D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[pemerton]

As sympathetic as I am to this point, I'm wondering if it's appropriate to the D&D specific forum in a thread explicitly about techniques for 5e? The foundational assumptions of 5e preclude the kind of drama-driven play above, but also fight against pure exploration-play described above. There are middle positions.

Point taken re thread-relevance - but it is 50+ pages in and I was following and conributing to an ongoing discussion.

With respsect to 5e, I'm always a bit uncertain because some posters on some threads (including quite recent ones) suggest that it is very flexible and can handle a wide variety of approaches to play, whereas others (like yours, if I've read it rightly) tend to suggest that it's its own distinct thing.

I reckon you could try and run a 5e game that came fairly close to what I described if it was low-ish level with non-spellcasting fighters and rogues. (And perhaps barbarians and monks?) I know that's not what the system defaults to, but I don't know if the system would work very well under those parameters (ie trying to keep action declarations and resolution to simple d20 rolls rather than bringing in a lot of the discrete sub-systems of spells and spell-like stuff that doesn't fit so easily with the "make a check and see what comes out of it" approach).

 

[Campbell]

The reason the referee steps outside during planning is the same reason why the referee and the player of the thief will step aside during scouting missions. It helps to maintain asymmetry of information so that responses are as authentic as possible. The referee will always try to stay impartial, but removing the temptation whenever possible is helpful for hygienic play.

Telegraphing is you use it here is what I would call adequately describing the fictional environment. If something should be apparent it is the referee's duty to describe it. This sort of thing and maintaining consistency of the fiction are not what I would consider any special sort of GM technique. They are the bare minimum of what every GM of every roleplaying game should be doing.

When I refer to telegraphing I think in terms of telegraphing future danger before it strikes, basically a direct and obvious fictional threat that demands actions that implies obvious consequences.

If this is the extent of what you mean my criticism would swing the other way. It is hardly sufficient for maintaining a meaningful sense of tension and danger. It in no way establishes clear stakes.

I really want to be fair here, but much of the commentary has focused on setting clear stakes and seemed to be deeply concerned with pacing and a sense of immediacy which you broadly agreed with including statements I made about how goal and approach could be used to maintain tension based on my own experience running 5th Edition and Blades in the Dark. Now that bring concerns about exploratory play telegraphs become mere descriptions of the environment and play priorities become radically different.

I guess what I am asking for is what are your guiding principles?

I will be honest, I find myself broadly suspicious because you and others seem to be saying you have found the secret sauce. In my experience there is no secret sauce. We need to decide what our goals are and use techniques tuned to those purposes.

 

[iserith]

The reason the referee steps outside during planning is the same reason why the referee and the player of the thief will step aside during scouting missions. It helps to maintain asymmetry of information so that responses are as authentic as possible. The referee will always try to stay impartial, but removing the temptation whenever possible is helpful for hygienic play.

Telegraphing is you use it here is what I would call adequately describing the fictional environment. If something should be apparent it is the referee's duty to describe it. This sort of thing and maintaining consistency of the fiction are not what I would consider any special sort of GM technique. They are the bare minimum of what every GM of every roleplaying game should be doing.

When I refer to telegraphing I think in terms of telegraphing future danger before it strikes, basically a direct and obvious fictional threat that demands actions that implies obvious consequences.

If this is the extent of what you mean my criticism would swing the other way. It is hardly sufficient for maintaining a meaningful sense of tension and danger. It in no way establishes clear stakes.

I really want to be fair here, but much of the commentary has focused on setting clear stakes and seemed to be deeply concerned with pacing and a sense of immediacy which you broadly agreed with including statements I made about how goal and approach could be used to maintain tension based on my own experience running 5th Edition and Blades in the Dark. Now that bring concerns about exploratory play telegraphs become mere descriptions of the environment and play priorities become radically different.

I guess what I am asking for is what are your guiding principles?

I will be honest, I find myself broadly suspicious because you and others seem to be saying you have found the secret sauce. In my experience there is no secret sauce. We need to decide what our goals are and use techniques tuned to those purposes.

Yeah, honestly, I think you and others are just speaking a different language than some of us are and it's not helping further the conversation. I've found that's often the case when Forge jargon or similar such terms, particularly from less well-known indie games are used. We lack a common vocabulary. It's often why I constrain my language to what is in the actual D&D 5e rules books. (Though "telegraphing" isn't a word that is used in them, to be fair. I, too, consider how I defined it as describing the environment, though others like @Lanefan consider it to be giving the mystery away.)

As for your suspicions, the latest of my queries were seeking such definitions because I was trying to square up certain assertions that were being made with my actual experience at the table and it seems I was correct in us not defining certain terms the same way. I do not claim to have any "secret sauce." I change the way I DM or GM based on the rules of the game that we're playing. The principles by which I try to guide my approach are found therein.

