D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[pemerton]

There is another, completely different, style of play where the secret backstory (not sure I like the term, but I'll go with it) is highly desirable. I call it explorationism, but most would see it as a form of world simulationism.

This doesn't require secret backstory, however. All it requires is GM authority over backstory authorship. But the GM can actually perform that authorship in real time, at the gaming table.

In this style <snippage> the world is an entity in and of itself. One of the "funs" of play is to be able to interact with that world--not the DM's story motivations.

<snip>

The players know that if they find something, it is because there was something there to be found (either because the DM previously created it, because a sourcebook or adventure specified that it was there, or because an appropriately called for random roll declared that it was there). It isn't about challenge in this style--it is about discovering a world together, both players and DM.

<snip>

It kind of saddens me that there seem to have been a couple of generations of D&D players who have never been exposed to this style of play.

I'm not unfamiliar with this style of play - I've been playing D&D since 1982, and have read plenty of 2nd ed and 3E modules which emphasise the playstyle you describe. But I don't entirely agree with your description of it. For instance, the GM is not discovering the world - s/he is authoring it (or, in the case of a sourcebook, s/he has already read it).

It's true that if the world is, literally, randomly generated then the GM discovers at the same time as the players. This is a style that Classic Traveller emphasises to a much greater extent than D&D. But very little D&D play, particularly in the present day, involves literally random content generation. It is mostly pre-authored by the GM or the module writer.

And once we turn our attention to non-random content generation, I also don't agree that this style implies some sort of independence from the GM's story motivations. Why does the GM, or the sourcebook, put fictional element A in fictional location B? So that the PCs can interact with it and thereby generate some story! (Some actual adventures I have in mind: the 1st ed module Pharoah, and especially the trapped Efreet; OA6 and OA7, two 2nd ed Oriental Adventures modules; the 3E module Expedition to the Demonweb Pits; the d20 Freeport modules.)

(Even random content generation is not necessarily divorced from story motivations - if you look at the city encounter table in Gygax's DMG, for instance, it is clearly intended to produce exciting encounters rather than a simulation of wandering through a pseudo-mediaeval city, given the number of demon, devil, lich, vampire etc encounters it yields.)

if it's purely random, and the players haven't actually staked anything, then why roll?

Because there's uncertainty over whether the character would know the thing, and the way that's handled by the game is by rolling?

There are lots of things that are uncertain but that we don't roll for. It's uncertain, for instance, whether or not a person will fall over and ruin his/her clothes walking through a city with cobblestones filthy with mud and worse - but we typically don't roll for that.

It's uncertain whether or not a person will contract illness from eating cheap gruel in a cheap inn, but we typically don't roll for that either.

It's uncertain whether or not the builder of the dungeon would really want single or double doors to his/her main chamber, but most GMs don't roll for that either - they just decide!

What I'm trying to get it is that a lot of fictional content is generated by sheer stipulation. So, when it comes to the truth about the religious icon, why roll? How is it adding to the play experience for the GM to provide the backstory, or withhold it, on the basis of that knowledge check? (The question is not rhetorical, in the sense that I'm interested in what answers might be given, but I'm not pretending that I don't have an inclination - I have doubts that it does add much to the experience for the GM to withhold backstory on the basis of such a check.)

Here are some approaches to random provision of backstory where I can see the point:

* Random rumours a la the Keep on the Borderlands. The players are expected to use this information to help solve the puzzles that the GM has presented to them; randomisation means that a portion of the rumours is handed out without the GM being responsible for which false ones are provided, and which true. That said, if the rumour list was a bit shorter and the players just got all of them, I don't think that would dramatically impact the play experience.

* Monster knowledge checks in 4e: by making a successful skill roll (no retries permitted) a player can get statistical info about monsters. This is the provision of a reward (rationed by way of randomisation) for a certain sort of PC build. Not having the stats for a monster doesn't affect the ability of players to make action declarations in respect of it, but does limit the ability to optimise those action declarations.​

Here are some approaches to random provision of backstory where I'm not sure of the point:

* Monster/NPC lore rolls in 4e: to the extent that this contains story elements that aren't just natural-language repetition of the statblock, I don't see the point of rationing it via die rolling. If it would be better for the play experience if the players have the backstory that (say) some people believe hobgoblins bread the other forms of goblinoid, then just let that come out in play. Why roll for the pleasure of learning that?

