Then why is it, when I opened this conversation, I was told, well actually you should do it this way. Since, all I do is let players tell me what they want to do and am prepared for things to become skill checks?
By all means, quote the post where I said “you should do it this way.” If you can point to it, I will cede that I misspoke and apologize. But this whole time I have done nothing but answer your questions about my DMing style and correct your misapprehensions about it. From my perspective, I am just being grilled relentlessly on my DMing style, while simultaneously being accused of attacking yours.
The one thing I did “attack,” if you want to call it that, was your suggestion of a “better” way to adjudicate the stupid poisoned handle scene. And my only point in doing so was to say “I don’t like it when the DM dictates what the PC does, especially when what they narrate contradicts the plauer’s description of their own action.” My approach to action adjudication avoids that. I don’t really care if you adopt my style or not.
Why do you keep telling me that we do things differently, when in the end we do them the same way?
Clearly we do do (heh) things differently. I only call for checks when the character’s approach has a reasonable chance of succeeding at achieving the player’s goal, a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the player’s goal, and a cost for the attempt or a consequence for failure, and if it has those things, I tell the player the DC and consequences so that they can make necessary preparations and/or decide not to go through with the action. You... Well, to be honest, I’m not sure what you do. This conversation has been almost entirely focused on what I do, which makes it extra strange to be accused of attacking your play style. I don’t even know what your play style is.
So you never play as a player?
That might explain a whole heck of a lot here, because I DM and play as a player. I switch between adjudicating the plan and making the plan depending on the day of the week. If you never play but only DM that might explain why we are having a hard time communicating.
I do play as a player, but when I do, I don’t tend to adjudicate actions. You’re asking me what I would do if I was a player in my own game? I don’t know. If it was my game there’d be more context than “you’re locked in a cell and there’s a guard.” But I guess since the guard is the only feature of the environment I’ve been given any information about, I’d try to talk to him? Or maybe ask the DM for more details about my environment. I don’t know, this is a very strange exercise and I really don’t see the point of it.
ALL CAPS!!!
Sorry, had to get that out of my system.
You’re good
At some point in this rambling conversation it was brought up that players who would worry about failing a roll and making a situation worse would simply choose not to roll. They would remain neutral as a counter to the consequences of failure.
So, it was proposed, that there should not only be consequences for failure, but consequences for doing nothing. So, exactly what I said. Consequence for failing and consequence for doing nothing.
Now, since that seems to be something you have a hard time grasping, considering your RESPONSE, I'm guessing you missed out or forgot that side conversation. But, I'm trying to cover my bases in this discussion to not misrepresent the playstyle.
Ok, well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have only been responding to the parts of your posts that are addressed to me (because I am not really interested in the rest of the conversation, I’m just defending my position.) So, I don’t know who said that or what they were on about, but the idea that there “must be a consequence for inaction” does not sound at all reflective of my DMing style to me. Maybe you’re rephrasing something I would actually agree with in a way I can’t grokk, but on its surface, the asssertion that “there must be a consequence for inaction” sounds like straight-up moonspeak to me and certainly doesn’t sound like something that I would enforce in my games.
If this was just about your personal checklist, why have you felt the need to correct me so many times about the way I play?
In your grilling me about my DMing style, you have proposed many example scenarios which are not reflective of my DMing style, and you have consistently re-framed examples I have given into a style not reflective of my own. That is what I have corrected. My process isn’t going to make sense to you as long as you continue to think of actions as requiring checks to resolve, except sometimes when the DM lets you automatically succeed. I’m not even a fan of the term “automatically succeed” because it gives the wrong idea from the get-go. It implies a baseline state where actions are resolved by checks, in which automac success and failure is possible in exceptional circumstances. This is not the case in my style. In my style, checks are not the way players interact with the world, they are tools the DM can utilize to adjudicate actions that do not already have clear outcomes. As long as you are thinking in terms of action=check, you are going to struggle to understand my style, because you are looking at it through an alien frame of reference.
And, I still don't see the connection between the things you do and ensuring success and failure come about because of the player's decisions instead of a die roll. Your process is just about when to roll the dice based off player decisions, so it has equal chances of dice rolls going bad. And bad dice rolls don't invalidate the decision, do they? And how does this work towards making sure the players are thinking in terms of their character's actions instead of their skills?
Especially if you don't share your checklist and from the outside there is no difference between our approaches?
