D&D General DM's: How transparent are you with game mechanics "in world?"

[aco175]

I tend to tell the players a lot of what is going on. Like what @Chaosmancer said, the PCs grew up in the world and live there, while the players play once a week for a few hours and do not have all the rules memorized or can even remember the mage that hired them a few weeks ago. Things like fire erupting from his weapon to deal +1d6 fire damage, or casting a spell on himself that seems like he is moving faster are fine to me. The players need to have more knowledge, where the PC would be able to sense things that I may not be telling the players.

I also tell them that he has 'cool monster power' that lets him do something that PCs cannot. The players know that monsters can have anything. They tend to come up with ideas on what it is, but generally not.

 

[Umbran]

The basic way to address this is a simple, "That's a great question. However, your character does not have the answer. If you want to spend an action to figure it out, please let me know."

Characters do live in the world, but that doesn't mean everyone is an expert in everything that everyone else can do. We specifically have skills they can use to check if they understand the import of what they see, and those should be applied where appropriate.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm usually 100% open with this stuff. The characters live in the world, they aren't aliens receiving cypher information about how it works, they see stuff. I always err on the side of too much. If I'm holding something back, there's a very good and important reason for it.

Of course, this is much easier since I usually play online using a VTT, and all of this is already visible in the roll windows, but I'm also in the habit of posting monster abilities when I use them as well. That way, I just click the button and the game info is there and I only worry about conveying it with narration.

 

[Blue]

I give the players all the knowledge their characters could notice. That includes if part of the damage was elemental or not and the like. That does not mean the source of all damage.

I am also clear that NPCs and foes need not be built the same way as PCs, so things such as number of rolls isn't something that they can safely interpret.

As a side note, casting with verbal components like Hunter's Mark is noticeable as casting a spell. Period. (Implicit in the PHB, explicit in Xanathar's pg 85). So nto identifying the spell being cast isn't just not describing, it's the DM cheating. (Yes, the DM can cheat, such as being inconsistant in their application of rules. It's just that they are given permission to do so. But a DM abusing cheating is still bad.)

I roll the d20s for rolls the characters know about in front of my players, because while I will usually narrate like "the ogre does a off-balance blow but the force behind it is so great that even the glance hurt", seeing that I rolled a 7 and it still hit above their AC really is what brings that home.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm very transparent, as I don't believe at all in the "DM is God" mentality, and I likewise expect a decent amount of transparency from my DMs, though not as much as I give. We all have different styles, and one of us really likes to occlude things and keep us guess and build tension using that lack of knowledge.

But my players know what the DC is of a check or save is before they make it, they know when the enemy hits half HP and when they're "on death's door" which just means "within an average non-boosted hit or two from death", etc.

How I run situations like the OP is fairly simple. The players know basically what is happening, how many dice are being rolled, etc, but i don't say the names of abilities and the like.

So, when they fought an archer, I told them that even riding fast on a horse she was standing up in the saddle, seeming to steady her bow and take an extra beat to get the perfect shot, which was gonna add extra dice to the damage. When a player asked if it was a "use before the roll" or "use when you hit" ability, I told them it was the latter (I don't like NPCs wasting very limited abilities too much, turns tough fights into cake walks too easily). I then rolled the IIRC 1d8+1d10+mod damage and gave the total.

Likewise, when they fought an arcane titan (modified warforged titan), I told them at the start that they could target each arm, the legs, the torso and head, and the cannon on it's torso, and each had it's own AC and HP. In addition to the in-world information about what they were seeing, I told them when it cast Heat Metal on it's weapon arms and that it would do extra fire damage as a result, when it took half damage by casting Absorb Elements, when it absorbed power to recharge it's limited use abilities from taking damage from a spell with a level and that it gained more charges the higher the spell slot level, and even roughly how much HP it's arcane energy shield had remaining.

But your player still seems...intense.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The basic way to address this is a simple, "That's a great question. However, your character does not have the answer. If you want to spend an action to figure it out, please let me know."

Characters do live in the world, but that doesn't mean everyone is an expert in everything that everyone else can do. We specifically have skills they can use to check if they understand the import of what they see, and those should be applied where appropriate.

I'd just challenge the action economy cost, there, because it's way higher than the payoff of even a very good roll. Otherwise that seems perfectly reasonable, as long as everyone is onboard.

 

[DammitVictor]

I'm pretty transparent about a lot of game mechanics... because I've seen a lot of things that are described as "metagaming" that are things that the player characters would obviously know, and describing the mechanic is a lot cleaner and more elegant than trying to describe it narratively. People who fight for a living know how much more abuse they can take, and how close their last attack routine came to hurting their enemy (hit points and AC); people who do a lot of jumping around have a pretty good idea of how high and how far they can jump.

But the player in the OP was out of line. You told him how much damage he took, and what kind of damage it was. When he asked about the dice you rolled, you asked him for an Arcana check-- which, point blank, told him it was a spell-- demanded to know why he needed to roll an Arcana check for... something that you thought was worth an Arcana check. Knowing why you're rolling an Arcana check is pretty much always the reward for succeeding on an Arcana check.

