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

[Charlaquin]

Yes I am ignoring feats. I've explained why I am ignoring feats, but I will continue to repeat myself.

You do not get a feat before level 4. There is an exception if you are a V. Human or a Custom Lineage, but as I have repeatedly stated, I am not assuming a specific race. Could you be a V. Human? Yes. You could also be a Fairy. Your attempts to force me to assume everyone plays Variant humans will continued to be ignored. There is an exception if you have specific backgrounds from Strixhaven. I'm not assuming you are playing in Strixhaven. So I am not assuming you have those specific backgrounds. Maybe you have backgrounds like Soldier or Entertainer which do not grant feats. I will continue to ignore your attempts to force me to assume everyone uses a background which grants a feat. I'll even acknowledge some people homebrew and houserule to allow feats at first level for everyone. But I will not be assuming that everyone uses that houserule. You can try and continue to force me to assume everyone uses that houserule, but I will not be.

I’m not claiming everyone does it. However, anyone can do it. You are refusing to acknowledge it as an option because it being an option makes your argument weaker.

So, are we done trying to force feats into this scenario? Or am I going to have to repeat this on every post?

We can be done with it if you want, sure.

The original point of the example was that your DMing style ignored the potential to use bardic inspiration to help the situation, which you acknowledged you would have put a stop to when they first proposed their original plan.

The party comp itself was not a critique of your style. The fact you feel the need to bully me into changing it because you don't like it really is starting to annoy me though.

Bully you? Seriously? That’s what you think is going on here? My friend, I’m just rebutting your arguments.

Wish we could have that conversation instead.

I mean, we could.

There is a far cry between "you can't have everything" and "being able to safely traverse a space requires a minimum of 6 people"

And it isn't really a meaningful decision in my mind. They are going to pick to spend money, as long as they have a enough (which isn't always the case) because you can't spend money if you are dead, and DnD money is a fairly empty and worthless thing anyways.

It’s certainly worthless if you ignore all the things players might need to spend it on. Do your players ever have to pay lifestyle expenses? Do you track light sources, rations, ammunition, expensive spellcasting components? Can they buy magical items? This is one of those things, like choosing travel tasks, that a lot of DMs ignore because they don’t see the immediate utility of, and then complain that there’s no use for money, or that the game has no exploration mechanics. These things are part of an interconnected system, and I have found that when you actually utilize all parts of the system, they work together harmoniously to create fun, challenging gameplay that generates emergent stories.

And of course they will spend it on people who can fight, leading to increasing threats, because they will have far more bodies on the field.

If they can afford to, probably; it’s a pretty efficient strategy.

None of this is what the game is about. The game is about the stories, and the story of needing to hire faceless NPCs to make sure they have enough eyes to not be ambushed every time they go anywhere isn't a good story. We can do far better than "do you spend money on faceless merc #3 or do you risk getting lost for an hour in the dungeon" in terms of meaningful decisions.

I mean, yeah, if the help they hire is faceless merc #3, that wouldn’t make for a very good story. Part of the DM’s job is to make NPC hirelings more than faceless mercs.

You know what I have found, more and more often? No one cares about the search. No one is excited by the search. They are excited by finding the item. That's when they get excited and engaged. Similarly, no one is excited by assigning a marching order and declaring their actions. No one cares. They care when something happens.

Unsurprisingly, when the search consists of saying “I search” and rolling a die to see if you found anything. That was also my experience, until I tried DMing a different way. And you know what I’ve found more and more often since then? When the search itself is engaging, people are excited by it too.

Sure, you've created a resource scarcity to make moving safely between the interesting bits harder. I suppose that is a sort of challenge, but... can't we do better than that? If you want to make moving through the dungeon harder and more of a challenge, can't we do it without making it something that is solved by hiring more people to cover more actions?

We can certainly do differently than that, and maybe for you it would be better. I happen to enjoy the resource management challenge. And I’ve found that even players who didn’t think they liked resource management challenge actually do when it’s executed well.

How could they? You wouldn't even check the monster's stealth against the player's passive perception, because they can't notice the door. I guess maybe you could have noises coming from inside the wall, but then you have still revealed the location of the secret door, which you said you would not do.

So how do you propose to alert the party to the prescence of monsters hiding behind a secret door, without revealing the secret door?

If the players can’t perceive the monsters through the secret door, how on earth are the monsters supposed to perceive the players through it?

Seriously? You thought a person looking for traps in a room wouldn't look at the ground? Man, I guess my highly trained killer, used to dozens of delves into dangerous places has encountered so many floating mid-air traps that they just stare straight ahead just in case. Maybe they closed their eyes before moving?
I know I'm being sarcastic and a bit rude, but seriously, where else would they look for traps if not the ground?! 90% of all traps are either on or triggered by the ground.

