D&D General "I make a perception check."

[Chaosmancer]

I have no investment in trying to convince you to like the way I run the game. That seems like it would indeed be a waste of time to try to do.

You don't engage in critical discussions to convince other people to like things. Therefore, that isn't a concern.

I have understood all along that you treat passive checks as passive on the character’s part. I think I have made it quite clear throughout this entire thread that I treat passive checks as a way to resolve repeated or continual active actions without a die roll (making them “passive” on the player’s part). This appears to me to be consistent with how the rules say they work. I am on record saying I think they were poorly named.

None of this answers the question I asked.

Do you understand that a different DM, by picturing "looking" instead of "seeing", can see an action that would be rolled?


We can debate whether or not a DM could determine that the break in the action allows them to make an active check instead of it being considered part of their repeated and continual check afterwards. But first I need to know if you can understand why a DM might take that action as something that can be rolled.

I know what I need to convey to the players for them to be able to make informed decisions, if that’s what you mean. I don’t gate any of that information behind checks though, so I don’t know how this is relevant to the discussion.

Because you originally said that you make random items that have "indeterminate" importance. We then got the random arrow of Dragonslaying that had no importance until the players randomly fought a dragon. I said that item was therefore not important, and that I would have put it in as a clue to the deeper story going in at the location. You have since indicated that you do the same thing, you roll these items randomly, but then you tie them into the... whatever you want to call the things going on at the location, since you seem to utterly reject the terms I would use to describe it.

Now you are saying that since that item is tied to the location in a logical way to inform what is going on at that location that you wouldn't gate it behind a check? Which is true, because it would be gated behind the players declaring actions to auto-succeed, but I still don't think that is what you meant.

So which is it? Do you know or do you not know which items are important enough to be clues to the events happening at the location and its history? You keep saying you have no idea until the players declare it is important, but that you also tie the items logically into the location, which means to me you have figured out they are important.

The game has a built-in overarching goal of accumulating experience and levels. That incentive structure can be leveraged to encourage more specific behavior - XP for treasure, for example, creates an overarching goal of gaining wealth. Requiring training to level up adds an additional sub-goal of finding suitable trainers. XP for combat creates an overarching goal of fighting powerful foes. XP for completing objectives allows for many small goals, in the form of quests. And of course, players often create their own individual character goals.

Two things

1) The story of how Bob the Fighter gained Experience Points in random unconnected encounters is utterly boring. No one I'm playing with is playing to get levels and experience. No one is interested in that. Do we want levels? Sure, but it isn't the goal of play.

2) We don't use experience points or trainers. I want to encourage people to engage with the world, but since I can't figure out how much XP talking to the washer woman and developing a budding relationship is worth, it isn't worth it for me to use XP. We've used milestones basically since before 5e.

I don’t know, I don’t understand how you’re using the word “important” and at this point we’ve strayed so far afield of the topic in discussing “importance” that I fail to see any value in continuing to litigate it.

I don’t know how to answer this then because I don’t know what you are talking about.

Maybe instead of continously saying "I don't know" or "I don't understand" or "My players decide" you could actually give me some counter-examples to help highlight where our definitions aren't meeting? Because I've tried giving you example after example, and you either declare you don't do that, because your players decide, or you don't understand.

I disagree that it’s the only thing they have left. Create a distraction of some kind, or try to trick the goblin into attacking too soon, try to wait it out… Hell, just up and leave if you really can’t think of anything else and flat out refuse to risk getting hit once by a goblin.

Right, because leaving a murderous goblin at your back would NEVER backfire. The fire plan is the only way I can think to get it to attack two people outside the room instead of one person in the room, I guess maybe you could try and set an ambush, but since you would be continously and repeatedly looking for the goblin to spring the ambush, it would be a passive check, and we've already proven that is going to fail.

Whatever, if you prefer to call it failing, be my guest; what word we use for it doesn’t really affect the (fictional) reality of the situation.

But it does affect the claim of you, in choosing to have them fail, ignoring their intent.