 

[pemerton]

the very pretty maps had obviously been scaled to suit the specific goals of the adventure designer in different parts of the adventure...resulting in two specific locations being x distance apart on one map and y distance apart on another, according to the scales on the maps - where x and y differ by a factor of about 4.

Obviously the adventure designer wanted travel time between these two sites to be short when dealing with local stuff but much longer when dealing with regional travel.

As a trained geographer, I see this as abhorrent!

As @Campbell has said, maintaining consistency of the fiction is pretty much GMing 101. It's not a distinctive technique or particularly well-adapted to one rather than another sort of play experience.

But being relaxed about times and distances isn't about inconsistency. It's about not being needlessly specific. In the particular bit of play that I described, it was established that the castle was an easy ride from the coastal village in the night-time. This certainly does not preclude it being a comfortable walking distance from the coastal village by daylight. Are we talking 2 miles? 5 miles? Even a little further than that? It doesn't matter.

The events that took place while the characters went to the lighthouse included some parleying, a joust with 3 lances but resting between each lance, and then a pitched battle between 100+ soldiers that ended with one side fleeing. How long exactly did all that take? Again, it doesn't matter.

No one at the table had any sense of inconsistency or spoiled verisimilitude.

Agreed. I read @pemerton's example and could imagine it being really dramatic, or really boring. Regardless of system. The difference has almost nothing to do with the rules. IMO, anyway.

The discussion I'm having with Lanefan shows one way that rules matter. If the rules for establishing distances travelled and time taken involve maps and measurement - which is the default for D&D - that has implications for how events can unfold within the fiction, which in turn has implications for dramatic pacing.

It can also be seen in the reply I posted upthread to your question about consequences for tying knots. My reply was an actual play example that is pretty close though not identical - it involved a sleeping potion rather than knots.

The way that I used the waking up of the drugged character as a consequence for the failed check to move successfully through the catacombs depended on holding time and distance flexible in the way I've just been talking about (eg how far through the catacombs? taking how long? and how long would the drug last? all this is addressed in pacing/narrative terms, not in terms of measuring sticks and clocks).

Adjudication of time and distance isn't the only way in which different rules might be better suited to exploratory or "heightened drama" plauy, but in my view is one of the more obvious ones.

 

[Xetheral]

With respsect to 5e, I'm always a bit uncertain because some posters on some threads (including quite recent ones) suggest that it is very flexible and can handle a wide variety of approaches to play, whereas others (like yours, if I've read it rightly) tend to suggest that it's its own distinct thing.

I'm firmly of the belief that 5e can handle a wide variety of both playstyles and DMing styles, and I think its ability to do so is evidenced by the wide variety of both types of styles described by posters on this forum who also report success using 5e. Even within this thread there have been sharp differences in posters' preferred styles amongst posters who prefer to play 5e.

Similarly, I think it's easily possible to approach 5e (or any game system) as "its own distinct thing" with regards to playstyle and DMing style. Many posters in this thread report great success from doing so, even if I might quibble as to how specificially a "5e default" playstyle or DMing style can be inferred from the rules text. But I think it's equally possible to approach 5e (or any game system) as a potential tool for running a campaign with a particular combination of styles already in mind. That's what I do, and 5e has been the most useful such tool I've found so far for running fantasy campaigns in the playstyle and DMing style I prefer.

 

[pemerton]

I'm firmly of the belief that 5e can handle a wide variety of both playstyles and DMing styles

Does this mean that you disagree with @Ovinomancer's suggestion that 5e wouldn't support the sort of play that I described?

I'm not trying to engender fights here, just trying to get a sense of the analytical and dialetical terrain, and the place of various posters on it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Telegraphing is you use it here is what I would call adequately describing the fictional environment. If something should be apparent it is the referee's duty to describe it. This sort of thing and maintaining consistency of the fiction are not what I would consider any special sort of GM technique. They are the bare minimum of what every GM of every roleplaying game should be doing.

When I refer to telegraphing I think in terms of telegraphing future danger before it strikes, basically a direct and obvious fictional threat that demands actions that implies obvious consequences.

But the “adequate description of the environment” in question - scorch marks on the wall opposite a door with a fire trap on it - does telegraph future danger before it strikes. Where do you draw the line between this and what you would consider a telegraph? At what point are the elements of the description that indicate the presence of danger no longer “impartial?”

If this is the extent of what you mean my criticism would swing the other way. It is hardly sufficient for maintaining a meaningful sense of tension and danger. It in no way establishes clear stakes.

I am very confused. The scorch marks pretty clearly establish the potential of burning to death, don’t they? Like, sure, you’ve got to be paying attention to pick up on it, but if you do, it pretty clearly lays out the danger. I also can’t speak for Iserith, but when I call for a check I state the DC and cost or consequence for failure, so there’s your clear stakes.

I really want to be fair here, but much of the commentary has focused on setting clear stakes and seemed to be deeply concerned with pacing and a sense of immediacy which you broadly agreed with including statements I made about how goal and approach could be used to maintain tension based on my own experience running 5th Edition and Blades in the Dark.

