Also, for the discussion of describing how you do a thing, it's one of the reasons I always try to make sure I get any players I'm going to GM to the table to run not just D&D/Pathfinder, but story games that are mechanically fiction first.
I always tell them you don't have to do acting if you aren't interested or comfortable, but you do have to tell us what we're seeing on screen.
"Steve the dwarf barbarian yells loudly at the bad guy that he's coming for him" works.
"I demoralize the bad guy" doesn't work. If you say this one, I'm just going to say "Alright, tell us what that looks like on screen" every single time. Eventually it becomes second nature.
That being said, if you're playing D&D or its ilk, you're probably not going to do this for every single roll, especially in combat encounters.
The way I always ran it (I say it this way because 5e isn't really interested in actually giving you hard rules so this is somewhat extrapolated from the book rather than hard RAW) Perception might have you notice a trip wire or a pressure plate, or an arrow slit that might fire an arrow trap. Investigation is how you figure out how the trap works (if necessary, in some cases it's easy to bypass without doing any investigation, e.g. the trip wire).
I'm pretty sure that is how it's supposed to work.
Right, the DMG or whatever says that, but with a whole lot of its signature "You can do this, you might do this" wording. My favorite part is how they say you can make a perception check if you're actively looking for traps, or you can have passive perception be what you use to find them. I've never met anybody who plays 5e who doesn't just use passive perception for it. Though a savvy player should be saying they're actively looking for traps, since passive perception is a floor so you have only a higher than passive result to gain by actively rolling, with no risk.
Sometimes I think a lot of people over-react to the "rulings not rules" ethos of 5e. And instead of accepting the rules that are given, end up second guessing the games or even themselves. The rules are there... there is just overt permission given by the designers to interpret them differently, if one chooses to.
Certainly in this example. I definitely think 5e went way too vague for me personally on a lot of topics, but that's a personal preference. I think 5e is a great game for what it wants to be. IMO it sits right in between OSR games and what most people think of as modern D&D. It's great for tables that want a fairly streamlined experience without a lot of character customization, where making rulings on how to do things, or how to apply advantage/disadvantage is very simple. I think 5e's biggest flaws are the parts of it where it tries to be more mechanical instead of just saying "DM ruling." An example would be the surprise rules. I've probably had to explain those rules 100 times to people on the D&D reddits and at my tables. Most of the game is so straight forward and "DM makes ruling" and then they have examples like that where people get so confused.
My table wasn't a good fit for it, because we either want story games, or if we're going to play tactical combat simulator hero fantasy game we want something that has more meat on the bone. We bounced from 5e to 13th Age, back to 5e for a bit and now are full bore into Pathfinder 2e, because PF2e is like D&D4 but without homogenizing everything, and with a better rules chassis.
Sometimes I think a lot of people over-react to the "rulings not rules" ethos of 5e. And instead of accepting the rules that are given, end up second guessing the games or even themselves. The rules are there... there is just overt permission given by the designers to interpret them differently, if one chooses to.
If you're not using miniatures or another visual aid, it can sometimes be difficult to determine who's in an area of effect and who isn't. The easiest way to address such uncertainty is to go with your gut and make a call.
Sometimes I think a lot of people over-react to the "rulings not rules" ethos of 5e. And instead of accepting the rules that are given, end up second guessing the games or even themselves. The rules are there... there is just overt permission given by the designers to interpret them differently, if one chooses to.
If you're not using miniatures or another visual aid, it can sometimes be difficult to determine who's in an area of effect and who isn't. The easiest way to address such uncertainty is to go with your gut and make a call.
