D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

This kind of thing is always going to be difficult to adjudicate, and tends to fall between multiple stools.
Personally, if an NPC were to cast Detect Thoughts on a PC I would ask the player "what is your character thinking?" and go with whatever they said.
But there is no right or wrong way to do this, just go with whatever works at your table.
Interestingly enough the PC had suspected the use of Detect Thoughts/ESP at the meeting (he uses it himself sometimes) and he had informed me that he was filtering his surface thoughts with nonsense. He was not aware that I was going to lean on his Flaw (final decision being his of course)

But you are right each table will look at the situation differently.

There are times where I play things close to my chest, other times I feel it works well out in the open. For me it is what best suits the situation and how can I lean more on the characters' TIBFs.
 

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If the NPC persuades the PC to do something the PC would never do, the player can ignore it and do something else? Because there is no "good faith acting as if something the PC would never do is true." It can't happen. Never = never.
If it’s something that the PC would “never do”, then obviously it can’t be the result of a successful resolution roll in the game.

If it’s a valid option for a successful resolution roll, then it seems like the player is making a categorical error in thinking this is something the character would never do.

It can’t be both.
 

I'm not okay with loss of agency. It's not something that I will take away from a player like that, and I won't play in a game where the DM is taking away my agency with social skills.

Loss of agency is the biggest issue, and it's an irreconcilable difference.
Other than gaining some biographical information that you’re willing to cut away a broad swathe of games and play techniques to fulfill your aesthetic needs (like most of us, I imagine), I’m not sure what information we’re supposed to take away from this.
 

Heh. How to say you only play D&D without saying you only play D&D. ((Sorry, that might be more snarky than it's meant. It is meant as a gentle ribbing))

There are tons of systems out there that disagree with you. FATE being an easy example. There are all sorts of mechanics in Fate, the Aspects for example, which give the DM a lever to influence the player's actions. in my current indie darling Ironsworn, there are a TON of mechanics for absolutely letting not only the GM (not that you actually need on in Ironsworn) but also every other player at the table get their fingers in your PC pie.

Your presumption here is that a character that is brought to the table is 100% known from generation. Everything we can know about that character is created before the campaign even begins. That's not true in all sorts of RPG's. An older one that I really enjoyed was 3:16 Carnage Beyond the Stars, where the character at the outset was barely detailed at all and it was during play that we learned who this character is.

As a DM in D&D, I always ask permission before I get my greasy fingers on someone else's character, but, since my players are generally groovy with it, they tend to let me. One of my players has, in the past, deliberately left his history blank with the presumption that I would be the one filling in at least some of those blanks.

But, in any case, the notion that allowing something like a social check to influence PC's would result in "horror stories" is pretty hyperbolic.


If you ask your players whether or not they accept your house rule, that's fine. Just don't expect that same house rule to apply to any other group. Because that's what it seems like you're arguing - because your group is okay with it every other group should be okay with it. Why is it so hard to accept that different games work in different ways? In some games the lines of control are a lot fuzzier than D&D's clear lines. Sometimes a player makes statements about the world, sometimes the GM makes statements about the character.

In D&D (sans house rules), the player's control is pretty limited. They control their character, a bit of background lore, and that's it. The aspect of the game they control is their character, the only way to significantly have impact on the world around them is their character. The trade-off that players get for being limited to changing the world through their characters is that they are always in control of what their character thinks or feels unless they are being controlled by some external supernatural force. That's why it crosses a red line for people. Unless you discuss it as a house rule and they accept it of course.
 

The issue remains, the roll is the mistake. Who rolls it is irrelevant.

Anytime we use mechanics to bludgeon players into acting in a certain way, especially if the player protests, we are crossing a boundary. We are choosing mechanics over the people at the table for little gain.
Do you feel that way about dice rolls/mechanics resulting in character death?
 

If it’s something that the PC would “never do”, then obviously it can’t be the result of a successful resolution roll in the game.

If it’s a valid option for a successful resolution roll, then it seems like the player is making a categorical error in thinking this is something the character would never do.

It can’t be both.
Fully agreed. There definitely sounds like some desire to have one's cake and eat it too, here, from those waving the "player agency" flag now. (Funny how little player agency mattered previously, eh?)

The player gets to decide every time, all the time, what their character would or wouldn't ever do--even if those things at time A and time B are diametric opposites? Nah, not okay. I might be willing to grant that a character is such a stone-cold badass that they simply don't feel much emotion in the face of a really scary thing happening (like a very dangerous creature or a threatening enemy). They cannot then later say that they're in tune with the emotions of a crowd. If you're an emotionless robot, you're an emotionless robot. You don't get to be an emotionless robot when it's convenient to you and then a copacetic grooving-with-the-audience type a week later when it's convenient to you. Either you have strong emotional responses or you don't--or you're going to have to work very, very, very hard to fake it when you need to be sensitive and emotive.

Not doing that very much IS giving the player the power to continually rewrite the world every time it suits them, simply because it gives them an advantage. Something we were told over and over again was utterly unacceptable.
 

You're kidding, right?

The fact that many of us have said that it was a bad example, and yet you keep bringing it up as if it's the way to do fail forward, is a ginormous strawman. Even though we have shown you many other examples.

The definition of strawman "An informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction." I never said it was a good example. I brought it up as an example that I had found so that we could discuss a detailed example in D&D instead of talking about how it works in other games that have different approaches and assumptions.

Stop sea-lioning me on this.

I pointed this bit out earlier, although I will admit I forget if it was to you or to someone else.

When someone rolls badly on Stealth, there are no rules that say why they failed. There's no d% table of Reasons Why You Failed The Stealth Check. Yet you don't just expect the character to shout out "I ROLLED A FOUR!" a la OOTS, and I'm sure you don't just shrug and say "you failed" and that's it. Instead, I'll bet that either you or the player make something up. You make up a reason why the Stealth roll failed. Right?

