D&D 5E (2014) Consequences of Failure

[Ovinomancer]

I for one tried to be helpful. Gave my reasoning of how a failed check could have a negative consequence. That's what this whole thread started with, didn't it? But you rejected it because it didn't meet your guidelines.

You can come up with just about any scenario that comes up in a game (even the "wedgie" scenario) and I can tell you how I'd resolve it. Sometimes dice would be involved, sometimes they wouldn't. I can tell you how failing a check could mean you don't make progress towards a goal and what that could cost.

But you can't do the same because they're "trap" options. If there are so many trap options, perhaps it's a flaw in assuming one rigid approach should be shoe-horned into all aspects of the game.

P.S. I don't play a "board game". I run a game that has earned an embarrassing amount of praise from a several people over the years. In part because I use a variety of techniques and have flexibility to cater to my player's style and preferences.

I understand where you're coming from. I had the same opinions myself, and argued somewhat snarkily with @iserith once upon a recent time. There's a kind of shift in perspective necessary, and I know that's not helpful but I can't really seem to find a good way to get it across. I've tried to explain it how I came into it, but that's not worked. Anyway, the thing is, that once you've turned that corner, you'll see that there have been tons of good examples of play in goal and approach -- they just don't look the same as what you're used to.

Take the recent Insight thread. There was a lot of asking how you'd use goal and approach to tell if someone was lying and how it feels like you're looking for specific forms of phrasing to get to the same end. And, yeah, that happened, largely because there was an attempt to engage that example. But the truth is that, largely, telling if the NPC is lying is rarely going to be a big thing in goal and approach. The NPC lying to you is going to be part of the handle that engages the players in the fiction so that they can now use goal and approach to change the fiction. Insight to tell if an NPC is lying is really just not much of a thing outside of a few occasions. Insight to gain, well, insight into what an NPC cares about so you can leverage that to get them to come clean? That's the ticket. So, in that sense, there's just not really a good example because it's going to go pear-shaped immediately due to what actions are declared. But a good example would be saying that this NPC is definitely hiding something and what are you going to do to find out what?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Lordy lord. So "if you disagree with me, you're doing it wrong. Just ignore any opinion that does not match mine."

Then you wonder why I say that some people give the impression of one-true-way-ism.

That's not what was said, though. What was said was, "the rules say X. Saying they say Y is wrong. You're free to play however you want, though, because the rules are more like suggestions."

I have, in a past game, heavily modified the resting rules. This was because it fit with the theme of that game, which was exploration and the costs of pushing into the unknown over time. But, in doing so, I would never claim that the rules said to do it this way. They don't, and that's just fact. You really seem to think that there are people that think less of you for how you play, and use pointing out the rules of the game as a way to show it. I don't think you could get further from the truth. Personally, I'm glad you enjoy how you play, and that it's different from me. If there weren't differences, what would we have to talk about? But, maybe, don't take honest advocacy as belittlement.

 

[iserith]

Take the recent Insight thread. There was a lot of asking how you'd use goal and approach to tell if someone was lying and how it feels like you're looking for specific forms of phrasing to get to the same end. And, yeah, that happened, largely because there was an attempt to engage that example. But the truth is that, largely, telling if the NPC is lying is rarely going to be a big thing in goal and approach. The NPC lying to you is going to be part of the handle that engages the players in the fiction so that they can now use goal and approach to change the fiction. Insight to tell if an NPC is lying is really just not much of a thing outside of a few occasions. Insight to gain, well, insight into what an NPC cares about so you can leverage that to get them to come clean? That's the ticket. So, in that sense, there's just not really a good example because it's going to go pear-shaped immediately due to what actions are declared. But a good example would be saying that this NPC is definitely hiding something and what are you going to do to find out what?

Lies are the traps of social interaction challenges. Telegraphing both gives the player a clue that something is up. Maybe players interact with the trap or the NPC's falsehoods based on those clues or maybe they don't. What they don't do is try to Perception check and Insight check their way to finding stuff that may or may not be there because there's a "gotcha" around every corner if they don't do their SOP. They can trust that the DM isn't going to present the game that way and that paying attention has a payoff.

Telegraphing as a technique, however, is something I would say runs alongside the players describing what they want to do and hope to achieve, since a DM needn't telegraph traps or lies for players to describe things like that. They are very complementary approaches though that together produce what I would say is a more solid, fair game since they basically represent the DM and player performing their respective roles in the conversation of the game to the utmost, that is, the DM describing the environment and the players describing what they want to do which both feed into the DM narrating the results of the adventurers' actions.

And this is why I think the term "goal and approach" needs to be defined solely as what I said it was a few posts up and some other name given to what are a host of techniques that when combined are greater than the sum of their individual parts. If we ever put together a thread on this as discussed earlier, perhaps it will make things a great deal clearer to those who actually seek clarity.

 

[iserith]

That's not what was said, though. What was said was, "the rules say X. Saying they say Y is wrong. You're free to play however you want, though, because the rules are more like suggestions."

I have, in a past game, heavily modified the resting rules. This was because it fit with the theme of that game, which was exploration and the costs of pushing into the unknown over time. But, in doing so, I would never claim that the rules said to do it this way. They don't, and that's just fact. You really seem to think that there are people that think less of you for how you play, and use pointing out the rules of the game as a way to show it. I don't think you could get further from the truth. Personally, I'm glad you enjoy how you play, and that it's different from me. If there weren't differences, what would we have to talk about? But, maybe, don't take honest advocacy as belittlement.

