This here’s a part of my year-long course in True Game Mastery. You don’t have to read the lessons in order, but that’s how they work best. So, if you’re new here, check out the series index and start at the beginning.
Click here for the True Game Mastery series index.
Today’s very special episode of True Game Mastery deals with a difficult and emotional topic. A topic that starts fights and splits friendships. A topic that has been unraveling the very fabric of the online gaming community for years.
What do you do when your player declares a problematic action?
Don’t worry: I haven’t gone woke. This ain’t a bunch of toxic inclusivity bullshit. Angry don’t do that crap. I’m talking about truly problematic actions. Actions that, for one reason or another, are just really hard to adjudicate.
Dealing with Problematic Actions
Action adjudication’s mostly a straightforward thing. Players declare actions, and you determine and describe the outcome. I taught you that shit two lessons ago.
But sometimes, it ain’t that simple. Some kinds of game actions give Game Masters — even True Game Masters — fits. Sometimes, it’s because it ain’t clear what the character’s actually doing. Or if they’re doing anything at all. Sometimes, it’s because describing the outcome demands a certain level of pedantical pickiness that just doesn’t come naturally. And sometimes, it’s because the actions don’t seem to need any game mechanics at all. But they do.
What kinds of actions are these? Really common ones, it turns out. Because the list includes such things as recognizing, recalling, examining, intuiting, spotting, searching, skulking, sneaking, speaking, schmoozing, sensing, and sympathizing. Just to name a few.
That’s a broad list, ain’t it? And it doesn’t seem like those actions have much in common with each other. Except for the fact that Game Masters keep screwing them up and then asking me how to handle them better. But there is a common thread between them. Three common threads, actually. Three core principles that True Game Masters employ to handle such actions without missing a beat while Mere Game Executors are stuck beep-booping their way through the pre-programmed code in their core rulebooks.
Today, I’m going to teach you those principles: The Three Laws of Game Mastering NonRobotics.
And because the Laws are a little tough to master, I’m going to use those problematic actions to help illustrate them. And to make life easier for everyone — especially me; I’m lazy — I’ve divided them into five broad action classifications. So I’ll be explaining how the Three Laws apply to:
- Thinky, Facty Actions… or Non-Actions
- Spotty, Searchy Actions… and Non-Actions
- Sneaky, Skuluky Actions
- Speaky, Schmoozy Actions… or Interactions
- Feely, Sensy Actions… and Non-Actions
Cool? Great. Just one thing before I start…
Focus on the Principles; Forget the Examples
As part of this lesson, I’m going to briefly tell you how True Game Masters use the principles of True Game Mastery to deal with some actions that have probably been screwing you up at your table. Despite that, I don’t want you to focus on those specifics. Not today.
Focus your energy on the Three Laws of Game Mastering NonRobotics. Write ‘em down, learn ‘em, live ‘em, and love ‘em. They’re way more important and empowering than learning specific processes.
Besides, I’m coming back to all those topics very soon. See, the next big unit in the True Game Mastery series — which this lesson is actually laying the groundwork for — involves running all kinds of encounters. So I’ll definitely be diving deep into things like perception, social interaction, and stealth in the coming weeks.
Actions Ain’t Skills
You might have noticed the action types I listed are really just cutesy names for common tabletop roleplaying game skills: Perception, Stealth, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, whatever. And you’d be wrong. I used cutesy non-skill names for a reason. And the reason is I ain’t talking about skills today.
Modern roleplaying game systems have screwed the action adjudication pooch bad by conflating actions with skills while they’ve also been consolidating their skill lists down to a handful of broad, shallow skills. It’s bad for them and it’s bad for you.
Skills are game-mechanical tools used to resolve actions. When a player says, “Ardrick hides behind the curtain” or “Cabe checks the chest for traps” or “Danae pleads with the magistrate for mercy,” those are actions. And they’re what I’m talking about. Skills are just modifiers you add to die rolls. Mostly.
Some of the stuff in today’s lesson will contradict the specific skill descriptions in your roleplaying game system due jury. What do you do when that happens? Well, a True Game Master would know the answer. And it sure as hell ain’t “flawlessly execute the game’s code.”
The Three Laws of Game Mastering NonRobotics
When a True Game Master is faced with a problematic action, three principles see them through. And they are…
- Automatic Responses Aren’t Actions
- Players Choose; Characters Act
- True Game Masters Speak Only Facts
Automatic Responses Aren’t Actions
Actions are deliberate choices players make on behalf of their characters. If something ain’t a deliberate choice, it ain’t an action. It’s that simple.
True Game Masters distinguish between actions and things like automatic responses, reflexes, and autonomous events. How can you tell the difference?
First, actions are interactive. If a character’s not acting on something in the world, they’re not taking an action.
Second, actions are external. Anything that’s happening only inside a character’s head ain’t an action.
Third, actions are visible. If a character’s not doing something that would be clear and obvious on a movie screen, they ain’t taking an action.
True Game Masters neither require nor allow players to declare anything that isn’t an action. Anything automatic happens automatically.
Players Choose; Characters Act
Players choose actions on behalf of their characters. They choose their characters’ intentions and approaches and decide what tools, resources, and information their characters use to make manifest their intentions in the world.
Characters execute those actions. They do the things, they use the tools, they speak the words, and so on. And when the outcome’s uncertain, it’s the characters’ capabilities at issue, not the players’.
Renee Descartes once posited that every person had a little spirit living in their pineal gland, pulling levers, pushing buttons, and driving their brain. That’s how it be. Players are the character’s reason and will and nothing else. Each player is trapped in a little room inside their character’s brain. Even the words they speak are just ideas until the characters blurt them out.
True Game Masters Speak Only Facts
True Game Masters tell players what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know. And nothing else. They don’t tell players what their characters deduce, believe, feel, or conjecture.
I know that seems simple, but as you’ll see below, it really ain’t. It’s a very finicky principle that’s tough to master. A lot of things that look like facts are, in reality, deductions and it’s vital you know the difference.
Some of you might think there are exceptions concerning specialized knowledge available to expert inhabitants of fantasy worlds. There ain’t. You’re wrong. Again, this will be clearer below — and in future lessons — but it’s going to take a lot of practice to get this right.
Also note this ain’t an admonition against lying. Characters can perceive things that ain’t really there — like illusions or hallucinations — and characters can learn incorrect facts. But this Law does keep you from having to lie quite so much when players flub certain checks.
To help make this Law — and all the Laws and some lingering issues from the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle — clear, I’m going to analyze five different broad kinds of actions in those terms.
Don’t Play the Game for the Players
I often talk about how real human brains work in my articles. And I’ve taught myself a lot about how brains work because game design is about two-thirds psychology. But I’m going to put that crap aside and speak purely about game design now.
Why is it so important that players choose and characters act? Why shouldn’t you tell your players what their characters deduce or conclude or believe?
Games need challenges or else they’re not games. But tabletop roleplaying games can only provide mental challenges. Because trying to roll a fifteen on a twenty-sided die is not a challenge. RPGs can’t test balance, coordination, reaction time, execution, muscle memory, or anything else that other games can. Roleplaying games can only challenge players in terms of strategy, problem-solving, and deduction. If you don’t let the players handle that crap, then your roleplaying game isn’t a game at all. It’s a luck-based activity.
