D&D General Renamed Thread: "The Illusion of Agency"

[Bill Zebub]

Ok, the thread title is more confrontational than I really mean. Please hear me out...

I renamed the thread thanks to an excellent response by @I'm A Banana

I want to argue that combat is the only part of the game in which the default should be reaching for dice and relying on mechanics. That in ALL other parts of the game we should first try to resolve things through narration/storytelling, and only roll dice as a last resort to resolve real uncertainty. Or, at least, that's how I personally would like to play. I believe that, outside of combat, rolling dice should follow this pattern:

1. The player declares an action
2. If the DM decides the outcome is uncertain, and there is a real cost to failure, the DM may call for a roll
3. The DM tells the player what the roll will be, including DC, and what the cost of failure will be
4. The player then has the option of not taking the action

And, by the way, "you can't try again" is not a cost of failure, at least by my definition. If you try to pick a lock and you fail, the door is still locked; the game state hasn't changed.

Litmus Test: if the DM's only tool for preventing everybody in the party from trying is by declaring (unrealistically) that only one character is allowed to try, then clearly the penalty for failure is insufficient.

This means:

• No passive rolls to spot things
• No rolls to see "if I know something"
• No rolling Insight to detect lies
• For those who want NPCs to "use social skills on PCs" the pattern is perfectly symmetric, which means the DM describes the action, the player decides whether outcome is uncertain, and calls for a roll, setting the DC.

And one final thing: I'm in the camp where I don't police, or even worry about, "metagaming" (using the narrow and somewhat inaccurate definition of "not separating player and character knowledge about the game world.")

But doing his is hard. Both because I got used to playing and another way, and just because sometimes it's hard. I'm still practicing DMing this way.

So to help me practice, here's the challenge: describe a scenario in which you think it would be challenging to follow these principles, and I'll see if I can figure out either how to handle the scenario, or how (and why) I would prefer to set up the scenario differently in the first place. Others are free to respond also. Maybe we'll all learn something.

Example:
"The party is exploring a maze of nearly identical passages, and there is a secret door in one otherwise unremarkable tunnel. How do you determine if the secret door is found without passive rolls or cost of failure?"

My answer:

• First, what purpose does the secret door serve in terms of making the game more fun. Is it just a random short-cut? Does it lead to a treasure room? Does it make the challenges faced by the party objectively easier?
• If it's just a random short-cut or otherwise provides a minor benefit, I might telegraph it's presence when they are near. For example, the party might intermittently notice footprints, and I'll tell them (no roll required!) that the footprints have disappeared. If they search around near where the footprints end, they find the door automatically. (Alternatively, I might eliminate the secret door as pointless.)
• If it's important, such as leading to a treasure room or making the party's objectives significantly easier, I would want to telegraph it from another location and then let them deduce the likely location. Any attempt to actively search for it in the correct location would be successful (but see next comment). The telegraph could be in a journal or map they find, a comment by a prisoner, a symmetric/geometric map in which one part is "missing", etc.
• If they are actively looking for a secret door but are under time pressure, then I might ask for a roll. The cost of failure is using up time. E.g., they are being pursued and want to use the secret door to hide from their pursuers before they are caught.

I'd love to have this thread NOT devolve into a debate about metagaming.

 

[Stormonu]

If you get down to brass tacks, combat could be done diceless or with a single roll as well.

The dice are there for "fairly" randomizing a chance of success where player knowledge/skill is not necessarily the same as the character. If you're playing a "your character knows what you know/can do what you do", then there's no reason to roll. If there's doubt about how well that character would do, throw the dice. But don't roll for things that aren't in doubt or don't have some sort of consequence or change in the game state for success or failure - even if it just means in the case of the locked door that the players need to resort to knocking the door down, breaking the lock, knocking to get someone to answer or just leaving it alone.

In the secret door case, unless you're showing to the players a picture of the hallways they're tromping through (including the faint outline of the door), the characters have a completely different sense that what the players at the table may have and it's perfectly fine to make a roll to see if the character perhaps spots, infers or somehow glosses over the presence of that secret door.

 

[Hussar]

No.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with mechanical frameworks outside of combat.

 

[Minigiant]

Prove you wrong?

Three answers:

Intelligence
Wisdom
Charisma

 

[Bill Zebub]

It seems that my post was much too long and few (yet) have actually read beyond the provocative title.

I'll keep hoping.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In the secret door case, unless you're showing to the players a picture of the hallways they're tromping through (including the faint outline of the door), the characters have a completely different sense that what the players at the table may have and it's perfectly fine to make a roll to see if the character perhaps spots, infers or somehow glosses over the presence of that secret door.

Sure, it's perfectly fine to do so, but my goal is to do it without RNG.

That's where I think telegraphing has to replace the visuals. E.g., the footprints I described. Or a faint odor/draft. (Where I'm currently living, during the winter I can feel a cold draft coming out of the light switches...seriously...on the basement level.)

The general philosophy I'm working through is to ask: is it really more fun for the players to be given information because of a successful passive perception check, rather than just being automatically handed the information? Why?

 

[KYRON45]

I don't like skill challenges. That's all I got.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If you get down to brass tacks, combat could be done diceless or with a single roll as well.

I don't want to derail the thread too much, but I think the reason dice work well for combat is because it involves so many rolls, so there's excitement around the ebb and flow, and there are ways for players to react and adjust, and decisions to take along the way to improve their chances.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I don't want to derail the thread too much, but I think the reason dice work well for combat is because it involves so many rolls, so there's excitement around the ebb and flow, and there are ways for players to react and adjust, and decisions to take along the way to improve their chances.

is there any good reason social and exploration couldn't involve more rolls?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't like skill challenges. That's all I got.

Would you like them more if you had several options, with different risk:reward profiles? For example, faced with a rickety bridge over a chasm:

• Solution A has a very good chance of success, but death if you fail
• Solution B has a lower chance of success, but a better chance to recover if it fails
• Or you can take the long way around, facing unknown dangers and costing you time.