Failure to Communicate
We all want our characters to be competent in their assigned roles, but should it be possible to build a character who always succeeds? Should Bard always, in every conceivable circumstance, manage to seduce Barmaid? Such automatic success might look like the absurd bonuses of 3.5 D&D or the literal “you always win contests” resolution system of Amber Diceless. If you’re not familiar with the latter, here’s a taste from the rulebook:
Early on, in one of the play-test sessions, one of the characters, cloaked with a magical invisibility, snuck up on one of the player characters who was a master in Warfare.
“I’m going to plunge my sword into his back,” said the invisible one.
“He turns,” replies the Game Master to the invisible character, “and parries your blade. As your swords clash, it’s obvious he knows you’re there. What are you doing?”
“How? I’m invisible!” protests the player, “How could he possibly parry my blade if he can’t see me?”
“Well, he’s awfully good,” says the Game Master…
It’s a great example of one of the fundamental problems of playing make believe. If we’re kids playing cops and robbers, I might declare that I shot you. You counter with, “You missed!” Which of us is right? TRPG resolution systems strive to answer that question, declaring that shields decrease probability, magic arrows increase probability, or if all else fails that the GM gets the last word. It might not look like it on paper, but I think the shield and the arrows don’t really matter. At the end of the day, GM fiat is the only thing we’ve really got to hold the world together.
I know that last bit is going to be controversial, so let me explain before the torches and pitchforks come out. In certain specific contexts, it doesn’t matter that the book says a DC 43 Spellcraft check ought to reveal the properties of that artifact. If your GM doesn’t want to spill the beans, it’s suddenly a super-special artifact that resists your petty mortal magics. Circumstances have changed, and “always succeeds” becomes “usually always succeeds.” As a point of comparison, let me qualify that whole “you always win contests” thing in Amber Diceless:
When two or more characters come into direct conflict, duking it out, things are usually resolved by comparing the two Attribute ranks. Then, the one with the higher rank usually wins.
Not always, just usually.
When Corwin fought Benedict in Guns of Avalon, Corwin knew that Benedict was the better swordsman. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, Benedict could beat Corwin in any fair fight.
Corwin won.
Why?
Well, Corwin fights dirty.
It’s lovely to have points of reference in a game system. It’s DC 5 to climb a knotted rope, DC 25 to climb a brick wall, and DC 100 to climb a perfectly smooth, flat ceiling. But what happens during a hurricane? Or if you’re phobic of heights? What happens if, like Corwin, circumstance is fighting dirty? Only the guy sitting behind the GM screen can know for sure. That’s why, if you happen to be the aforementioned guy behind the screen, it pays to make sure your players know the limits of the possible.
As a matter of personal GMing style, I like to expand the range of “automatic success” for highly specialized players. Like we talked about way back in “Knowledge is Power,” absurd bonuses and crazy-high rolls come along all the time. The default automatic success of “you always walk without tripping over your own feet” expands to “you can always jump at least X distance” when your Acrobatics bonus gets high enough. Depending on the circumstances, seducing Barmaid might be truly automatic. But by the same token, if she happens to be married, or scared and on the run from doppelganger assassins, or if you tried a truly insulting pick up line, then the sphere of the possible has shifted. Automatic success might just become automatic failure, and you might get a face full of beer despite all your skills.
There’s a line in the “Deceive or Lie” section of the Pathfinder rules that’s near and dear to my heart. It reads, “Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).” I think that sentiment is true of every action in a TRPG, not just social rolls like deception and diplomacy.
Successful players and GMs find a way to soldier on despite the ambiguity. We compare notes often. We communicate. We figure out whether a high roll means “I jump to the moon” is plausible, and whether a low roll means “the kindly old woman flies at you in rage” is the penalty for botched teatime etiquette. It’s only when we fail to communicate that problems arise, and when real-world beers get thrown into real-world faces.
That brings us, at long last, to the question of the day. Have you ever failed a roll that, in you opinion, ought to have been a success? What was your GM’s rationale? Let’s hear your tales of unlikely underachievement down in the comments!
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Hmm, it appears that the tavern got its supply of ale mixed up with… the potions of awesome cool-looking art upgrade! Thanks for the nice looks, Laurel!
