D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[pemerton]

That sounds to me like, what some games would call, "Say yes, or roll the dice," or "Yes, and..."; which doesn't sit well with me. It's not a traditional way of playing an RPG. It's a radical concept

Not really.

Gygax, in his DMG, makes the following comments about adjudicating discovery of secret doors (p 97):

They con possibly be sensed or detected by characters who are actively concentrating on such activity, or their possible location may be discovered by tapping (though the hollow place could be another passage or room beyond which has no portal in the hollow-sounding surface). Discovery does not mean that access to the door mechanism has been discovered, however. Checking requires a very thorough examination of the possible secret door area. You may use either of two methods to allow discovery of the mechanism which operates the portal:

1. You may designate probability by a linear curve . . . each character being allowed to roll each turn in checking a 10' X 10' area. . . .

2. You may have the discovery of the existence of the secret door enable player characters to attempt to operate it by actual manipulation, i.e. the players concerned give instructions as to how they will have their characters attempt to make it function: "Turn the wall sconce.", "Slide it left.", "Press the small protrusion, and see if it pivots.", "Pull the chain."

It is quite acceptable to have a mixture of methods of discovering the operation of secret door.​

That is pretty close to "say yes or roll the dice" - if the players declare the correct action for their PCs, the GM says yes; otherwise the dice are rolled.

The fundamental premise of a Role-Playing Game is that the events of the game world are really happening as far as the characters are concerned, and the characters are portrayed by the players.

<snip>

If you abandon that premise, then you aren't even playing an RPG anymore.

How does "say yes or roll the dice" abandon that premise? The events of the game world are really happening as far as the PCs are concerned. Not rolling dice in order to determine their occurence doesn't make them less "real". For instance, spellcasting in D&D almost never requires a dice roll (in 3E there are exceptions around casting spells in stormy weather and the like), but that doesn't make it "unreal" from the perspective of the PCs.

When someone tries something in the game, the answer should be "no" as often as it is "yes".

Why? In the real world I don't fail at most of the things I attempt. Why should the experience of the PCs in the gameworld be different from that?

Unlike other games, an RPG doesn't have a goal.

What makes you say that? Tunnels & Trolls states a goal in its 5th ed (1979, from memory): the goal is to delve dungeons and gain levels and treasure without dying.

Here is Gygax on the goal of AD&D (PHB, pp 7, 8, 109):

As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. . . . You act out the game as this character . . . You interact with your fellow role players . . . The Dungeon Master will act the parts of "everyone else", and will present to you a variety of new characters to talk with, drink with, gamble with, adventure with, and often fight with! Each of you will become an artful thespian as time goes by - and you will acquire gold, magic items, and great renown as you become Falstaff the Invincible!

. . .

The game is ideally for three or more adult players: one player must serve as the Dungeon Master, the shaper of the fantasy milieu, the "world" in which all action will take place. The other participants become adventurers by creating characters to explore the fantastic world and face all of its challenges - monsters, magic, and unnamed menaces. . . . By successfully meeting the challenges posed, they gain experience and move upwards in power, just as actual playing experience really increases playing skill. . . .

Skilled players always make a point of knowing what they are doing, i.e. they have an objective. They co-operate - particularly at lower levels or at higher ones when they must face some particularly stiff challenge - in order to gain their ends. Superior players will not fight everything they meet, for they realize that wit is as good a weapon as the sword or the spell. When weakened by wounds, or nearly out of spells and vital equipment, a clever party will seek to leave the dungeons in order to rearm themselves. (He who runs away lives to fight another day.) When faced with a difficult situation, skilled players will not attempt endless variations on the same theme; when they find the method of problem solving fails to work, they begin to devise other possible solutions. . . .

Superior play makes the game more enjoyable for all participants, DM and players alike. It allows more actual playing time. It makes play more interesting. The DM will have to respond to superior ploy by extending himself or herself to pose bigger and better problems for the party to solve. This in turn means more enjoyment for the players. Successful play means long-lived characters, characters who will steadily, if not rapidly, gain levels. You will find that such characters become like old friends; they become almost real. Characters with stories related about their exploits - be they cleverly wrought gains or narrow escapes- bring a sense of pride and accomplishment to their players, and each new success adds to the luster and fame thus engendered. The DM will likewise revel in telling of such exploits . . . just as surely as he or she will not enjoy stories which constantly relate the poor play of his or her group! Some characters will meet their doom, some will eventually retire in favor of a new character of a different class and/or alignment; but playing well is a reward unto itself, and old characters are often remembered with fondness and pride as well. If you believe that ADVANCED DUNGEONS 8 DRAGONS is a game worth playing, you will certainly find it doubly so if you play well.​

In other words, the goal of AD&D play, at least as intended by its author, is to play well, with skill, so as to ensure the success of your PC in overcoming the challenges put in his/her way by the GM - the levels gained by the PC are thereby a proxy for the demonstrated skill of the player.

