If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?

[iserith]

Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes, 5e combat is very much not the goal:approach method.

Except that players describe what they want to do in combat, the same as in any other area of the game. Per the rules on "How to Play": "This pattern [the play loop] holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon." Combat is more structured in that the players and DM take turns choosing and resolving actions. But otherwise players describing what they want to do and the DM deciding if a check is appropriate applies to all three pillars of the game. The rules are very clear on this (whether you follow them or not).

In practice, it's common for people to just assume an attack roll will follow the declaration of the goal and approach since the DM is instructed by the DMG to "call for an attack roll when a character tries to hit a creature or an object with an attack, especially when the attack could be foiled by the target's armor or shield or by another object providing cover." But it's still the DM's call.

Honestly, I didn't really think that that was a very good defense of goal:approach methodology.

No defense is necessary. The rules say what they say. If a group doesn't like those rules, they're free to change them.

 

[5ekyu]

I have a problem understanding this. How do you challenge a PC? It can’t think, it can’t act, it can’t do anything other than what the player says it does. It’s like a User Interface but it isn’t itself the User. It’s always the player behind the avatar that has to think and act.

What am I missing?

It has meaning in context and in contrast, not in isolation.

An obstacle that challenges the character requires some use or reference of the character traits to reach conclusion, to be solved. Three different characters with three different sets of abilities likely have very different chances to succeed. The character traits are integral and necessary. Obviously, there is likely also, in conjunction, some degree of effort or decision by the player, but it may be as little as "Johsn swings his axe at the dwarf."

An obstacle that "challenges the player" is by contrast one where the character has no required traits or skills needed to be called on. The 3 and 5 gallon jug type puzzles, riddles that font tie in PC abilities snd just player wordplay, or more complex escape room type things where any character regardless of specialties can solve it if the player just thinks it thru, no character fifferentistion provided bybthe challenge.

Put another way, a simple test, if you could literally take any commoner or orc or elf or other monster NPC stat block and replace the zpCs and the resolution is still the same, literally the character is irrelevant, you are likely challenging the player, not the character.

The player is always relevant as long as they control the character. But a gm can chose to make the character irrelevant, that's the difference.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I can see that. 4e borrows heavily from more ... ummm... hippy dippy, pass the story stick style gaming that I really enjoy.

I enjoy that style quite a bit too, it's just not what I'm personally looking for from D&D. I definitely get the appeal though.

So, yes, I approach most RPG's the same way. Handing over more and more load onto the players is something that I strongly approve of. Certainly not to everyone's tastes though.

As far as what 5e would have looked like had it been written for experienced gamers, I would think it would be a lot closer to 4e, to be honest. Where you don't need to spell out all the hand holding that 5e does with "DM Empowerment" stuff. Experienced gamers, especially ones who have drifted away from D&D and tried other games, generally don't seem to have the issues that gamers who strongly seem to focus on D&D as their game of choice and see the rules, as you do @iserith, as promoting a specific way of playing, rather than simply an a la carte selection of options to pick and choose from and then kit bash from other systems to create a game that is idiosyncratic to that specific table.

Mmmm... That is not consistent with my own experience. I've found that more experienced gamers who branch out from D&D tend to find different systems that they prefer to use for different purposes. It takes all sorts though, and I'm sure there are plenty who do both.

The funniest thing about 5e is how similar people's play styles actually have become. Rather than the completely different experiences that people had with earlier editions, the notion of shared experience really has come to the forefront. Heck, the whole Streaming Play stuff is all about that shared experience. You wouldn't get thousands of people watching someone's live play game if that table's play style was too idiosyncratic to that table. There needs to be this shared approach for this to be popular.

I think streaming has fed into the shared experience. Many people's first exposure to the game now is watching someone else play it, so naturally their approach to the game is informed by that early experience. The same way that people's approaches have in the past been shaped by the approaches of DMs they played with. It's just that now certain DMs have a much larger platform.

OTOH, I've never seen RPG books as a "How to Play" guide. I see them as a collection of ideas that I'm then going to pick and choose from to create a game for my table. Sometimes that game will be very, very close to what's in the books, and sometimes it'll be completely different. Depends on the campaign to be honest.

