D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[Lanefan]

Maybe, and that's part of his job. I'd be less inclined to think poorly of a DM who stopped us from doing something stupid by saying "Are you sure that's what you want to do?" than one who stayed silent while giving us no indication we ought to be more careful.

True; "are you sure?" is often the DM's final warning. Heard and said it many times, I have.

Hence the important line about "no dangerous doors before". Sure, there's always got to be a "first dangerous door" but again, there should be some kind of tell. Such as people mentioned up thread: if the altar kills whatever touches it, perhaps there's dead bodies (of people, bugs, animals, whatever), similarly the exploding door could have a fried skeleton in front of it, or perhaps the opposite wall has a "blast shadow" on it.

Sometimes, yes; but in this particular example probably not.

An exploding door is probably only going to be able to explode once. After that there's no door left.

Which, come to think of it, would be a good "tell" to have placed earlier in the Hall of Doors: a missing door surrounded by shrapnel, char marks, and scattered body parts.

Again, it's the PC's job to do the looking. It's the DMs job to tell them they ought to be looking.

Agreed.

I don't want players frozen by paralysis that every little doorknob may be trapped, that slows the game,

I don't mind a slower game.

The paralysis often happens because nobody's willing to be courageous and just try the door. What results is the classic Canadian standoff: "After you." "No, you first; I insist."

Bolded the important part. That was left out of my initial exchange for a reason. A "Strangely Clean Chest" is a tell. This is also an example of players "self-assigning rolls" IMO, I would probably just hold my hand up to tell them to wait for me to finish speaking, and then​ if they want to jump over and open the chest I'll let them do it.

Wouldn't work here, mostly because long ago I had to seriously smack down on "take backs" after some heated arguments, not just between me and players but between players. Thus the not-really-rule-but-more-like-guideline here is if you say you're doing something, you're committed to it.

So I could hold up my hand, finish speaking, and then narrate the results of the declared action...the end result would be exactly the same. Quicker just to respond immediately to the declared action.

See, I have the same problem with “your Rogue pulls out all the stops, tries everything she can think of, and these are the results” as I do with “I don’t know specifically what my character does to search the altar, but that’s what I’ve got this Skill on my character sheet for.” It’s too removed from the fiction. Too abstract for me to visualize what is actually going on in-universe. And it means the rogue’s player is succeeding or failing primarily by the grace of RNGsus with maybe a little help from the choices they made at character creation. I want her to succeed or fail primarily by the choices she makes in the moment with RNG and character building choices to settle situations where the immediate choice alone isn’t enough to decisively arrive at an outcome.

Fair enough. I prefer moving away from "I try again." <fail> "I try again." <fail> to in effect batching all those tries into one roll.

It also changes the dynamics. If you allow endless tries (essentially, take-20) then the only thing determining success or failure is the DC of the task at hand - in a completely binary fashion you can either beat it or you can't. Random variability or the character having an off day is removed from the equation, which I don't like at all. I much prefer the realism of sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you won't.

As a player, I never like when the DM hides the dice roll for my Action, so as a DM, I never do that to my players. I also make rolls for monsters and NPCs in the open as an act of good faith - if I the players have to roll their dice in the open, so should I. Plus it keeps me honest. No fudging rolls either in favor of the PCs or against them. Everybody saw what I rolled, there’s no pretending that untimely crit didn’t happen.

The problem with this is it's giving the players (and thus, characters) information that they simply shouldn't have.

Someone failing a search, for example, has no way of knowing in character whether the failure is due to their missing what was there to find or due to there being nothing there to find at all. Thus the player shouldn't know this either, as this knowledge may unduly affect what happens next.

Lanefan

 

[Satyrn]

What results is the classic Canadian standoff: "After you." "No, you first; I insist."

I've gotten down to only refusing twice before accepting that they really do want me to go first.

But I still feel so dirty rude afterwards.

 

[Lanefan]

If telling players how their characters feel about things works for your table, keep on doing it regardless of whether others see it as taking something away from the players.

I don't see it as taking something away from the players, but instead giving them something more to work with that they didn't have before.

