D&D 5E Do you let PC's just *break* objects?

[Charlaquin]

If I'm running a canned module it's usually to save time and effort; and IME those sort of tweaks to a canned module - enough to make it largely unrecognizable to someone who has played it (or run it) before - take just as much time and work as writing from scratch.

Far better IMO to just ask beforehand if anyone is familiar with the module and on hearing a "Yes", find a different module.

I’m not talking about transforming it to the point where it’s unrecognizable. I agree that at that point you may as well just be designing your own campaign. I just mean some tweaks here and there. Like I said, same broad beats, different specific details.

Some players are OK re-playing a module. Others will take shameless meta-advantage of prior knowledge if they have it* even if the adventure is new to their character.

Yeah, but I don’t care about metagaming, so it’s fine by me if they do take advantage of that knowledge.

* - the one and only situation in which this is A-OK is if the character somehow finds itself repeating an adventure and still has those memories. This happened to me as a player: I rebooted an old character into a newer campaign (same DM) who at the time was re-using an old adventure of his own, disguising it under a different name. I-as-player recognized the adventure before long and was able to play this out in character "Hey - I've seen this before!"; the DM had forgotten my character had been in the first go-round, 12 years prior. While interesting because it was unusual, it did spoil both my and others' enjoyment of the adventure a bit as I was sometimes able to tell them what came next.

That’s hilarious!

 

[jdrakeh]

Sure. Unless it's a risky action or being performed under duress, in which case I have them roll for it.

 

[Clint_L]

A third option is to keep the puzzle conceit, but to change the style of play from the puzzle-solving of the original tables to some sort of karaoke/emulation, where players who do know about trolls, poles, pits and the like play characters who don't. To me, this third option is extremely weird, but it seems to be quite popular.

You find it "extremely weird" that people take on roles other than themselves in a roleplaying game? What is roleplaying if not emulation? I don't quite follow the karaoke reference; I assume it is just intended as a general put-down as it definitely does not come off as complimentary. Maybe it was not your intent, but this entire comment reads as very condescending. Do you commonly call out things that are different from your taste as "extremely weird"?

Here's what I would find extremely weird: my character, raised in an isolated farmstead, becomes an adventurer to see the world, and eventually their party winds up in the lair of a Beholder.

"Me: Time out! [everyone, including the Beholder, freezes]. Okay, according to the...uh...lore of my people, this creature we are about to fight is a beholder. So, the big thing we have to worry about is its anti-magic ability. It's a 150' cone, so we're going to have to really spread out. It also has some eye rays; the one to really worry about is disintegrate, because if that takes you out, you are permanently dead, with no death saves! It has legendary actions so expect a lot of rays.

The good news is that it doesn't have that many HP for its challenge rating (only 180), so we can probably take it out fast. Bob, definitely use that action surge in the first round; if you get right below it you will be out of its anti-magic cone and able to use those boots of striding and leaping. Casters, it doesn't have any resistances and its dex and con saves are pretty weak, so probably just hit it with damage spells. Healers, just keep everyone above 60 HP or so and we should be safe from its disintegrate and death rays.

Okay, we good? Go!"

Weird is in the eye of the beholder. Some folks, like me, prioritize roleplaying. Others prioritize tactical gameplay. Others kind of meet in the middle. None of them are weird for it. Not even a little.

 

[greg kaye]

...: my character, raised in an isolated farmstead, becomes an adventurer to see the world, and eventually their party winds up in the lair of a Beholder.
... Okay, according to the...uh...lore of my people, this creature we are about to fight is a beholder. So, the big thing we have to worry about is its anti-magic ability. It's a 150' cone, so we're going to have to really spread out. It also has some eye rays; the one to really worry about is disintegrate, because if that takes you out, you are permanently dead, with no death saves! It has legendary actions so expect a lot of rays.
The good news is that it doesn't have that many HP for its challenge rating (only 180), so we can probably take it out fast. Bob, definitely use that action surge in the first round; if you get right below it you will be out of its anti-magic cone and able to use those boots of striding and leaping. Casters, it doesn't have any resistances and its dex and con saves are pretty weak, so probably just hit it with damage spells. Healers, just keep everyone above 60 HP or so and we should be safe from its disintegrate and death rays.
...

The Greeks knew information about creatures of myth, even when there was no real information. I don't see that a trading farmer should have to remain ignorant of a creature with the notability of a beholder, though that's feasible.

 

[Oofta]

The Greeks knew information about creatures of myth, even when there was no real information. I don't see that a trading farmer should have to remain ignorant of a creature with the notability of a beholder, though that's feasible.

So if people were RPing their PC they should just make up completely random stuff that's completely untrue? Sounds like an interesting character concept, maybe I'll have to work on a random monster attribute table to roll on. I can see it now "Watch out! It's a troll! [roll on table of attributes] It can shadow step and has flyby attack! By the gods! If it has flyby attack that means it can fly too!"

