D&D General Schrödinger's Rogue

[Ralif Redhammer]

After last night's Tomb of Annihilation session, I've observed the following phenomenon that I'm going to call Schrödinger's Rogue. Some time after the party enters a room, a PC (often, but not always, a rogue) will declare that they did not in fact enter the room. However, after nothing terrible happens to the party, they will start asking questions about the room, despite not having said that they went into the room to see any of it. So the rogue is simultaneous in the room and not in the room.

Anyway, I told the player and the table that from here on out, I'm going to assume that all of you stick together unless someone tells me otherwise beforehand. Because I am not spending the time before every room to ask each player if they go in or not. That would bog the game down to no end. Not to mention, the inevitable "I never said I went in there!" when something does go wrong for the party.

Anyone else experience this?

 

[prabe]

I haven't seen it that I've noticed in the campaigns I'm running, but those aren't dungeon crawls, though, so it wouldn't make sense. I've played in campaigns where there wasn't clarity on things like Door Procedures or marching order or things like that, and a player or two would try to game the lack of clarity in an attempt to improve survivability. I think as the DM that making your presumptions clear is probably the best way to handle it.

 

[iserith]

Are you running the game theater of the mind or tableau vivant? If the latter, it should be obvious who's in the room or not since their mini/token will have moved into the room.

If you're doing theater of the mind, I think it's even more important to establish a marching order and to give the people in the front ranks some kind of authority to establish the party's movement. The assumption is you're following behind the front rank unless you state otherwise and the window for declaring so is very short.

 

[Big Bucky]

I’ve definitely had that happen. I don’t use a battle map so I’ve found it helps if you are frequently giving summaries of what people are doing. “Ok Ragnor is inspecting the wall for any openings, Beedle is going to pick up the idol to see if anything happens, Grom what are you doing?”. I feel like it helps set the scene.

I also set up default assumptions like you said. I have them come up with a marching order at the start of the campaign and assume that is what they are doing until told otherwise. I also don’t have them pick a watch order. If something comes in the middle of the night. I roll a die to see who happens to be awake. The GM has too much to keep track of to bother with the nit picky stuff.

 

[Fenris-77]

Or just have the monsters in the hall for a couple of sessions, that'll learn him pretty quick. More seriously, and this really applies more for TotM, just have the party come up with a default room clearing protocol. Whatever standard procedure is for them. That'll save a bunch of decision making and declaration on the front end and you'll still always know where Schrodinger is.

 

[Dausuul]

I’ve definitely had that happen. I don’t use a battle map so I’ve found it helps if you are frequently giving summaries of what people are doing. “Ok Ragnor is inspecting the wall for any openings, Beedle is going to pick up the idol to see if anything happens, Grom what are you doing?”. I feel like it helps set the scene.

Yeah, I do this kind of thing too. As soon as a player says they're doing something that would require entering the room, I say "Okay - so you're entering the room?"

Nine times out of ten when I say this, there is in fact no danger and they can enter the room safely. Also about nine times out of ten, the question causes hesitation and wariness. I try to cultivate just the right level of paranoia in my players; not so much that they become paralyzed with fear, but enough that they don't ever feel... quite... safe.

 

[Oofta]

If there's ever any question I ask before it becomes relevant one way or another. Otherwise assume the party sticks together in an established marching order.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Reminds me of Knights of the Dinner Table. When something good was happening, they'd later say their characters were in the room. When a trap went off, they'd come up with reasons they weren't in the room, leading the DM to one day require minis...

 

[hawkeyefan]

After last night's Tomb of Annihilation session, I've observed the following phenomenon that I'm going to call Schrödinger's Rogue. Some time after the party enters a room, a PC (often, but not always, a rogue) will declare that they did not in fact enter the room. However, after nothing terrible happens to the party, they will start asking questions about the room, despite not having said that they went into the room to see any of it. So the rogue is simultaneous in the room and not in the room.

Anyway, I told the player and the table that from here on out, I'm going to assume that all of you stick together unless someone tells me otherwise beforehand. Because I am not spending the time before every room to ask each player if they go in or not. That would bog the game down to no end. Not to mention, the inevitable "I never said I went in there!" when something does go wrong for the party.

Anyone else experience this?

Yes....especially in Tomb of Annihilation due to the more old school, procedural method involved in classic dungeon delving. It was a shift in the playstyle my group's been using for some time.

The timing of entering a room, the positions of where everyone is at a certain time (when a trap goes off, for instance), and the party order.....all that stuff becomes hyper relevant.

We quickly had to adopt a standard Marching Protocol and a standard Door Protocol. These were the assumed defaults. I'd ask at a relevant point "Standard Door Protocol?" and they'd either confirm, or they could tell me what changes they wanted. If they didn't speak up at that point, then that was it. Then, once the door was opened, I asked each player in order what their character did. Kind of force an initiative in that way, and have everyone declare actions one at a time, in order.

It can take some work to get used to asking all these details, and sometimes it can be tedious. That adventure, which I plopped into my ongoing campaign, was a real challenge in that regard. The Protocols helped, but I also loosened up a bit as the adventure went on, and things got better. I focused more on the denizens of the tomb more than the traps.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I should have mentioned that yes, I run Theatre of the Mind. So that does make things more nebulous.

I think next time I will talk about establishing a marching order. I imagine it's going to be the two barbarians in front, but again, best to not assume.

Can't say it wasn't tempting to have a couple Tomb Dwarves show up to do some life-draining on the rogue.