# What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?



## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?

Thoughts?


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## Monayuris (Apr 25, 2019)

*What does it mean to &quot;Challenge the Character&quot;?*



Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?
> 
> Thoughts?




Good question. I don’t think it is even possible to challenge the character.

D&D can only ever challenge the player. Even in heavy mechanical games with character powers, it is the player who chooses if and when to use those powers. 

I think your second phrase is the most accurate. There is no such thing as challenging the character. The character doesn’t have any agency in the game, only the player.

That being said, there are gradations on how much the mechanical aspects of the character matters to the game.

Some people want high levels of mechanical/ character capabilities, others prefer a more interactive puzzle style. 

But there is always a player decision involved, so in all cases the player is the one who is challenged


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## Immortal Sun (Apr 25, 2019)

It depends on what you mean by challenge I suppose.  Mentally challenge?  Well PCs don't have brains so you can only really challenge the players in that regard.  Can't physically challenge them either too.  

You can present situations that require the PCs to invest some amount of resources beyond "a little" that makes the players feel like their characters had to "work for" their rewards.

So I guess the answer is yes and no.


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## Mort (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?
> 
> Thoughts?




Another way to phrase your second paragraph would be to challenge the player through the character.

If, for example, the challenge is a riddle or a puzzle that the player or players solve without  the skills and abilities of their character(s) then you are challenging the player directly, the character used is irrelevant.

If, on the other hand, the challenge presented requires the players to use the skills/abilities possessed by their characters and cannot be conquered, solved, without the use of those skills then you are challenging the players through their characters.

Just a thought.


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## Monayuris (Apr 25, 2019)

Mort said:


> Another way to phrase your second paragraph would be to challenge the player through the character.
> 
> If, for example, the challenge is a riddle or a puzzle that the player or players solve without  the skills and abilities of their character(s) then you are challenging the player directly, the character used is irrelevant.
> 
> ...





Take two possibilities:

1. A room has a trap that can only be disarmed by solving a riddle or logic puzzle... say a sphinx or something. This is challenging the player, directly. The player has to figure out the answer. The challenge is framed as a fun 'meta-challenge' within the context of the D&D game.

2. A room has a trap that has a DC 25 to discover and disarm. This is a challenge to the player, indirectly. Can a skill check be rolled that equals or exceeds 25 within the context of the mechanical abilities of the character. 

In these situations, both are based on player actions. In the case of 1, it is can the player figure out the puzzle? In the case of 2, did the player build their character to have a high enough skill bonus or can the player use an ability that can boost their roll high enough?

Both cases challenge the player in some way. I call the second option an indirect challenge because even though it appears to be only based on mechanical outputs, it is still the player who built their character or chooses to use a mechanical ability that determines the success or failure.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?
> 
> Thoughts?



Like a great mzny things it has meaning in contrast and context to other things.

It is most often used not in isolation, as you present it here, but in contrast to "challenge the player" in the sense of differentiating between two types of challenges...

The imp asks you a riddle "what starts with "tee" ends with "tee" and has "the in it?" "Tee" indicates a phonetic expression, not actual spelling. This challenges the players explicitly, has no tie to character or character ability and every character has equal chances st it cuz its dolelymplayer side - its even totally focused on  english language spelling, real world to drive the totally player side basis.

Another might be the 3 gallon jug 5 gallon jug or any number of other logic problems.

On the other hand, challenge that character is one where in addition to player choices the actual PC traits are a necessary component needed for the solution. So, different characters might have very different chances or even no chance. Does the imp give clues instead of riddles, maybe verses of a song, but each is in a different language within the world so that the character with multiple languages get more verses with key clues that let them get closer to the solution and control of the outcome?

Are clues hidden or in difficult to get to places or basically in some wsy going to require some PC trait chouces yo be important to the outcome?

That's the context and contrast, like warm vs cold, that spotlights the two terms.


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## CleverNickName (Apr 25, 2019)

I think it's shorthand for "challenge the numbers written on the character sheet."

Say, if I needed to challenge our 10th level Barbarian (half-orc berserker, melee build, low Int and Cha), I would set up an adventure specifically tailored to her strengths and weaknesses as they appear on the character sheet.  The dungeon would have small rooms and tight quarters, it would feature at least one type of monster with an "aura" effect on adjacent foes, and I'd maybe sprinkle in a few spellcasters or fiends that can use mind-control or illusion magic.  I'd mix it up with a magical trap that targets Intelligence, and maybe include a social encounter with an NPC or two.  

Then, after what would no doubt be frustrating couple of hours for our Barbarian, I'd make sure that the final boss monster is the _perfect_ opponent for her: fun to fight in melee, all alone in a giant arena, with a variety of healing abilities to keep it upright and dangerous well into Round 10, when the rest of the party has tired out but the barbarian is still swinging.  You know...give that 10th level barbarian a chance to shine while the rest of the party looks on in awe.

There's a difference between "challenging the character" and "sabotage," though.  The goal isn't to humiliate the barbarian for hours and then finally throw her a bone; that's just bad DMing.   No, the goal is to frustrate the player just enough to goad them into a frenzy, make them crave action.  Then when she finally gets to that boss battle, the player should be roaring with glee as she finally gets to take the spotlight and save the day.


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## Hussar (Apr 25, 2019)

[MENTION=50987]CleverNickName[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] and [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] get it.  As was said, meaning is rarely in a vacuum.  Challenge the character is simply shorthand for setting a challenge in the game that is addressed to the fictional abilities of the character and not directly addressed to the player.

Combat is a perfect example really.  Very few of us know how to use a halberd.  None of us can cast a fireball.  But, our characters can.  How they do it?  Dunno.  Don't particularly care either.  But, I do know that they can.  So, when combat ensues, I'm not expected to tell the group how I hold my halberd or how I wave my hands and make a fireball shoot out.  

Sure, the decision to use a halberd or a fireball is a player decision, but, the solution to the problem of the orc standing between you and the pie is found with the character, not within your ability to figure out how to stab that orc.

Once upon a time, adventures were designed to be very, very player facing.  Tome of Horrors is probably the best example of this, but, there are others.  Solving the Tomb of Horrors is a challenge to the player because, really, it doesn't matter terribly much what kind of character you bring in.  None of the challenges, or at least very few, are character facing.

Contrast that with, say, Caves of Chaos.  The characters you bring will very, very much determine your ability to achieve goals within the caves as my very first group of characters, 5 1st level MU's, discovered to their folly, falling foul to a fiendish flock of stirges.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

"Challenge the character not the player," IIRC, was originally a guideline that a gaming magazine... I think it was Dungeon? ...used for their adventure submissions. The intent being that they wanted the difficulty in those adventures to come from the game mechanics, not from logic puzzles. i.e. Don't present the players with an actual riddle and ask them to solve it themselves, just set a high DC Intelligence check they have to pass to solve the riddle.

The phrase as since grown to be a sort of tagline for that way of thinking. Ultimately it's just a way to present the idea that difficulty should be derived primarily from the game mechanics in a positive light, same as "theater of the mind" is a way to present the idea of playing without visual aid in a positive light and "the middle path" is a way to present the idea of only calling for rolls when there are meaningful costs or consequences for failure in a positive light.


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## Monayuris (Apr 25, 2019)

Not sure I think that is at all relevant. How does your character know how to use a halberd?

Because you, as a player, decided that to be the case. The player brings the character to the table. Even in heavy handed, pure roll skill checks for every thing game, the player determines what the character is good at.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 25, 2019)

"A challenge _of_ character" would be a role playing challenge. For example putting the character is a moral dilemma where the player has to decide if the character will stick closely to their professed alignment even when it might be disadvantageous to do so.


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## Shiroiken (Apr 25, 2019)

Challenging the character has a couple of meanings. 

It's a philosophy that came about in contrast to 1E's adventure design that was largely player decision driven (except combat), since official ability checks didn't come about until later in the edition. To challenge the character then was to focus on character abilities to overcome challenges, rather than player skill/knowledge. In 3E it became a sub-challenge to the player, because there were trap options built into the game that would make the character worse at challenges than they could be. As of 5E, the difference between optimal and non-optimal characters is minimal (as compared to other editions), making this sub-challenge less relevant.

Another aspect of challenging the character is to make a scenario specifically designed to play to 1 or more character's weaknesses. The easiest type I recall is flying creatures when the fighter/paladin/whatever had ultra-focused on melee, and had little to no ranged capabilities. Putting the low cha character in social situations was another common one. Hell, the hallway beholder is pretty much a spellcaster's bane. The possibilities of these are as endless as characters.


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## pemerton (Apr 25, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> "A challenge _of_ character" would be a role playing challenge. For example putting the character is a moral dilemma where the player has to decide if the character will stick closely to their professed alignment even when it might be disadvantageous to do so.



A truly virtuous character knows that it is never disadvantageous to do the right thing!


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?
> 
> Thoughts?




While at one level it is true that you can only meaningfully challenge the player since only the player is an active entity capable of making choices, the phrases "challenge the character" and "challenge the player" distinguish between two very different approaches to encounter design.

As an example of "challenge the character", you might imagine a simple locked door.  The GM designs this challenge by setting a difficulty of picking the lock, and by setting the difficulty of breaking or bashing down the door.  He then treats this encounter as if the ways to get through the door are picking the lock or using brute force to open the door, both of which he intends to resolve purely through a dice roll.   This encounter design "challenges the character" in that the player's creativity, skill, and choices don't matter as much as what is on the character sheet.   Do you have the requisite skills on your character sheet to pick locks or kick down doors?   If you do, then you can gain access to whatever is beyond the door.  

By contrast, imagine a door which opens only if a riddle is answered.   The GM designs this challenge by making the door immune to any force, magic, lock picking skill, or other devices that the party might have, either by literally writing that as an absolute ruling or by setting the difficulties to overcome the door's defenses so high that he knows the party will not be able to surpass them regardless of how well they roll.   The GM then selects invents an actual riddle which he then provides to the players, and he runs the encounter as if nothing on the player's character sheet - not intelligence or knowledge of riddles and enigmas (if there even is such a thing in the rules system) - is applicable to solving the riddle.  To solve the riddle, the player must actually answer the riddle.   This is an example of challenging the player.

Note that it is very possible to reverse these challenges, making a locked door challenge the player and a riddling door challenge the character, simply by changing the proposition filter that the GM is using during the encounter to determine what a valid proposition is, and by changing the mechanics he uses.   For the riddling door, he might actually allow an intelligence check or 'Knowledge (Games & Enigmas)' to resolve the puzzle of the riddle, while not allowing a player to answer without first showing his character could answer.  Indeed, in the extreme the GM might simply say "There is a riddle written on the door.  Roll Intelligence to know the answer to the riddle.", which means a player proposition like "I say, "Time." is irrelevant because no concrete answer exists to the riddle until the intelligence check is made.

Likewise, it is possible to make opening a locked door a player challenge, by only accepting as valid propositions to open the door the player's description of how their character goes about trying to open the door, such as hammering out the hinges, using a thin strip of wood or knife blade to lift the bar holding the door, or finding the secret catch on the wall to the left of the door and pushing it up, and not validating propositions like "I make a search check" or "I roll open locks".


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

_The grinding of stone can be beard most loudly in this area. A long hallway - 60 feet in length, 10 feet wide - runs west to east lined on the north by five alcoves, five feet separating each one. In each alcove a bloody spike protrudes out of the stone of the wall. The wall to the south is carved with images of fierce hobgoblin heroes chewing, swallowing, and digesting many-eyed, tentacled aberrations. The floor is damaged and in two places the stone tiles have partially fallen away revealing a space beneath.

What do you do?
_

South of a given alcove is a pressure plate that, when activated, causes the spike to shoot out, attacks whatever is on the plate and, if it hits, pushes him or her 5 feet southward into a covered pit trap. The pit trap is 20 feet deep and sheer-sided but the lid closes again, sealing any who fall into them within. What's more, the floor of the pit is a rolling sphere of stone that grinds up anyone at the bottom of the pit, eventually reducing them to a fine paste. In the floor space between alcoves is a mechanism that causes the floor to tilt when anyone steps on it, possibly causing them to spill backwards into either a pressure plate or a pit trap - a foil for tomb-robbers trying to jump the plates and pits. Two of these are damaged and no longer function and in two other places the lids of the pit have broken, revealing the pits beneath (that's me telegraphing). In short, if you are incautious or unlucky (or both), you might be chewed up by the spike, swallowed by the pit, and digested by the grinding stone.

This trap, which I adapted from an old D&D 4e module for my D&D 5e game, was a chokepoint in the dungeon (though there are secret ways to get around it via other paths in the dungeon). It's the direct path to the most important area of the whole adventure location, a tomb which is overrun with tremor-sensing kruthiks drawn to activity in what they claim as their hive (wandering monster checks every 10 minutes).

Is it a challenge to the player or to the character, and why?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=50987]CleverNickName[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION] and [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] get it.  As was said, meaning is rarely in a vacuum.  Challenge the character is simply shorthand for setting a challenge in the game that is addressed to the fictional abilities of the character and not directly addressed to the player.




But does that actually "challenge" anything?  It seems to me the character, which in this case means the numbers associated with the character, are just a constraint on the player's actions. But the player is still facing the challenge.

Two players both wish to accomplish the same thing in the same way, but one player adds 6 to the roll of a d20, and other subtracts 1 from the same roll.  The first player has a higher chance of succeeding, obviously.  But what or who has been challenged, and how?

The only challenge I see being addressed is that the first player in some sense "anticipated" this sort of challenge by making those particular choices for his character build.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> Is it a challenge to the player or to the character, and why?




Most challenges can't be neatly separated into challenges to player or to character, because they involve a combination of choices by the player (that don't involve dice rolling) and some amount of dice rolling (such as passive saving throws or damage that attacks a hit point buffer).   So I wouldn't be too surprised when you gave more details, that we'd find that the answer to the question was, "A bit of both."

But, to be very precise, you've not given enough details for us to answer your question, because we don't have enough of a description to understand the process of play.   You've described the fiction, but not the process you will use to filter, validate, and resolve player propositions.   For all the reader knows, everything in that fiction will be resolved by dice rolls or none of it will.

My strong suspicion is that what you've described is a mix, but that it leans strongly toward "challenge to the player".   This is because what you've described can I think be resolved without any recourse to character abilities.  In theory a party of first level characters can evade the traps here regardless of the 'challenge' that the traps represent in terms of difficult to detect or damage that they cause, even if they don't have any skill in finding or disarming traps, merely by application of caution and by describing their characters interacting with the environment in detail.  The pressure plates can be located, triggered, marked, and evaded without any recourse to die rolling, provided you as the GM are willing to accept those propositions as valid propositions and give the players the agency to perform them.   The scenario can be entirely "challenge to the player" if for each event the mechanics are absolute - the spikes always hit and push, the pits always swallow, the grinding traps always grind.   If no saving throws are allowed and the trap once sprung is always lethal regardless of reflex saves or hit points, then this is pure challenge to player.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

Well here's a simple question: What does Challenge Rating refer to if not the level of the characters (rather than the players)?

I would say that combat primarily challenges the characters and not the players - it directly interacts with the character's AC, HP, ability to hit etc etc. Sure the player animates that character during the combat, but its ability to stay in the fight is directly down to its stats on the sheet.

The rest of the game (exploration and social interaction), however, (and some decent proportion of combat) challenges the player.

Edit: And that may be why combat can become a bore, because it can devolve into a mechanical exercise rather than a entertaining experience (and a good reason to finish them once it becomes a foregone conclusion).


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

I started this whole conversation with another posting over on the thread that shall not be named, so I thought I'd weigh in.

Yes, when I said "challenge the PC" I meant any action with uncertainty that is resolved using PC proficiencies and abilities.  This is different from challenging the players who are running the PC.

There is often a mix of PC challenge and player challenge.  Let's take combat as an example.  First, there's various strategies in combat and frequently various goals.  Are you just killing everything in sight?  Trying to stop them from getting the McGuffin?  Trying to protect Ms McGuffin?  But there are also baseline strategies like focusing fire, not being what we call "fireball formation" when facing certain opponents etc.

But let's say the paladin is fighting a monster and his buddy goes down on the other side of the battlefield.  Do they ignore their buddy and let the cleric take care of them?  Rush over provoking an opportunity attack? Disengage but then not have an action to lay on hands?  Use misty step or save the spell slot for a smite?  Those are player challenges because the player is deciding what their PC will do based on the presented scenario.

But the majority of action in a combat is likely to be a PC Challenge.  Unless the player is doing something to change the odds, the paladin rolls a D20 and adds appropriate bonuses to determine if they hit.  PC proficiency, ability scores and other PC specific adjustments are all that matter.

Outside of combat, challenging the PC means there's an obstacle the player has decided to overcome using a PC proficiency.  There's a lock and the player has decided to pick the lock.  I don't care if you're a locksmith and can describe exactly how you're doing it.  While it may be interesting to hear how it works, there's still going to be a roll of a D20 and a dexterity (thieve's tools) check to open it unless it's automatically going to succeed.

In a broader sense, I like to create adventures that mix PC challenges and Player challenges.  If someone has invested a significant amount of PC resources into being the best trap-finder ever, I want to reward that.  If the players come up with a clever plan to bypass the trap altogether, I want to reward that as well.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But does that actually "challenge" anything?  It seems to me the character, which in this case means the numbers associated with the character, are just a constraint on the player's actions. But the player is still facing the challenge.




The player is always facing the challenge, but if the player's choices alone cannot resolve the conflict without recourse to the numbers associated with the character, then it is a "challenge to the character."  Most challenges are mixed, in that the player must make choices but those choices are constrained by the fictional abilities of the character, and so most examples drawn from a game are neither pure challenge to player nor pure challenge to character, but a mixture.  But there are certainly examples that are nearly pure one way or the other.



> Two players both wish to accomplish the same thing in the same way, but one player adds 6 to the roll of a d20, and other subtracts 1 from the same roll.  The first player has a higher chance of succeeding, obviously.  But what or who has been challenged, and how?
> 
> The only challenge I see being addressed is that the first player in some sense "anticipated" this sort of challenge by making those particular choices for his character build.




There is still a conflict which must be resolved.  If the choices the player can make to resolve the complex are simple and straight forward, so that they really represent no challenge at all to recognize what those choices might be, then they are not a challenge to the player.   

To understand this clearly, we need to simplify from the complex game world of an RPG down to something that will provide us a clearer picture.

Consider that we are not playing an RPG, but reading a "Choose Your Own Adventure" type book - perhaps something after the mold of the "Lone Wolf" series.

We come to the end of a page of text, and at the bottom are a selection of choices.  For each choice, we are told we can turn to a different page.   This is a challenge to the player.

We come to the end of a different page of text.   At the bottom it reads, "Roll a D6.  If you roll equal to or lower than your Dex score, turn to page 32.  If you roll higher than your Dex score, turn to page 57."   This is a challenge to character.   Similarly, if at the bottom it read, "You fight a goblin with Attack 1 and Health 4.   If you win the combat, turn to page 45.", this is also a challenge to character.   The player has no choices to make in either case.   Whether he passes the challenge or not depends entirely on dice rolls and what is on the character sheet - which potentially he wasn't even able to choose because there was no chargen in this game.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 25, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 25, 2019)

So... If I am presenting an obstacle that can be overcome via the use of game mechanical resources, and the player is playing a pregenerated character, am I challenging the person that is playing the character, or the person who generated the character?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Great and interesting post. I'm keying on this at the end for a reason.
> 
> I think that everyone who has posted in this thread, so far, has articulated the same distinction (for the most part) with regards to PC/Player challenges.
> 
> ...




One thing that makes discussions like this challenging is that participants often take slight differences in positions and exaggerate the other side to an extreme.  (I think that's what you're calling out here.)

As an example, I think it's fine for the player to solve a challenge without trying to imagine what it would be like for their 8-Int character.  (Mostly because it's simply not possible to "think like" somebody with a mind different from yours, and I don't want to reduce all the interesting bits of the game to dice rolls.)

Now, it's really easy to (mis)characterize that position as, "Oh, so you think it's fine to put multivariable calculus problems in the game and let dumb fighters solve them just because the player is a rocket scientist!"

No, that's not what I mean.  And, for the record, I hate the sort of puzzles that require solving an actual puzzle out-of-game. 

If I had to write a definition of the difference between "good" and "bad" puzzles I would say that good puzzles are the ones where the hard part is coming up with the approach, but once you do the solution is easy, and bad puzzles are where the approach is obvious but the solution is hard.

Good puzzle: in the original Zork, where you have to roll the giant onion into the room and cut it with the sword, causing the many-eyed creature to cry and go blind while you beat on it.  (What's _bad_ about that example is that no other solution is possible, e.g. there's no way to beat the monster in straight-up combat, but it's a computer game not an RPG.)

Bad puzzle: the floor is divided into a grid, and some squares are "on" and some are "off".  If you step on an "on" a square it changes state, and the four adjacent squares (but not diagonally adjacent ones) also change state....etc.

So in the first case it may take a while to come up with the approach, but once you do you're done.  In the second example you know exactly what the approach is, but it may take a while to solve.

Both are examples of "challenging the player" because the player has to come up with a solution, but in the latter case you really leave the game completely while you work on the solution.  

Also, I don't think it is at all unreasonable for a low-Int character to come up with the idea about the giant onion.

Now, it's fine if there are also some ability checks along the way.  Maybe it requires Strength to move the onion, although if there's no time pressure or consequence for failure I wouldn't require rolls.  The Wizard can't move it, but the Fighter can.  Or maybe it takes the Fighter AND the Wizard.  Whatever, no dice required.  But maybe you have to roll it over a narrow bridge or up some stairs.  Now a check is appropriate.  

Maybe that's what some people see as "challenging the character"?  If so, yeah that can be fun, too.  But ideally it should be a risk-reward option, so that the "challenge" is in deciding whether or not to risk the dice roll, depending on your character sheet.  "If you can push the onion over the bridge you'll get there quickly, but if you fail the roll you will lose the onion.  Otherwise you can take the long way around, but you risk waking up the dragon.  What do you do?"

If there's no real decision to be made, other than "who has the highest bonus to make this roll", it's just not very interesting.  Nor is it challenging anybody or anything.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> But, to be very precise, you've not given enough details for us to answer your question, because we don't have enough of a description to understand the process of play.   You've described the fiction, but not the process you will use to filter, validate, and resolve player propositions.   For all the reader knows, everything in that fiction will be resolved by dice rolls or none of it will.




As I mentioned in my post, this is for a D&D 5e game, which means the DM calls for ability checks when the player has described a task for the character that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. If the outcome is certain and/or there's no meaningful consequence for failure, then the character simply fails or succeeds according to the judgment of the DM without a roll or often without reference to the character's ability scores.

Please let me know if you need additional information to render an opinion.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But does that actually "challenge" anything?  It seems to me the character, which in this case means the numbers associated with the character, are just a constraint on the player's actions. But the player is still facing the challenge.
> 
> Two players both wish to accomplish the same thing in the same way, but one player adds 6 to the roll of a d20, and other subtracts 1 from the same roll.  The first player has a higher chance of succeeding, obviously.  But what or who has been challenged, and how?
> 
> The only challenge I see being addressed is that the first player in some sense "anticipated" this sort of challenge by making those particular choices for his character build.



Again, challenge the character is not meant to include "not challenging the player" in its basic definition. Its defining a case where the character traits are an integral part to overcoming the obstacle.

Your attempt to divorce it from player challenge is the misconception.

Its contrast is most obviously shown by the ones above, but any challenge in which the overcoming can be accomplished without reference to character, basically by any character, would likely be a "challenge the player."

For your example, assuming the bonus to the roll came from a character trait, then it's a challenge the character. The choices the players made at chargen or beyond are bring shoen to have meaning and relevancy.  

Contrast that to a teapot riddle challenge where you can pop in or out most any character and the same results occur if the player gives the same statement. There, it doesnt matter who the character is or what the choices on chargen etc were.

Challenge the character obstacles bring both player choice of actions  at the moment and character differences into the resolution.

Challenge the player only brings in the player choice of actiins at the momrnt.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 25, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Apr 25, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> Not sure I think that is at all relevant.




Yes, but in an attempt to give the player so much of their due, you can end up missing a point that isn't so much about the player or the character, but is about _adventure design_.

The focus isn't on how the player makes all decisions for the character, both tactical and strategic.  The point is that there are times when the adventure or challenge does an end run and goes for the player directly, bypassing the character and game mechanics.

Logic puzzles where the GM does not give hints via skill checks are one example.  Social scenes where the GM bases entirely off what the player says, without using the system's social encounter resolution mechanics, would be another.  Telling a player that their character can climb a 60' rope if the *player* can climb a 10' rope would be another.

Much of the point is that the player has already made strategic decisions in their character build.  If you challenge the player directly, those decisions are voided!  And that's not always cool.  

We can easily construct a scenario that makes this obvious.  We have one player who is a total mechanics, powergaming and logic rockstar, and has built himself a super-effective combat barbarian, with an Int of 6.  We have another player who isn't such a grand with manipulating the rules, isn't stunning at logic puzzles, but has a wizard character with an Int of 18.

If you challenge these with the classic "One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies" logic puzzle, the barbarian player can get it easily, but the wizard player won't.  But, within the story, the wizard should totally have figured it out before the problem was fully posed, while the barbarian should have gotten bored, shouted "TOO MUCH THINKY!!!" and tried to stab a guard.


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## Michael Silverbane (Apr 25, 2019)

Umbran said:


> If you challenge these with the classic "One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies" logic puzzle, the barbarian player can get it easily, but the wizard player won't.  But, within the story, the wizard should totally have figured it out before the problem was fully posed, while the barbarian should have gotten bored, shouted "TOO MUCH THINKY!!!" and tried to stab a guard.




Barbarian should follow up said stabbing with the question, "Is that guy dead?"


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> Well here's a simple question: What does Challenge Rating refer to if not the level of the characters (rather than the players)?




If you're referring to D&D 5e, the challenge rating "tells you how great a threat the monster is. An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths."

_Should_ is the operative word here, I think, as it leaves open the possibility that the party could suffer a death depending on the circumstances. Some of those circumstances might reasonably include the players making unfortunate tactical decisions that increase the difficulty of the encounter beyond the system's expectations.

I think we should also note that a better word for "challenge rating" is "difficulty," in my opinion, which I believe would make it easier to avoid conflating the concepts of "challenge" and "difficulty," but it is what it is.



robus said:


> I would say that combat primarily challenges the characters and not the players - it directly interacts with the character's AC, HP, ability to hit etc etc. Sure the player animates that character during the combat, but its ability to stay in the fight is directly down to its stats on the sheet.




I think this greatly downplays the importance of the player's tactical choices (and strategic ones for that matter).



robus said:


> Edit: And that may be why combat can become a bore, because it can devolve into a mechanical exercise rather than a entertaining experience (and a good reason to finish them once it becomes a foregone conclusion).




Here I think this is a separate issue, one of the "dramatic question." Combats become a grind when it's a foregone conclusion and all you're really doing at that point is mitigating resource drain to get the XP. That means that the challenge has been reduced to a difficulty that is no longer entertaining. Good encounter design can help with this.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Umbran said:


> If you challenge these with the classic "One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies" logic puzzle, the barbarian player can get it easily, but the wizard player won't.  But, within the story, the wizard should totally have figured it out before the problem was fully posed, while the barbarian should have gotten bored, shouted "TOO MUCH THINKY!!!" and tried to stab a guard.




First, I cringe at your use of "should have".  But maybe you meant, "An example of interesting roleplaying might be..."  (Although I also cringe at cliches about what classes and ability scores represent.)

But I think the real problem here is that the puzzle you use is just a bad puzzle to include in an RPG.  To use the criterion I proposed above, the approach is obvious and the solution is hard.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Barbarian should follow up said stabbing with the question, "Is that guy dead?"




Yes!!!!


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Great and interesting post. I'm keying on this at the end for a reason.
> 
> I think that everyone who has posted in this thread, so far, has articulated the same distinction (for the most part) with regards to PC/Player challenges.
> 
> ...



Since, "build" in rogue terms usually refers to the character and it's **relevant traits strengths and weaknesses**, especially with its stats often highlighted, then it is essentially a synonym for character in this context. 

So, "build challenge" is not distinguishable from "character challenge" in an obvious way.

One might try to divide them tho. But it would be a contrived case.

Character challenges involve the character traits by default in the resolution. That's the requirement. It's not requiring excluding the player or excluding choices by the player. Those likely having influence the outcome odds. They might even, if combined with character traits redult in auto-success. For example, If I cast enhance ability and that advantage raises a challenge to auto-success (if the character/build was good enough without it to get auto-success) or if the choices to team-up or use a crowbar raise the passive score to auyo-success etc etc etc)

For the purposes of overcoming a challenge involving mechanics or not "build" and "character" are synonymous so the distinction is not a real one.

I am fine if you want to rename it build challenge, I just fo not see the point.

But the key is, it involves the choices the player made in chargen (and beyond) into the resolution and differentiates the characters in this challenge. 

As opposed to non-character riddles and logic puzzles where any character with the same stated actions can succeed without reference to a character trait.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Yes, but in an attempt to give the player so much of their due, you can end up missing a point that isn't so much about the player or the character, but is about _adventure design_.
> 
> The focus isn't on how the player makes all decisions for the character, both tactical and strategic.  The point is that there are times when the adventure or challenge does an end run and goes for the player directly, bypassing the character and game mechanics.
> 
> ...



Exactly.


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Great and interesting post. I'm keying on this at the end for a reason.
> 
> I think that everyone who has posted in this thread, so far, has articulated the same distinction (for the most part) with regards to PC/Player challenges.
> 
> ...




We're kind of agreeing?  Sort of?  For me challenging the PC applies to the part of overcoming an obstacle or achieving a goal using the numbers on the character sheet along with a die roll*.  Sometimes this is good for the player because they have high numbers, sometimes it's not.

So again, encounters are often a mix.  Can you come up with a way of achieving your goal that uses the best aspects of your PC or do you have to fall back on some of the weakest because you have no choice?  I don't go out of my way to target weaknesses, but if the scene calls for lifting a heavy rock I had assumed you would need to make an strength (athletics) check.  But maybe the player thinks of using some type of lever in which case I'd still call for a check but this time using intelligence to see if they can put it together correctly.

But, like [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], I also dislike puzzles that rely on player intelligence without providing a fallback to appropriate ability checks to give hints.

_*Unless the PC's numbers are so high that it's an automatic success._


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## CleverNickName (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But does that actually "challenge" anything?  It seems to me the character, which in this case means the numbers associated with the character, are just a constraint on the player's actions. But the player is still facing the challenge.



Eh, in the sense that "facing the challenge" means the same thing as "deciding to do a certain thing a certain way," sure.  But that wasn't what I was getting at.  See, the player can decide actions, but the player doesn't decide to pass a skill DC, or decide to score a critical hit...those results come from luck, and are influenced by the numbers on the character sheet.

So to "challenge the character" the DM should select challenges and DCs that would make certain actions statistically probable (or improbable) to succeed, according to the numbers on the character sheet.  There aren't "constraints," per se...just varying degrees of probability.



Elfcrusher said:


> Maybe that's what some people see as "challenging the character"?  If so, yeah that can be fun, too.  But ideally it should be a risk-reward option, so that the "challenge" is in deciding whether or not to risk the dice roll, depending on your character sheet.  "If you can push the onion over the bridge you'll get there quickly, but if you fail the roll you will lose the onion.  Otherwise you can take the long way around, but you risk waking up the dragon.  What do you do?"
> 
> If there's no real decision to be made, other than "who has the highest bonus to make this roll", it's just not very interesting.  Nor is it challenging anybody or anything.



Absolutely.  I think it's important to have a mix of "Challenge the Player" and "Challenge the Character" (and also "Challenge the Party", which hasn't been discussed yet) in my adventures.  I like to mix it up to keep the game fun and the players engaged.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> _Should_ is the operative word here, I think, as it leaves open the possibility that the party could suffer a death depending on the circumstances. Some of those circumstances might reasonably include the players making unfortunate tactical decisions that increase the difficulty of the encounter beyond the system's expectations.
> 
> I think we should also note that a better word for "challenge rating" is "difficulty," in my opinion, which I believe would make it easier to avoid conflating the concepts of "challenge" and "difficulty," but it is what it is.




Well the challenge is an abstract value that only translates into difficulty when matched against a particular party - their level and number dramatically affecting the rated difficulty?



> I think this greatly downplays the importance of the player's tactical choices (and strategic ones for that matter).



Sure but that also massively varies by player, whereas the characters stats remain constant. I would estimate that the majority of players are not particularly clever in combat and simply have their characters hit/cast/fire at the enemies until they win/lose.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> As I mentioned in my post, this is for a D&D 5e game, which means the DM calls for ability checks when the player has described a task for the character that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. If the outcome is certain and/or there's no meaningful consequence for failure, then the character simply fails or succeeds according to the judgment of the DM without a roll or often without reference to the character's ability scores.
> 
> Please let me know if you need additional information to render an opinion.




Of course I do.  You have in fact, really given me no additional information.   You have not defined when the GM will decide if something is "certain" and there is or is not a meaningful chance of failure, and when as such the GM will simply fail or succeed according to the judgment of the DM by a fiat call.   Knowing what rules set or system you are using doesn't really tell me anything, as pretty much every rules set more sophisticated than the coin flip game ("World's Simplest RPG") has this "in the judgment of the GM" exception, that turns out to be more complex than the rules themselves.

For any two GMs, I can not predict how they will handle propositions like the following in the above scenario:

a) "I probe ahead with a 10' pole checking for pressure plates."  - One GM may decide that I automatically find the pressure plate, trigger it, but can suffer no meaningful consequence for failure because by definition of the fiction I'm not in the path of the spear.  But another GM may decide that I can't engage in that proposition without some chance of failure.  One GM may in fact decide that I've offered an invalid proposition (because metagaming?) and replace my proposition with a Search check with the stakes set by the GM (find trap or set it off).  The game rules don't specify which GM is right.  I have my own preferences, but I can't prove that my preferences are more correct.

b) "I belly crawl along the floor next to the wall where the spiked alcoves are located" - This is much like the above, but with the addition of possibilities like the pressure plate does not take up the whole 5' square, and I can't know whether a GM will decide whether a belly crawling human takes up less space than a 5' square and thus can evade the pressure plate.  The size of the pressure plates weren't described.  Are they 1'x1' or 3'x3' or 5'x5'?  The text doesn't specify, so different GMs if they were reading this module would come to different conclusions about the fictional positioning of the pressure plates.  Different GMs will decide whether the spikes safely pass over my body or not based on their own perceptions about the spikes and their own interpretation as to whether my proposition is valid.

c) "I place my tower shield on the floor in the space between the alcoves, so that it forms a bridge across it.  I then carefully crawl on the tower shield bridge, careful that the weight is on the shield, which is braced on either end by the stable part of the floor."   Again, different DMs will decide whether this plan has a chance of failure or not, often based on nothing but their own whim or sense that I'm unfairly beating their exciting challenge.  I've met DMs that would metagame against the PC's because they don't consider it fun if no one sets off the trap, setting high Dex checks on my attempt to crawl or otherwise giving me a chance of failure.  Others would decide my tower shield wasn't a good enough or long enough bridge, etc.   I've got no idea whether this will work until I have some experience with the GM, because all of this involves the DM's judgment by your own description.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> Well the challenge is an abstract value that only translates into difficulty when matched against a particular party - their level and number dramatically affecting the rated difficulty?




The abstract difficulty for encounter building purposes is pegged to a party of four of the average level of the CR. "Challenge" as a concept is just a situation you can win or lose based on your choices. "Difficulty" is (of course) how hard it is to achieve the win. I think it's helpful to separate all this out.



robus said:


> Sure but that also massively varies by player, whereas the characters stats remain constant. I would estimate that the majority of players are not particularly clever in combat and simply have their characters hit/cast/fire at the enemies until they win/lose.




And if it massively varies by player, that says something about who is actually being challenged, right?


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> And if it massively varies by player, that says something about who is actually being challenged, right?




All it means is it *can* challenge the player, if they choose to engage more cleverly, but as a baseline it immediately challenges the character.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Of course I do.  You have in fact, really given me no additional information.   You have not defined when the GM will decide if something is "certain" and there is or is not a meaningful chance of failure, and when as such the GM will simply fail or succeed according to the judgment of the DM by a fiat call.   Knowing what rules set or system you are using doesn't really tell me anything, as pretty much every rules set more sophisticated than the coin flip game ("World's Simplest RPG") has this "in the judgment of the GM" exception, that turns out to be more complex than the rules themselves.
> 
> For any two GMs, I can not predict how they will handle propositions like the following in the above scenario:
> 
> ...




These all sound like pretty reasonable things to attempt in my view. Please feel free to judge these actions as _you_ would rule them as DM in the context of the rules for D&D 5e.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> All it means is it *can* challenge the player, if they choose to engage more cleverly, but as a baseline it immediately challenges the character.




It _always_ challenges the player and the difficulty of the challenge is mitigated or aggravated by the player's choices. If the player makes choices in line with the system's expectations, then the party will suffer no deaths as a result of the encounter.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

Michael Silverbane said:


> So... If I am presenting an obstacle that can be overcome via the use of game mechanical resources, and the player is playing a pregenerated character, am I challenging the person that is playing the character, or the person who generated the character?




Well, you now have a good example of why I can't agree with [MENTION=6859536]Monayuris[/MENTION] when he proposes its not possible to challenge the character, only the player.  Monayuris assumes that character generation is even a thing in which the player has agency.  It may well not be.  

I think before we start dealing with the range of complexity that can be found in a game like 5e, we need to have a solid understanding of the difference between "challenging a player" and "challenging a character".  I think my "Choose your Own Adventure" example is simple enough that we can clearly see the two challenges are distinctive in character.  One depends entirely on player choice.  One involves no player choice.   In most situations there will be some mixture of player choice and mechanical resolution, but we can imagine a spectrum and in most cases decide whether the challenge is more like player choice only, more like mechanical resolution only, or lying in a fuzzy area between that so that the best description is "both".  

Both is probably more typical in a full fledged PnP RPG, in that most propositions involve adopting a strategy and then making some doubtful proposition which is resolved by a fortune mechanic.  But, as my early examples with the locked door show, it's possible to find pure examples in play.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

CleverNickName said:


> Eh, in the sense that "facing the challenge" means the same thing as "deciding to do a certain thing a certain way," sure.  But that wasn't what I was getting at.  See, the player can decide actions, but the player doesn't decide to pass a skill DC, or decide to score a critical hit...those results come from luck, and are influenced by the numbers on the character sheet.
> 
> So to "challenge the character" the DM should select challenges and DCs that would make certain actions statistically probable (or improbable) to succeed, according to the numbers on the character sheet.  There aren't "constraints," per se...just varying degrees of probability.
> 
> Absolutely.  I think it's important to have a mix of "Challenge the Player" and "Challenge the Character" (and also "Challenge the Party", which hasn't been discussed yet) in my adventures.  I like to mix it up to keep the game fun and the players engaged.



Way way back In another thread where this came up Idescribed four categories of challenge that I will rehash here...

1 - the obstacle can be overcome by using player choices alone. No PC stats are involved. There is no PC stat resolution that is at all reasonable. Answer the riddle to get the macguffin from thoth's emissary. No clues by dint of PC checks.

2 - the problem can be overcome by using PC stats and basic mechanics of the game. The player choices in the moment will likely affect the odds of success, maybe to 100% after taking into account the character stats. To get the macguffin from Thor's emissary, win a strength challenge. 

3 - there are both #1 and #2 ways to overcome the challenge. Answer the riddle and a rope is lowered for an automatic climb *or* make a difficult and risky climb without the rope. Or, you can choose to deal with Thor's emissary or Thoth's but you only need to beat one. 

4 - to overcome the challenge both #1 and #2 are required. A straight action to stats will fail. A series of player choices then brings the chance to overcome it with those kinds of tasks. You must pass both Thoth and Thor emmissary.

#1 is in this thread context challenging the player. Any character can give the proper response and overcome. No stats needed or useful.

#2 is challenging the character. PC stats must be used. 

#3 has both represented in a way that either can succeed.

#4 has both represented in a way that both are required.

Within a campaign and most rpg systems, there are long lasting choices made at chargen. Those typically involve trade- offs. Getting good at ABC means being meh at def. 

The frequency and import of challenges of each of the above types put into a campaign, that the players see in practice being resolved in one way or another is very important to seeing how much those choices made that differentiate character matter to the gsme.

The classic example is a game where the players see in practice they can avoid pitfalls of social skill lacks by "player choices` and do you wind up (shockingly) with an entire party with no Cha scores above 10, maybe multiple 8s.)

In my games, there are almost no cases of #1 that matter. These are not presented as obstacles or challenges. **They may be opportunities** - your character deciding to help strangers with mundane tasks after a storm or offer up supplies to hungry folks can be a major thing in the game, but that was not an obstacle. 

In my games, #2 is the most common type of obstacle by a landslide and #3 and #4 bring up the rear.

As I like to describe it, the character is driving the car but the player is choosing when to drive, the route and the destination.

If one uses challenge the player #1s the character is stuffed in the trunk. 

To me, #1 is basically a board game like Monopoly or Go where the piece or token makes no difference. Those are fun, we enjoy them, but it's not what we seek to spotlight in our rpg play.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> These all sound like pretty reasonable things to attempt in my view. Please feel free to judge these actions as _you_ would rule them as DM in the context of the rules for D&D 5e.




Cool.  Now I have perfect information, because you've made me the GM.

If the player adopted these sort of actions to bypass the room, then I would consider them to succeed pretty much automatically.  Once I was certain the players had a good plan and would stick to it, I'd probably handwave the steps, and just say, "Alright, you've now gathered together on the other side of the room."

As such, I would view this room as having been a pure player challenge that the player's succeeded at.  (And not a particularly difficult one at that.)

If the player's failed at the challenge, then sort of as a saving throw, the players would have recourse to survive this room based on their character resources.  That is to say, if you failed the player challenge part of the room, then it would become (as a sort of mercy) a character challenge where we made reflex saves and opposed strength checks and deducted hit points and made climb checks and so forth until the player's, relying on their character's abilities, extricated themselves from the traps, and now - hopefully wiser for the experience - tried to use their imagination to bypass the obstacles that had now been made apparent to them.

On the spectrum of 'pure player challenge' to 'pure character challenge', I would consider this closer to 'pure player challenge', and consider it close enough to a pure player challenge that I wouldn't feel amiss in calling it a "player challenge".  

But that's just how I would run it.  I've had plenty of arguments by people on this board who have suggested that, since players can invest in skills like "Search" and "Disable Traps" that propositions like I've discussed above should be interpreted as "Search" or "Disable Trap" checks irregardless of the fictional positioning that the player has (improperly?) expressed.  And, I'd suggest that there are games other than D&D 5e where the authors have, in describing the process of play much more tightly than D&D usually does, have actually endorsed that position as proper to the game that they intended to create.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> Well the challenge is an abstract value that only translates into difficulty when matched against a particular party - their level and number dramatically affecting the rated difficulty?
> 
> 
> Sure but that also massively varies by player, whereas the characters stats remain constant. I would estimate that the majority of players are not particularly clever in combat and simply have their characters hit/cast/fire at the enemies until they win/lose.



I think this is why some find the 5e CR too easy. The "setting" pretty much seems dialed for "novice" not "veteran" or "hard mode" and even a typical party of four with decent builds working in coordinated fashion will have an easier go of it than some like.

But, as you observe "difficulty" is more the combo of what happens when party toolkit A meets challenge that toolkit A may or maypy not be ideal for.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]: The thing I like most about your post in which you describe your 4 different categories of challenge is that we almost entirely agree on the definitions and meanings of the terms, but having done so, you express an entirely different set of preferences and processes of play which you also present a reasonable case for.  I don't agree with your preferences, and I have different ones and different processes of play, but I can't actually prove that you are right or wrong.  

Yet, we also agree that "challenge the player" and "challenge the character" are reasonable labels and define very different things.  

You probably won't be surprised to discover that just as you are trying to eliminate all category #1 challenges for your game, I'm trying to eliminate all category #2 challenges from mine.


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## Blue (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?




There's an important distinction between those.  Sure, a character without a player isn't anything.  Maybe you could mathematically model DPR or somethign to see if it passes a threshold, so that could be a "challenge", but any real-world tabletop challenge for the character is the player playing that character.  With emphasis on both player and character.

I'm a better storyteller then musician (by leaps and bounds), better at sketching then coloring, better at most things than dancing - but I still dance.  The character is the choice of media on how the player interacts with the world and it's challenges, and they are an integral part of it.  The same challenge with the same player but a different character could be a very different thing.

So to me the phrase "challenging the character" means tailoring to make something that will be difficult specifically for that character to accomplish.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Cool.  Now I have perfect information, because you've made me the GM.
> 
> If the player adopted these sort of actions to bypass the room, then I would consider them to succeed pretty much automatically.  Once I was certain the players had a good plan and would stick to it, I'd probably handwave the steps, and just say, "Alright, you've now gathered together on the other side of the room."
> 
> ...




Thanks for the analysis.

I ran this scenario twice for two different groups. One group made it through with a few checks, chiefly due to interacting with the tilting floors. The other group made it through with no checks at all by triggering the spikes with the pressure plate from a distance (good ol' 10-foot pole), weighing them down once triggered, then leap frogging their way down the corridor.

My position is that this challenge, as with all challenges, is for the players regardless of how the DM adjudicates. The characters are simply a tool to resolve uncertainty if and when it arises when there's a meaningful consequence for failure. Some DMs will assign more uncertainty to the outcome of the characters' tasks than others and therefore there will be more checks. Even so, it's the player who is being challenged in my view and the smart play is to avoid the rolls if you can since the d20 is a fickle friend at best.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> My position is that this challenge, as with all challenges, is for the players regardless of how the DM adjudicates. The characters are simply a tool to resolve uncertainty if and when it arises when there's a meaningful consequence for failure. Some DMs will assign more uncertainty to the outcome of the characters' tasks than others and therefore there will be more checks. Even so, it's the player who is being challenged in my view and the smart play is to avoid the rolls if you can since the d20 is a fickle friend at best.




We seem to be on the same page, but you are I think being biased by that perception and so assuming both that all GMs run their game that way, all game systems encourage that view point, and that all players prefer it.   I don't believe that is the case.

It's possible to run this challenge you've described using a only flow chart which at every branching point features, "Character failed or succeeded?" and never branches on player choice at all, and I think some GMs lean very strongly to preferring that process of play.   If I used such a flow chart, this would be entirely a character challenge, and even if it wasn't a pure character challenge because a few trivial decision points for the player remained, it would still be close enough to a pure character challenge that I wouldn't feel amiss calling it a "character challenge".

Some games, at least as written in the rule book, have a process of play where every player proposition ALWAYS is mapped to a particular rules proposition which calls for a fortune test, and for each proposition offered to the GM, the GM's role is to interpret correctly which rules proposition the player actually made.  I've even read rule books where it called out that if the player made a natural language proposition, and it was unclear which rules proposition - which character 'move' - the player was making, that the GM should invalidate the natural language proposition and force the player to phrase the proposition as a rules proposition.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Is it even possible to challenge the character?  Or does the phrase really mean "challenge the player's ability to build a character, and then use those abilities"?
> 
> Thoughts?



 The distinction I see is not 'challenge' - the game is challenging (or not) to the player - but /resolution/.

The game rules (& DM) can use a form of resolution that takes the imaginary capabilities of the character into account - a STR check, for instance.  
Or, resolution can be purely random ("roll even/odd, on odd something bad happens"). 
Or you can use the abilities of the player (often as judged by the DM) - "solve this riddle to open the door."


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> We seem to be on the same page, but you are I think being biased by that perception and so assuming both that all GMs run their game that way, all game systems encourage that view point, and that all players prefer it.   I don't believe that is the case.




Please bear in mind I am speaking solely of D&D 5e and, in particular, a challenge that was presented in my game. I might argue differently if we were talking about D&D 4e or someone else's game. That said, I cleave to the rules and processes of D&D 5e quite closely and I think to some extent any DM who does the same is likely to reach the same conclusion. I make no judgment here about what players prefer, only what are usually optimal decisions in this paradigm (avoiding the d20, for example).



Celebrim said:


> It's possible to run this challenge you've described using a only flow chart which at every branching point features, "Character failed or succeeded?" and never branches on player choice at all, and I think some GMs lean very strongly to preferring that process of play.   If I used such a flow chart, this would be entirely a character challenge, and even if it wasn't a pure character challenge because a few trivial decision points for the player remained, it would still be close enough to a pure character challenge that I wouldn't feel amiss calling it a "character challenge".




I would likely call it "random number generation." The important choices were made at character creation/advancement, short of the few trivial decision points you mention.



Celebrim said:


> Some games, at least as written in the rule book, have a process of play where every player proposition ALWAYS is mapped to a particular rules proposition which calls for a fortune test, and for each proposition offered to the GM, the GM's role is to interpret correctly which rules proposition the player actually made.  I've even read rule books where it called out that if the player made a natural language proposition, and it was unclear which rules proposition - which character 'move' - the player was making, that the GM should invalidate the natural language proposition and force the player to phrase the proposition as a rules proposition.




Dungeon World is something like this, where a fictional offer made by the player is judged as to whether it "triggers" a move and that both the GM and players are tasked with making sure that moves are used when appropriate. Most but not all moves require a die roll. That's a different kettle of fish for sure than D&D. (And I really like that game, for different reasons. I was a playtester for it as well.)


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> [MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]: The thing I like most about your post in which you describe your 4 different categories of challenge is that we almost entirely agree on the definitions and meanings of the terms, but having done so, you express an entirely different set of preferences and processes of play which you also present a reasonable case for.  I don't agree with your preferences, and I have different ones and different processes of play, but I can't actually prove that you are right or wrong.
> 
> Yet, we also agree that "challenge the player" and "challenge the character" are reasonable labels and define very different things.
> 
> You probably won't be surprised to discover that just as you are trying to eliminate all category #1 challenges for your game, I'm trying to eliminate all category #2 challenges from mine.



Not at all. And let me be clear, the ratio of 1-4 for me varies from gsme/syste/campaign by setting, theme and tone.

I will **never** want a lot of #1 in any significant chargen gamebecause to me it bypasses too many choices the player makes, but the balance of 2-4 will alter fairly dramatically in a spy game modern or scifi, a Vampire gothic game, even a supers team game using relatively indie tules or a horror game like say ten candles or... the list goes on.

That dial helps set the tone.

A key element to me is owning and respecting the work. 

If I make my players go thru 5e chargrn and go level after level of stats, choosing to trade off ABC for def,  then I as GM try and respect that by presenting the value of those in play - which means few obstacles like  #1s. The #1s turn into opportunities that might well pay off later and help #2s or be critical in #4s.

But if it's a 10 candles game, where chargen is like five index cards with a word or sentence each - thrn it's much more about choices and story and those stats, obviously, are a one time edge sort of thing.

But imagine if it's an rpg where "chargrn" is. "Its you in another world" like many novels have gone, taking a modern guy thru a portal. Then a greater  number of #1 might well have more of a place.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 25, 2019)

CleverNickName said:


> Eh, in the sense that "facing the challenge" means the same thing as "deciding to do a certain thing a certain way," sure.  But that wasn't what I was getting at.  See, the player can decide actions, but the player doesn't decide to pass a skill DC, or decide to score a critical hit...those results come from luck, and are influenced by the numbers on the character sheet.



I think this gets at why I personally dislike the philosophy that “challenge the character, not the player” is shorthand for. I hate feeling like my successes and failures are primarily a matter of luck. RNG can be a great way to introduce some unpredictability into a system, which can make it more exciting, but for me if player choice is not a bigger factor in determining success than RNG, I don’t find it very satisfying.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Blue said:


> So to me the phrase "challenging the character" means tailoring to make something that will be difficult specifically for that character to accomplish.




So maybe "challenging the character" really means "challenging the players in such a way that each player approaches the problem differently, depending upon their character."  

(And even that can mean from a roleplaying perspective and/or a mechanical perspective.)

I could get behind a definition like that.

Although I still think that the player has to actually be challenged for it to be interesting.  As I said in the other thread, if "I roll Skill X" conveys enough information to the rest of the table that everybody understands the intent, the challenge isn't really a challenge, and it isn't really very interesting.  It's just a speed bump toll booth.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I think this gets at why I personally dislike the philosophy that “challenge the character, not the player” is shorthand for. I hate feeling like my successes and failures are primarily a matter of luck. RNG can be a great way to introduce some unpredictability into a system, which can make it more exciting, but for me if player choice is not a bigger factor in determining success than RNG, I don’t find it very satisfying.




Totally agree.  "Can you roll above a certain number on a die?" is really not a very interesting challenge, even if one player has an easier target than another player.  So if that's all that's behind "challenging the character", count me out.  

But I don't think that's really what its proponents mean. At least not all of them.


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So maybe "challenging the character" really means "challenging the players in such a way that each player approaches the problem differently, depending upon their character."
> 
> (And even that can mean from a roleplaying perspective and/or a mechanical perspective.)
> 
> ...




Or it rewards/punishes players for the decisions they've made while building their character which to some people is important.

If I've built my character and made decisions that maximized my diplomacy because my PC has a silver tongue and the DM never calls for a single diplomacy check but rather relies solely on what the player says, I wasted my time.  I should have just focused on combat abilities instead.

If a PCs skill proficiencies don't matter, I don't see why anyone would anyone ever focus on anything other than combat skills.

That's why I try to have a balance of PC challenges and Player challenges, or more often encounters that challenge both.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Oofta said:


> Or it rewards/punishes players for the decisions they've made while building their character which to some people is important.
> 
> If I've built my character and made decisions that maximized my diplomacy because my PC has a silver tongue and the DM never calls for a single diplomacy check but rather relies solely on what the player says, I wasted my time.  I should have just focused on combat abilities instead.
> 
> ...




The only nitpick I would have with this is the implication, perhaps imagined by me, that the DM is designing challenges that are specifically meant to be solved in a certain way by certain PCs, or that are meant to force other PCs to use skills they are bad at, just to remind them that they are bad those things.

However, I'm all for:
a) Creating a variety of challenges, across all three pillars, without the DM expecting (or requiring) specific solutions to each one.
b) Rewarding players who find interesting ways to solve those challenges using the unique strengths of their characters by allowing those solutions to succeed (or giving them a decent chance, at least).

As I said upstream, if the player has to figure out _how_ to use his/her character's unique strengths to solve a problem, that's far more interesting than cases where it's obvious which character should use which strength.

So, yeah, include a neutral PC who has something the players need, as well as trait/bond/flaw/ideal.  If the silver-tongued player learns the flaw or ideal or whatever, and wants to leverage that to convince the PC to help the party, either give him an autosuccess or have him roll a die, depending on how effective you think that approach will be.

Another less eloquent character trying the same thing might have a much harder time, and might want to use a different strategy.

But I think the important part here is that persuading the NPC to help is just one possible "solution" to the problems the party faces. They might be able to progress without his help, or steal the McGuffin that he has locked up, or blackmail him with a secret they find, or cast a Charm spell, or....etc.  The adventure shouldn't be planned such that persuading this NPC is a "toll booth" that must be passed.

Does that make sense?


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## lowkey13 (Apr 25, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Spoken like someone who has never gone to Vegas!
> 
> I dunno; different parts of the game appeal to different parts of the lizard brain at different times. There is certainly something ... satisfying ... about a good roll. Even if the payout is in hit points instead of cold, hard cash.




High stakes can make it exciting, but that’s different from it being a challenge.


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> The only nitpick I would have with this is the implication, perhaps imagined by me, that the DM is designing challenges that are specifically meant to be solved in a certain way by certain PCs, or that are meant to force other PCs to use skills they are bad at, just to remind them that they are bad those things.
> ...
> Does that make sense?




Without getting into the weeds, I think we do agree on general approach for this.  How that goal is accomplished is going to vary, and how we express what we do and why may vary.  

I try to put a lot of variety into my encounters (and fights).  Some game days will go by where the dice are being rolled constantly, others they may be used a few times.

So I agree. I strive for a mix of challenges, and have multiple possible approaches whenever possible, including some I didn't even think of but my players do.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The distinction I see is not 'challenge' - the game is challenging (or not) to the player - but /resolution/.




Now, I think we are only arguing over which term of art that we have just made up is most appropriate.

"Challenge the Character" => "Indirect Challenge to the Player" => "Resolution Through Capabilities of the Character"

We're talking about the same thing.  



> Or, resolution can be purely random ("roll even/odd, on odd something bad happens").




Oh, that's a good one.  Yes, you can introduce or resolve a conflict without challenging either the player or the character.   You don't see it much any more, but in some old 1e AD&D encounter designs there were some encounters that seemed more or less to introduce and resolve the challenge randomly, through a pure random check, without any recourse to either the player's skill and choice or the character's abilities.   You'd find some encounter where, "There is a 20% chance X will happen to a random member of the party.", and it didn't matter what that character was capable of.

These seem to a be a pure case of what [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] calls "random number generation", where we just seem to be introducing randomness into the fiction for no reason other than the feeling that the fiction out to be random.  

But I think cases of "pure challenge to player" (as I've called them) are simply this in disguise, differing only in that we're inspecting the player before setting what we think the proper odds of random forks in the road ought to be.   Further, I think these "challenge to player" cases were we introduce something purely to create a small possibility of a random fork in the fiction are more common than you might think.   In MMORPGs it is typical for a player in combat to have few real choices regarding their action or their fictional positioning.  Typically they'll engage in the entire combat without moving because movement is meaningless within the fiction, and typically they will cycle through a list of abilities with particular refresh timers according to some optimal sequence and timing without needing to make any choices along the way.   In MMORPGs, its not unusual for some encounters to be relatively straight forward and tacticless, where no choices matter beyond performing these mindless tasks as efficiently as possible and success is determined solely by the level, character build, and equipment of the characters involved in the encounter.   In MMORPGs these are referred to as "pure damage races", but for our purposes we could equally refer to them as pure character challenges.

It strikes me that in many adventures there are encounters that are designed to be these sort of pure damage races, where the players best strategy is just to use their best damage attack each round and hope to overwhelm the foe before the foe overwhelms them.   Each round each player declares something like, "I attack", and then uses the fortune mechanics to determine how much damage they inflict and receive.  Success depends less on player choice than strong builds and good luck of the dice.

Those are cases of random number generation.  They are complex random number generators, but that's all they are.   You might as well turn a crank and have it tell you what the new fictional positioning is.   They are combats that largely resemble late game Risk combats, where you grind through large stacks of armies with repeated attacks.

And this reminds me of another thread, where we argued over the utility of ending a combat early, where I suggested the utility of that depended on whether or not the fiction was still evolving.   If it was, then there was no point in truncating the combat.   Well, in the context of this thread, I might have just as well phrased my point as there is no point in truncating the combat as long as it is the player's skill that continues to be tested, and it's not just the character's skill we are challenging, because as long as the player's skill is being tested the player will be engaged and tend to enjoy the combat.  Whereas, if it is just a damage race, we might as well figure out a simpler random number generator to use to arbitrate the outcome.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 25, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> First, I cringe at your use of "should have".  But maybe you meant, "An example of interesting roleplaying might be..."  (Although I also cringe at cliches about what classes and ability scores represent.)




If we don't have generally accepted ideas of what the scores stand for, then we can't talk about them until after we define, in excruciating detail, what it means to each of us.  That is a thread on its own.  Getting pedantic about this serves as a deflection.  I prefer to stick to the point, which I think was generally understood - it is a cliche because it is common and understandable, after all.



> To use the criterion I proposed above, the approach is obvious and the solution is hard.




You claim the Zork puzzle is a good one, but I (and I expect most who played the games when they first came out) know a bunch of people who quit Zork because it's puzzles were too hard and frustrating.  Whether you put the hard part at the approach or solution isn't a determiner - it is still *hard*.  Any hard challenge will stymie some people more than others, no matter the form.   This is a problem when the player thought they were designing a character who was supposed to be good at such things, but in play is not, because of the adventure design.  

Each player's got their own capacities and competencies, and the point is that those competencies should not need to match their character's.  This is why I included the rope-climbing example, to show that in a different form.  If a player builds an avatar that's supposed to be great at something, to do an end-run around the mechanics is not particularly fair to them.  

Now, when you are designing for your own home table, for people and characters you know, it may not be a big deal - you have a particular relationship and understanding you can lean on there.  But, this guidance comes from the context of publishing, where you don't know the people who will be playing the scenario.  In publishing, it is perhaps better to design for the avatar - the accepted and agreed upon interface - rather than to design for the player.  

And, you can do that and still have puzzles - just make sure there are mechanical elements included in the puzzle resolution.  In the game, a Strength 6 character can, in theory, punch their way out of a situation, but they can see the mechanics and know what they are getting into if they try, and maybe leave the punching to those who are good at it.  Same should be true for puzzle-challenges.  Maybe the characters with the right skills and stats can get clues, or it is structured akin to a skill challenge, so that those with the mechanical build for it will be better at it.

Or, look at it that combats really are themselves a sort of puzzle, with random dice elements.  Why should your other puzzles not be of the same form?


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## Oofta (Apr 25, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Spoken like someone who has never gone to Vegas!
> 
> I dunno; different parts of the game appeal to different parts of the lizard brain at different times. There is certainly something ... satisfying ... about a good roll. Even if the payout is in hit points instead of cold, hard cash.




May be a tangent, but if I always win a game is boring.  I almost always play video games on the hardest setting, I want a realistic chance that my plan could fail.  I would want the game to still go forward of course but if there's no risk (as represented by the roll of the die) then the reward is minimized.

I don't play D&D to get a "good breathing" award.  I'm perfectly okay with having to make a diplomacy check now and then even with my dwarven tank with an 8 charisma.  Hopefully I came up with a way to get advantage or lower the DC because of some leverage, but if I roll a 1 and get a -1 on my diplomacy that can be part of the fun.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Umbran said:


> You claim the Zork puzzle is a good one, but I (and I expect most who played the games when they first came out) know a bunch of people who quit Zork because it's puzzles were too hard and frustrating.  Whether you put the hard part at the approach or solution isn't a determiner - it is still *hard*.  Any hard challenge will stymie some people more than others, no matter the form.   This is a problem when the player thought they were designing a character who was supposed to be good at such things, but in play is not, because of the adventure design.




And that's why I said the problem with that particular challenge is that there was only one solution.  Which is typically going to be the case when it's a computer (or a rule system!) adjudicating, not a human using judgment.

Were that same scenario to happen in a TTRPG, I would instead say it was a great _solution_, instead of a great problem.



> Each player's got their own capacities and competencies, and the point is that those competencies should not need to match their character's.  This is why I included the rope-climbing example, to show that in a different form.  If a player builds an avatar that's supposed to be great at something, to do an end-run around the mechanics is not particularly fair to them.




The rope-climbing example, in all its forms, is an old argument, but I don't really buy it.  I mean, not the lesser form of the argument: sure, you shouldn't require the player to be able to climb a rope in real life to be able to do so in-game.  But I don't think it's a relevant analogue to problems where players are required to think of creative solutions, rather than just invoke mechanics.

Your rope-climbing example is more commonly presented as a sword-swinging example.  And, sure, I don't expect players to be able to swing swords in real life.  But I *do* expect them to avoid being surrounded, to not clump up (more than once, anyway) against Wizards, to finish off nearly dead opponents rather than attack fresh ones, etc. etc. etc.  None of that requires genuine sword-fighting ability, but neither does it abdicate decision-making to the dice.

So (to try this from one more angle) I don't expect players to know how to climb a rope, but I do expect them to have some good ideas about when to climb a rope, even if their character has a low Int.




> And, you can do that and still have puzzles - just make sure there are mechanical elements included in the puzzle resolution.  In the game, a Strength 6 character can, in theory, punch their way out of a situation, but they can see the mechanics and know what they are getting into if they try, and maybe leave the punching to those who are good at it.  Same should be true for puzzle-challenges.  Maybe the characters with the right skills and stats can get clues, or it is structured akin to a skill challenge, so that those with the mechanical build for it will be better at it.
> 
> Or, look at it that combats really are themselves a sort of puzzle, with random dice elements.  Why should your other puzzles not be of the same form?




I think we are mostly in agreement here, which leaves me puzzled (ha!) as to what impression I conveyed in earlier posts.  I'm all for mixing genuine puzzle solving with using the numbers on the character sheet.  It's when the actual problem-solving is left out, and it's must a mechanical process of "Oh, challenge X requires skill Y; who has the highest score?", that I wonder what the point is.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Not at all. And let me be clear, the ratio of 1-4 for me varies from gsme/syste/campaign by setting, theme and tone.
> 
> I will **never** want a lot of #1 in any significant chargen gamebecause to me it bypasses too many choices the player makes...




It's obvious that we look at this problem in a very different manner.  I think we agree that there is a fairly sweet spot where there is a mixture of player agency and choice with character simulation of abilities, where the character's abilities are informing the player's choice and no one's choices in character creation are being invalidated and conversely no one is able to get away with purely gaming the system by, for example, as you suggested dumping charisma and trying to treat all social situations as a matter of pure player skill.

But while we seem to agree over the sweet spot, we both are doing exactly the opposite in the pure cases - #1 and #2 - and yet we state that we have basically the same reasoning behind our opposite approaches.  So either something is screwy about what we mean by pure player challenge and pure character challenge, or we have a hugely different perspective on what invalidates play.

I understand that you don't want to see the chargen mini-game invalidated, but while I understand that, the risk incurred by invalidating player agency by taking their choices out of the equation seems to be vastly greater.

Let's return to my hypothetical "Choose Your Own Adventure Book".  In it I defined two cases, one of which, pure player choice involves no reference to character ability, and the other pure resolution by character ability, involves no player choice.   Of the two, which book do to you think makes a better game to play, the one where all the problems are of pure player choice (your #1) or all the problems are of pure resolution by character ability (your #2)?


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Each player's got their own capacities and competencies, and the point is that those competencies should not need to match their character's.




I think this is one of the biggest myths or misconceptions in all of table top gaming.  It sounds really appealing, and you can build an obvious superficial argument for why it ought to be so, usually revolving around the players at the table aren't actually able to swing swords with heroic prowess or cast world shaking spells.

But defining the character as being able to swing a sword heroically or cast spells heroically turns out to only be scratching the surface of the problem.  You can do that, and it works, but it won't make the character a mighty heroic warrior or a great spellcaster all on its own, because regardless, it requires the input of the player to animate that character and you can't make the player play the character well.  Nor, it turns out, would you even want to do so.



> Or, look at it that combats really are themselves a sort of puzzle, with random dice elements.  Why should your other puzzles not be of the same form?




And this is precisely the issue.  Combats are themselves a sort of puzzle, and as long as the combat are not pure damage races where the two sides make no choices and simply hammer on each other toe to toe in each round, then the fact that they are a puzzle to solve means that different people will possess different degrees of talent at solving them.  A player can stat out his character as a great battle captain, leader, soldier, and warrior all that he wants, but unless he also possesses great tactical acumen himself, then in play he will be continually frustrated that his mighty character does not create the heroic figure he wants.   

As an example, when I was in high school, I was over at my girlfriend's house and I met her younger brother and a friend who were engaged in playing D&D.  I immediately rose in the esteem of the younger brother by evidencing knowledge of his hobby - "My sister has a cool boyfriend, unpossible!" kind of thing.   One of the players was bragging about his character, a 30th level Paladin (cavalier subclass).  Apparently the kids were playing D&D by flipping through the monster manual, selecting an entry, and pitting the entry against this myrmidon of virtue.  The player bragged that he'd also slain many of the foes in the Deities and Demigods.   Amused, I suggested I take over as DM for a short while and run the monsters.   Within a very short order, his previously invincible Paladin was naked and on the verge of death.  The only thing that changed, is that in the encounters I run, I didn't explicitly tell the player what he was facing, nor did I necessarily have all my monsters go toe to toe, nor did the combats occur on featureless arenas lacking in terrain.  Faced with the need to make choices beyond hacking away with his +6 holy avenger every round, the player who had slain deities was struggling to overcome as much as a giant octopus.  

That's an extreme case, but in my experience it is typical.  Some players are good combat tacticians.  Others aren't.   Some players are good social tacticians.  Others aren't.  Some players are good at dungeon crawling, have a good sense of direction, exercise care in dungeon hygiene and trap detection, and are good at picking up telegraphed clues in the environment.  Others don't.  Players can improve their player skill through experience, but some times otherwise highly intelligent people just have the sort of mental gaps when it comes to tactics or social skills that a person who his learning disabled might have with regards to math, or one that is dyslexic might struggle more to read.

As a DM who has to play every character of every sort, I am made to be keenly aware of my own limitations.  Just because I want to play an NPC who is witty and funny, doesn't in fact mean that I can successfully pull this off.   There is no ability I can put on an NPCs character sheet that will make the PCs actually laugh at my jests and japes.  If I want to be funny, I have to be funny.  The character cannot be.   No amount of charisma on the character sheet can do this for me.  

Likewise, if I want an NPC to be perceived as a brilliant mastermind, as the DM I have many tools at my disposal to help me out, but ultimately I still have to plot and plan in such a way that the player's - not their characters - perceive the NPC as a brilliant mastermind.   No amount of INT or INT based skills on the sheet will make the character so if I am not.

A player's mind is intrinsically something that extends into the fiction.  If we try to remove the player's mental abilities from the fiction, we reduce the player to a mere observer who is watching the character act without their input.  If we only challenge the character rather than the player, then we have a process the player can experience as vicariously as my now brother in-law's young friend, but in which they are making no real choices and that makes for a very limited 'game'.  As such, the limits of what a player character can be are always constrained by the player's capacities and competencies.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Now, I think we are only arguing over which term of art that we have just made up is most appropriate.
> 
> "Challenge the Character" => "Indirect Challenge to the Player" => "Resolution Through Capabilities of the Character"
> 
> We're talking about the same thing.



 Yeah, it's a connotation and clarity thing.  "Challenge" is loaded - as a gamer, there's a perception that you must want to be challenged, that if you don't, you're a lesser species of gamer.  Challenge can be found in different ways and in different phases or aspects of the play experience.  A 'numbers race' that's played out in a pat, mechanistic, way may not seem like a challenge to the player, but choices he made in setting it up may have been challenging to get right.  

'Resolution' is more technical, and more explicitly about determining the outcome of uncertain events in the course of play.


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## BookBarbarian (Apr 25, 2019)

Challenging the Character usually goes like this:

"None shall pass...Then you shall die."


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## CleverNickName (Apr 25, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I think this gets at why I personally dislike the philosophy that “challenge the character, not the player” is shorthand for. I hate feeling like my successes and failures are primarily a matter of luck. RNG can be a great way to introduce some unpredictability into a system, which can make it more exciting, but for me if player choice is not a bigger factor in determining success than RNG, I don’t find it very satisfying.



I totally agree...having story elements reduced to a matter of sheer luck can be exciting, but usually it just leads to boredom.

I think that was the intent behind putting the responsibility of Inspiration, Advantage, and Disadvantage adjudication on the DM.  Random number generation is vital to the suspense of the game, but player choice should matter more than the bonuses and penalties on a character sheet.  So the DM is expected to evaluate the situation and actions of the character, and adjust the math accordingly using the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic.  This falls apart when Advantage, Disadvantage, and Inspiration become the expectation rather than the exception...which is why I'm pretty stingy with them.

Just saying "...and I help, you get Advantage!" isn't good enough.  I ask the player to describe how their character is helping the rogue to pick that lock, and then decide if it's really helpful enough to merit Advantage.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 25, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> It's obvious that we look at this problem in a very different manner.  I think we agree that there is a fairly sweet spot where there is a mixture of player agency and choice with character simulation of abilities, where the character's abilities are informing the player's choice and no one's choices in character creation are being invalidated and conversely no one is able to get away with purely gaming the system by, for example, as you suggested dumping charisma and trying to treat all social situations as a matter of pure player skill.
> 
> But while we seem to agree over the sweet spot, we both are doing exactly the opposite in the pure cases - #1 and #2 - and yet we state that we have basically the same reasoning behind our opposite approaches.  So either something is screwy about what we mean by pure player challenge and pure character challenge, or we have a hugely different perspective on what invalidates play.
> 
> ...



I think you may be hitting what p sense as the Elf-skew.

#2 is not at all "no player choice" - not harfly.

In #2 the player choices are involved in two ways, one direct, one indirect.
Indirect- the player choices made before - in chargen and after - directly setup the "stats" called for the resolution. Some of those may be absolutes (nor proficiency or no tools) but most they are modifiers to the odds. The Joe has +8" is an indirect result of a choice made long ago. So might "several NPCs dhow up to help" as a response to prior good faith acts that might have been totally non-stat (#1 provides boost.)

Directly, the choices made right then and there impact not only the outcome but the odds. Did you use dome crowbar to gain advantage? Did the guy who is best at it go first or not? Does someone have feather fall prepped irl known in case there is a fall? Is there a rope tied to you as safety? Does anyone use enhance ability or guidance or bardic dice? 

These and hundreds more can directly impact the odds - even moving it to an auto-success in some cases where skill plus these choices meet the criteria. They can also constrain and influence the outcome on a failure. This is imo vital in a game where "some progress with setback" is part of the basic core options for what a failure on a skill check is resolved as.

Your "just roll a die with no choice" is **not** my #2.  Its not close.

That's in DnD terms like maybe getting forced to draw from deck of many things. Even saves reflect back to chargrn choices and options in the moment that can apply.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I think you may be hitting what p sense as the Elf-skew.
> 
> #2 is not at all "no player choice" - not harfly.




When I introduced my example of the two doors to open, did you object to the details of the example?

When I introduced my example of the two different sorts of pages in a "Choose your Own Adventure Book", did you object to the details of the example?

Would you like to object now?



> In #2 the player choices are involved in two ways, one direct, one indirect.
> 
> Indirect- the player choices made before - in chargen and after - directly setup the "stats" called for the resolution.




These "indirect challenges to the player" are fundamentally what we are talking about as "challenges to the character".  First, I object that this is a challenge to the player because the player may have not had any agency in CharGen.  The player could be using pregenerated characters, as for example in the case of the "Lone Wolf" choose your own adventure books, or the D&D choose your own adventure books, or many RPG scenarios.   The player could use a game system that randomly generates his character, giving him little or no control over what sort of character he is playing.  Or for example, in my own campaign one player left and the incoming player took over playing his PC.  Which player is being challenged by these "indirect challenges"?  Isn't it obvious that it is the character that is being challenged either way you answer?

Secondly, I object that even if this is a sort of challenge to the player, challenging the player in a Chargen minigame to foresee the sorts of problems that they face and will need answers too is not the same sort of challenge as challenging a player to solve a problem through choice of strategy, deduction, and so forth in the moment and as such we can meaningfully distinguish between them.  I'm not particular stuck on terminology.   We can call them "A" and "B" or "1" and "2" as well as "challenge to the player" and "challenge to the character" for all I care.  That's just labels.  The point is, the two things are different.



> Directly, the choices made right then and there impact not only the outcome but the odds. Did you use dome crowbar to gain advantage?




False choice, and just another example (generally) of an indirect challenge.  Having appropriate tools or equipment is just part of a character preparation and doesn't involve a meaningful choice.  Why would you not use the crowbar?



> Did the guy who is best at it go first or not?




False choice.  Why would you not choose to use the guy who is best?  And if you didn't choose to use the guy that was best because the choice was forced on you, that's still not a choice.



> Does someone have feather fall prepped irl known in case there is a fall? Is there a rope tied to you as safety?




None of which has any bearing on the challenge of opening a door.   Introducing the possibility of a larger puzzle unrelated to the door, or more importantly to the door puzzle examples as previously presented as examples of type, is simply evading the issue.  And ultimately, even things like, "Did you check for traps?", "Did you listen at the door?", "Did you have a listening cone with a screen across it to block ear crawlies?", become non-choices as well, as they players are likely to just assert, "Standard procedure for doors." at some point.



> Does anyone use enhance ability or guidance or bardic dice?




Generally, false choice as well if this doesn't really involve expending any crucial resources and retries are allowed, etc.  This is just adding up more plusses anyway.



> These and hundreds more can directly impact the odds...




Sure, but that's all still just challenge to character.  You've just impacted the odds.  You've modified the strength check or the open locks check that is testing the character, and really not in a meaningful way other than impacting the odds.   If a choice is obvious and routine and requires no particular insight, it's not a choice.  No cleverness is involved in using a crowbar to force open a door, and choosing to take a crowbar is no different than choosing to have a strong character or skill in opening locks.  That's back to your "indirect challenge".  



> This is imo vital in a game where "some progress with setback" is part of the basic core options for what a failure on a skill check is resolved as.




Wait a minute... let's not get this conversation side tracked on "fail forward" stuff.  I see no need to add in more terms, especially to one that seems so tangential.



> Your "just roll a die with no choice" is **not** my #2.  Its not close.




I am not convinced.  Tell me that you can alter the odds of passing a strength check to open a door by applying a guidance spell and a crowbar is still chargen choices of the type you describe as indirect.



> That's in DnD terms like maybe getting forced to draw from deck of many things.




No, we have established in the thread that there are purely random things that are neither challenge to player or challenge to character.  Being forced to draw from a deck of many things would seem to be a case in point of.  But, I have provided simple examples of pure challenge to player and pure challenge to character.  If you have a quibble with the examples, I'd prefer you start from that point just so we have a framework of discussion.



> Even saves reflect back to chargrn choices and options in the moment that can apply.




Again, why assume chargen choices exist?  And to the extent that they exist, they are obviously different than making choices in the moment.  Again, for the proof of this, consider my previous examples of the types.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Totally agree.  "Can you roll above a certain number on a die?" is really not a very interesting challenge, even if one player has an easier target than another player.  So if that's all that's behind "challenging the character", count me out.




But isn’t this the majority of a combat encounter? Trying to roll a number to beat an AC or DC... (which is why I think combat really challenges the characters)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> But isn’t this the majority of a combat encounter? Trying to roll a number to beat an AC or DC... (which is why I think combat really challenges the characters)




That's the majority of the _dice rolling_, sure.  What about movement, choosing targets, deciding to take other actions (Dodge, Disengage, etc.), etc. etc. etc.

Looking at it another way, how much fun are fights where none of that other stuff happens, and it _is_ just taking turns rolling a d20 and subtracting damage?  It's the classic "bag of hit points" complaint, and it's boring.  (YMMV, of course.)

I'm basically making the same argument for other challenges: challenge the players to make decisions that affect the probability of success, and then resolve the remainder with dice rolls, if necessary.  (Combat can also be resolved without dice rolls: one side or the other flees, and if the pursuers are slower there doesn't need to be any dice rolled.)


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> But isn’t this the majority of a combat encounter? Trying to roll a number to beat an AC or DC... (which is why I think combat really challenges the characters)




There are a ton of important decisions being made by players every turn which affect the difficulty of the challenge. Take this challenge right here: Rope Tricked! Think of the myriad decisions the players are making as they try to survive and escape the roper then deal with thwarting the ghost's plans while navigating the environment. It's _way_ more than rolling dice. The dice are just there to resolve uncertainty.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

Sure sure, but when it comes down to it, the most important thing is dealing damage and not getting hit in return.  The rest is window dressing. That’s fun, I agree, but combat is 75% PC vs NPC dice rolling.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> But isn’t this the majority of a combat encounter? Trying to roll a number to beat an AC or DC... (which is why I think combat really challenges the characters)




To a large extent, yes, I think so.  Certainly it is the hope of every power gamer to arrange to have a big enough hammer that all obstacles can be beaten down by the simple application of force.  All challenges become nails.

However, there is a small amount of relevant tactical positioning in most RPG combats, and small amounts of battlefield control, and so forth, so that ones choices as a player can be meaningful.  I certainly know as a GM how a group of players with a good and well executed plan can make mince meat of most anything, while the same group of characters, when the players are less intentional and act with less foresight can find themselves tumbling back in disarray trying to recover before they are slaughtered by what was objectively less of a challenge than what they moments before overcome with ease.

It's my goal as a GM to as much as possible design encounters where the players have meaningful choices to make and it doesn't revolve down to just rolling to hit and subtracting hit points.  I don't always succeed, but that's what I strive for.


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> Sure sure, but when it comes down to it, the most important thing is dealing damage and not getting hit in return.




The many decisions made to achieve that result are how the players overcome the challenge. The more difficult the challenge, the harder the decisions, trade-offs, and resource expenditures become. The character stats and features just adjust the die rolls, when die rolls are required, plus additional action options for the player to use, etc.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> The many decisions made to achieve that result are how the players overcome the challenge. The more difficult the challenge, the harder the decisions, trade-offs, and resource expenditures become. The character stats and features just adjust the die rolls, when die rolls are required, plus additional action options for the player to use, etc.




Yeah, but you’re not going to agree that there’s a ton of die rolling in combat? The result of combat actions are almost always uncertain and require rolls. I’m not saying that the players don’t make choices I’m just saying there’s not much they can do to swing the combat without swinging a weapon (or casting a spell). 

Anyway we’re going in circles, and this is a weird feeling to be in counterpoint... (I probably failed my wisdom save, darn my -4 modifier!)


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## iserith (Apr 25, 2019)

robus said:


> Yeah, but you’re not going to agree that there’s a ton of die rolling in combat? The result of combat actions are almost always uncertain and require rolls. I’m not saying that the players don’t make choices I’m just saying there’s not much they can do to swing the combat without swinging a weapon (or casting a spell).




I don't know if I'd characterize it as a ton. But obviously I don't deny rolls happen in combat and often many of them. What I do object to is saying that the existence of said rolls indicate the character is being challenged (at least in the important sense of game play). It's the player who is being challenged here to make decisions to reduce the difficulty of the challenge and overcome it.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't know if I'd characterize it as a ton. But obviously I don't deny rolls happen in combat and often many of them. What I do object to is saying that the existence of said rolls indicate the character is being challenged (at least in the important sense of game play). It's the player who is being challenged here to make decisions to reduce the difficulty of the challenge and overcome it.




Yep, I understand.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 25, 2019)

Yes, combat tends to have a lot of dice rolling. But imagine a combat where nobody was ABLE to do anything except use their default attack. No movement, no dodging, no spellcasting, no special abilities. On each player’s turn their only option is to roll their attacks.  

Is that challenging? Or interesting? (Maybe it is the first time, once, as a novelty.)

Now imagine, more easily because we see it all the time, including in official adventures, an analogous thing happening in non-combat pillars.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't know if I'd characterize it as a ton. But obviously I don't deny rolls happen in combat and often many of them. What I do object to is saying that the existence of said rolls indicate the character is being challenged (at least in the important sense of game play). It's the player who is being challenged here to make decisions to reduce the difficulty of the challenge and overcome it.




I think it is self evident that in a typical combat we are somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between "pure player challenge" and "pure character challenge".  The player's choices matter.  It also matters greatly which character they are playing.

I will offer a test.  It is a pure player challenge when it doesn't matter what character they are playing - a 1st level character can overcome the challenge as well as a 10th level character.  The indestructible door which only opens if a riddle is answered is an example.  If the player can solve the riddle, they get through the door with a 1st level character.  

So what is combat like?  Well, it's obviously not a pure player challenge!  For a given challenge rating, regardless of how skilled the player, there is some character too low of level to reliably win the encounter.   While, at the same time, even a nominally skilled tactician will, with a much higher level (or much better optimized) character, breeze through the encounter without any difficulty.

So, for the most part, I tend to see combat - though it is not purely a character challenge - as being closer to being a character challenge than it is a player challenge.  The player's input matters and sometimes matters a great deal, but simple high level character abilities (big numbers) will suffice.


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## robus (Apr 25, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, combat tends to have a lot of dice rolling. But imagine a combat where nobody was ABLE to do anything except use their default attack. No movement, no dodging, no spellcasting, no special abilities. On each player’s turn their only option is to roll their attacks.




OK but all of those additional things are still prescribed character options. The player is choosing from a menu of character actions (most of the time, sometimes players get creative but mostly they stick with their preferred approaches).

I’m not sure whether I’m making an interesting point, but to me I find that combats (not just in my own games) devolve into stats vs stats. Perhaps it’s an aspect of TotM (and one reason I adopted the Roshambo system, to try and encourage my players to make more interesting choices)? Perhaps I’m finally getting bored of my campaign...


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think it is self evident that in a typical combat we are somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between "pure player challenge" and "pure character challenge".  The player's choices matter.  It also matters greatly which character they are playing.
> 
> I will offer a test.  It is a pure player challenge when it doesn't matter what character they are playing - a 1st level character can overcome the challenge as well as a 10th level character.  The indestructible door which only opens if a riddle is answered is an example.  If the player can solve the riddle, they get through the door with a 1st level character.
> 
> ...




I simply don't recognize character challenge at all, except in the fictional sense. The challenge is always to the player with the character being _a_ tool the player can apply as needed to overcome it. But of course there are no guarantees that the tools at hand will be enough to achieve victory.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2019)

iserith said:


> I simply don't recognize character challenge at all, except in the fictional sense.




It's easy to say that when the examples are drawn from play in a typically complex PnP RPG with a typical scenario, since such examples will be typically complex and take place within an even more complex context.   

Which is why I have provided simplistic examples.

Earlier I provided an example of a hypothetical "Choose Your own Adventure" book, where I described to different pages that might occur in that book.

Do you recognize a fundamental distinction between those two pages?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

robus said:


> OK but all of those additional things are still prescribed character options. The player is choosing from a menu of character actions (most of the time, sometimes players get creative but mostly they stick with their preferred approaches).




Sure, and the game provides a lot more...a lot more...character options for combat than it does for the other pillars. So it should be no surprise that actions other than "roll a d20" tend to be prescribed in combat, and improvised out of combat. 



> I’m not sure whether I’m making an interesting point, but to me I find that combats (not just in my own games) devolve into stats vs stats. Perhaps it’s an aspect of TotM (and one reason I adopted the Roshambo system, to try and encourage my players to make more interesting choices)? Perhaps I’m finally getting bored of my campaign...




It may be that your players are now sufficiently expert in 5e combat that you aren't seeing the variation between expert and inexpert play, and therefore aren't noticing the other decisions.  DMs who offer 1-dimensional combats probably also see little variation.

FWIW, I think the Roshambo system is especially intriguing, although not quite fully debugged (last time I looked).


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> It's easy to say that when the examples are drawn from play in a typically complex PnP RPG with a typical scenario, since such examples will be typically complex and take place within an even more complex context.
> 
> Which is why I have provided simplistic examples.
> 
> ...




If you're referring to the exchange between you and 5ekyu, I'm afraid that it may lack sufficient context for me to pick up on it as that poster has me blocked, so I skipped the post. I went back to read it, but unfortunately don't see where you're coming from. In any case I would say if the outcome of the situation is unknown and the player can affect the outcome through his or her choices, then we have a ourselves a challenge for that player. If the player can't affect anything by his or her choices or the outcome is known then we don't have a challenge. It's at best random number generation or narration.

I will not take the position that the character is challenged (except in a fictional sense) or that both player and character are challenged. That is a canard in my view, a way for some people to say they don't like riddles or puzzles or thinking through complex situations and prefer to outsource it to a random number generator. Or in some cases it's made by DMs who may be too agreeable or anti-authoritarian to feel comfortable being the judge of the efficacy of a player's ideas. 

I get it. I used to make this same "challenge the character, not the player" argument back when I played D&D 4e chiefly, I believe, because I was enamored with skill challenges. Clearly I did not think it through. But I've since learned.


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## Celebrim (Apr 26, 2019)

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]: Yeah, I sometimes forget just how divided up and compartmentalized these boards have become.  I can't blame anyone - I have my own list of people I silenced because I found them too distracting - but it is a shame just what the forums have become.  Half the people I cared to talk with have packed up and left, a few have gotten themselves banned from the boards, and I've gotten a blacklist longer than I ever imagined I'd have.  (Getting put on other people's blacklist was never very surprising, though a goodly portion of those people have gotten themselves evicted by the admins as well.)

One uncanny experience I have had many of time in these forums is the realization that I have been in an argument where I thought the point of contention was one thing, but then I was made to realize that in fact it was a proxy argument for something else.

I don't have a lot of interest in proxy arguments.


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## Hussar (Apr 26, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> We seem to be on the same page, but you are I think being biased by that perception and so assuming both that all GMs run their game that way, all game systems encourage that view point, and that all players prefer it.   I don't believe that is the case.
> 
> It's possible to run this challenge you've described using a only flow chart which at every branching point features, "Character failed or succeeded?" and never branches on player choice at all, and I think some GMs lean very strongly to preferring that process of play.   If I used such a flow chart, this would be entirely a character challenge, and even if it wasn't a pure character challenge because a few trivial decision points for the player remained, it would still be close enough to a pure character challenge that I wouldn't feel amiss calling it a "character challenge".
> 
> Some games, at least as written in the rule book, have a process of play where every player proposition ALWAYS is mapped to a particular rules proposition which calls for a fortune test, and for each proposition offered to the GM, the GM's role is to interpret correctly which rules proposition the player actually made.  I've even read rule books where it called out that if the player made a natural language proposition, and it was unclear which rules proposition - which character 'move' - the player was making, that the GM should invalidate the natural language proposition and force the player to phrase the proposition as a rules proposition.




/me Raises Hand!

Yup, I'm very much in the mechanics camp.  Sure, player fictional positioning is part of it too, but, for me, the more important part would be the mechanical resolution.  To the point where [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s entire trap could be bypassed by a Perception roll that the player calls for.

Heck, I have a PC in my group right now with the Observant feat (is that the right one that bumps your passive perception?) and an insane Passive Perception score.  This trap wouldn't even be a challenge, I'd just go ahead and tell him he sees everything and how to avoid it because the character has the scores that allow for that.


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## Charlaquin (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heck, I have a PC in my group right now with the Observant feat (is that the right one that bumps your passive perception?) and an insane Passive Perception score.  This trap wouldn't even be a challenge, I'd just go ahead and tell him he sees everything and how to avoid it because the character has the scores that allow for that.



I'm curious how you imagine keen senses allowing the character to determine how to avoid the trap.


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## Hussar (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, combat tends to have a lot of dice rolling. But imagine a combat where nobody was ABLE to do anything except use their default attack. No movement, no dodging, no spellcasting, no special abilities. On each player’s turn their only option is to roll their attacks.
> 
> Is that challenging? Or interesting? (Maybe it is the first time, once, as a novelty.)
> 
> Now imagine, more easily because we see it all the time, including in official adventures, an analogous thing happening in non-combat pillars.




That pretty much describes Theater of the Mind combat.  At least, unless the players are REALLY good at visualization of combat, it pretty much lines up as movement doesn't matter after contact and you pelt each other with dice until one side falls down.  Heck, that describes 1e and 2e combat to a T.  Other than the spell casting anyway, and, at lower levels, you had so few spells that many combats were resolved without a single spell or special ability.  We did this for DECADES.

So, no, it's not like it's not interesting.

And, just as a point about "there's only one solution".  Let's be honest here, most of the time, in most situations, there is one or two really obvious solutions.  That locked door or chest for example.  Sure, there are other possibilities, but, let's be honest here, smash or pick are the two most likely outcomes.

Talking to that NPC, by and large, while you can argue all these other approaches, most likely is going to come down to "do we talk nice, or not nice?".  Positing that non-combat encounters are always resolved, or even often resolved, by these wondrous, creative solutions, isn't all that likely.  That non-combat encounter gets resolved in a fairly predictable way, most of the time because, well, frankly, groups are predictable most of the time.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That pretty much describes Theater of the Mind combat.  At least, unless the players are REALLY good at visualization of combat, it pretty much lines up as movement doesn't matter after contact and you pelt each other with dice until one side falls down.




Huh.  Not in the games I play in.  In fact, it tends to work exactly like iserith describes: players will describe what they want to do, and the DM will tell them the outcome, or if a roll is called for.  Sometimes players will ask questions to better understand the scene, and sometimes we estimate/improvise distances.  But otherwise all the decision-making is still there.  (For climactic battle scenes we often pull out the grid, though.)

EDIT: See? I've already forgotten iserith's excellent advice to not use specific examples.  I can't wait to see how this example gets twisted to prove that I'm contradicting myself. Or worse.

As an example of skill check resulting from DM judgment call, in a recent game a player wanted to hit all the bad guys with a sleep spell. I said he could easily hit all but the captain, or he could try to include the captain but would have to make an Int check to avoid hitting friendlies at the same time.  He decided to skip the captain.  (And succeeded only in putting the cow in the shed to sleep, which he had forgotten about. Sometimes TotM is like that.)



> And, just as a point about "there's only one solution".  Let's be honest here, most of the time, in most situations, there is one or two really obvious solutions.  That locked door or chest for example.  Sure, there are other possibilities, but, let's be honest here, smash or pick are the two most likely outcomes.




For DMs who still bother to include those sorts of speed bumps/toll booths, sure.



> Talking to that NPC, by and large, while you can argue all these other approaches, most likely is going to come down to "do we talk nice, or not nice?".  Positing that non-combat encounters are always resolved, or even often resolved, by these wondrous, creative solutions, isn't all that likely.  That non-combat encounter gets resolved in a fairly predictable way, most of the time because, well, frankly, groups are predictable most of the time.




Well, I'm glad that works for your group.


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## iserith (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> /me Raises Hand!
> 
> Yup, I'm very much in the mechanics camp.  Sure, player fictional positioning is part of it too, but, for me, the more important part would be the mechanical resolution.  To the point where [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s entire trap could be bypassed by a Perception roll that the player calls for.
> 
> Heck, I have a PC in my group right now with the Observant feat (is that the right one that bumps your passive perception?) and an insane Passive Perception score.  This trap wouldn't even be a challenge, I'd just go ahead and tell him he sees everything and how to avoid it because the character has the scores that allow for that.




I would say it is still a challenge in that the player can make a decision to affect an uncertain outcome to the situation. In this case, the player has to at least decide which "skill check" he or she might "use" to bypass the trap or, if you are relying upon a passive check, establish the character as "passive skill checking" while traveling the dungeon which might include establishing a marching order where the character is in the front rank.

It's just the way you adjudicate may reduce the difficulty to somewhere between Laughable and Easy Peasy straight out of the gate since somehow this "skill check" can bypass 60 feet of corridor lined with pressure plates, jutting spikes, pit traps, and tilting floors. Not how I'd do it, but not important to show how challenge and difficulty are different concepts.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> When I introduced my example of the two doors to open, did you object to the details of the example?
> 
> When I introduced my example of the two different sorts of pages in a "Choose your Own Adventure Book", did you object to the details of the example?
> 
> ...



I dont remember the two doors example. I do remember your adventure book example snd did not like parts of it, did not see them as overly applicable to my position either way.

I am not going into cases from the adventure book of roll die vs stat with no choices allowed or involved, so that's why I brought that point up here. The closest to that in typical plaupy are saves, but they have options too. 

For your player not involved in chargen, even in the pick up con games with pre-gens I have encountered, there were choices of pre-gens. Someone can choose from sets the types of characterscthry want. It's also usually very true for campaigns. If you want to limit the dupiscusdion to the subset where players have zero input in character capabilities, that's fine, have a ball, but I prefer to discuss the vast majority of play in campaigns or one-offs where they do. 

False choices? Well, if that's how you see them, that's cool. They are choices I see made in games frequently. Why not use crowbar, why not use the best guy, why not use spells, etc... depends 9n the complexities involved. I almost added a whole lot more such as noise, alerting others, etc to another door example but realized it was gonna be a long post that only scratched the surface of possibilities every seasonedvplayr knows and likely has seen. If you dont see the possibility of reason to choose or not choose any of these, have not seen them in play, we have amazingly different experiences.

But, fact remains these choices impact the odds and so they are counted. So, the "choices" are not removed in a challenge that requires a character stat references, particularly if those can reach auto-success in combo with the stats.

You want to throw out the basic 5e ability check resolution mechanics of setback with progress, okay, but I will keep it in my play. 5e even has explicit call outs to using the margin of failure for different skill check results. So these "choices" that alter the odds or raise minimums play significant role, or rather might play significant roles, so I will keep including them. 

Why assume chargen choices exist? Because the vast majority of rpg play evidenced and the vast majority of rpg systems make that assumption as well. It's kind of a big deal. You know that right? You have seen that before right?

But for this...

"Secondly, I object that even if this is a sort of challenge to the player, challenging the player in a Chargen minigame to foresee the sorts of problems that they face and will need answers too is not the same sort of challenge as challenging a player to solve a problem through choice of strategy, deduction, and so forth in the moment and as such we can meaningfully distinguish between them. "

In my experience, in my play, in many systems it's more explicitly expressed this way but DnD doesnt ignore it - these chargen choices are less a forsee or guess by the player about what may come but a choice by the player of what kinds of things they want to be doing. 

That player choosing a fighter over a mage is doing do cuz that's what he wants to be playing - not a guess that the fighter will be needed more than the mage or less. That guy choosing criminal over craftsman is doing so cuz those are activities he hopes to pursue - using those traits and features.

These choices show the players intent and planned course, much more often than it shows his guesses of what is coming. 

It's this way because in many games and in many rpg campaign expectations characters have choices as to influence some of the types of challenges they encounter. 

But I do agree, the chargen, pre-scene and in-scene choices are different which is why I listed them as direct and indirect. If you prefer other names, that's fine. But direct and indirect seem good enough to me.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That pretty much describes Theater of the Mind combat.  At least, unless the players are REALLY good at visualization of combat, it pretty much lines up as movement doesn't matter after contact and you pelt each other with dice until one side falls down.  Heck, that describes 1e and 2e combat to a T.  Other than the spell casting anyway, and, at lower levels, you had so few spells that many combats were resolved without a single spell or special ability.  We did this for DECADES.
> 
> So, no, it's not like it's not interesting.
> 
> ...



I have to say, especially now, this just do rolling is not indicative of most combats in my games. 

Die rolls are used, but the real meat and potatoes are the choices thst focus them towards a goal. Are we focusing on one or trying to tie down several? Are we staying put or trying to advance, end run or draw them to a favorable spot. Are we hitting the mage yo break the concentration, exposing their hatred fighter or the cleric with the bless up? Are we burning spell slots or trying to get through with them available for the next more critical fight ?

If a game features a lot of combat scenes ehere it's just a damage chase scene without meaningful choices, that's a choice the GM made, not a default or typical status in my experience. 

A lot of those ewould get dull to me. 

It's also not even how our typical 1e and 2e fights were...  but I confess, that is based on "our memories" which are certainly biased by "memorable or not". So, how many totally forgettable fightsxwe had back then  is a mystery, but we liked more complex tactical situation even then. They loved the fight scenes I setup and the swerves. Thst was part of the reason I became the default GM for our group- back in the day.


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## Monayuris (Apr 26, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Yes, but in an attempt to give the player so much of their due, you can end up missing a point that isn't so much about the player or the character, but is about _adventure design_.
> 
> The focus isn't on how the player makes all decisions for the character, both tactical and strategic.  The point is that there are times when the adventure or challenge does an end run and goes for the player directly, bypassing the character and game mechanics.
> 
> ...




I understand your point of view, but I just disagree with it.

Personally, I prefer game adventure design that bypasses the character mechanics and applies to the player directly. The mechanical aspects of a character should only come into play when there is no clear way to adjudicate the action in the player world (a perfect example is attack rolls and combat damage, along with spells and such... ). I have a group of real, living people at my table. I run the game for them... not for their sheets of paper with numbers on it.

I guess for my style of gaming, I don't think about adventure design in that manner. I think about what would be cool or interesting or challenging and I think about what makes sense in my game world. I don't put a moments thought into challenging specific builds or providing chances for players to roll high against a target number. It has never occurred to me that I have to provide specific challenges to the numbers or abilities that are expressed mechanically. I build my world organically and let the players figure out how to deal with it.

As far as the situation of the Int 6 Barbarian vs the Int 18 Wizard, goes... my opinion is this:  In every version of D&D, there are already mechanical penalties for having a low Int (penalties to Int based skills, lack of languages, limits to spell levels prepared, etc.), I don't see the need to further penalize a player by having them have to sit out or pretend to be a drooling fool when presented with logic puzzles. 

If the player of an Int 6 barbarian figures out the answer to a puzzle before the player of the Int 18 wizard does then so be it... I have zero problem with that. Every person at my table gets to play the game and shouldn't feel that they should sit out just because of a number on a piece of paper.

This kind of delves into my pet-peeve of barbarians being murderous 'TOO MUCH THINKY" morons. I mean you can be from an uncivilized region but still have intelligence and wisdom. I usually assume this is a by product of point buy and standard array. I think its b.s. that you can't have an intelligent barbarian because you have to dump INT to be effective.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, combat tends to have a lot of dice rolling. But imagine a combat where nobody was ABLE to do anything except use their default attack.



 All Champion Fighters, then?



Elfcrusher said:


> I SEE YOU TRYING TO HIJACK THIS THREAD FOR YOUR OWN NEFARIOUS PURPOSES.




::villain laugh::


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## Hussar (Apr 26, 2019)

Charlaquin said:


> I'm curious how you imagine keen senses allowing the character to determine how to avoid the trap.




Hrm... there's a giant hole in the ground in front of me that my keen senses let me see, maybe I won't jump in it?

Or, put another way, there's a series of pressure plates that I can see because they are sticking out a little more than the others, along with spikes in the wall and various other things.  

So, I Indiana Jones through the corridor and miss all the traps.  I mean, to me, that scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where stepping on a pressure plate launches a dart is a perfect example of player makes a skill check to notice the trap, and then avoids it entirely.  Doesn't take a bunch of declarations or checks or anything else.  Heck, he knew the trap was there just by looking.

On the way back, he just runs fast enough to avoid getting darted.  

So, what exactly was his "approach" that required more than either a skill check (automatic success) or a Dex saving throw?


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## Charlaquin (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Hrm... there's a giant hole in the ground in front of me that my keen senses let me see, maybe I won't jump in it?
> 
> Or, put another way, there's a series of pressure plates that I can see because they are sticking out a little more than the others, along with spikes in the wall and various other things.



Sure, sure. Personally, that’s the extent of what I would give with Perception. Direct sensory information. What to do with that information, I’d personally leave to the player to decide. But your call makes sense too, I was just curious.



Hussar said:


> So, I Indiana Jones through the corridor and miss all the traps.  I mean, to me, that scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where stepping on a pressure plate launches a dart is a perfect example of player makes a skill check to notice the trap, and then avoids it entirely.  Doesn't take a bunch of declarations or checks or anything else.  Heck, he knew the trap was there just by looking.
> 
> On the way back, he just runs fast enough to avoid getting darted.
> 
> So, what exactly was his "approach" that required more than either a skill check (automatic success) or a Dex saving throw?



Nothing. Translating that scene to a hypothetical game scenario, I’d say he noticed the odd details in the timing and on the wall with passive Wisdom (Perception) pushed a pressure plate to confirm his suspicion - personally I’d say that would succeed without need for a roll of any kind, though an Intelligence (Investigation) check might make sense there too. And then yeah, on the way back it might have been one or more Dex saves, or the darts missing his AC, depending on the mechanics of the dart trap.


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## S'mon (Apr 26, 2019)

You can definitely challenge the abilities of the PC, which may be at least partly random rather than build-derived.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> In my experience, in my play, in many systems it's more explicitly expressed this way but DnD doesnt ignore it - these chargen choices are less a forsee or guess by the player about what may come but a choice by the player of what kinds of things they want to be doing.
> 
> That player choosing a fighter over a mage is doing do cuz that's what he wants to be playing - not a guess that the fighter will be needed more than the mage or less. That guy choosing criminal over craftsman is doing so cuz those are activities he hopes to pursue - using those traits and features.



To quote from Gygax's PHB, p 18:

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 . . .​
Although a different perspective is then suggested on p 107:

Once the objective has been established, consider how well the party playing will suit the needs which it has engendered. Will the characters have the means of accomplishing the goal? Is it well-balanced, so that it can cope with typical problems expected in the fullfillment of the objective? Will it be necessary to find mercenary non-player characters or hire men-at-arms in order to give the party the necessary muscle? .  . .

Characters must know each other's strengths and weaknesses, physical and mental, in order to meet the problem posed with the correct character or combination thereof. . . . Do we have as broad a spectrum of spells as possible so as to be able to have a good chance against the unexpected, considering the objective and what it requires in spells?​
I think reconciling these two concerns, in D&D play, has tended to rely on optimism about the distribution of preferences among the players: ie that when players choose character builds as per the p 18 imperative (ie _what do you want your role in the game to be_) this will also, by dint of good fortune and varied tastes, produce a "balanced" party as per p 107.

When it doesn't, then maybe the last person to turn up has to play the cleric!

(Of course there are non-D&D systems where the notion of "balanced party" isn't applicable.)



Elfcrusher said:


> I don't expect players to be able to swing swords in real life.  But I *do* expect them to avoid being surrounded, to not clump up (more than once, anyway) against Wizards, to finish off nearly dead opponents rather than attack fresh ones, etc. etc. etc.  None of that requires genuine sword-fighting ability, but neither does it abdicate decision-making to the dice.



As I said in another thread, this speaks to me of classic "skilled play".

I think that the player of a rogue probably should seek to avoid being surrounded. But a paladin should relish it!


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> To quote from Gygax's PHB, p 18:
> 
> 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 . . .​
> Although a different perspective is then suggested on p 107:
> ...



"When it doesn't, then maybe the last person to turn up has to play the cleric!"

Or the druid or the bard or the divine soul sorcerer or they say "let's go without a cleric" and as the ancient text above mentions they find other means and methods.

One of our more memorable 1e campaigns had a very imbalanced party where nobody had anything more than leather armor, no fighter, a half-cleric half thief and we completely changed how we approached problems than we did with the typical "balanced party". This gets to the point I made above, character choices in game can influence or decide a lot about the nature of challenges they face, unless the GM is taking that away. 

Another game, in 3.5 equally memorable had no cleric, only a ranger-druid multi-class as any healing, so, again they adjusted their choices, managed to find non-standard solutions and find ways to fill in some of that gap by other means. Its played very different than it would have with a typical standard well balanced party.

The last 5e one shot FLGS, the four players chose a warlock, a sorcerer, a bard and a rogue from the 15 pre-gens - adventure unseen. Ran thru it taking very different choices and methods and means thsn if they had chosen the barbarian, fighter, wizard and cleric from the pile.

All this to me boils down to... in my experience direct and indirect - players in the vast majority of cases *do have* choices in character abilities chosen by them to play and that in a lot of those cases it is done by preference, not to "forsee" as much as to inform their choices going forward. 

If one is forced to treat rpgs like a adventure book solo thing, then when they choose rogue, they then also decide as much as possible to the pick up to play the "sneaky tunnels of loot" book as opposed to the "tunnel of raging trolls" book.

But, others may have different experiences, especially if their primary basis is only or mostly in flavors of DnD  or even only the recent editions. 

My gaming and GMing draw a lot from a wide variety of games - some with as much playtime under my belt as the various DnDs together, and quite a few with more than DnD5e. 

That is for better or worse of course. Someone who puts value in *running 5e how it was intended by designers" likely sees this as a poor choice that leads to getting less out of it. Me? I long ago dismissed "how strangers think we should play their game" as irrelevant to our fun.


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## pemerton (Apr 26, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> One of our more memorable 1e campaigns had a very imbalanced party where nobody had anything more than leather armor, no fighter, a half-cleric half thief and we completely changed how we approached problems than we did with the typical "balanced party".



My two most memorable AD&D campaigns both involved two PCs: one all-thief, the other all-warrior (a bushi and a kensai from Oriental Adventures).

I'm not saying that it can't be done: just that it's not consistent with Gygax's advice on p 107, and that this tension between his two bits of commentary reflects a known phenomenon in D&D party building, of the tension between players choosing their approach, and having a "balanced" party which is widely seen as a desirable thing.

In my own case, the campaigns involving "unbalanced" parties didn't look very much like the sort of thing Gygax had in mind, and I would say didn't closely resemble the sort of scenarios that most posters in this thread tend to put forward as examples.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Or, put another way, there's a series of pressure plates that I can see because they are sticking out a little more than the others, along with spikes in the wall and various other things.
> 
> So, I Indiana Jones through the corridor and miss all the traps.  I mean, to me, that scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where stepping on a pressure plate launches a dart is a perfect example of player makes a skill check to notice the trap, and then avoids it entirely.  Doesn't take a bunch of declarations or checks or anything else.  Heck, he knew the trap was there just by looking.
> 
> ...




I like this. The player describes an approach, the DM thinks that approach would succeed, given the character's abilities, and so no roll is needed.

Goal-and-approach.  You nailed it.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 26, 2019)

pemerton said:


> My two most memorable AD&D campaigns both involved two PCs: one all-thief, the other all-warrior (a bushi and a kensai from Oriental Adventures).
> 
> I'm not saying that it can't be done: just that it's not consistent with Gygax's advice on p 107, and that this tension between his two bits of commentary reflects a known phenomenon in D&D party building, of the tension between players choosing their approach, and having a "balanced" party which is widely seen as a desirable thing.
> 
> In my own case, the campaigns involving "unbalanced" parties didn't look very much like the sort of thing Gygax had in mind, and I would say didn't closely resemble the sort of scenarios that most posters in this thread tend to put forward as examples.



Sure...

To be honest, I have not once in my years of actual gaming had someone bring up what "Gygax had in mind". Its always been "What are we playing? What do we want? Not "What would Gygax do?"
The only place I see that brought up is on forum discussions, not in anything tied to actual play.

But again, that's me. Maybe there are streams out there where the will of Gygax is printed out and hanging on their set backdrops.


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I like this. The player describes an approach, the DM thinks that approach would succeed, given the character's abilities, and so no roll is needed.
> 
> Goal-and-approach.  You nailed it.




But the real question is: did the player of Indiana say "I make an investigation check to figure out how this trap works."


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 26, 2019)

I see all challenges in the game as challenging the player.

For almost every situation in the game that comes up, it's the player, via their PC avatar, that is being challenged.  The PC doesn't act on its own.  In response to a challenge, the player decides how that PC thinks and acts in the context of their abilities, proficiencies, background, traits, bonds, flaws, experiences, etc.

Now, once in a while, there could be a puzzle that appears in the game world that is solved without using anything from the character sheets.  The "one truth telling/one lying/one question only" guard problem, perhaps.  Or maybe a combo lock on a door that is solved by busting out your Mastermind  board game.  If no PC stats are used to come up with clues/solutions and there have been no clues presented in the game world that PCs discovered previously, then we've kinda stepped out of D&D 5e for a moment.  The whole table needs to be on board for these moments - something that should be discussed in a session 0 to get buy-in or likely should be avoided altogether.


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## lowkey13 (Apr 26, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Swarmkeeper (Apr 26, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Just going to point out that (IMO) the bolded part is an odd statement to make given the history of D&D.
> 
> While someone could certainly say that the game has moved away from that (for some people), the history of D&D is one that emphasized player ability. I wouldn't say that a game that had some focus not using PC stats to come up with clues/solutions is "not D&D," as opposed to "D&D for the first 25 years or so."




Fair enough.  I have amended my statement to specify 5e.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 26, 2019)

Oofta said:


> But the real question is: did the player of Indiana say "I make an investigation check to figure out how this trap works."




Or even just, "I roll Investigation...45." 

Because it's obvious why he's doing that, right?


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## Oofta (Apr 26, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Or even just, "I roll Investigation...45."
> 
> Because it's obvious why he's doing that, right?




If he's standing in front of a hall and the players are discussing that it might be trapped, yes.  Although given his track record of failing to achieve his goals I wouldn't put his investigation check would be quite that high.  Or maybe it's just his wisdom that was low ... unable to judge the weight of an idol, pretty much delivering the treasure into the hands of his nemesis, finds the McGuffin for the nazis instead of just letting them dig in the wrong place, fails his deception check and gets captured.  Hmm.


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## Hussar (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I like this. The player describes an approach, the DM thinks that approach would succeed, given the character's abilities, and so no roll is needed.
> 
> Goal-and-approach.  You nailed it.




Umm, in my example, the player never actually said a word.  So, no goal and approach needed.  It was, "You see the traps ahead of you and avoid them."  "You are running, make a Dex save".  The player was barely involved at all.  Certainly no approach was even implied.  And, well, "Perception 45" would have been perfectly fine in the context. 

I mean, you're looking down a hall and rolling a perception check, what exactly do you think the player is doing?  If I, as the player, need to spell it out in more detail than that, I'm in the wrong game.



Oofta said:


> But the real question is: did the player of Indiana say "I make an investigation check to figure out how this trap works."




Heck, I'm going a step further.  But, sure, it might have started with that.  You see a hallway.  "Perception 45"  Ok, you see the trap in the hallway.  You can avoid it if you wish or you could disarm it.  "Naw, we'll go around, ain't got time to fiddle with it".  

Done.

Pretty much pure character challenge, since the player didn't actually have to really do anything - the perception check in my example was passive.  But, even if you want to argue rolling the perception check at this point in time is a player challenge, well, that's splitting hairs too finely for me.

AFAIC, there's a nice venn diagram here.  One sliver on the left is Pure Player Challenge.  One sliver on the right is Pure Character Challenge.  And the two circles overlap about 90% and is labeled "mix of the two".


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 27, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> While someone could certainly say that the game has moved away from that (for some people), the history of D&D is one that emphasized player ability. I wouldn't say that a game that had some focus not using PC stats to come up with clues/solutions is "not D&D," as opposed to "D&D for the first 25 years or so."



Well, "skilled play," certainly.  The game also simply neglected to model much beyond combat and spellcasting in any sort of consistent way until 3.0/d20 and skills/DCs/ranks, so you very often fell back on DM/player interaction and player ability as gauged by the DM as a resolution system.  Rather than having a Passive Perception based on the character's ability, the DM would describe the room, carefully being certain to describe the clues that showed there was a trap there, and wait for the player to describe his investigation of the room in a way that either resulted in the trap being sprung, or being noticed.  It was an art.  You wanted to describe things just so, so that the player would kick himself /after/ he set off the trap, rather than just whine what an unfair killer game you ran. 
Similarly, while there were reaction adjustments for charisma, and a reaction check, that was about it, so interaction was primarily how well the player persuaded the DM that his character was being persuasive/intimidating/diplomatic.  If you were good at convincing your DM, you didn't need CHA, if bad at it, no amount of CHA helped.
Of course, there was a lively debate over how realistic it was to play a low-CHA character that way, rather than intentionally grounding it's every interaction (or the need to play dumb when your PC had a low INT, say) - but little on the other side of it, how you were supposed to play a very high INT or CHA 'right' if your own INT/CHA (as filtered through the DM) wasn't so high... 

...really, the d20 skill system, borked class balance, diplomancers and all was a massive improvement over the classic game.  Just night and day … well, blackest night and gloomy, stormy, wouldn't-go-out-if-I-was-you day.


#goodoldaze


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I have not once in my years of actual gaming had someone bring up what "Gygax had in mind".



Not in so many words. I have had the issue of "balanced parties" come up, and have seen people post about it.

A variation of the same problem, which I've also encountered and heard accounts of, is one player building a LN character and another a CG one.


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## Immortal Sun (Apr 27, 2019)

I'm gonna throw this hook out here and see what fish I catch:

I don't like challenging the player.  I'm not a fan of riddles.  I'm not a fan of puzzles.  Even though I actually enjoy these things personally, and so do some of my players, I really don't like the idea that I'm challenging the puppetmaster and not the puppet.  That may sound weird but I guess the way I think about it is...if everything is really a _player_ challenge, why do we have characters?  Is even _having_ a character a player challenge?  Keeping it alive like some kind of pen and paper Tomagotchi?  Forever trapped in a world it has no functional control over or influence on, with no ability to leave or even make a choice without the interaction of the player?

That's dark man.

Yeah, I mean you can't separate the player/character unit.  They are and aren't a single unit.  The character can only think what the player thinks, even if the player is trying to think like the character.  The character can't do anything the player doesn't want to do (unless you're one of _those_ DMs, boooo hisssss!) but the player can't do anything the PC isn't capable of.  But at the same time, there are things the PC is capable of the player isn't, there's a level of "experience" the PC has which the player doesn't and the player only comes to understand or do these things via rolls of the dice.  The PC casts spells, the player rolls for their effects.  The PC swings a sword, the player only rolls to hit and damage.

The Player is and isn't the Character.  The Character is and isn't the Player.  I feel like we devalue the existence of the Character if we frame our thinking of challenges as challenging the Player.  The Player will play regardless of which side of the coin the challenges are aimed at.  But the Character?  Well, we can actually remove him from the equation completely if we wanted.

