And harder at the same time; because instead of re-rolling until you get a high result you get one shot, period.
I don’t know as that’s really
harder. Just... more likely to lead to the gameplay stalling, which I maintain is a bad thing.
Same thing. The classic example is trying to lift a portcullis. One person tries, rolls, and fails. So two people try lifting it together (the material change in the fiction being the addition of the second person), roll, and fail. So someone else hammers the spikes where they meet the ground just in case they've rusted in place, to break them loose; this is a material change, so another roll is given.
This isn’t consistent with how I would run such a scenario. If a character tries to open a portcullis by lifting it (and I determine they could succeed, could fail, and there’s a meaningful cost for trying or consequence for failing) I would set a DC and tell the player what it is and what cost they will have to pay to try or what consequence they will face if they fail. For example, maybe the opposing forces will catch up to them if they don’t get the portcullis open. Or maybe if they fail they strain their muscles and take some kind of penalty until they recover. Whatever, point is, if by attempting it they are risking something, I tell them the DC, modeling their characters’ estimation of their own ability to accomplish the task. At this point, they can take the risk and roll, or take steps to mitigate the chance of failure. For example, maybe they get another character to help, giving them advantage on the roll. Maybe they spend Inspiration. Maybe the cleric casts Guidance. Whatever. Then they either pay the cost and roll, making no progress on a failure, or if there is no cost to be paid they roll, suffering the consequences if they fail. Once that cost has been paid or that consequence has been suffered, if nothing in the fiction prevents them from trying again they are free to do so, as long as they’re willing to pay the cost or risk the consequences.
Granted, the previous failure may well have changed circumstances such that another attempt isn’t feasible (for example, the opposing army is already here so escaping through the portcullis is no longer an option), or has different consequences (for example, you’ve already strained your muscles, so you’ll have a penalty on the next attempt and the consequences may be more severe such as a major injury).
In broader terms, you don't get another roll until and unless you try somethng different. Straight out of Gygax 1e, this is.
I’m not running 1e, so I don’t really care what Gygax said about how to run that game.
You're not the only member of the party!
Your PC might not get bored doing what you're doing but the others sure might get bored watching you.
And it should be up to their players if they do, and what they do about it.
IME there's been a lot of PCs who have the attention span of chickens and who in the fiction would get bored with any delay.
What the characters “would do” is up to their players.
I might have the sequence wrong, and I forget who said what, but in the session I'm talking about all of the below occurred. On approachign the door we had immediately seen there's no lock (the DM had a picture of it, shared on roll20, so we all knew exactly what it looked like) and no handles, and no visible hinges. Also, this is a party ranging from 8th-13th level; which is pretty high for 1e.
[searching for a hidden lock in the door produced nothing]
Player A: "Cast Detect Magic." DM: "Yes, the door is radiating very strong magic."
Player A: "We cast Knock at it." DM: "Nothing happens."
Player B: "We try touching [various heretofore unidentified magic items] to the door, does it open?". DM: "Nothing happens."
Player C: "There was a very out-of-place long metal rod back down the passage, let's go get it and see if it helps here." DM: "OK, you retrieve the rod." [players then try various ideas with this rod, end result of all is] DM: "Nothing happens."
Player A: "Maybe it needs some bizarre spell cast on it. Try Faerie Fire." DM: "Nothing happens." [several other spells are cast, same result]
Player B: "Screw this. This door's a distraction; I bet the real door is hidden nearby. Search the area for secret doors!" DM: "After a lengthy search you come up dry."
Etc. etc. There was no time pressure on us that we knew of, but by the time we got through that sucker we were down about a dozen spells and various other pre-cast buffs had long since worn off. But what happened next? The PCs were bored, and so threw caution to the wind and went off in three different directions. One found trouble.....
How is this not gameplay, and how is this not following the play loop?!
This seems to be a very different scenario that we’ve been discussing. It sounds like you’re attempting actions that have no chance of success and repeatedly failing without a roll, not attempting things that could succeed or fail, rolling, failing, and being barred from trying again. Still sounds boring, but more because of what I would consider poor puzzle design than the rolls without consequences for failure issue.
But don't puzzles and riddles give the exact same effect, though: you're stuck until you can solve it?
