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

[Mannahnin]

Yeah. I haven't played 1e in a very long time, but I very much remember that we played Climb Walls as Pemerton describes here and not as some sort of Spiderman ability.

This is a tangent, but interpreting what's described in OD&D & B/X as the ability to "climb sheer surfaces" as a truly extraordinary/near-superhuman ability, as opposed to the much more limited parameters Gygax laid out in 1E*, is a commonly discussed option in the OSR.

Classically, in pre-3E editions, Thieves famously suck. They have terrible HP, bad attack tables, their skill percentages are poor, and DM advice (like Gary gave in the 1E DMG) and "realistic" interpretations often exacerbate these issues, with multiple skill checks often being called for in a single task (like making someone roll both Find and Remove traps, or multiple Climb Walls checks for a single climb, depending on length), backstab being extremely hard to do and limited to once per fight if you can even manage one.

I think one of the big early OSR blogs, maybe Philotomy's Musings, proposed that one way to make Thieves Not Suck (or at least Suck Less) would be to interpret their abilities as truly preternatural. Anyone can move quietly. If the Thief successfully rolls to Move Silently he is literally silent and unhearable, even by creatures with extraordinary hearing. Anyone can hide behind cover or obstacles. If a Thief succeeds at Hide in Shadows, presuming there is at least low light, she actually vanishes into a shadow. Anyone can climb a wall. A Thief who makes their roll can go up a SHEER wall, even one without handholds detectable by any other character. If you interpret these abilities more generously, and let the Thieves truly be extraordinary within their area of expertise, they can be more worth playing.

(*which example has mostly been followed in later editions)

 

[Maxperson]

I might not have been clear enough about what I was getting at. I wasn't specifically indexing success without a check, but rather problem solving that escapes the gravity of the basic game mechanics. Let's assume for a moment that there is an obstacle that the characters need to overcome that looks like it might involve climbing (just to keep the example the same). 5E has skill checks and systems that handle wall climbing, specifically the Athletics skill and sliding DCs. I was indexing the nature of 5E play as play that doesn't really step past those mechanics (obviously I'm generalizing here).

The idea that a successful perception check and a close examination of the wall might make it easier to climb isn't something 5E really works toward, by design anyway. Let's add some further detail to our example now, just to give ourselves some narrative handles. A character is in the outer keep of an enemy fortress and needs to climb the wall to escape, and just for giggles lets say this character isn't one with a high Athletics modifier, so they go looking for options. They find some sticky pitch in a barrel and give the wall a close examination to find the best place to climb (Perception or Investigation or whatever, with a good success). How do we adjudicate this?

For my part, I probably wouldn't even ask for an Athletics test, they'd just climb the wall. My contention is that many people probably would, and more importantly that it wouldn't occur to them not to ask for the check. The notion I'm driving at here is the idea that playing the mechanics and systems can be a problem when it gets substituted for playing the fictional position, on both sides of the screen.

I still feel like I'm struggling to make my point. I'll circle back in a bit and see where the above gets us.

5e doesn't list an clear way to make these decisions, but they do clearly state that such decisions should be made. In the ability check section of the PHB it very clearly says that you should only roll when the outcome is uncertain. That tells players and DMs that if the outcome is certain, you don't have to roll.

I do think that there should have been some gameplay examples where uncertainty was changed to certainty. That would at least give those people who are unsure of what that section means a better idea of what it takes to succeed or fail without rolling.

 

[Mannahnin]

I find that no-win scenarios generally stem from sentences that begin with "the DM decides" so I try to avoid deciding things in advance. In my game, when the player gets to the courtyard, which would have happened based on player decision making and framing, not force, then the question "What do you do?" is an honest one on my part. I might have an idea about what my happen if X time passes (guards show up or whatever), but I don't have any preconceived ideas about what's supposed to happen in the courtyard in terms of what the player does (i.e. there's no script). I expect nothing in terms of outcomes. I find (and this just is me and my games) that expectations I hold about outcomes tend to interfere with fair and impartial adjudication on my part.

DM decides to make it a no-win scenario? But why? What about DM decides generally segues into no-win scenarios for your group?

