cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/71856456
DM Sadism 101
I've played a lot of Barbarians and Paladins, my answer is always "fuck yah I touched it".
A dead PC is a powerful motivation for your party, especially if you were loved.
Always "Yes, and" your DM.
I do rolls for the player, in secret, if the outcome of that roll is also unknown to you. For example, if you roll a 2 on perception, you aren't going to know you missed something. So I rolled and hit you with the 'ole "You see a room."
I really dig the PBTA model.
The door is not trapped.
The player is suspicious of the door.
The player rolls to determine if the door is trapped.
On a failure, it turns out the door was trapped and now there are interesting consequences.
On a success, it turns out that the door was trapped and the player feels good about avoiding the consequences.
Every outcome is inherently more interesting.
The only risk to this is players catch on pretty fast, they're not stupid. It makes the world feel more silly or videogame-y, which can be fine, but it's a design choice. For more realistic games or settings, it's better for things to be as they are, the players uncover what was already there (or not).
Another core philosophy is to paint with a broad stroke, and to leave holes.
If a player is looking at an object and thinks "this should do something", they're right.
I only gave one example of something that might go wrong. Here are a few more:
All of these lead to more interesting story and play, and most importantly, bring the players into what was always meant to be collaborative storytelling.
Throw out the book. Nothing is meant to be anything, unless it is interesting and engaging.
There's nothing more boring than "yep, nothing there" or "haha sucker, that'll teach you for not rolling on every single door and cobblestone".
That's what passive perception and hidden rolls are for, but I don't remember if DnD still has that. I mostly play Pathfinder. So in this example, the rouge forgets to check the door. But as a DM, I asked the player beforehand how thorough their character is, and if they automatically check every door in exchange for a time penalty. If there's no "pressure" like chasing or being chased, I assume they check every door if that's the kind of thing they usually do, and roll for them if they forget and there's something there. Obviously a careless rogue wouldn't do this, and maybe they wouldn't check somewhere they don't expect traps like a manor party, so it depends on the character and situation. Like if they seem nervous and alert they would probably check for traps everywhere.
My players trust me to be fair in this regard and it really made the whole thing a lot smoother.
That kinda just seems like you're playing the game for them.
It worked for us. We had a few moments like "you didn't check for traps so now you take damage" and they said "well obviously my character would have" and I was like "y'know what you're right. You're playing your character, and if you were actually in that world you probably would have checked for traps because you did so the last 100 times."
Similar how in real life you're not conscious of every little thing you do, most of it is muscle memory.
A Druid PC of mine wanted to determine if his bear form can cross a large gap so I had him roll WIS - he rolled a 5 - I said "you're confident you can jump that gap"
He jumped. He fell.
Rogue rolls a 3
"There doesn't seem to be any traps..."
The Rogue:
This image of the darkest dungeon crown thing is the first thing in my head when I roll a one on anything!
Reminds me of the inanimate skeleton my players encountered. It had been put in armour and propped up by leaning it against a spear like it was guarding the door, so my players spent 15 minutes trying to guage how much of a threat it was before eventually deciding to all charge it at once. The battle was as quick as it was embarrassing.
I feel like I could run a game pretty decently (I wrote and ran a one-shot; nothing else), I just have no players :/
“It’s a perfectly normal chest”
I roll all perception, investigation, trap searching, insight & etc behind the screen. So they gotta trust what they get. I sometimes will do a wink and a nod if they do really well, but also sometimes when it's a crit fail. I think it also works well because we're playing a horror game, and a lot of horror involves the unknown and not being sure about your senses.
I don't even think that should be limited to horror; I think that should be boilerplate standard across all tables.
Nobody knows when they missed something important or they wouldn't have missed it, by definition.
I see a lot of negative reactions to secret checks in PF2e online, but my players and I love them. It's especially good when they all roll a secret check and the results mean I can give out conflicting information.
I suspect it's that meta/power-gamers dislike taking away a meta tool to Win the Game.
I’m a big fan of “Give me a Deception or Persuasion roll” rule for player interactions too. They don’t declare which one it is out loud. So the other player only hears the number, not whether or not it’s a lie. It curbs a lot of meta gaming.
My sleepy ass thought the post was about Direct Messaging someone “so you touch the object?”
Catch me literally always falling for this as a player
Y'all need more wizards around that used permanency more often. I'll pay another wizard the guild fee for them to give me a permanent detect magic, detect traps, and comprehend languages for the early game.
I always do this. It's a lot of fun to see the players scheming over a regular wall or door or whatever
Reminds me of Critical Role season one:
They eventually become mighty heroes who defeat dragons and demons of almost literally godlike power and prowess as well as entire armies, but their most dangerous foe ever was...a simple nonmagical door that happened to be locked on a day where the gods of the dice hated them while they all took turns holding the Idiot Ball 😄
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