Don’t Roll, Think
DM: “You see a few white, eyeless fish, and various stone formations in a pool of water about 4′ to 6′ deep and about 10′ long. That’s all. Do you wish to leave the place now?”
Player 1: “Yes, let’s get out of here and go someplace where we can find something interesting.”
Player 2: “Wait! If those fish are just blind cave types, ignore them, but what about the stone formations? Are any of them notable? If so I think we should check them out.”
– Dungeon Master’s Guide, 1979
Here’s a Generation Gap moment for some of you: old-school D&D did not have a Spot check.
There were no rules to determine if you saw something, or heard something, or smelled something, or whatever. There were rules for surprise, rules for listening at doors (but only doors) and there were rules for finding a secret door (”tie the elf to a stick and wave him around!”), but a generic Spot check did not exist (or Search check, or Listen check, or Notice check or whatever).
Wow, you think, things are so much better now in this modern world! Now I have an accurate way of determining whether a character notices something or not. Now I can give them fair unbiased information about the world around them with a simple die roll!
How did those primitive gamers survive, you ask? Simple: players listened to the GM’s description of the game world. Then they asked questions. Then the GM (ahem, DM) told them the results.
Rolling dice is not supposed to replace your brain. Making Spot checks all the time is just a lame way of saying “well, you haven’t asked anything that would really tell me if you would notice this or not, so we’ll just roll and let the dice decide.”
And if the information you may or may not notice is pertinent to the plot, it is asinine-by-design to decide whether to reveal it with a die roll. Scene from a GM lynching: “well if you had rolled better you would have seen that the tribe had red banners instead of black and that whole game would have probably made more sense to you, but hey, you failed your Spot check…”
Why am I picking on the poor Spot check? Partially because I’m a big bully, but mostly because it’s a good example of a bad trend.
It’s not surprising that as a game evolves, people expand the rules to cover more and more cases. Do we have rules for car chases? No? Better add some. Even if it’s just a question of applying a core mechanic where it has not been applied before, its logical to want to be able resolve more and more situations with dice.
The trick is that dice are supposed to improve the game, not replace the gamer. What’s the final outgrowth of resolving more and more things with dice instead of brains? The one-roll adventure: if you make the roll you win! Game over. No player decision making needed.
What are dice supposed to do? They’re supposed to resolve things that cannot be resolved in the polite confines of a kitchen table or in the physics of our world. Does my car explode when I crash into that tanker truck? Does my broadsword cut off that dragon’s head? Does my magic spell levitate the castle?
If it’s something you can do at the table, you should do it, not roll for it. Unless it’s boring. Or rude.
Your character is your representative in the game world, not your replacement. Tell your character what to do. Ask the GM questions. Explore the environment. Think, play, etc.
Here’s the challenge: if it’s not a combat situation or about to become one (aka checking for surprise or attacks at unawares), don’t use Spot checks. At all. None. Zero. Let players describe what they look for or how they are behaving and just arbitrarily decide what they see or don’t see.
Once your players get the gist of it, see if they become more inquisitive, interactive and basically just play more instead of falling back on the Spot check crutch.
What other rolls should you stop using in favor of play? You tell me…
July 16th, 2007 at 7:12 am
I believe I’ve heard a quote somewhere that goes like this:
“Say yes or roll the dice.”
If a player requests information, give it to them (Say Yes), unless there’s a genuine conflict involved, or failure makes things more interesting (Roll the Dice).
July 16th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Stuff like this is why I keep coming back to your site. You have a keen eye for what’s either lacking or unnecessary, and thankfully you don’t pull any punches.
I will testify to the spot roll being an annoyance. It has happened before, to me, that when a player entered the room with an important piece of information (Spot DC 15!), the player rolled a natural one and the character stared at his shoes.
So I arbitrarily decided to give them the information anyway. It felt oddly liberating. The only problem, I find, with doing away with the roll entirely is that players like to roll dice. They like it a lot.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:00 am
That’s a slippery slope that your advocating here. If gamers start ignoring Spot rolls, soon they ignore other parts of the system, and eventually they are all playing diceless games!
Crazy!
Seriously, though, I totally agree with what you’re saying here. Too often a GM can fall back on the rationalization that “if the PCs had only made their X check then the adventure would have gone much better for them.”
