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

[GMforPowergamers]

Why is that obvious?

do you mean to audience or characters... because I said it wasn't to the characters.

When 'Predator' came out, very few people had been exposed to the concept of an invisible alien with advanced tech hunting them. One of the experiences of the original movie that is hard to capture now is the fact the audience had barely more understanding of what was going on than the characters in the movie.

Invisible enemies in movies and books and comics go back to at least the 40's... so audiences (and players in that area) should not have been super surprised.

Now, all those tropes are part of the culture, so if real people were put into a similar situation it would be natural for them to think, "This is like Predator!" One of the problems with most zombie movies is that the characters in the movie act like they've never heard of a zombie before. Today, zombies are so ubiquitous as to be a trope. Everyone is genre savvy.

if I hear a noise outside I don't think "Man better make sure to bring back up Jason might be out there" I think "Oh the damn skunk again better try to shoo it off"
If a contagion broke out I bet half the people would not even think it was real... let alone take the safety percussions needed.
if tommorow in the really real world I saw a zombie I would think it a costume (weather that be someone horsing around or getting ready to shoot a movie) I would need some pretty extraordinary proof for that extraordinary situation...

In my opinion it often hurts a narrative when the characters are obviously dumb for the purposes of the plot. I hate that. Breaks my immersion every time, especially when the characters are protagonists.

people are not stupid if they act like they live in a real world when thing WELL outside the bounds of normal for them happen.

Or do we just have incoherent assumptions about what the character mindset should be.

I don't know... My opinion is that the character mindset should be based on the world THEY live in and the life experiences THEY had not on knowing it is a game with game tropes and rules.
What do YOY think?

Are we just demanding that the characters conform to some bad stereotype?

I am not... infact again I want them to be real in there lived experence NOT the stereotype of 'genre savey'.

One of the differences between RPGs and movies is that the plot can't depend on the characters being stupid.

and at no pint did I suggest they be stupid. I only said they should react in game not based on out of game knowledge.

The characters will be stupid, but not in a way that the plot depends on.

I mean everyone makes mistakes... I just don't understand why acting in character is stupid in your mind?

Then to be frank, unless a very good reason is given why the characters don't talk and share information, they are very bad stories.

sometimes they are bad (and I complain "why didn't you just say that 30 minutes ago") but most times they are working form the internal logic of the story and acting in character...

In REAL LIFE i have seen couples get into arguments over the dumbest misscommunication... sometimes in REAL life I yell "DOn't be a bad romance film" at my friends when they think a lie to cover up something that can be explained in a normal way is the best approach

Plots that depend on characters jumping through hoops because they are stupid annoy me to no end.

me too. I much prefer ones where they make sense for the setting and characters... and that is what I am asking for with my D&D games (as much as possible)

Now, if the characters don't talk for reasons that are sympathetic and understandable, because from the characters perspective they have good reasons, that's fine. And if the protagonists aren't the ones being stupid, that's OK. But I hate stupid protagonists with a passion in any media, and no RPG should depend on them.

again I am not asking for stupid. Just to be internally consistent (unless the character written/played IS stupid then I ask for that to be consistent too)

Especially from the perspective of an RPG, this is proof often that the story is poor.

no it more often then not is metagame thinking...

 

[redwullf]

I'm constantly have to remind my player to provide an action, and I will tell them which, if any ability to roll. Mostly they will ask instead of declare, but that's as annoying.

Yes, exactly. This is the "Can I..." problem? "I don't know, can you?" Or the classic Matt Mercer response, "You can sure try." I take a few seconds at the beginning of each session to remind my players that intent is all that matters. What is your intent? What are you looking for? What are you doing? What are you attacking and what weapon are you using? Where are you moving? Reminding players to express their character's intent makes everything go much more smoothly. Once they state their intent, I can often follow up with, "That's great, how does your character do that?" If they said their intent was to "find any hidden doors," my response is, "Very good, how does your character search for secret or hidden doors?" Then the mechanics can fall into place.

