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

[Thomas Shey]

Right, but my point was not to offer "realistic" tactics so much as several options that would seem reasonable upon seeing a dragon, which don't rely on meta knowledge. I was showing that there are ways to make the fiction match the play.

I think if someone is being so tight they won't let you assume dragons might have a breath weapon, the degree of information control has approached the pathological, and once you know the area effect could be a thing, no other reason to spread out is necessary.

I think that's something that is an obstacle in these conversations. Some folks are not willing to do that... to find ways to make things work.

There's always going to be people who are extremely fussy about the arrow of cause-and-effect in these things.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

Well, traps being hidden has a long convention. They aren't a gotcha per se. Though I'll give you an example of one I did in my younger days that absolutely was (I did a number of things then that were I around myself at that time now I'd be tempted to smack the hell out of for).

I had a room that had a collection of approximately waist height holes around the edges. These holes, in fact, did nothing; they were to make the players think getting down and crawling on the floor to avoid the darts or whatever would be a good thing, at which point blades would come out of the floor.

The parallel here was that there was a very limited amount they could do at the time to figure this out. They could guess that would work (at which point the trap would harm them because I'd played with their expectations) or not, and either way it was potentially a mistake.

Its why I think this sort of thing at least can be a gotcha, because it uses the players expectations against them. Its very easy for that to be a damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[iserith]

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.

Absolutely. Many of us are not playing the same game and even those who are playing the same game bring to it influences from other games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Mine, as with clues about general other things, is how frequent the failure cases are. At some point if people consistently miss them, I'm not setting things for my audience at least.

So far, so good.

(To make it clear, this is in reference to my own statement) There's exceptions to any generalization.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

I think it's fair to expect the players to expect traps in a dungeon, castle, etc. They should be looking for them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Yet I saw arguments about it 40 years ago when that was still the dominant paradigm, at least in the D&D sphere. But then, as I've noted, that was a period where you had plenty of people playing token play, and a fair number playing fairly hardcore IC play, and the clashes between those could be--severe.

 

[iserith]

Well, traps being hidden has a long convention. They aren't a gotcha per se.

Certainly traps can be hidden, but clues in the environment can exist which suggest something ain't right.

I had a room that had a collection of approximately waist height holes around the edges. These holes, in fact, did nothing; they were to make the players think getting down and crawling on the floor to avoid the darts or whatever would be a good thing, at which point blades would come out of the floor.

The parallel here was that there was a very limited amount they could do at the time to figure this out. They could guess that would work (at which point the trap would harm them because I'd played with their expectations) or not, and either way it was potentially a mistake.

Its why I think this sort of thing at least can be a gotcha, because it uses the players expectations against them. Its very easy for that to be a damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Yes, that strikes me as a "gotcha" if there was no clue they could draw a straight line to after the rogue got impaled (or hilariously sawed in half or whatever).

 

[iserith]

I think it's fair to expect the players to expect traps in a dungeon, castle, etc. They should be looking for them.

I think it's better to have no expectations at all as to what a player "would" or "should" do. That they are looking for them is part of why I would include telegraphing of their presence in my description of the environment.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think if someone is being so tight they won't let you assume dragons might have a breath weapon, the degree of information control has approached the pathological, and once you know the area effect could be a thing, no other reason to spread out is necessary.

Oh, I agree about the pathological bit. But the thing is we can almost always find a way to make the fiction work. I wasn't dodging its breath weapon, I didn't want us all to get stomped by its huge claw, or crushed beneath its belly if it landed on us" would seem to allow the players to do what they want, and the GM to rest easy knowing that dangerous metagaming has been thwarted!

Yet I saw arguments about it 40 years ago when that was still the dominant paradigm, at least in the D&D sphere. But then, as I've noted, that was a period where you had plenty of people playing token play, and a fair number playing fairly hardcore IC play, and the clashes between those could be--severe.

Oh, sure, but that's part of it. There are so many different ways to approach play, especially as editions have piled up. But this weird metagaming view seems like an odd mix of two things: fear of allowing an unfair advantage, and a decrease in concern about player skill.

It's an odd combo.

 

[Lanefan]

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

You say this like it's a bad thing.