D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[iserith]

My “what do you do about” phrasing is designed to be a nice, pithy soundbite, rather than to comprehensively encapsulate best practice. My point in it is that it’s important in your description of the environment to include details for the players to interact with. “What do you do about” doesn’t necessarily have to be about one specific thing (though there are times where that’s appropriate). It can also mean what do you do about this scenario you’re in with several points of interest. It’s just a note-to-self I use to remind myself to focus my description on providing the players with interesting things to interact with, rather than merely stating what is present like a lot of the boxed text in published adventures does.

Sure, but leading questions like this are also big in other games and it does push play in specific directions which may not be a thing one wants to do in D&D. It's worth examining if that's desirable before committing to it. I do it sometimes myself, especially if the scene was already set previously and conflict is escalating. I would characterize it as a thing to use after the players have pushed things in a given direction already.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Sure, but leading questions like this are also big in other games and it does push play in specific directions which may not be a thing one wants to do in D&D. It's worth examining if that's desirable before committing to it. I do it sometimes myself, especially if the scene was already set previously and conflict is escalating. I would characterize it as a thing to use after the players have pushed things in a given direction already.

Schism!

/popcorn

(Just kidding, of course.)

 

[Charlaquin]

Schism!

/popcorn

(Just kidding, of course.)

I know you’re joking, but I just want to make it clear do agree with Iserith on this point. I think the issue is that what works for me as a reminder to myself to focus on what’s interesting in the scene may communicate to others to use leading questions, which isn’t what I meant by it. It’s a case of what I call “I know what I mean,” which is ironically another phrase that makes sense to me but might not accurately communicate its intent to people who don’t live in my brain.

 

[Oofta]

If you look at some of those situations you are talking about, they come with expectations about resolution.

I can easily have a free-for-all wedgie fest, or a chance to win 100g in a festival, or whatever. It's not that the situations can or cannot come up, it's that some folks come with preconceptions about the means by which they get resolved.

I would say they come with expectations of uncertainty and how to resolve that uncertainty.

You can certainly bypass all of that by eliminating uncertainty, that's just not necessarily a satisfactory solution for some people.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wish one of the reactions we could give to a post was a confused-looking emoji, maybe with a question mark or three above their head.

 

[Campbell]

If I am going to approach running a game as a neutral arbiter I would be running a game that is well tuned to that experience like Moldvay B/X or Stars Without Number where only approach really matters. In any situation that I would choose to use Goal and Approach I would have an agenda as GM because I feel it works best in high stakes, conflict driven play. That agenda is not about deciding what player characters should do, but about focusing in on conflicts with curiosity about how it will unfold. Asking leading questions is part of conveying the fictional world honestly because it highlights how you are thinking about the fiction.

Blades in the Dark is another game that uses Goal and Approach. It instructs the GM to:

• Ask establishing questions to set the stage for action.
• Ask provocative questions to make players think and express their characters.
• Ask leading questions to show players what you're thinking. A big part of this is honestly conveying the fictional world and giving players a view of possible consequences.
• Ask trivial questions when the mood strikes and you are curious.
• Ask players for help when you are uncertain or stuck.
  
  

What's important is that these questions should all come from a spirit of curiosity instead of a desire to lead the fiction one way or the other.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I would say they come with expectations of uncertainty and how to resolve that uncertainty.

You can certainly bypass all of that by eliminating uncertainty, that's just not necessarily a satisfactory solution for some people.

I'm curious, what do you think this looks like? I have a suspicion that the answer is more a resolution oriented one than an actual fictional situation. And that's true -- resolutions are different and largely exclusionary. But the fictional situations aren't.

 

[Campbell]

For my part if a player declared their character was going to try to give a random bar patron a wedgie my response would be to address the character and ask why. Not out of judgement, but because I want to know and want to see where the fiction could possibly lead. I generally want consequences that are going to be more meaningful on a character level over time.

Maybe something like: "Whoa Ragna! Is this just a prank? Do you know this guy?"

 

[Guest 6801328]

I would say they come with expectations of uncertainty and how to resolve that uncertainty.

You can certainly bypass all of that by eliminating uncertainty, that's just not necessarily a satisfactory solution for some people.

Whose uncertainty? There is no objective uncertainty. What the player may think is uncertain the GM may think is uncertain, and vice versa.

Or, maybe, that's one of the fundamental differences here. Maybe if you start from the premise that there is objectively a certain (sic) amount...or a "fair" amount...of uncertainty, then that influences how you think it should be resolved.

 

[Oofta]

I'm curious, what do you think this looks like? I have a suspicion that the answer is more a resolution oriented one than an actual fictional situation. And that's true -- resolutions are different and largely exclusionary. But the fictional situations aren't.

We just had a whole long sub-thread on wedgies. While that was a spectacularly silly example, it is an example of how I would resolve scenarios with uncertain results. Other people would just say "it happens" or a number of different scenarios like suddenly you're hanging out with celestials and 20th level sun soul monks for some reason.

Or ... let's say you ask a paleontologist about Brachiosaurs. What do they know? Who knows. Maybe they're a specialist on the Pleistocene, not sauropods. Just because you have expertise in history does not mean you know all historical facts. My preference is to let the dice decide when I have that kind of uncertainty unless someone has reasonably established details in their backstory to justify specific knowledge.

It's entirely possible that we are conflating GAA and The Role of the Dice styles as laid out in the DMG.