So, by the very nature of even _having_ a Character, we must, to some extent, be challenging the Character somewhere along the road here.  Otherwise, for what purpose does the Character exist?







Hmmm, that's a little more existential than I intended....


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 27, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Umm, in my example, the player never actually said a word.  So, no goal and approach needed.  It was, "You see the traps ahead of you and avoid them."  "You are running, make a Dex save".  The player was barely involved at all.  Certainly no approach was even implied.  And, well, "Perception 45" would have been perfectly fine in the context.
> 
> I mean, you're looking down a hall and rolling a perception check, what exactly do you think the player is doing?  If I, as the player, need to spell it out in more detail than that, I'm in the wrong game.




Oh, I thought the _player_ was describing all that.  Nvm!





> Pretty much pure character challenge, since the player didn't actually have to really do anything...




And that's my goal for a fun and exciting game!

I like it when I can take a bathroom break and when I get back my character sheet has defeated the BBEG.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 27, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Not in so many words. I have had the issue of "balanced parties" come up, and have seen people post about it.
> 
> A variation of the same problem, which I've also encountered and heard accounts of, is one player building a LN character and another a CG one.



And alignment is another case of "what would gygax do" that we ignore too.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

On riddles: I think I used in 3 in 6 years of a 4e campaign. I don't think they required the players to depart from character to answer them.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 27, 2019)

pemerton said:


> On riddles: I think I used in 3 in 6 years of a 4e campaign. I don't think they required the players to depart from character to answer them.



I have used them less than thst. L much prefer the blue delving to be in-game mysteries and the like.

The last riddle session I was in was three weeks ago. One of them  hinged on the english spelling and pronunciation of a word, so it did not even cover the scope of our own real world, much less have a "in character in a fantasy world tie." So its answer definitely required leaving character. 

And, it was not one that seemed uncommon as rpg riddles go.


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## pemerton (Apr 27, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I have used them less than thst. L much prefer the blue delving to be in-game mysteries and the like.
> 
> The last riddle session I was in was three weeks ago. One of them  hinged on the english spelling and pronunciation of a word, so it did not even cover the scope of our own real world, much less have a "in character in a fantasy world tie." So its answer definitely required leaving character.
> 
> And, it was not one that seemed uncommon as rpg riddles go.



Well, here's the most recent riddle that I used - which is a while ago now!

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> the sphinx then came out, and told them that they must answer a riddle before they could pass further into the Mausoleum. I had mixed together abilities from a MM and MM2 sphinx, so they could either choose between accepting the challenge but suffering a debuff until answering it; or rejecting the challenge but granting the sphinx a power up. They chose to accept.
> 
> I wrote the riddle a few weeks ago on the train:
> 
> ...



[/sblock]

Before that I used a riddle from a 4e module, though in my campaign it was located in a different fictional context:

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> The invoker/wizard translated the supernal on the altar that announced that it contained the Ebon Flame. He prepared Object Reading (taking an hour) while the other PCs studied the sculptures and improvised some defences from the rubble where the floor had broken up. He then placed his hands into the marked slot and released his Object Reading. He learned that the altar had been made by Moradin and Pelor; that the Ebon Flame was within it; and that he was the first to touch it since it had been built. The altar itself spoke a riddle in Supernal (again from E1) - in summary form, what is the formless, colourless thing that moves the gods and causes victims of those who ignore it?
> 
> I was impressed that within five minutes or so of discussion the players had narrowed their options to Justice or Compassion/Benevolence. (Hope had also been canvassed but rule out as too non-specific; the contribution of the tiefling paladin of the Raven Queen, as played by his player, was to comment that this seemed to be about one of those good ideals rather than something like pride or revenge, and therefore the others could work it out.) The consensus seemed to be "Compassion", but the word had to be spoken in Supernal by the invoker/wizard, and he refused to place Compassion before Justice (he serves Erathis, Ioun, Bane, Vecna, Levistus, the Raven Queen, and Pelor only rather secondarily). Speaking the word "Justice" the altar blasted him with a crit for 77 points of damage, back into the angel of desolation where he took a bit more damage and had to be healed up before having another go. He then reluctantly spoke the word Compassion, and the altar opened up revealing the Ebon Flame - from which the form of Miska the Wolf Spider immediately burst forth (stats attached below).



[/sblock]

I can't remember the third, which was early in paragon tier. I believe I took it from a riddle book, but made sure it was not anachronistic.

Anyway, I hope the two actual play examples illustrate why I don't think that riddles have to involve breaking character or shifting the focus of play outside the fiction. Of course they have to be the right riddles.


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## Hussar (Apr 27, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh, I thought the _player_ was describing all that.  Nvm!
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Oh, hey, I've REPEATEDLY stated what works for me and mine and been very, very clear that I'm not in any way saying that it will work for you.  I fully believe that folks should find a table that works for them and not try to proclaim any single way is better or not, regardless of how much it follows the advice of the game writers.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Well, here's the most recent riddle that I used - which is a while ago now!
> 
> [sblock][/sblock]
> 
> ...



The raven queen examplexseems to show one of my #3 either a player-only or a character challenge can overcome it. **if** there was some check or trait that could have in-character led that paladin to the answer it's even more so because the answer option is character as well as player. In that, it foesnt rrl on the **player** knowing the Raven Queen story - their character does.

The second is it seems an example of my #4 - both are required (if I read it tight) because specific language skills in character *and* a riddle answered in player are required. 

Riddles do not have to be player only, no argument there. They just fo seem to be that way quite often.


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> The raven queen examplexseems to show one of my #3 either a player-only or a character challenge can overcome it. **if** there was some check or trait that could have in-character led that paladin to the answer it's even more so because the answer option is character as well as player. In that, it foesnt rrl on the **player** knowing the Raven Queen story - their character does.
> 
> The second is it seems an example of my #4 - both are required (if I read it tight) because specific language skills in character *and* a riddle answered in player are required.
> 
> Riddles do not have to be player only, no argument there. They just fo seem to be that way quite often.



I think at my table they're probably closer to your 1 (? I'm not sure I'm remembering your categories correctly), in the sense that there is not going to be any check made. At the table, the discussion is all between the players, playing their characters - so eg in the second you see the player of the paladin declining to take part because he's not interested in debating "good" ideals; and in the first, he is the one who is most excited about being in the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, and so it's not a coincidence (although also not guaranteed) that he is the one who works it out first.

I don't know 100% how this fits into your conception, or  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, or [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s - I would say it is challenging the player's ability to inhabit and play as his/her character. And of course it takes for granted that the player is immersed in the fiction of the campaign (riddle 3) or its moral logic (riddle 2). I think the first riddle - the one I can't remember - was probably weakest in this repsect because it didn't draw enough on that immersion.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think at my table they're probably closer to your 1 (? I'm not sure I'm remembering your categories correctly), in the sense that there is not going to be any check made. At the table, the discussion is all between the players, playing their characters - so eg in the second you see the player of the paladin declining to take part because he's not interested in debating "good" ideals; and in the first, he is the one who is most excited about being in the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, and so it's not a coincidence (although also not guaranteed) that he is the one who works it out first.
> 
> I don't know 100% how this fits into your conception, or  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, or [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s - I would say it is challenging the player's ability to inhabit and play as his/her character. And of course it takes for granted that the player is immersed in the fiction of the campaign (riddle 3) or its moral logic (riddle 2). I think the first riddle - the one I can't remember - was probably weakest in this repsect because it didn't draw enough on that immersion.



The reason I counted the sphinx as #3 was a perception (maybe wrong) that they had options to just bypass it and fight with debuff or some such, so they could default punt back to solving it with charscters.

I would not see it as default involving the charscter both ways **if ** it relied on the player knowing the raven queen story. If they can do a religion check and have their character's knowledge play a role, that's different. But the "immersion" equating to "did I memorize the lore myself" (if that is what you meant) would not be a linkage I work at. I dont expect the life cleric hesler to learn medicine yo show "immersion" or the thief player to learn lock picking.

 But its entirely possible I misread your immersion exsmple.


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## pemerton (Apr 28, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> The reason I counted the sphinx as #3 was a perception (maybe wrong) that they had options to just bypass it and fight with debuff or some such, so they could default punt back to solving it with charscters.
> 
> I would not see it as default involving the charscter both ways **if ** it relied on the player knowing the raven queen story. If they can do a religion check and have their character's knowledge play a role, that's different. But the "immersion" equating to "did I memorize the lore myself" (if that is what you meant) would not be a linkage I work at. I dont expect the life cleric hesler to learn medicine yo show "immersion" or the thief player to learn lock picking.
> 
> But its entirely possible I misread your immersion exsmple.



For me, the comparison between knowing the mythic history of your god which has been a principal focus of the play and the character, and knowing about how locks work or medicine works, is completely inapt.

It's more like, in a B2 campaign, the player knowing the difference between an orc in the Caves and a soldier of the Keep.


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## Hussar (Apr 28, 2019)

I wonder if there isn't some overlap between those who insist that there are no "character" challenges and those who insist that the DM should never take any control over a PC?

The reason I think this is because, if you accept that there is a separation of the character and the player, then stating something like, "You believe that NPC" isn't telling the player what he thinks at all.  The DM is stating what the character believes.  Because the character and the player are not the same thing, when the DM does this, he's not telling the player what to think, but, rather, he's telling the player that the character believes X and the player is now somewhat expected to take that into consideration when taking further actions.

To me, there's no difference between saying, "You believe the NPC" (you in this case meaning the character) and, "You take 10 damage from the orc's sword".  In both cases, it's the character that is being affected, not the player.  It's not like you reach over an punch your players when the PC takes damage in the game.  Well, maybe some folks do, but, generally, I'd say no, most don't.

If you think that there is separation between the player and the PC, then most of these issue go away.


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## Immortal Sun (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I wonder if there isn't some overlap between those who insist that there are no "character" challenges and those who insist that the DM should never take any control over a PC?




I'd be interested in the response as well, since I subscribe to the later, but not the former.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

pemerton said:


> For me, the comparison between knowing the mythic history of your god which has been a principal focus of the play and the character, and knowing about how locks work or medicine works, is completely inapt.
> 
> It's more like, in a B2 campaign, the player knowing the difference between an orc in the Caves and a soldier of the Keep.



Ok. Not sure u get your "it's more like" cuz whatever you mean by "a b2 campaign" is lost on me. It could be several things. But that's fine. Maybe you meant the 39 year old module, maybe not. 

But, for me, I dont see a difference in "you are playing a lock expert character  but you the player's knowledge of locks in the campaign is key to this challenge not the character's" and "you are playing the Raven Queen expert character but you the player's knowledge of the Raven Querns lore in the campaign is key to this challenge, not the character's"

Dont get me wrong, it's great if the player did all that, remembered all that and made the connection and it was in character too,  but to me at the end of the day the character has spent *one would think* years or months at this, far far far  more than a session a week, as a major part of their belief and life. Meanwhile I hope none of my players go as far as that with my games. 

So, for my games there would be a "refer to character" option, maybe it's not just an oblique similarity in the life cycle but some aspects of the art, the phrasings, the accent or pronunciation etc thst sync up with Raven Queen Lore that a character reference can reveal. 

But it's not gonna be a case of "hey, Joe, I know you have the new baby but really you should a spent a little more time reading the baby raven queen lore"

To me "the character I play is an acolyte of the raven queen and is very well versed in her lore" does not equate to orcrequire "ok, here is the list of links on RQ lore so you better start studying cuz when it matters its gonna be your knowledge that matters."

Note - I fully expect you do not take it to this extreme, but to me, it does seem like your example is calling out the player's knowledge of the lore (specifically the birth/life cycle of the queen's history (not the more day-to-day stuff the PLAYER references like say domain or domain features and traits)  and unless I missed it gave no reference to being able to refer to the character's knowledge in this case. - to check on whether or not the character knows it.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I wonder if there isn't some overlap between those who insist that there are no "character" challenges and those who insist that the DM should never take any control over a PC?
> 
> The reason I think this is because, if you accept that there is a separation of the character and the player, then stating something like, "You believe that NPC" isn't telling the player what he thinks at all.  The DM is stating what the character believes.  Because the character and the player are not the same thing, when the DM does this, he's not telling the player what to think, but, rather, he's telling the player that the character believes X and the player is now somewhat expected to take that into consideration when taking further actions.
> 
> ...



I do not step that far. So, I dont see the connection. 

When it comes to the insight vs lies etc, I tell the player what their character picks up.  

There is a big difference between "the signs you can see point to him being truthful" (or the more common language " he seems to be telling the truth") and "you believe them" So, in my games part of.the "on the same page" we get to early is that at any time it's my intent as GM to actually say "these thoughts are in your head" it will be far more explicit than that. That these are just ways of describing what characters perceive. 

I am not a GM who says that the consequence of failed insight checks etc must be the PC belief, not at all. I got lots more ways to make that check meaningful. 

But I dont see any linkage between that and the character challenge issue myself. 

But I certainly suppose someone could. If the whole deception vs insight us in a GMs mind a test of the player, then yeah, I suppose it's possible that leads to something very different on a failure than I might give.

"Yeah, that guy in the bar was full of it. I watched him and saw a couple obvious whoppers, a few sky ones and hey, probably missed some. You gotta get up pretty early in the day to fool... to...  hey... where is my pouch? The pouch with the ring we found! It's missing? How did it... wait... what... what halfling? I didn't see no halfling... I was watching the... oh crap."


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## iserith (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> If you think that there is separation between the player and the PC, then most of these issue go away.




What issues?


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## zedturtle (Apr 28, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> And that's my goal for a fun and exciting game!
> 
> I like it when I can take a bathroom break and when I get back my character sheet has defeated the BBEG.




I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:

*Shields!*
When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.

_Example: Wumbo has an Intelligence (Tactical Operations) of +6 and their Ship has a current Shield Strength of 10, meaning that the total shields' strength must add up to be 26. Anticipating an attack on the port side, they set Port-Bow and Port-Stern to 11 each, and assign only 1 point to the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern and Aft sections._

*OR*

*Shields!*
When you take this action, you try to anticipate your attackers' most likely targets and reconfigure the ship's shields to prevent damage. Make an Intelligence (Tactical Operations) check against your opponents' highest passive Dexterity (Targeting Systems). On a success, the ship has resistance to damage until the beginning of your next turn. If you succeed by 5 or more, the ship is immune to damage until the beginning of your next turn.

—•—

Now obviously those are two different kinds of rules and you'd never intermix those rule styles. But both rules consume the same resource (a player's action on their turn). One challenges the player to anticipate the attack position. The other challenges the character — the player is under no obligation to figure out where to reallocate the shields, but we figure that the character does do a good job if they succeed at the skill check.

—•—

* Of course our theoretical starship game uses a hex-grid for combat, because anything else would be barbaric.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

zedturtle said:


> I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:
> 
> *Shields!*
> When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.
> ...



To me those are both testing the charsacter examples.

One is z resource allocation that directly accesses the PC traits. The other is a check based one with more success-fail than resource spend but it still directly utilizes the charscter stats.

In short, no matter which of those you choose "who the charascter is" will matter to the outcome. If you put in the ships tactical officer or the ships cargo loading guy - it matters - because direct changes likely occur with the switch.

By the way, I see nothing st odds eith those two examples in same game, they could easily show different shield designs or training..

But a better kind of example would be having some sort of player-side puzzle to solve the "starship command codes" to turn off the other ship shields. If figuring out that code does not require PC stats, so that the cook and the cargo handler do not have different chances than the medic or the science officer, the results and solutions never touch "character."


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## zedturtle (Apr 28, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> To me those are both testing the charsacter examples.
> 
> One is z resource allocation that directly accesses the PC traits. The other is a check based one with more success-fail than resource spend but it still directly utilizes the charscter stats.
> 
> In short, no matter which of those you choose "who the charascter is" will matter to the outcome. If you put in the ships tactical officer or the ships cargo loading guy - it matters - because direct changes likely occur with the switch.




In the first example, the player is allocating the shields for various locations. A player with better spatial/tactical awareness will do a better job than a player without those traits.

In the second example, the only thing the character is allocating the shields for various locations. The success of the allocation is based solely on the randomness of the dice roll.

In both cases, the player decides to take the action. But in the first example, the player also gets to determine the results.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

zedturtle said:


> In the first example, the player is allocating the shields for various locations. A player with better spatial/tactical awareness will do a better job than a player without those traits.
> 
> In the second example, the only thing the character is allocating the shields for various locations. The success of the allocation is based solely on the randomness of the dice roll.
> 
> In both cases, the player decides to take the action. But in the first example, the player also gets to determine the results.




But in the first example, the character's stats determines how much shielding there is. So the choices that led to those stats and the character stats themselves apply as do the choices made now. So it is a challenge that the character matters to. 

perhaps this is party of the problem - the definitions of "challenge the character" does not include "no player choices". 

Take "i cast wall of fog". that is an action that involves a character trait and an expendable resource and a choice to use it. No die roll is needed. The player chooses where to put it. So, whatever challenge led to needing or deciding to cast wall of fog challenged the player and the character. Its likely no other characters could do this, or at least relatively few, so "this character here" matters - even though no die roll was made.

Similarly, the character who needs to pick a lock might have auto-success, while others wont, as long as they don't try it when under a disadvantaged effect. So again, a combo of character stats and player choices. 

Nothing in "challenge the character" says the player must be irrelevant - in a fight the player who chooses whether to to concentrate his attacks and where to move with a plan in mind  will often fare much better than say someone who lets a random roll decide his actions - player choices will seriously affect the outcome as well as the character stats. 

Now, if your example was such that there was no boost to shields from character stats *and* literally anybody can operate that console and assign the shields even if they had never seen a starship, then thats challenging the player directly - the character at work become irrelevant - any warm or cold body will do (and perhaps some non-bodies - it is scifi.)


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## iserith (Apr 28, 2019)

zedturtle said:


> I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:
> 
> *Shields!*
> When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.
> ...




I think the folks talking about "challenging the character" are mostly just confusing the concepts of "challenge" and "difficulty."

"Challenge" is a situation in which the player has to make decisions to affect an unknown outcome. "Difficulty" is how likely the undesirable outcome of that situation is to come to pass, often requiring tougher decisions on the part of the player to overcome the challenge. The better those decisions in context, the more difficulty is _mitigated_ and the better the odds of a favorable outcome. The worse those decisions in context, the more difficulty is _aggravated_ and the better the odds of an unfavorable outcome. The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge or, as in D&D 5e and ability checks, backup for when the proposed action has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.

In the case of your above example, the player is being challenged in both situations since the player has to make some decisions to affect an unknown outcome. With the "Shields!" option, the player is presumably choosing this action over other action options in the moment ("Fire Torpedos!" or "Fire Phasers!" perhaps) for reasons known to the player. Otherwise there is no choice here and thus no challenge to anyone, just random number generation if that. So, presuming there is a meaningful choice, the player is being challenged here. It's just that in the second "Shields!" option, it looks like the player just has less input. If there is no choice, again, there is no challenge - not to the player, and of course not to the character (which is just a tool for the player).

When some of you are talking about setting up situations that are tougher on the character or that are in line with the character's abilities, you're really just talking about making the tool that is the character less effective or more effective for the player to use to overcome the challenge. If you present a combat challenge with a fire-immune fire elemental to a wizard who has taken all fire spells, for example, you are not challenging the character - you are challenging the player and have made the tool by which the player can overcome the challenge less effective, thereby increasing the difficulty. If conversely you present a combat challenge with a bunch of fire-vulnerable mummies to that same wizard, you've made the tool by which the player can overcome the challenge more effective, thereby decreasing the difficulty. In either case, it is the player who is being challenged since it is the players' decisions that impact the outcome of the challenge.


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## Satyrn (Apr 28, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh, hey, I've REPEATEDLY stated what works for me and mine and been very, very clear that I'm not in any way saying that it will work for you.  I fully believe that folks should find a table that works for them and not try to proclaim any single way is better or not, regardless of how much it follows the advice of the game writers.






I've been reading that sentiment a lot lately 

This needs to be a drinking game: Drink a mug of ale every time someone says something like "I'm just saying what I do; you do you."


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

zedturtle said:


> I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:
> 
> *Shields!*
> When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.
> ...




I've been thinking about these debates (this thread, and the Insight one). It occurs to me that both sides keep describing the most extreme version of the other side, e.g. it's "the player solves a multivariable calculus problem" vs. "the DM makes passive checks for the characters without ever asking the players for input".  It's pretty hard to reconcile differences when you start with such a huge gulf.

Instead, what I've been thinking, is that the goal should be to come up with two variants of a scenario that are as close to each other as possible, but that one camp chooses version A, and the other camp chooses version B.  That would help us identify where the actual disagreement is, and help both sides better understand the other side's position.

And there's [MENTION=6830534]zedturtle[/MENTION] (of course...he's got expertise in Diplomacy) doing just that.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I've been reading that sentiment a lot lately
> 
> This needs to be a drinking game: Drink a mug of ale every time someone says something like "I'm just saying what I do; you do you."




What if what they say is: "Well you might as well be playing tic tac toe if you want to totally eliminate the roleplaying and just make it a mindless boardgame, you loser.  But no offense meant. I'm just saying what I do; you do you."

Do you still have to drink?  Or maybe it's not a matter of "have" to, more like you need to.


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## Satyrn (Apr 28, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What if what they say is: "Well you might as well be playing tic tac toe if you want to totally eliminate the roleplaying and just make it a mindless boardgame, you loser.  But no offense meant. I'm just saying what I do; you do you."
> 
> Do you still have to drink?  Or maybe it's not a matter of "have" to, more like you need to.




Well no. Unlike my dungeon crawl campaigns, my drinking game is not like a mindless boardgame, and so you gotta judge the context of their actions. In your example, there is no hint of sincerity, so there's no need to take a drink . . . and I see I need to errata in that the phrase must be spoken with a modicum of sincerity. What amount of sincerity constitutes a modicum is left to the disgression of the the judge - this isn't a mind drinking game, after all!

But, uh, this is just how I play my drinking game. You're free to play it in whatever way works best for you.


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## Satyrn (Apr 28, 2019)

zedturtle said:


> I think I've come up with the perfect example of challenging the character versus challenging the player, although it's not in-genre. Let's say that we are playing a game where the PCs are the bridge crew of an exploratory starship that often comes across new and exciting situations and sometimes does battle with aggressors, alien and otherwise. Let's also pretend that we're writing up the various actions that the crew can take in battle and we write up one for the Tactical Officer:
> 
> *Shields!*
> When you take this action, you can reallocate the shields' strength between the Forward, Starboard-Bow, Starboard-Stern, Port-Bow, Port-Stern and Aft locations*. The total shield strength is equal to the Ship's current Shield Strength plus your passive Intelligence (Tactical Operations) and each location must receive at least one point.
> ...




It's an excellent example, I think, but would've been made better with less complexity in the first option. As you quickly saw, the bit about the characters passive ability score confused the issue.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 28, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> It's an excellent example, I think, but would've been made better with less complexity in the first option. As you quickly saw, the bit about the characters passive ability score confused the issue.




What I do like about it, though, is that it involves _decision-making_ by the player combined with associated _mechanics_ determined by the character.

So many people arguing for "challenging the character" keep invoking examples where it's pure puzzle-solving by the player (riddles, logic problems, breaking codes and ciphers, etc.), even though most of the "challenge the player" crowd keeps saying that those sorts of problems are not what they're arguing for. 

So if zed's example had been totally divorced from the character it would risk further confusion.  And as I said in my last post, examples that are closer together, rather than further apart, is where we are all going to learn something (as opposed to simply continuing to ridicule a caricature of the other side's position...which is admittedly kinda fun, but not very productive.)


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## Satyrn (Apr 28, 2019)

True, it does show how  "challenging the player" does involve the character sheet, too.

And it does show the sort of mix of player decision and character stats that is seen a lot in my game. So yeah, it was simply an excellent example that does show what we mean when we talk about challenging the player.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 28, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> True, it does show how  "challenging the player" does involve the character sheet, too.
> 
> And it does show the sort of mix of player decision and character stats that is seen a lot in my game. So yeah, it was simply an excellent example that does show what we mean when we talk about challenging the player.



So, if you go back to even page one, you see descriptions of what challenge the charscter and challenge the layer divisions are - stated by some on iirc both sides.

If the challenge the player "side" is now wanting their position to be that it's about having both charscters stats and player choices relevant to resolution of encounters, not having player-only puzzles sndvriddles where literally any character can resolve it successfully with the right action statement - then I think that's wonderful and we have certainly made progress.


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## Mort (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge or, as in D&D 5e and ability checks, backup for when the proposed action has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.




Here, I think, is the fundamental issue:

You state "The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge..."

But Shouldn't the character *be* the suite of options?

If Gary is playing Plunk, half-orc barbarian with muscles the size of mountains and a brain the size of a pea, should Gary really be employing higher level strategic planning in social and exploration challenges?

By choosing Plunk and his suite of abilities/options, Gary has decided how he wishes to interact with the game. That's the player being challenged through the character.


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## Umbran (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So many people arguing for "challenging the character" keep invoking examples where it's pure puzzle-solving by the player (riddles, logic problems, breaking codes and ciphers, etc.), even though most of the "challenge the player" crowd keeps saying that those sorts of problems are not what they're arguing for.




Those sort of puzzle solving examples are invoked to demonstrate the logic of the issue, using an example that many of us have probably actually seen in practice at some time or other.  There are other examples, but they have connotations that allow for deflection*.

There's a completely different problem that arises in arguments - Person A says that in some given context, it is better to challenge the character, not the player, and then describes what they mean by that.  Then, Person B counters, saying, "But I want to challenge the player, and I don't do the sort of thing described," but then persists as if Person A is against what they do.  It is a form of rhetorical bait-and-switch.

If a problematic behavior is outlined, and you don't fit the description...  then maybe there's no issue, and you can stop arguing over it.




*For example, resolving social encounters without reference to the game's social mechanics - basing the result purely on the player's glib tongue, and not noting the character has a Charisma of 6.  The usual deflection I have seen is, 'Well, that's the GM just playing favorites," which misses the point.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> Here, I think, is the fundamental issue:
> 
> You state "The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge..."
> 
> ...




What are you calling “brain the size of a pea”?  Int 8?  6?  4?  Lower?

Regardless, if Gary wants to play Plunk as a moron I think he should be welcome to. But I don’t think it’s anybody else’s job to police exactly how he chooses to do that.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 29, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Those sort of puzzle solving examples are invoked to demonstrate the logic of the issue, using an example that many of us have probably actually seen in practice at some time or other.  There are other examples, but they have connotations that allow for deflection*.
> 
> There's a completely different problem that arises in arguments - Person A says that in some given context, it is better to challenge the character, not the player, and then describes what they mean by that.  Then, Person B counters, saying, "But I want to challenge the player, and I don't do the sort of thing described," but then persists as if Person A is against what they do.  It is a form of rhetorical bait-and-switch.
> 
> ...



"If a problematic behavior is outlined, and you don't fit the description... then maybe there's no issue, and you can stop arguing over it."

Yeah, after this latest swerve, it really seems we are all in favor of having challenges where the player makes choices *and* those combined with the references to the character stats and traits lead to the resolution, but that those where the player choices alone without reference to character traits are enough are right out, not what we are expecting.

I call that a win-win.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Those sort of puzzle solving examples are invoked to demonstrate the logic of the issue, using an example that many of us have probably actually seen in practice at some time or other.  There are other examples, but they have connotations that allow for deflection*.




I'm not sure I buy that.  I mean, I agree that it would be valid to use a pure-logic challenge for illustrative purposes, for example if you were asking another poster to clarify their position.

But what I'm seeing from some posters (and really this is a pattern that repeats itself in all these debates) is a willful exaggeration of the other side to the most extreme version of the position, in an attempt to discredit it.  

Exhibit J: "Telegraphing" a trap becomes "Signs that say 'trap here'."



> There's a completely different problem that arises in arguments - Person A says that in some given context, it is better to challenge the character, not the player, and then describes what they mean by that.  Then, Person B counters, saying, "But I want to challenge the player, and I don't do the sort of thing described," but then persists as if Person A is against what they do.  It is a form of rhetorical bait-and-switch.




Maybe that also happens, but some have argued pretty explicitly that they think the adjudication of anything important should fall to the dice using ability/skill mechanics, and that no cleverness on the part of the player should alter the probabilities.  That, for example, "I disarm the trap" with no description should have exactly the same odds of disarming the trap as proposing a clever and logical way of doing so.



> If a problematic behavior is outlined, and you don't fit the description...  then maybe there's no issue, and you can stop arguing over it.




It gets pretty frustrating when you try repeatedly to clarify your position, and others continue to (willfully?) ignore it, preferring the more extreme caricature instead.  For example, in the thread about Insight, how many times did a bunch of us explain "it's not about the quality of the performance, it's about the approach taken" and still a couple posters kept going on about how we're rewarding people for being glib.

I mean, I guess you're right in the sense that maybe we should just stop arguing with those people.



> *For example, resolving social encounters without reference to the game's social mechanics - basing the result purely on the player's glib tongue, and not noting the character has a Charisma of 6.  The usual deflection I have seen is, 'Well, that's the GM just playing favorites," which misses the point.




And as I just said above, continually accusing somebody of DMing that way, when it's been explained to them repeatedly that they are totally misinterpreting what you mean by 'approach', also misses the point.


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## Umbran (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> And as I just said above, continually accusing somebody of DMing that way, when it's been explained to them repeatedly that they are totally misinterpreting what you mean by 'approach', also misses the point.




Yep.

Now, go through the thread, and check - how many times have you actually been accused, _explicitly_?  How many times can you quote someone as saying *you* do a thing you don't actually do, and have said you don't do?  Leave out all cases where they are speaking in general, or about a person who is not you.

This is another things that happens, to people on all sides - perception of wrongs that are not actually in the text.  Humans read into stuff, a lot.  One person perceives a slight, and that gets under their skin, and they get irked, and it shows, so the other side senses the irk and figures that means an intended slight... and both sides end up feeling they are being accused, when little actual accusation has actually happened.

You have no idea how often two people will be arguing, and report each other for saying things that never actually got said.  This is especially common in what I call "dichotomy wars".  Like this one - you can Challenge the Player or Challenge the Character, and these somehow become two styles that are like matter and antimatter, and any critique of one becomes a Big Deal for the other.  

If you don't feel the other folks are listening to you... why continue talking?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Yep.
> 
> Now, go through the thread, and check - how many times have you actually been accused, _explicitly_?  How many times can you quote someone as saying *you* do a thing you don't actually do, and have said you don't do?  Leave out all cases where they are speaking in general, or about a person who is not you.




150 posts?  No thanks.  But if _you_ tabulate all those posts I'd love to see the results.

XML or JSON format, please.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> Here, I think, is the fundamental issue:
> 
> You state "The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge..."
> 
> ...




In my view, "should" is a problematic word in a imaginary world of sword and sorcery based on childhood games of make-believe. For every "should" you can come up with, I can come up with a whole lot more "could's," "might's," "may's," and "can's" to explain anything, anytime. That's the beauty of games based on imagination.

The game, and here I'm referring to D&D 5e (if not other games), sets no limits on whether an action declaration is valid or not. It tasks the DM with judging the _outcome_ of that action. But it's otherwise up to the player to determine how the character acts and thinks and what it says. 

If the DM wants Gary to portray Plunk in a particular way, perhaps according to Plunk's personal characteristics, the incentive the DM has for that is Inspiration. The decisions Gary has to make in a challenge in order to earn that Inspiration may raise or lower the difficulty of the challenge. But make no mistake, Gary is the one being challenged whether he's taking advantage of Plunk's character options or not.

What Plunk "should" do is nothing the DM ever needs to worry about in my view, provided Gary is otherwise making choices that are fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story. And if someone is the sort of person who is not having fun because Gary is not making decisions according to what _that person_ thinks a low-Intelligence barbarian is capable of thinking, saying, and doing, then it might be worth examining if the problem is someone other than Gary.


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## Mort (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> In my view, "should" is a problematic word in a imaginary world of sword and sorcery based on childhood games of make-believe. For every "should" you can come up with, I can come up with a whole lot more "could's," "might's," "may's," and "can's" to explain anything, anytime. That's the beauty of games based on imagination.




You didn't actually answer the question. 

The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?




iserith said:


> The game, and here I'm referring to D&D 5e (if not other games), sets no limits on whether an action declaration is valid or not. It tasks the DM with judging the _outcome_ of that action. But it's otherwise up to the player to determine how the character acts and thinks and what it says.




That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235.  A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.



iserith said:


> If the DM wants Gary to portray Plunk in a particular way, perhaps according to Plunk's personal characteristics, the incentive the DM has for that is Inspiration. The decisions Gary has to make in a challenge in order to earn that Inspiration may raise or lower the difficulty of the challenge. But make no mistake, Gary is the one being challenged whether he's taking advantage of Plunk's character options or not.
> 
> What Plunk "should" do is nothing the DM ever needs to worry about in my view, provided Gary is otherwise making choices that are fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story. And if someone is the sort of person who is not having fun because Gary is not making decisions according to what _that person_ thinks a low-Intelligence barbarian is capable of thinking, saying, and doing, then it might be worth examining if the problem is someone other than Gary.




Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> You didn't actually answer the question.
> 
> The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?




What do you mean by "going outside those options"?  The game provides for adding or subtracting an ability modifier from skill checks and saving throws.  There's no other rule for playing a "dumb" (or weak, or uncharismatic, etc.) character.  



> That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235.  *A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.*




The problem with quoting that rule is that 'metagaming' carries a lot of definitions and connotations, depending on who you ask. The part I bolded is entirely your subjective interpretation.

Here, this is how the passage you are invoking describes metagaming:


> For example, a player might say, " The DM wouldn't throw such a powerful monster at us!" or you might hear, " The read-aloud text spent a lot of time describing that door- let's search it again!"




In other words, _absolutely nothing_ related to how mental attributes should be roleplayed.  They are using a specific, and entirely different, definition of 'metagaming'.



> Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.




First, that recommendation is in the context of the kind of metagaming they are talking about, not the sort you are talking about.

Second, notice it explicitly does not encourage the DM to say, "This is what your character thinks..."  In other words, it's up to the players to decide what their character thinks.  So if the player of Zord the Barbarian, with his -1 modifier to Int checks and Int saving throws, wants to come up with a good idea, that's entirely up to the player.


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> The reason I think this is because, if you accept that there is a separation of the character and the player...




I accept that there is a separation between the character and the player, because in my time as DM I have killed a lot of characters, but so far I have never killed a player.



> The DM is stating what the character believes.  Because the character and the player are not the same thing, when the DM does this, he's not telling the player what to think, but, rather, he's telling the player that the character believes X and the player is now somewhat expected to take that into consideration when taking further actions.




While I do accept a separation between the character and the player, as I've argued elsewhere, the mind of the player inherently projects into the game world (in a fashion that, for example, their body does not).  As such, I don't see quite the same separation between telling the player what the character thinks and telling the player how to play that you are trying to draw here.  I might say, "As far as you can tell, the NPC is telling the truth."   I would never suggest that the player or player character actually believes the NPC, only that the player and PC have no evidence to the contrary.  

The only time I will tell the player how to play is if for some reason they've lost control over their character temporarily.   Then I might pass the player a note that says something like, "You've suddenly discovered your are madly in love with the fairy, and you'd never let her come to harm.", with the expectation that the player would understand, "I've been enchanted", but the player understands that the PC, by being enchanted, doesn't understand that.  Most of my player's are mature enough to go with that, so that I don't have to take their PC away from them.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> You didn't actually answer the question.




I did though, but I'll restate it again: The player describes what he or she wants to do. The player determines what his or her character does, thinks, and says. Those are the rules. What a character "should" do can therefore only be determined by the player. The player is not limited by what is on her or her sheet. That information is only there, in part, to resolve actions that have uncertain outcomes and a meaningful consequence of failure (as determined by the DM).



Mort said:


> The game provides the player with specific options for action resolution, both physical and mental. How is going outside those options not a violation of those rules/guidelines?




There is no limit placed by the rules on your action declarations. The player describes what he or she wants to do. The DM narrates the outcome of the adventurer's actions, sometimes calling for a roll when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.



Mort said:


> That's not correct. 5e expressly charges the DM to call out and discourage metagame thinking by players. If an action declaration is metagaming, the DM can absolutely call it out and even stop it. DMG p. 235.  A player consistently going outside the tools/abilities his character has qualifies.




Perhaps however you define "metagaming" or "metagame thinking" isn't how the game defines it. A lot of people drag in their ideas of what these terms mean from other games or how their older cousin taught them or whatever.

It's very clear what it means if taken on its face: Players are discouraged from making _bad assumptions_ based on out-of-game concerns that negatively impact the game experience. It gives specific examples such as as getting their characters killed because they don't think the DM would put a deadly monster in the adventure or wasting valuable time exploring a door simply because the DM was a little wordy when describing the environment.

_That_ is the sort of "metagame thinking" they recommend discouraging by suggesting to the players they have their characters take action in-game to assess things. It says absolutely nothing about, for example, a player of the barbarian coming up with an action that someone else at the table thinks is not suitable for a low-Intelligence barbarian.



Mort said:


> Playing through the character has nothing to do with player agency. It has to do with using the tools you chose/were given and the DM enforcing this. The DMG recognizes this by encouraging the DM to, for example, say "What do your characters think?" (DMG p. 235) when he sees the players acting outside of their characters.




"What does Plunk think?" _Whatever Gary says Plunk thinks_. But Gary is well-advised by the DMG not to have Plunk act on bad assumptions based on out-of-game information that may hurt the party or the play experience. That's all the section you are quoting means. 

The DM gets to decide the outcome of an adventurer's action. He or she doesn't get to decide what sorts of actions the player of that adventure may take, nor can other players. The smart play for Gary is to have Plunk do things Plunk is good at in the event the DM calls for a roll. _But the choice is up to Gary_. If he wants to engage in the exploration or social interaction challenge the DM presents, he better hope the dice are on his side when the DM asks him to roll - and that perhaps he has Inspiration in his back pocket from all that excellent portrayal of the character he did earlier.


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]: After 30+ years of GMing, I've discovered that if you are worried about the players metagaming, it's almost certainly the case that the fault is with you, and that then instructing the players to not metagame is simply digging your own hole deeper.  The only time metagaming is poor play is when it is a symptom of some other sort of poor play (such as cheating by buying a copy of the module you are playing).  Otherwise, you should really not even try to identify metagaming, much less assert GM force to prevent it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]: After 30+ years of GMing, I've discovered that if you are worried about the players metagaming, it's almost certainly the case that the fault is with you, and that then instructing the PC's to not metagame is simply digging your own hole deeper.  The only time metagaming is poor play is when it is a symptom of some other sort of poor play (such as cheating by buying a copy of the module you are playing).  Otherwise, you should really not even try to identify metagaming, much less assert GM force to prevent it.




Fully agree.

The word 'immersion' falls into a similar category.  Usually when either word is used it means the speaker/writer has a subjective preference for how RPGs get played, but they want their opinion to sound like objective truth.


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Well, you now have a good example of why I can't agree with [MENTION=6859536]Monayuris[/MENTION] when he proposes its not possible to challenge the character, only the player.  Monayuris assumes that character generation is even a thing in which the player has agency.  It may well not be.
> 
> I think before we start dealing with the range of complexity that can be found in a game like 5e, we need to have a solid understanding of the difference between "challenging a player" and "challenging a character".  I think my "Choose your Own Adventure" example is simple enough that we can clearly see the two challenges are distinctive in character.  One depends entirely on player choice.  One involves no player choice.   In most situations there will be some mixture of player choice and mechanical resolution, but we can imagine a spectrum and in most cases decide whether the challenge is more like player choice only, more like mechanical resolution only, or lying in a fuzzy area between that so that the best description is "both".
> 
> Both is probably more typical in a full fledged PnP RPG, in that most propositions involve adopting a strategy and then making some doubtful proposition which is resolved by a fortune mechanic.  But, as my early examples with the locked door show, it's possible to find pure examples in play.




I'm not sure how it is possible to create a character without player agency.

Again, even in the most strictest hard coded mechanic-heavy games. It is always the player who chooses to implement the abilities of the character. I guess if you want a game where only the character is challenged, you would end up with a pretty boring game.

I imagine it would work like this:
DM: You enter a room. It is DC 15
Player: My character rolled 18!
DM: You solved the room... next room..

Perhaps reducto ad absurdum, but it is what I think of when I see a lot of modern D&D game play. When, as a DM, you describe a room and you just allow a skill roll, you are boiling your game down to this. Every time you allow a player to just make an investigation check or whatever, you are just running through the above; but just with more words and flowery descriptions... but the end result is just that.


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## Mort (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What do you mean by "going outside those options"?  The game provides for adding or subtracting an ability modifier from skill checks and saving throws.  There's no other rule for playing a "dumb" (or weak, or uncharismatic, etc.) character.




I mean when a player consistently uses knowledge his character really shouldn't have.

And there are rules. The DM can expressly call for ability/skill checks. If for example a player consistently points out weaknesses of monsters his character really shouldn't know, or uses knowledge of history (as an example) the character couldn't possibly know, the DM can curb that.

But if the DM allows the player to play however they want on mental stats, the DM is favoring players who design characters a certain way.





Elfcrusher said:


> The problem with quoting that rule is that 'metagaming' carries a lot of definitions and connotations, depending on who you ask. The part I bolded is entirely your subjective interpretation.
> 
> Here, this is how the passage you are invoking describes metagaming:
> 
> ...




Using out our character knowledge to aid play is in no way subjective, it's metagaming.





Elfcrusher said:


> First, that recommendation is in the context of the kind of metagaming they are talking about, not the sort you are talking about.
> 
> Second, notice it explicitly does not encourage the DM to say, "This is what your character thinks..."  In other words, it's up to the players to decide what their character thinks.  So if the player of Zord the Barbarian, with his -1 modifier to Int checks and Int saving throws, wants to come up with a good idea, that's entirely up to the player.




I never said the DM should tell the player what to think - but to discourage using out of character knowledge in playing the game.

The problem is self correcting if the DM calls for checks to essentially keep the player honest. But, while it's a long, long thread, I get the impression those checks don't see a lot of play at certain tables, certainly not in the examples provided.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 29, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] said 
"Maybe that also happens, but some have argued pretty explicitly that they think the adjudication of anything important should fall to the dice using ability/skill mechanics, and that no cleverness on the part of the player should alter the probabilities. That, for example, "I disarm the trap" with no description should have exactly the same odds of disarming the trap as proposing a clever and logical way of doing so."

It would be nice to have cites for this claim. However, so far I dont think I have seen this on the challenge the character side. I am pretty sure many or most have at one point of another explicitly said that either advantage or disadvantage can come from the choices made by the player.

Do you have examples from this thread? 

Or is this one of those pretending extremes?


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> The problem is self correcting if the DM calls for checks to essentially keep the player honest. But, while it's a long, long thread, I get the impression those checks don't see a lot of play at certain tables, certainly not in the examples provided.




DMG page 236-237: "By balancing the use of dice against deciding on success, you can encourage your players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world."

Notably, this is the the only one of three approaches the DMG doesn't say has potential drawbacks.


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]: After 30+ years of GMing, I've discovered that if you are worried about the players metagaming, it's almost certainly the case that the fault is with you, and that then instructing the players to not metagame is simply digging your own hole deeper.  The only time metagaming is poor play is when it is a symptom of some other sort of poor play (such as cheating by buying a copy of the module you are playing).  Otherwise, you should really not even try to identify metagaming, much less assert GM force to prevent it.




Agreed!

Honestly meta-gaming isn't really something I particularly care about. I look at it like this: I run D&D for people who've been playing for 30+ years, I also run D&D for people who have never played before. I'm not going to look a 30 year veteran of D&D in the eye with a straight face and tell them that their 1st level character wouldn't use fire against the troll they're fighting. I mean how many times has this person fought trolls before?

If you want to avoid meta-gaming then bring some new . If your players are metagaming then push the boundaries and do something new. Have your orcs burst tentacles from their chests... they won't see that coming no matter how many monster manuals they read.

You can't admonish you players for studying the game... hell... you want people who are that committed at your table. You just got to 'bring it'. Show them something new that they can't prepare for. Don't worry about the obvious... how many times do you want to 'pretend to be surprised when the troll gets up'?


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> I'm not sure how it is possible to create a character without player agency.




Create a character or play a character?  I can give many examples of a player having a character to play, which they had no say in the creation of.

a) Character is pregenerated for a published scenario either for quick start to play, or to ensure characters have the tools to solve the scenario, or because it is assumed the players are novices.
b) Character is pregenerated by the GM to match a desired setting or story.
c) Character is generated by another player, and you take over that character.
d) Character is generated by a random character burner or similar random methodology.




> I guess if you want a game where only the character is challenged, you would end up with a pretty boring game.
> 
> I imagine it would work like this:
> DM: You enter a room. It is DC 15
> ...




We are in total agreement.  Among other things, I've used the argument you develop here before as part of a refutation of The Forge GNS, to show that any pure implementation of one of the three aesthetics of play that The Forge calls out in GNS results in something that is not an RPG.  

Your example of what a pure simulation would be like shows that if anyone did only have simulation as an aesthetic of play the result would cease to be a game at all, as the player would cease to have agency and be unable to make choices.  Pure simulation results in a toy, which can amuse through observation of the results, but where you cannot make choices, since the character's decision making process must also be simulated.

Similar problems result with any other purist approach to the three aesthetics of play in GNS.  Thus, GNS fails because aesthetics of play are not mutually exclusive, it fails because an RPG does not try to meet a single aesthetic of play alone, and finally because there are more than three aesthetics of play.



> ...but it is what I think of when I see a lot of modern D&D game play.




I don't know about that, but you'll note that earlier I said that I tried to minimize and remove all challenges that were pure challenge to character from my encounter design, and my reason is precisely the objection you are making now.


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## Mort (Apr 29, 2019)

iserith said:


> DMG page 236-237: "By balancing the use of dice against deciding on success, you can encourage your players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world."
> 
> Notably, this is the the only one of three approaches the DMG doesn't say has potential drawbacks.



You are quoting the middle path. This cuts both ways.

The player should also not be able to coast on his own knowledge without occasionally having to roll - always avoiding the dice has drawbacks too.

That's why I said self correcting.


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> Here, I think, is the fundamental issue:
> 
> You state "The character represents, among other things not relevant to this topic, a suite of options the player may be able to employ to help overcome the challenge..."
> 
> ...




This is solely the choice of the player. IF the player rolls up a dim-witted half-orc barbarian and the player WANTS to run that character as such then exactly.

But the player at the table may not be so dim-witted. That player may want to contribute to puzzles or strategy or planning. Should that player be removed from such just because their character is dim-witted?

Are you going to force a person at your table to not be a part of the in-game discussions because of their character's stats?

Characters only matter in the context of the people playing them.


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> I'm not going to look a 30 year veteran of D&D in the eye with a straight face and tell them that their 1st level character wouldn't use fire against the troll they're fighting. I mean how many times has this person fought trolls before?




It's simply impossible to simulate the absence of knowledge.  No one can know how someone would act in a counter-factual situation.  No one could know how long it would take them to solve a puzzle if they didn't already know the answer to the puzzle.  Suppose someone gives you the answer to a riddle, and then gives you a riddle.  How could you possibly know how many wrong answers you might have guessed before hitting on the right answer?  Zero?  One?  Forty?  Who knows! 

If this was the first time a player encountered a troll, how many rounds before they would attempt to burn it with fire?  Zero?  One?  Forty?  Who knows! 

If something is impossible, you should not demand it.

It never is becoming of a GM to play "gotcha" games, to try to impress the players with your power, or try to play the player's characters.  As a GM you have an infinite amount of power and will always inherently garner more than your share of attention.  You can afford to relax.


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## Mort (Apr 29, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> This is solely the choice of the player. IF the player rolls up a dim-witted half-orc barbarian and the player WANTS to run that character as such then exactly.
> 
> But the player at the table may not be so dim-witted. That player may want to contribute to puzzles or strategy or planning. Should that player be removed from such just because their character is dim-witted?




Removed, no, but also not encouraged.

He wouldn't be getting inspiration for playing against his character. 

But, more directly, designing challenges that can't always entirely avoid checks solves this issue.



Monayuris said:


> Are you going to force a person at your table to not be a part of the in-game discussions because of their character's stats?




Force, no, but I may inquire if the dumb brute is really the character they wish to play.



Monayuris said:


> Characters only matter in the context of the people playing them.




The character provides the tools the player  can use, otherwise why even have the rules?


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Create a character or play a character?  I can give many examples of a player having a character to play, which they had no say in the creation of.
> 
> a) Character is pregenerated for a published scenario either for quick start to play, or to ensure characters have the tools to solve the scenario, or because it is assumed the players are novices.
> b) Character is pregenerated by the GM to match a desired setting or story.
> ...



Good points. I would maybe point out that in a lot of these cases the player 'should' have some choice. Like they can pick which pre-gen is cool to them, or maybe the GM would ask them what they would like to play. But I didn't think of these and yeah that's possible.




> We are in total agreement.  Among other things, I've used the argument you develop here before as part of a refutation of The Forge GNS, to show that any pure implementation of one of the three aesthetics of play that The Forge calls out in GNS results in something that is not an RPG.
> 
> Your example of what a pure simulation would be like shows that if anyone did only have simulation as an aesthetic of play the result would cease to be a game at all, as the player would cease to have agency and be unable to make choices.  Pure simulation results in a toy, which can amuse through observation of the results, but where you cannot make choices, since the character's decision making process must also be simulated.
> 
> Similar problems result with any other purist approach to the three aesthetics of play in GNS.  Thus, GNS fails because aesthetics of play are not mutually exclusive, it fails because an RPG does not try to meet a single aesthetic of play alone, and finally because there are more than three aesthetics of play.



I've never bought into the forge theory. I don't really know much about GNS. I guess I really should edit my assertion that a 'pure simulation game would be boring' I think I was going a little too far. 

But my assertion is  that a role-playing game requires that the player be challenged... otherwise it wouldn't be a role-playing game: In that a RPG is a game that a player plays the role of a character. If that player is not able to have direct input within the rules of the game (player not character)... is it really a an RPG? What we may have instead is a wargame or a dungeon crawler boardgame.



> I don't know about that, but you'll note that earlier I said that I tried to minimize and remove all challenges that were pure challenge to character from my encounter design, and my reason is precisely the objection you are making now.



[/QUOTE]
Ha... sorry may have been a reaction to not having read every post. I apologize if I misunderstood and missed something.


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> Removed, no, but also not encouraged.
> 
> He wouldn't be getting inspiration for playing against his character.
> 
> ...




The rules already account for penalties for abilities. I see no need to penalize a real person at my table, further... by telling them they can't contribute in the game. I get the idea behind the  'all in with method acting' when it comes to D&D. I just disagree with it.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> You are quoting the middle path. This cuts both ways.
> 
> The player should also not be able to coast on his own knowledge without occasionally having to roll - always avoiding the dice has drawbacks too.
> 
> That's why I said self correcting.




Yes, I am quoting the "middle path," as I invariably do in every thread that gets into DM adjudication as it's the path I follow and the DMG recommends (in that it offers no drawbacks compared to two others). It's just that some people think that the player trying to avoid rolling a fickle d20 by doing what he or she can to remove uncertainty as to the outcome of the task and/or the meaningful consequence for failure - which is the smart play - is somehow the same thing as the DM never calling for checks. It's not. If the player is having his or her character boldly confronting perils as the rules imagine they will, there will be plenty of uncertainty and meaningful consequences for failure that the player may not be able to remove or mitigate. _Sometimes_, the player is going to have to roll.

In any case, none of this limits what the player can state as an approach to a goal, even the character's stats and abilities. Plunk's low Intelligence only bears on the action declaration to the degree Gary wishes it to. The outcome, however, is up to the DM. The DM can decide that the action is automatically successful or needs a check with advantage. Or the DM can say the task is impossible or needs a check with disadvantage. If the DM wants to encourage Gary to play Plunk as the sort of moron the DM imagines him to be, the DM can offer Inspiration when Gary chooses to do that.


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## Monayuris (Apr 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> It's simply impossible to simulate the absence of knowledge.  No one can know how someone would act in a counter-factual situation.  No one could know how long it would take them to solve a puzzle if they didn't already know the answer to the puzzle.  Suppose someone gives you the answer to a riddle, and then gives you a riddle.  How could you possibly know how many wrong answers you might have guessed before hitting on the right answer?  Zero?  One?  Forty?  Who knows!
> 
> If this was the first time a player encountered a troll, how many rounds before they would attempt to burn it with fire?  Zero?  One?  Forty?  Who knows!
> 
> ...




Part of the game is exploring the unknown. This includes encountering creatures that have crazy strengths and weaknesses. Part of the game is figuring this out.

Things like 'trolls need to be killed by fire', 'wraiths can level drain you', 'certain golems are healed by certain attack types' are all things that bring interest and excitement to the game.

These things need to be discovered in play. Its part of the experience... they are puzzles that need to be figured out by the player. A player can lose a character by level-draining wraiths that can only be hit by magic weapons. That same player rolls up a new character and encounters wraiths. Should he/she play the character as new and charge forth? Or should the person learn from previous experience and retreat?

Would it be wrong for the player to retreat? Should they just charge in only because their 'character' is new? 

If you, as a DM, lament that players know all the tricks, then you have to come up with better tricks.


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## Hussar (Apr 29, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] said
> "Maybe that also happens, but some have argued pretty explicitly that they think the adjudication of anything important should fall to the dice using ability/skill mechanics, and that no cleverness on the part of the player should alter the probabilities. That, for example, "I disarm the trap" with no description should have exactly the same odds of disarming the trap as proposing a clever and logical way of doing so."
> 
> It would be nice to have cites for this claim. However, so far I dont think I have seen this on the challenge the character side. I am pretty sure many or most have at one point of another explicitly said that either advantage or disadvantage can come from the choices made by the player.
> ...




/me raises hand.

I believe I've said something very much to that effect.  Mostly because I don't worry about narrating events until AFTER resolution, rather than doing it step by step.  So, no, in my game, you are not expected to tell me a "clever and logical way" of disarming that trap.  If you succeed in your roll to disarm that trap, then you have found a "clever and logical way" of disarming that trap.  If you failed in your roll, you have not, and suffer the potential consequences.

Like I said, it eliminates all of the counter-intuitive issues that occur where proposing "a clever and logical way" is simply, in my mind, gaming the DM.  Because a "clever and logical way" is only "clever and logical" if it appeals to the mind of the DM.  Otherwise, you run into a situation where the player believes that he or she is being "clever and logical" and the DM thinks it won't work and now you run into logjams.

But, Hussar!!! We're supposed to trust our DM's!!!  goes the inevitable cry.  Our DM's will always try to be fair and impartial and will adjudicate that way. 

Well, that might be true.  OTOH, I avoid the entire situation by simply allowing the character to resolve things and not engage in this sort of thing at all.  For the same way you don't get to make a "clever and logical" attack or saving throw, you don't get to make a "clever and logical" attempt to bypass something that falls under the skill system.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 29, 2019)

It's a very interesting point Hussar makes. I guess I am a middle roader. I ask the player to describe how they are disarming the trap, but, unless it obviously wouldn't work, I leave it's success up to the dice.

I am minded of the sequence in Ant Man where the safe is broken into by freezing it with liquid nitrogen. If this was in a game, would the DM set this up before hand, placing the gas cylinders, mattress etc around the place as clues, or would they just confront the player with the safe door and expect them to come up with a method from scratch? Or get them to roll the dice and then narrate the method?

I don't think there is any "right" answer to this.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> /me raises hand.
> 
> I believe I've said something very much to that effect.  Mostly because I don't worry about narrating events until AFTER resolution, rather than doing it step by step.  So, no, in my game, you are not expected to tell me a "clever and logical way" of disarming that trap.  If you succeed in your roll to disarm that trap, then you have found a "clever and logical way" of disarming that trap.  If you failed in your roll, you have not, and suffer the potential consequences.
> 
> ...



But, to be clear, because I am dense sometimes, if I tell you I am using z crowbar gor prying s gor, you give advantage of not?

If I tell you my character is trying to sneak past guards snd the plan is an ally starts a ruckus nearby to draw thrir attention away from the point I am sneaking thru, then I move... advantage or not?

Or in the same case, I use somantic only conttol flames to change the color of a bonfire suddenly(or half its light)  in that "other direction" then sneak by this way while they are distrscted... advantage or not?

Without going down the rabbit hole of the chsllenge player- side, these are just basic examples of the system rules definitions of cases to consider advantage that *fo* alter odds of success, which I was assuming you did factor in if given. 

Am I wrong?


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## Rya.Reisender (Apr 29, 2019)

Challenge the player: [Give the players an encounter they can only win/survive if they use a smart strategy.]

Challenge the character: "Aha! Peter! I challenge you to a duel!"


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> some have argued pretty explicitly that they think the adjudication of anything important should fall to the dice using ability/skill mechanics, and that no cleverness on the part of the player should alter the probabilities.  That, for example, "I disarm the trap" with no description should have exactly the same odds of disarming the trap as proposing a clever and logical way of doing so.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It gets pretty frustrating when you try repeatedly to clarify your position, and others continue to (willfully?) ignore it, preferring the more extreme caricature instead.  For example, in the thread about Insight, how many times did a bunch of us explain "it's not about the quality of the performance, it's about the approach taken" and still a couple posters kept going on about how we're rewarding people for being glib.





iserith said:


> In my view, "should" is a problematic word in a imaginary world of sword and sorcery based on childhood games of make-believe. For every "should" you can come up with, I can come up with a whole lot more "could's," "might's," "may's," and "can's" to explain anything, anytime. That's the beauty of games based on imagination.



I think there is at least a modest tension between these two posts - which are from different posters, but posters who generally seem to be in agreement on most of the issues under discussion on these threads.

A GM judging whether an approach is a clever and/or logical one seems to be imposing _shoulds_ - and relying on robust counterfactual assumptions more generally.

I think it makes sense to talk about who has authority over what aspects of the fiction; but I don't think it helps to explain this in terms of the robustness of "should" in a game of imagination.


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## pemerton (Apr 29, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I dont see a difference in "you are playing a lock expert character  but you the player's knowledge of locks in the campaign is key to this challenge not the character's" and "you are playing the Raven Queen expert character but you the player's knowledge of the Raven Querns lore in the campaign is key to this challenge, not the character's"
> 
> Dont get me wrong, it's great if the player did all that, remembered all that and made the connection and it was in character too,  but to me at the end of the day the character has spent *one would think* years or months at this, far far far  more than a session a week, as a major part of their belief and life.
> 
> ...



Your last paragraph is correct.

Your second-last paragraph is nothing like how my game plays. That's why I made the comparison to playing a Keep on the Borderlands (B2) campaign. In a B2 campaign, a player would typically understand the difference between a soldier from the Keep and an orc from the Caves. The notion that this would be something that the GM would send the players to read "links" on is absurd.

So in my 4e campaign, the epic mythology of the campaign is the heart of the campaign. The players haven't learned it by following links. It's come out in play, as a product of and focus for play.

If a campaign was focused on locks, then I might set a lock puzzle of that sort - but I personally am not a technician, and that sort of thing has never been the focus of my play. But I have played a campaign in which the laws of karma and the fate of souls was a key element of play, and that campaign ended in a surprising way when the players came up with an unexpected way to manipulate those laws to imbue a simulacrum with a duplicate of one of the PCs' karmic legacy, thsu sparing that PC from what otherwise would have been a very unhappy destiny.

I would not be intrested in GMing or playing a game in which knowledge and understanding of the shared fiction as it arises in the course of play does not bear upon action declarations. And this can manifest through riddles and puzzles, such as the ones I mentioned, as much as in other ways. (Eg yesterday I GMed a Cthuhlu Dark session. The players were able to make progress in the session by keeping track of the emerging and unfolding fiction, and looking for connections between and resonances among various elements of it.)


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Paul Farquhar said:


> It's a very interesting point Hussar makes. I guess I am a middle roader. I ask the player to describe how they are disarming the trap, but, unless it obviously wouldn't work, I leave it's success up to the dice.




What if they describe an approach to disarming the trap that obviously _would_ work, that would take no specialized knowledge or skills?  I.e., something your grandmother could do without trouble.  Do you still roll?

Let's say it's a trip wire, and the character says, "Oh, I stand way back and use my grappling hook and rope to snap the trip wire and pull on it until the trap triggers."  And there's no time pressure.  Do they have to roll to disarm it?


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## Hussar (Apr 29, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> But, to be clear, because I am dense sometimes, if I tell you I am using z crowbar gor prying s gor, you give advantage of not?




That's right there in the rules - well, using a portable ram is, anyway.  So, yeah, maybe.  But, then do you give advantage for using any tool?  If I have a great axe do I get advantage to break open the door?  How about a maul?  Size 12 boot?  

See, that's where the problem starts.  Maybe I figure that because my character is a big, muscular barbarian, he should be getting advantage on breaking open a door.  After all, Thunder is 6'2" and 260 pounds.  Why am I not getting advantage?  

Yet, I'll bet dollars to donuts that most  of the DM's I play with or ever will play with, won't give me advantage for breaking down the door.



> If I tell you my character is trying to sneak past guards snd the plan is an ally starts a ruckus nearby to draw thrir attention away from the point I am sneaking thru, then I move... advantage or not?




No, why?  The only reason you can sneak in the first place is because of the distraction.  Otherwise, you'd just get spotted.



> Or in the same case, I use somantic only conttol flames to change the color of a bonfire suddenly(or half its light)  in that "other direction" then sneak by this way while they are distrscted... advantage or not?
> 
> Without going down the rabbit hole of the chsllenge player- side, these are just basic examples of the system rules definitions of cases to consider advantage that *fo* alter odds of success, which I was assuming you did factor in if given.
> 
> Am I wrong?




Most often?  Yes, you would be wrong.  In these specific cases?  Yes, you would be wrong.  What you are doing is the basic requirements for getting the check in the first place.  You can't hide if there is a direct line of sight to you, so, that distraction is a base requirement for being able to hide and sneak.  

Honestly, thinking about it, having a crowbar probably wouldn't grant you advantage either.  Maybe, but, unlikely.

Advantage isn't all that easy to get.  And, in my mind, doing the bare requirements for performing a skill isn't enough.

--------

But, in any case, I would define challenging the character as any challenge in which the character being played impacts how that challenge is resolved.   If the challenge is resolved the same way regardless of what character is being played then that is a player challenge.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I think there is at least a modest tension between these two posts - which are from different posters, but posters who generally seem to be in agreement on most of the issues under discussion on these threads.
> 
> A GM judging whether an approach is a clever and/or logical one seems to be imposing _shoulds_ - and relying on robust counterfactual assumptions more generally.
> 
> I think it makes sense to talk about who has authority over what aspects of the fiction; but I don't think it helps to explain this in terms of the robustness of "should" in a game of imagination.




I think there's a difference here. Mort suggests (and plenty of others believe) a player _should_ have his or her character act a particular way, when that is not backed by the rules of the game we're playing and is easily explained given the mutability of the fiction. Whereas the rules saying the DM _should_ be judging the efficacy of a player's stated approach to the goal is telling the person choosing to be DM about his or her role in the game.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Mort said:


> I mean when a player consistently uses *knowledge his character really shouldn't have*.
> 
> And there are rules. The DM can expressly call for ability/skill checks. If for example a player consistently points out weaknesses of monsters *his character really shouldn't know*, or uses knowledge of history (as an example) *the character couldn't possibly know*, the DM can curb that.
> 
> ...




All those bits I bolded are subjective.

Who's to say the character can't know these things?  You, as the DM?  Sure.  But maybe your player disagrees.  Maybe he/she says, "There was a village elder who was a great adventurer in his youth, and as a child Gord the Barbarian sat at his feet and listened to all his stories."

Now, you, as DM, may want to overrule that and say, "No, it's my game world and that didn't happen."  But in that case the problem isn't metagaming (as AngryDM has done a great job of explaining) it's a problem between you and your players.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That's right there in the rules - well, using a portable ram is, anyway.  So, yeah, maybe.  But, then do you give advantage for using any tool?  If I have a great axe do I get advantage to break open the door?  How about a maul?  Size 12 boot?
> 
> See, that's where the problem starts.  Maybe I figure that because my character is a big, muscular barbarian, he should be getting advantage on breaking open a door.  After all, Thunder is 6'2" and 260 pounds.  Why am I not getting advantage?
> 
> ...



The crowbar description says you get advsntage on strength checks ehere its leverage can be applied.

I should have been more clear on the others.

My assumption was that the basic situation was one where a statement of. "I sneak past the guards using hide" was possible (obscurement, cover, crowds etc ) and where these were added efforts to help the attempt, not that these were the enabling factors.

To me, the first (distraction by ruckus raising ally) is a pretty textbook "help action" (or more precisely working together) for advantage. The last is not using an ally but using your own prior actions to aide your effort - the DMG on advantage specifically calls out use of prior actions by the actor or others that help as one of their four bullet points for advantage. 

But, hey, seems I was definitely wrong on where I saw the other positions.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What if they describe something that obviously _would_ work, that would take no specialized knowledge or skills?  I.e., something your grandmother could do without trouble.  Do you still roll?



Like walking across the floor or lacing boots, sure.

There are tons of no-character-traits-needed actions in my games. There are even ones you can do for benefit - anybody can "share my rations with the hungry" or "go buy blankets for the refugees" and those might well pay off down the road.

That is different from the "challenges that matter" which are not (in my game) so simple that "your grandmother could do without trouble" or that "take no specialized knowledge or skills."

As GM I choose to not have those be the nature of "challenges that matter" or "not an obstacle" and leave them to the plenty of room of other stuff your character does.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> That's right there in the rules - well, using a portable ram is, anyway.  So, yeah, maybe.  But, then do you give advantage for using any tool?  If I have a great axe do I get advantage to break open the door?  How about a maul?  Size 12 boot?




Do you trust your DM to decide?  Or don't you?



> See, that's where the problem starts.  Maybe I figure that because my character is a big, muscular barbarian, he should be getting advantage on breaking open a door.  After all, Thunder is 6'2" and 260 pounds.  Why am I not getting advantage?




The effect of high strength on that task is already accounted for in the rules.  Just like the effect of low Intelligence and Charisma on other tasks is already accounted for in the rules.



> But, in any case, I would define challenging the character as any challenge in which the character being played impacts how that challenge is resolved.   If the challenge is resolved the same way regardless of what character is being played then that is a player challenge.




Q.E.F.D.


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## Celebrim (Apr 29, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> But my assertion is  that a role-playing game requires that the player be challenged... otherwise it wouldn't be a role-playing game




Agreed.



> If that player is not able to have direct input within the rules of the game (player not character)... is it really a an RPG?




No, it's a simulation or toy.  I haven't seen a lot of these lately, but some of the old 'Sim' video games were correctly defined by Will Wright as not games but as electronic toys.



> What we may have instead is a wargame or a dungeon crawler boardgame.




In a wargame or boardgame, the player still has control of the pieces in some manner, so your assertion is not true.   The mind of "the general" is not simulated, but provided by the player, so a wargame or boardgame is not pure simulation.  Your choices are not controlled by some algorithmic process and you do more than observe how the game plays out.   Imagine the difference between the experience of playing a wargame, and observing a wargame where all the participants are AI.   The later is what happens when your game stands on the simulation aesthetic alone.

To create a wargame or boardgame from a role-playing game, you remove the narrative and simulation pillars.


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## Hussar (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Do you trust your DM to decide?  Or don't you?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




High strength?  Yup.  High size - as in height/weight?  Not so much.  My halfling with an 18 strength has exactly the same chances of smashing that door as a half-orc, despite the half orc being several times heavier.  So, when my DM says, "Nope, you don't get advantage", well, I suppose we just trust our DM right?  

The rules are hardly so robust as to account for every aspect of stats.  There is no "check" to account for when that 8 Int character comes up with the really smart plan.  Or the 8 Cha character makes that really good speech, negating the need for a check to influence the NPC.


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## Yardiff (Apr 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> All those bits I bolded are subjective.
> 
> Who's to say the character can't know these things?  You, as the DM?  Sure.  But maybe your player disagrees.  *Maybe he/she says, "There was a village elder who was a great adventurer in his youth, and as a child Gord the Barbarian sat at his feet and listened to all his stories."*
> 
> Now, you, as DM, may want to overrule that and say, "No, it's my game world and that didn't happen."  But in that case the problem isn't metagaming (as AngryDM has done a great job of explaining) it's a problem between you and your players.




If the bold part was part of the characters original background/backstory then I would have no problem with this answer.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> well, I suppose we just trust our DM right?



This is the D&D forum, so: Yes.


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## Hussar (Apr 29, 2019)

It's kinda funny.  The whole "I listened to stories at the feet of my elders" thing doesn't bother me in the slightest.  It's plausible, and I applaud players who want to add more backstory into their characters during play.  I think that sort of thing is great.

What does bug me though is when players try to, what I see as, game the system.  Yes, my character has no training whatsoever in persuasion and a below average Cha, but, because me the player can do good talky talky, I don't need to spend any resources there because I know that most of the time anyway, I can convince my DM that I don't need to make a check.

Play the character you brought to the table or bring a different character.


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## iserith (Apr 29, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It's kinda funny.  The whole "I listened to stories at the feet of my elders" thing doesn't bother me in the slightest.  It's plausible, and I applaud players who want to add more backstory into their characters during play.  I think that sort of thing is great.
> 
> What does bug me though is when players try to, what I see as, game the system.  Yes, my character has no training whatsoever in persuasion and a below average Cha, but, because me the player can do good talky talky, I don't need to spend any resources there because I know that most of the time anyway, I can convince my DM that I don't need to make a check.
> 
> Play the character you brought to the table or bring a different character.




How about instead the player plays his or her character how he or she sees fit - provided it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable story - and the DM describes the environment and narrates the outcome of the character's actions without telling the player how he or she ought to play that character?

How about the DM gives Inspiration for "playing the character you brought to the table" instead of seeing a player playing a game that puts no limits on action declarations as "gaming the system?"


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> How about the DM gives Inspiration for "playing the character you brought to the table" instead of seeing a player playing a game that puts no limits on action declarations as "gaming the system?"



JMHO, but Inspiration is a pita. (Yes, a tasty flat bread, thank you, autocorrect.) But it's not the (blessed) lack of hard restrictions on action declaration that makes a game susceptible to being, well, 'gamed.'  

Heck, in Hussar's example, it's not the system that's being gamed, at all.



Hussar said:


> It's kinda funny.  The whole "I listened to stories at the feet of my elders" thing doesn't bother me in the slightest.  It's plausible, and I applaud players who want to add more backstory into their characters during play.  I think that sort of thing is great.



 Especially if the system leaves enough wiggle room for him throw a few ranks (or whatever) to that kind of knowledge.



> What does bug me though is when players try to, what I see as, game the system.  Yes, my character has no training whatsoever in persuasion and a below average Cha, but, because me the player can do good talky talky, I don't need to spend any resources there because I know that most of the time anyway, I can convince my DM that I don't need to make a check.
> Play the character you brought to the table or bring a different character.



 That's not really gaming the system:  the system in that case says you suck at Persuasion, and if the DM ever calls for a check based on your declared actions, you likely will (though, binary result, on d20 check under BA - you could always get lucky).

It's just tailoring the character to your expectations of the campaign.  You don't expect there to be a lot of call for persuasion, so you invest in something else.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> JMHO, but Inspiration is a pita. (Yes, a tasty flat bread, thank you, autocorrect.)




I got you covered: The Case for Inspiration.



Tony Vargas said:


> But it's not the (blessed) lack of hard restrictions on action declaration that makes a game susceptible to being, well, 'gamed.'
> 
> Heck, in Hussar's example, it's not the system that's being gamed, at all.




Yeah, and somehow *I'm* the one who gets the "gaming the DM" argument thrown at him all the time.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I got you covered: The Case for Inspiration.



 Yeah, we've been there, yes, it's a fair way of implementing it to reduce one kind of DM headache (arguably in exchange for another).    

Nope, still just something to hold the falafels.

And, y'know, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the game, for me (greybeard that I am).  It's like a hummingbird got in the archaeopteryx display.  Like a Sponge Bob episode being shown on Shark Week.  




> Yeah, and somehow *I'm* the one who gets the "gaming the DM" argument thrown at him all the time.



You are on record saying players should try to avoid making checks as much as possible, yes?

(I hope I'm not on record as disagreeing.)

The point "gaming the DM" accusations try to make sound bad is that, under DM Empowerment - or anytime the DM is doing all the heavy lifting - players obviously have to put a lot of faith in the DM. 

(Other times, it's just less obvious.)


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Yeah, we've been there, yes, it's a fair way of implementing it to reduce one kind of DM headache (arguably in exchange for another).




What headache is there in exchange?



Tony Vargas said:


> You are on record saying players should try to avoid making checks as much as possible, yes?




Players "should" do what they want, as long as it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable tale. But the smart play is to avoid the d20.



Tony Vargas said:


> The point "gaming the DM" accusations try to make sound bad is that, under DM Empowerment - or anytime the DM is doing all the heavy lifting - players obviously have to put a lot of faith in the DM.
> 
> (Other times, it's just less obvious.)




I don't see what you're saying here. I thought your previous point was that Hussar was getting gamed because he was cool with players establishing backstory to get past a knowledge deficiency, whereas he took issue with players not playing into some other perceived deficiency.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> What headache is there in exchange?



 It'd break up the normal flow of play.  
At the same time, it seems like it defeats the purpose.  Shouldn't a player want to play his character to /his/ satisfaction, in his judgement, anyway?  Kinda the point of sitting down to a TTRPG in the first place.  The point of carrots like Inspiration is to get him playing the character to the DM's satisfaction, in his judgement.  

Which, AFAIC, 5e DM Empowerment already delivers copiously, without anything so tacked-on and indie-feeling as Inspiration.




> Players "should" do what they want, as long as it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable tale. But the smart play is to avoid the d20.
> I don't see what you're saying here. I thought your previous point was that Hussar was getting gamed because he was cool with players establishing backstory to get past a knowledge deficiency, whereas he took issue with players not playing into some other perceived deficiency.



 My point was that player expectations about a campaign can reasonably be taken into account when building a character.  A player who doesn't believe his character 'needs' a given skill, for whatever reason, isn't gaming the system, he's just putting build resources where they make sense.  Whether he feels that way because of the nature of the campaign, the system, or the DM doesn't really make a big difference, it's still fair to try to build a character whose mechanical abilities will be relevant & useful in play.  
But, yeah, it's a comment wide-open to "gaming the DM" spin.  My feeling, really, is "yeah, so what?"  The player maybe feels like he gets away with something, like the system-master who ekes out another 10 DPR (even though the DM is just tacking another 40 hps onto every monster he swings at). 
Which, if that's what he needs to be a happy player, fine.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> It'd break up the normal flow of play.
> At the same time, it seems like it defeats the purpose.  Shouldn't a player want to play his character to /his/ satisfaction, in his judgement, anyway?  Kinda the point of sitting down to a TTRPG in the first place.  The point of carrots like Inspiration is to get him playing the character to the DM's satisfaction, in his judgement.
> 
> Which, AFAIC, 5e DM Empowerment already delivers copiously, without anything so tacked-on and indie-feeling as Inspiration.




The Case for Inspiration which I linked handles all this.


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> How about instead the player plays his or her character how he or she sees fit - provided it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable story - and the DM describes the environment and narrates the outcome of the character's actions without telling the player how he or she ought to play that character?
> 
> How about the DM gives Inspiration for "playing the character you brought to the table" instead of seeing a player playing a game that puts no limits on action declarations as "gaming the system?"




Because when players ignore the character sheet, it hurts my enjoyment of the game because it's so blatantly obvious that the player is simply power gaming rather than actually playing the character in front of him or her?

I fail to see how, "Play the character you created" is a terribly difficult or unreasonable request to make of the players.  Apparently, some people do find that to be too difficult and unreasonable.  That's fine.  They have their own tables to play at because they aren't playing at mine.  And, I play that way as a player too.  I'm not sorry for having minimal expectations for play.  

You want to dump stat stuff and then build your character a certain way?  Fair enough.  But, that means you have significant disadvantages when attempting to do certain things.  And, I'm not going to help you ignore those limitations simply because you can come up with a good idea.  Thus, you roll first.  Solves all those issues nicely.  I don't have to police anything.  You don't get to give a great speech and ignore your character sheet.  You gave a great speech BECAUSE of your persuasion score.  

The dice provide the direction, the player provides the script.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Because when players ignore the character sheet, it hurts my enjoyment of the game because it's so blatantly obvious that the player is simply power gaming rather than actually playing the character in front of him or her?




I touched on this with Mort upthread, so I'll just quote myself from that earlier exchange in response to the above:



			
				iserith said:
			
		

> What Plunk "should" do is nothing the DM ever needs to worry about in my view, provided Gary is otherwise making choices that are fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story. And if someone is the sort of person who is not having fun because Gary is not making decisions according to what that person thinks a low-Intelligence barbarian is capable of thinking, saying, and doing, then it might be worth examining if the problem is someone other than Gary.




Nobody likes someone other than Gary.



Hussar said:


> I fail to see how, "Play the character you created" is a terribly difficult or unreasonable request to make of the players.




Everyone plays the character they created, unless someone created it for them.



Hussar said:


> You want to dump stat stuff and then build your character a certain way?  Fair enough.  But, that means you have significant disadvantages when attempting to do certain things.




Yes, and those disadvantages will reveal themselves - _sometimes _- when the player has to make a check. Those significant disadvantages don't mean the player's action declarations are invalid.


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## Ovinomancer (Apr 30, 2019)

As an add, when people respond to the goal and approach by claiming that you can pass off a low CHA-no-social-skill character because you, as a player, can talk well, you've completely missed the point.  I'm not judging how you acted out your goal and approach, I'm judging your goal and approach.  If you talk in flowery words, that's your approach -- "I use flowery words at the king to get him to see my point of view."  How pretty you, as a player, talk really doesn't matter much, although it may earn you inspiration if that's one of your BITFs.  I'm going to judge this approach and goal on if the goal aligns with what the king wants and if the approach is something that would work to get there.  If the king already wants to do this thing, no check, you succeed.  If the king would never do the thing (say, banish his favored heir) with that approach, then you just fail (and suffer consequences).  If it's uncertain, and there's a consequence for failure, then you'll be making a check.

Just because I say that players should avoid making checks doesn't mean that making checks is a very common part of my games.  As [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] says, when you delve into danger as adventurers do, stuff's gonna be uncertain and carry consequences.  My game focuses on these moments of uncertainty and consequence and not on play that encourages searching every 5' spaces for traps.


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I touched on this with Mort upthread, so I'll just quote myself from that earlier exchange in response to the above:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




So, because you feel that you should be able to min/max your character whatever way you like, the DM should just nod and smile and say, "Yuppers, it's your character, do whatever you like" and, not only that, but facilitate it by accepting certain descriptions of actions as automatic successes.

No thanks.  I don't want to play at that table.  If you cannot or will not play the character that you made, you can find another table.  

See, to me, no one likes Gary.  Gary is a colossal douche bag who ruins the table for everyone.  

Which, if that means some folks don't want to play with me?  Fantastic.  I'll stand by having basic minimum standards for the table over accepting the garbage that players like Gary want to pretend is actually role play any day. Having just had a "Gary" have a giant hissy fit because the DM actually had the temerity to design an encounter that wasn't dove tail tailored to the character that "Gary" played, and leave the group, I'm actually going to stand by that one.  I'd much, MUCH rather lose Gary than someone who actually takes the time to honestly attempt to play the character they created.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> As an add, when people respond to the goal and approach by claiming that you can pass off a low CHA-no-social-skill character because you, as a player, can talk well, you've completely missed the point.  I'm not judging how you acted out your goal and approach, I'm judging your goal and approach.  If you talk in flowery words, that's your approach -- "I use flowery words at the king to get him to see my point of view."  How pretty you, as a player, talk really doesn't matter much, although it may earn you inspiration if that's one of your BITFs.  I'm going to judge this approach and goal on if the goal aligns with what the king wants and if the approach is something that would work to get there.  If the king already wants to do this thing, no check, you succeed.  If the king would never do the thing (say, banish his favored heir) with that approach, then you just fail (and suffer consequences).  If it's uncertain, and there's a consequence for failure, then you'll be making a check.
> 
> Just because I say that players should avoid making checks doesn't mean that making checks is a very common part of my games.  As [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] says, when you delve into danger as adventurers do, stuff's gonna be uncertain and carry consequences.  My game focuses on these moments of uncertainty and consequence and not on play that encourages searching every 5' spaces for traps.



"As an add, when people respond to the goal and approach by claiming that you can pass off a low CHA-no-social-skill character because you, as a player, can talk well, you've completely missed the point. I'm not judging how you acted out your goal and approach, I'm judging your goal and approach. "

Just pointing out that wasn't bring said here. The " not talking about flowery language" and " not acting" is not what was just being put forth by Hussar.

Also if you just thought now was a good time to discuss other issues grest.

But, I can tell you that I can usually pick up on the subtle clues about NPCs personality, motives, etc presented by GM I have played with. I can formulate a very good set of arguments or presentations of deals to align our goals etc. So, if its just me... no stat involved... I would say easily I can play thru as 14 or better charisma without touching a fie - regardless of character - so if my GM showed me that those kinds of things were enough to resolve without checks, plus inspiration on hand whrn I do get stuck with a toll, then I would have almost no reason to put more than an 8 in cha - unless it's a casting stat. It would gain me almost nothing in a game and definitely not be worth putting a 14 there and accepting-3 for those ability scores ehere checks- were more common. 

At that point, your system is better off removing Cha as an ability score. 

But it's not about the player acting... it's about the player being better at navigating the social landscape than the PC.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Yes, my character has no training whatsoever in persuasion and a below average Cha, but, because me the player can do good talky talky, I don't need to spend any resources there because I know that most of the time anyway, I can convince my DM that I don't need to make a check.
> 
> Play the character you brought to the table or bring a different character.




 [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], did you include this one in the spreadsheet?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Because when players ignore the character sheet, it hurts my enjoyment of the game because it's so blatantly obvious that the player is simply power gaming rather than actually playing the character in front of him or her?
> 
> I fail to see how, "Play the character you created" is a terribly difficult or unreasonable request to make of the players.  Apparently, some people do find that to be too difficult and unreasonable.  That's fine.  They have their own tables to play at because they aren't playing at mine.  And, I play that way as a player too.  I'm not sorry for having minimal expectations for play.
> 
> ...




Let's say I play a Sorcerer, and I "dump" both Strength and Int with 8's in each.  (I won't even go into the fact that an 8, with a 5% penalty, isn't even really that low.)  For some reason the sorcerer is separated from his party and now he needs to push a mine cart loaded with heavy silver ingots up a steep ramp, and you (the DM) have already decided that it's a DC 18 Strength check to accomplish this, and if two characters try it then the guy with the lower score makes the roll with advantage.  A failed check means the cart makes an attack roll against the pushers, possibly doing a lot of damage.

But then I say, "Hey...I just thought of something.  Those ingots weigh 10 pounds each, right?  Heck, even with my 8 Strength I can carry 10 pounds.  I'll just carry them up one at a time.  I may be weak, but I've got Endurance (15 Con)!"

Question(s): 
Do you still require a DC 18 Strength check, or does this approach succeed automatically (if taking longer)?  

Is it unacceptable that a character with "only" 8 Int would think of this plan?  

Am I "using talky talky" to "game the system" to "avoid playing the character I made"?


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> So, because you feel that you should be able to min/max your character whatever way you like, the DM should just nod and smile and say, "Yuppers, it's your character, do whatever you like" and, not only that, but facilitate it by accepting certain descriptions of actions as automatic successes.




I don't know what you mean by "min/max." It's one of those words like "metagaming" that to me means "that thing I have an uncontrollable emotional response to which I refuse to accept as a personal problem I need to work on." If you have a different definition though, I'm happy to work with what you think it means.

As for the DM's response, yes, I would say it's your character and to do what you like. And because I follow the "middle path" recommended by the DMG, I will balance the use of dice against deciding on success. So sometimes the actions the player decides for the character will automatically succeed.



Hussar said:


> See, to me, no one likes Gary.  Gary is a colossal douche bag who ruins the table for everyone.
> 
> Which, if that means some folks don't want to play with me?  Fantastic.  I'll stand by having basic minimum standards for the table over accepting the garbage that players like Gary want to pretend is actually role play any day. Having just had a "Gary" have a giant hissy fit because the DM actually had the temerity to design an encounter that wasn't dove tail tailored to the character that "Gary" played, and leave the group, I'm actually going to stand by that one.  I'd much, MUCH rather lose Gary than someone who actually takes the time to honestly attempt to play the character they created.




The tragic part about Gary here is that if you go back and read any of the instances in which Gary was used as an example, he never actually did anything except have his low-Intelligence barbarian character Plunk try to participate in a social or exploration challenge.

He was advised to refrain from allowing "metagame thinking" to negatively impact the play experience (per the DMG). It was recommended Gary engage in tasks that his character Plunk would be good at in case he has to roll, which is smart play. Gary was even told to play Plunk to the DM's idea of what a moron should act like in order to get Inspiration (which he could then use on rolls where he's not as good).

This doesn't sound like a bad person to me. Rather, it sounds like a player trying to engage in challenges in D&D 5e.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Let's say I play a Sorcerer, and I "dump" both Strength and Int with 8's in each.  (I won't even go into the fact that an 8, with a 5% penalty, isn't even really that low.)  For some reason the sorcerer is separated from his party and now he needs to push a mine cart loaded with heavy silver ingots up a steep ramp, and you (the DM) have already decided that it's a DC 18 Strength check to accomplish this, and if two characters try it then the guy with the lower score makes the roll with advantage.  A failed check means the cart makes an attack roll against the pushers, possibly doing a lot of damage.
> 
> But then I say, "Hey...I just thought of something.  Those ingots weigh 10 pounds each, right?  Heck, even with my 8 Strength I can carry 10 pounds.  I'll just carry them up one at a time.  I may be weak, but I've got Endurance (15 Con)!"
> 
> ...



I cannot even see the connection.

The character can lift 10lbs is a reference to the characters strength. 
The characters Con is such and such so they can do the longer task is a use of the character sheet.
The choice between a quick but risky cart move vs a slow but manageable ingot by ingot haul is a choice between two different uses of the character stats, neither necessarily unforeseen. 
Some could a been accomplished by mage hand.

That's very different from the player navigating the maze of social cues and avoiding even a reference to their cha being needed - or any stat - if the GM resolves social situations by that means.


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## pemerton (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What if they describe an approach to disarming the trap that obviously would work, that would take no specialized knowledge or skills?  I.e., something your grandmother could do without trouble.





iserith said:


> I think there's a difference here. Mort suggests (and plenty of others believe) a player _should_ have his or her character act a particular way, when that is not backed by the rules of the game we're playing and is easily explained given the mutability of the fiction. Whereas the rules saying the DM _should_ be judging the efficacy of a player's stated approach to the goal is telling the person choosing to be DM about his or her role in the game.



I follow, but actually am now a bit more puzzled (not by you - by the overall logic of the situation) because of the post of Elfcrusher's that I've posted. (The emphasis is original, though I've changed it from italics to underlining so as to maintain it in the quote format.) And maybe "intrigued" would be a better word than "puzzled" - I'm not sure, but will post on.

Judging that an approach _would_ work very clearly requires a robust sense of a not-too-mutable fiction. But (as you say) the player is permitted to exploit the mutability of fiction to make sense of his/her play of the character.

For this to work requires - I think - very clear boundaries around what is mutable in the hands of the player, and what the GM is permitted to rigdily establish in advance of adjudicating the "woulds" and "coulds".

I think that (eg)   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s use of fortune very close to the framing, and postponing nearly all of the narration to afterwards, might be one way of trying to manage (by trying to avoid) this need for boundaries.

EDIT: I saw this just after posting:



Elfcrusher said:


> Who's to say the character can't know these things?  You, as the DM?  Sure.  But maybe your player disagrees.  Maybe he/she says, "There was a village elder who was a great adventurer in his youth, and as a child Gord the Barbarian sat at his feet and listened to all his stories."
> 
> Now, you, as DM, may want to overrule that and say, "No, it's my game world and that didn't happen." But in that case the problem isn't metagaming (as AngryDM has done a great job of explaining) it's a problem between you and your players.



Presumably if the player disagrees, in the context of disarming a trap, about what _would_ work because even one's grandmother could do it without trouble, the GM is expected to have the last word.

But in the PC backstory case, and the action declaration case (_My INT 6 barbarian does such-and-such_) which the PC backstory is meant to be ancilliary to, the GM having the last word is flagged as a possible source of problems.

This illustrates what I mean by the need for clear boundaries over who has what sort of authority over which bits of the shared fiction. I'm not suggesting it's going to be tricky in every case, but I think maybe it might be tricky in some cases.



Elfcrusher said:


> Do you trust your DM to decide?  Or don't you?



I don't think "trust" is the right notion, because in the context of Gord the Barbarian's backstory and action declaration you don't call on the player to trust the GM.

I think what is at issue here is the distribution of authority over establishing the fiction.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I follow, but actually am now a bit more puzzled (not by you - by the overall logic of the situation) because of the post of Elfcrusher's that I've posted. (The emphasis is original, though I've changed it from italics to underlining so as to maintain it in the quote format.) And maybe "intrigued" would be a better word than "puzzled" - I'm not sure, but will post on.
> 
> Judging that an approach _would_ work very clearly requires a robust sense of a not-too-mutable fiction. But (as you say) the player is permitted to exploit the mutability of fiction to make sense of his/her play of the character.
> 
> ...




I'm not sure what you're commenting on or asking, if you're asking anything at all.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I follow, but actually am now a bit more puzzled (not by you - by the overall logic of the situation) because of the post of Elfcrusher's that I've posted. (The emphasis is original, though I've changed it from italics to underlining so as to maintain it in the quote format.) And maybe "intrigued" would be a better word than "puzzled" - I'm not sure, but will post on.
> 
> Judging that an approach _would_ work very clearly requires a robust sense of a not-too-mutable fiction. But (as you say) the player is permitted to exploit the mutability of fiction to make sense of his/her play of the character.
> 
> ...




Methinks your requirement of "clear boundaries" indicates a lack of trust in other players/DMs.


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## pemerton (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'm not sure what you're commenting on or asking, if you're asking anything at all.



Fair enough.

I'm commenting on the apparent need, in the action resolution scenarios being discussed in this thread, for very clear boundaries in respect of who has authority over what bits of the fiction. And adding that notions of "trusting the GM" - which were invoked by another poster - seem to be irrelevant to the context in which they were invoked.

For what it's worth, the "literature" (for lack of a better term) on RPG design has discussed this issue of boundaries at some length, but not normally in the context of presenting D&D rules. To the extent that D&D rules and discussion of them articulate the issue at all, it tends to use very informal notions that mix at-the-table and in-the-fiction notions, like _the player has authority over the character_ and _the GM has authority over everything else in the gameworld_.

In  [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s examples, it's clear that the player is allowed not only to state that Gord the Barbarian believes, but that Gord the Barbarian _knows_, that the tribal elders told such-and-such tales. Whereas it's equally clear that Gord the Barbarian may _believe_ that a certain approach to disarming a trap could not go wrong, but that only the GM is allowed to decide whether or not this belief is true.

Maybe you disagree that clear boundaries of the sort I describe are needed. Or maybe you agree, but think that they _are_ quite clear and hence this need won't cause any issues in play. My own view is that a lot of the disagreement in this thread seems to be turning on differences of opinion and experience over whether those boundaries are (i) clear, and (ii) drawn in the right place to deliver a fun play experience.



Elfcrusher said:


> Methinks your requirement of "clear boundaries" indicates a lack of trust in other players/DMs.



No. It indicates that if I'm going to fit in properly at youe table, it would be hellpful to know what bits of the fiction (like Gord's elders) I have authority over, and what bits of the fiction (like what will or won't work to disarm a trap) you the GM have authority over.

That's not a trust issue. It's an allocation of roles issue.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> I'm commenting on the apparent need, in the action resolution scenarios being discussed in this thread, for very clear boundaries in respect of who has authority over what bits of the fiction. And adding that notions of "trusting the GM" - which were invoked by another poster - seem to be irrelevant to the context in which they were invoked.
> 
> ...




In D&D 5e, players describe what they want to do. They decide what their characters do, how they think, and what they say. That's all they can do. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions, sometimes calling for a roll to determine an outcome. A player is free to say what his or her character thinks, for example, about the weaknesses of trolls. Whether the character is right though depends on the trolls the DM puts in the world, so it's smart play to figure that out before acting on it to avoid a bad assumption leading to an undesirable outcome.


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## Paul Farquhar (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> What if they describe an approach to disarming the trap that obviously _would_ work, that would take no specialized knowledge or skills?  I.e., something your grandmother could do without trouble.  Do you still roll?
> 
> Let's say it's a trip wire, and the character says, "Oh, I stand way back and use my grappling hook and rope to snap the trip wire and pull on it until the trap triggers."  And there's no time pressure.  Do they have to roll to disarm it?




In that sort of trap, the skill roll is a perception check. A magical trap might be disarmed with an arcana check. Not all traps have to use the same skill/proficiency, but there is no point including it at all unless there is some chance of failure.


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## Hussar (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Let's say I play a Sorcerer, and I "dump" both Strength and Int with 8's in each.  (I won't even go into the fact that an 8, with a 5% penalty, isn't even really that low.)  For some reason the sorcerer is separated from his party and now he needs to push a mine cart loaded with heavy silver ingots up a steep ramp, and you (the DM) have already decided that it's a DC 18 Strength check to accomplish this, and if two characters try it then the guy with the lower score makes the roll with advantage.  A failed check means the cart makes an attack roll against the pushers, possibly doing a lot of damage.
> 
> But then I say, "Hey...I just thought of something.  Those ingots weigh 10 pounds each, right?  Heck, even with my 8 Strength I can carry 10 pounds.  I'll just carry them up one at a time.  I may be weak, but I've got Endurance (15 Con)!"
> 
> ...




It's far too easy to get lost in the weeds with specific examples which are always biased towards "proving" a particular point.  I have been quite clear about my views on this and I don't think I need to explain further.  If you cannot or will not play the character in front of you or at the very least, make an earnest attempt to do so, then you are not particularly welcome at my table.  Is emptying a cart to make it lighter an earnest attempt to play your character?  Then it is probably fine.  OTOH, is the reason your character has an 8 Str and 8 Int because you are pretty obviously min/maxing your character because you think that you can do an end run around the skill system by playing "smart"?  Then, well, there's the door.  



iserith said:


> I don't know what you mean by "min/max." It's one of those words like "metagaming" that to me means "that thing I have an uncontrollable emotional response to which I refuse to accept as a personal problem I need to work on." If you have a different definition though, I'm happy to work with what you think it means.




I'm having a really difficult time believing that.  And a really difficult time thinking that you are answering in good faith.



> As for the DM's response, yes, I would say it's your character and to do what you like. And because I follow the "middle path" recommended by the DMG, I will balance the use of dice against deciding on success. So sometimes the actions the player decides for the character will automatically succeed.




So, I can min/max my character so long as I do good on the talky talky, and I can end run around the game systems.  Great.  Good to know.  I have no interest in playing at this table.



> The tragic part about Gary here is that if you go back and read any of the instances in which Gary was used as an example, he never actually did anything except have his low-Intelligence barbarian character Plunk try to participate in a social or exploration challenge.
> 
> He was advised to refrain from allowing "metagame thinking" to negatively impact the play experience (per the DMG). It was recommended Gary engage in tasks that his character Plunk would be good at in case he has to roll, which is smart play. Gary was even told to play Plunk to the DM's idea of what a moron should act like in order to get Inspiration (which he could then use on rolls where he's not as good).
> 
> This doesn't sound like a bad person to me. Rather, it sounds like a player trying to engage in challenges in D&D 5e.




Yeah, again, using examples is always diving into the weeds.  I regret using it.

So, to be perfectly clear.  Play the character you brought to the table.  Sure, you can try to engage in a social challenge, go right ahead.  BUT, know that you will very likely fail difficult challenges *regardless* of what approach you use.  Because, at my table, you are going to roll BEFORE you narrate.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

pemerton said:


> No. It indicates that if I'm going to fit in properly at youe table, it would be hellpful to know what bits of the fiction (like Gord's elders) I have authority over, and what bits of the fiction (like what will or won't work to disarm a trap) you the GM have authority over.
> 
> That's not a trust issue. It's an allocation of roles issue.




Ah, ok.  Then that's something else.  I was misled by your focus on the word "would", which seemed to be a concern not about allocation of roles but fairness of adjudication.  Which definitely seems to be a concern of some other posters: their primary concern is that players will be greedy, or DMs will be arbitrary and/or manipulable, and seem to want rules systems that are designed to prevent bad play.  To me, that's simply a trust issue.  Untrustworthy players will find ways to be untrustworthy regardless of the system, so I find it easier to just not play with those people.

I find their position puzzling.  Sort of like being opposed to...oh, let's say freedom of speech, just because some people will say hateful things.  Yeah, they will.  But dealing with them is vastly preferable to not having that freedom. (Ok, against the best advice I've received I've now let that analogy loose in this thread...can't wait to see how it's tortured and abused to prove that I'm contradicting myself.)

But if we're talking about boundaries, mine are basically the same as @_*iserith*_'s, although...I'm hazarding a guess, here...I think mine are a little looser. I welcome players adding to the fiction outside of their character, especially if it's about their background; not sure if iserith does that.

In last night's session some low level characters encountered a partially used necklace of fireballs.  One of the players announced he was going OOC and said, "I'm pretty sure I know what this is but I don't think my character would know."  I said that's cool, he can have his character know or not know; it's all the same to me. But if he chooses to know, maybe he also knows why. The player said, "Ahhh..." and immediately invented a 'well-known' fairy tale from his homeland.

Another player (first time at my table; he kept saying things like, "I'll use Insight...") wanted to know if he had any friends/associates in the city who might have some particular information.  I said, "Describe this friend."  He did and...poof!...that friend existed.  I added some personality, the player added a name, I added the backstory to the name, and by the end of the session this character was fully integrated (and completely annoying) in the adventure.

But I'm not sure I can give a concrete, specific rule for when it's ok for players to add details to the world outside of their own character.  New players just have to listen to what other's do, and participate.  If somebody is too hesitant I'll ask for details ("describe the friend") and if somebody goes too far over the boundary I'll work with it but give some feedback, too.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It's far too easy to get lost in the weeds with specific examples which are always biased towards "proving" a particular point.  I have been quite clear about my views on this and I don't think I need to explain further.




That's too bad, because as I've said a couple of times recently I think it's the tricky examples in between the two positions...rather than the obvious ones at the extreme ends...that can help us figure out what the fundamental differences in belief are.  

You caricaturing my position ("talky talky") to make it look ridiculous, and me caricaturing your position ("search every 5' square") to make it look ridiculous, accomplishes nothing, except proving our mutual intransigence.

Of course, for it to work both sides have to actually be interested in understanding where the other side is coming from.

FWIW, I actually find it hard to believe that you _never_ listen to players propose a good plan of action and think, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that solution...that's really pretty clever" and just let them succeed without rolling, even though you had expected them to have to make a specific ability check.

What I've been trying to accomplish (and, yes, your caustic dismissiveness has at times led to me reciprocating with the same) is to see if you acknowledge any middle ground between the player using personal persuasiveness to manipulate the DM and purely mechanical rolling of dice with zero creative problem solving on the part of the player.

If you'll indulge me, let me turn my example into a more generic example to see if we can find any common ground:

You've stated VERY clearly that you are opposed to a player "dumping" Cha and then proposing a course of action in a social interaction that lets him avoid having to actually roll Cha.  Every time we've tried to describe it as "using an approach with a high probability of success" you've characterized it as just being player eloquence.

Ok, so what I'm trying to ask is: what if a player dumps Str, and then when encountering a problem that would seem to require Str he proposes an approach that still requires using his physical strength, but in such an obviously easy way that no roll would be needed.  Is it the same thing for you? I was hoping that by moving it from a social challenge to a physical one the difficulty and probability of success would become less subjective.  Sure, maybe to some extent you could say that the player is still "convincing" the DM it would work, but the DM is (probably?) much less likely to be swayed by "talky talky".


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It's far too easy to get lost in the weeds with specific examples which are always biased towards "proving" a particular point.  I have been quite clear about my views on this and I don't think I need to explain further.  If you cannot or will not play the character in front of you or at the very least, make an earnest attempt to do so, then you are not particularly welcome at my table.  Is emptying a cart to make it lighter an earnest attempt to play your character?  Then it is probably fine.  OTOH, is the reason your character has an 8 Str and 8 Int because you are pretty obviously min/maxing your character because you think that you can do an end run around the skill system by playing "smart"?  Then, well, there's the door.




The problem with this is that it is a standard trope of fiction that characters which aren't particularly clever often think of clever plans by doing the simple obvious thing that the more clever character didn't think of.  This is the "kids say the darndest things" trope and related tropes.  So there is nothing particularly wrong with a player who is intelligent, playing a mechanically "dumb" character in a "Forest Gump" like manner where he solves problems despite his lack of intelligence rather than because of it.   Yes, there are artful ways to play this out and less artful ways of playing this out, but I'm not going to show someone the door simply because they aren't an artful enough of a thespian for my tastes.

What are you going to do, tell the player that their character is too dumb to have come up with this plan?  Force the player to make an intelligence check to come up with the plan?  Are you also going to make the 18 INT character make an intelligence check to come up with the plan?   Because if you are going to do that sort of thing, why allow players to play their characters at all?

If a player dump stats an attribute and in your opinion doesn't suffer enough of a penalty for it, then it suggests that attribute doesn't actually have enough impact on play and possibly should be removed from the game entirely.  If it really was the case that there was no mechanical penalty for low INT, why do characters and the rules system have INT at all?  That sounds like a problem with the system and not with the players.



> So, to be perfectly clear.  Play the character you brought to the table.  Sure, you can try to engage in a social challenge, go right ahead.  BUT, know that you will very likely fail difficult challenges *regardless* of what approach you use.




This is where I'm having the hardest time understanding your point of view.  I don't think anyone has argued that for example in a social challenge you ought to succeed in difficult challenges regardless of your characters social skills.   I think that regardless of the approach that a player takes for solving the problem, having high skill in social conflicts is going to make you much more likely to succeed.   All people are suggesting is that approach does matter, in the same way that kicking down the door might be easier than picking the lock, or conversely the door might not even be locked and so opening it is easier than kicking it down.

I already know you and I have different processes of play, but typically what I'll do in a social encounters is allow the player a little bit to role play their character and then once I think they've reached a good point in the role play, I'll ask for a social check appropriate to their role play - intimidation if they were threatening, bluff if they were manipulative, diplomacy if they were trying to be persuasive.   I'll apply a circumstance bonus based on how appropriate their argument was, whether they raised salient points, and how entertaining their role-play was (which means that if they are 8 INT and they played like their INT didn't matter and used a lot of big words and complex idea, I might penalize them).   Then they have to roll.   Success is far from guaranteed.   If you are playing a misanthrope vermin sorcerer with multiple bloodline mutations, chances are you aren't going to succeed at anything regardless of what you role played.  People are going to be too freaked out to even pay attention to you, and regardless of how apt you thought your language, what people heard is going to be uncanny and alien.   

What I tell players is that what they hear as players in their own words isn't what the NPCs necessarily hear.  I have a player who is socially awkward and stutters a lot when he tries to RP.  Yet his character has very high diplomacy.  Consequently, while the player may stutter and be awkward, the character doesn't.   If the message is on point, the character will deliver it with the eloquence the player lacks.  Conversely, if I had a player that is very eloquent, but has large charisma penalties, the character will deliver the message in a wholly awkward fashion.   The player has in fact played out that trope scene from so many movies and TV shows where a character tries to achieve some brilliant oratory, but what has come out of there mouth has in fact made a fool of them.



> Because, at my table, you are going to roll BEFORE you narrate.




Fortune at the beginning is a perfectly valid approach.  

But my problem with it compared to fortune in the middle or even fortune in the end is that it tends to make the narration irrelevant and anticlimactic.  There is a tendency that if the roll actually is everything and is all of the deciding factor for the narration to be deprecated and not really happen, because why bother?  The results are known.  Perhaps one sentence will be said to humorously explain the result of the roll, but since the narration adds nothing there is no more reason to do it than there typically is reason to narrate the specifics of what happens when someone swings a sword.

Point that I want to convey though is that just because you use Fortune in the Middle or Fortune at the End doesn't mean that the dice don't determine what happens and that you can make an end run around a games mechanics.  

And the other point that I disagree with you over is that just because you have dump stated something doesn't mean that the proper way to play your character is failure.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> But my problem with it compared to fortune in the middle or even fortune in the end is that it tends to make the narration irrelevant and anticlimactic.  There is a tendency that if the roll actually is everything and is all of the deciding factor for the narration to be deprecated and not really happen, because why bother?  The results are known.  Perhaps one sentence will be said to humorously explain the result of the roll, but since the narration adds nothing there is no more reason to do it than there typically is reason to narrate the specifics of what happens when someone swings a sword.




I'm a huge fan of roll-then-narrate because it promotes creativity (and, as you say, humor), which I enjoy.  But it doesn't (in my experience) promote genuine problem solving.  Why find a creative, workable solution to a problem when it's going to be the same roll regardless of what you do? And I like D&D where the players have to figure things out.

Example: you need to persuade an NPC of something, and somewhere in the adventure you find some 'dirt' on that NPC. If you threaten to expose the truth the NPC might be much more likely to cooperate.  (And, in my opinion, if the dirt is sufficiently damning the PC's Charisma score shouldn't matter.)  But if telling the DM you are going to do that won't change the difficulty of the roll, why propose it? Why even think about?  None of it matters. Just say, "I roll Persuasion..."

That's why I use goal-and-approach AND roll-then-narrate.



> And the other point that I disagree with you over is that just because you have dump stated something doesn't mean that the proper way to play your character is failure.




Yes. Especially since in 5e "dumping" usually just means an 8, which is 5% worse than average.  That suggests to me that there is latent antipathy toward the _idea_ of dumping, brought over from previous editions, where you can be genuinely terrible at something. Thus, when you use the standard array and put the 8 somewhere, and then you don't invest in skills related to that ability, you are "minmaxing" and _you must be punished for it._


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I'm having a really difficult time believing that.  And a really difficult time thinking that you are answering in good faith.




Ask 10 different people what "mix/max" means and you're likely to get 10 different answers, especially since it's obvious it's all wrapped in some emotional response you're having. If you want to talk about it, you'll have to define what it means to you.



Hussar said:


> So, I can min/max my character so long as I do good on the talky talky, and I can end run around the game systems.  Great.  Good to know.  I have no interest in playing at this table.




What is the "talky talky?" Do you mean coming up with an efficacious approach to a goal? Such as using a key on the locked door instead of bashing it down with a portable ram? In a dramatic situation, the former approach likely doesn't require an ability check. The latter likely does.

What's the minimum Intelligence required to use a key instead of a portable ram to open a door? 



Hussar said:


> So, to be perfectly clear.  Play the character you brought to the table.  Sure, you can try to engage in a social challenge, go right ahead.  BUT, know that you will very likely fail difficult challenges *regardless* of what approach you use.  Because, at my table, you are going to roll BEFORE you narrate.




This seems like a very easy challenge - choosing the highest bonus skill, randomly generating a number, then describing what you did. What's the DC for putting a key in a lock to unlock the door? Or do I not worry about that until I've said I want to open the door, roll some kind of ability check, then if I succeed say I used the key instead of the ram? What happens if I fail - did I use the ram instead or maybe the key breaks?


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But if we're talking about boundaries, mine are basically the same as @_*iserith*_'s, although...I'm hazarding a guess, here...I think mine are a little looser. I welcome players adding to the fiction outside of their character, especially if it's about their background; not sure if iserith does that.




Yes, I think it's fine and I encourage players to keep their backstories to less than the length of a Tweet so that it's focused, easy for others to digest, and full of possibilities that can be expanded during the game. But that expansion really has very little impact on the game other than to flesh out their characters since I don't require players to justify the validity of their action declarations - that is not the DM's role in this game. If you want to say your character thinks something, that's up to you because that is the player's role. It's just the character might not always be right.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's just the character might not always be right.




Yes!  Elsewhere I gave the example from last night of my players finding a necklace of fireballs.  If I were really concerned about so-called 'metagaming' I would have either:
 - Described something that doesn't look like a n_ecklace of fireballs_. (E.g., bracelet with pearls)
 - Made it look like a _necklace of fireballs_ but do something totally different.

If I'm concerned about "knowledge the characters wouldn't have" and I include a necklace of fireballs that looks like what it is, then who's to blame but me?


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## lowkey13 (Apr 30, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So, this seems to be one of a number of contentious threads going on right now (both this forum and the general RPG forum), but I wanted to note that this is a common and recurrent issue (see also the genius with the 8 intelligence, or whatever that thread was) and IMO it relates to a few issues that seem to crop up.
> 
> The first is the one that is common to the boards and that you are alluding to- the idea of "dumping," or, at least, specifically not putting a good stat in a particular ability because you don't care about the pure mechanical aspects and you feel that you can RP your way out of the low score. Call this the Charisma/Intelligence problem. I call it that because it was a common issue back in the old days with charisma and intelligence- neither ability had much of a mechanical impact*, so unless you had a specialized use-case (magic user, paladin, to name two), players would put their low rolls by default in those stats because the other abilities had decided mechanical advantages; moreover, there was an emphasis on, and allowance for, "skilled play" that would let you get around a low intelligence, and you could always talk your way around a low charisma.
> 
> ...




Good post.

I especially like the _Blades in the Dark_ example (which I have also been reading lately).  Maybe that mechanic is a kind of litmus test: whether or not you like it perhaps says a lot about where you stand on a number of other playstyle questions.

For the record, I love that mechanic.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> The problem with this is that it is a standard trope of fiction that characters which aren't particularly clever often think of clever plans by doing the simple obvious thing that the more clever character didn't think of.  This is the "kids say the darndest things" trope and related tropes.  So there is nothing particularly wrong with a player who is intelligent, playing a mechanically "dumb" character in a "Forest Gump" like manner where he solves problems despite his lack of intelligence rather than because of it.   Yes, there are artful ways to play this out and less artful ways of playing this out, but I'm not going to show someone the door simply because they aren't an artful enough of a thespian for my tastes.
> 
> What are you going to do, tell the player that their character is too dumb to have come up with this plan?  Force the player to make an intelligence check to come up with the plan?  Are you also going to make the 18 INT character make an intelligence check to come up with the plan?   Because if you are going to do that sort of thing, why allow players to play their characters at all?
> 
> ...



"If a player dump stats an attribute and in your opinion doesn't suffer enough of a penalty for it, then it suggests that attribute doesn't actually have enough impact on play and possibly should be removed from the game entirely. If it really was the case that there was no mechanical penalty for low INT, why do characters and the rules system have INT at all? That sounds like a problem with the system and not with the players."

I agree. However, the impact on play of a stat is dependent on both the types of challenges presented to the charscter **and** the resolution methods seen to be needed in play.

If a GM shows routinely that social engagements are handled more on the player-side by puzzle-lock type play, where really perhaps insight and investigation play s bigger role (gathering clues to be used to manipulate the other) and that if the argument presented in player gets to "auto-success" etc (no Cha needed) then that is the GM choosing to rule out botched delivery by character as long as the player doesnt themselves do so. The GM has then shown Cha as less useful. 

Thats why I (and others perhaps) will tend to always refer back to stats, perhaps still auto-success, but used.

Some stats have hard coded uses, guaranteed uncertainties etc do the reference to the stat is maintained in many encounters by the mechanics. Others are far more succeptable to GM bypassing enough to see the stat devslued.

I would have zero issues if a GM said "in this game, most social types of challenges are gonna be more like mysteries to solve - investigation and insight driven if at all stats and so CHA is removed". Tell the folks that right up front. Rework classes to use other non-cha stats. 

But leaving Cha in and then showing in play it's more effective to overcome those challenges by the other means... you undercut the chargen choices and expectations. "I figured my sorc would be good at social stuff, but the ones finding clues do better at it than I. 
"

As for the int 18 vs Int 8 and why play character whatever...

Facing a 15' jump a str 18 doesnt have to roll but a set 12 or str 8 would.  So both require reference to character stat, but one auto-succeeds. Is that raising an issue of why play character too? 

Fir me, the ingots is an easy issue since str 8 can lift them and even toddlers learn there are things they can carry and things they cannot. The challenge doesnt come with one solution but with many and they have different ways they reference stats. It's not that a  Str 18 check was applied to the scene, but to moving the full cart. 

But then again, to me a challenge to Int would not be a "player puzzle but something that the character would need to do, like deciphering mystic runes or analysis of a compound etc. So, the idea that lifting ingots somehow gets worked into a int test for character is very skewed from my experience at gaming.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> Ask 10 different people what "min/max" means and you're likely to get 10 different answers, especially since it's obvious it's all wrapped in some emotional response you're having. If you want to talk about it, you'll have to define what it means to you.



 You might get 10 different opinions - 9 of them negative - but I've only ever heard two meaningfully different definitions.

1) Minimize weaknesses and maximize strengths - fanciful under most build systems.

2) Minimize investment in some areas to maximize it in others (often one other)

Few build systems actually model anything like diminishing marginal utility, so they tend to encourage extreme trade-offs.  If you've ever played an 8 STR 18 INT  wizard or an 18 STR 8 INT fighter, you've min/maxed, and you've nothing to be ashamed of.  It's just following a pattern that the system incentivizes.   



> What is the "talky talky?"



 In this case, specifically using speaking in character, alone, to resolve a social challenge, without reference to the relevant mechanical qualities of the character.



> Do you mean coming up with an efficacious approach to a goal? Such as using a key on the locked door instead of bashing it down with a portable ram?



 Given that the character has no key, that might be an example of a broader meaning.  (This is about to get insulting to my fellow nerds):  it's what goes on when a player-DM verbal interaction moves beyond what our high-conventional-IQ nerdbrains can process, due to the player possessing much greater emotional intelligence and social skills than we can even imagine, resulting in a DM ruling at odds with rules, stats, reason, and immune to any degree of logical rigour we  might resort to in proving how wrong it is.


OK, that's probably not what Hussar meant.


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> What is the "talky talky?" Do you mean coming up with an efficacious approach to a goal? Such as using a key on the locked door instead of bashing it down with a portable ram? In a dramatic situation, the former approach likely doesn't require an ability check. The latter likely does.
> 
> What's the minimum Intelligence required to use a key instead of a portable ram to open a door?




I think your questions are spot on, but I think I also know where Hussar is coming from.   And at the risk of offending him (again), I'll guess that the "talky talky" is actually his past experience with high charisma (but socially dysfunctional) players browbeating or bullying the DM into getting their way.  That is to say, I suspect that what Hussar is really guarding against is not problem solving in character per se, but a player playing the metagame where he tries to talk the DM into yielding to him.   

And that is I agree totally dysfunctional and yes I've seen that in play, and Hussar's strategy of using fortune at the beginning seems designed to just kill that cold without the need to have a confrontation with that player about the way that they are playing, precisely because players like that prefer to negotiate at the metagame level and any confrontation like that is simply starting up the drama with them. 



> This seems like a very easy challenge - choosing the highest bonus skill, randomly generating a number, then describing what you did. What's the DC for putting a key in a lock to unlock the door? Or do I not worry about that until I've said I want to open the door, roll some kind of ability check, then if I succeed say I used the key instead of the ram? What happens if I fail - did I use the ram instead or maybe the key breaks?




Again, what I really think Hussar is actually objecting to in play is not problem solving, as I suspect that in play he's not actually that far off what you or I do.  I suspect what he is really objecting to is player's being jerks, and there is a particular class of player jerk that attempts to short cut the entire proposition->fortune->resolution cycle by first getting the DM to agree to the stakes, then getting the DM to agree that a plan works, and if they can't get that DM to agree to the stakes and to the plan working, then they back up and try again, until they finally browbeat the DM into simply validating that they get what they want.   So you end up with a ton of argument over whether or not the DM is ruling correctly, and a ton of demands for do overs because the player would have never done this thing if he realized whatever.   That is I think the "talky talky".