I agree, but I am of the "try it as-written first before you start making houserules" mindset.

 

[Charlaquin]

What I'm not sure about is what is distinctive about the mechanics of 5e vs 4e that make one or the other approach suitable. That is, if someone ran 4e as you run 5e, what would break down? Or if someone ran 5e in the 4e style, what would break down?

I'm not disputing that there are differences between the systems - the ones that are most obvious to me are (i) the lack of skill challenges in 5e and (ii) the asymmetric resource recovery in 5e - but I'm not sure how these differences bear upon the topic of this thread.

I mean, that's a very complicated question to answer. 4e and 5e are both very complex systems, and the issues that can arise by playing with a different set of assumptions are numerous, varied, and subtle. Ultimately, either game would work fine if run like the other, but there are lots of niggling little issues that can arise. For example, one complaint I see all the time about 5e is that players rarely spend Inspiration, and Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws end up ignored as a result. This is not something I experience, because players always know that a check is going to be required, the DC, and the consequences, so they are more apt to spend Inspiration because they don't have to guess how difficult a task will be or how severe the consequences for failure will be. There are plenty of other ways to address Inspiration and Background Features, but as Iserith talked about earlier, it's yet one more case of DMs relying on houserules and/or the social contract to fix issues they cause for themselves.

And lest anyone take this as an admonition against such use of houserules and the social contract, if I went back to running 4e (which I have considered), I would probably run it more like I run 5e, because as I mentioned in another post, that creates the kind of gameplay experience that I want out of D&D, at least currently. Of course, I know that doing so would likely lead to a lot of those niggling little issues that I would end up needing to houserule around. It might ultimately lead to experience I actually like better than 5e. As I've mentioned, it's still my favorite edition of D&D mechanically. But I haven't ultimately decided to do that, in part because of the extra work I'd need to to to nail that feel that I get from just running 5e as-written.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION], the fact that no consequence was ever posited points to the notion that there was no consequence. And, at that point I think we all agree, regardless of approach, you just tell the players they climb over the wall and move on.

Same goes for pretty much any sort of obstacle where time will overcome it. I have to admit, I have no idea why 5e removed the "Take 20" rules. I suppose, at the end of the day, they don't really need them - you're not supposed to roll anyway, so, just get on with it. I always did think, though, that Take 20 was a nice mechanic in the game.

Too much power to the players maybe?

I would like to say, that as I read this last page of the thread, I find myself nodding with pretty much everyone. Well done you folks.

I've mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I believe take 10 and take 20 were a player-side way to achieve the same end goal, where tasks without cost or consequence don't get rolled for. I wouldn't say that it's "too much power to the players," but rather a difference in intended gameplay experience between 3e and 5e. 3e tried very hard to make the gameplay experience as consistent as possible from one table to the next, by making as many of its mechanics player-facing as possible. 5e, on the other hand, aimed to cut down on rules-referencing and mechanical minutia to make the game play out more like a conversation, and it did this by leaning heavily on DM judgment calls over codified mechanics.

 

[Charlaquin]

I can explain to someone whose never played either, but who has some idea of what RPGing invovles, why BW won't produce a Traveller experience, and vice versa.

As per your advice upthread:

​

I've read the rules for 5e. In the relevant respects - ie framing situations, adjudicating action declarations - I don't see any salient difference from 4e other than the advice. Which is to say, I can't see why that advice couldn't be ported into 4e, or the 4e advice ported into 5e. (Whereas it's easy to see why Traveller can't be run just by porting in BW advice, and vice versa.)

Hence my request for some more information. I appreciate that you don't want to provide it - you made that clear upthread - which is why I asked another poster with whom I feel I've been having some convivial and informative exchanges.

So, like, one example that comes to mind is the discussion that came up earlier about why some DMs might not want the player to roll and announce a result before they've set a DC, because it might influence the DM's decision. This is something 4e actively encouraged. I don't remember which book it was in, probably the DMG, but I distinctly remember reading in a 4e book that it's not always necessary to set a DC before asking a player to roll, that the DM should allow the player to use a skill unless there is a compelling reason not to, and can determine what happens based on the result.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes, 5e combat is very much not the goal:approach method. The players call for checks in combat. The players call for virtually everything that isn't being done by an NPC. The only real point that people made contrary to that was the notion that inexperienced players might need a DM to tell the player what to roll.

