D&D 5E (2014) Consequences of Failure

[billd91]

Then I'm going to stop stealthing.

And try again.

I'm being facetious, of course, but do you see how it requires a metagame construct to disallow this? It seems to me that just allowing the person to "stealth" and then waiting until it matters to make a roll solves that paradox.

And honestly, it's not that big a deal to do it either way. They roll right away and live with it (or, seeing as they don't know how well they did, as DM I roll) or they roll at the first check. More important is that the result rides through until they stop or are spotted rather than rolling every damn time (which just sets them up for failure).

 

[Celebrim]

On a related note, the other day I wanted to forge some documents for a ruse, and the DM had me roll Forgery Kit. I rolled a 22 and we went with that, but I was thinking to myself, "And why wouldn't I just keep trying until I got it right?"

So much of your problems seem to be related to your other decision that players should always have perfect information, or specifically that all rolls should be rolled in the clear. So much of your confusion goes away if we assume that if in the fiction your character lacks perfect information about his performance, that the DM should be rolling the dice and not the player.

But even if we didn't, your question is bewildering.

As for your question:
a) How does your character know that the got it wrong? If your basis of knowing that the character got it wrong is metagame information, and also the system assumes rolls in the clear what is wrong with the system being written in such a manner that it forbids the player from being able to act on that information. In other words, why would it be wrong or surprising that a system that assumes rolls in the clear forces you to accept the consequences of the dice roll?
b) How do you the player know that 22 is good enough? Most checks of this sort are against some target based on the NPC's skills of observation, whether against a passive DC or an opposed check. So as a player you still don't know if a 22 is going to be good enough.
c) In character, on what basis would your character have to judge a good forgery from a bad? But if your character had some basis, I probably would allow you to keep retrying until you got it right. If your character had some strong basis of telling a good forgery from bad, what in fiction would prevent a character from trying 20 or 100 times and choosing from the results the one that was, on the basis he had, the best forgery? Of course, there might be ancillary costs in making 100 copies, but in the real world forgers often do make numerous attempts to forge a document and keep the most perfect one. So why does this 'trying until I got it right' process present a problem for you provided that there was an in game rather than metagame basis?

 

[Celebrim]

This just comes down to a matter of to what extent (if at all) you want to give "hidden information" a role in your adventures. Certainly if what you want is "stuff that is determined by dice rolls, but without the PCs knowing" then it's really tricky to only implement what we're talking about.

What I'm beginning to realize, thanks to the persistence of @iserith and @Charlaquin and @Ovinomancer (and others) is that I'm not sure that kind of hidden information is as necessary or even as beneficial to the game as I might have once thought.

Since we seem to be going down this path whether I like it or not, I feel the need to make a distinction between two very very very different claims.

A) It doesn't matter what metagame information that players have.
B) If the players have metagame information the game is not improved by trying to prevent the players from acting on that information.

I have long been one of the strongest voices for 'B' on EnWorld and have advanced that argument for more than a decade now.

But I completely and utterly disagree with 'A'.

 

[iserith]

Since we seem to be going down this path whether I like it or not, I feel the need to make a distinction between two very very very different claims.

A) It doesn't matter what metagame information that players have.
B) If the players have metagame information the game is not improved by trying to prevent the players from acting on that information.

I have long been one of the strongest voices for 'B' on EnWorld and have advanced that argument for more than a decade now.

But I completely and utterly disagree with 'A'.

I agree, but then we'd have to get into what impact that metagame information has in a practical sense and whether that does actually matter and in what context.

That's a whole other thread.

 

[Celebrim]

I agree, but then we'd have to get into what impact that metagame information has in a practical sense and whether that does actually matter and in what context.

That's a whole other thread.

Agreed. Which is why I've wanted to avoid this tangent. I still don't feel like I know what's going on in this thread. If we open up another can of worms, it's just going to get worse.

 

[iserith]

Agreed. Which is why I've wanted to avoid this tangent. I still don't feel like I know what's going on in this thread. If we open up another can of worms, it's just going to get worse.

I think this is probably the underlying focus of the thread.

But there are many, many tangents as will happen.

 

[Xetheral]

Right. Rolling when there's actually an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure immediately clears up a lot of these concerns. And it has the added benefit of being supported by the rules of the game.

This just comes down to a matter of to what extent (if at all) you want to give "hidden information" a role in your adventures. Certainly if what you want is "stuff that is determined by dice rolls, but without the PCs knowing" then it's really tricky to only implement what we're talking about.

What I'm beginning to realize, thanks to the persistence of @iserith and @Charlaquin and @Ovinomancer (and others) is that I'm not sure that kind of hidden information is as necessary or even as beneficial to the game as I might have once thought.

