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

[Maxperson]

I make no distinction on what kind of trap. I telegraph them all.

Oh, I was sure you did, having read your posts for years now.

I'm just saying that the vast majority of traps are not "gotchas" if they are not telegraphed.

 

[iserith]

Oh, I was sure you did, having read your posts for years now.

I'm just saying that the vast majority of traps are not "gotchas" if they are not telegraphed.

I don't see how you can draw that conclusion, but if your players are happy with that outcome, there's not much I can say about it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a "gotcha" if there was no way to figure it out or avoid it beforehand.

I think you think that makes more difference than most players will. Especially if the thing still screams "troll" to people they're very likely not to see the cosmetic differences as significant. Which doesn't mean you can't telegraph it enough, but, well, let's just say my experience is that GMs pretty reliably think players will pick up on things they don't.

Telegraphing mitigates the perception of a "gotcha" even if the telegraphing was dismissed as unimportant by the players or forgotten. If a player can reexamine the setup and realize they missed that clue, then they don't tend to declare it a "gotcha." In that specific situation, several of the players picked up on the telegraphing I laid down and understood the troll was different than normal, but the wizard's player did not and the result was the situation became more difficult and an NPC was killed.

Well, yeah, that's obviously a different situation, though I think assuming people will necessarily respond to "I did give you a hint" positively is, well, optimistic.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't see how you can draw that conclusion, but if your players are happy with that outcome, there's not much I can say about it.

Because a gotcha is more than something unknown happening.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And dumb luck is absolutely a possible thing that can happen.

And they happen to guess the right minute among 60 they could guess, I can't get worked up. But at that point I don't think it changes the overall picture much.

You’re entitled to your own opinion but you’re not entitled to your own facts. It is a fact that the human brain is not capable of disregarding relevant information when making a decision.

I'll put this bluntly: in some contexts, I don't believe you. I am entirely capable of encapsulating my perceptions. I suspect most people are, and I think the facts you're working from you're extending past what they actually say. People filter out data in decisions literally all the time, and they often do it at a preconscious level. If you didn't, you'd not be able to pick out significant sounds and sights in any busy environment.

You can either choose to act on the information you have, or you can consciously choose to act in a way that is contrary to the way that information would otherwise lead you to act. Either way, that information is the primary motivating factor in your decision-making.

No, I can also push aside what I know that my character doesn't and not consider that. If you don't care to believe that, that's your choice.

Now, certainly you can make a rule that if you have information your character wouldn’t, you are only allowed to act in ways that are contrary to how that information would lead you to act. However, this rule would first of all not lead to the same outcomes that would occur if the player simply never had any knowledge that the character didn’t have (as it precludes those dumb luck moments). Second, there are a lot of issues with actually enforcing this rule, the most significant being what happens when there’s disagreement over what the character would or wouldn’t know, and what do you do when there’s disagreement over what is or isn’t contrary to how the information would otherwise make the player want to act?

You're immensely extending what I've said past the contexts I've said I pay attention to it in.

 

[iserith]

I think you think that makes more difference than most players will. Especially if the thing still screams "troll" to people they're very likely not to see the cosmetic differences as significant. Which doesn't mean you can't telegraph it enough, but, well, let's just say my experience is that GMs pretty reliably think players will pick up on things they don't.

Yeah, as anyone who telegraphs regularly can tell you, players sometimes don't pick up on it, assign some other importance to it, or put their focus elsewhere. That's okay. My standard as to whether the telegraphing was sufficient is whether they can look back and draw a straight line between what happened and the clue they were given.

Well, yeah, that's obviously a different situation, though I think assuming people will necessarily respond to "I did give you a hint" positively is, well, optimistic.

So far, so good.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I would say that a trap that is not telegraphed is definitely a "gotcha" in a D&D context.

I think that some of this is also a matter of lingering game design elements and mechanics... and outlooks... that remain in the game despite the game no longer really focusing on them in the same way. Like in early editions of D&D traps were a common feature because the game was almost always about exploring a dungeon of some sort. These things were expected to the point where you had every party carrying ten-foot poles and all other manner of absurdities.

The game was much more about testing player skill than anything else.

Now, however, the game is less about player skill. So certain encounter types... traps being one of them... don't serve the same function. They're not nearly as common in the published works.

I think a lot of this discussion is like a weird clash between approaches to play adopted across editions. Like, I can't see how you reconcile metagaming with tests of player skill in like a Gygaxian sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Very charitable.

I try not to assume bad faith until someone thoroughly demonstrates it to me. There's a poster in this thread who has (which is why some of the conversation is entirely cryptic to me) but the poster I was responding to has not yet reached that threshold.

 

[iserith]

Because a gotcha is more than something unknown happening.

I think where it matters in a D&D context is in presenting a fair challenge and to me telegraphing is part of making it fair.

 

[overgeeked]

A death trap, sure. The kind where if you get caught you end up trapped and dead. Water filling room, etc. Normal arrow traps, pits, lightning bolts, etc. are not gotchas. The party should be alert to traps in the first place and be looking for them in spots where traps are likely.

Yeah. The players being incautious doesn’t suddenly make traps gotchas. You’re in a dungeon. There are traps. You decided to not look for them. You sprung the trap. In no way is that a gotcha.