D&D 5E Modeling Uncertainty

[Guest 6801328]

The classic way to do that - which works well, again, in 5e - is to simply take the roll behind the screen. Another thing you could do back in the day is not tell the player whether he wanted high or low (since there were variants that went either way).

This is another thing I addressed in the first draft.

Beside just hating it when DMs roll for their players, rolling behind the screen doesn't really leave uncertainty. At most it can conflate negatives with false negatives. "You can't tell." But it can't produce believable false positives, not unless the DM improvises, or uses a house rule like "Natural 1 produces opposite answer." And the problem with THAT (in my mind) is that the chance of a false positive is always 1/20, regardless of skill or roll.

So I was looking for a system where the player gets to roll their own dice, and see their own dice, and the strength of the roll influences their faith in the answer...but always leaving a realistic and immersive seed of doubt.

If your players really like the feel of rolling dice themselves, an alternate little trick is to roll a d20 behind the screen as a 'seed.' You add it to the player's natural roll, subtracting 20 if the result is higher than 20 - thus you get the flat 1-20 range of a normal roll, but the player has no idea if he actually rolled 'well' or not.

Yes, I considered using this as the secondary roll (I'm fairly convinced that a complementary secret roll is necessary to achieve what I'm looking for) but I like how the probabilities work out with my system better.

The only thing my system does not provide is the possibility of convincing false negatives, which I admit is a shortcoming.

A system like you want could also address part of the 'DM may I' problem, at the price of adding another step to resolution. Players could ask the DM whether their PCs believe they can do something, make a check, and have some idea, but some remaining uncertainty as to whether they're able or not. :shrug:

Yes, absolutely.

"Can I disarm it?" (roll)
(secret roll) "Looks feasible."
"Ok, I try, do I succeed?" (roll)
(secret roll) "Seems like it."
"Ok, I open the chest."

...click...

BOOM!!!

By the way, the scenario I was really thinking about with all of this was pathfinding, and there I LOVE the ambiguity. You come to a junction in the cave system, and you roll some skill to determine the best way, and the DM gives you an answer, but you may never know for sure if it was in fact the best way. Now that's immersion.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I guess you could also imagine a system like:
- If you beat a DC by 3 or more, then you know you succeeded. ("You disarmed the tra," "The diplomat seems to be lying," "The peasant is clearly intimidated," or what ever.)
- If you fail by 3 or more, then you know you failed. ("You are unable disarm the trap." "You can't tell if the diplomat is lying or not." "The peasant is unimpressed.")
- If you roll is within the DC +/- 2, you aren't sure. ("You were able to manipulate the trap to some extent, but it's hard to be sure if it's really safe now." "You think the diplomat is [check succeeded]/ is not [check failed] lying, but it's hard to be sure." "The peasant seems intimidated, but you aren't sure how reliably he'll follow your instructions.")

I considered something like this, too. It provides uncertainty in some situations, but only 50/50 uncertainty, or at least what may as well be 50/50 uncertainty to the player, which given that it's identical to not having tried is a disappointing outcome for a potentially successful roll.

It never results in "I'm almost completely certain...but I could still be wrong."

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes, I considered using this as the secondary roll (I'm fairly convinced that a complementary secret roll is necessary to achieve what I'm looking for) but I like how the probabilities work out with my system better.

The only thing my system does not provide is the possibility of convincing false negatives, which I admit is a shortcoming.

You could subtract the average of the die, then roll the die & add. (or salt the difficulty by the average, roll & add) That way the chance of success is about the same, but you've added an 'uncertainty bar' around the player's result.

Now that's immersion.

Nod. That's kinda the point of this, isn't it? Modeling a PC with different abilities than the player as much as possible, while still keeping the player more or less 'in his head.'

If the players are rocking 'Director Stance,' the ambiguity is modeled by the players, rather than experienced by them. FWIW.

 

[iserith]

Oops I left out the 'or' to the 'either': the second part was "...or be really good at improv."

E.g., my players are talking to a guard and one of them says he is going to start looking for signs that the guard is lying. And I think, "ok, how do I give a hint such that this person who has been playing with me for 3 years isn't going to immediately see through."

Regarding your example, I don't think that even needs to be a consideration. Either the character succeeds at the proposed action or does not.

The reason I want uncertainty in some situations is that it's what my character would be experiencing, and I feel more immersed if I'm feeling the same thing. Do I know if I climbed the wall successfully? Yes...I'm standing on the top. But do I know for sure whether the guard is lying? No. My character might be very insightful, but he doesn't know with 100% certainty. And if my subsequent decisions depend very much on whether or not he's lying, I want that decision to contain at least some amount of worry. I want the decision to be interesting. If, however you choose to implement it, the result of a skill test is that the DM tells me he's lying, then there's no interesting subsequent decision.

Except that there is: What do you do now that you know the guard is lying?

