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Gaming session lessons: why moving slow is important all the time, and the kid learns kiting
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6543423" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 "<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty" target="_blank">fake difficulty</a>" in that the outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. To be fair, the passive check <em>does</em> 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).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 6543423, member: 97077"] 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 "[URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty"]fake difficulty[/URL]" in that the outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. To be fair, the passive check [I]does[/I] 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). [/QUOTE]
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