Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Yes, that was a typo. It should have said rolls. I post from my phone a lot.OK so a few things and a serious disconnect from me on this...
First, this is not language police but it actually impacts meaning, where you said "roles" and i underlined it in that first graph, i think you meant to say ROLLS, as in if the players assign their own ROLLS they need to understand etc.
I am procreeding with that.
Character creation only happens outside the game, so players can consult the DM, the book, or more experienced players for help in understanding how to mechanically express the character they want to play. Have you never walked a new player through character creation before? It’s pretty easy.But here is why i think you are incorrect about the players no needing to know which mechanics apply to which actions... they built the character.
Unless they do not have character sheets, unless they dont have to go thru chargen of any serious degree of crunchy spending bits, then they **NEED** to know those mechanics in order to know the results of this choice vs that choice.
"Saxon is a great medic" and assigning low wis and no skill in healing are contradictory, a conflict between description and mechanics that will show in play when it comes time to determine an actual result for that effort by that character.
No mechanical knowledge necessary for that. You know you made a character who is physically strong. You probably don’t need the DM’s help to know that a high Strength score and proficiency in the Athletics skill would help express that mechanically, but if you do, they’ll help you. Then in-game, describe your character doing things that strong people would do if you want to take advantage of your character being strong. It’s really not difficult.Similarly, in play trying to get the out of the gaol cell deciding between(describing) using a "muscle approach" (force bars ),a "dextrous approach" (lock pick) and a skilled approach (masonry) or others its a practical necessity for the player to have a clue which of his abilities should apply and really what they are.
That was me.Someone else describe the role of mechanics in resolving situations of thing, their hope, was to have them basically fade into the background while the description and interactions flow, with the players not thinking about their characters abilities and mechanics.
Ok. You’re welcome to run your games in a way that facilitates that. You and I want different things out of our games, there’s nothing wrong with that.What i want is for them to absolutely keep those mechanics and abilities in mind *as* they choose their actions and select their approachs and work in the scene and show it through their description.
i want the *mason* to have *masonry proficiency* and to be the one who suggests and tries the "stonework to weak bars" approach as he describes his character's choices and i don't want the dexterous guy with lock skills to be the one trying to force the door and i really don't want the described "muscle guy" (who actually has an 8 strength cuz, you know, no reason for player to know) to be the one to try the masonry angle without the actual mason involved.
Lack of knowledge of the specific mechanics required to resolve an action is not the same thing as lack of knowledge of your character’s strengths and weaknesses. You don’t have to know the specifics of the uses for Strength vs. Charisma to know that your beefy fighter is going to have better luck trying to scare someone by flexing his muscles than by staring someone down, or that your ruthless assassin who relies more on theatricality and deception than brute force will have an easier time frightening someone with subtlety than direct physical threats.One character attempt intimidate the guard by being big, beefy and pushing up against them while another just stares calmly while sharpening his knife and whistling in a odd sort of way. They players should choose those approaches for their characters base on not a *lack* of knowledge of their strengths, weaknesses and how those apply to the situation but on accurate knowledge of those things.
My players are not “often” surprised by the outcomes of their actions, because they describe their actions and the world responds in internally consistent ways. They can reliably predict what the outcome of an action will be because the first step in resolving any action is that I consider what effect this might have on the world and how likely that is to bring about the desired outcome. The dice come in when it’s not otherwise obvious what the result will be. By simply imagining themselves, or a person like the one they’ve created to roleplay as, in the situation described and considering what they or that character would do, they can get a pretty good idea what the results of their actions will be.As i have said, for various games where the detail and crunch and mechanics are built in to be mostly narrative and where honeslty "screen time" is an actual gameplay element and "hit points" really is not, the idea that you dont need to know mechanics of actions is great but for a game like this one where you do spend a lot of time on builds, on chargen and where at a moment's notice your mechanics can be called in and determine the outcome, the idea that players don't need to know this enough so that *often* they get it wrong is a very bad marriage of game system and gameplay. if and when a scene "goes to the dice" having that player not aware of how that scene will use their stats, not know whether this was good choice or bad choice, and having that player "often" surprised by the outcome... is just a hindrance to roleplaying.
