I want my actions to matter

[Micah Sweet]

Not really. One hand hits the grease when you lift it up. You hang there for a moment wiping the grease off on your cloths and then either figure out another way, or climb back down. It's not like you are going to get high enough up to have your feet slip or put both hands in the grease.

It's a deterrent yes, but most likely not a painful one.

Why? Should the player only get to roll a die if the PC rolls a die? I don't tell the DC numbers myself, but not because I think the players will abuse the information. Rather I keep the numbers to a minimum to try and avoid spoiling immersion. The more numbers enter the conversations the more the game feels like a game and not an experience.

My experience is the opposite. Not only can most ignore it, but they will pointedly ignore it even to the detriment of the PC just to avoid using the knowledge.

That's a difference in player culture. My experience has been more on @Lanefan 's side than yours. So I see what he's saying here. Either way would work if the players can handle it fairly.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And? The fact that you've changed your mind since then doesn't make your new feelings objectively better than your old ones or @Lanefan 'S current feelings. How is that statement less insulting to him than his statement was to your feelings?

I didn't say they were objectively better. I was pointing out that I don't need to have the idea of "metagaming" explained to me. I understood it in 1986, whether I still agree with it or not.

I don't want that degree of transparency, and if I got it anyway I would do my best to ignore it. To me it harms immersion to be throwing numbers around unnecessarily. Just do the best job you can describing the situation, and let me respond to that. That is good GMing to me.

Cool. To me it seems like a silly aversion to specificity in preference of the vague.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't say they were objectively better. I was pointing out that I don't need to have the idea of "metagaming" explained to me. I understood it in 1986, whether I still agree with it or not.



Cool. To me it seems like a silly aversion to specificity in preference of the vague.

Specificity of the sort you describe makes the world feel more artificial to me. I'd much rather have the GM keep the numbers to themselves and focus on describing what my PC experiences in the setting that the number represents mechanically.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Specificity of the sort you describe makes the world feel more artificial to me. I'd much rather have the GM keep the numbers to themselves and focus on describing what my PC experiences in the setting that the number represents mechanically.

It's funny, because to me the opposite is true. Less transparency takes me out of the game, forcing me (as both a DM and a player) into a sort of meta-game of guessing if there's really a DC, if the DM is just making it up, if my actions actually matter, if using that power that boosts my rolls is going to be a waste...

I guess my experience comes from playing with a DM who, on the surface, really let us do whatever we wanted as characters, but the only actions that really mattered were the ones that followed her preordained plot. So we could invest in an inn, adopt an orphan, research hidden treasures... But none of that really mattered unless because once we were done the DM would just say, "Okay, the next day you receive a message that..." and the plot would move forward, our actions having made no impact.

The same thing would happen with skill checks. It really didn't matter what we rolled when trying to convince the king to grant us extra magical weapons so we could go kill a demon... If that was part of the plot, the king would say Yes no matter the roll, and if it wasn't the king would says No.

For myself as a player, I really like to be told the number I need and the consequences. It makes rolling a lot more exciting and impactful. If the DM says, "This king is very protective of their treasure... You need a 25 to convince him, though a 20 will get you a discount at the royal magic weapon market. Oh, and if you roll below 10 the king will be very insulted."

To me that creates a lot of excitement as I get ready to roll my d20! And I'm able to easily translate all those numbers to in-game things my character is noticing.

I know that doesn't work for everyone, but hopefully you can see why it works for me, and why I don't consider it bad DMing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's funny, because to me the opposite is true. Less transparency takes me out of the game, forcing me (as both a DM and a player) into a sort of meta-game of guessing if there's really a DC, if the DM is just making it up, if my actions actually matter, if using that power that boosts my rolls is going to be a waste...

I guess my experience comes from playing with a DM who, on the surface, really let us do whatever we wanted as characters, but the only actions that really mattered were the ones that followed her preordained plot. So we could invest in an inn, adopt an orphan, research hidden treasures... But none of that really mattered unless because once we were done the DM would just say, "Okay, the next day you receive a message that..." and the plot would move forward, our actions having made no impact.