It's actually pretty easy to make the call most of the time. It's hard to explain in textual example though.
you like to cherry pick shit out of people's posts and then strawman the fuck out of them
i've played 51 sessions and we've done three "dungeons" at this point, everything else basically being roleplay shit, and this is the first time i've used traps to any significant degree
you take my post of asking for any input to supplement the roll into a "minute long one on one roleplaying session"
despite giving several examples taken right from my game
despite me saying for a change of pace in this particular dungeon i wanted to make them slow down and be a bit paranoid as a bit of contrast
and then liken my asking for any amount of flavorful narrative (of which i've given like 8 examples throughout all my posts, starting with "I look at it with my eyes" which seems pretty basic to me) to be akin to demanding the group describe in great detail how they set up latrines
O K
I'm sorry I was being defensive and deliberately obtuse
I understand what you do, and you reward creative thinking and aren't doing the thing I accused you of: railroading
You're not talking about causing an auto failure because they bend down and look for foot prints to see how someone would stand when passing this way, but the trap was a glyph of warding on the ceiling above the door that a blind person could have found if only they'd said they examined the ceiling
Given that my initial example was my DM responding to me with frustration because his piece of paper presented a binary choice, a binary choice that I literally had no idea which way my character would take, and I responded with annoyance to him - IE railroading, I took things in that light even though you explicitly weren't talking about doing that and mentioned several times you werent, it still colored my interactions and that's my bad, sorry.
The one thing I'm curious is, how much time do you take on doors that aren't trapped, or an entire room full of footlockers where only one was trapped (I assume not every building your characters go into is an ancient dungeon?). I've recently taken to just describing my player's designated trapfinder delicately searching nontrapped things (having him roll) over X number of minutes (depending on the roll) and finding no traps, and don't even bother with lockpicking checks for those - if they have time, they succeed. I think, on consideration, I might blend that with what you do and toss out what modules want for simple traps and just adapt them on the fly to how my players want to approach them
Edit: I do think it's unfair to categorize DMs who take different approaches as lazy though
Also, for the discussion of describing how you do a thing, it's one of the reasons I always try to make sure I get any players I'm going to GM to the table to run not just D&D/Pathfinder, but story games that are mechanically fiction first.
I always tell them you don't have to do acting if you aren't interested or comfortable, but you do have to tell us what we're seeing on screen.
"Steve the dwarf barbarian yells loudly at the bad guy that he's coming for him" works.
"I demoralize the bad guy" doesn't work. If you say this one, I'm just going to say "Alright, tell us what that looks like on screen" every single time. Eventually it becomes second nature.
That being said, if you're playing D&D or its ilk, you're probably not going to do this for every single roll, especially in combat encounters.
Yeah that's all good, I had a player try to convince a soldier on Sunday to spill the beans on a battle plan. He literally didn't know how he'd do that. He said "well he's interested in my character so I'll take him to get drinks", we get to there, "okay now I don't really know how to drill people for information, but as we get drunk I want to direct the conversation that way"
that's good enough for me, I had him throw the deception check down, and described them getting flirty and the soldier bragging about his elite secret mission, and then learning that he was a wyvern rider, and how they ended up in the wyvern hold of the skyship so he could show off his wyvern (in hopes of getting to show off his other wyvern), etc, etc
obviously we need to know *what* players are doing
Also, for the discussion of describing how you do a thing, it's one of the reasons I always try to make sure I get any players I'm going to GM to the table to run not just D&D/Pathfinder, but story games that are mechanically fiction first.
I always tell them you don't have to do acting if you aren't interested or comfortable, but you do have to tell us what we're seeing on screen.
"Steve the dwarf barbarian yells loudly at the bad guy that he's coming for him" works.
"I demoralize the bad guy" doesn't work. If you say this one, I'm just going to say "Alright, tell us what that looks like on screen" every single time. Eventually it becomes second nature.
That being said, if you're playing D&D or its ilk, you're probably not going to do this for every single roll, especially in combat encounters.
