Artificial Difficulty in Tabletops

[Segev]

The 'obscure information' is less of a problem in vide games, because you can look up a guide online. Even then, it's problemantic enough for people to complain.

Only One Way To Progress is kind of necessary (and a staple) in video games, but goes against the very point of tabletop ones.

These are both forms of artificial difficulty; in fact, tvtropes likes to call the first one "Guide Dang It," referring to something that only the incredibly lucky and persistant would find in the first dozen playthroughs and therefore are something you NEED a guide to find. The second is the tabletop equivalent, in a sense, since you have to guess the GM's secret solution. (In video games, this could also be a "Guide Dang It" if the solution is inobvious in the extreme, but most video games that aren't trying for that have so many signposts - literal and figurative - to the next plot point that you can usually find that one way through. It may frustrate you that you can't try other, possibly better solutions, but at least you're not lost on what to do.)


Real difficulty is something that calls upon the skills from the player which the game ostensibly measures/utilizes. In a rhythm game, real difficulty is more complex patterns involving more and different kinds of moves, or even patterns you've never seen before. It can also legitimately involve known patterns that are different just a little to see how well you're paying attention. Artificial difficulty shows up in modes players can self-impose in some of them, like DDR. Things like the patterns moving faster or slower on the screen than usual to throw off your learned pacing, or having them disappear before they reach the "execute now" symbol, or only appering very close to the symbol so you have to watch more carefully. A controller with a button or sensor that only works if you hit it just right is another common form of artificial (but unintentional) difficulty; this is especially true with DDR on home consoles, where the pads can just wear out from the physical abuse through which normal wear and tear puts them.


In a table top games, the skills usually called upon for players are character optimization (pre-game), tactical ability use (in-game), and problem-solving (inclusing puzzle-solving) skills (in-game, but semi-OOC). There's really little difference between "artificial difficulty" and "DM railroading" in such things, I think. It could take the form of the DM just over-inflating an encounter's CR, but that's less "difficulty" and more just "impossibility." About the only two things that really can count as genuine "artificial difficulty" involve obfuscation of information: the DM fails to describe what's going on to the players, so they are fumbling around in the metaphorical dark and not even aware there is something to which to react before it's screwed them over; or the DM is running on rails but won't tell the players where to find them, so they have to metaphorically pixel-hunt for the exact right solution as thought of by the DM. This makes the skill in question "read the DM's mind" or at least "know your DM very well." These are not usually expected skills in a tabletop game, so they're artificial difficulty to call upon.

[goto124]

the DM fails to describe what's going on to the players, so they are fumbling around in the metaphorical dark and not even aware there is something to which to react before it's screwed them over

This can create a weird game with so little description there's not much you can do, and you have no idea what you're doing. You don't get the joy of making reasonably informed decisions. Might even be a different kind of railroad where the DM doesn't have to stop you from interacting with stuff outside the plot, because they don't exist. Better than some alternatives, but still.

It also breaks versimiltude. Where am I? What does the place look like? What are the buildings made of? Are the people armored human guards, orc barbarians, or elf swashbucklers? How am I not able to know all of these when I'm in a sense a character able to see and percieve my surroundings?

Maybe I'm biased towards the wordy side, since I play mainly PbP and can take my time to wade through the text. I feel disappointed whenever I see 'You reach the town. Three people close in on you.'

Such lack of immersion doesn't exactly help with enjoyment of the game.

[ZeroGear]

I pose a counterpoint were a DM can give too much detail. Going into such detain, in fact, that it is hard to find exactly what is relevant to the whole plot, or is a solution to the puzzle.
By this I mean describing almost every item in the room even if it is either completely useless, a red erring, or trapped/coated with poison with the expectation that players will screw themselves over by going though it all with a fine toothed comb, essentially "not seeing the forest for the trees". Here, players need to be very wary of the words "seems" and "appears", as not everything is told at face-value, such as treasures that "seem" to be made of jewels and are quite heavy, but are actually quite worthless (and worse when you only get to choose a small amount of the treasure). Granted, the treasure problem relies on players not being proficient with appraisals (a skill few people ever put ranks into in 3.5), but it may happen at any time.
It can also come about when NPCs give contradictory information to the point where there is only one truth, but it is lost in the web of lies, rumors, and misinformation. Worse when rumors exist of a foe's weakness, but then finding out while fighting the boss that those rumors were planted and his weakness is something else entirely.
This gets worse when the actual campaign is open ended, but every choice you make influences the outcome in ways you could never predict.

[Segev]

This can create a weird game with so little description there's not much you can do, and you have no idea what you're doing. You don't get the joy of making reasonably informed decisions. Might even be a different kind of railroad where the DM doesn't have to stop you from interacting with stuff outside the plot, because they don't exist. Better than some alternatives, but still.