And that’s why you can’t allow your players to play characters smarter than themselves. Because smarts is the only thing these games can test.
Thinky, Facty Actions… or Non-Actions
Thinky, Facty Actions are attempts by characters to recall relevant information about the things they encounter. They’re attempts to know things. And they’re bullshit.
Thinky, Facty Actions aren’t actions. I don’t give a crap what the rules of your game of choice say. I don’t care how you think human brains work. They’re wrong. You’re wrong. These ain’t actions and no True Game Master mistakes them for such.
When characters encounter something about which they might know something — monsters they might recognize, symbols whose meanings they might recall, text in languages they might be able to translate — True Game Masters determine what the characters know and tell the players. Immediately. When they Set the Scene.
That’s a Game Master’s job: to tell the players what their characters see, hear, perceive, and know.
When a player asks a True Game Master whether their character “recognizes a thing” or “knows anything else about a thing”, True Game Masters always confidently and truthfully respond by saying, “I already told you everything your character knows; I always do.”
Build your players’ trust — and reassure them such knowledge is automatic — by telling them how their characters know what they know when you tell them their characters know it.
You see a strange, cat-like predator with six legs and tentacles. Because she studied the Foundational Arcane Texts, Beryllia recognizes it as a coeurl, a cunning predator that feeds on potassium and warps perceptions by emitting sonic vibrations.
Gathering Intelligence
In modern roleplaying games, characters either know things or they don’t. And players rarely take active steps to find the information they don’t already know. Why? Because modern players live in a world where information is just a tap of the fingers away. They have no idea how medieval, fantasy characters might glean information. And D&D and its cousins are really crappy at describing the possibilities in their worlds. So it never occurs to players that they might study, consult, experiment, divine, rumormonger, reconnoiter, or assay the information they need. Nor does it occur to most Game Masters.
Worse still, the tabletop roleplaying games that do decide to incorporate such possibilities skip over describing them and go full-bore into hard coding them as buttons players can just push. Players and Game Masters need to know how to hunt for information, not how to roll to find it.
Spotty, Searchy Actions… and Non-Actions
Spotty, Searchy Actions are how sensory information gets from the characters’ world into the players’ noggins. And it won’t surprise you — now — to learn most such actions aren’t actions at all. They’re as automatic as recognition and recall. At least, they should be.
True Game Masters, therefore, recognize when characters might become aware of things — especially non-obvious, concealed, or hidden things — determine whether the characters actually do become aware of such things and describe them accordingly. True Game Masters make sure players know everything their characters can perceive merely by looking around or approaching something.
To uncover things they can’t perceive, True Game Masters require characters to take action. Characters must interact with the environment to search it. They can’t just look around really hard; they have to move around, poke, prod, look around and under things, move things aside, and brush off the dust and dirt.
Remember what your mother told you when you couldn’t see the ketchup in the fridge: you’ve got to move stuff around.
The interaction’s important for two reasons. First, characters might blunder into the traps they’re looking for. And second, hidden ambushers might see searching characters coming and attack. Or cut and run. When characters interact with the world, the world can respond.
But the big thing True Game Masters have to learn is how to describe the signs of a thing instead of describing the thing itself. True Game Masters’ players never spot traps or secret doors or hidden goblins or stalking coeurls. Instead, they spot raised tiles or nearly invisible seams in the brickwork or the toes of hobnailed boots peeking out beneath tapestries. Or they hear rustlings in the underbrush. And that’s all they spot or hear.
This will be a big point when I teach you how to start encounters right.
Need some practice at this? Grab a published module, open to a random encounter description, read it carefully, and figure out what signs of things the characters might notice if they make all the spot checks. What clues might they perceive from which they can deduce the presence of a hidden trap or monster in ambush?
And do remember that all Spotty, Searchy Actions are ruined if the players see their die rolls. True Game Masters’ players never roll their own Perception checks. Ever.
Sneaky, Skulky Actions
Sneaky, Skulky Actions are actions characters take to conceal the signs of their presence. Assuming their presence isn’t already immediately obvious to everyone. And in modern tabletop roleplaying games, they’re a giant-ass mess thanks to this bullshit engage the cloaking device on-and-off approach to stealth that’s been hard-coded into every last one of them.
I promise I’ll teach you later how True Game Masters handle Stealth Encounters and Infiltration Scenes.
Right now, though, the only reason I’m even mentioning these actions is that they go hand-in-glove with Spotty, Searchy Actions — with each opposing the other — and because the two together can actually show you just how powerful my Three Laws of Game Mastering NonRobotics can be when properly applied. This is why True Game Masters don’t need any help — or special mechanical rules — to run engaging Stealth Encounters.
Imagine this setup…
Cabe is ransacking the goblins’ storeroom. He’s trying to be quiet about it, but there’s a goblin guard up the hall. The GM makes a Listen-type check and determines the goblin hears a noise. Or thinks he does. He moves quietly up the hall so the GM makes a Sneak-type check and then tells Cabe’s player that Cabe hears a scuffing of booted feet on the stone floor of the hall outside. “What does Cabe do?” Cabe’s player remembers the GM mentioning a tapestry. “I’ll hide behind the tapestry and close my hooded lantern.” The GM makes a Hide-type check as the goblin enters. “The goblin peers around the room. His eyes alight on the open chest Cabe was rooting through and he prowls over to it, then starts casting about the room. What does Cabe do?” Cabe stays hidden, but palms his dagger. Check. Did the goblin hear a noise? He’s moving toward the tapestry. “Cabe leaps out and tries to stab the goblin in the throat before he can scream…”
That simple cat-and-mouse Stealth Encounter arises just from a True Game Master properly adjudicating one action at a time.
Speaky, Schmoozy Actions
Speaky, Schmoozy Actions are actions in which a character uses words — supplemented occasionally by gifts, bribes, payments, and incriminating pieces of evidence — to sway a creature’s actions or demeanor. And they’re an endless source of debates among Mere Game Executors. And I’m going to settle three of those debates here and now.
First, Speaky Actions can’t change a player-character’s mind about anything. That’d require you to tell a player what their character deduces, believes, or feels. And that’s against the Law.
Second, it doesn’t matter whether players speak as their characters or just describe their characters’ social actions. Players don’t speak through their characters’ mouths anyway. They just put ideas in their characters’ heads.
Which is why, third, it doesn’t matter how a player describes a social action, the outcome’s down to the character’s social aptitude and skills and whatnot. True Game Masters know that however good a player’s performance — however inspiring their speech — that’s just what the character thinks they sound like in their own head. What actually issues from the character’s mouth is a different story.
Don’t like that explanation? Tough. That’s how it be.
Should you modify the character’s odds of success based on what the player says? Yes. And no. Yes, you should take into account the relevance of the arguments made, the evidence cited, the leverage used, and the emotions appealed to. No, you should not take into account the eloquence, passion, or poetic turn of phrase.
If it helps, imagine the character is stuck translating the player’s words from English to Common or whatever. Passion, eloquence, word choice, and witty puns get lost in translation, leaving only the semantical content intact. And then it’s down to the character to add their own passion, eloquence, word choice, and wit.
