D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[iserith]

They are the standard way people track time and make it matter.

Time can be a resource in the same way time is a resource in the real world, too. I submit the game works better when the DM implements it in that way. All the things you mention can tie into that too.

So I “quoted a rule” means I quoted you referencing a rule. Got it.

Yeah, you quoted what I was saying, which was a rule.

You keep saying that but have yet to explain it. How do you mean it’s a risk beyond homebrewed or reskinned monsters?

Any action taken based on a bad assumption can turn out badly. Maybe the guard in the example was doing something other than alerting their comrade to the PCs being liars. Suddenly casting charm person on them unprovoked could make the situation worse than it actually is. (Worse in the sense it could be bad for the characters. But it could actually be quite fun to see play out!)

It does mine. Maybe I’m weird in that I want players to actually roleplay and not play RPGs as if they were a boardgame or video game.

Roleplaying is just the player deciding what their character does, what they think, and what they say. They can communicate that via active or descriptive roleplaying. How they arrive at the decisions of what to roleplay is nobody's business but their own in my view.

LOL. The players metagaming is my fault. Right.

What someone else does isn't your fault. But it's worth acknowledging that setting the stage for it to happen is encouraging the very behavior you don't want to see at the table.

 

[Charlaquin]

Then it's not much of a trap, is it? The whole point of a trap is, ideally, to catch people unawares and - wait for it - trap them!

Well, no, the point of a trap is to protect something, usually something valuable. A good trap needs to be identifiable and avoidable by the people who made it, so they can access whatever it’s protecting. This is enough reason to make telegraphs plausible. The positive gameplay outcomes telegraphs lead to are enough reason to use them.

Proactively telegraphing traps greatly defeats this purpose.

And not giving any indication of their presence defeats their gameplay purpose.

I want players to interact with traps, yes; but I don't necessarily want them to be able to control how and when that interaction occurs. Players, on the other hand, don't want to interact with traps, and thus take steps e.g. searching, moving cautiously, etc. to avoid them.

When I say “interact with” I mean the same thing you’re here using “take steps to avoid” to mean.

 

[DND_Reborn]

This is "roll behind the screen", with extra steps.

Which is also an option if the player wants to get up and come over to where I am to roll behind the screen. If not, I add the extra roll sometimes (if they aren't metagaming, I don't need to...).

 

[iserith]

And not giving any indication of their presence defeats their gameplay purpose.

The "tell" for people who do not telegraph traps is always in the expressed or implied assumption that players always pick up on the clues and avoid the trap. Anyone who telegraphs regularly will know that this is wholly untrue, even if you are practically blatant about it.

 

[overgeeked]

Time can be a resource in the same way time is a resource in the real world, too. I submit the game works better when the DM implements it in that way. All the things you mention can tie into that too.

Yes, having things work closer to how they do in the real world is a good thing.

Any action taken based on a bad assumption can turn out badly. Maybe the guard in the example was doing something other than alerting their comrade to the PCs being liars. Suddenly casting charm person on them unprovoked could make the situation worse than it actually is. (Worse in the sense it could be bad for the characters. But it could actually be quite fun to see play out!)

Right. And if the player knows the DC and can do simple math, they know for a fact if it succeeded or failed. There’s no assumptions to make.

Roleplaying is just the player deciding what their character does, what they think, and what they say. They can communicate that via active or descriptive roleplaying. How they arrive at the decisions of what to roleplay is nobody's business but their own in my view.

Then we fundamentally disagree. Roleplaying is making those decisions based on what the character would know. Making those decisions based on metagame info is, well, metagaming.

What someone else does isn't your fault. But it's worth acknowledging that setting the stage for it to happen is encouraging the very behavior you don't want to see at the table.

You keep saying similar things and trying to lay the blame at my feet, but you don’t ever seem to actually explain yourself. Care to actually explain this?

 

[Charlaquin]

This is a very key thing here.

There should be a roll regardless, because while you-as-DM know the outcome is certain the player/PC does not.

Indeed, the player doesn’t know the outcome is certain when they make the decision to take the action. At your table or mine.

Example: PC is sneaking across the grounds of a manor house, scouting a possible means of entrance for the party. You-as-DM know there's no opposition present at the time and that the place is deserted, but the PC (and thus player) does not. So, I'll roll anyway (stealth rolls are secret) and narrate the results e.g. "You're real quiet crossing the grounds - what now?" or "That turned out quite a bit noisier than you'd like - what next?", as even though in fact there's nothing there, those results might affect their next action and-or how long it takes.