You know, as a long time play-by-post roleplayer, avoiding circumstances where you may fail you’re area of expertise is usually why most pbp rp’s Never last. Like your cops and robber example, there’s always going to be that one character who writes up how well they can shoot a fly twenty miles off in the dark inside a lead box with an unloaded flintlock, and the the one character who can avoid raindrops during a hurricane and can outrun darkness, but as soon as you put numbers into it suddenly they’re calling it quits.
Basically people who try to be good at something tends to want to always be good at it; fighter’s want to fight, social faces want to be social, so on and so forth. As a roleplayer I’ve always found it hard to balance “being the best at what I do” and “statistically actually hold at what I do” that doesn’t look like a munchkin’s wet dream.
I remember one example during my first pathfinder campaign where I felt the GM simply couldn’t allow me to succeed. I was playing a martial artist monk along with my party, and during it we ended up in a fight with a tribe of orcs. No problem we figured, we knew the dangers and came prepared. We fight, and then we all have to make saves vs sleep. None of us were elves so it was a legitimate tactic, and even the orcs who failed were few compared to the rest of the orcs out of the area of effect of the spell. Monks have good saves of course, and wisdom saves is one of our bests. But I was nervous when a fellow cleric managed to get a 26 on his save and still failed. That was not good news.
I rolled a natural 20 for a total of 30. Still failed.
Suffice to to say when we all saw and heard that, we were very concerned. Most of us weren’t very minmaxed, and I was a monk so I was MAD as heck. The GM simply said that the DC was higher, and we were all concerned hat he just shoehorned a boss outside of out level range for the purpose of railroading. It didnt exactly get better from there.
Obviously were captured instead of killed in our sleep, and it was railroading to get the party involved in some local politics stuff that we honestly had no interest in. The GM was pretty anal about making us Be involved in this plot of his, and fortunately calmer minds managed to prevail and we were able to work something out for everyone, but that moment really left a bad taste in my mouth for now Insistant the GM was that my monk had to fail one of his best saves he could accomplish.
“I rolled a natural 20 for a total of 30. Still failed.”
I don’t know if houserules were involved, but in standard Pathfinder, natural 20 Saving Throws always succeed, natural 1 Saving Throws always fail, no matter the modifier. (Most D20 rolls in Pathfinder do, I think skill checks might be the only exception.)
You failed either because of GM fiat or because of a rather rare (I’ve never heard of such) house rule.
Beat me to it. Here’s the rule for reference:
In terms of today’s larger thesis about communicating the sphere of the possible, it’s important to note that the phrase “we’re playing Pathfinder” is part of that communication. There’s an assumption that default rules apply, so it’s important for GMs to make damn sure there’s a good explanation when they make obvious departures from the rules. If the only answer is, “My game falls apart if X doesn’t happen,” that’s a good sign that you should go back and redesign the encounter.
Since it sounds like you’re Pathfinder guy, let me direct you towards this thing:
https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/bench-pressing-character-creation-by-the-numbers/
It gives you some useful benchmarks for “how well should I be doing this thing at this level?” You’ve still got to align yourself with the rest of the dudes at the table, but this is a good starting place for dialing it in.
DC is set according to what you try to do. The DC to hop over the narrowest part of the chasm is low, while the DC to backflip across the widest part is high.
Same goes for social rolls. The better the pickup line, the lower the DC, but the target also adjusts the DC based on how receptive they are to that sort of thing. Doesn’t matter how good your line is, and how well you roll: You ain’t picking up a nun or someone who doesn’t swing your way.
Got it in one! This is exactly it. The phrase “DC is set according to what you try to do” is obvious on paper, but hidden from players in practice. It all happens in the other side of the screen and in the GM’s head, and is generally system agnostic.
I actually wrote a whole PSA full of Jim Sterling references that nobody gets on the subject.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/8lknrx/psa_high_persuasion_rolls_arent_mindcontrol/
Nice! Looks like we’re in full agreement on this one. You might recall my posts about “social tactics?” Same principle.