Yes, obviously, but sometimes in trying to do something, you fail to achieve your intent. Especially when in trying to find a trap you step right on its trigger mechanism.

So, by declaring their action to try and get an auto-success, they instead got an auto-failure. Because they picked the wrong approach.

So, do you still not comprehend how someone could feel like rolling the dice is equally fair, since it is never an auto-fail?

but you seem to be so hung up on this one very specific possibility that you would refuse to engage with this scenario. It seriously resembles a hypervigilance response to past trauma.

And you do nothing but repeat yourself, which seriously resembles not caring beyond getting to trigger the trap on the player who made the wrong call. Maybe we don't accuse people of things and actually address the points presented? Might get more progress that way.

The difference is all of these things are discrete activities the rules lay out as options you can perform only one of at a time while traveling or exploring. And it does make sense - the person making the map is absorbed in recording their surroundings on paper; the person navigating is absorbed in searching the environment for landmarks to insure they remain on their intended route; the character searching for secret doors is absorbed in carefully scouring the walls, floor, ceiling, etc. for anything out of the ordinary - I’d say you could make a good argument that this character is better positioned to spot traps than one watching and listening for monsters that may be lurking in the shadows or around any corner.

Firstly, the rules are supposed to cover multiple scenarios in travel. From overland to travel through a dungeon. This is important.

What is the goal of navigating? To prevent the group from getting lost by making a Wisdom (Survival) check.
What is the goal of mapmaking? To allow the group to track their progress and not get lost. No check.

Now, maybe you think that someone is making Survival checks (which is used for tracking, hunting wild game, moving through the natural world, predicting weather and avoiding natural hazards) to navigate through a catacomb or maybe you think someone mapping a forest where everything looks the same allows them to avoid getting lost. However, I think it is blatantly clear that map-making is meant for dungeons and navigating is meant for overland travel.

Also, would you accept as a player a DM who allows you to be ambushed, when you specifically are looking for ambushes, because the enemies were hiding behind a secret door and you weren't looking for secret doors? To me, this is again a total break of the player's intent and just playing word games to ensure defeat.

Finally, I would note that there is no special action for noticing secret doors or looking for traps. Both of those and looking for ambushes are all covered under simply Noticing Threats and the rules for passive perception.

I don’t see anything wrong with that summary, except perhaps that you neglected to mention the fact that the description of the environment would have contained clues as to the danger inherent in standing in the center of the room. Clues the players might or might not pick up on, true enough, but it’s not as if they’re forced to guess blindly. They have the information, it’s up to them how they will use it.

They only have the information if they pick up on the clue. If they do not, they are blindly guessing.

Yes, and so does approach. That’s why I ask for both.

Except approach can overshadow and destroy intent. Intent doesn't matter. Approach does.

Here you have added something to the player’s description, which is something I ask for specifics in order to avoid having happen.

You didn’t only ignore their intent, you changed their stated approach.

But it was the player, not me, who (hypothetically) said they moved to the center of the room. It was you, not the player, who (hypothetically) said the character shoved people aside and interrupted the conversation.

I did not change their approach at all. They stated they were moving across the room. How else could I have possibly ruled it except to have them move across the room?

After all, you never said that the player moving into the center of the trap room needed to declare how they were moving. Clearly if they had been moving slowly, examining each brick as they went, they woulnd't have triggered the trap. But that didn't matter, they said they move to the center of the room, you assumed they did so in a manner which meant they could not possibly see the trap before they triggered it.

In both cases the player can complain "but I didn't say I was moving [insert description here]" and I assume in the instance of the trap you would shrug and say that they should have said differently. The only difference is that in-character my version is more obviously a bad idea. But nothing about the process has changed.

In this specific scenario contrived specifically to illustrate that sometimes this DMing style can result in PCs setting off traps? Yes. There are infinitely many possible scenarios in which the specifics of goal and approach matter for reasons other than figuring out if the character sets off a trap.

And there are infinitely many possible scenarios in which the specifics of the approach do not matter.

I told you. Specific enough that if the player and I both play out the action like a little movie in our heads, those movies would look pretty similar.

