D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[Charlaquin]

This, in particular, makes no sense to me. I cannot even fathom how a game can take place if the players are not allowed to ask questions.

Actions (which have goals and approaches) are preferable to questions.
“I draw on my familiarity with stonework to try and identify any distinguishing features of the local architecture” instead of “doI know anything about the local architecture with my stonecunning?” Or “I open every drawer in the desk looking for any keys” instead of “are there any keys in the desk drawers?” “I turn the doorknob to see if it opens” instead of “is the door locked?” “I apologize and ask him to remind me of his name” instead of “what was this guy’s name again?”

I’ve tried the “no questions, only actions approach” and it wasn’t for me, but it definitely has its merits. It grounds absolutely everything in terms of what is actually happening and what the characters are actually doing in the game world, and it insures the DM never has to assume an unstated action. For me it was more trouble than it was worth reminding my players to rephrase their questions in the form of an action their character performs to try to learn the answer. But it can be quite useful if your players are willing to get onboard.

 

[iserith]

Actions (which have goals and approaches) are preferable to questions.
“I draw on my familiarity with stonework to try and identify any distinguishing features of the local architecture” instead of “doI know anything about the local architecture with my stonecunning?” Or “I open every drawer in the desk looking for any keys” instead of “are there any keys in the desk drawers?” “I turn the doorknob to see if it opens” instead of “is the door locked?” “I apologize and ask him to remind me of his name” instead of “what was this guy’s name again?”

I’ve tried the “no questions, only actions approach” and it wasn’t for me, but it definitely has its merits. It grounds absolutely everything in terms of what is actually happening and what the characters are actually doing in the game world, and it insures the DM never has to assume an unstated action. For me it was more trouble than it was worth reminding my players to rephrase their questions in the form of an action their character performs to try to learn the answer. But it can be quite useful if your players are willing to get onboard.

Another upside to grounding everything in terms of what is happening in the game world, as pointed out to me by [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] in another thread a while back, is that players walk away from the play experience with the feeling that they had done a ton of stuff that session. Because they did! They didn't stop the forward progress of the game after the DM described the environment to have an exchange of Q&A. They continued to act through their characters, describing what they wanted to do, while the DM narrated the results. I'm very concerned with pacing, how much content we get through in a given session, and a play experience where the players feel like they have control over their own characters' destinies. I've found that getting players to think of things in terms of goals and approaches, rather than asking questions and making unprompted rolls, goes a long way toward achieving that.

 

[Charlaquin]

Another upside to grounding everything in terms of what is happening in the game world, as pointed out to me by [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] in another thread a while back, is that players walk away from the play experience with the feeling that they had done a ton of stuff that session. Because they did! They didn't stop the forward progress of the game after the DM described the environment to have an exchange of Q&A. They continued to act through their characters, describing what they wanted to do, while the DM narrated the results. I'm very concerned with pacing, how much content we get through in a given session, and a play experience where the players feel like they have control over their own characters' destinies. I've found that getting players to think of things in terms of goals and approaches, rather than asking questions and making unprompted rolls, goes a long way toward achieving that.

Absolutely, that’s another big advantage of doing it that way. I remember back before WotC closed their forums down, reading the two of you advocating for this style, which was what prompted me to try it myself. I found goals and approaches incredibly effective, but didn’t feel the payoff for requiring questions to be stated as actions was worth having to fight my players’ instincts to ask questions. I’m glad I tried it though, it was a valuable experience even if I ultimately decided to let the questions part go.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I feel like the questions thing might lead to statements like, "I use mental remembering to determine whether I've punched my DM in the liver lately." And I like my liver too much to deal with that.

 

[iserith]

Exactly.

After a time certain things become commonplace and "standard" communications.

i am all in with the "describe the odd" approach as opposed to the turn everything into defensive wording every time approach.

"PLAYER did not say you looked up", "PLAYER said you touched the lock", not as important to me for "good stuff happens" vs "bad stuff happens" as is **the character's skill**.

You know, it's much easier to reduce someone's methods down to something absurd than it is to understand them. I know, I've done that before myself. I'm trying to be better than that though.

If you're up for actually understanding what I'm talking about, I'm up for the challenge. Because if this is what you think I'm talking about, you've completely missed the mark.

 

[Charlaquin]

I feel like the questions thing might lead to statements like, "I use mental remembering to determine whether I've punched my DM in the liver lately." And I like my liver too much to deal with that.

In my experience it was never that bad. My players weren’t unwilling to give it a try, but there was a lot of “do I... Err, I mean... I try to remember (whatever)” which was just awkward.

What I do now is handle a lot of things that I’ve found to be awkward to phrase as actions via passive checks. If it’s difficult to phrase in terms of goal and approach, chances are that’s because it’s something you don’t actively do, like recalling information. So I don’t have players roll for those things, I check their passive scores and just give them the information.

This article by the Angry GM pretty perfectly sums up the process I stumbled into myself, although I use 10 as the base for passive checks instead of 8.