Also, remember that — like it or not — humans respond more to how things are said than what things are said. Sad but true. Look at me: I get everything absolutely right and I form brilliant, compelling arguments, and yet people still argue with me. Clearly, persuasion isn’t about being right.
Obviously, expect more about Social Encounters in the coming weeks.
Feely, Sensy Actions… and Non-Actions
Feely, Sensy Actions are to Speaky, Schmoozy Actions what Spotty, Searchy Actions are to Sneaky, Skulky Actions. And I shouldn’t have to explain further, but I probably do.
These are the people-reading actions. Actions characters take when they want to understand what the hell is happening in some other creature’s head. And just as modern roleplaying games have ruined Sneaky, Skulky Actions with crappily-designed game mechanics, so too have they ruined Feely, Sensy Actions. These days, Intuition is either a very powerful — but very narrow — form of lie detection or a kind of mind-reading that borders on psychic empathy. Both approaches break some or all of the Laws. Either you’re making deductions for the players or you’re telling them what their characters must believe or both.
It ain’t great.
What’s a True Game Master to do? I won’t go into too many specifics here — stay tuned for a lesson in Social Encounters — but I’ll say Paul Ekman’s seminal work on deception, Telling Lies and the old Fox television series based on his work, Lie to Me provide an excellent model for social interaction and social detection in tabletop roleplaying games. And it’s pretty much the model most True Game Masters stumble on eventually.
It’s like this: intuitive people are skilled at spotting emotional leakage. That’s when someone’s emotional state slips out in their tone, expression, and body language. And when a subject leaks an emotional state that’s incongruous with their actions or words, there’s cause for suspicion.
Thus, when a state official smiles and offers a friendly handshake, an intuitive character might spot concealed anger. And when a merchant gives his sales pitch, an intuitive character might notice signs of a hidden fear or shame. And when a long-lost friend invites a character to follow them into the deep, dark forest, an intuitive character might recognize a totally bland or neutral emotional state. It’s down to the player — not the character — to deduce that the official has an ulterior motive, that the merchant is being blackmailed into pulling a scam, or that the long-lost friend is actually a demonic spider from Deepnest in a magical guise.
Again, though, I’ll come back to this in more detail later. Social interaction systems in tabletop roleplaying games just suck and True Game Masters are stuck spackling over a lot of holes.
Social Actions and Poor Social Skills
Social interaction systems in tabletop roleplaying games suck, but it’s not really the fault of the designers. At least, not completely. The real problem is that most people aren’t social experts. And few people even recognize that inspiring orators, skilled dialecticians, profitable negotiators, and successful con artists are as much masters of a specialized skillset as doctors, scientists, locksmiths, martial artists, and ordained ministers. But we all think we’re at least decent social interactors because we interact socially all the time.
So game designers don’t know what people don’t know and Game Masters don’t know what holes to fill and players don’t even know what’s possible. This is why you end up with weird, stilted rules that sort of describe the absolutely vital social skill of Building Rapport, but don’t provide enough context for players to actually use it.
Want an example of a hole? You probably spotted it yourself. When I said “intuition is like spotting for social traps,” did you find yourself wondering, “so then is there something like searching players can actively do when they suspect deception?” Yes. There is. And that’s the kind of thing a good social interaction system should tell you.
And no, this is still not an argument for any sort of social combat bullshit. Such systems make games worse, not better.
Eyes on the Prize
Don’t get so hung up on all this talk of Stealth and Perception and Social Detection that you lose sight of what’s important. Especially given that those topics will return in future lessons. For now, focus on learning the underlying principles themselves. Write them down and keep them close. And start practicing them right now.
Remember that automatic responses aren’t actions. Don’t make players ask for things that should happen automatically. Handle them automatically and make sure your players know you’re doing so. And if a player wants to make something happen, force them to interact with the world in an obvious and visible way.
Remember that players choose while characters act. Action declarations — even when they amount to speaking in character — are just ideas in a character’s head. The character’s got to take the action or speak the words. And it’s that character’s skills and abilities that matter.
Finally, remember that True Game Masters speak only facts. Never tell the players what they deduce, feel, or believe. Distinguish between the signs of a thing and the thing itself. Tell the players the signs their characters see and let them deduce the thing from the signs.
So here’s a question regarding knowledge. I agree that the GM should just tell the players what they know since it’s not something you actually TRY to do. You either know it or you don’t.
But that conflicts specifically with 5e, with skills like Nature: “Nature. Your Intelligence (Nature) check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles.”
So in that case, is it better to just drop those skills from the game? It seems like a waste for the player to put their proficiency in it only to never use it.
Or is the way to just have the GM use the skills themselves behind the screen to determine the answers they give the players?
Passive scores are your friend. You know what the character knows, because you designed the encounter, and after designing the encounter and picking a DC to know whatever, you checked the character’s sheets for what their nature score is and what they know.
My problem with passive scores is they’re too static… a character with low Nature will never, ever, know anything about any nature thing even though they should probably know some things based on their background or where they live. So I’d be tempted to ignore it and just go with what makes sense, but then I’m ditching the skill at that point… which leads me to think that rolling it might be better to at least give you the chance to sometimes know things. None of them seem ideal really.
If you think they should know it based on background, then they do. Hooray! Checks are used when the result is uncertain.
So the DM is allowed to be uncertain whether a character can parkour up a wall, but is not allowed to be uncertain whether a character learned and remembers a certain piece of information. Seriously? How does that make any sense? And how does that improve the game?
You can certainly play that way if you want to (and I won’t tell you you’re “wrong”), but I don’t see the plausible reasoning that says that is more sensible or better game mastering.
See my reply to @douglampert above. And also, can you tone down the standoffish incredulity a bit in future comments? There’s room for precisely one asshole on this site and I pay the bills, so I’ve got dibs.
@Eric Dittert: You seem to confuse “the DM is alowed to not be uncertain” with “the DM is not allowed to be uncertain”.
The DM may decide “yeah, of course you know that” just like they could say “you parkour up that wall with no problem”; and in both cases they could just as easily decide to ask you for a random resolution instead.
Both approaches can be valid. It’s up to the DM to determine when to use which.
A roll is completely static, they either know it or they don’t. A roll made by the GM, that can easily be made prior to the start of the adventure’s actual play, is not dynamic, it is not uncertain, in play it is not anything that a passive roll isn’t.
If a background applies, then you may not need to roll at all, or maybe you should give advantage on the roll (hey! That works with passive too! Just as if passive were pretty much the same as rolling and coming up with a “10” on one of the dice.) But there’s nothing ADDED by refusing to use passive scores for this, unless you are unable to decide on a DC without reference to the character’s actual capabilities, and even then, the only thing added is whether you know in advance whether they will know or not. That’s all on the GM side of the table.
The players won’t know or care whether there was a die roll if you roll the dice for this sort of thing in advance or in secret.
There is also nothing SUBTRACTED by using die rolls instead of passive scores. Also, the general approach recommended by the designers in D&D 5E is to apply a +5 modifier to a Passive Score when Advantage applies. See also, Passive Perception while traveling at a slow pace.
The fact is, it really doesn’t matter one way or the other whether a GM prefers to use die rolls or passive scores. Except that some GMs prefer one to the other. I sure as hell do.
