D&D 5E Do you use the Success w/ Complication Module in the DMG or Fail Forward in the Basic PDF

[Charlaquin]

My point is that even if you're not in a race against time, it's only reasonable to think that some characters (not necessarily players, but in-fiction characters) will have a lower boredom threshold than others and won't be willing to wait the half-hour or however randomly long it takes the Thief to finally figure out the lock if she doesn't get it right away.

That’s fine, but it should be the players’ of those characters’s decision how long they’re willing to wait. And it should be the decision of the player of the character performing the task whether or not they care to stop so as to spare their party from boredom. And it should be the players’ of the other party members’ decision what to do if the character performing the task keeps going after they’ve said they’re bored and want to move on. Etc, etc. point is, the players should always be the ones who decide how their characters think and feel and what their characters do (or attempt to do, since I know you’re going to be picky about that phrasing).

 

[Lanefan]

If every roll has a consequence for failure (as it should), bundling all the rolls into one makes the game easier because you have fewer opportunities to suffer those consequences.

And harder at the same time; because instead of re-rolling until you get a high result you get one shot, period.

That’s not what you said. You said it’s binding until and unless something materially changes in the fiction.

Same thing. The classic example is trying to lift a portcullis. One person tries, rolls, and fails. So two people try lifting it together (the material change in the fiction being the addition of the second person), roll, and fail. So someone else hammers the spikes where they meet the ground just in case they've rusted in place, to break them loose; this is a material change, so another roll is given.

In broader terms, you don't get another roll until and unless you try somethng different. Straight out of Gygax 1e, this is.

It isn’t up to you when a PC gets bored, or that they stop trying once they do. If I as a player decide my character just loves trying to do something and keeps it up until they succeed, or that they power through the boredom because they’re that committed to getting it done, that’s my right as a player to decide. And if there’s no time limit or other source of external pressure, then there shouldn’t be anything stopping my character from doing so if that’s what I want them to do.

You're not the only member of the party!

Your PC might not get bored doing what you're doing but the others sure might get bored watching you.

The player can decide to do that if they want to. I’ve never seen a player choose to do so, but they can.

IME there's been a lot of PCs who have the attention span of chickens and who in the fiction would get bored with any delay.

Players getting stuck and spending hours brainstorming what to do is not a part of that loop, so whatever you were doing for a whole session trying to get that door open, it wasn’t gameplay.

I might have the sequence wrong, and I forget who said what, but in the session I'm talking about all of the below occurred. On approachign the door we had immediately seen there's no lock (the DM had a picture of it, shared on roll20, so we all knew exactly what it looked like) and no handles, and no visible hinges. Also, this is a party ranging from 8th-13th level; which is pretty high for 1e.

[searching for a hidden lock in the door produced nothing]
Player A: "Cast Detect Magic." DM: "Yes, the door is radiating very strong magic."
Player A: "We cast Knock at it." DM: "Nothing happens."
Player B: "We try touching [various heretofore unidentified magic items] to the door, does it open?". DM: "Nothing happens."
Player C: "There was a very out-of-place long metal rod back down the passage, let's go get it and see if it helps here." DM: "OK, you retrieve the rod." [players then try various ideas with this rod, end result of all is] DM: "Nothing happens."
Player A: "Maybe it needs some bizarre spell cast on it. Try Faerie Fire." DM: "Nothing happens." [several other spells are cast, same result]
Player B: "Screw this. This door's a distraction; I bet the real door is hidden nearby. Search the area for secret doors!" DM: "After a lengthy search you come up dry."

Etc. etc. There was no time pressure on us that we knew of, but by the time we got through that sucker we were down about a dozen spells and various other pre-cast buffs had long since worn off. But what happened next? The PCs were bored, and so threw caution to the wind and went off in three different directions. One found trouble.....

How is this not gameplay, and how is this not following the play loop?!

I love them.

But don't puzzles and riddles give the exact same effect, though: you're stuck until you can solve it?

Ah, good point. Yeah, in that case I adamantly maintain that a roll should not be called for if there isn’t a consequence for failure.

Then what do you do when success (with meaningful consequence) is in doubt but failure has no real consequence attached?

In my experience, doing things like this to curtail “metagaming” has only negative effects on gameplay

Where to me metagaming is about the biggest negative effect there is and should be curtailed (or better yet, eliminated) wherever it's reasonably practical to do so.

I wasn’t referring to plot progress at all. I’m not really a big fan of “plots,” such as they are, in D&D. As I’ve said a few times now, whatever happens during play is the story. I find D&D 5e lends itself better to location-based games than event-based (or “plot-based”) ones.

I think (?) we agree here; with our difference perhaps (?) being that I don't care if that happens-during-play story moves forward or not and-or how long it might take to do so.

