This tends to happen more heavily with a subset of skills:
- Deception
- Investigation
- Persuasion
- Search
The simplest way to talk about it is to showcase examples of play from the two perspectives:
Rolls vs Roles
Deception Roll
DM: The medusa stares at you furiously, holding back her stone gaze for the briefest moment. "Why have you come here, fools?"
Player: "Oh great medusa, we are here to worship you and serve as your bodyguards!" I roll my Deception skill.... 18!
DM: That's a success! "Fascinating... no sooner do I have a need than you appear. What skills do you have that can be of service for me?"
etc.
Deception Role
DM: The medusa stares at you furiously, holding back her stone gaze for the briefest moment. "Why have you come here, fools?"
Player 1: Okay wait. What do we know about this medusa so far?
Player 2: She eats ash and drinks smoke?
Player 1: Awesome, but I don't know if it helps us right now...
Player 3: She's had graven images of Cadixtat, the Chaos Titan all through her halls!
Player 1: Hmm yeah, and we heard from the Knowspider that she's pretty paranoid- and all those traps sure prove it.
Player 2: Hey wait, didn't we kill some priests of Cadixtat earlier? I stole one of their holy symbols thinking we could sell it... are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Player 1: Awesome! We've got it. Follow my lead. "Ohh great medusa! We suffered a plague of nightmares sent by the Chaos Titan, Cadixtat, exhorting us to come to your aid and protection! We bear his mark, and show it now as a sign of our faith and service!"
DM: Her tension visibly relaxes! Her shoulders relax and her serpents move in slow sinuous waves. "So. The titan himself has heard my need? This bodes well. Come forward..."
etc.
Search Roll
DM: The room is centered around a wooden parquetry table, with a blue-and-white china vase sitting on top of it. On the far wall is a blackened stone fireplace, with candleholders on each side. What do you do?
Player: Hmmm, I smell a trap. I want to search the room. ... I rolled a 21!
DM: Okay! Yeah, you examine the table and sure enough, there's a tripwire under the vase, connecting to mechanisms running down the central column of the table...
etc.
Search Role
DM: The room is centered around a wooden parquetry table, with a blue-and-white china vase sitting on top of it. On the far wall is a blackened stone fireplace, with candleholders on each side. What do you do?
Player 1: Okay, I raise my torch good and high so I can see clearly. How does the floor around the table look? Anything unusual or distinctive about it?
DM: Nope! The whole floor in here is the same uniform black stone. No markings or scuffing.
Player 1: Okay, I'm going to walk over next to the table. ... Do I die?
DM: Not this time!
Player 2: I want to go look around the fireplace! I'm walking over next to it, and examining one of the candlesticks.
DM: Which one?
Player 2: The right one. I'm just looking right now! Seeing if I see anything!
DM: Okay! While you do that, Player 1, what are you doing next to the table?
Player 1: Oh I'm totally messing with this vase. Carefully!
DM: How are you doing that?
Player 1: I guess I'm... putting my fingers on the lip of the vase and gently tilting it, looking under it for any kind of, like, pressure plate or whatever.
DM: Okay! Yeah, as you tilt the vase and peer under it, you see a tiny wire being stretched taut under it, disappearing into a hole in the table.
Player 1: I put the vase down! I put the vase down!
Player 2: Do I notice anything about these candlesticks?
DM: Well the right one you're looking at now? Its candles are unburned- and you notice the left one's candles are burned about half down.
Player 2: Hmmmm... what do you all think? Should we try lighting some candles?
Player 3: But which ones? The burnt ones, or the new ones?
etc.
As you can see, asking players to engage in the fiction- to actually find out what kind of lies or persuasions might be effective against their target, or to actually fictionally engage with the contents of a room- gives many more chances for play.
Though I'm half inclined to simply remove these skills from my game, I can see a possible middle ground- keep the skill, and let a successful roll against a fairly challenging DC represent the character's intuitive knowledge about the situation.
Search: "I rolled an 18!" Hmm okay, yeah! Your astute senses draw your attention to the wardrobe at the back of the room. It'd be a great place to hide some loot.... or a deadly threat.
Persuade: "Hey hey! A 21!" Rad. You can see that the nobleman is checking his water clock regularly, and you remember overhearing a whispered conversation between the servants earlier as you passed- something about "making sure it's ready in time." He seems pretty nervous about timing, specifically...
Of course, on the DM's side, this asks more work of us! In the case of the medusa example above, elements of the wider dungeon tied into her characterization- her paranoia, her worship of Cadixtat. In the trapped vase example, the DM should know how the trap functions, what physical evidence it leaves behind (a nearly invisible black ash coating over the black floor?), how it can be deactivated... you as the DM must invest your world with the authenticity the players will need to discover these things by engaging!
For elements of the environment, ask yourself:
- What tells might there be?
- What is the most interesting?
- What is the most valuable?
- How sensitive is the danger here?
- How could it be negated? What evidence is there of that?
For elements of personalities, ask yourself:
- What does this personality claim to want?
- What does this personality really want?
- What does this personality fear?
- How could the players present effective leverage?
- What is there about the surroundings, or other personalities, that can give insight into these answers?
What do you think?
