TheGreatEvilKing posted:

The skill challenge is an attempt to slap something mechanical into an out of combat scenario - which, given that this is D&D 5e, is doomed to questionable mechanics and tears. I'm not sure official publications use the term skill challenge anywhere honestly, but those never worked very well in 4e either due to Mike Mearls' bad math skills, so I'm assuming this is some homebrew skill challenge dealie where you need either X successes in Y rounds or X successes before Z failures. Given that, it literally doesn't matter what the hell happens in the fiction because 5e's skill system is poorly defined and allows poo poo like "Batman Utility Belt proficiency". It's best used as a collaborative storytelling prompt (as the other posters have stated) and quite frankly I don't see a difference between "I use Athletics to move the log I just made up" and "my 200 page backstory is about how I was raised by a group of monks who picked locks as a mental exercise to get closer to God, so I should be able to use my Religion skill to open this lock". The latter is tacitly encouraged by 5e including randomly switching your ability scores for skill checks if you can convince the DM it's appropriate, so go nuts! It's a D&D game, not a masterpiece of writing. You're sure as hell not creating great prose as an untrained actor ad-libbing with your friends, the plot can change in 5 minutes because the PCs did something you didn't expect, characterization is ever-mutable as the DM needs surprise antagonists or whatever, and ultimately it's a collaborative story so you can't really go into it expecting a full 3 act structure with a set of recurring themes that create some kind of allegory because you have 5 people with very different ideas of where the story is going to go. Heck, the game even has characters pull new abilities out of their collective asses every time they level up, and if we're taking verisimilitude I find it less likely that a wizard would suddenly become a swordmaster than a strong dude finding a log in the road. It's all a game of ad libs to make people who focused on skills feel good about their life choices, don't sweat it too much.

Trivia posted:

It's basically the difference between a deus-ex-machina and Chekhov's gun. If someone fires a gun where none once existed, ppl will say "where'd that gun come from?" or "how convenient that he just happened to have one." But if you set up its existence first, none of those issues arise. For me personally, seeing that sort of thing happen takes me right out of the moment.

Trivia posted:

Then say that. Don't say curtains when what you really want is "something to hide behind." Or ask the DM "what's in this room? Can you describe it to us? Now all players can react to the objects in the room and also use them.

Trivia posted:

The player could also say "I overturn a table to use as cover." when there was no table before. Well, that's fine I guess, but what's to stop them from willing a table into existence in every conceivable room, or attempting to do so? Other than "Not being an rear end in a top hat." That's where it can get "gamey," and the distinction between action / reaction is important imo.

Trivia posted:

I wouldn't necessarily want to say no, just the option to.

Trivia posted:

but asking first gives them an out.

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

So, for example, if I was in a game you were playing, and I landed the killing blow on say an ogre or whatever, and described some cool fighting move and said "My brother taught me that trick, back home"... that you would be taken right out of the moment and would be internally going "What brother? there was no mention of a brother! He just made that up just then!"?


That's what I said. The player should say "I want to hide behind the curtains, using my curtain hiding ability".


What do you mean "when there was no table before"? You understand that there's no actual table, right? It's all made up. As soon as you mention a table, the table has always been there in the scene. It doesn't in-fiction pop into existence when you say "there's a table". This doesn't change based on who said "a table".

Now, it's starting to be pretty obvious that you don't understand "don't be an rear end in a top hat", but are you really gonna pretend that players who aren't being assholes are conjuring tables into existence in rowboats, on top of icy mountains, in forests, and so on?



This really all comes down to you wanting players to ask your permission, doesn't it?

Trivia posted:

what's to stop them from doing that all the time and just being super video gamey, trying to min-max everything all the time?

Trivia posted:

As for the permission snipe, you're trying to paint me as this iron handed totalitarian.

Trivia posted:

if you allow characters to

what's to stop them

you can put one in at any time for any reason, but if players know they can

Trivia posted:

The DM took great pains to describe the current weather and time (early morning, roughly 9 am).

...

A player asking a leading question to prompt the DM AND THEN react to that is ok, but a player telling a DM that something exists sticks in my craw.

change my name posted:

You need to buy Tasha's wholesale to get Optional Class Features as an option, btw. I picked it up cheap in the character creator bundle last week but there is no piecemeal option for it

Trivia posted:

That's a far cry than letting the player claim curtains everywhere he can.

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

Lol

Trivia posted:

Saying that, because we're not actors or writers, therefore we shouldn't bother to attempt to do well I think misses the point. Nobody's comparing D&D to great works of literature (and that's an absurdly high bar), but that shouldn't mean we shouldn't try to make a cohesive or comprehensive story, yes?

kingcom posted:

God gently caress this is the most depressing topic the thread has come across. You're all playing the game, you're all actively talking and working with each other to tell this story. Every single one of the people at the table, whether they are playing as a player character or playing as the GM has equal levels of control of the situation. At any point a player can stand up and say 'no that doesn't happen to me' and there is not a single thing a GM can do to countermand that. The fiction and story and therefore the game and play itself is a collaborative experience by its very nature and it only functions by shared input and shared agreement. It is some really loving lovely browbeating Gygaxian pants shittery that tricks people into thinking that everyone contributing to the story is a bad thing or somehow an incorrect play experience.

If not everyone wants to invent things in a scene and add colour and set dressing then they don't have do but if players have a creative and cool idea, don't stop them, support them. In any other medium, adding increasing texture and scenery to a story is critical for really tactile experience but for some reason its being frowned up on in the medium of make believe storytelling.

