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.
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.
I don't always have there be consequences for failure like that, however, nor do I want to be put in a position where I feel I always have to have them; yet I still want there to be doubt as to whether something can be done or not and-or whether this person happens to be at their peak best today.
I’m not running 1e, so I don’t really care what Gygax said about how to run that game.
Heretic.
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.
Thing is, we don't know they're auto-fail until we try them. Sure, with the spells the DM can just narrate a no-go result but with the searches he should still go through the motions of rolling (we do search rolls behind the screen) so as not to tip us off as to whether there's nothing to find or whether we just missed what's there.
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.
I wouldn't. If it's obvious, or quickly becomes obvious, how to proceed then it's not much of a puzzle. And riddles can stump people for hours.
Narrate success. I thought I had made that pretty clear.
Even though that success is in doubt? Now you're either on easy mode or on binary pass-fail (i.e. take-20) mode.
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.
What makes the game more enjoyable- both as player and DM - is that metagaming be kept to as minimal a degree as possible, given the practicalities of the activity. This is one hill I ain't budging from.
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.
I'm not a GNS student at all so if I'm parroting their theories it's by sheer random chance, believe me.
I frequently use the terms simulation and gamist, though, in their English-language-meaning senses; and was doing so long before the Forge had ever been heard of.
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.
Ah - there's a key difference: to me what should separate one "attempt" from another is a change in approach: the "material change in the fiction" I mentioned upthread.
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.
Fair enough.
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?”
Different order of operations. I don't mention how long it'll take before the roll is made because I don't want to commit to a timeframe that the roll might then render moot. For example, on a very good roll it's possible the action was done very quickly and thus Bob wouldn't have had time to get up to anything else of note.
In other words, one of the factors that I-as-DM can use the roll to help inform is how long the action took to complete (or before failure occurred, whichever).
