D&D General The Fourth Pillar of D&D…shenanigans

[Umbran]

I thought it was social becuse it was how much bs you could talk... but I can see that

There's plenty of shenanigans that aren't dependent on talking.

Every time the characters or NPCs do something that’s unexpected or not covered by the rules…that’s shenanigans.

Unexpected, sure. But I don't think that it being covered by the rules is telling of a shenanigan. Indeed, we can name games whose primary design purpose is to mechanically support shenanigans - we are looking at you, Leverage.

 

[Helldritch]

Shenanigans have been a vital part of D&D since its inception. Adding skills just made people forget that they can try anything.
Last game, a player used an ogre zombie as a spring board to jump onto a levitating elder brain. They won the fight exactly because of this little trick he tried, unable to attack at range, he simply used the combat scene to his advantage. Since there was a flying barbarian attacking the brain, it enable him to sneak attack and the barb/battlemaster on his turn, ordered the rogue to attack again and voilà! An elder brain downed just as it was about to kill the whole group with with a psionic wave.

This is one of many examples where shenanigans will come up. Use the scene, the set up to your advantage. The character sheet is but a tool, the true power of a character is the player.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm a wee bit skeptical about the results of Ben Milton's informal poll.

The category of "shenanigans" doesn't feel as neutral as the other options, and it almost puts his thumb on the scale. "Shenanigans" is a silly sounding name that often attracts a lot of votes in a similar manner that "lemon curry" does here. He may as well have called the category "having fun." But would that represent a play pillar as we generally understand the other pillars?

Moreover, he is asking his subscribers, which are also likely to represent something of a self-selected bubble who may already fall inline with his own prejudices and biases in regards to this matter.

You can say all that, but I've never seen a D&D game that didn't involve a a small to significant amount of shenanigans, except one incredibly po-faced dungeon crawl I once witnessed, carried out by a DM who definitely hated fun, and some of the least imaginative people I've ever played with (I was amazed they were playing RPGs at all - they didn't seem to be having a great time).

So it doesn't happen enough to be part of social.

It definitely does in some groups, and your definition is unnecessarily narrow - any particularly ridiculous attempts to trick people which nonetheless seem like they might work out fall within "shenanigans" as well as "social". For example, when my main group came up with a completely demented plan to basically infiltrate a place by representing themselves as traveling wine salesman and wine educators - it was really the latter part which shot things into the shenaniganosphere. I can't even remember exactly how it all worked but hysterical and honestly it was situation-specific-enough (including them guessing stuff they hadn't actually found out) that I had to allow that it did. They improvised their way through all my attempts to poke holes in it with a fluid-ness we still talk about to this day. They skipped literally an entire dungeon that way!

As an side, D&D's three pillars are pretty arbitrary and definitely do not cover everything that goes on in D&D particularly well.

 

[wedgeski]

(Note: I haven't yet watched the video.)

'Shenanigans' is the filter through which I view all my design prep. It's why I always build encounters one difficulty level higher than the guidelines. It's why I'm never, ever worried about providing enough clues to solve a mystery. It's why I don't design hard solutions for a mystery, because the PC's will always (a) render the mystery meaningless before the solution is needed, or (b) solve it in a spectacularly unexpected way. It's a lovely way to express that indefinable magic that players bring to the table. As a DM, you should embrace their shenanigans and be thankful for them!

 

[Mannahnin]

It definitely does in some groups, and your definition is unnecessarily narrow - any particularly ridiculous attempts to trick people which nonetheless seem like they might work out fall within "shenanigans" as well as "social". For example, when my main group came up with a completely demented plan to basically infiltrate a place by representing themselves as traveling wine salesman and wine educators - it was really the latter part which shot things into the shenaniganosphere. I can't even remember exactly how it all worked but hysterical and honestly it was situation-specific-enough (including them guessing stuff they hadn't actually found out) that I had to allow that it did. They improvised their way through all my attempts to poke holes in it with a fluid-ness we still talk about to this day. They skipped literally an entire dungeon that way!

I had a less elaborate incident in a recent OD&D session where we were exploring the Greyhawk sewers and came upon a locked door that our MU's ESP spell told us had guards of some kind behind it, waiting around bored.

My character being in the front rank, I decided to take the bull by the horns and knock, shortly receiving a response of "What's the password?"

On the spur of the moment I replied something like "Your mother works at a cheap tavern" in Orcish. The DM (later informing us that the password had actually been "orc"), deciding that this was both funny and would be funny to the bored Thieves' Guild guard (I can't remember whether he made a Reaction Roll), had the guard open the door for a conversation.

 

[Helldritch]

You can say all that, but I've never seen a D&D game that didn't involve a a small to significant amount of shenanigans, except one incredibly po-faced dungeon crawl I once witnessed, carried out by a DM who definitely hated fun, and some of the least imaginative people I've ever played with (I was amazed they were playing RPGs at all - they didn't seem to be having a great time).

It definitely does in some groups, and your definition is unnecessarily narrow - any particularly ridiculous attempts to trick people which nonetheless seem like they might work out fall within "shenanigans" as well as "social". For example, when my main group came up with a completely demented plan to basically infiltrate a place by representing themselves as traveling wine salesman and wine educators - it was really the latter part which shot things into the shenaniganosphere. I can't even remember exactly how it all worked but hysterical and honestly it was situation-specific-enough (including them guessing stuff they hadn't actually found out) that I had to allow that it did. They improvised their way through all my attempts to poke holes in it with a fluid-ness we still talk about to this day. They skipped literally an entire dungeon that way!

As an side, D&D's three pillars are pretty arbitrary and definitely do not cover everything that goes on in D&D particularly well.

That is my feeling too.
For the bolded part.
This is a great share of anecdote you gave us there. This is what shenanigans are all about. And also the reason why we play RPGs. For moments like this!

 

[Minigiant]

It definitely does in some groups, and your definition is unnecessarily narrow - any particularly ridiculous attempts to trick people which nonetheless seem like they might work out fall within "shenanigans" as well as "social". For example, when my main group came up with a completely demented plan to basically infiltrate a place by representing themselves as traveling wine salesman and wine educators - it was really the latter part which shot things into the shenaniganosphere. I can't even remember exactly how it all worked but hysterical and honestly it was situation-specific-enough (including them guessing stuff they hadn't actually found out) that I had to allow that it did. They improvised their way through all my attempts to poke holes in it with a fluid-ness we still talk about to this day. They skipped literally an entire dungeon that way!

I don't consider that shenanigans.

That's using the base system in the intended way the pillar mechanics are designed for and with options clearly not hidden nor unaccounted for

 

[Vaalingrade]

Did we really manage to turn this into a dour discussion of the place of shenanigans in the pillars of D&D?

It's really funny when we're also treating the pillars as like a thing that's codified in game instead of a popular piece of theorycraft. It's like an in depth discussion on the Head of Vecna.

 

[darjr]

I call Shenanigans!

 

[James Gasik]

If the developers want to claim the game is balanced around pillars and that gets constantly brought up in any sort of balance discussion, then they must be real enough to talk about.