The crux of a gaming session should never boil down to chance.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:30 am
I am leaning toward instituting a Take - 0 mechanic and lowering a lot of challenges or contests. I agree that dice rolling can get carried away, and I find that cross class skills are virtually worthless. Lower DCs might mitigate min/maxing and make cross class skills useful some of the time, promoting cross training. I like to save dice rolling for combat and surprises… most other skills I prefer to Take (0, 10, 20) as appropriate and subject to limitations of the circumstance. A player can insist on rolling, but with lower DCs, success is not so time consuming… if a player really wants to succeed at a critical point in the adventure, Take 20 can cut to the chase so to speak.
Here are the telltale phrases I use to determine which Take to use:
Casual effort - Take 0 (noticing things on the fly, jumping short distances, hearing things while sleeping, etc…)
Normal Effort - Take 10 (not able to use in combat unless hero has skill mastery and time to use skill)
Careful effort - Take 20 (the best a hero can do, but constrained by time, the hazards of failure and the ability to concentration)
For example - A gated paddock chained close with a simple lock can be opened casually by a high level rogue, or through normal effort by a high level Ranger with open locks ranks.
July 17th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Beautiful post! Please keep up the inspiring posts, I enjoy them throughly!
July 19th, 2007 at 12:01 am
A lot of the dice in D&D are there to base the game on fair, uncaring chance instead of DM fiat. You have a 50% chance to notice something / spin a convincing lie / intimidate someone, unless you’re skilled at it, in which case your chances improve. Certainly, the idea here in the third edition rules is not “can it be done at the table”, but “can it be done fairly using dice”?
Some DMs think that a good flavour (specifying where to look, coming up with an amusing lie) should only grant a bonus to your dice roll, sometimes as low as +2. This works fine — if you’re running for eleven year olds who can’t trust the arbitrariness of a DM judging everything.
My own method is to allow both skill checks and specific requests. Suppose there’s treasure hidden in the fireplace. You can find it with a DC17 Search check, but if you specifically say “I search the fireplace” there’s no reason why you wouldn’t find it immediately. Similarly, a sufficiently good argument will negate the need for a Diplomacy roll.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:15 am
[...] Don’t Roll, Think: In this ars ludi post, Ben Robbins proposes ditching spot checks in non-combat situations, and [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
This was a very thoughtful article.
The opportunity to use player ideas, observations, and intuition to allow themselves greater interaction with the game world is something that shouldn’t be squandered.
My only caveat is that sometimes Role Playing can take a back seat to pure Gaming if you don’t pay the necessary heed to the ~ characters ~. Spot, Listen, and Search modifiers come up in reflecting an aspect of a character - eagle eyes and sharp ears. The Investigator or Scout should pick up a higher percentage of the more subtle observations the party makes upon entering a particular scene.
Now, that shouldn’t always come down to rolls either. Simple modifiers and a passive “Take 10″ could be applied to get an idea of just which character should be the one that is first to notice that, say, one volume of the encyclopedia is missing from the bookshelf in the drawing room they have just entered - leaving an obvious gap. Sometimes just deciding who picks up the first clue or hint in a situation is enough to let a character shine, even if it isn’t a true “challenge” event.
- Marty Lund
July 21st, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I like the article, and I agree. I think the spot check should have been ONLY for secret doors and traps, or something like that. For example, if I want an assassin to sneak up on the group I am DM’ing the players can always call me out and say they should have been entitled a spot check. The entry in the PHB 3.5 says that it is used to counter the hide check. Maybe it is just the evolution of the rules, maybe the skill system is too complex or even better, vague. Conditional modifiers aside pg. 83 in the Spot entry under subheading “Action” rightly screws every rogue character ever… unless the DM is rolling all of the dice. (Meta-gaming)
The game should be getting simpler but it can’t. Players are just getting crazier in these games, myself included.
July 24th, 2007 at 1:23 am
@Nanja Kang: Secret doors and traps come under Search skill, which covers things you’re actively looking around for, as opposed to things you notice. Without a Spot skill, how do you objectively determine a player or creature’s ability to notice someone sneaking up on him? How do you model a character who has especially good senses and will automatically notice an ambush, or similarly, a monster who is more or less likely to spot a hiding PC?