 

[redrick]

Exactly.

After a time certain things become commonplace and "standard" communications.

i am all in with the "describe the odd" approach as opposed to the turn everything into defensive wording every time approach.

"PLAYER did not say you looked up", "PLAYER said you touched the lock", not as important to me for "good stuff happens" vs "bad stuff happens" as is **the character's skill**.

I think what Iserith is describing is not about using the players words against them to ambush them with "gotcha" consequences. At least when I play, I try not to have anything bad happen to players simply because they were vague in stating their actions. I'll ask them what they are doing and how they are doing it.

And it doesn't take very long. I don't go as far as the actions-only approach, but I assume that player questions mean, "From where I'm standing can I see that ..."

PLAYER: Is the door locked?
DM: You can't tell from where you're standing.
PLAYER: Hmm, I'll try and turn the handle.
DM: It doesn't turn. It's locked.

Or.

DM: As you start to turn the handle, you hear something scraping beneath your feet. Roll a Dex save!
PLAYER: Oh no, it was trapped!

It wouldn't really be fair to say:

PLAYER: Is it locked?
DM: You can't tell from where you're standing, so you go to turn the handle, and a trap door opens beneath your feet!

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In my experience it was never that bad. My players weren’t unwilling to give it a try, but there was a lot of “do I... Err, I mean... I try to remember (whatever)” which was just awkward.

What I do now is handle a lot of things that I’ve found to be awkward to phrase as questions via passive checks. If it’s difficult to phrase in terms of goal and approach, chances are that’s because it’s something you don’t actively do, like recalling information. So I don’t have players roll for those things, I check their passive scores and just give them the information.

This article by the Angry GM pretty perfectly sums up the process I stumbled into myself, although I use 10 as the base for passive checks instead of 8.

That was the next thing that I was going to ask about (would also like to hear from [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] about this). How do you handle adjudicating whether or not a character knows about or recognizes a thing in the fiction?

For example, in a game that I'm currently running, the characters have encountered some russet mold and some vegepygmies, who have the mark of the demon lord Zuggtmoy on them. After describing the scene, I said something along the lines of, "Anybody who's not a druid (because druids know all about russet molds and vegepygmies, also the druid was once a vegepygmie, before being reincarnated) can make a Nature check to identify these critters. Also everyone can make me a Religion or Planes check to identify that weird mark they're all carrying." And then I told them some stuff about vegepygmies, russet mold, Zuggtmoy, and so on. And there followed a bit of back and forth about those specific bits of lore.

 

[cmad1977]

That was the next thing that I was going to ask about (would also like to hear from [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] about this). How do you handle adjudicating whether or not a character knows about or recognizes a thing in the fiction?

For example, in a game that I'm currently running, the characters have encountered some russet mold and some vegepygmies, who have the mark of the demon lord Zuggtmoy on them. After describing the scene, I said something along the lines of, "Anybody who's not a druid (because druids know all about russet molds and vegepygmies, also the druid was once a vegepygmie, before being reincarnated) can make a Nature check to identify these critters. Also everyone can make me a Religion or Planes check to identify that weird mark they're all carrying." And then I told them some stuff about vegepygmies, russet mold, Zuggtmoy, and so on. And there followed a bit of back and forth about those specific bits of lore.

I would have set a Nature DC to compare against the Pcs skills instead of rolling.

Though rolling for the weird mark makes sense to me as the sages of the party study and compare.

But either way seems fine.


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[iserith]

That was the next thing that I was going to ask about (would also like to hear from [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] about this). How do you handle adjudicating whether or not a character knows about or recognizes a thing in the fiction?

For example, in a game that I'm currently running, the characters have encountered some russet mold and some vegepygmies, who have the mark of the demon lord Zuggtmoy on them. After describing the scene, I said something along the lines of, "Anybody who's not a druid (because druids know all about russet molds and vegepygmies, also the druid was once a vegepygmie, before being reincarnated) can make a Nature check to identify these critters. Also everyone can make me a Religion or Planes check to identify that weird mark they're all carrying." And then I told them some stuff about vegepygmies, russet mold, Zuggtmoy, and so on.

I describe things as faithfully (and succinctly) as I can manage, telegraphing any specific dangers, and then ask the players "What do you do?" A player might then say he or she tries to recall what the strange mark on the monsters might be (to use your example) and then justifies that using some aspect of the character, be it background, personal characteristic, class feature, something that happened previously in the game, or whatever. From there I can decide if the attempt to recall the lore is certain (success or fail) or uncertain (roll). So it looks like the part where you establish that beforehand and say who can roll what I put on the players. Like [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] I am going to err on the side of giving the players lots of actionable information and don't gate anything essential behind "knowledge rolls." If you're paying attention to the description of the environment, you should be able to deduce that the vegepygmies regenerate, are afraid of fire, cold, and necrotic damage, or that suspicious spores swirl about in some areas. Recalling lore confirms deductions and adds non-essential (but interesting and potentially useful) information.