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

[GMforPowergamers]

Let me help...

Those things are actually not always certain. It depends on the situation and what the player declares as the goal and approach for their PC.

no help

 

[Swarmkeeper]

no help

So you want to forego advantage on the check?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Probably not, but if I might make a suggestion I feel it doesn't end well because you don't actually offer to me a competing view of what immersion is or how it is achieved. You don't give definitions. You don't explain why I'm wrong. Ect.

okay to me being immersed is being IN character... but so often your ways seem to me (IMO) break us out of in game logic to instead worry about who OOC has the best chance to do something... that is something I am not interested in. I want the in game, the in character to matter more

In this sense I mean it as, did the thing happen in the "book" or "movie" of the game or was it part of the process that created that "book" or movie?

okay so i was right good. I don't write transcripts (although I could I would probably have kurt do it since he takes the most detailed notes)

Well, did where the fart and monte python jokes something said in the imagined universe?

no... they are us friends joking (most times)

And I presume you mean that your fiancé and not the fiancé of your character. If they occurred in the real world but not in imaged game world, then they didn't end up on the transcript.

yes I mean me the DM pausing for a moment to say goodnight as she goes to bed.

So hard to say, but I think the answer is, "Yes, I mean more than that." Now, keep in mind the stuff I'm excluding isn't necessarily bad, and often it is necessary, but it isn't part of the imagined world.

yeah i assume we all have 100 distractions or at least potential ones (some more important then others)each game night

So we're also going to exclude attempts to clarify the fictional positioning like, "Is the orc on this side of the table, or the other side?" or "About how wide is the door?" The character wouldn't need to ask that because the character can see the orc or the door. But the player can't, so he needs clarification in order to see the same imagined world the GM sees.

okay... so I am with you so far.

OotS has an ongoing joke about this in that in world the magic words that are chanted for spells are literally the names of the spells.

yes I love and laugh at order of the stick all the time... but I have never (on purpose) used it as a refrence for how i want my games to play out if you had written them as a book.

If a player needs to read the rules to a spell out loud though, that isn't immersive. It's sometimes necessary if I forget the language of the spell, but it's not immersive. Only things that actually happen in the imagined space are immersive.

okay we somewhat agree we just disagree on the whole "everytime you rely on player instead of character skill is immersive breaking" that I see. (yes before you say it I know you disagree)

Because "I use diplomacy" doesn't help me type out the transcript of the game in the way "I use charm person on the guard does".

bilbo fast talked his way in... done... there it is in the transcript.
more flowery would be "with his honeyed tongue bilbo worked his way through the guards"

Oh good gosh no, no, no. The difference between the two is serious story versus parody. If you set up a problem in a book or Netflix TV show with a non-trivial solution and then you hand wave past that, that is super weak writing.

I'm sorry there is nothing about cutting from one scene to another that makes it a parody... in fact the general rule is if we don't see the plan the plan will work, if we do see the plan it wont... because we only cover (in films and show) once so if the plan works we skip it...but if we are going to show the details we don't show the planning.

Leverage is a Heist show that does this all the time, but as I rewatched quantum leap and star gate (also no paradoys) they used this cut alot around commercial breaks

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Different people have different ideas of what is or isn’t certain, and will rule differently on different actions. That’s something you kinda got to get used to if you play D&D with different people.

except it makes having these conversations infuriating

"I would have them roll for X"
"AANyone checking would make it no roll"
and
"You have to describe"(in diffrent levels of detail) "HOW you do it so i know if you auto pass auto fail or roll and the DC may be diffrent based on approch"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The game is a conversation.

100% true... I would add in most cases it is a conversation with your friends.

In my case right now 3/4 of my group are the oldest best friends I have

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I want to change perspective and come at this as a player for a minute, since I GM a lot more than I play. It might help me better understand that needs and intents of those players that declare "I roll perception! ::clatter::"

If I am a player and in a circumstance that feel precarious, my first instinct is to declare something like, "I draw my weapons and prepare for anything." If I am being honest, that's pretty vague (except the weapons part).