It also breaks versimiltude. Where am I? What does the place look like? What are the buildings made of? Are the people armored human guards, orc barbarians, or elf swashbucklers? How am I not able to know all of these when I'm in a sense a character able to see and percieve my surroundings?

Maybe I'm biased towards the wordy side, since I play mainly PbP and can take my time to wade through the text. I feel disappointed whenever I see 'You reach the town. Three people close in on you.'

Such lack of immersion doesn't exactly help with enjoyment of the game.

Indeed. That was somewhat the point. This is artificial difficulty in a tabletop game because it's not really allowing the players to use the skills they're "supposed" to be using to play it.

In some video games, artificial difficulty can be potentially fun, especially when self-imposed or when used to change the game to a different sort of game (e.g. DDR and its various modes that change how you see the arrows). But in a tabletop game, you can't call any changes made specifically with the intent of changing the skills expected to play it "artificial difficulty," because tabletops by their nature are mutable. House rules to change the nature of the game are not artificial difficulty; they're just changing the game.

Artificial difficulty in a tabletop requires that the expected/ostensible skills be one thing, and the way the game is laid out create another.

I suppose that means that games which are designed poorly enough in the direction of "we expect it to be played this way, but the game mechanics encourage playing this wholly different way" also have artificial difficulty, come to think of it. So "caster supremacy" is a form of artificial difficulty in 3e D&D.

[ZeroGear]

I suppose that means that games which are designed poorly enough in the direction of "we expect it to be played this way, but the game mechanics encourage playing this wholly different way" also have artificial difficulty, come to think of it. So "caster supremacy" is a form of artificial difficulty in 3e D&D.

Caster supremacy is just plain bad game design that leads to exploitation. It is an inherent design flaw that players can capitalize upon and has been up to DMs to remedy most of the time. If, of course, the players WANT to play a game like that, then there's not much that can be done.
Granted, poorly worded resources have led to a lot of exploitation (like the infamous "astral wish scroll cloning" or Iron Heart Surge abuse), but that is an entirely different problem.

[Segev]

Caster supremacy is just plain bad game design that leads to exploitation. It is an inherent design flaw that players can capitalize upon and has been up to DMs to remedy most of the time. If, of course, the players WANT to play a game like that, then there's not much that can be done.
Granted, poorly worded resources have led to a lot of exploitation (like the infamous "astral wish scroll cloning" or Iron Heart Surge abuse), but that is an entirely different problem.

My point was more that it is "artificial difficulty" because it was not intended by the game designers; their expressed intent was for all classes to be roughly on par with each other at every level. Because the game's writing assumes this is true, it becomes artificial difficulty for players because they now need to know where the book is just plain wrong in its assumptions in order to optimize their characters as best they can. It's a form of Guide Dang It with other, more experienced players being the guide.

[goto124]

I pose a counterpoint were a DM can give too much detail. Going into such detain, in fact, that it is hard to find exactly what is relevant to the whole plot, or is a solution to the puzzle.
By this I mean describing almost every item in the room even if it is either completely useless, a red erring, or trapped/coated with poison with the expectation that players will screw themselves over by going though it all with a fine toothed comb, essentially "not seeing the forest for the trees". Here, players need to be very wary of the words "seems" and "appears", as not everything is told at face-value, such as treasures that "seem" to be made of jewels and are quite heavy, but are actually quite worthless (and worse when you only get to choose a small amount of the treasure). Granted, the treasure problem relies on players not being proficient with appraisals (a skill few people ever put ranks into in 3.5), but it may happen at any time.
It can also come about when NPCs give contradictory information to the point where there is only one truth, but it is lost in the web of lies, rumors, and misinformation. Worse when rumors exist of a foe's weakness, but then finding out while fighting the boss that those rumors were planted and his weakness is something else entirely.
This gets worse when the actual campaign is open ended, but every choice you make influences the outcome in ways you could never predict.

For some reason, this seems (har har) more appealing than the lack of information DM.

[sincerity]I would love to hear a few actual examples from your experience, so that I can better understand your point as to why it's unenjoyable.[/sincerity]

[awa]

I have one, we had a wordy dm who had a group of npcs have a conversation which we couldn't interrupt and it went on a long time and apparently a bit of important information was supposed to be delivered but we missed it because it was subtle and we had started to tune him out. Not the best story but it happened like 12 years ago so the details have kind of leaked outa my brain in the mean time and it wasn't that exciting the first time.

Now that I think about it I can think of several instances of this and in general at least for me they focus on the unimportant stuff heavily describing all the stuff you can ignore and only spending a few words on the stuff you need. unfortunately none of them are very good stories.