Thank you for more of this, your insightful exposition. Your exploring the formal assumptions and interaction of moves (roles and rolls) in this way resonated with concerns I've got. I mean that the avenues that players have during gameplay, both GMs and PCs, are regulated signals or permissions to make or interrogate statements in fiction. They are mechanized modules which highlight thematic and actionable moments within the situation. Making or calling for these rolls/moves gives occasion for someone to say something interesting given the intent and genera of a game--navigating and surviving a gorgon's lair in a fantasy setting for example. The problem is that there's nothing like a definite cue for how to say something; only when to say. In the end of your essay, you provide an excellent and succinct guide for how to say the thing (and all without preordaining the circumstance!). The difficulty with mechanics is that they do what they do every time. Your list of questions for a GM to ask helps to give the GM interesting stuff to say before and after the roll. These lists can and clearly have become internalized aspects of a GMs practice.
ReplyDeleteMy question: can we expect PCs to adopt the soft-mechanics of reflective roleplaying as part of the rules in the way we expect them to use and learn the hard-mechanics of rollplaying? Second, how do you design that into the game if its something we can expect?
Thanks for the food for thought.
While I understand your concerns here, I also take issue with the conclusions.
ReplyDeleteIn restricting the power of mechanics in your game world, you limit accessibility. Mechanics empower the player, whether the mechanic describes searching, persuading, or attacking. I'm making an assumption here, but my guess is that you don't limit the power of mechanics in combat. Why is exploration and interaction different for you?
Also, too much weight becomes placed on the DM's real life experiences. People learn how to play and DM by using the rules, and vague rules teach poorly. A DM needs to be able to make a trap they cannot explain or make an NPC they cannot predict how a PC will persuade, just as they are not expected to know how an Orc fights or a Wizard creates a fireball.
You are reducing a game designed to expand learning into a game that tests and compares real life experiences and assumptions. This reduction requires you to play with like-minded individuals, limiting exposure to new ideas.
You are a fan of asking, "what is the problem we need to design to fix?" The problem isn't with Persuade or Search but with the context of those actions. The tactical significance of choosing either of those actions is rarely explained to the player in advance. In contrast, the context of the Attack action is more evident, and usually the player knows exactly what they are risking.
The problem is that the mechanics for these actions do not have clear consequences. Choosing to Persuade or Search should have telegraphed consequences. What do the players give up in order to take those actions? In a tactical situation trying to get an NPC to do what the PC wants, how does the player know whether choosing Persuade or Intimidate is more likely to succeed? In a strategic sense, how does the player know whether choosing Persuade or Intimidate will affect the next time they meet that NPC, or how that NPC will go talk to other people about the PC? The consequences are generally not written into the mechanics for these types of skills the way that they are for combat actions.
Instead of trying to fix the problem, you've decided to toss out that part of the game and switch to DM fiat. That works with exceptional DMs and mature players, but it's terrible advice for anyone trying to learn how to play games better. Worse, it's the laziest way to design games.
From my experience running games I've found that avoiding skill checks as often as possible leads to increased player agency and interaction with the game world. Reducing interactions to a skill roll creates a sort of "widget filter" where players look to their list of skills as the only way they can interact with the environment. I'm not saying that that's a problem with the system in itself, but that it tends to encourage players to select the right skill widget, thereby disengaging them from the game world.
DeleteSo, what about in combat? On the majority of turns that your players take in combat, what do they say, exactly?
DeleteDo they look at their list of attacks and the state of the battle, and then say, "I use my cleaving attack on these two goblins."?
Do they imagine the battle from their experiences with battles, and then say, "I step in toward the goblin on the right with my right leg, while holding my sword back a bit to maintain my guard. As soon as he presses forward, I twist my hips to change my balance to my left foot, then feint down with my sword to draw in his ally as well. As soon as they've both taken the bait, I dodge to the right, plant my foot, then push back left to slash across both of them as they come together."?
One is using the mechanics of the game, "Cleave Ability" that enables them to hit two targets, while the other describes some crazy moves about fighting in order to hit both creatures. At my table, everyone looks down their list of abilities in combat to decide what to do. Everyone uses mechanics to decide their tactics. No one at my table has the experience or the know-how to fight a real fight. The entire point of the RPG is to allow us to be something we aren't.
As soon as you ask the players to know how to find a trap that they can't actually find in real life or how to convince a person to trust them, you are taking away the RPG substituting for them.
Also keep in mind that mechanics don't have to be skill rolls. Many spells in D&D are not skill rolls, but they grant mechanical weight. The players are empowered by spells in D&D to say, "I will change the world in this way the spell says I can."
The problem isn't with the idea of persuading or searching as mechanical devices, but how they are presented in popular games. They're too simple. They often have boring consequences. And there aren't enough variants between characters in how they are able to implement different tactics.
If you could imagine a situation where Rogues, Fighters, and Clerics all had different abilities that affected Searching and that every attempt to Search came with a trade-off, you'd have the same situation as combat, with interesting decisions to make within the game system. You wouldn't have to feel like you have to rely on your out-of-game experience to engage players in the game world.
In my game, I push those changes. Time constantly ticks by. Every action the players take is about time. When a player wants to search a room, I tell them how much time it will take, and they can use relevant abilities to speed it up. Same with getting an NPC to trust them. It takes time, and they get to see how much time it will take. My players engage with the world without having to know HOW their characters are getting the job done.