that's fantastic.  Great.  For me, that advice isn't how I want to play.  And, fortunately, D&D is a big enough tent that it can encompass numerous play styles without anyone needing to "prove" that they are playing "the way the game is meant to be played".

So, yeah, I'd push back a whole lot less if you'd please stop telling me how much badwrongfun I'm having.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Ok, you may not mean it that way, but, from where I'm sitting, it's exactly how you sound.
> 
> "I'm doing what the rules say.  You aren't.  I'm playing the way the game is meant to be played.  You aren't."  How is that not directly telling me that I'm wrong?




If I'm directly telling you that you're wrong, I'd say "You're wrong." Because that's a direct statement as to your wrongness. But I haven't done that. I even refused to call what you're doing "house rules" even though you invited me to do so.

What I'm doing is saying what _I_ do and _why_. If for some reason that bothers you, then that's on you and is probably worth examining in my view.



Hussar said:


> And, sorry, the DMG has always been full of advice.  Some of it great, some of it less so.  Every DMG has been full of advice on "how to play the game".  But, advice isn't rules.  It's just advice.  It works for you and that's fantastic.  Great.  For me, that advice isn't how I want to play.  And, fortunately, D&D is a big enough tent that it can encompass numerous play styles without anyone needing to "prove" that they are playing "the way the game is meant to be played".




When I reference "How to Play," that comes from the Basic Rules and Players Handbook. It's in the section entitled, "How to Play," which details step-by-step how to play D&D 5e.


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Wait, there's a "roll everything" crew?  I thought there was a "roll as a last resort only if the DM asks for it possibly because the player can describe what they're doing without invoking the forbidden I make a skill check statement" vs the "use a mix, don't penalize people for preferring to use dice" crew.




Seems like there’s a “player decisions don’t matter; only dice rolls do” group and a “player decisions matter and dice rolls may determine the outcome of those decisions” group.

I’d personally prefer a game in which my decisions impacted the chance of succeeding or failing versus a game in which my decisions were irrelevant compared to what I throw on a die. 

If the game is just throwing dice, and no decision making or real choices, i don’t feel like I’m actually playing anything. Even Yahtzee has choices and decision points, after all. 

But if it’s just “roll to continue” over and over - I’ll pass.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Why not?  5e comes with downtime activities.  If the players came to me and told me, hey, this is what we want to do - can we just resolve this in a couple of rolls after a week of downtime, great, go for it.  Why would I force them to dance through my adventure?
> 
> Now, I'd probably be pretty annoyed that I've dropped all sorts of adventure hooks and the players are completely disinterested in it, but, let's ignore the obvious issues of table mismatch for a moment.  We'll presume the table is happy and healthy, but, they simply don't want to do this investigation thing.  Ok, great.
> 
> ...




Huh, ok.  That's illuminating.

As you've said, so much of this comes down to assembling a table of like-minded gamers.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

SkidAce said:


> Funny note:  Some guy named Sun Tzu said something similar about winning before even fighting.
> 
> /grin



True but i am pretty sure that guy was not a character in a fantasy rpg. 
i am pretty sure most "real people" if given say magic spells and such would not choose to go off hunting dungeons of loot and monsters either if it were real life.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 4, 2019)

Oofta said:


> BTW, you never answered my question.   If the player states "I study her closely looking for hints that she's not telling the truth.  I'm trying to glean clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms." what do you do?  Ignore them?
> 
> If you ask for an insight check since that's the definition of the skill, what's wrong with them saying "I make an insight check?"
> 
> If you tell them they can't do that, how is that not telling them what their character does?




That's not the definition of an insight check, it's a possible use.

The "problem" as you frame it for this is small in one way, large in others.  It's small in the sense that  a GM can run with it and assume things and most likely be right enough that it's a reasonable shortcut.  It's large in that it assumes there's no consequence for failure and that this method doesn't work for more ambiguous checks.

Approaching the latter issue first, it's of little surpruse that examples chosen to highlight asking for rolls are very simple applications where approach can be easily assumed.  In fact, I think you've said exactly this.  So, really, this complaint isn't that asking fior approach is a problem, it's that you're comfortable assuming approach from an ask to roll.  This leads to the former issue above -- lack of consequence.

Most of your examples of how you let players ask for rolls are absent consequence for failure.   Before you go defensive, look at it.  An ask for an insight check results in no change on a failure.  The character suspected but doesn't know before the roll, and nothing changes after the roll.  Same for looking for a trap -- the failire state is exactly the same as before the roll.  In fact, this approach kinda lends itself to weird play because the player knows his character failed but has to play as if they don't know?

The goal and approach method has, as an additional method, a failure state that is different from the state prior to the roll.  As a broad approach, these failure states vary.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has said he might tick a wandering monster clock for a failure in some games, letting the character know they failed and can try again but still changing the situation to become more dangerous.  I prefer more immediate changes, such that a failure thwarts the  goal directly (so failing an insight check may end the social encounter or cause a damaging social gaffe).  Regardless of preference for failure states, the approach will inform the failure state.

Again, I'll provide an in play example from a recent session:

The party knew they were entering an old temple complex full of traps.  In the first hallway, there was a trap, a set of false doors that would snap shut to seal the hallway if a pressure plate was triggered.  The party had their gloomstalker ranger scout ahead.  Mindful of alerting possible enemies, he chose to advance down the hallway without a light source, relying on darkvision.  This meant than the DC 12 passive perception check to notice deep groves on the floor showing the arc of closing for the false doors was missed (Passive of 16, -5 for dim light).  Had they not, this clue would have indicated something odd and given insight into the nature of the trap.  However, the player's chosen approach (use darkvision) to the goal of scouting for dangers, lead to an automatic failure.

The player then chose to move past the doors without  investigating them, so, again, the chosen approach lead to automatically missing the trap.  The pressure plate was triggered and the trap cut the ranger off from the rest of the party.

The party rogue then moved up to the trap with a light spell to examine it.  As the trap was sprung and the mechanism obvious, he automatically succeeded in his action to determine the nature of the trap.  (He had good light and stated he was inspecting it visually.) I told him what the trap did and that it was likely triggered on the other side where he couldn't see.  He also could see that the mechanism was accessible but under a lot of pressure, so failing to disarm it may cause a violent release, likely spraying pieces like shrapnel as it disintegrated.  

Meanwhile, the dwarven battlerager decided this was taking too long and charged the stone doors blocking the hall to break them down.  A STR check was called for with failure causing danage for running into a stone door and success breaking the door but automatically causing the same violent release.  The dwarf's player agreed and rolled -- success!  The door was shattered and a DC 13 DEX save was called against 5d6 piercing damage, half on a save.  Barbarians at his level have advantage on DEX saves from sources they can see and it was easily passed.  The dwarf's approach given the established wirking of the trap directly resulted in the violent release of the mechanism.  Had the rogue attempted to disarm, a success would have both disengaged the doors and avoided the explosion.  A failure would have disabled the doors, but with an explosion.

The party has continued on, but now the ranger is using a light source which has already resulted in detection of a similar trap deeper in.

And, finally, my preferred method of requiring a goal and approach with consequences for failurr DOES NOT MEAN that your method cannot.  Of course ypu can do this.  But, instead of having to stop play to clarify things in situations where "I roll X" is insufficient, I've taken to preferring to bever assume and always have players describe approach.  It's a preference that solves things at my table, and works well enough I like to advocate for it.  Neither my method nor my play suffer at all if you do it different.

Almost any approach works, by the way, I most certainty don't require anything close to magic words.  The trap I describe above had the following notes: [doors close to seal hall on sctivation of pressure plate, DC 12 passive to notice clues, once triggered doors under pressure].  That was it, no magic solve, any reasonable approach by players would have moved play further.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> That's not the definition of an insight check, it's a possible use.... (snip)




Really great post, Ovinomancer.  Although I've touched on it a couple of times, I haven't emphasized enough the importance of consequences for failure, that you so nicely illustrate.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Seems like there’s a “player decisions don’t matter; only dice rolls do” group and a “player decisions matter and dice rolls may determine the outcome of those decisions” group.
> 
> I’d personally prefer a game in which my decisions impacted the chance of succeeding or failing versus a game in which my decisions were irrelevant compared to what I throw on a die.
> 
> ...




And this was also really nicely said.  Risk/reward, trade-offs, decisions points...however you want to phrase it, I think that's the heart of the matter.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Seems like there’s a “player decisions don’t matter; only dice rolls do” group and a “player decisions matter and dice rolls may determine the outcome of those decisions” group.
> 
> I’d personally prefer a game in which my decisions impacted the chance of succeeding or failing versus a game in which my decisions were irrelevant compared to what I throw on a die.
> 
> ...




I have not seen anyone who advocated a "player decisions dont matter" or a "roll everything" crowd. I haven't even seen a case where anyone is saying player decisions wont affect chances of success and fail at all during their game (as you make reference to "a game " in which those blah blah..

if you got cites for that, by all means post them. But i see what you are describing as a parody of what is being said.

Why?

Almost everybody in the "not the side of balance you prefer, i think" admits to using the advantage/disadvantage process for (mostly what the Gm describes as) things that would help or hinder success. 

Additionally, there is the scope of success/fail, right? Are we talking success/fail on a check or success/fail at a goal? 

Take combat, the player makes a ton of decisions, who to attack, who to heal, which weapon, do i rage or not, do i use sharpshooter or not, etc etc etc etc that *influence* the results of the actions but for the large number of them whether or not an individual action succeeds is in the hands of the dice (especially if it directly affects the adversaries.) 

So, the descriptions don't always or necessarily even most of the time affect the die rolls or odds on the task level, but whether or not the choices of targets, timing etc make sense within the fight has a huge impact on whether or not the goal is achieved, the fight is won.

Consider a fight in which say a fighter was rolling randomly for each turn what their actions were (even if limited to who do i attack, where do i move and what weapons do i use) vs one where the player is choosing the actions for his character. I would suggest that in the vast majority of cases the fight would be more likely won by the latter, player choices, than the former.

So, even if the player choices never "influenced" a single die roll and certainly do not auto-success any attack, they still have a major impact on the success and fail, right? Player choices matter.

But, it seems to me the real differences being put forth here are not that at all, but (as i said earlier off of your previous example - thanks again) how often does the Gm put a "auto-win without checking character" option to solve the challenges that matter? How often is it able to be solved soleey at the player side before the character stats even come into play?

In the example i gave above, the player choices greatly influence the outcome, the result but at the various stages it is the character specs that guide the mini-resolution. 

Contrast that to say a game in which it is seen, put forth and even proclaimed that getting to even use your stats in a roll is cheating yourself because you see there are so often "no spec needed" auto-wins?

That seems to me to be the bigger divide here. 

Not the extremes you put forth as your portrayal of "the other side".

As pointed out earlier...

***

So, this is I think at part striking at the core of that "balance" the DMG mentions in its Middle Path and the others. 

How often do you have challenges that matter that are*:
A only solvable by #1
B only solvable by #2
C that are solvable by either #1 or #2 
D Only solvable by both #1 and #2 used in tandem

* Perhaps this is better expressed as "how often does our resolution process result in cases actually being solved by:" since that is what the players see in play and that shapes their views going forward. 

Where:
1 An absolute correct answer - if I do this, if I say this literally in this case, I get thru. No checks, no character skills needed. Just pick/guess the right key/way AS PLAYER and walk thru. There may even be more than one absolute answer - more than one just "choose the win."
2 A way to use a CHARACTER's skill check (ability check) to get thru. May be more than one way to "check the win." 
***


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Why not?  5e comes with downtime activities.  If the players came to me and told me, hey, this is what we want to do - can we just resolve this in a couple of rolls after a week of downtime, great, go for it.  Why would I force them to dance through my adventure?
> 
> Now, I'd probably be pretty annoyed that I've dropped all sorts of adventure hooks and the players are completely disinterested in it, but, let's ignore the obvious issues of table mismatch for a moment.  We'll presume the table is happy and healthy, but, they simply don't want to do this investigation thing.  Ok, great.
> 
> ...




Exactly...

if i put say a "medical mystery" like say to remove curse or a "murder mystery" into my games and the players tell me, my character wants to investigate it but i do not want to play thru that stuff, can we resolve it by checks" i am pretty much okay with that. then again, i am also Ok if they just say "nah, not something that involves us, lets hit the road." I ain't in the GMing business to drive my players down a rabbit hole they tell me they wont enjoy. 

Then again, i tend to produce more robust challenges and situations where there are multiple ways to get to the end and which directly involve stuff that ties to the PCs.

So, downtime checks and more than likely "failures with setbacks" will produce some results, maybe not all to the way the party would have liked, but one of my main points in my RPGs is that characters more often than not are struggling to control the outcomes and the less they succeed and get involved the more others control outcomes.

of course, the understanding of the "roll investigate downtime" is that its more than just "sit in tavern."

But, i can sure understand for a game driven by "describe how" more than "character skill" that approach might be not acceptable.


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I have not seen anyone who advocated a "player decisions dont matter" or a "roll everything" crowd. I haven't even seen a case where anyone is saying player decisions wont affect chances of success and fail at all during their game (as you make reference to "a game " in which those blah blah..
> 
> if you got cites for that, by all means post them. But i see what you are describing as a parody of what is being said.
> 
> ...




I’m afraid I don’t understand most of your post. I’ll attempt to address what I do understand. 

I’m more concerned with success/fail of a stated action than of a check. To me, a check is a process by which the outcome of an action can be determined. The check itself is not anything that is happening in the game world - it’s a game process happening outside the game world, the result of which determines the outcome of the in-game action (in cases where the DM cannot make that determination themselves). 

Even in combat, I adjudicate the player’s actions to see whether dice are even required. I think everyone must. Surely “I rage” is an action that doesn’t require a check. Likewise, taking in-game actions to set up a Sure-Thing (in my game we call this “check-mate”) is an auto-success that bypasses the process. (By way of example, I had a player take an enemy captain hostage and put a dagger to their throat. By the game rules, that dagger doing 1d4+2 could never kill that captain outright, regardless of the die roll. But that’s dumb! So the judgment kicks in and I rule that captain is check-mated. The player can auto-kill that captain if they choose to do so). 

Finally as to whether the DM “puts in” solutions, I can only say I don’t put in ANY solutions to obstacles. Any player’s approach may be a valid/possible, invalid/impossible, or automatically successful. But I won’t know what to set the DC at (if at all) until after I hear how a player sets about overcoming that obstacle. So for me, declaring “I’m going to make an insight check” isn’t a sufficient declaration. I’d like clarification. What do you hope to find out? How are you finding it out? If you just rolled and I didn’t give you anything close to what you intended as a result, you might reasonably feel that was a waste of time or that your investment/action is of little value. By clarifying before the roll, I can at least ensure I’ve faithfully carried out what you proposed when I narrate the result of the roll. 

Like if you rolled a 22 and I said “He’s a lecherous NPC motivated by sensual pleasure” you might be like “well, great but I was trying to find out if he’s working for the mob.” 

To estimate, I would say 15-25% of actions taken in game result in automatic success or automatic failure (although in the case of auto-fail I usually say “your character knows this won’t work - you want to try something else?”). The remaining 75% of actions are usually uncertain enough to require checks. However, that includes combat. Out of combat id estimate it’s closer to 50/50.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I’m afraid I don’t understand most of your post. I’ll attempt to address what I do understand.
> 
> I’m more concerned with success/fail of a stated action than of a check. To me, a check is a process by which the outcome of an action can be determined. The check itself is not anything that is happening in the game world - it’s a game process happening outside the game world, the result of which determines the outcome of the in-game action (in cases where the DM cannot make that determination themselves).
> 
> ...




For your "i do not put in the footnote, to cover both cases of where a GM says they do plan for solutions or not - whats important is how often the resolution process is seen to go one way or the other. " thats why i added the footnote "* Perhaps this is better expressed as "how often does our resolution process result in cases actually being solved by:" since that is what the players see in play and that shapes their views going forward. "

if i knew that out-of-combat auto-success in tasks would occur without reference to character stats applying to checks  50/50 that would give me great pause in investing in those traits as opposed to investing in traits that would see more actual influence. i would figure i could at least get 50/50 without "spending" a trait and its better to go with traits that will see much more use - not be as easily "auto-beat".

But, to be fair, i am not including "non-score" elements in this at all. So, given "i rage" is always an auto-success or auto-fail" and whether you can go into rage or not is never part of the "role of the dice" at all, i wasn't counting that. if i was, i guess the numbers would be like 99.99999999999999999999% in favor of auto-success since moving, drawing weapons, and so many other things are not matters of that issue at all. 

Going into a rage is never a challenge in my games (or so rarely one), so i dont include it in my 50-60% B, rarely A and split the CD figure i gave.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> But, i can sure understand for a game driven by "describe how" more than "character skill" that approach might be not acceptable.




To expand on that: the "describe how" method _is_ based on "character skill".  The player with the Wizard PC, for example, is less likely to describe how they are going to pick the lock if that is not something they are skilled in.  The player with the Rogue PC will gladly describe how they are picking the lock because that is based on a skill proficiency they have.  It's a recipe for more success if you describe actions that your PC is good at.  

That's probably not really what you are getting at, but I didn't want that point lost.

I see the contrast as "player describes how" vs "player just rolls ability check" -- both rely on character skill, the former chooses to be more narrative about it up front.


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> For your "i do not put in the footnote, to cover both cases of where a GM says they do plan for solutions or not - whats important is how often the resolution process is seen to go one way or the other. " thats why i added the footnote "* Perhaps this is better expressed as "how often does our resolution process result in cases actually being solved by:" since that is what the players see in play and that shapes their views going forward. "
> 
> if i knew that out-of-combat auto-success in tasks would occur without reference to character stats applying to checks  50/50 that would give me great pause in investing in those traits as opposed to investing in traits that would see more actual influence. i would figure i could at least get 50/50 without "spending" a trait and its better to go with traits that will see much more use - not be as easily "auto-beat".
> 
> ...




Going into a rage was just a demonstrative example of the idea. Drawing a weapon, too. But because we agree that not EVERY action (even in combat) warrants a check, I can describe my “check-mate” position as a natural extension of the idea. Sometimes you can do things, even big things, and their outcome isn’t dependent on the dice. And the borderline of whether or not the dice need to be involved is whether the outcome is uncertain. 

So the knife-to-the-throat thing, there’s no uncertainty. That the game rules fail to adequately handle that situation means that the DM must step in and make a ruling. 

As a matter of course I use my own judgment BEFORE I engage dice if only to ensure we’re faithfully carrying out the player’s intent and checking against impossibilities or rules-induced absurdities.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I’m afraid I don’t understand most of your post. I’ll attempt to address what I do understand.
> 
> I’m more concerned with success/fail of a stated action than of a check. To me, a check is a process by which the outcome of an action can be determined. The check itself is not anything that is happening in the game world - it’s a game process happening outside the game world, the result of which determines the outcome of the in-game action (in cases where the DM cannot make that determination themselves).
> 
> ...




"So for me, declaring “I’m going to make an insight check” isn’t a sufficient declaration. I’d like clarification. What do you hope to find out? How are you finding it out? If you just rolled and I didn’t give you anything close to what you intended as a result, you might reasonably feel that was a waste of time or that your investment/action is of little value. By clarifying before the roll, I can at least ensure I’ve faithfully carried out what you proposed when I narrate the result of the roll. "

again we go back to this...

first, at my table, we develop a good shared understanding of what insight skill expertise represents well before it becomes the issue at the table. *that is very important! We need to know this before we get to the rolling, be on the same page.* Why?

because of course that player in chargen had the option to choose other skills to be proficient with. that kinda needed to be an informed decision, right? if they chose insight and what they thought was actually going to be covered by investigation in my game, we still gots a problem when it hits and they try it and even with the greatest descipriont ever the Gm says "roll investigate int check" and the player looks at his non-proficient 8 int check vs his proficient 16 wisdom check and goes WTF.

So, if your table is resolving those issues not at chargen but at the point of occurrence play, hey, glad that works for you. For me and mine, we find its a lot better to get that nailed down way way way way before that.

But if the case is still vague at the moment of play, somehow, i have found an amazing solution, i ask. if its not clear by context of the scene and the moment - if somehow its not obvious whether or not this insight check is for checking for lies or evidence of deception vs say trying to predict the targets next move, then i ask *if* it matters to the resolution.

That gods awful video about the way thw world ends in fire if a player calls for ca check used an example of a player saying " i check arcana as i examine the painting" and in fact for me thats fine, i give him whatever answers would be appropriate for that skill about that painting. In the case in question it would be about whatever arcane symbols and spell effects were evident. 

But for me, almost always when a player tells me "i want an insight check" or "can i check insight on that" the context as to what they are after is obvious. So, this is a problem i do not see in actual play anywhere as much as it seems to be boogeymanned here.

but thats my table.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> To expand on that: the "describe how" method _is_ based on "character skill".  The player with the Wizard PC, for example, is less likely to describe how they are going to pick the lock if that is not something they are skilled in.  The player with the Rogue PC will gladly describe how they are picking the lock because that is based on a skill proficiency they have.  It's a recipe for more success if you describe actions that your PC is good at.
> 
> That's probably not really what you are getting at, but I didn't want that point lost.
> 
> I see the contrast as "player describes how" vs "player just rolls ability check" -- both rely on character skill, the former chooses to be more narrative about it up front.




Sorry but its been made pretty clear by some that there are auto-success "approaches" that dont get to character skill as part of their resolution. So, you know, if we can get to that auto-success without checking, the wizard can very well solve that trap.

there is a huge difference in that and say the way i do, using the auto-success rule from the DMG on proficiencies as a baseline for tasks/challenges that matter.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> To expand on that: the "describe how" method _is_ based on "character skill".  The player with the Wizard PC, for example, is less likely to describe how they are going to pick the lock if that is not something they are skilled in.  The player with the Rogue PC will gladly describe how they are picking the lock because that is based on a skill proficiency they have.  It's a recipe for more success if you describe actions that your PC is good at.
> 
> That's probably not really what you are getting at, but I didn't want that point lost.
> 
> I see the contrast as "player describes how" vs "player just rolls ability check" -- both rely on character skill, the former chooses to be more narrative about it up front.




I'd take it one step further and say that the whole "challenge the characters, not the players" position that underpins some of the posters' arguments here is completely bogus. The player is _always_ the one who is being challenged. And the _challenge_ in this game is to put your character in the best position to succeed at your desired goal. The _difficulty_ depends on your stated approach relative to the fictional situation as described by the DM. The difficulty is higher when achieving the desired goal is less likely and lower when it's more likely.

I used to make the "challenge the characters, not the players" argument back when I was playing D&D 4e more often. That argument (and I) was wrong then and it's wrong now (so I no longer make that argument). The character is not a real thing. While it's being challenged in a fictional sense - a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils - in terms of game play, it's always the player that is being challenged.


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "So for me, declaring “I’m going to make an insight check” isn’t a sufficient declaration. I’d like clarification. What do you hope to find out? How are you finding it out? If you just rolled and I didn’t give you anything close to what you intended as a result, you might reasonably feel that was a waste of time or that your investment/action is of little value. By clarifying before the roll, I can at least ensure I’ve faithfully carried out what you proposed when I narrate the result of the roll. "
> 
> again we go back to this...
> 
> ...




I haven’t seen that video. 

The quality of the description isn’t relevant to the outcome. 

I can’t nail down that stuff at char-gen because there are so very many variables in the instant these things come up. So I also ask for clarity. Sometimes it’s a negotiation. I may ask for one check and a player may go on to clarify why what they’re doing warrants a different check, instead. 

This isn’t a problem I see in actual play ANYMORE since I started playing this way. It used to bog my 3rd ed games down to near-unplayability.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Going into a rage was just a demonstrative example of the idea. Drawing a weapon, too. But because we agree that not EVERY action (even in combat) warrants a check, I can describe my “check-mate” position as a natural extension of the idea. Sometimes you can do things, even big things, and their outcome isn’t dependent on the dice. And the borderline of whether or not the dice need to be involved is whether the outcome is uncertain.
> 
> So the knife-to-the-throat thing, there’s no uncertainty. That the game rules fail to adequately handle that situation means that the DM must step in and make a ruling.
> 
> As a matter of course I use my own judgment BEFORE I engage dice if only to ensure we’re faithfully carrying out the player’s intent and checking against impossibilities or rules-induced absurdities.




not gonna get drawn into the merits or demerits of a Gm fiat deciding to skip an entire process in the game that is integrally tied to character survival. 

If thats an example you want to stand on for your "balance" between "the use of dice against deciding on success" that is pretty clear.

but for me, i do not have to use judgement before an ability check is made... i can decide "impossible", "auto-success" and DCs based on my consistent approaches to those that my players have seen in play whether it is before the roll or not. The only possible change is if the player did not realize they have advantage or disad, i can tell them to roll another die and why - again - in keeping with my established and shown in play patterns. that first clackety-clack of the bouncey die thingy does not force my brain to turn off, you know.


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> not gonna get drawn into the merits or demerits of a Gm fiat deciding to skip an entire process in the game that is integrally tied to character survival.
> 
> If thats an example you want to stand on for your "balance" between "the use of dice against deciding on success" that is pretty clear.
> 
> but for me, i do not have to use judgement before an ability check is made... i can decide "impossible", "auto-success" and DCs based on my consistent approaches to those that my players have seen in play whether it is before the roll or not. The only possible change is if the player did not realize they have advantage or disad, i can tell them to roll another die and why - again - in keeping with my established and shown in play patterns. that first clackety-clack of the bouncey die thingy does not force my brain to turn off, you know.




Okay.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Sorry but its been made pretty clear by some that there are auto-success "approaches" that dont get to character skill as part of their resolution. So, you know, if we can get to that auto-success without checking, the wizard can very well solve that trap.
> 
> there is a huge difference in that and say the way i do, using the auto-success rule from the DMG on proficiencies as a baseline for tasks/challenges that matter.




It's the DM's prerogative to adjudicate an auto-success based on the approach _with the PC (and, hence, the PC's abilities) in mind._  The approach is not in a vacuum.  If the lock is not mundane, why would the DM grant an auto-success to the wizard when we all know he is not skilled at picking locks?  No amount of "magic words" will work to get the wizard an auto-success... well, maybe the Knock spell  ... and so, as DM, if the player said their wizard wanted to pick a difficult lock, I'd probably tell the player (as [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] said upthread): “your character knows this won’t work - you want to try something else?”


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## 5ekyu (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I haven’t seen that video.
> 
> The quality of the description isn’t relevant to the outcome.
> 
> ...




i dont remember my 3.x games having that problem, but i find it practically absent in 5e. I mean, the skills/proficiencies are pretty well divided as are the abilities so really, with the broad and failry distinct "houses" its really rare that i see someone call for a check that is inappropriate to their task - especially after i cover some of the edge cases in that session zero thingy. 

That may be because i tend to use the variant rule where ability scores are not strictly tied to skills. maybe its because i see skills as pretty broad aptitudes and dont get into too far down in the weeds except to provide them clear divisions. i mean, to me if a player says they use dexterity acrobatics, that gives me both the nature of the effort (nimble-quick-finesse as opposed to brute force and power or others) and gives me the specific training used (balance, rolls, etc) so thats a pretty good baseline for whether or not thats gonna get them through or not or if its iffy. 


Dont know, but if we got into so many issues of "but wait doesnt this do that, no it doesn't " as far as the basic functing of skills that it bogged down in play, that would be seen as a huge honking problem with the system, not the players. 

i would be looking for a big major change system-wise to fix that. maybe go to the ditching skills and tools and going for ability scores and/or background level proficiencies maybe like the DMG presents instead. Hopefully we dont have that level of moment by moment confusion over even which ability score applies?


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## SkidAce (Apr 4, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> True but i am pretty sure that guy was not a character in a fantasy rpg.
> i am pretty sure most "real people" if given say magic spells and such would not choose to go off hunting dungeons of loot and monsters either if it were real life.




Oh, I agree.  I was hoping the grin would make it implied, rather than typing it all out (which you did so succinctly)


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> /snip
> 
> To estimate, I would say 15-25% of actions taken in game result in automatic success or automatic failure (although in the case of auto-fail I usually say “your character knows this won’t work - you want to try something else?”). The remaining 75% of actions are usually uncertain enough to require checks. However, that includes combat. Out of combat id estimate it’s closer to 50/50.




I don't play D&D to play "pass the story stick" games.  If a quarter to half of player declarations bypass the mechanics, it's not a game of D&D I want to play.  If I want to play pass the story stick type games, I'll play those since, well, what's the point of having all these mechanics if I'm just going to ignore them half the time?


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'd take it one step further and say that the whole "challenge the characters, not the players" position that underpins some of the posters' arguments here is completely bogus. The player is _always_ the one who is being challenged. And the _challenge_ in this game is to put your character in the best position to succeed at your desired goal. The _difficulty_ depends on your stated approach relative to the fictional situation as described by the DM. The difficulty is higher when achieving the desired goal is less likely and lower when it's more likely.
> 
> I used to make the "challenge the characters, not the players" argument back when I was playing D&D 4e more often. That argument (and I) was wrong then and it's wrong now (so I no longer make that argument). The character is not a real thing. While it's being challenged in a fictional sense - a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils - in terms of game play, it's always the player that is being challenged.




Hehe, for someone who is so insistent that they're not insisting that the other side of the fence is doing things wrong, you seem awfully insistent that we're doing things wrong.  Now, apparently, we're not even capable of describing our own way of playing without being wrong.  :/  

See, for us, the difficulty is the difficulty.  There is NO higher or lower.  And, since we're engaging the mechanics rather than gaming the DM, we're challenging the character, or rather the mechanics of the game which is what is meant by challenging the character, rather than challenging the player's ability to game the DM.


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Hehe, for someone who is so insistent that they're not insisting that the other side of the fence is doing things wrong, you seem awfully insistent that we're doing things wrong.  Now, apparently, we're not even capable of describing our own way of playing without being wrong.  :/
> 
> See, for us, the difficulty is the difficulty.  There is NO higher or lower.  And, since we're engaging the mechanics rather than gaming the DM, we're challenging the character, or rather the mechanics of the game which is what is meant by challenging the character, rather than challenging the player's ability to game the DM.




Demonstrating faults in your arguments is not the same as saying you're playing wrong.

The player is who is being challenged in a game-play sense by making choices appropriate to the situation. The character has resources that, when applied along with a goal and approach, reduce the difficulty (or perhaps increase it, if the player makes bad choices). The character is only being challenged in a fictional sense. And I've already addressed the matter of "gaming the DM" several times, which is also a bogus assertion. It does not describe a mode of play that anyone with whom you're discussing this topic engages.

Also, will I get a response to my question here or shall I give up hope that we'll find a point on which we can agree?


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## Bawylie (Apr 4, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I don't play D&D to play "pass the story stick" games.  If a quarter to half of player declarations bypass the mechanics, it's not a game of D&D I want to play.  If I want to play pass the story stick type games, I'll play those since, well, what's the point of having all these mechanics if I'm just going to ignore them half the time?




I feel the same way about “everything is a check.” If nothing I can think of or do impacts the outcome of the scenario, if the majority of situations are resolved by throwing dice at something until it goes away, then I do not feel my input matters and I do not feel I am playing a game in any meaningful way. 

To me, the game is playing out the scenario, not playing out the mechanics. 

I think this sentiment may inform how some people felt about 4E skill challenges. Some felt that it came down to just racking up points irrespective of what was going on in the game world. While some felt the process existed independently and you hang the in-game stuff on that structure. 

That may be something we’re hovering around now. How do you feel about the process of navigating scenarios via the game’s mechanics versus how you feel about navigating scenarios with your own ideas (and using the process to resolve uncertainty as warranted)? 

When I introduce a new player, or invite someone, I almost always hear “but I don’t know the rules/how to play.” But I take the rules on myself. You don’t need to know them to play - you just have to be able to imagine what your character might do when put in such a scenario. 

I’ve never had any success teaching a 6, 7, or 8 year old how and when to make skill checks or how the action economy works. Usually I just ask them to describe what their character is doing instead and use the rules on my side of the screen. I still have them roll the d20 and all that as normal for my game, but I do the math myself and say like “roll an 8 or higher.”

==========
Your post also makes me consider the relationship between challenge and difficulty and how that intersects with the relationship between the player’s skill and the character’s skill. 

IMO we have to consider these things together and not fall on one side or the other. 

Let me explain: I believe challenge (distinct from difficulty) describes a situation in which there is an objective and an obstacle to completing that objective, that the outcome of the situation is not predetermined and is uncertain (could go either way, sideways, or wild), and that a player, by making decisions (for good or ill) can influence the outcome of the situation (for good or ill). 

Hand-in-hand with that, I believe difficulty is a numeric measure of how hard (or easy) something is to accomplish. 

A straightforward challenge might be difficult by virtue of the task itself (jump a 45’ gap). And a hard challenge might likewise contain many easy obstacles but still be daunting (defend Helm’s Deep from basic orcs for 2 days until Gandalf shows up with Reinforcements). 

Then you have this idea like “but my character is better than I am” at whatever. Stronger, smarter, something. So they would be able to do these things even if I can’t. We let the strong characters roll to lift heavy gates, why not let the smart characters roll to overcome puzzles or riddles? Fair enough, right? But that’s where we need to look at these another way. The decision to lift the gate is a player decision but the actual lift is the character’s skill. The decision how to engage the puzzle belongs to the player while the intelligence of the character is matched against the difficulty of the riddle. 

So I think I come down here: I write challenges for the players to overcome, but the numeric difficulty of those challenges is measured against the character’s’ skills. 

Like above, I don’t concern the kids with the difficulty just the challenge. For adults it’s more of a mix. Adults have more patience and can get into difficulty in a way kids tend not to enjoy. Like mustard or hot sauce. 

I’m pretty sure I have to reject “challenge the character not the player” or vice versa. Probably a proper scenario contains a challenge whose outcome is influenced by a player’s decisions and whose difficulties are surmounted by the character’s stats/rolls, whatever. 

Surprise, bawylie finds another middle path!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 4, 2019)

I'll agree that even when you're "challenging the character" you're still challenging the player, just in a different way.

So it comes down to, in a really coarse sense: do you challenge the player's ability to remember rules, or do you challenge their ability to narrate creative solutions?

 @_*Hussar*_ says he doesn't want to advantage some players over others, because it's all about the characters, but doesn't his version of "challenge the characters" advantage those who are good at memorizing rules?

Or did I just repeat what @_*Bawylie*_ was saying?


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## iserith (Apr 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> but doesn't his version of "challenge the characters" advantage those who are good at memorizing rules?




I guess those players didn't memorize the part where it's the DM who calls for ability checks. Better luck next edition maybe.


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> To expand on that: the "describe how" method _is_ based on "character skill".  The player with the Wizard PC, for example, is less likely to describe how they are going to pick the lock if that is not something they are skilled in.  The player with the Rogue PC will gladly describe how they are picking the lock because that is based on a skill proficiency they have.  It's a recipe for more success if you describe actions that your PC is good at.
> 
> That's probably not really what you are getting at, but I didn't want that point lost.
> 
> I see the contrast as "player describes how" vs "player just rolls ability check" -- both rely on character skill, the former chooses to be more narrative about it up front.




This is another head scratcher for me.  If Bob the locksmith is a wizard* picking a lock he can probably describe it a heck of a lot better than Sue the chemist who happens to be running a rogue.  It's great if Bob can be entertaining in his description but why would it matter to the outcome?  The player isn't picking the lock, the PC is.
_ 
*EDIT: or maybe I just don't understand what you're getting at here._


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## Oofta (Apr 4, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Seems like there’s a “player decisions don’t matter; only dice rolls do” group and a “player decisions matter and dice rolls may determine the outcome of those decisions” group.
> 
> I’d personally prefer a game in which my decisions impacted the chance of succeeding or failing versus a game in which my decisions were irrelevant compared to what I throw on a die.
> 
> ...




I don't know where any of that comes from.  Player decisions absolutely matter.  It's what sets D&D apart from video games.

An example.  The group needs to gather information from an NPC.  If the NPC is hesitant or hostile, in my games getting information will largely be PC skill driven.  What the players decide to do with that information is completely up to them. 

But even when gathering that information, approach, details and arguments do matter. I don't think people are stating otherwise.  I just don't care if it's "I roll an intimidation check ___ and remind them of X, Y and Z" or a more detailed back and forth.  I prefer the latter but sometimes the former is simply more expedient or is the style the player is more comfortable with.

However there are times when the group just doesn't care about certain aspects of the game.  If they'd rather have some hireling go off to gather info while they have a dart throwing contest why would I care?  All I care about is that they're engaged and having fun.


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## Hussar (Apr 4, 2019)

iserith said:


> Demonstrating faults in your arguments is not the same as saying you're playing wrong.
> 
> The player is who is being challenged in a game-play sense by making choices appropriate to the situation. The character has resources that, when applied along with a goal and approach, reduce the difficulty (or perhaps increase it, if the player makes bad choices). The character is only being challenged in a fictional sense. And I've already addressed the matter of "gaming the DM" several times, which is also a bogus assertion. It does not describe a mode of play that anyone with whom you're discussing this topic engages.
> 
> Also, will I get a response to my question here or shall I give up hope that we'll find a point on which we can agree?




So, repeatedly stating that you're doing what the game expects you to do, isn't for the purpose of proving that you're doing things right?  Then why repeat it with every single post you've made for the past several?  Why do you keep restating this over and over and over again if you're not making an appeal to authority in order to tell everyone who disagrees with you that they're playing the game wrong?  

And, sorry, but, my linking isn't working so well, there's at least one poster here who has me blocked.  IIRC, your question was something along the lines of should players try to minimize risk?  Was that the question?  Sorry, I never thought it was an actual question, because it seemed like such a basic answer.  Of course they would.   So, sure, engage the mechanics - Help action, that sort of thing - to try to succeed.  But, "avoid skill checks whenever possible by describing things in such a way that my DM will judge my performance to be of such quality that I automatically succeed" or, to put it simpler, gaming the DM which is precisely what you are advocating, regardless of how many times you try to say you aren't, is not something I enjoy.  



Elfcrusher said:


> I'll agree that even when you're "challenging the character" you're still challenging the player, just in a different way.
> 
> So it comes down to, in a really coarse sense: do you challenge the player's ability to remember rules, or do you challenge their ability to narrate creative solutions?
> 
> ...




Oh noes, I give advantage to players who actually play the game?  The shame, the shame.  Sorry, but, if you want to play a game, learn how to play.  I have zero interest in playing with people who cannot be bothered learning the mechanics anymore.  I've been there.  Played with that guy who spent the first six months not even knowing the most basic things on his character sheet.  Yeah, not interested in that anymore.  Play the game we've all agreed to play or find another table.

In no other game would this even remotely be tolerated.  Can you imagine sitting down to play poker with someone who has been taught the game, plays weekly for six months and still cannot remember if two pairs beats a three of a kind?  Blarg.  No thanks.  It's not like gaming is really that complicated.  If you cannot learn one page of information (what's on your character sheet) in thirty or forty hours of play I no longer have patience with that person.



iserith said:


> I guess those players didn't memorize the part where it's the DM who calls for ability checks. Better luck next edition maybe.




Heh, yup, I'm doing it wrong.  You keep stating this stuff like it's a carved in stone rule and that D&D cannot encompass numerous playstyles.  Why are you insisting that your way is the one true way?  Why is it so hard to accept that not every table does it your way and not everyone views play advice as the holy writ of gaming?  Sheesh.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> So, repeatedly stating that you're doing what the game expects you to do, isn't for the purpose of proving that you're doing things right?




No. It's for the purpose of showing where I derive the approach I use.



Hussar said:


> Then why repeat it with every single post you've made for the past several?  Why do you keep restating this over and over and over again if you're not making an appeal to authority in order to tell everyone who disagrees with you that they're playing the game wrong?




Often it's to refute abjectly incorrect assertions about my approach from posters such as yourself.



Hussar said:


> And, sorry, but, my linking isn't working so well, there's at least one poster here who has me blocked.  IIRC, your question was something along the lines of should players try to minimize risk?  Was that the question?  Sorry, I never thought it was an actual question, because it seemed like such a basic answer.  Of course they would.   So, sure, engage the mechanics - Help action, that sort of thing - to try to succeed.  But, "avoid skill checks whenever possible by describing things in such a way that my DM will judge my performance to be of such quality that I automatically succeed" or, to put it simpler, gaming the DM which is precisely what you are advocating, regardless of how many times you try to say you aren't, is not something I enjoy.




I actually don't care what you do or do not enjoy. Not even a little. What I do care about is the aforementioned abjectly incorrect assertions you make because it may give other people reading this exchange the wrong idea. It's a curious thing why you'd do that.

But I am at least heartened by our agreement that mitigating the effect of a d20 is a good thing as a player. Do you agree that two different approaches to, say, opening a door might result in a situation where one is calls for an ability check and one is deemed an outright success?



Hussar said:


> Heh, yup, I'm doing it wrong.  You keep stating this stuff like it's a carved in stone rule and that D&D cannot encompass numerous playstyles.  Why are you insisting that your way is the one true way?  Why is it so hard to accept that not every table does it your way and not everyone views play advice as the holy writ of gaming?  Sheesh.




That was a joke. At least @_*Bawylie*_ got it. I'd use a smiley but I find them unprofessional.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> No. It's for the purpose of showing where I derive the approach I use.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Smileys are only unprofessional in a formal setting. This is informal. I’m not even wearing pants. 

But don’t smile at that.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> That's not the definition of an insight check, it's a possible use.
> 
> The "problem" as you frame it for this is small in one way, large in others.  It's small in the sense that  a GM can run with it and assume things and most likely be right enough that it's a reasonable shortcut.  It's large in that it assumes there's no consequence for failure and that this method doesn't work for more ambiguous checks.
> 
> ...




For the hundredth time:  if the DM doesn't call for an insight check or if the player is not allowed to ask for one then the players know there was no skill contest.  Since there was no skill contest the players now know the NPC was not trying to deceive them.

The consequence of no insight skill check is a confirmation that the NPC is not trying to be deceptive.  Technically there is no "failure" for the PC.  The DM is the one who failed by conveying information via meta-gaming that the players should not have had.  Maybe you don't care.  I do.

Well except in the case where I point out that if you do this while questioning subjects as to whether they're the criminal then the answer is "no of course that's not how it works".



Ovinomancer said:


> The goal and approach method has, as an additional method, a failure state that is different from the state prior to the roll.  As a broad approach, these failure states vary.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has said he might tick a wandering monster clock for a failure in some games, letting the character know they failed and can try again but still changing the situation to become more dangerous.  I prefer more immediate changes, such that a failure thwarts the  goal directly (so failing an insight check may end the social encounter or cause a damaging social gaffe).  Regardless of preference for failure states, the approach will inform the failure state.
> 
> Again, I'll provide an in play example from a recent session:
> 
> ...




Ummm ... I'm not sure I would have run things that much differently.  I also have no idea where your getting this idea that I call for checks that have no consequences.  Can the players ask or make checks that have no consequence?  Sure.  People attempt the impossible all the time.  People overcompensate all the time.  PCs are people.  Sometimes they'll kick in the door only to find out that it wasn't locked in the first place.  So?  The last time this happened we all got a chuckle out of it as the fighter hit the door and had to make a dex save because there was no resistance.

I've given examples (most recently of investigating the house of a potential rogue) where passive checks were the rule of the day to notice traps unless they specifically called it out.  If someone failed a disarm trap there were several possible outcomes depending on how much they missed it by.

Where I may run things differently is that if the rogue approached the door he could simply say "I investigate the trap and get a ___".  Then I'd tell him the info.  If the information was obvious, he may not have needed to roll but I don't see why that matters. He just rolled to save some time.  

When the barbarian declares they're going to charge and gives me a number to smash down the door I might give him a wisdom check (with disadvantage because he's a berserker) to let him know that it looks like it could hurt before I tell him the outcome.

While the scenario you gave would probably play out much the same other than I don't care if people just call out what skill they are using, this is hardly typical of other situations that have been described.  That's better summarized by "avoid skill checks whenever possible by describing things in such a way that my DM will judge my performance to be of such quality that I automatically succeed" which is being pushed.  In other words, it's the player's skill not the PC's skill that matters.

But your scenario?  I don't see any of that.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For the hundredth time:  if the DM doesn't call for an insight check or if the player is not allowed to ask for one then the players know there was no skill contest.  Since there was no skill contest the players now know the NPC was not trying to deceive them.
> 
> The consequence of no insight skill check is a confirmation that the NPC is not trying to be deceptive.  Technically there is no "failure" for the PC.  The DM is the one who failed by conveying information via meta-gaming that the players should not have had.  Maybe you don't care.  I do.
> 
> ...




The quality of the description doesn’t matter. 500 flowery words or 25 to-the-point words are equal so long as they convey an objective and a method.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

I think the biggest difference I see is that I try to reward PC skills instead of player skills.  I see overcoming obstacles that require skills as being the responsibility of the PC, not the player.  Several classes and builds have their contributions to the game tilted towards non-combat skills.  I want to let people play to the strengths of their PC.

This is never 100% possible of course.  Someone who is better at tactics will in general see a better resolution of combat.  Someone who is better at solving mysteries and picking up on clues is going to be better at that aspect.  I try to balance it out with appropriate skills, whether that's investigation, medicine, survival or whatever I or my players think up.

That and I have no issue with how players state what they are doing.  "I make an investigation check to see if the door is trapped and get a ___" is just as good as "I closely inspect the door looking for traps".  It's just shorthand that speeds up the game.

So that's it.  I generally run a very heavy RP game which has little to do with how I balance player vs PC skill.  It in no way means that player decisions have no effect on the game, it just lowers the impact of player skill on specific aspects of the game.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> The quality of the description doesn’t matter. 500 flowery words or 25 to-the-point words are equal so long as they convey an objective and a method.




I agree.  I think even a baker's dozen of words or less can convey objective and method 80% of the time.  Such as: "I make an investigation check ___ to check for traps on the door"


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I agree.  I think even a baker's dozen of words or less can convey objective and method 80% of the time.  Such as: "I make an investigation check ___ to check for traps on the door"




So close. 5 of those words ought to mention how. Probably the 1st 5. “Using my thieves’ tools...” for instance.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh noes, I give advantage to players who actually play the game?  The shame, the shame.




???  

Why the snark?

I'm not saying you're doing anything shameful, just that your assertion that you are advantaging some players over others is incorrect.  You are just advantaging a different category of player.



> Sorry, but, if you want to play a game, learn how to play. I have zero interest in playing with people who cannot be bothered learning the mechanics anymore. I've been there. Played with that guy who spent the first six months not even knowing the most basic things on his character sheet. Yeah, not interested in that anymore. Play the game we've all agreed to play or find another table.




That's fine.  And as [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] has made quite clear, he is specifically interested in playing with people who don't know the rules.  (I suspect not just to allow novices to play, but because that approach leads to a different style of gaming even for those who are expert in the rules.)  And his/our way of playing makes that possible.

An attempt to unearth fundamental underlying differences is not necessarily a personal attack.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For the hundredth time:  if the DM doesn't call for an insight check or if the player is not allowed to ask for one then the players know there was no skill contest.  Since there was no skill contest the players now know the NPC was not trying to deceive them.




That is an assumption made at your table, perhaps, but that is not part of the game in any official sense.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> So close. 5 of those words ought to mention how. Probably the 1st 5. “Using my thieves’ tools...” for instance.




A magnifying glass is also a good choice and may grant advantage on the Wisdom (Perception) check - should the DM determine a check is appropriate - if the trap is hidden in, for example, a highly-detailed carving on the door. 

Imagine that - two different approaches to the same goal and one of those approaches might be more efficacious than the other.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That is an assumption made at your table, perhaps, but that is not part of the game in any official sense.




Players know how contests work.  They know that deception is countered by insight.  I assume my players are not idiots.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> So close. 5 of those words ought to mention how. Probably the 1st 5. “Using my thieves’ tools...” for instance.




Use thieves tools to investigate a door for traps?  Cool trick.  Not applicable at all, but it's your game.

Now if they remind me they're using eyes of minute seeing or ask if they can use a magnifying glass, that might be information they should impart.  Unless of course they always use the eyes of minute seeing and it's just their standard modus operandi unless there's any question of whether it would be useful or not.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Use thieves tools to investigate a door for traps?  Cool trick.  Not applicable at all, but it's your game.
> 
> Now if they remind me they're using eyes of minute seeing or ask if they can use a magnifying glass, that might be information they should impart.  Unless of course they always use the eyes of minute seeing and it's just their standard modus operandi unless there's any question of whether it would be useful or not.




Thank you; it is a cool trick. 

But if it isn’t applicable, are you saying the attempt automatically fails?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Players know how contests work.  They know that deception is countered by insight.  I assume my players are not idiots.




Perhaps I wasn’t clear. There is absolutely nothing in the 5e rule set that says if an NPC is lying there is something a player can say or do that always results in an Insight check. 

So if your players accurately assume no roll = truth, that is basically a house rule. Maybe a house rule common among players of other editions, but a house rule nonetheless. 

And that’s fine. House ruling is part of the culture. But I want to correct your assertion about the actual rules. 

Although “The Medellin  Interpretation” is pretty clearly what the 5e ruleset says, this conversation would be more engaging if we could stop debating correctness and focus instead on the pros and cons of, and dispelling myths about, the various approaches.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For the hundredth time:  if the DM doesn't call for an insight check or if the player is not allowed to ask for one then the players know there was no skill contest.  Since there was no skill contest the players now know the NPC was not trying to deceive them.



Yup.  The problem with your assertion here is that this happens pretty much only when the interaction is trivial or unimportant.  If it's a crux moment in the game, I'm very unlikely to determine there's no consequence for failure (it's a crux moment) or that there's no uncertainty.  Just because you can imagine a situation where it's somehow important if the PC lies and where you think I (or others) won't ask for a check doesn't mean this is a normal or even rare occurrence in our games.

Fundamentally, this is one of the reasons I keep telling you that you don't understand the approach -- you make these very bad situations as if they're commonly occurring.



> The consequence of no insight skill check is a confirmation that the NPC is not trying to be deceptive.  Technically there is no "failure" for the PC.  The DM is the one who failed by conveying information via meta-gaming that the players should not have had.  Maybe you don't care.  I do.



I'm not following this at all -- presumably the player rolled, and can read the dice, and if it's a very low roll they will know they failed?  Hmm.  Perhaps you always do this contested, so the player doesn't know the NPC's check value because it's behind the screen?  Okay, well, that's interesting, because then I don't actually understand what the roll represents in the fiction -- it would appear that the player doesn't know if they succeed or fail because the hidden result of the NPC check is, well, hidden.  So, the outcome isn't made clear to the player, only a result that they do not know if they can trust, in which case, I'm not understanding the role of the roll, here -- it's not resolving uncertainty at all.




> Well except in the case where I point out that if you do this while questioning subjects as to whether they're the criminal then the answer is "no of course that's not how it works".




Huh?



> Ummm ... I'm not sure I would have run things that much differently.  I also have no idea where your getting this idea that I call for checks that have no consequences.  Can the players ask or make checks that have no consequence?  Sure.  People attempt the impossible all the time.  People overcompensate all the time.  PCs are people.  Sometimes they'll kick in the door only to find out that it wasn't locked in the first place.  So?  The last time this happened we all got a chuckle out of it as the fighter hit the door and had to make a dex save because there was no resistance.
> 
> I've given examples (most recently of investigating the house of a potential rogue) where passive checks were the rule of the day to notice traps unless they specifically called it out.  If someone failed a disarm trap there were several possible outcomes depending on how much they missed it by.
> 
> Where I may run things differently is that if the rogue approached the door he could simply say "I investigate the trap and get a ___".  Then I'd tell him the info.  If the information was obvious, he may not have needed to roll but I don't see why that matters. He just rolled to save some time.



If the roll doesn't matter (which I thought you said no rolls without consequences for failure?0, how does this save time?  What process was hastened by making an unneeded roll?  I'm trying to understand, because you keep telling me that how you do it is just like how I do it, but I'm not following it at all. I mean, I know how you do it -- I did it that way for decades.  What I don't follow is how you think your way is like my way when it's different and you keep providing examples of how different it is, while telling me it's largely the same and it's just a cosmetic difference.



> When the barbarian declares they're going to charge and gives me a number to smash down the door I might give him a wisdom check (with disadvantage because he's a berserker) to let him know that it looks like it could hurt before I tell him the outcome.



Why?  Why would the barbarian possibly be confused that running into a stone door might hurt?  Why would he not know what the rogue just explained about the danger of the trap? What's the consequence of failure for that check -- because this, again, seems to be exactly the same situation as before the check, the barbarian isn't aware of possible dangers.




> While the scenario you gave would probably play out much the same other than I don't care if people just call out what skill they are using, this is hardly typical of other situations that have been described.  That's better summarized by "avoid skill checks whenever possible by describing things in such a way that my DM will judge my performance to be of such quality that I automatically succeed" which is being pushed.  In other words, it's the player's skill not the PC's skill that matters.



Avoided skill checks:  the second similar trap because the ranger was using a light source.  Had the ranger looked at the trapped doors instead of choosing to not to, he'd have discovered the groves automatically (because stopping to examine something rather that walking past it is a different approach).



> But your scenario?  I don't see any of that.



Exactly -- it has none of the huge bugaboos you imagine our method has.  The real difference is that there's not a single die roll that doesn't have a consequence.

Later in the dungeon, there's a sarcophagus that had runes etched all around it in a language none of the characters spoke or were familiar with (Primordial).  The cleric attempted to discern if there was any religious significance to the runes -- a question I did not prep.  I said it'll be harder due to the lack of knowing the language, but since she is a grave cleric and funeral rites are her bag, baby, I set the DC at 15 and the danger was that if there were any wards or protections embedded in the runes, she'd trigger them.  She rolled a 1.  The binding of the runes (they were there to keep the mummies in) was broken and a fight started.  I hadn't planned any of that beforehand, but the player's choice to try to use her priestly knowledge was interesting and I don't refuse reasonable approaches.  A danger was introduced to account for the failure state and the dice rolled -- because it seemed uncertain that the cleric could decipher funeral markings in a language she didn't know.

This is a key point in how I run -- I do not set solutions, I set problems.  The players' approach determines the actual solution, or failure, to the problem.  My traps, when set, are problems.  The encounter above was a problem of how to deal with trapped mummies who had treasure.  I have no idea how my players are going to try to solve these problems, but I have a method -- I clearly set the scene, including elements of the problem (scenes without problems are dealt will 'offstage' in downtime); players tell me how they're engaging the problem; if I think it's uncertain, I call for a roll; and I narrate the results.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I think the biggest difference I see is that I try to reward PC skills instead of player skills.  I see overcoming obstacles that require skills as being the responsibility of the PC, not the player.  Several classes and builds have their contributions to the game tilted towards non-combat skills.  I want to let people play to the strengths of their PC.



Nope.  The player does provide the goal and approach, sure.  But, if that approach is uncertain, it's the character that dominates.  So, if the player isn't describing approaches that match his character's abilities, a bad time will be had when I call for checks, which turns out to be pretty darned often.



> This is never 100% possible of course.  Someone who is better at tactics will in general see a better resolution of combat.  Someone who is better at solving mysteries and picking up on clues is going to be better at that aspect.  I try to balance it out with appropriate skills, whether that's investigation, medicine, survival or whatever I or my players think up.



Funny thing, the tactics thing is right on because D&D strongly makes combat a challenge for players, not characters.  But that mystery thing?  I don't really have that problem, because the mysteries in my game aren't written out -- they're problems that the players propose solutions to.  So, the character abilities feature very strongly in mystery resolution, and player ability to guess mysteries rarely helps because, when they fail a check, the mystery quite often heads off in a new direction.



> That and I have no issue with how players state what they are doing.  "I make an investigation check to see if the door is trapped and get a ___" is just as good as "I closely inspect the door looking for traps".  It's just shorthand that speeds up the game.



I guarantee my game runs super smooth and fast when dealing with untrapped doors.  Example from recent play: 

Me:  The hallway ends in a door that is a plain stone door with a simple handle in the center, much like all the other doors in this complex.

Player:  I'll open the door, ready for danger on the other side!

This happens because my players trust my narration, and two, because I telegraph things that PCs are looking for, like dangerous traps.  For a trapped door, the PCs get this:

Me:  The hallway ends in a plain stone door with a simple handle in the center.  Your light glints off a strange, shimmery green discoloration on the handle.  What do you do?

Player:  Hmm.  I'm going to inspect the handle without touching it - does it smell funny?

Me:  Okay, make a DC 15 perception check to try to identify the substance on the door.

Player:  I'm trained in poisoner's tools, does that help?

ME: Absolutely!  You recognize the substance as Thieves Bane, a contact poison.  It can be neutralized with alcohol.

Player:  I have some wine, I'll pour it on the handle.

Me:  You wash off the substance, rendering it inert, what next?

Player:  I'll open the door, ready for danger on the other side!

I don't hide the game.



> So that's it.  I generally run a very heavy RP game which has little to do with how I balance player vs PC skill.  It in no way means that player decisions have no effect on the game, it just lowers the impact of player skill on specific aspects of the game.



I can't parse this very well, because it seems to encode a few assumptions of what "heavy RP" and "player vs PC skill" are.  Since my players are currently in a large, trapped, temple complex, I'll go back to the session before they got in -- we had four extended social encounters where one group of PCs tried to improve relations with a faction (failed), solicited help from another faction (success), went to a prison to intimidate a witness into giving up a location (barely succeeded), and the other tried to track down a bad guy by talking to a third faction who pointed them at a contact (success), and then tried to intimidate that contact (failed).  They all got back together and proceeded to track down a murderer and his gang, which had a social encounter that failed at the start (which I didn't expect but the players started, leveraging the limited fame of the dwarf in the pit fighting circuit to lull guards and try to get in to see the leader, but the dwarf absolutely bombed his CHA check) before having a big, multiple group fight as they went through the whole gang.  Lots of RPing, lots of skill checks, where success and failure changed how the situation went.  Want to know what I had prepped?  None of it.  Players surprised me at most every turn, but using goal and approach and assigning a consequence to failure, I was able to easily navigate the scenes. If the players succeeded, they got their goals and we moved to the next part.  If they failed, they didn't get their goals and had to do something else.  No magic words in sight.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Use thieves tools to investigate a door for traps?  Cool trick.  Not applicable at all, but it's your game.
> 
> Now if they remind me they're using eyes of minute seeing or ask if they can use a magnifying glass, that might be information they should impart.  Unless of course they always use the eyes of minute seeing and it's just their standard modus operandi unless there's any question of whether it would be useful or not.






			
				Thieves Tools said:
			
		

> This set of tools includes a small file, a set of lock picks, a small mirror mounted on a metal handle, a set of narrow-bladed scissors, and a pair of pliers. Proficiency with these tools lets you add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to disarm traps or open locks.




Huh, you're right, totally useless for finding traps.  I could use the file to poke depressions, or the mirror to look at things from a different angle, or the scissors to cut any cloth or thin coverings away that might conceal mechanisms.  Totes useless.

You keep saying that we're looking for magic words, or testing the player's ability to solve problems, but when presented with a situation where "i use my thieves tools to search for traps" it's you that's saying this is impossible whilst everyone that keeps telling you we don't use magic words is dumbfounded that you would say so.  Of course it's a valid approach.  We don't have a preferred solution, we have problems that the players tell us how they're going to solve.  I'm dead certain [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] (and myself, for certain) are not looking for the one approach we have written in our notes because there are NO approaches written in our notes, only the problems.  I never know how the players are going to solve a trap -- it's fun to find out how they do it.  Like, maybe, a ranger not using a light source getting caught in a trap where the dwarf decides to head-charge the trap and bust it to free his friend.  Never saw that coming.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm dead certain [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] (and myself, for certain) are not looking for the one approach we have written in our notes because there are NO approaches written in our notes, only the problems.




Yep.



Ovinomancer said:


> I never know how the players are going to solve a trap -- it's fun to find out how they do it.




Recently, I adapted a D&D 4e Eberron adventure to 5e with significant modifications for my regular campaign, then spun off one of the dungeons in the adventure into a one-shot that I ran with another group one night. I modified a trap included in the module and made it a choke point that connected one section of the dungeon to another. I described the environment: "The rumbling of stone upon stone [which they'd been hearing in the distance for a little while] can be heard most loudly in this area. A 10-foot-wide hallway runs 70 feet west to east lined on the north by five alcoves. In each alcove a bloody spike protrudes out of the stone. The wall to the south is carved with stylized images of fierce hobgoblin heroes masticating and devouring many-eyed, tentacled monsters. The floor is damaged and in two places (30 to 40 feet away) the tile has fallen away completely revealing a space beneath the floor."

The basic idea here is that if you step on a pressure plate adjacent to the spike, the spike shoots out of the wall, stabs you, pushes you into a pit trap, the lid of which closes again after you fall in. The floor of the pit is a rolling stone sphere with a small gap between the walls and floor. Now sealed in the pit, you are slowly ground up into a fine paste. To make matters worse, certain areas of the floor in between the alcoves would tilt, so if you tried to jump over the pressure plate and pit trap, you'd land on the tilting floor and it would potentially force you back the other way into the pressure plate or pit trap you were trying to avoid. In short, you are chewed up, swallowed, and digested.

The two groups were different players with different characters. I knew how the trap worked, but I wrote no solution. That's not my job after all. And each group overcame the challenge in their own way. My regular group thought about having the rogue try to disarm the pressure plates one by one, but were concerned about time - every 10 minutes I was rolling to see if wandering kruthiks would show up and that was five potential wandering monsters which could eat up resources they would need later. They decided to piton a rope to the wall at their end and the far end of the corridor (70 feet away) and shimmy across it. The rogue wall climbed using the carvings for grip to get to the other end, then set about affixing the rope with pitons. He got about halfway through that job when the noise attracted some ghouls which attacked the rogue while his allies were far away! So now the rope was only partially attached, meaning the other PCs could use the rope for stability, but could not climb on it. The wizard busted out a _Tenser's floating disk_, let it trail behind him, and made his way across with help from the rope (and Inspiration!) while two other party members rode it, getting off when they got to a safe spot. Then they engaged the ghouls just as the undead were dragging the unconscious rogue away. It was a great scene.

The other party decided to use 10-foot poles to push hard on the pressure plate, which would cause the spikes to shoot out quickly and retract, but they kept the pressure on the plate so it wouldn't reset. While it was "stuck," they had a PC stand on it to keep it depressed, then they'd repeat the process, essentially leapfrogging it all the way to the end. This had the benefit of keeping the party together when the ghouls showed up, so they had an easier time in that fight than the first party did.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> When you DM, and a player says, "Can I make a (skill) check to see if I can (something)" how do you set the DC?  Does it vary based on how they go about it, or is the same DC regardless of what their character does in support of the declared action?




You weren't quoting me, but this is something I wanted to reply to. 

I very rarely change the DC based on what the player tells me they are doing. Not saying I never do it, but it has happened. 

What I change is the results, especially if we are talking social skills, of success or failure. I've had plenty of times when a player has, for example, completely convinced the guards that they are an important noble (deception to get into the city) and for that success to mean that yes, the guards are convinced you are a noble, and are willing to escort you to the Tyrant King's palace themselves since he'll want to meet you. 

That wouldn't have happened if they instead convinced them they were secret agents of the crown who were reporting back in after a spy mission, because you don't parade spies through the streets with an armed escort. 

I can't decide which lie you told to convince them to let you through though, so I need more than "I roll Deception to get us into the city" 






iserith said:


> I'd take it one step further and say that the whole "challenge the characters, not the players" position that underpins some of the posters' arguments here is completely bogus. The player is _always_ the one who is being challenged. And the _challenge_ in this game is to put your character in the best position to succeed at your desired goal. The _difficulty_ depends on your stated approach relative to the fictional situation as described by the DM. The difficulty is higher when achieving the desired goal is less likely and lower when it's more likely.
> 
> I used to make the "challenge the characters, not the players" argument back when I was playing D&D 4e more often. That argument (and I) was wrong then and it's wrong now (so I no longer make that argument). The character is not a real thing. While it's being challenged in a fictional sense - a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils - in terms of game play, it's always the player that is being challenged.




Eh, yes and no. 

I hate putting riddles and puzzles into my games. Especially riddles. 

I love them in stories, but they are very much "do I know the answer" type of problems, and they go one of three ways. 

1) Player has heard it before, answer is automatic

2) Group has no idea and gets stuck trying to figure it out

3) Someone asks to roll the dice and I have to give them the answer if they succeed. 


And three is boring, it is just a die roll with no narrative attached, and one is boring because there is nothing except an automatic answer. 

So really, I find riddles boring in games, because you either have the answer or you don't. Similiar to a Con I was at where the GM brought a really beautifully carved puzzle box full of different puzzles we had to solve to get past a section of his game. We set aside our character sheets, because none of it mattered. And actually we solved the first step immediately because the guy righting our clues down wrote them in the wrong order, and _*accidentally *_ wrote them in the order that was the actual puzzle sequence. 

These only challenge "how smart are the players at the table today" not "how intelligently can they leverage their characters in this challenge", which is how I interpret that saying. 





Elfcrusher said:


> That is an assumption made at your table, perhaps, but that is not part of the game in any official sense.




You'd have to convince [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] of that is seems. He's been stating for the last dozen pages that the rules explicitly state there is no check if there is no ambiguity in the result. 

The only type of people I would have be so good at lying that it would be impossible to tell would be gods and archdevils or archfey. Otherwise there would be a chance of success. 

If there is a chance of success, but it is unlikely... you still get to roll, because there is a chance of success. So, if no roll is called for and you aren't talking to a diety level power, then it is fair to say that the rules have led you to there having been no chance of failure, can't fail because they were telling the truth. 




Elfcrusher said:


> Perhaps I wasn’t clear. There is absolutely nothing in the 5e rule set that says if an NPC is lying there is something a player can say or do that always results in an Insight check.




Lying is the Deception skill. 

Deception is counter by Insight.

If a PC is lying the NPC can make an Insight roll to determine that, so if a NPC is lying then players should be allowed to make insight checks to determine that. 

These are the rules of the game. 





Oofta said:


> Use thieves tools to investigate a door for traps?  Cool trick.  Not applicable at all, but it's your game.




Why is it not applicable? Thieve's Tools per RAW come with a small mirror attached to a stick, the type of thing that could be placed under a door frame to see places you otherwise could not, or to reflect light into small spaces of the door. 

Seems perfectly applicable to me.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Eh, yes and no.
> 
> I hate putting riddles and puzzles into my games. Especially riddles.
> 
> ...




I'm not sure what you mean here. I wasn't really talking about puzzles or riddles in the sense you describe them. And anyway, it's bad scenario design in my view if a puzzle or riddle is a choke point in the adventure for the reason you gave in #2.



Chaosmancer said:


> You'd have to convince [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] of that is seems. He's been stating for the last dozen pages that the rules explicitly state there is no check if there is no ambiguity in the result.
> 
> The only type of people I would have be so good at lying that it would be impossible to tell would be gods and archdevils or archfey. Otherwise there would be a chance of success.
> 
> If there is a chance of success, but it is unlikely... you still get to roll, because there is a chance of success. So, if no roll is called for and you aren't talking to a diety level power, then it is fair to say that the rules have led you to there having been no chance of failure, can't fail because they were telling the truth.




I can't see all the posts that led the statement by [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] that you quoted, but it is a matter of fact that the rules say that a check is appropriate only when there's uncertainty as to the outcome and a meaningful chance for failure. Now, Elfcrusher differs from me in that he or she does not appear to like the idea that characters can detect an NPC's lies, and prefers a certain level of uncertainty to remain in the players' minds. But that's another issue, one chiefly of narration of the result rather than whether or not there's an ability check.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Lying is the Deception skill.
> 
> Deception is counter by Insight.
> 
> ...




This is only partly true. While the DM can call for a contest of Charisma (Deception) and Wisdom (Insight) checks to resolve these sorts of tasks (when said tasks have uncertain outcomes and meaningful consequences for failure), a contest is not required by the rules. The DM can instead just set a DC.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You'd have to convince @_*iserith*_ of that is seems. He's been stating for the last dozen pages that the rules explicitly state there is no check if there is no ambiguity in the result.
> 
> The only type of people I would have be so good at lying that it would be impossible to tell would be gods and archdevils or archfey. Otherwise there would be a chance of success.
> 
> If there is a chance of success, but it is unlikely... you still get to roll, because there is a chance of success. So, if no roll is called for and you aren't talking to a diety level power, then it is fair to say that the rules have led you to there having been no chance of failure, can't fail because they were telling the truth.




What you're missing is that the DM decides if there's ambiguity in the result.  If the DM simply decides that the lie (or any other insight) can't be detected, or that the way the player proposes to accomplish it would automatically fail, then there's no roll.  Thus the absence of the roll should not be a signal to the player that the NPC is telling the truth.

Now, I think DMs should be very sparing with completely undetectable lies (maybe if it's a construct doing the lying or something), but the point is that just because a player proposes a course of action...or wants to "use a skill"...it doesn't entitle him/her to a roll.  Which in some ways is the heart of this whole debate.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I hate putting riddles and puzzles into my games. Especially riddles.
> 
> I love them in stories, but they are very much "do I know the answer" type of problems, and they go one of three ways.
> 
> ...




By the way, even though this isn't what [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] meant by riddle, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote here.  I hate riddles in D&D.  And I also hate the kind of "challenges" that are puzzles with specific solutions.  You know, "Ok, surrounding the boss are three pillars: one red, one blue, one green. On the floor are cyan, magenta, and teal tiles...."  Blech.


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

Out of chronological order'



Oofta said:


> I agree.  I think even a baker's dozen of words or less can convey objective and method 80% of the time.  Such as: "I make an investigation check ___ to check for traps on the door"




Heh.  The pedantic git in me needs to point out that a bakers dozen is, in fact, 144 words.    yes, I know I have a disease.  



iserith said:


> snip
> 
> Often it's to refute abjectly incorrect assertions about my approach from posters such as yourself.
> 
> ...




Hrm, incorrect assertions like, for example, pixel bitching:



iserith said:


> A magnifying glass is also a good choice and may grant advantage on the Wisdom (Perception) check - should the DM determine a check is appropriate - if the trap is hidden in, for example, a highly-detailed carving on the door.
> 
> Imagine that - two different approaches to the same goal and one of those approaches might be more efficacious than the other.




I mean, that, right there, is textbook example of pixel bitching.  Why would a player even think of using a magnifying glass?  One, the odds that a player actually would have one is pretty remote, and, two, even if you mention intricate carvings on the door, why would I not simply assume that I'm using a magnifying glass if I have one?  You grant extra bonuses based on whether or not the player can guess the right kind of trap for the door and then present you with a solution that you find plausible.

In what way am I misrepresenting what you are doing.  Because, that, right there, is pixel bitching and gaming the DM all rolled up in one nice neat package.


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> Yep.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Meanwhile, my group rolled a single die roll and went on their merry way because faffing about trying to guess a plausible solution bores the tears out of us.  Heck, I didn't even have to ask for it.  They just did it.  Poof, done.  All that wasted effort in designing a trap that no one but the DM actually cares about that could have been better spent in other places.  Or, if they failed the checks, they would be spread out trying to disarm the traps and the ghouls show up.  Either way, it's the ghouls showing up that I'm interested in.  The trap is mostly incidental.  And the means to bypass the trap is pretty much whatever the players tell me it is, AFTER they've made the check(s).  

Different strokes obviously.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meanwhile, my group rolled a single die roll and went on their merry way because faffing about trying to guess a plausible solution bores the tears out of us.  Heck, I didn't even have to ask for it.  They just did it.  Poof, done.  All that wasted effort in designing a trap that no one but the DM actually cares about that could have been better spent in other places.  Or, if they failed the checks, they would be spread out trying to disarm the traps and the ghouls show up.  Either way, it's the ghouls showing up that I'm interested in.  The trap is mostly incidental.  And the means to bypass the trap is pretty much whatever the players tell me it is, AFTER they've made the check(s).
> 
> Different strokes obviously.



Yup.

For me, I gave up on puzzle traps and the Indiana Jones implausibly complex trap-tricks long ago. 

Instead, if there are traps, they are rather simple, easily beaten **unless** there is an active threat. Imple, reasonsble traps are used in places in conjunction with an active defense scheme. 

So, if you are inside long abandoned ruins you may see the first one or two of these, potentially broken due to neglect and be able to just practically walk  around them. But later on, you might find a similar place where the undead make a world of difference to that walk-around trap's threat level.

But if you are in an active thriving establishment, likely as not each snd every one of those guarded traps will be a tough but to crack and a festure thst raises the threat of rather mundane foes by a good amount.


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Yup.
> 
> For me, I gave up on puzzle traps and the Indiana Jones implausibly complex trap-tricks long ago.
> 
> ...




I suppose one does have to wonder why the ghouls wouldn't have been destroyed by this trap long ago.  It's not like ghouls just sit in one room and never move.  

Now, I'm all for adding traps to encounters as part of the encounter.  Pits, elevation, spider webs, that sort of thing, that's great.  So, on one hand, I really, really like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s setup here.  It's really cool.  I just wouldn't play it out in the same way.  The important bit for me is the ghoul encounter, not how they get past the trap.  The fact that the trap would be active and be part of the encounter is more important to me as well.  Honestly, I'd more likely have the ghouls and the trap be encountered at the same time, rather than the way this is set up.  Just a preference, mind you.  I can certainly see how Iserith's scenario would be loads of fun as well.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I suppose one does have to wonder why the ghouls wouldn't have been destroyed by this trap long ago.  It's not like ghouls just sit in one room and never move.
> 
> Now, I'm all for adding traps to encounters as part of the encounter.  Pits, elevation, spider webs, that sort of thing, that's great.  So, on one hand, I really, really like [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s setup here.  It's really cool.  I just wouldn't play it out in the same way.  The important bit for me is the ghoul encounter, not how they get past the trap.  The fact that the trap would be active and be part of the encounter is more important to me as well.  Honestly, I'd more likely have the ghouls and the trap be encountered at the same time, rather than the way this is set up.  Just a preference, mind you.  I can certainly see how Iserith's scenario would be loads of fun as well.



Yeah, so many times traps seem to defy common sense. Contact poison in hallway doors? Does the owner do his own cleaning? Nobody ever come home drunk after party? Massive structures and mechanisms that can be beaten by low level magics or common gear? Sounds like screen doors on submarines to me. 

But, each of us has our own tastes and thresholds for what we want our worlds to be like.

Give me a hallway with floor tiles that are dangerous if you get cockatrices released by guards at other side (extreme weight breaks thru dropping statue into moat below) or that after triggered by guard your getting feared and running (or just forced to retreat) proves to be a major problem.


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Yeah, so many times traps seem to defy common sense. Contact poison in hallway doors? Does the owner do his own cleaning? Nobody ever come home drunk after party? Massive structures and mechanisms that can be beaten by low level magics or common gear? Sounds like screen doors on submarines to me.
> 
> But, each of us has our own tastes and thresholds for what we want our worlds to be like.
> 
> Give me a hallway with floor tiles that are dangerous if you get cockatrices released by guards at other side (extreme weight breaks thru dropping statue into moat below) or that after triggered by guard your getting feared and running (or just forced to retreat) proves to be a major problem.




Heh.  I'll be honest, although I fail more often that I succeed, I do at least try to use examples as they are presented without trying to get too bogged down by the details.  The point about the contact poison on the door was, "How do you resolve a simple (or fairly simple) trap"?  While the example is kinda silly, the point is well made.  How different groups handle this sort of stuff really drills down to the basics of the differences between tables.  Obviously my game and say, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s are probably fairly different.    I don't do things the way [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] does.  

For me, I guess the basic problem in this discussion is that I'm perfectly willing to admit that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach is perfectly fine.  I just wish folks would stop telling me how wrong I am for not adopting their approach and how if I just understood what they were trying to tell me, I'd switch right over.  No.  I do understand.  I understand very well. I'm just not interested.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Out of chronological order'
> 
> 
> 
> Heh.  The pedantic git in me needs to point out that a bakers dozen is, in fact, 144 words.    yes, I know I have a disease.




Ummm ... it means 13. Unless it's a _really _generous baker. Are you thinking a gross?

I could have gotten away with far less but I didn't think "I get 13 investigation" would be wordy enough even though the group is standing in front of a weird door wondering what it was even though I would be fine with it.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Why is it not applicable? Thieve's Tools per RAW come with a small mirror attached to a stick, the type of thing that could be placed under a door frame to see places you otherwise could not, or to reflect light into small spaces of the door.
> 
> Seems perfectly applicable to me.




It might be applicable in some cases I suppose - if the rogue has to see something they couldn't see normally as an example.  But it's not called out as a use of the tool and I don't think it would be helpful very often unlike the eyes or a magnifying glass.

But unless it's an unusual situation they give no mechanical benefit any more than would a set of castanets.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Back to the OP.  I can see it now.  The group has been hired by an insurance company to investigate a jewelry store heist.  They're questioning the shopkeeper.

DM/shopkeeper "So I locked up the store as usual, set the normal traps and went upstairs to bed."
Player: "You sleep above the shop?"
DM/shopkeeper: "Yes, it's part of the compensation, and I'm single so it works well for me."
Player: "So no witness and you didn't hear anything at all during the night."
DM/shopkeeper: "No witnesses and no I didn't hear anything.  But this building is very solidly built for a reason."
Player: "And there was no sign of forced entry, the traps were still set."
DM/shopkeeper: "That's right.  In fact the traps are supposed to ward against magical entry as well."
Player: "I don't believe him, I think he's hiding something."
DM: "Okay."
Player: "Umm...can I get a read on him?  An insight check?"
DM: "No."
Player: "What do you mean?"
DM: "The players don't get to ask to do skill checks.  They declare action and intent."
Player: "So...I'm studying him closely looking for signs that he's being deceptive."
DM: "Okay"
Player: "So can I roll an insight check?"
DM: "No"
Player: "Why not?  The PHB says I can use an insight check to try to determine their true intentions."
DM: "Because I didn't ask for an insight check."
Player: "What the f... okay.  Mother may I have an insight check?"
DM: "No."
Player: "Dude, I have investigator as my background.  I took Inquisitive Rogue so that I'd be particularly good at it.  I have the Ear For Deceit feature and expertise in insight. This is kind of a big deal for me.  Can I roll an insight check?"
DM: "No, asking for a check does not entitle you to a roll."​
Is that seriously how this could go if the shopkeeper is telling the truth?  Or lying for that matter, and you just don't think there's a reason to suspect the shopkeeper?  Because honestly, I wouldn't want to play with a DM that did this.

Because in my game it would be
...skipping a few lines...
Player: "I don't believe him, I think he's hiding something."
DM: "Give me an insight check."
Player: "20"
or even
Player: "I don't believe him, I make an insight check of 20"

My response as DM is going to be something like: "He seems to be telling the truth."

And so on and so forth.  Or maybe I'd reveal that the shopkeeper seemed nervous because to me the shopkeeper knows how bad this looks. Or maybe he's as cool as a cucumber and just really good at lying.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Back to the OP.  I can see it now.  The group has been hired by an insurance company to investigate a jewelry store heist.  They're questioning the shopkeeper.
> 
> DM/shopkeeper "So I locked up the store as usual, set the normal traps and went upstairs to bed."
> Player: "You sleep above the shop?"
> ...



Full stop, right here.  The player has stated an action with a goal and approach, the GM is now *obligated* to narrate the results of that action.  If the GM decides there's no uncertainty, the GM still _must narrate the outcome._

You continue to imagine the game stops because dice aren't rolled, which is wrong.  


> Player: "So can I roll an insight check?"
> DM: "No"
> Player: "Why not?  The PHB says I can use an insight check to try to determine their true intentions."
> DM: "Because I didn't ask for an insight check."
> ...



No, everything above would never happen because the GM either calls for a check and narrates the outcome or just narrates the outcome if it's certain.  

Firstly, this situation wouldn't ever happen in my game because, as presented, it apoears as a social challenge so it would be in my game, but this example isn't.  I don't have long question and answer periods with ambulatory exposition.  

However, assuming it did, and the clerk isn't lying and there's no consequence for failure ("no answer" isn't a consequence), then I'd narrate that close attention during the exchange reveals the clerk is earnestly trying to help.  If the clerk is lying, and I think the approach shoukd autofail (which I do not, I'd ask for a check in this situation with a consequence appropriate to the approach) I'd narrate that there's no indications in the clerk's body language that indicates falsehood.

Regardless, the argument you imagined would never, ever, happen. 



> Because in my game it would be
> ...skipping a few lines...
> Player: "I don't believe him, I think he's hiding something."
> DM: "Give me an insight check."
> ...



Cool, what happens on a failure when the ckerk isn't lying?  If the clerk is lying? I, and ithers, have brought this up numerous times that there's a big difference in style on failure, but you keep only presenting success.  What does failure look like in your game for this example?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Oh goodie, we are writing mocking parodies of each others playstyles. I can’t wait to get to a real keyboard. I just love satire.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Full stop, right here.  The player has stated an action with a goal and approach, the GM is now *obligated* to narrate the results of that action.  If the GM decides there's no uncertainty, the GM still _must narrate the outcome._
> 
> You continue to imagine the game stops because dice aren't rolled, which is wrong.
> 
> ...




First, this isn't a parody.  I honestly want to understand what you would do.  I still don't get why there couldn't be a dialog where the PCs are questioning the shopkeeper but since you refuse to give an example of what the dialog would look like I give up.

I don't want to put words into your mouth but since you refuse to give a concrete example, I'm assuming something like:

DM/shopkeeper "So I locked up the store as usual, set the normal traps and went upstairs to bed."
Player: "You sleep above the shop?"
DM/shopkeeper: "Yes, it's part of the compensation, and I'm single so it works well for me."
Player: "So no witness and you didn't hear anything at all during the night."
DM/shopkeeper: "No witnesses and no I didn't hear anything. But this building is very solidly built for a reason."
Player: "And there was no sign of forced entry, the traps were still set."
DM/shopkeeper: "That's right. In fact the traps are supposed to ward against magical entry as well."
Player: "I don't believe him, I think he's hiding something."
DM: "He's telling the truth"​
This to me would ruin all the mystery of a who-dunnit like this.  No thanks.  The shopkeeper _should_ be a primary suspect.  The reason to ask for an insight check is to maintain that air of mystery and doubt.  The shopkeeper is less likely to be involved, but there's no way to be certain.

And please don't bother responding if all you're going give me is more platitudes of "I would be such an amazing DM this could never occur" unless you can show how.  This is an extremely simple scenario that is very typical of games I've played in or run.  It shouldn't be hard.  Assume it's a new player and this is the beginning of the session.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Full stop, right here.  The player has stated an action with a goal and approach, the GM is now *obligated* to narrate the results of that action.  If the GM decides there's no uncertainty, the GM still _must narrate the outcome._
> 
> You continue to imagine the game stops because dice aren't rolled, which is wrong.
> 
> ...



"Cool, what happens on a failure when the ckerk isn't lying? If the clerk is lying? I, and ithers, have brought this up numerous times that there's a big difference in style on failure, but you keep only presenting success. What does failure look like in your game for this example?"

In my game, one of two things happen on a failure to use insight to suss out a lie on a truthful speaker.

1 Failure - no progress - status quo - "As you gauge his responses, its unclear, no clear compelling signs of deception or honesty really shine through to change your mind or confirm your suspicions."

Seems easy right? Not getting to success meant you hot nothing to change your mind.

2 Failure - some progress with setback. "Ok, so, it's a mixed bag but it's pretty clear he is being truthful about some but and not about others. The way he reacts and talks and manners make it look like he is serious about being here that  night, likely not being completely truthful about the traps being set and likely not giving you the whole story. 

Also seems easy, right? Pick some of the account as ringing true, some not and leave further doubt sown as a way of giving some progress with setback.

In addition, it sets up a less binary scenario result. Is he lying about setting the traps or is he just wondering if he is remembering right? Is it doubt or outright deception? Or, is he being truthful to the questions asked, but there are other questions that need to be asked? Is the truth what he has said, plus the fact he had a lover over before that who he is keeping hidden? 

But, to be fair, in my game, I work the quality of the die into the narration too, so if those were a natural 3 failure, I am likely to add more uncertainty into the mix (thus more likely no info narration as in number 1) than if it is a natural 12 failure (more likely described as number 2.) Muvh like I choose to narrate a roll of 2-fails on an attack roll as a wild miss but a roll of say 13-fail as a glancing blow, near miss or blocked by shield at last second.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Hrm, incorrect assertions like, for example, pixel bitching:
> 
> I mean, that, right there, is textbook example of pixel bitching.  Why would a player even think of using a magnifying glass?  One, the odds that a player actually would have one is pretty remote, and, two, even if you mention intricate carvings on the door, why would I not simply assume that I'm using a magnifying glass if I have one?  You grant extra bonuses based on whether or not the player can guess the right kind of trap for the door and then present you with a solution that you find plausible.
> 
> In what way am I misrepresenting what you are doing.  Because, that, right there, is pixel bitching and gaming the DM all rolled up in one nice neat package.




This is in no way an example of pixel-bitching. Pixel-bitching is when the DM provides only one solution to a problem and the players must find that solution to proceed. 

A magnifying glass is right in the equipment list in the PHB. It confers advantage to ability checks related to examining small or highly detailed objects. So if the DM has described a door with highly-detailed carvings on it and you are interested in searching said door for traps, a magnifying glass is a good choice as it may give you a better chance of success. A player does not need to use a magnifying glass to solve anything about the door. He or she can just search for traps without one. Or open the door and walk right through (if it's unlocked, of course).

I will add, once again, that pixel-bitching is a feature of the "ignoring the dice" method mentioned in the DMG ("...the DM focuses on one 'correct' action that the characters must describe to overcome an obstacle"). We've already told you that we use the "middle path." So, yes, you're making incorrect assertions. Again.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  The pedantic git in me needs to point out that a bakers dozen is, in fact, 144 words.    yes, I know I have a disease.




The baker in me needs to point out that a baker's dozen is 13. It comes from arranging things on a sheet tray in alternating rows of 3 and 2 (3-2-3-2-3).


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## Sadras (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This to me would ruin all the mystery of a who-dunnit like this.  No thanks.  The shopkeeper _should_ be a primary suspect.  The reason to ask for an insight check is to maintain that air of mystery and doubt.  The shopkeeper is less likely to be involved, but there's no way to be certain.




What air of mystery would that be?

1. The one where the PC knows he rolled well or badly or just plain average - leaving everyone else in the party make Insight check rolls too? 

2. The one where the DM narrates that the shopkeeper shifts uncomfortably in his seat as questions are asked?
Firstly do you really need an Insight skill to notice that? Secondly, any _suspicious_ descriptor now added by the DM about the shopkeeper means the PCs will press on with diplomacy, bribery and intimidation - and usually in that order.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meanwhile, my group rolled a single die roll and went on their merry way because faffing about trying to guess a plausible solution bores the tears out of us.  Heck, I didn't even have to ask for it.  They just did it.  Poof, done.  All that wasted effort in designing a trap that no one but the DM actually cares about that could have been better spent in other places.  Or, if they failed the checks, they would be spread out trying to disarm the traps and the ghouls show up.  Either way, it's the ghouls showing up that I'm interested in.  The trap is mostly incidental.  And the means to bypass the trap is pretty much whatever the players tell me it is, AFTER they've made the check(s).
> 
> Different strokes obviously.




The trap is an exploration challenge, which is part of the three pillars of this game.

I'll add that the second group got past the trap with ZERO die rolls. The first group had to make a few, chiefly Acrobatics checks as the wizard made his way across. Neither group actually disarmed the trap. How does your one die roll at all resolve the trap? I could see the characters spending some time to deduce its workings based on the available clues (which were right out in the open) which may call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check. But that only resolves how it works, not how to get past it, which would be separate actions.

Alternatively, you can find a way around. All you need to do, in this dungeon, is backtrack to a door near the entrance, go through it, deal with some smoke mephits (combat or social interaction challenge), repair a damaged secret door (optional: loot gems out of a statue there), open the secret door, fight some shadows, crypt dogs, and a goblin mummy (optional: loot the tomb), climb down a hole in the floor into a sub-level kruthik nest, sneak past or carve your way through a over a dozen adult kruthiks, young kruthiks, and flying kruthiks, find another hole in the ceiling, and climb up through it. This hole is past the corridor trap and opens up into the final chamber of the upper level of the dungeon.

Lots of solutions here.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I suppose one does have to wonder why the ghouls wouldn't have been destroyed by this trap long ago.  It's not like ghouls just sit in one room and never move.




Ghouls do whatever the DM says they do.

But if you really wanted to know as a player, you could just ask them - if you speak Goblin. Or further explore the chamber from which they came which may reveal who they were. Or not. Up to the players.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> For me, I guess the basic problem in this discussion is that I'm perfectly willing to admit that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach is perfectly fine.  I just wish folks would stop telling me how wrong I am for not adopting their approach and how if I just understood what they were trying to tell me, I'd switch right over.  No.  I do understand.  I understand very well. I'm just not interested.




Again, telling you that your arguments against others are weak or inapplicable isn't the same as criticizing how you play. I'm not criticizing how you play at all. Remember how you invited me to dismiss your approach as being "house rules" and I refused to do that?

I'm not even trying to convince you to play as I do and the rules say. I'm only describing how I play and refuting the incorrect assertions you are making. Your apparent persecution complex is entirely on you, and it's not a good look. We might have a more productive discussion if you'd stop thinking anyone gives a single flumph about how you play and getting defensive about it.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Sadras said:


> What air of mystery would that be?
> 
> 1. The one where the PC knows he rolled well or badly or just plain average - leaving everyone else in the party make Insight check rolls too?
> 
> ...




I've run insight (and investigate) checks a couple of ways. Let the players roll and trust them to not use meta-game knowledge or ask for their modifier and roll myself.

I prefer the former because I trust my players but I can see that it would not work for everyone.

As far as narrating nervousness or other behavior ... it just depends.  Sometimes I broadcast sometimes I don't by how I act when responding.  In my brief scenario the shopkeeper is calm.  But that means nothing.  If an NPC is proficient with deception they'll also appear to be calm as well unless you're really good at detecting deception.  Hence the skill known as "insight".

If the DM has to spoon-feed this kind of stuff (i.e. "He's telling the truth") or be good enough of an actor to always portray intent and the players have to be good enough to pick up on it ... well that's not a game I want to play.  I don't want to spoon feed.  I don't want to rely on DM or player abilities to portray and interpret every little nuance.


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## Sadras (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I've run insight (and investigate) checks a couple of ways. Let the players roll and trust them to not use meta-game knowledge or ask for their modifier and roll myself.
> 
> I prefer the former because I trust my players but I can see that it would not work for everyone.
> 
> ...




Bold emphasis mine - I too am not a fan of this black/white use of Insight.

I usually provide the following straight off the bat, particularly if someone is proficient in Insight (no roll required): change of tone in voice, shifting uncomfortably, side-way looks, eyes darting, nervous twitch, signs of perspiration, repetitiveness, ...etc.  
I'm not saying this is the correct way to do it, it is just something I do. If I remember I will provide all this information immediately, in the framing of the scene and not need any prodding by a player's action declarations or even mentioning their Insight skill. 

I prefer the Insight roll to provide clues, of an empathetic nature (undertones/shades of emotion) or things that might seem obvious to the DM but has escaped the players (relationship links, hidden benefits, deceptive manipulation...etc). I do not always get this right though.


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## robus (Apr 5, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm dead certain [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] (and myself, for certain) are not looking for the one approach we have written in our notes because there are NO approaches written in our notes, only the problems.




This is actually one of the major issues I have with the published adventures, they assume approaches (by indicating the desired ability/skill) and set DCs, and given this it's easy to understand why it is often the default mode of play instead of the recommendation in the PHB.

I'd much prefer that the adventures just describe the situation and indicate the expected challenge level, easy, medium, hard, deadly. Let us worry about approaches and DCs (and this is something the Starter Set should have covered, hold the DMs hand in chapter 1 (suggest possible approaches and appropriate DCs), loosen the grip in chapter 2 (just suggest approaches, no recommended DC - let the DM decide) and let go completely in chapter 3 (no approaches, no DCs, just challenges).


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

robus said:


> This is actually one of the major issues I have with the published adventures, they assume approaches (by indicating the desired ability/skill) and set DCs, and given this it's easy to understand why it is often the default mode of play instead of the recommendation in the PHB.
> 
> I'd much prefer that the adventures just describe the situation and indicate the expected challenge level, easy, medium, hard, deadly. Let us worry about approaches and DCs (and this is something the Starter Set should have covered, hold the DMs hand in chapter 1 (suggest possible approaches and appropriate DCs), loosen the grip in chapter 2 (just suggest approaches, no recommended DC - let the DM decide) and let go completely in chapter 3 (no approaches, no DCs, just challenges).




It's a bit of a mixed bag in my experience. Sometimes it spells out the approach pretty well, but many times it is just implied. I will say that when I write up some of my short-form scenarios without DCs, it takes more words to describe my intent. So this may simply be a way to save page space. As well, module writers are not immune to legacy thinking.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Ok...ehem...I'm at a keyboard.  Here's my understanding of the "it's all about character skill" approach:

DM: "In front of you is a door, looks like oak with metal strap hinges, riveted on.  There's a pull ring in the center."

Rogue: "Hmmm...we found that poison lab.  I'm going to carefully inspect that pull ring to see if there's any foreign substance on it.  I'll look from different angles, and maybe sniff the air. Oh, and I'll cut off a piece of that cultist cloak I found and carefully wipe the pull ring to see if anything comes off.  I have proficiency in Poisoner's Kit so I should know how to do this safely."

DM: "Roll Investigation."

Rogue: "Hmm...11."

DM: "Nope, seems clean."

Rogue: "Ok, I'm going to pull the door open."

DM: "It has contact poison on it; roll a save versus Constitution."

Rogue: "What?  I looked for contact poison!"

DM: "Yeah but the DC was 12; you just missed."

Rogue: "Wait a sec...it was only a 12 DC, but an 8th level rogue with Poisoner's Kit proficiency _specifically looking for contact poison in the right place_ didn't find it?"

DM: "Not if you fail the roll. Maybe you looked on the wrong _part_ of the pull ring."

A while later...

DM: "Ok, you come across another door, this one looks like..."

Rogue (interrupting, in a resigned voice): "...I roll Investigation looking for traps...14"

DM: "Nothing."

Cleric: "I'll roll, too...12, darn."

Wizard: "I got a 17..."

DM: "Nope"

Fighter: "Nat 20!  So, um, 19."

DM: "YOU find the trap!  Congratulations!  Ok, who is going to roll to disarm it?"



Oh, the fun to be had.  I'm just giddy with anticipation.


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## robus (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's a bit of a mixed bag in my experience. Sometimes it spells out the approach pretty well, but many times it is just implied. I will say that when I write up some of my short-form scenarios without DCs, it takes more words to describe my intent. So this may simply be a way to save page space. As well, module writers are not immune to legacy thinking.




Yeah - I'm working on an adventure scenario right now, and it's much harder than it looks  But I still think WotC (at least) should be trying to think about framing these challenges in a way that encourages creative thinking and not trip up DMs by documenting an assumed approach and DC and when the players try an obvious but different approach, leaving the DM to wonder why they bothered even writing that? I would much prefer they say something like "expertly disguised trap", or "hastily set trip wire", or something like that. Give us the flavor of the challenge, or the motivation(s) of the NPC (to pass onto the players) and let us worry about how to resolve the uncertainty. (And I guess it also assumes that there will be uncertainty, which again flies in the face of the PHB guidance, because a particular approach might eliminate all uncertainty, and their assumed approach cannot be the only one). There's a lot of useless fluff in the published adventures and not enough actionable information IMHO. I guess it makes for a more interesting read away from the table, but gets in the way when you actually try to run it.

That's probably enough on that digression!


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

robus said:


> Yeah - I'm working on an adventure scenario right now, and it's much harder than it looks  But I still think WotC (at least) should be trying to think about framing these challenges in a way that encourages creative thinking and not trip up DMs by documenting an assumed approach and DC and when the players try an obvious but different approach, leaving the DM to wonder why they bothered even writing that? I would much prefer they say something like "expertly disguised trap", or "hastily set trip wire", or something like that. Give us the flavor of the challenge, or the motivation(s) of the NPC (to pass onto the players) and let us worry about how to resolve the uncertainty. (And I guess it also assumes that there will be uncertainty, which again flies in the face of the PHB guidance, because a particular approach might eliminate all uncertainty, and their assumed approach cannot be the only one). There's a lot of useless fluff in the published adventures and not enough actionable information IMHO. I guess it makes for a more interesting read away from the table, but gets in the way when you actually try to run it.
> 
> That's probably enough on that digression!




Don't get me started. A vein pops out on my forehead when I see, for example, page space wasted on a tavern or town/village map and there's nothing of particular drama going on in those places. Like there's not a thousand such maps on the internet if the DM actually needs it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

robus said:


> Yeah - I'm working on an adventure scenario right now, and it's much harder than it looks  But I still think WotC (at least) should be trying to think about framing these challenges in a way that encourages creative thinking and not trip up DMs by documenting an assumed approach and DC and when the players try an obvious but different approach, leaving the DM to wonder why they bothered even writing that? I would much prefer they say something like "expertly disguised trap", or "hastily set trip wire", or something like that. Give us the flavor of the challenge, or the motivation(s) of the NPC (to pass onto the players) and let us worry about how to resolve the uncertainty. (And I guess it also assumes that there will be uncertainty, which again flies in the face of the PHB guidance, because a particular approach might eliminate all uncertainty, and their assumed approach cannot be the only one).* There's a lot of useless fluff in the published adventures and not enough actionable information IMHO.* I guess it makes for a more interesting read away from the table, but gets in the way when you actually try to run it.
> 
> That's probably enough on that digression!




No, I think this thread could use a good redirect.

And I totally agree with what you wrote above, neatly summarized in the part I bolded.  So many times I get to something and think, "Ok, but my players totally didn't do what you thought they would...now what?"  It's ok, I guess, I improvise, but it's still kind of annoying.  

The basic problem is that in trying to avoid linear dungeon crawls and move more toward the "sandbox" that some people are demanding, they create chapter after chapter of complicated plots with lots of moving parts, but they still expect the whole thing to fit in 156 pages (or whatever it is).


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## robus (Apr 5, 2019)

Here's my favorite: The north wall has a secret door. DC 15 Wisdom (perception)  (or investigation) to detect it. No description of what the tell tale sign of the secret door is, just it's there. Instead of telling my the DC, tell me what clues I can give to my players so that they have a chance of finding (or suspecting) its presence! The room is interesting so give them some interesting stuff to chew on!


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 5, 2019)

robus said:


> Here's my favorite: The north wall has a secret door. DC 15 Wisdom (perception)  (or investigation) to detect it. No description of what the tell tale sign of the secret door is, just it's there. Instead of telling my the DC, tell me what clues I can give to my players so that they have a chance of finding (or suspecting) its presence! The room is interesting so give them some interesting stuff to chew on!




You mean like:  "The north wall has a secret door. Spicy axebeak jerky dangles in the shadows just above it." ?


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> You mean like:  "The north wall has a secret door. Spicy axebeak jerky dangles in the shadows just above it." ?




"Tordek, don't eat that yet! We don't know if it was made in a facility that process wheat, milk, eggs, or tree nuts. I cast _detect gluten_."


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok...ehem...I'm at a keyboard.  Here's my understanding of the "it's all about character skill" approach:
> 
> DM: "In front of you is a door, looks like oak with metal strap hinges, riveted on.  There's a pull ring in the center."
> 
> ...




Far, far preferable to the pixel bitching hoops I need to jump through in order to find and disarm a trap.  Hey, whatever you find fun.  Me?  A simple trap on a door is a thirty second speed bump.  Throw some dice at it and move on.  Oh wait, I looked at the first trap, but, I forgot to mention that I was using a piece of a cloth to wipe for poison?  Guess I get to make saving throws against poison now.  I didn't specificy exactly the right words to find the trap.  

No thanks.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's a bit of a mixed bag in my experience. Sometimes it spells out the approach pretty well, but many times it is just implied. I will say that when I write up some of my short-form scenarios without DCs, it takes more words to describe my intent. So this may simply be a way to save page space. As well, module writers are not immune to legacy thinking.



I think it would go a long way to mention additional details that can be discerned with certain passive Wisdom (Perception) scores, and to use the easy/medium/hard/very hard scale in place of DCs. For example:

“There is a secret door in the north wall. Characters with passive Wisdom (Perception) 12 or higher notice a slight difference in the air quality in this room. Players with passive Wisdom (Perception) 15 or higher can tell that the draft flows from north to south. The door is disguised to resemble the natural stone of the north wall, making it very hard to identify by sight, but the faux stone is easy to discern from real stone by touch.”

In a sense its just longhand for the DC, but I think “such and such can be found easily” or “it is very had to blablah” can subtly put the DM in a different mindset than “there is a hidden door (DC 15).”


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

robus said:


> Here's my favorite: The north wall has a secret door. DC 15 Wisdom (perception)  (or investigation) to detect it. No description of what the tell tale sign of the secret door is, just it's there. Instead of telling my the DC, tell me what clues I can give to my players so that they have a chance of finding (or suspecting) its presence! The room is interesting so give them some interesting stuff to chew on!




Fantastic stuff.  Give me more please.  You all are apparently super creative DM's, you can faff about figuring out how this secret door works.  Knock yourselves out.  To me, it's what's on the other side of the door that's important.  The door itself?  Could really, really not care less.

You want more of this kind of cruft in modules?  No thanks.  Gimme "Secret Door DC X to discover" every time.


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> “There is a secret door in the north wall. Characters with passive Wisdom (Perception) 12
> or higher notice a slight difference in the air quality in this room. Players with passive Wisdom (Perception) 15 or higher can tell that the draft flows from north to south. The door is disguised to resemble the natural stone of the north wall, making it almost impossible to identify by sight, but the faux stone is easy to discern from real stone by touch.”




Yes, because players routinely announce they are touching random wall sections of a dungeon for no reason?  And, telling me that there is a draft in the room is going to be a clue to find a secret door?  Yeah, again, no thanks.  I'd just as easily assume poltergeists, or any number of a hundred other things that a draft could be, including nothing at all.  

I'm really, really glad you folks don't write for WotC.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Far, far preferable to the pixel bitching hoops I need to jump through in order to find and disarm a trap.




It's bad form to have been corrected on what "pixel-bitching" is very clearly (which you can verify with a Google search), then continue to use the wrong definition in subsequent posts to erroneously attribute it to how other people play.

I can think of 144 reasons not to do this - you know, a baker's dozen.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Back to the OP.  I can see it now.  The group has been hired by an insurance company to investigate a jewelry store heist.  They're questioning the shopkeeper.
> 
> DM/shopkeeper "So I locked up the store as usual, set the normal traps and went upstairs to bed."
> Player: "You sleep above the shop?"
> ...




Someone else adequately answered this but this one is funny because I’ve actually done this interview myself for a similar situation and I’ve run this type of thing in a game. 

To answer: my players aren’t asking to make rolls, so that bit doesn’t come up. Instead they might tell me they suspect, and look for signs of, deception. 

I might ask for a wisdom check, and a player might respond “hey I’m trained in insight.” 

In this circumstance I’d have an untrained character roll a wisdom check, but a character trained in insight might glean: “The shopkeeper is nervous and frightened, as anyone in this position would be. They’re afraid they will be blamed for the theft and they’re nervous because they can’t tell if anyone here is on their side. There is no indication that they’re being misleading or hiding anything.”

This also answers the OP (if anyone can remember the OP from the before-times). The DC to determine someone is telling the truth depends how you try to verify that - and for a person trained in insight, an automatic success might be most appropriate. 

Side note: this approach can also cover the “the DM didn’t make me roll so I know X” issue. Being trained in insight alone is enough to cover a LOT, so a roll itself  isn’t demonstrative of anything except an uncertain outcome. A variant can be found in the DMG where if the score is high enough, you can have auto-success (or something like that). I just skip the math and assume a trained character is sufficiently competent to get an auto success absent some notable cost, consequence, or interference.


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## robus (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fantastic stuff.  Give me more please.  You all are apparently super creative DM's, you can faff about figuring out how this secret door works.  Knock yourselves out.  To me, it's what's on the other side of the door that's important.  The door itself?  Could really, really not care less.
> 
> You want more of this kind of cruft in modules?  No thanks.  Gimme "Secret Door DC X to discover" every time.




Actually I really don't want to faff about figuring out how it works, I want the adventure writers to do that!  But, absolutely, I do want an interesting (and logical) world for my players to explore and interact with. Just killing stuff over and over gets old at my table... (because if there's little to no exploration or social interaction then all that remains is end to end combat?)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok...ehem...I'm at a keyboard.  Here's my understanding of the "it's all about character skill" approach:
> 
> DM: "In front of you is a door, looks like oak with metal strap hinges, riveted on.  There's a pull ring in the center."
> 
> ...



I have had so many games play out _exactly_ like this, and it is the exact problem I endeavor to avoid when I run the game.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fantastic stuff.  Give me more please.  You all are apparently super creative DM's, you can faff about figuring out how this secret door works.  Knock yourselves out.  To me, it's what's on the other side of the door that's important.  The door itself?  Could really, really not care less.
> 
> You want more of this kind of cruft in modules?  No thanks.  Gimme "Secret Door DC X to discover" every time.




Because what’s on the other side IS important, it’s often worthwhile for the obstacle to be substantial. 

After all, if ye don’ eat yuir meat, ye cannae hae any pudding! How can ye hae any pudding if ye don’ eat yuir meat?!


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## Hussar (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's bad form to have been corrected on what "pixel-bitching" is very clearly (which you can verify with a Google search), then continue to use the wrong definition in subsequent posts to erroneously attribute it to how other people play.
> 
> I can think of 144 reasons not to do this - you know, a baker's dozen.




Ok, fair enough, I did posrep everyone who corrected me on that.  Dunno what I was thinking to be honest.  I knew that and had a total brain fade about the bakers dozen.

But, the pixel bitching?  Nope, that's precisely what you've described.  When the player says the magic words, he gets to make that check, not before.  When he really nails the magic words, he doesn't even need to make that check, he just automatically succeeds.  

So, yup, that's textbook pixel bitching.  

You might not want to call it that, but, that's exactly what you are doing.  It's all about testing the player and not the character.  The character might as well not even be there, since, so long as the player can guess the right approach based on the hints that you give him, he never actually has to make a skill check.  I mean, that's his goal right?  To never have to make a check?  

Give me a better term then for what you're advocating?  Guided role play?  Chasing the right word?  Boggle?  What?  

Yeah, this is just going nowhere.  At the very least others are willing to discuss pros and cons.  

Look, if you think I'm mischaracterizing what you're saying, it's because, in all these pages, YOU'VE NEVER ACTUALLY DEFINED WHAT YOU DO in any concrete terms.  I ask, do you do this?  Nope, that?  nope, the other thing? nope.  I honestly have no freaking idea what you are actually doing at the table, other than, apparently, perfectly playing the game how it's meant to be played.  You aren't requiring the players to describe how they are doing things while at the same time they have to describe what they are doing but, that description doesn't matter because it's not pixel bitching, but it does matter because they cannot actually move forward without describing, in detail, what they are doing... on and on and on , round and round.   

Frankly, all you've done is confused the crap out of me.  After all these pages, I haven't the first clue how I would go about playing in your play style.  It's the quantum play style, all things to all gamers at all times.  :/   

I'm done.  That's more than enough from me.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yes, because players routinely announce they are touching random wall sections of a dungeon for no reason?



Not for no reason. Because the mention of different air quality in the room tipped them off that there was something out of the ordinary here, and “I look for secret doors” requires a method by which you hope to discern whether or not secret doors are present.



Hussar said:


> And, telling me that there is a draft in the room is going to be a clue to find a secret door?  Yeah, again, no thanks.  I'd just as easily assume poltergeists, or any number of a hundred other things that a draft could be, including nothing at all.



The fact that I specifically mentioned the draft should tip you off that it’s not nothing at all. If you think it’s poltergeists, that’s cool because it’s a starting point for action. Maybe you’ll consider casting truesight or something, and you’ll have to weigh the potential benefits vs. the resource cost. That’s making decisions as you think your character might, that’s roleplaying.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's bad form to have been corrected on what "pixel-bitching" is very clearly (which you can verify with a Google search), then continue to use the wrong definition in subsequent posts to erroneously attribute it to how other people play.
> 
> I can think of 144 reasons not to do this - you know, a baker's dozen.




I got a 144 problems but a pixel bitch ain't one.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yes, because players routinely announce they are touching random wall sections of a dungeon for no reason?  And, telling me that there is a draft in the room is going to be a clue to find a secret door?  Yeah, again, no thanks.  I'd just as easily assume poltergeists, or any number of a hundred other things that a draft could be, including nothing at all.
> 
> I'm really, really glad you folks don't write for WotC.




I'm beginning to get the impression that you are, um...what's the word?..._disdainful_ of this alternative approach.  Or am I misreading the clues?


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## Yardiff (Apr 5, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Not for no reason. Because the mention of different air quality in the room tipped them off that there was something out of the ordinary here, and “I look for secret doors” requires a method by which you hope to discern whether or not secret doors are present.
> 
> 
> The fact that I specifically mentioned the draft should tip you off that it’s not nothing at all. If you think it’s poltergeists, that’s cool because it’s a starting point for action. Maybe you’ll consider casting truesight or something, and you’ll have to weigh the potential benefits vs. the resource cost. That’s making decisions as you think your character might, that’s roleplaying.
> ...




Question: this draft that was noticed, did you use a passive perception to be noticed?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Far, far preferable to the pixel bitching hoops I need to jump through in order to find and disarm a trap.  Hey, whatever you find fun.  Me?  A simple trap on a door is a thirty second speed bump.  Throw some dice at it and move on.  Oh wait, I looked at the first trap, but, I forgot to mention that I was using a piece of a cloth to wipe for poison?  Guess I get to make saving throws against poison now.  I didn't specificy exactly the right words to find the trap.
> 
> No thanks.




Wow.  I tried to write satire, but I got it right?  That's scary.

(Kind of like the writers at The Onion trying to write political satire lately.)

But, more seriously, you keep mis-characterizing the approach, but I can't tell if it's because of true misunderstanding or intentional denigration.

Sure, the rogue might have just said, "I inspect the door for traps" without specifying how.  So the DM might rule that since no method/approach was specified, the outcome is uncertain, and thus an Investigation roll is needed. Which might be failed. So the outcome is exactly the way you prefer (including that you may then have a cascade of other people rolling if the rogue rolls poorly.)

All we (or at least I) am saying is that if the rogue uses clues/signaling to be more specific, then no roll is needed because success is automatic.

And...just to cut you off before you throw out one of your standard red herrings...NO the rogue does not have to also search the door in 17 other ways, because there has been no signaling or hints that the door might be trapped in other ways.

So it's pretty simple: if the player makes the connection or solves the clue, he/she can avoid a roll.  If he just wants to be vague, that makes the outcome uncertain, and the DM may choose to have a roll.  (Or reveal the trap anyway, if the rogue is really good at it, and the trap was crudely constructed.)  The DM might even rule that a general search is simply not going to find the trap, and no roll is needed because it's an autofailure.  (In your parlance, the DM sets the DC at 30.)

But, yeah, anyway, I doubt this is going to have any effect.  You pretty clearly have decided this is "pixel-bitching".  Ironic, really.


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## robus (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Frankly, all you've done is confused the crap out of me.  After all these pages, I haven't the first clue how I would go about playing in your play style.  It's the quantum play style, all things to all gamers at all times.  :/




I think you have a preconceived notion of how you think we play: pixel bitching, magic words, and when we say, no that's not how we play, it confuses you because you think you know how we play (and it's a form of play you think you've experienced and had a miserable time).

We're simply saying that we encourage creative and imaginative play at the table. Players are simply asked to immerse themselves in this imaginary world and by interacting with it come up with actions that have goals and approaches to the challenge at hand. That's it. The DM takes that declared action and adjudicates it and describes the result. Sometimes asking for dice when the outcome is uncertain and has consequences.

You may not like it, and think that it's a boring way to play  , but it's really not hard to comprehend!


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Wow.  I tried to write satire, but I got it right?  That's scary.
> 
> (Kind of like the writers at The Onion trying to write political satire lately.)
> 
> ...




I choose to take it as a true misunderstanding. It’s a healthier conversation to take each poster’s point in its best possible light, even when/if they haven’t put it the best way. 

I mean, it’s not debate team up in here. It’s a buncha nerds talking fine points of a nerdy shared hobby. Liberal helping of benefit of the doubt applies. 

IMO anyway.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Ok, fair enough, I did posrep everyone who corrected me on that.  Dunno what I was thinking to be honest.  I knew that and had a total brain fade about the bakers dozen.
> 
> But, the pixel bitching?  Nope, that's precisely what you've described.  When the player says the magic words, he gets to make that check, not before.  When he really nails the magic words, he doesn't even need to make that check, he just automatically succeeds.
> 
> So, yup, that's textbook pixel bitching.



Pixel bitching is a reference to old-school point and click adventure games where you sometimes had to click exactly the right pixel to progress, with little to no indication of where the right pixel is. Calling the goal and approach method “pixel bitching” suggests there is only one “correct” phrase that can be uttered to be successful, that anything but the exact right words will be stonewalled, and that the DM does not give sufficient information for the players to determine what the ”correct” words are. None of these things are true of the goal and approach method. For that method to work, the DM must give players sufficient telegraphs to have some idea where to start, and the DM should not have a predetermined set of acceptable approaches they are listening for. Each action should be assessed logically when the player describes it. The DM is not waiting for a code word, they are using their brain to decide if, given the circumstances, the player’s approach has a chance of succeeding at achieving the player’s goal, a chance of failing to achieve it, and a consequence for failing to achieve it. That’s what sets DMs apart from computers, they don’t have to follow a preprogrammed script, they can make reasoned judgment calls on the fly.



Hussar said:


> You might not want to call it that, but, that's exactly what you are doing.  It's all about testing the player and not the character.  The character might as well not even be there, since, so long as the player can guess the right approach based on the hints that you give him, he never actually has to make a skill check.  I mean, that's his goal right?  To never have to make a check?



In theory, the character is informing the player’s decision making. The player’s goal may be to succeed without needing a check, but since that is not always possible, a player with high Dexterity and low Strength can set themselves up to be more likely to succeed when success is uncertain by employing methods that rely more on precision and finesse than direct application of force.



Hussar said:


> Give me a better term then for what you're advocating?  Guided role play?  Chasing the right word?  Boggle?  What?



I just call it “the goal and approach method.”



Hussar said:


> Look, if you think I'm mischaracterizing what you're saying, it's because, in all these pages, YOU'VE NEVER ACTUALLY DEFINED WHAT YOU DO in any concrete terms.  I ask, do you do this?  Nope, that?  nope, the other thing? nope.  I honestly have no freaking idea what you are actually doing at the table, other than, apparently, perfectly playing the game how it's meant to be played.  You aren't requiring the players to describe how they are doing things while at the same time they have to describe what they are doing but, that description doesn't matter because it's not pixel bitching, but it does matter because they cannot actually move forward without describing, in detail, what they are doing... on and on and on , round and round.



I think Iserith has been quite clear on what they do. Where you seem to be struggling to understand it is in the assumption that declaring an action in terms of a goal and an approach must necessarily be a detailed description, and that Iserith and others who use this method must have a predetermined set of descriptions we will accept.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Question: this draft that was noticed, did you use a passive perception to be noticed?




In the example given? Yes, I said it took a passiv Wisdom (Perception) of 12 to notice that the air was different and 15 to notice that the draft was coming from the north.


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## Yardiff (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Wow.  I tried to write satire, but I got it right?  That's scary.
> 
> (Kind of like the writers at The Onion trying to write political satire lately.)
> 
> ...





Are you doing an "intentional denigration" in the bold parts? Because I'm sure this doesn't happen that Hussar's or Oofta or any table I've played at. Usually its something like "can I assist on that check". But maybe that happens are tables you've played at.


Edit: Sorry forgot to add that I don't expect to see that kind of "everyone calling out to make a check" at a table of experienced players. You could definitely see this at a table of mostly new players.


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## Oofta (Apr 5, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Bold emphasis mine - I too am not a fan of this black/white use of Insight.
> 
> I usually provide the following straight off the bat, particularly if someone is proficient in Insight (no roll required): change of tone in voice, shifting uncomfortably, side-way looks, eyes darting, nervous twitch, signs of perspiration, repetitiveness, ...etc.
> I'm not saying this is the correct way to do it, it is just something I do. If I remember I will provide all this information immediately, in the framing of the scene and not need any prodding by a player's action declarations or even mentioning their Insight skill.
> ...




Well let's talk about three possibilities with my jewel heist scenario.  
1) The shopkeeper is really telling the truth and is not particularly nervous or agitated.  
2) The shopkeeper is the thief but is not any good at deception.  
3) The shopkeeper is the jewel thief but he's really good at deception.  Good enough that a passive insight isn't going to catch the deception (which I would handle as an automatic success and let the player know).

For #1 there is no deception, but an insight check doesn't hurt in most cases.  It could even be a setback if low enough because the PC believes they see something that's not there.  

For #2 I want the encounter to be one where the PCs will know the shopkeeper is lying (possibly blackmail, etc).  I'll act nervous or give obvious clues. If people really want to make an insight check they can I suppose but I've never had players not pick up on this.

For #3 There's nothing obvious, but everyone has a "tell".  Think poker players.  A good poker player is not going to say "Woo-hoo!  What an amazing hand!"  I'm not going to broadcast anything because success isn't automatic even for someone with proficiency in insight.

In my games the players not be able to distinguish between scenarios 1 and 3 without using a skill.  Neither shopkeeper is obviously lying.  The PCs?  Well the PCs might be really good at noticing the "tell".  I want to reward the players for the decisions they've made about their PCs.

To me, insight is what let's the PC notice the NPC's tell.  How I describe that "tell" is going to vary. If their passive insight is good enough, I'll just tell the player about it.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Ok, fair enough, I did posrep everyone who corrected me on that.  Dunno what I was thinking to be honest.  I knew that and had a total brain fade about the bakers dozen.
> 
> But, the pixel bitching?  Nope, that's precisely what you've described.  When the player says the magic words, he gets to make that check, not before.  When he really nails the magic words, he doesn't even need to make that check, he just automatically succeeds.
> 
> So, yup, that's textbook pixel bitching.




Only if your textbook is completely wrong about what pixel-bitching is.



Hussar said:


> You might not want to call it that, but, that's exactly what you are doing.  It's all about testing the player and not the character.  The character might as well not even be there, since, so long as the player can guess the right approach based on the hints that you give him, he never actually has to make a skill check.  I mean, that's his goal right?  To never have to make a check?
> 
> Give me a better term then for what you're advocating?  Guided role play?  Chasing the right word?  Boggle?  What?




The "middle path."



Hussar said:


> Yeah, this is just going nowhere.  At the very least others are willing to discuss pros and cons.
> 
> Look, if you think I'm mischaracterizing what you're saying, it's because, in all these pages, YOU'VE NEVER ACTUALLY DEFINED WHAT YOU DO in any concrete terms.  I ask, do you do this?  Nope, that?  nope, the other thing? nope.  I honestly have no freaking idea what you are actually doing at the table, other than, apparently, perfectly playing the game how it's meant to be played.  You aren't requiring the players to describe how they are doing things while at the same time they have to describe what they are doing but, that description doesn't matter because it's not pixel bitching, but it does matter because they cannot actually move forward without describing, in detail, what they are doing... on and on and on , round and round.
> 
> Frankly, all you've done is confused the crap out of me.  After all these pages, I haven't the first clue how I would go about playing in your play style.  It's the quantum play style, all things to all gamers at all times.  :/




Not only is my approach written right into the rules of the game which you are free to read at your leisure, I've explained it many times in this thread and others. If you don't understand it, then you must not want to because I certainly don't think you're stupid.



Hussar said:


> I'm done.  That's more than enough from me.




You'll be back.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 5, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Are you doing an "intentional denigration" in the bold parts? Because I'm sure this doesn't happen that Hussar's or Oofta or any table I've played at. Usually its something like "can I assist on that check". But maybe that happens are tables you've played at.




You didn't bold anything, but, yeah, I'm starting to get a little bit snarky.  Several of us have been repeatedly correcting Hussar's misconceptions, and yet he keeps using the same dismissive put-downs.  Honestly, shame on us for continuing to try, but it doesn't appear that he has any interest in actually considering what we are saying.



> Edit: Sorry forgot to add that I don't expect to see that kind of "everyone calling out to make a check" at a table of experienced players. You could definitely see this at a table of mostly new players.




You'd think.  But I still do see it sometimes among more (or at least moderately) experienced players.  Perhaps more importantly, the fact that new players do it is, I think, significant and indicative.  Why don't "experienced" players do it?  Certainly not because it's ineffective.  It works great!  If they don't use it, it's because they've learned over time that it's cheesy and un-fun.  But game design shouldn't depend on people recognizing cheesy exploits in the system and voluntarily not using them.  

And I don't think 5e does have that weakness...unless one insists on using skills the 3e/4e way.


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## Valmarius (Apr 5, 2019)

As far as pixel-bitching is concerned, I think there's a miscommunication or a disconnect between this idea of:
(a) DM requires a specific course of action for the PC to succeed and,
(b) DM requires some specificity in the PCs description of their action in order to adjudicate properly.

Sure, as a DM I'd like you to be more specific as a player, but not because there's 'one true way' past the challenge.
I just want to hear what we see your character doing in this scene. Add a sentence to the story we're telling.

I think we can all agree that (a) is problematic and (b) is what many posters here are actually aiming for.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Question: this draft that was noticed, did you use a passive perception to be noticed?




A DM might do that, but doesn't need to. The draft can simply be part of the description of the environment.



Yardiff said:


> Are you doing an "intentional denigration" in the bold parts? Because I'm sure this doesn't happen that Hussar's or Oofta or any table I've played at. Usually its something like "can I assist on that check". But maybe that happens are tables you've played at.
> 
> Edit: Sorry forgot to add that I don't expect to see that kind of "everyone calling out to make a check" at a table of experienced players. You could definitely see this at a table of mostly new players.




If there's no cost, risk, or trade-off for asking to make checks and the expectation is that the DM will say "Yes" to the request, why _wouldn't_ the players all pile on? There's no downside. The DM reaps what he or she sows.


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## Satyrn (Apr 5, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Fighter: "Nat 20!  So, um, 19."



This is especially fun for me when I roll a Nat 1. Even more so when I was playing the half orc in 3e.

Satyrn: "I got a, uh, negative 1."


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Valmarius said:


> As far as pixel-bitching is concerned, I think there's a miscommunication or a disconnect between this idea of:
> (a) DM requires a specific course of action for the PC to succeed and,
> (b) DM requires some specificity in the PCs description of their action in order to adjudicate properly.
> 
> ...




Important distinction here.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> A DM might do that, but doesn't need to. The draft can simply be part of the description of the environment.




Yes, absolutely. It’s also worth noting that my way of using passive checks is a little different than what the rules describe.


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## Nebulous (Apr 5, 2019)

As DM, this Insight to detect lie is one of my most hated aspects of D&D.  It is liberally used as a Detect Lie spell, with everyone just rolling for a 19 or 20 and hoping for auto-success, as if you can easily discern a lie from someone.  To REALLY be able to detect a lie would require training, and even then it would be probably for a familiar humanoid race, not including trying to tell if a Mind Flayer is lying to you.   And to add to that, a good liar is REALLY GOOD at lying, but the paltry +5 to Deception or whatever doesn't take that into consideration. 

I always think of that scene from True Romance where Christopher Walken is interrogating Dennis Hopper, and how his father from the old country taught him that a man has 17 signals if he is lying.  That has nothing to do with rolling a 20, that's flat out SKILL.


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

The way I look at it is that players tend to try to roll more often if there is no consequence for failure. That's a reasonable behavior given the way the DM is running the game. But the rules say that _there is no roll unless there's a meaningful consequence for failure_ (and an uncertain outcome). So if you _just do what the rules say_, players will tend to stop trying to roll because rolling has consequences when they fail. That doesn't mean they'll stop trying to do stuff. They'll just try to figure out ways to succeed or at least mitigate the swinginess of the d20 as much as they can. Those are also reasonable behaviors, given the game's rules. Applied to this topic, if the result of a failed Insight check is that the social interaction challenge gets harder or ends in an undesirable outcome (for the characters if not the players), players will tend to be more careful about trying to pile on the Insight checks.

Further, the DM would be doing him or herself a favor by making it so Insight is a skill proficiency applied to more than just tasks with uncertain outcomes tied to lie detection. The DMG discusses this in the section on Social Interaction. It can be used to resolve tasks related to uncover the NPC's ideal, bond, flaw, or agenda which can then be leveraged to get the NPC to do what the players want them to do. If you discover that this lying NPC "cares for his baby girl more than life itself," then you can use that to your advantage by offering to protect his baby girl. Then maybe he'll come clean. That's arguably more valuable than trying to tell if the NPC is lying in certain situations. Plus it makes your social interaction challenges deeper and more varied. Prepping the NPC's personality trait, ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda also helps the DM with portraying the NPC faithfully and consistently.

Finally, for those who use lies as the primary obstacle in a social interaction challenge and/or don't like to reveal to players that an NPC is lying in a direct manner (with or without a roll), consider this: A lie in a social interaction challenge is like a pit trap in an exploration challenge. You might have the NPC lie and the player's character believes it (falls into the hidden pit trap). Or you might have the NPC lie and the player's character is suspicious (searches for hidden pit traps). The interesting part of play to my mind is not the search for the lie (or the trap), but _what the player does with the information if the task is successful_. You know the NPC is lying - now what? (You know there's a pit trap blocking the path - now what?) The challenge is not yet done. The characters in the trap scene from my games I mentioned upthread knew there were traps. It was obvious. The hard part was _what to do about it_. Your social interaction challenges can be largely the same.

I'll add that it's easier to deal with this sort of thing if your next plot point isn't hinging on the characters believing an NPC's lie. And in general, DMing is easier if you don't care about any particular solution or outcome except that it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable story.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 5, 2019)

Nebulous said:


> As DM, this Insight to detect lie is one of my most hated aspects of D&D.  It is liberally used as a Detect Lie spell, with everyone just rolling for a 19 or 20 and hoping for auto-success, as if you can easily discern a lie from someone.  To REALLY be able to detect a lie would require training, and even then it would be probably for a familiar humanoid race, not including trying to tell if a Mind Flayer is lying to you.   And to add to that, a good liar is REALLY GOOD at lying, but the paltry +5 to Deception or whatever doesn't take that into consideration.
> 
> I always think of that scene from True Romance where Christopher Walken is interrogating Dennis Hopper, and how his father from the old country taught him that a man has 17 signals if he is lying.  That has nothing to do with rolling a 20, that's flat out SKILL.




Ok so i will bite - if your npc is REALLY GOOD all caps at lying, why did you assign him a "paltry +5" if you do not think that is representative of it?

The DMG reccommends a DC of 20 baseline to reflect someone with both skill/training and Aptitude. So, that would be a starting point based in their recommendations for me for a DC to catch someone in a lie that fit that bill - REALLY GOOD all caps.

Furthermore, if its a lie they knew was gona be needed, say an alibi or some other part of the con, i would give the liar "advantage" reflecting "prior actions" like planning out supporting points, refining his script, planned out red herrings etc.

So by now we have a baseline DC of 20 with disadvantage (or 25 straight up using the +5 for passives replacements.)

So, to me, setting the REALLY GOOD all caps liar at a simple +5 opposition just seems to be a mismatch between your view of the NPC and the stats you give them.

But, fun thing on that other topic, me too die rolls... I find they tend to stop or get greatly reduced when the "every failire can include setback" definitions are used straight out of the PHB.

The whole "i might roll a 20 (or 17+) and get something" is not as appealing when they also see "but if i roll anything lower i might get bad stuff too."

...
...
...

"Wait, what do you mean the pouch with the stones and that ring is missing? I had it just a little while ago."

"Absolutely, you had it in that bar, when we all tried to suss out that guy's lies. Remember, you ducked at that but still managed to spot some of it as true."

"So where did it go? Could someone have lifted it?"

"What, when we were all studying the guy? Nah. Not hardly... Could they?"


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## Yardiff (Apr 5, 2019)

"Not only is my approach written right into the rules of the game which you are free to read at your leisure, I've explained it many times in this thread and others. If you don't understand it, then you must not want to because I certainly don't think you're stupid."


Every time you post something like this is where you get push back because it can very easily read as 'my way is the best way because its right there in the rules so your way isn't the right way'.


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## Bawylie (Apr 5, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> "Not only is my approach written right into the rules of the game which you are free to read at your leisure, I've explained it many times in this thread and others. If you don't understand it, then you must not want to because I certainly don't think you're stupid."
> 
> 
> Every time you post something like this is where you get push back because it can very easily read as 'my way is the best way because its right there in the rules so your way isn't the right way'.




It could be read that way, if you assume some ill-intent. Or even a less-than-charitable plain reading. 

OTOH if you assume good faith, it’s kind of like citing the rules in baseball. “Here’s what they are, there’s no true dispute over what they are, I’m not trying to call balls strikes, I’m just referencing which is which.” 

I don’t read any of it like “you got this call wrong.” It’s like “I’d have ruled this way, for these reasons.”


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## iserith (Apr 5, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> "Not only is my approach written right into the rules of the game which you are free to read at your leisure, I've explained it many times in this thread and others. If you don't understand it, then you must not want to because I certainly don't think you're stupid."
> 
> Every time you post something like this is where you get push back because it can very easily read as 'my way is the best way because its right there in the rules so your way isn't the right way'.




I appreciate your suggestion. In turn, I would suggest that the most effective way to deal with that is not to try to get _me_ to change what I say, but to change how _you_ interpret what I say, given that I've stated your interpretation is not my intention, and you presumably have control over yourself, whereas you have no control over me.

If _your_ way (or Hussar's way or whoever) works for you and your table, then it shouldn't matter what the rules say or what I say about _my_ way, right?


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## Yardiff (Apr 5, 2019)

iserith said:


> I appreciate your suggestion. In turn, I would suggest that the most effective way to deal with that is not to try to get _me_ to change what I say, but to change how _you_ interpret what I say, given that I've stated your interpretation is not my intention, and you presumably have control over yourself, whereas you have no control over me.
> 
> If _your_ way (or Hussar's way or whoever) works for you and your table, then it shouldn't matter what the rules say or what I say about _my_ way, right?




Actually I think your quite dismissive of what I said. But as _you've_ said, you do you and I'll do me.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 6, 2019)

iserith said:


> This is only partly true. While the DM can call for a contest of Charisma (Deception) and Wisdom (Insight) checks to resolve these sorts of tasks (when said tasks have uncertain outcomes and meaningful consequences for failure), a contest is not required by the rules. The DM can instead just set a DC.




This is like saying Perception isn't used to oppose Stealth because the DM can just set a flat DC. 

Technically true, but talking beside the point instead of addressing it. When an opposed deception roll is used, it is default of Deception vs Insight. 






Elfcrusher said:


> What you're missing is that the DM decides if there's ambiguity in the result.  If the DM simply decides that the lie (or any other insight) can't be detected, or that the way the player proposes to accomplish it would automatically fail, then there's no roll.  Thus the absence of the roll should not be a signal to the player that the NPC is telling the truth.
> 
> Now, I think DMs should be very sparing with completely undetectable lies (maybe if it's a construct doing the lying or something), but the point is that just because a player proposes a course of action...or wants to "use a skill"...it doesn't entitle him/her to a roll.  Which in some ways is the heart of this whole debate.





I think most players would realize the situation where Insight is impossible. Such as trying to Insight a recording or a letter.

But, to get to a question that might have an answer. If they tried, and there was no ambiguity because it is too easy. What do you tell them? 

Do you tell them no roll is necessary and just leave it at that, or do you tell them that no roll is necessary because they can easily tell? 

I've had times I've needed to tell players "No, the letter isn't lying to you" when they try and use Insight in a manner where it does not apply, but I let them know why there isn't a roll necessary, which means they either know it is impossible to tell or they succeed. And succeeding by realizing it is impossible is... kind of weird. 







Ovinomancer said:


> Full stop, right here.  The player has stated an action with a goal and approach, the GM is now *obligated* to narrate the results of that action.  If the GM decides there's no uncertainty, the GM still _must narrate the outcome._



.

See, I think you stopped the conversation too late.



> Player: "I don't believe him, I think he's hiding something."
> DM: "Okay."
> Player: "Umm...can I get a read on him?  An insight check?"
> DM: "No."
> ...




This would get me frustrated. It reads like a "power play" on the part of the DM. They want to force me to say things in a certain way






Elfcrusher said:


> Ok...ehem...I'm at a keyboard.  Here's my understanding of the "it's all about character skill" approach:
> 
> DM: "In front of you is a door, looks like oak with metal strap hinges, riveted on.  There's a pull ring in the center."
> 
> ...




I know this is sarcasm, and it is quite well done too, but it does lead me to a good point on DM presentation. 

For an 8th level rogue with prof to get an 11... they had to roll low. Player knows it, I know it. So, while narrating the result I don't say "No you failed" I'd say something more like "You're tired of this dungeon, and while you put in a good show of looking you only really glance at the handle while thinking about the fat piles of loot in your future."

We relied on the dice, and the dice tell us the rogue under-performed. So I come up with the reason why they lapsed in that moment. 


Now, I also wouldn't have gotten to that point, because they said "I wipe it with a cloth" and action no player of mine has ever thought of, and that would wipe the poison off onto the cloth. And, since this poison was potent enough to work even if the player is wearing gloves or gauntlets (yeah, contact poison handles actually would rarely work, because most people would be wearing leather gloves) then they get the check then. Or, they find the poison and no check is needed to know the handle had poison on it.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> This is like saying Perception isn't used to oppose Stealth because the DM can just set a flat DC.
> 
> Technically true, but talking beside the point instead of addressing it. When an opposed deception roll is used, it is default of Deception vs Insight.




That's certainly true in my experience and it's likely the call I'll make, but the rules make no judgment on a "default" adjudication here. The most support that can be found for this ruling, to my knowledge, is a Deception vs. Insight example in the Multiple Ability Checks section of the DMG for when a task might not be repeated. 

This is definitely a minor point on the surface, but I think it underscores that we shouldn't just assume the way we generally do things is what the rules say. It's a good meditation on scrutinizing our own assumptions, if nothing else, and of course if you prefer to change the rules or rule a particular way by default to suit the way you play, that's perfectly reasonable.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> For an 8th level rogue with prof to get an 11... they had to roll low. Player knows it, I know it. So, while narrating the result I don't say "No you failed" I'd say something more like "You're tired of this dungeon, and while you put in a good show of looking you only really glance at the handle while thinking about the fat piles of loot in your future."
> 
> We relied on the dice, and the dice tell us the rogue under-performed. So I come up with the reason why they lapsed in that moment.




I find it ironic that the "goal and method" approach is derided as some kind of DM power trip, but I see this as taking over the poor guy's character and roleplaying for him.  If I'm going to subject him to the whim of the dice, I'm _at least_ going to give him the courtesy of letting him narrate his own failures.

I was DMing for my nephew, who was about 10 at the time (stop reading here if you've read this before...it's at least the 3rd time I've posted this story here) and he failed an Athletics check climbing up the wall of a mausoleum.  His face fell...he was really disappointed. Then I asked him, "Why did you fall?"  He stared blankly at me for a moment, then his face lit up and he said, "There was some wet moss on the stone, and I slipped on that."

A few minutes later he said, "That was actually really cool."

Later in the game he crit on a sneak attack (on a ghoul in a tunnel under the mausoleum...of course) and out of 6d6 he got (if I remember it correctly) 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4.  The ghoul exploded.  Black blood everywhere.  He said, "Ok, that was even cooler than the slipping on the moss thing."  Later he eagerly, and graphically, recounted his exploit to his mom, my sister.  ("Really, sis, this game is GREAT for developing minds.")


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I find it ironic that the "goal and method" approach is derided as some kind of DM power trip, but I see this as taking over the poor guy's character and roleplaying for him.  If I'm going to subject him to the whim of the dice, I'm _at least_ going to give him the courtesy of letting him narrate his own failures.
> 
> I was DMing for my nephew, who was about 10 at the time (stop reading here if you've read this before...it's at least the 3rd time I've posted this story here) and he failed an Athletics check climbing up the wall of a mausoleum.  His face fell...he was really disappointed. Then I asked him, "Why did you fall?"  He stared blankly at me for a moment, then his face lit up and he said, "There was some wet moss on the stone, and I slipped on that."
> 
> ...




I blame it on table style personally. 

I've tried pretty hard to get people to describe things to me about how they accomplish a task. I've tried and I've tried, and all I get are blank stares and "I don't knows" 

So, I've taken over the "style points" narration. When a player lands an awesome blow, I describe it. When they pull off an intense character skill challenge, I describe it. 

Otherwise they just stare at me in existential terror at having to come up with something on the spot. 

I haven't given up on it, but it's just a fact of my style now after all these years. 





iserith said:


> That's certainly true in my experience and it's likely the call I'll make, but the rules make no judgment on a "default" adjudication here. The most support that can be found for this ruling, to my knowledge, is a Deception vs. Insight example in the Multiple Ability Checks section of the DMG for when a task might not be repeated.
> 
> This is definitely a minor point on the surface, but I think it underscores that we shouldn't just assume the way we generally do things is what the rules say. It's a good meditation on scrutinizing our own assumptions, if nothing else, and of course if you prefer to change the rules or rule a particular way by default to suit the way you play, that's perfectly reasonable.




So... what value are we getting out of this "rules don't say" conclusion? 

I understand making sure we look at our assumptions and make sure we know what the rules are (I'm having a discussion in another thread where the fact that you can wield any weapon regardless of proficiency is being brought up) 

But in this instance... what is the alternative here that is worth noting? That the rules don't explicit tie the skill called out for lying as being countered by the skill that detects lying? Did they even need to state those two skills being in opposition? 

I'm just not sure what point you are trying to make by quoting the rules at me here and hinting at "deeper" points.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I understand making sure we look at our assumptions and make sure we know what the rules are




^ That's it. It addresses an undercurrent in this discussion, that's all.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I blame it on table style personally.
> 
> I've tried pretty hard to get people to describe things to me about how they accomplish a task. I've tried and I've tried, and all I get are blank stares and "I don't knows"
> 
> ...




Well, that would certainly make it hard to play using "goal and method".

(Or, as I now like to call it, "The Medellin Interpretation.")


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## Bawylie (Apr 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> (Or, as I now like to call it, "The Medellin Interpretation.")




Why? What is that?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 6, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Why? What is that?




Check iserith's location.  (It's a dorky play on "The Copenhagen Interpretation")


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## Charlaquin (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I think most players would realize the situation where Insight is impossible. Such as trying to Insight a recording or a letter.
> 
> But, to get to a question that might have an answer. If they tried, and there was no ambiguity because it is too easy. What do you tell them?
> 
> ...



This is why I don’t have players make checks to see if an NPC is lying. If an NPC is lying, I make a Deception check for the NPC against the PCs’ passive Insight. If the NPC fails, I tell them something they notice about the NPC that could indicate they are lying (lack of eye contact, stuttering, sweating, some kind of behavioral tic that could be a tell, etc.) If the NPC succeeds, or if they are not lying, I say nothing and let the players draw their own conclusions.

I know this is sarcasm, and it is quite well done too, but it does lead me to a good point on DM presentation. 



Chaosmancer said:


> For an 8th level rogue with prof to get an 11... they had to roll low. Player knows it, I know it. So, while narrating the result I don't say "No you failed" I'd say something more like "You're tired of this dungeon, and while you put in a good show of looking you only really glance at the handle while thinking about the fat piles of loot in your future."



Oof. That gets a _hard_ Nope from me. No, I do not only glance at the handle. I told you I looked closely, sniffed the air, and wiped the handle with a cloth to see if there was any residue. I get control over one thing and one thing only in this game, and that’s my character’s actions. Take that away from me and what am I even here for?


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Oof. That gets a _hard_ Nope from me. No, I do not only glance at the handle. I told you I looked closely, sniffed the air, and wiped the handle with a cloth to see if there was any residue. I get control over one thing and one thing only in this game, and that’s my character’s actions. Take that away from me and what am I even here for?




What some people refuse to accept or acknowledge is that finding/removing traps descriptively is _boring_ for a lot of people.  They may have focused their limited options on being the greatest trap finder/remover they can be so they want to be rewarded by using the skill now and then.

But describing in detail how they counteract yet another contact poison?  Snooze time.  Not to mention, why is it always contact poison?  And why would pouring fermented grape juice on it do anything at all?  Why would anyone else at the table care?  I think if anyone started doing this at my table, I'd start throwing in alcoholic mimics that pretended to be poisoned door handles.  

So when it comes to that kind of stuff ... if people want to describe it and are reasonably entertaining _fantastic_.  Here's a cookie inspiration point.  But I don't expect people to play my way.  I don't expect them to describe every sword swing or how they read arcane script or decipher religious symbolism.  I don't even expect them to describe how they find/disable mundane traps. Even if some doorknob mimics may be disappointed by that.


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## Sadras (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Well let's talk about three possibilities with my jewel heist scenario.




Nice building on the original example. 

The below is how I'd rule on it. What is important to me is determining if their is advantage/disadvantage as well as figuring out what will be revealed in the PC's approach*. 

The approach being their line of questioning, the emotions they put on display, their movement and positioning, what specifically they might mention how their character's act or something specifically they do, use of seduction/deception/insinuating bribery/intimidation...etc  



> 1) The shopkeeper is really telling the truth and is not particularly nervous or agitated.
> For #1 there is no deception, but an insight check doesn't hurt in most cases.  It could even be a setback if low enough because the PC believes they see something that's not there.




I can see the merits for misdirection with a low score.

No Insight: Bare basics, nothing specifically noted, shopkeeper appears to be genuine.
Proficiency: Provide undertone of emotion in shopkeeper's language and behaviour. 
Insight check: _Success_ - Reveal characteristics of shopkeeper (bonds and/or ideals and/or flaws), _Failure_ - Misread shopkeeper, mistake a movement or tone of voice as some sort of tell.



> 2) The shopkeeper is the thief but is not any good at deception.
> For #2 I want the encounter to be one where the PCs will know the shopkeeper is lying (possibly blackmail, etc).  I'll act nervous or give obvious clues. If people really want to make an insight check they can I suppose but I've never had players not pick up on this.




No Insight: Like you, I'd provide all the basic clues upfront. 
Proficiency: Further exposition on the tells/clues of deception, misdirection, avoidance, inconsistencies. 
Insight check: _Success_ - Inform the characters on the range of emotions, highlight connections that PCs haven't made in the investigation, perhaps even get a sense of coercion depending on the PC's character read of the shopkeeper, revelation of ideals/bonds/flaws, maybe a sense of the man's life/history...etc
_Failure_ - Odd behaviour is just nerves on the side of the shopkeeper no ill intent, perhaps suffers from something psychological, or character senses deception but for the incorrect reasons.



> 3) The shopkeeper is the jewel thief but he's really good at deception.  Good enough that a passive insight isn't going to catch the deception (which I would handle as an automatic success and let the player know).
> 
> For #3 There's nothing obvious, but everyone has a "tell".  Think poker players.  A good poker player is not going to say "Woo-hoo!  What an amazing hand!"  I'm not going to broadcast anything because success isn't automatic even for someone with proficiency in insight.




No Insight: Bare basics, nothing specifically noted, shopkeeper appears to be genuine. 
Proficiency: Passive Deception versus Passive Insight. Success - Reveals something obscured or a concealed tell/nervous tick, Failure - Perhaps reveal false characteristic (bond and/or flaw and/or ideal.  
Insight Check: _Success_ - Might reveal connections/motives not realised by the PCs, reveal masked emotion
_Failure_ - Might reveal nothing, or reveal the incorrect personality characteristic (ideals and/or bonds and/or flaws), or reveal the incorrect emotion.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> What some people refuse to accept or acknowledge is that finding/removing traps descriptively is _boring_ for a lot of people.  They may have focused their limited options on being the greatest trap finder/remover they can be so they want to be rewarded by using the skill now and then.
> 
> But describing in detail how they counteract yet another contact poison?  Snooze time.  Not to mention, why is it always contact poison?  And why would pouring fermented grape juice on it do anything at all?  Why would anyone else at the table care?  I think if anyone started doing this at my table, I'd start throwing in alcoholic mimics that pretended to be poisoned door handles.
> 
> So when it comes to that kind of stuff ... if people want to describe it and are reasonably entertaining _fantastic_.  Here's a cookie inspiration point.  But I don't expect people to play my way.  I don't expect them to describe every sword swing or how they read arcane script or decipher religious symbolism.  I don't even expect them to describe how they find/disable mundane traps. Even if some doorknob mimics may be disappointed by that.



This kinda ties in with a question I had before, about the use of traps, the examples bring put forth etc and it all ties back to the ABCD divide between "challenges" and solutions.

In my games, the result of creating some massive IJones style shifting blocks massive multi-part mechanism at no doubt great effort and expense that literally anyone with a std adventurer's pack and kit under 50 gp can fool without need for proficiency or trainjng - well - would be the trap maker and his financial overseer getting to watch their families fed into its giant sliding blocks and then joining them as "the boss" searches for a better trapmaker.

I mean, really, some expertise went into these at their construction. Someone went to a lot of time and expense to make them tough to beat, not something anyone can just get around.

But, if instead there was no thought about "well, how could someone get around it?" when it was being built and so now it's a quick "look in your pack and let's just walk on thru simple then hey, it's a screen for on a submarine.

Now of course, some of these no doubt are just fabricated examples not something anybody would use in actual play. But that's kind of the point.

In play, is where ability scores and training and those choices matter. In play is where in-character choices matter. It's from those contexts that the "balance" between checks and no check required is seen and learned from.

So, if you as a player describe what you consider fool-proof poison-trap defeating moves and expect the execution to go off as you describe it... are you going so because you are roleplaying a character who is a master poison trap beater and know they cannot fail? Or are you going it regardless of character skill because you the player"know" this will defeat such?

This is where the concepts of "I dont think DC or solutions whrn i setup a challenge to me fails." Within the game world, someone did setup that scene, that challenge. Someone within the game world did think thru challenges and possible solutions in most of the cases we have here.

So, "how hood were they at it, how much time, resource and planning went into it, etc should all be directly part of the setup and from that the difficulty. 

If the massive Indiana sliding blocks of doom are beatable by a squire with a crowbar, there is a terrible breakdown in the underpinnings. One that would lead my players' character to go "WTF" not start patting themselves on the back and checking their inspiration tallies.

The DMG addresses this in its section on setting DCs by asking the GM to focus on how skilled someone would be who could beat it. They come up with some pretty basic divisions to get you to DC 10, DC 15 and DC 20. They leave room for higher and lower due to additional circumstances. 

This five tails with a practice that serves me well too, the reverse perspective - who set this up, why, how good were they, how much time and resource etc. Its really just the same decision making but when I have a "known" creator and intent I use that perspective.

In the DMG, they do not however scramble this in the context of or confined by "but of course maybe a squire with a crowbar is the best answer so let's just skip past it."

So, again it comes back to how many times does a GM show the players that their characters will be challenged based on their skills vs how many times its solvable by the players along, maybe just by thrir choice- to buy a kit with a crowbar st chargrn?

For poison on door handle, I dont use that as a care really of "trap disarming" - because it is as much a trap as three guys at the end of an alley. Notice it and you avoid it easily. No real skill needed. No aptitude needed. It's more hazard than trap. 

And it's also not a trap someone who knew what they were doing would expect to catch someone who had any skill or caution, unless we have some major mystical poison that really is more than a contact poison. 

Like say, maybe it's a layer of contact venom over a layer of reactive gas or spores, so that "I wipe the handle off" or "I pour wine to wash it off" releases the threats just as much as a casual handle grab would. 

Of course, that is now describing a "trap" setup by someone with skill at doing this who did spend a few minutes thinking through what solutions there were and counters. 

It's like kind of some experiences in Vietnam and other wars, where ambushes were most effective when the seemingly safe place with cover (that was obvious once the shooting started) was Bobby trapped.

So, no, I wont assign too much of "you were tired or counting your chickens" to the failure against the traps myself, instead I might describe a slip up, because like the fighter swing the player describes the attempt at the action not the success at it, but more likely I am describing a new wrinkle that was missed and already accounted for by the one who set it up.  

Like I said earlier, few of my "challenges that matter" are of a type where they can be overcome without checks (even passive checks) at all. Most require checks to overcome with opportunities for advantage and disadvantage driven by choices and circumstances. Some can be overcome by checks (passive,  active, adv disadv chouces) or choices a- either one. Some can only be overcome by a combination of checks (passive,  active, adv disadv chouces) and choices both required. 

I find that those rough divisions and considerations  tend to provide a world in view to the players that remains consistent, rational in the action of its denizens and a playstyle that provides consistent and meaningful balance between choices made and results.

I do acknowledge tho, it leaves out some old tropes of certain styles of fiction like the crowbar stopping the massive machinery "fix" - and that is  intended. 

So, its maybe not for everyone.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> What some people refuse to accept or acknowledge is that finding/removing traps descriptively is _boring_ for a lot of people.  They may have focused their limited options on being the greatest trap finder/remover they can be so they want to be rewarded by using the skill now and then.



No one refuses this.  No one is saying doing it your way is wrong, or lesser.  We've been asked how we do it and have responded.  I find it really weird that there's this pushback that, after asking how we do things, you take it as us telling you that you play wrong.  Like, really odd.

I actually love that you play differently from me.  I love this because you have fun when you do.  That's the best outcome for our shared hobby -- that lots of people enjoy it and tell others.  And, that's all I'm doing here, and all [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] are doing:  telling others how we enjoy our hobby.  I'm not a terrible person for advocating for my play any more than you are.  So, can we kindly (and this is for the whole thread) dispense with the outraged imagined injuries -- they don't actually exist.  You cannot quote anyone saying that they don't think that some people would find removing traps descriptively boring, you can only impute that yourself.  So, stop imputing it.



> But describing in detail how they counteract yet another contact poison?  Snooze time.  Not to mention, why is it always contact poison?  And why would pouring fermented grape juice on it do anything at all?  Why would anyone else at the table care?  I think if anyone started doing this at my table, I'd start throwing in alcoholic mimics that pretended to be poisoned door handles.



In order:

I don't ask them to.  I ask for an approach and goal -- in the case of removing contact poison, it can be any reasonable approach, I do not care.  It can be detailed or simple, it just has to give the the shape of the attempt so that, on a failure, I'm not assuming what the PC did when I level a consequence.  I also don't smear contact poison on every door and require my players to play through that.  That would, indeed, be very boring.  There's this trend in your complaints that assumes that things are very commonly occurring when they are not.  Traps are rare, special, and unique in my games -- and always telegraphed. The challenge is not finding it, or rolling dice at it, it's figuring out how to do what you want in spite of it.  If you're assuming that we have a game where there's lots of doorknobs with contact poison and we stop everything for a detailed explanation of how you do the same thing over again, you're _not paying attention or trying to understand_.  You're maintaining your preconceptions in spite of being told they are wrong.

It's definitely not always contact poison.  This is disingenuous af.  It was an example early in the thread and gets reused so that there aren't many examples to be confused about, as I'm very sure you know.

I don't care -- it's a reasonable approach and I'll take it.  I'm not looking for a specific result, and I do not have a complex chemical breakdown of the poison such that I evaluate any proposed action against such a detailed breakdown.  Pouring wine on it sounds good in genre logic (which is the only logic I really care about in game), so it's a valid approach.  If you had goat's milk, that would work too.  Or just water.  If I actually specified wine for some reason, it would be because it had been established in play already, and wine was available, because that would fit the genre logic and the established fiction.  This isn't rocket science, and I don't make it such.  Just about anything works, I just need an approach so I can adjudicate the difficulty and the consequence.  

Why does anyone care about anything happening at the table?  My answer to this hypothetical is because they find it fun.  Do you have a different answer?  Also, in my game, consequences tend to spill out, so other players care if things start going badly. 

Really?  You'd actually actively thwart successful play at your table because... I don't understand why you'd do this.  I get you think you don't like our play (although, in my example above, you said it works the same at your table -- although you then went on to list differences I thought were pretty large) so if it showed up at your table in a way we don't actually play (but you're invested in imagining we do, because.... don't understand that either, honestly) you'd make sure to screw over the players.  Yeah, not following that at multiple points.



> So when it comes to that kind of stuff ... if people want to describe it and are reasonably entertaining _fantastic_.  Here's a cookie inspiration point.  But I don't expect people to play my way.  I don't expect them to describe every sword swing or how they read arcane script or decipher religious symbolism.  I don't even expect them to describe how they find/disable mundane traps. Even if some doorknob mimics may be disappointed by that.



I also love it when players are entertaining in their descriptions!  It's great!  I also don't require it, punish it, or reward it (even with an inspiration point).  However you chose to address the rarely presented trap in front of you, I'm good.

And, to be frank, I think a large part of the problem here is that we're trying to engage you on examples that really don't exist in our games.  I, frankly, can't imagine having _just _a poisoned doorknob as a trap placed in my dungeon.  I can imagine a poisoned doorknob trap, certainly, and would have one, but it would be part of a larger challenge.  It might block the way when the party is trying to rapidly exit an area, or be part of a challenge where the party wants to get through an area undetected so the delay is a big deal.  But, just a series of trapped doors where the trap is the thing?  Nope.  But, I've engaged this example because it's one presented, and the setup for a trap in my game requires a huge amount of exposition because they're all tied into bigger things.  Even the hallway trap example I provided above elided many things in the overall situation that made it much more important to a bigger challenge than the simple version given.  I skipped that because it complicates the question of what happens at the point of contact -- where the mechanics meet the game.  The problem this causes is that you then assume our games otherwise look like yours - have lots of traps, maybe, where searching each door for a trap is a very wise way to play, and the individual traps aren't really that important if bypassed, so it makes sense to shortcut and just do the rolls and not waste time on these things.  In my game, a trap is a big deal -- it's rare, it's going to be dangerous, and it's going to directly thwart what it is you want to do, so you have to address it.  Or, it'll be part of a bigger challenge, where it's an added complication that forces hard choices -- do we deal with the trap and risk this other thing, or deal with the other thing and risk the trap?  As such, your imaginings that there are whole complexes of traps that are dealt with with the presented granularity must indeed seem very weird -- but, as we keep telling you, you're missing the bigger point; our games are actually different from yours.  Adopting the playstyle also means fundamentally altering how you approach the game and that alters what's important in the game.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> No one refuses this.  No one is saying doing it your way is wrong, or lesser.  We've been asked how we do it and have responded.  I find it really weird that there's this pushback that, after asking how we do things, you take it as us telling you that you play wrong.  Like, really odd.
> 
> I actually love that you play differently from me.  I love this because you have fun when you do.  That's the best outcome for our shared hobby -- that lots of people enjoy it and tell others.  And, that's all I'm doing here, and all [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] are doing:  telling others how we enjoy our hobby.  I'm not a terrible person for advocating for my play any more than you are.  So, can we kindly (and this is for the whole thread) dispense with the outraged imagined injuries -- they don't actually exist.  You cannot quote anyone saying that they don't think that some people would find removing traps descriptively boring, you can only impute that yourself.  So, stop imputing it.
> 
> ...



One bit I will comment on...

"Traps are rare, special, and unique in my games -- and always telegraphed. "

That would break my player's enjoyment and buy-in to my game world. It's a example is what I refer to as  screen door on a submarine.

If all the traps that were challenges that matter were telegraphed, my players would be wondering "WTF are we fighting idjits?" - especially if they were not cases of broken down abandoned crap. 

Then also, if when they themselves chose to setup a trap I also applied the "always telegraphed rule to their charscter's traps no matter how skilled their character's were - well - that would lead to some discussion. (As would me handwaving that rule for PC traps but not for skilled NPC traps - even NPCs they hire? Or do hired NPCs making traps for PCs get to waive the "always telegraphed rule?) 

Bah...  much simpler to let the traps be as easy to spot or to defeat or to avoid as the skills of the creator and the circumstances would suggest and leave the screen doors on the chicken coops where they belong.

But that's my games.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> What some people refuse to accept or acknowledge is that finding/removing traps descriptively is _boring_ for a lot of people.  They may have focused their limited options on being the greatest trap finder/remover they can be so they want to be rewarded by using the skill now and then.



I do not refuse to acknowledge that. Here is me, acknowledging it: I hereby officially acknowledge that finding and removing traps descriptively is boring for many people.



Oofta said:


> But describing in detail how they counteract yet another contact poison?  Snooze time.  Not to mention, why is it always contact poison?  And why would pouring fermented grape juice on it do anything at all?  Why would anyone else at the table care?  I think if anyone started doing this at my table, I'd start throwing in alcoholic mimics that pretended to be poisoned door handles.



If you want to talk about refusal of acknowledgement here,  how many times have those of us who ask our players to frame their actions in terms of a goal and an approach said that there is no requirement or expectation of a detailed description l? How many more times will we have to say it before people who “just are honestly curious how we would handle...”  get this?

And the only reason contact poison is being discussed right now is because it was the example being used in the comment air responded to and I rolled with it.. I have never used contact poison on a door handle in an actual game.



Oofta said:


> So when it comes to that kind of stuff ... if people want to describe it and are reasonably entertaining _fantastic_.  Here's a cookie inspiration point.  But I don't expect people to play my way.  I don't expect them to describe every sword swing or how they read arcane script or decipher religious symbolism.  I don't even expect them to describe how they find/disable mundane traps. Even if some doorknob mimics may be disappointed by that.



I don’t give any kind of reward for detailed descriptions of actions, personally. Seems like a very strange thing to do if you find descriptive roleplaying boring, but if it works for you, have fun. It’s also funny that you bring up combat (again), because it’s actually a great example of a context where most DMs run things similarly to how we do the rest of the time. There is no requirement or expectation of a detailed description of how you swing your sword. But you do need to specify your target (goal) and what you are attacking them with (approach). “I Attack the goblin with my sword” is a perfectly acceptable level of detail. Likewise, “I wipe the handle with a cloth” is a perfectly acceptable action out of combat. Strictly speaking it lacks an explicit goal, but it’s easu enough to infer the goal from the context of the example scenario. No detailed description necessary.

I’m happy to acknowledge that detailed description is boring for you. Are you willing to acknowledge that detailed description is not the norm at my table? How about that having control of my character taken away from me (“you rolled a 2, so you just casually glanced at the handle” and/or “You rolled a 2, and that represents your best effort”) is infuriating to me?


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I think most players would realize the situation where Insight is impossible. Such as trying to Insight a recording or a letter.
> 
> But, to get to a question that might have an answer. If they tried, and there was no ambiguity because it is too easy. What do you tell them?
> 
> Do you tell them no roll is necessary and just leave it at that, or do you tell them that no roll is necessary because they can easily tell?




Do you mean if they try to determine if what a letter says is true? What is their approach to the goal?



Chaosmancer said:


> For an 8th level rogue with prof to get an 11... they had to roll low. Player knows it, I know it. So, while narrating the result I don't say "No you failed" I'd say something more like "You're tired of this dungeon, and while you put in a good show of looking you only really glance at the handle while thinking about the fat piles of loot in your future."
> 
> We relied on the dice, and the dice tell us the rogue under-performed. So I come up with the reason why they lapsed in that moment.




Only the player may establish if the character is tired of the dungeon or that the character glances at the handle or thinks about loot.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> First, this isn't a parody.  I honestly want to understand what you would do.  I still don't get why there couldn't be a dialog where the PCs are questioning the shopkeeper but since you refuse to give an example of what the dialog would look like I give up.



Sigh, you keep saying this, but then you do not listen and instead insert your imaginings in place, like saying you don't understand why there couldn't be a dialog.  Where have I, or anyone else, said there's never a dialog?  This is your assumption, and it's wrong.

I'm not interested in imagining a dialog between players and me in my game.  I felt yours was fine up until the point I said 'full stop' because it reasonably looked like something that could happen in my game up until that point.  It, in fact, at that point that it became farce.



> I don't want to put words into your mouth but since you refuse to give a concrete example, I'm assuming something like:



I've given plenty of concrete examples.  Are you demanding that it be in the form of dialog now?  How does that help?



> DM/shopkeeper "So I locked up the store as usual, set the normal traps and went upstairs to bed."
> Player: "You sleep above the shop?"
> DM/shopkeeper: "Yes, it's part of the compensation, and I'm single so it works well for me."
> Player: "So no witness and you didn't hear anything at all during the night."
> ...



It's not what would happen at my table at all, though, which is why I put a full stop in above and explained what needed to happen.  Here, the issue for me is that you've decided that the shopkeeper being a suspect is important.  That's great!  If I did that, there would be all kinds of things going on that led to that, and it wouldn't be 'is he lying.'  To me, that would be very boring.  If I flat out told the players the shopkeeper isn't lying it would be because it wasn't interesting to anyone at the table except idly.  Again, the issue here is that the construct you've built wouldn't happen at all in my game.  If I ran this, then the shopkeeper would have many things going on that would not, at all, pivot on if the players think he's lying.

And, this really touches on another point of play -- what does a successful check actually mean in this case?  That the player confirms their guess and absolutely knows the shopkeeper is lying.  What does this enable that isn't also enabled by the suspicion of lying?   



> And please don't bother responding if all you're going give me is more platitudes of "I would be such an amazing DM this could never occur" unless you can show how.  This is an extremely simple scenario that is very typical of games I've played in or run.  It shouldn't be hard.  Assume it's a new player and this is the beginning of the session.



Because it's not an scenario that exists in my games, no matter how "awesome" I may or may not be.  As I say above, if I ran this scenario, the shopkeeper would have lots of interesting detail, but lying might not be one. This doesn't mean there wouldn't be lots to engage with.  Perhaps the shopkeeper's brother used his familiarity to rob the store without the shopkeeper's knowledge, but the shopkeeper suspects, that's a neat thing that would come out in the interaction and could be sussed.  Using Insight to discover the shopkeeper's ideal for honesty could help, or maybe a flaw that they always excuse their brother?  Lot's of neat things I might do with a heist scenario involving a live-in shopkeep that do not involve using insight to tell if he's not lying.



Oofta said:


> Well let's talk about three possibilities with my jewel heist scenario.
> 1) The shopkeeper is really telling the truth and is not particularly nervous or agitated.



This means that the shopkeeper is just ambulatory exposition, and I'd not even bother with this.  Or, the issue wouldn't be the shopkeep lying, but some other thing involving the shopkeep.  If the sole challenge is "do NPCs lie to us" and the shopkeeper doesn't, then why bother?

I mean, I know why, it's to preserve a sense of uncertainty in the game.  I've found that I can straight out give my notes to players (of all calibers), and they'll still create their own uncertainty and will definitely screw up by the numbers.  This is why consequences for failures are so critical to my style -- they create roadblocks and adversity without me having to spin the players along with uncertainty that what they rolled means anything at all.  My choices to do it this way are my choices, I certainly had a lot of fun in the past playing the other way, I just have less fun now.  YMMV, and all that.



> 2) The shopkeeper is the thief but is not any good at deception.



This is much more interesting.  At this point, that the shopkeep is lying is pretty much a foregone conclusion, so I'm not going to make that a crux point -- ie, the shopkeeper getting away with lying will not be that happens if the players investigate.  The 'mystery' will be why, to what ends, and what does this mean to the PCs and their goals.  Again, I'm not going to have a situation in my game where a store was robbed and the shopkeeper did it as the whole of anything -- this example would be just a front to a larger issue and the shopkeeper lying would not be the challenge.



> 3) The shopkeeper is the jewel thief but he's really good at deception.  Good enough that a passive insight isn't going to catch the deception (which I would handle as an automatic success and let the player know).



Again, interesting.  But, as I've said, I'm not going to hinge an investigation on an Insight check to tell if the shopkeep is lying.  Insight to get that the shopkeep is smug and unconcerned, maybe, because that would push players to look more closely at other things.  And, really, the other things would be what solves this mystery, not an insight check.

And, this leads me back to something I said above:  what's the point of the insight check?  What does it actually do?

Let's assume we're in #3 above, and the players succeed at a very high Insight check to tell that the shopkeep is lying about the theft.  What does this do in your game?  Is this proof, of any kind, that allows players to arrest/kill the shopkeeper as a criminal?  Normally, this would obviously be false, but I think this is actually what the check does -- it enables the players to have the moral right to punish the wrongdoer.  It, in many ways, functions like the old Paladin Detect Evil, which was sometimes used as a crutch to enable killing anything that pinged.  I'm not suggesting this is the same, here, because that's extreme, but I do think a successful Insight check to detect lying is really just a gate that provides justification to escalate within the scene.  I do not enjoy this for a couple of reasons.  One, I don't see that I need to validate your character's thinking so that they can act upon it -- that's up to the players.  Two, I don't find that interesting.  It's a tell to the player that this person is bad in a game where bad things are usually killed, but many GMs might also use that as a means to then take the expected player action and pervert it by having them get in trouble with the authorities.  And, if the authorities are important such that real proof is needed, then why am I validating player suspicions in a pass/fail way if it really doesn't make a difference?  This is one big reason why I do not use Insight as a lie detector, nor do I create situations where telling if someone is lying by talking to them is a crucial point of the game.

Since you've asked for examples, let me present a shopkeeper example I might run:

Initial PC information:
The shop has been burgled. There are numerous mundane and magical traps that have neither been disabled nor set off. The shopkeeper lives in the store and was present all night long.

Initial DM information:
The shopkeep didn't have anything directly to do with the burglary.  He didn't hear anything, and didn't see anything.  He does, however, do occasional fencing work for the local thieves guild, and so is guarded when answering questions.  He suspects that his brother may have been involved, and, indeed, he was.  The shopkeep's brother is a wanted jewel thief, but uses a different name so it's not obvious.  The shopkeeper has the following BITFs:  Trait: guarded with authorities and those representing them; Bond: will do anything for his daughters; Flaw:  I've always made excuses for my brother's behavior. 

There now I'm done with prep.  In play, this can go a huge number of ways.  If the players inspect the traps, they might discover evidence that they've been disabled and expertly reset.  Pointing this out to the shopkeeper would result in the shopkeeper being surprised and then suspicious and pointing out that he'd not have needed to do it that way as he has a much easier way to disable and reset the traps that wouldn't leave that evidence.  Further questioning on this line wouldn't result in much, as the shopkeeper has no reason to  reveal anything else.  The party might then look at what wasn't stolen, and could find out that some of the left merchandise was previously stolen and confront the shopkeeper about his fencing.  Having a party member affiliated with the guild would make this go very easily, and thus the connection with the guild would be exposed, indicating that it's not likely a guild job and thus likely an outsider.  Looking around the shopkeeper's apartment would uncover that he has daughters he's supporting (a letter, or painting, or kid's drawings, etc.).  Using this, and asking how he could possibly continue to support his daughters if the party doesn't recover the merchandise could result in the shopkeeper revealing his jewel-thief brother.  

Or, something totally different might happen, depending on the player's stated goals and approaches to those goals.  I do not ever write solutions, I write problems and then enjoy seeing what happens in the game.

To give you another example that actually happened in my game, here's some of that dialogue you asked for:

Scene:  the dwarven barbarian and his cleric companion have entered a seedy bar seeking information about the person that murdered the dwarf's entire clan, leaving him the only survivor. The dwarf doesn't know why this happened, only that it did and the person responsible is named Terak.  The dwarf has information that Terak has been in the city recently and is searching for him.  They enter the bar looking for Butcher, who, in a previous scene, they were told might have information.  The bar is dimly light, close, and full of regulars at the end of a hard workday (picture a coal-miner's bar and you're not far off).  They immediately notice Butcher, who is immense, occupying two bar stools, heavily muscled and overweight, with bright red skin, a single curling horn, and is wearing a butchers apron with a massive cleaver on his belt.  The duo approach and sit at the bar next to Butcher.

As they sit:
Butcher:  [without looking] what do you want.
Cleric:  who says we want something?
B: you don't belong here, you don't want to be here [turns to look at the cleric], and you sat next to me.  That means you want something. [turns back to his pitcher sized mug] So, what is it?
Dwarf: We want to know where Terak is.
B: [visibly pales, starts, tries to cover it]  Why would you want to know that?
C: So, you know who he is?
B: [winces]  I might.
Dwarf's player:  Okay, I'm going to activate my smoking armor and my glowing eyes helmet and then threaten him.
D:  [now with smoking armor and glowing red eyes] You'll tell us or else!
Me, as GM:  Okay, cool, make an intimidate check.  You don't get advantage for your gear because this is Butcher's stomping grounds and you've notice quite a few thugs around paying attention, so you're pretty sure he'll have some support if you start something.
D's Player:  sounds fair, I got a... 4.  Darn it.
Butcher: [glancing at the dwarf before turning back to his ale] That's a cute trick.  Why don't you get out of here before something bad happens you'll regret.  {I'm attempting to close the scene here.}
Cleric's Player:  I'm going to look around and see if I can notice anything that might help fix this.  The butcher has friends here, clearly, anything about them jump out?
Me: Sure, you look around and notice that there's a plaque opposite Butcher's spot at the bar that says, "In appreciation of Butcher and the support he provided after the Foundry accident.  The families of the Foundry thank him for his generous assistance in their time of need."
Cleric's Player:  Oh.  So, he helps around the community, I guess.  I'm going to try to leverage that.
Cleric:  Please forgive my friend, Mr. Butcher, he's lost his entire clan to this Terak.  I'm sure you understand how hard it can be to suffer a tragedy like that and try to do anything to help.  Are you sure there's nothing you can tell us to help us stop this Terak from destroying another community like my friends'?
Me:  Ooh, super nice.  He's pretty pissed though, so make a persuasion attempt but definitely get advantage on it.
Cleric's Player: An 18!
Butcher:  [deep sigh, looks at the plaque] Yeah, I get it.  [turns to the dwarf] I'm sorry that happened to you.  This person you're seeking is very bad news, and I'm sorry I ever got mixed up in anything with him, even if it was just supplying rare meats to his household.  He's put those shipments on hold indefinitely, and I have it on good authority he's left town, and I don't know where, sorry.
Dwarf: Is there anything you could tell us that might give a clue as to where he's gone?
Butcher: I overheard a conversation I wasn't supposed to between some of his goons when I made my last discovery.  They said that their boss was looking for an artifact called the Great Wheel and had just gotten a lead on a piece of it so they were packing up to go.  All I know, I tried to not learn anything at all.  I suggest you grieve for your lost and forget about it.  
D & C:  Okay, thanks, have a good day.
{scene}

So, in there, there were a bunch of possible checks.  A few automatic successes based on approach (the mood in the bar, noticing the plaque), and two that had checks called for: the intimidate attempt and the persuasion one.  The intimidate failed, and I moved to end the scene with no success to the overall goal of finding information on Terak.  The persuasion succeeded, because it leveraged a bond, and so reversed the move to close the scene (it's intent) and also automatically succeeded at eliciting further information.  The dwarven barbarian has this Terak as a central conflict in their backstory, so I'm leveraging that to provide hooks.  This whole scene occurred because of a previous hook I had set, and now the players are driving this plotline, not me.  I don't know where Terak is, but I know he'll show up, likely at the worst time.  We're gonna play some more and find out.  For instance, right after this another member of the party found information on a possible location of another piece of the Wheel, so they've cowboyed for a hop to the near Astral and a fragment of what was once a Primordial Cult temple from before current recorded histories in case that's the piece that Terak's after as well.  I wonder if it is...


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2019)

It's difficult to have this conversation and not occasionally make posts sound like attacks.  If I've done that I apologize.

So let me put this another way.  If you use a descriptive style of play why would anyone ever invest in a skill beyond proficiency?  If all I need is proficiency in thieves tools, then would it matter if my cleric with the correct background was the trap finder/remover?  Assuming the player could describe how his PC disables the trap what does it matter that he has an 8 dex and doesn't have expertise?  Or for that matter the 8 wisdom fighter who happens to have proficiency with insight played by someone eloquent?  Why would someone with an +1 insight who's proficient with an 8 wisdom automatically get information over someone with a +5 insight because of their high wisdom?

Speaking of traps, I don't use them all that often unless someone has invested heavily in the skills.  In that case I like to play to people's strengths now and then.  If I used a descriptive approach where your actual number didn't really matter I'd feel like I was cheating them.    Some people might find it boring to find/disable traps by simply rolling but if handled that way it's such a insignificant percentage of the time we spend playing I don't see why it would matter.

In general traps are more window dressing to the scenario we're working through than a focus.  If someone spending a minute or so on a trap is so boring you want to quit the game, I don't think that's 
a problem with the style of play.  On the other hand if you're the trap expert and you have fun giving detailed descriptions (and don't go overboard) then more power to you.

Description, dialog, choices, interactions all matter.  But so do the mechanics of the character's PC.  I want to reward both.  I want to cater to people who enjoy both aspects or either aspect of the game.  When I hear people say "if you can describe a valid approach no roll is needed" it feels like the mechanics of the PC are being ignored.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> It's difficult to have this conversation and not occasionally make posts sound like attacks.  If I've done that I apologize.
> 
> So let me put this another way.  If you use a descriptive style of play why would anyone ever invest in a skill beyond proficiency?  If all I need is proficiency in thieves tools, then would it matter if my cleric with the correct background was the trap finder/remover?  Assuming the player could describe how his PC disables the trap what does it matter that he has an 8 dex and doesn't have expertise?  Or for that matter the 8 wisdom fighter who happens to have proficiency with insight played by someone eloquent?  Why would someone with an +1 insight who's proficient with an 8 wisdom automatically get information over someone with a +5 insight because of their high wisdom?
> 
> ...



Bluntly, few approaches will result in automatic success, so having a good skill bonus and using approaches that leverage those skills is immensely beneficial when the very likely skill check is asked for.

I don't know how often I have to say that approach is used so I don't have to assume anything, to set DCs appropriately, and to set up appropriate consequences.  Apparently, it's at least once more.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Well, that would certainly make it hard to play using "goal and method".
> 
> (Or, as I now like to call it, "The Medellin Interpretation.")




A little bit, but I don't need them to be exhaustive or descriptive, I just need an idea. 

For example, my players just recently wanted to make disguises to sneak into an enemy city. Slightly difficult since one of them has a cloak they can't take off that constantly shines with light. 

So, I asked them who they wanted to be disguised as. It was a bit of a discussion, but once they settled on a Lord and his entourage that was good enough to start resolving the check. 






Charlaquin said:


> I know this is sarcasm, and it is quite well done too, but it does lead me to a good point on DM presentation.
> 
> Oof. That gets a _hard_ Nope from me. No, I do not only glance at the handle. I told you I looked closely, sniffed the air, and wiped the handle with a cloth to see if there was any residue. I get control over one thing and one thing only in this game, and that’s my character’s actions. Take that away from me and what am I even here for?




See, this is hard to turn into a proper discussion, because the original scenario was terribly sarcastic on purpose. 

Yeah, if you say you wipe the handle, then you are going to find a contact poison. That's just obvious to me. 

But, if you say you check the door for traps, and we agree that you roll the dice, and you roll low even with all your bonuses... how else do you explain it? We all can look at the die sitting on the table, and see that it is an incredibly low number. For some reason your thief with poison trap specialty missed the poison trap, it is a low die number, maybe you just didn't give it your best effort on that one? 

But if my description of why you failed offends you, then you can call me out on it and we can discuss the real reason you failed. But, if we roll the dice, and the dice say you failed, then you failed. You can't say "but I looked really closely and I'm really good at this, I couldn't have failed". We rolled, you failed. The question is just how and why you failed. And if you have a reason you like for the why, then great, we'll go with yours. But, a lot of my players don't have those ideas. They can't conceive of why they failed when they are so good at the thing, so I have to provide the answer. 




iserith said:


> Do you mean if they try to determine if what a letter says is true? What is their approach to the goal?




The example talks about times when Insight is impossible. Insight is about reading body language and tone and the like. 

A letter says what is says, to determine if what the letter says is true you have to figure out what the facts are. In my experience when I run into people trying to Insight a letter, they aren't thinking of an approach. They are forgetting that they are dealing with the written word instead of the person talking to them. 

After all, they can't see the letter, they just hear me talking. So, a reminder that it is a letter and you can't see if a letter is lying about what it says, usually is enough to get people thinking of other approaches to figuring out if the information is true that will actually yield results. 





iserith said:


> Only the player may establish if the character is tired of the dungeon or that the character glances at the handle or thinks about loot.




Yeah, look, I get it. Really I do. Some people are like rabid dogs defending a bone when it comes to their character's autonomy. Because of whatever reasons. 

But I'm not going around making stuff up out of nowhere when I do this. I play off of the recent events in the story, off of the established pattern of your character's personality. I don't tell the selfless paladin he's thinking about murdering that guy in the bar who spilled his drink, but the barbarian whose established he's a vindictive jerk who holds even the smallest grudge? That's perfectly in character for him to think that. 

And, again, if you don't like my description. If it offends you, then we can come up with something else. But, we know something had to have happened, because you failed at your goal. 

Edit: I'm coming across a little harsh here, and I want to step back for a moment. 

I also get annoyed when DM's tell me what actions my character takes. I'm still salty about a DM ruling where a fellow player was trying for a non-lethal takedown, but because a crticial hit the DM ruled it was a maiming blow that left the target footless. 

But at the same time, I've also had players who bristle at the slightest hint of me doing anything with how their character feels. IE:

"As the terrifying form of the dragon rises over the-"
"Wargros isn't scared. You can't tell me how he feels, he's seen way more terrifying things than that dragon"

And the momentum of the scene is ruined, because some guy had to get upset that his warrior might feel fear. Or awe. Or any emotion at all. 

It is frustrating as a DM to end up with a player with whom you can use no descriptive language at all, because you can't tell them how their character feels about anything at all. And I've dealt with that, and it annoyed the crap out of me.


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## Yardiff (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Bluntly, few approaches will result in automatic success, so having a good skill bonus and using approaches that leverage those skills is immensely beneficial when the very likely skill check is asked for.
> 
> I don't know how often I have to say that approach is used so I don't have to assume anything, to set DCs appropriately, and to set up appropriate consequences.  Apparently, it's at least once more.




Just to be clear, using the contact poison example, the character describing using a cloth to wipe the handle, you would ask for a skill check?


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Just to be clear, using the contact poison example, the character describing using a cloth to wipe the handle, you would ask for a skill check?



Likely, with advantage because the approach is well suited.  

Failure would be exposure to the poison.


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> The example talks about times when Insight is impossible. Insight is about reading body language and tone and the like.
> 
> A letter says what is says, to determine if what the letter says is true you have to figure out what the facts are. In my experience when I run into people trying to Insight a letter, they aren't thinking of an approach. They are forgetting that they are dealing with the written word instead of the person talking to them.
> 
> After all, they can't see the letter, they just hear me talking. So, a reminder that it is a letter and you can't see if a letter is lying about what it says, usually is enough to get people thinking of other approaches to figuring out if the information is true that will actually yield results.




So to be clear, the proposed approach is to read the body language or tone of the letter, which fails to achieve the goal of assessing the letter's veracity.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, look, I get it. Really I do. Some people are like rabid dogs defending a bone when it comes to their character's autonomy. Because of whatever reasons.
> 
> But I'm not going around making stuff up out of nowhere when I do this. I play off of the recent events in the story, off of the established pattern of your character's personality. I don't tell the selfless paladin he's thinking about murdering that guy in the bar who spilled his drink, but the barbarian whose established he's a vindictive jerk who holds even the smallest grudge? That's perfectly in character for him to think that.
> 
> ...




I would say in some situations the momentum of the scene is ruined not because of the player's response, but because the DM is stepping outside of his or her role in the game to establish something about the character that is solely in the player's domain to establish. That is so easily avoided it's a wonder why DMs insist on doing this. And it's pretty common in my experience, especially in games where the players are asking to make checks without specifying a goal and/or approach. Because some of the necessary fiction to build the scene is missing, the DM feels the need to fill in the blanks the player left which then sets the stage for potential conflict. I think a better response from the DM is to encourage the player to fill in those blanks him or herself as that is the player's role and responsibility in this game and, eventually, to do that without prompting.

That said, your example of describing the dragon as terrifying is not so much stating the emotional response of the character, but an attempt at using evocative language to describe the environment. It's fine in my view. If you flat out say Wargros is scared, that is a different story altogether and it doesn't actually matter if Wargros has been portrayed as being afraid of dragons in the past - the DM is well-advised to stay out of establishing anything about the characters in this regard.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Bluntly, few approaches will result in automatic success, so having a good skill bonus and using approaches that leverage those skills is immensely beneficial when the very likely skill check is asked for.
> 
> I don't know how often I have to say that approach is used so I don't have to assume anything, to set DCs appropriately, and to set up appropriate consequences.  Apparently, it's at least once more.



"Bluntly, few approaches will result in automatic success, so having a good skill bonus and using approaches that leverage those skills is immensely beneficial when the very likely skill check is asked for."

That seems to be lacking necessary info to be a necessarily valid conclusion or even a meaningful description that tells us anything. That is I think part of the communication issue here, very ambiguous claims.

So let me ask, did you mean "few challenges will be seen in play to be resolved by auto-success approaches" or did you mean "challenges will have only a few approaches that lead to auto-success"?



If there are  only 1 or 2 approaches per "challenge that matters" that produce auto-success without checks and character stats coming into play, but lots more of approaches for each that would require checks too, you could still see every single "challenge that matter" resolved by players choosing those 1-2  autos never once having to "leverage those skills".

That's why I broke it down to how often do you as GM setup (or do your players see resolution in play) of the challenges that matter having (being solved by) non-skill auto-success "approach wins" vs "leverage skills checks immensely wins?

Might be good to separate out vombat challenges thst mstter from non-combat, given even some of the "approach wins advocates seem to see combat challenges as "uncertain due to the whole roll-a-1 thing. 

My baseline estimate in my games was roughly 
60% require/resolved-by some form of checks (possibly passive, possibly auto-success due to stats (DMG proficiency.), approach/method reflected by advantage/disadvantage)
20%* require/resolved-by either some form of checks (as above) *or* some key approach/methods.
20%* require/resolved a combo of checks (as above) *and* some key approach methods used in tandem.

Practically none of my "challenges that matter" are resolvable by method/approach alone regardless of stats.

* Honestly this 20-20 varies and is more WAG than anything else. Not more than 30-10 or 10-30 I figure.

So, this means my folks see in play when it matters that most of the time the charscter's skills that the players chose to highlight and the player's in character choices go hand in hand to reach an outcome. They see in a few cases both are needed and in a few cases they can get by on method/approach slone.

That sounds like a very different thing and gameplay outcome than one gets when an "approach gm" goes into how it's actually "cheating yourself" to go mostly with skill checks for outcome as a player.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> And why would pouring fermented grape juice on it do anything at all?




Others have amply addressed the rest of your post, but to me this was the most interesting. 

Why does fermented grape juice work? Because the player says it does, and their character is expert in these things.  (Character skill, not player.)

One of the myths that you and Hussar keep repeating is that somehow the player needs to be expert in things like, well, poison. No, they do not. They just have to be imaginative and creative. They don’t even have to be consistent: “Oh, did I say wine last time? That’s because it was spider venom based. THIS poison reacts to urine.”

WHATEVER. 

All that matters (to me) is that the player is telling a good story, playing their character. Realism matters not a whit. 

I know you feel otherwise...you’ve made that abundantly clear...but *I* think this mode of play is infinitely more fun than “I roll to detect traps” “You find one” “I open the door” “you didn’t roll high enough to find the other one; take 7 damage”

God I would rather watch paint dry. Or gargle with broken glass. Or even watch Critical Role.


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## Yardiff (Apr 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Others have amply addressed the rest of your post, but to me this was the most interesting.
> 
> Why does fermented grape juice work? Because the player says it does, and their character is expert in these things.  (Character skill, not player.)
> 
> ...




Question: if a player said their character was "Using a magnifying glass and a lantern (shining the light from the lantern this way and that) to see if there was contact poison on the door handle" plus stating/reminding that the character has proficiency in alchemy/poisoner kit. Would this action require a skill(investigation) roll? Also the player then says his character takes a rag and wipes the door handle, would THIS action require a skill(Thief's Tools) check?


