D&D General Just Eat the Dang Fruit

[MarkB]

Would it be bad form for the DM to place snacks on the table and see who takes a bite of one. Then say that you ate one and the PC needs to make a save? Asking for a friend.

Not so long as you enjoy running for a party of dwarven paladins.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mean, it certainly might come across as impolite, and may well cause complications as a result. That’s a risk the players should be free to choose to take.

Except they aren't. They are expecting to just do it, without anything else. That's literally what was described. They aren't considering anything else.

It sounds like you’re saying it’s unreasonable from an in-universe social perspective, and fair enough. What I meant though is that it’s reasonable (or perhaps believable would be a better word) that the characters might make that choice, not that the choice is a socially appropriate one to make in the situation. I don’t think it’s my business as a DM to enforce the players to have their characters make socially appropriate decisions.

I'm not saying they have to. I'm saying that doing so out of the blue bothers me. A lot. A character needs a reason for doing what they do unless they're literally insane.

I don’t think it’s at all clear from this example that the unwillingness to partake is sudden.

Why not? That's exactly how it was described. No mention of refusal to sit at the table, reluctance, nothing, until the saving throw. The OP even describes it as, "Hospitality is big in the culture of this region, and though it's a bit odd that this dude and his servants are in this buried city, it's the first friendly face we've seen in a while." Odd, not instantly suspicious.

The situation is sketchy from the jump;

No. Odd. Not sketchy. That's a big part of my problem here.

the saving throw may only be confirming preexisting suspicions. Moreover, so what if it is only being done because of knowledge the players have and the characters don’t?

Because, unless there is an extremely good reason otherwise, characters' pure roleplay actions should occur for reasons those characters can at least somewhat describe. Because the story being told matters at least as much as the bare rules.

Why do we play Dungeons and Dragons and not Statistics & Spreadsheets? Because the fiction is absolutely vital to the experience. Flaunting that, turning it into an irrelevancy that we just crumple up and discard because it might cause a mathematical inconvenience, is hypocritical; the only reason the players care about taking the action is to protect the safety of the fictional character attached to the data.

That may be why the players made that decision, but it doesn’t have to be the reason the characters do. I believe my job as DM is to determine the results of the characters’ actions, not to police the players’ motivations for declaring that their characters take those actions.

So you are perfectly content with characters who perform insane, disjointed actions and neber justify or explain anything they do with any connection to the world? Why do you play TTRPGs then, and not...literally anything else that doesn't expect such a connection to the state of the fictional world?

Why does it matter to you that such a relationship exist? If there’s a plausible reason a character might do something,

I'm saying that in this context there isn't one, and the players were clearly lifting no finger to try to provide one. Otherwise, I'm sure @iserith would have said so. I welcome their correction if I am mistaken.

why does it matter if the player has a different reason for having the character do it? I mean, players are constantly making decisions influenced by factors their characters are unaware of.

Why does it matter that an NPC not prepare perfectly-tailored plans to defeat every secret thing the players cooperate to do? Why does it matter that agents in the world act with some approximation of rationality and sense (unless they are, in fact, actually irrational and/or senseless)? Why does it matter that cause comes first and effect comes after?

Because without these things, the fictional world is senseless, cannot be reasoned about. Can it even be said to have meaning at that point? And if it's meaningless, why are we playing D&D and not Statistics & Spreadsheets?

But a player’s reasoning could very easily be that they saw @iserith make a saving throw and don’t want their character to do the thing that caused him to have to make it, while at the same time their character’s reasoning is that they saw Binro nearly throw up (though, probably not in the opening example, since iserith’s character was not described as nearly having thrown up. So instead, perhaps something more like “I don’t trust these people who seem to be living in a buried city but somehow have access to fresh fruit.”)

Could. Wasn't. That is the whole point. There was no other reason, and even the reason you mention is weak as hell because Iserith's description makes zero mention of such concerns until after the saving throw. Only then is it suddenly sooooo concerning that this guy is in a weird place offering food. That makes no sense! Why would their paranoia suddenly flare to life when they had observed...nothing at all?

Now, as I said, I would totally support players wanting to see if they could detect that something occurred, or if they (passively) noticed anything odd about the food or their host/the servants, which sounds like some kind of Perception-type roll (though I could see maybe Medicine/Healing or, in a pinch, Nature to identify Ser Fruit-Eater's symptoms.) If someone in the party has a notable paranoid streak, I might even let them leverage that! There are a ton of ways to do the work that justifies the refusal described here (so long as the players are willing to accept the potential ramifications of that choice: rudeness to a host can be a serious insult and could cause problems the party might rather avoid more than the poison!) The players clearly aren't interested in showing that work. They just want the results without the work. I oppose this.