Right. The way I use Inspiration, for example, is not technically speaking how the rules say to handle it (outside of the rule that says, basically, "ask your DM how Inspiration works in your game"). I cannot and would not claim that how I run Inspiration is written in the rules. That would be a lie and an easily disproved one at that which would just make me look foolish. And I don't need any extra help to do that.

 

[Campbell]

Generally if I lack a clear view of the fiction going to the dice is not really going to help the situation because there would be no way I could meaningfully come up with suitable narration for success or failure. So we have an opportunity to interrogate the fiction and find out more! One method is just to think long and hard about the situation. If I still can't reach a ruling I ask questions so I can reach a ruling.

If I'm really stuck I just acknowledge it and ask the group what should happen. We do not need to be perfect. It is okay to admit we are stuck.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Lies are the traps of social interaction challenges. Telegraphing both gives the player a clue that something is up. Maybe players interact with the trap or the NPC's falsehoods based on those clues or maybe they don't. What they don't do is try to Perception check and Insight check their way to finding stuff that may or may not be there because there's a "gotcha" around every corner if they don't do their SOP. They can trust that the DM isn't going to present the game that way and that paying attention has a payoff.

Telegraphing as a technique, however, is something I would say runs alongside the players describing what they want to do and hope to achieve, since a DM needn't telegraph traps or lies for players to describe things like that. They are very complementary approaches though that together produce what I would say is a more solid, fair game since they basically represent the DM and player performing their respective roles in the conversation of the game to the utmost, that is, the DM describing the environment and the players describing what they want to do which both feed into the DM narrating the results of the adventurers' actions.

And this is why I think the term "goal and approach" needs to be defined solely as what I said it was a few posts up and some other name given to what are a host of techniques that when combined are greater than the sum of their individual parts. If we ever put together a thread on this as discussed earlier, perhaps it will make things a great deal clearer to those who actually seek clarity.

I somewhat disagree. "There's a 40' hallway to the north" as a presentation of the game puts a huge amount of pressure on the player to come up with a goal and approach, whereas a small amount of telegraphing provides the handle to make the technique actually functional and useful. The hallway on it's own, however, is practically begging for the ask-for-checks play to try and dig up more information. I don't think presentation and goal and approach resolution are as severable as you seem to imply. I could be misunderstanding, but I really think a huge part of the confusion in these threads stems from trying to present goal and approach as just a resolution mechanic rather than part of a holistic playstyle that includes the need for the DM to alter presentation to make goal and approach workable.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Generally if I lack a clear view of the fiction going to the dice is not really going to help the situation because there would be no way I could meaningfully come up with suitable narration for success or failure. So we have an opportunity to interrogate the fiction and find out more! One method is just to think long and hard about the situation. If I still can't reach a ruling I ask questions so I can reach a ruling.

If I'm really stuck I just acknowledge it and ask the group what should happen. We do not need to be perfect. It is okay to admit we are stuck.

I think this is a great point. There's a kind of seductive idea that picking up some dice and rolling them will jog loose what should happen next, but this is rarely the case. If you can't make some commitments to what might happen, even to yourself, before going to the dice, the dice aren't going to help.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hey, @Campbell, I often find your posts to be kind of like scattered nuggets of Confucian wisdom. They seem disconnected or random at first, or, at least, I sometimes have trouble figuring out where they originated from in the thread, but I they quite often give me something unexpected to mull over or provide a clear window into my own thinking. Thanks for this.

 

[Guest 6801328]

So, recent goading aside, have you gained some of what you sought, @Elfcrusher?

Yeah, there was some great discussion about several of the examples (forgery, stealth, and knowledge checks). The general pattern of not rolling until the success/failure state obtains is going to be a hard one for people used to the old way.

I think one of the really important points was about requiring players to do more of the 'work'.

 

[iserith]

I somewhat disagree. "There's a 40' hallway to the north" as a presentation of the game puts a huge amount of pressure on the player to come up with a goal and approach, whereas a small amount of telegraphing provides the handle to make the technique actually functional and useful. The hallway on it's own, however, is practically begging for the ask-for-checks play to try and dig up more information. I don't think presentation and goal and approach resolution are as severable as you seem to imply. I could be misunderstanding, but I really think a huge part of the confusion in these threads stems from trying to present goal and approach as just a resolution mechanic rather than part of a holistic playstyle that includes the need for the DM to alter presentation to make goal and approach workable.

I think we're in agreement. I think telegraphing combined with goal and approach is better than not telegraphing and asking players their goal and approach. But I can't make the claim that goal and approach requires telegraphing, as it's literally just the player being reasonably specific about, well, the approach to a goal.

"There's a 40' hallway to the north" may well be something you'd hear in my game as I describe some part of the dungeon. It's just, in my game, players know that I'm not going to play gotcha, so they won't have to goal-and-approach searching for traps just in case. They can just walk down the hallway (approach) to get to the other side (goal) like the proverbial chicken crossing the road. Or they might 10-foot-pole it in an abundance of caution - who knows? I just know that I'm telegraphing to make it a fair game and that's all. What they do after that is up to them.