D&D 5E (2014) I reject your reality and substitute my own!

[hopeless]

Isn't that where Passive Perception, Insight or Investigation comes in?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Regarding the OP, to some extent all Illusion spells cast by the PCs have this property. Unless detected, they become very real to the NPCs/monsters and the DM then must play out this new “reality” even if just for a short while.

In a broader sense, any action taken by a PC that causes the DM to improv could be argued to be altering the reality of the world. So the Urchin background ability to effectively “summon” secret doors is a DM improv decision to perform some minor setting creation to generate details that hadn’t existed before. Or the old chestnut: “is there a chandelier, you wonder? Hell yeah there is a chandelier!” even though one was not imagined before as part of the scene.

So maybe the whole of shared storytelling with the improv “yes and” concept thrown in supports the OP’s premise. Only it’s not truly a rejection - it’s an expectation.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Regarding the OP, to some extent all Illusion spells cast by the PCs have this property. Unless detected, they become very real to the NPCs/monsters and the DM then must play out this new “reality” even if just for a short while.

In a broader sense, any action taken by a PC that causes the DM to improv could be argued to be altering the reality of the world. So the Urchin background ability to effectively “summon” secret doors is a DM improv decision to perform some minor setting creation to generate details that hadn’t existed before. Or the old chestnut: “is there a chandelier, you wonder? Hell yeah there is a chandelier!” even though one was not imagined before as part of the scene.

So maybe the whole of shared storytelling with the improv “yes and” concept thrown in supports the OP’s premise. Only it’s not truly a rejection - it’s an expectation.

Agree on illusions but the Urchin or similar thing is an appeal to the DM not a substitution of the game narrative element with another.

 

[Cadence]

Back in the late 70s/early 80s there were lots of books put out by individuals and small ad-hoc publishers for D&D. The "Tome of Mighty Magic" in 1982 has this 20th (!?) level wonder:

Eradication
This spell is very rare and all powerful. The victim will cease to exist, will vanish from the multiverse and even from the minds of those who knew him or knew of him. Great deeds accomplished by the victim will be accredited to someone else. Items possessed by the victim will be scattered to various hoards of powerful monsters (who will remember them being there all along, of course!) in the far flung reaches of the multiverse.
Note: There is no creature living who remembers ever successfully casting this spell. Mortals get no saving throw. Divine creatures are unaffected.

Some more on that book is at Review - The Tome of Mighty Magic (1982 flashback)

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's one thing to talk about the advice in the DMG, it's another to justify a style and say "you're playing wrong because of what it says on page XX of YYY".

I think it's obvious from the text that they're warning DMs to not ask for rolls more than necessary which is good advice. I think it's a leap to go from "[don't ask for a] Charisma check to order a mug of ale" to "never ask for a check because you as DM know there's no chance of success". But it's natural language and open to interpretation.

No, it's pretty clear in what it says. Arguing it's ambiguous is an interesting take. I mean, you have the option to point out that it's one of three ways the DMG presents, and that's pretty good. Or your starting point that it's just advice, do what you want -- that works, too. But arguing that it's ambiguous when the text says don't call for a check if there's no consequence for failure? Hard sell, man. You need to do work to read that as "I want my players to be uncertain and that's a consequence, so I can just use that."

If a player asks to check for traps, they are saying that their PC is actively doing something. That's reflected by a roll of the dice. Telling them that there's no need for a roll is taking away their agency, saying in a sense that no, their PC did not bother to check for traps.

No it's not. Their character does the thing and succeeds. What agency was taken away? You're assuming that, by not asking for a roll, I'm preventing the action from happening? Why assume this? Instead, the character searches, and finds no evidence of traps. They take as much time as is needed. No agency is removed here, unless you're mistaking agency with "get to roll dice just because."

It's similar to if PC casts a fireball at an illusion - I'm not going to tell them that they didn't actually cast the fireball because there's no chance of affecting the illusion. They did decide, based on what they knew, to cast the fireball. They did decide, based on what they saw, to check for traps.

Uhuh, me either. The player has their character check for traps -- this happens. Then, because there's no consequence for failure, they succeed in time to their satisfaction.

I mean, how many times is it necessary to reiterate this? You've spent years arguing this exact point despite how often it's explained that there is no consequence for failure. You imagine that it takes time, and that this is a consequence. I agree -- if taking time is a problem, then there is a check because there is a consequence. However, in many cases, the time taken to check for traps is not relevant to consequence, so that's not a problem. I also don't view uncertainty as a consequence, especially if the uncertainty is actually caused by the check. The check should not be generating fiction by itself, it should resolve fiction. A competent character is going to check for traps competently, so if they can't possibly get a bad outcome, why am I wasting everyone's time pretending that they could. Instead, I assume the character performs competently, or that any mistakes made don't do anything because there's nothing there to do.

Honestly, the approach that says you need to make a check because the players shouldn't know things is because the GM doesn't have confidence that their game can be interesting without manufactured uncertainty -- that generating uncertainty enhances the challenge or immersion of the game. I used to think this, too. But, I've found out that I can provide loads of challenge, and get better buy-in from players if I'm not playing silly games like "you're not sure because you rolled low, even though there's nothing there." Heck, I usually make traps noticed straight off (again, competent characters) and make finding out what the trap is/does/is triggered by the point of interest and execution.

Also, I tend to find the objection that rolling prevents metagaming to be farcical -- an inconclusive result on a roll (whether from a secret roll or a roll in the open seen to be low) that only results in uncertainty is guaranteed to result in metagaming -- either by the player declaring actions to double check something that should have already resolved or by the player choosing to ignore what they know and making a choice they know is probably poor but feeling like they have to do the that because of metagaming (in effect metagaming anyway). It's an unvirtuous circle.

 

[Mort]

... but the Urchin or similar thing is an appeal to the DM not a substitution of the game narrative element with another.

How so? The Urchin ability allows the character to cut the time traveling in half when navigating a city environment (more specifically, you travel twice as fast as your speed would normally allow). That seems more like a direction than an appeal. The background imposes a narrative onto the DM that was not there before.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Not sure if someone already pointed this one out but: the Plot Points variant rule (DMG p269)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure the abilities "just work," but the HOW is up to the player (and sometimes the DM) and the extent is up to the DM. Lots of opportunities for interesting interactions thanks to the backgrounds! Frankly, I don't think most campaigns utilize them enough.

The reason the "how" doesn't come up as often as it should in always works situations is because humans are lazy. When there is a chance of failure, it makes a lot of sense and is even necessary to explain how things turned out the way they did. When you can take it for granted that you will succeed, it's much easier to just stipulate that and move on. Explaining the how in that case can feel like artificially layering unnecessary narrative onto the game state. People should still do it, IMO, but I understand why they don't.

 

[Mort]

Not sure if someone already pointed this one out but: the Plot Points variant rule (DMG p269)

Yes! this is an express attempt to introduce narrative control into the D&D game. It even acknowledges that this is clearly not for everyone.

Honestly, I think I skipped right over this section. One facet of having played so many editions is that you assume you already KNOW what's presented in the DMG and thus miss add-ons such as this.

 

[Cadence]

And we are role playing. Characters play a role in a story. There is a difference between what a player knows and what their character knows. The player should run their character as if they searched for a trap and did not find one - in both circumstances. They should behave the same way (all other things being the same).

@iserith From your experience, it hasn't mattered much, right?