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The Greeks knew information about creatures of myth, even when there was no real information. I don't see that a trading farmer should have to remain ignorant of a creature with the notability of a beholder, though that's feasible.

So much this. A fictional explanation for PC knowledge (or, perhaps better framed, what they think they know) is easy enough to incorporate into a shared story.

But... a player's assumption(s) could be wrong, however... what their character thinks is true and what are really true in the game world can be different.

 

[iserith]

You find it "extremely weird" that people take on roles other than themselves in a roleplaying game? What is roleplaying if not emulation? I don't quite follow the karaoke reference; I assume it is just intended as a general put-down as it definitely does not come off as complimentary. Maybe it was not your intent, but this entire comment reads as very condescending. Do you commonly call out things that are different from your taste as "extremely weird"?

Here's what I would find extremely weird: my character, raised in an isolated farmstead, becomes an adventurer to see the world, and eventually their party winds up in the lair of a Beholder.

"Me: Time out! [everyone, including the Beholder, freezes]. Okay, according to the...uh...lore of my people, this creature we are about to fight is a beholder. So, the big thing we have to worry about is its anti-magic ability. It's a 150' cone, so we're going to have to really spread out. It also has some eye rays; the one to really worry about is disintegrate, because if that takes you out, you are permanently dead, with no death saves! It has legendary actions so expect a lot of rays.

The good news is that it doesn't have that many HP for its challenge rating (only 180), so we can probably take it out fast. Bob, definitely use that action surge in the first round; if you get right below it you will be out of its anti-magic cone and able to use those boots of striding and leaping. Casters, it doesn't have any resistances and its dex and con saves are pretty weak, so probably just hit it with damage spells. Healers, just keep everyone above 60 HP or so and we should be safe from its disintegrate and death rays.

Okay, we good? Go!"

Weird is in the eye of the beholder. Some folks, like me, prioritize roleplaying. Others prioritize tactical gameplay. Others kind of meet in the middle. None of them are weird for it. Not even a little.

In a recent game of mine where the PCs were making their way out of the Abyss, they came across what looked at first to be a normal beholder in a bone tower. Only this was actually two beholders fleshwarped by a sibriex to be a single creature. So sure, on one side it projected the antimagic cone. But if it turned around or you got behind it, you found yourself looking at its second face and steeped in a wild magic cone. It had a higher CR, more hit points, higher DCs, etc. When it reached half HP or fewer it would tear apart and now have double its regular eye ray attacks.

Because I change things from time to time, the PC in your example above is actually wrong and acting on erroneous assumptions could lead to a bad result. Knowing this, players in my games tend to verify their assumptions before acting on them which is, in effect, mitigating against the "metagaming" you say you don't like. That's not why I do it, but it's a byproduct of what I do. And I don't have to ask players to pretend to forget what they think they know or judge encounter difficulty around that notion.

As well, it's roleplaying to portray the character as stating what the character thinks about beholders and it's roleplaying to portray the character as knowing nothing at all about them. Roleplaying is just saying what your character does, thinks, and says. It's just what your character thinks could be wrong.

 

[pemerton]

You find it "extremely weird" that people take on roles other than themselves in a roleplaying game?

No, that's not what I posted.

What I posted is:

A third option is to keep the puzzle conceit, but to change the style of play from the puzzle-solving of the original tables to some sort of karaoke/emulation, where players who do know about trolls, poles, pits and the like play characters who don't. To me, this third option is extremely weird, but it seems to be quite popular.

This is not about taking on roles. It's about engaging in a particular sort of roleplaying - pretending to be ignorant of the answers to puzzles one actually knows the answers to - so as to emulate the play of people from 40 to 50 years ago who played through the same puzzles, but actually were ignorant of the answers.

What is roleplaying if not emulation? I don't quite follow the karaoke reference; I assume it is just intended as a general put-down as it definitely does not come off as complimentary.

Again, I was describing a particular sort of thing - going through a process of creating the same fiction as other RPGers already created (thus "karaoke/emulation"), but unlike them already knowing the answers to the puzzles one is pretending, in character, to be ignorant of.

Not all roleplaying involves this. The first RPGers to declare the use of 10' poles to prod for pit traps were not emulating anyone else's play - they were actually inventing their own solutions to a brand-new set of puzzles. The first RPGer to work out how to kill trolls because they tried fire, or because they recognised the allusion to Three Hearts and Three Lions (I'm pretty sure that's the right book), was not pretending to be ignorant of stuff they actually knew - that RPGer was actually solving a puzzle.

Here's what I would find extremely weird: my character, raised in an isolated farmstead, becomes an adventurer to see the world, and eventually their party winds up in the lair of a Beholder.

"Me: Time out! [everyone, including the Beholder, freezes]. Okay, according to the...uh...lore of my people, this creature we are about to fight is a beholder. So, the big thing we have to worry about is its anti-magic ability. It's a 150' cone, so we're going to have to really spread out. It also has some eye rays; the one to really worry about is disintegrate, because if that takes you out, you are permanently dead, with no death saves! It has legendary actions so expect a lot of rays.