Besides, unless you’re in the practice of providing false information for failures, Knowledge-type checks don’t give anything away if the players roll them. So saying… “you open the door… Beth, roll an Arcana check for Beryllia… 19… okay, you see a six-legged tentacle-cat which Beryllia recognizes as a…” Not only does that do the job of letting the players see their Knowledge checks are in play and are automatic, it also gives the players a feeling of control over the situation, which, as I mentioned in the dice-rolling lesson, is an important feature. And that feature applies to GMs as well. There’s nothing wrong with a GM liking to feel the tension or control or whatever of using dice instead of passive scores providing it’s not detracting the game more than it’s adding to the players’ or GMs’ experience. And before you throw “pacing is god above all” at me and point out how terrible an extra die roll at the start of some encounters is, I’ll point out that “pacing is very important; usually most important; but a well-paced game that doesn’t feel good to play still sucks.”
You can use what skills the character has as a guide for what makes sense. If they have History, Arcana, and Nature skills… then they know the arcane history of the local nature. If they only have Nature, they can see that a historian or arcanist would know more. All without ditching skills 🙂
Sometimes I forget that dice add randomness, not depth or complexity.
There are active uses of those knowledge skills too. When you’re researching or experimenting with plants to discover their effects, you can apply your nature proficiency to that action. When the wizard studies the arcane runes to uncover their purpose, that’s active use of arcana. Something they might do if they didn’t recognize the runes on first glance (passive arcana).
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 beed 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. It is all about phrasing and word choice. No one knows everything about a given subject and some subjects are subjective. Random knowledge checks can still be random if you change the context. The player isn’t rolling to see if the character “remembers” a fact, the player is rolling to see if the character ever learned the particular fact in the first place. “I’m sorry Alan. It seems Gonzo the wizard, though well learned, has never read a book on ancient Goglogian architecture.”
Well, I am certainly NOT going to yell at you because you’re absolutely right.
Which makes perfect sense as well. A wizard, as learned as they are, might never have studied something like a rust monster, because their specialisation/focus is in a completely different field.
That does in no way mean that, just because Gonzo there might not know anything about them, that Romilian the Fighter or Betilda the Bard are incapable of recognizing it because of either his training and warnings about “particular nuisances that will make things expensive”, or her worldy knowledge and familiarity of stories about “that darn slug that eats swords”.
Although weirdly this leads into it’s own possibility of playing the game for the players, as going out and learning about the local monsters is an action you can take in a lot of rpgs, and here you’re handwaving that process with a roll, same as if you’d handled their item inventory with a preparedness skill.
I am going to disagree. My group has had a number of people on the spectrum over the years (several officially diagnosed but most not til much later).
For those players “a bead of sweat forms on his brow” is more likely to imply the person is hot, or perhaps infirm and worn out from basic physical exertion than due to deceit. Which often will result in them trying to perform a Medicine check to diagnose an underlying illness.
This player is more likely to be able to identify a fireball spell than the character. It is as appropriate to say “Ragnar senses they are nervous and are trying to avoid the subject” as it is for the wizard’s Investigate check to figure out how a library is organized even though the player has never seen Polar Elven Notation.
Both approaches are in the same spirit, it’s a matter of the wording you use to clearly convey meaning to your players because you’re aware of their unique needs. There’s no debate here.
If the rule doesn’t make sense to you, don’t use it. Just be consistent.
5e comes from a long line of incomplete games, and this is one aspect that just doesn’t work as well as it should.
I keep a list over all my players skills in front of me all the time.
When it comes to most of the intelligence based skills i tend to tell the players during narration that they get this information because of their skill.
I think Worlds Without Number has a great rule about this: If failing a roll would make the character seem incompetent in something they are supposed to know, then a roll shouldn’t be done.
My suspicion is that we as players and GMs have gotten a little too attacked to the numbers next to a skill, so we think rolling for everything is needed. When in reality we can reward players for having a skill by just acknowledging they have the skill, and ignore the number.
Nature as a skill can come into play when a party is looking for an animal, or a plant. Let’s say you are gathering a herb to make a potion. The player with Nature should be told that their character knows that such herbs grow in hills, usually close to pine trees. Now let’s say they find a plant that looks like the one they are searching for, at this point maybe the GM rolls behind the screen to determine if the player knows that this is a similar plant that’s poisonous, and not the one they are looking for. Here the knowledge has consequences.
What I have done to determine if I want a roll is the WWN rule above and also what a passive skill would be VS a DC I set. If the passive is lower than the DC I ask for a roll, if it’s higher I assume the character knows their stuff. Here I reward having the points in a skill.
I added a very op table roll.
If a character is proficient in a skill, the lowest they can roll is their passive. They can opt not to roll ajd just “take their passive”.
I got tired of people proficient in skills flubbing even easy-ish checks so…now they don’t, and proficiency is more meaningful than a simple +2 or whatever.
Please don’t come at me with “dont make them roll for easy” I consider dc12 easy.
I won’t come at you with “don’t make them roll for easy.” Hell, I’d never say that. But what I will say is, “don’t make players roll for things you don’t think their characters can fail.” Which I explicitly said at the end of the die-rolling lesson as well as many times in the past. You’re just adding steps to that and making it the players option to roll unnecessary die rolls.
Sorry that “dont come at me” was directed to everyone else.
You can come at me whenever you’d like.
Are you coming on to me?
Hate that I cant edit my comments lol.
The other part of my comment is, I don’t make them roll for things I think they couldn’t fail. If they’re proficient then they autopass a dc12 (but are welcome to try for a crit, I got one guy who is always a crit chaser) but for non proficient chars that dc12 is not an assumed pass.
When I use Knowledge checks with my players, I generally use it for things that they may have training in. For example, the ranger who grew up in the woods doesn’t typically need to roll for Woodland Nature things. But when we’re in mountains, I will have them roll to see if this was something they may have been trained in. And then, how well were you trained in it/remember it.
The whole “speak only facts” thing seems like a tough one. I have a feeling I tell my players quite a few things which are deductions, and not facts. Going to pay a lot of attention to that one in particular, going forward.
I feel like this is a spot where it can be very easy to get into a grey area where you think you’re applying the rule reasonably but are in fact moving into the ridiculous zone:
Technically if you tell your players “you come to a door” as opposed to “you see a brown vertical rectangle with a bronze colored sphere attached to it at about waist height” you *are* drawing a conclusion for your players. And at some point on the continuum from “he’s lying” to “his pupils begin to dilate” you are going to have to give your players *some* kind of conclusion beyond their raw sense impressions.
Spot and search type things are the pair from this that I fall down on. I tend to just say that you see the goblin when I should be saying that you see his boots behind the tapestry. And once it’s pointed out, I think it’s fairly obvious that the boot based description is better.
The Alexandrian has several articles under the key word matryoshka that go into more details on how to execute this.
A common thread I noticed between all these problematic actions is Angry has said they should be rolled by the GM. Sneaky, searchy, and feely actions so as not to reveal hidden information and maintain tension. Speaky actions to maintain pace. Thinky actions so you can weave the information into scene setting.
Agreed. GMs should find quick ways to secretly generate roll results.
This is easy to do on VTTs. Analog GMs could do the same using some sort of app.
