D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Ovinomancer]

@clearstream

I honestly do not understand why you're continuing to defend these answers. Like, seriously. You've claimed, multiple times now, that your responses were based on some strong misunderstandings. Yet, you continue to argue them as if they do coherently present your positions. And you make different levels of arguments here in the last two posts that seem to contradict each other in basic assumptions. My suggestion would be to just abandon those answers -- as you've said you tend to build your thinking as you go and change your mind, and I would humbly suggest that, at this point, you stop trying to fit those into whatever you want to say at this point and start over. There's a dog's breakfast of issues here.

 

[clearstream]

Let's break this down -- what was the result of the failed STR check to climb the cliff? Well, it can't be telegraphing a fall as you say, because that had to already be part of the initial framing (assuming here that there's elided steps where this is presented, of course). You can't introduce a new 100'+ fall because of the failure, the chance and therefore foreshadowing of such a fall being possible has to be present in the initial framing! So, in effect, the chance of a 100' fall isn't new or because of the failure -- it cannot be unless you're suddenly increasing the height of the cliff to make it so! This doesn't track. So, the actual outcome of the failure is -- no change in the fiction.

The overhang is there from the outset. It's not reached in 1, because the time pressure precludes the multiple checks rule. So the roll fails on the easy section. In 3, for me character death is a change in the fiction.

The end result of the failed check, called for (according to your previous post and this one) at the point where there's an overhang at sufficient height to cause a 100' or more fall is that the character doesn't fall, the initial framing of the obstacle is presented again without change, and the character is offered the chance to try again. The summation of this is "no progress." Nothing in the above changes this, unless we're assuming that this is a different overhang, suddenly introduced?

In 1 they can retry the easy section. In 3 the multiple checks rule moves us directly to the overhang, which can't be retried because 10d6 bludgeoning (well, if character survived I guess they could.)

At a larger scale, though, I'm confused why you've chosen different adjudication between case 1 and case 3. In both cases, the action declaration is climbing the cliff. In both cases, the fictional positioning with regard to the cliff is identical. Yet you chose to challenge the larger PC goal in case 1, but only stick with the fictional outputs of an attempt to climb a cliff in case 3. I do not understand why you make this choice in which consequence schema to apply. This is, of course, taking for arguments sake that your presentation in case 3 doesn't have any issues (ie, it's entirely separate from my criticism above).

Adjudication is identical, but circumstances differ. Time pressure versus no time pressure.

I can trivially provide narrations for all three while avoiding "no progress" results. I don't ask these kinds of questions I'm not prepared to answer myself. I provided this answer above -- climbing a cliff alone provides plenty of challenge, and I can choose from a suite of possible consequences that only deal with climbing a cliff. I, at no point, need to look to a larger goal to challenge for these in 5e. If it takes longer than is available to climb the cliff in case 1, causing the ritual to complete, well that's going to just come out in the wash in dealing with any actions to climb the cliff. I don't need to consider that goal as an control on what consequences I can provide. I did not understand why you needed higher level goals to adjudicate the climb,

I can only urge you to reflect on how the DCs, multiple checks rule, and presence/absence of time pressure interact.

which is why I started my questions at the resolution of the direct fictional inputs into the climb mechanics for 5e. The one that you said you had to have larger scope goals to even tell if a consequence is available. I followed along there because I thought that you had some idea as to how it worked that escaped me -- it was certainly a different argument than is made by others that argue the rules as you have. I was genuinely curious. I gave the three examples I did because they hit at different kinds of motivations, which I though might illumination your approach more fully. It doesn't appear to be the case.

Agreed. I have found them unilluminating, too. The problem is that you had a better question in mind than what I answered.

So, my answer to how to narrate each is that there's nothing there that requires different narrations for each -- they can all be adjudicated the same way and work out just fine.

I indeed narrate them the same way. I can see that my skepticism made that more difficult for you to discern.