So if in my movie the character went left to right and in your movie they went right to left, then you haven't received enough detail because our movies would differ. So would a movie where one person is making notes in a pad of paper and the other person is leaving chalk marks next to the items as they search them. Very different looking, so you'll need to know whether or not the player does that, correct?

I’m not dismissing intent, it’s one of two essential components of an action declaration. But nor am I glossing over approach, the other essential component. If I am accounting for both, I see no way that trying to find a trap by moving to the center of a room, when there is a trap that will be set off by someone standing in the center of the room, could have any result other than setting off the trap.

And I have trivially given you that way. They notice it before they step on it, view a detail they notice because of the change in perspective or from getting closer. That is the way that it could have a different result other than setting off the trap.

But to reach that point, you cannot have the approach invalidate the intent.

Ok. That’s your preference. I’m not going to force you to play that way if you don’t want to.

You couldn't if you tried.

It has absolutely not been my experience that asking to make a check has an equal chance of failure to describing an action in terms of goal and approach with the intent of achieving success without a roll.

And it has absolutely been my experience. Because over and over again, the intent didn't matter, only the actions I stated.

So, maybe instead of just assuming your way will almost always lead to success, imagine for a moment that your way leads to a percentage chance for success or failure, just like rolling the dice.

Yeah, some. Skill most people will have picked up in childhood.

Yes, and accordingly, characters with such skill will be much more likely to succeed when success is uncertain.

Stealth is more complicated than what 8 year olds can do. If you refuse to accept this, you will never understand the position.

When they encounter conflict in Moria, yes, I do think Gimli wants to resolve that conflict as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So Gimli had zero interest in learning what happened to his family and just wanted to pass through the mines and get to Mount Doom as fast as possible? Weird. I remember that actually being something he cared about a lot. Meanwhile, I don't think Samwise cared at all about the mines or what happened.

Except, again, the result actually made the story and the world less compelling, because character motivations be damned, I rolled low, so I get no progress!

Hmmm, your intent not mattering affected the story? I wonder where that could tie into our ongoing conversation?

Now, I will agree, failing forward is better than failing with no progress, but that has little to nothing to do with anything except all of us acknowleding fail forward is superior to stonewalling.

Doesn’t seem like it, since listening to the DM and making an informed decision about how to go about influencing the character resulted in exactly the same thing that would have happened if I’d just played Candy Crush in another tab until the DM stopped talking and then pressed the button to make the random number pop up on the screen.

Huh, wonder if you missed something that was telegraphed? It certainly sounds like that is something that sometimes happens in games. I've heard that repeatedly from you after all.

And, well, you can't get too upset, because the DM decides how the resolve the situation as per the rules, you've said that too.

Weird how this one example of things not working like you intended seemed to have struck such a nerve with you.

What I care about is the world responding to my input in a believable way, which in this instance (and many others in that campaign; I really didn’t care for that DM’s style) didn’t happen.

The DM clearly thought the world was responding to your input in a believable way, why else would they rule the way they did?

If that was the case, he did not communicate that at all. The general impression was definitely one of a pretty compelling argument, tailored to appeal to the NPC’s values. Again, I’m not saying I should have been automatically successful, but the results felt very incoherent with the narrative.

But you feel strongly enough to state that if you were not going to get some sort of mechanical benefit in exchange for your engagement, then your engagement with the game was pointless and you should have been playing Candy Crush instead.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So, the problem with that statement is you've already given a load of evidence that demonstrates that the statement is false. Because you yourself have already provided the counter example.

no i didn't...

You yourself brought up the situation that one of the DMs at your table has a house rule of "if you touch the lava you die, no exceptions" and you said that you didn't agree with the rule and wouldn't run the rule that way, but that since he was the DM that was the rule. So you have already conceded that you don't in fact walk out of tables where ultimately the DM decides the rules, because have already described how that isn't a deal breaker for you. It's not like Rule Zero is a terribly controversial assertion.