I don't think he's saying that it universally does. I think he's saying that WHEN a no-win scenario crops up, he's observed that it's most commonly because "DM decides" created a situation that became one. So he tries to avoid fixing the defined scenario too concretely ahead of time.

 

[Maxperson]

I think I get where you going here. For 5e, DMs would do well to shake free of the notion that "Wall" necessarily means a "climb" check. The same as "Merchant" does not necessarily equal a "bartering" check or "New environment" does not necessarily equal a "see what your PC notices" check or...

In other words, let the story flow. Give succinct but evocative detail to your environments so the players have something to work with. Be sure to listen to your players, rewarding their creativity at least some of the time with auto-successes. Bust out the dice not just based on what the characters are doing in the fiction but also only when there is meaningful consequence for failure. Creativity can still be rewarded when the dice do come out - DM: "Because you indicated X, roll this check with advantage."

Agreed. There are times where I might include a difficult to climb wall as a challenge. Sometimes, though, the players will think of something I didn't that completely changes the situation. Let's say that a few sessions ago the party came across a pile of bent scrap metal. One of them says, "What if we go get some of that bent metal and fashion a makeshift grappling hook?" I most likely never even thought of that, because I don't sit back and try to think of everything a player might come up with. Instead l just present challenges and let them figure out ways to overcome them. In the case above, I'd probably narrate it something like the following.

DM: "You sift through the pieces of metal and come up with one that suits your needs. After a little bit of effort you get the rope securely tied to the end of the metal. It takes you several attempts to hook your makeshift grapple to the top of the wall, but you eventually succeed and find yourselves at the top."

Then I'd describe what they see and gameplay would proceed from there.

 

[clearstream]

I don't think he's saying that it universally does. I think he's saying that WHEN a no-win scenario crops up, he's observed that it's most commonly because "DM decides" created a situation that became one. So he tries to avoid fixing the defined scenario too concretely ahead of time.

I see. He might then be using "DM decides" in a different sense than I expected. I am thinking of DM deciding when and how to apply game mechanics, narrating game world and results, all those many things DM decides. Who does the giant hurl a rock at? DM decides. Is a wall climb- able? DM has or will decide. What happens as a result... etc.

Typically "DM decides" is at the heart of successful D&D. The designers allude to that in the opening pages of the PHB. It's not the only way to RPG of course! I believe it is still the normal way to D&D.

 

[clearstream]

Agreed. There are times where I might include a difficult to climb wall as a challenge. Sometimes, though, the players will think of something I didn't that completely changes the situation. Let's say that a few sessions ago the party came across a pile of bent scrap metal. One of them says, "What if we go get some of that bent metal and fashion a makeshift grappling hook?" I most likely never even thought of that, because I don't sit back and try to think of everything a player might come up with. Instead l just present challenges and let them figure out ways to overcome them. In the case above, I'd probably narrate it something like the following.

DM: "You sift through the pieces of metal and come up with one that suits your needs. After a little bit of effort you get the rope securely tied to the end of the metal. It takes you several attempts to hook your makeshift grapple to the top of the wall, but you eventually succeed and find yourselves at the top."

Then I'd describe what they see and gameplay would proceed from there.

...see how it proceeds from there. Make it up on the fly as needed.

I don't favour the up front commitment to the degree some are arguing for. Probably because I favour open-world campaigns. Players might go in any direction. Allowing the mechanics to tell us about the details is valuable in that context.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Agreed. There are times where I might include a difficult to climb wall as a challenge. Sometimes, though, the players will think of something I didn't that completely changes the situation. Let's say that a few sessions ago the party came across a pile of bent scrap metal. One of them says, "What if we go get some of that bent metal and fashion a makeshift grappling hook?" I most likely never even thought of that, because I don't sit back and try to think of everything a player might come up with. Instead l just present challenges and let them figure out ways to overcome them. In the case above, I'd probably narrate it something like the following.

DM: "You sift through the pieces of metal and come up with one that suits your needs. After a little bit of effort you get the rope securely tied to the end of the metal. It takes you several attempts to hook your makeshift grapple to the top of the wall, but you eventually succeed and find yourselves at the top."

Then I'd describe what they see and gameplay would proceed from there.

Cool - I like this adjudication a lot.


