D&D General "Player Skill" versus DM Ingenuity as a playstyle.

[EzekielRaiden]

My experience of players who want all the maths are the same players who don't want any immersive details.

Then I am pleased to be the first. Allow me to introduce myself. Hi, I'm Ezekiel. I like balanced games, making informed choices, and serious, meaningful roleplay. My favorite games have always been those that feature both a great mechanical structure that I must wrestle with to achieve victory, and a great and cohesive narrative experience that gives me lots to sink my teeth into and moral quandaries to explore and respond to.

I want to roleplay by and through gaming, and game by and through roleplay. TTRPGs are the only place you can have that experience.

But sure, you could add those flourishes to Scenario 1 -- I still think adding the difficulty numbers in plain sight negates some mystery until you actively engage with the creature. The keys in the example:

"You need a 12 to hit it"
"You need a 4 to kill it"

I mean, I have repeatedly said I don't need those numbers--and, of course, by presenting it in this way, you're making the worst elements front and center with absolutely nothing to complement or complete them.

Part of all this is trying to replicate the sense of wonder you felt the first time you played a TTRPG. Everything was mysterious. As you become experienced and understand the rules and have lived through a lot of the typical challenges, some of the shine will inevitably wear off.

Sure, but that "everything is mysterious" is impossible to preserve. It's the infatuation, the "limerance," of TTRPGing. Like trying to lock a puppy in permanent puppyhood forever, or trying to rigidly preserve the beauty of one's early-twentysomething body for 50+ years. Of course it is "next to impossible" to trick or coerce your players into danger if you are stuck only using such things. Your well necessarily dries up, always.

I think this is when the hobby started to become more sophisticated with its adventures and started introducing more things like character arcs, cultural experiences, spiritual growth and moral quandaries. There are only so many variations of traps after all.

...but that's exactly the hard work I keep talking about! Well, one part of that work, anyway. I consider it a joy, not a burden, when I'm DMing. But that doesn't make it not work. I would agree that those specific parts are a more sophisticated approach, with the understanding that sophisticated isn't always necessary or even beneficial (beer and pretzels ain't for me, but it definitely is it for some!) The other side is what I mentioned above WRT mechanics, the "troll that is half-stone and weak to thunder/radiant" or just inventing brand-new monsters, both of which are things any beer-and-pretzels DM can get behind, I should hope.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Part of all this is trying to replicate the sense of wonder you felt the first time you played a TTRPG. Everything was mysterious. As you become experienced and understand the rules and have lived through a lot of the typical challenges, some of the shine will inevitably wear off. I think this is when the hobby started to become more sophisticated with its adventures and started introducing more things like character arcs, cultural experiences, spiritual growth and moral quandaries. There are only so many variations of traps after all.

IMO it's really kind of disappointing that so much of the things that are considered classic fantasy mainstays have become seen as basic and commonplace when used alongside the rest of the stuff in DnD, it's such a high-fantasy, high-magic design that you practically can't stop it happening, like, when's the last time anyone was really wowed to see an elf, just for being an elf.

 

[overgeeked]

IMO it's really kind of disappointing that so much of the things that are considered classic fantasy mainstays have become seen as basic and commonplace when used alongside the rest of the stuff in DnD, it's such a high-fantasy, high-magic design that you practically can't stop it happening, like, when's the last time anyone was really wowed to see an elf, just for being an elf.

And that’s the point. What was once magical becomes mundane with repeated exposure. To keep that magic alive you need to constantly feed new things into the game. But to keep the magical from becoming mundane you need to make them unique one-offs or incredibly rare, say once a campaign at most.

ETA: This is also why a lot of people don’t like the proliferation of PC races. It takes the magical and makes it mundane.

 

[bloodtide]

Part of all this is trying to replicate the sense of wonder you felt the first time you played a TTRPG. Everything was mysterious. As you become experienced and understand the rules and have lived through a lot of the typical challenges, some of the shine will inevitably wear off. I think this is when the hobby started to become more sophisticated with its adventures and started introducing more things like character arcs, cultural experiences, spiritual growth and moral quandaries. There are only so many variations of traps after all.

This is a big point. For the first couple of sessions of a game, everything is new. And it is a unique feeling. People should try to experience it always. And for a RPG there is only one first time of not knowing the rules and rolling some things like a save. But you can't really recreate that...once you know the rules...you know them.

But, with more lore items, not just dry game mechanics, you can. You only get one...maybe two times of "oh no this strange humanoid monster regenerates...nothing can stop it!", and then every other time is "oh a troll, zzzzzzzzzzz, we kill it with fire, zzzzzz".

And not every DM is creative and can make up new stuff....and more so not every DM is good at it. So they need new offical books with stuff.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

like, when's the last time anyone was really wowed to see an elf, just for being an elf.

Literally never. Why would I be wowed something my character can be (and in fact, was!). My first character like forever ago a red box elf (race and class!) that my friends older brother made when he let us hang out with the big kids.