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## Oofta (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Sigh, you keep saying this, but then you do not listen and instead insert your imaginings in place, like saying you don't understand why there couldn't be a dialog.  Where have I, or anyone else, said there's never a dialog?  This is your assumption, and it's wrong.
> 
> I'm not interested in imagining a dialog between players and me in my game.  I felt yours was fine up until the point I said 'full stop' because it reasonably looked like something that could happen in my game up until that point.  It, in fact, at that point that it became farce.



Thanks for the response.

I may have not been completely clear on what I meant.  And, yep, sometimes I'm overly sarcastic.  As far as a PC asking to make a skill check, I don't see why it's a big deal.  I also have no idea how you would respond to someone new at your table if they say "I make ___ skill check" because you've never really said as far as I remember other than that somehow it would never happen.

There's a lot here, so just to summarize the point of the jewelry heist scene was multiple.  The shopkeeper provided a great deal of info in a natural conversation.  The perpetrator was able to get past all the locks and wards, may not have had a good way of knowing when the shopkeeper went to bed (no one left the building).  There probably would have been some other cookie crumb to follow had the conversation gone past that point, like the fact that he only leaves the shop for his visits to The Red Head League meetings because I'm using Arthur Conan Doyle as an inspiration.  In addition, it just makes sense to me that the group would want to talk to him.  If they question people up and down the street, that may be hand-waved but the shopkeeper is central enough to get his moment in the spotlight and not just a handout.

I'm not going to argue about the insight check any more.  Unless I exclusively use passive insight (I don't) if I don't call for it the players know the shopkeeper is not trying to be deceptive whether they acknowledge or even consciously recognize it.  If he shopkeeper was trained in deception but a PC wins the contest, no one has stated that it's an automatic "he's lying, roll for initiative".  I'd probably say "he's hiding something" or "there's something suspicious about his behavior".  Maybe he keeps glancing at a spot on the floor where there's a loose brick where he hid the jewels.

A successful insight check uncovering an attempt at deception is not proof.  It's just a bread crumb.



Ovinomancer said:


> Dwarf's player:  Okay, I'm going to activate my smoking armor and my glowing eyes helmet and then threaten him.




I'd be perfectly okay with the player saying "I do an intimidation check" in which case I'd let him know he doesn't get advantage.  If he had already rolled with advantage I'd ask him to roll again.  This is where I simply don't care how a person states their intent and action where you seem to.




Ovinomancer said:


> Bluntly, few approaches will result in automatic success, so having a good skill bonus and using approaches that leverage those skills is immensely beneficial when the very likely skill check is asked for.
> 
> I don't know how often I have to say that approach is used so I don't have to assume anything, to set DCs appropriately, and to set up appropriate consequences. Apparently, it's at least once more.




Bluntly, I don't remember seeing a description of removing a trap that I've seen on this thread from the descriptive folks made a mention of a die roll.  In fact the concept being pushed has been summed up as "only use dice as a last resort".

For example:


Charlaquin said:


> Oof. That gets a _hard_ Nope from me. No, I do not only glance at the handle. I told you I looked closely, sniffed the air, and wiped the handle with a cloth to see if there was any residue. I get control over one thing and one thing only in this game, and that’s my character’s actions. Take that away from me and what am I even here for?




Now, if you're saying you use passive numbers extensively, that's fine.  Depending on the situation I will do that as well.  Sometimes that orcish encampment will have such poor quality traps that success is automatic.  But I find people often like the randomness of rolling a die.  Or maybe that's just me when my character is a halfling who has the "lucky" feat.


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## Satyrn (Apr 6, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Question: if a player said their character was "Using a magnifying glass and a lantern (shining the light from the lantern this way and that) to see if there was contact poison on the door handle" plus stating/reminding that the character has proficiency in alchemy/poisoner kit. Would this action require a skill(investigation) roll? Also the player then says his character takes a rag and wipes the door handle, would THIS action require a skill(Thief's Tools) check?




For me, the answer is it depends.

In a quiet room, with no pressure neither of those would require a check. They'd both work automatically, even if the character wasn't proficient with alchemy/poisoner kit.*

If there was a fight raging in the room, or some other chaos, they'd both require checks with advantage.


* One of the major assumptions  in my hand is that the PCs are "omnicapable:" They are fairly skilled in all things that I'd call dungeon-stuff. This means that not having Proficiency (game term) in a skill or tool does not mean they aren't proficient (English word) in this sort of thing.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> It's difficult to have this conversation and not occasionally make posts sound like attacks.  If I've done that I apologize.



Understood, and accepted. Likewise I apologize if my comments come off as attacking anyone. It’s an emotionally charged subject, but I assume we are all arguing in good faith.



Oofta said:


> So let me put this another way.  If you use a descriptive style of play why would anyone ever invest in a skill beyond proficiency?  If all I need is proficiency in thieves tools, then would it matter if my cleric with the correct background was the trap finder/remover?  Assuming the player could describe how his PC disables the trap what does it matter that he has an 8 dex and doesn't have expertise?  Or for that matter the 8 wisdom fighter who happens to have proficiency with insight played by someone eloquent?  Why would someone with an +1 insight who's proficient with an 8 wisdom automatically get information over someone with a +5 insight because of their high wisdom?



Two things: first of all, the reason to invest in skills/abilities/etc is to shore up your chances for when outcomes are uncertain. Obviously the goal is to avoid uncertainty, but a certain amount of it is inevitable. Sooner or later, you will come across a scenario where you just gotta take the risk and try to mitigate it the best you can. Actually, it happens pretty often at my table. When it does, having an investment in relevant skills and abilities helps to mitigate that risk. It also naturally informs the kinds of approaches one tends to take. Someone with high Str and low Dex is more likely to take direct approaches to physical challenges because they have a greater chance of success when the outcome of a direct application of physical force is uncertain than when the outcome of a sensitive application of physical manipulation is uncertain.

Additionally, the fact that only minimal investment in a certain skill or attribute is required to be able to succeed is in my view a feature, not a bug. I much prefer that competence be the baseline and your character build allow you to decide in what arenas you want to have the best chances of success in the face of adversity, than for incompetence to be the baseline and your character build to allow you to choose what you can even attempt.



Oofta said:


> Speaking of traps, I don't use them all that often unless someone has invested heavily in the skills.  In that case I like to play to people's strengths now and then.  If I used a descriptive approach where your actual number didn't really matter I'd feel like I was cheating them.    Some people might find it boring to find/disable traps by simply rolling but if handled that way it's such a insignificant percentage of the time we spend playing I don't see why it would matter.
> 
> In general traps are more window dressing to the scenario we're working through than a focus.  If someone spending a minute or so on a trap is so boring you want to quit the game, I don't think that's
> a problem with the style of play.  On the other hand if you're the trap expert and you have fun giving detailed descriptions (and don't go overboard) then more power to you.



I used to hate traps before adopting the goal and approach style. Now I love them. They’re certainly not the focus of adventures I run, but they are features that I and my players enjoy interacting with. The present opportunities to make decisions as you imagine your character would, which is what roleplaying is all about.



Oofta said:


> Description, dialog, choices, interactions all matter.  But so do the mechanics of the character's PC.  I want to reward both.  I want to cater to people who enjoy both aspects or either aspect of the game.  When I hear people say "if you can describe a valid approach no roll is needed" it feels like the mechanics of the PC are being ignored.



Mechanics are very important to me. I like a crunchy game, to the point that 5e often feels very limited to me. Just because a goal and approach with no uncertainty in the outcome does not need a roll to be resolved does not mean that the game mechanics don’t matter. Trust me, you’re going to have plenty of opportunities to roll the dice at my table. But when they come up, they will always be tense, because they happen only when there is both uncertainty and risk.

I would also argue that the process of determining whether an action has a chance of success, chance of failure, and cost or consequence for failure, _is_ a game mechanic. The most important game mechanic, in fact, because it’s the one mechanic that could not be executed by a powerful enough computer.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 6, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Question: if a player said their character was "Using a magnifying glass and a lantern (shining the light from the lantern this way and that) to see if there was contact poison on the door handle" plus stating/reminding that the character has proficiency in alchemy/poisoner kit. Would this action require a skill(investigation) roll? Also the player then says his character takes a rag and wipes the door handle, would THIS action require a skill(Thief's Tools) check?




I sense a trap, not a question motivated by curiosity. But I’ll roleplay a failed check...

As others have said, I’m only using the contact poison on the doorknob example because of the thread. I’ve never actually used that in a game. 

But assuming this is the situation, and I’ve dropped some hint that there might be contact poison here, then I’d probably make either of those actions an auto success.

EDIT: I was assuming no extra pressure. As Saturn says, if there’s time pressure or the rogue is trying to do this on his turn during a combat then I might ask for a roll, because lost time is a meaningful consequence of failure.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> See, this is hard to turn into a proper discussion, because the original scenario was terribly sarcastic on purpose.
> 
> Yeah, if you say you wipe the handle, then you are going to find a contact poison. That's just obvious to me.



Ok, that’s common ground. That’s a good start. For me, that’s where the conversation ends. When the outcome of the thing the player says their character does is obvious, then the obvious thing is what happens, full stop. The dice are for when what happens as a result is not obvious.



Oofta said:


> But, if you say you check the door for traps, and we agree that you roll the dice, and you roll low even with all your bonuses... how else do you explain it? We all can look at the die sitting on the table, and see that it is an incredibly low number. For some reason your thief with poison trap specialty missed the poison trap, it is a low die number, maybe you just didn't give it your best effort on that one?



This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off.



Oofta said:


> But if my description of why you failed offends you, then you can call me out on it and we can discuss the real reason you failed. But, if we roll the dice, and the dice say you failed, then you failed. You can't say "but I looked really closely and I'm really good at this, I couldn't have failed". We rolled, you failed. The question is just how and why you failed. And if you have a reason you like for the why, then great, we'll go with yours. But, a lot of my players don't have those ideas. They can't conceive of why they failed when they are so good at the thing, so I have to provide the answer.



Yes, absolutely. If we all agree to let the dice decide whether I succeed or fail, we need to come up with an explanation for what the dice say happened. That, to me, is putting the cart before the horse. You’re starting from the result and working backwards to explain how we got there. I prefer to start from the action, and only if we cannot figure out what is most likely to happen as a result, then we turn to the imartial random number generators to help us decide.



Oofta said:


> Yeah, look, I get it. Really I do. Some people are like rabid dogs defending a bone when it comes to their character's autonomy. Because of whatever reasons.
> 
> But I'm not going around making stuff up out of nowhere when I do this. I play off of the recent events in the story, off of the established pattern of your character's personality. I don't tell the selfless paladin he's thinking about murdering that guy in the bar who spilled his drink, but the barbarian whose established he's a vindictive jerk who holds even the smallest grudge? That's perfectly in character for him to think that.
> 
> ...



The best novels don’t tell you how the characters are feeling, save maybe the POV character. They describe only what can be observed from a 3rd person perspective. When DMing, I try to keep in mind that each PC is the POV character of their player’s story. So I never describe what the characters feel. The players provide that description for themelves (and ideally to themselves, in their own heads). I describe only what they can observe. Its the old “show, don’t tell” adage - don’t tell the players that the dragon is frightening, show them what is frightening about it. Be as evocative as you like in describing the power in its muscles, the malicious intellect in its eyes, the deafening timbre of its voice, the blood stains on its spear-like fangs, the heat of its breath that could turn to hellfire in an instant. Let the players decide for themselves how their characters feel about what you are describing.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Thanks for the response.
> 
> I may have not been completely clear on what I meant.  And, yep, sometimes I'm overly sarcastic.  As far as a PC asking to make a skill check, I don't see why it's a big deal.



Yes, you've said.  The big deal should be for the player, as failure has a consequence in my game.  You seem to keep missing this.


> I also have no idea how you would respond to someone new at your table if they say "I make ___ skill check" because you've never really said as far as I remember other than that somehow it would never happen.



As this question has been answered ad nauseum, the only way you still don't know has to be studied inattention.

Of course it happens when I have a new player and am unwinding what other GM's have done in their games.  If I need to, I explain it again, my other players explain it.  Despite how hard you're trying to make it, it's really not hard at all.  Once I made the mental shift to this style, it's been pretty easy to get players to. 



> There's a lot here, so just to summarize the point of the jewelry heist scene was multiple.  The shopkeeper provided a great deal of info in a natural conversation.  The perpetrator was able to get past all the locks and wards, may not have had a good way of knowing when the shopkeeper went to bed (no one left the building).  There probably would have been some other cookie crumb to follow had the conversation gone past that point, like the fact that he only leaves the shop for his visits to The Red Head League meetings because I'm using Arthur Conan Doyle as an inspiration.  In addition, it just makes sense to me that the group would want to talk to him.  If they question people up and down the street, that may be hand-waved but the shopkeeper is central enough to get his moment in the spotlight and not just a handout.



:blink: okay.



> I'm not going to argue about the insight check any more.  Unless I exclusively use passive insight (I don't) if I don't call for it the players know the shopkeeper is not trying to be deceptive whether they acknowledge or even consciously recognize it.  If he shopkeeper was trained in deception but a PC wins the contest, no one has stated that it's an automatic "he's lying, roll for initiative".  I'd probably say "he's hiding something" or "there's something suspicious about his behavior".  Maybe he keeps glancing at a spot on the floor where there's a loose brick where he hid the jewels.



Presumably the players were already suspicious when they asked for the check, so, if they succeed, you confirm they should be suspicious?  What happens if they fail?

Look, you can, of course, play however you enjoy (and more power to you), but I put in a lot of thought about what checks actually mean in the fiction and what they do.  I'm not going to call for a check if it doesn't do something concretely changing in the fiction on both a success or a failure.  A check, in my game, will always, always, _always_ change the fiction.  Something will happen to make it different from before.  And, because of this, I've changed what's in my sessions.  These fundamental changes mean that asking to roll a check in my game would be very suboptimal play.



> A successful insight check uncovering an attempt at deception is not proof.  It's just a bread crumb.



Then, what's the point?  If the check does not resolve an uncertainty, what does it do?




> I'd be perfectly okay with the player saying "I do an intimidation check" in which case I'd let him know he doesn't get advantage.  If he had already rolled with advantage I'd ask him to roll again.  This is where I simply don't care how a person states their intent and action where you seem to.



See, this is why people don't give you examples.  You ignore the presentation of play and how method is utilized and zero in on a specific point, change it, and then say how you'd make a different call in the changed situation.  Here, you say, "I'd be fine with just asking for an intimidate check."  You ignore that the player presented an approach that tried to either get an automatic success (a pit fighting champion in spiked armor that gives off infernal smoke and with glowing red eyes is pretty threatening) or at least angling for advantage.  And, his approach negated the disadvantage for trying to intimidate someone four times your size that has a bunch of burly friends at his back.  Your roll, absent goal and approach, does what?  What did the PC do? What do I have to assume to figure out what happens on a success or failure? 

Did the PC use subtle threats against family? Don't know.

Did the PC threaten to burn down the bar? Don't know.

Why am I going to guess when I can just have the player tell me?




> Bluntly, I don't remember seeing a description of removing a trap that I've seen on this thread from the descriptive folks made a mention of a die roll.  In fact the concept being pushed has been summed up as "only use dice as a last resort".



Again, studied inattention is the only possibility.  I've provided actual play examples with die rolls that you've responded to!!!  

And, no one, as _in not a single person in this thread_, has ever said "use dice as a last resort."  They've said *players* should avoid rolling, and that's because failure has consequences and you want to minimize your exposure.  I call for dice all the time.



> For example:



I'd say you badly misunderstand that response.  



> Now, if you're saying you use passive numbers extensively, that's fine.  Depending on the situation I will do that as well.  Sometimes that orcish encampment will have such poor quality traps that success is automatic.  But I find people often like the randomness of rolling a die.  Or maybe that's just me when my character is a halfling who has the "lucky" feat.



I only use passive numbers when a given approach calls for them.  Also, since a check will always change the fiction, I don't need to hide things and can ooenly ask fir passive values because things, at that point, are already going to happen.

If you like the randomness of the die, the GM probably isn't applying consequences for failure.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, you've said.  The big deal should be for the player, as failure has a consequence in my game.  You seem to keep missing this.
> 
> As this question has been answered ad nauseum, the only way you still don't know has to be studied inattention.
> 
> ...



"If you like the randomness of the die, the GM probably isn't applying consequences for failure."

This may be one of our notable differences. 

A statement like that has a definite chance to make players be afraid of failing a check, of risking a check, especially if combined with the comments like how if it goes to checks you are "cheating yourself" and so on. The general push and emphasis seems to be that failing a check is not just a failed attempt but something pretty dang drastic.

Yes, I know you did not say that exactly, not gonna get that nailed down, but your tone really does not in that response get close to anything else.

But, it wont take too much to find GMs who view a failed check as an opportunity for something "not as good as a successful  check was" (measured against the objectives on a strictly accounting the gains spreadsheet to victory) but which still gets you a little bit of what you wanted and is as interesting, as dramatic, as fun (or even moreso.)

*That is where that whole not-at-all-binary "how 5e defines ability checks" thing kicks in. "Some progress with setback" goes a long long way as far as having consequences for failure but still bringing "a result we like and enjoy as players and a group" to the table - even if the character does not.*

I think it was a blog post on this board today where it was observed a lot of story comes from failures - context was failed tries - unexpected outcomes etc.

"Oh crap, plan b, plan b, plan b. what the heck is plan b?"

;-)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> And, no one, as _in not a single person in this thread_, has ever said "use dice as a last resort.”



Actually, while I haven’t used those exact words, I also don’t think “only use dice as a last resort” is an unfair presentation of how I run the game. It is literally the last step in my mental process when resolving an action. I don’t have a particular preference for rolling or not rolling, but I do only call for a roll when the outcome can’t be determined with out a roll, so strictly speaking it _is_ my last resort.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 6, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Actually, while I haven’t used those exact words, I also don’t think “only use dice as a last resort” is an unfair presentation of how I run the game. It is literally the last step in my mental process when resolving an action. I don’t have a particular preference for rolling or not rolling, but I do only call for a roll when the outcome can’t be determined with out a roll, so strictly speaking it _is_ my last resort.



Heh.  I see the pedantic humor there, but I can't possibly see how such a careful distinction won't be badly misunderstood given how the obvious bits keep being missed.  In other words, stop helping! 

ETA: in case I failed to convey it  this was meant as humor


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## iserith (Apr 6, 2019)

From the perspective of a player in D&D 5e, what are some reasons you might _want_ to roll the dice, assuming success for your character is one of your goals? Outside of a fondness for gambling or liking the sound the dice make when they clatter across the table (and inevitably onto the floor), I mean.

"Use the options chosen during character creation and advancement" is one that is frequently offered, but as has been shown, that's going to happen without asking to roll (sometimes when you desperately _don't_ want to), provided you're the sort of player who is portraying a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in a world of sword and sorcery. 

So what other reasons might there be?


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## Yardiff (Apr 6, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> For me, the answer is it depends.
> 
> In a quiet room, with no pressure neither of those would require a check. They'd both work automatically, even if the character wasn't proficient with alchemy/poisoner kit.*
> 
> ...





So the way the see it, I think, is that in your playstyle all 'classes' are sub-classes of the 'Adventurer Class' and the 'Adventurer Class' gives everyone a certain set of adventuring knowledge.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> From the perspective of a player in D&D 5e, what are some reasons you might _want_ to roll the dice, assuming success for your character is one of your goals? Outside of a fondness for gambling or liking the sound the dice make when they clatter across the table (and inevitably onto the floor), I mean.
> 
> "Use the options chosen during character creation and advancement" is one that is frequently offered, but as has been shown, that's going to happen without asking to roll (sometimes when you desperately _don't_ want to), provided you're the sort of player who is portraying a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in a world of sword and sorcery.
> 
> So what other reasons might there be?




To support this: I keep hearing the argument about “investing” in a skill or ability. But just because I don’t call for a roll doesn’t mean I don’t (gah 3 negatives in a row) take a character’s abilities, proficiencies, and concept/backstory into consideration. 

For example, when I gave my sample dialog regarding the contact poison, nobody seemed to notice, or at least comment on, my inclusion of Poisoners Kit proficiency as a relevant factor. If you are making a straight Investigation check it’s not relevant at all. But as a DM I will factor that in when deciding if the outcome is uncertain.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> To support this: I keep hearing the argument about “investing” in a skill or ability. But just because I don’t call for a roll doesn’t mean I don’t (gah 3 negatives in a row) take a character’s abilities, proficiencies, and concept/backstory into consideration.
> 
> For example, when I gave my sample dialog regarding the contact poison, nobody seemed to notice, or at least comment on, my inclusion of Poisoners Kit proficiency as a relevant factor. If you are making a straight Investigation check it’s not relevant at all. But as a DM I will factor that in when deciding if the outcome is uncertain.




For what it's worth, spotting a poisoned object, when the task's outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure, is a DC 10 ability check with Poisoner's Tools, according to Xanathar's (if a group uses that book). Presumably that's Wisdom-based in most cases since the task is related to noticing things about the environment. My read on Investigation is that its main purpose is _deduction_ based on available clues, not searching for hidden clues. Hidden objects are Perception, unless you have available clues that can allow you to deduce the hidden object's location. The line regarding Investigation in the PHB is not well-written in my view and a lot of people stop after seeing "...searching for clues..." and think Investigation is like Search from 3.Xe. Taking the sentence as a whole and in the context of Perception and on the section on hidden objects all together clears it up a bit.


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## Mort (Apr 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> From the perspective of a player in D&D 5e, what are some reasons you might _want_ to roll the dice, assuming success for your character is one of your goals? Outside of a fondness for gambling or liking the sound the dice make when they clatter across the table (and inevitably onto the floor), I mean.
> 
> "Use the options chosen during character creation and advancement" is one that is frequently offered, but as has been shown, that's going to happen without asking to roll (sometimes when you desperately _don't_ want to), provided you're the sort of player who is portraying a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in a world of sword and sorcery.
> 
> So what other reasons might there be?



I'm not sure this is exactly what you're going for, but I have an answer here:

When the dice are fairer than the DM.

As in, the DM asks for specifics on how you resolve a task, but always seems to "gochya" on those specifics. Yet when simply rolling, he let's the dice fall where they may.

I encountered this exact situation last Gen Con. Most of the games were great, but there was one, where the DM would ask for specifics on task resolution "describe how you check the door," "how do you inspect the staff lodged in the stone," etc. And when given anything would play gotcha (clearly he had specific solutions, but since we couldn't read his mind we never seemed to get them)
. I (and everyone else) resorted to just asking for checks. He allowed it, Things went much smoother.

So there you go.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> I'm not sure this is exactly what you're going for, but I have an answer here:
> 
> When the dice are fairer than the DM.
> 
> ...




Or it's just that some people like rolling dice because, as it says in the DMG under "The Role of Dice" and "Rolling With It", it gives people a feeling that anything is possible.

For me I use a mix depending on the situation, but different people play for different reasons.


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## Mort (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Or it's just that some people like rolling dice because, as it says in the DMG under "The Role of Dice" and "Rolling With It", it gives people a feeling that anything is possible.
> 
> For me I use a mix depending on the situation, but different people play for different reasons.



Absolutely, rolling dice works just fine for me.

But the problem here was the DM seemed disconnected from how his game actually ran best.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> I'm not sure this is exactly what you're going for, but I have an answer here:
> 
> When the dice are fairer than the DM.
> 
> ...




Yes, it does seem like dice or mechanics are often a shield against DMs running the game in that fashion. The DMG warns against the "one solution" issue. I think the design of D&D 3e and later D&D 4e were based in part on assuming this was a known, widespread problem and working to mitigate it through the mechanics. (I recall reading that somewhere, perhaps from Monte Cook.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> I'm not sure this is exactly what you're going for, but I have an answer here:
> 
> When the dice are fairer than the DM.
> 
> ...




If one does not trust the DM, and/or if a DM does not trust the players, then I can see how totally objective, interpretation-free rules would have some appeal. 

But I would think that finding a more trustworthy DM and players would have even more appeal.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I sense a trap, not a question motivated by curiosity. But I’ll roleplay a failed check...
> 
> As others have said, I’m only using the contact poison on the doorknob example because of the thread. I’ve never actually used that in a game.
> 
> ...





So in a sense your using the take 10, take 20 from 3x.


Ok I understand that. Personally I think you might be using it to freely but that's just me.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So in a sense your using the take 10, take 20 from 3x.
> 
> 
> Ok I understand that. Personally I think you might be using it to freely but that's just me.




I suspect those rules were an attempt to address the same problem of meaningful consequences that we’ve been discussing. So in that sense, yes: same philosophical underpinnings.


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## Mort (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If one does not trust the DM, and/or if a DM does not trust the players, then I can see how totally objective, interpretation-free rules would have some appeal.
> 
> But I would think that finding a more trustworthy DM and players would have even more appeal.



Sure, when looking for a consistent game. This was a convention, one shot.

But as to your general point, yes I agree. Trust (players of the DM *and* DM of the players) is one of the most important, if not the most important, elements of a successful long term game.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> See, this is why people don't give you examples.  You ignore the presentation of play and how method is utilized and zero in on a specific point, change it, and then say how you'd make a different call in the changed situation.  Here, you say, "I'd be fine with just asking for an intimidate check."  You ignore that the player presented an approach that tried to either get an automatic success (a pit fighting champion in spiked armor that gives off infernal smoke and with glowing red eyes is pretty threatening) or at least angling for advantage.  And, his approach negated the disadvantage for trying to intimidate someone four times your size that has a bunch of burly friends at his back.  Your roll, absent goal and approach, does what?  What did the PC do? What do I have to assume to figure out what happens on a success or failure?
> 
> Did the PC use subtle threats against family? Don't know.




Whereas I would just say I disagree.  It wasn't meant as an attack, I'm not saying you do it wrong.  I was just saying how I would handle it.  

As far as this particular scenario, I got a bit of a chuckle.  Somehow "my armor smokes and my eyes glow red" is okay but saying "I try to intimidate him" is not.  I know who the PC is.  Presumably I know what they're capable of.  If I didn't understand what a player was trying to do I'd just ask for clarification.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> I'm not sure this is exactly what you're going for, but I have an answer here:
> 
> When the dice are fairer than the DM.



Exactly this. I’m pretty sure this is the primary reason many players want to make checks. It’s a common enough issue, especially with inexperienced DMs, and since many new players’ first play experiences are with equally new DMs, they develop this reliance on the dice as a defense mechanism early, and it ingrains itself into their still-developing play style.



Mort said:


> I encountered this exact situation last Gen Con. Most of the games were great, but there was one, where the DM would ask for specifics on task resolution "describe how you check the door," "how do you inspect the staff lodged in the stone," etc. And when given anything would play gotcha (clearly he had specific solutions, but since we couldn't read his mind we never seemed to get them)
> . I (and everyone else) resorted to just asking for checks. He allowed it, Things went much smoother.
> 
> So there you go.



This is one example of how the dice can be more reliable than the DM. On the other end of the spectrum are DMs who require a roll for things that seem like they should have no chance of failure and/or allow rolls for things that should have no chance of success. The “anything is possible” feeling can be exciting, but it really undermines the players’ ability to accurately predict the likely outcomes of their actions. When tying your shoes can lead to serious injuries on a natural 1 and elementals can be seduced with a natural 20, it can feel pretty pointless to bother coming up with a logical approach to achieving your goals - it’s gonna end up coming down to a d20 roll no matter what, so might as well pick the skill you have the highest bonus in that seems relevant to the task and ask the DM if you can roll that, rather than bothering to think of what your character is doing and risk being told to roll something you have a low bonus or even a penalty in.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This is one example of how the dice can be more reliable than the DM. On the other end of the spectrum are DMs who require a roll for things that seem like they should have no chance of failure and/or allow rolls for things that should have no chance of success. The “anything is possible” feeling can be exciting, but it really undermines the players’ ability to accurately predict the likely outcomes of their actions. When tying your shoes can lead to serious injuries on a natural 1 and elementals can be seduced with a natural 20, it can feel pretty pointless to bother coming up with a logical approach to achieving your goals - it’s gonna end up coming down to a d20 roll no matter what, so might as well pick the skill you have the highest bonus in that seems relevant to the task and ask the DM if you can roll that, rather than bothering to think of what your character is doing and risk being told to roll something you have a low bonus or even a penalty in.




The DMG mentions that while players relying on the dice can give them a sense that anything is possible, but that the drawback is that roleplaying _can_ diminish if players _feel_ that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Or it's just that some people like rolling dice because, as it says in the DMG under "The Role of Dice" and "Rolling With It", it gives people a feeling that anything is possible.
> 
> For me I use a mix depending on the situation, but different people play for different reasons.



Personally, I don’t like that feeling that anything is possible. It only makes it harder for me to predict likely outcomes and decide on a plan of action I think is likely to result in success. Beating the odds can be fun, absolutely, but only within the bounds of what seems logically plausible. I Also think a more grounded world makes smaller victories feel more rewarding. When “anything is possible”, you only get the rush of beating the odds on crazy WUXIA stunts that make Matt Mercer raise his eyebrows and say “you can certainly try.” In a more grounded world, you can get that same rush pretty much every time the die is rolled.

At least, that’s my preference. As you say, different people play for different reasons, and despite what it may sound like, I do see the appeal of the “anything is possible” feeling. Even though it’s not my preference, I have had fun in “anything is possible” games.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> Yes, it does seem like dice or mechanics are often a shield against DMs running the game in that fashion. The DMG warns against the "one solution" issue. I think the design of D&D 3e and later D&D 4e were based in part on assuming this was a known, widespread problem and working to mitigate it through the mechanics. (I recall reading that somewhere, perhaps from Monte Cook.)




Mike Mearls said something to this effect on Twitter a ways back.



Yardiff said:


> So in a sense your using the take 10, take 20 from 3x.
> 
> 
> Ok I understand that. Personally I think you might be using it to freely but that's just me.



To be honest, I think take 10 and take 20 were an attempt to incorporate the “dont call for checks when there aren’t any stakes” philosophy into an edition that, as Iserith observes, was specifically designed to arm players against bad DMs.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> The DMG mentions that while players relying on the dice can give them a sense that anything is possible, but that the drawback is that roleplaying _can_ diminish if players _feel_ that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success.




Exactly.


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## Mort (Apr 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Personally, I don’t like that feeling that anything is possible. It only makes it harder for me to predict likely outcomes and decide on a plan of action I think is likely to result in success. Beating the odds can be fun, absolutely, but only within the bounds of what seems logically plausible. I Also think a more grounded world makes smaller victories feel more rewarding. When “anything is possible”, you only get the rush of beating the odds on crazy WUXIA stunts that make Matt Mercer raise his eyebrows and say “you can certainly try.” In a more grounded world, you can get that same rush pretty much every time the die is rolled.




This is a bit off topic from this thread, but IMO, it's 100% the DMs responsibility to establish what exactly is possible in the context of his game - with or without dice. If the same character (say in the same session) manages a wuxia style 30' leap, but then for some reason can't make a measly 5' jump; Absent a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances, that'll cause a pretty big disconnect for me. 

And no, rolling a 1 or a 20, wouldn't, for me, count as a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> This is a bit off topic from this thread, but IMO, it's 100% the DMs responsibility to establish what exactly is possible in the context of his game - with or without dice. If the same character (say in the same session) manages a wuxia style 30' leap, but then for some reason can't make a measly 5' jump; Absent a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances, that'll cause a pretty big disconnect for me.
> 
> And no, rolling a 1 or a 20, wouldn't, for me, count as a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances.



I agree. Larger than life action can be awesome, as long as the world behaves in a consistent way and players can develop a clear sense of what is and isn’t possible.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> This is a bit off topic from this thread, but IMO, it's 100% the DMs responsibility to establish what exactly is possible in the context of his game - with or without dice. If the same character (say in the same session) manages a wuxia style 30' leap, but then for some reason can't make a measly 5' jump; Absent a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances, that'll cause a pretty big disconnect for me.
> 
> And no, rolling a 1 or a 20, wouldn't, for me, count as a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances.



Exactly. Just because you roll that doesnt change the possible and impossible outcomes. That's more of a misrepresrntation than a reality. 

I assign DCs based on the objective criteria setup in my world and set advsntage and disadvantage based on plans, circumstances etc. 

I think it's more often the crowd who insist that you only roll if there is a chance of success and failure who get so hung up on the "if I roll 20 I get awesome crazy" side of the coin. 

At least, in these discussions the times I see the roll impossible thing put forth its been more often by those on the more GM narrative decision side of the coin.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Mort said:


> This is a bit off topic from this thread, but IMO, it's 100% the DMs responsibility to establish what exactly is possible in the context of his game - with or without dice. If the same character (say in the same session) manages a wuxia style 30' leap, but then for some reason can't make a measly 5' jump; Absent a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances, that'll cause a pretty big disconnect for me.
> 
> And no, rolling a 1 or a 20, wouldn't, for me, count as a great explanation or extraordinary circumstances.




In my games a 1 is not an automatic failure and a 20 is not an automatic success.  If making a leap further than normal a 1 could be fairly significant downside because you slipped on a loose rock as you leaped, you hit the cliff on the other side much lower than expected.  A 10 may mean you make it to the other side but are just barely holding on to the edge.  A 20 could mean you get to the other side and use your momentum to hoist yourself up in one smooth action.  Or something similar based on the scene.

But no, it's not going to mean a difference of 25 feet.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

For all the back and forth on this topic that we seem to have every time it comes up, I think the majority of game play would actually be quite similar for most of us.  

However there are still things I don't think I will ever understand:

Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear?  Because 80% of the time when people say it in my game it is.  That other 20%?  I ask for clarification.  I encourage more descriptive play, but that may be as simple as "I use [INSERT SKILL] by doing [INSERT DETAIL]".
How are you _not_ diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?
Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve?  It's a minor speed bump I put in for flavor, not the focus of the game for me.
Why is it a big deal if the DM wants to keep the players guessing about whether or not the PC is using deception by having people roll an insight check?


_*I don't know how many people do this, but at least some do or they have not made it clear if they ever call for a roll. [EDIT: there are times I don't bother with a roll because someone's skill is high enough they're not going to meaningfully fail]_


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## 5ekyu (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For all the back and forth on this topic that we seem to have every time it comes up, I think the majority of game play would actually be quite similar for most of us.
> 
> However there are still things I don't think I will ever understand:
> 
> ...



* Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear? 

Obviously in my games it isnt. If I need more info, I ask. If it's a new player, I may try to coax more out of them with leading questions if there is an obvious hook in the scene to gain advsntage, as a teaching tool for newboes.

* How are you not diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?

In my game, in challenges that matter, the auto-successes will almost always derive from their skills. My game primer outlines the auto-success by skill parameters we use - and they are driven by stats not dialog. An exceptional plan (which is a lot more than just describing the most obvious "how we do this" like "I wipe a handle") can get you advantage. A bad plan, disadvantage. 

* Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve? It's a minor speed bump I put in for flavor, not the focus of the game for me.

That's about the frequency I see these in my games.

In fact, Mondsy I expect a player to auto-spot a fake wall section because his passive scores are high enough to do so. 

* Why is it a big deal if the DM wants to keep the players guessing about whether or not the PC is using deception by having people roll an insight check?

Hah. In my games, players make every roll, ever. I do not touch dice. (They roll "armor check" to "not get hit" for example.) They are also told in rule "you can use the die roll in your and your character's assessment and conclusion, as a measure of how confident your character is about the result. It's not meta-gaming." I as GM carry through on that with my descriptions and narration. A roll of 2 gets a narrative which shows it was not a result that's all that convincing, conclusive. Typically it adds something in the narrative that shows some environmental factor monkeying the wrench.

But, with success, failure-no progress and failure- some progress with setback all PHB core, this does not remove or limit my ability to make insight checks very fun and useful and mysterious. Or any other check, for that matter.

That said, I am not a GM who goes in for actual puzzles. Much more a fan of more interactive challenges like social or mysteries myself.


All that said, the part I still see very few clear answer on is - and I cant figure out if it's very odd or very telling - for all of the bluster and banter about how approach-method-no-dc-until-method-only-roll-if-method-uncertainty and huff about how they suto-success vs checks and stats etc etc etc... is how often does it happen?

How often does a challenge that matters get resolved thru method-approach without a comparison of "difficulty  to skill of character" (not necessarily numbers) vs how often are these challenges resolved using comparisons of diff to skill of characters?

We saw one poster say it was 50/50 out of combat iirc. 

Me, I gave a more detailed breakdown that basically puts it at about 1 in 10 for my games at most. 9 times in 10 character stats vs difficulty is used in resolving challenges that matter and method-approach is limited to the advantage/disadvantage side. 

Has one which said there were normally only very few approaches that auto-success but was not clear if that was per challenge - so not really sure.

It's just odd for something so lauded so strongly, the actual number of times the method-approach removes uncertainty auto-success is applied seems to be something that keeps getting, well, it seems... hidden.

I mean, if I am promoting something that I do in my games, how often it happens and makes a diff is not usually something I am shy sbout.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [*]Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear?  Because 80% of the time when people say it in my game it is.  That other 20%?  I ask for clarification.  I encourage more descriptive play, but that may be as simple as "I use [INSERT SKILL] by doing [INSERT DETAIL]".




Because if that approach is equally effective as "goal and method" you are training your players to skip the goal and method, nudging your game closer to a bland series of dice rolls.



> [*]How are you _not_ diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?




Because those who _don't_ invest in the skills are much less likely to get automatic successes?   (Seriously, I don't understand how this one could not be understood...)



> [*]Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve?  It's a minor speed bump I put in for flavor, not the focus of the game for me.




Even if it happens very rarely, if it exists in your game it exists in your game, and then players feel they either need to say "I use (skill) to search for traps!" at every door and chest, or @_*Hussar*_'s fears are realized and they start going through a pre-flight (or pre-kick-in-the-door) checklist on every portal.



> [*]Why is it a big deal if the DM wants to keep the players guessing about whether or not the PC is using deception by having people roll an insight check?
> 
> _*I don't know how many people do this, but at least some do or they have not made it clear if they ever call for a roll._




I think you left a word or two out of that one, but I get the gist.  This one is mostly me.

1. NPCs don't "use deception" they lie. Or leave out details. Or exaggerate.  If and when it comes down to a contested roll, their success at doing so may be determined with an appropriate ability check.  (Just have to get our terminology straight.)
2. For me this is not a rules thing, it's a flavor thing: most of the time I think it's more interesting and immersive for the players to have some uncertainty about what the truth is.  We could spend all day listing books and movies that would have been boring if the audience (or the characters) figured out who was lying at the beginning of the story rather than having it be revealed at the end.  
3. (related to 2) If a player's decision to suddenly say, "I use Insight to see if he's lying" means that your hard work setting up an exciting and scary story could be completely unraveled. It would mean you basically can't have...or, at least, shouldn't bother planning...adventures where a supposed ally is actually the villain. If the DM isn't a really great liar, and accidentally drops a hint, all a player has to say is, "Wait a sec...I use Insight!" and, poof!, hard work gone.
4. It diminishes the value of magical lie detection, which...as somebody concerned about the value of "investment" into characters...you should understand.  Imagine if the Deception skill were as powerful as a 2nd level illusion? Or even more so specifically because it is _not_ magical?
5. Lastly, although I'm not a realist/simulationist by any stretch (I don't really care how much authentic plate armor weighs, for example) "high confidence, non-magical lie detection" is just my personal pet peeve.  Humans suck at detecting lies in strangers. No, you can't be trained to detect "tells".  It's a total myth (with countless bad convictions resulting from the belief that it works.)


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] - have I ever said that insight guarantees someone is telling the truth?  Because it doesn't.  The best someone is going to get is "they seem to be telling the truth", "they seem to be hiding something", "they keep nervously glancing at ___" or something similar.  

You will never get "they're lying" or "they're telling the truth" in my game without the use of magic and even that is limited.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Because if that approach is equally effective as "goal and method" you are training your players to skip the goal and method, nudging your game closer to a bland series of dice rolls.




Also:

Because the player has a role and responsibility laid out by the rules of the game to describe what he or she wants to do.

Because the DM has a role and responsibility laid out by the rules to describe the environment and narrate the results of the adventurers action, which does _not_ include describing what the player wants to do making assumptions or establishing what the character is doing (which, again, is the player's role and responsibility). 

Because there is no support in the base rules for players asking to make ability checks or the like - this is legacy thinking from D&D 3e and D&D 4e and/or a way to protect against problematic DM approaches.



Elfcrusher said:


> Because those who _don't_ invest in the skills are much less likely to get automatic successes?   (Seriously, I don't understand how this one could not be understood...)




Also:

Because if you're a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in worlds of swords and sorcery, you will not always be automatically successful since situations will conspire to ensure you cannot remove the uncertainty as to the outcome of your task and/or the meaningful consequence of failure.

Because when you _do_ have to make a check (which will be frequent since you're a bold adventurer), you will be happy you have some resources and features to mitigate the swinginess of the d20.

Because the DM may be following the "middle" path which balances the use of dice against deciding on success, since that encourages the players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world. Which, again, further emphasize that you will indeed roll from time to time, sometimes a lot, even if you're working as a player to avoid that wherever possible.



Elfcrusher said:


> Even if it happens very rarely, if it exists in your game it exists in your game, and then players feel they either need to say "I use (skill) to search for traps!" at every door and chest, or @_*Hussar*_'s fears are realized and they start going through a pre-flight (or pre-kick-in-the-door) checklist on every portal.




Who cares what emphasis other people put on traps in their game? Anyone asking the sort of question to which you're responding appears to be seeking validation of their approach from people they don't even know which is kind of sad. We should look to your own players for validation, I say. If none is found, then perhaps it's time to change.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] - have I ever said that insight guarantees someone is telling the truth?  Because it doesn't.  The best someone is going to get is "they seem to be telling the truth", "they seem to be hiding something", "they keep nervously glancing at ___" or something similar.
> 
> You will never get "they're lying" or "they're telling the truth" in my game without the use of magic and even that is limited.




Cool. If that’s working for you then keep doing it.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For all the back and forth on this topic that we seem to have every time it comes up, I think the majority of game play would actually be quite similar for most of us.
> 
> However there are still things I don't think I will ever understand:
> 
> Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear?  Because 80% of the time when people say it in my game it is.  That other 20%?  I ask for clarification.  I encourage more descriptive play, but that may be as simple as "I use [INSERT SKILL] by doing [INSERT DETAIL]".



Why do you so badly want to say "I rolled a 17 perception!" rather than, "I take a minute and carefully look over the door for traps?"  I mean, really, you're entirely focused on an aesthetic choice of declaration and entirely missing the point -- with goal and approach I do not have to do the assuming you're happy to do in 80% of your rolls.  Further, it's never always obvious if your assumption matches the player's -- ie, it's not a hard line at your made up 80/20 split where you always, always know if this is a 79th percentile declaration or an 81st.  I never have this problem because it's always 100% I have the player tell me.

Further, there is NO time savings to your method.  I've played both ways, remember. I was on your side of this discussion 3 years ago and was quite rude to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] in the process because I didn't get it, either, even though I really thought I did.  I know how you play because I played that way and made your same arguments.  And, I can tell you from experience, I get more done in a single session than I did before, with no less time for bsing and silly interruptions.  You keep asserting that letting players call for checks quickly skips boring interactions, but that's not my experience -- my experience is that I don't have to put in the boring interactions anymore for them to be something to skip over.



> How are you _not_ diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?



Studied inattention, again.  You've been told that the DC of a check or possibility of autosuccess isn't dependent on magic words, but on the overall situation.  Take the poisoned doorknob example.  If I had a PC who had time, was trained in poisoner's kit, and said, "I carefully wipe off the doorknob with a cloth," that would likely be autosuccess because they have the requisite training and I reward approaches that lean into character skills.  At worst, they'd have advantage for their training.  If Bob the Fighter said the same thing, Bob's making a DEX check.  If Bob has a background in roguish things, he can add his proficiency in a skill that fits (I'm flexible, so I can see sleight of hand, thieves' tools, etc.).

Proficiency is stupid important in my games.  Being proficient is likely to get automatic additional information on a scene, and stronger consideration for autosuccess on a related approach than lack.  There are plenty of places that I let someone proficient succeed outright where the non-proficient get a roll (usually these are low DC checks, though, or things that fit very squarely into the specialize training represented by a proficiency).



> Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve?  It's a minor speed bump I put in for flavor, not the focus of the game for me.




Let me paraphrase this and see if you notice the problem:

"Why is killling/capturing the BBEG with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute of so to resolve?"

If I place a trap in my game, it's important to the game. It's a big obstacle to the goal.  It isn't a random drop in just to be there or something that doesn't matter.  It's very presence means it's important to the game.  So, skipping it with a "couple of dice rolls" is akin to you letting you players capture the BBEG from the comfort of the tavern by just making a few skill checks.  It's skipping the point of playing.

*I'll say it again, and bold it, so that maybe you catch it this time:  we don't have pointless traps in our games that need any mechanism to shortcuts the boring stuff.  A trap in our games will be a big part of the adventure, much like an important combat or important social encounter.  They are not things that need to be elided because they're boring to play out and show up often enough to need a SOP.  This is not a problem we have at all, so your "solution" doesn't address anything in our games.*



> Why is it a big deal if the DM wants to keep the players guessing about whether or not the PC is using deception by having people roll an insight check?



Because it hides the game.  Honestly, if you want your players to live in a cloud of confusion because even on a success the fiction doesn't appreciably change.  You've said that a successful Insight check to detect a lie will usually get a vague "he seems evasive" response.  Good grief, why are you doing this even in your style?!  If the players succeed, do not be a jerk and hide the game, give them their success.  If you allow a check, let that check mean something more than just 'you get a feeling he might be lying.'  GAH!  

My entry into this thread was to tell the OP that he appears to be hiding too much of his game.  I make this recommendation to anyone, without regard to preference for how you use dice:  DO NOT HIDE YOUR GAME!  If your think you need to keep the players in the dark, you really need to realize that players are already in the dark -- they only ever can know what you've told them, and we all do a lousy job telling anyone else everything we know.  So, stop doing this.  Give information when the players earn it, either through open roleplay, if that's your bag, or players asking for checks and succeeding, if that's it, or using goal and approach, or any other method of resolution.  *HONOR THE RESOLUTION*!  Let the players actually succeed!  I see too much of 'well, if I tell them outright, that removes the mystery!'  This is YOUR PROBLEM AS A GM!  Your mystery sucks if it's hinges on the players not knowing if this one guy is lying.  Do better, don't hide information as a crutch for your poor planning or need to force an outcome because your prep says the players have to fall for the lie.

The above two paras are general, not specific yous.  If you feel this is talking to you, specifically, you should examine why that is.  Maybe it is talking to you specifically.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], I can't think of anything new to add.  I've stated how I run my game and that I don't forbid phrases as long as what the PC is doing is clear.  _Some_ people do allow players to bypass skills with a good description, you've been unclear at times but if you say skills are important I believe you. I don't treat insight as a truth detector.  

That's all, and I still don't understand why this particular topic is so controversial.  Have a good one.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> _Some_ people do allow players to bypass skills with a good description.




That suggests to me that you still don’t understand what we are saying, but that you think you do.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

"When tying your shoes can lead to serious injuries on a natural 1"



Nobody in this thread has mention anything like this extreme example. Unless of course the character has a really low dex, something like 10-11, then when they try to tie their shoes they have a good chance of tying their fingers in knots instead.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That suggests to me that you still don’t understand what we are saying, but that you think you do.




Yeah, how could I possibly come to the conclusion that some DMs allow players to bypass skill checks completely.



> *If the DM can decide that the character automatically succeeds on a task, then that's a far better outcome than taking a chance on a fickle d20*. One worth striving for, I'd say, which means in such a game the smart play is not to ask to roll but to describe what you want to do in such a way that you remove the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. In doing so, you're setting up a situation where the DM _can't_ call for a roll which is far more reliable than rolling, if success if your goal. Further, players that are striving for this outcome tend to be more engaged and descriptive, delving into the environment for any edge they can get. I'd say that's a nice byproduct of the system.


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## robus (Apr 7, 2019)

A situation where I can see a lot of mundane obstacles to overcome would be playing something like Dragon Heist. There you can imagine a lot of locked doors to get past, or guards (city and private) to evade. Now those could be resolved with dice rolls, but most of the time they should not be. Remember if there’s no penalty for taking time then the PCs will eventually succeed. (a locked door just costs 10 minutes, waiting for a patrol to pass the same.) But if you’re being chased by the city guards, then quickly getting through a locked door suddenly becomes critical. If you fail the check and take too much time the guards will catch you!

So the locked doors and guard encounters that are narrated through are foreshadowing the possibility that if you need to move fast through the city things are going to be tricky, you won’t be able to duck into a building because its door is likely to be locked and running down the street is likely to produce an encounter with another patrol.


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So the way the see it, I think, is that in your playstyle all 'classes' are sub-classes of the 'Adventurer Class' and the 'Adventurer Class' gives everyone a certain set of adventuring knowledge.




Aye. That's accurate enough.

Edit: Indeed, I am constantly tempted to dump all the rules around skill proficiency entirely, and implement old school ability checks: like, if an action is at all possible, I'd just say "roll a Strength check" and the player would tell me if they succeed by rolling under their strength score.

No more skill lists, no more tools, no more DCs. No more players dirty looks. Schools been blown to pieces  . . .ahem. Got a little sidetracked there.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yeah, how could I possibly come to the conclusion that some DMs allow players to bypass skill checks completely.




Tell me if I've got this wrong, but the snarky, sarcastic tone suggests that you think our intent is obvious and you totally understand it.  And yet over and over again you seem to not understand it.

For example, I keep repeatedly hearing this dismissive thing about "describing every sword blow".  Perhaps you think that if a player would "add some description" to an attack ("Feinting low to get the orc to drop his shield, I switch my stance and instead lunge for his neck!") he would get to skip the attack roll.

No.  That's not it at all.  That's just describing a goal and a method ("I try to kill the orc, using my sword") using more colorful language.  If the DM rules that no roll is needed, it's because the outcome is a foregone conclusion (18th level Barbarian versus lone orc), not because the description was colorful.

Instead, imagine that instead of fighting the orcs, the players open the gate that floods the guard chamber, drowning all the orcs.  Now, maybe the DM would still require some rolls in there (to unlock the valve, to sneak into the chamber with the mechanism, etc. etc.) or maybe not, but either way the players are not forced to make any combat attack rolls...which is a good thing because combat is so unpredictable, and even when you win it consumes resources...and instead they solve the problem creatively through describing a *goal* and a *method*.

That same approach can be used to solving other problems/tasks/challenges.  

That's what we're talking about.

(And, yes, it does require that you trust your DM to adjudicate in the spirit of telling a good story, not to have a power trip or punish players or whatever.  If you don't trust your DM to do this then you may want to play 5th edition as if it were 4th edition.  Or find a different DM.)


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

They did something like this in 4e I think. All characters had training in all 11 skills and progressed in the skills equally as they leveled. Only difference was by stats and the few skills each character chose to specialize in.



Edit: A reply to *Satyrn* ​




​


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

robus said:


> A situation where I can see a lot of mundane obstacles to overcome would be playing something like Dragon Heist. There you can imagine a lot of locked doors to get past, or guards (city and private) to evade. Now those could be resolved with dice rolls, but most of the time they should not be. Remember if there’s no penalty for taking time then the PCs will eventually succeed. (a locked door just costs 10 minutes, waiting for a patrol to pass the same.) But if you’re being chased by the city guards, then quickly getting through a locked door suddenly becomes critical. If you fail the check and take too much time the guards will catch you!
> 
> So the locked doors and guard encounters that are narrated through are foreshadowing the possibility that if you need to move fast through the city things are going to be tricky, you won’t be able to duck into a building because its door is likely to be locked and running down the street is likely to produce an encounter with another patrol.




I will sometimes have parts of the story that are more narrative and/or resolved with a handful of rolls.  I haven't played dragon heist but certainly if time is not of the essence and the person doing the lockpicking is skilled enough that they don't run the risk of jamming a lock for example I'd just narrate the scenes with input from the players.  In other cases I'll call for group checks or just rely on passive values.  Certainly if the PCs can figure out a way past the guards by using a different route, setting up a distraction or bribery for example that works as well.

But I think there's a difference between that and a player being able to "describe what you want to do in such a way that you remove the uncertainty" to bypass skill checks and having parts of the story you fast forward through because the details are not critical to the story.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> ("Feinting low to get the orc to drop his shield, I switch my stance and instead lunge for his neck!")





This would be a really cool description if the player were describing an attack with advantage.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> _Some_ people do allow players to bypass skills with a good description...






Oofta said:


> Yeah, how could I possibly come to the conclusion that some DMs allow players to bypass skill checks completely.




I see where there is a potential source of some confusion in your back and forth with [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION].  You've inserted a very important word, which completely changes the meaning, in your second quote here:  "checks".

No one here that I have read allows players to bypass skills.  Skills are critical to the definition and success of a character.

Many people here, however, allow players to bypass skill _checks_ (or ability checks, really).  With a solid approach and goal *based on the skills of the character*, the player may be able to bypass a _check_ with an auto-success granted at the discretion of the DM.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> This would be a really cool description if the player were describing an attack with advantage.




Yes!  Totally agree. 

Or even narration post-roll, on a success.


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> They did something like this in 4e I think. All characters had training in all 11 skills and progressed in the skills equally as they leveled. Only difference was by stats and the few skills each character chose to specialize in.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I'd totally prefer the opposite. I edited my last post, saying this:



> Indeed, I am constantly tempted to dump all the rules around skill proficiency entirely, and implement old school ability checks: like, if an action is at all possible, I'd just say "roll a Strength check" and the player would tell me if they succeed by rolling under their strength score.
> 
> No more skill lists, no more tools, no more DCs. No more players dirty looks. Schools been blown to pieces . . .ahem. Got a little sidetracked there.




The constantly increasing numbers in 4e made me feel like low level characters were chumps who knew nothing, and could do nothing. I'd prefer a system that suggests that low level characters are skilled adventurers, and I think not having increasing skill proficiencies and level bonuses heips accomplish that.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes!  Totally agree.
> 
> Or even *narration post-roll, on a success*.




This I think is the better way to do a more descriptive combat. Attack rolls are made and the player then describes the attack. That is if you like a more verbose combat.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I'd totally prefer the opposite. I edited my last post, saying this:
> 
> 
> 
> The constantly increasing numbers in 4e made me feel like low level characters were chumps who knew nothing, and could do nothing. I'd prefer a system that suggests that low level characters are skilled adventurers, and I think not having increasing skill proficiencies and level bonuses heips accomplish that.





Personally I think skill proficiencies help individualize characters more.

I think its whether you like the game to be zero to hero or not. I believe most level based games are zero to hero.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> This I think is the better way to do a more descriptive combat. Attack rolls are made and the player then describes the attack. That is if you like a more verbose combat.




As I think I mentioned upthread, some folks in my group like to play that whoever gets the killing blow narrates it. Otherwise we mostly just roll the dice, perhaps narrating some misses or failed saving throws along the way.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I don't know if you're just being obstinate or not reading what I quoted so I'll repeat part of that quote



> [as a player you can] describe what you want to do in such a way that you remove the uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence of failure. In doing so, you're setting up a situation where the DM can't call for a roll which is far more reliable than rolling, if success if your goal.




The player is not changing the parameters of the encounter, nor are they finding a way to bypass it.  They're simply describing it in a way that removes uncertainty.  That's a player skill, not a PC skill.

Now, I don't know how many people really play that way.  I've never said that you DM that way. But some people seem to allow a player to bypass skill checks by simply changing the narrative.


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> No one here that I have read allows players to bypass skills.  Skills are critical to the definition and success of a character.




*Sheepishly raises his hand*

He might point to my how I've said I don't pay attention to a character's skill or tool proficiencies when adjuticatin success/fail, or seeing DCs, etc.

But then, I'm not one of the people he's discussing this with, and I'm not claiming my method is like the one he's trying to understand, so what I do shouldn't matter in this regard.


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## Yardiff (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> As I think I mentioned upthread, some folks in my group like to play that whoever gets the killing blow narrates it. Otherwise we mostly just roll the dice, perhaps narrating some misses or failed saving throws along the way.





That cool, sounds like the group I play with. Also sounds like the Matt Mercer "How do you want to do this".


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Personally I think skill proficiencies help individualize characters more.
> 
> I think its whether you like the game to be zero to hero or not. I believe most level based games are zero to hero.




This is very much the reason why I haven't dumped the skill system. My players might prefer that individualizing, and they certainly like it will enough that there no reason for me to implement a major change just because I would prefer it.

And your right about the zero-to-hero, thing. I like to view it as rookie-to-veteran.  In my dungeon crawl, the PCs are like rookies in their first year of the NFL: Fully capable right from the start.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Now, I don't know how many people really play that way.  I've never said that you DM that way. But some people seem to allow a player to bypass skill checks by simply changing the narrative.




Gahhhh!!!!

No, it’s not “bypassing a skill check”.  That suggests that the skill check is “there” waiting for the character to encounter it. Like a speed bump on the only road for mikes around. As if the players are SUPPOSED to roll dice here. 

There’s a locked door in the way, not a skill check. It may be that the method proposed by the players results in a dice roll, but if they charge the door with an elephant they didn’t “bypass the skill check”.

Now, if you take an adventure written with a 3e/4e mindset, that does put skill check speed bumps along the way, it may feel like players are bypassing them, but part of what we have been trying to describe is an approach to writing adventures that does not just sprinkle random  skill checks about like pixie dust


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> That cool, sounds like the group I play with. Also sounds like the Matt Mercer "How do you want to do this".




Oh. Maybe that’s where they got it from.


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## robus (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But I think there's a difference between that and a player being able to "describe what you want to do in such a way that you remove the uncertainty" to bypass skill checks and having parts of the story you fast forward through because the details are not critical to the story.




Yep I was just trying to think of an environment that would come with a lot of potential integral speed bumps as you call them and how that might play out.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

A long time ago...late 80's...I took a course on arms control & nuclear strategy.  In it I learned about "Circular Error Probability", which is defined as the radius within which at least one warhead will land if you shoot two.  I kept arguing and arguing with the professor that this was bad mathematics, and that you could never be certain that at least one of the two would hit, and he (and eventually the other students) kept getting more and more frustrated with me, repeating "Yes, but it's _defined_ that way".

Eventually I did understand what they were saying, and felt a little embarrassed that I was so slow to get it.

Anyway, I think I know how that professor felt.


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## SkidAce (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> As I think I mentioned upthread, some folks in my group like to play that whoever gets the killing blow narrates it. Otherwise we mostly just roll the dice, perhaps narrating some misses or failed saving throws along the way.




We pretty much narrate all actions.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Gahhhh!!!!
> 
> No, it’s not “bypassing a skill check”.  That suggests that the skill check is “there” waiting for the character to encounter it. Like a speed bump on the only road for mikes around. As if the players are SUPPOSED to roll dice here.
> 
> ...




Ding.  I think this is entirely what [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] misses. He sees a trapped door as something that needs a check to get past.  I see it as something my players will interact with.  How they interact with it may be uncertain, which will require a check.  Sometimes, how they interact with it will not be uncertain, and I won't call for a check.  The key is that there isn't a DC left there dangling because it never existed in the first place.

DCs don't exist until I get an approach and goal statement (or an action declaration, if you will), and I decide the outcome is uncertain, and then I pick a DC based on the approach and goal.  Only then is a check asked for.  It doesn't exist until this process occurs, so talking about "autosuccess" is a function of action declarations, not skill checks.  If a check exists, there's no autosuccess, because we've already moved past that point.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Gahhhh!!!!
> 
> No, it’s not “bypassing a skill check”.  That suggests that the skill check is “there” waiting for the character to encounter it. Like a speed bump on the only road for mikes around. As if the players are SUPPOSED to roll dice here.
> 
> ...




You can always attempt to break down a door if you don't mind the noise or have a pet elephant handy.

But let's say I have a trapped chest.  There's no way of opening it that it won't blow up first without disarming the trap which requires entering a combination the PCs don't have.  I don't care how the player describes what they do, they're still going to either have to have the combination or disable the trap.

In another case, a bridge across a chasm is trapped and they need to get across to the other side.  They can

Disable the trap using a skill check
Use a grappling hook to bypass the bridge altogether
Have a spell that gets everyone across safely
Find another route

In the former case the only way to bypass the trap is to find the combination, in the latter there are several ways around.  But they are getting around the trap by doing something other than trying to disable the trap.

Now maybe that was the intent of the post I quoted but to me it doesn't read like that.  In addition, if that's the way you run your game that's okay as well (particularly if you have a lot of house rules around skills) it's just not my preference.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> This I think is the better way to do a more descriptive combat. Attack rolls are made and the player then describes the attack. That is if you like a more verbose combat.




I prefer the player to describe the attempt, then we go to the roll. Once that's resolved, I narrate the impact of the attack on the enemy (but not anything about what the character does unless referencing what the player already stated).

I used to ask players to jump in and narrate the result of the adventurers' action after a critical hit or sometimes a death blow, but that actually created a weird speed bump in the conversation flow that before that point was all going according to the play loop. So I stopped doing it.

The main thing I see DMs fall down on the job with in combat is not starting the play loop again with a description of the environment on the next turn. After the player's turn is done, it's time to recap anything important or that has changed during that turn to set up the next player to describe what they want to do. Otherwise it just becomes something like, "Okay, John, you're up..." as if you're standing in line at the deli. A pithy sentence to describe the environment at the start of the turn makes a huge difference in the play experience in my view.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You can always attempt to break down a door if you don't mind the noise or have a pet elephant handy.
> 
> But let's say I have a trapped chest.  There's no way of opening it that it won't blow up first without disarming the trap which requires entering a combination the PCs don't have.  I don't care how the player describes what they do, they're still going to either have to have the combination or disable the trap.
> 
> ...




Yes, exactly.

You are describing 3e/4e "traps", and that's why you're stuck with this "players must use a skill and roll a certain DC to get past my speed bump".

We probably bear some of the responsibility by trying to respond to your descriptions of old-school traps with "goal and method" solutions.  Perhaps instead we should have emphasized that we try to avoid sprinkling random, un-signaled traps around.

But instead I'm going to jump right back into the pit...

In the case of your combination lock: you are describing a kind of "gotcha".  Without describing how the combination disarms the trap, and saying they must enter the combination, you are precluding any other solution.  

But let's say we've got some more specificity to this trap.  For example, let's say the combination is to a lock, and if the lock comes off the two glass vials (that when crushed and mixed produce a cloud of poison gas) can be safely removed, then a number of other solutions are possible:
 - They could pour acid on the lock (maybe they recently killed an acidic monster)
 - They could use magic to transmute the glass vials into steel
 - The could use other magic to freeze the components of the vials

Maybe you'd require a skill check on some of those solutions (handling monster acid safely?) maybe not.  But the point is that when they propose a method, you can either say, "Awesome. That works." or, if you think the outcome is uncertain, ask for an ability roll with a possible skill proficiency modifier.

And maybe they don't propose any of those ideas, and decide to try to crack the combination.  Then, sure, I might call for some kind of check.  Maybe straight Intelligence if the Wizard says he is going to use math, or a sleight-of-hand check if the rogue says he is going to see if he can feel the tumblers clicking.  

But if you just describe it as "A trap that has a combination that must be entered correctly by rolling 18 or higher on a (something) check to disarm the trap" then, yeah, you aren't really leaving your players any other options.  You are describing an unavoidable obstacle/speed bump, and I can see why it feels like "bypassing" it if the players won't play the way you want them to.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Accidental double-post, nothing to see here.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For all the back and forth on this topic that we seem to have every time it comes up, I think the majority of game play would actually be quite similar for most of us.



I think you’re probably right. The key difference is that in one style the player says what skill they want to use and the DM describes what the character does based on the skill employed and the result of the roll. In the other, the player describes what the character does and the DM says what skill to use (if any) based on the description. I also think the dice get rolled less frequently in the latter case.



Oofta said:


> However there are still things I don't think I will ever understand:
> 
> Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear?  Because 80% of the time when people say it in my it is.  That other 20%?  I ask for clarification.  I encourage more descriptive play, but that may be as simple as "I use [INSERT SKILL] by doing [INSERT DETAIL]".



It’s not _forbidden_ at my table. It’s just that, for me, saying “I use [INSERT SKILL] is not enough information to determine the player’s intent and the character’s approach, without making a lot of assumptions. Usually their goal is clear from context. When there’s a chest and the player says “I make a Perception check,” it’s pretty obvious that they want to find out  if it’s trapped, or a mimic or something. But just knowing what the player wants to accomplish is not enough for me to adjudicate the action, without knowing what the character is doing to try to figure it out. I could make an assumption that they are giving it a thorough visual examination, but that is not my role as the DM. I’m not here to tell you what your character is doing, that’s up to you. I’m here to tell you what happens as a result of what you tell me your character is doing, and if I can’t figure that out easily. i’ll ask you to roll a die to help me decide what happens. That’s why my go-to response for actions posed this way is, “I’m hearing that you want to [ASSUMED GOAL], but what does your character do to try to accomplish that?”



Oofta said:


> How are you _not_ diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?
> 
> _*I don't know how many people do this, but at least some do or they have not made it clear if they ever call for a roll. [EDIT: there are times I don't bother with a roll because someone's skill is high enough they're not going to meaningfully fail]_



Because skills still help tip the odds in your favor when the outcome of an action is uncertain and there is a risk associated with failure. It’s just that, instead of skill investment being the primary way you insure the best chance of success, they become your backup for when success is not already assured. You don’t invest in Charisma (Intimidation) because you need it to be able to be intimidating. You invest in it because you plan to play a character who frequently intimidated people, and you want to make sure that, when your attempt at being intimidating has a chance of causing you a setback if it fails, you have the best chance of success you can.

Now, you could argue that this does diminish the value of skill investment. Because a character who did not invest in Charisma (Intimidation) can still be intimidating. In my opinion, this is a feature not a bug. I don’t want skill investment to be a barrier for entry to certain tasks, I want them to be a bonus, something that you invest in because you want to be the guy the party calls on to do the thing when the stakes are high and you can’t afford to fail. Think of it like how 5e moved away from making bonuses from magic items an expected part of progression, to make them feel more meaningful. Instead of needing a +X magic weapon by level Y to have a chance of hitting CR Y monsters, that +X is always above and beyond what you need. This approach does the same for skills.



Oofta said:


> Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve?  It's a minor speed bump I put in for flavor, not the focus of the game for me.



I’m not sure I understand this one.



Oofta said:


> Why is it a big deal if the DM wants to keep the players guessing about whether or not the PC is using deception by having people roll an insight check?



It’s not a big deal necessarily. If that’s how you prefer to run the game, I have no interest in trying to stop you from doing so. I personally don’t like to do it that way, and if you are curious about my reasons why I feel that way, I would be happy to discuss them with you. But I do think it’s important to gram that discussion in the terms “This is why I prefer to run the game the way I do,” not “this is why I have a problem with you running the game the way you do.”


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But let's say I have a trapped chest.  There's no way of opening it that it won't blow up first without disarming the trap which requires entering a combination the PCs don't have.  I don't care how the player describes what they do, they're still going to either have to have the combination or disable the trap.



What if I guess at the combination, and I'm lucky enough to match the combination in your notes?

like, I specifically say "I enter 11, 22, 63 as the combination and open the chest" when your notes say the combination is 11/22/63?


(I'm a Stephen King fan is why I chose those numbers "randomly")


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Now, you could argue that this does diminish the value of skill investment. Because a character who did not invest in Charisma (Intimidation) can still be intimidating.




I'll also point out (again) that it's not like you could have spent those skill points improving your attack bonus or expanding your spell list. All you can do with those points is invest in skills.  So as long as the DM treats all skills the same (something he/she asks for to resolve uncertainty, not something the player invokes at will) then you can't really make a bad investment.


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## iserith (Apr 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> What if I guess at the combination, and I'm lucky enough to match the combination in your notes?
> 
> like, I specifically say "I enter 11, 22, 63 as the combination and open the chest" when your notes say the combination is 11/22/63?
> 
> ...




The combination is 1-2-3-4-5, same as my luggage.


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> The combination is 1-2-3-4-5, same as my luggage.




I pity the poor customs agent who has to inspect your exploding luggage.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> What if I guess at the combination, and I'm lucky enough to match the combination in your notes?
> 
> like, I specifically say "I enter 11, 22, 63 as the combination and open the chest" when your notes say the combination is 11/22/63?
> 
> ...




Sorry, the combination was 11/22/WAIT A MINUTE ARE YOU LOOKING AT MY NOTES????


----------



## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, exactly.
> 
> You are describing 3e/4e "traps", and that's why you're stuck with this "players must use a skill and roll a certain DC to get past my speed bump".
> 
> ...




Magic can bypass quite a bit, but barring that to me you're just describing how you disarm the trap.  So in your example, if someone wanted to use a ray of frost to disable the trap that's great.  You've come up with a way to not use thieves tools, give me an arcana check instead to ensure the vials are frozen evenly.  I'd say that was using the variant skill rules from the PHB.  

But otherwise?  You're just describing what the rogue is going to do with their skill check. I don't care if you describe it as putting your ear to the chest to hear the tumblers click as you move the dials.  

Well, actually if you describe how you put your ear to the chest to hear the tumblers click I might reward you inspiration because that's kind of a cool way to describe it.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh. Maybe that’s where they got it from.




Yep. A lot of groups are heavily influenced by Critical Role, whether they realize it or not. Somebody sees Matt Mercer do something they think is cool and starts doing it. Then somebody else who doesn’t watch Critical Role sees them do it and decides to start doing it too. Before you know it, “how do you want to do this?” and “you can certainly try” are mainstays of D&D, and most people don’t even realize where they came from.

Side note, _that_ is what the word meme means, not a funny image with a caption. Meme theory is a model of cultural evolution that mirrors biological evolution. A meme is a carrier of cultural information just as a gene is a carrier of biological information, and like genes, memes are copied from one person to the next, and small changes or mutations occasionally occur in the copying, which over time can lead to broader changes. The game telephone is a great example of meme theory in action.


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## Satyrn (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry, the combination was 11/22/WAIT A MINUTE ARE YOU LOOKING AT MY NOTES????




No, I did not look at your notes.


And because I'm a world class Truth Teller (there's no one better at telling the truth than me!) so you'll need to make a DC 30 Insight check to verify that yeah, I'm telling the truth.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Side note, _that_ is what the word meme means, not a funny image with a caption. Meme theory is a model of cultural evolution that mirrors biological evolution. A meme is a carrier of cultural information just as a gene is a carrier of biological information, and like genes, memes are copied from one person to the next, and small changes or mutations occasionally occur in the copying, which over time can lead to broader changes. The game telephone is a great example of meme theory in action.




Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”

I took expertise in Pedantry and just outrolled you.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”
> 
> I took expertise in Pedantry and just outrolled you.




Well played.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Magic can bypass quite a bit, but barring that to me you're just describing how you disarm the trap.  So in your example, if someone wanted to use a ray of frost to disable the trap that's great.  You've come up with a way to not use thieves tools, give me an arcana check instead to ensure the vials are frozen evenly.  I'd say that was using the variant skill rules from the PHB.
> 
> But otherwise?  You're just describing what the rogue is going to do with their skill check. I don't care if you describe it as putting your ear to the chest to hear the tumblers click as you move the dials.
> 
> Well, actually if you describe how you put your ear to the chest to hear the tumblers click I might reward you inspiration because that's kind of a cool way to describe it.




Fair enough. So if I ever find myself at your table I won’t bother trying to be a creative problem solver. I’ll just say, “I look for traps using Perception”, “I try to get him to give me the info using Intimidation”, “I check to see if he’s lying using Insight”, etc. 

Because engaging with the world and coming up with cool, creative solutions won’t actually change anything, right?

And so you may as well not describe the traps. Leave out all that stuff about the glass vials because it won’t make any difference to me. However you describe it I’ll just repeat, “I try to disarm it using Thieves’ Tools.”  You can just say “it’s a trap” and I’ll know what to do next.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> No, I did not look at your notes.
> 
> 
> And because I'm a world class Truth Teller (there's no one better at telling the truth than me!) so you'll need to make a DC 30 Insight check to verify that yeah, I'm telling the truth.




Hah!  You would only ask for an insight check if there was a reason to!  If there was no attempted deception, there would be no reason to call for an insight check, therefore I know you're trying to deceive me!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Hah!  You would only ask for an insight check if there was a reason to!  If there was no attempted deception, there would be no reason to call for an insight check, therefore I know you're trying to deceive me!




I think Grasshopper has achieved Enlightenment.

(So he's got that going for him.  Which is nice.)


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Fair enough. So if I ever find myself at your table I won’t bother trying to be a creative problem solver. I’ll just say, “I look for traps using Perception”, “I try to get him to give me the info using Intimidation”, “I check to see if he’s lying using Insight”, etc.
> 
> Because engaging with the world and coming up with cool, creative solutions won’t actually change anything, right?
> 
> And so you may as well not describe the traps. Leave out all that stuff about the glass vials because it won’t make any difference to me. However you describe it I’ll just repeat, “I try to disarm it using Thieves’ Tools.”  You can just say “it’s a trap” and I’ll know what to do next.




Most traps are boring.  For that matter so are puzzles.  Describing exactly how I'm carefully looking at the tenth door that may be trapped is tedious.  So while I include traps if they make sense to the story I'd rather not spend any more time on them then necessary.  

I do throw in complex traps now and then in which case you use skills to get hints on how to get past it but for the most part I'd rather focus on things I enjoy.  Like social encounters, mysteries, grand battles, forging alliances and making enemies, escorting the prince who keeps trying to run away because he's an idiot (or is he charmed, or a doppleganger?) or a thousand other stories I want to tell and share.

If describing in excruciating detail how you disable every trap is what makes the game fun for you then, no, I'm probably not the right DM for you.  Fortunately I've always found plenty of people who disagree.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 7, 2019)

There's some interesting stuff in this thread, that I'm still catching up on.



Elfcrusher said:


> If the DM simply decides that the lie (or any other insight) can't be detected, or that the way the player proposes to accomplish it would automatically fail, then there's no roll.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now, I think DMs should be very sparing with completely undetectable lies (maybe if it's a construct doing the lying or something), but the point is that just because a player proposes a course of action...or wants to "use a skill"...it doesn't entitle him/her to a roll.



To me, this seems highly contextual. If the construct is simply a device for introducing a certain proposition into the fiction as something for the PCs to entertain (so the functional equivalent of eg finding a diary entry, or a carving) then the idea that there is nothing for the PC to discern seems plausible. Depending on context, I might expect an Insight check to be one way of working out that the construct is just reciting pre-established words.

But if the construct is itself an element in a social challenge, and the issue of its truth-telling _matters_ to the resolution of that challenge, then I personally find a GM-fiat _no_ a little railroad-y. (But at some tables perhaps constrcuts can't participate in social challenges, and are really just like Magic Mouth spells?)



Oofta said:


> if the DM doesn't call for an insight check or if the player is not allowed to ask for one then the players know there was no skill contest.  Since there was no skill contest the players now know the NPC was not trying to deceive them.
> 
> The consequence of no insight skill check is a confirmation that the NPC is not trying to be deceptive.



This doesn't seem right. If the player doesn't declare any action for his/her PC that would suggest ascertaining the truthfulness (or otherwise) of the NPC, then how can the player infer that the NPC was telling the truth from the fact that no check was called for?



Oofta said:


> Well let's talk about three possibilities with my jewel heist scenario.
> 1) The shopkeeper is really telling the truth and is not particularly nervous or agitated.
> 2) The shopkeeper is the thief but is not any good at deception.
> 3) The shopkeeper is the jewel thief but he's really good at deception
> ...



OK, but (a) don't they have to declare some action to trigger the skill check?



Oofta said:


> First, this isn't a parody.  I honestly want to understand what you would do.  I still don't get why there couldn't be a dialog where the PCs are questioning the shopkeeper but since you refuse to give an example of what the dialog would look like I give up.
> 
> I don't want to put words into your mouth but since you refuse to give a concrete example, I'm assuming something like:
> 
> ...



I have trouble following this - how does an Insight cjeck maintain mystery and doubt? Only if you don't tell the players whether or not the check succeeds - but in that case, what is the check adding to the game? I mean, the player can be uncertain if no check is made.

In my game, if there shopkeeper is telling the truth then I want this to become clear so that play moves on to something more interesting.



5ekyu said:


> if i put say a "medical mystery" like say to remove curse or a "murder mystery" into my games and the players tell me, my character wants to investigate it but i do not want to play thru that stuff, can we resolve it by checks" i am pretty much okay with that.





Oofta said:


> What some people refuse to accept or acknowledge is that finding/removing traps descriptively is _boring_ for a lot of people.  They may have focused their limited options on being the greatest trap finder/remover they can be so they want to be rewarded by using the skill now and then.





Oofta said:


> there are times when the group just doesn't care about certain aspects of the game.  If they'd rather have some hireling go off to gather info while they have a dart throwing contest why would I care?  All I care about is that they're engaged and having fun.



These posts make it seem like the function of the checks is to "skip the boring bits". Although, as per the discussion of Insight checks maintaining mystery, it's not clear exactly how this will work if players aren't told whether or not their checks succeed.



Ovinomancer said:


> The problem with your assertion here is that this happens pretty much only when the interaction is trivial or unimportant. If it's a crux moment in the game, I'm very unlikely to determine there's no consequence for failure (it's a crux moment) or that there's no uncertainty.



This reads like, or at least fairly similarly to, "say 'yes' or roll the dice". That's a methodology that used to be extremely controversial on these boards.

It's also my preferred way to deal with "boring bits", or bits where nothing significant is at stake. Let's cut to something everyone's interested in!



Elfcrusher said:


> I find it ironic that the "goal and method" approach is derided as some kind of DM power trip, but I see this as taking over the poor guy's character and roleplaying for him.  If I'm going to subject him to the whim of the dice, I'm _at least_ going to give him the courtesy of letting him narrate his own failures.



My own preference in action resolution - which goes with "say 'yes' or roll the dice"  - is that on a success it's the player's narration that becomes part of the shared fiction, and on a failure it's the GM's narration of the consequences that becomes part of the shared fiction.

The overall idea is that (1) we establish something that both GM and player are invested in; (2) the check to find out what happens is framed and made; (3) on a success it goes as the player wants, on a failure as the GM thinks will step up the pressure.

In your example of player narration you have the player narrating the moss that his PC slipped on, but don't elaborate on what the consequences of failure are or who establishes those. If by "player narrating own failure" you're talking more about what form the immediate event of failing takes, rather than what flows from it, then I'd see that as a shared GM/player/table thing.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Most traps are boring. For that matter so are puzzles. Describing exactly how I'm carefully looking at the tenth door that may be trapped is tedious. So while I include traps if they make sense to the story I'd rather not spend any more time on them then necessary.



I thought that too, until I played under a DM who used the “middle path” method of action resolution. Turned out, the reason I felt that way was because I was subconsciously registering the fact that my choices didn’t matter. I could describe my attempts to disarm the trap any way I wanted, but at the end of the day, it was going to result in a DC 15 check no matter what I said. The most I could hope to do was convince the DM to let me roll Arcana instead of Thieves’ Tools, or get Inspiration if he thought my idea was cool. So I got bored of coming up with clever ways to try to disarm the trap that didn’t actually matter anyway. I started just announcing which skill I wanted to use to make the DC 15 check that I had no choice but to make, which if anything was actually less interesting, but at least it went by faster. I thought I hated traps because of this.

With the “middle path” adjudication style, it’s different. My choices actually mattered. Depending on how I wanted to go about dealing with the trap, I might not only get a say in what skill I got to roll, I might not even need to roll. An idea that seemed like it would work might just work. And when I did need to make a check, it was tense! I knew my method might work, but it also might blow up in my face, and I had to seriously consider if it was worth the risk, or if I should try coming up with a safer approach. Suddenly my character’s fate was in my hands, instead of just the result of an arbitrary dice roll. Suddenly I wasn’t just thinking about which skill I had the highest bonus with, I was thinking about how my character might go about it. I wasn’t just asking myself if I should take the risk, I was asking myself “would Sathe take that risk?” I was _roleplaying_! Imagine that, disarming a boring old trap wasn’t just a speed bump any more, it was an opportunity to roleplay, to make choices as I thought my character would, and to have those choices actually matter!

Also, just an observation here:


Oofta said:


> Why is finding/disabling the once in a blue moon trap/secret door with a couple of dice rolls a deal breaker for you if you aren't the person doing it and it takes a minute or so to resolve?





Oofta said:


> Describing exactly how I'm carefully looking at the tenth door that may be trapped is tedious.




Why are traps once in a blue moon under your method and ten times in a row under the “middle path” method? Are you under the impression that traps are significantly more common under the “middle path” method as a matter of course?


----------



## pemerton (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> One thing I don't believe you have answered, Hussar, is my hypothetical scenario about the players that just want to sit in the tavern...in the sense that they don't actually narrate where they go and who they talk to and what they search...and just want to roll Investigation to solve the mystery without having to describe any actions on their part.  I'm intentionally choosing an extreme case, of course, but that seems to fit the description of how you play: you aren't requiring the _players_ to figure out likely leads, you are letting their _characters_ do it.



This seems to raise questions like (1) Who at the table gets to frame scenes, and decide what "the action" is?, and (2) How are action declarations able to be framed?

For instance, if the GM has authority over framing scenes, then it seems that the players won't be able just to have their PCs sit around in a tavern.

And if the PCs are sitting in a tavern, what sorts of Investigation checks can they declare? Or, more generally, what sorts of actions can they declare? In [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s example, the PCs were engaging with their connections/factions, which seems to fit with being physically located in a tavern etc.

In some systems, the fiction-derived constraints on action declaration are less strict than is typical for D&D - eg in Marvel Heroic RP, during a transition scene a player can spend player-side resources to generate (what is called) a skill-derived Resource, without having to "play through" the process of generating that Resource. For instance, a player whose PC has Covert specialisation can spend the requisite player-side resources to generate (say) information from a contact as a Resource, without having to play through the rendez-vous, debriefing etc of that contact.

Traditionally, D&D hasn't had the right framework to support this sort of thing, although I imagine the 5e "downtime" framework could be adapted to it.



Bawylie said:


> To me, the game is playing out the scenario, not playing out the mechanics.
> 
> I think this sentiment may inform how some people felt about 4E skill challenges. Some felt that it came down to just racking up points irrespective of what was going on in the game world. While some felt the process existed independently and you hang the in-game stuff on that structure.



I see a skill challenge as similar in general character (not precise detail) to an extended contest in HeroWars/Quest, a Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel, and similar. The checks are framed relative to the fiction, and the consequences of each check change the fiction against which the next check is framed: if a player can't explain how s/he is engaging with the fiction (via his/her PC), then the check isn't properly framed. But the success/fail results (of each check, and of the challenge overall) establish constraints on what sort of fiction can be narrated.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> In my game, if there shopkeeper is telling the truth then I want this to become clear so that play moves on to something more interesting.




Which is perfectly fine from a narrative perspective.  A lot of cop shows for example are not really about the mystery because the audience knows who dunnit because they saw it happening.  It's about how the detectives figure it out and enjoying that process.  I prefer keeping the players guessing just as much as the PCs should be guessing because there is no way to know 100% if someone is telling the truth or lying without concrete evidence.  Not even meta-game knowledge.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Most traps are boring.  For that matter so are puzzles.  Describing exactly how I'm carefully looking at the tenth door that may be trapped is tedious.  So while I include traps if they make sense to the story I'd rather not spend any more time on them then necessary.
> 
> I do throw in complex traps now and then in which case you use skills to get hints on how to get past it but for the most part I'd rather focus on things I enjoy.  Like social encounters, mysteries, grand battles, forging alliances and making enemies, escorting the prince who keeps trying to run away because he's an idiot (or is he charmed, or a doppleganger?) or a thousand other stories I want to tell and share.
> 
> If describing in excruciating detail how you disable every trap is what makes the game fun for you then, no, I'm probably not the right DM for you.  Fortunately I've always found plenty of people who disagree.




Ok, so you think that traps are boring, even with the playstyle you espouse so strongly.

And a bunch of us are here saying, "We used to think so, too! But after years of D&D we've adopted a new approach that encourages creative problem solving and roleplaying, and now we have fewer traps but they're more fun!"

And no part of you, no tiny corner of your mind, is thinking, "Hmm...maybe I should be open to this?"


----------



## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I thought that too, until I played under a DM who used the “middle path” method of action resolution.




All I can say is that I first encountered what you're terming "middle path" long, long before it was a term.  As in back in the 80s.  I didn't like it then and I still don't.  Different people play for different reasons, not every DM is going to be a good fit for every player.  

Choices matter in my campaign and can have world-altering consequences.  I have people on the edge of their seats engaged on a reasonably regular basis.  I just don't like bypassing skills by having players describing how they're freezing the acid vials.

Much like how some people like sushi, it's not a question of whether I've tried it or not.  I tried it, it wasn't for me.


----------



## 5ekyu (Apr 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> There's some interesting stuff in this thread, that I'm still catching up on.
> 
> To me, this seems highly contextual. If the construct is simply a device for introducing a certain proposition into the fiction as something for the PCs to entertain (so the functional equivalent of eg finding a diary entry, or a carving) then the idea that there is nothing for the PC to discern seems plausible. Depending on context, I might expect an Insight check to be one way of working out that the construct is just reciting pre-established words.
> 
> ...



"These posts make it seem like the function of the checks is to "skip the boring bits". Although, as per the discussion of Insight checks maintaining mystery, it's not clear exactly how this will work if players aren't told whether or not their checks succeed."

An attempt is made, s roll is made (possibly with advantage if the effort warrants it by bringing in beneficial things other than what normally comes with the effort) and what happens as z redult is narrsted.

A Perhaps, you get a status quo, nothing changes. 
 Perhaps you get some positive gains with additional noticable drawbacks as well.
 C Perhaps you get some positive gains without any noticable drawbacks.

Note that in my gsme you also get included in the narrative a degree of confidence worked in. That may or may not tie in with the ABC result.

A shows pretty much a fail.
B shows a partial success partial success with hidden setback or a success outright.
C shows either a fail with progress and hidden setback or an outright success.

 But as you can see, of the three cases two give you something new to work with, a positive change and possibly a negative change. The good news is, even a negative chsange can lead to positive results or even a fail.

Consider, if an attempt to treat a disease fails in spite of a high confidence effort, the player knows and the character knows "oh crap, I need to go another route." (Just like a player missing on a to-hit roll of 19 realizes he has an attack roll problem and shifts to other options.)
So, maybe they bring up the spells for cures.

If my failed interrogations leads to still being suspicious, but not conclusive, maybe I move to searches or leverage? Maybe my failed intimidation leads z shopkerp to call the attempt in and thugs come to us... clues-with-feet.

As I often tell my players, often as not, what is bring contested is control of events. More often when the pcs succeed they dictate results and to varying degrees the aftermath. When they fail, others do - often in ways not too favorable.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> All I can say is that I first encountered what you're terming "middle path" long, long before it was a term.  As in back in the 80s.




Considering that you have consistently...throughout this entire thread...mischaracterized it and (apparently) misunderstood what we have been saying, I'm skeptical.

But so be it.  You seem to like the way you interpret the rules, so game on.


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## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, so you think that traps are boring, even with the playstyle you espouse so strongly.
> 
> And a bunch of us are here saying, "We used to think so, too! But after years of D&D we've adopted a new approach that encourages creative problem solving and roleplaying, and now we have fewer traps but they're more fun!"
> 
> And no part of you, no tiny corner of your mind, is thinking, "Hmm...maybe I should be open to this?"




You sound just like all my friends who who are always saying "But you just haven't tried _good_ sushi."  My food preferences have grown since I was a kid growing up on the farm, but I still like my fish cooked.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Considering that you have consistently...throughout this entire thread...mischaracterized it and (apparently) misunderstood what we have been saying, I'm skeptical.
> 
> But so be it.  You seem to like the way you interpret the rules, so game on.




You _just_ gave an example of how someone could disable a trap by freezing vials of acid therefore not needing to do a skill check.  I think that's using player skill instead of PC skill to overcome an obstacle.  I don't see how what I've stated as my preference mischaracterizes anything.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> All I can say is that I first encountered what you're terming "middle path" long, long before it was a term.  As in back in the 80s.  I didn't like it then and I still don't.  Different people play for different reasons, not every DM is going to be a good fit for every player.
> 
> Choices matter in my campaign and can have world-altering consequences.  I have people on the edge of their seats engaged on a reasonably regular basis.  I just don't like bypassing skills by having players describing how they're freezing the acid vials.
> 
> Much like how some people like sushi, it's not a question of whether I've tried it or not.  I tried it, it wasn't for me.



Yeah, I dont get how it seems that suddenly there are a lot of folks thinking DnD 5e is going all these "new things". I see it more on facebook than here. There I assume it's the large influx of new folks who haven't seen RPGs go thru multiple evolutionary cycles since 1980. 

 But, I would say that what I call the middle path and what I see the DMG middle path as (and the host of actual rules) is a wee bit different from what others are claiming and yeah, both those and lots in between have been around from way way way before 5e. 

In my games, the vast majority of challenges that matter are determined by character skills vs DC determined stages(checks or auto), with action choices bring the primary driver of both direction and ways to bring advantage, disadvantage and so forth. The choice to heal your rogue or try hold person will likely have major outcome impact.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> All I can say is that I first encountered what you're terming "middle path" long, long before it was a term.  As in back in the 80s.  I didn't like it then and I still don't.  Different people play for different reasons, not every DM is going to be a good fit for every player.



That’s absolutely fine, but you’ve been framing this conversation in terms of trying to _understand_ “the middle path” (which I put in quotation marks because I’m not really a fan of that term for it, but it’s faster to type than “the goal and approach method”). I’m not interested in trying to convince you to adopt the method in question. I’ve been trying to help you understand where I’m coming from as someone who does like it, because that was what you said you wanted. If you already understand it and just don’t like it, what are we doing here?



Oofta said:


> Choices matter in my campaign and can have world-altering consequences.  I have people on the edge of their seats engaged on a reasonably regular basis.  I just don't like bypassing skills by having players describing how they're freezing the acid vials.



I don’t doubt that many choices do matter in your campaigns. Just not choices about how to disarm traps. Which is why I would find traps boring in your game. I would probably enjoy the parts where you make choices with world-altering consequences and want to get past the parts where there are traps as quickly as possible so we could get to those more interesting parts sooner. Whereas, in campaigns like the ones Iserith runs, I do find traps interesting because my choices matter when interacting with them, in addition to my choices mattering in higher stakes situations. Personally, I like liking things more than not liking them, so I tend to prefer games where I like interacting with traps more than games where traps are boring.



Oofta said:


> Much like how some people like sushi, it's not a question of whether I've tried it or not.  I tried it, it wasn't for me.



So, again, why are you framing this in terms of trying to understand sushi when you already know exactly what sushi is, have already tried it, and already know it’s not for you? What are you hoping to accomplish other than annoying sushi lovers?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You sound just like all my friends who who are always saying "But you just haven't tried _good_ sushi."  My food preferences have grown since I was a kid growing up on the farm, but I still like my fish cooked.




Well, they’re right. I mean, I’m willing to eat mid-market sushi, but until you’ve had GREAT sushi...like sitting at the bar at Sushi of Gari while the chef serves omakase...you haven’t lived.

But I'll also point out that you are proudly laying claim to a habit of deciding what you do and don't like based on...based on...deciding what you will and won't like.  I wonder if there's any relevance to the last 50 pages...


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You _just_ gave an example of how someone could disable a trap by freezing vials of acid therefore not needing to do a skill check.  I think that's using player skill instead of PC skill to overcome an obstacle.  I don't see how what I've stated as my preference mischaracterizes anything.




Well, that shows you weren't really reading/understanding.  I said...pretty specifically...that maybe the DM would still require some sort of skill check for one of those other methods.

And here's the thing: I made up those answers without relying on any kind of expertise about vials of poison components or anything.  I just made it up.  It's not my graduate training in toxicology that let me suggest those things, it was just me making stuff up.  So there's no _skill_ required, just a willingness to engage with the fiction.  You (and Hussar) keep insisting that the middle path requires "player skill", whether in improv acting or mechanical engineering or something else, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Sure, it requires a willingness to spin a yarn.  I'll grant you that.

But if you really want to rip that out of the game, why not just play board games?  Lots of dice rolling there.

EDIT: And here's something else for you...you're so worried about "investment" in skills, but if the adventure prescribes a specific skill with a specific DC to solve a problem, it means you have fewer chances to use your skills.  If the description of the combination lock says, "DC 18 Intelligence check required to open" and you interpret it as a mandatory skill roll, it means that the rogue with sleight-of-hand or thieves' tools has no chance to solve it using that skill he invested so much in.  I would think that you, of all people, would want to be able to say, "I'd like to try to overcome this challenge by doing something I'm _good_ at, rather than the thing the book says."


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## Oofta (Apr 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, again, why are you framing this in terms of trying to understand sushi when you already know exactly what sushi is, have already tried it, and already know it’s not for you? What are you hoping to accomplish other than annoying sushi lovers?




Because I like making fun of people who don't know how to cook food?  

Kidding aside, there's been a lot of replies that I did not find clear.  Skills still matter, but if you can describe how your PC is disabling a trap they aren't used.  Saying "I inspect the door" is somehow better then "I roll investigation and get a 15" when the PCs are standing in front of a door wondering if it's trapped except when it's not.  Players never pick up on the fact that if someone is telling the truth the DM doesn't ask for an insight check.  Players can ask to make an insight check unless they can't.  Saying "my eyes glow red" is plenty of information when "I try to intimidate him" is not.

But for the most part I just don't understand why this topic is so touchy.  Different people have different styles and different ways of playing.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If one does not trust the DM, and/or if a DM does not trust the players, then I can see how totally objective, interpretation-free rules would have some appeal.



To be frank I think this is a red herring.

There are a large number of RPGs that rely on dice rolling to determine which direction play unfolds in (roughly, as the players want for their PCs, or as the GM conceives of things developing adversely to the PCs). The best-known on these boards would probably be PbtA games like Dungeon World.

The reason people enjoy Dungeon World has _nothing_ to do with distrust of GM rulings.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> To be frank I think this is a red herring.
> 
> There are a large number of RPGs that rely on dice rolling to determine which direction play unfolds in (roughly, as the players want for their PCs, or as the GM conceives of things developing adversely to the PCs). The best-known on these boards would probably be PbtA games like Dungeon World.
> 
> The reason people enjoy Dungeon World has _nothing_ to do with distrust of GM rulings.




Which is a funny argument, because I find the Dungeon World (Apocalypse World) approach to be very much philosophically aligned with "goal and method".  I don't really know the history of AW, but I would not be surprised if it were a reaction to the mindset that produced 4e, in the same way that 5e is.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Skills still matter, but if you can describe how your PC is disabling a trap they aren't used.




Really?  We're going over this AGAIN?!?!?

_Maybe_ dice aren't rolled if the DM decides it would be easy for you...because of your _proficiency in the skill_.  The skill is _used_ it just doesn't require dice to be rolled. If your friend without proficiency tried the same thing, the DM might very well ask for a dice roll, or just rule that it fails. How is that not "using" your skill?

Or maybe somebody proposes something that simply doesn't require any special skills.  That doesn't mean that skills don't matter in the game...just that the character/player found a creative way to avoid uncertainty.

(All those italics...I feel the caricature of the American tourist, trying to make himself understood in a foreign country by speaking _in a really loud voice_.)


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I prefer keeping the players guessing just as much as the PCs should be guessing because there is no way to know 100% if someone is telling the truth or lying without concrete evidence.



Then what is the point of the skill check? How is that affecting the fiction?



Elfcrusher said:


> Which is a funny argument, because I find the Dungeon World (Apocalypse World) approach to be very much philosophically aligned with "goal and method".  I don't really know the history of AW, but I would not be surprised if it were a reaction to the mindset that produced 4e, in the same way that 5e is.



I'll ignore your remark about 4e, which to me suggests a lack of familiarity with the best way of playing that system (as set out in its DMG and DMG2).

Dungeon World is based around "moves", which are _events that occur in the fiction_ that trigger _rolls that happen at the table_ which lead to _new events happening in the fiction_. Who gets to decide what the new events are (player or GM), and subject to what parameters, depends on the outcome of the dice roll.

The point of the dice roll is to allocate authority to determine the fiction. It's nothing to do with trust or distrust of players or GM. Nor to preferences in respect of 4e. (The earliest RPG I know of to present the function of dice rolling this way is Prince Valiant, which is late 80s - I think 1989. The best discussions of this approach to RPGing that I'm aware of are found on the Forge in the early 2000s.)

Here's an example of a DW move (p 68 of the rulebook) that seems relevant to the topic of this thread (the bolded bit indicates the relevant triggering event in the fiction; the roll is 2d6; ability score bonuses are as per Moldvay Basic; on a 6-, the player accrues 1 XP and the GM is entitled to evolve the fiction in some adverse direction):

Discern Realities
When *you closely study a situation or person*, roll+Wis.

✴On a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below.
✴On a 7–9, ask 1.

Either way, take +1 forward when acting on the answers.

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who’s really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

. . .

[T]he answers you get are always honest ones. Even if the GM has to figure it out on the spot. Once they answer, it’s set in stone.​
I hope this example makes clear how the point of the die roll is to establish parameters and authority for the development of the fiction.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> _Some_ people do allow players to bypass skills with a good description





Oofta said:


> Yeah, how could I possibly come to the conclusion that some DMs allow players to bypass skill checks completely.



I think the point is that _it's not because of a good description_. It's because _the described approach does not leave any uncertainty_ as to whether or not the PC achieves his/her goal.



Oofta said:


> The player is not changing the parameters of the encounter, nor are they finding a way to bypass it.  They're simply describing it in a way that removes uncertainty.  That's a player skill, not a PC skill.
> 
> Now, I don't know how many people really play that way.  I've never said that you DM that way. But some people seem to allow a player to bypass skill checks by simply changing the narrative.



To me, this seems to be backwards.

For it to be the case that _a player is bypassing a skill check_, it would have to be the case that _the game, by default, contains certain prescribed skill checks_. But it doesn't. (At least, no RPG that I play has this. It sound like a total railroad.) A RPG unfolds by the players saying what their PCs do, and then - depending on details of system and fiction - a check might be required.

Suppose that the game is D&D, and the GM says "OK, you're at the edge of the cliff looking down on the orc camp at its base. What next?"

If a player says "I push a boulder over the edge so that it crashes down among the orcs," then in most versions of D&D the GM might call for some sort of STR check to successfully push the boulder in a controlled fashion. If the PC is wearing a Girdle of Giant Strength, though, then maybe not.

If a player says "I pull out my crowbar and lever a boulder over the edge so that it crashes down among the orcs," then my prediction is less confident. Some tables might treat this as some kind of buff to a STR check; others, which like to emphasise equipment and preparation, might allow this to work automatically.

If a playr says "I pull out my scroll of Major Creation and read the spell so as to bring a boulder into existence above the orc camp!," then in most versions of D&D that will not require a check.

It's not about _bypassing checks_. It's about whether or not the actions declared by the PCs, in light of system and fiction, require a check to adjudicate them. (EDIT: Ninja'd on this point by  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION].)



Oofta said:


> let's say I have a trapped chest.  There's no way of opening it that it won't blow up first without disarming the trap which requires entering a combination the PCs don't have.  I don't care how the player describes what they do, they're still going to either have to have the combination or disable the trap.



What if one of the PCs has the ability to make his/her hand ethereal?

Or to dissolve the chest in acid (subsequently recovering the jewels left behind)?



Oofta said:


> there are still things I don't think I will ever understand:
> 
> Why is "I use [INSERT SKILL]" forbidden if the intent and action is clear?  Because 80% of the time when people say it in my game it is.  That other 20%?  I ask for clarification.  I encourage more descriptive play, but that may be as simple as "I use [INSERT SKILL] by doing [INSERT DETAIL]".
> How are you _not_ diminishing the values of investment in skills if a person can just describe what they're doing to get an automatic success*?
> ...



The 2nd I've addressed above.

To the 3rd I would offer an answer that is similar to  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s - why are we including stuff in the fiction that doesn't matter to play?

On the 4th: in my GMing, the point of checks is to determine _how the fiction develops_, not to establish _uncertainty on the part of the players as to how the fiction is developing_.

On the 1st: I want to know what the PC is doing. I can't know how the ficiton will develop if I don't know what's happening in it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Then what is the point of the skill check? How is that affecting the fiction?
> 
> I'll ignore your remark about 4e, which to me suggests a lack of familiarity with the best way of playing that system (as set out in its DMG and DMG2).
> 
> ...




Yes, I know.  I play Dungeon World.

Honestly I find this conversation a bit surreal.  I'm not even sure how to respond.  One of us totally doesn't understand what the other is talking about.  Or possibly both of us.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, I know.  I play Dungeon World.
> 
> Honestly I find this conversation a bit surreal.  I'm not even sure how to respond.  One of us totally doesn't understand what the other is talking about.  Or possibly both of us.



Well, I think there are (at least) two alternatives to [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s approach. [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is describing one. I think [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] may be describing something a bit different, but he can clarify that if he wants to. I'm not sure what your overall position is.

Both alternatives equate _action declaration_ with _describing something that happens in the fiction_. This is a contrast with Oofta, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], etc. In [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach to 5e, following such an action declaration the GM then adjudicates this to determine whether or not a check is required, and if so how hard it is. As he puts it, the ultimate player goal is to _avoid the risks of the dice_. I see this as a type of puzzle-solving play, though (obviously) not like solving riddles or chess puzzles.

By way of contrast, in DW, DitV, Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, The Dying Earth, etc (just to name some of the games I'm familiar with that adopt this alternative approach), there is no _avoiding the risks of the dice_, assuming that something is actually at stake. (If nothing is at stake, then the GM should just "say 'yes'" and try to work with the players to progress the fiction to something where there _is_ something at stake.) The point of the player's account of what his/her PC is doing is to _provide fiction that is able to be extrapolated_ either in success or failure. The emphasis of play is not on puzzle-solving but on (i) protagonism and (ii) fiction creation.

Now drawing the distinction between these two alternatives is slightly tangential to the main thrust of the thread. But I think that it is probably worth noting that there can be a reason for RPGing to prioritise dice rolls in action resolution which aren't connected to "distrust" of the GM, and which aren't connected to wanting to _avoid_ the fiction, and which don't require the idea of skill checks as prior givens that cheat-y players might try and "bypass".

This same tangent can also feed into some other stuff that's come up in this thread, like whether DCs are set before or after the player declares an action. Eg in BW, Prince Valiant and Maelstrom Storytelling the DC is established _in response to_ the player's action declaration, and reflecgts that fiction. Whereas in DW, D&D 4e and HeroWars/Quest the DC is established by the system (typically reflecting an inbuilt pacing logic).

I don't think either is "better" or "worse", but they can produce diffrent dynamics in play. And I think it's at least conceivable that someone could approch 5e using some sort of system/pacing logic to the setting of DCs, and using a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach, which would obviously be different from what iserith is doing but also would be different (I would say even more different) from what Oofta is doing. (I think the biggest hurdle facing this in a 5ae context is the lack of a die roll required for most spell casting; and obviously it would tend downplay eg the role of equipment in resolution, but 5e is meant to be a big tent!)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Because I like making fun of people who don't know how to cook food?
> 
> Kidding aside, there's been a lot of replies that I did not find clear.  Skills still matter, but if you can describe how your PC is disabling a trap they aren't used.



This is why people are saying you’re mischaracterizing the method. You’re making it sound like if you give any description at all, you can “bypass the check.” When the reality is, a check is called for when the described action would logically have a possibility of success, a possibility of failure, and a consequence for failure. This means checks will commonly be called for in dramatic situations, and rarely be called for otherwise.



Oofta said:


> Saying "I inspect the door" is somehow better then "I roll investigation and get a 15" when the PCs are standing in front of a door wondering if it's trapped except when it's not.



“I inspect the door”  isn’t any better than “I roll Investigation and get a 15” at all, because neither communicates what the player wants to achieve or what the character is doing to try to bring that goal about. In both cases, it can probably be inferred that the player wants to find out if the door is trapped or otherwise hazardous, but it cannot easily be inferred what the character is doing in either case. Are they just looking with their eyes? Are they touching it with their hands? Are they prodding it with a 10-foot poll? I could make a guess, but that’s not my roll as DM.

Now, I don’t need a detailed description. “I inspect the door _by looking at it_” is sufficient. “I inspect the door _with my lens of trueseeing_ is sufficient. “I inspect the door _by jiggling the handle_ is sufficient.



Oofta said:


> Players never pick up on the fact that if someone is telling the truth the DM doesn't ask for an insight check.  Players can ask to make an insight check unless they can't.



Here your confusion is coming from the fact that you are discussing this matter with different people, who all have slightly different ways of handling social interactions. At Iserith’s table, they (he?) will give you a clue if the NPC is lying to tip you off that the NPC might not be honest, and they are 100% fine with the fact that the players will notice he pattern (Iserith is on record as giving absolutely zero  about players making use of out of character knowledge). At my table, I occasionally make rolls behind the screen while you are interacting with NPCs, and will sometimes give you additional details about the NPC’s behavior or demeanor after making such a roll (these rolls are checks the NPCs are making against your passive Insight, which may be to deceive, intimidate, persuade, or any number of other things). At Ovinomancer’s or Elfcrusher’s tables, it might play out differently. 



Oofta said:


> Saying "my eyes glow red" is plenty of information when "I try to intimidate him" is not.



So, personally, I don’t think either of these statements give me enough information to adjudicate the action. From “I try to intimidate him,” I gather that the player wants to get the NPC to do something, and that they think their proficiency in the Intimidation skill will be relevant. But it doesn’t tell me what the character is doing. Saying “my eyes glow red” has the opposite problem - I know exactly what the character is doing*. But I don’t know what they hope to accomplish by doing it. From the context of your example, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that they want to intimidate an NPC, presumably to get them to do something. So, if that was also clear from the context of the game, I might be able to adjudicate that action.

The common thread here is that I (and others who use the “middle path”) need exactly two things to adjudicate an action: what the player wants to do, and how the characters tries to do it. Different DMs have different standards for how much detail they expect in the how, but most of us in this conversation don’t need or expect a great deal of detail. We’re generally pretty comfortable inferring a goal (Iserith less so than many of us), but everyone has a line. Fortunately it’s generally a pretty simple matter to ask the player for clarification. “Ok, so you’re casting Thaumaturgy to make your eyes glow red, hoping to frighten him out of asking you any more questions about ehat’ In the back of your wagon?” etc.




Oofta said:


> But for the most part I just don't understand why this topic is so touchy.  Different people have different styles and different ways of playing.



Well, from my perspective, I have been asked to explain my DMing style more times that I can count. I’ve gone into exhaustive detail about how I would handle a staggering number of absurdly specific situations. Through it all I have endeavored to always extend the questioner the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are acting in good faith and asking earnest questions. And for my patience, all I get is hundreds of pages of whatabouts, accuasations of pixel-bitching, and claims that “I get it, it’s just not my style” from the same people who claim to just be trying to understand my perspective. Why is the subject so controversial? You got me. Seems like a whole lot of people are really invested in trying to understand my play style and really struggle to understand it.

*well, kind of. Not 100% sure how they’re making their eyes glow red. Are they casting Thaumaturgy?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, I think there are (at least) two alternatives to @_*Oofta*_'s approach. @_*iserith*_ is describing one. I think @_*Ovinomancer*_ may be describing something a bit different, but he can clarify that if he wants to. I'm not sure what your overall position is.
> 
> Both alternatives equate _action declaration_ with _describing something that happens in the fiction_. This is a contrast with Oofta, @_*Hussar*_, etc. In @_*iserith*_'s approach to 5e, following such an action declaration the GM then adjudicates this to determine whether or not a check is required, and if so how hard it is. As he puts it, the ultimate player goal is to _avoid the risks of the dice_. I see this as a type of puzzle-solving play, though (obviously) not like solving riddles or chess puzzles.
> 
> ...




Ah, now I get it.  Good explanation.

I was focusing on how DW doesn't predefine a lot of obstacles, with specific actions (or die rolls) required to overcome them.  Heck, it doesn't even predefine the map.  The DM describes the part of the world the characters experience, the players describe how they want to respond, and it doesn't necessarily require invoking a Move to do so.  Furthermore (and the Move you cited is a great example of this) in a lot of cases there is no objective reality to the world until it is described.  To me this is very much in the same spirit as 5e, and contrasts to how I think a lot of people (including myself) played earlier editions of D&D.

So I'm not so much focused on the mechanics of the dice, and even the implications of them, but rather on how narration...by both players and DM...determines the reality of the game world.

EDIT: And let me actually amend that to say that the other similarity, for me, is that both DW and 5e rely on the players to determine the course of the narrative, more so than (it seems to me) was encouraged by previous editions of D&D.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Saying "my eyes glow red" is plenty of information when "I try to intimidate him" is not.




That you totally missed that the action was actually a _verbal threat to cause harm_ if the information wasn't provided and have focused on the fact that the player backed this up with an effort to make themselves look more physically intimidating really underscores my continued point of you not getting it despite being repeatedly shown it.  Your continued misrepresentation of things so blatantly really looks like you're not engaging earnestly, here.


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## iserith (Apr 8, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Your continued misrepresentation of things so blatantly really looks like you're not engaging earnestly, here.




A conclusion I drew months ago and corrected to the benefit of my experience on these forums.

I'm happy to talk about how I play in hopes that it helps someone have a better adventure or campaign. I'm eager to hear honest criticism and debate it because that can only be to my benefit, and perhaps others. But what's going on so far as I can tell is validation-seeking in the guise of pretending not to understand something while plainly misrepresenting it. It's gross.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> A conclusion I drew months ago and corrected to the benefit of my experience on these forums.
> 
> I'm happy to talk about how I play in hopes that it helps someone have a better adventure or campaign. I'm eager to hear honest criticism and debate it because that can only be to my benefit, and perhaps others. But what's going on so far as I can tell is validation-seeking in the guise of pretending not to understand something while plainly misrepresenting it. It's gross.




Yeah I'm getting there.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> So to be clear, the proposed approach is to read the body language or tone of the letter, which fails to achieve the goal of assessing the letter's veracity.




See, I want to say yes here, but I feel like you are trying to lead me somewhere with this question. 

So, yeah, that seems to be the case. However, are you thinking of a use of the Insight skill that would work on a letter? 

The only thing I could think of is analyzing word choice, which is frankly subtle enough that I generally don't try and pull that as a DM. 





iserith said:


> I would say in some situations the momentum of the scene is ruined not because of the player's response, but because the DM is stepping outside of his or her role in the game to establish something about the character that is solely in the player's domain to establish. That is so easily avoided it's a wonder why DMs insist on doing this. And it's pretty common in my experience, especially in games where the players are asking to make checks without specifying a goal and/or approach. Because some of the necessary fiction to build the scene is missing, the DM feels the need to fill in the blanks the player left which then sets the stage for potential conflict. I think a better response from the DM is to encourage the player to fill in those blanks him or herself as that is the player's role and responsibility in this game and, eventually, to do that without prompting.




Yeah, except they don't fill it in. 

Maybe they do some of the time, but other players just don't seem to have it in them. They know they want to do something, but they have no idea how to go about doing that. They don't know how to narrate a fail state involving the trap they aren't even sure exists. 

You say this isn't my role, but it kind of is my role in the game. Narrative truth has been portrayed, the player chose an action, they failed at that action, I need to describe how they failed and the consequences thereof. Which means I need to tell the player what went wrong, even if what went wrong was ostensibly something the character did. 





Charlaquin said:


> This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off.




I'm quoting here for convenience, but I'm looking at both of these middle paragraphs.

I don't disagree about wanting as much control over your success as possible, and I agree with preferring success because of well thought out plans instead of chance. I even agree with starting the entire thing based off player actions. 

I just don't see how any of that changes what I described. 

We're going to ignore the "wiping the handle" part for now, because that shuts down the conversation. But, let us say the player wants to study the door for traps, looking but not touching in case they trigger something. Player has stated an action, player has a plan "look for signs of traps, don't touch because touching might set it off". But, that does not change the fact that a roll will be asked for, and I will need to narrate the result of that roll. 

So, are you trying to say that you don't stop telling me what you are doing as a player, until you hit the stage of success? How do you handle a stealth check passed a guard? You can do a classic "throw thing down the other hallway" maneuver, but that let's them know something is up and I'd probably need a roll for doing that without being observed. Just because a plan is clever does not mean it succeeds, and at some point dice will be rolled and I'll have to narrate the results. So, how am I putting the cart before the horse so to speak? 




Charlaquin said:


> The best novels don’t tell you how the characters are feeling, save maybe the POV character. They describe only what can be observed from a 3rd person perspective. When DMing, I try to keep in mind that each PC is the POV character of their player’s story. So I never describe what the characters feel. The players provide that description for themelves (and ideally to themselves, in their own heads). I describe only what they can observe. Its the old “show, don’t tell” adage - don’t tell the players that the dragon is frightening, show them what is frightening about it. Be as evocative as you like in describing the power in its muscles, the malicious intellect in its eyes, the deafening timbre of its voice, the blood stains on its spear-like fangs, the heat of its breath that could turn to hellfire in an instant. Let the players decide for themselves how their characters feel about what you are describing.




Yeah, going to disagree on a few points here. 

There are many excellent novels that do tell you how the characters feel. Describing, even from the third person, how they feel can be great story telling. Even if it is couched in language that you would say is "show don't tell" we use adjectives that clearly "tell" what is going on. Screaming in terror tells us they are terrified, it is right there. 

But also, how lovingly do you want me to describe this thing? You're example has:
1) "the power in its muscles"
2) "the malicious intellect in its eyes"
3) "the deafening timbre of its voice" 
4) "the blood stains on its spear-like fangs"
5) "the heat of its breath that could turn to hellfire in an instant"

different categories of description. And a lot of them are kind of redundant if people know what a dragon is. Intelligent eyes, yeah they know it is smart, strong, yep they know that too, deafening voice, if they are going to hear it I might say it roars and then talk loudly so they know. 

I'm not saying I skimp on the descriptions, but I'm not writing a novel here and sometimes simplicity works best. Quick language, to the point, so we can get on to the action instead of listening to me try and write without a pencil 

I mean think about this, how few oratory arts do we have that follow the same styles as novels. There is a reason for that. 






iserith said:


> From the perspective of a player in D&D 5e, what are some reasons you might _want_ to roll the dice, assuming success for your character is one of your goals? Outside of a fondness for gambling or liking the sound the dice make when they clatter across the table (and inevitably onto the floor), I mean.
> 
> "Use the options chosen during character creation and advancement" is one that is frequently offered, but as has been shown, that's going to happen without asking to roll (sometimes when you desperately _don't_ want to), provided you're the sort of player who is portraying a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils in a world of sword and sorcery.
> 
> So what other reasons might there be?





Interesting question. 

For me there are at least two. The first is because I just don't know. The DM has set up a scenario, and I feel like there is something there I should be able to do, I can even narrow it down to a type of skill, but I just can't think of what the action is I want to perform. You can say all sorts of things about how that would never happen with a good GM, but it has happened to me and so it gets on the list. 

Second big one is meta-knowledge. I'm bad about meta-knowledge sometimes, and there are times when I'll ask to roll to see if my character knows something I know. For example, I have a game in the Forgotten Realms I'm playing in as a Paladin. The DM had a plot involving something with one of the gods, can't remember what, but I knew a lot of lore about that god. So I asked, "Does my character know this or should I roll", because I know but I don't know if my character knows. Happens with monsters a lot too. As a DM, I know a lot of facts about monsters, but I don't know if my character would know those things. 





Another thing, having finally caught up on this thread, and seeing a post that had a point I liked but was too long to quote. 

When a player describes their approach to a problem in my game, it is more than likely their ideal description of what they want to happen. 

If a player describes that they want to climb up to the ceiling and creep along the beams to sneak past the guards, that does not mean that is exactly what happens. If they botch the roll they might slip and fall, or the beam might crack and draw attention, or any number of other things could happen. 

They have described what they want to happen, not what is going to happen. 

Now, sometimes, there is no difference between what they describe and what happens, but there are unforeseen consequences which happen afterwards. And sometimes what they describe happens without a hitch and they get everything they want. 

But, until I am in the scenario and the player tells me what they want, I can't assume anything. I cannot assume if there will or will not be a roll. I cannot assume if I will or will not ask for clarification or more details on what they want. 

I do not standardize my resolutions. 

I've had moments where the local lord is saying how glad they are adventurers have come to aid them in this terrible time, and a player holds up their dice and just says "Insight". I let them roll. I know what they are asking, they are asking if they can tell if this guy is full of it or if they are on the up and up. 

Other times they say "Insight" and I'll ask, "what exactly are you trying to figure out?" because somethings I'll just tell them (Yeah, when the Lord said he was most impressed with all your heroics he was just kissing up) and somethings will need a roll (do they catch that he isn't telling them all he knows of the situation?) 

And sometimes my players will give me more description of how they go about their actions, maybe they don't want to insight the Lord, but they want to see how the serving maid is reacting to what he is saying, and that is a clever idea to see what the people think of the Lord's reaction to the crisis. 

But I don't standardize it. I just do well enough to get by.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ah, now I get it.  Good explanation.
> 
> I was focusing on how DW doesn't predefine a lot of obstacles, with specific actions (or die rolls) required to overcome them.  Heck, it doesn't even predefine the map.  The DM describes the part of the world the characters experience, the players describe how they want to respond, and it doesn't necessarily require invoking a Move to do so.  Furthermore (and the Move you cited is a great example of this) in a lot of cases there is no objective reality to the world until it is described.  To me this is very much in the same spirit as 5e, and contrasts to how I think a lot of people (including myself) played earlier editions of D&D.



This is interesting.

I don't think there's anything contentious in your description of DW! And I tend to approach most RPGs that way because it's my preferred approach (and I avoid RPGs that probably won't work with it) - at the moment I've got active Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, BW, Cortex+ Heroic, Dying Earth and 4e campaigns that use some or other variant on this general approach. (And yes, too many active campaigns relative to time available!)

I think that the way you characterise 5e as being similar might be more contentious (not to say it's _wrong_, but may be not universal), and I'm curious to see what response you might get. For instance,   [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach seems to require the GM establishing key elements of the fiction (like, to stick with the toy example that's been kicked around a bit, the presence o the door knob of the viscous fluid that's a contact poison). I see his approach as, in many ways, quite close to a classic Gygaxian "skilled play" approach. But if I'm in error here I'll await correction!

(For full disclosure, I'm not a 5e guy but I saw this thread was started by   [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], and I'm always interested in S'mon's ideas about RPGing, which is why I dropped into it.)

EDIT: After replying to your (Elfcrusher's) post I saw this post which I think relates to my point. Quoting it isn't meant to be combative or trying to drive any wedges, but rather to try and identify some of these differences in approach which give each table it's own "flavour" of RPGing.



Charlaquin said:


> This is why people are saying you’re mischaracterizing the method. You’re making it sound like if you give any description at all, you can “bypass the check.” When the reality is, a check is called for when the described action would logically have a possibility of success, a possibility of failure, and a consequence for failure. This means checks will commonly be called for in dramatic situations, and rarely be called for otherwise.



The idea of an action _logically_ having a chance of success, or failure, seems to me to require that the in-fiction context already be established at least to some significant degree. 

Whereas in DW, say, the chance of failure is _imposed_ by way of a "metagame" logic: at key moments the system demands a check to find out what happens, and "failure" can be anything from literal un-success to some adverse development that (in ingame causal terms) is unrelated to the action actually performed by the PC, depending on context, details and the GM's imagination and inclinations. And in this sort of way (plus narration forced by successes, too) the fiction is built up out of these chances of success and failure.

And another, further thought: I guess a group could try and play DW so as to avoid making moves as much as possible and try to get the GM to "say 'yes'" instead, but I'm not 100% sure how that would work, and to me it would look like a very atypical and perhaps even degenerate instance of DW play. Whereas I don't think that there's anything degenerate about what [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] describes (and thus, for instance, don't agree with those who say it "devalues" PC build choices).


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## Charlaquin (Apr 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm quoting here for convenience, but I'm looking at both of these middle paragraphs.
> 
> I don't disagree about wanting as much control over your success as possible, and I agree with preferring success because of well thought out plans instead of chance. I even agree with starting the entire thing based off player actions.
> 
> ...



The bolded segment is where we fundamentally disagree. “I look for signs of traps, but don’t touch because touching might set it off” is what determines whether or not a roll is called for. Depending on the nature of the traps, looking without touching may or may not have a chance of succeeding in detecting signs of traps. It may or may not have a chance of failing to do so. It may or may not have a consequence for failing to do so. Unless it does have all three of those things, a roll will not be called for. So, I would argue that I very well might change the fact that a roll is called for. Now, whether a roll is called for or not, I will need to narrate the result, because that is my roll as the DM. But I will only need to take into account the result of a roll if I called for one, and I will only call for one if “I look for signs of traps, but don’t touch because touching might set it off” meets all three of the afformentioned criteria.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, are you trying to say that you don't stop telling me what you are doing as a player, until you hit the stage of success?



No.



Chaosmancer said:


> How do you handle a stealth check passed a guard? You can do a classic "throw thing down the other hallway" maneuver, but that let's them know something is up and I'd probably need a roll for doing that without being observed.



Are you asking how I would adjudicate that action like that as a DM, or for me to describe an approach to sneaking past a guard as a player?



Chaosmancer said:


> Just because a plan is clever does not mean it succeeds,



Indeed, which is why it is the player’s role to say what they want to accomplish and how, and the DM’s role to narrate the result. The player doesn’t say “I throw something down the hall and sneak past the guard while he is distracted,” they say “I try to distract the guard by throwing something down the hall,” or “I throw something down the hall to sistract the guard,” and the DM describes what happens next, potentially asking for a dice roll if they are not certain.



Chaosmancer said:


> and at some point dice will be rolled and I'll have to narrate the results. So, how am I putting the cart before the horse so to speak?



You’re putting the cart before the horse by assuming that at some point dice will be rolled, without first taking into account what the PC is doing. Maybe dice will be rolled. But maybe they won’t need to be. Depends on if the approach has a chance of succeeding in the goal, a chance of failing in the goal, and a consequence for failing in the goal.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, going to disagree on a few points here.
> 
> There are many excellent novels that do tell you how the characters feel. Describing, even from the third person, how they feel can be great story telling. Even if it is couched in language that you would say is "show don't tell" we use adjectives that clearly "tell" what is going on. Screaming in terror tells us they are terrified, it is right there.



[/quote]
We’re going to have to agree to disagree here. I think directly stating what characters other than the POV character are feeling is poor writing. I’d prefer a description of the qualities of the scream that might lead me to conclude that the screamer is terrified. Perhaps “a shrill, trembling scream” or “a strangled squeak that might have began as a scream” or “a scream that could wake the dead.”



Chaosmancer said:


> But also, how lovingly do you want me to describe this thing? You're example has:
> 1) "the power in its muscles"
> 2) "the malicious intellect in its eyes"
> 3) "the deafening timbre of its voice"
> ...



I mean, whatever floats your boat. I don’t tend to go into a ton of detail. I try to limit myself to only narrating a few sentences at once before asking the players what they do, because I find longer than that risks losing their attention. But you can do a lot with a few sentences. Certainly enough to convey “scary Dragon” without saying that the PCs are scared. In fact, you can use the players’ familiatity with dragons to your advantage. They largely know what dragons look like and what about them they find scary or not, so I don’t have to waste any effort painting a picture of it. “The enormous reptilian beast unfurls its batlike wings and lets out a deafening roar; the air feels hot, as if it could ignite at any moment.” It’s not my place to say if your character is afraid of that or not.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> The idea of an action _logically_ having a chance of success, or failure, seems to me to require that the in-fiction context already be established at least to some significant degree.



It absolutely does, yes.



pemerton said:


> Whereas in DW, say, the chance of failure is _imposed_ by way of a "metagame" logic: at key moments the system demands a check to find out what happens, and "failure" can be anything from literal un-success to some adverse development that (in ingame causal terms) is unrelated to the action actually performed by the PC, depending on context, details and the GM's imagination and inclinations. And in this sort of way (plus narration forced by successes, too) the fiction is built up out of these chances of success and failure.



My apologies, I haven’t really been following this particular line of the conversation... why exactly are we talking about Dungeon World, now? Don’t get me wrong, Dungeon World is a pretty cool game, I’d love to DM it some time. But I would t run it the same way I run D&D 5e for exactly this reason - it is not built to work the same way 5e is, its design demands a different approach to DMing (or rather, MCing) than D&D 5e does.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is interesting.
> 
> I don't think there's anything contentious in your description of DW! And I tend to approach most RPGs that way because it's my preferred approach (and I avoid RPGs that probably won't work with it) - at the moment I've got active Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, BW, Cortex+ Heroic, Dying Earth and 4e campaigns that use some or other variant on this general approach. (And yes, too many active campaigns relative to time available!)
> 
> ...




No, I don't disagree with your analysis, either. 

Ok, I just deleted a long post because I thought of a better way to say this: I feel that both DW and 5e assume/require "trust" between GM and players...that is, trust to make choices in the best interest of the story...whereas a previous generation of games tried to (or seemed to try to, imo) minimize the need for trust by emphasizing mechanics over judgment.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> The idea of an action _logically_ having a chance of success, or failure, seems to me to require that the in-fiction context already be established at least to some significant degree.




So here's where I differ, and maybe why I find DW and 5e to be more similar than you do.  I don't always have all the details worked out, and will (invisibly) alter the game world in reaction to my players' actions and ideas.  If a player says, "I look to see if the trap mechanism has a doohickey" I might very well say, "Yes, in fact it DOES have exactly such a doohickey!" even though I hadn't previously considered such a thing. If they have a cool idea for the direction of the story, I want to enable that.

But don't tell my players, ok?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So here's where I differ, and maybe why I find DW and 5e to be more similar than you do.  I don't always have all the details worked out, and will (invisibly) alter the game world in reaction to my players' actions and ideas.  If a player says, "I look to see if the trap mechanism has a doohickey" I might very well say, "Yes, in fact it DOES have exactly such a doohickey!" even though I hadn't previously considered such a thing. If they have a cool idea for the direction of the story, I want to enable that.
> 
> But don't tell my players, ok?



Oh, yeah. I do this too.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think that the way you characterise 5e as being similar might be more contentious (not to say it's _wrong_, but may be not universal), and I'm curious to see what response you might get. For instance,   [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach seems to require the GM establishing key elements of the fiction (like, to stick with the toy example that's been kicked around a bit, the presence o the door knob of the viscous fluid that's a contact poison). I see his approach as, in many ways, quite close to a classic Gygaxian "skilled play" approach. But if I'm in error here I'll await correction!
> 
> (For full disclosure, I'm not a 5e guy but I saw this thread was started by   [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], and I'm always interested in S'mon's ideas about RPGing, which is why I dropped into it.)




I think 5e was deliberately designed to be 'driftable' to all sorts of different play styles, certainly including 1e Gygaxian skilled play, 2e GM-driven plot/railroad, 3e 'deck builder' character optimisation 'lonely fun', 4e combat-centric SKIP TO THE FUN, and even Pemertonian Scene Framing. 

Running Primeval Thule adventures currently - they establish an objective environment, some interesting NPCs, and a little bit of sword & sorcery style Dramatic Premise - "How do we deal with this morally ambiguous/fun-but-evil NPC?" or "What is money worth to you?" type stuff. Ran _Watchers of Meng_ recently and it had a ton of this stuff - but ignorable by a GM who didn't notice or care, I guess. Great adventure, highly recommend it.

Before I started Thule in January I was running Stonehell Dungeon in 5e as a Gygaxian skilled-play megadungeon; it worked OK, but I suspect using OD&D or an OD&D-derived clone would ultimately have suited it better.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> Before I started Thule in January I was running Stonehell Dungeon in 5e as a Gygaxian skilled-play megadungeon; it worked OK, but I suspect using OD&D or an OD&D-derived clone would ultimately have suited it better.



Can you elaborate a bit? Eg is there stuff in 5e that grated a bit? Or is there stuff missing from 5e that classic D&D would bring to the table? Or some other possibility I've missed?


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> why exactly are we talking about Dungeon World, now?



I read a post of  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]s' which it seems I misunderstood, which I took to imply that _wanting dice to be central in action resolution_ is at odds with _trusting the GM_. And I disagreed and mentioned DW as an example of why I disagreed.

That's then what led me to try to identify two ways of making the fiction of action declaration matter, one which is about (potententially) circumventing checks via skilled play, the other (which I associated, at least in broad terms, with DW) which is about providing material from which downstream fiction (whether success or failure, as determined by the dice rolls) can be extrapolated.



Elfcrusher said:


> So here's where I differ, and maybe why I find DW and 5e to be more similar than you do.  I don't always have all the details worked out, and will (invisibly) alter the game world in reaction to my players' actions and ideas.  If a player says, "I look to see if the trap mechanism has a doohickey" I might very well say, "Yes, in fact it DOES have exactly such a doohickey!" even though I hadn't previously considered such a thing. If they have a cool idea for the direction of the story, I want to enable that.
> 
> But don't tell my players, ok?



When I do this - and whether it's just "saying 'yes'" or whether it's the result of a roll - I tend to be very overt.

If it's a case of "saying 'yes'", then it will typically happen in a very relaxed way at the table eg a player might explain that "The imperial communication satellite will retain its data until an X-Boat arrives in the system and broadcasts the release/relay signal" and we all just proceed on that premise because it makes sense of what's gone before, and provides a clearer framing for the checks that are coming than existed beforehand. I think everyone at the table can see that it's that player who is establishing that particular bit of fiction.

If it's a case of making the player make a roll to see if it's the case, then likewise that makes it overt because of the framing of the check.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Can you elaborate a bit? Eg is there stuff in 5e that grated a bit? Or is there stuff missing from 5e that classic D&D would bring to the table? Or some other possibility I've missed?




Well 5e by default relies a lot on skill checks rather than description of interaction with the dungeon environment.
5e combat is a lot slower than pre-3e combat, which limited the amount of exploration per session.
5e does not really encourage 'logistical' play with OD&D features such as a bunch of retainers (who provide social roleplaying opportunities as well as resources), side-based initiative (allowing group-based battle tactics), need to consult with Sages (rather than knowledge skill checks), etc.  It's a lot closer to 3e & 4e with more of a Superhero Team ethos.
Most of my 5e players pretty well refused to map properly, which then limited their knowledge of available exploration routes. 
5e does not do attrition as well as pre-3e.

These were not major problems mind you; nothing like trying to run dungeon exploration campaign in 4e!


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> a bunch of retainers (who provide social roleplaying opportunities as well as resources)



I ran a Dying Earth session a week or so ago, and following that have been re-reading the rulebook (which is my window into Vance - I've never read the actual stories). I get the impression that recalcitrant retainers are a key aspect of the Vancian feel!

Back in my classic D&D days the PCs had retainers, but we found the DMG loyalty rules made it fairly easy to maintain loyalty at 100+, so the issue of recalcitrance didn't really come up.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is interesting.
> 
> I don't think there's anything contentious in your description of DW! And I tend to approach most RPGs that way because it's my preferred approach (and I avoid RPGs that probably won't work with it) - at the moment I've got active Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, BW, Cortex+ Heroic, Dying Earth and 4e campaigns that use some or other variant on this general approach. (And yes, too many active campaigns relative to time available!)
> 
> ...



I am curious, and you are raising some interesting points, so how would the following fit into the differences in what a check means between the two systems - in DW in your viewpoint.

In my games, "search checks" are not handled by 5e "standard" or even by others more word-driven approaches.

If a PC searches a room, I assign a DC based on the situation and circumstances and if they get a success they find stuff that is somehow interesting, adding to the fiction. This approach works a lot like say 5e foraging (success equals you did find stuff) as opposed to its "searching" (success equals that only if there is something hidden or hard to find you find it, but if nothing was noted there, nothing is found. )

Obviously, as in my insight and halfling example, failure can always be some success with setbacks) finding stuff but breaking some of it.

As a result of this approach I have a lot of "interesting stuff of interest" that gets into play solely as consequence of successful checks - not as result of "GM puts this here before we start session - room 2a - in the left desk drawer,"

Old school ways of course are rife with "this room, this corner, blah blah" and cases where if you dont say you search the right spot or look the right way then you dont find blah blah.

I think perhaps some of Ooftas perspectives follows a similar vein of "shroedinger's dungeon" - all the minutiae of a scene is not pre-designated, just enough to illustrate the key parts and the degree of understanding the PCs can get. So, "is freezing an auto-success" is not some pre-determined thing, even pre-determined at the moment... The successful check says " the character found a right way." 

But I could be wrong.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I think 5e was deliberately designed to be 'driftable' to all sorts of different play styles, certainly including 1e Gygaxian skilled play, 2e GM-driven plot/railroad, 3e 'deck builder' character optimisation 'lonely fun', 4e combat-centric SKIP TO THE FUN, and even Pemertonian Scene Framing.
> 
> Running Primeval Thule adventures currently - they establish an objective environment, some interesting NPCs, and a little bit of sword & sorcery style Dramatic Premise - "How do we deal with this morally ambiguous/fun-but-evil NPC?" or "What is money worth to you?" type stuff. Ran _Watchers of Meng_ recently and it had a ton of this stuff - but ignorable by a GM who didn't notice or care, I guess. Great adventure, highly recommend it.
> 
> Before I started Thule in January I was running Stonehell Dungeon in 5e as a Gygaxian skilled-play megadungeon; it worked OK, but I suspect using OD&D or an OD&D-derived clone would ultimately have suited it better.



"Pemertonian Scene Framing. "

Is this trademarked yet?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> Well 5e by default relies a lot on skill checks rather than description of interaction with the dungeon environment.
> 5e combat is a lot slower than pre-3e combat, which limited the amount of exploration per session.
> 5e does not really encourage 'logistical' play with OD&D features such as a bunch of retainers (who provide social roleplaying opportunities as well as resources), side-based initiative (allowing group-based battle tactics), need to consult with Sages (rather than knowledge skill checks), etc.  It's a lot closer to 3e & 4e with more of a Superhero Team ethos.
> Most of my 5e players pretty well refused to map properly, which then limited their knowledge of available exploration routes.
> ...



"Most of my 5e players pretty well refused to map properly, which then limited their knowledge of available exploration routes. "

 Hmm.. one of the things I liked about 5e was the explicit move of mapping to an "in-character" action in the movement and travel, along with navigation. That way it's much more a character-side discovery, govern able by in-character aptitudes and observation, not a mostly or completely player-driven feature.

I can certainly get why newer 5e players would not think the onus of mapping was on the players (or "properly mapping") since it is a defined character action within the rules.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "Pemertonian Scene Framing. "
> 
> Is this trademarked yet?




It's not a registered mark, but I reckon we have Goodwill in it by now (and are both lawyers) so improper use in UK or Australia will result in a Passing Off action.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I can certainly get why newer 5e players would not think the onus of mapping was on the players (or "properly mapping") since it is a defined character action within the rules.




I doubt more than 5% of my players ever noticed that section.
Anyway I did let them retrace steps, but I'm not going to hand out literal maps to them.


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## pemerton (Apr 8, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> In my games, "search checks" are not handled by 5e "standard" or even by others more word-driven approaches.
> 
> If a PC searches a room, I assign a DC based on the situation and circumstances and if they get a success they find stuff that is somehow interesting, adding to the fiction. This approach works a lot like say 5e foraging (success equals you did find stuff) as opposed to its "searching" (success equals that only if there is something hidden or hard to find you find it, but if nothing was noted there, nothing is found. )
> 
> ...



If I've understood you right, I would put this broadly into the DW way of doing things.

Two examples from my own play (neither 5e, but maybe illustrative nevertheless):

(1) In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, the PCs were teleported by a Crypt Thing deep into a dungeon (mechanically, I spent 2d12 from the Doom Pool to end the scene involvingthe Crypt Thing). I saddled each PC with a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication. In due course, I framed an Action Scene which involved the PCs stumbling into a large hall, and one of the Scene Distinctions I provided was Strange Runes. One of the players declared that his PC inspected the runes to discover whether they contained information about the dungeon: mechanically, this meant making a check including the Strange Runes Distinction in his pool, which - when it succeeded - both (i) in the fiction, confirmed that the runes did indeed contain information about the dungeon, and (ii) mechanically removed his PC's Lost in the Dungeon complication.

(2) In my Burning Wheel game, the PCs came to a ruined tower which, in the backstory of one of them, had been the place where he studied magic with his older brother, and had been working on enchanting a nickel-silver mace called The Falcon's Claw. As part of that same backstory, the tower had been assaulted by orcs and the PC's brother, in an attempt to cast a powerful spell to drive off and destroy the orcs, had instead been possessed by a balrog. This was the context for the PC's most important Belief, that _I will redeem my brother from his possession by a balrog_. And this moment of play was the first time the PC in question had returned to the tower since he had left it 14+ years ago as per his backstory. The PC was in the company of another character, an elven ronin who had left his homeland after his master and captain had been killed by an orcish arrow (more backstory), which the character still wore - broken - about his neck, as a token and reminder of his failure (mechanically, the player had payed a small PC creation cost to have that token on his equipment list). When the wizard PC mentioned that he had left The Falcon's Claw, unfinished, in the tower, the elven PC searched for it (using the BW Scavenging skill). I set the DC in accordance with the Scavenging skill descrition (BW has rather elaborate lists of DCs for most of its skills); the check was made and failed. So I declared that The Falcon's Claw was not found (in a subsequent session it turned out to be in the possession of a nemesis NPC who had been hanging around the tower), but that the search did reveal something else - in the ruin's of the older brother's workroom, which the mage PC had never been allowed to enter while a pupil of his brother, was a stand of cursed black arrows like the one that the elf wore around his neck! This was a shocking revelation for both PCs: for the mage, it suggested that his brother was not evil because possessed by a balrog, but rather had been possessed by the balrog because he was already evil; and for the elf, it suggested that rather than aid his companion to redeem his brother, he needed to take revenge on the brother who had made the arrow that had killed his master.​
If I've understood you correctly, then I would expect that you would see my (1) and (2) as similar to what you're talking about (one a success, the other a failure).



5ekyu said:


> I think perhaps some of Ooftas perspectives follows a similar vein of "shroedinger's dungeon" - all the minutiae of a scene is not pre-designated, just enough to illustrate the key parts and the degree of understanding the PCs can get.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But I could be wrong.



I don't get that vibe from [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s posts myself - I get the feeling that Oofta uses a "pre-stocked"/pre-described dungeon.

But I could be wrong too!


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I doubt more than 5% of my players ever noticed that section.
> Anyway I did let them retrace steps, but I'm not going to hand out literal maps to them.



My,players may or may not rrad various rules section, but when i GM and rules and actions become relevant, of course i ask them, sometimes explain and dedcribe things in terms that reflect the chsracter knows this or that.

So, for example, i sometime do show them maps snd sometimes do describe that there charscter can see this or that even of the player themselves does not have that knowledge.

Kinda like still describing an unlit room to a player who's character has dsrkvision but the player does not.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> So, for example, i sometime do show them maps




I sometimes show maps, but it's not practical to have me draw out a map that would resemble a player-drawn map. I assume any PC mapping is abstract this way-that way stuff to mark a route. Not Ordinance Survey.


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## S'mon (Apr 8, 2019)

BTW running Stonehell and other not very detailed OSR dungeons, I will indeed do the Dungeon World thing of giving them non-pre-existing stuff if they search the room and roll high. Eg I'll roll on Stonehell's Dungeon Dressing table, or the 5e PHB Trinkets table.

The assumption is that there is vastly more general junk lying around than is detailed and no one can find everything.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> If I've understood you right, I would put this broadly into the DW way of doing things.
> 
> Two examples from my own play (neither 5e, but maybe illustrative nevertheless):
> 
> ...



Yeah, i dont recall where it was that i first encountered the "success creates" aspect. I know it was detective/mystety based and it was emphasizing that the "check" was not about "finding a clue thats there" but "is this where the clue is". It may have been Screentime, maybe OtE, a lot of my more indie games experiences blur together these days. 

But of course, in 5e, thats pretty much how "forage" plays out. No GM assigns spots for water and food and if you get there you try and find it. More, how,likely is it there and how good is your character and if enough "bam" fiction is added. 

Similar concepts play out in some of their downtime mechanics too. 

But, for some, once a "dungeon" is wrapped around a space, its about what is put there.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I sometimes show maps, but it's not practical to have me draw out a map that would resemble a player-drawn map. I assume any PC mapping is abstract this way-that way stuff to mark a route. Not Ordinance Survey.



I dont get into trying to categorize mapping too much. I figure if a skilled adventurer is mapping, they do at least as good a job as my buddy Sandy the musician does and so if the "players" map would provide clues so would the PCs, if not more.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> BTW running Stonehell and other not very detailed OSR dungeons, I will indeed do the Dungeon World thing of giving them non-pre-existing stuff if they search the room and roll high. Eg I'll roll on Stonehell's Dungeon Dressing table, or the 5e PHB Trinkets table.
> 
> The assumption is that there is vastly more general junk lying around than is detailed and no one can find everything.



Exactly.

Especially if there is chsnces to tie finds to interts of the PCs seeding stuff for later.

But you would be surprised how shocked some folks get at the mention of a GM having a chest pop up in a secret compartment because of an exceptional check sometimes in these forum discussions.


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## Oofta (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> BTW running Stonehell and other not very detailed OSR dungeons, I will indeed do the Dungeon World thing of giving them non-pre-existing stuff if they search the room and roll high. Eg I'll roll on Stonehell's Dungeon Dressing table, or the 5e PHB Trinkets table.
> 
> The assumption is that there is vastly more general junk lying around than is detailed and no one can find everything.





Interesting idea but I'm afraid my inventions may not quite fit the tone of the game.  I'd probably have the group find underoos in Lord Soth's dresser or something similar.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 8, 2019)

S'mon said:


> BTW running Stonehell and other not very detailed OSR dungeons, I will indeed do the Dungeon World thing of giving them non-pre-existing stuff if they search the room and roll high. Eg I'll roll on Stonehell's Dungeon Dressing table, or the 5e PHB Trinkets table.
> 
> The assumption is that there is vastly more general junk lying around than is detailed and no one can find everything.



I’ve started doing that when my players loot the bodies. It’s just always so boring when their fallen foes have nothing on them, or nothing but a handful of copper pieces. So I have some tables of random junk they long find in a downed foe’s pockets.


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## Oofta (Apr 8, 2019)

I seem to be falling flat on my face in expressing what is just my opinion and way of doing things.  What I thought at the time was just light-hearted sarcasm is upsetting people and I get too caught up in the argument/debate at times.

In any case, different people play for different reasons, I make no claim one way or another that my way is better.  If I don't understand something, it's okay. It's difficult at best to really understand other people play style without actually being at the table. In addition, not every DM is going to work for every player.  That's okay.

 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]: I will _allow_ for an insight check on someone telling the truth, in general I won't ask for one.  People only get vague answers for insight checks something like "they seem to be telling the truth" or maybe "they seem to be a bit nervous, but your not sure why".

So I never tell anyone with 100% certainty that someone is lying or telling the truth with an insight check.  It's just a skill, not magic.  Even if an NPC is using deception, the insight check won't be a guarantee more of a feeling that they're hiding something or their unconsciously glancing at someone or something nervously.

I always allow people to ask if they can do any skill check.  I'll only tell them they can't if it should be obvious from the perspective of the PC that it's not possible.  Superman may be able to leap buildings with a single bound, PCs by and large cannot.  But otherwise they're always allowed to try even if it will fail because it reflects the effort.  I don't care if I know the skill check won't alter the outcome.  In the case of the OP it's not obvious from the perspective of the PC that the skill check will always have the same result.

 [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], I pre-map almost nothing.  I'm quite lazy and rarely even pre-draw maps lower than region or maybe a city down to the neighborhood level. I gave up on trying to figure out what my players were going to do ahead of time a long time ago.  So I focus on organizations, conflicts, alliances, general environment and ecology.  But I do set things in place that I think make sense.  If the NPC should have traps, they probably will. Related to that, I almost never use complex traps unless they're powered by magic or maintained by undead/automatons because I find them silly.

While I frequently have multiple ways around obstacles or allow the players to come up with something I didn't think of, describing how you're doing what I deem a skill check is not one of them.  Coming up with a different way to do the skill check (arcana to freeze the trap with Ray of Frost for example) is fine.  Some people indicate that they will allow a good description to bypass just about any obstacle and feel like they were wasting time if it does not.  That's just not my style of play, although they may get advantage on the check or inspiration.

Players are allowed to take 10 on mundane tasks like keeping an eye out for traps so there's never a need to ask for an investigation check every 10 feet.  In the same way, if there is no time pressure and no setback on failure they may get an auto-success if the task is possible.  They may also get an auto-success if their skill is high enough that a 1 succeeds.


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## Bawylie (Apr 8, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Exactly.
> 
> Especially if there is chsnces to tie finds to interts of the PCs seeding stuff for later.
> 
> But you would be surprised how shocked some folks get at the mention of a GM having a chest pop up in a secret compartment because of an exceptional check sometimes in these forum discussions.




Generally I have a list of stuff that I want the players to find for the adventure. That’s the sort of stuff that I end up sneaking in when they search or loot or whatever. Clues, important keys, quest-specific stuff. Must-finds. Often I also keep a list of optional world-buildy secrets and random treasure that I also hold in reserve for schroedinger’s search. May-finds. But it’s not just search, sometimes that stuff gets in other ways too. 

Same goes for encounters. I’ve got an adventure’s “random” encounters sort of built out. 3 or so that draw from the roster of baddies in the adventure. And 3 or so more that are from the “something happens” list I make for the adventure. These events are generally related/connected. I’ll generally alternate between lists when a random encounter is appropriate.


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## iserith (Apr 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> See, I want to say yes here, but I feel like you are trying to lead me somewhere with this question.
> 
> So, yeah, that seems to be the case. However, are you thinking of a use of the Insight skill that would work on a letter?
> 
> The only thing I could think of is analyzing word choice, which is frankly subtle enough that I generally don't try and pull that as a DM.




I know I was not leading you anywhere when I wrote this question, but unfortunately so many posts have been made since the one you're quoting that I cannot easily go back and reference it to see what this was about. As I have blocked some posters and been blocked by others, the forum bugs out when trying to click any links in the quote to go back to that post. The result is I don't recall what this was about and can't go back to look, sorry.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, except they don't fill it in.
> 
> Maybe they do some of the time, but other players just don't seem to have it in them. They know they want to do something, but they have no idea how to go about doing that. They don't know how to narrate a fail state involving the trap they aren't even sure exists.
> 
> You say this isn't my role, but it kind of is my role in the game. Narrative truth has been portrayed, the player chose an action, they failed at that action, I need to describe how they failed and the consequences thereof. Which means I need to tell the player what went wrong, even if what went wrong was ostensibly something the character did.




Barring some kind of inescapable personal hardship or challenge the player has, I think it's okay to expect and ask for players to fulfill their role and responsibility in the game. The DM should absolutely perform his or her role to narrate the result of the adventurers' actions - from the perspective of the environment. But stringing together enough words to describe what the character is doing and hopes to achieve is absolutely the player's role and responsibility. We have a shared goal in this game and each person plays a part. If the players are falling down on the job, they need to do better and rise to the occasion in my view. The only way to get better at something is to actually do it. A DM who performs the players' role for them is in no way helping those players or the game for that matter.



Chaosmancer said:


> Interesting question.
> 
> For me there are at least two. The first is because I just don't know. The DM has set up a scenario, and I feel like there is something there I should be able to do, I can even narrow it down to a type of skill, but I just can't think of what the action is I want to perform. You can say all sorts of things about how that would never happen with a good GM, but it has happened to me and so it gets on the list.




I'm not sure what you mean here. How could you be aware enough to know a skill proficiency is applicable, but not aware enough to describe the application of said skill proficiency in the context of the scenario? Has the DM not adequately described the environment such that you have enough context to act? That doesn't seem the case since you say you can imagine a skill proficiency being applied. An example may be useful here if you have one.



Chaosmancer said:


> Second big one is meta-knowledge. I'm bad about meta-knowledge sometimes, and there are times when I'll ask to roll to see if my character knows something I know. For example, I have a game in the Forgotten Realms I'm playing in as a Paladin. The DM had a plot involving something with one of the gods, can't remember what, but I knew a lot of lore about that god. So I asked, "Does my character know this or should I roll", because I know but I don't know if my character knows. Happens with monsters a lot too. As a DM, I know a lot of facts about monsters, but I don't know if my character would know those things.




The player determines what a character thinks. If you say your character thinks certain things about a god or a monster (or anything else), then that's what he or she thinks. No DM can gainsay you on this point, given the rules of this game. However, you know what they say about assuming. It is a good idea to verify your assumptions before you act upon them since the DM may have changed the lore on the god or the stat block on the monster. So an attempt to recall useful lore or deduce helpful information from available clues would be a good way to verify your assumptions before acting on them and potentially being roundly disappointed or even killed! Recalling lore or deducing information from available clues does not require a player to ask to make an ability check, just state a goal and approach as normal.


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## iserith (Apr 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I’ve started doing that when my players loot the bodies. It’s just always so boring when their fallen foes have nothing on them, or nothing but a handful of copper pieces. So I have some tables of random junk they long find in a downed foe’s pockets.




I set the expectation in many D&D 5e campaigns that if you want loot, in general you need to explore for it - exploration challenges net you gold and magic items. Social interaction and combat challenges get you XP.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> The bolded segment is where we fundamentally disagree. “I look for signs of traps, but don’t touch because touching might set it off” is what determines whether or not a roll is called for. Depending on the nature of the traps, looking without touching may or may not have a chance of succeeding in detecting signs of traps. It may or may not have a chance of failing to do so. It may or may not have a consequence for failing to do so. Unless it does have all three of those things, a roll will not be called for. So, I would argue that I very well might change the fact that a roll is called for. Now, whether a roll is called for or not, I will need to narrate the result, because that is my roll as the DM. But I will only need to take into account the result of a roll if I called for one, and I will only call for one if “I look for signs of traps, but don’t touch because touching might set it off” meets all three of the afformentioned criteria.




May or may not have a chance of succeeding
May or may not have a chance of failing
May or may not have consequences

And you need all three? First, my pendantry side wants to point out that one and two are the exact same thing. If something has a chance at success, by definition it has a chance of failure. 

So, let us look to consequences. This gets muddy. 

See, the consequence of failing to know something is to not know it. Something might happen because you do not know something, but that is not a direct consequence of the failed roll, the consequence of the failed roll is not having access to the knowledge. 

Now, this only applies if the knowledge is useful. Knowing why the Lady's heraldry contains a rose with five petals may or may not be useful, depending on the campaign. But, if it is useful, and a player asks to roll knowledge on that family's history. Well, they may or may not know the story, but the only consequence of failure is not having potentially useful information. 

Is that lack of information enough of a consequence for you to call for a roll? Maybe, I can't say. But, is giving them useful information with no roll, just because a failed roll only means they don't know make sense either? 


It isn't that I don't use this philosophy from time to time. If a group wants to break down a door, and there is no time limit or major consequence to them breaking down the door, then they will not fail at breaking down the door eventually. The roll does tell me how long it took though, and the players might not know there is no consequence to their roll, so we might roll and a low number just means they struggle through it, but eventually succeed. After all, there is no point in having them keep rolling until they succeed, but that doesn't mean that I need specific consequences in mind for every roll either. 




Charlaquin said:


> Are you asking how I would adjudicate that action like that as a DM, or for me to describe an approach to sneaking past a guard as a player?




I think I'm curious about your approach as a player. Somehow, there seems to be a problem with how rolls are handled at some of our tables, and people keep insisting that they describe actions so fully that there is no chance of failure. 

That somehow, given the scenario, a player can describe their actions in such detail that no roll is needed, because no failure is possible. And not in rare cases, such as wiping a poisoned handle and discovering a poison oil, but that it is more common for them to have scenarios that cannot possibly fail instead of ones that are uncertain. 

How? 



Charlaquin said:


> You’re putting the cart before the horse by assuming that at some point dice will be rolled, without first taking into account what the PC is doing. Maybe dice will be rolled. But maybe they won’t need to be. Depends on if the approach has a chance of succeeding in the goal, a chance of failing in the goal, and a consequence for failing in the goal.




So my only flaw in my approach is assuming there will be more uncertainty than certainty? That, in a discussion about how to handle skills, I am assuming that the dice will be rolled and a skill used instead of assuming that the approach given to me will be so certain of victory that no roll is needed? 

That isn't putting the cart before the horse, that is splitting hairs. 




Charlaquin said:


> We’re going to have to agree to disagree here. I think directly stating what characters other than the POV character are feeling is poor writing. I’d prefer a description of the qualities of the scream that might lead me to conclude that the screamer is terrified. Perhaps “a shrill, trembling scream” or “a strangled squeak that might have began as a scream” or “a scream that could wake the dead.”




Yeah, agree to disagree. I've seen a lot of novels get so verbose in trying to describe things that it takes away from the narrative. The fact that the lady was frightened isn't important enough to spend more words on, how people react and the events that unfold are far more important and if you have every emotional reaction take 7-10 words it is likely to get bogged down. 





iserith said:


> I know I was not leading you anywhere when I wrote this question, but unfortunately so many posts have been made since the one you're quoting that I cannot easily go back and reference it to see what this was about. As I have blocked some posters and been blocked by others, the forum bugs out when trying to click any links in the quote to go back to that post. The result is I don't recall what this was about and can't go back to look, sorry.




Yeah, I have problems catching where things are as well. Takes me a few minutes of scrolling to find my last post and just go from there. 

This particular thing was about Insighting written letters, if that jogs your memory. 




iserith said:


> Barring some kind of inescapable personal hardship or challenge the player has, I think it's okay to expect and ask for players to fulfill their role and responsibility in the game. The DM should absolutely perform his or her role to narrate the result of the adventurers' actions - from the perspective of the environment. But stringing together enough words to describe what the character is doing and hopes to achieve is absolutely the player's role and responsibility. We have a shared goal in this game and each person plays a part. If the players are falling down on the job, they need to do better and rise to the occasion in my view. The only way to get better at something is to actually do it. A DM who performs the players' role for them is in no way helping those players or the game for that matter.




I'm not going to disagree exactly, but I'm also not their babysitter. Sometimes I don't feel like devoting 2 to 4 minutes slowly walking them through the exercise of coming up with a plan, especially since that invites other players to chime in with what they would do and end up just running those actions for that player. 

It's never ideal, but I also don't have this strict line in the sand about "player responsibility" and "GM responsibility" that some of you seem to have, so it doesn't really bother me overly much, beyond wishing for better players. 



iserith said:


> I'm not sure what you mean here. How could you be aware enough to know a skill proficiency is applicable, but not aware enough to describe the application of said skill proficiency in the context of the scenario? Has the DM not adequately described the environment such that you have enough context to act? That doesn't seem the case since you say you can imagine a skill proficiency being applied. An example may be useful here if you have one.




Ugh, I wish I could think of a really good example of this. 

It mostly happens when I'm tired, or having an off day, so part of that is on me. And rarely any of the physical skills, those have clear actions behind them that I can picture. 

Insight and Investigation stuff? Knowledge checks? It happens when I know the DM is hinting at something, something that should be obvious, but I'm just not seeing it or understanding the significance of it. And I can usually narrow it down to 2 or 3 skills, and I ask if I could roll one of the list to see if I can break past whatever it is I'm not getting. 




iserith said:


> The player determines what a character thinks. If you say your character thinks certain things about a god or a monster (or anything else), then that's what he or she thinks. No DM can gainsay you on this point, given the rules of this game. However, you know what they say about assuming. It is a good idea to verify your assumptions before you act upon them since the DM may have changed the lore on the god or the stat block on the monster. So an attempt to recall useful lore or deduce helpful information from available clues would be a good way to verify your assumptions before acting on them and potentially being roundly disappointed or even killed! Recalling lore or deducing information from available clues does not require a player to ask to make an ability check, just state a goal and approach as normal.




Very few people I play under bother homebrewing monsters to the point that I'd be remiss in making assumptions. 

But there are two things I'm seeing here. 

1) How is asking to recall lore not a asking to roll a check? Sure, I, as a DM, have sometimes told people after asking that there is no need to roll, because it makes perfect sense they would know the thing, but it is the same question. I don't imagine most DM's would be much more or less likely to give you the information if you prettied up your question by asking "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" versus "Can I roll Arcana to see if my character knows what a Black Pudding is?" 

You are talking about a portion of a percentage difference I think, and that isn't enough to raise a fuss over. 

2) Assuming my character can know everything I know about a world and setting is a dangerous thing. I know A LOT more than most of the people who DM for me, and most of the other players. Usually, they don't mind me acting on my knowledge, but it is polite for me to ask them and get their permission. Even if it is only to assure them on some level that their plans weren't too simplistic, it was simply that I, as a player, know far too much about the game and how it works.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> So, let us look to consequences. This gets muddy.
> 
> See, the consequence of failing to know something is to not know it. Something might happen because you do not know something, but that is not a direct consequence of the failed roll, the consequence of the failed roll is not having access to the knowledge.
> 
> ...




That was a really long post, but I'm only going to address the above.

When some of us talk about consequences we mean, pretty much by definition "consequences worse than having done nothing at all."  In other words: risk.

The consequences you are talking about (not knowing the information) are the same whether you fail or don't try, so that's not really a consequence.

And the reason (or one of the reasons) consequences are important is because you...or we, anyway...want rolling dice to be a last resort.  When you can't solve the problem, you put yourself in the hands of fate.

Example consequences:
 - If you fail at finding a trap, it goes off (or perhaps you end up holding the trigger down and are stuck; something of that nature)
 - If you fail at disarming a trap, it goes off and you have disadvantage on the saving throw
 - If you fail at "lie detection" (whoo boy) the subject knows you don't believe them.  Or maybe you get information that's 100% opposite of the truth.
 - If you fail at jumping the chasm...well, that one is self explanatory
 - If you fail at picking pockets, the subject catches you
- If you fail at tracking quarry, you end up following the wrong spoor and wasting time.  Or worse.

Actually, let me expand on that last one.  This isn't, "We will try to track the orcs."  "Okay roll."  It's more like: "We will try to track the orcs."  "Ok, you follow them for about an hour, until you get to a place that the tracks are muddled, and some go west toward a hill and some go north toward the river valley. What do you do?"  "Ummm...jeez I guess I'l just try to figure out which set of tracks looks like it might have a female human among them. I'm proficient in Survival..."  "Ok, I'm going to need a Survival roll, then."

In all of those cases the consequence of failure leaves you in a worse state than before the roll.  Which, besides encouraging solutions that don't require rolls, also limits "can I roll too?" syndrome.

*Standard Disclaimer*
I'm not saying you have to play this way, or that if you don't you are having badwrongfun.  Just trying to explain what some of us mean when we talk about meaningful consequences for failure, and the game state changing after a roll.


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## pemerton (Apr 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> the consequence of failing to know something is to not know it. Something might happen because you do not know something, but that is not a direct consequence of the failed roll, the consequence of the failed roll is not having access to the knowledge.



To add to what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] already said: the consequences for failing a knowledge/lore roll can be the same sort of thing as failing a search roll, namely, the character confirms the truth of something that s/he'd rather be false. (See eg my post not far upthread where I talk about the PC learning that his brother was evil _before_ being possessed by a balrog.)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> May or may not have a chance of succeeding
> May or may not have a chance of failing
> May or may not have consequences
> 
> And you need all three? First, my pendantry side wants to point out that one and two are the exact same thing. If something has a chance at success, by definition it has a chance of failure.



As long a we’re being pedantic, a 100% chance of success is, by definition, a chance of success. Pedantry aside, I do not call for a roll when the action could not succeed in bringing about the goal, nor when the action could not fail to bring about the goal.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, let us look to consequences. This gets muddy.
> 
> See, the consequence of failing to know something is to not know it. Something might happen because you do not know something, but that is not a direct consequence of the failed roll, the consequence of the failed roll is not having access to the knowledge.
> 
> ...



No. It is not a direct consequence of failing.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, is giving them useful information with no roll, just because a failed roll only means they don't know make sense either?



Yes. Provided the player has a reasonable approach to the goal of obtaining the information in question, then they gain it.



Chaosmancer said:


> It isn't that I don't use this philosophy from time to time. If a group wants to break down a door, and there is no time limit or major consequence to them breaking down the door, then they will not fail at breaking down the door eventually. The roll does tell me how long it took though, and the players might not know there is no consequence to their roll, so we might roll and a low number just means they struggle through it, but eventually succeed. After all, there is no point in having them keep rolling until they succeed, but that doesn't mean that I need specific consequences in mind for every roll either.



If how long it took them to get through the door matters, then the time it takes is the consequence of failure. If it doesn’t matter, why bother rolling the die to find out how long it took?



Chaosmancer said:


> I think I'm curious about your approach as a player. Somehow, there seems to be a problem with how rolls are handled at some of our tables, and people keep insisting that they describe actions so fully that there is no chance of failure.
> 
> That somehow, given the scenario, a player can describe their actions in such detail that no roll is needed, because no failure is possible. And not in rare cases, such as wiping a poisoned handle and discovering a poison oil, but that it is more common for them to have scenarios that cannot possibly fail instead of ones that are uncertain.
> 
> How?



Detailed description isn’t the key to eliminating the possibility of failure. Choosing the right approach to accomplish your goal is. If my goal is to open an unlocked door, and my approach is to turn the handle and pull it open, there’s no possibility of failure and therefore no roll. If my approach is to yell at it to open, there is no possibility of success and therefore no roll. If my approach is to smash it with a warhammer, there is a possibility of success, and a possibility of failure, but if there is no time constraint there is no consequence for failure so we skip the roll and say I eventually succeed. If time is constrained, then and only then do we roll to see how long it takes.



Chaosmancer said:


> So my only flaw in my approach is assuming there will be more uncertainty than certainty? That, in a discussion about how to handle skills, I am assuming that the dice will be rolled and a skill used instead of assuming that the approach given to me will be so certain of victory that no roll is needed?
> 
> That isn't putting the cart before the horse, that is splitting hairs.



No. The flaw in your approach is in deciding that your obstacle _must_ be resolved by way of a check, and closed yourself off to other possibilities. You’re treating checks as things that exist in their own right, instead of as the means by which you determine the success or failure of actions with uncertain outcomes.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Apr 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> May or may not have a chance of succeeding
> May or may not have a chance of failing
> May or may not have consequences
> 
> And you need all three? First, my pendantry side wants to point out that one and two are the exact same thing. If something has a chance at success, by definition it has a chance of failure.



Well, to be properly pedantic, no, a chance for success does not mean there's a chance for failure, nor vice versa.  If the chance for success is 100%, the chance for failure is 0%.  So, then, there's a range between no chance for failure (100% success), a chance for success AND a chance for failure, and no chance of success (100% failure).  While what you're responding to is a bit wordy and a tad clunky, it's very accurate that the style calls for a chance of success between (but not inclusive) 100% and 0% and a corresponding chance for failure.

Ergo, all three are, indeed, required.  [/pedant]



> So, let us look to consequences. This gets muddy.
> 
> See, the consequence of failing to know something is to not know it. Something might happen because you do not know something, but that is not a direct consequence of the failed roll, the consequence of the failed roll is not having access to the knowledge.
> 
> ...



No, that's not a consequence, it's _no change_.  Before I failed, I didn't know and after I failed I also didn't know.  No change.  No change isn't really a consequence, it's just maintenance.

Consequence means there's actually a cost to failure.  Your proposition has no cost for failure, just no gain.




> It isn't that I don't use this philosophy from time to time. If a group wants to break down a door, and there is no time limit or major consequence to them breaking down the door, then they will not fail at breaking down the door eventually. The roll does tell me how long it took though, and the players might not know there is no consequence to their roll, so we might roll and a low number just means they struggle through it, but eventually succeed. After all, there is no point in having them keep rolling until they succeed, but that doesn't mean that I need specific consequences in mind for every roll either.




And, this is fine.  I have plenty of stuff that is important, though, so I'm not going to spend time on things that don't.  If there's no consequence for failure, then it's not important (in my game, natch).  I find there's plenty of uncertainty in the game without me needing to make rolls to add more uncertainty.

Or, in another way, a door that only serves as device to increase player uncertainty just will not exist in my game.  This is a strong preference I have -- my gaming time is limited and precious and I'd rather not use it in this way.

This also has little to do with goal and approach, except that such a method helps by already moving past anything like this I do accidentally include with a minimum of fuss.




> I think I'm curious about your approach as a player. Somehow, there seems to be a problem with how rolls are handled at some of our tables, and people keep insisting that they describe actions so fully that there is no chance of failure.
> 
> That somehow, given the scenario, a player can describe their actions in such detail that no roll is needed, because no failure is possible. And not in rare cases, such as wiping a poisoned handle and discovering a poison oil, but that it is more common for them to have scenarios that cannot possibly fail instead of ones that are uncertain.
> 
> How?



Detail is a red herring, here.  It's the approach that matters, not the details of the approach.  How much detail you add to carefully licking the doorknob clean won't result in an autosuccess, ever (unless, maybe, you're immune to poison?).  On the other hand, being skilled at poisoner's tools and wiping off the contact poison may very well result in autosuccess.  Don't make the mistake that we're looking for a long, detailed explanation for anything done -- that sounds horribly boring. 



> So my only flaw in my approach is assuming there will be more uncertainty than certainty? That, in a discussion about how to handle skills, I am assuming that the dice will be rolled and a skill used instead of assuming that the approach given to me will be so certain of victory that no roll is needed?
> 
> That isn't putting the cart before the horse, that is splitting hairs.



Yes, you are, and no, it's not.  The game revolves around actions, not skill checks.  Skill checks are used when an action is uncertain and there's a cost of failure.  You don't call for a skill check when a player declares their character walks across a room, do you?  Is this a case where hairs have been split because there should be a roll?

In other words, I say that a discussion about how to handle skills has placed the cart before the horse because we do not yet know how we handle actions.  Skills come after we get a handle on actions.





> Yeah, agree to disagree. I've seen a lot of novels get so verbose in trying to describe things that it takes away from the narrative. The fact that the lady was frightened isn't important enough to spend more words on, how people react and the events that unfold are far more important and if you have every emotional reaction take 7-10 words it is likely to get bogged down.




I think there's a bit of an excluded middle here (things can be more verbose than 'You're scared of the dragon' and less verbose than a novel with flowery descriptions, after all).  Still, it's a fair point and entirely a preference in play.  I find myself using such descriptive  shortcuts on occasion, and I'm pretty big about not telling a player what they think.  My players know it's descriptive and they're free to have their characters react however they want.



> Ugh, I wish I could think of a really good example of this.
> 
> It mostly happens when I'm tired, or having an off day, so part of that is on me. And rarely any of the physical skills, those have clear actions behind them that I can picture.
> 
> Insight and Investigation stuff? Knowledge checks? It happens when I know the DM is hinting at something, something that should be obvious, but I'm just not seeing it or understanding the significance of it. And I can usually narrow it down to 2 or 3 skills, and I ask if I could roll one of the list to see if I can break past whatever it is I'm not getting.




This is where I'll harp on my hobby horse of not hiding the game.  There's always going to be information disparity between the GM and the players in any game where the GM has secret stuff the players are trying to learn (what's in the next room, what the Duke is up to, did this shopkeep steal his own jewels, etc.).  This is because the GM already knows the secret and is trying to get the players to learn it in a fun way.  Because of this, GMs tend to create mysteries that depend on the players not knowing stuff, and then err on the side of hiding too much information.  This is what leads to players spamming knowledge skills or investigation and perception checks to try to convince the GM to give up this hidden information via a high roll.  In reality, these checks aren't doing anything in the fiction except convincing the GM to drop the next bit of hidden information.  I say, don't do this as a GM.  Make your mysteries based not on hiding information from the players, but instead on what will the players do once they learn the information.  Then the GM's motivation isn't to hide information because getting it gives away the game, so to speak, but instead get the information to the players clearly so that the game of what they do with it can be played.

If my players are asking for these things (or fishing for them with action declarations), then I take that as me not doing a good job presenting the world to the players.  This doesn't mean I don't expect my players to have to do things to learn things, just that such events are clear that they need to do something and with enough detail they can readily form an approach to how they want to do it.



> Very few people I play under bother homebrewing monsters to the point that I'd be remiss in making assumptions.



Well, that seems to benefit you.



> But there are two things I'm seeing here.
> 
> 1) How is asking to recall lore not a asking to roll a check? Sure, I, as a DM, have sometimes told people after asking that there is no need to roll, because it makes perfect sense they would know the thing, but it is the same question. I don't imagine most DM's would be much more or less likely to give you the information if you prettied up your question by asking "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" versus "Can I roll Arcana to see if my character knows what a Black Pudding is?"




I agree with this analysis (surprise!).  I hate the "knowledge" mechanic of D&D.  There's no real consequence I could possibly level at this to justify a check under my preferred method (actions cause changes to the fiction on success and failure) outside of telling the player, that knows they just rolled poorly, that they know a wrong thing.  Ew.

I'm pretty sure [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] just ignores this problem and uses knowledge checks as kinda freebies that don't have a consequence outside of not confirming your suspicions (or gaining new knowledge).  As I've said, I strongly dislike this.  So, I avoid it -- poorly.  I tend to provide information based on proficiency and backgrounds for free.  You see an X, and are proficient in that thing or have experience in an area, well, you know stuff about it -- here's some game stats.  Again, I don't use hidden information as the point of an encounter -- my players can know everything about all of the badguys and the encounter will still be fun because I don't care to play gotcha with abilities.  In fact, I dislike this as a player, so I avoid it as a GM.

This still leaves the knowledge skills in a weird place.  So, I use them in the exploration pillar.  You have religion?  That's awesome for figuring out a ritual or ceremony detail that can help you do something.  A recent example was a sarcophagus with a detailed carving around it in a a language none of the players could read.  The Wizard reached for his Comprehend Languages ritual, but the Grave cleric tried to decipher what the carvings might mean based on her experience as a Grave cleric.  She rolled poorly on her religion check, and so accidentally triggered a curse that resulted in the occupants of the sarcophagus animating as mummies.  On a success, she would have discovered that those in the sarcophagus were sealed in to protect against a cursed axe found in the sacrophagus (a beserker axe).  As it was, the party didn't get this information and the dwarven barbarian attuned to it.  Later fun was had!  



> 2) Assuming my character can know everything I know about a world and setting is a dangerous thing. I know A LOT more than most of the people who DM for me, and most of the other players. Usually, they don't mind me acting on my knowledge, but it is polite for me to ask them and get their permission. Even if it is only to assure them on some level that their plans weren't too simplistic, it was simply that I, as a player, know far too much about the game and how it works.



This would be a very poor assumption in my games.  I freely reskin and repurpose creatures to fit themes, so assuming that you know something would be a poor choice.  Of course, I'll probably just tell you anyway, so... eh?


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## iserith (Apr 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, I have problems catching where things are as well. Takes me a few minutes of scrolling to find my last post and just go from there.
> 
> This particular thing was about Insighting written letters, if that jogs your memory.




I'm sorry, it does not. We can leave it there if that's alright. It didn't seem like a major point anyway. Please feel free to dredge it up again if we find the thread.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not going to disagree exactly, but I'm also not their babysitter. Sometimes I don't feel like devoting 2 to 4 minutes slowly walking them through the exercise of coming up with a plan, especially since that invites other players to chime in with what they would do and end up just running those actions for that player.
> 
> It's never ideal, but I also don't have this strict line in the sand about "player responsibility" and "GM responsibility" that some of you seem to have, so it doesn't really bother me overly much, beyond wishing for better players.




To me it's kind of like playing Monopoly and a player in that game refusing to roll the dice or pay rent when they land on the property belonging to another player. I'm sorry, but you have to roll the dice and pay rent when the rules say you have to do that. Otherwise, you're effectively refusing to play the game. Sure, I can reach over and roll the dice for you and move your token around the board and sort through your cash and pay rent when you need to. But why are you even here?

Same for describing what you want to do as a player in D&D 5e. If you can't even do that, why are you here?



Chaosmancer said:


> Ugh, I wish I could think of a really good example of this.
> 
> It mostly happens when I'm tired, or having an off day, so part of that is on me. And rarely any of the physical skills, those have clear actions behind them that I can picture.
> 
> Insight and Investigation stuff? Knowledge checks? It happens when I know the DM is hinting at something, something that should be obvious, but I'm just not seeing it or understanding the significance of it. And I can usually narrow it down to 2 or 3 skills, and I ask if I could roll one of the list to see if I can break past whatever it is I'm not getting.




Yeah, I dunno, obvious stuff should just be described by the DM in my view. Many DMs hide information like it's critical to the play experience when it frequently just hurts it. The usual shtick is to gate it behind a roll, even if the information is critical to moving the plot forward. Stupid, in my view. Why put the game's forward momentum at stake? (This isn't an endorsement of event-based or plot-based adventures which I find problematic in D&D 5e, mind you.)



Chaosmancer said:


> Very few people I play under bother homebrewing monsters to the point that I'd be remiss in making assumptions.




That's the DM's problem in my view and why "metagaming" is the DM's fault almost all of the time. If they want not knowing something to be part of the difficulty of the challenge, he or she needs to do that without demanding the player act as if they don't know something they do know.



Chaosmancer said:


> But there are two things I'm seeing here.
> 
> 1) How is asking to recall lore not a asking to roll a check? Sure, I, as a DM, have sometimes told people after asking that there is no need to roll, because it makes perfect sense they would know the thing, but it is the same question. I don't imagine most DM's would be much more or less likely to give you the information if you prettied up your question by asking "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" versus "Can I roll Arcana to see if my character knows what a Black Pudding is?"
> 
> You are talking about a portion of a percentage difference I think, and that isn't enough to raise a fuss over.




An ability check is not a task. It's a mechanic used to resolve the outcome of a task, when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure. "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" is not a task either, and likely to get an answer like "I don't know, does he/she?" in my game. Contrast with "I draw upon my experience as a sage to recall what I may know about black puddings, having read about such things in the world's greatest libraries." Now we're getting somewhere. The DM can decide, based on that description, whether the character succeeds automatically, fails automatically, or whether an ability check is called for. An added benefit is that in some cases we learn something interesting about the character's background.



Chaosmancer said:


> 2) Assuming my character can know everything I know about a world and setting is a dangerous thing. I know A LOT more than most of the people who DM for me, and most of the other players. Usually, they don't mind me acting on my knowledge, but it is polite for me to ask them and get their permission. Even if it is only to assure them on some level that their plans weren't too simplistic, it was simply that I, as a player, know far too much about the game and how it works.




It's certainly a good idea to tell a DM that you know a lot of stuff about the campaign, adventure, etc., but I don't think it's a good policy to have players act as if they don't know a thing. The DM can change that easily enough if the difficulty of the challenge will be greatly impacted by a player's knowledge.


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## iserith (Apr 9, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm pretty sure @_*iserith*_ just ignores this problem and uses knowledge checks as kinda freebies that don't have a consequence outside of not confirming your suspicions (or gaining new knowledge).




The way I handle this is something vaguely like progress with a setback - you get some knowledge, but it's not as good as if you had succeeded. So if you stated you wanted to recall information on a monster's weaknesses and I called for a check that you botched, then I'll give you some information that's interesting, but not exactly what you wanted. In practice, a player is usually trying to get info off the stat block on a success since they are or are about to fight the thing and want to know how to hurt it or avoid its hurts. On a fail, I'll give the player information from the "fluff" text which may be interesting and possibly actionable, but often not as useful, at least not right away.


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## S'mon (Apr 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> Barring some kind of inescapable personal hardship or challenge the player has, I think it's okay to expect and ask for players to fulfill their role and responsibility in the game. The DM should absolutely perform his or her role to narrate the result of the adventurers' actions - from the perspective of the environment. But stringing together enough words to describe what the character is doing and hopes to achieve is absolutely the player's role and responsibility. We have a shared goal in this game and each person plays a part. If the players are falling down on the job, they need to do better and rise to the occasion in my view. The only way to get better at something is to actually do it. A DM who performs the players' role for them is in no way helping those players or the game for that matter.




I so very much agree with this. It's the player's job to say what their PC is doing, at least in general terms - and different levels of abstraction are appropriate to different parts of play. Occasionally a player seems to treat it like a video game with the GM as their flesh-server. Not good.


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## pemerton (Apr 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> How is asking to recall lore not a asking to roll a check? Sure, I, as a DM, have sometimes told people after asking that there is no need to roll, because it makes perfect sense they would know the thing, but it is the same question.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Assuming my character can know everything I know about a world and setting is a dangerous thing. I know A LOT more than most of the people who DM for me, and most of the other players. Usually, they don't mind me acting on my knowledge, but it is polite for me to ask them and get their permission. Even if it is only to assure them on some level that their plans weren't too simplistic, it was simply that I, as a player, know far too much about the game and how it works.



This brings out different approaches to establishing and using the setting background and details.

Generally in my games the setting is rather loosely established at the start of play, and gets filled in by the players and GM as we go along. Often a player doesn't need to make a check to attribute some knowledge to his/her PC: s/he just does it. When a check is required because the stakes are significant, then generally what is at stake is whether the truth is X (which is what the player and PC are hoping) or Y (which is something that tends to dash those hopes).

In my Classic Traveller game I also sometimes use Education checks to help establish framing. An example to show what I mean by this is the following: the PCs were intercepting some coded signals between a surface base and a satellite, and recognised the code as an Imperial Navy one. (I can't now remember how that part of the fiction was established.) Two of the PCs are former Imperial Navy crew members, and so I allowed an EDU roll to see if they knew the code; neither did. This meant that the players had to declare their actions ignorant of what was in the transmissions (although from context they could make some guesses). Had the checks succeeded then I would have had to make up the precise details of the messages (doing my own extrapolation from context) and that would then have been an element in the framing of the situation. Succeeding or failing on the EDU check doesn't make things any easier or harder, but changes the flavour of the ingame situation. I see that as one manifestation of the role of dice rolls in Traveller!

But I wouldn't use this approach in (say) 4e D&D. An attempt to decode a message would be a move in a skill challenge, and so a player-declared action which (if it fails) would produce an adverse development in the fiction.

Given 5e's "big tent" aspirations, I would expect there to be different approaches taken at different tables to how setting and details are established, whether lore checks feed into this or rather take it as input, whether provision of information is part of framing or an affirmative advantage, etc.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 9, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This brings out different approaches to establishing and using the setting background and details.
> 
> Generally in my games the setting is rather loosely established at the start of play, and gets filled in by the players and GM as we go along. Often a player doesn't need to make a check to attribute some knowledge to his/her PC: s/he just does it. When a check is required because the stakes are significant, then generally what is at stake is whether the truth is X (which is what the player and PC are hoping) or Y (which is something that tends to dash those hopes).
> 
> ...



Given that old school travellers had a significant investment into rolling up sub sectors or systems on the fly as you entered them, having the check determine the player gets to decide the nature of the coded messages or even really if they matter seems very plausible as far as fitting that game. Many find memories of games ran out of my black books.


"Given 5e's "big tent" aspirations, I would expect there to be different approaches taken at different tables to how setting and details are established, whether lore checks feed into this or rather take it as input, whether provision of information is part of framing or an affirmative advantage, etc."

I sure hope so. By like 30m into last night's session, the PCs had chosen a path that I had not expected but that made sense in it's own way, surprising not only me, that's expected, but them!!! And before that, they had dealt me a frighin' queen of hearts which meant (even though they did not know about that card) it was actually one of the better choices!!!

Great fun as the evening progresses and without me doing a thing they have split their own party up with several days of travel between the groups and one group is "inside the lion's den" - ok - soaking in a hot tub inside the lion's den with VIP treatment - but still.

Queen of friggin' hearts... go figure.


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## pemerton (Apr 9, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Given that old school travellers had a significant investment into rolling up sub sectors or systems on the fly as you entered them, having the check determine the player gets to decide the nature of the coded messages or even really if they matter seems very plausible as far as fitting that game. Many find memories of games ran out of my black books.



I have a habit of working up my own copies of games whose rules are frustratingly compiled/edited - so with Traveller I worked through my black books over the course of several months and wrote up a version of the game that makes it easier for me to find stuff (eg compiling all the vacc suit rules together; all the rules for dealing with officials on the same page; etc).

Even with its editorial limitations, though, Classic Traveller is still much more coherently put together than AD&D from the same era, and playing it again over the past year-and-a-bit I've been struck by what a "modern" system it is. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good sci-fi system that has a lot of setting-generation infrastructure and wide-ranging action resolution infrastructure to support "no/little myth" RPGing.


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## pemerton (Apr 9, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Queen of friggin' hearts... go figure.



I think there's an allusion or a mechanic here that I'm not getting . . .


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## Imaculata (Apr 9, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I’ve started doing that when my players loot the bodies. It’s just always so boring when their fallen foes have nothing on them, or nothing but a handful of copper pieces. So I have some tables of random junk they long find in a downed foe’s pockets.




I've expanded a bit on this for my 3.5 pirate campaign. I make large loot tables for my dungeons, which also include stuff like special keys, which may unlock chests/doors elsewhere in the dungeon. I also include objects in the loot table that may be plothooks of their own.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 9, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I have a habit of working up my own copies of games whose rules are frustratingly compiled/edited - so with Traveller I worked through my black books over the course of several months and wrote up a version of the game that makes it easier for me to find stuff (eg compiling all the vacc suit rules together; all the rules for dealing with officials on the same page; etc).
> 
> Even with its editorial limitations, though, Classic Traveller is still much more coherently put together than AD&D from the same era, and playing it again over the past year-and-a-bit I've been struck by what a "modern" system it is. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good sci-fi system that has a lot of setting-generation infrastructure and wide-ranging action resolution infrastructure to support "no/little myth" RPGing.




This suddenly has me jonesing to play Traveller again, after 30+ years.  Wish I had my original books.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 9, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think there's an allusion or a mechanic here that I'm not getting . . .



Hah... one thing I use in my gsmes is an improv variant that pays of great.

Start of each session each playercdesls me a card from std ddck face down that I alone see. Of course, I pick them up and stare st thrm multiple times during session.

Hearts means give aid or receive it.
Diamond means loot or greed 
Spades means passive or environmental threat or hazard (weather, terrain, bridge compromises etc)
Clubs means active threat or hazard (fights)

Value gives severity.

I then use those cards thru the session for the flavors of "what happens" , general outlooks, etc.

When the druid just got his Pass without Trace and they used it to ascend a peak to get st a necromancer unnoticed, I described two different times a group of menacing undead came close and passed them by, each time showing them a clubs card that I was discarding - one was a fade card. Added a bit of umphhh to those "hey, it worked".

One time the hit a raging semi-flooded river on their trek... medium spades. They chose to wait it out. They say loot flowing down river - started trying to get to it - diamonds. Then heard cries from up-river and headed there to find other travellers in dire straights hsvingvtriedvto cross snd got swamped- hearts. 

Showed them each card in turn after the fsct.

There are still big plots and stories and of course I work to make these more than "just cards stuff" - often these are cases where it pays off more later or gets call backs.

But, so, for last night, when they met the plague menace snd decided to zig instead of zag, they found their "send word to everyone looking for help" queen of friggin' hearts paid off bigly... and a lot of their prior contacts etc paid off and helped...

And they are gonna keep hearing about it as the help keeps coming, spawning new fertile ground events for the future. 

Or put in Star Trek terms - "You mean, for once, we aren't the only starship in the sector?" 

Queen of friggin' hearts man!


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## pemerton (Apr 9, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This suddenly has me jonesing to play Traveller again, after 30+ years.  Wish I had my original books.



You can get the revised edition (1980?) on DriveThru pretty cheaply - my physical copies are a 1978 printing of the 1977 edition but I bought the revised PDFs so I would have portable copies.

I've really been enjoying it, and would strongly recommend that anyone thinking about it take the plunge!


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That was a really long post, but I'm only going to address the above.
> 
> When some of us talk about consequences we mean, pretty much by definition "consequences worse than having done nothing at all."  In other words: risk.
> 
> ...






pemerton said:


> To add to what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] already said: the consequences for failing a knowledge/lore roll can be the same sort of thing as failing a search roll, namely, the character confirms the truth of something that s/he'd rather be false. (See eg my post not far upthread where I talk about the PC learning that his brother was evil _before_ being possessed by a balrog.)




