D&D General Hot Take: Uncertainty Makes D&D Better

[DMZ2112]

Funny how I can so strongly agree and disagree wiht the same post.

I haven't really been addressing your posts because I feel like we play very different games. I've been playing D&D since 1986 and running (for real) since 1991, and your style is not one that has ever interested me. That doesn't mean I don't respect it -- I suspect we both firmly believe the other is missing out, and that is one of the great things about the game.

Completely disagree. If the die results (and the parameters of the adventure as written, e.g. DCs) aren't to be honoured as binding on all involved then why bother rolling?

In short, because 99% of rolls don't need fudging (from our perspective), but from a philosophical standpoint, because it is important to maintain the illusion that every roll and numerical construct is legitimate. That's where players' fun comes from, the perception of risk. On that point, at least, I think we agree.

Let me remove dice from the equation to try and explain my opinion in another way. As dungeon masters we make a lot of decisions that impact the players without the benefit of randomization, particularly when we are asked to improvise content because a player choice has taken the session in a direction we did not expect.

We decide if the NPC innkeeper in town doesn't like or rent to adventurers, and whether there's a goblin scout camp in the copse of trees just outside town the party has opted to investigate for their own camp. We decide if those scouts set a lookout, or set up punji sticks. All of these decisions fall under the categories of "worldbuilding" or "encounter design," we do them to keep the game interesting for our players.

What's more, the players have to trust that we are being fair. That we are prepared to expand the fiction to explain the innkeeper's attitude and allow for mitigating it, if the players press the issue. That they won't be surprised by a goblin patrol at melee range that didn't exist while they were watching the trees from a distance. That the goblins have set traps is not contingent on the party not looking for them. That the challenges we pose to them are merciless without being cruel, and that the rewards we provide are commensurate.

But this fairness is largely an illusion, and it becomes more so the further we are required to range from our session notes, as we are forced to react rather than rely on preparation. Even when we succeed, we may be dependent on the quantum ogre principle, and when we fail, we could decide the innkeeper is intractable because it simplifies the scene, or stick the fighter with a punji stick because their player is being a jerk and the rogue didn't think to check. As far as the players are concerned, these things could have been our intent all along, and the only test they have for our fairness is the time they've spent with us and the trust we've built with them.

So, then, why does the arbitrary involvement of a cheaply manufactured chunk of bubble-filled plastic suddenly absolve us of this responsibility to build that trust and uphold the illusion of fairness?

Reasonable minds can absolutely disagree as to whether fudging should be done. My position is just that it is a tool that dungeon masters -- particularly new dungeon masters -- should be encouraged to recognize in their arsenal. No moral judgment should be laid here; it's a game we play with friends. If everyone at the table is having fun, the goal has been achieved.

Roll three crits against a staggering party? There's gonna be some deaths. It's part of the game. (then again, rockin' three consecutive crits - the odds of which are 1 in 8000 - isn't something that happens every day or even every campaign; sometimes a bad beat is just a bad beat)

You'll like this -- it happened to me the other night. I was gleefully preparing to roll damage, and the player says, "You made those rolls with disadvantage, right?" I'd forgotten about his Cloak of Displacement. :: deep sigh ::

Had those three rolls been fumbles instead would you overturn two of them and make them hits? Or, had the PCs rolled three crits against your dragon would you jump in and say two of those were just normal hits? I rather doubt it.

I was specifically trying to avoid a description of a situation where I was taking up an antagonistic position to the players to avoid controversy, but I've absolutely done this too. It's not about ensuring the PCs win easily, or win at all, it's about keeping things entertaining. Again, that is a definition that varies table to table and even player to player, just like showmanship varies audience to audience.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You don't need dice (randomness) to enforce this, though.

Not saying you do, just that that's why they're there.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Why not? Not every encounter has to be a fight. The lich could be a patron, a quest giver, an ancestor, etc?

No really, no. It’s about giving the players some expectations and idea of the challenges they might face. Monsters do wander “off level” and players can venture to deeper dungeon levels than their character levels would suggest. If they find a staircase that leads to level seven when they’re level one…so be it. In no way is it up to me where they go or what fights they pick.

Exactly. No risk, no reward. How boring if you knew ahead of time that it would certainly work. How would that feel? You won a guaranteed victory. Huzzah? Rather it’s that tense moment between when the dice leave your hand and they come to rest that’s exhilarating. It’s Schrödinger’s Victory. You don’t know until you try and roll the dice.

I think you are assuming a lot of things here. Of course we avoid fights we can’t win. But we are not usually put in situations where we can’t.

If you played totally randomly and mapped out the inhabitants of a province and TOTALLY let the chips fall, you would often have a very short lived game.

Think back to 1e modules. They put a level range on the front cover. Surely we don’t introduce level one characters to the demonweb pits?

My group plays with challenges we cannot win and character death. Period. If that is not radically “free enough” in how we do it for your tastes…ok? I think we have a good balance of all of the things.

