Let me start with this…
I have no idea how to classify this shit. It’s not quite a True Game Mastery Lesson, not quite an Ask Angry Mailbag, and not quite Random Bullshit. But it is a kind of Voltron-esque mishmash of the three. And it’s definitely something I’ll be doing again. Hence the one in the title.
Let me explain…
My last True Game Mastery Lesson — Dealing with Problematic Actions — sparked a lot of debate, discussion, and feedback. Basically, I sowed a bunch of chaos and confusion and I’ve got to mitigate it before I move on.
So this here’s a rambly, bullshitty True Game Mastery Studyhall Session wherein I — professor Angry — try to clarify all the crap I didn’t explain clearly enough last time. Mainly by responding to comments, feedback, discussions in my supporter Discord community, and e-mails.
Addressing Problematic Feedback
That last lesson in True Game Mastery was kind of a mess, huh? Yeah. My bad. I could have handled it better. But also, in some cases, your bad. Because man, some of you really hate the idea of using your Game Mastering judgment and intuition instead of following rote rules like a video game console.
Before I respond to any specific points, let me remind you of something: I am not trying to teach you how to run games. Read my book, Game Angry, if that’s what you’re after. Or wait for the revised edition and its sequel.
In True Game Mastery, I’m showing you how to go beyond merely running games. How to run the best damned game you can run. That’s hard. It takes effort and it takes practice and it takes judgment and intuition. Which you have to develop over time.
The rules of your game of choice — whatever game you choose — will not get you there. They can’t. They’re not even designed to. Roleplaying game systems are designed to empower average people to run perfectly okay games. They’re designed so Game Masters don’t have to master crap like game design and narrative structure.
Moreover, it’s impossible to run consistently great games by the book. Roleplaying games are great because of their open-ended freeformness. And that shit’s only possible if there’s a creative, human brain running the show. You can’t rely on rules, definitions, systems, and checklists. They’re the opposite of creative, open-ended freeformness.
That’s why, in the end, the answer’s always going to be, “I can’t give you a rule or definition, you need to use your own best judgment. And even if your judgment sucks right now, it gets better every time you use it instead of rules and definitions.”
If you can’t handle that, this series has got nothing for you. Go bother Crawford and Perkins.
Now to respond to specific points…
First, commenter mAc Chaos asked about the point of even having Knowledge-type skills in D&D if GMs just hand out information as part of their narration. Why let players waste resources on skills like Arcana, Nature, or Religion if they can’t use them or roll them?
At no point did I tell you not to roll Knowledge-type skill checks. In fact, I specifically said to use whatever rules the system gives you to determine what the characters know. I just said to do it automatically. And I also said the players can’t waste actions thinking really hard or trying to recognize or recall shit. They shouldn’t have to.
The Game Master’s job is telling the players what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know. If the players have to ask what their characters know, the Game Master’s shirking their duty. It’s that simple. Of course, it’s impossible to get it right a hundred percent of the time. Players are going to ask questions about the world. That’s fine. But that’s an interaction between player and Game Master, not between the player and the character’s brain.
Use the skills if you want to. Roll ’em behind the screen before doing your scene-setting narration or stop the game and ask the players to roll ’em before you set the scene or use Passive Scores or just use your own best judgment to decide who knows what based on their skills. Whatever rolls your cannoli. I literally don’t give a crap how you decide what the characters know. I care only that you do your freaking job and tell the players what their characters know as much as possible and never make them waste in-game actions asking questions of their own characters’ brains.
However you use the skills — roll ‘em publicly or privately or passively or whatever — the skills still have value. Players get extra, useful information they wouldn’t have without those skills. So they’re valuable.
With regards to the complaint that you don’t like passive checks because they’re too concrete and too certain, mAc Chaos, I’m going to say the same thing I said the last ten thousand times you — and others — raised that meaningless non-issue: grow up and get over it. Or get on the other side of the screen if you want unpredictability and surprise. If you want to be God, you gotta be able to handle omniscience.
This question also plays into what I said about going beyond the game’s mechanics. As does thetotheo’s question about the Investigation skill in D&D 5E. Yes, the Player’s Handbook literally says that it lets characters make deductions based on in-world clues. Which is precisely what I said not to do.
