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

[I'm A Banana]

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.

It is tragic to me that this argument conflates "mechanics" with "rolling dice to resolve uncertainty."

Like, the radius of light that a torch gives is an exploration mechanic.

Alignment (for all its faults) is a roleplaying mechanic.

Mechanics come is so many flavors that are not rolling a d20.

I'm amenable to the argument that rolling a d20 might not be the best way to resolve something outside of combat, though even that might be a bit too dramatic for my tastes...

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.

This is just the core loop in D&D, no?

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.

OK, on board in principle. But, these are questions that come up in play. So we do need mechanics to resolve them (even if those mechanics are not d20 rolls).

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.

My gameplay needs for a secret door are that (a) not everyone notices it, but (b) there's a chance for anyone to notice it, and (c) I want players to have "observant" characters who are better at noticing it. I want to be able to say, "Llyrd the Elven Ranger notices the secret door with their keen eyes."

The solution you've got here is essentially to "telegraph" (with some descriptive element) and then reward a player who pulls at that thread.

That works OK, but I think that the dodge of the die roll here happens at what you decide to telegraph and to who. In a straight standard scenario, the descriptive elements (footprints, a map or journal, etc.) would be revealed based on d20 rolls for Perception or Investigation. What are you replacing that with? Just announcing it to everyone? Because that has some negative effects on those who want to play "observant" characters - they don't actually play as any more observant than anyone else.

That's something that the d20 roll, with its modifiers for proficiency and Wisdom or Intelligence, provides for very well.

If we want to eliminate the d20 roll, and still provide players the ability to make their character "more observant than others," what mechanic creates that feeling?

Genuinely curious, because I think a d20 roll to find information is actually pretty kludgy and unsatisfying, but I don't have a great replacement for it, either. I wonder what games based on this kind of mechanic do (detective games, etc.).

 

[Stormonu]

An aside, while it's bad form to gate progress through some singular, specific action (finding the bad guy behind a secret door the players might miss due to a bad roll), it should be perfectly acceptable to conceal, hide or make things easier/difficult that aren't primary to moving the adventure forward and are in some small way a bonus for players being observant or perhaps lucky (moreso the former than the latter, but rolls succeeding due to an investment in skill or ability choice is good too).

As a DM, you can set side rewards that benefit (or mitigate a bad situation) a skill or ability choice that aren't critical to the adventure at hand. The character who thought to choose to take proficiency in Perception might be rewarded by succeeding on a roll where others would have failed to find the secret door hiding an extra chest worth 100 gp of gold, for example. Similar for a player who listens to the read-aloud text or studies the map they've drawn to realize "something is off" that prompts them to search for that same door. The extra gold doesn't stop the adventure in its tracks, but becomes a reward for paying attention or making a certain skill choice.

 

[payn]

An aside, while it's bad form to gate progress through some singular, specific action (finding the bad guy behind a secret door the players might miss due to a bad roll), it should be perfectly acceptable to conceal, hide or make things easier/difficult that aren't primary to moving the adventure forward and are in some small way a bonus for players being observant or perhaps lucky (moreso the former than the latter, but rolls succeeding due to an investment in skill or ability choice is good too).

As a DM, you can set side rewards that benefit (or mitigate a bad situation) a skill or ability choice that aren't critical to the adventure at hand. The character who thought to choose to take proficiency in Perception might be rewarded by succeeding on a roll where others would have failed to find the secret door hiding an extra chest worth 100 gp of gold, for example. Similar for a player who listens to the read-aloud text or studies the map they've drawn to realize "something is off" that prompts them to search for that same door. The extra gold doesn't stop the adventure in its tracks, but becomes a reward for paying attention or making a certain skill choice.

Right, ive been playing Starfield again and they have a series of backgrounds that give a character a leg up in certain situations. For example, you find a stranded colonist on a moon that is inured. It costs a medical resource to get them on their feet. However, if you took the combat medic background, you just get to heal the person for free. Multiply that amongst a series of choices and options. In D&D, some species liek Elf have had this built into their "keen sense" for finding hidden doors.

While doing something like that with ancestry and background in D&D might be interesting, I fear it would lead to a lot of every party being x,y,z to make sure all insta win situations are covered.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Really great stuff going on in this thread. Thank you! I have one more meeting, then I'm giong to try to give thoughtful responses.

 

[el-remmen]

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.

I don't announce DCs, I prefer to simply describe it as "You think it is easy/medium/hard. ." whatever it would seem to be (and probably is, but not always) and then the actual DC can be within a range of that number without them knowing for sure, and that way they can roll and decide if they want to risk burning a resource (or not) to improve the roll (if applicable). I also don't announce save DCs, creature HPs, or armor class (though in the case of the last one I have started telling the table once any one PC has both hit and missed the creature, if I remember to do so). But the DC has been determined before any roll is made, even though it remains veiled.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I say this becasue of my experience with GMs that are really bad at telegraphing such things.

Ok, but, is this an argument that because some people are bad at telegraphing, passive rolls are better/preferable?

