BG3 and the fun of transparency

[Beelzebub1111]

Oh yeah, the "useful information", the kind of description that prompts me to ask leading questions such as "does my character know that [some information that I, the player, know]"

in other words, snark aside, I find that obfuscating mechanically relevant information ( example : lycanthropes and alleged vulnerability to silver weapons ), even when using the rules-appropriate, results in an increase in metagaming that information, and then that awkwardness of wasting turns doing something ineffective on purpose, or not wasting turns doing somethign ineffective on purpose, but having the awkwardness of acting on information you haven't been esplicitly been told, but your character should have known due to high knowledge result.

I.E., if I make a good knowledge roll about the werewolf or whatever, and you don't tell me "you should use silver weapons", I will use silver weapons all the same, If I get questioned about it, I would probably snark about "well, since I know (whatever fluff things I got told about weres just some minutes ago), why wouldn't I know about (tactically relevant info about weres) ?


So, yeah, I'm on camp transparency :)

I allow that sort of meta information. If I said "Werewolf" I assume that comes with the knowledge of what a werewolf is in general. A knowledge check would tell you whether it's a weakness to silver or a resistance to non-silver. I would probably throw on a little extra information like to be careful about its bite since that's the part that spreads the curse. Save your nimble dodge for that attack.

If I only describe him as a snarling feral man in a loincloth surrounded by wild dogs, the knowledge check might tell you that he's showing telltale signs of lycanthropy and that they are weak to silver. If the players assume he's a werewolf beforehand and use silver, good for them they picked up on the hints themselves, and if it turns out to just be a guy so be it.

Same with trolls. If I say troll, I assume you have any meta information related to trolls, if you want more specifics: roll for Recall Knowledge.

[Ignimortis]

Oh yeah, the "useful information", the kind of description that prompts me to ask leading questions such as "does my character know that [some information that I, the player, know]"

in other words, snark aside, I find that obfuscating mechanically relevant information ( example : lycanthropes and alleged vulnerability to silver weapons ), even when using the rules-appropriate, results in an increase in metagaming that information, and then that awkwardness of wasting turns doing something ineffective on purpose, or not wasting turns doing somethign ineffective on purpose, but having the awkwardness of acting on information you haven't been esplicitly been told, but your character should have known due to high knowledge result.

I.E., if I make a good knowledge roll about the werewolf or whatever, and you don't tell me "you should use silver weapons", I will use silver weapons all the same, If I get questioned about it, I would probably snark about "well, since I know (whatever fluff things I got told about weres just some minutes ago), why wouldn't I know about (tactically relevant info about weres) ?

So, yeah, I'm on camp transparency :)

And that is a way of using this rule. Doesn't change the fact that RAW it's as useful or useless as the GM makes it, and only now they've gotten around to fixing it with the new core books to, well, the general reading many people use of "make a check, get to ask questions about AC, useful abilities, weaknesses and so forth". But right now, per PF2.0, it is about as useful (or perhaps even less so) as using knowledge skills on targets was in PF1.

[Brookshw]

I havent tried the Honor difficulty mode, so please forgive me if it completely wrecks my arguments.

I was just thinking of the degree of transparency in Baldur's Gate 3 actually making the game more fun. You know how many HP enemies have. You know their saves, you know their AC. The game outright tells you the to hit % or the likelihood someone will make their saving throw, allowing you to approach the game with more knowledge.

And i know all dnd game i played, the GM wouldnt tell us monsters' stats, the idea being that you wouldn't know an enemy AC or saving throws or HPs. Part of the fun is "figuring these things", a paradigm i never challenged until i had such a great time playing with the same ruleset, just transparent.

Do you have an opinion? Have you experienced better or worse tabletop experienced when the stats are freely shared?

I have zero interest and gain no value from reducing a game of creativity, fantasy, an imagination, down to a strategy guide level. No thanks, not interested, will not run my tables that way.

[Cikomyr2]

I have zero interest and gain no value from reducing a game of creativity, fantasy, an imagination, down to a strategy guide level. No thanks, not interested, will not run my tables that way.

I dont think you understand the point, but you do you!

[NeptunianOM]

I have played & DMed many games where HP & AC were open knowledge, so that was not that interesting to me. What really interested me was how the DC for every skill was known before you rolled the dice. I found that to be so liberating and interesting from the player's side because, for the most part, DCs are not public knowledge. The DM just says, "Give me a DEX Save" or "Make an Arcana Check". As a player, I really liked having that knowledge. I will try to implement open DCs as a regular aspect of DMing 5E

[kyoryu]

I have played & DMed many games where HP & AC were open knowledge, so that was not that interesting to me. What really interested me was how the DC for every skill was known before you rolled the dice. I found that to be so liberating and interesting from the player's side because, for the most part, DCs are not public knowledge. The DM just says, "Give me a DEX Save" or "Make an Arcana Check". As a player, I really liked having that knowledge. I will try to implement open DCs as a regular aspect of DMing 5E

I don't know why that's not more generally accepted. For the most part, when you attempt things, you know roughly how difficult they are. If I'm jumping across something, I can see how far it is, and what the launch and landing areas are like. If I were to pick a lock, I could tell if it was a cheap dollar store lock or a high-grade security lock (especially if I'm an expert or even really competent in the field).