Moreover, several of you in Discord and through e-mail pointed out that I, myself, allowed characters to make deductions using the Investigate skill in my learn-to-play module, The Fall of Silverpine Watch. Hell, lots of you pointed out that it was the first time you’d ever seen a published module use Investigation consistently with the game’s rules. So what gives? Doesn’t that make me a world-class hypocrite?
No. And shut up. Except for the praise. I like the praise. Otherwise, shut up.
This goes back to what I said before. As a game mechanic, the Investigation skill is fine. Totally adequate. And you can run a decently okay game with it. By the book. And that’s precisely what Fall of Silverpine Watch was designed to teach. How to run a passable, adequate game by the book. And thus, I used the skill as written. But the skill tells you to do a shitty thing no true Game Master should do. It’s a crutch. And if you really want to run your best game, excise that skill.
Or — and this is going to blow your mind — don’t excise it. Just go with it. Accept that there’s this one shitty skill that occasionally forces you to do something that you’re better off not doing. It’s not like that one little thing is going to break your entire game. True Game Masters are smart enough to recognize that every system has warts and problems and crutches and limitations. And True Game Masters know that if they spend all their time rewriting systems, they’ll never get around to running games. So, they pick their battles. How often does Investigation even come up? Not that much. It’s a sucky skill, but it’s not worth getting bent out of shape over.
That, too, is a part of good judgment. See how this shit works?
And speaking of rolling with sucky mechanics…
Commentor Yaamzie asked how to handle the Dungeon World move Spout Lore given my advice. And I couldn’t ask for a better way to highlight the issue at the core of all this automatic knowledge crap.
See, in Dungeon World, the players don’t declare mechanical actions. At least, they ain’t supposed to. They’re supposed to describe their characters’ in-world actions. The Game Master is supposed to recognize the action as matching a mechanical action — called a Move — in the game’s rules. “It sounds like you’re trying to Hack and Slash,” the GM is supposed to say, or “it sounds like you’re trying to Spout Lore.”
Spout Lore is a clunky-ass action a player would never take if it wasn’t on the list of Basic Actions players are allowed to see. Because it’s basically, “when your character stands around thinking really hard.” And it stands out precisely because it’s so at odds with Dungeon World’s basic fiction-first philosophy.
It’s an attempt to mechanically spackle over the problem that, in a fiction-first game, there’s no way for players to ask the Game Master questions about the world. But “hey, Game Master, I have a question about the world before I take my action” is a perfectly valid interaction. And it’s also totally valid to have a game mechanic that requires the Game Master to provide exposition based on the characters’ skills. Why does it have to be any more complicated than that?
That said, Yaamzie is on the way to True Game Mastery by admitting Spout Lore is a crappy action in need of change but also saying that there should be active ways to seek knowledge. Yeah, the suggestion Yaamzie made about giving characters piles of books to consult to trigger the Spout Lore action is just more mechanical excuse for non-mechanical interaction bullshit, but the impetus behind it is solid.
And that brings me to what bc56 said in my supporter Discord server after I posted the Early Access version of this article. See, bc56 was running a sci-fi game. The players discovered a bunch of dead bodies. The victims had been killed with radioactive bullets and that fact was supposed to clue the players into who was behind the killings. Or something like that.
Anyway, bc56 wanted to know how to avoid just saying, “you deduce these people were killed by radioactive-bullet-shooting weapons.”
And the answer is: just describe the bodies. They’re riddled with bullet holes and covered in radiation burns. That’s it. That’s what the characters see. And yes, I know some know-it-all asshole is going to argue that even saying bullet wound and radiation burn is providing deductions and that my advice, taken to a ridiculously inhuman extreme would preclude that. But that know-it-all asshole keeps missing the bit about Game Mastering judgment .
As a Game Master, you want to describe precisely what the characters see, hear, perceive, and know and not one iota more. Where that line is? Well, you have to guess. It’s impossible to set a single, universal line. Which is okay because Game Masters aren’t computers. They have brains. Despite the evidence some of my correspondence offers to the contrary.
Ask yourself, “what is the minimum information I can convey that still describes what the characters see, hear, perceive, and know?”