 

[Lanefan]

Not a fan of rolls to put players on edge or just inform the DM of some background stuff (they could easily extrapolate based on skill level). It pretty much undercuts the ability of the roll to provide tension to play.

That's the whole point! I want there to be less tension around any roll (unless the situation is obvious, of course) so as not to unduly give away information at the metagame level if-when a roll really does matter.

 

[Lanefan]

It's also worth noting that, if we're rolling for things that aren't about success or failure, it makes it harder for players to know when to use resources effectively to increase their odds of success, unless the DM is explicit about which rolls are for what purpose. If I spend a limited resource like Inspiration to give myself advantage on a check that ultimately doesn't matter except to change the color of the scene, I'm going to feel like I wasted that resource since I could have saved it for when it really mattered. By keeping rolls only for determining success or failure when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure, the players can determine if they're willing to risk the meaningful consequence for failure or bolster their odds of success with resources.

A good argument against having such meta-resources in the game at all, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, talk about creating ludonarrative dissonance...

 

[Lanefan]

If there’s no infinite time scenario, then there’s a cost or consequence for failure, so repeated attempts should be allowed as long as the player is willing to pay the cost or risk the consequence.

Ok, so this is just establishing that each attempt “costs” one full day. As long as I’m willing and able to pay that cost, I should be allowed to do so as many times as I want.

OK, this is a different tack than how I've been reading you so far: up till now I've been reading that you want one roll for each attempt, period.

Not at all, and making each roll represent a certain amount of time trying is one of my go-to techniques for insuring actions have a cost or consequence for failure. Lots of things you might attempt while exploring a dungeon, for example, take 10 minutes to try in my game. Of course, if you fail you’re more than welcome to spend 10 more minutes and try again. But every time you do, we’re getting one step closer to a roll for random encounters, which I make once every hour during that time scale of exploration by default. Some actions, particularly those that are noisy or reckless, can cause additional rolls for random encounters as a cost or consequence for failure beyond that default.

If the situation calls for random encounters, then absolutely yes. But not all situations (or modules) have such things.

What I take issue with isn’t rolls representing the total effort over a given period of time, or even over a nonspecific period of time if some consequence occurs before I finish on a failure. What I object to is being disallowed from making repeat attempts while I am still willing to pay the cost to try or risk the consequences of failure simply because the DM says “that was your best effort.”

The benefit of saying that was your best effort is that it forces you (as both player and character) to think creatively and come up with another approach or idea.

 

[iserith]

A good argument against having such meta-resources in the game at all, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, talk about creating ludonarrative dissonance...

I haven't made any "ludonarrative dissonance" arguments. But anyway, all those mechanics can easily be grounded in the fiction and are.

 

[Lanefan]

That’s fine, but it should be the players’ of those characters’s decision how long they’re willing to wait. And it should be the decision of the player of the character performing the task whether or not they care to stop so as to spare their party from boredom. And it should be the players’ of the other party members’ decision what to do if the character performing the task keeps going after they’ve said they’re bored and want to move on. Etc, etc. point is, the players should always be the ones who decide how their characters think and feel and what their characters do (or attempt to do, since I know you’re going to be picky about that phrasing).

If you handwave "success after x-amount of time" you're taking the boredom decision away from the other players.

Better perhaps to say "It looks like your Thief might be in for the long haul here and may or may not end up getting anywhere - what are the rest of you doing in the meantime?"

 

[Lanefan]

I haven't made any "ludonarrative dissonance" arguments.

You haven't, no. @Charlaquin brought it up earlier, and I was trying to tie to that.

But anyway, all those mechanics can easily be grounded in the fiction and are.

Difficult to do if one's running from an in-character or simulation perspective. Easy to do from a small-g gamist perspective.

 

[iserith]

You haven't, no. @Charlaquin brought it up earlier, and I was trying to tie to that.

Difficult to do if one's running from an in-character or simulation perspective. Easy to do from a small-g gamist perspective.

I don't really go in for any of that Forge waffle anymore. It's just tribalism in my view. What I find interesting about this sort of thinking is that if you look at a game like mine, you find a great deal more "in-character" thinking than you will at many of these so-called "simulation" games since mechanics like Inspiration drive toward that outcome.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't really go in for any of that Forge waffle anymore.

Hence my use of small-letter terms (which have quite useful functions in the English language) as opposed to capital-letter terms which I tie to their Forge definitions.

It's just tribalism in my view. What I find interesting about this sort of thinking is that if you look at a game like mine, you find a great deal more "in-character" thinking than you will at many of these so-called "simulation" games since mechanics like Inspiration drive toward that outcome.

Forgive me, but I fail to see how this can work: how are your players not pulled out into the metagame when deciding if-when to apply Inspiration?