D&D 5E What 5E needs: Let it Ride and Make it Interesting...

[Minigiant]

I like Let it ride.

But it is less rules and more DM advice and philosophy.
Good when done well.
Horrible when done wrong.
Just like everything.

But I am not a huge fan of single rolls through. It is too easy and tempting to condense things into a single roll for everyone and breeze through a lot of possible drama and fun.

I prefer 3 rolls for everyone. Actually... 3 roll flow charts.

For example I do a Signature Specialized Shopping minigame of 3 roll phases. First is Locating the place or person who has the item with different successes and failures based on the methods used, many of which nudge the party to the next phase. Then is Getting the salesman to sell switch can be skipped if the item or info is not coveted or the salesman is not hostile. Then there is the Haggling/Stealing phase with many bad and good outcomes.

 

[Ranganathan]

Let it Ride. My rule of thumb for this has always been if a movie would handle it as a quick montage, it's one roll. Anything more gives the action far too much weight, and as the math will show, simply increases the chance of failure without adding anything all that interesting.

Make it Interesting. If failure doesn't provide interesting results, there's no meaningful need for dice. Use the dice when there's chance, granted. But that should be a chance of something good (and interesting) happening or something bad (and interesting happening). Climbing a tower and having a failed climb check slide you down a few feet is dull. Pure and simple. Make the player roll it to see how long it takes, not if he does it. That stealth check should be made as the thief is trying to avoid a guard inside, not on the lawn outside.

Hell, having a highly trained thief (high Dex, trained in Athletics) roll at all for scaling a tower is dull, which is likely why they've been talking about ability scores as a "take 10" option to just do certain things instead of rolling. That's the start of the designers recognizing that rolling constantly is not only silly, but boring. I just hope they take it a step further and put both of these great rules in the game in big bold letters.

 

[LostSoul]

That's DMing advice, not rules.

Where do you draw the line, GR?

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

I’ve never played Burning Wheel, but I’m going to try to translate what I think “Let it Ride” and “Make it Interesting” mean into D&D with a familiar scene:

The Fellowship is trying to cross the Misty Mountains at the pass of Caradhras.

The party has on their side several hearty adventurers including one very skilled woodsman, a wizard master of fire, a fleet-footed elf, and several tough, but not particularly useful hobbits. They are not well geared for the climb (Sam didn’t bring any rope), but they have plenty of cold weather gear and have brought along plenty of firewood (thanks Boromir).

Everyone makes a CON check to endure the weather. It gets really cold and starts to snow heavily as they make their way up the pass. Anyone that fails the check will suffer some damage scaled by how badly they fail and mitigated by any extra precautions or efforts they use to defend against it. This damage will occur periodically as they continue the journey using the single check per character.

The most skilled in outdoor survival (Aragorn) makes a WIS check to find the best path. They WILL find a path across, this check just determines how long it will take, and how many times they suffer damage from the cold. Lack of proper climbing gear impedes this check.

So, they’re making their way along the pass. Everyone makes a CON check: Boromir, Gimli, and Gandalf succeed. Legolas does too, mostly due to his elven adaptation (Tolkien elves are like little gods, you know). Aragorn fails marginally. The four hobbits each suffer varying degrees of failure with Frodo faring the worst.

Aragorn finds a path, but it’s not a particularly good one, and this trek is going to take a very long time. Damage starts to accumulate from the cold and the snow. Eventually Boromir points out that the hobbits will die if they keep on, so they decide to stop for rest and start a fire for warmth.

Gimli can’t manage the fire starting (WIS check failed), so Gandalf lends a hand. Gandalf can automatically start a fire using his magic, but doing so alerts the giants living above the pass. The Fellowship decides to wait out the storm and look at moving forward in the morning. The fire mitigates much of the damage from the cold and only Frodo continues to suffer. Everyone takes a sip of miruvor (minor healing potion) and recovers some strength.

In the meantime, the giants saw Gandalf’s fire and start dropping boulders down around the heads of the Fellowship. This disturbs their sleep (no rest tonight) and has a very small chance (easy DEX check for each character) of doing some traumatic damage if someone gets hit. Luckily no one takes a stone to the head.

In the morning the Fellowship assesses the situation: the pass is blocked with snow in both directions. Legolas the super nimble and never daunted (damn Tolkien elves!) leaps up and goes to check things out. Making a WIS check he determines that it will be easier (though not easy) to turn back than to press forward.

The strongest member of the party (Boromir) makes a STR check to clear a path back down the pass and Aragorn assists. Again, success is guaranteed, but the higher the roll the quicker he can make way for the hobbits who continue to take damage from the cold, though the damage is less now as it’s not as cold and the snow has stopped.

The Fellowship makes its way back down the pass having failed to cross the pass of Caradhas with several folks suffering some frostbite and Frodo in pretty bad shape. Another sip of miruvor and some rest and everyone’s ready to try the Hollin Gate.

They could try the pass again, but they’ll suffer the same bad result unless they can come up with some good climbing gear, find a good map of the place, or otherwise change the situation. Weather control might be nice!

 

[n00bdragon]

Yet another "innovation" that 4e fixed and no one noticed because they were too busy getting purple faced over dragonboobs. Things like Stealth were a check you made once and then kept for as long as nothing warranted you make another stealth check (e.g. moving more than 2 squares in a round, leaving cover, etc).

 

[Ranganathan]

Yet another "innovation" that 4e fixed and no one noticed because they were too busy getting purple faced over dragonboobs. Things like Stealth were a check you made once and then kept for as long as nothing warranted you make another stealth check (e.g. moving more than 2 squares in a round, leaving cover, etc).