I do not recall this post. Care to direct me to it?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/gather-information
I enjoy building and playing characters who are optimized and specialized in on particular aspect of the game. If I build a character who hyper specializes in Craft (underwater basket weaving), I fully expect to be best at it for my character’s CR, so if the GM starts popping in NPC’s who are better at my schtick than myself, I get a little irked. I realize that super-specialization in certain aspects can invalidate certain encounters or make the GM’s job difficult, but if everyone at the table is having fun, what is the harm if someone’s character is the best of X or Y? I find it pleasantly gratifying when I see one player not just one-shot an enemy, but overkill it, the same joy is felt when a character exceeds what is supposed to be a difficult check by 20. Ultimately, what I am trying to say, is that I enjoy playing Legendary games.
Of course, I also recognize that legendary characters don’t mesh well in certain games or playstyles such as gritty or low-magic campaigns. But this is the sort of thing that should be discussed before character generation.
I feel like having an exceptional rival who is also good at Craft (underwater basket weaving) is OK (see The Antiparty), but in general I think you’re right: there’s an expectation that a player’s specialist will be the best at the thing in the vast majority of situations. Of course, I think challenges should fit the group, and the chance of failure ought to be baked into at least some of the adventure design.
There is a common quest cliché in which a person of political power enlists the aid of heroes who are seen as “the best at X” to save the town, kingdom, world, plane from Y. While it is perfectly reasonable to have rivals for each of the PC’s, it may appear that certain discrepancies occur when I the PC’s learn that certain NPC’s can do a job better than themselves. This may result in PC’s losing interest in the quest as obviously the GM-PC can save the day without them.
Are you talking about the “why doesn’t Elminster just save the day” problem? I tend to dislike placing super high-powered PCs in my games for exactly this reason. If they are in the world, they should probably have different roles than “adventurer.” I’m thinking stuff like “herald of the gods” or “ancient master.”
All this says to me is that if a DM does not want anyone to make a save, he shouldn’t call for rolls on the save.
A DM can perfectly well say “Suddenly you all loose consciousness and fall in a deep sleep” without calling for rolls. It would have been nice for the DM if everyone had rolled shitty rolls, and then you’d have had the illusion that your character could have stood up to the effect if he’d done his best. But now everyone feels cheated.
Did you mean to reply to me or Lucius?
I think you’ve got a good point. There’s this concept of “illusionism” where the players get to at least think they had a chance to influence play. When you do illusionism poorly, your railroad is laid bare and everyone is upset by the break in immersion. The world is no longer behaving consistently, and pretending it was begins to feel disingenuous.
For example, I remember playing with a new GM who threw some dire rats at my group. It was pathfinder, so I braced my longspear, got the hit, and did something like 15 damage.
“It looks wounded,” she said.
I had to bite my lip pretty hard on that one.
Not me, but one of my companions, once, in a Godbound game was playing a sword godbound, that is a god of melee combat. My pc was, a deception godbound, and pretending to betray the group, he was supposed to attack my character, and using sorcery and deception my pc would kill him. My friend’s pc attacks, he gets only ones in his rolls, so his godbound slips and stab himself with his own sword. I still remember his “WTF did just happened?” face, he then grabs his dice and throw them again, ones still and the next time. The GM the says then just says that we roll with that, so my pc, in that very awkward circumstance just say “That was what i totally intended, yep, that is, i am that good, apparently”. I didn’t knew what to do, my friend have killed the scene and his arm, and he was still throwing ones. The GM just take the scene forward and late in the game he retcon that incident as a fate-godbound-did-it. Fate godbound that my friend wanted to chop down, viciously and repeatedly.
Are critical-fails/fumbles/botches/etc. built into Godbound? I don’t know the game, but the story is definitely relevant. Screwing up despite the odds is one of the advantages of the much-maligned concept of the botch, and it does add to that “nobody’s perfect” vibe that separates mortal adventurers from demigods.
Godbound is a “Old School Renaissance” game. Roll 1d20 + attack-bonus + Target’s AC, if the total is 20 or more is a hit, a natural 20 is also a hit and a natural 1 is a miss. My friend didn’t botch the roll, he butched it with the scene. A sword godbound is a person with the power of a god of combat, with the right gift, think power-talents, they don’t even need to roll against lesser foes, still all their power that makes them a mook-butching-machine can’t protect them from a natural one. As it was an false attack i don’t even recall why he even rolled, alas he did it and in that way that ended.
Well then here’s the million dollar question: Do you like that the possibility of failure is built in like that, or would it be a better game if you took it off the table?