I mass-generate skill results on Roll20 with a macro: using e.g. one button for ‘World Lore’, one button for ‘Sneak’ etc. This rolls for all PCs at the same time. Then I form the narrative based on the results.
Very early on I showed the PCs what I was doing: just so they knew that their skills were being used and to build up trust.
But now it’s all behind the scenes. It made a huge difference to pacing and immersion.
Definitely curious about this as a fellow Roll20 GM
Hi Red – here’s one way to do it.
A) For each PC, create a roll20 ‘Character’. Let’s call them CharacterA, CharacterB etc
These ‘Characters’ do not have to be fully formed PC sheets: they just need to have Attributes and Abilties as listed below.
B) Each ‘Character’ should have Attributes (with numbers) for each skill. E.g. Arcane, Perception, Climb, etc.
C) Each ‘Character’ should also be given an Ability for each skill. This Ability will contain a macro which will looks like the following:
/w GM @{name} Arcane: [[1d20+@{Arcane}]]
The name of this Ability would be ‘Arcane’
D) Once you have all of these Characters set up with Abilities and Attributes, then create another character called something like “Skill Roller”
Create multiple Abilities in this Skill Roller, one to mass roll each Skill.
Like other Abilities, each Ability will contain a macro. The one to massroll the Arcane skill will look like the below:
%{CharacterA|Arcane}
%{CharacterB|Arcane}
%{CharacterC|Arcane}
Where ‘Arcane’ is the name of the Ability that we added to the ‘Character’ at step C, and ‘CharacterA’ is the name of the ‘Character’.
E) To use the Skill Roller just bring it onto your map and click on the Arcane or Climb or Perception button etc. The results will then show up in your chat.
It’s relatively easy to improve the formatting, but for now I recommend just trying to wire this up for (say) three pcs and 4 skills.
Hope this makes sense.
I’m a fan of paper dice for this, a concept I got from Whitehack. Basically, it’s a sheet of random numbers printed in the smallest font you can read. Point your pencil somewhere on it without looking, then read whatever number you’ve pointed at. That’s your result. Quick, easy, and totally silent.
I have PCs roll a bunch of 20s and I record them on a spreadsheet, then have their spot/listen (3.5!) and Fort/Will saves calculate automatically based on the rolls. Then I use and delete a roll as needed. This allows for things like “that monster maybe poisoned you” but they don’t know that could exist. If they fail, I relate what they are feeling; “you suddenly feel slightly weaker”, and keep track of any changes during a combat. When appropriate I will then pass them a note with the details; “-2 Con”, for example. Or after the ghoul claws them, “you feel a sudden cold course through your body. You take a moment and fight off the feeling, then jump back into the fray thanking Pelor for your strength”.
I admit to enjoying their reaction as they are rolling 20s and those 1s come up, because they know at some point they will get bit in the ass, but there is no doubt they prefer to “have their fate in their own hands” by rolling themselves. Which of course TGMs know is a stupid human failing viewpoint on a random chit, but if it makes them happy and entertained, go for it.
An old trick I learned to make the players feel they somehow have more control of fate and also make my life easy: have every player make 20-ish rolls and record them on a shared sheet, one row per character. The GM uses those rolls for secret checks. The gm has a list of all the characters’ “roll in secret” skills so they can quickly figure out Bobarella has a total of 17 on their “detect Impending Doom” check without Bobarella’s player know they even needed to detect Impending Doom.
The key part is the GM *also* uses those rolls for secret NPC checks. Starts at top and works down across the characters, while characters go left to right. Which means the aforementioned Impending Doom used a roll off that same sheet. There is a 1/(# PC) chance it was one of Bobarella’s rolls.
Did you roll 5 nat-20s? Great! It’s almost certain some NPC will benefit from that, just like you! Did you roll 5 nat 1s? Also great! It’s almost certain some NPC will fail because of that, just like you!
Since every characters’ secret rolls are guaranteed to be a roll they did with their own dice, for some reason it is “fair”. Yay psychology! And since rolls will be used by NPCs, any urges to fudge die rolls are heavily suppressed. Again, yay psychology!
He only said that for perceptive actions. There is no reason to not let a player Rroll for thinky or sneaky actions.
But there are other reasons.
Nice shout-out to Voyage of the Space Beagle there 🙂
Mechanically two great hacks I use to fill in the gaps are a 1d6 and 2d6 tables. High stats get a +1 and low stats get a -1.
I handle binary results (eg did they break the door down or not) on 1d6. 1-2 is a success but that range is modified by stats, tools, circumstances.
By delineating 2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-11, 12 we get a good feel for how some ongoing action is going on. 2 is complete failure, 12 is instant success, and then you get a range of the good and bad.
But
As for many things, you don’t resale need dice. I presume these are adventurous men and they are broadly competent in the things adventurous men do. Rather than “can you climb the wall,” the questions are how and how long. Like that.
To clarify: when an intuitive player sees an NPC lying the GM can check to see if the character recognizes the lie (using a roll or passive score or whatever).
Assuming the character passes the check, the GM could say:
1) The NPC is lying / hiding something
or
2) The NPC refuses to make eye contact
I’m trying to get my mind around the differences between these outcomes. At first blush, it seems like 2) requires more from the player and is more immersive. Does 1) contravene the rule about making deductions for the players? Or is it analogous to recognizing a certain type of magic or a monster type?
My gut tells me that either of these would be fine as long as you don’t explicitly allow the character to mind read and know the exact nature of the lie.
If you’re going to go for the descriptive route, having a table of physical descriptions of common emotional states / signs of deception would be really handy.
I think you’ve got it totally wrong. When a NPC is lying the roll is automatic. You can even roll the NPC deception Chech against the PC passive score. Then, if the deception fail you describe the emotional leak in facts, like your number 2. If the players deduce this fact as a lie and want to confirm it in any way,, the player should make an action. And, by the 3 rules, look really hard isn’t an action. It can make questions, for example, to catch the NPC in contradiction.but it has to be a visible and recognizable action. Only then you ask for a roll, and, if it succeeds, you describe the results in facts. “The NPC looks scared and starts to tumble on his words”
I agree with you that the check should be automatic, and I’m not really concerned with whether checks are passive, rolled or even fiat.
I’m trying to determine the range of acceptable GM descriptions of what the character perceives in the situation above. My impression is that the primary differences between descriptions 1) and 2) above are the degree of specificity and the direct mapping to physical perceptions.
2) is desirable because it requires players to know something about the world and because it provides a greater degree of immersion. However, at times 1) could be more desirable because it helps with pacing.
My question is whether the GM saying ‘the NPC is lying’ is a fact or a deduction. Is the statement ‘Something emerges from the darkness. Ranger Bob, with your background you recognize it as a troll’ a deduction or a fact?
How are these two cases different?
The main difference between “Because of your high intuition, you believe the NPC is lying.” And “Because of your training in Giant lore, you recognize this as a troll.” is that the first statement is telling the PC something subjective that they believe to be true about another character. The second statement is not (as) subjective. It either looks like a troll or it doesn’t. The character either recognizes it from their training or experience or they don’t.
“They are lying” isn’t something that can be stated as absolute fact without meta knowledge (like telepathy or magic). “They exhibited micro expressions typical of someone who isn’t being fully honest.” Is something a character could definitively recognize by training or intuition.
