D&D 5E Gaming session lessons: why moving slow is important all the time, and the kid learns kiting

The son's first D&D lesson learned was never trust kobolds.

iserith said:

As burrowing monsters, it's probably fair to say that the ground is providing them the fictional context to justify a Dexterity (Stealth) check to hide.

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Agreed. I was more asking the question for monsters in general.

iserith said:

It is exceedingly easy to justify how and why a monster might be hiding and waiting in ambush, especially a "lurker in the earth" like an ankheg with its tremorsense and a party bumbling headlong into its territory at normal pace with feet pounding the ground all the way. Other monsters could similarly be given fictional justification to be in the position to surprise adventurers. Fiction is easy to come up with.

However, my position is that it is not a fair challenge (and is fake difficulty) when the DM fails to fictionally telegraph the threat in a way that provides an opportunity for the players to discern that there is some threat in the area and that caution is warranted.

As I mentioned above, I would have described collapsed earthen tunnels, a husk of molted chitin, a partially eaten orc in a puddle of acrid bile, or the like. This would encourage the players to engage with the exploration pillar of the game - check out the tunnels, the husk, the corpse - the investigation of which may allow them to make deductions about threats in the area based on what they learn (with or without ability checks depending on the uncertainty or certainty of their stated actions). Based on their findings, they might opt to be more cautious and slow their pace. Or they might ignore that telegraphing or make the wrong deductions and carry on. Or they might decide to haul ass away from the area.

The key thing here is that the DM created an opportunity to interact with the environment and for the players to make meaningful decisions about what to do. The ankhegs might still get the drop on the PCs even in this scenario depending on what the players say they want to do, but at least they had a chance to avoid or prepare for the danger. It turns a potential "gotcha" into a scene that builds the tension and allows for meaningful decisions.

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Again, agreed.

iserith said:

Now, the OP seems to not do this (or at least not all the time as I would), relying upon meta communication (if you will) to warn players that they should be more cautious. The player skill then becomes reading your DM and taking action accordingly. That's fair enough if that's how they normally do things at that table. It's just not what I'd do.

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Thanks for your input here. We seem to have four basic solutions here so far:

1) The OPs. If you don't tell me, too bad. PC Passive Perception vs. monster Stealth.

2) Mine. I screwed up and did not give you enough clues, so Active Perception vs. lowest Passive Stealth for both sides (i.e. some chance for one or more creatures from both sides to act in a surprise round).

3) The PHB. Neither side is surprised since neither side was actively hiding.

4) Yours. I give out clues and if the players understand my clues, then they get chances to make decisions before initiative is rolled and surprise is determined based on those decisions and the normal rules.

I like your way and have used it in the past, I just think that with all that is going on during a game, I (as an old DM who forgets a lot of stuff) will often forget to do that and hence, I rely on the variability of the dice to fix my oops. I also have a Cleric PC in the group who has the Alert feat, so my way works good for her because there will be more encounters with at least some form of surprise. I can also understand that a given player from your table might wonder why I am not giving the PCs enough information (in his mind) to interact with the environment (i.e. why am I not foreshadowing an encounter?) if your player was to play at my game.

Clarification:

Point of fact, when an ankheg is hunting, it does in fact just sit there waiting for something to come by. Not only does it say that explicitly, but that's I've always played them. No different than an ant lion in real life. This isn't an orc, or chimera, or any other surface creature that was just sitting there. This was a burrowing creature, and thus since the party declared that they are just walking along casually, I used their passive perception against the ankheg's stealth. Exactly what passive perception is for.

Re: narrative signs, I think it's important to remember that they were in an alien environment they had never been in before. This was a giant subterranean cavern miles wide, complete with luminescent forests, mushroom forests 30ft high, rivers of quicksilver, etc. All of this was described in detail to the PCs as they traveled. When everything is brand new and unusual? You're not going to catch some sort of trail sign unless you're looking for it. And they weren't.

I'm getting the feeling that either you're not translating well to us how you winked and raised an eyebrow at the actions of the PCs, or you just went BAM! Surprise monsters! I'm not sure if your questions to the party are common at your table a lead in to "you need to be paying extra careful attention to stuff now" and if they are then its on your players to learn how the DM plays (if you play in a sane, trackable manner of course). If it's not, I'll be honest, I usually say something other than "are you proceeding?" in order to get player attention that they might want to, in the words of Scar, BE PREPARED! Because if I throw Illidan at them without warning and say "You are not prepared!" well I kinda look like a jerk.

From your presentation, while this underground world was interesting I do not feel a sense of danger from it at all. There's nothing about your description that says to me: "I should be extra careful and on my guard here." That's a key element to slow down the party. It needs to be obvious that the area is dangerous, even if not all of the dangers are obvious, just that the potential for danger is very real. If your party is walking through a park filled with adorable children, kindly old ladies and then SUDDENLY ANKHEG! That's poor presentation (unless you're running a very specific sort of game) but in most cases areas that do not give off any hint of danger do not cause players to prepare.

