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…
@ GiacomoArt — It’s not about “yea old school!”, or about good or bad GMs. Just like Initiative: the Silent Killer, it’s about seemingly logical and sensible rules changes that unintentionally take away the magic of the game.
You’re dead on. I think it’s nothing about “yea old school!” or the current state of rules-happy games. It’s probably about what constitutes “game.” If you’ve been raised by computer games, you want a roll of the dice, or random number generator, to determine your fate. Well, as a DM I’m not a computer, so I don’t have the inclination to do that. I’d much rather tune into the player’s personality and work with that to see what he or she sees.
I think the idea of giving a brief but tantalizing description of a room or scene, and then letting the players “bite” on the description, is the way to go. When I DM, I expect activity, not passivity, on the players’ part. Once their attention and interest latch onto something in a description, they get into the game. Rolling dice, for the most part, cannot do that; that’s about as personal as a game of craps in your local casino.
It is a social game. If the player isn’t a genius but his PC is, then there’s game mechanics or your judgement as a DM to make him spot something that only a genius would.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0003.html
Yeah, you have a point. When playing our last Pathfinder campaign the GM would often race through the blocks of “say this part aloud” text as if embarrassed, as if to say, “This is just color so I’m going to zip through it and get to the good stuff.” Maybe we have been adversely conditioned by the spot check.
We see this in videogames, too. Players get lost or confused, so the designers add HUD widgets (here’s the monster!) and automaps (you are here) and even GPS systems (GTA IV) and the players stop seeing all that art you spent 10 million dollars to make.
Which brings me to my fundamental problem with 3e, 4e, Pathfinder, and big-budget videogames: they are designed for lowest-common-denominator players. They make this assumption: “Our players are idiotic douches. We have to engineer systems and rules that will provide a passable experience even with lame players.” In that light, the spot check is good (our players don’t pay attention, we need a spot check to give them a second chance to notice the shit we’ve prepped), making it practically a board game is good, the excruciating detail on what you can or cannot do is good, GM rules like “Monsters don’t attack unconscious players” are good. But now, players and GMs who *aren’t* lame are better off playing a niche game that respects them.
That said, with what I’ve been running lately (https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B52cQuwRijG8YjllMzg2N2QtOTdhZS00ZGU3LWFkZWMtZmM1MWYwMGNhNGU4&hl=en) I still do spot checks, but the players often get narrative control on success (a bit like Donjon) and failures usually escalate (“you didn’t see the ambush.”)
I disagree.
We are NOT playing as ourselves. We are playing as characters (with given stats and such that roughly describe there abilities.
I may (or may not) be able to solve a riddle – but that has no bearing on if my character can. This is why an int check is a better representation of my character trying his hand at a logic puzzle then just giving it to me in real life.
I may not (or may) be good at spoting when subtle differences in the enviroment are pointing at danger – but that has no bearing on if my character can. This is why a perception check is better then describing the scene to me and seeing if I notice that there are slightly less bird songs in the description then usual.
@ Kyle: That’s all true, but by that logic, when are the players ever better experts than the characters? Why have players at all? The fighter character is a real warrior: they should know which opponent to attack or which feat to use more than a player who has never been in a real sword fight. The wizard character should know better which spells to use than the player, etc.
But where’s the fun in that? To be a game, it’s first priority should be play. I’d argue that realism or accurate simulation is far less important than whether putting decisions in the hands of the player (or taking them away) makes it a better game to play. The opposite extreme, having the players do everything, is just as bad: I wouldn’t want to play a game where you had to calculate exactly how to move each individual muscle in your character’s legs to make them walk. That’s not fun for the player, so that’s better delegated to the character.
The question of game design is really: what decisions are fun to put in the hands of the players and which aren’t. My argument is that the game is more fun and engaging when players use their brains and interact with the environment rather than sitting back and letting the dice tell them what they see.
I think you made a good counter argument and it definitely does come down to a matter of taste in the end.
But to continue the debate regardless:
It’s a balancing act. You don’t have to describe how he swings the sword (at least other then occasionally when someone describes a flourish or whatever they add to the swing for flavour) but you do have to choose the target. However – even then there is room (at least when my group plays) to let the character do some of the lifting instead of the player. Your fighter can use an appropriate knowledge to see what target is vulnerable in what ways. Some of the DMs I play with would grant you insight based on some creatures based on the fact that you are a fighter (if you’ve been fighting an enemy fighter for X rounds you may ask the DM if you know roughly what level they are).
In my complaint (above, in my first post) about spot checks and logic puzzles, using descriptions for a spot check or asking the player the riddle is completely ignoring the character. Not balance – but 100% ignoring the character in favour of the player. The rolls aren’t meaningless conveniences they are central and important role playing devices – they inform you what your character can do and know.
As for my personal tastes:
For how much you bring from the player – I personally vote aiming at 0%. 0% comes from the player’s personality. The player is supposed to bring as little of their real life abilities, prejudices and tastes to the table as possible. The player is 100% of the time supposed to be role-playing as their interpretation of the personality they constructed. Importantly, you are NOT role-playing as ‘a Halfling illusionist and some short paragraph of fluff but whenever it falls out of those confines I fall back on the players tastes/knowledge/abilities’. You are role-playing as a complete person who is not you in any way (this does not mean it has to be your opposite, of course).