I definetly don't see this as calling anything badwrongfun, but I do want to seek to understand here. Because, what you are saying, kills a lot of skill usage. 

Quick and dirty one: Perception. 

The team is walking through a dungeon, and they come to a doorway. They want to roll perception to see if there is an ambush waiting for them on the other side, because they've been ambushed a few times in this particular dungeon. 

Now, what happens if they do not roll perception? 

They get ambushed. 

So... what happens if they do roll perception? 

They get ambushed.  

And, to my mind, there is clearly uncertain circumstance if they press their ears to the door to see if they can hear enemies waiting on the other side. This clearly needs a roll. 


But the way you are describing this to me, in trying to be cautious and come up with a plan, they are inviting the possibility of worse things happening than just getting ambushed. Failing has to be worse than not trying. 


And knowledge skills... yeah, I've heard of the idea of telling the players lies when they roll low. The problem? I let my players roll their own dice. So, they know they rolled low, and they know it is likely what they have learned is a lie. Some players will run with it, but others are going to start trying to figure out how their character can learn what they know is a lie, because it is hard for them to act in a way they know is wrong. Plus, it adds a burden on me to come up with a lie for every failed knowledge roll. Then, I also need to keep those false facts straight. 

And, all to make failing worse than it already was? 




Charlaquin said:


> No. It is not a direct consequence of failing.
> 
> Yes. Provided the player has a reasonable approach to the goal of obtaining the information in question, then they gain it.




So, you as well fall into this "Things must become worse because you tried" camp? 

And, heck, reasonable approaches abound. "I'm a cleric of the Raven Queen, who is an enemy of Orcus. This ritual is being used by a cult of Orcus, have I ever run across mention of this ritual in old texts about conflicts between my church and Orcus cultists?" 

Reasonable, perfectly possible, but knowledge about this ritual might be a key to the mystery that you don't want to just hand away. However, not knowing about the ritual is the only failure of the roll, so you must give away the information by the standards you are setting down. 




Charlaquin said:


> If how long it took them to get through the door matters, then the time it takes is the consequence of failure. If it doesn’t matter, why bother rolling the die to find out how long it took?




Because it mattered to the players, even if it didn't matter to the plot. 

Why am I bothering to lock a door if when the players tell me how they get through it I just say "Okay, you did it"? And sometimes, it makes sense that doors are locked. When you want to get into the Archdukes estate, after killing him, to see if you can find clues to his betrayal... the door isn't going to be unlocked. Why would it? He locks his house when he leaves like a normal person. 

But, just getting a "yes, you succeed" isn't always satisfying as a player. Sometimes you want to roll dice, because it's been all politics and cloaks and daggers and you haven't gotten to kick down a door in five sessions. 



Charlaquin said:


> No. The flaw in your approach is in deciding that your obstacle _must_ be resolved by way of a check, and *closed yourself off to other possibilities.* You’re treating checks as things that exist in their own right, instead of as the means by which you determine the success or failure of actions with uncertain outcomes.




What other possibilities? 

A check is meant to resolve an action, if the actions success in uncertain. If I put a locked door in front of my party, and the barbarian wants to kick it down. That is a check. Rogue wants to pick the lock? Check. Bard wants to canvass the neighborhood for a locksmith to unlock the door? Check. Wizard wants to investigate the grounds for a hidden key? Check. 

If they want to attempt these actions, the outcome is uncertain, so there is a check. 

They have a pet giant who they have punch the door down? No check. It's a giant. 

But just because that possibility exists doesn't mean the other possbilities don't exist. And this discussion is about using checks, so... we are discussing using checks


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

I hope people don't mind the double post, but [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is right that responding to everything is starting to get too long for people to go through



Ovinomancer said:


> Detail is a red herring, here.  It's the approach that matters, not the details of the approach.  How much detail you add to carefully licking the doorknob clean won't result in an autosuccess, ever (unless, maybe, you're immune to poison?).  On the other hand, being skilled at poisoner's tools and wiping off the contact poison may very well result in autosuccess.  Don't make the mistake that we're looking for a long, detailed explanation for anything done -- that sounds horribly boring.
> 
> Yes, you are, and no, it's not.  The game revolves around actions, not skill checks.  Skill checks are used when an action is uncertain and there's a cost of failure.  You don't call for a skill check when a player declares their character walks across a room, do you?  Is this a case where hairs have been split because there should be a roll?
> 
> In other words, I say that a discussion about how to handle skills has placed the cart before the horse because we do not yet know how we handle actions.  Skills come after we get a handle on actions.





Okay, but let me call back to the original quote by [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]

"This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off."

According to this, the player declared an action "check for traps" but that was not specific enough, so when the roll happened we had to fill in story of why the result happened. 


The approach and action of "check for traps" is not enough. By accepting that it is enough for a roll to be called for, I am being told I am putting the cart before the horse... because the player needs to declare an action first? An action that has consequences? Like checking for traps? 

How much more is needed? How specific an action must the player take? Where am I justified in calling for a check without somehow doing something seen as wrong by some of the posters here? 

You are saying that I am calling for checks instead of actions, but a series of actions were called by the player. Why is that not good enough to call for a check in response? 





Ovinomancer said:


> This is where I'll harp on my hobby horse of not hiding the game.  There's always going to be information disparity between the GM and the players in any game where the GM has secret stuff the players are trying to learn (what's in the next room, what the Duke is up to, did this shopkeep steal his own jewels, etc.).  This is because the GM already knows the secret and is trying to get the players to learn it in a fun way.  Because of this, GMs tend to create mysteries that depend on the players not knowing stuff, and then err on the side of hiding too much information.  This is what leads to players spamming knowledge skills or investigation and perception checks to try to convince the GM to give up this hidden information via a high roll.  In reality, these checks aren't doing anything in the fiction except convincing the GM to drop the next bit of hidden information.  I say, don't do this as a GM.  Make your mysteries based not on hiding information from the players, but instead on what will the players do once they learn the information.  Then the GM's motivation isn't to hide information because getting it gives away the game, so to speak, but instead get the information to the players clearly so that the game of what they do with it can be played.
> 
> If my players are asking for these things (or fishing for them with action declarations), then I take that as me not doing a good job presenting the world to the players.  This doesn't mean I don't expect my players to have to do things to learn things, just that such events are clear that they need to do something and with enough detail they can readily form an approach to how they want to do it.




I'm not sure I entirely follow all of this. 

Information still needs to be hidden, otherwise the players wouldn't need to form an approach in the first place.

Information can be gained by rolling a knowledge check, otherwise what are knowledge checks used for? 

Yeah, don't make plot relevant stuff revolve around a single die roll, but that doesn't mean plot relevant stuff can't be found with a die roll




Ovinomancer said:


> Well, that seems to benefit you.




Yes, which is why I try and limit myself so that I am not using too much meta knowledge. 

That's why I ask to roll instead of just assuming my character knows. 





Ovinomancer said:


> This still leaves the knowledge skills in a weird place.  So, I use them in the exploration pillar.  You have religion?  That's awesome for figuring out a ritual or ceremony detail that can help you do something.  A recent example was a sarcophagus with a detailed carving around it in a a language none of the players could read.  The Wizard reached for his Comprehend Languages ritual, but the Grave cleric tried to decipher what the carvings might mean based on her experience as a Grave cleric.  She rolled poorly on her religion check, and so accidentally triggered a curse that resulted in the occupants of the sarcophagus animating as mummies.  On a success, she would have discovered that those in the sarcophagus were sealed in to protect against a cursed axe found in the sacrophagus (a beserker axe).  As it was, the party didn't get this information and the dwarven barbarian attuned to it.  Later fun was had!




So, you don't roll knowledge checks except when you do?

Edit: May be a bit snarkier than I intended, but seeing if they can piece together those carvings is a perfect knowledge check. However, in my understanding of your conclusion, the check failed so they got wrong information which led to them triggering the curse. Perhaps I’m wrong and the curse was triggered by them touching it in an attempt to decipher… but then success or failure of the roll would have led to the mummies, because touching it activated the curse. 

So, either I’m misunderstanding your conclusion, or your knowledge check led to the player learning the wrong information on a failed roll. Which is exactly what you said you didn’t like. 



iserith said:


> To me it's kind of like playing Monopoly and a player in that game refusing to roll the dice or pay rent when they land on the property belonging to another player. I'm sorry, but you have to roll the dice and pay rent when the rules say you have to do that. Otherwise, you're effectively refusing to play the game. Sure, I can reach over and roll the dice for you and move your token around the board and sort through your cash and pay rent when you need to. But why are you even here?
> 
> Same for describing what you want to do as a player in D&D 5e. If you can't even do that, why are you here?




Because they enjoy building a story together? 

Just because they can't describe how a lightning bolt killed the lich king in the final climatic moments of the campaign or how Jimmy failed to disarm a trap doesn't mean they can't play the game. 

Remember, this line of conversation started because you (and many others) took offense to how I would have narrated a failure of the dice in an extremely sarcastic example. How could a poisoner miss poison on a door handle if they spent five minutes looking at it from every angle? 

Well, the only way I can imagine a professional missing that kind of detail is because they weren't paying as close attention as they thought.

And, it isn't a situation I normally handle, because normally, I don't have players call out looking at the door handle. I also rarely have traps on door handles. 





iserith said:


> That's the DM's problem in my view and why "metagaming" is the DM's fault almost all of the time. If they want not knowing something to be part of the difficulty of the challenge, he or she needs to do that without demanding the player act as if they don't know something they do know.




Since this applies directly to myself and my knowledge, as that was the nature of my answer, then I will respond in the specific instead of the general. 

I know a lot, A LOT, more about this game than most of my DMs. 

Maybe not knowing something was the challenge, maybe they just didn't think anyone would know and it would be a cool reveal. Maybe they don't even know. Sometimes my asking to roll for a knowledge check about something I know has revealed that I knew a detail about that lore that the DM had no clue about. 

This is why I ask to roll, instead of just assuming that my character knows everything that I know. Because I know far more than most characters should know at low levels. 




iserith said:


> An ability check is not a task. It's a mechanic used to resolve the outcome of a task, when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure. "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" is not a task either, and likely to get an answer like "I don't know, does he/she?" in my game. Contrast with "I draw upon my experience as a sage to recall what I may know about black puddings, having read about such things in the world's greatest libraries." Now we're getting somewhere. The DM can decide, based on that description, whether the character succeeds automatically, fails automatically, or whether an ability check is called for. An added benefit is that in some cases we learn something interesting about the character's background.




Okay, so square this circle for me. 

I should not ask to roll for what my character knows, I should just have them know what I know. 

Except that can be dangerous because the world might not be the same as what I know, because the DM changed it. 

So I should come up with a backstory reason why I should know. 

But how do we know if I actually know, for example, how do we know that this Sage actually read anything about Black Puddings? 


To me, there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, you roll the dice. But I should not roll the dice unless things can become worse by failing. And failing to know something is not a consequence worth rolling dice about. Also, I should never ask for a check, I should just declare I know. 

After all, if I declare my character is a monster expert, then I do not need to ask the DM if I know anything about these monsters. I tell the DM I know, because I am a monster expert, and they cannot tell me I do not know. 


This is the morass I am finding myself in, with this thread.




S'mon said:


> I so very much agree with this. It's the player's job to say what their PC is doing, at least in general terms - and different levels of abstraction are appropriate to different parts of play. Occasionally a player seems to treat it like a video game with the GM as their flesh-server. Not good.




I agree, but as this discussion has progressed we have this, 

"I check the door for traps" 

failed roll

"Okay, what happens"

"I don't know"

Player is at fault? 

So, I should ask the player to be more specific with their action. 

"I look over the entire door, taking a magnifying glass to sections that seem likely to hide traps"

Roll? Outcome is still uncertain, they could miss something

But, can't just have them not find anything, that isn't enough of a consequence to their roll. So...

"As you peer through the magnifying glass, you forget to stand far enough back accidentally press against the door and trigger the blade trap"

Also wrong because now I've told the player what they were doing. Also, the player should have told me how they failed? 

Taken as a whole, this conversation has grown very confusing to follow what advice people actually are trying to give.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I definetly don't see this as calling anything badwrongfun, but I do want to seek to understand here. Because, what you are saying, kills a lot of skill usage.
> 
> Quick and dirty one: Perception.
> 
> ...



I can only speak for my own approach - and to reiterate my earlier disclosure, I'm not playing 5e (although some people in this thread - especially [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], if I've understood properly - use a similar approach in 5e). I use a broadly similar approach in 4e, Cortex+ Heroic, and Burning Wheel. (Prince Valiant doesn't really involve knowledge/perception checks, so this issue hasn't come up; and Classic Traveller is a bit different too as I posted not far upthread.)

Your examples seem to take it as a given that _the fiction already contains an answer_ - that there is an ambush, or that the truth of the situation is such-and-such.

But I'm using these checks to establish the fiction. An example, not too far upthread, is of the search for the mace. The check fails, and so the PCs discover something they didn't want to be true (namely, that the brother was an evil manufacturer of cursed black arrows).

If the players declare that they are trying to ascertain whether or not an ambush is behind a door, then there will already be some context in play that makes ambushes a salient stake. A successful check might mean the PCs learn there is no one behind the door; or perhaps - depending on context - allow them to get the drop rather than be ambushed. A failed check would have the opposite sort of outcome.

There's no _lying_ involved, because what's being established is the fiction itself, not simply PC beliefs about the situation.


----------



## iserith (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Because they enjoy building a story together?




If the players are not performing their role of describing what they want to do, then it's really just the DM building the story. The players are just in the room.



Chaosmancer said:


> Just because they can't describe how a lightning bolt killed the lich king in the final climatic moments of the campaign or how Jimmy failed to disarm a trap doesn't mean they can't play the game.




I think there is some confusion here. The players don't describe how he lich king is killed or what happens when the character fails to disarm the trap - the DM does that. The player describes the goal (kill the lich king, disarm the trap) and the approach (cast lightning bolt and target it _here_, use thieves' tools to disable the pressure plate). The player does NOT ask to make an ability check. An ability check is not a task and asking to roll a d20 is not good strategy.



Chaosmancer said:


> Remember, this line of conversation started because you (and many others) took offense to how I would have narrated a failure of the dice in an extremely sarcastic example. How could a poisoner miss poison on a door handle if they spent five minutes looking at it from every angle?




I don't recall the specifics of the example and I don't remember really engaging in the poisoned doorknob example. I do know, however, I've taken no offense.



Chaosmancer said:


> Since this applies directly to myself and my knowledge, as that was the nature of my answer, then I will respond in the specific instead of the general.
> 
> I know a lot, A LOT, more about this game than most of my DMs.
> 
> ...




There is no "should." Only "could" or "might." You can choose to play dumb, of course, but I don't think that's a good expectation for a DM to have of the players. Nor do I think it's good challenge design to have the difficulty completely hinge on ignorance. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, so square this circle for me.
> 
> I should not ask to roll for what my character knows, I should just have them know what I know.
> 
> ...




Asking to roll is dangerous, generally speaking, because the d20 is swingy and unreliable. If there are consequences of failure (which is a requirement for there to be a roll in the first place), why are you inviting a d20 to potentially kill you? Now, obviously that outcome is probably unlikely with most rolls to recall lore or make deductions based on available clues. I'm just stating a general principle.

And again, there is no "should," only "could" or "might." So you could describe a task to recall lore or make deductions, if you want, and that's going to generally be a way to mitigate the danger of bad assumptions. As for how you know the sage read anything about black puddings, that's for the player to decide - this is the player bringing backstory to the foreground and fleshing out the character. The ability check is testing recall or deductive reasoning, not whether your character has been exposed to the knowledge before. 



Chaosmancer said:


> To me, there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, you roll the dice. But I should not roll the dice unless things can become worse by failing. And failing to know something is not a consequence worth rolling dice about. Also, I should never ask for a check, I should just declare I know.




There are two criteria for the DM calling for an ability check: The task must have an uncertain outcome (not an outright success or failure) and must have a meaningful consequence for failure. The player cannot ask to roll a check and arguably should not want to roll (since automatic success is better than risk). There is no support for players asking to roll in the rules for D&D 5e. That is D&D 3e or 4e legacy thinking.



Chaosmancer said:


> After all, if I declare my character is a monster expert, then I do not need to ask the DM if I know anything about these monsters. I tell the DM I know, because I am a monster expert, and they cannot tell me I do not know.
> 
> This is the morass I am finding myself in, with this thread.




Think about it this way: If you decide that your character doesn't know anything about trolls OR you decide your character does know stuff about trolls, but you fail your attempt to recall lore, are you still prevented from hitting it with a fire bolt spell? No, you are not. Thus, you don't even have to declare that your character is a monster expert. You can just act. But if you want to make sure that the troll you're attacking isn't one that will explode into a fireball when you hit it with a fire bolt (perhaps because the DM telegraphed that something was off about *this* troll), now you might want to be cautious and try to recall lore about *this* troll or deduce how it's different from available clues.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can only speak for my own approach - and to reiterate my earlier disclosure, I'm not playing 5e (although some people in this thread - especially [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], if I've understood properly - use a similar approach in 5e). I use a broadly similar approach in 4e, Cortex+ Heroic, and Burning Wheel. (Prince Valiant doesn't really involve knowledge/perception checks, so this issue hasn't come up; and Classic Traveller is a bit different too as I posted not far upthread.)
> 
> Your examples seem to take it as a given that _the fiction already contains an answer_ - that there is an ambush, or that the truth of the situation is such-and-such.
> 
> ...




And this can work, but sometimes there is an answer in the fiction, because I have put it there. 

I have definitely allowed checks to create new fiction, especially when players ask me about things I had not considered before that moment (is there any treasure worth finding here? is a common one) 

But other times there is a truth, and I need to know that truth before even calling for a check, and a success or failure does not change that truth, only how things react and occur.


----------



## iserith (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Quick and dirty one: Perception.
> 
> The team is walking through a dungeon, and they come to a doorway. They want to roll perception to see if there is an ambush waiting for them on the other side, because they've been ambushed a few times in this particular dungeon.
> 
> ...




Players don't declare they are "rolling Perception." They describe a goal and approach. What they hope to achieve and how they set about achieving it. Only then can the DM determine if the outcome is an automatic success or failure, or whether some kind of roll is appropriate. If the PCs are trying to avoid being surprised, that's handled under the rules for determining surprise. PCs that are staying alert to danger while traveling the dungeon (as opposed to engaging in some other task that distracts from that effort) have a chance to avoid surprise. The DM applies their passive Perception.

But honestly, there isn't enough detail in this example to determine what's going on exactly and how to adjudicate. It hasn't been established that there actually are ambushers on the other side of the door, for example.


----------



## iserith (Apr 10, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can only speak for my own approach - and to reiterate my earlier disclosure, I'm not playing 5e (although some people in this thread - especially [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION], if I've understood properly - use a similar approach in 5e).




I'm sure you're trying to help, but bringing up approaches that are appropriate to other games and might not be a good fit for the one under discussion is in my view needlessly confusing. It's why I'm not responding to any of your posts where I've been summoned with [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]. Stories about Traveller, D&D 4e, Burning Wheel, Cortex+ and other games are of little value in understanding the finer points of D&D 5e and to my mind really muddy waters that are already pretty opaque given the length of these exchanges.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think there is some confusion here. The players don't describe how he lich king is killed or what happens when the character fails to disarm the trap - the DM does that. The player describes the goal (kill the lich king, disarm the trap) and the approach (cast lightning bolt and target it _here_, use thieves' tools to disable the pressure plate).




Then you are the one confused, because that is what you are telling me my players should be doing. 

I said originally that the reason I added the extra flair to my description all those pages ago, was because my players aren't always willing or good at *describing* what happens. So, I take over that responsibility, and build the narrative. 

And my players aren't playing the game because I do that. Despite the fact that I never once said my players do not tell me what they do and I must tell them what their character's are doing in any given moment. 



iserith said:


> The player does NOT ask to make an ability check. An ability check is not a task and asking to roll a d20 is not good strategy.




My players do, and asking to roll perception to see an ambush is a task. They are looking for an ambush, perception is the skill for looking and listening for hidden things. Asking to roll investigation for hidden doors is a task. They are searching an area, investigation is the skill for searching. Asking to roll deception to convince the king they don't have the McGuffin is a task. They are lying about something in their possession, and the skill for lying is deception. 

You can repeat "Asking for a random result instead of seeing if the DM will just give you what you want is a horrible strategy"  for another few hundred pages. That doesn't mean my players are not allowed to do so. 




iserith said:


> There is no "should." Only "could" or "might." You can choose to play dumb, of course, but I don't think that's a good expectation for a DM to have of the players. Nor do I think it's good challenge design to have the difficulty completely hinge on ignorance.




Who says it "completely hinges on ignorance"? 

I know the only way to truly kill a Flame skull is to sprinkle the remains with holy water. No matter what character I make, this is a thing I know. 

Maybe they wanted this to be a cool moment for the cleric, to have them act as the holy person of the group. But my Barbarian from the Gladiator pits knew the answer before any even thought to ask the question. 

I will also guarantee that across about 20 different players I am aware of, I can only think of two besides myself who might know that. And that is because both of them have also been DMs for years. 

I have enough advantages as a player, why shouldn't I try and limit myself in terms of knowledge, by asking the DM if they are okay with me knowing certain facts? Why does this seem to flabbergast people so much? 




iserith said:


> There are two criteria for the DM calling for an ability check: The task must have an uncertain outcome (not an outright success or failure) and must have a meaningful consequence for failure. The player cannot ask to roll a check and arguably should not want to roll (since automatic success is better than risk). There is no support for players asking to roll in the rules for D&D 5e. That is D&D 3e or 4e legacy thinking.




And round and round the circle we go. 

"Meaningful consequence" meaning that the failure must make the situation worse. If my understanding of this conversation has gotten me anywhere. It cannot mean that failure results in no change. Even if no change is the logical conclusion of failure. If no change would be the consequence of failure, the character either fails or succeeds with no roll. 

Players post a guard for night watch in the inn. I will not call a perception check to see if they hear their neighbor being murdered. If they succeed, they will find the dead body. If they fail, the body is discovered in the morning. There is no meaningful consequence for failure, so I decide what I want to happen. 


Also, about legacy thinking. No. It isn't. 

Read 3.X, never played it. Only ever played one game of 4e. 

I ask for a check, my players ask for checks. People at conventions who have never played DnD before ask for checks. We are not wrong. The game doesn't care if people say "Can I roll perception?" 

You care, you'll quote the rulebook at me to try and convince me the game cares, but it doesn't. Gameplay works just fine either way. Nothing breaks. 




iserith said:


> Think about it this way: If you decide that your character doesn't know anything about trolls OR you decide your character does know stuff about trolls, but you fail your attempt to recall lore, are you still prevented from hitting it with a fire bolt spell? No, you are not. Thus, you don't even have to declare that your character is a monster expert. You can just act. But if you want to make sure that the troll you're attacking isn't one that will explode into a fireball when you hit it with a fire bolt (perhaps because the DM telegraphed that something was off about *this* troll), now you might want to be cautious and try to recall lore about *this* troll or deduce how it's different from available clues.





See, trolls are too easy. 

I know Bargheists get dragged to Hell if they get too near a big enough fire. 

I know Minotaurs, per RAW, are formed via cannabalism. 

I know hags, per RAW, give birth via eating babies. 

I know Wood Woads, per RAW, are created by a guardian of the forest having their heart ripped out in a ritual. 


Not all of these are direct ties into combat actions. Heck, if I'm allowed to know how Hags give birth then a Hag introducing the party to her Daughter could very well lead to horror. But if the DM doesn't know that then my reaction makes no sense, because that isn't the case here. Or maybe that is the reaction they want, but only so they can reverse it on us. IT depends on if they read that specific section of the lore, agreed with it, and remembered it. 

This isn't about "do I counter Troll regeneration with fire or pretend I don't know DnD 101" this can be highly specific lore that changes how we approach entire sections of the campaign.


----------



## iserith (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Then you are the one confused, because that is what you are telling me my players should be doing.
> 
> I said originally that the reason I added the extra flair to my description all those pages ago, was because my players aren't always willing or good at *describing* what happens. So, I take over that responsibility, and build the narrative.
> 
> And my players aren't playing the game because I do that. Despite the fact that I never once said my players do not tell me what they do and I must tell them what their character's are doing in any given moment.




Are you as DM saying what the characters do? If you are, then I would say you're overstepping your role as DM, according to how that's defined by the game. Whether or not you care is up to you.



Chaosmancer said:


> My players do, and asking to roll perception to see an ambush is a task. They are looking for an ambush, perception is the skill for looking and listening for hidden things. Asking to roll investigation for hidden doors is a task. They are searching an area, investigation is the skill for searching. Asking to roll deception to convince the king they don't have the McGuffin is a task. They are lying about something in their possession, and the skill for lying is deception.
> 
> You can repeat "Asking for a random result instead of seeing if the DM will just give you what you want is a horrible strategy"  for another few hundred pages. That doesn't mean my players are not allowed to do so.




I don't actually care what you or your players do in your game. I'm only saying what the rules say to do. That does not include players asking to make ability checks and DMs saying what the characters do. Make of that what you will.



Chaosmancer said:


> Who says it "completely hinges on ignorance"?
> 
> I know the only way to truly kill a Flame skull is to sprinkle the remains with holy water. No matter what character I make, this is a thing I know.
> 
> ...




I'm not saying you can't play dumb only that you don't have to, nor do you have to justify your knowledge by asking to make checks or asking the DM for permission to act on your knowledge.



Chaosmancer said:


> And round and round the circle we go.
> 
> "Meaningful consequence" meaning that the failure must make the situation worse. If my understanding of this conversation has gotten me anywhere. It cannot mean that failure results in no change. Even if no change is the logical conclusion of failure. If no change would be the consequence of failure, the character either fails or succeeds with no roll.
> 
> Players post a guard for night watch in the inn. I will not call a perception check to see if they hear their neighbor being murdered. If they succeed, they will find the dead body. If they fail, the body is discovered in the morning. There is no meaningful consequence for failure, so I decide what I want to happen.




That's largely correct, though one could quibble on what "worse" means. That's going to vary widely by the context of the situation.



Chaosmancer said:


> Also, about legacy thinking. No. It isn't.
> 
> Read 3.X, never played it. Only ever played one game of 4e.
> 
> ...




You don't have to have played D&D 3e or 4e to play D&D 5e as if you are playing those games. It's common enough to have picked it up from others. My position is that games work better when we play them as the rules tell us to play them, not that games are unplayable if you don't.



Chaosmancer said:


> See, trolls are too easy.
> 
> I know Bargheists get dragged to Hell if they get too near a big enough fire.
> 
> ...




That just plays into my point: You decide what your character thinks and how he or she acts. But making assumptions can be risky for many reasons, so it's a good idea to take steps in-game to verify those assumptions before acting on them.


----------



## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Are you as DM saying what the characters do? If you are, then I would say you're overstepping your role as DM, according to how that's defined by the game. Whether or not you care is up to you.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Lotta folks confusing “if you do X, you’ll have a good time” with “if you don’t do X, you are a bad dm and your games are wretched.” And that’s not anyone’s position.

I’m not convinced the last 50 or so posts have done much in service of understanding.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I definetly don't see this as calling anything badwrongfun, but I do want to seek to understand here. Because, what you are saying, kills a lot of skill usage.
> 
> Quick and dirty one: Perception.
> 
> The team is walking through a dungeon, and they come to a doorway. They want to roll perception to see if there is an ambush waiting for them on the other side, because they've been ambushed a few times in this particular dungeon.



Why do they want to “roll Perception”? Shouldn’t they want to find out if there’s an ambush waiting on the other side? If that’s what they want, I would think listening at the door or peering through the keyhole would be a more effective approach than “rolled my perception.”



Chaosmancer said:


> Now, what happens if they do not roll perception?
> 
> They get ambushed.
> 
> ...



Wh.... what?



Chaosmancer said:


> And, to my mind, there is clearly uncertain circumstance if they press their ears to the door to see if they can hear enemies waiting on the other side. This clearly needs a roll.
> 
> 
> But the way you are describing this to me, in trying to be cautious and come up with a plan, they are inviting the possibility of worse things happening than just getting ambushed. Failing has to be worse than not trying.



Ok, let’s break this down. The player’s goal is to find out if there is something on the other side of the door waiting to ambush them. The character’s approach is to press their ear to the door and listen. If there is not anything waiting on the other side, or if whatever is on the other side doesn’t make any sound (maybe it’s an ooze, or there’d a Silence spell active), there is no uncertainty. The characters don’t hear anything, and you tell that to the players. If there is something waiting on the other side, the approach does have a possibility of success (they might hear the monsters on the other side.) If the monsters on the other side are making no attempt to be quiet, then there is no possibility of failure. The character hears them, and you tell the players that. If the monsters on the other side are trying to be quiet, then there is a possibility of failure (the character might hear it, they might not.) In that case, you need to determine what changes as a result of them failing? If nothing changes, then there’s no point in rolling, just let them succeed. If something does change, then we have appropriate dramatic tension to call for a roll to resolve it. So, does anything change as a result of listening at the door and not hearing the monsters on the other side? Yes, actually. If they don’t check, they don’t know if there is anything on the other side or not. But if they try and fail, then they have gained new information - that they did not hear anything. They might proceed under the false impression that there is nothing on the other side. So, roll Dexterity (Stealth) for the monsters or use their passive Dexterity (Stealth) to set the Perception DC and tell your players what’s at stake. “Ok, that will be a DC [whatever] Wisdom check - plus Perception if you’re proficient. If you fail, you won’t hear anything that might be on the other side, which will leave you surprised if you’re attacked. What do you do?” That gives the players the ability to make an informed decision. Do they take the risk? Do they cast Gidance or spend Inspiration to mitigate the risk? Do they decide the risk isn’t worth it and try a different approach? It’s up to them. Now they are succeeding or failing based on their decisions, not based on the whims of a d20 they had no choice but to roll.



Chaosmancer said:


> And knowledge skills... yeah, I've heard of the idea of telling the players lies when they roll low. The problem? I let my players roll their own dice. So, they know they rolled low, and they know it is likely what they have learned is a lie. Some players will run with it, but others are going to start trying to figure out how their character can learn what they know is a lie, because it is hard for them to act in a way they know is wrong. Plus, it adds a burden on me to come up with a lie for every failed knowledge roll. Then, I also need to keep those false facts straight.
> 
> And, all to make failing worse than it already was?



So, Knowledge skills are weird. It’s kind of tricky to fit wanting to know more about something into D&D 5e’s framework of the DM describing a scenario, the player’s describing what their characters do, and the DM determining the results of those actions (with the help of a dice roll if necessary), and describing the new scenario. Because knowing about stuff isn’t really an action. You can kind of make it one if you really want to (see Iserith’s preferred, “I think back to my days as an apprentice studying magical glyphs to see if I recall anything relevant about this symbol” style of declaration.) But it’s awkward any way you slice it. There are many different ways that those of us who use the “middle path” method of action resolution handle knowledge checks. My way is pretty nonstandard, so I’m not going to get into it here, to avoid further complicating this conversation. Suffice to say, what you are describing here is not how I handle knowledge checks.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, you as well fall into this "Things must become worse because you tried" camp?



I don’t think that moniker is particularly representative of my camp, but I don’t call for rolls when failure doesn’t have direct consequences, if that’s what you mean.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, heck, reasonable approaches abound. "I'm a cleric of the Raven Queen, who is an enemy of Orcus. This ritual is being used by a cult of Orcus, have I ever run across mention of this ritual in old texts about conflicts between my church and Orcus cultists?"
> 
> Reasonable, perfectly possible, but knowledge about this ritual might be a key to the mystery that you don't want to just hand away. However, not knowing about the ritual is the only failure of the roll, so you must give away the information by the standards you are setting down.



If it is information that I would be comfortable giving the players with a successful check, what harm is done by giving it to them without a check? If it is information that I would not be comfortable giving them with a successful check, then why would a check to gain that information be an option?



Chaosmancer said:


> Because it mattered to the players, even if it didn't matter to the plot.



I have never met a player who cares how long something took in in-game time, unless time was a limited resource. Players will gladly have their characters sit around doing nothing for 8 hours to get a few spell slots back if you let them, they don’t really care whether they busted the door down immediately or “eventually.” If the extra time a failure takes them gets them a step closer to a roll for random encounters, then they care. But then the failure had a consequence. Time can absolutely be a consequence, but only if the DM makes it so.



Chaosmancer said:


> Why am I bothering to lock a door if when the players tell me how they get through it I just say "Okay, you did it"? And sometimes, it makes sense that doors are locked.



You just answered your own question. If that bothers you, put some time constraints in your dungeons, boom, suddenly every attempt to pick a lock has a consequence for failure.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, just getting a "yes, you succeed" isn't always satisfying as a player. Sometimes you want to roll dice, because it's been all politics and cloaks and daggers and you haven't gotten to kick down a door in five sessions.



I believe that players wanting to roll dice is a learned behavior from games where dice rolls present an opportunity to succeed rather than a risk of failure. If you’re used to Dexterity checks opening locked doors when you roll high and not changing anything when you roll low, of course you want to roll dice. On the other hand, when picking locks is what opens locked doors and Dexterity checks are used to determine whether or not something bad happens when you attempt to pick the lock, you don’t want to roll dice. You want to pick locks without having to roll dice.



Chaosmancer said:


> What other possibilities?
> 
> A check is meant to resolve an action, if the actions success in uncertain. If I put a locked door in front of my party, and the barbarian wants to kick it down. That is a check. Rogue wants to pick the lock? Check. Bard wants to canvass the neighborhood for a locksmith to unlock the door? Check. Wizard wants to investigate the grounds for a hidden key? Check.
> 
> If they want to attempt these actions, the outcome is uncertain, so there is a check.



But you see what you’ve done here? By deciding that a check is needed to open the locked door, you’ve decided that any attempt to open it has an uncertain outcome. And that’s just not always the case. Some ways of trying to open a locked door are certain to fail (shouting at it). Some are certain to succeed (casting knock). Some are certain to succeed _eventually_ if nothing stops you before you finish (smashing it down). But since checks are meant to resolve actions with uncertain outcomes and you’ve decided this door requires a check to open, you are forcing uncertainty into approaches that may not be uncertain.



Chaosmancer said:


> They have a pet giant who they have punch the door down? No check. It's a giant.



Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. So you do agree that there are some ways to go about accomplishing a goal that do not involve any uncertainty.



Chaosmancer said:


> But just because that possibility exists doesn't mean the other possbilities don't exist. And this discussion is about using checks, so... we are discussing using checks



Right, but you said when the handle is poisoned and I describe using a cloth to wipe it off, but you called for a check and narrate me just glancing at the handle and not noticing anything when I didn’t roll high enough, despite the fact that I explicitly said I was wiping it with a cloth. That would be like if I said I had my pet giant knock down the door, you asked me to make a check, and since I rolled a 1 you said the giant missed the door and hit the wall instead.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, but let me call back to the original quote by [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]
> 
> "This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off."
> 
> ...



It’s very simple. What’s needed is a goal (i.e. “find out if the door is trapped”) and an approach (i.e. by wiping the handle with a cloth). That is all the information needed to be able to assess whether or not the approach could reasonably accomplish the goal, and if there is a cost or consequence for using the approach and failing to achieve the goal. If it has all of those things, ask for a check. Otherwise, a check is not needed, because the result is either obvious or doesn’t matter.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are saying that I am calling for checks instead of actions, but a series of actions were called by the player. Why is that not good enough to call for a check in response?



Because the outcome of the action wasn’t uncertain (the handle was poisoned, so wiping it with a cloth would certainly result in finding residue), but you called for a check anyway. And when the result of the check was incongruous with the fiction (the die said the character failed even though their approach didn’t have a reason chance at failing to achieve the goal), you narrated the character doing something other than what the player said they wanted to do, in order to justify what the dice said happened.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I agree, but as this discussion has progressed we have this,
> 
> "I check the door for traps"
> 
> ...




I'll try to answer this example.

The primary problem here is that we don't have enough information.  This is set up as a traditional "Checking for random traps" kind of trap, which just inherently doesn't work well with goal & approach.  Is there any reason the players would suspect a trap here?  Why?  What clue or signal were they given that this door is dangerous?

So let's just assume that, for whatever reason, they have been led to believe that there's a trap here that can be discovered if they just look really closely.  (As an aside, I would hope they got that information in an interesting way, or they had to figure out that the hint applied to this door, otherwise the resolution is just as mechanical & uninteresting as just "rolling for traps" in every 5' square.)  If that's the case, and a trained rogue _looks really closely_, shouldn't he succeed? Why do you still want to roll to see if he succeeds or fails?  To me, that's like making somebody roll Athletics for climbing a ladder.  (EDIT: Actually, that's like having some interesting roleplaying/puzzle-solving in order to find the secret ladder going up the cliff, and then requiring them to make the same Athletics check to climb the ladder that they would have had to make to just climb the cliff.)

Now let's look at another variant: the heroes have gotten a clue that there's a magical trap here involving writing, and if they [insert some task to accomplish] they can disarm it.  They haven't yet accomplished the task, but the rogue is impatient and wants to see if he can disarm it without going through all that trouble.  So he says, "I'll examine the door carefully using a magnifying glass, but if I see any writing I'll stop before I read the whole thing."  Now, I have no idea if this approach would work "in real life" (for obvious reasons) so this isn't a matter of player expertise trumping character expertise. But as the DM I might think, "Hey, that sounds pretty cool. I'll accept that as a valid, if risky, approach." So I say to the rogue, "Let's roll some dice to see if it works, but if you fail...or maybe if you fail by more than 5...it's going to trigger the trap. As the expert rogue you know that's a risk, so you can back out now if you want."

How about if I offer a real life example, which I used just last night.  My players had recently acquired an old house, which they had been led to believe contained some clue that would further their mission.  In their inspection of the basement I had included a description of a wine storage room, filled with those diamond-shaped bins that each hold multiple bottles of wine, and also one shelf designed to cradle 10 bottles, slightly angled so the labels would be on display, as if meant to hold the "good stuff".

In going through the piles of ledgers and paperwork and receipts trying to learn who lived here and why it was abandoned, one of the (many) clues they came across was a sort of bar-code like diagram: 10 skinny rectangles in a row, some filled in neatly, some empty.  At this point I was actually nervous they would make the connection too soon, but hey that's part of the game.

Ok, meanwhile they had gotten to know some of the neighbors, including a mysterious lady with her household that included a spooky little girl who had a penchant for cryptic prophecy.  When they rescued the lady, as part of the thank-you scene the little girl said, "Have you found yet what you're looking for under your house?"

The players go running back to the house, and start searching all kinds of stuff.  Not a single die rolled, though.  Somebody specifically mentions the chimneys (and in fact specifically the chimney in the kitchen on the first floor, although I wouldn't have required that) so I described how the flue seemed like a strange design.  They poked around in it, and I revealed that it looks like the flue joins another flue coming up from below.

They pull out their floorplans for the house, look where the fireplace is in relation to the basement, and realize that if there's a secret room below, it must be on one particular side of the basement, so they go down to carefully search all the walls facing in that direction.  Which just happens to include the wall of the wine room that contains the display rack.  This time when I describe that shelf, with its 10 spots, one of the players sits up and says, "I get that case of wine we received as a gift and put bottles in the (he looks at his notes) first, third, sixth, and seventh positions."

Click.

The table cheered, big smiles on their faces.  Not a single die rolled.  No out-of-game expertise needed (although there would have been some required to figure out what 1010011000 is when converted from binary to decimal, which nobody thought to use, despite having that expertise. Which is fine because it was an easter egg, not a necessary part of the plot.)

Now maybe you don't agree, but we thought this was way more fun...and WAY more rewarding/gratifying...than taking turns rolling Perception ("Can I roll, too?") in every 5' square until somebody "succeeded" by randomly getting a high enough number on a d20.  I know because I asked them, specifically with this thread on my mind.  And I didn't even phrase the question that derisively.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Who says it "completely hinges on ignorance"?
> 
> I know the only way to truly kill a Flame skull is to sprinkle the remains with holy water. No matter what character I make, this is a thing I know.
> 
> ...




I'm totally with @_*iserith*_ on this one: if you (and the rest of your table) think this kind of thing is important, then why the $#%& do you use pre-existing monsters like Flame Skulls, putting players into the position of having to pretend to be ignorant? Why not just create your own?  Or at least tweak the official monsters to have new/different secrets?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

[DELETED]

Oops...that got posted in the wrong thread.  Weird.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

I mean. I’ll admit, when I’m a player at another DM’s table, and I as a player know something about a monster from having read its monster manual entry, I ask it they’re cool with my character knowing it. I just figure, it’s common courtesy not to assume that another DM has the same philosophy as me regarding player knowledge and character knowledge.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean. I’ll admit, when I’m a player at another DM’s table, and I as a player know something about a monster from having read its monster manual entry, I ask it they’re cool with my character knowing it. I just figure, it’s common courtesy not to assume that another DM has the same philosophy as me regarding player knowledge and character knowledge.




Agreed.

AND...if they say, "No, please don't use that information" I smile and say ok but I'm thinking, "Then why didn't you _change_ it?"


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## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Agreed.
> 
> AND...if they say, "No, please don't use that information" I smile and say ok but I'm thinking, "Then why didn't you _change_ it?"




Same haha


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## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'll try to answer this example.
> 
> The primary problem here is that we don't have enough information.  This is set up as a traditional "Checking for random traps" kind of trap, which just inherently doesn't work well with goal & approach.  Is there any reason the players would suspect a trap here?  Why?  What clue or signal were they given that this door is dangerous?
> 
> ...




Gosh-darn awesome example. Love it.


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## ClaytonCross (Apr 10, 2019)

S'mon said:


> I've been setting it as their 'Passive Deception' DC. What do you do?




I see no problem with passive deception for lies and persuasion skill being a bonus to the player check if they are being honest. Then if the player rolls low, they just can't tell. However, I am also okay with a character with proficiency in insight having passive insight against any NPC deception attempts. 

I track passive perception, passive insight, and passive stealth(-5, for just being discreet and unnoticed in towns the -5 is for the disadvantage of not knowing who is watching them or where they are. This just means if a player is trying not to draw attention but not actively hiding I don't have to call for a roll if someone is looking for them or they are being followed. That would tip off the player. Instead they might get a perception roll to notice if one or more of them is being followed.)

So passive insight is something I do and Passive deception I would do for an NPC, but players are going to have to role as and active action do deceive an NPC. Which is against players, but a deceptive NPC is likely a story point I am okay with them spotting but don't want to auto fail. If the NPC is obvious or the player have sufficient reason to suspect they are lying, they will get a -5 to that DC for disadvantage. If the story calls for this as a plot point I would give the NPC +5 for advantage, but that means there is still a game set standard and it I am not ignoring player investment into incite. This also a method of saving time because I don't have to make rolls for every attempt to deceive by an NPC or worry about different players getting different rolls or anything. *I have not used passive deception for an NPC, I am just indorsing the idea*.

Let me also add, that know an NPC is lying or holding back the truth does not tell players what part of what was said was a lie or if it is a lie of omission. I say, the NPC does seem to be completely honest with you. The don't get anything else and that covers the whole of a conversation not a line by line break down.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

ClaytonCross said:


> Let me also add, that know an NPC is lying or holding back the truth does not tell players what part of what was said was a lie or if it is a lie of omission. I say, the NPC does seem to be completely honest with you. The don't get anything else and that covers the whole of a conversation not a line by line break down.




I suspect some participants in this thread would respond by blurting out "I use Insight!" (and "Can I use Insight, too?") every time the NPC finishes a sentence.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> How about if I offer a real life example, which I used just last night.  My players had recently acquired an old house, which they had been led to believe contained some clue that would further their mission.  In their inspection of the basement I had included a description of a wine storage room, filled with those diamond-shaped bins that each hold multiple bottles of wine, and also one shelf designed to cradle 10 bottles, slightly angled so the labels would be on display, as if meant to hold the "good stuff".
> 
> In going through the piles of ledgers and paperwork and receipts trying to learn who lived here and why it was abandoned, one of the (many) clues they came across was a sort of bar-code like diagram: 10 skinny rectangles in a row, some filled in neatly, some empty.  At this point I was actually nervous they would make the connection too soon, but hey that's part of the game.
> 
> ...




For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:

1. It takes some work to put all these pieces and place, and it took me a while to come up with all of these components.  I sketch some ideas, noodle on it, and the plan evolves slowly.  I can't just plop a secret door in a map and be good to go.  It takes preparation, in this case I probably thought about it over 6 weeks or so.  Consequently this was the _only_ secret door in this part of the adventure.

2. As an example of that preparation, there was a perfectly good, perfectly sensible reason why somebody would have sent them a gift of a case of wine.  I wanted to make sure they had wine bottles on hand when they figured out the puzzle*, but there was nothing at the time to make them think it was part of the puzzle.

*Confession: when they first explored this room in a previous session I made the mistake of describing it as empty of any bottles, so I had to fix that.

3. The bar code was "hidden" among a whole bunch of clues, so they wouldn't overly fixate on that one thing and solve it too quickly.  (Some of the other clues they still haven't made sense of yet, and aren't really clues to achieving goals as much as clues to making sense of the whole story, and to give them the satisfaction of figuring them out.) 

4. The little girl was my backup plan in case they needed more prodding in the right direction, which they eventually did.  If that failed I had yet another, even more explicit, backup plan, but in both cases the hint comes as a reward for achieving side-objectives, rather than just given out for free.  So basically you can keep giving stronger and stronger hints until they get it, but the hints should always feel earned.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, meanwhile they had gotten to know some of the neighbors, including a mysterious lady with her household that included a spooky little girl who had a penchant for cryptic prophecy.  When they rescued the lady, as part of the thank-you scene the little girl said, "Have you found yet what you're looking for under your house?"






Elfcrusher said:


> 4. The little girl was my backup plan in case they needed more prodding in the right direction, which they eventually did.  If that failed I had yet another, even more explicit, backup plan, but in both cases the hint comes as a reward for achieving side-objectives, rather than just given out for free.  So basically you can keep giving stronger and stronger hints until they get it, but the hints should always feel earned.





I dunno.  This is about as literally close to Mother-May-I as you can get.  I mean, they had to save the mom-figure to get the clue.

Otherwise, very nice!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> I dunno.  This is about as literally close to Mother-May-I as you can get.  I mean, they had to save the mom-figure to get the clue.




No, that's just how they _happened_ to get the clue. (Although knowing how they were roleplaying their characters, I figured they would.)

I think one of the communication problems we've had in this thread is that every time one of the goal-and-method proponents describes _one_ possible resolution to a challenge, others think it's the _only_ resolution, which does make it seem like "mother may I" or "pixel-bitching". What we've tried to emphasize is that you first set up the challenge, and then respond to what the players try.  

Even the barcode was optional: they were on the verge of physically destroying the wine rack (which would have been unfortunate, and less satisfying, but would have worked) when the one player had the key insight.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> No, that's just how they _happened_ to get the clue. (Although knowing how they were roleplaying their characters, I figured they would.)
> 
> I think one of the communication problems we've had in this thread is that every time one of the goal-and-method proponents describes _one_ possible resolution to a challenge, others think it's the _only_ resolution, which does make it seem like "mother may I" or "pixel-bitching". What we've tried to emphasize is that you first set up the challenge, and then respond to what the players try.
> 
> Even the barcode was optional: they were on the verge of physically destroying the wine rack (which would have been unfortunate, and less satisfying, but would have worked) when the one player had the key insight.




Sorry - that was just a joke that apparently fizzled (read it again with an emphasis on "mom-figure").  

Although, it did bring about your helpful assessment here which I'm fully on board with.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:
> 
> 1. It takes some work to put all these pieces and place, and it took me a while to come up with all of these components.  I sketch some ideas, noodle on it, and the plan evolves slowly.  I can't just plop a secret door in a map and be good to go.  It takes preparation, in this case I probably thought about it over 6 weeks or so.  Consequently this was the _only_ secret door in this part of the adventure.
> 
> ...



"For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:"

Just to be clear, were you " not just looking for ways to argue" with the by your own admission derisive roll for every 5' post comment in that post where you put out this example? Or when even now you frame it as against a "generic" scene?

I mean they seem basically more contentious add-ons that just attempts to spotlight differences.

But about your scene. 

It sound an awful lot like the escape room we did a few weeks ago. We, people, find piles of clues. Some have distinct sizes - three numbers on a vase bottom and a three number combo lock -(10 bottle slot shelf, 10 element bar code) - others may be color coded etc. 

In that same escape room, we had a number of clues or hints we could ask for and I swear that first room clue was about as on point as your girl safety net was. It was basically pointing us to a place to try to get what we need, much like your girl sent them back to the underhouse.


That escape room we did at the con was fun. It was fun even for me, and I cannot see well so a good chunk of it was not gonna be much for me. 

 But, the thing that strikes me about your example and now the usage notes bring home (I was wondering) is that *like our escape room** there is no bringing into the mix anything about the characters being played, the game system, be it diceless, be it RPS larping, be it a pamphlet sized character- on- post-card or HERO system 400+ pages of non-setting rules. 

So, it really does not spotlight "goal and approach" vs "character-centered" play in an RPG at all. It seems to be the epitome of "playing me or challenging me, the player" as opposed to "playing Hans or challenging Hans the dwarf".

Honestly, like the escape room, it has a lot more in common to a board game than an RPG. 

That's fine, I love them. Have loads of fun with board games, with chess where no dice are needed either and we just move our pieces around. 

Or Go, my stone never once is a "person" just a game piece and it's about how well I as a player choose my moves etc. But, every stone is the same. One stone has the same chance as any other st whatever task it is set to do. No reference cards bring up the dwarf stone's masonry or the very perceptive elf'stone.

I recommend every GM of diced games take a turn or two at running diceless systems. It imo really helps refine some techniques. 

I am glad your players enjoyed the sample setup you gave them. But if that is your flagship case for what defines and sets apart  "approach -and goal" I gotta say it sorta spotlight all that stuff about how it "devalues" all those chargen choices the system being discussed requires (and that by extension a GM using that system required) even tho it seems like the "approach and goal" advocates seem to keep saying they are not devaluing those choices. I mean, how many times have we seen the kind of "oh no, character stats matter... with frequent "we used them passively or..." insert other.

Yet in your whole example and your explicstive usage notes to your your case even more, not one reference to a trait of the PC that I can see. No point where it was important that it was a halfling or a gnome or a wizard or a rogue or... well... anything "character". 

It seems 100% play and GM puzzle and you did not se fit to show any point where character mattered to the outcome. 

That's very very informative about your presentation of what separates "approach and goal" from the rest **in actual play** and I thank you for that.

By the way, in my non "approach and goal" gameplay, I dont throw random or generic secret doors in either. They require time too. So, it's good that those are not the only alternatives.


As for this last part...

"So basically you can keep giving stronger and stronger hints until they get it, but the hints should always feel earned."

I am sure you know but in some games, the idea that "they might not get it" is also an option and the scenes and follow-ups and bigger campaign proceeds on... rather than just keeping piling on more and more stronger hints until they "get it."


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## Satyrn (Apr 10, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Sorry - that was just a joke that apparently fizzled


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## Satyrn (Apr 10, 2019)

Whew! I was kinda worried my joke would fizzle, too, [MENTION=6921763]DM Dave1[/MENTION].


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## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:"
> 
> Just to be clear, were you " not just looking for ways to argue" with the by your own admission derisive roll for every 5' post comment in that post where you put out this example? Or when even now you frame it as against a "generic" scene?
> 
> ...




The character/chargen stuff comes up when interacting with the game’s difficulty - not its challenges. 

In that same scenario, it may well have been that the adventurers did NOT place the bottles in the correct place at all and instead attempted to force the door. If so, THEN Hans the Dwarf’s prodigious Strength would have been front and center - trying (by way of a Strength check) to overcome the door’s DC. 

How about this? There is a mystery. It has a correct answer. You’re presented with the central question and tasked with figuring it out. Maybe a person was killed or a treasure was stolen. 

Looking at the scene, you may take a guess at what happened and if you hit an Intelligence check of DC 30, you’d get it exactly right. Or if you just said the answer and got it exactly right, that’d work too. But if you can’t hit that DC 30, you decide to do some investigation.

You find a handful of clues that give evidence about what happened. Each clue you find drops the DC by 6. After a couple clues, you (player) may have enough info to just guess the right answer. 

But maybe you’re not sure, so your character puts the clue together and hazards a guess (goal: solve mystery. Approach: by reviewing the evidence and deducing the likely solution). You’ve got two clues so the DC is now 18. Your character has +2 INT and training in Investigation. You might make this check. 

But say you fail. You continue investigating and grab 3 more clues. Now you have the answer and know for sure what happened. 

This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. If you’ve figured out a surefire way past an obstacle, there isn’t a need to roll a check. If you’ve got a pretty good (but not fail-proof) way past an obstacle, you probably need an ability check. Maybe you take some precautions so that you make the ability check on the most favorable of possible terms. That’s alright. And maybe you put in a bunch of work and arrive at the fail-proof way past the obstacle (as  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] ‘s group did). 

Any way past an obstacle may be valid. Some ways carry greater or lower chances of success, including 0% and 100%. 

Your super smart investigator might make the DC 30 INT (investigation) check. Maybe you, a super smart player, already figured it out! Or maybe both you and your character need some hints before either of you try.  In any case, there’s more than one way to skin this cat. 

(Two soldiers guard a door or whatever. One always lies and one always tells the truth. What’s the DC to determine whether a guard is actually telling the truth? Is there a fail-proof way to determine which one is telling the truth?).

Edit: spelling


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 10, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Whew! I was kinda worried my joke would fizzle, too, @_*DM Dave1*_.




Heh.  Oh, I've seen your abundant fine work around here.  You're like the change bank, you make money with volume.  Wait, I think I lost track of my metaphor there...


Also, to address the OP once more, I present Sir Isaac Newton:

[SECTION]Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. -_Isaac Newton_[/SECTION]
In other words, a simply stated goal and approach should suffice to know a truthful NPC is telling the truth.   Setting a DC, or multiple DCs, just confuses things when there is no meaningful consequence of failure.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 10, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> The character/chargen stuff comes up when interacting with the game’s difficulty - not its challenges.
> 
> In that same scenario, it may well have been that the adventurers did NOT place the bottles in the correct place at all and instead attempted to force the door. If so, THEN Hans the Dwarf’s prodigious Strength would have been front and center - trying (by way of a Strength check) to overcome the door’s DC.
> 
> ...



Read the usage notes, then players have zero reason to try Hans strength and a roll, the GM will keep giving them more and more hints until the players "get it" the player-side solution. 

Why take a guess (roll mechanics) - there *is* a player side solution?

More to the point, why did I take all those chargrn chouces to get to Investigate 30 as a reasonable option if *me* the player can just solve these with hints that keep coming until we "get it" built into, cooked into the challenge design? 

I know (or strongly suspect)  the fight scenes are gonna be much more stat driven, not as "find a solution that avoids uncertainty." So I dont need my character to have stats to solve scenes and types where, literally, the GM builds it and plans it to not even need be worth mentioning a single character trait?

Had a riddle last night, three in fact, but the one that stood out to me hinged on the English (modern English spelling) of a word. Thst riddle would not even have made sense in most of the languages in our modern world. So, that style of "test the players and ignore the characters" is great for, as I said board games, escape rooms and a whole lot of other entertaining venues. 

But, for those who might want a tad bit more "role" in their RPG scenarios, this explanation of and description of the strengths of **actual play** "approach and goal" to highlight its differences is very very telling, very informative and much appreciated, even with the kind of tag-on derision at the end.

Your classic logic puzzle guards at the end provides are another good example of a "player challenge" an escape room, brain teaser board game or perhaps "approach and goal" crowd might find desirable to use for challenges that matter. 

In my old ABCD type breakdown, it would likely show up in a D (both character and player challenges required" or maybe a C (either is sufficient) but see, where you portray it mono-focused (DC resolve and player resolve are the same solution) in mine thry would be different. So, for example, there might be a character challenge to get the statues to respond (let's say simplest obvious case a fight challenge that unlocks the info you present, one will lie, one will not, tell us...blahblah.) Obviously, there are a gazillion other character-side challenges that could be used, but z fight is obvious. 

But as long as it's all solvable by player side stuff that doesnt bring PC traits even to the level of **worth mentioning in the recap or the usage/design notes** it can certainly be loads of fun, but a challenge with a lot less "role" than some may find to their liking.

"If you’ve figured out a surefire way past an obstacle, there isn’t a need to roll a check"

Unless I misread it, wasnt there a girl in the wings and other clues to keep throwing in there by **deliberate intent of the GM** to keep piling on hints until "they get it"? Even the escape room at the con had a two clue limit and an hour timer.

But, I seem to recall one of the big loud talking points about "approach and goal was the "we dont have DC in mind before approach and even "we dont worry about solutions that auto-succeed before the play" etc. 

Here, this example which iirc you lauded, shows in absolute clarity as an example of what "approach and goal " looks like in actual  play,  chosen to show the differences - there is a right way, planned for in advance, a right approach, that will get to auto-success and where blues and more NPCs will keep popping up until they "get it" and not once did  a single character trait deserve even mentioning. 

I agree with you, that was a great example - made even greater by its use notes.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:"
> 
> Just to be clear, were you " not just looking for ways to argue" with the by your own admission derisive roll for every 5' post comment in that post where you put out this example? Or when even now you frame it as against a "generic" scene?




This wasn't mean as a "don't respond if you're just going to argue" caveat; I was really just trying to signal that I'm tired of arguing with those who just feel like arguing.  But I do see your point and that was probably an unnecessary precursor. 




> But about your scene.
> 
> It sound an awful lot like the escape room we did a few weeks ago. We, people, find piles of clues. Some have distinct sizes - three numbers on a vase bottom and a three number combo lock -(10 bottle slot shelf, 10 element bar code) - others may be color coded etc.
> 
> ...




The difference between your escape room and this scenario...or one in a similar vein...is exactly what I replied to DM Dave: your escape room really does have one (or several) fixed solutions.  The escape room doesn't respond and adapt to creative ideas by the participants.  It _is_ a case of mother-may-I.

Tiny but illustrative example: when the player announced that he was putting the bottles in those specific spots, I really wasn't listening to whether he got the right numbers.  He may have read his notes wrong, or taken his notes wrong.  I didn't care if he clicked the right pixels; that wasn't the point at all. Presumably in your escape room you have to also get the numbers right.



> So, it really does not spotlight "goal and approach" vs "character-centered" play in an RPG at all. It seems to be the epitome of "playing me or challenging me, the player" as opposed to "playing Hans or challenging Hans the dwarf".
> 
> Honestly, like the escape room, it has a lot more in common to a board game than an RPG.
> 
> ...




It's true that in the parts I described, no special character skills or personality traits were necessary, or even invoked, to put the final pieces of the puzzle together. But those distinctions factored into the story leading up to it.  It was the Wizard, who used Investigation and Arcana, who uncovered the clues.  And in rescuing the lady they all used both their mechanical abilities and their personalities.  Likewise with everything that led to the gift of the wine.

And, as @_*Bawylie*_ pointed out, if they had "solved" the problem in another way it might have relied more heavily on specific attributes/skills.

It's funny that you compare this approach to a board game, because I feel exactly the same way about the "I roll Perception to look for secret doors" approach.  Many posters talk about "challenging the character not the player" but that seems to be a euphemism for "challenging the player to build an effective character and knowing when to invoke abilities."  Maybe a card game is a better comparison that a board game, for it seems to be quite analogous to the challenge of building and playing an effective deck in M:tG. Would you call that "challenging the deck not the player"?  

Simply having different options, and different strengths and weaknesses, from player to player is not what sets RPGs apart from other games.


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## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Read the usage notes, then players have zero reason to try Hans strength and a roll, the GM will keep giving them more and more hints until the players "get it" the player-side solution.
> 
> Why take a guess (roll mechanics) - there *is* a player side solution?
> 
> ...




Okay, but how it DID play out was not the only possible way it COULD have played out. 

Let’s take a fight scene. Actually wait, let’s find out why it must be a fight scene. A black knight guards a rope bridge and will not permit you to pass unless you pay a toll. What do you do? You have many options, including combat to bypass this knight. Maybe pay the toll, maybe cast fly (uh-oh, a char-gen decision in “goal/approach”), maybe find a different passage, maybe cut the bridge and raft across. 

The decisions you make at char-gen give you resources to use in overcoming obstacles. Those resources are not the ONLY thing you might use. To think they are leaves aside the human mind that plays this game. I’ll tell you, when I play with the kids group, they almost exclusively come up with actions and never ask “can I roll my x?” Often I’ll get “Im strong so I’ll push whatever whatever.” Or something like that. For them, at least, play means engaging the scenario, not merely the process of task resolution. 

I think only an adult could truly confuse the process of the game for actually playing it. “How do I do this/that?” adults always ask. Don’t worry about - just say what your character wants to do and I’ll worry about the rules. 

But I’ll leave that aside. There are obstacles that can be overcome without failure given the right approach, and obstacles that cannot be overcome at all given a wrong approach. If that statement is truly in dispute, then there cannot be any further understanding or discussion.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I agree with you, that was a great example - made even greater by its use notes.




An alternative approach would be: "Hey, it doesn't seem like any character choices mattered here, and that you were determined they would arrive at this one (and only one) solution.  Is that the case or is there more you didn't tell us? What would you have done if they just didn't get it?"

That would have been an example of what I meant by "those genuinely interested in discussing this approach." (And, by the way, I'm still just the disciple.  @_*Bawylie*_ and @_*iserith*_ are the masters.)

Your assumption that you knew the answers to those questions, plus your sarcasm/snark, sorta makes me wish you'd put me back on ignore.


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## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> An alternative approach would be: "Hey, it doesn't seem like any character choices mattered here, and that you were determined they would arrive at this one (and only one) solution.  Is that the case or is there more you didn't tell us?"
> 
> That would have been an example of what I meant by "those genuinely interested in discussing this approach." (And, by the way, I'm still just the disciple.  [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] are the masters.)
> 
> Your assumption that you knew the answers to those questions, plus your sarcasm/snark, sorta makes me wish you'd put me back on ignore.




I’m just a dude on the internet, though.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I’ll tell you, when I play with the kids group, they almost exclusively come up with actions and never ask “can I roll my x?” Often I’ll get “Im strong so I’ll push whatever whatever.” Or something like that. For them, at least, play means engaging the scenario, not merely the process of task resolution.
> 
> I think only an adult could truly confuse the process of the game for actually playing it. “How do I do this/that?” adults always ask. Don’t worry about - just say what your character wants to do and I’ll worry about the rules. .




This is an excellent point, and I would argue it strongly supports my assertion that player’s wanting to roll dice at problems is a learned behavior. Children’s natural inclination is to engage with the fiction first, while adults often take a process-oriented approach. To a kid, you open the door by breaking it down, and maybe you’ll need to roll a die to see if that works. To many adults, you open the door by making a successful strength check, which represents your character’s attempt to break it down. A subtle distinction that makes a world of difference.


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## Bawylie (Apr 10, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This is an excellent point, and I would argue it strongly supports my assertion that player’s wanting to roll dice at problems is a learned behavior. Children’s natural inclination is to engage with the fiction first, while adults often take a process-oriented approach. To a kid, you open the door by breaking it down, and maybe you’ll need to roll a die to see if that works. To many adults, you open the door by making a successful strength check, which represents your character’s attempt to break it down. A subtle distinction that makes a world of difference.




Well, to be fair it’s not just kids. Complete strangers to the game are about 50/50 IMX. Some are like “how do I...?” But as many are like “ok so I’ll just do ...”


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 10, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Well, to be fair it’s not just kids. Complete strangers to the game are about 50/50 IMX. Some are like “how do I...?” But as many are like “ok so I’ll just do ...”




I know I've told this story (too) but once I was DMing for my 5 year old and his 12 year old cousin. The 12 year old persuaded the 5 year old to sneak ahead to scout things out.  After he snuck down the passage to the giant cave, the 12 year old eagerly asked, "What do you see?"

Instead of waiting for me to tell him what he saw, the 5 year old just started making stuff up.  It was awesome.


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## iserith (Apr 10, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I’ll tell you, when I play with the kids group, they almost exclusively come up with actions and never ask “can I roll my x?” Often I’ll get “Im strong so I’ll push whatever whatever.” Or something like that. For them, at least, play means engaging the scenario, not merely the process of task resolution.
> 
> I think only an adult could truly confuse the process of the game for actually playing it. “How do I do this/that?” adults always ask. Don’t worry about - just say what your character wants to do and I’ll worry about the rules.




The second sentence of the Introduction of the Basic Rules (that part that nobody reads or, even if they do read it, say it's "just advice" and not a statement on the nature of the game itself) says that D&D "...shares elements with childhood games of make-believe."

Leave it to adults to totally botch the job.


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## pemerton (Apr 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'm sure you're trying to help, but bringing up approaches that are appropriate to other games and might not be a good fit for the one under discussion is in my view needlessly confusing.



There's a fair bit going on in this thread. I've had some interesting exchanges with various posters which they also seem to have found interesting/rewarding (no one forced them to give XP). And I replied to a thread that quoted me.

I'm confident that [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] can work out that I'm speaking from one particular perspective.



Chaosmancer said:


> Perhaps I’m wrong and the curse was triggered by them touching it in an attempt to decipher… but then success or failure of the roll would have led to the mummies, because touching it activated the curse.



I could be wrong - but my reading of [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s example was that _the fiction of the curse_ is established as a narration of the consequence of a failed check. A similar example is found in this actual play report (that's me posting as thurgon on rpg.net) - failure on an Aura Reading check led me to narrate a curse on the angel feather the PC was examining.



Chaosmancer said:


> And this can work, but sometimes there is an answer in the fiction, because I have put it there.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there is a truth, and I need to know that truth before even calling for a check, and a success or failure does not change that truth, only how things react and occur.



In these sorts of cases, I think it is harder to establish meaningful stakes and consequences for a knowledge check. I'm not 100% sure knowledge checks are a good fit at all for that sort of game - I'm no sort of expert, but I look at (say) GUMSHOE and it tends to eschew _checks_ as the way to acquire game-driving knowledge.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 10, 2019)

pemerton said:


> In these sorts of cases, I think it is harder to establish meaningful stakes and consequences for a knowledge check. I'm not 100% sure knowledge checks are a good fit at all for that sort of game - I'm no sort of expert, but I look at (say) GUMSHOE and it tends to eschew _checks_ as the way to acquire game-driving knowledge.



Yeah, I am very much not a fan of knowledge checks in 5e. You can make them work if you must, but personally I just avoid them entirely and give players any information it makes sense for their characters to know based on their backgrounds and proficiencies. When in doubt, I’ll use their passive Intelligence + a relevant skill as a rough estimate, but really more often than not, if a character is proficiennt in a relevant skill, I give them the relevant information. Checks using Arcana, History, Religion, Nature, etc. only come up in my games in attempts to analyze or identify things, not to remember tidbits of info.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Are you as DM saying what the characters do? If you are, then I would say you're overstepping your role as DM, according to how that's defined by the game. Whether or not you care is up to you.




See, I don't like blanket statements like this. 

If the player says they use their axe to threaten the merchant, and after they roll I say "You raise your axe menacingly" then I am telling the player what they did, and according to your statement I am overstepping myself as a DM when I do that. 

But... I'm not. That's just normal DMing. 

What about if the player says "I intimidate the merchant" And I ask "How? Are you going to threaten him with you axe?" and the player responds, "Sure, that sounds good".

Am I overstepping? I gave the player the idea after all. It might as well have been me just saying that's what happened. 

What if they respond with, "I don't care, just something scary. I'm a dwarf barbarian covered in entrails, I'm sure I'm intimidating enough" and I decide they use their axe?


See, I don't really care to argue with you, but a statement like "If you ever say what the character does, you are wrong" just makes pointless lines in the sand. It doesn't mean what you seem to want it to mean.



iserith said:


> I don't actually care what you or your players do in your game. I'm only saying what the rules say to do. That does not include players asking to make ability checks and DMs saying what the characters do. Make of that what you will.




You don't care, except to constantly point out that we *cannot *do it. That in doing so we are not playing the game. That is doing so we are using rules from older editions that have no place in this game. Constantly.

But you don't care. 

Right.




iserith said:


> I'm not saying you can't play dumb only that you don't have to, nor do you have to justify your knowledge by asking to make checks or asking the DM for permission to act on your knowledge.




Why do I not have to justify myself in knowing something my character might have no reason to know? 

By this exact line of reasoning, if I had run an adventure path, and knew the secret password into the vault. Then I have no responsibility to justify that knowledge. I can simply act upon it and the DM is obligated to allow it, because they cannot say my character doesn't know secret information.

Sure, this plan would clearly fail, because the DM would immediately change the password to something else and giving a false password would do something horrible to us, but that shouldn't mean that I wasn't doing something out of line by utilizing knowledge I have little reason to know, without clearing it with my DM. 




iserith said:


> You don't have to have played D&D 3e or 4e to play D&D 5e as if you are playing those games. It's common enough to have picked it up from others. My position is that games work better when we play them as the rules tell us to play them, not that games are unplayable if you don't.




I am taking this in the best possible light, but I want to point out a negative interpretation of your assertion here. 

If the game works better, then that means my way is lesser. You are implying that my game is lesser than it could be, because of WORD CHOICE. 

Not that our actions run differently, not that we are playing under a different style, but because of the order of the words we use in the sentence. 

You understand that taken from that direction, which I am sure is not your intent, you sound incredibly elitist? 

You don't care what we do, you just want us to be aware it is lesser than the way you do things. 




iserith said:


> That just plays into my point: You decide what your character thinks and how he or she acts. But making assumptions can be risky for many reasons, so it's a good idea to take steps in-game to verify those assumptions before acting on them.




Taking in game steps... like asking to roll a knowledge check? The very thing this entire series of arguments has stemmed from me saying I do? 

Oh, sorry, that's doing it wrong. I should ask "To call upon my studies of arcane history for mention of *insert fact here*" instead of saying I'd be rolling a knowledge check.



Charlaquin said:


> Why do they want to “roll Perception”? Shouldn’t they want to find out if there’s an ambush waiting on the other side? If that’s what they want, I would think listening at the door or peering through the keyhole would be a more effective approach than “rolled my perception.”




Why do you insist on assuming that by asking for perception they are not listening at the door, peering through the keyhole, and smelling for the odor of blood and iron? 

The approach of asking for perception is only less effective if you refuse to acknowledge what the character would be doing. Rolling perception isn't gibberish that needs decoding. There are clear ideas of what that means. 



Charlaquin said:


> Wh.... what?




Apologies, typing quickly and I forgot a section. This entire example was based off this argument that failing a roll should be worse than not attempting the roll in the first place. 

So I should have added "add they fail the roll" to the part about rolling perception. That is my error. 





Charlaquin said:


> Ok, let’s break this down. *Snip the obvious*
> 
> So, does anything change as a result of listening at the door and not hearing the monsters on the other side? Yes, actually. If they don’t check, they don’t know if there is anything on the other side or not. But if they try and fail, then they have gained new information - that they did not hear anything.




And from what I was given to understand in [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] 's post, you are wrong. That is not enough of a consequence to call for roll. If failing the roll is no worse than not rolling, you should not call for a roll. 

Most players are smart enough to consider silent monsters, considering there are a large number of them in DnD. So, failing to hear anything does not mean they will feel safe. 

Also, you have cut your players options in less than half. By having them say they listen at the door, you are only considering what they may hear. 

They will have to give you an entirely separate action and resolution for if they see anything by looking through the keyhole. 

And then another for feeling the door to see if there is a temperature differential. Or whatever else they may try. 



Charlaquin said:


> That gives the players the ability to make an informed decision. Do they take the risk? Do they cast Gidance or spend Inspiration to mitigate the risk? Do they decide the risk isn’t worth it and try a different approach? It’s up to them. Now they are succeeding or failing based on their decisions, not based on the whims of a d20 they had no choice but to roll.




So, who says they couldn't mitigate the risk with guidance and the like anyways? Who says they "have no choice" especially since they are asking to roll. Who says they can't try other approaches to give them better chances? 

You make assumption at your own risk. 




Charlaquin said:


> I don’t think that moniker is particularly representative of my camp, but I don’t call for rolls when failure doesn’t have direct consequences, if that’s what you mean.




Except in the example you gave... you just did. You callled for a roll where the only consequence of failure was that they did not hear anything. That is not a direct consequence in the way they were being discussed earlier. That is simply not knowing, and defaulting to the state you were in before the check was wrong, according to the arguments I've been responding to. 



Charlaquin said:


> If it is information that I would be comfortable giving the players with a successful check, what harm is done by giving it to them without a check? If it is information that I would not be comfortable giving them with a successful check, then why would a check to gain that information be an option?




Why would players not be allowed to know something if they have the background to know of it? 

Why would players know something that is obscure and took your BBEG 30 years of searching to uncover? 

I was responding to the idea that simply "have them give a reasonable answer to why they know it" is fundamentally flawed. Reasonable answers are easy to come up with. Which means a clever player could position their character to "reasonably" know everything. 




Charlaquin said:


> But you see what you’ve done here? By deciding that a check is needed to open the locked door, you’ve decided that any attempt to open it has an uncertain outcome. And that’s just not always the case. Some ways of trying to open a locked door are certain to fail (shouting at it). Some are certain to succeed (casting knock). Some are certain to succeed _eventually_ if nothing stops you before you finish (smashing it down). But since checks are meant to resolve actions with uncertain outcomes and you’ve decided this door requires a check to open, you are forcing uncertainty into approaches that may not be uncertain.




Why do you assume that I am adding uncertainty? 

Why is my thinking that a locked door might require a lockpicking check mean that I am going to allow shouting to work or knock to not work?

If an approach is certain to work, then it is certain to work. Whether I imagined lockpicking as their answer or not. 




Charlaquin said:


> Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. So you do agree that there are some ways to go about accomplishing a goal that do not involve any uncertainty.




Yes, clearly. 

Did I ever say that I didn't? But most skill checks would require rolling at some point. If they don't, why are we talking about skill rolls? 



Charlaquin said:


> Right, but you said when the handle is poisoned and I describe using a cloth to wipe it off, but you called for a check and narrate me just glancing at the handle and not noticing anything when I didn’t roll high enough, despite the fact that I explicitly said I was wiping it with a cloth. That would be like if I said I had my pet giant knock down the door, you asked me to make a check, and since I rolled a 1 you said the giant missed the door and hit the wall instead.




Because I wasn't responding to the wiping of the handle. I was specifically, in my original post, responding to the poor handling of "You fail" given by the GM.  

I was offering an alternative to the GM's narration of failure.



Charlaquin said:


> It’s very simple. What’s needed is a goal (i.e. “find out if the door is trapped”) and an approach (i.e. by wiping the handle with a cloth). That is all the information needed to be able to assess whether or not the approach could reasonably accomplish the goal, and if there is a cost or consequence for using the approach and failing to achieve the goal. If it has all of those things, ask for a check. Otherwise, a check is not needed, because the result is either obvious or doesn’t matter.




But, wiping the handle does not reveal the blade trap. 

See, you are limiting the players to only using one method. They have to individually ask each different approach, and then you may or may not call for a check on any one of them. 



Charlaquin said:


> Because the outcome of the action wasn’t uncertain (the handle was poisoned, so wiping it with a cloth would certainly result in finding residue), but you called for a check anyway. And when the result of the check was incongruous with the fiction (the die said the character failed even though their approach didn’t have a reason chance at failing to achieve the goal), you narrated the character doing something other than what the player said they wanted to do, in order to justify what the dice said happened.




Okay, so I'm only going to respond to this once. 

It wasn't my example. It was Elfcrusher's I believe and fully called out to be overly sarcastic. 

I never called for any check, I even said that wiping the handle would have auto-succeeded, which is why I was ignoring the wiping the handle because it made it an unassailable event. 

The only thing I did to get this pile on was that I thought the way the DM narrated the failure was poor (You failed, take poison damage) and that I would have approached that narration differently, *if we had agreed a roll was needed*.

So, I have nothing to defend here, since you are making false accusations of me.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 10, 2019)

Breaking this into two posts again



Elfcrusher said:


> So let's just assume that, for whatever reason, they have been led to believe that there's a trap here that can be discovered if they just look really closely.  (As an aside, I would hope they got that information in an interesting way, or they had to figure out that the hint applied to this door, otherwise the resolution is just as mechanical & uninteresting as just "rolling for traps" in every 5' square.)  If that's the case, and a trained rogue _looks really closely_, shouldn't he succeed? Why do you still want to roll to see if he succeeds or fails?  To me, that's like making somebody roll Athletics for climbing a ladder.  (EDIT: Actually, that's like having some interesting roleplaying/puzzle-solving in order to find the secret ladder going up the cliff, and then requiring them to make the same Athletics check to climb the ladder that they would have had to make to just climb the cliff.)




Why should I assume the rogue will always flawlessly succeed in disabling or spotting a trap? 

If I am foreshadowing every traps, and paying attention to my descriptions is enough to know a trap is present, and the rogue auto-succeeds in disabling or spotting said trap... 

What's the point? 



Elfcrusher said:


> Now maybe you don't agree, but we thought this was way more fun...and WAY more rewarding/gratifying...than taking turns rolling Perception ("Can I roll, too?") in every 5' square until somebody "succeeded" by randomly getting a high enough number on a d20.  I know because I asked them, specifically with this thread on my mind.  And I didn't even phrase the question that derisively.




That does sound like a ton of fun, and a great experience. 

But that doesn't change anything about the fun had at my table, or the fact that if I do use a trap or investigation, I let my players roll and sometimes they find cool things and have a great amount of fun. 



Elfcrusher said:


> I'm totally with @_*iserith*_ on this one: if you (and the rest of your table) think this kind of thing is important, then why the $#%& do you use pre-existing monsters like Flame Skulls, putting players into the position of having to pretend to be ignorant? Why not just create your own?  Or at least tweak the official monsters to have new/different secrets?




My players don't know this? 

Again, I'm talking about *myself*. 

My players don't have to pretend to be ignorant, they are ignorant. 

And I do make homebrew monsters, but my DM's are usually running their first or second games... so they don't feel comfortable homebrewing. 

I have only been talking about myself, my knowledge and how I try and reconcile that with my DM's



Charlaquin said:


> I mean. I’ll admit, when I’m a player at another DM’s table, and I as a player know something about a monster from having read its monster manual entry, I ask it they’re cool with my character knowing it. I just figure, it’s common courtesy not to assume that another DM has the same philosophy as me regarding player knowledge and character knowledge.




And this is all I was saying, yet that is somehow a problem for people?


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## pemerton (Apr 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Why do I not have to justify myself in knowing something my character might have no reason to know?
> 
> By this exact line of reasoning, if I had run an adventure path, and knew the secret password into the vault. Then I have no responsibility to justify that knowledge. I can simply act upon it and the DM is obligated to allow it, because they cannot say my character doesn't know secret information.



This has been _extensively_ discussed in this current thread.

It would be wrong to say there's a consensus. But here is one example that illustrates a reason to disagree with your claim: Moldvay Basic tells the new player to read the rulebook (which includes a Monsters chapter). But every module I can think of tell the player not to read the module. Generalising: knowledge of spells, monsters, etc is part of the player's knowledge of the game system. Whereas reading the module, or the GM's notes, is cheating.

And put another way: the game assumes that players will replay it, and hence re-encounter trolls, or flameskulls, or whatever with new PCs. Whereas while it is true that, in real life, people replay modules, the design assumption of most contemporary modules is that the player plays them once, starting from a position of ignorance.


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> See, I don't really care to argue with you, but a statement like "If you ever say what the character does, you are wrong" just makes pointless lines in the sand. It doesn't mean what you seem to want it to mean.




I didn't say you were wrong though. The rules, however, are clear about who says what in D&D 5e.



Chaosmancer said:


> You don't care, except to constantly point out that we *cannot *do it. That in doing so we are not playing the game. That is doing so we are using rules from older editions that have no place in this game. Constantly.
> 
> But you don't care.
> 
> Right.




I don't, especially given that I don't know you or your players. But ostensibly you are making statements and asking questions in what appears to be an attempt to understand the point of view of several posters in this thread. I'm offering you the basis for those viewpoints - the rules themselves - so you can see where some of us are coming from.



Chaosmancer said:


> Why do I not have to justify myself in knowing something my character might have no reason to know?
> 
> By this exact line of reasoning, if I had run an adventure path, and knew the secret password into the vault. Then I have no responsibility to justify that knowledge. I can simply act upon it and the DM is obligated to allow it, because they cannot say my character doesn't know secret information.
> 
> Sure, this plan would clearly fail, because the DM would immediately change the password to something else and giving a false password would do something horrible to us, but that shouldn't mean that I wasn't doing something out of line by utilizing knowledge I have little reason to know, without clearing it with my DM.




The rules say the player determines how the character thinks and acts. The DM can only narrate the result of how you act. You may choose to justify your character's actions, if you wish, but you're not required to. That appears to be an assumption based on how you choose to play. I make no judgment as to whether it's a good idea to do what you say you do or not.



Chaosmancer said:


> I am taking this in the best possible light, but I want to point out a negative interpretation of your assertion here.
> 
> If the game works better, then that means my way is lesser. You are implying that my game is lesser than it could be, because of WORD CHOICE.
> 
> ...




Pick two distinct games other than D&D. Play one as if you are playing the other. Let me know if that works the same, better, or worse than just playing the way the rules say. If the games are similar in some ways, it may still be playable, but no doubt there may be difficulties that are not present otherwise.



Chaosmancer said:


> Taking in game steps... like asking to roll a knowledge check? The very thing this entire series of arguments has stemmed from me saying I do?
> 
> Oh, sorry, that's doing it wrong. I should ask "To call upon my studies of arcane history for mention of *insert fact here*" instead of saying I'd be rolling a knowledge check.




Asking to roll a check is not an action a character takes in the game. A check is not a task. It is mechanic used to resolve the outcome of a task when that outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. This is a core concept that seems to be a point of confusion as you discuss related matters with posters in this thread.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

You as a player of character A plays in campaign A with GM A and encounter a few creatures and learn somethings about them.

You as a player of character B plays in campaign B with GM A, encounter the same few creatures.


Do you as character B use the info on the creatures that you got playing character A to help defeat them before character B learns the info?


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> You as a player of character A plays in campaign A with GM A and encounter a few creatures and learn somethings about them.
> 
> You as a player of character B plays in campaign B with GM A, encounter the same few creatures.
> 
> Do you as character B use the info on the creatures that you got playing character A to help defeat them before character B learns the info?




Sure, though short of being told as much, there's no certain way to know that the creatures in Campaign B are exactly the same as Campaign A, so there's risk in just _assuming_ they are. It is therefore smart play to take steps to try to verify that before making what could be a bad assumption. Trying to recall lore about such monsters or making deductions based on available clues are two possibilities.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Do you as character B use the info on the creatures that you got playing character A to help defeat them before character B learns the info?




If I know there are players at the table who haven’t seen something before, I’ll sit back...or even actively flail...to give them that immersive experience. 

But if I know we’ve all seen something, I genuinely don’t understand why feigning group ignorance is a fun version of role playing.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Quick story: in the early 90’s I DM’d a couple sessions for coworkers who hadn’t played in many years. I threw some trolls at them, and thought they were roleplaying when the panicked over the regeneration. 

Turns out they had just forgotten.


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## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If I know there are players at the table who haven’t seen something before, I’ll sit back...or even actively flail...to give them that immersive experience.
> 
> But if I know we’ve all seen something, I genuinely don’t understand why feigning group ignorance is a fun version of role playing.




Because people are role playing?  Putting themselves into the mindset of a person that just lopped the head off this weird green giant-like creature that just freakin' got back up?

Because their reactions to be a reflection of their PC, not them?

I don't see why you wouldn't want people to play that way since you're so into immersive game play.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Why do you insist on assuming that by asking for perception they are not listening at the door, peering through the keyhole, and smelling for the odor of blood and iron?



I don’t. I insist on _not_ assuming the characters are doing things the players haven’t told me they are doing. If they want to listen at the door, peer through the keyhole, abs smell for anything unusual, they should tell me that.



Chaosmancer said:


> The approach of asking for perception is only less effective if you refuse to acknowledge what the character would be doing. Rolling perception isn't gibberish that needs decoding. There are clear ideas of what that means.



It’s not gibberish that needs decoding, it’s incomplete information. If all you tell me is that you “make a Perception check”, that does not tell me what you wish to accomplish or how. That only tells me that you think your proficiency in Perception is relevant in this situation. Duly noted, but I am not a mind reader, nor am I interested in trying to guess what you want to accomplish that you think your Perception proficiency might help you with in this situation, or how you plan to go about it. Now, I could guess. Given that you’re at a door and you think your Perception is relevant, I can assume you want to know if it’s safe to open the door and you plan to use your senses to try to determine if it is so, maybe by listening, smelling, touching, or tasting. I can probably guess that you don’t plan to lick the door. But do you touch it? Assuming you do opens me up to “but I didn’t say I was touching it!” or touching it springs a trap, and assuming you don’t opens me up to “but I didn’t say I wasn’t touching it!” if you miss information that you would have needed to touch the door to uncover. Besides that, it is not my place to say what your character does. If you want to look through the keyhole, tell me. If you want to touch the door, tell me. I will not make assumptions about what your character is doing. It’s not my role as DM, and overstepping my role can lead to problems.



Chaosmancer said:


> Apologies, typing quickly and I forgot a section. This entire example was based off this argument that failing a roll should be worse than not attempting the roll in the first place.
> 
> So I should have added "add they fail the roll" to the part about rolling perception. That is my error.



It’s cool. 



Chaosmancer said:


> And from what I was given to understand in [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] 's post, you are wrong. That is not enough of a consequence to call for roll. If failing the roll is no worse than not rolling, you should not call for a roll.



I disagree that it’s not a consequence. If you don’t listen at a door, you don’t know if there is anything on the other side. If you do listen, and you hear nothing, you now know that there is nothing making noise on the other side. You have gained information which may lead you to mistakenly believe there is nothing on the other side. Now, I’ll leave that up to the players to decide for their own characters, but personally I consider that a consequence. Something has changed as a result of the attempt failing, and that change is for the worse. Obviously other DMs are going to have different thresholds for what they consider a meaningful consequence.



Chaosmancer said:


> Most players are smart enough to consider silent monsters, considering there are a large number of them in DnD. So, failing to hear anything does not mean they will feel safe.



Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, that’s not for me to decide.



Chaosmancer said:


> Also, you have cut your players options in less than half. By having them say they listen at the door, you are only considering what they may hear.
> 
> They will have to give you an entirely separate action and resolution for if they see anything by looking through the keyhole.
> 
> And then another for feeling the door to see if there is a temperature differential. Or whatever else they may try.



Is there something wrong with resolving those actions sequentially?



Chaosmancer said:


> So, who says they couldn't mitigate the risk with guidance and the like anyways?



Sure they could. In my experience, however, they don’t tend to. Before I adopted the goal and approach style, players only ever spent Inspiration on death saving throws, and they either never used guidance and/or worked together, or they did so on every roll. With the goal and approach style, players have enough information to consider whether or not to use those resources, and do so when they feel it is appropriate.



Chaosmancer said:


> Who says they "have no choice" especially since they are asking to roll. Who says they can't try other approaches to give them better chances?
> 
> You make assumption at your own risk.



So first off, it seems I have misconstrued the way you handle checks, and for that I apologize. There was someone I was discussing this subject with who earlier said something along the lines of “if you try to pick the lock it’s a thieves tools check, if you try to freeze the vials with Magic it’s an Arcana check, if you try to break the chest open, it’s an Athletics check,” essentially suggesting that in the example given, a check had to be made for the trapped chest to be open, and that different approaches would only affect what skill was used. My mistake for conflating that argument with yours. That said, if you don’t tell your players the DC of the check and the consequences for failing, how do you expect them to know if a different approach might have better chances? If all you say is “make a Perception check,” without telling them the DC or what happens if they fail, do you honestly expect them to say, “wait, nevermind, I want to try something else”? Worse, if _they_ say “I make a Perception check. 14.” they’re _deffinitely_ not weighing the risks - they can’t even know whether or not there are risks, let alone what the risks are or if another approach might be less risky.



Chaosmancer said:


> Except in the example you gave... you just did. You callled for a roll where the only consequence of failure was that they did not hear anything. That is not a direct consequence in the way they were being discussed earlier. That is simply not knowing, and defaulting to the state you were in before the check was wrong, according to the arguments I've been responding to.



Again, different DMs will have different standards for what they consider a meaningful consequence, but personally I consider “I have listened and heard nothing” to be worse than “I have not listened.” That’s a meaningful change in circumstances, for the worse if there is something they might have heard but didn’t.



Chaosmancer said:


> Why would players not be allowed to know something if they have the background to know of it?
> 
> Why would players know something that is obscure and took your BBEG 30 years of searching to uncover?



Exactly. So why would you leave whether or not they know either of those things up to a dice roll?



Chaosmancer said:


> I was responding to the idea that simply "have them give a reasonable answer to why they know it" is fundamentally flawed. Reasonable answers are easy to come up with. Which means a clever player could position their character to "reasonably" know everything.



There are absolutely things that it is not reasonable to know. Sorry, the Raven Queen’s mortal name has been erased from history, you’re not going to come up with a reasonable explanation of how you know it. On the other hand, there are many things that it is perfectly reasonable for your character to know, and I’m not going to say you should have to roll a die to see if you know them. Either it’s something that makes sense for you to know, in which case why allow for the possibility of failing to know it, or it’s something that doesn’t make sense for you to know, in which case why allow for the possibility for you to know it?



Chaosmancer said:


> Why do you assume that I am adding uncertainty?
> 
> Why is my thinking that a locked door might require a lockpicking check mean that I am going to allow shouting to work or knock to not work?
> 
> ...



Again, sorry, I mistook you for someone else I was having a similar discussion with upthread.



Chaosmancer said:


> Did I ever say that I didn't? But most skill checks would require rolling at some point. If they don't, why are we talking about skill rolls?



The statement “Most skill checks would require rolling at some point” speaks to a fundamental difference in the way you and I view skill checks. In my view, all skill checks require a roll, but not all actions require skill checks to resolve. Skill checks aren’t things that are out there in the wild, waiting to be overcome with a high enough roll or bypassed with a clever alternative. They are a means of resolving actions with uncertain outcomes.



Chaosmancer said:


> Because I wasn't responding to the wiping of the handle. I was specifically, in my original post, responding to the poor handling of "You fail" given by the GM.
> 
> I was offering an alternative to the GM's narration of failure.



But you can’t just isolate the resolution from the action like that. You’re arguing that the DM should have narrated the failure differently, but there shouldn’t have been a failure to narrate in the first place. In order for there to be a failure there needs to be a check, and in order for there to be a check there needs to be an action with an uncertain outcome, which there was not in the example. That was the point of the example - to illustrate the absurdity of calling for checks without taking into account the player’s goal and approach.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, wiping the handle does not reveal the blade trap.
> 
> See, you are limiting the players to only using one method. They have to individually ask each different approach, and then you may or may not call for a check on any one of them.



Ok, setting aside the fact that there was no blade trap in the poisoned handle example, if there is a blade trap, it should be Telegraphed so that the players know to look for it, otherwise it’s just a gotcha. I fail to see the problem with working through a series of actions to examine a door, and calling for rolls when there is uncertainty in the outcome. Sounds like the game working as intended to me.





Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, so I'm only going to respond to this once.
> 
> It wasn't my example. It was Elfcrusher's I believe and fully called out to be overly sarcastic.
> 
> ...



This is a very strange hill to die on. The Example was a case of illustrative hyperbole, being used to show the kind of scenario that can happen when DMs put the cart before the horse. It’s not even that absurd of an example, I have literally seen such things happen in game, where a player describes an action that should not have a reasonable chance of failing, the DM called for a roll, the player rolled poorly, and the DM narrated the player doing something stupid like tripping to account for the failure the dice said occurred. You cannot say how the DM “should have narrated the failure” without implicitly validating the DM’s decision to call for a roll. It makes no sense to ignore the player’s action and say what the DM should have done “if we all agree a roll was needed” because the point of the example was to present a scenario where we could all agree that a roll wasn’t needed and shouldn’t have been called for.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Because people are role playing?  Putting themselves into the mindset of a person that just lopped the head off this weird green giant-like creature that just freakin' got back up?
> 
> Because their reactions to be a reflection of their PC, not them?
> 
> I don't see why you wouldn't want people to play that way since you're so into immersive game play.




I guess i'll have this conversation yet again...

You and I have different definitions of immersion.

I think the guy who has never encountered a D&D troll and is genuinely getting freaked out that this monster won't die but his character probably is..._that_ guy is immersed.

The guy who is _pretending_ to be freaked out, but is really wondering how long he should wait before pretending to guess that fire might work...that guy isn't immersed, he's just acting.

I do acknowledge that the 2nd example is _one kind_ of roleplaying...even if people like [MENTION=6703052]SA[/MENTION]elorn insist it is the only kind, in fact the very definition of roleplaying...but I don't find it nearly as interesting as the kind where you explore and develop your character's personality and experience the same emotions that your character experiences.  

I'm sure that in another thread, in the not-so-distant future, somebody else will again posit that pretending to be ignorant is "immersive roleplaying."


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I guess i'll have this conversation yet again...
> 
> You and I have different definitions of immersion.
> 
> ...





Interesting that once is only acting (not experiencing characters fear) but the other is experiencing the emotions of the character. Since your only acting out a role how are you experiencing these emotion? Is the other persons acting a different kind of acting then yours?


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## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I guess i'll have this conversation yet again...
> 
> You and I have different definitions of immersion.
> 
> ...




And I would say that if I'm playing in a world where my PC would not know that you need to burn a troll with fire, my PC would not know that you need to burn them with fire.  Period.  Because, as you point out, we play different games.  In my games, I'm not the one fighting the troll my PC is.  Just like it's my PC trying to find and disarm the trap.

So yes, I'll have fun responding as if my PC is freaking out.  I won't actually be freaking out of course (I'll probably have a hard time keeping a straight face), but if it's logical that my PC would be then he will respond accordingly.

We just play for different reasons and with different styles.  Except, of course, that I'll ask if I can do a knowledge check to see if I've ever come across troll lore unless I've already established in my background that I know about trolls.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Interesting that once is only acting (not experiencing characters fear) but the other is experiencing the emotions of the character. Since your only acting out a role how are you experiencing these emotion? Is the other persons acting a different kind of acting then yours?




I’m genuinely confused by this post. The only thing I can imagine going on is that you think I meant you are experiencing the exact same thing as your character, I.e. a true mortal terror of dying. 

No, of course not. But when my character is panicking because this horrific monster keeps coming back to life, ideally I am also feeling at least some of the same thing, genuinely worried about my character, because I genuinely don’t know what to do. 

If I’m pretending to not know what to do it’s not the same thing. 

Honestly if you don’t know what I’m talking about I really don’t think I can explain it. It’s like trying to explain what great sex is like to somebody who hasn’t has it. So we might just have to drop this particular topic.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I’m genuinely confused by this post. The only thing I can imagine going on is that you think I meant you are experiencing the exact same thing as your character, I.e. a true mortal terror of dying.
> 
> No, of course not. But when my character is panicking because this horrific monster keeps coming back to life, ideally I am also feeling at least some of the same thing, genuinely worried about my character, because I genuinely don’t know what to do.
> 
> ...





I see, your example was of someone pretending not know something while you are pretending to feel your characters emotion. Kind of a really fine line don't you think?

But whatever, your using an example of new player experiencing something for the first time, while I have been talking about experienced plays playing their roles.


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## ClaytonCross (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suspect some participants in this thread would respond by blurting out "I use Insight!" (and "Can I use Insight, too?") every time the NPC finishes a sentence.




And that is why I included that part of my statement. I allow one insight check for a conversation to get a feel of do you believe what they are saying or can you read them at all. I do get that changes in a real conversation but at the same I don't want to promote stopping conversation for continual roles. I will let them all role a check individually and I will whisper/text that general state of trust but I am not giving them "this is there lie" even if a player expects a specific part as a lie, I let them know texting on the phone or roll20 whisper or pull the player aside. They then have to convince the rest of the party and if they only have their word vs the NPC its up to the 3rd party player to support their ally and what that means even if they are working on nothing but a players intuition. Its not like people are human lie detectors. If there was feat or something that's one thing but their is not that I am aware of. Even then that would reinforce it as a special skill you don't normally have.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I see, your example was of someone pretending not know something while you are pretending to feel your characters emotion. Kind of a really fine line don't you think?
> 
> But whatever, your using an example of new player experiencing something for the first time, while I have been talking about experienced plays playing their roles.




Whoosh. 

Well, I hope you at least are getting great sex.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Whoosh.
> 
> Well, I hope you at least are getting great sex.




You know being as &^% isn't good sportsmenship.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Whoosh.
> 
> Well, I hope you at least are getting great sex.




So tell me how your acting out your characters emotion is different of acting out not knowing something?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So tell me how your acting out your characters emotion is different of acting out not knowing something?




Which part of “genuinely feeling” are you either missing or ignoring?


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Which part of “genuinely feeling” are you either missing or ignoring?




Which part of 'your acting out an emotion' are you ignoring?


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

"The guy who is pretending to be freaked out, *but is really wondering how long he should wait before pretending to guess that fire might work*...that guy isn't immersed, he's just acting."


The bolded part I agree with. Except if the player isn't waiting to say they figures it out and they run away to get help/knowledge on how to feat trolls.


Personally I've done the non-bold part of acting as ignorant of a creatures weakness but I've never don't the bold part.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Have you ever, when fighting a monster that you hadn’t encountered before, worried that you were going to TPK because you couldn’t figure out how to kill it? Then when you did figure it out, feel genuine elation/relief?  Not acting out elation and relief for others at the table, but literally felt that little jolt of oxytocin inside you?


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## Hussar (Apr 11, 2019)

Heh.  All you boys and girls need now is a Warlord discussion in here, and you have covered all the bases.


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## Imaculata (Apr 11, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  All you boys and girls need now is a Warlord discussion in here, and you have covered all the bases.




Yeah, we are kind of beating an undead horse at this point.

Regardless, I am of two minds on this. On the one hand I understand that it is fun to surprise your players with a monster that has some unexpected abilities. But on the other hand, I strongly dislike it when the knowledge of the players and their characters doesn't line up. I'm fine with players wanting to play out their character as being ignorant on certain things, even if that thing is a particular monster's strength or weakness. But when my players go into a fight, I prefer to allow them to use everything they know as players. That is why in a recent session I did not have my players stumble around blindly, not knowing that Lich's have philacteries. That sort of thing simply isn't an interesting interaction to me. When my players faced a couple of ghosts, I straight up described the effect of weapons versus ghosts to them right away, to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. My players are almost all veterans, and pretending not to know a famous monster's weakness is just not that interesting to them, nor is it to me. But, that doesn't mean I don't occasionally throw them a curveball by having new monsters show up with new abilities. But then of course player and character knowledge line up.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

So which monsters are famous and where does this fame come from?


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## Imaculata (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So which monsters are famous and where does this fame come from?




Trolls, beholders, Lich's, Mindflayers, zombies, mummies, skeletons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, dragons. The standard D&D rogue's gallery. They are used so often, that most players will be familiar with them and their abilities.

But D&D has tons of monsters, many of which probably don't see a whole lot of use. I prefer to use monsters that my players may not be familiar with, or I alter an existing monster to make it less predictable. And when I do use a classic monster that is well known, I don't make a mystery out of it. This game of guess-the-weakness just isn't very compelling to a whole lot of veteran players and DM's alike.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> But on the other hand, I strongly dislike it when the knowledge of the players and their characters doesn't line up.




Yeah I think that's a great argument for:

1) Just letting players use what they know.  It's just not worth the effort trying to keep compartmentalized knowledge straight.

2) DM should introduce lots of new monsters.


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## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

In my games the PCs know quite a bit about monsters _if the monsters are well known in the region_.  They don't necessarily have to justify it, people know that you need to burn trolls with fire simply because it's common knowledge.  I'll even tell people that have never played before if I think their PCs should know it.

If the PCs are facing monsters not common to the region I will usually give them knowledge checks. So if shambling mounds are highly unusual I'll allow nature and history checks and base the DC on how rare I think they really are.  

What I've seen other DMs do (especially in AL type games) is that you somehow have to prove that your PC has personally run into that monster.  That was annoying.


----------



## Imaculata (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yeah I think that's a great argument for:
> 
> 1) Just letting players use what they know.  It's just not worth the effort trying to keep compartmentalized knowledge straight.




-Or _think_ they know.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> -Or _think_ they know.




That's one reason I try to avoid saying the formal name of the monster, unless there is a strong reason _these_ characters would know what it is.  Instead I'll physically describe the monster.  If they want to make assumptions about what it "is" that's on them.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> 2) DM should introduce lots of new monsters.




Yep to this.  I love me some crazy from _Tome of Beasts_ and _Creature Codex_


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> Trolls, beholders, Lich's, Mindflayers, zombies, mummies, skeletons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, dragons. The standard D&D rogue's gallery. They are used so often, that most players will be familiar with them and their abilities.
> 
> But D&D has tons of monsters, many of which probably don't see a whole lot of use. I prefer to use monsters that my players may not be familiar with, or I alter an existing monster to make it less predictable. And when I do use a classic monster that is well known, I don't make a mystery out of it. *This game of guess-the-weakness just isn't very compelling to a whole lot of veteran players and DM's alike.*




I disagree with this, since after 30+ years of play I'm not jaded about RPing a low level character. But you seem to be suggesting all these other veterans seem to be.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I disagree with this, since after 30+ years of play I'm not jaded about RPing a low level character. But you seem to be suggesting all these other veterans seem to be.



I love low level play, but not because I have to pretend I don't know things.  There's so much else to do!


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I disagree with this, since after 30+ years of play I'm not jaded about RPing a low level character. But you seem to be suggesting all these other veterans seem to be.




Is it possible to like playing lower-level characters but not like playing dumb about the hard-won knowledge a player has earned?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

I love RPing low-level characters, too!

I just don't find feigned ignorance to be an interesting/compelling aspect of RP.  I'm more into exploring their personality and quirks and motivations.  I'm interested in how they are _different_ from other PCs and NPCs, rather than how they are similar to others of their kind (be that race, origin, backstory, experience, etc.).

There's only so much time at the table.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

iserith said:


> Is it possible to like playing lower-level characters but not like playing dumb about the hard-won knowledge a player has earned?




Is it possible to be a veteran *character* but still be low level?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Is it possible to be a veteran character but still be low level?




Technically yes, because "Soldier" is a background.  

I think, though, what you mean is that, in your interpretation, there is a whole bunch of knowledge about the game world that only an experienced ("veteran") character would know of.  And that's fine; you apparently like playing that way.

But a lot of people think that:
1) Novice adventurers would be as likely to know facts about their real world monsters as we are likely to know about, say, the fact that a Playtpus has poison.  
2) That it's just not interesting/fun/practical to pretend to be ignorant about game world knowledge, when there is so much other game world knowledge of which players actually _are_ ignorant, and that if ignorance is important to you it's so easy to not use the stuff players already know about.

If you want to explain why your way is more enjoyable, because a lot of us are genuinely interested in understanding alternate forms of roleplaying, I (we?) would love to hear about it.  But stubbornly stating (or implying) opinion as fact isn't really very compelling.


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Is it possible to be a veteran character but still be low level?




I suppose it depends on what you mean by "veteran." One can certainly be a veteran player and play a lower-level character.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Technically yes, because "Soldier" is a background.
> 
> I think, though, what you mean is that, in your interpretation, there is a whole bunch of knowledge about the game world that only an experienced ("veteran") character would know of.  And that's fine; you apparently like playing that way.
> 
> ...




Funny. 

No I don't think you are that interested So you do you and I'll do me.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

iserith said:


> I suppose it depends on what you mean by "veteran." One can certainly be a veteran player and play a lower-level character.




try reading what I posted again and see if your reply makes since. Here I'll bold my post.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> No I don't think you are that interested So you do you and I'll do me.




That's ironic, because when I was writing my post about the oxytocin rush I was thinking, "You know, it's possible that the actor stance people get the same kind of rush from a really spot-on performance.  I wonder if any of them will say something about that, or whether it's just going to be more of 'my version is the only real roleplaying' argument."


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## Bawylie (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Is it possible to be a veteran *character* but still be low level?




Yup. 

I did a one-shot as a retired dwarf paladin that was out-of-shape and over-the-hill but got sucked back into adventuring due to his LG nature.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That's ironic, because when I was writing my post about the oxytocin rush I was thinking, "You know, it's possible that the actor stance people get the same kind of rush from a really spot-on performance.  I wonder if any of them will say something about that, or whether it's just going to be more of 'my version is the only real roleplaying' argument."




I never said that the way I RP is any better or worse then anyone else's RP. I actually REALLY got the impression that that was the way you where coming off.

Because of the way you were being really dismissive of the example character _pretending_ to act out his characters fear.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Yup.
> 
> I did a one-shot as a retired dwarf paladin that was out-of-shape and over-the-hill but got sucked back into adventuring due to his LG nature.




So what level was he when he retired?

And when you reactivated him what level was he considered?


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> try reading what I posted again and see if your reply makes since. Here I'll bold my post.




It still depends on what you mean by "veteran" and what implications you think that has.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I never said that the way I RP is any better or worse then anyone else's RP. I actually REALLY got the impression that that was the way you where coming off.
> 
> Because of the way you were being really dismissive of the example character _pretending_ to act out his characters fear.




It's possible I bear some emotional baggage from Saelorn stubbornly repeating that I wasn't really roleplaying (until he blocked me).  So I tend to come out swinging on this issue.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So what level was he when he retired?
> 
> And when you reactivated him what level was he considered?




This is interesting.  

Do you think it's possible for an NPC military general to be low(ish) level?  For example, could the general be 2nd level, giving orders to 7th level captains?

This isn't a trap.  I just realized that some people may have stricter interpretations of "level", or stronger correlations between level and status, than I do.


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## Bawylie (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So what level was he when he retired?




Don’t know. For purposes of the one-shot, he was level 3, IIRC. I imagined he had been mid-tier at the high point in his life but age and lack of constant training effectively de leveled him. But I didn’t start him at higher level and then strip levels away or anything, I just thought up the “retired-but-can’t-leave-the-life” backstory in mind when making up a level 3 character. 

There were some details like his equipment was old, dented, and way out of fashion. All the painted devices were faded and the cloth was worn thin. None of that came up in play, but it was part of the concept.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

iserith said:


> It still depends on what you mean by "veteran" and what implications you think that has.





Personally I can get behind letting a player use his knowledge (to an extent) if the background and backstory makes sense that that knowledge would be available.

Outlander is probably the best for this kind of thing. Soldier is iffy because war doesn't know always mean fighting creatures. Sailor is possible because, as with the Outlander, of how much traveling they do.

Also I agree with Oofta in that monster are generally reginal, so if you come from that region its possible to have info.


Overall I don't think a GM should HAVE to use new creature to challenge a low level party run by 'veteran' players.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Don’t know. For purposes of the one-shot, he was level 3, IIRC. I imagined he had been mid-tier at the high point in his life but age and lack of constant training effectively de leveled him. But I didn’t start him at higher level and then strip levels away or anything, I just thought up the “retired-but-can’t-leave-the-life” backstory in mind when making up a level 3 character.
> 
> There were some details like his equipment was old, dented, and way out of fashion. All the painted devices were faded and the cloth was worn thin. None of that came up in play, but it was part of the concept.




This makes sense because his backstory gives a solid reason for such info.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This is interesting.
> 
> Do you think it's possible for an NPC military general to be low(ish) level?  For example, could the general be 2nd level, giving orders to 7th level captains?
> 
> This isn't a trap.  I just realized that some people may have stricter interpretations of "level", or stronger correlations between level and status, than I do.




This is possible because a politically appointed general could have very little actual experience of soldiering and/or war/tactics.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> It's possible I bear some emotional baggage from Saelorn stubbornly repeating that I wasn't really roleplaying (until he blocked me).  So I tend to come out swinging on this issue.




I can understand this and I'm sorry if things got to much into stuff.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Overall I don't think a GM should HAVE to use new creature to challenge a low level party run by 'veteran' players.




I agree! Largely because the challenge doesn't have to come from 'secret' monster abilities. For instance, put goblin archers on two high platform with 3/4 cover, with ladders that will take 2 rounds to climb to get up there, each ladder exposed to the other platform, and you've got a fun challenge, regardless of how thoroughly the players have read the Monster Manual.


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Personally I can letting a player use his knowledge (to an extent) if the background and backstory makes sense that that knowledge would be available.
> 
> Outlander is probably the best for this kind of thing. Soldier is iffy because war doesn't know always mean fighting creatures. Sailor is possible because, as with the Outlander, of how much traveling they do.
> 
> ...




I think the issue is that knowledge or experience is not a requirement to act (given effectively infinite justifications as needed), and the player is always in charge of what the character does, short of magical compulsion or the like. So the DM doesn't actually have a say in the application of the player's knowledge unless the DM creates a table rule to the contrary. Such a table rule in my view is completely unnecessary and counterproductive as it is an attempt at a solution to a problem the DM is creating. Better to not create the problem in the first place in my view.

To that end, players in my game know they're free to use whatever knowledge they wish to inform their actions; however, they also know that I sometimes change things which makes assumptions risky. So the smart play is to pay attention to my telegraphing and verify their assumptions before acting upon them.

Further, difficulty in a challenge is achieved through a number of vectors and ignorance of a monster's abilities (for example) is just one such vector. To my mind, if the DM can present a challenge when the players have full knowledge of everything in it and it's _still_ difficult (if slightly less difficult than if the players have no knowledge), that's a well-designed challenge.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> This is possible because a politically appointed general could have very little actual experience of soldiering and/or war/tactics.




How about a seasoned strategist and admired leader who isn’t himself a fearsome 1v1 combatant?

In other words, how does the game term “level” correlate to the in-game fiction?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think the issue is that knowledge or experience is not a requirement to act (given effectively infinite justifications as needed), and the player is always in charge of what the character does, short of magical compulsion or the like. So the DM doesn't actually have a say in the application of the player's knowledge unless the DM creates a table rule to the contrary. Such a table rule in my view is completely unnecessary and counterproductive as it is an attempt at a solution to a problem the DM is creating. Better to not create the problem in the first place in my view.
> 
> To that end, players in my game know they're free to use whatever knowledge they wish to inform their actions; however, they also know that I sometimes change things which makes assumptions risky. So the smart play is to pay attention to my telegraphing and verify their assumptions before acting upon them.
> 
> Further, difficulty in a challenge is achieved through a number of vectors and ignorance of a monster's abilities (for example) is just one such vector. To my mind, if the DM can present a challenge when the players have full knowledge of everything in it and it's _still_ difficult (if slightly less difficult than if the players have no knowledge), that's a well-designed challenge.




So would it be fair to say that at your table a character who had never encountered a particular monster would be free to use player knowledge, and that if the character/player knowledge divide were important to that player, he/she would be welcome to narrate whatever fiction explained it, such as luck, observation of a detail, flash of divine insight, recollection of an old folk tale, etc?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 11, 2019)

Yeah, I’m gong to echo the sentiment that if an encounter is only challenging to players who don’t know the monster’s weakness, then it’s not a very challenging encounter.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> How about a *seasoned* strategist and admired leader who isn’t himself a fearsome 1v1 combatant?
> 
> In other words, how does the game term “level” correlate to the in-game fiction?




He doesn't have to be a fighter class. But seasoned/veteran/etc all point to being more then just a commoner off the street.  High intelligence(strategist) and charisma(admired leader) alone isn't enough, those thing generally need some experience(levels) in something to account for seasoning. At least its how I see it.


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So would it be fair to say that at your table a character who had never encountered a particular monster would be free to use player knowledge, and that if the character/player knowledge divide were important to that player, he/she would be welcome to narrate whatever fiction explained it, such as luck, observation of a detail, flash of divine insight, recollection of an old folk tale, etc?




Yeah, or no fiction at all. I'm there to adjudicate actions, not judge whether the action itself is valid to take based on some arbitrary assessment of what the character knows or doesn't know. That's none of my business as DM.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> He doesn't have to be a fighter class. But seasoned/veteran/etc all point to being more then just a commoner off the street.  High intelligence(strategist) and charisma(admired leader) alone isn't enough, those thing generally need some experience(levels) in something to account for seasoning. At least its how I see it.




Ok, so what separates an experienced...I dunno..._merchant_ from an experienced general?  Is the head of the Royal Order of Vinters and Brewers high level because he's experienced?  He's led people, made decisions, resolved conflicts.

Or is it only people who have experience _killing things_ that gain levels?  And, if so, is it only people who have experience killing things that have knowledge of ferocious monsters?  What if you are high level but you've only ever killed orcs?  Does that leave you effectively "level 1" when fighting other monsters?

I haven't thought deeply about this before, so I'm really just making this up as I go along, but I think we're starting to bump into a problem between the game rules and the fiction.  "Level" seems to be something we apply to the game world in order to keep the game itself fun, but it really starts to break down if we ask what it means, in a real-world sense.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, so what separates an experienced...I dunno..._merchant_ from an experienced general?  Is the head of the Royal Order of Vinters and Brewers high level because he's experienced?  He's led people, made decisions, resolved conflicts.
> 
> Or is it only people who have experience _killing things_ that gain levels?  And, if so, is it only people who have experience killing things that have knowledge of ferocious monsters?  What if you are high level but you've only ever killed orcs?  Does that leave you effectively "level 1" when fighting other monsters?
> 
> I haven't thought deeply about this before, so I'm really just making this up as I go along, but I think we're starting to bump into a problem between the game rules and the fiction.  "Level" seems to be something we apply to the game world in order to keep the game itself fun, but it really starts to break down if we ask what it means, in a real-world sense.




One way to gain experience is but defeating challenges, that to lots of people is killing monsters, but defeating a creature challenge does not always mean killing the creature.

The vintners/brewers example would be of a 'seasoned' person could be admired as a leader and be a good organizer but where would he have obtain any strategy that would be combat viable? 


If you've only ever fought one creature type then you would most likely not know the best strategy to combat something new. 

There are many different playstyle, some playstyles only allow 'levels' to PC and special NPCs.

I personally have no issue with a '3rd level' barmaid being able to handle rowdy patrons.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Campaign setting I prefer to playing, Icon D&D creatures are not generally 'commonly' known, especially if their supposedly rare/reclusive creature. I think its generally best to set a standard for what is common knowledge. If you think troll, werecreature, skeletons/zombies, etc are considered common lore, great I have no problem with something like this.


Someone saying that he got 'divine inspiration' for a reason for creature knowledge....


This is the playstyle I prefer. So we're back to you do you and I'll do me.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I personally have no issue with a 3rd level barmaid being able to handle rowdy patrons.




Sure, but you're still equating "level" with "combat prowess".  

I think the problem I'm seeing out of the corner of my eye is that if you try to define "level" in real world terms, it always breaks down. It's only in the game because it's a convenient mechanic (for PCs) if you want to both reward players for success but steadily making them more powerful, and thus it's necessary (for NPCs) if you want to keep challenging those PCs, but otherwise it doesn't...it _can't_...really have any meaning _other than prowess in 1 on 1 or small group combat_*, unless you're willing to accept a whole host of paradoxes.

*And even then it falls apart logically in all sorts of ways, since according to the rules (in 5e, anyway) you get better at all sorts of things when you level up. A character who levels up doing nothing but fighting in a shield wall against vikings, or fighting only gladiator fights, improves equally versus any kind of opponent, even though he's only really used to one kind.

The moral of the story is, I think, to not try to hang too much meaning on "level".  It's entirely a metagame construct.


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## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, so what separates an experienced...I dunno..._merchant_ from an experienced general?  Is the head of the Royal Order of Vinters and Brewers high level because he's experienced?  He's led people, made decisions, resolved conflicts.
> 
> Or is it only people who have experience _killing things_ that gain levels?  And, if so, is it only people who have experience killing things that have knowledge of ferocious monsters?  What if you are high level but you've only ever killed orcs?  Does that leave you effectively "level 1" when fighting other monsters?
> 
> I haven't thought deeply about this before, so I'm really just making this up as I go along, but I think we're starting to bump into a problem between the game rules and the fiction.  "Level" seems to be something we apply to the game world in order to keep the game itself fun, but it really starts to break down if we ask what it means, in a real-world sense.




Well, obviously level probably makes about as much sense as hit points ... it's a useful abstraction but beyond that I wouldn't think about it too much.

But I kind of like the idea of commoner classes from previous editions, a novice cook is level 1 a master chef is level 10, a chef that is unbelievably gifted talented and experienced is level 20.

I know that in my field (software development) there are certainly different "levels" of developer, we just limit to a handful of "levels" that broadly define responsibility, scope of influence and aptitude.  A junior level developer and senior level developer will have extremely different capabilities.

But just because I'm a decent software developer doesn't mean I wouldn't get the snot kicked out of me in a street fight.  Develop an application?  I'm your guy.  Fight orcs?  Unless I'm rolling a D20 see ya later.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Well, obviously level probably makes about as much sense as hit points ... it's a useful abstraction but beyond that I wouldn't think about it too much.
> 
> But I kind of like the idea of commoner classes from previous editions, a novice cook is level 1 a master chef is level 10, a chef that is unbelievably gifted talented and experienced is level 20.
> 
> ...




Right, which is why it makes no sense to say that a level 1 character wouldn't know about...Beholders, let's say...but a level 20 character would.  What if it's a level 20 chef?  Or even a level 20 Fighter who (to use my previous example) has just fought gladiator duels his whole life?


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## Satyrn (Apr 11, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But I kind of like the idea of commoner classes from previous editions, a novice cook is level 1 a master chef is level 10, a chef that is unbelievably gifted talented and experienced is level 20.



I grew to hate those classes. I feel like I let their very existence trick me into forgetting that D&D is a game about adventurers having adventures, and I spent far too much time and effort treating D&D as a world simulation instead of an adventure game.

I hate those classes with the passion of a thousand @_*lowkey13*_s


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## iserith (Apr 11, 2019)

It's such a weird position to me. I don't need to know a thing about trolls to lob a fire bolt or acid splash at it. I don't need to know a thing about beholders to avoid the gaze of its central eye.

The action can be separate from the knowledge, so establishing the PC's knowledge isn't necessary.


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## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I grew to hate those classes. I feel like I let their very existence trick me into forgetting that D&D is a game about adventurers having adventures, and I spent far too much time and effort treating D&D as a world simulation instead of an adventure game.
> 
> I hate those classes with the passion of a thousand @_*lowkey13*_s




I didn't even know that was possible.  Wouldn't that much hate rip a hole in the space-time-D&D-continuum?

I still use them once in a blue moon when I want to describe the abilities of ritual casters or other NPC just to give myself a general idea of how good they'd be at something.  Of course I probably just have too much time on my hands and should just pull a number out of thin air.


----------



## Bawylie (Apr 11, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I grew to hate those classes. I feel like I let their very existence trick me into forgetting that D&D is a game about adventurers having adventures, and I spent far too much time and effort treating D&D as a world simulation instead of an adventure game.
> 
> I hate those classes with the passion of a thousand @_*lowkey13*_s




I always laughed at the idea of a level 20 commoner. I called him “the Uncommoner.”


----------



## Satyrn (Apr 11, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I didn't even know that was possible.  Wouldn't that much hate rip a hole in the space-time-D&D-continuum?



It would totally rip a hole like that if I didn't find a way to channel the energy into something else . . . that's why all the jokes.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

I heard that astronomers just recently successfully photographed his hate.


----------



## Satyrn (Apr 11, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I still use them once in a blue moon when I want to describe the abilities of ritual casters or other NPC just to give myself a general idea of how good they'd be at something.  Of course I probably just have too much time on my hands and should just pull a number out of thin air.



Aye. While I've stopped using levels (and classes!) for anyone but the PCs, I still wind up occasionally giving spellcasting monsters caster levels for simplicity.


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## Satyrn (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I heard that astronomers just recently successfully photographed his hate.




The "corona" (or whatever they call the surrounding red stuff) were the jokes trying to escape.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> It would totally rip a hole like that if I didn't find a way to channel the energy into something else . . . that's why all the jokes.




When do the jokes start?


----------



## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Aye. While I've stopped using levels (and classes!) for anyone but the PCs, I still wind up occasionally giving spellcasting monsters caster levels for simplicity.




Pretty much something like this. The 'levels' are not combat prowess their just a way to express experience in what they do. 'Levels' are pretty easy to understand for those who play level based RPGs. You could use words such as novice, journeyman, etc. that's pretty much the same thing.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 11, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Pretty much something like this. The 'levels' are not combat prowess their just a way to express experience in what they do. 'Levels' are pretty easy to understand for those who play level based RPGs. You could use words such as novice, journeyman, etc. that's pretty much the same thing.




So is a Grandmaster "National Living Treasure" glassblower a lot harder to kill than an apprentice glassblower?  Why?

And, if not, aren't you using an entirely different meaning of "level" than what we've been talking about?


----------



## Oofta (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So is a Grandmaster "National Living Treasure" glassblower a lot harder to kill than an apprentice glassblower?  Why?
> 
> And, if not, aren't you using an entirely different meaning of "level" than what we've been talking about?




The reason I've used it in the past was for me to get a general feel for proficiency.  For example, what deception proficiency should a used horse salesman have.  I would say that potentially ties this conversation back to the OP but used car horse salesman never tell the truth.


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## Yardiff (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So is a Grandmaster "National Living Treasure" glassblower a lot harder to kill than an apprentice glassblower?  Why?
> 
> And, if not, aren't you using an entirely different meaning of "level" than what we've been talking about?




Did you read what I posted? *The 'levels' are not combat prowess their just a way to express experience in what they do.*


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 11, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So is a Grandmaster "National Living Treasure" glassblower a lot harder to kill than an apprentice glassblower?  Why?
> 
> And, if not, aren't you using an entirely different meaning of "level" than what we've been talking about?



I feel an abstraction points vs meat points discussion coming on. We’re really checking all the boxes in this thread, aren’t we?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Did you read what I posted? *The 'levels' are not combat prowess their just a way to express experience in what they do.*




No, you're right, I didn't read carefully.

But if it's not combat prowess, what does it represent?  Just skill increase?  So some "classes" increase in skills only, but some also increase your combat prowess?  Which ones get to know about monsters?  Does a high level fighter who retires and farms for a few decades actually lose levels?  Does that mean he forgets about the monsters, too?

You wrote:



> 'Levels' are pretty easy to understand for those who play level based RPGs.




And I think that's kind of true...unless you start looking too carefully at them, and expecting them to answer too many questions, and then you realize that it's such a metagame abstraction, and so divorced from any kind of reality, that the whole thing sort of falls apart.


----------



## Yardiff (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> No, you're right, I didn't read carefully.
> 
> But if it's not combat prowess, what does it represent?  Just skill increase?  So some "classes" increase in skills only, but some also increase your combat prowess?  Which ones get to know about monsters?  Does a high level fighter who retires and farms for a few decades actually lose levels?  Does that mean he forgets about the monsters, too?
> 
> ...




Its just a down and dirty way to express the difference between a novice, a master etc. If you have a problem with the word 'level' just leave it off and say a novice is a 1 in skill at their trade while a master is a 10 in skill at their trade.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 12, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Its just a down and dirty way to express the difference between a novice, a master etc. If you have a problem with the word 'level' just leave it off and say a novice is a 1 in skill at their trade while a master is a 10 in skill at their trade.



What's the point? I don't understand what is gained by using levels for non-PCs or some few NPCs.  Especially when level has become so loosely defined as to just mean "better."


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## pemerton (Apr 12, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Because people are role playing? Putting themselves into the mindset of a person that just lopped the head off this weird green giant-like creature that just freakin' got back up?
> 
> Because their reactions to be a reflection of their PC, not them?
> 
> I don't see why you wouldn't want people to play that way since you're so into immersive game play.



To me it doesn't seem very immersive. It actually seems rather artificial.



Oofta said:


> I'll have fun responding as if my PC is freaking out. I won't actually be freaking out of course (I'll probably have a hard time keeping a straight face), but if it's logical that my PC would be then he will respond accordingly.



This seems to reinforce the fact that it's artificial rather than immserive.

That's not to say that it might not be fun. But if you're having a hard time keeping a straight face while playing your PC as freaked out, how are you immersed?



Yardiff said:


> Interesting that once is only acting (not experiencing characters fear) but the other is experiencing the emotions of the character. Since your only acting out a role how are you experiencing these emotion? Is the other persons acting a different kind of acting then yours?



In the first example given by  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], the player's fear that s/he will lose the encounter and have his/her PC die matches the PC's fear of the trolls. That's immersion. It's not acting or pretending, because the fear of losing is real, not feigned.



Yardiff said:


> Overall I don't think a GM should HAVE to use new creature to challenge a low level party run by 'veteran' players.



But no one said that.

The focus was on a particular aspect of monster design and associated tactcial play, namely, monster resistances and vulnerabilities.

If I as a player know that fire kills trolls, and the GM frames my PC into a troll encounter, and is expecting me not to use my knowledge, what's the challenge? The only challenge I can see is one of persuading the GM that, at point X during the encounter, it's OK to start swinging away with my flaming brand (or whatever). That's not the sort of challenge I play FPRGs for. And it brings all sorts of anti-immersive, artificial weirdness with it - like a genuine new player is allowed to use fire as soon as s/he likes, perhaps even by getting lucky, whereas the veteran player has to jump through whatever the GM's hoops are to be allowed to actually have a go at winning the encounter.



Yardiff said:


> Is it possible to be a veteran *character* but still be low level?



Sure. Play a 1st level fighter! (At least in some editions.)

Or start your 1st level PC as a 50 year-old hermit.

Or whatever else floats your boat!


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## pemerton (Apr 12, 2019)

On the issue of _can the GM narrate PC activity as part of the narration of a failed check_: my view is that if the activity is not deliberate, is relatively modest, and is a possibility that is implicit in the deliberate action that the player has declared, then the answer is _yes_.

For example, suppose the PC is fighting an orc on muddy ground. If the player rolls an attack, and misses, I think it's acceptable for the GM to narrate "You have trouble keeping your footing in the mud, and can't land a blow on the orc."

If the PC is trying to disarm a trap, and a check is made and fails, I think it's legitimate for the GM to narrate a slip, or a failure to notice one of the wires, or a drop of sweat from the PC's brow, etc

Is it acceptable to narrate "You use the shortcut your master showed you - but this trap must have been _built_ by your master, because it's got a failsafe against the shortcut- that you only discover too late!"? I would regard this as highly table-specific.

Similarly, if the player of the scholarly character fails a knowledge check, can the GM narrate "You must have skpped that lecture!"? That too looks to me like a highly tablle-specific thing.

Upthread,  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] suggested allowing _players_ to narrate their own failure. That's certainly one possibility, but some tables prefer the GM to be the one who carries the responsibilityi for introducing adversity into the game. I don't think there's anything in the 5e rules that contradicts that preference.


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## Oofta (Apr 12, 2019)

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], if I can play a PC that believes dragons are real, I can play a PC that doesn't know you need to use fire on a troll.

There are many things I don't personally believe that I act out my PC believing.  It's almost like I'm, I don't know, playing the role of someone I'm not.  If only there was a term for that.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 12, 2019)

Man, I kind of feel like a grump with how much humor and fun snuck into these last few pages, but I don't like ignoring people's responses. 




iserith said:


> I didn't say you were wrong though. The rules, however, are clear about who says what in D&D 5e.




*facepalm*

To paraphrase, "I didn't say you were wrong, just that you were breaking the rules."

You do understand that breaking the rules is generally considered "wrong", right? 



iserith said:


> I don't, especially given that I don't know you or your players. But ostensibly you are making statements and asking questions in what appears to be an attempt to understand the point of view of several posters in this thread. I'm offering you the basis for those viewpoints - the rules themselves - so you can see where some of us are coming from.




Okay, but why keep repeating it? 

I mean if the conversation is 

"I say this"

"You can't"

"What's the difference between this and that"

"The rules say you can't"

"Okay, but what's the difference"

"The rules say you can't"

Wouldn't it make sense that going beyond "but the rules say" might be useful? And if you're entire point is to simply educate in where you are coming from, why do you feel the need to swoop in every time simply to remind me I am breaking the rules? I know. You've said. You can stop repeating it. I know. 




iserith said:


> The rules say the player determines how the character thinks and acts. The DM can only narrate the result of how you act. You may choose to justify your character's actions, if you wish, but you're not required to. That appears to be an assumption based on how you choose to play. I make no judgment as to whether it's a good idea to do what you say you do or not.




So no consideration should be made about other players at the table or the DM. I should only care about myself?

Obviously that's not what you believe, but the rules don't say I need to care about the other players, so I don't have to. 

I'm done with this thread of conversation. I was asked why I would ever ask to roll dice, I gave an example, I've been brought to task repeatedly for that example, and the only thing you seem to care about is the absolute supremacy of the player's autonomy. Bully for you. 




iserith said:


> Pick two distinct games other than D&D. Play one as if you are playing the other. Let me know if that works the same, better, or worse than just playing the way the rules say. If the games are similar in some ways, it may still be playable, but no doubt there may be difficulties that are not present otherwise.




Right.

"I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just hiding behind all this reasonable sounding stuff to make it sound like you don't know what you are doing, and are wrong"

Getting bored of this. Just come out and say what you mean. 




iserith said:


> Asking to roll a check is not an action a character takes in the game. A check is not a task. It is mechanic used to resolve the outcome of a task when that outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. This is a core concept that seems to be a point of confusion as you discuss related matters with posters in this thread.




Right, my confusion stems from the fact that considering the context, asking to roll will tell me what actions a player intends to take 80% or more of the time. 

Yet, that is impossible because the rules say a check isn't an action... nowhere really, it is just heavily implied.



Charlaquin said:


> But do you touch it? Assuming you do opens me up to “but I didn’t say I was touching it!” or touching it springs a trap, and assuming you don’t opens me up to “but I didn’t say I wasn’t touching it!” if you miss information that you would have needed to touch the door to uncover. Besides that, it is not my place to say what your character does. If you want to look through the keyhole, tell me. If you want to touch the door, tell me. I will not make assumptions about what your character is doing. It’s not my role as DM, and overstepping my role can lead to problems.




Okay this? This is a reasonable concern. 

And, generally, if a specific thing like touching would make a difference, I ask the player "Okay, do you touch it or are you keeping your distance". And I don't always do it for bad things, sometimes it is for benefits, but as long as I am careful I can mitigate that risk. 

And, if a player wants to give me more detailed information of what they are doing, I'll accept that. I'm fine with it, I just do not demand that they never say "I roll perception" and I don't chastise or try to lead them out of it if they do. There is enough of an understanding of the fiction between myself and the player to move forward, and I'm not worried about offending them. 




Charlaquin said:


> Is there something wrong with resolving those actions sequentially?




Time comes to mind. If you end up always getting three to four actions to resolve a single challenge, you are very likely to end up bloating up obstacles. Especially if you are building uncertainty into your players minds. 




Charlaquin said:


> So first off, it seems I have misconstrued the way you handle checks, and for that I apologize. There was someone I was discussing this subject with who earlier said something along the lines of “if you try to pick the lock it’s a thieves tools check, if you try to freeze the vials with Magic it’s an Arcana check, if you try to break the chest open, it’s an Athletics check,” essentially suggesting that in the example given, a check had to be made for the trapped chest to be open, and that different approaches would only affect what skill was used. My mistake for conflating that argument with yours. That said, if you don’t tell your players the DC of the check and the consequences for failing, how do you expect them to know if a different approach might have better chances? If all you say is “make a Perception check,” without telling them the DC or what happens if they fail, do you honestly expect them to say, “wait, nevermind, I want to try something else”? Worse, if _they_ say “I make a Perception check. 14.” they’re _deffinitely_ not weighing the risks - they can’t even know whether or not there are risks, let alone what the risks are or if another approach might be less risky.




First off, no hard feelings, this thread has stretched long and it is easy to lump and confuse things. 

As to why I don't give out DCs... I like to keep the mystery I suppose. Sometimes the person you are talking to is more dangerous than they appear, and intimidating them is a DC 25, not a DC 10. But hearing that intimidating the foppish bard you found tied up in the woods is a DC 25 gives away the game of slowly revealing who it really is. 

That isn't to say I don't give them any idea of the challenge. A rogue looking to pick a lock is going to be able to get a decent sense of how hard a lock it is, but I don't feel compelled to tell them an exact number, or tell them about the hidden glyph that might go off if they fail. 

Also, as a player, I'm fine just knowing "easy, medium, hard, really hard" because knowing the exact number turns on my math brain. Every number on a d20 is 5%, mod is X, so I need DC-X which is Y%. It turns my risky maneuver into a math equation to be solved, and I don't want that when I'm doing skill checks. 




Charlaquin said:


> Exactly. So why would you leave whether or not they know either of those things up to a dice roll?




Because it can be interesting. It forces us to come up with a why, and sometimes I just don't let them try. I say "no", but when I'm uncertain... the dice get rolled. That's their job. 




Charlaquin said:


> The statement “Most skill checks would require rolling at some point” speaks to a fundamental difference in the way you and I view skill checks. In my view, all skill checks require a roll, but not all actions require skill checks to resolve. Skill checks aren’t things that are out there in the wild, waiting to be overcome with a high enough roll or bypassed with a clever alternative. They are a means of resolving actions with uncertain outcomes.




I agree with you. 

But I don't like absolutes, and for example, a 20 rogue saying they use stroke of luck, I'm probably not going to bother actually rolling the die, but I would still count that as a "skill check" 

A difference seems to be that you think this thread about skills is somehow a thread about "Actions players can take". Those are different types of discussions, we didn't start this thread with "What are all the ways you can tell an NPC is lying" it started with "If an NPC is telling the truth, and Insight is rolled, what DC is it to know they are telling the truth" 





Charlaquin said:


> But you can’t just isolate the resolution from the action like that. You’re arguing that the DM should have narrated the failure differently, but there shouldn’t have been a failure to narrate in the first place. In order for there to be a failure there needs to be a check, and in order for there to be a check there needs to be an action with an uncertain outcome, which there was not in the example. That was the point of the example - to illustrate the absurdity of calling for checks without taking into account the player’s goal and approach.




It was an absurd example, specifically called out to be an absurd example by the poster. 

But, poor style is still poor style, and it bugged me. So I addressed the style concern. I have never and will never say that a payer who said all those things would have to roll a die and have any potential for failure. I have repeatedly said they would have automatically succeeded. 

But saying "No, you fail, take damage" is really poor technique. And I reserve the right to critique style when an example is called out to be absurd and not meant to be taken as a serious argument.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

FWIW, although those examples use the word “you” they don’t describe actions taken, choices made, or thoughts had by the character. “You lose your footing in the mud” isn’t taking over the character. “You get distracted by the double rainbow and mis-time your backswing” is.


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## Yardiff (Apr 12, 2019)

pemerton said:


> If I as a player know that fire kills trolls, and the GM frames my PC into a troll encounter, and is expecting me not to use my knowledge, what's the challenge? The only challenge I can see is one of persuading the GM that, at point X during the encounter, it's OK to start swinging away with my flaming brand (or whatever). That's not the sort of challenge I play FPRGs for. And it brings all sorts of anti-immersive, artificial weirdness with it - like a genuine new player is allowed to use fire as soon as s/he likes, perhaps even by getting lucky, whereas the veteran player has to jump through whatever the GM's hoops are to be allowed to actually have a go at winning the encounter.





And to me it bring all kinds of anti-immersive, artificial weirdness if a character ho has never fought or heard of a creature know how to defeat it because his player knows.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> FWIW, although those examples use the word “you” they don’t describe actions taken, choices made, or thoughts had by the character. “You lose your footing in the mud” isn’t taking over the character. “You get distracted by the double rainbow and mis-time your backswing” is.



The PC fighting the orc is low on hp, and misses - and the GM narrates "Your fatigue is making it harder to move quickly." Or, if the PC msses and then the orc hits, "The orc draws you into a feint and gets the better of you!"

For both practical and metaphysical reasons I don't feel that leaning hard on a mind/body distinction is the way to go here.

I personally don't feel that all narrations of distraction, or being out-witted by a feint or whatever, or mishearing some mutter syllable (say for certain Arcane knowledge failures) counts as _taking over the character_.


----------



## iserith (Apr 12, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> *snip*






Chaosmancer said:


> *snip*






Chaosmancer said:


> *snip*






Chaosmancer said:


> *snip*






Chaosmancer said:


> Right.
> 
> "I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just hiding behind all this reasonable sounding stuff to make it sound like you don't know what you are doing, and are wrong"
> 
> Getting bored of this. Just come out and say what you mean.




So you're saying I sound reasonable?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], if I can play a PC that believes dragons are real, I can play a PC that doesn't know you need to use fire on a troll.




Spot on. If that’s what you enjoy, then go for it. 

It’s the implication that choosing another option is bad that’s a problem. That players MUST play that way. 



> There are many things I don't personally believe that I act out my PC believing.  It's almost like I'm, I don't know, playing the role of someone I'm not.  If only there was a term for that.




This, however, is starting to sound like “...and this is true roleplaying.”

But maybe you just meant, “...and this is one type of roleplaying.”  In which case we are good.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Spot on. If that’s what you enjoy, then go for it.
> 
> It’s the implication that choosing another option is bad that’s a problem. That players MUST play that way.
> 
> ...




Sure.  It was also an apparently failed attempt at humor.

But ... I will say that this can be really annoying if taken to an extreme.  I had a player once who would look up the monster we were fighting in the MM and tell everybody the details of the monster's abilities.  Like details of powers, what the recharge rate on powers was, counting down legendary resistances, etc.


----------



## Yardiff (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> It’s the implication that choosing another option is bad that’s a problem. That players MUST play that way.





Do you have house rules?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Its just a down and dirty way to express the difference between a novice, a master etc. If you have a problem with the word 'level' just leave it off and say a novice is a 1 in skill at their trade while a master is a 10 in skill at their trade.




It's not a terminology problem, it's a concept problem.

But I'm going to drop it, since we're not even close to being on the same wavelength with this one.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Do you have house rules?




No...why?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 12, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, but why keep repeating it?





Chaosmancer said:


> Man, I kind of feel like a grump with how much humor and fun snuck into these last few pages, but I don't like ignoring people's responses.



Say, Pot, have you met my friend, Kettle?



Chaosmancer said:


> Right, my confusion stems from the fact that considering the context, asking to roll will tell me what actions a player intends to take 80% or more of the time.





Chaosmancer said:


> I know. You've said. You can stop repeating it. I know.



I think you two would get along, you have so much in common.



Chaosmancer said:


> Okay this? This is a reasonable concern.
> 
> And, generally, if a specific thing like touching would make a difference, I ask the player "Okay, do you touch it or are you keeping your distance". And I don't always do it for bad things, sometimes it is for benefits, but as long as I am careful I can mitigate that risk.



Sure, that’s one way one might address that concern. Personally, I’d say that “gives away the game,” much more than telling players the DC. If it works for you, have at it, but I prefer my way of doing it.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, if a player wants to give me more detailed information of what they are doing, I'll accept that. I'm fine with it, I just do not demand that they never say "I roll perception" and I don't chastise or try to lead them out of it if they do. There is enough of an understanding of the fiction between myself and the player to move forward, and I'm not worried about offending them.



I don’t demand that players never say they roll Perception or chastise them for doing so. I ask that they tell me what they want to accomplish and how their character goes about it. They can be as specific and detailed as they like, or as simple and general as they like, so long as they provide me with the two things I need to adequately adjudicate their action without making assumptions or dictating what their character does - namely, a goal and an approach. Saying “I roll Perception” doesn’t provide me with that. Maybe it is enough for you to be comfortable adjudicating an action. Bully for you.



Chaosmancer said:


> Time comes to mind. If you end up always getting three to four actions to resolve a single challenge, you are very likely to end up bloating up obstacles. Especially if you are building uncertainty into your players minds.



I know you’re not going to believe me when I say this, but it does not take much time at all in my games. It helps that no time is wasted on unnecessary dice rolls. I also don’t build uncertainty - on the contrary, I run the game the way I do to build _certainty_ in my players’ minds, so that they can feel confident in making informed decisions. I have an example a while back of a player who was really concerned about the whole player skill vs character skill thing, until we had a talk about it, she agreed to give it a try, and she loves it. She is the most confident and creative player in my current group when it comes to describing actions.



Chaosmancer said:


> First off, no hard feelings, this thread has stretched long and it is easy to lump and confuse things.
> 
> As to why I don't give out DCs... I like to keep the mystery I suppose. Sometimes the person you are talking to is more dangerous than they appear, and intimidating them is a DC 25, not a DC 10. But hearing that intimidating the foppish bard you found tied up in the woods is a DC 25 gives away the game of slowly revealing who it really is.
> 
> ...



I get where you’re coming from. I used to feel the same way. Since embracing “the middle path,” I’ve realized that I was worrying too much about giving things away, when in reality, the game works much better (for me, YMMV) when I give the players information. There’s this great Alfred Hitchcock speech where he talks about the importance of giving the audience information in order to build suspense, and I think it applies to D&D as well as filmmaking.

To be fair, I think "easy, medium, hard, very hard" can work just as well, since those terms refer to specific DCs. As long as the players know that you’re using those terms that way.



Chaosmancer said:


> Because it can be interesting. It forces us to come up with a why, and sometimes I just don't let them try. I say "no", but when I'm uncertain... the dice get rolled. That's their job.



Whatever works for you. I’m not here to tell you your way of doing things is wrong.



Chaosmancer said:


> I agree with you.
> 
> But I don't like absolutes, and for example, a 20 rogue saying they use stroke of luck, I'm probably not going to bother actually rolling the die, but I would still count that as a "skill check"



Well you’re going to get a lot of pushback on that, because the term skill check has a specific meaning within the rules, and you’re using it to mean something else.



Chaosmancer said:


> A difference seems to be that you think this thread about skills is somehow a thread about "Actions players can take". Those are different types of discussions, we didn't start this thread with "What are all the ways you can tell an NPC is lying" it started with "If an NPC is telling the truth, and Insight is rolled, what DC is it to know they are telling the truth"



A fundamentally flawed premise, because we do not all agree that Insight should be rolled if an NPC is telling the truth.



Chaosmancer said:


> It was an absurd example, specifically called out to be an absurd example by the poster.
> 
> But, poor style is still poor style, and it bugged me. So I addressed the style concern. I have never and will never say that a payer who said all those things would have to roll a die and have any potential for failure. I have repeatedly said they would have automatically succeeded.



Then your message is extremely unclear. You have been arguing for an alternative ruling of the result, which is implicitly arguing in favor of the call to resolve the action by way of a dice roll.



Chaosmancer said:


> But saying "No, you fail, take damage" is really poor technique. And I reserve the right to critique style when an example is called out to be absurd and not meant to be taken as a serious argument.



Again, it’s a super weird hill to die on, given that “no, you fail, take damage” was arguably the least contentious part of the example. Sure, the hypothetical DM shouldn’t have said “no, you fail, take damage.” But the greater issue with that ruling is in allowing the possibility of failure in the first place. If you want to argue that DMs should be specific about why actions fail in terms of the narrative, instead of just saying they fail, fine, but the example under discussion is a terrible one to reference to make that point.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> It helps that no time is wasted on unnecessary dice rolls.




Just think how many goals and approaches a player could describe in the time it takes to retrieve just a single d20 lost under the table.

And if it rolls all the way to the radiator?  Oh, the horror...the horror...


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## pemerton (Apr 12, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> And to me it bring all kinds of anti-immersive, artificial weirdness if a character ho has never fought or heard of a creature know how to defeat it because his player knows.



I see two possible solutions to that:

(1) Play a character whose knowledge fits with the player's (eg your "1st level veteran" from upthread);

(2) Don't have the GM use trolls (or whatever) in a way that is premised on PC ignorance when the players know.


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## Imaculata (Apr 12, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But ... I will say that this can be really annoying if taken to an extreme.  I had a player once who would look up the monster we were fighting in the MM and tell everybody the details of the monster's abilities.  Like details of powers, what the recharge rate on powers was, counting down legendary resistances, etc.




It may be an extreme example, but I don't think that would change much about the difficulty of my encounters. My players are free to look up any monster in the Monster manual if they so choose. But it's kind of an unwritten agreement that they won't. If they did though... I don't think it would matter.

So if the players are facing a bronze dragon, and want to look up what its resistance and breath weapon are, fine by me. But they'd better not make any false assumptions based on that information, because I may just have changed some things about the beast that are not in the manual.

*Player:* So guys, according to the Monster Manual this thing has a lightning breath weapon. So lets just cast protection against electricity and we're good.
*Dragon:* _*Spits napalm*_
*Party:* Merciful Zeus!
*Player*: It also says it's Lawful Good!
*Party:* The hell it is!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 12, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sure.  It was also an apparently failed attempt at humor.




Honestly, I'm relieved.



> But ... I will say that this can be really annoying if taken to an extreme.  I had a player once who would look up the monster we were fighting in the MM and tell everybody the details of the monster's abilities.  Like details of powers, what the recharge rate on powers was, counting down legendary resistances, etc.




Ok, sure, but all kinds of things are annoying if taken to the extreme.  Even roleplaying.  (Especially roleplaying?) 
That's not really an argument for banning them in their non-extreme forms.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Honestly, I'm relieved.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Do what makes sense at your table.  Personally i'd rather not rely or use meta-game knowledge.  

I should also say that PCs not knowing the basics of monsters is pretty rare, and even when they do I customize monsters on a fairly regular basis.  But constantly reminding me of how the monster is "supposed" to work or quoting the exact wording from the MM really takes me out of the moment and makes it difficult to maintain the pace and flow of the game.


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## Satyrn (Apr 12, 2019)

Oofta said:


> When do the jokes start?


----------



## Yardiff (Apr 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> No...why?




Because its a house rule to not use player knowledge if the character would have no way of having that knowledge, so its known up front and agreed on. So yes they know they CANT do it.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 13, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Say, Pot, have you met my friend, Kettle?




Yeah, I guess I come across a little hostile towards the idea of trying to enforce speech patterns (and that came out hostile too), but I've mostly been defending myself for the past week, so I'm going to be a tiny bit bristly. 




Charlaquin said:


> I think you two would get along, you have so much in common.




Also, tone is hard in these sort of discussions. A sarcastic "Yes, you are right my confusion comes from you saying I'm not declaring actions when I am declaring actions" might not come across fully. 

Then again, I'd like to point something out. I'm not quoting the rulebook at people. Which is what I was objecting too. See, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has been quoting the same passage of the book for this entire thread. Saying the exact same thing, over and over and over. If you want to compare my typed out answers to that, well, I can't stop you. However, the comparison between my debate and a repeated "read the rules on page 15 of the Player's Handbook" is stretching it in my opinion. 




Charlaquin said:


> I don’t demand that players never say they roll Perception or chastise them for doing so. I ask that they tell me what they want to accomplish and how their character goes about it. They can be as specific and detailed as they like, or as simple and general as they like, so long as they provide me with the two things I need to adequately adjudicate their action without making assumptions or dictating what their character does - namely, a goal and an approach. Saying “I roll Perception” doesn’t provide me with that. Maybe it is enough for you to be comfortable adjudicating an action. Bully for you.




A goal and an approach. 

"I want to roll perception to listen for an ambush beyond the door" would work. "I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't? "Man, there have been a lot of ambushes in this dungeon. Bet there's another one lined up. I want to roll perception, let's see if we can get the drop on them instead" wouldn't? "I want to use my senses to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"

Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four. 




Charlaquin said:


> I know you’re not going to believe me when I say this, but it does not take much time at all in my games. It helps that no time is wasted on unnecessary dice rolls. I also don’t build uncertainty - on the contrary, I run the game the way I do to build _certainty_ in my players’ minds, so that they can feel confident in making informed decisions. I have an example a while back of a player who was really concerned about the whole player skill vs character skill thing, until we had a talk about it, she agreed to give it a try, and she loves it. She is the most confident and creative player in my current group when it comes to describing actions.




Sure, I believe you. But, I wonder if we have different ideas of certainty and uncertainty. 

See, I hate "Certainty" in a lot of ways. If my players are "certain" they can walk through a dungeon and catch every trap, then why am I bothering to place traps. They wouldn't be "certain" without hard evidence they could do so, and if they ahve that kind of assurance, then it means there is no point in caring about the traps. 

But, if they only think that the Duke is behind everything, even if they've got a lot of evidence, then it will be good to be proven right. They are only "certain" after it has been resolved. The "uncertainty" makes it more interesting. 

And usually this doesn't apply to abilities, but sometimes it does. I've on the spot homebrewed a lot of things. I've had clerics roll spellcasting checks and use channel divinity to cleanse an area of corruption, or heal a torn soul (literal). They aren't certain these things are allowed, but they are certain they can ask, and if it makes sense in the fiction (and doesn't unbalance the mechanics of the game too horribly) I've got a decent chance of allowing it. They trust I'm not going to have them waste time on things that aren't going to change, but there is some wiggle in what exactly their abilities can do. 




Charlaquin said:


> Well you’re going to get a lot of pushback on that, because the term skill check has a specific meaning within the rules, and you’re using it to mean something else.




Fair enough, but a lot of things are defined by the rules in ways we don't use them. For example, there is no action for swimming or climbing. Those are types of movement. So, by a purely tyrannical reading of the rules if you ask a player to give you an action, and they say "swim to the other side of the river" they are wrong, because the game defines actions and that isn't one. 

It's why I don't like this idea of "but this is very specific in the rules, so you can't use the term this way" because we use terms all the time in ways that aren't quite 100% accurate, and being 100% accurate all the time leads to more problems than it solves. 



Charlaquin said:


> A fundamentally flawed premise, because we do not all agree that Insight should be rolled if an NPC is telling the truth.




Nope, perfectly fine premise. Just narrow in scope. 

It would only be flawed if it had been intended to address people who did not think a roll was necessary, but by specifying a roll is being asked about, it tells you that those people are not being addressed. 

Now, we've obviously moved far far away from the premise of this thread, but it is worth considering. 



Charlaquin said:


> Then your message is extremely unclear. You have been arguing for an alternative ruling of the result, which is implicitly arguing in favor of the call to resolve the action by way of a dice roll.




I gave an alternate style of the result, then got swarmed by people calling me out for taking away player authority, and defending why in my circumstances that has become a natural outlet. 

While the entire time I have said that I would have allowed wiping the handle to bypass the check. 

If people want to pile on me, that is fine, just don't accuse me of making claims I never made. 



Charlaquin said:


> Again, it’s a super weird hill to die on, given that “no, you fail, take damage” was arguably the least contentious part of the example. Sure, the hypothetical DM shouldn’t have said “no, you fail, take damage.” But the greater issue with that ruling is in allowing the possibility of failure in the first place. If you want to argue that DMs should be specific about why actions fail in terms of the narrative, instead of just saying they fail, fine, but the example under discussion is a terrible one to reference to make that point.




I'm only dying because people are stabbing me. 

This is like ordering food at a burger joint with a friend who gets ketchup with their fries and hates coca-cola, saying you prefer mustard to ketchup for your fries. Then getting screamed down because your friend doesn't like coca-cola and how dare you implicitly accept that coca-cola isn't the primary drink of burger joints across the nation. 

It was never the point, but I've spent so much time defending something I never said that you seem to be convinced I had to have agreed with it somewhere.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 13, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> A goal and an approach.
> 
> "I want to roll perception to listen for an ambush beyond the door" would work. "I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't? "Man, there have been a lot of ambushes in this dungeon. Bet there's another one lined up. I want to roll perception, let's see if we can get the drop on them instead" wouldn't? "I want to use my senses to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"
> 
> Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four.




I just want to point out that in all four cases the action that you are calling the "approach" is something that the _player_ does.

What does the _character_ do?  (He/she certainly doesn't 'roll Perception'.)


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## pemerton (Apr 13, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> A goal and an approach.
> 
> "I want to roll perception *to listen for an ambush beyond the door*" would work. "I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't? "Man, there have been a lot of ambushes in this dungeon. Bet there's another one lined up. I want to roll perception, let's see if we can get the drop on them instead" wouldn't? "I want *to use my senses* to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"
> 
> Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four.





Elfcrusher said:


> I just want to point out that in all four cases the action that you are calling the "approach" is something that the _player_ does.
> 
> What does the _character_ do?  (He/she certainly doesn't 'roll Perception'.)



I've bolded two phrases in Chaosmancer's post where the imagined actin declaration includes an approach by the PC (_listening_, and _using his/her sense_). The one which refers to a desire _to notice an ambush beyond the door_ doesn't mention an approach, but I would say at many tables an approach is implicit there: assuming the PC isn't clarivoyant or telepathic, then the noticing will be dependent on ordinary senses, and the two of those that can notice things beyond doors are hearing and smell.

The only one of the four that I find a little odd is the idea of checking Perception to get the drop on enemies: that looks like a mismatch to me.


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## Yardiff (Apr 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> The only one of the four that I find a little odd is the idea of checking Perception to get the drop on enemies: that looks like a mismatch to me.




Just because it seems a little mismatched doesn't mean that it cant have been said. Not everyone is articulate all the time, sometimes people can get brain freeze.


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## pemerton (Apr 13, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> Just because it seems a little mismatched doesn't mean that it cant have been said. Not everyone is articulate all the time, sometimes people can get brain freeze.



I'm not saying it's impossible as an event at a gaming table! But I find it easy to imagine that in a lot of contexts, as a GM, that would not give me enough information to adjudicate it. I'd have to ask the player to elaborate.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, I guess I come across a little hostile towards the idea of trying to enforce speech patterns (and that came out hostile too), but I've mostly been defending myself for the past week, so I'm going to be a tiny bit bristly.
> 
> Also, tone is hard in these sort of discussions. A sarcastic "Yes, you are right my confusion comes from you saying I'm not declaring actions when I am declaring actions" might not come across fully.



No worries. I was attempting to point out, with a bit of levity, that the frustration with having to constantly defend one's self against the same tired points over and over again runs both ways here. In hindsight, I too came off more bristly than I intended to, and I apologize for that.



Chaosmancer said:


> Then again, I'd like to point something out. I'm not quoting the rulebook at people. Which is what I was objecting too. See, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has been quoting the same passage of the book for this entire thread. Saying the exact same thing, over and over and over. If you want to compare my typed out answers to that, well, I can't stop you. However, the comparison between my debate and a repeated "read the rules on page 15 of the Player's Handbook" is stretching it in my opinion.



I think it's important to take into account the context surrounding Isereth's quoting of the passages in question. Isereth is a firm advocate of trying the rules as written first before altering anything, so that one knows how the designers intended the game to be played, and is better equipped to depart from that intent with specific intent. He's not saying "you're doing it wrong, look, here's where the book says so!" He's saying, "here's where D&D 5e tells you how the designers intended play to work. Don't knock it till you've tried it." And I've seen a few commenters say that this style isn't anything new, they played with DMs who did it that way in the 80s, and it wasn't for them. But D&D 5e wasn't out in the 80s. If you haven't tried running _D&D 5e_ that way, you should really give it a shot before you judge it too harshly. It might work out better than you expect it to.




Chaosmancer said:


> A goal and an approach.
> 
> "I want to roll perception to listen for an ambush beyond the door" would work.



Yes. "Listen" is a approach and "for an ambush beyond the door" is a goal. I can also tell from "I want to roll perception" that the player thinks their Proficiency in the Perception might be applicable, if there is uncertainty in the result of listening to try to determine if there is an ambush behind the door.



Chaosmancer said:


> "I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't?



No. "See if I notice an ambush behind the door" is a goal, but no clear approach is indicated in this statement. What does your character _do_ to try to notice an ambush behind the door?


Chaosmancer said:


> "Man, there have been a lot of ambushes in this dungeon. Bet there's another one lined up. I want to roll perception, let's see if we can get the drop on them instead" wouldn't?



No. "See if we can get the drop on them" is a goal, but no clear approach is indicated. I do, however, get the sense that the player is anticipating a potential ambush, and since they seem to think their Proficiency in the Perception skill will be relevant if their action has an uncertain outcome, I'm guessing that "see if we can get the drop on them" isn't really their _immediate_ goal, but a planned goal for a potential future action after they have confirmed or denied their suspicion of an ambush.



Chaosmancer said:


> "I want to use my senses to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"



"I want to use my senses" is an approach and "detect if there is an ambush up ahead" is a goal, so I do technically have what I need to adjudicate that action. However, in this case I would clarify first, because I have a feeling the player probably doesn't want to taste the door. Probably something like, "Ok, I'm hearing that you want to determine if there is an ambush ahead, and that you want to use your senses to do so. By 'senses', you mean hearing, smell, touch, _and_ taste?"



Chaosmancer said:


> Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four.



Only if you consider "roll perception" to be an approach. It's not. Rolling perception is something the _player_ does to resolve uncertainty in the outcome of the _character's_ action. In order to determine whether or not it is appropriate for the _player_ to roll perception, I need to know what the _character_ is doing that might have an uncertain outcome.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, I believe you. But, I wonder if we have different ideas of certainty and uncertainty.
> 
> See, I hate "Certainty" in a lot of ways. If my players are "certain" they can walk through a dungeon and catch every trap, then why am I bothering to place traps. They wouldn't be "certain" without hard evidence they could do so, and if they ahve that kind of assurance, then it means there is no point in caring about the traps.
> 
> But, if they only think that the Duke is behind everything, even if they've got a lot of evidence, then it will be good to be proven right. They are only "certain" after it has been resolved. The "uncertainty" makes it more interesting.



Yes, we are indeed talking about different kinds of certainty here. Of course the players shouldn't be certain they can walk through a dungeon and catch every trap, or that the Duke is behind everything. They should, however, be certain of their immediate environment, their own capabilities, and the likely outcomes of their actions. They should be able to reasonably evaluate their chances of success and risks of failure, so that they can be confident in their decisions. They should be able to trust that the world responds to their actions in a logical and consistent manner.



Chaosmancer said:


> And usually this doesn't apply to abilities, but sometimes it does. I've on the spot homebrewed a lot of things. I've had clerics roll spellcasting checks and use channel divinity to cleanse an area of corruption, or heal a torn soul (literal). They aren't certain these things are allowed, but they are certain they can ask, and if it makes sense in the fiction (and doesn't unbalance the mechanics of the game too horribly) I've got a decent chance of allowing it. They trust I'm not going to have them waste time on things that aren't going to change, but there is some wiggle in what exactly their abilities can do.



See, I wouldn't like that. That would undermine my confidence in the consistency of the world. If your players skills and abilities don't consistently behave the same way - if sometimes they can heal torn souls with Channel Divinity and other times they can't - then it's no surprise that they don't wan to describe what their character is actually doing in the world to try to figure out if there are monsters waiting to ambush them. They aren't certain how the world will respond to that action, because sometimes it works one way and sometimes it works another. It's only natural that they would feel the d20 is more reliable than their own sense of what might happen in response to their characters' actions. Which is saying something considering how swingy d20s are.



Chaosmancer said:


> Fair enough, but a lot of things are defined by the rules in ways we don't use them. For example, there is no action for swimming or climbing. Those are types of movement. So, by a purely tyrannical reading of the rules if you ask a player to give you an action, and they say "swim to the other side of the river" they are wrong, because the game defines actions and that isn't one.



But action is an English word. "Skill check" is just rules jargon. You're not using a natural-language meaning of a word that also has a specific rules meaning, you're using a rules term to mean something other than what the rules system it comes from says it means.



Chaosmancer said:


> It's why I don't like this idea of "but this is very specific in the rules, so you can't use the term this way" because we use terms all the time in ways that aren't quite 100% accurate, and being 100% accurate all the time leads to more problems than it solves.



But your use of "skill check" as interchangeable with the rules term "action" is causing actual confusion. Using the English definition of "action" to describe something that is an action by the english definition but is not an action as defined by the rules of D&D is not.



Chaosmancer said:


> Nope, perfectly fine premise. Just narrow in scope.
> 
> It would only be flawed if it had been intended to address people who did not think a roll was necessary, but by specifying a roll is being asked about, it tells you that those people are not being addressed.
> 
> Now, we've obviously moved far far away from the premise of this thread, but it is worth considering.



Just so we're clear, are you saying that people who don't think a roll should be called for to determine whether or not a character who is not lying is lying should not participate in this discussion?



Chaosmancer said:


> I gave an alternate style of the result, then got swarmed by people calling me out for taking away player authority, and defending why in my circumstances that has become a natural outlet.
> 
> While the entire time I have said that I would have allowed wiping the handle to bypass the check.
> 
> If people want to pile on me, that is fine, just don't accuse me of making claims I never made.



You gave an alternative style of the result of _failing_ on a check that you said you wouldn't allow to fail. Do you not see why that might be confusing?



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm only dying because people are stabbing me.



It's an expression. "A hill to die on" is a cause you defend in spite of significant resistance. Historically, it carries connotations of defending a point with no real tactical value. I'm saying that this point you've chosen to defend to the death doesn't seem to me like a point worth dying for.



Chaosmancer said:


> This is like ordering food at a burger joint with a friend who gets ketchup with their fries and hates coca-cola, saying you prefer mustard to ketchup for your fries. Then getting screamed down because your friend doesn't like coca-cola and how dare you implicitly accept that coca-cola isn't the primary drink of burger joints across the nation.
> 
> It was never the point, but I've spent so much time defending something I never said that you seem to be convinced I had to have agreed with it somewhere.



Except that coca-cola has nothing to do with mustard on fries. Your alternative style of resolving the action in the example is directly related to the action in the example. You can say "but I would allow wiping the handle to automatically succeed!" until you're blue in the face, but as long as you keep following it up with, "but _if we did agree to roll for it_, this is what failure should have looked like," the first part doesn't really mean anything. A better analogy would be that if someone used mustard on fries as an example of a bad combination of foods, and you said, "obviously I would put catchup on my fries, but _if someone did_ put mustard on their fries, they should go with dijon." Which kind of mustard is least disgusting on fries was never a point of contention, why are you bringing it up? The whole point was that putting mustard on fries is obviously gross. But the fact that you keep saying "yeah, it's gross, but _if_ you put mustard on fries, you should use dijon!" makes me question if you really do think mustard on fries is gross. I know you keep saying it, but you sure seem insistent that dijon is better than yellow on fries. Almost like you're speaking from experience.


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## pemerton (Apr 13, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Isereth is a firm advocate of trying the rules as written first before altering anything, so that one knows how the designers intended the game to be played



Well, the designers did say - repeatedly - that 5e would enable people to enjoy _their_ D&D experience. That is, part of the pitch was that it was in many ways not a new game.

So if people have a certain way they were used to doing things in, say, 3E, then it's not unreasonable to expect 5e to support that also.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, the designers did say - repeatedly - that 5e would enable people to enjoy _their_ D&D experience. That is, part of the pitch was that it was in many ways not a new game.
> 
> So if people have a certain way they were used to doing things in, say, 3E, then it's not unreasonable to expect 5e to support that also.



Sure. You’re more than welcome to run 5e the way you ran 3e. I’ve heard plenty of people who do, who attest that it works just fine and I believe them. I also agree with Iserith that it works _better_ if you run it the way it says to run it. You may disagree, and that’s perfectly fine, have fun with the game the way you like to run it. But when people complain of problems running the game that I do not experience when I run the game, I don’t think it’s unfair to say, “I run the game this way, as per the advice in this part of the book, and this issue does not occur for me when I do so.”

EDIT: Also, things not working as advertised is nothing new. 5e is absolutely not the game they sold it as early in the playtest process. It’s a very good game, but it’s not the “fully modular, build your own edition” that they sold many of us on.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I've bolded two phrases in Chaosmancer's post where the imagined actin declaration includes an approach by the PC (_listening_, and _using his/her sense_). The one which refers to a desire _to notice an ambush beyond the door_ doesn't mention an approach, but I would say at many tables an approach is implicit there: assuming the PC isn't clarivoyant or telepathic, then the noticing will be dependent on ordinary senses, and the two of those that can notice things beyond doors are hearing and smell.
> 
> The only one of the four that I find a little odd is the idea of checking Perception to get the drop on enemies: that looks like a mismatch to me.




Ok, fair point.  I was scanning for the pattern I use [approach] to accomplish [goal], so in each case Perception sounded like the approach, and I read, for example, "listen for an ambush beyond the door" as a goal.  If he had just said, "I listen for an ambush beyond the door" I can see that being a goal and an approach.

However, I will say that in each case the approach is awfully vague.  Especially "use my senses".

I think in many ways this comes back to a recurring theme in this thread: one side keeps assuming a model of "listen randomly at every door and check it for traps" or "check every NPC to see if they are lying" of play.  And if that's the case, then yeah it gets a little unwieldy to describe approach in detail every time, and it also would feel like mere embellishment...a charge Oofta, for example, keep leveling.

But if the players know they don't have to listen at every door, then when they get to the door they do suspect they really need to listen to, they might have a more specific approach.  Silly example, but imagine there are 4 doors: you have every reason to believe that behind 3 of them are sleeping giants, and behind the 4th is the princess you are trying to rescue.  Now the players can say, "Ok, everybody be really quiet...I'm going to listen for deep breathing behind the doors" or maybe "I'm going to get down at the bottom of the door and take a deep whiff and see if I can catch a trace of that perfume we found."

Whether or not the DM calls for a Perception check depends on whether he thinks there's uncertainty.  If the doors are thick and lead to hallways, at the end of which are sleeping giants, maybe he/she calls for a roll.  If they are literally sleeping right beyond the doors, maybe he doesn't.  And if one of the rooms is actually empty, maybe he/she just says no.  (Players of such a DM would already know that not rolling doesn't mean anything one way or the other.)

As for "using my senses to get the drop on enemies", I would say that I could see one's senses being useful in achieving this goal, but I would want a lot more specificity in the approach.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> As for "using my senses to get the drop on enemies", I would say that I could see one's senses being useful in achieving this goal, but I would want a lot more specificity in the approach.



I think, in the interest of showing good faith to the critics of the goal and approach DMing style, it’s important that we not brush past this. Many of us who advocate for the goal and approach style have been quite insistent that detailed description is not necessary, as long as a goal and an approach are clearly stated. And this action does, strictly speaking, meet those criteria (though arguably there is some interpretation required on the DM’s part to translate “get the drop on them” to “find out if there’s anyone there, so that we can get the drop on them if there is.”) So here we can clearly see that _some_ degree of specificity in the approach is required. Now, different DMs will have different thresholds for how much specificity they expect, but I think most of us would agree that “use my senses” is a little too vague to do anything with. Perhaps it’s worth exploring how we might handle a player declaring a vague approach like this.

I’ve commented on this a bit already, but to elaborate on my previous post, my strategy is to clearly say to the player what I do understand (or think I understand) from their declaration, what I’m still not understanding, and ask for elaboration. “I’m hearing that you want to [blank]” (and I think that part is very important), “but I need to know [blank].” In this specific case, “I’m hearing that you want to use your senses to find out if there might be an ambush waiting on the other side, but I’m not sure what senses you plan to use. I assume listening carefully, are you also sniffing around, touching the door, licking the handle...?”


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## Oofta (Apr 13, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Sure. You’re more than welcome to run 5e the way you ran 3e. I’ve heard plenty of people who do, who attest that it works just fine and I believe them. I also agree with Iserith that it works _better_ if you run it the way it says to run it. You may disagree, and that’s perfectly fine, have fun with the game the way you like to run it. But when people complain of problems running the game that I do not experience when I run the game, I don’t think it’s unfair to say, “I run the game this way, as per the advice in this part of the book, and this issue does not occur for me when I do so.”
> 
> EDIT: Also, things not working as advertised is nothing new. 5e is absolutely not the game they sold it as early in the playtest process. It’s a very good game, but it’s not the “fully modular, build your own edition” that they sold many of us on.




Has _anyone_ been posting to here clamoring for advice on how to handle skill checks because it sucks?  Because I haven't seen it.

Because whether you meant it or not what you said comes off as,  "when you get tired of your boring game come ask me and I'll show you the right way to do it".

We all play slightly different games.  Heck, I probably disagree with the majority of people on the OP's topic.  That doesn't mean they're wrong or I'm right, I just share how I run my game and why.

P.S. I find "the rulz say to run it this way" particularly annoying.  It's two lines in the PHB of general guidance.  The PHB is not a holy text.  It was not vetted by thousands of lawyers over decades to be interpreted as a legal document.

I can quote the DMG (page 240 BTW) just like @iserith.  For example
Take into account each player's roleplaying style, and
try not to favor one style over another. For example,
Allison might be comfortable speaking in an accent and
adopting her character's mannerisms, but Paul feels
self-conscious when trying to act and prefers to describe
his character's attitude and actions. Neither style is
better than the other.​
So if one person is more comfortable saying "I make an insight check" vs well, I'm not exactly sure what.  "I study them closely"?


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## Oofta (Apr 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, fair point.  I was scanning for the pattern I use [approach] to accomplish [goal], so in each case Perception sounded like the approach, and I read, for example, "listen for an ambush beyond the door" as a goal.  If he had just said, "I listen for an ambush beyond the door" I can see that being a goal and an approach.
> 
> However, I will say that in each case the approach is awfully vague.  Especially "use my senses".
> 
> ...




And what exactly is gained when you suspect someone might be on the other side of the door that is not covered under "I make a perception check to see if there's anything?"  I might clarify in some cases along the lines of "Do you put your ear to the door?" if it matters or I just want to set a mood that's a little paranoid.  Because if they don't hear an ambush, they might hear a party.  Do you not tell them about the party?  Because after all that's not what they were seeking.  If the room reeks of alcohol are you going to tell them they don't smell it because they didn't mention they were smelling?

To me the PC is concentrating with all their senses, all the time, every time they make a perception check (or when I'm using passives).  No need to spell it out.  It's not like I plug my nose and close my eyes while listening at a door.  If you and your players prefer a descriptive approach, more power to you.  It just feels like an artificial overly-wordy way of saying what you want to do.  We use acronyms, shortcuts and emojis all the time in real life in my game that doesn't have to stop at the game table.

But I've also been accused of running games where everyone asks for a perception check every 5 feet or an insight check after every sentence.  So how about we just stop that, okay?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 13, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I think, in the interest of showing good faith to the critics of the goal and approach DMing style, it’s important that we not brush past this. Many of us who advocate for the goal and approach style have been quite insistent that detailed description is not necessary, as long as a goal and an approach are clearly stated. And this action does, strictly speaking, meet those criteria (though arguably there is some interpretation required on the DM’s part to translate “get the drop on them” to “find out if there’s anyone there, so that we can get the drop on them if there is.”) So here we can clearly see that _some_ degree of specificity in the approach is required. Now, different DMs will have different thresholds for how much specificity they expect, but I think most of us would agree that “use my senses” is a little too vague to do anything with. Perhaps it’s worth exploring how we might handle a player declaring a vague approach like this.
> 
> I’ve commented on this a bit already, but to elaborate on my previous post, my strategy is to clearly say to the player what I do understand (or think I understand) from their declaration, what I’m still not understanding, and ask for elaboration. “I’m hearing that you want to [blank]” (and I think that part is very important), “but I need to know [blank].” In this specific case, “I’m hearing that you want to use your senses to find out if there might be an ambush waiting on the other side, but I’m not sure what senses you plan to use. I assume listening carefully, are you also sniffing around, touching the door, licking the handle...?”




Yeah, agree with all of the above.


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## Yardiff (Apr 13, 2019)

"I also agree with Iserith that it works _better_ if you run it the way it says to run it."


This is worded poorly.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> And what exactly is gained when you suspect someone might be on the other side of the door that is not covered under "I make a perception check to see if there's anything?"
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> But I've also been accused of running games where everyone asks for a perception check every 5 feet or an insight check after every sentence.  So how about we just stop that, okay?




Ok, guilty of the "every 5 feet" accusations.  And I'm really not...honestly...accusing _you_ (or anybody specific) of doing that; it's a little bit of illustrative hyperbole, because I've seen it happen.  And I think in some ways it's the result of really old school (e.g., or really E.G.G., Tomb of Horrors) ideas about D&D.

But to answer the question at the top of your post, the point is that we're trying to get away from essentially random "Perception" checks...whether they are every 5' or simply at every suspicious door...because it feels, to us, like algorithmic playing.  'Don't forget to roll that trap check die at every suspicious door.'  It doesn't...again to _us_...feel like storytelling.

To make another hyperbolic illustration, imagine if you had a "combat" skill (my favorite game, TOR, does in fact have this skill) and if the DM said, "Five orcs spring from the shadows" you would reply, "I roll Combat...18!"  And the DM says, "Ok, all the orcs are dead."  I know you disagree, but to me that gets the same Fun Rating as "I roll Perception to see if there are traps."

And, just to make this point ONE MORE TIME, I also don't think it would be fun to simply embellish: "I leapeth bravely into the fray and cleaveth with my trusty greatsword....18 on the Combat roll!"  That is most definitely NOT what I'm advocating.

(You may object to this example because combat has lots of dice rolling, and I understand if it seems like I am against dice rolling.  If that truly seems like a contradiction I can elaborate further, although probably not until tonight.)


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> And what exactly is gained when you suspect someone might be on the other side of the door that is not covered under "I make a perception check to see if there's anything?"



We've tried to tell you a bunch of times, but you insist on only viewing it through the lens of your play.  I'll freely admit that, according to how you say you play, asking to roll is a very reasonable action on the part of your players.  This is for two main reasons -- one, you do not levy new consequences for failure very often, instead maintaining the status quo, and; two, you often do not conclusively resolve the uncertainty when a roll succeeded but just offer a hint.  This is a fine way to play (I wouldn't enjoy it), but it's these two assumptions of play that lead you to keep questioning why an approach helps over a straight ask to roll.

In my game, the action will be conclusively resolved one way or the other.  An appropriate approach may get you an automatic resolution in your favor, and, on a failure, may constrain the consequence.  Further, the DC of the task will be set depending on your approach, so, again, a reasonable approach limits your risk.  On a success, the uncertainty is conclusively resolved -- no questions are left.  On a failure, the uncertainty is also conclusively resolved, but not in a way the player wanted.

If you asked to just make a roll in my game, you'd not have provided an approach, so I could set the DC however I wanted and assume that you did things that I wanted you to do, and, if you failed, the situation would change in a negative way.  Listening at a door is an approach I can work with.  It's solid, I can set an appropriate DC or just give an autosuccess (if there's a party on the other side, frex).  On a failure, though, something will change in the fiction -- you either made a loud noise and alerted things on the other side, or the door opens to reveal a foe and you're surprised, or an earworm was infesting the door and you've contracted it.  Asking to make a roll when failure results in bad things is a bad strategy, so, yeah, that would be something gained by providing an approach instead of asking if you can try to fail.



> I might clarify in some cases along the lines of "Do you put your ear to the door?" if it matters or I just want to set a mood that's a little paranoid.



I, personally, very much dislike the creation of paranoia by use of the mechanics in an unclear manner.


> Because if they don't hear an ambush, they might hear a party.  Do you not tell them about the party?  Because after all that's not what they were seeking.



Is there a reason you imagine I would not?  This assumption that if you don't use the right words you'll get DM-screwed is WRONG.  Stop.


> If the room reeks of alcohol are you going to tell them they don't smell it because they didn't mention they were smelling?



I'd likely tell them this as part of the initial description.  Would you wait until someone asked to roll?  Of course not.  Do try to not assume we're being dicks.  When you do, it makes it hard to not assume you're not being a dick.


> To me the PC is concentrating with all their senses, all the time, every time they make a perception check (or when I'm using passives).  No need to spell it out.  It's not like I plug my nose and close my eyes while listening at a door.  If you and your players prefer a descriptive approach, more power to you.  It just feels like an artificial overly-wordy way of saying what you want to do.  We use acronyms, shortcuts and emojis all the time in real life in my game that doesn't have to stop at the game table.
> So, if the roll fails on the poisoned doorknob, you assume the PC is licking the door to taste it?  Weird.  I'm not going to assume that.
> 
> I also assume the PCs are both competent and aware they're in a dangerous situation.  This is why I provide lots of information in my descriptions.  If a door is trapped, for instance, there will be clear indication in the desciption that something is odd and  dangerous.  I'm not going to wait for my players to ask to make a roll, I'm just going to tell them what their PCs, who are competent and skilled, notice because they're competent and skilled.
> ...


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## Oofta (Apr 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, guilty of the "every 5 feet" accusations.  And I'm really not...honestly...accusing _you_ (or anybody specific) of doing that; it's a little bit of illustrative hyperbole, because I've seen it happen.  And I think in some ways it's the result of really old school (e.g., or really E.G.G., Tomb of Horrors) ideas about D&D.
> 
> But to answer the question at the top of your post, the point is that we're trying to get away from essentially random "Perception" checks...whether they are every 5' or simply at every suspicious door...because it feels, to us, like algorithmic playing.  'Don't forget to roll that trap check die at every suspicious door.'  It doesn't...again to _us_...feel like storytelling.
> 
> ...




To me what you're describing is covered under complex traps in the DMG.  Which I handle differently on the rare occasion I use one.  Then again, I may call for an athletics check and an arcana check (how would you describe "I decipher the magic runes with an arcana check" anyway?) along with whatever skills and minor puzzles I can think to engage the majority of the party and may require multiple steps.

I don't do that often though because most of my players in my last campaign found it boring.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Has _anyone_ been posting to here clamoring for advice on how to handle skill checks because it sucks?  Because I haven't seen it.



No, nor did I make the claim that anyone has said that. I would appreciate if you did not put words in my mouth.



Oofta said:


> Because whether you meant it or not what you said comes off as,  "when you get tired of your boring game come ask me and I'll show you the right way to do it".



Interesting. So, say someone posts a thread asking for advice with a problem they are experiencing - say, for example, that their players never engage with their Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws to gain Inspiration, and never remember to spend Inspiration when they have it. Now say one person advises them with, I don’t know, a house rule they use for Inspiration, while another person says, “I run it as written, but I have not experienced this problem - the way I adjudicate actions encourages players to think more actively about spending Inspiration when a check is called for.” Is the latter person telling the querrent that their game is boring and to come to them when they want to know the right way to do it? If so, is the former person not doing the same thing? Why or why not?



Oofta said:


> We all play slightly different games.  Heck, I probably disagree with the majority of people on the OP's topic.  That doesn't mean they're wrong or I'm right, I just share how I run my game and why.



Which is exactly what those of us who use the goal and approach style are doing.



Oofta said:


> P.S. I find "the rulz say to run it this way" particularly annoying.  It's two lines in the PHB of general guidance.  The PHB is not a holy text.  It was not vetted by thousands of lawyers over decades to be interpreted as a legal document.



No one claims that it is, or that it must be followed to the letter. But, as the rulebook’s advice is a not insignificant part of the reason many of us run the game the way we do, citing the relevant parts of the rules is a necessary component of explaining how we run the game and why.



Oofta said:


> I can quote the DMG (page 240 BTW) just like @iserith.  For example
> Take into account each player's roleplaying style, and
> try not to favor one style over another. For example,
> Allison might be comfortable speaking in an accent and
> ...



Solid GMing advice! And accordingly, I do not demand that my players speak in first person or an accent, nor do I discourage them from doing so if they wish. I myself iften narrate NPCs actions and dialogue in third person. Note, however, that Paul still _describes his character’s attitude and actions_, he does not simply annonice skills he wishes to roll.

Now, the DMG does specifically discuss allowing players to simply declare checks. It is given as one of three ways a DM might go about adjudicating actions. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with using any of those three styles, or any other style you might have independently developed. Personally, I prefer the style described as “the middle path” by the DMG, because it is the only one of the three that is says does not have disadvantages.



Oofta said:


> So if one person is more comfortable saying "I make an insight check" vs well, I'm not exactly sure what.  "I study them closely"?



Then I tell them I need more information in order to adjudicate their action, using the “I’m hearing [blank], I’m not sure of [blank]” format I mentioned earlier. “I’m hearing you think your Proficiency in the Insight skill will help you to achieve your goal here. I’m not sure what your goal is or what your character is doing to try to achieve it.”


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> "I also agree with Iserith that it works _better_ if you run it the way it says to run it."
> 
> 
> This is worded poorly.



I don’t know, I think the word choice is accurate. I do think it works better to run it the way I do, that’s why I do so. You’re free to disagree with me. If your way works better for you, then I wouldn’t expect you to run it the way I do.


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## Oofta (Apr 13, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> We've tried to tell you a bunch of times, but you insist on only viewing it through the lens of your play.  I'll freely admit that, according to how you say you play, asking to roll is a very reasonable action on the part of your players.  This is for two main reasons -- one, you do not levy new consequences for failure very often, instead maintaining the status quo, and; two, you often do not conclusively resolve the uncertainty when a roll succeeded but just offer a hint.  This is a fine way to play (I wouldn't enjoy it), but it's these two assumptions of play that lead you to keep questioning why an approach helps over a straight ask to roll.
> 
> In my game, the action will be conclusively resolved one way or the other.  An appropriate approach may get you an automatic resolution in your favor, and, on a failure, may constrain the consequence.  Further, the DC of the task will be set depending on your approach, so, again, a reasonable approach limits your risk.  On a success, the uncertainty is conclusively resolved -- no questions are left.  On a failure, the uncertainty is also conclusively resolved, but not in a way the player wanted.




I don't remember ever saying like any of that.  I freely admit I don't think insight is mind reading.  But there's no consequences to failure?  I have no idea where that comes from.



Ovinomancer said:


> If you asked to just make a roll in my game, you'd not have provided an approach, so I could set the DC however I wanted and assume that you did things that I wanted you to do, and, if you failed, the situation would change in a negative way.  Listening at a door is an approach I can work with.  It's solid, I can set an appropriate DC or just give an autosuccess (if there's a party on the other side, frex).  On a failure, though, something will change in the fiction -- you either made a loud noise and alerted things on the other side, or the door opens to reveal a foe and you're surprised, or an earworm was infesting the door and you've contracted it.  Asking to make a roll when failure results in bad things is a bad strategy, so, yeah, that would be something gained by providing an approach instead of asking if you can try to fail.
> 
> 
> I, personally, very much dislike the creation of paranoia by use of the mechanics in an unclear manner.





Huh?  I'm not playing "gotcha".  If there's a reason for the PC to believe putting their ear to the door is dangerous and the player isn't cautious I'm reminding him that his PC should be a bit paranoid.  The last time I used a door that tried to eat a PC i wasn't old enough to legally drink.  





Ovinomancer said:


> Is there a reason you imagine I would not?  This assumption that if you don't use the right words you'll get DM-screwed is WRONG.  Stop.
> 
> I'd likely tell them this as part of the initial description.  Would you wait until someone asked to roll?  Of course not.  Do try to not assume we're being dicks.  When you do, it makes it hard to not assume you're not being a dick.
> 
> ...



My point is I don't see a reason to state a goal in most cases.  It just becomes "I listen at the door" aka "I make a perception check at the door".  The goal is obvious. As far as what senses are used I believe the phrase was "I sniff at the door to see if I smell the perfume".  If a PC is at the door and doing a perception check I'm going to give them the smell of the perfume if it's important to the game.  The way it was stated made it sound like it would not be obvious unless they were specifically saying they were sniffing the air.  Conversely if they were sniffing at the base of the door they may not hear something.  Not my style.  If it's not yours either than I don't see why it matters how they describe their perception check.

Traps don't have neon signs saying "I'm trapped" in my campaigns.  On the other hand, I don't use traps particularly often but when I do they're logical located and I rely heavily on passive skill checks.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> (how would you describe "I decipher the magic runes with an arcana check" anyway?).




Well that’s just the thing. You wouldn’t. You would say “I carfully study the runes to see if I can decipher their meaning,” or ask “do I recognize these runes from my study of Arcana?” or something along those lines. Maybe if you can read the language they’re written in, the DM just tells you what they say. Maybe if they’re in a long-forgotten language that has passed completely out of mortal memory, the DM just tells you you can’t decipher them no matter how hard you try. Maybe they think you might be able to read them given enough time, but time is not of the essence, so they just tell you “after several dozen minutes of careful study, you determine [whatever].” Or maybe time is of the essence, so they say “It’s going to take some time. If you study them for 10 minutes and succeed on a DC 15 Intelligence check, you’ll be able to decipher them.” and you ask “would my Arcana proficiency be applicable?”


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## Bawylie (Apr 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, the designers did say - repeatedly - that 5e would enable people to enjoy _their_ D&D experience. That is, part of the pitch was that it was in many ways not a new game.
> 
> So if people have a certain way they were used to doing things in, say, 3E, then it's not unreasonable to expect 5e to support that also.