Years ago, we had level 9 characters. 1e days and as by the book as such things are. Years of play to get there.

We encountered an evil army who wanted to railroad us to their leader and we resisted. And died. We did have a choice of sorts…so there you go. We died.

 

[Neonchameleon]

D&D is both more swingy and less uncertain, because of the binary design of the resolution mechanic (which makes things less uncertain - it's just pass-fail) and it's wild swinginess and very very limited ability to mitigate that swing in most editions.

I don't think anyone is arguing D&D is less swingy in the sense of producing consistent numbers.

My point is that the only consistent thing D&D's extreme swinginess achieves is to push the game hard towards farce and silliness. The binary resolution approach also reinforces this push towards farce.

D&D (as was mentioned earlier in the thread) massively mitigates the swinginess thanks to things like hit points and being an action resolution rather than task resolution system, meaning that you need multiple rolls to succeed. Oh, and that spells basically always succeed unless they are trying to affect a foe. I wouldn't say it does farce very well; I'd far rather use something actually swingy like Cortex Plus or something Forged in the Dark.

 

[niklinna]

I'll say it again for folks obviously not reading the whole thread: the action resolution mechanic is not the only roll in the game. There are many options and opportunity for uncertain outcomes to enhance the game.

Those mechanics are generally not defining of D&D, in contrast to other games, the way that the d20 roll is. Lots of games have random tables, reaction rolls, crit tables, and such.

 

[Lanefan]

In short, because 99% of rolls don't need fudging (from our perspective), but from a philosophical standpoint, because it is important to maintain the illusion that every roll and numerical construct is legitimate. That's where players' fun comes from, the perception of risk. On that point, at least, I think we agree.

Other than that roughly 1% of rolls need fudging, yes.

Let me remove dice from the equation to try and explain my opinion in another way. As dungeon masters we make a lot of decisions that impact the players without the benefit of randomization, particularly when we are asked to improvise content because a player choice has taken the session in a direction we did not expect.

We decide if the NPC innkeeper in town doesn't like or rent to adventurers, and whether there's a goblin scout camp in the copse of trees just outside town the party has opted to investigate for their own camp. We decide if those scouts set a lookout, or set up punji sticks. All of these decisions fall under the categories of "worldbuilding" or "encounter design," we do them to keep the game interesting for our players.

And oftentimes, at least how I do it, some random rolling happens en route to determining that.

Players unexpectedly decide to have their PCs explore some woods I've never given a second thought to? Out come my dice, and using them as guidelines I'll quickly determine what's in there of any consequence...which might be nothing at all; I don't feel beholden to placing adventure wherever they may randomly go just because they go there. Some parts of the world really are safe.

As for the innkeeper, if his reaction to the PCs isn't pre-set by the module or other prep I'll often roll and even mutter out loud "So what does he think of you lot?"

What's more, the players have to trust that we are being fair. That we are prepared to expand the fiction to explain the innkeeper's attitude and allow for mitigating it, if the players press the issue. That they won't be surprised by a goblin patrol at melee range that didn't exist while they were watching the trees from a distance. That the goblins have set traps is not contingent on the party not looking for them.

Completely agree on this.

That the challenges we pose to them are merciless without being cruel, and that the rewards we provide are commensurate.

To a point. Some challenges might be rather easy and thus not merciless at all; others might be well beyond their pay grade and if they insist on standing in to them things might not go very well. Ditto the rewards, particularly in terms of treasure - that can also get pretty random: I've always loved the idea of Bilbo randomly stumbling on to the most valuable item in the known world while lost and alone in an underground passage.

Whether they in fact find the treasure is another source of great randomness.

But this fairness is largely an illusion, and it becomes more so the further we are required to range from our session notes, as we are forced to react rather than rely on preparation. Even when we succeed, we may be dependent on the quantum ogre principle, and when we fail, we could decide the innkeeper is intractable because it simplifies the scene, or stick the fighter with a punji stick because their player is being a jerk and the rogue didn't think to check. As far as the players are concerned, these things could have been our intent all along, and the only test they have for our fairness is the time they've spent with us and the trust we've built with them.

Perhaps, but it's also on us as DMs to ourselves be ethical, which often means not doing these things even if we might want to.

So, then, why does the arbitrary involvement of a cheaply manufactured chunk of bubble-filled plastic suddenly absolve us of this responsibility to build that trust and uphold the illusion of fairness?

That's just it: it doesn't absolve us of the responsibility. Quite the opposite: it proves we are not abusing that responsibility, provided we honour the dice once rolled.

Reasonable minds can absolutely disagree as to whether fudging should be done. My position is just that it is a tool that dungeon masters -- particularly new dungeon masters -- should be encouraged to recognize in their arsenal. No moral judgment should be laid here; it's a game we play with friends. If everyone at the table is having fun, the goal has been achieved.

Agreed to a point; though I posit new DMs should NOT be encouraged to recognize that fudging is a potential option as it'll only serve to encourage them to do it.