The real question it’s not if i like that or not. It is if you like to have fun or not. The dice introduce a random element in an otherwise formulaic and predictable environment. AMBER or Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, which is AMBER with another name and setting, use a diceless system, so if you are gonna win you are gonna win, no matter what, that is why Corwin lose. Wait a minute… Corwin lose? No, he don’t he wins, he wins when he must lose. The randomness of the dice, call it fate, luck, chaos or another, is a element that gives the players the despair just enough to enjoy the game. It’s the happiness of uncertainty, you don’t always know what do you have ahead, will the characters you and your friends created survive, will they perish, the drama, the angst, the emotion, it is not the same without that, or at least for me.
So in short, yes i like it. Order makes games supportable, chaos makes games interesting, just like life.
Also it is too much fun seeing your friend’s pc cutting themselves with his own sword 🙂
I dunno. We can introduce dramatic reversals without dice. However, that can feel artificial when it’s coming from a GM rather than an impartial randomizer like a die. But what if that artificiality is concealed? My argument is that, in a world with GM screens and unknown DCs, the FEEL of randomness is becomes indistinguishable from the real thing.
Like so many things in life, the final word is for if you like something or not. Some people like Abyssal exalted other Infernal ones, some like wizards other sorcerers, some randomness other diceless system. Choose what you like and have fun with your friends with it 🙂
I feel like saying that GM fiat is ultimately the only thing that matters is missing what’s really going on entirely.
It’s just the social contract.
Sure if the GM don’t want to tell you about the artifact despite the game saying that your character should know about it you cannot force them to, but this is no different than the fact that no matter how badly you roll to resist the BBEG’s fear aura, the GM can’t actually prevent you from interrupting their evil monologue with heckling.
Furthermore both of these facts are just the same fact that when one child shout “Bang! I shot you” and the second shout “no you missed!” then the first can’t actually force the second to stop running around and lie down and pretend to be dead instead.
We don’t have mind control powers in reality. If neither party backs down the winner of a conflict is the party whose claim doesn’t require the other to alter their behavior.
The GM having the right to alter or ignore the rules, possibly under certain circumstances such as only when it’s represent in-universe circumstance or possibly utterly unrestrained, is a somewhat common social contract, but it’s far from universal or inherent to the position of GM in and of itself.
I feel like you’re describing the “I pick up my ball and go home” scenario. You’re right that TRPGs are socially constructed and particular rather than platonic and universal. The convention of the GM is a specific kind of social structure though. As a player, it’s about getting the person with authority to agree that your version of reality is reasonable.
“I attempt to do the thing.”
“I’ll allow it. Make a check.”
Might I ask what other versions of this interaction you’re imagining? I’d be curious to give those styles a go for the sake of broadening my horizons.
Well for one thing the GM is not necessarily holding particular authority, (even ignoring games that are completely GM-less), it could be invested instead into say the player-group as a whole or into the game mechanics itself.
This would generally be something for less traditional and less simulating games that care more about how dramatic something is than what the circumstances are, or alternatively extremely simulating games with exactingly defined worlds and narrow scope (a game with a historical rather than fantastical setting might well respond to the question “what if it happens during a hurricane?” with “It doesn’t, there won’t be a hurricane here for the next X years.”).
Some possibilities could be:
“I attempt to do the thing, is it difficulty A, B, or C?”
“sounds pretty though, I’ll say B. Make a check” (With no, or strictly limited, allowances for making deciding it should be anything other than A, B, or C, including straight up impossible).
Or
“The thing happens (spends resources).”
“After the thing happened, this happen.”
I see where you’re coming from. Once Upon a Time and the boxed Castle Raveloft board game are good examples of games with different agendas than taditional TRPGs.However, they can descend into chaos (the silliness of the former) or linearity (the limited options of the latter) pretty quickly.
I’m imagining D&D-like games with the convention of Game Master in place as “guy that decides the DC.” I think that mechanism is necessary if we want a “you can do anything you can imagine” experience without “I rolled high, I get to jump to the moon.” In any case, today’s blog post ought to be understood in terms of that traditional TRPG paradigm. Even as the actual authority of a GM shifts from table to table, the device of “guy that sets the DC” remains the same. It’s about human judgment more than mechanics. I’m arguing that the raw numbers of DC are incidental to the form. They suggest, but they don’t constrain.