If that’s where you think 90% of traps are going to be found, then it should be pretty easy for you to come up with a reasonably specific description of how you search for them.

This is the type of thing we talk about when we talk about assuming the PCs are professionals who know what they are doing. We assume when someone is looking for traps, they look where traps will be. This seriously blows my mind.

I thought I had made myself pretty clear that I want to avoid making any assumptions at all about the players’ actions.

"Looking for traps" isn't good enough, that's like shouting at you shoelaces to tie themselves, but "looking at the ground for traps" is perfectly intelligible and acceptable.

Looking for traps was your goal. Giving it as your approach too is redundant. “I look for traps by looking for traps.” That doesn’t convey any information about how you are looking for traps. “I look for traps by slowly walking forward looking at the floor” does convey information about how you’re looking for traps.

Because then all the interesting parts of the game are bogged down by the minutia of protecting themselves. It becomes and endless parade of hyper-specific intstructions with the singular goal of preventing any possible unforeseen circumstances.

They pull out the plate gauntlet before opening anything, make sure to have a wet-rag wrapped around their face for spores and poison gases, probably try to get a full-on gas mask, then they make sure to never touch anything directly, while never standing in front of anything in case it fires out further than a foot. It goes on and on and on and on. And none of it is interesting. It is just tedium, and it can all be trivially prevented by just assuming that the PCs are professionals.

All of that is infinitely more interesting to me than “I check for traps” clatter. Now, I get it. If you don’t have enough information to make meaningful decisions, you end up going through laundry lists of pointless SOPs just trying to eliminate any conceivable danger, and yes, that gets boring. That’s why a key part of doing this style well is giving good information, both directly in your description of the environment, and indirectly through good level design. If this style done poorly is a pixel-hunting point-and-click adventure game, then this style done well is Portal.

Telegraphing is a fine line to toe though, because if you telegraph to the point people notice it, then how much difference is there between just telling them in the first place?

Honestly, I have strongly considered just telling players when they could a trap exactly what and where it is. Because if there is an interesting challenge, it would be in safely disarming the trap.

Hey, look at that, something we agree on. Absolutely it’s more interesting when the players are aware of the trap, because then they have the ability to meaningfully interact with it. And if the trap isn’t interesting when the players know it’s there, it won’t be made more interesting if they don’t. So, I do tell the players the trap is there. I just convey that information diegetically (colloquially, I “telegraph” it), because I think it’s more immersive and interesting that way. Is it possible players might miss telegraphs sometimes? Yes, and I’m ok with that. But, in my philosophy it should at least be clear enough that in retrospect, the players can recognize the clue that they missed, and what they could have done differently had they recognized it. That’s key to making the outcomes feel like direct results of the players’ actions instead of random, unavoidable screwjobs. That’s the difference between a good trap and a gotcha.

Unfortunately, most traps are trivial to disarm if you are aware of them, which is why most trap design discussions are difficult to even have. Because any trap that is trivial to beat if you see it isn't actually well-designed, but a well-designed trap is HARD to figure out.

Level design and tutorializing are powerful tools here. I like to use common themes and motifs in dungeons, so I can introduce a trap early on, in a very obvious, impossible to miss way, and then re-use the same type of trap throughout the dungeon in gradually subtler ways and/or in gradually more complex contexts. That way, the players can learn to recognize the patterns and apply what they’ve learned in more challenging situations to overcome those challenges by their own skills, which is an incredibly rewarding feeling.

Their goal is whatever their goal is. It would be context specific and it truly doesn't matter what the goal is. The player thinks that playing a sad song on their viol is enough to achieve their goal, and if I don't understand what they are going for in the attempt, I would ask "okay, what are you hoping to accomplish?"

But it does matter to me, because comparing the goal to the approach is an essential part of my action resolution process. I figure out whether or not to call for a roll by imagining the action and asking myself if it could result in bringing about the goal, if it could fail to do so, and if there would be a meaningful consequence for it failing to do so. I need both pieces of information to do that process.

But the larger point is, must like "search the room" could have dozens of specific variations of action, so can "play a sad song". In fact, it could have even more, since I could ask which culture the song is from, dwarven? elvish? gnomish? That might make a difference, right? Except... no one ever asks that.

Because none of that is relevant to the question of if the approach can succeed in the goal. At least not usually. I mean, I suppose if the goal is like… to woo the Dwarven ambassador with a song or something, maybe then the song being from Dwarven culture might be relevant. That’s why I need to know both the goal and the approach.