Well yes that's fine, I had a player try to convince a soldier on Sunday to spill the beans on a battle plan. He literally didn't know how he'd do that. He said "well he's interested in my character so I'll take him to get drinks", we get to there, "okay now I don't really know how to drill people for information, but as we get drunk I want to direct the conversation that way" - I ASSUME that's what everyone is talking about here right?
that's good enough for me, I had him throw the deception check down, and described them getting flirty and the soldier bragging about his elite secret mission, and then learning that he was a wyvern rider, and how they ended up in the wyvern hold of the skyship so he could show off his wyvern (in hopes of getting to show off his other wyvern), etc, etc
obviously we need to know *what* players are doing
Yeah, your player was doing exactly what you want. In a perfect world, they know the game mechanics well enough to also know if they're angling for a diplomacy, deception, intimidation, etc. check, but if I have to take one or the other, every time give me the player who gives descriptive fiction but needs me to slowly teach them what mechanics they're triggering with it.
Sometimes I think a lot of people over-react to the "rulings not rules" ethos of 5e. And instead of accepting the rules that are given, end up second guessing the games or even themselves. The rules are there... there is just overt permission given by the designers to interpret them differently, if one chooses to.
If you're not using miniatures or another visual aid, it can sometimes be difficult to determine who's in an area of effect and who isn't. The easiest way to address such uncertainty is to go with your gut and make a call.
It's actually pretty easy to make the call most of the time. It's hard to explain in textual example though.
Sure - I'm not suggesting that just deciding for yourself how many things a fireball hits is a heavy lift, it's just my favorite example of a case in 5e where the actual written rule for something is literally "There is no rule for this. You come up with one."
I'm sorry I was being defensive and deliberately obtuse
I understand what you do, and you reward creative thinking and aren't doing the thing I accused you of: railroading
You're not talking about causing an auto failure because they bend down and look for foot prints to see how someone would stand when passing this way, but the trap was a glyph of warding on the ceiling above the door that a blind person could have found if only they'd said they examined the ceiling
Given that my initial example was my DM responding to me with frustration because his piece of paper presented a binary choice, a binary choice that I literally had no idea which way my character would take, and I responded with annoyance to him - IE railroading, I took things in that light even though you explicitly weren't talking about doing that and mentioned several times you werent, it still colored my interactions and that's my bad, sorry.
The one thing I'm curious is, how much time do you take on doors that aren't trapped, or an entire room full of footlockers where only one was trapped (I assume not every building your characters go into is an ancient dungeon?). I've recently taken to just describing my player's designated trapfinder delicately searching nontrapped things (having him roll) over X number of minutes (depending on the roll) and finding no traps, and don't even bother with lockpicking checks for those - if they have time, they succeed. I think, on consideration, I might blend that with what you do and toss out what modules want for simple traps and just adapt them on the fly to how my players want to approach them
Edit: I do think it's unfair to categorize DMs who take different approaches as lazy though
it's alright, I was being harsh in my judgment of lazy
to answer the question, it depends how much the "trap" is part of the "encounter" if that makes sense? i tend to consider game sessions like an episode of a TV show, or a film, and the camera is constantly zooming out on stuff that doesn't matter or zooming back in, so like--if the trap matters, or rather, i want it to matter, we slow down and things get more tense as the trap becomes the "encounter" as it were
the dungeon o' traps i've been talking about was the first time i decided to feature traps as a centerpiece, so for this dungeon in particular, i was more 'strict' in asking how people were searching, and it was fun and tense as they navigated through; it was the first time, for instance, that i had the dungeon mapped out ahead of time and made the positioning important too
but it's like anything else, right? when you've wrung all of the water out of the sponge, you stop squeezing. nothing i do at my table above and beyond general practice is a hard policy, because i know next session we'll be doing something else equally dramatic but totally different
in general, i require any skill roll to be supplemented by any statement from within the fiction
Begin and end with the fiction
Everything you and the players do in Dungeon World comes from and leads to fictional events. When the players make a move, they take a fictional action to trigger it, apply the rules, and get a fictional effect. When you make a move it always comes from the fiction.