 

[Charlaquin]

Frankly, I think discussing this in terms of what the player wants vs. what the character wants is missing the mark, and I think that’s part of why Mulligan’s analogy comes across as a bit muddled. I think what it’s really about is two things the player wants: to be successful (I might say “to win” but that seems to be a contentious term), and to have a good story come out of the game. Those two things are not entirely compatible - good stories involve successes and failures, victories and losses, windfalls and setbacks. And ultimately I think most players want that. But in any given moment, they would rather succeed than fail. They want to give it their all, and try as hard as they can to win, but they also want the overall story to be one in which they sometimes win and sometimes lose. And I think different people go about trying to address this in different ways. Mulligan uses what he thinks of as rails to guide the players into a story. I think a lot of groups do it with restrictions against “metagaming” - sure, you have the genre savvy to succeed in this moment, but your character doesn’t, so you have to act like you don’t either, in order for the story to come out like it would if your character was acting on their knowledge. Others, like myself, do it through rules structures. We set the game up to challenge the players as well as the characters, so that they can try their best and still end up failing sometimes.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yes, exactly. This is the "Can I..." problem? "I don't know, can you?" Or the classic Matt Mercer response, "You can sure try." I take a few seconds at the beginning of each session to remind my players that intent is all that matters. What is your intent? What are you looking for? What are you doing? What are you attacking and what weapon are you using? Where are you moving? Reminding players to express their character's intent makes everything go much more smoothly. Once they state their intent, I can often follow up with, "That's great, how does your character do that?" If they said their intent was to "find any hidden doors," my response is, "Very good, how does your character search for secret or hidden doors?" Then the mechanics can fall into place.

I am about to get my kids started playing…I want to help them start with this mentality.

Frankly I wish our grown up group would move this way too

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This is the "Can I..." problem? "I don't know, can you?"

yes that joke was funny in 3rd grade... not at my table

remind my players that intent is all that matters.

then if in context you understand the intent why worry if they name a skill or phrase in the form of a question?

What is your intent? What are you looking for? What are you doing? What are you attacking and what weapon are you using? Where are you moving? Reminding players to express their character's intent makes everything go much more smoothly. Once they state their intent, I can often follow up with, "That's great, how does your character do that?" If they said their intent was to "find any hidden doors," my response is, "Very good, how does your character search for secret or hidden doors?" Then the mechanics can fall into place.

again sometimes I get you don't understand... or could miss understand (wait you want to seduce the door?) but most times if you have a long sword in your hand and have been in melee with 1 enemy for 3 rounds, and each round you attacked with the longsword I just don't see a reason to aask "with what?"

and if I asked my player on round 3 with what or how they attack I am sure I would get a smart alec response no "oh sorry with my longsword"

 

[Reynard]

Yup. And in practice in my games I allow auto-success if the players check in the right spot and it's not somehow MORE concealed in that spot, or adjust the DC based on their level of specificity and the amount of time they invest in the search.

Right, if the player says explitly says their character is emptying the drawers and checking the pockets of the clothes within, it seems unfair and intentionally adversarial to still make them roll Perception. Is it possible for someone to do all that and miss the hidden key? Sure -- but not to a degree that it is worth doing in a game about finding secrets stashes of coins -- especially when those coins are just little tiny angry, hungry mimics.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I am about to get my kids started playing…I want to help them start with this mentality.

Frankly I wish our grown up group would move this way too

so if you were showing a kid (lets say teenager but young teenager) how to play, and they came to a situation and asked "Can I use X skill to do Y" where in context you can understand both what they want and how they more or less plan to do it, what would you tell them?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Right, if the player says explitly says their character is emptying the drawers and checking the pockets of the clothes within, it seems unfair and intentionally adversarial to still make them roll Perception. Is it possible for someone to do all that and miss the hidden key? Sure -- but not to a degree that it is worth doing in a game about finding secrets stashes of coins -- especially when those coins are just little tiny angry, hungry mimics.