Actually, you shouldn’t even state “they are lying.” Rather, you should clue the person into their emotional state because that leaves the possibility for misinterpretation, false positives, false negatives, and player deduction in the mix. If a person is nervous and trying to hide it while giving an answer, it doesn’t mean they are lying. It could mean a lot of things. The PCs can deduce that it means they are lying, or suspect dishonesty and follow up with pointed questions or investigation or research, or any number of other things that leads to the players actually engaging with a mystery with incomplete information. If you say, “the NPC is lying,” however you say it, instead of, “weirdly, the NPC’s behavior seems off in this particular way,” you rob the game of all of that and turn every interrogation into a die roll. Which means the players can only rely on the luck of the dice instead of their own clever thinking and deduction.
This really flies in the face of Michael Mercers’ Insight Checks. My players love to just call out Insight Check. But I think you’re correct in having players call actions that interact with the world instead of calling on game mechanics would be better for generating investment.
As a GM, I have never rolled my PCs’ skills — ever. I’ve never considered it or seen it done in my gaming circle, either. So this is an interesting but very weird concept to me. Could someone help unpack it a bit? Why would the GM roll Atuuk the Butcher’s notice, stealth, or knowledge checks in secret, rather than asking Dave to roll for Atuuk?
As a side-note, Angry’s comment about refusing to reward Dave for his witty dialogue or epic oratory is one of the reasons I like Savage Worlds. In that situation, I could reward Dave for owning the scene by giving him a benny (a meta-currency that allows rerolls and mitigates damage) without rewarding Atuuk inside the scene itself. (Worth noting players get rewarded for all sorts of things, not just flowery dialogue.)
If Dave rolls a notice check, gets a 3, and the GM says “you don’t see anything,” then Dave and/or the other players will act differently than if Dave had rolled a 19. It’s inevitable. Once a person knows a thing, they can no longer act as they would have if they didn’t know. They can guess at how they would have acted, they can try to pretend, but they can’t be sure. And then you get into arguments about “metagaming” (as stupid a concept as it is) if the players spend extra time searching because of the 3 or choose to move on because of the 19, or is trying to avoid metagaming by continuing to search in response to the 19 an act of metagaming itself? It’s easier to just keep the rolls secret if they’re something that the characters wouldn’t be able to tell was a success or failure.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the example. This has never really been a problem at my table; I’ve never minded the clarity that comes from my players rolling a 19 and knowing it’s fine to move on. On the other hand, the discomfort of rolling a 3 and having to “act as though they didn’t know” has never been acute enough for them to bring it up as an issue. But maybe I’ll run an experiment next session: I’ll let my players know that I’ll be rolling certain checks in secret and see if it changes anything.
There is a full explanation about this idea and how to think about the impact of dice and die rolling at your table in the prior lesson: The Tao of the Dice at https://theangrygm.com/tao-of-dice/
As to your comment about Savage Worlds, it’s important to note that Dungeons & Dragons 5E has a similar mechanic to Savage Worlds’ bennies called Inspiration. But it doesn’t matter what you call the mechanic, providing any sort of mechanical reward for really good showmanship is no different than rewarding players for good penmanship on their character sheets.
I loved the idea. From now on, I’m going to give inspiration to players that are proficient in Calligrapher’s supplies and have pretty penmanship on their characters sheets.
Thanks — I’ll reread the Tao of the Dice article and see if I can answer my own question.
As for the second point, I respectfully (and I mean that) disagree. Penmanship is totally irrelevant to the game, obviously; but clever, detailed dialogue can enhance the “fiction” of a scene in a way that penmanship doesn’t. Is it necessary? No. Does it add value when done in moderation? Sure.
I’m hazy on 5E’s Inspiration, but I should point out that Savage Worlds is designed around players receiving 2-4 bennies per session (I think Inspiration is rarer?). So if a player adds some clever window-dressing to a scene, that’s a good excuse to slip them a small reward. And again, there are other, more consistent ways to get bennies: things like taking suboptimal actions based on your PC’s personality flaws.
Anyway, I’m not dunking on the overall point being made here; just offering a slightly different perspective on fancied-up dialogue. I’m not a “collaborative storytelling”-based GM, but I do like having a small reward to give players who are really enhancing the fiction for everyone.
And what about the seduction actions? If I don’t have to tell the player what his hero feels, then what should I do in such a situation: The NPC seduces the player’s character. Wouldn’t the hero then feel “attracted” to the NPC and want to be alone with him? Or will such actions of the NPC be doomed to failure automatically?
You can’t just roll a die and tell a player to adjust their mood, disposition, sympathy, antipathy, or opinion accordingly. Som if you really want seduction to be a part of your game, you’d better up your seduction game. Then again, maybe there’s things that just don’t work well in tabletop fantasy roleplaying games. And non-magical mood-alteration is one of them.
Thank you!
Isn’t it possible to describe it in a fact-based way?
“You perceive Grok Threeballs as being an attractive piece of ork”
Attractiveness is subjective. It’s not a fact. Therefore, it cannot be described in a fact-based way.
This will presumably be discussed in the upcoming social encounter articles Angry mentioned, but the short answer is you don’t roll anything. Whenever an NPC wants to convince a PC of something, you just present their arguments and let the player decide what their character thinks/feels/etc about that. Players always determine their characters thoughts/feelings/etc so rolling speaky, schmoozy actions directed at players is irrelevant
If memory serves, some older systems would adjudicate these things purely mechanically. I.e. a succubus’ seduction causes a character to physically embrace the creature for 1-6 rounds, during which it drains levels or whatever. Its an imperfect solution, especially for non-magical seduction-type things. But I do also think people can relate to the idea of doing things against your better judgement. Like getting involved with an MLM, or a very attractive humanoid hanging out in a dangerous dungeon with no weapons. No need to tell the player they’re madly in love or whatever.
Also, to Angry’s laws, feeling, say, lustful is arguably a physiological response that is automatic and involuntary. You just don’t use it as an excuse to pilot a player’s character or tell the player how their character is feeling emotionally or, crucially, how they act in response to the physiological response they’re feeling.
The situation looks like this. An assassination attempt is planned on a group of heroes. Meanwhile, the heroes celebrate another triumphant return from the dungeon in the tavern. During the celebration, the Assassins send courtesans to the Warrior and Monk so that they seduce the heroes and retire with them so that the group becomes more vulnerable to attack. And here the question arises. Do the heroes need to perform Willpower checks to resist seduction, or do they just need to describe the situation and wait for the players to decide whether the heroes will go with the courtesans or not (no, they won’t, because the players are too careful)?
If I was running something like this, I’d first consider how I’d handle a different distraction, and then apply that here.
For example, if I had the Assassins send a Mercenary to show the Warrior his collection of arms as a distraction, I’d say simply that: “a swarthy man approaches, saying to the Warrior ‘I’ve heard of your deeds, you seem like a man who’d appreciate these exotic arms in my collection.’” Followed by “what does the Warrior do?” letting the player decide how the Warrior would react instead of saying “roll WIS, oh, looks like the Warrior is really excited about these weapons, looks like he leaves the room.”
