Quote from: Exploderwizard;708299Sadly this kind of player skill is in decline. Some of the blame can fall on modern rpg design but not all of it.

Many modern rpgs are designed to mitigate (or eliminate) the effect of the actual ability of the player on the outcome of the game. This begins with the idea that every fucking bit of gameplay that means anything is mechanized with die rolls. This has the long term effect of training players to ignore what is happening until die rolls are called for.

The game world and what is taking place therein is "boring" until there is something to roll for because nothing of consequence can happen without making those rolls.

All of this horseshit is in the name of ensuring the the abilities of the character, and not the player determine success in the game.

Its a pretty good reason why players are so fond of fiddling with their phones or tablets instead of paying attention to the game because there IS no payoff to paying attention when EVERYTHING is going to boil down to "so what do I need to roll". Just focus in on those moments when you can have an actual impact on the game and watch Youtube the rest of the time.

This is why I prefer games that support both rulings, and the opportunity for player engagement and cleverness to have a significant effect on the outcome of a game.

I agree with this analysis. I was very struck with the point made in the old school primer about how traps are dealt with in different editions. In 3e or 4e you have stuff like 'check for traps, OK you rolled 25, you find a poison needle next to the clatch on the chest'. In older editions, particularly prior to the introduction of the thief and his F/RT % chance, you have stuff like 'here is a full description of the chest, tell me exactly what you do, safe discovery of the needle is contingent on you telling me how you search'. Those are two fundamentally different ways of approaching a game.

Quote from: soviet;708448In older editions,
particularly prior to the introduction of the thief and his F/RT % chance,

As a point of reference in OD&D Greyhawk Supplement I, there was only Remove Traps ability for Thieves. There was no Find Traps which was handled the same as before. By describing what you are looking for.

This is not commonly known and one of the main reason why Matt Finch wrote about it in the Primer.

From Page 4.

QuoteBasic abilities are:
— open locks by picking or foiling magical closures
— remove small trap devices (such as poisoned needles)
— listen for noise behind closed doors
— move with great stealth
— filtch items and pick pockets
— hide in shadows
— strike silently from behind
— climb nearly sheer surfaces, upwards or downwards

Quote from: estar;708466As a point of reference in OD&D Greyhawk Supplement I, there was only Remove Traps ability for Thieves. There was no Find Traps which was handled the same as before. By describing what you are looking for.

This is not commonly and one of the main reason why Matt Finch wrote about it in the Primer.

It is an important distinction. In OD&D dwarves  have a chance to detect certain kinds of traps with a die roll.

Most characters need to engage in what the entitled players refer to as " pixel bitching" to discover hidden features about the environment. I prefer to call it engaging with the setting instead of the rules.

Seeing as how the game was designed to be about exploring the setting, reducing all of gameplay to a pass/fail die roll seems to be a whole lot more boring than pixel bitching IMHO.

Quote from: estar;708466As a point of reference in OD&D Greyhawk Supplement I, there was only Remove Traps ability for Thieves. There was no Find Traps which was handled the same as before. By describing what you are looking for.

This is not commonly and one of the main reason why Matt Finch wrote about it in the Primer.

From Page 4.

Ah! That's interesting, thanks.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;708467Most characters need to engage in what the entitled players refer to as " pixel bitching" to discover hidden features about the environment. I prefer to call it engaging with the setting instead of the rules.

A big influence on the whole "what are you aware of in your environment" issue is my experience playing NERO boffer LARP for 15 years.

1) By and large if you were looking for traps you found them. It didn't take 10 minutes per 10 feet but being cautious did add time.

2) When you failed to notice a trap you are personally distracted. Mostly because most of it was hurry up and wait. You get distracted, don't check and fucking trip over a unnoticed wire or pressure plate.

3) Rarely you just being a dumb-ass and arrogant. The most common situation was "Fuck it" and flip open the lid of the chest. BAM! Trap goes off.

4) However most of the "injuries" resulting from traps are from trying to disarm the damn things. Which in NERO was consider a physical activity. Granted the "traps" we dealt with were not the lethal D&D variety. Mostly they were various gadgets with a clear physical action that was considered the trigger. Stuff like marbles in a cup, trip wire buzzers, etc, etc. A couple years in, the trap hounds* had come up with some very ingenious mechanisms that could easily be setup but were a challenge to disarm.