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So, this seems to be one of a number of contentious threads going on right now (both this forum and the general RPG forum), but I wanted to note that this is a common and recurrent issue (see also the genius with the 8 intelligence, or whatever that thread was) and IMO it relates to a few issues that seem to crop up.
> 
> The first is the one that is common to the boards and that you are alluding to- the idea of "dumping," or, at least, specifically not putting a good stat in a particular ability because you don't care about the pure mechanical aspects and you feel that you can RP your way out of the low score. Call this the Charisma/Intelligence problem. I call it that because it was a common issue back in the old days with charisma and intelligence- neither ability had much of a mechanical impact*, so unless you had a specialized use-case (magic user, paladin, to name two), players would put their low rolls by default in those stats because the other abilities had decided mechanical advantages; moreover, there was an emphasis on, and allowance for, "skilled play" that would let you get around a low intelligence, and you could always talk your way around a low charisma.
> 
> ...



Well said. 

I agree with your focus. Part of me thinks there might be generational divides that can exacerbate this - as someone who has a gaming lifespan that started in the 90s or at 3.x etc might not have gone thru the "glory days" seeing the rise and fall of all sorts of different approaches.

"Do you think that the PC is a separate entity, capable of solving problems with an independent base of knowledge?
Or do you think the PC is vessel for your play (the player)?"

While I dont see these as mutually exclusive and see them as two ends on a spectrum I fall for DnD 5e games closer to the "entity" side, where the "your play" is key for the bigger picture stuff but the "separate entity is key for the more granular task level stuff.

Take a fight - "your play" makes a world of difference - decisions on who to attack now, to attack or to cover, to heal or hurt, to fog cloud or serp, etc etc make eworld of difference and can swing the battle results in many ways. They can even shift the odds of the attacks, thru help or such.

But the resolution of each task often comes down to the "separate entity" and their stats or specs.

Or say we have a different challenge, a town beset by demonic plagues, needing cures we dont have. Again, "your play" can be huge - do you call in allies and if do which ones, do you send some folks to get cures from a nearby harbor instead, do you ho hunting the plague source yo get the cure from them etc etc etc. "Your play" is key to the overall effort, the strategic levels of the solution, but then at each of these actual efforts that will be where the "separate entity" and their capabilities matter. Did you send the big surly barbarian to try and talk the allies into coming to help? Did you send the charming thief to the harbor to try and "acquire" cures? The "who" of the character matters. 

Now, for other games, like say Ten Candles or VtM or OtE - my position on the scale between "entity" and "your play" shifts. Pretty much the more importance we show in chargen on mechanics and specifics for "the entity " the more I want to show that as time (choices) that matter. 

Five index cards with one word each as dramatic triggers - its gonna be mostly "your play" at every level. 

Point buy, classes, sub-classes, over a dozen skills, backgrounds, 20 level of mechanical changes, etc etc etc... "entity" is gonna matter more at the task level. 

But that's me.


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## Umbran (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I find their position puzzling.  Sort of like being opposed to...oh, let's say freedom of speech, just because some people will say hateful things.  Yeah, they will.  But dealing with them is vastly preferable to not having that freedom. (Ok, against the best advice I've received I've now let that analogy loose in this thread...can't wait to see how it's tortured and abused to prove that I'm contradicting myself.)




How about instead, we just note the fact that the analogy is poorly chosen and inappropriately hyperbolic, to the point of obscuring the issues being discussed, and leave it at that?


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> You might get 10 different opinions - 9 of them negative - but I've only ever heard two meaningfully different definitions.
> 
> 1) Minimize weaknesses and maximize strengths - fanciful under most build systems.
> 
> ...




Under the proposed definitions, I agree with your conclusion.



Tony Vargas said:


> In this case, specifically using speaking in character, alone, to resolve a social challenge, without reference to the relevant mechanical qualities of the character.




While the rules (and here I'm referencing D&D 5e) do say that the character's ability scores and race are taken into account when imagining the character's appearance and personality, there is no particular prohibition on action declarations for a given ability score. Further, the DM is told that it's "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."

So far as I can tell, some posters are adding an additional requirement about who can propose what based on some idea of what, for example, an 8 Intelligence or Charisma means. This is not supported by the rules of the game and, in some cases under examination here, it causes them to have to change the game to one of random number generation followed by description in order to enforce this additional requirement. Which as [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] notes appears to be a means by which they try to control dysfunctional player behavior.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think your questions are spot on, but I think I also know where Hussar is coming from.   And at the risk of offending him (again), I'll guess that the "talky talky" is actually his past experience with high charisma (but socially dysfunctional) players browbeating or bullying the DM into getting their way.  That is to say, I suspect that what Hussar is really guarding against is not problem solving in character per se, but a player playing the metagame where he tries to talk the DM into yielding to him.
> 
> And that is I agree totally dysfunctional and yes I've seen that in play, and Hussar's strategy of using fortune at the beginning seems designed to just kill that cold without the need to have a confrontation with that player about the way that they are playing, precisely because players like that prefer to negotiate at the metagame level and any confrontation like that is simply starting up the drama with them.
> 
> Again, what I really think Hussar is actually objecting to in play is not problem solving, as I suspect that in play he's not actually that far off what you or I do.  I suspect what he is really objecting to is player's being jerks, and there is a particular class of player jerk that attempts to short cut the entire proposition->fortune->resolution cycle by first getting the DM to agree to the stakes, then getting the DM to agree that a plan works, and if they can't get that DM to agree to the stakes and to the plan working, then they back up and try again, until they finally browbeat the DM into simply validating that they get what they want.   So you end up with a ton of argument over whether or not the DM is ruling correctly, and a ton of demands for do overs because the player would have never done this thing if he realized whatever.   That is I think the "talky talky".




Given what appears to be a highly emotional response, I think you may well be right. It's one thing to try to avoid the fickle d20 by offering good approaches to remove uncertainty as to the outcome of the task and/or the meaningful consequence for failure. It's another thing to browbeat or bully the DM into making a particular call. It argues for, as with many things in life, not avoiding the confrontation and facing it head on to resolve it. There's a long bad history with trying to use in-game solutions to solve out-of-game problems. Just talk to that player, I say, and if the problem isn't resolved, drop him or her from the game.

But I guess we'll have to see if this was indeed the root of the problem Hussar's method attempts to solve. If it is, it just trades one problem for another in my view and greatly reduces the difficulty of the game.


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## Oofta (Apr 30, 2019)

[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], can you define your "alternative method" for a low charisma character achieving a social goal.  Because when we ask for examples it's "use the key to open the locked door".  Well, duh.  Of course you can bypass a locked door by using a key.  You can smash it down if you don't mind the noise and the fact that you're breaking the door.

But it's the same as bypassing a trap.  Want to open a trapped chest?  You either have to use a skill or find the instructions on how to bypass the trap in my campaign.  If you're trying to get past a trapped door and can just bypass it by going around, why wouldn't you?

So for social encounters what are your options. Bribery?  Blackmail? The former may not work or you may have insufficient items of value, the latter is assuming you have a "key" (aka "dirt") and are willing to use it*.  It also assumes that you do either of those without insulting the NPC.  In other words in my campaign you could try those but best it would do would be to give you advantage and a lowered DC. Even then I'd still probably make it a 5 unless it's incredibly good leverage.

Which leaves us with "make a compelling argument", which gets translated into "good talkie-talk".

_*Which actually goes for both blackmail and bribery.  A lot of players would find those options a no-go, not to mention possible negatives in the future.  If your PC uses blackmail, you've created an enemy.  Bribery?  Charges of corruption._


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Umbran said:


> How about instead, we just note the fact that the analogy is poorly chosen and inappropriately hyperbolic, to the point of obscuring the issues being discussed, and leave it at that?




I’ll acknowledge nothing of the sort. It’s as good an analogy as any. Sure, more serious stakes in freedom of speech than in roleplaying games, but that doesn’t invalidate the analogy. 

This thread and others are full of bad-faith debate, willful misunderstanding, disingenuous rhetorical tricks, and denigrating/dismissive language.  

Yet you seem more bothered by me pointing out the obvious than by the behavior itself. What gives?


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> So far as I can tell, some posters are adding an additional requirement about who can propose what based on some idea of what, for example, an 8 Intelligence or Charisma means. This is not supported by the rules of the game and, in some cases under examination here, it causes them to have to change the game to one of random number generation followed by description in order to enforce this additional requirement. Which as [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] notes appears to be a means by which they try to control dysfunctional player behavior.




That was well-expressed.


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## Mort (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I’ll acknowledge nothing of the sort. It’s as good an analogy as any. Sure, more serious stakes in freedom of speech than in roleplaying games, but that doesn’t invalidate the analogy.
> 
> This thread and others are full of bad-faith debate, willful misunderstanding, disingenuous rhetorical tricks, and denigrating/dismissive language.
> 
> Yet you seem more bothered by me pointing out the obvious than by the behavior itself. What gives?




And as often seems to be the case, both sides seem utterly convinced it's the _other_ side that's guilty of said behavior.

For my part, I'll just have to be more clear in any examples/argument. And also - not post quickly from my phone which seems to rarely get the intent I intend across.


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## Mort (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], can you define your "alternative method" for a low charisma character achieving a social goal.  Because when we ask for examples it's "use the key to open the locked door".  Well, duh.  Of course you can bypass a locked door by using a key.  You can smash it down if you don't mind the noise and the fact that you're breaking the door.
> 
> But it's the same as bypassing a trap.  Want to open a trapped chest?  You either have to use a skill or find the instructions on how to bypass the trap in my campaign.  If you're trying to get past a trapped door and can just bypass it by going around, why wouldn't you?
> 
> ...




This is an excellent point, I too would like to delve deeper into social challenges vs. physical ones.

For example: In a recent game, the party had to get into the High Quarter of the city - populated near exclusively by nobles. It's walled and the guards are disinclined to let "rabble" in.

One of the characters was of noble background. He just prominently displayed his family crest and the group strolled right in.

Had no one had the noble background and tried the same approach, I likely would have required a deception check: The noble background ingrains the correct demeanor, bearing etc. but anyone else has to fake it (at least with that approach, if they'd tried something else I would have judged it from there).


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Mort said:


> One of the characters was of noble background. He just prominently displayed his family crest and the group strolled right in.




This sounds like the DM got pushed around by the player's talky-talky.


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## Mort (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> This sounds like the DM got pushed around by the player's talky-talky.



?

Noble background on his sheet. Seems like a clear example of the player using the assets/abilities of his character.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Mort said:


> ?
> 
> Noble background on his sheet. Seems like a clear example of the player using the assets/abilities of his character.




This sounds like something someone who got pushed around by talky-talky would say.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Oofta said:


> @_*Elfcrusher*_, can you define your "alternative method" for a low charisma character achieving a social goal.  Because when we ask for examples it's "use the key to open the locked door".  Well, duh.  Of course you can bypass a locked door by using a key.  You can smash it down if you don't mind the noise and the fact that you're breaking the door.




Sure! Happy to. And, yes, I get it, physical challenges somehow seem different than social/intellectual challenges.




> So for social encounters what are your options. Bribery?  Blackmail? The former may not work or you may have insufficient items of value, the latter is assuming you have a "key" (aka "dirt") and are willing to use it*.  It also assumes that you do either of those without insulting the NPC.  In other words in my campaign you could try those but best it would do would be to give you advantage and a lowered DC. Even then I'd still probably make it a 5 unless it's incredibly good leverage.




Sure, just like you may not have the key and have no other choice but to break it down (if there's no keyhole, either) or pick the lock (if it can't be broken down), sometimes you won't have the 'key' to a social encounter and might not be able to come up with any other plan than good old-fashioned fast-talking. In which case the DM may very well ask for a roll (or not, if the NPC is looking for an excuse to cooperate.)

Maybe one of the misunderstandings here is that that you (and others) are assuming there is ALWAYS an alternative plan with guaranteed success?  Not at all.  All we are saying is that the DM should listen to what the players propose.

By the way, you giving advantage, or a reduced DC, is logically no different than iserith and I giving automatic success: you are also modifying the difficulty based on the approach, you just are more reluctant to reduce it all the way to zero.  (And I also sometimes give advantage instead of making it an automatic success.)

Anyway, on to examples.  Yes, you cover a lot of the bases with the categories of "bribery" and "blackmail/threats":
 - Offer gold. Maybe a lot of gold.
 - Offer something else you know the NPC really wants (information, captives, magic items, perform a task, etc.)
 - Threaten to expose 'dirt' on the NPC
 - Threaten to kill the NPCs family members. (Does the DM ask for an Intimidation check? Kill a hostage instead.  Another Intimidation check? Kill another hostage. Etc.)
 - Instead of offering a trade, just do something to get in the NPC's good favor, and then ask.  "Here, I rescued your daughter. No, no, no...no payment necessary.  Although, now that you mention it..."

And, again, none of those are _necessarily_ going to reduce the difficulty, or make it zero. But they might. It's up to the DM, depending on the circumstances.

(If I understand correctly what Hussar is saying, in each one of those cases the player would still have to make the same Charisma check, with the same DC, that he would if he had done none of those things and just said, "I'll roll Persuade.")

Now, the players, for reasons of personal values, or because they are roleplaying characters with personal values, may balk at some of these options.  Again, there won't always be an alternative solution available.  Those player might just have to make a Charisma roll.  (Or give up, not wanting to face the consequences of a failed dice roll.)



> Which leaves us with "make a compelling argument", which gets translated into "good talkie-talk".




Yeah, there seems to be an ongoing reluctance/inability/unwillingness to distinguish between "proposing something sensible" and "hustling the DM."  

_



			*Which actually goes for both blackmail and bribery.  A lot of players would find those options a no-go, not to mention possible negatives in the future.  If your PC uses blackmail, you've created an enemy.  Bribery?  Charges of corruption.
		
Click to expand...


_
Yeah, sure.  In fact, all the better. "Try a Charisma roll you will likely fail, with the consequence that you get thrown out, or use Blackmail which will likely succeed, in which case even with success you'll have gained an enemy, not to mention a stain on your soul."  That's awesome.  I love trade-offs.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

Mort said:


> ?
> 
> Noble background on his sheet. Seems like a clear example of the player using the assets/abilities of his character.




I think he was messing with you.

You described a perfect example of "goal-and-method", and granted an automatic success because the approach made total sense.  (I might have put a new obstacle in the way, though: the guards will let in the noble but not the rabble with him.  Depending on what the player proposed, that might lead to a Cha check after all.)


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## billd91 (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Good post.
> 
> I especially like the _Blades in the Dark_ example (which I have also been reading lately).  Maybe that mechanic is a kind of litmus test: whether or not you like it perhaps says a lot about where you stand on a number of other playstyle questions.
> 
> For the record, I love that mechanic.




I enjoy that style of mechanic but to a limited degree. PF has a halfling feat called Well Prepared that goes about as far as I'd like with it. It's a nice little benefit that cannot be overused because, from a narrative sense, you can only use it once a day to have just the right item on hand. I build a lot of halfling adventurers with it because it's fun and gives you a very good reason to have a pack mule.


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2019)

Mort said:


> This is an excellent point, I too would like to delve deeper into social challenges vs. physical ones.
> 
> For example: In a recent game, the party had to get into the High Quarter of the city - populated near exclusively by nobles. It's walled and the guards are disinclined to let "rabble" in.
> 
> One of the characters was of noble background. He just prominently displayed his family crest and the group strolled right in.




I don't think there is anything wrong with that approach.  After all, the guard appears to have the instructions, "Let anyone in who is a noble.", and this doesn't need to be a situation that requires a lot of time to be spent on it.   It's not an exciting moment, so handwaving past it is fine.

I also don't think there is anything wrong with alternative approaches.   For example...

1) How prominent is the family crest in the community?  Is it one that would be immediately recognized?  I might require the guard to make an intelligence or skill check of the appropriate sort to recognize the device.  If not, then the guard might stop the PC and ask for further proof, such a identification papers of some sort or perhaps a check with his superior to see if the superior has heard of this family.

2) How likely is the guard to be suspicious in this circumstances?  Are false nobles a common problem?  Is the PC's family respectable and universally liked, or do they have a reputation.  Does the PC and his 'servants' appear to be reputable folks by the standards of the community, or do they look like a heavily armed band of ruffians and sellswords?   If the guard is suspicious or just takes a dislike to the PC (hello reaction check!), he may give the PC some difficulty even if he believes the PC is a noble - insisting on papers, being disagreeable, and making passive aggressive comments. 

3) How much noble bearing does the character really have?  It's not an automatic that just because the character has a noble background, that he paid attention to his dancing master and has good posture, good diction, and a proper noble bearing.  A low charisma noble might be assumed to in fact not have paid particular attention to these fine points, and have wiped his snotty nose on his sleeve, forgot to wash his face this morning, smell of sweaty horseflesh, and generally giving the impression of not being what the guard expects to see in a noble.   He might behave like "rabble" no matter how high his lineage, and so provoke suspicion and perhaps dislike from the guard on those grounds.   That after all is one reasonable expression of what having low charisma means.

I'd typically allow some chance that the player was refused admittance even though he had every right to be there.  Maybe the DC to get past the guard is 0 if you are really a noble, and 20 if you are not.   If you have a -8 on your social check, which is not at all impossible in my game, that would still mean you had a 35% chance of having a hassle even if you were a noble.  In fact, you might find that the party rogue, with +12 bluff check and appropriate insight that the guard was corrupt and open to a bribe (thus getting a circumstance bonus) actually has a better chance of getting you in that you have.

The other thing that differs in my approach is that "noble background" or anything else in your background that can be a tangible advantage has to be paid for at character generation.  There is literally a trait in my game called "Noble Rank" that lets you start the game as a noble, among the many advantages of which is that you are presumed to have reason to move in noble circles, and have a effectively +3 bonus on social checks in any situation where the NPC recognizes and respects your rank.   And if you also want to be "wealthy" there is a trait for that.  Heck, you can start play as the king's third son if you are willing to pay for all the advantages that you want to start with like wealthy, patron, high noble rank.

Where I've seen your example go wrong is when a player tries to leverage all sorts of advantages out of his background, or particularly out of the absence of his background, by browbeating the DM into accepting that he could in fact have this in his background, and if he did, then he shouldn't have to roll.   That can get to be a problem, with people treating color in their background as if it was an advantage on their character sheet.  Hence, the reason for assigning typical background claims to mechanical advantages is not only do I not have to say "no" to such things, but if someone tries to leverage their background, I can point out that they didn't pay for the advantage they are trying to have.   

Likewise, one potential problem with this approach is that if all the PC did was display a device on his shield or tunic, I can foresee a PC arguing that all he needs to do is by a fake shield and display that without needing a roll and that being an argument.   

How exactly I would approach this depends a lot on what I would think is good for the game at the moment.  Is it worthwhile to highlight the noble PC's low charisma and the parties mercenary appearance?  Or, is it better to just ignore any minor problems and role-play opportunities highlighting that might bring and get to the good stuff?   That's a pure judgment call with no right answer.

I can relate that about 1/3rd of the way into my campaign, the PC's moved their base from their home capital city to a foreign capital city, and had to move through customs and get papers, and I made the call to RP that out because it was also an opportunity to info-dump and get important information about the new city (and its laws) into the hands of the players.  One of the players had a pet grizzly bear.   "No problem." asserts the customs officer.  "Plenty of animals in the city.  We have a strong elven community.  Just don't leave your pets unattended where they might cause a disturbance."  (Naturally, one of the first things the PC did was leave the animal unattended.)   One of the characters was a hobgoblin.  THAT required a bunch of social rolls by a PC in the party with noble rank, including some name dropping, to even get the hobgoblin into the city - despite the fact that the hobgoblin was dressed appropriately for a gentlemen's man-servant (which he in fact was).   The refused to even talk to the hobgoblin, and if the hobgoblin had insisted on talking to them, given the xenophobia penalites involved and the hobgoblins lack of social skills it's highly likely they would have imprisoned or killed the hobgoblin on the spot.   One of the PC's commented to the hobgoblin, "It appears that they consider you a lower form of life than the bear."  Yes, precisely.


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## Celebrim (Apr 30, 2019)

billd91 said:


> I enjoy that style of mechanic but to a limited degree. PF has a halfling feat called Well Prepared that goes about as far as I'd like with it. It's a nice little benefit that cannot be overused because, from a narrative sense, you can only use it once a day to have just the right item on hand. I build a lot of halfling adventurers with it because it's fun and gives you a very good reason to have a pack mule.




I agree.  I don't like it as a generic way of handling things, but I very much do like it as a particular benefit you can buy for your character.   For one thing, feats like that allow you to actually play a character with mental attributes you yourself don't have.   I have one that goes even further than "Well Prepared" in my homebrew called "Mastermind" that lets you retroactively declare actions that you took in the past (including for example, buying a crowbar).   So long as there are reasonable limits on that, and they are trading that advantage for some other potential advantage, I don't mind it.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I’ll acknowledge nothing of the sort. It’s as good an analogy as any. Sure, more serious stakes in freedom of speech than in roleplaying games, but that doesn’t invalidate the analogy.
> 
> This thread and others are full of bad-faith debate, willful misunderstanding, disingenuous rhetorical tricks, and denigrating/dismissive language.
> 
> Yet you seem more bothered by me pointing out the obvious than by the behavior itself. What gives?



Since the real world issues surrounding the legal and political hot potato of freedom of speech,  including life and death stakes - some playing out right now on the news , are so very polarizing, I wont have anything to do with that attempt to link this gaming playstyle to that set of IRL issues.


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Sure! Happy to. And, yes, I get it, physical challenges somehow seem different than social/intellectual challenges.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



_"Maybe one of the misunderstandings here is that that you (and others) are assuming there is ALWAYS an alternative plan with guaranteed success? Not at all. "

Nah. Well some may but I and others have talked about it being the frequency, how often there are shown auto-success with no reference to skills of character.

"By the way, you giving advantage, or a reduced DC, is logically no different than iserith and I giving automatic success: you are also modifying the difficulty based on the approach, you just are more reluctant to reduce it all the way to zero. (And I also sometimes give advantage instead of making it an automatic success.)"

There is a huge logical difference between advsntage snd auto-succesd, especially if auto-success is taken to the no-skill-needed level. That difference is the crux of the debate - whether the character matters to the resolution. 

A test I proposed and some others as well was "could we substitute in every other character or even a commoner and still get auto-success with the approach."

Giving advantage is reflecting both the character and the player - even if that results in auto-success by the numbers (passive checks).

Deciding it's an auto-success for anyone with no reference to character and mechanics is a whole different thing._


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Sure! Happy to. And, yes, I get it, physical challenges somehow seem different than social/intellectual challenges.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



_"Anyway, on to examples. Yes, you cover a lot of the bases with the categories of "bribery" and "blackmail/threats":

- Offer gold. Maybe a lot of gold.

- Offer something else you know the NPC really wants (information, captives, magic items, perform a task, etc.)

- Threaten to expose 'dirt' on the NPC

- Threaten to kill the NPCs family members. (Does the DM ask for an Intimidation check? Kill a hostage instead. Another Intimidation check? Kill another hostage. Etc.)

- Instead of offering a trade, just do something to get in the NPC's good favor, and then ask. "Here, I rescued your daughter. No, no, no...no payment necessary. Although, now that you mention it...""

I recall the movie Ransom, where at the end the kidnapper asks why Mel Gibdon wouldn't pay up. 

Mel said in essence that he would have paid ten times that no problem, but the way the guy came off, the tone etc, led Mel to not believe him. He did not think that even if he complied the guy would honor his deal. So, one dollar or ten million - no difference.

When I look at the above list and add in "how convincing is the PC" and think "are any of these so automatic that an NPC would ignore his doubts even if he thought the other guy wasnt good for his word/promise" I come away with "nope, not certain. 
"
The last one, that describes a PC working with a friendly target, and the rules already provide good setup for that in the sections on social outcomes. If it's no risk, no problem. If its moderate risk, it's like DC 10, etc... and advantage plays a huge role. There's no roll even needed then, unless its risky. 

 Ut the rules provide different DCs gor different cases, so i doubt Hussar would be, as portrayed) a signing the same DC for a guard who idps friendly as a guard you dont know - anymore than the rules do. I dont think that's an accurate representation of his position._


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## 5ekyu (Apr 30, 2019)

billd91 said:


> I enjoy that style of mechanic but to a limited degree. PF has a halfling feat called Well Prepared that goes about as far as I'd like with it. It's a nice little benefit that cannot be overused because, from a narrative sense, you can only use it once a day to have just the right item on hand. I build a lot of halfling adventurers with it because it's fun and gives you a very good reason to have a pack mule.



There are a lot of games built with those sort of things in mind. I remember Stargate having expendable gear points for gizmo on demand".

Often they are tied in with gimmick points like hero points, plot points, momentum, inspiration and even sometimes to the point of scene editing. "Plot point - I bet the backdoor is blocked by old crates and stuff."

We have played a lot of those, each with their own takes on it and how far how fast they should play out "let the plot points flow like rain" to one per session or whatever.

Maybe supporting the idea of a link between the styles, we never found a balance we liked. We were much happier having "do I have" and "does the building have" type questions be things we answer by character play instead of by meta-game gimmick points. "Was there a back door" was more fun to us whrn it was answered by characters coming the joint beforehand thsn "does anyone have a gimmick point left."

The more we used them, the more the system integrated them into routine play and resolution, the less the feel of playing a character there was. The more it seemed playing a character.

Watching streams of STA 2d20 play, that drove us away from it as it seemed the most used word was "momentum"and the gain/loss of momentum seemed to be more important that the task.

So, scenes like those  or ganesxwhere everyone dumping CHA cuz thry know they can resolve those without checks to CHA enough (and use gimmick points to help if the get stuck with a check) are definitely not our cup of tea.


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## Mort (Apr 30, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think there is anything wrong with that approach.  After all, the guard appears to have the instructions, "Let anyone in who is a noble.", and this doesn't need to be a situation that requires a lot of time to be spent on it.   It's not an exciting moment, so handwaving past it is fine.
> 
> I also don't think there is anything wrong with alternative approaches...




I'm always up for alternative approaches depending on the situation. For example, I let the whole group in - I could have made it more challenging by only automatically allowing the actual noble in. At the time it was mostly a time/convenience issue and wanting to move forward to the meat of the adventure.




Celebrim said:


> The other thing that differs in my approach is that "noble background" or anything else in your background that can be a tangible advantage has to be paid for at character generation.  There is literally a trait in my game called "Noble Rank" that lets you start the game as a noble, among the many advantages of which is that you are presumed to have reason to move in noble circles, and have a effectively +3 bonus on social checks in any situation where the NPC recognizes and respects your rank.   And if you also want to be "wealthy" there is a trait for that.  Heck, you can start play as the king's third son if you are willing to pay for all the advantages that you want to start with like wealthy, patron, high noble rank.




In this case it's a 5e game and "Noble" background is exactly that: among the benefits is "position of privilege" which essentially does what your benefit does.




Celebrim said:


> Where I've seen your example go wrong is when a player tries to leverage all sorts of advantages out of his background, or particularly out of the absence of his background, by browbeating the DM into accepting that he could in fact have this in his background, and if he did, then he shouldn't have to roll.   That can get to be a problem, with people treating color in their background as if it was an advantage on their character sheet.  Hence, the reason for assigning typical background claims to mechanical advantages is not only do I not have to say "no" to such things, but if someone tries to leverage their background, I can point out that they didn't pay for the advantage they are trying to have.




In this case the player did actually "pay" for the advantage (that's the background he picked over other 5e choices.   Also, I have a stable group of players and trust has been established both ways - so shenanigans (browbeating etc.) tend to not come up.



Celebrim said:


> Likewise, one potential problem with this approach is that if all the PC did was display a device on his shield or tunic, I can foresee a PC arguing that all he needs to do is by a fake shield and display that without needing a roll and that being an argument.




Here, unless he has the noble background that's almost certainly going to require a check.

Just like the Urchin character can get to anywhere in the city twice as fast as any non-urchin character thanks to city secrets.



Celebrim said:


> How exactly I would approach this depends a lot on what I would think is good for the game at the moment.  Is it worthwhile to highlight the noble PC's low charisma and the parties mercenary appearance?  Or, is it better to just ignore any minor problems and role-play opportunities highlighting that might bring and get to the good stuff?   That's a pure judgment call with no right answer.




That seems about right.




Celebrim said:


> I can relate that about 1/3rd of the way into my campaign, the PC's moved their base from their home capital city to a foreign capital city, and had to move through customs and get papers, and I made the call to RP that out because it was also an opportunity to info-dump and get important information about the new city (and its laws) into the hands of the players.  One of the players had a pet grizzly bear.   "No problem." asserts the customs officer.  "Plenty of animals in the city.  We have a strong elven community.  Just don't leave your pets unattended where they might cause a disturbance."  (Naturally, one of the first things the PC did was leave the animal unattended.)   One of the characters was a hobgoblin.  THAT required a bunch of social rolls by a PC in the party with noble rank, including some name dropping, to even get the hobgoblin into the city - despite the fact that the hobgoblin was dressed appropriately for a gentlemen's man-servant (which he in fact was).   The refused to even talk to the hobgoblin, and if the hobgoblin had insisted on talking to them, given the xenophobia penalites involved and the hobgoblins lack of social skills it's highly likely they would have imprisoned or killed the hobgoblin on the spot.   One of the PC's commented to the hobgoblin, "It appears that they consider you a lower form of life than the bear."  Yes, precisely.




good example.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> While the rules (and here I'm referencing D&D 5e) do say that the character's ability scores and race are taken into account when imagining the character's appearance and personality, there is no particular prohibition on action declarations for a given ability score. Further, the DM is told that it's "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."



 Well, sure, something like walking across a room, or ordering a drink at a bar, or getting out of bed in the morning.  

Resolving a social interaction with meaningful consequences to success/failure, OTOH, maybe not what it was talking about.



> So far as I can tell, some posters are adding an additional requirement about who can propose what based on some idea of what, for example, an 8 Intelligence or Charisma means.



No additional requirement, no.  Though I do know what you're getting at, it's an old stereotype, really: 'That Guy' who would, back in the day, tell you "you can't do that, your character isn't smart enough!"
That was before there was any kind of skill system to help model what your character might know how to do.  

5e has a skill system, so you can define your character as being quite good (18 CHA bard, w/Expertise) or pretty bad (8 CHA Barbarian w/o Proficiency) with a selection of social skills.  Whether those skills ever see use is prettymuch a matter of the DM's play style.  Many a DM has long experience with skill-deficient versions of the game, and is in the habit of resolving most social challenges by simply talking it through in character.  In such an instance, there's no point investing in such skills: they're entries on your character sheet, but they don't actually do anything. If you're a Bard CHA is just something you use to cast, it might as well be MOJO or POW or something, since it has nothing to do with how persuasive you are, that's you talking in character to the DM.  
Of course, in 5e, that DM is ignoring the rules, because he /never/ calls for social checks, no matter how uncertain or significant an action might be, it's resolved in his preferred way.  You can't blame his players for adapting to that.
But, if a DM is scrupulously following the advice/guidelines of 5e, and calls for checks only when he sees both a chance of failure, and a consequence for same, then a player who feels confident he can avoid making checks when declaring certain sorts of actions is only acting rationally when he chooses to devote character-build resources to other checks he expects to make more, or even any, of. And, if he's mistaken about his ability to avoid checks, well, too bad, he'll kinda suck at those things.

It's all perfectly reasonable, really.  


I guess the question (assertion) isn't whether a player should be unable to declare certain actions because his character is poorly suited to doing them, but whether the action should be judged based solely on the declaration, or take the character ability into account (in deciding whether he rolls and/or by simply calling for a roll).  In another thread we have questions about why an NPC who is only a little better at some day-to-day skill than a PC might still be an 'expert', and doesn't he need a bigger bonus?  The answer, that he just doesn't need to make checks /because he's an expert/ doing something routine that he's good at, isn't exactly uncontroversial, but it is related to this objection, too.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

If a -1 modifier counts as “really bad” at something, what’s “average”?


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, sure, something like walking across a room, or ordering a drink at a bar, or getting out of bed in the morning.
> 
> Resolving a social interaction with meaningful consequences to success/failure, OTOH, maybe not what it was talking about.




It should be noted that if the task is trivially easy or impossible, there is no ability check even if there is a meaningful consequence for failure. So in those cases there's no reference to ability scores either.



Tony Vargas said:


> No additional requirement, no.  Though I do know what you're getting at, it's an old stereotype, really: 'That Guy' who would, back in the day, tell you "you can't do that, your character isn't smart enough!"
> That was before there was any kind of skill system to help model what your character might know how to do.
> 
> 5e has a skill system, so you can define your character as being quite good (18 CHA bard, w/Expertise) or pretty bad (8 CHA Barbarian w/o Proficiency) with a selection of social skills.  Whether those skills ever see use is prettymuch a matter of the DM's play style.  Many a DM has long experience with skill-deficient versions of the game, and is in the habit of resolving most social challenges by simply talking it through in character.  In such an instance, there's no point investing in such skills: they're entries on your character sheet, but they don't actually do anything. If you're a Bard CHA is just something you use to cast, it might as well be MOJO or POW or something, since it has nothing to do with how persuasive you are, that's you talking in character to the DM.
> ...




And the DM who is scrupulously following the rules for D&D 5e may notice that the "middle path" sorts this out.



Tony Vargas said:


> I guess the question (assertion) isn't whether a player should be unable to declare certain actions because his character is poorly suited to doing them, but whether the action should be judged based solely on the declaration, or take the character ability into account (in deciding whether he rolls and/or by simply calling for a roll).  In another thread we have questions about why an NPC who is only a little better at some day-to-day skill than a PC might still be an 'expert', and doesn't he need a bigger bonus?  The answer, that he just doesn't need to make checks /because he's an expert/ doing something routine that he's good at, isn't exactly uncontroversial, but it is related to this objection, too.




That whole NPC expert bonus thread is steeped in a fundamental misunderstanding of how tasks are resolved in D&D 5e. As are a lot of the issues in this thread and others in my view. People commonly view and treat a given game as some other game they played in the past and that sometimes leads to undesirable outcomes.


----------



## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> It should be noted that if the task is trivially easy or impossible, there is no ability check even if there is a meaningful consequence for failure. So in those cases there's no reference to ability scores either



Weeelll… what's trivially easy for an 18 stat/Expertise character might be impossible for an 8/non-proficient, and call for a check from anyone in between. (Or not, it's all the DMs judgement, there).  That is, the DM can choose to consider the character when judging the declared action.  (Some of the disagreement here might over whether he should or shouldn't?)



> That whole NPC expert bonus thread is steeped in a fundamental misunderstanding of how tasks are resolved in D&D 5e. As are a lot of the issues in this thread and others in my view. People commonly view and treat a given game as some other game they played in the past and that sometimes leads to undesirable outcomes.



It's not like it isn't spelled out in a simple step-by-step-by-step (there are only three steps, how hard is that?) basis, on page 3 of the basic PDF, right?

But, OTOH, in a lot of cases, D&D /is/ that 'other game' they played in the past.  A lot.  So viewing and treating D&D like D&D seems perfectly reasonable, and, if that's (5e)D&D and (B/X/1e/2eA)D&D, you don't even go far wrong - at least so long as you stay on the DM side of the screen.  

The Blacksmith Paradox, OTOH, is a problem you see when that other D&D is 3.x/PF.  ;P



Elfcrusher said:


> If a -1 modifier counts as “really bad” at something, what’s “average”?



Hey, it's as bad as you're allowed to be (y'can't all be Denis Rodman), and, under BA, a small numeric difference has to cover a lot, conceptually.

Proficiency, at 1st level, is +2, that's probably 'bout "average" - a competent, mediocre practitioner.  


Really, the 5e way is to make up for that lack of numeric differentiation by calling for checks less often, the more invested a character is in the ability*.  The blacksmith (per another thread), who works metal all day may only have a +6 roll, while an adventurer might have a +4, but the former can take a lot of blacksmithing 'actions' with no check, while the adventurer, perhaps trying to impersonate a blacksmith, might have to make a blacksmithing (excuse me, tool-use) check or two now and then to keep from screwing up in any too obvious a way.








* ironically, that'll make a certain player type feel like said investment was 'wasted.'  So it's one of those cases where you might want to make it clear he's getting to succeed automatically /because/ he's got such a high check.


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> It's not like it isn't spelled out in a simple step-by-step-by-step (there are only three steps, how hard is that?) basis, on page 3 of the basic PDF, right?




Nobody seems to read that section. And if they do, many just ignore it and say it's "advice" and not a statement on how to play THIS game.



Tony Vargas said:


> But, OTOH, in a lot of cases, D&D /is/ a game they played in the past.  A lot.  So viewing and treating D&D like D&D seems perfectly reasonable, and, if that's (5e)D&D and (B/X/1e/2eA)D&D, you don't even go far wrong - at least so long as you stay on the DM side of the screen.




It's a mistake in my view, one I've made myself when transitioning from D&D 3.Xe to D&D 4e and won't make again.



Tony Vargas said:


> The Blacksmith Paradox, OTOH, is a problem you see when that other D&D is 3.x/PF.  ;P




Quelle surprise.


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## Satyrn (Apr 30, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> Agreed!
> 
> Honestly meta-gaming isn't really something I particularly care about. I look at it like this: I run D&D for people who've been playing for 30+ years, I also run D&D for people who have never played before. I'm not going to look a 30 year veteran of D&D in the eye with a straight face and tell them that their 1st level character wouldn't use fire against the troll they're fighting. I mean how many times has this person fought trolls before?
> 
> ...




Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! I just gotta figure out if those tentacles belong to the orc, or a creature bursting out of the orc's chest.

*Yoink*


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> Nobody seems to read that section. And if they do, many just ignore it and say it's "advice" and not a statement on how to play THIS game.



 It's hard to miss. And repeated. And elaborated upon. 

::sigh:: you can lead a horse to water, but it's a lot of work to drown it...



> It's a mistake in my view, one I've made myself when transitioning from D&D 3.Xe to D&D 4e and won't make again.



 Sure, running 5e like it's 3.x or 4e would be a problem - because they're player-centric editions, and 5e is DM-Empowering.  But running 5e like it's AD&D or another TSR edition (or, really, many another RPG of that era), it's not so bad, because those past eds had similar expectations for the DM.  If you ran them, you're used to making judgements about the player's actions throughout the game.  5e just makes the judgement simpler, because you can always just call for a check if you're uncertain.



> Quelle surprise.



… it was a shocker, I know, I should've said "brace yourselves … "


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## iserith (Apr 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sure, running 5e like it's 3.x or 4e would be a problem - because they're player-centric editions, and 5e is DM-Empowering.  But running 5e like it's AD&D or another TSR edition (or, really, many another RPG of that era), it's not so bad, because those past eds had similar expectations for the DM.  If you ran them, you're used to making judgements about the player's actions throughout the game.  5e just makes the judgement simpler, because you can always just call for a check if you're uncertain.




I'd have to go back and read those ancient tomes before I could agree with that assessment. I've not even looked at them since the 90s.

Either way, I think the safest bet is to run the game as its rules say to do, then assess that game experience before making changes.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'd have to go back and read those ancient tomes before I could agree with that assessment. I've not even looked at them since the 90s.
> 
> Either way, I think the safest bet is to run the game as its rules say to do, then assess that game experience before making changes.



 Oh, you probably don't want to actually dig them up and read them.   SAN is so hard to come by (he said, mixing classic RPG systems).  But, the way 5e spells out you should run it - DM describes the sitch, players declare actions, DM judges how to resolve those actions & describes what happens, leading players to declare new actions...  
That's pretty close to the 1e expectations (no 'caller,' but I hardly ever saw anyone do that, anyway) - and it was how I always ran the classic game, personally.  It's the flow of play of a DM-centric system.  



> It's a mistake in my view, one I've made myself when transitioning from D&D 3.Xe to D&D 4e and won't make again.



Sorry to repeat that quote, but something else occurred to me:  the mistake I made when I first ran 5e was that I kept running it like the Next playtest.  Like it was still a shake-down cruise and we /wanted/ to find the problems.
As soon as I got into the swing of running it like it was 1e, it went a LOT better.


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## Guest 6801328 (Apr 30, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'd have to go back and read those ancient tomes before I could agree with that assessment. I've not even looked at them since the 90s.
> 
> Either way, I think the safest bet is to run the game as its rules say to do, *then assess that game experience before making changes.*




Or maybe find a game more suited to your preferences, even.


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## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> /snip
> 
> 
> I guess the question (assertion) isn't whether a player should be unable to declare certain actions because his character is poorly suited to doing them, but *whether the action should be judged based solely on the declaration, or take the character ability into account (in deciding whether he rolls and/or by simply calling for a roll)*.  In another thread we have questions about why an NPC who is only a little better at some day-to-day skill than a PC might still be an 'expert', and doesn't he need a bigger bonus?  The answer, that he just doesn't need to make checks /because he's an expert/ doing something routine that he's good at, isn't exactly uncontroversial, but it is related to this objection, too.




This, all about this.

The whole goal:method approach is all about the declaration.  Whether or not you need to make a roll is based on the declaration.  Whether you have advantage/disadvantage on the roll is based on the declaration.  It makes the declaration very, very important.  

The actual skill of the character only comes up after the declaration, and, even then, only if the declaration triggers a skill roll called for by the DM.  

Who judges that declaration?  The DM, of course.  Which places the DM front and center of all player facing actions.  Which means that since the character's abilities don't come up until after that judgment, the character's abilities are less important than the player's ability to make declarations.  They have to be.  

So, the player uses his Noble background to get past the gate guards.  To me, that's not goal:method.  That's pretty much purely a character challenge.  The player looked at his character sheet which tells him that, as a Noble, he can do this.  It's no different than the player casting a spell or making an attack.  It's based on the character's abilities, not on the player's abilities.  

IOW, there was no "method" being declared here.  Any player decisions were made at chargen and not during the challenge.


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## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'd have to go back and read those ancient tomes before I could agree with that assessment. I've not even looked at them since the 90s.
> 
> Either way, I think the safest bet is to run the game as its rules say to do, then assess that game experience before making changes.




Or... and this is just spitballing here... have enough experience running games to know what you like and play the way you like.  And, again, shocking I know, realize that the game runs perfectly fine this way and that folks can be perfectly happy playing 5e with a tad less DM entitl... err ... empowerment and with players who are on board, have a rocking good time.

I know, it's almost like the game is robust enough to encompass more than one play style.  Totally shocking.


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Or... and this is just spitballing here... have enough experience running games to know what you like and play the way you like.  And, again, shocking I know, realize that the game runs perfectly fine this way and that folks can be perfectly happy playing 5e with a tad less DM entitl... err ... empowerment and with players who are on board, have a rocking good time.
> 
> I know, it's almost like the game is robust enough to encompass more than one play style.  Totally shocking.




I agree with all that.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> This, all about this.
> 
> The whole goal:method approach is all about the declaration.  Whether or not you need to make a roll is based on the declaration.  Whether you have advantage/disadvantage on the roll is based on the declaration.  It makes the declaration very, very important.
> 
> ...




So, I think this might be a sign of progress, because the "Noble at the gate" story is a great example of goal-and-method. The reasons you say it's not may help us finally get at the disconnect.

First, there is no mechanical ability attached to Noble that allows them to influence guards.  The mechanical ability that is attached to that background is totally unrelated. So the player is definitely not invoking an "ability" or "skill" when he/she proposes that course of action. He's describing an approach narratively, not mechanically.  

Second, goal-and-method or goal-and-approach does not prevent the DM from factoring in the character sheet when deciding if it's a success, a failure, or whether it needs a dice roll. That seems to be a point of misunderstanding. The exact opposite, in fact.  Players *should* choose methods that leverage their character sheet, whether that's because of a specific mechanic they have, or because of something related to their background, race, or class that may be relevant, even if there's no mechanic.  Goal-and-approach doesn't _require_ support from the character sheet, but it definitely can benefit from it.

Third, how eloquently (or not) the player describes his interaction with the guard is completely irrelevant.  

So the only two things that should really factor into the DM's ruling are:
1) The approach, which is invoking noble status to be allowed through the gate
2) The fact that the character doing this actually is (or is at least related to) nobles, which increases the probability of the approach working.

That still doesn't make it an autosuccess.  The DM could factor in any number of things, and maybe still require a persuasion check (guards are suspicious that he's really a noble) or, like I suggested earlier, allow that PC to pass but not his companions, etc.  But I think however I ended up ruling this, based on the specifics, I would give this approach a higher probability of success than an approach of "I try to persuade the guards that they should let us pass because we have a wood elf in our party, and wood elves are kind and gentle nature-lovers, so obviously we must be nice guys."  The noble play just seems to me like an approach that is more likely to succeed.*

And, yes, that is inserting my judgment and biases as a DM into the game.  Guilty as charged.

*Now, if they DID choose the "wood elves are nice guys" approach and rolled really well, that would be an excellent time to use roll-then-narrate, and make up some reason why this guard is especially soft on wood elves.  Turns out he has been madly in love with the wood elf bartender at his favorite watering hole.  Whatever.


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## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So, I think this might be a sign of progress, because the "Noble at the gate" story is a great example of goal-and-method. The reasons you say it's not may help us finally get at the disconnect.
> 
> First, there is no mechanical ability attached to Noble that allows them to influence guards.  The mechanical ability that is attached to that background is totally unrelated. So the player is definitely not invoking an "ability" or "skill" when he/she proposes that course of action. He's describing an approach narratively, not mechanically.




Wait.  Hold on.  Right there?  That's a disconnect.

According to the Noble Background (PHB 135)



> Feature:  Position of Privilege.
> 
> ... You are welcome in high society and people assume yo uhave the right to be wherever you are... You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to




Sounds like a mechanic to me.  It would be pretty hard to secure an audience if you can't get through the gate after all.  So, no, the player doesn't have to state anything like an approach.  The fact that he's a noble means that there's no challenge here at all.

But, if goal:approach means that I can just point to my character sheet, then, well, I guess I do goal and approach too.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Wait.  Hold on.  Right there?  That's a disconnect.
> 
> According to the Noble Background (PHB 135)
> 
> ...




Gah.  Damn.  I should have looked up Noble background. I thought the mechanic only mentioned the reaction of other nobles.

Ok, so let's pretend that...

Oh, nevermind. If you were genuinely interested you would have been able to error correct around that mistake.


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## Hussar (May 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Gah.  Damn.  I should have looked up Noble background. I thought the mechanic only mentioned the reaction of other nobles.
> 
> Ok, so let's pretend that...
> 
> Oh, nevermind. If you were genuinely interested you would have been able to error correct around that mistake.




Hang on a tick.  After taking me to task repeatedly for not following the rules of the game, you don't get to then hand wave things away when you aren't following the rules.  You are claiming that this is a perfect example of goal:method.  It isn't.  It's a perfect example of a pure character challenge that the player doesn't really have a whole lot of input into.  In a goal:method approach, the character matters less (not that it doesn't matter, I agree with you on that).  Because the APPROACH is obviously important.  And it's the player that states approaches.  

And, it's not about getting wrapped up in flowery language.  If the player picks an approach that the DM feels will work, regardless of how it is phrased, then it works, no check is required.  Right?  See, this is where we are talking past each other.  When I talk about gaming the DM, it's not just using a funny voice and being entertaining.  A lot of gaming the DM is knowing what the DM will and won't call checks for.  If I know that Bob the DM doesn't really call for persuasion checks (or whatever check) very often so long as I can present my case well enough, then, well, I'm not going to bother investing character resources in persuasion.

For me, it tends to lead to players who _expect_ that approaches will work and expect that challenges will be tailored to the approaches that the players use.  When the DM then decides to do something else, and suddenly those ignored stats come into play, the player gets really huffy and arguments around the table start.  Now, I'm NOT SAYING this happens in your game.  It certainly doesn't happen all the time.  But, it does happen.  And it's one weak point for goal:approach methods.  Groups that play together for a while begin to learn each other's expectations.  I mean, heck, I just had a player blow a gasket and leave the group because the DM decided to play to the weaknesses of the group.  So, yes, I know that it happens.

Look, I see how you folks are doing it.  It's not exactly hard to see.  Good grief, the PHB and DMG are pretty clear about it.   I get it.  Really, honest to goodness I do.

I just don't prefer to play that way.  I find that it causes more arguments than it solves, because it places the DM to much in the forefront of the game.  I am not interested in that style of game anymore and haven't been for a long time.  So, I tend to run the game far closer to a 4e style, since, well, mechanically, the skill (whoops, mistype almost wrote skilly system ) system is pretty much identical to 4e sans the level adjustment.  It works perfectly fine run that way since the 4e skill system was pretty loosey goosey as well.  However, in 4e, the advice was to let the players drive the system whereas in 5e, it leans more heavily on the DM.  Meh, I let it lean on the players just fine.

The weakness of my approach though is that players who figure that they can just come up with different approaches or that the game will be tailored to not highlight deficiencies soon get frustrated.  And I can see how if one player comes up with a great idea for getting past the gate guard and then rolls a fail on the check can get frustrating.  

Perhaps the conversation would go forward a lot better if folks would point out the weaknesses in their own approaches rather than in others.  And I am VERY MUCH including myself in that.


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## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> In D&D 5e, players describe what they want to do. They decide what their characters do, how they think, and what they say. That's all they can do.



Does this mean that you don't agree that the player can establish the backstory for Gord the Barbarian that was flagged upthread?

Or - and I'm not trying to impute views to you, just trying to map out some of the relevant space of possibilities - would you see that as a _suggestion_ to the GM which the latter is free to accept or reject?



Elfcrusher said:


> if we're talking about boundaries, mine are basically the same as @_*iserith*_'s, although...I'm hazarding a guess, here...I think mine are a little looser.



That's what I'm getting at in the paragraph just above this one.



Elfcrusher said:


> I welcome players adding to the fiction outside of their character, especially if it's about their background; not sure if iserith does that.
> 
> In last night's session some low level characters encountered a partially used necklace of fireballs.  One of the players announced he was going OOC and said, "I'm pretty sure I know what this is but I don't think my character would know."  I said that's cool, he can have his character know or not know; it's all the same to me. But if he chooses to know, maybe he also knows why. The player said, "Ahhh..." and immediately invented a 'well-known' fairy tale from his homeland.
> 
> ...



After making my post yesterday and before reading replies, I was thinking about the following:

What happens if a player who suspects a trap (eg they've just had     [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s description of the room with the broken pit surface, the alcoves and slots and the like) declares, _Last week when I was hanging out at the thieve's guild I had a discussion with so-and-so about such-and-such and they were talking about this spear gauntlet trap they once encountered and told me such-and-such thing about it_?

I can see several different ways of dealing with this:

(1) It's not a permitted action declaration because it's about matters in the past relative to the GM's most recent bit of narration.

(2) It's permitted as a bit of flavour, similar to the story about Gord the Barbarian's elders, but that's all it is and it has no bearing on the resolution of the current situation.

(3) It's permitted as a genuine action declaration - to be resolved, say, as a test on CHA (for being sociable with the guild members) or INT (because it's really about the lore the player is familiar with) - which, if it is successful, obliges the GM to tell the player something about the current situation.

(4) as (3), but a successful resolution has some indeterminate consequence in the fiction ("The player recalls something useful from the conversation") which then grants advantage on one (at least) subsequent check made to successful disarm/bypass the trap.​
Maybe there are other possibilities too that I'm missing at the moment.

I don't know what the "official" 5e answer is. It's something where I would expect very significant table variation. My own approach would be either (3) or (4) - which one would depend on further issues of how the game is being played, what the role of pre-authored GM notes are, etc. If adjudicating via (4), then a failure would impose a penalty/disadvantage on the subsequent check. If adjudicating via (3) then a failure also needs to give a penalty, but that might have to be more concrete than an abstract mechanical thing and what that might be would depend very much on context.

And to finish with a slightly different matter . . . 



Elfcrusher said:


> What I've been trying to accomplish (and, yes, your caustic dismissiveness has at times led to me reciprocating with the same) is to see if you acknowledge any middle ground between the player using personal persuasiveness to manipulate the DM and purely mechanical rolling of dice with zero creative problem solving on the part of the player.



I could be misunderstanding     [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], but I don't see that the concern is with "personal persuasiveness" in the used car salesman sense, but rather with being able to cleverly pitch solutions which will impress the GM.

Example roll-circumventing action declaration which are rather obvious, like using ladders to climb walls or using keys to open locks, clearly don't fall within the scope of Hussar's concern. But I can't imagine those are the examples that "goal and approach" advocates have in mind when they advocate their position, either, as those would be very banal examples of a clever approach obviating the need for a check.


----------



## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Good post.
> 
> I especially like the _Blades in the Dark_ example (which I have also been reading lately).  Maybe that mechanic is a kind of litmus test: whether or not you like it perhaps says a lot about where you stand on a number of other playstyle questions.
> 
> For the record, I love that mechanic.



But it was meant to be an example that would correspond to someone thinking that the player with the 8 INT PC shouldn't engage in clever play! (ie it was mean to be an _anti-_vessel example).

For what it's worth, I would haven no problem with the BitD mechanic, although I don't envisage actually playing that game. (I do play Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, and in that system inventory is a matter of post-hoc checks or resource expenditure, not a matter of in-advance planning. So it's somewhat similar to BitD.)

In 4e D&D I take the same view as you do of the significance of an 8 INT or CHA in the 5e context, although because of my different approach to when to call for checks it perhaps comes into play more often than it would in your 5e game.

But when refereeing Classic Traveller I expect a player whose PC has a low INT to express that in his/her play of the PC.

Which is to say, that I don't think there is a simple dichotomy between _PC as separate entity_ and _PC as vessel_. I think it's about the details of system. Stats in 4e or 5e mean one thing (they are inputs into the process of adjudication); stats in Traveller mean something else (they are part of a description of who the character is in the fiction). And I would say that AD&D and B/X sit somewhere in between these two ends of the spectrum.



5ekyu said:


> Now, for other games, like say Ten Candles or VtM or OtE - my position on the scale between "entity" and "your play" shifts. Pretty much the more importance we show in chargen on mechanics and specifics for "the entity " the more I want to show that as time (choices) that matter.



Can you elaborate on Over the Edge? I haven't played it but am thinking I might get to run a session or three some time in the next few months. I would expect PC build to generate much stronger expectations about how a player will play his/her PC than would be the case in (say) 4e or (I think) 5e, even though the mechanical footprint is much lighter. An 8 INT on a D&D 4e or 5e character sheet does not carry much information about the personality/nature/propensities of the character - whereas it seems to me that the descriptors on the OtE sheet carry a _lot_ of weight.


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## Ovinomancer (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Does this mean that you don't agree that the player can establish the backstory for Gord the Barbarian that was flagged upthread?
> 
> Or - and I'm not trying to impute views to you, just trying to map out some of the relevant space of possibilities - would you see that as a _suggestion/I] to the GM which the latter is free to accept or reject?
> 
> ...



_Hmm.  In 5e I suppose it would have to depend on what already established fictions are.  Assuming it fits that fiction, I'd probably go with a 4; if it doesn't fit, it's a 2. In Blades, 3 would be my choice, possibly leveraging the flashback mechanic depending on significance._


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## lowkey13 (May 1, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Sounds like a mechanic to me.  It would be pretty hard to secure an audience if you can't get through the gate after all.  So, no, the player doesn't have to state anything like an approach.  The fact that he's a noble means that there's no challenge here at all.




The _goal_ is to get past the guards into the noble's quarter. The _approach_ is to draw upon the character's position of privilege to tell the guards he or she belongs here. I would have the guards ask the noble to see proof of the claim (if they aren't familiar with the PC), since anyone can claim to be noble, which the player may have in the form of a scroll of pedigree (noble starting equipment). If the scroll is produced, then the character is permitted entry (automatic success). If it is not produced, an ability check may follow depending on how the player has the character respond.

The _challenge_ to the player is to get the character past the guards. The _difficulty_ is made very low by applying the background feature and pedigree scroll.


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Does this mean that you don't agree that the player can establish the backstory for Gord the Barbarian that was flagged upthread?
> 
> Or - and I'm not trying to impute views to you, just trying to map out some of the relevant space of possibilities - would you see that as a _suggestion_ to the GM which the latter is free to accept or reject?




What is not clear to me is the action declaration the player is making for the character. The player is free to establish what the character thinks which may include something about the character's backstory. But until I see an action declaration, I have nothing to adjudicate as DM.


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## robus (May 1, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Same debate, multiple permutations, lots of threads.
> 
> It's almost like a multi-front war being fought.
> 
> Who's up for opening the Pacific Theater?




I think Hussar has that covered!


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## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> What is not clear to me is the action declaration the player is making for the character. The player is free to establish what the character thinks which may include something about the character's backstory. But until I see an action declaration, I have nothing to adjudicate as DM.



If framed as an action declaration, presumably it's something like _I (Gord) recall when the elders sat around and told such-and-such-a-tale about such-and-such-a-thing_.

But I'm not sure that it can be true that the GM has nothing to do until an action is declared. Players can also implicitly or expressly try to establish fiction without actually declaring actions for their PCs - eg Gord's player tells the table, _When I was a youngster the tribal elders told us such-and-such-a-tale about such-and-such-a-thing_.

An intriguing example of implicitly establishing fiction is Vincent Baker's example of the smelly chamberlain.

To me, this seems to be the sort of thing that can put pressure on boundaries as to who gets to establish what about the fiction.


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> If framed as an action declaration, presumably it's something like _I (Gord) recall when the elders sat around and told such-and-such-a-tale about such-and-such-a-thing_.




I'm still not seeing a goal here. What's the player trying to accomplish through the character?



pemerton said:


> But I'm not sure that it can be true that the GM has nothing to do until an action is declared.




No action, no adjudication. The DM's other role is to describe the environment.



pemerton said:


> Players can also implicitly or expressly try to establish fiction without actually declaring actions for their PCs - eg Gord's player tells the table, _When I was a youngster the tribal elders told us such-and-such-a-tale about such-and-such-a-thing_.




They're free to have their characters say what they want. The DM describes the environment and narrates the result of the adventurers' actions, sometimes calling for a roll when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. Until I know what the player is trying to achieve here and how, I have nothing to add as DM.


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## pemerton (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'm still not seeing a goal here. What's the player trying to accomplish through the character?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



How do players in your game establish backstories for their PCs - things like the clothes they own/wear, the names of their friends and family, place and date of birth, etc?

My impression from reading the Basic PDF is that these sorts of fictional elements are features of 5e D&D as much as of many other RPGs, including past editions of D&D. But they are not generally established by way of action declarations; yet their truth as part of the shared fiction has the potential to be relevant to action declarations.

A player can even attempt to establish fiction _as part of_ an action declaration: eg the GM narrates the PCs arriving at a town gate, and describing the guard at the gate, and player A says, in character and addressing the other PCs "I recognise that guard - she's Frances - the two of us were raised in the same orphan's hospice but I haven't seen her since I left to fight in the Dales Wars. She'll let us in for sure!" and then adds, in the playter's voice, "I approach the gate and call out, _Frances, remember me!_"

If the player's posited fiction is true, then that has to be relevant to assessing the success of the approach vis-a-vis the goal. But who gets to decide whether or not that fiction is true?

And if the GM stipulates that it's not true, is s/he - in effect - stipulating that player A's character is delusional and suffering from radically false memories of his/her childhood? And if so, how does that fit with the idea that it's the player who gets to decide what the character thinks and feels?


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> How do players in your game establish backstories for their PCs - things like the clothes they own/wear, the names of their friends and family, place and date of birth, etc?
> 
> My impression from reading the Basic PDF is that these sorts of fictional elements are features of 5e D&D as much as of many other RPGs, including past editions of D&D. But they are not generally established by way of action declarations; yet their truth as part of the shared fiction has the potential to be relevant to action declarations.
> 
> A player can even attempt to establish fiction _as part of_ an action declaration: eg the GM narrates the PCs arriving at a town gate, and describing the guard at the gate, and player A says, in character and addressing the other PCs "I recognise that guard - she's Frances - the two of us were raised in the same orphan's hospice but I haven't seen her since I left to fight in the Dales Wars. She'll let us in for sure!" and then adds, in the playter's voice, "I approach the gate and call out, _Frances, remember me!_"




There is nothing in the rules that suggest to me that this kind of authorial power is granted to the player in D&D 5e. The player can of course have his or her character take the action you suggest, but there is no obligation on the part of the DM to accept that this guard is Frances, someone the PC knows from before.

A character's background is created in Step 4 of the character creation process. I think it's reasonable to expand upon it during play, building on what has already been established with an eye toward avoiding contradicting previously established fiction.



pemerton said:


> If the player's posited fiction is true, then that has to be relevant to assessing the success of the approach vis-a-vis the goal. But who gets to decide whether or not that fiction is true?




The DM.



pemerton said:


> And if the GM stipulates that it's not true, is s/he - in effect - stipulating that player A's character is delusional and suffering from radically false memories of his/her childhood? And if so, how does that fit with the idea that it's the player who gets to decide what the character thinks and feels?




The DM can narrate the result of the character's greeting to the guard without saying anything in particular about the character.

But notably a player in D&D 5e who is familiar with his or her role in the game is not very likely to make such a statement in my view, effectively making this a non-issue. If the player is approaching D&D 5e as if it is some other game, however, and starts making such statements, then it's not hard to see what the problem is here - assuming this game is like other games in this regard.


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## 5ekyu (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> But it was meant to be an example that would correspond to someone thinking that the player with the 8 INT PC shouldn't engage in clever play! (ie it was mean to be an _anti-_vessel example).
> 
> For what it's worth, I would haven no problem with the BitD mechanic, although I don't envisage actually playing that game. (I do play Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, and in that system inventory is a matter of post-hoc checks or resource expenditure, not a matter of in-advance planning. So it's somewhat similar to BitD.)
> 
> ...



On the question about OtE to me, especially vs the 8 Int 5e case.

I am intrigued by the latest OtE reboot myself. So, it's on my list of hopefulls.

But let me maybe shed a bit of spotlight. 

First, I dont give most any weight in 5e to what an 8 int says about the character or how the player will play it. To me, my rough way of thinking (which draws on other games and lessons drawn from that) I see it as indicating a small gap or lack in the charzcter's knowledge compared to moat people. When I tun such, as GM of player, I try to include one minor adjective or aspect in background to show it and the scope of that lack. I would not expect that-1 to show in play frequently or in major way, just here and there, much like the 12 or 13 stat likely shows in play about as much.

When I talk about the linkage between chargen complexity and place thst leads me to on the "you" vs "character" I am speaking of the total complexity of the process as it pertains to mechanical choices. The nature cleric with high Wis and strength and an 8 int with proficiencies in nature and survival and animal handling and the hermit background etc gives a strong difference than say the rogue mastermind with high dex and Int and a sage background. This is even before we add in rsce.
There are a lot of different choices there with very defined impacts on play results 

For games like OtE and others, with fewer traits thst are much more "define your own" there are a lot of undefined bits that are much more dependent on ideas drawn from the player and GM, on the fly or in between, than on more defined mechanical aspects.

If we look at 5e, there are options for far more generalized "make your own" play mechanics. The skill/tool proficiencies csn be scrapped entirely if you choose as GM (group) to go with either Ability score proficiencies or background proficiencies - both of which rely on the more OtE define on the fly style.

But the more "define on the fly" as opposed to system defined traits, the more how the play proceeds shifts to "what the player comes up with" as opposed to the player playing the charsacter as they setup the mechanics. 

But each group will tend to find their own way. Some will use checks as more fiction defining that fiction revealing, for instance. An outstanding search might result in me as GM pulling from my list of "stuff I can throw in" as opposed to simply saying " great search, found diddly".

But that all said, if we shift off the "build" aspects and into the character aspects, weighing say flaw, bond, I deal, inspiration vs OtE and the way their "gets me involved" style traits, I find that area you tend to get better indicators from the OtE. 

That's longer and rambling than I wanted but then I am trying to compress s btoad sense of results across a lot of games over a lot of years - with both different and some old players, so... its what it is.


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## Ovinomancer (May 1, 2019)

pemerton said:


> How do players in your game establish backstories for their PCs - things like the clothes they own/wear, the names of their friends and family, place and date of birth, etc?
> 
> My impression from reading the Basic PDF is that these sorts of fictional elements are features of 5e D&D as much as of many other RPGs, including past editions of D&D. But they are not generally established by way of action declarations; yet their truth as part of the shared fiction has the potential to be relevant to action declarations.
> 
> ...



I think this is malformed: you're asking if this action declaration violates a principle of the DM not controlling characters thoughts before establishing that the action declaration violates established norms on who has this authorial control.  In other words, we can even reach your last question before resolving the authorial control one.

And, simply, in 5e the GM has this authority, the player does not.  So, again, we can't reach your last question without stipulating that the player has already broken the rules.  In which case, I think your question is mooted.


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## Satyrn (May 1, 2019)

Monayuris said:


> . . . Have your orcs burst tentacles from their chests . . .



So. I had started out with the intention of the tentacles being a part of the orc, but instead the idea, uh, morphed into an alien (of the Far Realm kind):

Aberrant Orcs 

These are just like regular orcs, but there's a Tentacle Mass living inside them. When the orc becomes bloodied, there is a 50% chance that the Tentacle Mass bursts forth from its chest (killing the orc host). If the swarm doesn't burst forth then, it does so when the orc is dropped to 0 hit points.

The tentacle mass has an uncountable number of tentacles constantly writhing through the space and time of multiple dimensions. However, each mass has a small number of tentacles that appear permanent. They do not fluctuate between dimensions (or they exist simultaneously in all) and are slightly larger than the rest. These tentacles each control and act independently of the mass like a hydra's heads.

Tentacle Mass
Medium Aberration, chaotic evil

Armor Class: 13 (dimensional phasing)
Hit Points: 39, or 13 (2d8+4) per "head"
Speed: 20 ft.

STR +2
DEX	+0
CON	+2
INT	+4
WIS -2
CHA +4

Damage resistance: psychic
Condition Immunities: prone
Senses: Blindsight 60 ft.
Languages: Orc
Challenge: 2 (450 XP)

Living-ish. The tentacle mass doesn't eat, breathe, sleep or exhibit any sort of normal behaviors.

Multiple Heads. The tentacle mass has 3 (1d4+1) heads . While it has more than one head, the tentacle mass has advantage on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, and knocked unconscious.

Whenever the mass takes 13 or more damage in a single turn, one of its heads dies . If all its heads die, the tentacle mass dies, seemingly winking out of existence. At the end of its turn, it grows 1d4-1 new heads for each of its heads that died since its last turn, unless it has taken fire damage since its last turn. The mass gains 10 hit points for each head regrown in this way.

Reactive Heads. For each head the tentacle mass has beyond one, it gets an extra reaction that can be used only for opportunity attacks.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The tentacle mass makes as many slam attacks as it has heads.

Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 1, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think this is malformed: you're asking if this action declaration violates a principle of the DM not controlling characters thoughts before establishing that the action declaration violates established norms on who has this authorial control.  In other words, we can even reach your last question before resolving the authorial control one.
> 
> And, simply, in 5e the GM has this authority, the player does not.  So, again, we can't reach your last question without stipulating that the player has already broken the rules.  In which case, I think your question is mooted.




Yes.  And also 'yes' to [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s response.

Now, in my own games I welcome this sort of thing, even though it's technically a violation of the Player/DM division of authority. If for some reason I didn't want the guard to be the Francis the player knows, it would just turn out that he's mistaken, this is not Francis.  

IT'S HIS EVIL TWIN!!!!  

Or just somebody who looks like Francis.

But, anyway, it's not an action declaration, it's the player assuming some of the DM's role.


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## Mort (May 1, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> But, anyway, it's not an action declaration, it's the player assuming some of the DM's role.




Yes, a separate question.

This is the player having a form of narrative control.

Some people are all fort this, some are (near violently) against it.

It's a very interesting question (and one that may need to be revived for 5e though I remember it causing quite the ruckus in past threads) but would likely only muddy the waters here.


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## robus (May 1, 2019)

It seems like we've veered wildly from the topic? Perhaps start a new thread - because this seems like an interesting dicussion...?


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## Oofta (May 1, 2019)

Mort said:


> Yes, a separate question.
> 
> This is the player having a form of narrative control.
> 
> ...




In my own games there's a bit of a gray area.  If someone is from a town, I may ask them to provide some details about the area.  This is usually offline so we can have some give-and-take if necessary.  But to go to the point that they know one of the guards would be crossing a line for me.  During a game they may say "when we're in town can I visit Uncle Bob?"  or "I want to find Weasel, he's one of my contacts" in which case we'll deal with it. 

But they couldn't just interrupt a scene in progress and insert Uncle Bob as a significant NPC on the fly.


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## Satyrn (May 1, 2019)

Mort said:


> This is the player having a form of narrative control.
> 
> Some people are all fort this, some are (near violently) against it.





Well, the latter wouldn't be on the cusp of violence if the former didn't instigate them by building forts.


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Mort said:


> Yes, a separate question.
> 
> This is the player having a form of narrative control.
> 
> ...




It's somewhat related in that players being able to establish this sort of thing during play can mitigate or aggravate the difficulty of the challenge to the player. A player establishing that the character is old friends with the guard, who is presumably the obstacle in the challenge, may be mitigating the difficulty. Conversely, a player establishing that the character has a strained relationship with the guard (perhaps as a means to portray a personal characteristic and earn Inspiration) may be aggravating the difficulty of the challenge to the player.


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## Tony Vargas (May 1, 2019)

Hussar said:


> This, all about this.
> 
> The whole goal:method approach is all about the declaration.  Whether or not you need to make a roll is based on the declaration.  Whether you have advantage/disadvantage on the roll is based on the declaration.  It makes the declaration very, very important.
> 
> ...



 It's up to the DM, really, how important the declaration vs the PC abilities (and qualities, like being a Noble or a certain race or whatever) may be. The DM keeps information behind the screen so the players don't know about it - the players have no such option, if the DM wants to know your Background, stat, proficiency, etc, he gets to know it and factor it into whether you skate, check, or crash & burn.



> So, the player uses his Noble background to get past the gate guards.  To me, that's not goal:method.



 In the example, the goal was getting past a guard, and the method was prominently displaying a noble crest and acting like a noble ('cause he was one, which is presumably easier than bluffing that you're one when you're really a Folk Hero or Outlander or something).



Most action declarations are going to constitute at least a method or a goal, and likely imply the other if it's not explicit.  "I hit da orc wi' m'axe!" for instance, gives a method and implies the goal of killing the orc, even if it doesn't explicitly state it.


The exception might be pure game-speak declarations ("I diplomacize him! 97!").


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## Celebrim (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> But notably a player in D&D 5e who is familiar with his or her role in the game is not very likely to make such a statement in my view, effectively making this a non-issue. If the player is approaching D&D 5e as if it is some other game, however, and starts making such statements, then it's not hard to see what the problem is here - assuming this game is like other games in this regard.




I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   Typically these games grant players one or more variously described 'tokens' which must be spent (either put back in a pot or given to another participant) if you as a player are going to introduce new setting or backstory elements in author stance, and typically the other game participants can bid their own tokens to overrule the newly asserted element.  No RPG I'm aware of allows as much arbitrary unlimited authorial control as pemerton's example of "Francis the Guard".

pemerton's hypothetical game where author insertions were valid player propositions at all times, would very likely cease to be an RPG and revert to a game of make-believe, as it would quickly degenerate toward the problem of no authorial control that RPGs were trying to solve with shared games of make-believe.

In other words, you might as well be playing "Cowboys & Indians" or "Cops & Robbers" where you have no mechanism for handling the mutually contradictory assertions, "I shot you!" and "No, you missed!"

If the player can propose on the fly a background that establishes or even overturns who a particular NPC is - whose to say that "Francis" doesn't already have a name and a stat block - what stops the following propositions from being valid:

a) "I notice that some has accidently dropped a wand of lightning bolts in the ditch!"
b) "My coming to this town fulfills a long awaited prophesy, and the inhabitants great me as their king, carry me on their shoulders, and shower me with gifts."
c) "When I was a youth, the goddess of death fell in love with me.  As such, whomever I hate, she hates, and I am incapable of dying."
d) "Although I am a simple seeming rogue, for many years I was a secret student of the Grand College of the Archmagi, where I was a favored pupil that absorbed all that could be taught by the ancient masters.  Now, recalling my long training and my great success their, I cast Polymorph Other to turn the dragon into a toad."
e) "My father was a master swordsmith so I pull out my +5 holy avenger which he gave to me as an heirloom."

Games of make believe can be fun, but they are not RPGs.

The fundamental problem that underlies this turn of discussion is that the truth of a backstory is expressed by and validated by the player's mechanical abilities.  Backstory cannot be used to conjure abilities or resources out of thin air.  You cannot assert new wealth, patrons, titles, rank, knowledge, allies or really any other sort of advantage on the basis of backstory.   Backstory proceeds from and justifies the choices taken in character creation.  You don't get to bypass character generation or other rules of the game just because backstory, nor can you reasonably introduce backstory to the game without consulting the rules (if the game allows for the possibility of found allies or resources, for example something like Mouseguard does with a Circles test) and the DM (as even with a circles test, the DM decides the obstacle to overcome).  It's perfectly possible to create a backstory which cannot be expressed by character generation, but that doesn't mean that character generation is wrong and that you get all the resources you want simply because you wrote them down.  Again, this is a player who isn't playing an RPG, but is engaged in playing "make believe".


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## Guest 6801328 (May 1, 2019)

Mort said:


> Yes, a separate question.
> 
> This is the player having a form of narrative control.
> 
> ...




I can easily see that if the relationship between DM and players is at all adversarial, or if you just have disruptive players, it would never work. 

But I don’t, so it does. (Maybe that’s why goal-and-approach works so well, too. I mean, smoothly. Both. )

Sometimes I have to coax veteran players into joining in this way. “No, seriously, there’s candy in the van. Your mother was wrong.”


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## iserith (May 1, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   Typically these games grant players one or more variously described 'tokens' which must be spent (either put back in a pot or given to another participant) if you as a player are going to introduce new setting or backstory elements in author stance, and typically the other game participants can bid their own tokens to overrule the newly asserted element.  No RPG I'm aware of allows as much arbitrary unlimited authorial control as pemerton's example of "Francis the Guard".
> 
> pemerton's hypothetical game where author insertions were valid player propositions at all times, would very likely cease to be an RPG and revert to a game of make-believe, as it would quickly degenerate toward the problem of no authorial control that RPGs were trying to solve with shared games of make-believe.




I would say that D&D 4e prior to Essentials with its embrace of "Yes, and..." and encouragement of the DM to accept ideas outside the character's control that the player proffers could be such a game. There's a sidebar in the D&D 4e DMG that uses an example from one of the designers wherein the player suggests there is a trap on a statue that is protecting a treasure. The DM rolls with it, they play out the trap challenge, and the player's character gets the treasure.

But even that requires the DM's assent and the limits (the designer above remarks that HE would be the one to decide what treasure it was!) are likely understood formally or informally in the form of a table rule.


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## Celebrim (May 1, 2019)

iserith said:


> But even that requires the DM's assent and the limits (the designer above remarks that HE would be the one to decide what treasure it was!) are likely understood formally or informally in the form of a table rule.




Within reason, I think it is a common table practice to entertain queries to the GM of the form, "Since X is in my backstory, can Y be true?"  As long as a player doesn't do that sort of thing too often, and the requests are small and reasonable, I doubt many tables even considered that they were doing something unusual.  A very similar query might be, "Is there a quill and pen in the writing desk?", where the GM has not previously established such utensils are present.  The GM might consider, "Sure, it's reasonable that a quill and pen be in the writing desk." and allow them to be established as part of the fictional positioning.   Or another similar query I get a lot of is, "Is there an X shop in this town?"   If the town is of a reasonable size to have shops of that sort, then I'll probably answer, "Sure.", even if I haven't previously given thought to such a business being present.   In backstory creation before play, a ton of this sort of negotiation occurs, with players inventing clans, historical events, cults, and villains which previously I may have given no thought to, and a there are a lot of questions of the sort, "Can something like X exist?", with me often replying, "Sure, I can work with that.  Here are the details..."

However, the query, "Since X is in my backstory, can Y be true?" and ones like it made to the GM is very different than the proposition, "I would like X to be in my backstory, therefore Y is true."  As you note in the 4e example, despite some similarities, 4e is still leaving the GM in the authorial role and requiring his assent.  Likewise, the 4e example does not involve attempts by the player to resolve some preexisting difficulty by inventing a solution on the spot.

4e attempted to introduce in a small way a variety of mechanisms from RPG theory, but did so in a way that I think did neither good service to 4e or to the theories in which they are based on.  For example, the trap example you site from 4e's sidebar is attempting to introduce an element from Nar game design, but at the same time it violates several well known principles of good Nar design - most notably that the person who introduces a complication should not be the same person tasked with resolving the complication.   And that's not even getting into the problem of poorly thought out design elements in the skill challenge system that would supposedly resolve that challenge, which was in essence a pure character challenge that could be reduced to a mechanical process and which had major flaws in its math.


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## 5ekyu (May 1, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   Typically these games grant players one or more variously described 'tokens' which must be spent (either put back in a pot or given to another participant) if you as a player are going to introduce new setting or backstory elements in author stance, and typically the other game participants can bid their own tokens to overrule the newly asserted element.  No RPG I'm aware of allows as much arbitrary unlimited authorial control as pemerton's example of "Francis the Guard".
> 
> pemerton's hypothetical game where author insertions were valid player propositions at all times, would very likely cease to be an RPG and revert to a game of make-believe, as it would quickly degenerate toward the problem of no authorial control that RPGs were trying to solve with shared games of make-believe.
> 
> ...



Well, see, here we go to the jump to exaggerated...

I have seen games, screentime comes to mind but that may be off, where the "check" or roll is to determine the fpoutvome and control. So, making a "check" against your "soldier" rank gets you past the guard by you then describing "Joe, hey, how are you? Hows the boy?He join the guard yet?" 

Other games for instance the search check is not "to find a clue if iit's there" but to determine "is there a clue here and find it" etc.

But, the more power and scope games give to this scene-editing, the more they take one of two approaches to your cowboys-indians paradox.

1 Some say "if you care, deal with it" and lean in. They shift whole hog away from the more overcome set challenge to create a shared fiction and rely on the players in good faith to not be a jerk and break the fiction with overboard BS that's not fitting.

I mean, maybe walking into town and everyone calls me king is tobyou outlandish, but A Man Called Jayne might be a great episode theme song for that very scenario if the group ran with it.

2 Some have a more strict statement that says in some form or another, dont be jerks, by fint of things like "no plot buster BS". In those games, instead of trying for exhaustive white lists of "these only" they allow broadly open choices with a few key elements banned. 

They may even have a more developed karmic system of say "good stuff" and "bad stuff" where finding that wand in the alley is great, but after you use it headhunters who have tracker it back by its energy find you "the assassins we have been hunting" and hilarity begins.

As for "c" that sounds like one hell of a horrific curse storyline in the right setting. 

"D" sounds fine for a group with divine purpose mission in mind for the setting. Whether you go for "being drug around bybthe sword" or "it's harder to keep the sword than to get the sword" or some other style of amazing gameplay fodder.

To draw a line from a decent movie "he may one ain't payin' rent but it ain't no way free."


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> The _goal_ is to get past the guards into the noble's quarter. The _approach_ is to draw upon the character's position of privilege to tell the guards he or she belongs here. I would have the guards ask the noble to see proof of the claim (if they aren't familiar with the PC), since anyone can claim to be noble, which the player may have in the form of a scroll of pedigree (noble starting equipment). If the scroll is produced, then the character is permitted entry (automatic success). If it is not produced, an ability check may follow depending on how the player has the character respond.
> 
> The _challenge_ to the player is to get the character past the guards. The _difficulty_ is made very low by applying the background feature and pedigree scroll.




But, there was no approach.  Other than a decision I made at character generation.  Aren't there two parts to your approach?  Sure, there's a goal here, but, what's the approach?  I'm not drawing on anything.  

....

Y'know what? I just realized that I've been playing goal:approach all the way along.  If all it takes for an approach is being able to point to a line on my character sheet, well, hell, the only real difference between my table and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s is I tend to let the players call for rolls.  And not even all the time.  Sometimes I, as DM, call for rolls too.  Wow, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s goal:approach system is so broad and vague that EVERYONE is doing it.

Well done you sir, you've convinced me.  Everyone who has ever sat down to play an RPG is using goal:approach methodology.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, there was no approach.  Other than a decision I made at character generation.  Aren't there two parts to your approach?  Sure, there's a goal here, but, what's the approach?  I'm not drawing on anything.
> 
> ....
> 
> ...




Not everyone, no. But the approach is as I demonstrated: To tell the guards the PC belongs there by virtue of his or her noble privilege (and possibly by showing the scroll of pedigree).


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> Not everyone, no. But the approach is as I demonstrated: To tell the guards the PC belongs there by virtue of his or her noble privilege (and possibly by showing the scroll of pedigree).




Oh hey, I'm not arguing.  I'm agreeing with you.  Pointing to a line on my character sheet is totally different than saying, "I diplomatize the guard, 25".  I totally see the difference now.  It's night and day.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh hey, I'm not arguing.  I'm agreeing with you.  Pointing to a line on my character sheet is totally different than saying, "I diplomatize the guard, 25".  I totally see the difference now.  It's night and day.




I don't think you do. You use your talky-talky words like a big boy or girl and tell the DM what you're doing and what you're hoping to accomplish. Pointing to a line on your sheet isn't telling anyone anything. "I diplomatize the guard" is only 75% real words and lacks a clear approach or goal.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   /snip
> 
> Again, this is a player who isn't playing an RPG, but is engaged in playing "make believe".




And, thus, the rallying cry for DM Empowerment.   

Because, obviously, players cannot be trusted with authorial power else they will ruin the game.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> I don't think you do. You use your talky-talky words like a big boy or girl and tell the DM what you're doing and what you're hoping to accomplish. Pointing to a line on your sheet isn't telling anyone anything. "I diplomatize the guard" is only 75% real words and lacks a clear approach or goal.




Oh, right, I have to point to my character sheet while saying the words, "I have the noble background.  I have a letter proving it."  

Like I said, I've been running goal:method all the way along.  It's surprisingly easy to follow this method.  Excellent.  I like it when we all agree.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh, right, I have to point to my character sheet while saying the words, "I have the noble background.  I have a letter proving it."




And what is your character doing with this letter?

You can do this.


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## Tony Vargas (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well done you sir, you've convinced me.  Everyone who has ever sat down to play an RPG is using goal:approach methodology.



 It's as much description as prescription.  If there's not both a goal & an approach at least implied, the GM may well feel the need to ask for some clarification, anyway.  Though sometimes a GM can also just insert the missing detail, narrating not only what the PC does, but how he did it (approach), for instance.  I've seen GMs do that back in the day, especially when much more familiar with the game or setting than the players - I've also seen players freak at the GM 'taking over their characters.'


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> And, thus, the rallying cry for DM Empowerment.
> 
> Because, obviously, players cannot be trusted with authorial power else they will ruin the game.




No one can be trusted with authorial power else they will ruin the game.  

The GM is assumed to maintain some degree of neutrality since, lacking an avatar in the world, they have no stake in the outcome and are not competing with the players.   But if the GM places an avatar of themselves in the game, or takes a stake in it's outcome, or starts competing with the players then very quickly that becomes dysfunctional.

You make the assumption that players shouldn't be allowed to take authorial power else they will ruin the GM's game.  But it's not the GM's game that is at stake, but the players.  Not only can players not be trusted with authorial power, but if they have no mechanism for sharing this power fairly, then they'll ruin each others game.   Moreover, if they use their authorial power to introduce and resolve problems, they become someone that is telling themselves a story, which is surely the least interesting thing that you can do in all of story-telling.

And I say that as a player.  If I'm tasked with both setting the obstacles and resolving them, or if I have authorial power to overcome obstacles by fiat, then it is boring.  *yawn*


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   Typically these games grant players one or more variously described 'tokens' which must be spent (either put back in a pot or given to another participant) if you as a player are going to introduce new setting or backstory elements in author stance, and typically the other game participants can bid their own tokens to overrule the newly asserted element.  No RPG I'm aware of allows as much arbitrary unlimited authorial control as pemerton's example of "Francis the Guard".
> 
> pemerton's hypothetical game where author insertions were valid player propositions at all times, would very likely cease to be an RPG and revert to a game of make-believe, as it would quickly degenerate toward the problem of no authorial control that RPGs were trying to solve with shared games of make-believe.
> 
> ...




Actually, there are a number of RPGs that this kind of declaration is possible in, without the use of plot point tokens.  The GM can either say yes, or challenge the assertion by asking for a roll.  Usually, these games have tiered results, with success, success with complication, and failure as usual outcomes.  On a success, the GM is obligated to acknowledge the success and adhere to it.  On a success with complication, the GM is obligated to acknowledge the play, but to introduce a complication to the scene.  On a failure, the GM is supposed to thwart the intent.

In this case, a success would mean the guard recognizes her friend and lets them into the town.  On success with a cost, the guard may recognize them, but not necessarily let them end, requiring something else to achieve the goal of gaining entry.  On a failure, the guard may recognize the PC, but have a very different recollection of the friendship, or have a much greater loyalty and refuse entry, or some other bad consequence.

The mechanics of these games are pretty heavily weighted so that success with a complication is the likely result of a check, with small bonuses to things the PC is skilled at.  Fail forward is also the default assumption o play.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Well, see, here we go to the jump to exaggerated...




If someone purposes something to be true, and yet places no boundaries on, you have to assume that the first thing I'm going to try is reductio ad absurdum.   The boundary I purpose is at minimum, "And the DM agrees."   Yet this boundary was suggested to violate the separation between the player and GM's prerogative.  Thus, reduction to the absurd is not a logical fallacy, because we have no rule to suggest when or how the player's authorial power is to be kept in check, and players - unlike the GM - have no reason to not employ the tools provided to them to solve problems because that's the players role in the game.   Fundamentally, if you give the power to author things to the players with no limits or boundaries, you've put the GM hat on the player and they can then resolve everything by fiat.



> I have seen games, screentime comes to mind but that may be off, where the "check" or roll is to determine the fpoutvome and control. So, making a "check" against your "soldier" rank gets you past the guard by you then describing "Joe, hey, how are you? Hows the boy?He join the guard yet?"




If that is just a bluff check, how does it have any authorial power?  I mean this is the sort of scene which in a movie, the protagonist walks by, and then the camera turns back to the guard who says, "Seemed like a nice guy, but my names not Joe."



> Other games for instance the search check is not "to find a clue if iit's there" but to determine "is there a clue here and find it" etc.




That may be true, but speaking as a GM, being asked to invent clues on the spot would be incredibly hard.  Games that I'm aware of that go down this route do not do either of these things, but instead assume clues are found automatically and checks are made (or narrative resources are spent) to interpret what the clue means.  That way, the GM can prepare the clues necessary for the scenario and you don't get into a situation where the player can keep trying different things until they finally browbeat the GM into inventing another clue.



> They shift whole hog away from the more overcome set challenge to create a shared fiction and rely on the players in good faith to not be a jerk and break the fiction with overboard BS that's not fitting.




Yes, but these games tend to forgo most of the aesthetics of play normally associated with an RPG, and tend to take a form more resembling a story-telling game or a theater game.  And even they tend to have a token that is passed between the participants which indicates who currently has the authorial control, so as to break ties and avoid endless contradiction.



> I mean, maybe walking into town and everyone calls me king is tobyou outlandish, but A Man Called Jayne might be a great episode theme song for that very scenario if the group ran with it.




I'm not saying that you can't have fun in a game of make believe, but it will very quickly stop being an RPG.  In particular, the problem with this is that in an RPG you are normally trying to achieve the experience of being Jayne Cobb in the episode "A Man Called Jayne".   But if you the player are the one introducing the mystery, and the conflict, and providing the resolution to it, then the since of wonder, mystery, emersion, fear, frustration, and so forth that Jayne experiences will be inaccessible to you.  It's one thing for the player to introduce a hook, "I'm a wanted outlaw." or "I had a botched heist on this world."   It's quite another for the player to introduce the actual conflict.



> They may even have a more developed karmic system of say "good stuff" and "bad stuff" where finding that wand in the alley is great, but after you use it headhunters who have tracker it back by its energy find you "the assassins we have been hunting" and hilarity begins.




Most karmic systems go back to my statement that games that have authorial control in the hands of the players in some way tokenize that control and force the players to pay for it.  For example, you may get to make a call to resolve a conflict using one of your 'chits', but if you do so, you have to give a 'chit' to the GM that they can then use to call an unexpected complication.   Often they also let a player do the reverse, introduce a complication into a conflict that they were otherwise winning, in order to get a 'chit' that they can use in a later scene.



> As for "c" that sounds like one hell of a horrific curse storyline in the right setting.




Or, it just sounds like a player uncreatively adopting Deadpool's backstory.   And again, sure, it might be fine for a player to begin play with this background and pay the appropriate character building resources to support that backstory, but introducing this into the middle of a game in response to the players imminent death is not really that fun for anyone.  If the player can solve problems by fiat, then there is no reason for the player to face problems.   You might as well play the old game were everyone writes a page in a notebook before advancing it along to the next player.   And if you've played that game for any reasonable period of time, you know well why that game is not even remotely as popular as RPing an usually becomes an exercise in frustration for everyone.



> "D" sounds fine for a group with divine purpose mission in mind for the setting. Whether you go for "being drug around bybthe sword" or "it's harder to keep the sword than to get the sword" or some other style of amazing gameplay fodder.




I guess... to me it just sounds like a player who wants to have all the spotlight and does not realize that they are playing a cooperative game.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Actually, there are a number of RPGs that this kind of declaration is possible in, without the use of plot point tokens.  The GM can either say yes, or challenge the assertion by asking for a roll....The mechanics of these games are pretty heavily weighted so that success with a complication is the likely result of a check, with small bonuses to things the PC is skilled at.  Fail forward is also the default assumption o play.




Can you point me at an example.  And can the GM set the difficulty of the roll?


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## Immortal Sun (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> And I say that as a player.  If I'm tasked with both setting the obstacles and resolving them, or if I have authorial power to overcome obstacles by fiat, then it is boring.  *yawn*




Well yes that's why the DMPC is typically a Gandalf.  They don't really overcome obstacles so much as provide guidance to the players overcoming obstacles and occasionally present the players with interesting situations beyond their power that the players must decide how to handle.

Which is why I will typically make healers for parties (and is one reason I encourage players not to worry about the "holy trinity" when assembling their party).  I rarely have to do anything other than support the party members in what _they_ are doing and occasionally say "I prayed to Pelor and he told me we should go _that way_."  Or "I sense a great disturbance in the Force near Questtown."

The GM has a vested stake in the game.  It's _both_ their games.  The DM is not, and never will be, your desktop computer running whatever you want it to at your beck and call.  The DM needs to enjoy their time DMing just as much as the player needs to enjoy their time playing.  The way in which they get their enjoyment may differ, the DM from presenting interesting content and the players from overcoming it, but both sides have a vested interest in the game.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> Well yes that's why the DMPC is typically a Gandalf.




Since Gandalf is the most overtly powerful character on the side of the forces of good, this seems like a terrible choice for a DM PC - if indeed there is ever a good choice for one.  



> The GM has a vested stake in the game.




Only in the sense that the GM wants the game to be fun for himself and for their players.  I'm not suggesting the GM ought to be sacrificing their enjoyment.  I am suggesting that if the DM's enjoyment is predicated on achieving a particular ending, plot, or outcome, they have absolutely no business being behind the screen.



> The way in which they get their enjoyment may differ, the DM from presenting interesting content and the players from overcoming it, but both sides have a vested interest in the game.




Yes, exactly.  But if the DM's enjoyment of the game comes from overcoming it, then they are on the wrong side of the screen.  A game is dysfunctional if the same participant introduces the conflict is tasked with overcoming it.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Can you point me at an example.  And can the GM set the difficulty of the roll?




I believe Burning Wheel has these mechanics.  And, generally, no, the difficulty is usually fixed with the weighting I described above.  The PbtA games are adjacent to this, although somewhat more codified.  In Blades in the Dark, for instance, players can actually establish similar things as attempted actions.  The "difficulty" of the roll is fixed -- you roll your d6 pool (usually 2 or 3) and take the highest one.  A 6 is a success, a 4-5 is success with cost, and 1-3 is a failure.  The GM can set the position based on the fiction and goal (and skill chosen by the player), but this mostly affects the level of cost for rolls of 1-5.  The GM also sets the effect, which is the level of success, usually standard, but perhaps great or limited.  Again, this is based on the action, the skill, and the fiction. 

If a player tried this play in my Blades game, he'd probably choose a Consort or Sway action, which are usually schmoozing type actions, although they'd be free to pick something else.  Let's say they're doing a Sway because they have 3 dice in it.  I, as GM, would evaluate the situation -- is this a risky action, a controlled action, or a desperate action?  Seems controlled -- there isn't  anything in the situation that seems overtly dangerous, but it could go that way.  This limits the consequences.  I also deem this effect to be standard -- it doesn't seem like a great effect is warranted, nor a limited one.  But, in a twist, this guard is a Tier higher than the PC, so the effect is dropped down one level.  So the PC is rolling 3 dice on a controlled, limited action.

If they roll at least one 6, it's a success!  The guard recognizes them and greets them warmly, but, since it's a limited success, more will be needed to achieve the goal of entry.  They've taken a step in the right direction. The player could, at this point, chose to burn Stress to improve the Effect, in which case it bumps to Standard, and they'll gain entry.  Or, if they rolled two or more 6's, that's a critical success that bumps the Effect up one.

Let's look at a 4-5.  The situation is controlled, so no great harm cost will occur, but there will be one.  In this case, the guard will recognize the player, and not be hostile or angry, but will be cool and say something like, "Ah, you.  Don't you owe me money after that last card game?"  Now I've put the problem of owed money on the table, but the guard is still not hostile and is open to further play if this money issue is resolved.  More play will occur here.

And, on a failure, there's a cost but I, as GM, should thwart the intent of the action.  In this case, I could have the guard say something like, "You must have me confused with someone else.  Get back in line, lout, and wait your turn.  I have my eye on you."


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## Immortal Sun (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Since Gandalf is the most overtly powerful character on the side of the forces of good, this seems like a terrible choice for a DM PC - if indeed there is ever a good choice for one.



You're missing the forest by focusing on the tree.



> Only in the sense that the GM wants the game to be fun for himself and for their players.  I'm not suggesting the GM ought to be sacrificing their enjoyment.  I am suggesting that if the DM's enjoyment is predicated on achieving a particular ending, plot, or outcome, they have absolutely no business being behind the screen.



I disagree strongly.  If the DM doesn't have some interest in certain outcomes over others they are lazy and careless and have no business being behind the screen.  "Any outcome" is not and never will be as valuable as a "good outcome".  Part of the DMs job is not just to ensure there is an outcome, but that the outcome is good and enjoyable for everyone.



> Yes, exactly.  But if the DM's enjoyment of the game comes from overcoming it, then they are on the wrong side of the screen.  A game is dysfunctional if the same participant introduces the conflict is tasked with overcoming it.



Which, _again_ is why I used Gandalf as an example.  There are very few things that Gandalf actually _does_ through the story.  He exposits a little information.  He defeats an encounter that clearly wasn't intended to be fought by the party.  He exposits a little more information.  He provides some street cred when the bumbling moro..I mean party needs to get in somewhere.

He really doesn't _do_ much.  Heck, in the "big encounter" that IS supposed to be fought by a party member (namely: the Witch King), he _loses_, only for the Witch King to be defeated by a party-level character.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that a game that validates pemerton's proposed proposition actually exists, at least not in the form he suggests.  Most games that have shared authorial control of the setting or backstory have some sort of rules framework that limits how much anyone other than the game moderator can introduce new setting or backstory elements.   Typically these games grant players one or more variously described 'tokens' which must be spent (either put back in a pot or given to another participant) if you as a player are going to introduce new setting or backstory elements in author stance, and typically the other game participants can bid their own tokens to overrule the newly asserted element.  No RPG I'm aware of allows as much arbitrary unlimited authorial control as pemerton's example of "Francis the Guard".
> 
> pemerton's hypothetical game where author insertions were valid player propositions at all times, would very likely cease to be an RPG and revert to a game of make-believe, as it would quickly degenerate toward the problem of no authorial control that RPGs were trying to solve with shared games of make-believe.
> 
> ...




And, as I have a moment more to go back to this post and discuss your conjecture that such a game would devolve.  This is actually well discussed as the Czerge Principle, and comes in when a player can both set the problem and propose the solution.  It's most often avoided in games that allow the players the latitude to make such declarations by the reason you cite for Mouseguard -- the DM sets up the obstacles and the players' attempted solutions are tested.  I find it interesting that you're familiar with Mouseguard to this extent but don't recognize a Circles test in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example.  I haven't played MG or BW, but I could easily see the Circles test lurking.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> You're missing the forest by focusing on the tree.
> 
> 
> I disagree strongly.  If the DM doesn't have some interest in certain outcomes over others they are lazy and careless and have no business being behind the screen.  "Any outcome" is not and never will be as valuable as a "good outcome".  Part of the DMs job is not just to ensure there is an outcome, but that the outcome is good and enjoyable for everyone.
> ...




I think you may be unaware of a number of games where what occurs is solely generated in play, at the table.  The GM has no "plan" and is playing to find out what happens alongside the players.  This kind of game puts a lot more burden on the players to bring the game, but often generates exciting content.  It does this by making the characters have strong traits and goals that the GM can then put into challenging positions, and by having mechanics built to generate interesting results.  This requires the players to take on a more of the burden of pushing play by advocating for their character's more strongly and taking and accepting risks more often.  This works very well.

For an easy(ier) introduction to this kind of play, I recommend Dungeon World.  It similar enough to D&D play that you'll not be pushed far out of your comfort zone too quickly, but relies on the play of the game to generate the content.  Players learn to take risks because there's fun play even in failure, and the game has strong themes that are easy to get behind and push.


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## Immortal Sun (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you may be unaware of a number of games where what occurs is solely generated in play, at the table.  The GM has no "plan" and is playing to find out what happens alongside the players.



Then, no offence, he's not the GM.  He's a player.

And I'm not saying anything is wrong with that kind of play.  But if the only functional difference between the GM and the players is that they defer to the GM for rulings, then all he amounts to is a player with two hats.  His "PC"s are simply the opposing forces.  

And I don't think talking about games where everyone is kinda the GM and also kinda a player, really applies to what I was describing, and it certainly doesn't sound anything like what Celebrim was talking about.




> This kind of game puts a lot more burden on the players to bring the game, but *often generates exciting content*.



BZZZT!  Judgement call detected!  I've been there.  I've played these games.  If the players are skilled and up to the task of being a GM-lite, then yeah, it can.  But if they're not?  And quite frankly: most of them aren't, then it _doesn't_.  There's a reason there are far more players than GMs.  Most people A: don't wanna.  And B: can't.  



> It does this by making the characters have strong traits and goals that the GM can then put into challenging positions, and by having mechanics built to generate interesting results.



This sounds suspiciously like one of those statement reversals that people trying to steal your money say.
Like: In order to discover the love in others, we must have others discover the love.
Also: this isn't limited to non-GM-centric games.  This occurs and _only_ occurs when players (all of them, GM included) are willing to step up to the plate.  Again, _most aren't_.  



> This requires the players to take on a more of the burden of pushing play by advocating for their character's more strongly and taking and accepting risks more often.  This works very well.



Sure, _again_ if you've got players who are up to the task.



> For an easy(ier) introduction to this kind of play, I recommend Dungeon World.  It similar enough to D&D play that you'll not be pushed far out of your comfort zone too quickly, but relies on the play of the game to generate the content.  Players learn to take risks because there's fun play even in failure, and the game has strong themes that are easy to get behind and push.



While I haven't played Dungeon World, I have played this a lot.  Because this is how I run a great deal of my games.  I provide a base world with some various details and work with my players to detail in more things based on their characters and what they want to see.  It is not procedurally generated, or randomly generated as I find this terribly boring (on both sides) and no, my players don't have equal control to the DM, they have a lot more control than just "their characters".


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I believe Burning Wheel has these mechanics.  And, generally, no, the difficulty is usually fixed with the weighting I described above.




So the GM can set and adjust the difficulty in a whole variety of ways, it's just done in a slightly different fashion, success as by setting the level of success ("limited") that success will obtain and the degree of failure that failure will result in ("desparate").  Plus, you have an additional control in that you can claim that the action is one or more Tiers above the character, with a commiserate increase in the degree of success required.  I don't know the rules, but I'd guess this is what prevents a player from just declaring that they summon lightning bolts from the sky and fry the guard.  A high Tier character probably could, if they had the right actions, but then you'd be playing by agreement of the fiction some sort of demigod or superhero.

Also, you mention the character could "burn Stress to improve the Effect", which sounds like a case of narrative currency.

Additionally, there is a huge panoply of other potential checks and balances here, not the least of which is that as with a traditional RPG full narration of the consequences is in the hands of the GM, as well as full rights to set the difficulty of the tasks, and in most cases the stakes (as the player can only set the positive stake, and then only is rarely going to achieve it, unless and until the GM wants them to or unless the player spends their narrative currency "Stress".) 

To a certain extent, I'd say that the "Blades" game empowers the GM far more than even I'm used to in my traditional play, it just compartmentalizes the player's narrative force less.   Yes, the player can introduce Myth into the setting, but only at the cost of allowing the GM full rein to introduce whatever Myth that they want for whatever reason that they want at all times - something that when I'm running a traditional RPG I tend to see as cheating and misuse of my GM authority - metagaming against the player to obtain the result I prefer.  

Still, what you describe has boundaries and a GM in a role as referee, so it seems like it would be functional for a functional group.   I really need to go to a Con and try a few of these games, if only to stretch my abilities as a player a bit.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> And, as I have a moment more to go back to this post and discuss your conjecture that such a game would devolve.  This is actually well discussed as the Czerge Principle, and comes in when a player can both set the problem and propose the solution.  It's most often avoided in games that allow the players the latitude to make such declarations by the reason you cite for Mouseguard -- the DM sets up the obstacles and the players' attempted solutions are tested.  I find it interesting that you're familiar with Mouseguard to this extent but don't recognize a Circles test in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example.  I haven't played MG or BW, but I could easily see the Circles test lurking.




If D&D had anything like circles that a player had to spend resources for in chargen in order to obtain the advantage of, then sure, then sure.  You have some sort of reasonable check and balance on the claim, including, as in Mousegaurd, that the GM can set the OB of the test.   What bother's me about pemerton's example is less that you might test something not established in the myth, but that a player might try to invent background on the fly to justify overcoming an obstacle.   In Mousegaurd, for example, you have character burner that very tightly establishes the limits of your character - where he is from and who he grew up with - which in turn means that the 'circle' of your circles test is delimited by your background.   You can make circles tests in Mousegaurd precisely because the myth of your character is a pretty stable and knowable, and we can make inferences as to when it really is reasonable that you might know someone.

I should also tell you that for the last few months, I've been having a running debate with myself over which is the worst designed RPG - Mouseguard or RIFTS.   Mousegaurd is the first thing I've tried to play that even comes close enough to be in such a debate.

There is a core of a great game somewhere in Mousegaurd, and there is a huge amount of imagination and creativity involved, but wow are the rules poorly thought out.


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## Mort (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I should also tell you that for the last few months, I've been having a running debate with myself over which is the worst designed RPG - Mouseguard or RIFTS.   Mousegaurd is the first thing I've tried to play that even comes close enough to be in such a debate.




And now I have to get and look at Mouseguard, any game that can compete with RIFTS for terrible design must really be something.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> "Any outcome" is not and never will be as valuable as a "good outcome".  Part of the DMs job is not just to ensure there is an outcome, but that the outcome is good and enjoyable for everyone.




That's such a broad claim I don't know how to engage with it.  I don't know what you are really claiming.  

What I am claiming is that good and enjoyable outcome for everyone almost never involves the DM using fiat to preserve his desired outcome, and certainly not to the degree that his actions are overt and persistent.   If the GM uses his power of fiat to override disaster, then the players know that they've been let off the hook, and the outcome is artificial.  It's not quite as deflating as discovering your chess opponent threw the game and let you win, but it's in the neighborhood.  And if the GM uses his power of fiat to override success, then the players come to know that they really will only win when the GM lets them do so, and that everything is on rails.  How well the players enjoy the destination depends on how they got there and why, and likewise the enjoyment of the GM tends to increase when they are using less and less heavy handed stage magic to keep the story going.



> Which, _again_ is why I used Gandalf as an example.




Let me put it this way.  LotR is my favorite book.  I've read it 18 times, and browsed it many times.  I can recognize every passage in the book and quote a long with many of them.

So you can imagine how much I've wanted my little bookworm to share the joy of the story with me.  Trouble is, she doesn't respond to the story in the same way that I do.  For example, long before she knew that Gandalf was going to die, she was rooting for his death because she hated the character so much.   In fact, she let out a whoop of glee when he died.  (I don't want to break her heart by telling her the character won't stay dead.)  Her reasoning?  Because Gandalf was doing everything in the story, and as long as Gandalf was around they could rely on him for everything.  And in a very real sense she's right: Frodo even admits and much once he's gone, and Bilbo does as well.   Gandalf is a character that HAS to leave the story for long periods.  Otherwise, there is no story except his story.



> Heck, in the "big encounter" that IS supposed to be fought by a party member (namely: the Witch King), he _loses_, only for the Witch King to be defeated by a party-level character.




Technically, he never gets to fight the Witch King.  It's a contest that never happens.  He's about to confront the Witch King, when both are distracted - The Witch King by the charge of the Rohirrim and Gandalf by Pippin's plea to come and save Faramir.


----------



## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Mort said:


> And now I have to get and look at Mouseguard, any game that can compete with RIFTS for terrible design must really be something.




It's not obvious. You really have to start playing it to realize how inflexible it is, how terrible it's math is, how pointlessly complex its mechanics are, how much of it is pure random number generator, how little player choice matters, and so forth.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> So the GM can set and adjust the difficulty in a whole variety of ways, it's just done in a slightly different fashion, success as by setting the level of success ("limited") that success will obtain and the degree of failure that failure will result in ("desparate").  Plus, you have an additional control in that you can claim that the action is one or more Tiers above the character, with a commiserate increase in the degree of success required.  I don't know the rules, but I'd guess this is what prevents a player from just declaring that they summon lightning bolts from the sky and fry the guard.  A high Tier character probably could, if they had the right actions, but then you'd be playing by agreement of the fiction some sort of demigod or superhero.



No, you're a bit off, here.  The GM has to be open about how and why he's picking position and effect, and the Tier level is selected by the players as part of their choice of who to run their Score against, so it's not a freely set kind of thing.  Also, I'm not sure that "difficulty" is the right term, because we were discussing probability of success -- which is fixed in Blades.  The other things I mentioned to give a full accounting of how the stakes of the action are set, largely to address your claims of Czerge principle violations.  I don't view those as 'difficulty' but rather explicit stakes mechanisms.  



> Also, you mention the character could "burn Stress to improve the Effect", which sounds like a case of narrative currency.



Only if you're okay defining the 5e Fighter's Action Surge as narrative currency.  It's a broad mechanic in Blades that represents a pool of 'extra effort' and doubles as a rough hit point mechanism (rough because it's not used as a damage mechanic, but is often expended to mitigate things like damage).



> Additionally, there is a huge panoply of other potential checks and balances here, not the least of which is that as with a traditional RPG full narration of the consequences is in the hands of the GM, as well as full rights to set the difficulty of the tasks, and in most cases the stakes (as the player can only set the positive stake, and then only is rarely going to achieve it, unless and until the GM wants them to or unless the player spends their narrative currency "Stress".)



Well, success is 50% of the possible outcomes of a single d6, and they'll usually roll 2-3 at a time.  The thing is that the fixed success rates makes judging success chances for the players very clear -- it never really changes, actually.  This puts the focus of play less on determining the success/failure breakpoints (a la DC setting) and more on the stakes of the action -- what's risked for what may be gained.



> To a certain extent, I'd say that the "Blades" game empowers the GM far more than even I'm used to in my traditional play, it just compartmentalizes the player's narrative force less.   Yes, the player can introduce Myth into the setting, but only at the cost of allowing the GM full rein to introduce whatever Myth that they want for whatever reason that they want at all times - something that when I'm running a traditional RPG I tend to see as cheating and misuse of my GM authority - metagaming against the player to obtain the result I prefer.



Um, huh?  Where did you get this from my example?  The GM can frame the scene, yes, but that's constrained by what the players have chosen for their Score -- they have a lot of leeway to determine the overall conditions of the session.  From there, the GM is obligated to follow the fiction and not veer off into whatever they want -- the game is about a criminal gang conducting criminal escapades, so there's some fairly tight constraints on the GM.  PbtA games have pretty good principles for play, and they aren't "The GM is empowered to introduce whatever they want."



> Still, what you describe has boundaries and a GM in a role as referee, so it seems like it would be functional for a functional group.   I really need to go to a Con and try a few of these games, if only to stretch my abilities as a player a bit.



Oh, I highly recommend it.  If you do, the key piece of player advice for Blades is "play your character like a stolen car."  Actually, this works for all the PbtA games.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> It's not obvious. You really have to start playing it to realize how inflexible it is, how terrible it's math is, how pointlessly complex its mechanics are, how much of it is pure random number generator, how little player choice matters, and so forth.




Huh, you're describing a very different game that the one I've heard about.  I've not had the pleasure of reading up on Mouseguard, but I've heard very good things.  I did read Burning Wheel, many years ago, and failed to understand it at the time.  I should give it another look now that I've got a better grasp of the play it's meant to create.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> Then, no offence, he's not the GM.  He's a player.
> 
> And I'm not saying anything is wrong with that kind of play.  But if the only functional difference between the GM and the players is that they defer to the GM for rulings, then all he amounts to is a player with two hats.  His "PC"s are simply the opposing forces.
> 
> ...




Yep, I'm totally uninterested in engaging in a discussion where your basis for argument is that players are largely incapable of grasping the game and need to be coddled within your preferred style.  Enjoy!


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> That's longer and rambling than I wanted but then I am trying to compress s btoad sense of results across a lot of games over a lot of years - with both different and some old players, so... its what it is.



Thanks for the response.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> No, you're a bit off, here.




Almost certainly to some degree.  I've never seen the rules.



> The GM has to be open about how and why he's picking position and effect...




Ok sure, but can the players except by DM wheedling/persuasion override his choices?  



> and the Tier level is selected by the players as part of their choice of who to run their Score against, so it's not a freely set kind of thing.




That's sort of interesting.  I guess.  So the player's get perfect information about the mark?   You don't run into a situation where you are running a con or a heist, and whoops, you realize you've just stolen funds from the city's Kingpin?



> Also, I'm not sure that "difficulty" is the right term, because we were discussing probability of success -- which is fixed in Blades.




It may not be the right term, since I recognized that the players had a limited ability to modify probability of success (basically only by attempting moves that they were 'skilled' in).  However, just because the odds are fixed doesn't mean that there isn't a winning strategy.  You win by convincing the GM that you have some edge which maximizes the success stake while minimizing the failure stake.   That is to say, you win by consistently getting the house to put more on the bet than you do.   Since the odds are fixed, but the payoffs are not, the side with the safest wagers wins in the long run.  However, it's entirely up to the GM to determine the ratio of the stakes - whether something has a big payoff or a big risk.  The players can try to be persuasive, but ultimately they don't get to rig the game in their favor, which would make the game pointless.   And that's what I mean about the GM "setting the difficult".  By how he weights the stakes, he's acting as the judge of the skillfulness of the player's propositions.  



> The other things I mentioned to give a full accounting of how the stakes of the action are set, largely to address your claims of Czerge principle violations.  I don't view those as 'difficulty' but rather explicit stakes mechanisms.




I don't see any Czerge principle violations in what you described.



> Only if you're okay defining the 5e Fighter's Action Surge as narrative currency.




I'm very happy to do so.  It's just a really minor narrative element compared to the ones that show up in more Nar focused games.  In my homebrew 3.X D&D game, I have destiny points that act as a minor sort of narrative currency in that they allow the player to mitigate luck and decide when they want to win or don't want to lose, and even to a small extent can allow the players to break the normal rules (such as asserting that they have a skill or feat in this scene that they don't normally have).   Star Wars D6 has "Force Points".  Mouseguard has not one but TWO types of narrative currency, and both are pathetically underpowered timid little things that don't do nearly enough or give the player nearly enough control over the action, especially compared to all the hassle that revolves around them.



> Um, huh?  Where did you get this from my example?




It's pretty much inherent to success with complications, which as you note the game is geared to produce as the most common result.   Throw in that I'd guess that this is mostly a "No Myth" or "Low Myth" game were the GM is encouraged to just sketch an outline of the major points, and you have an inherently GM empowering system presumably balanced by the players initial agency - "choosing the Score" - and occasional narrative control (rolling 6's or spending Stress).  



> Oh, I highly recommend it.  If you do, the key piece of player advice for Blades is "play your character like a stolen car."




Forgive me, but having never stolen a car I have no idea at all what that means, and I'm inclined to imagine that if I did steal a car, my feelings and concerns would be very different than the sort of people who normally steal cars.


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## Immortal Sun (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yep, I'm totally uninterested in engaging in a discussion where your basis for argument is that players are largely incapable of grasping the game and need to be coddled within your preferred style.  Enjoy!




Cool I'm glad you're going to lie about my position and willfully misconstrue anything I say to be something it's not.

Reported.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Almost certainly to some degree.  I've never seen the rules.
> 
> 
> 
> Ok sure, but can the players except by DM wheedling/persuasion override his choices?



There are a number of mechanics whereby they can, in greater or lesser degrees.





> That's sort of interesting.  I guess.  So the player's get perfect information about the mark?   You don't run into a situation where you are running a con or a heist, and whoops, you realize you've just stolen funds from the city's Kingpin?



Not in the sense that they're suddenly up against a higher tier, but as a consequence to a string of failed actions this is absolutely possible.  I haven't considered it, but it's also possible for the GM to set a clock on a mission that might increase the Tier of the opposition, if it makes sense to do so in the fiction.  




> It may not be the right term, since I recognized that the players had a limited ability to modify probability of success (basically only by attempting moves that they were 'skilled' in).  However, just because the odds are fixed doesn't mean that there isn't a winning strategy.  You win by convincing the GM that you have some edge which maximizes the success stake while minimizing the failure stake.   That is to say, you win by consistently getting the house to put more on the bet than you do.   Since the odds are fixed, but the payoffs are not, the side with the safest wagers wins in the long run.  However, it's entirely up to the GM to determine the ratio of the stakes - whether something has a big payoff or a big risk.  The players can try to be persuasive, but ultimately they don't get to rig the game in their favor, which would make the game pointless.   And that's what I mean about the GM "setting the difficult".  By how he weights the stakes, he's acting as the judge of the skillfulness of the player's propositions.



Oh, no, that's a great way to fail in the long run. If you only take the 'safe' bets, the mechanics and probability of failure means that the situation will snowball on you, sooner rather than later.  That's a key thing about PbtA games -- if you think you can game them by being super careful and caution, it'll punch you in the nose right quick.

For example, in my example above of a controlled, limited setting, the 4-5 option would dump the players into at least a risky position for the next task.  The fail option is definitely going to be risky, with a number of possibilities moving into desperate depending on what they players do.  The game is built to push back, which is why the players have so many resources and mechanics available to succeed in risky and dangerous situations.




> I don't see any Czerge principle violations in what you described.



There aren't... I was talking about your initial post here where you detail concerns that are very similar to the Czerge principle.  I was saying that the position and effect mechanics were to show how Blades can allow the example action declaration but still avoid the Czerge priniciple violation.




> I'm very happy to do so.  It's just a really minor narrative element compared to the ones that show up in more Nar focused games.  In my homebrew 3.X D&D game, I have destiny points that act as a minor sort of narrative currency in that they allow the player to mitigate luck and decide when they want to win or don't want to lose, and even to a small extent can allow the players to break the normal rules (such as asserting that they have a skill or feat in this scene that they don't normally have).   Star Wars D6 has "Force Points".  Mouseguard has not one but TWO types of narrative currency, and both are pathetically underpowered timid little things that don't do nearly enough or give the player nearly enough control over the action, especially compared to all the hassle that revolves around them.




Then, sure, they're narrative points.



> It's pretty much inherent to success with complications, which as you note the game is geared to produce as the most common result.   Throw in that I'd guess that this is mostly a "No Myth" or "Low Myth" game were the GM is encouraged to just sketch an outline of the major points, and you have an inherently GM empowering system presumably balanced by the players initial agency - "choosing the Score" - and occasional narrative control (rolling 6's or spending Stress).



Amusingly, Blades actually has a pretty well detailed setting, but it's very closed.  It's pretty much a single city, with lots of details, but those details are at the thumbnail sketch level only.  You have a number of neighborhoods, with quarter page descriptions and a whole laundry list of gangs and organizations with a few sentences each (enough to establish some flavor).  So, there's a lot of established myth in Blades, but there's plenty of room to add things in.