(edit Thinking about it the real problem with to much info guy that can make it worse then to little is the amount of time it wastes they are often the one that wants to give a quirk to every single person and describe every one of a dozen inconsequential bystanders but the thing is the odds of the dm being a great story teller are no better then to little info. So often times the long description does not give you a better sense of the setting or sets the mood it just tells you that you've found a another merchant that likes to pick his nose or another bartender that burps constantly.)

I run into the dm wont tell you things a lot more often I had one dm who would refuse to tell me what type of armor foes had on or what weapon they had out because he thought it was meta gamming. (He started a good dm but eventually started getting weird)

[Darth Ultron]

I pose a counterpoint were a DM can give too much detail. Going into such detain, in fact, that it is hard to find exactly what is relevant to the whole plot, or is a solution to the puzzle.

This is my DMing style. I make up tons and tons and tons of things and add all of it to the game. I do not go for the minimalist idea at all. I hate the idea that everything encountered must perfectly fit into the plot and over all story. Like a video game or movie or TV show. A RPG is different, and not like them. A TV show only has a small amount of time and has to appeal and be understood by even the below average people. So they keep things simple and easy. RPG's can be better.

This is not for every player. Lots of players like the minimalist approach. And they don't like all the details and stuff. For example:

The Ghost Door: The game started off ok, a basic vampire rising in the dark woods threatening town. The party fights some minor undead and makes it to the inn on the edge of the dark woods. That night at the inn a poor npc is crushed and killed by the inn's backdoor. The group is told the tale of the haunted ghost door,how Marley a town drunk, was killed by the former innkeeper with that door. Marley, now a ghost(poltergeist, accurately), haunts the place some times late at night and kills people using the door.

Now as DM I made this all as just part of flavor of the inn. It had nothing to do with the vampire at all.

But minimalist player Pete, does not get it. He thinks everything is connected, like a video game or tv show. He hears ''undead door'' and is convinced the ghost must be working with/servant of/master of the vampire. And he is the charismatic group leader, so he get the group to stay at the inn. The group takes a lot of time and trouble to track down and fight and destroy the poltergeist. Get a little treasure and xp, but do nothing to advance the vampire plot. The game ends for the night, and Pete is all mad. ''What was the point of that stupid door?" he complained. My answer was like ''it was just there''. And Pete was all like ''But we wasted like half our game play time on that stupid door and it did not mean anything''. I just shrugged.

Everyone else had fun, but Pete just could not get over ''wasting his time for nothing''.

[Knaight]

[sincerity]I would love to hear a few actual examples from your experience, so that I can better understand your point as to why it's unenjoyable.[/sincerity]

I haven't seen a lot of that, but a lot of it just comes down to description time. Describing things eats time, and the amount of information you get just keeps diminishing. The first sentence can convey a lot of useful information, the next few fill in a fair few details, but past a certain point all that's happening is focus is being lost. If you spend five paragraphs describing some pillar, it is either important enough to warrant five paragraphs, a deliberate red herring, or indicative of prose so purple it comfortable occupies the ultraviolet part of the EM spectrum.

Consider a novel, for reference. Even science fiction and fantasy, which frequently have to describe things which aren't even named yet and are lacking in obvious analogs, overly long prose tends to weaken a work. Even setting-first writers like Tolkien chose their words carefully, described things efficiently and with an eye for linguistic appeal, and didn't spend page after page after page on every little thing.

[goto124]

But minimalist player Pete, does not get it. He thinks everything is connected, like a video game or tv show. He hears ''undead door'' and is convinced the ghost must be working with/servant of/master of the vampire. And he is the charismatic group leader, so he get the group to stay at the inn. The group takes a lot of time and trouble to track down and fight and destroy the poltergeist. Get a little treasure and xp, but do nothing to advance the vampire plot. The game ends for the night, and Pete is all mad. ''What was the point of that stupid door?" he complained. My answer was like ''it was just there''. And Pete was all like ''But we wasted like half our game play time on that stupid door and it did not mean anything''. I just shrugged.

Everyone else had fun, but Pete just could not get over ''wasting his time for nothing''.

I have encountered this myself before, with me being the Pete.

I take the stance of 'If you're adding atmosphere, use broad strokes.' Don't use insane amounts of detail to something that isn't related to the main plot:

Even setting-first writers like Tolkien chose their words carefully, described things efficiently and with an eye for linguistic appeal, and didn't spend page after page after page on every little thing.

At least, not unless the players explicitly ask for it.

I don't have the tendency to write a lot - the opposite, in fact - but I usually go for things like

Waves crash against the shore as the crystal clear water shimmers under the burning hot sun. Boys and girls dash across the bright yellow sands, splashing one another playfully and filling the air with laughter. Some of the children are armed with water guns. You may get hit by stray but harmless jets of water.

