D&D 5E (2014) Consequences of Failure

[Ovinomancer]

What?!?!?! That's CRAZY talk!

I know. I have issues.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The reason is that players only get the information the DM gives them, and if a DM is acting to conceal information, that channel gets distorted in ways that are hard to judge from only one side -- eg, the DM may think they've provided enough information, but the players are just lost. I prefer to keep that channel as wide and open as possible by not constructing situations that require me to hide information and instead let the process of play generate the drama. It's does this very well on it's own.

I find when I'm playing (as a player) in DDAL adventures, I often have trouble keeping track of what the objective is and how the pieces are put together, and I suspect it's for exactly this reason: a lot of those adventures are authored from exactly this stance. That is, that there's this whole "thing" going on in the background, of which the players/characters are supposed to be only dimly aware, and pick up clues over time. I'm just lost. And honestly just not that interested.

 

[Charlaquin]

"... as you imagine you or that other person would... " - seriously? You're not playing yourself in the game (with rare exceptions where a game specifically expects you to play as real-world you), you're playing "that other person".

I was giving a general definition of role playing, not necessarily specific to D&D, or even tabletop role playing games.

And so, a further clause needs to be added to your definition of role-playing: "...given such knowledge and information as that person would have available."

I disagree. Many forms of role playing have no such requirement, and in fact there are forms of role playing (for instance, role playing as part of therapy, or as an educational tool) where attempting to isolate the knowledge of the person playing the role from the knowledge of the character would be counter-productive.

Perhaps, but I posit that said role-playing has by that point lost some or all of its integrity.

What inherent value does the “integrity” of role playing have? Or, if you prefer, what ill comes from violating that integrity?

Most (or nearly all?) of the time, using knowledge of 'extra' information known only to the player but not the PC gives the PC an in-fiction advantage it wouldn't otherwise have. To me this trends toward cheating.

It’s only cheating if it is in violation of the rules. Which it may well be in your D&D game. It is in many people’s D&D games. But I’ve found that by permitting it in my D&D games, the experience has only improved. Your mileage, as always, may vary.

By the same token, it's also very much the case that DMs have to carefully self-police in how they run their NPCs; as the DM always knows tons of stuff the NPC would not.

Again, what harm comes from a DM not doing so?

I agree; in fact that was kind of my point. I was responding to a post suggesting the reason for any check be told to the players before the check was called for, and gave an example of how this would quicky fall apart.

Better yet, ask for the stealth check anyway whether there's observers there or not...in this case, as the character is trying to move through a crowd, the check might also inform whether the PC somehow caught the attention of a random passer-by - e.g. the PC is trying her best to be stealthy and some little kid yells out "Hey - why is that person acting so sneaky?!"

It breaks character the moment they do something they wouldn't have done otherwise, or change what they'd already committed to doing.

Example: party says they're going to sneak down a passage past several open doors. Not until the 4th door do you call for a check (you-as-DM already knew the first three held no threat); and in response, before rolling, someone says "We stop here and rearrange our marching order into battle formation".

Now you-as-DM have given yourself a headache. Do you ban them from changing their order based on their prior commitment to sneaking the length of the hall? Do you let the order change happen and thus set a precedent that such metagaming is allowed?

See, I as a DM wouldn’t do that. I don’t call for checks except in response to actions described by the player. So, I wouldn’t just say, “make a Stealth check” when the player passed the third door. I would give them that Metal Gear exclamation point first. Maybe I describe a “what was that?” Coming from the other side of the door, and then ask the player what they do. That insures I’m asking them what they do about something, and the check, if needed, resolves what they do about it.

Wouldn't it have been better to call for the stealth check at the first door, even though there was no threat there? The characters (in theory) wouldn't know which doors held threats and which did not, so why not determine their SOP at the first opportunity?

They can still interact with the game, only that interaction is going to be based on less-than-perfect knowledge - and this is quite realistic, in that their PCs wouldn't have perfect knowledge either. There's always something to interact with, only sometimes that thing is just a shadow.

It may be realistic, but realism isn’t my goal. My goal is to create opportunities for the players to imagine themselves as other people, in a fictional scenario, and make decisions as they imagine those people would do in that scenario. Telling them to make Stealth checks as they pass doors that enemies may or may not be hiding behind to preserve a sense of role playing integrity does not, in my opinion, serve that goal. Telegraphing that they might be in danger of being detected and asking them what their character does about that serves that goal very well (again, in my opinion.)