> Forgive me, but having never stolen a car I have no idea at all what that means, and I'm inclined to imagine that if I did steal a car, my feelings and concerns would be very different than the sort of people who normally steal cars.



I'd suggest some Gone in 60 Seconds or the first Fast and Furious for some reference material.  Perhaps with an adult beverage?


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## Immortal Sun (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> That's such a broad claim I don't know how to engage with it.  I don't know what you are really claiming.



Gandalf is an example of a "high-level" character that is common throughout a number of books who does little.  He is more or less a talking plot device, ensuring the games moves in certain directions when it needs to and doesn't go in others when it shouldn't.  He is a literary device that translates well into RPGs, a way of guiding the players without negating their actions.  

I use it a _lot_.  The "wise old monk", the "faithful cleric", the "blind seer".  Someone who directly participates very little but spends most of their time providing useful exposition to help the players better understand the world and make contextually appropriate decisions.



> What I am claiming is that good and enjoyable outcome for everyone almost never involves the DM using fiat to preserve his desired outcome, and certainly not to the degree that his actions are overt and persistent.  If the GM uses his power of fiat to override disaster, then the players know that they've been let off the hook, and the outcome is artificial.  It's not quite as deflating as discovering your chess opponent threw the game and let you win, but it's in the neighborhood.  And if the GM uses his power of fiat to override success, then the players come to know that they really will only win when the GM lets them do so, and that everything is on rails.  How well the players enjoy the destination depends on how they got there and why, and likewise the enjoyment of the GM tends to increase when they are using less and less heavy handed stage magic to keep the story going.



Sure, I won't argue that.  But to quote Futurama: "If you do just enough, people won't know you've done anything at all." That's my perspective on DMPC involvment.  It's not the DM saving you from danger you've foolishly walked into.  It's the DM giving you guidance before the danger even comes up that it is indeed dangerous, from within the world that the characters exist in.



> So you can imagine how much I've wanted my little bookworm to share the joy of the story with me.  Trouble is, she doesn't respond to the story in the same way that I do.  For example, long before she knew that Gandalf was going to die, she was rooting for his death because she hated the character so much.   In fact, she let out a whoop of glee when he died.  (I don't want to break her heart by telling her the character won't stay dead.)  Her reasoning?  Because Gandalf was doing everything in the story, and as long as Gandalf was around they could rely on him for everything.  And in a very real sense she's right: Frodo even admits and much once he's gone, and Bilbo does as well.   Gandalf is a character that HAS to leave the story for long periods.  Otherwise, there is no story except his story.



And I don't disagree with her.  Gandalf has a _very_ heavy hand in the beginning, though arguably Aragon has this problem as well.  But contextually, the hobbits are _exceedingly_ out of their league.  Gandalf "does everything" in part due to the vast contrast between his character and the hobbits.  And even when he's gone, many of the things the hobbits accomplish are done via others.  Merry and Pippin can't take credit for the sacking of Isengard, all they did was convince the Ents to help and largely by coincidence.

This is one of those areas were stories _don't_ translate well into games.




> Technically, he never gets to fight the Witch King.  It's a contest that never happens.  He's about to confront the Witch King, when both are distracted - The Witch King by the charge of the Rohirrim and Gandalf by Pippin's plea to come and save Faramir.



Technically.  The point is this encounter was designed to be fought by a "player" and it was.  The Balrog wasn't, so it wasn't.  Sure, the GMdalf could have just let the party try to fight it, and die, but then the game would be over, the bad guy would win and the players would be complaining about why the DM put such a powerful monster there and not telegraph that the party _wasn't _supposed to fight it.

This is a perfect example of what I'm saying.  The DM (Tolkein) in this context had a specific outcome in mind: the loss of a friend to help motivate the players to continue on in their fight against evil without depending on the powers of a high-level character to keep them alive.  Now, granted this is a _book_ and not a _game._  And I'll be the first to argue that while games can translate into stories, stories do not always translate into games.  But there are certain structural elements that do.  

The Author wants to write a good story that is enjoyable for their readers just as the GM wants to create an enjoyable game that is enjoyable for their players.  That enjoyment is predicated on certain outcomes happening and certain outcomes _not_ happening.  This is why, for example, DM's ban PvP.  They understand that there are _bad_ outcomes from this type of play and these bad outcomes result in a lack of enjoyment from their players.

TLDR:  No, the GM should not cheat the players of victory or failure with fiat.  Yes, the GM should guide the players towards outcomes that would produce high enjoyment for everyone involved.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> And what is your character doing with this letter?
> 
> You can do this.




Heh.  Ok, fair enough.  

Setting aside all snark, despite that being somewhat funny, I do agree with you actually.  I honestly think that the difference between us is pretty small at the end of the day.  Really, about the only difference is that I will skip the step where the DM calls for a roll, sometimes.  Otherwise, most of our scenes will play out exactly the same.

I recently had a perfect example come up in our Dragon Heist game last session.  During the session, the PC's finally retrieve the Macguffin, only to be ambushed by Bregan D'arthe (sp) drow.  Fight ensues.

During the fight, half the party runs away with the Macguffin, leaving the other half of the party to slow down pursuit.  One of the PC's left behind announces that she will show the fake Macguffin that the party has (that they picked up in an earlier session) and declare that she has the real thing, in order to confuse the pursuers.  She then rolls a Deception check without me asking.  I roll Insight checks for the drow and play continues.

Now, as I understand it, the big difference here between me and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] will call for that Deception roll rather than the player simply going ahead and doing it.  Our group skips that step simply out of expediency really.  We're all experienced gamers and most of us have DM'd for a lot of years.  We know, pretty accurately, what declarations will call for a roll without being told.  Again, it's simply an extension of play experience and experience with playing with each other.  

OTOH, I doubt that the outcome would be any different at [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s table.  And, really, I suppose this is a good example of goal:method, with the change that we skipped a step.  Now, frequently, again because we've played together so long, we don't even need to make a declaration - it's a common enough action that it's just understood.  "I scout ahead - Stealth X" is a perfectly acceptable thing to do at my table, again, because everyone understands exactly what's going on and there's no need to add in the extra steps of the DM asking for rolls.  

So, yes, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], I do think that we're actually quite a bit closer than different.  I might skip over some steps and take larger assumptions in others, but, since we've played together so long, it's pretty easy to know where the lines get drawn.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> No one can be trusted with authorial power else they will ruin the game.
> 
> The GM is assumed to maintain some degree of neutrality since, lacking an avatar in the world, they have no stake in the outcome and are not competing with the players.   But if the GM places an avatar of themselves in the game, or takes a stake in it's outcome, or starts competing with the players then very quickly that becomes dysfunctional.
> 
> ...




In your 5 examples, if the DM added any of those things, we'd be playing an RPG.  But, when a player does that, suddenly we're playing make believe.  

Now, your last sentence, that it's boring, presumably to you of course, is closer to the truth IMO.  It's not that a game suddenly becomes "make believe" but, rather, you just don't like that style of game.  Totally fair.  Not a problem.  Can get right behind that.  But, my definition of "role playing game" is quite a bit broader than "things I like".


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I did read Burning Wheel, many years ago, and failed to understand it at the time.  I should give it another look now that I've got a better grasp of the play it's meant to create.



As you know I'm a huige BW fan. I think it's a very demanding game - it's as mechanically intricate as (say) RQ or D&D 4e, but also has the character/thematic demand of the PbtA games you're familiar with. I could understand someone being put off by the intricacy of the mechanics. I spent nearly 20 years GMing RM, though, so I say _bring 'em on!_

As you also know I haven't read or played BitD - but one impression I've got from discussion of it is that it uses some mechanical innovations to "tighten up" some elements of PbtA play, especially the complications on partial success and the choice of hard or soft moves. Perhaps a little bit similarly (at least at a sufficient level of generalisation), BW uses mechanics to "tighten up" those aspects of the character, and the character's engagement with the fiction, that in a "free descriptor" game like Over the Edge or Cthulhu Dark are handled much more at the level of table back-and-forth and GM intuitions.

In those free descriptor games, if a scene or a resolution falls flat it's not always obvious who made the mistake when, nor how exactly it misfired. Whereas in BW, if a scene or resolution falls flat you can nearly always look and see what bit of the PC sheet the GM ignored, or what GMing principle was flouted.

The above is a bit apropos of nothing, but might be of interest.


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> it's the player assuming some of the DM's role.





Ovinomancer said:


> I think this is malformed: you're asking if this action declaration violates a principle of the DM not controlling characters thoughts before establishing that the action declaration violates established norms on who has this authorial control.  In other words, we can even reach your last question before resolving the authorial control one.
> 
> And, simply, in 5e the GM has this authority, the player does not.  So, again, we can't reach your last question without stipulating that the player has already broken the rules.  In which case, I think your question is mooted.



I'm happy to accept that it's malformed in the context of 5e D&D. But I don't see how that conclusion can be reached without giving some account of who has what authority over which bits of the the fiction. And saying that the player has authority over what his/her PC does, thinks and feels isn't going to do the job - because _Hey, that's my old friend Frances - I ask her to let us through the gate!_ is an example of the player deciding what his/her PC does, thinks and feels.

Nor do I think it's enough of an answer to say that players have no authority over any aspect of the fiction except action declaration and associated bodily movements by their PCs. Page 33 of the Basic PDF says that "Characters are defined by much more than their race and class. They’re individuals with their own stories, interests, connections, and capabilities beyond those that class and race define." There are sidebar examples throughout the PDF of two characters (Tika and Artemis) who are distinguiished - as those sidebars emphasise - on the basis of non-mechanical details of the fiction. That seems an invitation to players to make up similar stuff for their PCs. Deciding on Ideals and Bonds seems also to invite the player to make up people and places that their PCs care about and are connected to.

In the context of this thread, I think that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has made it fairly clear that one reason he doesn't like the "goal and approach" method of action resolution is that it privileges the GM's conception of key aspects of the ficiton over possibly differing conceptions held by the players. Others obviously disagree, taking the view that exercising such authority is the prerogative of the GM. But upthread, [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] gave an example of a player authoring shared fiction invovling the stories told to a young PC by trial elders. I don't think many posters regarded this as a usurpation of the GM's authority. The general response to my post seems to be that the player deciding that the gate guard is her/his PC's childhood friend Frances is a usurpation of the GM's authority. But in some other recent threads I've seen criticisms of a GM narrating failure as some sort of oversight or carelessness on the part of the PC as a usurpation by the GM of the player's authority over deciding what his/her PC does, thinks and feels. Likewise there's a widespread view that it would be usurpation for a GM to decide that a PC _didn't_ do what the player has said s/he does, because the GM thinks it is inconsistent with the PC's stats.

These boundaries aren't crystal clear to me, and I'm a pretty experienced RPGer. I don't find them clearly articulated in the 5e Basic PDF. I'm sure I could get by in [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s game playing a "man with no name"-type character, but nothing in these threads has given me any indication of how I might go about playing a character who is genuinely embedded in the social context of the gameworld - even though the Tika/Artemis sidebars, and the more general tenor of chapter 4 of the Basic PDF, all give me the impression that the game is focused on such embedded individuals.



iserith said:


> It's somewhat related in that players being able to establish this sort of thing during play can mitigate or aggravate the difficulty of the challenge to the player. A player establishing that the character is old friends with the guard, who is presumably the obstacle in the challenge, may be mitigating the difficulty. Conversely, a player establishing that the character has a strained relationship with the guard (perhaps as a means to portray a personal characteristic and earn Inspiration) may be aggravating the difficulty of the challenge to the player.



Goal and approach is - as I understand it - all about _engaging the fiction_ so as to mitigate the difficulty of the challenge (or, perhaps, aggravating it so as to earn Inspiration).

I'm not disputing that a boundary can be articulated which explains why _I pull out my crowbar and use it to lever the door open_ is OK but _There's my old friend Frances, one of the guards now - I ask her to let us through_ is not. I'm just saying that I haven't seen it articulated yet. And although you emphasise not carrying baggage from one game to the next, at the moment the only grasp I am getting on the boundary is by ignoring chapter 4 of the Basic PDF and instead remembering how most traditional RPGs allocated GM/player authority over the ficiton from the 70s through most of the 90s.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

pemerton said:


> /snip
> 
> I'm not disputing that a boundary can be articulated which explains why _I pull out my crowbar and use it to lever the door open_ is OK but _There's my old friend Frances, one of the guards now - I ask her to let us through_ is not. I'm just saying that I haven't seen it articulated yet. And although you emphasise not carrying baggage from one game to the next, at the moment the only grasp I am getting on the boundary is by ignoring chapter 4 of the Basic PDF and instead remembering how most traditional RPGs allocated GM/player authority over the ficiton from the 70s through most of the 90s.




Well, isn't the basic difference fairly obvious?  In the crowbar example, the player has a crowbar written on his character sheet.  Presumably at some point in time before now, that character has bought/stolen/made/been gifted/somehow acquired a crowbar.  There is no additional information being added after the introduction of the locked door.

In the "old friend Frances" example, though, presumably that information has not been established prior to encountering "Frances".  It's something that the player is adding to the fiction after the fact.

Now, depending on where you fall on the "how much authority do player's get" scale, that latter action by the player is either completely off the table since only the DM is allowed to add in additional information after the facts are established, or, it's perfectly fine with a sense of "yes... and" in the game.  3e, for example, allowed you to spend Action Points in exactly this way.  To be honest, I'm not really sure why 5e couldn't use Inspiration this way as well, although, as written, that would be adding additional rules and not following RAW.  

Every group will find a place somewhere on that spectrum generally.


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, isn't the basic difference fairly obvious?  In the crowbar example, the player has a crowbar written on his character sheet.  Presumably at some point in time before now, that character has bought/stolen/made/been gifted/somehow acquired a crowbar.  There is no additional information being added after the introduction of the locked door.



I can see what you're saying, but I think there are a lot of cases where the contrast is not so clear cut. What if the equipment sheet has "burglarising tools" instead? What if, instead of a crowbar, we're talking about a stick of chalk that's been on the PC sheet since 1st level and in the game it's now 12 months and 10 levels later - is the chalk still there? How used up is it? The player is, here an now, deciding that nothing in the past 12 months broke the chalk or caused the PC to lose it, and is deciding that there's still enough there to be usable.

And if the gear has been on the sheet since 1st level, what did the character do to acquire it? The rules don't say - equipping a 1st level PC can be a purely mechanical exercise, of changing numbers in the "money" column and adding items to the "gear" column with no correlative fiction at all.

Turning to the NPC case, what if the PC sheet says "Raised in an orphanage before joining the army." Clearly that encompasses something, as in, it doesn't make much sense for those things to be true and yet there be _no one_ in the gameworld who was a childhood friend and whom the PC hasn't seen before going off to fight in some war or other. When is the player expected or entitled to flesh it out. Do you have to write your whole biogrphy before play begins if you don't want to be the man with no name?

Now in AD&D and B/X I don't think this really comes up, because those are very much focused on "man with no name" characters. But as I said, the 5e Basic PDF has a whole chapter on PC background, not to mention the running sidebars about Tika and Artemis, which are all about characters having context and backstory and connections and being much more than just some stats and an equipment list. How can that be true of the PC, yet it never be true that s/he bumps into an old friend? And if the player gets to decide what the PC feels, how can it be the _GM_ who tells the player which NPCs are the ones the PC feels warmth towards?

Again, I'm not saying that boundaries can't be drawn, but frankly the boundaries I'm seeing here are _play this like you would play any other 80s/90s mainstream RPG_, and if any disputes come up the GM resolves them.  That's fine, but doesn't seem to fit with the idea that each game is its own thing to be taken on its own terms. And also makes it a bit less clear to me how it's meant to be _obvious_ that an 8 INT doesn't impose some sort of constraint on permissible player action declarations.


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

Oh, hey, I'm in the same boat as you [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  We're both very much on the "yes, and" end of the spectrum.  

Heh.  I remember characters that had the same two weeks of iron rations on the character sheet from level 1 onward.    Your description of chalk just made me smile.

But, be that as it may, folks that are insistent that players do not have any authorial control would likely say that it's established that you have chalk, so, you have chalk.  Did you replace that chalk as time went on?  Maybe, probably, but, in any case, your character sheet says you have chalk, so you have chalk.  Does your character sheet say anything about "Frances"?  No?  Then, well, it's not up to you, the player to introduce any sort of prior relationship with "Frances" during play.  That's stepping on the DM's toes.

And, well, as far as debating what stats mean, well, I tend to go on the other end as well.  If you have no training in a skill and an 8 stat in that skill, you are failing what the game defines as Easy (DC 10) more than half the time.  Which, to me, says that you aren't very good at whatever that task is.  Even very easy tasks are failed significantly more often than someone with even a 10 stat and basic training in that skill (level 1=+2 proficiency bonus).  As in that PC fails twice as often at the easiest of tasks as someone who has no particular innate talent and basic knowledge of that task.

So, yeah, to me, and this is how I look at it, not necessarily how the game defines it, if your character has zero training in something and a below 10 stat in it, then well, your character sucks at that pretty hard.  Which, to me anyway, means that that should be reflected in how the player presents that character.  An 8 Int character with no training in history basically knows extremely little history.  And what he or she does know is more often than not, wrong.  If that character is coming up with intricate plans, well, to me, that's a badly played character.  You want to be the strategist in the party?  Cool.  Spend at least some basic character building resources to reflect that.  You want to be Sherlock Holmes and notice fine details that no one else catches?  Fantastic.  Don't play an 8 Int character with no training in Investigate and then expect me, the DM to let you bypass that.

No amount of goal:method is going to change that.


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> If someone purposes something to be true, and yet places no boundaries on, you have to assume that the first thing I'm going to try is reductio ad absurdum.   The boundary I purpose is at minimum, "And the DM agrees."   Yet this boundary was suggested to violate the separation between the player and GM's prerogative.  Thus, reduction to the absurd is not a logical fallacy, because we have no rule to suggest when or how the player's authorial power is to be kept in check, and players - unlike the GM - have no reason to not employ the tools provided to them to solve problems because that's the players role in the game.   Fundamentally, if you give the power to author things to the players with no limits or boundaries, you've put the GM hat on the player and they can then resolve everything by fiat.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



"you have to assume that the first thing I'm going to try is reductio ad absurdum. "

No, you dont.

I can assume that if we all agree to play a game where the players have a lot of freedom or even total freedom to create the fictions around their character scenes that we are not then trying to game that angle.

It's not at all different from saying "hey, let's play a supers game and start as a rich super-team" and then not spend a ton of game time playing thru Spider-Man type resource challenges we just "write a check"  or a "hey let's start at 10th level" and go to killing regular bands of goblins with squash scenes. 

Each group of players and their GMs determine essentially the various types of games and challenges they want to play in and they dont have to fit the same as others.

Obviously, the higher end of authorship games setup different goals and objectives and are not for everyone. Some groups may want the rules to be written to limit them in an effort to stop "bad behavior" like pushing "ad absurdum levels, but others may not want that at all.

Simply put it's not everyone's cup of tea.

As for the belief of it not being an RPG or not, well, I like to leave those to the officially ordainded keepers of the universal definitions.


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I'm happy to accept that it's malformed in the context of 5e D&D. But I don't see how that conclusion can be reached without giving some account of who has what authority over which bits of the the fiction. And saying that the player has authority over what his/her PC does, thinks and feels isn't going to do the job - because _Hey, that's my old friend Frances - I ask her to let us through the gate!_ is an example of the player deciding what his/her PC does, thinks and feels.
> 
> Nor do I think it's enough of an answer to say that players have no authority over any aspect of the fiction except action declaration and associated bodily movements by their PCs. Page 33 of the Basic PDF says that "Characters are defined by much more than their race and class. They’re individuals with their own stories, interests, connections, and capabilities beyond those that class and race define." There are sidebar examples throughout the PDF of two characters (Tika and Artemis) who are distinguiished - as those sidebars emphasise - on the basis of non-mechanical details of the fiction. That seems an invitation to players to make up similar stuff for their PCs. Deciding on Ideals and Bonds seems also to invite the player to make up people and places that their PCs care about and are connected to.
> 
> ...



I get what you're aiming at here, I just question why you're doing so, or maybe why you're coming at the issue so obliquely.  5e is not a system that can provide your preferred experience, although some pieces of it do well.  Now that I see what you were aiming at with your example I think there's some daylight between being able to "control what the PC thinks and does" and your example.  Fundamentally, this is on whether the thoughts and deeds of the PC are able to determine game fiction outside the character.  In 5e, this is (baseline) untrue.  The player is free to declare they think they know the guard and act accordingly, but the GM has no obligation to agree about the fictional state _of the guard_.

This last is the important distinction.  Being able to determine what your PC does and thinks doesn't extend to establishing new functional avenues to current challenges.  Let's contrast your guard example with the troll example.  In the troll example, the player establishes the PC's uncle told the PC about trolls' weakness to fire.  This is to "justify* doing so within the fiction.  But, the ability to use fire on the troll isn't causally tied to this bit of fiction.  This fiction does not enable previously unavailable actions.  

Your guard example, though, does establish new actions that weren't available before the introduction. The player is now trying to establish fiction in the current gameworld to enable new casual paths to overcome the immediate obstacle.  This isn't allowed in 5e -- it's outside the player's narrative authority because the player is now describing elements of the scene alongside their actions.

A 5e GM is free to allow this kind of play, but [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s injuction about smoothness of play comes in.  5e has no mechanical systems or support for this kind of play, so it's entirely on the GM's continued approval and the table conventions.  Perhaps this works well, but any such ad hoc system is likely to have more pain points related to it's ad hoc nature. In other words, absent mechanical reinforcement of this play in the system, exercising it is as reliant on GM approval as what you'd replace with it. Still can be an awesome game, though.

That said, I'm pretty loose with player introductions in 5e because I strive to use my GM "no" as rarely as possible.  Still, there's a limit in play and an understanding at our table because there are no mechanics available to resolve a conflict.  This is different when we play Blades, as there are those systems in play.  I clearly notice, though, that my overhead in running 5e is much higher than in Blades because I have to do more heavy lifting on the content side AND be careful to maintain "fairness" with that content.  In Blades, I just have to GM within the clear constraints and don't have to worry too much about "fairness" at all.


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I clearly notice, though, that my overhead in running 5e is much higher than in Blades because I have to do more heavy lifting on the content side AND be careful to maintain "fairness" with that content.  In Blades, I just have to GM within the clear constraints and don't have to worry too much about "fairness" at all.



This is interesting and really worthy of its own thread, about the burdens (or otherwise) of GMing.



Ovinomancer said:


> I get what you're aiming at here, I just question why you're doing so, or maybe why you're coming at the issue so obliquely.



Well, it started by just following some thoughts where they took me.

But one place they ended up taking me is that I think some of the constraints/rules that are being taken for granted in the 5e context aren't actually found in the rules but are imported from some more generic conception of RPGing.

To elaborate: in one of these recent threads, someone posted about GMing a couple of kids. Kid A, in character, tells Kid B (also in character) to scout ahead. B does so. A asks "What was up ahead?" B starts answering, without waiting to be told by the GM. And it's not only kids - the last time I introduced a new player to RPGing, he took for granted that he had a fair bit of liberty to establish context, background etc for his PC.

If all I know of RPGing is the 5e Basic PDF, I don't think I can fully work out how I'm meant to create and play a character like Tika Wayland, who (as advertised in the sidebars) has friends who care for her, a history and a home. The example of play - scoping out the gargoyles - gives some sort of indication that establishing the context is the GM's role. But the stuff in ch 4 strongly implies that establishing PC backstory is the player's role. I don't see much advice in the Basic rules on how to handle the interaction of these two things, and frankly it would just seem weird to be "playing my character" and yet to be having the GM tell me all about my intimate connections to the various NPCs I'm meeting, what our shared memories are, etc. Those look like player-side, not GM-side, elements of the fiction.

And so I guess I feel that, once it comes to light in this way that the game is in fact assuming people can bring some externally-generated expectation to bear on managing this aspect of it, then the claim that certain approaches are notably more consistent with the game taken on its own terms starts to look a bit weaker. To use a metaphor: if everyone has a bump in their rug, I find the claim to have identified the canonical floor covering a bit less persuasive than it might otherwise have been.

(Postscript: if everyone is playing "Man with no name" type characters; or characters whose backstory is all in the past, and/or somewhere else, and so not apt to actually come up in play; then the issue won't arise. But I don't think the 5e Basic PDF tells me that that's the sort of character I should create, or the sort of play experience I should expect. In fact, chapter 4 tends to suggest quite the opposite. Although maybe this is a case like the Foreword to Moldvay Basic, where the game text suggests one thing, but in its implementation very clearly delivers a different thing. But I don't see much account in 5e postings of playing "situated" characters, and how that works.)


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## pemerton (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> there are no mechanics available to resolve a conflict.



This probably could have been in the same post as just upthread, but I didn't think of it first time round.

Couldn't my example be done as a CHA check? With success/failure narrated along the lines you sketched upthread - success is fond memories and letting the PCs through; failure is either mistaken identity, or _what about my poker money_, etc.

Is the (or one) issue that it might be hard to set a proper DC? I'll admit I haven't thought that through, but it doesn't seem too big a hurdle.

I'll agree that table dynamics can get strained if the players push too hard in establishing fiction, but the same is true if the GM does: "rocks fall" is obviously at the absurd end, but I think most of us have heard stories of, and at least in my own case I've experienced multiple instances of, games failing because GMs couldn't get player buy in for the fiction they wanted to establish. In the player case just as in the GM case, I feel that this is something that robust table relationships should be able to handle.

And to respond to a possible question, namley, why bother, that is, why not just declare that the PC talks to the guard without adding in the extra fiction? For me, a major reason is that the tendency towards a lack of PC situatedness is in my view one of the suckiest tendencies in D&D. REH did it in his Conan stories for particular narrative reasons, but making it ubiquitous is something I really don't like. Oriental Adventures tried to tackle this in the mid-80s, and I'd like to think that D&D has made some progress in this regard in the intervening 30-odd years.


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## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

To me there's a big difference between "I have contacts in the city, does Bob happen to be one of the guards on duty?" and "I have contacts in the city, in fact Bob is captain of the guard so of course he'll let us in."

The former is establishing a background and history (even if it wasn't explicitly written) but the latter is altering the game world beyond what the PC could do.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "you have to assume that the first thing I'm going to try is reductio ad absurdum. "
> 
> No, you dont.
> 
> I can assume that if we all agree to play a game where the players have a lot of freedom or even total freedom to create the fictions around their character scenes that we are not then trying to game that angle.




You have subtly moved the argument.  Now we are talking about how you play the game.  And regarding that, my assumption was not that you immediately tried to find the most absurd declarations that you could make within the letter of the law.  There may be players like that, and actually, I've probably ran games for a couple of them, but I wasn't making the assumption that because the game did not prevent absurd situations that you played it absurdly.

What I do assume is that any game which allows absurd situations and has no barriers or remedies other than social agreements to prevent it is one that is quite fragile, requires a very particular group of players, and which is likely to go wrong and cause table conflicts in more subtle ways - and by conflicts I don't merely mean juvenile temper tantrums.   My expectation is such games are played rarely, and often abandoned after a short time, for many of the same reasons that once a person reaches a particular age, they are no longer content with games of Make Believe and gradually lose interest in them and cease to play them.



> As for the belief of it not being an RPG or not, well, I like to leave those to the officially ordainded keepers of the universal definitions.




Well, do as you like, but you will note that I have never said that a game which allows player authorship is not an RPG.  Quite the contrary, I've admitted to knowledge of several, and apparently "Blades" is also one.

Nevertheless, there are things which are RPGs and things that are not.  Merely in and of itself allowing player authorial control doesn't mean the game isn't an RPG, and the people that have made that claim regarding what I've said are simply dishonest.


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## lowkey13 (May 2, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Hussar (May 2, 2019)

Now i need to find a punch bowl.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> To me there's a big difference between "I have contacts in the city, does Bob happen to be one of the guards on duty?" and "I have contacts in the city, in fact Bob is captain of the guard so of course he'll let us in."
> 
> The former is establishing a background and history (even if it wasn't explicitly written) but the latter is *altering the game world beyond what the PC could do.*




There is a difference, but it is a finer and yet more important distinction than you make here.   What you say about it being something that PCs cannot do is true only for most traditional RPGs and most traditional processes of play.   There are a variety of games where there are processes of play that validate the PC making calls* of the sort, "I have contacts in the city, in fact Bob is captain of the guard so of course he'll let us in."

(*As I'm using the term, assertions or potential assertions about the myth of the game world.  These differ from propositions, which are assertions about the actions or intended fictional positioning of the player in the game world.  A call helps establish what the situation or problem is.  A proposition offers some way to solve it, often one that involves a certain amount of risk.   Note that a call is not part of the normal action resolution cycle that others in the thread are referring to as "goal-method", although calls of various sorts are allowed in most games through some process.)

But if you examine those games, you'll find that they still share something in common with traditional RPG play - the power of the player is limited.  If the player character has chalk, then chances are the have chalk because the game gives the play some limited resource to acquire chalk.  The same is true of every one of the player characters resources - they had a cost and are finite.

The first call refers to the players limited and defined resources and clearly recognizes that they are limited and thus may not apply.  Every RPG limits the resources of the players, for the reason that it - being a game - requires the players to have limits.  All games are defined by their limits, and thus have illegal moves or propositions.   The limits are actually what makes a game fun and challenging.  If a game doesn't have limits, it's not a game but a form of play.   (Yes, I recognize the words play and game are controversial and people that study these games argue over what they are, but close enough for us amateurs, and better than some of the pros.)

But the second call is, sans context, a call that suggests the power of the player is basically unlimited.   That sort of call suggests the player has the power of fiat - that Rule Zero applies to the player as well - and if the player can declare things by fiat then they can resolve pretty much any situation.  The reason that the GM of an RPG is not called a player, even though they are participating in the game, is that they have no limits and thus cannot (or should not) play the game any more than a referee can or should play in a game of soccer that they are officiating.

Now, in clearer context, we might find that there are actually limits on the second call.  Some RPGs allow calls of that nature within a framework that places limits on the their effectiveness or on how often they an be made and so forth.   But unless those limits exist, its probably not even a game.

As for the declaration that if there exists some call you can make about the fictional world, which will not be validated by the GM as true, that the GM is somehow playing your character for you... 

You can certainly aver as a player that your character is the ultimate author and ruler over reality, but if you do, it's no more likely to be true of the fictional universe than it is of this one.  You are free to assert that your character believes this to be true, and as the GM I cannot overrule you.   But I'm not obligated to affirm that the belief is true.  If you claim something delusional, you may be ill at ease if I don't affirm your delusion is true, but that is not interfering with your thoughts or your play.  Indeed, it is impossible to interfere with your thoughts - that's what makes a delusion a delusion rather than merely a false belief.   Your character can certainly try to be the ruler over reality, just as your character may try to leap over the ocean in a single bound.  But you cannot assert that anything you wish to be so is so, even perfect agreement between your character's mental image of the world and what the world actually is.   You cannot in the real world assert that just because you think something is so that it is.   You should have no expectation that you can do so in a game, unless provided for by the game.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Goal and approach is - as I understand it - all about _engaging the fiction_ so as to mitigate the difficulty of the challenge (or, perhaps, aggravating it so as to earn Inspiration).




What some have decided to call "goal and approach" is about more than that and what you're specifically stating here is really more from the perspective of the player.



pemerton said:


> I'm not disputing that a boundary can be articulated which explains why _I pull out my crowbar and use it to lever the door open_ is OK but _There's my old friend Frances, one of the guards now - I ask her to let us through_ is not. I'm just saying that I haven't seen it articulated yet. And although you emphasise not carrying baggage from one game to the next, at the moment the only grasp I am getting on the boundary is by ignoring chapter 4 of the Basic PDF and instead remembering how most traditional RPGs allocated GM/player authority over the ficiton from the 70s through most of the 90s.




The rules are clear on who gets to say what. The player gets to write a background during character creation. The DM helps him or her tie various elements of the background to the campaign, saying yes to the player's ideas if the DM can and suggesting alterations when the DM can't. This is laid out in the DMG under "Master of Worlds," as if the title alone was insufficient to tell us who gets to decide what.

During play, the player gets to describe what he or she wants to do. To that end, saying that the guard is Frances, an old friend, is a valid action declaration. But the DM is under no obligation to accept that the guard is, in fact, Frances or an old friend or both because the player has no control over this aspect of the game. Non-player characters are controlled by the DM, as per the chapter on NPCs in the DMG.

If you want a D&D game that overtly endorses a "Yes, and..." approach, where during play the DM accepts ideas from the players to change or add to the world, adventure, or NPCs in it, you're going to have to look to D&D 4e. (And notably, I took a lot of heat for suggesting DMs do that in D&D 4e on the WotC forums - despite it being plain as day in that edition's DMG. People coming from D&D 3.Xe or older editions simply would not have it, another example of carrying baggage from one game to the next.)


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> You have subtly moved the argument.  Now we are talking about how you play the game.  And regarding that, my assumption was not that you immediately tried to find the most absurd declarations that you could make within the letter of the law.  There may be players like that, and actually, I've probably ran games for a couple of them, but I wasn't making the assumption that because the game did not prevent absurd situations that you played it absurdly.
> 
> What I do assume is that any game which allows absurd situations and has no barriers or remedies other than social agreements to prevent it is one that is quite fragile, requires a very particular group of players, and which is likely to go wrong and cause table conflicts in more subtle ways - and by conflicts I don't merely mean juvenile temper tantrums.   My expectation is such games are played rarely, and often abandoned after a short time, for many of the same reasons that once a person reaches a particular age, they are no longer content with games of Make Believe and gradually lose interest in them and cease to play them.
> 
> ...



You can assume whatever you like about other games, but for me, I have seem plenty of conflicts in games without authorship by players. 

To me, honestly, my experience says the fsctors that lead to conflicts and campaigns bring abandoned over them are in the vast majority not actually related to the rules of the game system,  it the personalities and social dynamics. 

Fragility on the basis of these conflicts is not a rules problem. 

There is no game rule that stops folks from getting into conflicts  in they are inclined to. 

My players and I font need rules yo tell us to not be absurd st the table or to work together to resolve conflicts. 

Like I said, such games are not for all players...  no game is. 

As for you wanting to keep focusing on your choices in the "RPG or not" test, that's fine and dandy. I hope it yields for you some useful or beneficial results.

For me, worrying over whether or not someone else's style if play "counts as an RPG in my eyes" is a pursuit with no payoff at the end. I get nothing by doing so, no benefit, no gain and the only possible effect is ticking off somebody else if they for dome reason give a whit what I think. 

So, I dont make that pursuit one I care to take.

As for me takingbyime to "take note" of what you didn't say... why in the world would I try and note all the things you didnt say?


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> That said, I'm pretty loose with player introductions in 5e because I strive to use my GM "no" as rarely as possible.  Still, there's a limit in play and an understanding at our table because there are no mechanics available to resolve a conflict.




I advise the players to keep everything in terms of an action declaration as that is what I'm on the lookout for since that is when I have to adjudicate. I even discourage asking questions of the DM, if those questions can be answered by taking action in the game world. "How many doors are in this room?" is better stated as "I look to see how many doors there are in this room..." in my view. The stop-n-chat with the DM interferes with the flow of the game in my view, plus questions are often a form of out-of-game risk mitigation as the players fish for the best solution.

Anyway, I also follow the general concept that if it wasn't introduced in play then it doesn't exist and I have the option of adding it right now as long as it doesn't contradict some previously established fiction. So if a player says something like "I look around for someone I know among the guards..." and based on everything we know about the character, the setting, and what has come before points to that being reasonable, then I might say that's the case and, sure enough, ol' Frances just happens to be on duty. If it doesn't make much sense for that to be true, then nobody the character knows is on duty.


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## Oofta (May 2, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Now i need to find a punch bowl.




A gnome punchbowl perhaps?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 2, 2019)

Oofta said:


> To me there's a big difference between "I have contacts in the city, does Bob happen to be one of the guards on duty?" and "I have contacts in the city, in fact Bob is captain of the guard so of course he'll let us in."
> 
> The former is establishing a background and history (even if it wasn't explicitly written) but the latter is altering the game world beyond what the PC could do.




Yes, I agree.  Although the latter scenario could work as a roll-then-narrate thing:

Player: "I have contacts in the city; I'll approach the guards and see if any of them know me and will let me in if I promise to keep it quiet."
DM: "Even if you know them it's still going to to take some talking.  Sounds like you're using Persuasion, so let me have a roll."
Player: "17."
DM: "Yeah, one of them knows you, and he tells his mate that you're ok."
Player: "Sweet.  That's Bob.  Before he became a guard he used to hang out at the tavern where I performed, and after hours we were drinking buddies."

I'd be ok with that.  In fact I encourage that sort of thing.  The player has participated in world-building without changing the game state to gain advantage, and maybe even has given me some hooks for the future.  ("Oh, he used to perform regularly in a particular tavern? And stayed late drinking with some of the patrons?  Duly noted...")


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## Guest 6801328 (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> I advise the players to keep everything in terms of an action declaration as that is what I'm on the lookout for since that is when I have to adjudicate. I even discourage asking questions of the DM, if those questions can be answered by taking action in the game world. "How many doors are in this room?" is better stated as "I look to see how many doors there are in this room..." in my view. The stop-n-chat with the DM interferes with the flow of the game in my view, plus questions are often a form of out-of-game risk mitigation as the players fish for the best solution.




I think it's also good to just develop the habit of engaging in particular way.  The answer to "what's wrong with just saying 'I roll Skill X' when it's obvious?" is the same as the answer to "What's wrong with not using my turn signal when there's nobody there?"


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

> As for me takingbyime to "take note" of what you didn't say... why in the world would I try and note all the things you didnt say?




Because you seem quite happy to invent things for me to say when it suits your purposes.



5ekyu said:


> You can assume whatever you like about other games, but for me, I have seem plenty of conflicts in games without authorship by players.




Is that really all you got out of that?   I even called out that the sort of conflicts that I was talking about were not merely the sort that comes from players acting immaturely or having poor social skills, and yet here we are.



> As for you wanting to keep focusing on your choices in the "RPG or not" test, that's fine and dandy. I hope it yields for you some useful or beneficial results.  For me, worrying over whether or not someone else's style if play "counts as an RPG in my eyes" is a pursuit with no payoff at the end.




Style of play?  I'm not quibbling over styles of play.  

Objectively, there are things that are RPGs and things that are not.  That has nothing to do with a "style of play".   I personally find questions like: "Is "Cops & Robbers" and RPG?", "If it is not an RPG, what is it?", and "If it isn't an RPG, what minimal set of changes would it require to make it an RPG?" interesting and informative to ponder.  I'm not asserting you can change "Cops & Robbers" to an RPG just by a change in style of play (although if you could, that would be interesting).



> is ticking off somebody else if they for dome reason give a whit what I think.




I'm seeing well where this is going...


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## lowkey13 (May 2, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Guest 6801328 (May 2, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I mean ... it's hard to argue with "gnome" and "punch" in the same sentence......
> 
> As in, "I'd like to punt that gnome into the punch bowl."




Or "punch 'im roight in the bowls"


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## Ovinomancer (May 2, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is interesting and really worthy of its own thread, about the burdens (or otherwise) of GMing.
> 
> Well, it started by just following some thoughts where they took me.
> 
> ...



I addressed this issue in the parts if the post you snipped. 

Fundamentally, there's a scope difference between introducing off-screen fiction (Uncle Bob told me about trolls) and establishing fiction present in the current scene.  As I said in the various MMI threads, 5e is a GM-authority-centered game.  As such, introduction of fiction into a scene is the GM's authority, not the player's.  The player can leverage backstory (even on the spot created backstory) in an action declaration, but can't add to the fiction without GM approval.

This is the default -- it can be abridged in various ways but care needs to taken because the system doesn't directly support it.  As I've said, I'm comfortable enough with the system to relax this a bit in my games.

As for playing a centered in the fiction character, no, 5e doesn't do this in the way I've come to understand your meaning.  Or, more precisely, it does this as much as the GM allows, which is also not tge way I understand your point.







pemerton said:


> This probably could have been in the same post as just upthread, but I didn't think of it first time round.
> 
> Couldn't my example be done as a CHA check? With success/failure narrated along the lines you sketched upthread - success is fond memories and letting the PCs through; failure is either mistaken identity, or _what about my poker money_, etc.
> 
> ...



What in the fiction lets me, as GM, know how difficult this task will be?  I don't see anything, which makes any DC set entirely arbitrary -- it can't be grounded in either mechanics or the fiction.  This is the first problem.

The second is how skill bonuses work.  Doing this would priviledge classes that have Expertise mechanics, and esoecially a Rogue at 11+ level as Reliable Talent means minimum roll for any proficient skill is 10.  A not optimized rogue at 11th level will automatically succeed at any of their Expertise skills (3 or 4) for any easy, moderate, or hard tasks.  A optimised Fighter at any one of those skills can autosucceed at easy tasks, but has a 25% chance to fail moderate and a 50% to fail hard DCs.  Obviously, if we're talking about introduction of challenge solving fiction this kind of success rate is unacceptable, not to mention the class disparities.

The system will actively fight this kind of play.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

iserith said:


> I advise the players to keep everything in terms of an action declaration as that is what I'm on the lookout for since that is when I have to adjudicate. I even discourage asking questions of the DM, if those questions can be answered by taking action in the game world. "How many doors are in this room?" is better stated as "I look to see how many doors there are in this room..." in my view. The stop-n-chat with the DM interferes with the flow of the game in my view, plus questions are often a form of out-of-game risk mitigation as the players fish for the best solution.




Now that is fascinating.   Backing up a bit, one of my big obsessions in RP theory is the notion of a propositional filter.   That is to say, what propositions does the GM recognize as valid propositions which then require him to come up with some sort of resolution, and what propositions the GM rejects as invalid that need to be stated in a different manner.   It's my theory, and this is a big part of "Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs", that the proposition filter has the single biggest impact on the process of play - even more so than the rules of the system.   Further, in traditional RPGs such as AD&D, the proposition filter is generally not explicitly defined.   The writer of the system assumes the filter without actually stating what it is.   It's something that's some essential to the act of RPing that for the longest time, it was just overlooked without much thinking about it.

The fact that D&D and it's descendants do not specify its proposition filter is one of the reasons that with the exact same rules set, two groups that are "playing D&D" can be playing entirely different games.  It's also one of the big problems that 4e D&D ran into, is that 4e subtly started specifying its proposition filter, with the result that tables that had a well defined proposition filter and process of play, if it wasn't compatible with the 4e filter, and if they weren't willing to adapt 4e to their process of play or adapt their process of play to 4e, started saying things like, "This isn't even an RPG."  In their mind, all RPGs had a single proposition filter - that's how they'd always played - and a table with a different proposition filter is going to seem weird.  Like really weird.

What you are describing here is that your proposition filter is tuned to reject anything I earlier defined as a "call".   All propositions must take the form of a proposition.  And that's a really pure and interesting stance.   I'm inclined to like it, particularly since you are right that many calls take the form of interacting with the metagame rather than interacting with the game, and that often leads to dysfunctional processes of play, like as you call out "fishing for the best solution" (which is essentially attempting a bunch of do overs until you reach a trial and error solution without paying for the consequences of the failures).   I don't think I'd ever go completely purist with that approach, but I do like the thinking behind it.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Now that is fascinating.   Backing up a bit, one of my big obsessions in RP theory is the notion of a propositional filter.   That is to say, what propositions does the GM recognize as valid propositions which then require him to come up with some sort of resolution, and what propositions the GM rejects as invalid that need to be stated in a different manner.   It's my theory, and this is a big part of "Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs", that the proposition filter has the single biggest impact on the process of play - even more so than the rules of the system.   Further, in traditional RPGs such as AD&D, the proposition filter is generally not explicitly defined.   The writer of the system assumes the filter without actually stating what it is.   It's something that's some essential to the act of RPing that for the longest time, it was just overlooked without much thinking about it.
> 
> The fact that D&D and it's descendants do not specify its proposition filter is one of the reasons that with the exact same rules set, two groups that are "playing D&D" can be playing entirely different games.  It's also one of the big problems that 4e D&D ran into, is that 4e subtly started specifying its proposition filter, with the result that tables that had a well defined proposition filter and process of play, if it wasn't compatible with the 4e filter, and if they weren't willing to adapt 4e to their process of play or adapt their process of play to 4e, started saying things like, "This isn't even an RPG."  In their mind, all RPGs had a single proposition filter - that's how they'd always played - and a table with a different proposition filter is going to seem weird.  Like really weird.
> 
> What you are describing here is that your proposition filter is tuned to reject anything I earlier defined as a "call".   All propositions must take the form of a proposition.  And that's a really pure and interesting stance.   I'm inclined to like it, particularly since you are right that many calls take the form of interacting with the metagame rather than interacting with the game, and that often leads to dysfunctional processes of play, like as you call out "fishing for the best solution" (which is essentially attempting a bunch of do overs until you reach a trial and error solution without paying for the consequences of the failures).   I don't think I'd ever go completely purist with that approach, but I do like the thinking behind it.




Now here's the part that bakes some folks' noodles: If we're playing Dungeon World, ask all the questions you want. Even some of the moves are questions. That's all good. The game expects it and so do I.

But if we're playing D&D 5e, keep it in the form of an action declaration please! I'm not going to engage in the mini-game of players asking 20 questions before they take an action. The thing with questions in this context is that questions don't have consequences whereas actions might. So it's no wonder that most games I see have players asking questions to try to mitigate the difficulty of the challenge without taking any risks in the effort of that mitigation!


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## 5ekyu (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Because you seem quite happy to invent things for me to say when it suits your purposes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



So, if I get this right, in addition to bringing in what is an rpg and what kinds of conflicts count you want to count/exclude you also now want to kind of get into  to what constitutes a style of play vs say whatever your would choose to call a choice by a group to not rely on rules to limit ourselves regardless of your sense of that making it not being an RPG  ... 

I hope that gets you what you want.

But for me, it's not paths I find worth pursuing.

The scopes and levels to which RPGs (even in their own not approved by you use of the term RPG) and tables allow player authorship and how they play out is of interest to me... for instance... but deciding to stop at some point to decide or argue  "is this change to our authorship now make it not an RPG" doesnt get me snything.

I am more about the hanges in results and the impact on play (avoiding the term playstyle since that's another thing that somehow gets diversion going) than the change in the game's label. 

But that's me.


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## Umbran (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Because you seem quite happy to invent things for me to say when it suits your purposes.





This looks like it is getting personal.  Both of you back off, please and thank you.


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## Tony Vargas (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> that often leads to dysfunctional processes of play, like as you call out "fishing for the best solution" (which is essentially attempting a bunch of do overs until you reach a trial and error solution without paying for the consequences of the failures).



That's certainly familiar (even stereotypical) player behavior from back in the day.

FREX:

DM:  You see a door.
Player: Is it sturdy?
DM:  As you examine the door to determine how sturdy it is, the green slime coating it kills you.  Roll up a new character.
Player:  No, no, I meant: what kind of door?  wood?  iron-bound? does it have a latch or a metal handle or something? At a glance does it look old? new? strong? rotted?   
DM: Too late.  New character.
Player:  You're a jerk, Steve.*

And, I did see it starting to come back with 5e.  In 3.5 or even 4e, a player might have a really good idea not only of his character's ability and how it worked, but of the likely difficulty (DC or other factors) of a possible action.  In 5e, as in the classic game, you can't be so sure.  Unlike in the olden days when DMs would often make up random resolution mechanics off the cuff (roll d20 under your stat, roll d20 you want high, roll d6 even/odd no I won't tell you which is good, roll every dice you own take that much damage, etc), you at least know that if there is going to be a mechanic invoked, it'll likely be a check, and you have a fair idea what stat and skill might apply (and thus what the mod on your side will be), but whether there's a roll at all, and vs what DC (and maybe Adv/Dis) is entirely up to the DM. Players thus try to find ways to deal with that uncertainty.
While action declaration and resolution is a pretty tight ship, there's a little wiggle room in the first step - DM describes the situation.  A picture's worth a thousand words & all, and there's no picture, so the DM may be giving some pretty substantial descriptions that may be hard to follow, so it's only natural for players to ask questions in this step to clarify and get an understanding of said situation appropriate to what their characters are simply taking in at a glance.  It's not hard to fish for information about the best solution or the probable mechanical resolution involved (if any) of possible problems presented by that situation.  

(And, no, I'm not going to give an example mocking millennials the same way I did my own generation, above.  
I really want to, but I'm tak'n the high road for once.
Also, I can't think of anything quite as funny, because it wouldn't be as dysfunctional - might even be some iserithean gametopia.  
Except, it'd end with "You're a jerk, Brandon**"  )













* or Mike or Dave, most guys of gaming age back in the 80s were one of the three.
** because it seems like a lotta kids were being named Brandon. Or Taylor, yeah, that one's even unisex.


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## iserith (May 2, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's certainly familiar (even stereotypical) player behavior from back in the day.
> 
> FREX:
> 
> ...




A DM failing to adequately describe the environment and present the basic scope of options invites questions from players.

A DM failing to repeat the play loop and describe the environment again as appropriate (reminding of the major points, plus anything that has changed or been revealed by previous action), including in combat challenges, does the same.

A player failing to adequately describe what he or she wants to do invites the DM to fill in the blanks with assumptions to which the player might then object, especially if it flies in the face of how he or she imagines the character or if there is an undesirable consequence as a result of the assumption.

Which goes back to my point in this and other threads: Everyone shares the same goal - to have fun and to create an exciting, memorable story as a result of play. But the DM and players have different roles and responsibilities in pursuit of that goal. Know your role and responsibility and perform it to the utmost of your ability and a lot of the sorts of problems you imagine go away. Fail to do so, or attempt to perform someone else's role, and that's when we may see these problems appear.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's certainly familiar (even stereotypical) player behavior from back in the day.
> 
> FREX:
> 
> ...




An excellent example.  The Search skill or acts of searching that use things like a Perception skill are troublesome because they leave vague the fictional positioning of the character.

The player's call "Is it Sturdy?" was treated as a proposition by the DM, and validated as an action which needed a resolution.

In fact, the problem was poor proposition filtering.  The DM should have probably rejected the proposition ("You don't know.", "You can't tell.", "How do you plan to find out?") or at the very least assumed that since it was a call and not a proposition that the player should only be informed of what they can learn from passive observation.   Either way, the DM should be prompting for a valid proposition - again, harkening to what others have called out as the "method" of the goal.   We have a goal here from the call, but not a methodology.    

This seems obvious in simple examples like this but in play properly figuring out what fictional positioning the player is in and what fictional positioning the player thinks that they are in, and getting them to match is very difficult and one of the most challenging tasks for a DM.  I get them wrong all the time, and the only real good that has come out of it for me is that I'm very sensitive as a player to cases where I may not have the fictional positioning correct.   I'm finding it's easier for a player than the DM to know when things are off, and be able to phrase things in such a way that we get back on the same page.  But wow is it hard when you have a bunch of different players all of whom may be thinking in different ways and none of whom necessarily have any discipline with respect to what they are telling you.  (It occurs to me, just in this moment, that aside from the large number of players at his table, this may be one of the reasons Gygax preferred to work with a leader/caller.  The leader/caller was probably more disciplined in phrasing his propositions.)

Moreover, to really do this well you have to be disciplined about filtering in the situations that don't matter, so that you are less likely to have problems in the situations that do matter.  The above situation likely comes about because in the past, players have called, "Is it sturdy?", and the DM responded, "You grab the handle and give it a few tugs.  It seems solid and doesn't budge.", and neither party objected to it or realized the trouble that was brewing with that sort of process of play.

Finally, I've seen at least one player that deliberately tried to game and manipulate the DM in this way, by continually making vague propositions and if they didn't work out, demanding a retcon because the DM got his fictional positioning or his intended method wrong.  Or he would say something like, "I was only thinking of doing that.  I didn't say I actually would!"   Essentially the way he played is he'd do vague calls and ask questions about mechanics, particularly calls concerning the outcome of potential proposition, until he'd get the DM to agree that if he were to make a proposition, this would be how it be resolved, and only when he was given little or no chance of failure would he then offer a proposition.   And then if things didn't go the way he expected, he'd start up again.


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## Tony Vargas (May 2, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> In fact, the problem was poor proposition filtering.  The DM should have probably rejected the proposition ("You don't know.", "You can't tell.", "How do you plan to find out?") or at the very least assumed that since it was a call and not a proposition that the player should only be informed of what they can learn from passive observation.   Either way, the DM should be prompting for a valid proposition



 He did prompt for a 'valid proposition,' by killing off the character.  Next time the player will ask for more details of what he has already noticed ('passive observation'), and only move on to methods of examination - very cautious, detailed methods he's found that DM tends to respond well to - after exhausting those avenues.

That's how DMs of old forged callow newbs into skilled, experienced players like the ones jayoungr is dealing with in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?659008-Want-to-shake-things-up-Doorways-Scouting-Caution



> This seems obvious in simple examples like this but in play properly figuring out what fictional positioning the player is in and what fictional positioning the player thinks that they are in, and getting them to match



 It seems simple (Steve* is a jerk, /simple/), until you start making up game-design jargon to describe the problem.    Then it starts getting a little arcane.

Seriously, though, that is an interesting way of formally articulating such a familiar problem.  

























* not you, Steve, some other, hypothetical, Steve, c1983.  Sorry.


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## Celebrim (May 2, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> He did prompt for a 'valid proposition,' by killing off the character.




Well, "sink or swim" is one approach for educating new players.


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## Tony Vargas (May 3, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Well, "sink or swim" is one approach for educating new players.



 Yep:  if you swim, you're devoured by sharks (because everybody knows Great Whites hunt the surface and are drawn to splashing like an injured seal); if you sink, you find 10,000gp and a potion of water-breathing, that sank to the bottom as the sharks were eating all those other swimmers.


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## pemerton (May 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> In fact I encourage that sort of thing. The player has participated in world-building without changing the game state to gain advantage, and maybe even has given me some hooks for the future.



What's the objection to the player changing the game state to gain advantage? Isn't that something that good players try and do?



Ovinomancer said:


> What in the fiction lets me, as GM, know how difficult this task will be?  I don't see anything, which makes any DC set entirely arbitrary -- it can't be grounded in either mechanics or the fiction.  This is the first problem.



It's never been clear to me exactly how a 5e GM is meant to decide that some action has an uncertain outcome, or not, and how the DC is to be set. You seem here to be suggesting "objective" DCs - in the sense that the difficulty corresponds to or reflects (roughly) the in-fiction causal processes. Similar to a process-sim type game and unlike (say) Dungeon World or 4e.

When I wondered whether this might be a problem that you're seeing in the example I put forward, I wasn't very sure that I was right to do so. So it's interesting to me to see you affirm that it is a problem.



Ovinomancer said:


> Doing this would priviledge classes that have Expertise mechanics
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if we're talking about introduction of challenge solving fiction this kind of success rate is unacceptable, not to mention the class disparities.



This one's not as clear to me. I thought the point of expertise and similar class features is to make those classes the best at resolving non-combat problems through non-magical means. So if they're better at this, is that really a bad thing? (That would depend upon a skill check and not just a CHA check being required - I'm not sure there's a skill that pertains to the sort of thing I suggested, but maybe that's a less significant point.)



Ovinomancer said:


> there's a scope difference between introducing off-screen fiction (Uncle Bob told me about trolls) and establishing fiction present in the current scene.



I can see this. I'm less clear, though, where the 5e Basic PDF explains this difference and how it's fundamental to the play of the game. See further below.



iserith said:


> The rules are clear on who gets to say what. The player gets to write a background during character creation. The DM helps him or her tie various elements of the background to the campaign, saying yes to the player's ideas if the DM can and suggesting alterations when the DM can't. This is laid out in the DMG under "Master of Worlds," as if the title alone was insufficient to tell us who gets to decide what.
> 
> During play, the player gets to describe what he or she wants to do. To that end, saying that the guard is Frances, an old friend, is a valid action declaration. But the DM is under no obligation to accept that the guard is, in fact, Frances or an old friend or both because the player has no control over this aspect of the game. Non-player characters are controlled by the DM, as per the chapter on NPCs in the DMG.



Looking through the 5e Basic PDF, this is what I find on pp 2-3 (sblocked for length):

[sblock]The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents. . . .

Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers' action. Players roll dice to resolve whether their attacks hit or miss or whether their adventurers can scale a cliff, roll away from the strike of a magical lightning bolt, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others. . . .

In the Dungeons & Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.

One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee. The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. . . .

[T]he DM determines the results of the adventurers' actions and narrates what they experience. Because the DM can improvise to react to anything the players attempt, D&D is infinitely flexible, and each adventure can be exciting and unexpected. . . .

The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.

*1. The DM describes the environment.* The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what's around them, presenting the basic scope of options that
present themselves . . .

*2. The players describe what they want to do.* . . .

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. . . . But [not always.] . . . In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.

3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right
back to step 1.

This pattern holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon.[/sblock]I find this rather reminiscent of Moldvay Basic. It's pretty clear as far as it goes. To me it seems to break down, though, as soon as we get into circumstances where the PCs are not strangers to the environment or the NPCs. If I'm playing my character, why do I need to the GM to tell me what I see in my own house? Or what my sister looks like?

Now it seems to me that there are some accepted cases in this general ballpark where _the player gets_ to establish the environment. Eg if a player says "I'm looking in my backpack for my rope", I think even at many 5e tables it will be accepted accepted that the player establishes that there is a backpack, and what's in it, in virtue of having written up an equipment list. Page 4 of the Basic PDF perhaps indicates this by saying "Each character brings particular capabilities to the adventure in the form of ability scores and skills, class features, racial traits, equipment, and magic items."

But then the character sheet at the end of the Basic PDF not only has an entry for equipment but entries for PC backstory and for allies and organisations. And chapter 4 begins by saying that "Characters are defined by much more than their race and class. They're individuals with their own stories, interests, connections, and capabilities beyond those that class and race define. This chapter expounds on the details that distinguish characters from one another".

So how - other than by way of RPGing/D&D tradition - is the player meant to appreciate that non-equipment but nevertheless intimate elements of backstory don't break the basic pattern of play in the same way that equipment lists do? The clearest hint I can find in the Basic PDF is on p 36, under the heading "Backgrounds":

The most important question to ask about your background is what changed? Why did you stop doing whatever your background describes and start adventuring? Where did you get the money to purchase your starting gear, or, if you come from a wealthy background, why don’t you have more money? How did you learn the skills of your class? What sets you apart from ordinary people who share your background?​
This at least suggests that _adventuring_ is in fact something that occurs apart from, indeed divorced from, the PC's backstory. This is reinforced by the references on pp 2 and 3 to _towering castles beneath the stormy night sky_, _dark dungeons_, _ruined cities_, _haunted castles_, _lost temples deep in the jungle_, and _lava-filled caverns beneath mysterious mountains_. And by the statement on p 4 that

an adventure features a fantastic setting, whether it's an underground dungeon, a crumbling castle, a stretch of wilderness, or a bustling city. It features a rich cast of characters: the adventurers created and played by the other players at the table, as well as nonplayer characters (NPCs). Those characters might be patrons, allies, enemies, hirelings, or just background extras in an adventure.​
Notably absent is the suggestion that NPCs might be friends, family or other people whom the PCs have connections with outside of the context of the adventure.

If adventuring is always or at least primarily undertaken in strange places among strange people, then the action declaration I suggested is never going to come up, which obviates the need to write a rule that deals with it.


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## iserith (May 3, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Looking through the 5e Basic PDF, this is what I find on pp 2-3 (sblocked for length):
> 
> [sblock]The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents. . . .
> 
> ...




I can't speak to what you need. I can only say what the rules say. During play, players describe what they want to do. That's all they may do.



pemerton said:


> Now it seems to me that there are some accepted cases in this general ballpark where _the player gets_ to establish the environment. Eg if a player says "I'm looking in my backpack for my rope", I think even at many 5e tables it will be accepted accepted that the player establishes that there is a backpack, and what's in it, in virtue of having written up an equipment list. Page 4 of the Basic PDF perhaps indicates this by saying "Each character brings particular capabilities to the adventure in the form of ability scores and skills, class features, racial traits, equipment, and magic items."
> 
> But then the character sheet at the end of the Basic PDF not only has an entry for equipment but entries for PC backstory and for allies and organisations. And chapter 4 begins by saying that "Characters are defined by much more than their race and class. They're individuals with their own stories, interests, connections, and capabilities beyond those that class and race define. This chapter expounds on the details that distinguish characters from one another".
> 
> ...




If your conclusion is that you can refer to the guard as Frances and that the DM is under no obligation to change the world to suit your offer, then you have reached the correct conclusion as far as the rules are concerned. But honestly it's not entirely clear to me what you're driving at if that's not it.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 3, 2019)

pemerton said:


> What's the objection to the player changing the game state to gain advantage? Isn't that something that good players try and do?




Sorry, I should have been more specific.  Changing the game state by having your character do something is fine.  I was talking about changing the game state from the DM's side of the table. E.g., "Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, a piece of the ceiling collapses, landing on the evil necromancer."

(Maybe there are RPGs where that's part of game play?  Could be fun.  But this is the 5e forum.)

Like all these things there are gray areas in the middle, of course, and I'm sure we could both come up with examples of players narrating a change in game state for advantage that would be fine.  But the existence of twilight does not disprove the difference between day and night.


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## Satyrn (May 3, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Sorry, I should have been more specific.  Changing the game state by having your character do something is fine.  I was talking about changing the game state from the DM's side of the table. E.g., "Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, a piece of the ceiling collapses, landing on the evil necromancer."
> 
> (Maybe there are RPGs where that's part of game play?  Could be fun.  *But this is the 5e forum.*)
> 
> Like all these things there are gray areas in the middle, of course, and I'm sure we could both come up with examples of players narrating a change in game state for advantage that would be fine.  But the existence of twilight does not disprove the difference between day and night.




Remember how last month a couple people were asking that we include an edition tag to our new threads? When I saw that, I wondered "why the heck would we bother doing that when this is the 5e forum?" . . . and that's when I noticed this is now the D&D forum.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 3, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Remember how last month a couple people were asking that we include an edition tag to our new threads? When I saw that, I wondered "why the heck would we bother doing that when this is the 5e forum?" . . . and that's when I noticed this is now the D&D forum.




Oh, right. 

Well it is the D&D forum, anyway.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 4, 2019)

pemerton said:


> What's the objection to the player changing the game state to gain advantage? Isn't that something that good players try and do?



 It's something skilled players do  - but you can leave their alignment out of it.


> It's never been clear to me exactly how a 5e GM is meant to decide that some action has an uncertain outcome, or not, and how the DC is to be set.



 The DM uses his judgement, based 36 years of D&D experience (since the mode-average DM presumably started with the storied Red Box).

Or he fakes it.


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## pemerton (May 4, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The DM uses his judgement, based 36 years of D&D experience



OK, but that doesn't quite fit witih "playing by following the rules".



Tony Vargas said:


> It's something skilled players do  - but you can leave their alignment out of it.



So "skilled" is to "good" as "smoother" is to "better"?


----------



## ExploderWizard (May 4, 2019)

When a town guard says " Halt who goes there?" then the guard is challenging the character. The player isn't present in the setting. 

Do I win?


----------



## Satyrn (May 4, 2019)

ExploderWizard said:


> When a town guard says " Halt who goes there?" then the guard is challenging the character. The player isn't present in the setting.
> 
> Do I win?




Yes.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 4, 2019)

pemerton said:


> OK, but that doesn't quite fit witih "playing by following the rules".



 When the rule calls for the DM to exercise judgement, it does.  Circular?  Maybe, but dems da rulez.


> So "skilled" is to "good" as "smoother" is to "better"?



 Skilled is to good as legal is to lawful or beige is to neutral.

It was a pun.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 4, 2019)

pemerton said:


> So "skilled" is to "good" as "smoother" is to "better"?




Whoooooooosh


----------



## Hussar (May 5, 2019)

Isn't the issue, regardless of how we're playing, that the player is trying to game the DM?  I mean, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] talks about a player who asks a stream of questions in order to hit upon the "magic question" that allows the player to overcome the challenge without referring to the rules.  I talk about players that try for a stream of action declarations in order to hit the "magic declaration" that allows them to overcome the challenge without referring to the rules.

The problem isn't in the strengths or weaknesses of a given approach, the problem is with players playing in bad faith.  It's not that goal:approach solves the problems, it just shifts the problem of the player playing in bad faith to the left.  

What I find rather ironic though is how folks jumped up and down and yelled at me for not understanding how things are played when I talked about players hunting for the "magic phrase" in the goal:approach method, but, when talking about other ways of playing, we immediately jump to dysfunctional play where the players will ask endless streams of questions in order to hunt for the "magic question".

Perhaps folks just don't understand what we're talking about when we don't use goal:approach methodology.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Isn't the issue, regardless of how we're playing, that the player is trying to game the DM?



 The DM is a major functional element of the game.   So, no, it shouldn't be an issue, let alone the issue.   

Not to deny it's a thing, but the DM is also in a position to influence the player, and if anything, a superior one.  It's a social activity, absent tight rules of decorum and formal, unambiguous  procedures, social activities are rife with such, and merely minimized or just obfuscated, even with them.



> It's not that goal:approach solves the problems, it just shifts the problem of the player playing in bad faith to the left.



 The Left?

I thought we weren't supposed to talk politics.


----------



## Celebrim (May 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Isn't the issue, regardless of how we're playing, that the player is trying to game the DM?




Well, it's a issue, I'm not sure it is the issue.  A lot of the issues that I've been talking about have nothing to do with anyone playing in bad faith.



> I mean, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] talks about a player who asks a stream of questions in order to hit upon the "magic question" that allows the player to overcome the challenge without referring to the rules.




Well, no, that's not quite what I said.  What I'm talking about is player trying to manipulate the propostion->fortune->resolution cycle in order to move a game that is played normally Fortune in the Middle, to one which is moved to Fortune at the End.   The advantage here is that the player has now gotten the DM to agree to the player's stakes, which in a typical Fortune in the Middle game are not explicit.   Whether the player is trying to do this referring to the rules or not, the point is that the player is effectively negotiating for a stake in a game that has no mechanisms for setting stakes.  So sure, maybe he does at some point roll a skill check or cast a spell or do something in the rules using a resource on his character sheet, but he only agrees to do it after the DM has agreed that a certain outcome will happen if he does.  

That's a bit different, and I don't like being coopted in to your argument.



> What I find rather ironic though is how folks jumped up and down and yelled at me for not understanding how things are played when I talked about players hunting for the "magic phrase" in the goal:approach method, but, when talking about other ways of playing, we immediately jump to dysfunctional play where the players will ask endless streams of questions in order to hunt for the "magic question".




I'm really not following where you are going this except that you think you've found by twisting around something I've said some sort of "gotcha" in some argument I'm not a part of.  



> Perhaps folks just don't understand what we're talking about when we don't use goal:approach methodology.




Honestly, I don't know what you are talking about now.


----------



## Hussar (May 5, 2019)

Heh. Not a major deal [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]. Just pointing out the irony.  Not a worry. Interesting points you are making actually and apologies for giving in to a bit of humour.


----------



## iserith (May 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Isn't the issue, regardless of how we're playing, that the player is trying to game the DM?




I don't think the game imagines that the players or DM are playing in bad faith. That is a social problem, not a problem of adjudication or the rules from which that process is derived.



Hussar said:


> What I find rather ironic though is how folks jumped up and down and yelled at me for not understanding how things are played when I talked about players hunting for the "magic phrase" in the goal:approach method, but, when talking about other ways of playing, we immediately jump to dysfunctional play where the players will ask endless streams of questions in order to hunt for the "magic question".




It looks to me that you are conflating different people's positions and even topics again and trying to drag @_*Celebrim*_ into whatever crusade you appear to be on.



Hussar said:


> Perhaps folks just don't understand what we're talking about when we don't use goal:approach methodology.




But you said in this very thread that you do.


----------



## Hussar (May 5, 2019)

*backs away very slowly and carefully *

Ok folks. You have just witnessed a totally failed attempt at humour. 

Sorry.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 5, 2019)

Nevermind.  Sometimes it takes clicking the "Post" button to recognize that I'm not contributing.


----------



## Celebrim (May 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Heh. Not a major deal [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]. Just pointing out the irony.  Not a worry. Interesting points you are making actually and apologies for giving in to a bit of humour.




Ok, sure.  No hard feelings.

My state in this thread is that I would be happy to discuss the difference between challenge to a player and challenge to a character, but I'm not sure anyone is interested in that.  I have very much got the feeling that this is a continuation of several other arguments and that for the people who were involved in those other debates, this is mostly a proxy argument for whatever was being debated in those arguments.

I don't really know what the position is of everyone in the thread.  I don't know what side arguments that they were involved in.  It's been a long thread and I haven't closely followed everyone's stance.   At this point, it would require me taking notes to really know what all has been argued and what people believe.

In general, I noticed that in the "opposition to the idea camp", we had two mutually contradictory positions arise:

1) Some argued that there was no such thing as "challenge to character", and that every challenge was a challenge to player. 

2) Some argued that while yes, there was such a thing as "challenge to player", that challenges to the player violated the spirit of the game and that therefore every challenge ought properly be a "challenge to character". 

Some seemed to be trying to argue those two points at the exact same time.

There has been a significant and potentially interesting sub-thread that arose over what I call a game's proposition filter - that is to say, in what form must (or should) a character make declarations in play.  And a potentially interesting discussion could be had over why a proposition filter is inherently tied to the notion of "challenges to player" and "challenges to character".  

Given that I can point to cases in this thread where you have completely misunderstood my position, I think it's highly likely that the irony that you think is there isn't, and that's the reason I didn't get the humor.  But, as I'm also someone that frequently doesn't get humor, maybe the irony is there and I'm just not seeing it.


----------



## Oofta (May 5, 2019)

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I think you're seeing things a little black-and-white.  Some things (climbing a wall) have little or nothing to do with player capability in my game.  It's a straight die roll if the outcome is uncertain.  It relies only on your Strength(Athletics) score and the luck of the die.  Some things, like figuring out how to disarm a complex trap may be a mix of player skill and PC abilities with the players figuring out what skill to apply where to ensure success.  Other things, like resolving a mystery, or deciding whom to support in a political drama are primarily player challenges.

At least that's how I see it. You could stretch it and say that if your PC has a high athletics score that makes climbing the wall simple that it was the player who ultimately decided where to put ability scores and proficiencies but that's pretty tenuous connection to me.


----------



## Umbran (May 5, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> My state in this thread is that I would be happy to discuss the difference between challenge to a player and challenge to a character, but I'm not sure anyone is interested in that.




First:  Your ability to know what they want is limited to what they tell you.  Your ability to guess their actual desires with only internet-level contact is... minimal.  I don't suggest engaging in it.

Second: If you are not getting what you want out of a conversation, even after reasonable levels of trying to communicate that, it is perhaps best to simply accept that the conversation isn't for you, and leave.  If, after 375+ posts, you don't see what *you* consider teh appropriate discussion, maybe recognizing that what you want isn't going to be here.

These are at the core of self-policing.


----------



## Satyrn (May 5, 2019)

Hussar said:


> *backs away very slowly and carefully *
> 
> Ok folks. You have just witnessed a totally failed attempt at humour.
> 
> Sorry.




Do you know why it failed? Do you wanna know why it failed? Well I'll tell you why it failed. 

First let's show that attempt at humor:



Hussar said:


> What I find rather ironic though is how folks jumped up and down and yelled at me for not understanding how things are played when I talked about players hunting for the "magic phrase" in the goal:approach method, but, when talking about other ways of playing, we immediately jump to dysfunctional play where the players will ask endless streams of questions in order to hunt for the "magic question".
> 
> Perhaps folks just don't understand what we're talking about when we don't use goal:approach methodology.




Slapping a big fat smug smile emoticon at the end of a joking comment might work, it might get us to laugh at ourselves. Placing that joking comment immediately after a paragraph calling out people as hypocrites, though, turns the whole thing into an ugly mess that makes you look like you're insulting us with a big fat smug smile on your face.

So: If you're gonna make a joke, make it a separate post, is what I'm saying.

Or: Maybe try poking fun at yourself before trying for playful teasing of others. It really helps to take the sting out of the barbs.


----------



## Celebrim (May 5, 2019)

Oofta said:


> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I think you're seeing things a little black-and-white.




How so?



> Some things (climbing a wall) have little or nothing to do with player capability in my game.  It's a straight die roll if the outcome is uncertain.  It relies only on your Strength(Athletics) score and the luck of the die.  Some things, like figuring out how to disarm a complex trap may be a mix of player skill and PC abilities with the players figuring out what skill to apply where to ensure success.  Other things, like resolving a mystery, or deciding whom to support in a political drama are primarily player challenges.




I think if you'd start at the beginning you'd find that that is exactly what I've been saying all along.   For example, go back to my first post on the thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...aracter-quot&p=7596904&viewfull=1#post7596904

Or consider my second post:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...aracter-quot&p=7596939&viewfull=1#post7596939

When I wrote "Most challenges can't be neatly separated into challenges to player or to character, because they involve a combination of choices by the player (that don't involve dice rolling) and some amount of dice rolling (such as passive saving throws or damage that attacks a hit point buffer). So I wouldn't be too surprised when you gave more details, that we'd find that the answer to the question was, "A bit of both.""

What about the thesis I've been developing do you find to be too "black and white"?



> You could stretch it and say that if your PC has a high athletics score that makes climbing the wall simple that it was the player who ultimately decided where to put ability scores and proficiencies but that's pretty tenuous connection to me.




Yes, I agree.  But I think if you go and look at what I actually wrote, I said exactly the same thing.   So far as I can tell from your post, you are advancing my position and arguing against the same positions I've held in the whole thread.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 5, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> 1) Some argued that there was no such thing as "challenge to character", and that every challenge was a challenge to player.
> 
> 2) Some argued that while yes, there was such a thing as "challenge to player", that challenges to the player violated the spirit of the game and that therefore every challenge ought properly be a "challenge to character".
> 
> Some seemed to be trying to argue those two points at the exact same time.



 I can see that.  At some level they're both reasonable assertions.

We always have to circle back to, and not lose sight of, the fact that to RPG, we both Play a Game and Play a Role.   

1) approaches the question as pertains to the game:  "Challenge the character" is a non-sequiter, the player is the only one who experiences challenges.

2) answers as pertains to the role:  Any imaginary challenge in the imaginary world is overcome by the imagined abilities of the imaginary character.


So if you're trying to figure out if it's "better" to challenge the player or challenge the character, you're really just re-hashing the old Role v Roll debate, which was never worthwhile anyway, because it presumes that false dichotomy, that an RPG can some how be playing a game without playing a role, or playing a role without playing a game. It's both by definition.

So, the way I see it "Challenge the Character" is just a way of saying "take into account the abilities of the character when applying mechanics to resolve a challenge that is in doubt," while "Challenge the Player" means to present the player with (meta?) game choices that are meaningful, engaging, and impact how the game plays out.  Thus, all challenges should both be challenging the player (in the sense that he's playing a game that's not boring because it's too easy) and challenging the character (in the sense that the game is modeling /that character's/ heroic struggle, not a generic task that would play out the same no matter who was performing it).
That is, both the player and the character should matter.


----------



## iserith (May 5, 2019)

Challenge has to do with the decisions the player makes though. While a character may be facing a _fictional _challenge, it is the player who is being tasked with making decisions that impact the outcome of the challenge. Thus, it is always the player who is being challenged in any meaningful fashion. The character's abilities are secondary, used only to resolve the outcome as appropriate to the rules of the game.

Even in the simple climbing challenge, the player has to decide what the character is doing to overcome it - climb it with or without a climber's kit or a rope and grappling hook, with or without drinking a potion of climbing, or by casting a _guidance_ spell first, etc. That the player may then roll a die if the DM asks for one to determine an outcome does not mean that the character is making decisions on its own. If a player is making no decisions to impact the outcome, then there is no challenge.


----------



## Oofta (May 5, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> How so?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Well then it seems you made two mistakes. First, assuming that I knew what everyone said on every post.  Second, assuming I knew what the heck you were trying to get at, which obviously I've missed by a country mile.  In other words, huh?  I'm not challenging what you're saying, just admitting my complete and utter incompetence at interpreting it.  

As far as my opinion I don't have a thesis, I just think there are things that are resolved completely by mechanics of the the character, the rules in the book and (usually) the roll of a die.  On the other end of the scale you have things that are resolved entirely by the player with no regard to the capabilities granted to the PC by the game rules.  Many things fall into a gray area between the two and personally I try to mix them up and include plenty of out-of-combat obstacles that lean more on the PC as a way of rewarding the trade-offs people made during their build.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> I would say that D&D 4e prior to Essentials with its embrace of "Yes, and..." and encouragement of the DM to accept ideas outside the character's control that the player proffers could be such a game. There's a sidebar in the D&D 4e DMG that uses an example from one of the designers wherein the player suggests there is a trap on a statue that is protecting a treasure. The DM rolls with it, they play out the trap challenge, and the player's character gets the treasure.
> 
> But even that requires the DM's assent and the limits (the designer above remarks that HE would be the one to decide what treasure it was!) are likely understood formally or informally in the form of a table rule.




I wasn't planning on jumping into this thread, and this post is far back in this thread, but were you [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], not the one who told me repeatedly in the insight thread that the DM cannot and should not tell a player what they think? 

This was your justification for players having knowledge of monsters that they otherwise might not have, because the player got to decide what was reasonable for them to know, and the DM could never tell them that they could not think that. 

So, since this "Francis the Guard" example evolved from the "Orc Elder" example of hearing stories which told them the weaknesses of monsters, where does it go to far? 

Is the player correct about having been raised in an orphanage? 
Is the player correct that they were raised with a boy named Franics at said orphanage?
Is the player correct that Francis and the PC were very close and dear friends? 
Is the player correct that this guard looks like Francis?
Is the player correct that this guard is Francis?
Is the player correct in that Francis the Guard still thinks of them as a friend and wants to help them out? 

My guess is that you would try and cut this off at the point that the guard actually is Francis, they may look like Francis, but they are not actually Francis. That seems like a nice clean cut point between telling the player what they think, and allowing the player to affect the narrative. 

What do we do if the player then insists, "But I know Francis is a guard in this town, we had drinks before I left on my grand adventure." 

Is the PC delusional or does Francis the Guard exist? IF we can never tell the player that they cannot know something, because we cannot tell them what to think, how do we resolve this? 

Is it not okay to tell them what they think, but it is okay to tell them they are delusional and unable to tell reality from fiction? That seems to be a pretty major thing to force upon a player. 




Ovinomancer said:


> I get what you're aiming at here, I just question why you're doing so, or maybe why you're coming at the issue so obliquely.  5e is not a system that can provide your preferred experience, although some pieces of it do well.  Now that I see what you were aiming at with your example I think there's some daylight between being able to "control what the PC thinks and does" and your example.  Fundamentally, this is on whether the thoughts and deeds of the PC are able to determine game fiction outside the character.  In 5e, this is (baseline) untrue.  The player is free to declare they think they know the guard and act accordingly, but the GM has no obligation to agree about the fictional state _of the guard_.
> 
> This last is the important distinction.  Being able to determine what your PC does and thinks doesn't extend to establishing new functional avenues to current challenges.  Let's contrast your guard example with the troll example.  In the troll example, the player establishes the PC's uncle told the PC about trolls' weakness to fire.  This is to "justify* doing so within the fiction.  But, the ability to use fire on the troll isn't causally tied to this bit of fiction.  This fiction does not enable previously unavailable actions.
> 
> ...




Now this is fairly reasonable, I'm guessing from the XP this is the way [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is going to explain the difference between their current and former positions. 




iserith said:


> I advise the players to keep everything in terms of an action declaration as that is what I'm on the lookout for since that is when I have to adjudicate. I even discourage asking questions of the DM, if those questions can be answered by taking action in the game world. "How many doors are in this room?" is better stated as "I look to see how many doors there are in this room..." in my view. The stop-n-chat with the DM interferes with the flow of the game in my view, plus questions are often a form of out-of-game risk mitigation as the players fish for the best solution.




Wow. That's... definitely different.


----------



## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I wasn't planning on jumping into this thread, and this post is far back in this thread, but were you @_*iserith*_, not the one who told me repeatedly in the insight thread that the DM cannot and should not tell a player what they think?
> 
> This was your justification for players having knowledge of monsters that they otherwise might not have, because the player got to decide what was reasonable for them to know, and the DM could never tell them that they could not think that.
> 
> ...




I'm not telling the player how his or her character thinks. As I've said several times, the player is welcome to have the character think and say the guard is his or her old friend. But the DM is under no obligation to make that true nor does the DM need to say that the character is delusional. A DM might narrate the result of the adventurer's action with "The guard doesn't respond to being called Frances and doesn't recognize you as a friend - what do you do?"

Likewise if the DM describes a pile of copper pieces and the player has his or her character think and say it's gold, only to find out that the local merchants do not agree, is that the DM telling the player what his or her character thinks? No. No it is not.



Chaosmancer said:


> Now this is fairly reasonable, I'm guessing from the XP this is the way @_*iserith*_ is going to explain the difference between their current and former positions.




My position hasn't changed. I hope I clarified it for you though.



Chaosmancer said:


> Wow. That's... definitely different.




Yes, it's very common in my experience for games to include a lot of questioning the DM by the players. That is greatly minimized in my games by comparison.


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## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Sorry, I should have been more specific.  Changing the game state by having your character do something is fine.  I was talking about changing the game state from the DM's side of the table. E.g., "Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, a piece of the ceiling collapses, landing on the evil necromancer."



Would you agree that _equipment_ is on the player side of the table? So that a player who declares _I look in my backcpack and take out my rope_ isn't usurping the GM's role, _even though_ that player has narrated the environment.


----------



## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Whoooooooosh



Is that the sound of my joke going over your head?



Tony Vargas said:


> Skilled is to good as legal is to lawful or beige is to neutral.
> 
> It was a pun.



I saw your joke and raised it. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] got it.


----------



## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> So, since this "Francis the Guard" example evolved from the "Orc Elder" example of hearing stories which told them the weaknesses of monsters, where does it go to far?
> 
> Is the player correct about having been raised in an orphanage?
> Is the player correct that they were raised with a boy named Franics at said orphanage?
> ...



This is more-or-less a repost of what I said: it seems to me quite hard to (i) allow that PCs have friends and family like Frances, and (ii) have those friends and family be part of the ingame situation, and (iii) maintain a strong player/GM divide over narration of the environment, yet (iv) never have the GM tell the players what their PC's think and feel.

In the case of _equipment_, the exact same problem is resolved by relaxing (iii) - the game permits the _players_ to narrate those bits of the environment. My conclusion, in a post a few days ago based on a close reading of the 5e Basic PDF, is that the game assumes that (ii) is false - ie the game assumes that the action happens in places where the PCs are strangers and hence that friends and family won't be part of the active, ingame situation.


----------



## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Isn't the issue, regardless of how we're playing, that the player is trying to game the DM?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Perhaps folks just don't understand what we're talking about when we don't use goal:approach methodology.



I know that I don't understand where you draw the boundaries of "gaming the GM".

In my 4e game, the sorcerer PC has the Dominant Winds power: as a move action fly one target (self or ally) a certain number of squares: for the sake of the example, let's say that this was 40'. On one occasion the character was at the bottom of a chasm - let's say 200'. The player tells me (as GM) that his PC flies out of the chasm. I ask how, given that the chasm is deeper than his max flight distance. He replies that he is bouncing off the walls of the chasm, and balancing on ledges and the like, as he flies up - a mix of flight and parkour - and points out that his PC has a high bonus in Acrobatics. I say "fair enough" and call for the Acro check at the appropriate DC - Ican't remember now but probably Medium, and given the character's bonus probably auto-success or close to it.

Is that gaming the GM? From my point of view it's just playing the game.


----------



## iserith (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is more-or-less a repost of what I said: it seems to me quite hard to (i) allow that PCs have friends and family like Frances, and (ii) have those friends and family be part of the ingame situation, and (iii) maintain a strong player/GM divide over narration of the environment, yet (iv) never have the GM tell the players what their PC's think and feel.
> 
> In the case of _equipment_, the exact same problem is resolved by relaxing (iii) - the game permits the _players_ to narrate those bits of the environment. My conclusion, in a post a few days ago based on a close reading of the 5e Basic PDF, is that the game assumes that (ii) is false - ie the game assumes that the action happens in places where the PCs are strangers and hence that friends and family won't be part of the active, ingame situation.




From what I can tell of [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]'s reply to my post, he or she is asserting that two positions I hold are in conflict (one from this thread and one from another). Unfortunately, it just seems that the positions are misunderstood and in some sense conflated.

As for equipment, I would say most groups as a matter of practicality permit the player to establish during play where the equipment on his or her person may be found if the offer is reasonable - as decided upon by the DM. At least that has been very common in my experience. Some groups I've seen do establish equipment locations on the character sheet, though I think that was more common in previous editions of the game. In any case, so far as I can tell, the rules do not call this out as an exception to the player and DM roles. If the player says he or she wants the character to take the rope out of the backpack, the DM mediates between the players and the rules as appropriate (e.g., "Use an Object" in combat or the other rules for object interaction), sets limits as needed (e.g. "Your rope is in the previous chamber set up as a zip line to get across the pits, remember?"), and narrates the result of the adventurer's action. I make no judgment as to how granular about this anyone _should_ be - that's a matter of taste.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Would you agree that _equipment_ is on the player side of the table? So that a player who declares _I look in my backcpack and take out my rope_ isn't usurping the GM's role, _even though_ that player has narrated the environment.




Funny, my answer was in the 2nd half of my post, but you only quoted the first half.  Here; I'll re-post it for you:



> Like all these things there are gray areas in the middle, of course, and I'm sure we could both come up with examples of players narrating a change in game state for advantage that would be fine. But the existence of twilight does not disprove the difference between day and night.




So, no, I'm not going to argue about which side of the line mundane equipment carried by the character lies.


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## pemerton (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Funny, my answer was in the 2nd half of my post, but you only quoted the first half.  Here; I'll re-post it for you



I didn't realise that you were referring to equipment in that passage. I'm surprised that you think equipment - which is a central feature of D&D RPGing - is some sort of marginal or "twlight" example of game play.



Elfcrusher said:


> So, no, I'm not going to argue about which side of the line mundane equipment carried by the character lies.



Well, I wasn't asking you to argue! But I was wondering if you agree with me that - clearly, it seems to me - the player gets to narrate taing stuff out of his/her (which is to say, his/her PC's) backpack

My surprise that you think the rules are ambiguous on this is genuine, given how central equpiment is. My own view is that the way equipment is to be handled is clear. And that it's an obvious exception to the "GM narrates environment" principle.



iserith said:


> As for equipment, I would say most groups as a matter of practicality permit the player to establish during play where the equipment on his or her person may be found if the offer is reasonable - as decided upon by the DM. At least that has been very common in my experience. Some groups I've seen do establish equipment locations on the character sheet, though I think that was more common in previous editions of the game. In any case, so far as I can tell, the rules do not call this out as an exception to the player and DM roles. If the player says he or she wants the character to take the rope out of the backpack, the DM mediates between the players and the rules as appropriate (e.g., "Use an Object" in combat or the other rules for object interaction), sets limits as needed (e.g. "Your rope is in the previous chamber set up as a zip line to get across the pits, remember?"), and narrates the result of the adventurer's action. I make no judgment as to how granular about this anyone _should_ be - that's a matter of taste.



The GM remininding a player that the rope got left behind, or oversseing the action economy in respect of using objects, is no different from the GM reminding a player that s/he has no spell slots left, or overseeing the action econoy in respect of casting spells. The exception I'm pointing to is in relation to _establishing the ingame environment_. When it comes to equipment, in standad D&D play, I don't think the GM takes the lead in this respect. The Basic PDF (p 4) says that

Each character brings particular capabilities to the adventure in the form of ability scores and skills, class features, racial traits, equipment, and magic items.​
I think that makes it fairly clear which side of the player/GM divide management of equipment as an available component of the environment is meant to fall. (And I think a particularly clear case of that would be material components for spells.)


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## Ovinomancer (May 7, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I wasn't planning on jumping into this thread, and this post is far back in this thread, but were you [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], not the one who told me repeatedly in the insight thread that the DM cannot and should not tell a player what they think?
> 
> This was your justification for players having knowledge of monsters that they otherwise might not have, because the player got to decide what was reasonable for them to know, and the DM could never tell them that they could not think that.
> 
> ...



Do me a favor and leave me out of your gotcha posts against other posters.  Thanks.


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## Ovinomancer (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Would you agree that _equipment_ is on the player side of the table? So that a player who declares _I look in my backcpack and take out my rope_ isn't usurping the GM's role, _even though_ that player has narrated the environment.



Thus seems like you're trying to smear one thing into another.  On one hand, there's the limited authority of the player to use ingame resources to acquire equipment that is persistent until expended.  On the other, there's a suggestion that a player can freely add to the environment new fictional elements that modify the GM's narration of scene.

Your argument seems to be a smearing of the limited authority allowed to the accumlation of equipment to wholesale ability to propose new fiction into the scene.  You do this be claiming that a character pulling rope from a backpack is also a proposal of new fiction into the scene, but this fails because the rope, as equipment, was established a priori and is a persistent piece of fiction.  No contemporary authoring has occurred.  This categorically seperates it ftom the proposal that the guard is an old friend.


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## Ovinomancer (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This is more-or-less a repost of what I said: it seems to me quite hard to (i) allow that PCs have friends and family like Frances, and (ii) have those friends and family be part of the ingame situation, and (iii) maintain a strong player/GM divide over narration of the environment, yet (iv) never have the GM tell the players what their PC's think and feel.
> 
> In the case of _equipment_, the exact same problem is resolved by relaxing (iii) - the game permits the _players_ to narrate those bits of the environment. My conclusion, in a post a few days ago based on a close reading of the 5e Basic PDF, is that the game assumes that (ii) is false - ie the game assumes that the action happens in places where the PCs are strangers and hence that friends and family won't be part of the active, ingame situation.




Again, you example of iii) isn't the "rekaxation" you suppose.  Further, just because you find it difficult to concueve doesn't mean much, as per your contemporary example of biases in thinking about social sciences.  Another example of this is your claim that the 5e rules require ii) to be false.

Come on, man, look past your personal biases.  I know these games (like 5e) absolutely frustrate you as a player, but that doesn't mean that having rope must be an usurpation of GM authority or that the rules require adventure only with strangers or that it's impossible to have play including PC friends and family without telling player what their characters think and feel.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> The GM remininding a player that the rope got left behind, or oversseing the action economy in respect of using objects, is no different from the GM reminding a player that s/he has no spell slots left, or overseeing the action econoy in respect of casting spells. The exception I'm pointing to is in relation to _establishing the ingame environment_. When it comes to equipment, in standad D&D play, I don't think the GM takes the lead in this respect. The Basic PDF (p 4) says that
> 
> Each character brings particular capabilities to the adventure in the form of ability scores and skills, class features, racial traits, equipment, and magic items.​
> I think that makes it fairly clear which side of the player/GM divide management of equipment as an available component of the environment is meant to fall. (And I think a particularly clear case of that would be material components for spells.)




I think that's a pretty big reach to try and get to a position that the player is empowered to add new elements to the environment. Nothing about the above statement leads me to believe it's an exception to the standard adjudication process either.


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## Celebrim (May 7, 2019)

I'm going to cut out all the objectionable parts and try to respond to just the core of your questions...



Chaosmancer said:


> So, since this "Francis the Guard" example....
> 
> Is the player correct about having been raised in an orphanage?




That depends.  Was it established before play began that the player character was raised in an orphanage, or is this call being made spontaneously during play?  Normally, a player should expect to have his backstory vetted by the GM before play, and any major points of play he wants to be established in the fiction should be included in the backstory.   For example, a player ought not to expect that they can insist that they are a traveler from another dimension ("Earth") or that they are a cartoon character that was animated by a powerful magic, or anything else that would be wholly and completely novel in the setting without buy in from the GM.   Indeed, pretty much everything in a backstory ought to be negotiated with a GM before play.   Once the backstory is established as being in fiction and part of the setting, both the GM and the player can expect to make calls using it, but GM's should be careful about trying to impose new backstory on a player against their wishes and respect their wishes if the player strongly objects.  Likewise, if a player calls something new based on his backstory, the player should expect that certain calls which are inappropriate to the setting or story or which seem to be being made solely for gamist reasons (ei, to gain some mechanical advantage) might get vetoed.  

If it's established that you were an orphan, it's probably a reasonable call that you were raised in an orphanage.



> Is the player correct that they were raised with a boy named Franics (sic) at said orphanage?




Was it in the player's backstory prior to the beginning of play?  If so they were correct.  If it wasn't, they are only possibly correct.  In general, if it was established that the player grew up in an orphanage, there is nothing unreasonably about claiming that you knew someone named Francis (assuming Francis is the sort of name NPC's have in the setting).



> Is the player correct that Francis and the PC were very close and dear friends?




While all the above comments still apply, sure, why not?



> Is the player correct that this guard looks like Francis?




Again, while all the above comments still apply, sure, why not?



> Is the player correct that this guard is Francis?




Here is where things get really dicey.  It's generally considered poor form to try to use your backstory to gain mechanical advantage above and beyond what is written on your character sheet.  5e D&D has no built in "contacts"/"circles"/"allies" check and no built in way to list such things as preexisting in the setting.   In a game that did have such things, "Francis" would need to be written down in a column somewhere which had a finite number of called out allies, and a suitable description establishing that they were a guard in a particular location.  In that case, the player by calling out "Francis" from his character sheet would be doing something similar to calling out the rope in his backpack that was part of the preestablished fiction.   The player would have some mechanical device for negotiating with the GM regarding the narrative and establishing the truth of something in the fiction.   He might perhaps get a "circle test", and might have some reduced difficulty of some sort because Francis was a known established resource.   Then the fortune mechanics of the game would establish whether this was indeed Francis in a way that everyone had agreed was fair and reasonable prior to play.

None of this is true of 5e.  There is no mechanics available to the player for negotiating what is in the setting.   This means that the situation has to be resolved by fiat, and in D&D, only the GM has fiat authority.  Players can't establish things by fiat.   They can only propose things that they want their character to try to do.   The general rule about this is, "Could you as a real person cause someone to be someone you wanted them to be merely by wanting it to be so?"   No, you can't imagine the way you want reality to work, and therefore make it so.   Since normal people can't simply alter reality with wishes, your character needs some sort of explicit power or resource that they can call upon to alter reality.  Essentially, they need some sort of packetized narrative force (like a spell or power).  No such power exists in D&D so far as I know, short of something like spending a Wish.

So chances are, the player is NOT correct this is Francis.  The player can make a call like, "Is this guard Francis?", but the GM has no way of deciding that in D&D except by fiat, so he has to make a ruling.  Since rulings are outside the written rules, it's entirely up to the GM how to handle this and none of the ways are wrong.   He might say "Yes."   He might say "No."  He might give a flat percentage chance that it is so?  (If that is the case, in some games the player might have some power of Luck that modifies random rolls, and that might be applicable.)   Or he might invent some sort of test on the spot that seems good to the GM.   But while you can propose, "Is this guard Francis?", you can no more make it so than you can propose, "I jump over the Ocean in a single bound."   Less, because the second is an action, while the first is simply a question.  

Imagine the consequences of violating this simple and obvious interpretation of the process of play.   If a PC can propose, "This guard is Francis.", can they also propose, "This chest contains 10,000 gold pieces?"  Can they propose, "I once saved this Red Dragon's life by healing it of Dragon Pox."  Are you seriously advocating for a process of play where every statement a player makes about the environment is a statement of fact?  Such a process of play might be suitable for Toon - but even Toon has the rule "only if it is funny" - but probably not for a game intended to be serious.



> Is the player correct in that Francis the Guard still thinks of them as a friend and wants to help them out?




Depends on what has been established about Francis before this moment of play.  The player could be correct that Francis is Guard still thinks of them as a friend and wants to help them out, but that has no bearing over whether this is Francis and he is here right at this moment.   That's the thing that is really at stake.



> What do we do if the player then insists, "But I know Francis is a guard in this town, we had drinks before I left on my grand adventure."




Well, again, that depends on what has been established prior to this moment of play.  The player might well be correct about that, but that doesn't establish that this is Francis right now at this moment.  The GM isn't obligated to even say that this guard looks like Francis.   He might say, "No, the guards at the gate are orcs that look nothing like Francis."   What has happened to Francis, might be an interesting thing to resolve during play, but it's not up to the player to decide the answer to that - only to uncover what that answer is, if they can.



> Is the PC delusional or does Francis the Guard exist? IF we can never tell the player that they cannot know something, because we cannot tell them what to think, how do we resolve this?




You're creating a false dilemma.  A player is always free to establish that the PC is delusional, and if he insists on something false to facts regarding the setting, then the player is making the claim that his PC is delusional.   A player could decide that, all facts to the contrary, the PC believes this is Francis.   That is the player's prerogative.   But the player cannot establish the facts of the setting except as provided for by the process of play.   As a GM, I would be perfectly happy telling the player, "This is not Francis."  That's a statement of fact.   I might be happy telling them, "You aren't certain if this Francis or not.", depending on whether I think the player could tell if this is Francis.   But I really can't tell the player, "Your character doesn't believe that this is Francis." if they want to insist that the character believes that it is.   That highly unusual stance might require some negotiation so that I understand what the player intends, but again, if the player insists the character has false to facts beliefs and the player understands that they are false to facts, I'm not going to overrule them and tell them to play otherwise.  Presumably the player has a good reason of their own for playing that way, and I'll try to facilitate that role play.



> Is it not okay to tell them what they think, but it is okay to tell them they are delusional and unable to tell reality from fiction? That seems to be a pretty major thing to force upon a player.




This is where the whole statement gets ridiculous and turned on its head.  I didn't tell the player that their character is delusional and unable to tell reality from fiction.   The player told me that.  I didn't force anything on the player.   If I tell the player that a wall is 30' high and they tell me that no, it's 3' high, and they want to step over it, then they can RP out that as they like, but the wall will be 30' high and they will only be getting over it as provided by the game's process resolution.   If I tell a player that the chest contains copper coins, and they tell me that the character believes that they are gold, fine.  But that assertion about the player character's internal mental state does not alchemically change copper to gold.   If we are going to adopt a rule where everything the character believes is true, then the character becomes immediately more powerful than the gods in my campaign world, because that character now has the power of fiat.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 7, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I didn't realise that you were referring to equipment in that passage. I'm surprised that you think equipment - which is a central feature of D&D RPGing - is some sort of marginal or "twlight" example of game play.
> 
> Well, I wasn't asking you to argue! But I was wondering if you agree with me that - clearly, it seems to me - the player gets to narrate taing stuff out of his/her (which is to say, his/her PC's) backpack
> 
> ...




You are making assumptions about my position that are incorrect. 

Some tables track equipment assiduously. Others think it’s unnecessary and boring bookkeeping and don’t bother. It’s enough for them to say “you could easily have packed rope if we tracked those things so yes you have it if you say so.”

I don’t think it’s an illuminating or interesting exploration of “player narration altering the environment for advantage.”  Except for people who need or want a strict definition of where the boundary is. And I don’t.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I don’t think it’s an illuminating or interesting exploration of “player narration altering the environment for advantage.”  Except for people who need or want a strict definition of where the boundary is. And I don’t.




The boundaries seem pretty clear to me as far as the rules of the game are concerned, but in any practical sense who may establish what is going to vary quite a bit from table to table. While I take a hard line on what the rules say, at the table I may be perfectly willing to accept Frances is an old friend of a character if the player makes that offer. It depends on what I think about that in that moment. If I hadn't set up the guard interaction specifically as a social interaction challenge for the players to overcome, then I'm likely to see this as no big deal. If the guards are part of a social interaction challenge, then I may say that the guard isn't Frances and isn't the PC's friend. The player is going to have to do some work to achieve that goal.

It seems weird to me to press the idea of players establishing the environment by citing rules related to equipment though. I mean, I get why someone would want to find their preferred playstyle is supported by the rules, but I think we'd need to look to D&D 4e for that, not D&D 5e. In the former, I'm way more open to players establishing fiction outside of their characters because the rules of that game support it. In D&D 5e, sometimes yes, sometimes no.


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## Celebrim (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> The boundaries seem pretty clear to me as far as the rules of the game are concerned, but in any practical sense who may establish what is going to vary quite a bit from table to table. While I take a hard line on what the rules say, at the table I may be perfectly willing to accept Frances is an old friend of a character if the player makes that offer.




I might as well.  I might very well agree that the encounter is more interesting if it turns out that this otherwise nameless mook is the potentially important NPC "Francis the Guard".   But then, in both cases it is the GM making the judgment call here, not the player.

There are games that allow the player to narrate details about the setting, but they then generally have some sort of rules that limit how that player may do so.

A game that does not limit what a player may narrate about the setting, violates Celebrim's First Law of RPGs: "Thou shalt not be good at everything."   Specifically, unlimited unregulated fiat power granted to a player would mean the player does not have finite resources, and if the player lacks finite resources and lacks therefore boundaries on play, then you've dropped the game pillar out of RPG and properly what you have left is play, little different than a group of first graders playing make believe or (in a slightly more advanced for) a group of writers passing around a notebook and adding to a story one page at a time.

There is nothing wrong with either of those things (I've done both) but it's not an RPG by most definitions, and it will certainly strike most participants as surprising if their expectations of play are set by most traditional RPGs.   Likewise, there is nothing wrong with Storytelling Games (as they are sometimes called) or Theater Games where you engage in the theatrical equivalent of passing a notebook around adding content to it, and there are few I wouldn't mind playing.   But RPGs support more than one aesthetic of play, and to do so requires that they limit how setting information is added to the environment and often, who gets to do so.

I'm baffled by posters that try to argue otherwise, or even that you can take a traditional RPG and support the proposed process of play just because you'd like to do so.   It's one thing to assert you are the sort of GM that would always roll with a "Francis the Guard" call out.  Ok, I might buy that, but at least I'll take you at your word until I have reason to believe otherwise.   It's quite another to argue that this example proves the general rule and a GM wouldn't have to (and even shouldn't!) exercise judgment regarding player call outs about the setting, and could always answer "Yes" or even "Yes, but..." to everything in a cooperative social game with multiple players, particularly if you have a typical range of players with typical aesthetics and goals of play.  And it's bizarre to attempt to twist statements from the rules to try to prove that that is the intention or compatible with the normal process of play.


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> I mean, I get why someone would want to find their preferred playstyle is supported by the rules, but I think we'd need to look to D&D 4e for that, not D&D 5e. In the former, I'm way more open to players establishing fiction outside of their characters because the rules of that game support it. In D&D 5e, sometimes yes, sometimes no.



 Of course, in 5e the DM can allow players to establish as much fiction (their own backstory, environment, equipment, relationships to NPCs, etc) as he feels fits the group's style and makes for a good game experience.  The system doesn't 'support' it in the sense of requiring it or providing specific mechanics, but it's wide-open to it.  You even could graft FATE's tagging of aspects, for instance, directly in if you wanted to, just by making it part of declaring an action on the player side.  (It might seem silly to those unfamiliar, but for a simplistic example, if the DM describes a room as 'shadowy' the player could tag that aspect to enable sneaking through the room unseen.)  Or a DM could make fleshing out the details of the scene part of declaring an action, with the better the improv, the more likely you'll get success narrated (or at least a lower DC or favorable modifier/Advantage).


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I might as well.  I might very well agree that the encounter is more interesting if it turns out that this otherwise nameless mook is the potentially important NPC "Francis the Guard".   But then, in both cases it is the GM making the judgment call here, not the player.




Right. The player should have no expectation, at least not by the rules of the game, that the offer must be accepted.



Celebrim said:


> There are games that allow the player to narrate details about the setting, but they then generally have some sort of rules that limit how that player may do so.
> 
> A game that does not limit what a player may narrate about the setting, violates Celebrim's First Law of RPGs: "Thou shalt not be good at everything."   Specifically, unlimited unregulated fiat power granted to a player would mean the player does not have finite resources, and if the player lacks finite resources and lacks therefore boundaries on play, then you've dropped the game pillar out of RPG and properly what you have left is play, little different than a group of first graders playing make believe or (in a slightly more advanced for) a group of writers passing around a notebook and adding to a story one page at a time.
> 
> ...




Generally speaking, my experience has been that the limits of a game that makes liberal use of "Yes, and..." tend to exist as an agreement between the players and DM, explicit or implied, about what kinds of things the player can establish and when. Often this is for color or to flesh out the PC's background during play. Sometimes it's to establish a thing in the environment for use (e.g. a chandelier in the tavern to swing from that was not mentioned in the DM's description of the environment). Typically, the players are not establishing things that attempt to subvert the challenge the DM is presenting. As I argued on the D&D 4e forums years ago now when in the context of that game I suggested DMs make liberal use of "Yes, and...", players that do circumvent challenges by establishing new details outside their role are basically saying that _the challenge is not interesting to them_ and they want to move past it as quickly as possible. That argues for clearer communication before play about what sorts of challenges the group enjoys more then anything in my view.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Of course, in 5e the DM can allow players to establish as much fiction (their own backstory, environment, equipment, relationships to NPCs, etc) as he feels fits the group's style and makes for a good game experience.  The system doesn't 'support' it in the sense of requiring it or providing specific mechanics, but it's wide-open to it.  You even could graft FATE's tagging of aspects, for instance, directly in if you wanted to, just by making it part of declaring an action on the player side.  (It might seem silly to those unfamiliar, but for a simplistic example, if the DM describes a room as 'shadowy' the player could tag that aspect to enable sneaking through the room unseen.)  Or a DM could make fleshing out the details of the scene part of declaring an action, with the better the improv, the more likely you'll get success narrated (or at least a lower DC or favorable modifier/Advantage).




So, change the rules and you're good to go? Hardly controversial, right?


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> So, change the rules and you're good to go? Hardly controversial, right?



 Not change, interpret and fill-in.  The rules say the DM describes the situation, the player declares an action, the DM decides how to resolve it and narrates the results.  The DM can decide what he needs from the player to constitute an action declaration.  You want to see a clear (or at least clearly implied, I assume) goal & method, for instance.  Other DMs might want to see a bit of drama, or a clear (or implied) motivation based on the character's Bond/Flaws/etc(there's gotta be a nice shorthand for that sub-system), or even see the player calling out the skill/spell/tool/item/weapon to be used very clearly.  It's not too much of a stretch (though it's a stretch from D&D tradition), to expect/reward an action declaration that includes improv which builds on the existing scene.  

And, no, changing the rules outright should /not/ be controversial in a 5e forum.  It's a DM's prerogative to change the rules.


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## lowkey13 (May 7, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Not change, interpret and fill-in.  The rules say the DM describes the situation, the player declares an action, the DM decides how to resolve it and narrates the results.  The DM can decide what he needs from the player to constitute an action declaration.  You want to see a clear (or at least clearly implied, I assume) goal & method, for instance.  Other DMs might want to see a bit of drama, or a clear (or implied) motivation based on the character's Bond/Flaws/etc(there's gotta be a nice shorthand for that sub-system), or even see the player calling out the skill/spell/tool/item/weapon to be used very clearly.  It's not too much of a stretch (though it's a stretch from D&D tradition), to expect/reward an action declaration that includes improv which builds on the existing scene.




If by "improv" you mean the player engaging in what the rules define as the DM's role, that's not really interpreting and filling in - it's changing the rules. Which is fine, but let's call it what it is.

As for the shorthand on personal characteristics (which is what they're called as a whole), I've seen the acronym BIFTs used by a number of people.


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## Chaosmancer (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> I'm not telling the player how his or her character thinks. As I've said several times, the player is welcome to have the character think and say the guard is his or her old friend. But the DM is under no obligation to make that true nor does the DM need to say that the character is delusional. A DM might narrate the result of the adventurer's action with "The guard doesn't respond to being called Frances and doesn't recognize you as a friend - what do you do?"
> 
> Likewise if the DM describes a pile of copper pieces and the player has his or her character think and say it's gold, only to find out that the local merchants do not agree, is that the DM telling the player what his or her character thinks? No. No it is not.
> 
> ...




So, you chose to cut it off exactly where I thought you would. 

But you haven't answered the underlying question. Does Francis the Guard exist? Can the player track them down in that town, now that they have pulled that from their backstory? 

I see three major paths: 1) Frances exists and is a guard, the player changed the world. 2) Francis did exist, but either quit the guard or was eaten by wolves, players backstory was true, but things have changed and you are denying them a friendship within the guards. 3) Francs does not exist, and never did, you are telling the player their memories of their past are false. 





pemerton said:


> This is more-or-less a repost of what I said: it seems to me quite hard to (i) allow that PCs have friends and family like Frances, and (ii) have those friends and family be part of the ingame situation, and (iii) maintain a strong player/GM divide over narration of the environment, yet (iv) never have the GM tell the players what their PC's think and feel.
> 
> In the case of _equipment_, the exact same problem is resolved by relaxing (iii) - the game permits the _players_ to narrate those bits of the environment. My conclusion, in a post a few days ago based on a close reading of the 5e Basic PDF, is that the game assumes that (ii) is false - ie the game assumes that the action happens in places where the PCs are strangers and hence that friends and family won't be part of the active, ingame situation.




Yeah, I saw that. 

It is one way to play, but I think it has some major flaws since it really cuts players off and makes caring about things other than themselves far more difficult. 

Also, it seems to go against a lot of background traits and flaws. How are you supposed to deal with being the black sheep of a noble family, or contend with figures in your church as an acolyte, if you are so far away you never meet family members or people you knew growing up. 

I think that portion of the Basic rules is more about establishing a land of High Fantasy, than it is telling DMs they should cut off PCs from home, friends, and family. 




Ovinomancer said:


> Do me a favor and leave me out of your gotcha posts against other posters.  Thanks.




Wow. I'm sorry that I saw your answer as reasonable and a fair point to the disconnect I was talking about. Next time I won't include your name when I quote a relevant passage that I agree with. 






Celebrim said:


> That depends.  Was it established before play began that the player character was raised in an orphanage, or is this call being made spontaneously during play?  Normally, a player should expect to have his backstory vetted by the GM before play, and any major points of play he wants to be established in the fiction should be included in the backstory.   For example, a player ought not to expect that they can insist that they are a traveler from another dimension ("Earth") or that they are a cartoon character that was animated by a powerful magic, or anything else that would be wholly and completely novel in the setting without buy in from the GM.   Indeed, pretty much everything in a backstory ought to be negotiated with a GM before play.   Once the backstory is established as being in fiction and part of the setting, both the GM and the player can expect to make calls using it, but GM's should be careful about trying to impose new backstory on a player against their wishes and respect their wishes if the player strongly objects.  Likewise, if a player calls something new based on his backstory, the player should expect that certain calls which are inappropriate to the setting or story or which seem to be being made solely for gamist reasons (ei, to gain some mechanical advantage) might get vetoed.
> 
> If it's established that you were an orphan, it's probably a reasonable call that you were raised in an orphanage.
> 
> Was it in the player's backstory prior to the beginning of play?  If so they were correct.  If it wasn't, they are only possibly correct.  In general, if it was established that the player grew up in an orphanage, there is nothing unreasonably about claiming that you knew someone named Francis (assuming Francis is the sort of name NPC's have in the setting).




So, at my table, I don't necessarily disagree with any of this. I would say that it is a bit harsh to lock a player into only the backstory they come up with before play begins, but only because I often have players who can't come up with a backstory until two or three sessions in. In fact, even on fairly robust backstories, I, myself, and my players have found new inspiration which led to refining and adding details to those. So, knowing my full backstory is locked after session one is fair, but not something I would do personally. 

However, I also feel the need to point out, I was posting these questions for iserith. And, iserith has said that backstories in their games should be kept to the size of a tweet. That is about two sentences, maybe three. More details can be pulled from that, if I remember their position correctly,  but combining that with their insistence that one can never tell a player what their character thinks, led me to establishing the absolute base before moving my way up. 




Celebrim said:


> Here is where things get really dicey.  It's generally considered poor form to try to use your backstory to gain mechanical advantage above and beyond what is written on your character sheet.  5e D&D has no built in "contacts"/"circles"/"allies" check and no built in way to list such things as preexisting in the setting.   In a game that did have such things, "Francis" would need to be written down in a column somewhere which had a finite number of called out allies, and a suitable description establishing that they were a guard in a particular location.  In that case, the player by calling out "Francis" from his character sheet would be doing something similar to calling out the rope in his backpack that was part of the preestablished fiction.   The player would have some mechanical device for negotiating with the GM regarding the narrative and establishing the truth of something in the fiction.   He might perhaps get a "circle test", and might have some reduced difficulty of some sort because Francis was a known established resource.   Then the fortune mechanics of the game would establish whether this was indeed Francis in a way that everyone had agreed was fair and reasonable prior to play.
> 
> None of this is true of 5e.  There is no mechanics available to the player for negotiating what is in the setting.   This means that the situation has to be resolved by fiat, and in D&D, only the GM has fiat authority.  Players can't establish things by fiat.   They can only propose things that they want their character to try to do.   The general rule about this is, "Could you as a real person cause someone to be someone you wanted them to be merely by wanting it to be so?"   No, you can't imagine the way you want reality to work, and therefore make it so.   Since normal people can't simply alter reality with wishes, your character needs some sort of explicit power or resource that they can call upon to alter reality.  Essentially, they need some sort of packetized narrative force (like a spell or power).  No such power exists in D&D so far as I know, short of something like spending a Wish.
> 
> ...




No, I am not advocating for this style of play. In fact, in the original post, you will note this is where I said the likely break point was, because it is the point between the player establishing minor details and the player establishing a major point in the scene. 

However, if you cannot tell a player what they think, which was iserith's position both in this thread with the orc elder telling stories about monster weaknesses and the insight thread, then even getting to this point can be troublesome. Because the player may have established that the guard named Francis does exist. 

IF we cannot ever tell a player what they think, and they state "I once saved this Red Dragon's life by healing it of Dragon Pox" then we have a disconnect in the game reality. The player believes this, something must have triggered this belief, but the DM says it never happened. So why does the player have these memories? This is where the "false dilemma" you see comes from. 

In my games, I just tell the player no. "Sorry, that sounds like a cool idea, but it doesn't fit with what we have going on, your character never did this/this never happened" and because I, and my table, are fine with occasional overlap, we establish that the PC does not actually believe these things happened. The Character is not delusional, the player is simply trying to eke out an unfair advantage by calling upon their backstory in a way the game does not support. But, if I cannot tell a player what their character thinks, then either the player backs down, or I am forcing the situation to turn to "the Character is delusional and has memories of events that never happened" 


Honestly, part of what drew me into this example was how close it was to the Elder telling the character how to slay various monsters when they were a child, which everyone on one side accepted this was perfectly fine, but this example raised an outcry of players far overstepping their bounds and declarations they would be better off playing a different game. The difference between the two, in a narrative sense, is minimal. The only difference is one establishes knowledge a player likely already had and would use in fights, and the other gives them a social benefit in a situation.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> So, you chose to cut it off exactly where I thought you would.
> 
> But you haven't answered the underlying question. Does Francis the Guard exist? Can the player track them down in that town, now that they have pulled that from their backstory?
> 
> I see three major paths: 1) Frances exists and is a guard, the player changed the world. 2) Francis did exist, but either quit the guard or was eaten by wolves, players backstory was true, but things have changed and you are denying them a friendship within the guards. 3) Francs does not exist, and never did, you are telling the player their memories of their past are false.




Per the DMG, after the DM settles on what the campaign is about, the players work with the DM on how their characters' backgrounds and histories tie into the campaign. The DM is encouraged to say yes - if he or she can. If he or she can't, the DM is told to suggest alterations to the character's story so it better fits the world or figure out a way to weave the first threads of the campaign into the character's story. 

So, essentially, a collaborative effort with the DM's override prior to the game kicking off is how the game envisions the establishment of NPCs like Frances, not during play. Therefore, a player trying to establish Frances' existence during play is going against the game's expectations in this regard. And, as already established, the DM is under no obligation to accept the player's offer either before play or during. I make no judgment as to whether should or shouldn't accept the offer - that will depend on the DM's or group's preferences.


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> If by "improv" you mean the player engaging in what the rules define as the DM's role, that's not really interpreting and filling in - it's changing the rules. Which is fine, but let's call it what it is.