That said, everyone else had fun doing the sidequest. Funny how Pete is the only one who's mad, when he started it. Just because it's irrelevant to the main storyline, does not necessarily mean it's unfun and a waste of time.

Could've been a lot more trouble if the rest of the group members didn't have fun though...

I understand how he's a bit angry about it. Hopefully, he's learned about your sandbox style, and adjusts accordingly.

I'm surprised you went so far in something that you didn't plan. Kudos to you as a DM on that point- not forcing your players to 'follow the rails' of the main plot.



I'll talk about my own experience. Near the start of the game, I encounter an NPC, called Daz. She's the first NPC I met and she's named, so I make a note: 'Daz is important'. Later on, I hear Daz screaming. Naturally, I put in effort to rescue her, even breaking character to do so.

As it turns out, the DM hadn't expected me to go that way, and that the screaming was just atmosphere. This one wasn't bad, since the entire adventure was more or less made up on the fly anyway.

But I shudder to think about what could've happened in a different game.

[Knaight]

I don't have the tendency to write a lot - the opposite, in fact - but I usually go for things like...

That's a decent example. It's four sentences, it covers a broad area, and it evokes an inhabited beach where people are enjoying themselves quite well. That description could easily grow if there was something else particularly notable there (something like docks and a boat, or something particular about the sand, or tons of washed up jellyfish, or whatever else). It could also easily be bloated with lots of exact dimensions, beach curvature information, sand color distribution information, and marking down the location of every little tidepool. Doing that would convey the beach much less evocatively and thus much less effectively.

[Hawkstar]

I have encountered this myself before, with me being the Pete.

I take the stance of 'If you're adding atmosphere, use broad strokes.' Don't use insane amounts of detail to something that isn't related to the main plot:

This is my DMing style. I make up tons and tons and tons of things and add all of it to the game. I do not go for the minimalist idea at all. I hate the idea that everything encountered must perfectly fit into the plot and over all story. Like a video game or movie or TV show. A RPG is different, and not like them. A TV show only has a small amount of time and has to appeal and be understood by even the below average people. So they keep things simple and easy. RPG's can be better.

This is not for every player. Lots of players like the minimalist approach. And they don't like all the details and stuff. For example:

The Ghost Door: The game started off ok, a basic vampire rising in the dark woods threatening town. The party fights some minor undead and makes it to the inn on the edge of the dark woods. That night at the inn a poor npc is crushed and killed by the inn's backdoor. The group is told the tale of the haunted ghost door,how Marley a town drunk, was killed by the former innkeeper with that door. Marley, now a ghost(poltergeist, accurately), haunts the place some times late at night and kills people using the door.

Now as DM I made this all as just part of flavor of the inn. It had nothing to do with the vampire at all.

But minimalist player Pete, does not get it. He thinks everything is connected, like a video game or tv show. He hears ''undead door'' and is convinced the ghost must be working with/servant of/master of the vampire. And he is the charismatic group leader, so he get the group to stay at the inn. The group takes a lot of time and trouble to track down and fight and destroy the poltergeist. Get a little treasure and xp, but do nothing to advance the vampire plot. The game ends for the night, and Pete is all mad. ''What was the point of that stupid door?" he complained. My answer was like ''it was just there''. And Pete was all like ''But we wasted like half our game play time on that stupid door and it did not mean anything''. I just shrugged.

Everyone else had fun, but Pete just could not get over ''wasting his time for nothing''.

Wow... I think I'm more with Darth Ultron on this. (There's a surprising lack of advocacy for railroading) There's adventure everywhere in the world. Kind of a shame the guy who started it didn't enjoy the sidequest.

[ZeroGear]

And this is why my point of "too much information" works. Even if you keep it moderately short and say something along the lies of:

"You enter a long, ornate hallway. The decorations feel very much like what you would expect to find in a dukes manor, with a red velvet carpet covering most of the floor, and polished suits of iron lining the fall. Between them hang Portraits of past royalty, most likely the former owners of the abandoned mansion you are in."

Odds are that the characters will want to flip over the rug and possibly attack the armor, even if it is pretty clear that most of the description is just cosmetic. Maybe one of the armors *might* come to life or hide a foe, but odds are none of them do. That being said, none of them will look at the portraits, despite the chance that they might trigger Knowledge checks relevant to the ongoing plot. They may also miss the part about the armor being polished, possibly pointing to the fact that the mansion may not be as abandoned as most would assume.

It is very easy to hide actual clues underneath unimportant scenery because players tend to look in the most obscure places even if the answer is right in front of their noses. This may be because most are trained for traps at every turn, but abandoned homes of nobility rarely have traps in heavy-tragic areas.
Similarly, you describe a library full of books related to the outer planes, summoning, arcane lore, experiences of resurrected people, and druidic rituals expecting players to figure out that the incidents may be the result of a wizard trying researching certain topics, players will often toss the books aside looking for hidden rooms without even looking at the titles.