Since then I incorporated my LARP experience into my rulings on traps. The result is that Traps are still a challenge, still something to watch out for, but not as tedious as the traditional approach.

*Trap Hounds, there was a type of player who lived to disarm a trap. The more complicated the better. I remember one encounter that was setup where a small cabin in the area used to run module adventures was packed with dozens of trap mechanism. The center of which was set a chest with some pretty valuable treasure.

When the first party tried, and failed to deal with it, nearly every Trap Hound at the event heard about and they were attracted to like a bear to honey. One did manage to disarm everything.

Quote from: Old Geezer;708282That's a very narrow and thoroughly fuckwitted definition of player skill they gave you.

A big part of "player skill" was actually "being experienced in CHAINMAIL."  Of course you all had spears, and once in close melee the first rank switched to swords while the second rank fought with spears.

Another big part of "player skill" was listen and think.  There is a carved gargoyle head with a small lever inside the mouth.  What do you do?

Or "you run into the room full of gems.  You're standing in gems up to your ankles."

"I yell and scream and throw gems up in the air.  I'm rich."

"Yeah, it's more gems than you've ever seen.  You're standing in gems up to your shins."

Real example.  The player drowned in the gem-covered quicksand, ignoring "You're standing in gems up to your knees... your thighs... your hips... your waist..."

Listen, pay fucking attention, and THINK.  That's "player skill."

I listened, paid attention to what you wrote and think, there has to be some stuff you have left out.

Gem-covered quicksand?  Is that quicksand with a layer of gems on top of it?
 If yes, how are the gems staying on top of the quicksand without sinking?  Ignoring that part, was the player informed that he was getting wet from sinking or was the group already wet from something else?

Quote from: estar;708475A big influence on the whole "what are you aware of in your environment" issue is my experience playing NERO boffer LARP for 15 years.

1) By and large if you were looking for traps you found them. It didn't take 10 minutes per 10 feet but being cautious did add time.

2) When you failed to notice a trap you are personally distracted. Mostly because most of it was hurry up and wait. You get distracted, don't check and fucking trip over a unnoticed wire or pressure plate.

3) Rarely you just being a dumb-ass and arrogant. The most common situation was "Fuck it" and flip open the lid of the chest. BAM! Trap goes off.

4) However most of the "injuries" resulting from traps are from trying to disarm the damn things. Which in NERO was consider a physical activity. Granted the "traps" we dealt with were not the lethal D&D variety. Mostly they were various gadgets with a clear physical action that was considered the trigger. Stuff like marbles in a cup, trip wire buzzers, etc, etc. A couple years in, the trap hounds* had come up with some very ingenious mechanisms that could easily be setup but were a challenge to disarm.

Since then I incorporated my LARP experience into my rulings on traps. The result is that Traps are still a challenge, still something to watch out for, but not as tedious as the traditional approach.

*Trap Hounds, there was a type of player who lived to disarm a trap. The more complicated the better. I remember one encounter that was setup where a small cabin in the area used to run module adventures was packed with dozens of trap mechanism. The center of which was set a chest with some pretty valuable treasure.

When the first party tried, and failed to deal with it, nearly every Trap Hound at the event heard about and they were attracted to like a bear to honey. One did manage to disarm everything.

Interesting take. I used to LARP in Darkon and there was much more combat than trap disarming.

I would say the approach to disarming a trap in a game would be more casual than in an actual life or death situation (for the character).

Quote from: Sommerjon;708476I listened, paid attention to what you wrote and think, there has to be some stuff you have left out.

Gem-covered quicksand?  Is that quicksand with a layer of gems on top of it?
 If yes, how are the gems staying on top of the quicksand without sinking?  Ignoring that part, was the player informed that he was getting wet from sinking or was the group already wet from something else?

I caught this as a pit so deep full of gems that the player sunk into it and suffocated before any other members of the party were aware the player was even in trouble. Just another reason splitting up the party, or letting one player get too far ahead on point.... is a baaaaad idea for party integrity.