Other, more recent, editions of D&D have tended to have different goals of play. To the extent that these goals have sometimes been obscure (or obscured) I think that gets in the way of establishing clear rules and play procedures.

 

[Sadrik]

I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Your DC was too low. Setting the DC correctly is what matters. If the DC is 10 say, then everyone could essentially know it. 15 many probably know it. If the DC is 20 then only those who are smart and or proficient would potentially know it. And 25 really makes the information obscure because then at low level only smart and proficient and lucky are to know it.

2. Do it like rumors. So you may have 8 bits of information on this thing that the PCs are trying to determine. Have the PCs roll in an order they decide upon up to 8 times. For each success, they get a bit of knowledge.

3. We are talking about a dead recall of some fact. Most people need reference materials to determine things. For instance, I am pretty good at excel. I know what the potential is for excel. I don't know how to do every little thing, but I can look it up and then should be able to do it. Knowledge works that way a lot, where you know the general abstract but not the details. Details come from references, but you know where and how to reference. For in game play, this can be done with the PCs too. You could say you recall having read about that in the town library, you know Balthan is a powerful wizard from many years ago. You would have to go to the library to look it up to learn more.

4. Complex checks. Yeah. You need to 4 successes to get the full knowledge. Who wants to make those checks? Oh the person who is best at them... Right... Instant fix.

5. Passive knowledge as was mentioned early on this is a really good way to handle these too. You roll once and apply it to all PCs passive checks. Remember advantage or disadvantage on a passive score is +/-5. Or you could look at the DCs and apply them directly to the Passive checks. This becomes a math issue but could benefit game flow. By you just asking what the applicable passive score is and then looking at the DC and telling those who have X or higher what they know. With a 10 everyone will likely know. With a 15 only those proficient and smart. 20 is for higher level.


Another thing about clues and RPGs, this is a huge issue in some games. CoC for instance, if you do not get the clue your investigation can be halted and delayed a lot. This is a major issue and whole variant RPGs have been devised on how to tackle this issue. D&D is typically not run as an investigation style game because clues are very easy to discern with magic. It does bear some mention that this is not an easy area with RPGs in general.

 

[delericho]

By what you're saying though, the player can't really know if a roll is necessary unless he or she knows the DC.

But there's nothing lost by it either, unless you acknowledge dice superstitions. If the player rolls when it wasn't necessary, all they've done is generated a result that doesn't go anywhere.

You don't roll, after all, if the player can't roll lower than the DC or can't possibly roll high enough, right?

In my "jump to the roll" approach, the player would roll anyway, not knowing whether it's strictly necessary or not. If the task is such that it's an auto-success or auto-fail, the result just gets ignored, but there's no harm in that.

Now, if the player does instead describe an action (or even just says, "I want to roll Religion"), then if the task is indeed trivial I wouldn't bother insisting on the roll and instead just give the information - it's about cutting down on wasted time, not about going through the motions. (Of course, this assumes a binary yes/no - if there are multiple levels of success, there's a need to roll anyway.)

In the case where it's actually an auto-fail I may call for a roll anyway. This doesn't apply in cases of 'knowledge' skills, generally, but it may apply in cases where the character is trying to detect a lie from a suspicious NPC, or searching for traps, or similar - cases where the character doesn't know the answer but also doesn't know that he doesn't know the answer. In which case, the die roll serves to provide that uncertainty.

 

[iserith]

But there's nothing lost by it either, unless you acknowledge dice superstitions. If the player rolls when it wasn't necessary, all they've done is generated a result that doesn't go anywhere.

In my "jump to the roll" approach, the player would roll anyway, not knowing whether it's strictly necessary or not. If the task is such that it's an auto-success or auto-fail, the result just gets ignored, but there's no harm in that.

In the case where it's actually an auto-fail I may call for a roll anyway.

I'm not superstitious, but I do have a policy that every die roll should be significant. I don't go in for superfluous rolls as I feel that it lessens tension for rolls that actually matter. When you pick up a die in my games, your ass is probably on the line, literally or figuratively. I want players to feel that.

Players may not ask to roll and I will not ask for a roll myself unless the player has taken an action that I deem has an uncertain outcome. You will, for example, never see me ask for a roll "out of the blue," as I've seen many DMs do. No stated fictional action, no roll. Before a player rolls, they will know the DC and the outcomes for success and failure.

