D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[Lanefan]

Right, but knowing has several gameplay benefits.

Such as?

Preventing the party from chasing red herrings is not a benefit.
Preventing them from getting it wrong and acting on that wrong info is not a benefit.
Moving them along more quickly to the next bit of story is not a benefit.
Turning roleplay into a math exercise (the end-extreme result here) is definitely not a benefit.

Got any others?

 

[overgeeked]

Ok, that’s more or less all true of my game as well (though I simply set the DC at the time the action is made, rather than having a base DC that can be modified depending on the action, but that’s a process distinction I think wouldn’t lead to meaningfully different gameplay outcomes). So I’m not sure what you were trying to express with that example.

You've also said you explicitly tell the players the DC. That telling the players the DC, the stakes, etc is something you explicitly do.

Here's something that's absolutely true for me: game speak breaks immersion.

The second people start talking about checks, DCs, hit points, saves, etc...immersion is over. Done. The only way to be immersed is to not use game speak. To only talk about the world and the fiction of the game. The moment game speak comes in, immersion is broken.

So when you suggest explicitly using game speak and I say that breaks immersion, that's what's going on. All of your suggestions in the thread have revolved around bringing game speak explicitly to the fore and centering it in the moment. That's antithetical to immersion and verisimilitude.

Knowing the cost of each attempt and the likelihood of success is what allows the player to make a reasonable estimate about how long it’s most likely to take, but they can never know for sure.

And that's not something the character would know. The character knows their skill level, they don't know how tough the lock is. And they certainly don't know the future enough to say how long the lock would take to pick. This is where we're hung up on verisimilitude. You're centering the game and its mechanics so the player can make good gaming choices. That's antithetical to immersion and verisimilitude.

Quite possibly. Or you might be surprised. Neither of us know for sure.

Or maybe you don't assume we haven't tried to do things your way already and found them lacking. I can't speak for Oofta, but I have run things basically as you suggest. It was the least satisfying boardgame I've ever played. No immersion, no verisimilitude. It was D&D as boardgame instead of D&D as immersive fantasy world. I don't disagree with you simply to disagree. I disagree with you because I've done it your way and it sucked for me.

The less the game is centered the more immersive the experience is. That's simply a fact for me. No amount of you saying "but the gameplay" is ever going to change that. No amount of you arguing we should center the game is going to change that.

EDIT: Or, even better, combat. Like, pretty much everything that happens in it. The player can’t know precisely how the character should swing their sword to have the best chance of killing their opponent. They lack both the character’s martial knowledge and their direct experience of the opponent’s position, stance, demeanor, movement, tells, etc. So, we use game mechanics to abstractly represent the things the player isn’t able to directly experience.

Right. And, if you've noticed, a lot of people complain about how the normal state of the game stops dead when combat starts.

Here you are, trucking along, following the play loop, narrating...immersed in the world and the fiction...then suddenly it stops and the mechanics take over. To me, that's bad. Keep the mechanics out of the way, out of our mouths, and keep narrating.

The mechanics can abstract these things without us having to center them and speak them. Any time you stop talking about the world and the fiction you're stopping the immersion.

P1: "I swing my sword..." DM: "You hit! How bad is the wound?"

is a more immersive exchange than

P1: "I got a 19 to hit." DM: "You hit! How much damage?"

It's dead simple to keep things in the narration and immersive mode. Roll in the open. If you're on a VTT, you already are. You don't need to use game speak. It's better for immersion if you don't.

 

[Lanefan]

While I completely agree with your overall point I think you badly miss on a few of your examples:

The "Fun" Thief. The rogue finds something without telling the group. If it's a trap, the other PCs get to walk right into it or metagame. If it's treasure, the other players get to pretend they don't know. Either way, this builds resentment at the table. But it's the rogue intentionally being a jerk by centering metagaming. Best solution is to boot them.

This one is on the DM. The rest of the players simply should not know what the Thief found or did until and unless the Thief decides to tell them in-character - what the Thief did by himself should have been handled by secret note at the table, or in another real-world room.