I don't see how death was on the table for 3 and not for 1, if all the cliffs and action declarations were the same?! Was falling to their death never a possibility for 1?

In 1, the call had to be for roll at the easy section due to time pressure. Roll fail means overhang is not reached and ritual completes. In 3, absence of time pressure guides to yes on the easy section, so roll was at overhang.

In large part, this complexity was introduced by your insistence it be the same cliff. My solution avoided any conflicts in adjudication or narration.

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream

I honestly do not understand why you're continuing to defend these answers. Like, seriously. You've claimed, multiple times now, that your responses were based on some strong misunderstandings. Yet, you continue to argue them as if they do coherently present your positions. And you make different levels of arguments here in the last two posts that seem to contradict each other in basic assumptions. My suggestion would be to just abandon those answers -- as you've said you tend to build your thinking as you go and change your mind, and I would humbly suggest that, at this point, you stop trying to fit those into whatever you want to say at this point and start over. There's a dog's breakfast of issues here.

I hate to say it, considering all that has gone before, but sincerely: in our latest exchange, the misapprehensions are on your side.

 

[clearstream]

@Ovinomancer Recollect that your answer to this question...

So do we want to query just my thinking for narration of results of "roll" that were rightly called, and biased to no progress? Rest of play loop isn't at issue.

...was, to my understanding, yes. Did you mean no? Is it that you wanted us to go back and articulate full play loop? If so, we need a new stock of cases and no entangling of them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's just it: failure isn't possible if the DM never says no.

Therefore, whenever failure is possible out should come the dice.

I didn't say anything about a DM that 'never says no'. Nor do I understand how your 'therefore' follows from anything. Depictions of both success and failure are quite possible. For instance, the wizard decides to buy a new robe and haggles with the shopkeeper on the price. The GM could narrate any of a number of results, it could just be left up to the player to decide what the result is, that's one option, but only one of many.

Well of course the players are going to agree nothing's at stake whenever they can as it's in their better interests to do so!

First of all, I don't agree that players and GMs are on 'different sides', it isn't a competitive game, so IME there really is not such an incentive. But again, it has to be AGREED that nothing is at stake. Nobody is putting one over on anyone else, you are simply stuck thinking about RPGs as nothing but Gygaxian challenge play. While its a legitimate way to play, it is FAR from being the only way even 5e is clearly envisaged to be played.

Situation: a burglary job that looks like it requires at least 5 different climbs (outer wall, in and out; house wall, in and out; slippery sloping roof) and a fair degree of stealth.

Hidden situation: the PCs have lucked out in that there's nobody home tonight, meaning that within reason they can get away with being fairly unstealthy.

The 15' outer wall is fairly easy on the outside and dirt simple on the inside; the only hazard is a low spiked fence along the top. The 30' house wall is tricky but manageable. The sloping roof is very hard because rain has made it slick.

The way I see it as a DM, regardless of the ease/difficulty of climb or the hidden fact that there's nobody home each of those five climbs should be rolled for simply due to the fact that a fall is likely going to hurt (i.e. ablate some h.p.) and that losing some hit points now could have consequences later either via use of healing resources or of not being at full pop if something goes wrong. There's also the question of how the PCs will react if someone falls noisily; sure there's nobody home, but the PCs don't know that and until they do (if ever) why not keep the tension high?

First I would ask whether or not this is a situation where nothing is at stake. It doesn't SEEM to me like it is... I mean, lets imagine that it is such a situation, then regardless of any of these rolls the PCs will take what they are after from this house, right? So why are we wasting our time rolling dice here? Again, if there's some reason why some minor damage, or some hesitation due to poor stealth IS important, then some kind of stakes have been introduced. I don't generally think that situations where there are stakes are usually best run as 'free role-play', they probably should include checks, or at least determinations that a check isn't required in a given situation because, for example, the PC can just try again, etc.

As a player, though, I'll happily agree if the DM says the outer wall doesn't need a roll in either direction and the house wall only needs one (to get up, getting down is automatic) because it's in my interests.