Space marine medics know what bullet holes and radiation burns look like. Fine. But why say, “the person was killed by weapons that shoot radioactive bullets” instead of saying, “there sure are bullet holes and radiation burns and the radiation burns surround the bullet holes.” Don’t you watch cop shows, anyway? Medical examiners do autopsies to determine the cause of death. “I dug one of these bullets out and tested it because of the weird burns and it’s putting out radiation…”
The point of this shit is that there’s nothing interesting about rolling dice. People like rolling dice, but it ain’t challenging, interesting, engaging gameplay. That’s why we play Dungeons & Dragons instead of Yahtzee and Craps. Hell, even Yahtzee has some push-your-luck risk-taking and Craps has gambling and booze. Man, I love me some craps…
But I digress…
Knowledge-type skills are basically just roll-for-an-answer mechanics. They’re boring. They leave nothing for the players to do. That’s why the information they get should have some blanks to fill in or invite further action. Interaction-with-the-world type action. An autopsy is more interesting than a die roll in the field. Reaching conclusions about the enemy’s armaments by filling in the gaps between the facts is too. No matter how simple the deduction or additional action is, it’s better than flipping a coin to receive the answer.
That’s why you leave holes. That’s why you give the players the minimum amount of information you can.
Now, as a side note, I want to mention the oft-cited issue of GMs not being subject matter experts.
At my table, I would have described the red, swollen skin and blistering around the wounds. And the peeling of the skin at the edges of the bullet wounds. And I would have said, “there are burns around the wounds, but there’s no charring of the hair or clothing. That suggests radiation burns.” I’d give a clear description of the situation and the facts as the characters would know them.
So do I expect you to know what radiation burns look like? At least passably enough to supply a description? Yes. Absolutely yes. If you run a system or game that involves radiation burns, you damned well better know what radiation burns look like. It’s inexcusable if you don’t. Especially given it takes a five-minute search on your phone to find out.
There’s an adage among writers that holds equally for game designers: “write what you know.” That’s often incorrectly taken as an admonition to limit your writing to things with which you have personal experience. But it ain’t. It’s just a reminder that you’ve got a responsibility to do your homework and get shit right in your writing.
That’s part of your job as a Game Master.
But back to leaving gaps in your exposition to drive action, deduction, and questions. It’s the same with the Intuition-type checks. Commentor Andrew Wright struggled to grasp the difference between “the NPC is lying” and “the NPC is behaving like a liar” and “the NPC refuses to make eye contact.” And many who responded seemed to think my “speak facts and don’t give deductions” rule was about wording and semantics.
It ain’t.
When you tell a player categorically that an NPC is lying that’s the end of things. The players have the answer. When you tell a player that an NPC is nervous or cagey or dodgy, they can ask follow-up questions. They can investigate further. They can probe or pump information. Or they can make guesses. The point is there are gaps to fill in with further action or deduction.
People constantly ask me how to build good mysteries, good social interactions, and good stealth challenges. The key to all three starts with “stop letting the players win by dice alone.” Leave some gaps.
Commentor Chris earned an Angry Award for Totally Getting It with this:
At the risk of getting yelled at by Angry, it isn’t about the skill choice or passive vs. active or rolling vs. GM fiat. The answer lies in the adjudication narration conducted by the GM. There is no difference between, “You think he is lying,” vs. “You see a single bead of sweat roll down his forehead, as he answers your question.” EXCEPT one is telling the player what the character thinks and the other is providing more context clues to allow the player to make their own deductions.
Meanwhile, commenter Dmitrii Zelenskii asked me why I was so hellbent on calling non-interactive, non-visible-on-the-screen things nonactions when I, myself, “think real hard for a living.” So do scientists. Because thinking really hard is a totally valid way to get answers.
First, Dmitrii thinking really hard is a very small part of what I do. It’s mainly a background task. My thinking happens in the shower, mostly. Planning, designing, and writing are active processes. I do a lot of outlining, summarizing, free-writing, researching, analyzing, and calculating. And I’m fairly sure most scientists would say their work — while not nearly as rigorous as my work writing about how to pretend to be an elf better — is similarly active.
But — second — while I totally can go into the differences between explicit and implicit memory, talk about the current theories of memory retrieval, and cite the relevant research about the role conscious thought plays and whether it’s aided by “thinking really hard” and how the process of rehearsal for recall plays into it and blah blah blah… none of that shit matters.
