Many years ago I read an article somewhere about playing D&D without letting the players know what their characters statistics were--the DM had control of ALL game related statistics and information. Players didn't even know what level their characters were and how many hit points their characters had.
A player whose character has a 16 strength would be told "growing up you were stronger than most of the boys in your village, but you had trouble concentrating on your lessons sometimes (WIS 8). You learned to wield a variety of peasant weapons while serving as a runner in the militia (simple weapons feat), you also learned to reshoe horses (Craft-Blacksmithing 2 ranks) and spent many hours playing hide and seek with your friends (hide 2 ranks, move silently 1 rank)....
It would certainly eliminate meta-game thinking and would bring role-playing to a whole new forefront. Most players would probably figure out what level their characters were from the spells they could cast, but not having a PC sheet with a bunch of numbers in front of them would certainly make the DM's campaign world seem to come to life more, more threatening perhaps....
Has anyone tried this? Heard of it? Played in a game like that? If I did this, I think I would want a "DM's assistant" to help with the number crunching....
I think with the D&D rules, of any incarnation, there's far too much bookkeeping involved for a DM to be able to do this reasonably.
Mind you, I think it's a good thing for the DM to be as informed about the characters in his group as possible, but the blow by blow record keeping is better left in the hands of the players.
I think the ability to better concentrate on the flow of the game is worth the tradeoff of any possible metagaming. In truth, I don't view metagaming as much of a problem. It's a game, after all. I think it should only be taken just so seriously before it becomes something other than a game.
On the other hand, there are games out there designed to keep players in the dark, like the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game. But it's a rules light game using few absolutes, GM judgement calls, and storytelling to determine how the play unfolds.
I tried the diceless Amber system as a player about 8-9 years ago. I didn't like it all that much. I'm thinking more along the lines of keeping the players in the dark more about their characters exact abilities in order to encourage more role-playing and looking at interacting with the campaign world as more than just a mathematical exercise.
This wasn't a big problem in 1st edition, as levelling up was a rare event. My current campaign is about 9 months old and my players' characters are all 10th level. The players seem to spend inordinate amounts of time fretting about feats, skill point allocations, attack bonuses, etc.
Virtually all of the "between-game" questions I get from my players involve the availability of feats, prestige classes, etc. These are from the same batch of players who 15 years ago would spend most of their time on asking questions on "who rules kingdom XYZ, does my guild have a contact in Monmurg?"
I'm chalking some of this up to the fact that this is our first 3rd edition D&D campaign and everything is new, but I'm looking for some drastic suggestions on getting everyone to refocus on the world and not the game mechanics.
Many years ago I read an article somewhere about playing D&D without letting the players know what their characters statistics were--the DM had control of ALL game related statistics and information. Players didn't even know what level their characters were and how many hit points their characters had.
A player whose character has a 16 strength would be told "growing up you were stronger than most of the boys in your village, but you had trouble concentrating on your lessons sometimes (WIS 8). You learned to wield a variety of peasant weapons while serving as a runner in the militia (simple weapons feat), you also learned to reshoe horses (Craft-Blacksmithing 2 ranks) and spent many hours playing hide and seek with your friends (hide 2 ranks, move silently 1 rank)....
It would certainly eliminate meta-game thinking and would bring role-playing to a whole new forefront. Most players would probably figure out what level their characters were from the spells they could cast, but not having a PC sheet with a bunch of numbers in front of them would certainly make the DM's campaign world seem to come to life more, more threatening perhaps....
Has anyone tried this? Heard of it? Played in a game like that? If I did this, I think I would want a "DM's assistant" to help with the number crunching....
First off i think that's a real good idea (if you have the right players) or really bad (if you don't).