this is a guiding principle to me for not just D&D but all tabletop games, and it doesn't have to be flashy, it doesn't have to be elaborate, but it has to be there so i know what to give back in response to a check, because otherwise it really does lead to "I roll for X" "you succeed/fail" "ok great/oh no :c"
For this case, a few of them had these elaborate plans to try and get the soldiers to tell them things, the player in question, he ended up sleeping with this soldier because they had spun an offhand comment into a vast conspiracy theory and he wanted answers
It worked perfectly because his character has a high deception, performance, and persuasion but is incredibly dense and unwise. He started concocting a long term infiltration plan of this unit of wyvern riders and his character absolutely was too dumb for me to say "you think that given your status you could probably just ask their superiors what is going on and get an answer"
The party warlock, she just asked the captain what they were doing and was read into their entire plan, which was secret and involved deception but wasn't a secret coup or anything, it was just a surprise attack against some foreign agents that had set up shop
Also when it comes to skill checks, they are totally pull lever get bacon. It's my job to tell you what success looks like expressly because the player doesn't know what failure looks like. They go to inspect the eldritch statue, I have them roll, they succeed the check, I describe them not touching the statue because in their inspection they've realized that's the trap. Boom move on. If they fail the inspection check, they pickup the eldritch statue like an idiot and trigger the trap, that probably means a save vs effect and then move on. The far more interesting thing about traps is less their immediate functioning or discovery and far more the answer to the questions, "how did it work, who put it there, why did they put it there".
this is an interesting statement from the previous page; i feel like the first half and the second half run at cross-purposes, to me. how are you getting to answer those questions in a tangible way if every trap starts from the same mechanic? to me, it matters to the pacing and tension just as much if we see how Trap Person is doing their thing. it's an opportunity for the "audience" to see the character on screen doing their Cool Thing, and that can mean a lot to a player feeling special in my experience, and you get to reveal details that are important and also tailored to whatever approach Trap Person took
Also when it comes to skill checks, they are totally pull lever get bacon. It's my job to tell you what success looks like expressly because the player doesn't know what failure looks like. They go to inspect the eldritch statue, I have them roll, they succeed the check, I describe them not touching the statue because in their inspection they've realized that's the trap. Boom move on. If they fail the inspection check, they pickup the eldritch statue like an idiot and trigger the trap, that probably means a save vs effect and then move on. The far more interesting thing about traps is less their immediate functioning or discovery and far more the answer to the questions, "how did it work, who put it there, why did they put it there".
this is an interesting statement from the previous page; i feel like the first half and the second half run at cross-purposes, to me. how are you getting to answer those questions in a tangible way if every trap starts from the same mechanic? to me, it matters to the pacing and tension just as much if we see how Trap Person is doing their thing. it's an opportunity for the "audience" to see the character on screen doing their Cool Thing, and that can mean a lot to a player feeling special in my experience, and you get to reveal details that are important and also tailored to whatever approach Trap Person took
How trap person interacted with the trap is behind the dice rolls. You do the rolls then let them know the "how" of it.
They don't pick a method out of the ether for trap detection because trap detection specifically doesn't work the same for every trap, so they can't describe interacting with the trap successfully unless they already know everything about the trap. Since they don't, cause the trap is a secret I am keeping, I let them know how their very competent character went about things competently. They still get the screen time, we "yes and..." our way through the description of their success or failure, however we want that scene to look or sound, and then we move on.
awsimoa perfectly cromulent human; definitely not a robotRegistered Userregular
edited September 2019
EDIT: Moving post to new thread :P
This year, I decided to try my hand at DMing. I've been running LMoP + Icespire with a group of mostly first-time players, and it's been going surprisingly well.
The Rogue in my group has expressed an interest in doing more stealth-related activities, but it seems like the rules around stealth are fairly vague, and it's largely up to DM discretion. I told him that I'd be likely to reward him with advantage or inspiration-- or at least a lowered DC-- for being creative with stealth, like sneaking across roof beams or clever usage of Minor Illusion (he's running Arcane Trickster).
