Roll for Effect or Intent?

[soviet]

To be clear, my preference is for conflict resolution ('rolling for intent') over task resolution ('rolling for effect'). When I GM an old school task resolution game, I will still try to elicit the player's intent, and incorporate it into the outcome.

But to say that TR and CR are the same thing, or that TR is just bad play, is wrong.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

This thread is in the general forum and is not about your specific preference for adjudication only.

I don't play other games so I can only couch my contributions to the discussion through the lens of 5e (well, except for Worlds without Number... but adjudication is largely the same as in 5e... or maybe we're playing it wrong... lol)

To answer your question, though, it's because task resolution only cares about resolving the task.

So are you saying the goal of distracting the guard is ancillary to the goal of hitting the tree?

Hitting the tree is a success on a good roll, but you have no way of distracting the guard? Distracting the guard, to me, seems like the real goal/intent of the whole exercise.

There are other things the PC could try:

Player: "My PC uses ventriloquism to cast her voice over yonder to distract the guard"
DM: "Ok, roll for it!"
Player: "High roll! Yes!"
DM: "You successfully cast your voice over yonder! The guard is unfazed."

That... is a most unsatisfying outcome. IMO. I'd be like "wtf"? Is that something you'd honestly tolerate as a player @Hriston? Rolling a success an not achieving your intent?

 

[soviet]

I don't play other games so I can only couch my contributions to the discussion through the lens of 5e (well, except for Worlds without Number... but adjudication is largely the same as in 5e... or maybe we're playing it wrong... lol)



So are you saying the goal of distracting the guard is ancillary to the goal of hitting the tree?

Hitting the tree is a success on a good roll, but you have no way of distracting the guard? Distracting the guard, to me, seems like the real goal/intent of the whole exercise.

There are other things the PC could try:

Player: "My PC uses ventriloquism to cast her voice over yonder to distract the guard"
DM: "Ok, roll for it!"
Player: "High roll! Yes!"
DM: "You successfully cast your voice over yonder! The guard is unfazed."

That... is a most unsatisfying outcome. IMO. I'd be like "wtf"? Is that something you'd honestly tolerate as a player @Hriston? Rolling a success an not achieving your intent?

Your position seems to be that D&D can't be task resolution, because you prefer conflict resolution and you like D&D.

The practices you describe may be more fun for you, and they would also be more fun for me, but they are not how the game as written works. Plenty of people play it without such practices and also have fun. In fact, your practices would actively hurt some people's fun ('I don't want my PC to be able to bend reality with their hopes and desires').

 

[Hriston]

No roll required since hitting the tree apparently can't succeed in distracting the guard (according to @Hriston anyway).

To be clear, this was not something I decided. This was part of the rather hyperbolic example given by @bloodtide in which they as GM decided it "will never work" in their game. Granted, their example included the player stipulating that "the guard abandons his post and goes into the woods looking for the source of the sound for an hour and keeps his back to the door at all times" which I tried to tone down into something more reasonable that might happen at an actual table.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Your position seems to be that D&D can't be task resolution, because you prefer conflict resolution and you like D&D.

The practices you describe may be more fun for you, and they would also be more fun for me, but they are not how the game as written works. Plenty of people play it without such practices and also have fun. In fact, your practices would actively hurt some people's fun ('I don't want my PC to be able to bend reality with their hopes and desires').

Huh? Who said anything about bending reality? If a task and/or intent proposed by a player is truly impossible in the game world or specific scenario, the DM should not call for a roll and instead should just tell the player, since that is also in the rules.

 

[Reynard]

Your position is that D&D is conflict resolution, and anyone trying to play it under a task resolution lens is doing it wrong?

My position is that it I'd the GM's job to listen to the players and adjudicate THAT, not to play a shell game against the players. There is nothing more frustrating than an intentionally obtuse GM that says things like "You hit the tree and nothing happens" when the intent of the player was clear.

 

[Charlaquin]

You have a preference. And yet you don't seem to have voted.

I hadn’t voted because the options are nonsense. But since you insisted, I voted for “other.” That being both things are required to have a coherent action.

 

[soviet]

Huh? Who said anything about bending reality? If a task and/or intent proposed by a player is truly impossible in the game world or specific scenario, the DM should not call for a roll and instead should just tell the player, since that is also in the rules.

If I as a person in the real world throw a stone at a tree, and I hit, I might hope that it distracts the nearby guard, but I cannot guarantee that it will.

 

[Charlaquin]

I haven't read 5.24, but what you describe above is not reflected in the game text of any edition of D&D I'm familiar with, including 5.01. The player says what their character does and the DM decides what the outcome is.

Both 5e PHBs say the players describe what they want to do. A want is an intention. The rules don’t state it in terms of goal and approach, but they do seem to be saying, in casual language, that the player is not just declaring an action but an intention.

If the DM wants to take into account what the player was going for, great. But if the DM wants to say no, that's not realistic, or no, that NPC wouldn't do that, that's their prerogative.

Sure, in which case just don’t call for a roll. Rolls should always at minimum carry a possibility of success and a possibility of failure (or at least progress with a setback), and there should be a meaningful difference between those two outcomes.

 

[soviet]

Both 5e PHBs say the players describe what they want to do. A want is an intention. The rules don’t state it in terms of goal and approach, but they do seem to be saying, in casual language, that the player is not just declaring an action but an intention.

Sure, in which case just don’t call for a roll. Rolls should always at minimum carry a possibility of success and a possibility of failure (or at least progress with a setback), and there should be a meaningful difference between those two outcomes.

The player wants to throw a rock. It might or might not hit the tree. Everything else is GM-determined.