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

[Stormonu]

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?

Considering the "Rules of Clues"*, I don't think it works any better. I see not reason why RNG shouldn't be used. It can be fun for players to figure things out for themselves, but conditions aren't always favorable for that to occur - either because of a lack of properly communicating information, it being ignored or misunderstood. How many times have players gone down the wrong rabbit hole because of some misconstrued piece of information?

* Give a clue three times, in a slightly different way each time. The first two times it will be ignored and on the third the player/audience catches on it has significant meaning. Sometimes people are just dense.

 

[payn]

• 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.

I often negotiate situations in RPGs I run with my players. We do a lot of what you describe. Player states an action they want a PC to take with which expected outcomes. The point of contention(s) are then give a DC and failure states are determined. I've actually moved into a degree of success philosophy lately so that takes into account as well.

I think its important if there is going to actually be a social pillar to the game that there are guidelines lines. I think BA is a good foundation, but there likely needs to be some standards for GMs and players to follow when determining DCs and failure states. Tricky, I know, because a lot of it (for me anyway) will be contextual based.

 

[Bill Zebub]

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

In theory no. Although I've never seen systems that are anywhere near as fun as combat.

But my premise here is that I want to avoid dice rolling. That I find it more fun to resolve challenges without dice.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Considering the "Rules of Clues"*, I don't think it works any better. I see not reason why RNG shouldn't be used. It can be fun for players to figure things out for themselves, but conditions aren't always favorable for that to occur - either because of a lack of properly communicating information, it being ignored or misunderstood. How many times have players gone down the wrong rabbit hole because of some misconstrued piece of information?

* Give a clue three times, in a slightly different way each time. The first two times it will be ignored and on the third the player/audience catches on it has significant meaning. Sometimes people are just dense.

Yes, I agree. Which is why I never rely on telegraphing, and player deduction, for things that are necessary to success, but only for "bonuses" such as treasure rooms.

But that argument applies equally to dice rolling: since rolls can be failed, it's a bad idea to gate completion of the goals behind a few random skill checks.

And, really, if the players are not going to find the treasure room, I'd rather have it be because they missed or misinterpreted the clues, than because some passive check failed.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

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

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.

Many of your points are more reasonable than I expected when seeing your thread title. In fact, though I do not gm for D&D right now, I use a system without checks for many of the things you propose. There are no perception checks, or find-secret-door checks. It works pretty well and would probably work for D&D too.

My fear is that, well, D&D is really badly designed and one problem is that some characters simply have more things they can do than other characters. In the system I run, Lancer, this is not the case. Everyone is equally competent in and out of combat.

What happens in D&D if you de-power skills too much you are removing the only rules that allow some classes to properly and competently interact with the world, but you are doing this without affecting at all characters who do not use the skill system.

So let's assume that the game, outside of combat, is played with a minimum of skill checks. I think that might work fine if the party is equally reliant on skills, but what if someone is playing a wizard? That player is likely not going to give a crap that he can't use his skills often, because he has spells to do things. The same is not true for the rogue or the fighter.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I like where you are going, and I play in much the same style, but I'm going to kinda disagree in a different way.

Normally, in 5e anyway, it is the DM who is calling for a roll after hearing what the player wants their PC to do, and how they're going about it. In combat, we've simply decided that it is usually obvious: the hostile enemy is still trying to hurt your PC, so go ahead take whatever combat action you want and, if dice are involved, go ahead and roll them. The outcome is uncertain and the consequence for failure is meaningful (e.g. the enemy's hitpoints are not diminished so it can try to lop off your PC's head again next round).

Outside of combat, the "default" of game play is much more narrative and therefore we wait for the DM to declare if the PC's approach and goal warrant the dice.

In the example of a secret door, I'd argue that the interesting part isn't finding the secret door, it's figuring out how it works. So I like that the DM telegraphing the presence might lead to the players, via their capable adventurer PCs, indicating that they suspect something is up and want to do XYZ to figure out what is going on. I have no problem granting auto-success for discovery (or, perhaps, have them roll WIS(Perception) with the failure state being that they wasted time finding it). Now the PCs have a new challenge, how do they get through this (now, not so) secret door effectively?

So, actually, kinda agree / kinda disagree: 5e combat is a special case only in that we typically have players rolling without having the DM need to think about uncertainty and meaningful consequences - it is typically self-evident. Outside of combat, dice come out far less often but still follow the same rubric of uncertainty and meaningful consequence for failure.

Good topic!

 

[Bill Zebub]

Many of your points are more reasonable than I expected when seeing your thread title. In fact, though I do not gm for D&D right now, I use a system without checks for many of the things you propose. There are no perception checks, or find-secret-door checks. It works pretty well and would probably work for D&D too.

My fear is that, well, D&D is really badly designed and one problem is that some characters simply have more things they can do than other characters. In the system I run, Lancer, this is not the case. Everyone is equally competent in and out of combat.

What happens in D&D if you de-power skills too much you are removing the only rules that allow some classes to properly and competently interact with the world, but you are doing this without affecting at all characters who do not use the skill system.

So let's assume that the game, outside of combat, is played with a minimum of skill checks. I think that might work fine if the party is equally reliant on skills, but what if someone is playing a wizard? That player is likely not going to give a crap that he can't use his skills often, because he has spells to do things. The same is not true for the rogue or the fighter.

If I can translate, I think you are making the argument about "investment" in non-combat abilities. That if everything is narrated, playing a high Charisma character, or a character with a lot of knowledge skills, feels weak because you aren't really necessary. And only in games, like D&D, that enable that.

Is that it?