I don’t think they came close to delivering on that pitch, but I do remember that as a selling point.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I don't remember ever saying like any of that.  I freely admit I don't think insight is mind reading.  But there's no consequences to failure?  I have no idea where that comes from.



Yes, you very clearly indicated that a failure for insight would be no information. This is not a consequence, it's just the status quo.  Nothing has changed, so therefore no consequence.

I've said this before, you ignored it last time as well.  This evasive answering is very indicative of less than earnest engagement.





> Huh?  I'm not playing "gotcha".  If there's a reason for the PC to believe putting their ear to the door is dangerous and the player isn't cautious I'm reminding him that his PC should be a bit paranoid.  The last time I used a door that tried to eat a PC i wasn't old enough to legally drink.



Didn't say gotchas, said I dislike using mechanics to instill paranoia.  You, clearly, enjoy using mechanics to engender paranoia, via asking for approach just to instill it or answering success with not resolving the uncertainty, just smearing it around a bit and leaving it uncertain.  Personally, I think a door that tries to eat someone to be damn cool.  My players would, too, and they'd be able to clearly see how their approach led to getting eaten by it.





> My point is I don't see a reason to state a goal in most cases.  It just becomes "I listen at the door" aka "I make a perception check at the door".  The goal is obvious. As far as what senses are used I believe the phrase was "I sniff at the door to see if I smell the perfume".  If a PC is at the door and doing a perception check I'm going to give them the smell of the perfume if it's important to the game.  The way it was stated made it sound like it would not be obvious unless they were specifically saying they were sniffing the air.  Conversely if they were sniffing at the base of the door they may not hear something.  Not my style.  If it's not yours either than I don't see why it matters how they describe their perception check.



Sometimes goals are obvious.  That doesn't mean that a statement of approach is no longer needed, or that the goal doesn't exist.  Sometimes, though, the goal isn't obvious.  If a player is sniffing a door for perfume in my game it would be because I've already established that the scent of perfume is a marker for a thing the character cares about.  If your assuming that I'd have this happen in my game at a random door, you're off base by a large margin.  That declaration in my game would be a specific set of circumstances that had a clear line traced through previously established fiction to the present moment, and it would be very important that perfume is or is not on the door.  You keep assuming we play as you do, with vague traps that might be on any given door, but this is not the case.  You cannot evaluate it as if it is.



> Traps don't have neon signs saying "I'm trapped" in my campaigns.  On the other hand, I don't use traps particularly often but when I do they're logical located and I rely heavily on passive skill checks.



Sure they do, to highly competent tomb raiders.  There's holes in odd places, discolorations, mismatched tiles, etc.  If you actually treat traps as utterly invisible until the player guesses it's time to make a check and succeeds (or invests in a high passive score to avoid secret traps), then you should take it as given we play very different games.  To me, traps aren't gotchas that players can stumble into, but are encounters all their own -- they have tells and signals because I want the players to interact with them, not hide them.


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## Satyrn (Apr 13, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Oofta said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Small heads up.

You just accidentally told him about how things work in his game. I'm sure you didn't mean to, but it looks bad.


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## Bawylie (Apr 13, 2019)

Oofta said:


> My point is I don't see a reason to state a goal in most cases.  It just becomes "I listen at the door" aka "I make a perception check at the door".  The goal is obvious. As far as what senses are used I believe the phrase was "I sniff at the door to see if I smell the perfume".  If a PC is at the door and doing a perception check I'm going to give them the smell of the perfume if it's important to the game.  The way it was stated made it sound like it would not be obvious unless they were specifically saying they were sniffing the air.  Conversely if they were sniffing at the base of the door they may not hear something.  Not my style.  If it's not yours either than I don't see why it matters how they describe their perception check.
> 
> Traps don't have neon signs saying "I'm trapped" in my campaigns.  On the other hand, I don't use traps particularly often but when I do they're logical located and I rely heavily on passive skill checks.




Well that’s interesting. And I suppose I could posit you a half dozen “what-ifs” and that you might answer something like “that’s why ‘I roll perception’ works in all cases.” Fair enough - it does work.

But let’s say I’m DM-ing a game and you’re a player. As a table, we’ve agreed (for whatever reason; mystery, whatever) that I will make all dice rolls behind the screen for all players and NPCs alike. All the players will need to do is say what they’re characters are doing in the game world. Does/would that change how you play?

I ask this because when I first started I was 8 years old and playing with the neighbor boys, he oldest brother was the DM (and this was the old AD&D) and he kept literally everything behind the screen, rolling all checks. Also we only had one set of dice, and maybe that was a big reason he rolled everything. Later in life when I played 2nd edition onward, the ThAC0 roll and the attack matrix were player info and we did get into the habit of calling rolls instead of stating actions. Only since like 4E have I (and my tables) gone back to narrating actions. So I just wondered whether “who rolls” would change the way you might approach the game world.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 13, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Small heads up.
> 
> You just accidentally told him about how things work in his game. I'm sure you didn't mean to, but it looks bad.



Really?  I mean, that takes a whole lot of wanting to read it that way.  I'm not going to tiptoe around such delicate readings.


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## iserith (Apr 13, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Solid GMing advice! And accordingly, I do not demand that my players speak in first person or an accent, nor do I discourage them from doing so if they wish. I myself iften narrate NPCs actions and dialogue in third person. Note, however, that Paul still _describes his character’s attitude and actions_, he does not simply annonice skills he wishes to roll.
> 
> Now, the DMG does specifically discuss allowing players to simply declare checks. It is given as one of three ways a DM might go about adjudicating actions. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with using any of those three styles, or any other style you might have independently developed. Personally, I prefer the style described as “the middle path” by the DMG, because it is the only one of the three that is says does not have disadvantages.




Just as a point of order, if you're referring to the "Rolling With It" method on DMG page 236, it does not say players declare checks, only that "some DMs rely on die rolls for almost everything." It goes on to say the DM is the one who calls for checks.

To my knowledge, there is no support in the D&D 5e rules for players declaring or asking to make checks, except in some circumstances the player might ask if a skill proficiency applies to an ability check for which the DM has already called. Players asking to make checks appears to come from nearly 15 years of people playing D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e where this was an expectation. It continues commonly to this day despite no suggestion to do so in D&D 5e.

If you're referring to some other section that makes this claim, I'd very much like to see it as perhaps I've missed something.


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## Satyrn (Apr 13, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Really?  I mean, that takes a whole lot of wanting to read it that way.  I'm not going to tiptoe around such delicate readings.



Really.

That took no amount of wanting to read it that way. Indeed, I want to read it like you're saying how things work in your game, but I have to ignore what you're actually saying to get there. Lookat what he said and how you replied:

Him: Traps don't have neon signs saying "I'm trapped" in my campaigns.
You: Sure they do.

Do you really not see it?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> Just as a point of order, if you're referring to the "Rolling With It" method on DMG page 236, it does not say players declare checks, only that "some DMs rely on die rolls for almost everything." It goes on to say the DM is the one who calls for checks.
> 
> To my knowledge, there is no support in the D&D 5e rules for players declaring or asking to make checks, except in some circumstances the player might ask if a skill proficiency applies to an ability check for which the DM has already called. Players asking to make checks appears to come from nearly 15 years of people playing D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e where this was an expectation. It continues commonly to this day despite no suggestion to do so in D&D 5e.
> 
> If you're referring to some other section that makes this claim, I'd very much like to see it as perhaps I've missed something.



Nope, you’re right, I just misremembered the “rolling with it” section.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I'm not saying it's impossible as an event at a gaming table! But I find it easy to imagine that in a lot of contexts, as a GM, that would not give me enough information to adjudicate it. I'd have to ask the player to elaborate.




Yeah, and I'm a proponent of asking for clarification if the DM needs it.



Charlaquin said:


> No worries. I was attempting to point out, with a bit of levity, that the frustration with having to constantly defend one's self against the same tired points over and over again runs both ways here. In hindsight, I too came off more bristly than I intended to, and I apologize for that.




No problem, things always get heated when we talk about things we are passionate about. 





Charlaquin said:


> I think it's important to take into account the context surrounding Isereth's quoting of the passages in question. Isereth is a firm advocate of trying the rules as written first before altering anything, so that one knows how the designers intended the game to be played, and is better equipped to depart from that intent with specific intent. He's not saying "you're doing it wrong, look, here's where the book says so!" He's saying, "here's where D&D 5e tells you how the designers intended play to work. Don't knock it till you've tried it." And I've seen a few commenters say that this style isn't anything new, they played with DMs who did it that way in the 80s, and it wasn't for them. But D&D 5e wasn't out in the 80s. If you haven't tried running _D&D 5e_ that way, you should really give it a shot before you judge it too harshly. It might work out better than you expect it to.




See, I would agree with you if it was a few times, or if it was in regards to specific questions. 

But, if I put an example of someone asking to roll a d20 for a skill, Isereth posts that they aren't allowed to do that. 

That does not come across as advocating for a playstyle, that comes across as saying the attempt is invalid because of the rules. 




Charlaquin said:


> *Snipping individual yes and no's*
> 
> Only if you consider "roll perception" to be an approach. It's not. Rolling perception is something the _player_ does to resolve uncertainty in the outcome of the _character's_ action. In order to determine whether or not it is appropriate for the _player_ to roll perception, I need to know what the _character_ is doing that might have an uncertain outcome.




Reading through all your negatives, it really seems like you are trying to be ultra-precise. You will not move forward with resolution until you have an action verb that is tied to a specific sense that could be used to perceive something. 

I'm not that precise, and the only thing you seem intent on avoiding that this may help with is avoiding upsetting your players by resolving something based on an action they might have done. Which is a valid concern, but is not my primary concern when running the game. 




Charlaquin said:


> See, I wouldn't like that. That would undermine my confidence in the consistency of the world. If your players skills and abilities don't consistently behave the same way - if sometimes they can heal torn souls with Channel Divinity and other times they can't - then it's no surprise that they don't wan to describe what their character is actually doing in the world to try to figure out if there are monsters waiting to ambush them. They aren't certain how the world will respond to that action, because sometimes it works one way and sometimes it works another. It's only natural that they would feel the d20 is more reliable than their own sense of what might happen in response to their characters' actions. Which is saying something considering how swingy d20s are.




I think we are getting mixed up with our "uncertainties" again. 

A cleric can always attempt to heal a soul with channel divinity. It might not work because the damage was caused by a specific threat that left wounds you aren't powerful enough to heal. It might not work because you are standing in the dominion of a being opposed to your deity and your power for miracles is diminished here. Maybe it doesn't work because you couldn't handle the strain of channel so much divine power. 

The world (at least as well as I can make it) isn't inconsistent. But it isn't spelled out all the time. A paladin is immune to disease, but a magical disease contracted by the paladin almost breaking their oath in the usage of an artifact of Orcus... maybe they aren't immune to THAT. 

Demons are immune to poison, but are they immune to the Cosmic Serpent's venom? 

It doesn't make for an inconsistent world, just one larger than the books laid out. 



Charlaquin said:


> But your use of "skill check" as interchangeable with the rules term "action" is causing actual confusion. Using the English definition of "action" to describe something that is an action by the english definition but is not an action as defined by the rules of D&D is not.




That wasn't what I was saying when this line of discussion came up. 

I just said not all skill checks need to be rolled, because sometimes a player's abilities would change the roll or negate the roll. 

If a rogue has reliable talent they cannot roll below a 10. That means their minimum for a check is X. If X is higher than the DC you might not call for a roll. But, Reliable Talent only works for skill checks. If you refuse to call an action that doesn't require a roll a skill check (sorry, ability check, skill checks don't exist per the rules either) then Reliable Talent can't guarentee success. 

And also, as a side of that conversation, you seemed very concerned that I might know that certain likely actions a player may take would require an ability check. For example, just this morning I had someone roll athletics to tear down a steel vault door. The barbarian player likes destruction like that, so when I put the door their I figured they would try and break it down and it was solid enough they might not be able to. We also just got a rogue, it was a well made door, so trying to pick the lock would be a skill check as well. Knowing those very likely scenarios exist, and that they would likely require skill checks isn't a problem. Yet, it seemed to bother you and this line of discussion spun off. 



Charlaquin said:


> Just so we're clear, are you saying that people who don't think a roll should be called for to determine whether or not a character who is not lying is lying should not participate in this discussion?




No, like I said, we've moved far beyond the premise of this thread. But, if you are going to get upset at the assumption that a skill check might be called for in a thread that started off about how to resolve skill checks... maybe you should double check your assumptions. 




Charlaquin said:


> You gave an alternative style of the result of _failing_ on a check that you said you wouldn't allow to fail. Do you not see why that might be confusing?




Yeah, which is why in that example I specifically called out that fact, and said this was only an example of what I would do *if* for some bizarre reason we decided to call for a roll anyways. I incorrectly figured that would be enough to make it clear what I was doing. 




Charlaquin said:


> It's an expression. "A hill to die on" is a cause you defend in spite of significant resistance. Historically, it carries connotations of defending a point with no real tactical value. I'm saying that this point you've chosen to defend to the death doesn't seem to me like a point worth dying for.




I know what the phrase means. 

The point I'm trying to defend... do you even know what it is? 

I specifically called out that I would have not allowed that roll to fail. So the point I am defending is *I DIDN'T SAY THAT*. 

If you think defending yourself against false accusations is a strange hill to die on... 




Charlaquin said:


> Except that coca-cola has nothing to do with mustard on fries. Your alternative style of resolving the action in the example is directly related to the action in the example. You can say "but I would allow wiping the handle to automatically succeed!" until you're blue in the face, but as long as you keep following it up with, "but _if we did agree to roll for it_, this is what failure should have looked like," the first part doesn't really mean anything. A better analogy would be that if someone used mustard on fries as an example of a bad combination of foods, and you said, "obviously I would put catchup on my fries, but _if someone did_ put mustard on their fries, they should go with dijon." Which kind of mustard is least disgusting on fries was never a point of contention, why are you bringing it up? The whole point was that putting mustard on fries is obviously gross. But the fact that you keep saying "yeah, it's gross, but _if_ you put mustard on fries, you should use dijon!" makes me question if you really do think mustard on fries is gross. I know you keep saying it, but you sure seem insistent that dijon is better than yellow on fries. Almost like you're speaking from experience.





Actually, dijon mustard is great on fries. 

So, your entire problem with my statement is that I said "What you did wasn't right, but if we did it, we would at least do this part better"

Strange hills indeed.




Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, guilty of the "every 5 feet" accusations.  And I'm really not...honestly...accusing _you_ (or anybody specific) of doing that; it's a little bit of illustrative hyperbole, because I've seen it happen.  And I think in some ways it's the result of really old school (e.g., or really E.G.G., Tomb of Horrors) ideas about D&D.
> 
> But to answer the question at the top of your post, the point is that we're trying to get away from essentially random "Perception" checks...whether they are every 5' or simply at every suspicious door...because it feels, to us, like algorithmic playing.  'Don't forget to roll that trap check die at every suspicious door.'  It doesn't...again to _us_...feel like storytelling.)




I can see that, and appreciate it. 

I also think that sometimes I want to get the drop on the players, and not just the characters.

Sure, a failed perception check would mean they don't know what is behind the door, but the telegraphing and very fact that they rolled it means they know *something* is beyond the door. 

And so they will try and prepare and mitigate the unknown risk. And sometimes that is fine, and sometimes there is a part of me that wants them to panic a little bit, to get completely blindsided by a clever enemy or an unsuspected trap. Not often, not even once every campaign, but sometimes. 

And if I have an unspoken contract that says that will never happen, I feel just a little more limited than I like.


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## Yardiff (Apr 14, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t know, I think the word choice is accurate. I do think it works better to run it the way I do, that’s why I do so. You’re free to disagree with me. If your way works better for you, then I wouldn’t expect you to run it the way I do.





I think it would have been better if you  have written some thing like, 'I/We believe for my/our playstyle that it works better..."


Just saying 'it works better...'


See this way it comes across as your opinion instead of statement of fact that the game is better when run 'by the book'.


But it could be that I miss read what you were trying to convey.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Really.
> 
> That took no amount of wanting to read it that way. Indeed, I want to read it like you're saying how things work in your game, but I have to ignore what you're actually saying to get there. Lookat what he said and how you replied:
> 
> ...




I see how you've decided to turn this into a problem, yes.  Honestly, given the blatant misrepresentations that have been going on in this thread regarding _my _play, how should I react to someone calling me out on a very small matter of some less that perfect wording?


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 14, 2019)

Never mind.  Probably not as helpful as I first thought.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 14, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Well that’s interesting. And I suppose I could posit you a half dozen “what-ifs” and that you might answer something like “that’s why ‘I roll perception’ works in all cases.” Fair enough - it does work.
> 
> But let’s say I’m DM-ing a game and you’re a player. As a table, we’ve agreed (for whatever reason; mystery, whatever) that I will make all dice rolls behind the screen for all players and NPCs alike. All the players will need to do is say what they’re characters are doing in the game world. Does/would that change how you play?
> 
> I ask this because when I first started I was 8 years old and playing with the neighbor boys, he oldest brother was the DM (and this was the old AD&D) and he kept literally everything behind the screen, rolling all checks. Also we only had one set of dice, and maybe that was a big reason he rolled everything. Later in life when I played 2nd edition onward, the ThAC0 roll and the attack matrix were player info and we did get into the habit of calling rolls instead of stating actions. Only since like 4E have I (and my tables) gone back to narrating actions. So I just wondered whether “who rolls” would change the way you might approach the game world.




Personally I wouldn't do anything all that differently.  If the player says they're checking the door for traps, they're checking it for all sorts of traps.  I'm also going to assume they know what they're doing and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on the approach.  If they're trying to notice something out of the ordinary or listen at the door, then they're going to catch anything a perception check would catch.

BTW, I do encourage people to take a more narrative approach, but much like the DMG talks about style when doing RP I don't care how a player states their actions as long as it's clear.  I'd say it's clear at least 80% of the time and if it's not I ask for a clarification.

But this is not a new opinion for me.  I've never liked the "tell me how you..." even back in ye olden AD&D days.  I'm not a thief, my PC is.  My PC knows how to safely check a door for traps, I don't.





Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, you very clearly indicated that a failure for insight would be no information. This is not a consequence, it's just the status quo.  Nothing has changed, so therefore no consequence.
> 
> I've said this before, you ignored it last time as well.  This evasive answering is very indicative of less than earnest engagement.




You're the one so dead set that there must be a setback before a PC can attempt to do something, not me.  If someone tries to climb the wall that can't be climbed, they may not realize it couldn't be climbed until they tried.  If an NPC is telling the truth, they'll probably get a "they seem to be telling the truth".  When it comes to traps and whatnot, there definitely can be serious setbacks.  Or if they need to climb a cliff and falling could be deadly of course.



Ovinomancer said:


> Didn't say gotchas, said I dislike using mechanics to instill paranoia.  You, clearly, enjoy using mechanics to engender paranoia, via asking for approach just to instill it or answering success with not resolving the uncertainty, just smearing it around a bit and leaving it uncertain.  Personally, I think a door that tries to eat someone to be damn cool.  My players would, too, and they'd be able to clearly see how their approach led to getting eaten by it.




Depending on the campaign and group, yes I promote a sense of paranoia.  In other campaigns, not so much. In a campaign of political intrigue, not knowing who you can trust, paranoia is just one of many tools in the toolkit.






Ovinomancer said:


> Sometimes goals are obvious.  That doesn't mean that a statement of approach is no longer needed, or that the goal doesn't exist.  Sometimes, though, the goal isn't obvious.  If a player is sniffing a door for perfume in my game it would be because I've already established that the scent of perfume is a marker for a thing the character cares about.  If your assuming that I'd have this happen in my game at a random door, you're off base by a large margin.  That declaration in my game would be a specific set of circumstances that had a clear line traced through previously established fiction to the present moment, and it would be very important that perfume is or is not on the door.  You keep assuming we play as you do, with vague traps that might be on any given door, but this is not the case.  You cannot evaluate it as if it is.




My point is this:  If someone says "I'm a bit paranoid about this alley, I look cautiously for an ambush before I enter.  Can I get a perception check?" I'm going to tell them about the trap on the ground even though it's not an ambush.  If someone is using insight (however invoked) because they believe someone is lying, they're paying close attention to the person.  They may pick up emotions other then deception such as fear, love, envy, any number of hints and clues not related to lying.  In those cases I think the goal is kind of meaningless.  If the goal is not obvious I ask for clarification.



Ovinomancer said:


> Sure they do, to highly competent tomb raiders.  There's holes in odd places, discolorations, mismatched tiles, etc.  If you actually treat traps as utterly invisible until the player guesses it's time to make a check and succeeds (or invests in a high passive score to avoid secret traps), then you should take it as given we play very different games.  To me, traps aren't gotchas that players can stumble into, but are encounters all their own -- they have tells and signals because I want the players to interact with them, not hide them.





As I've stated before, if people think their PCs would be paranoid about a trap they get passive checks in exchange for moving more slowly because they're being cautious.  If they're particularly paranoid because they want to open a chest or jewelry box because they're objects that would be logically trapped then they can roll and use the higher of their passive or the roll.  But yeah, in my games there's not going to be a neon sign.  Then again doors that get used all the time aren't going to be trapped either because that would just be dumb IMHO.  Obviously using passive values does mean that there will be times when someone's passive is so high they detect every trap in which case I'll just narrate it.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 14, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I specifically called out that I would have not allowed that roll to fail.



A bit of a tangent - but what do you mean by _I, the GM, would not have allowed that roll by a player to fail_?


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## pemerton (Apr 14, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, fair point.  I was scanning for the pattern I use [approach] to accomplish [goal], so in each case Perception sounded like the approach, and I read, for example, "listen for an ambush beyond the door" as a goal.  If he had just said, "I listen for an ambush beyond the door" I can see that being a goal and an approach.
> 
> However, I will say that in each case the approach is awfully vague.  Especially "use my senses".



I personally think this issue of vagueness vs adequate precision is a matter of taste - not arbitrary taste, but still a wide range of table variation based on local expectations, context, experience with adventure design and adjudication, etc.

Which to some extent relates to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s "pixel bitching" complaint: one table's sufficiently precise action declaration is another's overly detailed pedantry. This is also why some posters keep coming back to notions of "sufficiently detailed" decriptions, despite being told it's not about _quantity_ of detail, nor its luridnesss, but about precision.

Think about other contexts, too. Is "I attack the orc with my sword!" enough? That's about as vague as "I listen at the door." Or does the player have to declare a more detailed combat move? Does it make a difference if the player wants to feed in a Battlemaster manouevre - eg does the player have to describe how s/he is wrongfooting the orc, or whatever?

Is it enough for the player of a bard to declare "I flirt with him to see what information he might drop"? Or does the player have to perform the actual words, mention the placing of the hand on the arm, etc?

The last time this sort of thing - ie flirting with a NPC to learn information - came up in a game I was refereeing (it was Classic Traveller), the player of the diplomat/spy, in character as his PC, issued an invitation to come back to his room. We used the Reaction mechanics (which is the closest Classic Traveller has to a CHA (Persuade) check) to determine if the NPC accepted the invitation, and when she did I then called for an Interrogation check (the closes thing in Traveller to a WIS (Insight) check) to see what the PC (and player) learnrd. The result of that check was that he had to share some info in order to get some info - ie some back-and-forth of conversation - but we certainly didn't play out the detail of the events in the hotel room or the real time of the pillow talk.

My own view, as referee, was that I had enough information - in the player's stated intent for his PC, in the issuing of the invitation, and in the (not only obvious but also expressly stated) invocation of James Bond tropes - to adjudicate the action and extrapolate the fiction in a way that generated fair consequences.

In a system or fictional context laden with earseekers, trapped doors, issues of doffing and donning head armour, etc, then "I listen at the door" may not be precise enough. But in most games that I run it certainly would be.

As far as this is concerned . . .



Elfcrusher said:


> Now the players can say, "Ok, everybody be really quiet...I'm going to listen for deep breathing behind the doors" or maybe "I'm going to get down at the bottom of the door and take a deep whiff and see if I can catch a trace of that perfume we found."


In 35-odd years of GMing I don't recall ever having a Perception-type check declared in this degree of detail. (Maybe there's something I'm not remembering, but the fact that I can't remember it is enough to show that it's not common.) I would perhaps expect that sort of detail in a very Sherlock Holmes-y game, but I've never run such a thing.

The most recent high-stakes Perception check I can recall was about two years ago now: a PC shaman was dominated by a dark naga, with instructions to bring the mage Joachim to the naga so that his blood could be spilled as a sacrifice to the spirits. Joachim had been badly hurt and was recuperating in a room in another mage's tower; the PC was rushing to that place to try and get there before an assassin who was determined to kill Joachim. The assassin got there first, and as the PC rushed in he saw Joachim being decapitated. At about this point in play, we switched adjudication from a somewhat abstracted time scale (which had finished with the PC failing the opposed Speed check to beat the assassin to Joachim's room) to the melee combat resolution framework. The player of the PC's first action declaration was "I look around the room for something to catch the blood in, lilke a chamber pot." The player spent the appropriate resources within the action economy, succeeded on the check (which was set at a fairly low difficulty given the likelihood of there being some sort of vessel in a bedroom in the tower of a well-to-do mage) and was able to grab the chamber pot and start catching blood.

_I look around the room for a vessel to catch the blood_ was enough to establish adjudicable fiction.



Oofta said:


> And what exactly is gained when you suspect someone might be on the other side of the door that is not covered under "I make a perception check to see if there's anything?"  I might clarify in some cases along the lines of "Do you put your ear to the door?" if it matters or I just want to set a mood that's a little paranoid.  Because if they don't hear an ambush, they might hear a party.  Do you not tell them about the party?  Because after all that's not what they were seeking.  If the room reeks of alcohol are you going to tell them they don't smell it because they didn't mention they were smelling?





Oofta said:


> I don't see a reason to state a goal in most cases.



For my approach to adjudication, much more important than the details of _how_ the PC is trying to notice things, is a clear grasp of _what the player is hoping that his/her PC will achieve_. So the player having a goal, which normally needs to be stated (occasinally it's implicit but quite evident), is crucial.

If the relevant fiction is not yet established then success on the check establishes the fiction in a way that conforms to the player's goal. The chamber pot example is one illustration. Here's another which, in the past, some posters on these boards have thought was unfair "gotcha" GMing, but which was fun at the time, and was done in a system (4e) which is very robust for acommodating this sort of thing:



pemerton said:


> I drew up my map similiarly, including with the side tunnel (behind the tiefling) which on my version ran down into the chasm, and the columns, stalactites, etc.
> 
> I didn't use four beholders, only 2 - an eye tyrant (MV version) and an eye of flame advanced to 17th level and MM3-ed for damage. And also a 15th level roper from MV, introduced on a whim when the player of the wizard asked, before taking cover behind a column, if it looked suspicious. (Response to result of 28 on the Perception check before adding the +2 bonus for knowing what he is looking for - "Yes, yes it does!")



On the other hand, if relevant fiction is already established, then I will have it express or implicit in the framing, so that the players can incorporate it into their goals. So no completely acontextual ambushes. (I think this would be an instance of what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] means by "telegraphing", although the mode of telegraphing may be different - see further below on this difference.)

As far as noticing a party in lieu of an ambush, that would either be narration of a failure (because the player wanted to get the drop on the waiting assassins on the other side of the door, but instead there's a crowd of revellers who are now an obstacle to finding the assassins and getting the drop on them) or in some contexts just a bit of colour.



Elfcrusher said:


> I think in many ways this comes back to a recurring theme in this thread: one side keeps assuming a model of "listen randomly at every door and check it for traps" or "check every NPC to see if they are lying" of play. And if that's the case, then yeah it gets a little unwieldy to describe approach in detail every time, and it also would feel like mere embellishment...a charge Oofta, for example, keep leveling.
> 
> But if the players know they don't have to listen at every door, then when they get to the door they do suspect they really need to listen to, they might have a more specific approach.



The vibe I'm getting from the "goal and approach" posts is very much one of classic, Gygaxian "skilled play" - a high degree of engagement with the fiction, where _the fiction_ is understood primarily in terms of "engineering" or "mechanical" details (_mechanical_ in the physics sense) - to do with locations of things, placement of things, numbers of things, amount of sweat on a NPC relative to room temperature, etc.

I would be surprised, though, if the 5e non-combat resolution system couldn't handle a game in which the engagement with the fiction is less about those sorts of details, and more about it's dramatic potential and significance. Which would mean running it more like Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, 4e, etc. In which case, to elaborate on what I said above, "telegraphing" takes the form not of "engineering"-type clues (like mismatched tiles to indicate a trap) but dramatic/thematic-type cues (like the PCs have defeated the sentries and broken into the enemy outpost, and are now moving through it, so one would expect an ambush around any corner!)



Charlaquin said:


> Sure. You’re more than welcome to run 5e the way you ran 3e. I’ve heard plenty of people who do, who attest that it works just fine and I believe them. I also agree with Iserith that it works _better_ if you run it the way it says to run it. You may disagree, and that’s perfectly fine, have fun with the game the way you like to run it. But when people complain of problems running the game that I do not experience when I run the game, I don’t think it’s unfair to say, “I run the game this way, as per the advice in this part of the book, and this issue does not occur for me when I do so.”



I don't run 5e, and have no intention to do so. And I've already posted in this thread about how I _would_ run it, which would be roughly the same as 4e, which is neither like you and iserith not like [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], but rather is closer to Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, Dying Earth and other systems that use dice rolls to determine outcomes when the fiction arrives at a moment of decision.

Nor have I run more than a handful of sessions of 3E which, at the time, I ran roughly in the same manner as Rolemaster.

But the problem raised in this thread is equally one that could be asked about 3E (only it would be Sense Motive rather than Insight); and if your answer is a good answer for 5e, I don't see any fundamental difference between 3E and 5e in this particular respect that would make your answer not a good one for 3E. The structure of both games, in this respect, is largely the same: the GM has almost total authority over framing and adjudication; but the player has a high degree of authority over action declaration within the context of the GM's framing; and when dice rolls are involved, the method of resolution (single d20 roll modified by a bonus derived primarily from the PC sheet but also factoring in possible circimstantial modifiers) is the same.

I think it's more useful to _explain the merits of an approach_ within this context, rather than to point to rules. Others may have read the rules and believe themselves to be conforming to them; may treat them as broad advice rather than a strict statement of play procedure (there's certainly a long history of doing this in D&D, actively encouraged by canonical game texts); or may be RPG anarchists who don't care about rules but do care about play experience!


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## Charlaquin (Apr 14, 2019)

D







Chaosmancer said:


> Reading through all your negatives, it really seems like you are trying to be ultra-precise. You will not move forward with resolution until you have an action verb that is tied to a specific sense that could be used to perceive something.



I don’t think “listen” is particularly precise. It’s about as vague as one can be while still technically stating at thing your character is doing.



Oofta said:


> I'm not that precise, and the only thing you seem intent on avoiding that this may help with is avoiding upsetting your players by resolving something based on an action they might have done. Which is a valid concern, but is not my primary concern when running the game.



It’s not my primary concern either, it is one benefit among many of the technique. The _main _reason I do it that way is to keep the game focused on the narrative. 



Oofta said:


> I think we are getting mixed up with our "uncertainties" again.
> 
> A cleric can always attempt to heal a soul with channel divinity. It might not work because the damage was caused by a specific threat that left wounds you aren't powerful enough to heal. It might not work because you are standing in the dominion of a being opposed to your deity and your power for miracles is diminished here. Maybe it doesn't work because you couldn't handle the strain of channel so much divine power.
> 
> ...



Ok... I’ve lost the thread of this part of the conversation.



Oofta said:


> That wasn't what I was saying when this line of discussion came up.
> 
> I just said not all skill checks need to be rolled, because sometimes a player's abilities would change the roll or negate the roll.



No, all skill checks need to be rolled because rolling a d20 and adding an ability modifier (and potentially a proficiency bonus) and trying to beat a target number is the definition of a skill check. If you’re not rolling, then a skill check is not what you’re doing.



Oofta said:


> If a rogue has reliable talent they cannot roll below a 10. That means their minimum for a check is X. If X is higher than the DC you might not call for a roll. But, Reliable Talent only works for skill checks. If you refuse to call an action that doesn't require a roll a skill check (sorry, ability check, skill checks don't exist per the rules either) then Reliable Talent can't guarentee success.



If we want to get pedantic, a Rogue with Reliable Talent still rolls the die, they just change the result to (10 + Ability + Prof) If the die comes up less than 10.



Oofta said:


> And also, as a side of that conversation, you seemed very concerned that I might know that certain likely actions a player may take would require an ability check. For example, just this morning I had someone roll athletics to tear down a steel vault door. The barbarian player likes destruction like that, so when I put the door their I figured they would try and break it down and it was solid enough they might not be able to. We also just got a rogue, it was a well made door, so trying to pick the lock would be a skill check as well. Knowing those very likely scenarios exist, and that they would likely require skill checks isn't a problem. Yet, it seemed to bother you and this line of discussion spun off.



I have no idea what you’re talking about.



Oofta said:


> No, like I said, we've moved far beyond the premise of this thread. But, if you are going to get upset at the assumption that a skill check might be called for in a thread that started off about how to resolve skill checks... maybe you should double check your assumptions.



No one got upset at the assumption that a skill check might be called for. A few of us answered the question, saying “I wouldn’t call for a check at all, so no DC,” and then a couple of people got upset that we said that had some honest questions about why we choose to run the game that way. In answer to which the rules were quoted, and... well, here we are.



Oofta said:


> Yeah, which is why in that example I specifically called out that fact, and said this was only an example of what I would do *if* for some bizarre reason we decided to call for a roll anyways. I incorrectly figured that would be enough to make it clear what I was doing.



”Obviously I wouldn’t put mustard on my hot dog, but *if* for some buzzard reason we decided to put mustard on them anyway, I would put Dijon on mine.”

Who cares what kind of mustard we would use “if” we put mustard on our fries, if we all agree we don’t want to do that?!



Oofta said:


> I know what the phrase means.
> 
> The point I'm trying to defend... do you even know what it is?
> 
> I specifically called out that I would have not allowed that roll to fail. So the point I am defending is *I DIDN'T SAY THAT*.



You kinda did, though. Again, you claim you wouldn’t call for a roll in that situation, but you are advocating _hard_ for the proper way to narrate the failure “if someone did, for some reason.” If a roll shouldn’t be called for, than _all_ ways to narrate the failure are improper, because it is not proper for the action to fail in the first place.



Oofta said:


> Actually, dijon mustard is great on fries.



-.-



Oofta said:


> So, your entire problem with my statement is that I said "What you did wasn't right, but if we did it, we would at least do this part better"
> 
> Strange hills indeed.



Not exactly. My problem was with the way of narrating the failure you claimed was better. It wasn’t better, it was flawed for exactly the same reasons that the ruling in the example was flawed - namely, that arriving at it would still have required calling for a roll in a situation where the outcome was not uncertain. It was no better a call, it was just a more flowery way of making the same bad call.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 14, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I think it would have been better if you  have written some thing like, 'I/We believe for my/our playstyle that it works better..."
> 
> 
> Just saying 'it works better...'
> ...




Alright, that’s fair.


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## iserith (Apr 14, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Alright, that’s fair.




Sit there and patiently fend off absurd assertions and purposeful obfuscations about the manner in which you play the game for weeks on end... but don't you dare use words that someone can take to mean you think the way you play is better than some other way, even though that's obviously why anyone would choose to play the way they do.

Sounds fair.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 14, 2019)

Gawdz....I was about to start doing some mass replying to posts in this thread, but I'm not sure I have the energy for any more.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You're the one so dead set that there must be a setback before a PC can attempt to do something, not me.  If someone tries to climb the wall that can't be climbed, they may not realize it couldn't be climbed until they tried.  If an NPC is telling the truth, they'll probably get a "they seem to be telling the truth".  When it comes to traps and whatnot, there definitely can be serious setbacks.  Or if they need to climb a cliff and falling could be deadly of course.



_Exactly!_  Your play is _different_.  You have a different set of assumptions as to what an action entails, and a different way of adjudicating them.  This is perfectly fine, but it's not the same way that a goal and approach method uses.  You really need to accept that this is so and stop trying to judge the method from how you play and instead try to understand how it's actually used.



> Depending on the campaign and group, yes I promote a sense of paranoia.  In other campaigns, not so much. In a campaign of political intrigue, not knowing who you can trust, paranoia is just one of many tools in the toolkit.



I promote a sense of paranoia, but I don't use the mechanics as the means to do so, I use the fiction in play.  I don't need to be vague about a success, with and answer of 'they seem to be telling the truth' because that's not needed -- I have plenty of other tools to inflict paranoia on my players.  

This is my point, the difference in our play is that I do not see the mechanics, either in success of failure, as a place to make the player uncertain of outcomes.  Those are where outcomes become certain.  I get to play with the before and after.

So, again, our play is different -- we're prioritizing different things, and this means that you cannot judge my play by situations that occur in your method because they're not the same situations as in my method.




> My point is this:  If someone says "I'm a bit paranoid about this alley, I look cautiously for an ambush before I enter.  Can I get a perception check?" I'm going to tell them about the trap on the ground even though it's not an ambush.



In my game, this player would be doing themselves a disservice because asking for a check is asking for a chance to fail, and failure has consequences that are not the status quo.  That's my point -- if you do not add consequence to every check, and, indeed, only ask for checks when there is a consequence (and a chance for success/failure), then asking for a check makes perfect sense -- it's the only way to get the GM to divulge their hidden story to you.  I do not play this way.  My method does not work in your method of play.  This should be obvious, but I keep having to say it.


> If someone is using insight (however invoked) because they believe someone is lying, they're paying close attention to the person.  They may pick up emotions other then deception such as fear, love, envy, any number of hints and clues not related to lying.  In those cases I think the goal is kind of meaningless.  If the goal is not obvious I ask for clarification.



This is because your point of conflict is "is this NPC lying to me."  That's, frankly, utterly boring to me.  

If I present a lying NPC, figuring out the NPC is lying will not resolve whatever the actual issue is.  It will just lead to a new point of contention.  Why did the NPC lie?  What do we do know that we know the NPC lied?

To go back to the shopkeep example you proposed, determining that the shopkeep lied would never be a check in my game. I'd never need to prevaricate to preserve uncertainty so that my plot continues.  Instead, discovering the lie is just one more means to advance the plot and do something different.  You'd need evidence, and could then brace the shopkeep with it to expose the lie and get the truth (which leads to more adventure), or maybe you engage in discussion, discover something about the shopkeep, like that he loves his little girls, and use that to get him to confess to the lie.  Or, maybe, you do not, and have to come at the problem a completely different way.  To me, discovering a lie is just like opening a door -- something you have to do to move the game along.  As such, if it's uncertain, there will be a consequence to failure that will  change how the fiction sits -- the status quo will not hold.  On the other hand, a success is a success -- the character reaps the reward and I don't try to diminish the success.  Why would I?  The character just took a risk I'd hammer home on a failure, so a success deserves nothing less than actual success at the intended goal.  Or, for complex goals, a solid step forward.




> As I've stated before, if people think their PCs would be paranoid about a trap they get passive checks in exchange for moving more slowly because they're being cautious.  If they're particularly paranoid because they want to open a chest or jewelry box because they're objects that would be logically trapped then they can roll and use the higher of their passive or the roll.  But yeah, in my games there's not going to be a neon sign.  Then again doors that get used all the time aren't going to be trapped either because that would just be dumb IMHO.  Obviously using passive values does mean that there will be times when someone's passive is so high they detect every trap in which case I'll just narrate it.



That's fine, but it's also why you need to have the "shortcut" of letting players ask for rolls and why you don't seek approaches -- there's no change if they fail and they can only benefit (maybe vaguely) on a success.  You've built your game around the idea that asking for checks is what's what, so that behavior is prioritized.  This is not a shortcut, or even a good idea in my game, because rolls will change the fiction -- for the better on a success and for the worse on a failure -- so it's better to seek to not to roll.  This is accomplished by providing an approach and goal so the GM has the best information possible to determine you might automatically succeed or, if it's going to be a roll, that you get the best possible chance by leveraging your character's abilities to the maximum extent possible.  And, a good approach might net you advantage!

This difference -- rolls change fiction -- is absolutely a huge difference in our game.  If you ever say, "nope, you don't find any traps," and nothing else on a check looking for traps, then this is a huge difference in our games, and, indeed, why our methods differ.  This is not something that is ever said in my games.  Instead, it's, "<sharp intake of breath> ooh, that's not going to be good."


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

pemerton said:


> The vibe I'm getting from the "goal and approach" posts is very much one of classic, Gygaxian "skilled play" - a high degree of engagement with the fiction, where _the fiction_ is understood primarily in terms of "engineering" or "mechanical" details (_mechanical_ in the physics sense) - to do with locations of things, placement of things, numbers of things, amount of sweat on a NPC relative to room temperature, etc.




I'd strongly disagree with this.  It's just making sure that the character is concretely doing something and having the player tell me what that is.  Gygaxian skilled play is about players beating the puzzle.  I run much more of a narrative game, where player declarations will change the fiction in their favor on a success or against them on a failure.  However, some declarations are so obviously fitting that they succeed.  We can start looking at this by way of a declaration to walk across a room absent of any dangers.  This is not a point at which anyone would ever call for a check of any kind to see if it succeeds.  The goal and approach method just requires that the player put their character into the action in a concrete way -- that they actually declare an _action_, not a mechanic.  This is contrasted by the method of allowing players to request mechanics without concrete actions.  The actual action declared just has to be reasonable for the goal stated, not precisely tuned to the GM's notes.  Any reasonable action will at least get a check.  Blatantly unreasonable actions might automatically fail.  Very apt actions might automatically succeed.

The example of the poisoned doorknob, for instance.  It's been established in the fiction previous that the doorknob is coated in contact poison.  Many possible actions could be taken, and any reasonable action will get at least a check.  But, if you leverage the established fiction (not the GM's secret fiction) well, you might autosucceed.  For instance, if your answer to the poisoned doorknob is to use an axe to chop down the door, there's no check to bypass the poison (although one might be needed to chop down the door, depending).  If you use a cloth to wipe the door down, and your character has training in poisons, then this might also be an automatic success.  If you do not have training in poisons, I'd definitely call for a check.  Or, maybe the player comes up with something very different, like using a decanter of endless water to wash the poison off of the doorknob.  Engaging the established fiction is the key, which Gygaxian skilled play was more about predicting the GM's secret notes by experience of how the GM prepares traps.

I write problems down in my prep, not solutions, and rarely even mechanics, preferring to determine these things in play according to checks. I can't predict how the fiction will go, so I don't, and instead prep more generic problems that can be quickly adapted to fit the current fiction when and if needed.  This isn't illusionism because I'm not always going to put my prep in front of the players -- but I will use it if it's warranted.  A more generic prep helps here.  Of course, 5e is a game that expects prep, and many of it's systems do not work well if you try to push too far to the story now methods of play, so it's always a balancing act.  I find that, to run a more reactive game, the level of system mastery must be very high. You must understand how the system balances things over time and be able to place challenges that fit this balance.  This was MUCH easier to do in 4e because it's balance point was the encounter whereas 5e's balance point is the adventuring day.  So, running a game more narrativistly while having to balance across multiple challenges requires a very strong grasp of the system and how it works.  Gygaxian skilled play wasn't concerned with any kind of balance like this.


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## iserith (Apr 14, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This difference -- rolls change fiction -- is absolutely a huge difference in our game.  If you ever say, "nope, you don't find any traps," and nothing else on a check looking for traps, then this is a huge difference in our games, and, indeed, why our methods differ.  This is not something that is ever said in my games.  Instead, it's, "<sharp intake of breath> ooh, that's not going to be good."




That's so true. Last night, my Eberron session kicked off with an important social interaction challenge that was pivotal to their success on the overall adventure. They needed to team up with NPCs who were hostile toward them without letting them know their true motives for helping (which would undermine a kingdom's plot to overthrow the government of another nation). I prepared the central NPC's ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda, and fleshed out the personality traits of the other four NPCs. I then presented a series of objections to what the players were putting forward. Overcoming those objections would slowly improve the NPCs' attitudes. Once the "final attitude" was resolved, then came the ask - could they work together? 

They overcame some objections handily, gaining automatic success. But some weren't so clear cut and I called for rolls. Every single one was filled with tension as the mostly un-charismatic PCs considered what arguments to make and what limited resources to apply to improve their odds. You'd think they were trying to avoid disintegration traps.

In the end, they succeeded in convincing the NPCs to team up. It was as tense and interesting as any combat. And being an alliance built upon a lie, we'll see how this goes awry soon, I'm sure!


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

iserith said:


> That's so true. Last night, my Eberron session kicked off with an important social interaction challenge that was pivotal to their success on the overall adventure. They needed to team up with NPCs who were hostile toward them without letting them know their true motives for helping (which would undermine a kingdom's plot to overthrow the government of another nation). I prepared the central NPC's ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda, and fleshed out the personality traits of the other four NPCs. I then presented a series of objections to what the players were putting forward. Overcoming those objections would slowly improve the NPCs' attitudes. Once the "final attitude" was resolved, then came the ask - could they work together?
> 
> They overcame some objections handily, gaining automatic success. But some weren't so clear cut and I called for rolls. Every single one was filled with tension as the mostly un-charismatic PCs considered what arguments to make and what limited resources to apply to improve their odds. You'd think they were trying to avoid disintegration traps.
> 
> In the end, they succeeded in convincing the NPCs to team up. It was as tense and interesting as any combat. And being an alliance built upon a lie, we'll see how this goes awry soon, I'm sure!




As an added example of a failure, one of my players wanted their character to get in good with one of Sigil's factions.  However, his previous associations meant this would be a challenge.  He first attempted to gain an audience and failed his DC 15 CHA check (the DC was set because the faction was unfriendly and his approach was a pretty straightforward ask).  This meant he was told that the prelate was busy at the moment, but that the PC was welcome to wait to see if a there was a time to work him in.  I also told the PC that he was certain that this was a brushoff and that there wouldn't be any openings for him (a no-check Insight on the clerk).  The player elected to call the bluff, and spent a his week of downtime to wait in the waiting room every day during business hours.  I determined that this expenditure of resource was sufficient to overcome the challenge of getting a sit-down without another check, so, towards the end of the week, the PC got his meeting.  Of course, nothing had changed, so the starting DC was still 15.  The player made a reasoned argument that his association with the other faction was only due to being hired for a job, which he prides himself in always completing contracts, and offered his considerably useful services to the this faction in exchange for certain privileges.  The factor was interested in this as the PC did have useful skills, and the explanation was enough, I felt, to lower the DC a bit, so I called for a CHA DC 12 check.  The player bombed it (around an 8, I recall).  As a consequence, I had the factor offer a very tough "interview" job with a 'do it or don't come back' statement and almost no informational assistance to accomplish the task.  This wasn't what the player wanted (he wanted access for his character to certain resources, and not to have to involve the rest of the party in this) as he know had to ask other party members for help in accomplishing this goal.  They agreed, but that led to another failure where the whole party was defeated and left for dead (they got better, for a given sense of the word).  Now, that situation stands with the target of the task completely in the wind and unreachable without much hard work and the faction quest failed with no access whatsoever and any goodwill remaining gone.  The player hasn't yet engaged back with this as another party member's needs are currently driving the group, but we'll be back to this in another session or two.  I believe the PCs are discussing a rather daring plan to try to lure the target back to Sigil for a pit-fighitng betting opportunity and then grab him at the match -- which one of the PCs will be fighting in!  Sounds like a great opportunity for some more rolls to go horribly wrong for them and maybe land the whole party on the wrong side of the Hardheads (Sigil's self-appointed police force)!


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## iserith (Apr 14, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> As an added example of a failure, one of my players wanted their character to get in good with one of Sigil's factions.  However, his previous associations meant this would be a challenge.  He first attempted to gain an audience and failed his DC 15 CHA check (the DC was set because the faction was unfriendly and his approach was a pretty straightforward ask).  This meant he was told that the prelate was busy at the moment, but that the PC was welcome to wait to see if a there was a time to work him in.  I also told the PC that he was certain that this was a brushoff and that there wouldn't be any openings for him (a no-check Insight on the clerk).  The player elected to call the bluff, and spent a his week of downtime to wait in the waiting room every day during business hours.  I determined that this expenditure of resource was sufficient to overcome the challenge of getting a sit-down without another check, so, towards the end of the week, the PC got his meeting.  Of course, nothing had changed, so the starting DC was still 15.  The player made a reasoned argument that his association with the other faction was only due to being hired for a job, which he prides himself in always completing contracts, and offered his considerably useful services to the this faction in exchange for certain privileges.  The factor was interested in this as the PC did have useful skills, and the explanation was enough, I felt, to lower the DC a bit, so I called for a CHA DC 12 check.  The player bombed it (around an 8, I recall).  As a consequence, I had the factor offer a very tough "interview" job with a 'do it or don't come back' statement and almost no informational assistance to accomplish the task.  This wasn't what the player wanted (he wanted access for his character to certain resources, and not to have to involve the rest of the party in this) as he know had to ask other party members for help in accomplishing this goal.  They agreed, but that led to another failure where the whole party was defeated and left for dead (they got better, for a given sense of the word).  Now, that situation stands with the target of the task completely in the wind and unreachable without much hard work and the faction quest failed with no access whatsoever and any goodwill remaining gone.  The player hasn't yet engaged back with this as another party member's needs are currently driving the group, but we'll be back to this in another session or two.  I believe the PCs are discussing a rather daring plan to try to lure the target back to Sigil for a pit-fighitng betting opportunity and then grab him at the match -- which one of the PCs will be fighting in!  Sounds like a great opportunity for some more rolls to go horribly wrong for them and maybe land the whole party on the wrong side of the Hardheads (Sigil's self-appointed police force)!




Awesome, I just wrapped a Planescape campaign before I started Eberron and that sounds like just the sort of antics my players got up to - all Clueless, new to the planes, who eventually became a Hardhead, an Athar, a Xaositect, a Sinker, and a Guvner. (There were more players than that, but these were the "regulars" of the player pool.) The Blood Pit featured heavily as well!


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## Oofta (Apr 14, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> _Exactly!_  Your play is _different_.  You have a different set of assumptions as to what an action entails, and a different way of adjudicating them.  This is perfectly fine, but it's not the same way that a goal and approach method uses.  You really need to accept that this is so and stop trying to judge the method from how you play and instead try to understand how it's actually used.
> 
> 
> I promote a sense of paranoia, but I don't use the mechanics as the means to do so, I use the fiction in play.  I don't need to be vague about a success, with and answer of 'they seem to be telling the truth' because that's not needed -- I have plenty of other tools to inflict paranoia on my players.
> ...




So ... this all starts out fine.  We play differently.  We have different styles.

Then you go off the deep end.  My  games are boring and I'm doing it wrong.  If only I did it just like you, my game would be so much better.

You know what?  I've retained multiple players for more than a decade.  I've been told without solicitation that I'm people's favorite DM when I run games (public and private).  So you can go to ... well you can go play your own game because I don't care any more.  

Have a day.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Oofta said:


> So ... this all starts out fine.  We play differently.  We have different styles.
> 
> Then you go off the deep end.  My  games are boring and I'm doing it wrong.  If only I did it just like you, my game would be so much better.



Nope, I woukd find that example boring.  If you see your game in that example, all I've said is that I'd find that part boring.

So, save the fake outrage for someone ekse.  I'm not buying it.


> You know what?  I've retained multiple players for more than a decade.  I've been told without solicitation that I'm people's favorite DM when I run games (public and private).  So you can go to ... well you can go play your own game because I don't care any more.
> 
> Have a day.




Awesome!  Me, too.  And, given how many times you've said you don't care anymire but still bring this up in other threads, I'm not buying that, either.


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## jgsugden (Apr 14, 2019)

OK, a few folks took this conversation off this flame war and bounced ideas back and forth.  Here is what we came up with:

Basic Insight DC: 20.  This is the DC to be confident the speaker is telling the truth.  If you miss it by 10, you're convinced they're lying.  If you miss it by less than 10, you're unsure.

Modifiers:
* Subtract the speakers persuasion from the DC.
* Add to the DC if there is reason to doubt the truth.   Examples (everything below is believed to be true by the speaker):
     * No modifier: The merchant is telling you that he is selling the product to you at his cost.
     * +5: You come across a man in an alley standing over a corpse.  He has a bloody weapon in his hand and is trying to convince you that he did not kill the dead person.
     * +10: The sage reveals that the God the PC worships is not a God, but is instead a Demon Lord.  
     * +15: The sage reveals that the PCs are just characters in a game and do not really exist.
* If the speaker would have advantage on their persuasion, lower the DC by 5.  If there would be disadvantage, raise it by 5.


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## Oofta (Apr 14, 2019)

jgsugden said:


> OK, a few folks took this conversation off this flame war and bounced ideas back and forth.  Here is what we came up with:
> 
> Basic Insight DC: 20.  This is the DC to be confident the speaker is telling the truth.  If you miss it by 10, you're convinced they're lying.  If you miss it by less than 10, you're unsure.
> 
> ...




I can see this working and have done similar (just not as codified or exact phrasing) in the past.  Do you roll for your players or have them roll?  Asking because I go back and forth on this one for a few skills; by and large I trust my players to not meta-game and just let them have fun with it but I'm curious what other people do.


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## Satyrn (Apr 14, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I see how you've decided to turn this into a problem, yes.  Honestly, given the blatant misrepresentations that have been going on in this thread regarding _my _play, how should I react to someone calling me out on a very small matter of some less that perfect wording?




Well my intention in giving you that heads up was to be helpful. I thought that you'd like to edit your less than perfect wording into something that wasn't the opposite of what you meant to say.

Or, if you didn't want to do that, I thought that my pointing it out first might make it less likely that Oofta would focus on that part of your post  and continue the conversation.



But whatever. I wish I was as wise as one of the Daves I know:



DM Dave1 said:


> Never mind.  Probably not as helpful as I first thought.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Well my intention in giving you that heads up was to be helpful. I thought that you'd like to edit your less than perfect wording into something that wasn't the opposite of what you meant to say.
> 
> Or, if you didn't want to do that, I thought that my pointing it out first might make it less likely that Oofta would focus on that part of your post  and continue the conversation.
> 
> ...




Thanks, then.  It's easy to take it the wrong way when you're suddenly held to task for a minor slip after a whole thread of larger slips by others.  I suppose I was a tad defensive.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 14, 2019)

KUMBAYAAAAA


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## jgsugden (Apr 14, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I can see this working and have done similar (just not as codified or exact phrasing) in the past.  Do you roll for your players or have them roll?



They roll, but only I look.  I have a dice chute that sends their dice to me, behind my screen.  I then pass them back.


> Asking because I go back and forth on this one for a few skills; by and large I trust my players to not meta-game and just let them have fun with it but I'm curious what other people do.



I trust my players to try not to metagame, but it is hard at times.  If your PC is unsure if someone lies, but the player knows, it is hard to decide whether the PC will decide to treat them as a liar or not if the stakes are high.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But yeah, in my games there's not going to be a neon sign.  Then again doors that get used all the time aren't going to be trapped either because that would just be dumb IMHO.  Obviously using passive values does mean that there will be times when someone's passive is so high they detect every trap in which case I'll just narrate it.




To add to this, let us say there is a massive bloodstain in front of a trapped door. A door that is still trapped. 

That means no one has gotten through this door, because it is still trapped and the person who tried is dead. 

So then, why would there be a bloodstain in front of the next trapped door in that dungeon? No one got through the first, the only indication you had was the previous adventurers failure, no hints from the trap itself, so how would you narrate the next door that was trapped in the same dungeon? 


Side Side tangent: I really want to have a big dungeon with traps and stuff clearly cleared by adventurers, holes in the walls next to next to doors for stone shape, ect. Then they come to a completely clean passage. The subsequent "oh craps" should be very entertaining. 






pemerton said:


> A bit of a tangent - but what do you mean by _I, the GM, would not have allowed that roll by a player to fail_?




Around 400 posts ago there was a highly sarcastic example of "rolling overceding player decisions" where a player did everything to a door handle possible, including wiping it down, to try and detect a poison on the door handle. Failed the roll, and things went from there.

A better phrasing might have been, I wouldn't have let the players actions fail. OR I wouldn't have called for a roll. Or any number of things. 

But, after defending myself so many times against something I never disagreed with because people think I disagreed with it, I'm getting sloppier in my responses. Mostly cause I'm getting tired of defending myself against something I never once said. 






Charlaquin said:


> No, all skill checks need to be rolled because rolling a d20 and adding an ability modifier (and potentially a proficiency bonus) and trying to beat a target number is the definition of a skill check. If you’re not rolling, then a skill check is not what you’re doing.
> 
> If we want to get pedantic, a Rogue with Reliable Talent still rolls the die, they just change the result to (10 + Ability + Prof) If the die comes up less than 10.




Okay, first I'm really curious why every time after the first that you quote me, it shows up as you quoting [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]. It doesn't matter, but it is starting to get weird. 

But, on to pedantry. 

That's the point. 

In the strictest since, a roll is being made, but the result is changing so that it doesn't matter what is rolled. So, if we decide not to roll the dice because the result is a known factor... is that an ability check? 

What if you want to flag down the waitress? It could be seen as a DC 5 charisma check. But, considering how minor in importance that moment is, and the high likelihood of success, we choose not to roll the dice. There is little to no uncertainty and no stakes. But does that mean there is not an ability check that could be rolled?

So, if the Rogue's Reliable Talent is an ability check, which is must be since that ability only works on an ability check, even if we do not roll the dice... then why must flagging down the waitress not be an ability check? Why is there a division between these two events, where they are both situations where no roll is made for speed of play, even though a roll could or should be made "technically:" 



Charlaquin said:


> I have no idea what you’re talking about.




I believe it was you who had an issue with the fact that sometimes I call for rolls when, given the amount of time players have and the lack of threat, the end result of the roll is not going to change the goal. Eventually, the players were going to get through the vault door. They had over a week until the next major threat that could possibly interrupt them from doing so, and it was only the work of hours to break through it, and the monsters in this area are automatons and are stuck in loops, not reacting to sounds. 

So, some people on this thread would have said that I should not call for the roll. There was no significant consequence for failure, the only thing being the inconsequential loss of time. And yet, I did it, and I did it because I knew that it made sense and that my player would enjoy succeeding on the roll. And that failure on the roll, indicating he could not break down the door quickly, would have been important to them, even if it changed nothing narrative. 

That idea seemed to bother people, and so a line of discussion spun off from it. 




Charlaquin said:


> ”Obviously I wouldn’t put mustard on my hot dog, but *if* for some buzzard reason we decided to put mustard on them anyway, I would put Dijon on mine.”
> 
> Who cares what kind of mustard we would use “if” we put mustard on our fries, if we all agree we don’t want to do that?!
> 
> ...




I did. 

And the point in that post I made was never about how to handle that roll, it was about how to narrate failure on a die roll. That is something that happens. A highly skilled character can fail trying something that statistically and mathematically they were unlikely to fail. 

And so, I responded that instead of just going with "You fail. Take Damage" I would want to cushion it in the narrative. There was a *reason * they failed in the story. It was because of the dice, but the dice only told us they failed. They don't tell us why. So, if I am confronted by failure, I don't just brush it off, I give them the reason in the narrative. 

Players fail rolls. It happens in the game. Whether that particular roll should have been called for has nothing to do with the fact that as a DM I have to consider how I would narrate a failure, even one that on the surface seemed so unlikely that we didn't think it was going to happen.




Charlaquin said:


> Not exactly. My problem was with the way of narrating the failure you claimed was better. It wasn’t better, it was flawed for exactly the same reasons that the ruling in the example was flawed - namely, that arriving at it would still have required calling for a roll in a situation where the outcome was not uncertain. It was no better a call, it was just a more flowery way of making the same bad call.




Exactly. You have no problem with what I said, you have no disagreement with me. Your entire disagreement is that I didn't condemn an absurd premise hard enough. 

Fine. 

 [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], in your sarcastic example of a DM calling for a die roll to disarm a poisoned handle, even after the player declared they were wiping the handle with a thick cloth and were wearing gloves so that no poison could possibly contact their skin, you were completely wrong in all ways and there was nothing redeemable about that. No roll should ever be called upon in that situation, no matter the circumstances, and nothing else could ever be said about that example or any permutation of that example because your failure in calling for that roll was so extreme it eclipses everything else. 

Further more, my use of that example to bring up an entirely different point was wrong in all ways. I should have never have done so, and will endeavor to punish myself appropriately for such a disgrace, since my point fell under the assumption of the roll that must have never been and that is a shameful scar upon my DMing from here on out. 

Now, [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], if I have properly responded to the roll that never should have been made, can we just drop this already? 






Ovinomancer said:


> This is because your point of conflict is "is this NPC lying to me."  That's, frankly, utterly boring to me.
> 
> If I present a lying NPC, figuring out the NPC is lying will not resolve whatever the actual issue is.  It will just lead to a new point of contention.  Why did the NPC lie?  What do we do know that we know the NPC lied?
> 
> To go back to the shopkeep example you proposed, determining that the shopkeep lied would never be a check in my game. I'd never need to prevaricate to preserve uncertainty so that my plot continues.  Instead, discovering the lie is just one more means to advance the plot and do something different.  You'd need evidence, and could then brace the shopkeep with it to expose the lie and get the truth (which leads to more adventure), or maybe you engage in discussion, discover something about the shopkeep, like that he loves his little girls, and use that to get him to confess to the lie.  Or, maybe, you do not, and have to come at the problem a completely different way.  To me, discovering a lie is just like opening a door -- something you have to do to move the game along.  As such, if it's uncertain, there will be a consequence to failure that will  change how the fiction sits -- the status quo will not hold.  On the other hand, a success is a success -- the character reaps the reward and I don't try to diminish the success.  Why would I?  The character just took a risk I'd hammer home on a failure, so a success deserves nothing less than actual success at the intended goal.  Or, for complex goals, a solid step forward.




Okay, I find myself somewhat confused here Ovinomancer. 

Why do you think finding out if the shopkeeper lied or not is the end of the conflict? 

As I understand things (and I abandoned the shopkeep lying discussion a while ago) it was a discussion a single moment. IF they are lying then that puts forth on set of events. If not, the players are going in a different direction. 

It is a single obstacle... why does it have to be interesting? The event of a goblin scout noticing the party is not, in and of itself, interesting. It is a relatively boring thing. The interest comes in the reactions after that. So why is it that we must investigate the shopkeep and turn his love for his daughter against him for him to tell us he lied.... if we don't know he lied. 

If we suspect he lied, then went back to get the truth, I see it. But, why do we suspect he lied? Are you just going to tell your players that the shopkeep is lying to them about what is going on? If we don't come out and say it, and or you strongly hint through clues and roadsigns that are impossible to miss, then why would the players investigate him for leverage to get the truth. They have the "truth" and don't suspect anything else. 

This is where the roll comes in. Can they tell if he is lying? If they can, then they can work to get the truth, if they can't they will assume he is not lying and that changes the nature of their investigation until they get the truth.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 14, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> KUMBAYAAAAA




Dang it, I'm always late on the Kumbaya.


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## Sadras (Apr 14, 2019)

jgsugden said:


> They roll, but only I look.  I have a dice chute that sends their dice to me, behind my screen.  I then pass them back.




Oh that's a neat idea


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## Satyrn (Apr 14, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> To add to this, let us say there is a massive bloodstain in front of a trapped door. A door that is still trapped.
> 
> That means no one has gotten through this door, because it is still trapped and the person who tried is dead.
> 
> So then, why would there be a bloodstain in front of the next trapped door in that dungeon? No one got through the first, the only indication you had was the previous adventurers failure, no hints from the trap itself, so how would you narrate the next door that was trapped in the same dungeon?




My megadungeon has numerous paths to most areas, and so there'd generally be another way around the trapped door. And there's also goblins that go around resetting their traps or laying new ones. But yeah, if the area beyond the trapped door wasn't accessible, then it would be silly of me to telegraph the followup trapped door with bloodstains . . . although the bloodstain could be from a treasure hunter who teleported past the first trap.

Anyway, there are plenty of ways to telegraph a trap without using signs of a previous victim. I've got a trapped portcullis where the players will see barrels of poison gas on the other side, for example. And then some tombs clearly warn they are trapped because I figured they figure it's better to turn away cowards so the trap will remain untriggered. 

I find it a fun creative exercise.


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## Oofta (Apr 14, 2019)

jgsugden said:


> They roll, but only I look.  I have a dice chute that sends their dice to me, behind my screen.  I then pass them back.
> I trust my players to try not to metagame, but it is hard at times.  If your PC is unsure if someone lies, but the player knows, it is hard to decide whether the PC will decide to treat them as a liar or not if the stakes are high.




Hmmm ... now I'm kind of envisioning some kind of Rube Goldberg dice rolling apparatus involving small rockets, squirrels on an exercise wheel and of course a catapult.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 14, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Hmmm ... now I'm kind of envisioning some kind of Rube Goldberg dice rolling apparatus involving small rockets, squirrels on an exercise wheel and of course a catapult.




I think every player should be required to bring a few dozen completely functional Schrodinger's Cat apparati to every session, and whenever a die roll is needed you open one up and see if the cat is alive or dead.

Ok, SURE, one re-usable apparatus and a supply of cats could also work.  I guess.  But it's not as fun.

And if you think that chasing a d20 under the radiator is annoying, just wait until the cats start escaping.  And chasing those runaway d20s.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 14, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, first I'm really curious why every time after the first that you quote me, it shows up as you quoting [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]. It doesn't matter, but it is starting to get weird.



Sorry, I copy and paste quote tags a lot, and sometimes things get mixed up. My bad there.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, on to pedantry.
> 
> That's the point.
> 
> In the strictest since, a roll is being made, but the result is changing so that it doesn't matter what is rolled. So, if we decide not to roll the dice because the result is a known factor... is that an ability check?



Yes, because the thing you’re doing is defined by the rules as an ability check. You’re just skipping the roll for expediency’s sake.



Chaosmancer said:


> What if you want to flag down the waitress? It could be seen as a DC 5 charisma check. But, considering how minor in importance that moment is, and the high likelihood of success, we choose not to roll the dice. There is little to no uncertainty and no stakes. But does that mean there is not an ability check that could be rolled?



Did the approach of flagging down the waitress have a reasonable chance of succeeding in the goal of getting her to come to your table, a reasonachance of failing to do so, and a cost for attempting or consequence for failing? If so, then why are you skipping the dice roll? If not, then an ability check is not the proper method of adjudicating the action, and there’s no reason for that DC5 to just be out there, existing in isolation of an action that requires a check to resolve.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, if the Rogue's Reliable Talent is an ability check, which is must be since that ability only works on an ability check, even if we do not roll the dice... then why must flagging down the waitress not be an ability check? Why is there a division between these two events, where they are both situations where no roll is made for speed of play, even though a roll could or should be made "technically:"



Reliable Talent is only applicable to ability checks, ergo if Reliable Talent is coming into play, there must be a reasonable chance of the approach succeeding in achieving the goal, a reasonable chance of the approach failing to achieve the goal, and a cost for attempting or consequence for failing. If you choose to skip the actual dice rolling part because the effect of Reliable Talent makes it impossible to get a roll result lower than the DC, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make the process of comparing your lowest possible result to a DC not a check.



Chaosmancer said:


> I believe it was you who had an issue with the fact that sometimes I call for rolls when, given the amount of time players have and the lack of threat, the end result of the roll is not going to change the goal. Eventually, the players were going to get through the vault door. They had over a week until the next major threat that could possibly interrupt them from doing so, and it was only the work of hours to break through it, and the monsters in this area are automatons and are stuck in loops, not reacting to sounds.
> 
> So, some people on this thread would have said that I should not call for the roll. There was no significant consequence for failure, the only thing being the inconsequential loss of time. And yet, I did it, and I did it because I knew that it made sense and that my player would enjoy succeeding on the roll. And that failure on the roll, indicating he could not break down the door quickly, would have been important to them, even if it changed nothing narrative.



Right, and my point was that your reason for calling for a roll despite the results not actually mattering (namely that your players like to roll dice) is a result of the fact that calling for rolls that have no consequence for failure changes the incentives in your game. In your game, checks are how things get done. You break down doors by succeeding on Strength (athletics) checks, and failing Strength (athletics) checks doesn’t really mean anything, except that you didn’t manage to break down the door, or didn’t manage to break it down right away. Naturally players want to roll in a game where that is the procedure. In my games, you don’t break down doors by succeeding on checks, you open doors by breaking them down, and if something bad could happen as a result of you trying to break the door down, then a check is how we decide if that bad thing happens or not. Naturally, players in my games want to avoid making checks. I like that incentive my style creates. I want plauers thinking about what their characters can do to insure the best possibility of success, not what check they have the highest bonus to.



Chaosmancer said:


> I did.
> 
> And the point in that post I made was never about how to handle that roll, it was about how to narrate failure on a die roll. That is something that happens. A highly skilled character can fail trying something that statistically and mathematically they were unlikely to fail.
> 
> ...



Yes, and I took issue with the fact that your way of narrating that failure necessarily contradicted the player’s description of their character’s action. DMs narrating what the PCs do is something I find extremely distasteful, and in the example given, the only way to make the failure make sense was by narrating what the PC did. That would not have been necessary if the DM in the example had followed the goal and approach method of task resolution. That’s my point, and I’m 99% sure it was Elfcrusher’s point too: that the method of task resolution where the players accomplish things by succeeding on checks leads to situations where narrating failure requires the DM to narrate what the PC does. Avoiding this kind of scenario is one of the main reasons I prefer goal and approach.


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## Oofta (Apr 14, 2019)

[MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], I think for a lot of people traps are a big part of the "exploration" leg of D&D. It certainly was in old-school dungeon crawls.  For the most part it's not for me unless it makes sense for the enemy.  Traps are more common with the "weaker" races such as goblins or especially kobolds. In my games, I just don't generally see the logic or justification for big complex traps very often.  I enjoyed the first Indiana Jones movies, but the traps never made a lot of sense to me.

As far as the shopkeeper scenario it's just one minor turn of the story.  As far as why they would they suspect the shopkeeper in the scenario, why would they not?  The place is well protected, there's no sign of forced entry, the first thing _I_ would think is that it's an inside job.  In my game an insight check (whatever the result, however you get there) isn't going to be the end of the investigation, just the start.  Just like every police procedural, you start with questioning likely suspects and witnesses and go from there.  A big part of that questioning someone in this kind of scenario is trying to get a feel for possible motivation and other clues.

While we may not resolve the scene using the same mechanics, I assumed it was a generic enough scene that most games would include questioning the guy.   I just don't broadcast intentions unless I think the NPC would broadcast their intentions.


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## pemerton (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> To add to this, let us say there is a massive bloodstain in front of a trapped door. A door that is still trapped.
> 
> That means no one has gotten through this door, because it is still trapped and the person who tried is dead.
> 
> So then, why would there be a bloodstain in front of the next trapped door in that dungeon? No one got through the first, the only indication you had was the previous adventurers failure, no hints from the trap itself, so how would you narrate the next door that was trapped in the same dungeon?



I wanted to second [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION]'s remark that it is possible to "telegraph" traps, to establish fiction that trap-interested players can pick up on, without introducing contradictions.

What those might actually look like - bloodstains, mismatched tiles, holes in the wall, etc (I'm just parroting [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] here) - would depend on mood, context, past narration, etc.

I'm also not sure how many of the "goal and approach" advocates are playing _dungeons_ in the sense that you describe here. I think more than one poster has already suggested that traps are a distinctive rather than generic occurence in the adventures they are running. So it mayu be that _this particular problem_, of finding meaningful framing for multile geographically and temporally proximate traps, doesn't come up much for them.



Chaosmancer said:


> What if you want to flag down the waitress? It could be seen as a DC 5 charisma check. But, considering how minor in importance that moment is, and the high likelihood of success, we choose not to roll the dice. There is little to no uncertainty and no stakes. But does that mean there is not an ability check that could be rolled?



I could be wrong, but you seem here to suggest that "an ability check" is an abstractly existing thing, or a latent element of the fiction. Whereas an ability check is clearly _an event that occurs at the table_ in order to _decide_ certain things about the fiction.

So the question is, _Is flagging down the waitress_ as that possibility has arisen here-and-now in the play of the game the sort of moment in the fiction that, _at our table and by the rules of our game_, requires an ability check to resolve it? DIfferent tables might answer differently. But if one table answers _no_, then that's that - the fiction unfolds without any check being needed to determine how it unfolds. There's no (abstract, possible) check that's been "skipped over".



Chaosmancer said:


> It is a single obstacle... why does it have to be interesting? The event of a goblin scout noticing the party is not, in and of itself, interesting. It is a relatively boring thing. The interest comes in the reactions after that.



I'm not across the shopkeeper example, but just picking up on this: I think what makes the fiction interesting, in adventure-oriented RPGing, is what is at stake. And in the example of being spotted by a goblin scout, it seems that quite a bit might be at stake. So I'm missing why is not interesting.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, if the Rogue's Reliable Talent is an ability check, which is must be since that ability only works on an ability check, even if we do not roll the dice... then why must flagging down the waitress not be an ability check? Why is there a division between these two events, where they are both situations where no roll is made for speed of play



One answer would be that the rules _force_ a division between _the GM deciding that no check is called for_ and _the GM deciding to call for a check, and setting a DC, which the player of the rogue can't miss_. This happens in my 4e game quite a bit, because the Sage of Ages epic destiny somewhat breaks the maths of skill checks, with the result that most knowledge skills are auto-succcesses for the player of that character; but the skill challenge rules still require me to call for checks from that player: which means I have to distinguish between events which are _unfolding fiction with no need for a check_ (eg because nothing is at stake) and events which _involve stakes in respect of the unfolding fiction_, and hence do call for a check (even if it's an auto-success).

I think this could also work in 5e, although if a GM is using PC capabilities as an element in determining whether or not a check is requred then it could be that sometimes Reliable Talent factors into adjudication at that point, rather than affecting the resolution of a check.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, I find myself somewhat confused here Ovinomancer.
> 
> Why do you think finding out if the shopkeeper lied or not is the end of the conflict?



Okay, so, to be clear, your confusion is because I said that the shopkeeper lying is the conflict?

I say this because it's treated with importance in the examples.  A successful check to see if the shopkeep is lying leaves the uncertainty intact -- some hint is provided, but it's been clearly stated that an answer isn't going to be provided.  The only way I see this being useful is if the shopkeeper lying is a key part of the mystery (which has also been said) such that a quick answer will disrupt the GM's plans.  If it's not that important, I really don't understand why the uncertainty isn't being resolved on a success, much less what might happen on a failure.

In other words, it appears to be the crux of the situation because of the level of protection provided to the truth of the shopkeeper lying.  I don't understand why you would do this if it wasn't the important part.



> As I understand things (and I abandoned the shopkeep lying discussion a while ago) it was a discussion a single moment. IF they are lying then that puts forth on set of events. If not, the players are going in a different direction.
> 
> It is a single obstacle... why does it have to be interesting? The event of a goblin scout noticing the party is not, in and of itself, interesting. It is a relatively boring thing. The interest comes in the reactions after that. So why is it that we must investigate the shopkeep and turn his love for his daughter against him for him to tell us he lied.... if we don't know he lied.



Again, if I put an obstacle into the game, it will be of interest.  I mean, if it's uninteresting, why not just narrate past it and get to the interesting bits?

As I've said above, I think that the inclusion of obstacles that aren't interesting is a big driver in the playstyle of letting players ask for rolls to get past these obstacles quickly.  



> If we suspect he lied, then went back to get the truth, I see it. But, why do we suspect he lied? Are you just going to tell your players that the shopkeep is lying to them about what is going on? If we don't come out and say it, and or you strongly hint through clues and roadsigns that are impossible to miss, then why would the players investigate him for leverage to get the truth. They have the "truth" and don't suspect anything else.



If it's not an interesting obstacle, then, yes, I will just tell them this in narration.  If it's an interesting obstacle, then the lying shopkeep will be an avenue to what they actually want to accomplish.  In that scenario, in my game the theft as a whole would be part of a larger goal for the party.  Perhaps they're trying to gain influence, or they're paying off a debt.  I couldn't say without the actual game.  But, the shopkeeper lying would be a facet for which the resolution of the lying question would be something to move that goal forward (on a success) or backward (on a failure), but it would be interesting and the uncertainty would be conclusively resolved, one way or the other.

There's still this framing of the situation as if it's occurring in your games, with your style and your design.  I can't seem to say it enough that using the goal and approach, or, more specifically, always consequence on failure, means that how the game is set-up changes a great deal.  Now, if you ask for a roll, you have to be prepared to have a bad thing happen on a failure and also be prepared to conclusively resolve the uncertainty in the character's favor on a success.  There's no more punting the uncertainty down the line by soft-peddling a success to keep the uncertainty but provide a vague feeling one way or the other.  You have to close the deal on a success.  Or, if it's a big goal, move decisively closer to resolution on a success.  Thinking of the challenges this way is very different from the methods of running that are very common in older editions.  You have to acknowledge the play.  This is a weird thing to say, but really think about your last session -- how many times did you answer a roll vaguely versus how many times did you let a roll change the fiction (one way or the other) decisively?  My game is the latter, where rolls change the fiction decisively, and that means that I have to set up challenges in a very different way than what you seem used to.  Frex, there's no obstacles that aren't interesting because any failure on a roll means that things get worse, and that's something that's definitely interesting.



> This is where the roll comes in. Can they tell if he is lying? If they can, then they can work to get the truth, if they can't they will assume he is not lying and that changes the nature of their investigation until they get the truth.



Personally, I see no point in a roll to let the players know that it's okay for their characters to think a thing about an NPC.  If the players think the NPC is lying, they can declare actions based on that thought, and I'll adjudicate them.  This may involve an Insight check, depending on the approach provided.  But a roll to see if someone is lying?  Meh, nope, boring.  And, please note, this is my interpretation, others of the middle path do it differently.


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## pemerton (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



OK, but then "I listen at the door" is pretty concrete. "I ride my horse across the plain, hastening to Hardby" is pretty concrete. But at least some posters are suggesting that those sorts of action declarations lack sufficient precision.

I'm not wanting to put everyone in the same box - I already think I posted upthread that I get a different impression from your posts than (say) [MENTION=80916]elf[/MENTION]rcrusher's - but the overall vibe I am getting is one of emphasis on _engineering_ details rather than (say) emotional or thematic details. To the extent that your game contradicts that vibe, OK, I believe you.



Ovinomancer said:


> Gygaxian skilled play is about players beating the puzzle. I run much more of a narrative game, where player declarations will change the fiction in their favor on a success or against them on a failure. However, some declarations are so obviously fitting that they succeed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Engaging the established fiction is the key, which Gygaxian skilled play was more about predicting the GM's secret notes by experience of how the GM prepares traps.



I think this may be an overly narrow account of "skilled play". There's a well-known anecdote of Gygax ruling that the sceptre-to-crown trick can destroy the demilich in ToH: that's not about "pixel bitching" or gussing the GM's notes, but it _is_ about engaging the fiction.

I imagine there was a fair bit of similar imaginative play in the "trapped gods" room and the "face of Fraz-Urb'luu" (sp?) room.

I think you're right that Gygaxian play doesn't involve a lot of creation of new elements in the fiction (like eg cursed sacrophaguses) as part of the narrration of failure, but the only poster in this thread who seems to use that technique beside you is me (maybe I've missed others? in that case, sorry). That's a technique that I've spent about a decade on these boards articulating in the face of dismissals of "Schroedinger's dungeon", being "unrealistic", wrecking immersion, etc, etc. I'm pretty familiar with it, and what's to be said for or against it. As far as I can tell there's nothing in 5e that makes the technique more apt than in 3E. (And if that's what we're meaning by "goal and approach" then let's use Luke Crane's "intent and task" (coined c 15 years ago) and be upfront about it! )


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 15, 2019)

pemerton said:


> OK, but then "I listen at the door" is pretty concrete. "I ride my horse across the plain, hastening to Hardby" is pretty concrete. But at least some posters are suggesting that those sorts of action declarations lack sufficient precision.
> 
> I'm not wanting to put everyone in the same box - I already think I posted upthread that I get a different impression from your posts than (say)  [MENTION=80916]elf[/MENTION]rcrusher's - but the overall vibe I am getting is one of emphasis on _engineering_ details rather than (say) emotional or thematic details. To the extent that your game contradicts that vibe, OK, I believe you.



I listen at the door is at the minimum threshold, i think.  And, yes, I'd say there's a lot more engineering in [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s game than mine,  His example of how much thinking goes into his games is a very far cry from the "oh, crap, I supposed to run in 15 minutes" I usually do.  I just finished a dungeon tonight that's run the last two sessions, which was reasonably prepped.  The "final" room, though, didn't go at all how I anticipated, which was awesome.  I mean, I figured it would be a social encounter with a powerful prisoner of the area, negotiating information for freedom, and it was kinda that, but the dwarven barbarian kicked things off by making an offering of alcoholic beverages, and so it went in a very different way that what I anticipated.  Drunk djinns are much more genial and forthcoming than I expected (some great rolls!).  As it was, the planned hard choices ended up being friendly with a powerful elemental AND getting good info on what they came for.


> I think this may be an overly narrow account of "skilled play". There's a well-known anecdote of Gygax ruling that the sceptre-to-crown trick can destroy the demilich in ToH: that's not about "pixel bitching" or gussing the GM's notes, but it _is_ about engaging the fiction.
> 
> I imagine there was a fair bit of similar imaginative play in the "trapped gods" room and the "face of Fraz-Urb'luu" (sp?) room.
> 
> I think you're right that Gygaxian play doesn't involve a lot of creation of new elements in the fiction (like eg cursed sacrophaguses) as part of the narrration of failure, but the only poster in this thread who seems to use that technique beside you is me (maybe I've missed others? in that case, sorry). That's a technique that I've spent about a decade on these boards articulating in the face of dismissals of "Schroedinger's dungeon", being "unrealistic", wrecking immersion, etc, etc. I'm pretty familiar with it, and what's to be said for or against it. As far as I can tell there's nothing in 5e that makes the technique more apt than in 3E. (And if that's what we're meaning by "goal and approach" then let's use Luke Crane's "intent and task" (coined c 15 years ago) and be upfront about it! )



I think you're edging into an assumption of what Gygax actually did at his table, which is a hard thing to conclusively say, IMO.  I go off of the published adventures of the time as the means for judging what Gygaxian skilled play means, and how they often spelled out solutions that weren't obvious from the fiction at all, but would be things that a skilled and experienced player would do as they have run across similar kinds of things in previous modules.

Anytime you're in the place where having multiple 10' poles and you're poking everything while the GM pays attention to what you might have not poked, you're past the threshold for pixel-bitching.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 15, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> My megadungeon has numerous paths to most areas, and so there'd generally be another way around the trapped door. And there's also goblins that go around resetting their traps or laying new ones. But yeah, if the area beyond the trapped door wasn't accessible, then it would be silly of me to telegraph the followup trapped door with bloodstains . . . although the bloodstain could be from a treasure hunter who teleported past the first trap.
> 
> Anyway, there are plenty of ways to telegraph a trap without using signs of a previous victim. I've got a trapped portcullis where the players will see barrels of poison gas on the other side, for example. And then some tombs clearly warn they are trapped because I figured they figure it's better to turn away cowards so the trap will remain untriggered.
> 
> I find it a fun creative exercise.




Yeah, I considered the multiple paths thing. Just, most of the "foreshadowing" people talk about is done by showing signs of the trap being triggered before. Always makes me wonder how they square that with places where the trap wouldn't have been triggered yet. 

Also, because I enjoy puzzle solving, I'm curious how that trap with the portcullis and the barrels works. I'm assuming that the portcullis being triggered breaks the barrels and unleashes the poison (though how they can tell poison gas from a distance...) but isn't that a really easy trap to get past? Hit the barrels from a distance and wait for the poison to dissipate or settle. Heck, might even be able to use it against the trap designer by pushing the poison further past the portcullis. 

It seems too simple, so am I missing something or is that one supposed to be an easy one? 





Charlaquin said:


> Sorry, I copy and paste quote tags a lot, and sometimes things get mixed up. My bad there.




Like I said, no problem. I was just wondering if it was some kind of ENworld system glitch.

Or if I was secretly Oofta and didn't know it  




Charlaquin said:


> Yes, because the thing you’re doing is defined by the rules as an ability check. You’re just skipping the roll for expediency’s sake.
> 
> Did the approach of flagging down the waitress have a reasonable chance of succeeding in the goal of getting her to come to your table, a reasonable chance of failing to do so, and a cost for attempting or consequence for failing? If so, then why are you skipping the dice roll? If not, then an ability check is not the proper method of adjudicating the action, and there’s no reason for that DC5 to just be out there, existing in isolation of an action that requires a check to resolve.
> 
> Reliable Talent is only applicable to ability checks, ergo if Reliable Talent is coming into play, there must be a reasonable chance of the approach succeeding in achieving the goal, a reasonable chance of the approach failing to achieve the goal, and a cost for attempting or consequence for failing. If you choose to skip the actual dice rolling part because the effect of Reliable Talent makes it impossible to get a roll result lower than the DC, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make the process of comparing your lowest possible result to a DC not a check.




I'm not seeing how this is all consistent. 

In both cases there was no reasonable chance of failure but one is an ability check, because being an ability check is how there is no reasonable chance at failure. 

You cannot fail if your lowest possible roll beats the DC, therefore there is no reasonable chance of failure, therefore you do not roll. But it is an ability check. It has to be, otherwise there is a reasonable chance of failure and a roll must be made. 

And why does it matter if I make up phantom DCs? If I know the bard has been eager to use their disguise kit, so I figure disguising themselves to get into the castle is a reasonable course of action they may choose to take in next weeks game, why can I not decide what the DC is likely to be ahead of time? I have created an obstacle, assigned a DC to a possible action the player's might take, but that doesn't mean anything about how the actual event will unfold. Maybe they will act like I suspect and I'll be prepared, maybe they'll pull out the Award for Valor they got from a prominent Knight I totally forgot they had in their inventory and be allowed to walk right in. DCs can exist seperate from the actions of the players, in a space of potential plans and actions. 

Heck, we already have a second example from the book. It is a DC 20 strength check, a barbarian has an ability that says their lowest result for a strength check is their strength score. With a 20 strength, they cannot fail, and even if they did fail the consequences of failing to break manacles are generally status quo, but the ability only works if they make a strength check. 

Not every check corresponds to a d20 roll. 




Charlaquin said:


> Right, and my point was that your reason for calling for a roll despite the results not actually mattering (namely that your players like to roll dice) is a result of the fact that calling for rolls that have no consequence for failure changes the incentives in your game. In your game, checks are how things get done. You break down doors by succeeding on Strength (athletics) checks, and failing Strength (athletics) checks doesn’t really mean anything, except that you didn’t manage to break down the door, or didn’t manage to break it down right away. Naturally players want to roll in a game where that is the procedure. In my games, you don’t break down doors by succeeding on checks, you open doors by breaking them down, and if something bad could happen as a result of you trying to break the door down, then a check is how we decide if that bad thing happens or not. Naturally, players in my games want to avoid making checks. I like that incentive my style creates. I want plauers thinking about what their characters can do to insure the best possibility of success, not what check they have the highest bonus to.




I don't want to comment on your experience, but at that sort of table I would be terrified to try something my character is bad at. 

If my warlock got tossed in a cell, with his +0 strength and no proficiency in athletics, I'd never try and break the door to get out. Maybe by magical means, but I'd want to know what bonus I got before trying to roll. Because, if I fail to break down the door, my situation gets worse. Even if I try and break off a bed leg to get a bar to leverage advantage, the DC is likely at least a 15 and with a +0 I need to roll 15 or better. The odds are really bad. And failure hurts my chances of getting out even more. I'd be much better served pretending to be sick and angling for a performance or deception check, which gets me a +4 or +7 to the roll.

However, at a game where failure does not automatically mean things get worse, I might try athletics. It is certainly a faster solution, and maybe I see speed as of the essence. IF I fail, well they'll know I tried to escape but it doesn't necessarily mean things get worse. 

All I see from a style of play where failure is punished more harshly every time, is a style of play that disincentives risk. The low charisma characters won't try to talk their way out, because they have a bad chance at that if it comes to a roll. And if you say "I hear you want to persuade the guard to let you go by talking about your achievements for the city, but he's not convinced your deeds outweigh the damages you've done. It'll be a DC 15 charisma persuasion check, and if you fail you might get slapped with a huge fine instead of simply tossed in jail" Then as a player who sees -1 charisma on his sheet, I'm going to try and backpedal. I've got only a 25% chance of making that roll. 75% chance of making things worse, no way, I'll let the bard take over. No reason for me to risk making that roll. 

Alternatively, I've had quite a few times in my games where a player will pipe up trying to convince an NPC of something, or trying to look for a clue, despite having no mechanical skill. Because they don't fear failure. That doesn't mean there are no consequences ever, sometimes failure hurts, but the consequences are in line with what they attempted, and they are not guaranteed to make things worse by trying. 






pemerton said:


> I could be wrong, but you seem here to suggest that "an ability check" is an abstractly existing thing, or a latent element of the fiction. Whereas an ability check is clearly _an event that occurs at the table_ in order to _decide_ certain things about the fiction.
> 
> So the question is, _Is flagging down the waitress_ as that possibility has arisen here-and-now in the play of the game the sort of moment in the fiction that, _at our table and by the rules of our game_, requires an ability check to resolve it? DIfferent tables might answer differently. But if one table answers _no_, then that's that - the fiction unfolds without any check being needed to determine how it unfolds. There's no (abstract, possible) check that's been "skipped over".




But, this creates a problem from my perspective as I discussed above. 

If ability checks only exist when a roll happens, and rolls only happen when their is a reasonable chance of failure, then what do abilities that change the result of a roll to eliminate that reasonable chance of failure do? 

A high level barbarian does not have a reasonable chance of failure to break standard manacles, but that is only because they have an ability which dictates the result of that ability check. No chance of failure, no roll, no ability check, then the ability which removed the chance of failure does not activate. If the game definitions of "Ability check" are stringent enough that they are only this one thing which involves a D20 roll.... then how is this consistent? And if their are ability checks which do not require a roll... then the statement I said a few hundred posts ago was correct, despite people telling me it was not. 




pemerton said:


> I
> I'm not across the shopkeeper example, but just picking up on this: I think what makes the fiction interesting, in adventure-oriented RPGing, is what is at stake. And in the example of being spotted by a goblin scout, it seems that quite a bit might be at stake. So I'm missing why is not interesting.




As I understand the positions of those I'm discussing with, a check needs to have direct consequences on the narrative. 

Finding out the shopkeeper is lying was not interesting, supposedly because the adventure was not about whether or not they were lying but what they were lying about. 

By that same logic, being spotted by the scout is not interesting. Being spotted does not have a direct consequence, and some of the consequences that could arise are easily canceled out by players. 

At, while the stakes for being spotted by an enemy scout are immediately obvious, the stakes for this merchant break-in are not. It could be high stakes involved (and likely is since we are investigating it as part of the adventure) so failing to know that could have just as dire consequences going forward. 

That's why I'm confused, a single obstacle is rarely interesting. Whether the goblin scout sees you or not is not interesting, how the players react to the goblin scout darting out of hiding to warn the cave of your approach is interesting. Whether of not the merchant is lying isn't interesting, but the consequences of not realizing he's working with the bad guys can be interesting. 



pemerton said:


> I
> One answer would be that the rules _force_ a division between _the GM deciding that no check is called for_ and _the GM deciding to call for a check, and setting a DC, which the player of the rogue can't miss_. This happens in my 4e game quite a bit, because the Sage of Ages epic destiny somewhat breaks the maths of skill checks, with the result that most knowledge skills are auto-succcesses for the player of that character; but the skill challenge rules still require me to call for checks from that player: which means I have to distinguish between events which are _unfolding fiction with no need for a check_ (eg because nothing is at stake) and events which _involve stakes in respect of the unfolding fiction_, and hence do call for a check (even if it's an auto-success).
> 
> I think this could also work in 5e, although if a GM is using PC capabilities as an element in determining whether or not a check is requred then it could be that sometimes Reliable Talent factors into adjudication at that point, rather than affecting the resolution of a check.




A fair point. Some people would argue that using 4e logic is wrong since 5e's rules are not 4e's rules (for example, they could say 5e never requires an ability check to be called), but I can see that being a fine resolution to the dissonance being created by the people I'm discussing this with. 




Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, so, to be clear, your confusion is because I said that the shopkeeper lying is the conflict?
> 
> I say this because it's treated with importance in the examples.  A successful check to see if the shopkeep is lying leaves the uncertainty intact -- some hint is provided, but it's been clearly stated that an answer isn't going to be provided.  The only way I see this being useful is if the shopkeeper lying is a key part of the mystery (which has also been said) such that a quick answer will disrupt the GM's plans.  If it's not that important, I really don't understand why the uncertainty isn't being resolved on a success, much less what might happen on a failure.
> 
> In other words, it appears to be the crux of the situation because of the level of protection provided to the truth of the shopkeeper lying.  I don't understand why you would do this if it wasn't the important part.




Okay, this makes some sense. 

I think this is a confusion of speakers thing. Some people have been claiming they would not give definitive answers to an insight check because IRL you can't tell if someone is lying. 

I think that is only a portion of the people discussing the shopkeeper though, which is what is causing the confusion here.


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## pemerton (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> It is a DC 20 strength check, a barbarian has an ability that says their lowest result for a strength check is their strength score. With a 20 strength, they cannot fail, and even if they did fail the consequences of failing to break manacles are generally status quo, but the ability only works if they make a strength check.
> 
> Not every check corresponds to a d20 roll.
> 
> ...



Well, to repeat what I said upthread, I think the most natural way to handle this is to (i) have the GM call for a check at a given DC on the basis of _difficulty_, or _stakes_, or _prima facie uncertainty_, or whatever else is the trigger for a check in that particular game; then (ii) apply the character ability to resolve that check, which may result in no d20 being rolled because success is guaranteed. (As I said, this is a recurrent feature of my 4e game as far as knowledge checks by the Sage of Ages are concerned.)

If the GM, at stage (i), uses his/her knowledge of the character's ability in deciding that there is no reasonable chance of failure and hence no check required, well, I think the "goal and approach" advocates would see that as an instance of _working as intended_. I can see some possible problems here - eg there are two PC barbarians, one with STR 18 and one with STR 20, and the GM at stage (i) doesn't distinguish between them and thus does not give the 20 STR PC the benefit of that extra bit of STR. But I think that that is likely to be a marginal issue at most tables.



Chaosmancer said:


> If my warlock got tossed in a cell, with his +0 strength and no proficiency in athletics, I'd never try and break the door to get out. Maybe by magical means, but I'd want to know what bonus I got before trying to roll. Because, if I fail to break down the door, my situation gets worse.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> However, at a game where failure does not automatically mean things get worse, I might try athletics.



Speaking from my own perspective, but also trying to make sympathetic sense of [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s, I think there is a bigger issue here which you're missing - or to put it another way, you're missing the _dynamic of play wood_ because of the _ability check adjudication trees_.

I play a game (be that 4e, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, or The Dying Earth) in which there are adverse consequences for failed checks. But that's only a special case of the bigger picture: there are adverse consequences for the PCs _unless they act_. The situation is framed so as to yield pressure on the PCs (and, thereby, their players) which will drive the game forward.

So while your trapped warlock may choose not to try to bend the bars, because you recognise the prospect is hopeless and you don't like the consequences implicit in the GM's framing of the situation, you can be sure that _something_ is going to happen that will force you to make _some_ sort of choice. And if you don't try to escape now, then you give the GM licence to make that _something_ a bigger deal, if only because the passage of time in the fiction makes it feasible for the GM to evolve the situation forward in an adverse fashion.

This actually came up in the current arc of my Burning Wheel campaign: the PC sorcerer was in prison. One escape attempt went bad, and then he had to deal with various nemeses who came to visit him and strike deals with them in order to be able to get himself out. The choices of which checks to make and not to make affected the details of the unfolding situation, but the player wasn't able to avoid pressure simply by choosing not to engage certain elements of the fiction.

What I've just described is of course not the only way to play RPGs, and my experience (in real life and on message boards) makes me think it's in fact a distinctively minority approach. In a game in which what's at stake is driven primarily by the GM's authorship and modulation of the "plot", then a _consequences for failure_ approach becomes harder to implement. There was discussion of that not too long ago in this thread.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I listen at the door is at the minimum threshold, i think.




If I'm being sober about it, I think "I listen at the door" is fine, too, if minimal. The problem with that example is that it's probably where the two different styles meet, so it's not really a great illustration of the difference.



> And, yes, I'd say there's a lot more engineering in @_*Elfcrusher*_'s game than mine,  His example of how much thinking goes into his games is a very far cry from the "oh, crap, I supposed to run in 15 minutes" I usually do.




For the record, although I'd _like_ for my game to be as "engineered", and to unfold as nicely, as the example I narrated earlier, it's definitely the exception.  I find myself winging it much more than I want to, and too often think afterward "Oh, what I should have done was...."  I'm not a great improv DM.

I'll add that I'm still licking my wounds over the accusation (e.g. @_*5ekyu*_) that it was _over_-engineered, that I wasn't allowing for the possibility that the story might unfold a different way. On the one hand, I really wanted (needed?) them to eventually/somehow find and open the secret door, and I had a couple of likely pathways mapped out. But yes...of course...if they did something completely unexpected (like siding with the Lady's attackers) I would have adapted.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not seeing how this is all consistent.
> 
> In both cases there was no reasonable chance of failure but one is an ability check, because being an ability check is how there is no reasonable chance at failure.



Reasonable chance of failure is only one third of the requirements an action must meet to require an ability check. Does flagging down the waitress also have a reasonable chance of failure and a cost or consequence for failing? If it does, then a check is called for. If it doesn’t, it’s just an action that can be resolved without making a check.



Chaosmancer said:


> You cannot fail if your lowest possible roll beats the DC, therefore there is no reasonable chance of failure, therefore you do not roll. But it is an ability check. It has to be, otherwise there is a reasonable chance of failure and a roll must be made.



Ahh, I see the confusion. “Reasonable chance of failure” does not refer to the chances of the player rolling high enough to beat the DC. Again, DCs are something checks have, and we don’t call for checks unless the _action_ meets the three criteria. “Reasonable chance of success” and “reasonable chance of failure” in this context are not mechanical considerations, they are DM judgment calls based on the fiction. If what the rogue is trying to do logically might work, might not, and has stakes, then a check is the way to resolve it, and if we are resolving it with a check, then the rogue can’t get lower than a 10 so it might not be necessary to actually roll dice to determine whether or not he passes the check. Does that make more sense?



Chaosmancer said:


> And why does it matter if I make up phantom DCs? If I know the bard has been eager to use their disguise kit, so I figure disguising themselves to get into the castle is a reasonable course of action they may choose to take in next weeks game, why can I not decide what the DC is likely to be ahead of time? I have created an obstacle, assigned a DC to a possible action the player's might take, but that doesn't mean anything about how the actual event will unfold. Maybe they will act like I suspect and I'll be prepared, maybe they'll pull out the Award for Valor they got from a prominent Knight I totally forgot they had in their inventory and be allowed to walk right in. DCs can exist seperate from the actions of the players, in a space of potential plans and actions.



It doesn’t matter, necessarily. That’s how I read manacles, for example - _if_ the player’s approach to breaking out of the manacles is something that logically could work, could fail to work, and has stakes, _then_ the DC for the check you use to resolve it is the one listed in the item’s entry (15 IIRC?). The problem is when you start thinking of breaking the manacles as a DC15 check, instead of as an in-fiction action the character performs, the result of which might or might not depend on the result of a DC15 check.



Chaosmancer said:


> Heck, we already have a second example from the book. It is a DC 20 strength check, a barbarian has an ability that says their lowest result for a strength check is their strength score. With a 20 strength, they cannot fail, and even if they did fail the consequences of failing to break manacles are generally status quo, but the ability only works if they make a strength check.



Right, so _if a check is called for_, with all that entails, the Barbarian might not need to roll a die to determine the result of the check. This is distinct from an action that does not even need a check to be resolved, due to not meeting all the criteria for narrative uncertainty.



Chaosmancer said:


> I don't want to comment on your experience, but at that sort of table I would be terrified to try something my character is bad at.



This is really funny to me, considering the fact that the go-to condemnation of my style is that it supposedly de-values stats. Yet, here you are saying you wouldn’t want to attempt something that you didn’t have high enough stats for. I think we might actually be getting somewhere here.



Chaosmancer said:


> If my warlock got tossed in a cell, with his +0 strength and no proficiency in athletics, I'd never try and break the door to get out. Maybe by magical means, but I'd want to know what bonus I got before trying to roll. Because, if I fail to break down the door, my situation gets worse. Even if I try and break off a bed leg to get a bar to leverage advantage, the DC is likely at least a 15 and with a +0 I need to roll 15 or better. The odds are really bad. And failure hurts my chances of getting out even more. I'd be much better served pretending to be sick and angling for a performance or deception check, which gets me a +4 or +7 to the roll.



And now you might start to see why, when I do call for a check, I tell the player what the DC and consequence for failure is.

Also, important to note here: I’m not just making up consequences out of nowhere. Consequences are a _prerequisite_ for a check to be called for, not something I assign _because_ a check is called for. If you say you want to break down the door with your bare hands, I go through the process in my head. Does this approach (break the door with my bare hands) have a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving your goal (get the door open)? No. So I don’t call for a check, I say, “try as you might, the iron bars are too solidly built for you to break with just your hands”  If you say you want to break off a leg of the bed and use it for leverage, I go through the same process. Does this action have a reasonable chance of success? Sure. Does it have a reasonable chance of failure? Absolutely. Is there a consequence for failure? Eh, it depends. If there are no a guards nearby that might hear the noise, and no time pressure, then no. In that case, the action doesn’t meet all the requirements to be resolved via check, so I’d just let it succeed. “The leg is a bit challenging to rip off, but after a little pulling, you manage it. It makes a loud noise, but no one seems to be coming to investigate. What do you do?” On the other hand, if there is a guard who might hear you, that seems like a consequence. I might say “ok, you could break the leg off the bed with a DC 10 Strength check, but the noise might attract the guard’s attention if you fail. Stealth might be applicable if you have proficiency with it. What do you do?” Now you have enough information to make an informed decision, whether youvwant to accept the risk or try a different approach. You’re not blindly making checks, the results of which you can’t predict. You’re thinking about your character as an entity existing in a world, making decisions as you imagine that entity might. You succeed and fail based on your decisions and the risks you accept or don’t accept.

Also, like... deciding you’d rather try to fake being sick than snap off a leg of the bed and use it to pry the door open because you’re not very strong or Athletic, but you are decently but persuasive sounds like a well-reasoned decision based on your character’s capabilities. That’s making a decision based on what you imagine your character would do in a fictional situation, and baby, that’s what I call roleplaying!



Chaosmancer said:


> However, at a game where failure does not automatically mean things get worse, I might try athletics. It is certainly a faster solution, and maybe I see speed as of the essence. IF I fail, well they'll know I tried to escape but it doesn't necessarily mean things get worse.



I mean... If time is of the essence, then failing absolutely makes things worse, because it wastes time. If that’s the case, I might say something like, “it’ll take some time to pull that leg off the bed. It’ll take a DC 10 Strength check to do it, plus Athletics if you’ve got it. But each attempt is going to take 10 minutes. What do you do?” More importantly, that you don’t want to “try Athletics” is the adjudication style working as intended. You should want to try some kind of in-game action that you think has a good shot at resulting in getting you out of this cell. If you are more likely to lean towards solutions that might rely on your magical prowess than your physical abilities in order to mitigate any potential risk, so much the better. Your character’s stats are informing your decisions in a narrative sense rather than a mechanical one. Again, roleplaying.



Chaosmancer said:


> All I see from a style of play where failure is punished more harshly every time, is a style of play that disincentives risk. The low charisma characters won't try to talk their way out, because they have a bad chance at that if it comes to a roll. And if you say "I hear you want to persuade the guard to let you go by talking about your achievements for the city, but he's not convinced your deeds outweigh the damages you've done. It'll be a DC 15 charisma persuasion check, and if you fail you might get slapped with a huge fine instead of simply tossed in jail" Then as a player who sees -1 charisma on his sheet, I'm going to try and backpedal. I've got only a 25% chance of making that roll. 75% chance of making things worse, no way, I'll let the bard take over. No reason for me to risk making that roll.



That’s fine, that’s your call to make. I inform you of the difficulty and consequences to give you the opportunity to cast Gudance, or Charm Person, or Friends, or spend Inspiration, or enlist help from your fellow party members who might have higher Charisma, or yes, to back out if that’s what you want to do. That makes sense that your character with low Charisma might choose to remain silent in a high-stakes social situation. Also, I think you would find that at my table, more often than not if an action seems like it’d probably work, it just does, especially in low-stakes situations. But any time there is a risk of failure, you know exactly what the risk is, and are always able to back out. In my experience, this very much encourages players to try things, because even in the worst case scenario - the one where you have to make a check - they know what’s at stake, they know their chances of success, and they know they don’t have to go through with it if they don’t feel it’s worth the risk.



Chaosmancer said:


> Alternatively, I've had quite a few times in my games where a player will pipe up trying to convince an NPC of something, or trying to look for a clue, despite having no mechanical skill. Because they don't fear failure. That doesn't mean there are no consequences ever, sometimes failure hurts, but the consequences are in line with what they attempted, and they are not guaranteed to make things worse by trying.



My players quite often step in with an idea as well. The difference is, when my players do it, it’s with a clever approach they think might have a good chance of achieving their goal, not the name of a skill they want to roll.


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## pemerton (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I don't want to comment on your experience, but at that sort of table I would be terrified to try something my character is bad at.
> 
> If my warlock got tossed in a cell, with his +0 strength and no proficiency in athletics, I'd never try and break the door to get out.
> 
> ...





Charlaquin said:


> I’m not just making up consequences out of nowhere. Consequences are a _prerequisite_ for a check to be called for, not something I assign _because_ a check is called for. If you say you want to break down the door with your bare hands, I go through the process in my head. Does this approach (break the door with my bare hands) have a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving your goal (get the door open)? No. So I don’t call for a check, I say, “try as you might, the iron bars are too solidly built for you to break with just your hands”  If you say you want to break off a leg of the bed and use it for leverage, I go through the same process. Does this action have a reasonable chance of success? Sure. Does it have a reasonable chance of failure? Absolutely. Is there a consequence for failure? Eh, it depends. If there are no a guards nearby that might hear the noise, and no time pressure, then no. In that case, the action doesn’t meet all the requirements to be resolved via check, so I’d just let it succeed. “The leg is a bit challenging to rip off, but after a little pulling, you manage it. It makes a loud noise, but no one seems to be coming to investigate. What do you do?” On the other hand, if there is a guard who might hear you, that seems like a consequence. I might say “ok, you could break the leg off the table with a DC 10 Strength check, and you could apply Athletics proficiency if you have it. But the noise might attract the guard’s attention if you fail. What do you do?” Now you have enough information to make an informed decision, whether you want to accept the risk or try a different approach. You’re not blindly making checks, the results of which you can’t predict. You’re thinking about your character as an entity existing in a world, making decisions as you imagine that entity might. You succeed and fail based on your decisions and the risks you accept or don’t accept.



Here we can see the outlines of different approaches to RPGing.

I want to draw out one contrast: between (1) consequences for failure as a _prior, necessary condition_ to call for a check (Charlaquin's approach) and (2) consequences for failure as a _subsequent condition_ mandated by a prior decision to call for a check (my preferred approach, perhaps sometimes  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s approach).

In approach (1), _part of deciding whether or not to call for a check_ is inspecting the "causal" state of the fiction to determine whether or not it contains implicit consequences (eg guards who might be attracted by noise in a cell). This is one aspect of what I was trying to get at upthread in talking about an approach that focuses on "engineering" aspects of the fiction, like who is where when, and what causal processes are they participating in.

This is not an aspect of approach (2). Approach (2) determines whether or not to call for a check on a different basis (I'll say what in a moment). _If a check is called for_, and fails, then consequences _will be narrated_, which may require establishing new fictional elements (like guards, or a cursed sarcophagus) to be constituent elements of those consequences. To put it another way, if a consequence is needed then the GM establishes the requisite in-fiction "causal" conditions that will be part of that.

On approach (2), what triggers the decision to call for a check? That the moment of decision and action declaration is a _dramatic_ or _emotionally resonant_ moment in the unfolding fiction, as it is being played by the participants at the table. The _uncertainty_ that underlies the call for a check is not "engineering" or "casual" uncertainty but dramatic, thematic, emotional uncertainty, the uncertainty of "This is a big deal, I hope it works out!"

On approach (2) players can't, in general, avoid rolling the d20 through careful/clever play. That's an idea that pertains to approach (1). Under approach (2) it may be that, if everyone at the table gets excited or moved or shocked by a player's declared action at a key moment then perhaps the GM doesn't call for a check - but again that's for reasons to do with _emotion_ and _drama_, not "engineering" or skilled play.

During the playtest for 5e there were some posters on these boards who thought that the emerging rules for ability checks created scope for approach (2) as well as approach (1). I think that, in principle at least, this should be feasible with the final ruleset. Using approach (2) making it clear what the character is doing in the fiction, when a player declares an action, is as important as in approach (1) because that helps establish the fictional context for the extrapolation of consequences, including helping establish what exactly the player has put at stake by way of his/her PC's action. But the underlying logic of calling for checks is quite different as between the two approaches.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 15, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If I'm being sober about it, I think "I listen at the door" is fine, too, if minimal. The problem with that example is that it's probably where the two different styles meet, so it's not really a great illustration of the difference.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oh, sure, which is why I contacted with my, "crap, I have to run in 15 minutes."

Funny story.  My wife, who doesn't play, is still used to my old style of running and asks every game day if I'm ready to run (because I used to prep for hours).  I say, "probably not," and then don't do anything until about 30 minutes before the session.


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## Imaculata (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Oh, sure, which is why I contacted with my, "crap, I have to run in 15 minutes."
> 
> Funny story.  My wife, who doesn't play, is still used to my old style of running and asks every game day if I'm ready to run (because I used to prep for hours).  I say, "probably not," and then don't do anything until about 30 minutes before the session.




I tend to overprep. Just this saturday I spent the *entire day(!)* prepping the session on sunday, only to find myself not having to use any of my prep work, thanks to my players just roleplaying, preparing for a battle, and being entertained by what I improvized on the spot. I don't like being unprepared. It has happened a few times, and always worked out alright, but as a general rule I'd rather have a big pile of notes full of prep-work, so that every last detail is well thought out.

*Note to self:* Putting a giant monster in a lake and keeping the details a secret is a great way to keep your players busy.



Oofta said:


> As I've stated before, if people think their PCs would be paranoid about a trap they get passive checks in exchange for moving more slowly because they're being cautious.  If they're particularly paranoid because they want to open a chest or jewelry box because they're objects that would be logically trapped then they can roll and use the higher of their passive or the roll.  But yeah, in my games there's not going to be a neon sign.  Then again doors that get used all the time aren't going to be trapped either because that would just be dumb IMHO.  Obviously using passive values does mean that there will be times when someone's passive is so high they detect every trap in which case I'll just narrate it.




I agree on having traps in locations that make sense. However, I prefer to avoid the classic search-for-traps-in-every-room scenario. That gets old fast. So instead I provide some sort of clue, however subtle, that something is amiss. It may just be a door that is ajar, when all the others are not. There don't have to be signs that the trap has been triggered before, but maybe something else stands out? A soft humming behind a door perhaps? (a magical trap) A strange smell? (a chemical trap) A corridor that is oddly clean? (a trapdoor)

I want to have clear indicators to my players when they _could_ be expecting a trap and need to be cautious, so we don't get this default trap-search behavior. Also, I feel that having no trap searching most of the time, and then suddenly a very suspicious hallway, creates far more suspense. I think you need to have this contrast, in order to get your players on the edge of their seat. If they are always on high alert for traps, that some what diminishes the suspense of traps in my view.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Or if I was secretly Oofta and didn't know it



Well, it _is_ true that no one has ever seen us in the same room together.  



Chaosmancer said:


> ...even if they did fail the consequences of failing to break manacles are generally status quo, but the ability only works if they make a strength check.




I think this bears repeating.  I don't think a failure of a check maintaining the status quo means there should be no check.  It's quite illogical to me to say that every failure must have a negative consequence.

In this case there was a possible positive outcome for success, I can't imagine what a penalty could be that would make sense.



Chaosmancer said:


> I think this is a confusion of speakers thing. Some people have been claiming they would not give definitive answers to an insight check because IRL you can't tell if someone is lying.
> 
> I think that is only a portion of the people discussing the shopkeeper though, which is what is causing the confusion here.




Yep. I don't believe insight equates to mind reading.  If it did and was admissable as evidence then it would solve every mystery with a simple "Did you do it?"  Now _that_ would be boring.

But some of the responses make it sound like people have never read a mystery or watched a police procedural.  Some of the questioners coming out of the interrogation saying things like "I think they're lying" or "They're hiding something, we need to figure out what" is just par for the course.  Even if they use insight as magical truth detectors they still have to find proof.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 15, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I think this bears repeating.  I don't think a failure of a check maintaining the status quo means there should be no check.  It's quite illogical to me to say that every failure must have a negative consequence.
> 
> In this case there was a possible positive outcome for success, I can't imagine what a penalty could be that would make sense.



A guard notices your attempt.  You strain yourself and take damage.  A wandering monster appears and you're still manacled.

It's not hard if you make the mental leap to bad things must happen to then come up with bad things.  It's endemic to the mindset that checks are just checks to not be able to see a consequence.  Another point for "our play isn't the same except for some wording."




> Yep. I don't believe insight equates to mind reading.  If it did and was admissable as evidence then it would solve every mystery with a simple "Did you do it?"  Now _that_ would be boring.
> 
> But some of the responses make it sound like people have never read a mystery or watched a police procedural.  Some of the questioners coming out of the interrogation saying things like "I think they're lying" or "They're hiding something, we need to figure out what" is just par for the course.  Even if they use insight as magical truth detectors they still have to find proof.



Again, you confuse your play for ours and assume our games do not provide the same kinds of satisfaction.  I put it to you that mimicking the _fiction_ of a police procedural does not rest on a specific preference for mechanical resolution.  I get that kind of fiction just fine with my methods.  Yours is not the only way to run an exciting or interesting mystery.  The difference is what points get mechanical resolutions and, indeed, what actually counts as the mystery.


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## Oofta (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> A guard notices your attempt.  You strain yourself and take damage.  A wandering monster appears and you're still manacled.
> 
> It's not hard if you make the mental leap to bad things must happen to then come up with bad things.  It's endemic to the mindset that checks are just checks to not be able to see a consequence.  Another point for "our play isn't the same except for some wording."
> 
> ...




If I'm not being clear, I'm just saying how I run it and what makes sense to me.  I see no reason to always have a cost of failure, I think it actually detracts from the game because I don't want to discourage creativity.

You've added cost of failure as a pre-condition for a check, I don't think it's necessary and would frequently feel artificial to me.  

I am not commenting on your play style one way or another.  Run your game the way you want.


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## WaterRabbit (Apr 15, 2019)

IMHO, I think the best example of how to model Insight is by looking at the character of Patrick Jane in the Mentalist.  He has an very high Insight.  He can do things that seem mysterious, but just rely on his insight into human behavior.  He isn't a walking lie detector, but he notices "tells" that give people away.  

The difficulty in modeling this for the DM is working it into the narrative without relying on dice rolls, but still letting the player know that his skill investment is paying off.  I had a similar issue with a player on the Observant feat.  It came up all the time in play, but since it is mostly passive, he didn't realize its use and was thinking of swapping it out.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 15, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If I'm not being clear, I'm just saying how I run it and what makes sense to me.  I see no reason to always have a cost of failure, I think it actually detracts from the game because I don't want to discourage creativity.
> 
> You've added cost of failure as a pre-condition for a check, I don't think it's necessary and would frequently feel artificial to me.
> 
> I am not commenting on your play style one way or another.  Run your game the way you want.




In our game, if there is no cost to failure then the action can just be narrated as an automatic success or an automatic failure.  We don't bother with rolling if there is no meaningful consequence to failing.  

Silly example:  

With no cost of failure:
Player:  My character howls at the moon to see if the Goddess of the Harvest will respond.
DM:  Ok.  Cool howl.  The Goddess does not respond.  Now what would you like to do?

With a cost of failure:
Player:  My character howls at the moon to see if the Goddess of the Harvest will respond.
DM:  Ok.  Make a Charisma (Performance) check.  DC 15.  If you fail, the wolves that you've been hearing in the distance will take offense.
Player:  On second thought...

At our table, knowing that any action might have a meaningful cost of failure does not discourage creativity - in fact, it is quite the opposite in practice.  Creativity is often rewarded with lower DCs, Advantage, or automatic success, depending on the situation.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 15, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> In our game, if there is no cost to failure then the action can just be narrated as an automatic success or an automatic failure.  We don't bother with rolling if there is no meaningful consequence to failing.
> 
> Silly example:
> 
> ...



This.  
 [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] you've said multiple times that you see asking for a check as only being stylistically different from the goal and approach method, yet we've shown there are clear differences in both methid and design. Are you now willing to acknowledge that there are clear differences in the styles, or will you continue to maintain you see liitle difference?


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## Satyrn (Apr 15, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Also, because I enjoy puzzle solving, I'm curious how that trap with the portcullis and the barrels works. I'm assuming that the portcullis being triggered breaks the barrels and unleashes the poison (though how they can tell poison gas from a distance...) but isn't that a really easy trap to get past? Hit the barrels from a distance and wait for the poison to dissipate or settle. Heck, might even be able to use it against the trap designer by pushing the poison further past the portcullis.
> 
> It seems too simple, so am I missing something or is that one supposed to be an easy one?



It is essentially that simple, yes. I don't know how simple it will actually prove to be in play, because my players often unexpectedly complicate things by thinking it can't be as simple as it looks*.

To answer the question you put in parentheses:

I don't intend to tell the players that the barrels are full of poison (actually more like an acidic poison gas). In describing the scene I'll mention that the barrels are faintly labeled in Goblin speak (or whatever language I chose, I forget the details). Someone bothering to read the labels will discover that the labels are a prayer beseeching the gods to keep the fatal dissolving gas contained until the right time, or some such nonsense.

All the other questions you ask are excellent, and are exactly the sort of thing I hope to elicit from my players, and they investigate it and decide how to deal with it. Maybe they disable it, harmlessly trigger it, or even weaponize it. 

As a DM,and as the trap designer, I don't care which they do. I just hope that is an interesting enough puzzle so my players enjoy doing with

This trap is a pretty straight forward puzzle with a simple "win condition" (get to the other side). If you make it past the trap and find a way to use it against your enemy**, that's a bonus . . . but that is more complicated than just getting past, which probably will be more dangerous because now you're probably interacting more closely with the poison, too.


(I should also maybe mention that I tend to make a straightforward trap like this significantly dangerous if it does hit someone. I think this trap deals 10d6 damage per round, and the gas lingers for several minutes, but again, I can't remember the details)


*As an example, see the next footnote.

**This is what I'm talking about.


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## Oofta (Apr 15, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> In our game, if there is no cost to failure then the action can just be narrated as an automatic success or an automatic failure.  We don't bother with rolling if there is no meaningful consequence to failing.
> 
> Silly example:
> 
> ...




Whereas I would say that there doesn't need to be a meaningful cost of failure other than you did not succeed.  Sometimes there will be a cost, other times there won't.  If I think failure would have no meaningful consequence I'm not going to make something up just to meet some arbitrary requirement of "failure has to have a cost".

In other words, if someone tries to climb a 10 ft wall they aren't going to fall far enough to take damage.  If they can keep trying until they succeed then I'll narrate them getting over.  If there's a time constraint or other reason they can't continue to repeatedly attempt to climb then I'll ask for a roll even though there is no direct cost to failure.


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## Oofta (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This.
> [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] you've said multiple times that you see asking for a check as only being stylistically different from the goal and approach method, yet we've shown there are clear differences in both methid and design. Are you now willing to acknowledge that there are clear differences in the styles, or will you continue to maintain you see liitle difference?




I agree that I probably wouldn't want to play at your table based on my understanding of what you say you do.  I'd give specifics but I'm tired of being told what I think and how I "misrepresent" what you say.

I freely admit (and tell new players) that not every DM is a good fit for every player.  My style, restrictions on no evil PCs and allowed races may not work for them.  The way I handle obstacles may not work for you.  I may not throw in enough puzzles for [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION].  It's hardly the end of the world.

Have a good one.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 15, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This.
> [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] you've said multiple times that you see asking for a check as only being stylistically different from the goal and approach method, yet we've shown there are clear differences in both methid and design. Are you now willing to acknowledge that there are clear differences in the styles, or will you continue to maintain you see liitle difference?



Not Oofta but how in the example just provided does that differ from asking for a check wpproach.

First example - context - no dangerous wolves or creatures in area. PCs not hiding. Check has no chance of success. So, this falls into let them make the roll and move on. Maybe describe the difference in nearby noises. Might make them worried. But more to the point, if they achieve a high score and were proficient,  I  might well give them a reward... something does hear them and come by... not dangerous but interesting. Or maybe, right after their howl, lights appear below in the woods. See, their "goal" might be impossible but that in no way prevents something cool ftom coming of the effort - since we are determining results of actions not a more strict "did you achieve goal."

Second example, context shifts - threats are around. The check is set as a degree of difficulty to sound enough like wolves to not draw unwelcome attention or get lucky enough that they dont get to you. Now, success can be treated like above. But failures likely get setbacks. But hopefully, some of the others point out the risk.

As for creativity, Oofta has like I have made multiple references to giving advsantage etc for various choices, now I personally dont give rewards for creativity. If something gets advantage, it will do so the first time, the twentieth time etc, not just when it fits some creativity check mark. 

But, I am sure your viewpoint of your play proves to you that you are right about its merits. But it remains mostly a self-referential cycle.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 15, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I would say that there doesn't need to be a meaningful cost of failure other than you did not succeed.  Sometimes there will be a cost, other times there won't.  If I think failure would have no meaningful consequence I'm not going to make something up just to meet some arbitrary requirement of "failure has to have a cost".



Neither are those of us who say there must be a cost or consequence for there to be a check. If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence, then the action is successful.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 15, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Here we can see the outlines of different approaches to RPGing.
> 
> I want to draw out one contrast: between (1) consequences for failure as a _prior, necessary condition_ to call for a check (Charlaquin's approach) and (2) consequences for failure as a _subsequent condition_ mandated by a prior decision to call for a check (my preferred approach, perhaps sometimes  @_*Ovinomancer*_'s approach).
> 
> ...



Yeah, I’m aware of approach (2). It’s a legit way of doing things, but not my preference, personally. I’d use approach (2) if I was running, like, Dungeon World or another Powered by the Apocalypse game, because that’s how that system is designed to work. But I think approach (1) is a better fit for D&D 5e.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 15, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I would say that there doesn't need to be a meaningful cost of failure other than you did not succeed.  Sometimes there will be a cost, other times there won't.  If I think failure would have no meaningful consequence I'm not going to make something up just to meet some arbitrary requirement of "failure has to have a cost".
> 
> In other words, if someone tries to climb a 10 ft wall they aren't going to fall far enough to take damage.  If they can keep trying until they succeed then I'll narrate them getting over.  If there's a time constraint or other reason they can't continue to repeatedly attempt to climb then I'll ask for a roll even though there is no direct cost to failure.




Look at my example again.  In the first scenario "with no cost of failure" there is... no cost of failure.  So I've literally demonstrated that failure does NOT have to have a cost at our table.  The PC's action failed to achieve the stated goal and the PC is no worse off after the action than before.  No arbitrary requirement.  No need to make anything up.  

However, for there to be a die roll called for by the DM, failure DOES have to have a cost.  At our table.

In your example of the 10ft wall, at our table, if there is a time constraint then we would acknowledge that wasting time *is* the cost to failing the called-for ability check.  They've wasted precious time - which should then be the cause of further complications.  We'd handle it exactly the same way you do if the PC could keep trying until they succeed.  No cost of failure - so we just narrate the success.

TL/DR  
These things exist at our table:
Successes
Successes with costs
Failures with no costs
Failures with costs


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## Bawylie (Apr 15, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Look at my example again.  In the first scenario "with no cost of failure" there is... no cost of failure.  So I've literally demonstrated that failure does NOT have to have a cost at our table.  The PC's action failed in the state goal and the PC is no worse off after the action than before.  No arbitrary requirement.  No need to make anything up.
> 
> However, for there to be a die roll called for by the DM, failure DOES have to have a cost.  At our table.
> 
> ...




I also have successes with costs.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 15, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I also have successes with costs.




Edited my post to incorporate this.  Thanks!


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## robus (Apr 15, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I also have successes with costs.




That's the most delicious one!  "You just manage to be successful, but...."


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## robus (Apr 15, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Neither are those of us who say there must be a cost or consequence for there to be a check. If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence, then the action is successful.




To clarify, "a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence *to retry*, then the action is successful."


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## Charlaquin (Apr 15, 2019)

robus said:


> To clarify, "a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence *to retry*, then the action is successful."




Sure? I’m not sure what practical difference that distinction makes, but I have no objection to that rephrasing.


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## robus (Apr 15, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Sure? I’m not sure what practical difference that distinction makes, but I have no objection to that rephrasing.




Because otherwise there was really no chance of failure?


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 15, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Speaking from my own perspective, but also trying to make sympathetic sense of [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s, I think there is a bigger issue here which you're missing - or to put it another way, you're missing the _dynamic of play wood_ because of the _ability check adjudication trees_.
> 
> I play a game (be that 4e, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, or The Dying Earth) in which there are adverse consequences for failed checks. But that's only a special case of the bigger picture: there are adverse consequences for the PCs _unless they act_. The situation is framed so as to yield pressure on the PCs (and, thereby, their players) which will drive the game forward.
> 
> ...




I don't find myself disagreeing with anything you are proposing necessarily. But I find times when I can both pressure the PCs if they choose not to act and punish them for failing to be uncommon at best. 

And I don't really need to look for them most of the time. Eventually my players seek out things, they look for those narrative points. 

Also, I don't like rolling only during narratively important events, because I think that removes rolling too much from the game. 

I think what most got me in the post you quoted was Charlaquin's claim that punishing players makes them look for better options instead of relying on their best skills. To my perspective, it would do the opposite. I would fight like crazy to avoid situations where I had to use a skill I was bad at, to the point where I'd cede the narrative to another player. And, if your play involves leaving players no choice but to hope for the best, because both acting and not acting have dire consequences... that can be fun occasionally, but wouldn't it be better for the players to seek out these moments instead of being driven to them? 




Charlaquin said:


> Ahh, I see the confusion. “Reasonable chance of failure” does not refer to the chances of the player rolling high enough to beat the DC. Again, DCs are something checks have, and we don’t call for checks unless the _action_ meets the three criteria. “Reasonable chance of success” and “reasonable chance of failure” in this context are not mechanical considerations, they are DM judgment calls based on the fiction. If what the rogue is trying to do logically might work, might not, and has stakes, then a check is the way to resolve it, and if we are resolving it with a check, then the rogue can’t get lower than a 10 so it might not be necessary to actually roll dice to determine whether or not he passes the check. Does that make more sense?




So the reasonable chance of failure has nothing to do with the success or failure of the check? 

I'm glad we are clearing up confusion, but you realize then that we now have a chance of failure in an action which cannot fail.  Which could get very confusing if I tried to explain it to a player for example. 

But that makes me re-look at the barmaid example. Chance of success? Yep. Chance of failure? Yep. Stakes? Possible depending on the circumstances. So, would you call for a DC 5 check, if there were high enough stakes? You aren't considering the mechanical effects what so ever, it is purely within the fiction, the mechanical comes afterwards. 



Charlaquin said:


> The problem is when you start thinking of breaking the manacles as a DC15 check, instead of as an in-fiction action the character performs, the result of which might or might not depend on the result of a DC15 check.




What problem? The closest you've come to telling me there is a problem is that I'll suddenly stop allowing people to succeed without a roll... which isn't true. So what problem do you see in thinking that breaking manacles with pure muscle strength (maybe the aid of a crowbar) is a DC 20? They have an AC and HP too, is it a problem to start thinking of breaking manacles as being a combat roll with damage as well? DC to pick the lock is 15 I do believe, so now I also have the problem of thinking of them as a DC 15 picking check. 

All three are true, all three I can consider, and yet keeping those in mind is a problem? How? Why? 




Charlaquin said:


> And now you might start to see why, when I do call for a check, I tell the player what the DC and consequence for failure is.
> 
> Also, important to note here: I’m not just making up consequences out of nowhere. Consequences are a _prerequisite_ for a check to be called for, not something I assign _because_ a check is called for. If you say you want to break down the door with your bare hands, I go through the process in my head. Does this approach (break the door with my bare hands) have a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving your goal (get the door open)? No. So I don’t call for a check, I say, “try as you might, the iron bars are too solidly built for you to break with just your hands”  If you say you want to break off a leg of the bed and use it for leverage, I go through the same process. Does this action have a reasonable chance of success? Sure. Does it have a reasonable chance of failure? Absolutely. Is there a consequence for failure? Eh, it depends. *If there are no a guards nearby that might hear the noise, and no time pressure, then no. **In that case, the action doesn’t meet all the requirements to be resolved via check, so I’d just let it succeed.* “The leg is a bit challenging to rip off, but after a little pulling, you manage it. It makes a loud noise, but no one seems to be coming to investigate. What do you do?” On the other hand, if there is a guard who might hear you, that seems like a consequence. I might say “ok, you could break the leg off the bed with a DC 10 Strength check, but the noise might attract the guard’s attention if you fail. Stealth might be applicable if you have proficiency with it. What do you do?” Now you have enough information to make an informed decision, whether youvwant to accept the risk or try a different approach. You’re not blindly making checks, the results of which you can’t predict. You’re thinking about your character as an entity existing in a world, making decisions as you imagine that entity might. You succeed and fail based on your decisions and the risks you accept or don’t accept.
> 
> Also, like... deciding you’d rather try to fake being sick than snap off a leg of the bed and use it to pry the door open because you’re not very strong or Athletic, but you are decently but persuasive sounds like a well-reasoned decision based on your character’s capabilities. That’s making a decision based on what you imagine your character would do in a fictional situation, and baby, that’s what I call roleplaying!




Actually, baby, I was making a decision based off of the mechanics of the roll and what was my highest modifier. The thing you said your style would de-emphasize. 

If I was thinking about how my character would act in a fictional setting... I'd consider their personality. Are they are hot head who is going to rage about and try and break out, or are they cool headed and going for a plan that involves deception. I didn't consider any of that, I didn't think about my role, I looked at hard numbers for the most likely path to success. My character didn't matter at all, only my statistics. 

And I'm curious, about the bolded part. What do you do with information the player cannot have? I don't see guards, and I seem to be alone, but they've actually got a guard post with a scrying eye set up. Do you tell me that I'm secretly under observation so I can make my decision? 

And how long would I have to have to be under "no pressure" timewise? An action is a few seconds, if I have ten minutes during the guard switching or dragging a prisoner off is that enough time to auto-succeed? Would you tell me that, so I could make the most complete decision? 



Charlaquin said:


> More importantly, that you don’t want to “try Athletics” is the adjudication style working as intended. You should want to try some kind of in-game action that you think has a good shot at resulting in getting you out of this cell. If you are more likely to lean towards solutions that might rely on your magical prowess than your physical abilities in order to mitigate any potential risk, so much the better. Your character’s stats are informing your decisions in a narrative sense rather than a mechanical one. Again, roleplaying.




No role is necessary to look at my stats. And, I know that any roll to break something via strength of arm is 90% likely to be an athletics check. Just like I know "I huddle into the corner to blend with the shadows so the guards can't see me" is a stealth check. I'm trying stealth. Whether or not I dress it up is immaterial to me knowing what mechanical call is likely to be made from my actions. 

My mechanical stats are informing decisions of the narrative, exactly what you said would not be the case. "Players are more likely to look for the action most likely to succeed instead of simply rolling a check." Well, I'm looking at the most likely mechanical check to succeed and you are praising me for my roleplaying, with no regards to any role. 



Charlaquin said:


> That’s fine, that’s your call to make. I inform you of the difficulty and consequences to give you the opportunity to cast Gudance, or Charm Person, or Friends, or spend Inspiration, or enlist help from your fellow party members who might have higher Charisma, or yes, to back out if that’s what you want to do. That makes sense that your character with low Charisma might choose to remain silent in a high-stakes social situation. Also, I think you would find that at my table, more often than not if an action seems like it’d probably work, it just does, especially in low-stakes situations. But any time there is a risk of failure, you know exactly what the risk is, and are always able to back out. In my experience, this very much encourages players to try things, because even in the worst case scenario - the one where you have to make a check - they know what’s at stake, they know their chances of success, and they know they don’t have to go through with it if they don’t feel it’s worth the risk.




So you are perfectly fine with players backing out of moments of fictional importance because their mechanics don't match up with the challenge. 

Roll playing is the term you are looking for to describe that. 



Charlaquin said:


> My players quite often step in with an idea as well. The difference is, when my players do it, it’s with a clever approach they think might have a good chance of achieving their goal, not the name of a skill they want to roll.




Ah, I see the problem. You assume that because I'm fine with players saying "I roll insight" that all they need to do is say "persuasion 23" and that's it. They never come up with clever approaches. 

Well, once more, assumptions are dangerous things. Yes, I would allow "I want to roll persuasion to convince the guards to let us go, we're heroes of the city after all". But, that doesn't mean I would allows "Persuasion 23" and just go with it. And my players also come up with clever approaches. I'd like to think I encourage that because they know that having a bad idea isn't going to hurt the party necessarily. Not that I don't also point out to them when they are making a poor decision "So you want to temporarily mind control the guard into letting you go... are you sure about that?" 





Charlaquin said:


> Neither are those of us who say there must be a cost or consequence for there to be a check. If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence, then the action is successful.





Umm, you might want to reread your post 

"Neither of us said there has to be a consequence for there to be a check. If there is no consequence the action is just successful (ie, no check)"


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## Oofta (Apr 15, 2019)

robus said:


> To clarify, "a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence *to retry*, then the action is successful."




In my example, if there is no time constraint to climbing that 10 ft wall I don't bother rolling assuming you can even climb it.  

I may ask for a roll to see how long it takes depending on the situation to determine if it takes a minute to climb or 10 minutes I suppose.  Although to be honest this is all quite hypothetical.

My only point is that in my games if Plan A is to break the manacles to escape and you can't do it, the only penalty is that you have to go to Plan B since I don't allow retries on breaking manacles unless something else changes.


----------



## iserith (Apr 15, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Yeah, I’m aware of approach (2). It’s a legit way of doing things, but not my preference, personally. I’d use approach (2) if I was running, like, Dungeon World or another Powered by the Apocalypse game, because that’s how that system is designed to work. But I think approach (1) is a better fit for D&D 5e.




^ This. Different games, different rules, different approaches that work with those rules.

I'll quote the D&D 5e DMG (emphasis mine):

"When a player wants to do something, it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed *without a roll or a reference to the character's ability scores*... only call for a roll if there is a *meaningful consequence for failure*." It then goes on add another prerequisite, that being, if it has an uncertain outcome (somewhere between trivially easy and impossible).​
This last bit is reinforced by the D&D 5e PHB (emphasis mine):

"*The DM* calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results."​
Taking these elements plus the rest of the rules into account (such as divorcing a fictional task from a "skill check") and I think the conclusion is as you say above. pemerton's Approach 1 is a better fit for D&D 5e. I don't particularly agree with the whole "engineering" bit (as I am by far no engineer), but the causal bit _in the context of a fantasy world_ is a reasonable way of thinking about it in my view.

Having said that, I greatly prefer Approach 2! I argued for a more 4e-esque game than D&D 5e eventually became, and I love Dungeon world and was one of the original playtesters for that game. I lost that argument, however, and what we have is what we have. So my preferences get set aside to play in a manner that most suits the rules set as I see it. And what do ya know, we still have fun games. Different games, different rules, different approaches that work with those rules. It seems like madness to me to play every game the same way.


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## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Just for grins I decided to look up where people were getting the "there has to be a meaningful consequence for failure" so I looked it up.  I think the phrase is being completely overblown and taken out of context.

When a player wants to do something, it’s often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character’s ability scores. *For example, a character doesn’t normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of ale.* Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure.​
I think the example is fairly clear, but people quoting the rule seem skip the example which is kind of a critical clarification because it's pretty obvious they're talking about mundane tasks.  

It also continues on to say:


When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:

Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
Is a task so inappropriate or impossible — such as hitting the moon with an arrow — that it can’t work?

*If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.*​
So ... if a PC wants to try to break out of manacles, is there a chance of failure (for most PCs)?  Yes.  Therefore you need to look at the next line

If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.​
There's no requirement for meaningful consequence for failure, just a chance of failure.  Is this contradictory?  I don't think so, it's just that the section is general suggestions written in a casual language not parsed as a legal document.  Well, that and it's just a suggestion ... run the game the way that makes sense to you.  But if you're going to quote rules, quote them in context.


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## Bawylie (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Just for grins I decided to look up where people were getting the "there has to be a meaningful consequence for failure" so I looked it up.  I think the phrase is being completely overblown and taken out of context.
> 
> When a player wants to do something, it’s often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll or a reference to the character’s ability scores. *For example, a character doesn’t normally need to make a Dexterity check to walk across an empty room or a Charisma check to order a mug of ale.* Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure.​
> I think the example is fairly clear, but people quoting the rule seem skip the example which is kind of a critical clarification because it's pretty obvious they're talking about mundane tasks.
> ...




I disagree that they’re not quoted in context. But if you want to take in an even larger context, why would you omit the 3 sections on use of the dice? Rolling with it, ignoring the dice, and the middle path.  Seems like those sections provide quite a bit of context too. 

Or the very last paragraph that says the dice don’t run your game. That’s a whopper. And goes right in with your conclusion: “run the game the way that makes sense to you.”


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## Bawylie (Apr 16, 2019)

iserith said:


> ^ This. Different games, different rules, different approaches that work with those rules.
> 
> I'll quote the D&D 5e DMG (emphasis mine):
> 
> ...




I have to disagree here. I think 3rd/PF plays better when you do it like 5th than when you play it like 3rd/PF. But to be fair, I’m way more interested in the answer to “what do you do?” than i am in the answer to “what did you roll?” And I might be closer to “ignoring the dice” than I am to “rolling with it,” though I still consider myself middle-path.


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## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I disagree that they’re not quoted in context. But if you want to take in an even larger context, why would you omit the 3 sections on use of the dice? Rolling with it, ignoring the dice, and the middle path.  Seems like those sections provide quite a bit of context too.
> 
> Or the very last paragraph that says the dice don’t run your game. That’s a whopper. And goes right in with your conclusion: “run the game the way that makes sense to you.”




First of all, I can't quote the entire DMG.  What I was addressing was a very specific claim that the rules say that there has to be a meaningful consequence for failure as a prerequisite for rolling dice.  That's obviously not true, or the rules contradict themselves in the space of a couple of paragraphs.

Then again, I don't claim to be a rules lawyer and I look at this kind of stuff as general guidance and not "thou must playeth this way" so I have no clue by what you mean "that's a whopper".  I've stated how I run the game.  I don't see a reason for there to be a meaningful chance of failure as a prerequisite for a roll of the die.  If you do, run your game that way.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I think what most got me in the post you quoted was Charlaquin's claim that punishing players makes them look for better options instead of relying on their best skills.



This is very,very far afield of my claim. My claim was/is that not calling for a roll unless the action has a logical chance of success, chance of failure, and cost for the attempt or consequence for failure, encourages players to look for ways of resolving actions that don't have a chance of failure or don't have a cost for the attempt or consequence for failure.



Chaosmancer said:


> To my perspective, it would do the opposite. I would fight like crazy to avoid situations where I had to use a skill I was bad at, to the point where I'd cede the narrative to another player.



The thing is, a more successful strategy to avoid situations where you have to use a skill you're bad at is to avoid situations where you have to use a skill. Try to eliminate the chance of failure by coming up with effective approaches, rather than relying on your stats to mitigate the chance of failure.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, if your play involves leaving players no choice but to hope for the best, because both acting and not acting have dire consequences... that can be fun occasionally, but wouldn't it be better for the players to seek out these moments instead of being driven to them?



Where are you getting this idea from?



Chaosmancer said:


> So the reasonable chance of failure has nothing to do with the success or failure of the check?



No. The _existence of the check_ has everything to do with the logical outcome of the action.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm glad we are clearing up confusion, but you realize then that we now have a chance of failure in an action which cannot fail.  Which could get very confusing if I tried to explain it to a player for example.



No, we have an _action_ that can fail, being resolved by a _check_ that cannot. That's why it's important to distinguish between the action the character performs and the check the player must make to resolve it.



Chaosmancer said:


> But that makes me re-look at the barmaid example. Chance of success? Yep. Chance of failure? Yep. Stakes? Possible depending on the circumstances. So, would you call for a DC 5 check, if there were high enough stakes? You aren't considering the mechanical effects what so ever, it is purely within the fiction, the mechanical comes afterwards.



Eh, to be honest, I don't think flagging down the waitress has a reasonable chance of failure. Like, could it technically fail? Sure, but so could tying your shoes, and we don't make checks for that. That's why I say "reasonable chance of failure" instead of "possibility of failure." Whether or not a check is called for depends not only on if the action _could_ fail, but if failure is a plausible and dramatically significant possibility. In other words, if it has a chance of failure and a consequence for failure.

That said, I'm happy to examine the hypothetical situation where failing to flag down the waitress is both reasonably likely and has a meaningful consequence. Maybe the restaurant is really busy so it might be too noisy for her to hear you, and she might be too distracted to notice you, but there is a chance she might see or hear you. And maybe you're running late for an important meeting, so if you do fail to get her attention quickly enough, you might not make it in time to your meeting and you'll get in trouble. Ok, now we have met all the criteria for this action to be resolved by way of a check. Seems like Charisma, and seems easy to moderate to pull off. So sure, I'll ask for a DC 5 Charisma check. Maybe Performance would be applicable. I'd say that, and if your Charisma + Performance was +4 or higher, or if you had some feature like Reliable Talent that would prevent you from rolling lower than a 5, you could tell me so, and I'd say you succeed.



Chaosmancer said:


> What problem? The closest you've come to telling me there is a problem is that I'll suddenly stop allowing people to succeed without a roll... which isn't true. So what problem do you see in thinking that breaking manacles with pure muscle strength (maybe the aid of a crowbar) is a DC 20? They have an AC and HP too, is it a problem to start thinking of breaking manacles as being a combat roll with damage as well? DC to pick the lock is 15 I do believe, so now I also have the problem of thinking of them as a DC 15 picking check.
> 
> All three are true, all three I can consider, and yet keeping those in mind is a problem? How? Why?



Again, _keeping those things in mind_ is not a problem. Conflating the mechanical process of the DC 20 Strength check, the DC 15 Dexterity check, or the attacks made to destroy the manacles with the action of trying to break out of them, trying to slip out of them, or trying to smash them with something is. It leads to confusion, as you pointed out earlier, when you mistake an action that could fail being resolved by a check that could not with an action that could not fail.



Chaosmancer said:


> Actually, baby, I was making a decision based off of the mechanics of the roll and what was my highest modifier. The thing you said your style would de-emphasize.
> 
> If I was thinking about how my character would act in a fictional setting... I'd consider their personality. Are they are hot head who is going to rage about and try and break out, or are they cool headed and going for a plan that involves deception. I didn't consider any of that, I didn't think about my role, I looked at hard numbers for the most likely path to success. My character didn't matter at all, only my statistics.



Alright, then I guess that's how you made your decision. I'm not the thought police. The important thing, to me, is that you thought about the situation, thought about what your character would do in that situation, and told me what your character was doing, rather than just telling me the name of a stat you wanted to roll with.



Chaosmancer said:


> And I'm curious, about the bolded part. What do you do with information the player cannot have? I don't see guards, and I seem to be alone, but they've actually got a guard post with a scrying eye set up. Do you tell me that I'm secretly under observation so I can make my decision?



I tell you the DC and possible consequences of your action. "That'll require you to succeed on a DC 10 Strength check, plus Athletics if you've got it. On a failure, you might attract the attention of the guards." That doesn't really tell you anything you couldn't otherwise know. I'm not telling you there's a secret scrying sensor, I'm not telling you you're not alone, I'm telling you that making noise could attract guards.



Chaosmancer said:


> And how long would I have to have to be under "no pressure" timewise? An action is a few seconds, if I have ten minutes during the guard switching or dragging a prisoner off is that enough time to auto-succeed? Would you tell me that, so I could make the most complete decision?



I would say if you only have 10 minutes, that is enough time pressure to require a check. I tend to work in 10-minute intervals for simplicity's sake, so in that situation I'd probably rule that you could get it done in less than 10 minutes on a success, but not on a failure. Something like: "You could do that quickly with a DC 10 Strength check. On a failure, it'll take 10 minutes."



Chaosmancer said:


> No role is necessary to look at my stats. And, I know that any roll to break something via strength of arm is 90% likely to be an athletics check. Just like I know "I huddle into the corner to blend with the shadows so the guards can't see me" is a stealth check. I'm trying stealth. Whether or not I dress it up is immaterial to me knowing what mechanical call is likely to be made from my actions.



But, see, you're still thinking in terms of action = check. Breaking something is not 90% likely to require a check. _If it does_, yes, it is 90% likely to be Strength based, but I'll also tell you if it requires a check and give you the opportunity to take action to mitigate the risk or to back out if you so choose. "I try to break it with my hands" might result in "Ok, it breaks" or might result in "that'll take a DC (whatever) Strength check, and on a failure (whatever). What do you do?" There's never a situation where you're forced to make a Strength check because the action you described is physical in nature. I'll always tell you the risk, and you are always free to say "On second thought, nah, I'm gonna try something else."



Chaosmancer said:


> My mechanical stats are informing decisions of the narrative, exactly what you said would not be the case. "Players are more likely to look for the action most likely to succeed instead of simply rolling a check." Well, I'm looking at the most likely mechanical check to succeed and you are praising me for my roleplaying, with no regards to any role.



Again, you are still making your decisions based on an assumption that action = check. Instead of looking for what stat you're most likely to succeed on a roll with, you would have more success thinking about what your character could do that seems like it would probably work without a roll. And in actual play, with players who are genuinely interested in engaging with the game instead of trying to prove that my DMing style is bad, that's what I find most of my players doing, including ones who are initially reticent about having to describe actions in terms of in-character approach.



Chaosmancer said:


> So you are perfectly fine with players backing out of moments of fictional importance because their mechanics don't match up with the challenge.
> 
> Roll playing is the term you are looking for to describe that.



Let's not resort to name-calling. Roll-playing is a meaningless term used only to insult playstyles one doesn't like.



Chaosmancer said:


> Ah, I see the problem. You assume that because I'm fine with players saying "I roll insight" that all they need to do is say "persuasion 23" and that's it. They never come up with clever approaches.
> 
> Well, once more, assumptions are dangerous things. Yes, I would allow "I want to roll persuasion to convince the guards to let us go, we're heroes of the city after all". But, that doesn't mean I would allows "Persuasion 23" and just go with it. And my players also come up with clever approaches. I'd like to think I encourage that because they know that having a bad idea isn't going to hurt the party necessarily.



Aight, man. If that works for you, have fun. Not my style, personally.



Chaosmancer said:


> Not that I don't also point out to them when they are making a poor decision "So you want to temporarily mind control the guard into letting you go... are you sure about that?"



Umm...


Chaosmancer said:


> So you are perfectly fine with players backing out of moments of fictional importance because their mechanics don't match up with the challenge.
> 
> Roll playing is the term you are looking for to describe that.



???



Chaosmancer said:


> Umm, you might want to reread your post
> 
> "Neither of us said there has to be a consequence for there to be a check. If there is no consequence the action is just successful (ie, no check)"



No, you might want to re-read my post



Charlaquin said:


> Oofta said:
> 
> 
> > Whereas I would say that there doesn't need to be a meaningful cost of failure other than you did not succeed. Sometimes there will be a cost, other times there won't. If I think failure would have no meaningful consequence *I'm not going to make something up just to meet some arbitrary requirement of "failure has to have a cost".*
> ...


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## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I have to disagree here. I think 3rd/PF plays better when you do it like 5th than when you play it like 3rd/PF. But to be fair, I’m way more interested in the answer to “what do you do?” than i am in the answer to “what did you roll?” And I might be closer to “ignoring the dice” than I am to “rolling with it,” though I still consider myself middle-path.



I mean, I agree with you on that, but I also think 3e and Pathfinder are... (warning: opinion incoming) bad systems. Running them like 5e helps address some of the problems with those systems. One certainly could design a game to work better with the players declare actions style of task resolution. I would argue that 4e is an example of such a system.


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## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Neither are those of us who say there must be a cost or consequence for there to be a check. If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, but no cost or consequence, then the action is successful.




Which is fine, it's just not what the rules clearly state:


Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
Is a task so inappropriate or impossible — such as hitting the moon with an arrow — that it can’t work?

If the answer to both of these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.​
There is no mention of no cost or consequence, just a chance of failure.  I really don't know how much clearer the rules can be. 

As always, feel free to add whatever rules float your boat in your campaign.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Which is fine, it's just not what the rules clearly state:
> Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
> Is a task so inappropriate or impossible — such as hitting the moon with an arrow — that it can’t work?
> 
> ...




Sure. "This is how the books say you're supposed to run 5e" is Iserith's hill, not mine. I, personally, care more about the results of different DMing approaches in actual play, and in my experience, requiring all three criteria leads to a better play experience, though of course your mileage may vary.

And to be honest, while I agree with Iserith and Bawylie's interpretations of the section in question, along with DMG pages 236-237, "The Role of Dice," I very much doubt that it is in line with the developers' intent, given what I've seen of Mearls', Crawford's, and Perkins' DMing.


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## Bawylie (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> First of all, I can't quote the entire DMG.  What I was addressing was a very specific claim that the rules say that there has to be a meaningful consequence for failure as a prerequisite for rolling dice.  That's obviously not true, or the rules contradict themselves in the space of a couple of paragraphs.
> 
> Then again, I don't claim to be a rules lawyer and I look at this kind of stuff as general guidance and not "thou must playeth this way" so I have no clue by what you mean "that's a whopper".  I've stated how I run the game.  I don't see a reason for there to be a meaningful chance of failure as a prerequisite for a roll of the die.  If you do, run your game that way.




That’s precisely my point. Nobody quoting text is purposely ignoring context, but they’re citing passages relevant to their point. Specific passages for specific circumstances. They can’t quote the whole DMG. But they’re (and you’re) leaving out of context is functional, not an attempt to deceive.


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## iserith (Apr 16, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I have to disagree here. I think 3rd/PF plays better when you do it like 5th than when you play it like 3rd/PF.




I'll have to take your word for it on that. I haven't played D&D 3.Xe in some time and perhaps the game is "backwards compatible" in that way. I wouldn't want to go the other way and bring players asking to make checks to perform tasks into D&D 5e in any case which was certainly a part of the common D&D 3.Xe approach in my experience.

I think this is a "systems matter" issue underlying our disagreement, which I know we've had before. I think it matters to the extent the players and DM have some focus on the rules, just perhaps not as much as the overwrought Forge model might imply. I'm going on "middle path" on this position too!


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 16, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This is very,very far afield of my claim. My claim was/is that not calling for a roll unless the action has a logical chance of success, chance of failure, and cost for the attempt or consequence for failure, encourages players to look for ways of resolving actions that don't have a chance of failure or don't have a cost for the attempt or consequence for failure.




So, "actions that don't have a chance of failure" are not "better options"? 

And, if there is no cost for the attempt of consequence of failure, they auto-succeed correct? So, those are options that don't have a chance of failure... I guess that is in the meta since the actions might have a chance to fail in the fiction, but cannot fail in the meta since them failing wouldn't propel the story forward. 



Charlaquin said:


> The thing is, a more successful strategy to avoid situations where you have to use a skill you're bad at is to avoid situations where you have to use a skill. Try to eliminate the chance of failure by coming up with effective approaches, rather than relying on your stats to mitigate the chance of failure.




You say this like it is so easy, that people can just decide to take actions that have no chance of failing. And, now not only are those options better, but they are more effective approaches as well. 

I'm curious, thinking on my character who is locked in a prison cell. Let us say there is a guard, so you won't auto-success from there being no consequences, what is the best and most effective option that leaves no chance of failure? What would a warlock player do, that uses no mechanics and no skills to automatically succeed in escaping? 



Charlaquin said:


> Where are you getting this idea from?




Your own statements. There must be a consequence for failure. There must be consequences for not acting. Your only hope as a player is to come up with a plan so iron-clad that it has a near zero percent chance of failure, or risk the situation deteriorating. These are the statements you have been arguing, that is where I am getting this idea from. 



Charlaquin said:


> No, we have an _action_ that can fail, being resolved by a _check_ that cannot. That's why it's important to distinguish between the action the character performs and the check the player must make to resolve it.




But this is a distinction you have added to the game. And how do you explain this to someone. "Your action could fail, but you can't fail because you cannot fail the roll" It reads like an oxymoron. The only reason is so you can claim some sort of moratorium on checks, that checks must be this other thing that can't interact with the fiction except through specific gates, but I don't get why. 



Charlaquin said:


> Again, _keeping those things in mind_ is not a problem. Conflating the mechanical process of the DC 20 Strength check, the DC 15 Dexterity check, or the attacks made to destroy the manacles with the action of trying to break out of them, trying to slip out of them, or trying to smash them with something is. It leads to confusion, as you pointed out earlier, when you mistake an action that could fail being resolved by a check that could not with an action that could not fail.




My confusion comes from why we need to divide this. A check that cannot fail and an action that can not fail lead to the same narrative result. The same thing happens, either way. If you move 3 ft or 1 yd you have moved the same distance. Yet, you want to divide this, you want to break it into two parts... and the more I think of it the more confused I am. 

If I don't separate "Actions which may lead to a check" from "checks that are called for" I will confuse checks with actions which will lead to me using the wrong name? Maybe you gave me a clear and concise example of how exactly these methods differ a while back, but I don't see it. We are doing the same thing, you just insist on adding extra layers and rules about how it happens. 



Charlaquin said:


> Alright, then I guess that's how you made your decision. I'm not the thought police. The important thing, to me, is that you thought about the situation, thought about what your character would do in that situation, and told me what your character was doing, rather than just telling me the name of a stat you wanted to roll with.




So it is all about having the proper presentation for you? 




Charlaquin said:


> But, see, you're still thinking in terms of action = check. Breaking something is not 90% likely to require a check. _If it does_, yes, it is 90% likely to be Strength based, but I'll also tell you if it requires a check and give you the opportunity to take action to mitigate the risk or to back out if you so choose. "I try to break it with my hands" might result in "Ok, it breaks" or might result in "that'll take a DC (whatever) Strength check, and on a failure (whatever). What do you do?" There's never a situation where you're forced to make a Strength check because the action you described is physical in nature. I'll always tell you the risk, and you are always free to say "On second thought, nah, I'm gonna try something else."




Of course I'm still thinking in terms of the check. So are you. 

Does the action have a chance to succeed? Does the action have a chance to fail? Does the action have consequences? Am I good at that check? 

I can work through the entire process. If there was no chance of failure, of course I'd just do it. There is no chance of failure. Heck, if I can game your system to figure out when there is no consequence you'll imagine large enough to warrant a check, I'll try those too. Not because I want to play my character or try to be clever, but because having a 100% guarantee is an awesome reason to do something when my back is against the wall. 

And from this statement, I can just keep talking to you, laying out a large variety of options, and just pick the one you give the best odds of success. Everytime I hit a point of making a check I can back up, consider a different path, and see if you give that one better odds. 



Charlaquin said:


> Again, you are still making your decisions based on an assumption that action = check. Instead of looking for what stat you're most likely to succeed on a roll with, you would have more success thinking about what your character could do that seems like it would probably work without a roll. And in actual play, with players who are genuinely interested in engaging with the game instead of trying to prove that my DMing style is bad, that's what I find most of my players doing, including ones who are initially reticent about having to describe actions in terms of in-character approach.




An action that has a chance of success, An action that has a chance of failure. An action that has consequences. Once I know all three of those, I know you will call for a roll. How am I supposed to come up with something that has zero chance of failure? What kinds of things allow for that? 

And, how does your system of enforcing all these rules encourage engaging the story? 

My rules for players wanting to do something? Tell me what you want to do. That's the only big rule. If you are too vague, I'll ask for some clarification until I understand what is going on. If they want to do something silly and impossible like throw a mountain, I'll tell them no. 

I don't need three questions to be confirmed. I don't need "I hear you want to do this" goal and approach questioning. I say "here's the story, here's the scene. What do you do?" 

You are adding all these rules and conditions and divisions into the game and claiming it makes the game better, that my way is worse. But as we dig into these rules that you claim are absolute, you seem to be getting frustrated and tied into knots over it. I want to engage in the story, not worry about what extra consequences I'm pulling down upon the party by trying something that makes sense but mechanically would be a poor choice. Or if I'm taking the correct course of action that has no chance of failing. 

I just want to follow the story. 



Charlaquin said:


> Let's not resort to name-calling. Roll-playing is a meaningless term used only to insult playstyles one doesn't like.




I'm not trying to name call, but somehow you seem to think the most important thing is the statistics. You are praising looking to the highest mechanical value for finding your successful strategies, instead of what makes the most sense. 

The barbarian shouldn't back out of rolling persuasion just because they aren't good at it, especially if it was their idea and speech that could switch the tide. That is the moment they should roll, they made a narrative move and it could be awesome, but you seem to advocate them backing up, checking the numbers, looking for ways to nudge in guidance or some bardic inspiration. None of that has to do with their Role in the story. That's all rolling the dice. 




Charlaquin said:


> No, you might want to re-read my post




Ah, you were disagreeing with their assertion of making something up, obviously you've considered all the consequences before the players declared their action. Not considering them on the spot. 

But, since their point was "I don't require consequences for failure to roll the dice" and your response was "If there is no consequence, we don't roll the dice" you can see how you might come across as missing the point.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> So, "actions that don't have a chance of failure" are not "better options"?
> 
> And, if there is no cost for the attempt of consequence of failure, they auto-succeed correct? So, those are options that don't have a chance of failure... I guess that is in the meta since the actions might have a chance to fail in the fiction, but cannot fail in the meta since them failing wouldn't propel the story forward.



What are you talking about?



Chaosmancer said:


> You say this like it is so easy, that people can just decide to take actions that have no chance of failing. And, now not only are those options better, but they are more effective approaches as well.



Look, I don't know how much more plainly I can say it. At my table, if you think of an idea that seems like it would probably work, chances are pretty good that it just will. If there is a risk involved, I will tell you so, and give you the option to proceed, or change tactics. It's really not that hard. 



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm curious, thinking on my character who is locked in a prison cell. Let us say there is a guard, so you won't auto-success from there being no consequences, what is the best and most effective option that leaves no chance of failure? What would a warlock player do, that uses no mechanics and no skills to automatically succeed in escaping?



I don't know, I didn't plan out a foolproof escape plan for you. Try something, and I'll use my best judgment to adjudicate it.



Chaosmancer said:


> Your own statements. There must be a consequence for failure.



Then you are still not understanding me. If there is not a consequence for failure, I'm not going to make one up out of thin air. I'm just going to let you succeed.



Chaosmancer said:


> There must be consequences for not acting.



What does this even mean?



Chaosmancer said:


> Your only hope as a player is to come up with a plan so iron-clad that it has a near zero percent chance of failure, or risk the situation deteriorating. These are the statements you have been arguing, that is where I am getting this idea from.



In other words, you are reading my statements as uncharitably as possible, and then claiming that I am uncharitable in my adjudication. It's clear that you are not making an earnest attempt to understand my DMing style, so unless you actually come to one of my games to see it firsthand, you're just going to have to take my word for it that it is really not that hard to be successful.



Chaosmancer said:


> But this is a distinction you have added to the game.



No, it's really not. The Player's handbook describes an ability check as follows:


> "To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier. As with other d20 rolls, apply bonuses and penalties, and compare the total to the DC. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success—the creature overcomes the Challenge at hand. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective or makes progress combined with a setback determined by the GM."



That is distinct from an action, which the PHB describes this way:


> "The players describe what they want to do (...) Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action."



An action is something a character does in the world. A check is a mechanical process a player might or might not need to perform to help the DM determine the outcome of an action.



Chaosmancer said:


> And how do you explain this to someone. "Your action could fail, but you can't fail because you cannot fail the roll" It reads like an oxymoron. The only reason is so you can claim some sort of moratorium on checks, that checks must be this other thing that can't interact with the fiction except through specific gates, but I don't get why.



You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be. It doesn't require an explanation. Here's how it actually goes in my game:
*Rogue:* I use my theives' tools to pick the lock.
*Me:* Ok, that'll take about 10 minutes and a successful DC 15 Dexterity check.
*Rogue:* I have +7 with Thieves' Tools and Reliable Talent, do I still need to roll?
*Me:* Nah, you're good, you can totally pick this lock with 10 minutes of work.
*Rogue:* Cool, let's do it!
*Me:* *Makes note of 10 minutes passing* Ok, the door unlocks with a click.



Chaosmancer said:


> My confusion comes from why we need to divide this. A check that cannot fail and an action that can not fail lead to the same narrative result. The same thing happens, either way. If you move 3 ft or 1 yd you have moved the same distance. Yet, you want to divide this, you want to break it into two parts... and the more I think of it the more confused I am.
> 
> If I don't separate "Actions which may lead to a check" from "checks that are called for" I will confuse checks with actions which will lead to me using the wrong name? Maybe you gave me a clear and concise example of how exactly these methods differ a while back, but I don't see it. We are doing the same thing, you just insist on adding extra layers and rules about how it happens.



Look, all I'm doing is pointing out that action and check are two different things. You're the one confusing yourself with all this meaningless pedantry.




Chaosmancer said:


> So it is all about having the proper presentation for you?



No. "I roll perception" and "I listen at the door for the sound of other creatures" are qualitatively different.



Chaosmancer said:


> Of course I'm still thinking in terms of the check. So are you.



No, you're still thinking in terms of _action=check_. You should be thinking in terms of action as the thing your character does and check as a mechanical process that is sometimes required of you to perform to find out what happens as a result of your character's action.



Chaosmancer said:


> Does the action have a chance to succeed? Does the action have a chance to fail? Does the action have consequences? Am I good at that check?
> 
> I can work through the entire process. If there was no chance of failure, of course I'd just do it. There is no chance of failure. Heck, if I can game your system to figure out when there is no consequence you'll imagine large enough to warrant a check, I'll try those too. Not because I want to play my character or try to be clever, but because having a 100% guarantee is an awesome reason to do something when my back is against the wall.
> 
> And from this statement, I can just keep talking to you, laying out a large variety of options, and just pick the one you give the best odds of success. Everytime I hit a point of making a check I can back up, consider a different path, and see if you give that one better odds.



Something wrong with that?



Chaosmancer said:


> An action that has a chance of success, An action that has a chance of failure. An action that has consequences. Once I know all three of those, I know you will call for a roll. How am I supposed to come up with something that has zero chance of failure? What kinds of things allow for that?



By imagining your character as an entity in a world that behaves more or less like the real one. Think about what that character might do in the situation being narrated, and what might happen as a result. If you are uncertain of the results, there's a good chance it will require a check. If you're pretty confident about what you think would happen as a result, there's a good chance that is exactly what will happen. Describe your character's actions accordingly, and I will do the same. If I am uncertain of the outcome, I will ask you for a check to help me decide what happens. Easy.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, how does your system of enforcing all these rules encourage engaging the story?



By making the above the best way to succeed.



Chaosmancer said:


> My rules for players wanting to do something? Tell me what you want to do. That's the only big rule. If you are too vague, I'll ask for some clarification until I understand what is going on. If they want to do something silly and impossible like throw a mountain, I'll tell them no.



Me too. The fact that you think the process looks different in my games is a clear indication that you are not understanding me.



Chaosmancer said:


> I don't need three questions to be confirmed. I don't need "I hear you want to do this" goal and approach questioning. I say "here's the story, here's the scene. What do you do?"



The three questions are entirely on my end. The only thing I need from the players is what they want to accomplish and what their character does to try to pull that off. "I hear ____, I need to know ____" is just my preferred way of asking for clarification. I like that format because it acknowledges and honors what I was able to infer from what the player did say, while making it clear what I still require clarification about, and gives them the opportunity to correct me if my inference was incorrect.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are adding all these rules and conditions and divisions into the game and claiming it makes the game better, that my way is worse. But as we dig into these rules that you claim are absolute,



Woah, back up a second there. When did I ever make such a claim? That would be a very strange thing for me to have done, because it's not something I believe.



Chaosmancer said:


> you seem to be getting frustrated and tied into knots over it.



I'm getting frustrated by your seemingly deliberate attempts to misunderstand me. I have been quite clear. My method is not complex. You are the one tying yourself into knots trying to make it more complicated than it is.



Chaosmancer said:


> I want to engage in the story, not worry about what extra consequences I'm pulling down upon the party by trying something that makes sense but mechanically would be a poor choice. Or if I'm taking the correct course of action that has no chance of failing.
> 
> I just want to follow the story.



So just engage in the story. I promise you, that is the best way to be successful in my games. Just imagine the scenario, imagine your character in it, describe your character doing whatever you think makes sense for your character to do, and most of the time, I'll just describe what happens as a result, which most of the time will be about what you expected to happen. Sometimes, I will tell you that I need you to make a check to determine what happens next, and what will happen if you fail. Then you can decide if you want to go through with that action, shore up your odds with some Bardic Inspiration or whatever, or back out and try something else.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not trying to name call, but somehow you seem to think the most important thing is the statistics. You are praising looking to the highest mechanical value for finding your successful strategies, instead of what makes the most sense.



Not at all. The story is the most important thing. Do what you think your character would do. If what your character would do is avoid things they are not good at when stakes are high... That seems plenty realistic to me. And it's none of my business whether or not you arrived at that decision by looking at your stats.



Chaosmancer said:


> The barbarian shouldn't back out of rolling persuasion just because they aren't good at it, especially if it was their idea and speech that could switch the tide. That is the moment they should roll, they made a narrative move and it could be awesome, but you seem to advocate them backing up, checking the numbers, looking for ways to nudge in guidance or some bardic inspiration. None of that has to do with their Role in the story. That's all rolling the dice.



Again, this misunderstanding of my method is coming from you thinking in terms of action = check. If the barbarian's player has an idea for an awesome speech they think could switch the tide, they should just go ahead and give that speech. If they aren't an expert wordsmith and can't think of a way to make it sound good, that's fine, they can phrase it in terms of goal and approach, "I try to convince the king by playing to his sense of honor and tradition" or whatever. There's a good chance they won't _need_ to roll. You're so worried about not wanting to have to make a check that you might have a chance of failing, you're completely overlooking the very good possibility that no check will be called for. And if it will be, I'll give you fair warning. There is absolutely no risk in describing a social action with your 8-charisma barbarian. Worst case scenario, I'll let you know exactly what the risks are, and if you're still that worried about failing, you can say "nah, nevermind."



Chaosmancer said:


> Ah, you were disagreeing with their assertion of making something up, obviously you've considered all the consequences before the players declared their action. Not considering them on the spot.
> 
> But, since their point was "I don't require consequences for failure to roll the dice" and your response was "If there is no consequence, we don't roll the dice" you can see how you might come across as missing the point.



No, their point was "I don't make up consequences just because a roll was called for" and my response was "neither do I." I call for a roll _because_ there are consequences for the action failing, not the other way around.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 16, 2019)

[MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] I think you should give up. It just ain't gonna happen.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 16, 2019)

iserith said:


> It seems like madness to me to play every game the same way.



Or, conversely, if there's a particular way that one likes to play then choose games that work that way.

But D&D gets put under a lot of pressure in this respect because of it's extremely wide uptake by RPGers with very diverse preferences.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I see no reason to always have a cost of failure, I think it actually detracts from the game because I don't want to discourage creativity.



To be honest this doesn't make sense to me, because the two things aren't related.

The idea of a _cost for failure_ is about what is at stake in an action declaration. If something is at stake then there is, almost inherently I think, a cost for failure - because if you fail you lose out on what was at stake. (And if nothing is at stake, then what would a check be for?)

But the idea of _creativity_ seems to have nothing to do with this. Sometimes being creative might increase the chances of success (eg if a player comes up with a way to achieve some goal using a method in which his/her PC is strong rather than weak). Sometimes being creative might have little impact on the chance of success (eg defeating a group of enemies by using a Fly spell to strafe them might seem more creative than blowing them up using Fireball, but the chance of success may be comparable in both cases - especially because, in D&D, spell casting is generally automatically successful). Sometimes being creative might even reduce the chance of success, but be desirable nevertheless (eg killing the group of enemies by luring them over a cliff using Major Image might be trickier than either strafing them or blowing them up, but the elegance might be an independent pay-off of some sort).

They seem two quite independent phenomena.



Chaosmancer said:


> I find times when I can both pressure the PCs if they choose not to act and punish them for failing to be uncommon at best.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Also, I don't like rolling only during narratively important events, because I think that removes rolling too much from the game.



I think that these two things are connected: if gameplay consists primarily of narratively important events then (i) dice rolling won't be removed, and (ii) there will almost always be pressure on the PCs which, if their players' checks fail, provides a springboard for the narration of consequences for failure.



Chaosmancer said:


> I would fight like crazy to avoid situations where I had to use a skill I was bad at, to the point where I'd cede the narrative to another player. And, if your play involves leaving players no choice but to hope for the best, because both acting and not acting have dire consequences... that can be fun occasionally, but wouldn't it be better for the players to seek out these moments instead of being driven to them?



Well, as my previous post indicates I think RPGing is more fun when the main focus of play is on narratively important events: that is, the same sort of stuff that tends to be the focus of adventure fiction and drama.

And my own experience in this sort of game is that if players have the choice between declaring an action that their PC will have only a modest chance of success in, or just conceding whatever it is that is at stake, then they will declare the action. For instance, I see this in my 4e game quite regularly - the player of the low-CHA fighter with no social skills nevertheless has his character talk to NPCs and try to persuade them of things, because (1) the player doesn't want his PC to just be standing there looking like a fool, and (2) because he ha views about what the NPCs should do, and wants those views to be realised. It's the same sort of reason that means that the wizard fights back when attacked, even though the wizard is a relatively weak combatant.



Chaosmancer said:


> would you call for a DC 5 check, if there were high enough stakes?



Obviously I can't speak for other posters. But my answer to this question is Yes. (Although once the check is called for, if we do the maths and see that it can't fail - eg +4 or greater bonus on the DC 5 check - then the dice may not physically need to be rolled.)



Chaosmancer said:


> My character didn't matter at all, only my statistics.



I'm intrigued that you divorce these things. In RPGing I tend to find them closely connected (although not necessarily co-extensive).



Chaosmancer said:


> you are praising me for my roleplaying, with no regards to any role.



Well, Gygax in his PHB (p 18) did say that "The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class (or multi-class)." In your example, the role is that of being a physically weak but magically puissant and cunning warlock - that's the role you're playing in deciding to have your PC rely on magical deception rather than brute strength to escape the cell.



Chaosmancer said:


> Not that I don't also point out to them when they are making a poor decision "So you want to temporarily mind control the guard into letting you go... are you sure about that?"



This is a somewhat separate thing from the other points in this post: on its face, what you say here seems to be the GM telling the player what action to declare or not to declare.

I appreciate that, especially in the heat of the moment, the GM can have a special duty to ensure that action declarations fit the genre and preconceptions of the game, and respect good taste and the established fiction. A silly example given by Luke Crane in a Burning Wheel rulebook: "No roll is allowed for the chance to find beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet!"

But I can't easily imagine a D&D game where mind controlling a guard into letting one go would be genre-breaking or bad taste in this way. It seems more like the very paradigm of genre-appropriateness: if it's good enough for Obi-Wan, it's good enough for a PC in a FRPG!


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Apr 16, 2019)

As with intelligence based skills there is no "one size fits all" answer.

If I as a DM where a great actor, the players would be able to use their own judgment of the performance if the NPC is lying or not. Skills really aren't needed, and I don't think it's inappropriate to lump skills in the optional rules category.

However, if the DM is a less than brilliant actor they are unlikely to be able to convey levels or veracity and skill in duplicity accurately and consistently. So the skill rolls substitute.


----------



## Sadras (Apr 16, 2019)

Do posters in this thread know that GoT season 8 has started?


----------



## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Do posters in this thread know that GoT season 8 has started?




Much like the eponymous a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it, if a show starts on a premium cable channel you don't subscribe to does it matter?


----------



## Sadras (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Much like the eponymous a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it, if a show starts on a premium cable channel you don't subscribe to does it matter?




Damn, that's no good!

Well I'd invite you to come watch it at my place, but it might be cheaper subscribing to the premium cable channel


----------



## iserith (Apr 16, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Or, conversely, if there's a particular way that one likes to play then choose games that work that way.




That seems like a better choice in my view.


----------



## Yardiff (Apr 16, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Do posters in this thread know that GoT season 8 has started?




I personally didn't like the books so live-action show about them doesn't hold any interest.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 16, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 16, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> But ... what if it was done with MUPPETS?
> 
> Anyway, this thread has nearly 1,000 comments. I see the topic, and I see the number of comments ....
> 
> um ... anyone care to explain this one to me?




TL,DR:  Some people are exasperated that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has a fun way to play 5e


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## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> But ... what if it was done with MUPPETS?
> 
> Anyway, this thread has nearly 1,000 comments. I see the topic, and I see the number of comments ....
> 
> um ... anyone care to explain this one to me?




Game of Thrones?  Everyone you care about dies.  If they haven't died yet, they're about to die.

Or did you mean the never-ending thread?  You have two basic camps.  

One takes what I consider a very hard-core approach that a PC cannot ask to do a skill check (i.e. "I make an insight check to see if they're lying") and instead have to state goal and method.  Depending on who you ask there also has to be a requirement for a significant cost of failure.  Oh, and in the case of the OP the player could not ask for a skill check because players can't ask for skill checks.  Only the DM can call for a skill check and they won't because there's no chance of failure.

In addition, players should avoid skill checks at all costs and instead describe how they're accomplishing the goal in such a way that it's guaranteed to succeed.

The other (that I support) doesn't really care how people say what they're doing or how as long as it's clear.  If it's not clear, I just ask for clarification.  As far as the the OP I'd ask for (or allow) an insight check because people meta-game even if they don't realize it and if I don't ask (or allow) for one there was no attempt at deception.

Now I'll probably be accused of completely misrepresenting the former opinion and not being sincere.  That and I run boring games where all people do is sit around grunting at each other and rolling dice because I don't let people bypass the skill check entirely by describing how they disable a trap.


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## Yardiff (Apr 16, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> But ... what if it was done with MUPPETS?
> 
> Anyway, this thread has nearly 1,000 comments. I see the topic, and I see the number of comments ....
> 
> um ... anyone care to explain this one to me?




They would have to be Dark Crystal style muppets, then maybe.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Do posters in this thread know that GoT season 8 has started?




I got pretty disillusioned with that show after the billionth time they turned a sex scene that was consensual in the books into another rape scene.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> They would have to be Dark Crystal style muppets, then maybe.




Or just for [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], muppet paladin gnomes.  So cute!  So fuzzy!  So holier-than-thou!


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## Charlaquin (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> The other (that I support) doesn't really care how people say what they're doing or how *as long as it's clear.*  If it's not clear, I just ask for clarification.



The thing is, our camp doesn’t care how people say what they’re doing either. It’s just that we don’t find “I use [skill] to [do the thing]” clear. So, we ask for clarification - “Ok, so you want to [do the thing], but I’m unclear what your character is actually doing to pull that off. Could you please elaborate?”



Oofta said:


> Now I'll probably be accused of completely misrepresenting the former opinion and not being sincere.  That and I run boring games where all people do is sit around grunting at each other and rolling dice because *I don't let people bypass the skill check entirely* by describing how they disable a trap.



So, this is a key point of contention. To those of us who perfer a goal and an approach, skill checks are not things that exist independently, to be overcome with a high enough roll or bypassed with a creative approach. A locked door is not a skill check waiting to happen, it’s just a locked door, which can be unlocked through various methods the characters might employ, such as using the key, or casting knock, or picking the lock with thieves’ tools. If the outcome of the attempt to open the lock is in question, then a check is the means of answering that question. That’s why you keep being accused of misrepresenting this style of task resolution. You keep framing it in the terms of your preferred style, which leads to incongruities with the way you are presenting the style and the way it actually looks in play. “Bypass the skill check” is kind of a nonsense phrase in a goal-and-approach framework. I guess maybe you could argue that abilities like Reliable Talent kind of allow you to bypass skill checks, because they modify the set of possible results on a check being made. But a character disarming a trap without making a check is not “bypassing a check” under goal-and-approach, any more than a character tying their shoes without a check is.


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## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

[MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], I don't want to waste time on this any more.  Obviously if someone has a key to a door they don't need to use lockpicks.   If they can bypass a trap by taking another route, they take the other route.

On the other hand if they have to disable a simple trap (complex traps are a different beast) or unlock a door with lockpicks, I will ask for a check no matter how they describe it.

That's just not how I run it.  Run it differently at your table? As long as people are having fun you're doing it right.


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## Satyrn (Apr 16, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> TL,DR:  Some people are exasperated that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has a fun way to play 5e




I roll an insight check to see if Dave's telling the truth . . . 13!

Does that beat the DC?


----------



## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I roll an insight check to see if Dave's telling the truth . . . 13!
> 
> Does that beat the DC?




The _real_ question is, if he thinks he's telling the truth, is he really telling the truth even if it's not true?  What if he thinks he's _probably_ telling the truth but isn't certain?   What if he starts posting in all caps that YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!


----------



## Satyrn (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> The _real_ question is, if he thinks he's telling the truth, is he really telling the truth even if it's not true?  What if he thinks he's _probably_ telling the truth but isn't certain?   What if he starts posting in all caps that YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!




I dig through my Socratic Philosophy textbook in search of the answers to these weighty questions  . . .*Rolls his lucky d20*. . . 7!

What ability modifier do I use? And can I add my proficiency bonus to the roll to because of my philosophy degree?

. . .

Er, who's the DM of this thread anyway?


----------



## 5ekyu (Apr 16, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Game of Thrones?  Everyone you care about dies.  If they haven't died yet, they're about to die.
> 
> Or did you mean the never-ending thread?  You have two basic camps.
> 
> ...



You left out always  telegraphed giant rolling wine bottles and creativity, you fiend!!!!


----------



## Oofta (Apr 16, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> You left out always  telegraphed giant rolling wine bottles and creativity, you fiend!!!!




Must ... resist ... snarky ... comment ... that ... will ... continue ... flame ... war!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 17, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], I don't want to waste time on this any more.  Obviously if someone has a key to a door they don't need to use lockpicks.   If they can bypass a trap by taking another route, they take the other route.
> 
> On the other hand if they have to disable a simple trap (complex traps are a different beast) or unlock a door with lockpicks, I will ask for a check no matter how they describe it.
> 
> That's just not how I run it.  Run it differently at your table? As long as people are having fun you're doing it right.




That’s fine, but after all these pages you could at least characterize what we’ve been saying with a modicum of fairness.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 17, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That’s fine, but after all these pages you could at least characterize what we’ve been saying with a modicum of fairness.




This post had absolutely nothing to say about how you run your games.  

I obviously disagree with you on several points, I'm just relating how I run my game.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 17, 2019)

Oofta said:


> This post had absolutely nothing to say about how you run your games.
> 
> I obviously disagree with you on several points, I'm just relating how I run my game.




I was referring to the previous page.


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## Oofta (Apr 17, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I was referring to the previous page.




Ah, well then thanks for confirming that I will be accused of misrepresenting you.  

I know I'm a bit sarcastic and I obviously run my game differently but without going to actual quotes I did my best.  

Was I mistaken? The Cliff Notes version:

Players should not declare use of skills, the DM calls for skills if necessary.
There should never be a skill check unless there is a significant penalty for failure.
The DM should never call for (or allow a player to ask for) a skill check if there is no chance of failure (i.e. no insight check if the NPC is telling the truth like the OP).
Players should always avoid a skill check if possible, which includes describing for example how they disarm a trap.*
Traps and challenges should be broadcast so that they are obvious


 I think I'm probably missing one but I'm drawing a blank. I'm also not saying you personally run your game that way.

Now you could give me blocks of text on _why_ you prefer this style, but I don't really see a point.  You like playing the game this way?  Your players enjoy it?  Fantastic!  _

*I have no problem with people bypassing a trap altogether by taking another route, but if disarming a simple trap in my game you need to make a roll. _


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> What are you talking about?




Sorry if I am phrasing my summaries poorly. 

You said that you aren't saying your players will take "Better options" just options that have no chance of failure. 

Also, an option than has no meaningful consequence, you won't call for a roll, it will just auto-succeed. Meaning in the meta (since you are very specific in what you want to mean) those action would be considered actions that cannot fail, because the DM will make them succeed. 




Charlaquin said:


> Look, I don't know how much more plainly I can say it. At my table, if you think of an idea that seems like it would probably work, chances are pretty good that it just will. If there is a risk involved, I will tell you so, and give you the option to proceed, or change tactics. It's really not that hard.




But you also keep saying that you aren't trying to claim your players are picking better ways, or more effective ways. 

They are just the ways that will succeed. Because they come up with ideas that are likely to work. 

There is an implicit thrust to this, that people not using your set of requirements are getting players who are not taking those actions, who are not coming up with actions that are likely to succeed or ideas that will likely work. If your system creates those types of actions, it seems you are implying we don't.m 

I understand the order of operations you are operating under, but I don't see what it is meant to achieve that my approach of just asking the players to tell me what they want to do, and being prepared for things to become skill checks, doesn't. 



Charlaquin said:


> I don't know, I didn't plan out a foolproof escape plan for you. Try something, and I'll use my best judgment to adjudicate it.




I might have been unclear. 

I'm not coming up with a plan. I wanted to see what your plan was. 

You're system incentivizes players to take actions that have no chance of failing, so, in that scenario, what is the foolproof plan that your system would incentivize you to make. I can think of plenty of plans that have a chance of failing, some maybe involving multiple rolls. But I'm not trying to understand myself, I'm trying to understand you. 




Charlaquin said:


> In other words, you are reading my statements as uncharitably as possible, and then claiming that I am uncharitable in my adjudication. It's clear that you are not making an earnest attempt to understand my DMing style, so unless you actually come to one of my games to see it firsthand, you're just going to have to take my word for it that it is really not that hard to be successful.




I was going to respond to the part right above this, but this seemed like a better point. 

How am I being uncharitable? 

If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, and consequences for the action. You will call for a roll. If there are consequences they must make the situation worse for the player than it started out as. There must also be consequences for not acting. The goal is not to roll the dice at all. 

The only ways to avoid rolling the dice, would be to come up with a plan that cannot fail (removing the requirement of the action having a chance of failure) or to come up with a plan that has no consequence for failure (removing that structure instead). You could also avoid rolling by coming up with a plan that has no chance of success, but that means auto-failure, so that's not ideal. 

This is what you have said, this is your system. Now, maybe you mean "the action has a decent chance of failure" instead "chance of failure" but just from what you have said, I don't want to assume that. 

Now, it is likely we would call for rolls much of the same time, I might just call for more than you do. But, I don't see the difference you are trying to put between our two methods unless you are more strict in rulings or consequences than I am. Otherwise, this entire discussion has come about because I occasionally allow rolls you wouldn't instead of any major difference in our adjudication of rolls. 



Charlaquin said:


> You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be. It doesn't require an explanation. Here's how it actually goes in my game:
> *Rogue:* I use my theives' tools to pick the lock.
> *Me:* Ok, that'll take about 10 minutes and a successful DC 15 Dexterity check.
> *Rogue:* I have +7 with Thieves' Tools and Reliable Talent, do I still need to roll?
> ...




