Player skill vs character skill?

[Bill Zebub]

Whereas I'm typically fine with status quo as a possible outcome. Sometimes, "no, you're not able to pick this lock at this time, try something else or find a way to change the situation in your favour" is an outcome that makes sense in the context of the fictional world, and I don't have a need for it to be spiced up with further consequences -- in fact, I actively don't want more interesting outcomes forced on me.

I get that, and I know most people play that way, and I played that way for years, and honestly I sometimes still do when I'm caught flat-footed by my players.

But some people on this forum...who weirdly all seem to have actually deleted their accounts (@Ovinomancer, @iserith, I can't think who else)...eventually persuaded me to rethink that.

The question I started to ask is: if the character has a reasonable chance of picking a lock then obviously it must not be game/adventure/plot breaking for them to succeed. So if there's no danger to trying to pick the lock, why not just let them succeed? What does it actually add to the game to make it a random outcome? If you want them to not be able to open the door so they will explore the other direction, then don't put a pickable lock on the door. If it genuinely doesn't matter which way they go, then...it genuinely doesn't matter. Let them pick the lock if they want. The role that lock should play is not a challenge to be overcome (because it's not; it's random, not challenging) but rather a signal for the players that something important is beyond it.

I know that what I'm saying is...unusual. "What? Just remove random chance and let them open all locks, recall all lore, find all secret doors, track all prey, bend all bars and lift all gates? All they have to do is declare the action and they succeed? That's crazy talk!"

But...yes. I do it, and it works not only fine but great. It means I have a LOT more work to do to prepare, because I can't just sprinkle some traps here, secret doors there, locked portcullises over here, slap on some DCs, and let them loose. It means my traps have to be challenging to deal with once discovered. The secret doors need to have interesting mechanisms to open them. Again, locked doors primarily are indicators of intent, not difficult obstacles to overcome. And if I actually want to stop them, if I actually want them to have to work to get through a door, then I can't just put a normal lock on it. Which....is what adventure design does anyway. If a designer wants you to have to go visit areas C, D, and E before opening the door from A to B, they don't just slap a higher DC on the lock. They make the lock rusty and broken, or whatever.

So what I'm really saying is that I think it's better to put design energy, and game session time, into the important doors, and stop trying to make a "game" out of rolling dice for things with no consequence.

 

[SableWyvern]

I get that, and I know most people play that way, and I played that way for years, and honestly I sometimes still do when I'm caught flat-footed by my players.

But some people on this forum...who weirdly all seem to have actually deleted their accounts (@Ovinomancer, @iserith, I can't think who else)...eventually persuaded me to rethink that.

The question I started to ask is: if the character has a reasonable chance of picking a lock then obviously it must not be game/adventure/plot breaking for them to succeed. So if there's no danger to trying to pick the lock, why not just let them succeed? What does it actually add to the game to make it a random outcome? If you want them to not be able to open the door so they will explore the other direction, then don't put a pickable lock on the door. If it genuinely doesn't matter which way they go, then...it genuinely doesn't matter. Let them pick the lock if they want. The role that lock should play is not a challenge to be overcome (because it's not; it's RNG) but rather a signal for the players that something important is beyond it, not

I know that what I'm saying is...unusual. "What? Just remove random chance and let them open all locks, recall all lore, find all secret doors, track all prey, bend all bars and lift all gates? All they have to do is declare the action and they succeed? That's crazy talk!"

But...yes. I do it, and it works not only fine but great. It means I have a LOT more work to do to prepare, because I can't just sprinkle some traps here, secret doors there, locked portcullises over here, slap on some DCs, and let them loose. It means my traps have to be challenging to deal with once discovered. The secret doors need to have interesting mechanisms to open them. Again, locked doors primarily are indicators of intent, not difficult obstacles to overcome. And if I actually want to stop them, if I actually want them to have to work to get through a door, then I can't just put a normal lock on it. Which....is what adventure design does anyway. If a designer wants you to have to go visit areas C, D, and E before opening the door from A to B, they don't just slap a higher DC on the lock. They make the lock rusty and broken, or whatever.

So what I'm really saying is that I think it's better to put design energy, and game session time, into the important doors, and stop trying to make a "game" out of rolling dice for things with no consequence.

To be clear, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. If what you're doing works for you, it works for you -- it just happens to be fundamentally at odds with the whole way I approach most games (and, as noted earlier, rolling dice too often is definitely not a thing that tends to happen in my games, so it isn't a problem that needs fixing).

The main reason I responded at all is because, up until that point, it had seemed we were very closely aligned in our processes and philosophies. Then, suddenly, we weren't, and it felt notable to me.

As a an aside, I'm not sure that your position is that odd -- it seems to be fairly well supported these days.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not rolling unless there is an interesting consequence for failure seems to be the hardest skill a GM has to learn.

Absolutely. I'm a firm believer in it, and it's really, really, really hard.

The number of times I've watched GMs call for rolls, then have the roll fail, then scramble to try to cover for what they obviously thought was going to be a successful roll is painful.

Yeah, huge mistake. If they didn't already know what the consequence was, they should have just granted automatic success. I lay out the stakes for players before they roll, and if they don't like the stakes they can negate the action.

"I leap over the chasm!"
"Um, ok, it's really far. I'll need a DC 25 Athletics roll, and if you fail you die."
"Oh. Uh, never mind."

It's hard to quantify how much I now dislike the "fail forward" concept as I now feel that the prevalence of advice on why to use it is mostly so GMs who call for rolls far too often can use "fail forward" to cover for their poor judgement. I have watched a lot of GMs run what I can only describe as consequence free games because PCs either succeed, or "fail forward" which is just them succeeding through luck rather than skill.