If so, I agree it's a problem. A few possible ways to address it:

• Assuming the players are proposing an actual action, with a cost of failure, and not just saying "do I know...?" or "can I tell...?", then that investment will be worth it. Either because they will automatically succeed, or will at least not automatically fail, and will have a better chance of success if they roll. Caveat here is that, yes, it can be challenging to figure out a way to turn something like, "Can I read those runes?" into an action declaration with a cost of failure.
• Often if I am going to give information away, such as those footprints in the passage, it will be to the player who made that investment.
• And sometimes I will say, "Everybody make me a (something) roll...". There is no DC, but whoever rolls highest gets the information.

EDIT: But, yes, in a game that allows that kind of investment, it will remain a challenge.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In the example of a secret door, I'd argue that the interesting part isn't finding the secret door, it's figuring out how it works.

I think it's both! Or, either, really. Same with traps.

Sometimes they are easy to find, but hard to "solve."

Other times they are hard to find, but once you do they are easy to solve.

But whichever it is, players should feel a sense of accomplishment for...well, accomplishment. I'm not really sure (euphemism for "I disagree that...") a single dice roll with a binary outcome ever really feels like accomplishment. Just "relief", maybe.

So, actually, kinda agree / kinda disagree: 5e combat is a special case only in that we typically have players rolling without having the DM need to think about uncertainty and meaningful consequences - it is typically self-evident. Outside of combat, dice come out far less often but still follow the same rubric of uncertainty and meaningful consequence for failure.

Here I would argue that it's not just a special case because we tend to do it that way, but also it's really, really, really hard to do it otherwise. But there are exceptions: I will sometimes allow elaborate plots/traps to kill enemies without having to roll for it. Or, reducing it to a single roll with a cost of failure: "If the minotaur spots your trap (opposed roll), he's going to know you're there and be even more alert. But otherwise you win."

This was in combat, and did require rolls, but one of my favorite schemes ever was to polymorph the purple worm into a chicken, throw the chicken into the bottomless chasm, then wait a couple seconds and voluntarily break concentration.

Good topic!

Thank you! I have been obsessing about these questions for a long time. I don't have it all figured out! But I aspire to get better.

 

[payn]

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?

I think a passive check works wonders for things like hidden treasure room that have no significance on the adventure itself. I say this becasue of my experience with GMs that are really bad at telegraphing such things. Also, players that catch wind and never give up or accept failure to discover.. It becomes an issue of how much session time do I want to waste on a hidden treasure room that has no significance to the adventure? My experience has informed me its not much, so passively missing the treasure room means no time will be wasted on it at all.

Yes, I agree. Which is why I never rely on telegraphing, and player deduction, for things that are necessary to success, but only for "bonuses" such as treasure rooms.

Agreed. You should never gate an adventure behind an obstacle. I approach things now from a degrees of success stand point. If the players cant solve the puzzle to open the door, they can break it down. Though, that takes a lot of time and makes a lot of noise. That could/should have implications. Though, not reading the clues and figuring out how to proceed isnt a dead end itself.

But that argument applies equally to dice rolling: since rolls can be failed, it's a bad idea to gate completion of the goals behind a few random skill checks.

Following my degrees of success path, I usually allow a failed roll to still be a success but with a complication. Recently in my Traveller game the players travellers were establishing a contact to fence stolen goods for them. The fence offered his 30% starting rate, but the players wanted 20% instead. They tried to broker skill with the fence, but they were unsuccessful in changing his mind. However, the fence realized it was something the travellers really wanted so he made a counter offer. The travellers would get the 20% rate, but they owed the fence a favor a crew with a ship could offer him in the future.

And, really, if the players are not going to find the treasure room, I'd rather have it be because they missed or misinterpreted the clues, than because some passive check failed.

I covered this from my perspective, I think its a bummer for everyone to catch a whiff of something, and then never find it. Might as well have never known about it at all.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I think it's both! Or, either, really. Same with traps.

Sometimes they are easy to find, but hard to "solve."

Other times they are hard to find, but once you do they are easy to solve.

But whichever it is, players should feel a sense of accomplishment for...well, accomplishment. I'm not really sure (euphemism for "I disagree that...") a single dice roll with a binary outcome ever really feels like accomplishment. Just "relief", maybe.

That's fair.
Either way, the key is that there is a meaningful consequence for failure so that the "accomplishment"/ "rejoicing" / "relief" or... the opposite... is palpable.
I really like what you state in step 3 in your OP. Tell the players the odds and failure state - it gives credence to the fact that the PCs are capable adventurers who have a sense of what they are about to attempt. And the player - not being an expert locksmith or sage or gymnast or whatever - can decide the PC changes their mind if the task then appears too difficult and/or too risky (FWIW, they seldom do change their mind, IME).
I find 5e D&D sessions in which the DM doesn't announce the DC tend to lack a certain something... like they are winging it and so rolling high is success and rolling low is failure and somewhere in the middle is... whatever the DM is feeling in the moment. It doesn't provide the same payoff, IMO.

Here I would argue that it's not just a special case because we tend to do it that way, but also it's really, really, really hard to do it otherwise. But there are exceptions: I will sometimes allow elaborate plots/traps to kill enemies without having to roll for it. Or, reducing it to a single roll with a cost of failure: "If the minotaur spots your trap (opposed roll), he's going to know you're there and be even more alert. But otherwise you win."

True true.
Yeah, exceptions to rolling in combat are really good to keep in mind, too. I'm still haunted by an adjudication in my early days of DMing 5e when my then 11 year old son, playing a half-orc assassin, wanted to execute an unsuspecting enemy. I made him roll. Ugh.

This was in combat, and did require rolls, but one of my favorite schemes ever was to polymorph the purple worm into a chicken, throw the chicken into the bottomless chasm, then wait a couple seconds and voluntarily break concentration.

Awesome!

Thank you! I have been obsessing about these questions for a long time. I don't have it all figured out! But I aspire to get better.

Hear hear.