You've also said you explicitly tell the players the DC. That telling the players the DC, the stakes, etc is something you explicitly do.
Here's something that's absolutely true for me: game speak breaks immersion.
The second people start talking about checks, DCs, hit points, saves, etc...immersion is over. Done. The only way to be immersed is to not use game speak. To only talk about the world and the fiction of the game. The moment game speak comes in, immersion is broken.
So when you suggest explicitly using game speak and I say that breaks immersion, that's what's going on. All of your suggesting in the thread have revolved around bringing game speak explicitly to the fore and centering it in the moment. That's antithetical to immersion and verisimilitude.
We’re talking about when a check is being called for, so game speak is already happening regardless of whether you state the DC abs stakes or not.
And that's not something the character would know. The character knows their skill level, they don't know how tough the lock is.
Why don’t they? A person trained in lockbreaking should very much be able to make a reasonable assessment of the difficulty of picking a given lock.
And they certainly don't know the future enough to say how long the lock would take to pick.
Nor can the player. But they should be able to make a reasonable guess, which stating the DC and stakes allows the player to do, just as their character would be able to do.
This is where we're hung up on verisimilitude. You're centering the game and its mechanics so the player can make good gaming choices. That's antithetical to immersion and verisimilitude.
I’m doing no such thing. I’m being transparent with the mechanics so that the player can understand the things their character should.
Or maybe you don't assume we haven't tried to do things your way already and found them lacking. I can't speak for Oofta,
Oofta already spoke for Oofta, and made it clear they had not tried it my way. Oofta is who I was speaking to, I made no assumption about your experience.
but I have run things basically as you suggest. It was the least satisfying boardgame I've ever played. No immersion, no verisimilitude. It was D&D as boardgame instead of D&D as immersive fantasy world. I don't disagree with you simply to disagree. I disagree with you because I've done it your way and it sucked for me.
Ok. That’s your experience. My experience has been quite different - my games were vague and nebulous before adopting these strategies, which made immersion impossible. I also find it much easier to immerse myself in the character when playing with DMs who use the same or similar techniques than with DMs who hide information in the name of curtailing metagaming. So, when you say “your approach doesn’t work for me because I care about immersion,” that doesn’t track. Immersion is a big part of why I use the techniques I do. Maybe it wouldn’t work with the way you prefer to immerse yourself in your characters, that’d make sense.
The less the game is centered the more immersive the experience is. That's simply a fact for me. No amount of you saying "but the gameplay" is ever going to change that. No amount of you arguing we should center the game is going to change that.
I’m not arguing anyone should center the game. As I’ve said several times, my approach is very much fiction-first. Doesn’t mean things that improve the gameplay experience aren’t also positives.
Right. And, if you've noticed, a lot of people complain about how the normal state of the game stops dead when combat starts.
Here you are, trucking along, following the play loop, narrating...immersed in the world and the fiction...then suddenly it stops and the mechanics take over. To me, that's bad. Keep the mechanics out of the way, out of our mouths, and keep narrating.
Sounds like a poorly-run combat to me. Loath as I am to direct people to his website, the angry GM’s article, “How to Run Combat like a &@$! Dolphin” gives pretty good advice on how to alleviate this problem.
The mechanics can abstract these things without us having to center them and speak them. Any time you stop talking about the world and the fiction you're stopping the immersion.
P1: "I swing my sword..." DM: "You hit! How bad is the wound?"
is a more immersive exchange than
P1: "I got a 19 to hit." DM: "You hit! How much damage?"
It's dead simple to keep things in the narration and immersive mode. Roll in the open. If you're on a VTT, you already are. You don't need to use game speak. It's better for immersion if you don't.
Here’s a neat thing you can do: tell the players the monsters’ AC and not only do you never have to say the dreaded numbers out loud again, you even need the exchange of “did I hit?” “Yes/no” any more. The player will know immediately if they hit and can go straight to narrating the results, every time.
I know, I know, “there’s no way the characters could know the target’s AC.” Except yes, there absolutely is. If the target is wearing armor, it’s common knowledge how protective that armor is. And it’s not at all implausible for a trained adventurer to be able to tell how nimble an opponent looks, or how tough a monster’s hide is.