I’ve had a few experiences with this recently- the first one was when we were traveling cross-country and my Druid was the only one to fail his roll to not get hypothermia at night. Embarrassing but not really detrimental in the long run.
The second was in a psuedo-combat encounter where the hardest part was trying to figure out how our Rogue could be making some sort of Dexterity check instead of the opposed Strength checks against the town-guard who was trying to grapple him; it was definitely an instance of fighting the rules more than the enemy. (both of these are in 5th edition)
In 3.5, I think the issue was mainly that the designers were just bad at balance, and it was way to easy to get bonuses that entirely eclipsed the dice-roll, even just at mid levels, so auto-success ended up being far more common than was intended. That meant that if someone actually had to roll to determine outcome, someone else in your party probably couldn’t possibly fail or couldn’t possibly succeed, depending on which way it was balanced. Since there were more encounters where you party just had to provide its best possible roll than where everyone had to roll this wasn’t usually a problem, but when it DID come up it sure was noticeable.
I’ve heard that 4th edition gave everyone a bonus to skill checks based on level, so that high-tier characters couldn’t possibly look clumsy and oafish when compared to the common rabble. That’s ok for some sorts of games, but it ended up with weird instances like the Paladin being pretty decent at pick-pocketing, and the bookish Wizard being good at athletics.
5th edition seemed to keep the spirit of that, but tuned the numbers way down with their generic “proficiency” bonus and capped stats so that the d20 roll is still relevant. It still doesn’t entirely solve the issue though- the Rogue I mentioned before gets something like a +9 to certain checks, in a system where an 11 or 12 or usually the minimum our GM requires for some sort of success (albeit with consequences).
There are various solutions, like the aforementioned level-bonus, or taking 10 all the time, or inspiration so that you can reroll for cinematically appropriate moments, but I would question how much failing a check that you think you should have passed is really a problem. Afterall, isn’t rolling dice the reason we have the game in the first place? If at the start of every session you just sat down and compared who had the biggers numbers and declared them the winner…well it might be a different sort of challenge, but it wouldn’t be tabletop gaming as we know it.
In the long run, I think the “can’t possibly fail this check” is a bigger issue in terms of both balance and gamplay than “should have passed, but occasionally failed”. The latter is a serious concern for balance, storytelling, and inclusion, while the latter leads to amusing anecdotes, so I tend balance with that goal in mind.
A better solution, IMO, is to give the players LOTS of opportunities to use as many different skills as possible. If the Bard makes 5 seduction checks every time he comes within spitting distance of a tavern, boffing one occasionally is no big deal. On the other hand, if I sank a lots of resources into Survival and then we only made a single survival check all campaign, I’d feel pretty silly. Especially if I miffed the roll when it really counted.
I’m feeling a little bit of this with the Druid right now and a wasted proficiency in “Medicine”, which I think I’ve used a grand total of twice. Once which was on a group of civilians who didn’t skedaddle fast enough when the lightning bolts started flying. Meanwhile we’re being called on to make perception checks 4 or 5 times a session. I’m not losing much sleep over it because at the end of the day I’m still a Druid, and between Wildshape and my spell-list there’s very little I can’t compensate for, but on a less versatile class it might be a bigger sticking point.
There is an Unearthed Arcana feat for 5e which might make that medicine proficiency a bit more useful if you did want to invest in it:
<Medic
(Unearthed Arcana)
You master the physician’s arts, gaining the following benefits:
Increase your Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You gain proficiency in the Medicine skill. If you are already proficient in the skill, you add double your proficiency bonus to checks you make with it.
During a short rest, you can clean and bind the wounds of up to six willing beasts and humanoids. Make a DC 15 Medicine check for each creature. On a success, if a creature spends a Hit Die during this rest, that creature can forgo the roll and instead regain the maximum number of hit points the die can restore. A creature can do so only once per rest, regardless of how many Hit Dice it spends.>
I did not know about that, so thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.
It still kinda feels like throwing limited feats after bad choices in a way, and I believe most of the Wisdom-based classes already have some form of healing. What I’d really like to see is some sort of system that encouraged more options and versatility rather than doubling down on the specializations you’re already good at.