I mean by your reading every house rule make the DM "Ultimately I decide" without considering that every thing I have said is us all being equals and us all discussing these things... and I can not stress this enough WE ALL DM... at no point did I say this was a deal breaker... we all have our own little things (same DM uses flanking too and I don't) but it's not "My way or the highway" its, here are some ideas... and we all submit ideas and we figure our what one sounds best... (I know i have told you that before)...

if the other 4 of us all said "Hey, we don't like this rule" I have no doubt he would change it... it just isn't something we ask him to (we just need to remember when both games end up near lava flows the rules are different.

By the way when I said earlier I was talking to another DM in the group about expanding my DC11 if you are train auto success... yeah that was him... and he adopted MY house rule on that just a few years ago cause he saw it work so well.

I had one of the guys propose we use crit fails (we have tried before and pre covid i even played in some short other games without this entire group) I can not stress enough he will be the DM, he wanted it, we vetoed it... he didn't say "I'm the DM Ultimately I decide" he did ask for us to keep an open mind and brings it up sometimes... but we don't mind talking it through. He even tries different ways to do it... so far no one is in for it.

And at this point, I can no longer treat you as someone that is speaking in good faith.

lol that's funny from someone that seems to take everything I say twist it to the worst possible meaning, then build upon it by adding more assuming I must be the worst DM ever...

So we are done. I'm out.

if you don't respond I will just continue talking to others. good gaming

I didn't outline a scenario.

yes you did... you assumed the DM told us we had to do it. You assumed it was the DMs idea at all... and you assumed if we decided we didn't wat it to continue he was going to pull some "Ultimately I decide"

I outlined no details of how it came to be

without knowing how it came to be...

and made no assumptions about it.

then how could you outline details for something I said in passing without details and you were not there for... you did what people say I do at games... instead of excepting the small passing comment you added details... and you made them out to be bad.

The point of my comment is that it doesn't matter how it happened or came about.

then why make up details that were not true about a game you didn't play?

The point is that for a lengthy period the game was directed by the DM.

lol... I don't know where you get this from. we VERY rarely follow what the DM lays out. Not when I DM not when I play.

I get that there was table agreement to get on the rails and stay on the rails and it wasn't opposed on the table.

i'm sorry we broke any rails (if they were there) game session 1 when we decided the gnolls were right.

That was obvious from your description, but that doesn't make it less railroading.

again... this was not something the DM planned and told us... it was US taking interest in an NPC and him (DM) acting weird so after the 2nd time we asked and he said "He was just supposed to be in the background... but he is the Diviner" we just said okay, continued in game without acting on that knowledge.

I understand the aesthetic of play that motivates those sorts of table contracts, but it doesn't make it less railroading.

how can it be a railroad when the DM doesn't plan it, and panics when it starts?

Achieving a big villain reveal is hard because the players are likely to get suspicious.

I don't care how suspicious a player gets... in fact it can be fun after session to talk about these things

But if you have a table agreement that says the characters can't get suspicious,

we do not

then you aren't actually in character.

we are... and I can't stress enough it was a blast... especially when I yelled "You saved my life against the Death KNight...we were best friends" during the final battle... my character feeling betrayed.

You are metagaming that the characters wouldn't know or gets suspicious by fiat.

or... and try this one on, he never did anything that would make us suspicious during game...

And that lets you achieve a transcript of play that is very hard to achieve with organic in character play.

except it DID happen organic in character.

Which is what railroading is for, is it gives you ways to make a story that minimizes the chance the story will "go wrong".

I promise you the DM would give you (as I can about most to all my campaigns) a VERY long list of things that not only went wrong but went WTF!!?!?!?!?

 

[Charlaquin]

One of the reasons I prefer Moldvay Basic DnD. This is an example of 5th edition adding a meaningless mechanic. The "mapper" and mapping is recognized as a useful visual aid for players while, at the same time, characters living in the world don't need to map every ten feet of it to know where they are going.

characters in 5e don’t need to map every 10 feet to know where they’re going either. But they do need to make a map if they want to have a map as an item in their inventory which they could perhaps sell, or a character could use grant advantage on their Wisdom (Survival) check to navigate.