No one wants the same level of detail they want for searching a room for playing a sad song. Because playing a sad song can't trigger a trap.

That’s what you think! Until I put a trap in the adventure that triggers when a hidden mechanism resonates with the right musical frequency! Muahahaha!!!!!!!

(I kid, of course. Trying to bring some levity to what has been an exhaustingly serous discussion.)

There is no way that the player could say they play that song that leads to them automatically failing and triggering something bad. So no one bothers to ask.

But there are ways a player might play a song that could fail in them achieving their goal, depending on what that goal is. In order to properly resolve an action, I need to know the goal and the approach, to a degree of specificity so that I can determine if the approach can succeed in achieving the goal, if it can fail to do so, and if there is any consequence for failing to do so.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am curious though. Realistically, what is the difference between saying "There are three charred skeletons near the door, and the hallway is scorched" and "There is a fire trap at the end of the hall?" To me, that seems like the exact same thing, and the exact same gameplay happens, where they try and figure out a way past the the trap.

Only that the former conveys the information diagetically, which keeps the gameplay rooted in terms of the fiction. I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to imagine the fictional space as if it were a real place and make decisions about what my character would do within it when it’s consistently described in terms of what my character perceives, instead of addressed to me directly in “meta-game” terms.

Meanwhile, finding crossbow trap pieces in a room just tells them there are crossbow traps "somewhere" in this dungeon, which seems like it leads immediately to them checking every 5 ft for tripwires because they now know that's a thing they have to look out for.

The crossbow trap pieces would indeed just tell the players that there are crossbow traps somewhere in the dungeon. On its own, it doesn’t give the players enough information to make meaningful decisions about how to find and avoid those crossbow traps. Accordingly, it shouldn’t be the only telegraph. It can be one piece of the puzzle though. First introduce the fact that there are crossbow traps in the dungeon. Then, maybe include a sprung crossbow trap, so they can see where it’s set up and how it works. Maybe later have a very obvious and easy to avoid crossbow trap, so they can confirm that there is a consistent pattern to where and how they’re set up. Continue to use these traps in gradually subtler and/or more complex ways, so the players can apply what they learn about these traps in the early, relatively risk-free contexts to help them succeed in more difficult, dangerous contexts.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, I think that's what this entire long discussion is about. If a GM is expecting more detail out of their players for how they interact with the environment, they either have to get the players buy-in or it becomes a pixelbitching exercise.

This discussion is coming at things from the GM perspective: what do the players have to say? I suspect they expect a more basic approach to exploring the game world, or don't want a 'gotcha' moment. I know that when I start talking with a GM about searching for traps and they want me to explain specifically how I'm doing it, I often think "I'm not the expert on traps that my character is, and all we're going for is a 'oh, you put your hand in the wrong place' sort of thing."

Honestly, that's a problem that comes up inevitably in this kind of thing. Asking for specifics here has, shall we say, a history. And at the end of the day, it may not matter that the individual GM is not intending to use it that way, because, like it or not (and this is particularly true within the D&D sphere) to some extent you always carry the weight of not only any past GMs the player has had, but every one he's ever heard about, because its formed some of his expectations.

And the expectation that sits in a lot of players is that wanting more information is, to one extent or another, asking for the player to give the GM enough rope to hang them with.

A given GM can feel that's unfair, not like it, or not accept it, but until that washes out of the common gamer consciousness (if it ever does) its going to be the lens through which a lot of players approach this, whether conscious or not.

 

[Charlaquin]

Honestly, that's a problem that comes up inevitably in this kind of thing. Asking for specifics here has, shall we say, a history. And at the end of the day, it may not matter that the individual GM is not intending to use it that way, because, like it or not (and this is particularly true within the D&D sphere) to some extent you always carry the weight of not only any past GMs the player has had, but every one he's ever heard about, because its formed some of his expectations.

And the expectation that sits in a lot of players is that wanting more information is, to one extent or another, asking for the player to give the GM enough rope to hang them with.

A given GM can feel that's unfair, not like it, or not accept it, but until that washes out of the common gamer consciousness (if it ever does) its going to be the lens through which a lot of players approach this, whether conscious or not.