* Rolls to learn a clue (like the religious icon mentioned above). Why let the game stall for want of player knowledge of backstory?​

It forces the players to come up with another solution to the problem. Maybe they need to go spend the money on a Sage, meaning they don't now have it to spend on other things. Maybe they have to call in a favour from one of their contacts, again meaning they've burnt that resource. Or perhaps they need to do a deal with the devil and approach one of their less-that-savoury associates for the help.

Well now I'm a bit puzzled. I said "if the players haven't actually staked anything, then why roll" - and your reply is that there are stakes.

The question that then becomes salient, to me at least, is do the players know what the stakes are? For instance, do the players know that if they fail the religion check they will have to pay a sage?

My own practice in this respect is mixed - as with the examples posted upthread, I don't always make overt what is at stake with a failed roll (eg the cursed angel feather, or getting run over by the Sphere of Annihilation), but in those cases the framing of the situation gave a general sense of what might go wrong (in the first case, a dodgy peddler selling an angel feather in a seedy market place, in circumstances where the PC's motivation is to find something that will help him defeat/purify his Balrog-possessed brother; in the latter case, an argument over whether or not to shove the ready-to-hand Wand of Orcus into a ready-to-hand Sphere of Annihilation).

But where the consequence is a bit more remote from the situation - as with having to pay a sage - then I think I would want to make that clear in the framing of the situation. One way to do that is to frame the consequences of success and failure clearly: succeed, and you get the info for free and quickly; fail, and you get the info at a cost and requiring the passage of time. If the players aren't prepared, or lack the money, to risk the cost then they don't get to make the roll and have to suck up the consequences of their ignorance.

Another way is to use the payment of money to a sage or other contact as a way to get a post hoc bonus to the skill roll: eg 100 gp gains a +1 and requires the sage to read/ponder for a day, so if you fail by 10 then it will be 1000 gp and 10 days to get an answer from the sage. I used something similar to this in a recent skill check in my 4e game, when one of the PCs was trying to seal off the Abyss from the rest of the cosmos: as a chaos mage, every healing surge spent allowed a +2 to the roll (that rate of exchange is suggested in the 4e DMG2) so, when the player missed by 8, he had his PC spend 4 healing surges. In that case I required the expenditure ex ante, but we allow ex post expenditure at the cost of an action point, and other conventions at other tables would seem quite reasonable.

Or, indeed, maybe they decide that it's not worth the effort of solving the problem at all, in which case the cult strikes again and now the PCs have to deal with the feeling that they could have stopped it but didn't.

This is more the sort of thing I have in mind in saying that I don't quite see the point. Why let a random roll of the dice decide whether or not the table is going to pursue the adventure about the mysterious cult? If the GM thinks it's a fun adventure, and the players are interested in it, but it depends upon giving the player access to some backstory, then why not just provide the backstory.

This is the sort of case where I don't see what the roll is adding to the game. Gygax himself recognised this issue over 30 years ago (from his DMG, p 110):

t is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the players. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, eg a secret door that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every right to overrule the dice at any time if there is a particular course of events that you would like to have occur.​

Another passage in the DMG (p 9, where Gygax says that fudging combat die rolls would be "contrary to the major precepts of the game") makes it clear that when Gygax is talking about a particular course of events occurring he is not talking about action resolution. Rather, he is talking about introducing backstory and framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into particular challenging situations - as with his example of making sure the PCs find a secret door that will lead to a fun part of the dungeon.

If it would be fun for the players to play through the cult scenario, and it depends upon them learning about the religious symbol, then why not just tell them?

In the simulation/immersion style of play, the integrity of the story is much more important than its dramatic weight. A good story is the one which reinforces the illusion of the objective reality, rather than the one which would make a good book or movie.

I find this odd in at least two ways.

First, the integrity of the story in REH's Conan, or Tolkien's LotR, or a movie like Excalibur or (to go a bit more downmarket) Ladyhawke, is far greater than the typical D&D campaign. It's certainly much greater in those classic stories than in any WotC or TSR module I've ever read. If I could get my game to have half the integrity those stories have I'd be very happy, but those authors didn't achieve the integrity of their stories by trying hard to avoid making a good book or movie!

Second, and following on, the dramatic weight of a story is not at odds with its integrity. To advert back to the example of the cult symbol: if we agree that the PCs have a chance of knowing the backstory (eg the DC is 20 and at least one PC can roll without a penalty, and hence has at least a 5% chance of knowing it), then how does it spoil integrity to just stipulate that the PC does know it. (If you like, to stipulate that the die roll comes up "20"?) This is similar to the example of boxes in the alley - if there's no reason for there to be no boxes there, then it does no harm to realism/verisimilitude for the boxes to be there.

