Poking things to see if they work

[MerricB]

My AD&D campaign is now over 2 years old, and is still attracting between 6 and 9 players each session at my FLGS. This coming year, I'm intending to go back to weekly play after running it on a fortnightly schedule. Yes, it'll play merry havoc with who is available for each session, but the game has very much developed into a megadungeon crawl, albeit with other matters occasionally impinging themselves on the players.

My first experiences with D&D (over 30 years ago, now) were with the AD&D and Moldvay Basic editions, and they've given me a legacy of a few odd DMing tricks and techniques. One of those is the "poke things and see how they work" technique, which is (partly) a version of "Mother, May I?" Yes, I am training my players in mind-reading techniques, with the spur of losing their characters if they choose poorly...

This is not strictly true. I very rarely have things to outright kill the players in my dungeons. Discomfit them? All the time, but as a spur for the players to try something else next time. Above all, the name of the game is entertainment, and (at least) the other players will be entertained by the situations their companions create. However, a large part of the entertainment comes for this group from the players trying things to get things to work rather than just rolling dice.

I have nothing against rolling dice for mundane activities. Looking for a secret door? Yeah, you can roll dice for that. What I don't want is the ingenuity of the players being lost because everything has dice rolling attached to it. Dice might be used to find the starting point, but in my "old age", I'm moving back towards keeping a lot of the monsters and traps secret, and letting the players learn about them rather than have the assumption that their characters know already.

Quite frankly, it was a lot more fun having the magic-user cast lightning bolt on the flesh golem (healing it) rather than just have an arcane check tell him all the immunities and vulnerabilities. Jesse knows better now, and will be prepared the next time he meets a flesh golem - and all the players have stories to tell about that fight. It's not, "And Jesse rolled some dice and pulled out the right spell!" Running the game in this manner has reminded me of a few tricks that I'll likely use in 5E when it comes around.

Is this the be-all and end-all of how to run D&D? By no means. The reason that this technique of dealing with knowledge was overhauled in 3E and 4E was because it can cause a lot of problems. "You didn't look up, so you didn't see the massive green slime as you entered the room. Sorry, you're dead!" That isn't fun. Well, I might find it amusing, but I probably wouldn't keep players in the campaign. Discretion is required.

There's another advantage to using "poking it" rather than straight dice rolling: When you use player skill rather than character skill, you can keep players engaged even if their characters are otherwise weak in other situations. When exploration tasks use a combination of mechanics and player ingenuity, rather than just mechanics, it opens up another area where everyone who wants to can contribute. Personally, I like the game most when player skill and character skill both contribute to the solution of a problem; I'm not so happy when it's all one or the other.

Cheers!

 

[ExploderWizard]

I have never stopped being a huge fan of this playstyle. Player engagement is greatly enhanced when the players know that their contributions can have a big impact on outcomes, and not just for selecting the correct menu item and making a roll of X difficulty. A game handled largely by character based skills tends to make players less likely to contribute in areas that their characters are less proficient in. Who can blame them. If their own ideas and cleverness don't matter in the resolution of things there is little reason to bother. Let the character with the best modifier handle the appropriate tasks is the smart play.

This kind of thing is what made skill challenges kind of drab and predictable. Either those with the highest skills in the right areas handled everything or the challenge required participation by all and was pretty much doomed to failure because the low modifier folks sank the ship. I like to run more freeform skill-challenge type situations that incorporate player ideas along with character abilities in the resolution. A character skill might be applicable, but even if there isn't one to apply from a particular player, a solid idea is still worth something.

The part of the playtest packs that bugged me the most about Next was the section on exploration tasks. The whole play dynamic of choose a maneuver, and make a roll for every aspect of play just doesn't sit right. In a game driven by imagination, having pre-chosen choices for everything isn'y my idea of designing to the strengths of tabletop play.

 

[TerraDave]

Merric, I think with this thread you are now officially a grognard.

Congrats, I guess.

 

[Li Shenron]

Personally, I like the game most when player skill and character skill both contribute to the solution of a problem; I'm not so happy when it's all one or the other.

I very much agree, and I usually thought this was the reason behind the Knowledge (or Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma) checks in 3e, because the player's contribution is not usually prevented, but without those checks there is not much support for character's contribuition.

But you are right in pointing out that it's not fun when checks take care of things too often.

 

[GMMichael]

This is not strictly true. I very rarely have things to outright kill the players in my dungeons. Discomfit them? All the time, but as a spur for the players to try something else next time. Above all, the name of the game is entertainment, and (at least) the other players will be entertained by the situations their companions create. However, a large part of the entertainment comes for this group from the players trying things to get things to work rather than just rolling dice.

Regarding save-or-die traps and trap placement: Dungeonscape was an excellent book on these topics. The book also brought the "encounter trap," which required more PC involvement in the encounter than "great, I saved."

Rolling for knowledge is something of which I'm not a big fan, which is why I like to start my PCs at first level. If you play your character from the bottom, you know what he knows by the time he gets to the top.

But if a character -starts- at mid to high level, only a dense backstory will cover all the bases of what a character knows. Without that, you really need to roll those knowledge checks.

So yes, my rule is "roleplay first." If the character is better at something than the player is, permit a roll to make up the difference. If the character is really good at finding secret doors, give the player lots of hints - not the puzzle's answer.
[MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION]: The part of the playtest packs that bugged me the most about Next was well, Next. Since I was hoping for a more direct return to 3.5, I started writing my own RPG instead.

 

[MerricB]

Merric, I think with this thread you are now officially a grognard.