[erikun]

I've read through most of the thread at this point, and there are just two things I would like to make note of at the moment.

First: The allowance on what is considered an "artificial" difficulty of a game and what is considered a "natural" or "allowable" difficulty depends a lot on the game design and nature of the setting. Dark Souls (and, presumably, Bloodborne) are designed in such a way to where having an enemy jump out of a corner and instantly kill you, or pull off an unfamiliar attack which wipes out all your HP, is an acceptable temporary loss. These things are considered fair because you can get back into the game without too much fuss involved. Most video games, if nothing else, allow a player to simply reload a save file if things go poorly, limiting the amount of damage even a full death and loss can deliver.

Most tabletop RPGs, by contrast, have a much less lenient view on bringing characters back. Even something as simple as "reloading a previous save" is quite awkward in a standard RPG. The standard resurrection procedure in D&D involves dragging a corpse back to a priest in town, and most other RPGs don't even offer that option. As such, an unknown enemy suddenly jumping out of the shadows and OHKOing a PC is considered distinctly unfair. By contrast, if some of the game mechanics were to change - if a PC could be easily revived, perhaps even just by having an ally stand next to the body for a round - then the "unfair" situation can be more acceptable and the difficulty easier to work with.

Second: D&D has a long history of playing groups who have dealth with considerably unfair difficulties. They are the stereotypical 10-foot-pole groups. They are the ones who rent hirelings to set off traps, who have items for infinite free minions, who use divinations on any potential threat. They are the ones who back up their spellbook and put then in Leomund's Secret Chest. They are the ones who go through a set routine of spells, checks, and precautions every time they open a door or enter a new room. They are the ones who turn themselves into Necropolitans, set themselves up on a faster-speed demiplane of infinite platinum and Astral Projection themselves to the party. It's something that has been happening since AD&D, and while there are clearly people who enjoy that - or at least are willing to play like that - I think you might want to consider what would reasonably happen if you present a D&D party with "unfair" or "artificial" challenges on a regular basis. The end result may not be what you might expect.

[awa]

in those specific examples (in reference to zero gear) it seems that the problem is not the description but the players. Possible it's the problem of player expectation if they have been in a lot of games where those would be the correct choice of action.

Personally I would ask their int or will or something then roll a die behind my screen and say it occurs to you that maybe this might help and hopefully they figure out these kinds of stuff could be useful
then you could wean them off of it say next time roll the dice but don't tell them anything so now they start trying to figure out what they missed. and/or you may let them be confused awhile and then have a helpful npc say have you tried X. Either they will learn or you will learn you are not running the correct game for that group

The problem in this is not too much info it's that they are focusing on the wrong info. You just need to show them what is most likely to be useful.

On the other hand another way to get them to focus on the info in question is to emphasize it give that bit an extra line. Also remember this is not a computer game they are supposed to be these people not just a guy driving them like a remote control robot. If they enter a hallway with pictures and the pictures might triggered a knowledge check don't require them to say they look at them they may be assuming that if they are in a room with pictures they were doing that already. Just make the check for them.

[ZeroGear]

You make a fair point, and this does vary from group to group. Again though, players will that you (the DM) are railroading them if you make hidden checks for them. And there are groups, and I have played with some, that will still focus on all the unnecessary background fluff despite you telling them that it is cosmetic.
It almost seems like DMs can't make detailed and interesting worlds without them obfuscating quest focusses and adding distractions.

[awa]

possibly but that hasn't been my experience, I have only seen one time in recent years where the pcs became really enamored with a piece of decoration and that was a complex arcane mechanism built by alien entities with lots of strange functions and even then it wasn't really a problem they eventual gave up and got on with the quest.

I don't think any my players have ever thought hidden check meant railroading I use them fairly often whenever the party is trying to do something where success or failure is not necessarily known for example looking for traps.
If there is no trap and they rolled a 20 then they would no there actually is no trap but if they rolled a 1 they would think well maybe there is a trap if I roll for them then all they know is they found no trap just as it should be.

[goto124]

It is really hard for players to separate 'fluff detail' from 'plot-relevant knowledge', as ZeroGear has demostrated a few posts above. Don't blame the players- calibrating expectations is difficult, and chances are the group will stumble over it a few times. I'm not blaming the DM either, since both sides have their reasonable points.

It does point to something else though. Why must you look at the portraits to get clues to a plot? Why must you follow a specific set of actions to be able to progress in amy fashion? Why is there a pre-planned plot? Why can't players interpret things their way, choose their own way, make their own story?

For example: The players were in a mansion. I described a hallway with many trophies and a large portrait, intending to showcase the owner of the mansion as pompous and self-important. The players, however, too, away the message that he was a competent person who could actually do things. Hilarously enough, one of the players says,

The only question is whether he has used all his wealth and skill for anything Good, or if he has only used it to enhance his own greatness. One is good, the other is better.

