Are You Sure?
In all of gaming, there is no phrase more sobering than, “Are you sure?” It’s what GMs ask when you’re about to poke your head into the statue’s mouth for a quick look around. Or when you’re about to kick the dragon to prove he’s only an illusion. Or when you’re about to push the big red button marked “do not push.” It’s a freebie from that smug tyrant behind the screen, a second chance at wriggling out of your own mess and living to fight another day. Or is it?
Being a smug tyrant who spends entirely too much time behind a GM screen, there is nothing I like better than interjecting the odd, “Are you sure?” into innocuous situations. Suppose, for example, that an adventurer is about to open a nondescript door. Now I could simply allow the action, describe the monster on the other side, and roll for initiative. But with the addition of an “Are you sure?” I get so much more entertainment! Trust me guys, there is no better fun to be had in any dungeon than watching those wheels turn in the players’ heads. Did the thief fail at her check for traps roll? Should I maybe open this door with a 10 ft. pole? Is it better to push or pull the door? Can I hear anything from the other side? But wait a minute… Is the GM trying to trick me into not doing something awesome? Is it worth risking my character’s life over this? What if overthinking is itself the trap?
But for serious guys, you probably shouldn’t fire yourself out of a catapult. Or should you?
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I’m a big fan of “Are you sure?” The amount of fun I had with a room full of PCs, two doors exiting the room, pillars described as “load-bearing”, and a single, innocuous gold coin in the very centre of the otherwise large and empty room.
Interspersed with several “Are you sure?”s, They spent half an hour testing the coin in every way they could think of before picking it up and (this being Shadowrun) pawning it for a significant windfall.
Wait. GUYS! I said wait! Do you want to die!?
OK, I don’t believe we almost didn’t ask. Is the coin heads up or tails up?
I avoid that specific phrase, because it’s more fun to be even more unbiased seeming and asking questions that have more or less the same effect without anyone being able to claim that’s what I’m actually doing.
Of course I don’t have to do it terribly often. My players tend to go on over-cautious paranoid time wasting spirals all on their own.
For example recently they were offered a mysterious potion they identified as something to give them the effects of a long rest right before a boss fight. Because I made the choice to add some flavor and suggest it might have some mild side effects, the players immediately became concerned their allies were attempting to poison them or drug them and do unspecified things to do. Even when I pointed out that their ally’s forces outnumbered them something like 10000 to 1 and they were underground in said ally’s territory and they wouldn’t actually NEED to drug them or poison them if they wanted something and that the PCs hadn’t yet even done the job the ally wanted them to do…. it still took way too long for 3/4ths of them to take the potion. It would have been pretty funny…. if it hadn’t taken so long I nearly came to the point of just declaring they took it and moving the scene on three times. Maybe it’ll be funny to me in a year or two when the agony of it isn’t so fresh.
Are you a Sicilian? If so, that would explain their reluctance to go in when death is on the line.
INCONCEIVABLE! We Sicilians ALWAYS go in when death is on the li — *thud*
One of my DMs has taken to declaring “reason checks” (make an Int save to gain insight into the action) when we’re about to do something terribly stupid. It helps that it’s a group of players who will -gleefully- do said terribly stupid thing when the reason check fails.
Ima need an example of “something terribly stupid.” You know… Just to make sure we’re on the same page here.
Well, this comic worries me quite a fair bit. Fighter and I think alike!
By that, I mean that I, to, am a fan of catapulting people. Heck, only a few weeks ago, while I was DMing, I had a tournament where one of the competitions was “who can survive being fired out of a catapult into cliff the most times?”.
It was great! Fortunately for the participants, the tournament was organised by clerics. No humanoids were permanently harmed in the making of this game.
Well then. I think I might know a band of interplanar daredevils that want to sign up:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/falling-damage
This comic reminds me of the GURPS Advantage (like a feat) called Common Sense. The text of it reads “Any time you start to do something the GM feels is STUPID, he will roll against your IQ. A successful roll means he must warn you: “Hadn’t you better think about that?” This advantage lets an impulsive player take the part of a thoughtful character.
When I’m behind the screen, all my players get that advantage for free at character gen.
Huh. As a dm, my version of “Are you sure?” always seems to come out as “Well. Okay.”
Said in a sing-song voice mayhap?
You know, you might be right…
I’ve mentioned a player I called Galaxy-Brain in some other comments on this website. He’s used giant loincloths to dress up as a slave, thrown vindictive psychopaths because he refused free guns, and repeatedly forgot whether the monster he was running had claws or an axe. All of this makes him sound amusingly buffoonish, and I’d be lying if I said he didn’t have moments like that.
But most the time, GB was the guy who doubled down whenever someone asked “Are you sure?” There’s the gun thing, and no shortage of other examples.
The worst example is when he challenged the toughest-looking monk in the monastery to spar by saying “I’m gonna put you in the ground!” The DM and a couple of players suggested ways he could rephrase that to not be a murder threat, but he refused and the party was booted from the monastery before they found out any of what they journeyed for days through treacherous wilderness to learn.