From Personal experience, that's EXACTLY what my wife did when she first learned how to play. She didn't even want to see a character sheet, she just roleplayed it (and I as DM kept track of everything numerical for her). She actually did better than experienced players, and was so totally "thinking outside the box" that some of my other players considered it. The only problem is the extra work for the DM (if the party is large), and that 2 of my players being min/maxers and rules lawyers wanted to have nothing to do with it. So it broke down when they went with the all or nothing vote and finally decided not to go through with it.Another thing is that of all you mentioned I did use ONE thing throughout a whole campaign once just as a reaction to some metagame abuse my players were heaping my way. You know: the fight until 1hp then retreat...the decision to engage or not was dependant on their calculations of monster damage vs their hit points (they have the whole monster manual memorized...so i've had to adjust every one for evey encounter..know how time consuming that is??)...and I finally snapped when the rogue would fail to disarm the trap and the fighter would volunteer to walk up to it and set it off because he had enough hit points to survive! What i did was totally hide hit points for the whole campaign. The players would roll for hit points when they leveled behind my screen, I would keep track of their hit points and they never knew how much they had. Instead of saying you take a hit for 8 points of damage to describe combat, I switched to flavor text for the whole campaign (and I actually found it fun and refreshing...also the players were a LOT more cautious than ususal). It lasted for one campaign, and then when someone elase Dmed they went back to the old way. It seems I liked it a lot more than my players, because when it was my turn to DM again, they presented me with an ultimatum of no more hidden hit points or they wouldn't play in my campaign LOL.
So that's my 2 cents worth...do with it as you please =)
I haven't played that in D&D but we had a modern-day Illuminati campaign some time ago where players didn't make any dice rolls or kept track of their character sheets...
Only info about my first character was a simple e-mail I sent the GM where I described who my character was and what he has been doing and the GM then made up the actual stats. Second character I actually made by the book but then gave the sheet to GM who might have fudged up some things ("he may think he can do that even though he actually cannot but without realising he is actually quite good at this").
That style worked well since the nature of the campaign was such that players shouldn't get too much information...
I would say that style like this requires certain type of campaign...if you are planning a campaign concentrating mostly on politics, diplomacy or knowledge this should work like a charm but for a combat-oriented campaign stick to the public stats, otherwise it is just too much work for GM and boredom to players.
The players seem to spend inordinate amounts of time fretting about feats, skill point allocations, attack bonuses, etc.
Virtually all of the "between-game" questions I get from my players involve the availability of feats, prestige classes, etc. These are from the same batch of players who 15 years ago would spend most of their time on asking questions on "who rules kingdom XYZ, does my guild have a contact in Monmurg?"
I'm chalking some of this up to the fact that this is our first 3rd edition D&D campaign and everything is new, but I'm looking for some drastic suggestions on getting everyone to refocus on the world and not the game mechanics.
Bear in mind that your players are possibly still in the process of learning. They have a HUGE wealth of new abilities and options open to them, the likes of which seriously haven't been seen in D&D before 3rd edition. In 1st and 2nd Ed, you had a few classes, a few optional classes, and that was it. And you had an even more limited advancement path.
Now, they can dip into classes for a taste of one thing or another, gain prestige classes, take feats for new abilities as well as qualify for PrCs, and have a set of rules to design their own magic items. That's like taking someone who's used to only the choice of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and neopolitan, and throwing them into a Baskin Robins or a Ben & Jerry's.
Some things that might save you some headaches:
* Sit down and spend time with the gaming resources available to your group (including magazines as they come out), compile a list of what's in and what's out in your campaign, and make the list available to your group. Then they don't have to spend so much of your time asking about such things.
* Consider placing a limit on the number of classes and prestige classes a given character can have. The other DM in our group, for example, limits us to a single 10 level Prestige Class, with no set limit on lesser ones.
And, you might also consider slowing down progression a bit. Not too much, or you might have a revolt on your hands. But just enough to spend a session or two here and there in some roleplay immersion. Provide them with opportunities to use their hard earned and planned for abilities, but in ways that favor story over mechanics.
To elaborate on my last comment:
Keep a copy of your group's character sheets so you know what they can do. Make quick cards, or whatever will help you quickly access the information during these 'roleplay' immersion sessions.
Don't bother with dice too much. Instead, reference their card to see if they have enough skill, etc, to make the grade. A good rule of thumb would be to consider them to be 'taking 10' at all times, or maybe 'taking 5 or 8' if you want to be a little conservative. Whatever indicates to you that they're likely to succeed. If they beat the DC you have in mind, woo! Have them describe their actions, and reward them with a 'Roleplay Bonus' to give them a boost.
Let their special abilities come into play without really keeping track of the nitpicky details too much. For example, let the shadow dancer use his shadow jump here and there when dramatically appropriate instead of worrying about just how many feet of movement he's used. Don't worry about exactly what spells your spell casters have prepped. If they have access to it and think to use it, no harm no foul. And keep combat at a minimum; just use easy victories to let them ham it up and show off by describing their actions.