It's these sort of things that tabletop games are for.

Side note: I had a suit of armor in the mansion. If the players thought it was dangerous for whatever reason and attacked it, it would've made for a really funny scene. 'Miss, are you alright?'

Oh, and yea, being forced to follow a script as if it were a computer game, would be artifical difficulty.

[ZeroGear]

I would just like to not the that my previous example was about PCs missing clues in the background fluff, not that the clues were absolutely vital to the actual adventure.
In the Example with the hallway, the fact that the armor is polished means someone is taking care of the abandoned mansion, and the characters shouldn't be surprised when someone attempts to get the drop on them. Similarly, the paintings could have provided clues about the habits of the builder, and thus the possible layout of the building, like where the hidden rooms tend to be.
The library example, on the other hand, could have induced that the Big Bad is a caster that focusses on Conjuration and Necromancy.
Neither of these are absolutely necessary for groups to know, but they do make the game a lot easier if the characters take time to look at the right clues. It was just being pointed out that the vital clues can be missed if placed between background fluff, making them harder to notice.

Again, experience with groups vary, and I have played with people that can be quick to point fingers.

[Segev]

My biggest piece of advice in response to the "description-heavy" approach is to allow players to roll appropriate checks - perception, knowledge, sense motive, even gather information/diplomacy or relevant professions and crafts - to get certain relevant elements of the detailed setting highlighted for them. You could give your description, then ask the players for rolls, or you could ask for rolls and then take care to, during the description, say, "And, Pete, your character, thanks to his Profession (Guardsman) check, notices that the number and distribution of guards seems excessive in this particular area," which would make sure that Pete's attention was drawn to a detail his PC would find significant and thus is not losing relevant information he should be able to pick up just because the description also conveys lots of other details that are less relevant.

Personally, I do start to tune out description. I can't stand Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame because its insanely detailed descriptions of hats and bricks in the city without a jot of character introduction after pages of reading was just so hideously dull. I wasn't getting a vivid mental image of Paris; I was getting tired of individual bricks being lovingly detailed. I similarly stopped reading The Hobbit after a particularly purple bit of prose describing the history of a mountainside, until a piece of it fell off as a pebble, which got a page of description as to its own journey through weather and other natural processes until - and this was the sole relevance it had to the narrative - it wound up in Bilbo's shoe, and made him have to stop and shake it out. "He got a rock in his shoe" was apparently not detailed enough of a reason.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words won't always paint a clear picture. It's a literary equivalent to those image-games where somebody zooms in for a super-close-up of an everyday image, and then you have to guess what it is.

[ZeroGear]

Ah, than you for bringing us to the following point:
Skill checks.
One of the problems with them is that once you ask characters to make rolls for spot, listen, profession, knowledge, appraise, search, survival, or any number of other skills that may give unknown information, and a character fails everyone immediately grow suspicious because THEY KNOW something is there. Rarely have I ever seen a group that enters a room after a failed spot check because everyone KNOWS there is a trap in the room (this kinda defeats the point of unknown information).
On the other side of this argument, some DMs don't ask for these check, fully expecting players to make them on their own discretion. THEY DON'T. Which often leads players to accusing DMs of being unfair because they "didn't know they needed to make the check".

So here's the problem: how do you run a game that is supposed to be mysterious and hard without either giving away every potential hazard, or being accused of hiding information? I know someone will inevitably say "tell the group that it's that kind of game", and I would point out that some players either don't listen or forget (and these tend to be the complainers).

This is brought up because since players are rarely in the habit of asking to make these checks, it seems to impose a unintentional difficulty.
("Why the hell didn't you tell us there was a trap in that room?"
"You never asked to make a spot check, I just told you what you would have normally seen at a glance."
"I didn't know I needed a check!")

[goto124]

Personally?

I would let the PCs automatically pass the checks. Make it that those checks were so easy (DC 0 ), rolling is unnecessary.

Again, personally. The checks come with the advantage of making the characters feel individualised- Bob notices that there're too many guards, Alice notices the hidden trap in that corner over there, etc.

[awa]

that one is easy write down there spot, sense motive, ect scores ahead of time and roll for them behind your screen. Make Shure to roll sometimes when nothing is happening so they don't necessarily know a roll is important.

Or roll a bunch of d20s ahead of time and write them down and when you need to make a secret check just look at the top number use it and cross it off

or just assume they take 10

[ZeroGear]

Playing Devil's Advocate on this, so bear with me:

Wouldn't the constant rolling make them suspicious and influence their actions?
Wouldn't the assumption of taking 10 cause them to cry 'railroading', because it makes the encounter seem scripted?