Or does it just mean that a great of handing it is, admittedly, hard? (And, if so, is there a way to get better at it?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

All of this can be alleviated by the way these things are designed. The way I like to handle it is that if they get a "whiff" of something that's enough information to ensure success. So, in my secret door example, as long as they realize that footsteps are disappearing means some kind of secret door, which they could learn through asking questions, "Does the tunnel change such that we don't leave footsteps, either? Is there any indication that the footsteps have been erased?" etc., then as soon as they say, "I'm going to look around for secret doors right where the footsteps disappeared" then they are going to find the secret.

So the 'challenge' (if you can call it that in this case) is to simply deduce what the clues mean. I'm not then going to gate success around a lot random searches.

I'm reminded of quests in games like WoW, where the clue is "talk to the NPCs and see if anybody knows anything" and there are literally 30 different NPCs. At that point I go straight to the internet to find out which NPCs. Talking to all of them is not interesting.

EDIT: Also, I agree with you about failure = success with complication. Also called "failing forward." Dungeon World is designed this way mechanically.

You pick the lock, but your lockpick breaks off inside the lock, so you no longer have tools and everybody will know you picked it.

You climb the cliff without falling and dying but you had to drop your pack. (Well, make it a choice...)

You successfully persuade the guard to let you pass, but he insists on accompanying you.

Etc.

 

[Bill Zebub]

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.

Yeah, it's hard to argue that D&D is beneficial to young players if they don't learn important life lessons like, "Strike first, strike quietly, and strike hard."

 

[Gorgon Zee]

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.

This seems D&D (or other combat-focused games) specific. I could state equally well:

Gumshoe: I think the reason dice work well for investigation 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.

Fate: I think the reason dice work well for social interaction 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.

Pendragon: I think the reason dice work well for tournaments (sports) 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.

Numenera: I think the reason dice work well for exploration 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.

Basically, if you like dice rolling to resolve unknowns, then when you want to focus on a certain style of play, then you'll like a game which uses dice mostly (or only) for that style of play.

You like dice, and you like combat -- so you like systems that focus on dice for combat. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I don't announce DCs, I prefer to simply describe it as "You think it is easy/medium/hard. ." whatever it would seem to be (and probably is, but not always) and then the actual DC can be within a range of that number without them knowing for sure, and that way they can roll and decide if they want to risk burning a resource (or not) to improve the roll (if applicable). I also don't announce save DCs, creature HPs, or armor class (though in the case of the last one I have started telling the table once any one PC has both hit and missed the creature, if I remember to do so). But the DC has been determined before any roll is made, even though it remains veiled.

For sure, that's a decent alternative.

I'm likewise vague about monster HP (online we have bars that decrease incrementally; in person, I describe how damaged they look, roughly). I don't give the numbers out but the players usually hone in on the AC of the baddies and, sometimes, the save DC, too.

 

[payn]

Ok, but, is this an argument that because some people are bad at telegraphing, passive rolls are better/preferable?

More of a discussion point. Your examples lead me to believe you are not the "thousand questions, but only one correct one" skill play type of GM. Though, this suggestion gives that type a bit more power than id like.

Or does it just mean that a great of handing it is, admittedly, hard? (And, if so, is there a way to get better at it?)

Rules are better guidelines because folks will want substantial and numerous examples. This is a little too in the weeds for my taste. Folks who enjoy organized play will not have a good time with the vagueness for example.

All of this can be alleviated by the way these things are designed. The way I like to handle it is that if they get a "whiff" of something that's enough information to ensure success. So, in my secret door example, as long as they realize that footsteps are disappearing means some kind of secret door, which they could learn through asking questions, "Does the tunnel change such that we don't leave footsteps, either? Is there any indication that the footsteps have been erased?" etc., then as soon as they say, "I'm going to look around for secret doors right where the footsteps disappeared" then they are going to find the secret.

So the 'challenge' (if you can call it that in this case) is to simply deduce what the clues mean. I'm not then going to gate success around a lot random searches.

I'm reminded of quests in games like WoW, where the clue is "talk to the NPCs and see if anybody knows anything" and there are literally 30 different NPCs. At that point I go straight to the internet to find out which NPCs. Talking to all of them is not interesting.

Im trying to think on how to split the difference. Getting a "whiff" meaning success leads me to believe all the clue hunting probably isnt worth the time spent on following it up. If they found it, they found it. Time to move on. If its an event, with possibility for complications or advantages to the adventure, im willing to roll with it. Key for me is making it worth spending time on it in the first place. A hidden treasure room probably isnt, imo.

EDIT: Also, I agree with you about failure = success with complication. Also called "failing forward." Dungeon World is designed this way mechanically.

You pick the lock, but your lockpick breaks off inside the lock, so you no longer have tools and everybody will know you picked it.

You climb the cliff without falling and dying but you had to drop your pack. (Well, make it a choice...)

You successfully persuade the guard to let you pass, but he insists on accompanying you.

Etc.

Very nice. That is my current style.