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Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.
Problems are subtle, and quick to anger.
Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.
Problems are subtle, and quick to anger.
Guess I misremembered where I read that. Anyway, it was just one example. As I said, the problems that can arise are many, varied, and subtle.
It depends on what you mean by "good" or "bad." Certainly the role of the DM expects that he or she will judge that some approaches make the goal trivially easy or impossible to achieve. In neither case is there an ability check. Is the former "good" approach and the latter a "bad" approach in your view?
Mort said:It's actually a pretty big difference, and not narrow at all.
What it means under this paradigm: if the player picks the "correct" approach and can avoid rolling, his character has the same chance of success (certainty) regardless of his CHA or focus on social skills in a social challenge situation.
robus said:One thing we have to stop saying is that there’s “a correct approach”, there a good approaches and bad approaches. It’s very poor DMing (Imho) to have situations with a single acceptable approach. In fact I never even consider approaches when I put obstacles in the way of the players, I just think of what would naturally be the result of either their or NPCs actions (or the environment) and throw them in their way. Their job is to figure creative ways to overcome them. One reason I dislike the published adventures providing ability checks (and DCs) it encourages the belief that there’s one “correct” approach.
Me said:"Good" and "Bad" are equally problematic in reference to what @Mort was saying.
In that context a "good" approach avoids rolling and gives the player a pass on doing what they want to do. A "bad" approach then means that a roll is necessary.
I think that is almost worse than "correct" since there is some inherent sarcasm in the idea of a correct approach that highlights what it was Mort was objecting to. Mainly, that describing a set of actions that the DM agrees with means you will not have to risk failure. Which leads to what some people refer to as "gaming the DM" where they can dump intelligence or charisma stats and still dominate the social and exploration parts of the game, because they know how to describe things to the DMs liking, while players who have those stats and abilities but can't or don't describe things to the DMs liking end up suffering because of it.
I said I’d stay out, but I’ve seen a couple of references to my “good”/“bad” approaches responses to [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION]’s “correct” approach complaint.
First off, Mort, if you were just being sarcastic, I apologize for not picking up on that, but in my defense it wasn’t the first time that this had been raised as a complaint against approaches needing to match DM expectations.
Secondly, “good/bad” was simply shorthand for “productive” vs. “unproductive” approaches. The DM has to adjudicate player actions and that involves evaluating them against the fictional world. Some approaches are going to be better than others. And some are going to be utterly hopeless. (And I will try to remember, in future, that the worst possible interpretation will be taken, which probably explains why Iserith is so precise in his responses!)
I've been spelling my mindset out pretty explicitly. Yes, a check is an undesirable outcome of an action in my games.
Giving players information on the potential consequences of their actions is kind of a fundamental aspect of the DMing style that I have been referring to as "goal and approach," or occasionally "the middle path." But ok, fine, forget that style for a second. My question is, is your disagreement with the assertion that giving players information about the consequences of their actions leads to better and more dramatic roleplaying based on experience employing this technique (the one where you tell your players the potential consequences of their actions) and finding that it did not lead to better and more dramatic roleplaying than when you don't give said information? Or are you basing it only on your experience running your game not doing that, and this leading to a level of drama in your roleplaying that you are satisfied with?
The gotcha to me is in justifying "the character couldn't possibly know the chandelier might break if they fail their check" with "The chandelier looks sturdy enough to support the character's weight, but the beams supporting it have rotted in such a way that is not immediately obvious to the player." You are using your own choice to hide the details the character would need for the player to make an informed decision as an excuse for not giving the player enough details to make an informed decision.
It is my opinion that if a player is being asked to make a decision, they should always be sufficiently informed to not make a bad choice based on lack of information. If the player has to choose between trying to roll past the guards and trying to swing to the other side, they should also know that if they fail to roll past the guards, the guards will catch them, and if they fail to swing to the other side, they will fall. It is in my opinion the DM's responsibility to make sure that information is accessible to the player. If "there's no way the character could know" something that they would need to know to make an informed decision, then the DM has failed in that responsibility. As the person who created the scenario, the DM should set the scenario up in such a way that they character could know any important details.
Yes, there's no way for the character to know about the rotten beams. So, the DM shouldn't be using rotten beams here. They should be using a chandelier that is obviously not sturdy enough to hold the character's weight for more than a couple seconds.