(If you are concerned about the PCs seeming to be the luckiest people ever, then you ration: in Trail of Cthulhu, finding more than the most basic clues is rationed; in Burning Wheel, finding boxes that the GM didn't specify might require a Perception check, with an adverse consequence for failure, just as in my angel feather example above. To advert back to [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION]'s OP, it seems that his group might work fine without this sort of rationing, because they have reached there own informal consensus on when it is appropriate for the players to push the fiction and when not - eg only the knowledgeable character seeks to acquire the backstory from the GM.)

Gygaxian skilled play is primarily concerned with the gamist aspect of the activity, and many of the rules were designed with an eye toward fairness to the player. The DM was expected to write down all of the secrets beforehand, to reduce any chance of bias either for or against the player. The story was a secondary concern, if even that, and roleplaying immersion wasn't something that was thought of or addressed in any way.

Yes. You are restating my point back to me. If you are not playing in the Gygaxian style, then there is quite possibly no reason to keep using Gygaxian play procedures, like insisting on writing everything down in advance and using random rolls to avoid bias.

Simulationism grew out of Gygaxian gamist play by their shared absence of narrative contrivance

As a matter of historical fact I have doubts about that. Games like RuneQuest and Classic Traveller, for instance, weren't derived from Gygaxian play but reactions against it, and in part reactions against its contrivances (like dungeons with convenient levels, and combat with convenient hit point buffers, etc).

But in any event, there is no particular connection between simulationist play and rolling for things where nothing is at stake. Even Traveller and Runequest don't make the players roll to see if their PCs break their legs while peacefully mounting a horse or climbing down a spaceship ladder.

 

[delericho]

There are lots of things that are uncertain but that we don't roll for. It's uncertain, for instance, whether or not a person will fall over and ruin his/her clothes walking through a city with cobblestones filthy with mud and worse - but we typically don't roll for that.

(snip other examples)

What I'm trying to get it is that a lot of fictional content is generated by sheer stipulation. So, when it comes to the truth about the religious icon, why roll?

For the same reason you might roll to see if a PC can bash down a dungeon door to get to some treasure - if they succeed then the story goes one way, and if they fail then it goes another.

And please understand that I'm not saying you must roll for such things. I'm saying that you might roll for such things, and especially in those cases where the outcome is relevant to the story.

Well now I'm a bit puzzled. I said "if the players haven't actually staked anything, then why roll" - and your reply is that there are stakes.

Unless the roll is literally without consequence then it always has stakes; it's just a question of how big they are. Even if the PC immediately retries and succeeds, they've still lost whatever time is taken in the first attempt.

Of course, there's a point where those stakes are small enough not to be worth bothering with (such as requiring a roll to bash down a door when the PCs can just keep retrying until they succeed). But the threshold for that will differ for different groups, and will even differ for the same group at different times.

The question that then becomes salient, to me at least, is do the players know what the stakes are? For instance, do the players know that if they fail the religion check they will have to pay a sage?

Why do they need to know the stakes? They want the information that's gated by that knowledge roll. Deciding not to attempt the roll just means they go straight to the "fail" case.

I suppose one could consider it worthwhile to reduce the number of rolls in the game, such that every individual roll becomes that much more meaningful. But given the frequency that D&D resorts to using the dice anyway (because of the prevalence of combat), it really doesn't seem to be the game for that approach.

But where the consequence is a bit more remote from the situation - as with having to pay a sage - then I think I would want to make that clear in the framing of the situation. One way to do that is to frame the consequences of success and failure clearly: succeed, and you get the info for free and quickly; fail, and you get the info at a cost and requiring the passage of time.

Sorry, I find that entire construction absurd. Because the Cleric can't personally identify this icon we have to go consult a sage?

This is more the sort of thing I have in mind in saying that I don't quite see the point. Why let a random roll of the dice decide whether or not the table is going to pursue the adventure about the mysterious cult?

That's not what I said. If the PCs fail the roll then they have to find some other way to pursue the story. Or, indeed, they can abandon it, in which case it wasn't the dice that made that choice.

If the GM thinks it's a fun adventure, and the players are interested in it, but it depends upon giving the player access to some backstory, then why not just provide the backstory.

Because there are many potential fun adventures out there, where the choice of which one actually plays out dependent on emergent gameplay. If the Cleric identifies the icon right away you get one particular story; if the Cleric doesn't then you get a different story - which may well be just as much fun.