Neat. In my games, roleplay and game are not separate things. It’s a game that you play by imagining yourself as a different person or in a different situation and making decisions as you think you or that other person would in that situation. You know, roleplaying. The mechanics are the way the game resolves the outcomes of your decisions, which means that assessing how these decisions are likely to affect the scenario you imagine yourself in is an essential part of the mechanics. But as a person playing the game, it is not essential for you to understand exactly how those mechanics work. Just like when you’re playing a roleplaying video game like Elder Scrolls or The Witcher, you don’t need to understand the game’s programming to play the game effectively. I know that if I want to be good at using big swords in Skyrim, I should use big swords a lot. I know that without needing to understand the exact calculations the computer is making to figure out how much damage I do to a mudcrab when I swing my big sword at it.In my games, R-P-G all play a roll and mostly an equal role.
ROLE is running the character to suit the charater you wanted and you built and having that chracter's mechanics match those.
PLAY is your making choices that fit your character and his personality and his past and his aptitudes and weakness reflected in both the mechanics and the choices and the expectations of results.
GAME is having the mechanics of resolution and success fail all tie together with the other things, with the decisions and choices, with the setting and scene and the narrative.
And as stated before, it is not either/or for "die roll vs description. What i am referring to is what my players do and what i have seen other players do again and again, choose character actions, describe character actions and interact with a scene keeping their character's actual definitions in mind and then rolling dice at the appropriate time they choose, with of course Gm having full option to veto or adjust as needed.
That’s not how I run social interaction scenes at all. Just like with other actions, I consider what the players say and if those things would have a reasonable chance of swaying the NPC’s opinion, a reasonable chance of failing to sway their opinion, and a chance of making that NPC more hostile. I ask the player to make rolls when the NPC’s reaction is uncertain.Consider this...
There is a discussion between a player and an NPC. The player is trying to sway the NPC in their favor. The discussion goes back and forth. The discussion has ebbs and flows. The outcome in uncertain.
I have no problem with the player at some point of his choosing to pick up his dice and basically decide to "call scene" on a high point, on a good line from him, and making the roll then and there. Sure, we could have continued that dialog for another 10m or 20m or whatever and it could have been fun etc but its not *me* and me alone who gets to decide "the editing" of that in my games... and letting the player decide to make that the point they want to roll is not something i have a problem with.
That is *not* the same of course as saying "and thats it, give me an answer now." and in game cutting the talk short. That is a different thing which lets the "act" itself play into the resolution of the scene.
Sure. Different playstyles for different people.Not everyone would like giving the player that "creative control" over their scenes, that is for sure.
I have no such expectation about players in my games understanding the mechanics of combat. Have you never run for new players before? It’s pretty easy to resolve a combat even with players who aren’t familiar with the rules. If the player describes what their character is doing, I can easily tell them what they need to roll to resolve that action. Players tend to catch on to the rules of combat pretty quickly, mainly because there’s a lot of uncertainty in combat, so the dice get involved a lot, so players who are interested in learning those mechanics can easily figure them out if they pay attention. And players knowing the rules of combat doesn’t get in the way for me, nor does players knowing any of the rules. It just doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.In my experience, i find not having one standard of expectation for player choices and knowledge of mechanics and use of mechanics for combat resolution (i choose to use my axe because thats where i am best) and a completely different one for out-of-combat challenges does not serve the roleplaying game experience well for me and those i have seen.
I have a player who has been in my games for years. Still doesn’t know the rules of D&D. Because he has no interest in learning them. And that’s fine! He tells me what kind of character he wants to play, I help him translate that into a character sheet, and for the rest of the game, he tells me what he wants to do, and I tell him what dice to roll. He’s perfectly happy with that arrangement, he gets to imagine himself as a hero in a fantasy world and make decisions like that hero would, and he doesn’t have to get bogged down with a bunch of math he finds boring. I have another player who loves the rules minutia and we talk shop all the time. She enjoys digging deep into the rule books, understanding all the little interactions, building highly optimized characters, and all that stuff. She’s never had a problem in my games either. She knows what the different skills and abilities do, and how to get the results she wants. Player knowledge of the rules doesn’t positively or negatively impact their experience in my games, unless that player tries to use the rules to circumvent roleplaying.