In my approach, the primary way of accomplishing things is by describing what your character does to try to accomplish them. Your ability to imagine the scenario, imagine your character in it, and make predictions about the likely outcomes of your character’s actions is your most powerful tool for achieving your goals. If you can imagine your character doing a thing, and imagine what would probably happen next as a result of him or her doing that thing, chances are that’s exactly what will happen if you tell me that your character does that thing. Sometimes, I might inform you that there’s a chance that there’s a chance something bad might happen as a result of your character doing this thing (which you may have already predicted). When I do so, I will say what bad thing might happen, and what the chances are of that bad thing happening, and give you the opportunity to change your mind. Though, again, if you’ve been imagining the world, you probably already had a pretty good idea about the possibility of the bad thing happening, so chances are good that you’re ok with that possibility, unless what I’m saying might happen is much worse and/or much more likely than you had anticipated, in which case I’m glad you got fair warning about that.
I think it’s pretty self-explanatory how this encourages players to think in terms of the character and the world. As for how it makes decisions the primary driver of success over RNG... Well, for one thing, there are a lot fewer dice rolls being made. I’ve seen plenty of D&D games where the DM calls for rolls in situations I never would have (or even just “because we haven’t had a roll in a while - god, I hate that. Not saying you are guilty of this, just saying it’s a thing I’ve experienced). This introduces many more opportunities for failure due to low rolls then there are in my games. I’m not a fan of that. It sucks to fail because of bad luck, so if something seems like it’d probably work, it just does in my games. Or, if it seems like it might work or might not, but nothing dramatic or interesting happens if it doesn’t work... then it just works. Then when something seems like it might work or might not, and also seems like it not working is an interesting possibility, then I tell you what’s at stake and what the chances of success are, and allow you to decide if you still want to go through with it or not. So if you fail, it’s not just because of a bad roll. I mean, that is part of it, but ultimately you’re the one who decided to take that chance, with full knowledge of the risk involved. It doesn’t feel like a bad roll screwed you out of succeeding, it feels like you took a calculated risk that didn’t pay off.
Wait...by "guessing" are you just worried about DMs who say "Well, this is a locked door, they need to use the lockpicking skill" and ignore every other plan until the players decide to pick the locks? Did you think that was the style I was advocating at any point?
That is one of many pitfalls that my DMing style circumvents. Whether you fall into this particular pitfall or not, I don’t know. Like I said, I know very little about how you actually DM, apart from the fact that you do allow players to initiate checks, you don’t require them to state explicitly what their character is doing, and you do call for checks where failure doesn’t change the status quo. Oh, and that you will occasionally narrate the PC’s action, which drives me nuts as a player when DMs do it to me. But other than that, I don’t really know. What I do know is, when I used to do these things as a DM, it did not lead to an experience I or my players found very satisfying. When I changed my approach, my games became much more enjoyable for everyone involved.
You know, breaking my statements into smaller chunks is making it harder to respond succinctly. I've been dealing with that, but this? Taking this where you have and giving such a sarcastic response does nothing to address anything and is just a jab.
You wanted to quote this with the rest of the section that followed, great, throw in your jab and then address my points. But, don't break it this far apart so that my only possible response is to be rude back. It encourages nothing but trouble.
If I’m jabbing it’s in retaliation for being jabbed. Sorry, that’s a bad habit of mine, but your “is it really that hard for you to understand?” comment really rubbed me the wrong way. And for the record, it was in its own line apart from the preceding paragraph, I didn’t isolate it any more than it was already isolated.
I think the shove example is the one that stands out the most out of this list, but frankly, I'm getting tired of the circle.
You want to divide the narrative action from the mechanical resolution. To the point where your advice to me as a player is to not even worry about how my action might resolved. At least, not until you've told me there will be a check and the DC and the consequences for failure.
What am I supposed to be gaining here? If I want to move really fast, I don't just say that and wait for the DM to tell me that I can take the Dash action, I know the Dash action is a thing and I consider both the story and the mechanics. I treat spells, combat actions, and skills mostly the same way. Combat gets reversed more often than not, but social and exploration are handled the same way.
Some actions, notably the ones listed in the “Actions in Combat” section of the PHB, have very specific, codified effects. When you take this specific action, here’s exactly what happens. Skills do not function this way. Skills have effectively unlimited possible applications and by their nature must be adjudicated on a case by case basis. Additionally, skills are not actions in and of themselves. Skills allow you to add your proficiency bonus to a check, when the action being resolved by the check falls under that skill’s purview.
And, I guess what I'm supposed to be gaining is an understanding of your personal checklist for resolution... woo?
Man, if you don’t care about the process I use to resolve actions, why are you grilling me so hard on it?
I'm not sure, but why would I be defending my style if you weren't commenting on how I was doing it wrong? And then, instead of saying "Hey, it's just the way I prefer to do things" you double down, telling me I don't understand it, that I'm making mistakes in my use of terms, that your method leads to more people making decisions as their characters instead of... on something else since I'm starting to question what exactly you are trying to avoid.
I've been digging into what you are saying, trying to figure it out, and it seems our difference is simply you have a strict checklist that you don't share with your players and just mentally work through? That's what this entire thing exploded from?
I guess?