But I'd like to give him some more mechanically tangible ways to use stealth at the table; something more involved than just "roll a DEX (Stealth) check." I've thought about creating a kind of turn-based minigame inspired by Hitman GO where he has to observe guard movements and slip between their routes, maybe even use construction paper cones on the minis to represent field(s) of vision.
All of this is a long-winded way of me asking if any other DMs out there have come across any fun or interesting ways to implement stealth in their games? I'd love any and all suggestions!
I usually have 5 players of which 3 are min maxers, 1 takes a few levels in several classes each campaign, and 1 is constantly distracted. Our play seasons are 3 to 3.5 hours, and because we are in Batovia i track in-game time down to the minute. And they constantly split the party for RP reasons.
Unfortunately don't get enough time for that sort of additional mechanics.
Posts
I always tell them you don't have to do acting if you aren't interested or comfortable, but you do have to tell us what we're seeing on screen.
"Steve the dwarf barbarian yells loudly at the bad guy that he's coming for him" works.
"I demoralize the bad guy" doesn't work. If you say this one, I'm just going to say "Alright, tell us what that looks like on screen" every single time. Eventually it becomes second nature.
That being said, if you're playing D&D or its ilk, you're probably not going to do this for every single roll, especially in combat encounters.
I'm pretty sure that is how it's supposed to work.
My table wasn't a good fit for it, because we either want story games, or if we're going to play tactical combat simulator hero fantasy game we want something that has more meat on the bone. We bounced from 5e to 13th Age, back to 5e for a bit and now are full bore into Pathfinder 2e, because PF2e is like D&D4 but without homogenizing everything, and with a better rules chassis.
For a given value of 'there', certainly.
It's actually pretty easy to make the call most of the time. It's hard to explain in textual example though.
I'm sorry I was being defensive and deliberately obtuse
I understand what you do, and you reward creative thinking and aren't doing the thing I accused you of: railroading
You're not talking about causing an auto failure because they bend down and look for foot prints to see how someone would stand when passing this way, but the trap was a glyph of warding on the ceiling above the door that a blind person could have found if only they'd said they examined the ceiling
Given that my initial example was my DM responding to me with frustration because his piece of paper presented a binary choice, a binary choice that I literally had no idea which way my character would take, and I responded with annoyance to him - IE railroading, I took things in that light even though you explicitly weren't talking about doing that and mentioned several times you werent, it still colored my interactions and that's my bad, sorry.
The one thing I'm curious is, how much time do you take on doors that aren't trapped, or an entire room full of footlockers where only one was trapped (I assume not every building your characters go into is an ancient dungeon?). I've recently taken to just describing my player's designated trapfinder delicately searching nontrapped things (having him roll) over X number of minutes (depending on the roll) and finding no traps, and don't even bother with lockpicking checks for those - if they have time, they succeed. I think, on consideration, I might blend that with what you do and toss out what modules want for simple traps and just adapt them on the fly to how my players want to approach them
Edit: I do think it's unfair to categorize DMs who take different approaches as lazy though
Ugh. Seriously.
It's plainly "b," as you can see from these three Sage Advice articles and this Youtube video with Mike Mearls.
We've been over this so many times now.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Yeah that's all good, I had a player try to convince a soldier on Sunday to spill the beans on a battle plan. He literally didn't know how he'd do that. He said "well he's interested in my character so I'll take him to get drinks", we get to there, "okay now I don't really know how to drill people for information, but as we get drunk I want to direct the conversation that way"
that's good enough for me, I had him throw the deception check down, and described them getting flirty and the soldier bragging about his elite secret mission, and then learning that he was a wyvern rider, and how they ended up in the wyvern hold of the skyship so he could show off his wyvern (in hopes of getting to show off his other wyvern), etc, etc
obviously we need to know *what* players are doing
Yeah, your player was doing exactly what you want. In a perfect world, they know the game mechanics well enough to also know if they're angling for a diplomacy, deception, intimidation, etc. check, but if I have to take one or the other, every time give me the player who gives descriptive fiction but needs me to slowly teach them what mechanics they're triggering with it.