I don’t call for rolls when there aren’t immediate stakes. If you’re sneaking across the grounds, you’re sneaking across the grounds. When and if you run into something that might find you, I’ll ask for a check.

Except as noted above there's often going to be times when they simply don't and can't know what's at stake, if anything.

No one has yet given me an example where the context leading up to the roll doesn’t make the stakes clear. This problem is one you create for yourself by asking for rolls when there are no immediate stakes.

It's perfect information, however, in deciding whether to make that roll or to bail out. Or do you only tell the DC once the player has committed to the roll and can't back out?

That’s the point. I want the player to have enough information to decide if they want to make the roll or not. Making decisions and feeling like you succeded or failed based on those decisions, rather than random chance, is what RPGs are all about (for me).

Why? What stops them from looking just for the hell of it, or because they've imagined something that isn't really there?

Nothing at all. I mean, looking takes time, and dungeons and other adventuring locations are dangerous places to spend time without making forward progress. But if a player wants to spend that time based on a hunch, or because they (incorrectly) thought something in the description sounded like it might indicate a trap or a hidden door or object? They’re more than welcome to do so.

Here's the metagame bit, though: by not rolling you've just outright told them there's nothing to be found there, when in the fiction they wouldn't and couldn't know that for sure.

If they took the time to do a thorough search, I think it’s more than reasonable for their character to be confident there’s nothing to be found by continuing to search. True, the character couldn’t be 100% sure, but they could easily be 99% sure. I’m comfortable abstracting that 1% uncertainty away for the sake of the benefits I’ve innumerated.

 

[Oofta]

I would no more tell people what the DC to a check is, details of consequence to failure that are not obvious or any other information beforehand than I would show people the detailed stats for a monster. I would dislike it if a DM did this for me, as others have stated it would totally break immersion. A big part of the game is discovery and being surprised, if I don't have that I lose something.

I will tell players what their PCs would know of course. If a gap is 100 feet they know it's impossible to jump so if you try don't bother rolling since you will fail. On the other hand, I speak from experience that sometimes you simply don't know how hard it will be to scale a cliff until you try. You may not see all the details, the rock may be brittle and break off in your hand, once you get up a ways there may be more handholds than you expect.

The PCs don't have perfect information or perfect insight, I don't know why the players would either. Being told details ahead of time would greatly reduce my sense of fun.

 

[Charlaquin]

The "tell" for people who do not telegraph traps is always in the expressed or implied assumption that players always pick up on the clues and avoid the trap. Anyone who telegraphs regularly will know that this is wholly untrue, even if you are practically blatant about it.

Yeah, and it’s hard to really believe that if you haven’t tried it. I was quite skeptical myself until I took a leap of faith and tried it.

 

[CreamCloud0]

But it’s also a game. In my experience, knowing the stakes and the odds strikes the best balance between roleplaying (making decisions as you imagine your character would in the fictional situation) and game (in particular, a dice-based game od push-your-luck). It allows you to take precautions to try to minimize the chance of failure and take calculated risks when you can’t eliminate it completely.

Reading this I’d just like to point out my original point is not ‘the players shouldn’t know the odds or the stakes of what they might be attempting’ but ‘there are situations where the players wouldn’t inherently know if their attempt succeeded but knowing the results of their own dice roll would essentially give away that information anyway’

 

[Charlaquin]

I would no more tell people what the DC to a check is, details of consequence to failure that are not obvious or any other information beforehand than I would show people the detailed stats for a monster. I would dislike it if a DM did this for me, as others have stated it would totally break immersion. A big part of the game is discovery and being surprised, if I don't have that I lose something.

I will tell players what their PCs would know of course. If a gap is 100 feet they know it's impossible to jump so if you try don't bother rolling since you will fail. On the other hand, I speak from experience that sometimes you simply don't know how hard it will be to scale a cliff until you try. You may not see all the details, the rock may be brittle and break off in your hand, once you get up a ways there may be more handholds than you expect.

The PCs don't have perfect information or perfect insight, I don't know why the players would either. Being told details ahead of time would greatly reduce my sense of fun.

It sounds like you’re speaking hypothetically rather than from experience - “I wouldn’t like it” rather than “I don’t like it” or “I didn’t like it.” Or am I misinterpreting? Not that there’s anything wrong with speaking hypothetically on the matter, but in my own experience the way I now run the game sounded to me like it would hurt immersion when I first heard it described, but my experience actually playing that way has been very much the opposite.