D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Umbran]

No. There is no style in which "the player decides" after the fortune test to retcon the fiction.

Several folks have noted that occasionally negotiating such stuff, even after the die roll, seems a reasonable thing that they would do or have done. It is within their style of GMing.

So, maybe the absolute is not serving you well.

 

[Celebrim]

However, as players, we felt a little cheated! If the DM had asked us, we would have communicated that we like clear consequences even for dumb decisions. Even the player of the cleric would have preferred to get trampled to death.

GM interfered with the group's collective aesthetic of challenge in a clear indication that he didn't understand what the group found fun.

Better GMing here if you really want to avoid a player death (even when earned) is to use some light illusionism alter your fortune/resolution mechanic to give the Cleric some chance to survive. For example, in the first session of one campaign the city was hit by a tidal wave. Most players ran away early on but one player ended up dallying and going the wrong way and got trapped in a crowd near the shore. By the rules, the player was likely to get killed outright if I rolled average damage, but behind the screen a I slightly lowered the damage I rolled for the character so that an average roll wouldn't quiet kill them. I then had the PC's that had survived coincidentally find the dying PC buried among the wreckage, needing to work together to save the character from death's door. This fulfilled everyone's aesthetic of challenge without breaking any verisimilitude rules but allowed me to keep a PC in play and not have a novice player die to one bad choice in the first session.

The players of course were none the wiser that I'd used some light illusionism here because I hadn't negated player choice and the danger was still real and believable to them as the form of resolution I might have chosen for this circumstance. No one else had tested getting swept away by the wave so they had no double standard to detect.

 

[Celebrim]

I mean, you can say there isn't a style, but multiple people in this thread say that's how they play it. So based purely on anecdotal evidence (and my own game), I'd say that it is a style.

It's not a style of play or a style of game. It's a mechanism for dealing with game failure when a player violates the social contract and acts dysfunctionally. The player doesn't want to face the consequences of their choices and has resorted to the metagame, implicitly with the threat of throwing a temper tantrum and ruining everyone's fun, and with a lot of GM wheedling possibly even bullying involved.

In such a situation, stopping the game to placate the jerk who has decided to try to 'win' by screwing the whole group over with invented gloves he gave not a thought about before learning the consequences is probably a better solution than letting that one little immature baby continue to derail the game.

But that's not a style of game. That is a concession to try to get the game going again instead of listening to an hour-long emotional rant by one player.

Note, this isn't the same as a legitimate GM mistake. If the character sheet says something like, "Gloves of Dexterity +2 (worn)" and the GM forgot to account for that fact, or if an hour earlier in the session the player had specifically said something like, "I put on my riding gloves and then dramatically bow to the baroness with a flourish of my cape" and nothing has happened to imply the gloves are now off, then the player has a point. The GM forgot part of the fiction (it happens) and should retcon his error.

But if the player says, "I was wearing gloves" off some flimsy pretense and doesn't have any evidence to back up that assertion and in fact has ignored the supposed gloves when grabbing gear or searching for secret doors, then "negotiating" isn't a style of game any more than a contested election is a style of government. We're negotiating here to prevent a rebellion, not because it's part of the agreed upon rules, and what that negotiation will look like - dice for it, partial concession, table vote, etc. - depends on things outside the game and nothing in the rule book.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So what if the player genuinely thought they had gloves?

The conversation from the OP happens and they flip open their notebook to reveal they've been drawing their character and lo and behold, there's gloves?

So it's clear in their mind that they thought they were safe from contact poison when they touched the chest?

 

[BookTenTiger]

It's not a style of play or a style of game. It's a mechanism for dealing with game failure when a player violates the social contract and acts dysfunctionally. The player doesn't want to face the consequences of their choices and has resorted to the metagame, implicitly with the threat of throwing a temper tantrum and ruining everyone's fun, and with a lot of GM wheedling possibly even bullying involved.

In such a situation, stopping the game to placate the jerk who has decided to try to 'win' by screwing the whole group over with invented gloves he gave not a thought about before learning the consequences is probably a better solution than letting that one little immature baby continue to derail the game.

But that's not a style of game. That is a concession to try to get the game going again instead of listening to an hour-long emotional rant by one player.

Note, this isn't the same as a legitimate GM mistake. If the character sheet says something like, "Gloves of Dexterity +2 (worn)" and the GM forgot to account for that fact, or if an hour earlier in the session the player had specifically said something like, "I put on my riding gloves and then dramatically bow to the baroness with a flourish of my cape" and nothing has happened to imply the gloves are now off, then the player has a point. The GM forgot part of the fiction (it happens) and should retcon his error.

But if the player says, "I was wearing gloves" off some flimsy pretense and doesn't have any evidence to back up that assertion and in fact has ignored the supposed gloves when grabbing gear or searching for secret doors, then "negotiating" isn't a style of game any more than a contested election is a style of government. We're negotiating here to prevent a rebellion, not because it's part of the agreed upon rules, and what that negotiation will look like - dice for it, partial concession, table vote, etc. - depends on things outside the game and nothing in the rule book.

I think we have different definitions of "style of play."

 

[payn]

So what if the player genuinely thought they had gloves?

The conversation from the OP happens and they flip open their notebook to reveal they've been drawing their character and lo and behold, there's gloves?

So it's clear in their mind that they thought they were safe from contact poison when they touched the chest?

Roll a save. You didnt spot the contact poison and interacted with it. If you save, then the gloves helped, if you fail, they didnt.

 

[Greg Benage]

It's not a style of play or a style of game. It's a mechanism for dealing with game failure when a player violates the social contract and acts dysfunctionally.

Is it just me, or is this site more on edge than usual?

Anyway, it'd be fine in my regular heroic fantasy 5e game and I wouldn't think my players are dysfunctional jerks for assuming traveling clothes include gloves. But I'm okay if we don't call it a "style" if that helps.

 

[iserith]

Roll a save. You didnt spot the contact poison and interacted with it. If you save, then the gloves helped, if you fail, they didnt.

And of course the next trap is a magical statue that bestows a curse in the form of a wasting disease but only on characters wearing gloves.

 

[Greg Benage]

Mimic with a taste for hot pockets.

 

[Celebrim]

So what if the player genuinely thought they had gloves?

Covered this earlier. If the player has previously through their honesty and attention to the fiction made me believe they genuinely thought they had gloves, then I give them the benefit of doubt. Otherwise, based on long experience, this probably isn't the case. I mean I could name the only player in my current group likely to pull this sort of crap, because it's always that one player that is always doing this. And it's the same player that always cheated on his dice rolls whenever he thought he could get away with it.

And it's not like it's that one player. I could go back through my 40 years of gaming and list the players that pull this sort of stunt, and they are also the ones that cheat with the dice and think no one else notices (or don't care, because they'll threaten to break the group to protect their illusion of success).

The conversation from the OP happens and they flip open their notebook to reveal they've been drawing their character and lo and behold, there's gloves?

This is evidence along the lines of having "gloves (worn)" written on your character sheet. It proves that in the fiction as the player understood it, there is evidence of gloves. In that case, I go, "Ok, just so we don't have a future argument about this and for clarity, write "gloves (worn)" on your character sheet. I will assume you are wearing gloves from now on unless the fiction establishes you have removed them. Keep in mind that wearing gloves can sometimes negatively impact your sense of touch."