D&D 5E Persuade, Intimidate, and Deceive used vs. PCs

[Ristamar]

Even without the penalizing, it's worse. If I have to say "I inspect the table to see what color it is" that's very different than just saying "what color is that table you mentioned?"

You don't need to inspect an object to glean basic observable details from it. So the first example isn't realistic and, to me, is far worse for immersion. It feels very fake.

That raises the obvious question as to why you expressed interest in the color of the table. If you felt that detail was important but the DM did not, there may be a disconnect in play style or communication, especially if that sort of thing happens frequently.

Putting that aside, "worse" is debatable. Much like the bulk of this thread, it's a subjective preference.

 

[Lanliss]

For what it's worth: I'm skeptical this is even an issue in Iserith's actual play. I haven't seen it much in the transcripts so far, because he tends to answer reasonable questions without issue so far.

But it seems like as this thread goes on he is digging in his heels on the "no questions" thing. Probably a result of aggressive antagonism towards his style. I dunno.

Perhaps it is something that comes up little enough for him to forget about it. Seems like it would be easy to forget you answer questions every now and then when it only comes up 1> a session. Of course, this is all speculation, and will have to wait for Iserith's return for an answer.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Even without the penalizing, it's worse. If I have to say "I inspect the table to see what color it is" that's very different than just saying "what color is that table you mentioned?"

You don't need to inspect an object to glean basic observable details from it. So the first example isn't realistic and, to me, is far worse for immersion. It feels very fake.

that is exactly what I am trying to say...

I apologize if I am misunderstanding, but is the current objection the fact that Iserith plays an "all roleplay" style?

no, the objection was him saying I take away free will from my players, and as we got going he then told me that he don't allow questions things must be actions... so then another poster talked about one of the worlds worst DMs doing a horrable thing that fits his narrative (there are good and bad dms at every exrmere so we were compairing directly) at witch point he said they should take actions... and 'recall lore' or 'try to break free' when in that game system such things don't happen... at witch point it became wordgames and I proved this with a few simple questions that he rephrased as actions...

My theory right now is that he believes I take away free will and agency, because the rest of his style of play does not allow group discussions. The same line I deliver from my mouth as a DM and anyone could question or clearfy out of game, would force his players in away it wouldn't mine...

He had a problem with my players a week or two ago stoping mid catching a theif and player A asked me if player B knew the head of the local thieves, then asked me directly how important of an NPC this was... I just answerd. I didn't require anyone to declair they 'recall lore'...

the smell of the door is another infuriating one... You walk into a roomand get the description you ask for claiarity on a sense not described and boom he thinks I walk up and stick my face next to a mimic... In my mind asking if something smells is a little easier to answer... "no not really" or "I didn't give that much thought," or "yea you get a hint of pine" or even "Ha ha ha just cause it's shaped like a Christmas tree it's not athing to hang from your rere view." maybe you do say "Well that depends how close you getting to check it out?"

It spot hidden things all over again.... Me and my friends used to LARP (both Wod and bopper weapon types) and one of the older GMs took something to heart... You hide a scroll in a book shelf and let the player really go at it looking for it, and an hour later you still may not have found it... hide 2-3 things in a room and it could be all day searching... so then he spent a year or two not letting people 'search' the room with a skill check you had to say how and where... witch lead to the least fun game sessions ever.

The idea that I ask "Hey do I know anything about this" being the same as "I spend some time thinking really hard about this" I think perfectly illistrats this. I do not know everything my character knows just asking seems perfectly vailid.



Now about beggers getting into see the king... in my last ebberon game (based on a mix between A team and Leverage) that could have happened because the best con man in the world was one of the concepts at play and his mentor (who he had surpassed in time) was living in the cogs under sharn for about 2 years...

 

[MostlyDm]

That raises the obvious question as to why you expressed interest in the color of the table. If you felt that detail was important but the DM did not, there may be a disconnect in play style or communication, especially if that sort of thing happens frequently.

Putting that aside, "worse" is debatable. Much like the bulk of this thread, it's a subjective preference.

So if the DM is unable to predict every question a player might have, that indicates a disconnect in play style?

Nah.

If the players have no unpredicted questions that would be much more alarming to me.

 

[Ristamar]

So if the DM is unable to predict every question a player might have, that indicates a disconnect in play style?

Nah.

It may or may not, but it's a question worth examining if there is a common thread.