And I said exactly that in the sidebar.
I don’t care whether you personally believe thinking really hard to recall a random fact you learned once ten years ago is useful. Because it doesn’t make for a great play experience. Inviting the players to interact with the world does. Leaving pieces unstated so the players can fill them in does. That’s what a Game Master wants. As much as possible. Because the only challenges you can build into roleplaying games are mental challenges.
Reality designs shitty games. And it writes shitty fiction too.
And that gives away my answer to commenter King Joey’s question about how I’d design a good “stand around and think” mechanic. I wouldn’t. Because that makes for a shitty game. And besides, I can’t imagine many players who’d rather waste round after round in combat rerolling their Knowledge checks than just trying to beat the monster and seeing what works.
But not everyone was hung up on the underlying philosophy bullshit. Some were really, really obsessed with the mechanical specifics of rolling the characters’ checks behind the screen.
A fair few folks were just wondering how I managed to pull off such amazing feats of Game Mastery while running either real-life or virtual-space games and, frankly, I’m as baffled by that as I am by the people who can’t figure out how to track initiative without an iPhone app.
It ain’t hard to roll a skill check. Just roll a die and add a modifier. Whether you’re running games on the Internet or in real life, you’ve got to be able to roll dice. And it ain’t hard to know what modifier to add. Just keep a list or ask for it as you need it.
You open the door and… hey, Adam, Ardrick is proficient in History, right? What’s his modifier? Okay… good… so… as your torchlight spills into the gallery beyond, it falls on a marble statue of a soldier in ancient Zethinian regalia. Ardrick recognizes the symbol emblazoned on the statue’s shield as that of General Pevan Ardorus III who…
It’s that simple. And if your setup — be it a virtual tabletop or a physical gamespace — somehow impedes your ability to make quick-and-easy skill checks, change your frigging setup. Your setup shouldn’t make it hard to run games. If it does, you’re doing it wrong.
Meanwhile, folks like commenters Pocket Contents and Kigmatzomat had serious issues with the idea that a Game Master might roll checks for the players. Pocket Contents outright said they would never do such a thing and knew of no Game Master who would. Kigmatzomat, meanwhile, got around the issue through the simple expedient of having the players pre-roll a bunch of dice and write down the results on a list so the Game Master could then work down the list and…
Holy shit, I couldn’t even finish typing that tedious bullshit out. Why are people doing this? Why are you complicating this crap? Players roll lots of dice. Tons of dice. Rolling a few dice yourself won’t break their spirits and convince them their agency is just a farce. And if it does, your players are the problem.
Real talk: if a player doesn’t trust you to roll checks behind the screen for pacing or to conceal secrets or otherwise for the good of the game, your player doesn’t trust you enough to sit at your table. No such player would be welcome at my table.
Finally…
Commentor Zed asked something I hear a lot about how much detail players should provide when declaring actions. Especially when searching. Especially given the need to strike a balance between the tedium of searching every tiny little thing separately. And especially especially when there’s a danger the character might blunder in to during their search.
How much detail must a player provide before you feel the action has been described sufficiently for you to adjudicate it? Enough that you can describe the action back to the player and they agree that’s what they meant. And if there are important details that might affect the outcome, you include them even if the player didn’t.
You’re searching the room? You intend to ransack every corner of the room and every piece of furniture, looking for anything that seems interesting, eye-catching, valuable, hidden, or dangerous? Is that right? And you realize a reasonably thorough search like that will take a good half hour?
Once the player agrees you got it right, they’re stuck with whatever happens. When the character blunders into a hidden trap in the bookshelf, they can’t say, “well, I didn’t specifically say I went near the bookshelf” because they agreed “to ransack every corner and every piece of furniture.”
And that is why you repeat back the action and get the player to swear it’s their final answer. So that there are never any tap-backs.
Thanks for not calling out my dumb table rule I love.
Yay, I got mentioned by Angry! And someone should put “Reality designs shitty games. And it writes shitty fiction too” on a T-shirt…
However, while you are right that it ultimately doesn’t matter much for pretend elves and providing mental challenges, I do wish to officially declare that I did *not* state that “thinking really hard to recall a random fact you learned once ten years ago is useful” – there are reasons I started the original comment with a fully unrealistic example and continued with what scientists do. I am familiar with some of that memory research, and “remembering really hard” is less useful than it could seem – but my original comment didn’t mention _memory_ once; what I had in mind was generating new ideas, not recalling old ones. This includes analyzing (when you mean the old meaning of analyzing not “put this into my statistical machine of choice and wait for it to spew out a number or two”). (Of course, cognitive functions are intertwined, blah-blah-blahty-blah.)