"This is an icky-feeling place that makes your skin crawl and your stomach turn" is far easier for both me to say and a/the player/s to react to than 250 words words of horror-movie set exposition by me as DM.

 

[iserith]

I don't see it as taking something away from the players, but instead giving them something more to work with that they didn't have before.

"This is an icky-feeling place that makes your skin crawl and your stomach turn" is far easier for both me to say and a/the player/s to react to than 250 words words of horror-movie set exposition by me as DM.

I didn't say my way of doing things was easy. I had to learn to do it through practice. I value my players' agency over their characters enough that this extra effort is worth it to me.

I don't recommend long descriptions though - three to five sentences tops when describing the environment seems to be best in my experience.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You keep saying this, but so far I haven’t seen you two agree on any DMing techniques. Like, ultimately you’re both running D&D 5th Edition, so of course there will be a lot of similarities in your players overall experience. But when it comes to specifics, your styles seem to be pretty much polar opposites.

With every post you make about your own game, I am forced to disagree.

And that's okay that our games are different.

we both prefer the use of character knowlade and thought over player
we both prefer story over mechanic
(both sometimes get shortened to role play over roll play)
we both want players to flesh out choices and make them make sense

we both craft adventures that will challenge mental abilities of our players and enjoy a good rp session where we delve into characters... other than I let my players use "bad" words I don't see much difference at all.

 

[iserith]

we both prefer the use of character knowlade and thought over player

I don't know what this means. Would you clarify?

we both prefer story over mechanic
(both sometimes get shortened to role play over roll play)

I don't value "story over mechanic."

we both want players to flesh out choices and make them make sense

I don't care if player choices make sense. I just adjudicate the results. I'm not sure what you mean by "flesh out choices."

we both craft adventures that will challenge mental abilities of our players and enjoy a good rp session where we delve into characters... other than I let my players use "bad" words I don't see much difference at all.

I do craft adventures that challenge the players. That seems to me to be the basic unit of the game since D&D is about bold adventurers confronting deadly perils, adventurers under the control of the players. I'd be puzzled why someone wouldn't be doing that.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a good rp session where we delve into the characters." I tend to think of this as a byproduct of going on adventures and don't spend sessions focused on it. If that's what you mean, anyway.

More importantly, I think, is why you try to make the case that our games are largely the same? I'm fine with them not being so.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

More importantly, I think, is why you try to make the case that our games are largely the same? I'm fine with them not being so.

because discussions work best when you find common ground, and work out the differences from there. I am trying to forge a common ground. I am trying to see the things we play are same, then try to point out that we have different approaches is some areas and that people can see that both have minor changes to the game...and as such on a forum like this provide points to help others see both ways have merits and flaws.

 

[5ekyu]

True; "are you sure?" is often the DM's final warning. Heard and said it many times, I have.

Sometimes, yes; but in this particular example probably not.

An exploding door is probably only going to be able to explode once. After that there's no door left.

Which, come to think of it, would be a good "tell" to have placed earlier in the Hall of Doors: a missing door surrounded by shrapnel, char marks, and scattered body parts.

Agreed.

I don't mind a slower game.

The paralysis often happens because nobody's willing to be courageous and just try the door. What results is the classic Canadian standoff: "After you." "No, you first; I insist."

Wouldn't work here, mostly because long ago I had to seriously smack down on "take backs" after some heated arguments, not just between me and players but between players. Thus the not-really-rule-but-more-like-guideline here is if you say you're doing something, you're committed to it.

So I could hold up my hand, finish speaking, and then narrate the results of the declared action...the end result would be exactly the same. Quicker just to respond immediately to the declared action.

Fair enough. I prefer moving away from "I try again." <fail> "I try again." <fail> to in effect batching all those tries into one roll.

It also changes the dynamics. If you allow endless tries (essentially, take-20) then the only thing determining success or failure is the DC of the task at hand - in a completely binary fashion you can either beat it or you can't. Random variability or the character having an off day is removed from the equation, which I don't like at all. I much prefer the realism of sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you won't.