This also helps the scene move forward to the next stage of the conflict. Leaving things uncertain might have the effect of causing the players to hesitate and the scene does not move forward. That's something I care about, personally, but others might not.

Conversely, if the DM doesn't give me a yes/no answer but only gives me hints to interpret, the usefulness of the clues is going to be effectively arbitrary. Let's say my character has high Insight and high Wisdom and gets a good roll. So the DM gives me some clues that he thinks are appropriate. But are they? Chances are they are either a dead giveaway (again, the "gosh I rolled high and the DM is telling me he looks nervous" scenario) or the DM actually tries to make it an interesting decision so that it's interesting decision. But I find it implausible that any DM can reliably tune such hints to give a probability that from the player's point of view is distinguishable from 50/50 odds...which is the same as just guessing.

Does any of that make sense?

It appears to be a concern that stems from the desire for there to be uncertainty even after mechanics are applied to resolve said uncertainty, not create it. Which, to me, means I have to go back and address that desire in some fashion.

Iserith, I almost always agree with you 100% about these sorts of things. But there's a nugget of something important here, and I hope you turn it around in your mind and consider it.

Oh, and to the point about telling players what they think...I 99% agree. But when dealing with knowledge that includes uncertainty (such as 'knowing' if somebody is lying) if the DM presents only sensory evidence, without interpretation, then you may as well not have mental stats and skills, because at that point it is the player interacting with the DM, not the character interacting with the environment. So in those cases I have no problem with, "It seems to you that..."

"I examine the guard's mannerisms and body language in an effort to see if he's lying."

"The guard's body language reveals that he is being untruthful."

That is the character interacting with the environment. I don't need to tell the player what his or her character is thinking, right?

Do I really have to develop a schematic for a device that will appropriately challenge the human player, such that it will accurately represent his character's ability to defuse a bomb? I mean, really, even if I put all that time into developing such a puzzle, what are the odds that it will be of just the right difficulty?

I'd much rather just let the player roll a skill check and say, "You figure out that it's almost definitely the red wire."

No, I don't think it necessary to develop a schematic. The player just needs to be specific enough that the DM doesn't have to assume what the character is doing and establish that for the player. I'm sure we've all seen situations where the player gives a vague action declaration or asks a question that suggests action. The DM then establishes for the player what the character actually does. (This is a very common way of playing in my experience.) Only sometimes the player says "Wait, I wouldn't have done that." This is a situation to be avoided in my opinion, but is something of a side issue to the overall discussion of course.

And so I'd much rather get reasonable specificity out of the player with regard to goal and approach, decide if there's uncertainty as to the outcome, ask for a check if there is, and definitively narrate the result of the action taken. The uncertainty lives in whether the approach will be successful in achieving the goal. I don't think the uncertainty should exist past the roll.

 

[iserith]

A trick I've tried doing on that point, especially with knowledge checks, going back to 4e, is to tell the group that one character can make a knowledge check, or everyone can make a group knowledge check. The idea being that if everyone listens and defers to the party 'expert' they get either the information as best he knows it, or a simple "I don't know," but if they all start throwing in their untrained speculation and opinions and half-remembered rumors and whatnot, the actual information can be obscured and rendered useless (kinda like an on-line forum, really).

Most of the time I'll just call for a check or a group check up-front, but when there's that pile-on impulse, I pull out the group check.

That's rather a kludge to fix a problem that could be fixed "upstream," wouldn't you say?

 

[cooperjer]

I guess you could also imagine a system like:
- If you beat a DC by 3 or more, then you know you succeeded. ("You disarmed the tra," "The diplomat seems to be lying," "The peasant is clearly intimidated," or what ever.)
- If you fail by 3 or more, then you know you failed. ("You are unable disarm the trap." "You can't tell if the diplomat is lying or not." "The peasant is unimpressed.")
- If you roll is within the DC +/- 2, you aren't sure. ("You were able to manipulate the trap to some extent, but it's hard to be sure if it's really safe now." "You think the diplomat is [check succeeded]/ is not [check failed] lying, but it's hard to be sure." "The peasant seems intimidated, but you aren't sure how reliably he'll follow your instructions.")

This gets to providing the player with a confidence level in the result as much as the result. So, to take an example from real life, I completed a mechanical line drawing. It took some time and I was careful. I would say this is a passive Int (drafting) check with a DC set by the complexity of the part. If the DC of the drawing is low I'll have high confidence the drawing was done correctly and I'm not missing any information on it. If DC of the drawing is near my passive ability then I'll have some confidence but also some uncertainty with respect to getting all the information on it. If the DC is higher than my passive ability, then I pass the drawing on to a co-worker for them to check as well because I'm now confident that I missed something on the drawing. If I assist my co-worker with checking the drawing I now have advantage on the check and I hopefully will have more confidence on getting all of the information correct.