Honestly, I didn't really think that that was a very good defense of goal:approach methodology. If we only use it in combat if the players don't know what they're doing, then why do we then use it out of combat when the player does know what they are doing?

Really, I think that's one of my bigger issues here. Why use different methodologies in different parts of the game for task resolution? We don't expect goal:approach in combat, so why do it out of combat? And, really, even out of combat, it's unevenly applied. Numerous skill uses are not predicated on DM adjudication - my PC can jump Str feet without a check for example. Granted, 5e is a lot more loosey goosey about this sort of thing than 3e or 4e with a lot less standardization in 5e, but, the basic premise is the same.

Essentially, I don't see what's actually being added to the game by doing the goal:approach method. It wouldn't add anything to my game and would in fact be incredibly frustrating to my players if I insisted upon it. I get that with new players it is a better way of doing it - and it really fits with the whole DM empowerment thing that 5e preaches. What better way to control the game than to be able to control exactly when any player can do anything that doesn't involve swinging a sword?

I'm just not interested in that level of DM empowerment.

Combat is absolutely not a different methodology than goal:approach. The player says what they want to do (i.e. "I attack the orc") and how (i.e. "with my longsword"), and the DM calls for a roll if the outcome is uncertain and has a cost or consequence for failure. It happens that the structure of combat insures that there is always a cost - usually an action, occasionally a bonus action or a reaction, each of which you have a limited number of per turn - and the appropriate roll to call for is more strictly codified than out of combat. But ultimately the conversation of the game is still very much the same.

 

[Hussar]

Seriously? Outside of teaching a new player to play, your combats look like this:

Player: I attack the orc with a longsword.
DM: Ok, make your attack roll.
Player: 17
DM: You hit. Roll your damage roll.
Player: 7 damage.
DM: A mighty hit the orc drops!
Player: Now I want to move over there.
DM: Ok, you have enough speed to do that. You can move over there.
Player: Ok, now I want to second wind.
DM: Yes, you can do that.
Player: Ok, now I want to attack some more.
DM: Well, you only get one attack per round.
Player: Is there a way I can get more attacks?
DM: You can Action Surge if you like.
Player: Ok, I action surge and I attack the other orc. 14!
DM: Wait, wait. I didn't call for an attack roll, that doesn't count. You have to wait for me to call for rolls.
Player: Ok, right.
DM: So, yes, make your attack roll.
Player: I attack the orc. 13.
DM: I'm sorry, but, how did you attack the orc?
Player: Umm, I action surged.
DM: Yes, I know you had the action, but, how did you attack the orc.
Player: Oh, right. I attack the orc with my sword.
DM: Right, remember, you always have to state a method with your goal, otherwise I won't understand. A 13 hits.
Player: Waiting
DM: Roll your damage.
Player: I do 4 damage.
DM: Great, the orc is wounded. Dave it's your turn now.... Dave? Someone wake Dave up.

Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but, seriously? You actually insist on Goal:Approach in combat? Yuck. I would blow my brains out.

 

[Charlaquin]

Seriously? Outside of teaching a new player to play, your combats look like this:

(...)

Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek maybe, but, seriously? You actually insist on Goal:Approach in combat? Yuck. I would blow my brains out.

It would be more accurate to say that the rest of my game plays out more like what you would likely imagine as a typical example of combat than it does like your tongue in cheek example here.

 

[pemerton]

Not quite sure what you mean, but, if I'm following you, then yes

Thanks for the reply - and yes, I think you understood me.

I don't see what's actually being added to the game by doing the goal:approach method.

I've got my own view about what is added by requiring players to explain an intent and task, and to work with the GM to establish exactly what the appropriate check (if any) might be. But it's a bit different from what is being advocated under the "goal and approach" rubric in this thread. (Although closer to some than others - there is some variety being presented under that rubric.)

For me, it's about being clear on the content of the fiction and (among other things, but perhaps most importantly) implict consequences of action.