Now, if the player does instead describe an action (or even just says, "I want to roll Religion"), then if the task is indeed trivial I wouldn't bother insisting on the roll and instead just give the information - it's about cutting down on wasted time, not about going through the motions. (Of course, this assumes a binary yes/no - if there are multiple levels of success, there's a need to roll anyway.)

To me, "I want to roll Religion" lacks the necessary context of the character's goal and approach which makes it easier for the DM to narrate the result of the adventurer's action or to establish uncertainty. The player is effectively saying the action - whatever it is because it's certainty not clear in that offer - is uncertain by default. Not only is this not the player's role, but it is bereft of the fiction that makes the collaborative storytelling interesting in my view.

This doesn't apply in cases of 'knowledge' skills, generally, but it may apply in cases where the character is trying to detect a lie from a suspicious NPC, or searching for traps, or similar - cases where the character doesn't know the answer but also doesn't know that he doesn't know the answer. In which case, the die roll serves to provide that uncertainty.

I use dice (and careful attention to the stakes) to resolve uncertainty in the character's fictional action, not to foster uncertainty in the player.

 

[Agamon]

The fundamental premise of a Role-Playing Game is that the events of the game world are really happening as far as the characters are concerned, and the characters are portrayed by the players. The role of the GM (and to a lesser extent, of the players) is to maintain that illusion.

Agreed, but constantly rolling dice for every little thing breaks that illusion for me.

If you abandon that premise, then you aren't even playing an RPG anymore. At best, you're playing a Story-Telling Game. At worst, you're just telling a story, or playing a game.

It's okay to say you don't like playing certain ways, but elitist proclamations don't help anyone. The RPG scene is a lot wider than simply D&D. What Happy Jacks jokingly refer to as "Hippie Games" are still RPGs, whether they tickle your fancy or not.

Unlike other games, an RPG doesn't have a goal. What D&D has instead are a method of play (the 1-2-3 dynamic), and a criteria for acknowledging success (have fun, tell a memorable story). If you mistakenly take the story as some sort of goal, and violate the 1-2-3 method in pursuit of it, then you have destroyed the integrity of the game world and the story becomes meaningless.

Not too sure what you're on about with this 1-2-3 thing, but the goal at my table is to have fun and tell a memorable story, and according to my players, is usually successful. Three elements craft the story: the DM, the players, and the dice. If most decisions the players make is rolled for, the player element is downplayed and the dice take over for them.

As an aside, because I see the dice as an element in crafting the story, I don't fudge. Making a lot of unnecessary rolls creates a game more heavily influenced by variance. I have a suspicion that there is some correlation between those who roll the dice for all decisions and those who have dice fudging in the arsenal...not that I'm judging - DMs that call for rolls for everything or fudge are fine by me (well, unless I'm in their game, I guess )

 

[delericho]

I'm not superstitious, but I do have a policy that every die roll should be significant. I don't go in for superfluous rolls as I feel that it lessens tension for rolls that actually matter. When you pick up a die in my games, your ass is probably on the line, literally or figuratively. I want players to feel that.

I can certainly appreciate that!

To me, "I want to roll Religion" lacks the necessary context of the character's goal and approach which makes it easier for the DM to narrate the result of the adventurer's action or to establish uncertainty. The player is effectively saying the action - whatever it is because it's certainty not clear in that offer - is uncertain by default. Not only is this not the player's role, but it is bereft of the fiction that makes the collaborative storytelling interesting in my view.

The thing is that I don't find simply examining our hypothetical religious icon (or searching a room, or discerning lies, or many of these other things) interesting in and of themselves anyway. What's interesting is what the PC does with the information, or lack thereof, once that's been resolved. The quicker we get to "it's a symbol associated with the lost cult of Gygax" or "it's shiny!" the quicker we can get on with the story.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Agamon]

I can certainly appreciate that!



The thing is that I don't find simply examining our hypothetical religious icon (or searching a room, or discerning lies, or many of these other things) interesting in and of themselves anyway. What's interesting is what the PC does with the information, or lack thereof, once that's been resolved. The quicker we get to "it's a symbol associated with the lost cult of Gygax" or "it's shiny!" the quicker we can get on with the story.

Without the back and forth, though, the player just says, "Okay, I'm going to roll my History to see if I know anything about the cult, and if that doesn't work, I'll take it to a sage and roll Persuasion." That doesn't make for much of a story, in my mind.

On the other hand, I suppose if the goal is to get through the info dump quickly and back to the action, this style has merit.

