D&D General If you had to choose between quality of story or combat

[Dessert Nomad]

I feel a lot of this procedural argument is mostly about springing "gotchas" on players who do not specify the exact precautions being taken at all times.

Except in the example I brought up, the gotcha is aimed at people who try to take the exact precautions at all times (whether the die is high or low) saying 'if you look for a trap and don't find one being cautious is metagamaing', it's forcing them to only take their standard precautions based on whether a die roll that fails to find something is high or low (and not success or failure). It's just such a weird position for people to take, and the idea of micromanaging when PCs are allowed to decide how to stand when opening a door and worrying about whether they're using the proper process to arrive at whether they cluster up or spread out on the door.

The veteran trap-dealing players just laugh at the idea of believing that one roll will automatically find each and every trap and hazard that can be associated with a door and the whole idea that you base how you open the door on whether the die to search was high or low, and know that things that mitigate one trap might make another one worse and are just settling on which risk to take. (A door that teleports people close to it or that causes another door to fall separating people near and far from the door is more dangerous to the spread out party, a clustered party can make better use of a paladin aura for saves, a trap that triggers something coming from the walls is more dangerous to the people away from the doors, and so on). It's also just fun to have a party quickly do the 'go into position, breach NOW' formation and see what happens, instead of turning that into 'go into position, breach... oh, now we have an argument about whether breach formation is metagaming'.

 

[Coroc]

Except in the example I brought up, the gotcha is aimed at people who try to take the exact precautions at all times (whether the die is high or low) saying 'if you look for a trap and don't find one being cautious is metagamaing', it's forcing them to only take their standard precautions based on whether a die roll that fails to find something is high or low (and not success or failure). It's just such a weird position for people to take, and the idea of micromanaging when PCs are allowed to decide how to stand when opening a door and worrying about whether they're using the proper process to arrive at whether they cluster up or spread out on the door.

The veteran trap-dealing players just laugh at the idea of believing that one roll will automatically find each and every trap and hazard that can be associated with a door and the whole idea that you base how you open the door on whether the die to search was high or low, and know that things that mitigate one trap might make another one worse and are just settling on which risk to take. (A door that teleports people close to it or that causes another door to fall separating people near and far from the door is more dangerous to the spread out party, a clustered party can make better use of a paladin aura for saves, a trap that triggers something coming from the walls is more dangerous to the people away from the doors, and so on). It's also just fun to have a party quickly do the 'go into position, breach NOW' formation and see what happens, instead of turning that into 'go into position, breach... oh, now we have an argument about whether breach formation is metagaming'.

Wow seems your games are pretty old school about dungeon mechanisms from hell, i personally like that, my group would not want this with this frequency that i read out of your example.

But thanks for detailing this, now i understand your point of view much better. Nothing explains things more than good examples.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Wow seems your games are pretty old school about dungeon mechanisms from hell, i personally like that, my group would not want this with this frequency that i read out of your example.

But thanks for detailing this, now i understand your point of view much better. Nothing explains things more than good examples.

Oh, it's not all that frequent - I do a lot of one-shot type games, and the majority of them don't have any significant traps, or the traps are more of telegraphed puzzles than the search-and-mitigate types. But if a dungeon has a significant trap on an early door, people take that as a cue that 'there might be traps' and the party starts going into cautious mode and make a point of setting up their position as they open new doors or poke at objects, even if they're not old school players. Same if something in the adventure points to traps, like a door/corridor/wall with ornate decorations with moving parts or something like pyramids or chultan ruins as the setting.

The idea of claiming the players must be metagaming because they responded to an in-game situation 'there are traps here, we should expect traps' but don't assume 'if I make a roll and don't find a trap, there must be no traps' and that the idea they should have to justify their failure to follow the same process they used before they found a trap (or reason to suspect traps) is weird. It's also something that would absolutely kill the momentum and fun of the game - what usually happens if players/characters start to worry about traps is that the players get very engaged with the normally bland task of opening doors, and will start to do a lot of positioning and preparing that normally doesn't happen, and everyone gets ready for 'what happens when I open the door'. The idea of smashing down that enthusiasm and interest with an argument about 'you can't position yourselves like that, Jimmy made a roll to find traps and it was low' runs directly counter to what I want to happen in the game.

 

[pemerton]

I mean, how can they? The assumption of some posters has been that the DM can simply override the players contribution to the fiction by interpreting the result of the skill test. Which has been the whole point. The DM can change the fiction by ordering an insight skill test and then (if the roll fails) declare the character believes whatever the DM says he believes instead. Which is when the insight test becomes a Wisdom save vs mind control.

As best I can tell, the discussion about Insight tests has proceeded on the premise that the player is angling for the check. I recognise that the player calling for a check is not quite orthodox 5e, but by my reading of accounts of 5e play, it is not radically deviant either.

Could the player refuse the wager? Can he tell the DM "no, I don't want to roll insight. I will remain satisfied with my initial assumption only?"

I don't see why not?

 

[pemerton]

Let's look at every step in the fiction creation process.
1. First, the DM sets the scenario. That can be the lying countess, the trapped door, or the black cat in a darkened room. The DM knows the correct answer (the countess is a doppelganger, the door is trapped, the cat is not in the room).
2. The player reacts to the scenario. The player could act solely on just his initial assumption (the countess is flirting, the door is trapped, the cat is in the room) and declare his actions based only on that, but most players aren't going to blindly act, so they request additional information.

I think I posted upthread that you seem to be envisaging play that is very GM-driven in its content, and that emphasises the GM players trying to "solve"/"beat" the GM's puzzle/scenario.

Your description here of how play goes seems consistent with that. I don't think that's the only sort of play that 5e D&D can support, although it is probably the default.