Yes, this is undeniably a thing we (by which I mean, we DMs who like to use this sort of action resolution process) have to contend with. A lot of players are going to be coming to the table with baggage related to being asked for specificity. It’s a bit of a leap of faith for them to try playing this way, and we need to be willing to show some patience and empathy to them in turn. It also helps if we run damn good games, cause at the end of the day that’s what’s going to sell someone on our GMing.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, this is undeniably a thing we (by which I mean, we DMs who like to use this sort of action resolution process) have to contend with. A lot of players are going to be coming to the table with baggage related to being asked for specificity. It’s a bit of a leap of faith for them to try playing this way, and we need to be willing to show some patience and empathy to them in turn. It also helps if we run damn good games, cause at the end of the day that’s what’s going to sell someone on our GMing.

At the same time though eventually player resistance crosses a line where they are just using the gm as life support for an OC story and acting like Cassandra from Dr who. .I've seen more than one player try to vilify me over the years when things go poorly for them or I just refuse to provide it only to have one of more players stand up calling them out for consistently trying to force play to win & pixdlbitching into the game rather than playing to have fun. Cassandra as a play style gets way too much benefit of the doubt when it comes to being allowed to nurse the baggage they bring to the table.

 

[Charlaquin]

At the same time though eventually player resistance crosses a line where they are just using the gm as life support for an OC story and acting like Cassandra from Dr who. .I've seen more than one player try to vilify me over the years when things go poorly for them or I just refuse to provide it only to have one of more players stand up calling them out for consistently trying to force play to win & pixdlbitching into the game rather than playing to have fun. Cassandra as a play style gets way too much benefit of the doubt when it comes to being allowed to nurse the baggage they bring to the table.

I don’t know what you think I meant by “show some patience and empathy” that would turn into “using the GM as life support”…

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yes, this is undeniably a thing we (by which I mean, we DMs who like to use this sort of action resolution process) have to contend with. A lot of players are going to be coming to the table with baggage related to being asked for specificity. It’s a bit of a leap of faith for them to try playing this way, and we need to be willing to show some patience and empathy to them in turn. It also helps if we run damn good games, cause at the end of the day that’s what’s going to sell someone on our GMing.

I'm currently playing (mostly) with two groups:
1) A group of experienced adults, including some long-term veterans
2) A new group consisting of four 9-10 year olds (plus occasionally a 5 year old who plays the wolf sidekick) who only started playing this summer.

The first group really struggles to shed old ways of playing. Two members in particular frequently either announce they are "making a History check" (or whatever the relevant skill is) or ask if they can make such a check. It drives me crazy.

The kids don't have any baggage. They never talk about making checks, they just tell me what they are doing, and sometimes I ask for a check. It's freaking awesome. I love playing with them.

Today in Lost Mine of Phandelver the Nothic ambushed them from behind as they got into a fight with some ruffians. When the rogue got the killing blow on the Nothic and gleefully described stabbing it in its enormous single eye, I narrated how green "eye juice" squirted all over his arm, and also got all over the wolf. The 5 year old playing the wolf, on his turn, decided to jump into the cistern to wash the eye juice off, even though the fight wasn't over. Well right there in the text it says the treasure in the cistern isn't visible from above, but is immediately apparent if they go into the water. The wolf emerged from the water and told the warlock, who had taken beast speech as an invocation specifically to be able to talk to the wolf. I can't imagine any of this happening with the jaded veterans. So much fun.

So I think @Thomas Shey is right to some extent. The solution is to stop playing with baggage-laden veterans. Find some kids and teach them to play.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'm currently playing (mostly) with two groups:
1) A group of experienced adults, including some long-term veterans
2) A new group consisting of four 9-10 year olds (plus occasionally a 5 year old who plays the wolf sidekick) who only started playing this summer.

The first group really struggles to shed old ways of playing. Two members in particular frequently either announce they are "making a History check" (or whatever the relevant skill is) or ask if they can make such a check. It drives me crazy.

The kids don't have any baggage. They never talk about making checks, they just tell me what they are doing, and sometimes I ask for a check. It's freaking awesome. I love playing with them.

Today in Lost Mine of Phandelver the Nothic ambushed them from behind as they got into a fight with some ruffians. When the rogue got the killing blow on the Nothic and gleefully described stabbing it in its enormous single eye, I narrated how green "eye juice" squirted all over his arm, and also got all over the wolf. The 5 year old playing the wolf, on his turn, decided to jump into the cistern to wash the eye juice off, even though the fight wasn't over. Well right there in the text it says the treasure in the cistern isn't visible from above, but is immediately apparent if they go into the water. The wolf emerged from the water and told the warlock, who had taken beast speech as an invocation specifically to be able to talk to the wolf. I can't imagine any of this happening with the jaded veterans. So much fun.

So I think @Thomas Shey is right to some extent. The solution is to stop playing with baggage-laden veterans. Find some kids and teach them to play.