Replace “Mercenary” with “Courtesan” and “arms collection” with “bedroom” and that describes my take on the situation where you don’t have mind-control magic or enchantment in the mix
Bingo.
So here’s the thing.
As per the philosophy of gaming he’s already set out, Angry is basically only here for looking at the goals the players consciously choose for their characters, and the tactical decisions they make to achieve those goals. And something that mucks up the whole system of simulation and strategy is the fact that an RPG character in this model must perforce have more free will than any other kind of fictional character, in the sense that ‘realistic’ characters and real people have our goals and tactics set for us by our emotions. And once you start going down the path of letting the character tell the player what the character’s goals are, you’ve stripped the players of the only kind of autonomy that’s relevant to this discussion: to choose their character’s goals and move tactically towards them.
If the DM only tells facts about what a character perceives and not about the deductions the character makes, then what’s the point of the Investigation skill in 5e?
The 5e definition of Investigation has a few examples that work well (e.g., “determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse”), but if you remove the core point, to “look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues”, it feels like you’re left with a very narrow and rarely used skill.
This happens in other skills too. 5E isn’t exactly known for having a good skill system. In most cases GMs seems to use them intuitively rather than what the rules state it’s used for. Ignoring the rules the skill is quite intuitive: When you investigate something, you roll an investigation check. Sadly too many people use perception for this, but they are different. Perception is about noticing and sensing things. If your character runs their hand across a wall they might feel a little breeze from a crack. Investigation could lead to understanding what is behind the crack, or finding out that the crack is in fact part of a hidden door.
I think that when Angry and others say that a DM should not outright give to players what their characters “deduce” (handing explicit knowlodge) they are meaning it from a “feels” perspective.
That is, a character “deducing” something using an Investigation check is a material and immediate act of skill.
What should be avoided is to tell the players what their characters “believe”, a subjective endeavour.
So, determining “the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse” is skill-related, whereas “deducing” that the ancient dragon that is causing problems near the village may be pregnant, is not.
Don’t know if I could express my point clearly.
It’s simpler than that: Investigation — the deduction skill — is just a crappily designed skill.
The designers of 5e wanted the game to hold space for other play priorities than Angry’s is the answer to your question.
As someone who plays Dungeon World, im curious about how you’d suggest handling Spout Lore (triggers “when you consult your accumulated knowledge about something”). That strikes me as a non-action, and the “giving interesting and/or useful information” should just be built into the narrative flow.
I still like the idea of keeping an INT-based basic move in the game, so considering rephrasing the trigger to “when you study or research a topic.” Then it becomes an action when the character takes time to read something in the Bag of Books they bought in town or translate the runes written on the wall rather than me sitting to wait for my players to ask “do I know something” or forcing a move on them every time I set a scene. Also gives a way to resolve going to the noble’s or academy’s library when in town
I don’t really see what an “INT-based basic move” is. I think you misunderstand the article if you think intelligence can never be a skill check that the player use as part of an action. It’s just that most of the knowledge skills in RPGs are something that should happen automatically. But, you can of course take actions which would most likely be based off your intelligence score.
If you see a deer on the side of the road, do you stop and ask “what do I know about deer?” Or, do you just remember what you know about deer then and there? Sometimes we don’t remember everything we actually know about deer though. (Hence a roll)
If you on the other hand found a book named “The Big Book of Bucks” you might also recall what you know about deer, but now you have the ability to read more. It would be an action to use the book to gain more knowledge about deer no?
Let’s say you found this book, the GM rolls for you, or asks you to roll an intelligence check. Then based on that roll you are given all the information your character knows about deer: They are hunted for meat, their antlers falls off once per season. You might even know that in many nations it’s illegal for anyone who isn’t sanctioned by the crown to hunt deer.
Since you now have a book about deer you might want to spend some time to find out if you can learn more about deer. Reading the book takes time, it’s an action. You are asked to roll again. The roll might decide if you succeed or fail to learn that buck antlers are used in potions of speed, which makes them very valuable to certain buyers. If your roll is bad the GM can just tell you that after X time of reading you don’t learn anything you didn’t already know about deer.
I totally agree with you on this in the context of a d20 system, and would do something very similar to what you described in my Dungeon World game (with a couple *minor* tweaks).
The big thing I’m pointing out is that DW is structured around “moves” being triggered by actions (like Angry describes). The DW handbook lists seven “basic moves” that any player has access to (one for each ability plus Defy Danger, which is a catch-all mechanic). The one listed for INT is the “non-action” based on what triggers it RAW. My suggestion is to do something similar to what you describe, use the DW-equivalent of a “passive check” during non-actions, and only allow players to roll when they do something (like read a book) by changing the trigger to something more active. I like this better than saying “the INT move is a non-action RAW, and I’m not going to replace it with an actual action.”
Some of the nuance on Dungeon World moves is more than I can fit into a comment, but suffice to say, I think we’re describing very similar adjudication, there’s just a slight language barrier between our game systems.
It might be simplest to make the name Spout Lore more literal:
“When you authoritatively call out to your allies what you believe to be true about the situation roll +INT.”
Hi Angry, you specifically call out non-magical mood-alteration, but what about magical sources? A charmed PC might begin seeing allies as enemies, or enemies as trusted friends. Also, what about aura’s of actual feelings, like “as Balrick enters the crypt a foreboding sense of dread shrouds his mind” this is not a feeling, but an intangible actual thing, such as tainted air.
One of my games heavily featured gods of both virtue and vice, and they had mind control powers. Dread and hope were things I wanted to instill, but it did seem to come of as contrived when I just stated it as an affect.
I suspect it comes down to poor factual description becoming “playing the games for my players” instead of saying “a foreboding sense of dread shrouds his mind” it should instead be something like “the vague scent of foul air causes his vision to dim, as if color is being drained from the world.” The dread becomes emergent, to be interpreted, not a fact that should be described.
“Bob, your character John is under the effects of a magical compulsion that clouds his perception of friend and foe. None of the creatures around you count as allies. Please act accordingly.”
Magic that takes away your agency does what it says on the tin. But it’s still their character. They still get to act on the information their character can perceive, even if those perceptions are warped.
I’m curious how “visible” an action needs to be on screen in order to be an “action”. Specifically with the thinky facty actions, people can obviously recall more information by spending time actively trying to remember. If a character spots a rune on a wall and recognizes it as an ancient dwarven warning sigil mentioned in his father’s stories, is it an “action” for him to pause for a moment trying try and concentrate on those old stories and see if he can recall more details? On the one hand I can see this being visible on screen as the character doing a double take and stopping for a moment with a faraway contemplative look, then either shaking his head after nothing more comes to him or snapping his fingers and exclaiming, “that’s it! This was the symbol they used to caution miners about .” On the other hand, I’m not sure if standing there thinking is either “visible” or “interactive” or “external” enough to meet the standards here for “actions”. I can see where it has consequences (the character’s not moving, they’re distracted, etc.) but I’m not sure whether that’s enough to qualify in your approach.
Why are actions that don’t have an obvious, visible effect non-actions? Say the magic system used has (for some reason) a mana counter you can replenish by concentrating and thus not doing anything else”, but this counter is not visible to others and thus will only come into play when you cast something. Yet under literal reading of your text, it suggests that “concentrate to replenish your mana counter” is not an action because it’s not obviously, visibly different from “just standing still, metaphorically catching flies”.
