D&D 5E Rolling Without a Chance of Failure (I love it)

[Lanefan]

It’s not about the player reading the DM, it’s about the player paying attention to the details of the environment, and using those details to inform their decisions. And players can do that regardless of their familiarity with any given DM.

Except that no matter how hard you try* you're inevitably going to fall into a pattern of presenting those environmental clues and cues in certain ways and using certain turns of phrase that the players, over the medium-term, will pick up on.

This is an advantage to your long-time players, sure, but I suspect a rookie would soon enough be taught these tricks by the veterans. That part doesn't bother me. The part where you're in effect giving them the answer before (or while) asking the question is what seems a bit jarring.

* - unless you're using a published module and stick hard to the boxed text; but who in the world stick to just the boxed text?

 

[Lanefan]

The odd part about this for me is that often it's the same people that use "I check/disarm the trap" and throw dice at the situation who also complain that exploration challenge options are lacking in D&D 5e. I'm not saying that's the people engaged in the current conversation (I don't recall who was in the last exploration hate thread), but there's usually a correlation.

I don't generally pay much attention to who specifically says what in different threads - it's enough to keep track of who's saying what in the thread I'm engaged in at the time - so I'll have to defer to your memory here.

 

[iserith]

Except that no matter how hard you try* you're inevitably going to fall into a pattern of presenting those environmental clues and cues in certain ways and using certain turns of phrase that the players, over the medium-term, will pick up on.

This is an advantage to your long-time players, sure, but I suspect a rookie would soon enough be taught these tricks by the veterans. That part doesn't bother me. The part where you're in effect giving them the answer before (or while) asking the question is what seems a bit jarring.

* - unless you're using a published module and stick hard to the boxed text; but who in the world stick to just the boxed text?

That's really just not the case in my experience. Even long time players fail to pick up on clues from time to time for various reasons. And, let's say you're right, and they pick up on every telegraphed clue to know that a trap is present. So? There's still the matter of finding it, figuring out how it works, then disarming or circumventing it. The challenge doesn't end just because I suspect the scorch mark on the wall opposite the door means the door has a fire trap!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It reduces conflict by not setting up situations where the DM and the player are imagining different things the character is doing. You can see this a lot in games. I saw it just the other day on a stream where the DM basically assumed the character did a thing and the player stepped up and said the character wouldn't do that. Now this problem isn't all on the DM. The player needed to do a better job of being explicit with action declarations. If he had done that, the DM couldn't have filled that void with a bad assumption.

But this is them being on different pages and can happen in other direction too. I can easily imagine players getting annoyed by GM demanding what to them feels overtly specific declarations and then hitting them with bad stuff because they said wrong specific stuff. "Make con save!" "But I searched for traps!" "Sure, you searched traps with a pokey stick, but this trap required you to use magnifying class!"

It increases agency because the player has more control when actions are reasonably specific, leaving little or no room for someone else to come in and reduce agency by describing what their character does for them.

I ask players to be succinct in the truest sense of the word - brief but clear - because my game moves fast. Say enough that I don't have to ask you a bunch of questions to clarify what you're doing so I don't step on your agency. But don't say so much that you're slowing down the game. That's a pretty good rule of thumb in my experience and it makes for much more engaged players. No wall flowers at my table, that's for sure.

I don't think increasing detail automatically increases agency. Some players might feel it reduces their agency as they feel they would rather communicate their wishes in more generic terms, and are forced to deal with more specific stuff they don't care about. And you might deny it, but your method certainly increases the element of reading the GM, and I don't think that is the sort of agency all players want. Granted, in a game with a lot of GM authority like D&D that is always a thing in certain sense.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't generally pay much attention to who specifically says what in different threads - it's enough to keep track of who's saying what in the thread I'm engaged in at the time - so I'll have to defer to your memory here.

I mainly try to remember what I have said in a given thread!

However, I'm pretty sure I haven't complained that exploration is boring. Though I also have to say I rarely use traps, and this thread certainly has been a good reason to think about them a bit more. So at least in that sense this has been useful!

 

[iserith]

But this is them being on different pages and can happen in other direction too. I can easily imagine players getting annoyed by GM demanding what to them feels overtly specific declarations and then hitting them with bad stuff because they said wrong specific stuff. "Make con save!" "But I searched for traps!" "Sure, you searched traps with a pokey stick, but this trap required you to use magnifying class!"

Again, it's not about saying specific stuff. It's about saying just enough stuff that nobody has to (wrongly) assume what you're doing. But of course, if you use an approach to a goal that simply cannot work, like anything else, you just fail, no roll.

I don't think increasing detail automatically increases agency. Some players might feel it reduces their agency as they feel they would rather communicate their wishes in more generic terms, and are forced to deal with more specific stuff they don't care about. And you might deny it, but your method certainly increases the element of reading the GM, and I don't think that is the sort of agency all players want. Granted, in a game with a lot of GM authority like D&D that is always a thing in certain sense.

It leads to reading the environment - not the DM - since there's a direct benefit to paying attention and engaging with the environment in a way that can eliminate uncertainty as to the outcome of a task and/or the meaningful consequence for failure so that you don't have to roll. Does anyone have any objections to players being more attentive and engaged at the table?

 

[Lanefan]

It's the same. If I need the player attempt to push the nob on the drawer, pull the nob, twist the nob, tap the nob in the middle, slide the nob up, slide the nob sideways, slide it down in order to convey to me how he's trying to find the trap, that's pixelbitching.

You call it pixelbitching, I call it pre-emptive argument prevention.

I've had enough "I didn't do that!" "Yes you did!" arguments in my time to tell me I really don't want any more.

So, unless you want to put your character's fate entirely in my hands (because if you leave it open for me to make assumptions, my word becomes law), bloody well give me some specific details as to what you're doing!

In this example, all of that could be concatenated down to the player saying "I try everything I can with this knob short of ripping it right off the drawer." Problem solved.

 

[iserith]

In this example, all of that could be concatenated down to the player saying "I try everything I can with this knob short of ripping it right off the drawer." Problem solved.

Right - clear, but brief. In other words, succinct. Don't leave anyone wondering what you're really doing. Be a good communicator. The game is a conversation after all!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, it's not about saying specific stuff. It's about saying just enough stuff that nobody has to (wrongly) assume what you're doing. But of course, if you use an approach to a goal that simply cannot work, like anything else, you just fail, no roll.

And that kinda means you have to say specific stuff. You need to say the stuff GM thinks will work. Which of course is in certain sense how anything works, but more specific technical stuff we get, more problematic this comes. At some point it just becomes guessing how GM thinks made up nonsense would work. Not saying that your approach necessarily is that, but that' the danger.

It leads to reading the environment - not the DM

Well... These things are not unrelated... The GM creates the environment.

- since there's a direct benefit to paying attention and engaging with the environment in a way that can eliminate uncertainty as to the outcome of a task and/or the meaningful consequence for failure so that you don't have to roll. Does anyone have any objections to players being more attentive and engaged at the table?

No. And I get what you're saying. But it is an balancing act, and I really want the characters' capabilities to matter too.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You call it pixelbitching, I call it pre-emptive argument prevention.

I've had enough "I didn't do that!" "Yes you did!" arguments in my time to tell me I really don't want any more.

I think people's opinions on this are coloured by their past bad experiences. Because I don't remember that ever being problem. What I remember being a problem several times is GM having some specific solution to a problem in mind and players being frustrated when they didn't get it and failed to poke the right things!