As a semi-participant in this particualr discusion with [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION], I will say that what you describe here doesn't ring true to me at all, for my game.
I'm not talking about tellling players coonsequences which would obtain even if the players weren't told. I'm talking about telling the players those consdequences that obtain, or - alternatively - having those consequences be implict in the framing of the situation and the plyaer's knowledge of why the situation matters.
I don't think that keeping potential consequences secret from the players makes for good RPGing.
The devil is always in the details, of course - but at the level of generality that you have presented this example, the risk of the chandelier breaking would seem to be very much implict in the framing of the situation.
I don't agree with this at all. If it wasn't implicit in the situation that such a thing might happen, I would regard this as very bad GMing. I once had a thing a bit like this happen in a game - the GM teleported the party 100 years into the future. The effect was to largely invaldiate all our play to date, which was enmeshed in a particular time and place. (I think the GM did it because he felt he had lost control of the campaign, and wanted to reestablish that control.)
I quite the game a session or two after that, and I heard that it ended not long after.
Well, except maybe for this passage on p 61 of the Basic PDF:D&D 4e Rules Compendium which as you may recall was the most up-to-date version of the rules in that system: "The Dungeon Master determines if a skill check is appropriate in a given situation and directs a player to make a check if circumstances call for one. A player often initiates a skill check by asking the DM if he or she can make one. Almost always, the DM says yes." (Emphasis is mine.)
By contrast, the D&D 5e rules say nothing like this. There is no expectation laid out that the players will ask for checks or that the DM's response should be "Yes."
Just as we can only speculate as to why the skill text in the Basic PDF for 5e seems to take 3 different approaches across the 3 entries of Investigation, Perception and Survival.The D&D 4e PHB also said: "The DCs assume acting in situations that are far from mundane; the DM should call for checks only in dramatic situations." Later, the more up-to-date D&D 4e Rules Compendium removed this line from the same section ("Difficulty Class"). We can only speculate as to why.
Whose expectation? The DMG and PHB for 4e came out in 2008 - were expectations changed by a book published two years later?Put this together and we have an expectation that players will ask for checks
Ok, you're getting there, just one detail you seem to be missing from this conversation. This has nothing to do with me labeling things as "good" or "bad" the original impetus for this conversation
Well, except maybe for this passage on p 61 of the Basic PDF:
When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check.
You there very clearly refers to the player of the PC.
Page 62 also has the following, contrasting, passages:
Perception. Your Wisdom (Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses. . . .
Survival. The DM might ask you to make a Wisdom (Survival) check to follow tracks . . .
The rule for survivial suggests that the check is made at GM instigation to adjudicate some action. The rule for perception suggests that the perception check is mandated by the rules as a type of model of the infiction process of the PC looking around.
Just as we can only speculate as to why the skill text in the Basic PDF for 5e seems to take 3 different approaches across the 3 entries of Investigation, Perception and Survival.
Whose expectation? The DMG and PHB for 4e came out in 2008 - were expectations changed by a book published two years later?
Did the RC change its text because it was wanting to bring the rules text more closely into line with observed play practices? In which case one could hardly assert its normative force.
Well, my point is that this was not my practice in D&D 4e because I followed the rules set out in the 4e PHB and DMG, which identify calling for checks as a GM function, not a player function. Changes in rules text 2 years down the track, in a book that had several retrograde changes to rules text (eg in its description of the role of the GM) which I took to be attempts to reduce the "indie" flavour of the 4e rules, did not change how I played the game.given how this was a practice in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e for many people that they carry on with it in D&D 5e.
Well, my point is that this was not my practice in D&D 4e because I followed the rules set out in the 4e PHB and DMG, which identify calling for checks as a GM function, not a player function. Changes in rules text 2 years down the track, in a book that had several retrograde changes to rules text (eg in its description of the role of the GM) which I took to be attempts to reduce the "indie" flavour of the 4e rules, did not change how I played the game.
This is where I start to have a bit of sympathy for [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s view about the significance of "how to play rules" vs the actual play of the mechanics at the table.I don't know what to tell you, man. The D&D 4e Rules Compendium is the most up-to-date version of the rules, whether you choose to adopt them or not. They tell us how to play the game and that includes players asking to make skill checks and the DM almost always saying yes.