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If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7588319" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>No one refuses this. No one is saying doing it your way is wrong, or lesser. We've been asked how we do it and have responded. I find it really weird that there's this pushback that, after asking how we do things, you take it as us telling you that you play wrong. Like, really odd.</p><p></p><p>I actually love that you play differently from me. I love this because you have fun when you do. That's the best outcome for our shared hobby -- that lots of people enjoy it and tell others. And, that's all I'm doing here, and all [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] are doing: telling others how we enjoy our hobby. I'm not a terrible person for advocating for my play any more than you are. So, can we kindly (and this is for the whole thread) dispense with the outraged imagined injuries -- they don't actually exist. You cannot quote anyone saying that they don't think that some people would find removing traps descriptively boring, you can only impute that yourself. So, stop imputing it.</p><p></p><p></p><p>In order:</p><p></p><p>I don't ask them to. I ask for an approach and goal -- in the case of removing contact poison, it can be any reasonable approach, I do not care. It can be detailed or simple, it just has to give the the shape of the attempt so that, on a failure, I'm not assuming what the PC did when I level a consequence. I also don't smear contact poison on every door and require my players to play through that. That would, indeed, be very boring. There's this trend in your complaints that assumes that things are very commonly occurring when they are not. Traps are rare, special, and unique in my games -- and always telegraphed. The challenge is not finding it, or rolling dice at it, it's figuring out how to do what you want in spite of it. If you're assuming that we have a game where there's lots of doorknobs with contact poison and we stop everything for a detailed explanation of how you do the same thing over again, you're <em>not paying attention or trying to understand</em>. You're maintaining your preconceptions in spite of being told they are wrong.</p><p></p><p>It's definitely not always contact poison. This is disingenuous af. It was an example early in the thread and gets reused so that there aren't many examples to be confused about, as I'm very sure you know.</p><p></p><p>I don't care -- it's a reasonable approach and I'll take it. I'm not looking for a specific result, and I do not have a complex chemical breakdown of the poison such that I evaluate any proposed action against such a detailed breakdown. Pouring wine on it sounds good in genre logic (which is the only logic I really care about in game), so it's a valid approach. If you had goat's milk, that would work too. Or just water. If I actually specified wine for some reason, it would be because it had been established in play already, and wine was available, because that would fit the genre logic and the established fiction. This isn't rocket science, and I don't make it such. Just about anything works, I just need an approach so I can adjudicate the difficulty and the consequence. </p><p></p><p>Why does anyone care about anything happening at the table? My answer to this hypothetical is because they find it fun. Do you have a different answer? Also, in my game, consequences tend to spill out, so other players care if things start going badly. </p><p></p><p>Really? You'd actually actively thwart successful play at your table because... I don't understand why you'd do this. I get you think you don't like our play (although, in my example above, you said it works the same at your table -- although you then went on to list differences I thought were pretty large) so if it showed up at your table in a way we don't actually play (but you're invested in imagining we do, because.... don't understand that either, honestly) you'd make sure to screw over the players. Yeah, not following that at multiple points.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I also love it when players are entertaining in their descriptions! It's great! I also don't require it, punish it, or reward it (even with an inspiration point). However you chose to address the rarely presented trap in front of you, I'm good.</p><p></p><p>And, to be frank, I think a large part of the problem here is that we're trying to engage you on examples that really don't exist in our games. I, frankly, can't imagine having <em>just </em>a poisoned doorknob as a trap placed in my dungeon. I can imagine a poisoned doorknob trap, certainly, and would have one, but it would be part of a larger challenge. It might block the way when the party is trying to rapidly exit an area, or be part of a challenge where the party wants to get through an area undetected so the delay is a big deal. But, just a series of trapped doors where the trap is the thing? Nope. But, I've engaged this example because it's one presented, and the setup for a trap in my game requires a huge amount of exposition because they're all tied into bigger things. Even the hallway trap example I provided above elided many things in the overall situation that made it much more important to a bigger challenge than the simple version given. I skipped that because it complicates the question of what happens at the point of contact -- where the mechanics meet the game. The problem this causes is that you then assume our games otherwise look like yours - have lots of traps, maybe, where searching each door for a trap is a very wise way to play, and the individual traps aren't really that important if bypassed, so it makes sense to shortcut and just do the rolls and not waste time on these things. In my game, a trap is a big deal -- it's rare, it's going to be dangerous, and it's going to directly thwart what it is you want to do, so you have to address it. Or, it'll be part of a bigger challenge, where it's an added complication that forces hard choices -- do we deal with the trap and risk this other thing, or deal with the other thing and risk the trap? As such, your imaginings that there are whole complexes of traps that are dealt with with the presented granularity must indeed seem very weird -- but, as we keep telling you, you're missing the bigger point; our games are actually different from yours. Adopting the playstyle also