 

[Lanefan]

There is a vast gulf of difference between "the information is available to me, I just do not care to examine it" (a perfectly cromulent choice for any given person) and "I will not let the information be available to you regardless of your preferences." The former is a player choosing to play in the way they find most pleasing. The latter is the DM unilaterally declaring that all players must play that way.

As long as the information available to us players more or less coincides with the information available to the characters in the fiction, the latter is fine with me.

Again, I don't need to know a monster's statblock (though you'd better believe I feel quite strongly about that statblock not changing without a diegetic reason once it's entered play). I do need to know how attack rolls actually work, if I'm going to be making informed decisions. Me knowing how attack rolls and saving throws works is the IRL abstract representation of my character having combat experience and being able to reason about dangers they face. I may not know the enemy's AC, but knowing my own statistics and what I've seen of the enemy is, in fact, the rules-side analogy of my character having intuitions about their ability (or lack thereof) to achieve success on the battlefield. Leaving that totally oblivious is, in fact, less like actually doing a real person's reasoning.

As a player, you know your (character's) own capabilities - probably to a more exact level of detail than does the character itself. But, both in and out of character you don't and shouldn't have exact knowledge about the opponent beyond what you see in front of you (which is, ideally, narrated properly by the DM),

"This guy coming at you - probably a Human, though it's hard to tell under all that armour - is lumbering along in plate mail, has a big ol' shield on his arm, and wields a blood-stained morning star in his other hand. His shield is blazoned with the colours of [xxxxx]*. His hostile intentions are abundantly clear, made even more so by his screaming "I'm gonna kill you all dead!!!" as he charges. If you want to fight back, roll for initiative."

* - insert known enemy organization here.

So, both as player and character you know he's in plate with a large shield and that he's used that morning star before. You also know his speed seems normal, so no hasting or slowing effects on him. If it matters, you know he's Human-size and has a Human-ish sounding voice but may or may not actually be fully Human.

You don't - and can't, yet - know anything else: you don't know if any or all of the armour, shield, or weapon is magical, or if he has any other magical benefits going for him; you don't know his strength, toughness, or resilience; and you don't know how skilled he is (or isn't) at actual combat. This information will likely reveal itself as the combat goes on, but by the time you've got a complete picture the odds are very high that the battle will be over.

A real, reasonable (not perfect, just reasonable) person does not behave as though they are totally ignorant of their own capabilities when sincerely trying to succeed. Knowing that you need a 9 or better to hit (say) chainmail armor actually is a representation of your character's awareness of their abilities. That mechanical element precisely corresponds to the thought, "I've taken on jerks in chain before, it's still risky but the odds are in my favor." Yes, obviously, as a player you can be much more precise with those odds than the character could be, but that's the simple price we pay for having rules in the first place.

The way to reduce that price is to not give the player information about things your character doesn't (yet) know.

 

[Lanefan]

I almost NEVER tell them how many hit points the bad guy has -- except sometimes I can't help but giddily gloat when they leave it with only 1 HP.

I'll often describe the opponent's condition in terms of what the PCs see; and if something that started with 50 hit points is down to just having 4 left, I'm probably going to describe it as being on its last legs.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Literally never. Why would I be wowed something my character can be (and in fact, was!). My first character like forever ago a red box elf (race and class!) that my friends older brother made when he let us hang out with the big kids.

this is basically my point, how are you meant to craft weighty dramatic moments like the hobbits or the fellowship experiencing rivendell or lothlorien for the first time when your party is entirely desensitised to these kinds of things being special, half the party probalby is an elf and the other half is something wackier or more miraculous.

 

[TiQuinn]

this is basically my point, how are you meant to craft weighty dramatic moments like the hobbits or the fellowship experiencing rivendell or lothlorien for the first time when your party is entirely desensitised to these kinds of things being special, half the party probalby is an elf and the other half is something wackier or more miraculous.

IMO, this is a tough task for DMs regardless because at least with the examples you mentioned, it’s hard to create a sense of wonder without something visual - i.e. artwork or the movie version of Lord of the Rings showing Rivendell or Moria.

 

[Wolfpack48]

this is basically my point, how are you meant to craft weighty dramatic moments like the hobbits or the fellowship experiencing rivendell or lothlorien for the first time when your party is entirely desensitised to these kinds of things being special, half the party probalby is an elf and the other half is something wackier or more miraculous.

It really comes down to framing the initial setting and adventure in a fresh way that doesn’t rely to heavily on tired tropes. Standard bog elves and goblins and orcs can but represented in interesting ways, but it does mean the referee needs to do some work to present things in a different and interesting light.

For example, traditional enemies in the orcs come to the elves asking for help from an unknown threat. What could cause such strange behavior for a sworn enemy to behave this way? It’s about taking tropes and twisting them around in novel directions.