Is my way ‘the best way’ – no of course not, the way that is the most fun for everyone overall is the best way. Is my way better role-playing….ignoring the fun factor, then honestly yes I think this way is better role playing.
Your ability to solve logic puzzles or figure out when a DMs description contains something ‘off’ is (IMO) completely irrelevant to what your character would realistically know. To bring in your own ability is bad role-playing unless your ability relates to the character (including a FULL personality!) and if that happens it is likely to coincide with the dice result anyway.
Just because you are great at logic puzzles does not in any way mean it’s appropriate for your barbarian to ace them too – that is terrible role-play. And if you are dumb as a spade that doesn’t mean your wizard should suffer and not be able to do his typical role of figuring out the riddles, again that is bad role-play.
Just because you have a degree in X doesn’t mean you’re character is too (unless you’ve spent appropriate points in it) – that is terrible role-play. And also – just because someone who is a real builder or scientist is role-playing as a builder or scientist doesn’t mean they should get to use their character better then a layman who is role playing as the same thing! That is awful role play.
Just because you’ve been playing D&D for fifteen years and can read your DM’s descriptions of a scene like the back of your hand does not mean your aloof wizard should start spotting every bush that wasn’t described quite right and has a goblin in it while your ranger who has maxed out perception ranks is failing to notice every one because it’s his first campaign. Bad, bad role play. Might be lots of fun and might reward real life effort – but fundamentally bad role-play.
However, fun > role-playing. I whole heartedly agree with your point that playing it the other way might be more fun. But I also want to (strongly) point out that this IS a sacrifice of role-play to fun. That’s fine – but just be aware that that’s what’s happening.
I know I’ve already gone on a little long but I feel like adding that my group has played with roughly this attitude and we do so very easily, smoothly and comfortably. It doesn’t (despite how it sounds) require large back stories and it isn’t demanding. We are lazy gamers and I think I might be making this sound hard and demanding but it really isn’t.
Thanks for the reply – looking forward to another if you decide to post one. If I argue strong (or even come across rude) it was not my intention and it was written with no malice. You write some damn cool articles!
@Kyle
I don’t think that Ben is proposing that you ignore the character (and their stats) entirely, I think his point is that A) the more the players are interacting with the environment the better and that B) rolling dice can detract from that interaction. For example, if a group’s playstyle is that the GM automatically rolls spot checks in a room to see if any of the PCs see anything, you (might) have room encounters something like:
GM: OK, now that the combat’s over you look around the room [rolls some dice behind screen] and the ranger spots that one of the stone formations is odd, looking at it more closely the thief notices that its carved and has a secret compartment which he opens and finds 150gps
Player 1: Hurray! We move on to the next room….
From a strict simulationist perspective this is fine and if everyone at the table wants to play this way then great, everyone is having fun. But as you say you’ve traded off some amount of the players being involved in the action in order to better stick to the simulation. And to go the other way (as Ben suggests) sacrifices some amount of simulation to increase the involvement of the players.
I do not think that Ben’s suggestion here necessarily detracts from the roleplaying, that is from the players acting as their characters and not themselves. A small step from my example above would be to require the players to say they were searching instead of just rolling automatically, or if everyone knew that the automatic roll was some low level default check (e.g. taking 10) but if you specifically told the GM you were searching it would be better. This would increase the interaction a bit.
Even if you get rid of the roll entirely it doesn’t have to mean that the character stats are ignored. Just because a player thought to say that he’s looking behind the party to see if anyone’s following doesn’t mean that he’s going to see the goblins – even without a roll. If the goblins are pretty sneaky and it’s their woods, the priest won’t see them but the ranger would. Now a simulationist probably is not that happy with my on-the-fly decision without dice but the narrativst is perfectly happy. So really it’s up to your group what they consider fun.
To me the main issue is did the player have to think of looking behind them or did the GM include that in some roll without the player doing something themselves. To me, the player doing something is better than them waiting for the GM to tell them.
But Ben’s core thesis here is (I think) that there is a danger in just letting the dice roll handle everything for the players, if the dice are deciding almost everything about what the character does, then the player is less directly involved in the game.
As another example, you mentioned logic puzzles which to me don’t seem to make much sense as a game element if all you are doing is rolling to solve it. If I describe the door as being fastened with some sort of logic puzzle (DC 20) or locked (DC 20) the only difference is (possibly) what skill is used to open it. The players are doing the exact same thing in both cases, which makes me think that after a while they will stop caring which it is (“uhh sure whatever, what’s the skill and DC?” ). On the plus side there’s less work for the GM since they don’t have to come up with an actual puzzle
To me once the player is saying things like “just tell me the skill & DC”, or worse, if the GM is rolling for the character without any initiative on the part of the player (e.g. my example at the top) something has been lost. It may be a better simulation, but not really what I’m interested in.
i’m a bit late to this party, sorry, but @Kyle, you’re still playing the character not just watching him go.
if you’re playing a meticulous, observant character, you should be making some attempt to play him as such. You can’t just smash through everything at mach 3 and then demand all the information because you neglected the part of the RPer’s agreement that you should be attempting to represent your character in how you play him.
If you’re not very good at it, then your DM should be attempting to meet you somewhere in the middle or encourage you to do the things your character should be doing.
It’s a lot like old-style alignment; you can’t write lawful good in the corner of your sheet and expect your paladin to be unhindered when you start stabbing peasants, just like you can’t write spot 20 on your sheet and not have to respect that with how you play your character.