As I say, the players and the GM are not two different sets of interests, D&D can include some challenging of players by GMs, but the two parties are not at odds in any fundamental way. And to reiterate, if nothing really is at stake, then any rolling is meaningless anyway, definitionally.

If I-as-player know my character can automatically succeed at something I'm going to do it far more often than if I-as-player know success isn't guaranteed (assuming the character has the same degree of knowledge in the fiction).

Well, I don't think that later caveat is particularly justified, why would the character know? Anyway, again, there's no 'contest' here. Is doing something that offers no risk at all interesting? I mean, I have really not seen very many players in my time who really want uninteresting play... If a given situation happens to have no stakes, it is probably a very minor plot point, at best. Really the only time something like this generally comes up at all is when the players and GM are 'setting up' something (IE its basically a cut scene or even a flashback that acts to explain or add color to some later events that are taking place in the immediate time frame, etc.). Why would anyone run a game where no challenges exist, its really not an issue that even needs addressing IMHO.

Where I think these techniques REALLY are interesting, is more in terms of focusing play on aspects that are most engaging to the players, and DO offer real challenge. So, we need an explanation of where the PCs got 'the key', it can simply be provided by saying something like "Oh, you stole it from that poorly guarded temple of Lir down the road." Nobody needs to play that out, its just color. If it is played out at all it would maybe be a scene where some other interesting information is revealed or foreshadowed, something like that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The overhang is there from the outset. It's not reached in 1, because the time pressure precludes the multiple checks rule. So the roll fails on the easy section. In 3, for me character death is a change in the fiction.


In 1 they can retry the easy section. In 3 the multiple checks rule moves us directly to the overhang, which can't be retried because 10d6 bludgeoning (well, if character survived I guess they could.)


Adjudication is identical, but circumstances differ. Time pressure versus no time pressure.

This is very weird. You earlier complained that you didn't craft a complete and coherent model for the play loop because you assumed the check was assumed and so just went to crafting consequences. I can find the direct quote of this, if you'd like. The first time you mention time pressure is here, the first time you mention anything about an easy/hard section of climb was multiple posts after your original answer. In the post right before this you said it was hard to conceive how to maintain adjudication across the three cases, yet here you're blithely claiming that the adjudication was the same in all three.

It's extremely hard to reconcile your complaints about how I was asking gotcha questions and why you felt that way and where your mistakes in understanding occurred (and I reference ones you claimed earlier, not some new or different ones) and yet all of that is suddenly resolved here, when you're explaining your earlier thought processes. My immediate conclusion here is that you've created this explanation post hoc and have no applied it to the prior. There's still great problems with this, as I'll address here:

I can only urge you to reflect on how the DCs, multiple checks rule, and presence/absence of time pressure interact.

I'm 100% familiar with how these work, but I'm wondering why you're telling me this when you're misusing them above! Firstly, DCs don't even enter into the discussion at all. The multiple checks rule is the only place that time pressure really interacts at all so I'm not sure why you're separating these. As for multiple checks, you have to first accept that the result of a given check is that there is no significant cost to failure -- ie, that the result of a check is no progress only, no other costs. You then can, in the interests of speeding up play, just assume that the task succeeds at 10x the normal time (which cannot be any real cost, either, otherwise we cannot use this rule). To cite this rule, you have to 100% embrace "no cost" failure.

Are you indeed claiming no cost to the checks here so that you can call upon this rule? It seems 100% counter to the point you're trying to make.

Just so we're clear on the section and rule, here it is again:

Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so, the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task. However, no amount of repeating the check allows a character to turn an impossible task into a successful one.

Emphasis mine. Further it's useful to note that the character has to spend 10x the time to get this advantage -- this is not something that the GM asserts for the character, otherwise we're violating the PHB pg6 process because now the GM is declaring actions for the PC (ie, spending the extra time).

