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

[Thomas Shey]

But for situations where there are things the characters can’t observe? When characters don’t have complete awareness of all the external factors, so the players don’t act on information their characters couldn’t have.

Reusing my guard example from the initial post, you try to bluff the guard that “you’re just travellers” you roll a 3 on deception, you see you have a 3, but then the guard says with a smile “welcome, come on in, you must be tired after such a long journey on the roads”, doesn’t that make you immediately suspicious knowing you rolled a 3? suspicious in a way you wouldn’t be if you didn’t know the results of your roll, and no matter how much you might try to ignore that information as you describe your actions it’s still going to be there in your mind influencing your thought process whether you want it to or not.

There's a problem here, and its hard to approach because people have different views on it.

What does the die roll represent?

To some people its a representation of just how well the character does in what he's doing; but for some its also a representation of low-end and outside factors that the character really has limited control over. And its not impossible for some of those to be invisible, at least in the moment.

If its just the former than the player should be suspicious of it (after all, he's unlikely to be entirely unclear that his word choice wasn't great and seemed out of the appropriate), but if its partly the latter, it may be conveying things he has no way to know.

For all the fact I'm normally a believer in the player knowing what he rolled--because the character can see how the process played out in realtime--there are some classes of resolution that, barring a very high-order narrative playstyle, should be hidden rolls. I just don't think that applies to most physical or technical (in the sense of things like lockpicking or crafting) rolls, and its debatable with knowledge skills and the equivelent.

 

[Charlaquin]

On the other hand, this can become the "You should try this fish" problem. People have been trying to get me to eat fish my whole life. There's usually some "but this fish is different!" in it. I even made the attempt a few times, and found it just as unpleasant. At a certain point, you begin to think other people don't understand your issue, and it gets annoying to get someone trying to get you to do it for the four-hundredth time. That's probably not a reason to get soggy about it unless they're demanding, but scar tissue is scar tissue.

The thing is, I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. If you don’t want to try my playstyle, that’s fine. Doesn’t make any difference to me. I just asked Oofta if he had tried it, and several people started accusing me of being condescending.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I honestly don't get the desire to utterly eliminate all metagaming.

It's still just a game and the efforts to eliminate or shame it don't seem worth it.

To some people the game elements are an unfortunate necessity to get to the experience they want. If that wasn't true you wouldn't see the extremely simple games some prefer.

 

[iserith]

No, I don’t think it’d make me more suspicious. It’d make me the proper amount of suspicious.

Like, whatever I said to the guard was said poorly or otherwise did a poor job of convincing him… that’s what the 3 indicates. So if I put my foot in my mouth trying to convince someone I’m something I’m not, and then their reaction is to invite me in… yeah, I’d be suspicious.

You can avoid this (if you don’t want it)by declaring the 3 a success. Then the player knows the guard inviting them in is genuine.

This seems to me like the “solution” actually creating the problem.

Alternatively, a player might look at that 3, figure they blew it, then lean into the guard's invitation anyway because the character has a flaw like "I struggle to tell when people are lying to me." That may earn them Inspiration. Or perhaps the character has a flaw like "I have a hard time trusting people I don't know." Same deal - the player establishes that the character doesn't trust the guard and does whatever follows.

The key thing is that the player gets to decide what they do for any reason they want or no reason at all. If an explanation is demanded so as to prove they are not "metagaming," that's trivially easy to offer even without established flaws as above, which makes the demand seem a bit pointless to begin with in my view.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The thing is, I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. If you don’t want to try my playstyle, that’s fine. Doesn’t make any difference to me. I just asked Oofta if he had tried it, and several people started accusing me of being condescending.

I repeat, scar tissue is scar tissue.

 

[Maxperson]

I get the impression that some DMs actively prioritize creating situations where it’s implausible, in order to combat metagaming.

There's nothing to create. Either the PCs can use knowledge they don't have, but the players do(metagaming) or they can't(not metagaming). There's no situation to create where it becomes either plausible or implausible. It boils down to whether you accept it or you don't.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's nothing to create. Either the PCs can use knowledge they don't have, but the players do(metagaming) or they can't(not metagaming). There's no situation to create where it becomes either plausible or implausible. It boils down to whether you accept it or you don't.

See the exchange about lying to the guard. There are ways you could fail to convince them that it would be implausible to know you failed, and ways that you could fail that would be plausible to know you failed.

 

[Maxperson]

The point of contention here is that what folks are saying they’ve tried that’s similar, doesn’t actually sound similar to me. It’s like you saying you’ve tried those fish so you know you won’t like octopus.

There's nothing similar between a fish and an octopus. They are completely different sea creatures. What I described between the types of fish = similarity. And similar is close enough to know whether we'd like something or not.

 

[Maxperson]

See the exchange about lying to the guard. There are ways you could fail to convince them that it would be implausible to know you failed, and ways that you could fail that would be plausible to know you failed.

What does that have to do with metagaming? The fiction will determine whether the PC is aware or not. There's nothing to contrive there. If the fiction warrants the PC knowing, the PC will. If the fiction doesn't, he won't. I don't have to contrive anything to match what the player knows or doesn't.

 

[Maxperson]

That's what I meant. The players should know how much HP everyone else at the table has. The characters should be able to see how battered they all look. It's just the out of fiction terms being used in an explictly in fiction dialogue that I was not fond of.

5e RAW is that damage isn't even beginning to be visible until 50% hit points, and even then it's some scratches or a bruise. Not that I enforce players not knowing the PCs hit points, because that's not fun, is a pain in the rear, and leads to TPKs, but RAW doesn't support that.