Totally agree about the t shirt. I loved that line.
Thank you for the clarification on lying. The advice about about leaving gaps for players to fill explicates things perfectly.
Turns out I was being a ‘know-it-all asshole’ about the line between deduction and perception. Use your GM judgement says everything.
It’s a little “Draw the F$&%ing owl” for an instructional guide but what can one do?
This bit reminded me of the scene in total recall (Schwarzenegger version) where the doctor and Arnie’s wife show up trying to convince him he’s still at the Rekall facility, having a ‘schizoid embolism’ WHICH HE TOTALLY IS, but he spots a bead of sweat rolling down the doctor’s forehead and shoots him. Give your players a chance to make that kind of mistake.
I’m thoroughly enjoying your True Game Mastery series for its refreshing focus on communication between Game Masters and players, rather than getting bogged down in the mechanics of different game systems. I’m particularly intrigued by how you’ve separated the sensory aspects of the character from the player’s mind. It seems like the approach is for players to think of their characters as avatars that they control with their brains, reason, and will.
Now after my rambling, I do have a question. I was interested in your thoughts on how a game like Numenera uses the GM intrusion method and how (if) such a system fits with in the True Game Mastery lesson.
Thank you.
This was certainly very clarifying! I wouldn’t mind more of these in the future after other complex articles.
Slight correction to this:
“Meanwhile, folks like commenters Pocket Contents and Kigmatzomat had serious issues with the idea that a Game Master might roll checks for the players. Pocket Contents outright said they would never do such a thing and knew of no Game Master who would.”
I merely said that I HAD never considered doing this and hadn’t seen any GM do it in my gaming circles, not that I would never. (Or at least, that’s what I meant to say — maybe I miscommunicated.) But actually, after last week’s discussion I had a chat with my players about “secret rolls,” and they immediately got the reasoning behind them. We tried it out, and it was a success! I could sense that they were using their brains more and paying closer attention to the details of my narration during our session’s social encounter, since they couldn’t depend on dice knowledge to help them figure out if the stranger was lying. So thank you all for the useful comments! I’m going to keep going with that practice.
One thing I’m wondering about is mechanics like Recall Knowledge in PF2. On its face, it’s definitely written as a “think hard” mechanic; it’s not helped that RAW it’s pretty vague in what it means, what the results are. My understanding from talking to PF2 GMs is the most common way they allow their players to use it is roll to determine what an enemy’s weaknesses/resistances/immunities are, or alternatively which of the creature’s saving throws are good/bad for its level. As a game design mechanic, it makes some sense–give up resources (it takes an action) to gain a tactical advantage (finding which tools will work better, especially which spells). I suspect Angry is planning on writing about this in the future, but it seems like players/GMs should understand what they are actively doing instead of “thinking hard” to get these results. For example, watching the enemy closely to see if it’s restrained and heavy-set but slow (good will/fort, bad reflex) or something else, not just thinking what you know about it. But does having a game-mechanic ‘cost’ for doing something complicate the story generally?
I may be wrong (since I’m not a sexy gaming genius), but I think PF2 is a particularly hard case for Angry approach. Because it is based on GM judgment over game mechanics and rules. But, PF2 is very, very, very mechanics centric. In your exemple, for instance, it’s not even just the “discover weakness bit”, there are feats that specifically have bonus that interact with Recall Knowledge. I really don’t know what Angry would say about that. But, nonetheless, I like the concept of observing the enemy to find a weakness. Maybe the key it’s just to mix it up with test actions, like testing hitting with different parts of your sword or casting minor magical effects to determine enemy vulnerabilies. You can even leave it to narration “fluff” and not mess with PF2 actions balance.
I agree. I love certain parts of PF2e, but it certainly has a few aspects that go against the principles laid out in this course.