The same thing would happen with skill checks. It really didn't matter what we rolled when trying to convince the king to grant us extra magical weapons so we could go kill a demon... If that was part of the plot, the king would say Yes no matter the roll, and if it wasn't the king would says No.

For myself as a player, I really like to be told the number I need and the consequences. It makes rolling a lot more exciting and impactful. If the DM says, "This king is very protective of their treasure... You need a 25 to convince him, though a 20 will get you a discount at the royal magic weapon market. Oh, and if you roll below 10 the king will be very insulted."

To me that creates a lot of excitement as I get ready to roll my d20! And I'm able to easily translate all those numbers to in-game things my character is noticing.

I know that doesn't work for everyone, but hopefully you can see why it works for me, and why I don't consider it bad DMing.

I do see where you're coming from. It seems a lot of the stuff determining where you fall on this spectrum is based on how unpleasant one's experiences with certain DMs actually were. Many folks seem to have had a string of bad DMs, or so I gather, and it has led to a lack of trust and a desire to force the DM to play a certain way for them to feel comfortable. That's unfortunate.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm kinda at the middle-ground on the DC transparency issue. I don't like metaknowledge, but if it is a task where the challenge is based on factors the characters can freely observe, I just tell the DC. I don't see this as metagaming, I see it representing the experienced adventures being able to gauge roughly how hard certain common tasks are. I don't tell the DC if the difficulty is related to things the characters cannot observe.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I do see where you're coming from. It seems a lot of the stuff determining where you fall on this spectrum is based on how unpleasant one's experiences with certain DMs actually were. Many folks seem to have had a string of bad DMs, or so I gather, and it has led to a lack of trust and a desire to force the DM to play a certain way for them to feel comfortable. That's unfortunate.

I can assure you that in my case, it has nothing to do with "certain DMs" or a "lack of trust" or "desire to force the DM to play a certain way for them to feel comfortable". That framing is a supposition on your part. And an odd one since you've stated your preference on how this is handled is entirely about your comfort.

It is about transparency. It's about not hiding information from the players of a game when they're expected to make decisions about how to approach play. It's also about using the game's mechanics to help communicate the situation in the fiction. If a steep climb on a slick surface means the Athletics DC to climb is 18, then why not just say 18? Doing so simply communicates "steep" and "slick" how they relate to a game's mechanics. It removes the vagueness of simple description and gives the player a clear understanding.

Not doing so simply because hearing numbers breaks immersion... I don't know. Seems odd. I mean... how do we know how good a character is at climbing? What does it say on the character sheet, "pretty darn good" or "+8"? What does the die roll tell us, "a valiant effort, but not quite" or "4"?

Seems really odd to be comfortable with all the math that comes into play with a game like D&D, except with Difficulty Classes.

I'm kinda at the middle-ground on the DC transparency issue. I don't like metaknowledge, but if it is a task where the challenge is based on factors the characters can freely observe, I just tell the DC. I don't see this as metagaming, I see it representing the experienced adventures being able to gauge roughly how hard certain common tasks are. I don't tell the DC if the difficulty is related to things the characters cannot observe.

But then when you don't share the DC, the player will know there's something unobserved at play, which their characters won't know!!!

Which makes it just as likely they'll base their decision on what they don't know... so metagaming is unavoided!

 

[mamba]

It is about transparency. It's about not hiding information from the players of a game when they're expected to make decisions about how to approach play.

Do you show them the monster stat block before they decide to attack or come up with a tactic? I see no need for someone to know the exact DC, esp. not in cases where they do not have all the information for whatever reason.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Do you show them the monster stat block before they decide to attack or come up with a tactic? I see no need for someone to know the exact DC, esp. not in cases where they do not have all the information for whatever reason.

I'll sometimes tell players the AC of monsters. It really speeds things up.

 

[pointofyou]

I'll sometimes tell players the AC of monsters. It really speeds things up.

When players ask how a creature looks I'll often tell them in the form of "On a scale of 1 to 187 this one looks like about a 43." Neither that nor revealing AC is even in the ballpark of "showing the players the statblock."