D&D General "I make a perception check."

[iserith]

No. he is saying, "I make a stealth check to hide in the closet" instead of saying "I hide in the closet" and the GM saying "Make a stealth check" or not. It's the same loop.

If that is true, it's extra steps for no gain. You're better off saying "I hide in the closet" and leaving it at that.

 

[robus]

i disagree passive is passive. I walk into the room and don't say i am looking around, I just walk to teh bed.
active is active not passive, I walked in and LOOKED around, that is an action an activation now there is a roll (or not depending on DM call) if the DM says there is not, but I had 35% chance of seeing her I would ask WHY I didn't get the chance, and if the answer was word games "I'm sorry you didn't declair your intent to look around in enough detail" I will NOT be happy

Once again, I have to lament WotC's word choice with passive. Passive is referring to the player not the PC. The player does not make rolls for these checks, they are passive. But the PC is very busy with their ongoing action.

Shakes fist at WotC!

 

[Reynard]

If that is true, it's extra steps for no gain. You're better off saying "I hide in the closet" and leaving it at that.

I think you are missing the core piece motivating the playstyle: avoiding unfair, biased and generally crappy GMing. It makes me sad, to be honest.

 

[Charlaquin]

the problem is you describe something with no consequence or lack of retrie... I can sit and try to tie my shoes 100 times

but lets take your use rope skill example... (maybe a took kit in 5e)
we have a captured goblin and I want to tie him up so he can't get away.

That sounds like a goal and an approach to me. No more specific detail is required, because you’ve stated clearly and with reasonable specificity what you want to accomplish (prevent the goblin from getting away) and what your character does to try and accomplish it (tie him up). I would probably not even require you to make a check to accomplish that successfully.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You are not wrong that you character is your character sheet. You are wrong that we can treat mental and social skills exactly the same as physical skills. That's impossible. Whether we think that's unfortunate or fortunate is a different matter.

no ... just no
trying to say you have some handed down on high truth that proves a diffrent way of playing wrong is not helping at all

That is exactly the same as my process of play. You are describing exactly what happens at my table as well. So we can't be in as much disagreement as you think.

the funny part is that if we really did sit down at gencon and play at the same table I doubt we would notice...

So let's get back to what you left out of your process of play.

and here we go

Suppose the players come to a walled garden which you describe. One wall is smooth stone. Another wall has carved decorations on it. Another wall has ivy growing up it. A third wall has a tree that is growing near it which has a branch that overhangs the top of the wall.

Four players enter the garden. You ask them what they want to do? And it turns out that they all want to climb over the wall to see what is on the other side.

great. I don't care what amount of detail the player gives I care how well they can climb (and if it matters)

Does it matter which side they use?

yes but if someone asked to climb the sheer blank surface it would trigger (what I say all the time) "wait what, why?"

That is to say in your game are all four of those walls equally easy to climb?

no but I would only set the DC for the easiest unless a player gave me a good reason to try a harder one.

Or to put it another way, do some choices that the players make earn them advantage and disadvantage?

yes... some choices cann grant advantage. off the top of my head 'aid another' and in some games I play in (but not ever ones I run) flanking.

Because if choices the player can make, whether climbing the ivy or using a grappling hook can change the difficulty of a task, they you haven't taken the player from the equation.

again... in the situation were there is an easy way and a hard way and someone says they want to take the hard way I will ask out of game why and if they are sure, then let them take the harder route... I will defualt to the easy route if not.

Because of choices a player can make do give advantage and disadvantage, sooner or later you are going to get into a situation where the character with weak climbing ability is succeeding more often than the character with good climbing ability.

yes but the less it happens the better I find games...

I am not looking for prefect 100% character... I just want to maximize the amount of character and minimize the amount of player.
there are plenty of examples I myself will give if you like where I fell short... times that player skill DID even in the last year (2 decades into do this) i can name at least once.

