GMing: Transparency and Immersion

[Reynard]

Too often, I find that when the GM says, "roll and we'll find out", it really means:
"If you roll pretty high you'll be able to do it. If you roll kinda low, you won't."

The reason I hate that kind of GMing is that my stats soon become meaningless. The success of whether I accomplish something or not is determined by what the d20 rolls, not what my abilities are compared to the d20.

that's a very specific kind of GMing, one which I tend to frown upon. Call it "storytelling" or "fudging" or whatever, it's essentially cheating in favor of the GM's personal preferences. I don't think a lack of transparency at suggests a need or desire to fudge - though the temptation might be there.

Let the numbers hold and let the dice fall where they may, I say.

 

[Toben the Many]

that's a very specific kind of GMing, one which I tend to frown upon. Call it "storytelling" or "fudging" or whatever, it's essentially cheating in favor of the GM's personal preferences. I don't think a lack of transparency at suggests a need or desire to fudge - though the temptation might be there.

Let the numbers hold and let the dice fall where they may, I say.

That's a great point. To assuage by paranoia and GM distrust, how does one tell the difference between the GM keeping the numbers hidden, and the GM fudging everything?

 

[gizmo33]

I understand DMs not wanting to tell players how many hitpoints the monsters have left. And in general, I understand not wanting to give players more information that their characters would have.

But the first issue to settle is whether or not a 4E Shield spell, for example, was balanced with the other powers assuming that the player had the information or didn't. Shield is more effective with information than without. This is irrespective of any "immersion" issues and just has to do with balancing powers.

On the subject of immersion, IMO there's a question here as to whether telling players what AC a monster hits (for example) or telling them when a monster is "bloodied" really is substantially different than the tons of mechanical information available to the PCs. Heck, they can see *exactly* how far away a monster is when they use ranged spells. They know how many hitpoints they have, and they know what AC their own attack hits, etc. etc. etc.

A picture is worth a thousand words (ie. an inordinately long time spent describing petty details), as they say, and I think sometimes the mechanics of the situation are a necessary shorthand for giving players the information that they're character would have. Take the Shield example again: wouldn't an experienced adventurer gain some instinct for when they are facing a threatening attack (ex. a roll that will easily hit) from a one that would just barely hit? A shield spell is an immediate reaction - so you're actually already breaking immersion by allowing the player to retrogame anyway. And as a DM, I don't want to sit there with a thesaurus and try to pick different words for each kind of hit or miss in order to approximate what the numbers would tell them anyway.

 

[el-remmen]

Heck, they can see *exactly* how far away a monster is when they use ranged spells.

How can they see that?

Is it just that in my games I have players pick the target and then count the range. . . It is possible to come up short.

I also have them pick the box they are targeting for AoE spells then roll a d4 to see which intercise is the actual center to get around what I consider the cheesy ability to perfectly positions spells every time. Though I do allow a feat (Accurate Caster) to get around this.

 

[gizmo33]

But no, no you don't get to know right off the bat how the numbers crunch. I mean if you were playing WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES and you asked your opponent "Let me see your Magic Cards, I want to know what you drew so I can use effective counterspells and cancel you out" or "Hey, are you going to use your night goblin fanatics against my cavalry? Just let me know so I know how to use some command points..." you'd get laughed out of the tournament.

Yes, obviously the game needs to define what information you can have, and what you can't, when you play it. Warhammer works like it does because that's one of the agreements of the game. Think about it though - the person coming up with the tactics is some giant head hovering over the battlefield and able to see the back ranks as clearly as the front. What happened to the fog of war? Obviously the player of Warhammer has access to some tactical information that a tiny, wounded little miniature surrounded by screaming orcs and demons would not have.

And these rules are different between games. I don't run 4E the same way I ran ADnD because it seems to me that 4E power use necessitates some of this information. But even in ADnD, what reason do you have to even say that PCs "hit" a monster. Given the way that hitpoints work, there's no obvious reason to conclude that your character's weapon connected at all with the creature he's fighting.

 

[gizmo33]

How can they see that?

Based on the way the game is run according to the books. I can't account for every possible subsystem used by DMs in what I'm saying - which is that there is no mandate for hiding this information.

Is it just that in my games I have players pick the target and then count the range. . . It is possible to come up short.

Right, well what basis do they have for guessing this range? A giant head hovering over the battle field (a relatively flat one at that AFAIK). So a giant hovering player head is guessing what range (in inches, mind you) their little miniature down on the board is at? I really don't see a fundemental difference here other than you've subsituted one type of player knowledge for another. As a player in your game, I would wonder why my keen-eyed 1000 year old elf wasn't picking his own range instead of letting some near-sighted 30-some year old dude do it for him.

Plus, playing the way you described would cause combats to take longer than they already do, with questionable benefits - obviously according to my particular priorities. But I would think that a persual of the 4E PHB, with rules on diagonal movement and whether or not squares are counted within a particular effect, would provide a clue to you that many 4E players use grids. And the use of grids is what I assumed in my statement - and I think assumed by the rules.

I also have them pick the box they are targeting for AoE spells then roll a d4 to see which intercise is the actual center to get around what I consider the cheesy ability to perfectly positions spells every time. Though I do allow a feat (Accurate Caster) to get around this.