If no, then those are awesome ideas, especially the rolling ahead of time one. I'm guessing it would make the game flow a lot more because rolling wouldn't be a constant interruption?

[NichG]

I tend to favor systems with a sort of passive perception mechanic in order to avoid that kind of problem. Threshold-based things are annoying if you're designing adventures on the fly (because you know the PCs' stats), so my current favorite is a sort of expenditure-based system. For example, the way I run Stealth is that rather than roll and see if you're detected, you have a pool based on your skill that gradually counts down as you spend time in places you could be detected. If there's someone in the area with high perception skills, your pool ticks down faster. You're guaranteed to be unobserved until you take an overt action or your pool hits zero, but you don't know how quickly your pool will drop because you don't know the stats and positions of the observers.

For static things like traps, I don't have such a system yet, but you could make one in a similar way. The player can choose to declare that they are 'on the lookout', which burns through their Search pool room by room. As long as they are 'on the lookout' in a room, they automatically find anything hidden there before it can negatively affect them - monsters waiting to ambush, traps, secret doors, hidden loot, etc. But every room they go through burns a portion of their pool.

[goto124]

Suspicious as in 'DM's rolling again- is he rolling for Perception or a Fort save?', causing them to start searching the room and take other precautionary actions?

What does taking 10 mean here? Does it refer to assuming the player rolled a 10?

Do players complain if the DM decides that a certain action is easy, and thus they automatically pass the check?

Ooooo, where can I get a set of detailed rules for the pool system? We could all benefit from it! Is it for DnD? Is it a homebrew?

[Earthwalker]

that one is easy write down there spot, sense motive, ect scores ahead of time and roll for them behind your screen. Make Shure to roll sometimes when nothing is happening so they don't necessarily know a roll is important.

Or roll a bunch of d20s ahead of time and write them down and when you need to make a secret check just look at the top number use it and cross it off

or just assume they take 10

Of course we get into a situation where the players have a pool of points that allow them to influence dice rolls. Stuff like action points in pathfidner, or edge in shadowrun or fate points in fate.

You then have a situation of the group being on the completly wrong end of a ambush and asking why didnt we get perception checks ? I would have totaly spent an action point to mean we werent so disadvantaged.

Of course if they spend action points on perception check, do they lose them becuase the GM is just making them roll for nothing.

Player "Yay I got a 20 plus 4 more for my action dice. Percption tot is 32"
GM "Erm you notice the floor is a lighter shade of grey. it doesnt do anything tho"
Player "mumble grumble"

[NichG]

Ooooo, where can I get a set of detailed rules for the pool system? We could all benefit from it! Is it for DnD? Is it a homebrew?

Complete from-the-ground-up homebrew system, but you could try to port it. Here's the full system.

To summarize the relevant parts, skills in this game are on a rank system, with 1-5 ranks being the normal human range (5 being a grandmaster or other pinnacle of normal human achievement), and 6-7 being skill on the level of the supernatural. Each rank of each skill grants a particular special ability. Ranks cost a fixed amount of XP to buy up, but buying up the cap involves stuff in a different subsystem which isn't relevant here. So most characters will be in the 1-5 range, with PCs having 5 in their main schtick and trained NPCs (veteran soldiers and the like) being around 3 ranks.

The relevant part is:

Stealth

Spoiler

Show

The Stealth skill provides a pool of Stealth ’pips’ that
can be used during a particular infiltration scenario. Factors
which increase the alertness of defenders with respect
to the sneaking character reduce that Stealth pool, but as
long as the Stealth pool remains and the character does not
take actions which explicitly break Stealth, the character
has not been detected.

A character’s base Stealth pool is one pip plus one pip
per their rank of the Stealth skill.

At any particular time in which a character needs to
move or act in a way that would be detected by an observer
but where there is some form of scattered cover or
usable distraction, it costs one pip of their Stealth pool.
If the motion is completely exposed, the cost is two pips.
The number of observers does not matter, but their skill
can matter in the form of increased costs (from Perception
waza). An action that directly involves an observer
normally breaks Stealth (e.g. going up to a guard and
speaking with them or trying to grab their sword).

For example, a character who needs to pass through
a cluttered office in which two guards are chatting would
have to spend one pip to cross the office. If the door were
locked and they had to take the time to pick it, this would
cost a second pip. If the office were well lit without clutter,
it would cost two pips to cross it due to a lack of cover. If
you want to spy on a meeting in said office, you only pay
the pip cost to initially hide in the office — continuing to
hide is free, until you take a subsequent action or move to
leave.

Monitoring devices, alarms, and the like may modify
the pip cost. For example, scattering dry leaves over the
floor makes it harder for someone to move without being
heard and would increase the pip cost for crossing that
area by 1.