Congrats, I guess.

I don't think I grumble anywhere enough yet.

The truth is that I enjoy games in a wide range of styles; I really enjoy the AD&D game, but I also really enjoy the 4E and Next games I run. Funnily enough, I didn't really enjoy PF all that much; I wonder how much of my non-enjoyment came from the system, and how much came from the very nature of the Adventure Paths and Paizo's approaches to challenges.

(I do play Advanced Squad Leader when I get the chance, though!)

One of the biggest challenges that has been facing the designers of D&D over the past few years is that the nature of Adventure Paths (and such scenarios) requires a different underlying system than what D&D began with. When you're in a megadungeon, you can run away. When you reach the final Boss of an AP, the final battle needs to be big, memorable and achievable. And it's a major difference in design style. Great encounters need to be designed, rather than arising organically out of play. And some of the solutions that have been used leave me underwhelmed.

(Kyuss at the end of Age of Worms is one such. Play a rogue in that fight. Get frustrated).

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

The part of the playtest packs that bugged me the most about Next was well, Next. Since I was hoping for a more direct return to 3.5, I started writing my own RPG instead.

Good luck with that endeavour!

There are so many approaches to D&D now available (even within the official line), that there was no way Next was ever going to appeal to everyone. I just delight in that there *are* other ways that I can get to suit my mood and my players.

 

[howandwhy99]

Personally, I like the game most when player skill and character skill both contribute to the solution of a problem; I'm not so happy when it's all one or the other.

Cheers!

What we do is allow both as an option, though rolling isn't always applicable. You could easily find what you seek right away or have to dig deeper to even have a chance. it depends. Players search by trial and error describing attempts and learning results. At some point they may do something with a varied result and dice are asked to be rolled, the results and difficulty of which are predetermined by the specific person, place, or thing searched. Searches can always continue, but players usually stop after awhile for all sorts of reasons.* Dice rolls can be rerolled, but they constitute separate attempts. This sounds like "roll until you succeed" for every search or die roll perhaps, but time is spent. Other things happen in the world during that time. And sometimes "taking all day" isn't the best option (like being interrupted a dungeon).

They key is, players can always generalize their attempts to see if that level of abstraction is covered by the game. Like 1 minute of standard attacking (block, parry, thrust, dodge, etc.) or 1 turn of searching a room (check walls, floors, ceilings, under, over, and inside things, etc). Odds can be changed by trying different things before any dice are rolled, but dice could simply be rolled repeatedly if actual time is of the essence and game time isn't.

Also, most everything in the game can be done cooperatively or individually. Players always have the option of personal die rolls, but they can also work as a team too. That can mean shared initiative, shared saves, or even shared searching. Working together changes things and having multiple people aid means more ability to influence the situation. Rooms are searched more quickly. All heights are accounted for in terms of reach. Vision, hearing, racial abilities, all sorts of abilities accumulate when working together rather than alone. Not to mention a lot of the cooperative aspect is learning how to work together better, synergy if you will. ("I get on his shoulders to search the ceiling") But this option isn't always good either. Sometimes you want someone watching the hallway. Sometimes you all want to duck the fireball separately. It depends.

*In college I had a player who ran into a forest by following an attackers tracks. Then kept running until he couldn't anymore. Then kept walking until the tracks reached a road. And then picked a direction and followed the road all night, the next day, then... Sometimes they make it their life's mission to find that hidden door in room 218b.

 

[N'raac]

I generally get concerned about "player skill" when we deal with interaction skills. I game to play someone with abilities different from my own. A player who is not well spoken, perhaps a wallflower, should be able to play a suave, smooth talking con man, or a diplomat, or whatever (just like an obese couch potato can play a nimble acrobat or powerful warrior). No one would think of asking a player to "role play" the Kirk shoulder roll coming up, dagger drawn, to slice an adversary.

But "role play your speech" is far more common. The glib, well spoken player who thinks on his feet should not get better results with his 8 CHA, no social skills character because of "player skill" than the 18 CHA PC who maxes out his social skills (at the expense of other abilities) who is played by an introverted, stuttering wallflower.

Put another way, the glib player's bonuses for a well made speech should be no greater than the combat bonus awarded our wallflower because he, IRL, has a black belt, and he demonstrates some martial arts moves in describing his character's actions. Similarly, if the wallflower is penalized for an insipid real-life speech, I want to see Tubby role play that sprint across the rocks and shoulder roll into an imaginary opponent, regardless of his character's acrobatics roll and BAB. The relative impact of character and player skill should be consistent across all tasks.

Or be upfront and state no one should waste skill points on interaction skills, or stats on CHA, as you will evaluate success and failure of interaction based on role playing and player skill alone. That's pretty much the pre-3e model as there were no social skills - and what was the lowest stat on most characters in 1e and 2e?

 

[ExploderWizard]

@ExploderWizard : The part of the playtest packs that bugged me the most about Next was well, Next. Since I was hoping for a more direct return to 3.5, I started writing my own RPG instead.

As far as Next as a whole is concerned, I'm reserving judgement. The playtest packets were a wide scope of mudballs thrown at a wall to determine the most well recognized "feel" for D&D (as determined by feedback) The actual game and mechanical workings may be close to some playtest packet items or not. I wouldn't consider the last packet to be the almost complete game any more than I would the first one. Everything the public gets to see is yesterday's news compared to the live "active" version of the game as it exists in-house.

So with the playtest being nothing more than a long marketing feeler process, I await the finished product with an open mind.