You admonished others much earlier in the thread that if you're going to correct you on a rule, you better come 100% right or you will hold them accountable. It seems that worm may have turned.

Agreed. I have found them unilluminating, too. The problem is that you had a better question in mind than what I answered.

I didn't. I asked the question according to what you demanded.

I indeed narrate them the same way. I can see that my skepticism made that more difficult for you to discern.

You didn't. In fact, there's a glaring problem here. In the first example, you said you were considering the situation in 1 minute increments. Yet a single failure (not situated at the easy slope, so no progress was the result of that check, not damage or other consequence) immediately triggered a failure of the goal -- because of a delay of 1 minute.

Look, I'm just going with what you're providing. I'm not adding new details. I'm trying to follow along with your claims.

In 1, the call had to be for roll at the easy section due to time pressure. Roll fail means overhang is not reached and ritual completes. In 3, absence of time pressure guides to yes on the easy section, so roll was at overhang.

Right, 1 minute delay before trying again means the ritual completes. That's a serious complication, yes? And absence of time pressure only guides to "yes" on the easy section if the player declares taking 10x the time to climb that section. Further, if this is true, then the problem I posted above still remains! The first failure is at the overhang, and the result is still no progress and a retry offered! Even with this extended detour into no time pressure doesn't really answer or solve either of my primary points against either case even if we accept that you're 100% correct on how that works!

In large part, this complexity was introduced by your insistence it be the same cliff. My solution avoided any conflicts in adjudication or narration.

I see no added complexity here for this. And, no, your solution adds conflicts in adjudication and narration! You still have the problem that a single failed check in case 1, representing at most a 1 minute delay, causes a total failure in a goal that isn't being resolved by the check (the check addresses climbing). You also still have the problem that on a failed check in case 3, the complication was no progress only and a retry offered. Nothing about time pressure actually solves or addresses why you chose to implicate the overall goal in 1 and not in 3, and why in 3 the only leveled consequence was no progress.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer Recollect that your answer to this question...



...was, to my understanding, yes. Did you mean no? Is it that you wanted us to go back and articulate full play loop? If so, we need a new stock of cases and no entangling of them.

I didn't offer details on the rest of the play loop in explanation. You did. Please stop blaming me for things you introduce. Or is your expectation that you get to say whatever and I'm only limited to respond to things you've decided I can respond to?

 

[Lanefan]

I didn't say anything about a DM that 'never says no'.

Say yes or roll the dice - where's the 'no' option in there?

Nor do I understand how your 'therefore' follows from anything. Depictions of both success and failure are quite possible. For instance, the wizard decides to buy a new robe and haggles with the shopkeeper on the price. The GM could narrate any of a number of results, it could just be left up to the player to decide what the result is, that's one option, but only one of many.

If the player is left to decide then the robe will be free. Every time.

Unless, of course, one has players who are actively willing to work against their own interests, which is (literally!) self-defeating.

First of all, I don't agree that players and GMs are on 'different sides', it isn't a competitive game, so IME there really is not such an incentive. But again, it has to be AGREED that nothing is at stake. Nobody is putting one over on anyone else, you are simply stuck thinking about RPGs as nothing but Gygaxian challenge play. While its a legitimate way to play, it is FAR from being the only way even 5e is clearly envisaged to be played.

It's the DM's job to use the setting as a proxy in order to challenge the PCs, and thus the players. It's the players' job, via their PCs, to overcome these challenges among or around whatever else they might be doing in the setting.

First I would ask whether or not this is a situation where nothing is at stake. It doesn't SEEM to me like it is... I mean, lets imagine that it is such a situation, then regardless of any of these rolls the PCs will take what they are after from this house, right? So why are we wasting our time rolling dice here?

Because neither the PCs nor the players know in this case how low the stakes have become; that there's nobody home and they're going to succeed unless they Keystone Kops it. If the PCs somehow learn this in the fiction through their actions and-or deductions, all well and good, but I'm not just going to tell them up front and nor should I.

