How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I'm a big fan of hidden information, but at the same time the rules need to be transparent. Things shouldn't be fuzzy for the sake of obscurantism.

There's no need for players to know exact stats of monsters, but at the same time the GM should provide information when requested. Does an enemy look wounded or not? How serious are the wounds?

 

[SteveC]

I tend to be the over-sharing type because there are so many intangible things that you don't get clued in on. Even a great GM is not a VR simulation, and I find all the time there's miscommunication about exactly what a situation is and how difficult it should be.

If you think about it, you're able to get through your daily life without hurting yourself because you get to see everything around you and have experiences about what you can and can't do. How does that translate into an RPG? I think a lot of people would regularly get themselves hurt in the real world if it ran like we run RPGs.

So I share a little bit too much. I'd rather clue a player in a little bit more on difficulty than have someone who's meant to be a heroic character look like a fool.

 

[billd91]

I'm a big fan of hidden information, but at the same time the rules need to be transparent. Things shouldn't be fuzzy for the sake of obscurantism.

There's no need for players to know exact stats of monsters, but at the same time the GM should provide information when requested. Does an enemy look wounded or not? How serious are the wounds?

I can generally get behind this. I'll describe roughly how badly an opponent has been injured as we're playing. If we're playing remotely via Roll20, the hit point bar I set up above the tokens usually serves pretty well. In person, I'll usually point out the point where the target is bloodied (probably the best concept to come out of 4e, in my book) and otherwise respond to queries about how the targets are looking.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is hard to tell how good a fighter someone is until they start punching you in the face. You only know how good you are, so when you take a swing and they block or duck, you suddenly have a clue as to their skill. When they hit you, you learn more.

The idea that you can precisely assess an opponent outside of watching them fight or actually fighting them is laughable.

Source: wrestling, martial arts, and being a dumb kid in the Army in the 90s.

There's a pretty good sized gap between "precisely" and "to whatever degree the GM both bothers and manages to convey to you."

 

[Manbearcat]

It is hard to tell how good a fighter someone is until they start punching you in the face. You only know how good you are, so when you take a swing and they block or duck, you suddenly have a clue as to their skill. When they hit you, you learn more.

The idea that you can precisely assess an opponent outside of watching them fight or actually fighting them is laughable.

Source: wrestling, martial arts, and being a dumb kid in the Army in the 90s.

Your telling me that your wrestling, martial arts and "dumb kid in the Army in the 90s" (whatever that means) + whatever sparring, grappling, and real stakes conflicts hasn't afforded you the ability to size up the most dangerous individual among a group of individuals before actually being involved in a fight?

You can't instantly evaluate someone's ape index, their ease and efficiency and suddenness of movement, the athleticism (or not) of their natural gait, their shoulder to hip ratio, their hand/finger/wrist length and size, whether their ears are cauliflowered or their nose is subtly crooked?

I mean...come on. There is no one I know who has been involved in the fight game/martial arts/live sparring or grappling that would say what you just said. That_is_laughable. Its trivial to identify dangerous people before you're forced into a violent confrontation. Trivial.

And the moment a dangerous person with actual striking or grappling prowess squares up against you? No exchange. Just squares up. Its trivial to identify a wrestler who is going to shoot a double leg vs a kickboxer who is going to teep and manage distance vs a BJJ player who looks for a single leg entry away from danger and looks to immediately establish an underhook and wrist control vs most everyone else who has absolutely zero idea of what they're doing (but they're still dangerous because they're still a highly evolved chimp).

If you're telling me that you have no ability to distinguish levels and types of danger in various humans, then I'll take your word for it. But that has absolutely nothing to say about how trained fighters in the real world with a large amount of live sparring distinguish danger and certainly how that would play out in D&D-world where dangerous people are involved in dangerous, life-or-death conflict routinely (and therefore the survivor bias would 100 % select for people with extraordinary ability to distinguish the magnitude and type of danger in front of them).

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I can generally get behind this. I'll describe roughly how badly an opponent has been injured as we're playing. If we're playing remotely via Roll20, the hit point bar I set up above the tokens usually serves pretty well. In person, I'll usually point out the point where the target is bloodied (probably the best concept to come out of 4e, in my book) and otherwise respond to queries about how the targets are looking.

The bloodied concept is great. Every GM I have uses it and I use it myself too.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If it's any consolation to you, they're trying to know your AC as well.

Of course the problem there is that the person operating them already does. We just take it on faith that the GM will be good enough at firewalling that knowledge.

 

[Corinnguard]

We just take it on faith that the GM will be good enough at firewalling that knowledge.

This should also be true for the player. The GM also has take it on faith that the player is also good enough at firewalling that knowledge.

 

[Campbell]

The issue I have personally experienced with the sort of relative descriptions we see most GMs provide in most games is what they are relative to (normal people). This makes it very difficult to assess relative strength or danger in comparison (every monster is dangerous to a typical villager) because then you have to mentally index relative strength based on where the GM may see your character (if they are even indexing your character). I would have no issue myself with relative descriptions of things like speed and fighting prowess if they directly index the characters being played in particular, but they often do not.

Faster than most does not really tell me anything. Slightly faster than you does.

When I GM the reason I tend to lean on numbers (in addition to detailed descriptions) is that numbers allow each individual player to assess things relative to their own character rather than some baseline that might differ from person to person.

 

[Reynard]

Your telling me that your wrestling, martial arts and "dumb kid in the Army in the 90s" (whatever that means) + whatever sparring, grappling, and real stakes conflicts hasn't afforded you the ability to size up the most dangerous individual among a group of individuals before actually being involved in a fight?

You can't instantly evaluate someone's ape index, their ease and efficiency and suddenness of movement, the athleticism (or not) of their natural gait, their shoulder to hip ratio, their hand/finger/wrist length and size, whether their ears are cauliflowered or their nose is subtly crooked?

I mean...come on. There is no one I know who has been involved in the fight game/martial arts/live sparring or grappling that would say what you just said. That_is_laughable. Its trivial to identify dangerous people before you're forced into a violent confrontation. Trivial.

And the moment a dangerous person with actual striking or grappling prowess squares up against you? No exchange. Just squares up. Its trivial to identify a wrestler who is going to shoot a double leg vs a kickboxer who is going to teep and manage distance vs a BJJ player who looks for a single leg entry away from danger and looks to immediately establish an underhook and wrist control vs most everyone else who has absolutely zero idea of what they're doing (but they're still dangerous because they're still a highly evolved chimp).

If you're telling me that you have no ability to distinguish levels and types of danger in various humans, then I'll take your word for it. But that has absolutely nothing to say about how trained fighters in the real world with a large amount of live sparring distinguish danger and certainly how that would play out in D&D-world where dangerous people are involved in dangerous, life-or-death conflict routinely (and therefore the survivor bias would 100 % select for people with extraordinary ability to distinguish the magnitude and type of danger in front of them).

I don't know how many fights you have been in versus how many movies you have seen, but in my experience the most dangerous people do not have an "ape index" (whatever that is). People swagger and saunter all the time that have no real skill (more often than not, in fact) and ones that can fight often do not flex until it happens.

In other words: it is pure fantasy to suggest that in the real world people walk around with a hit point bar and level hovering above their heads. Acting like that is a real thing is something people who don't know what they are talking about do.