 So, I think the following would unambiguously follow a typical interpretation of the basic rules you & I are always touting:

DM: Count Mephisto descends the grand staircase, fixing you with a malevolent gaze, … blah... blah, lotsa cool dramatic stuff but not a huge amount of detail about the environment.
Player: Does the room have a chandelier?
DM: Er, sure, yeah, it's a grand ballroom, our campaign's a trifle anachronistic.
Player: How high is it.
DM: Well, the ceilings 18' and the chandelier is, oh 4 or 5' from top to lowest elements, and the chain it's on would be similar, so maybe about 8' off the ground.
Player: so if I were to swing on it, I'd be working with a 10'r arc.  and could get up onto the staircase where the count is?
DM: You could attempt it.
Player:  Ok, I'm going to take a running leap, swing on the chandelier, and attack the Count!

(Cheesy, I know, but bear with me.)

Now, what I was getting at was a DM who would not only tolerate, but encourage or even require, in a systematic way, the alternate:

DM: Count Mephisto descends the grand staircase, fixing you with a malevolent gaze, … blah... blah, lotsa cool dramatic stuff but not a huge amount of detail about the environment.
Player: I'm going to take a running leap, swing on the Grand Ballroom's chandelier*, and attack the Count right on the stair!  

The rules don't, for an instance near & dear to your heart, spell out that the player must provide a goal & method in declaring an action.  That's filling in what the DM expects from the player declaring an action, it formalizes that segment of play a bit.  But it's not changing the rules. 

DMs could take their interpretation or formalization of action declaration in different ways.  A DM could, as above, tolerate (or even require) the players to add to the scene as part of a formal/valid action declaration.  He could require the Player nominate a stat & skill he intends to use in the action.  He could require a declared weapon/tool/implement/environmental feature be engaged in any valid action (I'm not sure why, but he /could/).  Limits are the DM's imagination (and ego, and sheer unmitigated gall), and the players' willingness/ability to find an alternate DM.  ;P

Ultimately, 5e's written in natural language and leaves it to the DM to interpret the rules, even the most basic of 'em.  Those rules put a /lot/ of 'power'/responsibility on the DM, but they in no way dissuade him from delegating bits of it to the players, formally or informally, systematically or on the spur of the moment. 

As far as the line between interpreting and changing a rule:  it's moot.  It's the DM's game.  If a DM changes a rule and calls it an a interpretation, it's an interpretation, if he interprets a rule in a fairly conventional way, but lists it as a variant it's a change.




> As for the shorthand on personal characteristics (which is what they're called as a whole), I've seen the acronym BIFTs used by a number of people.



Thanks!




iserith said:


> So, essentially, a collaborative effort with the DM's override prior to the game kicking off is how the game envisions the establishment of NPCs like Frances, not during play. Therefore, a player trying to establish Frances' existence during play is going against the game's expectations in this regard.



Nod.  OTOH, there's no way any such pre-game establishment of backstory could cover every detail of the character & his connection to the world.  DMs don't set their worlds in stone in every detail before play begins, if a new aspect of the world is revealed that may have had some bearing on the PC's backstories, that might be seen as re-opening that collaborative effort.

FREX:  The DM might have established that the campaign-home-Kingdom has fought many wars with it's neighbor, Nepharia, and that a player may have established that his father was killed in one of those most recent wars.  Now, if the DM later introduces a powerful Nepharian champion renowned for his death toll on the battlefield of the last war, the player might just come up with the idea that it was /that/ villain who killed his father.  Instant retcon vendetta. (Hey, it's not like stuff like that doesn't happen in fiction!)

If the DM is very proprietary about control of the details of his setting, then the player might introduce that idea with a series of leading questions:

Player: If he's such a great hero, how come we've never heard of him before.
DM: Oh, you've heard of him all your lives, he's infamous.
Player: And he fought in the most recent war?
DM: Yep, renowned for his savagery and sheer body count on the field.
Player: Did he fight in all the battles of that war?
DM: All the major ones, he was seen as virtually invincible.
Player: Including the battle where my father was killed?
DM: Definitely.
Player: Could he be the one who killed my father?

(And the DM could totally roll with it:  /Yes/, that's the family story.  And, now, looking at him, you can believe it.
or not:  No, you remember the king's messenger saying your father took an arrow to the heart, this guy's strictly a melee type.)

A DM with a different style might be so inclined to roll with such ideas that his players realize they don't have to resort to leading questions to get an idea in there.  He may even be up-front an encourage it.  Maybe give inspiration for RPing that instant vendetta without even clearing it first.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> As far as the line between interpreting and changing a rule:  it's moot.  It's the DM's game.  If a DM changes a rule and calls it an a interpretation, it's an interpretation, if he interprets a rule in a fairly conventional way, but lists it as a variant it's a change.




I think it's quite possible to discern what is written in the book and what is not. I don't think it's a good idea to muddle that in a discussion about the rules. Of course as to whether what is written in the book is valued by the group will vary. That's a separate issue in my mind anyway.



Tony Vargas said:


> Nod.  OTOH, there's no way any such pre-game establishment of backstory could cover every detail of the character & his connection to the world.  DMs don't set their worlds in stone in every detail before play begins, if a new aspect of the world is revealed that may have had some bearing on the PC's backstories, that might be seen as re-opening that collaborative effort.




Yep, this is the argument I used in support of this sort of thing in D&D 4e where "Yes, and..." was in the rules. You can't account for everything up front, so you may as well be open to establishing things during play. The most common response to that at that time would make you think that I had personally insulted the poster's mother.

The funny thing to me about these discussions of late is that I'm making more or less the same arguments others made against me in D&D 4e that I'm now making in D&D 5e. But in most cases, I am putting forward what the rules say for the given edition, not my personal preferences or calling my personal preferences rules just because I'm the DM and what I say goes.


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## Ovinomancer (May 7, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Wow. I'm sorry that I saw your answer as reasonable and a fair point to the disconnect I was talking about. Next time I won't include your name when I quote a relevant passage that I agree with.



Hmm.  Thanks, no thanks.


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think it's quite possible to discern what is written in the book and what is not. I don't think it's a good idea to muddle that in a discussion about the rules. Of course as to whether what is written in the book is valued by the group will vary. That's a separate issue in my mind anyway.



 I feel like it's varied a lot with edition, as well.

The dismissive refrain "You can do that, but it'd be a House Rule!" was a mark of 3e era discussions.

5e, not s'much.  And I find it mildly amusing that in promoting & expounding upon just how much freedom the DM has in 5e, we occasionally circle back to quoting rules as such.



> Yep, this is the argument I used in support of this sort of thing in D&D 4e where "Yes, and..." was in the rules.



 4e was organized with rules (mechanics) vs advice/guidelines vs fluff (color) a little more clearly divvied up, and I think the whole "yes, and..." thing was more DM advice than rules.  Rules in the 4e era were tight little blocks of jargon - and the definitions of said jargon and the sections on how-to-read and how-to-use said blocks.

If the basic sequence of play rules were in 4e, they'd've been seen as advice, because they invoke no mechanics and use no jargon. It's just Mike talk'n at you 'bout how to run your game.  In 5e, there as much rules as a spell description, say.



> You can't account for everything up front, so you may as well be open to establishing things during play. The most common response to that at that time would make you think that I had personally insulted the poster's mother.



 The boards were meaner back then.  There was a war on, y'know.



> The funny thing to me about these discussions of late is that I'm making more or less the same arguments others made against me in D&D 4e that I'm now making in D&D 5e. But in most cases, I am putting forward what the rules say for the given edition, not my personal preferences or calling my personal preferences rules just because I'm the DM and what I say goes.



 Sorry, couldn't parse that one.  

The rules say that what the DM says goes, rules notwithstanding, including that one.

My point was simply that we don't see the blind devotion to RaW for it's own sake going like we saw in 3.x days, so "may way is RaW, yours is a house rule" is a very weak assertion - even moot* IMHO … 

… so to say that "the rules don't support" a given DMing style isn't very meaningful.  The power to support a style isn't in the rules, it rests with the DM.









* yeah, I use that word correctly, it's almost like a had to sit through Paper Chase when I was a kid.


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## iserith (May 7, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> I feel like it's varied a lot with edition, as well.
> 
> The dismissive refrain "You can do that, but it'd be a House Rule!" was a mark of 3e era discussions.
> 
> ...




Rules are the things you find in the rules books. Unless you ignore them in which case they are just "advice." Or if you're an experienced DM, you don't bother reading anything anyway so none of it matters, especially not the DMG because what could you possibly learn by reading that?



Tony Vargas said:


> The rules say that what the DM says goes, rules notwithstanding, including that one.
> 
> My point was simply that we don't see the blind devotion to RaW for it's own sake going like we saw in 3.x days, so "may way is RaW, yours is a house rule" is a very weak assertion - even moot* IMHO …
> 
> … so to say that "the rules don't support" a given DMing style isn't very meaningful.  The power to support a style isn't in the rules, it rests with the DM.




I don't hold a position that we must follow the rules, only that the rules inform us how the game is intended to be played. Ignore them if you want, but if something goes awry, ignoring those rules is often the root cause, which is what we see frequently reported on the forums and elsewhere. It's either that or somebody at the table is being a jerk.


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## Tony Vargas (May 7, 2019)

iserith said:


> Rules are the things you find in the rules books. Unless you ignore them in which case they are just "advice."



 Depends on the organization of the rulebook.  (I mean, apart from fiddly technicalities, like the title, author, and copyright statements /clearly/ aren't rules.)  In 4e, mechanics and flavor text in powers, for instance, were neatly segregated from eachother, a format unique in D&D history.  

In every edition there have been sections clearly presented as DMing advice (and in some cases advice to players). As ambiguous as natural language may be, it's hard not to take "you should generally ...' as a hard-and-fast rule, rather than as advice.  
There's also tons (or ounces in 4e) of flavor text.  And there's actual mechanics, if sometimes hard to tease out.  And (as usual, apart from 4e) there's a LOT of grey areas among those. 

Even in 5e there are sidebars clearly meant to be taken differently than the rest of the text.  
Aside from that, though, in 5e, there's not a strong case to be made for excluding anything between the covers from being "part of the rules," since the rules of 5e, like the more-clearly-delineated 'advice' or 'flavah' - or for that matter, filler - of other editions, are written in natural, even conversational, language.  
Yet, at the same time (or maybe as a consequence), such 'rules' carry much less force, so the lines among rule, flavor, advice, or even filler are not too important, either.  



> Or if you're an experienced DM, you don't bother reading anything anyway so none of it matters, especially not the DMG because what could you possibly learn by reading that?



It's not like it could have anything new to say after the preceding 5 DMGs on your shelf.  No, seriously, it couldn't.  There's also been an odd trend over the editions to move rules (or, to be more prices, 'mechanics?') to the PH from the DMG.  It probably peaked in 4e, which even put magic items in the PH.



> I don't hold a position that we must follow the rules, only that the rules inform us how the game is intended to be played.



 In the case of 5e, it's intended to be played the way the DM wants, rules in the books notwithstanding*. 
There is /soooo/ much leeway (Empowerment!) given the DM in 5e, that I could run 5e nominally "by the book" and make it run like FATE.  I wouldn't, because it'd be a pita to flog bifts that hard, but I totally could.  
More effortlessly, I can run it just like I did AD&D.  



> Ignore them if you want, but if something goes awry, ignoring those rules is often the root cause, which is what we see frequently reported on the forums and elsewhere. It's either that or somebody at the table is being a jerk.



More often the latter.    But, seriously, I'm not see'n the primary problems people have as coming from ignoring the rules this time around (nor in 3.x, nor in older editions, for that matter).  In 3.x, people /didn't/ ignore the rules, it just wasn't done, or wasn't admitted to, anyway, and if you did go off the RaWservation, you were on your own.  In the TSR era changing the rules was prettymuch standard practice - even when you found DMs who insisted they were 'playing by the rules' the rule they used were a lot more different from eachother than you might expect. 

If 5e can be said to have a unified RaW or RaI or much consistency at all to the experience, it's not a matter of intent of the rules (which is for the DM to take responsibility for the experience, over & above the rules), but of practicality in the context of AL.













* I'm feel'n my inner Gygax today.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Depends on the organization of the rulebook.  (I mean, apart from fiddly technicalities, like the title, author, and copyright statements /clearly/ aren't rules.)  In 4e, mechanics and flavor text in powers, for instance, were neatly segregated from eachother, a format unique in D&D history.
> 
> In every edition there have been sections clearly presented as DMing advice (and in some cases advice to players).  There's tons of flavor text.  And there's actual mechanics.  And (as usual, apart from 4e) there's a LOT of grey area among those.
> 
> Even in 5e there are sidebars clearly meant to be taken differently than the rest of the text.  Aside from that, though, in 5e, there's not a strong case to be made for excluding anything between the covers from being "part of the rules," since the rules of 5e, like the more-clearly-delineated 'advice' or 'flavah' - or for that matter, filler - of other editions, are written in natural, even conversational, language.  Yet, at the same time (or maybe as a consequence), such 'rules' carry much less force, so the lines among rule, flavor, advice, or even filler are not too important, either.




Yes, yes, heard it all before. This is a rule, but this isn't because I choose not to follow it, so it couldn't be a rule. That sounds like fluff, so ignore it or reflavor it however you want. And on and on. And yep, you can do all that and it's fine. Until it isn't.



Tony Vargas said:


> It's not like it could have anything new to say after the preceding 5 DMGs on your shelf.  No, seriously, it couldn't.  There's also been an odd trend over the editions to move rules to the PH from the DMG.  It probably peaked in 4e, which even put magic items in the PH.




The D&D 4e DMG doesn't apply to D&D 5e. The D&D 3.Xe DMG doesn't apply to D&D 4e. And so on. Best to ignore other games when learning and playing a new game in my view.



Tony Vargas said:


> In the case of 5e, it's intended to be played the way the DM wants, rules in the books notwithstanding*.




Again, play how you want. Just don't be surprised if there are issues when playing the game as if it's some other game.



Tony Vargas said:


> More often the latter.    But, seriously, I'm not see'n the primary problems people have as coming from ignoring the rules this time around (nor in 3.x, nor in older editions, for that matter).  In 3.x, people /didn't/ ignore the rules, it just wasn't done, or wasn't admitted to, anyway, and if you did go off the RaWservation, you were on your own.  In the TSR era changing the rules was prettymuch standard practice - even when you found DMs who insisted they were 'playing by the rules' the rule they used were a lot more different from eachother than you might expect.
> 
> If 5e can be said to have a unified RaW or RaI or much consistency at all to the experience, it's not a matter of intent of the rules (which is for the DM to take responsibility for the experience, over & above the rules), but of practicality in the context of AL.




There was a conversation just this week with someone who was dissatisfied with the D&D 5e skill system. As soon as we popped the hood on that one, whatdoyaknow we find that the players are declaring they are using "skill checks" instead of describing what they want to do and leaving the calls for checks to the DM. Which is basically the same conversation as the people who are freaked out by an NPC blacksmith's chances of making a weapon or whatever - a misunderstanding of how the adjudication process works. Game issues related to ignoring the fundamental processes of play and treating this game like it's some other game.

While some groups can play that way with no issue by implementing kludges or ignoring the rough edges, other groups find fault with the system, only to discover they aren't playing the system in the manner that is intended.


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## Celebrim (May 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> But you haven't answered the underlying question. Does Francis the Guard exist? Can the player track them down in that town, now that they have pulled that from their backstory?




You've already called me on this, so yes I know the question isn't for me, but, for my part at least, I'm happy to say that Francis the Guard exists (or at least did exist).  I'm even happy to go with any reasonable suggestion regarding the existence of any NPC implied to exist by the backstory.  What I'm not happy about is a player dictating to me that a particular NPC is Francis, or something like that Francis is a 12th level fighter, or what have you.  I might decide that those things make for an interesting game or at least is reasonable for the games demographics*, but I can do that as an impartial judge.  A player, because they are managing an avatar in the game world and trying to "win", doesn't have the impartiality to decide that. 

*(This guard is much more likely to be Francis, if this is a village of 80 people, and only has one guard, than it is to be Francis in a city of 50,000 people which has a town watch of 500 individuals, etc.)



> So, at my table, I don't necessarily disagree with any of this. I would say that it is a bit harsh to lock a player into only the backstory they come up with before play begins, but only because I often have players who can't come up with a backstory until two or three sessions in. In fact, even on fairly robust backstories, I, myself, and my players have found new inspiration which led to refining and adding details to those. So, knowing my full backstory is locked after session one is fair, but not something I would do personally.




I find that players that don't make backstories aren't interested in backstories and generally don't have literary goals for their character - that is to say, they don't really care if the character is involved in any sort of narrative arc except supporting the "plot" and meta-plot of the campaign.   The characters growth as a person is not interesting to them compared to the characters growth as a playing piece.   And that's OK.

I strongly encourage long backstories even if I don't always get more than a few sentences.  Adding to a backstory at any point generally requires mutual consent of both the GM and the player, although typically when a character is created I ask the player how much they are willing to have me "mess with them", by which I mean introduce complications based on their backstory and even elements of their backstory which they themselves didn't realize ("you are an illegitimate child", "you are adopted", "your family is suffering from a curse", "turns out, you aren't even human", etc.).  Some players want me to run wild and introduce complications.  Others feel that if you do that, you are bullying them.  I try to accommodate both desires.



> However, if you cannot tell a player what they think, which was iserith's position both in this thread with the orc elder telling stories about monster weaknesses and the insight thread, then even getting to this point can be troublesome. Because the player may have established that the guard named Francis does exist.
> 
> IF we cannot ever tell a player what they think, and they state "I once saved this Red Dragon's life by healing it of Dragon Pox" then we have a disconnect in the game reality. The player believes this, something must have triggered this belief, but the DM says it never happened. So why does the player have these memories? This is where the "false dilemma" you see comes from.




You probably aren't doing this on purpose, and I've certainly used the terms inappropriately a ton of times, but for this passage the difference between the player and the character really matters and I can't be absolutely sure which you mean.   Does the character believe that the guard is Francis, or does the player believe that the guard is Francis?   

If the player believes that the guard is Francis, we have an out of game problem that has to be addressed as an out of game problem.  Somehow the player got confused as to the fictional state of the game world or his role as a player, and we have to iron that out - just as if the player started performing a plan, and I have to explain something like, "You did understand that there is a deep chasm running across the middle of the room." and it turns out that they thought it bisected the room in a different manner, or if the player starts outlining a plan and I have to explain, "I'm not sure if I made this clear, but the thing I described is about 400 yards away."   

But if the character believes that the guard is Francis, then I am not telling the player how to play their character or what the character believes.   They are free to tell me that the character believes that the guard is Francis and has whatever memories that he wants to have regarding "Francis".   And they are free to invent their own reasons why the character thinks as they do or however they want to rationalize this false belief.   

Again, describing the setting as it actually is - no matter how you twist words around - is not telling the player what to think or how to play their character.  It's just trying to communicate as many relevant facts as the player needs to make a judgment of how they want to play.  The player can no more tell me that the NPC is Francis the Guard than they can tell me that the chest actually contains a fortune in gems.  If the player asserts, "My character believes that this is Francis the guard" or "My character believes that the chest contains a fortune in gems.", that's swell, but the characters belief doesn't make the asserting true.   A player can ask, "Hey, according to my backstory I grew up in this town, and was friends with a young man named Francis that became a guard.  Is Francis among the guards?"  And that's a perfectly valid question, and the answer may be, "Yes.  Yes he is."   Luke's player can say, "Heh, my friend Biggs Darklighter wanted to join the Rebellion, and this is a rebel base.  Is he here?", and that might make a great call out.   But you can't assert things like, "Biggs Darklighter is here", "Biggs Darklighter is the base commander.", or whatever you want and expect them to be true just because you say that the character thinks it is true.   

And if you do, it's not my job to explain why the character thinks it is true, or to get the player to back down.  It's not my character.



> Honestly, part of what drew me into this example was how close it was to the Elder telling the character how to slay various monsters when they were a child, which everyone on one side accepted this was perfectly fine, but this example raised an outcry of players far overstepping their bounds and declarations they would be better off playing a different game. The difference between the two, in a narrative sense, is minimal. The only difference is one establishes knowledge a player likely already had and would use in fights, and the other gives them a social benefit in a situation.




Heck, I'm not even aware of that argument or all the agendas that lie behind this thread.   For my part, you can assert that someone told your character how to slay various monsters when you were a child, and I consider that a perfectly fine thing for you to assert.   Trouble is, it doesn't change the fact that you will get no special treatment from me unless your character also has spent CharGen resources on whatever lore skills are necessary to actually learn facts about monsters.   If you, as a player of a character that has no lore skill regarding monsters, assert that your character was told a lot of stuff, the very fact that your character does not have a bunch of points spent on monster lore proves that what you were told was probably incomplete, or common knowledge, or just plain wrong.  The facts on your character sheet disprove your claim of special knowledge - or else they don't.  That call out to your background may perfectly explain why you do have all that lore on your character sheet.   Or it may just explain that natural 20 you rolled to identify this particular monster.

If your character has BAB +0, telling me how you were taught for years by a swordmaster how to fight in your youth, won't convince me to give you a +20 bonus on attacks.  It just convinces me you weren't a very good student because the facts say you aren't a great sword master.

Or else it convinces me you are a problem player that is going to require special handling to deal with your emotional needs.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> Yes, yes, heard it all before. This is a rule, but this isn't because I choose not to follow it, so it couldn't be a rule. That sounds like fluff, so ignore it or reflavor it however you want. And on and on. And yep, you can do all that and it's fine. Until it isn't.



 I get it, and in the case of 5e, in particular, that's arguably very much the case:  there's no saying that one passage is a hard-and-fast 'rule' and another is just 'advice' - unless there's some nice helpful label like "Advice of DMs" as a header, or some clear-even-if-natural language like "it can generally be a good idea to..."

But just as 5e leaves plenty of ambiguity as to what's a rule and what's rule-adjacent, it also leaves plenty of ambiguity to what each passage means, so the DM has a lot of room for interpretation.

To circle back a bit, we're both happy to take the basics of play as rules.  I find no issue in interpreting "...player declares an action..." to allow an action that assume facts about the situation that have not already been detailed by the DM.  Even if I were to choose to interpret it otherwise, a player /could/ still functionally insert such details by asking a careful series of leading questions, so it's not even like there's some huge pandora's box opened by allowing players, up front, to fill in details under the rubric of action declaration.  



> The D&D 4e DMG doesn't apply to D&D 5e. The D&D 3.Xe DMG doesn't apply to D&D 4e. And so on. Best to ignore other games when learning and playing a new game in my view.



 The rules don't apply, specifically (though, a LOT of them are carried over), but the experienced gained is a definite boon (or obstacle).  



> Again, play how you want. Just don't be surprised if there are issues when playing the game as if it's some other game.



 Don't be surprised if there are issues if you try to run strictly "by the book."  Seriously, you're making an inference that there's some way to play that's going to work better than all others - (and, if I'm being honest, there is: it's to mostly ignore the rules! but that's not helpful) - and that's not what 5e is.  It's not a puzzle that the DM has to crack to extract the correct rules that will actually work.  It's a starting point that different DMs will take in different directions to find what works best for them & their players. 



> There was a conversation just this week with someone who was dissatisfied with the D&D 5e skill system. As soon as we popped the hood on that one, whatdoyaknow we find that the players are declaring they are using "skill checks" instead of describing what they want to do and leaving the calls for checks to the DM.



 Yep. Which was a case of paying too much attention to the rules (the 'hard' mechanics of skills, such as they are), instead of the DM taking full responsibility for resolution, details of the rules notwithstanding.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> I get it, and in the case of 5e, in particular, that's arguably very much the case:  there's no saying that one passage is a hard-and-fast 'rule' and another is just 'advice' - unless there's some nice helpful label like "Advice of DMs" as a header, or some clear-even-if-natural language like "it can generally be a good idea to..."
> 
> But just as 5e leaves plenty of ambiguity as to what's a rule and what's rule-adjacent, it also leaves plenty of ambiguity to what each passage means, so the DM has a lot of room for interpretation.
> 
> To circle back a bit, we're both happy to take the basics of play as rules.  I find no issue in interpreting "...player declares an action..." to allow an action that assume facts about the situation that have not already been detailed by the DM.  Even if I were to choose to interpret it otherwise, a player /could/ still functionally insert such details by asking a careful series of leading questions, so it's not even like there's some huge pandora's box opened by allowing players, up front, to fill in details under the rubric of action declaration.




It's all rules as I see it, and you're free to ignore the rules you don't want to use. Again, just be aware that this may impact the game experience negatively and require adjustment. There isn't much value in picking and choosing which are rules and which are not in my view. Accept them as one big bag of rules that are instructing you on how to play the game, then pare them down if you wish (or add to them).

I'm also finding it a rather tedious to discuss what is or isn't a rule so I'll just say that this is my last on this point. I'm telling you how I see it. You're free to disagree.



Tony Vargas said:


> The rules don't apply, specifically (though, a LOT of them are carried over), but the experienced gained is a definite boon (or obstacle).




As an exercise, I think it's worth it to examine each game on its own without reference to the editions that came before it.



Tony Vargas said:


> Don't be surprised if there are issues if you try to run strictly "by the book."  Seriously, you're making an inference that there's some way to play that's going to work better than all others - (and, if I'm being honest, there is: it's to mostly ignore the rules! but that's not helpful) - and that's not what 5e is.  It's not a puzzle that the DM has to crack to extract the correct rules that will actually work.  It's a starting point that different DMs will take in different directions to find what works best for them & their players.




The game runs smoother in my view if you follow the rules. A group still might not like that play experience, but that is a different matter.



Tony Vargas said:


> Yep. Which was a case of paying too much attention to the rules (the 'hard' mechanics of skills, such as they are), instead of the DM taking full responsibility for resolution, details of the rules notwithstanding.




I diagnose the problem not as paying too much attention to the rules, but discounting the fundamental process of play as "advice" or "rules-adjacent" as you say above. Also there appears to be a fair amount of viewing and playing the game as if it's some other game which no doubt leads to the aforementioned discounting.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's all rules as I see it, and you're free to ignore the rules you don't want to use. Again, just be aware that this may impact the game experience negatively and require adjustment. I'm also finding it a rather tedious to discuss what is or isn't a rule so I'll just say that this is my last on this point. I'm telling you how I see it. You're free to disagree.



 Since we're actually in pretty close agreement, we are going around in a pretty tight little circle.   The way you're putting it that keeps making me want to push back is just too reminiscent of that 3.x era "..but it'll be a house rule."  Dismissal.  There is on one RaW of 5e, it can be interpreted and worked from in a variety of ways.  You've found one that works very well for you, and, in particular in the "goal + method" concept, I certainly applaud it.  

But deviating from it is not 'ignoring the rules,' nor are there "issues" to watch out for in doing so.  The rules of the game /require/ interpretation.  They require judgement from the DM.  Issues arise from failing to put in that work on the DM side.



> As an exercise, I think it's worth it to examine each game on its own without reference to the editions that came before it.



 As an exercise, it could be interesting.  And it is fair to try to judge a game's merits in a vacuum like that.  
In a practical sense, designers of each edition have been decidedly familiar with the ones that came before, and, clearly, motivate to address issues past eds had, be that with their mechanics, or their fanbase. IMHO, much of 5e makes a lot more sense if you come at it from past experience with the TSR era, for instance - I suppose, in part, because Mr Mearls was intentionally going back to that era looking for inspiration, as part of that elusive quest to re-capture the peak popularity the game enjoyed in the 80s.
Miraculously, he succeeded.
Hard to argue with that.



> The game runs smoother in my view if you follow the rules. A group still might not like that play experience, but that is a different matter.



 The game runs smoother, IMX, if you don't follow them too closely. 
They're a starting point.




> I diagnose the problem not as paying too much attention to the rules, but discounting the fundamental process of play as "advice" or "rules-adjacent" as you say above.



They're a much higher-level part of the ruleset, sure.  If you follow them faithfully, you /will/ end up ignoring some lower level rules much of the time.  Not that the rules contradict, just that the higher level rules spell out the precedence of the DM. For instance, a group could run into much the same issue with "the skill system" if the DM's style tended towards calling for checks in virtually all circumstances.  He's still playing by the high-level rules, following the process, but by focusing on the less functional details of the system, he gets into trouble.  Hypothetically, that can be solved by changing his style and exercising more judgment, or by overhauling the skill system.  Neither is better - though one is certainly more work.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Since we're actually in pretty close agreement, we are going around in a pretty tight little circle.   The way you're putting it that keeps making me want to push back is just too reminiscent of that 3.x era "..but it'll be a house rule."  Dismissal.




Another poster who stated that he or she deviated from the rules told me to call what he or she does "house rules" before. I refused. So I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else to push back on in this regard. This isn't me advocating slavish devotion to RAW for its own sake. 



Tony Vargas said:


> As an exercise, it could be interesting.  And it is fair to try to judge a game's merits in a vacuum like that.
> In a practical sense, designers of each edition have been decidedly familiar with the ones that came before, and, clearly, motivate to address issues past eds had, be that with their mechanics, or their fanbase. IMHO, much of 5e makes a lot more sense if you come at it from past experience with the TSR era, for instance - I suppose, in part, because Mr Mearls was intentionally going back to that era looking for inspiration, as part of that elusive quest to re-capture the peak popularity the game enjoyed in the 80s.
> Miraculously, he succeeded.
> Hard to argue with that.




The endless polling probably didn't hurt.



Tony Vargas said:


> They're a much higher-level part of the ruleset, sure.  If you follow them faithfully, you /will/ end up ignoring some lower level rules much of the time.  Not that the rules contradict, just that the higher level rules spell out the precedence of the DM. For instance, a group could run into much the same issue with "the skill system" if the DM's style tended towards calling for checks in virtually all circumstances.  He's still playing by the high-level rules, following the process, but by focusing on the less functional details of the system, he gets into trouble.  Hypothetically, that can be solved by changing his style and exercising more judgment, or by overhauling the skill system.  Neither is better - though one is certainly more work.




There you go again parsing the rules and organizing them in some sort of level of relative importance. Pointless and problematic in my view.


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## Chaosmancer (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> Per the DMG, after the DM settles on what the campaign is about, the players work with the DM on how their characters' backgrounds and histories tie into the campaign. The DM is encouraged to say yes - if he or she can. If he or she can't, the DM is told to suggest alterations to the character's story so it better fits the world or figure out a way to weave the first threads of the campaign into the character's story.
> 
> So, essentially, a collaborative effort with the DM's override prior to the game kicking off is how the game envisions the establishment of NPCs like Frances, not during play. Therefore, a player trying to establish Frances' existence during play is going against the game's expectations in this regard. And, as already established, the DM is under no obligation to accept the player's offer either before play or during. I make no judgment as to whether should or shouldn't accept the offer - that will depend on the DM's or group's preferences.




Well, a non-answer is a type of answer too. That's fine, we can drop it. 




Celebrim said:


> I find that players that don't make backstories aren't interested in backstories and generally don't have literary goals for their character - that is to say, they don't really care if the character is involved in any sort of narrative arc except supporting the "plot" and meta-plot of the campaign.   The characters growth as a person is not interesting to them compared to the characters growth as a playing piece.   And that's OK.




See, I would agree with you, except that my last table had three players who had never played DnD before. Table before that had one. I'm not going to judge that those players aren't interested in their own narrative plots just because they didn't have a backstory after character creation. 

I've got players with a few years under their belts, and they sometimes want a few sessions to get a feel for things before they add details to their backstories. "Sure, I think I was a soldier, but I'm not sure why I left the army or how I got with these people". Again, that doesn't preclude them from making a narrative arc that they embrace and enjoy. 

I know this for a fact, because people at both those tables had exactly those issues, and ended up with full character arcs that they were ecstatic about. Now, a guy whose played for thirty years and shows up saying "I'm playing Bob the Fighter and that's all you need to know". Yeah, that guy probably doesn't care about backstories, but I'll still leave the door open, in case he wants to try something different this time. 



Celebrim said:


> You probably aren't doing this on purpose, and I've certainly used the terms inappropriately a ton of times, but for this passage the difference between the player and the character really matters and I can't be absolutely sure which you mean.   Does the character believe that the guard is Francis, or does the player believe that the guard is Francis?




For some of the people I've been discussing with? There is no difference. 

For the purpose of the discussion with you, the character believes it, because the player says so. 



Celebrim said:


> Heck, I'm not even aware of that argument or all the agendas that lie behind this thread.   For my part, you can assert that someone told your character how to slay various monsters when you were a child, and I consider that a perfectly fine thing for you to assert.   Trouble is, it doesn't change the fact that you will get no special treatment from me unless your character also has spent CharGen resources on whatever lore skills are necessary to actually learn facts about monsters.   If you, as a player of a character that has no lore skill regarding monsters, assert that your character was told a lot of stuff, the very fact that your character does not have a bunch of points spent on monster lore proves that what you were told was probably incomplete, or common knowledge, or just plain wrong.  The facts on your character sheet disprove your claim of special knowledge - or else they don't.  That call out to your background may perfectly explain why you do have all that lore on your character sheet.   Or it may just explain that natural 20 you rolled to identify this particular monster.




Again, according to some of the people I've been discussing this with, you are completely wrong. In fact, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] went so far as to state in the insight thread that a player never has to justify why their character knows something. There is no roll, there is no story, the player says their character knows earth elemental are vulnerable to thunder damage, so their character knows that. 

Now, iserith was also very quick to state that assuming what you know is accurate is a dangerous thing, because the DM could have changed anything and your assumptions might be woefully inaccurate, but I disagree with the premise, not the exception. 

It was why I disagreed with the Elder telling you all the monster secrets, that everyone seemed to agree was perfectly okay. No CharGen resources needed, no lore rolls required, you know what your character thinks, therefore you know those facts about those monsters. However, when it turned to a social event where a roll could be bypassed, the player was outside the rules of the game, as everyone has stated repeatedly. 

That was why I brought this up, because one way was okay, but the other was not, and I was curious where those individuals saw that line in the sand.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> But you haven't answered the underlying question. Does Francis the Guard exist? Can the player track them down in that town, now that they have pulled that from their backstory?




I'll try to answer that, and maybe this will help [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], too, who keeps trying to get me to define this boundary.

Francis the Guard exists if that suits my purpose.  He exists only in the player's imagination otherwise.  Or he died.  Or maybe he does exist, but this isn't Francis.  As [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] points out, the player has absolute control over the character's thoughts and beliefs, and the DM has absolute control over the environment.  Both may cede some of that authority if they want, but that is going outside the rules.  

Now, I _think_ your question (and maybe pemerton's...I may be wrong) is really asking the question of how you define a clear boundary, to prevent players from trying to grab too much of the DM's authority.  That what's needed is some kind of clear rule, that can't be debated or refuted, right?

No. Wrong. This isn't a problem of unclear rules. This is a problem of players sometimes being jerkwads, and I don't need rules to protect my games against jerkwads.  I have a door for that.  

I also don't need rules to protect me from jerkwad DMs. This door is a magical door, and it also works, albeit in a slightly different manner, as protection against jerkwad DMs.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Well, a non-answer is a type of answer too. That's fine, we can drop it.




What answer are you looking for? I stated what the rules have to say on the matter and have addressed the specific example in a reply to Elfcrusher upthread. You're welcome to read it.



Chaosmancer said:


> For some of the people I've been discussing with? There is no difference.




I hope you don't count me among them. If you do, then you've misunderstood (and now misstated) my position.



Chaosmancer said:


> Again, according to some of the people I've been discussing this with, you are completely wrong. In fact, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] went so far as to state in the insight thread that a player never has to justify why their character knows something. There is no roll, there is no story, the player says their character knows earth elemental are vulnerable to thunder damage, so their character knows that.




Yes, the player determines what the character thinks and does, and particular knowledge is not necessarily a prerequisite to act. My character doesn't need to know a thing about the vulnerabilities of earth elementals to hit it with a thunderwave spell. But I can choose to say my character thinks that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder. My character might be right. Or the character might be wrong.



Chaosmancer said:


> Now, iserith was also very quick to state that assuming what you know is accurate is a dangerous thing, because the DM could have changed anything and your assumptions might be woefully inaccurate, but I disagree with the premise, not the exception.




It's risky to act on assumptions when the character's life is on the line, so don't just assume as a player - have your character act in the context of the setting to verify your assumptions. Or don't and potentially face dire consequences. It's the player's call.


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## Celebrim (May 8, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Again, according to some of the people I've been discussing this with, you are completely wrong.




See, again, I think you are trying to draw contrasts that just aren't there, and I wish you'd stop using me as evidence in some argument you are having with someone else..



> In fact, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] went so far as to state in the insight thread that a player never has to justify why their character knows something. There is no roll, there is no story, the player says their character knows earth elemental are vulnerable to thunder damage, so their character knows that.




I wasn't in that discussion, but this seems to be something else entirely.  I'm generally of the opinion that there is no such thing as metagaming, so if you the player know that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, you don't have to justify to me how your character knows that.  I'm not going to force you to pretend you don't know that information and try to get you to guess how you would behave if you didn't know that, because that's just impossible.  So yes, in that case if you have player knowledge, there is no roll, there is no story.  The player simply knows so the character does as well.   If you want to justify your in game knowledge through some sort of backstory, eh, I don't care.  If you don't, I still don't care.   The thing with metagaming is that the player's mind is inherently part of the game universe and can't be removed from it.  So even if in theory I'd like to stop metagaming, it's not possible to do it in a way that doesn't amount to telling the player how to play their character.   As long as the player isn't snooping at the session notes or buying copies of the module we are playing, I'm OK with player knowledge.

What I was talking about was something else entirely.  Suppose a player does not know that Earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, and the player encounters some monster for the first time.  That player is allowed in my games to make a skill check versus a DC that depends on the monster (in my game, based on commonality and reputation) and if they are successful, I will tell them a number of facts about the monster that depends on how well they succeeded on their check.   

What I was saying was that if you declare, "I used to sweep floors for the village hedge mage, and he once told me all about earth elementals.", that gets you no advantage on your lore check to identify the monster.    



> No CharGen resources needed, no lore rolls required, you know what your character thinks, therefore you know those facts about those monsters. However, when it turned to a social event where a roll could be bypassed, the player was outside the rules of the game, as everyone has stated repeatedly.




The same for me would generally hold true, although it's much harder to metagame social encounters with NPCs that it is monster entries in a monster manual.  But conceivably, if I ever run the same group on multiple campaigns in my homebrew world (and considering I've played 7 years on the current one and have years more to go, that's unlikely), all the stuff that they learned about the campaign world would be stuff they are carrying around that I couldn't stop them from using.  Granted, I'd probably set the campaign in a different part of the campaign world to minimize the cross over of knowledge, but now they'd have built up considerable lore about the cosmology, personality of various royal persons, religion, ways of magic, thieves guilds and secrets societies, secrets of the universe and so forth.   I can't ask the players to forget all that and there is no way to know how they'd act without it, so if they act on that knowledge, we can only assume that the character heard about it somehow.


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## pemerton (May 8, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Thus seems like you're trying to smear one thing into another.  On one hand, there's the limited authority of the player to use ingame resources to acquire equipment that is persistent until expended.  On the other, there's a suggestion that a player can freely add to the environment new fictional elements that modify the GM's narration of scene.
> 
> Your argument seems to be a smearing of the limited authority allowed to the accumlation of equipment to wholesale ability to propose new fiction into the scene.  You do this be claiming that a character pulling rope from a backpack is also a proposal of new fiction into the scene, but this fails because the rope, as equipment, was established a priori and is a persistent piece of fiction.  No contemporary authoring has occurred.  This categorically seperates it ftom the proposal that the guard is an old friend.



I'm not "smearing" anything - I'm enquiring about a particular aspect of the environment (namely, equipment) and who has principal authority over it.



Ovinomancer said:


> Again, you example of iii) isn't the "rekaxation" you suppose.  Further, just because you find it difficult to concueve doesn't mean much, as per your contemporary example of biases in thinking about social sciences.  Another example of this is your claim that the 5e rules require ii) to be false.
> 
> Come on, man, look past your personal biases.  I know these games (like 5e) absolutely frustrate you as a player, but that doesn't mean that having rope must be an usurpation of GM authority or that the rules require adventure only with strangers or that it's impossible to have play including PC friends and family without telling player what their characters think and feel.



I don't think that _having rope_ is a usurpation of GM authority. Because I think it's a clear exception to the GM's authority over establishing the environment.

As for how play is going to involve friends and family consistently with the player having primary authority over the feelings of the PC: I'm waiting for the examples to illustrate. _You see a person in front of you - she looks about fifty and has the bearing of a typical villager_ is narrating the environment. _You see a person in front of you - she looks about fifty and has the bearing of a typical villager - in fact, she's your mum!_, in a context where the player has a loving mum as part of his/her background, seems to be engendering and indeed coming close to dictating a particular feeling on the part of the PC.

I didn't see _exactly _that sort of thing very often in AD&D play, but _similar _stuff using _alignment_ rather than personal background as the lever was very common.



Tony Vargas said:


> there's no way any such pre-game establishment of backstory could cover every detail of the character & his connection to the world.



Right. To me, that's what establishes the tension between _GM establishes environment_ and _player establishes character_. Because if we take the backstory seriously, _and_ take the GM's authority over environment seriously, then from time-to-time the GM will establish elements of the environment which, given the backstory, _trigger a response from the character_.

************************

Anyway, having made these posts about equipment and friends/family I found myself reading the intro pages to Burning Wheel Gold and noticed that the connection is made there too. (And maybe my drawing of the connection was triggered by having read an earlier edition of those pages sometime in the past decade.) From p 17:

Let’s take a look at what comprises a character in this system: He has stats, attributes and skills; Beliefs, Instincts and traits; Resources, relationships, reputations, affiliations and Circles; and of course, he’s got his gear and stuff that he totes around with him.​
That's very close to the corresponding passage on p 4 of the 5e Basic PDF:

Each character brings particular capabilities to the adventure in the form of ability scores and skills, class features, racial traits, equipment, and magic items.​
We have, in both, abilities and skills; features/traits; resources and gear. The BW character has Beliefs and Instincts - the closest analogue in 5e D&D is Ideals, Bonds and Flaws, which aren't mentioned on p 4. And then the BW character has _relationships, reputations, affiliations and Circles_.

I don't think that the difference between _objects that I bring into the game as extensions of me_ and _persons that I bring into the game as extensions of me_ is self-evident. And I think that D&D itself has had features, over multiple editions, that illustrate the point: is a henchman a NPC (the official rule) or a second-tier PC (the frequent default in play which even the official rules give a pretty good nod to); what about a MU's familiar or a druid's animal friend/companion? Or even a charmed person or monster?

Obviously there are ways of handling all this, and of formally or informally allocating the requisite authorities. It's been done, both at the system level and at the table level, again and again over decades of RPG design and RPG play. What I am asserting is that _the GM has authority over the environment, the player authority over the character_ isn't enough to do this job. And if that's all a game gives you, then you're going to have to supplement it with intuitions or understandings drawn from elsewhere.



iserith said:


> It seems weird to me to press the idea of players establishing the environment by citing rules related to equipment though.



That's not what I'm doing. I'm saying that you can't work out what is or isn't permitted, in the contrast between _objects_ and _people_, simply by reiterating _GM controls environment, player controls character_. More specification - be that express or implicit - is needed. I've pointed to bits of the Basic PDF that I think do some of this, but frankly I also think it relies on some received understandings about how many RPGs, especially D&D, work.



Chaosmancer said:


> part of what drew me into this example was how close it was to the Elder telling the character how to slay various monsters when they were a child, which everyone on one side accepted this was perfectly fine



Yes, that was part of what led me to wonder about the example.



Chaosmancer said:


> It is one way to play, but I think it has some major flaws since it really cuts players off and makes caring about things other than themselves far more difficult.
> 
> Also, it seems to go against a lot of background traits and flaws. How are you supposed to deal with being the black sheep of a noble family, or contend with figures in your church as an acolyte, if you are so far away you never meet family members or people you knew growing up.



I understand what you're saying here. But as I've said earlier in this post, I find it hard to see how that sort of play can (i) give all the authority around establishing those NPCs, who they are, what they're doing, etc to the GM and yet (ii) give the player all the authority to decide his/her PC's feelings.

In bits of your post that I didn't quote, you talk about solving some of these issues by letting the GM override the player's account of what his/her PC believes. I assume you'd be prepared to do the same to make the sort of scenario you've described here work.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I'm not "smearing" anything - I'm enquiring about a particular aspect of the environment (namely, equipment) and who has principal authority over it.
> 
> I don't think that _having rope_ is a usurpation of GM authority. Because I think it's a clear exception to the GM's authority over establishing the environment.
> 
> ...




If all this stuff of serious concern to you?  Or is it just philosophical debate for the point of...well, philosophical debate?  Because if disagreements about these things are actually causing problems at your table(s), I would suggest it's an issue with the attitudes of the participants, not game/house rules.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

pemerton said:


> That's not what I'm doing. I'm saying that you can't work out what is or isn't permitted, in the contrast between _objects_ and _people_, simply by reiterating _GM controls environment, player controls character_. More specification - be that express or implicit - is needed. I've pointed to bits of the Basic PDF that I think do some of this, but frankly I also think it relies on some received understandings about how many RPGs, especially D&D, work.




And I'm saying it's absolutely true that you can work out what is or isn't permitted with the existing rules. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions, always. If the player says he or she wants to have the character reach into the backpack and grab a rope, by the rules, the DM gets to say how that works out. As I said before, the DM may decide the character lacks the remaining actions to do it right now or that the character doesn't have the item due to previous circumstances or because the rope is actually strapped to the side of the backpack and is not inside it as is the case with certain equipment packs. Or the DM can say "Yep, the rope is in your hand - now what do you do?"

As a matter of practicality, I doubt anyone is going to bat an eye when the player describes the character grabbing the rope out of the backpack, even if the location of the rope has not been previously established. It's probably not that important to establish except in very specific circumstances. But I don't think the claim that the rules don't cover this aspect of things is accurate or that the passage you cite is an exception to the process of play. The players describe what they want to do; the DM mediates between the player and the rules, sets limits, and narrates the result of the adventurers' actions.

This has the look of you trying to weaken the argument that you can learn to play D&D 5e without reference to other games. It's unclear why you'd want to do that in the first place, but I think you have thus far not succeeded.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> Another poster who stated that he or she deviated from the rules told me to call what he or she does "house rules" before. I refused. So I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else to push back on in this regard. This isn't me advocating slavish devotion to RAW for its own sake.



 If you want to label others' interpretations as 'deviated from the rules,' you are advocating devotion to the RaW.  If not for its own sake, then for the sake of buttressing a position you fear can't stand on its own merits without the imprimatur of RaW. 

Or, rather, that's an impression that you're creating which I'm pushing back against, because I hold a very similar interpretation, that's I'd like to see stand on its merits, as such, rather than defending it as dogma.



> There you go again parsing the rules and organizing them in some sort of level of relative importance. Pointless and problematic in my view.



 "High level" in that context is a matter of scope and detail, not importance.

Sorry if that's getting a trifle strident, but we have spun in this circle for a while now.  It gets frustrating.



iserith said:


> And I'm saying it's absolutely true that you can work out what is or isn't permitted with the existing rules.



 Not in an absolute sense, as in 3.x RaW (which, even then, was more an ideal than a reality).  Rather, by convention (both ancient D&D tradition and explicit 5e intent) the DM's interpretation of what is or isn't 'permitted' within the existing rules is the final word. 



> This has the look of you trying to weaken the argument that you can learn to play D&D 5e without reference to other games.



That'd be a strange argument to undertake.  5e is /meant/ to be accessible to new players.  It's also very much meant for long-time and returning players, who will necessarily learn it in the context of their past experiences.  

That's really 5e's great accomplishment: working for both.  It's why it's accepted by the existing fans rather than warred against, in spite of being accessible to potential new ones.


My feel for it is that, while you certainly can learn any edition without reference to any other, or learn it primarily in terms of what it changes from a prior edition, another manifestation of this acceptable/accessible feat of 5e, is that probably the /best/ way to learn it is at a mixed table of new, long-time, & returning players, each contributing their own perspective to the D&D experience.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> If you want to label others' interpretations as 'deviated from the rules,' you are advocating devotion to the RaW.  If not for its own sake, then for the sake of buttressing a position you fear can't stand on its own merits without the imprimatur of RaW.
> 
> Or, rather, that's an impression that you're creating which I'm pushing back against, because I hold a very similar interpretation, that's I'd like to see stand on its merits, as such, rather than defending it as dogma.




I would say your impression is mistaken and perhaps, based on your previous posts in this and other threads, greatly influenced by your experience in the edition wars and related discussions of the past. My position is that the rules are like the directions of a recipe. If you don't follow them, you may get a different result than the recipe intended. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. That's all. I follow the recipe and the result is something I find enjoyable enough to keep doing. Others may not.



Tony Vargas said:


> Not in an absolute sense, as in 3.x RaW (which, even then, was more an ideal than a reality).  Rather, by convention (both ancient D&D tradition and explicit 5e intent) the DM's interpretation of what is or isn't 'permitted' within the existing rules is the final word.




I don't see how "The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions" is anything other than absolutely clear. Then add to that the scope of the DM's role as fleshed out by the DMG and we have everything we need to determine who gets to say what.



Tony Vargas said:


> That'd be a strange argument to undertake.




I agree. But I also think that pemerton has asserted as much upthread, if I remember correctly. I can go look for the post if my recollection is disputed.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> My position is that the rules are like the directions of a recipe.



 Every seen a recipe that says "add ______ to taste?"  Sure, 5e is like a recipe - one where every ingredient is "to taste."



> If you don't follow them, you may get a different result than the recipe intended. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of taste. That's all. I follow the recipe and the result is something I find enjoyable enough to keep doing. Others may not.



 You follow your interpretation of the recipe, to your taste. Unless it blows up on you, it'd be unfair of someone else to say that you're doing it wrong.  Grant others the same courtesy, rather than claiming you have a lock on the One True RaW.



> I don't see how "The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions" is anything other than absolutely clear.



 You're seeing it in pemerton's posts, among others.  

Describing the results of an action can include narrating what a character thinks, decides, does or feels - or not, depending on your interpretation.



> I agree. But I also think that   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has asserted as much upthread, if I remember correctly. I can go look for the post if my recollection is disputed.



 I suspect it may have been more along the lines of experience with past editions can't be entirely set aside or compartmentalized when learning a new edition.  I went so far as to say it'd be very helpful.  I doubt anyone really claimed that 5e is impossible for new players to learn.



Elfcrusher said:


> If all this stuff of serious concern to you?  Or is it just philosophical debate for the point of...well, philosophical debate?



 IIRC,   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is an actual philosopher, like IRL.  

Or am I miss-remembering?



pemerton said:


> I'm not "smearing" anything - I'm enquiring about a particular aspect of the environment (namely, equipment) and who has principal authority over it.



 Players typically pick equipment from a list in the rule book, and are privileged (a privilege first formalized in 3.0) to describe what their that gear looks like.  Adding to or banning from those lists, though, is presumably the DM's prerogative.  



> I don't think that _having rope_ is a usurpation of GM authority. Because I think it's a clear exception to the GM's authority over establishing the environment.



 The DM's authority could include ruling that the player doesn't (or does) have rope if it's found not to be on his character sheet, or narrating that the player doesn't find said rope where he left it (it may have been stolen, or lost, say).



> I don't think that the difference between objects that I bring into the game as extensions of me and persons that I bring into the game as extensions of me is self-evident. And I think that D&D itself has had features, over multiple editions, that illustrate the point: is a henchman a NPC (the official rule) or a second-tier PC (the frequent default in play which even the official rules give a pretty good nod to); what about a MU's familiar or a druid's animal friend/companion? Or even a charmed person or monster?



 OK, I have to acknowledge those are good points, and not even all exclusively from past editions.  4e & 5e did get /very/ careful about 'pet' mechanics, though, which seems consistent with the intent for them being player-controlled (and that was clearly spelled out in 4e, of course, since it was way more precise & jargony).



> Obviously there are ways of handling all this, and of formally or informally allocating the requisite authorities. It's been done, both at the system level and at the table level, again and again over decades of RPG design and RPG play. What I am asserting is that _the GM has authority over the environment, the player authority over the character_ isn't enough to do this job. And if that's all a game gives you, then you're going to have to supplement it with intuitions or understandings drawn from elsewhere.



 I question that the D&D player actually has /final/ authority over his character.  Rather, the process of play is that he generally makes decisions for his character.  In 'narrating results' the DM could essentially take control of the character (something that freaks some players out, admittedly, but arguably within the scope of the DM's 'power,' that scope being essentially unlimited).



> I understand what you're saying here. But as I've said earlier in this post, I find it hard to see how that sort of play can (i) give all the authority around establishing those NPCs, who they are, what they're doing, etc to the GM and yet (ii) give the player all the authority to decide his/her PC's feelings.



 I don't see an inherent contradiction.  People can have one sort of relationship, each as far as the other knows (understands/experiences), yet the interior life of either or both my not be in synch with that. 



> In bits of your post that I didn't quote, you talk about solving some of these issues by letting the GM override the player's account of what his/her PC believes. I assume you'd be prepared to do the same to make the sort of scenario you've described here work.



 The DM would seem to have that authority, both traditionally through most of the game's history, and specifically in 5e.  But, like all rules, it's open to interpretation - DM interpretation.


----------



## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Every seen a recipe that says "add ______ to taste?"  Sure, 5e is like a recipe - one where every ingredient is "to taste."
> 
> You follow your interpretation of the recipe, to your taste. Unless it blows up on you, it'd be unfair of someone else to say that you're doing it wrong.  Grant others the same courtesy, rather than claiming you have a lock on the One True RaW.




Please do not ascribe to me claims I am not making. As for showing where others are not following the rules and perhaps not achieving a desirable result, that's fair game as far as I am concerned. It's advice for correcting a problem the poster reports. They can take it or leave it. Further, me saying what I do is because I'm just following what the books say is not a judgment on what other people choose to do. I frankly don't care what they do. It doesn't affect me.

I would also like to leave off on discussing how to discuss or argue about how to argue. It's not productive in my view.



Tony Vargas said:


> You're seeing it in pemerton's posts, among others.
> 
> Describing the results of an action can include narrating what a character thinks, decides, does or feels - or not, depending on your interpretation.




Only if you are ignoring the rule that states it's the _player_ who determines what the character does, thinks, and says.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

BTW: I guess iserith & I must have similar schedules, that's probably why we've got this crazy reply velocity going, not because of the intensity of the subject matter or anything.  I also hope are posting styles aren't clashing too badly.  I tend to be flippant and to poke fun at myself (and my generation or any other identity group that hasn't successfully expelled me yet - see, I just did it again) and that can bleed over onto posters I agree with too vehemently. 



iserith said:


> Please do not ascribe to me claims I am not making. As for showing where others are not following the rules and perhaps not achieving a desirable result, that's fair game as far as I am concerned. It's advice for correcting a problem the poster reports. They can take it or leave it. Further, me saying what I do is because I'm just following what the books say is not a judgment on what other people choose to do. I frankly don't care what they do. It doesn't affect me.



 If you didn't care, you wouldn't be claiming & defending the mantle of "following the rules" so zealously.  
(nb: caring can be good.)



> Only if you are ignoring the rule that states it's the _player_ who determines what the character does, thinks, and says.



 The rule (from the set we're talking about, anyway) says the player declares actions. That's a very high-level rule and not unambiguous.

The rules are open to interpretation.  Even in editions that tried to make them as clear, precise, and unambiguous (and, sometimes even balanced) as possible.

That's /not/ open to interpretation! ;P


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> If you didn't care, you wouldn't be claiming & defending the mantle of "following the rules" so zealously.




Sorry, dude, I'm the only authority here on what I care about. Please kindly leave off on this track.



Tony Vargas said:


> The rule (from the set we're talking about, anyway) says the player declares actions. That's a very high-level rule and not unambiguous.
> 
> The rules are open to interpretation.  Even in editions that tried to make them as clear, precise, and unambiguous (and, sometimes even balanced) as possible.
> 
> That's /not/ open to interpretation! ;P




"Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's _you_ as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks." (PHB, p. 185)

Taken together with "How to Play," we see very clearly who gets to say what according to the rules. The DM's authority does not extend to how the character thinks, acts, and talks, even when narrating the outcome of the adventurer's actions. (Some kind of magical compulsion might be an exception.) Whether someone chooses not to heed these rules is up to them. What the books says about it is, however, is not disputable.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's _you_ as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks." (PHB, p. 185)



 That's a definition of RP, we all know how uncontroversial those are.



> Taken together with "How to Play," we see very clearly who gets to say what according to the rules. The DM's authority does not extend to how the character thinks, acts, and talks, even when narrating the outcome of the adventurer's actions.



 That's one valid interpretation. 
It's not the only one.  That's the sticking point that's got us spinning like this.  I'm insistent that a game written in natural, even conversational language, that encourages the DM to interpret the rules and make judgements is, in fact, open to multiple interpretations.  

I'm not inclined to die on hills, but I feel like I could heavily fortify this one and leave a lot of mines on it.



> (Some kind of magical compulsion might be an exception.) Whether someone chooses not to heed these rules is up to them. What the books says about it is, however, is not disputable.



 What the book says, literally, is in black & white - how to interpret it is up to the DM.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's a definition of RP, we all know how uncontroversial those are.




As far as D&D 5e is concerned, that's the definition. Other games might have other definitions.



Tony Vargas said:


> That's one valid interpretation.
> It's not the only one.  That's the sticking point that's got us spinning like this.  I'm insistent that a game written in natural, even conversational language, that encourages the DM to interpret the rules and make judgements is, in fact, open to multiple interpretations.
> 
> I'm not inclined to die on hills, but I feel like I could heavily fortify this one and leave a lot of mines on it.
> ...




That the game works to varying degrees whether a DM follows the rules or not is something I do not dispute, especially since I've seen that be the case (even if it some cases it wasn't my cup of tea). But that comes at the risk of arriving at a game experience that is not intended or in some cases undesirable. That the books are written in natural language really doesn't have any bearing on anything in my view.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's a definition of RP, we all know how uncontroversial those are.
> 
> . . .
> 
> What the book says, literally, is in black & white - how to interpret it is up to the DM.



I like that you started your post dismissing what the book says, then ended it by appealing to what the book says.


Is that chutzpah? Or is it ironic? Should I ask Alanis?


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> I like that you started your post dismissing what the book says, then ended it by appealing to what the book says.



 5e /admits/ that what it says is open to DM interpretation and that the DM can change rules as he likes (once he's figured out what they say to his satisfaction - or instead of trying to interpret them, for that matter.  The reality is that's true of every RPG, just by the nature of the player-GM dynamic.  The GM choose what game to run, that can be a given game 'by the book,' or variation on one (or an original system, though I've rarely - I can't say never because "Storyboard" - seen that go well).  5e calls for DM rulings in leu of presenting more detailed mechanics.

None of that's an appeal to 5e's 'RaW.'


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> That the game works to varying degrees whether a DM follows the rules or not is something I do not dispute, especially since I've seen that be the case (even if it some cases it wasn't my cup of tea). But that comes at the risk of arriving at a game experience that is not intended or in some cases undesirable. That the books are written in natural language really doesn't have any bearing on anything in my view.



 Frankly, IMX, the risk of delivering a negative experience is greater for the DM who follows the rules too closely, than for the DM who wings it (or at least, comes up with an interpretation that works well for him & his players, if he must stick to something too closely).

When I read your posts, I see a good DM, who's come up with very good interpretations of 5e that work well for him, and might well be great for a /lot/ of tables.  But, I also see you wrapping those interpretations in a mantle of being the /only/ interpretation that's valid, with everything else being 'changing the rules.'  That bothers me.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> Or is it ironic? Should I ask Alanis?




Alanis had the last laugh on that one.  Most people were so busy gleefully pointing out that the anecdotes in the song are (for the most part) not examples of irony that they missed the point that the _song itself_ is ironic.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Frankly, IMX, the risk of delivering a negative experience is greater for the DM who follows the rules too closely, than for the DM who wings it (or at least, comes up with an interpretation that works well for him & his players, if he must stick to something too closely).
> 
> When I read your posts, I see a good DM, who's come up with very good interpretations of 5e that work well for him, and might well be great for a /lot/ of tables.  But, I also see you wrapping those interpretations in a mantle of being the /only/ interpretation that's valid, with everything else being 'changing the rules.'  That bothers me.




Thanks for the kind words, but if that's your interpretation of my position, I'm afraid it will have to continue to bother you. I won't stop saying that I do what I do because the rules say to do that or suggest to people having issues that they try what the rules say to see if it corrects the problem.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> 5e /admits/ that what it says is open to DM interpretation and that the DM can change rules as he likes (once he's figured out what they say to his satisfaction - or instead of trying to interpret them, for that matter.  The reality is that's true of every RPG, just by the nature of the player-GM dynamic.  The GM choose what game to run, that can be a given game 'by the book,' or variation on one (or an original system, though I've rarely - I can't say never because "Storyboard" - seen that go well).  5e calls for DM rulings in leu of presenting more detailed mechanics.
> 
> None of that's an appeal to 5e's 'RaW.'




I never said RaW, just "what the book says." And here you are, again appealing to what the book says to justify summarily dismissing what the book says.

I feel like I've just been handed a Cobra Assault Cannon. "I like it."


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> Thanks for the kind words, but if that's your interpretation of my position, I'm afraid it will have to continue to bother you. I won't stop saying that I do what I do because the rules say to do that or suggest to people having issues that they try what the rules say to see if it corrects the problem.



 If it's too hard to say "try interpreting those rules, this way" instead of "try following the rules."  If it's too hard to present something as a method that "works well for me" instead of "the right way to do it."  If the I, M, H, & O keys just don't work. 
::shrug::



Satyrn said:


> I never said RaW, just "what the book says."



 What's the distinction?  







> And here you are, again appealing to what the book says to justify summarily dismissing what the book says.



 I'm not sure how you could possibly arrive at that conclusion.  5e goes right ahead and says that the DM can interpret/ignore/change/fill-in rules, that it's just a starting point, and the DM can take it where he wants.  But, the DM has never needed such permission.


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> If it's too hard to say "try interpreting those rules, this way" instead of "try following the rules."  If it's too hard to present something as a method that "works well for me" instead of "the right way to do it."  If the I, M, H, & O keys just don't work. .




Here we're just discussing how to discuss or arguing about how to argue and you know my feelings about that.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> What's the distinction?



One is jargon that surely has some specific meaning to you, the other is what I actually said.

But, dang, this was a stupid shallow rabbit hole that leads nowhere I stepped into and really don't care about.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

On to more productive matters!



Elfcrusher said:


> Alanis had the last laugh on that one.  Most people were so busy gleefully pointing out that the anecdotes in the song are (for the most part) not examples of irony that they missed the point that the _song itself_ is ironic.




Was this actually her intent, or is this explanation just a successful retcon?

And do you think Alanis is a fan of Fuller House?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 8, 2019)

I don't see why iserith should be expected to temper what he's saying.  The passages he quotes aren't suggestions; they are rules.  Sure, people might find it more persuasive if he stopped using that argument and instead explained why he finds the actual rules more enjoyable than some misinterpretation of them.  But he's not saying anything subjective or untrue.  Nor is he telling other people that what they are doing is "wrong" morally, ethically, aesthetically, theologically, fiscally or in any other sense, other than simply not being the rules.

If people don't like the rules they should, of course, feel free to change them.  I do.  There's a long rich history of that in D&D.  But this whole "my way of playing, which is different from what the authors of the book have written, are not house rules because the book says I can change the rules" is...is...well, I'm honestly not sure what it is. What's the point of trying to make that crazy argument?


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I don't see why iserith should be expected to temper what he's saying.  The passages he quotes aren't suggestions; they are rules.



 The problem isn't just whether any given passage between the covers is a 'rule,' guideline, mechanic, flavor text, suggestions, advice, or whatever - it's that even if you do decide to take a passage as a rule, the language (relatively informal and jargon-lite) has plenty of ambiguity and room for interpretation.  







> Sure, people might find it more persuasive if he stopped using that argument and instead explained why he finds the actual rules more enjoyable than some misinterpretation of them.



 Because what he plays by isn't "the actual rules" and how other people read them isn't "misinterpretation" - they're /different interpretations/.  5e simply isn't written so unambiguously that a claim of RaW is meaningful.  And, I really didn't care for what that attitude did to 3.x discussions - hate to see it happen to 5e, even just in this corner of the broader community.  

If I wanted to go back to that, I could engage more with PF discussions.

What 5e has gotten back to, intentionally, and what TSR era D&D had going for it more or less by accident, is that lack of precision that allows each DM to get out of the game what he wants from it & brings to it, rather than /only/ what the writer 'intended.'  It's a great accomplishment of 5e that different DMs can run in quite different styles, supported by quite different interpretations & rulings, yet still be "playing 5e" in the sense that everything they come up with is in accord with what's written in the book.



Satyrn said:


> One is jargon that surely has some specific meaning to you, the other is what I actually said.



 The meaning of 'RaW' is familiar to anyone that suffered through the community as it existed in the 3.x era, anyway, and that specific meaning is "what the book says," literally.



> But, dang, this was a stupid shallow rabbit hole that leads nowhere I stepped into and really don't care about.



 Long as you didn't break your ankle it's all good.  ;P


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## iserith (May 8, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> And, I really didn't care for what that attitude did to 3.x discussions - hate to see it happen to 5e, even just in this corner of the broader community.




I truly think that is what your objection is all about - memories of a war in which you participated that ended long ago. It can be seen in a lot of your posts and it appears to color your reception of the viewpoints and positions of others. It's in your often backhanded or faint praise of D&D 5e, compared to the edition of the game you clearly prefer (and frankly so do I).

I'm not a ghost from that war come to haunt you or someone trying to revive a toxic culture from two editions ago. I'm just saying what I do is what the book says to do and, if someone is having problems with the game, maybe they ought to try doing what the books say to see if that corrects the problem. That's hardly some quasi-religious RAW zealotry. It's just doing what's in the instruction manual, same as I'd do if playing any other game.


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## Tony Vargas (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> I truly think that is what your objection is all about - memories of a war in which you participated that ended long ago. It can be seen in a lot of your posts and it appears to color your reception of the viewpoints and positions of others.



 Those who forget the mistakes of history and all...


...though, to be fair, RaW madness pre-dated the edition war.


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## Satyrn (May 8, 2019)

iserith said:


> I truly think that is what your objection is all about - memories of a war in which you participated that ended long ago. It can be seen in a lot of your posts and it appears to color your reception of the viewpoints and positions of others. It's in your often backhanded or faint praise of D&D 5e, compared to the edition of the game you clearly prefer (and frankly so do I).
> 
> I'm not a ghost from that war come to haunt you or someone trying to revive a toxic culture from two editions ago. I'm just saying what I do is what the book says to do and, if someone is having problems with the game, maybe they ought to try doing what the books say to see if that corrects the problem. That's hardly some quasi-religious RAW zealotry. It's just doing what's in the instruction manual, same as I'd do if playing any other game.




If I read the instruction manuals, I would never have built up this collection of spare nuts and bolts.

(And it's a good thing I have them because my Ikea shelving keeps falling apart)


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> What answer are you looking for? I stated what the rules have to say on the matter and have addressed the specific example in a reply to Elfcrusher upthread. You're welcome to read it.




I read what you wrote. 

The DMG says you should work with character backstories before the game, allowing things to fit where they can. During the game the player is going against expectations by trying to add to their backstory, but that may be fine, or it may not be. It depends on the table and the temperament of the people involved since it doesn't involve the rules in any way. 

As solid as mist that is. 




iserith said:


> I hope you don't count me among them. If you do, then you've misunderstood (and now misstated) my position.




With your assertions of characters thinking what the player decides, and always being right in that regard, then if the character thinks Francis exists, then the player thinks Francis exists, because they must be right about what their character is thinking. 

I'm sure it is more nuanced than that, but you seem very much in-line with wanting as little divide between character and player knowledge as possible. 



iserith said:


> Yes, the player determines what the character thinks and does, and particular knowledge is not necessarily a prerequisite to act. My character doesn't need to know a thing about the vulnerabilities of earth elementals to hit it with a thunderwave spell. But I can choose to say my character thinks that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder. My character might be right. Or the character might be wrong.
> 
> It's risky to act on assumptions when the character's life is on the line, so don't just assume as a player - have your character act in the context of the setting to verify your assumptions. Or don't and potentially face dire consequences. It's the player's call.




Yep, this all lines up with how I understand your position. 

Though, I find it amusing you added in the part about not needing to know an earth elementals vulnerabilities to cast Thunderwave. You are completely correct, of course, but there are other ways to utilize a character's knowledge. For example, buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells in preparation of a battle involving lots of earth elementals under the assumption of them being vulnerable to that damage. 

Of course, "assume at your own risk, I as the DM can and will change anything in the game" but that is a separate thing from what is being discussed. 




Celebrim said:


> See, again, I think you are trying to draw contrasts that just aren't there, and I wish you'd stop using me as evidence in some argument you are having with someone else..




I'm talking to multiple people, but when I posted the original bit addressing iserith, you responded with your own points. Then, you have been looking at my points and calling them out as though the answer is obvious, but if you look at some of the other responses, they are not obvious to all the people I'm discussing with. 

I'm not dragging you into this, you quoted me first and decided to get involved with the discussion. I'm just trying to help you understand that my arguments have been crafted because of certain assumptions, and that if you don't share those assumptions it might seem strange I have to make these arguments at all. 




Celebrim said:


> I wasn't in that discussion, but this seems to be something else entirely.  I'm generally of the opinion that there is no such thing as metagaming, so if you the player know that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, you don't have to justify to me how your character knows that.  I'm not going to force you to pretend you don't know that information and try to get you to guess how you would behave if you didn't know that, because that's just impossible.  So yes, in that case if you have player knowledge, there is no roll, there is no story.  The player simply knows so the character does as well.   If you want to justify your in game knowledge through some sort of backstory, eh, I don't care.  If you don't, I still don't care.   The thing with metagaming is that the player's mind is inherently part of the game universe and can't be removed from it.  So even if in theory I'd like to stop metagaming, it's not possible to do it in a way that doesn't amount to telling the player how to play their character.   As long as the player isn't snooping at the session notes or buying copies of the module we are playing, I'm OK with player knowledge.
> 
> What I was talking about was something else entirely.  Suppose a player does not know that Earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, and the player encounters some monster for the first time.  That player is allowed in my games to make a skill check versus a DC that depends on the monster (in my game, based on commonality and reputation) and if they are successful, I will tell them a number of facts about the monster that depends on how well they succeeded on their check.
> 
> What I was saying was that if you declare, "I used to sweep floors for the village hedge mage, and he once told me all about earth elementals.", that gets you no advantage on your lore check to identify the monster.




Okay, fair enough. In your post you made it sound as though at your table you expected your players not to act upon information in the MM without having to have first made a roll at some point to determine that knowledge. 

I agree that separating that knowledge is difficult if not impossible. It rarely comes up at my table, and people are generally more concerned with avoiding resistances and immunities that exploiting vulnerabilities, so the few times people do know something, it is a minor effect. However, I am a person who gets bugged by inconsistencies in stories, so if your character has knowledge about how mindflayers are created, despite being a poor street rat with no encounters with anything more arcane than a magic lantern, I'm going to wonder how you came by this explicit and detailed secret knowledge. It will bother me, simply because it alters your story and would seem out of place. 

Even more so if it happens to be a major world secret that the players previously had to struggle and fight to learn. 




pemerton said:


> I understand what you're saying here. But as I've said earlier in this post, I find it hard to see how that sort of play can (i) give all the authority around establishing those NPCs, who they are, what they're doing, etc to the GM and yet (ii) give the player all the authority to decide his/her PC's feelings.
> 
> In bits of your post that I didn't quote, you talk about solving some of these issues by letting the GM override the player's account of what his/her PC believes. I assume you'd be prepared to do the same to make the sort of scenario you've described here work.




Yeah, I'm fully prepared to work with the player and have some give and take in these areas. Players can add some details to the game world, I can throw in some minor surface feelings to the PC. I'm not going to run roughshod over their characters, but if the player has established, let us say a child, and then as part of a magic trap playing on a character's fears, I'd feel perfectly fine saying something to the effect of "With dawning horror you realize that the figure being strapped to the rack is [insert npc name here]". Yes, I'm telling the player how their character feels, but I'm working with what we have previously established. And myself and the entire table is going to be a little taken aback if their reaction to their kid being strapped to a torture device isn't some form of horror.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I read what you wrote.
> 
> The DMG says you should work with character backstories before the game, allowing things to fit where they can. During the game the player is going against expectations by trying to add to their backstory, but that may be fine, or it may not be. It depends on the table and the temperament of the people involved since it doesn't involve the rules in any way.
> 
> As solid as mist that is.




What's not solid about it?



Chaosmancer said:


> With your assertions of characters thinking what the player decides, and always being right in that regard...




Always right in that this is what the character thinks, anyway, since the rules say the player determines what the character thinks. Those thoughts themselves might be wrong.



Chaosmancer said:


> then if the character thinks Francis exists, then the player thinks Francis exists, because they must be right about what their character is thinking.




The player need not necessarily believe that Frances exists. The player could be portraying a character who is sometimes confused about what is or isn't real, a flaw that when so portrayed could be worth Inspiration.

In any case, I don't have any particular preference with regard to the "divide between character and player knowledge." It's up to the player what the character thinks. It's none of my business as DM.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yep, this all lines up with how I understand your position.
> 
> Though, I find it amusing you added in the part about not needing to know an earth elementals vulnerabilities to cast Thunderwave. You are completely correct, of course, but there are other ways to utilize a character's knowledge. For example, buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells in preparation of a battle involving lots of earth elementals under the assumption of them being vulnerable to that damage.
> 
> Of course, "assume at your own risk, I as the DM can and will change anything in the game" but that is a separate thing from what is being discussed.




"Buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells" does not necessarily require knowledge on the part of the character of the weaknesses of earth elementals either, even if the player knows a battle with such creatures looms.


----------



## Hussar (May 9, 2019)

*ducks back in, waving a white flag*

Totally, totally not trying to start anything.  Honest.

I just want to point something out [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION].  When three different posters, at least, at three different times - myself, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] and now [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], all come to the same, or at least very similar conclusions based on what you are posting, perhaps, and I'm not saying this is true, but, perhaps, the point you are trying to make isn't as clear as you think it is.

I mean, you're dismissing Tony Vargas because apparently he's been scarred by edition wars.  You dismissed oofta so hard that he's still on your ignore list.  You dismissed my points as well.  

I'm not saying you're wrong here.  I'm not trying to pick a fight and my horse in this race is long dead.  I'm just saying that perhaps, just maybe, your point could be misconstrued.

I mean, heck, once you actually pointed out an actual example, I realized that there is not much difference between your table and mine, I just don't insist on such strict adherence to formula - I skip steps.  Otherwise, the end results between your table and mine are probably pretty close.  However, it took an actual example to see that.  

I guess what I'm trying to say is, continuously repeating the same line will not convince anyone.  It requires multiple approaches.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Hussar said:


> *ducks back in, waving a white flag*
> 
> Totally, totally not trying to start anything.  Honest.
> 
> ...




I'm not trying to convince you of anything. And it's likely that more people understand my points than don't. Just a handful of folks are vocal in their objections and it's always the same posters in multiple threads. That strikes me as a clash of personalities more than anything else.


----------



## pemerton (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> This has the look of you trying to weaken the argument that you can learn to play D&D 5e without reference to other games. It's unclear why you'd want to do that in the first place, but I think you have thus far not succeeded.





Elfcrusher said:


> If all this stuff of serious concern to you?  Or is it just philosophical debate for the point of...well, philosophical debate?  Because if disagreements about these things are actually causing problems at your table(s), I would suggest it's an issue with the attitudes of the participants, not game/house rules.



I haven't kept secret my reasons for talking about this stuff. I think that the rules _the GM controls the environment_, _the GM narrates the consequencdes of action_, _the player decides what his/her PC thinks_ don't settle all questions of authority. There are aspects of the environment - stuff (equipment) and people (friends and family) - which are (apt to be conceived of as) extensions of the character.

A player gets to write _rope_ on his/her PC sheet if s/he follows the proper steps in character building. This makes it true that the environment of the PC contains a rope. That is to say, the GM doesn't exercise principal authority over that aspect of the environment.

As to why I care - it's over 400 posts into a thread that is a spin-off of another thread that is over 1000 posts. To me, this is the interesting topic that is alive after those 2000-odd posts.



Tony Vargas said:


> IIRC, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is an actual philosopher, like IRL.
> 
> Or am I miss-remembering?



No, you're not misremebering. I'm an academic lawyer and philosopher.



Tony Vargas said:


> I have to acknowledge those are good points



Thank you!



Tony Vargas said:


> I question that the D&D player actually has /final/ authority over his character.  Rather, the process of play is that he generally makes decisions for his character.  In 'narrating results' the DM could essentially take control of the character
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The DM would seem to have that authority, both traditionally through most of the game's history, and specifically in 5e.  But, like all rules, it's open to interpretation - DM interpretation.





Chaosmancer said:


> I'm fully prepared to work with the player and have some give and take in these areas. Players can add some details to the game world, I can throw in some minor surface feelings to the PC. I'm not going to run roughshod over their characters, but if the player has established, let us say a child, and then as part of a magic trap playing on a character's fears, I'd feel perfectly fine saying something to the effect of "With dawning horror you realize that the figure being strapped to the rack is [insert npc name here]". Yes, I'm telling the player how their character feels, but I'm working with what we have previously established. And myself and the entire table is going to be a little taken aback if their reaction to their kid being strapped to a torture device isn't some form of horror.



This all makes sense.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I haven't kept secret my reasons for talking about this stuff. I think that the rules _the GM controls the environment_, _the GM narrates the consequencdes of action_, _the player decides what his/her PC thinks_ don't settle all questions of authority. There are aspects of the environment - stuff (equipment) and people (friends and family) - which are (apt to be conceived of as) extensions of the character.
> 
> A player gets to write _rope_ on his/her PC sheet if s/he follows the proper steps in character building. This makes it true that the environment of the PC contains a rope. That is to say, the GM doesn't exercise principal authority over that aspect of the environment.




There's a difference between _before play_ and _during play_ with regard to equipment. Yes, you get to pick your equipment before play during character creation, just like you get to pick your ability scores (if you're not rolling them), race, class, and so on. _During play_, the results of your action declarations are firmly in the hands of the DM.

People other than player characters are non-player characters and similarly under the control of the DM during play.


----------



## Celebrim (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> ...people having issues that they try what the rules say to see if it corrects the problem.




My general advice to noob DMs is try the rules first, and only change them if everyone at the table is unhappy with the results.   And certainly, if something seems wrong, consult the rules to make sure you are actually using them before complaining about the rules.  Make sure you are testing the rules as they exist before deciding to write your own.

The big problem with house rules is that rules smithing is an art, and most DMs just don't have the skills accomplish their actual goals.  Chances are, the professionals designed it better than you will.  Back when we had a real house rules forum, I saw tons of house rules proposed that didn't solve the problem that they were intended to solve, or which created more problems than they solved, or which seemed to be a solution searching for a problem.

That said, every game has issues, and the professionals have deadlines and are working under a budget and within a limit on page count.   If you know what you are doing and if a rule just makes everyone unhappy, by all means change it.   

Further, every rule set has gaps in it where things are either open to interpretation, or the exact circumstances just aren't covered by the rules, or where the rules work for a given set of assumptions but that in real play cases come up outside of the assumptions.  I've never really DMed a game where the players haven't proposed something that a kindergartener could at least try to do (maybe failing, but they could try) but the rules didn't really clearly explain what to do in that case.  Further, I've never DMed a game where the rules have't stated something that for most cases is perfectly reasonably, but produces unreasonable results in edge cases.

So even if you don't plan on having house rules, and even if you plan on playing by the RAW, you have house rules.  If you think you don't, then you just aren't conscious of your house rules.

I haven't followed very closely on the argument you are having, but what passage from 5e do you think is a rule?  

It's been my experience that a lot of things that people claim are rules aren't rules.   For example, "wealth by level" in 3.X was not a rule, it was a guideline.  Thirteen encounters per adventuring day, was not a rule, but a guideline.  That this percentage of encounters should be above CR and this below it was not a rule, but a guideline.   Yet I often got into arguments online that insisted that if the PC's didn't receive their suggested wealth by level that I was breaking the rules.

Generally speaking, I don't classify things that don't have to do with process resolution as "rules".   Much of the DMG in every edition tends to be just good advice to novice DMs on how to play D&D according to its default assumptions.


----------



## Hriston (May 9, 2019)

I agree that there are NPCs that the game suggests are "extensions of the PC" and thus under the control of the player. This is nowhere more apparent than in the background features.

From the acolyte's "Shelter of the Faithful":
While near your temple, you can call upon the priests for assistance, provided the assistance you ask for is not hazardous and you remain in good standing with your temple.​
From the criminal's "Criminal Contact"
You have a reliable and trustworthy contact who acts as your liaison to a network of other criminals. You know how to get messages to and from your contact, even over great distances; specifically, you know the local messengers, corrupt caravan masters, and seedy sailors who can deliver messages for you.​
From the noble's "Position of Priviledge":
You can secure an audience with a local noble if you need to.​
From the sage's "Researcher":
When you attempt to learn or recall a piece of lore, if you do not know that information, you often know where and from whom you can obtain it. Usually, this information comes from a library, scriptorium, university, or a sage or other learned person or creature.​
These are abilities, on the order of class and racial features on the character sheet, that the player can invoke that give his/her character access to NPCs with which s/he is connected and over which the player can exert some degree of influence.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 9, 2019)

Hussar said:


> *ducks back in, waving a white flag*
> 
> I mean, you're dismissing Tony Vargas because apparently he's been scarred by edition wars.



 All my scars are on the inside.




pemerton said:


> I think that the rules the GM controls the environment, the GM narrates the consequencdes of action, the player decides what his/her PC thinks don't settle all questions of authority.




Y'know, it occurs to me that are times when the DM deciding what the PC thinks is the whole point.  

Player: I pay attention not just to what he's saying, but to his body language how he's saying it, to try to get a sense of if he's being truthful or not.
DM: OK, roll WIS, Insight applies.
Player:  9 + 2 +5 that's a 15
DM: _16_  You think he's probably being truthful.
Player: STOP TELLING ME WHAT MY CHARACTER THINKS!



pemerton said:


> A player gets to write _rope_ on his/her PC sheet if s/he follows the proper steps in character building. This makes it true that the environment of the PC contains a rope. That is to say, the GM doesn't exercise principal authority over that aspect of the environment.




Player:  I pull 50' of rope out of my pack and...
DM: You find no rope in your pack.
Player:  I picked it before play, it's right here on my sheet! 
DM:  It's not there now.
Player:  What happened to it?
DM:  I hear a goal, but not a method.
Player:  What do I think could have happened to it?
DM:  Oh, no, I'm not falling for that again.

… that is, the DM controls the environment and the environment could do all sorts of things to your equipment after play begins.



> There are aspects of the environment - stuff (equipment) and people (friends and family) - which are (apt to be conceived of as) extensions of the character.



 But, even if they're conceived that way, and they happen to come up in play, then their condition, what they do, etc, is all described along with the rest of the environment, by the DM.

OTOH, there have been (often problematic) 'pet' mechanics that let the player control a class feature that happens to be nominally not a player character.  

"the GM controls the environment, the player declares actions, the GM narrates the consequences of action" may not be adequate in all instances, but it's a good, reasonably clear (obviously ambiguous) high-level rule and it still informs instances where it doesn't apply exactly like it sounds.

A player controlling an animal companion's actions, fleshing out his background, picking (and describing - which IIRC, is still allowed) his gear, and so forth may not neatly, literally fit that rule on the surface, but they're still compatible with it at some level.  Picking gear, for instance, is just simplified:  you could - and might be required to by some DMs - acquire gear through a series of interactions with the environment - the DM describes the town, you declare you look for chandler, the DM narrates finding one, you declare the goal of acquiring rope & the method of honestly negotiating a fair price with said chandler, the DM narrates you getting ripped off because of the 'gold rush economy,' etc.  
At that rate, it should only take a few sessions to get everyone equipped and to the dungeon.


----------



## Celebrim (May 9, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I agree that separating that knowledge is difficult if not impossible. It rarely comes up at my table, and people are generally more concerned with avoiding resistances and immunities that exploiting vulnerabilities, so the few times people do know something, it is a minor effect. However, I am a person who gets bugged by inconsistencies in stories, so if your character has knowledge about how mindflayers are created, despite being a poor street rat with no encounters with anything more arcane than a magic lantern, I'm going to wonder how you came by this explicit and detailed secret knowledge. It will bother me, simply because it alters your story and would seem out of place.




As far as inconsistencies in stories go, there have been at least 3 origin stories for Mind Flayers that I know of (and that's before we even finished 2e) and I wouldn't be surprised to find recent editions have introduced more of them, or that 2e settings I'm not that familiar with (Planescape, Spelljammer) had their own backstories that weren't completely congruent.   Beyond that, I'd never assume that a particular DM was using one canon or another.   Running a game in say a Marvel or DC universe would be equally ambiguous.  The comics are full of retcons.  

If a poor street rat knows a bunch about Mind Flayers because his player knows a bunch about Mind Flayers, and he chooses to act on that knowledge in character by relating all the stuff he knows, that's nothing I can do anything about.  I can't tell a player how to play their character, and I can't make players forget what they know.   They'll have to make choices about what they are comfortable doing.  If we need to establish how he knows it, well, that's never that hard to do and in my experience often makes for fun story hooks especially if the player is willing to let me run with that.

Lots of things that players do used to bother me that elicit shrugs these days now that I'm older.



> And myself and the entire table is going to be a little taken aback if their reaction to their kid being strapped to a torture device isn't some form of horror.




Maybe so, but that's the players choice how to play it as far as I'm concerned.   If the player wants to play this as, "Don't worry Johnny, this will only hurt for a little while...", that's the player's decision, and the fact that everyone is taken aback by this reaction might well be interesting.   I prefer not to tell players how their character acts.   The player has little enough control over the game as it is with me stepping on the one prerogative that they unambiguously have.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I haven't followed very closely on the argument you are having, but what passage from 5e do you think is a rule?
> 
> It's been my experience that a lot of things that people claim are rules aren't rules.   For example, "wealth by level" in 3.X was not a rule, it was a guideline.  Thirteen encounters per adventuring day, was not a rule, but a guideline.  That this percentage of encounters should be above CR and this below it was not a rule, but a guideline.   Yet I often got into arguments online that insisted that if the PC's didn't receive their suggested wealth by level that I was breaking the rules.
> 
> Generally speaking, I don't classify things that don't have to do with process resolution as "rules".   Much of the DMG in every edition tends to be just good advice to novice DMs on how to play D&D according to its default assumptions.




I would say anything that isn't specifically called out as a rules variant (e.g., encumbrance or different resting options) or the like is a rule. This includes the stuff that doesn't seem very "crunchy," such as the section on "How to Play" or what the player gets to determine about the character. I think to parse it into various other words like "guidelines" or the like doesn't really help and certainly doesn't make for interesting discussion in my view. The books are instruction manuals on how to play a fairly complex game. Ignore or downplay parts of it at your own risk. Doing so may change nothing appreciable about the outcome. Or it may result in an undesirable experience - but so too might playing by the rules if the play experience isn't to your tastes. That might suggest a need for house rules, variant rules, table rules, or a wholesale change of game.

I want to be clear here: I am not advocating slavish devotion to RAW. I change rules depending on the campaign I am running to better support the campaign's theme. But like you said, I think it's a good idea to play as intended first before deciding whether things need to change and how.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Hriston said:


> I agree that there are NPCs that the game suggests are "extensions of the PC" and thus under the control of the player. This is nowhere more apparent than in the background features.
> 
> From the acolyte's "Shelter of the Faithful":
> While near your temple, you can call upon the priests for assistance, provided the assistance you ask for is not hazardous and you remain in good standing with your temple.​
> ...




Sure, but all of the organizations, locations, and NPCs are under the full control of the DM during play as are the outcomes of all action declarations by the player related to the background features above, since you still have to declare an action to seek assistance from the priests of your temple, get messages to your criminal contact, secure an audience with a noble, and so on. This does not suggest control over the environment outside of the character to me; rather, they are rules the DM may choose to use to decide on the outcome of the action declaration. As DM, I'm inclined to say your action declaration to get an audience with the local noble automatically succeeds if you have the "Position of Privilege" feature. But that might not always be the case, for example, if there is no local noble in the town or (for reasons I sure I hope I telegraphed previously) the noble refuses all audiences due to some plot-relevant reason.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> I would say anything that isn't specifically called out as a rules variant (e.g., encumbrance or different resting options) or the like is a rule. This includes the stuff that doesn't seem very "crunchy," such as the section on "How to Play" or what the player gets to determine about the character. I think to parse it into various other words like "guidelines" or the like doesn't really help



 There's definite differences among, say, a crunchy mechanic, a clearly stated but vague rule, an a section explicitly labeled 'advice.'  Since such distinctions exist, labeling them isn't unreasonable.

If you want to use 'rule' in every label, why not.  Maybe:  'rule mechanic', 'procedural rule,' 'rule of thumb,' respectively, for the above instances.   

Or, we could call none of them rules:  resolution mechanic, sequence of play, advice.

It shouldn't make a difference.





> The books are instruction manuals on how to play a fairly complex game.



 They're closer to self-help books than technical manuals.  Again, intentionally so, other WotC eds were more manual-like, heavier on the jargon and all, less conversational, etc, and 5e design explicitly moved away from that.



> *Ignore or downplay parts of it at your own risk.* … I want to be clear here: I am not advocating slavish devotion to RAW.



 It's a good thing you clarified, because the bolded bit, sounds like exactly that (and stated none too gently, at that).  Language is ambiguous, that way.  

By the same token, absent Mike Mearls sitting at your table, clarifying every word of the books, interpretation is called for, and different interpretations may well be equally valid.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Maybe so, but that's the players choice how to play it as far as I'm concerned.   If the player wants to play this as, "Don't worry Johnny, this will only hurt for a little while...", that's the player's decision, and the fact that everyone is taken aback by this reaction might well be interesting.   I prefer not to tell players how their character acts.   The player has little enough control over the game as it is with me stepping on the one prerogative that they unambiguously have.




I agree. I think it may have been this thread where I mentioned that even if the DM "gives" the player the freedom to react however he or she likes after the DM establishes how the character feels about something, the DM still established a constraint in which the player may feel compelled to take into account when deciding what to do. As [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] points out, the rest of the table might be taken aback if the character acts in a manner that is incongruous with what the DM established about the character's feelings. This is a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) form of control, even if the DM doesn't intend it that way. Better to steer clear in my view.


----------



## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> There's definite differences among, say, a crunchy mechanic, a clearly stated but vague rule, an a section explicitly labeled 'advice.'  Since such distinctions exist, labeling them isn't unreasonable.
> 
> If you want to use 'rule' in every label, why not.  Maybe:  'rule mechanic', 'procedural rule,' 'rule of thumb,' respectively, for the above instances.
> 
> ...




Yeah, we can play all kinds of word games if you want. But I don't think that's very interesting or helpful.



Tony Vargas said:


> They're closer to self-help books than technical manuals.




More word games.



Tony Vargas said:


> It's a good thing you clarified, because the bolded bit, sounds like exactly that (and stated none too gently, at that).  Language is ambiguous, that way.




It looks more to me that you're reading into my words an intent I do not have.


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## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> At that rate, it should only take a few sessions to get everyone equipped and to the dungeon.




And who among us old-timers haven't been in games like that?! I sure as heck have.


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## Satyrn (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> And who among us old-timers haven't been in games like that?! I sure as heck have.




One of the guys at my table spends way too much game time trying to buy a nice sword.

Meanwhile, I'd pay double, triple or even tenfold, the listed gold price to just buy the thing without playing out the shopping scene.


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## Tony Vargas (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> Yeah, we can play all kinds of word games if you want. But I don't think that's very interesting or helpful.
> More word games.



 Insisting everything between the covers be called a 'rule' is a word-game, in that sense, too.

There are valid distinctions between a crunchy mechanic, an overarching procedure, flavor/color text, etc...  denying those distinctions by insisting on just calling them all 'rules' is as much a word game as picking one set of labels over another.  



> It looks more to me that you're reading into my words an intent I do not have.



Exactly. And, unless the designer is right there (and his memory good) to clarify (and, heck, if he were, he'd probably say something like "don't sweat it, the rules are just a starting point"), you might be reading an intent into any given 'rule' that wasn't there, either.  That's language being ambiguous, and decoding ambiguous language means using judgement and coming up with reasonable interpretations.  Not everyone reading the same passage will have the same interpretation - any that fit the wording may be equally valid.


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## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Insisting everything between the covers be called a 'rule' is a word-game, in that sense, too.
> 
> There are valid distinctions between a crunchy mechanic, an overarching procedure, flavor/color text, etc...  denying those distinctions by insisting on just calling them all 'rules' is as much a word game as picking one set of labels over another.




All your position means is that we're at an impasse and there's nothing left to discuss on this front. I won't be changing what I call the rules.



Tony Vargas said:


> Exactly. And, unless the designer is right there (and his memory good) to clarify (and, heck, if he were, he'd probably say something like "don't sweat it, the rules are just a starting point"), you might be reading an intent into any given 'rule' that wasn't there, either.  That's language being ambiguous, and decoding ambiguous language means using judgement and coming up with reasonable interpretations.  Not everyone reading the same passage will have the same interpretation - any that fit the wording may be equally valid.




I mean in a kind of postmodern sense, sure, anything can mean anything. But in a pragmatic sense, only some interpretations will actually be valid in that they actually work reliably in achieving the intended goal. If you're saying that some people can have a perfectly fine game by running it differently than I do, I have never disputed that and even acknowledged it just a few short posts ago (which you even partially quoted). So as above there is really nothing to discuss here. It's rather exasperating that you keep harping on these points, frankly, when it seems we're in agreement on just about everything.

Edit: And besides, we don't have time for this. There's a D&D sex scandal on and we have pearls to clutch.


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## Tony Vargas (May 9, 2019)

iserith said:


> And who among us old-timers haven't been in games like that?! I sure as heck have.



 Thus the example.  I speak from direct experience more than I care to admit, sometimes.



iserith said:


> But in a pragmatic sense, only some interpretations will actually be valid in that they actually work reliably in achieving the intended goal.



 Some.  Not exactly one.

And 5e professed rather a number of goals, not all of them mutually compatible.  DM Empowerment was not only one of those goals, it was a safety valve by which each group could resolve those little contradictions.



> It's rather exasperating that you keep harping on these points, frankly, when it seems we're in agreement on just about everything.



 it can be more exasperating to /almost/ agree with someone than to be diametrically opposed 

I mean, I'll come right out and argue that the basic sequence of play + goal/method + improv + old-school DM experience/judgement + unrepentant 'illusionism' is the /best/ way to run 5e, hands down - if anything, a more extreme version of what you advocate.  But I won't argue it's the only valid interpretation.  



> Edit: And besides, we don't have time for this. There's a D&D sex scandal on and we have pearls to clutch.



 hard pass

Debating rules minutia - even if it's only debating whether it should be called 'rules minutia' or 'micro-mechanics' sounds funner.


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## Celebrim (May 9, 2019)

This is my sense of what belongs to the player:

1) Their character, once blessed for play, belongs to the player.   Typically, the GM will establish a character generation process and make legal whatever the character generation process allows, but in some cases when using a large body of character generation resources, the GM might still impose a reasonableness test.   Once in play, in a typical, fortune in the middle game - such as D&D and most traditional RPGs - the player may propose any action that their character could do, including any action an average adult could propose to do, as well as any action that is blessed by their characters described heroic or extraordinary abilities.  They cannot however act with any assurance that a proposed action will succeed.  So any statement like, "I pull the rope out of my backpack...", really means, "I attempt to pull the rope out of my backpack..."  

2) The backstory of a character belongs jointly to the player and the GM, and neither ought to tamper with the backstory without some sort of formal permission from the other one to do so.  Typically, the GM ought to bless any backstory that is reasonable for the setting, and make suggestions on how to make the backstory more appropriate to the setting or campaign, by supplying details that the player could not otherwise know.  Some process of negotiation occurs where the GM and the player hash out something they are both happy with, and then it becomes an established truth of the fiction - part of the stories 'myth'.   This process can continue after play begins, but should generally involve some sort of agreement between the GM and the player on how that process should be handled.  Different players and GMs will have different ideas about what is reasonable to introduce, and if there is any question, they should defer to the other's judgment.

2) The possessions of the character belong to the character, not the player.  They are the things established by the fiction that the character is in possession of.   The player can propose to interact with them, like for example, proposing to take the rope out of their pack.   But they are in no way in control of the rope beyond what their character is capable of.  They cannot introduce new possessions for the character except through the process of play, whatever that is.  Note that some games do allow the player to introduce possessions for the character through the process of play, but typically those games require the player to spend some sort of resource - such as one of a number of limited inventory slots to do so.   Thus, even though the player is introducing the specific possession, they are still doing it through the process of play.  You cannot propose an action with an object you don't possess.  That's just nonsense.   If you don't have a Greatsword, you can't swing one.   Nor can you introduce a possession from the setting unless it is established that the object is in the setting (usually by the GM).   You could reasonably say, "Since I'm in a weaponsmithy, I look around for a weapon - preferably a greatsword.  If I see one, I grab it."   You cannot reasonably say, "Since I'm in a weaponsmithy, I grab a greatsword."   You could reasonably say, "I grab the greatsword [which you previously described as being there] off the pegs where it is hanging on the wall.", but until the GM establish something is around and that you have acquired it successfully, it's not in your possession.   This is all I think obvious.

3) NPC associates and other sentient resources established via backstory or character generation mechanics are part of the game's backstory.  Quite often they exist to establish for the player what sort of setting resources that the GM will automatically bless.  For example, the 5e "Criminal's Contact" is basically a sort of backstory resource.   You could establish this as part of your backstory, but the GM is by having such a mechanic basically asserting that unless you acquire some sort of Character Generation resource, he's unlikely to bless anything as valuable as "Criminal's Contact".   Mechanics like "Criminal's Contact" exist to put a limit on the player's expectations as to what they can introduce via their background.   Generally speaking, an NPC is still an NPC and is still therefore part of the domain of the GM.  The GM is just contractually agreeing with you that the NPC will meet certain basic expectations - the NPC is reliable, friendly disposed to you, well-connected, and famous enough that messages can be routed to them from anywhere you could route messages.   Some Chargen resources introduce highly loyal NPCs with very close attachments to the player.  Familiars and Animal Companions tend to fall into this category.   They are still NPCs, and still part of the GMs world, and the GM may decide to RP them from time to time for the sake of color and interest, but the characters control over them is so complete because of telepathic or empathic connections, that for most purposes they can be considered an extension of the character.  Or like any NPC a GM may extend permission to RP the animal companions to the player if that is interesting (for example the Familiar was sent on a mission or the PC is unconscious), but while that may be the norm it's not something that the player can really demand.  Technically, when the character proposes an action for a Familiar or Animal Companion, they are only commanding the Familiar or Animal Companion to do these things.  It's just that the player has such a reasonable expectation that the command will be obeyed, that normally all the extra steps are cut out for the sake of speeding play.

Personally, I'm not a fan of as weak of backstory resources as 5e provides for, since they end up siloing perfectly reasonable backstory resources.   The implications of things like "Researcher" or "Position of Privilege" is that you can only do things like that if you chose the right chargen attributes.  So the more of these you actually introduce over time, the more propositions you are making unreasonable for a player to expect to succeed.

4) Elements that are part of a player's backstory, such as friends, relations, family estates or homes are pretty much fair game for the GM to use just as any other setting element.  GMs should however take care not to disestablish some truth of the backstory without permission.   For example, if the backstory establishes that an NPC is a close and loyal friend, the GM should not establish through play that the NPC is actually treacherous and hates the player, unless the player has already agreed that he enjoys that sort of twist.   And while the GM may have the authority to do with setting established through backstory whatever he likes, a well-mannered GM will not exercise that authority without restraint and without some consideration for the feelings of the player.   Remember, players are often playing some sort of avatar of themselves, and as such things like family members are often in some way representative of their real family members.   Since real life family relations can be strained and difficult, care should be taken not to carry out family drama that is too much like real sources of pain for the player, and GMs should be willing to back off story lines of that sort if the player expresses discomfort.   It is perfectly valid for a player to establish with a GM certain "hands off" rules for NPCs that should not be made to be too much sources of risk or challenge.   However, if an NPC is to be "hands off", the player shouldn't insist that they are in the foreground of stories where they would reasonably face danger and hardship.  If you carry your kid into a dungeon after making a "hands off" agreement, you shouldn't expect that its now immune to fireballs.   "Hands off" requires both sides to leave the NPC in the background of the story.


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## iserith (May 9, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Some.  Not exactly one.
> 
> And 5e professed rather a number of goals, not all of them mutually compatible.  DM Empowerment was not only one of those goals, it was a safety valve by which each group could resolve those little contradictions.






Tony Vargas said:


> I mean, I'll come right out and argue that the basic sequence of play + goal/method + improv + old-school DM experience/judgement + unrepentant 'illusionism' is the /best/ way to run 5e, hands down - if anything, a more extreme version of what you advocate.  But I won't argue it's the only valid interpretation.




Already addressed upthread. And there are approaches that DMs take that simply cannot be derived from the plain English words on the pages of the D&D 5e rules books. Some certainly could if you were reading a rules book from some other game. When that happens, expect me to point it out, especially if the poster is reporting dissatisfaction with the game experience.


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## Tony Vargas (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> And there are approaches that DMs take that simply cannot be derived from the plain English words on the pages of the D&D 5e rules books.



 Sure, and they're often running great games, too.  The rules are a starting point - move beyond 'em or go nowhere.  Goal + Approach (or is it method?) is a bit of user-defined jargon that makes a critical, overarching part of 5e a bit more systematic, consistent & playable, for instance.  It's not derived from the rules, though it's entirely consistent with them.  Illusionism - to pick on my favorite disfavored DMing technique to defend - is not spelled out as /the/ way to run 5e, but it's entirely consistent with the role, latitude, and Empowerment of the 5e DM, and it can work very well, indeed.  

Conversely, trying to run the game by-the-book as if it were some kind of algorithm to be executed by a state-machine will halt and throw an error at the first action resolution.  The game just absolutely requires DM judgement, from high-level processes down to minutia, there are ambiguities to be interpreted, judgement to be exercised, and rulings to be made.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sure, and they're often running great games, too.  The rules are a starting point - move beyond 'em or go nowhere.  Goal + Approach (or is it method?) is a bit of user-defined jargon that makes a critical, overarching part of 5e a bit more systematic, consistent & playable, for instance.  It's not derived from the rules, though it's entirely consistent with them.  Illusionism - to pick on my favorite disfavored DMing technique to defend - is not spelled out as /the/ way to run 5e, but it's entirely consistent with the role, latitude, and Empowerment of the 5e DM, and it can work very well, indeed.
> 
> Conversely, trying to run the game by-the-book as if it were some kind of algorithm to be executed by a state-machine will halt and throw an error at the first action resolution.  The game just absolutely requires DM judgement, from high-level processes down to minutia, there are ambiguities to be interpreted, judgement to be exercised, and rulings to be made.




Yeah, so you just keep saying things I'm not arguing against as if I am and, because I feel obliged to respond to someone who responds to me, I feel like I'm wasting my time now. Probably best to just ignore each other.


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## Hussar (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Already addressed upthread. And there are approaches that DMs take that simply cannot be derived from the plain English words on the pages of the D&D 5e rules books. Some certainly could if you were reading a rules book from some other game. When that happens, expect me to point it out, especially if the poster is reporting dissatisfaction with the game experience.




But, what if the poster is reporting satisfaction with their game experience?  Why point out the "rules book from some other game" to those posters?  What are you trying to prove?  No one who is arguing with you here is saying, "Well, my game sucks, but, I'm not doing it your way."  What you've gotten as counter arguments is, "We are running games that work quite well but, we aren't doing what you are advocating, therefore, what you are advocating isn't really universal, regardless of what the rules say".

 [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I largely agree with what you've said, with a slight amendment that, as a DM, I tend to fob off a lot more authority at the table onto the players.  While I understand the notion that letting players have limited fiat control might be off putting to some, I find that since each player has their own fiat control powers, it becomes more a sense that everyone at the table is contributing towards authoring the game, rather than the DM being so central to the larger campaign.  And, just because Bob adds in "Frances is my friend" to use an example, doesn't mean that the scene suddenly becomes a non-issue for the rest of the group.  

As far as everyone else is concerned, does it really matter if "Frances is Bob's friend" comes from Bob or the DM?  Either way, the rest of the group now has more information in the scene to work with.  I just don't have a real problem with a player adding in elements like this.  And, since 5e does allow for this sort of thing by leveraging backgrounds, nemesises (nemesi?) and the like, I find it encourages players to become more grounded in the campaign and thus, more immersed.


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## pemerton (May 10, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Y'know, it occurs to me that are times when the DM deciding what the PC thinks is the whole point.
> 
> Player: I pay attention not just to what he's saying, but to his body language how he's saying it, to try to get a sense of if he's being truthful or not.
> DM: OK, roll WIS, Insight applies.
> ...



I think your GM was meant to say "He seems to be truthful"!

Whether that's mere semantic sleight of hand, or a substantive compliance with a principle for allocating narrative authority, I'm not sure.



Tony Vargas said:


> Player:  I pull 50' of rope out of my pack and...
> DM: You find no rope in your pack.
> Player:  I picked it before play, it's right here on my sheet!
> DM:  It's not there now.
> ...



Well, quite.



Tony Vargas said:


> Picking gear, for instance, is just simplified:  you could - and might be required to by some DMs - acquire gear through a series of interactions with the environment - the DM describes the town, you declare you look for chandler, the DM narrates finding one, you declare the goal of acquiring rope & the method of honestly negotiating a fair price with said chandler, the DM narrates you getting ripped off because of the 'gold rush economy,' etc.



There's always been some ambiguity in how D&D presents its equipment rules: is the starting gp total a resource pool for equippage-by-way-of-points-buy (which is how I've always done it) or is it itself a piece of equipment, to be used in an episode of play that involves buying stuff?

I assume that the rules are intended to accommodate both styles, as well as allowing the equipment list to serve as an element of setting as well as a set of points-buy rules. There are systems that handle this differently - eg Burning Wheel has points buy for starting gear, but a completely different mechanic for resolving the acquisition of gear during play.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, what if the poster is reporting satisfaction with their game experience?  Why point out the "rules book from some other game" to those posters?  What are you trying to prove?  No one who is arguing with you here is saying, "Well, my game sucks, but, I'm not doing it your way."  What you've gotten as counter arguments is, "We are running games that work quite well but, we aren't doing what you are advocating, therefore, what you are advocating isn't really universal, regardless of what the rules say".




Again (and again and again...), me saying what I do as being something the rules books say to do isn't a judgment on how you play. But in a discussion about DMing approaches, especially one as meandering as some of the threads of late, it may be appropriate for any number of reasons to observe that someone's approach is clearly taken from some other game when it's obvious there is no support for it in the D&D 5e rules. It doesn't mean anything other than that or that the game is somehow bad. It may not be something I would do or even enjoy and that's fine. It's not me anyone has to worry about since I'm not at that table.


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## Tony Vargas (May 10, 2019)

Hussar said:


> But, what if the poster is reporting satisfaction with their game experience?  Why point out the "rules book from some other game" to those posters?  What are you trying to prove?  No one who is arguing with you here is saying, "Well, my game sucks, but, I'm not doing it your way."  What you've gotten as counter arguments is, "We are running games that work quite well but, we aren't doing what you are advocating, therefore, what you are advocating isn't really universal, regardless of what the rules say".



 Don't recall if it's been in this thread, specifically, but there's a fair a amount of "this game sux!"/"you're doin' it wrong!" out there.

To speculate wildly (which I'm sure he'll hate, which can only be a comedic bonus at this point, so far beyond the pale has our little high-velocity sub-conversation of acrimonious agreement gone, and only fair since he's diagnosed me with Post-Traumatic Edition-War Syndrome*), iserith might be reacting to some pretty disingenuous criticism of 5e that he's repeatedly demolished using his (pretty impressive, IMHO, & entirely valid) interpretation of how to run the game in a way that doesn't suck, like, at all, only to have it met with such flaming illogic that the only course of action left seems to be to seek cover in the big-R Rules.  Like, "Ok, don't play this way because it's sensible, works wonderfully well, and is way more fun, DO IT BECAUSE THE RULES SAY SO!"   

Which is a tragic level of foundational exasperation that I'm afraid I've only piled onto, with my own cynical-old-man posting style and lame attempts at humor.




> As far as everyone else is concerned, does it really matter if "Frances is my friend"  comes from Bob or the DM?



 It might, if everyone else trusts the DM to tell a good story, while they're exasperated with Bob trying to get away with stuff all the time.  (Or, vice-versa if Bob's OK, but the DM's a jerk.)








* Y'don't need even a BS in psychology to figure that one out, really.


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## Chaosmancer (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> What's not solid about it?




_Blink Blink_

The fact that you are saying nothing? Look, I said we can drop it, and we can, but in response to "Does Francis exist even if he isn't that specific guard" you have said "At some tables he might, at others he wouldn't" All while spending an awful lot of words telling me the rules say nothing about it. 

That's a non-answer, there is nothing there to discuss. Some tables do, some tables don't. It is true, but it doesn't give us anything to talk about, it is a deflection. 



iserith said:


> Always right in that this is what the character thinks, anyway, since the rules say the player determines what the character thinks. Those thoughts themselves might be wrong.




And if you decide they are wrong about the existence of an entire person, what does that say about the Character's mind? In fact, since the player cannot choose for the NPC to be real, if they DM chooses that they are not, then the Character has an entire made up person in their head they believed to be real. Why?

You can say "Well, that answer doesn't matter to me" but as the DM it does, because you are the player's window into this world. If a player doesn't know where these lines are, because they have absolute authority over their character, they can end up with a character who is completely delusional, constantly wrong about facts of their own lives. And if the player didn't come forward with that as a concept, but is instead dealing with it because of the DMs rulings, that can become an issue at the table. 



iserith said:


> "Buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells" does not necessarily require knowledge on the part of the character of the weaknesses of earth elementals either, even if the player knows a battle with such creatures looms.




... So, to be clear. A player stating "I am going to buy scrolls with spell that deal thunder damage because I know we are fighting earth elementals and they are vulnerable to thunder damage" does not require knowledge of earth elementals being weak to thunder damage...

Because, I did state they were buying them under that assumption, therefore it was the driving motivator behind their decision. I didn't say they bought them because they were the cheapest spells in the store, or because they liked loud booms, I said it was because it was utilizing knowledge of a specific weakness. And your counter to that is that they don't neccessarily have to be buying them to utilize that specific weakness.





Celebrim said:


> As far as inconsistencies in stories go, there have been at least 3 origin stories for Mind Flayers that I know of (and that's before we even finished 2e) and I wouldn't be surprised to find recent editions have introduced more of them, or that 2e settings I'm not that familiar with (Planescape, Spelljammer) had their own backstories that weren't completely congruent.   Beyond that, I'd never assume that a particular DM was using one canon or another.   Running a game in say a Marvel or DC universe would be equally ambiguous.  The comics are full of retcons.




Completely beside the point. First of all, I said "Are created" not "Were created". Now, I will grant, easy distinction to miss, but I was talking their breeding habits, not their origin story. I can claim that, but either way the retcons of editions have nothing to do with the point we are discussing. 



Celebrim said:


> If a poor street rat knows a bunch about Mind Flayers because his player knows a bunch about Mind Flayers, and he chooses to act on that knowledge in character by relating all the stuff he knows, *that's nothing I can do anything about*.  I can't tell a player how to play their character, and I can't make players forget what they know.   They'll have to make choices about what they are comfortable doing.  If we need to establish how he knows it, well, that's never that hard to do and in my experience often makes for fun story hooks especially if the player is willing to let me run with that.




First off, the bolded part is false. There are things you can do. Maybe not a lot of productive things, but things nonetheless. 

For example, I encourage my players to ask me, just like I ask my DMs. I don't find that shameful or DM powertripping or anything, it just is useful. That way if they are going off of info in the MM that I changed, I can let them know that isn't what I'm using. Sometimes things make perfect sense, sometimes I need a second to think through how they could know something. And, I never try and have people hide mechanics, like resistances and vulnerabilities, those aren't the things I'm concerned with. 

And frankly, it rarely comes up at all. But, as the DM, I am the curator of the story, I mix the player's various threads and make a whole, and that might mean setting limits on player knowledge, especially when the lore is meant to be revealed as part of a big plot. Sure, I can't wow the veteran player who knows the secret, but that doesn't mean they should ruin the fun for everyone by blurting it out when their character has no reason to know.



Celebrim said:


> Maybe so, but that's the players choice how to play it as far as I'm concerned.   If the player wants to play this as, "Don't worry Johnny, this will only hurt for a little while...", that's the player's decision, and the fact that everyone is taken aback by this reaction might well be interesting.   I prefer not to tell players how their character acts.   The player has little enough control over the game as it is with me stepping on the one prerogative that they unambiguously have.




But am I overstepping by saying they feel a "dawning horror" over the reveal? That's the only thing I'm saying that you aren't. I'm not going to narrate how they act, but, is it too much to give a nudge in the logical emotional direction?

Some people say yes, but I don't think so. I don't think I'm overstepping.


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## Celebrim (May 10, 2019)

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I largely agree with what you've said, with a slight amendment that, as a DM, I tend to fob off a lot more authority at the table onto the players.




I'm not even convinced that's a disagreement.   Without some way of quantifying how much you "fob off a lot more authority" I couldn't really say whether your methodology is different than mine or not.  I've allowed players to create whole new deities and establish a cult of assassins operating secretly under the auspices of a neutral good deity. 

What's important is that they did so under my blessings.  That's the core of what I'm outlining.  Ultimately authority over a setting lies with the DM, no matter how often that "fob off" that authority.   

So the only thing that would be an actual disagreement with me is the claim that players have and by rights ought to have some sort of unlimited fiat authority.   If you think that, then we have a disagreement.   If you don't think that, then we are just discussing subtle differences in approach to what is fundamentally the same point of view.



> While I understand the notion that letting players have limited fiat control might be off putting to some, I find that since each player has their own fiat control powers, it becomes more a sense that everyone at the table is contributing towards authoring the game, rather than the DM being so central to the larger campaign.




So, if this is actual disagreement with me, then the first thing I'll want to know is how the system works.   If players have "their own fiat control powers", what do those powers look like?  How are they actually used in play?   How are disputes between participants resolved?   How is spot-light balance maintained between the players?   How do you support the aesthetic of challenge if a player actually has fiat power over the narrative?

It's all great to say, "Sure, I give my players fiat authority."   But, if that authority is operating under the veto power of the GM, then it's not authority at all nor is it particularly unique or different than the normal way to play.   And if the authority is not operating under the veto power of the GM, and it's true fiat authority then you are going to run into all the problems that plague games of make-believe or attempts to write stories one page at a time with a rotating cast of authors, plus all the additional problems that come from removing the supports from what are aesthetics of play that experienced players are going to expect to be supported.   So in short, I'm not going to believe it until you actual explaining it, and in the mean time will assume that subtle differences aside, your table plays pretty much like mine and every other table I've seen.



> And, just because Bob adds in "Frances is my friend" to use an example, doesn't mean that the scene suddenly becomes a non-issue for the rest of the group.




No, but again, that's never been the stake.  The stake is whether the player has the authority to force all the other participants, including a GM, to accept that this random NPC is in fact "Francis, my friend".  The GM has that authority, and in most games exercises it all the time.   When however I try to imagine a game where everyone has that authority, I find my imagination fails me.   The closest I can imagine is the sort of make-believe play my daughters engaged in as 1st or 2nd graders.



> As far as everyone else is concerned, does it really matter if "Frances is Bob's friend" comes from Bob or the DM?  Either way, the rest of the group now has more information in the scene to work with.




I don't have enough information to answer that question, but I can certainly imagine cases where it really matters to play that the guard is "Frances, Bob's Friend", and the GM or some other participant cares.  The problem with your question is that the answer is "No", if and only if  no one has any stake in this encounter at all, and introducing "Francis, Bob's Friend" is everyone agrees the most interesting thing to do with the scene.   But just as the case when you are passing around a notebook adding a story to it a page at a time, it does at some point really matter that the story is departing from where it was going, and participants can get frustrated by the different directions each participant wants for a scene or the plot.   Sooner or later, you are going to have a situation where more than one participant has an idea for what the scene should be and they are, while all perhaps valid, contradicting.