I want to ask @Charlaquin and @GMforPowergamers and anyone else how you would respond to that declaration.

I would 9 out of 10 times say okay, and just make a mental note your weapon is out...

but I have to again go with context mattering a lot...

if you are in the middle of my city, they may get an 'are you sure' and if it is in the kings court it might get "what...are you kidding why?"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Except, unless your description is perfect (and who's is?) you will know the layout better than the player. Further, this is another way of saying, my character is better at this than I (the player) am, can I get some help.

again this is about hide... but my buddy kurt is like an expert at reading small tells on DMs (the best part is that the people who go to casino's to play poker are nnot as good at picking up on all of it) also he is a published author

might as well plug for a friend Amazon.com: No Laughing Matter: An O.C.L.T. Tie-in Novel (Edición audio Audible): Kurt M. Criscione, Graydon Schlichter, Crossroad Press: Audible Books & Originals

who has been VERY expert in describing looking for and disarming traps, and kinda good at face type interactions (maybe not best but top 3 at least) so for years he played the rogue...and before that the thief. (JUST FYI he also takes the notes) but since the last 10 years he has played many many new types of characters... he still gives detailed descriptions more often then not, sometimes a bit over the top but still detailed.

Making HIM roll an investigation to find and a thieves or tinker tool check to disarm is MUCH less likely even when he has high +s then if he can just talk to the DM and describe.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Hard to make a good ruling on out of the context of a game.

see we can agree on some things

I would say if you did this during travel or exploration, it sounds to me like a declaration that you want to keep watch for danger, which would mean until you shift focus to some other task, any creatures attempting to ambush you would need to beat your passive Wis (Perception) with a Dex (Stealth) check to surprise you.

wait... would not an NPC have to make a dex (stealth) (or other in some circumstance) check DC passive Perception anyway?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would expect deciding where to hide is a part, maybe a central part when in a hurry and needing to hide now!, of the Stealth skill. My real-life Stealth let me know that one can't hide by just running behind the back of a person and mimicking his moves, and that closing your eyes doesn't make you more stealthy. At the table, I'd be unhappy if my skilled rogue mastering the art of not being seen was having to roll (and potentially fail) because the untrained barbarian's player identified that hiding behind the curtain was the ideal place (automatic success) while I chose to have my rogue hide under the table.

this is 100% immersion breaking for me...

Same if I were to use Stealth to get past a guard. It might very well be extremely stupid in real life to throw a rock at an armour to make a noise and use the time he's looking toward the noise to speed toward the next room, because it warns the guard that something is odd and he probably won't leave his post to look at the armour scratching his head but just glance quickly toward the armour and put his hand on his sword, warily (or it could be a tried and true tactics of infiltrators, for all I know, but let's assume it's bad). So basically, doing that is both a flourish in description and a bad idea that should warrant disadvantage, compared to Bobby Barbarian whose player just said "I roll Stealth to get in the next room, err, stealthily?". I'd say my skilled rogue would know if the stone trick is a valid one or not. Especially since, irrespective of the validity of the trick in real life, it works in fiction (Plague's Tale, Thief...) and might work in the genre-emulating gameworld.

again... we had someone earlier in the thread drop the idea of someone useing something from an old movie that the DM thought was dumb (I don't dissagree... it was not a good plan) but the DM in the example let the player (that in the example would have a great roll if given a roll) do it without warning them even if the character should at least in theory know better.

I am not pleading for not describing rolls, but that part of the skill is knowing how to do things without player adjudication. One wouldn't ask "do you chant the song of revealing first or do you do the magic-detecting gesture first when using Arcana to assess if the sword is magical?"

any time a player says "My character has a good skill, but i don't know how to do this" the DM should (if they care about immersion or character skill) do somthinge... maybe just give the roll, maybe help by advisiing "Well you know hiding in x or y is okay but you are sure if you hide in z it will almost gurantee"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Absent an additional context about this precarious circumstance,

i think we MIGHT all agree this example needs context...