While in the gnome village before heading out, the major there warned them many times that Felk Mor was extremely dangerous, describing demons, trolls, and other unique monsters. The party had fair warning that venturing out wasn't like a park.

And even if they hadn't been warned, this is Dungeons and Dragons lol. You don't just venture forth into the Underdark willy nilly So I asked them a few times how they were moving and progressing as they were traveling, emphasizing pace. If they weren't paying extra attention? I'm afraid that's on them.

KarinsDad said:

4) Yours. I give out clues and if the players understand my clues, then they get chances to make decisions before initiative is rolled and surprise is determined based on those decisions and the normal rules.

I like your way and have used it in the past, I just think that with all that is going on during a game, I (as an old DM who forgets a lot of stuff) will often forget to do that and hence, I rely on the variability of the dice to fix my oops. I also have a Cleric PC in the group who has the Alert feat, so my way works good for her because there will be more encounters with at least some form of surprise. I can also understand that a given player from your table might wonder why I am not giving the PCs enough information (in his mind) to interact with the environment (i.e. why am I not foreshadowing an encounter?) if your player was to play at my game.

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Thanks for the feedback. To me, it's easy to remember because I have a relentless focus on the basic conversation of the game (Basic Rules, page 3). The first step is that the DM describes the environment. Without that context, the players cannot describe what they want to do meaningfully. It ends up being just procedural stuff - fighter in the front, secondary tanky guy in the back, squishies in the middle, slow pace if we're not in a hurry, ten foot pole engaged, check every door or chest for traps, listen at doors, and so on. To me, that's not meaningful - that's rote memorization for the purpose of failure mitigation.

As well, I don't use passive checks in most of my games. I think that simply comparing two numbers to each other and then hitting the PCs with a surprise attack is "fake difficulty" in that the outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. To be fair, the passive check does represent the average result of performing a task repeatedly - in this case, "keeping an eye out for hidden threats." But given that there are only a few things that will cause you to be unable to do this (see "Other Activities," Basic Rules, page 65), most of which won't see play, it kicks most of the decision-making back to character creation alone, encouraging players to pump Perception rather than interact with the game environment in a meaningful and interesting way. Surprise does still happen in this approach; however, it's not presented or received as a "gotcha" situation. The players had a real opportunity to take action before the threat is revealed, even if they botch the job (or fail to take action at all).

I think it's nice that the PCs weren't living in a constant state of fear, even if they should have been. I wish I could go back to those days when establishing walking order was more about who your character was going to give a flat-tire to than it was about defending against possible ambushes.

Meta or not, the signs of danger were there. If you're going to live fast and loose in a dungeon, you gotta learn to add the clause "Oh, and I'm looking for any signs that might indicate a threat," so as to trigger the narrative before the ambush. Of course there needs to be false alarms, or else what's the point?

iserith said:

Thanks for the feedback. To me, it's easy to remember because I have a relentless focus on the basic conversation of the game (Basic Rules, page 3). The first step is that the DM describes the environment. Without that context, the players cannot describe what they want to do meaningfully. It ends up being just procedural stuff - fighter in the front, secondary tanky guy in the back, squishies in the middle, slow pace if we're not in a hurry, ten foot pole engaged, check every door or chest for traps, listen at doors, and so on. To me, that's not meaningful - that's rote memorization for the purpose of failure mitigation.

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Well, I do describe the environments. I just might not necessarily do it with the level of foreshadowing that you might. Also, I definitely understand the concept of:

DM: "You have been slogging through the swamp for three days. You see a dead animal carcass, just like the early dozen or so carcasses that you have seen before. What do you do?"

as some DMs thinking that this is too much of a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" that something special is going on at this location and giving the player a little bit of metaknowledge that they should not have. In other words, if the PCs had already encountered a dozen (or even hundreds of) carcasses in the swamp, and precautions that they took the first few times are not resulting in encounters, wouldn't they eventually come to think that the sign of a carcass rarely means an encounter?

iserith said:

As well, I don't use passive checks in most of my games. I think that simply comparing two numbers to each other and then hitting the PCs with a surprise attack is "fake difficulty" in that the outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. To be fair, the passive check does represent the average result of performing a task repeatedly - in this case, "keeping an eye out for hidden threats." But given that there are only a few things that will cause you to be unable to do this (see "Other Activities," Basic Rules, page 65), most of which won't see play, it kicks most of the decision-making back to character creation alone, encouraging players to pump Perception rather than interact with the game environment in a meaningful and interesting way. Surprise does still happen in this approach; however, it's not presented or received as a "gotcha" situation. The players had a real opportunity to take action before the threat is revealed, even if they botch the job (or fail to take action at all).