Sure - I'm not suggesting that just deciding for yourself how many things a fireball hits is a heavy lift, it's just my favorite example of a case in 5e where the actual written rule for something is literally "There is no rule for this. You come up with one."
it's alright, I was being harsh in my judgment of lazy
to answer the question, it depends how much the "trap" is part of the "encounter" if that makes sense? i tend to consider game sessions like an episode of a TV show, or a film, and the camera is constantly zooming out on stuff that doesn't matter or zooming back in, so like--if the trap matters, or rather, i want it to matter, we slow down and things get more tense as the trap becomes the "encounter" as it were
the dungeon o' traps i've been talking about was the first time i decided to feature traps as a centerpiece, so for this dungeon in particular, i was more 'strict' in asking how people were searching, and it was fun and tense as they navigated through; it was the first time, for instance, that i had the dungeon mapped out ahead of time and made the positioning important too
but it's like anything else, right? when you've wrung all of the water out of the sponge, you stop squeezing. nothing i do at my table above and beyond general practice is a hard policy, because i know next session we'll be doing something else equally dramatic but totally different
in general, i require any skill roll to be supplemented by any statement from within the fiction
this is a guiding principle to me for not just D&D but all tabletop games, and it doesn't have to be flashy, it doesn't have to be elaborate, but it has to be there so i know what to give back in response to a check, because otherwise it really does lead to "I roll for X" "you succeed/fail" "ok great/oh no :c"
It worked perfectly because his character has a high deception, performance, and persuasion but is incredibly dense and unwise. He started concocting a long term infiltration plan of this unit of wyvern riders and his character absolutely was too dumb for me to say "you think that given your status you could probably just ask their superiors what is going on and get an answer"
The party warlock, she just asked the captain what they were doing and was read into their entire plan, which was secret and involved deception but wasn't a secret coup or anything, it was just a surprise attack against some foreign agents that had set up shop
I couldn't have scripted it better
this is an interesting statement from the previous page; i feel like the first half and the second half run at cross-purposes, to me. how are you getting to answer those questions in a tangible way if every trap starts from the same mechanic? to me, it matters to the pacing and tension just as much if we see how Trap Person is doing their thing. it's an opportunity for the "audience" to see the character on screen doing their Cool Thing, and that can mean a lot to a player feeling special in my experience, and you get to reveal details that are important and also tailored to whatever approach Trap Person took
How trap person interacted with the trap is behind the dice rolls. You do the rolls then let them know the "how" of it.
They don't pick a method out of the ether for trap detection because trap detection specifically doesn't work the same for every trap, so they can't describe interacting with the trap successfully unless they already know everything about the trap. Since they don't, cause the trap is a secret I am keeping, I let them know how their very competent character went about things competently. They still get the screen time, we "yes and..." our way through the description of their success or failure, however we want that scene to look or sound, and then we move on.
This year, I decided to try my hand at DMing. I've been running LMoP + Icespire with a group of mostly first-time players, and it's been going surprisingly well.
The Rogue in my group has expressed an interest in doing more stealth-related activities, but it seems like the rules around stealth are fairly vague, and it's largely up to DM discretion. I told him that I'd be likely to reward him with advantage or inspiration-- or at least a lowered DC-- for being creative with stealth, like sneaking across roof beams or clever usage of Minor Illusion (he's running Arcane Trickster).
But I'd like to give him some more mechanically tangible ways to use stealth at the table; something more involved than just "roll a DEX (Stealth) check." I've thought about creating a kind of turn-based minigame inspired by Hitman GO where he has to observe guard movements and slip between their routes, maybe even use construction paper cones on the minis to represent field(s) of vision.
All of this is a long-winded way of me asking if any other DMs out there have come across any fun or interesting ways to implement stealth in their games? I'd love any and all suggestions!
Unfortunately don't get enough time for that sort of additional mechanics.