July 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I like how you compare D&D today with “old school” and I agree that the new rules do leave out a lot of role-playing opportunities. Case in point, 10 years ago or so I ran my players through the Slave Lords module using 1st Edition rules. Now I’m running an almost entirely new group (my wife ran through the original) through the same module that has been converted to 3.5. We’re just about ready to go into Highport to gather information. I haven’t decided yet where to draw the line between role-playing to get the information or allowing “Information Gathering” rolls.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I don’t believe that the mechanic is there to dumb down the game play. I think it is there to speed up play. If you play at conventions you have a time limit to the game you are playing and taking an hour trying to figure out something in a room is not an option when you only have 4 hours to finish. If you are playing a home game then don’t use it because you should have plenty of time. If your time is limited then roll once and move on to the next room.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Roll the dice anyway - make them wonder if they missed anything
July 25th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I can understand where you’re coming from, but I have to disagree at least a little… or at least to add a qualifier. The problem with just asking for more details and dictating your character’s actions based on the ensuing descriptions is that what your character sees and does is based off your own personal insight as a player. If your character’s stats dictate that he is MORE perceptive than you as a player, you’re not doing your character justice by limiting his success/failure to your own. The same holds true when taken in reverse, although then you’re getting into questions of poor roleplaying and metagaming.
July 25th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Wow….never been called a primitive gamer….lol….I guess I would be one of those people who played by the 1st edition rules way back in the eighties. We did move partially to second edition system when it came out, but before long the annoyances of real life mostly put an end to our regular gaming, so I’m not particularly familiar with the newer edition and what has been happening in the past few years.
I would agree with some of the comments here. There were many ‘holes’ and oddities we found in the original rules, and most of the time, our response was to make up our own rules regarding these situations, as I think Gygax and company intended for people to do. We tried not to ‘mechanize’ our solutions too much, attempting to bring the roleplaying aspect to the forefront in our solutions if possible. I think that it often depends on a players character and how attuned the DM is/was to those characters. If you play your character headstrong and impatient, perhaps they will not notice as much as they could, or should. A character that you normally play in a more deductive fashion, who takes note of details, etc, may be granted more leeway by the DM, and perhaps given a nudge or an extra emphasis on some descriptions to try and stimulate their ‘normal’ attention to details. I guess the methods are as varied as the people who play the games.
On another note, there was a perception attribute introduced in the 1st edition rules - I believe it originally appeared in Dragon Magazine (not sure of the issue, might have it somewhere still), and I’m pretty sure it was then included in Unearthed Arcana when it was released. The perception attribute sounds like the precursor to the spot roll you are mentioning above. When we incorporated it into our games, we ran into the same issue…one DM would rely heavily on it, to the point you didn’t have to think, just roll. The other DM followed a more balanced approach, using the perception roll occasionally, working with it dependent on circumstances.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
What a lot of sense!!!
July 25th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I think an obvious choice would be to drop rolls for uncontested skill checks or non-combat situations. That get rid of the cops-and-robbers arguement of who shot who, and keeps teh CalvinBall to a minimum. This is not to say that the GM should just give out all the info just because the characters enter the room. But if they ask reasonable questions or look in the right places, give them the reward.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I am going to take an opposing view. Sort of.
I like the spot check. But I also think that I use it differently than was described above.
And for the record - my old school creds are as good as anyones.
I see spot as immensely useful. When used properly (imho, oc).
First of all - the purpse of spot is to see things that are HIDDEN. “The spot skill is used primarily to detect characters or creatures who are hiding” - PHB p. 83.
It is not to determine the color of a tribes banners. Unless those banners are disguised or hidden.
It is not to determine whether or not there is anything interesting in a dungeon pool. Unless something is hidden in that pool (and not all that is interesting is hidden, nor is all that is hidden interesting). In the above example, neither the fish, nor the stone formations were hidden. Although perhaps a knowledge check might have revealed something about one or the other. In which case - the DC is set by whether the DM wants the PCs to have the information (low), or feels that it would give them an advantage but is not essential (higher).
Thus - if it is information that the players are SUPPOSED to know - you tell them (although using old school techniques like providing leading descriptions and reserving details and significance for those who investigate them is strongly encouraged).