The fail forward/partial success examples we give are exactly like this.

No, the rules don't say that there's a cook that hears you. But it makes sense to say that because you bungled your roll, you were clumsy with your attempt to pick the lock, and because you were clumsy, you made noise and were heard, or you didn't keep to the shadows enough and were seen. Just like it makes sense to say that you stepped on a twig or knocked into some furniture and that's why you failed your Stealth check.


Remember that fail forward is there to keep the game moving. So such an event should mean that either another way through is revealed--someone ages ago brought up the idea of "you can't pick the lock, but you suddenly notice an open third-story window"--or they succeed but there's a cost--such as the screaming cook, or cutting yourself on the jagged lock, or damaging or losing your tools.


It does fit if there's a time crunch involved. If you only have an hour to get in and get out, then spending ten minutes on the lock will mess up the rest of your plans.

The issue that people have is that it assumes that there is a cook active and in the vicinity at all hours of the day. As a DM I set up interesting obstacles and scenarios when planning. I am not being particularly neutral in my judgment here. I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle the boring bits using minimal game time, if it makes sense in-world for there to be a threat to great for them to handle how do I broadcast that they should avoid it and how, and finally the bits and pieces we're going to play out. So those bits and pieces we're going to play out should be challenging, interesting, and just as important not be gated behind a single roll so I need to consider multiple options. If I think there even is a cook, I may make some notes about servants quarters and whatnot such how they're going to react (not all servants are going to be fond of their employer and so on) to intruders.

As much as possible once the session starts I become a neutral arbiter and referee. I break down what's going on in the world into reactions to what the players say and what actions they attempt. I am not pushing a narrative, I feel no obligation to force the momentum of the game in any specific direction. The players are in the driver's seat not me. If they try something I had not thought of ahead of time I'll have to make a decision at that point, if I'm uncertain (such as whether there a coal chute or root cellar) I'll roll for it. For me, the way forward if they can't open a door is to be attempt to open a window. If they can't open the window there's a brick they can use to break the window or whatever other option makes sense for the scenario. Of course there's going to be times when I'm ad-libbing because the players went in a direction I had not expected and I'm making it up as I go along. But I'm still going to do that ad-libbing based on what I know about the location and who or what they might encounter. The location of the cook? They will only be there if I think they would be preparing food or cleaning up at the time of the break-in.

There are some situations where I can see fail forward could apply, although most of those for me I would consider partial success or success at a cost. So the player rolls high enough to break down the door but takes a bit of damage doing it. But there's still the chance that they could just not be able to break down the door. For example I don't know how I'd fail forward if the player needed to make a knowledge check to a mystery.

There are other cases where, like with lock picking, the sleight of hand check was done to see if the character could pick the lock quickly and they may fail. If I think they are capable of opening the lock if given enough time they have the option of rolling to see how long it will take, but that extra time increases the chance of being noticed. The big difference to me is that I see those as separate action declarations made by the player, their declared action didn't work so they have multiple other possibilities including fiddling with the lock until it does work.

I understand the concept of fail forward and in games that don't have the same core assumptions of the effect being directly tied to the cause that D&D does, it would be easier to implement. If I was playing a game where failure could mean bad karma, that bad karma could have influence other than a lock just stubbornly remaining locked. I am someone who needs concrete examples sometimes, theory is great but the only thing that really matters is the specifics when the rubber meets the road. So if you want to discuss actual detailed examples using the assumptions of D&D? Great. If not, there's no reason to continue this tangent.
 

Would this change for you were the consequence or knowledge concerning it diegetic... something the characters can know?

"Sure, you're confident you (the PC) can climb the cliff, but unless you get a good route it could take more time than you have."

What's 'negotiated' then isn't what the world is like, that's stable once established, it's what the player characters decide to do.
I'm honestly not sure how you can do that consistently, but also no, my concern is that negotiation is not generally a compelling gameplay experience (and once it's introduced, it eats all the other possible gameplay experiences).

If the climbing rules are consistent, then the time is a factor of the cliff and the PC's skill and not up for negotiation, it's simply a choice available to the PCs derived from the board state. In order to make the time variable, you'd either need to be altering the board, eliding some detail, or changing the PC's capabilities at the time of the proposed check.
 

I'm honestly not sure how you can do that consistently, but also no, my concern is that negotiation is not generally a compelling gameplay experience (and once it's introduced, it eats all the other possible gameplay experiences).

If the climbing rules are consistent, then the time is a factor of the cliff and the PC's skill and not up for negotiation, it's simply a choice available to the PCs derived from the board state. In order to make the time variable, you'd either need to be altering the board, eliding some detail, or changing the PC's capabilities at the time of the proposed check.

It's described in the DMG under the Trying Again section of ability checks "If failure has no consequences and a character can try and try again ... you can call for a single ability check and use the result to determine how long it takes for the character to complete the task."

So the safe way up is always going to work, you may just slide backwards but not take any damage on a regular basis but you'll eventually get there. The fast way? That's up a steeper section and if you fall you take damage.
 

@Snarf Zagyg has entered the chat!

Not really. I saw something interesting and chimed in.

Then I checked this morning and saw ... well, you know. I think that there could be productive and interesting conversations that might be had if they were a little more focused, but given the lack of agreement on terms, the continual shifting of frames (talking about TTRPGs in general, but then using specific examples from specific games), and most importantly, the inherent assumptions that most people have that they have found the right way to play and use examples from that and then assume bad-faith examples from other styles of play as a counterpoint (and vice versa) ... it just doesn't work very well. IMO.

That said, if people are getting real value from this, who am I to rain on the parade? And looking at the massive number of comments, that must be the case.
 

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