D&D 5E 5e* - D&D-now

[Malmuria]

It's left to individual GMs to come up with and implement on their own, with no help from 5e. I think it's fair when talking about 5e to note what 5e does, and not give 5e the credit for not stopping a table from coming up with their own things. They didn't need permission from 5e to do this.

A common observation among osr players is that the lack of extensive rules encourage/require the table to come up with ad-hoc rulings. I don't know if that's a "credit" to those editions (e.g. b/x) or just a result of how they are written. I think 5e was aiming for this, though as mentioned it probably also has too much exception-based bloat to do it well. Still, I think it's possible to design a game to intentionally have some empty space that encourage/require players to come up with some ad-hoc decisions.

 

[Ovinomancer]

A common observation among osr players is that the lack of extensive rules encourage/require the table to come up with ad-hoc rulings. I don't know if that's a "credit" to those editions (e.g. b/x) or just a result of how they are written. I think 5e was aiming for this, though as mentioned it probably also has too much exception-based bloat to do it well. Still, I think it's possible to design a game to intentionally have some empty space that encourage/require players to come up with some ad-hoc decisions.

Sure, but do we then credit the game for this? I don't think that's fair. 5e is getting credited quite often for the work of it's players, with the statement that it left that room open for them to do this. I'm not sure that makes much sense. The only reason I see for this behavior is for social adhesion to the group -- even though I'm doing the work I'm going to credit 5e for it so that I make it clear I still belong to the group playing 5e. I think we all understand that 5e isn't doing this work, though, it just appears to be bad manners(?) to point it out.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think this sort of thing was the intent behind 5e's interpretation of "rulings not rules." That is, that it was sort of up to the player to make gm narration (even just of the physical environment) actionable, and the role of the gm to work with the player on a case by case basis. Basically, "the rule of cool." You can see this in the way Chris Perkins runs games. But that doesn't always sit well with the more defined mechanics, and can lead to very un-grounded seeming gameplay.

What we've been using is cinematic advantage. It seems to work OK, and adds a bit of room for improvisation and creativity to the combat.

 

[Reynard]

I ask the players to describe their actions, and then I ask them to make a roll to conclude that action.
It never matters whether there are consequences or not. For us it's about resolving the action described in a satisfying way...it's not about fishing for consequence.

One way to do it:
P: "I search for secret doors."
DM: "You don't find anything."
P: "How do you know? I didn't even get to roll!"
DM: "Don't bother, there's nothing to find anyway."

My way of doing it:
P: "Woo! A nat-20! I open the secret door!"
DM: "There's not a secret door. You did find a some faint graffiti, 'Ogg Was Here'."
P: "Why did you have me roll Perception if there wasn't a secret door there in the first place?"
DM: "Because you said you were searching for secret doors."

The player is always going to be disappointed that there wasn't a secret door. But I think my way at least gives the player the satisfaction of having tried.

Having players make rolls when there is no uncertainty about the outcome can be a problem when the roll isn't high. If the roll in your example had been a 4 chances are you would have ended up with 30 minutes of players trying to get advantage or a second roll. If you are going to tell them there's no door,I say just tell them.

 

[CleverNickName]

Having players make rolls when there is no uncertainty about the outcome can be a problem when the roll isn't high. If the roll in your example had been a 4 chances are you would have ended up with 30 minutes of players trying to get advantage or a second roll. If you are going to tell them there's no door,I say just tell them.

Yep, this is true.

I guess I just kindle the hope that, eventually, the players will all realize the absurdity of trying to engineer the rules in order to gain Advantage or force a reroll on every. single. throw. of the dice. Sometimes an empty room is just an empty room.
(I know, I know. But hope springs eternal.)

YMMV, depending on your players, of course. But I feel that only calling for rolls when there is a meaningful result would telegraph to the players "there is something here," and it would only encourage that cacophony of MetooBlessGuidanceHelpLuckyEtc that slows the game down with every skill challenge.

 

[Oofta]

I ask the players to describe their actions, and then I ask them to make a roll to conclude that action.
It never matters whether there are consequences or not. For us it's about resolving the action described in a satisfying way...it's not about fishing for consequence.

One way to do it:
P: "I search for secret doors."
DM: "You don't find anything."
P: "How do you know? I didn't even get to roll!"
DM: "Don't bother, there's nothing to find anyway."

My way of doing it:
P: "Woo! A nat-20! I open the secret door!"
DM: "There's not a secret door. You did find a some faint graffiti, 'Ogg Was Here'."
P: "Why did you have me roll Perception if there wasn't a secret door there in the first place?"
DM: "Because you said you were searching for secret doors."

The player is always going to be disappointed that there wasn't a secret door. But I think my way at least gives the player the satisfaction of having tried.

In addition, if they roll low they have no clue if there's a secret door. It has a meta-game consequence.

 

[Reynard]

In addition, if they roll low they have no clue if there's a secret door. It has a meta-game consequence.

The secret door thing is interesting because even the initial search is driven by metagame motivation. They are such a trope of adventure design that players look for likely places and make their checks, or they clear out the rest of the level and believe there must be one for whatever reason. Like traps they exist in the fiction of the world but only because they are part of the game.

 

[Charlaquin]

That advice is not really very good. I am not prohibited from describing cuts and bruises from damage prior to half down, which would utterly remove this clue once actually past half down. I'm also, according to the advice, allowed to narrate hp loss however I want by the first sentence. The rest is a general maybe "good practice" but it's not fully formed.

The first sentence is “DMs narrate damage in different ways,” not “DMs can narrate damage however they want.” You can read the first sentence in a way that is not contradictory with the rest of the paragraph. And that’s what I mean when I talk about reading the text holistically. If you assume it is a cohesive ruleset and interpret the text as such, rather than actively looking for contradictions, it all works together quite nicely.

 

[Oofta]

The secret door thing is interesting because even the initial search is driven by metagame motivation. They are such a trope of adventure design that players look for likely places and make their checks, or they clear out the rest of the level and believe there must be one for whatever reason. Like traps they exist in the fiction of the world but only because they are part of the game.

Secret doors were often for servants, so they do kind of make sense for some locales. I rarely use typical D&D traps because by and large they're kind of dumb. Indiana Jones may look cool, but I always question who maintains the traps. There are exceptions of course. I once had a trap filled dungeon maintained by undead, oftentimes just hands or whatever was needed.

In general I use passive values for this kind of stuff and adjust for circumstances and how quickly the group is moving through the area or investigating a specific room.

 

[Reynard]

Secret doors were often for servants, so they do kind of make sense for some locales. I rarely use typical D&D traps because by and large they're kind of dumb. Indiana Jones may look cool, but I always question who maintains the traps. There are exceptions of course. I once had a trap filled dungeon maintained by undead, oftentimes just hands or whatever was needed.

In general I use passive values for this kind of stuff and adjust for circumstances and how quickly the group is moving through the area or investigating a specific room.

I am running OD&D for the first time tomorrow and it is fascinating seeing the origins of these ideas and systems. Traps for example only go off 1/3 of the time.