I think it's way more exciting to say, "You notice a rat looking at you in a surprisingly intent way, for a rat. What do you do?" Than to glance at some numbers behind the DM screen and say, "Ok, so you're sneaking through the market. What next?"

TRIGGER WARNING: DATA-LESS OPINION INCOMING

And odds are actually pretty decent that players are going to pick up on the fact that something is going on, anyway.

Based on these responses I fear my point (and the connection to the topic of this thread) may have been lost in the exchange of posts. To summarize, here's a fleshed out example and an explanation of my point:

The PCs have succeeded at their goal of fomenting large-scale civil unrest, but were identified while doing so. They know the king's spies will be looking for them, so they decide to lay low in a safe house. They receive a desperate request to meet from an ally of theirs, so the PCs decide to take the risk of sending the sneakiest among them to meet the contact. After considering various routes, the chosen PC decides to make her way over a bridge that is packed with rioters. She suspects (but does not know for certain) that the bridge will be watched. She declares her goal is to make it across the bridge unspotted and her approach is to blend in with the crowd, not hurrying, gradually moving across the bridge in time with the natural fluctuations in the crowd.

So far, so good? I think everyone would agree that there is a meaningful consequence for failure to get across the bridge unseen. And if (and only if) someone is watching, there is also an uncertain outcome. There are two competing approaches being discussed:

(1) Narrate the PC's journey over the bridge, and only call for a stealth check if/when she approaches within sight of a potential observer. If she makes the check, narrate the success. If she fails and there is an immediately-visible result from the failure, narate the failure. If she fails and the result from the failure is not immediately visible (but may be crucially important later), narrate the same result as the success. Whatever the check result, the cost of this approach is that player now knows whether or not the bridge is watched.

(2) Call for stealth check first, regardless of whether anyone is watching. Narrate the character's journey across the bridge exactly the same way as in #1. The cost of this approach is that the player knows the check result, and thus knows that it was likely they were observed if an observer was present, even if there was no immediately-visible result.

Both approaches are perfectly consistent with requiring the players to state their goal and approach rather than simply declaring a type of check. Both approaches are also perfectly consistent with only rolling when there is a meaningful consequence for failing to achieve the goal. So both approaches are within the bounds of the assumption of the thread. Both approaches also involve giving the player information the character does not have (i.e. metagame information). (As @Charlaquin points out, these are slightly different varieties of metagame information.) My point is that even within the playstlye assumptions of this thread, different posters will have different ideas about which option is preferable.

 

[Celebrim]

@Xetheral: Your bridge example post is a very good post, is correct in all regards as far as I can tell, but still doesn't clarify for me what the original intention of Greenleaf was. The original post was not about metagame information, cool of a topic as that may be.

Out of curiosity, is your underlying point that "goal and approach" does not dictate any single process of play? If so, then again, I agree.

(Interestingly my approach would fall under option '3' and still would be consistent with "goal and approach".)

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I used to feel this way too. Then I read some very good DMing advice and decided to try just not worrying about metagaming. And not only did it not ruin the game, it actually improved it quite a bit, because we were no longer wasting time on meaningless rolls made only to disguise which rolls were important. Players acted with more confidence because they were empowered to make informed decisions. I was able to stop fretting over when it was or wasn’t appropriate to tell a player that their character believed something spurious or didn’t know something that’s common player knowledge. Now I look back and I can’t figure out what I was afraid would happen if players acted on out of character knowledge. Literally only good things came from letting it go.

So you're saying that your players never play beyond their characters' knowledge, when the player knows more? If yes, you are blessed with excellent players!

But if no, then how can they claim to be playing true to their characters? As in, seeing the fiction through their characters' eyes and (as far as possible) using only the knowledge those characters would have; in full awareness that sometimes that knowledge might be based on information that is either outright faulty at source or has been misinterpreted by the PCs/players.

And if they're intentionally not bothering to play true to their characters, what's the point of having characters?

 

[iserith]

Both approaches are perfectly consistent with requiring the players to state their goal and approach rather than simply declaring a type of check. Both approaches are also perfectly consistent with only rolling when there is a meaningful consequence for failing to achieve the goal. So both approaches are within the bounds of the assumption of the thread. Both approaches also involve giving the player information the character does not have (i.e. metagame information). (As @Charlaquin points out, these are slightly different varieties of metagame information.) My point is that even within the playstlye assumptions of this thread, different posters will have different ideas about which option is preferable.

Again, and while trying to avoid picking apart examples only to miss the point, my position is more along the lines of: If you're doing a thing that is causing a problem, stop doing that thing. Not that someone who is encountering a particular problem is always forgetting about the necessity of uncertain outcomes and meaningful consequences for failure before calling for a check. It might be sometimes though.