According to the game (4E), a thief who tries to sneak across a courtyard, scale a wall, and sneak into a room in a high tower could make upwards of a dozen checks for various actions. Move more than 2, extra check. Break cover, extra check. Enter the moat, extra check. Enter cover, no check. Break second cover, extra check. Climb the wall, extra check. A few Athletics checks to get up the bloody thing. Then stealth again to move around inside the tower.

That's ridiculous and adds nothing interesting to the game. It only slows things down and increases the likelihood of failing at an uninteresting point, say in the courtyard, breaking cover for the second time. Wrap that all up into a few rolls, one each for climbing and one for sneaking when it really counts (inside the tower), and it's suddenly a much more interesting (re: dramatic and engaging) story, rather than fondling the game mechanics needlessly.

 

[Libramarian]

No, I don't think this works for me. It's important that the DM doesn't muck around with the PC's odds of success based on their judgement of whether a scene is "cinematic" enough or narratively satisfying. There needs to be consistency in how and where they call for checks to allow the players to make strategic decisions about how they go about sneaking into the castle, or whatever. And they need to be able to fail (sometimes in deprotagonizing, anti-climactic ways) in order to make their plans matter, and not just be fluff on top of a railroad structure.

I think if you want to skip to some part in the adventure, you should narrate up to it without making any rolls.

 

[Ranganathan]

No, I don't think this works for me. It's important that the DM doesn't muck around with the PC's odds of success based on their judgement of whether a scene is "cinematic" enough or narratively satisfying. There needs to be consistency in how and where they call for checks to allow the players to make strategic decisions about how they go about sneaking into the castle, or whatever. And they need to be able to fail (sometimes in deprotagonizing, anti-climactic ways) in order to make their plans matter, and not just be fluff on top of a railroad structure.

I think if you want to skip to some part in the adventure, you should narrate up to it without making any rolls.

1) Their plans need to matter.
2) The dice determine the outcome.

These are contradictory statements.

And just so you know, making players roll over and over is "mucking with their chance of success". But then, so is assigning any DC.

It's not changing their chances of success based on cinematic expectations, it's deciding to not bore the players to tears by spending half an hour watching as the thief sneaks into the tower to steal a MacGuffin. It's Shadowrun and decking.

Railroading is making sure a specific thing happens no matter what the players say or do. Let it Ride isn't that. Let it Ride is actually the opposite of that. When you make a player roll repeatedly for the same action, you are dramatically increasing their chance of failure, all but guaranteeing a failure at some point. That's railroading with a fancy purple dress on.

 

[Oni]

I personally would consider these more advice than rules, or more to the point, tools in the DM's toolbox. I've never believed in making people roll until they fail, I've always considered that 'doing it wrong' but there are various situations and reasons more or less rolls might be called for. In a lot of ways it's a matter of zoom. If something isn't important, or people aren't particularly interested in it, or time is just short there isn't a lot of reason to draw a lot of attention to it. For instance in my Pathfinder game this past weekend, one of the players went along to scout out the bandit camp, I asked for one stealth roll and then gave him a quick summery of what happened so that I could keep everyone else involved in the game. He got a lot out of his one roll, but keeping the game moving was more important than zooming in on his actions. If I had wanted to focus on that and build more tension I would definitely have called for multiple rolls, but my rule is that if I'm require multiple rolls for success than I should also require multiple rolls for failure. Picking up the dice is a sort of punctuation, it should create the impression something is at stake. Sometimes they're a red herring, but you don't know that until the moment is passed, if the players are wound up and think they should roll I totally let them, even if it's not necessary, sometimes the act of rolling is more important than the outcome. Like if they tried to sneak past a dead guard, I could just narrate that since it doesn't matter, but it doesn't have the same panache as one them rolling a one and the sudden rise tension, then the release when nothing happens. Or maybe they all roll great, get my and never find out, they all keep their sense of tension and I get a good chuckle, win-win.

Anyway I'm rambling. I certainly hope they include in the DMG (assuming they go that format) a section on how to use the dice as more than a number generator.

 

[pemerton]

Yet another "innovation" that 4e fixed and no one noticed because they were too busy getting purple faced over dragonboobs. Things like Stealth were a check you made once and then kept for as long as nothing warranted you make another stealth check (e.g. moving more than 2 squares in a round, leaving cover, etc).

According to the game (4E), a thief who tries to sneak across a courtyard, scale a wall, and sneak into a room in a high tower could make upwards of a dozen checks for various actions. Move more than 2, extra check. Break cover, extra check. Enter the moat, extra check. Enter cover, no check. Break second cover, extra check. Climb the wall, extra check. A few Athletics checks to get up the bloody thing. Then stealth again to move around inside the tower.

That's ridiculous and adds nothing interesting to the game. It only slows things down and increases the likelihood of failing at an uninteresting point, say in the courtyard, breaking cover for the second time.

I don't think 4e Stealth is exactly Let It Ride, but I think n00bdragon is right that 4e pushes more in this direction than some other versions of D&D.

The problem with its Stealth rules are that they are written on the assumption that Stealth is being used in melee. It's analogous, in BW terms, to the need to retest Speed or Stealth or whatever each volley for positioning (Let It Ride doesn't apply in that case). But there is the note in the Stealth rules that, out of combat, one way of maintaining cover is to have any potential viewer's back to you - so in the case of sneaking into the tower, if no one is looking at the thief then there is no breaking of cover and so no need to recheck when entering and leaving the moat.