Let me explain to you what that Skill Check was about. You see travelling from point a to point b is boring poo poo. It doesn't matter, it literally just unimportant filler that has no bearing on what you're actually doing and you can just cut straight to the destination but instead the GM has opened up a box for everyone to have a chance to give a spotlight on each player. The consequences are pretty limited but it turns an irrelevant and boring scene into one where 4 people can put their heads together make it interesting and exciting, to add some texture to the world. They're given the opportunity to be writers and a writer when handed a list of solutions (skills) is going to find a problem for those solutions to solve. Thats the core consequence of that mechanical design.


Everything everyone does in a ttrpg is a prompt for input, from players to other players and from GM to players and if my players invented something unprompted I would be loving hyped. That player just straight up said allowed something they cared about their character that integrates their character to the world around them. I would want to immediately write down and talk to that player about what they said, who is this person what experience led them to knowing about this stuff, etc. A player who does that is actual gold. There is genuinely nothing more miserable to me as a GM than when I find out nobody at the table is going to want to invent something and surprise me.

If I want to just tell a story I wouldn't GM, I want to be a part of this play experience, I want to have people share their stories and change what I was expecting as well. If I'm the only arbiter of what happens in the world and what the world consists of, that world is going to be pretty loving dull to me because I already know it all. Having a whole table of additional voices and ideas and perspectives placed upon that baseline I can provide improves both from the finer details to the grand structure of the worlds ideologies.

Trivia posted:

I'm sorry this isn't more entertaining.

Then what's the point of even playing at all?

Man it sounds like you've had some bad experiences before and you're projecting that on to me. When this happened in game we rolled with it and I deferred to the GM. I took my issue here to talk about it. At no point did I say "you're playing wrong" or "players shouldn't help create the world." And I absolutely wouldn't want to hang up the game for however long to hash out the minutiae of one stupid detail.

I agree. Within reason of course.

See, this here shows me that there is a fundamental need to ground things and justify their existence. If a player said that X person from their backstory told them, that would satisfy me much more than making up an NPC to justify their knowledge. It's like Screenwriting 101. You have to introduce people, places, and things first and then use them later. If you watch a movie and the movie suddenly cuts to the protagonist piloting a helicopter to chase Bad Guy without first setting up the helicopter's existence, I can't but help think "oh that's convenient (and lazy writing)."


Not really. I haven't laid out everything (and that's my bad), but the NPC we talked to said to get to our destination we need to go back the way we came, then head east at a crossroads. The need to go east is prompted by him (the DM). A solution to finding east is to find the sun's position.


Well, it really depends on the adventure doesn't it? We're using a published adventure, which comes with a pre-made setting. Having a mountain suddenly appear where there was none before affects things. If it were a homebrew adventure where anything's possible, then hell yeah, that snow-capped mountain would be kickin' rad. That's the very definition of emergent gameplay and what makes tabletops so fun.


I totally agree with you, provided it's a blank canvas game. But if it were a module it seems like headaches could arise.

kingcom posted:

Also I got some loving beef with this poo poo. What the gently caress are you talking about 'that's literally the DM's main job'. Now lets put aside the paid GM's stuff cause I've got no experience with that and don't really understand the social nature of it.

Trivia posted:

The player could also say "I overturn a table to use as cover." when there was no table before. Well, that's fine I guess, but what's to stop them from willing a table into existence in every conceivable room, or attempting to do so? Other than "Not being an rear end in a top hat." That's where it can get "gamey," and the distinction between action / reaction is important imo.

Trivia posted:

It feels like it would devolve into Calvinball at that point.

Declan MacManus posted:

any tips for running games at a high level? my dm is getting burnt out because he can’t come up with challenging encounters for a party of 6 level 20 characters (but really i think he just wants to wrap up the story and be done with this campaign he’s been running for three years; i just was hoping to come up with stuff to make it fun for him)

kingcom posted:

Disargeria posted:

It's more important that the players get involved and have fun than hammering out the terms and conditions.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Right, but you do see why a DM going "Make up some stuff for your characters to do for this bit guys, I'm going for a quick wank" is not exactly good DMing?

Perry Mason Jar posted:

There's different ways to play the game and no two tables are going to play the game alike. You should talk to your table about what degree of narrative input from players is desired by the group. Nobody is wrong or right, there are different ways to play the game, different things that make the game fun for some but less fun for others. Just literally talk to the your group about what's most fun for everyone. At least if even you don't get your ideal style it'll be a concession to the group rather than a fold to the DM or whomever's decree.

FFT posted:

what's the name of the game, again?

At that point an ancient dragon (or two) wouldn't be out of line. They'd need lair and legendary actions, though, which I know some DMs are hesitant about

FFT posted:

what's the name of the game, again?

At that point an ancient dragon (or two) wouldn't be out of line. They'd need lair and legendary actions, though, which I know some DMs are hesitant about

Bobby Deluxe posted:

It's bad DMing within the definition of what DMing is, is what I'm saying.

Trivia posted:

We kinda had a brief talk about the game and what to expect, but since we're all new we didn't know about a Session 0 and discussing things like player input or things of that sort. Good to know.

Trivia posted:

It's his first session as DM and aside from this small hiccup he actually did a bang up job.

Trivia posted:

Is it necessarily plausible to have a log blocking a paved path, one that is traveled frequently, and then needing to use strength of all things to clear it (instead of walking around)?

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Right, but you do see why a DM going "Make up some stuff for your characters to do for this bit guys, I'm going for a quick wank" is not exactly good DMing?

PeterWeller posted:

It's totally plausible because traveling down that path is a skill challenge, and skill challenges involve difficulty and obstacles.

One way to think about it is that the log was implicitly there the moment the DM decided to make traveling down that path a skill challenge.