You could talk about hidden info, like "the tree looks easy to climb, but you don't know about the brittle branches" or "the lock looks easy, but it's rusted". Arguably, that's part of what the dice roll is for.

And it makes the decision-making process for players so much more interesting, too. I apply this to just about every game I run. I really see no downsides.

[Satinavian]

I don't need the open DCs for most knowledge checks or awareness checks or the like. They usually don't come with a cost for an attempt or a risk for failure that is worse than not rolling.

For most things where the decision to attempt or not attempt is meaningful, the DC should be known.

[diplomancer]

I have played & DMed many games where HP & AC were open knowledge, so that was not that interesting to me. What really interested me was how the DC for every skill was known before you rolled the dice. I found that to be so liberating and interesting from the player's side because, for the most part, DCs are not public knowledge. The DM just says, "Give me a DEX Save" or "Make an Arcana Check". As a player, I really liked having that knowledge. I will try to implement open DCs as a regular aspect of DMing 5E

The best thing about open DCs is that they actually force DMs to determine a DC before the die is rolled. I see so often "give me an x check", you roll the die, and the DM goes like "well, such and such happened".

And the worst part of this is that, again in my experience, this makes the number rolled more important than the modifiers. If you roll a 7 and you have a +6 the DM might describe a worse outcome than if you rolled a 12 with +0.

[icefractal]

I have played & DMed many games where HP & AC were open knowledge, so that was not that interesting to me. What really interested me was how the DC for every skill was known before you rolled the dice. I found that to be so liberating and interesting from the player's side because, for the most part, DCs are not public knowledge. The DM just says, "Give me a DEX Save" or "Make an Arcana Check". As a player, I really liked having that knowledge. I will try to implement open DCs as a regular aspect of DMing 5E

I'm with you on that! It's a big reason I like the 3E skill system better than the 4E or 5E ones (despite largely agreeing with the skill consolidation that they do) - 3E establishes a whole baseline of known DCs.

And as diplomancer mentions, pre-setting DCs both keeps the GM honest and conveys that honesty to the players. And FWIW, I would call this an honesty thing, not a "rules vs rulings" thing - deciding each DC on the fly just before anyone rolls is "rulings over rules", deciding it after someone rolls, based on the roll, is making the check secretly meaningless but pretending it matters.

[kyoryu]

And as diplomancer mentions, pre-setting DCs both keeps the GM honest and conveys that honesty to the players. And FWIW, I would call this an honesty thing, not a "rules vs rulings" thing - deciding each DC on the fly just before anyone rolls is "rulings over rules", deciding it after someone rolls, based on the roll, is making the check secretly meaningless but pretending it matters.

In most rules-light games, you can't really have preset difficulties. What you generally have is a well-understood set of difficulty targets for calibration, and generally a culture of announcing the opposition before the roll.

This is made easier because the numbers in most games don't scale like they would in D&D.

But, yeah, supporting you that it's not a "rules over rulings" thing at all. Transparency can be in place either way.

[Cikomyr2]

Slight tangent, but to me one big problem is that certain DM (and players) cannot handle plain success/failure outcome for certain situation. They ask for a die roll and then cannot handle when it doesnt go their way.

If the story absolutely, 100% depends on your players finding a piece of paper, no amount of natural 1 critical fail on your investigation roll should make you miss it. In fact, why even make your PC do the roll?

Alternatively, if something is outright ludicrous and impossible, why hint that a nat 20 would succeed? Why allow the roll to happen if you do NOT want this to happen, period?

[kyoryu]

Slight tangent, but to me one big problem is that certain DM (and players) cannot handle plain success/failure outcome for certain situation. They ask for a die roll and then cannot handle when it doesnt go their way.

If the story absolutely, 100% depends on your players finding a piece of paper, no amount of natural 1 critical fail on your investigation roll should make you miss it. In fact, why even make your PC do the roll?

Alternatively, if something is outright ludicrous and impossible, why hint that a nat 20 would succeed? Why allow the roll to happen if you do NOT want this to happen, period?

The general advice from narrative games is "don't do that". If you need to roll on something that must/should succeed, then make the roll about something besides success. Okay, you'll find the clue. The question is whether you find it before the police show up or not.

This can be simulated with more atomic actions by allowing retries, but having each one take some amount of time. I generally prefer single rolls, as people are bad at combinatorial math (myself included)