Wild to me how people will gut the game’s exploration system because they “don’t need” any of the mechanic in it ans then complain that the exploration pillar is anemic.

 

[Charlaquin]

You don't engage in critical discussions to convince other people to like things. Therefore, that isn't a concern.

Indeed, and since that avenue of discussion has lead nowhere, I no longer care to pursue it.

None of this answers the question I asked.

Do you understand that a different DM, by picturing "looking" instead of "seeing", can see an action that would be rolled?

We can debate whether or not a DM could determine that the break in the action allows them to make an active check instead of it being considered part of their repeated and continual check afterwards. But first I need to know if you can understand why a DM might take that action as something that can be rolled.

I literally just told you that I have understood this the entire time.

Because you originally said that you make random items that have "indeterminate" importance. We then got the random arrow of Dragonslaying that had no importance until the players randomly fought a dragon. I said that item was therefore not important, and that I would have put it in as a clue to the deeper story going in at the location. You have since indicated that you do the same thing, you roll these items randomly, but then you tie them into the... whatever you want to call the things going on at the location, since you seem to utterly reject the terms I would use to describe it.

Now you are saying that since that item is tied to the location in a logical way to inform what is going on at that location that you wouldn't gate it behind a check? Which is true, because it would be gated behind the players declaring actions to auto-succeed, but I still don't think that is what you meant.

So which is it? Do you know or do you not know which items are important enough to be clues to the events happening at the location and its history? You keep saying you have no idea until the players declare it is important, but that you also tie the items logically into the location, which means to me you have figured out they are important.

Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about at this point.

Two things

1) The story of how Bob the Fighter gained Experience Points in random unconnected encounters is utterly boring. No one I'm playing with is playing to get levels and experience. No one is interested in that. Do we want levels? Sure, but it isn't the goal of play.

2) We don't use experience points or trainers. I want to encourage people to engage with the world, but since I can't figure out how much XP talking to the washer woman and developing a budding relationship is worth, it isn't worth it for me to use XP. We've used milestones basically since before 5e.

Great, so once again we have arrived at “we have different preferences.” So glad I’ve spent the last three freaking days hashing that out with you

Maybe instead of continously saying "I don't know" or "I don't understand" or "My players decide" you could actually give me some counter-examples to help highlight where our definitions aren't meeting? Because I've tried giving you example after example, and you either declare you don't do that, because your players decide, or you don't understand.

I’ve been giving examples of things throughout this conversation. I don’t know what you want me to give you an example of at this point.

Right, because leaving a murderous goblin at your back would NEVER backfire. The fire plan is the only way I can think to get it to attack two people outside the room instead of one person in the room, I guess maybe you could try and set an ambush, but since you would be continously and repeatedly looking for the goblin to spring the ambush, it would be a passive check, and we've already proven that is going to fail.

If that’s your assessment of the situation, you would be welcome to try the fire plan. I still think it was a perfectly fine plan. As an aside, it’s really strange to me that you assume a passive check is always going to fail. Though I suppose it might explain why you refuse to accept it as a means of resolving an attempt to find something by looking around.

But it does affect the claim of you, in choosing to have them fail, ignoring their intent.
So, by declaring their action to try and get an auto-success, they instead got an auto-failure. Because they picked the wrong approach.

So, do you still not comprehend how someone could feel like rolling the dice is equally fair, since it is never an auto-fail?

I’ve never not been able to comprehend it, I just think it’s bizarre. Seems like your paranoia over the possibility of failure is holding you back from seeking success. A common enough phenomenon, I guess.

And you do nothing but repeat yourself, which seriously resembles not caring beyond getting to trigger the trap on the player who made the wrong call. Maybe we don't accuse people of things and actually address the points presented? Might get more progress that way.

I don’t think that’s evidenced in our conversation.

Firstly, the rules are supposed to cover multiple scenarios in travel. From overland to travel through a dungeon. This is important.

What is the goal of navigating? To prevent the group from getting lost by making a Wisdom (Survival) check.
What is the goal of mapmaking? To allow the group to track their progress and not get lost. No check.