 

[iserith]

The thing is that I don't find simply examining our hypothetical religious icon (or searching a room, or discerning lies, or many of these other things) interesting in and of themselves anyway. What's interesting is what the PC does with the information, or lack thereof, once that's been resolved. The quicker we get to "it's a symbol associated with the lost cult of Gygax" or "it's shiny!" the quicker we can get on with the story.

YMMV, of course.

It depends though. Going back to the example I fleshed out of the cleric and rogue examining the religious icon, the players make some declarations. Specifically the cleric references time spent cloistered (kept away from the outside world; sheltered) at study while the rogue talks about having been around murderers. Both of these are offered up as part of the character's approach to the action they are taking - drawing upon experiences they've had at some point in their past and applying it to the situation they're in now. These offers are either establishing new information about the characters or reinforcing details that were already established. So we're learning a little bit more detail about the characters or being reminded of who they are.

By making players aware that I'm not going to adjudicate their actions until I fully understand their characters' goal and approach to an action (which needn't be "flowery" or overlong, just clear), these are the kinds of offers I typically get. Little by little, action after action, adjudication after adjudication, these small details add up to characters with a lot of established detail and depth. This context allows for the players to more easily portray their characters and for other players to know how best to interact with characters that are not their own. From a storytelling perspective, we're also spending more time "in the fiction" than we are just making reference to game mechanics. This context also helps make it easier for me as DM to decide whether an action needs an ability check attached to it.

This might not be for everyone, of course, but in my experience it serves to create compelling characters and stories with a lot of depth and detail.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Again, that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the notion that the outcomes of actions are objective. They are not. Suspending disbelief over the existence of dragons or elves or magic is a different issue. I know when I'm playing a game that the DM is deciding what happens. It doesn't happen objectively.

The disbelief to be suspended is that the events within the game world are occurring objectively. They aren't, because the DM can't simulate the entire game world in order to determine every small detail, but everyone should act as though they are. That is the basic conceit of a role-playing game.

That is pretty close to "say yes or roll the dice" - if the players declare the correct action for their PCs, the GM says yes; otherwise the dice are rolled.

Whether there is a box to be stood upon, at the end of an alleyway, cannot depend on whether the player asks. Nor can a wall be climbable, based on the player attempting it. If the player wants to climb the impossibly-smoothed cliff face, or hide a bomb in the dishwasher when the apartment is not equipped with a dishwasher, then the GM should answer no. The GM knows what's going on in the game world, and the player doesn't know everything; sometimes, when the GM is communicating information to the players, that information will conflict with what the player expects.

It's not about when the players declare correct actions. Correct actions should either work, or have some probability of working. It's about incorrect actions, where there is no possible chance of success. The GM should be empowered to deny a request as much as to grant it.

 

[iserith]

The disbelief to be suspended is that the events within the game world are occurring objectively. They aren't, because the DM can't simulate the entire game world in order to determine every small detail, but everyone should act as though they are. That is the basic conceit of a role-playing game.

Perhaps that's a basic conceit of how you choose to play roleplaying games, but I don't fool myself when it comes to knowing that the DM isn't objectively deciding how things play out. The guy or gal isn't a computer and the game system itself isn't robust enough to simulate it without some measure of human input into the matter (when an outcome is certain or uncertain, what the DC will be, which check applies, etc.). I know that every adjudication I make for a player's described action is made with the goals of play in mind - my rulings have to be fun for everyone and lead to an exciting, memorable story. When I'm a player, I also choose to do things that serve the goals of play without a single thought about the objectivity of the setting or the rules as physics.

Whether there is a box to be stood upon, at the end of an alleyway, cannot depend on whether the player asks.

Sure it can. Until it's established, the box doesn't exist. If I haven't established the non-existence of boxes (e.g. empty alleyway) and the player says his or her character looks around for boxes, then I'm free to say there are boxes there.

Nor can a wall be climbable, based on the player attempting it.

If the wall isn't established as un-climbable, then it's conceivably climbable. When describing the environment, the DM should establish it as un-climbable if this is an obstacle he or she is throwing in the characters' way.

If the player wants to climb the impossibly-smoothed cliff face, or hide a bomb in the dishwasher when the apartment is not equipped with a dishwasher, then the GM should answer no.

If it has already been established that it's an impossibly smooth cliff face or that there is no dishwasher, then most certainly the DM should answer "no" if the character wants to climb the cliff face without some preparation that will overcome its smoothness or plant a bomb in a non-existent dishwasher. If I haven't established either of those things and the player takes an action like that, then as far as I'm concerned, we're moving forward with the player's idea - the cliff is climbable, the dishwasher is present. I really gain nothing by saying "No."

If the DM is even a little bit capable at framing scenes, this simply isn't a problem.