D&D 5E (2014) player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[Guest 6801328]

And notice how the official advice in all these cases is NOT to tell the players what they may or may not do, but to surprise them with unexpected facts about the world that contradict their assumptions.

 

[iserith]

The player of course always has an opportunity to declare and describe their action in more detail. But if they don't that doesn't mean they would just miss certain things automatically. It makes perfect sense: if you examine a think closely, there is greater chance that you notice/remember things about it than if you just glance at it, but even in the latter case there is still a chance that you notice/remember if that was at all possible in the first place.

In games where I've seen this technique employed, it was because the DM had passive players compared to what I would consider average. The corrective employed was to ask them to make "skill checks" so that the DM had an excuse (not that one is needed) to provide more information than the basic description of the environment so that the players would do something. The issue with this is it just makes the players more passive, not less. It sounds like you may employ an incentive to further deal with that issue such that the DC will be lower if they actually play their characters. The solution to me is not more downstream kluges, but rather fix the issue with the players being passive upstream.

It seems to overtly punitive to me to just make characters effectively autofail in completely unrealistic manner unless the player constantly remembers to click every pixel in the hopes that this was the right thing that allows them to roll.

You cannot fail at what you do not try. And nobody's asking them to click pixels in my game. Just play their characters, because I'm not going to do it for them.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It has absolutely nothing to do with using OOC information IC. It is merely about the players sharing information between themselves.

And you’re accusing others of rules lawyering? Seriously?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This approach would seem to encourage players to examine everything closely, leading to a lot of time spent on carefully studying features of the environment that have little or no significance for fear of missing additional information.

If they think that maybe getting five point lower DC in some roll is worth wasting all that time, I guess. But that doesn't seem likely and certainly this way worse issue in your playsyle where you don't get to roll at all unless you poke the right object with right questions and still might get just a part of the answer. That if anything would result the players describing countless specific things they would try to discern about every object, whereas in my style merely entering the room eyes open is sufficient to warrant a roll a possibility of learning everything relevant with that one roll.

This is not an accurate characterization of the way many of us adjudicate actions.

I based it on your description of the seal issue.

 

[iserith]

It has absolutely nothing to do with using OOC information IC. It is merely about the players sharing information between themselves.

Didn't you just accuse me of reading things myopically?

 

[Charlaquin]

If they think that maybe getting five point lower DC in some roll is worth wasting all that time, I guess. But that doesn't seem likely and certainly this way worse issue in your playsyle where you don't get to roll at all unless you poke the right object with right questions and still might get just a part of the answer. That if anything would result the players describing countless specific things they would try to discern about every object, whereas in my style merely entering the room eyes open is sufficient to warrant a roll a possibility of learning everything relevant with that one roll.

Not at all. In my approach the description of the environment already carries sufficient detail for the players to be able to make decisions and confidently take actions with reasonable specificity.

I based it on your description of the seal issue.

You have not demonstrated that this example scenario requires any such pixel-bitching.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And you’re accusing others of rules lawyering? Seriously?

The difference here is rather important, not merely technical. It is not at all about whether the character can use the knowledge the player has. It is about whether the players share openly information between them regardless of whether their characters know it. These are completely different things, certainly you must see that?

 

[Charlaquin]

The difference here is rather important, not merely technical. It is not at all about whether the character can use the knowledge the player has. It is about whether the players share openly information between them regardless of whether their characters know it. These are completely different things, certainly you must see that?

You seem to have a very strange assessment of what constitutes importance and what constitutes technicality.

 

[iserith]

You seem to have a very strange assessment of what constitutes importance and what constitutes technicality.

It's just internet debate 101. If it refutes my point, you're reading too myopically. If it supports my point, you're not reading myopically enough.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You have not demonstrated that this example scenario requires any such pixel-bitching.

Well it did. First of, merely observing the item didn't trigger the skill check, thus you need to try to specifically try to discern things about every item in the vicinity to trigger the skill check. Furthermore, depending on how the player worded their examination, the check would only reveal a one part of the things that there was to know about this item. Thus this requires examining every item separately and making several examination attempts for each item and even then you cannot know whether you missed something.