How far do you really take this fortune at the beginning concept? You hinted that you railroad players in your prior posts using the "your character would know better" method. Do you make the player roll the climb check and then decide based on how well they did which wall and method they climbed up? Or is every wall the same difficulty and only the character skill matters such that the character skill describes the world?

no nothing like that...

and it isn't railroading (but it is sometimes helping players remember lore or facts or mechanics)

lets take both MY and my friend Matts games (we alternate 2 weeks my game 2 weeks his)
Matt has a house rule about lava... it is death no matter what. no "but I am immune to fire" no "but I hold my breath" touching lava even just your finger tip is a save or die effect that you get no save for.
I don't use that rule. Lava deals MASSIVE fire damage and you will sink slowly in it and be 'grabbed' if you fall into it in my game.

so if next week a player in Matts game says "I jump down onto the lava and hope for the best" matt would remind him he knows better that will be death... just or die no save.
if 2 weeks later the party was standing near lava and a player says "Hey if he throw the red dragon in the lava that auto kills him" I will remind them that yes we are very different games... the dragon can bathe in lava for all i care... it's like a hot bath.


neither of us will stop the player from trying if they want... but we will warn "this is what you would know"

now that is a crazy example (how often do you run into lava) but earlier someone (I don't think it was you) had an example of a player slapping a queen like she was a hysterical woman in an old movie. I would tell them "Before you do that, you do have a good persuasion, and you know that is most likely not going to work"
in fact I would rather they 'diplomancy' the queen then fall into a trap trying to pull off an old movie cliche and fail...

So, you are really upset by the idea that players might metagame the GM, but you are actually bragging about how you the GM might megagame against potential players?

how am I metagaming?

You are more and more convincing me that your obsession with making sure player skill doesn't matter is actively adversarial GMing. Is that why players throw things at you? I hope that hasn't happened in the last 20 years or so.

not once.... wait no the tarasque planet... okay 1 time I was accused of adversarial DMing... in general I hear the oppisit complaint I am too lenient

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yeah, he almost has to be describing Fortune At the Beginning where propositions are in the form of Moves. If he isn't, then well, proposition matters and well he's not as different from everyone else as he thinks.

I don't know why you think I have to do rolls first... I narrate results, but attempts are entirely first pre roll

 

[Jack Daniel]

Easy solution (works every time I've ever had to do it):

PLAYER: "I roll a perception check!"

DM: "Okay... you fish some funny-looking dice out of your pocket, crouch down, and give 'em a roll. Everyone else in the party is giving you weird looks, wondering what that's all about. Meanwhile, while you're playing with dice..." (turns to the next player)

Players shape up real quick when you pull that on 'em.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't even understand what you are saying anymore...

I'm using some jargon here, which of course you aren't expected to necessarily know. It would be a long side discussion to define the terms.

But before we go any further, it's a bias of mine but when I read text that is poorly punctuated and filled with misspellings in a conversation like this that on the other end of the conversation the person is just shaking with rage and cursing at the screen. Please tell me that you are just typing on the phone or something, or if you are actually as agitated as your text looks to me, I'll stop replying for a few hours and let you calm down.

here is a good rule of thumb... if you don't understand a diffrent way to play but think that the best description is railroading you will almost always be wrong.

You keep using that term "rule of thumb". Please believe me when I tell you that after 40 years of play and dozens of different tables and groups, there is basically no way of playing I haven't been exposed to or couldn't adopt if I wanted to. This whole thing with how different groups using the same rules play different things through adopting different processes of play? This is something I actively study and am obsessed with. Processes of play are things I treat like treasures to put in a cabinet and get out and study and think about. I've written more text than is probably good for me on EnWorld describing those concepts.

When I bring "railroading" into the conversation, it's not because I don't understand the term. I literally mean go read my essay on it the subject and see which of the techniques are familiar to you.

For example, you responded to me by saying sometimes you fast forward through combats... and suddenly we have yet another railroading technique from my essay turning up as part of your process of play. So I'm even more curious now about your aesthetics of play, because unlike a lot of people I don't use "railroading" as pejorative.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So it is the same loop but with an explicit player request to use a skill, rather than the GM determining the skill?
How are DCs established, since 5E has very broad DC categories? Are the DCs subject to "player skill" as you defined it?

I have my own house rule scale for DCs but it is based on the situation not the player... again if the oger cheif is walking in the paliden with -1 and disadvantage is justt rolling agains this passive perception... so even with -1 and disadvantage most likely very doable...

 

[Charlaquin]

my character is trying to use there perception to actively look for dangers that may be hidden at first glance..

Again, you did that, that was the passive Perception check. If you want to do something other than look around, you have to say what that is.

except this is just the example... every skill in the game, sooner or later you will run into one that "I have no idea how to do that?"

Not if you stop trying to think of it in terms of “what do I have to say to get the DM to let me use Skill X?” and start thinking of it in terms of “what do I want to accomplish and what do I do to try and accomplish it?”