A character cannot normally initiate Stealth against
an observer who has already seen them and is continuing
to watch them. However, things which break line of sight
can allow them to do so if they have pips remaining (e.g.
smoke bombs and the like

Stealth Waza:
●❍❍❍❍❍❍ Backstab: You may spend 3BP to
make an attack while Stealthed which causes dou-
ble the normal injury (the target receives their de-
fenses as normal). If the attack is ranged, this costs
3 pips unless the attack kills/takes out all potential
observers. If this is a melee attack, it automatically
breaks stealth unless it takes out all potential ob-
servers.
●●❍❍❍❍❍ Second Shadow: By spending 2BP,
you can use someone else as a form of cover in order
to cross an otherwise wide-open space.
●●●❍❍❍❍ Share Stealth: You may double your
pip costs to help a group of people all sneak through
an area (applying to up to one extra person per your
rank in Stealth)
●●●●❍❍❍ Just a Cat: Once, during an infiltra-
tion, if you mistakenly begin to take an action that
would cause your Stealth to be broken (e.g. you did
not realize that there was a skilled observer and the
Stealth costs were different than you expected), you
can spend 5BP and retract the action. If it was their
action that created the situation, (an observer enters
the room) you can use the opportunity to leave the
room back the way you came just before they step
in.
●●●●●❍❍ Exit Strategy: When you spend pips
to avoid detection in a particular situation, you do
not have to spend pips again to reverse your steps
and leave that same way. If situational factors have
caused the cost to increase, you do have to pay the
additional cost however.
●●●●●●❍ Whisperless Blade: Targets may
not Bolster against attacks you make from Stealth.
●●●●●●● Fade: When Stealthed, you hide so
well that you can pass part-way out of reality, and
gain the advantage of the Faded status condition
even against area attacks and other ambient hazards.
In addition, you no longer suffer penalties from using
Stealth to cross areas without some form of cover,
and do not need to interrupt line of sight to re-Stealth
so long as you have pips remaining.

The Perception skill is mainly relevant here because of the 2nd rank waza, which increases the Stealth cost. Otherwise, Perception mainly does things with regards to avoiding the consequences of ambushes, noticing certain kinds of details 'about' a situation or person, etc.

Spoiler

Show

●●❍❍❍❍❍ Piercing Sight: For hostiles, main-
taining Stealth within the range of your vision costs
an extra pip per round per two ranks of Perception
(rounded down).

There are also waza for other relevant skills that help with situational stealth. For example, Wilderness grants extra Stealth pips when in wild surroundings, Guise has a similar pool-based system for undercover work or pretending to be someone else (any time your disguise is challenged, you lose pips), etc.

The system has actually come into a lot of use recently for a series of timed dungeon levels that the party is trying to make their way through. The 'timed' aspect starts from the moment that the guards notice the PCs, so they can basically earn extra rounds of time by having stealthy characters sneak into position before doing things that catch the attention of the level guardians. It seems to work decently well - the PCs have to decide whether or not to risk darting from cover to cover when they don't know what's in the area they're going to, which can be a bit nerve-wracking ("Crap, we stealthed into a dead end, now we don't have enough pips to backtrack without alerting the guards!" kind of thing).

[Segev]

Ah, than you for bringing us to the following point:
Skill checks.
One of the problems with them is that once you ask characters to make rolls for spot, listen, profession, knowledge, appraise, search, survival, or any number of other skills that may give unknown information, and a character fails everyone immediately grow suspicious because THEY KNOW something is there. Rarely have I ever seen a group that enters a room after a failed spot check because everyone KNOWS there is a trap in the room (this kinda defeats the point of unknown information).

You're giving detailed description; you therefore know what's important ahead of time. Make them roll before you start describing, and make note of what to call out to whom. They only know there is something important in the description somewhere, now. In theory, you wanted them paying attention anyway, didn't you?

So here's the problem: how do you run a game that is supposed to be mysterious and hard without either giving away every potential hazard, or being accused of hiding information? I know someone will inevitably say "tell the group that it's that kind of game", and I would point out that some players either don't listen or forget (and these tend to be the complainers).

I'm not sure what you mean. How do you never tell them about the hazard and NOT be obfuscating information? I think you may need to elaborate on this one a bit more for me to grasp what you're talking about.

This is brought up because since players are rarely in the habit of asking to make these checks, it seems to impose a unintentional difficulty.
("Why the hell didn't you tell us there was a trap in that room?"
"You never asked to make a spot check, I just told you what you would have normally seen at a glance."
"I didn't know I needed a check!")

Spot checks should be called for. Search checks - which are what you need to find traps - should be the players' responsibility to initiate. Even if they don't say "I roll a search check," they should have to say, "I'm taking this action" that the DM interprets to be searching, so the DM calls for a search check.