The problem with this is it's giving the players (and thus, characters) information that they simply shouldn't have.

Someone failing a search, for example, has no way of knowing in character whether the failure is due to their missing what was there to find or due to there being nothing there to find at all. Thus the player shouldn't know this either, as this knowledge may unduly affect what happens next.

Lanefan

Lanefan that lsst conclusion about "no way of knowing" depends a lot on what someone interprets the roll as.

In most cases when i have say been going thru in a closet, i can come away with a sense of how sure am i that i got into everything or not. Sometimes i looked into everything, sometimes not so much.

In fact, for almost every task i have ever done i came away with a sense about it as to how well i did, how well it went, etc. Sometimes that impression was wrong sure but mostly the final quality was not a surprise.

So, as i staed earlier, if i was narrating a failed search roll with a low roll i would describe it with a lot of uncertainty - soaces seemed odd but you could not get to, broken and suspicious edges, parts which slide and stick etc. If someone failed to find something on a high roll, i would describe it with lots of references indicating certainty.

It realky comes down to what one wants to have that YUGE span of 1-20 is representing as to what he believes they player should or should not get from knowing it or not.

To me a factor that big in every task attempted (vs auto fail or auto succes) is not serving the game well as a total unknown or inexplicable trump factor.

So, i tell my players straight up that roll is a measure of yoir character's quality of execution in that moment/stage.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[iserith]

because discussions work best when you find common ground, and work out the differences from there. I am trying to forge a common ground. I am trying to see the things we play are same, then try to point out that we have different approaches is some areas and that people can see that both have minor changes to the game...and as such on a forum like this provide points to help others see both ways have merits and flaws.

That's fair. We seem to have common ground on creating challenging adventures for the players.

 

[Charlaquin]

Fair enough. I prefer moving away from "I try again." <fail> "I try again." <fail> to in effect batching all those tries into one roll.

As do I. I just do it by making failure cost something - usually time, which means more risk of random encounters - or if there is no time pressure, then by allowing the player to succeed.

It also changes the dynamics. If you allow endless tries (essentially, take-20) then the only thing determining success or failure is the DC of the task at hand - in a completely binary fashion you can either beat it or you can't. Random variability or the character having an off day is removed from the equation, which I don't like at all. I much prefer the realism of sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you won't.

I don’t allow endless retries. I attempt to insure that retries carry a risk or expend a resource, and if circumstances don’t allow for that, I skip the roll and montage over the process. That said, what determines success or failure in a no-pressure situation is your choices. If you approach something in a way that has a realistic chance of succeeding and no pressure if you don’t succeed quickly, then yeah, of course random chance doesn’t enter the equation. Repetition will eventually brute force through those random factors, so limiting a player by saying “that unlucky roll was the best you could do” is artificial. I could have done better if I’d gotten luckier, and in-Universe there’s nothing that should be preventing me from trying until I get lucker.

The problem with this is it's giving the players (and thus, characters) information that they simply shouldn't have.

Someone failing a search, for example, has no way of knowing in character whether the failure is due to their missing what was there to find or due to there being nothing there to find at all. Thus the player shouldn't know this either, as this knowledge may unduly affect what happens next.

Yep, that’s the usual counter-argument for my open-rolls approach. Frankly, I don’t really care about that. If I called for a dice roll, you already know that means I thought your approach had a reasonable chance of succeeding in achieving your goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve your goal, and a cost or consequence for failing to achieve your goal. What more is really gained or lost by knowing you rolled low? If you’re rolling at all you already know the DC is low enough you can succeed, but you risk something by trying. Depending on the context, you have a pretty good chance of knowing what the risk is. At that point, all thats seeing your roll result does is gives you an idea how well your character feels they did on that attempt, which helps you decide if you want to risk trying the same thing again, going for a different approach, or moving on. And I’m fine with that. For me, the gameplay experience this style of action resolution creates is well worth the tradeoff of giving the players a bit of out of character information they can use to inform their decisions. Informed decisions with meaningful consequences are, for me, what makes D&D worth playing.