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"I make a perception check."
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8729954" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>Your argument was that they almost certainly have 14 passive perceptions at most, so they only have a 40% chance of success. My rebuttal is that they could easily have greater than a 14 passive perception. The low chance of success is a product of their party composition and build choices, not something inherent to the scenario of trying to find a hidden goblin or the way I run such a scenario.</p><p></p><p>If they took Chef they would probably have a 14 passive perception. My argument isn’t that they can’t or shouldn’t have a 14 passive perception, it’s that they could easily have had greater than 14, and your argument hinges on the 14.</p><p></p><p>I mean, that’s all fine, but you understand I run the game differently, and the resource management game is all part of a big interconnected system, yes? Money is part of that system, it’s one of the resources the players have to manage. Maybe that isn’t your cup of tea, but “the players will always choose to hire NPC help because gold is useless anyway” just isn’t true in my games.</p><p></p><p>Sorry you struggle with that, I guess?</p><p></p><p>I don’t think looking for people to help because the dungeon is a dangerous place and you want to insure you have all your bases covered is inorganic.</p><p></p><p>Ok. Well, it’s definitely more interesting than doing chores in my game.</p><p></p><p>I guess, if the purpose of the secret door is to set up ambushes, that might be plausible. I typically use them for short cuts, hiding spaces, and hidden treasure.</p><p></p><p>I didn’t assume you weren’t looking at the ground, what I did was not assume looking at the ground was your approach to looking for traps.</p><p></p><p>That was a bad call on your DM’s part. Had it been me, I wouldn’t have assumed you purchased all the supplies you would need before heading out, but I also wouldn’t have just said “ok, 7 days in you run out of food and water.” I would have said something like “are you sure you want to head out before gathering any additional supplies?” because that would obviously be a crazy thing to do.</p><p></p><p>Well here’s the disconnect, then. A goal is enough for you because you assume the characters have all the necessary information and make the best decisions they can about how to achieve that goal, given that information. That doesn’t work for me because for me making decisions in-character is what the game is all about. I don’t know about you, but to me “roleplaying” means imagining yourself as someone else and/or in a fictional scenario and making decisions as you imagine you or that other person would in that scenario. If I assume you have all the information and make the best decision you can, I have assumed all the roleplaying out of that scenario. As a player, I want to be the one to assess the information that has been conveyed to me via what my character can directly perceive, and try to make the decision I imagine they would make; I don’t want the DM to just assume I make the best decision or ask me to roll a die and then tell me what decision I made based on the result. I’m playing D&D because I want to make those decisions myself. Likewise, when I DM, I don’t want to take the power to make those decisions away from the players.</p><p></p><p>But I want to arrive that conclusion myself, not have you spoon feed it to me. I want to immerse myself in the character and try to see the world through their eyes instead of from a detached third-person perspective. Just tell me what my character perceives, I’ll draw my own conclusions from that information. That, to me, is what roleplaying is all about.</p><p></p><p>I literally am asking the PCs to bypass it. The traps are there <em>to be</em> overcome. It’s a game, a series of challenges for the players to try to overcome using some combination of skill, strategy, and luck. This and the above are the two components of what an RPG is: roleplaying and game. Immersing yourself in the character and facing challenges through the lens of that character’s perspective, making decisions as you imagine they would do in order to overcome those challenges.</p><p></p><p>Now, of course, we want the fictional world to have some sense of verisimilitude to it. Obviously whoever set the traps up in-universe didn’t want them to be found. But it’s easy enough to come up with explanations for why the traps are the way they are once we’ve set them up the way we want to create the desired gameplay experience. We can lean on the fact that presumably whoever set up the traps wanted to be able to bypass them themselves, so they would have included ways to do so. Cues that they, as the traps’ designers, would be able to recognize, and teach to anyone else that they wanted to allow past the traps. Then we just contrive scenarios to teach those cues to the players environmentally. In game design parlance, we add a tutorial for the traps.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8729954, member: 6779196"] Your argument was that they almost certainly have 14 passive perceptions at most, so they only have a 40% chance of success. My rebuttal is that they could easily have greater than a 14 passive perception. The low chance of success is a product of their party composition and build choices, not something inherent to the scenario of trying to find a hidden goblin or the way I run such a scenario. If they took Chef they would probably have a 14 passive perception. My argument isn’t that they can’t or shouldn’t have a 14 passive perception, it’s that they could easily have had greater than 14, and your argument hinges on the 14. I mean, that’s all fine, but you understand I run the game differently, and the resource management game is all part of a big interconnected system, yes? Money is part of that system, it’s one of the resources the players have to manage. Maybe that isn’t your cup of tea, but “the players will always choose to hire NPC help because gold is useless anyway” just isn’t true in my games. Sorry you struggle with that, I guess? I don’t think looking for people to help because the dungeon is a dangerous place and you want to insure you have all your bases covered is inorganic. Ok. Well, it’s definitely more interesting than doing chores in my game. I guess, if the purpose of the secret door is to set up ambushes, that might be plausible. I typically use them for short cuts, hiding spaces, and hidden treasure. I didn’t assume you weren’t looking at the ground, what I did was not assume looking at the ground was your approach to looking for traps. That was a bad call on your DM’s part. Had it been me, I wouldn’t have assumed you purchased all the supplies you would need before heading out, but I also wouldn’t have just said “ok, 7 days in you run out of food and water.” I would have said something like “are you sure you want to head out before gathering any additional supplies?” because that would obviously be a crazy thing to do. Well here’s the disconnect, then. A goal is enough for you because you assume the characters have all the necessary information and make the best decisions they can about how to achieve that goal, given that information. That doesn’t work for me because for me making decisions in-character is what the game is all about. I don’t know about you, but to me “roleplaying” means imagining yourself as someone else and/or in a fictional scenario and making decisions as you imagine you or that other person would in that scenario. If I assume you have all the information and make the best decision you can, I have assumed all the roleplaying out of that scenario. As a player, I want to be the one to assess the information that has been conveyed to me via what my character can directly perceive, and try to make the decision I imagine they would make; I don’t want the DM to just assume I make the best decision or ask me to roll a die and then tell me what decision I made based on the result. I’m playing D&D because I want to make those decisions myself. Likewise, when I DM, I don’t want to take the power to make those decisions away from the players. But I want to arrive that conclusion myself, not have you spoon feed it to me. I want to immerse myself in the character and try to see the world through their eyes instead of from a detached third-person perspective. Just tell me what my character perceives, I’ll draw my own conclusions from that information. That, to me, is what roleplaying is all about. I literally am asking the PCs to bypass it. The traps are there [I]to be[/I] overcome. It’s a game, a series of challenges for the players to try to overcome using some combination of skill, strategy, and luck. This and the above are the two components of what an RPG is: roleplaying and game. Immersing yourself in the character and facing challenges through the lens of that character’s perspective, making decisions as you imagine they would do in order to overcome those challenges. Now, of course, we want the fictional world to have some sense of verisimilitude to it. Obviously whoever set the traps up in-universe didn’t want them to be found. But it’s easy enough to come up with explanations for why the traps are the way they are once we’ve set them up the way we want to create the desired gameplay experience. We can lean on the fact that presumably whoever set up the traps wanted to be able to bypass them themselves, so they would have included ways to do so. Cues that they, as the traps’ designers, would be able to recognize, and teach to anyone else that they wanted to allow past the traps. Then we just contrive scenarios to teach those cues to the players environmentally. In game design parlance, we add a tutorial for the traps. [/QUOTE]
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