 

[iserith]

I'm calling shenanigans. Especially on the bold part. It's weird, after I left you seem to have doubled down on the "no questions" thing, whereas when we discussed it up thread you acknowledged that sometimes questions are okay.

Here's the thing. You have now indicated the following:

1) your room descriptions are brief, typically no more than 3-4 sentences
2) players must declare actions to gain more information
3) if a player is asking the color of an object in the room, the GM sucks at description.

Sorry, but no. You aren't giving the color of every object in a room in 3 sentences unless that room is Spartan as hell. Maybe you're telegraphing object importance and giving the colors that matter; I'd buy that. That has its own problems. Except in the transcript plenty of areas have very flat descriptions so far, but not too much telegraphing. So that's good.

But if for whatever reason the player is curious about another color...

He has to say he investigates or something, doesn't he?

What Ristamar said.

A player might say something like "I glance at the table and make a note of its color." Or even better, "Ever curious about the color of mundane things, I glance at the table." The latter not only is an action but says something about the character. It's kind of a silly example, but perhaps that character was an artist somewhere in his or her background and the particular description reinforces that.

The goal is to keep things in the narrative as much as possible. It encourages both the DM and players to describe things in more evocative ways, which in my view contributes to the game experience in a positive way.

This is the part where it really breaks down. Ovinomancer had a good point about penalizing observant characters. I don't need to especially focus on the room I'm in, and I can still pick up something like 8 colors in my periphery. And I'm lying down in bed in dim light (disadvantage to my perception checks!) with my eyes primarily focused on a phone. I'm not a hyper observant guy.

I would suggest that it does not penalize "observant" characters at all. Proficiencies and feats that are used to resolve uncertainty in this regard come into play when necessary, which is after the character actually does something. Those characters (and thus their players) have an edge here over those who do not have said proficiencies and feats. I don't see any particular obligation on the part of the DM to describe a room differently depending on the character during step 1 of the basic conversation of the game. In my approach, this typically occurs in step 3.

Do these colors matter? I dunno. But if a player wants that info to help them picture the scene, why make it awkward and implausible for them to get it?

I don't think it's awkward or implausible. It's just a matter of storytelling. In my experience, players get used to it pretty quickly and, in general, prefer it once they're in the groove.

You said before you don't refuse all questions. But you pushed back to other posters using this example. I don't see your case. Looks like a serious flaw in your style, if people have to spend time doing utterly implausible stuff like examining a room to get color descriptions, or any other ancillary details that are readily apparent but didn't make it into a 3 line description.

I wouldn't say I was "pushing back." I was showing how most of those questions can be phrased as description of characters taking fictional action in the game world. I think if you're capable of asking a question, you're also capable of describing what your character is doing.

I also explained in other posts why I think that's important for more than just storytelling with the example of the mimic and a player whose characters' actions were assumed by the DM after the player asked a question. I think limiting assumptions like this is a good policy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I also explained in other posts why I think that's important for more than just storytelling with the example of the mimic and a player whose characters' actions were assumed by the DM after the player asked a question. I think limiting assumptions like this is a good policy.

On ignore or not, your entire point about this was shown to be a false binary. Nothing is in evidence that someone not following your method assumes the actions or players. This is a classic strawman.

 

[iserith]

This reminds me of something else:

I have a DM who wants our TotM combat in a savage worlds game to be intense and chaotic and not optimal. Among other things, declaring actions in melee requires we do some LARP-ish adjudicating using resin weapons to determine angles of attack, location, likelihood of parrying, etc. People reading this may think that sounds ridiculous, or maybe ridiculously fun. It's mostly the latter.

Just for the record and without judgment, I don't do that at my table.

But in his haste to keep things tense and atmospheric and chaotic he sometimes leaves out what I consider important details that *should* be available. And he's like you, I know that if I ask "how far is X from me?" He will say something like "okay you spend a moment pondering that," which means I've forfeited any action. Sometimes that's fair, other times it turns out X was two arm lengths away.

I think if any resource is going to be expended for a given fictional action - in this case, a mechanical action - the player needs to be made aware of that before fully committing. For what it's worth, checking to see how far away something is wouldn't qualify as a (mechanical) action in my view. At least not in D&D 5e.

It's gotten to the point where I preface such questions with something like "without thinking about it, just based on my peripheral vision, do I know where X is?"

I would see your specificity as helpful. It makes it easier for the DM to adjudicate your action into success, failure, or uncertainty and means the DM doesn't have to make assumptions about what you are doing. "I look for X as quickly as possible" tells me both your goal and approach in clear terms - you're trying to find something and you're not spending much time on it. (Time's almost always important resource in my adventures.) Now I can decide, based on what you want to do and the fictional circumstances, if you succeed, fail, or roll.