That’s an excellent summary of the various takes on the problem across the recent D&D editions. I’d be curious to hear your take on the Amber Diceless approach though.
This is (roughly) the resolution system in Amber. Yet it is still a game that exists. How does it manage to remain interesting?
I’d never heard of it before today, so I’m not sure I can adequately respond, but based on a little research it seems like a very different sort of game than D&D. To quote TVTropes: “this game focuses more on relationships and roleplaying than number-crunching”.
According to wikipedia it takes the cooperative-storytelling aspect of D&D but leaves aside the more randomized elements that make it into of both skill AND chance. It also seems to rely heavily on judgement calls by the GM, which D&D moved away from in 3.5 and seems to have moved back to a bit in 5th edition, and on PvP (or PvNPC) instead of PvE or PvMonsters.
Without actually playing the game though, I don’t think I have a good understanding of all the intricacies. All I can really say is that it’s different. Whether it’s good or bad depends on what you, personally, like, but at the end of the day it’s a different sort of fantasy storytelling. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare it to tabletop D&D anymore than I’d compare D&D to LARPing.
I’ll ignore the question of the day since while I’m sure it has occurred more than once, my memory is not good enough for me to actually recall the circumstances of such things.
I will talk on the other subject you brought up, sort of.
Something I like to do if I’m not running a specific game system for a reason, is to run things where I just figure out with the players what is reasonable for their characters to have/be able to do in a general sense. Then we just roll d100s to see how well any given action went percentage wise. This number just being something for me to factor into my considerations for how good or bad a character is at something to determine what the outcome is. It’s just enough “mechanics” so that nothing is a sure thing or going to always work out the same way every time even under the same circumstances, but so little that I can have a game where the only limitations are what I as GM feel are reasonable for the characters. Because so often we find ourselves wanting to do things with a character that the rules don’t really support/are outright impossible in a given system or are just horrifically inefficient in a mechanical sense.
The tricky thing here is that in my mind this is “the best” system as it’s 100% just creativity based without having to worry about mechanics. But it’s also “the worst” because it absolutely 100% requires the GM to be a fair and reasonable (and often generous) person who has enough experience to know what is reasonable. And it requires the players to maintain faith in the GM’s fairness.
Did I ever tell the story of my first GMing session? It was absurd and hilarious and involved rolling a d20 instead of a d100, but was otherwise like your system.
There’s a freedom in reducing the hobby to its most basic parts, but an odd kind of loneliness as well. Without mechanics there’s nothing to play off of but the raw number on dice, and the dice are sort of minimalist as improv partners go.
I love your explanation of “the best” and “the worst” here. It reminds me of that part in (obscure reference warning) “The Book of the New Sun” when the Autarch is explaining to Severian that his form of government is the highest and best, since it rests secure in the control of a single figure. There is an appeal in simplicity, but you give up the dialogue with rules and other players that creates a sense of balance in tabletop/democracy.
As a recovering munchkin myself, I am familiar with this concept. Though, I experienced it through wonky probability. World of Darkness is very prone to this, due to it being a “roll a number of dice equal to your skill.” It doesn’t matter that your character has a Dexterity of 5, a Stealth of 5, and a +3 bonus from magic, if you rolled no successes on your roll then you are easy for everyone to see. We played it out as basically my character just timed something wrong and someone turned around while i was darting between cover.
Of course, there is also the opposite circumstance where I tracked a person back to their evil villain lair, suspected it was too easy, threw a rock out to attract attention and watched the True Fae leap out to look around. Deciding that taking on a Gentry with a Brawl of zero was a bad idea, I decided to creep away and rolled 14 successes. The GM declared that I had hidden so well that the Hedge forgot I was there, and ended up back in the real world.
I think “Dice+modifier” systems are better in this respect than “Drop X Dice” systems because you get more consistency and it is easy to feel that your character has a certain degree of base competence. A Pathfinder Rogue with a +20 to Acrobatics is a nimble, cat-footed ninja capable of walking across an average balance beam on their worst day, and the numbers play that out. A Dexterity 5, Athletics 5 Changeling can still bomb that 10 dice roll though.
I think this is key. It’s not that you suddenly slipped on a banana peel and lost your status as badass stealth dude. You simply ran into some rotten luck.