To make Recall Knowledge more in line with them, firstly, I think outside of combat you could just apply these principles straight off. Just provide the information as part of descriptions, based on skill training as usual (rolling or not behind the screen). Never expect players to call out Recall Knowledge explicitly, during exploration.
In combat, however, the fact that it needs to cost one action and be modified by lots of feats and features makes it tough to just handwave away unless we house rule extensively.
Might be best to “Accept that there’s this one shitty skill that occasionally forces you to do something that you’re better off not doing” in that case.
I play PF2e too, and this is exactly what I was thinking. “Accept that there’s this one shitty skill that occasionally forces you to do something that you’re better off not doing”. Every game has one, and at least this one encourages me to use secret checks.
At the end of the day, i think you can (mostly) have your cake and eat it too in the case of PF2e’s Recall Knowledge checks.
You basically just run encounters as suggested by Angry and just tell players any information that they should reasonably know about whatever creatures they encounter. (I can’t imagine that there’s going to be a situation where part of your “standard description/background knowledge is going to include information like “AC of x” etc.)
And then if players want use the RK skill in combat then you frame it as “you take a moment to carefully analyse the creature’s gait/attack patterns/etc. and it becomes clear to you that Y”
Essentially, you run it so that the RK action represents “active” thinking/analysis rather than “passive” memory/knowledge.
I play a lot of PF2, and I definitely don’t let my players just “think hard” about things. Whatever your players are doing when you decide that they are using the Recall Knowledge mechanic, they should be doing something proactive. Even if that something is just “studying the enemy and making deductions about it.”
Like you said, “For example, watching the enemy closely to see if it’s restrained and heavy-set but slow (good will/fort, bad reflex) or something else.”
More importantly, though, is the fact that characters like the investigator get mechanical bonuses when they crit-succeed at Recall Knowledge. I would describe this as the character studying their opponent for weaknesses, such as a bad leg or poor fighting form, etc. You can totally decouple the ‘gaining information’ bit from the ‘scrutinizing the enemy to spot a weakness’ bit, although you should still work the information in elsewhere.
What I do is:
1. When players encounter a creature for the first time, I describe it. For example, if the players encounter a Ghost Mage, I tell them they see a ghostly figure wearing ethereal robes covered in arcane symbols. At this level, I assume that they already know a good bit about ghosts (as they have encountered them before), so I don’t mention things like ghosts being immune to non-magical damage.
2. When a player wants to spend an action “Recalling Knowledge,” aka studying the target, I would more overtly remind them of the things they already know about ghosts. I would also allude to things like weak or strong saving throws, but using more immersive language. RAW is pretty bad on this, so I’d definitely adjudicate this action much more intuitively. (For example, the difficulty of learning anything at all about the creature is supposed to scale with the creature’s level, but even a high level skeleton would be pretty obviously *a skeleton* and therefore weak to bludgeoning damage. So I just ignore that rule and go with what makes sense.)
3. In addition to giving a recap about what players already know, studying a target should reveal some additional information (if successful). This part absolutely should be limited to facts, and the players can put the pieces together. While additional Recall Knowledge actions can still proc the mechanical benefit, it won’t reveal any additional information unless the player does something different that could reasonably uncover more information.
This is basically already how I do things, but I am curious about one case. Suppose you decide what the player knows, and you give them information, and then they ask if they know about X or Y or Z anyway, or questions that didn’t come up yet. Do you just limit your response to things you already established or do you just decide then and there whether they know about that question too? It seems like this is basically the same as them just saying they think hard about something and prompting you for information except they’re just asking you directly, without it being an action or anything.
Imagine you describe a scene, you put in all the details that seem relevant and you think the players need. Then one of your players asks something like “What is the weather like?” that you didn’t mention. They don’t have to “think hard” to know the answer of course, they would just know it. I think what you are asking amounts to the same thing.
Even though you tell the players everything the characters see, hear, and know about the world, you can’t they’ll them literally everything they see hear and know about the world or you will never get to playing. Sometimes a player will ask if they know something you didn’t say and you only need to decide if they do or not. I don’t think it is very complicated.
You got it Pajama Man! And if the players ask for info that you already checked for – “do I know anything else” – you can say, “I already told you all your character knows; you’ll have to figure out the rest yourself.”