If it would be fun for the players to play through the cult scenario, and it depends upon them learning about the religious symbol, then why not just tell them?

Because failing the roll doesn't mean they can never ever play through the cult scenario. It means they have to find another way to engage with that scenario. It's not about Gygax's example of finding that one secret door into the hidden dungeon rooms, it's about determining which of the several doors that lead into those rooms.

And I think that's something that's missing in this discussion. I simply would not present an adventure gated on the PCs finding a single secret door, or successfully identifying a single religious icon, or otherwise predicated on a single stress-point. That's bad adventure design. So if they fail that roll it doesn't stall the adventure, it simply redirects it - you can't go that way, so go another.

(Although there does, of course, come a point where the PCs have managed to squander every other possible route to their goal, and that religious icon turns out to be the last possible chance. But if we've got to that point it's because they've blown a whole bunch of other chances, so fair enough. Because while I want my PCs to succeed on their quests, I have to allow them to fail.)

 

[ExploderWizard]

The disbelief to be suspended is that the events within the game world are occurring objectively. They aren't, because the DM can't simulate the entire game world in order to determine every small detail, but everyone should act as though they are. That is the basic conceit of a role-playing game.
Whether there is a box to be stood upon, at the end of an alleyway, cannot depend on whether the player asks. Nor can a wall be climbable, based on the player attempting it. If the player wants to climb the impossibly-smoothed cliff face, or hide a bomb in the dishwasher when the apartment is not equipped with a dishwasher, then the GM should answer no. The GM knows what's going on in the game world, and the player doesn't know everything; sometimes, when the GM is communicating information to the players, that information will conflict with what the player expects.

It's not about when the players declare correct actions. Correct actions should either work, or have some probability of working. It's about incorrect actions, where there is no possible chance of success. The GM should be empowered to deny a request as much as to grant it.

While a player shouldn't assume things about the environment that may or may not be true, unless the DM has detailed that environment to that level of detail, then a chance for such items to be present perhaps should be checked. The type of buildings surrounding the alley, and other factors will have an impact on this chance but it shouldn't be automatically dismissed just because the area wasn't detailed prior to play.

You are confusing the method of play with the measure of success. Again.

The method of play is as follows: 1) The DM describes the environment, 2) The players describe what they want to do, 3) The DM narrates the results. If you follow this procedure, you will have a fun and memorable story.

Quoting Watto here-" NO, YOU WON'T". You will have typical game play, which is fine. Fun and memorable stories can arise from this play depending on the players and the circumstances and when it does, then it becomes a thing of beauty. If you set out to simply play the game and have fun, then memorable stories will create themselves. If you set out to create memorable stories then quite often, actual play will fail to live up to those expectations.

Note, in particular, that it is not the player's place to describe the environment. That is entirely the role of the DM. The player does not offer feedback on what the environment may or may not contain. If the DM accepts such feedback, then he or she is deviating from the method of play. By violating the procedure, the integrity of the story is ruined, and it is no longer fun or memorable.

Again, when the environment lacks specific detail, the players should be asking questions about it, and the answers the DM provides informs players decisions which guide the flow of play. That is the meat & potatoes of play. A player asking if there is a piece of broken furniture in an abandoned room will not ruin the integrity of the game.

 

[Ristamar]

Why do they need to know the stakes? They want the information that's gated by that knowledge roll. Deciding not to attempt the roll just means they go straight to the "fail" case.

Except in this case, deciding not to roll isn't really even a decision. Of course the PCs will roll. They don't have any other options. This encounter, if you can even call it that, is essentially a simplistic game of chance. It's "roll the die for free, maybe win a prize." The PCs role and influence in that instance is reduced to being a random number generator, and the odds of succeeding at the encounter are the same for a 25 year veteran of the game as they are for a 3-month old baby.

 

[delericho]

Except in this case, deciding not to roll isn't really even a decision. Of course the PCs will roll.

Yes. And?

Of course they should be rolling - the PC who has proficiency in the relevant skill has invested resources to get that skill and it is absolutely right that he should be using that skill. I really don't see why that's a problem.

Essentially, the alternative that's being suggested is that the PCs might have found this clue and yet may choose not to examine it.

This encounter, if you can even call it that...

Perhaps there's the rub: this isn't an encounter. It's a gating point between encounters. And, no, I don't think it should be much of a choice whether you examine the item (and therefore roll) or not - of course you should roll.

The interesting question (to me, at least) is not whether to roll or not - it's what to do after the roll. If you now know what you need to know, how are you going to deal with the cult? If you don't, what's your alternative plan of action?