means fundamentally altering how you approach the game and that alters what's important in the game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7588319, member: 16814"] No one refuses this. No one is saying doing it your way is wrong, or lesser. We've been asked how we do it and have responded. I find it really weird that there's this pushback that, after asking how we do things, you take it as us telling you that you play wrong. Like, really odd. I actually love that you play differently from me. I love this because you have fun when you do. That's the best outcome for our shared hobby -- that lots of people enjoy it and tell others. And, that's all I'm doing here, and all [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] are doing: telling others how we enjoy our hobby. I'm not a terrible person for advocating for my play any more than you are. So, can we kindly (and this is for the whole thread) dispense with the outraged imagined injuries -- they don't actually exist. You cannot quote anyone saying that they don't think that some people would find removing traps descriptively boring, you can only impute that yourself. So, stop imputing it. In order: I don't ask them to. I ask for an approach and goal -- in the case of removing contact poison, it can be any reasonable approach, I do not care. It can be detailed or simple, it just has to give the the shape of the attempt so that, on a failure, I'm not assuming what the PC did when I level a consequence. I also don't smear contact poison on every door and require my players to play through that. That would, indeed, be very boring. There's this trend in your complaints that assumes that things are very commonly occurring when they are not. Traps are rare, special, and unique in my games -- and always telegraphed. The challenge is not finding it, or rolling dice at it, it's figuring out how to do what you want in spite of it. If you're assuming that we have a game where there's lots of doorknobs with contact poison and we stop everything for a detailed explanation of how you do the same thing over again, you're [I]not paying attention or trying to understand[/I]. You're maintaining your preconceptions in spite of being told they are wrong. It's definitely not always contact poison. This is disingenuous af. It was an example early in the thread and gets reused so that there aren't many examples to be confused about, as I'm very sure you know. I don't care -- it's a reasonable approach and I'll take it. I'm not looking for a specific result, and I do not have a complex chemical breakdown of the poison such that I evaluate any proposed action against such a detailed breakdown. Pouring wine on it sounds good in genre logic (which is the only logic I really care about in game), so it's a valid approach. If you had goat's milk, that would work too. Or just water. If I actually specified wine for some reason, it would be because it had been established in play already, and wine was available, because that would fit the genre logic and the established fiction. This isn't rocket science, and I don't make it such. Just about anything works, I just need an approach so I can adjudicate the difficulty and the consequence. Why does anyone care about anything happening at the table? My answer to this hypothetical is because they find it fun. Do you have a different answer? Also, in my game, consequences tend to spill out, so other players care if things start going badly. Really? You'd actually actively thwart successful play at your table because... I don't understand why you'd do this. I get you think you don't like our play (although, in my example above, you said it works the same at your table -- although you then went on to list differences I thought were pretty large) so if it showed up at your table in a way we don't actually play (but you're invested in imagining we do, because.... don't understand that either, honestly) you'd make sure to screw over the players. Yeah, not following that at multiple points. I also love it when players are entertaining in their descriptions! It's great! I also don't require it, punish it, or reward it (even with an inspiration point). However you chose to address the rarely presented trap in front of you, I'm good. And, to be frank, I think a large part of the problem here is that we're trying to engage you on examples that really don't exist in our games. I, frankly, can't imagine having [I]just [/I]a poisoned doorknob as a trap placed in my dungeon. I can imagine a poisoned doorknob trap, certainly, and would have one, but it would be part of a larger challenge. It might block the way when the party is trying to rapidly exit an area, or be part of a challenge where the party wants to get through an area undetected so the delay is a big deal. But, just a series of trapped doors where the trap is the thing? Nope. But, I've engaged this example because it's one presented, and the setup for a trap in my game requires a huge amount of exposition because they're all tied into bigger things. Even the hallway trap example I provided above elided many things in the overall situation that made it much more important to a bigger challenge than the simple version given. I skipped that because it complicates the question of what happens at the point of contact -- where the mechanics meet the game. The problem this causes is that you then assume our games otherwise look like yours - have lots of traps, maybe, where searching each door for a trap is a very wise way to play, and the individual traps aren't really that important if bypassed, so it makes sense to shortcut and just do the rolls and not waste time on these things. In my game, a trap is a big deal -- it's rare, it's going to be dangerous, and it's going to directly thwart what it is you want to do, so you have to address it. Or, it'll be part of a bigger challenge, where it's an added complication that forces hard choices -- do we deal with the trap and risk this other thing, or deal with the other thing and risk the trap? As such, your imaginings that there are whole complexes of traps that are dealt with with the presented granularity must indeed seem very weird -- but, as we keep telling you, you're missing the bigger point; our games are actually different from yours. Adopting the playstyle also means fundamentally altering how you approach the game and that alters what's important in the game. [/QUOTE]
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