Put another way, characters have to be given the opportunity to lie if they want to. Or, and this is even more important, the opportunity to honestly forget to report something vital, or to over/under-emphasize the wrong things. Scout returns, excited: "Guys, there's three giants around the next corner, they're just sittin' there taking it easy - we could get the drop on 'em if we hurry! Let's go!". The scout (and the scout's player) got so wound up about the giants he completely forgot to mention the pit trap he found halfway down the hall.

The Infinite Resters. The group that insists on going nova every fight and taking a long rest after every fight. Easy solution, waves of enemies.

This is anything but metagaming - in fact, it's the opposite: it's exactly what the characters would try to do were they real and had a sense of self-preservation.

The waves-of-enemies solution is more metagamey than the nova-rest cycle, in my view.

 

[Lanefan]

The second people start talking about checks, DCs, hit points, saves, etc...immersion is over. Done. The only way to be immersed is to not use game speak. To only talk about the world and the fiction of the game. The moment game speak comes in, immersion is broken.

So when you suggest explicitly using game speak and I say that breaks immersion, that's what's going on. All of your suggesting in the thread have revolved around bringing game speak explicitly to the fore and centering it in the moment. That's antithetical to immersion and verisimilitude.

I'm starting to wonder if you and @Charlaquin are talking about completely different types of immersion here.

You're talking about immersion in character; where (ideally) your only thoughts are those of your character and you forget about real-you for a while.

She, I think, might be talking about immersion in the act of playing the game; similar to when one forgets the rest of the world exists while deep in a game of chess.

Your version (it's mine too) largely requires that player knowledge and character knowledge be the same, as far as is practical.

Her version, if I've got it right, doesn't care as much about who knows what but instead just wants the game itself to flow smoothly and seamlessly in order to keep players immersed in the act of playing.

 

[iserith]

Yes, you get to back up your claim that all metagaming is the DM's fault. Not interested in doing so? That's funny.

Yeah, see my position is and always has been that you're not responsible for what the players do. So it isn't your fault directly that players "metagame." I'm not obligated to defend a position I don't take. But it is the DM who creates the opportunities for this to happen. You even admit as much by saying you change up monsters, thereby mitigating those opportunities. In addition, DMs create their own dissatisfaction by making it their business why a player makes a certain decision for their character when it's not their business at all.

All metagaming bothers me. Every time a player makes a decision (any decision) based on game mechanics or out of character knowledge, that's metagaming and it bugs me.

So very easy to just not react that way. To suggest otherwise is to admit to a lack of self-control in my view.

The Book Club. Split party. Group 1 on the far side of town suddenly decides to come running to Group 2's location because Group 2 is in some trouble...despite Group 1 having literally no way of knowing that Group 2 is in trouble. One common cheese excuse, "I borrowed this book from [PC in Group 2], I've decided I should return it."

The Walkaway. Group has a prisoner they've decided to torture for information. So the paladin goes for a walk. An oldie but a goodie that is more about old-school D&D than 5E. But I still play old-school D&D, so it's still a problem that pops up.

The Fire Hose. Low-level group encounters a monster for the first time and magically knows its vulnerabilities. Party encounters a troll..."Everyone blast it with fire!" Party encounters an ooze..."No one hit it with slashing weapons!" Easily solved by homebrewing and/or reskinning, but it's still metagaming and gives me more work because the players can't be bothered to roleplay instead of metagame.

The Omniscient Tactician. Typically a wargamer, the player who looks all around the map and makes decisions based on details on the map their PC couldn't know. Enemies behind doors, around corners, etc. Perfect AoE placement into other rooms when their character doesn't know there's even enemies in the other room. Etc.

The Spot Healer. Party healer who doesn't heal until someone goes down because "pop up healing" is more efficient. Also PCs not bothering to do anything about another PC making death saves until they get two fails.

The Wow Raider. The player who comes from video games and thinks D&D is like a WoW raid so they read up on all the monsters, read the module, etc so they can be as efficient as possible. Either never use anything written down by anyone ever or boot them. Infinitely easier to boot them. Also the DM's notes reader. Pure boot them.

All of these above are basically the same issue: DM demands an explanation for why a character is undertaking the action when they don't owe the DM one. They can do any of these things for any reason or no reason at all. Pick one that works best in the fiction, if you need to. To declare that an acceptable one doesn't exist is to admit a failure of imagination while playing a game that is based on make-believe. That doesn't seem like a good strategy to me.