I remember hearing an explanation of a dude that quit gaming in highschool after one session. He couldn’t understand how, when a giant armored worm was crawling past his hiding spot, he could simply “miss” on his attack.
“How can I miss? It’s as big as a house and not moving very fast!”
His vision of the world didn’t match up with the explanation he was hearing, which was simply the bizarre “you miss” instead of the more believable “your sword bounces off of its scales.” That’s what I’m getting at with the need for good communication. It’s about getting on the same conceptual page with the rest of your party.
I like to play these as “you need to be clear what the challenge is”.
So while Bard’s charisma and speech skills make him excellent at pressing people’s buttons, he still has to identify the correct button to press, if it even exists.
This can be played as a the NPC having a really high barrier to overcome (“this guy is really committed to his cause”) but I prefer for PCs to not be able to simply overpower encounters with skills (“sorry, the barmaid is committed to her partner and has you arrested for harassing her. A magical restraining order is placed upon the bard”).
I find this gets players more invested in the world because their actions will have consequences, and they cannot simply assume that they can get everything they want if they roll high enough. So they need to actually think and, you know, role-play their character.
But then I take the view that the DM is there to make the shared story interesting, and that this requires both challenges and breakthroughs. So of course there will be other ways to get the information. Some of those might not even exist until someone thinks of trying one.
This tends to be the method I use, but you have to be wary of the whole “punishing bad RP” thing. Some gamers loathe the idea that “I have to be as charming as my bard.” The important distinction is that we are talking about content rather than delivery. You don’t have to be a smooth taker, but you do have to come up with plausible ideas that work for the scene. If the merit of hose ideas affects DC, we might think of this as a “hidden circumstance bonuses.” Less mechanically, we might think of it as GM fiat.
Funky stuff to keep in mind. :/
I had a situation worth mentioning that I only recalled when I was reading this comment. Had a group who was talking to an NPC and one player, who to be honest was normally just looking at his computer until someone needed healing, looks up and the following exchange occurs.
Player: “I roll diplomacy” Tosses a die on the table “32.”
Me (DM): “Okay…what do you say?”
Player: “I rolled diplomacy, I say 32 in diplomacy.”
Me (DM): “Uh…I get that. You hit the DC. I am trying to determine what you are asking for. Do you say something like “Hey man, we’re just trying to get through here, so could you let us get by this once?” Do you try to get the guy to be your friend?
Player: “I shouldn’t have to say things. My character is good at talking, not me.”
Me (DM): “What is the goal of your diplomacy check, how do you want him to react?”
Player: “Oh. I just get him to tell us what’s going on.”
Me (DM): “Okay, so you’re trying to gather information.”
We typically have people that say a piece or roleplay, then toss a die to see how well the speech went over and I have never penalized someone for not being good at coming up with something to say in character; only for asking something of the NPC that they didn’t want to give or the like. I realize that not everyone is suave, but as the GM I do need to know what you expect to accomplish.
In a different game (Changeling the Lost), I have an entire situation based around getting two sisters to make up with each other after one betrayed the other and left her in Arcadia. As you can imagine, the younger sister who was left behind is not really into forgiving her older sister after she practically had nothing to keep her from falling into despair except for a nova hot rage. Combined with the natural trust issues from being betrayed by your older sister, and there is an entire table of social modifiers based on what you ask her to do. The older sister has a different table, since part of the reason she betrayed the younger is that she felt she was living in the more artistically talented sister’s shadow and she has this whole secret inferiority complex going on. It’s been fun watching the Player try to slowly get them to realize that under all the raw emotions they do still somehow care about each other.
You’re quoting the script of an older comic, lol:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/gather-information
I think we’re on the same page here. 🙂
It ought to have been a success by what probability had said our chances were. That said, the dice didn’t agree, and the dice’s decision was clear.
We were a stealth party. We were all great at stealth, and we’d all taken a nifty little feat that let us use the roll of whoever got the highest roll when we rolled stealth together. With four people in the party, chances were that someone was going to roll at least halfway decent on each attempt.
Our first go at stealthing, though, every single player rolled a natural 1 at the same time. We all tripped over each other and fell into bed with the sleeping drow matriarch.
Fun times.
Especially if you’re a lonely drow matriarch, lol.