A 240am kind of brainwave


#1

So I was thinking about the ol’ “Everybody roll WIS versus Target to see if anyone notices that hidden and dangerous/helpful thing” and what a PITA it can be because of all the metagaming it engenders in the hapless PCs whether they pass their roll or not.

And it occurred to me that a perfectly valid GM thing to do (especially with my past dabblement in Fate Accellerated and how I tend to use Fate “Fractal” Style short form notes for monsters and NPCs and even Room notes) is to treat any such hidden things in a setting as an abstract collective entity… giving the Room’s Secrets themselves a simple roll vs Target on the GMs turn to “Avoid Passive Detection” by all PCs who are in a position to notice/detect it passively.

Granted, I am usually all about putting dice in players hands for lots of stuff. Not quite Dungeon World level, but maybe 75% of the way. Even so, the ol’ “check to see if anyone notices” schtick has just always rubbed me wrong.

Doing it this way seems like it would simplify information distribution, help prevent pointless bottlenecks, and speed up the action, while cutting down some degree of metagaming all those WIS checks. And course PCs can spend their turn searching the room anytime they want and have a shot at finding things as per usual.

Thoughts?


#2

That’s a pretty slick idea, dude. Simple fix for something that has always bothered me a bit too. Well played, man. I’m going to use this in my next game this week. I’ll drop some notes on how it goes, but it already sounds like it’ll work like a charm.


#3

This paragraph outright gives it away that those WIS checks are redundant in the first place. Let me offer something very simple: Eschew rolling altogether and just give the information to the players without any rolls.

Letting everybody roll for the same thing is a “design smell” to me, i.e. an indication of a bad design. Allow me to explain. It is silly, slow and meta and it signifies a problem. It usually happens when there is something important players better notice or else something bad happens like the story getting stuck, important information is not delivered and so on. If the information is important, just give it to the players. Rolls/checks should be for optional things; things that are useful but not essential.

Another thing that bothers me is a secret in a room is by definition passive. Why would it roll a check to avoid detection? This is another design smell to me. If you want rolls then you can pick the character with the highest WIS to make the roll (and lowest DEX for stealth), or you can pick a character randomly each room, or whoever has the initiative makes the check.

Just don’t make people roll for pointless things; it drags the table down in my opinion.


#4

I see how you come to the place you are, @Khan.

Totally agree with that and in general your whole post in principle. That said, I think you may have misunderstood what I was getting at, what gristle I was trying to chew through:

The bottleneck I am referring to is not the bottleneck of “you didn’t find the essential clue, too bad suckas!” It’s the bottleneck of meta. “We rolled for an optional thing, now let’s keep fiddling around in the metagame till the randomized option is effectively no longer random nor optional.” I know there’s timers in play for exactly this sort of thing, but it still breaks the fun for the half the table that wants to enjoy RP experience in another world…no matter how much fun the minmaxers on the other side are having contriving stupid (though often amusing!) reasons to get EVERY LAST CRUMB OF COOKIE from an encounter without taking so much as a hangnail.

And also, yanno, I’m always one to enjoy applying the Fate Fractal concept in new and Improv-friendly ways. It was definitely a three AM kind of idea. :cowboy_hat_face: And kind of exciting to consider handling a Room Secret as if it were a Fate Mook.


#5

Oh, I see. In that case time pressure is your friend like you said (timers, chasing enemies and whatnot) because without any pressure, players’ actions are essentially free so they will try things until they succeed. You can put a limit on this but it is not a nice move by the GM. Also if they don’t have a time pressure, why don’t you give them what they want without them rolling?

You can make the room roll to hide its secrets of course. It does rub me the wrong way like I said but it is your game - you know what’s best for you and for your group.


#6

I have yet to try implementing it (mostly due to not DMing lately) but I thought Seth Skorkowsky’s alternate method seemed really clever.


#7

In my opinion this is too much work for something that shouldn’t even be an issue but YMMV as usual.