You'll like this -- it happened to me the other night. I was gleefully preparing to roll damage, and the player says, "You made those rolls with disadvantage, right?" I'd forgotten about his Cloak of Displacement. :: deep sigh ::

That Cloak just became worth every penny the character spent on it!

I was specifically trying to avoid a description of a situation where I was taking up an antagonistic position to the players to avoid controversy, but I've absolutely done this too. It's not about ensuring the PCs win easily, or win at all, it's about keeping things entertaining.

Sometimes a shockingly easy win can be very entertaining, especially for the player who pulls it off. I'd never overturn spectacular player-side rolls, if only because I know the odds of their happening frequently are vanishingly small and thus that what's happening right now is very likely a once-ever thing.

I was once in a game where a PC pulled off three maximum crits in a row...only our crit system has a confirm roll, so instead of 1-in-8000 her odds of doing what she did were closer to 1-in-6,000,000. No cheating either; this is perhaps the most honest player I've ever gamed with, and the rolls were on the table.

Our crit system involves putting a multiplier on the total damage that would otherwise be dealt, and a maximum crit multiplies everything by 4. So, in three swings she did something like 336 points of damage (without maxing any of the actual damage rolls); this in a system where a character doing 10 points damage is noteworthy and 20 points is a big deal.

Three different foes, of course; none of 'em had nearly enough starch to handle what she was doing!

 

[overgeeked]

I think you are assuming a lot of things here. Of course we avoid fights we can’t win. But we are not usually put in situations where we can’t.

How boring. There’s no thrill of victory unless there’s a chance of defeat.

If you played totally randomly and mapped out the inhabitants of a province and TOTALLY let the chips fall, you would often have a very short lived game.

Odd. My longest game was basically exactly that. Randomly generated map. Randomly generated encounters. Randomly generated denizens. There was a 100-foot god-tree visible from the starting town. The players immediately went there. And picked a fight. Instead of quitting they tried again and acted a bit smarter the second time around.

Think back to 1e modules. They put a level range on the front cover. Surely we don’t introduce level one characters to the demonweb pits?

No one’s suggesting you should. But if the entrance is on the map the PCs can enter any time they want.

My group plays with challenges we cannot win and character death. Period. If that is not radically “free enough” in how we do it for your tastes…ok? I think we have a good balance of all of the things.

Everyone has their preferences.

Years ago, we had level 9 characters. 1e days and as by the book as such things are. Years of play to get there.

Good for you. It’s tough to get that far.

We encountered an evil army who wanted to railroad us to their leader and we resisted. And died. We did have a choice of sorts…so there you go. We died.

Yeah. As long as it makes sense. That’s what happens.

 

[Reynard]

Those mechanics are generally not defining of D&D, in contrast to other games, the way that the d20 roll is. Lots of games have random tables, reaction rolls, crit tables, and such.

And I'm saying putting them in D&D makes the game better. What's the confusion?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

How boring. There’s no thrill of victory unless there’s a chance of defeat.

Odd. My longest game was basically exactly that. Randomly generated map. Randomly generated encounters. Randomly generated denizens. There was a 100-foot god-tree visible from the starting town. The players immediately went there. And picked a fight. Instead of quitting they tried again and acted a bit smarter the second time around.

No one’s suggesting you should. But if the entrance is on the map the PCs can enter any time they want.

Everyone has their preferences.

Good for you. It’s tough to get that far.

Yeah. As long as it makes sense. That’s what happens.

This is getting into weird semantics so I am guessing some of my group’s games would not be alien to you. But then again who knows?

If you don’t even consider levels and challenges—-ever—-plunking a low level character in a super high level module will have consequences.

If you consider level of party and challenges, you are putting your finger on the scales and it’s probably in the favor of characters. If not, I have not tried that experiment.

 

[Reynard]

In classic D&D, does the GM get to decide whether a failed morale check results in flight or surrender? (I have a feeling it might be different in B/X and AD&D, with the latter being more rigid; I don't know what OD&D says.)

In another recent thread, someone was comparing stunting rules in AD&D 2nd ed and 5e. Presumably these require someone to establish fiction.

What happens if a player moves their character into a muddy patch, and the GM calls for a DEX check to avoid slipping and sliding - doesn't someone have to establish fiction in that context?

I mean, I know that D&D combat has wargame-ish tendencies, but are they really as extreme as you seem to be implying in your post?

I was speaking mostly of WotC era ,where once combat starts its mostly participant input--die roll--system output. Earlier D&D is that way too but there's more GM adjudication in the midst of combat as you mention -- although I don't recall whether the intent was that the GM got to decide to abide by the results of the morale check. There are of course some outliers where the system asks for more input from participants after the roll.

As to setup, that is traditionally a GM or designer responsibility but you can randomize that too. Take your battlements and throw a handful of dice. X results are elevated terrain squares. Y results are depressions. Z results are difficult terrain. Something like that.

Again, my whole these is that randomness and uncertainty are a net benefit to D&D play. But I am NOT saying absolutely everything must be random, or that there is no place for input or adjudication.