In a scenario like this, as a GM, I would go into real time with the sinking player. He has, at most four minutes from the time he is chest deep in gems and realizes he is in trouble, until the time he dies. For three of those minutes, he/she will be completely immersed in gems, so any shouting or noise making will be muffled and unheard by any other party members more than 30' distant from the sinking player. During the last minute the player has to make a ST each round vs. Wisdom to keep from panicing and being unable to take any action at all during the round. Each successive round after the first in the last minute, a cumulative -1 penalty is imposed for the saving throw as the player is out of air and struggles to breath.

Quote from: estar;708475A big influence on the whole "what are you aware of in your environment" issue is my experience playing NERO boffer LARP for 15 years.

Most LARP traps though arent specifically designed to blend into the scenery or made by master trapsmiths. Though the picking or disarming mechanisms for LARP traps can be really interesting. Though I have not seen yet a newer LARP and suspect that the actual hiding of them has advanced some.

If some stereotyped situation comes up often enough, people tend to make up a rule for it.

"Level 1 to 3 hits against Mail and Shield 30% of the time, and a sword does 1d8 points of damage," is a familiar example. It's just a lot more convenient than the GM needing to reinvent everything from scratch every single combat round!

Even if something doesn't come up that much, but people are interested in getting into details, they may come up with some pretty extensive rules.

It doesn't follow that the same full set of methods must be applied all the time. We might, for instance, reserve hit location rules for important duels and use a general damage system for routine monster-bashing.

Even if the rules set is the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, situations are bound to come up that are not covered. Having more from which to extrapolate is generally helpful. Feeling obliged to look up and cross reference a lot of material is not helpful when keeping the game moving would be more conducive to fun!

A good GM knows when the Mark I Eyeball gives a better return on investment than rules-lawyering. Part of how one learns this is by listening to the players. A lot of problems I see people complaining about online seem to stem from people just not talking with each other.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;708467Most characters need to engage in what the entitled players refer to as " pixel bitching" to discover hidden features about the environment. I prefer to call it engaging with the setting instead of the rules.

"pixel bitching" originally meant that the graphical clues in a computer game were too low res and muddy to actually pick out what to click on, so you were forced to fall back on 'move cursor one pixel over, click, nope, repeat'.

Maybe some entitled players use "pixel bitching" to cover having to actually engage their brain in order to find a trap, but I would use it to describe a trap/puzzle that is "solved" by wearing a green hat, standing on one leg, singing a dirty limerick about a hedgehog, while levitating a butter churn with tenser's magic disk... none of this having been actually hinted at in game.

If PCs take the time to look for traps, I make it very likely they will find the trap. Here's why:

1. What the PCs do once they find a possible trap is often quite interesting and fun. Usually more fun than, "an arrow trap springs for 2D6 damage".

2.  I use Wandering Monsters and Timed Mission so if PCs spend time on a trap, there are consequences so PCs have to decide how careful they want to be versus how fast they want to deal with a dangerous zone.

Another metaphor besides "pixel bitching" would be Crap Parser Syndrome. Back in the early days of computer games, a lot of people put out text adventures with frustratingly limited -- sometimes absurdly so! -- flexibility in accepting commands. You'd know just what you wanted to do, but had to figure out what arcane phrasing was necessary (or that the program simply wouldn't let you do that thing).

Sometimes GMs can make communication similarly frustrating.

I think the most credible complaints about "pixel bitching" are those directed at GMs who come up with one solution and one solution alone to a problem that is pitched at the players, and shoot down any alternate solutions - even if there's absolutely no in-world reason why the alternatives the players thought up shouldn't work.

Quote from: GameDaddy;708565I caught this as a pit so deep full of gems that the player sunk into it and suffocated before any other members of the party were aware the player was even in trouble. Just another reason splitting up the party, or letting one player get too far ahead on point.... is a baaaaad idea for party integrity.

I think the point is that some things are going to be harder to perceive via listening to the GM than if you were actually there; a GM has to make reasonable allowances or you end up with PCs killing themselves by ramming into walls because they thought the door was North when its really West.