> And, since 5e does allow for this sort of thing by leveraging backgrounds, nemesises (nemesi?) and the like, I find it encourages players to become more grounded in the campaign and thus, more immersed.




Yes, but that's not anything novel or particular to 5e or D&D.  It's completely tangential to the real issue which is narrative authority, and not whether lengthy backstories that provide contacts and settings are useful and fun in play or anything else of the sort.   The thing that is unusual about the "Francis the friend" example IS NOT and never was that the idea came from the player.  The thing that is unusual about it is that it was asserted as a solution to a challenge (get through the gate) without any blessing by the DM required to accept the statement as true.  

No one in the thread really cares whether a player has a suggestion that this be Francis his friend, especially if the circumstances make sense, and pretty much everyone agrees that in some circumstances that they as a GM might go with it.   If you let players add elements like this by going with a suggestion or idea you hadn't previously thought of, congratulations, you are running a bog standard normal RPG and you have absolutely no grounds for thinking you are doing something particularly special or grand.  I can find examples of this sort of play in rule books from highly traditional RPGs going back more than 20 years from before Nar or Indy gaming was even a thing.  I have no way of quantifying how often or to what degree you allow the PC to introduce ideas into your game to compare it to what I know anyone else has one.  I've played under a GM that latter told me that he invented an entire nation and an ongoing civil war entirely to support a player's offhand comment one night that he'd like his PC to be a king some day.  This was like in 1991.   I hate to break it to you, but you are probably not that special or different.   

The real issue is narrative authority and agency.   Waving a wand of blessing over a player's idea is not untraditional.  What would really be unusual is if you were forced against your wishes as GM for this PC to be Francis, Bob's friend.   If you have narrated, "This is Grog, the orc henchmen of the wicked mayor.", and the PC is able to overrules you and say, "Not fun.  This is Francis my friend.", then that is something that I'd want you to explain to me because I don't understand it.


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## Tony Vargas (May 10, 2019)

pemerton said:


> There's always been some ambiguity in how D&D presents



 D&D?  Some Ambiguity?  That's like observing that there's always been some water in the ocean...
 ...while trying to explain fire to a fish (sorry, 'nuther thread).



> its equipment rules: is the starting gp total a resource pool for equippage-by-way-of-points-buy (which is how I've always done it) or is it itself a piece of equipment, to be used in an episode of play that involves buying stuff?



 Some eds - mind you, I don't remember which did which - made it clear that starting gear was what you'd accumulated over the years in preparation to realizing your ambition to become an adventurer, whether by purchase, crafting, barter, theft, scrounging or whatever.  (Maybe it was 3e, to head off players trying to use crafting skills to stretch their starting gold? 3e was also the first edition I noticed giving players explicit permission to describe their gear, cosmetically, how they liked... "...so, if they want a katana, they can just take a bastard sword and describe it as a katana - so simple! so flexible! everyone'll love it!")



> I assume that the rules are intended to accommodate both styles, as well as allowing the equipment list to serve as an element of setting as well as a set of points-buy rules.



 IDK, I suspect there's a price list & starting gold because there's always been a price list & starting gold, and it wouldn't really feel like D&D without 'em.


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## Celebrim (May 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You can say "Well, that answer doesn't matter to me" but as the DM it does, because you are the player's window into this world. If a player doesn't know where these lines are, because they have absolute authority over their character, they can end up with a character who is completely delusional, constantly wrong about facts of their own lives. And if the player didn't come forward with that as a concept, but is instead dealing with it because of the DMs rulings, that can become an issue at the table.




Let me get this straight:

a) I the player imagine Francis the Guard.
b) I the player imagine that my character believes Francis the Guard exists.
c) I the player then conclude firstly that Frances the Guard exists (!!)
d) and secondly, that this particular NPC is in fact Francis the Guard(!?!?!) 

All the other potentially interesting things you are saying for me get wrecked on this bizarre twisted illogical argument.   It sounds like some barrister's attempt at a loophole, a diversion from the actual point of the case, to try to lead the court in a merry chase of semantics that in fact isn't really that clever at all.   

This is bog simple.  Control of your player does not require that everything your player imagines to be true conforms to your desires.  Far from being an attempt to assert any sort of control over your character, this is by definition and very plainly an attempt at asserting control over the setting, by the obvious fact that Francis is not your character.   The question is not, "Does Francis exist?", because we would need to know far more of the situation than is provided in the example.  The only question of any real importance that can be answered from the example is, "Can Bob's player force every other participant in the game to concede that not only does Francis exist, but he is here right now." 



> First off, the bolded part is false. There are things you can do. Maybe not a lot of productive things, but things nonetheless.




I suppose I could hit the player with a club and hope if they survived that they would have amnesia.  But I think that would hardly be advisable as sound DMing.   Then again, many claim that GMs should seek to kill their players...



> But, as the DM, I am the curator of the story...




Case closed then.  You and iserith don't nearly have as much to disagree about as the heatedness of the exchange would indicate.



> But am I overstepping by saying they feel a "dawning horror" over the reveal?




Yes.  Not much.  It's not something I'm saying you ought to really worry about, in the sense that it is some sort of sin or crime against the player.   What I am saying is that as a thoughtful GM, you ought to be consciously aware of when you have dipped a toe over the line and are in the player's business.   

Doing what you are doing there is "Director Stance".   It's the GM not only being the curator of the story, but the conductor of the actors in it.   You are giving the players stage direction and cues.  And that's not always a bad thing, but the important thing is to know that you are doing it and what it involves and what it risks, so that you are making the choice consciously and intelligently and intentionally, and not painting yourself into a corner accidently.   



> That's the only thing I'm saying that you aren't. I'm not going to narrate how they act, but, is it too much to give a nudge in the logical emotional direction?




Ultimately, it's a railroading technique, and a heavy reliance on "Director Stance" indicates low trust by the DM in their players and their players ability to play their characters.  I guess I don't really think it's "too much", but I'm not impressed by it, because I'd rather see you talking about how you encourage your players to mature as players, and "Director Stance" really doesn't do that because it teaches the player that part of the game belongs to the GM.   A GM in director stance is too absorbed by their own artistic vision, and in my opinion is - ironically considering the larger discussion - not taking enough feedback from the players.

That said, there might really be times to use "Director Stance" as a GM - though at the moment I can't really think of a great example.  After all, when I listed "Director Stance" in my essay on railroading, I never said "Good GMs never use these techniques."   What I really said was, "Good GMs understand these techniques and use them appropriately (and appropriately tends to be sparingly)."


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## Guest 6801328 (May 10, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Ultimately, it's a railroading technique, and a heavy reliance on "Director Stance" indicates low trust by the DM in their players and their players ability to play their characters.  I guess I don't really think it's "too much", but I'm not impressed by it, because I'd rather see you talking about how you encourage your players to mature as players, and "Director Stance" really doesn't do that because it teaches the player that part of the game belongs to the GM.   A GM in director stance is too absorbed by their own artistic vision, and in my opinion is - ironically considering the larger discussion - not taking enough feedback from the players.




Great paragraph.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> _Blink Blink_
> 
> The fact that you are saying nothing? Look, I said we can drop it, and we can, but in response to "Does Francis exist even if he isn't that specific guard" you have said "At some tables he might, at others he wouldn't" All while spending an awful lot of words telling me the rules say nothing about it.
> 
> That's a non-answer, there is nothing there to discuss. Some tables do, some tables don't. It is true, but it doesn't give us anything to talk about, it is a deflection.




I'm not sure what you're saying here - the truth is a deflection?



Chaosmancer said:


> And if you decide they are wrong about the existence of an entire person, what does that say about the Character's mind? In fact, since the player cannot choose for the NPC to be real, if they DM chooses that they are not, then the Character has an entire made up person in their head they believed to be real. Why?
> 
> You can say "Well, that answer doesn't matter to me" but as the DM it does, because you are the player's window into this world. If a player doesn't know where these lines are, because they have absolute authority over their character, they can end up with a character who is completely delusional, constantly wrong about facts of their own lives. And if the player didn't come forward with that as a concept, but is instead dealing with it because of the DMs rulings, that can become an issue at the table.




In the context of the game, it actually doesn't matter to the DM in my view. My assumption in this example is that the player is making an offer in good faith and with full knowledge of the rules of the game and the table rules. If, however, the player is under some misapprehension that, by the rules of this game or perhaps some other game we're not playing, he or she is empowered to create NPCs wholesale during play, then we'll probably need to stop and have a conversation to get back on the same page. But that is an issue that exists outside the context of the game. It is a mismatch of expectations, not a statement by the DM that the player or character is being delusional. 



Chaosmancer said:


> ... So, to be clear. A player stating "I am going to buy scrolls with spell that deal thunder damage because I know we are fighting earth elementals and they are vulnerable to thunder damage" does not require knowledge of earth elementals being weak to thunder damage...
> 
> Because, I did state they were buying them under that assumption, therefore it was the driving motivator behind their decision. I didn't say they bought them because they were the cheapest spells in the store, or because they liked loud booms, I said it was because it was utilizing knowledge of a specific weakness. And your counter to that is that they don't neccessarily have to be buying them to utilize that specific weakness.




In your post, you said nothing about the player making the statement you make above. As far as I could tell from what you actually wrote ("For example, buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells in preparation of a battle involving lots of earth elementals under the assumption of them being vulnerable to that damage."), the _player_ merely _thought_ that, not necessarily the _character_. (Because players and characters are different, _right?_) So what it appears you've done here is move the goalposts, perhaps unintentionally, and then criticized my response on that basis.

But let's roll with what you added so we have something to talk about: If the player did make that statement and/or established that the character thought it, it still doesn't matter in my view. The player can have the character tell all and sundry why he or she is doing that for all I care. I'm only concerned with describing the environment, sometimes calling for checks, and narrating the results of the adventurers' in pursuit of fun for everyone while contributing to an exciting, memorable story. I don't see anything about the game that suggests I need to give a dusty flumph about why a player chooses to have the character do a thing and I certainly don't want to be policing thoughts, neither the players' nor the characters'.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Don't recall if it's been in this thread, specifically, but there's a fair a amount of "this game sux!"/"you're doin' it wrong!" out there.
> 
> To speculate wildly (which I'm sure he'll hate, which can only be a comedic bonus at this point, so far beyond the pale has our little high-velocity sub-conversation of acrimonious agreement gone, and only fair since he's diagnosed me with Post-Traumatic Edition-War Syndrome*), iserith might be reacting to some pretty disingenuous criticism of 5e that he's repeatedly demolished using his (pretty impressive, IMHO, & entirely valid) interpretation of how to run the game in a way that doesn't suck, like, at all, only to have it met with such flaming illogic that the only course of action left seems to be to seek cover in the big-R Rules.  Like, "Ok, don't play this way because it's sensible, works wonderfully well, and is way more fun, DO IT BECAUSE THE RULES SAY SO!"
> 
> Which is a tragic level of foundational exasperation that I'm afraid I've only piled onto, with my own cynical-old-man posting style and lame attempts at humor.




Fair play, since I provided my own diagnosis for you as you say. However, I think it's more simple: I say what I do in my games e.g. players don't ask to make checks. Someone responds to ask why or to criticize my choice (fair enough), _often someone who already knows the answer_, perhaps adding that he or she does that and his or her game works fine. I say something like, "I do it because there is nowhere in the rules that say players ask to make checks and all sorts of places where it says the DM asks for checks. I'm just doing what the rules say." Objections ensue. Page numbers are referenced. More objections follow, often with silly examples. People who use similar methods as me or who at least understand what I'm saying jump in. At some point I may say that I don't run all games the same way. That gets ignored. Then I try to say something like, "Hey, if you're in my D&D 4e game, ask to make checks all you want. It's says that's cool right there in the book, go nuts. Different games, different approaches." Same deal with players having more control over the environment. But that distinction gets ignored. Then there's a lot of defending "playstyles" which I never actually attacked. It's _weird_, but thankfully it appears to be confined to just a handful of posters.

You may ask why I allow it to continue. Well, for the same reason I've been slaying the same ol' goblins since the early '90s in D&D games - _for the XP._


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## Hussar (May 10, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> /snip
> 
> It might, if everyone else trusts the DM to tell a good story, while they're exasperated with Bob trying to get away with stuff all the time.  (Or, vice-versa if Bob's OK, but the DM's a jerk.)
> 
> * Y'don't need even a BS in psychology to figure that one out, really.




Fair enough.  But, that's not really a problem with shared authority.  That's a problem with Bob or the DM.  If everyone is earnestly attempting to make the game better, then there shouldn't be too many problems.



			
				Celebrim said:
			
		

> The real issue is narrative authority and agency. Waving a wand of blessing over a player's idea is not untraditional. What would really be unusual is if you were forced against your wishes as GM for this PC to be Francis, Bob's friend. If you have narrated, "This is Grog, the orc henchmen of the wicked mayor.", and the PC is able to overrules you and say, "Not fun. This is Francis my friend.", then that is something that I'd want you to explain to me because I don't understand it.




Meh, it's as simple as, "Well, everyone at the table has a stake in making the game as interesting for everyone as possible."  The notion that the DM, by virtue of the DM, somehow has a better sense of what's best for the table than anyone else at the table, let alone everyone else at the table, is a very traditional approach to gaming, but, hardly the only one.

Your example, like your previous examples of other styles of play, shows a pretty strong bias for dysfunctional tables.  I'm trying pretty hard to think how a player could justify completely rewriting an NPC that the DM has proposed in play - turning Grog the orc henchman into Francis my friend.  How would that possibly be fun for the table?  I can't really connect the dots there.

OTOH, this human gate guard suddenly being my friend Frances the Gate Guard is a fairly easy line of logic to follow.  The Player has introduced fiction that melds with existing fiction and the challenge is now for the other players and the DM to run with this new fiction.  I can certainly see how that works.  

Then again, I do not draw such a hard line about what constitutes an RPG.  The notion of passing the notebook to author the story, while simplistic and not really much of a game that I would enjoy too much, is close enough to an RPG that it passes my sniff test.  

IOW, if everyone at the table is operating in good faith, then there is no problem.  The traditional structure where the DM is the sole authority over everything that isn't a PC, isn't the only way to play an RPG.  Heck, Ironsworn is a fantastic example of an RPG that can be played with a DM, without a DM, or even solo.  Fun game that I SOOO want to play.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> You may ask why I allow it to continue. Well, for the same reason I've been slaying the same ol' goblins since the early '90s in D&D games - _for the XP._




If only you could earn _treasure points_ on Enworld.  

Amirite?


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## pemerton (May 10, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> > As far as everyone else is concerned, does it really matter if "Frances is my friend" comes from Bob or the DM?
> 
> 
> 
> It might, if everyone else trusts the DM to tell a good story, while they're exasperated with Bob trying to get away with stuff all the time.  (Or, vice-versa if Bob's OK, but the DM's a jerk.)



This seems to point towards dysfunctionality at the table.

Also, what does _trusting the DM to tell a good story_ have to do with anything? When did D&D referees become storytellers?!

Also also, there's this undercurrent in the thread that the player, by establishing that the guard is his/her PC's friend Frances, is somehow "cheating" or unfairly/improperly subverting a challenge. As if the number of challenges available for RPGing purposes is finite, so that the players are getting a freebie here. If the player would rather play _I meet Frances for the first time in 10 years - I wonder what's up with her?_ rather than _Persuade guard number N to let us through the gate_, then isn't that in itself a reason to run with it? I don't think there's anything in the 5e rules that is opposed to the suggestion that _challenges_ and _quests_ should follow player interests.



Chaosmancer said:


> as the DM, I am the curator of the story, I mix the player's various threads and make a whole, and that might mean setting limits on player knowledge, especially when the lore is meant to be revealed as part of a big plot. Sure, I can't wow the veteran player who knows the secret, but that doesn't mean they should ruin the fun for everyone by blurting it out when their character has no reason to know.



Metaphors are tricky things - but I suspect my approach to the GM's role in RPGing is a bit different from yours. And I wouldn't try and use a "secret" that a player already knows.

But the idea that there might be some fiction that isn't yet known to the players (or their PCs) is certainly acceptable to me. (Often it mightn't be known to the GM either.)



Chaosmancer said:


> And if you decide they are wrong about the existence of an entire person, what does that say about the Character's mind? In fact, since the player cannot choose for the NPC to be real, if they DM chooses that they are not, then the Character has an entire made up person in their head they believed to be real. Why?
> 
> You can say "Well, that answer doesn't matter to me" but as the DM it does, because you are the player's window into this world. If a player doesn't know where these lines are, because they have absolute authority over their character, they can end up with a character who is completely delusional, constantly wrong about facts of their own lives. And if the player didn't come forward with that as a concept, but is instead dealing with it because of the DMs rulings, that can become an issue at the table.



I agree with this. When players establish what their PCs think and believe, _but the GM is free to establish the fiction independent of this_, then the outcomes you describe are possible. My own preferred approach is to democratise establishing the salient bits of backstory, and - as a GM - to regard myself as constrained by fiction that the players establish, and - conversely - where I don't want to be constrained, advise them either (i) what the truth is that their PCs are aware of, or (ii) inform them that their PCs are ignorant.

Sometimes this unfolds within the context of action declaration, but often it doesn't. For instance, the players may be discussing among themselves (in character, or perhaps drifting in and out of character) what they should do (eg should they ally with X against Y?). A player may state a reason such as _Well, X occupies such-and-such a role in the imperial government, and Y is in such-and-such an organisation that has such-and-such connection to it_. If such a statement contradicts an established bit of fiction which the character knows but (eg) the player has forgotten, or has become confused about (eg s/he confused two countries in her note-taking) then often I will intervene to correct the factual misapprehension. Or, if such a statement extrapolates from the established fiction in a way that fits with what the character might be expected to know (eg the PC is a noble, and it makes sense that nobles would understand these relationships that arise among government bureaus and officials), then I am likely to accept the statement as establishing truth about the fiction.

And if such a statement deals with something that the PC clearly couldn't know, then I may point that out. _Are you a member of the Imperial Scout Corps? No? Then how do you know what they do in their secret initiation rituals?_ (Depending on system, the proper response might be to call for a knowledge check. But sometimes stipulation can be the right response.) There can be a range of reasons for taking this approach. One might be to save a big reveal - though I don't normally do that myself. Another might be because the ignorance is part of what establishes the tension in the situation (eg in my 4e game, there was _no way_ I was going to let any player start with a PC who knows the name of the Raven Queen - that is something that has to be, and was, acquired in the course of play). Another might be because, as GM, I want the game to stay focused on this thing rather than that thing, and I'm pretty confident that I can engage the players better with this thing rather than that thing, and so am not interested in throwaway knowledge checks derailing that. (This last is another thing that is system-dependent; what I'm describing here works better in 4e D&D, I think, or Classic Traveller, than in Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic.) I'm also happy with the "metagaming" this can lead to - if the players can see that I've got nothing interesting to offer in response to some or other desire to know a thing, but do have this other interesting thing to offer that's in the current neighbourhood of play, that helps keep us on the same page as to where the action is.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, to be clear. A player stating "I am going to buy scrolls with spell that deal thunder damage because I know we are fighting earth elementals and they are vulnerable to thunder damage" does not require knowledge of earth elementals being weak to thunder damage...
> 
> Because, I did state they were buying them under that assumption, therefore it was the driving motivator behind their decision. I didn't say they bought them because they were the cheapest spells in the store, or because they liked loud booms, I said it was because it was utilizing knowledge of a specific weakness. And your counter to that is that they don't necessarily have to be buying them to utilize that specific weakness.
> 
> ...



This is another example where I think I'm not wildly different from you. If the player is wrong about the vulnerability, and hence is imputing an irrational motivation to his/her PC, I'm happy to point that out. Of course if the player is making a guess then that's what the player is doing too, which is fine. If the player is guessing but believes that his/her PC might know, then we can turn to the system to find out how (if at all) this player/character gap might be traversed.

Anyway, doing things the way I describe in this post hasn't caused me any headaches that I can recall. And in a game in which the motivations and "inner lives" of the characters are meant to matter, it helps avoid the "delusional/alienated PC" issue that you identify.


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## Hriston (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Sure, but all of the organizations, locations, and NPCs are under the full control of the DM during play as are the outcomes of all action declarations by the player related to the background features above, since you still have to declare an action to seek assistance from the priests of your temple, get messages to your criminal contact, secure an audience with a noble, and so on. This does not suggest control over the environment outside of the character to me; rather, they are rules the DM may choose to use to decide on the outcome of the action declaration. As DM, I'm inclined to say your action declaration to get an audience with the local noble automatically succeeds if you have the "Position of Privilege" feature. But that might not always be the case, for example, if there is no local noble in the town or (for reasons I sure I hope I telegraphed previously) the noble refuses all audiences due to some plot-relevant reason.




Right, but by putting the outcomes of such declarations into the realm of auto-success, these background features constrain the DM's narration of the outcome to align with the desires of the player. For example, if the player of an acolyte declares an action to ask a priest of the acolyte's temple to help in a non-hazardous way, I think it's reasonable for the player to expect the DM to say yes, and that to say no or ask for a Charisma check would require the DM to essentially ignore that part of the character's background feature.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Right, but by putting the outcomes of such declarations into the realm of auto-success, these background features constrain the DM's narration of the outcome to align with the desires of the player. For example, if the player of an acolyte declares an action to ask a priest of the acolyte's temple to help in a non-hazardous way, I think it's reasonable for the player to expect the DM to say yes, and that to say no or ask for a Charisma check would require the DM to essentially ignore that part of the character's background feature.




I think they would _inform_ but not _constrain_ the DM's narration of the outcome of the adventurers' outcome. This may seem like splitting hairs, but we have to take any rule into the context of the idea that the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. In this case, it may well be likely that the DM always says the character can (for example) get an audience with a noble or help from his or her temple; however, in the realm of infinite fictional possibilities, that might not always be the case and the DM decides the result, not the rules and not the player, even if the rules inform the DM's decision. Thus, I would say background features such as the ones you quoted fall short of demonstrating that some NPCs are "extensions of the PC." In a practical sense, it might look and operate that way if it always works, but it's not an exception to the standard adjudication process.


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## Celebrim (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Thus, I would say background features such as the ones you quoted fall short of demonstrating that some NPCs are "extensions of the PC." In a practical sense, it might look and operate that way if it always works, but it's not an exception to the standard adjudication process.




I agree.  It's more reasonable to site familiars or animal companion as an extension of the PC, in that they are in some sense even within the fiction joined together.   That might make for some sort of exception.

But when you talk about a line in a background feature that says, "You can get an audience with a noble", it's no more reasonable to assume that on account of that line every noble is an extension of the PC than it would be that if a PC had some skill at carpentry to say that every board in the campaign is an extension of the PC.  All it is saying is that all other things being equal, it's easy for a PC to get an audience with an NPC noble.   It doesn't necessarily mean that you can trivially get an audience with the Lord of Dee, who hasn't received a visitor in 400 years, or that you'll have safe conduct into the lair of an Ultralithid as a diner rather than a dish, or that if you greatly offended the noble last time that he's still equally willing to see you.   There could still be examples of "nobles" that don't fit with the concept, or where access is restricted for valid reasons.  It certainly doesn't mean that you can propose actions for the NPC the way that you can for your PC.   It only means something like, "If any noble could seek an audience with this noble a reasonable chance of success, then you can as well."

If all nobles were extensions of the PC, then you could always propose there actions.  Instead, you still can only propose your own actions, you just have reasonable assurance that the answer to the proposition about your PC, "I seek an audience with Baron Overhill", that the answer is "Yes, you get your goal."   It's really no different than in say D&D 3.X having +14 on a skill check where the DC is always 15.


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## iserith (May 10, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I agree.  It's more reasonable to site familiars or animal companion as an extension of the PC, in that they are in some sense even within the fiction joined together.   That might make for some sort of exception.
> 
> But when you talk about a line in a background feature that says, "You can get an audience with a noble", it's no more reasonable to assume that on account of that line every noble is an extension of the PC than it would be that if a PC had some skill at carpentry to say that every board in the campaign is an extension of the PC.  All it is saying is that all other things being equal, it's easy for a PC to get an audience with an NPC noble.   It doesn't necessarily mean that you can trivially get an audience with the Lord of Dee, who hasn't received a visitor in 400 years, or that you'll have safe conduct into the lair of an Ultralithid as a diner rather than a dish, or that if you greatly offended the noble last time that he's still equally willing to see you.   There could still be examples of "nobles" that don't fit with the concept, or where access is restricted for valid reasons.  It certainly doesn't mean that you can propose actions for the NPC the way that you can for your PC.   It only means something like, "If any noble could seek an audience with this noble a reasonable chance of success, then you can as well."
> 
> If all nobles were extensions of the PC, then you could always propose there actions.  Instead, you still can only propose your own actions, you just have reasonable assurance that the answer to the proposition about your PC, "I seek an audience with Baron Overhill", that the answer is "Yes, you get your goal."   It's really no different than in say D&D 3.X having +14 on a skill check where the DC is always 15.




Yeah. To be clear, I actually _prefer_ the players have some additional measure of control of the fiction outside of their characters and frequently build on offers the players make during play, especially when it comes to my regular players. But I also know that this is _not_ supported by the rules of D&D 5e and so I can't honestly make the argument that it is when we're discussing what is or isn't in the rules, even if it's my preference.


----------



## Satyrn (May 10, 2019)

iserith said:


> Edit: And besides, we don't have time for this. There's a D&D sex scandal on and we have pearls to clutch.



Yes. While all the monsters in the Cyber Sea are distracted, I will loot their oysters!


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## Satyrn (May 10, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> If only you could earn _treasure points_ on Enworld.
> 
> Amirite?



I don't like it. I'm rather proud of how high in the XP and Laughs Given rankings. 

But I'm a greedy horder, and I'd be at the bottom of the Treasure Points Given.


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## Chaosmancer (May 10, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> This is bog simple.  Control of your player does not require that everything your player imagines to be true conforms to your desires.  Far from being an attempt to assert any sort of control over your character, this is by definition and very plainly an attempt at asserting control over the setting, by the obvious fact that Francis is not your character.   The question is not, "Does Francis exist?", because we would need to know far more of the situation than is provided in the example.  The only question of any real importance that can be answered from the example is, "Can Bob's player force every other participant in the game to concede that not only does Francis exist, but he is here right now."




It is actually something you said in your response to Hussar that gave me some insight into why some parts of this conversation are getting so confusing for me. You said "if that authority is operating under the veto power of the GM, then it's not authority at all." 

This is not how I would have imagined the terms used. Authority, in my view, is the ability to make decisions even if those decisions can be vetoed. 

That is why I have been having problems reconciling the view that players have absolute authority over their character's thoughts, with no veto power of the DM, when combined into this scenario. If you are giving absolute authority to the player, then as the DM you have to consider that authority beyond veto, and then that causes issues if a player decided to add to the story in a way that the DM is fully in their rights to veto, because in vetoing they infringe on the absolute authority granted to the player over their character by the same DM. 

To me, a player's authority over their character is not free from DM veto, but if I declare that it is, then it must always be free from my veto. I don't get to go back and veto something just because I don't like it. That's why my question is "does Francis exist", because that is the intersection between absolute authority of the player over their character and absolute authority of the DM over the setting. That intersection doesn't happen with Francis being the guard at the gate, because there are logical reasons for the mix up that do not infringe on the player authority. If Bob insists on that, they are pushing too far. However, if the DM has said Bob has absolute authority over all aspects of his character, which would include his backstory, then Bob is not being unreasonable to create Francis the Guard and expect him to exist, because that is him exercising the absolute authority the DM handed them. 




Celebrim said:


> Yes.  Not much.  It's not something I'm saying you ought to really worry about, in the sense that it is some sort of sin or crime against the player.   What I am saying is that as a thoughtful GM, you ought to be consciously aware of when you have dipped a toe over the line and are in the player's business.
> 
> Doing what you are doing there is "Director Stance".   It's the GM not only being the curator of the story, but the conductor of the actors in it.   You are giving the players stage direction and cues.  And that's not always a bad thing, but the important thing is to know that you are doing it and what it involves and what it risks, so that you are making the choice consciously and intelligently and intentionally, and not painting yourself into a corner accidently.
> 
> ...




Wow, there is a lot I'm going to have to think about for a response to all that. You say it isn't _too_ bad, just that it is a railroad technique and involves risks. 

But, you put a sentence in there that I fully disagree with. I bolded it, and the more I think on it the more I think this is a rather major point. You said that it teaches the player that some part of the game belongs to the GM. Since you are using that as a negative, that must mean you believe that to be false. That no part of the game whatsoever belongs to the GM. I cannot find a single way to agree with that view. I am at the table, I am spending multiple hours playing with my friends, even more hours thinking about the next session and making sure monsters and challenges are prepared. Months if not years crafting lore and worlds for the players to explore and play the game in. I have absolute authority over the setting, the NPCs, the very rules of the game. 

Yet none of that, not even a sliver can be called mine? 

I share it gladly. I know that I am at risk, as a writer, of letting myself get too enamored with certain outcomes and I strive constantly to avoid that. But the things I create are mine. We can share them, we can work together on changing them, I can give you cart blanche to do whatever you like with them. But they are mine, because I created them. I do own a portion of the game, because it would be a different game without me. The players would not have the same experience with a different DM, and if I left half way through, the second half of the game would feel very different, because I would take my portion of the game with me when I left, just as my players have taken portions of the game with them when they have left. 

To me, to say that I own no portion of the game would be to abdicate all responsibility and care for the game. I'd be no better than an really smart calculator telling the players the results of their dice. 





iserith said:


> In your post, you said nothing about the player making the statement you make above. As far as I could tell from what you actually wrote ("For example, buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells in preparation of a battle involving lots of earth elementals under the assumption of them being vulnerable to that damage."), the _player_ merely _thought_ that, not necessarily the _character_. (Because players and characters are different, _right?_) So what it appears you've done here is move the goalposts, perhaps unintentionally, and then criticized my response on that basis.
> 
> But let's roll with what you added so we have something to talk about: If the player did make that statement and/or established that the character thought it, it still doesn't matter in my view. The player can have the character tell all and sundry why he or she is doing that for all I care. I'm only concerned with describing the environment, sometimes calling for checks, and narrating the results of the adventurers' in pursuit of fun for everyone while contributing to an exciting, memorable story. I don't see anything about the game that suggests I need to give a dusty flumph about why a player chooses to have the character do a thing and I certainly don't want to be policing thoughts, neither the players' nor the characters'.




I'm snipping the first part because I am tired of going in circles about it. If you can't see where the problem I have is, then there is no way to discuss it. You can check the response I gave above to Celebrim about authority, that might clear it up. 

As for the other part, I did not move the goalposts intentionally, I really doubt I moved them unintentionally, since I stated in the original and in this "under the assumption of" the earth elementals vulnerability. 

Now, if this is somehow different if a player simply thinks a thing compared to saying it out loud... I'm not sure what to say to that. I don't make a habit of assuming people are mind readers so I thought by stating what the players assumption was behind their action of purchasing, that you would understand that is what they would have said out loud at the table. The player's intent was clear in the example. 

And, while you may not care, I am trying to show that just because a player's knowledge doesn't matter in the "Well, why wouldn't the wizard cast fireball on the trolls" combat application, there are other things people can do to act on information. Things that are directly tied to the information in question. And information is something that is a resource in the game. There are methods, skills, and abilities that tie into the gathering of information, and you seem to not care at all. Anything written at any point, or said by you or another DM at any point, is fair game for them to simply know. Whether it makes any sense for them to know, or if it will upend your campaign, it doesn't seem to matter to you. 

The only thing I can think of, is that you have a different view on character information. They are fine to know things, because you will just change them if the character knowing that thing is too disruptive for you. They knew false information, why that information was false doesn't matter to you either, it just was. That doesn't work for me, if I am going to give my player's characters full authority to know anything, then they know it, I'm not going to change it later so they don't actually know it. That strikes me as dishonest. 

And before this comes up, yes I do homebrew and change things myself, quite often actually. I also do not tell my players they can let their character's know anything and everything. They know there is a limit to what their character can know. So, since they are aware of that limit, then I don't feel bad changing things, because the information they gather and get is always accurate. 

I don't know, myabe I'm just overly sensitive about this, but telling people they can "know" something to be true, because it is in the book and it is true, and then switching it on them, it just rubs me the wrong way. 




pemerton said:


> Also, what does _trusting the DM to tell a good story_ have to do with anything? When did D&D referees become storytellers?!




Since we started setting scenes, creating characters, and formulating plots. So, kind of since the beginning. We aren't standing at the side of the table like they do in wargaming or Magic Tournaments, we are sitting at the table and participating. 




pemerton said:


> Metaphors are tricky things - but I suspect my approach to the GM's role in RPGing is a bit different from yours. And I wouldn't try and use a "secret" that a player already knows.
> 
> But the idea that there might be some fiction that isn't yet known to the players (or their PCs) is certainly acceptable to me. (Often it mightn't be known to the GM either.)




One thing to note about what I was saying. There were two players in that example. One who is a veteran and new some piece of lore, and the other who is newer and did not. 

Players operate at different levels of knowledge, and what may be a fun and interesting plot for one to pursue could be ground to a halt if another pipes up with the answer before we even get started.


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## BoldItalic (May 10, 2019)

<The players announce a short rest>

...
Joe: "We gather around the campfire, cleaning weapons and binding our wounds."
Jim: "Hamish Broadsword remarks _That last cave was quite a challenge_."
Ann (IC): "I thought we would prevail before I ran out of spells. I would have given anything for just one more _Scorching Ray_.
Joe: "I reassure Ann's character."
Jim: "Hamish says thoughtfully _Another time, we should be better prepared for falling rock traps._"
...

The _characters_ were indeed challenged _because the players said they were and role-played it that way_.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 11, 2019)

pemerton said:


> This seems to point towards dysfunctionality at the table.



 Well, yeah.  

You say that like DMs and players shouldn't ever have to cope with dysfunction, and games should be designed for players & GMs who are functionally ideal, no dys, at all.  The PC's may live in a fantasy world (and resolve their problems with violence & magic), but those playing the game sit at a table in the real one, where relationships and human interactions are complicated and prone to such things.



> Also, what does _trusting the DM to tell a good story_ have to do with anything? When did D&D referees become storytellers?!



 The 90s, same time everyone else did, lest they be labeled ROLLplayer. ::shudder::



> Also also, there's this undercurrent in the thread that the player, by establishing that the guard is his/her PC's friend Frances, is somehow "cheating" or unfairly/improperly subverting a challenge.



 Is it an undercurrent?  Could just come right out and say players pull stuff like that all the time?  Because player do everything they can think of to eke out some advantage for the characters.




Hussar said:


> Fair enough.  But, that's not really a problem with shared authority.  That's a problem with Bob or the DM.  If everyone is earnestly attempting to make the game better, then there shouldn't be too many problems.



 Sure it's a problem with shared authority (because if you give out authority to a bunch of people, some of 'em are likely jerks.  It's also a problem with centralized authority (because if that one guy who gets it all is a dysfunctional jerk, watch out).  

However you distribute authority, try to keep it away from the dysfunctional jerks, right?



> Meh, it's as simple as, "Well, everyone at the table has a stake in making the game as interesting for everyone as possible."  The notion that the DM, by virtue of the DM, somehow has a better sense of what's best for the table than anyone else at the table, let alone everyone else at the table, is a very traditional approach to gaming, but, hardly the only one.



 Everyone on the planet has a pretty critical stake in keeping the air breathable, but the environment still seems to be a thorny issue not everyone can agree on.



> Your example, like your previous examples of other styles of play, shows a pretty strong bias for dysfunctional tables.



 Yes.  Because they exist.  
Ideal tables may exist, too, I've just never seen one.  I've /heard/ of them, all the time.  Whenever someone is defending a game they think is awesome, the table they report playing it seems downright ideal, for instance.



> I'm trying pretty hard to think how a player could justify completely rewriting an NPC that the DM has proposed in play - turning Grog the orc henchman into Francis my friend.  How would that possibly be fun for the table?  I can't really connect the dots there.



 Not to give anyone reading this whiplash, but, I recall reading an example of play from a FATE game - spirit of the century, I think - where a player did exactly that.  An NPC (Villain) was introduced, and the player changed it's name and retconned in a long-standing fued of some sort between them.  One of those melodrama tropes ("ha! we meet again!"). I remember thinking it seemed a pretty cool technique, at the time.



> IOW, if everyone at the table is operating in good faith, then there is no problem.



 Yep, so why bother discussing or designing games for such tables?  They'll be fine.  





#cynicismnotjustforbreakfastanymore


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## Hussar (May 11, 2019)

Tony V said:
			
		

> Yes. Because they exist.
> Ideal tables may exist, too, I've just never seen one. I've /heard/ of them, all the time. Whenever someone is defending a game they think is awesome, the table they report playing it seems downright ideal, for instance.




Oh, sure, and I have certainly seen more than a few dysfunctional players and tables.  But, 



> Is it an undercurrent? Could just come right out and say players pull stuff like that all the time? Because player do everything they can think of to eke out some advantage for the characters.




isn't true.  Or, at least, it's isn't always true.  There are more than enough players out there that aren't interesting en eking out some advantage all the time.  It might take a bit of hunting to find them, but, by and large, they are out there in pretty decent numbers.  And, frankly, I think this comes down to a maturity thing at the table.  (not age, maturity - they are different)  Players who play long enough tend to work their way through the whole "I must get every advantage" thing after a while, particularly if they get shown another way of playing.

In a group that always power games, sure, they probably won't change much.  But, in a group where authority gets spread around and, if the group enjoys that sort of thing, folks tend to settle down quite a bit and start taking a little broader view of the game rather than singular focus on their character.


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## Celebrim (May 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> This is not how I would have imagined the terms used. Authority, in my view, is the ability to make decisions even if those decisions can be vetoed.




If you can agree with your friend to come over to their house, but first you have to check and make sure it's OK with your parents, you don't have authority.   Authority is when you are in charge.  You have the power and right make decisions, give orders, and enforce your wishes.   If you have to ask, "Mother may I?", it's not authority.



> That is why I have been having problems reconciling the view that players have absolute authority over their character's thoughts, with no veto power of the DM, when combined into this scenario. If you are giving absolute authority to the player, then as the DM you have to consider that authority beyond veto...




Ok, yes.  So far so good.



> ...and then that causes issues if a player decided to add to the story in a way that the DM is fully in their rights to veto, because in vetoing they infringe on the absolute authority granted to the player over their character by the same DM.




I'm sorry, but I don't know how to make this any clearer, but "adding to the story in some way" and "authority over their character" are not the same things, and there is absolutely no conflict between having one and not the other.   Just because you have authority over your character, does not mean you have a right to add things that are by definition external to the character.   I'm at a loss to see how you don't understand that.   



> That's why my question is "does Francis exist", because that is the intersection between absolute authority of the player over their character and absolute authority of the DM over the setting.




But... it's just not.   Francis is not part of the character.   There is no conflict here.    To the extent that player backstory does intersect with setting, in that a player creating a backstory wants to introduce things to the setting, then I've already explained how that issue is resolved in other posts.  Essentially, neither the GM nor the player can unilaterally impose backstory on the other without some sort of permission.   The player can't introduce a new character to the setting without permission of the GM (because the GM absolutely owns the setting), and the GM can't decide something happened to the player's character in the past without permission from the player (because the player absolute owns the PC).  It's really simple.  In practice, much of the time the two participants are happy to work with each other to create myth, but for very good reasons both sides must agree because there are times the player does not want his story altered by the GM and the GM doesn't want his setting altered by the player and each can have good and valid reasons for that.   



> If Bob insists on that, they are pushing too far. However, if the DM has said Bob has absolute authority over all aspects of his character, which would include his backstory, then Bob is not being unreasonable to create Francis the Guard and expect him to exist, because that is him exercising the absolute authority the DM handed them.




Seriously, Francis the Guard is obviously external to the character.   This isn't even an interesting edge case like a Wizard's Familiar.  The player's authority over the character does not extend to anything beyond his ability to play the character and make choices about the character.   You have no more right to create Francis the Guard and expect him to exist than you do to create a +5 Holy Avenger and give it to yourself, and no matter how you twist, you can't make Francis the Guard part of the character because Francis is obviously an NPC.



> But, you put a sentence in there that I fully disagree with. I bolded it, and the more I think on it the more I think this is a rather major point. You said that it teaches the player that some part of the game belongs to the GM. Since you are using that as a negative, that must mean you believe that to be false. That no part of the game whatsoever belongs to the GM.




Wait???  What?!?!?  OK, we're just done.  This isn't even amusing anymore.   I said that it teaches that "some" part of the game belongs to the GM, and you have somehow twisted that into me saying that "no part of the game whatsoever belongs to the GM"?   I have no words.


----------



## Hussar (May 11, 2019)

Celebrim said:
			
		

> Just because you have authority over your character, does not mean you have a right to add things that are by definition external to the character. I'm at a loss to see how you don't understand that.




Is character backstory external to the character?  I realize that you would say, resoundingly, yes, it is.  I'm not sure it's so cut and dried as that though.  For a lot of groups, or at least mine , character background extends beyond the skin of that character.  Things like friends, mentors, family, etc, is part of creating a character and I frequently extend authority to the players to do things like this.  It is pretty understood at my table that we can all do this, with the understanding that we will try to do this to make the game more interesting for everyone at the table.



> The player can't introduce a new character to the setting without permission of the GM (because the GM absolutely owns the setting), and the GM can't decide something happened to the player's character in the past without permission from the player (because the player absolute owns the PC).




I would add the line, "at my table" to the above to make it true for you.  It most certainly isn't true at my table.  I don't own my setting and I strongly invite players to fold, spindle and maul my setting to their hearts content.  On the other side, the players don't really have a problem with me getting my sticky fingers on their characters because they trust that I won't abuse the situation.  ((And, generally, I'll ask first, but, not always))

Not really disagreeing with you [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], just cautioning against making too broad a statement about "the game".


----------



## pemerton (May 11, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> player do everything they can think of to eke out some advantage for the characters.



Not always, in my experience.

But in any event, _what is the advantage_ in having the guard by _my old friend Frances_? Does the GM have no challeng to put before the players (and their characters) except that of getting past the gate?



Tony Vargas said:


> Yep, so why bother discussing or designing games for such tables?  They'll be fine.



Huh? I don't think that the main purpose of RPG rules is to curb, or manage, dysfunction. They're to guide the play of the game.

I don't think my table is dysfunctional, but we play various games, using the various rules and approaches that those games provide for us.

************************************

On player and GM authority over backstory: I have always taken it for granted that players can introduce elements into the fiction via their backstory. How excatly this is managed depends on system details. Eg games like AD&D (with OA as an exception) or Rolemaster have no rules framework to manage this, so it's all by way of give-and-take, negotiation and consensus; games like Burning Wheel or Classic Traveller have lifepath PC generation which offers something of a framework, and BW has more bells and whistle on top of this, so it's not just about negotiation but about following the lead of the system.)

I also think that the player's backstory is fair game for the GM, but obviously a certain degree of deftness is mandatory - eg the player should have in some sense put his/her backstory at risk. In the example of Frances the guard, if the player's check (say, a CHA check) is unsuccessful then I think it's absolutely fair game for the GM to narrate Frances as recalling some adverse event, or retaining some grudge, that the player hadn't mentioned and that the player's PC hadn't appreciated would be Frances's principal motivation upon their re-meeting.


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## 5ekyu (May 11, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Not always, in my experience.
> 
> But in any event, _what is the advantage_ in having the guard by _my old friend Frances_? Does the GM have no challeng to put before the players (and their characters) except that of getting past the gate?
> 
> ...



"But in any event, what is the advantage in having the guard by my old friend Frances? Does the GM have no challeng to put before the players (and their characters) except that of getting past the gate?"

To me the last sentence there is not relevant. It's too broad to have meaning. Doesnt the GM have a challenge other than that dragon? Than that raidingnparty of orcs? Thsn that...etc etc etc

But Then I tend to find the first sentence more interesting. 

Part of my perspective about this is that if I say "yes, and..," having the guard indeed be an old war buddy or some other call back to a character trait seems reasonable. 

In fact, it's not at all uncommon for me to draw in these as the narrative for a good check result or circumstance. I keep backgrounds as front as possible.

But if we had this put ahead, "what is the advantage" is defined in the rules by using the friendly-indifferent-hostile charts in the dmg. Most likely, it means we use the friendly not the indifferent. So, the edge gained depends on the risk involved. 

Most likely that means a success to get the guard to take a minor risk is DC 10 vs DC 20. If it's a higher risk - major security post under high alert - even worse.

In my games, this would more frequently play out not as a meta-player declaration but in character with "Hey, are any of these guards former soldiers I have served with?" followed by some degree of investigation and socializing. 

To us, that plays better and invokes those character features in ways we find more satisfying than just meta-declares by players. Unless circumstances are extremely agsinst it, its all but certain to result in a yes but in a more covert way.

In Mage the Ascension, your character with the right features could castpt z fireball, typical DnD style into a crowd. Or one could have a car explode as if a car bomb went off or a gas line rupture. The former was considered "vulgar" magic - not as an insult but as a measure of how " in the face" the magic was to the observers. The more the fact that it was magic vs mundane the more "vulgar". The more obvious it was a break in the internal reality.

So, for us, the in-character question and investigate etc to find a guard who us a former soldier is less "vulgar" than it is to just have a player meta-declare the guard *is* and old buddy. 

But having played both in various systems and flavors, that's just a preference of ours.


----------



## Celebrim (May 11, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Is character backstory external to the character?  I realize that you would say, resoundingly, yes, it is.  I'm not sure it's so cut and dried as that though.  For a lot of groups, or at least mine , character background extends beyond the skin of that character.  Things like friends, mentors, family, etc, is part of creating a character and I frequently extend authority to the players to do things like this.  It is pretty understood at my table that we can all do this, with the understanding that we will try to do this to make the game more interesting for everyone at the table.




Do you in any way think that that is unusual or departs from what I or probably the vast majority of groups do?

Those sort of comments are beginning to border on disparaging.



> Not really disagreeing with you [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], just cautioning against making too broad a statement about "the game".




What we have discovered so far is that at your table you have an unspoken "gentlemen's agreement" regarding the content that is introduced.  That's very typical and as long as you have a high trust environment where everyone has worked out the sort of things that other people enjoy and their limits and preferences after long periods of (often nonverbally) forming a social contract, that works just fine.

In practice I'd guess "at my table" and "at your table" aren't that different in terms of what the group would endorse.   The assertions I'm making about "the game" aren't actually assertions you are disagreeing with.   I've talked about a lot of the same things you are talking about here, including loosely negotiated agreements between players and GMs to cross the line in the interest of creating fun.   My statement of " In practice, much of the time the two participants are happy to work with each other to create myth..." is pretty much exactly the same statement you make, "It is pretty understood at my table that we can all do this, with the understanding that we will try to do this to make the game more interesting for everyone at the table...".   If you have permission from all parties, you're not trespassing.

The only thing I can take from your objections is that you don't like the tone or technicality of the way I'm saying things, because they don't sound as friendly and as cooperative as your jolly good fun.   But I am agreeing that table play should be friendly and cooperative, I'm only discussing what basis that cooperation rests on, because every good table no matter how well the players know each other and how long they've been friends will have disagreements regarding story direction.


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## Hussar (May 11, 2019)

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]. Yup. I’d largely agree with that.


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## Tony Vargas (May 11, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Oh, sure, and I have certainly seen more than a few dysfunctional players and tables.  But,
> .  There are more than enough players out there that aren't interesting en eking out some advantage all the time.



 True, enough - too often they're the ones who just aren't engaged much with the game, but, yeah, I'd left them out.
Then there's also the ones that go to the opposite extreme to prove what realROLEplayers they are.

I mean, lists of dysfunctional, stereotypical, annoying, and/or funny player types have been out there since the early days of The Dragon.



> Players who play long enough tend to work their way through the whole "I must get every advantage" thing after a while, particularly if they get shown another way of playing.



 As often, I've seen players learn the behavior over time.



pemerton said:


> Huh? I don't think that the main purpose of RPG rules is to curb, or manage, dysfunction. They're to guide the play of the game.



 To guide away from dysfunction - or push right into it, depending on the system.


----------



## iserith (May 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm snipping the first part because I am tired of going in circles about it. If you can't see where the problem I have is, then there is no way to discuss it. You can check the response I gave above to Celebrim about authority, that might clear it up.
> 
> As for the other part, I did not move the goalposts intentionally, I really doubt I moved them unintentionally, since I stated in the original and in this "under the assumption of" the earth elementals vulnerability.
> 
> Now, if this is somehow different if a player simply thinks a thing compared to saying it out loud... I'm not sure what to say to that. I don't make a habit of assuming people are mind readers so I thought by stating what the players assumption was behind their action of purchasing, that you would understand that is what they would have said out loud at the table. The player's intent was clear in the example.




The player's intent is clear; the character's is not. They don't have to be the same thing since player and character are separate, right? The player could know that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, but never say anything about the character's knowledge and just describe what he or she wants to do: "I want to go to Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls of _thunderwave_." Just to be sure I understand your position, would you as DM say the character can't do that?



Chaosmancer said:


> And, while you may not care, I am trying to show that just because a player's knowledge doesn't matter in the "Well, why wouldn't the wizard cast fireball on the trolls" combat application, there are other things people can do to act on information. Things that are directly tied to the information in question. And information is something that is a resource in the game. There are methods, skills, and abilities that tie into the gathering of information, and you seem to not care at all. Anything written at any point, or said by you or another DM at any point, is fair game for them to simply know. Whether it makes any sense for them to know, or if it will upend your campaign, it doesn't seem to matter to you.
> 
> The only thing I can think of, is that you have a different view on character information. They are fine to know things, because you will just change them if the character knowing that thing is too disruptive for you. They knew false information, why that information was false doesn't matter to you either, it just was. That doesn't work for me, if I am going to give my player's characters full authority to know anything, then they know it, I'm not going to change it later so they don't actually know it. That strikes me as dishonest.




There is nothing dishonest about it. If a player wants his or her character to think something is true, that's his or her business. And the player (and character) might be right. But then they both might be wrong, too. That is why the smart play is to verify one's assumptions before acting upon them. That's how something goes from "think" to "know."



Chaosmancer said:


> And before this comes up, yes I do homebrew and change things myself, quite often actually. I also do not tell my players they can let their character's know anything and everything. They know there is a limit to what their character can know. So, since they are aware of that limit, then I don't feel bad changing things, because the information they gather and get is always accurate.
> 
> I don't know, myabe I'm just overly sensitive about this, but telling people they can "know" something to be true, because it is in the book and it is true, and then switching it on them, it just rubs me the wrong way.




It occurs to me there is some conflation between "thinking" and "knowing" in the context of this discussion. I'll try to break these apart in hopes it sheds some light. "Knowing" is related to truth. I can _think_ that this earth elemental is vulnerable to thunder damage, and have my character do the same, because I've read the Monster Manual. I won't _know_ that is true until I, for example, successfully recall the related lore or make an accurate deduction based on available clues. (Or any other task that might establish a thing as being true.) This is the "smart play" I'm talking about with regard to taking action within the game to verify assumptions before acting upon them.

Telegraphing is also a good technique here in my view. When describing the environment, the DM provides clues as to the monster's strengths and weaknesses. From there the players can make informed decisions if they're paying attention. If my description is somehow not consistent with how a player, for example, remembers how earth elementals work, then the player might realize something is up. The DM therefore gives the players a fair shot to figure it out before things go potentially awry.


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## Chaosmancer (May 11, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> If you can agree with your friend to come over to their house, but first you have to check and make sure it's OK with your parents, you don't have authority.   Authority is when you are in charge.  You have the power and right make decisions, give orders, and enforce your wishes.   If you have to ask, "Mother may I?", it's not authority.




And yet we can clearly say Congress has the authority to make laws, in spite of the President's veto power. And the FBI has the authority to arrest people and the Federal Courts have the authority to jail people, in spite of the President's power of Pardon to nullify those decisions. 

Authority with oversight exists, and is part of the definition of the word. That's why I didn't realize you were operating under such a different version of the definition, your version is what I refer to as "absolute authority" which is quite different. 





Celebrim said:


> I'm sorry, but I don't know how to make this any clearer, but "adding to the story in some way" and "authority over their character" are not the same things, and there is absolutely no conflict between having one and not the other.   Just because you have authority over your character, does not mean you have a right to add things that are by definition external to the character.   I'm at a loss to see how you don't understand that.




Because there are things that are external to the "character" that still fall under the character. 

I make a character, and decide in their backstory they have a childhood sweetheart. That sweetheart is external to the character, but it would be strange for the DM to tell me I have a childhood sweetheart, wouldn't it? What about a hometown? As a player, I could decide that my character's home town was a bit like Mayberry, and that the various people within that town and their relationships with my character shaped them in a variety of ways. That entire town and all the people in it are external to my character, but they are vital to my character's story. Heck, I have a paladin who is married. Actual character I am playing. His wife is definitely external to the character, but her backstory and their relationship is something I feel is under my control. Because having a loving wife is part of my character's story, it is part of my character, even if the wife is an NPC and external to my character. 

These are muddy waters, and if you give a character absolute authority over their character, but caught it off once you get more than 3 inches past the character's skin or scales, then you have not given them absolute authority over their character, because people are more than their physical bodies and thoughts. They are their relationships too. 




Celebrim said:


> But... it's just not.   Francis is not part of the character.   There is no conflict here.    To the extent that player backstory does intersect with setting, in that a player creating a backstory wants to introduce things to the setting, then I've already explained how that issue is resolved in other posts.  Essentially, neither the GM nor the player can unilaterally impose backstory on the other without some sort of permission.   The player can't introduce a new character to the setting without permission of the GM (because the GM absolutely owns the setting), and the GM can't decide something happened to the player's character in the past without permission from the player (because the player absolute owns the PC).  It's really simple.  In practice, much of the time the two participants are happy to work with each other to create myth, but for very good reasons both sides must agree because there are times the player does not want his story altered by the GM and the GM doesn't want his setting altered by the player and each can have good and valid reasons for that.




Okay, you seem to get what I was saying above. But looking at that do you not understand why I am saying that a unilateral call that the player has absolute authority over their character contradicts this? Why when reading posters who claim that they allow their players this absolute authority, yet decide that it is completely unreasonable for the player to decide they have a friend in town, that I want clarification, since those two stances are incompatible? 

IF you have absolute authority, you have absolute authority. That includes adding characters and places to the setting. I agree with you that in practice, this generally goes smoothly, but it seems that in this discussion we are talking past one another. 




Celebrim said:


> Wait???  What?!?!?  OK, we're just done.  This isn't even amusing anymore.   I said that it teaches that "some" part of the game belongs to the GM, and you have somehow twisted that into me saying that "no part of the game whatsoever belongs to the GM"?   I have no words.




If it is a negative that "some part" of the game belongs to the GM, how the heck else am I supposed to interpret what you mean? Is it like a "pinch" and a "dash", that "some" part of the game is too much but "a little" is just right? 

I'll quote you again. 



> I guess I don't really think it's "too much", but I'm not impressed by it, because I'd rather see you talking about how you encourage your players to mature as players, and "Director Stance" really doesn't do that because it teaches the player that part of the game belongs to the GM. A GM in director stance is too absorbed by their own artistic vision, and in my opinion is - ironically considering the larger discussion - not taking enough feedback from the players.




You'd rather see me talk about something else, it doesn't help the players mature, A GM in this stance teaches that part of the game belongs to the GM, A GM in this stance is too absorbed in their own vision, They aren't taking enough feedback from players. 

That is an awful lot of negatives in there, with the "part of the game belongs to the GM" right smack dab in the middle of it. Was that supposed to be a positive aspect instead? 






iserith said:


> The player's intent is clear; the character's is not. They don't have to be the same thing since player and character are separate, right? The player could know that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage, but never say anything about the character's knowledge and just describe what he or she wants to do: "I want to go to Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls of _thunderwave_." Just to be sure I understand your position, would you as DM say the character can't do that?




If all I had to go on was their desire to buy scrolls, then I wouldn't have an issue with it. I've never once claimed to be a mind reader. But if they state their knowledge, I might have a question of how they know that. 

But, are you trying to say that Player knowledge = Character Knowledge but Player Motivation =/= Character motivation? 

The player knows earth elementals are vulnerable, the character knows they are vulnerable, player is motivated to buy scrolls because the elementals are vulnerable... but the character has a completely different motivation? 

You push for character and player to be closer and closer together, but then as soon as I start pointing out the potential issues with that you drag them back apart like they are teenagers about to get caught making out. 



iserith said:


> There is nothing dishonest about it. If a player wants his or her character to think something is true, that's his or her business. And the player (and character) might be right. But then they both might be wrong, too. That is why the smart play is to verify one's assumptions before acting upon them. That's how something goes from "think" to "know."




But you have told them their character can know what they know. If they encounter a cleric capable of casting Raise Dead, then they know with at least 24 hours notice, that cleric can cast Greater Restoration. It is in the books, it is a solid fact. Therefore the stats in the monster manual are solid facts as well, by the same logic. So if a player is a diabolist and has read everything on the Nine Hells ever printed and they know a lot of facts about the Hells. Then they get there and you've changed everything, with no warning to them, then you have undercut them and their character. You told them they could know everything, then showed them they knew nothing in "reality". 

Thinking on it, I suppose if you go forward saying "Hey guys, you can think you know anything you want, but I change things constantly, so you have no reason to believe anything in the books will remain true" then I guess I don't have as much of an issue with it, because you are really telling the players they don't know anything, and they can proceed with that realization in place. But, it occurs to me, if a player makes a character and describes them as having been a monster expert, or raised by monster experts, or what have you and you have changed a common monster in the world to act differently. Do you tell the player before the game begins? OR do you tell them that their character can think they know things, but since they haven't been out actually fighting yet, they don't know. 

Because the player is setting up a character who would know such things, and I'm curious if that makes a difference to you.


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## iserith (May 11, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> If all I had to go on was their desire to buy scrolls, then I wouldn't have an issue with it. I've never once claimed to be a mind reader. But if they state their knowledge, I might have a question of how they know that.




If you're fine with the them going to buy the scrolls _without_ explanation, why care _with_ an explanation? The DM is just there to adjudicate the action of buying the scrolls, nothing more. A player might say "Hey, everyone, earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage." But there's nothing there for the DM to do.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, are you trying to say that Player knowledge = Character Knowledge but Player Motivation =/= Character motivation?
> 
> The player knows earth elementals are vulnerable, the character knows they are vulnerable, player is motivated to buy scrolls because the elementals are vulnerable... but the character has a completely different motivation?
> 
> You push for character and player to be closer and closer together, but then as soon as I start pointing out the potential issues with that you drag them back apart like they are teenagers about to get caught making out.




I don't say "player knowledge = character knowledge" though. I'm saying the player determines what the character thinks. A player might know that, assuming the DM hasn't changed anything, earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage. He or she may say the character thinks that. Or he or she may not. It's up to the player. A player might choose to establish some other reason for buying the scrolls that is unrelated to thinking anything in particular about earth elementals, too.



Chaosmancer said:


> But you have told them their character can know what they know. If they encounter a cleric capable of casting Raise Dead, then they know with at least 24 hours notice, that cleric can cast Greater Restoration. It is in the books, it is a solid fact. Therefore the stats in the monster manual are solid facts as well, by the same logic. So if a player is a diabolist and has read everything on the Nine Hells ever printed and they know a lot of facts about the Hells. Then they get there and you've changed everything, with no warning to them, then you have undercut them and their character. You told them they could know everything, then showed them they knew nothing in "reality".




Except I just told you I do warn them? Through telegraphing, remember?



Chaosmancer said:


> Thinking on it, I suppose if you go forward saying "Hey guys, you can think you know anything you want, but I change things constantly, so you have no reason to believe anything in the books will remain true" then I guess I don't have as much of an issue with it...




Great - though I don't say that "I change things constantly" as that would not be accurate. But that I can change things at all is sufficient warning to be vigilant.



Chaosmancer said:


> ...because you are really telling the players they don't know anything, and they can proceed with that realization in place.




I'm telling them they are free to have their characters think what they want, and they might be right, but that the smart play is to verify assumptions before acting on them. Which isn't bad (nor novel) advice in the real world either.



Chaosmancer said:


> But, it occurs to me, if a player makes a character and describes them as having been a monster expert, or raised by monster experts, or what have you and you have changed a common monster in the world to act differently. Do you tell the player before the game begins? OR do you tell them that their character can think they know things, but since they haven't been out actually fighting yet, they don't know.
> 
> Because the player is setting up a character who would know such things, and I'm curious if that makes a difference to you.




Since I telegraph all of these things anyway, there's really no additional special concerns I have. The players are free to think what they want. They're encouraged to pay attention to the DM's description of the environment. And they're free to act as they will to verify their assumptions. Or not. That's their business, not mine.


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## pemerton (May 12, 2019)

iserith said:


> If you're fine with the them going to buy the scrolls _without_ explanation, why care _with_ an explanation?



I can't answer for [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], although I get the sense that he (? I think) and I have some similar views here.

The things the player characters believe, the things they say to one another, etc are a part of the gameworld as much as anything else. If a character is telling another character something about earth elemental, then that belief and conversation is part of the fiction.

Now when it's speculation about esoteric arcane matters, if the belief diverges from the truth that probably doesn't create any issues for the fiction - though in some circumstances (eg the PC is an archmage) it might.

But if the conversation is about the character's hometown and childhood friends, then all of those beliefs turning out to be false would be rather odd. Is being an inveterate liar, or someone who is utterly deluded about his/her childhood, part of the player's conception of the character? Chaosmancer and I are assuming that it's not.



Chaosmancer said:


> when reading posters who claim that they allow their players this absolute authority, yet decide that it is completely unreasonable for the player to decide they have a friend in town, that I want clarification, since those two stances are incompatible
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



Yes, these are the same examples as the one's I was thinking of - knowledge of one's childhood; or the diabolist/monster expert who is similar to the archmage in the earlier part of this post.

This is why, upthread, I referred to pressure in the game set-up for PCs to be strangers/"alienated" from the gamworld (like Conan in REH's stories). If the characters are at home in the gameworld, it doesn't make much sense that the players would be dependent on the GM to tell them everything they know, and that the players would have to extract all that through action declaration. That's a device for playing alienated characters.


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## iserith (May 12, 2019)

pemerton said:


> I can't answer for [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], although I get the sense that he (? I think) and I have some similar views here.
> 
> The things the player characters believe, the things they say to one another, etc are a part of the gameworld as much as anything else. If a character is telling another character something about earth elemental, then that belief and conversation is part of the fiction.
> 
> ...




I don't understand what you're saying here in relation to my specific question that you quoted. If the DM does not care that the PC went to buy scrolls presumably good in a fight against earth elementals with no explanation whatsover, then why would someone care if they do so after saying "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder" or words to that effect? Does something meaningful change about the action declaration at that point?


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## pemerton (May 12, 2019)

iserith said:


> If the DM does not care that the PC went to buy scrolls presumably good in a fight against earth elementals with no explanation whatsover, then why would someone care if they do so after saying "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder" or words to that effect? Does something meaningful change about the action declaration at that point?



Yes. The action declaration is premised on some other elements of the shared ficiton established by the players - something along the lines of _that such-and-such a character believes such-and-such a thing, and has shared that belief with other PCs_.

If the GM is intending to introduce fiction that reveals the PC belief to be false, _and_ it is established or implicit in the fiction that the PC is an expert (eg my _archmage_, or [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]'s _diabolist_), then we have the possibility of tension if not outright contradiction.

Whose vision has to yield? If the answer is _the player's_, then Chaosmancer and I think that contradicts the clam that the player has authority over the character.


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## Chaosmancer (May 12, 2019)

iserith said:


> If you're fine with the them going to buy the scrolls _without_ explanation, why care _with_ an explanation? The DM is just there to adjudicate the action of buying the scrolls, nothing more. A player might say "Hey, everyone, earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage." But there's nothing there for the DM to do.




Because intent matters? The narrative weight of actions can change depending on the intent behind them, and require different adjudications?

Really, the entire point of the example has been to show that players can take actions with player knowledge beyond just simply attacking something in combat. 

Maybe they buy items specifically to defeat an enemy they have never researched, maybe they break into the shop to steal a wish scroll they only know about because they read the module, maybe they use knowledge from the books to confront a powerful being in disguise as an old man and use a clue they were supposed to get later down the line to trick it into fighting against their enemies. 

There are many ways in which players can use the carte blanche to know anything with no restriction to disrupt the game. And the GMs job is more than just adjudicating actions, it is making sure things run smoothly.

And, while this is amusingly ironic, you seem to be fine with it on this end of the spectrum, but on determining things about a player's past and the people they know after the game has started, you are not fine with it.  




iserith said:


> I don't say "player knowledge = character knowledge" though. I'm saying the player determines what the character thinks. A player might know that, assuming the DM hasn't changed anything, earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage. He or she may say the character thinks that. Or he or she may not. It's up to the player. A player might choose to establish some other reason for buying the scrolls that is unrelated to thinking anything in particular about earth elementals, too.




You are giving the players the freedom to choose how much of their knowledge the character has, mostly I think because like Elfcrusher you find the idea of pretending not to know something distasteful, so do you expect players to not utilize any scrap of knowledge they have? 




iserith said:


> Except I just told you I do warn them? Through telegraphing, remember?




How exactly do you telegraph that the item they read was hidden in the fort isn't actually there? How do you telegraph that hags don't eat children to give birth to daughters? 

Sure, you can telegraph something is weird about an earth elemental by saying it is blue instead of brown, but some aspects of knowledge are going to be nearly impossible to telegraph without just outright stating that you changed something. 

And, I keep trying to make this clear, I'm not only talking about combat and combat strengths and weaknesses. I'm talking lore. I'm talking knowledge. 

In fact, here is a good table example. We were playing a game, and we were going through a dream world dungeon full of various undead. We encountered a pair of vampires, a married couple, who had no idea they were vampires and in fact had been turned into vampires by some weird stones. One of the players, despite these NPCs having no idea what was going on and having never harmed anyone, attempted to dominate and destroy them. They were acting under the lore that all undead are made from portions of the Negative Energy plane, that they are anti-life and therefore have no rights and must be destroyed absolutely no matter what. They got upset when the DM had no idea what they were talking about, because the DM was not only not acting under that assumption, but had no idea that assumption even existed. 

It ended up causing a massive fight and hurt feelings around the table, because the player went forth thinking everything they knew was true and the DM had subverted that without intention, and so while they were seeing abominations to be destroyed, other members of the party say victims being persecuted and we ended up in conflict. And not interesting party conflict, the type that nearly wrecked the campaign. 

Going forth and allowing players to believe that everything they know about the game applies and is valid for them to draw upon can be a dangerous proposition. Especially when it conflicts with what the DM or other players know and are drawing from. 




iserith said:


> Great - though I don't say that "I change things constantly" as that would not be accurate. But that I can change things at all is sufficient warning to be vigilant.




Only if you change a lot, otherwise their knowledge being inaccurate is an anomaly not something they will learn to look out for.


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## iserith (May 12, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Yes. The action declaration is premised on some other elements of the shared ficiton established by the players - something along the lines of _that such-and-such a character believes such-and-such a thing, and has shared that belief with other PCs_.
> 
> If the GM is intending to introduce fiction that reveals the PC belief to be false, _and_ it is established or implicit in the fiction that the PC is an expert (eg my _archmage_, or [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION]'s _diabolist_), then we have the possibility of tension if not outright contradiction.
> 
> Whose vision has to yield? If the answer is _the player's_, then Chaosmancer and I think that contradicts the clam that the player has authority over the character.




I don't find any contradiction here that isn't created by the player. It is the player that has to yield since it is the player stating something about the world (e.g. "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage"), which is under the purview of the DM. The obvious solution to me is for the player not to do that (nor declare the guard is Frances, an old friend) and, again, to verify one's assumptions before acting upon them.


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## iserith (May 12, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Because intent matters? The narrative weight of actions can change depending on the intent behind them, and require different adjudications?
> 
> Really, the entire point of the example has been to show that players can take actions with player knowledge beyond just simply attacking something in combat.
> 
> ...




I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] establishes a good line here: The player is free to draw upon hard-won knowledge to inform how he or she has the character act. The limit is when the player is not acting in good faith and has, as you suggest above, read the module and presumably didn't tell anyone. I think a player not being forthcoming about this many people would consider rude or worse. But sometimes my players replay my one-shots to try out a different character or approach with a new party. It can work just fine even with perfect knowledge.

But anyway let's say that the player does say "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage" then says he or she wants to go Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls or _thunderwave_ for the party wizard to use. You know as DM that THESE earth elementals have no particular vulnerabilities to thunder damage. Let's up the ante and say that the characters have never encountered earth elementals before. Let's go one step further and say the character is an Int-8 barbarian. What do you do here as DM? Does the character go buy the scrolls or do you invalidate the action declaration?

I'll add that you are incorrect about my views on the player determining things about a character's past during play. Here I'm stating what the rules support, not what I personally do. Read upthread and you will see me make several statements about my preferences in this regard. What I'll not say is that the rules of the game support that preference (or yours). Every table has to figure this out on their own. (This was, by the way, the answer I gave that you said was "clear as mist" and wanted to move past.)



Chaosmancer said:


> You are giving the players the freedom to choose how much of their knowledge the character has, mostly I think because like Elfcrusher you find the idea of pretending not to know something distasteful, so do you expect players to not utilize any scrap of knowledge they have?




I have no issue with a player playing a character that doesn't know something the player does. That's up to the player. My issue has always been the DM _requiring_ the player to do so.



Chaosmancer said:


> How exactly do you telegraph that the item they read was hidden in the fort isn't actually there? How do you telegraph that hags don't eat children to give birth to daughters?




That depends on the context. I don't understand the first question. The second could be done through a knowledgeable NPC, and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to get the correct information into the PCs' hands. Not to mention - _the smart play is to act on assumptions only after verifying them_.



Chaosmancer said:


> Sure, you can telegraph something is weird about an earth elemental by saying it is blue instead of brown, but some aspects of knowledge are going to be nearly impossible to telegraph without just outright stating that you changed something.
> 
> And, I keep trying to make this clear, I'm not only talking about combat and combat strengths and weaknesses. I'm talking lore. I'm talking knowledge.
> 
> ...




That sounds like a few problems at play to me, mostly having to do with personalities and how the group deals with conflict resolution. What appears to kick things off is that the player acted on an assumption without verifying it first. But the DM bares some responsibility here as well by failing to describe these vampires as somehow distinct from others. Then there's an issue with how the players move forward on action declarations as a group and how they resolve conflicts. This can't be laid entirely at the feet of the person wanting to attack the vampires and frankly there are plenty of characters that might credibly do that even if the player knows something is off about _these _vampires.

This is a situation with multivariate issues. To lay it at the feet of just one thing looks a lot like confirmation bias to me.



Chaosmancer said:


> Only if you change a lot, otherwise their knowledge being inaccurate is an anomaly not something they will learn to look out for.




Seems like a blanket statement to me that is easily disproved by a single example.


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## Tony Vargas (May 12, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Whose vision has to yield? If the answer is _the player's_, then Chaosmancer and I think that contradicts the clam that the player has authority over the character.



 Was it a claim of absolute or final authority?

AFAICT, even under the hard-core, don't-tell-me-what-my-character-thinks ethos, the GM can place an environment that's at odds with everything he thinks.


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## pemerton (May 12, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Was it a claim of absolute or final authority?
> 
> AFAICT, even under the hard-core, don't-tell-me-what-my-character-thinks ethos, the GM can place an environment that's at odds with everything he thinks.



It would be interesting to see what you and others think of "the smelly chamberlain".

Suppose that the players play their PCs as keeping their distance from the chamberlain, opening windows when he enters the room, etc - because the players have decided that their PCs think the chamberlain smells - while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell. Whose view prevails? What is true in the fiction - does the chamberlain smell? are the PCs hallucinating? can the GM insist that the PCs in fact _don't_ think the chamberlain smells?

The idea that each can have absolute authority over a domain - PC beliefs/feelings; the rest of the gameworld - with no possibility of contradiciton isn't tenable, in my view.



iserith said:


> I don't find any contradiction here that isn't created by the player. It is the player that has to yield since it is the player stating something about the world (e.g. "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage"), which is under the purview of the DM. The obvious solution to me is for the player not to do that (nor declare the guard is Frances, an old friend) and, again, to verify one's assumptions before acting upon them.



To me, the player yielding in this fashion is not consistent with the idea that the player has _total authority_ over what the PC thinks and feels.



iserith said:


> I think [MENTION=4937]The player is free to draw upon hard-won knowledge to inform how he or she has the character act.



This seems straight out of the Gygaxian playbook. I don't think it suits a game in which the player wants to play a PC who is embedded in the gameworld rather than a relative stranger to it.


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## 5ekyu (May 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> It would be interesting to see what you and others think of "the smelly chamberlain".
> 
> Suppose that the players play their PCs as keeping their distance from the chamberlain, opening windows when he enters the room, etc - because the players have decided that their PCs think the chamberlain smells - while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell. Whose view prevails? What is true in the fiction - does the chamberlain smell? are the PCs hallucinating? can the GM insist that the PCs in fact _don't_ think the chamberlain smells?
> 
> ...



"'The idea that each can have absolute authority over a domain - PC beliefs/feelings; the rest of the gameworld - with no possibility of contradiciton isn't tenable, in my view."
Uh huh...

But the heart of the matter is this...

"- while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell."

As a gm, I would never rule the NPC doesn't smell. Everyone has a smell to them, even faint. Perception rules establish expectations. In one supers campaign, I had a villain who chain smoked distinctive brands and that smell often lingered  at crime scenes. In another game, each magician had tell tale sigils, they also could linger after. 

So, what the players are doing is *either* (their call as to which ) in character pranking *or* deciding that their character finds the particular smell of the target unpleasant. If its the former, it might become relevant as deceptions are not absolute. If its the latter, it would need to be played within the normal expectations for percrption established in the game.

So, no real conflicts unless the players want to define not just what they think of the target's smell but how far it goes or how loud it is. 

This, imo, is an example born out of vagueness in the term smell. Seitch it got hearing sounds and liking it or not and the difference is rather clearer. They can decide they find the NPCs voice funny, but not that its overly loud or unusually high pitched.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 13, 2019)

I don't find the Smelly Chamberlain to be particular complicated.  The author apparently thinks it's some sort of paradox.

The only paradox is that the author seems to think that the GM needs to define whether or not the chamberlain is objectively, factually smelly.  He doesn't.  He only needs to decide whether _other people_ (other than the PCs) think he's smelly.

If the GM likes the idea, he runs with it.  If he doesn't think his Chamberlain should smell bad (but I do hope he has a good reason, because really if the players want him to smell bad that's a great contribution) then the PCs are the only people who think he smells bad.

The players are free to have their characters act like he smells bad.

The players are free to have their players think he smells bad.  But they may eventually notice that nobody else thinks he smells bad.  They're free to come up with whatever narration they want to explain it.  They're crazy?  They suffered neurological damage in the battle with Jubilex?  They all were fed some herb as kids that happened to make them extremely sensitive to the chamberlain's cologne?  I don't know, but if they're creative enough to come up with the idea in the first place, I'll bet they are creative enough to come up with an explanation for why they are the only three people who seem to think he's smelly.

Or not.  Does it really matter? The 3 PCs think he's smelly.  Nobody else does.  Maybe it's just one of those things that nobody can explain.

Or MAYBE it's a plot hook....

(All of the above applies to Francis the Guard, by the way.)


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> To me, the player yielding in this fashion is not consistent with the idea that the player has _total authority_ over what the PC thinks and feels.




Why? Does what the PC think have to be a truth about the game world or be permitted to create NPCs during play (over which the player has NO authority by the rules) in order for you to feel the player has "total authority over what the PC thinks and feels?"



pemerton said:


> This seems straight out of the Gygaxian playbook. I don't think it suits a game in which the player wants to play a PC who is embedded in the gameworld rather than a relative stranger to it.




Why does this make the PC a "relative stranger" to the game world? The player can choose to use that knowledge to inform how he or she has the character or not as he or she sees fit.


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think they would _inform_ but not _constrain_ the DM's narration of the outcome of the adventurers' outcome. This may seem like splitting hairs, but we have to take any rule into the context of the idea that the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. In this case, it may well be likely that the DM always says the character can (for example) get an audience with a noble or help from his or her temple; however, in the realm of infinite fictional possibilities, that might not always be the case and the DM decides the result, not the rules and not the player, even if the rules inform the DM's decision. Thus, I would say background features such as the ones you quoted fall short of demonstrating that some NPCs are "extensions of the PC." In a practical sense, it might look and operate that way if it always works, but it's not an exception to the standard adjudication process.




Okay, but what I'm talking about is that background features that give reliable access to (and outcomes from) NPCs are as much a part of the character sheet as the character's ability scores, equipment list, and (if the character is a spellcaster) spell list. Of course the DM can rule that your spell doesn't work for circumstantial reasons, but that doesn't mean that the ability to cast that spell isn't part of your character's identity, and that the DM isn't overriding the character sheet to some extent by doing so.


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## Ovinomancer (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Okay, but what I'm talking about is that background features that give reliable access to (and outcomes from) NPCs are as much a part of the character sheet as the character's ability scores, equipment list, and (if the character is a spellcaster) spell list. Of course the DM can rule that your spell doesn't work for circumstantial reasons, but that doesn't mean that the ability to cast that spell isn't part of your character's identity, and that the DM isn't overriding the character sheet to some extent by doing so.



When did "control over PC thoughts" turn into "on the character sheet?"


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Okay, but what I'm talking about is that background features that give reliable access to (and outcomes from) NPCs are as much a part of the character sheet as the character's ability scores, equipment list, and (if the character is a spellcaster) spell list. Of course the DM can rule that your spell doesn't work for circumstantial reasons, but that doesn't mean that the ability to cast that spell isn't part of your character's identity, and that the DM isn't overriding the character sheet to some extent by doing so.




They may be listed on the character sheet, but as the outcome of all action declarations are decided upon by the DM, I don't think where they are listed says anything about the player controlling the fiction in this regard.


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> When did "control over PC thoughts" turn into "on the character sheet?"




I don't know what you're talking about. This exchange isn't about whether players have control over the thoughts of their PCs. It's about whether certain background features turn certain NPCs into "extensions of the character" in the way a spell like _dominate person_ does, unless you're making a connection that I've missed.


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## Celebrim (May 13, 2019)

So we've reached the point where this is claimed to be a rational series of steps:

a) Player decides to have his PC gas-light an NPC.
b) Player declares that the false to facts belief of the PC with respect to the environment is something the PC actually believes.
c) Therefore either the PC is correct and the environment retroactively conforms to the PC's belief, or else the GM is playing the player's character?

This is at the point where if I were the GM, and something like this happened, I'd conclude that the player - not the character, but the player - was insane.

Somehow we've gone from, "The GM can't tell the player what the PC thinks." to "The PC can tell the GM what the setting is because the PC's thoughts are invariably true to facts."   "My character believes this" is something that the player can declare.   "My character believes this, and therefore it is true." is not something the player can declare, least of all when such a declaration contravenes established fact.   We've recreated the "I've shot you!  No you missed!" problem of a playground Make Believe games, only this time no rules process can possibly resolve the one-up-manship of this process of play because we have no way of establishing any of the facts upon which rules processes depend.   Like the game of playground make believe, either the participants must yield to the most stubborn participant or the game cannot continue.   Any game played according to this process of play would not long endure, because at most it can support the aesthetic goals of a single participant - the player who insists his right to play his character extends to the right to describe the setting as well.   

And as long as we are supposedly discussing what it means for a game to have "challenge", this game cannot support the pillar of "challenge" even for that player, since the player has fiat authority and can basically declare "checkmate" regardless of the board position because he can arrange the board position without respect to any rules process.

Furthermore, this example doesn't even have the thin tissue of rules lawyering that supposedly justified the example with the guard.   In no way can the player claim that the Chamberlain's smelliness was in some fashion part of the player's backstory, and if through some twisted logic he can, then he can claim the entire setting belongs to the player through the same set of steps.


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> They may be listed on the character sheet, but as the outcome of all action declarations are decided upon by the DM, I don't think where they are listed says anything about the player controlling the fiction in this regard.




The player controls the fiction as it concerns how the PC thinks, acts, and talks. To me, it follows that automatic outcomes of PC actions are also examples of the player controlling the fiction. For example, if I decide my PC casts _fireball_ and I have that spell listed on my character sheet, I have a spell slot available, etc., then I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the effects of the spell take place in the fiction. I think the same can be said of calling on the priests of my temple for assistance if I have Shelter of the Faithful listed on my character sheet. By doing so, I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the priests offer assistance as long as my request meets the conditions of the feature.


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> The player controls the fiction as it concerns how the PC thinks, acts, and talks. To me, it follows that automatic outcomes of PC actions are also examples of the player controlling the fiction. For example, if I decide my PC casts _fireball_ and I have that spell listed on my character sheet, I have a spell slot available, etc., then I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the effects of the spell take place in the fiction. I think the same can be said of calling on the priests of my temple for assistance if I have Shelter of the Faithful listed on my character sheet. By doing so, I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the priests offer assistance as long as my request meets the conditions of the feature.




But who decides that there is an "automatic outcome" to casting a _fireball_ or seeking help from the PC's temple?

The DM, always.


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## Celebrim (May 13, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I make a character, and decide in their backstory they have a childhood sweetheart. That sweetheart is external to the character, but it would be strange for the DM to tell me I have a childhood sweetheart, wouldn't it? What about a hometown? As a player, I could decide that my character's home town was a bit like Mayberry, and that the various people within that town and their relationships with my character shaped them in a variety of ways. That entire town and all the people in it are external to my character, but they are vital to my character's story. Heck, I have a paladin who is married. Actual character I am playing. His wife is definitely external to the character, but her backstory and their relationship is something I feel is under my control. Because having a loving wife is part of my character's story, it is part of my character, even if the wife is an NPC and external to my character.




I'll be honest [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], at this point I consider you to be trolling and not even arguing in good faith.  So I see no reason to continue any of the arguments we've been having.

However, I will say that I find this new element of the conversation highly ironic, since if you do believe this, then it is not me that you have an argument with but rather yourself and those that have been arguing similar view points.

Under my theory of play, all you've just said is true.   Per the process of play I outlined, I cannot as GM tell you that a backstory relationship regarding a loving wife which was previously established to exist, in fact is false because to do so would be impinging upon the conception of your character.   While the NPC wife is external to your character, the nature of the relationship between you and that NPC once established cannot be retconned without your permission because that relationship is part of how your character is defined.   

But consider that it is your own side of this argument that disagrees with that.   When the "Francis the Guard" example was introduced as a valid process of play, that is to say that the player could introduce an NPC to the setting who was his best friend and insist that that NPC was present right now at this moment in the setting, the claim was made that since the setting/character line was so blurry, the correct and proper response by the GM to the player introducing an NPC to the setting in the middle of an encounter or situation was for the GM to invent that the best friend now held some grudge against the PC on account of some thing that the player had done the past that the GM could now impose on the player.   In other words, it was argued that sure, the player can impose things on the setting, but in turn the GM can (and ought) impose facts about the player's character on the player, up to and including changing the fundamental relationship between the PC and NPCs as the player understood them.

How can you not see not only how dysfunctional that is, but how obviously both sides are crossing a not so blurry line, how the ends of this argument actually contradict your claims about it, and how contrived these claims are? 

Fundamentally, you cannot introduce a backstory without the GMs permission.  You may correctly observe that this means you cannot play a particular character without the GMs permission, and that is true, but even though this is so, this does not mean that the GM can play your character.   Typically players create a backstory in good faith, and the GMs validate it as a reasonable backstory and therefore expresses facts that are true within the setting.  Occasionally a GM may ask the player to make tweaks to better fit the setting, and the player can either except these tweaks or come up with a different backstory entirely.   Very very rarely, a player might introduce a backstory that cannot at all be validated by the GM because it is totally at odds with the setting or else is obviously a bad faith attempt to unfairly hog the spotlight that ought to justly be shared equally by all players, but generally this indicates a problem player, or a player who is completely new to the setting, and isn't something that happens a lot with long running groups.   In the case of your otherwise generic and simple background for your Paladin, in most cases I'd expect a GM to validate that, but if the GM was planning to run a game in a setting like Ravenloft or Midnight, he'd be well in his rights to tell you, "In this setting, towns like Mayberry don't really exist.  At best, if you insist on playing a character that believes that they are from Mayberry, you have to understand that the character is in some fashion deluded and his beliefs regarding his hometown and the relationships in it are false."

Now, I will say that 30 years ago as a teenage DM I used to think that a GM had no right to tell a player what to play, and I would have probably had to have been convinced that that wasn't true if someone made that claim.  But I had in my head at the time a very simplistic idea of character, and I would have been defending a proposition like, "The DM can't force the player to play a LG cleric." and defending a proposition like, "The player should be allowed to make their own character."   And while I still might defend those propositions, I now realize that in a healthy game the DM can't approve every character that a player might create.   Yes, the DM can and ought to try to accommodate the players wishes regarding his character as far as is possible, but there are some concepts for a character that will sooner or later (and usually sooner) result in dysfunction and a less than enjoyable experience for all parties.



> These are muddy waters...




No not really.


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> But who decides that there is an "automatic outcome" to casting a _fireball_ or seeking help from the PC's temple?
> 
> The DM, always.




Yes, that's true. But it reminds me of the example up-thread of the player declaring s/he pulls a length of rope out of his/her backpack when the player believed that item was in his/her inventory. The DM has the authority to declare an outcome other than what the player expects, but, without a good reason, it seems like a breach of the social contract.


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## 5ekyu (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> The player controls the fiction as it concerns how the PC thinks, acts, and talks. To me, it follows that automatic outcomes of PC actions are also examples of the player controlling the fiction. For example, if I decide my PC casts _fireball_ and I have that spell listed on my character sheet, I have a spell slot available, etc., then I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the effects of the spell take place in the fiction. I think the same can be said of calling on the priests of my temple for assistance if I have Shelter of the Faithful listed on my character sheet. By doing so, I have controlled the fiction to the extent that the priests offer assistance as long as my request meets the conditions of the feature.



I actually dont have much of a problem with this viewpoint except to,point out that *like fireball* but *unlike magic missle* both these features require an external factor not under your control in character and in plsyer - the material components which for the priests means a temple and priests. 

Unless you are camping at the temple, the one "a town away" youmight find sacked, abandoned or under someone oe something else's control. This is not unlike  losing access to materials.

There are other considerations but the background features like this establish s baseline, expectation not an absolute. For instance, there is nothing IIRC saying *immediate* or *unlimited*  assistance and healing.


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Yes, that's true. But it reminds me of the example up-thread of the player declaring s/he pulls a length of rope out of his/her backpack when the player believed that item was in his/her inventory. The DM has the authority to declare an outcome other than what the player expects, but, without a good reason, it seems like a breach of the social contract.




"Social contract" exists as what the DMG calls "table rules" which are not the rules of the game. These will vary from table to table. 

I have already given good reasons, based on what the rules describe as the DM's role, why the DM may decide that the player's action declaration to take the rope out of the character's backpack may fail. Those reasons might be that the DM needs to mediate between the rules and the players (e.g. no enough actions left to do it right now) or set limits (e.g. the rope was used in a previous location and not recovered). I don't imagine the rules contemplate a situation where the DM isn't performing his or her role properly, being a text on how to play the game in its respective roles.

I still think that those who believe the player has a right to declare fiction outside of the character during play have a lot of work ahead of them to show any rules support for their position. It's just not there in this game like it may be in other games. (And to repeat what appears to be a necessary refrain lest I be attacked by others for not doing so, people can play how they like regardless of what the rules say.)


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> I actually dont have much of a problem with this viewpoint except to,point out that *like fireball* but *unlike magic missle* both these features require an external factor not under your control in character and in plsyer - the material components which for the priests means a temple and priests.
> 
> Unless you are camping at the temple, the one "a town away" youmight find sacked, abandoned or under someone oe something else's control. This is not unlike  losing access to materials.
> 
> There are other considerations but the background features like this establish s baseline, expectation not an absolute. For instance, there is nothing IIRC saying *immediate* or *unlimited*  assistance and healing.




Right, but assuming you have the material components in your possession and faithfully perform the other components of the spell, and assuming you have ties to a temple that you are close to and have good standing with, and that the assistance you request is not hazardous to the priests, shouldn't the character's capabilities be somewhat reliable and operate in the game as they are described on the character sheet?


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## Celebrim (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> "Social contract" exists as what the DMG calls "table rules" which are not the rules of the game. These will vary from table to table.




Typically, a social contract exists to cover things that are so basic to the process of play, that the game either forgets to or doesn't bother to call them out.  It's the usually unspoken agreements that a table comes to make the game playable for their particular group.  It usually has at its basis, "We all cooperate.", and expressions like, "No one plays an evil character unless we all agree to play evil characters." or "Regardless of the alignment of the characters, we all work together to achieve the party goals."


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## 5ekyu (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Right, but assuming you have the material components in your possession and faithfully perform the other components of the spell, and assuming you have ties to a temple that you are close to and have good standing with, and that the assistance you request is not hazardous to the priests, shouldn't the character's capabilities be somewhat reliable and operate in the game as they are described on the character sheet?



Nitpick - "to the priests" did not accompany "hazardous" in the write-up in the PHB. So, for instance, if the priests' spells and efforts are tied up combating a local outbreak, they might consider casting cure spells on your scratches a lower priority than saving other people's lives - the hazard being yo those thry are helping.

But, to be clear, given your long list of assumptions, I would boil it down to "unless there is a compelling reason not to... " 

A referencexwas made above yo sort of "without a good reason" and to me most of my playstyle revolves around "say yes, unless you have a compelling reason to say no" and I basically set the burden on me as GM through setting, circumstance and NPC to establish "why not" instead of on the player and their PC to establish "why."

So, really, more often than not the "no" is already expected as they see "why" before they get to the " no".


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Typically, a social contract exists to cover things that are so basic to the process of play, that the game either forgets to or doesn't bother to call them out.  It's the usually unspoken agreements that a table comes to make the game playable for their particular group.  It usually has at its basis, "We all cooperate.", and expressions like, "No one plays an evil character unless we all agree to play evil characters." or "Regardless of the alignment of the characters, we all work together to achieve the party goals."




Right. My point being that nobody can really say that a social contract applies to all tables and, given how it will vary, it's not something that helps show an approach is a breach of the social contract. It might be for some and not for others. I think from the perspective of the rules the DM gets to say what the outcome of every action declaration is. Some might not like this or outsource some of this to the players, but that does little to show the game's support for players establishing fiction outside of their control.


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## Celebrim (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> Right. My point being that nobody can really say that a social contract applies to all tables and, given how it will vary, it's not something that helps show an approach is a breach of the social contract. It might be for some and not for others. I think from the perspective of the rules the DM gets to say what the outcome of every action declaration is. Some might not like this or outsource some of this to the players, but that does little to show the game's support for players establishing fiction outside of their control.




Right.

So from the perspective of the rules, the DM decides what every rules outcome of an action declaration is.

But a social contract might govern who gets to narrate what part of the consequences of that action is, because in D&D the rules themselves are usually silent on who owns the narration in cases where the player character is the focus of the narration or the results.

Consider the attack declaration.

The player declares, "I attack the ogre.", rolls a D20 and adds per the rules his bonuses to hit, resulting in say a "14".
The GM responds, after consulting the rules whether this hits or not, and reports back to the player accordingly.

The rules state that if the attack hits, the player rolls damage and its applied against the ogre's hit point total, and if he does not that he does not roll damage.

But they are pretty silent on how to handle this as a process of play, so...

a) Some tables may never narrate the result.  The result is simply a deduction of hit points are not and what it looks like isn't important.
b) Some tables may agree to let the DM narrate the result of the hit or miss in a cinematic fashion - "You swing a mighty blow at the ogre, but he turns it aside with his great oaken club!" or "You plunge your blade deep into the ogre's flesh, tearing a gaping wound in its hip.   The ogre staggers, roars in pain but despite the wound..."
c) Some tables may decide however, that since misses or hits primarily involve actions by the player's character, that the player ought to be the one narrating the scene once the player knows the general result.  This avoids the DM establishing something about the character that goes against the player's conception of his character.
d) Some tables may use a combination, with either the GM or the player adding narration if they feel they have something that adds to the scene, and ignore narration if no one is inspired and we're trying to get the combat over quickly.   Or these tables may let the DM narrate some general physical positioning, and allow the player to add detail and color by saying specifically how their character's respond to the success or miss.  This works well with tables that have played with each other enough that they can take cues and understand intuitively where each side draws the lines.

All of that is "goodrightfun" if it works for the table.

What you'll find no table really doing if it is to remain a table for long is allowing players to overrule the game by narrating their own preferred results over what the rules process and the GM have established.  For example, you won't find many tables that allow the player to narrate that, as a result of a hit on the ogre, that the ogre sits down and begins to cry, or flees in panic, or begs for mercy.   Nor ought the player narrate the result of a non-lethal hit as a decapitation, since the rules haven't created the fictional positioning - "The ogre is now dead." yet, but decapitation tends to imply that it is.  The ogre is after all an NPC, and so narration pertaining to the ogre properly belongs to the GM.   Anything beyond what the has already confirmed, "You wounded it a bit.", is not proper narration, and a player that breaks the social contract and adds improper narration a lot will soon find that part of the social contract up for debate.

Likewise, any GM that violates the player's prerogative of playing their own character to the extent that he uses cinematic narration about a miss to consistently make a player seem ridiculous  - every miss is cinematically an epic fumble, puts words in the mouth of the player's character so that they say stupid and unheroic things in response to missing, or interpreting the miss as the character perform ridiculous actions like attacking the wall by mistake, or stumbling around, is very likely to find he has dissatisfied players, because the player will eventually come to dislike having his character characterized by someone other than himself especially if they feel the characterization is unfair and disrespectful.  (Of course, a player may want to be playing a ridiculous clown, but those players with very specific ideas about how they want to play are more than any others the ones who appreciate being allowed to narrate their own outcomes, or at least add on to them.)


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## Hriston (May 13, 2019)

iserith said:


> "Social contract" exists as what the DMG calls "table rules" which are not the rules of the game. These will vary from table to table.




The social contract encompasses things like expectations and the rules of the game the group has agreed to play. I think an expectation that your character's capabilities work the way your character sheet says they do could fall under that for some groups, although admittedly not for others. 



iserith said:


> I have already given good reasons, based on what the rules describe as the DM's role, why the DM may decide that the player's action declaration to take the rope out of the character's backpack may fail. Those reasons might be that the DM needs to mediate between the rules and the players (e.g. no enough actions left to do it right now) or set limits (e.g. the rope was used in a previous location and not recovered). I don't imagine the rules contemplate a situation where the DM isn't performing his or her role properly, being a text on how to play the game in its respective roles.




Those are all good reasons, and I don't think a player would have any reason to expect their character to be able to take a rope out of his/her backpack once the mismatch between what the DM and player are imagining is cleared up. But _without a good reason_, if the DM is just going to say, "Okay, you find the rope in your backpack and take it out," I don't see how that's the DM controlling the fiction outside of the character. To me, that seems more like the DM agreeing that the player's view of the fiction is what prevails.



iserith said:


> I still think that those who believe the player has a right to declare fiction outside of the character during play have a lot of work ahead of them to show any rules support for their position. It's just not there in this game like it may be in other games. (And to repeat what appears to be a necessary refrain lest I be attacked by others for not doing so, people can play how they like regardless of what the rules say.)




To me, this isn't so much about a player declaring what happens in the fiction outside of his/her character as it is about the player interacting with the fiction in a way that's reliable to his/her character and therefore should be reliable to the player.


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> What you'll find no table really doing if it is to remain a table for long is allowing players to overrule the game by narrating their own preferred results over what the rules process and the GM have established.  For example, you won't find many tables that allow the player to narrate that, as a result of a hit on the ogre, that the ogre sits down and begins to cry, or flees in panic, or begs for mercy.   Nor ought the player narrate the result of a non-lethal hit as a decapitation, since the rules haven't created the fictional positioning - "The ogre is now dead." yet, but decapitation tends to imply that it is.  The ogre is after all an NPC, and so narration pertaining to the ogre properly belongs to the GM.   Anything beyond what the has already confirmed, "You wounded it a bit.", is not proper narration, and a player that breaks the social contract and adds improper narration a lot will soon find that part of the social contract up for debate.
> 
> Likewise, any GM that violates the player's prerogative of playing their own character to the extent that he uses cinematic narration about a miss to consistently make a player seem ridiculous  - every miss is cinematically an epic fumble, puts words in the mouth of the player's character so that they say stupid and unheroic things in response to missing, or interpreting the miss as the character perform ridiculous actions like attacking the wall by mistake, or stumbling around, is very likely to find he has dissatisfied players, because the player will eventually come to dislike having his character characterized by someone other than himself especially if they feel the characterization is unfair and disrespectful.  (Of course, a player may want to be playing a ridiculous clown, but those players with very specific ideas about how they want to play are more than any others the ones who appreciate being allowed to narrate their own outcomes, or at least add on to them.)




A D&D 5e DM who wants to act in the framework the rules provide in my view narrates the result of the adventurers' action without establishing anything new about what the player described as wanting the character to do. This is the effective limit for the DM in this regard, since he or she cannot determine what the character does, thinks, or says. One trick I do in an effort to avoid overstepping my bounds is to try not to describe anything by starting with "You." It's too easy to get from "You..." to saying what the character does, thinks, or says. By starting with the creature or object that is impacted, it's easier to steer clear of this - "The orc is bloodied from the blow..." or "The lock clicks audibly and the door is no longer secured."

What I've noticed at many (many, many) tables is that the players do an inadequate job of performing their role and the DM feels an obligation to pick up the slack. This then turns into a playstyle built on an expectation that the players don't actually have to describe what they want to do. They can just throw some dice and state a goal (e.g. "I convince the guard to let us pass, 18 Persuasion..."), even if it's not their role to decide that dice need to be rolled. The DM accepts the goal and perhaps the success at the task, then must now assume what "18 Persuasion" means, narrating what the character does to achieve the goal. (This is common in combat as well when the player offers little in the way of description and the DM feels the need to embellish.) The DM therefore steps into the player's role by saying what the character does, thinks, or says. Sometimes the player rightly objects to what the DM establishes, perhaps because as you say above, the DM narrates in a way that runs contrary to the way the player thinks of the character. Well, that would less likely if the player was performing his or her role adequately in the first place!


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## iserith (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> The social contract encompasses things like expectations and the rules of the game the group has agreed to play. I think an expectation that your character's capabilities work the way your character sheet says they do could fall under that for some groups, although admittedly not for others.
> 
> Those are all good reasons, and I don't think a player would have any reason to expect their character to be able to take a rope out of his/her backpack once the mismatch between what the DM and player are imagining is cleared up. But _without a good reason_, if the DM is just going to say, "Okay, you find the rope in your backpack and take it out," I don't see how that's the DM controlling the fiction outside of the character. To me, that seems more like the DM agreeing that the player's view of the fiction is what prevails.
> 
> To me, this isn't so much about a player declaring what happens in the fiction outside of his/her character as it is about the player interacting with the fiction in a way that's reliable to his/her character and therefore should be reliable to the player.




I can't really speak for the social contracts at anyone's table but my own. From the perspective of the rules though, that expectation does not hold up well in my view since the outcome of all action declarations are decided by the DM who is empowered to use the rules to inform his or her decision but is never beholden to them. (This necessarily includes something as simple as taking rope out of a backpack, even if this is probably too granular for most groups in a practical sense. It _is_ an action declaration after all.)

Because of this, as a player, I have absolutely zero expectation that the things on my sheet will matter in all situations, though if the DM is consistent in his or her application of the rules and the internal logic of his or her setting, I can probably reliably predict that it will or will not matter. Sometimes I will be wrong though. If the DM is not consistent, then all bets are off. This argues for consistency in the DM's approach, whatever it may be, more than anything.


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## Celebrim (May 13, 2019)

Hriston said:


> The social contract encompasses things like expectations and the rules of the game the group has agreed to play. I think an expectation that your character's capabilities work the way your character sheet says they do could fall under that for some groups, although admittedly not for others.
> 
> Those are all good reasons, and I don't think a player would have any reason to expect their character to be able to take a rope out of his/her backpack once the mismatch between what the DM and player are imagining is cleared up. But _without a good reason_, if the DM is just going to say, "Okay, you find the rope in your backpack and take it out," I don't see how that's the DM controlling the fiction outside of the character. To me, that seems more like the DM agreeing that the player's view of the fiction is what prevails.
> 
> To me, this isn't so much about a player declaring what happens in the fiction outside of his/her character as it is about the player interacting with the fiction in a way that's reliable to his/her character and therefore should be reliable to the player.




I think I agree with all of this.  The rope is in the backpack.   That has been established in the fiction by some process of play.   The player has a reasonable expectation that, "I take the rope out of my backpack..." is something that should automatically succeed, and is probably the preamble to some larger proposition like, "And start tying one end around my waist."   The play may expect that in some games, using the rope successfully is something that might be checked, or that the DM may require a full round of searching through his stuff to find the rope.   The player probably doesn't expect, "You don't find the rope."

However, I think we both agree that the GM could say, "You don't find the rope.", if the GM has some knowledge of the fictional positioning that the player doesn't, or the player has forgotten that last week he tied the rope to a pillar at the top of the pit the party is now in, and it is logically still back there hanging down the wall.   The GM may know that one of the other players handed the GM a note saying, "I steal the rope from his pack while he's sleeping.", or he may know that the Mite in area #26 stole the rope back when the PC put the backpack down while they were fighting the Steam Mephits, or that the rope was actually an illusion cast by the imp in area #43 and never existed in the first place.  

The fact that we both agree that the GM could say this because he has more knowledge of the fictional positioning than the player is proof that the DM controls the fiction outside of the player.  The two say the same thing.   While he may agree that the player's view of the fiction ("the rope is in my backpack") prevails, he is not required to do so.   Ultimately, the player can't force the DM to accept the player's view of the fiction.  The player may insist that he recovered the rope, or that there was no way it could have been stolen, or that he has two ropes - and depending on the persuasiveness of the argument the GM may yield - but the GM is meant to be the judge of what is true here.   

If that isn't true for rope, then isn't it true for +5 Vorpal Swords?  Surely a player could validly argue he'd enjoy the game more if his player happened to find a +5 Vorpal Sword is his backpack?  Surely it's easy to imagine a player arguing this find would make the game better for everyone, and the player honestly be arguing in good faith.  The player may even be correct - everyone at this table might enjoy the game better if they were less gritty and playing in a higher tier.   However, ultimately, the GM still runs the game, and if the GM overrules rope or +5 vorpal swords, it's his reasons for doing so that prevail good or bad.  

Maybe a player can propose to the table that they play a different game with different assumptions.  They still can't control the setting.

These aren't entirely hypothetical examples.  I had a DM friend of mine invite a new college aged player to his game and told him to make a third level character for 1e AD&D.  The player showed up with a third level character (with multiple 18's)... and a +5 vorpal sword, wand of wonder, a ring of elemental command (fire), and a dozen other items on his character sheet.   The player couldn't understand why the DM (or the rest of the players for that matter) weren't affirming his view that his character needed and perforce had these items.   Why couldn't he just select whatever equipment he wanted?  (To make it more ludicrous, this happened after the DM explicitly told the player before hand it was a low-magic gritty campaign.)

I don't think that it should be controversial that the player, not my friend the DM, was confused regarding the role of a player in the game, and what was or was not the DM's prerogative.


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## Tony Vargas (May 13, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Suppose that the players play their PCs as keeping their distance from the chamberlain, opening windows when he enters the room, etc - because the players have decided that their PCs think the chamberlain smells - while the GM, exercising his/her power to describe the environment, insists that the chamberlain doesn't smell. Whose view prevails? What is true in the fiction - does the chamberlain smell? are the PCs hallucinating? can the GM insist that the PCs in fact _don't_ think the chamberlain smells?
> 
> The idea that each can have absolute authority over a domain - PC beliefs/feelings; the rest of the gameworld - with no possibility of contradiction isn't tenable, in my view.



 I think the idea here would be that the GM can insist that they don't smell anything (because there's nothing to smell), but they're free to insist that they do - so they're either hallucinating, deluded, or just teasing the guy.  And, really, probably not hallucinating, but deluded, yeah, if the distinction is that hallucinations are /caused/ by something (like the ergot in the rye bread that came with your standard rations - should've sprung for the iron), while delusions are self-imposed.



> This seems straight out of the Gygaxian playbook. I don't think it suits a game in which the player wants to play a PC who is embedded in the gameworld rather than a relative stranger to it.



There's a bit of a traditional double-standard at play, here.  OT1H, you have the ideal of Gygaxian skilled play, in which knowing that trolls can't regenerate fire damage and thus having your PC who's never seen or heard of them make with the flaming oil he's never used that way before, is just smart play - "challenging the player" to tie it back.  OTOH, you have the contrary ideal that you should never use 'player knowledge' (these day we'd say "no metagaming!"), in which case you only use the knowledge the character should have - "challenging the character."   
Both are pretty old-school, in spite of being inherently contradictory.  The game was played very differently by different folks and/or at different times back then.


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## Chaosmancer (May 14, 2019)

iserith said:


> I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] establishes a good line here: The player is free to draw upon hard-won knowledge to inform how he or she has the character act. The limit is when the player is not acting in good faith and has, as you suggest above, read the module and presumably didn't tell anyone. I think a player not being forthcoming about this many people would consider rude or worse. But sometimes my players replay my one-shots to try out a different character or approach with a new party. It can work just fine even with perfect knowledge.
> 
> But anyway let's say that the player does say "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage" then says he or she wants to go Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls or _thunderwave_ for the party wizard to use. You know as DM that THESE earth elementals have no particular vulnerabilities to thunder damage. Let's up the ante and say that the characters have never encountered earth elementals before. Let's go one step further and say the character is an Int-8 barbarian. What do you do here as DM? Does the character go buy the scrolls or do you invalidate the action declaration?




Thinking through that scenario happening, I'd end up asking at least two questions. 1) Why is the barbarian buying scrolls that they cannot use? There are many answers, from buying them so other party members can use them to them not knowing that their barbarian can't use scrolls. Then, 2) I'd ask them why they think their character would believe the Earth Elementals to be weak to thunder damage? Now, maybe the party wizard is going to jump in and say they told the barbarian, so the barbarian could buy the scrolls, and they have studied the arcane including elementals so they should know. And I would respond, okay, maybe, let's roll Arcana since you're backstory was a conman who stole a spellbook. And so on and so forth. 

The idea is a consistent fiction, as consistent as we can make it. Which includes every character suddenly being a walking encyclopedia in spite of their backgrounds. 




iserith said:


> That depends on the context. I don't understand the first question. The second could be done through a knowledgeable NPC, and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to get the correct information into the PCs' hands. Not to mention - _the smart play is to act on assumptions only after verifying them_.




You know, it is amusing to me that you keep repeating that line. "The smart play is to verify". It isn't that I don't agree with you, that is the smart play, but people don't always do the smart play. In fact, especially when it comes to verification, they rarely do. 

For an IRL example, it might be smart to check that your car has gas before you try and start it. After all, someone might have siphoned it off in the night. But, I doubt almost anyone does that. Because the vast majority of the time, your car is the exact same as it was when you stopped driving it the last time. The chances your verification will turn up anything new is low, so you are likely to skip verifying. 

This is why I said that unless you are changing things with some regularity, often enough that players realize anything could be different any time they sit down, then I doubt they really go out and verify much of anything. 




iserith said:


> That sounds like a few problems at play to me, mostly having to do with personalities and how the group deals with conflict resolution. What appears to kick things off is that the player acted on an assumption without verifying it first. But the DM bares some responsibility here as well by failing to describe these vampires as somehow distinct from others. Then there's an issue with how the players move forward on action declarations as a group and how they resolve conflicts. This can't be laid entirely at the feet of the person wanting to attack the vampires and frankly there are plenty of characters that might credibly do that even if the player knows something is off about _these _vampires.
> 
> This is a situation with multivariate issues. To lay it at the feet of just one thing looks a lot like confirmation bias to me.





Of course there was more going on here than a single issue. There is always more going on than a single issue. But the usage of player knowledge under the assumption that anything they brought from the books was true, was part of the problem. No matter how many other things you can point to as contributing to escalating the problem, that was an aspect of it that ties directly into what we are discussing. 





Celebrim said:


> I'll be honest [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], at this point I consider you to be trolling and not even arguing in good faith.  So I see no reason to continue any of the arguments we've been having.
> 
> However, I will say that I find this new element of the conversation highly ironic, since if you do believe this, then it is not me that you have an argument with but rather yourself and those that have been arguing similar view points.
> 
> ...





I wonder why I keep getting accused of not arguing in good faith. I read what people post. I try and see where their arguments do not align with what is either being said or what is trying to be expressed. I point it out and try and put forth my position. I make no attacks. I make no appeals to authority. I try and avoid every logical fallacy I can. 

And the longer the conversation drags on, the more likely it is people say that I am trolling and not arguing in good faith. 


It might be that it occurs because these forums drag conversations on for days and weeks at a time and people get lost down rabbit holes of their own arguments. 

Because I never agreed that Francis the Guard should be at the gate. I did call people out who claim players have "absolute authority" over their characters thoughts and actions, yet decried Francis the Guard as a step too far. But, interestingly, I have never gotten an answer to the follow up of Francis not being at the gate. Does Francis exist within the city? 

My entire goal in this thread is to figure out the consistency, if there is "Absolute Authority" of a player over their character, then there are things that should not be true. 

Like, for example, you pointing out that a DM could tell a player they cannot play a LG Cleric. I think you are right. A DM can tell a player that, hopefully with good reasons and not just "I hate the gods" since a DM should try and work with players whenever possible. 

However, the player can also tell the DM, that this is the hometown they grew up in. Now, a DM could again, deny them that and tell them it doesn't fit, and I agree with that. If the player is setting up something that doesn't fit with the setting, then DM is perfectly within their rights to tell them to come up with something else, maybe work with them to find a way to fit it. 

And we can come up with examples of players declaring things, choosing things, or trying to create things within the shared universe of the table, and the DM could deny any and all of those, especially those that do not fit within the shared vision of the table. 

Now, why are a PCs thoughts and actions different? If a player declares a character's belief or action that is too far out of alignment with the tone and setting at the table, why can the DM not exercise the same authority they have been exercising every step of the way and say "No, that doesn't make any sense"? I'm not saying they should, I'm not saying it will be common, I'll even say that the list of things a DM might say no to in this case is microscopic while the list of things they'd say yes to is macroscopic in the extreme. 

This ties back into your "playground cops and robbers" problem. While I will say I think that sharing many things and being respectful of staying within the fiction means that it will appear as though no one has the authority, and that is the ideal situation. Ideally, the DM and the player work together. But the DM has the final say on everything. 

Why then have I been arguing about Francis the Guard? Because the people I have been arguing with have claimed both that Player's have absolute authority over their characters and that those players do not have the authority to create Francis somewhere within the town. But, if the player has absolute authority over the character, then they have absolute authority over the character's background, and therefore they have absolute authority over the creation of NPCs that tie to that background. Because absolute authority is absolute. 

So, if a player does not have absolute authority over their background, then they do not have absolute authority over their character. Without absolute authority over their character, then it is possible for the DM to exercise their authority over that character. 

Because absolute authority is absolute.


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## iserith (May 14, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Thinking through that scenario happening, I'd end up asking at least two questions. 1) Why is the barbarian buying scrolls that they cannot use? There are many answers, from buying them so other party members can use them to them not knowing that their barbarian can't use scrolls. Then, 2) I'd ask them why they think their character would believe the Earth Elementals to be weak to thunder damage? Now, maybe the party wizard is going to jump in and say they told the barbarian, so the barbarian could buy the scrolls, and they have studied the arcane including elementals so they should know. And I would respond, okay, maybe, let's roll Arcana since you're backstory was a conman who stole a spellbook. And so on and so forth.
> 
> The idea is a consistent fiction, as consistent as we can make it. Which includes every character suddenly being a walking encyclopedia in spite of their backgrounds.




What is the Arcana check for? I don't see an action declaration from the wizard in your breakdown.



Chaosmancer said:


> You know, it is amusing to me that you keep repeating that line. "The smart play is to verify". It isn't that I don't agree with you, that is the smart play, but people don't always do the smart play. In fact, especially when it comes to verification, they rarely do.




That's not the DM's problem. It's up to the players to play their characters effectively.



Chaosmancer said:


> For an IRL example, it might be smart to check that your car has gas before you try and start it. After all, someone might have siphoned it off in the night. But, I doubt almost anyone does that. Because the vast majority of the time, your car is the exact same as it was when you stopped driving it the last time. The chances your verification will turn up anything new is low, so you are likely to skip verifying.




My car doesn't use gasoline. That is the smart play. 



Chaosmancer said:


> This is why I said that unless you are changing things with some regularity, often enough that players realize anything could be different any time they sit down, then I doubt they really go out and verify much of anything.




My players do because they have an incentive to. As an example from my current Eberron campaign, the players found a chamber in the dungeon containing crates covered in brown mold. I telegraphed an unusual chill in the adjoining chamber. A couple of characters ran afoul of it and took a bit of cold damage when they kicked down the door to said chamber. Everyone in my group is an experienced player. They knew this was brown mold and how to do deal with it (cold damage) and how not to use fire on it. But, they know that I change things up from time to time and, with the wizard having no cold-damage cantrips and only one spell slot remaining, they could not take any risks on this.

So the wizard used _mage hand_ to collect a small sample of the brown mold, not enough to do damage to anyone, with a test tube. He handed it off to the warforged fighter who has integrated alchemist's supplies. Ten minutes of testing and analysis, a wandering monster check (no wanderer), and a successful Intelligence (Alchemist's Supplies) check later, they verified it was brown mold. The wizard cast an _ice knife_ spell, destroyed the brown mold, and they were able to obtain the schema they were seeking to complete their quest.

The players chose to play effectively. All I had to do was describe the environment and narrate the results of the adventurers' actions.



Chaosmancer said:


> Of course there was more going on here than a single issue. There is always more going on than a single issue. But the usage of player knowledge under the assumption that anything they brought from the books was true, was part of the problem. No matter how many other things you can point to as contributing to escalating the problem, that was an aspect of it that ties directly into what we are discussing.




Yes, the player would have been better served trying to verify his assumptions before acting upon them. But based on the details you provided, this was a minor issue compared to how the group resolves conflict in my view. This wouldn't have been an issue in my group for many reasons.


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## Celebrim (May 14, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I wonder why I keep getting accused of not arguing in good faith.




I can't speak for any one else, but for my part its because I repeat the same things over and over and they just bounce off.  I have a hard time believing that you aren't at this point able to answer your own questions.   I mean just considering what you've now posted, the answers to your own questions are present if you are willing to see them.   I admit I have weird pet peeves and my social-emotional framework doesn't well align with the rest of the human race, but honestly if you made attacks and cast open aspirations or said "You make me so angry", it would be less frustrating to me and more understandable than what you are doing.

I'm going to respond somewhat out of order.  I'm not deliberately trying to misconstrue you in anyway by doing so.  I just want to point out how disconnected from itself your argument becomes as it develops.



> My entire goal in this thread is to figure out the consistency, if there is "Absolute Authority" of a player over their character, then there are things that should not be true.




Ok, let's go with that.  I agree that player's have "absolute authority" over their characters, and as a result that there are things that implies should and should not be true.

But what does that "absolute authority" mean?  What does it look like?  When people use the term, what are they saying?   Well, you know the answer for that yourself, because you say it:



> I did call people out who claim players have "absolute authority" *over their characters thoughts and actions*...




So you know already well what people meant.  You have no misunderstanding as to what there position is when you decide to "call it out".

So how is it that your point of contention is:



> But, if the player has absolute authority over the character, then they have absolute authority over the character's background...




How is it that when you've well understood that people were saying "players have absolute authority over their character's thoughts and actions" that you've now added to that something of your own invention in order to condemn their position as illogical, namely that the players also have absolute authority over the character's background, and by which you mean something that they never said, that they also have absolute authority to create any background that they like at any time in the game?