That's pretty much how I would handle it. Except for the 10 minutes part (but that has nothing to do with anything we're discussing) I just wouldn't tell them it was a DC 15 check. Might tell them it looks like a fairly basic lock if they have the time to study it. 

The player asked to do something. They easily can beat the DC due to their abilities. They succeed. 

Where is the need for your three step process and division between actions and checks? Since that gets resolved the same way... what do you think I'm doing differently? 



Charlaquin said:


> Look, all I'm doing is pointing out that action and check are two different things. You're the one confusing yourself with all this meaningless pedantry.




Right, you insisted something I said was wrong, because these two things are distinct. I cannot have checks which do not require a roll, because all checks require a roll only actions might not require a roll. 

And as I try and dig into this to understand why what I was saying was wrong... I'm finding almost no meaningful distinction, nor a reason you had to call out my statement as wrong. You just had to point out that you follow very strict definitions of the terms that have little impact on the game itself? 



Charlaquin said:


> No. "I roll perception" and "I listen at the door for the sound of other creatures" are qualitatively different.




Why? 



Charlaquin said:


> No, you're still thinking in terms of _action=check_. You should be thinking in terms of action as the thing your character does and check as a mechanical process that is sometimes required of you to perform to find out what happens as a result of your character's action.
> 
> Something wrong with that?




Why do you insist on this? Is it really that hard for you to understand how this works?

"I search the room for clues" is an investigation check. Sure, maybe the DM will just hand me a success, but if they do not it will be an investigation check to investigate the room. "I shove the goblin off the cliff" is the shove action, which is an athletics check, maybe the DM just wants to get the fight over with and my fighter will succeed, but if they do not it will athletics opposed by Goblin Dexterity to shove it off, and the goblin will get a Dex save to catch the edge as well. "I listen through the door to hear what they are saying about the Duke" is a perception check. Maybe the DM will just let me succeed, but if they do not it will be a perception check to hear a conversation through a thick wooden door. 

You want me to divide these, to only think in terms of the actions, but the resolution of actions is done through skill checks. Actions are highly likely to have skill checks follow them. So, thinking only about the action and not considering the mechanics behind the action just seems like poor play. Especially when, if a check is called for at your table, you are going to tell me a DC and a consequence for failure, so I need to already be thinking in mechanical terms not surprised when you say I need to roll perception if I want to accomplish my task. 

As for me having a problem with a player being able to lay out all their options with precise DCs for each, before wasting any time or making any decision... yeah, I have a problem with that. It kind of ruins the narrative. Just like how I really never liked the VATS system in Fallout 3, because all of a sudden I could stop being in the world and pull up a screen of statistics to make the most mathematical optimal choice. You don't know what the mathematical best choice is between shoving past the guards on the stairs, jumping out the window, or leaping for the chandelier. You just know those are options, you are on the 3rd floor and the floor below the chandelier is at least 10 ft down. You have the information your character has, go ahead an make a choice. 



Charlaquin said:


> By imagining your character as an entity in a world that behaves more or less like the real one. Think about what that character might do in the situation being narrated, and what might happen as a result. If you are uncertain of the results, there's a good chance it will require a check. If you're pretty confident about what you think would happen as a result, there's a good chance that is exactly what will happen. Describe your character's actions accordingly, and I will do the same. If I am uncertain of the outcome, I will ask you for a check to help me decide what happens. Easy.




But this has nothing to do with any of what you said. Why is your system about presenting chances of success and failure and consequences for failure and all these different mechanical options if your goal is simply "imagine your character is in the world". That's far simpler. That doesn't require anything you have been talking about. I should know, getting people to think like their character would is my entire goal, yet I never break down their choices into a three step verification process. 

Sure, I think about the likelihood of success, but once they are thinking like their characters then they almost never make choices that have no chance of success. And they don't need to know the consequences for their actions, because those consequences that aren't obvious aren't things that the character is likely to know anyways. They didn't study the chandelier's structural integrity to see that a mistimed jump is going to cause it to rip out of the ceiling. They don't know that. They just know that they might be able to jump to it as one of their choices for avoiding the guards. 

You go on about the process like that is the important part, but I'm reaching the same goal without your process and strict definitions. 




Charlaquin said:


> Me too. The fact that you think the process looks different in my games is a clear indication that you are not understanding me.




And you not understanding me, since you kept telling me I was wrong. 




Charlaquin said:


> Woah, back up a second there. When did I ever make such a claim? That would be a very strange thing for me to have done, because it's not something I believe.




You kept calling me out for not doing things your way, indicating that following these rules make for the best game. I've spent far more of our discussion defending why I said a thing, or trying to understand what I'm doing differently than you than I've spent picking apart your style, because you keep insising I'm not getting it and implying your way is the best way. 




Charlaquin said:


> Not at all. The story is the most important thing. Do what you think your character would do. If what your character would do is avoid things they are not good at when stakes are high... That seems plenty realistic to me. And it's none of my business whether or not you arrived at that decision by looking at your stats.




But you make me highly aware of my stats first. By both assuring that there are consequences for failure if dice are rolled, and by telling me the exact DC, I know my precise chances of success. Once I have that information, I would find it very difficult to ignore that information and make decisions in spite of it. If I know my actions, despite being logical and exactly what I want my character to do, only have a 20% chance of success... then I'm breaking away from the story and instead delving into the mechanics. I know information my character doesn't (the precise odds of success) and so I am going to work off of that information instead of what makes sense for the story. 



Charlaquin said:


> Again, this misunderstanding of my method is coming from you thinking in terms of action = check. If the barbarian's player has an idea for an awesome speech they think could switch the tide, they should just go ahead and give that speech. If they aren't an expert wordsmith and can't think of a way to make it sound good, that's fine, they can phrase it in terms of goal and approach, "I try to convince the king by playing to his sense of honor and tradition" or whatever. There's a good chance they won't _need_ to roll. You're so worried about not wanting to have to make a check that you might have a chance of failing, you're completely overlooking the very good possibility that no check will be called for. And if it will be, I'll give you fair warning. There is absolutely no risk in describing a social action with your 8-charisma barbarian. Worst case scenario, I'll let you know exactly what the risks are, and if you're still that worried about failing, you can say "nah, nevermind."




So, I'm supposed to ignore any sort of mechanics until you pull aside the curtain and decide it is time to talk about them? There are plenty of reasons the King might not be swayed by my speech, and plenty of ways I could flub it up. Maybe I'm just against the idea of undoing player actions. I feel like at your table, the closest I would come would be asking "okay, what if I said something kind of like this" instead of staying in character and talking to the king, because the idea of "unringing a bell" once there is a chance for failure bothers the heck out of me. It makes me want to be too risk averse.



pemerton said:


> And my own experience in this sort of game is that if players have the choice between declaring an action that their PC will have only a modest chance of success in, or just conceding whatever it is that is at stake, then they will declare the action. For instance, I see this in my 4e game quite regularly - the player of the low-CHA fighter with no social skills nevertheless has his character talk to NPCs and try to persuade them of things, because (1) the player doesn't want his PC to just be standing there looking like a fool, and (2) because he ha views about what the NPCs should do, and wants those views to be realised. It's the same sort of reason that means that the wizard fights back when attacked, even though the wizard is a relatively weak combatant.




See, I disagree that it will happen under the system of consequences, and those consequences being worse than the status quo. 

If the Fighter wishes not to look like a fool, attempting to do something could be far worse, because then they would be the fool who put their foot in their mouth and ruined the negotiation instead of letting the bard handle it. If there was no guarantee they could make things worse, I would agree with you, but if that guarantee exists then they are more likely to back out and express their desires by convincing the bard to agree with them rather than doing anything directly. 

"Better to let people think you are a fool than open your mouth and prove it" as the saying goes. 



pemerton said:


> I'm intrigued that you divorce these things. In RPGing I tend to find them closely connected (although not necessarily co-extensive).




I usually don't. After character creation and deciding what my character is (Cop, doctor, Musician, Jeweler) I have a general understanding of what I'm good at. That does influence my play, a character with high nature I tend to play as knowing a lot and caring a lot about nature. But, I generally respond with what I want my character to do, and then look to see what kind of roll that would be. Whether it is a good roll or not doesn't usually matter, because I've made a decision on my course of action that makes sense for what I think about my character. 

In the example I was talking about though... I just looked at the highest number on my sheet. I didn't consider this character at all, I just figured out what his highest number was and what action that would correspond to. I went backwards, and then got told that was great roleplaying. 




pemerton said:


> This is a somewhat separate thing from the other points in this post: on its face, what you say here seems to be the GM telling the player what action to declare or not to declare.
> 
> I appreciate that, especially in the heat of the moment, the GM can have a special duty to ensure that action declarations fit the genre and preconceptions of the game, and respect good taste and the established fiction. A silly example given by Luke Crane in a Burning Wheel rulebook: "No roll is allowed for the chance to find beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet!"
> 
> But I can't easily imagine a D&D game where mind controlling a guard into letting one go would be genre-breaking or bad taste in this way. It seems more like the very paradigm of genre-appropriateness: if it's good enough for Obi-Wan, it's good enough for a PC in a FRPG!




It's more about making players aware of what they are asking to do. 

I've had players who want to do something like cast charm person on the guard, because charming the guard to make them let you go is a good plan in the immediate. I then remind them, that while they are perfectly fine to go forward with that action, they would be using magic to mind control an officer of the law, and that officer will be aware of their tampering after only a minute. 

Or, wanting to swipe things from an NPC's pocket, and not remembering that when I set the scene, there are over forty thieves watching you all like hawks and they won't take kindly to be stolen from. 

Generally, I get a "oh right, duh" because it was just the player not fully understanding the scene or the action they were taking. Other times I get the grin and the "OH yeah, that's the point" type answer. And then things progress from there.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 17, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Sorry if I am phrasing my summaries poorly.
> 
> You said that you aren't saying your players will take "Better options" just options that have no chance of failure.



Ok, I see the confusion here. You said:


Chaosmancer said:


> I think what most got me in the post you quoted was Charlaquin's claim that punishing players makes them look for better options instead of relying on their best skills.




I said:


Charlaquin said:


> This is very,very far afield of my claim. My claim was/is that not calling for a roll unless the action has a logical chance of success, chance of failure, and cost for the attempt or consequence for failure, encourages players to look for ways of resolving actions that don't have a chance of failure or don't have a cost for the attempt or consequence for failure.




You assumed that the part of your quote I took issue with was "makes them look for better options." In fact, I took issue with the "punishing players" part, along with the fact that your quote implies that "looking for better options" and "relying on their best skills" are mutually exclusive things.



Chaosmancer said:


> Also, an option than has no meaningful consequence, you won't call for a roll, it will just auto-succeed. Meaning in the meta (since you are very specific in what you want to mean) those action would be considered actions that cannot fail, because the DM will make them succeed.



...Weird way to phrase that, but ok, I think I see what you mean.



Chaosmancer said:


> But you also keep saying that you aren't trying to claim your players are picking better ways, or more effective ways.



Keep trying to claim? I corrected your misrepresentation of my stance one time.



Chaosmancer said:


> There is an implicit thrust to this, that people not using your set of requirements are getting players who are not taking those actions, who are not coming up with actions that are likely to succeed or ideas that will likely work. If your system creates those types of actions, it seems you are implying we don't.



I have made no such claim. I claim that my way of doing things encourages players to look for ways of resolving actions that don't have a chance of failure or don't have a cost for the attempt or consequence for failure. In contrast to your assertion that my way of doing things punishes players and in so doing makes them rely on their best skills. I am not attacking your way of doing things, I am defending mine.



Chaosmancer said:


> I understand the order of operations you are operating under, but I don't see what it is meant to achieve that my approach of just asking the players to tell me what they want to do, and being prepared for things to become skill checks, doesn't.



You keep suggesting that my way of doing things is somehow not "just asking the players to tell me what they want to do, and being prepared for things to become skill checks." This is not the case.



Chaosmancer said:


> I might have been unclear.
> 
> I'm not coming up with a plan. I wanted to see what your plan was.



I don't have a plan. It is not my role as DM to come up with a plan for the player to escape. My role is to adjudicate the player's plan.



Chaosmancer said:


> You're system incentivizes players to take actions that have no chance of failing, so, in that scenario, what is the foolproof plan that your system would incentivize you to make. I can think of plenty of plans that have a chance of failing, some maybe involving multiple rolls.



My system incentivizes players to think in terms of what their character is doing, in order to maximize their ability to avoid having to make checks. Again, if you just imagine your character existing in the world and describe what they do, most of the time what happens as a result will be pretty much what you expected to happen. If you have a pretty good idea about the most likely outcome of your character doing a thing, that's probably exactly what's going to happen. In the case that something bad might happen, you'll get fair warning about that. You're the one trying to force this "players need to come up with foolproof plans to succeed" narrative, not me.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm trying to understand you.



All evidence to the contrary.



Chaosmancer said:


> I was going to respond to the part right above this, but this seemed like a better point.
> 
> How am I being uncharitable?
> 
> If there is a chance of success, a chance of failure, and consequences for the action. You will call for a roll. If there are consequences they must make the situation worse for the player than it started out as. *There must also be consequences for not acting*. The goal is not to roll the dice at all.



YOU KEEP SAYING THIS, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS!!!



Chaosmancer said:


> The only ways to avoid rolling the dice, would be to come up with a plan that cannot fail (removing the requirement of the action having a chance of failure) or to come up with a plan that has no consequence for failure (removing that structure instead). You could also avoid rolling by coming up with a plan that has no chance of success, but that means auto-failure, so that's not ideal.
> 
> This is what you have said, this is your system. Now, maybe you mean "the action has a decent chance of failure" instead "chance of failure" but just from what you have said, I don't want to assume that.



I have literally told you that I mean that.


Charlaquin said:


> Chaosmancer said:
> 
> 
> > But that makes me re-look at the barmaid example. Chance of success? Yep. Chance of failure? Yep. Stakes? Possible depending on the circumstances. So, would you call for a DC 5 check, if there were high enough stakes? You aren't considering the mechanical effects what so ever, it is purely within the fiction, the mechanical comes afterwards.
> ...






Chaosmancer said:


> Now, it is likely we would call for rolls much of the same time, I might just call for more than you do. But, I don't see the difference you are trying to put between our two methods unless you are more strict in rulings or consequences than I am. Otherwise, this entire discussion has come about because I occasionally allow rolls you wouldn't instead of any major difference in our adjudication of rolls.



This conversation has come about because you are repeatedly (and seemingly deliberately) misinterpreting my position. Yes, we probably would call for rolls much of the same times. Yes, you probably do call for rolls more often than I do. The difference between our methods is that I have a more rigorous process that I personally follow in adjudicating actions - namely, I ask myself if the character's action has a reasonable chance of accomplishing the player's goal. If it doesn't, it fails. If it does, I ask myself if the character's action has a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the player's goal. If it doesn't it succeeds. If it does, I ask myself if there is a cost for attempting this action, or a consequence for failing. If it doesn't, it succeeds. If it does, I ask myself what Attribute this task would best be resolved with, and whether the task is easy, medium, hard, or very hard. Then I tell the player to make a check with the appropriate Attribute, at the appropriate difficulty, and let them know what will happen on a failure. I do these things primarily to insure that the characters successes and failures will largely be the result of the players' decisions, rather than the roll of the dice. Secondarily, I do these things to encourage players to think in terms of what their character is doing (rather than trying to guess what skill or skills I'll allow them to accomplish their goal with on a success), and to equip them with enough information to make informed decisions.

If your players think primarily in terms of what their characters are doing the way you run things, that's great. To be perfectly frank, I don't really care. You do whatever you want, it doesn't affect my game. In my experience, when I have allowed players to announce actions in terms of what skill they want to use instead of what their character is doing, it has not worked that way. I have had much more success running it the way I describe above. Your mileage may, and probably will, vary. And that's fine.



Chaosmancer said:


> That's pretty much how I would handle it. Except for the 10 minutes part (but that has nothing to do with anything we're discussing) I just wouldn't tell them it was a DC 15 check. Might tell them it looks like a fairly basic lock if they have the time to study it.
> 
> The player asked to do something. They easily can beat the DC due to their abilities. They succeed.
> 
> Where is the need for your three step process and division between actions and checks? Since that gets resolved the same way... what do you think I'm doing differently?



The three step process is something I do to help me resolve actions in what I feel is the best way I can. If you don't need or want to use such a process, great. Again, I don't really care. As for the division between actions and checks, they are two different things. They just are. That's how they're defined by the rules. I quoted the exact sections of the rules that define them, I don't know what more you want from me. Actions aren't checks, checks are a tool you use to figure out what happens as a result of actions. This is not some ideological thing, this is literally what the words mean in terms of 5e's rules.



Chaosmancer said:


> Right, you insisted something I said was wrong, because these two things are distinct. I cannot have checks which do not require a roll, because all checks require a roll only actions might not require a roll.



Rolling a d20, adding modifiers, and comparing to a DC is the processes that constitutes the game rules term, "check." In some specific cases, certain abilities may make it possible to determine the results of a check without having to roll the d20.



Chaosmancer said:


> And as I try and dig into this to understand why what I was saying was wrong... I'm finding almost no meaningful distinction, nor a reason you had to call out my statement as wrong. You just had to point out that you follow very strict definitions of the terms that have little impact on the game itself?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Because you thinking of the words "check" and "action" as essentially interchangeable seems to be getting in the way of you understanding my methods.



Chaosmancer said:


> Is it really that hard for you to understand how this works?



I don't know, is it really that hard for you to undrstand that words mean things?



Chaosmancer said:


> "I search the room for clues" is an investigation check.



No, it is not. It is an action. It's a thing the character is doing. It may or may not require a check to resolve, to which Proficiency in the Investigation skill may or may not be applicable. Personally, I'd say Perception would be more appropriate than Investigation here, but that's neither here nor there.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, maybe the DM will just hand me a success, but if they do not it will be an investigation check to investigate the room.



And this way of thinking is a barrier to you understanding my method. Don't worry about what kind of check it is. Just say what you want to accomplish and how your character is going about it. Most of the time, what will happen is pretty much what you think will happen, no roll necessary. Sometimes, I might inform you of a potential consequence that action might have, and what you'd need to roll to avoid that consequence. If you don't want to take the risk, you don't have to.



Chaosmancer said:


> "I shove the goblin off the cliff" is the shove action,



Correct. You'll note that the action is the thing your character is doing.



Chaosmancer said:


> which is an athletics check, maybe the DM just wants to get the fight over with and my fighter will succeed, but if they do not it will athletics opposed by Goblin Dexterity to shove it off,



No, this is the mechanical process used to resolve the Shove action.



Chaosmancer said:


> and the goblin will get a Dex save to catch the edge as well.



Possibly. That's a DM judgment call, really.



Chaosmancer said:


> "I listen through the door to hear what they are saying about the Duke" is a perception check. Maybe the DM will just let me succeed, but if they do not it will be a perception check to hear a conversation through a thick wooden door.



No, it's an action, which may or may not require a Perception check to resolve.



Chaosmancer said:


> You want me to divide these, to only think in terms of the actions, but the resolution of actions is done through skill checks.



Sometimes. But many actions can be resolved without skill checks.



Chaosmancer said:


> Actions are highly likely to have skill checks follow them.



Not at my table. The action-to-ability-check ratio is pretty steep at my table. Checks are made frequently, because my games focus on adventurous people in dangerous situations and naturally that will lead to a high frequency of actions with uncertain outcomes and dramatic consequences. But far more actions are declared that don't have uncertain outcomes or don't have dramatic consequences. When a check happens in my games, it's because things are getting tense.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, thinking only about the action and not considering the mechanics behind the action just seems like poor play.



It's not. Again, short of actually coming to my game and seeing how it plays out, you're just going to have to take my word for it. But trust me, that is the best way to be successful in my games.



Chaosmancer said:


> Especially when, if a check is called for at your table, you are going to tell me a DC and a consequence for failure, so I need to already be thinking in mechanical terms not surprised when you say I need to roll perception if I want to accomplish my task.



Why does it matter if you're surprised? I'm telling you exactly what you need to roll, what the difficulty is, and what the consequences could be, and allowing you to back out if you don't want to go through with it. In what way are you disadvantaged by not having predicted that I'd make that call?



Chaosmancer said:


> As for me having a problem with a player being able to lay out all their options with precise DCs for each, before wasting any time or making any decision... yeah, I have a problem with that. It kind of ruins the narrative. Just like how I really never liked the VATS system in Fallout 3, because all of a sudden I could stop being in the world and pull up a screen of statistics to make the most mathematical optimal choice. You don't know what the mathematical best choice is between shoving past the guards on the stairs, jumping out the window, or leaping for the chandelier. You just know those are options, you are on the 3rd floor and the floor below the chandelier is at least 10 ft down. You have the information your character has, go ahead an make a choice.



Alright. You're allowed not to like that. Personally, I do.



Chaosmancer said:


> But this has nothing to do with any of what you said. Why is your system about presenting chances of success and failure and consequences for failure and all these different mechanical options if your goal is simply "imagine your character is in the world". That's far simpler. That doesn't require anything you have been talking about. I should know, getting people to think like their character would is my entire goal, yet I never break down their choices into a three step verification process.
> 
> Sure, I think about the likelihood of success, but once they are thinking like their characters then they almost never make choices that have no chance of success. And they don't need to know the consequences for their actions, because those consequences that aren't obvious aren't things that the character is likely to know anyways. They didn't study the chandelier's structural integrity to see that a mistimed jump is going to cause it to rip out of the ceiling. They don't know that. They just know that they might be able to jump to it as one of their choices for avoiding the guards.
> 
> You go on about the process like that is the important part, but I'm reaching the same goal without your process and strict definitions.



Good for you, dude. If that works for you, go nuts. It has no impact on me and my games.



Chaosmancer said:


> You kept calling me out for not doing things your way, indicating that following these rules make for the best game.



I have done no such thing. I don't care if you do things my way or not. I, personally, have found the most success running the game the way I do, which is why I do it. If it doesn't interest you, don't do it my way. Why would I care?



Chaosmancer said:


> I've spent far more of our discussion defending why I said a thing, or trying to understand what I'm doing differently than you than I've spent picking apart your style, because you keep insising I'm not getting it



You have done nothing but pick apart my style in your quest to understand what you're doing differently than me. When in reality, it could not be simpler. You allow players to declare actions in terms of what skill they want to use, and you don't tell players the DC or possible consequences. I request that players declare actions in terms of goal and approach, and I do tell them the DC and possible consequences. Additionally, I only call for rolls under a particular set of circumstances (namely, a reasonable chance of success, a reasonable chance of failure, and a cost for the action or consequence for failure). That's it. It really isn't more complicated than that.



Chaosmancer said:


> and implying your way is the best way.



For me, it is the best way I've found. I can only speak to my own experience. If your way works for you, have fun with your way.



Chaosmancer said:


> But you make me highly aware of my stats first. By both assuring that there are consequences for failure if dice are rolled, and by telling me the exact DC, I know my precise chances of success. Once I have that information, I would find it very difficult to ignore that information and make decisions in spite of it. If I know my actions, despite being logical and exactly what I want my character to do, only have a 20% chance of success... then I'm breaking away from the story and instead delving into the mechanics.



Ok. That's your call to make. Whether you are making it because of what you imagine your character would do or based on your mental cost/benefit analysis, that's none of my business. My job is to give you the information you need to make decisions. What decisions you make or why is up to you. 



Chaosmancer said:


> I know information my character doesn't (the precise odds of success) and so I am going to work off of that information instead of what makes sense for the story.



See, on this we disagree. I think your character can and should have a decent sense of their own capabilities. Just like you can look at a cliff and make a fairly accurate prediction about whether or not you'd be able to climb it and what would happen if you failed. Just like you, your character is a sapient entity with a concept of cause and effect, who can make predictions about the likely effects caused by their own actions, to a reasonable degree of accuracy. Me telling you the DC and consequences is an abstraction of that knowledge, and if you go through with it, the possibility of failure is an abstraction of the possibility of your character misjudging their capabilities, the difficulty of the task, or both. And we are telling the story together. Whatever decision you make, that's what makes sense in the story. That's your right as a player, you have full autonomy over your character's actions.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, I'm supposed to ignore any sort of mechanics until you pull aside the curtain and decide it is time to talk about them? There are plenty of reasons the King might not be swayed by my speech, and plenty of ways I could flub it up. Maybe I'm just against the idea of undoing player actions. I feel like at your table, the closest I would come would be asking "okay, what if I said something kind of like this" instead of staying in character and talking to the king, because the idea of "unringing a bell" once there is a chance for failure bothers the heck out of me. It makes me want to be too risk averse.



I don't think you being risk averse is a bad thing. The point is to allow you to succeed and fail based more on your choices than on random chance. If your decision is to avoid risk, great! If your decision is to dive headfirst into risk, also great! But it should be an informed decision either way, otherwise we're just flailing about and asking the dice to tell us what happens, which is not my cup of tea.

Now, my way may not be your cup of tea either. By the sound of it, it's very much not. And that's perfectly ok. We don't have to like the same things, and if my style isn't for you, then all I can say is, I hope you have more fun with your own style than you would with mine.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 17, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Ah, well then thanks for confirming that I will be accused of misrepresenting you.
> 
> I know I'm a bit sarcastic and I obviously run my game differently but without going to actual quotes I did my best.
> 
> ...



For what it’s worth, I think this is a perfectly fair and accurate representation of the style I prefer. The previous post had two specific things that made it a less good representation of the style, which I attempted to point out in my response to it, but I recognize and respect that you are not interested in discussing it further, so I won’t harp on about them.


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## Bawylie (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Ok, I see the confusion here. You said:
> 
> 
> I said:
> ...




Yeah, actions and checks are completely different things. Check out your PH pg 192 “Actions in Combat.” Dodge, dash, disengage, etc. don’t need checks at all. And even the “Roll With It” path wouldn’t ask for checks on these things. 

Here’s a real trip, look at “Search” as an in-combat action. The text says, “When you take the Search action, you devote your attention to finding something. Depending on the nature of your search, the DM might have you make a Wisdom (Perception) check or an Intelligence 
(Investigation) check.” 

Seems to indicate that the Approach(!) of your Search Action determines the ability (and skill) check you’d roll. You’ll note it doesn’t say “your [player’s] choice of Intelligence or Wisdom check determines how you find what you’re looking for.” The Action comes first, then, maybe, the check (if the DM decides that’s necessary and appropriate). 

What’s more, that word “might” seems to play at two meanings. The DM may decide between two different Ability Checks, or may choose not to ask you to roll at all. 

I wouldn’t say it’s poor play for a player to ask to make a check, but I would say that’s backwards. Players should concern themselves about what their character is doing and DMs should concern themselves with the application of the rules, or not, as warranted and agreed-on.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 17, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Yeah, actions and checks are completely different things. Check out your PH pg 192 “Actions in Combat.” Dodge, dash, disengage, etc. don’t need checks at all. And even the “Roll With It” path wouldn’t ask for checks on these things.
> 
> Here’s a real trip, look at “Search” as an in-combat action. The text says, “When you take the Search action, you devote your attention to finding something. Depending on the nature of your search, the DM might have you make a Wisdom (Perception) check or an Intelligence
> (Investigation) check.”
> ...




To be fair, there are also counter-examples in the rules that could muddy the waters, such as the “Detect” Legendary Action all Legendary dragons have:

*Detect:* The Dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.

I kind of hate that action, cause it leaves me scratching my head, wondering to what end the Dragon is making this check. What is the dragon trying to find? How is the dragon trying to find it? Why is a check necessary to find it? What happens if the check succeeds, or if it fails?

Nearest I can tell, maybe the writers figured, the dragon is controlled by the DM, the DM obviously knows the location of any hidden objects or creature the dragon might be trying to find, so the dragon needs to succeed on a Perception check before it’s allowed to act on that knowledge. It very much feels like a 3.X-ism that slipped in under the radar to me.


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## Bawylie (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> To be fair, there are also counter-examples in the rules that could muddy the waters, such as the “Detect” Legendary Action all Legendary dragons have:
> 
> *Detect:* The Dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
> 
> ...




DM-side stuff doesn’t work like player-side stuff.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 17, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> DM-side stuff doesn’t work like player-side stuff.




Sure, but I still feel like “the dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check” doesn’t give me enough information to properly utilize the Legendary Action.

I’m sorely tempted, just for a laugh, to spend the Legendary Action and narrate the dragon pulling out an enormous 20-sided die, rolling it, and announcing that it got a (whatever number) on its perception check. Like, to no further effect.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> To be fair, there are also counter-examples in the rules that could muddy the waters, such as the “Detect” Legendary Action all Legendary dragons have:
> 
> *Detect:* The Dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
> 
> ...




It a direct lift from The Hobbit.

What is the dragon trying to find? Invisible hobbits (or any other hidden player characters).

How is the dragon trying to find it? Sniffing, listening, trying to feel vibrations...

Why is a check necessary to find it? Because it may or may not succeed.

What happens if the check succeeds? The dragon knows in which square the hidden PC is.

or if it fails? The dragon does not know in which square the hidden PC is.


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## pemerton (Apr 17, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Actions are highly likely to have skill checks follow them.



Action _declarations_ sometimes have checks follow them. The action declaration, like the check itself, is an event in the real world. On the other hand, the action is an imagined event that (we pretend) occurs in the fictional world of the game.

I think that keeping these things distinct aids clarity, especially when trying to compare different approaches to action resolution.



Chaosmancer said:


> the resolution of actions is done through skill checks



For most versions of D&D, including 5e, for many action declarations this simply isn't true. In 5e the action declaration _I cast a spell_ is not normally resolved by calling for a check. Nor is the action declaration _I pick the sword up from the ground_. Nor is the action declaration _I use the key to unlock the door_.



Chaosmancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



When you say that you _disagree_, are you (i) doubting the accuracy of my report of my experience, or (ii) reporting your own experience with this approach, or (iii) offering a conjecture?

To me, everything you talk about here is about GMing technique. Yes, if GMs use poor techniques they will get poor games. But that's why we don't use poor techniques!

To elaborate: in most D&D games I've participated in, observed, or read about, the non-combatants don't get to let the fighter "handle" the fighting. The GM establishes situations that put PCs other than just the fighter under pressure. Social situations can be framed the same way. Is the bard the fighter's herald? Well, then, the troll king (or whomever) does not want to deal with flunkies and go betweens - _I wish to treat directly with your lord_? Is the fighter there in the company of the bard - then the NPC asks, _So, what do you have to say?_ Is the fighter going to refuse to respond? Will the fighter reply "I let our bard do all my talking for me?"

And if the player of the fighter makes a check and fails, why does that mean the fighter put his/her foot in his/her mouth? Why is the GM narrating that as the consequence of failure? When the player of the mage rolls a failed opportunity attack, does the GM narrate that the mage accidentally stabs him-/herself? If not, why narrate social failures in such a fashion. Or to put it another way, why frame the stakes as _that the fighter does or doesn't put his/her foot in his/her mouth_ rather than (eg) _that the troll king does or doesn't agree to the fighter's proposal_?

To quote a post from another thread:



pemerton said:


> RPGing is fun when the players are engaged. Combat is often engaging by default, because PC death is at stake. To make non-combat engaging, the players have to be able to see that something is at stake that they care about. This is what will get them wanting to engage. And they have to be confident that engaging the situation won't leave them hosed. The fear of being hosed leads to turtling, tedious tactically-focused play, a game that moves at the pace of treacle, etc.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 17, 2019)

> Or to put it another way, why frame the stakes as that the fighter does or doesn't put his/her foot in his/her mouth rather than (eg) that the troll king does or doesn't agree to the fighter's proposal?




It could be framed either way. My DMing technique is to frame it in whatever way makes for the most entertaining story.


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## pemerton (Apr 17, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> It could be framed either way. My DMing technique is to frame it in whatever way makes for the most entertaining story.



Well, sure. But I was replying to a poster who said that the _foot in mouth_ consequence would discourage the player of the fighter from declaring social actions. If a GM believes that to be the case, the solution is right there, ready-to-hand: frame the stakes differently!


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 17, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, sure. But I was replying to a poster who said that the _foot in mouth_ consequence would discourage the player of the fighter from declaring social actions. If a GM believes that to be the case, the solution is right there, ready-to-hand: frame the stakes differently!




My players often quite enjoy "foot in mouth" scenarios (but it would get old if it happened all the time).


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## Sadras (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Nearest I can tell, maybe the writers figured, the dragon is controlled by the DM, the DM obviously knows the location of any hidden objects or creature the dragon might be trying to find, so the dragon needs to succeed on a Perception check before it’s allowed to act on that knowledge.




Exactly. It is countering meta-knowledge by having the DM-controlled creature expend an in-game resource to act on such knowledge. Furthermore it is a cool general ability for a creature, such as a dragon, to possess as the Detect is a general Detect, so it may be used by the dragon to gain other knowledge (motives, relationships, hidden artifacts, strange energies, true form, concentrated spells, consumables in use...etc).

It assists the narrative and allows for interesting dialogue to occur - supported by the mechanics. Win-win.


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## Imaculata (Apr 17, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> To be fair, there are also counter-examples in the rules that could muddy the waters, such as the “Detect” Legendary Action all Legendary dragons have:
> 
> *Detect:* The Dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
> 
> ...




The way I interpret this, is that dragons have very accute senses, and are always on the look out for intruders. They don't need a reason to be trying to detect intruders, they are just always on guard. If the check succeeds, it knows there are intruders (if any), if it fails, then it remains oblivious.


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## iserith (Apr 17, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, sure. But I was replying to a poster who said that the _foot in mouth_ consequence would discourage the player of the fighter from declaring social actions. If a GM believes that to be the case, the solution is right there, ready-to-hand: frame the stakes differently!




And to honor the idea that the player is the only one who can say what the character does, I think it is far better to frame stakes and narrate outcomes in terms of changes to the environment or NPCs/monsters than what the character does. I don't want to say the fighter stuck his or her foot in his or her mouth - that is not my role as DM and runs the risk of dissatisfaction on the part of the player if that's not how he or she imagines his or her character. I just say how the Troll King responds and then frame the next challenge at the top of the play loop as appropriate.

It's super common in my experience for the DM to say what the character is doing, often because the player fails to adequately perform his or her role in the game (describing what the character tries to do). I feel like asking those DMs if they just like the sound of their own voice because, after all, they already control two-thirds of the basic conversation of the game (describing the environment, narrating outcomes). Do they _really_ need that final third, too?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 17, 2019)

iserith said:


> And to honor the idea that the player is the only one who can say what the character does, I think it is far better to frame stakes and narrate outcomes in terms of changes to the environment or NPCs/monsters than what the character does. I don't want to say the fighter stuck his or her foot in his or her mouth - that is not my role as DM and runs the risk of dissatisfaction on the part of the player if that's not how he or she imagines his or her character. I just say how the Troll King responds and then frame the next challenge at the top of the play loop as appropriate.
> 
> It's super common in my experience for the DM to say what the character is doing, often because the player fails to adequately perform his or her role in the game (describing what the character tries to do). I feel like asking those DMs if they just like the sound of their own voice because, after all, they already control two-thirds of the basic conversation of the game (describing the environment, narrating outcomes). Do they _really_ need that final third, too?




This.  The consequences of failure should be a change in environment narrated by DM. If the player wants to narrate the failure as well that's fine.

Furthermore, if the King asks the Fighter a question, and the player's response is to just answer the question, I hope that in most circumstances the DM doesn't call for a roll.  It's kind of unfair to say, "The king asked you a question, and if you answer I'm going to force you to make a Cha check, and if you fail there will be consequences." That starts to feel like "skill check as required obstacle".

Now, if the party is there because they want something, and the king refuses to deal with anybody but the fighter, and the fighter say, "Whooo-boy. I guess I'll have to try. Ok, I'm going to try to persuade the king to let our friend the rogue out of the dungeon, by pointing out that the rogue has the best chance of finding the (something), and that we promise to keep our eye on him."  THEN the DM might say, "Ok, that's going to require a Persuasion check, but if you fail the king will be furious and...etc.


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## Mort (Apr 17, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Furthermore, if the King asks the Fighter a question, and the player's response is to just answer the question, I hope that in most circumstances the DM doesn't call for a roll.  It's kind of unfair to say, "The king asked you a question, and if you answer I'm going to force you to make a Cha check, and if you fail there will be consequences." That starts to feel like "skill check as required obstacle".




But you have to have some way to reward/penalize for the player voluntarily prioritizing/dumping charisma of the character.

If the answer doesn't have consequences, then sure - no check. But if the answer involves some kind of consequence or has a persuasive component - then absolutely a check may or even should result - as you allude to below.




Elfcrusher said:


> Now, if the party is there because they want something, and the king refuses to deal with anybody but the fighter, and the fighter say, "Whooo-boy. I guess I'll have to try. Ok, I'm going to try to persuade the king to let our friend the rogue out of the dungeon, by pointing out that the rogue has the best chance of finding the (something), and that we promise to keep our eye on him."  THEN the DM might say, "Ok, that's going to require a Persuasion check, but if you fail the king will be furious and...etc.




Sorry if this is too nitpicky ... but isn't this the perfect opportunity for success = progress, failure = progress with setback?

As in success - king: you know you're right I'll let your companion out and then hire you for the job.

Failure: king: Oh you think you have me in a corner? sure, I'll let your companion out - and then I'll geas the lot of you to ensure you all do exactly what I need you to do!

End result is essentially the same - but the circumstances are quite different based on success or failure.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 17, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This.  The consequences of failure should be a change in environment narrated by DM. If the player wants to narrate the failure as well that's fine.
> 
> Furthermore, if the King asks the Fighter a question, and the player's response is to just answer the question, I hope that in most circumstances the DM doesn't call for a roll.  It's kind of unfair to say, "The king asked you a question, and if you answer I'm going to force you to make a Cha check, and if you fail there will be consequences." That starts to feel like "skill check as required obstacle".
> 
> Now, if the party is there because they want something, and the king refuses to deal with anybody but the fighter, and the fighter say, "Whooo-boy. I guess I'll have to try. Ok, I'm going to try to persuade the king to let our friend the rogue out of the dungeon, by pointing out that the rogue has the best chance of finding the (something), and that we promise to keep our eye on him."  THEN the DM might say, "Ok, that's going to require a Persuasion check, but if you fail the king will be furious and...etc.



King asks fighter a question.
Players says their character answers the question.
Gm calls for Cha check. 

Check is bad.
GM: Your character answered but the king gets up, looks angrier, more suspicious, you are not sure why, but its obvious that somehow what you said has made the king more upset than he was before. He glares at you, obviously fuming. What do you do?

Check is good
GM: you character answered and the king gets upset. He stands up, paces and stomps for a bit. Turns his gaze back to you then... stops... thinks... and then his face hardens as he turns to stare at his chief of arcanery - Iago - with a stare that seems down right unpleasent.

In both cases, the same info was presented but the convincing vs unconvincing or other sort of "nature" of what was presented changes the end result. 

One case the flawed effort drew suspicion or other ill will to the PC. Other case, it moved it away from the PC. 

Much like how a sword swing could fell an opponent on a hit or draw it to attack you if that fails.

Of course, all is dependent on the nature of the scene in question. There are a gazillion options. Many ways to have the results of that skill check bring that fighters player choices on "am I good at this or not" come into play.

Assuming of course, it's not just handled st the player GM levrl without reference to those.


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## pemerton (Apr 17, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> if the King asks the Fighter a question, and the player's response is to just answer the question, I hope that in most circumstances the DM doesn't call for a roll.  It's kind of unfair to say, "The king asked you a question, and if you answer I'm going to force you to make a Cha check, and if you fail there will be consequences." That starts to feel like "skill check as required obstacle".



I was thinking of a context in which the interaction with the troll king (or whomever) is a high-stakes situation. (A skill challenge in 4e terms.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> King asks fighter a question.
> Players says their character answers the question.
> Gm calls for Cha check.
> 
> ...




The problem I have with your scenario...and maybe I have the wrong picture in my head of what is happening...is that it feels like a skill check is forced on the player. Like, as soon as they decided to talk to the king, this check was inevitable. 

The general pattern I ascribe to is:
GM narrates something, and either says or implies, “What do you do?”
Player describes a course of action (preferably using goal and approach)
If the course of action would require a skill check, the DM says, “that’s gonna take a [skill] check with a DC of X. If you fail the consequence is Y. Do you want to try?”

Does the scenario you describe fit this pattern?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> Sorry if this is too nitpicky ... but isn't this the perfect opportunity for success = progress, failure = progress with setback?
> 
> As in success - king: you know you're right I'll let your companion out and then hire you for the job.
> 
> ...




Oh, sure. I love failing forward.


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## robus (Apr 18, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> The way I interpret this, is that dragons have very accute senses, and are always on the look out for intruders. They don't need a reason to be trying to detect intruders, they are just always on guard. If the check succeeds, it knows there are intruders (if any), if it fails, then it remains oblivious.




If nothing else I, at least, learned something new in this thread. Detect had puzzled me too!


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## 5ekyu (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> The problem I have with your scenario...and maybe I have the wrong picture in my head of what is happening...is that it feels like a skill check is forced on the player. Like, as soon as they decided to talk to the king, this check was inevitable.
> 
> The general pattern I ascribe to is:
> GM narrates something, and either says or implies, “What do you do?”
> ...



My scenario fits the pattern I described.

The gm in the scene has the king ask the character a question. Contextually there is some significance to the question - not just about lunch or the weather tho all the significance may not be known to the character nor the connections that can come to it.

The player has a number of choices but he provides an answer, possibly with added narration to the gm if trying some extra bits that are not carried thru in the langusge.

Gm says make a Charisma check, likely calling for persuasion or deception to use as a measure for the uncertain elrments.

Then proceed.

The player thru his character brings his character's charisma into play when they get into a discussion, so nothing is forced on them. They could have decided to say nothing.

But, no, the player does not get told up front what happens on a failure. Most likely, the context gives them an idea but the specifics do not have to get spelled out in advance. Thats not info the character has. 

They also dont get told the DC by default but they do have good general idea of how DCs are done in this campaign and may have better ideas than that.

So, nope, does not fit your latter parts at all.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> My scenario fits the pattern I described.
> 
> The gm in the scene has the king ask the character a question. Contextually there is some significance to the question - not just about lunch or the weather tho all the significance may not be known to the character nor the connections that can come to it.
> 
> ...




I almost wrote that the DC and the consequence aren’t strictly necessary, although some sense of the difficulty and what could go wrong should be part of it, but went for conciseness instead. My bad, because those details were a distraction. 

The essential part of my pattern is that a challenge is presented, the player decides what actions to attempt to overcome, and depending on the nature of those actions an ability check of some sort might be required. 

It seems like in your scenario the player is intentionally  being boxed in to where  a specific ability check will be required, pretty much regardless of what he decides to do. (That is, short of doing something even less likely to succeed, like starting combat).


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> But you have to have some way to reward/penalize for the player voluntarily prioritizing/dumping charisma of the character.



Do you, though? Like, I know that punishing dump stats is a time-honored tradition, but... Should it be?



Mort said:


> Sorry if this is too nitpicky ... but isn't this the perfect opportunity for success = progress, failure = progress with setback?



I really like this way of doing things, but I've found that under goal-and-approach, it usually arises organically. For a simple example, look at the locked door with an ogre on the other side. The ogre is not aware of the party. The party barbarian decides to bash the door down with her axe. Chance of success? Check. Chance of failure? Check. Cost for the attempt or consequence for failure? You betcha.

*DM:* Ok, that's going to require a DC10 Strength check, and the noise is going to alert any nearby creatures to your presence.
*BARBARIAN:* Can I apply Athletics?
*DM:* Absolutely.
*BARBARIAN:* Damn, natural 1, so that's a total of 7.
*DM:* Your axe clangs against the door, but it doesn't give way.
*BARBARIAN:* Can I try again?

Now we've got a new action. Again, the barbarian wants to break the door down with her axe. Chance of success? Check. Chance of failure? Check. Cost for the attempt or consequence for failure? Not this time. The ogre on the other side has already heard the noise, it's already aware of the party's presence. Failing again won't meaningfully change the party's situation, so the action is successful.

*DM:* No need, now that any nearby monsters have heard you, there's no _more_ danger in taking all the time you need to bust the door down.
*BARBARIAN:* Guys, we sure we don't want to look for another way?
*ROGUE:* No time, remember? That's why I didn't want to take the 10 minutes to pick the lock.
*BARBARIAN:* Alright, everyone get ready, in case there's an ambush waiting for us on the other side.
*CLERIC:* I'm gonna cast Bless on everyone real quick, just to be safe.
*BARBARIAN:* Good call, thanks. Alright, everyone ready? Three, two, one... I break the door down!

That example got away from me a little bit. My point is, the above is functionally similar to progress with a drawback - the door can be opened in a single roll either way, and either way the party is in a worse position if that initial roll fails. The difference is, the above example affords the party the opportunity to reassess their situation after failing the roll and seeing that they've incurred a drawback. They can break down the door without rolling again if they want to, but they can also decide that now that the drawback is in play, they don't want to open it any more, or they can make preparations before opening it, like the Cleric casting Bless in the above example.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Do you, though? Like, I know that punishing dump stats is a time-honored tradition, but... Should it be?
> 
> 
> I really like this way of doing things, but I've found that under goal-and-approach, it usually arises organically. For a simple example, look at the locked door with an ogre on the other side. The ogre is not aware of the party. The party barbarian decides to bash the door down with her axe. Chance of success? Check. Chance of failure? Check. Cost for the attempt or consequence for failure? You betcha.
> ...




This is already a great example, but the detail I love is the bit that the rogue says. In well-designed games almost everything you do is a decision, and every decision is a trade-off. This party has to choose between opening the door quickly and possibly alerting something behind it, or doing it slowly and...dealing with whatever unspecified consequence the rogue was referring to.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This is already a great example, but the detail I love is the bit that the rogue says. In well-designed games almost everything you do is a decision, and every decision is a trade-off. This party has to choose between opening the door quickly and possibly alerting something behind it, or doing it slowly and...dealing with whatever unspecified consequence the rogue was referring to.




Rolls for random encounters. 10 minutes is my go-to duration for actions where the time it takes is a meaningful cost. Primarily because that’s the amount of time it takes to cast a spell as a ritual, so it’s a convenient standard interval between a turn and an hour. That way when the rogue wants to pick a lock or the wizard wants to cast detect magic or whatever, I can go around the table and see if anyone else has anything they want to do during those 10 minutes. Then I drop a d6* in a cup. When there are 6d6 in the cup, an hour has passed. Whenever someone makes a lot of noise or otherwise does something that might attract the attention of wandering monsters, or when I would add a 7th die to the cup, I roll all the dice currently in the cup. If any come up a 1, there’s a random encounter. If there were fewer than 6 dice in the cup when I rolled them, I put them all back in.

Credit where it’s due, I got this mechanic from the Angry GM, and run it pretty much exactly as written in the article. But yeah, in my games, breaking down a door vs. picking the lock is a trade off between a roll for random encounters right now with a smaller chance of one happening, or brining the party 1/6 of the way closer to a roll for random encounters that will have a larger chance of one happening. And, of course, trying to  pick the lock and failing multiple times in a row can add up a lot of time, whereas after failing to break down the door once, you’re not going to make your presence any more known than you already did.

I mean, I guess in the example I kind of implied the party was under some kind of actual time limit, not just worried about random encounters, but... I didn’t have anything specific in mind for the example. Maybe the dungeon is filling with poisoned gas or something. That was a pretty cool mechanic in Hidden Shine of Tamoachan, so we’ll go with that.

*usually. In a less dangerous but still not completely safe environment I’ll use a d8, in a highly dangerous environment I’ll use a d4.


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## pemerton (Apr 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Elfcrusher said:
> 
> 
> > 5ekyu said:
> ...



I wanted to give my take on this example.

So most of the time talking to the Troll King looks like something is going to be at stake: if that's not the case then we (that is, GM and players) can free-narration through it until we get to something that does involve stakes.

Assuming, then, that there is something at stake in the conversation with the Troll King, like 5ekyu I call for a check. In my case this is not so much connected to "player vs character", but to the principle of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", which Luke Crane (BW Gold, p 72) glosses this way:

Unless there is something at stake in the story you have created, don't bother with the dice. Keep moving, keep describing, keep roleplaying. But as soon as a character wants something that he doesn't have, needs to know something he doesn't know, covets something that someone else has, roll the dice. . . . When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.​
So the check is "forced onto the player" _in virtue_ of him/her having pushed play to the point of conflict. (Which of course is what the GM is trying to achieve!, by applying pressure on the players via their PCs.)

I don't generally allow the player to back out: the player should already have a sense of difficulty when getting into the situation and declaring the action, either in virtue of familiarity with the system (this is how 4e andMHRP/Cortex+ Heroic work) or in virtue of a good sense of the state of the fiction (this is how BW and Prince Valiant work, and is also my sense of how most people run 5e).

I think it's important for consequences to be clear - and I don't think of this through the lens of character knowledge but player knowledge - because the player needs to have a sense of what sort of resources to throw at the check (which depending on system and circumstances could be anything from fate/inspiration points, to equipment, to spells and potions, to . . .). Luke Crane says the following about making consequences clear (BW Gold, p 32):

When a player sets out a task for his character and states his intent, it is the GM’s job to inform him of the consequences of failure before the dice are rolled.

"If you fail this…" should often be heard at the table. Let the players know the consequences of their actions. Failure is not the end of the line, 
but it is complication that pushes the story in another direction.

Once that is said, everyone knows what's at stake and play can continue smoothly no matter what the result of the roll is.​
However, in his subsequently-published book of GMing advice (The Adventure Burner) Crane says that, in his own game, rather than stating the consequences expressly he often relies on context - of the fiction, of the mood at the table, etc - to make them implicit. When I'm GMing, I alternate between express and implicit consequences depending on inclination and whim. But again, for me this has a different motivation from that which 5ekyu states. I'm not worries about player vs character knowledge, and so even if consequence is implicit it will be implicit to the player as well as the GM - there won't be "hidden" bits of the fiction that suddenly emerge into the action on the basis of a failure. It's about pacing and narrative continuity and not weakening emotional intensity with needless explanation.

In a style in which players are "forced" to make checks, and so failure is going to happen from time-to-time (in a system with mechanics that are generous to players) or quite often (in a system like Burning Wheel that is fairly brutal on the players), I regard establishing failures which (i) honour what was at stake, and (ii) follow impeccably from the fiction, and (iii) that are fair to the player and not an excessive hosing, as probably one of the most important demands on the GM. It's very different from a "skilled play" paradigm where it's quite fair that failure at least sometimes be hosing, because skilled players will avoid failure by avoiding checks.



Elfcrusher said:


> It seems like in your scenario the player is intentionally  being boxed in to where  a specific ability check will be required, pretty much regardless of what he decides to do. (That is, short of doing something even less likely to succeed, like starting combat).



This doesn't seem right. Maybe I've misunderstood 5ekyu's example, but as at least as I'm imagining it either (i) the player has chosen to have his/her PC seek an audience with the Troll King; or (ii) some prior failure has meant that the player's desire that his/her PC _avoid_ such an audience has not been realised.

if it's (i), well what did the player expect? If you're going to have an audience with a king, it seems likely your interpersonal ability will be tested. If it's (ii), well the player has the full sweep of his/her ingenuity to draw on - anything from blowing up the Troll King, to talking to him, to conjuring an illusion to escape behind, to abasing him-/herself before the Troll King and promising fealty!

Neither pathway to the situation involves the player being boxed in.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I almost wrote that the DC and the consequence aren’t strictly necessary, although some sense of the difficulty and what could go wrong should be part of it, but went for conciseness instead. My bad, because those details were a distraction.
> 
> The essential part of my pattern is that a challenge is presented, the player decides what actions to attempt to overcome, and depending on the nature of those actions an ability check of some sort might be required.
> 
> It seems like in your scenario the player is intentionally  being boxed in to where  a specific ability check will be required, pretty much regardless of what he decides to do. (That is, short of doing something even less likely to succeed, like starting combat).



Boxed in?

Here was the exsmple... 

"Furthermore, if the King asks the Fighter a question, and the player's response is to just answer the question,"

The example originally presented was framed as (before I responded) the character answers the question, though it may have been phrased as the player answers the question.

So, the question of what the character does, or did, was already defined before I got involved. So, "regardless of what he decides to do" was already past - the player decided.

I acknowledged it could be a variety of proficiencies depending on what was said, and  that they could have said nothing. 

So, hey, yeah, if that's boxed in... to you... then hey i guess it was me who boxed them in by picking up the example as given.

Whatever.

Maybe it would not have been boxed in if we started back before the stepping in front of king or whstever.

Huh?

And of course I did say this...

"The player has a number of choices but he provides an answer, possibly with added narration to the gm if trying some extra bits that are not carried thru in the langusge."

Boxed in tight I guess.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 18, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I wanted to give my take on this example.
> 
> So most of the time talking to the Troll King looks like something is going to be at stake: if that's not the case then we (that is, GM and players) can free-narration through it until we get to something that does involve stakes.
> 
> ...



"However, in his subsequently-published book of GMing advice (The Adventure Burner) Crane says that, in his own game, rather than stating the consequences expressly he often relies on context - of the fiction, of the mood at the table, etc - to make them implicit."

Yup. That's what I was referring to in my references to the nature of the scene, contextually, etc etc. Neither the player nor the character may know they are holding a loaded gun (all the potential in each of their options) but they do know there is something serious going on here.

NOTE - there might well be cases where they dont. They may have a bit of info  that they are relating to someone that has much more relevance than the character knows. They may not know that the  two folks they describe seeing at the seedy motel at 3am were the guy they are reporting to wife and rival. But, usually a meeting with the troll king where you are being questioned is not that kind of case. However even in the motel case, then the skill check might switch to insight to spot the growing intensity of the other guy... tone of his conversation, with results determining if and more when the PC catches on that he has walked into a minefield. 

Moving on...

Yes, as I have said before, I like having checks create fiction and also love failure as some success with setback. 

So depending on the check, the nature of presentation to the troll king might create unexpected favorables just as it might create unexpected unfavorables.  Maybe something in the combo of voice, tone, look, quick and clear eye to eye unflinching (high check, skilled speaker) triggers a very fond recollection in the troll king. Or maybe it wasnt as skilled but struck them funny.  Or maybe the specific info and situation and check resulted in suspicion and distrust. 

Lots potentially coming out of that check. Lots potentially coming out of a conversation with  troll king. Seems to go hand in hand, not from a box.


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## WaterRabbit (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> The problem I have with your scenario...and maybe I have the wrong picture in my head of what is happening...is that it feels like a skill check is forced on the player. Like, as soon as they decided to talk to the king, this check was inevitable.
> 
> The general pattern I ascribe to is:
> GM narrates something, and either says or implies, “What do you do?”
> ...




I think, especially in the like of the current troll king scenario being discussed, that explicitly telling the player the DC and the consequence is poor form.  At the very least, explaining the consequences would fall actually be the proper use of Insight.  A character with low Insight would not be able to predict the troll king's response to his attempt whereas a character with a high Insight would.

Also stating the exact DC also seems off.  A general sense if the difficulty maybe, but the exact DC?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Boxed in?
> 
> Here was the exsmple...
> 
> ...




Wow, chill.  Ok, I shouldn't have typed "your scenario" because you (and I) were picking up the given scenario.  Sorry.  It should have been "your take on _the_ scenario."

But do you understand the distinction I'm trying to make?  It's "you're now in this situation and must make a skill roll" vs. "you are facing this problem what do you want to do?"

Maybe I'm misunderstanding and the fighter/player have options other than relying on a Cha skill, but it doesn't feel like it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> I think, especially in the like of the current troll king scenario being discussed, that explicitly telling the player the DC and the consequence is poor form.  At the very least, explaining the consequences would fall actually be the proper use of Insight.  A character with low Insight would not be able to predict the troll king's response to his attempt whereas a character with a high Insight would.
> 
> Also stating the exact DC also seems off.  A general sense if the difficulty maybe, but the exact DC?




Yeah, I said in the follow-up it wouldn't have to be the exact DC and the exact consequence.  It could be, "The king is angry and doesn't seem to be in the mood for rationale discourse; no telling what he will do if an attempt to influence him fails."  And then an Insight check, as you suggest, might very well reveal a trait/bond/ideal/flaw (which could then be used to influence him without even having to roll!)

As I said to 5ekyu, I was really trying to make the point that I think the player should have to decide on a course of action first, and if that action would force a skill check the player should be given the rough outlines of what that will look like, and be given a chance to rescind.  

I acknowledge that only makes sense if you are taking a "middle road" approach, but players who are used to only rolling dice when the outcome is in doubt should be warned when that's the case.

"I'll bash down the door."
"It's a stout door: to do it in one shot and potentially surprise anybody on the other side is going to take a Str roll."
"Hmm...how stout?"
"You've smashed stouter ones."
"Ok, I'll go for it."

"I'll go up the stairs to get close to the door."
"The stairs look really icy...that's going to require a Dex check."
"Oh, really?  Ok, nevermind, i won't do that yet."

"I'll keep asking for more detail about his story, and circle back a lot to see if he changes the details."
"Ok, but that will take an Investigation check to pull off, and he may realize what you're doing."
"I'll risk it."


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Rolls for random encounters. 10 minutes is my go-to duration for actions where the time it takes is a meaningful cost. Primarily because that’s the amount of time it takes to cast a spell as a ritual, so it’s a convenient standard interval between a turn and an hour. That way when the rogue wants to pick a lock or the wizard wants to cast detect magic or whatever, I can go around the table and see if anyone else has anything they want to do during those 10 minutes. Then I drop a d6* in a cup. When there are 6d6 in the cup, an hour has passed. Whenever someone makes a lot of noise or otherwise does something that might attract the attention of wandering monsters, or when I would add a 7th die to the cup, I roll all the dice currently in the cup. If any come up a 1, there’s a random encounter. If there were fewer than 6 dice in the cup when I rolled them, I put them all back in.
> 
> Credit where it’s due, I got this mechanic from the Angry GM, and run it pretty much exactly as written in the article. But yeah, in my games, breaking down a door vs. picking the lock is a trade off between a roll for random encounters right now with a smaller chance of one happening, or brining the party 1/6 of the way closer to a roll for random encounters that will have a larger chance of one happening. And, of course, trying to  pick the lock and failing multiple times in a row can add up a lot of time, whereas after failing to break down the door once, you’re not going to make your presence any more known than you already did.
> 
> ...




I need to follow Angry DM more religiously.  But this is awesome.  Totally doing it next session.


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## robus (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I need to follow Angry DM more religiously.  But this is awesome.  Totally doing it next session.




If you like this idea you'll love this time tracking sheet that was created to support Angry's time keeping method: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/253286/Time-Tracker


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## Sadras (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But do you understand the distinction I'm trying to make?  It's "you're now in this situation and must make a skill roll" vs. "you are facing this problem what do you want to do?"




I understand the distinction you are making.



> The general pattern I ascribe to is:
> GM narrates something, and either says or implies, “What do you do?”
> Player describes a course of action (preferably using goal and approach)
> If the course of action would require a skill check, the DM says, “that’s gonna take a [skill] check with a DC of X. If you fail the consequence is Y. Do you want to try?”




Your method above though I find very interesting. 
Firstly the mechanics are laid bare with the DC, consequences revealed up front.
Secondly there is an almost pre-assessment of actions which is strange for me in this specific example.

It is almost as if before the PCs make up their mind they can propose a number of replies to the NPC and based on the DM's DCs and consequences, select _the best one_ as opposed to engaging naturally in the social pillar and see what may come.

I don't view this specific example like if the PCs were being faced with challenges such as climbing over a wall or stealthily breaking and entering where PCs have the luxury of time to assess the difficulty as well as understand the obvious consequences.

EDIT: Perhaps I can see the consequences in the social pillar example being tied to the Insight skill, whereby said skill allows the PC to figure out the possible negative effects, should the dialogue fail.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I wanted to give my take on this example.
> 
> So most of the time talking to the Troll King looks like something is going to be at stake: if that's not the case then we (that is, GM and players) can free-narration through it until we get to something that does involve stakes.
> 
> ...




Good post. A couple of comments:

1) Certainly the players deciding to seek out the troll king (somewhat) changes the dynamic, as opposed to, for example, them being captured and then dragged in front of the troll king.

2) Still, even if that's the case, once the fighter is on the spot I don't like a pre-ordained "you must use a social skill now."  Let the fighter propose something. "Let me fight your champion!"  "I'll pull out that gem-encrusted goblet and offer it to the king as a gift of my esteem."  Whatever.  And maybe, depending on what the player proposes, the DM will still rule that it will require a skill check of some sort, and maybe even a Cha-based skill.  What makes me wary is the idea that "You ARE going to have to make a Cha check to get out of this."  (Especially if it's designed as some sort of punishment for dumping Cha, as at least one poster has suggested.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I understand the distinction you are making.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Ok, after 3 references to it I'm really regretting how I phrased that. One more time: it doesn't have to be the specific DC and the specific consequence, just a general sense of how hard it will be, and what sort of thing might go wrong. And, honestly, I could have (should have?) left that sentence out completely as it's only a refinement of the main point.

But in general I do think players should have some sense of how hard something will be before they attempt it. There are probably exceptions.

I don't see a problem with the section in bold at all.  The DM's description of the environment is always going to be incomplete, and even where it's not the players will often get a different impression than the DM is trying to convey.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I need to follow Angry DM more religiously.  But this is awesome.  Totally doing it next session.




His GMing advice is indispensable. Unfortunately his douchebaggery goes beyond the persona. But if you can separate the art from the artist as it were, most of his actual content is well worth the read.


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## Sadras (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But in general I do think players should have some sense of how hard something will be before they attempt it. There are probably exceptions.




Agree, this was done in my edit (we were cross-posting). 
I feel that the Insight skill would work quite well in this - perhaps revealing the difficulty and possible consequences/hurdles should the conversation not go as planned.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I understand the distinction you are making.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I don't see this in play.  If I did, it's fairly easily handled by just adding additional fictional pressure -- indicate that the waffling is angering the troll king, forcing a choice or facing consequences.  The fiction isn't forced to pause indefinitely while the player deliberates.  You can start it up again if they're having trouble deciding.


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## iserith (Apr 18, 2019)

The only time I see a player trying to back out of something he or she has described as wanting to do is when the DC or consequences that I laid out are strikingly different than what the player had in mind. In this case, it's a mismatch of expectations and I think it's reasonable for the player to withdraw the action declaration. This is an exceedingly rare circumstance in my experience, given that I devote a lot of my effort to keeping everyone on the same page via the play loop.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

iserith said:


> The only time I see a player trying to back out of something he or she has described as wanting to do is when the DC or consequences that I laid out are strikingly different than what the player had in mind. In this case, it's a mismatch of expectations and I think it's reasonable for the player to withdraw the action declaration. This is an exceedingly rare circumstance in my experience, given that I devote a lot of my effort to keeping everyone on the same page via the play loop.



Yeah, I think a lot of the kvetching over the possibility of players tossing out actions and backing out repeatedly until they get a result with odds they like is overblown. It’s a “problem” that only really exists on paper, but in actual play doesn’t really come up.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Yeah, I think a lot of the kvetching over the possibility of players tossing out actions and backing out repeatedly until they get a result with odds they like is overblown. It’s a “problem” that only really exists on paper, but in actual play doesn’t really come up.



This.  I was thinking on why I didn't see this at all (except for the occasional understanding mismatch [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] mentions) is that if we're at the point of a check, it's because the player has akready decided what they want to do.  It's important to stress that the situation isn't something I've placed as a generic challenge but rather one placed because it engages the characters' interests and needs.  The players should already want to have their characters act because the outcome is something that natters to them.  As such, declarations are already aligned with player gials and they aren't seeking an easier way past -- they want to do this thing.

Barring complete understanding mismatches, natch.


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## Satyrn (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, after 3 references to it I'm really regretting how I phrased that. One more time: it doesn't have to be the specific DC and the specific consequence, just a general sense of how hard it will be, and what sort of thing might go wrong. And, honestly, I could have (should have?) left that sentence out completely as it's only a refinement of the main point.
> 
> But in general I do think players should have some sense of how hard something will be before they attempt it. There are probably exceptions.
> 
> I don't see a problem with the section in bold at all.  The DM's description of the environment is always going to be incomplete, and even where it's not the players will often get a different impression than the DM is trying to convey.




In your defense, as a DM, I totally preferpre tell the players the DC before they roll the dice. It lets them know if they succeed, instantly as soon as the d20 stops rolling. Before I know, even!  In many circumstances, too, I'll tell them exactly what success and failure will mean, too. It puts a little more tension on the roll itself, instead of waiting for me to tell them the result. It also prevents me from fudging the DC.

But, if I'm spelling out all the consequences, it's right before the player rolls the dice - the character is in the midst of performing the action - and there is no backing out (barring extraordinary circumstance, such as finding out that player and DM aren't on the same page regarding what's happening*).


Edot:

*Ha! I didn't read the previous three or so posts that day this same thing before writing that line.


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Do you, though? Like, I know that punishing dump stats is a time-honored tradition, but... Should it be?




I don't see it as punishing though- it's adjusting for the stats and skill choices of the players for their PC.

If Bill is playing the 8 CHA barbarian and Bob is playing the 20 CHA persuasion trained bard - their conversation with the king is likely to go very differently *even if* Bill and Bob *the players* use identical wording in trying to persuade the king.

In the same vein as if Bill the 20 Str Barbarian and Bob the 8 Str bard try to physically  knock down a door. The results are likely to be very different.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> I don't see it as punishing though- it's adjusting for the stats and skill choices of the players for their PC.
> 
> If Bill is playing the 8 CHA barbarian and Bob is playing the 20 CHA persuasion trained bard - their conversation with the king is likely to go very differently *even if* Bill and Bob *the players* use identical wording in trying to persuade the king.
> 
> In the same vein as if Bill the 20 Str Barbarian and Bob the 8 Str bard try to physically  knock down a door. The results are likely to be very different.




I agree with this _and_ I don't go out of my way to punish players for dumping stats.


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## Bawylie (Apr 18, 2019)

Nevermind.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> I don't see it as punishing though- it's adjusting for the stats and skill choices of the players for their PC.
> 
> If Bill is playing the 8 CHA barbarian and Bob is playing the 20 CHA persuasion trained bard - their conversation with the king is likely to go very differently *even if* Bill and Bob *the players* use identical wording in trying to persuade the king.
> 
> In the same vein as if Bill the 20 Str Barbarian and Bob the 8 Str bard try to physically  knock down a door. The results are likely to be very different.




I mean, you were the one who said “you have to have some way to reward/penalize for the player voluntarily prioritizing/dumping charisma of the character.” I’m personally not a fan of that way of thinking. I don’t feel the need to force low-charisma characters into situations where they have to make charisma checks, just to penalize their choice of stat allocation. If they choose to take actions that require Charisma checks to resolve, the lower chances of success are penalty enough. If they avoid risky social actions for fear of having to make Charisma checks, that’s also penalty enough, in my opinion. No need to manipulate events so they’ll need to make a roll with their dump stat for the dump stat to be affecting their play.


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean, you were the one who said “you have to have some way to reward/penalize for the player voluntarily prioritizing/dumping charisma of the character.” I’m personally not a fan of that way of thinking. I don’t feel the need to force low-charisma characters into situations where they have to make charisma checks, just to penalize their choice of stat allocation. If they choose to take actions that require Charisma checks to resolve, the lower chances of success are penalty enough. If they avoid risky social actions for fear of having to make Charisma checks, that’s also penalty enough, in my opinion. No need to manipulate events so they’ll need to make a roll with their dump stat for the dump stat to be affecting their play.



I wasn't actually thinking of forcing a roll. 

I was more thinking of the charismatic, well spoken player trying to downplay the 8 CHA, and still trying to act like a face.

In other words, if the player voluntarily tries to talk to the king - I'll filter the conversation with his CHA and skill level in mind.


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## iserith (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> I wasn't actually thinking of forcing a roll.
> 
> I was more thinking of the charismatic, well spoken player trying to downplay the 8 CHA, and still trying to act like a face.
> 
> In other words, if the player voluntarily tries to talk to the king - I'll filter the conversation with his CHA and skill level in mind.




I would not. I don't have the foggiest idea what the PCs' stats are for one, and no matter how charismatic or well-spoken the player is, everything I'm judging still boils down to a goal and approach. The dump stat will come into play if and when the die is cast and, given how swingy a d20 is, it probably doesn't matter all that much unless the DC is particularly high.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I have made no such claim. I claim that my way of doing things encourages players to look for ways of resolving actions that don't have a chance of failure or don't have a cost for the attempt or consequence for failure. In contrast to your assertion that my way of doing things punishes players and in so doing makes them rely on their best skills. I am not attacking your way of doing things, I am defending mine.
> 
> You keep suggesting that my way of doing things is somehow not "just asking the players to tell me what they want to do, and being prepared for things to become skill checks." This is not the case.




Then why is it, when I opened this conversation, I was told, well actually you should do it this way. Since, all I do is let players tell me what they want to do and am prepared for things to become skill checks? 

Why do you keep telling me that we do things differently, when in the end we do them the same way?



Charlaquin said:


> I don't have a plan. It is not my role as DM to come up with a plan for the player to escape. My role is to adjudicate the player's plan.




So you never play as a player? 

That might explain a whole heck of a lot here, because I DM and play as a player. I switch between adjudicating the plan and making the plan depending on the day of the week. If you never play but only DM that might explain why we are having a hard time communicating. 




Charlaquin said:


> YOU KEEP SAYING THIS, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT MEANS!!!




ALL CAPS!!!

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. 

At some point in this rambling conversation it was brought up that players who would worry about failing a roll and making a situation worse would simply choose not to roll. They would remain neutral as a counter to the consequences of failure. 

So, it was proposed, that there should not only be consequences for failure, but consequences for doing nothing. So, exactly what I said. Consequence for failing and consequence for doing nothing. 

Now, since that seems to be something you have a hard time grasping, considering your RESPONSE, I'm guessing you missed out or forgot that side conversation. But, I'm trying to cover my bases in this discussion to not misrepresent the playstyle. 




Charlaquin said:


> This conversation has come about because you are repeatedly (and seemingly deliberately) misinterpreting my position. Yes, we probably would call for rolls much of the same times. Yes, you probably do call for rolls more often than I do. The difference between our methods is that I have a more rigorous process that I personally follow in adjudicating actions - namely, I ask myself if the character's action has a reasonable chance of accomplishing the player's goal. If it doesn't, it fails. If it does, I ask myself if the character's action has a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the player's goal. If it doesn't it succeeds. If it does, I ask myself if there is a cost for attempting this action, or a consequence for failing. If it doesn't, it succeeds. If it does, I ask myself what Attribute this task would best be resolved with, and whether the task is easy, medium, hard, or very hard. Then I tell the player to make a check with the appropriate Attribute, at the appropriate difficulty, and let them know what will happen on a failure.* I do these things primarily to insure that the characters successes and failures will largely be the result of the players' decisions, rather than the roll of the dice. Secondarily, I do these things to encourage players to think in terms of what their character is doing (rather than trying to guess what skill or skills I'll allow them to accomplish their goal with on a success)*, and to equip them with enough information to make informed decisions.




If this was just about your personal checklist, why have you felt the need to correct me so many times about the way I play? 

And, I still don't see the connection between the things you do and ensuring success and failure come about because of the player's decisions instead of a die roll. Your process is just about when to roll the dice based off player decisions, so it has equal chances of dice rolls going bad. And bad dice rolls don't invalidate the decision, do they? And how does this work towards making sure the players are thinking in terms of their character's actions instead of their skills? 

Especially if you don't share your checklist and from the outside there is no difference between our approaches? 

Wait...by "guessing" are you just worried about DMs who say "Well, this is a locked door, they need to use the lockpicking skill" and ignore every other plan until the players decide to pick the locks? Did you think that was the style I was advocating at any point?



Charlaquin said:


> I don't know, is it really that hard for you to undrstand that words mean things?




You know, breaking my statements into smaller chunks is making it harder to respond succinctly. I've been dealing with that, but this? Taking this where you have and giving such a sarcastic response does nothing to address anything and is just a jab. 

You wanted to quote this with the rest of the section that followed, great, throw in your jab and then address my points. But, don't break it this far apart so that my only possible response is to be rude back. It encourages nothing but trouble.



Charlaquin said:


> No, it is not. It is an action. It's a thing the character is doing. It may or may not require a check to resolve, to which Proficiency in the Investigation skill may or may not be applicable. Personally, I'd say Perception would be more appropriate than Investigation here, but that's neither here nor there.
> 
> And this way of thinking is a barrier to you understanding my method. Don't worry about what kind of check it is. Just say what you want to accomplish and how your character is going about it. Most of the time, what will happen is pretty much what you think will happen, no roll necessary. Sometimes, I might inform you of a potential consequence that action might have, and what you'd need to roll to avoid that consequence. If you don't want to take the risk, you don't have to.
> 
> ...




I think the shove example is the one that stands out the most out of this list, but frankly, I'm getting tired of the circle. 

You want to divide the narrative action from the mechanical resolution. To the point where your advice to me as a player is to not even worry about how my action might resolved. At least, not until you've told me there will be a check and the DC and the consequences for failure. 

What am I supposed to be gaining here? If I want to move really fast, I don't just say that and wait for the DM to tell me that I can take the Dash action, I know the Dash action is a thing and I consider both the story and the mechanics. I treat spells, combat actions, and skills mostly the same way. Combat gets reversed more often than not, but social and exploration are handled the same way. 

And, I guess what I'm supposed to be gaining is an understanding of your personal checklist for resolution... woo? 




Charlaquin said:


> I have done no such thing. I don't care if you do things my way or not. I, personally, have found the most success running the game the way I do, which is why I do it. If it doesn't interest you, don't do it my way. Why would I care?




I'm not sure, but why would I be defending my style if you weren't commenting on how I was doing it wrong? And then, instead of saying "Hey, it's just the way I prefer to do things" you double down, telling me I don't understand it, that I'm making mistakes in my use of terms, that your method leads to more people making decisions as their characters instead of... on something else since I'm starting to question what exactly you are trying to avoid. 

I've been digging into what you are saying, trying to figure it out, and it seems our difference is simply you have a strict checklist that you don't share with your players and just mentally work through? That's what this entire thing exploded from?






pemerton said:


> Action _declarations_ sometimes have checks follow them. The action declaration, like the check itself, is an event in the real world. On the other hand, the action is an imagined event that (we pretend) occurs in the fictional world of the game.
> 
> *I think that keeping these things distinct aids clarity, especially when trying to compare different approaches to action resolution.*
> 
> For most versions of D&D, including 5e, for many action declarations this simply isn't true. In 5e the action declaration _I cast a spell_ is not normally resolved by calling for a check. Nor is the action declaration _I pick the sword up from the ground_. Nor is the action declaration _I use the key to unlock the door_.




Actually, if we want to get really pedantic to quote [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] "Rolling a d20, adding modifiers, and comparing to a DC is the processes that constitutes the game rules term, "check."" 

So, almost all spells are resolved through a check. Either an attack roll or a saving throw. 

But while we can pedantically argue down the primrose path, I think another point here is more important. That bolded section... is that the only point to keeping them separated? Just for ease of comparing different styles, most of which will still follow "declaration before roll" no matter what may find its way between? (I think it is fair to say no one has been advocating rolling then declaring an action afterward)

In that case, awesome, I appreciate it existing for that. Why am I getting taken to task for saying there are some checks that don't require a roll (reliable talent, barbarian strength) and that the action and check are so closely linked that I don't see a point in dividing them at the table? 

I was told I was wrong for equating actions and checks, that I'm misunderstanding that actions and checks are different, that I'm resolving skills incorrectly because I keep thinking of them in terms of checks instead of actions. 

But the entire point of a harsh division... is to help people with different styles be more clear in their discussions. So... I wouldn't have been wrong about any of that. I wouldn't have been resolving actions incorrectly. There was no point in calling me out as being wrong. 



pemerton said:


> When you say that you _disagree_, are you (i) doubting the accuracy of my report of my experience, or (ii) reporting your own experience with this approach, or (iii) offering a conjecture?
> 
> To me, everything you talk about here is about GMing technique. Yes, if GMs use poor techniques they will get poor games. But that's why we don't use poor techniques!
> 
> ...




I'd say it is more inline with option (ii), but (iii) sprinkles in there. 

I have had far too many players who are so scared of failing and making things worse for the party that instead they opt to do nothing. 

So, when I see people saying that by adding more consequences for failing a roll than simply defaulting to the status quo, and that makes their players more eager to act, that goes against everything I have seen with new players. The more consequences there are, the more likely they are to withdraw. Now, I do have more experienced players who love diving into issues and getting bloodied up in the process, but I don't need to guarantee that every check has a direct consequences for that to happen. 

Failing forward is great, I love that style. But that was not the style I was addressing. This style seems more like "checks shouldn't be rolled unless failure hurts" and that is why I said the fighter puts there foot in their mouth. Under that style, as I understand it, it cannot be that the fighter simply fails to persuade the Troll King. It must be that the fighter makes the situation worse by failing to persuade the Troll King. Losing him as an ally, turning him into an enemy, accidentally getting embroiled in an honor duel, something to make the situation worse than it was before the fighter took the check. 

And players can easily shield non-social characters most of the time. The Troll King wants to adress the man in charge, well, why isn't the bard the one in charge? He's the best at giving rallying speeches and dealing with political intrigue. The Fighter is just his Captain of the Guard, good at hitting stuff and not dying. 

But you know, I want anyone and everyone to be able to get in on that sort of scene, not just those good at it, which is why I object to a style that says every failure of the dice must make things worse. Sure, sometimes they make things worse, but it should not be a requirement of the check.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Do you, though? Like, I know that punishing dump stats is a time-honored tradition, but... Should it be?




If there is never a point where a player wishes they had a higher mod in a stat, then alternatively, there would rarely be a situation where a player is getting to utilize that stat to its full extent. 

If the melee brute never thinks a task would be easier with a higher charisma, or regrets wearing heavy armor because it ruins stealth, then are the stealthy and social characters really getting their chance to shine? Are they not occassionally regretting having a low strength and low AC? 

For choices to matter, both good and bad must be present. 




Charlaquin said:


> I really like this way of doing things, but I've found that under goal-and-approach, it usually arises organically. For a simple example, look at the locked door with an ogre on the other side. The ogre is not aware of the party. The party barbarian decides to bash the door down with her axe. Chance of success? Check. Chance of failure? Check. Cost for the attempt or consequence for failure? You betcha.
> 
> *DM:* Ok, that's going to require a DC10 Strength check, and the noise is going to alert any nearby creatures to your presence.
> *BARBARIAN:* Can I apply Athletics?
> ...





What would have happened on a success? 

I almost didn't like the second set of interactions, but it did allow the cleric to buff the party before the barbarian was done breaking down the door, so I understand why it was there. But, if the players succeeded they get the same penalty that they did for failure? 

Or was the reward for success getting surprise on the Ogre?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Wow, chill.  Ok, I shouldn't have typed "your scenario" because you (and I) were picking up the given scenario.  Sorry.  It should have been "your take on _the_ scenario."
> 
> But do you understand the distinction I'm trying to make?  It's "you're now in this situation and must make a skill roll" vs. "you are facing this problem what do you want to do?"
> 
> Maybe I'm misunderstanding and the fighter/player have options other than relying on a Cha skill, but it doesn't feel like it.



Still?

Again, the example I picked up was a case where the player saying their character answered the question was already stated. 

The talking with troll king ship had sailed. Maybe there were ten trillion alternatives, maybe only 13. I wasnt involved in that part.

I acknowledged they could have refused to answer. But the example picked up at they did answer.

At that point given the declaration of "I answer the question" and uncertainty of the net outcome (reaction) I would have called for a Charisma check. Whether it was persuasion, deception, intimidation or even some knowledge proficiency perhaps that adjusted is impossible to determine without context. There **might** be an insight proficiency playing a part - as in the motel case - but thsts all gonna depend on the specific nature of the scene.

But, my players and I are on the same page about what each of the six abilities represent and cover that we all know that the question of "is this strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom or charisma?) as far as results of a conversation is gonna most likely be "charisma" unless there is something obvious driving it another way.

So, if you think resolving reactions influences with charisma unless there is compelling reason to use another stat in cases of uncertainty boxing someone in, then YUP YOU GOT IT. I boxed that sucker in. 

Just like if they want to carry something heavy I box them in by checking strength.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Still?
> 
> Again, the example I picked up was a case where the player saying their character answered the question was already stated.
> 
> ...




Thanks for clarifying, and my deepest apologies for offending you so deeply with my attempts at discussion.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If there is never a point where a player wishes they had a higher mod in a stat, then alternatively, there would rarely be a situation where a player is getting to utilize that stat to its full extent.
> 
> If the melee brute never thinks a task would be easier with a higher charisma, or regrets wearing heavy armor because it ruins stealth, then are the stealthy and social characters really getting their chance to shine? Are they not occassionally regretting having a low strength and low AC?




It's possible different people imagine different things with the language used.  By "punish" I (and I think others) are imagining the DM intentionally trying to make sure the player/character is forced to use the dump stat.  But maybe others use "punish" to mean just letting people play the game, and not always giving the player an "out" to avoid using the dump stat.




> What would have happened on a success?
> 
> I almost didn't like the second set of interactions, but it did allow the cleric to buff the party before the barbarian was done breaking down the door, so I understand why it was there. But, if the players succeeded they get the same penalty that they did for failure?
> 
> Or was the reward for success getting surprise on the Ogre?




Yes, I think that's it. If the Fighter had succeeded on the first attempt they might have surprised the ogre.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Good post. A couple of comments:
> 
> 1) Certainly the players deciding to seek out the troll king (somewhat) changes the dynamic, as opposed to, for example, them being captured and then dragged in front of the troll king.
> 
> 2) Still, even if that's the case, once the fighter is on the spot I don't like a pre-ordained "you must use a social skill now."  Let the fighter propose something. "Let me fight your champion!"  "I'll pull out that gem-encrusted goblet and offer it to the king as a gift of my esteem."  Whatever.  And maybe, depending on what the player proposes, the DM will still rule that it will require a skill check of some sort, and maybe even a Cha-based skill.  What makes me wary is the idea that "You ARE going to have to make a Cha check to get out of this."  (Especially if it's designed as some sort of punishment for dumping Cha, as at least one poster has suggested.)



The examples you describe are alternatives to what exactly? 

Instead of saying "I answer the question?" 

Sure, I took up the example after that option was chosen. But there are lots of other answers. It sermsbodd to just blurt out "instead of me answering let me fight somebody?" Or some such before we have gone beyond "tense situation eith ttoll king talking but hey, it could be interesting.

But, how would a GM choose between the "troll king agrees to let them fight instead of answer" and "troll king decides he would rather get an answer" - in other words - did the characters appeal change the troll king's position? To me, that would be a Charisma check or possibly an intimidation strength check -depending on the specifics. Heck, if done right, it could be strength and perform for gosh sakes. 

But again, that's not the same adjudication I would use for "I answer the question." 

Now if you have jumped ahead to the scene, after the answer where a problem has occurred as a result of "I answer the question" and are suggesting a variety of ways to redolvevthat, that is another case.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> I wasn't actually thinking of forcing a roll.
> 
> I was more thinking of the charismatic, well spoken player trying to downplay the 8 CHA, and still trying to act like a face.
> 
> In other words, if the player voluntarily tries to talk to the king - I'll filter the conversation with his CHA and skill level in mind.




That’s cool if that’s the way you like to do things. Personally, I prefer to let the player’s goal and approach speak for themselves. When and if one of their actions requires a Charisma check to resolve, the -1 they’ll get to that roll is penalty enough for my taste, without me needing to filter the character’s social actions through my idea of whatever 8 charisma means.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> That’s cool if that’s the way you like to do things. Personally, I prefer to let the player’s goal and approach speak for themselves. When and if one of their actions requires a Charisma check to resolve, the -1 they’ll get to that roll is penalty enough for my taste, without me needing to filter the character’s social actions through my idea of whatever 8 charisma means.




Right.  

Every now and then that -1 will make a difference, but an 8 Charisma is not abysmal.  It's just a little bit below average. In fact, exactly as far below average as a 12 Charisma is above average.


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

iserith said:


> I would not. I don't have the foggiest idea what the PCs' stats are for one, and no matter how charismatic or well-spoken the player is, everything I'm judging still boils down to a goal and approach.




Wait, you're saying that you'd accept the same approach from a high charisma trained bard as from an untrained low CHA barbarian? Or would you expect different approaches and adjudicate each on on its merits?

If they both tried the same persuasive approach, surely the chance out success should not be equal?




iserith said:


> The dump stat will come into play if and when the die is cast and, given how swingy a d20 is, it probably doesn't matter all that much unless the DC is particularly high.




Actually it would matter a lot.

Let's say you (as the DM) determine that a DC 10 persuasion check is what's called for.

A 5th level bard (or rogue) with expertise and an 18 CHA will auto make that check.

An 8 CHA untrained character of the same level will only have a 50% chance.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> Wait, you're saying that you'd accept the same approach from a high charisma trained bard as from an untrained low CHA barbarian? Or would you expect different approaches and adjudicate each on on its merits?
> 
> If they both tried the same persuasive approach, surely the chance out success should not be equal?
> 
> ...



I'm not seeing the problem, here.  What do you think should happen?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> Wait, you're saying that you'd accept the same approach from a high charisma trained bard as from an untrained low CHA barbarian? Or would you expect different approaches and adjudicate each on on its merits?
> 
> If they both tried the same persuasive approach, surely the chance out success should not be equal?
> 
> ...




I think you just answered your own question.

If the player proposes something for which the outcome is uncertain and has consequences for failure (and, as many suggest, will actually impact the state of the game world) then roll the dice. The 5th level bard or rogue with 18 Cha will auto-succeed.  The untrained barbarian with 8 charisma only has a 50% chance of succeeding.

In fact, since you know the bard or rogue will auto-succeed, you can skip the roll. But the grumpy barbarian still has to roll.

What more could you want? Why would you need or want to adjudicate the two scenarios differently?


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## iserith (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> Wait, you're saying that you'd accept the same approach from a high charisma trained bard as from an untrained low CHA barbarian? Or would you expect different approaches and adjudicate each on on its merits?
> 
> If they both tried the same persuasive approach, surely the chance out success should not be equal?




I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking. It's not up to the DM to "accept" a goal and approach. The player states the goal and approach. The DM decides if it is successful, a failure, or uncertain as to the outcome and, in the case of the latter, calls for an appropriate check if there is a meaningful consequence for failure. If there is a roll, then the bard will have a greater chance of success, generally speaking. That's the point at which the impact of a dump stat would be felt.



Mort said:


> Actually it would matter a lot.
> 
> Let's say you (as the DM) determine that a DC 10 persuasion check is what's called for.
> 
> ...




It's self-evident in my view that the bard would have a greater chance of success in general. But that doesn't mean it's impossible for the barbarian because the d20 is swingy. (Not to mention the player may have the option to spend resources like Inspiration to increase the odds of success.)


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not seeing the problem, here.  What do you think should happen?



My problem with the first part was  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] seemingly stating that the charisma of the PC wouldn't really matter (which is why I asked for clarification)

The second part was me responding to the assertion that if a check was called for the roll would likely not matter that much.

As to what do I think should happen? I think in a social situation, the high Cha trained character should have an easier time navigating the environment.


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What more could you want? Why would you need or want to adjudicate the two scenarios differently?




You wouldn't. 

But the initial response by  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] made me think that he would allow the same chance of success from both characters in the social situation and that struck me as wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted.


----------



## iserith (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> You wouldn't.
> 
> But the initial response by  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] made me think that he would allow the same chance of success from both characters in the social situation and that struck me as wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted.




Same goal and approach, same success, failure, or uncertainty.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> You wouldn't.
> 
> But the initial response by  @_*iserith*_ made me think that he would allow the same chance of success from both characters in the social situation and that struck me as wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted.




I think he was saying that he would determine whether a method would definitely work, would definitely fail, or would fall somewhere in the middle, independently of who proposed it.

If it was in the 3rd category he would then ask for a roll, at which point the ability score, and/or proficiency, would become a factor.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Then why is it, when I opened this conversation, I was told, well actually you should do it this way. Since, all I do is let players tell me what they want to do and am prepared for things to become skill checks?



By all means, quote the post where I said “you should do it this way.” If you can point to it, I will cede that I misspoke and apologize. But this whole time I have done nothing but answer your questions about my DMing style and correct your misapprehensions about it. From my perspective, I am just being grilled relentlessly on my DMing style, while simultaneously being accused of attacking yours.

The one thing I did “attack,” if you want to call it that, was your suggestion of a “better” way to adjudicate the stupid poisoned handle scene. And my only point in doing so was to say “I don’t like it when the DM dictates what the PC does, especially when what they narrate contradicts the plauer’s description of their own action.” My approach to action adjudication avoids that. I don’t really care if you adopt my style or not.



Chaosmancer said:


> Why do you keep telling me that we do things differently, when in the end we do them the same way?



Clearly we do do (heh) things differently. I only call for checks when the character’s approach has a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving the player’s goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the player’s goal, and a cost for the attempt or a consequence for failure, and if it has those things, I tell the player the DC and consequences so that they can make necessary preparations and/or decide not to go through with the action. You... Well, to be honest, I’m not sure what you do. This conversation has been almost entirely focused on what I do, which makes it extra strange to be accused of attacking your play style. I don’t even know what your play style is.



Chaosmancer said:


> So you never play as a player?
> 
> That might explain a whole heck of a lot here, because I DM and play as a player. I switch between adjudicating the plan and making the plan depending on the day of the week. If you never play but only DM that might explain why we are having a hard time communicating.



I do play as a player, but when I do, I don’t tend to adjudicate actions. You’re asking me what I would do if I was a player in my own game? I don’t know. If it was my game there’d be more context than “you’re locked in a cell and there’s a guard.” But I guess since the guard is the only feature of the environment I’ve been given any information about, I’d try to talk to him? Or maybe ask the DM for more details about my environment. I don’t know, this is a very strange exercise and I really don’t see the point of it.



Chaosmancer said:


> ALL CAPS!!!
> 
> Sorry, had to get that out of my system.



You’re good 



Chaosmancer said:


> At some point in this rambling conversation it was brought up that players who would worry about failing a roll and making a situation worse would simply choose not to roll. They would remain neutral as a counter to the consequences of failure.
> 
> So, it was proposed, that there should not only be consequences for failure, but consequences for doing nothing. So, exactly what I said. Consequence for failing and consequence for doing nothing.
> 
> Now, since that seems to be something you have a hard time grasping, considering your RESPONSE, I'm guessing you missed out or forgot that side conversation. But, I'm trying to cover my bases in this discussion to not misrepresent the playstyle.



Ok, well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have only been responding to the parts of your posts that are addressed to me (because I am not really interested in the rest of the conversation, I’m just defending my position.) So, I don’t know who said that or what they were on about, but the idea that there “must be a consequence for inaction” does not sound at all reflective of my DMing style to me. Maybe you’re rephrasing something I would actually agree with in a way I can’t grokk, but on its surface, the asssertion that “there must be a consequence for inaction” sounds like straight-up moonspeak to me and certainly doesn’t sound like something that I would enforce in my games.



Chaosmancer said:


> If this was just about your personal checklist, why have you felt the need to correct me so many times about the way I play?



In your grilling me about my DMing style, you have proposed many example scenarios which are not reflective of my DMing style, and you have consistently re-framed examples I have given into a style not reflective of my own. That is what I have corrected. My process isn’t going to make sense to you as long as you continue to think of actions as requiring checks to resolve, except sometimes when the DM lets you automatically succeed. I’m not even a fan of the term “automatically succeed” because it gives the wrong idea from the get-go. It implies a baseline state where actions are resolved by checks, in which automac success and failure is possible in exceptional circumstances. This is not the case in my style. In my style, checks are not the way players interact with the world, they are tools the DM can utilize to adjudicate actions that do not already have clear outcomes. As long as you are thinking in terms of action=check, you are going to struggle to understand my style, because you are looking at it through an alien frame of reference.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, I still don't see the connection between the things you do and ensuring success and failure come about because of the player's decisions instead of a die roll. Your process is just about when to roll the dice based off player decisions, so it has equal chances of dice rolls going bad. And bad dice rolls don't invalidate the decision, do they? And how does this work towards making sure the players are thinking in terms of their character's actions instead of their skills?
> 
> Especially if you don't share your checklist and from the outside there is no difference between our approaches?



In my approach, the primary way of accomplishing things is by describing what your character does to try to accomplish them. Your ability to imagine the scenario, imagine your character in it, and make predictions about the likely outcomes of your character’s actions is your most powerful tool for achieving your goals. If you can imagine your character doing a thing, and imagine what would probably happen next as a result of him or her doing that thing, chances are that’s exactly what will happen if you tell me that your character does that thing. Sometimes, I might inform you that there’s a chance that there’s a chance something bad might happen as a result of your character doing this thing (which you may have already predicted). When I do so, I will say what bad thing might happen, and what the chances are of that bad thing happening, and give you the opportunity to change your mind. Though, again, if you’ve been imagining the world, you probably already had a pretty good idea about the possibility of the bad thing happening, so chances are good that you’re ok with that possibility, unless what I’m saying might happen is much worse and/or much more likely than you had anticipated, in which case I’m glad you got fair warning about that.

I think it’s pretty self-explanatory how this encourages players to think in terms of the character and the world. As for how it makes decisions the primary driver of success over RNG... Well, for one thing, there are a lot fewer dice rolls being made. I’ve seen plenty of D&D games where the DM calls for rolls in situations I never would have (or even just “because we haven’t had a roll in a while - god, I hate that. Not saying you are guilty of this, just saying it’s a thing I’ve experienced). This introduces many more opportunities for failure due to low rolls then there are in my games. I’m not a fan of that. It sucks to fail because of bad luck, so if something seems like it’d probably work, it just does in my games. Or, if it seems like it might work or might not, but nothing dramatic or interesting happens if it doesn’t work... then it just works. Then when something seems like it might work or might not, and also seems like it not working is an interesting possibility, then I tell you what’s at stake and what the chances of success are, and allow you to decide if you still want to go through with it or not. So if you fail, it’s not just because of a bad roll. I mean, that is part of it, but ultimately you’re the one who decided to take that chance, with full knowledge of the risk involved. It doesn’t feel like a bad roll screwed you out of succeeding, it feels like you took a calculated risk that didn’t pay off. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Wait...by "guessing" are you just worried about DMs who say "Well, this is a locked door, they need to use the lockpicking skill" and ignore every other plan until the players decide to pick the locks? Did you think that was the style I was advocating at any point?



That is one of many pitfalls that my DMing style circumvents. Whether you fall into this particular pitfall or not, I don’t know. Like I said, I know very little about how you actually DM, apart from the fact that you do allow players to initiate checks, you don’t require them to state explicitly what their character is doing, and you do call for checks where failure doesn’t change the status quo. Oh, and that you will occasionally narrate the PC’s action, which drives me nuts as a player when DMs do it to me. But other than that, I don’t really know. What I do know is, when I used to do these things as a DM, it did not lead to an experience I or my players found very satisfying. When I changed my approach, my games became much more enjoyable for everyone involved.



Chaosmancer said:


> You know, breaking my statements into smaller chunks is making it harder to respond succinctly. I've been dealing with that, but this? Taking this where you have and giving such a sarcastic response does nothing to address anything and is just a jab.
> 
> You wanted to quote this with the rest of the section that followed, great, throw in your jab and then address my points. But, don't break it this far apart so that my only possible response is to be rude back. It encourages nothing but trouble.



If I’m jabbing it’s in retaliation for being jabbed. Sorry, that’s a bad habit of mine, but your “is it really that hard for you to understand?” comment really rubbed me the wrong way. And for the record, it was in its own line apart from the preceding paragraph, I didn’t isolate it any more than it was already isolated.



Chaosmancer said:


> I think the shove example is the one that stands out the most out of this list, but frankly, I'm getting tired of the circle.
> 
> You want to divide the narrative action from the mechanical resolution. To the point where your advice to me as a player is to not even worry about how my action might resolved. At least, not until you've told me there will be a check and the DC and the consequences for failure.
> 
> What am I supposed to be gaining here? If I want to move really fast, I don't just say that and wait for the DM to tell me that I can take the Dash action, I know the Dash action is a thing and I consider both the story and the mechanics. I treat spells, combat actions, and skills mostly the same way. Combat gets reversed more often than not, but social and exploration are handled the same way.



Some actions, notably the ones listed in the “Actions in Combat” section of the PHB, have very specific, codified effects. When you take this specific action, here’s exactly what happens. Skills do not function this way. Skills have effectively unlimited possible applications and by their nature must be adjudicated on a case by case basis. Additionally, skills are not actions in and of themselves. Skills allow you to add your proficiency bonus to a check, when the action being resolved by the check falls under that skill’s purview.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, I guess what I'm supposed to be gaining is an understanding of your personal checklist for resolution... woo?



Man, if you don’t care about the process I use to resolve actions, why are you grilling me so hard on it?



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not sure, but why would I be defending my style if you weren't commenting on how I was doing it wrong? And then, instead of saying "Hey, it's just the way I prefer to do things" you double down, telling me I don't understand it, that I'm making mistakes in my use of terms, that your method leads to more people making decisions as their characters instead of... on something else since I'm starting to question what exactly you are trying to avoid.
> 
> I've been digging into what you are saying, trying to figure it out, and it seems our difference is simply you have a strict checklist that you don't share with your players and just mentally work through? That's what this entire thing exploded from?



I guess?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 18, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If there is never a point where a player wishes they had a higher mod in a stat, then alternatively, there would rarely be a situation where a player is getting to utilize that stat to its full extent.
> 
> If the melee brute never thinks a task would be easier with a higher charisma, or regrets wearing heavy armor because it ruins stealth, then are the stealthy and social characters really getting their chance to shine? Are they not occassionally regretting having a low strength and low AC?
> 
> For choices to matter, both good and bad must be present.



Of course there will be situations where a player wishes they had higher stats in a particular area. I’m just saying, I think the rules already provide plenty of these moments, without DMs needing to force them.



Chaosmancer said:


> What would have happened on a success?
> 
> I almost didn't like the second set of interactions, but it did allow the cleric to buff the party before the barbarian was done breaking down the door, so I understand why it was there. But, if the players succeeded they get the same penalty that they did for failure?
> 
> Or was the reward for success getting surprise on the Ogre?



On a success, they would have still made noise, but they would have been through the door immediately, so the ogre wouldn’t have had time to prepare. He’d have heard a boom, and immediately after there would have been adventurers facing him, instead of hearing a boom, then having a moment to assess the situation, maybe stand at the door with his weapon at the ready to clobber whatever came in, then a bunch more banging until the door eventually broke down (eventually here being maybe a minute of work - enough time  that the ogre isn’t caught off guard, but not enough time to add another die to the time pool). I probably wouldn’t give the players surprise against the ogre on a success, for that they’d have needed to take a stealthier approach to begin with. But due to the failure, the ogre might have a chance of surprising the party. Of course, the players in the example have made it pretty clear that they’re on alert, so they probably aren’t going to be surprised either. I’d probably give the ogre +5 a bonus to Initiative, and have him Ready an attack against the first creature to open the door if he acted before the players.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 18, 2019)

Mort said:


> My problem with the first part was  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] seemingly stating that the charisma of the PC wouldn't really matter (which is why I asked for clarification)
> 
> The second part was me responding to the assertion that if a check was called for the roll would likely not matter that much.
> 
> As to what do I think should happen? I think in a social situation, the high Cha trained character should have an easier time navigating the environment.




It _doesn't _matter, as far as the GM's adjudication goes.  It does matter for the character, though.

As for the second, I don't think you followed what he was saying -- he was saying that unless the DC is pretty high (or low, I guess), the d20 is going to be the big part of it, not the skill.

And, for the high CHA trained character having an easier time, it would appear that they do, given they'd automatically succeed at the check (note that they didn't automatically succeed at the _action_, but at the check, a narrow but important difference).


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## Mort (Apr 18, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> As for the second, I don't think you followed what he was saying -- he was saying that unless the DC is pretty high (or low, I guess), the d20 is going to be the big part of it, not the skill.




I think I did follow it. I showed that the assertion is incorrect (he stated unless the DC was high the D20 roll matters more than the skill, that's just not correct).



Ovinomancer said:


> And, for the high CHA trained character having an easier time, it would appear that they do, given they'd automatically succeed at the check (note that they didn't automatically succeed at the _action_, but at the check, a narrow but important difference).




It's actually a pretty big difference, and not narrow at all.

What it means under this paradigm: if the player picks the "correct" approach and can avoid rolling, his character has the same chance of success (certainty) regardless of his CHA or focus on social skills in a social challenge situation.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

iserith said:


> I would not. I don't have the foggiest idea what the PCs' stats are for one, and no matter how charismatic or well-spoken the player is, everything I'm judging still boils down to a goal and approach. The dump stat will come into play if and when the die is cast and, given how swingy a d20 is, it probably doesn't matter all that much unless the DC is particularly high.




Out of this entire thread, I think this, right here, this specific approach, which isn't uncommon at all, is probably the biggest impediment to understanding, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s and company's style of play.

To me, and, again, I'm not criticizing here, despite prior, ahem, perhaps less that tactful responses, to me, this illustrates why some of us really don't "get" [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach.  To me (I'm repeating myself deliberately so as to at least try to show that I'm only speaking for myself and not making any broader statement other than my own personal preferences), the notion that the DM doesn't "have the foggiest idea what the PC's stats are" is not something I would ever do.

One of the few things I actually do try to enforce during the game is that you will play the character you brought to the table.  No amount of talking will change that.  So, no, you don't get to make with the talky bits and avoid a check.  You will almost always make a check, because making the check is how I enforce players actually playing the characters that they made.  If you have no skill in persuasion and you have an 8 Cha, you don't actually say whatever it is you, the player, have said.  What you actually said in the game world is defined by the check you made to persuade that NPC to do something.  

To me, the narration comes AFTER the check, not before.  The check gives you the direction for that narration, which you, the player can then narrate.  But, to me, the check always comes first.  In the same way you cannot narrate climbing a wall or jumping really far, or calming your horse or tracking those orcs before your die roll, you cannot narrate any check before the roll.  

At least that's how I do it.  So, please, don't quote the PHB at me, and don't tell me I'm doing it wrong by 5e rules.  I know I'm doing it wrong by the 5e rules.  Fair enough.  But, that's how "I" do it.  The dice are, IMO, very important in ensuring fairness at the table.  And, besides, I find the randomness a lot more fun.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> I think I did follow it. I showed that the assertion is incorrect (he stated unless the DC was high the D20 roll matters more than the skill, that's just not correct).



Well, okay, then, you win?




> It's actually a pretty big difference, and not narrow at all.
> 
> What it means under this paradigm: if the player picks the "correct" approach and can avoid rolling, his character has the same chance of success (certainty) regardless of his CHA or focus on social skills in a social challenge situation.




Maybe, if the approach is deemed to have no chance of failure or no cost for the attempt or consequence for failure.  As someone that runs in this style, this happens often for many things that are not of significance -- for instance, you'd not need a check to walk into the troll king's throne room.  You would very, very, very likely need a check to explain before the troll king's guards attack you for doing so.

The focus of the game shifts towards narratively interesting moments, where it's very, very likely that uncertainty in outcome exists, so checks exist.  I know the focus of this thread seems to be on traps or doorknobs or finding treasure under beds, but that's honestly just not a big part of my game at all.  Convincing the troll king to let your friend go would be, and that seems like something that's very, very likely to be uncertain regardless of approach.

Also, there's no "correct" approach.  I have no idea in mind what will work for problem I present -- or, rather, I don't try to guess what my players will do.  If their approach sounds reasonable, they'll at least get a check out of it, regardless of what I might have chosen to have done in their stead.  Problems are what I present, not puzzles with solutions.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Out of this entire thread, I think this, right here, this specific approach, which isn't uncommon at all, is probably the biggest impediment to understanding, @_*iserith*_'s and company's style of play.
> 
> To me, and, again, I'm not criticizing here, despite prior, ahem, perhaps less that tactful responses, to me, this illustrates why some of us really don't "get" @_*iserith*_'s approach.  To me (I'm repeating myself deliberately so as to at least try to show that I'm only speaking for myself and not making any broader statement other than my own personal preferences), the notion that the DM doesn't "have the foggiest idea what the PC's stats are" is not something I would ever do.
> 
> ...




First off, I think not knowing the PCs’ stats is an Iserith thing, not a “middle path” thing. I personally do like to know what all the PCs stats are, cause I find it helps me build challenges appropriate to the party. That said, I do think you’re right on the money in terms of this being the core of our disagreement. I’ve seen it referred to as “challenge the character, not the player” to put a spin on it that favors your style, I’ve described it as placing success and failure on the player’s decisions over random chance, which I think casts my style in a more positive light. But at the end of the day, this is what it’s about, one way or another. Personally, I HATE when the result of the die roll determines what the character does or says. It’s MY character, I should be the one to decide what they do or say, not the dice. If at any point the result of the roll overrides my agency as a player, the dice are overstepping their role, *in my opinion*. Now, I’m well aware that others feel differently, and that’s fine. Some people find, the idea that the 8-Charisma barbarian could give a stirring speech without having to roll really high just as atrocious as I find the idea that “your character didn’t _really_ say that, you didn’t roll well enough.” And there’s really no reconciling such diametrically opposed playstyles.

EDIT: I will say, I’ve been on the other side of this fence. I used to be very concerned that players being able to do well at things they had low stats in without at least rolling high was tantamount to metagaming, which I just kind of took for granted was a terrible thing. But when I actually tried running the game the way a lot of folks online had been recommending, I found that not only did it not ruin my game to stop worrying about metagaming, it actually made the experience significantly more enjoyable, both for me and for my players. Of course as always, your mileage may vary. But in my personal experience, the game got way better when I stopped trying to maintain a hardline division between player knowledge and character knowledge and police what characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.”


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> First off, I think not knowing the PCs’ stats is an Iserith thing, not a “middle path” thing. I personally do like to know what all the PCs stats are, cause I find it helps me build challenges appropriate to the party. That said, I do think you’re right on the money in terms of this being the core of our disagreement. I’ve seen it referred to as “challenge the character, not the player” to put a spin on it that favors your style, I’ve described it as placing success and failure on the player’s decisions over random chance, which I think casts my style in a more positive light. But at the end of the day, this is what it’s about, one way or another. Personally, I HATE when the result of the die roll determines what the character does or says. It’s MY character, I should be the one to decide what they do or say, not the dice. If at any point the result of the roll overrides my agency as a player, the dice are overstepping their role, *in my opinion*. Now, I’m well aware that others feel differently, and that’s fine. Some people find, the idea that the 8-Charisma barbarian could give a stirring speech without having to roll really high just as atrocious as I find the idea that “your character didn’t _really_ say that, you didn’t roll well enough.” And there’s really no reconciling such diametrically opposed playstyles.




To add my own, different answer:  I am similar to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] in that I only have a vague clue what the stats of my players' characters are.  I know a lot about their motivations, their flaws, traits, bonds, etc., and what they've done, but I couldn't tell you what anyone's stats are.  I mean, I figure the wizard is probably trained in arcana and has a decent INT, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

But, no amount of flowery acting is going to get a free pass in my game, because I care about adjudicating the approach and goal, not the nice words you used when you attempt to act that out.  So, the 8 CHA barbarian can speak as nicely as the player wants, but I'm going to judge if his goal is achievable by his approach (speak flowery words) and, most likely, determine that this has a chance of failure and probably a consequence of failure and call for a CHA check.  The flowery words the player spoke just don't enter into this.

If, however, the player chose to leverage the target's bonds to get a favorable response with the flowery words, that goes into the approach -- use bond and flowery words -- and they'll likely get advantage.  If what the character is asking for is straight down the leveraged bond, it might succeed automatically, not because of flowery words, but because they're asking the target to do something the target would already want to do.

So, no, I only have a foggy idea what the character's stats are, but I assure you those stats come up quite a bit because my game focuses on situations were goals and approaches will likely be uncertain.  I only need to pay attention to what they characters are asking and how, and only that will determine if a check is called for.  No amount of acting out the flowery words will make a difference.  Excepting, of course, it's fun to act and my players will do it for that reason only.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> It's actually a pretty big difference, and not narrow at all.
> 
> What it means under this paradigm: if the player picks the "correct" approach and can avoid rolling, his character has the same chance of success (certainty) regardless of his CHA or focus on social skills in a social challenge situation.




One thing we have to stop saying is that there’s “a correct approach”, there a good approaches and bad approaches. It’s very poor DMing (Imho) to have situations with a single acceptable approach. In fact I never even consider approaches when I put obstacles in the way of the players, I just think of what would naturally be the result of either their or NPCs actions (or the environment) and throw them in their way. Their job is to figure creative ways to overcome them. One reason I dislike the published adventures providing ability checks (and DCs) it encourages the belief that there’s one “correct” approach.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Out of this entire thread, I think this, right here, this specific approach, which isn't uncommon at all, is probably the biggest impediment to understanding, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s and company's style of play.
> 
> To me, and, again, I'm not criticizing here, despite prior, ahem, perhaps less that tactful responses, to me, this illustrates why some of us really don't "get" [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s approach.  To me (I'm repeating myself deliberately so as to at least try to show that I'm only speaking for myself and not making any broader statement other than my own personal preferences), the notion that the DM doesn't "have the foggiest idea what the PC's stats are" is not something I would ever do.




That really helps to explain how we’ve managed to talk at cross-purposes for so long! Except for things like passive perception, AC and level I know little else about the players character sheet.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

I think one possible and recurring misunderstanding is that some folks still suspect we are taking into account the player’s eloquence and acting. Now, it’s possible that being a human I’m not as good at this as I believe, but I at least try to look at the approach, not the delivery. So a brilliantly acted attempt to flatter the king, an awkward attempt to do so, and a monotone “I will try to flatter him with flowery language” all get treated identically. 

And, yes, the grumpy barbarian gets the same DC as the dashing Paladin. Probably, but not necessarily, the Paladin has a higher bonus. 

I suppose the million dollar question is whether I would treat both characters the same in terms of granting autosuccesses. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, is the best I can say. 

I wonder if some of the pushback comes from an aversion to the DM wielding so much discretion?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I think one possible and recurring misunderstanding is that some folks still suspect we are taking into account the player’s eloquence and acting. Now, it’s possible that being a human I’m not as good at this as I believe, but I at least try to look at the approach, not the delivery. So a brilliantly acted attempt to flatter the king, an awkward attempt to do so, and a monotone “I will try to flatter him with flowery language” all get treated identically.
> 
> And, yes, the grumpy barbarian gets the same DC as the dashing Paladin. Probably, but not necessarily, the Paladin has a higher bonus.
> 
> ...



Having seen both sides of this fence, as I mentioned in my edit, I think it has more to do with a desire to preserve the fidelity of the roleplay. Like Hussar said, “You will almost always make a check, because making the check is how I enforce players actually playing the characters that they made. If you have no skill in persuasion and you have an 8 Cha, you don't actually say whatever it is you, the player, have said. What you actually said in the game world is defined by the check you made to persuade that NPC to do something.”

It’s not so much about giving the DM too much power (though I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case for some folks), it has more to do with insuring that the players don’t “cheat” by dumping mental and social stats and then roleplaying around ever having to make checks with them. That’s where the whole “player skill vs. character skill” argument comes from. And saying that you are only taking into account the goal and approach, not the performance, doesn’t really do anything to assuage those concerns. Because the primary concern isn’t about being fair to players of all social skill and comfort levels (though I’m sure that is _a_ goal.) The primary concern is not letting the characters succeed in arenas they have low stats in without a lucky roll.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Out of this entire thread, I think this, right here, this specific approach, which isn't uncommon at all, is probably the biggest impediment to understanding, @_*iserith*_'s and company's style of play.
> 
> To me, and, again, I'm not criticizing here, despite prior, ahem, perhaps less that tactful responses, to me, this illustrates why some of us really don't "get" @_*iserith*_'s approach.  To me (I'm repeating myself deliberately so as to at least try to show that I'm only speaking for myself and not making any broader statement other than my own personal preferences), the notion that the DM doesn't "have the foggiest idea what the PC's stats are" is not something I would ever do.




For most campaigns, I usually have more players than seats per session and more than one character per player. So I might have 20 PCs in a given campaign and no clue which players and which characters might be at a given session. So I can't keep track of who has what Charisma score or whatever. And anyway I see nothing in the rules that suggest I should.



Hussar said:


> One of the few things I actually do try to enforce during the game is that you will play the character you brought to the table.  No amount of talking will change that.  So, no, you don't get to make with the talky bits and avoid a check.  You will almost always make a check, because making the check is how I enforce players actually playing the characters that they made.  If you have no skill in persuasion and you have an 8 Cha, you don't actually say whatever it is you, the player, have said.  What you actually said in the game world is defined by the check you made to persuade that NPC to do something.




I don't see anything in the game that suggests the DM should "enforce players actually playing the characters they made." They do that by default by simply playing, right? They're also rewarded with Inspiration when they play according to specific personal characteristics.



Hussar said:


> To me, the narration comes AFTER the check, not before.  The check gives you the direction for that narration, which you, the player can then narrate.  But, to me, the check always comes first.  In the same way you cannot narrate climbing a wall or jumping really far, or calming your horse or tracking those orcs before your die roll, you cannot narrate any check before the roll.




Yes, that's what I saw a lot of people doing in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e, particularly the latter. Mechanics first, fiction second. The mechanics were always "right," and you had to figure out how to make that make sense in context. "I diplomacy check that guy... oops, natty 1. I guess I insulted his mother."



Hussar said:


> At least that's how I do it.  So, please, don't quote the PHB at me, and don't tell me I'm doing it wrong by 5e rules.  I know I'm doing it wrong by the 5e rules.  Fair enough.  But, that's how "I" do it.  The dice are, IMO, very important in ensuring fairness at the table.  And, besides, I find the randomness a lot more fun.




Despite the perception some may have here, I bet I have more rolls in my game than most people's games. But only because my game is the sort of experience where you're going to be in situations with meaningful stakes for the entire 4-hour session. We aren't spending time ordering breakfast in inns, shopping, or interviewing cagey quirky NPCs to get exposition. We're boldly confronting deadly perils, engaging in high stakes diplomacy, and exploring our way through worlds of sword and sorcery.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

robus said:


> It’s very poor DMing (Imho) to have situations with a single acceptable approach.




And THAT is what "pixelbitching" actually is.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Excepting, of course, it's fun to act and my players will do it for that reason only.




And sometimes the flowery speech (or whatever) might be worth Inspiration, depending on the PC's personal characteristics.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Having seen both sides of this fence, as I mentioned in my edit, I think it has more to do with a desire to preserve the fidelity of the roleplay. Like Hussar said, “You will almost always make a check, because making the check is how I enforce players actually playing the characters that they made. If you have no skill in persuasion and you have an 8 Cha, you don't actually say whatever it is you, the player, have said. What you actually said in the game world is defined by the check you made to persuade that NPC to do something.”
> 
> It’s not so much about giving the DM too much power (though I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case for some folks), it has more to do with insuring that the players don’t “cheat” by dumping mental and social stats and then roleplaying around ever having to make checks with them. That’s where the whole “player skill vs. character skill” argument comes from. And saying that you are only taking into account the goal and approach, not the performance, doesn’t really do anything to assuage those concerns. Because the primary concern isn’t about being fair to players of all social skill and comfort levels (though I’m sure that is _a_ goal.) The primary concern is not letting the characters succeed in arenas they have low stats in without a lucky roll.




Well, yeah, but I think part of that is a fear of letting DM judgment override mechanics.  That is, that the DM will let him/herself be swayed by player eloquence.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Well, yeah, but I think part of that is a fear of letting DM judgment override mechanics.  That is, that the DM will let him/herself be swayed by player eloquence.



Partly, but it’s more than that. The thinking goes, no matter what your approach, if your goal is to kill the orc, you’re gonna need to make an attack roll. If, on the other hand, your goal is to persuade the king, and you can do that without having to make a Charisma check with the right approach, then the game is unfairly favoring physical stats.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Partly, but it’s more than that. The thinking goes, no matter what your approach, if your goal is to kill the orc, you’re gonna need to make an attack roll. If, on the other hand, your goal is to persuade the king, and you can do that without having to make a Charisma check with the right approach, then the game is unfairly favoring physical stats.




Ah, gotcha.

So maybe those people are also opposed to avoiding the fights through smart playing.

My motto remains: "Challenge the player, not the build."


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Partly, but it’s more than that. The thinking goes, no matter what your approach, if your goal is to kill the orc, you’re gonna need to make an attack roll. If, on the other hand, your goal is to persuade the king, and you can do that without having to make a Charisma check with the right approach, then the game is unfairly favoring physical stats.




As an aside, with regard to attack rolls, the DMG has this to say: "Call for an attack roll when a character ties to hit a creature or an object with an attack, especially when the attack could be foiled by the target's armor or shield or by another object providing cover." The implication here is that there's something in the way of your success when you're making an attack roll. If there isn't, then an attack roll is superfluous. This leaves open the possibility, however remote, that as long as a character can figure out a way to get around the target's armor, shield, or cover sufficient to negate uncertainty, then there's no roll and damage is applied. @_*Bawylie*_ sometimes brings up an example along these lines with regard to a PC holding a knife to a NPC's throat, effectively "checkmating" the NPC.

Even saving throws aren't a given. "A save makes most sense when something bad happens to the character and the character has a chance to avoid that effect." So if you have no chance to avoid the effect, you don't get to make a save. 

All that to say - I don't see any reason, given a reading of the rules for D&D 5e, that anyone should assume there's going to be a roll in all situations. We have to examine the fiction first.


----------



## Mort (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> My motto remains: "Challenge the player, not the build."




Shouldn't one of the challenges to the player be playing within the confines of the build?

If a player has a character that has low int, no tactical skills and no background that would provide those tactical skills - yet consistently comes up with strategies and tactics that allow him and the group to overcome monsters and other challenges, is that player really playing the character he created?


----------



## Oofta (Apr 19, 2019)

I admit that I struggle with the eloquence/good argument from a player with a PC that has a low charisma and I'm not always 100% sure how to handle it.  On the one hand, I want people to contribute. I want people to be engaged and feel like they can speak up. 

But ... people frequently play opposites.  The guy that has good, persuasive arguments will play the low charisma tank. The guy that's not all that great at communicating ideas or coming up with persuasive arguments that doesn't necessarily like speaking up is playing the PC with the highest charisma at the table.  The high intelligence wizard isn't the sharpest tack in the drawer and so on.

So that's _my _dilemma.  How do I balance PC skills (which I try to rely on) vs player skill or lack therein.  If you have a 20 charisma but just called the king an incompetent fool, it makes no sense to _not_ give them disadvantage or increase the DC if a persuasion check is even possible.

In any case, I'm sure there's no one answer for all tables.  There's probably not even one answer for _my_ table.


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## Ristamar (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> Shouldn't one of the challenges to the player be playing within the confines of the build?
> 
> If a player has a character that has low int, no tactical skills and no background that would provide those tactical skills - yet consistently comes up with strategies and tactics that allow him and the group to overcome monsters and other challenges, is that player really playing the character he created?




Being an adventurer with a class level would likely indicate some ability to formulate a plan and execute on the battlefield, even at level 1, IMO.  Much a like a "low INT" guy that only played a year or two as a QB at a small high school probably has a lot more practical knowledge of the tactics and strategies of football than most "high INT" armchair quarterbacks that have zero experience on the field.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> Shouldn't one of the challenges to the player be playing within the confines of the build?
> 
> If a player has a character that has low int, no tactical skills and no background that would provide those tactical skills - yet consistently comes up with strategies and tactics that allow him and the group to overcome monsters and other challenges, is that player really playing the character he created?




You apparently have never met Jezebel, the 5 Int genius warlock.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> Shouldn't one of the challenges to the player be playing within the confines of the build?




A player is welcome to do that if he or she wants. It's none of the DM's concern in my view and, so far as I can tell, nothing that is supported by the rules of the game.



Mort said:


> If a player has a character that has low int, no tactical skills and no background that would provide those tactical skills - yet consistently comes up with strategies and tactics that allow him and the group to overcome monsters and other challenges, is that player really playing the character he created?




What business is that to anyone but the player of that character? If I can't have fun because I have a different idea of what an Int 8 character should be able to do strategically or tactically, perhaps the problem isn't that player. Perhaps it's me and how I think about what ability scores mean.

The PHB suggests that a player consider ability scores when imagining the character's appearance and personality and gives some examples of what ability scores _could_ mean. There is, however, nothing suggesting what a given ability score _must_ mean let alone which action declarations are valid given a set ability score.

Where we encourage players to portray the character in particular ways is via Inspiration. The PHB lays out the basic rules for that and the DMG (p. 240-241) discusses various options for specific things the DM might encourage. You could, if you wanted, award Inspiration when the player correctly guesses how stupid you think his or her Int-8 ought to act.


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## Yardiff (Apr 19, 2019)

Ristamar said:


> Being an adventurer with a class level would likely indicate some ability to formulate a plan and execute on the battlefield, even at level 1, IMO.  Much a like a "low INT" guy that only played a year or two as a QB at a small high school probably has a lot more practical knowledge of the tactics and strategies of football than most "high INT" armchair quarterbacks that have zero experience on the field.




I don't think this is a good example. Being that the coach of the team is the one calling the play?


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## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I admit that I struggle with the eloquence/good argument from a player with a PC that has a low charisma and I'm not always 100% sure how to handle it.  On the one hand, I want people to contribute. I want people to be engaged and feel like they can speak up.
> 
> But ... people frequently play opposites.  The guy that has good, persuasive arguments will play the low charisma tank. The guy that's not all that great at communicating ideas or coming up with persuasive arguments that doesn't necessarily like speaking up is playing the PC with the highest charisma at the table.  The high intelligence wizard isn't the sharpest tack in the drawer and so on.
> 
> ...




Yeah, insulting the king doesn’t go over well no matter what your charisma is. 

Let’s take 2 adventurers. One with Cha 20 and Persuasion and one with Cha 10. Both wish to convince the king to lend them a vanguard for use in a dance competition in the slums. The king feels this is a terrible use of trained soldiers. Both adventurers decide they will attempt to persuade the king to lend the vanguard by convincing him it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people. The king sort of cares about his soldiers’ rep but not much. 

As DM, I judge this to be a difficult task.  The goal is clear - get the king to lend the vanguard. The approach is clear - try to convince him of the reputation benefits. The DC is clear - 20 for a hard task. 

The adventurer with 20 Cha and Persuasion needs to hit a 12. The adventurer with 10 Cha needs to hit a 20. 

It’s way more likely our silver-tongued ally will succeed than our more blunt ally. But the DC is a 20 regardless. What’s more, it doesn’t matter how good of an explanation either Player gives. No matter how many eloquent words the player of the blunt character uses, the DC is still 20 for this particular approach to this particular goal. And no matter how much of a mumble-mouth our player of the Cha 20 character is, they’ll still have a +8 to the roll. 

Pretty neat, eh?  The scenario challenges the players. The difficulty of the task challenges the characters.


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## Yardiff (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You apparently have never met Jezebel, the 5 Int genius warlock.




So what is the genius part of this character?


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## Ristamar (Apr 19, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> I don't think this is a good example. Being that the coach of the team is the one calling the play?




Of course. Because the quarterback is obviously a mindless automaton with no ability to learn.


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## Yardiff (Apr 19, 2019)

Ristamar said:


> Of course. Because the quarterback is obviously a mindless automaton with no ability to learn.




He could very well be. All he needs to do is follow instruction and use his amazing skill to throw the ball.


----------



## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

And this is why examples are bad in partisan discussions. They distract and obfuscate as they get weaponized in the debate.


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## Ristamar (Apr 19, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> He could very well be. All he needs to do is follow instruction and use his amazing skill to throw the ball.




It's certainly a possibility.  But that could likely be a reflection of his personality and attitude rather than his "low INT."  Either way, it's the player's right to choose which variant of the fiction is representative of their respective character.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> First off, I think not knowing the PCs’ stats is an Iserith thing, not a “middle path” thing. I personally do like to know what all the PCs stats are, cause I find it helps me build challenges appropriate to the party. That said, I do think you’re right on the money in terms of this being the core of our disagreement. I’ve seen it referred to as “challenge the character, not the player” to put a spin on it that favors your style, I’ve described it as placing success and failure on the player’s decisions over random chance, which I think casts my style in a more positive light. But at the end of the day, this is what it’s about, one way or another. Personally, I HATE when the result of the die roll determines what the character does or says. It’s MY character, I should be the one to decide what they do or say, not the dice. If at any point the result of the roll overrides my agency as a player, the dice are overstepping their role, *in my opinion*. Now, I’m well aware that others feel differently, and that’s fine. Some people find, the idea that the 8-Charisma barbarian could give a stirring speech without having to roll really high just as atrocious as I find the idea that “your character didn’t _really_ say that, you didn’t roll well enough.” And there’s really no reconciling such diametrically opposed playstyles.
> 
> EDIT: I will say, I’ve been on the other side of this fence. I used to be very concerned that players being able to do well at things they had low stats in without at least rolling high was tantamount to metagaming, which I just kind of took for granted was a terrible thing. But when I actually tried running the game the way a lot of folks online had been recommending, I found that not only did it not ruin my game to stop worrying about metagaming, it actually made the experience significantly more enjoyable, both for me and for my players. Of course as always, your mileage may vary. But in my personal experience, the game got way better when I stopped trying to maintain a hardline division between player knowledge and character knowledge and police what characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.”




This, so much this.



iserith said:


> For most campaigns, I usually have more players than seats per session and more than one character per player. So I might have 20 PCs in a given campaign and no clue which players and which characters might be at a given session. So I can't keep track of who has what Charisma score or whatever. And anyway I see nothing in the rules that suggest I should.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




And, right back to pointing to the PHB and the rules... I even SAID, straight up in the quote you quoted, that I'm not looking at the rules here.  Good grief, can you not make a single response without appeals to authority?  You complain about being attacked and having to defend yourself.  Well, perhaps if you'd stop wrapping yourself up in the rule books EVERY SINGLE POST, you might have better luck discussing this.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ah, gotcha.
> 
> So maybe those people are also opposed to avoiding the fights through smart playing.
> 
> My motto remains: "Challenge the player, not the build."




And my motto remains:

Play the character you brought to the table, not yourself.  

I have zero interest in challenging the player.  Nor, as a player am I interested in the DM challenging me rather than my character.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> And, right back to pointing to the PHB and the rules... I even SAID, straight up in the quote you quoted, that I'm not looking at the rules here.  Good grief, can you not make a single response without appeals to authority?  You complain about being attacked and having to defend yourself.  Well, perhaps if you'd stop wrapping yourself up in the rule books EVERY SINGLE POST, you might have better luck discussing this.




Who needs luck when you have RULES?


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I admit that I struggle with the eloquence/good argument from a player with a PC that has a low charisma and I'm not always 100% sure how to handle it.  On the one hand, I want people to contribute. I want people to be engaged and feel like they can speak up.
> 
> But ... people frequently play opposites.  The guy that has good, persuasive arguments will play the low charisma tank. The guy that's not all that great at communicating ideas or coming up with persuasive arguments that doesn't necessarily like speaking up is playing the PC with the highest charisma at the table.  The high intelligence wizard isn't the sharpest tack in the drawer and so on.
> 
> ...



I used to struggle with questions like this a lot. Eventually, I found that the best answer (for me - obviously others will have different experiences) was “don’t worry about it.” Just adjudicate the players’ actions and don’t sweat what the characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.” Let the players decide that for themselves, and focus on adjudicating those actions as best you can. The game won’t fall apart because the 8-Cha fighter is a smooth talker or the 20-Int Wizard isn’t a genius. And to boot, most players will enjoy the game more. At least that’s been my experience.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

In case folks here think that I'm being unfair to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I'd point out that in a handful of posts in the last two pages, he has pointed to the rule books no less than SIX times:  



> I don't see anything in the game that suggests the DM should "enforce players actually playing the characters they made."






> Yes, that's what I saw a lot of people doing in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e, particularly the latter. Mechanics first, fiction second.






> As an aside, with regard to attack rolls, the DMG has this to say: "Call for an attack roll when a character ties to hit a creature or an object with an attack, especially when the attack could be foiled by the target's armor or shield or by another object providing cover."






> I don't see any reason, given a reading of the rules for D&D 5e, that anyone should assume there's going to be a roll in all situations. We have to examine the fiction first.






> It's none of the DM's concern in my view and, so far as I can tell, nothing that is supported by the rules of the game.






> The PHB suggests that a player consider ability scores when imagining the character's appearance and personality and gives some examples of what ability scores could mean. There is, however, nothing suggesting what a given ability score must mean let alone which action declarations are valid given a set ability score.
> 
> Where we encourage players to portray the character in particular ways is via Inspiration. The PHB lays out the basic rules for that and the DMG (p. 240-241) discusses various options for specific things the DM might encourage. You could, if you wanted, award Inspiration when the player correctly guesses how stupid you think his or her Int-8 ought to act.




Again, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], for the love of little fishies, WE GET IT.  WE REALLY, REALLY DO.  We UNDERSTAND that the rules don't support what we're playing.  We KNOW.  Can you please, please, please, stop beating this horse?  Let the poor thing die.


----------



## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> In case folks here think that I'm being unfair to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I'd point out that in a handful of posts in the last two pages, he has pointed to the rule books no less than SIX times:




I bet if you set your forum settings to show more posts per page, it will increase my rules-mentions to 6 in _one_ page which will make me look even more like a monster.



Hussar said:


> Again, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], for the love of little fishies, WE GET IT.  WE REALLY, REALLY DO.  We UNDERSTAND that the rules don't support what we're playing.  We KNOW.  Can you please, please, please, stop beating this horse?  Let the poor thing die.




From my perspective, it looks more like I point to rules to show why _I_ do what _I_ do, not to show why _you're_ "wrong." Because I don't think you're wrong. You just play differently.


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## Mort (Apr 19, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Yeah, insulting the king doesn’t go over well no matter what your charisma is.
> 
> Let’s take 2 adventurers. One with Cha 20 and Persuasion and one with Cha 10. Both wish to convince the king to lend them a vanguard for use in a dance competition in the slums. The king feels this is a terrible use of trained soldiers. Both adventurers decide they will attempt to persuade the king to lend the vanguard by convincing him it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people. The king sort of cares about his soldiers’ rep but not much.
> 
> ...



What this example also shows:

Despite the many, many pages of bickering the execution and end result of the player asking for a check or the DM calling for a check after the player states the action he wishes to take - often (likely more often than not) end up in exactly the same place.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> In case folks here think that I'm being unfair to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I'd point out that in a handful of posts in the last two pages, he has pointed to the rule books no less than SIX times:
> 
> Again, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], for the love of little fishies, WE GET IT.  WE REALLY, REALLY DO.  We UNDERSTAND that the rules don't support what we're playing.  We KNOW.  Can you please, please, please, stop beating this horse?  Let the poor thing die.



For what it’s worth, I find these citations helpful. For instance, the part about attack rolls was actually pretty enlightening to me. It’s also worth noting that Iserith is on record as preferring the DMing style he attributes to 4e. He just places a higher priority on playing each game as its own rules suggest than on playing in his preferred style if it doesn’t mesh with the intended play of the system being used. I could be wrong, but I suspect Iserith enjoys running 4e more than 5e, but would rather run 5e as written than try to run it like he would  4e.

If that’s not your bag, that’s cool.


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## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> What this example also shows:
> 
> Despite the many, many pages of bickering the execution and end result of the player asking for a check or the DM calling for a check after the player states the action he wishes to take - often (likely more often than not) end up in exactly the same place.




Yes but my way is better ;-)


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> For what it’s worth, I find these citations helpful. For instance, the part about attack rolls was actually pretty enlightening to me. It’s also worth noting that Iserith is on record as preferring the DMing style he attributes to 4e. He just places a higher priority on playing each game as its own rules suggest than on playing in his preferred style if it doesn’t mesh with the intended play of the system being used. I could be wrong, but I suspect Iserith enjoys running 4e more than 5e, but would rather run 5e as written than try to run it like he would  4e.




Just like I don't run Dungeon World like D&D 4e or 5e. Or Life like Monopoly. Or Cards Against Humanity like Dominion.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> What this example also shows:
> 
> Despite the many, many pages of bickering the execution and end result of the player asking for a check or the DM calling for a check after the player states the action he wishes to take - often (likely more often than not) end up in exactly the same place.




Seemingly small fundamental differences can be magnified greatly in the actual play experience though. My game will look a lot different than others where players are asking to make checks, even if my players make just as many checks on average.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> What this example also shows:
> 
> Despite the many, many pages of bickering the execution and end result of the player asking for a check or the DM calling for a check after the player states the action he wishes to take - often (likely more often than not) end up in exactly the same place.




I dunno, it’s hard to tell a player their pre-rolled nat 20 didn’t accomplish anything...

Edit: I retract that, you’re talking about asking, not rolling without asking. Apologies.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Mort said:


> What this example also shows:
> 
> Despite the many, many pages of bickering the execution and end result of the player asking for a check or the DM calling for a check after the player states the action he wishes to take - often (likely more often than not) end up in exactly the same place.




Hence my advice, “don’t worry about it.” We DMs have a way of working ourselves and each other into a frenzy over things that don’t actually matter nearly as much as we think they do when the dice actually hit the table. I used to think of metagaming as the cardinal sin of RPGs, the root of all roleplaying evil. In my defense, this was pretty much treated as common knowledge in the 3.5 and 4e eras that I was brought up in, and I never thought to question it. But then a funny thing happened during the 5e playtest. A lot of high-profile DMs started making the bold public assertion that metagaming wasn’t a big deal. I was skeptical at first, but eventually  I decided to try letting go of my anxieties about metagaming. And not only did the game survive, it improved.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Hence my advice, “don’t worry about it.” We DMs have a way of working ourselves and each other into a frenzy over things that don’t actually matter nearly as much as we think they do when the dice actually hit the table. I used to think of metagaming as the cardinal sin of RPGs, the root of all roleplaying evil. In my defense, this was pretty much treated as common knowledge in the 3.5 and 4e eras that I was brought up in, and I never thought to question it. But then a funny thing happened during the 5e playtest. A lot of high-profile DMs started making the bold public assertion that metagaming wasn’t a big deal. I was skeptical at first, but eventually  I decided to try letting go of my anxieties about metagaming. And not only did the game survive, it improved.




Right. DMs are famous for creating their own problems, then working hard to come up with solutions to the problems they've created. The game gets all wobbly and complicated and they often turn to the social contract to fix those problems (e.g. "no metagaming" or "play your ability scores"). 

A better solution, in my view, is to not create those problems in the first place.


----------



## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Hence my advice, “don’t worry about it.” We DMs have a way of working ourselves and each other into a frenzy over things that don’t actually matter nearly as much as we think they do when the dice actually hit the table. I used to think of metagaming as the cardinal sin of RPGs, the root of all roleplaying evil. In my defense, this was pretty much treated as common knowledge in the 3.5 and 4e eras that I was brought up in, and I never thought to question it. But then a funny thing happened during the 5e playtest. A lot of high-profile DMs started making the bold public assertion that metagaming wasn’t a big deal. I was skeptical at first, but eventually  I decided to try letting go of my anxieties about metagaming. And not only did the game survive, it improved.




What’s a high profile DM?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> What’s a high profile DM?




Ya know. A DM who posts stuff about D&D on the internet, and people actually read/listen to. And since the 5e playtest was happening, at the time, that meant like... all the WotC forum regulars. My taste in RPGs was very much still developing, and I had only just started to dip my toe into DMing. You and Iserith were certainly both influential on my developing DMing style. I recall Mellored being someone I enjoyed reading. And there were a fair number of D&D blogs at the time, most of which I don’t remember, but the Angry GM was among those I was reading at the time.

Nowadays with the advent of streaming games and D&D advice YouTube, you’ve got folks like Matt Mercer, Chris Perkins, Griffin McElroy, Jim Davis, the Nerdarchy folks, etc.


----------



## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Ya know. A DM who posts stuff about D&D on the internet, and people actually read/listen to. And since the 5e playtest was happening, at the time, that meant like... all the WotC forum regulars. My taste in RPGs was very much still developing, and I had only just started to dip my toe into DMing. You and Iserith were certainly both influential on my developing DMing style. I recall Mellored being someone I enjoyed reading. And there were a fair number of D&D blogs at the time, most of which I don’t remember, but the Angry GM was among those I was reading at the time.
> 
> Nowadays with the advent of streaming games and D&D advice YouTube, you’ve got folks like Matt Mercer, Chris Perkins, Griffin McElroy, Jim Davis, the Nerdarchy folks, etc.




Alright. I only recognize a few of those names and I don’t watch the streams. But I suppose the streaming draws the most eyes.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Ya know. A DM who posts stuff about D&D on the internet, and people actually read/listen to.




Oh!  Like [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]?

(On a totally unrelated note: [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION]...check your messages.)


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## pemerton (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> once the fighter is on the spot I don't like a pre-ordained "you must use a social skill now."  Let the fighter propose something. "Let me fight your champion!"  "I'll pull out that gem-encrusted goblet and offer it to the king as a gift of my esteem."  Whatever.



Sure. I thought I gave some examples of my own along these lines.

But in the approach I take (which, if I was running 5e, I would bring to bear - because in this particular respect I don't see 5e as that different from 4e), these would still require a check. But the DC required to persuade a Troll King to allow a fight between fighter and champion might well be lower than the DC to persuade a Troll King to let the PC go.



Elfcrusher said:


> Certainly the players deciding to seek out the troll king (somewhat) changes the dynamic, as opposed to, for example, them being captured and then dragged in front of the troll king.



To me, this raises the question of _how much should failure snowball?_ This is very system dependent, but my overall take is that if the players are unsuccessful and so their PCs are captured by the Troll King, then they can expect to have to make some suboptimal moves. A bit like when a fight goes bad and the wizard has to start declaring melee attacks.



Chaosmancer said:


> At some point in this rambling conversation it was brought up that players who would worry about failing a roll and making a situation worse would simply choose not to roll. They would remain neutral as a counter to the consequences of failure.
> 
> So, it was proposed, that there should not only be consequences for failure, but consequences for doing nothing. So, exactly what I said. Consequence for failing and consequence for doing nothing.



That was me, not [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION].

As per a post I made not too long ago days-wise but maybe 100+ posts upthread, there are different approaches possible and this thread is bringing out some of those differences. Just to mention some of the posters I've interacted with:

The approach I'm describing (which I use in 4e and which I think could be ported to 5e) has some similiarities to   [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]'s, but is not identical (as can be seen in the discussion of the Audience With the Troll King scenario).   [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] also does some things similar to me - eg in some recent posts mentions the idea of keeping up the pressure on the players via their PCs - but not identically I don't think.

I also have some similiarites to   [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] - eg regarding the fictional specification of the declared action as very important - but some differences - eg I call for more checks than they do (see my quote upthread from Luke Crane for the reasons why).



Chaosmancer said:


> I have had far too many players who are so scared of failing and making things worse for the party that instead they opt to do nothing.
> 
> So, when I see people saying that by adding more consequences for failing a roll than simply defaulting to the status quo, and that makes their players more eager to act, that goes against everything I have seen with new players. The more consequences there are, the more likely they are to withdraw.
> 
> ...



I don't know for sure what _you_ mean by "fail forward" - it's a term that has become somewhat bowdlerised. When I use it I mean it in the sense that Jonathan Tweet uses it (in both 13th Age and the foreword to the 20th Anniversary edition of  Over the Edge - I think the wording is identical, or close to, in both sources). Here's the 13th Age quote (p 42):

A simple but powerful improvement you can make to your game is to redefine failure as “things go wrong” instead of “the PC isn’t good enough.” Ron Edwards, Luke Crane, and other indie RPG designers have championed this idea, and they’re exactly right. You can call it “fail forward” or “no whiffing.” . . .

A more constructive way to interpret failure is as a near-success or event that happens to carry unwanted consequences or side effects. The character probably still fails to achieve the desired goal, but that’s because something happens on the way to the goal rather than because nothing happens.​
And I posted a quote from Luke Crane's BW rulebook on failure and consequences upthread. So what I am talking about is exactly "fail forward". And losing the Troll King as an ally, or getting embroiled in an honour duel, would be paradigm examples.

If you've got players turtling because of the fear of failure then to me that's a sign that you're not using fail forward at all. (Or else it's a sign that they don't want to play the game - I don't know how common this is, but I have had strange experiences in club games where there are players there who clearly don't want to be playing.)

For the character, of course having to fight an honour duel is a bad thing. But for the player, that's exactly what playing the game looks like, isn't it? And fighting the honour duel with the Troll King's champion is more interesting than fighting Random Monster #101. In more general terms, unless the player is planning to finish playing the game, having things get worse in the fiction doesn't stop the game being exciting and engaging.



Charlaquin said:


> I HATE when the result of the die roll determines what the character does or says. It’s MY character, I should be the one to decide what they do or say, not the dice. If at any point the result of the roll overrides my agency as a player, the dice are overstepping their role, *in my opinion*. Now, I’m well aware that others feel differently, and that’s fine. Some people find, the idea that the 8-Charisma barbarian could give a stirring speech without having to roll really high just as atrocious as I find the idea that “your character didn’t _really_ say that, you didn’t roll well enough.” And there’s really no reconciling such diametrically opposed playstyles.



I think I draw the boundary here a bit differently from you - for instance, I regard "You reach for the handhold but miss, and slide down a few feet before catching yourself on a ledge" as a permissible narration of a failed check made to resolve a climb. And upthread I gave some other examples, like narrating a missed attack as _losing one's footing in muddy ground_ or narrating being hit as _being successfully feinted by the opponent_. In the example of wiping the poison of a doorknob, I would regard _You must be more tired than you think you are - you missed a spot_ as acceptable.

But I also think that this brings us back to the narration of failure. There are many ways to narrate a failed check made to influence a NPC by way of a rousing speech that don't require narrating that the character didn't speak well.



iserith said:


> that's what I saw a lot of people doing in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e, particularly the latter. Mechanics first, fiction second. The mechanics were always "right," and you had to figure out how to make that make sense in context. "I diplomacy check that guy... oops, natty 1. I guess I insulted his mother."



And for what it's worth, I think this approach has no more support from the 4e DMG than from the 5e rules. In fact it directly contradicts what is said in the 4e DMG discussion of how to frame and adjudicate checks in a skill challenge, which - to borrow a phrase from a different game - emphasises that such checks begin and end with the fiction.



Charlaquin said:


> the game got way better when I stopped trying to maintain a hardline division between player knowledge and character knowledge and police what characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.”



Deciding what the character would or wouldn't do is something I leave up to the player. It also depends a bit on system: to give an example, I've been playing quite a bit of Classic Traveller recently, and I think there is an expectation in that system that a player's play of his/her PC will, to some extent, represent the INT stat of the character.

To elaborate: in our 4e game the fact that most of the PCs had relatively low INT compared to the rest of their stats only really came into play when knowledge-type checks were called for. But in our Traveller game players look to the INT of a PC to get a sense of what that character ought to be doing - in particular, there have been a couple of ex-military PCs with low INT but high Education who have been played as "everything they know they learned from the manuals"-types.

Why the difference? 4e has a very structured system that "directs" the player into tactically and mechanically sound choices for his/her PC (the character's "powers", the character's strong skills, etc). And nothing about it suggests that the rules are a "model" of the PC: they're clearly a set of parameters for underpinning and then adjudicating action declrations. We learn who a PC is from the _outcomes_ of those action declarations in the fiction. The fighter will present, in the fiction, as a physically rather than intellectually oriented character simply in virtue of what the player is led to do with the character in virtue of those established parameters. There's no need, in addition, to "roleplay" the character's stats.

Traveller, on the other hand, is quite different. The PC build process is clearly a model of the PC's life so far. The numbers on the PC sheet _are_ a model of the character: they're not a set of "moves" or parameters for declaring actions. No one had to direct or even suggest that the low-INT chacracter's aren't that bright: the players could see this as implicit in the way the system presents the PC as a tool for play. Similarly it wasn't at all controversial that when we were wondering which character might be the right one to wriggle through the slit-window of a gun emplacement, it was the one with high DEX but low STR and END. Whereas in 4e we wouldn't ask about stats: any player could try to have his/her PC do it, making an Acrobatics check to see how it went.



Charlaquin said:


> I used to think of metagaming as the cardinal sin of RPGs, the root of all roleplaying evil. In my defense, this was pretty much treated as common knowledge in the 3.5 and 4e eras that I was brought up in



This caught me by surprise. Or maybe I've missed something about who's criticisng what? Anyway, what surprised me was that I saw lots of criticism directed at 4e on the basis that it encourages and sometimes depends upon "metagaming". From my point of view, I saw this aspect of 4e reflecting D&D catching up with changes in game design that had been taking place since the second half of the 90s.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

iserith said:


> I bet if you set your forum settings to show more posts per page, it will increase my rules-mentions to 6 in _one_ page which will make me look even more like a monster.
> 
> 
> 
> From my perspective, it looks more like I point to rules to show why _I_ do what _I_ do, not to show why _you're_ "wrong." Because I don't think you're wrong. You just play differently.




Heh.  Ok, fair enough.  I over reacted.  But, you have to understand what this looks like from my side of the screen.  
"We play this way..." 

"Well, I play this way because that's what the rules of the game says"  

"Yes, we get that but, we don't like that way, so we don't play that way." 

"Well, that's what the rules say and I am following the rules of the game.  

"But, we don't really care what the rules of the game says, our way works for us." 

"I'm only following the rules of the game.  If you would just follow the rules of the game, it would work so much better for you."

On and on and on.  While I realize you are just stating why you play the way you do, and that's fair, repeating it so often does look very much like an appeal to authority.  On my good days, I just ignore it.  On my bad days, well, it just flies up my left nostril.  



Bawylie said:


> Yeah, insulting the king doesn’t go over well no matter what your charisma is.
> 
> Let’s take 2 adventurers. One with Cha 20 and Persuasion and one with Cha 10. Both wish to convince the king to lend them a vanguard for use in a dance competition in the slums. The king feels this is a terrible use of trained soldiers. Both adventurers decide they will attempt to persuade the king to lend the vanguard by convincing him it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people. The king sort of cares about his soldiers’ rep but not much.
> 
> ...




See, to me, this is a perfect example of why I don't play this way.  If, as [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] says, " it doesn’t matter how good of an explanation either Player gives", then why am I giving any explanation at all?  If the DC is static, then what's the point?  I can be as silver tongued or as tongue tied or just say, "I persuade the King, Persuasion X" and the end result is identical.  Me, I would much, much rather that the player narrates the results than the lead up to the roll.  The lead up may be contradicted by the roll.  The results won't be.

Now, OTOH, if, as say, [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] says, we are playing to the player and not the character, then what I say absolutely matters.  If I can say it right, I won't even have to make a check, or, depending on how well I do it, my DC will be reduced (which effectively grants me bonuses on my die roll).  Again, and I think I stated this way, way back in the early pages of this thread, it makes me, the DM, too visible as now I'm judging performances, which I don't want to do.  

So, I'd rather be like [MENTION=6674266]Ba[/MENTION]ywilie where it doesn't matter what explanation the player gives and then take it a step further and skip the explanation (which doesn't matter) and go right to the result, which does matter.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 19, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Sure. I thought I gave some examples of my own along these lines.
> 
> But in the approach I take (which, if I was running 5e, I would bring to bear - because in this particular respect I don't see 5e as that different from 4e), these would still require a check. But the DC required to persuade a Troll King to allow a fight between fighter and champion might well be lower than the DC to persuade a Troll King to let the PC go.
> 
> ...



"If you've got players turtling because of the fear of failure then to me that's a sign that you're not using fail forward at all. "

Indeed. One of the warm fuzzy moments I get as a GM is when one of my players says something like "well, this may not work but hrll, I know it will be fun" because they have seen that in my games various levels of fail forward and progress with setback etc etc show that they dont need to be afraid of daring and bold - just stupid and even then really grossly stupid.

There was a thread recently- might have been this one but do many blur together - where someone said something like "a player willing to risk the five is z sign the gm is not enforcing consequences for failure" and I felt (likely commented) that consequences dont have to be punishments to the point that they deter or scare off actions. They can be serious, problematic and yet entertaining and meaningful, well worth the risk.

Heck, my best treatment of "pc death" in rpgs involved a whole lot of changes, scenes, transformative events etc but all resulted in the PC back alive. Lots of fun for everyone. 

As I often state, in RPGs it seems to me that the "risk" (and "stakes" tho I hate driving near thst term anymore) should be at its core "control" (in whole or in part) not "fun".

In my experience, when that is true, fear of failure goes way way down because "not going is often the lowest form of "surrender control" and you know that it's not uncommon for try and fail to give you partial control when "some and setback" hits (not just randomly.)


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## 5ekyu (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  Ok, fair enough.  I over reacted.  But, you have to understand what this looks like from my side of the screen.
> "We play this way..."
> 
> "Well, I play this way because that's what the rules of the game says"
> ...



I will add to this the part which was (I think left out for brevity).

The elements of what was said may result in advantage or disadvantage. The DC remains static, but if the player decides to include  factors not related to themselves that make it more (or less) likely to work, then hey, blame, they get advantage, odds of success shift but that who "stats I as player chose" still plays a role.

So, is there a bit of lore they found that helps make the case? 
Is there a tie-in with their past history that can be leveraged?
Do they already have the troll king's daughter in their corner hrlping?
Do they say "hey, dont decide yet. you got that fighting pit, why not you toss in one of your finest and let me get a workout while you chew it over?"

Etc etc etc. 

That kind of thing to me is the sweet spot (imo) of the middle ground. Where for challenges that matter, player choices can influence greatly the chances of success (advantage, disadvantage, tactics, strategy, resources) but it still comes back to how well does the character do as resolved by a "check vs stats" (may or may not involve roll - by mostly pre-defined consistent auto-up/down criteria.)

Essentially, in terms of challenges that matter, the number of auto-win choices that dont refer back to character stats is practically nil.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

We 







Yardiff said:


> So what is the genius part of this character?



It was a thread from a couple of years ago. I described a warlock who was brilliant, but at key moments (specifically, when called upon to make Int checks or saving throws) she often hid her genius from her companions. 

Some people howled and screamed and called this cheating; others thought it was totally fine. Revealed a big divide. 

Bringing this back on topic, it seems like a bunch of people only have one conception of what 8 Cha means. Maybe it’s a charming, eloquent character with a hot temper. Whenever she rolls low it means she can’t help herself and lashes out at the person she is talking to.


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## Oofta (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> We​
> It was a thread from a couple of years ago. I described a warlock who was brilliant, but at key moments (specifically, when called upon to make Int checks or saving throws) she often hid her genius from her companions.
> 
> Some people howled and screamed and called this cheating; others thought it was totally fine. Revealed a big divide.
> ...




Whereas I think someone with an 8 charisma may _think_ they're charming but really come off as a slime ball.




But that's just how I would picture it.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> And my motto remains:
> 
> Play the character you brought to the table, not yourself.




I agree here - and will expand on that thought.  

Why create a character with flaws and a low ability score or two if you are not going to roleplay those at the table?  There's a good deal of fun to be had there - don't miss out on it because you are trying to "win"!  Frankly, it will backfire when, for example, the low CHA barbarian describes an approach and goal to a social interaction that the DM deems worthy of a roll.  Well... actually there's some fun to be had there, too, since the player may be playing a barb who is somewhat delusional about their social skills.  Anyway... that brings me to a related point...

It's not up to the DM to say "your character wouldn't do that".  It's not up to the DM to police how the player plays their character at all.  The DM has enough to do describing the environment and adjudicate actions according to the rules (of the table).  The players are in charge of how their PCs think and act.



Hussar said:


> I have zero interest in challenging the player.  Nor, as a player am I interested in the DM challenging me rather than my character.




IMO, it's a game that should be challenging - and entertaining - to the players (and DM).  The PCs are the players' avatars in the campaign world that they use to overcome said challenges.  As a DM, I am challenging the players, not keeping track of ability scores (other than Passive Perception/Investigation/Insight) and builds and such in en effort to "challenge the character" - there's too much on my plate as is.  The players can tell me when one (or more) of their traits/ideals/bonds/flaws or skill proficiencies is pertinent to my adjudication before the dice are rolled - and I then might grant advantage or even inspiration accordingly.


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## Oofta (Apr 19, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> Yeah, insulting the king doesn’t go over well no matter what your charisma is.
> 
> Let’s take 2 adventurers. One with Cha 20 and Persuasion and one with Cha 10. Both wish to convince the king to lend them a vanguard for use in a dance competition in the slums. The king feels this is a terrible use of trained soldiers. Both adventurers decide they will attempt to persuade the king to lend the vanguard by convincing him it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people. The king sort of cares about his soldiers’ rep but not much.
> 
> ...




Couple of things.

One is that I run campaigns with a lot of RP, a lot of back-and-forth.  So trying to persuade or convince people happens on a pretty regular basis.  I don't want to stop someone from contributing because they run a low charisma character, but if I rely on a straight roll in a lot of times that is the result.  This is something I've experienced from both sides of the DM's screen.  I'm just not sure there's a good answer.  Or at least not for me.

Second (and I think [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] brought this up) what a person says does matter.  If they make a cogent argument, bring up salient points I'll give them advantage or lower the DC.  I may also give the player some insight, history or straight intelligence checks to remember things that might be important.

I also don't usually have a predetermined DC in mind.  I run a sandbox campaign most of the time, I know who's who and what's going on but the PCs largely drive the story.  I may have never foreseen that they'd try diplomacy with the rat king, but they're free to do so.  So I'm making up the DC on the fly and I'm simply acknowledging that what the player says will probably affect the DC.


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## Oofta (Apr 19, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I used to struggle with questions like this a lot. Eventually, I found that the best answer (for me - obviously others will have different experiences) was “don’t worry about it.” Just adjudicate the players’ actions and don’t sweat what the characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.” Let the players decide that for themselves, and focus on adjudicating those actions as best you can. The game won’t fall apart because the 8-Cha fighter is a smooth talker or the 20-Int Wizard isn’t a genius. And to boot, most players will enjoy the game more. At least that’s been my experience.




I will sometimes give players running high intelligence PCs hints now and then.  It really depends on how the player reacts, and I don't do it all the time.  It is their character after all.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I think someone with an 8 charisma may _think_ they're charming but really come off as a slime ball.
> 
> View attachment 105979
> 
> But that's just how I would picture it.




That's a good characterization, too.  Somebody like that is NOT tongue-tied and shy, and it should be no surprise that they come up with strategies that involve fast-talking and charm, just like the high charisma individual. But at key moments (read: when the dice get rolled) they fail.

Look, I don't think anybody would have a problem with an 8 Str fighter who was roleplayed as the gallant knight, threatening to smite ne'er-do-wells, and in generally acting like a mighty warrior, because they know that when it really mattered...again, when the dice hit the table...his 8 Str is going to shine through.

Why do so many people have a problem with 8 Cha or 8 Int characters being roleplayed other than stereotypically?

(Now Warlords really are the only contentious issue this thread hasn't touched on.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Now, OTOH, if, as say, [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] says, we are playing to the player and not the character, then what I say absolutely matters.  If I can say it right, I won't even have to make a check, or, depending on how well I do it, my DC will be reduced (which effectively grants me bonuses on my die roll).  Again, and I think I stated this way, way back in the early pages of this thread, it makes me, the DM, too visible as now I'm judging performances, which I don't want to do.




So even though I keep repeatedly saying that the performance doesn't matter, and that it's the content of the idea (the "approach") that counts, not how well it was delivered, you simply don't believe me?

FWIW, you can't challenge the character.  The character doesn't exist.  You can only challenge the player. Part of resolving the challenge can use the numbers on the character sheet, but that still does not challenge the character.

Now, the player can do their best to pretend to be the character when addressing the challenge, and that's great, but I don't want to get into a game of arbitrating what is good and bad, or valid and invalid, roleplaying.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So even though I keep repeatedly saying that the performance doesn't matter, and that it's the content of the idea (the "approach") that counts, not how well it was delivered, you simply don't believe me?
> 
> FWIW, you can't challenge the character.  The character doesn't exist.  You can only challenge the player. Part of resolving the challenge can use the numbers on the character sheet, but that still does not challenge the character.
> 
> Now, the player can do their best to pretend to be the character when addressing the challenge, and that's great, but I don't want to get into a game of arbitrating what is good and bad, or valid and invalid, roleplaying.



Performance is a loaded word with way too much to be meaningful here.

It can mean "its acting" but it can also mean most any measure of success. 

You seem to want to protest it on the "its acting" level, but I know for me and I anpm pretty sure for Hussar its being used in the more quantitative aspect. That's the little dance that seems to have been going on when these issues get discussed.

Many pages back you highlighted an actual play session that you brought up to spotlight the benefits of goal and approach and went thru this long example of escape room like (to me) play where not one PC "stats" even got worth being mentioned. It was all player vs scene as you described it and really carried with it (to me, maybe not others) a sense of it having been played out much the same with totally different PCs. The PCs were irrelevant to the scene. 

Pretty sure that is what Hussar was referencing above, not performancing as Shakespearean dialog.

But it's an easy swerve to always try and defend as if that's the claim.

Did the player say it right, as in, include enough ticks to hit "gm declares auto success" score and avoid a reference to character stats at all?

Now, it does seem some want to claim proudly yep, that's how approach works - keep it from getting to referencing stats cuz stats only matter if you dont get high enough on auto-success score. Seems others take it a bit back down, where stats apply even at that auto score stage, but then they may post this big highlight scene to show the differences and never once bring a PC stat in. 

To me, and perhaps Hussar as well, when "Jim the player" can get "Jorune the character" an auto-success on a challenge that matters without reference to Jorune's definition within the game world, it makes Jorune irrelevant and all those choices that went into defining Jorune pointless and that is not what we might see as the middle ground.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> repeating it so often does look very much like an appeal to authority.




As you've mentioned me committing this logical fallacy a couple of times, I should mention I don't think it actually applies here. If I make a claim of what is in the rule books, I'm not appealing to an authority. I'm just making a factual claim. If I said that I'm obviously right because I am Iserith, a High Profile DM, then you'd be right. But I haven't, and I'm not comfortable throwing my weight around in this regard, even with all that High Profile DM money coming in.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Performance is a loaded word with way too much to be meaningful here.
> 
> It can mean "its acting" but it can also mean most any measure of success.
> 
> ...




You apparently missed my response the first time you leveled this accusation. This thread has grown so long that it's easier to re-type it than go searching for it, but here's the gist:

 - I was focusing on the problem solving, not on character differentiation, so didn't try to address that. But since you bring it up:
 - The wizard (who took on the task of figuring out the house, while the other characters focused on other stuff) used both Investigation and Arcana in finding the clues I mentioned.
 - In the interactions with the "Lady" I mentioned, leading up to the dramatic rescue, other characters used both Wisdom and Charisma based skills, as well as some class and subclass abilities.
 - Although the players followed one particular path of breadcrumbs (that I expected, knowing how they were playing their characters) there were some other possible solutions that I had left clues for, and if they had come up with something totally unexpected I would have adapted to that as well. 



> To me, and perhaps Hussar as well, when "Jim the player" can get "Jorune the character" an auto-success on a challenge that matters without reference to Jorune's definition within the game world, it makes Jorune irrelevant and all those choices that went into defining Jorune pointless and that is not what we might see as the middle ground.




You seem to have this picture in your head of us/me only ever resolving things by players using their own mental faculties.

Then again, I have a picture in my head of your players only ever resolving things by rolling dice, without ever doing any thinking for themselves.  

Probably both images are wrong.

But I will say that I care about "Jorune the character" far more in terms of the personality and quirks that the player has created, than I do about the numbers written on a character sheet.  And maybe that's the biggest difference between the way the two factions see the game.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See, to me, this is a perfect example of why I don't play this way.  If, as  [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] says, " it doesn’t matter how good of an explanation either Player gives", then why am I giving any explanation at all?  If the DC is static, then what's the point?  I can be as silver tongued or as tongue tied or just say, "I persuade the King, Persuasion X" and the end result is identical.  Me, I would much, much rather that the player narrates the results than the lead up to the roll.  The lead up may be contradicted by the roll.  The results won't be.




I think there is a misunderstanding here. What [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] is saying is that no matter how it is presented by the players, as long as the goal and approach is the same, the DC is the same. So let's say you have the Cha-10 character's player give a first-person in-depth reasoning for why the king would benefit from lending the vanguard to the dance competition. Tears are in the eyes of everyone else at the table after this thespian finishes his or her speech. In an alternate reality where the same situation is playing out at the table, a Cha-20 character's player just says "Hex Arcana tries to convince the king to lend the vanguard to the dance competition because it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people and improve their reputation." 

_The resulting uncertainty is the same as is the difficulty_ since the Cha-10 character's player has said the same thing with more (and perhaps more stirring) words. The DM is judging the goal and approach, not the word count or acting ability of the player. So it does matter _what_ you say. It does not matter _how_ you say it, provided you have at least said what you want to do and how you want to do it. (Although it might matter in another way, such as if you might earn Inspiration by using flowery speech or perhaps by being blunt and to the point.)

"I persuade the king, Persuasion X" is insufficient here because the DM cannot judge the goal and approach and decide if there is uncertainty, a meaningful consequence of failure, or set a DC. Further, the "lead up" would never be contradicted by the roll in the method described above since the roll determines the outcome - the king does or does not approve the request (or approves it at a cost or with a setback for the PCs).


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think there is a misunderstanding here. What @_*Bawylie*_ is saying is that no matter how it is presented by the players, as long as the goal and approach is the same, the DC is the same. So let's say you have the Cha-10 character's player give a first-person in-depth reasoning for why the king would benefit from lending the vanguard to the dance competition. Tears are in the eyes of everyone else at the table after this thespian finishes his or her speech. In an alternate reality where the same situation is playing out at the table, a Cha-20 character's player just says "Hex Arcana tries to convince the king to lend the vanguard to the dance competition because it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people and improve their reputation."
> 
> _The resulting uncertainty is the same as is the difficulty_ since the Cha-10 character's player has said the same thing with more (and perhaps more stirring) words. The DM is judging the goal and approach, not the word count or acting ability of the player. So it does matter _what_ you say. It does not matter _how_ you say it, provided you have at least said what you want to do and how you want to do it. (Although it might matter in another way, such as if you might earn Inspiration by using flowery speech or perhaps by being blunt and to the point.)
> 
> "I persuade the king, Persuasion X" is insufficient here because the DM cannot judge the goal and approach and decide if there is uncertainty, a meaningful consequence of failure, or set a DC. Further, the "lead up" would never be contradicted by the roll in the method described above since the roll determines the outcome - the king does or does not approve the request (or approves it at a cost or with a setback for the PCs).




If you don't mind me adding to this excellent example...

I _hope_, but don't require, that in both cases the player brings in their character's personality, whether that means using the formal bond/trait/flaw/ideal or just the persona and quirks that they've developed for this character.  And that could be done in "acted" 1st person, un-acted 1st person, or 3rd person.

But that's just for the enjoyment of everybody at the table.  It's not going to effect the mechanical difficulty of the task they are undertaking.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If you don't mind me adding to this excellent example...
> 
> I _hope_, but don't require, that in both cases the player brings in their character's personality, whether that means using the formal bond/trait/flaw/ideal or just the persona and quirks that they've developed for this character.  And that could be done in "acted" 1st person, un-acted 1st person, or 3rd person.
> 
> But that's just for the enjoyment of everybody at the table.  It's not going to effect the mechanical difficulty of the task they are undertaking.




The characters of my regulars in the Eberron campaign are a pretty uncharismatic lot. I think the highest Cha is 10 and nobody really has those skills trained. (They call themselves _Tools Integrated_ and they're more troubleshooters than talkers.) 

Still, they find themselves in social interaction challenges with some frequency. So what we'll tend to see is that they will make their case in a way that plays into their personal characteristics so that they can claim Inspiration (see The Case for Inspiration) and then spend it right away to improve their odds of success. So Arthur d'Cannith might overcome his sheepishness and be the first among his comrades to step forward to talk to the king (to continue with bawylie's example) because of his bond "I am determined to impress the leaders of my house, and to become a leader myself." He then states his goal and approach (usually first person for this player) and, if I call for an ability check, spends the Inspiration straight away.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

iserith said:


> The characters of my regulars in the Eberron campaign are a pretty uncharismatic lot. I think the highest Cha is 10 and nobody really has those skills trained. (They call themselves _Tools Integrated_ and they're more troubleshooters than talkers.)
> 
> Still, they find themselves in social interaction challenges with some frequency. So what we'll tend to see is that they will make their case in a way that plays into their personal characteristics so that they can claim Inspiration (see The Case for Inspiration) and then spend it right away to improve their odds of success. So Arthur d'Cannith might overcome his sheepishness and be the first among his comrades to step forward to talk to the king (to continue with bawylie's example) because of his bond "I am determined to impress the leaders of my house, and to become a leader myself." He then states his goal and approach (usually first person for this player) and, if I call for an ability check, spends the Inspiration straight away.




I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it.  But I think it's freakin' brilliant.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You apparently missed my response the first time you leveled this accusation. This thread has grown so long that it's easier to re-type it than go searching for it, but here's the gist:
> 
> - I was focusing on the problem solving, not on character differentiation, so didn't try to address that. But since you bring it up:
> - The wizard (who took on the task of figuring out the house, while the other characters focused on other stuff) used both Investigation and Arcana in finding the clues I mentioned.
> ...



Yawn... again with the stretches of how you see others.

I stated numerous times very clearly that the differences I see is in the perception of how often one has seen in play resolutions that are solely driven by player and where character does not get referenced - stats wise. That we all seem to combine them and use them both, but on what grounds and to what degree. Heck up above in what you quoted I even made specific reference to auto-success with no roll- yet you cling to tossing out the straw man of us always rolling and even get to throw in an added USB that somehow that also brings in "never thinking". 

But hey, par for the course. 

As for your deep concern for Jorune's personality and quirks, those matter to me as GM somewhat as far as they apply to what kinds of things I might want to include to offer up "hooks" which is certainly critical to my style of GMing. Frankly, I use class, background and race as " hook fodder" probably more than "personality" because those are more defined, less subject to swings.

But on the very nuts and bolts level, I need to care about their stats too, a lot, as far as how they impact the results as well as setups. 

But mostly, the personality of a PC is a bigger aspect of the player-side than the GM-side in my games, since that is all theirs to define and not something they have to "assign" or trade- off - like stats are.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Yawn... again with the stretches of how you see others.
> 
> I stated numerous times very clearly that the differences I see is in the perception of how often one has seen in play resolutions that are solely driven by player and where character does not get referenced - stats wise. That we all seem to combine them and use them both, but on what grounds and to what degree. Heck up above in what you quoted I even made specific reference to auto-success with no roll- yet you cling to tossing out the straw man of us always rolling and even get to throw in an added USB that somehow that also brings in "never thinking".
> 
> ...




I'm not a big fan of block lists, but given that we seem unable to have a civil conversation perhaps we should stop engaging with each other.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it.  But I think it's freakin' brilliant.



I think that most every style of resolution will indeed produce very expected results in chargen. It's nothing new for players to tend to dump stats thry think they can "work thru"  at the player level and spend on those that they see involved more directly at the resolution level.

It's the logical outcome. It likely impacts a wide variety of things, including core aspects like classes selection if those are tied to these. 

Whether it's good or bad or whatever is a matter of taste. 

For me, I dont really want wizard vs sorcerer vs warlock or paladin vs ranger vs fighter  being decided on whether or not they see in play me in a practical sense showing resolutions that put some of their core needed scores in "less demand". Its not technically my job by the rules to portray each class or race as equally good options, but my experience tells me it's more fun overall when they seem to be.

So I reject mostly approaches which work against that.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it.  But I think it's freakin' brilliant.




Well, we wouldn't want a system that encourages careful attention and skillful play while also incentivizing the player to portray the character faithfully, now would we? That would be _daft_.


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## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  Ok, fair enough.  I over reacted.  But, you have to understand what this looks like from my side of the screen.
> "We play this way..."
> 
> "Well, I play this way because that's what the rules of the game says"
> ...




This was my fault for trying to use an example. Dang. 

Alright, we seem to have missed a key component. The two adventurers both tried to do exactly the same thing (get think king to loan the vanguard for the dance competition) in exactly the same way (by pointing out how much goodwill the vanguard would earn among the common people). I judged that thing hard (because the king doesn’t care too much about the vanguard’s reputation among commoners) and set an appropriately hard DC.

In that example, it did not matter how good of a speech either player gave. That approach to achieving that goal was Hard.

Now let’s change it up and say the Cha 20 adventurer trained in persuasion still wants to do the same thing. Get the king to lend the vanguard for the dance competition. I’ve already determined that’s a Cha (persuasion) check DC 20. 

But - our Cha 10 character is going to try something else. The goal is the same (get the king to lend the vanguard for the dance competition). But they take a different approach. They say “my uncle is a powerful diviner and if you lend me the vanguard for the dance competition, I will introduce your vizier to my uncle.” 

I think this is more interesting to the King than the goodwill of the common people. He’s going to get something out of this that may pay off well over time. A vizier that has an “in” with someone who can read the future is pretty good. So I’ll say this is a DC 10 because the king values the connections of his vizier more than the reputation of his vanguard. 

Both adventurers have the same goal. The Persuasive character faces a hard check (but he’s got a +8 to the roll). The Cha 10 character faces an easy check but has a +0 to the roll. 

The approach they employ to achieve their goal helps determine the DC. This is why “I persuade” isn’t good enough. One of those characters offered a more persuasive incentive than the other. They are rewarded with a lower DC (or as others might do - maybe they get advantage on the roll). 

Because I won’t set the DC until I at least know what they’re trying to do and how, it’s not fair or appropriate for a roll before I decide on a DC. 

—————
Finally let’s consider that our Cha 10 character tries a different approach altogether. The goal is the same. But they say “I am taking your vanguard with or without your permission. This is merely a formality to let you know where they are. My uncle is an extremely powerful sorcerer and will raze your kingdom if you oppose me in this most trivial of matters.” As a DM I am not certain whether that is true (in which case Intimidate might apply) or not (in which case Deception might apply). The king isn’t sure either. So I ask the player what is more accurate - are you bluffing or threatening? (They don’t have training in either so they simply decide they’re threatening). I think that might work and ask for a DC 15. If they can credibly deliver that threat, the king will lend the vanguard (and remember this insolence for a long time). 

It wouldn’t be enough to say “I intimidate” and throw dice. If the character threatened something the king didn’t fear or value (“do it or ill tel everyone you’re mean!”), it might not have a chance to work at all. Whereas if the threat included something the king valued highly (“do it or I’ll fireball you this instant!”), there might have been no chance to fail.


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## Yardiff (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> We​
> It was a thread from a couple of years ago. I described a warlock who was brilliant, but at key moments (specifically, when called upon to make Int checks or saving throws) she often hid her genius from her companions.
> 
> Some people howled and screamed and called this cheating; others thought it was totally fine. Revealed a big divide.
> ...




So having a temper is part of cha? Possibly.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> So having a temper is part of cha? Possibly.




In the sense that it's a turn-off when somebody blows a gasket.  It's the opposite of charming and persuasive.

Another version of Cha 8 is an articulate and engaging person who nevertheless responds to people with snark, derision, and intentional mischaracterization of the other person's statements, all of which leads the other person to actually want to disagree with the character, regardless of how sound the arguments are.  

Maybe THAT will sound familiar to folks around here.  Although really that would be Cha 4 or 5, not 8.


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## Yardiff (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> In the sense that it's a turn-off when somebody blows a gasket.  It's the opposite of charming and persuasive.
> 
> Another version of Cha 8 is an articulate and engaging person who nevertheless responds to people with snark, derision, and intentional mischaracterization of the other person's statements, all of which leads the other person to actually want to disagree with the character, regardless of how sound the arguments are.
> 
> Maybe THAT will sound familiar to folks around here.  Although really that would be Cha 4 or 5, not 8.




This example would be someone who is good at making speeches/giving lectures but when he/she must engage with people just how much of an asshat he really comes through, right?

Will not respond to the final couple sentences since I try to be civil even if others cant.


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## Bawylie (Apr 19, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> This example would be someone who is good at making speeches/giving lectures but when he/she must engage with people just how much of an asshat he really comes through, right?
> 
> Will not respond to the final couple sentences since I try to be civil even if others cant.




I feel attacked.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

I cast _sleep_ on this thread!


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## Oofta (Apr 19, 2019)

robus said:


> I cast _sleep_ on this thread!




Ah, robus, my dear deluded poster.  This thread has over a thousand posts, do you really think a simple _sleep_ spell will put it to rest?

Even if it does, it is only a matter of time before it rises from the dead yet again.  Jason Voorhees is probably easier to kill.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 19, 2019)

robus said:


> I cast _sleep_ on this thread!




Next time use Intimidation.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Next time use Intimidation.




I think this thread has seen quite enough of that!


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## Charlaquin (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Next time use Intimidation.




I tried to persuade everyone not to go down this route all the way back on page 7, but apparently my approach didn’t have a reasonable chance of success.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> It's possible different people imagine different things with the language used.  By "punish" I (and I think others) are imagining the DM intentionally trying to make sure the player/character is forced to use the dump stat.  But maybe others use "punish" to mean just letting people play the game, and not always giving the player an "out" to avoid using the dump stat.




Yeah, I agree that the term "punish" is poor wording for how I look at it as well. 

I'd point out the original statement did also say they should be rewarded for having high stats as well, which is why I think they meant it more in lines with not giving people outs to avoid having to care about their weak points.







Charlaquin said:


> By all means, quote the post where I said “you should do it this way.” If you can point to it, I will cede that I misspoke and apologize. But this whole time I have done nothing but answer your questions about my DMing style and correct your misapprehensions about it. From my perspective, I am just being grilled relentlessly on my DMing style, while simultaneously being accused of attacking yours.
> 
> The one thing I did “attack,” if you want to call it that, was your suggestion of a “better” way to adjudicate the stupid poisoned handle scene. And my only point in doing so was to say “I don’t like it when the DM dictates what the PC does, especially when what they narrate contradicts the plauer’s description of their own action.” My approach to action adjudication avoids that. I don’t really care if you adopt my style or not.




1) I really hate this type of "By all means" because going back through hundreds of posts is an absolute pain and on a normal day I'd have no time for it. Luckily, Good Friday means I can go back and reread hundreds of posts to see how things shook out weeks ago. 

2) Here is what I've determined. 

Seems I was slightly mistaken in one respect, which was that I thought you and myself had discussed before Elfcrusher's poisoned doorhandle post. But it seems your first response to me was on April 6th, in regards to that exact post (#483 on my counter)

Before that I was mostly talking with Iserith and Elfcrusher. However, it also seems that you agreed with iserith more than once, which might be how I confused things, since you seemed to hold similiar beliefs I may have grouped discussions with them as discussions with you. I only went back another 250 posts after that event though, so I could have missed something. I did not a lot of XP given to iserith for their responses to me though, indicating a level of agreement with their stances. 

However, there are some posts that might show why we grew increasingly more defensive with each other. Spoilering it so everyone else can ignore it. 

[sblock]







> This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off.




Calling ease of play poor strategy, and saying that this is somehow against the making of clever plans or calculated risks. This is a jab at the playstyle, instead of being highly specific in what the player was asking, they were general. You did mention it was fine if I liked it that way, but there does seem to be a value judgement there. 



> Yes, absolutely. If we all agree to let the dice decide whether I succeed or fail, we need to come up with an explanation for what the dice say happened. That, to me, is putting the cart before the horse. You’re starting from the result and working backwards to explain how we got there. I prefer to start from the action, and only if we cannot figure out what is most likely to happen as a result, then we turn to the imartial random number generators to help us decide.




This one from the same post (#502 from my count and on April 6th again) started a long discussion about why you thought I was putting the cart before the horse. IT seemed to come down to you didn't like a general action being declared, and then the narrative filled in from the dice roll. You prefer the narrative to be settled, then the dice to give an answer... though in the end the results are the same, just the details are not. 



> No. The flaw in your approach is in deciding that your obstacle must be resolved by way of a check, and closed yourself off to other possibilities. You’re treating checks as things that exist in their own right, instead of as the means by which you determine the success or failure of actions with uncertain outcomes.




This particular one, now that we've discussed it to death, seems to have arisen from you misunderstanding me. I was putting forth the idea that in this discussion on resolution the only flaw you seemed to find in my approach was the assumption that there is uncertainty in the outcome. You might remember bits of the conversation that followed about the existence of DCs and the fact that the checks are certainly possible but some things might bypass their need. 

So, still, the only flaw you had was that I was assuming a check would get called for. While you wanted to insist that my flaw was a desire to call for checks despite whatever the players may have planned, and in fact you seem to not want to look past the players declarations and stop the discussion there. Oh, and the various times you called that backfilling me "overstepping my bounds as a DM" 


Also, interestingly, I found yet another place where I asked you how you as a player would describe a set of actions to resolve an obstacle, a thread you never responded to. But, that point might be further in this post. 




> Sure they could. In my experience, however, they don’t tend to. Before I adopted the goal and approach style, players only ever spent Inspiration on death saving throws, and they either never used guidance and/or worked together, or they did so on every roll. With the goal and approach style, players have enough information to consider whether or not to use those resources, and do so when they feel it is appropriate.




I might be a little nit-picky with this one, but you are the one who decided it would be a good idea for me to go back over hundreds of posts (likely thinking I'd never bother to do it and just accuse you with no basis). However, you definitely view my approach as not the "goal and approach style" so when I was confused why players would choose not to use resources like guidance or work together with the Help action [which on a side not my players do constantly, to the point where I need to find logical times they can't help each other just to tone down the constant advantage] you posted this response. 

In general, there are assumptions that my players don't use their resources properly, don't work together, and don't have enough information to make a decision on using those resources. All because I am not, as you understand it, using the goal and approach style. 

By this point, we'd obviously irritated each other, and things started getting a little less civil.



> Say, Pot, have you met my friend, Kettle?
> I think you two would get along, you have so much in common






> It's an expression. "A hill to die on" is a cause you defend in spite of significant resistance. Historically, it carries connotations of defending a point with no real tactical value. I'm saying that this point you've chosen to defend to the death doesn't seem to me like a point worth dying for.




This one particularly irritated me, since you seemed to assume my response to your "strange hill to die on" comment meant I didn't understand a very commonly used turn of phrase. I know you don't know anything about me, and it may not be as common outside of the US, but that sort of assumption of ignorance irritates me on a personal level. 



But, to be fair about all this, perhaps I've been a little defensive. The debating with other posters could have stained my view of your responses, taking some of your assumptions of superiority more to heart than I should have. I'm also not going beyond post #790 on my end (April 13th) since it gets even more heated on both our sides, and frankly, being rude to each other isn't what I want.  
[/sblock]



Charlaquin said:


> Clearly we do do (heh) things differently. I only call for checks when the character’s approach has a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving the player’s goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the player’s goal, and a cost for the attempt or a consequence for failure, and if it has those things, I tell the player the DC and consequences so that they can make necessary preparations and/or decide not to go through with the action. You... Well, to be honest, I’m not sure what you do. This conversation has been almost entirely focused on what I do, which makes it extra strange to be accused of attacking your play style. I don’t even know what your play style is.




My style isn't very strict, I don't have a standardized way of handling things. 

Player declares what they want to do. Sometimes that is a goal and approach, sometimes it is asking for a roll with an implicit set of actions that will lead to an implicit goal. I either call for a roll or I don't. Certain actions regularly get rolls called, like breaking down doors, and depending on the circumstances I either have them succeed but struggle with it for an amount of time, or they smash through. Sometimes players ask things I didn't consider, like looting a room I didn't expect them to loot, and a high roll will add something that I hadn't placed there before (like a magic bottle based off the Alchemical Jug, except it contains different vintages of rare wines). Soemtimes I ask for clarification, sometimes I double check what they want to achieve. I pretty much never tell them the DC or consequences, but I will sometimes give them an idea of the difficulty, or summarize what they are attempting to do if it is a really bad idea (So, you want to open yourself to all the energy created by this magic fusion generator and try and absorb all of its power at once? Are you sure?) 

There is a process of me thinking about the action and the scene, and sometimes weighing information the players don't know (they once got a very powerful item for selling something they didn't realize was an artifact to a hag) , but I don't standardize it as much as I just run it through a movie projector and play out some likely scenes. 




Charlaquin said:


> I do play as a player, but when I do, I don’t tend to adjudicate actions. You’re asking me what I would do if I was a player in my own game? I don’t know. If it was my game there’d be more context than “you’re locked in a cell and there’s a guard.” But I guess since the guard is the only feature of the environment I’ve been given any information about, I’d try to talk to him? Or maybe ask the DM for more details about my environment. I don’t know, this is a very strange exercise and I really don’t see the point of it.




We have been talking a lot about how the players present their actions. But, you've been approaching the discussion from how the DM judges those actions. And, I'm sorry, but if you are tying to be funny with your first sentence I don't get it. I never asked you to adjudicate your own actions, I wanted what your response would be as a player. 

The point of the exercise (or at least an attempted point) was to try and understand the difference in player approach. You seem to have a very specific set of things in mind when a player declares a goal and approach. So, getting an example of you responding to a scenario is useful in seeing what you mean. 

I'm sure we could start giving context to this cell, but most cells would be fairly bare of things which could be used to escape them. You might have a chamber pot and a pile of rags to sleep on, but beyond that there would be little around unless there was something special about the cells. 





Charlaquin said:


> If I’m jabbing it’s in retaliation for being jabbed. Sorry, that’s a bad habit of mine, but your “is it really that hard for you to understand?” comment really rubbed me the wrong way. And for the record, it was in its own line apart from the preceding paragraph, I didn’t isolate it any more than it was already isolated.




I tend to break into paragraphs because walls of text make me go cross-eyed. Not always because the to ideas do not flow from one another. 

And I apologize, I'm obviously getting too frustrated with this conversation and our lack of progress in understanding what the other means. I'm trying to rein that frustration back. 








robus said:


> One thing we have to stop saying is that there’s “a correct approach”, there a good approaches and bad approaches. It’s very poor DMing (Imho) to have situations with a single acceptable approach. In fact I never even consider approaches when I put obstacles in the way of the players, I just think of what would naturally be the result of either their or NPCs actions (or the environment) and throw them in their way. Their job is to figure creative ways to overcome them. One reason I dislike the published adventures providing ability checks (and DCs) it encourages the belief that there’s one “correct” approach.




"Good" and "Bad" are equally problematic in reference to what [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] was saying. 

In that context a "good" approach avoids rolling and gives the player a pass on doing what they want to do. A "bad" approach then means that a roll is necessary. 

I think that is almost worse than "correct" since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as "gaming the DM" where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 19, 2019)

pemerton said:


> If you've got players turtling because of the fear of failure then to me that's a sign that you're not using fail forward at all. (Or else it's a sign that they don't want to play the game - I don't know how common this is, but I have had strange experiences in club games where there are players there who clearly don't want to be playing.)




A quick note on this, it is generally my newest players who are turtling, lacking confidence and not wanting to mess up. After a few sessions, generally, they start coming out of their shells. 



pemerton said:


> For the character, of course having to fight an honour duel is a bad thing. But for the player, that's exactly what playing the game looks like, isn't it? And fighting the honour duel with the Troll King's champion is more interesting than fighting Random Monster #101. In more general terms, unless the player is planning to finish playing the game, having things get worse in the fiction doesn't stop the game being exciting and engaging.




So it seems we've been misunderstanding the position you meant by "making things worse". Personally, I don't see the honor duel as necessarily a bad thing. The player is likely built for combat and in a situation like an honor duel at a negotiation, going Nova is a perfect strategy. Unless the Champion is many times more powerful than the player, turning it into a combat gives them a reliable way to get what they want. 

Mileage varies obviously, but I remember something similar happening to my barbarian. I could reduce so much damage, and dealt just enough, that even an incredibly powerful champion of a Fey Lady had little chance of actually beating me.


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## robus (Apr 19, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> "Good" and "Bad" are equally problematic in reference to what [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] was saying.
> 
> In that context a "good" approach avoids rolling and gives the player a pass on doing what they want to do. A "bad" approach then means that a roll is necessary.
> 
> I think that is almost worse than "correct" since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as "gaming the DM" where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it.