That sounds like really poor implementation of fail forward.

Same with the "absolutely no consequence" rolls. The ones where it's pretty obvious the GM was calling for a roll just so the players could throw dice, as I can easily tell that no matter the outcome of the roll the result would be the same. It's really disheartening to see that for many groups the idea of the PCs suffering any kind of real setback is anathema. Maybe I need to hunt down more old school style AP, or just accept that fact that the games I run where PCs can have bad things happen, fail to achieve objectives, or (oh my gosh, what a concept) die, is by far not the norm anymore. Games nowadays are about coddling players and hand holding and participation trophies. Oh well.

I tell you, rap music is to blame. Somehow.

 

[Bill Zebub]

As a an aside, I'm not sure that your position is that odd -- it seems to be fairly well supported these days.

Boy it doesn't seem that way, at least not on these forums.

I try to spread the word to non-believers, like @Ovinomancer and @iserith did for me when I was skeptical, whenever one of these threads comes up, and it certainly feels like I'm shouting into the wind by myself.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

It sounds like when you say "D&D" you mean 5e, Pathfinder and similar games, where choosing and using specific feats and abilities is a key component (hence my feeling that you were referring to games with a strong charop element). As this is a thread in the TTRPG General forum, I assume D&D isn't a given and, if D&D, 5e isn't a given.

If I run D&D, it will be something much closer to B/X or AD&D

Yeah didn't realize the general forum at first as the posts had veered into D&D so should have been more specific. And yes I was referring to 3e, 5e and similar games.

Basic and AD&D are definitely more compatible with player skill prominence in my mind as there are less specifically defined character abilities to compete with player skill, some expectation of combat as war vs sport, etc.

 

[cbwjm]

Yeah, huge mistake. If they didn't already know what the consequence was, they should have just granted automatic success. I lay out the stakes for players before they roll, and if they don't like the stakes they can negate the action.

"I leap over the chasm!"
"Um, ok, it's really far. I'll need a DC 25 Athletics roll, and if you fail you die."
"Oh. Uh, never mind."

You've just reminded me of something a lot of DMs seem to call for a roll for: jumping. Seems all too often when a PC has the requisite strength score to clear the chasm in 5e rules, a DM will often still call for an athletics check.

 

[Lanefan]

I get that, and I know most people play that way, and I played that way for years, and honestly I sometimes still do when I'm caught flat-footed by my players.

But some people on this forum...who weirdly all seem to have actually deleted their accounts (@Ovinomancer, @iserith, I can't think who else)...eventually persuaded me to rethink that.

The question I started to ask is: if the character has a reasonable chance of picking a lock then obviously it must not be game/adventure/plot breaking for them to succeed. So if there's no danger to trying to pick the lock, why not just let them succeed? What does it actually add to the game to make it a random outcome?

It doesn't add to the game. Rather, it subtracts from the game in that there's less challenge for the PCs, and by extension the players.

Frustration at being unable to move forward is in itself a challenge to be overcome.

If you want them to not be able to open the door so they will explore the other direction, then don't put a pickable lock on the door. If it genuinely doesn't matter which way they go, then...it genuinely doesn't matter.

Thing is, it always matters. It's the butterfly effect: something small happening here (e.g. a party having to go in through a window because they can't pick the door open) may or may not have major downstream effects later depending how things go. And because you don't and can't know if there'll be any major downstream effects until after the point at which those effects might manifest, you've IMO got to let the dice decide what happens now even if what happens is (or appears to be) nothing..

 

[Retros_x]

I think its not a VERSUS. Sometimes you need or want player skill, sometimes character skill. For me personally TTRPG is about making decisions and problem solving. These are the main areas that I don't want to automate or abstract away behind skill checks, because these are the fun of the game for me.

So figuring out how a trap works, what leaverage to use against the guard captain, investigating a scene, these all are player skills for me. Same as having creative approaches to overcome a trap or obstacle, exploration etc. I don't want to abstract these away, these all are ROLEPLAY in the TTRPG sense for me.

Physical skill, Physique and emotional expression are NOT required for fun and good roleplaying in TTRPG. There might be in LARP, but not in TTRPG. Its not a player skill, its a character skill. So nobody ever needs to have the moves with a sword or do good acting. It gets abstracted away behind a dice roll. When a player says "I try to entertain the king with a fun story that makes jokes about the rival kingdom", I answer with "nice" and not with "uhm, please use your actual (player) skill to act this story out". Its perfectly fine roleplaying to just describe your intent and action, because its about making the decision what action you choose and with what intent behind it, not about the ability to act it out.

Knowledge, Lore and History are for me character skills, Roleplaying is not about the player memorizing everything or reading a dozen page long lore document and learning everything from it. But I rarely roll for it. If its knowledge "before the adventure" like general lore and history I decide based on the characters background if they know it. Knowledge that gets gathered during the adventure I just straight up tell them. "Remember Karl the Kobold told you that the dragon lord lived once in this country"

I never head of any table that runs a game with 100% character skill or 100% player skill. So I think everyone uses a mix, just with different shape than mine. But, and this is a side tangent, is another reason to believe for me that meta-game and the fear of meta-game is nonsensical. The player and the character are always mixed up with each other, there is no clear seperation. Its always the player making decisions FOR the character and often using their player skill. So trying to forcefully seperate the player from the character - "No metagaming!!!!!" - is a quixotic goal.