I mean, maybe he's a good player otherwise and one time like this doesn't really justify booting him. Maybe, yeah, everyone having a good time is more important than asserting your dominance as the Dungeon Master.

But the appropriate response here, at minimum, is "I've told you everything your character knows about the attack and the attacker. Either roll your Arcana check to learn more, or drop it and wait for your turn." I would very probably fail at phrasing it that politely, if it happened the way the OP described it... but my advice is usually a much better guide than my example.

 

[Umbran]

I'd just challenge the action economy cost, there, because it's way higher than the payoff of even a very good roll.

Yep, I agree that, in the typical case, in the middle of a fight, the action economy cost of figuring out exactly where the numbers come from doesn't pay well. There will be some cases where it pays off, but it'd be highly situational.

But... so what? Not every choice of action is optimal. Indeed, for choice to be particularly meaningful, there ought to be some that pay off well, and others that don't. If the question is asked to trying to gain tactical success, then it should be lumped in with the myriad other possible choices, some of which are really bad ideas.

If the question isn't being asked to gain tactical advantages, then it can be saved for after the action scene is done.

 

[Lyxen]

See, I don't fully disagree with you, but I find it weird that the DM giving out numbers and technical information is fine, but the players seeking to confirm those same numbers and technical information isn't.

It's D&D. the DM still has to say how much damage is sustained, it's the bare minimal technical information to be conveyed from him to a player. What he is not saying is "and out of this, it's one or more attacks, with such and such bonus and sneak and hunter's mark...".

I just don't get where "trust" is coming into this. It doesn't sound like the player thinks the DM is lying, they are just trying to understand what they are being told. If they didn't trust the DM... why would they bother asking? They wouldn't trust him or her to give them a real answer.

Damage and Hit Points are abstract counters in D&D anyway. For me, that kind of verification is quite often based on some sort of mistrust and checking that the DM has not forgotten anything about the defenses of the player. Now, coming back to the original post, it's clearly that "To him, we're playing a wargame with certain rules and there's a bias towards "perfect information" and that might be less a question of trust, but I have addressed this point separately.

I also have had a lot of DMs, even experienced ones, mess up the rules.

And for me, it's in general not a problem. Of course, if it's all the time, and it screws up the vision of the universe because it's inconsistent, or if it's done on purpose to make the world seem more dangerous and in a sense screwing the players, it's bad, but I've almost never met that kind of case, especially the second one. And the first one is usually linked to an inexperienced DM.

But if once in a long while you take a bit more or a bit less damage, who cares ? For us, it's not worth interrupting the flow of the game for a technical discussion leading to ruleslawyering. If really it bothers you, wait until the end of the session and ask the DM about confirmation that something works one way or another, and if oyu don't go into accusatory mode, and the DM feels like explaining (he might not, by the way, as is his perfect right, in particular if the player has no reason to know about it - special magic, special NPC, special circumstances), discuss about it.

Misremembering something like Charm being a one I've encountered a lot, and while I know a lot of people prefer to project the DM as infallible, or that correcting them ruins the game because they might be doing something they homebrewed... sometimes a mistake is a mistake. And it isn't wrong to make sure if it is homebrew or an honest mistake. DMs shouldn't feel attacked by that.

It all depends on the way it's presented, see above. It might be a mistake, or it might not, and it's not a good thing, in my view, to encourage discussion of things which might or might not be mistakes during the game. Again, it might depend on your table etiquette and wishes, if at table the players went to go into wargaming style where everything is justified, that's cool, but it's also cool to let the story flow without peppering the DM with questions and without making the game technical, it does not need to be.

Not pulled what? Making a mistake?

Either cheating or making a mistake of that size. You see, when there is trust, the players are also careful to avoid breaking that trust, so they will not do anything outrageous without checking, usually quietly between themselves if their understanding is correct, or with the DM before pulling it off.

It also goes with the "not breaking the flow of the game", pulling something outrageous will always to this. If it's justified, it will be fantastic, and everyone will applaud, if it's unjustified or really borderline (in particular in terms of interpretation), might as well double check before pulling it off. And I think that this is why it has not happened in years (or more exactly, it happened about 3 years ago with the last real powergamer at our table before he left the table by mutual agreement, but it has not happened in much longer with the other players, at all the tables of our groups).

 

[Lyxen]

I'm usually 100% open with this stuff. The characters live in the world, they aren't aliens receiving cypher information about how it works, they see stuff. I always err on the side of too much. If I'm holding something back, there's a very good and important reason for it.

Of course, this is much easier since I usually play online using a VTT, and all of this is already visible in the roll windows, but I'm also in the habit of posting monster abilities when I use them as well. That way, I just click the button and the game info is there and I only worry about conveying it with narration.

You know that VTTs can hide everything, including monster name, type, etc. it's just a standard option in at least the two mainstream VTTs that I have extensively gamed with.