The good news is that it doesn't have that many HP for its challenge rating (only 180), so we can probably take it out fast. Bob, definitely use that action surge in the first round; if you get right below it you will be out of its anti-magic cone and able to use those boots of striding and leaping. Casters, it doesn't have any resistances and its dex and con saves are pretty weak, so probably just hit it with damage spells. Healers, just keep everyone above 60 HP or so and we should be safe from its disintegrate and death rays.

Okay, we good? Go!"

Well some of that is strange, because I don't see how the "lore of my people" would include knowledge about hit points, which are purely a metagame construction for resolving D&D combat.

But the real weirdness, from my point of view, is presenting a challenge that, as a challenge, depends upon certain "hidden gameboard" features (like the anti-magic ray of a beholder), knowing that those facing the challenge (the players of the game) are aware of the solution, yet expecting them to declare actions for their PCs from a point of view of pretended ignorance. I don't get it at all.

My preference is either to set an actual challenge/puzzle, or else to not have puzzles be at the centre of play at all.

 

[greg kaye]

...
Well some of that is strange, because I don't see how the "lore of my people" would include knowledge about hit points, which are purely a metagame construction for resolving D&D combat.
...

I could imagine 5e characters trying to envision the lives of players and wondering how we could know about things like cholesterol levels, BMI indexes etc.
Characters immersed in the worlds of D&D may be very familiar with things like level jumps, acquisition of hit points, and the trading of hit dice over a short rest. These are the things that they live with and with which they may have become very familiar.

 

[Clint_L]

No, that's not what I posted.

What I posted is:
This is not about taking on roles. It's about engaging in a particular sort of roleplaying - pretending to be ignorant of the answers to puzzles one actually knows the answers to - so as to emulate the play of people from 40 to 50 years ago who played through the same puzzles, but actually were ignorant of the answers.

Again, I was describing a particular sort of thing - going through a process of creating the same fiction as other RPGers already created (thus "karaoke/emulation"), but unlike them already knowing the answers to the puzzles one is pretending, in character, to be ignorant of.

Not all roleplaying involves this. The first RPGers to declare the use of 10' poles to prod for pit traps were not emulating anyone else's play - they were actually inventing their own solutions to a brand-new set of puzzles. The first RPGer to work out how to kill trolls because they tried fire, or because they recognised the allusion to Three Hearts and Three Lions (I'm pretty sure that's the right book), was not pretending to be ignorant of stuff they actually knew - that RPGer was actually solving a puzzle.

Well some of that is strange, because I don't see how the "lore of my people" would include knowledge about hit points, which are purely a metagame construction for resolving D&D combat.

But the real weirdness, from my point of view, is presenting a challenge that, as a challenge, depends upon certain "hidden gameboard" features (like the anti-magic ray of a beholder), knowing that those facing the challenge (the players of the game) are aware of the solution, yet expecting them to declare actions for their PCs from a point of view of pretended ignorance. I don't get it at all.

My preference is either to set an actual challenge/puzzle, or else to not have puzzles be at the centre of play at all.

No one is trying to emulate the play of people from 40-50 years ago. They are trying to emulate what their character would do in an unfamiliar situation. The reality is that all of us bring knowledge of the world and varying degrees of knowledge about the game, so we are always navigating the question "what makes sense for this character to do in this situation?" Acting, in other words. What I ask of my players is to try to immerse themselves in the story, to see it through the eyes of this person that they have created.

I know the rules of this game inside and out (I mean, there are folks on this forum who put my knowledge to shame, but compared to the median, I'm pretty expert). So if I play, I pretty much have to put a ton of that knowledge on hold if I am going to act in character, which for my taste in TTRPGs is a priority - it's how I have fun. So, for example, having my character do the wrong thing because it makes sense for them is a feature, not a flaw, and if it means failure, well, good stories need failure and challenge.

Iserith, above, has the obvious solution to combat challenges, which is to create new creatures as needed. But this can be a lot of extra work that not everyone wants to do, and might not be necessary, depending on what the players know (most of my current players are not interested in the rules at all; my spouse has been playing for years and still couldn't tell you that fire can stop a troll from regenerating, though they are smart and would probably figure it out quickly enough). And I can't know how much each player knows from other campaigns, reading on the internet, etc. So I don't think it is hard for players who do happen to have some out of character knowledge to put a pin in it for the sake of story logic, if that is the type of game we have agreed to.

Complete aside: the 10' pole thing tradition always bugged me, even back in the day. Have you ever tried walking around with a 10' pole? I have, more or less, while doing construction, and it's super inconvenient. The idea of a bold adventuring party cautiously moving through the dungeon with their 10' pole is the least heroic thing I can imagine.

Edit: in writing class, a question I always come back to with students is "what makes sense for this character in this situation?" That's my basic premise for my TTRPG characters, as well.