New Legends & Lore: Player vs. Character

[billd91]

D&D does not need to become another one for the sake of jumping on a popular trend any more than the Rolling Stones needed to release a disco album.

I do not need D&D to come to my narrative rescue.

Says you. Some Girls (rated very highly) and Emotional Rescue were very successful and flowed directly into Tattoo You. I don't think the Stones have been as successful in the US since.

 

[Quickleaf]

While I personally like this, many D&D players have a substantive dislike for any sort of narrative play.

I think we can safely assume at this point that any future D&D will have a strong return to its simulationist roots. I'm certainly getting that vibe from the L&L articles.

Actually I was thinking something more like this...

Player A: "I'm trained in Perception. What's up with the statue? I'm not touching it or anything."

DM: "Ok, you're examining the statue. Anyone else?"

Player B: "Yeah I'm trained too. How old is this statue? Has it seen any recent use, like is it covered in cobwebs or is it pristine like there's a magical force field? And are there any obvious lizardman offerings?"

Player C: "I'm not trained but I'll make a check anyhow!"

DM: "Player A make a check, Player C aid him. Player B make your own check."

All succeed.

DM: "At the base you find a secret lever which allows it to pivot, scratch marks on the floor indicate it has been used often."

DM considers Player B's actions, which according to the adventure module wouldn't uncover the secret of the statue. However, the PC is trained and the player made the effort, which means the DM finds a way to get the secret info to the PC. The module doesn't say anything about the statue's age, so the DM says 'yes'.

DM: "Player B, the statue is indeed quite old, judging by the weathering of the stone, and you also find old offerings of slaughtered animals decomposed at it's base - though it hasn't been used as a sacrificial altar in months. Repeated blood stains mark the scratches on the floor...except for the part of the scratched arc facing the western wall..."

Maybe I described what I was thinking poorly before. It's more like when in doubt, what the player (whose PC is trained in Perception) imagines/asks leads to the secret info even if they're not asking the "right" questions.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Absolutely. The DM cannot expect his players to be mind readers. They need information to make good choices or to even know when a choice can be made.
In a case not too different from the safe opening, I have a player in my PF Council of Thieves campaign who has invested a lot in open locks, to the point where most locks are a trivial obstacle. Only locks given the arcane lock treatment (wizard lock to the grognards) slow her down much. And in those instances, I will tell her that the lock seems to actively resist her attempts to pick it or some other clue so that the party could try to press on with her attempt or maybe even try some magical counter. It helps keep the whole party involved in the action.

By a similar token, the players also should learn that not everything the DM mentions in his descriptions is Checkhov's gun. Not everything is significant. Not every gun introduced in the background will be fired. Sometimes a statue in the corridor is just a statue and not an entrance to a secret tunnel if you just slide it aside. If they (and the DM) don't realize this, then descriptions just become lists of things to manipulate and PCs end up spamming the searches.

The existance of dice roll mechanics help to identify the real Checkov's guns from the mere dressing. If the players roll well and find nothing they know it is just dungeon dressing. Alternatively if there DM is in the habit of calling for perception checks where there is only something to see.

One the issues that I have seen in pure description style play is that it can be very hard to indentify the thing that is important from that just mentioned in passing. Especially in the omore adversarial older styles.

While I have had fun going into the dungeon with a bag of pitons, bag of caltrops, bag of flour, dentist mirror, string, rope, sealing wax, candles, oil and covered lantern and a 10' pole, i find is tedious to DM.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The vast majority of tabletop rpgs are written with certain assumptions. A big one of these is guessing that a group of friends might enjoy sitting around a table and conversing with one another as part of the game.

These same assumptions also guess that when violence takes place in the game these friends don't actually want to swing objects at each other and so mechanics for handling this in the gameworld are written.

That seems disingenuous to me. Talking to each other around a table doesn't necessarily mean you want in-character dialogue and resolution systems relying entirely on how well you convince a GM. Talking to each other can also include describing violent actions, in such a way as to convince a GM. I'm pretty sure you can imagine a battle system entirely played out by a GM judging which attacks and defenses are successful based on "common sense" just as well as you can imagine a social conflict resolved through die rolls.

So it still seems rather arbitrary to me, which resolution system gets the in-depth mechanical solution, and which gets judged solely by DM Fiat. Why does one get "I look at the base of the statue, I examine the statue's arms, I try tinkering with the visor of the statue," and not "I examine the statue *roll*."? Why does the other get "I swing my sword *roll*" and not "I press my advantage, backing the orc against a wall, screaming to strike fear into its heart, and slash for his left arm, hoping to disable his shield."?

So the answer with the statue would be that there is no conflict (save in only the most abstract sense), so rolling isn't necessary.

That's interesting, since I see conflict all over that statue challenge. It's explicitly "character vs. environment," one seeking to overcome the other.

Last, to get back to the exploration of the statue, I think the way D&D handles exploration (in all editions) could use rethinking. Whether the player knows the DM well, has as played lots of D&D, or is able to hone in on subtle clues, they still look to the DM for the answer. "What do I see/know?" is more interactive with Q&A, but it's still dependent on being shown the answer. Rolling is just a quicker way of cutting through the Q&A immersion to the core question, again "What do I see/know?"

Usually a that point the DM describes something and the player goes "Yeah, that," to the rest of the party. It's the same situation by different names.

But what if skill training in exploration skills signified the player getting a say in the narrative such that the DM responds with "Here's the basic setup, now what do you notice?" The reward for roleplaying with a high skill is that you get to determine some of what your PCs discover.