If the puzzle is designed well, the players should rarely if ever be stuck with absolutely no idea of what to do. They might have to use some trial and error, but if they ever reach a point where they feel like they’ve exhausted all their options and have absolutely no inkling how to proceed, I’d consider that a failure on the designer’s part.
Then what do you do when success (with meaningful consequence) is in doubt but failure has no real consequence attached?
Narrate success. I thought I had made that pretty clear.
Where to me metagaming is about the biggest negative effect there is and should be curtailed (or better yet, eliminated) wherever it's reasonably practical to do so.
Yeah, I figured you would think so. I used to think that way, and I ran terrible games because of it. My games improved
immeasurably when I finally took the advice of many people I had been hearing from who’s games sounded
way more fun than mine were to just stop worrying about it.
Trying to prevent metagaming is a mental trap that only leads to a cascade of bad rulings causing gameplay problems, which you make more bad rulings to try and fix, which lead to more gameplay problems. I think all DMs would do well to free themselves of the metagame-policing mentality and focus instead on what actually makes the game more enjoyable instead.
I think (?) we agree here; with our difference perhaps (?) being that I don't care if that happens-during-play story moves forward or not and-or how long it might take to do so.
I don’t agree with that assessment. Again, whatever happens in play is the story, so as long as play is happening the “story,” such as it is, is “moving forward.” I think you are making a lot of assumptions about my gameplay preferences, possibly influenced by flawed models of game design like GNS theory (though not necessarily that one specifically), and those assumptions are causing you to misunderstand my position.
OK, this is a different tack than how I've been reading you so far: up till now I've been reading that you want one roll for each attempt, period.
I can see how I may have given that impression, sorry for the misunderstanding. No, I’m comfortable with a single roll representing a batch of activity - an attack roll representing several swings of the sword, an ability check representing a certain amount of time working at a task, etc. I was thinking of “attempt” in a more abstract sense, as like a discrete unit of activity. What should separate one “attempt” from another is its impact on the narrative. If nothing changes as a result of your action (either due to succeeding or suffering a consequence of some sort), there’s no point in rolling.
If the situation calls for random encounters, then absolutely yes. But not all situations (or modules) have such things.
That was just an example. I
like using wandering monsters because they’re an easy go-to way to make time spent on a task a meaningful cost, but it’s far from the only meaningful cost or consequence an action might have.
The benefit of saying that was your best effort is that it forces you (as both player and character) to think creatively and come up with another approach or idea.
You can also encourage creative thinking by insuring dice rolls have meaningful costs and consequences. As mentioned in my earlier post, doing so shifts the focus from looking for opportunities to make dice rolls that employ your best modifiers to thinking up creative approaches that will mitigate the risk of failure. So, even if I take it for granted that encouraging creative thinking is a benefit of your method, my method also has that same benefit, and has fewer drawbacks.
Of course, since you consider “metagaming” to be a drawback, I’m sure you would feel similarly about my method (that is to say, that while it may or may not have the benefit of encouraging creative thinking, it has more drawbacks than your method). I think if you’re looking for the key difference in our values, this is it. You consider “metagaming” the ultimate gaming sin, I don’t think it causes any meaningful problems in actual play.
If you handwave "success after x-amount of time" you're taking the boredom decision away from the other players.
Not at all. If the player making the attempt wants to get bored and give up part way through, they should tell me so in their description of what they want to do as part of the gameplay loop. Or, if they didn’t anticipate the task taking such a long time (possibly do to a miscommunication about the scenario creating misaligned expectations), they can tell me so when I establish the results of their action and we can adjust accordingly. If the players of any of the other characters want their characters to get bored part way through, they can tell me what they want to do about it and I will resolve their actions the same way I do all actions.
Better perhaps to say "It looks like your Thief might be in for the long haul here and may or may not end up getting anywhere - what are the rest of you doing in the meantime?"
Oh, of course. If it wasn’t clear, any time a player commits their character to an activity that will take an extended amount of time (I like to work in intervals of roughly 10 minutes), I ask the other players what they’re doing in the meantime. So, if the rogue tries to unlock the door by picking the lock with their thieves’ tools, I’ll usually say something like “ok, that will take 10 minutes and a successful DC 15 Dexterity check. Bob, what are you doing in the meantime?”