Now, maybe you think that someone is making Survival checks (which is used for tracking, hunting wild game, moving through the natural world, predicting weather and avoiding natural hazards) to navigate through a catacomb or maybe you think someone mapping a forest where everything looks the same allows them to avoid getting lost. However, I think it is blatantly clear that map-making is meant for dungeons and navigating is meant for overland travel.

Bavigating is certainly not typically necessary in dungeons. Mapping is quite useful in both cases. Point being, there are many distinct exploration activities a character might engage in that would preclude keeping watch for danger (and thereby making a passive perception check), so it is indeed a choice.

Also, would you accept as a player a DM who allows you to be ambushed, when you specifically are looking for ambushes, because the enemies were hiding behind a secret door and you weren't looking for secret doors? To me, this is again a total break of the player's intent and just playing word games to ensure defeat.

I would disagree that such a ruling is consistent with either the letter or intent of the rules, but I would accept the ruling because that’s the DM’s call to make, not mine. If I often found myself disagreeing with the DM’s rulings I might bring it up at a later time, and/or decide not to continue playing in their game.

Finally, I would note that there is no special action for noticing secret doors or looking for traps. Both of those and looking for ambushes are all covered under simply Noticing Threats and the rules for passive perception.

A secret door is not a threat, so I would not consider that the same activity as Noticing Threats, but yes, looking for ambushes and traps are both covered under the same activity, which I misremembered as being called “keeping watch for danger.” Looking for secret doors is not specifically listed as a travel activity, but it is given specifically as an example of an action that one could use a passive check to resolve performing repeatedly.

They only have the information if they pick up on the clue. If they do not, they are blindly guessing.

The clue is the information. The possibility that they may misinterpret the information does not mean that the decisions they make were not informed decisions.

Except approach can overshadow and destroy intent. Intent doesn't matter. Approach does.

An approach can certainly prevent intent from being achievable. If my intent is to tie my shoes and my approach is to yell at the laces to move, my approach has no chance of succeeding at achieving my goal. But both things would be necessary information for someone to determine if my overall action could succeed or fail.

I did not change their approach at all. They stated they were moving across the room. How else could I have possibly ruled it except to have them move across the room?

There are many ways one might move across a room without shoving people. If you felt the action declaration was not specific enough, you should have asked for further clarification. But what you did instead was established a more specific approach that the player did not specify, which again, is exactly what my method of action resolution is designed to prevent from happening.

After all, you never said that the player moving into the center of the trap room needed to declare how they were moving. Clearly if they had been moving slowly, examining each brick as they went, they woulnd't have triggered the trap.

My understanding was that the trap is triggered by standing in the center of the room. How slowly you walk to the center of the room will have no effect on whether or not the trap that triggered by standing in the center of the room will be triggered when you stand in the center of the room.

But that didn't matter, they said they move to the center of the room, you assumed they did so in a manner which meant they could not possibly see the trap before they triggered it.

What they are able to see was already established in the initial description. If they wanted to change what they could see, they would need to have interacted with the environment in some way.

In both cases the player can complain "but I didn't say I was moving [insert description here]" and I assume in the instance of the trap you would shrug and say that they should have said differently. The only difference is that in-character my version is more obviously a bad idea. But nothing about the process has changed.

What could the player possibly have said differently about how they moved to the center of the room that would not have resulted in the trap that triggers when someone stands in the center of the room from triggering once they got to the center of the room?

And there are infinitely many possible scenarios in which the specifics of the approach do not matter.

That’s just factually untrue. The specifics of the approach are necessary to determine if it can succeed in achieving the goal, or if it can fail to do so.

So if in my movie the character went left to right and in your movie they went right to left, then you haven't received enough detail because our movies would differ. So would a movie where one person is making notes in a pad of paper and the other person is leaving chalk marks next to the items as they search them. Very different looking, so you'll need to know whether or not the player does that, correct?

Probably, though I’ve lost track of the example scenario you’re talking about here.

And I have trivially given you that way. They notice it before they step on it, view a detail they notice because of the change in perspective or from getting closer. That is the way that it could have a different result other than setting off the trap.