Right, I should have been clearer (and I thought it was obvious from the context and use of 4E Shield spell) that other game systems have other rules for what players know and don't know. As i said, it's important to note that 4E must have had an intent on this subject when it designed certain powers.

There was a time when I found exact placement of fireballs to be cheesy as well. But given hit points and saving throws (or attack rolls in 4E) and all of that, there is enough variation in the outcome of a fireball that I didn't find the introduction of an additional mechanical system to be worth it.

 

[Alan Shutko]

A good point that's been brought up here that I echo is that players have knowledge of their own capabilities, and should have better understanding of DCs. They won't necessarily know about other creature's capabilities or things which aren't immediately apparent.

An example that keeps coming up in my game is Acrobatics. I believe that a character trained in a skill should know the approximate DCs of common things. Is walking over that board considered easy, or hard? If I'm trained, I should be able to evaluate a situation and decide roughly how likely it is I can accomplish a task. Naturally, there might be considerations I don't see (the board looks wet from rain but has actually been oiled). But as a player, I don't like constantly being told "roll and find out". It makes skill use less appealing compared to a boring attack, since the attack has a reasonably well-defined chance of success. Even if you don't know the AC going in, you've been watching the entire party roll and get a pretty good idea pretty quickly. And the downside to an attack roll is just that you miss... instead of falling to the ground, tripping, or the usual array of entertaining mishaps DMs like to give you on skill checks.

It may be more immersive to ignore the numbers, but that only works for me if it's expected that my character has no real idea of his ability to accomplish any task.

 

[jbear]

I am DM a group of player's that are almost completely new to RPG and dnd.
I have valued transperency over immersion. This has been a natural answer to the fact they have shown certain distrust towards my decisions on several occaisions, or that an attack has missed with a total attack roll of 20. I have even gone so far as to show them the monsters stats after a game to prove I wasn't cheating. In this way I hope to build up their trust and thus be able to avoid such situations in the future.

Also, in a way, every time someone rolls a dice and says my attack roll total is 26 the game slips out of the full immersion it was in. Is it anymore damaging to the players imagination of the adventure/story by replying you needed 28, your blade grazes the creatures chest but doesn't pierce the thick leather armour?

Also I don't think the GM is only a Narrator, otherwise the title would be GN and you probably wouldn't roll any dice at all. I certainly don't think his 'role is undermined' by giving meta-game information to the players.

I do, however realise, my GM style is currently influenced by the inexperience of my players. I prefer that the pace of the game is lighter at the moment. They hum and har enough as to what to do as it is, without beingly overly strict about not mentioning DC's needed to achieve a possible course of action or having them weighing up wether to use shield due to being in the dark about its effectiveness for 5 minutes.

There are 7 character's in the group and we don't meet very often. These are two other important factor influencing my gaming style. Game time is precious, so when I need to get the game moving I do So in what I consider the most effective way possible... fast forward to the juicey bits where I consider the decisions truly important and worth taking time to mull over.

And yet when I think the story calls for tension and the sense of hidden danger or deadly menace I try to immerse the player's deliberately by keeping DC and other stats secret. For example Stealth or Perception.

I advocate transparency and applaud those who have the freedom and receive the trust from their players to be able to play with full immersion.

 

[Reynard]

A good point that's been brought up here that I echo is that players have knowledge of their own capabilities, and should have better understanding of DCs. They won't necessarily know about other creature's capabilities or things which aren't immediately apparent.

An example that keeps coming up in my game is Acrobatics. I believe that a character trained in a skill should know the approximate DCs of common things. Is walking over that board considered easy, or hard? If I'm trained, I should be able to evaluate a situation and decide roughly how likely it is I can accomplish a task. Naturally, there might be considerations I don't see (the board looks wet from rain but has actually been oiled). But as a player, I don't like constantly being told "roll and find out". It makes skill use less appealing compared to a boring attack, since the attack has a reasonably well-defined chance of success. Even if you don't know the AC going in, you've been watching the entire party roll and get a pretty good idea pretty quickly. And the downside to an attack roll is just that you miss... instead of falling to the ground, tripping, or the usual array of entertaining mishaps DMs like to give you on skill checks.

It may be more immersive to ignore the numbers, but that only works for me if it's expected that my character has no real idea of his ability to accomplish any task.

I think the answer to this particular issue is consistency from the GM. That is, in any given circumstance where the player/PC might ask how difficult something is to accomplish, the GM's answer has the same meaning as the last time such a question was asked. It may be as simple as sitting down with a little chart where DC 10-14=easy, 15-19=moderate, 20-24=difficult, etc... and using that terminology to let the player's know the range of difficulty. i agree that characters and players should have some idea of what they are capable, but there are times when things in real life seem like they should be easy, but end up being difficult.

But the issue that inspired me to think about this was something different than a simple assessment of the probability of success. In this instance, the player was trying to determine whether to use a limited resource (in this case a 4E power, but it could as easily be force points or hero points or whatever) to modify the outcome of a roll to make the result more favorable to the PC. i think this is altogether different than deciding whether to scale the wall or go inside and take the stairs (insert whatever risk vs reward circumstances make this an important choice). The question was a wholly metagame one (not kocking it, by the way -- I think metagaming is a natural aspect of RPG play, though how much varies between games and even within games depending on circumstance).

 

[Nightson]

Nothing pulls me straight out of the game like lack of transparency about things characters should know. ACs and Attack Rolls fall under that umbrella for me.