D&D General DM's: How transparent are you with game mechanics "in world?"

[Stalker0]

A lot of this discussion comes back around to the notion of "DM cheating" which has been argued to death on these forums. Like many things its a spectrum, some players think any DM fudge is grounds for DM expulsion, other people think its find is DMs are adjusting monster stats on the fly as the combat goes on.

At the end of the day, if your group is having a good time....your doing it right.

Back to the OP, I think one of the key 5eisms to remember is that npcs do not have to follow the same rules as PCs, in fact if you look over the npcs in the core books many of them have abilities that are not given to PCs, and there numbers dont' exactly track. So there is never a situation where my player can go "oh well he's a ranger so why are you rolling a d6 instead of a d8?".... I roll the die I roll to implement the game mechanics I want or need to make....and at no point does the player get to know that....unless its a mechanic that would be obvious to the character.

Likewise sometimes I just roll a d20....sometimes its for a random encounter, sometimes its just to freak out my players a little bit and create some ambiance. At no point does a player ever get to "demand" to know what that d20 is for.

Another trick I like to use. Sometimes I will have the entire table roll a check or a save ahead of time....with no knowledge of why. I record the results and use them later. This is great for illusions as an example, the issue always is as soon as the players have to make rolls they smell something is up. But with rolls ahead of time I can describe what they see based on their previous rolls without breaking the immersion. I'm still following the rules, but I manipulate the timing of the rules to better enhance the experience.

 

[Oofta]

There are times when I try to come up with creative descriptions of what's happening in game.

For example, that hell hound drool will be drops of fire, acid will drop off of other creatures. I'll always specify the type of damage if it's not just physical.

Things with legendary resistance will have a necklace that has glowing gems on it that go black as the resistance is used. In other cases I've had shrunken heads that are affected, or whatever else has an appropriate look. I once had a hill giant pull goblins put of a sack to intercept spells.

I think there are a lot of ways to tell people what's going on without using game terms. YMMV on whether or not it matters.

 

[robus]

I like to use natural language as much as possible to avoid getting into a numbers game, using words like easy or hard to describe the difficulty or armor class. I also pre-roll initiative to avoid the combat swoosh. (I also adjust monster HP on the fly if the encounter is not delivering the expected difficulty, mostly upwards as the PCs generally kick my monsters butts. )

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is relevant perhaps, in that I've alawys viewed magic as being invisible unless something about it or its effect says it is visible.

For example, there's no way to visually tell if someone is charmed or otherwise enchanted. There's no way to visually tell if someone is using a Detect xxxx spell unless the caster is obvious about gazing around at everything. Hunter's Mark doesn't say anything about visibility in its write-up thus by default there's no way to visually tell if someone is marked, and chances are high the target isn't aware of it either.

I’d say that, in general, while the effect might not be visible (I do agree that it is very hard visually to tell someone is charmed) that the casting of the spell is generally visible. It could be a media and expectations thing, but the idea of casting a spell on someone in a crowded room and no one having any chance of noticing, is weird to me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Look it however you want to, but you can't make something that is impossible possible just because you feel that it carries more weight. It is literally impossible for the DM to cheat. Not possible. There are no rules that he can break.

I just find this so weird, how emphatic everyone is to defend that there is no possible way a DM could ever cheat. Using loaded dice? Nope, they are the DM, not cheating. Not accurately recording damage information? DMs do what they want, no cheating. Using 1st level slots to cast 4th level spells? DM, can’t possibly be cheating. Automatically critting on every attack? Are they still the DM, then it still isn’t cheating.

Yet, if a player did any of the things I’ve discussed, you and everyone else would likely boot them immediately because you won’t let cheaters at your table. And this dichotomy isn’t healthy I don’t think. These sorts of double standards that insulate the role of DM from that of the other people sitting at the table.

No, but I don't read all of his posts. He did explain it afterwards in response to my post and it's a cultural thing apparently, not the bad thing you implied it was. If that's how his culture is, who are we to comment on it through the lens of our culture?

And he didn’t say it was a cultural thing until his response to you. In fact, in the response to me, he said it was based off of his LARPing experience and time working for charitable organizations, not European culture.

If he had said “In European culture we always give more respect to people who do more work, and since the DM does more work we give them more respect” then I would have responded differently, but his post was “The DM does more work, so they get more respect”. So I judged his statement by his words, not by an assumption about a culture I don’t share.

Being bad at gaining the advantage that they are cheating to get does not negate the fact that they are cheating in order to get an advantage. Not everyone that cheats is good at it.

Can you be bad enough at cheating to intend to cheat but be unable to pull it off? Is the intent to cheat therefore enough to have it considered cheating, even if it would be considered “impossible” to actually pull it off?

Again, I have to wonder, why are people so invested in this idea that under no circumstances could a DM ever be capable of cheating in any way shape or form. Because to remind you, my initial premise was “It is possible for DMs to cheat to, so since we aren’t talking about cheating DMs, why bring up cheating players?” and since then it has become a deluge of people stating that absolutely a DM is incapable of cheating and nothing they do, no matter how damaging to the game, could be considered cheating. What value are we getting out of this assertion? Why does it matter so much that the DM is incapable of cheating? Are you scared that if you admit it is possible that homebrewing will suddenly wither and die?