A similar idea can be applied to traps, locks, research, etc. For the purpose of insight into the motivations or intention of a NPC the PC is speaking with, it may be a little more abstract to apply.

How a player states the approach to achieving a goal, especially with traps, can be variable based on the player. I have one player who is in the medical field while I'm in the mechanical design field. If I present her character with a problem related to medicine then the approach she describes is most likely beyond my knowledge. I ask that she make a roll if I'm unsure the approach will not meet the goal. If most cases the detail of approach she describes will meet the goal so no roll is necessary. On the other hand, a mechanical system challenge, such as a trapped chest, poses a challenge for the player to describe an approach I feel would meet the goal, because of my knowledge in mechanical systems. Because of this, I tend to let the player state "I check for traps," and then roll, which then allows me to verbally state to the player what I feel that means. If the roll was high then I give more detail. If the roll was low then I give less detail as I describe what I feel the character did.

Player uncertainty in a solution can drag the game out, depending on a couple factors. 1) Is the player okay with the uncertainty and decides to move forward? 2) If the player is not okay with the uncertainty an attempts again, does the DM allow the other players to pile on rolls or is that prevented?

 

[Bawylie]

I think that sometimes we DMs look for a system to use before other solutions. Maybe it's the way we're trained by the books.

You really could introduce uncertainty by giving the WRONG info once for every four or six successful checks. Of course, I would tell the players the uncertainty rule is in play at the start.

But, randomness and chaos are already antagonists. And we want to empower the players to make good, informed decisions that neuter chaos and randomness altogether. (I do, anyway). So I'm unlikely to screw with success.

So you might, from time to time, give them correct and true information on a failed roll, as if it were a success. An unbelievable truth. A few of these will create uncertainty over time. And it won't screw with successes.

I probably wouldn't do this either. The information I give out as a DM serves to answer a question, conclude the current scene, and lead into the next scene. If it doesn't do that, action and play time stall badly. I don't like when playtime is eaten up by deliberation.

So when does uncertainty serve me best? What do I want it for? Largely, I want uncertainty to augment the tension when players must decide between This and That. Choosing between equally good, equally bad, a good option with a bad rider, or sacrificing a good option to prevent a bad option - that stuff is where tension lives and where I like my uncertainty.

Take the Dark Knight. Joker has kidnapped 2 people and tells batman where they both are. But that he can only save one of them. Batman's interrogation of Joker gets him the info he needs to go to the next scene. There are kidnapped people in peril at different locations. The dilemma and tension for batman is which of the two victims he'll try to save. (In a twist, Joker lied about which victim was at which location). And that's a sort of clever way to introduce the unbelievable truth and some uncertainty. The kidnap game's rules and players and locations were completely true. But in future dealings with Joker, batman must factor in some small uncertainty that can carry huge consequences.

So IF I'm going to add uncertainty, I'm not going to do it in the structure of getting players to make decisions or move from turn to turn and scene to scene. I'm going to introduce it more broadly and consequentially.

So I guess, I want the players to be able to rely on their abilities and investments and improvements. So I won't hinder those (generally). And I want tension to exist in action and decision (as opposed to unreliability). I also need the players to trust me, even when they don't trust an NPC.

Lots to unpack here. Hmm


-Brad

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's rather a kludge to fix a problem that could be fixed "upstream," wouldn't you say?

Doesn't seem particularly ugly or inelegant, to me. What'd be the 'upstream' fix? (Not just 'get better players,' I assume?)

 

[Bluenose]

The necessity of the player establishing clearly the goal and approach is something of a side issue, but it's connected to the overall process of adjudication.

There's one very obvious problem with asking the player to describe how they're doing something. Sometimes the player knows more than the GM about a subject in the Real World. If their RW knowledge isn't applicable, then how can they answer the question without your input?

Let's take the poisonous mushrooms question from the OP. If I tell you I'm looking for a valvo, do you know where and what that is? What colour are the gills? Is there red on the cap or stem? There are other things I'd look for examining a mushroom, but that's two simple ones. You can certainly stop the game to look up what those things mean, or maybe you know the answer, but then there's an awful lot of subjects where it's not easy to find information on some things and you won't know the answer. How do you then determine whether the player is suggesting something reasonable and adjudicate accordingly?

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'm a fan of "roll then narrate".

Let's say the player rolls a natural 20 on his Insight check. I might say, "Yeah, you know with certainty he's lying. How do you know that?" I'll let the player come up with, "Because he mentioned that he was with the warlock, Eloelle the Brilliant, at the time, but he didn't know that in fact she was in the same tavern I was while this was all taking place."

For those who HATE players having this much input on the narrative, the DM could of course always insert that part him/herself, but I'm a lazy DM and would rather have the players contribute.

Indeed. Collaborating to create a cool resolution is one of the funnest elements of RPGing. That step would not be skipped in my method of setting up the resolution with good ideas and then carrying through after the skill check.