You might want to ask why they want to know what the weather is. When they specifically raise things you didn’t describe, it might be a sign they have grabbed the wrong end of the stick – that is, what you understand is not what they understand about the situation. Or it might be a sign that they are about to do something unexpected and awesome. Either way, you want to know where their mind is going.
I suspect there’s a reason why resolving knowledge checks as player actions might be useful: spotlight management. When a characters tries to remember something, they do nothing “on camera”, but the player still interacts with the game world and narrative. A player might establish their character as a skilled fighter by lunging at monster, or they might be establishing them as a experienced monster hunter by pointing out monster’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Both look like valid story beats to me, from the narrative standpoint.
When knowledge checks are implemented as an action, the moments when particular characters can shine end up more or less evenly distributed, and the attention is divided sort of uniformly among the characters. Dumping knowledge info outside of regular spotlight order might create unwanted dynamics that GMs will have to put efforts to stabilize and control.
This additional effort might not be the case, or might be the case, but not a big deal for some GMs. But I personally prefer systems and procedures that automate some of GM’s work, rather than the ones that increase GM’s workload.
I don’t think making knowledge checks automatic takes away from the spotlight. The GM can say “Balthazar is an experienced monster hunter, and knows from his time in the southern isles that drakes are slowed when exposed to the cold” as part of the scene-setting and narration. It does not require the player saying “I think hard about drakes to determine weaknesses” in order to happen. You don’t need to waste screen time on characters standing around “thinking hard” when the GM can automate it, and the character still gets their spotlight.
Recently, I have started rolling checks for characters behind the screen, especially knowledge and stealth checks. It’s actually faster and easier most of the time. I roll the check, consult my list of character stats/abilities, and describe the result. It’s faster than asking for a roll, then asking if the number they stated was the rolled result or the result with bonuses, then reminding them to add another modifier, THEN describing the result.
Regarding passive skills, a lot of people have a problem with them because it feels like they are just deciding whether or not the PCs pass. If you know that the PC has a passive perception of 16 then if you give the pit trap a DC 17 to spot you are just deciding that the players can’t spot it, and that can feel awkward.
The key is in how the GM views encounter design. You aren’t designing a wall for the players to climb, you are determining how a wall was built. Is it a wooden palisade? Brick? Granite blocks? Did goblins slap it together in an afternoon or did dwarves spend a year fitting stone blocks together perfectly? The fiction of your world should determine the DC of checks, not the scores of your players. The GM just needs an internally consistent model of how difficult traps are to spot, or what info is available from the History skill. Don’t think of it as designing an adventure for a specific set of PCs, think of it as designing an adventure for an average set of PCs.
I’m a scientist and I endorse this description of doing science.
Once, I did a scene where a player was thinking very hard, like in the Sherlock series, with Benedict Cumberbatch. The player had to accumulate succes by thinking, but the environment distracted him…and the other players had to make the environment quiet and non-disturbing. It’s the only time we’ve done that.
And to me this seems like a good way to bring “thinking hard” into the fold. Used very occasionally, and to highlight a particularly brainy PC’s attempt to sus something out under duress, makes sense to play it out, and sounds like fun.
One thing that has helped me with the players not wanting me to make checks for them works on my VTT, Foundry. The GM can call for a blind skill check, so the player makes the skill check, adds any bonuses the might have, but only the GM sees it.
Now I’m lucky enough to have players who aren’t afraid I’m going to cheat them out of something, but it really does seem to remove even the hint of that from the game.
One thing that I think is tangentially related to this is all the effort adventures like to put into backstory that the players can likely never find out unless they ask about it. That’s why I really like what you suggest. You have players who have invested resources in history or magic or religion or any number of skills, and you can reward them by letting them know all those cool bits of lore that otherwise you’d be the only one clued in on. I sort of feel that if an adventure (or you as the GM who makes their own adventure) has lore to it and no one ever finds out, does it really even exist? Outside of allowing you as the GM to feel clever, I suppose.
You answered one thing i almost typed in the chat and was like “no, trust your guts”.
The thing with radioactive bullet. Because I had to google how people determine what wound is post mortem and what is not and I figured if i had to google it, none of my players would know about it. (Also thanks to gming im probably on multiple watchlists…)
I have to say this brings me back to the ol’ school days, where the teacher would answer questions – even dumb ones – with varying degrees of patience, but always with the intention of developing understanding as opposed to rote memory. Good stuff. Thank you Angry.