So, by them not completing the action they declared?

But to reach that point, you cannot have the approach invalidate the intent.

I don’t know what this means.

You couldn't if you tried.

What a strange thing to say.

And it has absolutely been my experience. Because over and over again, the intent didn't matter, only the actions I stated.

So, maybe instead of just assuming your way will almost always lead to success, imagine for a moment that your way leads to a percentage chance for success or failure, just like rolling the dice.

It does neither. It often results in automatic success. Sometimes, it results in needing to make a roll of some sort to succeed. And occasionally, it results in failure, though fairly rarely, and more often than not, inconsequentially.

Stealth is more complicated than what 8 year olds can do. If you refuse to accept this, you will never understand the position.

I haven’t claimed otherwise.

So Gimli had zero interest in learning what happened to his family and just wanted to pass through the mines and get to Mount Doom as fast as possible? Weird. I remember that actually being something he cared about a lot. Meanwhile, I don't think Samwise cared at all about the mines or what happened.

You ignored the part where I said “when they encountered conflict.”

Hmmm, your intent not mattering affected the story? I wonder where that could tie into our ongoing conversation?

My intent did matter, the issue was my approach not mattering.

Huh, wonder if you missed something that was telegraphed? It certainly sounds like that is something that sometimes happens in games. I've heard that repeatedly from you after all.

no. This DM was not one for telegraphing.

And, well, you can't get too upset, because the DM decides how the resolve the situation as per the rules, you've said that too.

Yes, and I accepted that ruling. I accepted a lot of rulings he made that I disagreed with. Occasionally, we discussed those disagreements outside of game time. Eventually, I decided the game was not for me and left.

Weird how this one example of things not working like you intended seemed to have struck such a nerve with you.

It was one example that I mentioned, because it was relevant to the discussion. There were many more examples of rulings I thought were poor ones in that campaign. That one wasn’t even particularly egregious, just kind of annoying. I could give you some worse ones if you want. Ultimately though, nah, not a big deal. I decided that group wasn’t a good fit for me and moved on. I think the campaign is actually still going, and I’m sure the folks who stayed did so because they enjoyed it. Different strokes.

The DM clearly thought the world was responding to your input in a believable way, why else would they rule the way they did?

Literally because I rolled low,

But you feel strongly enough to state that if you were not going to get some sort of mechanical benefit in exchange for your engagement, then your engagement with the game was pointless and you should have been playing Candy Crush instead.

I said it would have made no difference had I been playing Candy Crush instead, which is true. I happen to know that other players in that campaign regularly goofed off in other tabs. It bothered me quite a bit that actually engaging in the game was treated no differently than tabbing out until the DM shut up and then pushing one of the “make something else happen” buttons on the character sheet. It did not make for a believable world, because the world didn’t really respond to player inputs, it just did whatever the octopus in the DM’s brain decided the random numbers meant would happen next.

 

[Reynard]

characters in 5e don’t need to map every 10 feet to know where they’re going either.

Why not? There's nothing special about 5E that says players don't need to map.

 

[Charlaquin]

Why not? There's nothing special about 5E that says players don't need to map.

Huh? I’m talking about the characters making a map.

 

[Reynard]

Huh? I’m talking about the characters making a map.

Ok. I misunderstood you. But I would say if the characters don't map, their fate is their own.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ok. I misunderstood you. But I would say if the characters don't map, their fate is their own.

Yes, I agree. I mentioned mapping was an exploration activity and someone responded that Moldvay Basic was so much better because it didn’t have this unnecessary step and mapping was a player activity and a useful visual aid instead of something the characters had to do to know where they are. It was weird.

 

[robus]

Maybe the DM thought your speech completely missed the mark and they would have auto-failed you, but figured you put enough effort in to warrant a check.

Isn’t this the “magic words“ hoop that we all say we decry?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why not? There's nothing special about 5E that says players don't need to map.

This assumes they really needed to in prior editions, either. The fact the game started out that way didn't make it necessary in any way.