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I do not disagree. And I rarely use passive perception or passive insight myself. The reason for the "passive stealth" houserule of mine is that I do not want to roll 5 PC active perceptions against 4 NPC active stealths, and 4 NPC active perceptions against 5 PC active stealths. That's a lot of rolling.

Nor do I want encounters to just be about:

Player 1: "The DM opened his mouth and described an environment. Everyone be alert."

Although my system is not perfect, it does avoid that issue a bit. And if I combine it with some foreshadowing (when I remember to do so), the players do not get into this mode of "hey guys, something is about to happen" because sometimes, encounters just spring up on them and sometimes, I'm putting out a lot of detail for the environment which may or may not result in an encounter.

But, I don't think that the DM should go beyond a general description and into a lot of detail for overland travel encounters. If monsters are hiding, PCs really shouldn't get a chance to do something out of the ordinary. Describing an environment, then asking what the PCs are doing results in "metagame decision making" instead of "fake difficulty".

But I definitely get your point.

KarinsDad said:

Well, I do describe the environments. I just might not necessarily do it with the level of foreshadowing that you might. Also, I definitely understand the concept of:

DM: "You have been slogging through the swamp for three days. You see a dead animal carcass, just like the early dozen or so carcasses that you have seen before. What do you do?"

as some DMs thinking that this is too much of a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" that something special is going on at this location and giving the player a little bit of metaknowledge that they should not have. In other words, if the PCs had already encountered a dozen (or even hundreds of) carcasses in the swamp, and precautions that they took the first few times are not resulting in encounters, wouldn't they eventually come to think that the sign of a carcass rarely means an encounter?

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I like the foreshadowing because it creates (good) tension and allows players to put two and two together over time. In my experience, this creates a greater sense of satisfaction in the players.

Your example above is not something I would consider a good practice. If it's no different than anything else they've already come across, then it's simply not notable. I describe things that are notable with the assumption of reasonable competence on the part of the adventurers. Perhaps instead that pile of carcasses is significantly larger than what they've seen before or more thoroughly picked clean or suspiciously free of any kind of putrid smell or there's a large four-toed footprint in the mud near it, partially filling with water. Now, "What do you do?" There may be no encounter here whatsoever. It might simply be an opportunity to explore.

KarinsDad said:

I do not disagree. And I rarely use passive perception or passive insight myself. The reason for the "passive stealth" houserule of mine is that I do not want to roll 5 PC active perceptions against 4 NPC active stealths, and 4 NPC active perceptions against 5 PC active stealths. That's a lot of rolling.

Nor do I want encounters to just be about:

Player 1: "The DM opened his mouth and described an environment. Everyone be alert."

Although my system is not perfect, it does avoid that issue a bit. And if I combine it with some foreshadowing (when I remember to do so), the players do not get into this mode of "hey guys, something is about to happen" because sometimes, encounters just spring up on them and sometimes, I'm putting out a lot of detail for the environment which may or may not result in an encounter.

But, I don't think that the DM should go beyond a general description and into a lot of detail for overland travel encounters. If monsters are hiding, PCs really shouldn't get a chance to do something out of the ordinary. Describing an environment, then asking what the PCs are doing results in "metagame decision making" instead of "fake difficulty".

But I definitely get your point.

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In my experience, this is not how it plays out. Really, I want the players to be "on alert" in the sense that they're paying attention to their surroundings and interacting with them in meaningful ways. As well, not every description of an environment results in an encounter (see above). Further, even if the players are engaged in metagame thinking, I'm okay with that so long as they take actions in the game to verify their assumptions. Metagame thinking is only a problem when a player's expectation turns out to be wrong in a dissatisfying way, such as when they assume an encounter is "level appropriate" then proceed to get their ass kicked (see DMG, page 235). But that's on the player. I can't control how other people think or how they make decisions for their characters. I can only provide them with opportunities to engage with the three pillars of the game as they see fit.

Good discussion, thanks.

KarinsDad said:

DM: "You have been slogging through the swamp for three days. You see a dead animal carcass, just like the early dozen or so carcasses that you have seen before. What do you do?"

as some DMs thinking that this is too much of a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" that something special is going on at this location and giving the player a little bit of metaknowledge that they should not have. In other words, if the PCs had already encountered a dozen (or even hundreds of) carcasses in the swamp, and precautions that they took the first few times are not resulting in encounters, wouldn't they eventually come to think that the sign of a carcass rarely means an encounter?

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Why so many carcasses?!

Surely this is why you should switch up your flavour-descriptions so that carcasses (or other obvious signs of more immediate danger) don't get ignored, compared to things like bubbles in the water that pop as the party trudges through the water and stink of rotten eggs, twisted branches hanging over the path, giant gnats buzzing around the party members' heads. Things like that can give an oppressive and dangerous atmosphere, without signalling to the party that 'hey, something bad's about to happen!'.