> Because I never agreed that Francis the Guard should be at the gate. I did call people out who claim players have "absolute authority" over their characters thoughts and actions, yet decried Francis the Guard as a step too far. But, interestingly, I have never gotten an answer to the follow up of Francis not being at the gate. Does Francis exist within the city?




So why is it surprising that someone who you admit said "players have "absolute authority" over their characters thoughts and actions" should think that absolute authority over their background is a step too far?  And further, in the Francis example, we have gone even one step further past claiming that the player has absolute authority over their background, and are now asserting that the background has absolute authority over the setting.  

Why should it even be confusing that someone who only started from the proposition "players have absolute authority over their characters thoughts and actions", should not able to answer your question regarding whether Francis exists in the city?  After all, even if someone did assert that players had absolute authority over their background, that would only mean that the player could assert that Francis existed sometime in the city in the past.  You could not assert on the basis of your authority over background, that now in the present Francis is still alive, still in the city, and still serving in the guard.  All of those things could have changed between the point you asserted Francis had existed and the present moment in game, and regardless of your absolute authority over background you could not decide those things without absolute authority over the setting.   So of course people can't answer your question in any general way or give you any other answer but "Maybe."

And remember, these people by your own admission never began by asserting players had absolute authority over their background in the first place.

In point of fact, while I've asserted that players do have a sort of absolute authority over their background, I asserted that only in the sense that a player character's background is inviolable.  That is to say, a player may absolutely refuse any other participant's suggestion to alter their background.  A GM cannot force a player to have a backstory they don't want.  A player can say, "Mess with me.  I want to have complications and drama because that's the sort of game I want to play.", and thereby give the GM permission to introduce backstory elements.   But a player can also say, "My backstory is meant only to serve as backstory, and I only want my character to evolve through forestory, and not by making unwanted revelations about his past."   All that is fine, but it is also very different from the assertion that a player has an absolute right to introduce backstory, much less that having introduced backstory, he has some absolute right to insist that present situations conform to his desires and expectations.  Even if the player's relationship to Francis is inviolable and even if their is a table agreement to be "hands off" with respect to Francis, such a social contract does not mean Francis is here now in the present.  The GM, being absolutely in charge of the setting, could say, "This guard isn't Francis.   The Guard says, "So you're a friend of Francis?  Yeah, he has the night watch tonight.  I'm Robert.  We agreed to switch because I'm going to see a lovely little lady tonight at the festival.", or any number of other things.   Francis is after all, an NPC, whether he's in your backstory or not.



> Now, why are a PCs thoughts and actions different? If a player declares a character's belief or action that is too far out of alignment with the tone and setting at the table, why can the DM not exercise the same authority they have been exercising every step of the way and say "No, that doesn't make any sense"? I'm not saying they should, I'm not saying it will be common, I'll even say that the list of things a DM might say no to in this case is microscopic while the list of things they'd say yes to is macroscopic in the extreme.




In point of fact, the GM could say that.  The GM could for example overrule a character whose IC motivation is to kill the other members of the party, or could overrule a character whose concept is that he's working for the bad guys.   I'm not saying a GM should always do that, but it takes an extraordinarily mature group to deal with that in a cooperative fashion.

And this is a good segue into the problem of, "If you are saying that a player has absolute authority over their character and the GM has absolute authority over the setting, aren't there going to be issues in a backstory that equally involve both character and setting?  How do you resolve the issue of conflicting desires of two parties with absolute authority?  How can the both have absolute authority in that situation?"   And the answer is the sort of authority both have in that situation is of the inviolable sort.   They both have a right to be obdurate immovable objects.   The GM is under no obligation to accept a backstory that implies setting changes he doesn't want, and the player is under no obligation to accept a backstory that implies character changes he doesn't want.   As neither can force the other to budge, either the status quo prevails or else they negotiate some agreement between each other.

In my game, the player writes a background and submits it for approval.  Once I approve it, it becomes real and the implications are adopted into the setting.  Depending on what the player wrote, that can profoundly shape the setting in ways I didn't consider or expect.   But as long as it is reasonable, adds to the setting rather than detracts from it, and doesn't seem to be an attempt to outshine the other players in either participation, authority, or control over the narrative, I'll probably agree.   But I cannot be made to agree, any more than I can write a background for the player and say, "This is you, like it or not."

I do not think that, provide we apply "absolute" to the right ideas of what a player or GMs authority is, that it is an improper modifier.   With respect to what we've said is the rights and privileges, those rights and privileges are absolute.  The problem or confusion comes when you start inventing rights and privileges that were never under discussion and then claiming that the modifier implies those rights and privileges.   But that is illogical and uncivil.

For example, if I said, "The player has an absolute right to play their character.", and you said, "Well that means that if the character proposes to leap the Atlantic Ocean, you have to allow that regardless of what is on their character sheet, or else you are interfering with their right to play their character.", at most I ought to have to say, "Their character can't leap the Atlantic Ocean.  That isn't the character they agreed to play and/or designed for themselves.  Leaping the Atlantic Ocean isn't part of their character."   If you responded then, "But you said they could play their character any way that they wanted!!!", I'd be inclined to think you weren't serious.


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## Satyrn (May 14, 2019)

"Okay, but can I jump the Arctic Ocean? It's smaller, and the colder air lets me jump farther."


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## Tony Vargas (May 14, 2019)

iserith said:


> "Social contract" exists as what the DMG calls "table rules" which are not the rules of the game. These will vary from table to table.



 IDK.  The rules of the game probably wouldn't function too well without certain assumptions in that social contract.  Change the rules or change the contract, so long as you to get them working together at that table.  



> I don't imagine the rules contemplate a situation where the DM isn't performing his or her role properly, being a text on how to play the game in its respective roles.



 So you do imagine the rules assume perfection from the DM?  
  That's fair, actually.  While the DM won't be perfect, he is presumably good enough for his group.



> I still think that those who believe the player has a right to declare fiction outside of the character during play have a lot of work ahead of them to show any rules support for their position. It's just not there in this game like it may be in other games. (And to repeat what appears to be a necessary refrain lest I be attacked by others for not doing so, people can play how they like regardless of what the rules say.)



 Rules that say you must play in that way are certainly lacking, as are rules that explicitly say you can't.  
The rules /do/ give the DM a great deal of latitude in how he runs his game and what he expects from the players.  You can, as DM accept an action declarations that includes a declaration of fiction outside the character, or even reward (with inspiration perhaps) or require such, if that works for you.  There's no rules being changed or added, to do so, it's just a matter of the convention of what an action declaration is at the DM's table.  

In that sense 5e supports both these very different styles under discussion. Which was kinda the point (ok, a point) of writing rules in natural language and actively promoting DM Empowerment.


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## Satyrn (May 14, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> So you do imagine the rules assume perfection from the DM?
> That's fair, actually.  Well the DM won't be perfect, he is presumably good enough for his group.




No. He's saying the rules expect the DM is performing his own role, and letting the players perform theirs.

Kinda like how the rules of 8 ball assume you're not taking your opponent's shots, or the rules of Euchre expect that you're not playing your partner's or opponents' hands, etc etc etc.


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## iserith (May 14, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> So you do imagine the rules assume perfection from the DM?




No more than anyone should expect me to perfectly execute the approach I use and discuss here on enworld, especially after three or more Jamesons. But I know what I'm supposed to be doing per the rules and I try.



Tony Vargas said:


> Rules that say you must play in that way are certainly lacking, as are rules that explicitly say you can't.
> The rules /do/ give the DM a great deal of latitude in how he runs his game and what he expects from the players.  You can, as DM accept an action declarations that includes a declaration of fiction outside the character, or even reward (with inspiration perhaps) or require such, if that works for you.  There's no rules being changed or added, to do so, it's just a matter of the convention of what an action declaration is at the DM's table.
> 
> In that sense 5e supports both these very different styles under discussion. Which was kinda the point (ok, a point) of writing rules in natural language and actively promoting DM Empowerment.




A lot of words to say "People can play how they want." Which is and has never been in dispute. But if you want to say the rules support players establishing fiction outside their character without the approval of the DM, good luck finding them.


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## Tony Vargas (May 14, 2019)

iserith said:


> No more than anyone should expect me to perfectly execute the approach I use and discuss here on enworld, especially after three or more Jamesons. But I know what I'm supposed to be doing per the rules and I try.



 So, yes, you imagine that the rules assume perfection on the part of the DM.  It's OK.  That's how I see it, too.  Afterall, if they're not working from that assumption, they'd have to put checks on the DM's role which would set the rules above the DM rather than vice-versa.  It's maybe not the best way of saying - like I said 'trusting the DM' is a more tactful way of putting it than 'assuming perfection.'  

Perhaps another way of putting it is that the rules assume the DM will have a better chance of knowing/implementing what's best for his group, specifically, than the designers would.




> A lot of words to say "People can play how they want." Which is and has never been in dispute.



 To say that the game is actually down with that.  I mean, people /can/ play any ed, or any game, however they want, that's not really saying much.



> But if you want to say the rules support players establishing fiction outside their character without the approval of the DM, good luck finding them.



 The rules do support the DM in allowing/encouraging/requiring (or disallowing/punishing/banning) his players establishing fiction outside their character.  The same rules that support goal + method.  In the sense of 'support' that is little more than "leave plenty of room for the DM to run that way if he likes." 
But, no, you're not going to find rules allowing players to do /anything/ without at least tacit approval of the DM - since the DM's role includes that of final arbiter.


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## iserith (May 14, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> So, yes, you imagine that the rules assume perfection on the part of the DM.  It's OK.  That's how I see it, too.  Afterall, if they're not working from that assumption, they'd have to put checks on the DM's role which would set the rules above the DM rather than vice-versa.  It's maybe not the best way of saying - like I said 'trusting the DM' is a more tactful way of putting it than 'assuming perfection.'
> 
> Perhaps another way of putting it is that the rules assume the DM will have a better chance of knowing/implementing what's best for his group, specifically, than the designers would.




I have no idea what your goal is with this.



Tony Vargas said:


> To say that the game is actually down with that.  I mean, people /can/ play any ed, or any game, however they want, that's not really saying much.




And yet here we are saying it.



Tony Vargas said:


> But, no, you're not going to find rules allowing players to do /anything/ without at least tacit approval of the DM - since the DM's role includes that of final arbiter.




Except determine what their characters do, think, and say.


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## Celebrim (May 14, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> So, yes, you imagine that the rules assume perfection on the part of the DM.  It's OK.  That's how I see it, too.  Afterall, if they're not working from that assumption, they'd have to put checks on the DM's role which would set the rules above the DM rather than vice-versa.  It's maybe not the best way of saying - like I said 'trusting the DM' is a more tactful way of putting it than 'assuming perfection.'
> 
> Perhaps another way of putting it is that the rules assume the DM will have a better chance of knowing/implementing what's best for his group, specifically, than the designers would.




I think that those are all good ways to put it.

I would put it as, "The rules recognize that the problem of poor GMing cannot be fixed by the rules."

I think that there is a certain theory in some design circles that poor GMing can be fixed by having the right rules or process in place, but 5e D&D in particular radically departs from that fad.


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## Tony Vargas (May 14, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think that those are all good ways to put it.
> 
> I would put it as, "The rules recognize that the problem of poor GMing cannot be fixed by the rules."



That's a slightly different statement, since it makes the leap from speculating about design assumptions - to taking a specific position on game-design theory (which may or may not have informed the assumption). 

I do, however, think it's fair to say that no rule can stop the GM from just changing the rules (Rule 0 in 3e wasn't so much a rule, as an acknowledgement of fact).  
So, a bad (malevolent) DM could simply change any rule that got in his way.  The closest a system could get to protecting players from their own DMs' malevolence would be to have many rules that might get in the way of malicious DMing, and encourage a culture of suspicion towards DMs who change/override rules.  

You can see how that could never fly with 5e's DM-Empowerment mandate.  So, it "assumes perfect DMing" - or rather, makes no provision for imperfect DMing. Once you make that leap of faith, though, the system can fall back on the DM as much as needed to keep it simple/intuitive/light/natural/flexible/etc as desired, without worrying so much about the mechanical nitty-gritty debates that drove us crazy earlier in the WotC era.

(Instead we get this kind of discussion to drive us crazy!  Progress!)




> I think that there is a certain theory in some design circles that poor GMing can be fixed by having the right rules or process in place



 Sure, use an analogy, you don't have to assume perfect drivers to build safer cars, quite the contrary, you start by assuming there'll be accidents.  Thus "rules can't fix poor GMing" is akin to "seat belts can't prevent accidents" - and it's not like no one said that back when there was debate on the issue, there really was a school of thought that safety features would make drivers careless and /cause/ more accidents.
Of course, an analogy with one very important difference:  fatal D&D accidents are exceedingly rare. The worst that can happen is an un-fun session.
Perspective.


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## Hriston (May 15, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Nitpick - "to the priests" did not accompany "hazardous" in the write-up in the PHB. So, for instance, if the priests' spells and efforts are tied up combating a local outbreak, they might consider casting cure spells on your scratches a lower priority than saving other people's lives - the hazard being yo those thry are helping.




Forgive me, but this interpretation seems like a lawyerly effort to screw over the players. I think it's pretty clear that hazardous assistance refers to assistance that would be hazardous to the priests themselves, not hazardous to anyone in general.



5ekyu said:


> But, to be clear, given your long list of assumptions, I would boil it down to "unless there is a compelling reason not to... "




What's wrong with sticking to only the conditions of the spell or feature, and not imposing additional restrictions that the DM deems "compelling" in his/her judgement? 



5ekyu said:


> A referencexwas made above yo sort of "without a good reason" and to me most of my playstyle revolves around "say yes, unless you have a compelling reason to say no" and I basically set the burden on me as GM through setting, circumstance and NPC to establish "why not" instead of on the player and their PC to establish "why."
> 
> So, really, more often than not the "no" is already expected as they see "why" before they get to the " no".




This all seems good to me and sounds like it avoids mismatched expectations. If the "why" has already been established though, I wonder why you would ever get to the "no", unless I'm misunderstanding you.


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## Hriston (May 15, 2019)

iserith said:


> I can't really speak for the social contracts at anyone's table but my own. From the perspective of the rules though, that expectation does not hold up well in my view since the outcome of all action declarations are decided by the DM who is empowered to use the rules to inform his or her decision but is never beholden to them. (This necessarily includes something as simple as taking rope out of a backpack, even if this is probably too granular for most groups in a practical sense. It _is_ an action declaration after all.)
> 
> Because of this, as a player, I have absolutely zero expectation that the things on my sheet will matter in all situations, though if the DM is consistent in his or her application of the rules and the internal logic of his or her setting, I can probably reliably predict that it will or will not matter. Sometimes I will be wrong though. If the DM is not consistent, then all bets are off. This argues for consistency in the DM's approach, whatever it may be, more than anything.




This is a more expansive interpretation of "the rules serve the DM" than I would subscribe to (e.g. I would rather change the player's background feature beforehand than override it during play), but I can accept that the social contract of many if not the majority of groups contains such an understanding and that their games are no worse for it.


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## pemerton (May 15, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> I think the idea here would be that the GM can insist that they don't smell anything (because there's nothing to smell), but they're free to insist that they do - so they're either hallucinating, deluded, or just teasing the guy.  And, really, probably not hallucinating, but deluded, yeah, if the distinction is that hallucinations are /caused/ by something (like the ergot in the rye bread that came with your standard rations - should've sprung for the iron), while delusions are self-imposed.



Right. Which is not consistent with the suggestion that the player has total authority over what the character thinks and feels.



Elfcrusher said:


> If the GM likes the idea, he runs with it.  If he doesn't think his Chamberlain should smell bad (but I do hope he has a good reason, because really if the players want him to smell bad that's a great contribution) then the PCs are the only people who think he smells bad.
> 
> The players are free to have their characters act like he smells bad.
> 
> The players are free to have their players think he smells bad.  But they may eventually notice that nobody else thinks he smells bad.  They're free to come up with whatever narration they want to explain it.  They're crazy?  They suffered neurological damage in the battle with Jubilex?  They all were fed some herb as kids that happened to make them extremely sensitive to the chamberlain's cologne?  I don't know, but if they're creative enough to come up with the idea in the first place, I'll bet they are creative enough to come up with an explanation for why they are the only three people who seem to think he's smelly.



But they're not free to come up with the answer _because he is smelly_. That is, they're not free to make their perceptions non-delusional.



5ekyu said:


> what the players are doing is *either* (their call as to which ) in character pranking *or* deciding that their character finds the particular smell of the target unpleasant. If its the former, it might become relevant as deceptions are not absolute. If its the latter, it would need to be played within the normal expectations for percrption established in the game.
> 
> So, no real conflicts unless the players want to define not just what they think of the target's smell but how far it goes or how loud it is.



Again, the GM - by declaring that the chamberlain doesn't stink - is able to exercise control over what beliefs and sensations the players are allowed to attribute to their PCs.

I don't think that that is all that outrageous. It's just not consistent with certain claims about the extent of player authority. The underlying point is that _what a person thinks and feels_ is, in part, a function of _the environment_ in which that person is located. So you can't give one author full authority over the first, and another author full authority over the second, without generating the potential for conflict.


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## Tony Vargas (May 15, 2019)

pemerton said:


> Again, the GM - by declaring that the chamberlain doesn't stink - is able to exercise control over what beliefs and sensations the players are allowed to attribute to their PCs.



 Allowed to attribute without resorting to the rubric of delusion, anyway. 







> I don't think that that is all that outrageous. It's just not consistent with certain claims about the extent of player authority. The underlying point is that _what a person thinks and feels_ is, in part, a function of _the environment_ in which that person is located. So you can't give one author full authority over the first, and another author full authority over the second, without generating the potential for conflict.



 That does not sound unreasonable.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 15, 2019)

pemerton said:


> But they're not free to come up with the answer _because he is smelly_. That is, they're not free to make their perceptions non-delusional.




I disagree. "Smelly" is a subjective term, and a player is free to declare they their character finds a certain odor offensive or not. Now, if the rules call for a saving throw to avoid an effect the dice may override their declaration ("Sure, usually you like the smell of raw sewage, but in this case it overwhelms you...") but otherwise why not let them decide what they are sensitive to, or not?



> Again, the GM - by declaring that the chamberlain doesn't stink - is able to exercise control over what beliefs and sensations the players are allowed to attribute to their PCs.




As I said above, the GM's mistake here is making a declaration about how the players interpret something. (I mean, the big problem is a dysfunctional table. Either the players pulled this stunt in bad faith, or the GM is a dick for not rolling with it, or both. But that aside...)  The GM should stick to describing the environment, including other characters:

"Lady Longbottom is leaning in close to the Chamberlain, whispering and laughing. She certainly doesn't seem bothered by any odor."

Are the character's delusional, or other people used to it or faking it?  Something for the players to wonder about, and the GM hasn't contradicted anything they've said.

"You want to lean in close and see if you smell anything specific, without him noticing?  Any particular way you are trying to achieve the latter?  No?  Ok, give me a perception check. Yeah, you smell traces of sweat, cologne, and maybe wine.  Now give me a sleight-of-hand or deception check, your choice..."

If a player tries to declare, "But the Chamberlain *IS* smelly!" The GM can just say, "To your character, apparently."

Etc.

Again, the players may push against this.  "No, I definitely smell skunk."  Then we're talking delusion and/or dysfunction.  If that situation actually occurs maybe somebody at the table can post here and ask for advice, but that's a matter for navigating social situations, not resolving game design philosophy.


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## Hriston (May 15, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think I agree with all of this.  The rope is in the backpack.   That has been established in the fiction by some process of play.   The player has a reasonable expectation that, "I take the rope out of my backpack..." is something that should automatically succeed, and is probably the preamble to some larger proposition like, "And start tying one end around my waist."   The play may expect that in some games, using the rope successfully is something that might be checked, or that the DM may require a full round of searching through his stuff to find the rope.   The player probably doesn't expect, "You don't find the rope."
> 
> However, I think we both agree that the GM could say, "You don't find the rope.", if the GM has some knowledge of the fictional positioning that the player doesn't, or the player has forgotten that last week he tied the rope to a pillar at the top of the pit the party is now in, and it is logically still back there hanging down the wall.   The GM may know that one of the other players handed the GM a note saying, "I steal the rope from his pack while he's sleeping.", or he may know that the Mite in area #26 stole the rope back when the PC put the backpack down while they were fighting the Steam Mephits, or that the rope was actually an illusion cast by the imp in area #43 and never existed in the first place.
> 
> The fact that we both agree that the GM could say this because he has more knowledge of the fictional positioning than the player is proof that the DM controls the fiction outside of the player.  The two say the same thing.   While he may agree that the player's view of the fiction ("the rope is in my backpack") prevails, he is not required to do so.   Ultimately, the player can't force the DM to accept the player's view of the fiction.  The player may insist that he recovered the rope, or that there was no way it could have been stolen, or that he has two ropes - and depending on the persuasiveness of the argument the GM may yield - but the GM is meant to be the judge of what is true here.




Isn't this just another way of saying it's the DM's job to keep track of this stuff? What judgement is required over whether the rope is in the backpack or not? If the DM has secret knowledge about it, then it's the DM's job to keep track of that until it's revealed through play, sure. But if it's shared knowledge by both player and DM that the rope is in the backpack, I don't see how the DM is _controlling_ that. Let's assume this rope has been in the character's backpack since chargen. Wasn't it the player who put it there when s/he outfitted the character? To me, that, and the choices the player has made in play about how the character has manged his/her inventory since then, is what controls the fiction about whether the rope is still in the backpack when the player has his/her character reach for it.



Celebrim said:


> If that isn't true for rope, then isn't it true for +5 Vorpal Swords?  Surely a player could validly argue he'd enjoy the game more if his player happened to find a +5 Vorpal Sword is his backpack?  Surely it's easy to imagine a player arguing this find would make the game better for everyone, and the player honestly be arguing in good faith.  The player may even be correct - everyone at this table might enjoy the game better if they were less gritty and playing in a higher tier.   However, ultimately, the GM still runs the game, and if the GM overrules rope or +5 vorpal swords, it's his reasons for doing so that prevail good or bad.
> 
> Maybe a player can propose to the table that they play a different game with different assumptions.  They still can't control the setting.
> 
> ...




These are examples of dysfunctional play due to a mismatch in expectations about the allocation of the various roles and duties of playing the game. I don't see how they support an argument that in a game that has an _intact_ social contract, with an expectation that the PC's inventory is at the player's disposal through his/her control of the PC, that the player doesn't have the authority to reliably have his/her PC retrieve the rope from his/her backpack.


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## Celebrim (May 15, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Isn't this just another way of saying it's the DM's job to keep track of this stuff?




Not at all.  Or at least, at my tables I certainly don't keep track of the players stuff, and if the player takes something but doesn't write it down on their character sheet, I'm not at all going to overrule and decide that they have it (unless it has a particular sort of curse).  

All I'm saying is that the DM, in his role as secret keeper, can and usually does have information about the fictional positioning that the player doesn't have.  The DM is as it were, omniscient with regards to the imagined world.   The player on the other hand, since his knowledge of the game is filtered by the secret keeper according to what he has noticed or can perceive, is acting under "fog of war".  This is required to allow for the aesthetic of discovery, as it is sometimes called exploration.   



> What judgement is required over whether the rope is in the backpack or not?




Access to the secret knowledge, as you well understand because you go on to say...



> If the DM has secret knowledge about it, then it's the DM's job to keep track of that until it's revealed through play, sure.




You aren't as confused as you think you are.



> But if it's shared knowledge by both player and DM that the rope is in the backpack, I don't see how the DM is _controlling_ that.




Your actual confusion over this is someone has introduced a false dichotomy into this discussion, and you've bought into the false dichotomy and are assuming that people like me are arguing over that false dichotomy.  The question over the rope has never been whether the DM or the player controls the rope.   No one set out to set up a dichotomy over who controls the rope.  The claim that this dichotomy existed, only muddles the conversation and confuses people about what is being debated. 

The question is over how the rope was introduced to the fiction.

I asserted that the rope was introduced to the fiction in one of two ways - by GM fiat, since the GM controls the setting and therefore can add ropes to it by fiat, or else through a process of play.  For example, the rope may be in the PC's backpack because as part of the process of CharGen, the player exchanged a CharGen resource - say "gold pieces" - for a list of approved items and equipment that had approved costs associated with them.  As long as the player has the rope through that established process of play, then the rope exists in the fiction somewhere (even if it is no longer in the player's backpack).   Likewise, a different game might dispense entirely with the traditional equipment list mechanic, and have a process of play where the player begins each session with some number of empty equipment slots, and during the course of the session the player may announce that he's filling an equipment slot with a normal mundane transportable piece of equipment - such as a length of rope.  Again, if that is the case, then the rope exists in the fiction because the player has used an established process of play to bring the rope into the fiction.  While the mechanics seem a bit different from the traditional equipment list mechanic, they are actually fundamentally the same - the player exchanges some sort of limited resource for some other sort of limited resource.  They differ really only in the details.

Neither is anything like the GMs ability to bring rope into the fiction.  The GM can just establish that there is an entire room of rope, a whole ropemaker's guild, an entire forest covered in enchanted rope, or whatever else he likes.



> Let's assume this rope has been in the character's backpack since chargen. Wasn't it the player who put it there when s/he outfitted the character? To me, that, and the choices the player has made in play about how the character has manged his/her inventory since then, is what controls the fiction about whether the rope is still in the backpack when the player has his/her character reach for it.




If we assume that the rope has been in the character's backpack since chargen, then you've constructed a circular argument.  The rope is introduced by the process of play and per your constraint on the situation, no secret knowledge has effected the rope, so yes at this point the rope is by definition introduced to the fiction by the player and that choice was made by the player.   But your statement is as pointless as it is circular, because it argues a point that was never in contention.  

The point of contention was whether ropes in a backpack since chargen were introduced to the fiction by the same process as ropes introduced by the GM.   And this rope, just wasn't.  You've already conceded the important point, that the GM may have secret knowledge about the rope and he may therefore overrule the player's understanding of the fiction.   He can do this because he controls the setting, as is implied and required by his job as Secret Keeper.   The player can't have secret knowledge in the same way, nor may he override the GM's knowledge of the fiction by asserting that what the GM thinks about the fiction is not true.   The player isn't the Secret Keeper nor is the player the Referee responsible for adjudicating the results of things.  

Nor can the player introduce to the fiction anything not provided by an explicit process of play.   The player can't simply declare by fiat, because he wishes it, that there is a rope in the corner of the cell.   The GM can on the other hand introduce rope any time he wants by any means he wants.   He doesn't need a process of play to do it.   The rope is just there in the setting because the GM declared it to be so.  



> These are examples of dysfunctional play due to a mismatch in expectations about the allocation of the various roles and duties of playing the game.




Yes, exactly!  And so, much less obviously, is a game where the player can declare without permission from the GM or without any recourse to the processes of play that a rope exists.  



> I don't see how they support an argument that in a game that has an _intact_ social contract, with an expectation that the PC's inventory is at the player's disposal through his/her control of the PC, that the player doesn't have the authority to reliably have his/her PC retrieve the rope from his/her backpack.




Because you've already asserted yourself that the GM's secret knowledge could potentially override this authority!   Unless you want to recant that, what you really mean is "I don't see how they support an argument that in a game that has an _intact_ social contract, with an expectation that the PC's inventory is *NORMALLY* at the player's disposal through his/her control of the PC, that the player doesn't have the authority to reliably have his/her PC retrieve the rope from his/her backpack."

And yes, I agree that it normally is, but we've both agreed that there are rare exceptions to that where the GM can overrule the player because the GM has secret knowledge.

But again, this is all a red herring that someone else in the thread introduced to confuse things.  No one has ever asserted that the player's inventory isn't normally within the player's control.   The real question is not whether the player controls their inventory, or even whether they normally control their inventory.   The real question was whether the items in a player's inventory could be declared to be there by the player's fiat, _in the exact same fashion that they could declare by fiat the intention to climb a wall or attack an orc with an item in that inventor_.  In other words, I argued - and still argue - that while a player can by fiat declare what a PC feels, or what a PC thinks, or what a PC does, because the player had control over the PC, their PC's possessions - while they were part of the character - where still external to the PC and could not be controlled or introduced by fiat alone.

To disagree with this is to assert that these two propositions by the player are fundamentally the same:

A) I draw the +5 Holy Avenger [which my player acquired during play], and attack the Lich King.
B) I draw the +5 Holy Avenger [which I'm now introducing to the game's fiction now even though no such item formerly existed because I think it would be cool to have one], and attack the Lich King.

That is the real point of debate.  The whole "who is in control of the backpack" canard was a logical fallacy introduced to disguise what I would think is a rather unpopular claim that 'B' and 'A' are actually the same thing for what it is.   And since you've already agreed that one example is "dysfunctional play due to a mismatch in expectations about the allocation of the various roles and duties of playing the game", then I suspect you and I really don't have much to disagree over.


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## Celebrim (May 15, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I disagree. "Smelly" is a subjective term, and a player is free to declare they their character finds a certain odor offensive or not.




I agree.

The smelly chamberlain example is just the latest example of attempt to assert that the boundaries of the PC extend to encompass all that the PC can observe or think on.  

One wonders if the person making these claims believes their own person extends to encompass all that they can observe or think on?   

I really have a hard time taking these arguments seriously, as I think they are less serious arguments than attempts to justify a process of play that includes a gentlemen's agreement over what different participants can introduce to the fiction in an effort to improve the game - something I think that is neither justified by these red herrings nor which needs to be justified.  It's not badwrongfun to cooperate together.  Go ahead, especially if you have nigh unto perfect knowledge of what everyone else at the table enjoys.  Under such conditions, well why not?

But, as far as the example goes, consider the following:

The GM introduces a Chamberlain wearing costly perfumes.

The PC is, by virtue of their fiat control of their character free to assert all of the following:

1) They find the costly perfumes attractive and would like to inquire where they could purchase themselves.
2) They want to pretend that they find the costly perfumes attractive and inquire where they could purchase some themselves.
3) They find the odor offensive, but wish to pretend that they do not to avoid offending the Chamberlain.
4) They find the odor offensive, and wish to mock the Chamberlain regarding his perfumes, either to deliberately enrage the Chamberlain or make a fool of him in front of the court (or both).
5) They don't find the odor offensive, but wish to mock the Chamberlain regarding his perfumes anyway.

Likewise, if the GM introduces a Chamberlain which he describes as having strong body odor, by virtue of the player's fiat control over the PC, they may propose all of the following.

1) They find the body order attractive and would like to compliment the Chamberlain on his manly odor.
2) They want to pretend that they find the body odor attractive and compliment the Chamberlain on his manly odor.
3) They find the odor offensive, but wish to pretend that they do not to avoid offending the Chamberlain.
4) They find the odor offensive, and wish to mock the Chamberlain regarding his body odor, either to deliberately enrage the Chamberlain or make a fool of him in front of the court (or both).
5) They don't find the odor offensive, but wish to mock the Chamberlain regarding his body odor anyway.

Further, the GM could introduce a Chamberlain with no noticeable odor whatsoever, and yet by virtue of the player's fiat control over the PC, the player could still propose:

1) They find the Chamberlain's smell attractive, as a false to facts of the fiction assertion regarding the odor of the Chamberlain.  
2) They don't find the Chamberlain's smell attractive, as a false to facts of the fiction assertion regarding the odor of the Chamberlain.
3) In combination of neither or either of the above, that they wish to insult the Chamberlain regarding his smell, in hopes of enraging the Chamberlain or making him seem foolish in the eyes of the court.

None of these assertions need to be justified.  The player is declaring things about his character's beliefs, feelings, and actions.  He may or may not have good justification for those beliefs, feelings, and actions, but he doesn't have to justify them.   He's just playing his character.

However, as soon as the player tries to declare something that is not about his PC's beliefs, feelings, or actions, but rather about the beliefs, feelings, or actions of NPCs or the existence of novel things in the fiction, then he's not playing his character.   I can't believe I'm saying that, because I would have thought it was obvious and axiomatic, but here we are.

Now, depending on the player character's social skills, courses of action regarding the Chamberlain's odor such as attempting to make a fool of him in front of the court might have a chance of success.  The odds of success will very much depend on the perceptions of the NPCs.  If it is the case that the Chamberlain's odor is not much commented on in the court, the player's proposed course of action would be much more difficult than if the GM decides that Chamberlain's odor is already perceived by the court as being obnoxious and everyone is just afraid to say anything about it.   The clever player may in fact have perceived by some means that this is true, while a creative player may be banking on it being true or something the GM finds plausible.  

What is not the case is that the PC can propose that since his player finds Chamberlain's odor offensive, that the NPCs of the court find it offensive - and this is especially the case if the GM does not establish that such an odor exists and in fact notes that the odor is not particularly notable nor would it normally be found offensive at all.   It's beyond the bounds of playing your PC to make declarations about what exists in the environment or how NPCs think and behave.  

Real people can't cause smells to come into being that other people experience just by imagining them.   Neither can a PC acting in the fiction cause a smell to come into existence by imagining it.  Perhaps a heroically good orator could convince a court by the power of suggestion that the Chamberlain smells despite their being no significant odor present, but in this case he's by the power of his descriptive rhetoric introducing into the fiction a belief that the Chamberlain smells and doing that through a process of play.   Or a wizard PC might actually magically create an odor to attack to the Chamberlain to embarrass him provided he had some character ability that allowed the player to assert such a narrative device.   But all of that is playing your character.   Claiming that your character thinks the Chamberlain smells, and therefore perforce the Chamberlain does smell is not playing your character because implicitly it is NPCs doing the smelling.   You can no more control what the NPCs think by fiat than the GM can control what your PC thinks by fiat.

On that note, the GM cannot do the following:

a) Assert that since the Chamberlain has body odor, you find him offensive.  Even if the body odor is so bad that it causes an automatic physical reaction, you ought not say that the PC finds that offensive, only that it causes him to vomit unless he passes a fortitude save (or whatever).  If he passes the fortitude save, he's free to explain that he likes the smell of body odor, so this was no big deal.  Heck, the player may hypothetically be playing a talking dog that finds the smell of dirty socks the best thing in the world.   But even if he is, the player gets to decide that - not you.  (Heck, if the player wants to establish in the fiction that he finds body odor attractive, as a GM I'd probably decide to hence forth mechanically support that just because it's amusing.)
b) Assert that since the Chamberlain is wearing expensive perfumes, you find the perfumes attractive.   Even if the perfumes are magical, so that they cause an automatic physical reaction impairing judgment as if the PC had just downed a pair of Long Island Iced Teas on an empty stomach, that's still a matter of process of play to establish if the PC is so impaired that it overrides the players normal control over the character, and has nothing to do with the perfumes attractiveness.



> As I said above, the GM's mistake here is making a declaration about how the players interpret something. (I mean, the big problem is a dysfunctional table. Either the players pulled this stunt in bad faith, or the GM is a dick for not rolling with it, or both. But that aside...)




Agreed.  I've had a lot of problem players over 30 years of play, but this hypothetical where the player insists that they believe some false to facts thing and therefore everyone else ought to as well has never come up.  I'm pretty sure I've had players insist on false to facts play, but only because they were gonzo players that wanted to play someone who was delusional or weird, usually out of misguided attempts to attract the spotlight to their PC.   Sometimes it was even believably in character for them to be delusional and weird.  They still didn't insist that the NPC's _and other PC's present_ had to believe the same thing.   How we've had the thread derailed over endlessly pointing out that no, ascribing traits to other characters or things in the setting in contrast to the established fictional positioning or introducing things which were novel to the fictional positioning did not constitute playing your PC.   It might even be something that was allowed, but if it allowed, it still wasn't playing your PC but rather shared narrative control that arose from something other than the right to play your PC.


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## Tony Vargas (May 15, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> One wonders if the person making these claims believes their own person extends to encompass all that they can observe or think on?



 What?  Like Solipsism?



> I think they are less serious arguments than attempts to justify a process of play that includes a gentlemen's agreement over what different participants can introduce to the fiction in an effort to improve the game - something I think that is neither justified by these red herrings nor which needs to be justified.  It's not badwrongfun to cooperate together.



 There's a lot of that still goin' around, even though you'd think in the 5e era there'd be less.  Ideally, DMs should just feel free to run their games in their style, using the rules as a toolset & starting point to do so, and leave it to other DMs to do so in their ways, too.  (With the obvious exception of organized play, like AL, were some consistency from table-to-table is desirable).  But, invariable, someone is too insecure in their prefered style to just do it, and instead need to justify it to themselves as 'how the game is really meant to be played,' (whether that's based on a by-the-book reading of rules, or an assumed intent of the designers, or immemorial tradition or simulation/verisimilitude/whatever)  and, then, by extension, to get on-line and make that argument to the circumambient ether.  
Of course, as soon as the second person does that, the circumambient ether erupts in flames. 




> However, as soon as the player tries to declare something that is not about his PC's beliefs, feelings, or actions, but rather about the beliefs, feelings, or actions of NPCs or the existence of novel things in the fiction, then he's not playing his character.   I can't believe I'm saying that, because I would have thought it was obvious and axiomatic, but here we are.



 Or as the Forge might've said, he's "not in Actor Stance."  ::shrug::  

There are fundamental differences in approach among playing a character as if you were:  creating & developing a character in fiction vs choreographing the actions of a fictional character to fulfill its role in a story vs portraying a fictional character on stage or screen vs inhabiting an alternate self in a dream or dissociative state vs literally 'playing' a typed or unique game-piece in accord with rules governing its moves. 

IMHO, those approaches mostly, at worst, conflict on an aesthetic or theoretical level, they're not only compatible at the same table and/or workable in a variety of systems, but it's likely any given player's style is a mix of several of them rather than 'pure.'


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## 5ekyu (May 15, 2019)

Hriston said:


> Forgive me, but this interpretation seems like a lawyerly effort to screw over the players. I think it's pretty clear that hazardous assistance refers to assistance that would be hazardous to the priests themselves, not hazardous to anyone in general.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



On the lawyerly part... well if you mean its lawyerly to point out what was written in contrast to what you claimed, then guilty.

But, if one accepts that the actual text is telling you to only consider hazardous to the priest, then on gets the door opened to a lot of very strange results. If it means the priest spends his time casting raise dead instead of using a cantrip to stabilize an injured child then hey, if that's good for you, great. 

As for sticking to the components... in 5e and in the games I run, NPCs are not under the control of the player and its recommended they be played as characters, not as tools or props. There are certainly some exceptions with compels and the like. 

But as a very broad rule of thumb, NPCs are handled very very different than the other components. So, yes, that means that your cleric might have to wait and get your healing or remove curse tomorrow because you are not "casting my NPC" feature but rather asking this person for help knowing they will help me but not *controlling* the specifics of it. 

What the Acolyte describes in general and more specifically with phrases about keeping in good standing and remain on good terms us a relationship - not a slot machine of free Healing, housing, care and assistance- just insert your acolyte chip. 

Many of the background work this way, setting up prior established contacts and allies and avenues... not just "meat-spells" like some "cure wounds with feet". 

So, yeah, even if it wont cause specific hazard to the priest, he may say "no" when you ask him to flame strike the innkeeper for overcharging you. 

In my game, NPCs are not just "features" even when they are from backgrounds.


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## Celebrim (May 15, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> What?  Like Solipsism?




If a player believes he is the only person playing at a table, my solution would be to make this conclusion a fact and leave him to it.

As far as the whole, way things are meant to be played thing goes, I'd say there are certainly ways that RPGs are traditionally played, and often they are played in this way for very good reasons.  But, I've got no problem with people experimenting beyond the way things are traditionally played if they can make that work for them.  Typically though, I find that real problem is that they can't explain how they make that work for them, and sometimes when you scratch the surface there is less there than the raging flame war in the heavens would at first lead you to believe.



> Or as the Forge might've said, he's "not in Actor Stance."  ::shrug::




Speaking of raging flame wars, and badwrongfun, and the devil appears.   

I kid a little, because occasionally the Forge produced something actually worthwhile, and the stance language is one that tends not be too bad as long as it is descriptive and not judgmental.  Pawn stance is easier to do than some others, but if you are doing pawn stance because you like it and not just because you are unaware of any other approaches, feel free to play pawn stance at my table without me telling you, that you are doing it wrong.  

I agree with you whole hearted about the sort of statements that would have caused an auto-de-fe at the Forge, that the stances and aesthetics of play are compatible and that most players are pure about neither.

However, there is a difference between a player not being in Actor Stance or Author stance or some other stance normally associated with play, and assuming a Director Stance or some other stance associated with GMing in a game that has a GM and no mechanics for sharing the Director's chair.  It would I think require a phenomenal degree of interpersonal understanding to share a Director Stance without conflict if you had no mechanism to ensure equitable allocation of the Director chair.   Heck, I generally advice GMs to avoid Director Stance as a GMing stance as much as possible, since - as the term applies - it becomes too easy to start telling the players what to do in order to get your story done.


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## Tony Vargas (May 15, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> If a player believes he is the only person playing at a table, my solution would be to make this conclusion a fact and leave him to it.



 He'll be fine.



> As far as the whole, way things are meant to be played thing goes, I'd say there are certainly ways that RPGs are traditionally played, and often they are played in this way for very good reasons.



 … and often to not so good effect and/or for not so good reasons …  really, most of the time, said tradition is unexamined. 



> Typically though, I find that real problem is that they can't explain how they make that work for them, and sometimes when you scratch the surface there is less there than the raging flame war in the heavens would at first lead you to believe.
> Speaking of raging flame wars, and badwrongfun, and the devil appears.
> 
> I kid a little, because occasionally the Forge produced something actually worthwhile, and the stance language is one that tends not be too bad as long as it is descriptive and not judgmental.  Pawn stance is easier to do than some others, but if you are doing pawn stance because you like it and not just because you are unaware of any other approaches, feel free to play pawn stance at my table without me telling you, that you are doing it wrong.
> ...



 OK, you deserved XP already, but you're getting it for that reference. 



> However, there is a difference between a player not being in Actor Stance or Author stance or some other stance normally associated with play, and assuming a Director Stance or some other stance associated with GMing in a game that has a GM and no mechanics for sharing the Director's chair.  It would I think require a phenomenal degree of interpersonal understanding to share a Director Stance without conflict if you had no mechanism to ensure equitable allocation of the Director chair.   Heck, I generally advice GMs to avoid Director Stance as a GMing stance as much as possible, since - as the term applies - it becomes too easy to start telling the players what to do in order to get your story done.



 Honestly, back in the day, I recall what we'd now call 'sharing director stance' /just happening/ as part of the GM* & player trying to get through the fuzzy/dysfunctional/non-existent resolution systems we had to work with.










* normally if I'm talk'n 'bout "back in the day" it'll be DM, but the specific memory is of something that happened more than a few times in a Traveler campaign, so GM it is.


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## Satyrn (May 16, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I agree.
> 
> The smelly chamberlain example is just the latest example of attempt to assert that the boundaries of the PC extend to encompass all that the PC can observe or think on.
> 
> One wonders if the person making these claims believes their own person extends to encompass all that they can observe or think on?



As I was typing up a reply for another thread, it dawned on me that I was also writing up a real-life example akin to the smelly chamberlain:

I had . . .  . . . a cat, a very beautiful cat with flowing white fur and the most gorgeous silver-blue eyes. And though he was a charming buffoon, he carried himself with a natural elegance, like the whole world was his catwalk.

I also had a neighbour . . . insisted on calling him by a flowery name she christened him with and referring to him as her. The cat was so beautiful, my neighbour just could not she him as masculine. This went on for years, I just stopped correcting my neighbour.

But for all her thinking my cat was female, her thoughts never changed the sex of my cat.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 16, 2019)

Satyrn said:


> As I was typing up a reply for another thread, it dawned on me that I was also writing up a real-life example akin to the smelly chamberlain:
> 
> I had . . .  . . . a cat, a very beautiful cat with flowing white fur and the most gorgeous silver-blue eyes. And though he was a charming buffoon, he carried himself with a natural elegance, like the whole world was his catwalk.
> 
> ...




I'm glad you didn't take away her agency.


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## Chaosmancer (May 17, 2019)

iserith said:


> What is the Arcana check for? I don't see an action declaration from the wizard in your breakdown.




I'll assume that was a serious question. For seeing if the wizard's character does actually know that knowledge. Arcana is the skill linked with knowledge about elementals and their strengths and weaknesses after all. And as a DM, I can call for checks, correct?




iserith said:


> That's not the DM's problem. It's up to the players to play their characters effectively.




I'm not saying it is a problem, but you keep using it as a defense. Everything is fine, because the smart play is to verify. But, just because it is smart does not mean that is what the player will do.

And you know what is a DM problem? The players not having fun. Which is something which I could see happening in extreme cases of this whole discussion. 




iserith said:


> My players do because they have an incentive to. As an example from my current Eberron campaign, the players found a chamber in the dungeon containing crates covered in brown mold. I telegraphed an unusual chill in the adjoining chamber. A couple of characters ran afoul of it and took a bit of cold damage when they kicked down the door to said chamber. Everyone in my group is an experienced player. They knew this was brown mold and how to do deal with it (cold damage) and how not to use fire on it. But, they know that I change things up from time to time and, with the wizard having no cold-damage cantrips and only one spell slot remaining, they could not take any risks on this.
> 
> So the wizard used _mage hand_ to collect a small sample of the brown mold, not enough to do damage to anyone, with a test tube. He handed it off to the warforged fighter who has integrated alchemist's supplies. Ten minutes of testing and analysis, a wandering monster check (no wanderer), and a successful Intelligence (Alchemist's Supplies) check later, they verified it was brown mold. The wizard cast an _ice knife_ spell, destroyed the brown mold, and they were able to obtain the schema they were seeking to complete their quest.
> 
> The players chose to play effectively. All I had to do was describe the environment and narrate the results of the adventurers' actions.




What you described isn't incentive. They were cautious, yes, but if later in the campaign they encounter a brownish mold in a cold room will they check it again? How about the third time? The Fourth? 

Sure, you might change it, and then you'll telegraph it by describing something different about the mold this time, maybe by adding yellow stripes to it or something. 

But, despite their caution, look at how you describe the thought process. Cold room, brown mold. It is probably brown mold, *but we don't have more than one spell slot and no cold-based cantrips* so we should verify it is brown mold first. The entire verification was based upon their lack of resources, if they had had a cold cantrip, they would have just shot it at the mold, because there would have been no loss of resources to the party. Unless you had changed it to do something else. That is what I've been talking about. Verification will not happen every time. 




Celebrim said:


> I can't speak for any one else, but for my part its because I repeat the same things over and over and they just bounce off.  I have a hard time believing that you aren't at this point able to answer your own questions.   I mean just considering what you've now posted, the answers to your own questions are present if you are willing to see them.   I admit I have weird pet peeves and my social-emotional framework doesn't well align with the rest of the human race, but honestly if you made attacks and cast open aspirations or said "You make me so angry", it would be less frustrating to me and more understandable than what you are doing.




I try not to assume what people will say, I can sometimes predict what an answer will be before I see it, but then I'd be talking to myself and not the actual other person. 

I apologize if it frustrates you, but repeating the same thing over and over does not necessarily convince me of anything, and in fact, if I bring up a counter-point that doesn't get addressed, then it is nothing more than circular movement. 



Celebrim said:


> How is it that when you've well understood that people were saying "players have absolute authority over their character's thoughts and actions" that you've now added to that something of your own invention in order to condemn their position as illogical, namely that the players also have absolute authority over the character's background, and by which you mean something that they never said, that they also have absolute authority to create any background that they like at any time in the game?




I've added nothing, just followed the logic. 

Absolute Authority over thoughts and actions is translating to absolute authority over the character's mind. That's what thoughts and actions are, since the Player does not have the authority to automatically succeed. This would then include authority over your own memories. Barring an outside influence, if I have absolute authority over my character's thoughts, then I should assume I have absolute authority over what they do and do not remember. We even include emotions in this, relationships. 

That means they have the same authority over their past that they have over their actions, because they are the ones telling that story. 

Now, you can lock backgrounds, tell the player that they are not allowed to alter or add to their background after the first session, but most tables do not do this. It is perfectly acceptable at a lot of tables to allow players to flesh out backgrounds over the course of play, because writing the full life story of a 25 year old soldier who lost his way in war and converted to the worship of a peace goddess... well that is hard. 

Also, I just confirmed this character was 1) in a military unit, 2) fought in battles if not a full war 3) joined a temple or religion 4) worships a goddess of peace. All of that is setting information, the existence of these things should be in the realm of the DM, but, I have full control over my character's thoughts. I can say that my character believes in peace because he has buried too many friends, by the way,  he know has dead friends. 

I'm not being a problem player, I'm not going beyond the pale, but I've been adding to the setting. Now, the DM is fully within their rights to veto any of this, but if they, for example, say that there has been no war for the last 20 years, then my character drastically changes, because he can no longer have the thoughts he had about war, because he no longer has the experience of war. I did not have absolute authority over my character's thoughts, because the DM declaring a peaceful era immediately changed those thoughts.



Celebrim said:


> So why is it surprising that someone who you admit said "players have "absolute authority" over their characters thoughts and actions" should think that absolute authority over their background is a step too far?  And further, in the Francis example, we have gone even one step further past claiming that the player has absolute authority over their background, and are now asserting that the background has absolute authority over the setting.
> 
> Why should it even be confusing that someone who only started from the proposition "players have absolute authority over their characters thoughts and actions", should not able to answer your question regarding whether Francis exists in the city?  After all, even if someone did assert that players had absolute authority over their background, that would only mean that the player could assert that Francis existed sometime in the city in the past.  You could not assert on the basis of your authority over background, that now in the present Francis is still alive, still in the city, and still serving in the guard.  All of those things could have changed between the point you asserted Francis had existed and the present moment in game, and regardless of your absolute authority over background you could not decide those things without absolute authority over the setting.   So of course people can't answer your question in any general way or give you any other answer but "Maybe."
> 
> ...




So, I think I cover some of this up above, but a few salient points. 

There is no "sort of absolute authority". If authority is not absolute, then it is not absolute authority. 

Secondly, while you very much could respond to the player searching the city for Francis with "Well, Francis is dead" that feels a bit... squicky, to me at least. "Hey, I want to look for an old friend in this city." "Okay, he's dead, let's move on"

Now, you can turn any of these into interesting points. Maybe with him moving you'll encounter him later because the player is curious why Francis decided to leave. Maybe with him no longer being a guard you can explore some aspect of the city or have a personal character building moment. Maybe with him being dead you can get a personal sub-quest to avenge your friends death. All of these can be interesting. All of them also mean the player changed the setting, because Francis did not exist until the player said so. The DM okayed it, the DM allowed it, but the Player changed the setting here, which is why I've said these lines are not burnt into the ground. Authority over thoughts leads to emotions and memories which leads to relationships with NPCs which leads to the player changing the setting. 




Celebrim said:


> In point of fact, the GM could say that.  The GM could for example overrule a character whose IC motivation is to kill the other members of the party, or could overrule a character whose concept is that he's working for the bad guys.   I'm not saying a GM should always do that, but it takes an extraordinarily mature group to deal with that in a cooperative fashion.




So, reading this it seems we are actually in agreement. 

A DM can tell a player what their character does not do or does not think. Therefore their is no absolute authority. If you claim an absolute authority, then you must accept everything that flows from that. 

I especially agree that a DM should be very receptive to players who point out aspects of their character or backstory that are inviolable. Making sure the players are invested and feel like their investment matters is key to a successful game. 

It seems after reading this entire post that you think I'm being unfair by saying if you give a player absolute authority over their character's thoughts, that will apply to memories, emotions, and relationships as well. But, our thoughts are shaped by are past, by how we are raised, by what we feel. You cannot separate them. 




Celebrim said:


> One wonders if the person making these claims believes their own person extends to encompass all that they can observe or think on?




This made me chuckle, because I thought about someone who would claim to have absolute authority over their own thoughts. I find that idea to be wrong, we do not have that sort of authority over our own minds.


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## iserith (May 17, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'll assume that was a serious question. For seeing if the wizard's character does actually know that knowledge. Arcana is the skill linked with knowledge about elementals and their strengths and weaknesses after all. And as a DM, I can call for checks, correct?




Yes, if the player declares an action that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. In this example, including what you added, we have two action declarations: (1) The barbarian wants to go to Ye Ole Magick Shoppe to buy some _thunderwave_ scrolls for the wizard and (2) The wizard's player wants to retroactively give the barbarian a reason to take the aforementioned action to satisfy what appears to be an incredulous DM's questions about the validity of the action declaration. 

So what is the Arcana check for? What uncertain outcome does it resolve? What is the meaningful consequence for failure? Or, if you decide you don't like that rule, what actually happens if the wizard's player botches the Arcana check? Does the wizard not have the knowledge to retroactively give the barbarian a reason to buy the scrolls? If so, does that mean the barbarian's action declaration is made invalid and he or she can't take that action at all?



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not saying it is a problem, but you keep using it as a defense. Everything is fine, because the smart play is to verify. But, just because it is smart does not mean that is what the player will do.




Again, not the DM's problem, which appears to be something upon which we agree.



Chaosmancer said:


> And you know what is a DM problem? The players not having fun. Which is something which I could see happening in extreme cases of this whole discussion.




What wouldn't be fun here in your opinion?



Chaosmancer said:


> What you described isn't incentive. They were cautious, yes, but if later in the campaign they encounter a brownish mold in a cold room will they check it again? How about the third time? The Fourth?
> 
> Sure, you might change it, and then you'll telegraph it by describing something different about the mold this time, maybe by adding yellow stripes to it or something.
> 
> But, despite their caution, look at how you describe the thought process. Cold room, brown mold. It is probably brown mold, *but we don't have more than one spell slot and no cold-based cantrips* so we should verify it is brown mold first. The entire verification was based upon their lack of resources, if they had had a cold cantrip, they would have just shot it at the mold, because there would have been no loss of resources to the party. Unless you had changed it to do something else. That is what I've been talking about. Verification will not happen every time.




Again, not the DM's problem - which we appear to agree on. Going back to the thread's topic, if they had cold-damage cantrips, that just reduces the difficulty of the challenge to the player. The difficulty was higher because they didn't have that resource, so they had to work a bit harder to overcome the challenge.

But they _do_ have an incentive, since they are encouraged by the DM changing things to verify assumptions before acting upon them. This doesn't mean they will always do it. Incentives don't guarantee an outcome; they merely motivate or encourage certain behaviors. In this case, reasonably cautious engagement with the environment to avoid additional resource expenditure.


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## Chaosmancer (May 18, 2019)

iserith said:


> Yes, if the player declares an action that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. In this example, including what you added, we have two action declarations: (1) The barbarian wants to go to Ye Ole Magick Shoppe to buy some _thunderwave_ scrolls for the wizard and (2) The wizard's player wants to retroactively give the barbarian a reason to take the aforementioned action to satisfy what appears to be an incredulous DM's questions about the validity of the action declaration.
> 
> So what is the Arcana check for? What uncertain outcome does it resolve? What is the meaningful consequence for failure? Or, if you decide you don't like that rule, what actually happens if the wizard's player botches the Arcana check? Does the wizard not have the knowledge to retroactively give the barbarian a reason to buy the scrolls? If so, does that mean the barbarian's action declaration is made invalid and he or she can't take that action at all?




Okay, let us take this a bit at a time. 

Let us cover the check first. Thinking is an action, to think is an action verb, so it counts. We do not know if the character has the knowledge, therefore we have uncertainty. 

Now, meaningful consequences are hard to really nail down, and I don't like that stipulation. I can however point to the PHB, pages 177 and 178 where they lay out that Intelligence checks (including Arcana, History, Religion and Nature) all can involve checks to "recall lore" and Arcana specifically is used for recalling lore about the denizens of different planes of existence. Like Elementals.

So, an Arcana check to know the weaknesses of Earth Elementals seems to fit entirely within the game structure. Even without potential "meaningful consequences" beyond not knowing the information. 

Now, since this check was to give the barbarian the reason to act on out-of-character knowledge, then yes, if the roll fails and they do not know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage there is no reason for the player to continue going to shop to buy scrolls of magic that the elementals are weak against. 

In fact, knowledge checks and out-of-character knowledge really highlights the crux of this. Because the entire thing is predicate on knowing something their character does not know. 

To give an example I'm sure you would not allow at your table. A player receives a secret letter from the Mob, and hides it in their bag. None of the other characters know about this letter. Later that night one of the players declares they are searching the Mob players bag for the hidden letter. Not only is this rude to the other player, but there is no reason for the character to do this. And sure, I can come up with reasonable answers to why they would suddenly go rooting through their companions bag and "accidentally" find the letter I know about but my character doesn't, but that does not change the fact that they were just finding a work around to act upon knowledge they did not have. 

Also I enjoy you slipping in "to satisfy what appears to be an incredulous DM's questions about the validity of the action declaration". Because there is nothing wrong with questioning the validity of an action declaration, as a DM I am supposed to make sure that actions are valid. You can't climb a wall that doesn't exist after all. So the DM isn't "incredulous" they are simply confirming where the character received the information they are acting upon. 




iserith said:


> Again, not the DM's problem, which appears to be something upon which we agree.
> 
> What wouldn't be fun here in your opinion?




Nice job breaking up one statement into two. 

Yes, I think we would agree that it is not the DMs problem if the players are not playing the game optimally. Generally, it isn't even a problem. However, we have two opposing perspectives of the game going on here. We have the DM who is going forth assuming the players will double check everything, and the players going forward assuming that they are allowed, perhaps even encouraged to use out-of-character knowledge in regards to settings, monsters, and NPCs. 

These can come into conflict, especially the rarer it is that the DM changes something. Because if those changes just happen to be worse for the PCs, invalidating plans and actions they thought were clever because of some secret knowledge that is actually not viable, then it can give a poor impression on the DM. IT can cause tension at the table. 

And I am fully aware, "this doesn't happen if the players trust the DM" and "That isn't the DMs problem" and "You are talking about problems away from the table, not at the table, and they should be handled away from the table". Yeah, I get all that. But, if one isn't careful with our their actions at the table effect things away from the table, then it is an issue. It is something that can cause problems. So, you have to examine things carefully, you have to weigh pros and cons. 





iserith said:


> Again, not the DM's problem - which we appear to agree on.




You know, I wonder if one of these days we will have something we are discussing that you will say is the DMs problem. So far, nothing involving the players or their characters is ever the DMs problem. 

Maybe that is a side benefit of playing with the same group for decades instead of getting a new table every year, the DM concerns themselves with less and less.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 19, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Thinking is an action, to think is an action verb, so it counts. We do not know if the character has the knowledge, therefore we have uncertainty.




Ok, so you _are_ policing their thoughts.


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## Chaosmancer (May 20, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Ok, so you _are_ policing their thoughts.




If you mean in terms of using knowledge checks to see if a character has knowledge, then yes. 

IF you mean yelling at my players for thinking bad things... then sometimes yes, but only when I can tell they've got their minds in the gutter.


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## iserith (May 20, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, let us take this a bit at a time.
> 
> Let us cover the check first. Thinking is an action, to think is an action verb, so it counts. We do not know if the character has the knowledge, therefore we have uncertainty.




How the character thinks is in the control of the player, not the DM. As a result, there is no uncertainty - the character thinks whatever the player says he or she thinks.



Chaosmancer said:


> Now, meaningful consequences are hard to really nail down, and I don't like that stipulation.




No doubt.



Chaosmancer said:


> I can however point to the PHB, pages 177 and 178 where they lay out that Intelligence checks (including Arcana, History, Religion and Nature) all can involve checks to "recall lore" and Arcana specifically is used for recalling lore about the denizens of different planes of existence. Like Elementals.




The players in the example did not attempt to recall lore. One said he or she wanted to go buy some scrolls. The other said, only after the incredulous DM raised an eyebrow or the like, that he or she suggested a reason for the aforementioned task to the other character. No attempt to recall lore here. If there was, I might agree that an ability check was reasonable, provided it met the requirements for an ability check. But there wasn't. The DM just assumed there was and/or established for the player an action for his or her character which oversteps the DM's role.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, an Arcana check to know the weaknesses of Earth Elementals seems to fit entirely within the game structure. Even without potential "meaningful consequences" beyond not knowing the information.




Without a meaningful consequence for failure, it _doesn't_ fit within the game structure though. No meaningful consequence for failure, no roll. No roll, then either the character succeeds or fails outright, as determined by the DM. 

That is, of course, assuming we have a verbalized action declaration, which we _don't_ in this example (where recalling lore is concerned). What we appear to have is a DM attempting to invalidate an action declaration by establishing a knowledge prerequisite to the task and then and using the dice as a potential means to do it.



Chaosmancer said:


> Now, since this check was to give the barbarian the reason to act on out-of-character knowledge, then yes, if the roll fails and they do not know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage there is no reason for the player to continue going to shop to buy scrolls of magic that the elementals are weak against.




No reason _you_ can imagine, anyway. As established upthread, particular knowledge about earth elementals is not required to buy scrolls of _thunderwave_. The barbarian might just like the sound it makes, as it reminds him or her of stormy nights on the steppe, safe under the protection of a yurt, drinking fermented aurochs milk with Frances who later became a town guard.



Chaosmancer said:


> In fact, knowledge checks and out-of-character knowledge really highlights the crux of this. Because the entire thing is predicate on knowing something their character does not know.




As a fun exercise, keyword search "knowledge check" in the D&D 5e Basic Rules PDF. You won't get any results. You might if you're capable of keyword searching older editions of the game though.

In D&D 5e, an Intelligence check may follow when the player describes the character attempting to recall lore or make deductions based on available clues, when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.

There is no rules support for the DM calling for "knowledge checks" to determine if a player's action declaration is valid in the first place.



Chaosmancer said:


> To give an example I'm sure you would not allow at your table. A player receives a secret letter from the Mob, and hides it in their bag. None of the other characters know about this letter. Later that night one of the players declares they are searching the Mob players bag for the hidden letter. Not only is this rude to the other player, but there is no reason for the character to do this. And sure, I can come up with reasonable answers to why they would suddenly go rooting through their companions bag and "accidentally" find the letter I know about but my character doesn't, but that does not change the fact that they were just finding a work around to act upon knowledge they did not have.




This would be fine in my game. Knowledge of a letter is not a prerequisite for rifling through a backpack. Similarly, in my game, the barbarian could just go buy the _thunderwave_ scrolls, provided they are available and he or she has the gold. There would be no eyebrow raising from me when presented with that action declaration.



Chaosmancer said:


> Also I enjoy you slipping in "to satisfy what appears to be an incredulous DM's questions about the validity of the action declaration". Because there is nothing wrong with questioning the validity of an action declaration, as a DM I am supposed to make sure that actions are valid. You can't climb a wall that doesn't exist after all. So the DM isn't "incredulous" they are simply confirming where the character received the information they are acting upon.




The attempt to climb a non-existent wall just fails, no roll, since it does not meet the requirements for an ability check. It might be worth addressing what's going on in the fiction with the player in case he or she is under some kind of misapprehension about the environment, but ultimately, presuming that is not the case, the action declaration stands and the action fails.

This is not the same as you inserting a knowledge prerequisite into an action declaration. Which is a common enough thing, by the way. Lots of DMs who have a particular definition and view of "metagaming" do this. There's just nothing in the rules to support it. It's an approach that appears to be derived from other games and a particular gamer culture.



Chaosmancer said:


> Nice job breaking up one statement into two.
> 
> Yes, I think we would agree that it is not the DMs problem if the players are not playing the game optimally. Generally, it isn't even a problem. However, we have two opposing perspectives of the game going on here. We have the DM who is going forth assuming the players will double check everything, and the players going forward assuming that they are allowed, perhaps even encouraged to use out-of-character knowledge in regards to settings, monsters, and NPCs.
> 
> ...




I don't make any assumptions about the PCs' actions. They act as they please. I adjudicate the outcomes. As a player, it's smart play to verify one's assumptions before acting upon them. But I make no assumptions that players will actually do that. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes their assumptions are correct and sometimes they aren't. As long as I am doing my part in adequately describing the environment and fairly adjudicating outcomes, it's fair as the players can pay attention and take action accordingly. If they want to take a risk, that's on them.

One of the many benefits of this approach is that I don't have to worry about the kind of "metagaming" that a lot of DMs and players concern themselves with. It simply doesn't matter.



Chaosmancer said:


> You know, I wonder if one of these days we will have something we are discussing that you will say is the DMs problem. So far, nothing involving the players or their characters is ever the DMs problem.
> 
> Maybe that is a side benefit of playing with the same group for decades instead of getting a new table every year, the DM concerns themselves with less and less.




In the specific context of the elemental example we've been discussing, there really is nothing there that is the DM's problem, except if he or she creates one by requiring a knowledge prerequisite to validate an action declaration.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make with how long a DM is running for a group though. I run games the same for my regular group as I do for one-shots with pickup groups with the possible exception that I'm more willing to entertain the Frances the guard situation from my regular group.


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## Celebrim (May 20, 2019)

iserith said:


> How the character thinks is in the control of the player, not the DM. As a result, there is no uncertainty - the character thinks whatever the player says he or she thinks.




You'd think that would be easy to explain and without controversy.



> There's just nothing in the rules to support [mental checks to be allowed to perform some action]. It's an approach that appears to be derived from other games and a particular gamer culture.




It's a bizarre form of 'mother may I'.   I don't doubt you are right that it's not unusual, but it can't be logically supported IMO by any tortured path.   

There are plenty of GMs and even some players that seem frustrated by and even offended by the undeniable fact that the player's mind extends into the game universe and interacts with it.   GMs and players with an aesthetic of simulation feel this somehow invalidates the game in some fashion.  The player is supposed to be pretending that he's whatever character he created, and if the player brings any of his own mental skills to the table then that's "metagaming" or whatever.   And I agree that at some level it is metagaming, I just find it absolutely bizarre that anyone would think that this is bad.  

Yes, I prefer to have players mostly play their character in "actor stance", but even in "actor stance" the player's mind still extends into the game universe and animates the choices of the character.   So "metagaming" is what happens every single time that a player decides to do something, because he can't ever be pure and not exist in this universe as well as the game universe.  It only however is "wrong" with the GM doesn't get their way.  A GM that tries to force a player to pass some sort of mental check in order to decide what the player's character does, is a GM that really wants to be playing the game by themselves with only their own mind making any choices in the game, or (to be more generous) wants no minds at the table extending into the game.

But consider the consequences of that if you aren't going to be a hypocrite about it and apply this idea evenly to the game.  If what a PC or NPC chooses to do is to be left to a dice roll, why aren't all choices first tested against a dice roll.  Choose to be bad or good?  Pass an alignment check and then play that way.  Choose to be smart or dumb?  Pass an intelligence check.  Choose to be greedy or generous, merciful or vengeful?  Pass the associated personality tests to find out how the PC acts?  Will you attack the orc on the left or the right?   Don't metagame, flip a coin!   The result of taking the player's mind out of the game is that the player becomes part of the audience of the game, and not a participant in it.   If the player's intelligence, knowledge, intuition, or charisma is not to be trusted within the game, then the player obviously can't be allowed to make choices about how his character acts.

What it turns out is actually going on when a GM accuses the player of metagaming, is the GM is frustrated by their lack of control over the game and decides to start playing both sides of the table so that the player - who is getting it "wrong" - is forced to get it "right".   The players are loading up with spells that thwart "Earth Elementals"?  Well, the GM decides that is not how that wanted or planned the encounter to go, so by golly we are going to make it happen the way it "should".   The biggest flaw common to new GMs is that spend a lot of time fanaticizing about how cool some planned encounter is going to be, reimagining the details as the player's are surprised or awed or a afraid again and again in their mind, and excited to spring some difficulty on the players.   Such daydreaming may seem harmless, but is the mother of all sorts of GMing sins.

What are the stakes of these checks really?  What meaningful consequence is calling for this Arcana check really adjudicating?  Nothing less than who gets to play the player's character.  If the player loses the roll, then the GM gets to play the character.   And the GM is calling the checks, so presumably he can keep calling the checks until the player bows to his wishes.

Fundamentally, the problem I've had since the "Francis the Guard" issue was introduced to derail this thread and get us off the original topic, is that the side involved in declaring one ought to validate that the guard is Francis have claimed that they are doing so to empower the player and increase their agency.  They have sneered against the idea of GMs that refuse to share their hat.  Yet time and time again, when you scratch the surface, the actual stake being argued over is that the GM gets to play the player's character.   The GM is allowing "Francis the Guard" only because by yielding on this point about the setting, he's gaining even greater leverage over the PC.   For example, the same poster that introduced "Francis the Guard" claimed that his response to "Francis the Guard" was a "Yes, but..." response _where he literally got to tell the player how his character had behaved_.  

There is nothing wrong with fielding ideas from the players, but don't tell me how empowering that is, if you are going to repeatedly bring up how small concessions by the GM involve big concessions by the player.  All the denial that the player is absolutely in control of their character, seems in point of fact geared to proving the GM is in control of the PC by rights.  The real issue in the twisted claim that for a player to be in control of the characters thoughts, the setting and the thoughts had to be in agreement, seems to actually be that in blurring the line, the GM wants control over the player character's thoughts.  After all, once that wall separation goes down, it's a two way street but one which, if unregulated, is not equal in power.


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## iserith (May 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> What are the stakes of these checks really?  What meaningful consequence is calling for this Arcana check really adjudicating?  Nothing less than who gets to play the player's character.  If the player loses the roll, then the GM gets to play the character.   And the GM is calling the checks, so presumably he can keep calling the checks until the player bows to his wishes.




Wow, I hadn't really thought about it in this way before, but that really _is_ what's at stake. On the surface it's all "hey, we're just checking to see what your character knows, 'kay?" Which doesn't seem _that_ unreasonable, especially if you are used to a paradigm where the DM just asks for checks sometimes without an action stated by the player and the player doesn't look too closely at the rules of the game. Under the surface, it's really about _who gets to declare actions for the character_. Which ought to be the player, by the rules anyway. Here though, the DM is taking that power or is being given that power by the player's acquiescence. Roll and get this number or better or _you can't even make that action declaration_.

Like the DM declaring how a character feels about something which reasonably constrains choices in response, this really is just a way to control the characters. The DM may not even realize this, if he or she learned to DM this way from another game or DM.


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## Satyrn (May 21, 2019)

iserith said:


> No reason you can imagine, anyway. As established upthread, particular knowledge about earth elementals is not required to buy scrolls of thunderwave. The barbarian might just like the sound it makes, as it reminds him or her of stormy nights on the steppe, safe under the protection of a yurt, drinking fermented aurochs milk with Frances who later became a town guard.



One day, in the somewhat-distant future (or maybe tomorrow if the opportunity arises) I am gonna reply to some post of yours with a joke that references Frances the town guard.

Perhaps the joke will be about how Frances the town guard considers himself such an experienced guard he decides he need not bother reading the newest edition of the legal code, and goes about happily enforcing outdated laws


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## Tony Vargas (May 21, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> It's a bizarre form of 'mother may I'.   I don't doubt you are right that it's not unusual, but it can't be logically supported IMO by any tortured path.



 It's really just peeling another onion-layer off action declaration.  Implicit in many action declarations is a reason for the choice of method that goes with the goal.  If that reason is predicated on knowledge and the PC having or recalling that knowledge is in doubt, then in calling for the check the DM is just breaking down a declared action into necessary smaller actions.  DMs have been doing that forever - there's an example of it in the 1e DMG, IIRC - a player declares an action that the DM rules will take several rounds to play out all it's steps.

And, yeah, it's common, and, no, it's not cross-pollenated from other RPGs, it was quite a common thing for DMs to do back in the day, IMX, even though the game had no actual official mechanics for 'making an intelligence roll,' DMs, confronted with a use of 'player knowledge' - be it knowledge of the MM, or "my character's going to try mixing sulfur and charcoal, hey, I think I'll add some saltpeter, just because" - would sometimes, rather than just flat-out saying "you can't do that, you're character wouldn't think of it," call for one, typically roll under INT on d20, sometimes some sort of percentile check...




> But consider the consequences of that if you aren't going to be a hypocrite about it and apply this idea evenly to the game.  If what a PC or NPC chooses to do is to be left to a dice roll, why aren't all choices first tested against a dice roll.  Choose to be bad or good?  Pass an alignment check and then play that way.  Choose to be smart or dumb?  Pass an intelligence check.  Choose to be greedy or generous, merciful or vengeful?  Pass the associated personality tests to find out how the PC acts?  Will you attack the orc on the left or the right?   Don't metagame, flip a coin!



 Nod.  Think about it as what choices are available.  "Hit the troll with your usual weapon" probably doesn't come off the table very often.  But /some/ choices may have a bar to clear before you can make them available.  Not entirely crazy or unfair, just depends on what the play aesthetic of the group is like.

D&D saw a lot of it in the past, and 5e - by design, intent on supporting past play styles - grants plenty of latitude for it, if the DM cares to run that way.



> If the player's intelligence, knowledge, intuition, or charisma is not to be trusted within the game, then the player obviously can't be allowed to make choices about how his character acts.



OTOH, if you are going to rely on those attributes being provided by the player, why give the character INT, WIS, CHA, or knowledge/social skills, at all?  Just simplify the system by cutting them out.




> What are the stakes of these checks really?  What meaningful consequence is calling for this Arcana check really adjudicating?  Nothing less than who gets to play the player's character.  If the player loses the roll, then the GM gets to play the character.   And the GM is calling the checks, so presumably he can keep calling the checks until the player bows to his wishes.



 Maybe at a high, almost philosophical level.  At a practical level, the consequence is the number of choices available to the player.  Characters limit the choices available to players all the time.  A wizard can't cast Cure Wounds, a fighter can't cast fireball (oh, wait EK, er, Cone of Cold), etc.  




> Yet time and time again, when you scratch the surface, the actual stake being argued over is that the GM gets to play the player's character.   The GM is allowing "Francis the Guard" only because by yielding on this point about the setting, he's gaining even greater leverage over the PC.   For example, the same poster that introduced "Francis the Guard" claimed that his response to "Francis the Guard" was a "Yes, but..." response _where he literally got to tell the player how his character had behaved_.



 I suppose, in an adversarial play aesthetic, it could break down that way. In a 'shared storytelling' or troupe-style play, though, they're just engaged in a back-and-forth dynamic that builds a story not entirely under the control of either …
...'playing to find out what happens' on both sides of the screen, I guess.


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## Chaosmancer (May 22, 2019)

iserith said:


> How the character thinks is in the control of the player, not the DM. As a result, there is no uncertainty - the character thinks whatever the player says he or she thinks.




That debate seems to be the core of this, no? So, since you know my position is not the same as yours and you asked "why is there a check" did you not expect that this would be how things would go? You wanted to know which action caused the check, "thinking" was the action. 




iserith said:


> No doubt.




_Slow Clap_, great sarcasm. 

But yeah, this stipulation causes more complications as we discussed in the last thread. As you know. And again, you knew my opinion, so what did you expect me to say here. 




iserith said:


> The players in the example did not attempt to recall lore. One said he or she wanted to go buy some scrolls. The other said, only after the incredulous DM raised an eyebrow or the like, that he or she suggested a reason for the aforementioned task to the other character. No attempt to recall lore here. If there was, I might agree that an ability check was reasonable, provided it met the requirements for an ability check. But there wasn't. The DM just assumed there was and/or established for the player an action for his or her character which oversteps the DM's role.




Okay, wait. DMs decide when the dice get rolled correct? So how does any of this overstep the GM's role? 

One player said they were going to buy something based off a monster's weakness. When the DM asks how they know the monsters weakness, another player says their character could have told them. Neither player has established they actually know the information yet, hence the check. The barbarian is free to make the check as well, but there is an attempt to recall lore, since neither of them know the information yet. Therefore they must first either attempt to recall it or to go research it. 

It is almost like you forgot the premise of the example while responding to why a check was called for. 




iserith said:


> Without a meaningful consequence for failure, it _doesn't_ fit within the game structure though. No meaningful consequence for failure, no roll. No roll, then either the character succeeds or fails outright, as determined by the DM.
> 
> That is, of course, assuming we have a verbalized action declaration, which we _don't_ in this example (where recalling lore is concerned). What we appear to have is a DM attempting to invalidate an action declaration by establishing a knowledge prerequisite to the task and then and using the dice as a potential means to do it.




Okay, two different points to address here. 

The entire point of the example was that the players were acting upon information their characters might not have had. The players are the ones who claimed to have this knowledge, but without a solid reason beyond "I've read the Monster Manual" then the DM could call for a Arcana check, which is how the game handles recalling knowledge about elementals. This is not trying to invalidate an action, this is establishing whether they have knowledge in-character that they possess out-of-character. This is the point of the knowledge checks. 

Other objection of yours, "meaningful consequences". How do we force "meaningful consequences" into checks to recall information? If I remember correctly from your position in the last thread, "meaningful consequences" cannot be simply failing the check. That isn't "meaningful" enough. But when the entire check is "do I know this" then there seems to be only three results, "Yes I do" "No I don't" "I think I do but am wrong" 

Now, since you are saying there are no "meaningful consequences" to the check in this example, then none of those are good enough. In that case, what happens? Do all players automatically succeed knowledge checks? Do they fail? I can guess people would like to memorize as much information as they can, since otherwise you get to decide via fiat whether or not they know something in the game. 




iserith said:


> No reason _you_ can imagine, anyway. As established upthread, particular knowledge about earth elementals is not required to buy scrolls of _thunderwave_. The barbarian might just like the sound it makes, as it reminds him or her of stormy nights on the steppe, safe under the protection of a yurt, drinking fermented aurochs milk with Frances who later became a town guard.




You are right. 

Of course, the player started by stating he was going to buy them *because earth elementals are weak to thunder damage*. So, let us imagine the player says this, but the DM has them roll. They fail the check and do not know the weakness of earth elementals. They then declare that they are buying the scrolls anyways because.... He likes the sound and wants the wizard to cast it more often. But only against earth elementals because... that reminds him of the thunder against the cliffs back home. 

They are clearing making excuses. That wasn't why they went to buy the scrolls in the first place, they just weren't happy with failing the die roll and wanted to get around that failure to continue with their plan. That isn't respectful to the DM, the game, or the other players. 




iserith said:


> As a fun exercise, keyword search "knowledge check" in the D&D 5e Basic Rules PDF. You won't get any results. You might if you're capable of keyword searching older editions of the game though.
> 
> In D&D 5e, an Intelligence check may follow when the player describes the character attempting to recall lore or make deductions based on available clues, when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure.
> 
> There is no rules support for the DM calling for "knowledge checks" to determine if a player's action declaration is valid in the first place.




So... you dislike my usage of terms? Fine. 

Fun exercise, replace all uses of "knowledge check" in my posts with "Intelligence check, possibly using proficiency if they involve Arcana, Religion, History, or Nature, when used to recall lore about a feature of the game world including monsters and mechanical facts about said monsters" 

Tons of fun for the whole family I imagine. While doing that would you mind informing me why those skill proficiencies are included since there seems to be no point in them? I mean, there are no "meaningful consequences" according to you and the players could just read the MM anyways, so there doesn't seem to be a good reason to include "recall lore" about monsters anyways. 





iserith said:


> This would be fine in my game. Knowledge of a letter is not a prerequisite for rifling through a backpack. Similarly, in my game, the barbarian could just go buy the _thunderwave_ scrolls, provided they are available and he or she has the gold. There would be no eyebrow raising from me when presented with that action declaration.




Wow. I can't imagine a single table I've played at where that would fly. The player is clearly acting upon out-of-character knowledge and infringing upon the story and fun of a different player. I'm honestly shocked you would find that to be okay. 




iserith said:


> One of the many benefits of this approach is that I don't have to worry about the kind of "metagaming" that a lot of DMs and players concern themselves with. It simply doesn't matter.




Honestly, it doesn't seem like you worry about much of anything. 




iserith said:


> Wow, I hadn't really thought about it in this way before, but that really _is_ what's at stake. On the surface it's all "hey, we're just checking to see what your character knows, 'kay?" Which doesn't seem _that_ unreasonable, especially if you are used to a paradigm where the DM just asks for checks sometimes without an action stated by the player and the player doesn't look too closely at the rules of the game. Under the surface, it's really about _who gets to declare actions for the character_. Which ought to be the player, by the rules anyway. Here though, the DM is taking that power or is being given that power by the player's acquiescence. Roll and get this number or better or _you can't even make that action declaration_.
> 
> Like the DM declaring how a character feels about something which reasonably constrains choices in response, this really is just a way to control the characters. The DM may not even realize this, if he or she learned to DM this way from another game or DM.




Was talking to a friend of mine about my old 4e games and I remembered something. 

I bet you wouldn't worry about it because you don't worry about what characters think, but this is another example of why that could be problematic. 

We were playing a pirate-themed game, players started out on the largest island in an island chain. One player wants to track down the biggest shipbuilding company in the area. Seems reasonable, and one roll later to figure out who they are they show up. 

Player declares that his dwarf who had never been on a boat before reaching these islands, begins to describe to one of the shipwrights how to build steel cargo carriers. The multi-ton ships that we currently use for shipping. 

The player has the most basic knowledge of how this works, like googling how ships are made, and yet wants his character to revolutionize the entire shipping industry in the first session of the game. Just because a 21st century person knows how this thing works and his dwarf has a basic knowledge of blacksmithing. 

This seems to be a clear cut example of something it is perfectly reasonable not to allow, because there is no reason that the character should be able to figure this out.


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## iserith (May 22, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> That debate seems to be the core of this, no? So, since you know my position is not the same as yours and you asked "why is there a check" did you not expect that this would be how things would go? You wanted to know which action caused the check, "thinking" was the action.




It's frankly hard to say what's at the core of this discussion anymore. What I do know is that if you want to call "thinking" an action, then because of the rule that players determine what the characters think, then there can be no ability check here since there is no uncertainty as to the outcome. The character thinks what the player says he or she thinks.



Chaosmancer said:


> But yeah, this stipulation causes more complications as we discussed in the last thread. As you know. And again, you knew my opinion, so what did you expect me to say here.




I don't see any complications with that rule. You don't ask for checks if there's no meaningful consequence for failure. Easy peasy.



Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, wait. DMs decide when the dice get rolled correct? So how does any of this overstep the GM's role?
> 
> One player said they were going to buy something based off a monster's weakness. When the DM asks how they know the monsters weakness, another player says their character could have told them. Neither player has established they actually know the information yet, hence the check. The barbarian is free to make the check as well, but there is an attempt to recall lore, since neither of them know the information yet. Therefore they must first either attempt to recall it or to go research it.




The characters, as established by the players, think that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage. There is no uncertainty here and thus no check. They might be right, they might be wrong, but there is no action declaration here to recall lore.

If you call for a check, you are de facto stating that the characters are attempting to perform a task with an uncertain outcome and meaningful consequence for failure because that is when the rules say the DM calls for a check. But only the players may describe what they want their characters to do. If the DM does it, that DM is overstepping his or her role. 



Chaosmancer said:


> Okay, two different points to address here.
> 
> The entire point of the example was that the players were acting upon information their characters might not have had. The players are the ones who claimed to have this knowledge, but without a solid reason beyond "I've read the Monster Manual" then the DM could call for a Arcana check, which is how the game handles recalling knowledge about elementals. This is not trying to invalidate an action, this is establishing whether they have knowledge in-character that they possess out-of-character. This is the point of the knowledge checks.




There are no "knowledge checks." You may be thinking of some other game, perhaps D&D 4e. In D&D _5e_, players can attempt to recall lore or make deductions. Those are the tasks that might call for an Intelligence check, when there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. The DM doesn't ask for the checks until the players describe their characters as attempting to perform those tasks because that's how the play loop works.



Chaosmancer said:


> Other objection of yours, "meaningful consequences". How do we force "meaningful consequences" into checks to recall information? If I remember correctly from your position in the last thread, "meaningful consequences" cannot be simply failing the check. That isn't "meaningful" enough. But when the entire check is "do I know this" then there seems to be only three results, "Yes I do" "No I don't" "I think I do but am wrong"
> 
> Now, since you are saying there are no "meaningful consequences" to the check in this example, then none of those are good enough. In that case, what happens? Do all players automatically succeed knowledge checks? Do they fail? I can guess people would like to memorize as much information as they can, since otherwise you get to decide via fiat whether or not they know something in the game.




The players in this example didn't describe their characters as performing a task to recall lore or make deductions, so there's no check in the first place and no need to determine if there are meaningful consequences for those tasks.

"Meaningful consequences" are determined by the context of the situation in which the PCs find themselves, so in the abstract it's not easy to say what might be a meaningful consequence for failure on a task to recall lore or make deductions. In context, however, it might be very important to be able to recall a fact and that failing to do so has meaningful consequences. In many cases, however, there won't be and so the DM just says whether the character recalls the lore or makes the deduction. Maybe he or she does and maybe he or she doesn't.

In the example I gave upthread from my Eberron game, the meaningful consequence for failure of figuring out if the substance covering the boxes was indeed brown mold was damage. The warforged was using his integrated tool to investigate it. With a failure on the check, the experiment goes awry, the brown mold grows at an exponential rate, shatters the test tube, and the character takes some cold damage. However, that would have been ruled as progress combined with a setback. The substance is confirmed to be brown mold, but at the cost of some hit points. As it happens, the check succeeded.

As you do not like the rule for meaningful consequences for failure being a requirement of a check and you also appear to declare actions for the characters so far as I can tell, then yes, you will most likely have more Intelligence checks in your game than in mine. But that doesn't mean my game has none. Verifying one's assumptions often entails recalling lore or making deductions, after all.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are right.
> 
> Of course, the player started by stating he was going to buy them *because earth elementals are weak to thunder damage*. So, let us imagine the player says this, but the DM has them roll. They fail the check and do not know the weakness of earth elementals. They then declare that they are buying the scrolls anyways because.... He likes the sound and wants the wizard to cast it more often. But only against earth elementals because... that reminds him of the thunder against the cliffs back home.
> 
> They are clearing making excuses. That wasn't why they went to buy the scrolls in the first place, they just weren't happy with failing the die roll and wanted to get around that failure to continue with their plan. That isn't respectful to the DM, the game, or the other players.




Perhaps under your table rules, that is the case. But under the rules of the game, the DM is not properly adjudicating the only action on the table - the barbarian going to buy the scrolls. The reason given for doing so is completely irrelevant to the adjudication process. If the player has said nothing about why the character wanted to buy the scrolls, would you have asked for a check?



Chaosmancer said:


> So... you dislike my usage of terms? Fine.
> 
> Fun exercise, replace all uses of "knowledge check" in my posts with "Intelligence check, possibly using proficiency if they involve Arcana, Religion, History, or Nature, when used to recall lore about a feature of the game world including monsters and mechanical facts about said monsters"
> 
> Tons of fun for the whole family I imagine. While doing that would you mind informing me why those skill proficiencies are included since there seems to be no point in them? I mean, there are no "meaningful consequences" according to you and the players could just read the MM anyways, so there doesn't seem to be a good reason to include "recall lore" about monsters anyways.




I neither like nor dislike your usage of terms. I point out that it doesn't exist in this game, but does exist in other games, because a lot of DMs in my experience do not revise their approaches when moving from game to game to, in my view, the detriment of their understanding and discussions of the game they are playing. Asking for a "knowledge check" before the player even declares an action to recall lore or make a deduction is an example of this.



Chaosmancer said:


> Wow. I can't imagine a single table I've played at where that would fly. The player is clearly acting upon out-of-character knowledge and infringing upon the story and fun of a different player. I'm honestly shocked you would find that to be okay.




I think there's some bias at play here. While I've seen this sort of thing go wrong, I've also seen it go right. It depends on the players. My regulars would certainly be fine with it because of the culture at our table in which the expectation is that you accept and build while pursuing the goals of play.



Chaosmancer said:


> Honestly, it doesn't seem like you worry about much of anything.




I worry about achieving the goals of play, that is, everyone having a good time and helping to create an exciting, memorable story as a result of play by performing the role of DM to the utmost of my ability. 

Anything else seems superfluous, especially what some people call "metagaming." That is a self-inflicted problem in my view.



Chaosmancer said:


> Was talking to a friend of mine about my old 4e games and I remembered something.
> 
> I bet you wouldn't worry about it because you don't worry about what characters think, but this is another example of why that could be problematic.
> 
> ...




On one hand, one could say this appears to be a player who does not understand or buy into the genre (e.g. sword and sorcery) and that warrants an out-of-game discussion. On the other hand, the DM can simply adjudicate the action by having the shipwright explain that the sort of thing the PC wants to do isn't possible. The shipwright might believe that such a ship would never float and, besides, there isn't that much steel in all the kingdoms of the realm to build something that big. "Now stop wasting my time, you lunatic!"

What I _wouldn't_ do is tell the player he or she can't do that or ask for a check to invalidate the action declaration.


----------



## Chaosmancer (May 22, 2019)

iserith said:


> It's frankly hard to say what's at the core of this discussion anymore. What I do know is that if you want to call "thinking" an action, then because of the rule that players determine what the characters think, then there can be no ability check here since there is no uncertainty as to the outcome. The character thinks what the player says he or she thinks.




*_sigh_*

You know, I know why we keep going in this circle. Because you could care less about players using out-of-character knowledge, seemingly in any form. But this is also why a lot of people see Intelligence as a dump stat, because two of the biggest uses for Intelligence are Investigation and knowledge checks. Oh sorry, Intelligence checks using proficiency with the intent to recall lore. But, if players get to determine that they already know the lore, then there is no need for those checks. 

If they just tell you they know something, then that is what they know. The only check upon that is that they might be wrong out of the game because you as the DM changed something. In which case, why do we even bother to have an Intelligence stat and the skills for recalling various types of lore. It seems meaningless under this style. 



iserith said:


> I don't see any complications with that rule. You don't ask for checks if there's no meaningful consequence for failure. Easy peasy.




Except what counts as a "meaningful consequence"? Not knowing something obviously isn't meaningful enough, taking a lot of time is probably not meaningful enough especially if players don't take these checks while under a time pressure or in dangerous territory. You have to actively work to make things worse for the players in response to them attempting things, just to allow them to make checks, or they auto-succeed on trying anything. 

Sure, "the players just succeed" sounds really easy on paper, but it opens things to abuse that I don't want to deal with, and makes failing a roll dangerous enough that my players might not end up attempting interesting things. After all, who would try and woo a princess if failing the charisma check ends up with her ordering your execution. After all, her just not being interested isn't "meaningful" enough, you have to end up making things worse for you and your party. 




iserith said:


> The characters, as established by the players, think that earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage. There is no uncertainty here and thus no check. They might be right, they might be wrong, but there is no action declaration here to recall lore.
> 
> If you call for a check, you are de facto stating that the characters are attempting to perform a task with an uncertain outcome and meaningful consequence for failure because that is when the rules say the DM calls for a check. But only the players may describe what they want their characters to do. If the DM does it, that DM is overstepping his or her role.




The first paragraph is our point of disagreement. Players cannot just tell me they successfully recall lore. Recalling lore is an action, it has associated skill proficiencies. The fact that they might be right or they might be wrong tells us that there is uncertainty about that. Again, you as the DM are free to make changes, these earth elementals summoned by Zuul might be different, but the players have recalled facts about normal earth elementals because they have either fought them in other games or read the MM. That is not knowledge their characters are just born knowing. 

So, if I call for a check, I am not telling the player what they are doing. They already declared the action, I am adjudicating. That is not overstepping my bounds. 




iserith said:


> The players in this example didn't describe their characters as performing a task to recall lore or make deductions, so there's no check in the first place and no need to determine if there are meaningful consequences for those tasks.




You are right, they didn't explicitly say "I try to remember what the vulnerabilities of earth elementals are." Instead, they just declared "I know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage." 

So... if they player just tells you they succeed and get the end result, they don't need to make a check? That is ludicrous. You would never allow a player to simply state "I walk off with the Queen's Crown" and just let them do so, why then do we allow them to state "I perfectly recalled the weaknesses of this monster"? 

They are attempting to do something with uncertainty, we at the table do not know if this character has this knowledge, so a check is called for. 



iserith said:


> "Meaningful consequences" are determined by the context of the situation in which the PCs find themselves, so in the abstract it's not easy to say what might be a meaningful consequence for failure on a task to recall lore or make deductions. In context, however, it might be very important to be able to recall a fact and that failing to do so has meaningful consequences. In many cases, however, there won't be and so the DM just says whether the character recalls the lore or makes the deduction. Maybe he or she does and maybe he or she doesn't.




So, not knowing the weakness of Earth Elementals and not being able to prepare for the coming fight by buying scrolls specifically targeting that weakness is not meaningful enough? How much more impactful does a consequence have to become to be meaningful?



iserith said:


> In the example I gave upthread from my Eberron game, the meaningful consequence for failure of figuring out if the substance covering the boxes was indeed brown mold was damage. The warforged was using his integrated tool to investigate it. With a failure on the check, the experiment goes awry, the brown mold grows at an exponential rate, shatters the test tube, and the character takes some cold damage. However, that would have been ruled as progress combined with a setback. The substance is confirmed to be brown mold, but at the cost of some hit points. As it happens, the check succeeded.
> 
> As you do not like the rule for meaningful consequences for failure being a requirement of a check and you also appear to declare actions for the characters so far as I can tell, then yes, you will most likely have more Intelligence checks in your game than in mine. But that doesn't mean my game has none. Verifying one's assumptions often entails recalling lore or making deductions, after all.




Two things.

First, Holy crap. That was an integrated tool system, which means it was in the warforged's *warm* body. A failure led to them getting infested with quickly growing brown mold within their body, the only way to destroy said mold being to expose it to cold damage, so the player is either going to constantly be draining hp from taking the cold damage of being "near" the mold that is inside their body, or have themselves blasted with cold damage to destroy the mold. Cold damage which would have been Ice Knife from the wizard if I remember your example correctly. An Ice Knife which potentially would have needed to be targeted within the warforged's body to hit the mold growing over their integrated tool. 

Did the warforge know they were courting death, loss of their tool set, and possible dismemberment from exploding ice shards when they tried to determine the nature of a mold? A mold they strongly suspected the nature of? 

Secondly, how are they supposed to verify their assumptions with checks to recall lore? They are only thinking, which means they automatically succeed, because there are no meaningful consequences. Unless they could be wrong about what they are thinking... which is kind of the entire point of me calling for a check involving Arcana in the first place. So since you disagree with me, there must be something else players do in your game to recall lore. They cannot just make a check, because they cannot fail to think something they want to think. 



iserith said:


> Perhaps under your table rules, that is the case. But under the rules of the game, the DM is not properly adjudicating the only action on the table - the barbarian going to buy the scrolls. The reason given for doing so is completely irrelevant to the adjudication process. If the player has said nothing about why the character wanted to buy the scrolls, would you have asked for a check?




As we established before, I would likely ask them why a character who cannot use magic scrolls is going to go and buy magic scrolls. This would likely get their intent, which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion. 




iserith said:


> I neither like nor dislike your usage of terms. I point out that it doesn't exist in this game, but does exist in other games, because a lot of DMs in my experience do not revise their approaches when moving from game to game to, in my view, the detriment of their understanding and discussions of the game they are playing. Asking for a "knowledge check" before the player even declares an action to recall lore or make a deduction is an example of this.




But it does exist in this game. Players can make checks using Intelligence (Arcana) to recall the weaknesses of monsters. This is a knowledge check. "A rose by any other name" as it were. Sure, the game doesn't explicitly call them that, but since players can recall lore it is assumed that they don't know every fact about monsters, so what is the difference here? Did 3.5 have a rule that explicitly said "Players are not expected to have all the information on a monster from the monsters statblock, if they wish to use this information, they should make a knowledge check" and 5e says somewhere that I've missed that "players are expected to know a monster's statblock and do not need a check to recall lore about monsters"? 

I mean, you keep saying that the rules allow the player to know this stuff, but the rules never state that. At least, not that I've ever found. The very existence of Arcana, Religion, Nature, and History seem to contradict this opinion that players can just know whatever they wish to know. 




iserith said:


> I think there's some bias at play here. While I've seen this sort of thing go wrong, I've also seen it go right. It depends on the players. My regulars would certainly be fine with it because of the culture at our table in which the expectation is that you accept and build while pursuing the goals of play.




Accept and build what? That there can't be secrets? That players will act on knowledge there is no way their character's could know? 

I admit, I have biases, but I don't see how this improves fun at the table, if players can just know everything that happens no matter where their character is or what is happening. 




iserith said:


> I worry about achieving the goals of play, that is, everyone having a good time and helping to create an exciting, memorable story as a result of play by performing the role of DM to the utmost of my ability.
> 
> Anything else seems superfluous, especially what some people call "metagaming." That is a self-inflicted problem in my view.




But you seem unconcerned with actions that can impact people having a good time and creating an internally consistent story. 

In fact, your description of a DM is very hands-off in every aspect. 




iserith said:


> On one hand, one could say this appears to be a player who does not understand or buy into the genre (e.g. sword and sorcery) and that warrants an out-of-game discussion. On the other hand, the DM can simply adjudicate the action by having the shipwright explain that the sort of thing the PC wants to do isn't possible. The shipwright might believe that such a ship would never float and, besides, there isn't that much steel in all the kingdoms of the realm to build something that big. "Now stop wasting my time, you lunatic!"
> 
> What I _wouldn't_ do is tell the player he or she can't do that or ask for a check to invalidate the action declaration.




So players can bring modern designs, knowledge of chemistry, gunpowder, ect to the game. You may talk to them out of game, maybe pausing the game to tell them that isn't consistent with the world... but that's exactly what happens by telling them "No, your character wouldn't know that" when it comes to these applications. Because pausing the game and talking to them is telling them that that knowledge is not acceptable in the game world because it doesn't match the knowledge that exists in the game world. 

The other option, of letting them keep the knowledge and simply not have people believe them, leaves open the chance for them to try and make the thing themselves. Personally revolutionizing the economy is incredibly lucrative,  and if you are trying to run a single game world for many different campaigns, it is incredibly destabilizing.


----------



## iserith (May 22, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You know, I know why we keep going in this circle. Because you could care less about players using out-of-character knowledge, seemingly in any form.




The rules of the game don't seem to indicate I should care about this as DM. The only exception is to encourage players not to waste game time or their characters' lives on bad assumptions and I do that.



Chaosmancer said:


> But this is also why a lot of people see Intelligence as a dump stat, because two of the biggest uses for Intelligence are Investigation and knowledge checks. Oh sorry, Intelligence checks using proficiency with the intent to recall lore. But, if players get to determine that they already know the lore, then there is no need for those checks.
> 
> If they just tell you they know something, then that is what they know. The only check upon that is that they might be wrong out of the game because you as the DM changed something. In which case, why do we even bother to have an Intelligence stat and the skills for recalling various types of lore. It seems meaningless under this style.




It seems more likely to me that Intelligence is seen as a dump stat because there is only one class and a couple of sub-classes that use it regularly for attack rolls and DCs and very few spells or monsters that force Intelligence saves.

Intelligence checks can also come up in exploration challenges involving traps and secret doors. They may also come up in social interaction challenges (e.g. recalling lore trying to prove a point or trying to communicate wordlessly). Intelligence might also be used to resolve tasks performed with certain tools. The section on ability checks has a number of other tasks that might be resolved with Intelligence checks. XGtE expands on this in some ways with its Tools & Skills section.

At this point I'd like to retract my earlier statement that your game may have more Intelligence checks than mine. That doesn't seem like the case now if what I quoted of your statements above is something you believe to be true. Unless your players are asking to make Intelligence checks or asking a lot of "Do I know anything about..." questions during play.



Chaosmancer said:


> Except what counts as a "meaningful consequence"? Not knowing something obviously isn't meaningful enough, taking a lot of time is probably not meaningful enough especially if players don't take these checks while under a time pressure or in dangerous territory. You have to actively work to make things worse for the players in response to them attempting things, just to allow them to make checks, or they auto-succeed on trying anything.
> 
> Sure, "the players just succeed" sounds really easy on paper, but it opens things to abuse that I don't want to deal with, and makes failing a roll dangerous enough that my players might not end up attempting interesting things. After all, who would try and woo a princess if failing the charisma check ends up with her ordering your execution. After all, her just not being interested isn't "meaningful" enough, you have to end up making things worse for you and your party.




The DM determines whether there is a meaningful consequence for failure given the fictional context. So if you're the DM, it's up to you.



Chaosmancer said:


> The first paragraph is our point of disagreement. Players cannot just tell me they successfully recall lore. Recalling lore is an action, it has associated skill proficiencies. The fact that they might be right or they might be wrong tells us that there is uncertainty about that. Again, you as the DM are free to make changes, these earth elementals summoned by Zuul might be different, but the players have recalled facts about normal earth elementals because they have either fought them in other games or read the MM. That is not knowledge their characters are just born knowing.
> 
> So, if I call for a check, I am not telling the player what they are doing. They already declared the action, I am adjudicating. That is not overstepping my bounds.




There was no attempt to recall lore described by the players in that example. A player is simply stating what the character thinks which is under the player's control. The DM is overstepping his or her role by calling for a check without a corresponding action described by the player. The smart play for this player is, of course, to try to recall lore to verify that assumption, but that is not the DM's problem.



Chaosmancer said:


> You are right, they didn't explicitly say "I try to remember what the vulnerabilities of earth elementals are." Instead, they just declared "I know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage."
> 
> So... if they player just tells you they succeed and get the end result, they don't need to make a check? That is ludicrous. You would never allow a player to simply state "I walk off with the Queen's Crown" and just let them do so, why then do we allow them to state "I perfectly recalled the weaknesses of this monster"?
> 
> They are attempting to do something with uncertainty, we at the table do not know if this character has this knowledge, so a check is called for.




"Walking off with the queen's crown" is (perhaps partially) describing what they want to do and as DM I get to say how that turns out in Step 3 of the play loop. "I know that earth elementals are weak to thunder damage" is just a statement of the character's thoughts and there's nothing I can do with that as DM.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, not knowing the weakness of Earth Elementals and not being able to prepare for the coming fight by buying scrolls specifically targeting that weakness is not meaningful enough? How much more impactful does a consequence have to become to be meaningful?




The DM determines whether there is a meaningful consequence for failure. So if you're the DM, it's up to you.

However, the issue with this specific example is not that there is or isn't a meaningful consequence for failure. We don't even get to that point in the adjudication process since the player is only stating what the character is thinking and since the player is the one who determines what the character thinks, there is no uncertainty as to the outcome. If there is no uncertainty as to the outcome, then there can be no ability check. We don't have to imagine meaningful consequences for failure here.



Chaosmancer said:


> Two things.
> 
> First, Holy crap. That was an integrated tool system, which means it was in the warforged's *warm* body. A failure led to them getting infested with quickly growing brown mold within their body, the only way to destroy said mold being to expose it to cold damage, so the player is either going to constantly be draining hp from taking the cold damage of being "near" the mold that is inside their body, or have themselves blasted with cold damage to destroy the mold. Cold damage which would have been Ice Knife from the wizard if I remember your example correctly. An Ice Knife which potentially would have needed to be targeted within the warforged's body to hit the mold growing over their integrated tool.
> 
> Did the warforge know they were courting death, loss of their tool set, and possible dismemberment from exploding ice shards when they tried to determine the nature of a mold? A mold they strongly suspected the nature of?




That's not how I would or did resolve it. The player was aware of the consequences of failure because I usually tell them what that is so they know the risks. You succeed, you figure out what it is. You fail, you figure out what it is but take damage in the process. Or you can skip that and throw the ice knife at the crates and hope you didn't just waste your last spell slot. Easy to understand the risks and trade-offs here.



Chaosmancer said:


> Secondly, how are they supposed to verify their assumptions with checks to recall lore? They are only thinking, which means they automatically succeed, because there are no meaningful consequences. Unless they could be wrong about what they are thinking... which is kind of the entire point of me calling for a check involving Arcana in the first place. So since you disagree with me, there must be something else players do in your game to recall lore. They cannot just make a check, because they cannot fail to think something they want to think.




A player describes wanting to draw upon logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning, often coupled with some elements of their background or adventuring experience to recall the specific lore they seek. Like any other action declaration, I decide if there's uncertainty as to the outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. If both elements are present, I ask for a roll. If either element is absent, I decide if they succeed or fail and narrate accordingly.



Chaosmancer said:


> As we established before, I would likely ask them why a character who cannot use magic scrolls is going to go and buy magic scrolls. This would likely get their intent, which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion.




I don't see why that's any of the DM's business. But in any case, there are countless reasons that can be given. Some might even be worth Inspiration, if they play into the character's personality traits, ideal, bond, or flaw.



Chaosmancer said:


> But it does exist in this game. Players can make checks using Intelligence (Arcana) to recall the weaknesses of monsters. This is a knowledge check. "A rose by any other name" as it were. Sure, the game doesn't explicitly call them that, but since players can recall lore it is assumed that they don't know every fact about monsters, so what is the difference here? Did 3.5 have a rule that explicitly said "Players are not expected to have all the information on a monster from the monsters statblock, if they wish to use this information, they should make a knowledge check" and 5e says somewhere that I've missed that "players are expected to know a monster's statblock and do not need a check to recall lore about monsters"?
> 
> I mean, you keep saying that the rules allow the player to know this stuff, but the rules never state that. At least, not that I've ever found. The very existence of Arcana, Religion, Nature, and History seem to contradict this opinion that players can just know whatever they wish to know.




I haven't stated that "the rules allow the player to know this stuff." I said what the rules say - that it's the player who determines what the character thinks, does, and says. You seem to be conflating "thinking" and "knowing" as I have mentioned before.



Chaosmancer said:


> Accept and build what? That there can't be secrets? That players will act on knowledge there is no way their character's could know?
> 
> I admit, I have biases, but I don't see how this improves fun at the table, if players can just know everything that happens no matter where their character is or what is happening.




That's for the players to work out among themselves in accordance with the shared goals of play as outlined by the rules.



Chaosmancer said:


> But you seem unconcerned with actions that can impact people having a good time and creating an internally consistent story.
> 
> In fact, your description of a DM is very hands-off in every aspect.




I'm hands off where it comes to the player determining what the character thinks, does, and says. That is what the rules tell me to do.

Players and DM are all individually responsible via the shared goals of play to create a fun experience and an exciting, memorable story as a result of play.



Chaosmancer said:


> So players can bring modern designs, knowledge of chemistry, gunpowder, ect to the game. You may talk to them out of game, maybe pausing the game to tell them that isn't consistent with the world... but that's exactly what happens by telling them "No, your character wouldn't know that" when it comes to these applications. Because pausing the game and talking to them is telling them that that knowledge is not acceptable in the game world because it doesn't match the knowledge that exists in the game world.
> 
> The other option, of letting them keep the knowledge and simply not have people believe them, leaves open the chance for them to try and make the thing themselves. Personally revolutionizing the economy is incredibly lucrative,  and if you are trying to run a single game world for many different campaigns, it is incredibly destabilizing.




Perhaps you forget that it's the DM who narrates the result of an adventurers' actions.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 22, 2019)

_Sorry if I mostly riff off your post for humor purposes...._



Chaosmancer said:


> If they just tell you they know something, then that is what they know. The only check upon that is that they might be wrong out of the game because you as the DM changed something. In which case, why do we even bother to have an Intelligence stat and the skills for recalling various types of lore. It seems meaningless under this style.



 Any stat or skill could conceivably be rendered moot by the DM's style or choice of setting & challenges, I suppose. 



> Except what counts as a "meaningful consequence"? Not knowing something obviously isn't meaningful enough



 I don't see why not knowing anything isn't a meaningful consequence.  I mean, recalling something useful certainly is.  Is the idea that you start off not knowing anything, so you might as well try?  

Ultimately, isn't the whole knowledge check/INT roll/trying-to-recall-lore-using-INT-with-a-trained-skill-possibly-applying-because-5e-is-rules-lite thing just gating exposition?  
If, as a DM, I want to provide some exposition, I can have a (suspiciously Gandalfy) NPC do it, or I can look at a player and say "your character knows /whah…/" and that's that.  I don't really need to call for a check, and if I do, failure, though it might have severe consequences for the party, is awfully blah.  
Even if a player actually wants to play a Gandalf/Prof.Zarchov type who's main purpose is to provide exposition, and take high INT and tons of useless skills to model it mechanically, it's still pretty meh for that player to make his checks, and have /you/ tell the whole table what he knows - and completely inefficient and annoying and no more satisfying to have you tell him privately so he can parrot it.

The way I've seen some systems (none of them D&D) both make such a character fun to play, and give meaning the sorts of mechanics in question, is if the player making the successful knowledge check /gets to make stuff up/ to his party's advantage.  "It's a Klick-Klick, if we all shout 'November!' it'll drop dead...*"  on a failure, the consequence is the DM makes stuff up, or maybe that the made-up stuff is wrong... (depends on exactly how the mechanics are handled - FREX, the Expositionator could make a declaration like the above, make a plan around it, and it's only when the plan is executed that he makes the check to see if he was right about it.)  But I couldn't see any ed of D&D playing nice with something like that, (OK, except, as always, 4e, which already has some Schrodinger's Mechanics like that). It'd certainly turn the whole 5e describe-declare-resolve-describe DM-PC-DM-DM  cycle on it's ear...



> taking a lot of time is probably not meaningful enough especially if players don't take these checks while under a time pressure or in dangerous territory. You have to actively work to make things worse for the players in response to them attempting things, just to allow them to make checks, or they auto-succeed on trying anything.
> Sure, "the players just succeed" sounds really easy on paper, but it opens things to abuse that I don't want to deal with, and makes failing a roll dangerous enough that my players might not end up attempting interesting things. After all, who would try and woo a princess if failing the charisma check ends up with her ordering your execution. After all, her just not being interested isn't "meaningful" enough, you have to end up making things worse for you and your party.



 "Fail Forward" doesn't sound so bad, now. 




> You are right, they didn't explicitly say "I try to remember what the vulnerabilities of earth elementals are." Instead, they just declared "I know that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder damage."
> 
> So... if they player just tells you they succeed and get the end result, they don't need to make a check? That is ludicrous. You would never allow a player to simply state "I walk off with the Queen's Crown" and just let them do so, why then do we allow them to state "I perfectly recalled the weaknesses of this monster"?



 Of course, that's true.  In general, it seems, in pondering issues like this, drawing an analogy from knowledge/social check to a concrete ability/skill makes it obvious.  But acceptance of such analogies is surprising hard to win. 


> As we established before, I would likely ask them why a character who cannot use magic scrolls is going to go and buy magic scrolls. This would likely get their intent, which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion.



 Hmm... I guess this is another example of how establishing a goal & method can be like peeling an onion.  The goal isn't really "buy magic scrolls" it's "defeat some earth elementals..."

One DM I know is really sensitive to these kinds of player shenanigans, she's always cutting to "What are you /really/ trying to do?"

I think some of the current we may be swimming against, here, flows from the classic game, when it was a tad bit more adversarial, and developing 'player skill' was an objective of play.  In the absence of concrete systems, and within the dogma of DM omnipotence, players would learn to couch questions carefully and declare actions piecemeal, in a way that would box the DM into letting some harebrained scheme actually (maybe) work.



> Did 3.5 have a rule that explicitly said "Players are not expected to have all the information on a monster from the monsters statblock, if they wish to use this information, they should make a knowledge check"



 Something about that sounds familiar. 



> So players can bring modern designs, knowledge of chemistry, gunpowder, ect to the game.



One of the fun things about a setting that's /not/ scientific, at all:  
"I build a modern ship out of steel!" 
"It sinks" 
"What, but I'm a naval architect IRL, that design is sound!"  
"Sorry, on the Flat Earth of Nevereilli, the Element of Metal always sinks in the Element of Water - every 7-year-old Alchemist's Apprentice knows that..."











* I did not make that up, it's a joke from an old Dragon mag.


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## Chaosmancer (May 27, 2019)

iserith said:


> The rules of the game don't seem to indicate I should care about this as DM. The only exception is to encourage players not to waste game time or their characters' lives on bad assumptions and I do that.
> 
> It seems more likely to me that Intelligence is seen as a dump stat because there is only one class and a couple of sub-classes that use it regularly for attack rolls and DCs and very few spells or monsters that force Intelligence saves.
> 
> ...




I was off for a few days because holidays lead to crazy schedules, and looking back over this... I'm just not sure if there is a point in continuing this conversation. I mean, looking at this part here



> There was no attempt to recall lore described by the players in that example. A player is simply stating what the character thinks which is under the player's control. The DM is overstepping his or her role by calling for a check without a corresponding action described by the player. The smart play for this player is, of course, to try to recall lore to verify that assumption, but that is not the DM's problem.




The smart play is to recall lore... on the lore they already decided? Again, sure, you might have changed earth elementals, but the player stating "Earth Elementals are vulnerable to Thunder Damage" has read the monster manual. They know this is true for standard earth elementals, and they also know that if the ones they face are not standard, then you will telegraph that, so they will just ask to roll arcana then. Wait, no, you don't allow that. They will say they try and deduce the nature of these strange earth elementals calling upon their knowledge of the arcane arts, so they can make an Arcana check. And even then, these elementals are still likely weak to thunder or ambivalent to thunder, so it isn't like the scrolls are a waste. There is just no good reason. 

I also love how you describe the action of recalling lore. 



> A player describes wanting to draw upon logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning, often coupled with some elements of their background or adventuring experience to recall the specific lore they seek. Like any other action declaration, I decide if there's uncertainty as to the outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. If both elements are present, I ask for a roll. If either element is absent, I decide if they succeed or fail and narrate accordingly.




And then somehow don't seem to understand that my claims about why they shouldn't just be able to declare "Earth Elemental are weak to Thunder Damage" as a fact. After all, to recall knowledge they need to draw upon their memories (which the player controls as well, but let us not get back down that Francis-shaped rabbit hole) or their education (which... seems like that part would help determine what things they could declare as things they know, like a barbarian that has never studied the arcane knowing all the lore of the various planes of the multiverse) and coupling that with their experience (like how low-level new adventures probably don't know the secrets of the multiverse that the player discovered three years ago in a previous game). These are the things that I am talking about why players can't just know these things. 

And, of course, the difference between "Thinking" and "knowing". Problem with that is, the player does know what the Monster Manual said. And they may rightfully assume that since it is an objective source, they are right. Yes, the DM can change things, but the rules of the game state that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder Damage and are siege monsters that deal double damage to structures. They know this, so they declare that their character knows this. You, however, are stating "well, they think it. If they want to know it they need to make a check" which will.... what? The player has been playing their character as knowing it, but now that they stop and think they remember they are wrong? I mean, confirmation bias is a thing, people will think they are right unless given evidence they are wrong. And even then they will likely keep thinking they were right. 




Tony Vargas said:


> I don't see why not knowing anything isn't a meaningful consequence.  I mean, recalling something useful certainly is.  Is the idea that you start off not knowing anything, so you might as well try?




I'm just going off what iserith has said. There seems to be no meaningful consequence (by their definition) so even if I was allowed to ask a player to make a check to declare their out of character knowledge as in character, then they would auto-pass. 

The character might know a lot about the world. But, how much? To give an IRL example, I know poison ivy is dangerous to touch. Didn't know what a fully adult vine of poison ivy looks like if it doesn't have leaves on it. (Turns out is looks like a slightly hairy wooden vine) so I didn't take proper precautions a few years ago when pulling some off an apple tree. 

So, I don't like players just telling me things they know because it was in the Monster Manual and they read it, and assuming their character has the same knowledge (despite Iserith trying to distinguish between thinking and knowing in this scenario). I feel like there should be a check. Because while it might be something your character knows, it might not be. 



Tony Vargas said:


> Ultimately, isn't the whole knowledge check/INT roll/trying-to-recall-lore-using-INT-with-a-trained-skill-possibly-applying-because-5e-is-rules-lite thing just gating exposition?
> If, as a DM, I want to provide some exposition, I can have a (suspiciously Gandalfy) NPC do it, or I can look at a player and say "your character knows /whah…/" and that's that.  I don't really need to call for a check, and if I do, failure, though it might have severe consequences for the party, is awfully blah.
> Even if a player actually wants to play a Gandalf/Prof.Zarchov type who's main purpose is to provide exposition, and take high INT and tons of useless skills to model it mechanically, it's still pretty meh for that player to make his checks, and have /you/ tell the whole table what he knows - and completely inefficient and annoying and no more satisfying to have you tell him privately so he can parrot it.
> 
> The way I've seen some systems (none of them D&D) both make such a character fun to play, and give meaning the sorts of mechanics in question, is if the player making the successful knowledge check /gets to make stuff up/ to his party's advantage.  "It's a Klick-Klick, if we all shout 'November!' it'll drop dead...*"  on a failure, the consequence is the DM makes stuff up, or maybe that the made-up stuff is wrong... (depends on exactly how the mechanics are handled - FREX, the Expositionator could make a declaration like the above, make a plan around it, and it's only when the plan is executed that he makes the check to see if he was right about it.)  But I couldn't see any ed of D&D playing nice with something like that, (OK, except, as always, 4e, which already has some Schrodinger's Mechanics like that). It'd certainly turn the whole 5e describe-declare-resolve-describe DM-PC-DM-DM  cycle on it's ear...