1st I 100% support baby mimics as coins...

2nd I;m not sure if something as easy to find as some coins in a drawr requires some roll either... it seems like any degree of looking in that room should turn it up

 

[Warpiglet-7]

so if you were showing a kid (lets say teenager but young teenager) how to play, and they came to a situation and asked "Can I use X skill to do Y" where in context you can understand both what they want and how they more or less plan to do it, what would you tell them?

Both are game naive. One is younger and not a teen.

So they probably won’t ask that. I think I train them to just tell me what they want to do. We will see.

Over time I will coach them about what the skills mean so they might start thinking that way and they know what they are “good at.” But to start, I want to just train them to say what you do.

 

[Celebrim]

do you mean to audience or characters... because I said it wasn't to the characters

But you can't know that. You can't say, "I know the characters wouldn't know what a vampire is." or something like that. Because that's not a statement of fact. That's a statement of opinion. In the real world, if there was evidence of a vampire, some people would be skeptical and some people would immediately be going, "We need garlic and holy water." It might turn out to be a serial killer pretending to be a vampire, in which case the skeptics would be right, but both reactions would be reasonable for a character.

And in the D&D world, every rural peasant probably knows as much or more about vampires than you or I do because they live in that world.

if I hear a noise outside I don't think "Man better make sure to bring back up Jason might be out there" I think "Oh the damn skunk again better try to shoo it off"

Sure if that's all the evidence you have. But if you go outside and instead of a skunk you see a guy in a halloween mask with a chainsaw, and you unload a shotgun into him and it doesn't seem to phase him, you are now at the point where, "Is this Jason or is this a guy in bullet proof vest?" becomes reasonable speculation and how you react will depend on you as a person. I won't be able to tell you how you react in that moment. But, "Jason is real!" becomes reasonable in context.

If a contagion broke out I bet half the people would not even think it was real... let alone take the safety percussions needed.

You just completely admitted the wrongness of your position. Yes, half of the people would not even think it was real. The rest of the population would make other choices. You don't get to decide which part of the population a Player Character is in. The Player gets to decide that. Stop telling Players how to play their character. You've been doing it the whole thread.

people are not stupid if they act like they live in a real world when thing WELL outside the bounds of normal for them happen.

Yes they are! People aren't stupid if they use their common sense in situations that are well inside the bounds of normal. But as soon as things well outside the bounds of normal happen, it's utter stupidity to keep acting like your common sense is relevant your evidence is "We are outside the bounds of normal".

More importantly, you don't get to tell the players as a GM that they should be stupid for the sake of your story. The Players are the ones that decide what their characters know and how they react. If the players want to pretend that they don't know something because they think their character wouldn't, then great. That's their call. But you as the GM don't get to tell them, "Your character wouldn't know that.", because you as the GM cannot know that. The full life experiences and knowledge of the character isn't listed. If you are using some common trope, then chances are no matter what the world that knowledge is common to many many characters, including possibly the player character. You never as a GM write stories that depend on the player's lack of knowledge. It's just terrible GMing to insist, "Pretend you don't know that", or "You have to pretend you don't know that because your character wouldn't."

My opinion is that the character mindset should be based on the world THEY live in and the life experiences THEY had not on knowing it is a game with game tropes and rules.
What do YOY think?

I think exactly the same thing, which is why I think you are obviously wrong. And this especially true of the D&D world. In the D&D world, common sense tells you that there are zombies and invisible things, so if the door opens on its own, every NPC's first thought ought to be, "Something invisible entered the room, quick throw something at it and see if it bounces. If it's corporeal, we can kill it."

I mean everyone makes mistakes... I just don't understand why acting in character is stupid in your mind?

Characters will be plenty stupid in play without deliberately being stupid because players will in the natural course of things make tons of mistakes. Acting in character with enforced stupidity is almost always wrong.