The only thing I try to do differently here is to not use the word "you" in narrating results or describing environments. It's an interesting narrative technique to avoid the appearance of "controlling" the PCs. So something like:

DM (narrating the results of the PCs' actions - step 3): "After a few minutes, a suitable piece of metal is found that can be fastened at the end of a rope. A few tosses later, the makeshift grappling hook catches firm and the climb is easily completed." (indeed these are the things the players wanted to accomplish - auto success)
DM (describing the environment - step 1): "From the top, XYZ can be seen. What do you do now?" (the only time I use "you" is to pass the proverbial conch back to the players)

By the way, I don't think your narration, @Maxperson, "controls" the PCs in any way that would be deemed inappropriate. It's just a different style.

The approach I aspire to is perhaps subtle and, no doubt, some will say nitpicky. But I'm really only nitpicking myself here not to say "you" in a conscious effort to avoid telling the players what their PCs are thinking, saying, or doing. It has made a great mental difference for me in how I stylistically approach my role as DM and how I treat the role of the players. I have played with DMs who have taken too many liberties in describing what my character or other players' characters are thinking, saying, or doing as part of their DM narration - I have found that I don't enjoy that at all and hence I actively try to avoid using "you" altogether.

 

[Hriston]

That's all fine, but this thread is about having the freedom to play the game within the limits of the game. It's not about having the freedom to not play or to disrupt the game. I wouldn't have thought that needed saying.

What people are trying to say as far as I can tell is that the limits of the game are defined by the group. What those limits are, how they are expressed, will vary from table to table. I think that's pretty clearly baked into the rules of the game.

I can't argue with that! And I can see that, in my post to which you're responding, it's unclear whether the word game is being used to refer to the game as written or the game as played, which was not my intention. The game as played is whatever the table it's being played at says it is, and the freedom of the participants to engage in that game (D&D, for the purposes of this thread) can be assumed to be total.

I think, in this context, it's reasonable to reformulate the sentiment expressed in the OP to state that some tables prioritize the players' authority over the roleplaying of their characters, as supported by How to Play (PHB, p 6) and Roleplaying (PHB, p 185), while other tables take a more collaborative approach to the roleplaying of the PCs in order to prioritize other concerns.

 

[Maxperson]

Cool - I like this adjudication a lot.


The only thing I try to do differently here is to not use the word "you" in narrating results or describing environments. It's an interesting narrative technique to avoid the appearance of "controlling" the PCs. So something like:

DM (narrating the results of the PCs' actions - step 3): "After a few minutes, a suitable piece of metal is found that can be fastened at the end of a rope. A few tosses later, the makeshift grappling hook catches firm and the climb is easily completed." (indeed these are the things the players wanted to accomplish - auto success)
DM (describing the environment - step 1): "From the top, XYZ can be seen. What do you do now?" (the only time I use "you" is to pass the proverbial conch back to the players)

By the way, I don't think your narration, @Maxperson, "controls" the PCs in any way that would be deemed inappropriate. It's just a different style.

Yeah. I didn't think you were saying I controlled them and I'm very careful(though I do rarely slip up) to avoid saying what they think or feel as that would be usurping control. Exceptions do happen, such as when the player tells me what he thinks or feels as a part of his action declaration. Inclusion of what that player has said to me regarding what the PC thinks/feels as part of the narration is not taking control of the PC.

The approach I aspire to is perhaps subtle and, no doubt, some will say nitpicky. But I'm really only nitpicking myself here not to say "you" in a conscious effort to avoid telling the players what their PCs are thinking, saying, or doing. It has made a great mental difference for me in how I stylistically approach my role as DM and how I treat the role of the players. I have played with DMs who have taken too many liberties in describing what my character or other players' characters are thinking, saying, or doing as part of their DM narration - I have found that I don't enjoy that at all and hence I actively try to avoid using "you" altogether.

I can see that and you aren't the only DM here who I've seen say that. It's a fine playstyle.

 

[Scott Christian]

IME that variance more to do with different player types than anything else. Which is more than fine; if adventures played out the same way every time they were run, it'd be way more boring running them more than once.

Yeah, different players can matter. But, in my experience, the variance I was describing is still limited; new players, experienced players, bards-fighters-wizards, male or female, young or old. A well described setting piece pulls the same attention most of the time regardless of player type.