Again we're probably talking at cross-purposes because I don't see myself in an adversarial position to my players, I try to put interesting challenges in front of them and they in turn try to engage creatively with those challenges.

If that makes me a bad DM then I guess that's a cross I'll have to bear. 

And with that I'm finally out of this thread.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> "Good" and "Bad" are equally problematic in reference to what [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] was saying.
> 
> In that context a "good" approach avoids rolling and gives the player a pass on doing what they want to do. A "bad" approach then means that a roll is necessary.
> 
> I think that is almost worse than "correct" since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as "gaming the DM" where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it.




All that means is that the DM you imagine is a person who isn't living up to the standards the DMG sets forth - that the DM be an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players. And who, by following the "middle path" is balancing the use of dice against deciding on success to "encourage players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world."

So yes, I suppose if you DM in a way that the game does not intend, things can go wrong. I am glad we agree on this point.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So even though I keep repeatedly saying that the performance doesn't matter, and that it's the content of the idea (the "approach") that counts, not how well it was delivered, you simply don't believe me?
> 
> FWIW, you can't challenge the character.  The character doesn't exist.  You can only challenge the player. Part of resolving the challenge can use the numbers on the character sheet, but that still does not challenge the character.
> 
> Now, the player can do their best to pretend to be the character when addressing the challenge, and that's great, but I don't want to get into a game of arbitrating what is good and bad, or valid and invalid, roleplaying.




 [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] answered this quite well but, I thought I'd repeat.

The approach matters.  The approach is defined by the player.  The player can define an approach regardless of what the character he or she is playing.  Thus, we are challenging the player.  

I am not interested in that.  

Perhaps a better way for me to phrase it is that everything the player does must be shaped by the character and the results of the die roll.  So, no your approach doesn't really matter to me.  The results matter.  Because, as you say, you don't want to arbitrate good or bad.  Therefore, I don't.  Remove approach and now there is nothing to arbitrate.


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## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

iserith said:


> /snip
> 
> "I persuade the king, Persuasion X" is insufficient here because the DM cannot judge the goal and approach and decide if there is uncertainty, a meaningful consequence of failure, or set a DC. Further, the "lead up" would never be contradicted by the roll in the method described above since the roll determines the outcome - the king does or does not approve the request (or approves it at a cost or with a setback for the PCs).




Insufficient for you, perhaps.  I have no such problem.  Nor does it cause issues at my table.


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## iserith (Apr 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Insufficient for you, perhaps.  I have no such problem.  Nor does it cause issues at my table.




The "here" in "insufficient _here_" - which you just quoted - refers to the method of adjudication under discussion in the context of [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] 's post, not to how you are doing things. 

Twice in as many days you have observed how you've overreacted to my posts, but you're still doing it so far as I can tell. Third time's a charm perhaps?


----------



## Hussar (Apr 19, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it.  But I think it's freakin' brilliant.




LOL.  So, disagreeing is now denigrating?  Perhaps you might have an easier time having a discussion without trying to characterize the other side as being completely unreasonable?  Just a thought.

See, to me, that's great.  And, sure, I can see why that particular example works.  But, that's the thing with examples, they tend to dovetail nicely into whatever point you're trying to make.  

Because, to me, regardless of that character's bonds and traits, the fact that he has no Cha bonus and no training in persuasion generally means that every time he opens his mouth, he's sticking his foot in it.  He is, in fact, terrible at persuading anyone to do anything.  You want to be good at it?  Then spend the resources to be good at it.  Don't expect me, the DM to reward you because you found the right approach that minimizes or even removes the chance of failure.

Before you make that persuasion roll?  Just like any other skill, your character hasn't done anything.  He's standing there waiting to speak until that roll hits the table.  Just like you haven't started climbing until you drop the check or you haven't started looking for tracks until that die hits the table.

It's a different way of doing it, yup.  And I see that you folks really like your way.  That's great.  See, no denigration here.  Just honest disagreement that what you are doing is going to work at my table.


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## Hussar (Apr 20, 2019)

iserith said:


> The "here" in "insufficient _here_" - which you just quoted - refers to the method of adjudication under discussion in the context of [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] 's post, not to how you are doing things.
> 
> Twice in as many days you have observed how you've overreacted to my posts, but you're still doing it so far as I can tell. Third time's a charm perhaps?




No, I got the context.  And, I'm going to stand pat.

"I persuade the king, Persuasion 17" is a perfectly fine thing to say at my table.  I have ZERO problem with it.  In the context of the situation, it's going to be obvious what the player wants to accomplish - he wants the king to do something and that's going to come out in play.  But, again, since I don't care about the approach and since I feel that nothing actually happens in the game until the dice hit the table, then stating approaches don't really matter to me.  

And, frankly, goal is typically pretty obvious.  If it's not, sure, I'll ask.  Or, really, the statement would most like be, "I want the king to follow my plan, Persuasion 17" if it's not already really, really obvious.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 20, 2019)

Hussar said:


> LOL.  So, disagreeing is now denigrating?  Perhaps you might have an easier time having a discussion without trying to characterize the other side as being completely unreasonable?  Just a thought.
> 
> See, to me, that's great.  And, sure, I can see why that particular example works.  But, that's the thing with examples, they tend to dovetail nicely into whatever point you're trying to make.
> 
> ...




So are you claiming that if I go back through 100+ pages of this thread, I will only find disagreement, not denigration?


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## Yardiff (Apr 20, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So are you claiming that if I go back through 100+ pages of this thread, I will only find disagreement, not denigration?




If there was are you claiming it was only one sided?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 20, 2019)

Yardiff said:


> If there was are you claiming it was only one sided?




Hellz no. I punch back. I'll own that.

Here, I'll quote myself:



> You seem to have this picture in your head of us/me only ever resolving things by players using their own mental faculties.
> 
> Then again, I have a picture in my head of your players only ever resolving things by rolling dice, without ever doing any thinking for themselves.
> 
> Probably both images are wrong.




Note the third paragraph. In other words, "I can interpret your playstyle in just as negative a light as you interpret mine. Maybe we should both knock it off?"

But maybe that wasn't obvious, because here's one response:



> yet you cling to tossing out the straw man of us always rolling and even get to throw in an added USB that somehow that also brings in "never thinking".




But, yeah, I can play that game.  And I sorta enjoy it.  I don't think I start it...I try not to...but so many people come in and out of these threads that I might sometimes take a swing at the wrong person.

FWIW I really am trying to be more zen, like Bawylie.


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## pemerton (Apr 20, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> A quick note on this, it is generally my newest players who are turtling, lacking confidence and not wanting to mess up. After a few sessions, generally, they start coming out of their shells.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't see the honor duel as necessarily a bad thing. The player is likely built for combat and in a situation like an honor duel at a negotiation, going Nova is a perfect strategy. Unless the Champion is many times more powerful than the player, turning it into a combat gives them a reliable way to get what they want.



I'm as averse to overly-pedantic debating as anyone, but this post leaves me a bit confused. Upthread _you_ identified the honour duel as an example of making things worse, which would lead to turtling.

Now you're saying you agree with me that it won't. And you're saying you don't see turtling issues.

So I'm confused over what your views are, and what you're basing on experience and what is conjecture.

My view remains that (i) if you put things at stake and make it clear how those consequences will factor into adjudication, players will declare actions for their PCs, and (ii) this makes for better and more dramatic RPGing.

Always assuming, of course, that the players want to play the game. Of course the PCs might wish for a nice quiet life, but that's not something we're going to play out at the table!


----------



## Satyrn (Apr 20, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I tried to persuade everyone not to go down this route all the way back on page 7, but apparently my approach didn’t have a reasonable chance of success.




No kidding. You couldn't even persuade yourself.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 21, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> 1) I really hate this type of "By all means" because going back through hundreds of posts is an absolute pain and on a normal day I'd have no time for it. Luckily, Good Friday means I can go back and reread hundreds of posts to see how things shook out weeks ago.
> 
> 2) Here is what I've determined.
> 
> ...



Yeah, fair point, that wasn't really a reasonable ask. That said, I do appreciate you actually digging back through all that. It certainly helps me see where I've been less diplomatic than I should have been, and for that I do apologize.

[sblock]



Chaosmancer said:


> Calling ease of play poor strategy, and saying that this is somehow against the making of clever plans or calculated risks. This is a jab at the playstyle, instead of being highly specific in what the player was asking, they were general. You did mention it was fine if I liked it that way, but there does seem to be a value judgement there.



I'm not seeing how this is a jab at your playstyle at all. To me, this is entirely a statement of my own personal preference. I consider vague statements to be a poor strategy for success in D&D, because doing so leaves the DM little choice but to use the dice to determine success or failure first, and then interpret what the specifics of the action must have been to explain the result. I prefer when the player gives the specifics of the action first, which the DM uses to determine the success or failure, employing the dice if and only if success or failure can not be determined by the specifics of the action alone. The reason I prefer the latter method is that the prior method leaves more room for failure due to a low roll than the latter, making it a poorer (read: less likely to result in success) strategy, from a player's perspective. I don't see that as a value judgment on the former method. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with preferring the former method, I'm just explaining what my preference is and why.



Chaosmancer said:


> This one from the same post (#502 from my count and on April 6th again) started a long discussion about why you thought I was putting the cart before the horse. IT seemed to come down to you didn't like a general action being declared, and then the narrative filled in from the dice roll. You prefer the narrative to be settled, then the dice to give an answer... though in the end the results are the same, just the details are not.



I don't think the results are the same. If you state a goal and approach, the possible results are:
1.) The approach does not have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal. You fail.
2.) The approach does have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal, but does not have a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the goal. You succeed.
3.) The approach does have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal, and a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the goal, but there are no consequences for failure. You succeed (or you fail, but failure is inconsequential anyway, so you eventually succeed if you keep at it long enough.)
4.) The approach does have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the goal, and a consequence for failure. You must make a check, but you do not beat the DC. You fail.
5.) The approach does have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the goal, and a consequence for failure. You must make a check, and you beat the DC. You succeed.

Three of the five possible outcomes result in success. On the other hand, if you make a check first and the outcome of the check is used to determine the narrative, the possible results are:
1.) You make a check but do not beat the DC. You fail. It is then determined what your character did that resulted in this failure.
2.) You make a check and beat the DC. You succeed. It is then determined what your character did that resulted in this success.

Only two possible outcomes, and only one of them results in success.

I'll concede that calling it "putting the cart before the horse" is a somewhat judgmental way to express that, and for that I apologize. Does this un help explain what I mean when I call it a "poor strategy"? 




Chaosmancer said:


> This particular one, now that we've discussed it to death, seems to have arisen from you misunderstanding me. I was putting forth the idea that in this discussion on resolution the only flaw you seemed to find in my approach was the assumption that there is uncertainty in the outcome. You might remember bits of the conversation that followed about the existence of DCs and the fact that the checks are certainly possible but some things might bypass their need.
> 
> So, still, the only flaw you had was that I was assuming a check would get called for. While you wanted to insist that my flaw was a desire to call for checks despite whatever the players may have planned, and in fact you seem to not want to look past the players declarations and stop the discussion there. Oh, and the various times you called that backfilling me "overstepping my bounds as a DM"



Yeah, this was a big misunderstanding, and I apologize for my part in that. On the subject of the "overstepping bounds" part though, I think you may be reading more into that phrasing than was intended by it, though to your credit, I probably should have unpacked it more. I strongly believe that the player should have sole and ultimate authority over the thoughts and actions of their character. I, personally, despise when a DM narrates my character's actions, and I endeavor never to narrate the actions of the player characters in my games. It is my opinion that the DM's role is to narrate the world, and how it reacts to the player-characters' actions, but never what the player-characters' actions are. I believe that this division of roles is well-supported in the text of the rule books. This is not to say that I hold anything against groups who mutually agree that they are ok with the DM narrating PCs' actions. If this is how you like to play, I see nothing wrong with you playing that way. And the DM of such a group is not really overstepping their bounds, because the social contract of the group, whether implicitly or explicitly, has redefined those boundaries. Game on, don't let my distaste for that style of play keep you from having fun any way you want.



Chaosmancer said:


> Also, interestingly, I found yet another place where I asked you how you as a player would describe a set of actions to resolve an obstacle, a thread you never responded to. But, that point might be further in this post.



I don't remember that specific exchange, but if I ignored it or missed it, sorry.



Chaosmancer said:


> I might be a little nit-picky with this one, but you are the one who decided it would be a good idea for me to go back over hundreds of posts (likely thinking I'd never bother to do it and just accuse you with no basis). However, you definitely view my approach as not the "goal and approach style" so when I was confused why players would choose not to use resources like guidance or work together with the Help action [which on a side not my players do constantly, to the point where I need to find logical times they can't help each other just to tone down the constant advantage] you posted this response.
> 
> In general, there are assumptions that my players don't use their resources properly, don't work together, and don't have enough information to make a decision on using those resources. All because I am not, as you understand it, using the goal and approach style.



I think it is you who is assuming that I'm contrasting my style with yours here. Again, I don't know what your style is, except for the fact that you do allow players to initiate skill checks, and you do not treat consequences for failure as a prerequisite for a roll. I was contrasting my current style with my style before I adopted the goal and approach technique. Thats why I specifically said, "_in my experience_, they don't tend to" and, "Before I adopted the goal and approach style, (blah). With goal and approach, (blah)." I made an explicit effort to frame this in terms of my personal experience and how that experiences shaped my preferences today.



Chaosmancer said:


> By this point, we'd obviously irritated each other, and things started getting a little less civil.
> 
> This one particularly irritated me, since you seemed to assume my response to your "strange hill to die on" comment meant I didn't understand a very commonly used turn of phrase. I know you don't know anything about me, and it may not be as common outside of the US, but that sort of assumption of ignorance irritates me on a personal level.



Yeah, the pot/kettle comments were over the line, I'm sorry for them. In my defense, your response to my comment about your position being a strange hill to die on was "I'm only dying because I'm being stabbed" or something to that effect, which genuinely made it seem to me that you had not understood the idiom. It was not my intent to be condescending in explaining the turn of phrase, but I accept responsibility for that misunderstanding.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, to be fair about all this, perhaps I've been a little defensive. The debating with other posters could have stained my view of your responses, taking some of your assumptions of superiority more to heart than I should have. I'm also not going beyond post #790 on my end (April 13th) since it gets even more heated on both our sides, and frankly, being rude to each other isn't what I want.



Yeah, for sure, that's not what I want either. Again, thanks for actually going back through so much of the thread, seems like it has helped clear things up a bit. Clearly, while it has not been my _intent_ to attack anyone else's playstyle, I have not made my actual intent as clear as I should have.
[/sblock]



Chaosmancer said:


> My style isn't very strict, I don't have a standardized way of handling things.
> 
> Player declares what they want to do. Sometimes that is a goal and approach, sometimes it is asking for a roll with an implicit set of actions that will lead to an implicit goal. I either call for a roll or I don't. Certain actions regularly get rolls called, like breaking down doors, and depending on the circumstances I either have them succeed but struggle with it for an amount of time, or they smash through. Sometimes players ask things I didn't consider, like looting a room I didn't expect them to loot, and a high roll will add something that I hadn't placed there before (like a magic bottle based off the Alchemical Jug, except it contains different vintages of rare wines). Soemtimes I ask for clarification, sometimes I double check what they want to achieve. I pretty much never tell them the DC or consequences, but I will sometimes give them an idea of the difficulty, or summarize what they are attempting to do if it is a really bad idea (So, you want to open yourself to all the energy created by this magic fusion generator and try and absorb all of its power at once? Are you sure?)
> 
> There is a process of me thinking about the action and the scene, and sometimes weighing information the players don't know (they once got a very powerful item for selling something they didn't realize was an artifact to a hag) , but I don't standardize it as much as I just run it through a movie projector and play out some likely scenes.



That's cool, man. If that works for you, keep doing your thing. Personally, I used to run the game much more like how you describe here, and it did not work for me _at all_. My experience is my own, and it's natural that it will diverge from yours. But it's the only experience I can speak from. That experience has led me to prefer the goal and approach style. It works much better for me, for the reasons that have been gone over exhaustively in this thread, and in my experience, my players enjoy the game much more now than they did when I ran the game more like what you describe here. But that's not meant to denigrate your play style. If it works for you, that's fantastic.



Chaosmancer said:


> We have been talking a lot about how the players present their actions. But, you've been approaching the discussion from how the DM judges those actions. And, I'm sorry, but if you are tying to be funny with your first sentence I don't get it. I never asked you to adjudicate your own actions, I wanted what your response would be as a player.
> 
> The point of the exercise (or at least an attempted point) was to try and understand the difference in player approach. You seem to have a very specific set of things in mind when a player declares a goal and approach. So, getting an example of you responding to a scenario is useful in seeing what you mean.
> 
> I'm sure we could start giving context to this cell, but most cells would be fairly bare of things which could be used to escape them. You might have a chamber pot and a pile of rags to sleep on, but beyond that there would be little around unless there was something special about the cells.



I just don't see me describing an action as a player is going to give you any additional insight into my DMing style. It might give _me_ insight into _your_ DMing style, but that's not really something I'm especially interested in pursuing.



Chaosmancer said:


> I tend to break into paragraphs because walls of text make me go cross-eyed. Not always because the to ideas do not flow from one another.
> 
> And I apologize, I'm obviously getting too frustrated with this conversation and our lack of progress in understanding what the other means. I'm trying to rein that frustration back.



It's cool. It has been an emotionally charged conversation, and I haven't exactly been devoting much effort to trying to diffuse or de-escalate. I appreciate the apology, and I apologize in turn for my own part in getting the conversation to this point.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 21, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> No kidding. You couldn't even persuade yourself.




Touché. Although in my defense, both responses to my suggestion consisted of “Fair enough, _but...” _and then a continuation of the discussion. Since then I’ve primarily (though I admit not exclusively) been responding to things directed at me.


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## Satyrn (Apr 21, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Touché. Although in my defense, both responses to my suggestion consisted of “Fair enough, _but...” _and then a continuation of the discussion. Since then I’ve primarily (though I admit not exclusively) been responding to things directed at me.




Hey, you don't need to defend yourself. This is why we're here.


(Besides, your defense came too late anyway. My barb had already struck home)


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## SkidAce (Apr 22, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Because, to me, regardless of that character's bonds and traits, the fact that he has no Cha bonus and no training in persuasion generally means that every time he opens his mouth, he's sticking his foot in it.  He is, in fact, terrible at persuading anyone to do anything.




Would this example not make them average?

And as such as likely to succeed as ti fail? (50/50 ish?)


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2019)

SkidAce said:


> Would this example not make them average?
> 
> And as such as likely to succeed as ti fail? (50/50 ish?)




Well, that depends on the DC no?  Whether Easy, Moderate, Difficult or Hard.  They will fail Moderate checks 50% of the time and Moderate checks are typically run of the mill, every day sort of checks.  Nothing too outlandish.  Convincing your professor to give you an extension on your essay sort of checks.  

But, we're talking a fairly difficult task  - a not sympathetic NPC who doesn't really want to help you and doesn't believe you.  So, DC 15, likely.  Meaning that our 0 bonus character fails 75% of the time (or thereabouts).  1 in 4 is not exactly great odds.  Not impossible sure, but, far more likely to fail.  Thus, our zero bonus character is sticking his foot in it about three times more often in the clutch than succeeding.

Or, to put it another way, this guy is terrible at convincing anyone to do anything.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 22, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, that depends on the DC no?  Whether Easy, Moderate, Difficult or Hard.  They will fail Moderate checks 50% of the time and Moderate checks are typically run of the mill, every day sort of checks.  Nothing too outlandish.  Convincing your professor to give you an extension on your essay sort of checks.
> 
> But, we're talking a fairly difficult task  - a not sympathetic NPC who doesn't really want to help you and doesn't believe you.  So, DC 15, likely.  Meaning that our 0 bonus character fails 75% of the time (or thereabouts).  1 in 4 is not exactly great odds.  Not impossible sure, but, far more likely to fail.  Thus, our zero bonus character is sticking his foot in it about three times more often in the clutch than succeeding.
> 
> Or, to put it another way, this guy is terrible at convincing anyone to do anything.



A lot here depends on gameplay and GM. 

But first, the actual rules.

DMG tules 5ebon social skills once you get down to the nuts and bolts...
Friendly (your sympathetic or inclined to hrlp) does the task if it involves no risk or harm on DC zero. Thry might even risk serious danger on a 20.
Indifferent (neither for or against you) does the request on DC 10. (Not the 15 you seemed to imply above)
Hostile creatures basically wont help except in a 20+

So...


For someone who is neutral, neither inclined to help or against the idea, thats more like 50/50ish DC 10 and there just a simple appeal gets you that. But a more robust approach, using something to again advantage like prior actions to call on, or bring able to bribe or offer favors they want - a definition case for advantage.

There was dome annoying movie thing where someone "thought" they were bring " persuasive by just repeating "do it" over and over when asking favors and told "no" and the idea that a character is bad because their basic little yo no effort is 50/50 in neutral circumstances feels like that.

So, really, what the game system puts forth is that an "average guy" with no exceptional skill or aptitude at socisl-fu can get some friendly towards or who would rather see them succeed them to help almost all the time unless there is some risk to them in which case that gets worse 50% if risk is minor, down to 5% if major.

That some guy dealing with someone who just foesnt care - 50/50-ish if no risk (yeah pretty much textbook indifferent) but slim odds if it requires risk. 

But these are your head-on - work a bit harder and gain advsntage on the roll - get support from someone they do like, build past relationship, play off your rep etc etc etc - those odds shift bigly in your favor.

But, like I said, if your gm basically throws a 5 to 10 point swing against you by default and/or advantage is out of the question- then maybe social-fu is well worth its investment.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 22, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, that depends on the DC no?  Whether Easy, Moderate, Difficult or Hard.  They will fail Moderate checks 50% of the time and Moderate checks are typically run of the mill, every day sort of checks.  Nothing too outlandish.  Convincing your professor to give you an extension on your essay sort of checks.
> 
> But, we're talking a fairly difficult task  - a not sympathetic NPC who doesn't really want to help you and doesn't believe you.  So, DC 15, likely.  Meaning that our 0 bonus character fails 75% of the time (or thereabouts).  1 in 4 is not exactly great odds.  Not impossible sure, but, far more likely to fail.  Thus, our zero bonus character is sticking his foot in it about three times more often in the clutch than succeeding.
> 
> Or, to put it another way, this guy is terrible at convincing anyone to do anything.




I think the point he is making is that somebody without "training" (by which I assume you mean proficiency) and 10 Cha, or even 8 Cha, is really about average: no bonuses, or maybe a -5% penalty.  You describe this guy as 







> ...every time he opens his mouth, he's sticking his foot in it. He is, in fact, terrible at persuading anyone to do anything.




How do you figure that no bonus to something, or perhaps a -5% penalty, makes somebody "terrible" at whatever that task is?

Sure, statistically that average person will fail more often at hard tasks.  But I just find it odd to call the absence of bonus "terrible".

I would describe it as..."average".  He is not particularly persuasive, but neither is he particularly bumbling or offensive.  In other words, if he comes up with a plan for persuading an NPC to do something, he has a normal chance of succeeding.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 22, 2019)

After some more thought I have a followup to my last post.

It occurs to me that there might be two different viewpoints about ability scores and proficiencies. Or really maybe two points on a spectrum, with an infinite number of viewpoints in between:

1) PCs start off as average at everything. And maybe (if one stat is left at 8) slightly worse...5% worse, to be exact...at one category of activities. From there the player picks which things they want to be especially good at.

2) The player picks which things they are good at, or perhaps really good at.  Anything neglected, _especially_ if you "dump" a stat by leaving it at 8, you are really bad at.

I can see how two people holding these two different views would endlessly disagree on how the numbers on the character sheet translate to the in-game narrative.


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## iserith (Apr 22, 2019)

When my character doesn't have a good Charisma score, as is often the case with brutish types, I always take the Insight skill proficiency. This way I have a higher chance to contribute meaningfully to social interaction challenges by trying to uncover the NPC's agenda, ideal, bond, and flaw then impart that information to more charismatic party members. They can then use that information as leverage during the interaction.

As well, any character without a good ability score or skill proficiency in the relevant task can offset deficiency with Inspiration. I think a player should always have Inspiration in his or her back pocket for just such an occasion.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 22, 2019)

iserith said:


> When my character doesn't have a good Charisma score, as is often the case with brutish types, I always take the Insight skill proficiency. This way I have a higher chance to contribute meaningfully to social interaction challenges by trying to uncover the NPC's agenda, ideal, bond, and flaw then impart that information to more charismatic party members. They can then use that information as leverage during the interaction.




I tend to use my dagger of friendship, "I input my dagger of friendship into his NPC attitude port to see if he wants to be friends." I almost always get a positive result.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 22, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> After some more thought I have a followup to my last post.
> 
> It occurs to me that there might be two different viewpoints about ability scores and proficiencies. Or really maybe two points on a spectrum, with an infinite number of viewpoints in between:
> 
> ...



A lot of this can come from background in gaming as well as the GM.

It's not uncommon for folks accustomed to minmaxing to see even second best as "horrible" or "useless" (common outlook among MMO.) If a group playstyle works at it, it can often be the case that the second best talker or picker never gets involved outside of help **if** the primaries keep at a task.

The GM of course can also be z type who throws what are (system dpesking) overly high DCs or sets DCs by "must challenge the best" styles or is overly stingy with advantage. 

But the 5e system basics do not support a 10 cha guy being as often to put his foot in it as get help. Far from it.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 22, 2019)

robus said:


> Again we're probably talking at cross-purposes because I don't see myself in an adversarial position to my players, I try to put interesting challenges in front of them and they in turn try to engage creatively with those challenges.
> 
> If that makes me a bad DM then I guess that's a cross I'll have to bear.
> 
> And with that I'm finally out of this thread.




I'm trying to figure out how letting you know your word choice could lead to problematic assumptions led to you bearing the cross of... doing the job of a DM? 

I never spoke about what types of challenges you put in front of your players, I was just saying that describing approaches as "good" or "bad" is problematic. 





iserith said:


> All that means is that the DM you imagine is a person who isn't living up to the standards the DMG sets forth - that the DM be an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players. And who, by following the "middle path" is balancing the use of dice against deciding on success to "encourage players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world."
> 
> So yes, I suppose if you DM in a way that the game does not intend, things can go wrong. I am glad we agree on this point.




Yes? What does this have to do with what I was trying to say? 

This is so surreal. It'd be like telling a friend he's going to get in less trouble if he stops telling his wife "You'd be less ugly if you did this" and him responding about the fidelity of marriage... Yes, you are right, still doesn't change the fact that implying your wife is ugly *at all * by saying she'd be "less ugly" is a poor choice and you will get less grief if you avoid it. 





pemerton said:


> I'm as averse to overly-pedantic debating as anyone, but this post leaves me a bit confused. Upthread _you_ identified the honour duel as an example of making things worse, which would lead to turtling.
> 
> Now you're saying you agree with me that it won't. And you're saying you don't see turtling issues.
> 
> So I'm confused over what your views are, and what you're basing on experience and what is conjecture.




Sorry, I forgot I mentioned an honor duel in that list a while back. I'll try and handle these seperately.

Turtling:

I stand by the idea that if every check led to the potential to make everything worse, I would see players less willing to take risks. I do see this in some players already, which is why I think changing things to make failure more punishing would lead to an increase in this behavior. 

However, in my current games, I usually only see this behavior in new players and they eventually relax, because they see that even if they fail, it is usually not the end of the world. Making it so failure leads to demonstrably worse results will make that less obvious to them, because a string of failures will teach them that trying just makes things worse for everyone. 

Hopefully that clears that up. 

Honor Duel:

I think the big part here comes from the intention of the plan. I mentioned in the post you are refering "Accidentally" getting in an honor duel, which to me refers to situations where even winning the duel is a poor result. It isn't the plan, and in fact it works against the plan. However, since I posted that we have had some people point out that the Honor Duel can be the fighting man's (or woman's) answer to that social situation. In that case, it is the plan, and if the fighter leans into that plan it can be seen as not a bad result, but things working as intended. 

Hope that clears that one up. 





pemerton said:


> My view remains that (i) if you put things at stake and make it clear how those consequences will factor into adjudication, players will declare actions for their PCs, and (ii) this makes for better and more dramatic RPGing.
> 
> Always assuming, of course, that the players want to play the game. Of course the PCs might wish for a nice quiet life, but that's not something we're going to play out at the table!




I respect that that is your view, but I tend to disagree. 

The players go to disable a powerful ritual circle, they don't know the consequences for failure. Maybe they will fail and the circle will stand, maybe it will blow up, maybe it will unleash some mutated horror. They don't know, and that murky future can be interesting for some players. They aren't making decisions because they know what will happen, but because they are just as blind as any other character in any other medium about where their choices will lead them. 

Sure, sometimes things are obvious, sometimes they know what the consequences for failure are and that makes for the tension, but other times it should be unknown. The swashbuckler doesn't need to know that failing that acrobatics check means they break the chandelier and fall. They have no way to know that in the heat of combat. 






Charlaquin said:


> In my defense, your response to my comment about your position being a strange hill to die on was "I'm only dying because I'm being stabbed" or something to that effect, which genuinely made it seem to me that you had not understood the idiom. It was not my intent to be condescending in explaining the turn of phrase, but I accept responsibility for that misunderstanding.




I'm still miffed about that, but not for the reason you think. 

I still think that was a funny way to express what I was thinking. Which was that I was "dying on the hill" only because people kept attacking. 

I still grin from my own humor, and it fell completely flat


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## Hussar (Apr 22, 2019)

I'm not going to get terribly concerned about how you want to describe the guy who fails 50% of the time or more.  That's not really the point.  The point is, the untrained guy, as [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] points out, fails social checks that carry any sort of real penalty at least half the time.  Again, not a very persuasive person.   And, since, by the rules, if the NPC is actively hostile, the untrained, low Cha character (Cha 8) has zero chance of success, I'd say that he's not very persuasive.

But, the point being, I'd rather you make the check first and then narrate.  Solves all the inconsistency issues and falls in line with every other d20 roll you ever make.  You don't narrate before an attack, you don't narrate before initiative, you don't narrate before a saving throw.  You can't narrate before most other checks as well - physical checks is what I'm thinking here.  You can't narrate a climb before you make your check.

So, I simply follow the same method for all checks - make the check first and then deal with the fallout.


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## ParanoydStyle (Apr 22, 2019)

ermagard are we still doing this? It's still 15.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Turtling:
> 
> I stand by the idea that if every check led to the potential to make everything worse, I would see players less willing to take risks. I do see this in some players already, which is why I think changing things to make failure more punishing would lead to an increase in this behavior.
> 
> However, in my current games, I usually only see this behavior in new players and they eventually relax, because they see that even if they fail, it is usually not the end of the world. Making it so failure leads to demonstrably worse results will make that less obvious to them, because a string of failures will teach them that trying just makes things worse for everyone.



See, in my experience the goal and approach style leads players to be more willing to try things, because they see that trying things doesn’t always lead to a check. Things that seem likely to work often just do, and when things require a check to do, you get fair warning first. Of course, if you ask for checks for most actions, and you don’t give players a heads up about the risk and potential consequences of failure, then every check having consequences for failure probably would lead to turtling. If you can’t easily predict whether or not an action will require a roll to resolve (or alternatively, if you can reliably predict that most actions will require a roll to resolve), you don’t get fair warning before having to make a check, and checks always make the situation worse on a failure, naturally doing anything will be scary. But that’s not how most of us who use goal and approach do it. You’ve got to evaluate the technique holistically, instead of evaluating wach individual element as if it was brought over to your game on its own.



Chaosmancer said:


> I respect that that is your view, but I tend to disagree.



Is this disagreement based on direct experience, or theory?



Chaosmancer said:


> The players go to disable a powerful ritual circle, they don't know the consequences for failure. Maybe they will fail and the circle will stand, maybe it will blow up, maybe it will unleash some mutated horror. They don't know, and that murky future can be interesting for some players. They aren't making decisions because they know what will happen, but because they are just as blind as any other character in any other medium about where their choices will lead them.



See, I wouldn’t tell the players, “the ritual circle will blow up if you fail,” because as you say, it doesn’t really make sense for them to know that. Maybe if one of the PCs is familiar with the ritual, but let’s assume that’s not the case for the sake of argument. I’d tell them that failing to properly disrupt the circle will cause a dangerous magical disturbance. And that might prompt the players to want to prove further before rushing ahead and trying to disrupt the circle.

“What kind of magical disturbance,” on player might ask.
“Hard to say, are you proficient in Arcana?”
“Yes!”
“Ok, you’d be familiar enough with ritual circles to know that the magic involved is extremely volatile. All kinds of strange effects can happen if the magical energy is not diffused properly. Any more than that would require a more thorough examination of the circle.”
“Ok, I study the runes ti see if I can figure out what might happen.”
“That will take 10 minutes and a successful Intelligence check. Your Arcana proficiency would apply.”
“What happens if I fail?”
“Nothing beyond the wasted 10 minutes. Of course, that will bring us closer to the next check for random encounters.”
“Alright, lets do it.”
“Anyone else have anything they would like to do while Alora examines the runes?”

Very much like in the earlier example with the ogre behind the door, I didn’t say “if you fail, an ogre on the other side of the door is going to know your here and prepare to attack you as soon as you opened it.” I said that trying to break the door down would be very loud and would alert any nearby enemies to their presence. Immediate, direct consequences are sufficient to inform the player of what could go wrong, without having to give them details they would have no ability to predict.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, sometimes things are obvious, sometimes they know what the consequences for failure are and that makes for the tension, but other times it should be unknown. The swashbuckler doesn't need to know that failing that acrobatics check means they break the chandelier and fall. They have no way to know that in the heat of combat.



I disagree. I feel like whether or not a chandelier is sturdy enough to support the weight of a human(oid) should be pretty obvious at a glance. I also feel like the majority of the time it should be obvious that it can’t. I probably wouldn’t even make that a consequence for failure, I’d make that a cost for the attempt. “The chandelier will definitely fall if you swing from it, but with success on a Hard Dexterity check, you can swing to the other end of the balcony and let go before it snaps.” Or something like that. In any case, “the chandelier might break and fall with you on it” seems very much like “are you _sure_ you want to do the obviously dumb thing?” kind of information to me.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, the point being, I'd rather you make the check first and then narrate.  Solves all the inconsistency issues and falls in line with every other d20 roll you ever make.  You don't narrate before an attack, you don't narrate before initiative, you don't narrate before a saving throw.  You can't narrate before most other checks as well - physical checks is what I'm thinking here.  You can't narrate a climb before you make your check.
> 
> So, I simply follow the same method for all checks - make the check first and then deal with the fallout.



Whereas at my table, you can’t make a check before you’ve narrated an action with an uncertain outcome. I too follow the same method for all checks - describe what you want to accomplish and how your character attempts to do it, and if the outcome is uncertain, I’ll ask for a check.


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## pemerton (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I stand by the idea that if every check led to the potential to make everything worse, I would see players less willing to take risks.





Charlaquin said:


> if you ask for checks for most actions, and you don’t give players a heads up about the risk and potential consequences of failure, then every check having consequences for failure probably would lead to turtling. If you can’t easily predict whether or not an action will require a roll to resolve (or alternatively, if you can reliably predict that most actions will require a roll to resolve), you don’t get fair warning before having to make a check, and checks always make the situation worse on a failure, naturally doing anything will be scary.



My experience is consistent with what I quoted Luke Crane saying upthead (BW Gold, pp 31-32, 72):

When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .

Failure is not the end of the line, but it is complication that pushes the story in another direction. . . .

When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . .

Try not to present flat negative results - "You don’t pick the lock." Strive to introduce complications through failure as much as possible. . . .

Success or failure doesn’t really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere.​
Of course, success or failure _does_ matter to the PC. The point is that failure doesn't bring the adventure and actions of the PC to a halt. So while failure makes the situation worse _from the point of view of the PC_, it simply makes things _different_ from the point of view of the player as a player of the game.

For instance, if the guards turn up before the lock is picked, this is obviously bad for the PC. But for the player this is _playing the game_ - exactly the sort of adventure that a player expects when signing on for some FRPGing.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

pemerton said:


> My experience is consistent with what I quoted Luke Crane saying upthead (BW Gold, pp 31-32, 72):
> When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .
> 
> Failure is not the end of the line, but it is complication that pushes the story in another direction. . . .
> ...



​
I find only calling for a check when failure has consequences accomplishes this quite handily.


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## Hussar (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Whereas at my table, you can’t make a check before you’ve narrated an action with an uncertain outcome. I too follow the same method for all checks - describe what you want to accomplish and how your character attempts to do it, and if the outcome is uncertain, I’ll ask for a check.




Well, no, I don't think you do actually.  You ask the players to narrate how they attack?  How they make a saving throw?  By and large, I don' think it's too contentious to say that most tables don't expect a "How" statement before any of those checks.  Nor do we generally make "how" statements for physical skill checks - how are you jumping?  how are you climbing the wall?  how are you doing a backflip?  Not really, do you?  So, while these are all checks which have uncertain outcomes and certainly consequences for failure, we generally don't ask for any narration before the roll.  

I simply apply that same standard to all d20 rolls.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Yes? What does this have to do with what I was trying to say?




You stated: "I think that is almost worse than 'correct' since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as 'gaming the DM' where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it."

I pointed out that this outcome is only if the DM behaves in a manner inconsistent with the standards the DMG sets forth for how the DM acts, in that the DM is not acting as "...an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players. And who, by following the 'middle path' is balancing the use of dice against deciding on success to 'encourage players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.'"

If you agree with that statement, then this addresses your objection and, in the context of the overall discussion, looks like progress of a kind to me as it a recognition that not doing things in the manner the rules expect can lead to undesirable outcomes.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, no, I don't think you do actually.  You ask the players to narrate how they attack?  How they make a saving throw?  By and large, I don' think it's too contentious to say that most tables don't expect a "How" statement before any of those checks.  Nor do we generally make "how" statements for physical skill checks - how are you jumping?  how are you climbing the wall?  how are you doing a backflip?  Not really, do you?  So, while these are all checks which have uncertain outcomes and certainly consequences for failure, we generally don't ask for any narration before the roll.
> 
> I simply apply that same standard to all d20 rolls.




Unless I'm misunderstanding the point you are trying to make, I think this is still showing a fundamental misconception of what goal-and-approach is.

It's not simply narration.  It's not describing "how" you are climbing the wall, it's describing how you overcome the obstacle of a wall being in your path.  And maybe the way you do that is indeed by climbing, in which case the DM probably calls for an Athletics check.  But maybe you think of another way (was there a ladder in that last room? what if you move all those crates to the base of the wall? etc.)

Goal-and-approach isn't a way of resolving ability (skill) checks; it's a way of storytelling past obstacles. Sometimes that results in ability (skill) checks.  Sometimes it doesn't.

And that's why goal-and-approach is also not mutually exclusive with roll-then-narrate:

1. Player describes a goal and an approach
2. DM either tells him it succeeds, it fails, or it's going to take some kind of roll that will carry a consequence if it fails.
3. If it takes a roll, the player rolls and then can narrate the result.  "I slip on the moss I didn't notice and crash into the crates that the wizard is busy piling up at the bottom of the wall."


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, no, I don't think you do actually.  You ask the players to narrate how they attack?  How they make a saving throw?  By and large, I don' think it's too contentious to say that most tables don't expect a "How" statement before any of those checks.



I expect the players to at least state what target they intend to attack, and with what weapon or spell, which is exactly as much narration as I expect from any action - a goal and an approach. With saving throws, I narrate what the character can observe about the triggering incedent (“you feel a tile sink beneath the weight of your foot and hear a ‘click,’ what do you do?” or, “the dragon takes a deep breath, and you can see its gullet bulge as it prepares to exhale, what do you do?” The goal in this case is implicit (as goals often are) - avoid whatever danger is triggering the save. Based on the player’s approach, (I pull up my shield and try to block whatever is coming,” or “I tuck and roll out of the way,” I might grant advantage or impose disadvantage on the save.

It is worth noting, I don’t think my way of handling saving throws is necessarily typical of goal and approach. It is, however, my preference, because it allows me to maintain consistency in the standards I apply to d20 rolls.



Hussar said:


> Nor do we generally make "how" statements for physical skill checks - how are you jumping?  how are you climbing the wall?  how are you doing a backflip?  Not really, do you?  So, while these are all checks which have uncertain outcomes and certainly consequences for failure, we generally don't ask for any narration before the roll.



Usually a physical action is an approach, not a goal. Jumping is the “how” to the “what” of “get across the chasm.” Climbing is the “how” to the “what” of “get to the top of the cliff.” Doing a backflip is the “how” to the “what” of “impress the onlookers.” And as I mentioned, goals are often easy enough to infer. If I can’t tell what the character is trying to accomplish by backflipping or whatever, I’ll ask for clarification before asking for a roll.



Hussar said:


> I simply apply that same standard to all d20 rolls.



So do I, it’s just a different standard than you apply.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, no, I don't think you do actually.  You ask the players to narrate how they attack?




I do. I need to know who you're attacking and with what and sometimes more detail than that. Isn't that the case at your table?



Hussar said:


> How they make a saving throw?




Sometimes, but as the rules say, saving throws are distinct from attack rolls and ability checks in that they are an instant response to a harmful effect and are almost never done by choice. A _fireball_ spell calls for a Dexterity saving throw as the character's defense (like armor class is a defense against attack), for example. Other times, situations can arise that call for a saving throw that aren't laid out as neatly as in a spell description, when the character is subjected to a harmful effect that can't be hedged out by armor or a shield. In that case, I'll need to know how the player might have his or her character attempt to defend against it e.g. dodge out of harm's way, withstand an effect that subsumes personality, endure a hazard that saps vitality, etc.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

@_*Charlaquin*_ and @_*iserith*_ raise an excellent point, which maybe will clear up some of the confusion.  Players do, after all, often say a lot more than, "I attack."  They describe where they move.  They say which target they are going to attack.  They use bonus actions.  They invoke special abilities.  The expend resources.  

Notice this is not just the "narration" you keep invoking.  It's not that they wrap colorful adverbs around the actions.  They are describing specific things they are doing to achieve their goal. And those decisions have mechanical impact.

The other two pillars have far, far fewer mechanics designed to support them, so to make those pillars as rich you need to give the players some leeway to be creative.  As I suggested above, maybe they go fetch a ladder, or stack up some crates, to climb a wall.  I'm _glad_ the game doesn't have specific class mechanics for activities like these; I'd rather leave it to improvisation and DM judgment.  But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be mechanical effects.


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## Hussar (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> @_*Charlaquin*_ and @_*iserith*_ raise an excellent point, which maybe will clear up some of the confusion.  Players do, after all, often say a lot more than, "I attack."  They describe where they move.  They say which target they are going to attack.  They use bonus actions.  They invoke special abilities.  The expend resources.
> 
> Notice this is not just the "narration" you keep invoking.  It's not that they wrap colorful adverbs around the actions.  They are describing specific things they are doing to achieve their goal. And those decisions have mechanical impact.
> 
> The other two pillars have far, far fewer mechanics designed to support them, so to make those pillars as rich you need to give the players some leeway to be creative.  As I suggested above, maybe they go fetch a ladder, or stack up some crates, to climb a wall.  I'm _glad_ the game doesn't have specific class mechanics for activities like these; I'd rather leave it to improvisation and DM judgment.  But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be mechanical effects.




Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?  Or, if they stack crates, then again, there's no check.  But, again, if the player simply states, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17", I am not going to stop him and ask what he's doing.  Needlessly adding all these superfluous elements to the example is just pointless.  

I move here, I attack that orc, I use my bonus action to cast Hunters Mark on that target is, to me, no different than, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17".  Because, unlike you, I don't ask the players for an attack roll.  The players don't have to ask me to cast Hunter's Mark or whether or not they can move to that location.  

You're claiming that there isn't any difference, but, that's the primary difference all the way along.  In your method, which has been repeated over and over and over again, the player CANNOT CALL FOR A SKILL CHECK.  That's been the common refrain all the way along.  Yet, in combat, the player calls for every check, tells the DM exactly what's going to happen and doesn't wait for anything.  The player doesn't say, "Oh I attack this orc"  and the DM replies, "OK, make an attack roll".  The player doesn't state "I'm casting Hunter's Mark" and then wait for the DM to call for a bonus action.  

Combat is the exact opposite of everything you folks have INSISTED on all the way through this thread.  The player calls for checks in combat.  The player states actions and doesn't even wait for DM adjudication most of the time.  Heck, the player tells the DM to make a saving throw for this or that creature, essentially telling the DM to make checks.  

So, no, you don't raise an "excellent point".  You have just completely contradicted every single post that you folks have made for the last 111 pages of this thread.  

I run skill checks the same way I run combat - the players generally tell me what checks to make and whatnot.  For me, it's simply applying the same standard across the game.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I'm not going to get terribly concerned about how you want to describe the guy who fails 50% of the time or more.  That's not really the point.  The point is, the untrained guy, as  [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] points out, fails social checks that carry any sort of real penalty at least half the time.  Again, not a very persuasive person.   And, since, by the rules, if the NPC is actively hostile, the untrained, low Cha character (Cha 8) has zero chance of success, I'd say that he's not very persuasive.
> 
> But, the point being, I'd rather you make the check first and then narrate.  Solves all the inconsistency issues and falls in line with every other d20 roll you ever make.  You don't narrate before an attack, you don't narrate before initiative, you don't narrate before a saving throw.  You can't narrate before most other checks as well - physical checks is what I'm thinking here.  You can't narrate a climb before you make your check.
> 
> So, I simply follow the same method for all checks - make the check first and then deal with the fallout.



I realize this isnt the thrust of your point but... this is a gross misrepresentation or spin of my points and references to thevrukes... 
"The point is, the untrained guy, as [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] points out, fails social checks that carry any sort of real penalty at least half the time."

I already gave the references to the charts on DCs etc. At best, your claim there is a cherry picked case expressed in a manner that makes it feel like a description of the system beyond its scope but which isnt. At worst, its deceptive or misleading. 

So, you want to pursue that agenda, fine, but citing me as a reference when my post pushed back on the skin you are pushing is misrepresentative of what I said. 

To be clear, by the system, for friendly and indifferent targets your persuasion efforts dont have the chance to make it worse and together you have a much higher than 50/50 chance of success - even with straight up approach. With effort (gain advantage) it gets even better. 

So unless you are limiting it to persuading actively hostile folks as your benchmark **or** limiting your persuasive efforts to cases where you are asking them to put themselves at risk or make a sacrifice *&and** ignoring any efforts to get advantage, your presentation is flawed.

If you are limiting to those and then using those at your baseline for the general assessment of "not very persuasive" that's an odd baseline to be painted with such a broad tag.


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?  Or, if they stack crates, then again, there's no check.  But, again, if the player simply states, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17", I am not going to stop him and ask what he's doing.  Needlessly adding all these superfluous elements to the example is just pointless.
> 
> I move here, I attack that orc, I use my bonus action to cast Hunters Mark on that target is, to me, no different than, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17".  Because, unlike you, I don't ask the players for an attack roll.  The players don't have to ask me to cast Hunter's Mark or whether or not they can move to that location.
> 
> ...




Which is exactly the same issue I've had ... which _always_ gets countered by "you're misrepresenting what we're saying" and then something about how players don't call for skill checks.  Which is exactly what we've been saying.

A wall in the way with no door, way around or ladder?  "I make a 19 athletics check" is all a player needs to say.  I know what they're doing, they're climbing the wall.  If there was a ladder in the previous room or crates on the floor, obviously they are not using them otherwise they would have stated so.  To say that we haven't communicated what the PC is doing and what their intent is is just silly.  Same way that they can say in combat "I get 15, does that hit?"  I don't quiz them on 15 what, 99% of the time we both know what they're doing.  If for some reason unclear who they're attacking or how I'll ask.

When it comes to climbing or "I make a 15 perception check at the door" I _know_ what they're doing, they know what they're doing.  That doesn't mean I've "taken over their character" or that I'm going to do a DM gotcha, it's just that I don't want the game to go at a glacial pace while we all discuss how we climb the wall.  It's just a wall.  If the PC is going back to get a ladder or attack a different creature than they attacked last round or disengage from the monster they're currently fighting to go fight another one they will tell me.  If there's an open hole in the wall and they tell me they're climbing, I'll prompt them about the hole.  

But the vast majority of time? Telling me the result of a skill check tells me everything I need to know and there's no need for anything more.  If they want to take a different approach I trust them to tell me.  If climbing to the top of the wall will expose them to obvious danger that the PC is aware of, they trust me to prompt them about it.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?




Because people sometimes fall off ladders.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?  Or, if they stack crates, then again, there's no check.




So the approach to the goal of getting over the wall matters then, eh? Some approaches can also be automatically successful without reference to the dice or the character's ability scores? This is progress! Now apply that discovery to other goals a player might describe.


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## WaterRabbit (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.




This isn't needless hair splitting.  You made a statement that isn't correct.  If other hadn't I would have.  Before any roll is made, a statement of intent or action by the player must precede it -- this isn't narration.  Without a such a statement, how do you know what to roll?  The narration is the result of the action.

Climbing a wall is a perfect example:

Player: I climb the wall in this manner. 
DM: Sets the DC for Athletics check based on the player's statement.  The DC could be anywhere from automatically successful (i.e., using a ladder) to impossible (bare-handed while trying to carry everyone else in the party on his back up a wall made of ice).  
Player: Rolls if necessary. 
DM: Narrates the success or failure of the action.

Now maybe that is what you meant, but then you misunderstood/misrepresented the person you were responding to.  

The point they and others were making is that you cannot make a roll much less determine the chance of success unless you have a clear understanding of the player's goal.  This interaction loop applies to combat, social, and environmental interactions.  The only real difference is that for combat, many of the variables are already predetermined (AC, to hit bonus, damage to be applied, etc.).  The other two pillars have many more undefined variables that cannot be set until a clear statement of action is made.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?  Or, if they stack crates, then again, there's no check.  But, again, if the player simply states, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17", I am not going to stop him and ask what he's doing.  Needlessly adding all these superfluous elements to the example is just pointless.




Yes, exactly.  If they stack up creates there is (or might be) no check at all.  I thought you were opposed to the player finding alternate solutions to obstacles?  

This entire time we've been talking about doing things like stacking crates to solve problems.  That is, coming up with solutions that maybe the DM hadn't considered.  _Not_ adding colorful adverbs to the act of climbing, which is how you keep describing it.



> I move here, I attack that orc, I use my bonus action to cast Hunters Mark on that target is, to me, no different than, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17".  Because, unlike you, I don't ask the players for an attack roll.  The players don't have to ask me to cast Hunter's Mark or whether or not they can move to that location.
> 
> You're claiming that there isn't any difference, but, that's the primary difference all the way along.  In your method, which has been repeated over and over and over again, the player CANNOT CALL FOR A SKILL CHECK.  That's been the common refrain all the way along.  Yet, in combat, the player calls for every check, tells the DM exactly what's going to happen and doesn't wait for anything.  The player doesn't say, "Oh I attack this orc"  and the DM replies, "OK, make an attack roll".  The player doesn't state "I'm casting Hunter's Mark" and then wait for the DM to call for a bonus action.




First of all, don't extrapolate to combat too far.  Although there are some illustrative analogies, that pillar is sufficiently different that I think most of us run it differently.

At the same time, there is still a useful analogy: when playing with beginners it can be _exactly_ like you describe.  "I want to stab the orc with my dagger."  "Ok, roll the d20...no, the big one.  You'll need an 11 or better to hit."

Now, I realize one of the things you value is system mastery, and players who understand the rules well enough that the DM doesn't have to do this. And, again, that's where the two camps differ. I like to emphasize how beginners play, because in some ways that's how I like to see experts play: describe what they want to do, not the rules they want to invoke.  YMMV.



> Combat is the exact opposite of everything you folks have INSISTED on all the way through this thread.  The player calls for checks in combat.  The player states actions and doesn't even wait for DM adjudication most of the time.  Heck, the player tells the DM to make a saving throw for this or that creature, essentially telling the DM to make checks.




Yeah, I'll agree with this, sorta. Not "exact opposite" but "different".  As I said above in this post, and a previous post, the combat pillar is so much different/richer mechanically that it is run differently, even if the underlying philosophy applies.

Also note that those rules passages that iserith keeps quoting...the ones you hate...refer specifically to ability checks, not all d20 rolls.  So, yes, attack rolls and saving throws work differently.



> So, no, you don't raise an "excellent point".  You have just completely contradicted every single post that you folks have made for the last 111 pages of this thread.




Logically false, even ignoring the sweeping hyperbole.  I/we tried to use combat as an analogy to help you gain a better understanding of goal-and-approach, and you have taken the imperfection of the analogy as evidence that we are contradicting ourselves.

Sometimes I think you are determined to not understand.



> I run skill checks the same way I run combat - the players generally tell me what checks to make and whatnot.  For me, it's simply applying the same standard across the game.




Yup, we understand that.  You don't seem to understand what we're doing, though.  I suppose it doesn't really matter, because you don't seem interested in understanding, but having our approach mocked and ridiculed and mischaracterized leads us to want to make it understood.  I apologize if I have in turn mocked your approach, but sometimes it's hard to just take the punches without hitting back.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> it's just that I don't want the game to go at a glacial pace while we all discuss how we climb the wall.




Those of us who use goal-and-approach have repeatedly told you that it doesn't slow the game down.  Since you don't use goal-and-approach you are just imagining it slowing the game down, but you have no evidence.

Are you accusing us of lying?


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> This isn't needless hair splitting.  You made a statement that isn't correct.  If other hadn't I would have.  Before any roll is made, a statement of intent or action by the player must precede it -- this isn't narration.  Without a such a statement, how do you know what to roll?  The narration is the result of the action.
> 
> Climbing a wall is a perfect example:
> 
> ...



I admire  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]  and [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] for their persistence in agsin climbing down the morphing shifting rabbit hole offer up, but hey, evetybody's got to have a hobby.

I find the ladder funny and just tha latest swerve retread so I will toss in a line or two which I am sure clearly shows I misunderstand the wonders of the approach.

I (and Hussar I suspect and many others) consider cases in which **as GMs** we provide a wall the PCs might need or want to get over **and** a ladder they can just pick up (or crates they can stack) and use as **not an obstacle** or **not a challenge**. Its the equivalent to "I get out of bed" or "I eat lunch" and so on and so on. They dontvrise near the level of challenge, obstacle or as I tend to specify "challenge that matters."

The only way these have significance worth their "resolution" is if something else makes it a challenge - like bad guys en route do you havevtimevyo stack or are you better off preparing to fight using crates stacked up as cover - not ladder.

In all my years of gaming, I have never once saw there be any, none, not one bit of confusion when a ladder or crates were there as to whether a PC was using them to climb or not. So, the bendy wendy timey riney rabbit hole does not help me there either.

The ladder and crates and wall example is yet another *chosen* example that highlights the point - it's back to the escape room. If the GM is gonna **provide** player-side solutions that dont need the skills of the character involved in a "challenge" or "obstacle" then they devalue those character-side skills and more to the point the player choices made in choosing those skills.

The more the GM does this, the less those choices matter. The more the GM does this, the more they show which choices at chargen matter and which can be "solved" by rabbit holing.

Now, in my experience, the more games are run by GMs who more strongly push this rabbit hole escape room approach to some of the aspects of the gameplay, the worse they have played out and the more it seemed that "playing the GM" by following down the rabbit hole was the best route.

Of course, now queue up the endless redirects to that doesnt happen, we dont put solutions, we are unaffected by influences and are like totally fair man... etc etc etc...

Then look back to the escspe room example and now the ladder and crates... both dialed up to spotlight cases and both examples ehere the GM setup the solutions and obstacles (or did I miss the memo that says some other force mandates all walls have ladders left nearby?)

I love carrots and rabbit stew, but this rabbit hole is just too deep and windy for me to go deeper than that.

Likely just another sign of how much I misunderstand about this glorious thing that is GMing.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, exactly.  If they stack up creates there is (or might be) no check at all.  I thought you were opposed to the player finding alternate solutions to obstacles?
> 
> This entire time we've been talking about doing things like stacking crates to solve problems.  That is, coming up with solutions that maybe the DM hadn't considered.  _Not_ adding colorful adverbs to the act of climbing, which is how you keep describing it.
> 
> ...



Flip Wilson wants his joke back.


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Those of us who use goal-and-approach have repeatedly told you that it doesn't slow the game down.  Since you don't use goal-and-approach you are just imagining it slowing the game down, but you have no evidence.
> 
> Are you accusing us of lying?




I'm saying that in my experience what I do works well and moves the game along quickly for me and my group. That and I just don't see the point of strictly enforcing what you call "goal and approach" style.

There are some podcasts that in my opinion do go at a glacial pace.  That's okay, they have fun doing it and I don't have to listen.  Your games?  I have no clue.

[EDIT] P.S. good job of picking out one line that had nothing to do with the rest of my post just so you could take offense.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Those of us who use goal-and-approach have repeatedly told you that it doesn't slow the game down.  Since you don't use goal-and-approach you are just imagining it slowing the game down, but you have no evidence.
> 
> Are you accusing us of lying?



Ummm...  unless I am misunderstanding again... you are saying it (rabbit hole goal and blah blah) doesnt slow **your** gameplay down. 

Or are you actually speaking for everyone's games?

Examples you seem to use include cases where there is confusion over what being tried, where players and GMs have widely different views on what ability scores even represent, etc. 

Our examples are cases where they do share common understanding and these kinds of issues come up so rarely they dont add up to squat time wise compared to the time saved by getting the dice and check done right off the bat, no back and forth waiting for GM to pre-approve the obvious roll that will be coming.

Or are you saying we are lying when we say it would slow down our game play?

For the record, I am perfectly willing to accept that goal and approach likely does speed up your gameplay. But I consider that s comment about the nature of your gameplay before and after, not about the merits of the approach to others. 

 See, this gets back to the position put forth, the spin, that the alternative we suggest isnt the middle path but is rolling for everything.

You claim right there "Since you don't use goal-and-approach you are just imagining it slowing the game down, but you have no evidence."

That's bull. 

There are cases in my game, in hussars, in ooftas in most every GMs game where the circumstances are not clear and where the player doesnt jump to "skill check" because it's not so obvious - and then we do more detailed kinds of what do you do and so on type of gameplay.

 Those are great. But we dont need that for every wall climb thats an obstacle/challenge and every door listen and every time a check might be needed. Often enough, in our games not necessarily yours, we and our players are on the same page and so we font need that.

See, we acknowledge generally that we use both. Hussar said ***if there's a ladder thry climb it, it's not a challenge and it's never been unclear that they did it cuz thry said do***(paraphrasing them but those were explicitly stated) yet now you say  "Since you don't use goal-and-approach you are just imagining it slowing the game down, but you have no evidence."

Just what- a page removed (actuslly, same page) and already we go from explicit claims the we  use goal and approach to claims we dont. 

I know that if I stopped every I climb the wall athletics check 17" and insisted on thrm telling me how just because in some cases there may be ladders they forgot to mention, it would slow things down for my games.

That said, there is another common sieve down this rabbit hole usually trotted out when pace of game gets trotted out: telegraphing.

Frequently snuck in with the rabbit hole of goal and approach on time is the "all traps telegraphed" and " info is just given not gated behind (character) skill checks" and other such stuff. Often its put forth and packaged for easy swallowing as "the fun is what they do after, not whether or not they get it" and that kinds of stuff.

I get that, really I do, but I dont agree with it as a strong guiding principle or that it overall results in more fun - far as me and mine go. 

Attended a session of HERO supers once where each session started at the briefing outside the mall/lab/other scene of crisis snd within 5 mins real time the heroes were inside the "arena de jour" slugging away with bad guys. When I asked obliquely about it, they said in response "we used to fo morectoleplay, starting you in your secret I'd when the news came out so you had to spend a few mins getting out of the office to get here... but we decided to stop that and just get to the fun stuff"

So, yeah, telegraphing as core design - all traps are telegraphed- yeah - that will really speed up play. But that is separate from goal and rabbit holes. It's also, well, let's say highly subjective as to whether it's fun or more gun orca better game to say all traps in this world will be telegraphed **to the players**."

But hey, all this talk of rabbits and carrots has made me hungry and stews take a while to cook and some things dont gr better by faster, so... off to cook.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Logically false, even ignoring the sweeping hyperbole.  I/we tried to use combat as an analogy to help you gain a better understanding of goal-and-approach, and you have taken the imperfection of the analogy as evidence that we are contradicting ourselves.
> 
> Sometimes I think you are determined to not understand.




Which is why I continually advise against examples or analogies. In a debate of this nature, the people holding the opposing viewpoint are incentivized to pick apart the example for flaws and use them against you instead of using them to understand your position. I wish that wasn't so as examples can be illustrative and helpful; however, that is not the case when engaging with certain posters in particular. This is why adhering to rules is more effective in my view (and perhaps why we see objections to quoting rules).



Elfcrusher said:


> Yup, we understand that.  You don't seem to understand what we're doing, though.  I suppose it doesn't really matter, because you don't seem interested in understanding, but having our approach mocked and ridiculed and mischaracterized leads us to want to make it understood.  I apologize if I have in turn mocked your approach, but sometimes it's hard to just take the punches without hitting back.




The good thing about not punching back is that the people doing the punching tend not to be viewed in a positive light by people who are reading but not engaging in the debate. If the poster looks bad, then their position is often judged negatively. While a position shouldn't necessarily be judged by the poster presenting it but rather the soundness of their ideas, in a pragmatic sense it is of benefit to let them keep punching (and not return the attack) as it means they end up defeating themselves with their own words and behavior. In short, if your opponent is making a spectacle of themselves, step back and let them keep doing it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

iserith said:


> Which is why I continually advise against examples or analogies. In a debate of this nature, the people holding the opposing viewpoint are incentivized to pick apart the example for flaws and use them against you instead of using them to understand your position. I wish that wasn't so as examples can be illustrative and helpful; however, that is not the case when engaging with certain posters in particular.




I know you're right, and yet somehow I always forget, and somehow hope/believe that an example or analogy will be taken in the spirit with which it was intended. And yet it never is.  As you say, by certain posters in particular.

Fool me once, shame on them.  Fool me twice...or 100 times...shame on me.



> The good thing about not punching back is that the people doing the punching tend not to be viewed in a positive light by people who are reading but not engaging in the debate. If the poster looks bad, then their position is often judged negatively. While a position shouldn't necessarily be judged by the poster presenting it but rather the soundness of their ideas, in a pragmatic sense it is of benefit to let them keep punching (and not return the attack) as it means they end up defeating themselves with their own words and behavior. In short, if your opponent is making a spectacle of themselves, step back and let them keep doing it.




Yeah, this too.  /sigh


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

For what it's worth if I was in a game where there is a wall we need to climb and I roll my dice and say "I get a 20 athletics to climb the wall" I would find it annoying if the DM told me I couldn't do that.  That as a player I couldn't just take the obvious shortcut.

From the other side of the screen my response could be any number of responses

The wall is so smooth you can't get a purchase, you don't think you'll be able to climb it.
You barely get to the top.
Okay [insert what they see if it's important] what are going to do?
The wall is so pitted you think anyone could climb it.
You're ignoring the ladder?
Are you doing anything to avoid the guard [that the PC was aware of before climbing] at the top?

On the other hand if someone asks "Can I climb the wall?" my response would be to call for an athletics check (or ask for clarification, etc).  Either way is fine.  I do my best to accommodate my players styles and preferences.

Don't run your game that way?  Fine. If someone is so adamant that I had to state action and intent along with some arbitrary limit on my not calling out the appropriate skill check I don't know if I'd stick with that table.


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I know you're right, and yet somehow I always forget, and somehow hope/believe that an example or analogy will be taken in the spirit with which it was intended. And yet it never is.  As you say, by certain posters in particular.
> 
> Fool me once, shame on them.  Fool me twice...or 100 times...shame on me.
> 
> ...




Yeah, heaven forbid you give actual samples of how this works at the table and don't just talk in platitudes and "the rulz say".  I mean people might be able to discuss what really happens at their table instead of having a philosophical debate about correctness.  

After all if we disagree with you and you've given no examples you can always fall back on you just haven't tried good sushi action and intent and that if only we gave it a chance we'd all agree with you.

Or maybe it's just a matter of different play styles.  What works for me may not work for you and by giving or asking for examples I try to dispel confusion about what actually happens at the game table.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> .  The player doesn't say, "Oh I attack this orc"  and the DM replies, "OK, make an attack roll".



Uhh... This happens _all the time_ at my table. Has nobody else played with inexperienced or unconfident players before?



Hussar said:


> The player doesn't state "I'm casting Hunter's Mark" and then wait for the DM to call for a bonus action.



This is a poor analogy. The player doesn’t say “I climb the wall” and then wait for the DM to call for an action either, action economy is a completely different thing that task resolution. What you seem to be trying to do here though is point out that spells don’t need the DM’s input to be resolved, the player just says what spell they cast and applies it’s effects. Again, though, a spell is an approach to a certain goa. You open the door _by casting knock_, you kill the goblins _by casting fireball_, you get to the top of the cliff _by casting Fly_. It so happens that the rules for spells specifically define their exact effects, and what method to use to resolve any uncertainty there may be in the outcome of casting them. For many spells, there is never uncertainty, you cast knock and the door opens, just like you can use a key and the door opens. With some spells, particularly spells that damage a single target, there is uncertainty if the spell hits its target, and you resolve that with an attack roll. For others, particularly spells with mind-affecting properties or areas of effect, the uncertainty is resolved by the target(s) or creatures in the affected area making a saving throw. With improvised actions, the specific effects of the action are not hard-coded like they are with spells, so it falls to the DM to determine the best way to resolve the action. Any of the above methods might be appropriate, depending on the particulars of the improvised action.

This is another one of the fundamental differences in our ways of thinking. To you, casting a spell and using a skill are both actions the player can take. To me,” using a skill” is not an action, it is a means of resolving an action. Climbing a cliff is an action, which may or may not require an abiliry check to resolve, just like casting a spell is an action, which may or may not require an attack roll or saving throw to resolve. Spells are just less flexible than most non-spell actions.



Hussar said:


> Combat is the exact opposite of everything you folks have INSISTED on all the way through this thread.  The player calls for checks in combat.  The player states actions and doesn't even wait for DM adjudication most of the time.  Heck, the player tells the DM to make a saving throw for this or that creature, essentially telling the DM to make checks.



Not so. It’s still fundamentally the same process of the player giving a goal (“attack the orc”, or “put the kobolds to sleep”) and an approach (“with my longsword” or “with the sleep spell”), and the DM determining the outcome, possibly calling for a roll if the outcome is uncertain. The only difference is that most actions in combat have hard-codes effects and means of resolution, while most actions out of combat do not.



Hussar said:


> I run skill checks the same way I run combat - the players generally tell me what checks to make and whatnot.  For me, it's simply applying the same standard across the game.



I run skill checks the same way I run combat too. It’s just different than the way you do it.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> After all if we disagree with you and you've given no examples you can always fall back on you just haven't tried good sushi action and intent and that if only we gave it a chance we'd all agree with you.



I mean, anecdotes are not data, but I have had my mind changed by actually trying both the goal-and-approach method and real-life, non-metaphorical good sushi.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yeah, heaven forbid you give actual samples of how this works at the table and don't just talk in platitudes and "the rulz say".  I mean people might be able to discuss what really happens at their table instead of having a philosophical debate about correctness.




Funny I don't recall anybody writing "the rulz say" in those exact words, although you quoted it.  Is your use of slang perchance an attempt to denigrate those who take that position?

That aside: yes, you would think we could use actual samples.  And we (or I) do!  But every time there are some posters who willfully misinterpret and misrepresent the example. Apparently from a desire to undermine the idea rather than understand it.

EDIT:

Look back a few pages: I spelled out, in fairly lengthy form, an example from one of my games.  But of course it wasn't a transcript of the whole session; it was a summary and naturally I left out 95% of the details. A certain poster immediately dismissed anything informative in the story and instead ridiculed the approach for leaving out any differences between character sheets.  I responded to that, and explained some places where differences between the characters factored into the overall story. He never responded to that, and instead repeated the accusation some pages later.  I again responded, but never had it acknowledged. (Or never read the acknowledgement; I've stopped reading responses from the poster in question.)

I certainly welcome clarifying questions from people who are genuinely interested in learning more, but why should I post incomplete examples if some people are just going to use the incompleteness as an excuse to go on the attack?


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean, anecdotes are not data, but I have had my mind changed by actually trying both the goal-and-approach method and real-life, non-metaphorical good sushi.




Whereas I've tried sushi multiple times and I still find it barely edible.  Tastes, and play style preferences, differ.

Besides, what makes you think I don't use a hybrid goal-and-approach method but only apply it when I think it matters or it's the style my players seem to prefer?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But the vast majority of time? Telling me the result of a skill check tells me everything I need to know and there's no need for anything more.  If they want to take a different approach I trust them to tell me.  If climbing to the top of the wall will expose them to obvious danger that the PC is aware of, they trust me to prompt them about it.



This idea that the vast majority of the time, the skill the player wants to use is enough for you to know what the character is doing, keeps coming up. And if that’s enough for you, great! Please try to understand, that is not enough for those of us who use goal and approach. It is usually enough to determine a goal. I know you want to get to the top of the wall, or detect the presence of danger on the other side of the door. And I know that you think your athletic training or your keen senses will be useful in helping you achieve that goal. But I am not comfortable adjudicating your action without knowing, for example, whether you are free-climbing the wall or using rope, harness, hammer, and pitons, or whether you are listening at the door, peering under the crack, smelling the air, pressing at the door with your hands, or with some tool, or all or none of the above. If you are comfortable adjudicating an action with only the skill the player wants to use, more power to you, but for me, that is not enough information.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I've tried sushi multiple times and I still find it barely edible.  Tastes, and play style preferences, differ.



And that’s cool.



Oofta said:


> Besides, what makes you think I don't use a hybrid goal-and-approach method but only apply it when I think it matters or it's the style my players seem to prefer?



What makes you think I think that? I am only explaining the way I do things and why, I have no opinion about the way you do things.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I've tried sushi multiple times and I still find it barely edible.  Tastes, and play style preferences, differ.
> 
> Besides, what makes you think I don't use a hybrid goal-and-approach method but only apply it when I think it matters or it's the style my players seem to prefer?





[humor]
Because good sushi is objectively and factually so delicious that anybody unable to appreciate it is obviously the sort of person who lets preconceived notions and stubbornness actually override the signals their sensory system is trying to send to their brain. 
[/humor]


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## Satyrn (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Funny I don't recall anybody writing "the rulz say" in those exact words, although you quoted it.




Please don't call this out as bad form. I've made many of my fake internet points by witty* paraphrasing delivered in quotes. I'd hate to see that practise demonized.


* by witty, of course, I mean "vaguely humorous to somebody somewhere. Maybe. Hopefully. Please click laugh"


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This idea that the vast majority of the time, the skill the player wants to use is enough for you to know what the character is doing, keeps coming up. And if that’s enough for you, great! Please try to understand, that is not enough for those of us who use goal and approach. It is usually enough to determine a goal. I know you want to get to the top of the wall, or detect the presence of danger on the other side of the door. And I know that you think your athletic training or your keen senses will be useful in helping you achieve that goal. But I am not comfortable adjudicating your action without knowing, for example, whether you are free-climbing the wall or using rope, harness, hammer, and pitons, or whether you are listening at the door, peering under the crack, smelling the air, pressing at the door with your hands, or with some tool, or all or none of the above. If you are comfortable adjudicating an action with only the skill the player wants to use, more power to you, but for me, that is not enough information.




As an aside, climbing is a particularly bad example since climbing with no particular complication does not call for an ability check anyway. It's simply a factor of speed. Only if there is something like lack of handholds, slippery vertical surface, or the like does the DM call for an ability check, if the approach to climbing has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.

I think it gets used because of legacy thinking around the idea that if a given action seems like it could equate to a skill proficiency, then there's an ability check. And anything that doesn't stand out as falling under a skill proficiency just succeeds (like walking across an empty room). Climb = Athletics. Lie = Deception. Walk Across Room = Hmm... *scans list of skill proficiencies* guess there's no "skill check" here, carry on! I see this a lot in actual play podcasts, including one I saw just this week where a player proposed an action and the DM really had to think about which "skill check" applied. You could tell he was mentally scanning down that list when in my view he should have been thinking about whether this was a "skill check" situation in the first place.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Please don't call this out as bad form. I've made many of my fake internet points by witty* paraphrasing delivered in quotes. I'd hate to see that practise demonized.
> 
> 
> * by witty, of course, I mean "vaguely humorous to somebody somewhere. Maybe. Hopefully. Please click laugh"




Fair enough. I may unfairly be lumping Oofta in with some others, and thus mistaking humor for denigration. If so, my apologies, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION].


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> whether you are free-climbing the wall or using rope, harness, hammer, and pitons,




Pedantry break...

Free-climbing uses ropes and harness. Hammer and pitons are more commonly associated with aid climbing, but can be used for free-climbing. 

I believe the term you want is “free-soloing.”  (Oddly, “soloing” does not necessarily mean climbing without a rope; it just means you don’t have a partner.)

Ok, back to arguing about elves and wizards.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Pedantry break...
> 
> Free-climbing uses ropes and harness. Hammer and pitons are more commonly associated with aid climbing, but can be used for free-climbing.
> 
> ...




Ahh. Yeah, I’m not super familiar with technical climbing terms, but that works.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Funny I don't recall anybody writing "the rulz say" in those exact words, although you quoted it.  Is your use of slang perchance an attempt to denigrate those who take that position?
> 
> That aside: yes, you would think we could use actual samples.  And we (or I) do!  But every time there are some posters who willfully misinterpret and misrepresent the example. Apparently from a desire to undermine the idea rather than understand it.
> 
> ...



See, as the target of this edit, the guy who Elf is calling out... I gotta say it's funny to see.

See, the posts in question are on about pages 70-75 if this is page 120ish. They are from over two weeks ago, the original, but did get repeated more recently.

But for elf's interesting take on it I do have just a few points...

First, I did not respond to the original- until they later added usage notes explaining more behind the scenes gm side stuff - then I addressed both in one post. 

In neither the example or the follow up usage notes did one PC skill check or reference get made, make the cut yo be worthy enough to mention - but backup clues, how much work the gm had to do, etc all did. 

Second, while the claims about how they left out all those details on how and where PC skills were key or whatever, you should notice they left out those  **but did take time to mention skill checks they did not make  in that original post and how their live example was so much better or more fun for it.***

Here was the sign off... the end piece of their home play example...  

 "Now maybe you don't agree, but we thought this was way more fun...and WAY more rewarding/gratifying...than taking turns rolling Perception ("Can I roll, too?") in every 5' square until somebody "succeeded" by randomly getting a high enough number on a d20. I know because I asked them, specifically with this thread on my mind. And I didn't even phrase the question that derisively. "

So, see, while in there whole example of play they did not see it as I guess worth mentioning a single PC skill check or reference from their actual play, they did see fit to take time to point out skill checks they didn't have to do because of the goal method approach.

That seems odd, even confusing, yo decide the only skill checks worth actually mentioning from your live play were the ones you never made. 

How in the world sense do we have to be to not get from that and the usage notes thst there were lots of skill checks key to the resolution- so key they deserve less mention that skill checks never made, likely never made anywhere in fsct, as cannot think of a game where gameplay was roll every 5' for clues. 

But of course, after waiting and seein even the usage notes no references to pcs over players, I responded and somehow something I said there was ridiculing... 

And of course immediately after a criticism or response questioning, the thing morphs and suddenly what they said wasnt what we should base our viewpoints on... again. 

Here was my response, to their use case post... maybe we can spot the ridicule? I am sure it has to be there. 

****

"For any followers of this thread who genuinely are interested in how "goal and approach" differs from generic "there is a secret door" or "there is a trap", and not just looking ways to argue, here are some usage notes from the above scenario:"


Just to be clear, were you " not just looking for ways to argue" with the by your own admission derisive roll for every 5' post comment in that post where you put out this example? Or when even now you frame it as against a "generic" scene?


I mean they seem basically more contentious add-ons that just attempts to spotlight differences.


But about your scene. 


It sound an awful lot like the escape room we did a few weeks ago. We, people, find piles of clues. Some have distinct sizes - three numbers on a vase bottom and a three number combo lock -(10 bottle slot shelf, 10 element bar code) - others may be color coded etc. 


In that same escape room, we had a number of clues or hints we could ask for and I swear that first room clue was about as on point as your girl safety net was. It was basically pointing us to a place to try to get what we need, much like your girl sent them back to the underhouse.


That escape room we did at the con was fun. It was fun even for me, and I cannot see well so a good chunk of it was not gonna be much for me. 


But, the thing that strikes me about your example and now the usage notes bring home (I was wondering) is that *like our escape room** there is no bringing into the mix anything about the characters being played, the game system, be it diceless, be it RPS larping, be it a pamphlet sized character- on- post-card or HERO system 400+ pages of non-setting rules. 


So, it really does not spotlight "goal and approach" vs "character-centered" play in an RPG at all. It seems to be the epitome of "playing me or challenging me, the player" as opposed to "playing Hans or challenging Hans the dwarf".


Honestly, like the escape room, it has a lot more in common to a board game than an RPG. 


That's fine, I love them. Have loads of fun with board games, with chess where no dice are needed either and we just move our pieces around. 


Or Go, my stone never once is a "person" just a game piece and it's about how well I as a player choose my moves etc. But, every stone is the same. One stone has the same chance as any other st whatever task it is set to do. No reference cards bring up the dwarf stone's masonry or the very perceptive elf'stone.


I recommend every GM of diced games take a turn or two at running diceless systems. It imo really helps refine some techniques. 


I am glad your players enjoyed the sample setup you gave them. But if that is your flagship case for what defines and sets apart "approach -and goal" I gotta say it sorta spotlight all that stuff about how it "devalues" all those chargen choices the system being discussed requires (and that by extension a GM using that system required) even tho it seems like the "approach and goal" advocates seem to keep saying they are not devaluing those choices. I mean, how many times have we seen the kind of "oh no, character stats matter... with frequent "we used them passively or..." insert other.


Yet in your whole example and your explicstive usage notes to your your case even more, not one reference to a trait of the PC that I can see. No point where it was important that it was a halfling or a gnome or a wizard or a rogue or... well... anything "character". 


It seems 100% play and GM puzzle and you did not se fit to show any point where character mattered to the outcome. 


That's very very informative about your presentation of what separates "approach and goal" from the rest **in actual play** and I thank you for that.


By the way, in my non "approach and goal" gameplay, I dont throw random or generic secret doors in either. They require time too. So, it's good that those are not the only alternatives.


As for this last part...


"So basically you can keep giving stronger and stronger hints until they get it, but the hints should always feel earned."


I am sure you know but in some games, the idea that "they might not get it" is also an option and the scenes and follow-ups and bigger campaign proceeds on... rather than just keeping piling on more and more stronger hints until they "get it."

***


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This idea that the vast majority of the time, the skill the player wants to use is enough for you to know what the character is doing, keeps coming up. And if that’s enough for you, great! Please try to understand, that is not enough for those of us who use goal and approach. It is usually enough to determine a goal. I know you want to get to the top of the wall, or detect the presence of danger on the other side of the door. And I know that you think your athletic training or your keen senses will be useful in helping you achieve that goal. But I am not comfortable adjudicating your action without knowing, for example, whether you are free-climbing the wall or using rope, harness, hammer, and pitons, or whether you are listening at the door, peering under the crack, smelling the air, pressing at the door with your hands, or with some tool, or all or none of the above. If you are comfortable adjudicating an action with only the skill the player wants to use, more power to you, but for me, that is not enough information.




If someone has a tool, equipment, magic or other ability to enhance I assume they're using them.  If there's any question, they'll ask.

This is no different to me than when we use stealth checks.   The player doesn't have to clarify what kind of armor they're wearing before applying any penalty or bonus.  They know what their modifiers are.  If there's a question of whether those elven boots help with the check, they'll ask.

When it comes to perception, I just let one check cover sight, smell, hearing.  if there's a keyhole or crack to peep through, that isn't covered under the perception check. That requires a "I peer through the keyhole"  because you never know when you're playing peeping tom with a medusa.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 23, 2019)

I didn't get to weigh in early in the thread, so I'd like to mention that this same issue came up in 3.0 - your low-CHA character was exactly as bad at telling the truth as at telling lies, because Bluff was the only thing that exposed Sense Motive.  In 4e, it was explicit that deception used Bluff and dealing in good faith used Diplomacy, so a low-CHA character /could/ be better at telling the truth if he were trained in the latter skill but not the former.  I don't see why the same couldn't hold in 5e, but, in addition, as has apparently been exhaustively asserted already...



Hussar said:


> Meh, needless hair splitting.  If there's a ladder, there's no check at all.  Why would there be?  Or, if they stack crates, then again, there's no check.  But, again, if the player simply states, "I climb the wall, Athletics 17", I am not going to stop him and ask what he's doing.  Needlessly adding all these superfluous elements to the example is just pointless.



 Pointless, but part of the basic model of play advanced by 5e.  Players declare actions, DMs call for checks if one is needed.  "I roll a ______ check" is not an action.  In theory, 5e players should never get to do that.  A DM could be a jerk about it (cf 'jerk DM' thread), and take the player at his word, and have his character perform some dissociative (in the psychological sense) action as a result, as he is clearly insane.  ;P



> In your method, which has been repeated over and over and over again, the player CANNOT CALL FOR A SKILL CHECK.  That's been the common refrain all the way along.  Yet, in combat, the player calls for every check, tells the DM exactly what's going to happen and doesn't wait for anything.  The player doesn't say, "Oh I attack this orc"  and the DM replies, "OK, make an attack roll".  The player doesn't state "I'm casting Hunter's Mark" and then wait for the DM to call for a bonus action.



  Players might do that, at some or even most tables, and certainly in some other editions, but in 5e, the foundational assumption is that they aren't meant to, and it's up to DM leniency what degree to allow them to do so.  (For extremely familiar repeated actions that always take the same check, for instance, like the fighter's monotonous attacks.)



> I run skill checks the same way I run combat - the players generally tell me what checks to make and whatnot.  For me, it's simply applying the same standard across the game.



Sure, it's just not the basic 5e standard - applying /that/ the same across the game means players declare attacks and are told to make attack rolls (or have success/failure narrated)... every freak'n time, if the DM doesn't want to start cutting corners for the sake of saving a second here and there, and maybe his voice.


…so if your character is trying to get a read on whether he feels like an NPC is telling the truth, he asks the DM, and the DM either tells him he can't tell, he feels the NPC is truthful, he feels the NPC is pulling something, or calls for a check (whatever check he wants, but probably WIS, with Insight applicable).  Because, really, that's the answer to just about every question about how to resolve something (unless magic) in 5e.  
You could prettymuch mad-lib it.

Certainly no need for 100+ pages.  ;P

(Which, yes, I know, I'm only adding to… 
…I'll shut up now.)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If someone has a tool, equipment, magic or other ability to enhance I assume they're using them.  If there's any question, they'll ask.
> 
> This is no different to me than when we use stealth checks.   The player doesn't have to clarify what kind of armor they're wearing before applying any penalty or bonus.  They know what their modifiers are.  If there's a question of whether those elven boots help with the check, they'll ask.
> 
> When it comes to perception, I just let one check cover sight, smell, hearing.  if there's a keyhole or crack to peep through, that isn't covered under the perception check. That requires a "I peer through the keyhole"  because you never know when you're playing peeping tom with a medusa.




Right, I understood that you consider the name of a skill alone to be enough information the first time you said it.


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Right, I understood that you consider the name of a skill alone to be enough information the first time you said it.




Sorry, no offense meant. We just run our games differently.  Have a good one.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sorry, no offense meant. We just run our games differently.  Have a good one.




No worries. You have a good one too!


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> (For extremely familiar repeated actions that always take the same check, for instance, like the fighter's monotonous attacks.)




I SEE YOU TRYING TO HIJACK THIS THREAD FOR YOUR OWN NEFARIOUS PURPOSES.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If someone has a tool, equipment, magic or other ability to enhance I assume they're using them.  If there's any question, they'll ask.




Serious question:  Do you have all your players' characters' tools/equipment/magic/abilities memorized?  I am thinking not, but maybe you have a photographic memory.  In which case, cool!  Or maybe you look at their sheets a lot during play?

For most DMs without photographic (or even really good) memories, or at tables where it is not feasible to see all the character sheets, it seems the process would be easier if the players declared how they wanted to accomplish something instead of the DM assuming they're using the thing(s) that the DM likely doesn't know about.  I guess DMs can ask for clarification, too.  In that sense, our styles of play have a similarity:  without enough information to resolve an action declaration, the DM asks for clarification.


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## Oofta (Apr 23, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Serious question:  Do you have all your players' characters' tools/equipment/magic/abilities memorized?  I am thinking not, but maybe you have a photographic memory.  In which case, cool!  Or maybe you look at their sheets a lot during play?
> 
> For most DMs without photographic (or even really good) memories, or at tables where it is not feasible to see all the character sheets, it seems the process would be easier if the players declared how they wanted to accomplish something instead of the DM assuming they're using the thing(s) that the DM likely doesn't know about.  I guess DMs can ask for clarification, too.  In that sense, our styles of play have a similarity:  without enough information to resolve an action declaration, the DM asks for clarification.




i generally know the important things. But I also expect them to apply any bonuses/penalties appropriate to the situation.  I trust my players to not knowingly cheat just like they trust me to not spring a DM gotcha on them.

So if someone has boots of spider climbing and they just climb up the wall with no check, I may question it once or twice but eventually I'll remember.  No different than getting a crit on the guy with adamantine armor, he had to remind me every once in a while but most of the time I remembered.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> i generally know the important things. But I also expect them to apply any bonuses/penalties appropriate to the situation.  I trust my players to not knowingly cheat just like they trust me to not spring a DM gotcha on them.
> 
> So if someone has boots of spider climbing and they just climb up the wall with no check, I may question it once or twice but eventually I'll remember.  No different than getting a crit on the guy with adamantine armor, he had to remind me every once in a while but most of the time I remembered.




Ah - yes.  I'd gather that this is all quite common among the many tables represented here, regardless of preferred playstyle.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 23, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> See, in my experience the goal and approach style leads players to be more willing to try things, because they see that *trying things doesn’t always lead to a check*. Things that seem likely to work often just do, and w*hen things require a check to do, you get fair warning first*. Of course, if you ask for checks for most actions, *and you don’t give players a heads up about the risk* and potential consequences of failure, then every check having consequences for failure probably would lead to turtling. If you can’t *easily predict whether or not an action will require a roll to resolve* (or alternatively, if you can reliably predict that most actions will require a roll to resolve), you *don’t get fair warning before having to make a check*, and checks always make the situation worse on a failure, naturally doing anything will be scary. But that’s not how most of us who use goal and approach do it. You’ve got to evaluate the technique holistically, instead of evaluating wach individual element as if it was brought over to your game on its own.




You know, I'm not going to disagree with you but something jumped out at me. I bolded it... okay, I bolded a lot, but it was all to the same point. 

Why are checks bad? 

Not trying to get into the philosophy that asking for checks is asking for failure, or saying that you think checks are bad, but look at some of your word choice. Particularly, "don't get fair warning before [a] check" 

Why does a player need "fair warning" before a check? Maybe it is personal vernacular, but I tend to hear that phrase in contexts like "Fair warning, Josh has been eating beans all night". It is a warning about something potentially bad... and since when are checks bad? Bad enough we have to warn players "Hey, just so you know, that might require you to roll a check" 

I don't want this to come across as an accusation, but it is a strange concept to me and I felt it was worth pointing out.





Charlaquin said:


> Is this disagreement based on direct experience, or theory?




Both?

I can tell you it isn't based on peer-reviewed research, but I'm not sure why this is the second time I've been asked about my direct experiences. Have all the times I've talked about my games at my tables and how things have gone for us not demonstrated that I have direct experience as a DM? 





Charlaquin said:


> See, I wouldn’t tell the players, “the ritual circle will blow up if you fail,” because as you say, it doesn’t really make sense for them to know that. Maybe if one of the PCs is familiar with the ritual, but let’s assume that’s not the case for the sake of argument. I’d tell them that failing to properly disrupt the circle will cause a dangerous magical disturbance. And that might prompt the players to want to prove further before rushing ahead and trying to disrupt the circle.
> 
> “What kind of magical disturbance,” on player might ask.
> “Hard to say, are you proficient in Arcana?”
> ...





I'd say you are missing the point with both of these, because neither one of your responses hits upon what I was trying to get at. 

I'm not taking about a flimsy chandelier, I'm talking about a sturdy one, but maybe the wood has loosened around the nails due to age. The reason why it is going to collapse isn't the point, the point was it wasn't obvious at a glance. If it was obvious, then of course it would be mentioned. 

I would also say that "dangerous magical disturbance" is parlance for "magic explosion", maybe even "wild magic going out of control" so you are telling them. 

And none of that addresses the point. Some times, it is more fun not to know. Just like you see the "are you sure you want to do the dumb thing" in the chandelier, that's what I'm seeing you say with the magic circle. They are messing with something of power and you raised a flag "warning, this might be dangerous" causing them to slow down and reevaluate. Which is fine, caution play is perfectly fine, but you've also taken the tension out of the moment. After that ten minutes of studying those runes they will know exactly what might happen, and for some players always knowing exactly what could happen would be boring. 

That is the point I was trying to make. Sometimes, people want to jump into the unknown and take a risk. Sometimes that is the excitement, and having the DM wave a flag that says "okay, just remember these are the consequences" takes away from that excitement. It is a different style. 






iserith said:


> You stated: "I think that is almost worse than 'correct' since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as 'gaming the DM' where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it."
> 
> I pointed out that this outcome is only if the DM behaves in a manner inconsistent with the standards the DMG sets forth for how the DM acts, in that the DM is not acting as "...an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players. And who, by following the 'middle path' is balancing the use of dice against deciding on success to 'encourage players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.'"
> 
> If you agree with that statement, then this addresses your objection and, in the context of the overall discussion, looks like progress of a kind to me as it a recognition that not doing things in the manner the rules expect can lead to undesirable outcomes.





Okay, you just don't get what I was trying to say. That's fine.



 [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] had an objection to a style where there was a "correct" approach. 

The person they were objecting to responded with a preference for saying there were "good" and "bad" approaches. 

My point was that using that language is even worse. 

If you insist on telling me that you only call for checks when someone is using a "bad" approach, then I don't care if you are also saying you are "an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players." Because one of those two statements has to be false due to your word choice. 

That is because only calling for checks when there is a "bad" approach would mean you are not impartial, there is a preference and you are acting upon it, which means that the language of "good" and "bad" approaches would lead to accusations of gaming the DM, because that is what labeling those approaches with that language would mean. 

In using "correct" like Mort did, in the context of their post, there was a clear sarcasm in the word choice, there is no "correct" approach, and even calling an approach "correct" makes little sense in the context of a game with free-form approaches. So it was less objectionable as it helped make the point Mort was attempting to make.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If you insist on telling me that you only call for checks when someone is using a "bad" approach, then I don't care if you are also saying you are "an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players." Because one of those two statements has to be false due to your word choice.




Per the rules, I call for checks when the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. There are approaches that make achieving the goal more difficult, however, which is why the DM is tasked by the rules to set DCs and/or grant advantage or disadvantage depending on what the player describes as wanting to do (in addition to just saying something succeeds or fails outright).


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 23, 2019)

I was sharing/discussing my wine-rack-secret-door story with a couple friends, and one asked (mischievously) how I would feel about a 6 Int character solving it. 

I’d have no problem with it in general, but I think I would especially like it if the player role played his character’s weakness by saying, “Well, I’m no good at this sort of thing, so I guess I’ll make myself useful and unload that wine we were given. Not sure why, but for some reason I feel compelled to put wine bottles in the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 7th slots.”

I know some people will HATE that, but I would think it’s awesome. I think that’s great roleplaying. 

Discuss.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You know, I'm not going to disagree with you but something jumped out at me. I bolded it... okay, I bolded a lot, but it was all to the same point.
> 
> Why are checks bad?



 Oooh, good question.

I guess, short answer: because you can fail them.

As gets mentioned in various commentaries now and then, BA has left kinda a narrow gap between really good and just OK, as afar as bonuses go, and an upshot of that is a PC that's s'posedta be good at something can still fail more than the player might like.  Getting the DM to narrate success instead of calling for a check is thus not just a good way of engineering success, it's a good way of establishing/defending your character concept.  



> Not trying to get into the philosophy that asking for checks is asking for failure



 Oops, sorry, nevermind … 




Elfcrusher said:


> I was sharing/discussing my wine-rack-secret-door story with a couple friends, and one asked (mischievously) how I would feel about a 6 Int character solving it.
> 
> I’d have no problem with it in general, but I think I would especially like it if the player role played his character’s weakness by saying, “Well, I’m no good at this sort of thing, so I guess I’ll make myself useful and unload that wine we were given. Not sure why, but for some reason I feel compelled to put wine bottles in the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 7th slots.”
> 
> ...



 It's not like you don't see that in movies & TV.  The dumb or even just distracted or frustrated character solves the puzzle by accident.

It's a fair reason to put more detail into narration after the roll, rather than always declaring a plausible 'method' with actions. When the players all pile on to some check and the least appropriate one happens to succeed, you narrate it that way, for a laugh.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

I would say that ability checks aren't inherently good or bad. If your goal is success, then automatic success is better than leaving it to chance, e.g. use the key to unlock the door rather than pick the lock with thieves' tools in a dramatic situation. But ultimately the ability check is just a mechanic that resolves uncertainty as to the outcome of a task when there's a meaningful consequence for failure, no more, no less.


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## WaterRabbit (Apr 23, 2019)

Oofta said:


> i generally know the important things. But I also expect them to apply any bonuses/penalties appropriate to the situation.  *I trust my players to not knowingly cheat *just like they trust me to not spring a DM gotcha on them.
> 
> So if someone has boots of spider climbing and they just climb up the wall with no check, I may question it once or twice but eventually I'll remember.  No different than getting a crit on the guy with adamantine armor, he had to remind me every once in a while but most of the time I remembered.




That is what I dislike the most here.  Why are you assuming that cheating is involved anywhere?  Why bring it up?

That is not at all the reason why understanding how the player is trying to accomplish a task works.  Unless you are playing a board game version of the game, it is unlikely that the players have access to all of the information involving the the task they are trying to accomplish.  How a player tries to climb the metaphorical wall (because we really aren't talking about just a wall, but any task) makes a difference in outcomes and the information they get.  

In your game, they player declares they climb the wall.  However, in mine they might be using pitons to create ropes because other party members have terrible athletics.  By using pitons, they actually break pieces of rock off and find an ancient bas relief underneath.  But if they just climbed straight up with their hands they wouldn't.  

The "how" matters as much as the "what" -- sometimes more.  But this is the difference between roll-play and role-play.  Either is fine, but each has a different goal in mind.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 23, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You know, I'm not going to disagree with you but something jumped out at me. I bolded it... okay, I bolded a lot, but it was all to the same point.
> 
> Why are checks bad?
> 
> ...



Because they have a possibility of failure and consequences for failure. I don’t mean to come off accusatory here either, but... how is this only striking you now? Haven’t we been discussing this for the past 100 pages? Wasn’t the fact that checks always have consequences your primary objection to my way of running things?



Chaosmancer said:


> YBoth?
> 
> I can tell you it isn't based on peer-reviewed research, but I'm not sure why this is the second time I've been asked about my direct experiences. Have all the times I've talked about my games at my tables and how things have gone for us not demonstrated that I have direct experience as a DM?



You have demonstrated that you have direct experience with your style of DMing. You have also demonstrated such difficulty in understanding the goal and approach style, that it did not seem likely to me that you had any experience running a game that way. Not wanting to assume, I asked for clarification.



Chaosmancer said:


> YI'd say you are missing the point with both of these, because neither one of your responses hits upon what I was trying to get at.
> 
> I'm not taking about a flimsy chandelier, I'm talking about a sturdy one, but maybe the wood has loosened around the nails due to age. The reason why it is going to collapse isn't the point, the point was it wasn't obvious at a glance. If it was obvious, then of course it would be mentioned.



Right, but if you’re the GM, you’re the one who decided that this chandelier is liable to break for a reason that the character has no way of boing about. Your reasoning for not telling the player that the chandelier might fall if they try to jump on it is that their character couldn’t know that. But their character _could_ know that, if you hadn’t designed the challenge in such a way that they couldn’t. I’m sorry, but to me that feels like a gotcha. If your players are cool with you setting up challenges this way, that’s awesome, but personally, as a DM, I would not feel comfortable doing that.



Chaosmancer said:


> YI would also say that "dangerous magical disturbance" is parlance for "magic explosion", maybe even "wild magic going out of control" so you are telling them.



Not really. “Dangerous magical disturbance” could mean a lot of things, and assuming it means “magic explosion” could be dangerous, if it actually means “will summon a random creature from a random plane of existentence,” for example. You might make preparations for an explosion like taking cover or quaffing a potion of fire resistance or something, and then find yourself dealing with a Marid or something instead of what you expected to happen. And that’s kind of the point of the method. You’re dealing with the consequences of your decisions, instead of the consequences of a poor dice roll. I, as a player, would find it to be a much more satisfying experience having to fight that Marid after having expected a magical explosion than taking a magical explosion after not having known what to expect might happen as a result of my failure on an Arcana check to disrupt a ritual circle. The former is my own fault for not having investigated further to confirm my suspicions. The latter is just an unpredictable mishap that occurred as a result of a crappy dice roll.



Chaosmancer said:


> YAnd none of that addresses the point. Some times, it is more fun not to know. Just like you see the "are you sure you want to do the dumb thing" in the chandelier, that's what I'm seeing you say with the magic circle. They are messing with something of power and you raised a flag "warning, this might be dangerous" causing them to slow down and reevaluate. Which is fine, caution play is perfectly fine, but you've also taken the tension out of the moment. After that ten minutes of studying those runes they will know exactly what might happen, and for some players always knowing exactly what could happen would be boring.
> 
> That is the point I was trying to make.
> 
> Sometimes, people want to jump into the unknown and take a risk. Sometimes that is the excitement, and having the DM wave a flag that says "okay, just remember these are the consequences" takes away from that excitement. It is a different style.




I’m sorry, but that does not sound at all like the argument you were making. Permenton said: 


pemerton said:


> My view remains that (i) if you put things at stake and make it clear how those consequences will factor into adjudication, players will declare actions for their PCs, and (ii) this makes for better and more dramatic RPGing.




To which you responded:


Chaosmancer said:


> I respect that that is your view, but I tend to disagree.



Prompting me to ask for clarification as to whether or not you had personal experience with (i) and it not leading to (ii), and:


Chaosmancer said:


> The players go to disable a powerful ritual circle, they don't know the consequences for failure. Maybe they will fail and the circle will stand, maybe it will blow up, maybe it will unleash some mutated horror. They don't know, and that murky future can be interesting for some players. They aren't making decisions because they know what will happen, but because they are just as blind as any other character in any other medium about where their choices will lead them.
> 
> Sure, sometimes things are obvious, sometimes they know what the consequences for failure are and that makes for the tension, but other times it should be unknown. The swashbuckler doesn't need to know that failing that acrobatics check means they break the chandelier and fall. They have no way to know that in the heat of combat.



The thrust of your argument seems to me to be that the character’s “have no way of knowing”, therefore the players shouldn’t know either. And I voiced my disagreement with the premise that the characters have no way of knowing - in the magic circle example, it should be pretty obvious to anyone who lives in a world where magic circles are a thing that messing with them can lead to negative results, and that’s all the players need to know to satisfy (i). In the chandelier example, the character’s would absolutely be able to make a reasonable guess that the chandelier wouldn’t support their weight, unless you as DM are actively hiding the information that might lead them to that conclusion, such as by deciding that it looks perfectly sturdy, but the beams are rotten, and that rot is not immediately apparent.

If your argument was that “sometimes it’s fun to not know that an action might have negative consequences,” then you’ve not made that clear at all. Personally, I would not find that fun. But if you do, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. Just wouldn’t be the game for me.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 23, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> That is what I dislike the most here.  Why are you assuming that cheating is involved anywhere?  Why bring it up?
> 
> That is not at all the reason why understanding how the player is trying to accomplish a task works.  Unless you are playing a board game version of the game, it is unlikely that the players have access to all of the information involving the the task they are trying to accomplish.  How a player tries to climb the metaphorical wall (because we really aren't talking about just a wall, but any task) makes a difference in outcomes and the information they get.
> 
> ...



Ok do, you expect the player to say they are using options. Grest. So do I. So foes Oofta. If the dont say it snd we dont know it... we dont count it.

Not sure what the issue is.

In the vast majority of times in my games when a player declares a check, we are noth on the same page without needing the full baggage of approach and goal and we are through the resolution likely split. 

The more I keep hearing about how serious the problem were without approach and goal and how much it cleared up problems for them and speeds up their games compared to what they had been, the more I begin to feel glad they found a way to solve all of those issues their games apparently had.

If my games start having those to any significant degree I am glad I have this as a fall back option.


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## Hussar (Apr 23, 2019)

iserith said:


> Per the rules, I call for checks when the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. There are approaches that make achieving the goal more difficult, however, which is why the DM is tasked by the rules to set DCs and/or grant advantage or disadvantage depending on what the player describes as wanting to do (in addition to just saying something succeeds or fails outright).




You’re saying the same thing, just in reverse. If some finds the approach which makes something less difficult then no check is needed. Providided that the approach is effective enough. 

Which is where I get off the train. I’ve had far, far too many arguments from either side of the screen over what constitutes making something more or less difficult. 

Like I said, this places the dm too much in the forefront for my comfort. 

Instead, simply treating things the same way I treat combat - with the player telling me what’s happening and then using the dice to drove the action makes the system more fair to me.


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## iserith (Apr 23, 2019)

Hussar said:


> You’re saying the same thing, just in reverse. If some finds the approach which makes something less difficult then no check is needed. Providided that the approach is effective enough.
> 
> Which is where I get off the train. I’ve had far, far too many arguments from either side of the screen over what constitutes making something more or less difficult.
> 
> ...




As I suggested in a later post, a player whose character is in a dramatic situation might try to get past a locked door by using a key, picking the lock with thieves' tools, kicking it in, or prying it open with a crowbar.

If some of those tasks come with a check and others do not, or some of those checks are easier than others, then you're judging the effectiveness of the approach the player described and now you're one of us.

ONE OF US
ONE OF US


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## Bawylie (Apr 24, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> That is what I dislike the most here.  Why are you assuming that cheating is involved anywhere?  Why bring it up?
> 
> That is not at all the reason why understanding how the player is trying to accomplish a task works.  Unless you are playing a board game version of the game, it is unlikely that the players have access to all of the information involving the the task they are trying to accomplish.  How a player tries to climb the metaphorical wall (because we really aren't talking about just a wall, but any task) makes a difference in outcomes and the information they get.
> 
> ...




FWIW, your last two sentences cut into the overall credibility of your argument here.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 24, 2019)

https://youtu.be/9C4uTEEOJlM

I think this will probably end the same way, though....


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2019)

iserith said:


> As I suggested in a later post, a player whose character is in a dramatic situation might try to get past a locked door by using a key, picking the lock with thieves' tools, kicking it in, or prying it open with a crowbar.
> 
> If some of those tasks come with a check and others do not, or some of those checks are easier than others, then you're judging the effectiveness of the approach the player described and now you're one of us.
> 
> ...




Well yes? By changing the parameters of the situation you get different results. So what?

In your method I state I want to get through the door. It’s locked and I don’t have a key. You have to ask the player how they are going to do it. They then reply they are trying to pick the lock or break it down. You then have to call for the check. Four steps. 

I break down the door athletics 21. 

One step. 

No different than, “I attack the orc 21”.


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## Oofta (Apr 24, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> That is what I dislike the most here.  Why are you assuming that cheating is involved anywhere?  Why bring it up?
> 
> That is not at all the reason why understanding how the player is trying to accomplish a task works.  Unless you are playing a board game version of the game, it is unlikely that the players have access to all of the information involving the the task they are trying to accomplish.  How a player tries to climb the metaphorical wall (because we really aren't talking about just a wall, but any task) makes a difference in outcomes and the information they get.
> 
> ...




Do people just go out of the way to take offense?   If someone says "I get a 20 to climb the wall" I'm assuming they're applying all reasonable bonuses.  I trust my players until proven otherwise. That's all.

If they're using a climber's kit to assist others they'll say so.  I don't see how any of this has anything to do with role-playing one way or another.  As far as how they climb the wall, in most cases it make no more difference than how they swing their sword.  If it floats your boat go for it.  I have plenty of dramatic, descriptive scenes in my game but not every wall needs to be a focus of the game.

To me this kind of relates to Chekhov's Gun.  If details are important, add them.  Add in an extra level of interaction.  But if it makes sense for the story for there to be a somewhat difficult to climb run-of-the-mill wall I may include it.  Unless it's important I get past it with as little muss and fuss as possible.  Along the same lines, if the bas relief is important, they have a chance to notice them no matter how they climb.  It may even be guaranteed that they notice it if it drives the story or fills in some fun background.  But if the bas reliefs aren't important I won't include them.

To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a wall is just a wall.  All you need to climb that wall most of the time is an athletics check.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well yes? By changing the parameters of the situation you get different results. So what?
> 
> In your method I state I want to get through the door. It’s locked and I don’t have a key. You have to ask the player how they are going to do it. They then reply they are trying to pick the lock or break it down. You then have to call for the check. Four steps.
> 
> ...




“No, just Strength, no Athletics.”

See how much time would have been saved with goal and approach?


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well yes? By changing the parameters of the situation you get different results. So what?




It shows that there are multiple approaches to a goal and some of those are approaches are more effective than others. You suggested you weren't comfortable being the judge of that, despite sitting in the DM's chair. Is that still your position?



Hussar said:


> In your method I state I want to get through the door. It’s locked and I don’t have a key. You have to ask the player how they are going to do it. They then reply they are trying to pick the lock or break it down. You then have to call for the check. Four steps.
> 
> I break down the door athletics 21.
> 
> ...




First, I don't really have to ask the players how they are going to do something. They tell me because that's their role in the game and my players perform their role, just as I perform mine as DM. "I try to bust open the door with my crowbar."

Second, would you rule that it's effectively easier to break that door down with a crowbar if its leverage can be applied? As opposed to without a crowbar.

Third, even if it is fewer steps, what is gained by that? Pacing of the game, if that is the concern, is based on many factors as was already discussed way upthread, chiefly player readiness and to some extent dice sorting/rolling.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 24, 2019)

iserith said:


> Per the rules, I call for checks when the outcome of the task is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. There are approaches that make achieving the goal more difficult, however, which is why the DM is tasked by the rules to set DCs and/or grant advantage or disadvantage depending on what the player describes as wanting to do (in addition to just saying something succeeds or fails outright).




Yes?

I take it you agree with my statement then, since you quoted the rulebook yet again about something that is completely parallel to my point? Or, do you think that if a DM is going to label approaches as "good" or "bad" they are still impartially judging whether a task is uncertain and if there is a meaningful consequence for failure, as per the PHB? 






Charlaquin said:


> Because they have a possibility of failure and consequences for failure. I don’t mean to come off accusatory here either, but... how is this only striking you now? Haven’t we been discussing this for the past 100 pages? Wasn’t the fact that checks always have consequences your primary objection to my way of running things?




Maybe it just stood out to me in your phrasing... but don't you find it weird to actively avoid the resolution mechanic of a game? 

Looking at it, "they have the possibility of failure", that makes it sound like by getting a check called for... the player has somehow failed. I'm not trying to say that is how you resolve things, I understand you only call for checks when those three criteria are met, no need to repeat them, but take a step back and think about this in a pure sit down to play any game in the world context. 

You are warning players when they are about to use the main resolution mechanic of the game. By that resolution mechanic being called on, you are allowing the possibility of failure to enter the game. It is purely negative. There is no upside. 

That's weird right? It is a d20 system, but rolling the dice is the worst outcome for the player, they should be warned, prepared, have the option to back out and find another way. They should not roll dice. 

It just never struck me before that was the type of mindset you had. It just never registered, because I've never considered using the primary resolution mechanic of the game to be a bad 



Charlaquin said:


> You have demonstrated that you have direct experience with your style of DMing. You have also demonstrated such difficulty in understanding the goal and approach style, that it did not seem likely to me that you had any experience running a game that way. Not wanting to assume, I asked for clarification.




But in this exact conversation thread, we aren't talking about goal and approach. We are talking about whether or not giving players information on the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying. That has nothing to do with how the players approach the problem and all about how much we tell them. 

So why does my experience with how the players present their actions to me matter? Do you think that because my players do not always present their actions in goal and approach that I've never had them attempt to solve a dangerous situation? That they have never entered into a dramatic moment where their success or failure could change the course of the game? Do I have direct experience with these sorts of situations or am I simply theorizing what players may find engaging and exciting was your exact question. It has nothing to do with style. 



Charlaquin said:


> Right, but if you’re the GM, you’re the one who decided that this chandelier is liable to break for a reason that the character has no way of boing about. Your reasoning for not telling the player that the chandelier might fall if they try to jump on it is that their character couldn’t know that. But their character _could_ know that, if you hadn’t designed the challenge in such a way that they couldn’t. I’m sorry, but to me that feels like a gotcha. If your players are cool with you setting up challenges this way, that’s awesome, but personally, as a DM, I would not feel comfortable doing that.




I must assume you have entirely forgotten the where this chandelier example came from, otherwise you I don't see how this could possibly be a "Gotcha". To remind you of the scenario. 

You are standing in on the second floor of a mansion, guards are charging up the stairs and you need to escape. You see a window and a chandelier, across from which is a ledge leading somewhere else,  in addition to the stairs leading down. What do you do? 

It is possible that by deciding to jump on the chandelier and use it as a means of travel, the player might have to roll a check. It seems likely, chandelier jumping is dangerous stuff. IF they fail this check, then perhaps instead of "you miss" it could be that they land heavily on one side, and with a snap the chandelier breaks from the ceiling and crashes to the ground. 

There is no gotcha here, the player can't spend 10 minutes checking the stability of the chandelier. It is a viable option, but a failed check might lead to it breaking, and the player doesn't know it could break. The challenge has nothing to do with the chandelier, excepting that it might be a solution, the challenge is "escape from the guards" and there is no gotcha in allowing the player to make a choice. They could try tumbling past the guards and sliding down the stair's railing. They could jump out the window. They could teleport somewhere. They could scream and throw a table and scare the guards off. But each of those actions might also fail in some way, and if you jump on a chandelier and land wrong, you might break it. 



Charlaquin said:


> Not really. “Dangerous magical disturbance” could mean a lot of things, and assuming it means “magic explosion” could be dangerous, if it actually means “will summon a random creature from a random plane of existentence,” for example. You might make preparations for an explosion like taking cover or quaffing a potion of fire resistance or something, and then find yourself dealing with a Marid or something instead of what you expected to happen. And that’s kind of the point of the method.* You’re dealing with the consequences of your decisions,* instead of the consequences of a poor dice roll. I, as a player, would find it to be a much more satisfying experience having to fight that Marid after having expected a magical explosion than taking a magical explosion after not having known what to expect might happen as a result of my failure on an Arcana check to disrupt a ritual circle. The former is my own fault for not having investigated further to confirm my suspicions. The latter is just an unpredictable mishap that occurred as a result of a crappy dice roll.




If you decide to mess with a clearly dangerous magical circle, to attempt to deactivate it in a safe manner, and it fails, how are you not dealing with the consequences of your decisions? 

Honestly, if you make the decision to mess with dangerous things, no matter what bad thing happens, is that not a consequence of your decision? Doing more research into the energies of the circle could tell you something, it could not, depends on the exact circumstances, it might just tell you "chaotic magical energies are held in place by this circle". Can you know the results of "chaotic magical energies"? Does not knowing invalidate your decision to try and disperse it? 


Sometimes not knowing is equally fun to knowing. Sometimes it is more fun. Sometimes it is less fun. Regardless, if you declare an action, your character has taken an action. If there is a negative result from that action, you are dealing with the consequences of that action. Yes, if I say someone is yelling for help, you declare you run to see what is going on, and I tell you you take fire damage from the burning building they just ran into, that is bad DMing. But your decision to try and disable a magic circle humming with energy is not invalidated if when you fail I decide to teleport the entire party to the Far North instead of having it all unleash in a massive fireball like you expected. It is clear that in failing to properly disperse a large amount of magical energy _something _ would happen, but not knowing exactly what doesn't seem like it should ruin your fun. Your character can't see the future after all.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Yes?
> 
> I take it you agree with my statement then, since you quoted the rulebook yet again about something that is completely parallel to my point? Or, do you think that if a DM is going to label approaches as "good" or "bad" they are still impartially judging whether a task is uncertain and if there is a meaningful consequence for failure, as per the PHB?




It depends on what you mean by "good" or "bad." Certainly the role of the DM expects that he or she will judge that some approaches make the goal trivially easy or impossible to achieve. In neither case is there an ability check. Is the former "good" approach and the latter a "bad" approach in your view?


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## robus (Apr 24, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] had an objection to a style where there was a "correct" approach.
> 
> The person they were objecting to responded with a preference for saying there were "good" and "bad" approaches.
> 
> ...




I said I’d stay out, but I’ve seen a couple of references to my “good”/“bad” approaches responses to [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION]’s “correct” approach complaint.

First off, Mort, if you were just being sarcastic, I apologize for not picking up on that, but in my defense it wasn’t the first time that this had been raised as a complaint against approaches needing to match DM expectations.

Secondly, “good/bad” was simply shorthand for “productive” vs. “unproductive” approaches. The DM has to adjudicate player actions and that involves evaluating them against the fictional world. Some approaches are going to be better than others. And some are going to be utterly hopeless. (And I will try to remember, in future, that the worst possible interpretation will be taken, which probably explains why Iserith is so precise in his responses!)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Maybe it just stood out to me in your phrasing... but don't you find it weird to actively avoid the resolution mechanic of a game?
> 
> Looking at it, "they have the possibility of failure", that makes it sound like by getting a check called for... the player has somehow failed. I'm not trying to say that is how you resolve things, I understand you only call for checks when those three criteria are met, no need to repeat them, but take a step back and think about this in a pure sit down to play any game in the world context.
> 
> ...



I've been spelling my mindset out pretty explicitly. Yes, a check is an undesirable outcome of an action in my games. If dice are getting rolled it's because  is getting real, we're in a situation with a real possibility of failure and meaningful stakes. If possible, you want to avoid having to roll dice by taking precautions ahead of time, and employing approaches that minimize chance of failure. When the dice do need to be rolled, you want to expend resources to mitigate the chance of failure. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the worst outcome, because there is still a chance of success as well, and probably a pretty good one if you are employing tactics that play to your character's strengths and using abilities and resources to help improve your chances. But if there isn't dramatic tension involved, there doesn't need to be a dice roll in my opinion.

Another point of order here. I imagine you're going to see this as me being pedantic again, like how I differentiate between "action" and "check", but like with the difference between an action and a check, this is a fundamental part of my DMing philosophy that you will struggle to understand my DM philosophy if you dismiss out of hand.

Rolling dice is not the primary resolution mechanic of the game, in my view. The primary resolution mechanic is using a human brain to imagine a fictional scenario and determine the likely outcome of the action within that scenario. _If_, and _only if_ the outcome can not be determined by this method alone, then rolling dice is a tool to help make that determination.

That's why a "Athletics check" is not enough information for me to resolve the action. That doesn't give me a clear picture of what is going on, so I cannot properly employ the primary resolution mechanic. I don't know if it is appropriate to call for a check yet or not, because I cannot picture what your character is doing in the physical world and use my brain to determine if what you're doing might work, not work, and/or have consequences.



Chaosmancer said:


> But in this exact conversation thread, we aren't talking about goal and approach. We are talking about whether or not giving players information on the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying. That has nothing to do with how the players approach the problem and all about how much we tell them.
> 
> So why does my experience with how the players present their actions to me matter? Do you think that because my players do not always present their actions in goal and approach that I've never had them attempt to solve a dangerous situation? That they have never entered into a dramatic moment where their success or failure could change the course of the game? Do I have direct experience with these sorts of situations or am I simply theorizing what players may find engaging and exciting was your exact question. It has nothing to do with style.



Giving players information on the potential consequences of their actions is kind of a fundamental aspect of the DMing style that I have been referring to as "goal and approach," or occasionally "the middle path." But ok, fine, forget that style for a second. My question is, is your disagreement with the assertion that giving players information about the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying based on experience employing this technique (the one where you tell your players the potential consequences of their actions) and finding that it did not lead to better and more dramatic roleplaying than when you don't give said information? Or are you basing it only on your experience running your game not doing that, and this leading to a level of drama in your roleplaying that you are satisfied with?



Chaosmancer said:


> I must assume you have entirely forgotten the where this chandelier example came from, otherwise you I don't see how this could possibly be a "Gotcha". To remind you of the scenario.
> 
> You are standing in on the second floor of a mansion, guards are charging up the stairs and you need to escape. You see a window and a chandelier, across from which is a ledge leading somewhere else,  in addition to the stairs leading down. What do you do?
> 
> ...



The gotcha to me is in justifying "the character couldn't possibly know the chandelier might break if they fail their check" with "The chandelier looks sturdy enough to support the character's weight, but the beams supporting it have rotted in such a way that is not immediately obvious to the player." You are using your own choice to hide the details the character would need for the player to make an informed decision as an excuse for not giving the player enough details to make an informed decision.

It is my opinion that if a player is being asked to make a decision, they should always be sufficiently informed to not make a bad choice based on lack of information. If the player has to choose between trying to roll past the guards and trying to swing to the other side, they should also know that if they fail to roll past the guards, the guards will catch them, and if they fail to swing to the other side, they will fall. It is in my opinion the DM's responsibility to make sure that information is accessible to the player. If "there's no way the character could know" something that they would need to know to make an informed decision, then the DM has failed in that responsibility. As the person who created the scenario, the DM should set the scenario up in such a way that they character _could_ know any important details.

Yes, there's no way for the character to know about the rotten beams. So, the DM shouldn't be using rotten beams here. They should be using a chandelier that is obviously not sturdy enough to hold the character's weight for more than a couple seconds.




Chaosmancer said:


> If you decide to mess with a clearly dangerous magical circle, to attempt to deactivate it in a safe manner, and it fails, how are you not dealing with the consequences of your decisions?



If you were not made aware that a dangerous magical disturbance was a possible outcome of your action, then a dangerous magical disturbance that occurs as a result of your action is not a consequence of your _decision_. You did not _decide_ to accept that risk, you walked into it blindly.



Chaosmancer said:


> Honestly, if you make the decision to mess with dangerous things, no matter what bad thing happens, is that not a consequence of your decision? Doing more research into the energies of the circle could tell you something, it could not, depends on the exact circumstances, it might just tell you "chaotic magical energies are held in place by this circle". Can you know the results of "chaotic magical energies"? Does not knowing invalidate your decision to try and disperse it?



I would say "chaotic magical energies are held in place by this circle" to be sufficient telegraphing. If the player knows this, and still decides to take an action that has a potential risk of releasing those chaotic magical energies, I consider it common courtesy to give the player an "are you sure?" To remind them, "ok, but if you fail, the chaotic magical energies will be released." _That_ is an informed decision. If the player _decides_ to accept that risk and fails, that's on them. Simply saying "I make an Arcana check to disable the circle! Oh no, natural 1..." and being slapped with consequences for that natural 1 isn't an informed decision. The consequences of that natural 1 aren't on the player, they're on the dice, because the player didn't knowingly accept the risk, they blindly guessed that Arcana was the right one of the 18 buttons on their character sheet to push, and the dice landed on the "bad things happen" side.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sometimes not knowing is equally fun to knowing. Sometimes it is more fun. Sometimes it is less fun.



I disagree, but fun is subjective, so if that's more fun to you, awesome.



Chaosmancer said:


> Regardless, if you declare an action, your character has taken an action. If there is a negative result from that action, you are dealing with the consequences of that action. Yes, if I say someone is yelling for help, you declare you run to see what is going on, and I tell you you take fire damage from the burning building they just ran into, that is bad DMing. But your decision to try and disable a magic circle humming with energy is not invalidated if when you fail I decide to teleport the entire party to the Far North instead of having it all unleash in a massive fireball like you expected. It is clear that in failing to properly disperse a large amount of magical energy _something _ would happen, but not knowing exactly what doesn't seem like it should ruin your fun. Your character can't see the future after all.



It's clear _to me_ that in failing to disperse a large amount of magical energy something would happen. I don't want to assume that it is clear to the players. As I said in my earlier post, I don't think it's necessary to tell the players _exactly what_ will happen. "Failing will release the large amount of magical energy that is being contained in this circle, you still want to go through with it?" is perfectly sufficient. Now I know for certain that the player is aware that this action is potentially dangerous. If they want to try it anyway, that's an informed decision. If they decide to do some more research to try to figure out what might happen, that is an informed decision. But if I don't tell them, "hey, something bad might happen if you fail," I don't know that they're making the decision to try to disrupt the circle with full information. They might think that this action might just succeed, or might just fail, or if we're playing in a game where dice rolls are sometimes called for despite the action not having consequences for failure, then they might think that failing will just lead to nothing happening. I'm not a mind-reader and I don't like to make assumptions, so I'm going to make sure my players are aware of the consequences before I make them commit to the action.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 24, 2019)

DM: "Your path is cut by an apparently bottomless chasm. It's not too far across, but to jump and miss would be fatal. From the depths you hear..."

Player: "I'll jump.  Uh-oh...4 on my Athletics check."

DM (frowning): "Well, I wasn't going to ask for a roll.  It was an easy jump. This wasn't meant to be a physical obstacle.  But since you rolled, and failed, I guess you're dead."


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> DM: "Your path is cut by an apparently bottomless chasm. It's not too far across, but to jump and miss would be fatal. From the depths you hear..."
> 
> Player: "I'll jump.  Uh-oh...4 on my Athletics check."
> 
> DM (frowning): "Well, I wasn't going to ask for a roll.  It was an easy jump. This wasn't meant to be a physical obstacle.  But since you rolled, and failed, I guess you're dead."




I don't think anyone on either side of this argument would make a call like that.


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## Sadras (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don't think anyone on either side of this argument would make a call like that.




Why? I think it is more than fair. Do we only accept rolls that yield high results?


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2019)

Yeah, I gotta admit, what's the problem here?  

Well, other than the example doesn't work since you can always jump your STR score in feet with a running start, so, no check is needed, but, other than that... 

Or, say we're sticking with the "Well, I wasn't going to ask for a check" - meaning that the DC is trivial, how did the PC fail?  The only time you don't ask for a check is if there is no chance of failure, right, so, why did the roll suddenly change the DC?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Why? I think it is more than fair. Do we only accept rolls that yield high results?




Oh, ok. I stand corrected, I guess. It read to me like a charicature of a DM using the “players may initiate checks” style. So, if your plan had been that the chasm wasn’t going to require a check to jump across, but the player said they make an Athletics check, you would have them fall if they rolled low? I... guess that’s one way to encourage players to describe actions instead of making checks unprompted. Wouldn’t be my choice.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, I gotta admit, what's the problem here?
> 
> Well, other than the example doesn't work since you can always jump your STR score in feet with a running start, so, no check is needed, but, other than that...
> 
> Or, say we're sticking with the "Well, I wasn't going to ask for a check" - meaning that the DC is trivial, how did the PC fail?  The only time you don't ask for a check is if there is no chance of failure, right, so, why did the roll suddenly change the DC?



Yeah, that last part is what got me. Seems very strange to let a PC fall to their death as a result of a failed check you wouldn’t have asked for in the first place. It sounds to me like declaring checks would be a really terrible strategy in a game like that.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 24, 2019)

In real life people die or are seriously injured as a result of silly accidents all the time. My partner sustained a serious injury falling of a chair whilst cleaning windows. (although since that was a swivel chair, I think it might have been a failed wisdom check rather than Athletics).

In D&D the question to ask is "does it make for a good story?" Obviously a hero dying as a result of a stupid accident does not usually make for a good story. However, if the heroes are traversing a hostile environment, then a close run thing doesn't hurt.

The trick is, the failed roll isn't 100% fatal. If the character falls I might allow a dex saving throw in order to grab something - cliffhanger serials are full of these, there is a good one in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Or someone could grab the dwarves' beard. Or, if the chasm is bottomless, there is plenty of time to cast Levitate or wildshape into a flying squirrel (since it can't actually fly, level 8 not needed).

The trick is to remember you are telling a story (which is fun) not simulating real life (which is random and stupid).


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?


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## Sadras (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?




I'm saying that IF it is fair and custom for the table that a player may pick up the dice and initiate skill checks without even being asked to roll, as has been advocated by some, then the result will matter, be it high or low. Surely?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I'm saying that IF it is fair and custom for the table that a player may pick up the dice and initiate skill checks without even being asked to roll, as has been advocated by some, then the result will matter, be it high or low. Surely?



I obviously can’t speak for everyone who allows players to initiate checks, but I know I’ve read from a few of them who have said that if the player makes a roll for something that they would have automatically succeeded on, they just say it succeeds. I know at least 5ekyu has said that.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I'm saying that IF it is fair and custom for the table that a player may pick up the dice and initiate skill checks without even being asked to roll, as has been advocated by some, then the result will matter, be it high or low. Surely?



It depends.

There are those on this thread and others who have said essentially that EVEN if its an auto-success -  if a player calls for a check then they get a fail chance, added, bam, done. Their rationale (some) was that a die roll check mandates there be uncertainty and fail chance. (That said, they were not clear if it plays the same way for impossible tasks - if the player declares "i roll" the GM will now add a 20 succeeds kinda thing. My bet not - but it's not clear if they take this " player caller for uncertainty " both ways.)

Others, myself included, have said if it was an auto-success before, its an auto-success even if you ask for check. If its an auto-fail before, it is after you call for a check. 

But the use case was ambiguous and morphic-ready. It was not said that it was  auto-success - just that the GM wasnt gonna call for roll? It was described as easy, which is DC 10 in DnD5e terms. So that example has the default built in wiggle room rabbit hole we by now should not find surprising.

For me tho, I also recognize that a failed ski...  errr...  ability check is a failure which by the basic 5e definition for resolution of ability checks can be some progress ewih setback so, the possibility of not making the other side at ground level, but catching on the other side some x feet down on the ledge is possible too. Add in some damage, a need to climb up or be helped, etc and options other than dead are on the table.

But then, I d9nt know of any player who would have jumped from that description before asking "how far. So, I too assumed it was a rabbit hole pre-wiggled parody of the perception of those who dont embrace the faith of goal and approach  myself and prefer the middle path.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I'm saying that IF it is fair and custom for the table that a player may pick up the dice and initiate skill checks without even being asked to roll, as has been advocated by some, then the result will matter, be it high or low. Surely?



In such a case, if it was an impossibly long jump, can a player declared "I roll" call turn an auto-fail into a possible succeed or does this "the result will matter. Surely?" only cancel the uncertainty if it goes against the player?


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## Imaculata (Apr 24, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> In such a case, if it was an impossibly long jump, can a player declared "I roll" call turn an auto-fail into a possible succeed or does this "the result will matter. Surely?" only cancel the uncertainty if it goes against the player?




If a check is an auto-fail or an auto-succeed, I always disregard the die result. If I say no roll is required, then this requirement doesn't suddenly change because a player decided to roll anyway.


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?




No. I wouldn’t. If there was no chance of failure then the roll is superfluous. Doesn’t matter if he scored a 0 (actually happened for an insight check last session lol ). There’s no chance of failure so there is no chance of failure. 

But in the example given, an automatic success suddenly became non-automatic because the player rolled. Considering the number of accusations of misinterpretation and willful ignorance, it’s a bit funny and a lot ironic to see.


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## Oofta (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?




If I wasn't going to ask for a roll because it was not necessary, it succeeds.  If something can't be achieved it can't be achieved even with a nat 20.  

They may have wasted a roll of a die but last time I checked those aren't a limited resource.  Although every time someone rolls a 20 when no roll was necessary you would think they were.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 24, 2019)

Good morning, gang!

For the record, I wasn't expecting anybody to take that post seriously.  I thought I'd get a few "laugh" clicks and we'd move on.  I was going for a humorous illustration of how "players initiate skill checks" and "failed rolls have consequences" don't mix well.

(I thought the flaw would be obvious: if success would have been automatic, even a low roll would still be success.)


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If I wasn't going to ask for a roll because it was not necessary, it succeeds.  If something can't be achieved it can't be achieved even with a nat 20.




I think another point here is that some (many?) people think it rude or at least a breach of etiquette for an experienced player to just go ahead and roll without letting the DM finish their part of the play loop.  At the very least, it is potentially disruptive/time wasting for someone to roll when it was not even called for.



Oofta said:


> They may have wasted a roll of a die but last time I checked those aren't a limited resource.  Although every time someone rolls a 20 when no roll was necessary you would think they were.




Yeah, it’s funny how superstitious gamers can be.  As players only roll at meaningful moments in our games, the only time I’ve seen it lately is when some of them are “warming up” before we get started. I play into it, too:  “oops, you just wasted a crit!”


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> I think another point here is that some (many?) people think it rude or at least a breach of etiquette for an experienced player to just go ahead and roll without letting the DM finish their part of the play loop.  At the very least, it is potentially disruptive/time wasting for someone to roll when it was not even called for.




This came up in one of the previous threads about 'allowing players to make rolls' or something like that, and I found it somewhat confusing then, as well as now. When I am a player, I'll often say things like...

"I use _oral speaking_ to convince the Troll King to _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_. If that calls for a check, I got a [rolls dice] _result_."

Depending on what _oral speaking_ (approach) and _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_ (goal) were, the DM is free to ignore the _result_ to narrate success or failure, as they see fit, or to take _result_ into account to narrate success or failure. How is that rude, and how does it waste time?


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## Oofta (Apr 24, 2019)

I don't consider it rude or a waste of time if someone rolls a die and tells me the result as long as it is clear what their player is doing.  I'm with [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION], why would it be rude?  We're just saving some time and keeping the game flowing.  Worst case I ignore the roll and tell them the check they were trying to do doesn't make sense and clarify the scene to eliminate confusion.

Then again I also encourage people to roll attack and damage ahead of time in combat; it saves time and as long as the person is consistent and honest it doesn't matter to me.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?




They can roll. I generally don't tell them the DC, so it could be DC0, in which case I would just tell them they succeed, no matter what the roll is.

It might influence the manner of success though. If they roll badly whist trying to jump across a pit that the rules say they can cross automatically, I would say something like this "You attempt a spectacular long jump over the pit, which you easily clear. However, you stumble on landing and fall on your backside."


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> This came up in one of the previous threads about 'allowing players to make rolls' or something like that, and I found it somewhat confusing then, as well as now. When I am a player, I'll often say things like...
> 
> "I use _oral speaking_ to convince the Troll King to _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_. If that calls for a check, I got a [rolls dice] _result_."
> 
> Depending on what _oral speaking_ (approach) and _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_ (goal) were, the DM is free to ignore the _result_ to narrate success or failure, as they see fit, or to take _result_ into account to narrate success or failure. How is that rude, and how does it waste time?




If the DM has finished their description of the scene with “What do you do?” then I’d say it isn’t and doesn’t - if you are playing in a manner where players self-assign ability checks.  In a goal and approach style of play, if the DM has finished their description of the scene with “What do you do?” then the player has done a nice job of describing their approach and goal, but has now inserted a roll when one may not have been needed, disrupting the play loop.  Somewhat rude for an experienced player at that table and a waste of time to boot.

In any play style, if an experienced player (ie. one that KNOWS the play loop) rolls “without letting the DM finish their part of the play loop” (which is exactly what I said above), then it could be considered - by some or many - rude and a waste of time because they’ve cut off the DM from providing a full description and have self-assigned a roll without one being called for.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> This came up in one of the previous threads about 'allowing players to make rolls' or something like that, and I found it somewhat confusing then, as well as now. When I am a player, I'll often say things like...
> 
> "I use _oral speaking_ to convince the Troll King to _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_. If that calls for a check, I got a [rolls dice] _result_."
> 
> Depending on what _oral speaking_ (approach) and _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_ (goal) were, the DM is free to ignore the _result_ to narrate success or failure, as they see fit, or to take _result_ into account to narrate success or failure. How is that rude, and how does it waste time?



In the latest example, it was the actual interruption mid-sentence that might be seen as rude. Nothing to do with loop sequence, just not interrupting. 

Although, a lot depends on the table and whether the GM is good st breaking for player input or not.


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## WaterRabbit (Apr 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> FWIW, your last two sentences cut into the overall credibility of your argument here.




Ok, good to know you think that.  However, your comment cuts into the overall credibility of any of your arguments here since it has no explanation as to why you think that.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> If the DM has finished their description of the scene with “What do you do?” then I’d say it isn’t and doesn’t - if you are playing in a manner where players self-assign ability checks.  In a goal and approach style of play, if the DM has finished their description of the scene with “What do you do?” then the player has done a nice job of describing their approach and goal, but has now inserted a roll when one may not have been needed, disrupting the play loop.  Somewhat rude for an experienced player at that table and a waste of time to boot.
> 
> In any play style, if an experienced player (ie. one that KNOWS the play loop) rolls “without letting the DM finish their part of the play loop” (which is exactly what I said above), then it could be considered - by some or many - rude and a waste of time because they’ve cut off the DM from providing a full description and have self-assigned a roll without one being called for.



There is a gray area... even to the interruption snhlr.

There are some GMs who (maybe poor form or maybe by design) dont explicitly mark the end of their stage in the play loop with a formal declaration every scene. 

Maybe their description includes water flooding into the room and "begins to rise, it's now above your ankles, continuing to rise" or maybe it's some batch of walking or shambling menace "moves closer" etc 

Sometimes it just a more rookie GM thing but sometimes it's more a setting atmosphere and sense of impending threat that *formally acknowledging the beginning and end stage of each segment in the hitherto agreed upon by all parties play loop* fits like letting the air out of a wet bslloon.

Not every group is ss hung up on the formal process steps done in the proper order **in actual play** as folks on forum threads sometimes seem to sanctify.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Then again I also encourage people to roll attack and damage ahead of time in combat; it saves time and as long as the person is consistent and honest it doesn't matter to me.




I think many - perhaps ALL - tables, regardless of play style, will have players roll attack rolls after saying which enemy they are attacking and with what weapon, if those descriptions were not already spelled out last round.  Some will even have players roll damage at the same time as the attack to save some time.

But, I digress, we're talking about ability checks here.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 24, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> In such a case, if it was an impossibly long jump, can a player declared "I roll" call turn an auto-fail into a possible succeed or does this "the result will matter. Surely?" only cancel the uncertainty if it goes against the player?




DC 50.

If they roll high they may only be 10 feet short of the other side instead of 20.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

The players and the DM share the game overall goal - that everyone has fun and an exciting, memorable tale is created during play. That is how to "win" at D&D 5e, according to the rules.

Each participant in the game works toward that goal in their individual roles. The DM describes the environment and narrates the results of the adventurers' actions, sometimes calling for rolls to resolve uncertainty when there's a meaningful consequence for failure. The players just describe what they want to do.

When the individuals are all working toward the same goal and are each trying to perform their specific roles to the best of their abilities, then there is a greater chance of achieving those goals. The more clearly the DM lays out the basic scope of options when describing the environment, the better the players are able to make informed decisions and describe what they want to do. The more clearly the players describe what they want to do, the better the DM is able to decide if a roll is needed and what the result of their actions are. And round it round it goes as the play loop turns during the game.

One might say this approach is particularly suited to the goal because that is how the game was designed, everyone working toward a shared goal, each in their own specifically defined roles. It's when we aren't working toward the same goal, when we aren't performing our roles well or are trying to perform someone else's role (DM establishing what characters are doing, players calling for rolls, players narrating the result of their actions, etc.) that we can sometimes arrive at unintended or undesirable results. We see these results reported on the forums all the time and many are resolved by simply focusing on the fundamentals - who gets to say what and when and doing that in the best way the individuals can.

So that's the argument for playing in the manner some of us do - it's the game's design and it works. But if some of you would rather play it some other way and don't mind the odd issue that may arise, then carry on. How we play has no impact on how you play.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 24, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> There are some GMs who (maybe poor form or maybe by design) dont explicitly mark the end of their stage in the play loop with a formal declaration every scene.




Why would a DM "by design" not signal to the players that they need to do something?  What does that even mean?  Do some DMs just end their sentence or trail off and sit in awkward silence until someone else says something?  Maybe some tables develop an "It's your turn" facial expression?  Ok, could work.  It's not, IMO, difficult or scene breaking to just say "What do you do?" or something similar to indicate the ball is now in the players' court.

Or maybe the players need to roll insight to determine if the DM is really done?


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## Bawylie (Apr 24, 2019)

WaterRabbit said:


> Ok, good to know you think that.  However, your comment cuts into the overall credibility of any of your arguments here since it has no explanation as to why you think that.




Any of them, huh? Oh well.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> DC 50.
> 
> If they roll high they may only be 10 feet short of the other side instead of 20.



Uhhh ok. But without more info, not informative. Thanks tho.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Why would a DM "by design" not signal to the players that they need to do something?  What does that even mean?  Do some DMs just end their sentence or trail off and sit in awkward silence until someone else says something?  Maybe some tables develop an "It's your turn" facial expression?  Ok, could work.  It's not, IMO, difficult or scene breaking to just say "What do you do?" or something similar to indicate the ball is now in the players' court.
> 
> Or maybe the players need to roll insight to determine if the DM is really done?



Why? Many reasons. But mostly because the group finds it more fun to focus on scene and character roles tasn on the process of the rules and player vs gm roles.

Might have thought it ramped up drama to keep the threat hanging and let the players react to it without killing the mood and tension by stating formally. "At this point the official stage of GM narrations has ended. So as per pagex12 of the codified rules of table conduct, you have 19.3 seconds to declare your intentions." or whatever other code phrase or common statement is agreed to mark the end of one formal stage snd the beginning of the next formal stage.

Really, seriously, games are played lots of ways and in some - it may be shocking - less attention is paid to process, order and sequence of rules than is to tone, scene and tension.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Why would a DM "by design" not signal to the players that they need to do something?  What does that even mean?  Do some DMs just end their sentence or trail off and sit in awkward silence until someone else says something?  Maybe some tables develop an "It's your turn" facial expression?  Ok, could work.  It's not, IMO, difficult or scene breaking to just say "What do you do?" or something similar to indicate the ball is now in the players' court.
> 
> Or maybe the players need to roll insight to determine if the DM is really done?




Most of the time, it is pretty easy to tell when someone is done talking. I mean, in most conversations, we don't formally acknowledge that we're done talking and that it is someone else's turn to do so, we simply pause and another person takes that as a cue to start.

If a DM finds themselves frequently interrupted, they may want to adopt a formal, "What do you do?" transition, or perhaps be sure to make appropriate filler sounds when pausing for thought in the middle of a dialogue, or both (assuming that the DM is being interrupted by multiple people in different situations, rather than by a single interrupter or only in a single type of situation).

If a single player is doing the interrupting, then perhaps a different conversation to point out the disruptive behavior should happen, "Gosh [player], you sure seem excited about the game. That's great. Please try not to interrupt when I've got my DM pants on, though. It causes them to bunch up uncomfortably."


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> No. I wouldn’t. If there was no chance of failure then the roll is superfluous. Doesn’t matter if he scored a 0 (actually happened for an insight check last session lol ). There’s no chance of failure so there is no chance of failure.
> 
> But in the example given, an automatic success suddenly became non-automatic because the player rolled. Considering the number of accusations of misinterpretation and willful ignorance, it’s a bit funny and a lot ironic to see.




Ok, cool. That was what I thought, that’s why I said I didn’t think anyone on either side of this argument would rule that way.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Most of the time, it is pretty easy to tell when someone is done talking. I mean, in most conversations, we don't formally acknowledge that we're done talking and that it is someone else's turn to do so, we simply pause and another person takes that as a cue to start.



Yeah, I try to end my narrations with “what do you do?” as a reminder to myself to always provide the players with something to respond to (if “what do you do?” sounds awkward at the end of my final sentence, it’s a signal to myself that I’m failing in that goal). But the idea that the players might not recognize that its their turn if you don’t ask “what do you do?” feels a bit like insisting that youmust alwaus  end your sentence with “over” when you’re using a walkie-talkie.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Yeah, I try to end my narrations with “what do you do?” as a reminder to myself to always provide the players with something to respond to (if “what do you do?” sounds awkward at the end of my final sentence, it’s a signal to myself that I’m failing in that goal). But the idea that the players might not recognize that its their turn if you don’t ask “what do you do?” feels a bit like insisting that youmust alwaus  end your sentence with “over” when you’re using a walkie-talkie.




You forgot to say, "Over." Over.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Linking this post again (#995) as there were several non-rhetorical questions in it for @_*Hussar*_ that may have been overlooked.


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## Satyrn (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> This came up in one of the previous threads about 'allowing players to make rolls' or something like that, and I found it somewhat confusing then, as well as now. When I am a player, I'll often say things like...
> 
> "I use _oral speaking_ to convince the Troll King to _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_. If that calls for a check, I got a [rolls dice] _result_."
> 
> Depending on what _oral speaking_ (approach) and _input his dagger of friendship into my player agency slot_ (goal) were, the DM is free to ignore the _result_ to narrate success or failure, as they see fit, or to take _result_ into account to narrate success or failure. How is that rude, and how does it waste time?




For me, the issue is that I don't get the chance to set the DC. I prefer to do that before the player rolls so I can't fudge it, and I can't be seen to be fudging it.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> For me, the issue is that I don't get the chance to set the DC. I prefer to do that before the player rolls so I can't fudge it, and I can't be seen to be fudging it.




Why would you fudge it? Part of the job of the DM is to adjudicate impartially.


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## Satyrn (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Why would you fudge it? Part of the job of the DM is to adjudicate impartially.




This seems like a rhetorical question, meant to mock me or someone else.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> This seems like a rhetorical question, meant to mock me or someone else.




It was not that, exactly.

I don't think that you would fudge it, any more than I think that you would set an unattainable DC at a goal and approach that you didn't expect but which might reasonably be thought to succeed (which, to me, is the same as fudging the result after seeing the die roll).

I am trying to think of a less jerky way to rephrase, but I am a jerk, so this may be beyond me.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Why would you fudge it? Part of the job of the DM is to adjudicate impartially.



Part of the job of a "Judge" at a 70s wargame was to adjudicate impartially, because players were competing.  DMing somehow inherited that expectation, but there's no fair competition in traditional RPGs.  One side are player characters, the other are made up by the DM for the scenario.  One side, the players, are bound by rules, the other, the DM, is not.  

It goes beyond impartiality, the DM needs to adjudicate with the player experience in mind, because he's almost wholly responsible for that experience being worth repeating.


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## Satyrn (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> It was not that, exactly.
> 
> I don't think that you would fudge it, any more than I think that you would set an unattainable DC at a goal and approach that you didn't expect but which might reasonably be thought to succeed (which, to me, is the same as fudging the result after seeing the die roll).
> 
> I am trying to think of a less jerky way to rephrase, but I am a jerk, so this may be beyond me.




But you should think I might fudge it!

The very fact that I value a method because it prevents me from fudging tells you that I might very well fudge a DC if given a chance. 

I have in the past, in a couple different ways. When I kept the DC private from my players, and they rolled close but not quite to it, sometimes I nudged it downward so they'd succeed. Sometimes I wouldn't bother setting a DC, and just let the players succeed if they "rolled high." Why? I was too much of a cheerleader fit the players, maybe, or I was too invested in making sure the plot moved forward.

So, yeah, I need a method that curtails my opportunity to fudge the DC. And that's why I don't want the players rolling the dice before I tell them to.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 24, 2019)

I fudge.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 24, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Part of the job of a "Judge" at a 70s wargame was to adjudicate impartially, because players were competing.  DMing somehow inherited that expectation, but there's no fair competition in traditional RPGs.  One side are player characters, the other are made up by the DM for the scenario.  One side, the players, are bound by rules, the other, the DM, is not.




I don't agree with that last sentence, here. The DM is not bound to the same rules as the players, because they have different roles. He is still bound to the principles of play.



Tony Vargas said:


> It goes beyond impartiality, the DM needs to adjudicate with the player experience in mind, because he's almost wholly responsible for that experience being worth repeating.




I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying. Does _adjudicate with player experience in mind_ mean that the DM _should_ fudge?  Or that the DM _should not_ fudge?  Or something else?

I'm a little bit dense today, I was up past my bedtime at a game session yesterday. My character got killed *twice* in about fifteen minutes. It was brutal.


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## Oofta (Apr 24, 2019)

I like fudge as long as it doesn't have nuts in it.   Why do people ruin perfectly good fudge?


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I like fudge as long as it doesn't have nuts in it.   Why do people ruin perfectly good fudge?



I believe I have deduced the underlying problem to our disagreements...


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> But you should think I might fudge it!
> 
> The very fact that I value a method because it prevents me from fudging tells you that I might very well fudge a DC if given a chance.
> 
> ...



Interesting.

In my games they rarely have to bother. I show them up front how I determine DCs and I follow that very strongly throughout. They learn what to expect and when a DC seems higher, which they see by a result, their characters take it as a clue that something unforeseen is amiss.

But for the not Smith, the narrative tends to set the expectations close enough that it foesnt need to come before the roll because things have been described *or* the character leapt before looking and it becomes obvious after the fact. 

I can see it as a potential problem if a gm doesnt have a consistent approach *and* a link between narrative/description/contest that the characters and players can follow.


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## Satyrn (Apr 24, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Interesting.
> 
> In my games they rarely have to bother. I show them up front how I determine DCs and I follow that very strongly throughout. They learn what to expect and when a DC seems higher, which they see by a result, their characters take it as a clue that something unforeseen is amiss.
> 
> ...




I think you're saying that you don't fudge the DCs, and your players are confident that you're impartially setting and following them.

I'm a little flawed in this regard and need a method to keep me from fudging . . . I'm glad my flaw is interesting to you, though.


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## Oofta (Apr 24, 2019)

I think the word "fudge" (sweet, sweet fudge) is throwing people off.

I can see why some people would not like people rolling and  telling them a number before the DM has made a call because they don't want to be _influenced _by the result that the player gets.  

Which makes sense.  As much as I try to be objective I do a lot of on-the-fly scenes and don't always have detailed notes on most encounters.  That and there's not always a simple formula, especially when the players are really going off the rails which is what they do pretty much every time we play.

So while it doesn't bother me, if a DM asked me to not roll a number for things that require DM judgement call and explained _why_ I'd be okay with it.


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## Satyrn (Apr 24, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I think the word "fudge" (sweet, sweet fudge) is throwing people off.
> 
> I can see why some people would not like people rolling and  telling them a number before the DM has made a call because they don't want to be _influenced _by the result that the player gets.
> 
> ...



Yeah, you get me!

Also, I guess "fudge" is one of those loaded words, one of our many many many loaded words. I'm definitely talking about what you describe you describe as "influenced."


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 24, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> I don't agree with that last sentence, here. The DM is not bound to the same rules as the players, because they have different roles. He is still bound to the principles of play.



 The DM is explicitly free - at least in most eds of D&D - to add to, change, and override the rules as he sees fit.  Feels pretty un-bound, to me.  

Or, in 5e parlance, not 'not bound by the rules' so much as "Empowered!"



> I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying. Does _adjudicate with player experience in mind_ mean that the DM _should_ fudge?  Or that the DM _should not_ fudge?  Or something else?



 Should fudge, definitely, /and/ something else:  should engage in "Illusionism" as much as in necessary to deliver a good experience to his players.  



> I'm a little bit dense today, I was up past my bedtime at a game session yesterday. My character got killed *twice* in about fifteen minutes. It was brutal.



See?  Your DM could've done better!    (Unless you /like/ 'brutal,' then, well-done, DM!)


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2019)

Sorry [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] - I'm only sporadically checking the thread and generally only to pick up the last couple of pages, I think I missed your questions.  Since at least one poster in this thread has me on ignore, links don't work.  If you have questions specifically for me, you'll need to repost them, not link to them.

But, as far as your last post goes, seems about right.  It works for you and it certainly is what the rules suggest, so, yeah, go for it.

For me, it's needlessly clunky.  Why go through so many steps to get to the same point.  In your method, you need at least three steps to get to a resolution:

Step 1

Player states a goal - I want to break down the door.

Step 2 

Player states a method - with a crowbar.  (note, steps 1 and 2 can be combined)

Step 3

DM calls for a check - Ok, give me an Athletics check with advantage.

Step 4

Player makes check.

That's at least 3 steps since steps one and two can be combined.

In my way, it's a single step:

Step 1

Player - I want to break down the door with a crowbar - the crowbar gives me advantage, so 21 Athletics.

Done.  

Someone mentioned earlier about how calling for rolls is linked to new players.  I can totally see that.  I haven't played with new players in many years, so, it doesn't matter to my table.  We've played together for quite a few years now as well, so, generally, the players and DM know each other well enough by now that very few misunderstandings occur.  

Since the DMG and PHB are written very much with neophyte players and DM's in mind, I can see why it would appeal to anyone who is new to the game.  It needs clearly demarcated roles to lessen confusion in new players.  Totally get that.  However, my table of 6 players has, collectively, creeping up on two centuries of play experience.  We really don't need the rules to tell us who has to do what.  Of the six people at the table 5 also run games either for the group or other groups.  We've all been behind the screen so, again, we aren't really the target audience for the PHB and DMG advice.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Sorry [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] - I'm only sporadically checking the thread and generally only to pick up the last couple of pages, I think I missed your questions.  Since at least one poster in this thread has me on ignore, links don't work.  If you have questions specifically for me, you'll need to repost them, not link to them.




I thought that may be an issue as I've blocked one person and have been blocked by another. How annoying. Thanks for confirming it's a problem.



Hussar said:


> In my way, it's a single step:
> 
> Step 1
> 
> ...




It may be fewer steps if the outcome is the same (an ability check). But not every task results in a roll, so at least some of the time, the player's roll is superfluous and may need to be addressed in play which is not the case if the player sticks to his or her role. A game also tends to run smoother if it's played in the manner intended in my experience, regardless of how many steps are involved. To that end, I don't think this is a very convincing case for doing what you do, though I pass no judgment on you for doing it.



Hussar said:


> Someone mentioned earlier about how calling for rolls is linked to new players.  I can totally see that.  I haven't played with new players in many years, so, it doesn't matter to my table.  We've played together for quite a few years now as well, so, generally, the players and DM know each other well enough by now that very few misunderstandings occur.
> 
> Since the DMG and PHB are written very much with neophyte players and DM's in mind, I can see why it would appeal to anyone who is new to the game.  It needs clearly demarcated roles to lessen confusion in new players.  Totally get that.  However, my table of 6 players has, collectively, creeping up on two centuries of play experience.  We really don't need the rules to tell us who has to do what.  Of the six people at the table 5 also run games either for the group or other groups.  We've all been behind the screen so, again, we aren't really the target audience for the PHB and DMG advice.




Nor are my regulars - we're all very experienced and have been playing together for years (some from my previous D&D 4e campaigns). I think the rules are for new players and experienced players both and they tell us how _this_ game is played. I think experienced players ignore them at the risk of failing to achieve the goals of play. Each game produces a particular play experience in my view when the rules of the respective games are followed. If I didn't like the D&D 5e experience, I'd probably just go back to playing D&D 4e full time instead of playing D&D 5e with D&D 4e approaches (for example). That seems like a better fit all around, especially after the experience of transitioning from D&D 3.5e to D&D 4e without having developed the viewpoint that I hold now. (Those troubles were the catalyst to get me to stop dragging my approaches from one game into another.)

So the advice I give to a lot of people trying out D&D 5e, though this applies to anyone in my view: Forget what you know about other games. Read the rules. Try to imagine the game experience it will create when followed and the approaches needed to support it. Play it and see if you like it. Then decide if it needs changing or abandoning altogether.


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## Hussar (Apr 24, 2019)

iserith said:


> /snip
> 
> A game also tends to run smoother if it's played in the manner intended in my experience, regardless of how many steps are involved. To that end, I don't think this is a very convincing case for doing what you do, though I pass no judgment on you for doing it.




The point I was making though is that the designers were intending the game to be played by people with no gaming experience.  That's how the game is written to me.  Since I'm not that, the advice doesn't really appeal as much.



> Nor are my regulars - we're all very experienced and have been playing together for years (some from my previous D&D 4e campaigns). I think the rules are for new players and experienced players both and they tell us how _this_ game is played. I think experienced players ignore them at the risk of failing to achieve the goals of play. Each game produces a particular play experience in my view when the rules of the respective games are followed. If I didn't like the D&D 5e experience, I'd probably just go back to playing D&D 4e full time instead of playing D&D 5e with D&D 4e approaches (for example). That seems like a better fit all around, especially after the experience of transitioning from D&D 3.5e to D&D 4e without having developed the viewpoint that I hold now. (Those troubles were the catalyst to get me to stop dragging my approaches from one game into another.)
> 
> So the advice I give to a lot of people trying out D&D 5e, though this applies to anyone in my view: Forget what you know about other games. Read the rules. Try to imagine the game experience it will create when followed and the approaches needed to support it. Play it and see if you like it. Then decide if it needs changing or abandoning altogether.




To me, this experience would be far too structured and rely far to heavily on the DM being at the front and center of the game.  Simply ignoring this bit of the game in favor of trusting that my players know what they're doing instead of having me have to judge every declaration means that we have a better experience.  

5e is written from the point of view that it has to be played by 15 year olds who've never role played before.  So, it gives a very structured approach - goal and method as you call it - which will work very well at nearly any table.  There's nothing wrong with doing it this way.  It certainly works.  And, yes, it certainly would clear up misunderstandings if followed faithfully.

OTOH, it assumes that the group needs this level of structure and that narrative power over the game rests very squarely on the DM's shoulders.  That the players have their area of control in the game and the DM has everything else.  LIke I said, I have no problems with players declaring stuff to be true.  In the earlier example of climbing the wall and using boxes, it would not bother me in the slightest for the player to declare that he climbed the wall because there were boxes among the bric a brac in the last room and that he stacked them up to climb over the wall.  IOW, the boxes were never described prior to the player rolling a success.  

Doesn't happen much, but, I have no problem with it.  5e does not grant much authorial control to the players by the rules.  I prefer the players to have more authorial control in the game.  I LOVE it when the players declare stuff to be true that I hadn't added in.  Lots of "Yes , and" sort of improv stuff.  Would not be something that would work in a group of new players as well, and would not work with the goal and method approach either since it's the success of a check that allows the player to declare things in the game.

I guess that is another central idea - for you, a check is called for when the players haven't found a way to do something without needing a check.  For me, a check allows the players to author elements in the game that weren't there beforehand.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The point I was making though is that the designers were intending the game to be played by people with no gaming experience.  That's how the game is written to me.  Since I'm not that, the advice doesn't really appeal as much.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I think to me, and mine, its basically never about "playing 5e" but about "using 5e to play our game". With as many differrntvsystems as we have played thru, GMed, tried, tired of etc etc over the years we haven't really been concerned with the beginner how to's of systems for ages. Nor with the idea of isolating what we learned and liked from the past when we move to new systems. It's all a big buffet and we choose more of this and less of that all the time.

But, we do get new players, frequently. And in my experience, the more the "process" and especially the process of the rules becomes the focus  the harder it is to get them over the new guy hump, not less. 

But each group will be different.


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## Bawylie (Apr 24, 2019)

iserith said:


> I thought that may be an issue as I've blocked one person and have been blocked by another. How annoying. Thanks for confirming it's a problem.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The problem with reading the rules and imagining the game play, de novo, is the same problem with reading sheet music and imagining the song in your head. Very few people can really do that. 

So it’s natural that people reach for the nearest possible experience to inform their current doings. 

That said, I’m chalking this up to a longstanding disagreement on whether system matters. It kind of does, but not in the way people typically assume. 

Anyway that leads me to my advice for new people on trying out D&D. Which is to pretend like you did when you were a kid. Don’t worry about the rules of the game and just put yourself in the imaginary situation and say what you want to do and I will use the rules to help you make that happen, sometimes with dice and sometimes not. 

Kids always get this. I’ve never run a table with kids who couldn’t do this within 5 minutes of play. They dive in and out of imaginary spaces like water. But adults fixate on procedure - and IMO that’s because they reach to their nearest experiences, that is Board Games or sports with stratified turns, phases, and rules. You rolled 4 so you move 4 spaces. On doubles, this thing happens. It’s this many points for crossing this line. And (again IMO) it’s always adults who get confused over “how” you’re supposed to do something. Even to the point of confusing the doing of the thing (the task) with the process or model that determines the outcome of that task. 

Put simpler - play is play; game mechanics facilitate play but are not themselves play. Kids play. Adults get confused about what to do. This is plain as day when you do a mixed group. I point it out to show how sometimes we lose sight of play as we get older. 

Anecdote - a friend of mine recently advised me, while I was in a rough spot: “we don’t stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing.” That sticks with me.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The point I was making though is that the designers were intending the game to be played by people with no gaming experience.  That's how the game is written to me.  Since I'm not that, the advice doesn't really appeal as much.




One wonders what the rules would look like if they were intending the game to be played by people with a lot of gaming experience.

I'm guessing it would look much the same since this game isn't other games.



Hussar said:


> OTOH, it assumes that the group needs this level of structure and that narrative power over the game rests very squarely on the DM's shoulders.  That the players have their area of control in the game and the DM has everything else.  LIke I said, I have no problems with players declaring stuff to be true.  In the earlier example of climbing the wall and using boxes, it would not bother me in the slightest for the player to declare that he climbed the wall because there were boxes among the bric a brac in the last room and that he stacked them up to climb over the wall.  IOW, the boxes were never described prior to the player rolling a success.
> 
> Doesn't happen much, but, I have no problem with it.  5e does not grant much authorial control to the players by the rules.  I prefer the players to have more authorial control in the game.  I LOVE it when the players declare stuff to be true that I hadn't added in.  Lots of "Yes , and" sort of improv stuff.  Would not be something that would work in a group of new players as well, and would not work with the goal and method approach either since it's the success of a check that allows the player to declare things in the game.
> 
> I guess that is another central idea - for you, a check is called for when the players haven't found a way to do something without needing a check.  For me, a check allows the players to author elements in the game that weren't there beforehand.




The funny thing here is that if we could go back and look at my posts on the WotC forums from the D&D 4e days, you'd see me getting even more hate than I do now for suggesting that players can establish fictional details about the world. You'd think I personally insulted everyone's mother with that take, even though "Yes, and..." is plain as day in the D&D 4e DMG as are a number of other sections that suggest this is perfectly okay within certain parameters. Perhaps some of the old-timers around here remember the sheer vitriol this produced back in the day.

Now, you don't see me arguing the same points in D&D 5e. It's not explicitly in the rules. While I still find value in "Yes, and..." improvisational techniques on the player side for smoother game play (no endless debates between players, no pointless blocking), I will not argue that players can establish fictional elements outside of their characters' control in D&D 5e. These are different games and so I approach them differently. I find games run more smoothly when that is the case.


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## iserith (Apr 24, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> The problem with reading the rules and imagining the game play, de novo, is the same problem with reading sheet music and imagining the song in your head. Very few people can really do that.
> 
> So it’s natural that people reach for the nearest possible experience to inform their current doings.




Sure, that's reasonable. And it argues for a continual checking of oneself in my view, something I commonly dispense as advice: Ask yourself if the thing you're doing is informed by the game you're playing now or something you're bringing in from another game. Then examine it fully to determine if you need to leave it behind or keep using it in order to achieve the intended game experience. Once you arrive at that intended game experience, evaluate and see if it's for you.

You can see this to some degree in the short-form scenario designs I've posted. The earlier ones show a lot of D&D 4e influence and slowly over time that goes away.


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## Bawylie (Apr 24, 2019)

iserith said:


> Sure, that's reasonable. And it argues for a continual checking of oneself in my view, something I commonly dispense as advice: Ask yourself if the thing you're doing is informed by the game you're playing now or something you're bringing in from another game. Then examine it fully to determine if you need to leave it behind or keep using it in order to achieve the intended game experience. Once you arrive at that intended game experience, evaluate and see if it's for you.
> 
> You can see this to some degree in the short-form scenario designs I've posted. The earlier ones show a lot of D&D 4e influence and slowly over time that goes away.




Look at this guy advocating self-examination. Yeah, right! Ain’t nobody got time fo dat!


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## Charlaquin (Apr 24, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The point I was making though is that the designers were intending the game to be played by people with no gaming experience.  That's how the game is written to me.  Since I'm not that, the advice doesn't really appeal as much.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I don’t think it’s so much an assumption that the players will _need_ that level of structure, but rather that D&D 5e aims to create a play experience that said structure facilitates. The structure is the approach, not the goal. That said, if the goal is not one that interests you - if you don’t enjoy the play experience that structure is designed to facilitate - then it makes perfect sense to discard that structure.



Hussar said:


> OTOH, it assumes that the group needs this level of structure and that narrative power over the game rests very squarely on the DM's shoulders.  That the players have their area of control in the game and the DM has everything else.  LIke I said, I have no problems with players declaring stuff to be true.  In the earlier example of climbing the wall and using boxes, it would not bother me in the slightest for the player to declare that he climbed the wall because there were boxes among the bric a brac in the last room and that he stacked them up to climb over the wall.  IOW, the boxes were never described prior to the player rolling a success.
> 
> Doesn't happen much, but, I have no problem with it.  5e does not grant much authorial control to the players by the rules.  I prefer the players to have more authorial control in the game.  I LOVE it when the players declare stuff to be true that I hadn't added in.  Lots of "Yes , and" sort of improv stuff.  Would not be something that would work in a group of new players as well, and would not work with the goal and method approach either since it's the success of a check that allows the player to declare things in the game.
> 
> I guess that is another central idea - for you, a check is called for when the players haven't found a way to do something without needing a check.  For me, a check allows the players to author elements in the game that weren't there beforehand.



Sounds like 4e to me. And that’s not a bad thing. I still think 4e is the best-designed edition of D&D, from a mechanical standpoint.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> So the advice I give to a lot of people trying out D&D 5e, though this applies to anyone in my view: Forget what you know about other games. Read the rules. Try to imagine the game experience it will create when followed and the approaches needed to support it. Play it and see if you like it. Then decide if it needs changing or abandoning altogether.




My favorite RPG, The One Ring, suffers (in the marketplace, not as a game) from not living up to the expectation of being a lot like D&D. People try to play it like D&D, and are disappointed. 

New gamers, who actually read and follow the rules without trying to translate it to D&D, seem to like it more. 

This relates to my beef with Modiphius games, too. They don’t seem to realize that rules set tone, and so they just keep refluffing 2d20 for every setting and genre.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> One wonders what the rules would look like if they were intending the game to be played by people with a lot of gaming experience.



5e is very much suited to being played by both new/casual players, blissfully unaware that there even /are/ other TTRPGs, and long-time/returning D&Ders who first sat down with dice & minis in the 20th century.
I'd go so far as to say, ideally, at the same table, with an old-timer behind the screen.

Of course, that's hand-in-glove with making the game both acceptable to the established hard-core fanbase /and/ accessible to the mainstream.

So maybe they were intending one and got the other as a side benefit, or maybe they were trying for both under the big-tent philosophy of inclusion?


Whatever it was, it worked.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> My favorite RPG, The One Ring, suffers (in the marketplace, not as a game) from not living up to the expectation of being a lot like D&D. People try to play it like D&D, and are disappointed.
> 
> New gamers, who actually read and follow the rules without trying to translate it to D&D, seem to like it more.
> 
> This relates to my beef with Modiphius games, too. They don’t seem to realize that rules set tone, and so they just keep refluffing 2d20 for every setting and genre.



Re the link between rules and tone and 2d20 in particular - cannot agree more. Tone and setting need rules that reinforce those and highlight them to reach their best - or sometimes even good enough.

Spent way too many years running " generic" systems you tailor yo fit setting - which boils down to making the setting fit within the system more than anything else. We had fun, but more in spite of than because of the massive systems and processes.

Still, they taught us things we usecdvrn today in other systems and other games.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t think it’s so much an assumption that the players will _need_ that level of structure, but rather that D&D 5e aims to create a play experience that said structure facilitates. The structure is the approach, not the goal. That said, if the goal is not one that interests you - if you don’t enjoy the play experience that structure is designed to facilitate - then it makes perfect sense to discard that structure.
> 
> 
> Sounds like 4e to me. And that’s not a bad thing. I still think 4e is the best-designed edition of D&D, from a mechanical standpoint.




Yeah, I can see that.  4e borrows heavily from more ... ummm... hippy dippy, pass the story stick style gaming that I really enjoy.  

So, yes, I approach most RPG's the same way.  Handing over more and more load onto the players is something that I strongly approve of.  Certainly not to everyone's tastes though.  

As far as what 5e would have looked like had it been written for experienced gamers, I would think it would be a lot closer to 4e, to be honest.  Where you don't need to spell out all the hand holding that 5e does with "DM Empowerment" stuff.  Experienced gamers, especially ones who have drifted away from D&D and tried other games, generally don't seem to have the issues that gamers who strongly seem to focus on D&D as their game of choice and see the rules, as you do [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], as promoting a specific way of playing, rather than simply an a la carte selection of options to pick and choose from and then kit bash from other systems to create a game that is idiosyncratic to that specific table.

The funniest thing about 5e is how similar people's play styles actually have become.  Rather than the completely different experiences that people had with earlier editions, the notion of shared experience really has come to the forefront.  Heck, the whole Streaming Play stuff is all about that shared experience.  You wouldn't get thousands of people watching someone's live play game if that table's play style was too idiosyncratic to that table.  There needs to be this shared approach for this to be popular.

OTOH, I've never seen RPG books as a "How to Play" guide.  I see them as a collection of ideas that I'm then going to pick and choose from to create a game for my table.  Sometimes that game will be very, very close to what's in the books, and sometimes it'll be completely different.  Depends on the campaign to be honest.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> As far as what 5e would have looked like had it been written for experienced gamers, I would think it would be a lot closer to 4e, to be honest.  Where you don't need to spell out all the hand holding that 5e does with "DM Empowerment" stuff.  Experienced gamers, especially ones who have drifted away from D&D and tried other games, generally don't seem to have the issues that gamers who strongly seem to focus on D&D as their game of choice



 Long-time monoglot D&Ders are still very much 'experienced gamers,' and may well be a plurality of such, especially if you start dividing up the remainder by system of choice.  /Ecclectic/ experienced gamers probably are something of a minority.

5e couldn't have been much like 4e without ticking off the long-time D&Ders, so I can't agree.  If 5e had prioritized appealing to experienced gamers over mainstream appeal, it'd've ended up a lot more like Pathfinder, a system-master's playground.



> The funniest thing about 5e is how similar people's play styles actually have become.  Rather than the completely different experiences that people had with earlier editions, the notion of shared experience really has come to the forefront.  Heck, the whole Streaming Play stuff is all about that shared experience.  You wouldn't get thousands of people watching someone's live play game if that table's play style was too idiosyncratic to that table.  There needs to be this shared approach for this to be popular.



 I'm not so sure other WotC eds delivered wildly divergent experiences.  Sure, the D&D of the fad years - remember, this was in veritable Dark Ages before the Internet - was played very differently from region to region, right down to being wildly different from one DM to the next.

I get the impression it has gotten less variable as time went on, first as the hobby contracted after the fad flopped, then as our on-line world grew figuratively 'smaller.' Now, yeah, perhaps ironically, as the hobby grows with mainstream adoption, it may become that much more homogeneous.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> As far as what 5e would have looked like had it been written for experienced gamers, I would think it would be a lot closer to 4e, to be honest.  Where you don't need to spell out all the hand holding that 5e does with "DM Empowerment" stuff.  Experienced gamers, especially ones who have drifted away from D&D and tried other games, generally don't seem to have the issues that gamers who strongly seem to focus on D&D as their game of choice and see the rules, as you do [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], as promoting a specific way of playing, rather than simply an a la carte selection of options to pick and choose from and then kit bash from other systems to create a game that is idiosyncratic to that specific table.




Just for the sake of clarity on my viewpoint, I'll note as an aside that while I do hold to the rules on "How to Play" which I consider fundamental to the game experience, I'm very much in favor of turning some rules on and some rules off - tuning the dials, as it were - to point toward a campaign concept or theme. For a classic dungeon crawl, I might go with the variant encumbrance rules, for example. For my Planescape game, I added Alignment to Ideal as another option to earn Inspiration since that plays into that campaign's theme. In my Eberron game, since it's about "pulp serial heroes," I took PC death off the table; you can lose, but you can't die (unless you choose to). I think D&D 5e is actually quite good in this regard. But when it comes to "How to Play" - what the DM does and what the players do - that always remains constant.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Rolling dice is not the primary resolution mechanic of the game, in my view. The primary resolution mechanic is using a human brain to imagine a fictional scenario and determine the likely outcome of the action within that scenario. _If_, and _only if_ the outcome can not be determined by this method alone, then rolling dice is a tool to help make that determination.



I'm glad you spelled this out, because it was the first thing I thought when I read [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]'s remark about the game's resolution method - ie that you would not agree.



Chaosmancer said:


> we aren't talking about goal and approach. We are talking about whether or not giving players information on the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying. That has nothing to do with how the players approach the problem and all about how much we tell them.



As a semi-participant in this particualr discusion with [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], I will say that what you describe here doesn't ring true to me at all, for my game.

I'm not talking about _tellling players coonsequences which would obtain even if the players weren't told_. I'm talking about _telling the players those consdequences that obtain_, or - alternatively - having those consequences be implict in the framing of the situation and the plyaer's knowledge of why the situation matters.

I don't think that keeping potential consequences secret from the players makes for good RPGing.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are standing in on the second floor of a mansion, guards are charging up the stairs and you need to escape. You see a window and a chandelier, across from which is a ledge leading somewhere else, in addition to the stairs leading down. What do you do?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the player can't spend 10 minutes checking the stability of the chandelier. It is a viable option, but a failed check might lead to it breaking, and the player doesn't know it could break.



The devil is always in the details, of course - but at the level of generality that you have presented this example, the risk of the chandelier breaking would seem to be very much implict in the framing of the situation.



Chaosmancer said:


> your decision to try and disable a magic circle humming with energy is not invalidated if when you fail I decide to teleport the entire party to the Far North instead of having it all unleash in a massive fireball like you expected.



I don't agree with this at all. If it wasn't implicit in the situation that such a thing might happen, I would regard this as very bad GMing. I once had a thing a bit like this happen in a game - the GM teleported the party 100 years into the future. The effect was to largely invaldiate all our play to date, which was enmeshed in a particular time and place. (I think the GM did it because he felt he had lost control of the campaign, and wanted to reestablish that control.)

I quite the game a session or two after that, and I heard that it ended not long after.



Oofta said:


> If details are important, add them. Add in an extra level of interaction. But if it makes sense for the story for there to be a somewhat difficult to climb run-of-the-mill wall I may include it. Unless it's important I get past it with as little muss and fuss as possible.



To me, this would seem a good reason not to call for a check at all, because nothing is at stake.. Just narrate the climbing of the unremarable wall and keep moving until something more significant comes up.



Charlaquin said:


> So, just to be clear, y’all _would_ allow a player to roll (and potentially fail) to perform a task that you didn’t initially plan to require a roll to succeed on, simply because they announced that they were making a check? That’s actually how you would all rule in that situation?



For my part, it would depend. If the DC is zero/automatic (as per [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s comments upthread), no. But if what's going on is a mismatch between GM and player expectations as to whether something is at stake, it might be time for a re-calibration in our understanding of the situation.

Either way, I couldn't imagine it playing out like [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s example.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Either way, I couldn't imagine it playing out like [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s example.




That makes two of us!


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> There are some GMs who (maybe poor form or maybe by design) dont explicitly mark the end of their stage in the play loop with a formal declaration every scene.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Sometimes it just a more rookie GM thing but sometimes it's more a setting atmosphere and sense of impending threat that *formally acknowledging the beginning and end stage of each segment in the hitherto agreed upon by all parties play loop* fits like letting the air out of a wet bslloon.





DM Dave1 said:


> Why would a DM "by design" not signal to the players that they need to do something?  What does that even mean?



The comment was about _not using a formal declaration/acknowledgement_. And the reasong given was _to preserve atmosphere_.

Another reason - which applies at my table - is informality among friends, and going along with the back-and-forth of play. If I describe a situation and a player says "OK, I'm doing this" I'm not going to disregard the action declaration just because that player didn't wait for me to ask "What do you do?"


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

Regarding the wall that's just a wall ...



pemerton said:


> To me, this would seem a good reason not to call for a check at all, because nothing is at stake.. Just narrate the climbing of the unremarable wall and keep moving until something more significant comes up.




Who said there was no consequence t failure?  Just because it's a minor background issue, doesn't mean it's not important.  Don't get me wrong, a lot of times the wall is just climbed.  But if there's time pressure or falling from the wall could cause injury or other setback then I think a check should be called for.  Maybe the quickest way would be to climb but there's also a longer way around or a more dangerous route, so on and so forth.

I'm just saying some obstacles are simple.  Sometimes a chest is trapped because it makes sense for it to be trapped and there is a level of risk, that doesn't mean I'm going to make a big deal out of it.

But it also goes back to who is overcoming the obstacle; the PC or the player?  Some obstacles will be player challenges by their nature, I simply think some things should be PC challenges.


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## Bawylie (Apr 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Regarding the wall that's just a wall ...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I have a problem understanding this. How do you challenge a PC? It can’t think, it can’t act, it can’t do anything other than what the player says it does. It’s like a User Interface but it isn’t itself the User. It’s always the player behind the avatar that has to think and act. 

What am I missing?


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t think it’s so much an assumption that the players will _need_ that level of structure, but rather that D&D 5e aims to create a play experience that said structure facilitates.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Sounds like 4e to me. And that’s not a bad thing. I still think 4e is the best-designed edition of D&D, from a mechanical standpoint.



What I'm not sure about is what is distinctive about the mechanics of 5e vs 4e that make one or the other approach suitable. That is, if someone ran 4e as you run 5e, what would break down? Or if someone ran 5e in the 4e style, what would break down?

I'm not disputing that there are differences between the systems - the ones that are most obvious to me are (i) the lack of skill challenges in 5e and (ii) the asymmetric resource recovery in 5e - but I'm not sure how these differences bear upon the topic of this thread.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

Well, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION], the fact that no consequence was ever posited points to the notion that there was no consequence.  And, at that point I think we all agree, regardless of approach, you just tell the players they climb over the wall and move on.  

Same goes for pretty much any sort of obstacle where time will overcome it.  I have to admit, I have no idea why 5e removed the "Take 20" rules.  I suppose, at the end of the day, they don't really need them - you're not supposed to roll anyway, so, just get on with it.  I always did think, though, that Take 20 was a nice mechanic in the game.

Too much power to the players maybe?  

I would like to say, that as I read this last page of the thread, I find myself nodding with pretty much everyone.  Well done you folks.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> What I'm not sure about is what is distinctive about the mechanics of 5e vs 4e that make one or the other approach suitable.




Play it and get back to us.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Just because it's a minor background issue, doesn't mean it's not important.



I'm not meaning to be a smart-arse, but to me that looks almost self-contradictory: how can it be _minor_ yet _important_?



Oofta said:


> Sometimes a chest is trapped because it makes sense for it to be trapped and there is a level of risk, that doesn't mean I'm going to make a big deal out of it.



But calling for a check _makes it a big deal_ - or at least that's how it seems to me.

I think part of the explanation for our different conceptions here might be very different approaches to establishing the adventure/scenario.



Bawylie said:


> I have a problem understanding this. How do you challenge a PC? It can’t think, it can’t act, it can’t do anything other than what the player says it does. It’s like a User Interface but it isn’t itself the User. It’s always the player behind the avatar that has to think and act.
> 
> What am I missing?



I think _challenge the PC_ means something like _establish a ficitonal situation in which the PC faces a challenge_.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> Play it and get back to us.



There was a reason I asked [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION].


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> There was a reason I asked [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION].




I think my suggestion will be more informative for you and for us. Traveler and Burning Wheel can only take you so far, or us, where these discussions are concerned.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think my suggestion will be more informative for you and for us. Traveler and Burning Wheel can only take you so far, or us, where these discussions are concerned.



I can explain to someone whose never played either, but who has some idea of what RPGing invovles, why BW won't produce a Traveller experience, and vice versa.

As per your advice upthread:



iserith said:


> Read the rules. Try to imagine the game experience it will create when followed and the approaches needed to support it. Play it and see if you like it. Then decide if it needs changing or abandoning altogether.



I've read the rules for 5e. In the relevant respects - ie framing situations, adjudicating action declarations - I don't see any salient difference from 4e _other than the advice_. Which is to say, I can't see why that advice couldn't be ported into 4e, or the 4e advice ported into 5e. (Whereas it's easy to see why Traveller can't be run just by porting in BW advice, and vice versa.)

Hence my request for some more information. I appreciate that you don't want to provide it - you made that clear upthread - which is why I asked another poster with whom I feel I've been having some convivial and informative exchanges.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think my suggestion will be more informative for you and for us. Traveler and Burning Wheel can only take you so far, or us, where these discussions are concerned.




Well, as someone who's played both 4e and 5e pretty extensively, I can honestly say that playing 5e with a 4e player centric approach works perfectly fine for us.  Playing 4e with 5e's more DM centric focus would work, although, ((I'm going to be so sorry I said this)) I think it would slow play down considerably for players to constantly have to check with their DM to make their powers work.

Or, rather, in 4e, the goal:method approach isn't really needed since the players have so much power invested in the players by the rules of the game.    The rules really are quite clear about this - that the players should be the ones clearly in the drivers seat for a lot of the game.  Thus players tell the DM what skill they would like to use during a skill challenge, for example and, the DM is to some degree obliged to allow it provided the table is happy.

I simply extend the same approach to 5e to be honest.

((Wow, that felt great!!))


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can explain to someone whose never played either, but who has some idea of what RPGing invovles, why BW won't produce a Traveller experience, and vice versa.
> 
> As per your advice upthread:






			
				iserith said:
			
		

> Read the rules. Try to imagine the game experience it will create when followed and the approaches needed to support it. *Play it and see if you like it.* Then decide if it needs changing or abandoning altogether.




You appear to have stopped short of my advice to "Play it and see if you like it."

But I'll leave it to Charlaquin to get into it further with you with apologies for being surly. I'll be happy to discuss D&D 5e with you in great detail if and when you ever actually play it.

Edit: Tony Vargas (who I can figure out how to summon) would also be a good source to compare the two in my view, even if his praise for D&D 5e is rather cynical and backhanded (if you ask me).


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, as someone who's played both 4e and 5e pretty extensively, I can honestly say that playing 5e with a 4e player centric approach works perfectly fine for us.  Playing 4e with 5e's more DM centric focus would work, although, ((I'm going to be so sorry I said this)) I think it would slow play down considerably for players to constantly have to check with their DM to make their powers work.




I think it would, too, and D&D 4e certainly does not need any help being slow by comparison to D&D 5e, even with players with system mastery (as mine had). In my D&D 4e games, you don't have to do that, and you're free to ask to make checks which is the expectation those rules lay out. You're also free to establish fictional details as we discussed above.



Hussar said:


> Or, rather, in 4e, the goal:method approach isn't really needed since the players have so much power invested in the players by the rules of the game.    The rules really are quite clear about this - that the players should be the ones clearly in the drivers seat for a lot of the game.  Thus players tell the DM what skill they would like to use during a skill challenge, for example and, the DM is to some degree obliged to allow it provided the table is happy.




Yes, those are all pretty big differences from D&D 5e which change the play experience. I love skill challenges and wrote a ton of them on the WotC forums for the community. But they just don't work with the D&D 5e paradigm in my view.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But it also goes back to who is overcoming the obstacle; the PC or the player?  Some obstacles will be player challenges by their nature, I simply think some things should be PC challenges.




The more I think about this, the more I convinced there is no such thing as "challenging the character".  You can challenge the player's ability to build a character, and you can challenge the player's ability to use what's on his/her character sheet, but you can't actually challenge the character.

I do acknowledge that there's one interesting thing that might fall under the category of challenging the character: I like the idea of players being encouraged to find creative solutions to problems using the strengths of their characters. But pretty much all of the examples offered by the "challenge the character" crowd don't involve creative solutions; it's all been "using a skill" to overcome challenges in pre-determined ways.  Persuade the troll king. Pick the lock. Detect a lie. This is attested to by the insistence that one can simply announce "I'll roll [Skill]".  As in, "The door is locked." "I'll roll Thieves' Tools."

What we don't hear is:
"The door is locked." 
"I'll roll Animal Handling."

Why?

Maybe the guy has double proficiency in Animal Handling and he has a plan involving the tame weasel they found, the chimney, and the set of keys they can see through a crack in the door.  (I'm winging this; bear with me.)  I still don't see this as actually "challenging" the character, but it is challenging the player to use the unique assets of his character to solve problems.  

On the other hand, I don't see who or what is being "challenged" by expecting the rogue to announce, "I'll roll Thieves' Tools".  I mean, how obvious and un-challenging is that? You don't even need players: I could write software that could play _that_ RPG in about 5 minutes.

Ok, back the weasel tamer: if he is going to actually implement his plan, he is going to have to offer a lot more than just "I roll Animal Handling."  He is going to have to describe it to the DM, and then give the DM a pleading puppy-dog-eyes look, hoping the DM will say, "Ok, I'll need an animal handling check."

In other words, goal-and-approach.  Followed by...because the outcome is uncertain...a DM call for a dice roll.

And just think of all the fun ways this could go horribly wrong on a failed check.

So maybe one reason I don't like "I use Skill X" is because if that pronouncement is enough for everybody at the table to know what you're doing, what you're doing isn't very interesting.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Frankly, the whole "challenging the character" thing deserves its own thread. It's a bogus claim that falls apart under even passing scrutiny and I'm frankly ashamed that I used to make that argument as little as 5 years ago. The hobby would be better for ridding itself of the notion.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> Frankly, the whole "challenging the character" thing deserves its own thread.




Done!


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> You appear to have stopped short of my advice to "Play it and see if you like it."



I'm very confident I won't like it, primarily in virtue of the differences I mentioned upthread. But as I also said, those seem orthogonal to the focus of discussion in this thread.



Hussar said:


> Well, as someone who's played both 4e and 5e pretty extensively, I can honestly say that playing 5e with a 4e player centric approach works perfectly fine for us.  Playing 4e with 5e's more DM centric focus would work, although, ((I'm going to be so sorry I said this)) I think it would slow play down considerably for players to constantly have to check with their DM to make their powers work.



Although in this thread there seems to be a widespread though not universal view that combat in 5e also has a less distinctive "goal and approach" approach, for reasons that seem rather similar to what you point to here - ie a variety of pre-defined "moves" which players can activate for their PCs.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> The more I think about this, the more I convinced there is no such thing as "challenging the character".  You can challenge the player's ability to build a character, and you can challenge the player's ability to use what's on his/her character sheet, but you can't actually challenge the character.



Are you making this claim particularly in relation to 5e - in which case, out of deference to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I won't voice any opinions - on in relation to RPGing in general? If the latter, then I'm happy to explain why I disagree.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I'm very confident I won't like it, primarily in virtue of the differences I mentioned upthread. But as I also said, those seem orthogonal to the focus of discussion in this thread.
> 
> Although in this thread there seems to be a widespread though not universal view that combat in 5e also has a less distinctive "goal and approach" approach, for reasons that seem rather similar to what you point to here - ie a variety of pre-defined "moves" which players can activate for their PCs.




Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes, 5e combat is very much not the goal:approach method.  The players call for checks in combat.  The players call for virtually everything that isn't being done by an NPC.  The only real point that people made contrary to that was the notion that inexperienced players might need a DM to tell the player what to roll.

Honestly, I didn't really think that that was a very good defense of goal:approach methodology.  If we only use it in combat if the players don't know what they're doing, then why do we then use it out of combat when the player does know what they are doing?

Really, I think that's one of my bigger issues here.  Why use different methodologies in different parts of the game for task resolution?  We don't expect goal:approach in combat, so why do it out of combat?  And, really, even out of combat, it's unevenly applied.  Numerous skill uses are not predicated on DM adjudication - my PC can jump Str feet without a check for example.  Granted, 5e is a lot more loosey goosey about this sort of thing than 3e or 4e with a lot less standardization in 5e, but, the basic premise is the same.