Kids are such naturally great roleplayers. The process of simply imagining themselves as their characters, in the fictional works, and describing what they want to do within it comes so intuitively to them, it’s just wonderful. You can kind of get a similar effect with adults who are new to the game, but they tend to have a harder time immersing themselves in a fictional narrative than kids do.

That said, it’s entirely possible to get experienced players to go along with you for the ride. Like I said, it requires some patience and empathy, and of course the game has to be fun. But it can be done. And there are some benefits to playing with experienced players, like they usually have an easier time remembering how their class features and spells and stuff work. And they’re usually faster at the math.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am a big fan of the approach @Charlaquin is describing, but I think part of the disconnect is that to work really well it requires a different approach to writing/planning adventures. If you just to apply it to, say, official WotC adventure paths, it doesn't work well. At least, I personally struggle to make it work, because most adventures don't really telegraph the presence of traps/ambushes/secret doors/etc, and I end with the thing @Crimson Longinus is describing. You don't want the players declaring they walk slowly across every floor, scanning for pressure plates; you want them to have some reason to suspect this particular floor.

In my experience, it works best when the players stop worrying that hidden things might be completely untelegraphed, and learn to pay attention to clues. It might be an immediate clue, like charred skeletons in front of a door, or it might be a more roundabout clue, like looking at the map and realizing that there must be a secret room in that blank area. Maybe the PCs find spare parts for crossbow traps and tripwires in a storage room, or an NPC gives them a cryptic warning that seems to reference a feature of the dungeon they just found.

I know some people object to the players themselves solving these sorts of things, because they're supposed to be roleplaying the 9-Int Fighter, and apparently (from previous threads) 9 Intelligence is insufficient to come up with interesting plans and solutions, but personally I find figuring things out, rather than being handed them via RNG, to be one of the best parts of RPGing. I find it completely unrewarding...playing a "board game"...to roll a d20 and be told, "You find a trap." /yawn

Now, the caveat is that this is hard. It's hard to come up with unique, interesting clues. It's much, much, much easier to wait until they say "I roll Perception" or even to say myself, "Everybody give me a Perception check." But I just don't find that style of play...after years of doing it...fun anymore. Expedient, yes. Fun, no.

I don’t use adventure paths either it’s just that HC dungeon delving is far less significant part of my games than it seems to be of games of some other people. Like sure, there are “dungeons” but it will be something like three to five rooms and there certainly won’t be methodical exploration and players mapping or dungeon turns or assigned roles or stuff like that. It is far more casual.

As for telegraphing, I certainly do that a lot, but of course there cannot be a guarantee that everything is telegraphed. People who make traps presumably don’t want the traps to be easily noticeable and in some rare occasions they might actually succeed in hiding them properly! That being said, I try to put traps into logical places and if the area is inhabited by intelligent creatures they obviously have some convenient ways to bypass their own traps the PCs can discover.

And yeah, it is more satisfying to to figure to figure things out yourself than just solve the thing via a roll. Then again, I don’t think poking all the different things in all the different ways to get the clues is the interesting part. When possible, I try to build things so that you can gain/discover clues/information via skills and then they can figure out what the clues mean/imply using their own brains.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In my experience, "There is a fire trap at the end of the hall" leads to "can I roll dice to disarm it?" Whereas describing the skeletons invites them to figure out where the fire came from and what to do about it. (I'm taking that particular example from Forge of Fury, by the way. One of the few good examples from published adventures.)

Honestly, thinking about my response to "can I disarm it?"

"Sure, if you can figure out how it works. If you want to just roll you'd have a higher risk of setting off the trap."

To me, asking where the fire came from is them trying to clarify, and I'd either tell them or maybe have them roll investigation to see if they can decipher the burn pattern.

The what to do about it is... well, if they figure out it is a trap and not a sign of fire breathing monsters in the next room, they'd either try and disarm it or figure out a way around it. But, like I said, that's the interesting part.

If the traps are in the next hallway, we're good.

Or, more seriously, imagine there's more context than I gave in that abbreviated example. If that seems unreasonable, it's possible this whole approach won't work for you and you should just keep DMing the way you always have. I'm not going to try to force feed you a new idea.

I'm not asking you to force feed me ideas. I'm pointing out what I saw as good examples and what I saw as problematic examples. I can assume anything I want about the level of detail you give. Maybe you tell them they find five partially assembled traps, but the racks could hold nine crossbows, so they know they are looking at a maximum of four traps. I don't know, you didn't specify, and just assuming you will perfectly execute an idea with zero flaws seems like a poor point to begin a discussion from.