 

[Xetheral]

One thing that's been going through my head during this thread is that one difference may result from how we view the objective reality/truth of our game world. I followed that link you posted a while ago to that blog on DMing, and the first post I clicked on, about the "Quantum Ogre", tried to persuade me that it's fundamentally wrong to alter the world based on what the players are doing. It's a classic sandboxer's argument. And I completely disagree.

And I'm guessing (maybe you even said this...I can't remember who responded how) that you really didn't like my way of handling knowledge check: that the player's success or failure actually changes the state of the game world. Whereas that kind of appeals to me.

I'm certainly not arguing that either position is write or wrong; it's purely a matter of aesthetic preference. But I'm betting it's at least a partial driver behind some of the opinions in this thread.

There may have been a slight mixup: I didn't post any links to blogs. (Or, if I did, I'm having a much harder time adapting to the new interface than I realized.)

That said, yes, I generally prefer that important checks don't determine the pre-existing state of the game world. (I'm fine with fiat or probabalistic determinations for minor things. If a player asks "is there a broken ladder in the pile of refuse?" I'm fine with just saying yes/no or flipping a coin.) So while I didn't comment on it directly, I do indeed not like the idea of a knowledge check changing a creature's resistances.

I play fast and loose with the rules and the setting in the name of fun (e.g. changing enemy plans if a session is dragging), but for the most part I need enemy resources to be well-defined. I expect my players to do their best to win/obviate/subvert/weaken potential combat encounters before initiative is rolled, and that requires the state of the game world to be predictable.

 

[FrogReaver]

And I think that's fair. The method you are proposing for this scenario is pretty standard, in my experience (and I assume others?) so it's completely reasonable to fall back on it when a different methodology doesn't seem to fit.

And, yet, I find this sort of thing so much less engaging in practice than I find risk:reward mechanics. So I think it's worth some discussion to dissect this, instead of simply deciding to use the old method in these cases.

For me, I think about this kind of scene, and I wonder, "Wait...was it actually fun...did it add to the game...to have the player make a blind stealth check, while I resolve its meaning behind the screen? Is there an entirely other way to handle this that might be more fun?" Not just a different use of dice to resolve whether the character actually snuck past the observers, but a change to how I actually compose adventures.

Consider this, that encounter that you barely survived, but against all odds tried something out of the box and it worked and saved the party. That's FUN. That's memorable.

You can't reproduce that because the more you try the more fake it feels and finally when you are playing and all encounters start being barely won by some heroic feat then it takes the fun out of that event. It's ordinary and mundane now.

So while I think you have a noble goal, I don't think making every single check in the game more risk vs reward is necessarily going to increase the overall enjoyment your players get from your game. In great likelihood they will end up missing some of the less fun checks that set them up for the really memorable ones.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Consider this, that encounter that you barely survived, but against all odds tried something out of the box and it worked and saved the party. That's FUN. That's memorable.

You can't reproduce that because the more you try the more fake it feels and finally when you are playing and all encounters start being barely won by some heroic feat then it takes the fun out of that event. It's ordinary and mundane now.

So while I think you have a noble goal, I don't think making every single check in the game more risk vs reward is necessarily going to increase the overall enjoyment your players get from your game. In great likelihood they will end up missing some of the less fun checks that set them up for the really memorable ones.

My experience doesn't align with your expectations.

 

[FrogReaver]

My experience doesn't align with your expectations.

Yea, everyone’s got an experience. The thing is it’s always a different experience.

How about actually commenting on the actual point I raised. Is it wrong?

 

[Charlaquin]

Yea, everyone’s got an experience. The thing is it’s always a different experience.

How about actually commenting on the actual point I raised. Is it wrong?

Just guessing, but, “In my experience, yes”?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yea, everyone’s got an experience. The thing is it’s always a different experience.

How about actually commenting on the actual point I raised. Is it wrong?

I thought I said that. It is wrong as a general statement. It may be right as a specific one.

 

[FrogReaver]

I thought I said that. It is wrong as a general statement. It may be right as a specific one.

All I said was that it wasn't necessarily going to make the game more fun. Is that a general statement or a specific one?