Essentially, I don't see what's actually being added to the game by doing the goal:approach method.  It wouldn't add anything to my game and would in fact be incredibly frustrating to my players if I insisted upon it.  I get that with new players it is a better way of doing it - and it really fits with the whole DM empowerment thing that 5e preaches.  What better way to control the game than to be able to control exactly when any player can do anything that doesn't involve swinging a sword?

I'm just not interested in that level of DM empowerment.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes, 5e combat is very much not the goal:approach method.




Except that players describe what they want to do in combat, the same as in any other area of the game. Per the rules on "How to Play": "This pattern [the play loop] holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon." Combat is more structured in that the players and DM take turns choosing and resolving actions. But otherwise players describing what they want to do and the DM deciding if a check is appropriate applies to all three pillars of the game. The rules are very clear on this (whether you follow them or not).

In practice, it's common for people to just assume an attack roll will follow the declaration of the goal and approach since the DM is instructed by the DMG to "call for an attack roll when a character tries to hit a creature or an object with an attack, especially when the attack could be foiled by the target's armor or shield or by another object providing cover." But it's still the DM's call.



Hussar said:


> Honestly, I didn't really think that that was a very good defense of goal:approach methodology.




No defense is necessary. The rules say what they say. If a group doesn't like those rules, they're free to change them.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I have a problem understanding this. How do you challenge a PC? It can’t think, it can’t act, it can’t do anything other than what the player says it does. It’s like a User Interface but it isn’t itself the User. It’s always the player behind the avatar that has to think and act.
> 
> What am I missing?



It has meaning in context and in contrast, not in isolation. 

An obstacle that challenges the character requires some use or reference of the character traits to reach conclusion, to be solved. Three different characters with three different sets of abilities likely have very different chances to succeed. The character traits are integral and necessary. Obviously, there is likely also, in conjunction, some degree of effort or decision by the player, but it may be as little as "Johsn swings his axe at the dwarf."

An obstacle that "challenges the player" is by contrast one where the character has no required traits or skills needed to be called on. The 3 and 5 gallon jug type puzzles, riddles that font tie in PC abilities snd just player wordplay, or more complex escape room type things where any character regardless of specialties can solve it if the player just thinks it thru, no character fifferentistion provided bybthe challenge. 

Put another way, a simple test, if you could literally take any commoner or orc or elf or other monster NPC stat block  and replace the zpCs and the resolution is still the same, literally the character is irrelevant, you are likely challenging the player, not the character. 

The player is always relevant as long as they control the character. But a gm can chose to make the character irrelevant, that's the difference.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, I can see that.  4e borrows heavily from more ... ummm... hippy dippy, pass the story stick style gaming that I really enjoy.



I enjoy that style quite a bit too, it's just not what I'm personally looking for _from D&D_. I definitely get the appeal though.



Hussar said:


> So, yes, I approach most RPG's the same way.  Handing over more and more load onto the players is something that I strongly approve of.  Certainly not to everyone's tastes though.
> 
> As far as what 5e would have looked like had it been written for experienced gamers, I would think it would be a lot closer to 4e, to be honest.  Where you don't need to spell out all the hand holding that 5e does with "DM Empowerment" stuff.  Experienced gamers, especially ones who have drifted away from D&D and tried other games, generally don't seem to have the issues that gamers who strongly seem to focus on D&D as their game of choice and see the rules, as you do @_*iserith*_, as promoting a specific way of playing, rather than simply an a la carte selection of options to pick and choose from and then kit bash from other systems to create a game that is idiosyncratic to that specific table.



Mmmm... That is not consistent with my own experience. I've found that more experienced gamers who branch out from D&D tend to find different systems that they prefer to use for different purposes. It takes all sorts though, and I'm sure there are plenty who do both.



Hussar said:


> The funniest thing about 5e is how similar people's play styles actually have become.  Rather than the completely different experiences that people had with earlier editions, the notion of shared experience really has come to the forefront.  Heck, the whole Streaming Play stuff is all about that shared experience.  You wouldn't get thousands of people watching someone's live play game if that table's play style was too idiosyncratic to that table.  There needs to be this shared approach for this to be popular.



I think streaming has fed into the shared experience. Many people's first exposure to the game now is watching someone else play it, so naturally their approach to the game is informed by that early experience. The same way that people's approaches have in the past been shaped by the approaches of DMs they played with. It's just that now certain DMs have a much larger platform.



Hussar said:


> OTOH, I've never seen RPG books as a "How to Play" guide.  I see them as a collection of ideas that I'm then going to pick and choose from to create a game for my table.  Sometimes that game will be very, very close to what's in the books, and sometimes it'll be completely different.  Depends on the campaign to be honest.



I agree, but I am of the "try it as-written first before you start making houserules" mindset.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> What I'm not sure about is what is distinctive about the mechanics of 5e vs 4e that make one or the other approach suitable. That is, if someone ran 4e as you run 5e, what would break down? Or if someone ran 5e in the 4e style, what would break down?
> 
> I'm not disputing that there are differences between the systems - the ones that are most obvious to me are (i) the lack of skill challenges in 5e and (ii) the asymmetric resource recovery in 5e - but I'm not sure how these differences bear upon the topic of this thread.




I mean, that's a very complicated question to answer. 4e and 5e are both very complex systems, and the issues that can arise by playing with a different set of assumptions are numerous, varied, and subtle. Ultimately, either game would work fine if run like the other, but there are lots of niggling little issues that can arise. For example, one complaint I see _all the time_ about 5e is that players rarely spend Inspiration, and Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws end up ignored as a result. This is not something I experience, because players always know that a check is going to be required, the DC, and the consequences, so they are more apt to spend Inspiration because they don't have to guess how difficult a task will be or how severe the consequences for failure will be. There are plenty of other ways to address Inspiration and Background Features, but as Iserith talked about earlier, it's yet one more case of DMs relying on houserules and/or the social contract to fix issues they cause for themselves.

And lest anyone take this as an admonition against such use of houserules and the social contract, if I went back to running 4e (which I have considered), I would probably run it more like I run 5e, because as I mentioned in another post, that creates the kind of gameplay experience that I want out of D&D, at least currently. Of course, I know that doing so would likely lead to a lot of those niggling little issues that I would end up needing to houserule around. It might ultimately lead to experience I actually like better than 5e. As I've mentioned, it's still my favorite edition of D&D mechanically. But I haven't ultimately decided to do that, in part because of the extra work I'd need to to to nail that feel that I get from just running 5e as-written.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION], the fact that no consequence was ever posited points to the notion that there was no consequence.  And, at that point I think we all agree, regardless of approach, you just tell the players they climb over the wall and move on.
> 
> Same goes for pretty much any sort of obstacle where time will overcome it.  I have to admit, I have no idea why 5e removed the "Take 20" rules.  I suppose, at the end of the day, they don't really need them - you're not supposed to roll anyway, so, just get on with it.  I always did think, though, that Take 20 was a nice mechanic in the game.
> 
> ...




I've mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I believe take 10 and take 20 were a player-side way to achieve the same end goal, where tasks without cost or consequence don't get rolled for. I wouldn't say that it's "too much power to the players," but rather a difference in intended gameplay experience between 3e and 5e. 3e tried very hard to make the gameplay experience as consistent as possible from one table to the next, by making as many of its mechanics player-facing as possible. 5e, on the other hand, aimed to cut down on rules-referencing and mechanical minutia to make the game play out more like a conversation, and it did this by leaning heavily on DM judgment calls over codified mechanics.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can explain to someone whose never played either, but who has some idea of what RPGing invovles, why BW won't produce a Traveller experience, and vice versa.
> 
> As per your advice upthread:
> 
> ...




So, like, one example that comes to mind is the discussion that came up earlier about why some DMs might not want the player to roll and announce a result before they've set a DC, because it might influence the DM's decision. This is something 4e actively encouraged. I don't remember which book it was in, probably the DMG, but I distinctly remember reading in a 4e book that it's not always necessary to set a DC before asking a player to roll, that the DM should allow the player to use a skill unless there is a compelling reason not to, and can determine what happens based on the result.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes, 5e combat is very much not the goal:approach method.  The players call for checks in combat.  The players call for virtually everything that isn't being done by an NPC.  The only real point that people made contrary to that was the notion that inexperienced players might need a DM to tell the player what to roll.
> 
> Honestly, I didn't really think that that was a very good defense of goal:approach methodology.  If we only use it in combat if the players don't know what they're doing, then why do we then use it out of combat when the player does know what they are doing?
> 
> ...




Combat is absolutely not a different methodology than goal:approach. The player says what they want to do (i.e. "I attack the orc") and how (i.e. "with my longsword"), and the DM calls for a roll if the outcome is uncertain and has a cost or consequence for failure. It happens that the structure of combat insures that there is always a cost - usually an action, occasionally a bonus action or a reaction, each of which you have a limited number of per turn - and the appropriate roll to call for is more strictly codified than out of combat. But ultimately the conversation of the game is still very much the same.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

Seriously?  Outside of teaching a new player to play, your combats look like this:

Player:  I attack the orc with a longsword.
DM:  Ok, make your attack roll.
Player:  17
DM:  You hit.  Roll your damage roll.
Player:  7 damage.
DM:  A mighty hit the orc drops!
Player:  Now I want to move over there.
DM:  Ok, you have enough speed to do that.  You can move over there.
Player:  Ok, now I want to second wind.
DM:  Yes, you can do that.
Player:  Ok, now I want to attack some more.
DM:  Well, you only get one attack per round.
Player:  Is there a way I can get more attacks?
DM:  You can Action Surge if you like.
Player:  Ok, I action surge and I attack the other orc.  14!
DM:  Wait, wait.  I didn't call for an attack roll, that doesn't count.  You have to wait for me to call for rolls.
Player:  Ok, right.
DM:  So, yes, make your attack roll.
Player:  I attack the orc.  13.
DM:  I'm sorry, but, how did you attack the orc?
Player:  Umm, I action surged.
DM:  Yes, I know you had the action, but, _how_ did you attack the orc.
Player:  Oh, right.  I attack the orc with my sword.  
DM:  Right, remember, you always have to state a method with your goal, otherwise I won't understand.  A 13 hits.  
Player:  Waiting
DM:  Roll your damage.
Player:  I do 4 damage.  
DM:  Great, the orc is wounded.  Dave it's your turn now.... Dave?  Someone wake Dave up.

Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but, seriously?  You actually insist on Goal:Approach in combat?  Yuck.  I would blow my brains out.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Seriously?  Outside of teaching a new player to play, your combats look like this:
> 
> (...)
> 
> Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but, seriously?  You actually insist on Goal:Approach in combat?  Yuck.  I would blow my brains out.




It would be more accurate to say that the rest of my game plays out more like what you would likely imagine as a typical example of  combat than it does like your tongue in cheek example here.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes



Thanks for the reply - and yes, I think you understood me.



Hussar said:


> I don't see what's actually being added to the game by doing the goal:approach method.



I've got my own view about what is added by requiring players to explain an intent and task, and to work with the GM to establish exactly what the appropriate check (if any) might be. But it's a bit different from what is being advocated under the "goal and approach" rubric in this thread. (Although closer to some than others - there is some variety being presented under that rubric.)

For me, it's about being clear on the content of the fiction and (among other things, but perhaps most importantly) implict consequences of action.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> one complaint I see _all the time_ about 5e is that players rarely spend Inspiration, and Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws end up ignored as a result. This is not something I experience, because players always know that a check is going to be required, the DC, and the consequences, so they are more apt to spend Inspiration because they don't have to guess how difficult a task will be or how severe the consequences for failure will be.



See, this is not something that I would see as a contrast between 4e and 5e - what you describe here I would regard as being as true of 4e as of 5e.

Looking for ways to mitigate the effects of a raw d20 roll (by way of adds, rerolls, etc) is something I see as a core part of playing 4e.

Which makes me think that perhaps you and/or some other posters in this thread approached 4e differently from how I did. (Always so hard to be sure - lots of moving parts in anyone's approach to a RPG.)


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> See, this is not something that I would see as a contrast between 4e and 5e - what you describe here I would regard as being as true of 4e as of 5e.
> 
> Looking for ways to mitigate the effects of a raw d20 roll (by way of adds, rerolls, etc) is something I see as a core part of playing 4e.
> 
> Which makes me think that perhaps you and/or some other posters in this thread approached 4e differently from how I did. (Always so hard to be sure - lots of moving parts in anyone's approach to a RPG.)




Like I said, 4e actively encouraged DMs to say yes to players initiating checks, with or without a DC already in mind, and to decide on consequences (positive or negative) after seeing the results. Sure, players taking steps to mitigate the risk of failure was still a thing in 4e. But, in 5e, many people who run 5e more like the way 4e encouraged DMs to run the game often complain about their players not making use of resources that are there to help mitigate the risk of failure. I do not experience this issue, and the way I run 5e is a big part of that.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So, like, one example that comes to mind is the discussion that came up earlier about why some DMs might not want the player to roll and announce a result before they've set a DC, because it might influence the DM's decision. This is something 4e actively encouraged. I don't remember which book it was in, probably the DMG, but I distinctly remember reading in a 4e book that it's not always necessary to set a DC before asking a player to roll, that the DM should allow the player to use a skill unless there is a compelling reason not to, and can determine what happens based on the result.



So advice to that effect - deciding success based on the check result rather than setting a DC in advance - is found in a sidebar on p 3 of the DM Guidelines document from the 5e playtest (I've got it dated 19 September 2013 - I'd copy and paste it, but the document also has a prominent "confidential information" notice at the top of each page!). The sidebar concludes by saying that _the players will never know_ - so there's at least a suggestion of GM fudging/control over outcomes.

I don't recall this being in the 4e DMG, and on a quick flick through just now didn't find it. I did find the following, though (on p 12), which is one reason why I don't feel the 4e/5e contrast that is being drawn in this thread:

Being a referee means that the DM stands as a mediator between the rules and the players. A player tells the DM what he wants to do, and the DM responds by telling the character what kind of check to make and mentally setting the target number. If a player tells the DM he wants his character to swing his greataxe at an orc, the DM says, "Make an attack roll," while looking up the orc's Armor Class.

That'’s such a simple example that most players take it for granted and don't wait for the DM to ask for the attack roll. But if the player tells you that he wants his character to knock over a brazier full of hot coals into the orc's face, you (as the DM) have to make some snap judgments. How hard is it to knock over the heavy, solid metal brazier? "Make a Strength check," you might respond, while mentally setting the DC at 15. If the Strength check is successful, you have to figure out how a face full of hot coals affects the orc, and might decide it deals 1d6 points of fire damage and gives the orc a –2 penalty to attack rolls for a round.​


Charlaquin said:


> Like I said, 4e actively encouraged DMs to say yes to players initiating checks, with or without a DC already in mind, and to decide on consequences (positive or negative) after seeing the results.



See, I don't really agree with this. The passage I just quoted doesn't suggest this to me at all.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

posting problems - double post deleted.


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## Imaculata (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but, seriously?  You actually insist on Goal:Approach in combat?  Yuck.  I would blow my brains out.




Simply stating that you attack, is stating an approach is it not?

*In my campaigns the combat basically looks like this: *

The player states what they want to do, or what they are attempting to do. I then rule what is needed for that task. If the player states that they are attacking, and it isn't clear with what weapon they are doing this, I may ask them to clarify. But on following attacks, I feel confident in assuming its still the same weapon until the player says otherwise.

But it is important to note that attacking isn't the only option for a player in combat. There are many things for both the players and the monsters to do. Attacking is simply the most obvious one, and usually does not require any stated approach, but the player may state that he's targeting the monster that looks the most/least wounded, for example. There are also a lot of narrative actions that a player or a monster can take during combat, which may not be specified in detail in the rules. It is then up to me as a DM to rule on such an action. But as long as the players state what their characters do, or are trying to do, anything is possible.

Isn't this how most people run the game?


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> So advice to that effect - deciding success based on the check result rather than setting a DC in advance - is found in a sidebar on p 3 of the DM Guidelines document from the 5e playtest (I've got it dated 19 September 2013 - I'd copy and paste it, but the document also has a prominent "confidential information" notice at the top of each page!). The sidebar concludes by saying that _the players will never know_ - so there's at least a suggestion of GM fudging/control over outcomes.
> 
> I don't recall this being in the 4e DMG, and on a quick flick through just now didn't find it. I did find the following, though (on p 12), which is one reason why I don't feel the 4e/5e contrast that is being drawn in this thread:
> 
> ...



Sorry, but why do you believe early playtest material is at all relevant to 5e rules?  This would be like claiming THAC0 is relevant to 5e because it's part of an "earlier playtest".  If you want to discuss 5e, you should do that.  If you want to discuss the playtest, you should do that.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Sorry, but why do you believe early playtest material is at all relevant to 5e rules?  This would be like claiming THAC0 is relevant to 5e because it's part of an "earlier playtest".  If you want to discuss 5e, you should do that.  If you want to discuss the playtest, you should do that.



I was replying to another poster about something he thought was in 4e. I don't recall it being there - I was pointing out a place where I had encountered it.

That's the sort of thing one does on a message board.

(It's also not that early a playtest - more than a year in according to my file details.)


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 25, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The DM is explicitly free - at least in most eds of D&D - to add to, change, and override the rules as he sees fit.  Feels pretty un-bound, to me.
> 
> Or, in 5e parlance, not 'not bound by the rules' so much as "Empowered!"




Within the bounds of what the rest of the players will put up with. Personally, I consider it shenanigans for the DM to make rules changes outside of a few specific cases and without explicit consent from the rest of the players.



Tony Vargas said:


> Should fudge, definitely, /and/ something else:  should engage in "Illusionism" as much as in necessary to deliver a good experience to his players.




Ah. Our preferences are in direct opposition here.



Tony Vargas said:


> See?  Your DM could've done better!    (Unless you /like/ 'brutal,' then, well-done, DM!)




I like brutal quite a lot. I am very much of the, "Losing is fun!" mindset. Similarly, when running the game, I want to see the player characters succeed, but I also want my players to believe that I am out to get them (which is, of course, absolutely an illusion).


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

Bawylie said:


> I have a problem understanding this. How do you challenge a PC? It can’t think, it can’t act, it can’t do anything other than what the player says it does. It’s like a User Interface but it isn’t itself the User. It’s always the player behind the avatar that has to think and act.
> 
> What am I missing?




Let me rephrase.  Sometimes only the PC's abilities can overcome an obstacle.  If a lock needs to be picked, it's a tool check.  There may be other ways of overcoming the obstacle such as using a key or a crowbar of course.

The thieve's tools check is a PC challenge resolved by rolling dice and is based on the PC's proficiency.  As another example, in my game simple traps can't be overcome by describing how you sniff the door handle and then pour wine on it to get rid of the contact poison. Appropriate checks and associated rolls are going to be needed to discover and disable the trap.  You can of course always take an alternate route.

I don't view proficiency with a skill or tool all that much differently than proficiency with a weapon.  Yes, a +1 sword will add 5% to your chance to hit and a climber's kit will stop you from falling more than 25 feet once you're anchored.  But you still need to roll a d20 in all but a few edge cases to hit with the sword and you still need to roll a d20 to climb a wall unless it's a foregone conclusion that you can climb the wall safely.

In any case, this was in response to a posting about how climbing a wall requires describing _how_ you're climbing the wall and getting out a climber's kit, and so on and so forth.  The vast majority of time I don't care.  It's just a wall, make an athletics check to climb unless you have all the time in the world or you can't fall far enough to hurt yourself.  If the latter case, you just climb the wall as part of the narration.

[EDIT] I think [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] probably put it better.  If a PC's ability and proficiency score do not matter it's a player challenge.  If it's something that gets resolved using a PC's stats, it's a PC challenge.  In addition I use blended challenges sometimes, especially when it comes to puzzles; if the players are struggling I'll give them hints based on PC's capabilities.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

pemerton said:


> So advice to that effect - deciding success based on the check result rather than setting a DC in advance - is found in a sidebar on p 3 of the DM Guidelines document from the 5e playtest (I've got it dated 19 September 2013 - I'd copy and paste it, but the document also has a prominent "confidential information" notice at the top of each page!). The sidebar concludes by saying that _the players will never know_ - so there's at least a suggestion of GM fudging/control over outcomes.
> 
> I don't recall this being in the 4e DMG, and on a quick flick through just now didn't find it. I did find the following, though (on p 12), which is one reason why I don't feel the 4e/5e contrast that is being drawn in this thread:
> 
> ...




Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.




Problems are subtle, and quick to anger.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Problems are subtle, and quick to anger.




Be rary of wowsing a rizard’s wath


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.




D&D 4e Rules Compendium which as you may recall was the most up-to-date version of the rules in that system: "The Dungeon Master determines if a skill check is appropriate in a given situation and directs a player to make a check if circumstances call for one. *A player often initiates a skill check by asking the DM if he or she can make one. Almost always, the DM says yes.*" (Emphasis is mine.)

By contrast, the D&D 5e rules say nothing like this. There is no expectation laid out that the players will ask for checks or that the DM's response should be "Yes." That straight away creates a difference in the play experience.

The D&D 4e PHB also said: "The DCs assume acting in situations that are far from mundane; the DM should call for checks only in dramatic situations." Later, the more up-to-date D&D 4e Rules Compendium removed this line from the same section ("Difficulty Class"). We can only speculate as to why. Put this together and we have an expectation that players will ask for checks, even in situations that are mundane and undramatic, and the DM almost always says "Yes."

Again contrast with D&D 5e where the DM makes the call as to any check including attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws, and there is no expectation laid out that players will ask for checks or that the DM will assent to the request. As well, the DM will only ask for checks if there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. These seemingly small differences at the fundamental level will produce different experiences at the table. I make no judgment as to one experience being better than the other. I love D&D 4e and D&D 5e is just fine, too. But I will not play my D&D 5e like it's D&D 4e. I'll just play D&D 4e instead.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> It depends on what you mean by "good" or "bad." Certainly the role of the DM expects that he or she will judge that some approaches make the goal trivially easy or impossible to achieve. In neither case is there an ability check. Is the former "good" approach and the latter a "bad" approach in your view?




O

M

G

Ok, you're getting there, just one detail you seem to be missing from this conversation. This has nothing to do with me labeling things as "good" or "bad" the original impetus for this conversation



			
				Mort said:
			
		

> It's actually a pretty big difference, and not narrow at all.
> 
> What it means under this paradigm: if the player picks the "correct" approach and can avoid rolling, his character has the same chance of success (certainty) regardless of his CHA or focus on social skills in a social challenge situation.






			
				robus said:
			
		

> One thing we have to stop saying is that there’s “a correct approach”, there a good approaches and bad approaches. It’s very poor DMing (Imho) to have situations with a single acceptable approach. In fact I never even consider approaches when I put obstacles in the way of the players, I just think of what would naturally be the result of either their or NPCs actions (or the environment) and throw them in their way. Their job is to figure creative ways to overcome them. One reason I dislike the published adventures providing ability checks (and DCs) it encourages the belief that there’s one “correct” approach.






			
				Me said:
			
		

> "Good" and "Bad" are equally problematic in reference to what @Mort was saying.
> 
> In that context a "good" approach avoids rolling and gives the player a pass on doing what they want to do. A "bad" approach then means that a roll is necessary.
> 
> I think that is almost worse than "correct" since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as "gaming the DM" where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it.





So, if you read through those three quotes, you will see that my entire point was that it is unhelpful at best to label approaches as good or bad. In fact, it may lead to accusations that it is possible to "game the DM" if one uses those labels, because it implies the DM is not impartial in their judgements, and can be swayed by a convincing enough argument for "good". 





robus said:


> I said I’d stay out, but I’ve seen a couple of references to my “good”/“bad” approaches responses to [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION]’s “correct” approach complaint.
> 
> First off, Mort, if you were just being sarcastic, I apologize for not picking up on that, but in my defense it wasn’t the first time that this had been raised as a complaint against approaches needing to match DM expectations.
> 
> Secondly, “good/bad” was simply shorthand for “productive” vs. “unproductive” approaches. The DM has to adjudicate player actions and that involves evaluating them against the fictional world. Some approaches are going to be better than others. And some are going to be utterly hopeless. (And I will try to remember, in future, that the worst possible interpretation will be taken, which probably explains why Iserith is so precise in his responses!)




I'd say avoid shorthand, because I see "productive" and "unproductive" as perfectly fine. There is no value judgement in them, just a measure of their effectiveness. That was the only point I was trying to make, yet it took multiple days and multiple responses to get people to this. 






Charlaquin said:


> I've been spelling my mindset out pretty explicitly. Yes, a check is an undesirable outcome of an action in my games.




I definitely see that as strange. Failure is undesirable, but a check is neutral to me, because there is both the possibility of success and the possibility of failure. There is a small chance of things getting better than they would have with a check in the way I process the events of the game. Because if someone rolls a 25 on a DC 15 check, sometimes they get more than just a success. they might get more benefits. 

I see what you mean about the use of the human brain to imagine fictional scenarios, but to me that isn't the primary resolution mechanic because there is nothing to resolve when that happens. 



Charlaquin said:


> Giving players information on the potential consequences of their actions is kind of a fundamental aspect of the DMing style that I have been referring to as "goal and approach," or occasionally "the middle path." But ok, fine, forget that style for a second. My question is, is your disagreement with the assertion that giving players information about the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying based on experience employing this technique (the one where you tell your players the potential consequences of their actions) and finding that it did not lead to better and more dramatic roleplaying than when you don't give said information? Or are you basing it only on your experience running your game not doing that, and this leading to a level of drama in your roleplaying that you are satisfied with?




Man, there are times when everything you say just seems designed to give off the wrong impression. 

First of all, since I have stated I do not tell my players the consequences, you are likely assuming I have not used that style, but you need me to admit that so you can discredit my entire line of reasoning with a "well. if you haven't tried it my way you can't have an opinion" 

But the thing the really gets me is your two standards. Did I do it your way and find it did not lead to "better and more dramatic" roleplaying (all positives there) or have I not done that and found a level of drama (not more drama, just a generic level) that I am "satisfied" with (not that is good, just that I'm willing to settle for that much, just like you settle for a crappy car because that is all you can afford. 

So, with the acknoweldgement that I might be reading into this things you did not intend to put forth, this entire paragraph is asking me to admit to doing something you know so you can discredit my objections and show that instead of trying it the "better" way I'm merely settling for the "Adequate" way. 

All not addressing my actual point (some people find it more dramatic not to know what happens next) because the logical evidence that there is some truth to my statement is the very existence of spoilers and holding back information. 

I have no problem with people giving out the consequences in an academic sense, your game your preferences, but if you make a habit of telling players and then don't tell them for dramatic reasons, you are depriving them and it isn't fun but the DM breaking their own rules. So I do not tell them, because sometimes it is more dramatic and interesting for them not to know. 




Charlaquin said:


> The gotcha to me is in justifying "the character couldn't possibly know the chandelier might break if they fail their check" with "The chandelier looks sturdy enough to support the character's weight, but the beams supporting it have rotted in such a way that is not immediately obvious to the player." You are using your own choice to hide the details the character would need for the player to make an informed decision as an excuse for not giving the player enough details to make an informed decision.
> 
> It is my opinion that if a player is being asked to make a decision, they should always be sufficiently informed to not make a bad choice based on lack of information. If the player has to choose between trying to roll past the guards and trying to swing to the other side, they should also know that if they fail to roll past the guards, the guards will catch them, and if they fail to swing to the other side, they will fall. It is in my opinion the DM's responsibility to make sure that information is accessible to the player. If "there's no way the character could know" something that they would need to know to make an informed decision, then the DM has failed in that responsibility. As the person who created the scenario, the DM should set the scenario up in such a way that they character _could_ know any important details.
> 
> Yes, there's no way for the character to know about the rotten beams. So, the DM shouldn't be using rotten beams here. They should be using a chandelier that is obviously not sturdy enough to hold the character's weight for more than a couple seconds.




You are missing an important detail here. 

The chandelier only falls on a failed check. 

Let us say the chandelier is rock steady and cannot break, and the player fails the check to jump and swing across. What would happen? They would fall. What happens if the chandelier breaks when they try and swing across? They fall. 

In choosing to utilize the chandelier, and a check being called for, the players should already realize that falling is a likely result of failure, just as they should realize that trying to rush past the guards will lead to them being grabbed by the guards if they fail. 

The chandelier breaking is simply a dramatic detail added to the result the player already expected. It wasn't that they missed and fell, they landed wrong and it broke. But the result of their failure (falling to the ground) is the exact same result. 

A "gotcha" is a failure *due * to information the player doesn't know. If choosing the chandelier always led to it breaking and you falling, then it would be a "gotcha". But the chandelier only breaks if you fail, it is the "how did you fail" not the "why"



pemerton said:


> As a semi-participant in this particualr discusion with [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], I will say that what you describe here doesn't ring true to me at all, for my game.
> 
> I'm not talking about _tellling players coonsequences which would obtain even if the players weren't told_. I'm talking about _telling the players those consdequences that obtain_, or - alternatively - having those consequences be implict in the framing of the situation and the plyaer's knowledge of why the situation matters.
> 
> I don't think that keeping potential consequences secret from the players makes for good RPGing.




I think implicit consequences might be the sticking point here, because I think players generally understand most implicit dangers. For example:


pemerton said:


> The devil is always in the details, of course - but at the level of generality that you have presented this example, the risk of the chandelier breaking would seem to be very much implict in the framing of the situation.




We seem to agree that telling the players the consequences isn't fully necessary, because the possibility is implicit that they may fall



pemerton said:


> I don't agree with this at all. If it wasn't implicit in the situation that such a thing might happen, I would regard this as very bad GMing. I once had a thing a bit like this happen in a game - the GM teleported the party 100 years into the future. The effect was to largely invaldiate all our play to date, which was enmeshed in a particular time and place. (I think the GM did it because he felt he had lost control of the campaign, and wanted to reestablish that control.)
> 
> I quite the game a session or two after that, and I heard that it ended not long after.




I would argue this is a completely different problem. 

What I was getting at is that the players decision is not invalidated if they do not know the exact nature of the consequences. 

What you are describing is purposefully committing an act which wipes out the player's former actions and invalidates much if not everything in the game before that point. 

That is a secondary point, and one I agree with. It is why I kind of hate the Feywild time shenanigans or memory loss, because those things wipe out sections of the campaign. But, being teleported far away for a few sessions might not cause that level of disruption. It would be a balancing act.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> D&D 4e Rules Compendium which as you may recall was the most up-to-date version of the rules in that system: "The Dungeon Master determines if a skill check is appropriate in a given situation and directs a player to make a check if circumstances call for one. *A player often initiates a skill check by asking the DM if he or she can make one. Almost always, the DM says yes.*" (Emphasis is mine.)
> 
> By contrast, the D&D 5e rules say nothing like this. There is no expectation laid out that the players will ask for checks or that the DM's response should be "Yes."



Well, except maybe for this passage on p 61 of the Basic PDF:

When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check.​
_You_ there very clearly refers to the player of the PC.

Page 62 also has the following, contrasting, passages:

*Perception.* Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. . . .

*Survival.* The DM might ask you to make a Wisdom (Survival) check to follow tracks . . .​
The rule for survivial suggests that the check is made at GM instigation to adjudicate some action. The rule for perception suggests that the perception check is mandated by the rules as a type of model of the infiction process of the PC looking around.



iserith said:


> The D&D 4e PHB also said: "The DCs assume acting in situations that are far from mundane; the DM should call for checks only in dramatic situations." Later, the more up-to-date D&D 4e Rules Compendium removed this line from the same section ("Difficulty Class"). We can only speculate as to why.



Just as we can only speculate as to why the skill text in the Basic PDF for 5e seems to take 3 different approaches across the 3 entries of Investigation, Perception and Survival.



iserith said:


> Put this together and we have an expectation that players will ask for checks



Whose expectation? The DMG and PHB for 4e came out in 2008 - were expectations changed by a book published two years later?

Did the RC change its text because it was wanting to bring the rules text more closely into line with observed play practices? In which case one could hardly assert its _normative_ force.

Anyway, given the text I've quoted from the 4e DMG and the text you've quoted from the 4e PHB, I hope you can see why I don't see the cleavage in systems being as great as you do in respect of GM and player roles. The key difference I see is that the 4e rules assume that checks _will _be made at moments of drama, whereas the 5e rules as applied by [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] and (I think) you expect players to be angling for no check even at moments of drama. My own framework for making sense of this contrast is between "say 'yes' or roll the dice" (4e) and classic skilled play, which in my view doesn't involve "pixel bitching" as you have described it upthread, but does involve leveraging the fiction to generate desired results by way of free narration (5e "goal and approach" as articulated in this thread).


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Ok, you're getting there, just one detail you seem to be missing from this conversation. This has nothing to do with me labeling things as "good" or "bad" the original impetus for this conversation




You could still choose to answer the question regardless of whose labels they were.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, except maybe for this passage on p 61 of the Basic PDF:
> When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check.​
> _You_ there very clearly refers to the player of the PC.
> 
> ...




Well, yes, the player is the one who _makes_ the ability check, but the DM is the one who _decides_ if an ability check is appropriate and _calls_ for one, based on what the player described as wanting to do. The section on ability checks discusses skill proficiencies that may apply to the ability given certain approaches to the goal. See sections on "How to Play," the beginning of the section on "Ability Checks," plus the DMG on "Using Ability Scores."

Your PDF also appears to be outdated. You can get a new version at the Wizards site.



pemerton said:


> Just as we can only speculate as to why the skill text in the Basic PDF for 5e seems to take 3 different approaches across the 3 entries of Investigation, Perception and Survival.




No speculation is required if you don't ignore all the other rules that apply here that I mention above. Again, I strongly suggest you play the game if you want to engage in debates about it. For the sake of your own credibility if nothing else.



pemerton said:


> Whose expectation? The DMG and PHB for 4e came out in 2008 - were expectations changed by a book published two years later?
> 
> Did the RC change its text because it was wanting to bring the rules text more closely into line with observed play practices? In which case one could hardly assert its _normative_ force.




It's irrelevant why the text was changed in my view. The most up-to-date rules for D&D 4e which reflect the refinements since the original release say how to play the game. And that game has players asking for skill checks and the DM saying yes. That is not the case in the D&D 5e rules which creates a different play experience. But it's no wonder, given how this was a practice in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e for many people that they carry on with it in D&D 5e.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> given how this was a practice in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e for many people that they carry on with it in D&D 5e.



Well, my point is that this was _not my practice_ in D&D 4e because I followed the rules set out in the 4e PHB and DMG, which identify calling for checks as a GM function, not a player function. Changes in rules text 2 years down the track, in a book that had several retrograde changes to rules text (eg in its description of the role of the GM) which I took to be attempts to reduce the "indie" flavour of the 4e rules, did not change how I played the game.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, my point is that this was _not my practice_ in D&D 4e because I followed the rules set out in the 4e PHB and DMG, which identify calling for checks as a GM function, not a player function. Changes in rules text 2 years down the track, in a book that had several retrograde changes to rules text (eg in its description of the role of the GM) which I took to be attempts to reduce the "indie" flavour of the 4e rules, did not change how I played the game.




I don't know what to tell you, man. The D&D 4e Rules Compendium is the most up-to-date version of the rules, whether you choose to adopt them or not. They tell us how to play the game and that includes players asking to make skill checks and the DM almost always saying yes.

As an aside, they also have actual working rules for skill challenges in there as opposed to the nightmare published in the PHB/DMG (whichever ones they appeared in, can't recall which right now).


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't know what to tell you, man. The D&D 4e Rules Compendium is the most up-to-date version of the rules, whether you choose to adopt them or not. They tell us how to play the game and that includes players asking to make skill checks and the DM almost always saying yes.



This is where I start to have a bit of sympathy for [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s view about the significance of "how to play rules" vs the actual play of the mechanics at the table.

I mean, you seem to be telling me that I played 4e wrong because I played in accordance with the published "how to play" advice which was, in a late release, modified/watered down for no very clear reason.

Suppose that, for whatever reason, WotC changes the "how to play" rules in publisehd versions of 5e. Would that mean that, retrospectively, it turns out you've been playing 5e wrong for all these years?

In my view that would be a silly view to take. And I think it's equally silly for you to tell me that I should recognise this huge contrast between 4e and 5e about player and GM roles when, in fact, I played 4e in accordance with the published rules and thus did not experience any such contrast! (And to be clear, I'm not disputing that there is a difference - I've identified it multiple times in this thread - but it's a difference about the principles according to which a check is called for, not who has the job of calling for checks.)


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is where I start to have a bit of sympathy for [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s view about the significance of "how to play rules" vs the actual play of the mechanics at the table.
> 
> I mean, you seem to be telling me that I played 4e wrong because I played in accordance with the published "how to play" advice which was, in a late release, modified/watered down for no very clear reason.
> 
> ...




It would be a silly view to say you're playing the game wrong, which is why I don't say that.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

Don't worry about "gaming the DM accusations." 
It is always possible - DMs are human, afterall.  The potential opportunities & rewards may be greater the more the system loads the DM, but the potential is always there in any system with anything like a DM role. 

There's not even anything wrong with it, necessarily, just as there's nothing innately wrong with system mastery or fudging or illusionism - It's what you do with them that might be judged good or bad.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Don't worry about "gaming the DM accusations."
> It is always possible - DMs are human, afterall.  The potential opportunities & rewards may be greater the more the system loads the DM, but the potential is always there in any system with anything like a DM role.
> 
> There's not even anything wrong with it, necessarily, just as there's nothing innately wrong with system mastery or fudging or illusionism - It's what you do with them that might be judged good or bad.




I've been waiting for you to bring this up since your very first post in the thread. Luckily, I already addressed this upthread with Chaosmancer.

Being that "gaming" someone is by definition an unscrupulous, manipulative act, I don't agree that it's okay. I don't think the rules contemplate playing with people who would do this, nor is it advisable to play with such people in my view. The rules describe the people around the table as "friends." Friends don't do that in my book.

Plus, if you're the sort of DM who is getting gamed, then you're not living up to the standards set forth by the DMG for the DM: an impartial yet involved participant who acts as a referee that mediates between the rules and the players, one who sets limits, and who - by following the "middle path" - encourages the players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.

I used to make a "gaming the DM" argument during the playtest because I wanted D&D 5e (or D&D Next, as it was called) to be more like D&D 4e where the DM outsourced more judgment as to the efficacy of the players' ideas to the system and dice. I lost that argument and I'm glad I did because I learned that I was wrong. My hope is that others see that someday too.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> I've been waiting for you to bring this up since your very first post in the thread.



 I wouldn't want to dissapoint.



> Being that "gaming" someone is by definition an unscrupulous, manipulative act, I don't agree that it's okay.



 A lot of things can be done in the context of a game that would be pretty reprehensible in other contexts.

Friends don't punch eachother, but in a boxing ring, it's OK.  

In RPGs, D&D in particular, you don't just imagine a PC in your control doing things that'd be unacceptable in polite society, you willingly enter into an unequal power dynamic of a degree that'd give Christian Grey pause (Did I get that right? Not a fan).
And, at the same time, the stakes are essentially non-existent (imaginary). 

When a grifter manipulates you out of $10k, that's a crime, when you manipulate your DM to get your PC 10kgps, not s'much.



iserith said:


> I used to make a "gaming the DM" argument during the playtest because I wanted D&D 5e (or D&D Next, as it was called) to be more like D&D 4e where the DM outsourced more judgment as to the efficacy of the players' ideas to the system and dice. I lost that argument and I'm glad I did because I learned that I was wrong. My hope is that others see that someday too.



That's a legit argument  - if you want to avoid gaming the DM, enter into a more balanced imaginary power sharing arrangement that incentivises it less - if that's what you want.  
But its not "really D&D," the dynamics of such a game are completely different, and as the edition war illustrated, unacceptable to too much of the fan base to be tenable.

Same with being down on system mastery - you can choose a system that offers fewer rewards for it - if that's your priority.

But I'm less sympathetic to choosing a game that rewards system mastery lavishly, and decrying power gaming as innately wrong, or choosing a DM centric-game and being down on illusionism or gaming the DM.

The idea of carrot & stick isn't to punish going for the carrot.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 26, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I definitely see that as strange. Failure is undesirable, but a check is neutral to me, because there is both the possibility of success and the possibility of failure.



Right, which is why I say a check isn't the worst possible outcome of an action. Technically a check isn't even an outcome of an action, it's the way we determine an outcome. But generally success without a check is preferable to having to make a check, because a check has a possibility of failure and a consequence for failure.



Chaosmancer said:


> There is a small chance of things getting better than they would have with a check in the way I process the events of the game. Because if someone rolls a 25 on a DC 15 check, sometimes they get more than just a success. they might get more benefits.



I can see why that would make checks a desirable thing in your game, if not only do they not always have consequences for failure, but they have a possibility of better outcomes than automatic success. This is not how I run the game, however.



Chaosmancer said:


> I see what you mean about the use of the human brain to imagine fictional scenarios, but to me that isn't the primary resolution mechanic because there is nothing to resolve when that happens.



Sure there is. The action. The player says what they want to do and how their character tries to do it. The DM uses their brain to try to predict the most likely outcome, and if they cannot do so with certainty, they call for a roll. This process is called resolving, or sometimes adjudicating, the action. So, I guess it would be more accurate to say that dice rolls are _a part of_ the primary resolution mechanic, which is evaluating the goal and approach, relying on a weighted random number generator, in the form of a d20 roll with modifiers based on character statistics, to resolve any uncertainty that arises, and narrating the result based on this evaluation.



Chaosmancer said:


> Man, there are times when everything you say just seems designed to give off the wrong impression.
> 
> First of all, since I have stated I do not tell my players the consequences, you are likely assuming I have not used that style, but you need me to admit that so you can discredit my entire line of reasoning with a "well. if you haven't tried it my way you can't have an opinion"



I am not assuming you haven't tried telling your players the consequences. I asked specifically to _avoid_ falling into that assumption. The things I say would probably not give off the wrong impression so much if _you_ stopped assuming I'm arguing in bad faith.



Chaosmancer said:


> But the thing the really gets me is your two standards. Did I do it your way and find it did not lead to "better and more dramatic" roleplaying (all positives there) or have I not done that and found a level of drama (not more drama, just a generic level) that I am "satisfied" with (not that is good, just that I'm willing to settle for that much, just like you settle for a crappy car because that is all you can afford.



"Beter and more dramatic roleplaying" was _pemerton's_ standard, not mine, which you disagreed would result from the method pemerton described. My question was if you have _tried_ the method pemerton described and found that it did not lead to the result they said it would (specifically, better and more dramatic roleplaying), or have you found your own method to result in roleplaying that is dramatic enough and of sufficient quality that you don't believe it would be improved by the method pemerton described?



Chaosmancer said:


> So, with the acknoweldgement that I might be reading into this things you did not intend to put forth, this entire paragraph is asking me to admit to doing something you know so you can discredit my objections and show that instead of trying it the "better" way I'm merely settling for the "Adequate" way.



I'm not going to pretend I don't think the way I do it is better. But I do acknowledge that different people have different tastes and different experiences. Rather than assume you must not have tried my way if you don't think it's better, I thought it would be more courteous to ask if you have tried it and found it lacking, or if you simply aren't interested in trying it because you are already perfectly happy with your own method.

Note that, even if the answer is the latter, I don't believe that you would necessarily find my method preferable to your own if you just tried it. I do think you would find that it works better than you seem to think it would, but I expect you would probably still prefer your way, and indeed, think it is better. 



Chaosmancer said:


> All not addressing my actual point (some people find it more dramatic not to know what happens next) because the logical evidence that there is some truth to my statement is the very existence of spoilers and holding back information.



Addressing your point was never the intent of my inquiry. I just wanted to know if your disagreement was based on experience with the method in question or on theory.



Chaosmancer said:


> I have no problem with people giving out the consequences in an academic sense, your game your preferences, but if you make a habit of telling players and then don't tell them for dramatic reasons, you are depriving them and it isn't fun but the DM breaking their own rules. So I do not tell them, because sometimes it is more dramatic and interesting for them not to know.



Again, I disagree that not knowing the potential consequences of a failed skill check is necessarily more dramatic or interesting. On the contrary, I think it is less dramatic and interesting because it hides what's at stake. I've referenced this before in this thread, I don't remember if it was with you, but I think Alfred Hitchcock's essay on why information is essential for creating suspense is equally applicable to roleplaying games as it is to filmmaking. I think a lot of DMs just get too caught up in worrying about keeping information the characters "couldn't know" out of the players hands and end up convincing themselves that they are making the game more dramatic by keeping information from the players instead of less.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are missing an important detail here.
> 
> The chandelier only falls on a failed check.
> 
> ...



I agree, the player _should_ realize those things. That's kind of my point. There is every possibility that the player _doesn't_ realize those things, in which case you do them a disservice by not making _sure_ they know it. On the other hand, if they do know, you don't do them any disservice by reiterating it. Same concept as a life preserve, better to be given a reminder of the consequences and not need it than need a reminder and not get one.



Chaosmancer said:


> The chandelier breaking is simply a dramatic detail added to the result the player already expected. It wasn't that they missed and fell, they landed wrong and it broke. But the result of their failure (falling to the ground) is the exact same result.



Sure, but what harm is done by telling the player the chandelier will fall if they fail? Don't tell them, you risk a scenario where the player, who had been expecting the chandelier to remain up if he fell so his other party members could still try to use it to escape, protests "I wouldn't have jumped if I'd known it might have broken!" Tell them, and... What? You ruin the surprise when it falls? I think you might be overestimating the drama added by _not_ telling the players things, and underestimating the drama added by telling them.



Chaosmancer said:


> A "gotcha" is a failure *due * to information the player doesn't know. If choosing the chandelier always led to it breaking and you falling, then it would be a "gotcha". But the chandelier only breaks if you fail, it is the "how did you fail" not the "why"



Ehh, I'm not really interested in arguing about what is or isn't a "gotcha." My point is "there's no way the character could know that!" is a poor reason not to tell the player something when it is well within your power as DM to set up the scenario in such a way that the character _could_ know it. If you object to me using the term "gotcha" for that, fine, I won't use that term for it.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's a legit argument - if you want to avoid gaming the DM, enter into a more balanced imaginary power sharing arrangement that incentivises it less - but its not "really D&D."
> The dynamics of such a game are completely different, and as the edition war illustrated, unacceptable to too much of the fan base to be tenable.




It's a weak argument based on imagining the worst in people and on being too agreeable to act as a judge of the ideas of others. I'm ashamed I made it when I did. What a waste of my time. (Unlike this whole thread which, as anyone can see, has totally been worth it. Yep. _Totally_. _Worth_. _It_.)

I also choose not to see the creation and reception of D&D 5e as a rejection of D&D 4e, as if "I" lost and "they" won. I still have my books. They still work. I don't play it as much as I'd like, but I can when I want to.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> (Unlike this whole thread which, as anyone can see, has totally been worth it. Yep. _Totally_. _Worth_. _It_.)



 I've come to it late.



> I also choose not to see the creation and reception of D&D 5e as a rejection of D&D 4e, as if "I" lost and "they" won. I still have my books. They still work. I don't play it as much as I'd like, but I can when I want to.



 That's a positive attitude, one that was in short supply when 4e was the current ed.
My feeling is that they're just different games, with different strategies.  They give you different tools as player or DM, its all in what you do with them.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Don't worry about "gaming the DM accusations."
> It is always possible - DMs are human, afterall.  The potential opportunities & rewards may be greater the more the system loads the DM, but the potential is always there in any system with anything like a DM role.
> 
> There's not even anything wrong with it, necessarily, just as there's nothing innately wrong with system mastery or fudging or illusionism - It's what you do with them that might be judged good or bad.



My players know that I'm relatively sentimental, and also that I use a high proportion of undead/demon-type opponents compared to human opponents.

They act on this information in PC build (eg building PCs who will be effective against supernatural threats) and sometimes in resolution (eg they know that I'm unlikely to have NPCs who foreswear violence etc to turn on the PCs and break their oaths).

I don't regard this as any sort of improper "gaming" of the GM. It's just the emergence of a group synergy/preference!


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> "Beter and more dramatic roleplaying" was pemerton's standard, not mine, which you disagreed would result from the method pemerton described. My question was if you have tried the method pemerton described and found that it did not lead to the result they said it would (specifically, better and more dramatic roleplaying), or have you found your own method to result in roleplaying that is dramatic enough and of sufficient quality that you don't believe it would be improved by the method pemerton described?



Seeing as my standard has been referred to, I thought I would say something more about it. I don't know that the following remarks are apropos of anything in particular, but this thread is well past 1000 posts so I don't think I'm obliged to stay strictly on-topic.

One thing is this: another current thread has given me the impression that some people don't _want_ more dramatic roleplaying. They prefer (what they describe as) more "realistic"/"immersive" roleplaying, which (I would say) involves less drama and more haggling over the price of goods, describing how camps are pitched and dismantled, establishing precise details as to the presence and character of architectural features, etc.

A second thing is that some RPGers seem to envisage the "story" or the "plot" as something to be presented by the GM to the players - so that the drama is provided by that (often pre-established) story/plot.  [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]'s idea of the players _not knowing what happens next_ also seems to be an example of something like this - it is the GM who decides what happens next, and for the players the drama consists in that revelation. That sort of approach isn't necessarily going to want a method of the sort I personally like - you can often see this thought reflected in comments like "It's bad adventure design to allow the <whatever> to be gated behind a die roll". That way of thinking about scenario design and adjudication is pretty much the antithesis of what I advocated as a means to achieve "better and more dramatic roleplaying".

A third thing is something that I think of in terms of rationalism vs existentialism (others may not use these particular categories!). The rationalist sees a choice situation as a situation of _calculation_ or _optimisation_ - what ought I to do here to maximise my expected return? Whereas the existentialist sees a choice situation as an imposition of the will upon the world - to paraphrase/butcher Merleau-Ponty (because I can't remember the quote properly), the choice answers a call from a future that the choosing person helps to create through his/her choice. I tend to prefer RPGs that favour, or at least support, an existentialist rather than rationalist approach by the player - this can be a function of resolution mechanics but also of non-mechanical adjudication techniques (such as "fail forward", or permitting success on a check to significantly change the shared fiction which, following Luke Crane in Burning Wheel, I tend to call "intent and task"). Conversely, classic "skilled play" and also many of the presentations in this thread of "goal and approach" are in what I've called the rationalist camp. For those who incline that way, the particular approach to resolution that I advocate is probably less appealing than it is to me.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

I would just say that for the whole "know what happens next" vs "not knowing" ... huh?  I've never had a DM tell me exactly what was going to happen on every single failure.  I mean sometimes it's obvious, if you fail your dexterity check to walk the tightrope you fall.  But other times?  Is my PC a psychic fortune teller?  

In other words, I don't see how it plays in to the immersion and loose simulation of the games I play.  I give my players the information I think their PCs would have, nothing more, nothing less.  It may be obvious (or detectable) that the chandelier may not support your weight* or it may just look like your standard, ordinary chandelier.  If it's not reasonable for the PC to know that the lighting fixture isn't able to support their weight, I'm not going to tell them.

_*How does failed check affect the structural integrity of a chandelier?  I know it's just an example, but if my PC swings from it, I don't see how gracefully I swing from it affects anything.  Anyway, minor point on an example._


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> How does failed check affect the structural integrity of a chandelier?  I know it's just an example, but if my PC swings from it, I don't see how gracefully I swing from it affects anything.  Anyway, minor point on an example.



Here, you are assuming that _the narration of a failure_ must identify some _causal process_ that links the PC's action to the unhappy outcome - here, the breaking chandelier.

That's not an assumption that obtains in "intent and task"/"fail forward" adjudication. (For an example in the context of D&D, see the example of a Skill Challenge in the 4e Rules Compendium - the final failure produces an uhappy outcome for the PCs, but it's not directly caused by any error/failure on the PCs' part.)


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Here, you are assuming that _the narration of a failure_ must identify some _causal process_ that links the PC's action to the unhappy outcome - here, the breaking chandelier.
> 
> That's not an assumption that obtains in "intent and task"/"fail forward" adjudication. (For an example in the context of D&D, see the example of a Skill Challenge in the 4e Rules Compendium - the final failure produces an uhappy outcome for the PCs, but it's not directly caused by any error/failure on the PCs' part.)




What I'm saying is that if I think it's reasonable that the PC could tell that the chandelier could fall, I will tell the player.  If there's a question of whether I think the PC might notice I'll ask for a perception or investigation check.  If there's no reason for the PC to think the chandelier will fall, I don't tell the player anything.

I try to make my decisions based on how I envision the campaign world working, not on game theory.

Which actually ties back to the OP.  I don't think you can ever be 100% certain someone is lying or telling the truth just by watching them closely. Therefore, I don't care what the game says I'm going to adjudicate based on my understanding of the way the world works.  I'm not going to give or withhold information the PC should not have even from a meta-game standpoint.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I would just say that for the whole "know what happens next" vs "not knowing" ... huh?  I've never had a DM tell me exactly what was going to happen on every single failure.  I mean sometimes it's obvious, if you fail your dexterity check to walk the tightrope you fall.  But other times?  Is my PC a psychic fortune teller?
> 
> In other words, I don't see how it plays in to the immersion and loose simulation of the games I play.  I give my players the information I think their PCs would have, nothing more, nothing less.  It may be obvious (or detectable) that the chandelier may not support your weight* or it may just look like your standard, ordinary chandelier.  If it's not reasonable for the PC to know that the lighting fixture isn't able to support their weight, I'm not going to tell them.
> 
> _*How does failed check affect the structural integrity of a chandelier?  I know it's just an example, but if my PC swings from it, I don't see how gracefully I swing from it affects anything.  Anyway, minor point on an example._



So it's not true in your campaigns that all traps are telegraphed? Radical!!! Heretic!!! Welcome.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> So it's not true in your campaigns that all traps are telegraphed? Radical!!! Heretic!!! Welcome.




Yeah, I know.  What are my evil bad guys thinking?  Hidden traps designed to harm people?  SACRILEGE!


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Conversely, classic "skilled play" and also many of the presentations in this thread of "goal and approach" are in what I've called the rationalist camp. For those who incline that way, the particular approach to resolution that I advocate is probably less appealing than it is to me.




I think trying to put people into boxes is problematic. I don't _incline_ any particular way. I play every game differently, according to what suits those systems. I can jump from a D&D 4e game, to a D&D 5e game, to a Dungeon World game (or Marvel Heroic or whatever) at will, playing and running each of them differently. If playing in the rules doesn't produce a desirable experience, I just don't play that game anymore. I don't try to make it something it's not or play it as if it's some other game. I have too many other games I can pick up to waste my time fighting the system or changing it.

I think "I only like games with this particular method" is self-limiting and I think running most games the same way despite their differences is self-defeating (in the sense that many people end up creating issues at the table).


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> _*How does failed check affect the structural integrity of a chandelier?  I know it's just an example, but if my PC swings from it, I don't see how gracefully I swing from it affects anything.  Anyway, minor point on an example._




Not a minor point: it reveals a fundamental difference between two points of view about the nature of what's "real" in the game world.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Not a minor point: it reveals a fundamental difference between two points of view about the nature of what's "real" in the game world.




If I understand you,the fundamental difference is that I build my encounters based on how I see the world working.  If the chandelier looks fragile or if the building is old with rotting beams it makes sense that the chandelier may not support someone's weight.  The state of the building depends on the scene.  Abandoned?  Well maintained?  Opulent but the residents are maintaining a facade they haven't been able to afford for a long time?

I run my games as being a simulation of a fantasy world with simplified rules used to emulate that reality.  While I try to balance that with what will be fun and challenging for the group, I start from what makes sense in the wold.  Encounters and obstacles are derived from that scene.  Player knowledge is always based on PC knowledge.

You approach it as a game first, simulation second.

So if I've captured that correctly, yes we have fundamentally different approaches.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I would just say that for the whole "know what happens next" vs "not knowing" ... huh?  I've never had a DM tell me exactly what was going to happen on every single failure.  I mean sometimes it's obvious, if you fail your dexterity check to walk the tightrope you fall.  But other times?  Is my PC a psychic fortune teller?
> 
> In other words, I don't see how it plays in to the immersion and loose simulation of the games I play.  I give my players the information I think their PCs would have, nothing more, nothing less.  It may be obvious (or detectable) that the chandelier may not support your weight* or it may just look like your standard, ordinary chandelier.  If it's not reasonable for the PC to know that the lighting fixture isn't able to support their weight, I'm not going to tell them.



Here’s my thing, though. The only way it’s unreasonable for the PC to know that the lighting fixture isn’t able to support their weight is if the DM makes it so. If you don’t think the game is improved by ensuring that the players always know the consequences their actions could have going in, that’s fine, we can agree to disagree about that. But since you create the world “there’s no way the character could know that” carries an implicit “because I made it that way.”



Oofta said:


> _*How does failed check affect the structural integrity of a chandelier?  I know it's just an example, but if my PC swings from it, I don't see how gracefully I swing from it affects anything.  Anyway, minor point on an example._



Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t have whether or not the chandelier falls be dependent on the result of the player’s check in D&D either. But some folks would, and I might in a system like Dumgeon World. It’s a difference of baseline assumptions about the roles of GMs, players, and the dice.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t have whether or not the chandelier falls be dependent on the result of the player’s check in D&D either. But some folks would, and I might in a system like Dumgeon World. It’s a difference of baseline assumptions about the roles of GMs, players, and the dice.




I might, as a form of progress combined with a setback, which is a standard adjudication option in D&D 5e.

My standard response to "I don't see how this could be..." in a game like D&D is "Hold my beer."


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You approach it as a game first, simulation second.




I'm not sure simulation even ranks second for me. (Although, like everybody else, there are places where a lack of realism gets under my skin.)  

But, yes, between those two things that's the order.  

I just can't muster any outrage over, for example, martial abilities being 1/day. Why is it 1/day?  Game balance. How do you 'explain' it? That was the only time that day that the hero could muster sufficient ferocity. Where's the problem?


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'm not sure simulation even ranks second for me. (Although, like everybody else, there are places where a lack of realism gets under my skin.)
> 
> But, yes, between those two things that's the order.
> 
> I just can't muster any outrage over, for example, martial abilities being 1/day. Why is it 1/day?  Game balance. How do you 'explain' it? That was the only time that day that the hero could muster sufficient ferocity. Where's the problem?




I never said it was a particularly _good_ set of rules for simulation of a fantasy world.  Obviously things have to be simplified to work as a game, and D&D has always been more "action movie" reality than the real thing.

It's just the most enjoyable set of rules I've used for my goal of simulating a fantasy world.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Here’s my thing, though. The only way it’s unreasonable for the PC to know that the lighting fixture isn’t able to support their weight is if the DM makes it so. If you don’t think the game is improved by ensuring that the players always know the consequences their actions could have going in, that’s fine, we can agree to disagree about that. But since you create the world “there’s no way the character could know that” carries an implicit “because I made it that way.”
> 
> 
> Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t have whether or not the chandelier falls be dependent on the result of the player’s check in D&D either. But some folks would, and I might in a system like Dumgeon World. It’s a difference of baseline assumptions about the roles of GMs, players, and the dice.






Whereas I would say that it's only reasonable for the chandelier to not be able to bear the weight of someone is if it's obviously not designed to hold weight or there's a structural deficiency.  

If it's the former I haven't described it with enough detail and I'll warn the player.  If it's the latter, I've been broadcasting the general state of the building.  Whether this particular fixture is on the verge of collapse becomes a judgement call on the side of the player of whether they want to risk it.

On a related note if the player is just adding a feature to the room that's fine, I allow that on a fairly regular basis.  But it's still going to follow the same rules. I hadn't thought about there being a chandelier (or any other fixture)?  Fine.  Who built the structure, what state is it in.

I don't coddle my players.  If they want to take a risk, they take the risk.  If they're in a building with obvious signs of disrepair and wood rot and they want to swing from the chandelier I shouldn't need to spell out the fact that it may not hold.  It should be obvious.  If I think it may not be I'll give them an appropriate check.

People do risky things all the time not knowing all possible consequences or even the chance of failure.  I see no reason to change that for PCs.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Good conversation; let me tell ya, there are places where people can't even believe that you can discuss this issue since, you know, "realism" can never be truly defined.
> 
> But yeah, fun and enjoyment > realism (IMO).
> 
> ...




Well, I do base my campaigns on action movie realism, not reality.  But yeah, end of the day I want to be able to envision my PC as the protagonist in a good book or movie.   On the other hand a simulation that realistically portrayed dying from and infected "flesh wound" a week after your combat wouldn't be fun.

Or to put it another way, having a consistent logical world that at a high level works like what I would expect to read in a novel/movie is what makes the game enjoyable for me.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

I started writing a long post on this topic, inspired by some of the comments/ideas here, but decided it's really a fork in the discussion so started a new thread.  And it's a game, too!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ons-to-common-obstacles&p=7597513#post7597513


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Good conversation; let me tell ya, there are places where people can't even believe that you can discuss this issue since, you know, "realism" can never be truly defined.
> 
> But yeah, fun and enjoyment > realism (IMO).
> 
> ...



Oh, good grief.  This childish sniping across multiple threads is, well, childish.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Good conversation; let me tell ya, there are places where people can't even believe that you can discuss this issue since, you know, "realism" can never be truly defined.



 Sure it can.  It'd be a game that sucked every bit as much as RL.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> LOL.
> 
> Accountants and Actuaries, FTW!
> 
> It's almost as if these conversations have occurred, repeatedly, for decades ...



 Papers & Paychecks had been a punchline since the 1e DMG!


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I've seen how you envision your protagonist, what with the rapiers, and the tiny grasp-y gnome hands, and the *shiver* Paladin-ing.
> 
> I think you mean a BAD book or movie, right?




Hmm ... Sir McStabsalot vs the Lowlife 13 ... practically writes itself!  Except of course that it would be over far, far too quickly.  Nothing could stand against the glorious awesomeness of his dual rapier wielding righteous glory.  One brilliant flashing of his perfect smile would reduce all evil-doers to quivering blobs begging for forgiveness.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Charlaquin (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Whereas I would say that it's only reasonable for the chandelier to not be able to bear the weight of someone is if it's obviously not designed to hold weight or there's a structural deficiency.
> 
> If it's the former I haven't described it with enough detail and I'll warn the player.  If it's the latter, I've been broadcasting the general state of the building.  Whether this particular fixture is on the verge of collapse becomes a judgement call on the side of the player of whether they want to risk it.
> 
> ...



That makes sense to me. Thanks for elaborating!


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

I argued for a Chandelier Structural Integrity skill proficiency in the playtest, but yet again I was ignored. But at least I can point to its absence as justification to screw over the players when they try to do something cool.


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## Satyrn (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> I argued for a Chandelier Structural Integrity skill proficiency in the playtest, but yet again I was ignored. But at least I can point to its absence as justification to screw over the players when they try to do something cool.




When I get my time machine working, I'm gonna send you back in time to the playtest so you can argue against the roll-under skill checks of AD&D. Right after I attend every Rush concert ever.

Oh, and kill baby Hitler (but not until I attend every Rush concert ever, just in case they vanish from History)


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Well, I do base my campaigns on action movie realism, not reality.  But yeah, end of the day I want to be able to envision my PC as the protagonist in a good book or movie.   On the other hand a simulation that realistically portrayed dying from and infected "flesh wound" a week after your combat wouldn't be fun.
> 
> Or to put it another way, having a consistent logical world that at a high level works like what I would expect to read in a novel/movie is what makes the game enjoyable for me.



I agree. My players love the consistency of my worlds as it gives them a ton to draw on for their own planning etc. A significantly less consistent one, hinders that sense of being in a living world the characters know.

But for the chandelier, I could easily see managing the results of the check into the integrity.

Failed check - gets there, grabs the outer parts which buckle and give way. Might carry you partway then drop you. Might even carry you across but break apart in the process, stopping others - or not.

Good check - grabbed strongest point and it held.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> You gotta go next level, man.
> 
> Real DMs don't need a justification to screw over the players; they do it because they CAN.




Isn't that the whole point of a third of the monsters in the old monster manuals?  Mimics, cloakers, monster floors that eat you?

Ahh, the good old days.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> That's right! If the treasure chest didn't eat you, the ethereal mummy would.




Just for reference in case people haven't ever heard of a trapper


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> You could still choose to answer the question regardless of whose labels they were.




You are right I could.

My answer is that labeling player approaches as "good" or "bad" is tone deaf at best and a practice I refuse to engage in. If I ever tell a player "That was a bad approach, so now X" in response to their declared actions, then I will have hit my lowest point as a DM. 

Which is why I was advocating that those terms are actually unhelpful in refuting a point. Which you should understand from reading the multiple posts on this subject. 






Tony Vargas said:


> Don't worry about "gaming the DM accusations."
> It is always possible - DMs are human, afterall.  The potential opportunities & rewards may be greater the more the system loads the DM, but the potential is always there in any system with anything like a DM role.
> 
> There's not even anything wrong with it, necessarily, just as there's nothing innately wrong with system mastery or fudging or illusionism - It's what you do with them that might be judged good or bad.




Very true, but in the practice of illusions, it is best to present things in the best possible angle. 

If we appear inhumanly impartial, then at least it makes it seem more likely 

(I don't play that way, I'm constantly "bemoaning" the fate of my monsters and the successes of my players, most of them seem to enjoy the act, especially since I let them know it is all an act on top of it. I'm very silly at times) 






Charlaquin said:


> Sure there is. The action. The player says what they want to do and how their character tries to do it. The DM uses their brain to try to predict the most likely outcome, and if they cannot do so with certainty, they call for a roll. This process is called resolving, or sometimes adjudicating, the action. So, I guess it would be more accurate to say that dice rolls are _a part of_ the primary resolution mechanic, which is evaluating the goal and approach, relying on a weighted random number generator, in the form of a d20 roll with modifiers based on character statistics, to resolve any uncertainty that arises, and narrating the result based on this evaluation.




I think this is a point we will never agree on, because it is style and philosophy. I'm an amateur writer, and there are somethings which do not need "resolved" in a scene, they follow logically and I don't need to really put forth the same effort that other sections require to even make progress in. 

The same with the game, things which follow naturally with no question do not get resolved, they simply follow naturally. Resolving would require a serious effort of thought, because they are uncertain.  





Charlaquin said:


> Again, I disagree that not knowing the potential consequences of a failed skill check is necessarily more dramatic or interesting. On the contrary, I think it is less dramatic and interesting because it hides what's at stake. I've referenced this before in this thread, I don't remember if it was with you, but I think Alfred Hitchcock's essay on why information is essential for creating suspense is equally applicable to roleplaying games as it is to filmmaking. I think a lot of DMs just get too caught up in worrying about keeping information the characters "couldn't know" out of the players hands and end up convincing themselves that they are making the game more dramatic by keeping information from the players instead of less.




I'm skipping a lot of your post, but I feel like this is a point worth addressing. 

Having not read Hitchcock's essay, I may only assume, but my guess is that he was more referencing a light touch of information rather than a blatant telling of all information. I'm going to talk about mystery writing to clarify my point. 

In a mystery novel, if the entire plot twists upon knowing about the Evil Twin of the Uncle, and you never reference or hint at it until the final reveal, you have written a poor mystery. For the reader to get the most enjoyment, you generally need to add clues and allusions to the story, things that subtly point in the direction of the hidden information. Because it should be possible for the reader to solve the mystery before the main character does. 

However, if the main character gets shot at in the dark of night, and they and the reader have no idea who attacked them, this does not a bad mystery make. This is hidden information, this is something that the character "couldn't know", the identity of their attacker. And yet, it does not by it's nature take away from the mystery and tension, because there is a question to be answered. 

And even if that question is answered ten minutes later after a car chase, it still provides exactly the tension I am speaking about. We have entered a realm of uncertainty, which means we must imagine what the outcome will be, and that can be highly exciting. 

Additionally, remember that Hitchcock was not talking about gaming, either video game design or tabletop game design. Hitchcock's model is for a separate audience watching the character move through the world. In the world of gaming, the audience is the character moving through the world, which is an entirely different type of engagement. I do not approach playing DnD in the same mindset that I approach watching a movie, and people who direct games might find the some of the techniques used in directing movies to be a poor fit.  




Charlaquin said:


> Sure, but what harm is done by telling the player the chandelier will fall if they fail? Don't tell them, you risk a scenario where the player, who had been expecting the chandelier to remain up if he fell so his other party members could still try to use it to escape, protests "I wouldn't have jumped if I'd known it might have broken!" Tell them, and... What? You ruin the surprise when it falls? I think you might be overestimating the drama added by _not_ telling the players things, and underestimating the drama added by telling them.




The only negative you give for not telling them seems to be the player protesting "If I'd known I wouldn't have done it". And that is something that has only happened to me once, and that was when I misunderstood a player and had them enter a building they had not actually wanted to enter. 

I'm not hiding everything from them, I'm not even hiding most things from them, but sometimes it is more fun when there are things they don't know. And while I could contrive any scenario so that the players had perfect awareness of every aspect of the environment and the NPCs within that environment and all their motivations... sometimes it is more fun not to know. Sometimes it is fun to make a decision with limited information, and find out that it was a poor decision in retrospect. It grounds things for me and my players. 




Seeing the discussion of my chandelier example, let me try to make sure things are entirely clear. 

Player chooses to swing from the chandelier and *fails the roll* I called for. 

This means they did not successfully swing across to the otherside by use of the chandelier. 

*This most likely means they fall*. 

Instead of just saying they missed the jump, or they fall, I decided to spice it up by saying they landed heavily on the chandelier and it broke and fell. 

If I really got challenged by a player on why the chandelier broke, I'd inform them that it had been up for a few years, and their landing put too much shearing pressure on the screws holding it in the rafter, causing them to snap, which left too few screws in the wood to hold the weight of the chandelier plus a person standing on it, causing them to rip free and fall. 

Of course, I doubt that conversation takes place, because they knew as soon as the roll failed that they were probably going to fall, and they are more concerned with what they do next than arguing what just happened.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Isn't that the whole point of a third of the monsters in the old monster manuals?  Mimics, cloakers, monster floors that eat you?
> 
> Ahh, the good old days.



The old 1e MM2 introduced a monster called a Stunjelly, IIRC, that looked like a wall.  At that point, it was possible to build a room entirely out of monsters:  4 stun jellies, a trapper, a lurker above - and a mimic pretending to be the door.


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## Hussar (Apr 27, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The old 1e MM2 introduced a monster called a Stunjelly, IIRC, that looked like a wall.  At that point, it was possible to build a room entirely out of monsters:  4 stun jellies, a trapper, a lurker above - and a mimic pretending to be the door.




AIR, they went one further and actually gave us states for a House Mimic - I can't remember if that was the actual name or not, but, it was exactly that - a gigantic mimic that ate you when you went through the door.  

OTOH, I do loves the notion of a living dungeon.  As in a dungeon that is literally alive.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> AIR, they went one further and actually gave us states for a House Mimic - I can't remember if that was the actual name or not, but, it was exactly that - a gigantic mimic that ate you when you went through the door.



 Was it MV2 or 13A that had the living tower?



> OTOH, I do loves the notion of a living dungeon.  As in a dungeon that is literally alive.



 The 13A living dungeon concept is an inspired take on the D&D Dungeon stereotype: a maze of Hieronymus Bosch meets MC Esher architecture, full of mismatched monsters and arbitrary magical traps.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> (...I'm constantly "bemoaning" the fate of my monsters and the successes of my players, most of them seem to enjoy the act, especially since I let them know it is all an act on top of it. I'm very silly at times)




While I largely agree with [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] in this discussion, I am seeking to share some common ground here.  Our table very much enjoys this farce as well where I openly lament the party’s latest beat-down of my creatures.  We’ll see who laughs last, though!  Each battle is but a test for the final showdown with the BBEG!


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think trying to put people into boxes is problematic. I don't _incline_ any particular way.



Nor did I suggest otherwise - I simply referred to _those who incline that way_. Some people have preferences/inclinations. I'm one of them. As I've alread posted in this thread, that's why I don't play 5e D&D.



iserith said:


> I think "I only like games with this particular method" is self-limiting



I think you're probably right to me it looks like tautology.

I take it that you also think that such self-limiting is a bad thing or a (modest) character flaw. I personally don't think that. No one is under any obligation to cultivate a taste for all the options that are out there.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If I understand you,the fundamental difference is that I build my encounters based on how I see the world working.  If the chandelier looks fragile or if the building is old with rotting beams it makes sense that the chandelier may not support someone's weight.  The state of the building depends on the scene.  Abandoned?  Well maintained?  Opulent but the residents are maintaining a facade they haven't been able to afford for a long time?
> 
> I run my games as being a simulation of a fantasy world with simplified rules used to emulate that reality.  While I try to balance that with what will be fun and challenging for the group, I start from what makes sense in the wold.  Encounters and obstacles are derived from that scene.  Player knowledge is always based on PC knowledge.
> 
> ...



I doubt that what you describe here is an accurate contrast.

It's not about two different ways of building encounters. It's about two different ways of deciding whether or not this ceiling fixture is, at this point in time, sufficiently decrepit to break/fall under someone's weight.



Oofta said:


> I've been broadcasting the general state of the building. Whether this particular fixture is on the verge of collapse becomes a judgement call on the side of the player of whether they want to risk it.



Is "judgement call" here a synonym for _guess_? If not, what is the player's judgement meant to be based on?



Oofta said:


> I don't coddle my players.  If they want to take a risk, they take the risk.  If they're in a building with obvious signs of disrepair and wood rot and they want to swing from the chandelier I shouldn't need to spell out the fact that it may not hold.  It should be obvious.



Who do you think is "coddling" their players? (That said, I have been known to offer mine drinks and biscuits.)

How is confronting a player with a hard choice (eg let the assassin go, or else risk a fall from a chandelier to catch him/her!) a form of _coddling_?


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 27, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Is "judgement call" here a synonym for _guess_? If not, what is the player's judgement meant to be based on?




One could assume that their judgement call would be based off of the information they have been provided by the DM, including descriptions of the environment so far, the general tone of the campaign, and their basic understanding of the world



pemerton said:


> Who do you think is "coddling" their players? (That said, I have been known to offer mine drinks and biscuits.)
> 
> How is confronting a player with a hard choice (eg let the assassin go, or else risk a fall from a chandelier to catch him/her!) a form of _coddling_?




I believe the reference to coddling was in the idea of telling the player the consequences for all challenges or actions taken by their character. 

I would say coddling is a bit harsh, but I can see where the idea finds its roots.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The old 1e MM2 introduced a monster called a Stunjelly, IIRC



The Fiend Folio, not MM2.



Tony Vargas said:


> Was it MV2 or 13A that had the living tower?



MV2.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I think this is a point we will never agree on, because it is style and philosophy. I'm an amateur writer, and there are somethings which do not need "resolved" in a scene, they follow logically and I don't need to really put forth the same effort that other sections require to even make progress in.
> 
> The same with the game, things which follow naturally with no question do not get resolved, they simply follow naturally. Resolving would require a serious effort of thought, because they are uncertain.



At that point it's just semantics though. I would say that the outcome that follows naturally from its inciting action is still a resolution of that action, but if you prefer not to call it that, fine. If the consequences of your character's action follows naturally, that is preferable to that outcome needing to be resolved (by way of dice).



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm skipping a lot of your post, but I feel like this is a point worth addressing.
> 
> Having not read Hitchcock's essay, I may only assume, but my guess is that he was more referencing a light touch of information rather than a blatant telling of all information. I'm going to talk about mystery writing to clarify my point.



Essay might have been a bit of a lofty way to describe it, it was a brief excerpt from an interview. Here's what he said: "The element of suspense is giving the audience information. Now, you and I are sitting here. Suddenly a bomb goes off. Up we go, blown to smithereens. What did the audience have from watching this scene? 5 or 10 seconds of shock. Now, we do the scene over again, but we tell the audience there's a bomb underneath this table and it's going to go off in 5 minutes. Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. 'Don't talk about fooball, there's a bomb under there!' that's what they want to tell us. Then their anxieties will be as long as this clock ticks away."

Obviously he's discussing filmmaking here, where we're talking about RPGs, and specifically action resolution within RPGs. But what I think his point about information making the difference between shock and suspense is still very much applicable here. If the player (who is the audience for the RPG, excepting actual plays) doesn't know the potential consequences - or indeed, if there will even _be_ a consequence - for their declared action, what to they get out of that? Maybe a moment of surprise, if they fail and experience an unexpected consequence. What to they get if they know the potential consequence? Well, now they have information. They know what's at stake, so the time between when the pick up the die, and when they see the result is now imbued with that tension and anxiety Hitchcock spoke of. And whether the outcome is success or failure, that releases the anticipation. If they succeed, they are relieved, if they fail, their anxiety is realized. Either way, this is the more dramatic experience, in my opinion.



Chaosmancer said:


> In a mystery novel, if the entire plot twists upon knowing about the Evil Twin of the Uncle, and you never reference or hint at it until the final reveal, you have written a poor mystery. For the reader to get the most enjoyment, you generally need to add clues and allusions to the story, things that subtly point in the direction of the hidden information. Because it should be possible for the reader to solve the mystery before the main character does.
> 
> However, if the main character gets shot at in the dark of night, and they and the reader have no idea who attacked them, this does not a bad mystery make. This is hidden information, this is something that the character "couldn't know", the identity of their attacker. And yet, it does not by it's nature take away from the mystery and tension, because there is a question to be answered.
> 
> And even if that question is answered ten minutes later after a car chase, it still provides exactly the tension I am speaking about. We have entered a realm of uncertainty, which means we must imagine what the outcome will be, and that can be highly exciting.



This is a very different kind of drama than we're talking about though. You're talking about plot elements, I'm talking about immediate consequences of actions. I'm not advocating giving plot details away to the character, especially in a mystery scenario. I'm saying, don't hide the stakes from the character. Let them know what they're putting on the line in the moment, or its loss is only an unpleasant surprise instead of a release of dramatic tension.



Chaosmancer said:


> Additionally, remember that Hitchcock was not talking about gaming, either video game design or tabletop game design. Hitchcock's model is for a separate audience watching the character move through the world. In the world of gaming, the audience is the character moving through the world, which is an entirely different type of engagement. I do not approach playing DnD in the same mindset that I approach watching a movie, and people who direct games might find the some of the techniques used in directing movies to be a poor fit.



Indeed, in gaming the audience is an active participant in the narrative, which forces us to address things a little differently than we would in a medium where the audience is a passive observer. That said, in that context I think it is still necessary for the audience to know what is at stake to create suspense.



Chaosmancer said:


> The only negative you give for not telling them seems to be the player protesting "If I'd known I wouldn't have done it". And that is something that has only happened to me once, and that was when I misunderstood a player and had them enter a building they had not actually wanted to enter.
> 
> I'm not hiding everything from them, I'm not even hiding most things from them, but sometimes it is more fun when there are things they don't know. And while I could contrive any scenario so that the players had perfect awareness of every aspect of the environment and the NPCs within that environment and all their motivations... sometimes it is more fun not to know. *Sometimes it is fun to make a decision with limited information, and find out that it was a poor decision in retrospect*. It grounds things for me and my players.



The bolded section does not hold true for me. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Seeing the discussion of my chandelier example, let me try to make sure things are entirely clear.
> 
> Player chooses to swing from the chandelier and *fails the roll* I called for.
> 
> ...



Ok, but you can't know with 100% certainty that the player knows this. Telling them "If you fail, you'll fall, you sure you want to risk that?" is a simple matter that handily insures everyone is on the same page. If the player already expected their character to fall on a failure, no harm done, but if they didn't realize this was a potential risk, you avoid a potential dispute. For me, that's reason enough to give the player that reminder, and I really don't see any compelling reason not to. I don't think this is a situation where "it's more fun not to know" is a compelling argument in favor of not telling the player, because as you observe, it's likely pretty obvious, and on the off chance that the player doesn't realize their character might fall here, it's going to be an unpleasant surprise.



Chaosmancer said:


> Instead of just saying they missed the jump, or they fall, I decided to spice it up by saying they landed heavily on the chandelier and it broke and fell.



But that's not just a bit of narrative flair there, there is an actual meaningful difference between falling and the chandelier remaining up, or falling and the chandelier falling as well. If the chandelier falls, it's no longer up there for other characters to try and swing on, or to cut it and drop it on the heads of reinforcement guards that show up at the bottom, or whatever. The decision to make the chandelier fall isn't a purely aesthetic one, it has a very real impact on the players' future options.



Chaosmancer said:


> If I really got challenged by a player on why the chandelier broke, I'd inform them that it had been up for a few years, and their landing put too much shearing pressure on the screws holding it in the rafter, causing them to snap, which left too few screws in the wood to hold the weight of the chandelier plus a person standing on it, causing them to rip free and fall.
> 
> Of course, I doubt that conversation takes place, because they knew as soon as the roll failed that they were probably going to fall, and they are more concerned with what they do next than arguing what just happened.



Sure. Chances are, no one is going to make a stink about this outcome, even if they are a bit miffed by it. In the grand scheme of things, this is a really minor blip, not worth getting into an argument over. Most players aren't going to be bothered by this call, and those that are will most likely just roll their eyes and move on. But I still think that on the whole, reminding the players of the potential consequences of their actions, and designing scenarios not to hide that information from their characters, leads to an overall more satisfying experience. If you disagree, that's cool. Again, not telling you how to run your game, just telling you why I choose to run mine the way I do.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> One could assume that their judgement call would be based off of the information they have been provided by the DM, including descriptions of the environment so far, the general tone of the campaign, and their basic understanding of the world



The description of the environment was simply that the building is decrepit.

How is "judging" whether or not the GM will decide that the chandelier in a decrepit house might fall if leapt on any different from _guessing_ that same thing?

And if the answer is that the possiblity is implict in the situation and the player's knowledge of the GM's taste and table practices, then it no longer serves an example of the consequences not being known to the player! Which is what it was presented as (by  [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]).



Chaosmancer said:


> I believe the reference to coddling was in the idea of telling the player the consequences for all challenges or actions taken by their character.



So it's "coddling" to tell it to the players, but it's not "coddling" to wink it to them (by way of _descriptions of the environment so far, the general tone of the campaign, and their basic understanding of the world_)? That's not a contrast I find easy to follow. Particularly in the context of interpreting a poster who was making a big deal of _not_ telegraphing traps.

Let's look at it another way:

The player knows chandeliers, in general, may fall under human weight. The player also knows (because the GM said so) that this building is run down. That increases the prospect that the chandelier might fall when leapt on.

The player, knowing all this, declares that his/her PC wants to leap onto the chandelier and swing across the room to pursue the assassin. The GM calls for a check, which gives rise to a chance of failure.

_How is it coddling the player to tell them that, on a failed check, they will bring down the chandelier?_ What advantage is being ceded? The player already is uncertain as to the outcome of the action, because the check is required. What additional challenge is created by keeping the player uncertain as to what the GM thinks the result of failure should be? It's just adding more guessing on top of an already uncertain resolution process. I don't see that it makes things any harder (less coddled) for the player.


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## iserith (Apr 27, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You are right I could.
> 
> My answer is that labeling player approaches as "good" or "bad" is tone deaf at best and a practice I refuse to engage in. If I ever tell a player "That was a bad approach, so now X" in response to their declared actions, then I will have hit my lowest point as a DM.




Whether or not we're asked to say whether a thing is good or bad, we're tasked as DMs by the rules of D&D 5e to judge whether a player's approach to a goal makes the task trivial or impossible and, if neither and accompanied by a meaningful consequence of failure, to call for a roll of some kind. Do we agree on that point?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

I'll admit I'm perplexed why there is resistance to telling the player the consequences of failure.

If helping them making an informed decision is "coddling" then I'm all for it: I'd rather have them know the stakes, so that when they decide to roll that die they know what they're rolling for.  As Charlaquin says, and supports with the Hitchcock quote, the suspense is so much more delicious when you know what that stakes are.

Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence.  "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise.  Are you _sure_...?"  But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'll admit I'm perplexed why there is resistance to telling the player the consequences of failure.




Because it's frequently not apparent.

Consider this: a pit appears bottomless, but is actually an illusion - it's really on 3 feet deep. What do you do, tell them the truth: "if you fail this roll nothing bad will happen", blatantly lie to them "you will fall to your death", or tell them nothing, thus letting them know there is something fishy about the pit, because you normally tell them what will happen?


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Because it's frequently not apparent.
> 
> Consider this: a pit appears bottomless, but is actually an illusion - it's really on 3 feet deep. What do you do, tell them the truth: "if you fail this roll nothing bad will happen", blatantly lie to them "you will fall to your death", or tell them nothing, thus letting them know there is something fishy about the pit, because you normally tell them what will happen?




 @_*Elfcrusher*_ already answered this before your post:



Elfcrusher said:


> Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence.  "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise.  Are you _sure_...?"  But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.




"If you fail, you fall into the pit".  No more detail necessary.  The players can be terrified until they make it across safely and then perhaps laugh at the clumsy wizard who screamed as he fell three feet, reveling the illusion.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'll admit I'm perplexed why there is resistance to telling the player the consequences of failure.
> 
> If helping them making an informed decision is "coddling" then I'm all for it: I'd rather have them know the stakes, so that when they decide to roll that die they know what they're rolling for.  As Charlaquin says, and supports with the Hitchcock quote, the suspense is so much more delicious when you know what that stakes are.
> 
> Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence.  "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise.  Are you _sure_...?"  But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.




Why would they know?  Much like telegraphing traps, I give my players the same information I think the PCs would know.  In addition, it takes away the element of surprise.

I remember an old TV show "Kung Fu" with David Carradine back in the 70s about this guy who was a raised as a monk and went around beating up bad guys in the American old west because he was a man of peace.  In any case, there was a flashback scene to his training where he had to walk a balance beam across what he was told was acid.  He fell in, only to find the tank was just filled with water and the bones were fake.

My point is that (a) I'm old and (b) sometimes the consequence of failure is not what you expect.  Sometimes it's not as bad, sometimes it's worse.  Trying to disarm a trap and fail?  Who knows what's going to happen.  Maybe an alarm, maybe poison gas, maybe nothing because the acid that was supposed to spray you in the face dried up long ago but it turns your face purple for the next week.

Most people I play with enjoy that moment of wondering "what happens if I fail" and "oh, crap, a 1.  What happens?"  I know I do.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Why would they know?  Much like telegraphing traps, I give my players the same information I think the PCs would know.  In addition, it takes away the element of surprise.
> 
> I remember an old TV show "Kung Fu" with David Carradine back in the 70s about this guy who was a raised as a monk and went around beating up bad guys in the American old west because he was a man of peace.  In any case, there was a flashback scene to his training where he had to walk a balance beam across what he was told was acid.  He fell in, only to find the tank was just filled with water and the bones were fake.
> 
> ...




And again:



Elfcrusher said:


> Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence.  "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise.  Are you _sure_...?"  But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.




"If you fail, you are going to fall into the vat."  or maybe "if you fail by 5 or more, you are going to fall into the vat, if you fail by less than 5, I'll give you a chance to grab the beam as you fall." 
The contents of the vat have been telegraphed and the player is now aware of the failure consequence.  The player can still have their moment of wondering what happens at "splash!".


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> And again:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Sometimes the apparent consequence of failure will be apparent, sometimes it won't.  Sometimes there's no way of knowing, sometimes it's complex with varying degrees of complete and utter failure up to a stunning success.

I'm going to communicate everything pertinent to the scene that I think the PCs would know,  What the consequences of failure or success are is up to the players to figure out from that information.  I don't play D&D the Board Game, I don't tell them things their PCs would not know.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Sometimes the apparent consequence of failure will be apparent, sometimes it won't.  Sometimes there's no way of knowing, sometimes it's complex with varying degrees of complete and utter failure up to a stunning success.




Mostly agreed, except for the "no way of knowing" part.  In our games, experienced adventurers have some sense of the consequences of failure in their actions.  Might be just a completely vague sense, but it is there.



Oofta said:


> I'm going to communicate everything pertinent to the scene that I think the PCs would know,




Same here.



Oofta said:


> What the consequences of failure or success are is up to the players to figure out from that information.




Now, I know you don't play a "gotcha" style as I believe you've stated as much before and you've mentioned that you've been a highly sought after DM for over a decade (paraphrasing here - can't find the actual quote), so that wouldn't jive with "gotcha" DMing.  But, if the players don't truly don't know the consequences of their actions - or at least have some sense of them - then one is treading that dangerous ground of being accused of "gotcha" DMing.



Oofta said:


> I don't play D&D the Board Game, I don't tell them things their PCs would not know.




Same here.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> And again:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Since the character would see a cat, see a beam and reasonably obvious to them that falling off would have a chance to fall into said , it seems like this is challenging the assertion with an example that fits the category of "what character would know."

Seems odd. 

This is a far very much different thing from blanket statements like "all traps are telegraphed" and the like.

I too am in the camp of the scene and what is "seen" being the basis for the info the character and player gets. ("Seen"  being not just sight, obviously.)

Unlike movies, the player is a participant, not just a viewer. So, I dont need to hand them outside info to ramp up drama. I want the drama to come thru and from the character and that perspective, I find the lore of a skew that exists between what a player knows about the immediate perils and what the character knows about them, the more speed bumps one creates for that whole "being a character" bit.

It cznt be completely eliminated, but I sure dont have to go full hog the other way and script every trap to be telegraphed or an explicit statement of odds and results like fail by 5 and... etc.

Unless it's something mysterious or unknown they should get an idea from the scene just like their characters do.

I manage to achieve that without the extremes.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Mostly agreed, except for the "no way of knowing" part.  In our games, experienced adventurers have some sense of the consequences of failure in their actions.  Might be just a completely vague sense, but it is there.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




A player can always ask "can I tell what happens if..." and I will make sure the the scene is clear and possibly give an appropriate skill check which reflects their experience as an adventurer.  However, they don't get "spidey sense" unless there's a rules justification for it.  I don't do this to play "gotcha", but sometimes the unexpected happens.

Sometimes there's just no way to know what's going to happen if you push that big red button.  To me, that's part of the tension, and the drama, of the game.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> @_*Elfcrusher*_ already answered this before your post:
> 
> 
> 
> "If you fail, you fall into the pit".  No more detail necessary.  The players can be terrified until they make it across safely and then perhaps laugh at the clumsy wizard who screamed as he fell three feet, reveling the illusion.





But it's blindingly obvious if the player is making a skill roll to jump across a pit that they will fall if they fail, there is no need to state it, and quite frankly it's an insult to the player's intelligence to do so.

So there are two possibilities: either the consequence of failure is obvious, or the consequence of failure will only be revealed if it happens. In either case, there is no reason for the DM to say anything until it actually happens.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> A player can always ask "can I tell what happens if..." and I will make sure the the scene is clear and possibly give an appropriate skill check which reflects their experience as an adventurer.  However, they don't get "spidey sense" unless there's a rules justification for it.  I don't do this to play "gotcha", but sometimes the unexpected happens.




Agreed.  All I am saying is that, in our game, the player gets to have a sense of what happens upon failure.  Maybe not the full picture, but enough to allow them to determine if they really want to try the action or not.  The tension and drama occur when they risk it anyway (which they almost always do) or regroup to figure out another way.



Oofta said:


> Sometimes there's just no way to know what's going to happen if you push that big red button.  To me, that's part of the tension, and the drama, of the game.




Perhaps the "big red button" is just a metaphor, but pushing a button is not in the same ability check category as these other challenges we are describing - smashing down a door, leaping across a pit, or getting across a beam.  The PC either pushes the button or they don't.  I don't think any style of play is going to makes someone roll for that and there's no need to provide a consequence of failure.  What happens after the PC pushes the button certainly could be a mystery assuming, for example, there's no label near the button and/or an NPC who could tell them what happens.  But, we're kinda off topic here.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> But it's blindingly obvious if the player is making a skill roll to jump across a pit that they will fall if they fail, there is no need to state it, and quite frankly it's an insult to the player's intelligence to do so.
> 
> So there are two possibilities: either the consequence of failure is obvious, or the consequence of failure will only be revealed if it happens. In either case, there is no reason for the DM to say anything until it actually happens.



Not disagreeing with you but... the third possibility is that the consequence is not obvious **but** there are ways the PCs can try and determine it or mitigate it. Some of these efforts may have their own consequences in time, resources, risks of their own (noise, tracks, etc)

Net result is not just two cases but a spectrum, none of which require a GM to Player declaration be explicit, especially by default. 

I myself get quickly turned off of RPGs or systems where every resolution brings the GM up front with a sort of negotiation to set the stage for the resolution. The more we need to overtly spend time on out of scene stuff to get thru events, the more I get driven away from a scene and the less I enjoy it. I have left aside more than a few rpg systems for this very reason. 

But, this is a statement of preference and experience. Others will vary.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> But it's blindingly obvious if the player is making a skill roll to jump across a pit that they will fall if they fail, there is no need to state it, and quite frankly it's an insult to the player's intelligence to do so.
> 
> So there are two possibilities: either the consequence of failure is obvious, or the consequence of failure will only be revealed if it happens. In either case, there is no reason for the DM to say anything until it actually happens.




The scenario is perhaps over-simplified.  A consequence of failure might not be blindingly obvious:  if you fail, you make it across the pit but hit your head on the low tunnel ceiling taking 1d6 bludgeoning damage.  Or if you fail, you make it across just barely and will be hanging onto the lip of the pit.  The consequence of failure need not be obvious nor only revealed if it happens.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 27, 2019)

I frequently comment that IMO many or most GMs should run a few diceless games. My experience is it helps them get perspective, experiences and techniques that carry over into diced games and may make them better.

That has some applicability here.

I am sure it's very efficient to have before every check a formal statement of success/fail/stakes and/or negotiation to set those. I am sure it after a while becomes quick. For those who value getting a lot done in a session of preventing any lack of clarity, that's great, I am sure.

But, I am also sure that in many cases it risks  *becoming* the important part because you are not needing to rely on all that scene description to convey the info, the real info is in the stakes-fu dialog. It's just not as important to create the living and robust scene and depict it in detail when the **actual decisions** will be defined and made in the stakes-fu dialog. 

In my diceless games, the systems and play taught me to look at the scene, its setup and descriptions as not just atmosphere but as meaningful. In some games, the emphasis is tone and flavor and using scenery for that. In some the scenery spices up things but is mostly just setting. 

In diceless games, choice is the randomizer and the focus on scenery is its meaningful use to shift the outcome. So, you get used to thinking in terms of how scenery matters to the play, how it can be used, etc and especially in how to convey that sufficiently by description. Its important to make the scene and scenery you describe as  "vital" to the outcomes.

That followed me into my diced games and so I took how we depict the scene, what the character sees etc as "vital" not just tone or setting. 

If instead we all know there will be an explicit stakes-fu dialog where the scenery, scene or choices get boiled down to "the actual facts and choices "buy" the numbers" in a stakes negotiation before a choice is ever made, then that descriptive stuff becomes far less critical. It becomes akin to the campaign speech waiting before the actual policy in writing. 

To me, and my players, i have seen things like that detract from the overall enjoyment more than they add. 

So we rely on the in-character stuff for the choices, the drama, the expectations and all that scenery and description over more meta-game stakes and solutions.

But that us, not for everyone.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> But it's blindingly obvious if the player is making a skill roll to jump across a pit that they will fall if they fail, there is no need to state it, and quite frankly it's an insult to the player's intelligence to do so.
> 
> So there are two possibilities: either the consequence of failure is obvious, or the consequence of failure will only be revealed if it happens. In either case, there is no reason for the DM to say anything until it actually happens.




I disagree.  The _assumed_ consequence would be falling in the vat, but maybe there's some other complication here.  I would think it's unfair to the players to let them think that a failure means falling into the pit, but then when they fail you spring some other surprise consequence on them.  So if the consequence is falling, just tell them.  As DM Dave said, they don't have to know what's in the pit. Maybe it's illusory? (But if there's some trick it should also be discoverable.)

I dunno, I just think it's more suspenseful and immersive (in the sense of emotional investment, not in the "perfect simulation" sense) to drop ominous hints.  Done right it both raises the dramatic tension and avoids players feeling like they've been gotcha'd.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Agreed.  All I am saying is that, in our game, the player gets to have a sense of what happens upon failure.  Maybe not the full picture, but enough to allow them to determine if they really want to try the action or not.  The tension and drama occur when they risk it anyway (which they almost always do) or regroup to figure out another way.
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps the "big red button" is just a metaphor, but pushing a button is not in the same ability check category as these other challenges we are describing - smashing down a door, leaping across a pit, or getting across a beam.  The PC either pushes the button or they don't.  I don't think any style of play is going to makes someone roll for that and there's no need to provide a consequence of failure.  What happens after the PC pushes the button certainly could be a mystery assuming, for example, there's no label near the button and/or an NPC who could tell them what happens.  But, we're kinda off topic here.




Yeah maybe I should have put [METAPHOR]big red button[/METAPHOR].  

In a lot of my campaigns there are frequently numerous [METAPHOR]big red buttons[/METAPHOR], and not just related to skill challenges.  Whom do you trust?  What do you believe when there's conflicting evidence?  Who's really behind the metaphorical curtain pulling the levers?

But it really depends on the campaign and the players.  Basically it's just one technique I try to use to make the game fun for everyone.

As far as knowing all possible consequences even though my PC would not, no thanks.  Just not the kind of game I would want to play.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I disagree.  The _assumed_ consequence would be falling in the vat, but maybe there's some other complication here.  I would think it's unfair to the players to let them think that a failure means falling into the pit, but then when they fail you spring some other surprise consequence on them.  So if the consequence is falling, just tell them.  As DM Dave said, they don't have to know what's in the pit. Maybe it's illusory? (But if there's some trick it should also be discoverable.)
> 
> I dunno, I just think it's more suspenseful and immersive (in the sense of emotional investment, not in the "perfect simulation" sense) to drop ominous hints.  Done right it both raises the dramatic tension and avoids players feeling like they've been gotcha'd.




That's the point of _not_ telling them: let them assume. If they assumed wrong, that's their fault. Life aint predictable, and sometimes failing might lead to a better outcome than success.

The only exception is when something would be apparent to the characters that might not be apparent to the players. For example a low overhead beam. Even then, only tell them what their characters notice, not the outcome.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Because it's frequently not apparent.
> 
> Consider this: a pit appears bottomless, but is actually an illusion - it's really on 3 feet deep. What do you do, tell them the truth: "if you fail this roll nothing bad will happen", blatantly lie to them "you will fall to your death", or tell them nothing, thus letting them know there is something fishy about the pit, because you normally tell them what will happen?




I don’t call for a roll, because there is no consequence for failure.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> But it's blindingly obvious if the player is making a skill roll to jump across a pit that they will fall if they fail, there is no need to state it, and quite frankly it's an insult to the player's intelligence to do so.
> 
> So there are two possibilities: either the consequence of failure is obvious, or the consequence of failure will only be revealed if it happens. In either case, there is no reason for the DM to say anything until it actually happens.





5ekyu said:


> Since the character would see a cat, see a beam and reasonably obvious to them that falling off would have a chance to fall into said , it seems like this is challenging the assertion with an example that fits the category of "what character would know."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



The first of these quotes doesn't describe how I prefer to GM a game.

The second is closer - but I think (given my preferences) that the connection between the character and the scene should be more "intimate" than what I am getting from 5ekyu's post. It's not just that the player gets an idea from the scene - but what's at stake in the scene should be something that issues from the character.

So the example that was given upthread, of discovering without "telegraphing" or implication, that disturbing the magic circle sends you to the far north, wouldn't be something I would do in a game in which location/geograph has any great significance.

The vat wouldn't be filled with acid, nor the pit illusory, without that having some logic in the situation _not_ as conceived by the GM in secret but _as conceived by the player in relation to the character_.



Paul Farquhar said:


> That's the point of _not_ telling them: let them assume. If they assumed wrong, that's their fault. Life aint predictable, and sometimes failing might lead to a better outcome than success.



This sounds like a game in which the GM is wielding very great control over the outcomes.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This sounds like a game in which the GM is wielding very great control over the outcomes.




As a DM I build and control the world which responds to the actions (or lack therein) of they PCs.  The players help fill in bits and pieces, but it's almost always offline and background information.  While they may occasionally ask if there's a chandelier to swing from and **poof** it was always there if it makes sense, they don't get to decide if the pit is bottomless or just an illusion.  Or if it truly was bottomless would you just slowly die of thirst?  I mean, it would be quite boring after a while if you just kept falling forever.  

As far as broadcasting, I may tell them it's a 30 ft drop into the alley before they start climbing on the ledge and remind them they have seen the guards patrolling the area.  They should know that falling that far onto what looks like piles of broken crates and garbage would hurt in addition to making a lot of noise.  But they won't know about the oytugh hiding in the garbage unless they have a good enough perception.

I know some people enjoy building scenes together, but much like the "always say yes" it's just not how I run the game nor would I enjoy it as much.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t call for a roll, because there is no consequence for failure.




Untrue. "Everyone laughs at them" is a consequence. Not all consequences have to be life threatening, or do anything mechanical. It's called role playing.

It's also a very odd way to play. The player doesn't know the pit won't kill them, nor does their character. If no one fails they may never  discover the pit was an illusion. If they don't discover _that_ illusion they may not be clued in to look out for illusions further in. Like a horror film, D&D relies a lot of false peril to disguise the real peril. There are those statues that _don't_ come to life and attack you; the illusionary wall of fire; the guards who really aren't interested in the party but look menacing. Not rolling the dice is like flashing "don't worry it's only a cat" on the screen whenever there is a strange noise in a horror movie.

You roll the dice whenever the outcome is uncertain. The player decides their character is going to tell a joke in the tavern. Make a performance check. Consequence of success: everyone laughs. Consequence of failure: no one laughs. That's role playing.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> That's the point of _not_ telling them: let them assume. If they assumed wrong, that's their fault.



See, what I always come back to is, how does this improve the game? Telling the players the outcome can make the experience more rewarding, because failure is always the result of a calculated risk the player knowingly accepted. How is the game improved by making the players rely on their assumptions?



Paul Farquhar said:


> Life aint predictable, and sometimes failing might lead to a better outcome than success.



I don’t see that. When does failure on a check lead to a better outcome than success?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

Well, I’ll give you guys credit for consistency: if the players don’t know what the risk:reward profile looks like, nobody can say it’s ‘challenging the players not the characters.’ Hard to be challenged when you have no idea what’s going on.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The language of "building scenes together" can be a bit misleading - I was referring to _outcomes_, not _framing_.

BUt in any event, you also seem to be describing a game in which the GM wields very great control over the outcomes.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Untrue. "Everyone laughs at them" is a consequence. Not all consequences have to be life threatening, or do anything mechanical. It's called role playing.



Sure, but “everyone laughs at them” is also a potential consequence of failing to tie your shoes. We don’t make checks for that because it’s not an interesting consequence. Maybe if your game is focused on slapstick, it makes sense to call for rolls to avoid harmless but comical prat falls, but that’s not the sort of conflict I’m interested in playing out. I think you and I also have different definitions of roleplaying, but that’s a whole other discussion.



Paul Farquhar said:


> It's also a very odd way to play. The player doesn't know the pit won't kill them, nor does their character. If no one fails they may never  discover the pit was an illusion. If they don't discover _that_ illusion they may not be clued in to look out for illusions further in. Like a horror film, D&D relies a lot of false peril to disguise the real peril. There are those statues that _don't_ come to life and attack you; the illusionary wall of fire; the guards who really aren't interested in the party but look menacing. Not rolling the dice is like flashing "don't worry it's only a cat" on the screen whenever there is a strange noise in a horror movie.



Note, I’m not telling the players in advance that the pit is an illusion and they won’t have to roll if they want to walk across it. I’m describing what the characters can observe - a seemingly bottomless pit - and asking them what they do. They, imagining themselves in their characters’ shoes, decide how to deal with this obstacle, and announce what they intend to do (which is what I consider roleplaying). If I don’t call for a roll, that only tells them that their approach did not have both a reasonable chance of failure and a meaningful consequence for failure. They don’t know that the reason for that is the illusory nature of the pit. In fact, I would think that the more intuitive assumption would be that their approach was effective enough not to need a roll to resolve.



Paul Farquhar said:


> You roll the dice whenever the outcome is uncertain. The player decides their character is going to tell a joke in the tavern. Make a performance check. Consequence of success: everyone laughs. Consequence of failure: no one laughs. That's role playing.



Again, I don’t consider that an interesting enough risk to bother with a dice roll. You can have that laugh, there’s no compelling reason not to give it to you. Now, if there are higher stakes; if, for example, tensions are running’s high, the tavern is on the verge of erupting into a brawl, and a good joke might just diffuse the tension and avoid a fight breaking out, then I’ll call for a roll. But if we’re just hanging out at the tavern, I see no compelling reason not to just let your joke land.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Sure, but “everyone laughs at them” is also a potential consequence of failing to tie your shoes. We don’t make checks for that because it’s not an interesting consequence. Maybe if your game is focused on slapstick, it makes sense to call for rolls to avoid harmless but comical prat falls, but that’s not the sort of conflict I’m interested in playing out. I think you and I also have different definitions of roleplaying, but that’s a whole other discussion.
> 
> 
> Note, I’m not telling the plauer’s in advance that the pit is an illusion and they won’t have to roll if they want to walk across it. I’m describing what the characters can observe - a seemingly bottomless pit - and asking them what they do. They, imagining themselves in their characters’ shoes, deciding how to deal with this obstacle, and announcing what they intend to do. If I don’t call for a roll, that only tells them that their approach did not have both a reasonable chance of success and a meaningful consequence for failure. They don’t know that the reason for that is the illusory nature of the pit. In fact, I would think that the more natural assumption would be that their approach was effective enough not to need a roll to resolve.
> ...




That’s why the consequences aspect is often described as “changing the state of the game world,” right? That is, the consequences need to be something that will affect future decision points. 

So if the PCs will eventually need the support of the other people in the tavern, and they know or at least suspect that, then being laughed at is a meaningful consequence. 

If they don’t know that being laughed at is the consequence, or that losing the respect of the audience matters, then it won’t feel like anything is on the line.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Yeah maybe I should have put [METAPHOR]big red button[/METAPHOR].
> 
> In a lot of my campaigns there are frequently numerous [METAPHOR]big red buttons[/METAPHOR], and not just related to skill challenges.  Whom do you trust?  What do you believe when there's conflicting evidence?  Who's really behind the metaphorical curtain pulling the levers?
> 
> But it really depends on the campaign and the players.  Basically it's just one technique I try to use to make the game fun for everyone.




Sounds good.



Oofta said:


> As far as knowing all possible consequences even though my PC would not, no thanks.  Just not the kind of game I would want to play.




Not in my game either.  The players are told the consequences for failure that their PCs would know.  Not all possible consequences.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t see that. When does failure on a check lead to a better outcome than success?




What, in real life or the game?

I've already given an in game example: If a character fails to jump across the illusionary pit they discover it's an illusion. They now know that there are illusions in the dungeon and take precautions that enable them to avoid a more deadly illusion. Or, more directly, the pit is an illusion and so is the "solid" ground on the other side. If the person makes a successful leap the fall through the illusionary floor into a pit of poison spikes. Classic D&D dungeons Like White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors are full of traps of that kind.

Or, in real life, someone is running for the bus. They don't run fast enough so the miss the bus. A few minutes later the bus is in a horrific crash that would have killed the person who didn't run fast enough.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> What, in real life or the game?



In the game.



Paul Farquhar said:


> I've already given an in game example: If a character fails to jump across the illusionary pit they discover it's an illusion. They now know that there are illusions in the dungeon and take precautions that enable them to avoid a more deadly illusion. Or, more directly, the pit is an illusion and so is the "solid" ground on the other side. If the person makes a successful leap the fall through the illusionary floor into a pit of poison spikes. Classic D&D dungeons Like White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors are full of traps of that kind.



Ok, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the clarification.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Sure, but “everyone laughs at them” is also a potential consequence of failing to tie your shoes. We don’t make checks for that because it’s not an interesting consequence. Maybe if your game is focused on slapstick, it makes sense to call for rolls to avoid harmless but comical prat falls, but that’s not the sort of conflict I’m interested in playing out. I think you and I also have different definitions of roleplaying, but that’s a whole other discussion.




There is certainly lots of humour in our games, and we spend much of the time laughing. The game, like life, would be pretty grim and miserable if you took it seriously all the time.



Charlaquin said:


> Note, I’m not telling the players in advance that the pit is an illusion and they won’t have to roll if they want to walk across it. I’m describing what the characters can observe - a seemingly bottomless pit - and asking them what they do. They, imagining themselves in their characters’ shoes, decide how to deal with this obstacle, and announce what they intend to do (which is what I consider roleplaying).




Sure that's role playing. And it's also role playing if they walk into the tavern and announce what they want to drink.



> If I don’t call for a roll, that only tells them that their approach did not have both a reasonable chance of failure and a meaningful consequence for failure. They don’t know that the reason for that is the illusory nature of the pit.




It tells them enough that any player with more than half a brain would be able to deduce the illusionary nature of the pit. As Sherlock Holmes said "the curious incident of the dog in the night time".



Charlaquin said:


> Again, I don’t consider that an interesting enough risk to bother with a dice roll. You can have that laugh, there’s no compelling reason not to give it to you. Now, if there are higher stakes; if, for example, tensions are running’s high, the tavern is on the verge of erupting into a brawl, and a good joke might just diffuse the tension and avoid a fight breaking out, then I’ll call for a roll. But if we’re just hanging out at the tavern, I see no compelling reason not to just let your joke land.



Because the story is sometimes more entertaining if a joke falls flat.

Indeed, I specifically didn't give as an outcome "some people laugh and some don't". That's because even though it might be more realistic it doesn't make as interesting a story as "everyone loves you" or "everyone hates you".


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That’s why the consequences aspect is often described as “changing the state of the game world,” right? That is, the consequences need to be something that will affect future decision points.
> 
> So if the PCs will eventually need the support of the other people in the tavern, and they know or at least suspect that, then being laughed at is a meaningful consequence.
> 
> If they don’t know that being laughed at is the consequence, or that losing the respect of the audience matters, then it won’t feel like anything is on the line.




But the PCs would not know that they might need the support of the people in the tavern in the future. Maybe it will matter, maybe it won't.

Even the DM might not know. A player might come up with something like "you know those villagers who found us so entertaining the other night? We would like to go back there and try and rally them into a mob to drive out the corrupt mayor".

Butterfly wings. Even the smallest actions might have huge consequences, and not even the gods know which.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Sounds good.
> 
> 
> 
> Not in my game either.  The players are told the consequences for failure that their PCs would know.  Not all possible consequences.




Fair enough.  It seems like some of the other posters on this subject would tell the player all possible consequences whether their PCs were aware of them or not.  It's just something I've never actually seen in a D&D game although it's certainly par for the course in other games.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> There is certainly lots of humour in our games, and we spend much of the time laughing. The game, like life, would be pretty grim and miserable if you took it seriously all the time.



There’s plenty of humor in my games too, it just isn’t derived from characters failing checks in harmless but comical ways.



Paul Farquhar said:


> Sure that's role playing. And it's also role playing if they walk into the tavern and announce what they want to drink.



Agreed.



Paul Farquhar said:


> It tells them enough that any player with more than half a brain would be able to deduce the illusionary nature of the pit. As Sherlock Holmes said "the curious incident of the dog in the night time".



I disagree. Actions succeed without a roll quite often in my games, and very rarely is it due to the apparent obstacle being an illusion. When you see a pit, you come up with a plan to cross it, and the DM narrates your plan succeeding without further complication, the most natural conclusion to draw is not that the pit must have been an illusion. The much more intuitive assumption is simply that your approach was certain to get you safely across the pit. Now, maybe if you’ve come across other illusory obstacles in this dungeon before, you might suspect this pit of being illusory as well. But in isolation, getting safely across a pit without needing to roll is not such an unusual event in my games as to raise suspicion of illusions.



Paul Farquhar said:


> Because the story is sometimes more entertaining if a joke falls flat.
> 
> Indeed, I specifically didn't give as an outcome "some people laugh and some don't". That's because even though it might be more realistic it doesn't make as interesting a story as "everyone loves you" or "everyone hates you".



I agree, which is why I gave an example of a scenario where that might be the case. The appeal of stories lies in conflict. I don’t see any conflict in the scenario where the only difference between success and failure is whether everyone laughs and no one does. Now, if no one laughs _and_ a surly fellow who found your joke distasteful is now giving you the stink eye and cracking his knuckles. That’s a scenario where the consequence for failure is dramatically interesting. But “nobody finds it funny. There are a few moments of awkward silence before the patrons return to their business,” is not narratively interesting to me.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> But the PCs would not know that they might need the support of the people in the tavern in the future. Maybe it will matter, maybe it won't.
> 
> Even the DM might not know. A player might come up with something like "you know those villagers who found us so entertaining the other night? We would like to go back there and try and rally them into a mob to drive out the corrupt mayor".
> 
> Butterfly wings. Even the smallest actions might have huge consequences, and not even the gods know which.




This doesn’t stop being the case because the success was determined without a dice roll.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Fair enough.  It seems like some of the other posters on this subject would tell the player all possible consequences whether their PCs were aware of them or not.




Which other posters? Certainly not me, I’ve made multiple explicit statements to the contrary.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Which other posters? Certainly not me, I’ve made multiple explicit statements to the contrary.




Maybe I'm misunderstanding things like



Elfcrusher said:


> Well, I’ll give you guys credit for consistency: if the players don’t know what the risk:reward profile looks like, nobody can say it’s ‘challenging the players not the characters.’ Hard to be challenged when you have no idea what’s going on.





as one recent example.  I guess maybe I've just been lumping it into the same "trap here" signs that some people seem to place in their dungeons.  

I'm not saying _you_ do anything like that, I'm just stating what I do.  As with a lot of things on this thread I sometimes feel like I play and run a different game than other people.  But then again, it's just a message board and ideas/intent/concepts get lost.

EDIT: I'm also not saying anyone else is doing it wrong even if they do it differently.


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## Satyrn (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> It seems like some of the other posters on this subject would tell the player all possible consequences whether their PCs were aware of them or not.




I don't get that impression, but maybe I'm wrong. Raise your hands, forumites, if that's what you do!


. . .


*Sheepishly raises his hand*

Oh. I kinda see my method in that. When I tell the player to roll a check, I do tell them the DC and briefly mention what failure will look like. But what I tell them it's probably nowhere near as detailed as you're imagining.

If a player is insighting an NPC to detect a lie, all I'm really saying is "Give me a Wisdom check, DC 10, on a failure you don't learn anything and can't try again."

If he's jumping that illusionary bottomless pit, it's "Give me a Strength check, DC 10, on a failure you fall into the pit."

And, as I've said earlier, this is when the character is in the act of doing. The player doesn''t get to rewind time at this point.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Maybe I'm misunderstanding things likeSnip)as one recent example.  I guess maybe I've just been lumping it into the same "trap here" signs that some people seem to place in their dungeons.  I'm not saying _you_ do anything like that, I'm just stating what I do.  As with a lot of things on this thread I sometimes feel like I play and run a different game than other people.  But then again, it's just a message board and ideas/intent/concepts get lost.



Placing “trap here” signs is another thing I don’t think many, if any of us, do. There is a world of difference between telegraphing traps and outright telling the players there’s a trap here. I understand it’s hard to picture when you haven’t seen these techniques in actual play. There are actual plays where the DMs use this technique you could watch/read/listen to if you’re curious. I’m pretty sure Iserith has done a few. But with or without an actual play examples, it helps of you start from the assumption that a technique you’re unfamiliar with _does_ work, and endeavor tio understand how, instead of starting from the assumption that a technique wouldn’t work and demanding that its proponents prove to you that it would.


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## Oofta (Apr 27, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Placing “trap here” signs is another thing I don’t think many, if any of us, do. There is a world of difference between telegraphing traps and outright telling the players there’s a trap here. I understand it’s hard to picture when you haven’t seen these techniques in actual play. There are actual plays where the DMs use this technique you could watch/read/listen to if you’re curious. I’m pretty sure Iserith has done a few. But with or without an actual play examples, it helps of you start from the assumption that a technique you’re unfamiliar with _does_ work, and endeavor tio understand how, instead of starting from the assumption that a technique is nonsense and demanding that its proponents prove to you that it doesn’t ruin the game.




Different people play different ways.  Did I ever say your style of play was "ridiculous"?  I don't know how to say this that it doesn't sound like an apology that's not really an apology, but all I've done for quite some time now is state how I run my game.  So ... sorry if my minor fits of sarcasm bother you but I don't see much of a difference between telegraphing where traps are to the point that nobody is surprised by them is any different than putting a "trap here" sign.  I don't see how players could know all possible outcomes of failure unless you tell them things the PCs wouldn't know.

If it's not obvious by now, I take quite a different approach to my D&D games.  As stated up-thread I view D&D as a simplified simulator for letting people imagine what it would be like to be the protagonist of a fantasy story.  So simulator first, game second.

As far as iserith, he blocked me a long time ago because of this topic.  I think it bothered him that I didn't just agree with him ... but he wouldn't ever say exactly what it was that bothered him other then "don't do that".  When I asked what "that" was he blocked me. 

P.S. It doesn't really help to say that "if you just played it like we did you'd agree with us".  Just because I disagree with you, doesn't mean I don't understand you.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 27, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Different people play different ways.  Did I ever say your style of play was "ridiculous"?



Yeah, I realized that phrasing was a bit unfair, and I changed it to be a bit less hyperbolic in an edit, sorry for that original wording.



Oofta said:


> I don't know how to say this that it doesn't sound like an apology that's not really an apology, but all I've done for quite some time now is state how I run my game.



I mean, saying it seems like people place “trap here” signs is definitely not just stating how you run your game.



Oofta said:


> So ... sorry if my minor fits of sarcasm bother you but I don't see much of a difference between telegraphing where traps are to the point that nobody is surprised by them is any different than putting a "trap here" sign.  I don't see how players could know all possible outcomes of failure unless you tell them things the PCs wouldn't know.



Right, so start from the assumption that the technique does work. That would mean sufficient telegraphing of traps =/= nobody is surprised by them and telling players possible consequences for failure before they roll =/= the plauers kmow all possible outcomes for failure. Both of those statements are accurate, to my games at least. You would have less trouble understanding this style if you started from the baseline assumption that it does work.



Oofta said:


> If it's not obvious by now, I take quite a different approach to my D&D games.  As stated up-thread I view D&D as a simplified simulator for letting people imagine what it would be like to be the protagonist of a fantasy story.  So simulator first, game second.



Which is a perfectly valid and fun way to play the game, I’ve got no beef with that, even if I prefer to emphasize the game part a bit more in my own games.



Oofta said:


> P.S. It doesn't really help to say that "if you just played it like we did you'd agree with us".  Just because I disagree with you, doesn't mean I don't understand you.



I have never said that, and I don’t believe it. In fact, given what I’ve read from you, I’m pretty sure if you tried my waybof running things, you wouldn’t find it to your liking. I think you would probably dislike it less than you think you would, but I still don’t think you’d really like it. I’m not saying I don’t think you understand it because you don’t think you’d like it, I’m saying I don’t think you understand it because the techniques you keep attributing to an unspecified “some people in this thread” do not accurately reflect the techniques that most of us in this thread actually use.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

Yes, I (generally) tell players the consequences of a failed roll.  Like Satyrn, and as I've said several times, I try to leave it in general terms.  For example, I'll tell them they will land in the pit.  I won't tell them it's an illusory pit, or the liquid is (or isn't) acid, etc.

But somehow that nuance keeps getting overlooked, and the approach repeatedly gets caricatured* as telling the players everything. Of 'coddling' them.  Of putting up 'trap here' signs.  Etc.  

*As does pretty much everything in threads like these.

Here's a question: what's coddling players more, telegraphing the nature of the consequence of a failure, or not even having failures trigger meaningful consequences?  Talk about irony!


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## Hussar (Apr 27, 2019)

Who's having failures not trigger meaningful consequences?  The chandelier did fall, the character did believe the lie.  Is anyone arguing for a lack of meaningful consequences for failure?



			
				Charlaquin said:
			
		

> That would mean sufficient telegraphing of traps =/= nobody is surprised by them and telling players possible consequences for failure before they roll =/= the plauers kmow all possible outcomes for failure. Both of those statements are accurate, to my games at least




The problem, I think, that folks are having here is how you can both telegraph a trap AND surprise a player with that trap.  Or, and this is my bigger issue, if you tell a possible consequence of failure to the player and then go with a totally different consequence, don't your players get annoyed?

I mean, if I'm swinging on that chandelier (why is this always an example? In 30+ years of gaming I've NEVER seen a player try this) and you tell me that I'll miss the jump if I fail my check and then have the chandelier break, don't your players react pretty negatively?

I've been repeatedly told that allowing my players to roll first will result in the players being angry for things like "Well, I didn't SAY I was doing that".  I avoid that by being pretty clear up front that actions are resolved AFTER the roll, which means that the DM gets a smidgeon of control over the character from time to time.  Making that roll indicates that you are okay with that.

But, if you tell me X is going to happen if I fail and then Y happens, how is that not a bait and switch?  "I wouldn't have done that if I thought that THAT could happen."


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, I (generally) tell players the consequences of a failed roll.  Like Satyrn, and as I've said several times, I try to leave it in general terms.  For example, I'll tell them they will land in the pit.  I won't tell them it's an illusory pit, or the liquid is (or isn't) acid, etc.
> 
> But somehow that nuance keeps getting overlooked, and the approach repeatedly gets caricatured* as telling the players everything. Of 'coddling' them.  Of putting up 'trap here' signs.  Etc.
> 
> ...



"Here's a question: what's coddling players more, telegraphing the nature of the consequence of a failure, or not even having failures trigger meaningful consequences? Talk about irony!"

If a check is being made, it's being made to reflect an action - an attempt to do something. Even if its only "you didn't get it" that is a consequence. How meaningful the consequence is or will be is a matter of context, regardless of the degree to which it is played thru in game orvthru meta-game negotiations.

"You take 3d6 poison damage from needle trap" may be very meaningful for a 1st level group still in a dungeon or other risky situation. But for a 5th level party relaxing in their inn before a night's rest, it's likely far from meaningful - trivial. But since the party has not ben told in advance that is the case, a check is made anyway.

It's when the context is removed that you get into whacky misperceptions.


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## Oofta (Apr 28, 2019)

There have been long, long discussions about how players shouldn't be surprised by traps.  That they should be broadcast.   That if someone can describe what their doing there's no need to roll a D20.  That if people don't know what the possible outcome of a failure is how can they possibly make a decision.  

How did I get that impression?  Well it could be from postings like...


> I would think it's unfair to the players to let them think that a failure means falling into the pit, but then when they fail you spring some other surprise consequence on them.



and


> Well, I’ll give you guys credit for consistency: if the players don’t know what the risk:reward profile looks like, nobody can say it’s ‘challenging the players not the characters.’ Hard to be challenged when you have no idea what’s going on.



or


> Telling the players the outcome can make the experience more rewarding, because failure is always the result of a calculated risk the player knowingly accepted.




And so on.  If there was clarification of that, then I missed it or misunderstood.  My bad.

But I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I get a bit sarcastic now and then.  On the other hand I've never insisted that anyone prove anything.  I don't think anyone on this thread plays "gotcha" DMing despite the assertions to the contrary.  I have asked for clarification now and then. I've said that I don't run my game the same way.  I don't see why people are so insistent on players not calling for skill checks.  But I've never told anyone that if they just played the game my way they'd see how much better it works.  I don't appeal to authority by quoting the rules while sometimes leaving out important clarifying clauses.

If I'm being insulting or rude, or otherwise violating the rules report me.  Barring that, I'm entitled to my opinion which may include not thinking a different way of running the game is any better, and in fact based on my understanding it would be less enjoyable for me.


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2019)

In my own case, the logic of the illusory pit would typically be the reverse of what some have presented in this thread: that is, it's not that _discovering the pit is merely an illusion_ would alert the players to the possible presence of illusions in the neighbourhood; rather, _because the logic and trajectory of play have made illusions salient_, then an illusion may be introduced into the fiction as a particular consequence of a particular failed check.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Who's having failures not trigger meaningful consequences?  The chandelier did fall, the character did believe the lie.  Is anyone arguing for a lack of meaningful consequences for failure?



Chaosmancer seems very opposed to failure *always* having meaningful consequences, and IIRC, a few people have voiced agreement with that. I very much doubt anyone is opposed to failure *ever* having meaningful consenquences. Certainly no one here has given that impression.



Hussar said:


> The problem, I think, that folks are having here is how you can both telegraph a trap AND surprise a player with that trap.



By using telegraphs that are subtle enough that a player has to be paying attention to notice it. Think of it like Dark Souls. Part of the notorious difficulty of dark souls is ambushes and traps that get you when you're least expecting it. But these traps and ambushes are always telegraphed. If you are paying careful attention to your environment, you can pick up on the clues and avoid places you know are likely to be trapped. If you're rushing, you're likely to get nailed by them. This is why it is often said that Dark Souls is difficult, but fair. This is something I strive to emulate in my D&D games.

One effective way to do this is to have an observable pattern to the traps within a particular dungeon. Maybe in an old dwarven ruin, there are many statues of ancient dwarf heroes that flank various doorways and passages, some of which (but not all of which) mark traps; anyone who walks in-between the statues triggers spears that shoot up from the floor and skewer them. Early in the dungeon, you put a skeleton between a set of statues, with puncture marks in its armor. Now, it's very unlikely that the players will be surprised by _this_ specific trap, if they have an ounce of genre savvy. That's not the point of this trap. This trap is a "teach." Now the players have enough information to know that in this dungeon, they should be cautious of statues flanking doorways, _if they're paying attention_. The next time they come to a doorway flanked by statues, they might remember the previous time, and they might investigate to look for holes the spears might come out from, or a pressure plate that might trigger the spears, or a secret passageway around the trap. Or, they might not have picked up on the pattern yet, and they might just get nailed by some spears. Either way, they're definitely going to be cautious the next time they see such statues. So, maybe next time, the statues have been largely destroyed. There's still a bit of the stone pedestal the statues sat on, but no statues. Again, players who have picked up on the pattern might realize that this is part of it if they realize these pedestals are the bases of destroyed statues, but then again they might be surprised by the trap if they miss that detail. And, you'll want some sets of statues that don't trigger such traps. They're just ordinary statues, flanking doors and passageways. If the players are paying attention, they're sure to be cautious, but when they can't find anything and nothing happens when they walk between them, this is going to get them thinking about what marks the difference between the trapped statues and the safe ones. And there should be a difference they can pick up on, if they're specifically looking for it. Maybe the trapped statues all depict dwarves from a particular clan of dwarves, and you need Proficiency in History (or Stonecunning) to recognize it. Then the broken statues are going to be real head scratchers.



Hussar said:


> Or, and this is my bigger issue, if you tell a possible consequence of failure to the player and then go with a totally different consequence, don't your players get annoyed?
> 
> I mean, if I'm swinging on that chandelier (why is this always an example? In 30+ years of gaming I've NEVER seen a player try this) and you tell me that I'll miss the jump if I fail my check and then have the chandelier break, don't your players react pretty negatively?



I imagine they would, which is why I wouldn't do that.



Hussar said:


> I've been repeatedly told that allowing my players to roll first will result in the players being angry for things like "Well, I didn't SAY I was doing that".  I avoid that by being pretty clear up front that actions are resolved AFTER the roll, which means that the DM gets a smidgeon of control over the character from time to time.  Making that roll indicates that you are okay with that.



Which is perfectly valid and fun way to do things. No judgment here, if that's what you and your players prefer, by all means, enjoy!



Hussar said:


> But, if you tell me X is going to happen if I fail and then Y happens, how is that not a bait and switch?  "I wouldn't have done that if I thought that THAT could happen."



I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that anyone is doing this. You don't tell the players one thing will happen and then have another thing happen. You tell the players what it is reasonable for them to know will happen. Again with the illusory pit example, "if you fail, you'll fall in" doesn't give away that it's an illusion, doesn't mislead the players into thinking one thing will happen when really another will, and gives the players enough information to make a good decision about how to proceed. You don't have to tell them that they'll take 10d6 damage when they fall, just telling them they'll fall is fine. You don't have to tell them the magic sigil will explode if they mess up deactivating it, just telling them the volatile magical energies will be released unsafely is fine. You don't have to tell the players there's an unaware ogre on the other side of the door that will hear them and have enough time to prepare for them if they fail to break down the door in one go, just telling them that the noise will alert nearby creatures to their presence is fine. The idea that the only options are "tell the players information their characters couldn't know" or "don't tell the players the consequences of a failed roll" is a false dichotomy.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Who's having failures not trigger meaningful consequences?




Some argue that meaningful consequences are not a necessary condition of dice rolls, and/or they argue that unchanged conditions (E.g. "They still don't know if there's a trap") count as consequences.

Coddlers.  The lot of 'em.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

And let's talk about traps that _aren't_ telegraphed for moment, and see if we can figure out what exactly the gameplay for this is supposed to look like.

*Option 1: Every 5' Square*
The players are just supposed to all make Investigation and Perception checks every 5', and hope that somebody in the party rolls high enough. I'm not saying this is how it must be played; just trying to cover all bases here.  Can we all agree this one is not a desirable outcome?

Analysis: didn't we stop playing this way in about 1980?

*Option 2: Passive Perception*
If anybody's passive score is high enough, the trap is discovered, otherwise it's not, with no decision-making by the player. This might be what some refer to as "challenging the character" (or "challenging the build", as it were.) 

Analysis: In addressing @_*iserith*_'s trapped hallway, @_*Hussar*_ claims that once the Perception check succeeds no further explanation/input by the player is required; the DM can infer that a trap of which the party is aware is also successfully avoided.  So it would seem that the players don't actually need to do anything here: if their passive Perception is high enough, nothing else happens. Otherwise the trap is triggered (presumably with some narration by the DM: "It's a poison arrow trap, you take X piercing and Y poison damage.") 

Instead of actually doing all this work behind the DM screen during play, it might be more expedient to add up the average damage of all the traps, multiply by the odds of the trap being triggered, divide by the number of people in the party, and just have everybody reduce their hp by that number. You could speed things up even more by not reducing damage and instead having everybody check off the spell slots and HD necessary to negate all that damage. 

*Option 3: Clues*
There's some clue that challenges players...oops, I mean, _alerts_ players...to make a Perception check in this particular spot. Umm....

Analysis: Oh, wait, a clue is like a "telegraph" and we're not supposed to be discussing "trap here" scenarios.

*Option 4: Known Locations*
This one is sort of a hybrid of 1 and 3: players aren't expected to make checks in every square, just the ones that canonically "May Contain Trap".  So the trap isn't telegraphed, per se, but savvy players (damn, there's that "challenge the player" thing rearing its ugly head again) know which locations to check: chests, closed doors, huge gems sitting on top of altars, etc.  So it's a combination of "always check" and "but only in certain locations". 

Analysis: While somewhat more efficient than "check every square" it also hobbles the DM, who now can't put traps in other places without risking annoying the players and/or teaching them to start searching every 5' square.

So which is it?  Those of you who deride telegraphing traps, what does it look like at your table?


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 28, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> This doesn’t stop being the case because the success was determined without a dice roll.




When Einstein said "God does not play dice with the Universe" he knew he was wrong when he said it. He just didn't like the truth.

As a teacher, I know that you can teach the same lesson to a very similar class and have very different outcomes. Perform skill + random dice roll is as good a way to represent reality as any.

Random rolls have the added advantage of potentially sending the story spinning off in a direction even the DM did not anticipate.


Now, I can see the justification of not having a random roll if you are taking a purely story telling approach and simply deciding on the outcome based on what makes for the most interesting story. However, sometimes there is more than one interesting outcome.

You could also take a performance based approach to replace dice rolls if you have improv-drama inclined players. However, any stand-up would tell you you can do everything right and still have a joke fall flat.

The only other reason for limiting dice rolls is because you only have one D20 for the whole game. I was in this situation back at school in the 80s, but these days all the players have at least 2 D20s, so they can roll the dice without pausing play.


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 28, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> When Einstein said "God does not play dice with the Universe" he knew he was wrong when he said it. He just didn't like the truth.
> 
> As a teacher, I know that you can teach the same lesson to a very similar class and have very different outcomes. Perform skill + random dice roll is as good a way to represent reality as any.
> 
> ...




Or maybe some (most?) of us prefer The Middle Path over Rolling With It (DMG p236).


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> When Einstein said "God does not play dice with the Universe" he knew he was wrong when he said it. He just didn't like the truth.




I know a fair bit about the context, background, and meaning of this quote, and I'll admit I'm struggling to find any relevance to the topic at hand.

(As an aside, he didn't "know he was wrong" when he said it, and the fact that hand-wavy believers in the the Copenhagen Interpretation say he was wrong doesn't make it so. In the decades since there has been a growing acknowledgement that Einstein was right. Read "What is Real" by Adam Becker for a reasonably approachable lay explanation, or keep an eye out for a book by Simon Saunders coming out this year, if you don't want to take the time to go to graduate school.)

Maybe I should pull some pithy quotes by Andrew Dice Clay and hope that they seem relevant because the word "Dice" is in there.

Anyway, nobody is arguing against using dice _at all_ (except, perhaps, as an experiment to broaden our minds about RPGs). It's just that every action in D&D doesn't need to be resolved randomly.  



> The only other reason for limiting dice rolls...




You've completely overlooked the best reasons.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 28, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> When Einstein said "God does not play dice with the Universe" he knew he was wrong when he said it. He just didn't like the truth.



I gotta agree with Elfcrusher here, I don’t see how this is relevant.



Paul Farquhar said:


> As a teacher, I know that you can teach the same lesson to a very similar class and have very different outcomes. Perform skill + random dice roll is as good a way to represent reality as any.



Which is all well and good, but I’m not aiming to represent reality. I’m aiming to create a fun and satisfying roleplaying and gaming experience. This is not to say that your games are not fun or satisfying, merely that I have different priorities. Giving the player the opportunity to succeed or fail based on their decisions rather than random chance takes priority for me over simulating reality.



Paul Farquhar said:


> Random rolls have the added advantage of potentially sending the story spinning off in a direction even the DM did not anticipate.



I’ve found that players, by virtue of being independent agents, can and will take the story in unexpected directions with or without the random element of the dice, and in fact, too many dice rolls can get in the way of that because it ties the outcomes to a probability curve instead of to the plauers’ whims.



Paul Farquhar said:


> Now, I can see the justification of not having a random roll if you are taking a purely story telling approach and simply deciding on the outcome based on what makes for the most interesting story. However, sometimes there is more than one interesting outcome.



Of the options you present here, this is probably the closest to my approach, although I don’t judge the outcomes of actions based on what I think will be more interesting. I judge based on how appropriate the goal is to the approach, to create a fictional world the players can count on to react in a predictable way to their input, the better to allow them to influence the story in a way that will be interesting to them.



Paul Farquhar said:


> You could also take a performance based approach to replace dice rolls if you have improv-drama inclined players. However, any stand-up would tell you you can do everything right and still have a joke fall flat.



One could do that. I might enjoy playing in a game like that. I would not enjoy running a game like that and I don’t think very many of my players would enjoy playing in it.



Paul Farquhar said:


> The only other reason for limiting dice rolls is because you only have one D20 for the whole game. I was in this situation back at school in the 80s, but these days all the players have at least 2 D20s, so they can roll the dice without pausing play.



This is definitely not the only other reason.


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## Chaosmancer (Apr 29, 2019)

Dagnabbit. I spent hours going through and reading posts and responding. Then my Twitch account got hacked and dealing with that I copied over everything I had typed. 

Argh. 

Attempt #2




Charlaquin said:


> Essay might have been a bit of a lofty way to describe it, it was a brief excerpt from an interview. Here's what he said: "The element of suspense is giving the audience information. Now, you and I are sitting here. Suddenly a bomb goes off. Up we go, blown to smithereens. What did the audience have from watching this scene? 5 or 10 seconds of shock. Now, we do the scene over again, but we tell the audience there's a bomb underneath this table and it's going to go off in 5 minutes. Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. 'Don't talk about fooball, there's a bomb under there!' that's what they want to tell us. Then their anxieties will be as long as this clock ticks away."
> 
> Obviously he's discussing filmmaking here, where we're talking about RPGs, and specifically action resolution within RPGs. But what I think his point about information making the difference between shock and suspense is still very much applicable here. If the player (who is the audience for the RPG, excepting actual plays) doesn't know the potential consequences - or indeed, if there will even _be_ a consequence - for their declared action, what to they get out of that? Maybe a moment of surprise, if they fail and experience an unexpected consequence. What to they get if they know the potential consequence? Well, now they have information. They know what's at stake, so the time between when the pick up the die, and when they see the result is now imbued with that tension and anxiety Hitchcock spoke of. And whether the outcome is success or failure, that releases the anticipation. If they succeed, they are relieved, if they fail, their anxiety is realized. Either way, this is the more dramatic experience, in my opinion.




Okay, he was talking about exactly what I thought he was talking about so I'm sticking by my points. 

Big difference here is that the characters are also the audience. If the characters are aware of the bomb, then there are only two options remaining. Either the scene turns to absurd comedy or there must be other forces keeping them at the table. 

Same thing with the players, if they know something, they must address it, which changes the nature of the drama. 

A lot of the conversation later on focuses on this, and it made me curious about another point I will be adressing further down. Look for your name. 





Charlaquin said:


> But that's not just a bit of narrative flair there, there is an actual meaningful difference between falling and the chandelier remaining up, or falling and the chandelier falling as well. If the chandelier falls, it's no longer up there for other characters to try and swing on, or to cut it and drop it on the heads of reinforcement guards that show up at the bottom, or whatever. The decision to make the chandelier fall isn't a purely aesthetic one, it has a very real impact on the players' future options.




You know, for certain character that type of analysis is perfectly fine. Heck, I do it as a player myself. But not everyone wants to play that way. Sometimes players want to be caught off guard instead of making a cost-beenfit analysis for every roll of the dice. 







pemerton said:


> The description of the environment was simply that the building is decrepit.
> 
> How is "judging" whether or not the GM will decide that the chandelier in a decrepit house might fall if leapt on any different from _guessing_ that same thing?
> 
> And if the answer is that the possiblity is implict in the situation and the player's knowledge of the GM's taste and table practices, then it no longer serves an example of the consequences not being known to the player! Which is what it was presented as (by  [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]).




How is "guessing" different from a hypothesis? They are looking at the information they have and making a decison based off of that, judging what they think the consequences may be. 

It is possible we have a difference of terminology at work here as well, I'll be mentioning your name when we get to that section. I hate having to retype everything because of that copy error, but it might end up working in my favor here.



pemerton said:


> _How is it coddling the player to tell them that, on a failed check, they will bring down the chandelier?_ What advantage is being ceded? The player already is uncertain as to the outcome of the action, because the check is required. What additional challenge is created by keeping the player uncertain as to what the GM thinks the result of failure should be? It's just adding more guessing on top of an already uncertain resolution process. I don't see that it makes things any harder (less coddled) for the player.




"Coddling" was never my word choice, so you'll have to bring that up with the poster who said it. 

I'm also not sure why you think I am worried about "ceding an advantage". I create the entire world and have all the resources in that world to work with, to the point of bending the very laws of the universe if it suits me. I have all the advantages I could ever need. 

This is about style. My players want to be the characters in the game, and that means they are limited by what those characters could see or understand. 






iserith said:


> Whether or not we're asked to say whether a thing is good or bad, we're tasked as DMs by the rules of D&D 5e to judge whether a player's approach to a goal makes the task trivial or impossible and, if neither and accompanied by a meaningful consequence of failure, to call for a roll of some kind. Do we agree on that point?




For the most part, I do not agree with "needing a meaningful consequence of failure" before asking for a die roll. 






Elfcrusher said:


> I'll admit I'm perplexed why there is resistance to telling the player the consequences of failure.
> 
> If helping them making an informed decision is "coddling" then I'm all for it: I'd rather have them know the stakes, so that when they decide to roll that die they know what they're rolling for.  As Charlaquin says, and supports with the Hitchcock quote, the suspense is so much more delicious when you know what that stakes are.
> *
> Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence.  "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise.  Are you sure...?"  But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.*





And here [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is where I want to discuss something about our word choice. 

See, I don't see the point in telling my players that breaking down a door with an axe will make a lot of noise. To me, that is unnecessary because it is obvious. As obvious as telling a player that if they attempt to jump over a ravine, they might fall into said ravine. This is obvious, this is knowing how the world works. 

We assume standards such as gravity and sound work the same as always, until we are given reason to suspect otherwise. To me, this is just telling the players obvious things, the only use of which is if you think they have forgotten this or forgotten they were hoping to remain quite and you are trying to signal to them that they are about to make a mistake. 

To me, this is not telling them the consequences of their actions, because they are not learning anything new about the scenario. They know no more before you spoke than they did after. 

So, to me, if you say you tell the player the consequences of their actions, so they can make a more informed decision and not get caught off-guard by knowledge they didn't have (ala Hitchcock) then that means to me that when they are about to jump over the pit you tell them that if they fail they will fall on the hidden spikes coated with poison in the bottom of the pit. If you are just telling them if they fail they will fall in the pit... then you are just telling them what should be obvious from the fact that they are jumping over a pit and might not succeed. 

After all, knowing there are spikes and poison below is the same as knowing there is a bomb under the table, and when the players go to roll, they know exactly what the stakes are. But to me, that is revealing far more about the scenario than they have any reasonable way of knowing, without them having tested things out. 

And. I want to throw this out there as well. Just because I don't tell my players the consequences for grabbing the magical orb, does not mean they cannot decide to investigate it and try and figure that information out. If my players want to be cautious and look for answers, to investigate and try and piece together clues about their surroundings, then they are more than welcome to. I won't hide things as impossible to know (unless they truly are impossible) if my players want to take the time and effort to investigate. However, I'm not going to force that mind set on them and I'm not going to assume they would be happier analysising everything. If they do not ask questions and just charge forward, then I assume their character is not asking questions and is just charging forward.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> For the most part, I do not agree with "needing a meaningful consequence of failure" before asking for a die roll.




But you do agree that the DM judges the efficacy of the approach to the goal, correct?

And you also accept, even if you do not agree, that the game tells us to call for rolls only when there's a meaningful consequence for failure?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You know, for certain character that type of analysis is perfectly fine. Heck, I do it as a player myself. But not everyone wants to play that way. Sometimes players want to be caught off guard instead of making a cost-beenfit analysis for every roll of the dice.



Ok, two things here: first, remember that _at my table_ “every roll of the dice” isn’t every time they take action. It’s only when they take an action that may or may not achieve their goals, and has a meaningful cost for failure. I’ll grant that if a player did not want to analyze the risk involved when there are meaningful stakes riding on their roll, my game probably wouldn’t be the best fit for them. I’m ok with that though, especially because I’ve never met a player who didn’t. I’ve certainly met players whose characters were reckless, and those players often take risks that the player of a more cautious character would not. But I’ve never had a player object to being told the DC and consequences when something meaningful was on the line.



Chaosmancer said:


> And here @_*Charlaquin*_ and @_*pemerton*_ is where I want to discuss something about our word choice.
> 
> See, I don't see the point in telling my players that breaking down a door with an axe will make a lot of noise. To me, that is unnecessary because it is obvious. As obvious as telling a player that if they attempt to jump over a ravine, they might fall into said ravine. This is obvious, this is knowing how the world works.
> 
> ...



I have made it explicitly clear that I am only talking about consequences it is reasonable for the character to be aware of. Yes, I would remind the player that breaking the door down will be loud and potentially alert any nearby monsters to their presence, or that failing to jump the ravine will cause them to fall in, and how far the fall would be (if they can see the bottom of course, otherwise I’d probably say “an unknown distance” or something.) It May be obvious to me, but I cannot garuntee it is obvious to the player. It probably is, but again with the life preserve analogy. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. It certainly has happened that a reminder of consequences I’ve thought were self-apparent has lead a player to think twice about an action.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, to me, if you say you tell the player the consequences of their actions, so they can make a more informed decision and not get caught off-guard by knowledge they didn't have (ala Hitchcock) then that means to me that when they are about to jump over the pit you tell them that if they fail they will fall on the hidden spikes coated with poison in the bottom of the pit. If you are just telling them if they fail they will fall in the pit... then you are just telling them what should be obvious from the fact that they are jumping over a pit and might not succeed.
> 
> After all, knowing there are spikes and poison below is the same as knowing there is a bomb under the table, and when the players go to roll, they know exactly what the stakes are. But to me, that is revealing far more about the scenario than they have any reasonable way of knowing, without them having tested things out.



I mean, if I was going to put hidden poisoned spikes at the bottom of a pit, I’d probably telegraph that with an earlier pit where the spikes were not hidden - maybe with the mechanism that hides them visibly jammed. I want to provide players with the opportunity to pick up on clues, and use that knowledge to avoid future danger or assure future success by making smart choices based on that knowledge, not just by getting lucky rolls. I want them to fall into traps and go “Oh! I totally could have avoided that if I had noticed/remembered/thought about [whatever]!” not to just take surprise damage because they didn’t decide to roll a Perception check on this door in particular, or because they got a low roll. This is what I mean when I say, my style aims to put success and failure in the players’ hands rather than the dice’s.

So, sure, if for some reason there’s a pit containing poisoned spikes that the PCs couldn’t reasonably be aware of, no, I’m not going to tell them they’ll fall on the poison spikes they don’t know are there on a failure. But that’s also just not a scenario that’s likely to arise in my games. Again, you already have an example more Germaine to my games: “breaking the door down will alert nearby creatures to your presence,” not “the ogre on the other side of the door will hear you.”



Chaosmancer said:


> And. I want to throw this out there as well. Just because I don't tell my players the consequences for grabbing the magical orb, does not mean they cannot decide to investigate it and try and figure that information out. If my players want to be cautious and look for answers, to investigate and try and piece together clues about their surroundings, then they are more than welcome to. I won't hide things as impossible to know (unless they truly are impossible) if my players want to take the time and effort to investigate.



I wouldn’t have assumed otherwise.



Chaosmancer said:


> However, I'm not going to force that mind set on them and I'm not going to assume they would be happier analysising everything. If they do not ask questions and just charge forward, then I assume their character is not asking questions and is just charging forward.



Nobody’s forcing mindsets on anyone here. If my players don’t ask questions and charge forward, great, that’s the action I’ll adjudicate. If in my adjudication I determine that the action they are rushing into has a chance of success, chance of failure, and consequence, I’ll tell them what might happen if they fail, and what DC they need to beat with what Attribute to avoid that outcome. Whether they decide to follow through or reconsider is 100% up to them.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I know a fair bit about the context, background, and meaning of this quote, and I'll admit I'm struggling to find any relevance to the topic at hand.
> 
> (As an aside, he didn't "know he was wrong" when he said it, and the fact that hand-wavy believers in the the Copenhagen Interpretation say he was wrong doesn't make it so. In the decades since there has been a growing acknowledgement that Einstein was right. Read "What is Real" by Adam Becker for a reasonably approachable lay explanation, or keep an eye out for a book by Simon Saunders coming out this year, if you don't want to take the time to go to graduate school.)
> 
> ...




I've _been_ to grad school (PhD Astrophysics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology).

Einstein had always believed, like pretty much every other scientist of is time, in the Newtonian clockwork universe, where a single cause A always mapped to a single effect B. His own research into quantum mechanics directly contradicted that belief, by showing that a cause could lead to multiple effects, with no way to determine which - randomness was fundamental to the universe, whether you accept the Copenhagen Interpretation or not (personally, I lean towards the "many worlds" interpretation).

In recent years the rise in religious fundamentalism has lead to attempts to explain away observations and restore the clockwork universe, but that belongs with the flat earthers a climate change deniers. People tend to believe what they want to believe, and try to adjust the evidence to fit. Einstein was better than that by allowing the evidence to challenge his core beliefs.

But the bottom line is randomness is part of the universe, and outcomes are fundamentally unknowable. D&D's dice rolling is a fair way to simulate that.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> randomness is part of the universe, and outcomes are fundamentally unknowable. D&D's dice rolling is a fair way to simulate that.



For most people engaged in interactions of modest complexity, outcomes are quite predictable. Eg I went into a meeting today with a number of people whom I mostly don't know from outside that meeting context. I can know that a nodded greeting or "hello" to them will trigger a similar greeting in response. I knew that the sun would rise. I knew that the meeting would occur as scheduled, because I also knew - when I arrived at work and went to the meeting room - that no unusual thing had occurred to change the timetable. Etc etc.

People are rather poor knowers/predictors of society-level processes or outcomes, but almost nothing in D&D attempts to model such processes or generate such outcomes via randomisation, and so I'm not sure that that aspect of human ignorance is relevant to D&D.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 29, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> I've _been_ to grad school (PhD Astrophysics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology).
> 
> Einstein had always believed, like pretty much every other scientist of is time, in the Newtonian clockwork universe, where a single cause A always mapped to a single effect B. His own research into quantum mechanics directly contradicted that belief, by showing that a cause could lead to multiple effects, with no way to determine which - randomness was fundamental to the universe, whether you accept the Copenhagen Interpretation or not (personally, I lean towards the "many worlds" interpretation).
> 
> ...



There’sa reason the Newtonian model was so broadly accepted for so long. The probabilistic behavior of quantum particles is not generally noticeable in our everyday experience, outside of experiments specifically designed to demonstrate it, and even those experiments have predictable results. So unless you’re roleplaying as a photon, no, dice aren’t an accurate way to represent physics in the real world. Which is perfectly ok, because it’s a roleplaying game, not a quantum physics simulator.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> for certain character that type of analysis is perfectly fine. Heck, I do it as a player myself. But not everyone wants to play that way. Sometimes players want to be caught off guard instead of making a cost-beenfit analysis for every roll of the dice.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I can only speak for myself.

To me, _you_ are the one who is making "analysis" a focus of play, by requiring "testing things out" in order to establish what is at stake in the play of the game.

My approach is the opposite: the players choices about PC build, thematic and goal orientation, etc, establish what is at stake, and then I as GM build that into the ingame situation. A player can choose to play his/her PC as analytic, or reckless, but either way the player knows that his/her interests/thematic concerns will be at stake in the game. They don't have to choose between playing an "analytic" PC or alternatively guessing what the GM might have in mind.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> I've _been_ to grad school (PhD Astrophysics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology).
> 
> Einstein had always believed, like pretty much every other scientist of is time, in the Newtonian clockwork universe, where a single cause A always mapped to a single effect B. His own research into quantum mechanics directly contradicted that belief, by showing that a cause could lead to multiple effects, with no way to determine which - randomness was fundamental to the universe, whether you accept the Copenhagen Interpretation or not (personally, I lean towards the "many worlds" interpretation).
> 
> ...




Just like a teacher to bring religion to a physics fight.  (Sorry, that wasn't very good, but I was trying to make a funny based on the "knife to a gun fight" saying...)

As the Bell Inequality...and subsequent experiments _confirming_ the Bell Inequality...demonstrate, either quantum is wrong (or at least not complete), or relativity is violated.  That's what I mean when I say the Copenhagen Interpretation is crumbling, even if many physicists don't want to acknowledge that.

(And it's odd that you support the Everett hypothesis, because that contradicts "fundamental randomness of the universe.")


----------



## robus (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> As the Bell Inequality...and subsequent experiments _confirming_ the Bell Inequality...demonstrate, either quantum is wrong (or at least not complete), or relativity is violated.  That's what I mean when I say the Copenhagen Interpretation is crumbling, even if many physicists don't want to acknowledge that.




Off topic: I'm not a physicist, but I've been enjoying following the resurgence of interest in De Broglie's Pilot Wave Theory/Bohmian Mechanics.

Back to the thread...


----------



## Swarmkeeper (Apr 29, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> So unless you’re roleplaying as a photon...




Oooo... is that a new race or a new class?  Or area we now talking about race-class duality of PCs?  No such thing since BECMI, as far as I'm aware!


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 29, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Oooo... is that a new race or a new class?  Or area we now talking about race-class duality of PCs?  No such thing since BECMI, as far as I'm aware!




They behave like a Class in some cases and like a Race in others.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> They behave like a Class in some cases and like a Race in others.




But never at the same time.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Apr 29, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> There’sa reason the Newtonian model was so broadly accepted for so long. The probabilistic behavior of quantum particles is not generally noticeable in our everyday experience, outside of experiments specifically designed to demonstrate it, and even those experiments have predictable results. So unless you’re roleplaying as a photon, no, dice aren’t an accurate way to represent physics in the real world. Which is perfectly ok, because it’s a roleplaying game, not a quantum physics simulator.




I would say that the reason the Newtonian model was accepted for so long (if you can call 200 years "long") is that people like to believe that their actions are meaningful and the outcomes predicable.

And sure, macro-scale physics might not seem to be much influenced by interactions on the quantum scale, but the brains of living beings are.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> But you do agree that the DM judges the efficacy of the approach to the goal, correct?




If we are going to play it this way, sure. The DM is the one who decides what happens after the player declares their actions, and as such they must determine how effective that approach is based off a variety of factors.



iserith said:


> And you also accept, even if you do not agree, that the game tells us to call for rolls only when there's a meaningful consequence for failure?




Nope, the game tells me nothing of the sort. 

The rules give some suggestions to that end, but the game is what myself and my players make of it. Just as I would disagree that "the game" tells me that a rogue gets a 1d6 sneak attack ability at level one, I disagree that "the game" tells me there must be meaningful consequences for failure before rolling the dice. The rules suggest it, but I am free to do what I like to make the game more enjoyable for myself and my players. 






Charlaquin said:


> I mean, if I was going to put hidden poisoned spikes at the bottom of a pit, I’d probably telegraph that with an earlier pit where the spikes were not hidden - maybe with the mechanism that hides them visibly jammed. I want to provide players with the opportunity to pick up on clues, and use that knowledge to avoid future danger or assure future success by making smart choices based on that knowledge, not just by getting lucky rolls. I want them to fall into traps and go “Oh! I totally could have avoided that if I had noticed/remembered/thought about [whatever]!” not to just take surprise damage because they didn’t decide to roll a Perception check on this door in particular, or because they got a low roll. This is what I mean when I say, my style aims to put success and failure in the players’ hands rather than the dice’s.
> 
> So, sure, if for some reason there’s a pit containing poisoned spikes that the PCs couldn’t reasonably be aware of, no, I’m not going to tell them they’ll fall on the poison spikes they don’t know are there on a failure. But that’s also just not a scenario that’s likely to arise in my games. Again, you already have an example more Germaine to my games: “breaking the door down will alert nearby creatures to your presence,” not “the ogre on the other side of the door will hear you.”




If all you are meaning with "tell them the consequences of failure" is to remind them of the obvious, then I would have far less issue with it at the table. I can't say it would never get aggravating, but that would require sitting at your table to determine for certain. 

However, everything else you say seems that it really wants to take the majority of surprise out of the game. If the players are paying attention there will never be a time when they are caught off-guard, you have laid out every clue possible to point out to them what is dangerous and requires extra attention and what is simply window dressing that has no bearing on what they are doing. 

I find the idea of that mildly boring. I mean, I love puzzling things out as much as the next guy, and I'm sure you build a mean plot that will keep things moving, but some of my best memories of these games is the moment something I had no way of seeing show up and the scramble to solve it _now_. That seems harder to come across in a game where everything has been laid out for me to solve beforehand. 





Charlaquin said:


> Nobody’s forcing mindsets on anyone here. If my players don’t ask questions and charge forward, great, that’s the action I’ll adjudicate. If in my adjudication I determine that the action they are rushing into has a chance of success, chance of failure, and consequence, I’ll tell them what might happen if they fail, and what DC they need to beat with what Attribute to avoid that outcome. Whether they decide to follow through or reconsider is 100% up to them.




That ignores some basic psychology though. 

See, if they rush forward and things bad things happen, they may look back and decide next time they aren't going to rush forward. They made a decision, there was immediate repercussions. This might change how they act in the future or act as character growth for them. 

If they rush forward, you stop them, tell them the consequences, suddenly they have a choice. Continue doing what they wanted to do, ignoring the potential consequences, or back off and think about it. They must confront this, because you have stopped them and gated their action behind a second decision set, and they must choose to either consider their actions or ignore the consequences. They can no longer just go forward, they must go forward after consciously weighing that they are willing to take the risks associated with that action. 

Fundamentally, you have taken control of their character and changed how they act, because you are determining they must slow down and consider the consequences. 






pemerton said:


> I can only speak for myself.
> 
> To me, _you_ are the one who is making "analysis" a focus of play, by requiring "testing things out" in order to establish what is at stake in the play of the game.
> 
> My approach is the opposite: the players choices about PC build, thematic and goal orientation, etc, establish what is at stake, and then I as GM build that into the ingame situation. A player can choose to play his/her PC as analytic, or reckless, but either way the player knows that his/her interests/thematic concerns will be at stake in the game. They don't have to choose between playing an "analytic" PC or alternatively guessing what the GM might have in mind.




You are going to have to explain this to me. How is not telling the players the immediate consequences of their actions making analysis a focus of play and making them choose between being analytic and guessing what I have in mind? 

If a player wants to take time to study a situation, they can make that choice. IF they do not, they can make that choice. I'm not making anything a focus, I'm simply running the game and letting them make the decisions they want to make.


----------



## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If we are going to play it this way, sure. The DM is the one who decides what happens after the player declares their actions, and as such they must determine how effective that approach is based off a variety of factors.




Great. I'm glad we agree on this.



Chaosmancer said:


> Nope, the game tells me nothing of the sort.
> 
> The rules give some suggestions to that end, but the game is what myself and my players make of it. Just as I would disagree that "the game" tells me that a rogue gets a 1d6 sneak attack ability at level one, I disagree that "the game" tells me there must be meaningful consequences for failure before rolling the dice. The rules suggest it, but I am free to do what I like to make the game more enjoyable for myself and my players.




It does though. It's right there in writing, plain as day, and there's no need to deny it. Whether or not you implement that rule, however, is a different story. And if someone doesn't implement that rule, it changes the play experience accordingly. Would you agree with that?


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If all you are meaning with "tell them the consequences of failure" is to remind them of the obvious, then I would have far less issue with it at the table. I can't say it would never get aggravating, but that would require sitting at your table to determine for certain.



I remind the players of what consequences their characters should be able to ascertain, which may or may not be obvious to the players. Usually it is, but on the occasions that it isn’t, the players tend to be glad I did.



Chaosmancer said:


> However, everything else you say seems that it really wants to take the majority of surprise out of the game. If the players are paying attention there will never be a time when they are caught off-guard, you have laid out every clue possible to point out to them what is dangerous and requires extra attention and what is simply window dressing that has no bearing on what they are doing.
> 
> I find the idea of that mildly boring. I mean, I love puzzling things out as much as the next guy, and I'm sure you build a mean plot that will keep things moving, but some of my best memories of these games is the moment something I had no way of seeing show up and the scramble to solve it _now_. That seems harder to come across in a game where everything has been laid out for me to solve beforehand.



Do you like From Software games? They’re a good example of the kind of feel I aim to capture. Where, sure, you may be surprised by a trap or hazzard, but when you are you can think back and realize what you missed that could have tipped you off. I find that infinitely more interesting than just taking damage from something I could never have anticipated and my only recourse from is a lucky Dexterity save. If that’s not to your taste though, that’s fine, my games probably wouldn’t be for you.



Chaosmancer said:


> That ignores some basic psychology though.
> 
> See, if they rush forward and things bad things happen, they may look back and decide next time they aren't going to rush forward. They made a decision, there was immediate repercussions. This might change how they act in the future or act as character growth for them.
> 
> ...



See, I’d say I’m _utilizing_, rather than ignoring, psychology, to allow you the opportunity to consciously decide if you want your character to behave recklessly, rather than risk you doing so by mistake, due to lack of information. And again, I’ve never had a player protest this. I’ve had players grumble about other aspects of my DMing, most often the fact that I require them to state an approach in terms of what their characters do, but I’ve never had anyone complain that I’m preventing them from making bad decisions by accident. Turns out, players don’t tend to like making bad decisions by accident.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> It does though. It's right there in writing, plain as day, and there's no need to deny it. Whether or not you implement that rule, however, is a different story. And if someone doesn't implement that rule, it changes the play experience accordingly. Would you agree with that?




You say it like they laid it out on the first page "Rule #1 of DnD, Rule #2 of DnD, ect." That isn't how this works.

And, you didn't ask me about what the rules (even though I would be hard pressed to call that section a rule) said, you asked me about what the game said. As my answer should have illustrated, the game and the rules are two different animals. The PHB has no rules for using Concordance to summon a Servitor of the Faerie Court, that's a 3rd party supplement. The DMG has no rules on what reagents are needed to mix a Potion of Fine Fettle, that is a 3rd party supplement. 

There is no rule on when to roll the dice, there is advice on that subject, no rules. 

If you want to keep on trying this proccess of slowly getting me to agree with your points so that I must accept your perspective as correct, I'd advise we move on from this point, but I do not agree with you here and rephrasing the question is not going to change my mind on that. 

Though, because you will inevitably try and ask this anyways, why yes, I do agree that if you change which rules you are playing by the game will be different. Just like if you change the medium you are drawing with the picture will be different. 






Charlaquin said:


> I remind the players of what consequences their characters should be able to ascertain, which may or may not be obvious to the players. Usually it is, but on the occasions that it isn’t, the players tend to be glad I did.




I'd ask you for an example of a time when the consequence was not obvious to the player, but after talking with you this long I suspect I wouldn't get a straight answer, since you'd want to know more about where my experiences with the question are coming from and if I'd ever tried it myself instead. 




Charlaquin said:


> Do you like From Software games? They’re a good example of the kind of feel I aim to capture. Where, sure, you may be surprised by a trap or hazzard, but when you are you can think back and realize what you missed that could have tipped you off. I find that infinitely more interesting than just taking damage from something I could never have anticipated and my only recourse from is a lucky Dexterity save. If that’s not to your taste though, that’s fine, my games probably wouldn’t be for you.




I had to look them up, may I assume you aren't talking about the Armored Core games or the Adventures of Cookie and Cream?

Yeah, I've never played Dark Souls. I've enjoyed watching other people play them online, but a few things have driven me off of them. One is personal (involving my sister's ex-boyfriend and him being a complete @!#$%^#@) but other things have turned me off of ever trying them. 

One is this constant reference to them as "the game where they telegraph every trap, and if you just look back you'll see exactly how to avoid it". You are a fan, so you realize part of that is simply because the traps never change, right? Everything resets constantly back to the same state. But also, it isn't like Dark Souls is the only game series to ever do that, if you play Prince of Persia and you see holes in the walls, spikes are going to come out of that. If you are paying attention, you'll see them, and if you get caught off-guard then you can look back and see what you did wrong. It is the exact same concept. 

But in every case, until you know what to look for, you are going to set off the trap. And what happens when an intelligent enemy sets a trap that uses a trigger for the first time? How many times in Superhero stories do we see the hero get fooled by a robo-duplicate. Sure, after the first time, we and them begin to suspect it, but it works best when it is a surprise, and intelligent enemies work to reduce telegraphing. Some surprises you can't see coming.  



Charlaquin said:


> See, I’d say I’m _utilizing_, rather than ignoring, psychology, to allow you the opportunity to consciously decide if you want your character to behave recklessly, rather than risk you doing so by mistake, due to lack of information. And again, I’ve never had a player protest this. I’ve had players grumble about other aspects of my DMing, most often the fact that I require them to state an approach in terms of what their characters do, but I’ve never had anyone complain that I’m preventing them from making bad decisions by accident. Turns out, players don’t tend to like making bad decisions by accident.




Note your value judgement. To you, going in without knowing the consequences is a bad decision. Whether or not the plan works, whether or not they ever find out what the consequences could have been, in your mind going forward without that information is a mistake. 

My players also never complain to me about letting them make bad decisions by accident, because I am not responsible for their decisions. Interestingly enough, my players seem to realize that if they make a poor decision and bad things happen as a result of that, then it is because they made a decision, not because I chose to not step in and prevent their decision. They are responsible for their character's actions, not me.


----------



## Manbearcat (Apr 29, 2019)

"Meaningful Consequence" 

My take on this will always append "upon the gamestate" to that.  Because they don't spell it out in the section on Using Ability Scores, here is the likely best reference point for what the designers meant by "meaningful consequences."



> DMG p 27
> 
> In constructing a narrative, beware of "false action," or action for its own sake. False action doesn't move a story forward, engage characters, or cause them to change. Many action movies suffer from false action, in which car chases, gunfights, and explosions abound but do little more than inconvenience the characters and eventually bore the audience with their repetition and dearth of meaningful stakes.




I think this is a good working definition that is cribbed from many-a-modern-game.

If the gamestate isn't changed in some appreciable way (if the arrangement of the fiction and the actual table time we spend conversing and rolling dice barely notices a blip on its collective radar screen), "false action" and "consequences without meaning" are what has just transpired.

Whether you think "false action" or "consequences without meaning" have some kind of other utility (I get that some people find these instances of play "immersion enhancing" or something to that effect) is another matter (a gamestate neutral matter).


----------



## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You say it like they laid it out on the first page "Rule #1 of DnD, Rule #2 of DnD, ect." That isn't how this works.
> 
> ...
> 
> There is no rule on when to roll the dice, there is advice on that subject, no rules.




The funny thing about rules books in my experience is people say the rules they choose to follow are _rules_ and the rules they don't choose to follow are _advice_. 

How about we say they're _all_ rules, since they're in a rules book that is telling us how to play the game, and we can follow the rules we like and ignore the ones we don't? Doesn't that seem like a reasonable take instead of arbitrarily calling some rules advice because we don't like them?



Chaosmancer said:


> ...why yes, I do agree that if you change which rules you are playing by the game will be different.




Great. I'm glad we agree on this.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> The funny thing about rules books in my experience is people say the rules they choose to follow are _rules_ and the rules they don't choose to follow are _advice_.
> 
> How about we say they're _all_ rules, since they're in a rules book that is telling us how to play the game, and we can follow the rules we like and ignore the ones we don't? Doesn't that seem like a reasonable take instead of arbitrarily calling some rules advice because we don't like them?
> 
> ...




Or, conversely, we could look at the entire set as advice and not hard and fast rules.  Y'know, the way we're told to look at them.


----------



## Tony Vargas (Apr 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You say it like they laid it out on the first page "Rule #1 of DnD, Rule #2 of DnD, ect." That isn't how this works.



 Page 3 of the Basic Rules pdf, anyway.  Under "How to Play," though the Introduction on Page 2 also alludes to it pretty clearly.  But, you're right, it's not on Page 1. Page 1 is title & credits.


----------



## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Or, conversely, we could look at the entire set as advice and not hard and fast rules.  Y'know, the way we're told to look at them.




That's not really what they say though. It's very clear on the DM's role as someone who knows the rules and is making sure everyone plays by them, for example, as well as being a mediator between the rules and players, setting limits, etc.

It is also true, however, that the rules serve the DM (and by extension the group) and not the other way around. So I think my stated position of - "these are all rules, use the ones you like when you want to use them" is more accurate. And certainly more consistent than what amounts to "That one's a rule because I follow it and that bit's advice because I don't."


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## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

For all the calls to authority to justify different people's opinions on how to run the game, they seem to forget this little bit from the first page of instructions in the DMG.

_The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game._


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> It is also true, however, that the rules serve the DM (and by extension the group) and not the other way around.






Oofta said:


> _The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game._




Well, would you look at that:  Common ground!

{end thread}


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Well, would you look at that:  Common ground!
> 
> {end thread}




Nah, my Discord friends are betting this goes to 2000 posts.

Also, Chaosmancer made it clear that when I'm seeking to find common ground, it's some sort of trap. I wouldn't want to disappoint.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'd ask you for an example of a time when the consequence was not obvious to the player, but after talking with you this long I suspect I wouldn't get a straight answer, since you'd want to know more about where my experiences with the question are coming from and if I'd ever tried it myself instead.



I mean, I can't remember a specific occurrence off the top of my head, but generally it goes something like this: "Ok, that'll take 10 minutes and a successful DC X [Whatever] check."
"Oh, shoot, maybe I don't want to spend that 10 minutes..."

or

"Ok, make a DC X [Whatever] check, on a failure, [consequence]."
"Hmmm... On second thought maybe I'll hold off on that."

It doesn't happen all that often, but every once and a while it does.



Chaosmancer said:


> I had to look them up, may I assume you aren't talking about the Armored Core games or the Adventures of Cookie and Cream?



Hardy har. I've just taken to calling the games I'm talking about "from software games" because calling them "dark souls" games leaves out Demon's Souls, "the souls games" leaves out Bloodborne, and now even "Soulsborne" games leaves out Sekiro. And clearly you got what I meant.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, I've never played Dark Souls. I've enjoyed watching other people play them online, but a few things have driven me off of them. One is personal (involving my sister's ex-boyfriend and him being a complete @!#$%^#@) but other things have turned me off of ever trying them.
> 
> One is this constant reference to them as "the game where they telegraph every trap, and if you just look back you'll see exactly how to avoid it". You are a fan, so you realize part of that is simply because the traps never change, right? Everything resets constantly back to the same state.



Yes, but you can still notice and avoid traps the first time you encounter them, if you're playing cautiously and paying close attention to the environment. It helps if you're familiar with the From Software/soulslike style, just like it helps in my D&D games if you're familiar with the conventions and tropes of the genre.



Chaosmancer said:


> But also, it isn't like Dark Souls is the only game series to ever do that, if you play Prince of Persia and you see holes in the walls, spikes are going to come out of that. If you are paying attention, you'll see them, and if you get caught off-guard then you can look back and see what you did wrong. It is the exact same concept.



Absolutely! Tons of games use telegraphing, which should be a strong indication that it's a piece of design that tends to be well-received by players. And it's no surprise. Avoiding a trap because you noticed it makes you feel smart, and gives you a little shot of dopamine. Falling into a trap always feels bad, but it feels less bad if you can clearly see where it was you who made the mistake, not the game putting you into an unfair situation. The reason I use From Software's Soulslike games as my go-to example is because they are widely known for this, and this way of thinking permeates their design on a large scale. It's been said that where a lot of modern games challenge the players' reflexes (look at Cuphead for a good example of this), Soulslikes challenge their situational awareness, and because of this, they are famous for being difficult-but-fair. This type of difficult-but-fair, awareness-based challenge is something I look to emulate in my D&D games.



Chaosmancer said:


> But in every case, until you know what to look for, you are going to set off the trap.



Often, but sometimes you can notice that something is fishy. Again, a genre-savvy player sees holes in the floor and thinks, "this looks suspicious."



Chaosmancer said:


> And what happens when an intelligent enemy sets a trap that uses a trigger for the first time? How many times in Superhero stories do we see the hero get fooled by a robo-duplicate. Sure, after the first time, we and them begin to suspect it, but it works best when it is a surprise, and intelligent enemies work to reduce telegraphing. Some surprises you can't see coming.



And there are some surprises my players don't see coming. But I always want to make sure they _could_. In my opinion, a surprise you can't possibly foresee is a gotcha. Maybe it's difficult to foresee, but it shouldn't be impossible.

RE: enemies working to reduce telegraphing, I don't agree, at least when it comes to traps. The point of a trap is to protect something from those who aren't in the know, but to allow those who are in the know safe passage. That means there should be a signal for those in the know. Now, since the PCs aren't in the know, that signal shouldn't be obvious. Going back to my example of the statues that mark the locations of spear traps, there's no way someone not in the know is going to pick up on the fact that the statues of dwarves from a particular clan are safe while those of another clan are trapped. Heck, most folks not in the know aren't even going to be able to recognize the clans the dwarves in the statues belonged to, unless they're proficient in History. But a character who is paying attention might pick up on the pattern, and that, to me, is what makes it difficult-but-fair.



Chaosmancer said:


> Note your value judgement. To you, going in without knowing the consequences is a bad decision. Whether or not the plan works, whether or not they ever find out what the consequences could have been, in your mind going forward without that information is a mistake.



I didn't say that. If the plan works, clearly it wasn't a mistake. If the plan doesn't work though, and you didn't consider the consequences, and they're bad consequences, that might be a mistake. I want to avoid putting players into situations where they make mistakes as a result of lack of information.



Chaosmancer said:


> My players also never complain to me about letting them make bad decisions by accident, because I am not responsible for their decisions. Interestingly enough, my players seem to realize that if they make a poor decision and bad things happen as a result of that, then it is because they made a decision, not because I chose to not step in and prevent their decision. They are responsible for their character's actions, not me.



Great! Glad to hear your way works well for you.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> For all the calls to authority to justify different people's opinions on how to run the game, they seem to forget this little bit from the first page of instructions in the DMG.
> 
> _The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game._




Umm... I've been staying out of this line of discussion because I'm not really interested in semantics about what's a rule and what's advice, but...


iserith said:


> we can follow the rules we like and ignore the ones we don't





iserith said:


> the rules serve the DM (and by extension the group) and not the other way around. (...) these are all rules, use the ones you like when you want to use them"




Clearly, iserith is _not_ forgetting that part. It is, in fact, a key part of his argument. He's not saying "these are the rules and therefore you must follow them," he's saying "these are the rules, and if you don't like them feel free to ignore them."


----------



## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Umm... I've been staying out of this line of discussion because I'm not really interested in semantics about what's a rule and what's advice, but...
> 
> 
> 
> Clearly, iserith is _not_ forgetting that part. It is, in fact, a key part of his argument. He's not saying "these are the rules and therefore you must follow them," he's saying "these are the rules, and if you don't like them feel free to ignore them."




So is that why practically every post of his contained something along the lines of "the rules say" and "it's 5E and if you run it according to the rules [and my interpretation of those rules] it works much better"?

All I'm really saying is that I look at the rules as guidance, especially when it comes to things like adjudicating skill checks to see if the players know an NPC is telling the truth.  Quoting or referring to the rules incessantly doesn't really bolster your argument in my book, especially when it comes to general guidance.  Want to talk about how the fireball spell works?  Great. Break out the rules.  Something as nebulous as how the players indicate what their players are doing?  Meh.

To each their own.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> So is that why practically every post of his contained something along the lines of "the rules say" and "it's 5E and if you run it according to the rules [and my interpretation of those rules] it works much better"?
> 
> All I'm really saying is that I look at the rules as guidance, especially when it comes to things like adjudicating skill checks to see if the players know an NPC is telling the truth.  Quoting or referring to the rules incessantly doesn't really bolster your argument in my book, especially when it comes to general guidance.  Want to talk about how the fireball spell works?  Great. Break out the rules.  Something as nebulous as how the players indicate what their players are doing?  Meh.
> 
> To each their own.




Again, I don't really care about this particular line of discussion. Just wanted to set the record straight that iserith is _not_ ignoring the fact that the rules are meant to serve the game, not the other way around.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Again, I don't really care about this particular line of discussion. Just wanted to set the record straight that iserith is _not_ ignoring the fact that the rules are meant to serve the game, not the other way around.




Thank you, though the reason that poster is blocked is because keeping the record straight did not appear to be a shared goal in the past.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> The funny thing about rules books in my experience is people say the rules they choose to follow are _rules_ and the rules they don't choose to follow are _advice_.
> 
> How about we say they're _all_ rules, since they're in a rules book that is telling us how to play the game, and we can follow the rules we like and ignore the ones we don't? Doesn't that seem like a reasonable take instead of arbitrarily calling some rules advice because we don't like them?




Funny thing, you seem to be making the assumption that I don't consider the entire PHB, DMG and MM advice. 

Didn't you notice in my first response including the rogue's sneak attack as something that I could completely change? I could rebuild all the classes in the PHB, and I can still say I am running a DnD 5e game. Might be a stretch, might be way more work than is worth doing, but I could do it. 

So, how about instead of arbitrarily deciding all the things written in the books must be acknowledge on some level, we drop this point of you trying to back me into a corner by agreeing with something I clearly do not agree with. 

The books are full of advice, sometimes really good advice that works really well, sometimes advice I see no reason to change, but none of it is more binding than any other part.




iserith said:


> Great. I'm glad we agree on this.




I'm glad you decided to skip down to the part you wanted to hear and got enjoyment from it. 

Edit: I'm trying to be funny, but alas, I am not funny. 




iserith said:


> Nah, my Discord friends are betting this goes to 2000 posts.
> 
> Also, Chaosmancer made it clear that when I'm seeking to find common ground, it's some sort of trap. I wouldn't want to disappoint.




I've seen the technique many times. 

You agree with this point right?
And you agree with this point right? 

Well, if you agree with those two points isn't it unreasonable/inconsistent for you not to agree with this point, since it clearly follows from the first two? 

However, I think your Dischord buddies are too pessimistic. Betting we hit the limit of post count for the thread, whatever that happens to be on ENWorld. 






Charlaquin said:


> I mean, I can't remember a specific occurrence off the top of my head, but generally it goes something like this: "Ok, that'll take 10 minutes and a successful DC X [Whatever] check."
> "Oh, shoot, maybe I don't want to spend that 10 minutes..."
> 
> or
> ...




You do realize one of those is so vague as to be useless, since we have no idea what [consequence] is, and the other includes you adding an element of spent time that they were likely not expecting since generally actions take very little time to accomplish. 

And before this gets conversation spins too far off, I rarely utilize precise times in my games. We generally don't need to track ten minutes. I also rarely use random encounters, because I find they generally are just a waste of time (if they are going to be random) and I much prefer to simply have encounters planned out depending on the location and the current plot. (Gangs of goons under the sway of the vampires the party angered might ambush them on the streets for example, but I'm not rolling a percentile at ten minute intervals to see if that happens.) 




Charlaquin said:


> Hardy har. I've just taken to calling the games I'm talking about "from software games" because calling them "dark souls" games leaves out Demon's Souls, "the souls games" leaves out Bloodborne, and now even "Soulsborne" games leaves out Sekiro. And clearly you got what I meant.




Wasn't kidding about having to look them up. I've been out of the video game scene for a few years, so while "From Software" tickled the back of my mind I wasn't certain what you meant. I only even know Sekiro exists because I follow Gajin Goomba and he did a video on the main character. If I hadn't watched that a week or two ago I'd have no idea what you were talking about there. 




Charlaquin said:


> Yes, but you can still notice and avoid traps the first time you encounter them, if you're playing cautiously and paying close attention to the environment. It helps if you're familiar with the From Software/soulslike style, just like it helps in my D&D games if you're familiar with the conventions and tropes of the genre.




Does nothing to dispute what I said. Sometimes it is just pure luck, seeing something through a window because you went right instead of left and realize you'll be going through that room later. But if you'd gone left... well then you fall into the ambush. 




Charlaquin said:


> Absolutely! Tons of games use telegraphing, which should be a strong indication that it's a piece of design that tends to be well-received by players. *snip*
> 
> Often, but sometimes you can notice that something is fishy. Again, a genre-savvy player sees holes in the floor and thinks, "this looks suspicious."




I think you missed my point that Dark Souls frustrates me because every uses it as an example, that was as far as I was thinking that would go. 

And sure, it can work occasionally, heck maybe it can even work all the time if you really want it to. But, that doesn't mean you have to use it for every trap, for every plot point, for every mystery. 

Most people don't only play Dark Souls, they play other games as well that give them other thrills. I'm not going to telegraph everything, sometimes it doesn't make sense, sometimes it just doesn't fit to telegraph the what is coming. 



Charlaquin said:


> And there are some surprises my players don't see coming. But I always want to make sure they _could_. In my opinion, a surprise you can't possibly foresee is a gotcha. Maybe it's difficult to foresee, but it shouldn't be impossible.
> 
> RE: enemies working to reduce telegraphing, I don't agree, at least when it comes to traps. The point of a trap is to protect something from those who aren't in the know, but to allow those who are in the know safe passage. That means there should be a signal for those in the know. Now, since the PCs aren't in the know, that signal shouldn't be obvious. Going back to my example of the statues that mark the locations of spear traps, there's no way someone not in the know is going to pick up on the fact that the statues of dwarves from a particular clan are safe while those of another clan are trapped. Heck, most folks not in the know aren't even going to be able to recognize the clans the dwarves in the statues belonged to, unless they're proficient in History. But a character who is paying attention might pick up on the pattern, and that, to me, is what makes it difficult-but-fair.




Sure most traps work that way, but does the Lich who can simply teleport into his inner sanctum really need traps like that, it is meant to be a gauntlet of death no one can get through. Not a gauntlet of death his nonexistent living minions can get through. 

And plot wise, I once had a game where one of the major powers was an Elven merchant woman, richest and most influential person in the area. Also a secret Drow spy hiding under an illusion and had been for 100 years. What clues should I give the players who don't even have a reason to suspect her? What slip ups make sense for someone like that. Heck, her necklace which hid her illusion had a second setting which revealed horrible burns, a vain and powerful woman hiding her disfigurements under an illusion explains why she is constantly under an illusion spell 

I'm not saying the players could have never figured it out. She did have a few shadow organizations they might have traced back to her and gotten suspicious about, but the entire point is how well she covered her tracks. It should be nearly impossible to break her cover, how do you telegraph that without breaking the fiction of it? 

Sure, maybe if I was a better DM I could "find a way" but, if the entire point is how hard it is, then there shouldn't be a reason to make it easier. 



Charlaquin said:


> I didn't say that. If the plan works, clearly it wasn't a mistake. If the plan doesn't work though, and you didn't consider the consequences, and they're bad consequences, that might be a mistake. I want to avoid putting players into situations where they make mistakes as a result of lack of information.





So their action is only a mistake if they lack information, but the only information you are giving are the obvious consequences that they should have known. Nothing else. And the only thing that determines if they succeed or fail is the die roll, or if they back down and come up with a plan that doesn't require a die roll. 

So, is it a mistake to come up with a plan that comes down to a die roll? 

I'm not trying to attack your style, but your language is showing a bias and your defense of what you are saying seems inconsistent.


----------



## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> _The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game._



And dems the rulez, folks!  

Seriously, 5e (heck, D&D in general) has a teeny bit in common with Thunderdome, that way. ("You know the rules! There are no rules!")

What follows are Da Rulez: da first rule is, the DM can ignore or change the rulez all he wants.  Including dis one.

"But, if he ignores the rule that says he can ignore the rules, then he can't ignore the rules, which means he is following the rules, but then he has to follow the rule that says he can ignore the rules, but … Illogical. Illogical. All units relate. All units. Norman, co-ordinate."

… yeah, funny how dat works out, huh … 


And that is why Androids, as imagined in the late 60's, can't play D&D.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Funny thing, you seem to be making the assumption that I don't consider the entire PHB, DMG and MM advice.
> 
> Didn't you notice in my first response including the rogue's sneak attack as something that I could completely change? I could rebuild all the classes in the PHB, and I can still say I am running a DnD 5e game. Might be a stretch, might be way more work than is worth doing, but I could do it.
> 
> ...




I don't deny the rules can be ignored or changed.

Would it be reasonable to say that you consider all of the rules books simply to be advice? That they contain no rules at all? Even the parts that specifically use the word "rules?"



Chaosmancer said:


> I've seen the technique many times.
> 
> You agree with this point right?
> And you agree with this point right?
> ...




If that is indeed my tactic, and I don't say it is, wouldn't you rather be aware of your unreasonableness or inconsistencies so you can take steps to address them?


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You do realize one of those is so vague as to be useless, since we have no idea what [consequence] is,



*shrug* sorry? Like I said, I can't remember a specific example off the top of my head. You'll fall into the pit. Whatever.



Chaosmancer said:


> and the other includes you adding an element of spent time that they were likely not expecting since generally actions take very little time to accomplish.
> 
> And before this gets conversation spins too far off, I rarely utilize precise times in my games. We generally don't need to track ten minutes. I also rarely use random encounters, because I find they generally are just a waste of time (if they are going to be random) and I much prefer to simply have encounters planned out depending on the location and the current plot. (Gangs of goons under the sway of the vampires the party angered might ambush them on the streets for example, but I'm not rolling a percentile at ten minute intervals to see if that happens.)