Again, if there's some reason why some minor damage, or some hesitation due to poor stealth IS important, then some kind of stakes have been introduced. I don't generally think that situations where there are stakes are usually best run as 'free role-play', they probably should include checks, or at least determinations that a check isn't required in a given situation because, for example, the PC can just try again, etc.

No matter how high the stakes I'll stick with free role-play for social interactions. For physical things that require abstraction, then I largely agree with you here.

As I say, the players and the GM are not two different sets of interests, D&D can include some challenging of players by GMs, but the two parties are not at odds in any fundamental way.

Whenever the DM (by proxy as noted above) challenges the players and the players try to overcome that challenge, the players and DM are in oppositon to each other as represented by the PCs being in opposition to whatever setting element is posing the challenge.

And on a broader scale I posit that in general the DM and the players do in fact have different sets of interests, or at least priorities. The DM has to look out for the game/campaign as a whole and prioritize that, while any player only really has to look out for the well-being of their PC(s) and can freely prioritize that.

And to reiterate, if nothing really is at stake, then any rolling is meaningless anyway, definitionally.

My stance is that just because a roll is meaningless isn't reason enough not to do it.

I have my players roll "null" rolls fairly often, largely so that when I call for rolls that matter it's not a metagame trigger that something's afoot.

Well, I don't think that later caveat is particularly justified, why would the character know?

Because player knowledge and character knowledge are or should be the same. If I-as-player know that you-as-DM are going to say yes every time then it's safe to assume my character is also going to know that in the setting. And if you don't want my character to know that then don't give me that info as a player; make me roll and keep that doubt lingering.

Anyway, again, there's no 'contest' here. Is doing something that offers no risk at all interesting? I mean, I have really not seen very many players in my time who really want uninteresting play... If a given situation happens to have no stakes, it is probably a very minor plot point, at best. Really the only time something like this generally comes up at all is when the players and GM are 'setting up' something (IE its basically a cut scene or even a flashback that acts to explain or add color to some later events that are taking place in the immediate time frame, etc.). Why would anyone run a game where no challenges exist, its really not an issue that even needs addressing IMHO.

Where I think these techniques REALLY are interesting, is more in terms of focusing play on aspects that are most engaging to the players, and DO offer real challenge. So, we need an explanation of where the PCs got 'the key', it can simply be provided by saying something like "Oh, you stole it from that poorly guarded temple of Lir down the road." Nobody needs to play that out, its just color. If it is played out at all it would maybe be a scene where some other interesting information is revealed or foreshadowed, something like that.

That's a hard no from me. In this example, if it becomes apparent at some point that the PCs are going to need that 'key' then we're going to play out their getting of said key in time-order as it happens in the fiction (i.e. if they go get the key before starting the job we play the key bit out first; if they only realize halfway through the job that they need they key we play out their abandoning the job and going after the key instead). Detail matters. Sequentiality is vital.

And the risk with playing out scenes as flashbacks is that the players can (and IME will, guaranteed!) meta the hell out of it; if the currently-being-played action is happening tonight and the flashback scene was yesterday morning the players can go absolutely gonzo-nuts crazy with their PCs' actions in that flashback as they already know they're all going to be alive free and functional tonight! And that, let me tell you, can and does get degenerate in a real hurry.

How to prevent this? No flashbacks.

 

[clearstream]

This is very weird. You earlier complained that you didn't craft a complete and coherent model for the play loop because you assumed the check was assumed and so just went to crafting consequences. I can find the direct quote of this, if you'd like. The first time you mention time pressure is here, the first time you mention anything about an easy/hard section of climb was multiple posts after your original answer.

"The first hundred feet are easy. The overhang will be very hard and you will be 100' up. What do you do?" What is different about the cliffs in 1 and those in 3? Nothing. Per your specification these are the same cliffs. You said:

To be 100% clear, the status and nature of the cliffs is exactly the same in each of these cases.