Furthermore, now that I think on it, they’d reserve this treatment for those that came back after class, showed some initiative or at least a genuine interest in learning, as opposed to just showing up for the day because it was mandatory.
You’re like one of those good teachers that a few of us had, that actually cared that what we learned was the best they could provide, before most of them became jaded by a broken system, thousands of idiots passing through, and perhaps the wasted potential of one too many promising students waylaid by BS.
No wonder you’re angry… Stay awesome teach!
I propose “Office Hours” if the title isn’t locked down at this point.
That is a GREAT title.
I just wanted to let you know how awesome I find the series and your writing to be. I decided to become a GM because I was at a game and the GM running it was just god awful. And I was like well if they can run a table then surely I can run a table. So I started to do some research and I came across your name in a Reddit post and I started to read your works and fell in love with your entire style of GMing.
I kind of picture you in my head as the angry Google guy from college humor. I don’t know if you read these comments or even really care about some noob telling you you’re awesome but I just really really wanted to let you know that you’ve helped me a lot.
I read every comment… and I do appreciate it.
i noticed my response wasn’t called out specifically. let alone my newest one. or at least not by name. either i didn’t anger you enough or i’m not in trouble or at the very least, you want to secretly acknowledge our mutual understanding.
Or I write these things days in advance and your comments weren’t posted when I started drafting this…
thankies
Ha. I’ve been working hard on describing just the facts. The investment I’ve seen from my players has increased.
This will probably be covered later but I’ve got some specific questions on handling perception type tasks–
1) How to best handle it when two or more different things are spotted by a given character (either through a passive check or an active search.) Example 1) Spotty McSpottypants walks into a room and has a high enough passive perception score that Spotty sees both the nearly invisible seams in the brickwork AND the toes of hobnailed boots peeking out beneath tapestries. Example 2) Spotty spends 30 minutes and ransacks every corner of the room and every piece of furniture. Spotty’s player rolls high enough that Spotty perceives both the raised tile by the eastern doorway and the miniature engraved runes on the second shelf of the bookcase.
2) How to best handle it when two or more characters spot the same thing. Example 3) While Beryllia has the higher passive perception, both Beryllia’s and Cabe’s passive perception scores exceed the threshold for hearing a scuffing of booted feet on the stone floor of the hall outside.
I don’t think there is anything unusual with both examples. If the things are noticed, just tell the player(s) everything their characters note.
Regarding example 1) Just tell the player both things.
Example 2) Just tell both players what their characters note: “Beryllia and Cabe, you hear a scuffing of booted feet on stone floor of the hall outside. What do you do?”
I believe you would not want to address both players. That’s akin to tossing the Fabrige Egg of pacing onto the ground. I believe you should inform them that both of their characters hear the booted feet on the stone floor, but then pick one Principle Character and ask it’s Player what they want to do. Something like “Susan…John… Beryllia and Cabe hear a scuffling of booted feet on the stone floor of the hall outside. Susan, what does Beryllia do?” and then before adjudicating Beryllia’s action say “John, while Susan moves to hide behind the tapestry, what does Cabe do?” and then adjudicate both actions.
I don’t post here often, just chiming in in case it helps anyone.
I’ve sort of reinterpreted Investigate. It isn’t you being Sherlock Holmes and figuring out a crime scene… I use search/perception to figure out if you find the clues. It’s not the cops at a crime scene, it’s a lawyer putting together a case.
For instance, Investigate isn’t Gandolf throwing the ring into the fire to see if the words come up, it’s the research he did in Minas Tirath to figure out doing that would answer his question.
Part of why I have the pre-rolled numbers is for things like opposed stealth/perception, where I need it happening in the background, without dice to trigger the players. And yes, trigger is the correct word. I play in some groups with ND people so keeping everyone in the right mental state is key. Dice rolling sets off a whole cascade of mode switching.
And I soooo don’t have the right skillset to even begin addressing any of their problems.
I could have pre-rolled all the planned events and keep my own pre-rolled list of numbers for stuff that pops up, but even for the NT players, there is some degree of “lucky charm ” in knowing their rolls applied to their checks. It is statistically irrelevant but psychologically meaningful.