And if the concentration in example above is an action, is it different from, say, “concentrating to perform some in-world calculations to up your chances at a task”? Both are time-consuming, both are exclusionary with things that are more obviously actions, and both aren’t (in any obvious way) external.
Frankly, there’s a more general problem: thinking really hard is a huge part of what a number of people, including you, do for living (and _certainly_ spend time on it in their world), are they not performing an action by that? Is a scientist looking at some objects and thinking before saying “aha!” not choosing to act in a certain way?
That doesn’t mean any of that is actually good game design.
Wow, this sentence actually answers a lot more than it could seem from a glance! (Or I’m reading way too much into it.) So, this is a question of game design and of what works well in games, rather than of what should be done with such actions if they do occur?
I’m curious then what would be a good game design (iyo) for that type of action. How would you adjudicate a player saying, “I’m going to keep thinking about that and try to figure it out”?
Isn’t that what a player would say, not the character? That’s why it’s a non-action. The game design revolves around the player trying to figure things out. After they spend some time thinking, they either say, “Aha!” or “I can’t solve this without more clues.” Either way, the next step is declaring a character action.
It is what the player would say. And the player would say that in am attempt to declare the action, “think about this some more and try to remember more details from my training/stories/background/etc.,” which — as you pointed out — appear to be what Angry is calling a “non-action”. My question is. If that is a non-fiction, then how would/should a true game master adjudicate a player attempting it? I find the notion unsatisfying that a person (character or player) is presumed to always remember every detail that they can possibly recall about a thing immediately upon sight, or that standing and looking at a shelf full of books for more than 6 seconds (e.g., actually reading the titles of more of the books) cannot yield more information without physically manipulating the books or shelves or whatever. And yet, as “non-actions”, that seems to be the result. So I am wondering whether I am simply misunderstanding some part of Angry’s process, or if there is a more basic disconnect between his appreciation of these situations and my own.
Who said a player “reading through the titles of the books on the bookshelf” could do so instantly? Or in six seconds? A person searching through a bookshelf is going to take a few minutes as they scan and walk along the bookshelf, maybe even touch the titles or point and scan along their finger as they do so. And it’ll sure as hell take them more than six seconds. Haven’t you ever shopped in a bookstore or looked for something in a library?
There are two things you’re missing. First: “if the action is entirely in the character’s head, it’s a non-action.” Thinking hard and trying to recall something is not looking over a bookshelf.
Second: “use your judgment and adjudicate the action.” If a player says they want to examine the books on the shelf, browse through the titles, and look for anything interesting, that’ll take a bit of time and require them to be close to — and move along — the bookshelf, depending on how long it is. But it also won’t reveal if any of the books are hollowed out and have secret treasures inside nor will it reveal if any are catches for secret doors.
How much detail is the player supposed to provide before I decide he described an action enough (thinking about Declaring Actions/Error Checker from a few weeks back)?
Say the players enter in a room with a bookshelf and other things. The bookshelf has an interesting book. It’s a bit to the side but not hidden. It’s not like you can pick out a weird book title by glancing at a shelf full of them
Is “I search the room” sufficient or do they have to specifically ask about the shelf?
If “search the room” is sufficient, don’t I run the risk of assuming the player took actions he didnt mean to (You trigger a trap on the shelf. “Wait, I didnt want to go to the shelf!”).
If they have to ask specifically about the shelf, is it not possible to slow the game to a crawl when the players get overly cautious (“I search the chair. I search the table. I search the other chair”)?
I’d say that the player should use as much details as is needed to specify what he is doing. In your example, if the Player wants his character to carefully check over the room but avoid the shelf because of an obvious difference, you say that.
“Estelle checks over the room, searching for signs of traps while avoiding the shelf, having already something strange about it.”
I think the answer to this is to properly set the scene with your narration so that the players have “interactables” to work with. Ex: You open the door and peer into the next room. Inside, along the left wall is a DESK with an inkwell and various papers strewn across it. On the wall next to the desk is a BOOKSHELF half filled with books and an unlit wax candle. On the right side wall is a MIRROR and a DOOR, and sitting in the center of the room is a CHEST made of wood with a padlock hanging in the front. Notice how this narration sort of divides the room into different zones for the players to interact with by giving a name of an object followed by some small details. The caps lock is for our sake, but you could definitely emphasize the names if your players are particularly dense. And then if anyone tries to “search the room” you can ask what part of the room do they search, maybe even repeating your earlier narration. And if they still don’t get it you can just straight list the names and ask them to pick from it. What’s nice about this is you can adjust the scale of your interactables to match the scale of the scene. Are your players searching a whole building? Name the rooms of the building. A city block? Name different building. Or you could go smaller scale and maybe ask the players to name which drawer specifically they decide to search. The scales you set comes down to your judgement based on things like: how much time do the characters have to work with, how hard should it feel to find the hidden thing, what kind of atmosphere are you trying to create.
now, there are some non dnd systems that expect players to roll their own perception or sense motive checks because they have a meta currency that can be spent to potentially undo a failure. like Savage Worlds or most systems with a Meta Currency. which usually also expect you to reveal the creature’s stealth check. purely because the player has to make an educated guess and informed decision on using the meta currency. but those systems generally expect the player to be mature enough to honor their failure or at the very least pursue alternate means to change the circumstances to get the reveal.
Putting the players in a place where their motive and knowledge conflicts with their characters is careless design and shouldn’t be excused as “expecting maturity.”
the problem is mostly one with character skill systems. another issue caused by the use of metacurrencies as a default mechanic, and well, expecting players to separate player knowledge from character knowledge.
because “roll to search the Baronesses Sock Drawer for the False Bottom Containing the Baron’s Incriminating Ledger” is i agree just as stupid as “roll to see the little girl in the frilly black dress brandishing a knife as she materializes from the shadows and plans to stick that knife in your wizard friend’s right kidney”
and Most Metacurrency systems expect players to know what they are rolling for and what the stakes are. because they have to be able to make informed player choices on whether or not they spend the metacurrency. expecting players to not act on the knowledge of what they were rolling for and call it “expecting maturity”
most skill check systems usually have skills for completely reactive responses like thinking real hard for a few seconds or noticing the little girl in the frilly black dress coming from nowhere with the knife
and i understand these are because there are things the character would know the player personally would not. because i’m not expecting players to have a PHD in every last profession they play.
but i do at the very least expect characters to describe how they are approaching something from the third person at the very least. “like little Umbrie plays the role of a good little innocent bystander and listens to stories in town square from the locals while looking for potential rumours, leads, stories or opportunities to play her skill as a pint sized assassin for the benefit of those around her.”
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Hi Angry! Two questions!
First, should a DM who is game design minded, and while following these rules, run the false hydra? More specifically, is telling a player that their character forgot something in line with telling only the facts, despite it breaking player-character thought alignment?
And second, should non-actions still be mentioned at the table? A giga-DM such as yourself would never forget character background details, but for us lesser DMs, what should we do? This isn’t an excuse to not think through setting the scene, but more asking if that kind of flexibility should be allowed.
Thanks a ton. I love your articles. I send them to one of my friends regularly, and I especially like this one- that’s why I’m asking questions.