Now that bring concerns about exploratory play telegraphs become mere descriptions of the environment and play priorities become radically different.

This seems like an entirely false dichotomy to me. I just cannot fathom how immediacy and pacing could in any way conflict with the play style you described above.

I guess what I am asking for is what are your guiding principles?

I’ve never really made a conscious effort to identify “guiding principles,” I just do what I find works well. I suppose a big one for me might be that, barring magical compulsion, players should have absolute authority over their own characters’ thoughts and actions at all times. The DM should never describe a PC’s actions or tell a player what their character “would” or “wouldn’t” do (nor, for that matter, should any other player). Related to this, the PCs’ success and failures should be determined primarily by the decisions their players make. If you get nailed by a trap, it should be because you didn’t notice the signs of its presence in the DM’s description of the environment, or because after noticing them you decided taking precautions to find and disable it wasn’t worth the time it would take, or because your attempts to detect and disarm it accidentally triggered it, not because you got a natural 1 on your Perception or Thieves’ Tools check. In the event that the outcome of an action described by a player cannot be determined by consistent application of the logic of the fiction alone, dice should be used to determine the outcome, and the player should be informed of the difficulty and risk so that the dice roll too is a conscious decision.

I will be honest, I find myself broadly suspicious because you and others seem to be saying you have found the secret sauce. In my experience there is no secret sauce. We need to decide what our goals are and use techniques tuned to those purposes.

I don’t disagree that there is no “secret sauce” and that you should use the right tools for the job you want to do. But I do disagree with your assessment of this “dramatic stakes” vs “referee impartiality” dichotomy you’ve set up.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm firmly of the belief that 5e can handle a wide variety of both playstyles and DMing styles, and I think its ability to do so is evidenced by the wide variety of both types of styles described by posters on this forum who also report success using 5e. Even within this thread there have been sharp differences in posters' preferred styles amongst posters who prefer to play 5e.

Similarly, I think it's easily possible to approach 5e (or any game system) as "its own distinct thing" with regards to playstyle and DMing style. Many posters in this thread report great success from doing so, even if I might quibble as to how specificially a "5e default" playstyle or DMing style can be inferred from the rules text. But I think it's equally possible to approach 5e (or any game system) as a potential tool for running a campaign with a particular combination of styles already in mind. That's what I do, and 5e has been the most useful such tool I've found so far for running fantasy campaigns in the playstyle and DMing style I prefer.

5e doesn't support a wide range of playstyles, though. It supports a narrow range of playstyles strongly constrained by "GM adjudicates." It's further constrained under this by quite a lot of "GM says." The rules are open to GM ruling, by design, meaning quite a bit of a game is, mechanically, what the GM says it is.

Really, what we've been arguing here are small differences -- essentially hiw players are expected to interact with GM provided fuction so that the GM can adjudicate according to GM preferences. Yes, it seems big, but if you compare it to other ganes where player have direct control over adding fictional elements in play and limited GM fiat, then, no, it's really not a broad range of play supported by 5e.

And, that's actually really good! You don't want such a malleable game -- it would suck. 5e is good at being D&D, and that's awesome.

 

[Krachek]

A dm is to one who run the show of the session.
Ok for being impartial, but when the game is going nowhere, he should make things happens.
A good Dm should have a good poker face. Never reveal its tricks, small cheat or the like. Real life archeology, exploration, investigation and even war have very dull and long time out, in DnD we don’t necessarily want all these long and dull time.
if a dm has made an over complex dungeon or intrigue he should reduce its size before the players get completely drowned into it.

 

[pemerton]

I just cannot fathom how immediacy and pacing could in any way conflict with the play style you described above.

The 5e Basic PDF has an example of play. So does the rulebook for Apocalypse World. I think they illustrate - in broad terms, at least - the relevant contrast.

Spoiler: AW example of play

I assume everyone knows the D&D example. The AW one has a psychic PC going to try to mess with a rival group of gang-members, and accidentaly frying the brains of one of them in the process, which leads to that rival gang turning up at the PC's house, part-forcing open her door and throwing in a grenade. The home invasion ends with the PC frying the brains of some of the attacking NPCs and cutting another down with a chainsaw.

Another way of looking at it is the names of "moves" - 5e has the WIS (Insight) check; Apocalypse World has read a charged situation. Now I'll cheerfully concede that there is a degree of contrivance there - I mean, they're just labels. But in this case the contrivance of the label points to something real underneath. In AW if a situation is not charged then it's not really a focus of play (or, perhaps, one might say that it's the job of the GM and the players, between them, to make situations into charged ones). That's the immediacy - or at least an example of the immediacy - that @Campbell is talking about (assuming I've read his posts right). Which also links to his contrast between (what he calls) telegraphing and the (mere) description of the environment.