 

[AnotherGuy]

It may not be what the player is striving for, though. Rather than the tough guy who powers through such obstacles, they may want their character to be the smart guy who sees them coming and deftly avoids them, or the observant guy who picks up on anything that's out of place.

I hear you, but asking the PCs who eats the food in front of them doesn't require smarts on the side of the players/characters. It also encourages the metagame.
And this isn't about hit points or being the tough guy. A poison can have a number of interesting effects.

And there's a fine line between setting up a situation that's unfair to the character and setting one up that's unfair to the player - and they may see that line as being in a different place than you do.

What is unfair to the player? That he did not get to choose whether his character ate in a scenario where there was no suspicion - because remember I specifically mentioned a situation where they would NOT expect it. The betrayal would be part of the moving the story along, providing further clues...etc

EDIT: If there WAS suspicion then of course smart play would be rewarded - because that would mean investigation on possible betrayal existed.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But those other forms of media have authors who decide what the protagonists do. The central conceit of RPGs is that the players are the ones who decide what the protagonists do. For the DM to remove that choice from the players in order to insure the narrative they want (wherein the characters are unwittingly poisoned) is the most egregious class of railroading, and sure to be received poorly by any players who have not agreed to such railroading ahead of time.

We have a violently different PoV in how this scene plays out.
The poison scene is part of the framing, part of the encounter challenge, part of moving the story along (I mentioned exposition) and giving the party further clues from which the adventure can play out.

It has nothing to do with me taking away player agency. Also see my response to @MarkB with regards to the possibility of suspicion existing.

 

[MarkB]

What is unfair to the player? That he did not get to choose whether his character ate in a scenario where there was no suspicion - because remember I specifically mentioned a situation where they would NOT expect it. The betrayal would be part of the moving the story along, providing further clues...etc

So, not the situation presented by the OP, then.

If there WAS suspicion then of course smart play would be rewarded.

If you've done this sort of thing before, then the players know that the best time to get suspicious is when there's no apparent cause for suspicion. And so will their characters, if they've experienced such situations before..

 

[overgeeked]

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

The issue is metagaming. If the regional culture is one of hospitality, the characters are being extremely rude by not eating. The host and PCs should react accordingly. If the players refuse to roleplay their characters, try a board game instead.

The referee should not have announced you needed to make a CON save until after everyone had eaten. Because players metagame. They (almost) always will. Especially if doing so benefits them in any way. It’s a risk adverse mentality that’s more interested in winning and optimizing than playing the role of the character.

 

[Xamnam]

Unless I could be absolutely positive that the other characters in the scene were going to eat the fruit prior to the con save being rolled, I really couldn't do anything more than raise an eyebrow at that. Maybe, maybe I might ask why, if I had some fairly clear reason to believe they altered their course of action, but with the facts as given, I can't claim any solid ground to challenge that decision without resorting to assumptions.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So, not the situation presented by the OP, then.

You are correct, the first paragraph paints a suspicious scenario from which the characters can be highly cautious.
The issue I have is that afterwards the social encounter roleplay moves into the area of the metagame, as it is no longer a mystery that the food is poisoned but a fact which is communicated not through the description of the character who sampled the fruit but out of story via mechanics. The way it was handled by the DM was not ideal.

If you've done this sort of thing before, then the players know that the best time to get suspicious is when there's no apparent cause for suspicion. And so will their characters, if they've experienced such situations before..

I provided one example upthread of where the PCs dined with a vampire. They have also dined with a devil, where nothing was poisoned again, some sampled the food & drink, others waited to see the results from their companions, and others did not partake at all.

I cannot remember having poisoned them via refreshments in this campaign (spans almost a decade), but I could be mistaken. If something comes to mind I will edit.

When I was younger I did use gotcha moments - like a poison-coated envelope. I would not do that now.

 

[iserith]

When I was younger I did use gotcha moments - like a poison-coated envelope. I would not do that now.

"You're poisoned and there was nothing you could do to avoid that fate" is a "gotcha." It doesn't matter if you're doing it as hard scene-framing.

 

[Clint_L]

On the one, hand, I agree that it is ultimately up to the players what their characters do, even including having them act on information the player has but the character does not, per the example.

But it is up to me whether I want to continue to put my time and effort into players who aren't willing to buy into the story.