Spot checks, on the other hand, reveal things that you “DON’T want them to know”. Or rather, information that would be beneficial for them to know, but which is not going to break the game if they don’t, Knowing that there is a snake curled up on the path ahead of the party, or that two orcs lie in ambush ahead of them might give them an advantage compared to what would occur if they failed the spot check. But failing that spot check merely changes the condition of the encounter. Being able to read someone’s lips or notice something unusual about your opponent might give you an advantage. But if the information is information that you WANT the players to have, you shouldn’t be designing a skill check as they only way to get it.
Any more than you should be placing climb checks, lock pick checks, or ANY other check between the players and the only way for the party to succeed.
Spot checks are not the problem. Mis-using them as a replacement for DM description and PC roleplaying is the problem.
Carl
August 9th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I’ve found myself doing this, noticing it and remembering the old days before such rolls… and now I come here and it’s all laid out for me. Cool stuff!
August 15th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Well, I for one use perception rolls to determine the amount or degree of information immidately gained. Failed perception roll still can mean one sees the banner and if the player asks questions, I will provide the answers for her. Rolling 3 successes on a perception roll for example, means that the character will not only notice the banner but some other detail as well, like the army not having a camp of followers, which is rather odd.
September 20th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
@Don re: Gather Information. How about giving the players the info, but a failed roll means their opponents find out they’ve been asking questions?
May 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I’m going to suggest a different solution to the same problem that isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario.
But first, I’m going to draw an analogy with social skills: For a long time I disliked the idea of social skills. “If you can do it (i.e. roleplay it), why are you rolling dice?” But I’ve since come to realize that the correct application of social skills is actually advantageous because it removes arbitrary decision points.
One of the things I love about playing RPGs is when unexpected surprises spontaneously emerge out of gameplay.
So if the PCs lie to an NPC I have a decision to make: Does he believe it? Without a social skill, I have to either say “yes” or “no”. But if I add a Bluff skill to the game, I can suddenly say “maybe” and see what happens. Even more importantly I can vary the likelihood of the lie being believed depending on how believable the lie was.
Rather than closing down social interactions, it opens them up: Players become engaged with the game as they try to figure out how to use their skills to their best advantage.
Now, let me bring this back to Spot and Search checks: I vary the difficulty of the check by what the player tells me they’re doing. Is there a bit of writing carved into the lower lip of a desk? That’s difficult to notice if you’re searching the entire room, but far more likely to be noticed if you’re focusing your search on the desk itself and will almost certainly be noticed if you tell me that you’re specifically looking at the underside of the desk.
Perhaps the most common example of this is the infamous “I look up” instruction that happens whenever they get ambushed by something dropping down on top of them. But just because they’re looking up doesn’t necessarily mean the pirates should spot the ninja lurking in the shadows there — maybe the ninja is just that good at hiding. So, when you give me that instruction, you get a bonus for spotting things on the ceiling… but suffer a penalty to noticing things anywhere else.
This type of mechanical differentiation encourages the same type of proactive play that you’re advocating; but it doesn’t discard the advantages of using mechanics, either.
As for the example of a scenario falling apart because the PCs don’t notice one particular clue… well, that’s just as likely to happen without Spot checks. One solution is to make sure you always give them all the clues, but I find a better solution is the Three Clue Rule.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Justin if you haven’t read it yet take a look at Rolling for Roleplaying: the Virtual Roll. I think that might be the kind of approach you’re talking about.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Just discovered the site. Awesome!
I agree that rolling should not replace thinking, and just wanted to point out that GMs got lynched back in the old days, too, when they forgot to think (Well you didn’t SAY that you looked at the floor, and that’s why you didn’t notice the pool of lava….).
Along with the spot check, I think the game has evolved from “don’t tell them unless they ask” to more of a “tell them everything upfront EXCEPT for this (Spot DC).” In the end, I think the latter premise probably keeps the game moving better.
May 19th, 2008 at 5:06 am
In my next campaign im trying out a new idea:
Every spot check is a series of difficulties. I will give an example of the party going through a forest and meeting a bear:
Spot DC -10: You are in a forest (okay joking on this one)
Spot DC 10: The bear have bloody paws
Spot DC 15: Thats probably from the dead animal lying behind it, hidden in the underbrush
Spot DC 30: It looks like it just ate a lot, so it probably isn’t hungry
The point being that the better the roll, the more information, but the party isn’t excluded from clues with a low roll, the clues just get better.