 

[Ristamar]

I wouldn't say it's a gate as much as it's a slot machine, roulette wheel, etc.

If Option A, success on a random die roll, is a "Get Out Of The Next Interesting Adventure Segment Free" card, and option B, failure on a random die roll, is the "Interesting Adventure Segment," why even include Option A?

Is it a problem? I guess that depends on your players' definition of a problem. It's arguably bad design, if nothing else.

 

[delericho]

If Option A, success on a random die roll, is a "Get Out Of The Next Interesting Adventure Segment Free" card, and option B, failure on a random die roll, is the "Interesting Adventure Segment," why even include Option A?

Because it's not. At its simplest, Option A leads you on to "Adventure Climax", which is itself a Next Interesting Adventure Segment, allowing the PCs to tackle that while fresh and fully-resourced, while Option B leads to the "Further Investigations" segment, which is interesting but which drains resources. Meaning that when the PCs then move from that on to "Adventure Climax" they have to face it with fewer resources available, face a harder time of it, and face a greater chance of failure.

(And typically I'd construct adventures with far more complex structures than than, but those don't lend themselves to 100-word examples.)

The end result is that the adventure should be interesting either way, but the two outcomes lead to different interesting outcomes.

 

[Ristamar]

Because it's not. At its simplest, Option A leads you on to "Adventure Climax", which is itself a Next Interesting Adventure Segment, allowing the PCs to tackle that while fresh and fully-resourced, while Option B leads to the "Further Investigations" segment, which is interesting but which drains resources. Meaning that when the PCs then move from that on to "Adventure Climax" they have to face it with fewer resources available, face a harder time of it, and face a greater chance of failure.

(And typically I'd construct adventures with far more complex structures than than, but those don't lend themselves to 100-word examples.)

The end result is that the adventure should be interesting either way, but the two outcomes lead to different interesting outcomes.

We're still right back at where we started the discussion. The result of one die roll without any player choice or impetus is determining whether the PC's proceed or have to embark on a sidequest. It's nearly the equivalent of saying, "roll to see if we play this section of the adventure, or if we just skip ahead to next one." I don't see how that's a better option than the DM determining the result, or more preferably, retooling the encounter so the players' have an opportunity to make meaningful decisions beyond "do I want to roll the dice?"

Again, the random roll is not a problem if your group enjoys it, but I'd be disappointed if I ever bought a module that included those gates of chance. Well, unless the module was called something like "Chancellor Channing's Chambers of Chance" in which case, I obviously got what I paid for.

 

[delericho]

The result of one die roll without any player choice or impetus is determining whether the PC's proceed or have to embark on a sidequest.

Instead of envisaging a railroad with a sidequest, imagine instead an entire rail network with lots of different paths. Some of which are gated off because specific rolls went against the PCs.

II don't see how that's a better option than the DM determining the result

It rewards the player who invested character-building resources such that he can (usually) make that roll. This time out, it's the character who took the Religion proficiency. Next time, it may be the guy with Persuasion, or Search, or...

or more preferably, retooling the encounter so the player's have an opportunity to make meaningful decisions beyond "do I want to roll the dice?"

IT'S NOT AN ENCOUNTER.

This is a point between encounters where the PCs are gathering information. What information they are able to gather, coupled with how they put it together with the information that they've previously gathered, will determine what they do next.

Again, the random roll is not a problem if your group enjoys it, but I'd be disappointed if I ever bought a module that included those gates of chance. Well, unless the module was called something like "Chancellor Channing's Chambers of Chance" in which case, I obviously got what I paid for.

You've heard of "Ravenloft", I presume? That adventure, as written, starts with a random roll that determines Strahd's motivation for the adventure ahead, and consequently dramatically affects how it all plays out. And it does so based on a roll that the PCs can't influence - at least in the "examine the icon" case the choice of proficiencies adjusts the odds.

 

[Agamon]

It forces the players to come up with another solution to the problem. Maybe they need to go spend the money on a Sage, meaning they don't now have it to spend on other things. Maybe they have to call in a favour from one of their contacts, again meaning they've burnt that resource. Or perhaps they need to do a deal with the devil and approach one of their less-that-savoury associates for the help.

Or, indeed, maybe they decide that it's not worth the effort of solving the problem at all, in which case the cult strikes again and now the PCs have to deal with the feeling that they could have stopped it but didn't.

So, in this case, there are consequences to failure. And it's important. So yeah, in this case, rolling is a good idea. Nobody is arguing against that.