In the post right before this you said it was hard to conceive how to maintain adjudication across the three cases, yet here you're blithely claiming that the adjudication was the same in all three.

It was hard. I found a way.

I'm 100% familiar with how these work, but I'm wondering why you're telling me this when you're misusing them above! Firstly, DCs don't even enter into the discussion at all. The multiple checks rule is the only place that time pressure really interacts at all so I'm not sure why you're separating these. As for multiple checks, you have to first accept that the result of a given check is that there is no significant cost to failure -- ie, that the result of a check is no progress only, no other costs. You then can, in the interests of speeding up play, just assume that the task succeeds at 10x the normal time (which cannot be any real cost, either, otherwise we cannot use this rule). To cite this rule, you have to 100% embrace "no cost" failure.

Barring time, there is no cost for the easy section. But in 1, time cannot be barred.

Emphasis mine. Further it's useful to note that the character has to spend 10x the time to get this advantage -- this is not something that the GM asserts for the character, otherwise we're violating the PHB pg6 process because now the GM is declaring actions for the PC (ie, spending the extra time).

This is a fair point. I have helped myself to an assumption that any reasonable DM of 5e* in case 3 will have worked with player to invoke that rule. Given time is not at issue, and there is no other cost for the easy section, I see that as the inevitably correct ruling

You didn't. In fact, there's a glaring problem here. In the first example, you said you were considering the situation in 1 minute increments. Yet a single failure (not situated at the easy slope, so no progress was the result of that check, not damage or other consequence) immediately triggered a failure of the goal -- because of a delay of 1 minute.

Correct other than that this isn't a problem, glaring or otherwise.

Right, 1 minute delay before trying again means the ritual completes. That's a serious complication, yes? And absence of time pressure only guides to "yes" on the easy section if the player declares taking 10x the time to climb that section. Further, if this is true, then the problem I posted above still remains! The first failure is at the overhang, and the result is still no progress and a retry offered! Even with this extended detour into no time pressure doesn't really answer or solve either of my primary points against either case even if we accept that you're 100% correct on how that works!

First failure is on easy slope, in 1.

I see no added complexity here for this. And, no, your solution adds conflicts in adjudication and narration! You still have the problem that a single failed check in case 1, representing at most a 1 minute delay, causes a total failure in a goal that isn't being resolved by the check (the check addresses climbing). You also still have the problem that on a failed check in case 3, the complication was no progress only and a retry offered. Nothing about time pressure actually solves or addresses why you chose to implicate the overall goal in 1 and not in 3, and why in 3 the only leveled consequence was no progress.

I correctly apply the rules. That's all there is to it. [Well, more than that in all honesty. I came up with a way to structure the cliffs to make it all work out. I had an advantage as it was a structure I'd used before to good effect, in live 5e play.]

 

[clearstream]

@Ovinomancer our last multiple exchanges have not helped advance understanding one iota. You seem determined that my adjudication and narration must be wrong somehow. I am determined in defending that they were right. I do not believe we will satisfactorily resolve that.

To be clear, on RAW and on narrating meaningful consequences - ones that matter - I am confident of my adjudication and it seems impossible to imagine anything you will say - based on what you have said - that will change that.

Equally, I will do you the cordiality of assuming you are confident I am in the wrong, and nothing I say - based on what I have said - will change that.

If ever there was a time to agree to disagree, now is it. I know it can be odious to put in the last word and end the conversation. So I will say here that I won't be replying further on this line of discussion.

[POSTSCRIPT I realise I did learn something to carry forward. When we're not privy to the prior conversation, and don't know the thought processes of a DM, we can't tell if 5e* is being played. That is something you said up-thread about video of DW. At the time I thought you mistaken, but you were right. From my perspective, that is what has played out before me here. Any written "proof" of playing 5e* must meet a high bar: prior conversation, the shared fiction in play, any DM thought processes must all be richly articulated. One will need to speak for imagined players, as well as DM.]