I'm not sure what exposition has to do with it. 

Yeah, if it something I want the players to know, I'll just tell them. Like, for example, I've told my groups that there are no such things as metallic and chromatic dragons in my world, because color-coded alignment is boring as heck. I don't even tell them through an NPC. I just tell them, because they grew up in a world with stories of dragons, but they never heard of a "green" dragon or a "blue" dragon. They might have heard of a storm dragon able to breathe lighting and possessing the primal force of a thunderstorm that terrorized a kingdom from the mountains. Or one born of stone and flame whose breath could melt the very stones of the castle and kidnapped a princess. So, I'm telling the players "don't go forward with this assumption, it is a bad assumption." 

And yeah, I've noticed players who figure out lore or discover a clue often aren't super excited about relaying what I've let them in on. I like using notecards, so I'm not vocalizing only for them to parrot, other times I'll just relay the information they've learned and the player will say "I tell them that" and we move on, but none of that has any bearing on what me and iserith are discussing, so I'm really not sure what the point is. 





Tony Vargas said:


> One of the fun things about a setting that's /not/ scientific, at all:
> "I build a modern ship out of steel!"
> "It sinks"
> "What, but I'm a naval architect IRL, that design is sound!"
> ...




Yeah, I can sometimes pull on that. But, I'm the type of person who then try and figure out how that effects how the world works. Or I'd be worried about opening a new avenue of shenanigans.

Easier if players just don't try and bring modern knowledge into a distinctly non-modern world.


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## Tony Vargas (May 28, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I'm not sure what exposition has to do with it.



 Exposition is what happens in a narrative that is analogous to what happens in an RPG when there's a knowledge check.


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## iserith (May 28, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I was off for a few days because holidays lead to crazy schedules, and looking back over this... I'm just not sure if there is a point in continuing this conversation. I mean, looking at this part here




"I'm just not sure if there's a point in continuing this conversation... allow me to continue it."



Chaosmancer said:


> The smart play is to recall lore... on the lore they already decided? Again, sure, you might have changed earth elementals, but the player stating "Earth Elementals are vulnerable to Thunder Damage" has read the monster manual. They know this is true for standard earth elementals, and they also know that if the ones they face are not standard, then you will telegraph that, so they will just ask to roll arcana then. Wait, no, you don't allow that. They will say they try and deduce the nature of these strange earth elementals calling upon their knowledge of the arcane arts, so they can *make an Arcana check*. And even then, these elementals are still likely weak to thunder or ambivalent to thunder, so it isn't like the scrolls are a waste. There is just no good reason.




The reason would be to verify the player's assumption that the earth elementals they are about to face are vulnerable to thunder. This will in part determine their resource allocation and tactics in the upcoming battle.

I would add that the smart player in my view doesn't seek to "make an Arcana check." The smart play is to shoot for automatic success. The d20 is nobody's friend.



Chaosmancer said:


> I also love how you describe the action of recalling lore.




It's really not my description. It's almost verbatim from the rules. Much of the stuff I say is.



Chaosmancer said:


> And then somehow don't seem to understand that my claims about why they shouldn't just be able to declare "Earth Elemental are weak to Thunder Damage" as a fact. After all, to recall knowledge they need to draw upon their memories (which the player controls as well, but let us not get back down that Francis-shaped rabbit hole) or their education (which... seems like that part would help determine what things they could declare as things they know, like a barbarian that has never studied the arcane knowing all the lore of the various planes of the multiverse) and coupling that with their experience (like how low-level new adventures probably don't know the secrets of the multiverse that the player discovered three years ago in a previous game). These are the things that I am talking about why players can't just know these things.




Players can know whatever they want and establish that their characters think whatever they want. And to be clear, I do understand your claims. It's just that they are not derived from a reading of this game. There's simply no support in _this game_ for your position. Which is not to say you shouldn't play that way. It's just a position that's better suited for a different game.



Chaosmancer said:


> And, of course, the difference between "Thinking" and "knowing". Problem with that is, the player does know what the Monster Manual said. And they may rightfully assume that since it is an objective source, they are right. Yes, the DM can change things, but the rules of the game state that Earth Elementals are weak to Thunder Damage and are siege monsters that deal double damage to structures. They know this, so they declare that their character knows this. *You, however, are stating "well, they think it. If they want to know it they need to make a check" which will.... what?* The player has been playing their character as knowing it, but now that they stop and think they remember they are wrong? I mean, confirmation bias is a thing, people will think they are right unless given evidence they are wrong. And even then they will likely keep thinking they were right.




Regarding what I bolded above, NO, that is NOT what I am stating. Not only do you appear to conflate "thinking" and "knowing," but you seem to be conflating "action" with "check." I _absolutely_ do not think that in order for the character to know something the player must make a check. Not even a little bit. In order to verify an assumption, the player describes what he or she wants to do to achieve that end. That may or may not involve a check. From the player's perspective, it is always better if it _doesn't_, provided they are shooting for automatic success.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'm just going off what iserith has said. There seems to be no meaningful consequence (by their definition) so even if I was allowed to ask a player to make a check to declare their out of character knowledge as in character, then they would auto-pass.




No. If there is no uncertain outcome and/or meaningful consequence for failure, the character would either succeed OR fail. Just because there is no check doesn't mean you always succeed.



Chaosmancer said:


> So, I don't like players just telling me things they know because it was in the Monster Manual and they read it, and assuming their character has the same knowledge (despite Iserith trying to distinguish between thinking and knowing in this scenario). I feel like there should be a check. Because while it might be something your character knows, it might not be.




The interesting thing to examine in my view is why you "feel like there should be a check." I submit it is because you learned this behavior from _another_ game where that sort of thinking was more supported than in _this_ game. Again, this isn't a problem on its own. Play how you want. But it's useful as I see it to understand why you choose to play that way so that you can perhaps understand the position of others who don't.


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## Ovinomancer (May 28, 2019)

If I may, at this late juncture...

This argument is about something that's entirely downstream of the real issue, which isn't being address clearly enough (although [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has touched on it repeatedly):  what a character thinks is irrelevant to the game structure.  The game let's players have the authority to declare actions for their characters.  This is, really, the only authority players have outside of character build (creations and leveling).  What a character thinks is just something the player establishes as color for the action declaration if they care to do so.  So, of course the player has complete authority over what the character thinks, because the rule say that they player has complete authority over what the character tries to do.  You cannot have the latter if you have restrictions on the former.  

So, in the case of the thunderwave scrolls, the player has the authority to declare this action for their character.  What the character is thinking here is color -- it's not important at all; the game doesn't care at all.  If, however, the player wants information from the setting, then they can establish an action declaration for how their character is attempting to gain this information, which, presumably, the player will then use for future action declarations.  Again, though, what the character is thinking is not part of this except as a emergent phenomenon of play.

Now, this is entirely anathema to a number of playstyle conceptualizations, but it is how this system is written.  Anything that the players or GM wish to layer on top of the 5e system is up to them  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has pounded this point home often), and more power to them.  But, again, if you, as GM, are placing limits on what characters are allowed to think, the outcome is that you are declaring certain categories of action declaration as off-limits.  Consider why you want to do this -- what does this gain you?  I used to think that it was important to have such controls to encourage "roleplaying" in my players, but it turns out they're adult people that don't really need such external controls and I'm having much more fun not playing thought police with my players.  It's also made me realize that if my game rests on the players pretending they don't know things, then I really need to step up my game.  If I'm using Earth Elementals, for example, the players maybe knowing they're weak to thunder damage is the last thing I care about -- them knowing this will not, in any way, reduce any part of my game.


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]

I agree with everything you just said. However, i do have a lingering issue with point buy 5e. INT is a dump stat for a lot of classes, but that doesn't stop whole parties of shortbus INT 8 characters from quoting chapter and verse from the MM or coming up with diabolically fiendish plans on a regular basis. No, the game doesn't care, and as a GM running actual games, neither do I, but conceptually, or perhaps even philosophically (ecumenically?) it sets my teeth on edge.


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## Tony Vargas (May 28, 2019)

The DM describes the situation.  Implicit in that is what got the characters to that situation - ultimately, the entire imagined world, it's past, and the PCs experience and knowledge of the world to that point.

So, should DMs really decline to disabuse players of a misconception about all that scene-setting?  Just on the grounds that it's interfering in what bailiwick the game leaves them?

Now, sure, hypothetically, a player could willfully declare an action notwithstanding that description or any supplemental information the DM provides.  
"Count Nepherii descends the grand staircase, his malevolent gaze flickers over you without betraying a hint if recognition, but you're sure it's him."
"I set my phaser on 'kill and shoot the Klingon!"
"I catch butterflies!"
"I invite everyone in the grand ballroom to play an RPG that doesn't suck!"
"I apologize for my friend's aberrant behavior, and explain that their still recovering from a Mindflayer's psionic blast."
"Roll diplomacy again..."

Could be fun, actually.  Players reading this thread should totally try it at their next session.

 ... or not.


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## Ovinomancer (May 28, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> The DM describes the situation.  Implicit in that is what got the characters to that situation - ultimately, the entire imagined world, it's past, and the PCs experience and knowledge of the world to that point.
> 
> So, should DMs really decline to disabuse players of a misconception about all that scene-setting?  Just on the grounds that it's interfering in what bailiwick the game leaves them?
> 
> ...



I fail to see how this example wouldn't be equally bad in any approach, nor how you should expect to deal with this using an in-game  approach.  This problem seems much better dealt with out of game.


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## Tony Vargas (May 28, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I fail to see how this example wouldn't be equally bad in any approach, nor how you should expect to deal with this using an in-game  approach.  This problem seems much better dealt with out of game.



 It's not a problem, just an example illustrating the latitude given players in declaring actions under one interpretation.

There's no need to deal with it out of game, the DM accepted their control of what their characters think/know and the actions they declared, determined one of those actions was uncertain, and called for a check, next he'll narrate the results....


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## Ovinomancer (May 28, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> It's not a problem, just an example illustrating the latitude given players in declaring actions under one interpretation.
> 
> There's no need to deal with it out of game, the DM accepted their control of what their characters think/know and the actions they declared, determined one of those actions was uncertain, and called for a check, next he'll narrate the results....



No, you're presenting degenerate play as a necessary outcome, if only on the edges, of the presented idea.  This is only true if there are no other constraints on play like genre assumptions or shared play goals.


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## iserith (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> However, i do have a lingering issue with point buy 5e. INT is a dump stat for a lot of classes, but that doesn't stop whole parties of shortbus INT 8 characters from quoting chapter and verse from the MM or coming up with diabolically fiendish plans on a regular basis. No, the game doesn't care, and as a GM running actual games, neither do I, but conceptually, or perhaps even philosophically (ecumenically?) it sets my teeth on edge.




I would say that the assertion that an Int-8 character is "shortbus" needs some proof, given bounded accuracy. It sounds like some adjustments in perception or expectations is needed here.

If that doesn't work, the game does provide a way to address this via the PCs' personal characteristics. Just add a personality trait or flaw to the effect of "I'm about as smart as a bag of hammers and it shows..." then award Inspiration when the players portray that trait or flaw. It stands to reason that a player motivated enough to draw upon information in the Monster Manual to succeed might also be enticed to portray his or her character in a way that will net a further advantage.


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

iserith said:


> I would say that the assertion that an Int-8 character is "shortbus" needs some proof, given bounded accuracy. It sounds like some adjustments in perception or expectations is needed here.
> 
> If that doesn't work, the game does provide a way to address this via the PCs' personal characteristics. Just add a personality trait or flaw to the effect of "I'm about as smart as a bag of hammers and it shows..." then award Inspiration when the players portray that trait or flaw. It stands to reason that a player motivated enough to draw upon information in the Monster Manual to succeed might also be enticed to portray his or her character in a way that will net a further advantage.



I'm fine adjudicating low INT on a player by player basic, there are mechanics for it, it's fine. My problem is, as I mentioned, more philosophical. The 5e point buy system from the PHB generally mitigates for dump stats at 8, which is a -1 modifier. Let's say we have a party consisting of a Bard, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger (not a made up example). It's a solid party, all stealth capable, with spellcasting, buffs, control and solid DPR and nova. Its also a party where 3 out of 4 characters are likely to be INT 8. And not because the players _wanted_ an 8 INT particularly, but because the point system mitigates for it in order to maximize the effectiveness of the characters.

From a mechanical game design standpoint I generally have no issue with character build systems than enforce some penalties in order to maximize effectiveness elsewhere. However, when viewed from a different angle, for example "all (almost all) the best fighters are kinda dumb" I start to raise en eyebrow. It's not about the mechanics, it's more about feel, and I'll readily admit that my personal preferences play in here in a big way. I want heroes in my games, not dumb and dumber with longswords. The point buy system is our common frame of reference for character builds, and to build the best point buy fighter, you are, almost inevitably, going to end up with a dumb and socially inept or foolhardy character (8 INT, 8 CHA or WIS). My issue is not with an inability on my part to change that in my own game, obviously I can do what I like there, my issue is with the kind of characters produced by the system that we use as a common frame of reference. Like I said, an entirely philosophical issue.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I'm fine adjudicating low INT on a player by player basic, there are mechanics for it, it's fine. My problem is, as I mentioned, more philosophical. The 5e point buy system from the PHB generally mitigates for dump stats at 8, which is a -1 modifier. Let's say we have a party consisting of a Bard, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger (not a made up example). It's a solid party, all stealth capable, with spellcasting, buffs, control and solid DPR and nova. Its also a party where 3 out of 4 characters are likely to be INT 8. And not because the players _wanted_ an 8 INT particularly, but because the point system mitigates for it in order to maximize the effectiveness of the characters.
> 
> From a mechanical game design standpoint I generally have no issue with character build systems than enforce some penalties in order to maximize effectiveness elsewhere. However, when viewed from a different angle, for example "all (almost all) the best fighters are kinda dumb" I start to raise en eyebrow. It's not about the mechanics, it's more about feel, and I'll readily admit that my personal preferences play in here in a big way. I want heroes in my games, not dumb and dumber with longswords. The point buy system is our common frame of reference for character builds, and to build the best point buy fighter, you are, almost inevitably, going to end up with a dumb and socially inept or foolhardy character (8 INT, 8 CHA or WIS). My issue is not with an inability on my part to change that in my own game, obviously I can do what I like there, my issue is with the kind of characters produced by the system that we use as a common frame of reference. Like I said, an entirely philosophical issue.




How come there's no insistence that an 8 Str means that a character can barely stand?  Lots of casters dump Str, but nobody seems to insist that this be portrayed a certain way.  They take their -1 penalty on Str checks, and have to watch their carrying capacity, and that's about it.  But somehow 8 Int means drooling moron, and 8 Cha means either pathological introversion, or that you can't open your mouth without offending people.


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> How come there's no insistence that an 8 Str means that a character can barely stand?  Lots of casters dump Str, but nobody seems to insist that this be portrayed a certain way.  They take their -1 penalty on Str checks, and have to watch their carrying capacity, and that's about it.  But somehow 8 Int means drooling moron, and 8 Cha means either pathological introversion, or that you can't open your mouth without offending people.



Exaggerating my post for rhetorical effect isn't terribly helpful.  Also, while I didn't mention STR dumps, I didn't exclude them either. I'm curious if you actually read my post, or if this is more of a knee jerk reaction, because what you say I said, and what I actually said really aren't the same. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I believe I was pretty clear that my issue was a philosophical one about the feel of the characters created using the standard point buy system. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped...


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## iserith (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I'm fine adjudicating low INT on a player by player basic, there are mechanics for it, it's fine. My problem is, as I mentioned, more philosophical. The 5e point buy system from the PHB generally mitigates for dump stats at 8, which is a -1 modifier. Let's say we have a party consisting of a Bard, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger (not a made up example). It's a solid party, all stealth capable, with spellcasting, buffs, control and solid DPR and nova. Its also a party where 3 out of 4 characters are likely to be INT 8. And not because the players _wanted_ an 8 INT particularly, but because the point system mitigates for it in order to maximize the effectiveness of the characters.
> 
> From a mechanical game design standpoint I generally have no issue with character build systems than enforce some penalties in order to maximize effectiveness elsewhere. However, when viewed from a different angle, for example "all (almost all) the best fighters are kinda dumb" I start to raise en eyebrow. It's not about the mechanics, it's more about feel, and I'll readily admit that my personal preferences play in here in a big way. I want heroes in my games, not dumb and dumber with longswords. The point buy system is our common frame of reference for character builds, and to build the best point buy fighter, you are, almost inevitably, going to end up with a dumb and socially inept or foolhardy character (8 INT, 8 CHA or WIS). My issue is not with an inability on my part to change that in my own game, obviously I can do what I like there, my issue is with the kind of characters produced by the system that we use as a common frame of reference. Like I said, an entirely philosophical issue.




How many traps and secret doors are in your game? Figuring out how a trap works ahead of disabling it may call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check, as might a task to figure out how a secret door can be opened.

How often are players attempting to recall lore when fighting monsters in order to figure out their strengths, weaknesses, etc.? If they're not doing that, why aren't they? The ranger in particular seems like a great candidate for this, given favored enemy lore bonuses.

Does recalling lore ever come up in a social interaction challenge, such as trying to prove a point using historical facts or trying to gain useful background info that can be used to get at the NPC's agenda or play to an NPC's ideal or bond?

Point being, players reasonably dump Intelligence if they don't think it will come up much. In my experience, that chiefly has to do with a lack of traps and secret doors in the given game, but it can be for other reasons. If your players are experienced and know the Monster Manual pretty well, then they might not see value in recalling lore on monsters, which argues for changing up the monsters (if that will be fun for everyone). So it might be worth examining the game you're presenting to see if that is adding to the game-induced impetus to dump Intelligence.


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## Tony Vargas (May 28, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> No, you're presenting degenerate play as a necessary outcome, if only on the edges, of the presented idea.  This is only true if there are no other constraints on play like genre assumptions or shared play goals.



 Or an understanding of what constitutes a valid action declaration?  To get a little weird & technical, the basic process of play is mainly encoding & decoding.  The DM encodes the state of the game, the player decodes it and encodes an action; the player decodes that, processes it, and encodes a resolution (which may include looping back to the player for a check, but /that/ part is pretty precisely coded using simple numbers & randomization).

That process can exclude a LOT of the contentious issues that seem to be popping up late in this thread. A player 'metagaming' with 'player knowledge' that the character "shouldn't have" is an example of encoding/decoding errors in the process. The DM hasn't expressed or the player hasn't understood aspects of the setting and situation.  Once they're resolved, so will the issue be resolved - without either having to appeal to any RaW or One True Way as to their respective roles as DM and Player - most of that resolution, like mechanical resolution, though, /is/ ultimately the DM's responsibility.   


(Why, yes, I did say "just talk to your players," but with more, snootier words.)


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]

I agree with you - the Ranger would seem to be a great candidate for that. However, in order to be able to do that you mostly need to slight your actual core abilities to fight and track stuff. Like I said, this is eminently fixable in a given campaign given a GM with a desire to do so, and my issue (problem? whatever...) isn't with specific games, but rather with the optics and feel of our common frame of reference characters. This wasn't supposed to be contentious (not that you personally have been contentious about it). I don't like the feel of exemplar heroes with multiple negative attributes in common areas based on class.


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## Swarmkeeper (May 28, 2019)

iserith said:


> How often are players attempting to recall lore when fighting monsters in order to figure out their strengths, weaknesses, etc.? If they're not doing that, why aren't they? The ranger in particular seems like a great candidate for this, given favored enemy lore bonuses.
> 
> ...
> 
> Point being, players reasonably dump Intelligence if they don't think it will come up much. In my experience, that chiefly has to do with a lack of traps and secret doors in the given game, but it can be for other reasons. If your players are experienced and know the Monster Manual pretty well, then they might not see value in recalling lore on monsters, which argues for changing up the monsters (if that will be fun for everyone). So it might be worth examining the game you're presenting to see if that is adding to the game-induced impetus to dump Intelligence.




So I've been struggling a bit with coming up with some meaningful consequences for failure of knowledge checks when fighting monsters.  
On a success, the PC recalls some helpful lore
On a failure, the PC doesn't recall lore (which falls a bit flat since that is essentially "nothing happens")

Perhaps better:
On a failure, the PC doesn't recall lore and the enemy becomes offended at the PC's probing, if not somewhat confused, stare down.  Enemy will gain advantage on next attack against PC.

I know we don't have a specific example here but, in general, what might you do, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]?


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## 5ekyu (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]
> 
> I agree with everything you just said. However, i do have a lingering issue with point buy 5e. INT is a dump stat for a lot of classes, but that doesn't stop whole parties of shortbus INT 8 characters from quoting chapter and verse from the MM or coming up with diabolically fiendish plans on a regular basis. No, the game doesn't care, and as a GM running actual games, neither do I, but conceptually, or perhaps even philosophically (ecumenically?) it sets my teeth on edge.



The 5e system does not by default enforce or require any sort of roleplaying. The mechanics fo not take any of that and codify it into rules. The closest it comes are a few cases where "in good standing" is required for some features.

But, yo me that is, by design, left to the table to determine. 

The "system" does not say "Int is a dump stat" because when and where skill checks are required and for what is up to the GM and de facto the group. 

But, if it needs to be said, there is a major difference between "what the PC thinks", "what actions the PC tries" and "what the PC knows" and it seems that perhaps for some the system giving pretty much broad or absolute authority to the second and maybe the first should not, to me, lead one to see the system as giving the same to the third.

"I know who killed the magister and where the evidence is" is perfectly valid as a character statement, maybe even as "what the character thinks" but not necessarily more than that. That is much more a case of the stuff the system leaves to  table side and in-game aspects.

The rules fo not put the onus on the GM to change published monsters and scenarios if their table doesn't buy into the table-side "what the player knows, the character knows" and that leaves Int checks and the like as one possible way to try an adjudicate those.


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## iserith (May 28, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> So I've been struggling a bit with coming up with some meaningful consequences for failure of knowledge checks when fighting monsters.
> On a success, the PC recalls some helpful lore
> On a failure, the PC doesn't recall lore (which falls a bit flat since that is essentially "nothing happens")
> 
> ...




I think progress combined with a setback is good here - give them the info, but the monster gains an advantage as you say. That could be a situational advantage or just advantage on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw.


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## 5ekyu (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> Exaggerating my post for rhetorical effect isn't terribly helpful.  Also, while I didn't mention STR dumps, I didn't exclude them either. I'm curious if you actually read my post, or if this is more of a knee jerk reaction, because what you say I said, and what I actually said really aren't the same. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I believe I was pretty clear that my issue was a philosophical one about the feel of the characters created using the standard point buy system. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped...



In my experience Int 8, Str 8 and Cha 8 are frequently seen on various characters, as are 12s in some others. I tend to view both as "slightly below/above average but well withing "normal range". That tends to play out fine as far as our "philosophies" go. 8 int vs 10 Int vs 12 int isnt "kinda dumb" at all, it's more akin to the difference one would see in a modern school system between somebody who went to the underfunded  rural high school system vs the higher end capital high schools. Maybe the diff between someone born into an affluent household with lotsa books and parents who encouraged reading vs poorer ones where books were not readily available and were not part of the day-to-day life.  For strength, it's more akin to the difference between someone who drives a cab or runs a cash register vs doing carpentry and hanging dry wall or even yard work for a living.

I think for some the "problem with the 8" stems in large part from the exaggeration of the 8.

A technique I tend to use, borrowed ages ago from "other systems" is to encourage the players to give one adjective for each plus or minus in stats.

"give the plus a name or a face"

This is like "puuting a face on the plot" as one is often encouraged to do in fiction. 

So, two characters with a -1 Cha and -1 Str and +3 dex might get entirely different adjectives and be very different people in play. Its not uncommon for those adjdetives/descriptors to play a role in advsntage/disadvantage either. 

Yeah, I know, some might object cuz its using stuff "from other game systems" and not playing 5e purely how they think the designers intended, but it works for us.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> Exaggerating my post for rhetorical effect isn't terribly helpful.  Also, while I didn't mention STR dumps, I didn't exclude them either. I'm curious if you actually read my post, or if this is more of a knee jerk reaction, because what you say I said, and what I actually said really aren't the same. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I believe I was pretty clear that my issue was a philosophical one about the feel of the characters created using the standard point buy system. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped...




I wasn't referring just to you.  Your post just brought this recurring pattern to mind.  So, no, I wasn't saying that "you said" anything specific.


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

Fighting monsters (or anything really) you can also gate appropriate knowledge behind passive checks at levelled DCs. You can write it right into encounters - passive DC 15 Arcana (or whatever) - you remember x about stone golems, DC 20 the knowledge is more specific. I wouldn't go to the effort of writing this into every scenario, but it is an effective way to gate information behind what feels a little more like "hey, you remembered this thing....".


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I wasn't referring just to you.  Your post just brought this recurring pattern to mind.  So, no, I wasn't saying that "you said" anything specific.



Fair say. The issues I have aren't the same as most people's, in this instance anyway. Unless you're thinking of people who are also existentially bothered by the public optics of standard character builds.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> Fair say. The issues I have aren't the same as most people's, in this instance anyway. Unless you're thinking of people who are also existentially bothered by the public optics of standard character builds.




No, I was just referring to the fact that you called Int 8 "dumb" and Cha 8 "socially inept".  Mathematically that should be "5% less smart than average" and "5% less charismatic than average".

Or, to put it another way, would you call Int 12 "smart" and Cha 12 "socially adept"?  I think most people view 12's as "a bit above average, but nothing to write home about".  So shouldn't an 8 be the same, but in the other direction?


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

Setting the bar at average seems low for heroic roleplaying. To me anyway. Plus that math doesn't scale going all the way to 20. A fighter with 18 STR is more than 40% stronger than average.


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## Swarmkeeper (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> Setting the bar at average seems low for heroic roleplaying. To me anyway. Plus that math doesn't scale going all the way to 20. A fighter with 18 STR is more than 40% stronger than average.




Given that a Commoner in the MM has 10s across the board, that is a pretty good standard for average in 5e.  I hadn't really thought about it this way before but, yeah, according to 5e math, 18 STR actually means 20% stronger than average.  Then again, the heroes of the story are so much more than their ability scores and modifiers.


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## Fenris-77 (May 28, 2019)

DM Dave1 said:


> Given that a Commoner in the MM has 10s across the board, that is a pretty good standard for average in 5e.  I hadn't really thought about it this way before but, yeah, according to 5e math, 18 STR actually means 20% stronger than average.  Then again, the heroes of the story are so much more than their ability scores and modifiers.



Sure, if you're counting mods not stat points. Neither really makes sense as straight scaling math compared to an 'average' 10, at least not in the context of anything else we've ever seen about what an 18 means in D&D. Mind you, I'm not convinced that talking about the stats in percentages, whether points or mods, makes much sense anyway. Agree with the second point completely.


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## Celebrim (May 28, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> It's not a problem, just an example illustrating the latitude given players in declaring actions under one interpretation.




Although D&D doesn't have an explicitly defined proposition filter, I imagine that in practice any PC proposition that is nonsense will be rejected.

So, "I set my phaser on 'kill and shoot the Klingon!", probably receives the error response, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment."

And, "I catch butterflies!", probably receives the error response, "There are no butterflies in the immediate vicinity, so you should probably specify a bunch of other steps before you try to catch any.  For example, where are you planning to go to catch them, and how do you plan to get there?"

Propositions like, "I invite everyone in the grand ballroom to play an RPG that doesn't suck!", while not errors, in that a player could start inviting everyone, probably require clarification, "By invite, what do you mean?  Are you going to go to each person individually or are you planning to shout out your invitation?"   Once the clarification is made however, the player's statement is probably going to be seen as some sort of nonsense by everyone in the grand ballroom, who are likely to have no idea what an RPG is and may not understand the idiomatic phrase "suck" either.  At best, their going to treat this as some weird joke which they don't get.  At worst, the PC is likely to be treated as drunk or insane.

Whereas, "I apologize for my friend's aberrant behavior, and explain that their still recovering from a Mindflayer's psionic blast.", might possibly be actually good RPing at a grand ball in a typical D&D setting where a PC is going on about "RPG's that don't suck!"  

I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make with these examples.


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## Celebrim (May 28, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> Fighting monsters (or anything really) you can also gate appropriate knowledge behind passive checks at levelled DCs. You can write it right into encounters - passive DC 15 Arcana (or whatever) - you remember x about stone golems, DC 20 the knowledge is more specific. I wouldn't go to the effort of writing this into every scenario, but it is an effective way to gate information behind what feels a little more like "hey, you remembered this thing....".




While you can use such gates to feed players more information than they have, once the information is past the gate for whatever reason, including the player owns the Monster Manual and has read it, there is no effective way to put the information back on the other side of the gate.   If the player knows everything about stone golems, it doesn't really matter what the player character knows, his play will be inevitably and unavoidably colored by his knowledge of stone golems.   The player can, if he wishes, try to pretend he is the character who doesn't know anything about stone golems, but no person can exactly pretend to act as if he did not have knowledge that he has.   No person can predict how they would behave if they didn't know something.

Even cRPGs with limited player choice and tightly constrained proposition filters can't perfectly deal with that.   For example, the old RPG Planescape: Torment gates certain multiple choice dialogue options behind the player character having sufficient INT, WIS, or CHR.   Thus, even if the player knows the choice exists and wants to take it, the player can be prevented from making that choice.  However, this wall is still imperfect.   The player can still select INT, WIS, or CHR specifically to pass certain challenges or receive certain rewards, and the player can still acting on his knowledge of the game solve certain puzzles the first time through without error based on past play throughs or a published walkthrough.   Once you know the 'spoilers', you can't ever know how you'd play without them.  If the player has the 'spoilers' before the first play through, he'll never know whether his choices are based consciously or unconsciously on the knowledge or consciously or unconsciously trying to avoid basing the choices on the knowledge.  

There is no way to accurate fake ignorance.   If reading a mystery novel, if you have spoilers, you'll have no way of knowing whether without the spoilers you would or wouldn't have figured out the mystery before it was revealed.   It just can't happen.

As such, there is no real way to stop players from metagaming even if you wanted to.   Even if they want to cooperate with your goal, they will be at some point unable to do so.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

I'm not trying to fake ignorance. Nor was I really talking about MM info, "golem" was just the first word that popped into my mind and maybe wasn't the best example. The gating works better with stuff from the History/Arcana/Religion type skills that players usually index when they ask "what do I know about that..." but often don't actually know themselves. This makes it feel more like something their character did, and should, know without having a game mechanic intrude between player and character. Not my original idea, but I like it, it's elegant.

On the monster side, I usually just kitbash new monster variants when I have players whose encyclopedic knowledge of the MM might make my life difficult. It keeps players on their toes.


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## Tony Vargas (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Although D&D doesn't have an explicitly defined proposition filter, I imagine that in practice any PC proposition that is nonsense will be rejected.



 I'm glad to see you:  "Proposition Filter!" is what I've been trying to remember, and it wasn't coming to me. 



> So, "I set my phaser on 'kill and shoot the Klingon!", probably receives the error response, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment."



 But that would be telling the player what his character thinks!  So, clearly, he's just delusional.  

The DM could narrate him pointing his finger at someone (or at empty air) and making a trilling sound, for instance.  




> Propositions like, "I invite everyone in the grand ballroom to play an RPG that doesn't suck!", while not errors, in that a player could start inviting everyone, probably require clarification, "By invite, what do you mean?  Are you going to go to each person individually or are you planning to shout out your invitation?"   Once the clarification is made however, the player's statement is probably going to be seen as some sort of nonsense by everyone in the grand ballroom, who are likely to have no idea what an RPG is and may not understand the idiomatic phrase "suck" either.  At best, their going to treat this as some weird joke which they don't get.  At worst, the PC is likely to be treated as drunk or insane.



 Speaking in tongues or something.  Heck, you might even interpret that the character is speaking English rather than Common.  



> Whereas, "I apologize for my friend's aberrant behavior, and explain that their still recovering from a Mindflayer's psionic blast.", might possibly be actually good RPing at a grand ball in a typical D&D setting where a PC is going on about "RPG's that don't suck!"
> I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make with these examples.



 I'm struggling to make it, so I don't blame you.  Really, it's probably not worth the struggle.  I guess I'm just trying to say that, yes, players can decide what their characters think and do, but that latitude is best exercised with some thought to the scene the DM has set, and the character's place in it.  
Importantly, I'm not saying the players or the DM in the example are doing anything wrong.  The DM has (previously) set the scene, and describes a situation, the players declare actions (albeit all at once, since there's no initiative order), and the DM calls for a check on the one action declaration that is in doubt as to success/failure.  He'll go on to narrate the results of all the actions.  It's a perfectly cromulent example of play, that way.  


This discussion could do with a dissertation on the Proposition Filter concept, I think, if you haven't already provided one up-thread.  

Because at least some of the concern with metagaming and "you can't do that" seems to be related.


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## iserith (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I'm not trying to fake ignorance. Nor was I really talking about MM info, "golem" was just the first word that popped into my mind and maybe wasn't the best example. The gating works better with stuff from the History/Arcana/Religion type skills that players usually index when they ask "what do I know about that..." but often don't actually know themselves. This makes it feel more like something their character did, and should, know without having a game mechanic intrude between player and character. Not my original idea, but I like it, it's elegant.




While I'm sure it works with little issue at the table, I think passive check DCs for set knowledge is more appropriate to D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e than for D&D 5e. In the latter, I prefer to simply lay out the necessary context and basic scope of options sufficient for the characters to act and let the players describe what they want to do. That might include recalling lore to introduce new information into the situation. To ask for a check, passive or otherwise, from a player without an action declaration preceding it is putting the cart before the horse in my view. At least in _this_ game.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

I don't know if I agree entirely with that last statement. Using the passive check level as a gate to disseminate appropriate skill-related information is a pretty good approximation of passive knowledge use. By which I mean knowledge that people just have in their heads - nothing to figure out, we just know. Having to state and roll every time you want to access the character's memory for something that may or may not actually be there is an awkward mechanic, IMO anyway, at least for a lot of instances of trying to remember stuff rather figuring something out (which I submit does reflect passive versus active knowledge use pretty well, at least broadly stated). 

I'm not suggesting that going entirely one way or the other is best mind you, I find a mix of the two works pretty well. Characters state and roll sometimes, retaining a sense of player agency, and sometimes the information is just given them because the character would know, which indexes character authenticity.


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## iserith (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I don't know if I agree entirely with that last statement. Using the passive check level as a gate to disseminate appropriate skill-related information is a pretty good approximation of passive knowledge use. By which I mean knowledge that people just have in their heads - nothing to figure out, we just know. Having to state and roll every time you want to access the character's memory for something that may or may not actually be there is an awkward mechanic, IMO anyway, at least for a lot of instances of trying to remember stuff rather figuring something out (which I submit does reflect passive versus active knowledge use pretty well, at least broadly stated).




Notably, in D&D 5e, "passive" in "passive check" doesn't actually refer to the character being "inactive." It just refers to there being no dice. Unfortunately, it's commonly interpreted as meaning the character isn't doing anything in particular but I don't think one can get there from a reading of the D&D 5e rules. One _can_ get there by reading the _D&D 4e_ rules which refers to both "actively using a skill" and "passive" checks and suggests that the DM might use a passive check to determine how much a character knows about a monster at the start of an encounter.



Fenris-77 said:


> I'm not suggesting that going entirely one way or the other is best mind you, I find a mix of the two works pretty well. Characters state and roll sometimes, retaining a sense of player agency, and sometimes the information is just given them because the character would know, which indexes character authenticity.




The DM doesn't need the permission of the mechanics to establish the necessary (or optional) context though which is what gating is, effectively.

Which is not to say one shouldn't do this or that it's bad. But there's a b-plot in this thread about taking assumptions from other games and mixing them up in this game and I'm taking this as an opportunity to point what could be another example of this.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

I'm aware of what a passive check is and I wasn't just making an interpretive mistake based on a generic reading of the word. I was just suggesting that a player having to actively roll a dice or ask the gm everytime he wanted basic access to the characters knowledge and memories feels like a awkeard mechanic to me. Moreover, i was suggesting that there might be positive dividends paid by an alternate mechanic for representing memory access type knowledge use. Its a rules hack, not a rules interpretation.


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## Tony Vargas (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I'm aware of what a passive check is and I wasn't just making an interpretive mistake based on a generic reading of the word. I was just suggesting that a player having to actively roll a dice or ask the gm everytime he wanted basic access to the characters knowledge and memories feels like a awkeard mechanic to me. Moreover, i was suggesting that there might be positive dividends paid by an alternate mechanic for representing memory access type knowledge use. Its a rules hack, not a rules interpretation.



'Passive check' sounds like a contradiction.  

Apologies for the tangent, but a Passive score based on a stat mod or stat+proficiency or "skill" could have been a very useful little mechanic, if it had ever been used exclusively as a target number for someone else's check. 'Checking' a passive score vs a DC is just nonsense, both are static, the outcome is certain - it's precisely the situation in which you don't need a check. (Tangential to the tangent, opposed checks are just terrible, too!  No d20 game should use 'em, make a check vs a passive score, instead.)  

OK, ranting tangent (rantgent?) over.


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## iserith (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> I'm aware of what a passive check is and I wasn't just making an interpretive mistake based on a generic reading of the word. I was just suggesting that a player having to actively roll a dice or ask the gm everytime he wanted basic access to the characters knowledge and memories feels like a awkeard mechanic to me. Moreover, i was suggesting that there might be positive dividends paid by an alternate mechanic for representing memory access type knowledge use. Its a rules hack, not a rules interpretation.




That's fair and my apologies for attributing to you anything that you don't believe.

I think that the fewer exceptions to the basic play loop the better. I would also say that "basic access" is something I see as available to anyone through the DM's description of the environment and the things within it and it's on the players to speak up if they want to recall more information that may be useful.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

No one's upset, I was just trying to set my thoughts out as clearly as possible. In some ways this ends up looking, at the table, like just a slightly different method of exposition wherein certain things the party knows/is told are attributed to the skills of particular characters, which is neat. 

The major difference comes in the encounter design phase. To answer Tony's objection above, its not at all pointless if you are writing the gates into an encounter before you know exactly what characters will be in the party and what skills they may or may not decide to take. At that point you only know one of the two static numbers. Obviously when you already know that both it is indeed pretty silly to compare them and call it a check. GMs may differ in how they write up "addition info" into encounters, and how they adjudicate acquiring that knowledge,  but most of them do it in some form. I'm just suggesting a tweak to that which ties the info to specific skills and occasionally hands it out without waiting for players to actively decide to roll. Handing the info over, for example, on a post it, can further enhance the fiction of character memory and knowledge at work. Ive done both on occasion, and its worked well for me and my players. YMMV.

"Is 4 still bigger than 2? Yeah? Ok, cool  just checking."


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## iserith (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> No one's upset, I was just trying to set my thoughts out as clearly as possible. In some ways this ends up looking, at the table, like just a slightly different method of exposition wherein certain things the party knows/is told are attributed to the skills of particular characters, which is neat.
> 
> The major difference comes in the encounter design phase. To answer Tony's objection above, its not at all pointless if you are writing the gates into an encounter before you know exactly what characters will be in the party and what skills they may or may not decide to take. At that point you only know one of the two static numbers. Obviously when you already know that both it is indeed pretty silly to compare them and call it a check. GMs may differ in how they write up "addition info" into encounters, and how they adjudicate acquiring that knowledge,  but most of them do it in some form. I'm just suggesting a tweak to that which ties the info to specific skills and occasionally hands it out without waiting for players to actively decide to roll. Handing the info over, for example, on a post it, can further enhance the fiction of character memory and knowledge at work. Ive done both on occasion, and its worked well for me and my players. YMMV.
> 
> "Is 4 still bigger than 2? Yeah? Ok, cool  just checking."




Yeah, I have a player pool which includes more players than seats in a given game and, often, multiple PCs per player. There is no way, especially considering my increasing age and penchant for drink at the table, that I can remember anything about the characters' stats. So I don't see any issue with choosing a DC for a task ahead of time which is later resolved by a passive check. I've had that argument with said poster before. I must not have been very convincing if he still holds that view.

A small correction on one statement though as it relates to my position: I don't think it's in line with the rules of the game for "players to actively decide to roll." What I'm talking about is _describing a task_ and leaving it to the DM to decide if a check is necessary. So I might describe the environment as including a troll that goes out of its way to avoid a flaming brazier (telegraphing its aversion to fire), then the player might describe a task of trying to draw upon the character's time as a sage in the world's greatest libraries to recall if trolls have a particular weakness to fire. At that point I can decide if a check is necessary per the standard adjudication process or whether the character simply recalls the desired lore or fails to recall it with no check.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

Fair enough. I think we're mostly talking about the same thing generally,  just with different wrinkles. I do exactly what you just described regularly, so we can't be that far apart, my current mechanics idea aside anyway.

Modelling character knowledge not possessed by the player has been a constant source of frustration for me since 2nd. I know that no one answer or mechanic is going to get it done, but I like to putter with rules.


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> But that would be telling the player what his character thinks!




No, very literally I did not.   I said, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment."  I have said nothing about the characters beliefs or feelings or actions.  Everything I described is external to the character.



> So, clearly, he's just delusional.




It's not really up for me to decide that.  If the player tells me, "The character is delusional.", that's fine.   However, my first thought is likely to be something like, "This is an OOC joke.", and my second thought is likely to be something like, "I've not clearly communicated the shared fiction with the player, so that our understandings of the fictional positioning have diverged."   That second thought might instead be, "The player wasn't paying attention.", if the player has been on his phone or engaged in OOC table chatter.   While the case with the phaser and the Klingon is comical and exaggerated, far less exaggerated and less extreme versions of players offering up propositions based off poor understanding of the fictional positioning occur all the time.   Making sure the player is not operating under a false assumption is an important GM job.

If the player tells me his character believes he has a phaser, then I'll work with that.   If on the other hand the player insists that the character has a phaser, I'm likely to become nearly as concerned as if the player insisted that they have a phaser.  Either way, the player has clearly lost it. 



> The DM could narrate him pointing his finger at someone (or at empty air) and making a trilling sound, for instance.




The DM could but the DM shouldn't.   The player has purposed to shoot a Klingon with a phaser.  I will certainly not narrate anything like pointing a finger at someone or empty air and making a trilling sound.  If the player narrates that, then fine, but it's not my job to interpret the player character's actions to the degree I'm imposing anything on the character that the player hasn't proposed.   If after a discussion, we establish that the player understands that the character doesn't have a phaser, but that the character is delusional then I will ask the player what it is that the delusional character actually does that he believes is shooting something with a phaser.   It's not really my job to explain to the player that the character couldn't possibly know what a phaser or Klingon is, even if delusional.   Perhaps he's recovering from a mind blast from a being from beyond the Far Realms, which in my game is an infinite realm of uncreated things that the primal creator could have created but didn't, and so some fragment of unreality has tainted the player.   But even if a convenient explanation didn't exist, it's still not my job.

But again, if the player believes that the player character really has a phaser and insists on it despite all my explanations, then chances are that player needs psychiatric care.  It's not something that has ever come up in 30 years of play, sometimes with some fairly dysfunctional teens and occasionally dysfunctional adults.     



> Speaking in tongues or something.  Heck, you might even interpret that the character is speaking English rather than Common.




But again, why would I do that sort of interpretation?  It's my job to resolve the interaction with the environment caused by a proposition the player makes.  A proposition that a player makes that doesn't interact with the environment calls for no resolution.  It's not my job to interpret what the proposition is.  If I don't know exactly what the player intends, then I need to establish that first.  Regardless of whether the character thinks he's speaking English or speaking in tongues or whatever, the likely result of such babble is probably that the character will be treated as being drunk or insane.  I'm not interpreting what the character is doing, only what the NPCs are doing.   At some point, I should always be able to explain to the player why the result that happens is logical and fair (although sometimes to avoid releasing OOC information, that may not be for a long time after the session).   I can't do that, and it will be immediately obvious that it isn't, if the interpretation I put on an action was at odds with the player's intention.



> I'm struggling to make it, so I don't blame you.  Really, it's probably not worth the struggle.  I guess I'm just trying to say that, yes, players can decide what their characters think and do, but that latitude is best exercised with some thought to the scene the DM has set, and the character's place in it.




I agree with that.   What I'm trying to say is that the "interpretation" thing you keep bringing up isn't really part of the proposition->fortune->resolution cycle.   I can interrogate the player to try to figure out what exact action that they intend, and often should do that.   And I can force the player to phrase a proposition in a way that passes the games proposition filter, whether formal or informal.   But I can't and shouldn't be transforming the proposition to anything that might lie outside the player's intent.   Only after a valid and clear proposition is understood, do we start cranking handles and come up with a resolution.   To do anything else is to be a very dysfunctional sort of "Gotcha DM", that would cause even Nitro Ferguson to shake his head and declare that you've got some maturing to do.



> Importantly, I'm not saying the players or the DM in the example are doing anything wrong.  The DM has (previously) set the scene, and describes a situation, the players declare actions (albeit all at once, since there's no initiative order), and the DM calls for a check on the one action declaration that is in doubt as to success/failure.  He'll go on to narrate the results of all the actions.  It's a perfectly cromulent example of play, that way.




Well, with caveats above, "Yes."   If a player purposes, "My character delusionally thinks he's Captain Kirk, and that a Klingon has entered the room.  He points his finger at the Chancellor of the Exchequer and makes a "Zap!" noice.", then that's a valid proposition that I can act on.   It might not be a very good one.   It might not be a very artistic one.  It might not be a very mature one.  But, heh, one man's art is another man's trash, and it's not my job to play the character.   Besides, in some games, for some characters, that proposition might even make sense.



> This discussion could do with a dissertation on the Proposition Filter concept, I think, if you haven't already provided one up-thread.




If I started one, I'd do it in a different thread.  I'm concerned that we've been too long off topic and are no longer advancing any discussion in a meaningful and useful manner.  In fact, I'd abandoned the thread until some fresh voices joined it.



> Because at least some of the concern with metagaming and "you can't do that" seems to be related.




Yeah, "you can't do that because you're metagaming" is definitely an informal proposition filter I've seen employed at tables.  Heck, at one time - say before age 20 - I probably would have deployed it myself.  I do think that there is value in playing in character as much as possible, and would encourage players to adopt more mature stances toward their player character.   However, I've since decided that "You can't do that because you're metagaming!" is unworkable as a proposition filter and is ill-advised on several grounds:

a) Sometimes metagaming is helpful to everyone's enjoyment and many sorts of metagaming are blessed by GMs.  As such, whether a particular metagamed action triggers the filter pretty much comes down to, "I don't like that.", and a GM shouldn't really be filtering PC actions to that degree.
b) It's not actually possible for a player to not metagame, so a GM asking a player to not metagame is often asking the impossible of them.   And again, whether or not the GM accepts that a particular action is not metagaming often comes down to whether the GM thinks it's the right action, which eventually comes down to the GM playing the PC.
c) Most of the time that a GM faults a player for metagaming, the GM is actually the one at fault for using some process of play that gave the player metagame information - including not just keeping his mouth shut when he should have.   By passing the responsibility to the player, the Gm is not adopting more mature methods of play and growing as a GM.
d) There are always better approaches to dealing with any sort of metagaming that is having a negative impact on play.
e) It's entirely possible that the GM deploying "You can't do that, it's metagaming." is actually the dysfunctional participant and the real motivation is that the GM wants total control over the game.


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> If the player knows everything about stone golems, it doesn't really matter what the player character knows, his play will be inevitably and unavoidably colored by his knowledge of stone golems.  The player can, if he wishes, try to pretend he is the character who doesn't know anything about stone golems, but no person can exactly pretend to act as if he did not have knowledge that he has...




Not exactly, no. Nor can any person can sing perfectly on pitch, and yet some humans still sing, because many of us do it well enough for entertainment purposes.

Sure, there's a discrepancy between character knowledge and player knowledge. I cannot bring that gap to zero point zero, nor do I want to. That said, there's a significant difference between "bought the scrolls" and "didn't buy the scrolls", and my imperfect, non-exact RP still falls on the side of "didn't buy the scrolls"... when I'm a playing a PC who knows that she's likely to encounter stone golems, and who doesn't know how useful those scrolls would be. Yes, when we actually encounter the stone golems, I the player will think "too bad my PC didn't know about thunder damage", but even if some NPC had cast Detect Thoughts on my PC, that thought was not in the PC's mind *at an observable level*.

Is this, in your experience, an unusual level of compartmentalization? I consider it a low bar to clear. If a player cannot (or will not) refrain from declaring character actions which act on information which their character could not possibly know, then I consider that player an unskilled and/or immature TRPGer, and I'd rather not sit at the same table.



Celebrim said:


> As such, there is no real way to stop players from metagaming even if you wanted to. Even if they want to cooperate with your goal, they will be at some point unable to do so.




There is, however, the option of recruiting players to your table, who have *their own goal* of managing their meta gaming, in order to co-create an enjoyable story. Some players are okay with the suspension of disbelief necessary for "we encounter stone golems", while disliking the suspension of disbelief necessary for "the barbarian just happened, for unrelated reasons, to have some scrolls of Thunderwave, which the barbarian now hands to the wizard for immediate tactical use".

I want many things, as a player. One of those things is the respect of the DM and my fellow players. The players, at the table where I play every week, would not be impressed by "hey, guys, look, my barbarian character has scrolls of Thunderwave!". They would give me a disapproving side-eye, or a spoken "Riley, that's crappy role-playing. We're not munchkins here". They'd rather have their PCs either win without those scrolls, or fail without those scrolls, than win by using those scrolls.

The question of whether the DM suppresses that kind of meta-gaming does not often arise, at this table, because peer pressure among players suffices to discourage that kind of meta-gaming.


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> I'm glad to see you:  "Proposition Filter!" is what I've been trying to remember, and it wasn't coming to me.
> 
> But that would be telling the player what his character thinks!  So, clearly, he's just delusional.
> 
> ...



This is like teaching someone checkers and telling them they can move a piece on their turn only to be interrupted with, "I play a Draw 4!" You politely point out that's not checkers but Uno and are met with a, "so I _can't_ move a piece on my turn then?"


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Is this, in your experience, an unusual level of compartmentalization? I consider it a low bar to clear. If a player cannot (or will not) refrain from declaring character actions which act on information which their character could not possibly know, then I consider that player an unskilled and/or immature TRPGer, and I'd rather not sit at the same table.




Is it possible to provide examples where the obvious skillful move is known by the player?  Sure.  Can a skilled player choose when Actor stance is more appropriate than Author stance based on evaluating their own motivations?  Probably so.   But the real question for me here isn't player skill, but whether deploying a proposition filter that stops a player from metagaming is skilled play by the GM.  I'm suggesting that it isn't and that there are strong limits to the ability of a GM or player to abide by a "no metagaming" rule.   However bad unskillful play by the player may be, the proposed remedy is worse.

Let's move the earth elementals example back one step.   A player character knows that they are going to encounter earth elementals and it's established by some process of play that that character shouldn't know anything about earth elementals.   So now the player offers up the following IC proposition to the other players, "I don't know anything about earth elementals, and I don't think we should go face them without learning something about them.  The sound magical and I'm not even sure a stone can bleed.  I don't want to try to kill a rock with a sword.  Let's find a wizard or a sage that might know something about earth elementals and see what we can learn about them."   Now, is this metagaming?  Possibly, but now the player is engaged in a more sophisticated Author stance.  His motivation OOC might be that he wants to get Thunderwave scrolls, but he's offering a plausible in game explanation for his character's actions.   Should this be stopped as an act of metagaming?  Would this deserve side-eye from his fellow partipants?

And how do you know that, if the player was also ignorant, he wouldn't offer the same proposition?  How can the player know whether, were he truly ignorant, he might offer the same proposition?

Sure, I think there are times when a player should try to ignore his OOC knowledge and play the character in a proper Actor stance based on what he thinks the character would do based on his IC knowledge.   Heck, as a GM, I'm called to do this all the time, however imperfectly I can do it.   "If I didn't know the PC's weaknesses, would I still use this sort of strategy?  Would I still have cast this defensive spell before starting the encounter?"   As a GM, I hold myself to not metagaming against the players at a much higher and more rigid standard than I would ever hold the players too.   

However my points remain.   Metagaming isn't always bad.  Metagaming by the players is usually the GM's fault.   And there are much better ways to deal with a metagaming problem than putting up a proposition filter that amounts to choosing what a PC is going to do.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Not exactly, no. Nor can any person can sing perfectly on pitch, and yet some humans still sing, because many of us do it well enough for entertainment purposes.
> 
> Sure, there's a discrepancy between character knowledge and player knowledge. I cannot bring that gap to zero point zero, nor do I want to. That said, there's a significant difference between "bought the scrolls" and "didn't buy the scrolls", and my imperfect, non-exact RP still falls on the side of "didn't buy the scrolls"... when I'm a playing a PC who knows that she's likely to encounter stone golems, and who doesn't know how useful those scrolls would be. Yes, when we actually encounter the stone golems, I the player will think "too bad my PC didn't know about thunder damage", but even if some NPC had cast Detect Thoughts on my PC, that thought was not in the PC's mind *at an observable level*.
> 
> ...




One problem I have with all of this is that you are taking a personal preference...that not only you but also the people at your table strive to separate character knowledge from player knowledge...and then you start assigning value labels to that.  Those who do that have "respect of the DM and fellow players".   Those who don't are "unskilled and/or immature TPRGers".  

As it happens, I've got my own way of describing people who insist on roleplaying exactly the way you like, but it's not very generous, so I'll refrain from sharing it.  

You have a preference, which is great.  Maybe it's safer to leave it at that, rather than trying to claim that it's superior, and that people who play some other way are inferior.  Because the next thing you know the insults start flying.


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I've got my own way of describing people who insist on roleplaying exactly the way you like




I am indeed insisting on roleplaying exactly the way I like to role-play... at a table where, every week, that style is welcomed and encouraged. Last session, I told the DM "I think I know why the bad guys attacked this village, but I don't think my PC has figured it out yet", and the DM gave me a thumbs-up to keep playing accordingly. I had the "respect of the DM and fellow players" *specifically for that DM and those players*. Perhaps the DM and the players at *your* table would have formed a different opinion.

If I insisted on roleplaying exactly the way I like, at YOUR table, then I might wear out my welcome, and in THAT case, you'd have good reason to bluntly tell me what you think of my style.

Yes, there are player behaviors which I consider immature. Some of those behaviors involve fart noises. Some of them involve loaded dice. "My barbarian buys some scrolls of Thunderwave, just because he likes the noise they make", when actually the player's motive is tactical advantage, is *generally* one of the behaviors I consider immature, though with exceptions. (One exception: Session Zero established a zany, Loony Tunes level of suspension of disbelief. Another exception: The table has an understanding that the PCs are guided by Divine Providence, or nudged by the Valar, and sometimes make choices which turn out to be wiser than the PC knew at the time.)

If you have a problem with my opinions and preferences, then you can die mad about it. Or you can play at your table, and not at mine!


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm suggesting that it isn't and that there are strong limits to the ability of a GM or player to abide by a "no metagaming" rule.   However bad unskillful play by the player may be, the proposed remedy is worse.




I agree, more or less. I don't like the remedy of the DM veto, the declaration "You can't do that." I prefer the remedy of another player asking "Wait, do our characters know - at this point - that thunder damage will be extra effective?" If the barbarian's player responds "No, my character doesn't know, he's making a lucky guess", then I still want the DM to decide what happens *in the fiction* on the basis of whether anyone in town has such scrolls and is willing to sell them (and at what price).



Celebrim said:


> "Let's find a wizard or a sage that might know something about earth elementals and see what we can learn about them."  Now, is this metagaming?  Possibly, but now the player is engaged in a more sophisticated Author stance.  His motivation OOC might be that he wants to get Thunderwave scrolls, but he's offering a plausible in game explanation for his character's actions. Should this be stopped as an act of metagaming? Would this deserve side-eye from his fellow partipants?




If this is metagaming, then it's the kind of metagaming which I consider useful, appropriate and part of a good story. It is functionally equivalent to playing a PC who is cautious and resourceful... which is one of the many possible forms of heroism.

It *might* lead to the purchase of Thunderwave scrolls. It might lead to the DM inventing, on the spot, a new NPC, in the form of a wizard or sage; that new NPC might in time become a recurring character. It might mean that the DM gets to *finally* introduce that librarian NPC which the DM has been *aching* to introduce to the PCs (with a side quest to recover some missing books of arcane lore). It might lead to the discovery that an NPC bought all the Thunderwave scrolls in the city, last week, and also bought some rope, rations and similar adventuring gear - and thus the hint that there's another party, also heading into the same mountains, who now has a head start on the PCs. This range of outcomes, all arising from an IC proposal to do some research, is lush with opportunities, more so than just going directly to "mark off X gold pieces, and add Y scrolls of Thunderwave to your character's inventory".

Another example of Riley-approved metagaming: the PCs meet someone in a tavern who wants to join their party, and the PCs find plausible reasons to welcome that person to their party, even though the PCs don't know that this stranger is the PC of a new player joining the group. If the PCs go through the motions of reasonably wary precautions (membership in a faction such as Order of the Gauntlet, or perhaps asking the newcomer to consent to Detect Thoughts or Zone of Truth), then they're establishing a higher level of IC plausibility, but they're still moving towards the answer of yes. (Depending on the table's convention about PCs with ulterior motives, that is.)



Celebrim said:


> Metagaming isn't always bad. Metagaming by the players is usually the GM's fault. And there are much better ways to deal with a metagaming problem than putting up a proposition filter that amounts to choosing what a PC is going to do.




I agree on the first. As for the second, the IC welcoming of a new PC to the party, on the first session of a new player to the table, isn't the GM's fault, because no error has happened and thus no one is at fault. I agree on the third.

Tangent: could you perhaps recommend to me an article or essay which explains the Author stance and Actor stance, as you are using those terms?


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> I am indeed insisting on roleplaying exactly the way I like to role-play... at a table where, every week, that style is welcomed and encouraged. Last session, I told the DM "I think I know why the bad guys attacked this village, but I don't think my PC has figured it out yet", and the DM gave me a thumbs-up to keep playing accordingly. I had the "respect of the DM and fellow players" *specifically for that DM and those players*. Perhaps the DM and the players at *your* table would have formed a different opinion.
> 
> If I insisted on roleplaying exactly the way I like, at YOUR table, then I might wear out my welcome, and in THAT case, you'd have good reason to bluntly tell me what you think of my style.
> 
> ...



Hmm.  I used to be big about the PC/player knowledge divide, but then I came to the conclusion that this was immature of me and I could make intruguing and challenging ganes without expecting my players to have to pretend they don't know something to preserve the challenge of my games.  Now, I look at situations like the barbarian buying scrolls not as a point where the player has to justify the action but as an opportunity for the player to tell us something about his barbarian and how he knows such things, if the player cares to.  The trick is to not base the narrative weight of your game on not knowing things about the game (like monster stats).  Heck, I'll usually give that stuff away for free.

And, I'll put the narrative weight and depth of my games up against anyone's -- they won't suffer in comparison at all because I don't strictly regulate "metagaming."


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> an opportunity for the player to tell us something about his barbarian and how he knows such things




That sounds fun! Maybe long ago, a druid in her tribe fought earth elementals, evoked a thunderstorm, and won an amazing victory. Maybe there's a tribal folktale or song about that fight, which the barbarian heard as a lullaby. So the barbarian thinks "if I buy scroll and wizard makes thunder, then maybe the spirit of my glorious ancestor will return to re-enact great victory".

Okay, it's a stretch, but it's still an addition to the story, which I find vastly preferable to "uh, I bought these scrolls, which I can't use myself, for some reason completely unrelated to my actual intention". YMMV.


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> without expecting my players to have to pretend they don't know something to preserve the challenge of my games.




It's sticky and uphill for a DM to enforce "no, you don't know that, at least not yet" on determined players. If your D&D players insist on having their PCs invent gunpowder, refine caking and corning gunpowder to propellant grade, invent cannon, and refine those cannon into shoulder-fired flintlock muskets, all in a single year: okay, as DM you give the PCs foes and obstacles which are hard to defeat even with muskets.

As a player, though, I would generally not find those victories satisfying. In D&D, I'd rather win or lose with swords and sorcery, than resort to "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" methods.

IMO the core question - can a DM challenge characters? - hinges on whether the DM has players who want challenges.


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

When it comes to monsters, and spells and magic items, I don't actually have a huge issue with this kind of metagaming generally. First, this is the easiest and most obvious place where experienced players can bridge the player/character knowledge gap, and I'm in favour of that. Second, setting aside listed character skills for a moment, knowledge of monsters and magic represents the kind of professional knowledge one would expect an adventurer to acquire. Our actual game sessions only represent a fraction of a character's in-world social interactions and there are two especially large lacunae - downtime and travel time. In real life, what tends to happen when you put a bunch of people from the same profession in a bar, or on a bus, or in a training session? They tend to talk shop and swap stories. This is an obvious way for an adventurer to have gained the kind of knowledge we're talking about. While this might not fall inside D&D's specific skill mechanic that doesn't necessarily mean it's character inappropriate.

All that said, there are obviously instances where a player can go too far and it can certainly start to take away from a campaign or session - for example when it feels more like rule book reading and zero effort is made to role play the info into the game. That kind of table management is one of the GMs primary jobs though, so I can live with it when problems arise on a case by case basis.


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> It's sticky and uphill for a DM to enforce "no, you don't know that, at least not yet" on determined players. If your D&D players insist on having their PCs invent gunpowder, refine caking and corning gunpowder to propellant grade, invent cannon, and refine those cannon into shoulder-fired flintlock muskets, all in a single year: okay, as DM you give the PCs foes and obstacles which are hard to defeat even with muskets.
> 
> As a player, though, I would generally not find those victories satisfying. In D&D, I'd rather win or lose with swords and sorcery, than resort to "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" methods.
> 
> IMO the core question - can a DM challenge characters? - hinges on whether the DM has players who want challenges.




I don't see the connection between knowing about in-game things like earth elementals to jumping to players introducing without challenge out-of-game knowledge like milled gunpowder.  The firmer is within the scope of the game, the latter is not.  Not to mention that a GM that allows players to dictate that gunpowder is even a thing, or that it's formulation is exactly like the real world's, or that there's no challenge at all in creating it has many, many more problems at their table than metagaming.

As to your core question, if the players don't want challenges, why is there even a game?  However, taking this in the best light, of course the challenges presented in game should align with what the players want to be challenged with.  Else, again, why is there a game?


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## Guest 6801328 (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> I am indeed insisting on roleplaying exactly the way I like to role-play...
> 
> (snip)
> 
> If you have a problem with my opinions and preferences, then you can die mad about it. Or you can play at your table, and not at mine!




That's fine, but do you have to insult people who play a different way?  Can't you just say, "I like to play this way, and like to play with people who share the same preference?"

Why do others have to be "unskilled" and "immature"?


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## 5ekyu (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> When it comes to monsters, and spells and magic items, I don't actually have a huge issue with this kind of metagaming generally. First, this is the easiest and most obvious place where experienced players can bridge the player/character knowledge gap, and I'm in favour of that. Second, setting aside listed character skills for a moment, knowledge of monsters and magic represents the kind of professional knowledge one would expect an adventurer to acquire. Our actual game sessions only represent a fraction of a character's in-world social interactions and there are two especially large lacunae - downtime and travel time. In real life, what tends to happen when you put a bunch of people from the same profession in a bar, or on a bus, or in a training session? They tend to talk shop and swap stories. This is an obvious way for an adventurer to have gained the kind of knowledge we're talking about. While this might not fall inside D&D's specific skill mechanic that doesn't necessarily mean it's character inappropriate.
> 
> All that said, there are obviously instances where a player can go too far and it can certainly start to take away from a campaign or session - for example when it feels more like rule book reading and zero effort is made to role play the info into the game. That kind of table management is one of the GMs primary jobs though, so I can live with it when problems arise on a case by case basis.



Yeah, pretty much.

Not gonna buy into anybody's sense of "mature" this or "narrative weight" but for my worlds it's not uncommon for many of the major traits of creatures to be known. IRL I knew tons of monster lore by ten and also plenty of warnings about IRL dangers. In a fantasy world, likely they would be more similar.

It's not been uncommon for me to pass out stat blocks for foes pre-session, reflecting "common knowledge" or results of fact finding. In some cases, instead of stat blocks they got some useful descriptions. "The mage has been see casting fireball.... and ice storm".

But on top of that are frequent "exceptions exist."

When they were sent to stop hill giants, they were handed stat block for them and their dire wolves. Most fit that, but the leader ddmonic-tainted giant and his alpha wolf were exceptions. 

Some info tho, is not common and so tharsxehen more cases of checks and research come into play.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I don't see the connection between knowing about in-game things like earth elementals to jumping to players introducing without challenge out-of-game knowledge like milled gunpowder.




He's just making a parade-of-horribles argument. Whenever proponents of his style shift from "I just like it this way" to "the other way is wrong", the only way to defend that position as some kind of objective truth is by giving examples of what could theoretically happen in an extreme case.


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> I agree, more or less. I don't like the remedy of the DM veto, the declaration "You can't do that." I prefer the remedy of another player asking "Wait, do our characters know - at this point - that thunder damage will be extra effective?" If the barbarian's player responds "No, my character doesn't know, he's making a lucky guess", then I still want the DM to decide what happens *in the fiction* on the basis of whether anyone in town has such scrolls and is willing to sell them (and at what price).




Sure.  But, on the other hand, I don't expect the DM to decide that no scrolls are available purely on the grounds that a PC wants one.  Fortunately, for me this sort of thing isn't usually a problem, as I have no magic shops to speak of and certainly not ones were arbitrary desirable items are available.  



> If this is metagaming, then it's the kind of metagaming which I consider useful, appropriate and part of a good story. It is functionally equivalent to playing a PC who is cautious and resourceful... which is one of the many possible forms of heroism.




Agreed.  But I've heard of DMs that get upset at this kind of thing because they don't feel that the PC is intelligent or wise enough to be cautious and resourceful, and as such try to put a gate on those decisions because they claim that they don't think the decision is in character for the PC.   Such is the perils of deciding that you have a veto on the player's play of their character - they might as well get up from the table and let you play both sides of the screen.



> Another example of Riley-approved metagaming: the PCs meet someone in a tavern who wants to join their party, and the PCs find plausible reasons to welcome that person to their party, even though the PCs don't know that this stranger is the PC of a new player joining the group. If the PCs go through the motions of reasonably wary precautions (membership in a faction such as Order of the Gauntlet, or perhaps asking the newcomer to consent to Detect Thoughts or Zone of Truth), then they're establishing a higher level of IC plausibility, but they're still moving towards the answer of yes. (Depending on the table's convention about PCs with ulterior motives, that is.)




Yes, this is the iconic example of positive metagaming.  Basically, any time playing your character in a straightforward method might derail everyone's fun, the mature player invents a plausible scene that stays mostly true to the character while maintaining everyone's fun.  This burden falls equally on all the players, so if the Paladin's player is trying to reach a compromise, then the Thief's player should be as well.



> As for the second, the IC welcoming of a new PC to the party, on the first session of a new player to the table, isn't the GM's fault, because no error has happened and thus no one is at fault.




While I agree to some extent, the GM has a responsibility prior to play for making sure that the players have a plausible motivation to work together, and for establishing a suitably compelling hook in the first session.  A GM that leaves all the burden on the player's for coming up with why this group will get together and stay together, and leaves it up to the players to hook themselves isn't doing his job as well as he could.   Still, many groups just deal with the weakness of the hook by handwaving right past the problem, but for the more thespian minded this can be unsatisfying.  Also, I tend to judge a new group by how well they can handle this sort of RP - the group I have the most fond memories of playing with handled the problem of integrating characters with extraordinary gracefulness.  



> Tangent: could you perhaps recommend to me an article or essay which explains the Author stance and Actor stance, as you are using those terms?




I could point you to one, but I couldn't recommend it.   Besides, the concepts are pretty easy.   Briefly, as I use them:

Pawn Stance: The player chooses his propositions entirely according to his goals with no consideration of the character's goals.

Author Stance: The player chooses his propositions according to his own goals, but tries to invent a plausible color for why the character's goals concur with his goals.

Actor Stance: The player chooses his propositions according to what he perceives to be the character's goals based on his understanding of the character's knowledge and personality, even when or especially when those goals might conflict with or sacrifice some of the player's goals.

As I see things, "Pawn Stance" represents immature but not wrong play.  It's a starting point and for some tables a sufficient stance for fun, and in cases where there is no meaningful difference between player and character goals - surviving a combat for example - there is really no difference between Pawn and Actor stances.  Actor stance represents an obvious and intuitive mature form of play, but is not in and of itself a better form of play than Pawn Stance.   The trick and what really separates highly skilled RPers from run of the mill ones, is there ability to recognize when Actor Stance if followed blindly will reduce the fun of the group collectively, and to therefore temporarily switch in a collaborative way to Author Stance to promote everyone's collective fun while still staying in character.   Thus, the player that says, "But I'm just playing my character" regardless of how dysfunctional what he is proposing is, is really no more mature of a player than the player in Pawn Stance and arguably is probably less fun to play with.  Nor is Author Stance inherently superior either, as in my experience a player that stays in Author Stance all the time is just annoying.  What is clever and mature for negotiating a tricky table issue becomes saccharine and groan-worthy if employed in continuous or heavy handed manner.  You'd be better off just using Pawn Stance and not dragging things out and slowing the pace of play down.

There is also "Director Stance" where the player attempts to achieve goals by playing the metagame rather than the game, such as by altering the fiction rather than making a proposition within the fiction.  In most traditional RPGs, "Director Stance" is limited to the GM, but as you may have noted from the thread some participants are advocating for "Director Stance" as a valid stance for the player as well.  In some Indy RPG's, the players have limited resources that they can use to gain temporary rights to "Director Stance" in order to further their interests as a player.  Indy designers have frequently made the claim implicitly or explicitly that games which allow shared access to the director's chair are inherently more mature and sophisticated than those that don't, so the participants in the thread advocating for "Director Stance" in 5e D&D are basically trying to show how in doing so they are playing a more sophisticated game than those of us that don't.   For my part, I've held the position that "Director Stance" isn't inherently more mature than the other stances and that a perquisite for allowing it into a game is in fact having mechanisms for fairly sharing it and limiting access to it.   Beyond that, in my own experience with "Director Stance" in the hands of the players, I tend to find as a player that it doesn't live up to the claims made on the packaging.  Specifically, my goals as a player tend to be that I want to have the experience of being a character in a great story, and "Director Stance" inherently interferes with that experience in a variety of ways.  Games that advocate for "Director Stance" as a tool for the players tend to mistake the production of a transcript for the experience of participating in a story, and at least for me, I find production of a transcript not the same as participating in a story.  Instead, I find that a game that focuses on the production of transcript as the primary artifact of play tend to create the experience of collaborative screenplay writing for the players, and not the experience of being in a story.  There is an inherent loss of emersion that goes with "Director Stance" because you are being taken out of character, and certain aesthetics of play like Challenge are harmed by the ability to employ deus ex machina on your own behalf.  Heck, I'm not even that big of a fan of "Director Stance" in a GM.  Every GM needs a little bit of illusionism and stage craft, but if it becomes obvious you are employing it, then it harms the enjoyment of the players.


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> It's sticky and uphill for a DM to enforce "no, you don't know that, at least not yet" on determined players. If your D&D players insist on having their PCs invent gunpowder, refine caking and corning gunpowder to propellant grade, invent cannon, and refine those cannon into shoulder-fired flintlock muskets, all in a single year: okay, as DM you give the PCs foes and obstacles which are hard to defeat even with muskets.




I have said before that I have no proposition filter on actions declared for OOC reasons.  I never abuse a player for metagaming or using OOC character knowledge, and I tend to believe that if any metagame knowledge is a problem for the game, then that problem was created by the GM.   So, I'm pretty extreme on the end of the spectrum that says, "It's not wrong to metagame."

And I don't think your example with gunpowder and muskets, which is a stock example for why using player knowledge is wrong, is or should be a problem in play.  There are so many obvious solutions to the issue that don't require playing the PC that as an example, I find it pretty hollow.

a) Just because you have the ability to recite things, doesn't mean you have the hand skills.  Players may have a solid understanding of how to create gunpowder (though IME that's really rare), but just because they do doesn't mean the character has the craftsmanship to accomplish the player's propositions.   A player may have a solid idea of how to perform carpentry, but describing how do joinery and actually doing it is like the difference between watching a youtube video and actually doing it.   Anyone that has done home crafts based on watching a youtube video knows that watching the video may help, but it won't make you a master plumber, carpenter, blacksmith or seamstress just having watched a video.   It takes tons of practice, and as such appropriate skill checks can be and ought to be called for.  

b) Just because you have great knowledge of real world physics, doesn't mean that the fantasy world will exactly correspond to the real world.  In a world with magic, four elements, and all the rest, there is no reason to suspect that knowledge of real world chemistry necessarily makes you into a great fantasy alchemist.   Not only may your real world knowledge fail to work in a fantasy world, but it may actually be actively dangerous.   Thus, again, appropriate skill and knowledge checks can and ought to be called for, even if the player has a PhD in chemical engineering.   Rather quickly, you can start undermining the player's expertise by having character knowledge checks inform the player that his perceptions are not correct for the world.   If the player's motivation is a desire to win easily and dominate the game world, he's very likely to lose interest in the project.

c) Building up the infrastructure to produce gunpowder and musketry is in and of itself a potentially interesting campaign, and if the group collectively is interested in this, the simplest thing to do might simply be let them play that campaign and start throwing complications for them to solve.   If the group really is interested in it, then everyone has fun.   And if it is just one player stroking his own ego in a dysfunctional manner, then his spotlight stealing behavior is likely to lead to peer pressure to drop this storyline and just let the "real game" go on.   At that point, the problem is revealed to an OOC character problem, and it's best to not try to deal with player problems IC.

d) In a world with magic in it in which you have full control over the rules of resolution, flintlock musketry is unlikely to be game breaking.  The player not only has to build a character that can build muskets, but which also is skilled in their use, and the result is still not likely to be more powerful than simply building a wizard or other spell-caster.   Nor are the armies of musketeers likely to be all that impressive in a world with wands of fireballs.   You suggest that as a player you would generally not find those victories satisfying, as if in fact going the route of trying to recreate modern technology in a fantasy setting is easy mode.   But I think on the other hand it's likely to prove much harder than just gaining XP and leveling up, and if the motivation of the player was to figure out the "cheat mode" of the game so that he could win without effort, the bigger problem you are likely to have at the table is that the player will be frustrated and angry when his "clever idea" which is anything but clever or creative doesn't lead to the plaudits and respect he was actually seeking.   If the issue is you have a player that wants to "win" and doesn't want to be challenged, then the problem you are going to have is that player hasn't really thought through his plan as much as he thinks he has and then he's going to be angry that you don't just validate that yes he does win.   And fundamentally, that's the real problem with gunpowder.   It doesn't break the game.  But a player whose goal of play is Validation and whose unconscious plan for achieving that is having a GM that just says "Yes" all the time, and which in his mind is forced to concede just how brilliant and unbeatable the player is, is going to be angry when you don't validate him as brilliant all the dang time.


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## Guest 6801328 (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Nor are the armies of musketeers likely to be all that impressive in a world with wands of fireballs.




"...and also roll a saving throw against that fireball for your equipment.  Oh, right!  You are carrying a small keg of gunpowder, aren't you....?"


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> "...and also roll a saving throw against that fireball for your equipment.  Oh, right!  You are carrying a small keg of gunpowder, aren't you....?"



You _were_ carrying a small keg of gunpowder. Now you're a fine red mist. Welcome to Faerun.


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> "...and also roll a saving throw against that fireball for your equipment.  Oh, right!  You are carrying a small keg of gunpowder, aren't you....?"




Indeed.

The first thing that happens in my campaign world whenever some player that thinks they are clever does the clever and creative thing that countless such players have tried in countless games before him is that NPC's laugh at him.

You see, unlike the player or the player's character, the NPC's have ranks in alchemy and knowledge (history) and so forth, and they know just how incredibly stupid this idea is and how disastrously it has failed in the past.   Far from being a novel idea, "firearms" have been invented 3 or 4 times in the past by would be world conquerors (most of them goblins who delight in such things), only to have their efforts end in ridiculous calamity.  Indeed, in learned circles, the names of such would be BBEG's are bywords for folly - figures of comedy rather than figures that inspire terror.  

One of the central tenants of my campaign world is that the PC's are not more clever than NPC's.  Anything that a clever player or PC is likely to think of is likely to be something that some NPC in the 10,000 year written history of the world has also tried.   Quite naturally, the learned alchemists of the world have recognized the potential value of explosives and have spent 1000's of years of collective effort researching practical explosives.  By the time a player proposes this sort of thing, whole libraries of books researching the problem have been written.   And what all that effort has so far discovered is that practical explosives are hard.   The most practical explosives known have a brisance equivalent to blackpowder, but a stability and shelf-life slightly on the touchy side of raw nitroglycerine.  So you can in fact make a bomb, or a grenade, or a firearm.  That's easy, and any master alchemist in a large town in theory could do it (although most of them will refuse to do so because they have an unreasonable attachment to their fingers).  What you can't however do is safely store or transport such an item, especially in large enough quantities to supply an army.  And if you try, the almost inevitable result is that your stockpile of munitions is of greater threat to you than it is to your enemy.  And one wizard on the opposing side with ranged fire spell or a summoned fire elemental, can trigger a chain reaction that will decimate your entire army.  

So sure, you can spend a great deal of resources building up an army of musketeers and grenadiers.  But don't expect to be the first person who has thought of this idea or for it to turn the game into easy mode.  By all means, take some ranks in alchemy and build yourself a bomb or some grenades for your personal use.  I will do nothing to stop you.   Just don't expect this to be cheating.


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Sure.  But, on the other hand, I don't expect the DM to decide that no scrolls are available purely on the grounds that a PC wants one.  Fortunately, for me this sort of thing isn't usually a problem, as I have no magic shops to speak of and certainly not ones were arbitrary desirable items are available.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I understood Director stance to be making choices for the betterment of the fiction, and then retroactively inventing character motivation.  You can use fiction authoring authority from within the other stances (pawn being obvious), so that can't be the defining line.  In Director stance you choose actions that make for a better story, vice following player or character goals.


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> He's just making a parade-of-horribles argument. Whenever proponents of his style shift from "I just like it this way" to "the other way is wrong", the only way to defend that position as some kind of objective truth is by giving examples of what could theoretically happen in an extreme case.



Dude, you just complained about making points in an unnecessarily disparaging manner.  Physician heal thyself!


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> I understood Director stance to be making choices for the betterment of the fiction, and then retroactively inventing character motivation.  You can use fiction authoring authority from within the other stances (pawn being obvious), so that can't be the defining line.  In Director stance you choose actions that make for a better story, vice following player or character goals.




As I use the term, that's Author stance.

The difference between Author and Director, is that in Author stance you make propositions which are based on the fictional positioning.   In Director stance, you out right declare new fictional positioning.   As I define a proposition, it does not let you declare new fictional positioning, but only the intention to perform some action within the capabilities of your character.   Declaring new fictional positioning, such as declaring that the guard is your friend Francis, is not a "proposition" but a "call".   I call out that the hitherto unidentified guard is my friend Francis through some process of play, and then I propose that I greet him.  I could then call out that Francis greets me warmly, but calling that Francis greets me warmly is not a proposition since it isn't about my own character's actions.

I don't understand how you can claim Pawn Stance has fiction authoring authority, or maybe I just don't understand what you mean by that.   A proposition does let you author fiction, in that you adjust the fictional position by saying something like, "I strike the goblin with my sword", which then may result after a fortune test in the goblin's death, changing the fiction.  But this is different than calling out that the goblin is crushed by a falling rock, which authors the fiction much more directly.

I personally feel that Director stance needs to be split into two different stances, one of which involves advancing player goals and another which involves advancing character goals.  I don't think Director's are inherently interested in creating story, or that Director's inherently do create story (much less quality story).  A Director Stance can be assumed for the same reason as a Pawn Stance, simply to "win".

UPDATE:  The canonical definition of "Director Stance" is:

"The player determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters."


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## Guest 6801328 (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Dude, you just complained about making points in an unnecessarily disparaging manner.  Physician heal thyself!




Fair point. 

...AND I think there’s a difference between denigrating someone’s playstyle and calling them out for rhetorical tricks. 

But I could be gentler in doing so.


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## Ovinomancer (May 29, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> As I use the term, that's Author stance.
> 
> The difference between Author and Director, is that in Author stance you make propositions which are based on the fictional positioning.   In Director stance, you out right declare new fictional positioning.   As I define a proposition, it does not let you declare new fictional positioning, but only the intention to perform some action within the capabilities of your character.   Declaring new fictional positioning, such as declaring that the guard is your friend Francis, is not a "proposition" but a "call".   I call out that the hitherto unidentified guard is my friend Francis through some process of play, and then I propose that I greet him.  I could then call out that Francis greets me warmly, but calling that Francis greets me warmly is not a proposition since it isn't about my own character's actions.
> 
> ...



Ah.  I'm experiencing that rare moment when a misunderstanding corrected lessens your appreciation.  Stance theory, with my now corrected understanding, is much less useful as a tool to analyze play.  This is evidenced by the fact that i can play a game with some form of plot point mechanic entirely in pawn stance, except when I use the plot point I'm momentarily in director stance.  This discards useful information about actual play motivations for a shallow description of where a move occurs -- within the character ir without.


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## Celebrim (May 29, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Ah.  I'm experiencing that rare moment when a misunderstanding corrected lessens your appreciation.




I had that experience with pretty much all of The Forge some years ago. 



> This discards useful information about actual play motivations for a shallow description of where a move occurs -- within the character ir without.




Stance does not directly address motivations for play.  In theory GNS as a whole addresses motivations for play, but in my opinion has some huge holes in it.   When I address motivations for play, I use the 'aesthetics of play' terminology.   Stance only addresses the relationship of the player to the character.    In pawn stance, the character is to the player only a playing piece, but the player could still have most any aesthetic of play, including narrative.  Director differs only from pawn stance in that the player treats the entire fiction as if it was his character, and doesn't draw a line between the player character and the setting.   

At The Forge, director was typically treated as if it was inherently the superior and more mature stance.  I tend to treat it as if it was the least useful and least mature stance.   After all, if you watch the play of a group of pre-schoolers, they are really only able to play in director stance.  As the participants in that play mature, eventually the director stance becomes incapable of meeting their maturing aesthetics of play, and unless they evolve a more mature stance most of them will give up their game of make believe.   

Now from the perspective of making Director work, yeah, it probably requires more skill than any other stance.  I wouldn't really want to participate in a game that allowed director stance to players that wasn't composed entirely of participants sophisticated enough in their RP to successfully run an RPG as the GM.   There is just two much that can go wrong with fiat call outs.  I'm interested in playing more with a skilled group, but only because I want to find out whether anything can be achieved with Director that really can't be achieved in other stances.   I'm hoping to have some time to go to a Con, but I don't have a lot of hope that a random group of convention players is high skill.

There is also a problem I have with the canonical definition of the Director stance in that unlike the other stances, it doesn't fully address the player's relationship to the character.  It notes that there is a difference between the other stances and director in that the other three involve delimiting your character and in some fashion playing within the character with varying degrees of RP primacy, by contrast and Director doesn't do that but treats the whole imagined setting as something available for you to play, but to me you could make a Director stance call and be in any other stance.

For example, you manipulate the setting to meet your goal as a game participant, irrespective of any justification for it.  You want the goblin dead, so rocks fall.   This mirrors pawn stance where you offer propositions regardless of whether they make the slightest sense from the perspective of the character's knowledge, stated personality, or goals.  

Or, you manipulate the setting to meet your goal as a game participant, but you try to put a color of verisimilitude or reasonableness to that manipulation.  In other words, you beg for suspension of disbelief which mirrors how you play in Author stance.

Or, you make a call on the setting because you think it is highly realistic, even if in doing so you are potentially thwarting your own goals.  For example, you might call that your character has become sick from ingesting polluted water because you legitimately think that is the sort of thing that should happen, and not because it helps you win or gives you some mechanical benefit or makes for a good story.  This mirrors playing in Actor stance.

So it's possible Director isn't even a stance at all.


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## Chaosmancer (May 29, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Exposition is what happens in a narrative that is analogous to what happens in an RPG when there's a knowledge check.




Sort of? But, while dealing with different types of exposition is important in a novel I don't know what that has to do with players rolling knowledge checks in a DnD game. 

I don't see the connection you are trying to draw here. It feels like talking about athletics checks and you mentioning how Nintendo designed Mario's jump. Yeah, they might be analogous, but it doesn't seem to apply to the discussion. 




iserith said:


> "I'm just not sure if there's a point in continuing this conversation... allow me to continue it."




Sorry, I try not to ignore people's points. So, I end up continuing to post and talk. But, I am tired of retreading the same ground over and over, so I'm going to skip. 





iserith said:


> Players can know whatever they want and establish that their characters think whatever they want. And to be clear, I do understand your claims. It's just that they are not derived from a reading of this game. There's simply no support in _this game_ for your position. Which is not to say you shouldn't play that way. It's just a position that's better suited for a different game.




But you seem to think that "different game" is something like DnD 3.5 or ADnD, or ODnD... none of which had specific rules language about this either. But, the same rules and assumptions were used in later editions, while your style was expected in something like ODnD where player skill was paramount. Before things like arcana and religion were added to the game. These design principles stayed with the game though. 




iserith said:


> Regarding what I bolded above, NO, that is NOT what I am stating. Not only do you appear to conflate "thinking" and "knowing," but you seem to be conflating "action" with "check." I _absolutely_ do not think that in order for the character to know something the player must make a check. Not even a little bit. In order to verify an assumption, the player describes what he or she wants to do to achieve that end. That may or may not involve a check. From the player's perspective, it is always better if it _doesn't_, provided they are shooting for automatic success.




Seriously? That required ALL CAPS. Yes, I am aware of your position on rolling the D20, actions, skills, goal and approach and all that. We've been discussing for over a month, you've mentioned it once or twice. But my statement seems to be good in terms of application. They must describe themselves calling upon their memories or education (which may or may not lead to an intelligence check using arcana proficiency) in order to change from "Well I think this" to "Well I know this". 




iserith said:


> The interesting thing to examine in my view is why you "feel like there should be a check." I submit it is because you learned this behavior from _another_ game where that sort of thinking was more supported than in _this_ game. Again, this isn't a problem on its own. Play how you want. But it's useful as I see it to understand why you choose to play that way so that you can perhaps understand the position of others who don't.




Why do you think that this idea is not supported in 5e? Just because it isn't stated in the rules? There are a lot of things not directly stated in game rules that still apply to those games. Especially in "roleplaying" games where one is supposed to enter into the "role" of someone else. In that case it is generally considered bad form to use knowledge your character would not have or use, since it would break the "role"




Ovinomancer said:


> If I may, at this late juncture...
> 
> This argument is about something that's entirely downstream of the real issue, which isn't being address clearly enough (although [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has touched on it repeatedly):  what a character thinks is irrelevant to the game structure.  The game let's players have the authority to declare actions for their characters.  This is, really, the only authority players have outside of character build (creations and leveling).  What a character thinks is just something the player establishes as color for the action declaration if they care to do so.  So, of course the player has complete authority over what the character thinks, because the rule say that they player has complete authority over what the character tries to do.  You cannot have the latter if you have restrictions on the former.
> 
> ...




See, most players are adults who can handle things without any prompting. But not all players work on the same wavelength. 

In fact, if I am unable to establish any limits, then nothing prevents one player from listing off the entire history of The Xanathar, ruining the potential discovery by players with no knowledge of that history. 

Nothing prevents them from attempting to bring real world knowledge of physics or chemistry into a game where the other players do not want it. 

It is my job as DM to make sure the story we are all building together is fun, interesting, and coherent. That may mean occasionally telling a player that they do not know the location of the Heart of Gith, which could end the war between the Githyanki and Githzerai. In fact, considering the player has never established any connection with the Outer Planes and grew up on a farm, I may wonder why they know about the history of the Gith and their war with the Mindflayers. 

The player may be wanting to share their cool and shiny new knowledge because they read a new book, but it isn't something their character just immediately knows for no reason. 




iserith said:


> I would say that the assertion that an Int-8 character is "shortbus" needs some proof, given bounded accuracy. It sounds like some adjustments in perception or expectations is needed here.
> 
> If that doesn't work, the game does provide a way to address this via the PCs' personal characteristics. Just add a personality trait or flaw to the effect of "I'm about as smart as a bag of hammers and it shows..." then award Inspiration when the players portray that trait or flaw. It stands to reason that a player motivated enough to draw upon information in the Monster Manual to succeed might also be enticed to portray his or her character in a way that will net a further advantage.




Yeah, it will be great for them acting dumb on very rare occasions to get a single inspiration token that they can then use to ensure advantage on a roll when they decide to enact one of their "Devilishly clever plans".


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Fair point.
> 
> ...AND I think there’s a difference between denigrating someone’s playstyle and calling them out for rhetorical tricks.
> 
> But I could be gentler in doing so.




To be fair, you're not wrong about my use of parade-of-horribles. "I invent the musket! From scratch, in under a year!" is a classic cherry-picking example. It does not prove
 that there are only two possible modes of play, one of them mature and the other immature. There are a LOT of mature options.

I spent last weekend at a gaming convention, playing in three games and observing a few others. No two of those games had exactly the same relationship between player initiative and PC initiative. None of them were immature, or at least not "fart noises and cheating dice" levels of immaturity.


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## Tony Vargas (May 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Sort of? But, while dealing with different types of exposition is important in a novel I don't know what that has to do with players rolling knowledge checks in a DnD game. I don't see the connection you are trying to draw here. It feels like talking about athletics checks and you mentioning how Nintendo designed Mario's jump. Yeah, they might be analogous, but it doesn't seem to apply to the discussion.



 My thoughts do go in strange directions, sometimes. 

The point of exposition is to present the audience with information the characters have that they can't be expected to have.  Players, like an audience, do not know everything their characters might or should know, especially when the DM is mak'n stuff up as he goes along (which is not exactly a bad way to run some RPGs). Sometimes the DM should obviously just present the players with that information directly, sometimes he can do it through an NPC, an inscription, or whatever.  It's just like regular authorial exposition in those cases.

But, for whatever reason, we have mechanics available to test whether a PC has a specific bit of knowledge.  If the PC passes the check *ding* he remembers/deduces something (and presumably relays it to his friends) in a fit of exposition.  

Sticklers for continuity might also point out that exposition /establishes/ that the characters know something, at a certain time, and that informs what they do from then on, or that, contrarily, delaying exposition until after actions informed by it are complete is retconning.  The same dissatisfaction such viewers might have with a retcon or twist like that, might be felt by a player or GM confronted with blatant use of 'player knowledge' to drive PC decisions.

I don't think it's a popular way of thinking about RPGs - usually it's realism/"verisimilitude" vs playability or the like - but I often think of RPGs as modeling a genre story, rather than imaginary characters in an imaginary setting that may or may not have a genre story happen to them in the course of play.  So if there is a mechanic designed to impart character knowledge onto players, it should end up providing something like exposition in the narrative.  Including doing so like /good/ exposition, that's not intrusive or pointless, and maybe even enjoyable.   

...the rest of this is more me agreeing with you, if, again, maybe strangely so...



> But you seem to think that "different game" is something like DnD 3.5 or ADnD, or ODnD...



 Which is really a different version of the /same/ game.  It's not unreasonable to expect some continuity from one ed to another - that was a major issue for some players with 4e, for example, and thus exactly the kind of thing 5e has tried to avoid.  Yes, different prior eds handled skills differently from eachother, so 5e needed to be flexible enough in its handling - that is, the Empowered DM's handling - of skills, to let different past-ed styles port over more or less seamlessly.  It's far from perfect, the DM can make it work.




> Why do you think that this idea is not supported in 5e? Just because it isn't stated in the rules? There are a lot of things not directly stated in game rules that still apply to those games.



 This is my sticking point, as well.  The rules in 5e support a lot in the sense of giving the DM plenty of latitude, they don't close off much of the possible universe of play styles.  They don't support much in the sense of forcing you to play one way.  They definitely don't force anyone else to play iserth's way (even though it's a way that works really well with 5e, it's not the only way, and the rules don't prescribe or require it, nor do they proscribe other approaches).


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## Fenris-77 (May 29, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> To be fair, you're not wrong about my use of parade-of-horribles. "I invent the musket! From scratch, in under a year!" is a classic cherry-picking example. It does not prove that there are only two possible modes of play, one of them mature and the other immature. There are a LOT of mature options.
> 
> I spent last weekend at a gaming convention, playing in three games and observing a few others. No two of those games had exactly the same relationship between player initiative and PC initiative. None of them were immature, or at least not "fart noises and cheating dice" levels of immaturity.



How about "I fire a magic missile into the darkness!" levels of immaturity? It's a step up from fart noises I think.


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## Swarmkeeper (May 29, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> How about "I fire a magic missile into the darkness!" levels of immaturity? It's a step up from fart noises I think.




Wasting a spell slot is a good learning experience at our table.  Players need to read their spell descriptions carefully.


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> ODnD where player skill was paramount. Before things like arcana and religion were added to the game.




Cherry-picking example: in “White Plume Mountain”, there is a puzzle involving a series of numbers, and which of those are prime numbers. I pondered the numbers for maybe a second, then stated the correct answer. My PC, a Folk Hero paladin, was unaware of prime numbers (and possibly fuzzy on multiplication tables). White Plume Mountain was written with the assumption of Pawn Stance, so I played accordingly. (See also, this exchange between Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford during the filming of Star Wars. Hamill notices a continuity issue, and wants to fix it; Ford responds gruffly with “Hey, kid, it ain’t that kinda movie.”)



Chaosmancer said:


> In that case it is generally considered bad form to use knowledge your character would not have or use, since it would break the "role"




When did that idea or value emerge? The idea that using my knowledge of prime numbers would be “bad form”? It wasn’t the guiding principle of that puzzle in White Plume Mountain.

D&D developed from putting a name to tokens on a miniatures battlefield: this is a Squad of Archers token, this is a Heroic Warrior token - hey, what if this Heroic Warrior was named Fritz? (Two rounds later: “They've killed Fritz! Those vermin!”) There’s a long, winding road from that level of characterization, to games such as Fiasco or Masks.



Chaosmancer said:


> The player may be wanting to share their cool and shiny new knowledge because they read a new book, but it isn't something their character just immediately knows for no reason.




Thank you for naming that particular player motivation. We’ve discussed the player motivation of “I want an easy victory over earth elementals” as a reason for declaring that the barbarian buys scrolls. The motivation of *showing off lore* is different from power gaming, and therefore responses from the DM - and from fellow players - might differ accordingly. “Shut up, your PC doesn’t know that” might provoke an even worse outcome, when the motivation is impressing one’s fellow players. “I’m glad you enjoyed that book, but look around the table: do your fellow players want spoilers?” might be more effective. (That question cuts to the root of the problem, more directly than a discussion of who in the setting knows about the githyanki.)


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## Riley37 (May 29, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> "...and also roll a saving throw against that fireball for your equipment.  Oh, right!  You are carrying a small keg of gunpowder, aren't you....?"




As an aside, one of my less-favorite rules in 5E, is that the fireball cannot ignite the musketeer's keg if it's "worn or carried". Let's assume the musketeer has set the keg on the ground. THEN we can get the secondary explosion.


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## iserith (May 29, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> But you seem to think that "different game" is something like DnD 3.5 or ADnD, or ODnD... none of which had specific rules language about this either. But, the same rules and assumptions were used in later editions, while your style was expected in something like ODnD where player skill was paramount. Before things like arcana and religion were added to the game. These design principles stayed with the game though.




As I think I mentioned, I'd characterize some of your positions and preferences as being rooted in D&D 3.Xe and/or D&D 4e. I think you've mentioned playing those games before, so this makes perfect sense. My "style" is based on the game system. You would notice my "style" changes when I run and play D&D 4e. Just like it changes when I run and play Dungeon World. That's my point here: I don't have one "style" that applies to multiple games. I don't think that's a good idea. My "style" is derived from the rules of the specific game I'm playing.



Chaosmancer said:


> Seriously? That required ALL CAPS. Yes, I am aware of your position on rolling the D20, actions, skills, goal and approach and all that. We've been discussing for over a month, you've mentioned it once or twice. But my statement seems to be good in terms of application. They must describe themselves calling upon their memories or education (which may or may not lead to an intelligence check using arcana proficiency) in order to change from "Well I think this" to "Well I know this".




If you are aware of my position and then misstate it, then a reasonable conclusion is that you are doing so purposefully. After all, we've been discussing this for over a month and I've mentioned it once or twice, as you say. Yet there you are, misstating my position. What's the appropriate response to someone who knows what you're saying and then chooses to misstate it?



Chaosmancer said:


> Why do you think that this idea is not supported in 5e? Just because it isn't stated in the rules?




Yes. Do you care that what you do is or isn't in the rules? If you do, why? If you don't, then good.



Chaosmancer said:


> There are a lot of things not directly stated in game rules that still apply to those games. Especially in "roleplaying" games where one is supposed to enter into the "role" of someone else. In that case it is generally considered bad form to use knowledge your character would not have or use, since it would break the "role"




"Roleplaying" is defined in the D&D 5e rules. In that same section, it says the player determines how the character acts, thinks, and what it says. There is nothing in the game about it being "bad form to use knowledge your character would not have or use." That is something you got from another game or from your group's culture. At best, the section in the DMG on "metagame thinking" suggests you should think as your character might think so as to avoid dying needlessly or wasting valuable game time because of your bad assumptions. Any such prohibition on using "knowledge your character would not have" has to exist at the level of what the DMG calls "table rules," which vary by group.

Now, I'm pretty sure if we crack open a D&D 3.Xe PHB or DMG, it does support your position on this issue. So when playing that game without any table rules to the contrary, I'd play like you play. I can max out all my skill ranks in Knowledge skills and then ask to make checks to see if my subsequent action declarations will be seen as valid by the DM.



Chaosmancer said:


> Yeah, it will be great for them acting dumb on very rare occasions to get a single inspiration token that they can then use to ensure advantage on a roll when they decide to enact one of their "Devilishly clever plans".




I agree, that would be pretty fun, which is why I suggested it.


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## Riley37 (May 30, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> There are so many obvious solutions to the issue that don't require playing the PC that as an example, I find it pretty hollow.




Indeed. In your scenario of the players choosing “let’s invent muskets!” as a campaign objective, and a DM interested in running that campaign, I’d recommend the following as background reading to the DM:
(1) Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”. The protagonist succeeds - at some levels and to some extent, but not in all his goals. He’s got the hands-on experience, as a fire-arms factory foreman and he develops the in-setting time and resources to set up the necessary production chains.
(2) Piper’s “Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen”. Greater success, with different social commentary.
(3) Poul Anderson’s “The Man Who Came Early”, which demonstrates, as a counterpoint, ways in which such attempts could fail disastrously (with technologies other than gunpowder).
(4) Stephen Stirling’s “The Reformer” dives deep into many of the problems which one might face, along the way, including social (such as what happens when a jealous noble decides to thwart the upstart who's suddenly become so popular with the King).



Celebrim said:


> But a player whose goal of play is Validation and whose unconscious plan for achieving that is having a GM that just says "Yes" all the time, and which in his mind is forced to concede just how brilliant and unbeatable the player is, is going to be angry when you don't validate him as brilliant all the dang time.




Yes. THAT is the core of the play style which I consider unskilled and immature, now that you've handed me a low-hanging, easily-skewered version. Anyways, I agree with you, that this is a problem which is not best solved by the DM responding "Your PC doesn't know that".


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## Tony Vargas (May 30, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> When did that idea or value emerge? The idea that using my knowledge of prime numbers would be “bad form”?



 The idea that any "player knowledge" (and I recall people spitting it out like a curse, that way, back in the day) would be bad form was already familiar when I was still the annoying youngest kid at the table, c1981 (probably was in '80, too, but I was playing with other annoying kids my own age, and we hadn't a clue what we were doing).  
Prettymuch as soon as people started thinking of it as a Role Playing Game rather than "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper & Pencil & Miniature Figures."  It was a 180 from the Gygaxian ideal of 'skilled play,' still apparently expected in the Tournaments of the day (of which I went to exactly one and found it awful, for the record), and quite popular with some groups, to this very day.

Of course, that was in one region, limited to the radius a kid's bicycle could reach.




Edit:  Now that I think of it, the idea might have been broached in Out on a Limb, too, or in some TD editorial, around that time.  Not at all certain.


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## Riley37 (May 30, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> when I was still the annoying youngest kid at the table, c1981




In 1981 or 1982, at age 14 or so, I started a group using "The Fantasy Trip", in which PCs allocate stats, then choose skills up to the limit of their INT. When I handed off the role of DM, I wrote a PC with lots of INT, so that my PC could have all the major lore-related skills, and thus I could *in character* reasonably draw on my extensive knowledge of the setting. I named that PC "Loremaster Chester", riffing off a character in the Niven and Barnes novel "Dream Park". Chester wasn't particularly effective in combat, with neither high STR/DEX, nor spellcasting to make good use of high INT. It just seemed narratively necessary, since I was the only player who'd read the setting book (such as it was) (not that the next DM actually drew much on that book for lore).

So yeah, sometime between 1974 and 1981, a schism had developed (or was developing?) between gamers who preferred solving prime number puzzles in Pawn Stance, and gamers who preferred actor stance.


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## Celebrim (May 30, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> So yeah, sometime between 1974 and 1981, a schism had developed (or was developing?) between gamers who preferred solving prime number puzzles in Pawn Stance, and gamers who preferred actor stance.




It was a pretty early division.  At the time, they wouldn't have used the terminology.  They would have distinguished between games that described characters in terms of "what they can do" versus games that described characters in terms of "who they are".   And very likely they would have described the problem with player knowledge as it being "unrealistic" because back then, everything that was a problem was perceived as a problem with a lack of "realism" and a game that enforced "realism" on the play and resolution was perceived as being the cure all for all problems - whether poor role-playing or table arguments or fun.

 They probably had other terminology that I'm not familiar with, but there was definitely a schism between role-playing as played by the wargamers and role-playing as played by the thespians that developed early one.


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## Chaosmancer (May 30, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Cherry-picking example: in “White Plume Mountain”, there is a puzzle involving a series of numbers, and which of those are prime numbers. I pondered the numbers for maybe a second, then stated the correct answer. My PC, a Folk Hero paladin, was unaware of prime numbers (and possibly fuzzy on multiplication tables). White Plume Mountain was written with the assumption of Pawn Stance, so I played accordingly. (See also, this exchange between Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford during the filming of Star Wars. Hamill notices a continuity issue, and wants to fix it; Ford responds gruffly with “Hey, kid, it ain’t that kinda movie.”)
> 
> When did that idea or value emerge? The idea that using my knowledge of prime numbers would be “bad form”? It wasn’t the guiding principle of that puzzle in White Plume Mountain.
> 
> D&D developed from putting a name to tokens on a miniatures battlefield: this is a Squad of Archers token, this is a Heroic Warrior token - hey, what if this Heroic Warrior was named Fritz? (Two rounds later: “They've killed Fritz! Those vermin!”) There’s a long, winding road from that level of characterization, to games such as Fiasco or Masks.




You want to disprove my point, but you are actually proving it. White Plume Mountain is an old module, published in 1979 by TSR in an era where they expected player skill and knowledge to be highlighted and used. The same with The Tomb of Horrors, it is designed for the players to check everything and the characters are just the board pieces they are using to interact with the Tomb. 

It has been forty years since then. The game has evolved, and this applies to trap design as much as it does to player interactions. We've been down the long, winding road, I don't understand why we what to pretend like modern DnD is the same as it used to be. 



Riley37 said:


> Thank you for naming that particular player motivation. We’ve discussed the player motivation of “I want an easy victory over earth elementals” as a reason for declaring that the barbarian buys scrolls. The motivation of *showing off lore* is different from power gaming, and therefore responses from the DM - and from fellow players - might differ accordingly. “Shut up, your PC doesn’t know that” might provoke an even worse outcome, when the motivation is impressing one’s fellow players. “I’m glad you enjoyed that book, but look around the table: do your fellow players want spoilers?” might be more effective. (That question cuts to the root of the problem, more directly than a discussion of who in the setting knows about the githyanki.)




Yes, you should always be polite and understand when talking to other people. 

At least face to face, it gets harder and harder to do that over the internet. 




iserith said:


> As I think I mentioned, I'd characterize some of your positions and preferences as  being rooted in D&D 3.Xe and/or D&D 4e. I think you've mentioned playing those games before, so this makes perfect sense. My "style" is based on the game system. You would notice my "style" changes when I run and play D&D 4e. Just like it changes when I run and play Dungeon World. That's my point here: I don't have one "style" that applies to multiple games. I don't think that's a good idea. My "style" is derived from the rules of the specific game I'm playing.




I've actually never played 3.5 beyond a single starter set adventure. Had the rulebooks and read them for a while, but no one ever wanted to play after that first game. We talked about playing, just never did. 

Played 4e once and ran it once, and I've been playing 5e for years. 

So, I guess I was just corrupted by the one game of 4e I played and it taught me all those 3.5 -isms that have rooted my games. 




iserith said:


> If you are aware of my position and then misstate it, then a reasonable conclusion is that you are doing so purposefully. After all, we've been discussing this for over a month and I've mentioned it once or twice, as you say. Yet there you are, misstating my position. What's the appropriate response to someone who knows what you're saying and then chooses to misstate it?




I'd hope you would understand that after reading pages and pages to catch up and then writing three to four pages worth of response on word to copy and paste back into ENworld that I might take the occasional shortcut in formulating a response. I mean, it is rather annoying to have to state things like "an intelligence check using Arcana Proficiency" instead of just saying "an Arcana check" and then having to remember to preface that with "a player will declare an action such as thinking back to their education as a wizard to recall the effect thunder magic has on earth elementals, then the DM will determine if there is a chance for success, a chance for failure, and a meaningful consequence for failure and then only after that might they call for a d20 to be rolled, which a player should try and avoid." 

And doing that every single time UNLESS I WANT ALL CAPS FURY DIRECTED AT MISCHARACTERIZING YOUR POSITION. 

It does get a little tedious after a month. 




iserith said:


> "Roleplaying" is defined in the D&D 5e rules. In that same section, it says the player determines how the character acts, thinks, and what it says. There is nothing in the game about it being "bad form to use knowledge your character would not have or use." That is something you got from another game or from your group's culture. At best, the section in the DMG on "metagame thinking" suggests you should think as your character might think so as to avoid dying needlessly or wasting valuable game time because of your bad assumptions. Any such prohibition on using "knowledge your character would not have" has to exist at the level of what the DMG calls "table rules," which vary by group.
> 
> Now, I'm pretty sure if we crack open a D&D 3.Xe PHB or DMG, it does support your position on this issue. So when playing that game without any table rules to the contrary, I'd play like you play. I can max out all my skill ranks in Knowledge skills and then ask to make checks to see if my subsequent action declarations will be seen as valid by the DM.




You know what, fine. Let me dust off that 3.5 PHB I buried. 

Let us see here, pg 4 "The Core Mechanics: Whenever you attempt an action that has some chance of failure, you roll a twenty-sided die (d20). To determine if your character succeeds at a task (such as attacking a monster or using a skill), you do this:" It then lists out roll, add, check against DC and explains that meeting or beating the DC means you succeed and rolling below it means failing. 

Maybe in this part on pg 5, What Characters Can Do "A character can try to do anything you can imagine, just as long as it fits the scene the DM describes. Depending on the situation your character might want to listen at a door, search an area, bargain with a shopkeeper, talk to an ally, jump across a pit, move, use an item, or attack an opponent. Characters accomplish tasks by making skill checks, ability checks, or attack rolls, using the core mechanic" This must be the rule you are looking for right? After all, it says character accomplish tasks and then give a list... though the first quote also says you only roll when there is a chance of failure. Hmm. I'll keep digging around. 

The Player's Role? "As a player, you use this handbook to create and run a character. Your character is an adventurer, part of a team that regularly delves into dungeons and battles monsters. Play where everyone feels comfortable and there's a place to set ....[List of potential supplies]... and character sheets. The DM sets each scene and describes the action. It's your job to decide what your character is like, how he or she relates to the other adventurers, and act accordingly. You can play as... [another list, they loved listing different archetypes in this book]... With your character in mind, respond to each situation as it comes up. Sometimes combat is called for, but other situations might be solved through magic, negotiation, or judicious skill use." 

Is this the rule that says players shouldn't use out of character knowledge in 3.5? It sounds like it, after all it is calling for players to play with their character in mind, to keep their character in mind when reacting. Of course, in 5e, there is an entire section of the book dedicated to player's backstories and personalities. So, while the rules never directly state you should keep your character in mind while responding to situations... it seems kind of heavily implied doesn't it? Your background and personality get their own chapter in 5e, while 3.5 they get a single paragraph each, with multiple pages written about the gods of greyhawk and the alignment system. 

But, this isn't about personality, this is about using out-of-character knowledge. I doubt I'll find it in the races or classes section, so let us skip to skills. Surely if it is anywhere, it will be there right? 

Well, what do you know, a whole sidebar about it. "It's pretty simple to measure a character's knowledge of things the player doesn't know. That's what a Knowledge skill check represents-for instance, the player of a character with many ranks in Knowledge (geography) isn't required to memorize all the geographical data about the campaign world to use his character's skill ranks. The opposite case, however, is harder to adjudicate cleanly. What happens when a player knows something that his or her character does not have any reason to know? For instance, while most veteran players know the black dragon breathes acid, it's entirely likely that most inexperienced characters don't know that fact. Generally speaking, it's impossible to separate completely your personal knowledge (also called player knowledge) from your character's knowledge. Ultimately, the decision on how (or if) to divide player knowledge from character knowledge must be made between the players and the DM. Some DMs encourage knowledgeable players to use their experience to help their character's succeed. Other prefer that characters display only the knowledge represented by their skill ranks and other game statistics. Most fall somewhere between those two extremes. If in doubt, ask your DM how he or she prefers to handle such situations. The Dungeon Master's Guide has more information on this topic."

So, I guess that is the final verdict. I was corrupted by the sidebar in the 3.5 PHB that said that is was up to the DM whether or not players should use out of character knowledge. Wait, no, I was probably lured in by homebrew table cultures of people in my area to think that using out of character knowledge was discouraged. 

I mean, 3.5 said either way is fine, and 5e doesn't even talk about it at all except in that section where they talk to DMs about how they might want to handle this exact issue. The rules in these two games are just so entirely different, I'm shocked I got them so mixed up.


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## iserith (May 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> I've actually never played 3.5 beyond a single starter set adventure. Had the rulebooks and read them for a while, but no one ever wanted to play after that first game. We talked about playing, just never did.
> 
> Played 4e once and ran it once, and I've been playing 5e for years.
> 
> So, I guess I was just corrupted by the one game of 4e I played and it taught me all those 3.5 -isms that have rooted my games.




Yeah, or the culture of the group in which you play.



Chaosmancer said:


> I'd hope you would understand that after reading pages and pages to catch up and then writing three to four pages worth of response on word to copy and paste back into ENworld that I might take the occasional shortcut in formulating a response. I mean, it is rather annoying to have to state things like "an intelligence check using Arcana Proficiency" instead of just saying "an Arcana check" and then having to remember to preface that with "a player will declare an action such as thinking back to their education as a wizard to recall the effect thunder magic has on earth elementals, then the DM will determine if there is a chance for success, a chance for failure, and a meaningful consequence for failure and then only after that might they call for a d20 to be rolled, which a player should try and avoid."
> 
> And doing that every single time UNLESS I WANT ALL CAPS FURY DIRECTED AT MISCHARACTERIZING YOUR POSITION.
> 
> It does get a little tedious after a month.




Keep it up and I'll bring out the exclamation points.

But seriously, I don't mind shortcuts. I do mind it if the shortcut you chose to characterize my position isn't actually my position.



Chaosmancer said:


> You know what, fine. Let me dust off that 3.5 PHB I buried.
> 
> Let us see here, pg 4 "The Core Mechanics: Whenever you attempt an action that has some chance of failure, you roll a twenty-sided die (d20). To determine if your character succeeds at a task (such as attacking a monster or using a skill), you do this:" It then lists out roll, add, check against DC and explains that meeting or beating the DC means you succeed and rolling below it means failing.
> 
> ...




Also, D&D 3.Xe DMG, page 11: "Any time the players base their characters' actions on logic that depends on the fact that they're playing a game, they're using metagame thinking. This behavior should always be discouraged, because it detracts from real roleplaying and spoils the suspension of disbelief."

I love the bit about "real roleplaying."


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## Riley37 (May 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> You want to disprove my point, but you are actually proving it.




No, I don't want to disprove your point. I don't know what your point is. Perhaps you're confusing me with some other participant, or perhaps you're looking for a foe to vanquish?

Are you perhaps arguing that the difference between "play your PC as a pawn" and "play your PC as a character" is edition-specific? Are you arguing that it isn't? I can't tell!

Are you taking a position on pawn stance versus actor stance in games other than D&D, such as Fantasy Hero, Runequest, Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, Fall of Magic, Warhammer, Car Wars, and Global Thermonuclear War?


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## 5ekyu (May 30, 2019)

[MENTION=6786839]Riley37[/MENTION]
"When did that idea or value emerge? The idea that using my knowledge of prime numbers would be “bad form”? It wasn’t the guiding principle of that puzzle in White Plume Mountain."

You followed this up in other posts but to add my thoughts and recollections...

Others have noted back in ye olde days when Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine put forth guidelines for submissions and the like, they had at times expressed preference to having the modules, segments etc that "challenged the character" as opposed to "challenge the player." It emphasize putting the charspacter abilities at the heart of the chsllenge over the player's knowledge of real world things. So, unless the classes and chargen involved some charscters having "math theory" and others not, an example where the key to success was a simple "prime numbers" derived answer would not be preferred. 

Another type of example would be the following " puzzle
Tiles with pairs of numbers carved in - indications three fails is bad, very bad.
First tile (6,3)
Second Tile (12,6)
Third tile (9, 4)

Mystery/puzzle tile (7,?)

The correct answer would be 5! But 9nly if you knew how to "read modern english" would that be obvious as the second number is the number of letter in the modern English spelling of the first number. 

That puzzle makes little sense " in character" in a fantasy world not set in times using modern english - or even regions where today modern English is not the language.

If the puzzle had been for a campaign instead it could use names of historical dwarven leaders and numbers equating to the pips on their rank insignia... then that can combine character knowledge of dwarven history and/or player- knowledge of such lore that had been previously introduced. 

As for White Plume mountain iirc it was a convention competition thing firdt ... it bears noting that the "convention" contests modules were designed to be scored "competitive play" between groups and so they tend to be structured into series of quick scorable tests loosely tied together with zero expectation of prior lore or play history - often with pre-gens for PCs. 

As such, "player tests and puzzles" fit that set of "design intents" for the quite well. Obviously, those were not exclusively used there - but it did fit the bill far more than it did the more "part of an actual ongoing csmpaign" design goals for the non-convention-competition modules and dungeons.


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## Fenris-77 (May 30, 2019)

Chaosmancer said:


> Assertion 1: Ultimately, the decision on how (or if) to divide player knowledge from character knowledge must be *made between the players and the DM*.
> 
> Assertion 2: the sidebar in the 3.5 PHB that said that is was *up to the DM* whether or not players should use out of character knowledge.



I would submit that the second assertion does not follow from the first. The idea is negotiation not dictation. This is something that is unique to every game and would ideally be decided in session zero (and it exactly the kind of thing that mitigates for having a session zero in the first place). The whole issue is far more complicated than "should" anyway, a fact that is highlighted in your rule book quote just slightly up from my little snippet quoted here. Without leveling a value judgement of any kind, I think your reading of the rules passage you quoted is narrow and overly binary. Whether that was on purpose and for rhetorical effect I have no idea.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 1, 2019)

Fenris-77 said:


> "up to the DM whether or not players should use out of character knowledge."
> The idea is negotiation not dictation.



 Think of it as negotiation from a position of strength.


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