 

[Chaosmancer]

So, anyway... back to the OP where we are discussing transparency of mechanics in good faith play rather than with devious, abusive DMs...

There are lots of ways a good faith DM can handle transparency at their table - and as long as fun is had by all, lots of ways will work. FWIW, here's what we do:

At our table, the DM's rolls are in the open so players can see what dice are being used and get a sense of bonuses - this is especially easy on the VTT where hovering over a roll result will show the dice and modifiers (I think this can be hidden, but I just haven't bothered since I don't see the point for our table).

For ability checks, I'll tell the player the DC and let them know the stakes if the succeed or fail before they roll. In the game world, this is the equivalent of the character being experienced enough to realize the difficulty of what they are about to try and to have a sense of what's on the line. Further, it gives them the opportunity to back it up and rethink the approach if they really want.

For monster HP, I typically have the unnumbered health bar up on the VTT - which is really just me being a little bit lazy as, in person, I will narratively describe the monster's condition - like if the monster starts looking bloodied (half max HP) or appears to be on its last legs (less than 10 HP left).

If someone has a quick question about a ruling, I often have no problem explaining the mechanics in the moment but sometimes will let the player simply know that, in the game world, "huh, yeah, something weird is going on here." The main point is to keep things moving. If an experienced player was constantly interrupting the flow of our game to question the mechanics and/or my rulings, then there would be a conversation after the game to see what we could work out to satisfy their curiosity while keeping the game flowing smoothly. If they kept the interruptions up for a few sessions after our chat, I might offer one or two more warnings but, ultimately, that player would be demonstrating to me that they are just not a good fit for our table and would be asked to move on.

I don’t disagree with anything you are saying here, and this all seems rather fair. I do want to ask a question though.

Based on my reading of the OP and how similar it sounds to other people I know, I wonder if this is a degree of poor social skills and such. I know people who would chatter and think out loud like this, letting their excitement override other concerns. IF otherwise they were a good player, but they had this quirk in their personality, do we treat this by eventually asking them to leave the group?

This gets back to one of my first posts in this thread, where I see a lot of people ascribing motivations to this player that may not be there. So, if this is just a guy who talks before he thinks, is that really unacceptable?

 

[ad_hoc]

At the end of the day, if your group is having a good time....your doing it right.

Not always.

I've seen people argue that it is okay for the DM to lie to players as long as they don't find out. People have written long posts of advice about how best to make the players feel like they're in danger when they're not in danger at all because as DM, they argue, it is your job to have them be victorious in the end but make it seem like they just barely won.

Yes, the players may find that fun as long as they don't know but I don't like to lie to my friends. I think it is bad form and is also condescending as it's being done 'for their own good (fun)'.

I don't like DM as puppet master. Where the line is is up for debate.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Nothing other than the definition of cheating in a game, which requires the purpose be to gain an advantage. What advantage does the DM get by fudging(which is within the rules anyway since he's the DM and has created the rule by virtue of using it) to save a player?

Saving the characters life. Seems pretty obvious.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To be fair, you seem to be the only one focused on "extreme" cheating. Most everyone else appears to be concerned with bending rules for the benefit of the game, rather than screwing others over. Actual cheating, as already said countless times, is a violation of social contract, not a rules issue. The fact that it can happen is irrelevant to how sincere gamers play, which is what this discussion is supposed to be about.

I would agree, except with a caveat.

Cheating players was brought up. This discussion had nothing to do with cheating, but when a poster asked if a DM would question a player who picked up an abnormal amount of dice for clarification, one of the responses was "my player's don't cheat."

Which is a bit of an odd statement, since no one had been accusing the DMs in any of these scenarios of cheating. Making mistakes, having homebrewed, ect, sure, but cheating hadn't entered into the discussion... until something was brought up about a player doing something and the DM being confused. Then, we had to clarify that this isn't an issue, because their players don't cheat. I simply pointed out that, if one of our concerns is whether or not the players are cheating, DMs are capable of cheating as well.

Which started this deluge of denials and hard-line stances that it is impossible for a DM to cheat. That the very idea is absurd... which is part of why I made sure to bring it up. Because "We don't have that issue, my players don't cheat" gets brought up with distressing regularity on these boards, but people will fall over themselves to say that a DM could never, and will never cheat. Which seems rather detrimental to honest conversation, if we divide up the scenarios between people who might be cheating, and people who are incapable of cheating.

 

[Lanefan]

I’d say that, in general, while the effect might not be visible (I do agree that it is very hard visually to tell someone is charmed) that the casting of the spell is generally visible. It could be a media and expectations thing, but the idea of casting a spell on someone in a crowded room and no one having any chance of noticing, is weird to me.

True, though a caster can take steps to disguise or hide it - 5e has mechanics for this, I believe, though I forget the names. Failing that, the caster can just step behind a large potted plant...