Remember, the DM is there to describe the environment, adjudicate the actions the players describe, and narrate the result. Not to judge them based on how and why they arrive at the decisions for their characters. If you do, you're creating the problem for yourself.

The Skill Dogpile. Someone makes a roll and fails so the rest of the group (or anyone proficient with that skill) decide, magically, to saunter over and make the same roll, just in case.

Players can't declare they are making ability checks. So if players can just declare they are making rolls in you game, this is a problem of your own creation. And again, this is resolved after the first attempt anyway with "progress combined with a setback" on the failed check as previously established.

The "Fun" Thief. The rogue finds something without telling the group. If it's a trap, the other PCs get to walk right into it or metagame. If it's treasure, the other players get to pretend they don't know. Either way, this builds resentment at the table. But it's the rogue intentionally being a jerk by centering metagaming. Best solution is to boot them.

Failure of the DM to set expectations around the PCs working together instead of against each other.

The Second Guesser. The player who knows the DM really well so decides to use that knowledge to their advantage. "Tony really digs traps and puzzles and riddles, so I'll go read up on traps and puzzles and riddles."

The risk is on the player here because the assumption can be wrong. There's an example similar to this in the DMG where the players believe that the dragon the DM put before them is appropriate to their level because they know the DM well enough to know they wouldn't put anything in front of them they couldn't defeat. They're free to take the chance, but the outcome might not be great.

The Infinite Resters. The group that insists on going nova every fight and taking a long rest after every fight. Easy solution, waves of enemies.

DM fails to make time matter.

Honestly, many of these just seem like things you don't like, not really "metagaming" as many people use the term.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@overgeeked if gamespeak broke my immersion so easily, I would be using some far more rules light game than D&D 5e. Now it is true that extensive gamespeak, and lacking fiction will harm immersion, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fiction wouldn't be provided along with the numbers. In fact fiction informs the numbers and vice versa. The DC I set for the task is based on my description of the situation, the injury I describe is informed by the damage number rolled. These things go hand in hand.

 

[Charlaquin]

Such as?

Preventing the party from chasing red herrings is not a benefit.
Preventing them from getting it wrong and acting on that wrong info is not a benefit.
Moving them along more quickly to the next bit of story is not a benefit.
Turning roleplay into a math exercise (the end-extreme result here) is definitely not a benefit.

Got any others?

I’ve been over them several times already. Reduces waffling, helps the DM to call for rolls when they’re relevant instead of any time an action is declared, and prevents miscommunication about the difficulty and stakes of actions are some of the major ones.

 

[overgeeked]

This is anything but metagaming - in fact, it's the opposite: it's exactly what the characters would try to do were they real and had a sense of self-preservation.

Well, I walked away at the wrong moment and left out an important bit of that. As mentioned: time pressure. The point wasn’t about the resting, the point was supposed to be about ignoring external time pressure. “We’re not risking ourselves to save the dragon from the princess” and all that. Waves of enemies was supposed to be an example of external time pressure the PCs couldn’t ignore.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm starting to wonder if you and @Charlaquin are talking about completely different types of immersion here.

You're talking about immersion in character; where (ideally) your only thoughts are those of your character and you forget about real-you for a while.

She, I think, might be talking about immersion in the act of playing the game; similar to when one forgets the rest of the world exists while deep in a game of chess.

Your version (it's mine too) largely requires that player knowledge and character knowledge be the same, as far as is practical.

Her version, if I've got it right, doesn't care as much about who knows what but instead just wants the game itself to flow smoothly and seamlessly in order to keep players immersed in the act of playing.

You’re probably right. I’ll leave it to Char to answer either way.

 

[overgeeked]

@overgeeked if gamespeak broke my immersion so easily, I would be using some far more rules light game than D&D 5e. Now it is true that extensive gamespeak, and lacking fiction will harm immersion, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fiction wouldn't be provided along with the numbers. In fact fiction informs the numbers and vice versa. The DC I set for the task is based on my description of the situation, the injury I describe is informed by the damage number rolled. These things go hand in hand.

My preferred game system would fit on a business card.