I have a feeling you're going to chalk stuff like this up to bad description. But it's not. He gives good descriptions, he's just not psychic and can't always predict what I'm going to care about. That's inevitable, unless your scenes are so simple that there's only a couple of relevant data points to keep track of.

I take you at your word that the DM is good at description. As far as the DM not describing everything a player might want to know, that's where players describing what their characters do come into play. Where the PCs are, what's going on, and what the basic scope of options available is all we're tasked with describing at the outset. More specificity is easily gotten by describing what the characters do and the DM narrating the results.

 

[iserith]

For what it's worth: I'm skeptical this is even an issue in Iserith's actual play. I haven't seen it much in the transcripts so far, because he tends to answer reasonable questions without issue so far.

It's not an issue because the players buy into it and generally find that it enhances the game experience. I reviewed the first few transcripts again. There were 4 questions from player to DM in Session One. There is 1 question from player to DM in Session Two, and that was whether an NPC counted as an ally for the purposes of sneak attack. There were 0 questions from player to DM in Session Three. Each session was two hours with about 15-20 minutes of improvisational warm-up at the outset.

I'm not going to go through the rest of the transcripts because it is time-consuming and I think that this demonstrates my point: Players learn to stop asking questions reasonably quickly. As well, I never played with these players before, except for bawylie who was in a one-shot I did few months before starting the Summer at the Lake campaign.

Are there never-ever any questions ever? No. Sometimes questions get asked. Sometimes I just answer it. Sometimes I have to ask the player to articulate that question in the form of something the character is doing, especially if their question is going to generate a question from me because I don't want to assume character actions. But these transcripts are pretty representative of the number of questions that typically get asked at our sessions and based on that I think it's obvious that questions from players to DM is much less than many games with no negative impact on the play experience.

 

[MostlyDm]

Iserith, after reconsidering some of your posts here, reading through your Twitter, and considering the first 2-and-bit transcripts that I have reviewed so far, I have come to a tentative conclusion. I sort of suspected it/alluded to it up thread quite a while ago.

We have massively different goals from games. Your desired result is much more akin to a novel (your only real protest was that I was using a written transcript to form my opinion, so... Call it a live radio broadcast if done in person, if you like).

You're interested in minimizing randomness and rolling, keeping people in character at all times if possible, and telling the story you want to tell. The characters aren't necessarily even co-writers, they're supposed to *live* the story. It's closer to performance art, in a sense. That's a noble goal and it's clear your players respond well to it.

I think it's fallen out of favor but I still like the Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist distinction for some purposes. And... In the classic G/N/S breakdown I don't think there's any question where you fall, right? You're a narrativist through and through.

I used to think I was a simulationist. But I'm not really. I'm a narrativist at heart, I just find I like it most when my focus is on pretending to be a similationist, and using the narrative and the game on a meta level to serve this purpose.

As much as I respect your style, I don't totally agree. For one thing... When I want to write fiction, or engage in pure free form role playing, I do those things. I don't see D&D as the appropriate vessel, but it's cool that it works for your group.

I relish the role of dice and random chance in changing the outcomes of events in ways I could never have foreseen. Minimizing rolls is not of any interest to me. If it was, I'd play a different game. D&D in particular has way worse roll randomness and narrative disruption than, say, FATE.

These days I actually kind of avoid creating a true story/plot in the traditional sense. Instead I create dozens and then hundreds and then thousands of characters with their own goals and skills and then unleash them.

I see the characters and the players as two distinct entities, with the PCs just another collection of characters in the world. I encourage my players to run multiple characters, and let them run my NPCs at times if it seems like they have a good handle on the personality involved.

I let my players continually add to and change the game world when it makes sense. I don't worry overmuch about "spoiling" stuff; the concept starts to lose meaning when they have six characters apiece, in different locations and often working at cross purposes.

Meta knowledge isn't necessarily seen as a bad thing. I've taken this to extremes lately, with various custom/home brew abilities that outright function at a meta level (such as retroactively declaring a previous action was done, almost a sort of flashback event.)

The players exist outside the fiction, and know more than their characters. But when they assume the role of their characters, I expect them to play true. Most of the questions would occur in the space between the points where we delve into the scene in character.

Man. I'm getting very philosophical here. I hope that made sense. I have more thoughts, but I have to get back to work.