Dagnabbit. I spent hours going through and reading posts and responding. Then my Twitch account got hacked and dealing with that I copied over everything I had typed.
Argh.
Attempt #2
Essay might have been a bit of a lofty way to describe it, it was a brief excerpt from an interview. Here's what he said: "The element of suspense is giving the audience information. Now, you and I are sitting here. Suddenly a bomb goes off. Up we go, blown to smithereens. What did the audience have from watching this scene? 5 or 10 seconds of shock. Now, we do the scene over again, but we tell the audience there's a bomb underneath this table and it's going to go off in 5 minutes. Now this innocuous conversation about football becomes very potent. 'Don't talk about fooball, there's a bomb under there!' that's what they want to tell us. Then their anxieties will be as long as this clock ticks away."
Obviously he's discussing filmmaking here, where we're talking about RPGs, and specifically action resolution within RPGs. But what I think his point about information making the difference between shock and suspense is still very much applicable here. If the player (who is the audience for the RPG, excepting actual plays) doesn't know the potential consequences - or indeed, if there will even be a consequence - for their declared action, what to they get out of that? Maybe a moment of surprise, if they fail and experience an unexpected consequence. What to they get if they know the potential consequence? Well, now they have information. They know what's at stake, so the time between when the pick up the die, and when they see the result is now imbued with that tension and anxiety Hitchcock spoke of. And whether the outcome is success or failure, that releases the anticipation. If they succeed, they are relieved, if they fail, their anxiety is realized. Either way, this is the more dramatic experience, in my opinion.
Okay, he was talking about exactly what I thought he was talking about so I'm sticking by my points.
Big difference here is that the characters are also the audience. If the characters are aware of the bomb, then there are only two options remaining. Either the scene turns to absurd comedy or there must be other forces keeping them at the table.
Same thing with the players, if they know something, they must address it, which changes the nature of the drama.
A lot of the conversation later on focuses on this, and it made me curious about another point I will be adressing further down. Look for your name.
But that's not just a bit of narrative flair there, there is an actual meaningful difference between falling and the chandelier remaining up, or falling and the chandelier falling as well. If the chandelier falls, it's no longer up there for other characters to try and swing on, or to cut it and drop it on the heads of reinforcement guards that show up at the bottom, or whatever. The decision to make the chandelier fall isn't a purely aesthetic one, it has a very real impact on the players' future options.
You know, for certain character that type of analysis is perfectly fine. Heck, I do it as a player myself. But not everyone wants to play that way. Sometimes players want to be caught off guard instead of making a cost-beenfit analysis for every roll of the dice.
The description of the environment was simply that the building is decrepit.
How is "judging" whether or not the GM will decide that the chandelier in a decrepit house might fall if leapt on any different from guessing that same thing?
And if the answer is that the possiblity is implict in the situation and the player's knowledge of the GM's taste and table practices, then it no longer serves an example of the consequences not being known to the player! Which is what it was presented as (by [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]).
How is "guessing" different from a hypothesis? They are looking at the information they have and making a decison based off of that, judging what they think the consequences may be.
It is possible we have a difference of terminology at work here as well, I'll be mentioning your name when we get to that section. I hate having to retype everything because of that copy error, but it might end up working in my favor here.
How is it coddling the player to tell them that, on a failed check, they will bring down the chandelier? What advantage is being ceded? The player already is uncertain as to the outcome of the action, because the check is required. What additional challenge is created by keeping the player uncertain as to what the GM thinks the result of failure should be? It's just adding more guessing on top of an already uncertain resolution process. I don't see that it makes things any harder (less coddled) for the player.
"Coddling" was never my word choice, so you'll have to bring that up with the poster who said it.
I'm also not sure why you think I am worried about "ceding an advantage". I create the entire world and have all the resources in that world to work with, to the point of bending the very laws of the universe if it suits me. I have all the advantages I could ever need.
This is about style. My players want to be the characters in the game, and that means they are limited by what those characters could see or understand.
Whether or not we're asked to say whether a thing is good or bad, we're tasked as DMs by the rules of D&D 5e to judge whether a player's approach to a goal makes the task trivial or impossible and, if neither and accompanied by a meaningful consequence of failure, to call for a roll of some kind. Do we agree on that point?
For the most part, I do not agree with "needing a meaningful consequence of failure" before asking for a die roll.
I'll admit I'm perplexed why there is resistance to telling the player the consequences of failure.
If helping them making an informed decision is "coddling" then I'm all for it: I'd rather have them know the stakes, so that when they decide to roll that die they know what they're rolling for. As Charlaquin says, and supports with the Hitchcock quote, the suspense is so much more delicious when you know what that stakes are.
Now, you don't have to give away every nuance of the consequence. "Sure, you can try to chop the door down, but it's going to make a lot of noise. Are you sure...?" But they don't have to know exactly what sort of creature is going to be alerted.
And here [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is where I want to discuss something about our word choice.
See, I don't see the point in telling my players that breaking down a door with an axe will make a lot of noise. To me, that is unnecessary because it is obvious. As obvious as telling a player that if they attempt to jump over a ravine, they might fall into said ravine. This is obvious, this is knowing how the world works.
We assume standards such as gravity and sound work the same as always, until we are given reason to suspect otherwise. To me, this is just telling the players obvious things, the only use of which is if you think they have forgotten this or forgotten they were hoping to remain quite and you are trying to signal to them that they are about to make a mistake.
To me, this is not telling them the consequences of their actions, because they are not learning anything new about the scenario. They know no more before you spoke than they did after.
So, to me, if you say you tell the player the consequences of their actions, so they can make a more informed decision and not get caught off-guard by knowledge they didn't have (ala Hitchcock) then that means to me that when they are about to jump over the pit you tell them that if they fail they will fall on the hidden spikes coated with poison in the bottom of the pit. If you are just telling them if they fail they will fall in the pit... then you are just telling them what should be obvious from the fact that they are jumping over a pit and might not succeed.
After all, knowing there are spikes and poison below is the same as knowing there is a bomb under the table, and when the players go to roll, they know exactly what the stakes are. But to me, that is revealing far more about the scenario than they have any reasonable way of knowing, without them having tested things out.
And. I want to throw this out there as well. Just because I don't tell my players the consequences for grabbing the magical orb, does not mean they cannot decide to investigate it and try and figure that information out. If my players want to be cautious and look for answers, to investigate and try and piece together clues about their surroundings, then they are more than welcome to. I won't hide things as impossible to know (unless they truly are impossible) if my players want to take the time and effort to investigate. However, I'm not going to force that mind set on them and I'm not going to assume they would be happier analysising everything. If they do not ask questions and just charge forward, then I assume their character is not asking questions and is just charging forward.