So, to slightly expand on the idea, why would you use that in Exploration but not in Interaction or Combat? Why can I take skill training and describe the world, but not take skill training and describe the results of my attacks or defenses or the reactions of NPCs? Why that system here but not there?

"Immersive" play is often focussed on "inhabiting" the mental "space" of a character.

This "no-rolling" method is usually described as more immersive, but I can't say I personally find that to be the case. Perhaps my background as a performer has lead me to be unusually good at this role-playing, so that I am not dislodged from it by a die-roll, which shatters others' sense of them being their character? For me, it enhances the immersion, being able to say, "My character is good at X, bad at Y, and completely untrained in Z" without having to know X, Y, and Z encyclopedically enough to convince the DM that my character can do things that I can't think of, since we are not the same creature.

Part of me now wonders how close this is to the "gamist problem" in 4e, where there are explicitly things that happen in the world for purely mechanical reasons, and that disrupts the enjoyment of the game for some, jarring them out of the world. Simply rolling dice might do that for a lot of folks. Everyone probably has different triggers.

Which is, again, why basing the game in "Assume there are no rules" would be a positive step. Each group can determine for themselves what elements of the rules help or hinder their own style of play, without fear that grabbing one bit of it would stop the other bits from working.

What we may need is smaller, discrete, more self-contained rules elements, that affect only themselves, and nothing outside of them. Nothing like 3e's treasure system, for instance, which has all sorts of unexpected consequences if not followed, from the skills and monsters to published adventures' encounter rates and hundreds of other tiny effects.

 

[Quickleaf]

So, to slightly expand on the idea, why would you use that in Exploration but not in Interaction or Combat? Why can I take skill training and describe the world, but not take skill training and describe the results of my attacks or defenses or the reactions of NPCs? Why that system here but not there?

Well I think I misrepresented my idea, which I subsequently gave a good example of just a couple posts back.

But I do think these areas of play have inherent differences in D&D. Like you pointed out, character vs. unknown environment is a type of conflict. I'm not talking about traps and hazards, just the normal back and forth that goes on as the PCs explore the game world. What sets exploration apart from roleplaying and combat is the unveiling of information, with knowledge being the aim.

It tends to be the most "top-down" part of D&D, which also means it has the greatest potential for DM vagueness to confound the players in ways that boggle the mind. The rusty hinged chest example upthread is an example of this. The technique I suggested intends to provide guidelines to giving the players the benefit of the doubt in such situations.

Does that make sense?

 

[Rolflyn]

I recently ran a D&D game with no skills. And it was awesome. No diplomacy skill meant having to talk to the NPCs, no search skill meant having to interact with the environment.

Far too many of my previous games had turned into "You see a room." "I rolled a 27 spot." "You see a secret door." And I found that extremely boring. There was no immersion, just rolling, and it was usually only one character rolling.

But I am a liberal DM. If you say you are searching the statue, I would give you any information about it instead of saying you didn't search his left armpit.

Also there is another side to skills: If someone asks to search the statue, and you use a skill check, and the skill check fails, the info isn't found and you have to be okay with that. Why put a secret compartment into an environment that the players can randomly miss through no misaction on their own? Or have the party randomly fail at negotiations because of a bad roll? That doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

By a similar token, the players also should learn that not everything the DM mentions in his descriptions is Checkhov's gun. Not everything is significant. Not every gun introduced in the background will be fired. Sometimes a statue in the corridor is just a statue and not an entrance to a secret tunnel if you just slide it aside. If they (and the DM) don't realize this, then descriptions just become lists of things to manipulate and PCs end up spamming the searches.

Honestly though, that's the problem. Say one statue has a secret compartment. Fine, great. But, you have to know that the players will now examine EVERY statue they come across to find stuff. Of course they will start spamming searches - it's a strategy that is rewarded.

And, if they don't, they get punished because they don't find stuff.

So, IME, descriptions are always lists of things to manipulate because that's how most games are set up.

 

[LostSoul]

Honestly though, that's the problem. Say one statue has a secret compartment. Fine, great. But, you have to know that the players will now examine EVERY statue they come across to find stuff. Of course they will start spamming searches - it's a strategy that is rewarded.

And, if they don't, they get punished because they don't find stuff.

So, IME, descriptions are always lists of things to manipulate because that's how most games are set up.

Wandering monsters (should) make time a valuable resource, as does a reactive dungeon. Spending time searching carries a cost. Without that cost, it makes sense to "Greyhawk" the dungeon (or Take 20 on Search checks for every 5' square).

 

[Sammael]

I recently ran a D&D game with no skills. And it was awesome. No diplomacy skill meant having to talk to the NPCs, no search skill meant having to interact with the environment.

So, the fighter was equally good at talking as the bard? And the cleric was equally good at searching as the rogue?

What would have happened if one of the players had really poor communication skills (perhaps due to shyness)? Similarly, what would have happened if one of the players had really poor spatial orientation?

The dice are there because you are (for the most part) not playing yourself in the RPG - you are playing a character. And that character's skills are (usually) completely different from your own skills.

 

[prosfilaes]

I'll never understand why "metagaming" is intrinsically a bad word to some people.

[And yet, they often have no problems adding that wizard they found in a bar to their party because "he seems a trustworthy fellow." ]

I do have a problem with that, and I would prefer if DMs didn't put me in that situation. Perhaps someday in a really serious campaign, I won't do that. But in the games I'm in right now, it's not going to make anything more fun for me or anyone else to make a fuss about it, and it's part of the social contract to let it go. I make an exception in metagaming for this to make things more fun for everyone.