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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?
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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8824110" data-attributes="member: 86653"><p>No. Anything the character wouldn't know the player shouldn't know. This is because it prevents metagaming.</p><p></p><p>Exactly. Metagaming. Using out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions, i.e. not roleplaying.</p><p></p><p>I've been playing and running D&D for almost 40 years. This comes up regularly and the player has chosen not to metagame exactly zero times. So, the players don't get to know the results of the rolls unless it would be obvious in-fiction to the character. Secret doors, nope. Bluff checks, nope. Searching for traps, nope. Because inevitably someone metagames. Suddenly the expert rogue who flubbed the role is mysteriously backed up and you get a dogpile of skill checks "just to be sure." It's tedious and lame.</p><p></p><p>That's an entirely recent phenomenon. It was standard practice in older editions for the referee to roll those kinds of things for the player or for there to simply not be any rolls associated with those things, like bluffing the guard. This is also why when rolls are involved in longer term things like sneaking into some place or climbing walls it became standard practice to not make a roll until the character was about half-way through whatever the task was. To avoid the player metagaming their way out of the consequences of a bad roll.</p><p></p><p>Absolutely. It's a game, yes, but the point of the game is roleplaying a character. To do that you need to make decisions based on what the character knows, which is limited to the info the character would actually have in that situation, not what they couldn't possibly know (i.e. game stuff). If it's not part of the fiction it shouldn't be part of the decision making process for the player, therefore it's better to keep that game info away from the player so they don't metagame.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 8824110, member: 86653"] No. Anything the character wouldn't know the player shouldn't know. This is because it prevents metagaming. Exactly. Metagaming. Using out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions, i.e. not roleplaying. I've been playing and running D&D for almost 40 years. This comes up regularly and the player has chosen not to metagame exactly zero times. So, the players don't get to know the results of the rolls unless it would be obvious in-fiction to the character. Secret doors, nope. Bluff checks, nope. Searching for traps, nope. Because inevitably someone metagames. Suddenly the expert rogue who flubbed the role is mysteriously backed up and you get a dogpile of skill checks "just to be sure." It's tedious and lame. That's an entirely recent phenomenon. It was standard practice in older editions for the referee to roll those kinds of things for the player or for there to simply not be any rolls associated with those things, like bluffing the guard. This is also why when rolls are involved in longer term things like sneaking into some place or climbing walls it became standard practice to not make a roll until the character was about half-way through whatever the task was. To avoid the player metagaming their way out of the consequences of a bad roll. Absolutely. It's a game, yes, but the point of the game is roleplaying a character. To do that you need to make decisions based on what the character knows, which is limited to the info the character would actually have in that situation, not what they couldn't possibly know (i.e. game stuff). If it's not part of the fiction it shouldn't be part of the decision making process for the player, therefore it's better to keep that game info away from the player so they don't metagame. [/QUOTE]
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Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?
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