Most players who have been playing in one of my games for more than a few sessions are going to have a pretty good idea of what actions are going to take 10 minutes. I've talked about this before in the thread, but 10 minutes (the amount of time it takes to cast a spell as a ritual) is my go-to length of time for actions where time spent is the only cost. Picking a lock, thoroughly searching the evil vizier's desk, whatever. It's technically an abstract amount of time spent, and may be slightly more or less than 10 minutes, but either way, 6 such abstract time intervals spent add up to one hour (the amount of time it takes to take a short rest), which is also technically somewhat abstract, but it's the interval at which I roll for random encounters. And when I say "random encounters," I mean encounters that occur randomly, not necessarily encounters that are themselves randomly generated. The random element is _when_ they happen, not _what_ happens when they are rolled.

I too generally have a set of planned encounters that are appropriate to the dungeon or the adventure, and generally serve the story at hand. Often they come in a specific order. For instance, I'm currently running my players through the dungeons in Tales from the Yawning Portal. When we get to White Plume Mountain, I plan for the party to not be the only group of adventurers following the clues to find Whelm, Wave, and Blackrazor. We're still on Forge of Fury, so I don't have the "random" encounters for White Plume Mountain planned out yet, but my intent for when we get there is to have a set of encounters with other adventurers seeking the weapons that occur in a specific progression. But progress will be made by way of dice rolls that occur roughly once each hour, or rather, once every 6 times the players take an action where time spent is the cost. Additionally, actions that make a lot of noise or otherwise attract attention to the party can trigger extra rolls for these encounters, though generally with a lower chance of resulting in an encounter.



Chaosmancer said:


> Wasn't kidding about having to look them up. I've been out of the video game scene for a few years, so while "From Software" tickled the back of my mind I wasn't certain what you meant. I only even know Sekiro exists because I follow Gajin Goomba and he did a video on the main character. If I hadn't watched that a week or two ago I'd have no idea what you were talking about there.
> 
> Does nothing to dispute what I said. Sometimes it is just pure luck, seeing something through a window because you went right instead of left and realize you'll be going through that room later. But if you'd gone left... well then you fall into the ambush.
> 
> ...



You don't have to use it for _any_ trap if you don't want to. My preference is to use some degree of telegraphing for every trap. I personally don't think it's fair to my players to spring traps on them that they couldn't have seen coming. Again, it doesn't have to be obvious, but in my opinion if it wasn't possible to realize it was coming, it wasn't a fair challenge.



Chaosmancer said:


> Most people don't only play Dark Souls, they play other games as well that give them other thrills. I'm not going to telegraph everything, sometimes it doesn't make sense, sometimes it just doesn't fit to telegraph the what is coming.



*shrug* I don't agree.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sure most traps work that way, but does the Lich who can simply teleport into his inner sanctum really need traps like that, it is meant to be a gauntlet of death no one can get through. Not a gauntlet of death his nonexistent living minions can get through.



I guess, but that doesn't sound like a very fun dungeon. And it's pretty trivial to come up with a reason the Lich might have decided to leave clues. Maybe he does have living minions. Or maybe he has a sense of sportsmanship and wants to make sure the adventurers have a chance. Maybe he (wisely, in my opinion) assumes his gauntlet of death won't be able to lure in very many adventurers if they don't think they'll be able to find their way through it. This comes back to what I said about the chandelier. Sure, if the reason the chandelier is unstable is because the wood that holds it up has rotten in a place that the characters can't see... Yeah, it doesn't make sense to tell them the chandelier might break. But, as DM it is your decision to set the scenario up that way. If, like me, you think it's important that players have information, you can set it up in such a way that it is reasonable for the character to know the chandelier might break. 



Chaosmancer said:


> And plot wise, I once had a game where one of the major powers was an Elven merchant woman, richest and most influential person in the area. Also a secret Drow spy hiding under an illusion and had been for 100 years. What clues should I give the players who don't even have a reason to suspect her? What slip ups make sense for someone like that. Heck, her necklace which hid her illusion had a second setting which revealed horrible burns, a vain and powerful woman hiding her disfigurements under an illusion explains why she is constantly under an illusion spell
> 
> I'm not saying the players could have never figured it out. She did have a few shadow organizations they might have traced back to her and gotten suspicious about, but the entire point is how well she covered her tracks. It should be nearly impossible to break her cover, how do you telegraph that without breaking the fiction of it?
> 
> Sure, maybe if I was a better DM I could "find a way" but, if the entire point is how hard it is, then there shouldn't be a reason to make it easier.



...That's a mystery, not a trap. That's is a _very_ different situation than what we've been discussing. I also don't generally run mystery adventures because they're not my favorite, and frankly, I'm not very good at writing them.



Chaosmancer said:


> So their action is only a mistake if they lack information, but the only information you are giving are the obvious consequences that they should have known. Nothing else. And the only thing that determines if they succeed or fail is the die roll, or if they back down and come up with a plan that doesn't require a die roll.
> 
> So, is it a mistake to come up with a plan that comes down to a die roll?



No. Stumbling into consequences you didn't see coming is a mistake. Taking a risky action when you know the risk and potential consequences is not a mistake, it's a calculated risk. A gamble. If a player declares an action that has an uncertain outcome and potential consequences, I will tell them the odds and potential consequences (within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know, of course). If the player was already expecting the consequences and expected the difficulty to be in the same ballpark that I gave, no harm done. If the player expected lesser consequences or a much lower risk of failure, then we've successfully avoided a mistake. Now that player can adjust their expectations and proceed accordingly. Maybe they still think the gamble is worth it and proceed, in which case, great. Maybe they think twice and decide the risk is too great, in which case, also great. As long as nobody is accidentally taking risks that are far greater than they anticipated or have far worse consequences than they thought (again, within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know).



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not trying to attack your style, but your language is showing a bias and your defense of what you are saying seems inconsistent.



Coulda fooled me.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> That's not really what they say though. It's very clear on the DM's role as someone who knows the rules and is making sure everyone plays by them, for example, as well as being a mediator between the rules and players, setting limits, etc.
> 
> It is also true, however, that the rules serve the DM (and by extension the group) and not the other way around. So I think my stated position of - "these are all rules, use the ones you like when you want to use them" is more accurate. And certainly more consistent than what amounts to "That one's a rule because I follow it and that bit's advice because I don't."




We've had this conversation.

5e is written for very new gamers who have little to no gaming experience.  As such, it is written to provide a specific experience for a specific audience.  Since I am neither a new gamer nor someone with little to no gaming experience, much of what they say doesn't really apply to me.  They're all advice.  However, some advice looks a lot more like a rule - longswords do d8 damage, than others.

Funny how 4e was crucified for being too limited in playstyle and trying to force gamers into specific paths, yet, now, 5e is being lauded for doing exactly the same thing.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

> Quote Originally Posted by Charlaquin View Post
> Umm... I've been staying out of this line of discussion because I'm not really interested in semantics about what's a rule and what's advice, but...
> 
> 
> ...




QFT.  One has to wonder why [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has repeatedly, I believe I counted what 8 times in 10 posts, insisted that he is only doing what the rules state and if we would just follow the rules, we'd have a better time, if, at the same time, he agrees that the rules are simply guidelines.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> We've had this conversation.
> 
> 5e is written for very new gamers who have little to no gaming experience.




A baseless assertion.



Hussar said:


> As such, it is written to provide a specific experience for a specific audience.  Since I am neither a new gamer nor someone with little to no gaming experience, much of what they say doesn't really apply to me.




Sounds like a post-hoc justification for not bothering to read the rules and for playing the game as if it's some other game. Which you're free to do. You don't need to make baseless assertions to justify it though.



Hussar said:


> They're all advice.  However, some advice looks a lot more like a rule - longswords do d8 damage, than others.




Advice, even when the rules refer to themselves as rules? Okay.



Hussar said:


> Funny how 4e was crucified for being too limited in playstyle and trying to force gamers into specific paths, yet, now, 5e is being lauded for doing exactly the same thing.




I neither crucify nor laud.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> QFT.  One has to wonder why [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has repeatedly, I believe I counted what 8 times in 10 posts, insisted that he is only doing what the rules state and if we would just follow the rules, we'd have a better time, if, at the same time, he agrees that the rules are simply guidelines.




No one has to wonder anything. My words are plain and consistent.

I don't agree that the rules are guidelines. I think they are rules, especially the ones that say they are rules. They tell us how the game is meant to be played. Not surprisingly, the game runs smoothly when we do since the game is designed reasonably well. Whether that game experience is enjoyable is a different issue as that is a matter of taste. The rules can also be ignored or changed if they don't produce a desirable game experience. The rules even tell us so.

When I'm asked where I get all these strange ideas like only DMs calling for rolls, players describing what they want to do, and the necessity of meaningful consequences for failure before dice are thrown, I point to the rules because that's the truth. And for some reason it seems to confound about a half-dozen vocal posters on these forums.

Perhaps the wondering should be turned inward as to why.


----------



## pemerton (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You are going to have to explain this to me.



OK, but I'll start a new thread in General, as it's not a specifically D&D point, is not really about truth-telling or lying NPCs, and won't be terribly brief.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Funny how 4e was crucified for being too limited in playstyle and trying to force gamers into specific paths, yet, now, 5e is being lauded for doing exactly the same thing.



For one thing, those people were in the wrong to crucify 4e for being too limited in playstyle. Its rules, just like 5e's were designed to create a particular play experience, but could be ignored if they did not suit the preferences of the group playing it. For another, I don't see anyone lauding 5e for being limited in playstyle. People are expressing their enjoyment of the play experience 5e's rules create, and pointing to those rules when asked why we run the game the way we do.



Hussar said:


> [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] (...) insisted that he is only doing what the rules state and if we would just follow the rules, we'd have a better time



Citation needed.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> For one thing, those people were in the wrong to crucify 4e for being too limited in playstyle. Its rules, just like 5e's were designed to create a particular play experience, but could be ignored if they did not suit the preferences of the group playing it. For another, I don't see anyone lauding 5e for being limited in playstyle. People are expressing their enjoyment of the play experience 5e's rules create, and pointing to those rules when asked why we run the game the way we do.
> 
> 
> Citation needed.




Nope.  Don't need a citation.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] above actually AGREES with what I said.  He's made no bones about it.  



			
				Iserith said:
			
		

> When I'm asked where I get all these strange ideas like only DMs calling for rolls, players describing what they want to do, and the necessity of meaningful consequences for failure before dice are thrown, I point to the rules because that's the truth. And for some reason it seems to confound about a half-dozen vocal posters on these forums.




Umm, who's asking that?  After this long and that many repetitions, we understand where you're getting the ideas from.

But, as far as the rules being written for newbies, that's hardly baseless is it?  Why would you presume otherwise?  5e is very much written for new gamers.  That's the whole point of 5e, to attract new gamers or pick up lapsed ones.  What it's not written for is folks like us who have played for decades.  Otherwise, if it was, it wouldn't have to spend considerable page count explaining basic notions like how to roll dice and the like.

In any case, I think we're at what is known as an imp arse.  So, I'll go back to lurking for a few dozen more pages and catch up with this once it's moved onto something more interesting than pedantic wankery over "what is a rule".


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Nope.  Don't need a citation.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] above actually AGREES with what I said.  He's made no bones about it.



I see nothing in that post that asserts you'd have a better time if you followed the rules. On the contrary, he specifically said that whether the game experience that following the rules leads to is enjoyable or not is a matter of taste. See:


iserith said:


> Whether that game experience is enjoyable is a different issue as that is a matter of taste. The rules can also be ignored or changed if they don't produce a desirable game experience. The rules even tell us so.




Seems like people are reading what they want to out of iserith's posts in order to vilify his position, instead of reading what his posts actually say.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Nope.  Don't need a citation.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] above actually AGREES with what I said.  He's made no bones about it.




I can't possibly refute all the bogus claims you make, not with only 24 hours in the day. So I pick the ones that are more interesting. This claim wasn't interesting, but since you seem to think that a lack of refutation is the same as agreement (which is a very odd conclusion), I guess I'll have to say something:

I don't agree with your characterization. I don't say that the game is better if you follow the rules. I do say it runs _smoother_ because you're not working at cross-purposes to the game's design. But whether the game experience is _better_ is in the eye of the beholder. You don't appear to enjoy the game experience that D&D 5e's rules support, though it's not clear you've every played in such a game or even understand it. And that's okay. It doesn't affect me at all.



Hussar said:


> Umm, who's asking that?  After this long and that many repetitions, we understand where you're getting the ideas from.




That doesn't appear to be the case with others who can't figure out why I mention the rules.



Hussar said:


> But, as far as the rules being written for newbies, that's hardly baseless is it?  Why would you presume otherwise?  5e is very much written for new gamers.  That's the whole point of 5e, to attract new gamers or pick up lapsed ones.  What it's not written for is folks like us who have played for decades.  Otherwise, if it was, it wouldn't have to spend considerable page count explaining basic notions like how to roll dice and the like.




I think the safe assumption is that the rules were written for anybody who wants to play D&D 5e, being a manual on how to play the game and all. So that includes novice and experienced gamers alike.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> (And it's odd that you support the Everett hypothesis, because that contradicts "fundamental randomness of the universe.")




I didn't say I specifically supported the Everett hypothesis - I was a professional scientist, they paid me to come up with my own ideas!

Whist the multiverse might not be random, since every potential outcome "exists" in some sense, which branch of the multiverse the observer finds themselves in when they make an observation is.


----------



## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I can't possibly refute all the bogus claims you make, not with only 24 hours in the day. So I pick the ones that are more interesting. This claim wasn't interesting, but since you seem to think that a lack of refutation is the same as agreement (which is a very odd conclusion), I guess I'll have to say something:
> 
> I don't agree with your characterization. I don't say that the game is better if you follow the rules. I do say it runs _smoother_ because you're not working at cross-purposes to the game's design. But whether the game experience is _better_ is in the eye of the beholder. You don't appear to enjoy the game experience that D&D 5e's rules support, though it's not clear you've every played in such a game or even understand it. And that's okay. It doesn't affect me at all.




Oh good grief.  You're splitting the hair between "better" and "smoother"?  Seriously?  And then double down by saying that by not following the rules I'm "working at cross-purposes to the game's design"?   Come on, for someone complaining about being misrepresented, that's about as pedantic as it gets.  

And it's hardly vilifying is it?  That's pretty strong.  I'm not vilifying anyone.  Simply disagreeing.

Of course the implication that my game runs less smoothly (or less well in plain English) because I do not play your way is pretty clear.

See, the problem is, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], you're presuming that the rules ONLY support one experience.  That unless I play exactly the way you do, I cannot understand it, nor have I apparently ever played that way.  Despite repeatedly being told that I have, in fact, played the way you play, done it for years in fact, and didn't enjoy it, I'm apparently unable to understand what you are saying.  

Or, to put it another way, only people who agree with you apparently understand what you are doing.  That's pretty convenient no?  




> That doesn't appear to be the case with others who can't figure out why I mention the rules.
> 
> 
> 
> I think the safe assumption is that the rules were written for anybody who wants to play D&D 5e, being a manual on how to play the game and all. So that includes novice and experienced gamers alike.




Whereas I look at the fact that a very large chunk of the books are written very much for those with little or no gaming experience means that there are large chunks of the book that I can safely ignore or change.  Such as this clear delineation between player and DM roles.  The books are chock a block with it.  It's simply a different interpretation that yours [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION].  Which leads us to treating the books and the guidelines/rules contained therein very differently.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh good grief.  You're splitting the hair between "better" and "smoother"?  Seriously?  And then double down by saying that by not following the rules I'm "working at cross-purposes to the game's design"?   Come on, for someone complaining about being misrepresented, that's about as pedantic as it gets.
> 
> And it's hardly vilifying is it?  That's pretty strong.  I'm not vilifying anyone.  Simply disagreeing.
> 
> ...




It's rather _inconvenient_ really, given that I may likely have more productive conversations about the game if you actually were familiar with the way some of us play. You and others have consistently shown that you do _not_ understand it in this thread despite repeated, patient attempts to explain it to you (and the fact that it is written plain as day in the rules). Your own words lead us to believe you have no idea what we're talking about.



Hussar said:


> Whereas I look at the fact that a very large chunk of the books are written very much for those with little or no gaming experience means that there are large chunks of the book that I can safely ignore or change.  Such as this clear delineation between player and DM roles.  The books are chock a block with it.  It's simply a different interpretation that yours [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION].  Which leads us to treating the books and the guidelines/rules contained therein very differently.




Yes, it's quite clear that you ignored a lot of the rules.


----------



## robus (Apr 30, 2019)

As a new player/DM to D&D 5e, my earlier brief encounter with AD&D not really counting for much, I have to say that the core books leave a lot to desired as an introduction to the game. The basic rules aren’t bad, but no one can seriously claim that the DMG, for example, was written with a newbie DM in mind! The first part is utterly ridiculous, it should be the the last. Master of the game, master of adventure then, finally, master of worlds (away from books so apologies if the part names are off, but you get the point...) Even the PHB puts the stuff players want to read first halfway through the book. Rolling a character is not the first thing a new player wants to read, it intimidating stuff with a bunch of interacting parts that don’t make much sense at first.

Anyway, back to the main thread...


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

robus said:


> but no one can seriously claim that the DMG, for example, was written with a newbie DM in mind!




Evidence to the contrary is right in this thread!


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh good grief.  You're splitting the hair between "better" and "smoother"?  Seriously?  And then double down by saying that by not following the rules I'm "working at cross-purposes to the game's design"?   Come on, for someone complaining about being misrepresented, that's about as pedantic as it gets.



Well, smoother and better do have different meanings. And if the game is designed a certain way and you play it a different way, your purposes are objectively crossed with the games. There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want to do. Also, if you tell me your game runs smoothly the way you run it, I’ll believe you. It’s entirely possible to rn the game differently than it was written and have a smooth gameplay experience.



Hussar said:


> And it's hardly vilifying is it?  That's pretty strong.  I'm not vilifying anyone.  Simply disagreeing.



Disagreeing on the basis that he’s making a different, more malicious point than he’s actually making.



Hussar said:


> Of course the implication that my game runs less smoothly (or less well in plain English) because I do not play your way is pretty clear.



Again, smoothly and well are not the same thing. If you and your players enjoy running the game the way you do more than you enjoy running it the way Iserith does, then your way works better for your group, no arguments there. That greater enjoyment may be in spite of, or even because of, some places where your play style conflicts with the intended play, and creates inconveniences that you may or may not notice or be bothered by.



Hussar said:


> See, the problem is, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], you're presuming that the rules ONLY support one experience.  That unless I play exactly the way you do, I cannot understand it, nor have I apparently ever played that way.  Despite repeatedly being told that I have, in fact, played the way you play, done it for years in fact, and didn't enjoy it, I'm apparently unable to understand what you are saying.



You played _D&D 5th edition_ that way for years? Or did you play a different game that way, like AD&D or AD&D Second Edition? Those games, from what I have heard (I haven’t played or run them myself) has a similar intended play style to D&D 5th Edition, and were a major source of inspiration to the developers of D&D 5th Edition. But they are different systems, and playing each as intended will lead to different play experiences. Now, your experience playing those games may help give you a sense of what the intended play experience of D&D 5th Edition is, but it is not exactly the same experience.



Hussar said:


> Or, to put it another way, only people who agree with you apparently understand what you are doing.  That's pretty convenient no?



The reason many of us think you don’t understand our play style is that the way you talk about it does not line up with our experiences playing it. You seem to dislike a play style other than the one we are advocating. At a guess, probably the style of play you experienced for years playing another system in a similar manner. And you assume that the way we play is just like that, and you therefore wouldn’t like it. You may well be right that you wouldn’t like it. In fact, I would expect you probably wouldn’t like it. But the way you talk about our style and the way it actually goes don’t line up, which leads us to think you don’t actually understand it.



Hussar said:


> Whereas I look at the fact that a very large chunk of the books are written very much for those with little or no gaming experience means that there are large chunks of the book that I can safely ignore or change.  Such as this clear delineation between player and DM roles.  The books are chock a block with it.  It's simply a different interpretation that yours [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION].  Which leads us to treating the books and the guidelines/rules contained therein very differently.



There is an implicit value judgment here that a clear delineation between player and DM roles is something “for inexperienced players.” You are mistaking your preference for more give-and-take of narrative control between the players and the DM for a more refined taste that players and DMs will naturally grow into with experience.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> ...
> The reason many of us think *you don’t understand our play style *is that the way you talk about it does not line up with our experiences playing it.
> ...
> 
> There is an implicit value judgment here that a clear delineation between player and DM roles is something “for inexperienced players.” You are mistaking your preference for more give-and-take of narrative control between the players and the DM for a *more refined taste *that players and DMs will naturally grow into with experience.




You really don't see how what you're saying basically comes down to "obviously you haven't tried our way of doing it because if you did you'd agree that we're better than you are"?


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You really don't see how what you're saying basically comes down to "obviously you haven't tried our way of doing it because if you did you'd agree that we're better than you are"?




I really cannot see at all how you get from evidence to conclusion on that one.  Maybe you skimmed the second paragraph and thought he was claiming "more refined taste" for his own playstyle?

In the first paragraph he is saying (and honestly it's hard to paraphrase it more succinctly and clearly than what he wrote) "we don't think you understand what we're saying because your descriptions of it are not accurate".  No value judgment at all in there.

In the second paragraph he is saying "you seem to be assuming that because you are experienced and prefer X, anybody who prefers the opposite of X is inexperienced, and that's a false assumption".

Absolutely nothing in there about "our way is better than your way".


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Well, smoother and better do have different meanings.




My two small boys are always asking me to take a detour on the way home that goes over a dirt road.  They think the bumpy way is better.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I really cannot see at all how you get from evidence to conclusion on that one.  Maybe you skimmed the second paragraph and thought he was claiming "more refined taste" for his own playstyle?




"More refined", much like "smoother" is just another way of saying "better than you".

Anyway I was just trying to provide feedback on why some people get the "holier-than-thou" impression.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> "More refined", much like "smoother" is just another way of saying "better than you".
> 
> Anyway I was just trying to provide feedback on why some people get the "holier-than-thou" impression.




Ok, but even so, he was not saying his own tastes are more refined, he was saying the other guy's tastes are not more refined.  He was making a statement of equality, not superiority.


----------



## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, but even so, he was not saying his own tastes are more refined, he was saying the other guy's tastes are not more refined.  He was making a statement of equality, not superiority.




Huh?  I'm not better than you, you're just worse? He literally says playing his way leads to a more refined play style.  You may as well replace "more refined" with "better" as far as I'm concerned.

In any case I was just trying to give some feedback on how he was expressing himself.  Take it or leave it.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> He literally says playing his way leads to a more refined play style.




You really need to re-read that passage. It’s not at all what he said. Not even close.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

She, by the way.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> She, by the way.




Roger. 

Damn, I mean, uh...let’s go with “Edith”


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You really need to re-read that passage. It’s not at all what he said. Not even close.




I blocked this poster months ago for this very reason. I suggest just letting him or her rail against what he or she thinks I'm saying because there is no way to change this mindset. It's sad and not worth spending time on in my view, plus anyone who is not already in his or her camp will see it for what it is. Any good points he or she might actually make will always be overshadowed by these antics and that's a self-inflicted loss to him or herself. When an opponent is doing this, it's often best to just let them keep doing it until they defeat themselves.

I do appreciate your efforts to clarify my position though.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I blocked this poster months ago for this very reason. I suggest just letting him or her rail against what he or she thinks I'm saying because there is no way to change this mindset. It's sad and not worth spending time on in my view, plus anyone who is not already in his or her camp will see it for what it is. Any good points he or she might actually make will always be overshadowed by these antics and that's a self-inflicted loss to him or herself. When an opponent is doing this, it's often best to just let them keep doing it until they defeat themselves.
> 
> I do appreciate your efforts to clarify my position though.




He was quoting Charlquin.  And apparently not actually _reading_ what she wrote.  

But, yeah, I think there are two (more) people in this thread I need to put on "manual Ignore."


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> He was quoting Charlquin.  And apparently not actually _reading_ what she wrote.
> 
> But, yeah, I think there are two (more) people in this thread I need to put on "manual Ignore."




There isn't much daylight between Charlaquin's position and mine, plus I have the other poster blocked, so my mistake there. But that poster has been continually railing about my position as well or what he or she can read of it in quotes from others or perhaps logging out and logging back in. This seems like a self-imposed misery to me that this person is welcome to wallow in as far as I'm concerned and is a poor approach to the goal of winning anyone over in my view.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Huh?  I'm not better than you, you're just worse? He literally says playing his way leads to a more refined play style.  You may as well replace "more refined" with "better" as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> In any case I was just trying to give some feedback on how he was expressing himself.  Take it or leave it.



“More refined” is what I was saying Hussar was mistaking his playstyle preference for, as opppsed to simply a preference. By saying that the playstyle the 5e rules promote is for inexperienced players, it was him suggesting that his playstyle was more refined. It’s the equivalent of saying “[thing I don’t like] is for babies.” I was merely pointing out the bias in Hussar’s wording. I don’t think either of our tastes are more refined, or “for more experienced players,” I think they are simply different preferences.


----------



## Chaosmancer (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't deny the rules can be ignored or changed.
> 
> Would it be reasonable to say that you consider all of the rules books simply to be advice? That they contain no rules at all? Even the parts that specifically use the word "rules?"




You are correct that taking parts of the books as "advice" and part as "rules" would be cherry-picking, though I'd say the books generally intend to include both. 

However, if we must choose one and only one set, why not have it all be advice? It works surprisingly well, and is consistent, and it changes nothing about our discussion. We aren't discussing mechanics or probabilities, we are discussing styles and table cultures. Whether the material in the books is a "rule" or "advice" has little bearing, and freeing myself from being constrained by "the rules" has made some of my sessions far more enjoyable than if I had played everything exactly by the book. 




iserith said:


> If that is indeed my tactic, and I don't say it is, wouldn't you rather be aware of your unreasonableness or inconsistencies so you can take steps to address them?




How far is the journey between indigo and violet? 

Looking at a gradient scale of colors you can clearly find different colors on each end, but finding the exact point where one becomes the other is impossible. That's how people are, you can lay out point by point your path, but that doesn't mean the nuance doesn't exist and doesn't change the color at the end of the journey. 






Charlaquin said:


> You don't have to use it for _any_ trap if you don't want to. My preference is to use some degree of telegraphing for every trap. I personally don't think it's fair to my players to spring traps on them that they couldn't have seen coming. Again, it doesn't have to be obvious, but in my opinion if it wasn't possible to realize it was coming, it wasn't a fair challenge.




That's fine for you. I'm just trying to say, sometimes having a fair challenge isn't the point. When the players are confronted by 50 of the Churches Elite Paladin's because of some prophecy, it isn't fair. But, between Divination, Commune, and Divine Intervention, it makes sense they could be tracked down and ambushed if the Church is truly afraid of something. 



Charlaquin said:


> *shrug* I don't agree.




You can not agree, but people still play games other than Dark Souls. 

(Obviously I know you meant you don't agree that telegraphing doesn't always make sense. I disagree with that, and you offered no reasoning, so I can't address it. The closest I could come is you are probably going to say I am engineering the scenario, so it only does not make sense because I say it doesn't, but I feel like that ignores some details on how building a world and furnishing it with people works)




Charlaquin said:


> I guess, but that doesn't sound like a very fun dungeon. And it's pretty trivial to come up with a reason the Lich might have decided to leave clues. Maybe he does have living minions. Or maybe he has a sense of sportsmanship and wants to make sure the adventurers have a chance. *Maybe he (wisely, in my opinion) assumes his gauntlet of death won't be able to lure in very many adventurers if they don't think they'll be able to find their way through it.* This comes back to what I said about the chandelier. Sure, if the reason the chandelier is unstable is because the wood that holds it up has rotten in a place that the characters can't see... Yeah, it doesn't make sense to tell them the chandelier might break. But, as DM it is your decision to set the scenario up that way. If, like me, you think it's important that players have information, you can set it up in such a way that it is reasonable for the character to know the chandelier might break.




I see you misunderstood the scenario. I can tell because of the bolded part.

This is the gauntlet that leads to the lich's lair, his home. They want to dissuade people from trying to get through it, the entire point is that it is a security measure. You don't post the code to your home security system on the front lawn, why would a Lich who is willing to devour and destroy souls to extend their life risk anything that could lead to their death? 

As for fun... I don't know. It would certainly be a challenge to get through a lich's gauntlet to finally destroy them once and for all. Be kind of anti-climatic if it was fair and the players felt like they could tell where all the traps and tricks are. It would feel like beating an equal, not destroying a great threat. 




Charlaquin said:


> ...That's a mystery, not a trap. That's is a _very_ different situation than what we've been discussing. I also don't generally run mystery adventures because they're not my favorite, and frankly, I'm not very good at writing them.




Everything you've said applies to mysteries and puzzles as much as it does traps. It wasn't an important plot point that this lady existed, in fact I think the players are still unaware of her all these years later, but it was there if they chose to pursue the various criminal gangs they kept running into and try to track down their boss. But, even action games can have elements of mysteries, if players choose to engage in them, so I'd say it is kind of hard to cut all mysteries and puzzles out of this discussion. 





Charlaquin said:


> No. Stumbling into consequences you didn't see coming is a mistake. Taking a risky action when you know the risk and potential consequences is not a mistake, it's a calculated risk. A gamble. If a player declares an action that has an uncertain outcome and potential consequences, I will tell them the odds and potential consequences (within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know, of course). If the player was already expecting the consequences and expected the difficulty to be in the same ballpark that I gave, no harm done. If the player expected lesser consequences or a much lower risk of failure, then we've successfully avoided a mistake. Now that player can adjust their expectations and proceed accordingly. Maybe they still think the gamble is worth it and proceed, in which case, great. Maybe they think twice and decide the risk is too great, in which case, also great. As long as nobody is accidentally taking risks that are far greater than they anticipated or have far worse consequences than they thought (again, within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know).




I like how you are now adding "within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know". Of course, by your own arguments what is reasonable to know is only reasonable because you have determined it to be reasonable, and the unreasonable is the same way, so in the end, you are doing the same thing I am doing. 

I'm also really curious why you've decided to prevent your players from ever making a mistake. I'm still pinning down exactly what is a mistake in your games, but if we go with your current definition of it only occurring when you stumble into a consequence with no warning, then it is impossible to make a mistake in your games. You have decided no one can ever make a mistake. 

Now imagine all those times you played Dark Souls. How many times have you had a playthrough with zero mistakes? How many times did those zero mistake playthroughs happen on your first game? 

People can never learn from mistakes that don't happen, and that means they can't improve. 



Charlaquin said:


> Coulda fooled me.




Well that's a problem, if I can fool you into thinking you have no biases and aren't using language that seems loaded with meanings you don't want to convey, then I could make you look quite bad. 






iserith said:


> When I'm asked where I get all these strange ideas like only DMs calling for rolls, players describing what they want to do, and the necessity of meaningful consequences for failure before dice are thrown, I point to the rules because that's the truth. And for some reason it seems to confound about a half-dozen vocal posters on these forums.
> 
> Perhaps the wondering should be turned inward as to why.




Since I'm probably one of those half dozen, I think I should point out I've never asked you where you get these "strange" ideas (I've also never said they were strange). In fact, you've told us so many times where you got them from I'm actually shocked I don't have the page numbers memorized. As such, it does not "confound" me. 

What "confounds" me, is why you seem so strict on something that is so flexible. You seem dismissive of the idea that our games run as well as yours even though we let the players ask for rolls, or have rolls with no meaningful failures. You seem "confounded" that people can have fun while not following the letter of "the rules" and keep insisting that the only way forward is following those rules exactly, even when it is unnecessary. 

(and since I'm probably going to get some commentary on them being rules now, just trying to match your language.) 




pemerton said:


> OK, but I'll start a new thread in General, as it's not a specifically D&D point, is not really about truth-telling or lying NPCs, and won't be terribly brief.




You'll have to include a link at some point, I'm having a hard enough time just keeping up with this thread. 




Elfcrusher said:


> You really need to re-read that passage. It’s not at all what he said. Not even close.




Really?

"There is an implicit value judgment here that a clear delineation between player and DM roles is something “for inexperienced players.”* (There is a clear judgement that marking the line between player and DM is something for new players) *You are mistaking your preference for more give-and-take of narrative control between the players and the DM for a more refined taste that players and DMs will naturally grow into with experience. *(You are mixing up your preference for a "give and take" style for a more refined style that players will grow into with experience)*"

How is "your preference" vs "a more refined style" not saying that their preference is less refined? Add in that this more refined style naturally comes from experience and there is an implication that lacking that more refined style is either choosing to play as if you were inexperienced, or comes about from being inexperienced. 

Seems pretty dang close to what [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] was saying about [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] coming across as feeling superior in their style. 





Charlaquin said:


> “More refined” is what I was saying Hussar was mistaking his playstyle preference for, as opppsed to simply a preference. By saying that the playstyle the 5e rules promote is for inexperienced players, it was him suggesting that his playstyle was more refined. It’s the equivalent of saying “[thing I don’t like] is for babies.” I was merely pointing out the bias in Hussar’s wording. I don’t think either of our tastes are more refined, or “for more experienced players,” I think they are simply different preferences.





Ah, I see that now. Be easier to spot with some clearer subject-verb usage, it gets a little muddled and I think it could be read either way. 




iserith said:


> There isn't much daylight between Charlaquin's position and mine, plus I have the other poster blocked, so my mistake there. But that poster has been continually railing about my position as well or what he or she can read of it in quotes from others or perhaps logging out and logging back in. This seems like a self-imposed misery to me that this person is welcome to wallow in as far as I'm concerned and is a poor approach to the goal of winning anyone over in my view.




Since we are trying to be helpful to each other's use of language, bad mouthing a poster again after being told they weren't talking about you (phrases like "self-imposed misery" or "continually railing" and word choices like "wallow") do not cast you in a very positive light either. 

A better play would have been to just admit your fault, instead of trying to make it sound like they were attacking you by attacking someone who agrees with you. 

Also, if you are blocked or are blocking someone, isn't it good policy to just not talk about them, since they can't see what you are saying? 5eyku has had me blocked for a long time and while I do occasionally read what they say in quotes, because I find they raise good points, I try not to point towards them in anyway, since they could never directly respond to me and that would be unfair.


----------



## Charlaquin (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> That's fine for you. I'm just trying to say, sometimes having a fair challenge isn't the point. When the players are confronted by 50 of the Churches Elite Paladin's because of some prophecy, it isn't fair. But, between Divination, Commune, and Divine Intervention, it makes sense they could be tracked down and ambushed if the Church is truly afraid of something.



Alright, man. If you want to give your players unfair challenges on purpose and they're cool with it, you have fun with that.



Chaosmancer said:


> You can not agree, but people still play games other than Dark Souls.



-.- 



Chaosmancer said:


> (Obviously I know you meant you don't agree that telegraphing doesn't always make sense. I disagree with that, and you offered no reasoning, so I can't address it. The closest I could come is you are probably going to say I am engineering the scenario, so it only does not make sense because I say it doesn't, but I feel like that ignores some details on how building a world and furnishing it with people works)



I didn't offer any reasoning because it doesn't matter. Obviously we're never going to agree on this, and it seems clear at this point that you are understanding my position here, and simply hold a different one. So, I'm satisfied with that. You see where I'm coming from re: telegraphing, and you have a different preference, and that's fine. I'm not interested in trying to change your mind.



Chaosmancer said:


> I see you misunderstood the scenario. I can tell because of the bolded part.
> 
> This is the gauntlet that leads to the lich's lair, his home. They want to dissuade people from trying to get through it, the entire point is that it is a security measure. You don't post the code to your home security system on the front lawn, why would a Lich who is willing to devour and destroy souls to extend their life risk anything that could lead to their death?



You say that like it's an objective fact, but this lich and his dungeon don't actually exist. You made the scenario up. You didn't have to set it up specifically to make any telegraphing not make sense, that was a conscious choice. Maybe you think that's more fun. I don't.



Chaosmancer said:


> As for fun... I don't know. It would certainly be a challenge to get through a lich's gauntlet to finally destroy them once and for all. Be kind of anti-climatic if it was fair and the players felt like they could tell where all the traps and tricks are. It would feel like beating an equal, not destroying a great threat.



Have you tried asking your players if they would prefer a fair challenge or an unfair one? I have a feeling which one they'd pick.



Chaosmancer said:


> Everything you've said applies to mysteries and puzzles as much as it does traps. It wasn't an important plot point that this lady existed, in fact I think the players are still unaware of her all these years later, but it was there if they chose to pursue the various criminal gangs they kept running into and try to track down their boss. But, even action games can have elements of mysteries, if players choose to engage in them, so I'd say it is kind of hard to cut all mysteries and puzzles out of this discussion.



Look, man, I don't think you need to telegraph the identity of your elf or whatever. I've been talking about traps and hazards here, you're the one who decided to extend it to mysteries.



Chaosmancer said:


> I like how you are now adding "within the bounds of what it is reasonable for the character to know". Of course, by your own arguments what is reasonable to know is only reasonable because you have determined it to be reasonable, and the unreasonable is the same way, so in the end, you are doing the same thing I am doing.



I've been saying all along that I wouldn't tell the players consequences it wasn't reasonable for their characters to know. I've also been saying that my preference is to set challenges up in such a way that it is reasonable for the characters to know the potential consequences of their actions, because that leads to a gameplay experience I think is more enjoyable for most players.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm also really curious why you've decided to prevent your players from ever making a mistake. I'm still pinning down exactly what is a mistake in your games, but if we go with your current definition of it only occurring when you stumble into a consequence with no warning, then it is impossible to make a mistake in your games. You have decided no one can ever make a mistake.



It's impossible for you as a player to mistakenly blunder into unexpected consequences. Because doing so isn't fun. Again, this is not a controversial thing at my table. I've never had a player express that they wish I wouldn't let them know what consequences their actions might lead to. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Now imagine all those times you played Dark Souls. How many times have you had a playthrough with zero mistakes? How many times did those zero mistake playthroughs happen on your first game?



You're conflating "mistakenly blunder into an unexpected consequence" with "fail to notice a trap." My playstyle does not prevent players from failing to notice traps. Players get nailed by traps with some frequency in my games, even with the telegraphing I do. They just don't unknowingly spring traps as results of failed rolls to disarm traps they have spotted. Sometimes they knowingly do so though.




Chaosmancer said:


> Well that's a problem, if I can fool you into thinking you have no biases and aren't using language that seems loaded with meanings you don't want to convey, then I could make you look quite bad.



What the heck are you babbling about?



Chaosmancer said:


> Really?
> 
> "There is an implicit value judgment here that a clear delineation between player and DM roles is something “for inexperienced players.”* (There is a clear judgement that marking the line between player and DM is something for new players)*



Yes, a judgment Hussar is implicitly making by calling out the clear delineation between player's and DM's rolls as an example of a place where the 5e rules are written for inexperienced players. Something I disagree with.







Chaosmancer said:


> You are mistaking your preference for more give-and-take of narrative control between the players and the DM for a more refined taste that players and DMs will naturally grow into with experience. *(You are mixing up your preference for a "give and take" style for a more refined style that players will grow into with experience)*"



Yes, he is making the mistake of thinking that his preference (a "give and take" style) is a more refined one than the one the 5e rules present as standard, when in reality it is simply a preference that is neither more or less refined.



Chaosmancer said:


> How is "your preference" vs "a more refined style" not saying that their preference is less refined?



It is saying that his preference is not more refined, as his statement seemed to suggest it was.



Chaosmancer said:


> Add in that this more refined style naturally comes from experience and there is an implication that lacking that more refined style is either choosing to play as if you were inexperienced, or comes about from being inexperienced.



I agree, that was a pretty bold thing for Hussar to suggest!



Chaosmancer said:


> Seems pretty dang close to what @_*Oofta*_ was saying about @_*Charlaquin*_ coming across as feeling superior in their style.



That's a pretty impressive misreading of what I said. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Ah, I see that now. Be easier to spot with some clearer subject-verb usage, it gets a little muddled and I think it could be read either way.



And yet you left in your mis-analysis of my post for some reason.


----------



## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You are correct that taking parts of the books as "advice" and part as "rules" would be cherry-picking, though I'd say the books generally intend to include both.
> 
> However, if we must choose one and only one set, why not have it all be advice? It works surprisingly well, and is consistent, and it changes nothing about our discussion. We aren't discussing mechanics or probabilities, we are discussing styles and table cultures. Whether the material in the books is a "rule" or "advice" has little bearing, and freeing myself from being constrained by "the rules" has made some of my sessions far more enjoyable than if I had played everything exactly by the book.




It seems odd to me to call rules that refer to themselves as "rules" _advice_. Even rules about how to conduct the game outside of the rules of the game are called "table rules."



Chaosmancer said:


> How far is the journey between indigo and violet?
> 
> Looking at a gradient scale of colors you can clearly find different colors on each end, but finding the exact point where one becomes the other is impossible. That's how people are, you can lay out point by point your path, but that doesn't mean the nuance doesn't exist and doesn't change the color at the end of the journey.




So is that a "yes" or a "no" on finding value in seeing one's own inconsistencies and contradictions?



Chaosmancer said:


> Since I'm probably one of those half dozen, I think I should point out I've never asked you where you get these "strange" ideas (I've also never said they were strange). In fact, you've told us so many times where you got them from I'm actually shocked I don't have the page numbers memorized. As such, it does not "confound" me.
> 
> What "confounds" me, is why you seem so strict on something that is so flexible. You seem dismissive of the idea that our games run as well as yours even though we let the players ask for rolls, or have rolls with no meaningful failures. You seem "confounded" that people can have fun while not following the letter of "the rules" and keep insisting that the only way forward is following those rules exactly, even when it is unnecessary.
> 
> (and since I'm probably going to get some commentary on them being rules now, just trying to match your language.)




I don't count you in that half-dozen. Your posts barely register to me compared to others who are in nearly every other thread I'm in, talking largely about the same things.

I wouldn't call myself "strict." I change rules regularly to suit the campaign. What I don't change are the fundamental elements such as how to play the game and the adjudication process. 

I also make no judgment as to how well your game runs, having never seen it firsthand, only observing that sometimes running the game in a way that runs contrary to its design can make for a less smoothly running game. We see this sort of thing reported on the forums all the time. I am also not confounded by how others have fun, nor do I say that following the rules is the only way forward or always necessary. I say what I do and why, that's all. And while I don't count you among the aforementioned half-dozen, statements such as these put you right in line with their tactics of ascribing to me things I do not believe by grossly mischaracterizing things that I say. I would hope you don't continue to follow suit.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I blocked this poster months ago for this very reason. I suggest just letting him or her rail against what he or she thinks I'm saying because there is no way to change this mindset. It's sad and not worth spending time on in my view, plus anyone who is not already in his or her camp will see it for what it is. Any good points he or she might actually make will always be overshadowed by these antics and that's a self-inflicted loss to him or herself. When an opponent is doing this, it's often best to just let them keep doing it until they defeat themselves.
> 
> I do appreciate your efforts to clarify my position though.



Oho, so now even your way of posting is better than ours!

Poe's Law Disclaimer: the above is intended as humorous satire.  Any resemblance to honestly held views is intentional.


----------



## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Iserith said:
			
		

> only observing that sometimes running the game in a way that runs contrary to its design can make for a less smoothly running game




Fair enough.  I can also make the observation that running the game in the way that the game suggests can make for a less smoothly running game.

I'd say it depends mostly on the group and the person running the game.

But, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], don't you find it strange that the only people who apparently understand the way you run the games are also the people that agree with you?  That everyone who disagrees with you apparently just doesn't understand what you're doing?  Something to cogitate on since we're all about that self reflection right?


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh good grief.  You're splitting the hair between "better" and "smoother"?  Seriously?



 Also between the /game/ being better and the experience of running it smoother.  The latter is less a claim of quality about the game itself.

Though I would go right ahead and say that 5e is a better game if run the 'right' way by the right DM.  
with iserith being a pretty fair example.  Just needs a bit more shameless illusionism.  



> And then double down by saying that by not following the rules I'm "working at cross-purposes to the game's design"?   Come on, for someone complaining about being misrepresented, that's about as pedantic as it gets.



 Because it's just fun to type silliness like this:  no, it's by following the rules that you're working at cross purposes to the game's rules which rule that the rules should be over-ruled selectively whenever ruling with the rules would detract from the rule of the DM.  

Or something like that.

Yeah, I'm joking, but I'm also serious.  The brilliance of DM Empowerment is that you can't take refuge in "just play'n by the rules," you have a greater responsibility than that as DM.



> Of course the implication that my game runs less smoothly (or less well in plain English) because I do not play your way is pretty clear.



Well, iff you're running 5e (or TSR era D&D), and iff you're insisting on playing by natural-language rules as if they were perfectly clear unambiguous precise-jargon rules, your experience may be less smooth than it could be if you just circular-filed the book and did whatever you wanted.  Or ran something else.  Which amounts to the same thing, really.



> See, the problem is, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], you're presuming that the rules ONLY support one experience.  That unless I play exactly the way you do, I cannot understand it, nor have I apparently ever played that way.  Despite repeatedly being told that I have, in fact, played the way you play, done it for years in fact, and didn't enjoy it, I'm apparently unable to understand what you are saying.



 Of course the rules support many sorts of experiences - whatever sort of experiences /you/ support while ignoring the bits of the rules that don't support that experience are perforce, supported.



> Whereas I look at the fact that a very large chunk of the books are written very much for those with little or no gaming experience means that there are large chunks of the book that I can safely ignore or change.



 Not a bad way to write the books when you have tons of new people entering the hobby through your flagship offering. I'd say you can safely ignore or change anything between the covers, but, really, feel free to change/ignore the covers, too.



iserith said:


> It seems odd to me to call rules that refer to themselves as "rules" _advice_. Even rules about how to conduct the game outside of the rules of the game are called "table rules."



 Ultimately the GM in any RPG can change/overrule/ignore the rules of the game he's running.  Even if that game /does/ try to present itself as a tense set of immutable rules.

5e does not choose to so present itself.



> So is that a "yes" or a "no" on finding value in seeing one's own inconsistencies and contradictions?



It is and it isn't.



> I wouldn't call myself "strict." I change rules regularly to suit the campaign. What I don't change are the fundamental elements such as how to play the game and the adjudication process.



 If you strictly follow the rules of a game written in natural language, that empowers the DM, /you're not following the rules at all/.  OTOH, if you constantly subordinate the rules to your own judgement, you're totally following them.



> I also make no judgment as to how well your game runs, having never seen it firsthand, only observing that sometimes running the game in a way that runs contrary to its design can make for a less smoothly running game. We see this sort of thing reported on the forums all the time.



 I'll admit that the first few times I ran 5e, I ran it as 'by the book' as possible in every detail, and things got a lot better when I got over that impulse.


Another way to look at it.  The rules of the game exist on more than one level.  The general order/philosophy of play is an over-arching rule that offers a helpful guideline to the DM.  The details - bonuses, skills, monster stat blocks, etc, etc, etc - are on another level.  Following the higher-level rule includes making judgements about and changing/ignoring/modding/over-ruling/tweaking the lower-level details.

…

There must be some reasonable way to state this that's obvious to folks that didn't grok DMing back in the day.


----------



## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fair enough.  I can also make the observation that running the game in the way that the game suggests can make for a less smoothly running game.
> 
> I'd say it depends mostly on the group and the person running the game.
> 
> But, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], don't you find it strange that the only people who apparently understand the way you run the games are also the people that agree with you?  That everyone who disagrees with you apparently just doesn't understand what you're doing?  Something to cogitate on since we're all about that self reflection right?




No, I don't find it strange since we have a record of the words those people used that show they do not understand. Based on those words, as best as I can figure, some folks really don't like a game that I'm not running.


----------



## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Ultimately the GM in any RPG can change/overrule/ignore the rules of the game he's running.  Even if that game /does/ try to present itself as a tense set of immutable rules.




I've said nothing to the contrary.



Tony Vargas said:


> 5e does not choose to so present itself.




That is true.



Tony Vargas said:


> So is that a "yes" or a "no" on finding value in seeing one's own inconsistencies and contradictions?




That question wasn't directed at you and your answer makes little sense to me.



Tony Vargas said:


> If you strictly follow the rules of a game written in natural language, that empowers the DM, /you're not following the rules at all/.  OTOH, if you constantly subordinate the rules to your own judgement, you're totally following them.




I advocate running the game by its rules which includes the DM deciding when the rules come into play to resolve uncertainty.



Tony Vargas said:


> I'll admit that the first few times I ran 5e, I ran it as 'by the book' as possible in every detail, and things got a lot better when I got over that impulse.
> 
> Another way to look at it.  The rules of the game exist on more than one level.  The general order/philosophy of play is an over-arching rule that offers a helpful guideline to the DM.  The details - bonuses, skills, monster stat blocks, etc, etc, etc - are on another level.  Following the higher-level rule includes making judgements about and changing/ignoring/modding/over-ruling/tweaking the lower-level details.
> 
> ...




I would say "How to Play" and the DM's adjudication process are the fundamental aspects of the game and it is tinkered with at your game's peril. The rest of the rules come into play at the DM's discretion (so say the rules).


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> I've said nothing to the contrary.
> That is true.
> That question wasn't directed at you and your answer makes little sense to me.



Yeah, we may be in violent agreement on some points here. (The last one was my un-patented lame attempt at humor.) 



> I advocate running the game by its rules which includes the DM deciding when the rules come into play to resolve uncertainty. I would say "How to Play" and the DM's adjudication process are the fundamental aspects of the game and it is tinkered with at your game's peril. The rest of the rules come into play at the DM's discretion (so say the rules).



 That sure sounds clear & reasonable, to me.  


I find it too much fun to shout the superficial contradictions.  
I should probably just shut up.


----------



## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You'll have to include a link at some point, I'm having a hard enough time just keeping up with this thread.



Sorry about that, here's the link. You might also have got a quote notification.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Fair enough.  I can also make the observation that running the game in the way that the game suggests can make for a less smoothly running game.
> 
> I'd say it depends mostly on the group and the person running the game.
> 
> But, @_*iserith*_, don't you find it strange that the only people who apparently understand the way you run the games are also the people that agree with you?  That everyone who disagrees with you apparently just doesn't understand what you're doing?  Something to cogitate on since we're all about that self reflection right?




I mean... One possible explanation of this phenomenon might be that people who do understand the way we run the game tend to like it. It's a bit like saying "Don't you think it's a little odd that everyone who says they like sushi seem to have tried authentically-made sushi?" No, I don't find that odd, honestly. Authentically made sushi is very good. Obviously it's not to everyone's tastes, and there certainly are some folks who have tried it and still didn't like it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not the least bit surprising to me that most people who have tried it have liked it, and most people who are convinced they won't like it based on their experience with cheap sushi haven't tried it.


----------



## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean... One possible explanation of this phenomenon might be that people who do understand the way we run the game tend to like it. It's a bit like saying "Don't you think it's a little odd that everyone who says they like sushi seem to have tried authentically-made sushi?" No, I don't find that odd, honestly. Authentically made sushi is very good. Obviously it's not to everyone's tastes, and there certainly are some folks who have tried it and still didn't like it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not the least bit surprising to me that most people who have tried it have liked it, and most people who are convinced they won't like it based on their experience with cheap sushi haven't tried it.




Or ... people understand, have played that way and choose not to be that picky about how people declare what they are doing.  Oh, and sushi is still just raw fish despite all the hype.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Or ... people understand, have played that way and choose not to be that picky about how people declare what they are doing.



Certainly. Although, this explanation would fail to account for the fact that a majority of the people who claim to have played that way and chosen not to be picky about how people declare what they are doing also display several fundamental misunderstandings of the playstyle they claim to have tried.



Oofta said:


> Oh, and sushi is still just raw fish despite all the hype.



It's fish (sometimes raw, but often cooked), rice, nori, and various vegetables.


----------



## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Certainly. Although, this explanation would fail to account for the fact that a majority of the people who claim to have played that way and chosen not to be picky about how people declare what they are doing also display several fundamental misunderstandings of the playstyle they claim to have tried.




What don't I understand?
- Players should not declare use of skills, the DM calls for skills if necessary.
-There should never be a skill check unless there is a significant penalty for failure.
-The DM should never call for (or allow a player to ask for) a skill check if there is no chance of failure (i.e. no insight check if the NPC is telling the truth like the OP).
-Players should always avoid a skill check if possible, which includes describing for example how they disarm a trap.
-Traps and challenges should be broadcast so that they are obvious.

I'm not saying everyone runs things exactly like that, but that's the gist.  Or did I miss something?  



Charlaquin said:


> It's fish (sometimes raw, but often cooked), rice, nori, and various vegetables.




And, in the US anyway served with artificially colored green horseradish that's been mislabeled 'wasabi'.  What's your point?


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> -Players should always avoid a skill check if possible, which includes describing for example how they disarm a trap.



Well, for one, it’s up to the player how they want to go about achieving their goals. Trying to avoid having to make skill checks where is a good strategy for success, but it’s certainly not a necessary part of the technique. Depending on what you mean by “describing how they disarm a trap,” this may be either something that is a necessary part of any action declaration under this technique (if by “describe,” you mean “state your action in terms of the character’s approach to the goal of disarming the trap,) or something that is never required, though certainly permitted (of by “describe” you mean go into great detail about the specifics of the character’s approach).



Oofta said:


> -Traps and challenges should be broadcast so that they are obvious.



Not at all. Traps and challenges should be telegraphed so that a player who is paying close attention might be able to anticipate it. That does not mean this telegraphing needs to make the presence of the trap or other challenge obvious.



Oofta said:


> I'm not saying everyone runs things exactly like that, but that's the gist.  Or did I miss something?



There’s the bit about letting the players know the DC and potential consequences of an action if a roll is required to resolve an action, though that one isn’t a universally accepted part of the technique. As well, there is a tendency to think of actions that don’t require rolls as “automatic success” or “automatic failure” as opposed to merely not needing dice to resolve. There are several similar fundamental differences in the way the technique’s opponents and advocates view things like the role of the dice, and the nature of checks.



Oofta said:


> And, in the US anyway served with artificially colored green horseradish that's been mislabeled 'wasabi'.  What's your point?



Just kinda found it ironic that you either misunderstood or misrepresented the fundamental components of sushi there.


----------



## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Well, for one, it’s up to the player how they want to go about achieving their goals. Trying to avoid having to make skill checks where is a good strategy for success, but it’s certainly not a necessary part of the technique. Depending on what you mean by “describing how they disarm a trap,” this may be either something that is a necessary part of any action declaration under this technique (if by “describe,” you mean “state your action in terms of the character’s approach to the goal of disarming the trap,) or something that is never required, though certainly permitted (of by “describe” you mean go into great detail about the specifics of the character’s approach).
> 
> 
> Not at all. Traps and challenges should be telegraphed so that a player who is paying close attention might be able to anticipate it. That does not mean this telegraphing needs to make the presence of the trap or other challenge obvious.
> ...




There's a fair amount of variation, and my quickly-typed bullet list isn't meant to be comprehensive. 

But seriously.  There are over a thousand posts.  I think both sides have explained their sides or they aren't being consistent in what they say.  I simply run my game differently and find it annoying that people keep telling me that I'm too stupid and ignorant understand the brilliance of their style because if I did I'd agree.


----------



## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean... One possible explanation of this phenomenon might be that people who do understand the way we run the game tend to like it. It's a bit like saying "Don't you think it's a little odd that everyone who says they like sushi seem to have tried authentically-made sushi?" No, I don't find that odd, honestly. Authentically made sushi is very good. Obviously it's not to everyone's tastes, and there certainly are some folks who have tried it and still didn't like it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's not the least bit surprising to me that most people who have tried it have liked it, and most people who are convinced they won't like it based on their experience with cheap sushi haven't tried it.




Heh.  Most folks have never eaten truly authentic sushi.  Heck, even here in Japan, most folks haven't eaten really authentic sushi because it's unbelievably expensive.  Did your sushi have avocado or tomato?  That's from California.  Did your sushi have chicken or anything other than fish?  Yup, not traditional.  Which soy sauce did you use?  After all, there's a considerable regional difference in soy sauce and, if you're from outside of Japan, most likely the soy sauce you had was Chinese.

On and on and on.

I've met people who absolutely adore conveyer belt sushi (kainten sushi).  But, by and large, that's made with frozen, low quality fish.  It's the McDonalds of sushi.  Yet its fantastically more popular than actual sushi.  Trying to claim that authenticity makes it better doesn't really hold much water since, outside of a very small percentage of people, so few have actually eaten truly authentic sushi.

Some folks like sushi.  Some folks like teriyaki chicken sushi.  Some folks like avocado sushi.  Does that mean that most folks are wrong for liking sushi that isn't authentic?  Or only folks who eat traditional sushi are the ones who really know what sushi is?  Or that folks are wrong for liking teriyaki chicken sushi but detesting ikura (fish eggs) sushi because they just don't "really understand" or apparently haven't really tried the "real" sushi?  

It's unbelievably arrogant to continuously assume that everyone who tries a particular way of gaming will like it and that if someone doesn't like it, they obviously just haven't done it right.  The onetruewayism stench in here is getting very, very thick.  I play the way I do because I like it better this way.  Not because it's better for anyone else or following the rules, or runs smoother (although I do think that it does run faster - less steps=runs faster) or anything else.  I've tried it the way you and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and co. are talking about and it doesn't work for me.  It's slower, and forces the DM into a central position that I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN since the DM now has to constantly ask for rolls rather than just letting the players drive the game.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 1, 2019)

I find it rather astonishing that you interpret this debate as us preaching a superior “onetruewayism”. 

From my point of view this entire discussion has been a few of us defending our approach from (intentional?) mischaracterization and denigration “Mother May I”, “pixelbitching”, “talkie talkie” etc.


----------



## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Y'know, I have to apologize for the "talkie talkie" thing.  I thought it was funny and cute, totally not meant as a shot or anything like that.  I see that it has very much taken on a life of its own, and that's totally my bad.  Sorry about that.

When I say, talky talky or talky bits, I'm simply meaning those parts of the game that revolve around the social pillar.  As opposed to the hacky bits or looky bits.   

Yeah, humour is always tough.

But, honestly [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I've never seen this as you folks needing to defend anything.  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is 100% right in saying that this is what the 5e books expect.  It is right there in black and white.  I can't really argue with that.

My point has always been that anyone, like me or [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION], saying that we have a way that works better for us is immediately dogpiled on as coming from dysfunctional tables or not understanding other approaches or whatever.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh.  Most folks have never eaten truly authentic sushi.  Heck, even here in Japan, most folks haven't eaten really authentic sushi because it's unbelievably expensive.  Did your sushi have avocado or tomato?  That's from California.  Did your sushi have chicken or anything other than fish?  Yup, not traditional.  Which soy sauce did you use?  After all, there's a considerable regional difference in soy sauce and, if you're from outside of Japan, most likely the soy sauce you had was Chinese.
> 
> On and on and on.
> 
> I've met people who absolutely adore conveyer belt sushi (kainten sushi).  But, by and large, that's made with frozen, low quality fish.  It's the McDonalds of sushi.  Yet its fantastically more popular than actual sushi.  Trying to claim that authenticity makes it better doesn't really hold much water since, outside of a very small percentage of people, so few have actually eaten truly authentic sushi.



I think you've stretched the metaphor well beyond its breaking point here.



Hussar said:


> Some folks like sushi.  Some folks like teriyaki chicken sushi.  Some folks like avocado sushi.  Does that mean that most folks are wrong for liking sushi that isn't authentic?  Or only folks who eat traditional sushi are the ones who really know what sushi is?  Or that folks are wrong for liking teriyaki chicken sushi but detesting ikura (fish eggs) sushi because they just don't "really understand" or apparently haven't really tried the "real" sushi?



Nah, man, people are free to enjoy what they enjoy.



Hussar said:


> It's unbelievably arrogant to continuously assume that everyone who tries a particular way of gaming will like it and that if someone doesn't like it, they obviously just haven't done it right. The onetruewayism stench in here is getting very, very thick.



I agree, but no one here has said that if you don't like it, you must not have done it right.



Hussar said:


> I play the way I do because I like it better this way.  Not because it's better for anyone else or following the rules, or runs smoother (although I do think that it does run faster - less steps=runs faster) or anything else.  I've tried it the way you and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and co. are talking about and it doesn't work for me.  It's slower, and forces the DM into a central position that I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN since the DM now has to constantly ask for rolls rather than just letting the players drive the game.



And that's totally fine. Nothing wrong with that.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> There's a fair amount of variation, and my quickly-typed bullet list isn't meant to be comprehensive.
> 
> But seriously.  There are over a thousand posts.  I think both sides have explained their sides or they aren't being consistent in what they say.  I simply run my game differently and find it annoying that people keep telling me that I'm too stupid and ignorant understand the brilliance of their style because if I did I'd agree.




And I simply find it annoying that people keep telling me that I'm telling them they're too stupid and ignorant to understand the brilliance of my style because if they did they'd agree when I have never said that and do not believe it's true.


----------



## robus (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Y'know, I have to apologize for the "talkie talkie" thing.  I thought it was funny and cute, totally not meant as a shot or anything like that.  I see that it has very much taken on a life of its own, and that's totally my bad.  Sorry about that.
> 
> When I say, talky talky or talky bits, I'm simply meaning those parts of the game that revolve around the social pillar.  As opposed to the hacky bits or looky bits.
> 
> ...




I’d like to give XP for this, but the final paragraph is too much. You guys were rebutted *because* you went after goal/approach method complaining of pixel-bitching and talky-talky and how much you hated it when you tried it 20+ years ago. If you’d instead just said, that’s cool but I prefer handling it this way... I don’t think things would have gone so off the rails (so to speak.) So no, I don’t think you don’t get to say that we dogpiled on you. You thoroughly disrespected our preferred method, and now you’re saying it was us that started it? Talk about gaslighting!

Why do I keep reading this thread??!


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

robus said:


> I’d like to give XP for this, but the final paragraph is too much. You guys were rebutted *because* you went after goal/approach method complaining of pixel-bitching and talky-talky and how much you hated it when you tried it 20+ years ago. If you’d instead just said, that’s cool but I prefer handling it this way... I don’t think things would have gone so off the rails (so to speak.) So no, I don’t think you don’t get to say that we dogpiled on you. You thoroughly disrespected our preferred method, and now you’re saying it was us that started it? Talk about gaslighting!
> 
> Why do I keep reading this thread??!




I wish I could give this post more than one XP.


----------



## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

robus said:


> I’d like to give XP for this, but the final paragraph is too much. You guys were rebutted *because* you went after goal/approach method complaining of pixel-bitching and talky-talky and how much you hated it when you tried it 20+ years ago. If you’d instead just said, that’s cool but I prefer handling it this way... I don’t think things would have gone so off the rails (so to speak.) So no, I don’t think you don’t get to say that we dogpiled on you. You thoroughly disrespected our preferred method, and now you’re saying it was us that started it? Talk about gaslighting!
> 
> Why do I keep reading this thread??!




I do think that people are reading what they want to read.  Myself included.  Go back to the early posts.  While I cannot speak for anyone else, I never "went after" anything.  I was pretty clear that I was only speaking for how I played.  I even went so far as to invite folks to call my way house ruling if it helped.  

IOW, while I might have gotten sucked down into some argument, I certainly started off by saying, "That's cool but I prefer to handle it this way".


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I do think that people are reading what they want to read.  Myself included.  Go back to the early posts.  While I cannot speak for anyone else, I never "went after" anything.  I was pretty clear that I was only speaking for how I played.  I even went so far as to invite folks to call my way house ruling if it helped.
> 
> IOW, while I might have gotten sucked down into some argument, I certainly started off by saying, "That's cool but I prefer to handle it this way".




Umm... Your first handfull of posts in this thread contained the following gems:



Hussar said:


> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.  *I've honestly never played this way. * We've always assumed that a player can make a skill roll whenever the player chooses.  Granted, of course, sometimes the DM will call for rolls too, fair enough, but, *I've never played in a game where the players are not allowed to make skill rolls.*




^Which would seem to contradict your later assertion that you played like this 20+ years ago.



Hussar said:


> Firstly, since we both agree that there are no auto succeeds or auto fails, what is changed by a player rolling before asking?  If the task was impossible, it remains impossible.  If the task was very easy, it remains very easy.  Rolling beforehand changes nothing.
> 
> However, the notion that a player is not "entitled" to a skill check is something I strongly disagree with.
> 
> Earlier examples from [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] regarding his player would cause me, as a player to do nothing but grind my teeth.  Y*ou don't ask me to describe my actions before I attack and I can certainly roll an attack roll without your permission*,



^ A mischaracterization of how I run the game



Hussar said:


> nor do you ask me to describe my actions before casting a spell.  So, what's wrong with, "I'm trained in investigation - I check for traps"?  *The idea that somehow that makes me an "entitled" player *is something I strongly object to.



^ A mischaracterization of my position.



Hussar said:


> And, as a DM, I have zero interest in gate keeping player skill checks.  They can roll any time they want.  Frankly I prefer it that way.
> 
> To me the fact that [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s very polite requests for why doing it your way helps the game were *completely stonewalled and people immediately got defensive*



^ A mischaracterization of my response to Oofta



Hussar said:


> demonstrates that perhaps folks are *a bit more controlling while sitting in the DM's chair than they think they are.*



^ A mischaracterization of ...everyone who runs the game the way those of us on the "goal and approach" side do.

So please, don't try to pretend you were just innocently stating your preferences. From the beginning, you were presenting the way we play the game in a negative light. We have only been defending our position since then.

To be fair, I think Oofta's posts were far more inflamatory than yours, but your posts didn't exactly help de-escalate the situaition.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> You say that like it's an objective fact, but this lich and his dungeon don't actually exist. You made the scenario up. You didn't have to set it up specifically to make any telegraphing not make sense, that was a conscious choice. Maybe you think that's more fun. I don't.




Do you know that the Russo brothers killed Quintillions of people by having Thanos snap his fingers? And man, if you haven't, go rewatch those fights with Thanos in Infinity War, there is no way that was a balanced fight. Seems completely unfair, especially when he got the ability to manipulate reality at his will. 

Wasn't it a great show? 

If I create a lich that is an undead sociopath, with no regard for mortal life except as a fuel source to delay it's own death for as long as possible... Why on earth would I have it sandbag the heroes by posting a riddle before a trap? "Oh, if the heroes are clever enough they'll bypass my defenses, right into my inner sanctum, but of course they'll never be more clever than me and catch all the clues I left them."

No. 

This is a being of cunning, evil, and above all a desire to preserve its own existence, it will not try and be clever at the risk of making itself vulnerable, it will work to make itself unassailable. Did I make it that way? Yes, just like Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict, CU Thanos was obsessed with balance, and Mammon is obsessed with gold. I could also make my lich like the Riddler, desperate to prove itself smarter than anyone else and layering clues upon clues into everything. I could make him a jester, chortling and making bad puns while fighting the heroes where a rubber chicken suit. I can make anything. But, what makes the right impact? 

Sometimes, it is to have the joke character, sometimes the character who is too consumed by ego, honor, or duty. Sometimes, it is the character who will utilize every resource to its full potential, no games, no compromise, they will come at you with everything they are capable of. 

Which villains do you think are the most viscerally satisfying to take down?




Charlaquin said:


> Have you tried asking your players if they would prefer a fair challenge or an unfair one? I have a feeling which one they'd pick.




I have a feeling if I phrased it that way, you would be right. 

What if I asked them is they would prefer a realistic world compared to a saturday morning cartoon? (Unfair analogy, it makes your style seem cartoonish)

What if I asked them if they would prefer the greatest challenges I could lay before them, or a game where I took it easy on them? (again, unfair, makes it sound like you take it easy on your players.)

If you ask a black or white question, and phrase it correctly, you can get anyone to agree to anything. And even though I constantly feel like my games aren't good enough, I have yet to have a single player agree with me, so they must at least enjoy the way I lay it out. 




Charlaquin said:


> Look, man, I don't think you need to telegraph the identity of your elf or whatever. I've been talking about traps and hazards here, you're the one who decided to extend it to mysteries.




We've been talking styles, I never once said I was limiting it to only traps and hazards. That's why I kept bringing in examples that are not only traps or hazards. If you should telegraph everything, then you should mean EVERYTHING, not just this subset of things. 




Charlaquin said:


> I've been saying all along that I wouldn't tell the players consequences it wasn't reasonable for their characters to know. I've also been saying that my preference is to set challenges up in such a way that it is reasonable for the characters to know the potential consequences of their actions, because that leads to a gameplay experience I think is more enjoyable for most players.




So... when I set up something and say "well it isn't reasonable for them to know this" I should be reminded that it is only unreasonable because I made it so, therefore I should make it reasonable. 

You only tell them what is reasonable, but you set up challenges so that the consequences are reasonable to know... and you only tell them the reasonable bits and leave out the unreasonable ones? 

I hope you can see where I'm confused here. Either you are telling them everything, because their consequences should be reasonable to know, or you are doing the exact same thing I am and holding me to task for not doing it on a large enough scale? I mean, we are both not telling them what it is that is unreasonable to know, and we are both crafting the scenarios and deciding what is reasonable or unreasonable... so the only difference is how much we decide is unreasonable. Right? 





Charlaquin said:


> You're conflating "mistakenly blunder into an unexpected consequence" with "fail to notice a trap." My playstyle does not prevent players from failing to notice traps. Players get nailed by traps with some frequency in my games, even with the telegraphing I do. They just don't unknowingly spring traps as results of failed rolls to disarm traps they have spotted. Sometimes they knowingly do so though.




Nope. I said what I meant. 

You are making it impossible to make a mistake. I've watched playthroughs of Dark Souls, failing the dodge at the right time is a mistake, rolling over an edge is a mistake, hitting the button too many times and not leaving enough poison cures in your inventory is a mistake. 

Your players can be inattentive, they can miss things, but they can never make a mistake. Because if they were to make a mistake, you would tell them they were about to make a mistake. At that point, it is no longer making a mistake. It is choosing to face the consequences of a risky action. 





Charlaquin said:


> What the heck are you babbling about?




In that thread of our conversation, I pointed out at the end of a section that I was not attacking your choice of style, but instead trying to show you that your word choice was indicating biases. 

You responded with "could have fooled me" 

Instead of trying to defend myself, I went on a merry little thought experiment about if I was trying to fool you. What would it be like to fool you into thinking that your words couldn't have interpretations that you did not want them to have. If I could fool you into thinking that you are not coming across in ways that are hurting your position. 

If I could fool you into thinking that, then you'd never see how badly you come across with some of your statements. 



Charlaquin said:


> And yet you left in your mis-analysis of my post for some reason.




Because it showed what we were seeing before you made your position more clear. It helps you understand where we saw the fault in your statement, and I followed it with the acknowledgement of your intent, to show that I know understand what you were trying to say, despite what it looked like you were saying. 

Besides, anyone not willing to read another line down to see where I was wrong was never going to read your clarification anyways. 





iserith said:


> It seems odd to me to call rules that refer to themselves as "rules" _advice_. Even rules about how to conduct the game outside of the rules of the game are called "table rules."




Why not, if we must have only rules or advice, not some mixture of both, then advice fits far better for me. I tend to change things pretty drastically from the DMG and MM, I have attempted a few different rewrites of some classes (nothing good, so don't ask to see them), and have take to using entire sets of cobbled together 3rd party material that directly contradicts what is in the DMG or PHB. 

If it must be one or the other, then advice is closer to how I view the material. 




iserith said:


> So is that a "yes" or a "no" on finding value in seeing one's own inconsistencies and contradictions?




I'm trying to decide if this was meant as humorous or not. 

You are trying, not by your admission but a lack of denial points this way as well, to lead me to a point and then say "aha, you are inconsistent". But, I see a good deal of the path ahead, the types of questions you want to ask (Can you see value in finding your inconsistencies? Seriously? Why no Mr. Parker, I am the type of man who sees no value in self improvement whatsoever, that makes me look reasonable you know) and am pointing out that asking a series of black and white, yes or no questions, and leading me to your conclusion against my agreements would in no way make me inconsistent. You are looking for the exact dividing line on a gradient scale, and it doesn't exist. 




iserith said:


> I don't count you in that half-dozen. Your posts barely register to me compared to others who are in nearly every other thread I'm in, talking largely about the same things.
> 
> I wouldn't call myself "strict." I change rules regularly to suit the campaign. What I don't change are the fundamental elements such as how to play the game and the adjudication process.
> 
> I also make no judgment as to how well your game runs, having never seen it firsthand, only observing that sometimes running the game in a way that runs contrary to its design can make for a less smoothly running game. We see this sort of thing reported on the forums all the time. I am also not confounded by how others have fun, nor do I say that following the rules is the only way forward or always necessary. I say what I do and why, that's all. And while I don't count you among the aforementioned half-dozen, statements such as these put you right in line with their tactics of ascribing to me things I do not believe by grossly mischaracterizing things that I say. I would hope you don't continue to follow suit.




Woohoo, I barely register 

I wouldn't say I am grossly mischaracterizing you, statements such as "And for some reason it seems to confound about a half-dozen vocal posters on these forums. Perhaps the wondering should be turned inward as to why." Is pretty clear, the problem isn't you it is them. They are obviously not dealing in good faith, otherwise things would be clear to them. 

That seems fairly clearly your intent. 

Sometimes, it is only a perceived intent, but you imply a lot with some of the statements you make. 

I mean, to borrow one of your techniques, would you prefer a bumpy plane ride or a smooth plane ride? 




iserith said:


> I would say "How to Play" and the DM's adjudication process are the fundamental aspects of the game and it is tinkered with at your game's peril. The rest of the rules come into play at the DM's discretion (so say the rules).




Ooh, my game is in peril now. That is much more exciting. 

I mean, by choosing not to care whether a roll has meaningful consequences I have tinkered with the DM adjudication proccess, or the "How to Play" section, or both. Double Peril? 

Of course, you aren't saying my game is in peril as a judgement call or anything, it is simply a sign that it might be "less smooth" than it might otherwise be. 




robus said:


> Why do I keep reading this thread??!




Because at this point it is a glorious collage and has enveloped us all. 

Personally, I just find it rude not to respond to people, so I tend to just keep talking.


----------



## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> Umm... Your first handfull of posts in this thread contained the following gems:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Huh, you kinda skipped ones like:



Hussar said:


> Fair 'nuff I suppose.  Probably reading too much into this anyway.  It was meant as an off the cuff remark that I was surprised that DM's do this.  Just something I'd never run across.




Oh, and cut off the last bit in the first quote where I admit that I'm probably too gamist in my approach.

and:



> Something that occurs to me that maybe is shaping my POV, is that I play online. And have done so for a long time. Which means that players can roll dice to me (the DM) without knowing the results of the roll. Fantasy Grounds, for example, has the Dice Tower, which means that anything rolled in the tower is only visible to the DM.
> 
> So, yeah, of course my players are going to drop dice without me asking. They don't know the results anyway, so, may just as well.




and, later on, this gem:



> Going to take these out of order:
> 
> Quote Originally Posted by Charlaquin View Post
> I don’t think most people would consider the “If the players don’t say they’re looking at the ceiling, they’re automatically surprised” to be at all reasonable. I certainly don’t. I want a goal and an approach to actions they take, but I don’t require that degree of specificity, and I certainly wouldn’t expect players to specify that they’re looking up when they’re just exploring the dungeon.
> ...




So, you can try to paint me as all unreasonable all you like.  There's been more than enough back and forthing and talking past each other on both sides here without trying to play the victim card.


----------



## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> This is the gauntlet that leads to the lich's lair, his home. They want to dissuade people from trying to get through it, the entire point is that it is a security measure. You don't post the code to your home security system on the front lawn, why would a Lich who is willing to devour and destroy souls to extend their life risk anything that could lead to their death?



To reiterate the obvious, I'm not [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]. Still, I think my response to this question is consistent with what Charlaquin has said upthread: _you, the GM, tell me_. I mean, it's the GM's job to frame a situation that will be engaging for the players, and if that situation is going to be a lich's gauntlet of death than it's on the GM to find a way of making that engaging rather than just an experience in literalness.

If you, as a GM, want to keep threats and consequences hidden from your players well that's your prerogative. But you can't blame this on the fiction, given that _you wrote that_!



Chaosmancer said:


> If I create a lich that is an undead sociopath, with no regard for mortal life except as a fuel source to delay it's own death for as long as possible... Why on earth would I have it sandbag the heroes by posting a riddle before a trap? "Oh, if the heroes are clever enough they'll bypass my defenses, right into my inner sanctum, but of course they'll never be more clever than me and catch all the clues I left them."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



There are many ways to establish the nature of threats and of consequences than the ones that you canvass here. But I won't pursue that any further in this thread given that I started another for that purpose!

*********************************



Hussar said:


> But,  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], don't you find it strange that the only people who apparently understand the way you run the games are also the people that agree with you?  That everyone who disagrees with you apparently just doesn't understand what you're doing?  Something to cogitate on since we're all about that self reflection right?



Well I'm pretty confident I understand how [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] runs 5e although I have never run a RPG that way and can't envisage doing so in the future. (I've run AD&D and B/X, and those are designed to be run more-or-less in iserith's way, but I wasn't good at it then and am not good at it now; the really successful AD&D games that I ran were heavily drifted from the default expectation.)

One recurrent point of disagreement I've noticed has been the significance, on the "goal and approach" method, of player descriptions. I think it's clear that "flowery language" is not relevant. It's not obvious to me that some degree of eloquence is not relevant, given that the player is expected to state reasonably clearly what his/her PC is doing. Given that RPGing is (at least as I do it) an exercise in oral communication and the sharing of ideas, I don't see anything objectionable about this. I expect this in my GMing, and if I'm not sure what a player thinks is going on with their PC in the fiction will ask. (I then do a different thing with that information from what [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] does, as per my posts upthread.)

As per another current thread, I don't think the _artistry_ of the communication is core to RPGing, but that's a different thing from well thought out and clearly communicated ideas.



Charlaquin said:


> One possible explanation of this phenomenon might be that people who do understand the way we run the game tend to like it.



I personally don't find this a very tenable explanation. I believe that there are a number of posters on these boards who are not participating in this thread, who understand how you run your game, but who don't necessarily care for it - roughly speaking, because their preferences are closer to mine.

My own conjecture is that a number of those who you are arguing with - maybe not all - either formed their RPGing tastes in the era of Dragonlance and then 2nd ed AD&D, or had their RPGing tastes informed by the legacy of that era (eg at 3E tables playing in a similar fashion). They are therefore working with radically different conceptions of what the GM's role is, how the players are expected to engage with the shared fiction, what the relationship is between mechanics and fiction, etc.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> To reiterate the obvious, I'm not [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]. Still, I think my response to this question is consistent with what Charlaquin has said upthread: _you, the GM, tell me_. I mean, it's the GM's job to frame a situation that will be engaging for the players, and if that situation is going to be a lich's gauntlet of death than it's on the GM to find a way of making that engaging rather than just an experience in literalness.
> 
> If you, as a GM, want to keep threats and consequences hidden from your players well that's your prerogative. But you can't blame this on the fiction, given that _you wrote that_!
> 
> ...



This last bit.  The conjecture that only those that agree understand is wild confirmation bias.  Only those that agree will bother to defend the style, generally.  It should be noted that there's really only a double-handful of posters active in this thread, which has largely separated into two loose camps.  Drawing any broader conclusion from this is ridiculous.


----------



## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I wasn't sure - are you agreeing with my conjecture, disagreeing with it, or saying that I'm conjecturing on too weak an evidence base? The last would probably be fair - I'm not sure if it counts as running my way or against me if I add that, in formulating my conjecture, I'm drawing on past threads involving different posters but dealing with somewhat similar topics of discussion.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I wasn't sure - are you agreeing with my conjecture, disagreeing with it, or saying that I'm conjecturing on too weak an evidence base? The last would probably be fair - I'm not sure if it counts as running my way or against me if I add that, in formulating my conjecture, I'm drawing on past threads involving different posters but dealing with somewhat similar topics of discussion.



Sorry, agreeing.  There's more out there than the remaining posters in this thread.


----------



## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> My own conjecture is that a number of those who you are arguing with - maybe not all - either formed their RPGing tastes in the era of Dragonlance and then 2nd ed AD&D, or had their RPGing tastes informed by the legacy of that era (eg at 3E tables playing in a similar fashion). They are therefore working with radically different conceptions of what the GM's role is, how the players are expected to engage with the shared fiction, what the relationship is between mechanics and fiction, etc.




While I have played D&D pretty much since it's inception, I would say that my preference is not totally based on that experience.  I'm a software developer (and a lot of players have been friends from work), and we speak in code words called "patterns" on a pretty regular basis.  So I'm used to using verbal shortcuts.  I'm used to people saying "we're using the factory pattern" or "this code used DI so...".  I don't see "I make an athletics check" to be that much different.

That, and I just have a different perspective on the game than some people.  I view it as a fantasy/action movie/novel story generator simulator first with compromises to make it a game second.  So sometimes people try things that will never work like trying to climb the impossible to climb wall.  Sometimes they suspect the guy that's telling the truth and I don't want to give anything away so I let them make an insight check to maintain reasonable doubt.

What bugs me is repeatedly, incessantly hearing that I simply "don't understand" the goal and approach method(tm).  _That's_ what I find insulting.


----------



## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I just have a different perspective on the game than some people.  I view it as a fantasy/action movie/novel story generator simulator first with compromises to make it a game second.  So sometimes people try things that will never work like trying to climb the impossible to climb wall.  Sometimes they suspect the guy that's telling the truth and I don't want to give anything away so I let them make an insight check to maintain reasonable doubt.



I think the inference from _I view it as a fantasy/action movie/novel_ to _sometimes people try to climb the impossible-to-climb wall, which can never work_ is contentious.

For instance, one way to decide in a FRPG that a wall is impossible to climb is by seeing whether or not a check to climb it succeeds or fails. That can be quiet consistent with viewing the game as a fantasy/action movie/novel. But obviously involves taking a different view about where authorial power lies.


----------



## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think the inference from _I view it as a fantasy/action movie/novel_ to _sometimes people try to climb the impossible-to-climb wall, which can never work_ is contentious.
> 
> For instance, one way to decide in a FRPG that a wall is impossible to climb is by seeing whether or not a check to climb it succeeds or fails. That can be quiet consistent with viewing the game as a fantasy/action movie/novel. But obviously involves taking a different view about where authorial power lies.




One of the things I do which seems to be contentious is to let people try to do things even if I know it's bound to fail (or will always succeed).  If it gets out of hand I'll stop it for speed of play, but if someone want to climb the wall that can't be climbed they can always attempt it.

I reflect the attempt of the PC to climb with the roll of a die roll at the table.  An effort was made, and until the effort was made there was no way of knowing, it's just a method to reinforce the futility of climbing the wall.  But it also feels like I'm taking agency away from the player to me if the DM is the only one who can call for a roll because I know what the result will be.

In other words, if an attempt seems to be possible but not guaranteed from the perspective of the PC I allow or may ask for a roll (sometimes I don't just for brevity).  Pretty much _everything_ is run from the perspective of the PC, not the perspective of the DM.


----------



## robus (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I do think that people are reading what they want to read.  Myself included.  Go back to the early posts.  While I cannot speak for anyone else, I never "went after" anything.  I was pretty clear that I was only speaking for how I played.  I even went so far as to invite folks to call my way house ruling if it helped.
> 
> IOW, while I might have gotten sucked down into some argument, I certainly started off by saying, "That's cool but I prefer to handle it this way".




I dunno, your very first post in thread definitely took an aggressive stance: #37 


> All this equivocating or "letting there be leeway for error" is just a player screw job AFAIC.





> Yeah, I'm not big on playing silly buggers to try to increase difficulty.



So definitely stepping into the realm of going after others method right off the bat.

Your second post in thread #42 gets a bit more passive aggressive:



> I always find it surprising how many DM's insist on only the DM calling for skill rolls.





> Maybe I'm just too gamist in my approach.



 @_*Bawylie*_ engaged with that though in post #46 but rather than dogpiling, gave a brief history of the game discussing the different approaches to action resolution encouraged by the different editions.

 @_*Oofta*_ joins in with post #49 and increases the temperature with this little nugget:



> While I encourage people to state things in-character, I don't see a need to treat every action like Jeopardy where things have to be said using the correct structure. No need for a *wording gestapo* if the intent is clear.



(my bold)

And we’re off to the races...

Edit: and I see [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] beat me to it.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> While I have played D&D pretty much since it's inception, I would say that my preference is not totally based on that experience.  I'm a software developer (and a lot of players have been friends from work), and we speak in code words called "patterns" on a pretty regular basis.  So I'm used to using verbal shortcuts.  I'm used to people saying "we're using the factory pattern" or "this code used DI so...".  I don't see "I make an athletics check" to be that much different.
> 
> That, and I just have a different perspective on the game than some people.  I view it as a fantasy/action movie/novel story generator simulator first with compromises to make it a game second.  So sometimes people try things that will never work like trying to climb the impossible to climb wall.  Sometimes they suspect the guy that's telling the truth and I don't want to give anything away so I let them make an insight check to maintain reasonable doubt.
> 
> What bugs me is repeatedly, incessantly hearing that I simply "don't understand" the goal and approach method(tm).  _That's_ what I find insulting.



This is a bit rich, given the number of material misrepresentations and erroneous assumptions you've made on this. I mean, becoming irate because you recently may have some understanding kinda ignores the slightly less recent past.  A past where you declared you understood as well while still making the gross misrepresentations.

 I find your protest to be unmoving, especially in the face of zero acknowledgement of past misunderstanding.  I also don't see the bullet list you've provided as strong evidence you understand the play. It's more a recitation of the things you've been told ad nauseum in the face of your past misunderstandings. Perhaps you could devise some example play to show off your understanding.  It should be easy, given your expressed understanding.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Oofta said:


> One of the things I do which seems to be contentious is to let people try to do things even if I know it's bound to fail (or will always succeed).  If it gets out of hand I'll stop it for speed of play, but if someone want to climb the wall that can't be climbed they can always attempt it.
> 
> I reflect the attempt of the PC to climb with the roll of a die roll at the table.  An effort was made, and until the effort was made there was no way of knowing, it's just a method to reinforce the futility of climbing the wall.  But it also feels like I'm taking agency away from the player to me if the DM is the only one who can call for a roll because I know what the result will be.
> 
> In other words, if an attempt seems to be possible but not guaranteed from the perspective of the PC I allow or may ask for a roll (sometimes I don't just for brevity).  Pretty much _everything_ is run from the perspective of the PC, not the perspective of the DM.




I don’t think that’s at all contentious. That’s how you choose to run the game, and that’s fine. But, in the course of our discussion, it seems to me that you have filtered our explanations of how we run the game and why through this framework, leading you to see us as “taking away the player’s agency” when in fact maintaining player agency is one of our major reasons for why we run the way we do. And it has led you to framing our technique as not allowing a roll when the roll would “automatically succeed” or “automatically fail”, which is contentious because in our mental framework there is no roll to succeed or fail without a chance of success and a chance of failure.


----------



## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It's slower,




It's not, we've discussed this, even getting into the number of scenes and challenges our respective games have. And anyway the pacing of the game is influenced by manner factors beyond the adjudication process.



Hussar said:


> and forces the DM into a central position




The game envisions this for the role of DM, so I would consider this the default rather than "forced" which suggests the DM's role is something other than what the game says it is. (And it's fine if you don't like that. I'm not arguing against your preferences, just how you frame this.)



Hussar said:


> since the DM now has to constantly ask for rolls rather than just letting the players drive the game.




First, the DM asks for rolls when it's appropriate. If it's "constantly," then the players are engaging in a lot of tasks with uncertain outcomes with meaningful consequences for failure. Second, players drive the game under this approach as well. The DM just describes the environment and narrates the results of the adventurers' actions, sometimes calling for a check to resolve uncertainty.


----------



## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm trying to decide if this was meant as humorous or not.
> 
> You are trying, not by your admission but a lack of denial points this way as well, to lead me to a point and then say "aha, you are inconsistent". But, I see a good deal of the path ahead, the types of questions you want to ask (Can you see value in finding your inconsistencies? Seriously? Why no Mr. Parker, I am the type of man who sees no value in self improvement whatsoever, that makes me look reasonable you know) and am pointing out that asking a series of black and white, yes or no questions, and leading me to your conclusion against my agreements would in no way make me inconsistent. You are looking for the exact dividing line on a gradient scale, and it doesn't exist.




You ascribe to me a tactic and goal that I don't actually have, which explains the defensive nature of your posts. But if there are no objections I'll take this to mean you do see value in having inconsistencies pointed out to you.



Chaosmancer said:


> Woohoo, I barely register
> 
> I wouldn't say I am grossly mischaracterizing you, statements such as "And for some reason it seems to confound about a half-dozen vocal posters on these forums. Perhaps the wondering should be turned inward as to why." Is pretty clear, the problem isn't you it is them. They are obviously not dealing in good faith, otherwise things would be clear to them.




It's plainly obvious there is some lack of good faith going on in the characterization of my position, if not others'. The discussion wouldn't have lasted this long without those displays.



Chaosmancer said:


> Ooh, my game is in peril now. That is much more exciting.
> 
> I mean, by choosing not to care whether a roll has meaningful consequences I have tinkered with the DM adjudication proccess, or the "How to Play" section, or both. Double Peril?
> 
> Of course, you aren't saying my game is in peril as a judgement call or anything, it is simply a sign that it might be "less smooth" than it might otherwise be.




That's a possibility yes, but not having seen your game I can't be sure.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Do you know that the Russo brothers killed Quintillions of people by having Thanos snap his fingers? And man, if you haven't, go rewatch those fights with Thanos in Infinity War, there is no way that was a balanced fight. Seems completely unfair, especially when he got the ability to manipulate reality at his will.
> 
> Wasn't it a great show?



See, now you’re talking about combat encounter difficulty, which is a different thing than trap/hazzard telegraphing.



Chaosmancer said:


> If I create a lich that is an undead sociopath, with no regard for mortal life except as a fuel source to delay it's own death for as long as possible... Why on earth would I have it sandbag the heroes by posting a riddle before a trap? "Oh, if the heroes are clever enough they'll bypass my defenses, right into my inner sanctum, but of course they'll never be more clever than me and catch all the clues I left them."
> 
> No.
> 
> ...



This is a false dichotomy. There is a whole spectrum of villain motivations between ineffable mastermind who foresees all possible ways the heroes could notice his traps and takes measures to cover them up, and the riddler. There are any number of reasons that the details that telegraph the presence of traps might remain intact. You have chosen to set this scenario up in such a way as to excuse your conscious choice to make the traps in your dungeon impossible to detect. That’s your prerogative if you think that will lead to an enjoyable play experience for you and your players, but personally I wouldn’t want to play that game.



Chaosmancer said:


> I have a feeling if I phrased it that way, you would be right.
> 
> What if I asked them is they would prefer a realistic world compared to a saturday morning cartoon? (Unfair analogy, it makes your style seem cartoonish)
> 
> ...



Except, we haven’t been discussing realism vs stylization or challenge vs. ease. We’ve been discussing fair challenge vs. unfair challenge. It is entirely possible to design a campaign that is “realistic” (insofar as D&D can be realistic), challenging, and fair. Again, I point to Dark Souls as the classic example of difficult but fair game design. That is in fact exactly what I aim to capture in my games. You’re the one who said that a fair challenge isn’t always desirable. I disagree with that. And that’s fine, you don’t need my permission to run your game any way you want.



Chaosmancer said:


> We've been talking styles, I never once said I was limiting it to only traps and hazards. That's why I kept bringing in examples that are not only traps or hazards. If you should telegraph everything, then you should mean EVERYTHING, not just this subset of things.



Well, sorry, I don’t think your elf’s identity needs telegraphing. If you thought I would think it did, now you have an example why I don’t think you actually understand my style.



Chaosmancer said:


> So... when I set up something and say "well it isn't reasonable for them to know this" I should be reminded that it is only unreasonable because I made it so, therefore I should make it reasonable.
> 
> You only tell them what is reasonable, but you set up challenges so that the consequences are reasonable to know... and you only tell them the reasonable bits and leave out the unreasonable ones?
> 
> I hope you can see where I'm confused here. Either you are telling them everything, because their consequences should be reasonable to know, or you are doing the exact same thing I am and holding me to task for not doing it on a large enough scale? I mean, we are both not telling them what it is that is unreasonable to know, and we are both crafting the scenarios and deciding what is reasonable or unreasonable... so the only difference is how much we decide is unreasonable. Right?



I literally do not care what you do. You presented my style as if I was telling players things their characters couldn’t possibly know, which I disputed. You gave an example of a consequence the character couldn’t possibly know (the chandelier with the rotten beams thing). I said that I wouldn’t have set it up that way, because I’m not interested in hiding vital decision-making information from my players like that. I’m not “taking you to task” for anything because I literally don’t care what you do, I am responding to misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the way I run the game.



Chaosmancer said:


> Nope. I said what I meant.
> 
> You are making it impossible to make a mistake. I've watched playthroughs of Dark Souls, failing the dodge at the right time is a mistake, rolling over an edge is a mistake, hitting the button too many times and not leaving enough poison cures in your inventory is a mistake.



Failing to dodge at the right time is a failed Dexterity saving throw, that’s not the same thing as what we’ve been talking about, which is letting the players know the potential consequences of their action (when said action has a chance to succeed, chance to fail, and consequence for failure) before making them commit to it. Rolling off the edge is something that can happen due to the game’s real-time physics, and pushing the button too many times and using up more of a consumable than you meant to likewise. These aren’t issues that arise in a pen and paper RPG, they are unique to video games.



Chaosmancer said:


> Your players can be inattentive, they can miss things, but they can never make a mistake. Because if they were to make a mistake, you would tell them they were about to make a mistake. At that point, it is no longer making a mistake. It is choosing to face the consequences of a risky action.



If we’re defining “mistake” as “blunder into a consequence of your own action that you were not aware of the possibility of,” then sure.



Chaosmancer said:


> In that thread of our conversation, I pointed out at the end of a section that I was not attacking your choice of style, but instead trying to show you that your word choice was indicating biases.
> 
> You responded with "could have fooled me"



Yeah. Into thinking you were in fact attacking my choice of style. I assume you’re familiar with the idiom, right?



Chaosmancer said:


> Instead of trying to defend myself, I went on a merry little thought experiment about if I was trying to fool you. What would it be like to fool you into thinking that your words couldn't have interpretations that you did not want them to have. If I could fool you into thinking that you are not coming across in ways that are hurting your position.
> 
> If I could fool you into thinking that, then you'd never see how badly you come across with some of your statements.



I’m sorry, but this reads as gibberish to me.



Chaosmancer said:


> Because it showed what we were seeing before you made your position more clear. It helps you understand where we saw the fault in your statement, and I followed it with the acknowledgement of your intent, to show that I know understand what you were trying to say, despite what it looked like you were saying.
> 
> Besides, anyone not willing to read another line down to see where I was wrong was never going to read your clarification anyways.



Whatever, I don’t care to belabor this point.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> The game envisions this for the role of DM, so I would consider this the default rather than "forced" which suggests the DM's role is something other than what the game says it is. (And it's fine if you don't like that. I'm not arguing against your preferences, just how you frame this.)



"Forced" is fair (and not a bad thing):  DM Empowerment has some teeth to it.


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> "Forced" is fair (and not a bad thing):  DM Empowerment has some teeth to it.




"Forced" in this context is referring to the person playing the role of DM being made to go from a presumably non-central role to a central role. But in truth the default position of DM in this game is a central role. The same can be said of other editions of the game. So "forced" seems like an odd choice of words here. I imagine it's based on some discomfort in being the person charged with assessing the ideas of the players.


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## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> "Forced" in this context is referring to the person playing the role of DM being made to go from a presumably non-central role to a central role. But in truth the default position of DM in this game is a central role. The same can be said of other editions of the game.



 If you assume a position is the default, but the system offers no impetus to take up that position, is it really the default position?  
It might be more cogent to say that 5e 'forces' the /players/ to accept the central role of the DM by default.  But DM Empowerment is not some empty buzzword, it's strongly informs the design of the system, which robustly supports it.


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## lowkey13 (May 1, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> If you assume a position is the default, but the system offers no impetus to take up that position, is it really the default position?
> It might be more cogent to say that 5e 'forces' the /players/ to accept the central role of the DM by default.  But DM Empowerment is not some empty buzzword, it's strongly informs the design of the system, which robustly supports it.




It's not clear to me you're following the chain of the conversation. My post was a response to an objection that D&D 5e forces the DM into a central role, as if the DM not being in a central role isn't always the case by the rules of any edition of D&D.

I do think "DM Empowerment" is an empty buzzword. Just like "Player Entitlement" is an empty buzzword. They are the weapons of the edition war as far as I'm concerned. It's used by one camp or another as a means of attack and you'll have to forgive me if I'm very suspicious of your use of it considering your stated positions in the past.


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## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Yes, but again, "force" is often viewed as a pejorative or loaded term.
> Neither the players nor the DM is forced to play D&D (or a particular edition of D&D) as opposed to some other RPG



 (as an aside, D&D (typically the current ed, or maybe PF or OSR), is very often the only game a group can all agree on) but, no, of course not, not forced to play, forced to accept the central role (Empowerment!) of the DM.

And, yeah, forced is definitely a loaded term with a bit of a negative connotation.  But, hey being 'forced' to do the right thing or the best thing for the game experience, that seems a lot less negative to me.



iserith said:


> I do think "DM Empowerment" is an empty buzzword. Just like "Player Entitlement" is an empty buzzword.



 You may not care for the spin that's been put on them, sure, and maybe they're a tad disingenuous or exaggerated at times, but they are getting at very real differences between 5e/TSR-era D&D and the other two WotC versions of the game.  Until 5e, WotC's tenure with the D&D IP had been marked by very player-centric rules and offerings. 3.x/4eE were very player-choice-rich systems, 3.x loaded the DM with player expectations that his monsters and NPCs would follow the same rules and the same level of build detail as the PCs, leveling the player-DM dynamic to a degree, 4e, while very different in approach, still pushed the DM off his pedestal a bit, lending itself to very in-the-open play with the mechanics an open book the players could audit pretty easily, and the process of DMing simplified and streamlined to the point that the role felt less critical & central.

5e's return to a more DM-centric attitude in system, presentation, and, thus, player expectations is a major accomplishment, metaphorically putting a genie back in it's bottle, even.


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## lowkey13 (May 1, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn (May 1, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So ... this is really about a different battle ... or should I call it a WAR?



Are you implying that Tony is one of the Four Horsemen?

Because if you are I'm gonna have to do my own implying, something about those pestilent do-gooders.

Also, I'm hungry.


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## lowkey13 (May 1, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Are you implying that Tony is one of the Four Horsemen?



 No horses were harmed in the making of this post.



lowkey13 said:


> It's all good- and no force.



  Sure, OK, we can completely avoid using the word 'force,' while still saying/meaning the same thing.  

...or not...


> ... if you know it's a loaded term with a negative connotation, STOP USING IT. Because otherwise, you're just going to get called out on it, repeatedly, instead of having more productive discussions.



 IDK, I guess I just feel like taking the connotation, itself, on.  Like, a game should 'force' (require? encourage? support? deliver?) certain things, if it's, y'know s'pose'ta have 'em.  



> So ... this is really about a different battle ... or should I call it a WAR?



 I'm not aware of a quasi-edition war in which 3.x/PF & 4e/E are facing off against 5e.  It'd certainly be a strange alliance if there were one.


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## Charlaquin (May 1, 2019)

I don’t think connotations are the issue here, context is. “Force” is being used here to mean, making something happen by way of force that would not otherwise happen. Like forcing a square peg through a round hole, or forcing someone to give you their wallet under threat of violence. Regardless of what connotations the word may have, I don’t think the way in which it is being used here is an accurate description of the way 5e defines the role of the DM.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

lowkey13 said:
			
		

> Again, no force. Choice does not equal force.




But, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is saying that there is no choice.  That DM centric is the default state and the presumed state of the game.  If I'm playing 5e by the rules, then, by default, the rules place me front and center of the game.

So, where's the choice there?

Again, this is just another case of playing silly buggers with semantics.  It's not forcing you to be front and center, it's "defaulting" to front and center.    Gimme a break.  It's not "better", but, it's "smoother".  On and on and on.  Any criticism is immediately deflected with this sort of pedantry. 

There would be a lot less accusations of misunderstanding points if folks would actually stick to plain English instead of trying to dodge any potential issue with this sort of garbage.  Several criticisms of arguing in bad faith and then every time there is any criticism, a complete retreat into bad faith pedantry.

Like I said in the other thread, if folks were willing to accept that no approach is 100% perfect and contains both strengths and weaknesses, these conversations would be a whole lot shorter.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is saying that there is no choice.  That DM centric is the default state and the presumed state of the game.  If I'm playing 5e by the rules, then, by default, the rules place me front and center of the game.
> 
> So, where's the choice there?
> 
> ...




No, sorry Hussar, but this is total B.S.

"Better" and "Smoother" do have different meanings.  Go look them up.  It's not hard to understand.

As for acknowledging "weaknesses", sure, goal-and-approach has weaknesses.  Poorly implemented, or misunderstood, players may try to "talkie talkie" the DM or think it's "mother may I."  Of course, those sorts of DMs and players will try to do that anyway, so honestly I'm not sure how much of a weakness it is.

But never once have I heard you say that the problem is that these things _might_ happen.  You basically defined goal-and-approach, over and over again, as _being_ these things.  So don't give us any disingenuous crap about sober discussion of flaws.  You have been pouring gasoline on this conversation for 150 or so pages.

I should have stopped engaging with you a long time ago.  Consider yourself on my analog 'block list'.


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## Charlaquin (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, @_*iserith*_ is saying that there is no choice.  That DM centric is the default state and the presumed state of the game.  If I'm playing 5e by the rules, then, by default, the rules place me front and center of the game.
> 
> So, where's the choice there?



The choice to play in a manner contrary to the game’s default assumptions. No one is forcing you to play by the default assumptions, and if you want to play contrary to them, by all means go ahead.



Hussar said:


> Again, this is just another case of playing silly buggers with semantics.  It's not forcing you to be front and center, it's "defaulting" to front and center.    Gimme a break.



Those words aren’t even synonymous though. This isn’t linguistic sleight of hand, it’s plain English. The game doesn’t force you to play the way it presents as default, and in fact encourages you to change or ignore any rules that don’t suit you. “Forcing” a playstyle is straight up not an accurate way to describe that.



Hussar said:


> It's not "better", but, it's "smoother".  On and on and on.  Any criticism is immediately deflected with this sort of pedantry.



“Smoother” is an evaluation of a tangible quality of gameplay. “Better” is a subjective value judgment. The game runs smoothly when you play it the way it suggests. That doesn’t guarantee that you will find the experience of playing the game the way it suggests to be a good experience. You may find that a different way of playing the game creates a better experience, despite the places where that way of playing creates friction with the rules. Again, you’re free to change or ignore any rules you wish, so any friction that playing a different way might cause can be pretty trivially corrected for. 



Hussar said:


> There would be a lot less accusations of misunderstanding points if folks would actually stick to plain English instead of trying to dodge any potential issue with this sort of garbage.  Several criticisms of arguing in bad faith and then every time there is any criticism, a complete retreat into bad faith pedantry.



There would be a lot less misunderstanding if folks would actually read the words other people were using instead of trying to interpret malicious intent into them.



Hussar said:


> Like I said in the other thread, if folks were willing to accept that no approach is 100% perfect and contains both strengths and weaknesses, these conversations would be a whole lot shorter.



I’m sorry, has anyone said that there is a 100% perfect approach with only strengths and no weaknesses?


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## robus (May 2, 2019)

Surely this horse is bereft of life after all the flogging?


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## Tony Vargas (May 2, 2019)

robus said:


> Surely this horse is bereft of life after all the flogging?



 Nay!

I mean, "neeeiighhh!"



Hussar said:


> But, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is saying that there is no choice.  That DM centric is the default state and the presumed state of the game.  If I'm playing 5e by the rules, then, by default, the rules place me front and center of the game.
> 
> So, where's the choice there?



 You 'abuse' your Empowerment to let your players drive the game more than a conforming DM might allow.  No matter how much (Em)power(ment) the game 'forces' on you, you can just turn around and delegate it to your players, no?



> Again, this is just another case of playing silly buggers with semantics.



 This is the internet, yes.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> /snip
> As for acknowledging "weaknesses", sure, goal-and-approach has weaknesses.  Poorly implemented, or misunderstood, players may try to "talkie talkie" the DM or think it's "mother may I."  Of course, those sorts of DMs and players will try to do that anyway, so honestly I'm not sure how much of a weakness it is.
> 
> /snip




So, the only weakness is if someone doesn't do it right.   Ok.



Charlaquin said:


> /snip
> 
> I’m sorry, has anyone said that there is a 100% perfect approach with only strengths and no weaknesses?




Didn't you ask me for cites not so long ago.  There's one right there.

And, as far as smooth vs better goes, I'm sorry, but, that's complete bollocks.  My game is running smooth=good.  My game is running rough=bad.  That's plain English.  Endless dodges don't actually change that.  It's not force, but, rather, default.  Please.  For all the complaints about misunderstanding, you folks do seem bent on defending some pretty disingenuous points.  

Yeah, [MENTION=6801558]robus[/MENTION] is right.  The other thread showed me the light.  I'm already running it goal:method anyway according to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], so, well, this conversation is rather pointless.

I did try to unsubscribe once before.  We'll see if it sticks this time.


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> So, the only weakness is if someone doesn't do it right.   Ok.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I would myself push back on a definition of smooth play for RPGs as following the intended playstyle or rules. There are more than a few RPGs where the rules/playstyle either clash or where the "correct play" is anything but smooth. 

At best, smooth to me means that the play flows easily from one beat to the next. Smooth would be quick series of choices and actions resolving quickly as we go through a conflict. If we need to stop multiple times to consult different charts etc, then it's not smooth, even if its the rules as presented. 

But really, its boiling down to we need an ENW language lexicon for clear terms we can use to avoid swerving by thesaurus. 

Maybe "flarfel" can be the ENW term for "general term for favorable or better in some contexts directly related to the intended purpose and context"  as in "fresh fruit is "flarfel" than rotted fruit."


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## lowkey13 (May 2, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I would myself push back on a definition of smooth play for RPGs as following the intended playstyle or rules. There are more than a few RPGs where the rules/playstyle either clash or where the "correct play" is anything but smooth.
> 
> At best, smooth to me means that the play flows easily from one beat to the next. Smooth would be quick series of choices and actions resolving quickly as we go through a conflict. If we need to stop multiple times to consult different charts etc, then it's not smooth, even if its the rules as presented.
> 
> ...




I don't want to continue the argument of whether "smoother" means "better", because it's pointless.   Smoother for whom?  My games run quite smoothly, thank you very much.  Claiming that a particular style is better smoother is a pointless completely subjective judgement call.  

I don't have a problem with player statement of intent DM response player action, but if that can be shortened into player stating their intent and asking if their action overcomes the obstacle*.  The latter in the vast majority of cases is IMHO a swifter resolution.  Faster in my games is smoother because we spend less time discussing minor obstacles.

I guess I could get rid of all minor obstacles, but for certain scenes (chase scenes for example) those minor obstacles can add a lot of depth.

_*In my games it really depends on player preference, some players do this others don't.  And yes, in a few cases I have to ask for clarification or let the player know it's not possible or whatever, but it's less than 10% ... usually much less._


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## robus (May 2, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Mmm.... I love some good flarfel .... maybe in some pita bread .... a little tzatziki sauce ...




If you're ever in Austin, TX I can heartily recommend Kebabalicious. Best falafel pita I've ever had.


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I don't want to continue the argument of whether "smoother" means "better", because it's pointless.   Smoother for whom?  My games run quite smoothly, thank you very much.  Claiming that a particular style is better smoother is a pointless completely subjective judgement call.
> 
> I don't have a problem with player statement of intent DM response player action, but if that can be shortened into player stating their intent and asking if their action overcomes the obstacle*.  The latter in the vast majority of cases is IMHO a swifter resolution.  Faster in my games is smoother because we spend less time discussing minor obstacles.
> 
> ...



On the value of minor obstacles - absolutely. Maybe even more so. It's part of why I often use the term "challenge that matters" to deal with serious "this takes work mechanically speaking to resolve issues- where charsacterctests matter.

A lot of lesser obstacles that don't require that much can be highly valuable but just dont require specific character elements.

Did you stop and help the refugees with blankets, good, resources or just generally show compassion or ignore?

As you rode in, did you stop and engage or listen to the crush of people outside the main gates who are not allowed in - or did you tuck your head and spur the mounts to get thru quickly?

Did you take time to go to the town temple or guard post shortly after arriving? 

Did you take time to leave the traveller's wayshrine better than you left it, or worse?

In my games, these and many more things can matter a lot yet none get a telegraphing of risk or expression of stakes and they don't get tossed aside in the interest of"how can we get more done."


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I don't want to continue the argument of whether "smoother" means "better", because it's pointless.   Smoother for whom?  My games run quite smoothly, thank you very much.  Claiming that a particular style is better smoother is a pointless completely subjective judgement call.
> 
> I don't have a problem with player statement of intent DM response player action, but if that can be shortened into player stating their intent and asking if their action overcomes the obstacle*.  The latter in the vast majority of cases is IMHO a swifter resolution.  Faster in my games is smoother because we spend less time discussing minor obstacles.
> 
> ...



This post is a good example of you not inderstanding what's being presented.  Minor obstacles are quickly dealt with in my games because they don't require a check at all -- you almost always succeed outright.

And play isn't:
DM[in best Monty Python bridge guardian voice]: what's your goal?@
Player: um, get to the top of the wall.
DM: what's your approach?!
Player: I climb it?
DM: okay, you can pass.  Next up is Bob the Fighter.  What's your goal?!

Instead, it's:
DM: okay, you've reached the base of the outer wall, which is made of rough stone blocks.  You don't see any guards.  What do you do?
Player 1: I'm going to study tge wall to determine hiw hard it eould be to climb.
DM: Sure.  The rough construction offers lots of hsndholds.  It's just a matter of doing it.
Player1: I'll climb the wall, trying to quiet in case therr are guards at the top.
DM: good thing, too!  You scale the wall and when you get to the top, there are two hobgoblin guards looking bored.  Go ahead and make a DEX check to see if the've noticed you since you were being stealthy.
Player1: I'll use (Stealth) with that. <rolls> Crud, a 12.
DM: you're fine, these guards aren't paying much attention.  The guards are chatting in goblin to each other about having to work this shift and are pretty inattentive. They have their swords, but their shields and crossbows are leaning against the oaraoet nearby. What do you do?


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## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This post is a good example of you not inderstanding what's being presented.  Minor obstacles are quickly dealt with in my games because they don't require a check at all -- you almost always succeed outright.
> 
> And play isn't:
> DM[in best Monty Python bridge guardian voice]: what's your goal?@
> ...




I made no comment on your game or your play style.  None.  Zero.  I have no idea how quick/smooth your games are.  

All I'm saying is that arguing about something as subjective as "smoother" is IMHO pointless.  What works for me and my table may or may not work for your table.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I made no comment on your game or your play style.  None.  Zero.  I have no idea how quick/smooth your games are.
> 
> All I'm saying is that arguing about something as subjective as "smoother" is IMHO pointless.  What works for me and my table may or may not work for your table.



Oh, I see the game now.  You aren't naming people so you can technically claim you aren't talking about someone-specific's play.  One wonders, then, what playstyle are you contrasting here when you say, "I don't have a problem with [other playstyle]"? Clearly no playstyle, but that then renders your post unintelligible as your contrasting make believe against your preferred play.

In shorter words: don't buy the vagueness routine, and I similarly don't buy that you've recently acquired understanding.


----------



## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Oh, I see the game now.  You aren't naming people so you can technically claim you aren't talking about someone-specific's play.  One wonders, then, what playstyle are you contrasting here when you say, "I don't have a problem with [other playstyle]"? Clearly no playstyle, but that then renders your post unintelligible as your contrasting make believe against your preferred play.
> 
> In shorter words: don't buy the vagueness routine, and I similarly don't buy that you've recently acquired understanding.




Seems to me like now you're just looking for an excuse to be offended.  

Have a good one.


----------



## Satyrn (May 2, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Naw. The more I see some of the battles that go on, the more I think that many of them are re-creations of past battles. Not in a bad or malicious way, but because sometimes we get so used to fighting, it becomes a reflex.




It's like we're family.


----------



## Charlaquin (May 2, 2019)

This is clearly a completely pointless conversation. Some folks were confused by the reasons behind some other folks choices of how they run the game. Those folks have tried to explain why they choose to run the game the way they do. But apparently any explanation of why anyone might find their playstyle preferable over another is deemed too judgmental of other playstyles. Apparently all playstyles have advantages and disadvantages, but if you talk about the advantages you perceive in your preferred playstyle in comparison to any other playstyle, or the disadvantages you perceive in another playstyle compared to the one you prefer, you’re guilty of one-true-wayism. Sorry, but I’m not interested in trying to explain my preferences and reasons for them without using any language that suggests any qualitative differences might exist between the things I prefer and the things I don’t. I’m out.


----------



## lowkey13 (May 2, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> If you think about it, any given enworld forum comment thread will, if it goes on long enough, resemble your Thanksgiving dinner.
> 
> Sure, it might be a little different this year. Maybe.
> 
> ...



Hey, hey, hey... not wait one minute.

Speaking as the old fart uncle who might well drink st our Turkey Slaughterday Feasting...

Yeah, pretty much agree. 

No pass the damn corn pudding and another beer.


----------



## iserith (May 2, 2019)

I think this is more like Festivus, given all the Airing of Grievances. 

Here's hoping subsequent posts and threads are smoother.


----------



## lowkey13 (May 2, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

You know, this does remind me of Thanksgiving.

Sue: "What kind of side dish can I bring?"
Uncle Joe: "Cranberry sauce would be good"
Uncle Bob: "Yeah, just don't bring the stuff out of a can"
Uncle Joe: "I don't know, I kind of like the stuff out of the can"
Uncle Bob: "According to the Betty Crocker cookbook, that's not real cranberry sauce.  It's only real cranberry sauce if [insert recipe]"
Uncle Joe: "It's okay, you can bring your sauce, I'll grab a can, I like the ridges."
Uncle Bob: "That's not real cranberry sauce, page 128 BCC says..."
Uncle Joe: "Sure.  I just don't like that stuff, it's fine if you do"
Uncle Bob: "You're just putting down cranberry sauce because you haven't tried it"
Uncle Joe: "No, I've tried it.  I just prefer the canned stuff."
Uncle Bob: "You just refuse to accept cranberry sauce.  BCC page 128 says ..."

Throw in some attempts at humor that fall completely, completely flat or are misconstrued along with a cranky comment here and there and it sounds about right.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 2, 2019)

This is all a day late thanks to IRL stuff



pemerton said:


> To reiterate the obvious, I'm not [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]. Still, I think my response to this question is consistent with what Charlaquin has said upthread: _you, the GM, tell me_. I mean, it's the GM's job to frame a situation that will be engaging for the players, and if that situation is going to be a lich's gauntlet of death than it's on the GM to find a way of making that engaging rather than just an experience in literalness.
> 
> If you, as a GM, want to keep threats and consequences hidden from your players well that's your prerogative. But you can't blame this on the fiction, given that _you wrote that_!




Why is it not engaging?

I'm not looking to rebuild the Tomb of Horrors, but sometimes my players will have more fun if I'm not holding back. Would they ask me to not hold back? I doubt it, they want to succeed, but they know I sometimes just unleash, and those can be some of the best fights and challenges they overcome. And sometimes that means catching them off guard, not telegraphing something.

I'm not blaming  the fiction, of course I am creating it. But, why is that fact being used to tell me I'm doing it wrong? That I should change the fiction to fit with someone else's style, because their style is better, because the only reason I'm saying something is impossible is because I determined it was impossible, and that is a bad thing?





Charlaquin said:


> See, now you’re talking about combat encounter difficulty, which is a different thing than trap/hazzard telegraphing.




Sure, but when talking about setting up a boss plus lair, they tie into each other. Especially when you insist that I must be fair. To be completely fair, I can't send them against overpowered foes in heavily fortified bases. That isn't fair.

It is also great in every other use of media, because it is compelling.




Charlaquin said:


> This is a false dichotomy. There is a whole spectrum of villain motivations between ineffable mastermind who foresees all possible ways the heroes could notice his traps and takes measures to cover them up, and the riddler. There are any number of reasons that the details that telegraph the presence of traps might remain intact. You have chosen to set this scenario up in such a way as to excuse your conscious choice to make the traps in your dungeon impossible to detect. That’s your prerogative if you think that will lead to an enjoyable play experience for you and your players, but personally I wouldn’t want to play that game.




You seem to think I'm working in reverse.

I imagined the villain, then looked at how they would obfuscate their traps, because it is what they would do. I didn't decide the traps were undetectable then create my villain.

Of course there is a spectrum, but you don't seem to think there is. To you, all traps must be telegraphed, the villain cannot have hidden a trap so well that it is not telegraphed, because that is me working against my players. Therefore, there is no spectrum that includes "not telegraphed" because every trap must be telegraphed, period, no matter what else is true.



Charlaquin said:


> Except, we haven’t been discussing realism vs stylization or challenge vs. ease. We’ve been discussing fair challenge vs. unfair challenge. It is entirely possible to design a campaign that is “realistic” (insofar as D&D can be realistic), challenging, and fair. Again, I point to Dark Souls as the classic example of difficult but fair game design. That is in fact exactly what I aim to capture in my games. You’re the one who said that a fair challenge isn’t always desirable. I disagree with that. And that’s fine, you don’t need my permission to run your game any way you want.




You realize, just as an aside, one of the major points of Dark Souls is that you have infinite lives right?

Also, you want to talk about “fair” vs “unfair” but you haven’t really explained anything beyond “the player not knowing all the information if unfair”. With that my only recourse is to assume that the only fair challenge is the transparent one, where the player knows all the pertinent information possible to know, which will be all of it, since you’ll design it so everything is available. 

That is why I’m saying, that not every challenge that is engaging and fun is “fair” because the characters aren’t on a level playing field with their opponents. Their opponents hold the edge. 



Charlaquin said:


> Well, sorry, I don’t think your elf’s identity needs telegraphing. If you thought I would think it did, now you have an example why I don’t think you actually understand my style.




Okay then, what doesn’t get telegraphed? What do you not tell your players when they are about to roll the dice. Because, you keep using vague terms, like “the consequences” and so I am left having to assume you what you mean. 

Do you only telegraph clues in the exploration pillar, and never in the social? Do combat encounters get telegraphed? What am I getting wrong? 




Charlaquin said:


> I literally do not care what you do. You presented my style as if I was telling players things their characters couldn’t possibly know, which I disputed. You gave an example of a consequence the character couldn’t possibly know (the chandelier with the rotten beams thing). I said that I wouldn’t have set it up that way, because I’m not interested in hiding vital decision-making information from my players like that. I’m not “taking you to task” for anything because I literally don’t care what you do, I am responding to misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the way I run the game.




Okay, then give a counter-example.

My example was bad because the I hid too much vital information and it was only hidden because I decided it was. 

That would be far more productive than just constantly telling me “But it is only impossible to know because you decided it was impossible to know” which reads as a critic of what I am doing, not a defense of what you are theoretically doing instead. 




Charlaquin said:


> Failing to dodge at the right time is a failed Dexterity saving throw, that’s not the same thing as what we’ve been talking about, which is letting the players know the potential consequences of their action (when said action has a chance to succeed, chance to fail, and consequence for failure) before making them commit to it. Rolling off the edge is something that can happen due to the game’s real-time physics, and pushing the button too many times and using up more of a consumable than you meant to likewise. These aren’t issues that arise in a pen and paper RPG, they are unique to video games.




Facepalm  

Yes, those are mistakes unique to video games. Board games and RPGs have their own mistakes that can be made. Like going forward with an action whose consequences were worse than you thought they would be. 




Charlaquin said:


> Yeah. Into thinking you were in fact attacking my choice of style. I assume you’re familiar with the idiom, right?




Yes


----------



## pemerton (May 3, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not looking to rebuild the Tomb of Horrors, but sometimes my players will have more fun if I'm not holding back. Would they ask me to not hold back? I doubt it, they want to succeed, but they know I sometimes just unleash, and those can be some of the best fights and challenges they overcome. And sometimes that means catching them off guard, not telegraphing something.
> 
> I'm not blaming  the fiction, of course I am creating it. But, why is that fact being used to tell me I'm doing it wrong? That I should change the fiction to fit with someone else's style, because their style is better, because the only reason I'm saying something is impossible is because I determined it was impossible, and that is a bad thing?
> 
> ...



I don't know what your players do/don't find engaging, and wasn't wanting to talk about that.

I'm saying that I don't think it's a good reason for saying _I don't telegraph traps_ that the villain you've thought up would hide those traps. Rather, the question is _how does it make the game engaging by having a villain who hides traps_. If there's a good answer to that question then by all means devise that villain! But it's that question of _what game elements will engage the players_ that (in my view) should come first.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 3, 2019)

Oofta said:


> You know, this does remind me of Thanksgiving.
> 
> Sue: "What kind of side dish can I bring?"
> Uncle Joe: "Cranberry sauce would be good"
> ...




Real cranberry sauce is better, but canned cranberry sauce is smoother.


----------



## lowkey13 (May 3, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Chaosmancer (May 3, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I don't know what your players do/don't find engaging, and wasn't wanting to talk about that.
> 
> I'm saying that I don't think it's a good reason for saying _I don't telegraph traps_ that the villain you've thought up would hide those traps. Rather, the question is _how does it make the game engaging by having a villain who hides traps_. If there's a good answer to that question then by all means devise that villain! But it's that question of _what game elements will engage the players_ that (in my view) should come first.




Fair enough, my players seem to always want the best story, and interaction with the world. Levels of realism including the intent and tactics of my enemies helps make them feel they are working against real people, not level designed threats. 

They engage with the world, so keeping consistency is highly important to that goal.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 3, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Fair enough, my players seem to always want the best story, and interaction with the world. Levels of realism including the intent and tactics of my enemies helps make them feel they are working against real people, not level designed threats.
> 
> They engage with the world, so keeping consistency is highly important to that goal.




I harbor this dear but dim candle of hope that someday when somebody says “well MY players...” to defend their position, it will turn out that one of the people they are arguing with is, in fact, one of their players.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I harbor this dear but dim candle of hope that someday when somebody says “well MY players...” to defend their position, it will turn out that one of the people they are arguing with is, in fact, one of their players.



Heh, could happen to me.  At least two of my players have accounts and occasionally (rarely?) visit, but I've no clue what their usernanes are.  They may know mine, though.  I'd say I'd welcome the input, but at least one of them would really enjoy trolling the heck outta me and recounting it at the next game.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 4, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I harbor this dear but dim candle of hope that someday when somebody says “well MY players...” to defend their position, it will turn out that one of the people they are arguing with is, in fact, one of their players.




Unlikely in my case, they all fear the forums for the endless arguments I tend to get into. 

pemerton asked how the game is more engaging by what I do, and if there was a good reason for it. I spoke to that, not some grand philosophy on gaming as a whole, just, why I do what I do. Because that is what the people I play with enjoy and keep coming back for.


----------



## pemerton (May 4, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Fair enough, my players seem to always want the best story, and interaction with the world. Levels of realism including the intent and tactics of my enemies helps make them feel they are working against real people, not level designed threats.
> 
> They engage with the world, so keeping consistency is highly important to that goal.



There's a least a hint here that "telegraphed" traps are less realistic, and that there is some contrast between "realism" and "level designed threats" - which is itself perhaps a short-handed for a certain sort of GM attention to the design of scenarios.

My own experience is that the suggested contrasts don't have to hold. So I equally could (and would) say tht my players engage with the ficiton of the gameworld, and hence that consistency is important; and that they like to feel they are facing "real" opponents. 

It's possible the approach to "story" is a difference between our tables.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 4, 2019)

pemerton said:


> There's a least a hint here that "telegraphed" traps are less realistic, and that there is some contrast between "realism" and "level designed threats" - which is itself perhaps a short-handed for a certain sort of GM attention to the design of scenarios.
> 
> My own experience is that the suggested contrasts don't have to hold. So I equally could (and would) say tht my players engage with the ficiton of the gameworld, and hence that consistency is important; and that they like to feel they are facing "real" opponents.
> 
> It's possible the approach to "story" is a difference between our tables.





There is a hint there, but only if I never telegraph traps. Sometimes I do, because it makes sense. Other times I do not. 

However, saying that not all traps should be telegraphed seems to be frowned upon, so I end up in the position of defending when traps should not be telegraphed and only speaking to that side of my design.


----------



## pemerton (May 5, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> saying that not all traps should be telegraphed seems to be frowned upon, so I end up in the position of defending when traps should not be telegraphed and only speaking to that side of my design.



I don't have views on whether or not traps should be telegraphed. Classic D&D-style traps are not really part of my RPGing.

But generally if someone says "I do X in my game because of realism/immersion", I'll respond to that because I've got strong views about the degree of realism/immersion in my own games!


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## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> However, saying that not all traps should be telegraphed *seems to be frowned upon*, so I end up in the position of defending when traps should not be telegraphed and only speaking to that side of my design.




If some of us are questioning un-telegraphed traps, the question we are asking is "what is the point?"  Your answer to that question seems to be "because in a real world traps would NOT be telegraphed, so it feels more realistic to have them be a total surprise."

Ok, fair enough. I (and I assume others) believe there are all sorts of 'realistic' things that don't actually add to the fun of a game.  It would be realistic for sword wounds to leave a lot of adventurers crippled, for example, but I don't find that sort of realism to be a particularly fun way to play RPGs.  Some do.

So maybe the question is why does this particular form of realism make the game more fun?

If using _completely_ un-telegraphed, totally random traps, there seem to be a few ways (as I mentioned elsewhere) that this can unfold in play:
1) Players are rewarded for either constantly looking for traps, or randomly doing so and lucking out.
2) Players are rewarded for having a high passive Perception.
3) DM rolls in secret and players are rewarded for having high (normal) Perception.
4) Traps are random consumers of resources by causing damage in unavoidable ways.

Now, a lot of those options are pretty common in D&D, historically.  Over the years I've played using all those mechanisms.  But, since the "board game" insult has been used by others, those all feel a lot more board-gamey to me.  You roll your dice, move your piece, and maybe you land on somebody else's Hotel. Or the lich's death-trap, as the case may be.

So really this comes back to the "player skill" or "challenging the player" thing: I'd just rather play (and DM) where the human players have to pay attention for hints and then use those hints to make meaningful decisions.  And by "meaningful decisions" I mean informed decisions with risk:reward tradeoff that will impact the game state either way.


----------



## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If some of us are questioning un-telegraphed traps, the question we are asking is "what is the point?"  Your answer to that question seems to be "because in a real world traps would NOT be telegraphed, so it feels more realistic to have them be a total surprise."
> 
> Ok, fair enough. I (and I assume others) believe there are all sorts of 'realistic' things that don't actually add to the fun of a game.  It would be realistic for sword wounds to leave a lot of adventurers crippled, for example, but I don't find that sort of realism to be a particularly fun way to play RPGs.  Some do.
> 
> ...



"If using completely un-telegraphed, totally random traps, there seem to be a few ways (as I mentioned elsewhere) that this can unfold in play:"

Just curious why on the subject of telegraphed vs non-telegraphed traps the need was there to add in "totally random"?

I dont recall anybody pushing for totally random traps - did the telegraph traps guys get that a lot before their switch? Was that a serious problem at their tables thry fixed by telegraphing?

If so, I could understand that move to the other side of the pendulum.

My game does not featurexrither totally random or always telegraphed traps. Seems to find a working balance my players enjoy with relatively few traps used but when they do they matter quite a bit.


----------



## Oofta (May 6, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I'm with [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] on this.  I don't place traps randomly.  I don't use them very often and when I do it's in fairly obvious locations an situations.  As I've stated before, when I do I rely heavily on passive checks.

I've never had a 5E game devolve into checking for traps every 5 ft.  Has anyone on this thread ever claimed they were in a game where that happened?  Because it seems to be a strawman.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I'm with [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] on this.  I don't place traps randomly.  I don't use them very often and when I do it's in fairly obvious locations an situations.  As I've stated before, when I do I rely heavily on passive checks.
> 
> I've never had a 5E game devolve into checking for traps every 5 ft.  Has anyone on this thread ever claimed they were in a game where that happened?  Because it seems to be a strawman.




So... you telegraph the traps?


----------



## Satyrn (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I'm with [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] on this.  I don't place traps randomly.  I don't use them very often and when I do it's in fairly obvious locations an situations.  As I've stated before, when I do I rely heavily on passive checks.
> 
> I've never had a 5E game devolve into checking for traps every 5 ft.  Has anyone on this thread ever claimed they were in a game where that happened?  Because it seems to be a strawman.




And if you look closely, you can see the strawman is holding a sign saying "trap here."


----------



## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> So... you telegraph the traps?



What definition of telegraph is being asked about here?

Is it "dead bugs or other detectable signs of "trap here"" telegrsph?

Or is it "you know, if I were the other guy, this would be where I would put a trap" reasoning and deduction telegraph?


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 6, 2019)

Why am I getting quote notifications ftom 5ekyu when he's on my block list?


----------



## Oofta (May 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> So... you telegraph the traps?




Just repeating the way I run it.  If you want to interpret that as "telegraphing" I can't stop you.  I don't see it that way because it goes back to PC capabilities and expertise in paying attention to the environment around them, not the player.


----------



## Ovinomancer (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Just repeating the way I run it.  If you want to interpret that as "telegraphing" I can't stop you.  I don't see it that way because it goes back to PC capabilities and expertise in paying attention to the environment around them, not the player.



It sounds pretty much like what's been presented as telegraphing.  If the players can guess that this is area is likely trapped, then... what do you think is the difference?


----------



## Oofta (May 6, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> It sounds pretty much like what's been presented as telegraphing.  If the players can guess that this is area is likely trapped, then... what do you think is the difference?




One relies on PC skill, the other on player skill and a DM giving out hints.  I don't see the confusion.


----------



## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> One relies on PC skill, the other on player skill and a DM giving out hints.  I don't see the confusion.



I believe to some that might be defined as gatekeeping important info behind character stats and seen as not the (insert non-judgemental jargon for as goid as my way) method.



But, yeah, me too.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> @_*Elfcrusher*_, I'm with @_*5ekyu*_ on this.  I don't place traps randomly.  I don't use them very often and *when I do it's in fairly obvious locations an situations.*  As I've stated before, when I do I rely heavily on passive checks.




"Obvious locations" is a form of telegraph.  If a player is thinking, "This door to the treasure room is probably trapped" then we are talking about player skill, right?  That's why the only way to not telegraph, at all, is to place them randomly.

Or maybe you had a different idea in mind when @_*iserith*_ and others started talking about 'telegraphing'?  Maybe you thought, oh, I don't know...how about: signs that say "trap here".  If so, I'm glad we had this little chat and cleared that up.

Now, I think 'obvious locations' is a particularly _uninteresting_ form of telegraphing.  Sure, it still relies on player skill, but not a very engaging or rewarding form of player skill. Or really very much skill. I never get that little rush of satisfaction, the one that I get when overcome something novel and interesting, just because I remembered to check for traps in an obvious place.  But, hey, it's telegraphing.



> I've never had a 5E game devolve into checking for traps every 5 ft.  Has anyone on this thread ever claimed they were in a game where that happened?  Because it seems to be a strawman.




"Devolve"?  No. 

Play that way in the early 1980's because that was what the adventures required, and even because it seemed fun at the time? Sure.

And, anyway, I was pretty clear that I was just trying to enumerate the number of ways that one _could_ play with zero telegraphing (not even "obvious locations") of traps.  Checking every 5' is one of those ways.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If some of us are questioning un-telegraphed traps, the question we are asking is "what is the point?"  Your answer to that question seems to be "because in a real world traps would NOT be telegraphed, so it feels more realistic to have them be a total surprise."
> 
> Ok, fair enough. I (and I assume others) believe there are all sorts of 'realistic' things that don't actually add to the fun of a game.  It would be realistic for sword wounds to leave a lot of adventurers crippled, for example, but I don't find that sort of realism to be a particularly fun way to play RPGs.  Some do.
> 
> So maybe the question is why does this particular form of realism make the game more fun?




How many times have people decried the villain leaving the hero in an "unescapable death trap" then walking away after monologuing their entire plan. There are times it makes me nearly scream in frustration, "just put a bullet between his eyes", Hero is dead, plan can't be ruined. 

Some fictional set-ups can get around this, for example, in most modern superhero novels I've read there is reference to "the unspoken rules" Supervillains don't generally kill heroes because doing so brings more heat than it is worth. They don't kidnap the heroes children as hostages, because it isn't worth the massive amount of heroes destroying them in retaliation. 

That doesn't exist in DnD though. Most of our villains aren't playing by those rules, they are going to do anything to win, they are not going to play fair, they are not constrained by Saturday Morning Morality. 

Now, I don't often use traps. They aren't worth the headache, and they generally don't make enough of a difference to be worth while, especially since I generally have at least one player with an 18 or higher passive perception by mid-game. But, if I am using them, and the villain falls into the right mindset, they aren't going to be telegraphed. That doesn't mean they aren't noticeable, but they will be quite hard to notice, because that is the point of a trap.


----------



## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> "Obvious locations" is a form of telegraph.  If a player is thinking, "This door to the treasure room is probably trapped" then we are talking about player skill, right?  That's why the only way to not telegraph, at all, is to place them randomly.
> 
> Or maybe you had a different idea in mind when @_*iserith*_ and others started talking about 'telegraphing'?  Maybe you thought, oh, I don't know...how about: signs that say "trap here".  If so, I'm glad we had this little chat and cleared that up.
> 
> ...



So, yay, we have characters or players realizing "maybe vault doors are trapoed or alarmed" as telegraphing and challeges that check against PC stats as "challenges to players".

If we keep this up, we will soon have no non-re-definable differences at all.


----------



## Oofta (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> "Obvious locations" is a form of telegraph.  If a player is thinking, "This door to the treasure room is probably trapped" then we are talking about player skill, right?  That's why the only way to not telegraph, at all, is to place them randomly.
> 
> Or maybe you had a different idea in mind when @_*iserith*_ and others started talking about 'telegraphing'?  Maybe you thought, oh, I don't know...how about: signs that say "trap here".  If so, I'm glad we had this little chat and cleared that up.
> 
> ...




Well if you consider it telegraphing that I don't add dangerous traps to random objects in random locations, then yes I guess.

If you really have to have a "win" there you go.  You got me.  I guess.

I'm just being clear that no one has to my knowledge stated that they have to check for traps every 5 ft in any game recently played in this thread.  So to the best of my knowledge you are arguing that traps should be telegraphed based on a non-existent issue.  AKA a strawman argument.


----------



## iserith (May 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Now, I don't often use traps. They aren't worth the headache, and they generally don't make enough of a difference to be worth while, especially since I generally have at least one player with an 18 or higher passive perception by mid-game. .




I think the finding of the trap is the least interesting part about them. It's figuring out how to bypass or disable them that is the real challenge.


----------



## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Well if you consider it telegraphing that I don't add dangerous traps to random objects in random locations, then yes I guess.
> 
> If you really have to have a "win" there you go.  You got me.  I guess.
> 
> I'm just being clear that no one has to my knowledge stated that they have to check for traps every 5 ft in any game recently played in this thread.  So to the best of my knowledge you are arguing that traps should be telegraphed based on a non-existent issue.  AKA a strawman argument.



But to be fair, if the pre-telegraph pre G-A-P standard being used as the baseline is thst assumed play with checks every 5 ft (with apparently lotsa confused take-backs over mis-understanding on skill checks) it does certainly make the claims in various discussions about speeding up play more plausible.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I'm just being clear that no one has to my knowledge stated that they have to check for traps every 5 ft in any game recently played in this thread.  So to the best of my knowledge you are arguing that traps should be telegraphed based on a non-existent issue.  AKA a strawman argument.




Yeah, I was both clear in my first post, and then re-explained in my next post, why I included that as a possible outcome (because it is).  But if it makes you feel better to get a "win" by continuing to misinterpret this point so that you can dismiss it as a strawman, then you got me, too.  I guess.

But as long as we're on the topic, has anybody here (besides me) _ever_ been in a game where the randomness of traps and secret doors led to essentially constant checks for traps (or secret doors), literally in every square along every wall and floor in an entire dungeon?  Oofta apparently doesn't take my word for it, but maybe if somebody else raises their hand he'll publicly retract his 'strawman' assertion and apologize.

Hmm?  Hmm?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think the finding of the trap is the least interesting part about them. It's figuring out how to bypass or disable them that is the real challenge.




That's the thing, right?  There's basically nothing interesting or exciting or suspenseful about the occasional trap going off because nobody's passive Perception was high enough.  What's interesting is knowing the trap is there, coming up with a plan to avoid/disarm it, and then crossing your fingers that it works.  And the problem with just "rolling to disarm" is that you know you're doing the correct thing. The optimal strategy, for the "use a skill" crowd, is to pick the guy with the highest bonus and have him roll.  You aren't left wondering, "Is this the right way to do it?  Should we have tried something different?  Wait...maybe I'm not ready yet."  And it's that wondering while you wait for resolution, whether or not there's a die roll, that adds to the suspense.  A.k.a. "immersion".


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## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yeah, I was both clear in my first post, and then re-explained in my next post, why I included that as a possible outcome (because it is).  But if it makes you feel better to get a "win" by continuing to misinterpret this point so that you can dismiss it as a strawman, then you got me, too.  I guess.
> 
> But as long as we're on the topic, has anybody here (besides me) _ever_ been in a game where the randomness of traps and secret doors led to essentially constant checks for traps (or secret doors), literally in every square along every wall and floor in an entire dungeon?  Oofta apparently doesn't take my word for it, but maybe if somebody else raises their hand he'll publicly retract his 'strawman' assertion and apologize.
> 
> Hmm?  Hmm?



The closest we ever csme was when, under "that GM" where we would get hung out to dry on casual statements by the players, we would develop written "standard procedures" - as in "door procedure" and "enter room procedures".

This had nothing to do with traps per se, but it was about surviving the numerous cases of "you did not say you looked up" and so on.

It was much more about the preponderance of "player didnt say" stupidities that ignored completeky reasonable character capabilities in the scene.

But, traps every 5 ft would only ever occur for something like Tomb of Horrors where it **was** in context a reasonable idea. It was never a routine "thru every dungeom crawl"

But for decades now, a simple presumption of competent characters is enough to avoid that.


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## iserith (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> That's the thing, right?  There's basically nothing interesting or exciting or suspenseful about the occasional trap going off because nobody's passive Perception was high enough.  What's interesting is knowing the trap is there, coming up with a plan to avoid/disarm it, and then crossing your fingers that it works.  And the problem with just "rolling to disarm" is that you know you're doing the correct thing. The optimal strategy, for the "use a skill" crowd, is to pick the guy with the highest bonus and have him roll.  You aren't left wondering, "Is this the right way to do it?  Should we have tried something different?  Wait...maybe I'm not ready yet."  And it's that wondering while you wait for resolution, whether or not there's a die roll, that adds to the suspense.  A.k.a. "immersion".




I don't know about "immersion" which I consider a laughable buzzword that gets thrown around like "metagaming," but depending on how a trap is presented and adjudicated by the DM, it can basically be just random number generation affected by whatever choices the player made during character creation. Whether anyone finds that fun is up to them.


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## iserith (May 6, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yeah, I was both clear in my first post, and then re-explained in my next post, why I included that as a possible outcome (because it is).  But if it makes you feel better to get a "win" by continuing to misinterpret this point so that you can dismiss it as a strawman, then you got me, too.  I guess.
> 
> But as long as we're on the topic, has anybody here (besides me) _ever_ been in a game where the randomness of traps and secret doors led to essentially constant checks for traps (or secret doors), literally in every square along every wall and floor in an entire dungeon?  Oofta apparently doesn't take my word for it, but maybe if somebody else raises their hand he'll publicly retract his 'strawman' assertion and apologize.
> 
> Hmm?  Hmm?




If there is no telegraphing and the DM doesn't use passive checks, then what you propose is the smart play provided there are no disincentives for doing so. I've certainly observed games and played in them where that was the case. It's less common nowadays in my experience, but does come up in games where the DM doesn't like passive checks and with DMs for whom telegraphing is a foreign concept.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't know about "immersion" which I consider a laughable buzzword that gets thrown around like "metagaming," but depending on how a trap is presented and adjudicated by the DM, it can basically be just random number generation affected by whatever choices the player made during character creation. Whether anyone finds that fun is up to them.




That's why I put "immersion" in quotes.  _Usually_ it used to mean, "My favorite form of realism is rigidly adhered to."  As if the player is so absorbed in the game they forget that it's not reality, until somebody swims in plate armor or falls 100 feet without dying uses fire on trolls, or whatever. And then suddenly they find themselves sitting at a table covered in dice, minis, and empty mountain dew cans, going "WTF...I thought I was fighting the Lich King.  Man, that totally blew my immersion."

No, I'm just using it to mean the player is feeling emotions that are something like what their imaginary character would be feeling.  E.g., you are tense/nervous/stressed when you try to get past the trap.


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## 5ekyu (May 6, 2019)

For me, a meaningful definition I like to use for "telegraphing" is as follows.


If a general statement of the circumstance would lead players and PCs to think "there are traps here" it's not telegraphing - its just established world consistency. "Going into the hidden crypt of lost king ehere thry ssy lots of loot is buried" is not "telegraphing traps any more than "got to the vault door" is or that "we are eating at La Pasta Georgino" counts as telegraphing we are eating Italian tonight.

If the general open for all boxed text (in module terms) of a scene or portion of a scene includes tells without PC checks involved that there are traps or dangers or hidden stuff - that ***is*** telegraphing because it comes down to specifics open yo all *players *.

If the non-open interactions with scene provide for PC checks to reveal there are traps, hidden stuff etc *if* they meet certain DCs and conditions, then that is *not* telegraphing. It requires PC related checks. 

So, to me, telegraphing is in the middle of the spectrum, not so broadly inclusive as to become practically mesninhless.


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## Chaosmancer (May 6, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think the finding of the trap is the least interesting part about them. It's figuring out how to bypass or disable them that is the real challenge.






Elfcrusher said:


> That's the thing, right?  There's basically nothing interesting or exciting or suspenseful about the occasional trap going off because nobody's passive Perception was high enough.  What's interesting is knowing the trap is there, coming up with a plan to avoid/disarm it, and then crossing your fingers that it works.  And the problem with just "rolling to disarm" is that you know you're doing the correct thing. The optimal strategy, for the "use a skill" crowd, is to pick the guy with the highest bonus and have him roll.  You aren't left wondering, "Is this the right way to do it?  Should we have tried something different?  Wait...maybe I'm not ready yet."  And it's that wondering while you wait for resolution, whether or not there's a die roll, that adds to the suspense.  A.k.a. "immersion".




Sure, but unless they are pretty elaborate traps, it isn't terribly hard to figure out how to bypass or disable them. If I'm going to build a trap for someone to disable and deal with, I'm going to make it a whole thing. Otherwise, it just isn't worth the time.


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## iserith (May 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, but unless they are pretty elaborate traps, it isn't terribly hard to figure out how to bypass or disable them. If I'm going to build a trap for someone to disable and deal with, I'm going to make it a whole thing. Otherwise, it just isn't worth the time.




That sounds like an argument FOR "pretty elaborate traps" to me.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 6, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, but unless they are pretty elaborate traps, it isn't terribly hard to figure out how to bypass or disable them. If I'm going to build a trap for someone to disable and deal with, I'm going to make it a whole thing. Otherwise, it just isn't worth the time.




Exactly. 

I wouldn’t  use a single orc as a combat encounter for a high level party. Likewise I wouldn’t bother putting a trap in their way that gets resolved by rolling one die without thinking.


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## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If some of us are questioning un-telegraphed traps, the question we are asking is "what is the point?"  Your answer to that question seems to be "because in a real world traps would NOT be telegraphed, so it feels more realistic to have them be a total surprise."
> 
> Ok, fair enough. I (and I assume others) believe there are all sorts of 'realistic' things that don't actually add to the fun of a game.  It would be realistic for sword wounds to leave a lot of adventurers crippled, for example, but I don't find that sort of realism to be a particularly fun way to play RPGs.  Some do.
> 
> ...



I think there's another possibility. To me, it seems to lie behind some of the posts in this thread (eg [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], maybe [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]) although of course I could be drawing mistaken inferences from what they've said.

5) The presence from time-to-time of "random"/"untelegraphed" traps - some of which are triggered, some of which are narrated in advance by the GM to those players playing PCs with certain Passive Perception skills - reinforces the players' sense of setting and/or story.​
Used in this way, traps aren't about _rewarding_ players for skilled play or skilled build, nor about consuming resources. Their function is about establishing a certain fiction/feeling, not about "beating the dungeon".


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## Guest 6801328 (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think there's another possibility. To me, it seems to lie behind some of the posts in this thread (eg @_*Chaosmancer*_, maybe @_*Oofta*_) although of course I could be drawing mistaken inferences from what they've said.
> 5) The presence from time-to-time of "random"/"untelegraphed" traps - some of which are triggered, some of which are narrated in advance by the GM to those players playing PCs with certain Passive Perception skills - reinforces the players' sense of setting and/or story.​
> Used in this way, traps aren't about _rewarding_ players for skilled play or skilled build, nor about consuming resources. Their function is about establishing a certain fiction/feeling, not about "beating the dungeon".




EDIT: Wait, I mis-read what you were saying slightly.  I missed the part about some of them getting triggered.

You're making a category error. You are proposing a new _reason_ for putting in those traps, but my list was about the impact on gameplay.  So, yeah, the purpose may be to establish mood, but how does it drive player behavior?

I would totally be down with simply narrating that the best trap-finder in the party finds some traps, without even setting a DC or comparing to a passive score.  Just for establishing a mood (or, better yet, for telegraphing the tougher traps ahead...but that's something else.)

But if some of those random traps get triggered, what kind of incentive does that create for the players?  Maybe they don't start searching _literally_ every 5 feet, but aren't they going to revert to board game mentality and start calling out "I search for traps!" at every likely spot?


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## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You're making a category error. You are proposing a new _reason_ for putting in those traps, but my list was about the impact on gameplay.  So, yeah, the purpose may be to establish mood, but how does it drive player behavior?
> 
> I would totally be down with simply narrating that the best trap-finder in the party finds some traps, without even setting a DC or comparing to a passive score.  Just for establishing a mood (or, better yet, for telegraphing the tougher traps ahead...but that's something else.)
> 
> But if some of those random traps get triggered, what kind of incentive does that create for the players?  Maybe they don't start searching _literally_ every 5 feet, but aren't they going to revert to board game mentality and start calling out "I search for traps!" at every likely spot?



I dunno - I don't play games in which "establishing mood" is an important part of play. But there are a number of posters for whom this seems very important, perhaps even the principal goal of play.

Maybe they don't declare searches every 5 feet because (i) that would spoil the mood, and (ii) they rely on the GM to regulate the number and effect of traps. But really, you'd have to ask them.


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## Charlaquin (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I dunno - I don't play games in which "establishing mood" is an important part of play. But there are a number of posters for whom this seems very important, perhaps even the principal goal of play.
> 
> Maybe they don't declare searches every 5 feet because (i) that would spoil the mood, and (ii) they rely on the GM to regulate the number and effect of traps. But really, you'd have to ask them.




Man, if you're putting untelegraphed traps in your dungeons to establish a mood, and the optimal player strategy for safely dealing with these untelegraphed traps spoils the mood... I dunno, doesn't seem like a very effective approach to the stated goal.


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

I can only speak for myself, sometimes traps are set dressing sometimes they're a a threat.  In most cases it's a background feature that reinforces the fiction of the campaign world.

For example, kobolds (and to a slightly lesser degree goblins) are known for using traps.  If the PCs are low enough level that detecting and removing the traps is uncertain, I rely on passive perceptions or investigation to detect them and they need to be disarmed or bypassed.  As stated, this primarily means telling me they're moving slowly and cautiously.  At a certain point if the party's skills are high enough this could become automatic unless the party is trying to move quickly.

On the other hand ogres don't do traps.  They smash.

Traps are rarely a focus of my game, they're basically flavor text.  Flavor text that could blow you up if you're not careful or unlucky but flavor text nonetheless.


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

One other thing that keeps seeming to come up is that using skills to overcome an obstacle is "boring".  Do you ever have people use survival to track?  Athletics to climb a wall or force open a door?  Maybe an acrobatics check to walk along a narrow ledge or walk quickly across ice?

I don't see finding and removing traps any different.  I use a mix of challenges, with a mix of solutions.  Everything from a straight die roll based on PC stats to challenges that have little to do with the PC.  Most fall somewhere in between.


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## Ristamar (May 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> One other thing that keeps seeming to come up is that using skills to overcome an obstacle is "boring".




If meaningful choices don't often preclude the die roll, the act of simply rolling can become tedious.  No different than fights with foregone conclusions that drag out far too long.


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

Ristamar said:


> If meaningful choices don't often preclude the die roll, the act of simply rolling can become tedious.  No different than fights with foregone conclusions that drag out far too long.




If combat is just a slog vs a bag of hit points, that's a problem.  No different than out of combat challenges.

I don't see a difference, and what is enjoyable for one group or individual may not be for another.  Die rolls for resolving out of combat challenges is just one tool in the box.  I use a variety.


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## 5ekyu (May 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If combat is just a slog vs a bag of hit points, that's a problem.  No different than out of combat challenges.
> 
> I don't see a difference, and what is enjoyable for one group or individual may not be for another.  Die rolls for resolving out of combat challenges is just one tool in the box.  I use a variety.



Yeah this last exchangexwas confusing to me. I dont get the linkage between rolling skill checks to resolve a challenge or obstacle and combats with foregone conclusions, particularly as regards to 5e. 

When fights look to the participants like foregone conclusions, that easily time or past time that things should be changing...  right? One side or the other tries other solutions like flight, surrender, bargaining, evasion and delay for help, etc etc etc.

Similarly, I suppose maybe superficially to a check where (with fails open to progress with setback) a lot of different outcomes are possible. 

Nothing really "foregone" there.

Beyond "anything can be boring if you choose to make it so" these foregones and so on seem less like most rpg play I have experienced.


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## Satyrn (May 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> One other thing that keeps seeming to come up is that using skills to overcome an obstacle is "boring".



It's not that using skills to overcome an obstacle is boring.

What's boring is the DM laying out the obstacle and asking for the skill check to overcome it, with the players major involvement in the scene being to roll some dice. *Sigh* I've done that before:"As you head along the cliff, you come across narrow ledge. Give me a balance check" and "those of you entering the passage, give me a Spot check . . .  you notice a tripwire that connects to a crossbow."

There just wasn't enough player input in those scenes to be exciting or worth bothering with at all. And yes, those are real examples from my time DMing 3e, examples I remember because they remind me that I should do better.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> It's not that using skills to overcome an obstacle is boring.
> 
> What's boring is the DM laying out the obstacle and asking for the skill check to overcome it, with the players major involvement in the scene being to roll some dice. *Sigh* I've done that before:"As you head along the cliff, you come across narrow ledge. Give me a balance check" and "those of you entering the passage, give me a Spot check . . .  you notice a tripwire that connects to a crossbow."
> 
> There just wasn't enough player input in those scenes to be exciting or worth bothering with at all. And yes, those are real examples from my time DMing 3e, examples I remember because they remind me that I should do better.




This reminds me of the DMs who out of nowhere go "Uhhhh, give me a.... Perception check..." without an action declaration by the player preceding the request. It's like the DM is asking permission of the dice to describe the environment. Super common in my experience.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If combat is just a slog vs a bag of hit points, that's a problem.  No different than out of combat challenges.
> 
> I don't see a difference, and *what is enjoyable for one group or individual may not be for another. * Die rolls for resolving out of combat challenges is just one tool in the box.  I use a variety.




The bold part is absolutely true, and perhaps I should be prefacing a lot of my statements with "in my opinion". But, yes, definitely: when I say something is boring and uninteresting I mean _for me_. YMMV.

Anyway, back to the dice rolling...

What I don't like is a situation where there's an obstacle (a trap, a lock, a wall, a ledge) that is clearly meant to be solved one and only one way, and that involves a win or lose dice roll.

I prefer trade-offs.  Two different options, each of which may or may not require some kind of roll, with different benefits/risks.  An example would be the "pick the lock and take time, or smash the door and alert the ogre" example previously.  I like that.

If there's a ledge to be crossed with Acrobatics, I want to know what the other option is.  Can I go around the long way and make a Stealth check to avoid waking something up?  Or maybe it will cost me time?

What I find uninspired and uninteresting, mostly because it doesn't require me to make any decisions, are pure skill check/resource consumption obstacles.  The DM could just save time by saying, "Ok, everybody with less than +5 in Acrobatics, take 7 damage.  Everybody else is fine." And it honestly wouldn't be any more or less engaging for me. If rolling the die isn't a _calculated_ risk, I'm not invested in it.

I played in an adventure last night and we had a choice of two paths.  We chose one, and stumbled into a trap (involving some grease, a ramp, a pit, and bad guys, so it wasn't just a single roll).  Before we made the choice we looked around, but there were no clues as to which path we should take, or what the trade-off might be in taking them. And I guess we failed passive Perception checks or something, because the trap was just sprung on us and we all had to make Dex saving throws.  But it felt like something that was _done to us_, rather than something we _got ourselves into to_, because we only had one decision to make along the way, and it was made randomly because we had no information.  We were just along for the ride.

Once we were actually in the pit (I failed my save) we could start making decisions again, and from there on I was engaged again.  It was a fun fight.


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## Satyrn (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> This reminds me of the DMs who out of nowhere go "Uhhhh, give me a.... Perception check..." without an action declaration by the player preceding the request. It's like the DM is asking permission of the dice to describe the environment. Super common in my experience.




That was me for most of 3e!


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## 5ekyu (May 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> That was me for most of 3e!



It was me last night.

Group was moving thru a crowd when someone sneaky in the crowd got close enough to whisper to one of them. The others who made a certain degree of perception were close enough or looking in the right direction and not next to someone else bring loud in the chaotic scene to notice it and maybe hear what was whispered.

The die roll covered the uncertainty in the scene and their own perception scores (and languages) made a difference. 

Now, whether or not those who heard it, saw the speaker or understood the Message choose to share it is up to them, but at the table, those who made it saw meaning in having done so.


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## Satyrn (May 7, 2019)

Quoting Myself For Great Justice!



Satyrn said:


> That was me for most of 3e!




I meant to also say that I started DMing so much better when I adopted what I think of as the AD&D mindset. I didn't change the rules of 3e, I just started asking the players "whaddya do?" instead of n telling them whatta do.

And then 5e came along doing the same! I wasn't even part of the playtest . . . I'm glad you were, though, @_*iserith*_.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I played in an adventure last night and we had a choice of two paths.  We chose one, and stumbled into a trap (involving some grease, a ramp, a pit, and bad guys, so it wasn't just a single roll).  Before we made the choice we looked around, but there were no clues as to which path we should take, or what the trade-off might be in taking them. And I guess we failed passive Perception checks or something, because the trap was just sprung on us and we all had to make Dex saving throws.  But it felt like something that was _done to us_, rather than something we _got ourselves into to_, because we only had one decision to make along the way, and it was made randomly because we had no information.  We were just along for the ride.
> 
> Once we were actually in the pit (I failed my save) we could start making decisions again, and from there on I was engaged again.  It was a fun fight.




Ugh, no choice, just a random number generator to determine the starting position for the fight. DM could have just rolled on a chart, put your characters where he or she wanted, and asked for initiative. The Dex saves and possibly passive Perception check is just a thin veneer that some choice you made during character creation or advancement mattered to the situation. And who knows if going left instead of right would have resulted in a different outcome in the first place.

I do have sympathy for some DMs though. The DMG has some decent rules for presenting and resolving traps, but as is clear from these discussions, it doesn't seem like anyone actually _reads_ the book that tells the DM how to perform his or her role. Xanathar's has even better stuff for traps, but not every group uses that book and, if they do, it's typically just skimmed for PC options from what I see. So taken together, DMs are really kind of left to their own devices on how to present and resolve traps and many end up exactly with what you experienced above. Many don't even know that there's another way where player choice during play actually matters.


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## lowkey13 (May 7, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Charlaquin (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> This reminds me of the DMs who out of nowhere go "Uhhhh, give me a.... Perception check..." without an action declaration by the player preceding the request. It's like the DM is asking permission of the dice to describe the environment. Super common in my experience.




My favorite is when the DM does this, the player gets a really low roll, and the DM goes “Uhh... Well, I guess you’d still be able to notice [whatever], but you almost missed it!” That was a thing I used to do a lot, when the PCs really needed to find a particular detail of the environment to make progress, like a hidden door or tracks or something. I remember in the 3e era it was a sort of hobbywide in-joke that there was no point investing in tracking abilities because of it matters to the adventure, you’ll find the tracks no matter what, and if it doesn’t, there won’t be tracks to find.


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> It's not that using skills to overcome an obstacle is boring.
> 
> What's boring is the DM laying out the obstacle and asking for the skill check to overcome it, with the players major involvement in the scene being to roll some dice. *Sigh* I've done that before:"As you head along the cliff, you come across narrow ledge. Give me a balance check" and "those of you entering the passage, give me a Spot check . . .  you notice a tripwire that connects to a crossbow."
> 
> There just wasn't enough player input in those scenes to be exciting or worth bothering with at all. And yes, those are real examples from my time DMing 3e, examples I remember because they remind me that I should do better.




Taking the narrow ledge as an example, how else would you deal with it?  I'd set the scene something like:  "The trail ahead turns treacherous. It looks like an avalanche took out about 20 feet of trail.  There's a narrow ledge that goes down to a few inches in a few places for the entire section.  There are no hand-holds in the otherwise smooth rocks, you're going to have to rely on your balance to get across.  If you fall, it's going to be at least 50 feet down to the trail below. What do you do?"

At this point they may send someone ahead, perhaps using a climber's kit to anchor them.  Maybe someone misty steps or uses some other spell. Hopefully they figure out some way to get that tank character with an 8 dex across.  What I wouldn't do is tell them how to overcome the obstacle, although if they climb along it I will call for a dexterity (acrobatics) check.  If I _repeatedly_ throw this, that would be boring so I won't.

Having to do this is quite a common trope in fiction.  I can't remember the last time I did this specific scenario but I'm sure I've done this or similar.  I don't know how else you would do it if you've decided as a DM that it makes sense.

To put it another way, I want people who invested in acrobatics to shine now and then.  This is just one.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Hmmmm.
> 
> IME, most DMs learn not from reading the DMG (or any particular book) but from:
> 
> ...




It shows.

Reading and doing is my approach to the goal. Plus arguing on enworld.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> My favorite is when the DM does this, the player gets a really low roll, and the DM goes “Uhh... Well, I guess you’d still be able to notice [whatever], but you almost missed it!”




Yes! I've seen that a lot, too. Probably did it myself back in the day. Modules as I recall often presented information this way ahead of the boxed text (if I remember correctly). Make some rolls to determine what everyone knows and sees, then describe the environment accordingly.


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## lowkey13 (May 7, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn (May 7, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Taking the narrow ledge as an example, how else would you deal with it? I'd set the scene something like: "The trail ahead turns treacherous. It looks like an avalanche took out about 20 feet of trail. There's a narrow ledge that goes down to a few inches in a few places for the entire section. There are no hand-holds in the otherwise smooth rocks, you're going to have to rely on your balance to get across. If you fall, it's going to be at least 50 feet down to the trail below. What do you do?"



Yeah that's way better than what I did. And it's not at all what I described myself doing in the post you quoted. I mean, I did what I said: described a narrow ledge, and asked for a skill check. 


Do you realize what you've described is a good example of what the "other side" is talking about? Telegraphing, scene setting, challenging the player, making the players' choices matter, however we've been describing it.

Edit: and the rest of your quote for context:



> At this point they may send someone ahead, perhaps using a climber's kit to anchor them. Maybe someone misty steps or uses some other spell. Hopefully they figure out some way to get that tank character with an 8 dex across. What I wouldn't do is tell them how to overcome the obstacle, although if they climb along it I will call for a dexterity (acrobatics) check. If I repeatedly throw this, that would be boring so I won't.
> 
> Having to do this is quite a common trope in fiction. I can't remember the last time I did this specific scenario but I'm sure I've done this or similar. I don't know how else you would do it if you've decided as a DM that it makes sense.
> 
> ...


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Do you realize what you've described is a good example of what the "other side" is talking about? Telegraphing, scene setting, challenging the player, making the players' choices matter, however we've been describing it.




I would say that there's a lot of gray areas.  The ledge example may play out much the same other than I'd be okay if the response to my "what do you do" is "I make an acrobatics check 15 to get across".

I would also say that sometimes I do call for specific checks if it is called for by an external event or one that is not "telegraphed".  Let's say the group is walking down a staircase in an abandoned building and it starts to collapse. I may call for acrobatics checks to avoid going prone and potentially falling.  Event then the wizard could cast feather fall to avoid making an acrobatics check.  

I don't do that often, but sometimes the unexpected happens.  I see it the same as the party getting surprised by a fireball and everybody needs to make dex saves because the enemy wizard was invisible when they entered the room and the enemy got the drop on the party.  Or like that time my friend had a goose commit suicide-by-car by dive bombing them as they drove down the highway.  Nobody advertised kamikaze goose, it just happened.  Now she did have a choice afterwards and could have stopped by a car wash and been late for her appointment rather than having to deal with goose smear that had been baking on a hot black car all day.  But that was after the fact.


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't know about "immersion" which I consider a laughable buzzword that gets thrown around like "metagaming."



 Hey, that is totally unfair!

… to the word "metagaming."



Elfcrusher said:


> But as long as we're on the topic, has anybody here (besides me) _ever_ been in a game where the randomness of traps and secret doors led to essentially constant checks for traps (or secret doors), literally in every square along every wall and floor in an entire dungeon?



There were old-school campaigns that /weren't/ like that?  

You're not pulling my leg, are you?

Of course, that was the olden days, when paranoia was rife (and not it's own RPG yet).


Then again, I saw that sort of thing come back with 3e, and it's Search skill and take 20 rules... 

… "Do you even realize how long taking 20 on every 5x5 surface in the room is going to take?"



iserith said:


> This reminds me of the DMs who out of nowhere go "Uhhhh, give me a.... Perception check..." without an action declaration by the player preceding the request. It's like the DM is asking permission of the dice to describe the environment. Super common in my experience.




The Simulationist Mystique … 




Oofta said:


> One other thing that keeps seeming to come up is that using skills to overcome an obstacle is "boring".



It is a single binary check.  Imagine how riveting combat would be if, instead of fighters, armor, weapons & hps, we had a Fighting Skill, that you rolled to determine which side won a given battle.


… actually, that'd at least put the poor Fighter class out of its misery.


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## robus (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> This reminds me of the DMs who out of nowhere go "Uhhhh, give me a.... Perception check..." without an action declaration by the player preceding the request. It's like the DM is asking permission of the dice to describe the environment. Super common in my experience.




Yeah I’m guilty of that, trying to wean myself off it.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

robus said:


> Yeah I’m guilty of that, trying to wean myself off it.




Yeah man, probably most of us have done that. Some likely still do it and don't have a problem with it.

It's a habit people pick up from other DMs or from other games.


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## Oofta (May 7, 2019)

I'm a bit confused.  Why is it wrong to ask the players for a perception check without them declaring an action?  I mean, things happen in the world that the PCs may or may not notice, right?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I'm a bit confused.  Why is it wrong to ask the players for a perception check without them declaring an action?  I mean, things happen in the world that the PCs may or may not notice, right?




I was trying to figure out how it's possible to _not_ understand why so many people have moved away from that DMing style (not that it's "wrong"...but perhaps "weak" would be an appropriate adjective.)

Then it occurred to me: if you belong to the RPG school of thought that the epitome of fine roleplaying is pretending your character doesn't know what you know, then a DM asking for Perception checks and then saying "huh" and doing nothing is handing the players a golden opportunity for roleplaying.  Right?  The person who does the _best job_ acting as if that didn't just happen is the best roleplayer!


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## 5ekyu (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I was trying to figure out how it's possible to _not_ understand why so many people have moved away from that DMing style (not that it's "wrong"...but perhaps "weak" would be an appropriate adjective.)
> 
> Then it occurred to me: if you belong to the RPG school of thought that the epitome of fine roleplaying is pretending your character doesn't know what you know, then a DM asking for Perception checks and then saying "huh" and doing nothing is handing the players a golden opportunity for roleplaying.  Right?  The person who does the _best job_ acting as if that didn't just happen is the best roleplayer!



Wow.


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## Charlaquin (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I was trying to figure out how it's possible to _not_ understand why so many people have moved away from that DMing style (not that it's "wrong"...but perhaps "weak" would be an appropriate adjective.)
> 
> Then it occurred to me: if you belong to the RPG school of thought that the epitome of fine roleplaying is pretending your character doesn't know what you know, then a DM asking for Perception checks and then saying "huh" and doing nothing is handing the players a golden opportunity for roleplaying.  Right?  The person who does the _best job_ acting as if that didn't just happen is the best roleplayer!




I’mma be honest, even I as a staunch defender of the goal and approach style find this a little unfair to the non goal and approach folks.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I’mma be honest, even I as a staunch defender of the goal and approach style find this a little unfair to the non goal and approach folks.




Should I have added some smilies?


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## Charlaquin (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Should I have added some smilies?




I mean, I got that it was a joke, just not the most diplomatic joke given the sensitivity of the topic.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I mean, I got that it was a joke, just not the most diplomatic joke given the sensitivity of the topic.




But also a joke with a point: how could it _not_ be obvious why "Can I have a Perception check?  4?  Ok, nevermind...." is a DMing technique that could be improved upon?


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## Charlaquin (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But also a joke with a point: how could it _not_ be obvious why "Can I have a Perception check?  4?  Ok, nevermind...." is a DMing technique that could be improved upon?




It’s certainly odd to me that it wouldn’t be obvious to someone else why such an exchange would be less than ideal. But I am willing to extend the benefit of the doubt that it probably isn’t an accurate representation of what their games actually look like. I’ve had my approach misrepresented and that misrepresentation ridiculed enough to know that it only serves to muddy the issue and make everyone involved angrier and more defensive. It’d be nice if _some_ kind of value or understanding could be reached from this mess of a thread, and I think jokes like that are only a hinderance to that objective.


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## pemerton (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But also a joke with a point: how could it _not_ be obvious why "Can I have a Perception check?  4?  Ok, nevermind...." is a DMing technique that could be improved upon?



There are rulebooks that recommend that, in such circumstances, the GM should make the check. Two I can think of off the top of my head are Classic Traveller (1977) and the 4e D&D DMG (2008).

The 5e Basic PDF (pp 59, 69) appears to suggest the use of Passive Perception in lieu of the player or the GM actually rolling a die. To me that seems like a fairly simple variant on the _GM rolls_ approach, but maybe it's more than that and I'm missing it?

Anyway, if the idea is that _changes in the game state should all be consequent on players' action declarations_, then these _GM rolls_ appproaches seem just as undesirable as calling for a roll from the player.


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## pemerton (May 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> if you're putting untelegraphed traps in your dungeons to establish a mood, and the optimal player strategy for safely dealing with these untelegraphed traps spoils the mood... I dunno, doesn't seem like a very effective approach to the stated goal.



Like I said, maybe the idea is that players play PCs who fit with the mood, and the GM picks up and manages (perhaps manages away) all the potential adverse  consequences.

I haven't got REH's The Scalet Citadel in front of me, but as I recall it there are two main traps/hazards: there's a pit, which Conan avoids falling into in the dark due to his uncanny senses (in game terms, this could be some sort of Perception mechanic at work); and there's the hell plant, which - as best I recall - Conan defeats by dint of physical prowess (in game temrs, this could be resolving some sort of check or series of checks to eliminate the triggered hazard).

A GM who drops in traps and hazards at (what s/he takes to be) a dramatically appropriate frequency will not purge players who play their PCs like Conan. There'll be the occasional narration of the noticed trap (like the pit) and there'll be the occasional stumbling into a trap/hazard (like the hellplant) which the PCs defeat without debilitating downstream consequences for their prospects of success.

And if the struggle against the hellplant looks like it _is_ being more demanding than was intended by the GM, then in the approach I'm describing here the GM might manipulate things "behind the scenes" to compensate - whether reducing the threat posed by some later planned encounter, or fudging one of the checks made to deal with the plant, or whatever other device this sort of GM has up his/her sleeve.

I personally don't play in the style I've just described - in a different current thread in General, I've been discussing (with [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] and others) what I think are ways of getting the REH-like dramatic pacing and consequnces but with less reliance on GM-side determinations. But I think that the sort of approach I've described in this thread is a widely-adopted one. I'm hesitant to project my own account of the approach too readily onto individual posters each of whom has his/her own unique way of playing RPGs, but with appropriate caution and no intention to cause offence, I would conjecture that [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6789021]Yardiff[/MENTION] can all recognise some aspects of how they approach GMing in what I've set out in this post.


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## Oofta (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But also a joke with a point: how could it _not_ be obvious why "Can I have a Perception check?  4?  Ok, nevermind...." is a DMing technique that could be improved upon?




I trust my players to not act on meta-game knowledge like this.  If they do I'll ask them politely not to.  I like having a cooperative relationship where we all work together like mature people and play fair.  

Oh, wait ... would putting smileys on that make it seem like I wasn't implicating that you don't trust your players?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I trust my players to not act on meta-game knowledge like this.  If they do I'll ask them politely not to.  I like having a cooperative relationship where we all work together like mature people and play fair.




See?  I didn't even need smilies.  It was taken as a compliment!

But more seriously, our gaming values are _so completely different_ that it should be no surprise that we find different mechanics appealing.

You apparently don't mind if the DM tips his hand because you expect players to ignore that information.

I think it makes the game less fun if the players have to compartmentalize like that...I want players, to the extent possible, to be in the same mental state as their characters...so I'd rather not tip my hand.


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## Umbran (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Should I have added some smilies?





Given how often people choose, "But it was only a joke," as a defense for pouring a bucket of sarcasm and derision on others... well, the number of smilies is probably the least of your worries at this point.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I would say that there's a lot of gray areas.  The ledge example may play out much the same other than I'd be okay if the response to my "what do you do" is "I make an acrobatics check 15 to get across".



Sure, Cool. I'd be fine with that, too.

I don't think you understand just how has the DMing in my example was, though, so I'm baffled that you want to show ways you do the same thing. It's even more baffling that you're doing that while trying to distance yourself from the "other side' while you keep showing you have a lot in common with them.

What the heck is the disconnect?


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## Charlaquin (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> I trust my players to not act on meta-game knowledge like this.  If they do I'll ask them politely not to.  I like having a cooperative relationship where we all work together like mature people and play fair.
> 
> Oh, wait ... would putting smileys on that make it seem like I wasn't implicating that you don't trust your players?



I don’t think this implies that you believe a lack of trust exists between goal-and-approach DMs and their players at all, so I’m not sure what your point is here.

This is probably a misunderstanding based on a difference of values. I don’t need to trust my players not to use meta-game knowledge because I don’t think using meta-game knowledge is a bad thing. You trust your players not to use meta-game knowledge, while I allow them to use meta-game knowledge if they so desire.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Given how often people choose, "But it was only a joke," as a defense for pouring a bucket of sarcasm and derision on others... well, the number of smilies is probably the least of your worries at this point.




Except I wasn't really joking, as I said in my next post. Sure, I was trying to be funny and a wee bit hyperbolic at the same time, but that's different from "just kidding."  

And then Oofta pretty much confirmed that what I was saying...about him (and others)...was true.

If anything, I should have added the smilies to the "Should I have added smilies?" comment.  Because _that_ was the sarcastic part.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I don’t think this implies that you believe a lack of trust exists between goal-and-approach DMs and their players at all, so I’m not sure what your point is here.
> 
> This is probably a misunderstanding based on a difference of values. I don’t need to trust my players not to use meta-game knowledge because I don’t think using meta-game knowledge is a bad thing. You trust your players not to use meta-game knowledge, while I allow them to use meta-game knowledge if they so desire.




And even if you do care about the meta-knowledge thing (which I don't, just in case I haven't made that abundantly and redundantly clear), why would you want to _intentionally_ give the players more information their characters don't have? 

Every time you call for a Perception check and the player fails and you just keep moving, you are just expanding the disconnect, the gulf, between player knowledge and character knowledge.

I can totally understand a sheepish, "Yeah, I do that, too, out of habit. I'd like to stop."  What I find completely bafflingly perplexing is, "What's wrong with that?"


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Edit: sorry for the accidental quote alert, Oofta. Dang multiquote.



lowkey13 said:


> Because you enjoy the suffering of others?
> 
> "Muahahahahahahaha. Now that you have the information, and you cannot act on it, what will you do now?"
> 
> Admittedly, it works much better at the gaming table than when I am explaining my plan for world domination to the protagonist who cannot possibly (POSSIBLY!) escape his incipient doom as I leave the room.




"First, we kill all the lawyers paladins . . ."


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## Oofta (May 8, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Sure, Cool. I'd be fine with that, too.
> 
> I don't think you understand just how has the DMing in my example was, though, so I'm baffled that you want to show ways you do the same thing. It's even more baffling that you're doing that while trying to distance yourself from the "other side' while you keep showing you have a lot in common with them.
> 
> What the heck is the disconnect?





Umm ... forums are sometimes a horrible way to communicate ideas and concepts?

I have no issue with people having different styles of play.  I can only do my best to explain the way I run games I do and why.  I take what I consider a "middle of the road approach".

I'll just reiterate one of my first postings on this topic.  I don't get why this is such a big deal.  The biggest difference is that I don't use the "ignore the dice" approach when it comes to some obstacles such as handling simple traps.  I allow people to declare their action and intent as a skill check.  They're even allowed to roll and give me the number.  If it's not clear what they're trying to accomplish I'll ask.

That's all.  It's what works for me. If I misunderstood what you were trying to say I apologize.


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## Oofta (May 8, 2019)

Hold on.  Going back, way, way back to the OP here.  If someone is telling the truth what's the insight check to know that far back.


What I said was that I allow the players to roll and that the result is probably going to be "they seem to be telling the truth".  Because I try to limit the amount of meta-game knowledge my players have.


Then we get


Elfcrusher said:


> why would you want to intentionally give the players more information their characters don't have?





If you don't allow an insight check because you know the result ... you're giving away information the characters don't have.  The players now know the NPC is telling the truth.  Yet somehow asking for a perception check that may result in the player not getting any new information is something I should be ashamed of?  


As far as...


Elfcrusher said:


> Every time you call for a Perception check and the player fails and you just keep moving, you are just expanding the disconnect, the gulf, between player knowledge and character knowledge.
> 
> 
> I can totally understand a sheepish, "Yeah, I do that, too, out of habit. I'd like to stop." What I find completely bafflingly perplexing is, "What's wrong with that?"





Why would I be sheepish?  I have nothing to be ashamed of other than your opinion that I'm doing it wrong.  In my campaign things happen outside of the PC's control that they may or may not notice.  I handle it like most other uncertainty in the game that has a consequence and cannot be directly resolved by PC action, with a die roll.


I don't know how else you could resolve that.  If it's critical to the story, they'll find out the minimum they need to know to continue the story with a setback.  As far as "compartmentalizing", yes I ask people to not act on knowledge that their PC does not have.  I've had people literally break out the MM and start quoting text from it. I resolved that by asking them not to do it in the future.  I also assume that if a player is a chemist that knows how to make gunpowder that I don't automatically have to deal with gunpowder in my campaign.


I don't see why that would ever be a problem or what's wrong with it.  In other cases instead of overhearing a conversation that would make their investigation a little easier they'll hear about something inconsequential like rumors of a local farmer having a really big cow for sale.


I like to think I take the middle road as described in the DMG but your game seems to be much, much more in the "ignore the dice" realm. If it works for you, great.  I accept that different people play for different reasons.  Personally I enjoy getting into the mindset of my PC, even when that's different than my own.


<HUMOR?>
THIS JUST IN ... DIFFERENT PEOPLE PLAY FOR DIFFERENT REASONS ... JUST BECAUSE A STYLE DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU DOESN'T MEAN OTHER STYLES AREN'T VALID ... NEWS AT 11 ...
</HUMOR?>


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## Swarmkeeper (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> If you don't allow an insight check because you know the result ... you're giving away information the characters don't have.  The players now know the NPC is telling the truth.  Yet somehow asking for a perception check that may result in the player not getting any new information is something I should be ashamed of?




Next stop... 2000 posts!  Nice going, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]!  




Oofta said:


> I like to think I take the middle road as described in the DMG but your game seems to be much, much more in the "ignore the dice" realm. If it works for you, great.  I accept that different people play for different reasons.  Personally I enjoy getting into the mindset of my PC, even when that's different than my own.




It's a wide road.  Apparently.  We can all ride there in the middle.  In our respective lanes.


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## Umbran (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Except I wasn't really joking...





Perhaps you haven't realized - if you keep working your way to publicly admitting you were knowingly and actively dumping disrespect on people, I will have to act on that beyond waggling a metaphorical finger.

Do you want to keep arguing with me, or do you want to take this as a warning that you probably want to be less disrespectful going forward?  Your call.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Please stop weaponizing humour!

You'll just make Them ban it, and then I'll have nothing to contribute to this forum.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But also a joke with a point: how could it _not_ be obvious why "Can I have a Perception check?  4?  Ok, nevermind...." is a DMing technique that could be improved upon?



 It could certainly be used in different ways.  If your players are used to thinking that a call for a perception check that yields no information means they missed something, it'll build tensions, for instance... until you've over-used it for that purpose. 

Though, if you /don't/ want that tool, you could always stick to Passive Perception.  Keep each PC's PP noted behind the screen.  Roll monsters' stealth or the like against it.  (Or, if you also don't want rolling-behind-the-screen to build tension/telegraph anything, even roll said checks in advance when placing said monsters.)



pemerton said:


> Anyway, if the idea is that _changes in the game state should all be consequent on players' action declarations_, then these _GM rolls_ appproaches seem just as undesirable as calling for a roll from the player.



 Exploring or traveling through an area is an action, no?



Oofta said:


> Hold on.  Going back, way, way back to the OP here.  If someone is telling the truth what's the insight check to know that far back.
> 
> What I said was that I allow the players to roll and that the result is probably going to be "they seem to be telling the truth".  Because I try to limit the amount of meta-game knowledge my players have.



 Calling for a check is fine, of course, as it just saying that he seems to be truthful (either because he is, or he's an awesome liar they have no chance of detecting).  

I think part of the issue stems from 3.x, when your skill at lying was also your skill at telling the truth convincingly.  That changed in 4e, it went from Bluff to Diplomacy, and IIRC, 5e hasn't changed it back.

Personally, I still find it all a tad dissatisfying.  Honesty should, IMHO, be a solid option, not a dicey one.


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Charlaquin (May 8, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Umm ... forums are sometimes a horrible way to communicate ideas and concepts?
> 
> I have no issue with people having different styles of play.  I can only do my best to explain the way I run games I do and why.  I take what I consider a "middle of the road approach".
> 
> ...




Just so you know, the bolded section is why you keep getting people insisting that you don’t understand their style. You keep saying that you don’t understand it, and we, in an attempt at good faith discussion, take your word for it and explain why it’s a big deal to us. Then instead of saying “ok, that’s not a big deal to me, but I can see why it is to you,” you argue against the reasons we give for why it’s a big deal to us.

I really don’t care if it’s a big deal to you. If you want to know why it’s a big deal to me, I’ll do my best to explain it. When I do so, I am not trying to convince you that you should think it’s a big deal, I don’t care whether or not you think it’s a big deal. I am only telling you the reasons it’s a big deal to me, because you asked me to.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> What? You don't want yet another 2,000 comment thread about the minuscule yet VERY IMPORTANT differences between DMs that do things one way, and DMs that do things another way?
> 
> I mean, it's kept me off the streets, selling my body for ambien!




No, i don't really want another thread like that . . . unless there's a Realism subplot. Then I'm all in. I've got so many jokes on the topic, but Max and Lanefan were the only ones in that thread who were laughing along, I'm saving the jokes for a bigger audience.


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Swarmkeeper (May 8, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I'm only in if we can work in surrealism next time.
> 
> I mean, sure, some DMs are all about TTRPGs and realism, but when was the last time you stanned for surrealism?
> 
> ...




I roll Insight, 18.  Truth!  How many tarts can I fit in my backpack?


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I'm only in if we can work in surrealism next time.
> 
> I mean, sure, some DMs are all about TTRPGs and realism, but when was the last time you stanned for surrealism?



 The last campaign I was in had multiple sessions set in "The Dreaming" so, just last year, I guess.

I have to ask... the connection between 'Realism' and 'immersion' is obvious.  What'd be the corresponding player-state that'd be the crowning, tenuous, achievement of Surrealism?


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## robus (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The last campaign I was in had multiple sessions set in "The Dreaming" so, just last year, I guess.
> 
> I have to ask... the connection between 'Realism' and 'immersion' is obvious.  What'd be the corresponding player-state that'd be the crowning, tenuous, achievement of Surrealism?




"Enlightenment"


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> The players would be squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretching to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centers are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air, as the flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.



 Have you been re-reading The Naked Lunch?


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## lowkey13 (May 8, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## 5ekyu (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> And even if you do care about the meta-knowledge thing (which I don't, just in case I haven't made that abundantly and redundantly clear), why would you want to _intentionally_ give the players more information their characters don't have?
> 
> Every time you call for a Perception check and the player fails and you just keep moving, you are just expanding the disconnect, the gulf, between player knowledge and character knowledge.
> 
> I can totally understand a sheepish, "Yeah, I do that, too, out of habit. I'd like to stop."  What I find completely bafflingly perplexing is, "What's wrong with that?"



"And even if you do care about the meta-knowledge thing (which I don't, just in case I haven't made that abundantly and redundantly clear), why would you want to intentionally give the players more information their characters don't have? "

Because the other options are worse, to us and our game play.

There are a gazillion ways one PC can get info the others dont. Various senses, traits and activities would include languages, darkvision, blindsight, scouting ahead, scrying, divinations, personal knowledge etc. They are fairly obvious to settings snd fiction and can come up even by player choices, not just setting, so just saying "we dont allow them in our games" isnt really a preferential option we even vonsidered.

When those moments hit in game and in situations where it matters there are three basic and obvioys ways to do this.

1 play thru at the table and others hear the info as players but then choose to not use it in character until they get an opportunity for "I tell you..." 

This if frankly our norm. Has been for as long as I can remember and it's not some torture or burden. It's not something we give mock awards to or really think anything of. It's the roleplaying equivalent to us of "tie your shoes" not exceptional at all.

2 separate folks by going outsidr, whispers, passing notes, emails texts etc. Basically keep the other players in the dark. This is rarely done by us as it's too much sn interruption. We sometimes see it in other games - Mercer does it eith whispers snd notes on CR. But it rarely occurs in our play outside of downtime stuff with emails (rarely). So we just ho eith the easy "just ignore it til the info dump" and dont interrupt play. 

3 decide player and character knowledge are the same so when s pc scouts snd gets KOed your character knows the exact details even if not there? If domronecehispers sn offer in draconuc to the lizard man zpC all the other players know what was said and can use it in character. 

3 is not an option we go in for. I can see how it can really help if your players have issues with separating PC and player knowledge but we dont have that to contend with.

Sure, there are likely more options than these basic three tent poles but we found an easy spot that works well for us.

But, I imagine choices to go to GAP and  things like "meta-knowledge is ok" and the like are very much driven by what issues and problems and preferences a given table has seen in play. Certainly, if we kept hitting problems with players not separating knowledge as a matter of course or not knowing what the various ability scores represented in terms of applying to actions in play we would be looking at #2, #3, GAP or other styles more closely.


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## Chaosmancer (May 9, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Re-reading?
> 
> To paraphrase the great American patriot and poet, Willie Nelson:
> 
> ...




One of these days I'm going to let down my guard and decide that reading that "book" is a good idea. 

I fear for the aftermath, but I'm sure it will happen.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 9, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Perhaps you haven't realized - if you keep working your way to publicly admitting you were knowingly and actively dumping disrespect on people, I will have to act on that beyond waggling a metaphorical finger.
> 
> Do you want to keep arguing with me, or do you want to take this as a warning that you probably want to be less disrespectful going forward?  Your call.




I roll Insight!

Drek....I got a 3. Guess I’ll have to roleplay arguing, even though I really don’t want to.


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