I think by taking time to immerse them in cinematic RP, you'll encourage them to get their heads back into the world and not worry so much about the mechanics. And by letting them showcase (and maybe even showboat) their special abilities, you help them embrace these sessions.
Thanks for the feedback...I like the idea of just hiding the hit points, but I can certainly see Xellan's point of that it might just be the fact that my players are suddenly at Baskin & Robbins and there are some simple steps I can take to get them to refocus on the game.
Magdalena, I think I would have enjoyed that Illuminati game quite a bit...
Magdalena, I think I would have enjoyed that Illuminati game quite a bit...
Yeah, it was fun. What's more, since it took place in "real world" and none of us were professional soldiers, wrestlers or such all the characters avoided direct combat as much as possible. If things heated up first idea was to get away...or other way around, when we had to do something like that ambushes, surprise attacks and well-planned tactics were a good idea.
Many years ago I read an article somewhere about playing D&D without letting the players know what their characters statistics were--the DM had control of ALL game related statistics and information. Players didn't even know what level their characters were and how many hit points their characters had.
Was it called "keep 'em guessing"? Not sure if I got the name right but I think I remember reading in in one of the old Best of Dragons (4 or 5 most likely). I could be wrong on my facts, it's been a while but I did at the time think it quite intriguing. But my players were having none of it when I proposed it to them :) Some of them were of the "rub my dice and wait for my turn while ignoring everything else" school. Character build is such a huge part of this current edition I don't know if it would work these days.
The only time I ever witnessed it done, it was a total travesty of a 'fair, balanced' gaming experience; fortunately, I was only a first-time guest looking in on the game. I wound up stealing the entire game group out from under him - it was a mercy-killing of that game and done for the sake of the suffering players...
...but that's a whole other thread.
The DM was the only one to ever roll a die - and when he did, it was just a d6, to determine if what you were trying to do would fail or not; he wouldn't tell you if you needed to roll high or low (because either would be taken as failure for you), so you hoped that you rolled a '3' or a '4', because then his unfairness would be laid bare as he told you that you failed anyways...
His girlfriend was a 4th level druid with about 5 animal companions to protect her from the rest of the group, who conspired to kill her every week (just like an episode of "Pinky and the Brain"); the session consisted of a plot to kill her, it's subsequent execution, failure (guaranteed by the DM) and the generation of new, 1st-level characters to try again with next week.
Needless to say, I would never try to run a 'diceless' game.
M
I'm sure I wouldn't go that extreme, as my wife can attest to the three of her characters that I've killed in the last few years.
I think about the only thing I could reasonably try is the "keep hit points secret" thing. I really like that idea.
The "no dice rolling by players" wouldn't work for my gaming group either...last weekend both my wife and a male buddy of mine bought new sets of dice and talked about how neat those metal dice from Crystalcaste would be for Christmas.
You might also consider the Injury system in the Unearthed Arcana for 3e which replaces hit points. Each time you're struck in combat, you make a fort save to resist taking a 'hit'. Hits apply penalties (including to future fort saves), and if you fail the fort save by 10 or more, you're 'disabled'. If you take a hit while disabled, you start dying. If, that is, you're going with a hidden hit point system.
If you have a gaming mat (with squares or hexes) or use something like one you might try tossing it out. It seems like you have a group of long time players and the 3rd ed. rules have brought a lot of meta game thinking to the forefront by getting involved in "exactness". What I mean is, in the older versions GMs described a room with novel-like detail then if combat started they would give out the dimensions and how far away the bad guy is. With the 3rd ed. the bad guy is 10 squares away and the description and imagination is lost, the GM just puts the bad guy model on the map and everyone counts out ranges and movement by squares. Can the characters judge the distance that accurately? If they ask how far they are from their target you give it in "you think he is about..." or you clump it by saying he is at medium range (this gives the minuses/bonuses without the square count). It should never really hurt the characters (like they miss with a short range spell because the bad guy is one foot out) but it makes the players see the fight in their heads and not reduce the game to numbers. Tricky fights or scenarios use figures,without the grid still, to give general locations of cover and specific objects but again no squares to count. This might take some of the meta thinking out of the game side and leave it in level-up area where it belongs.
Also the word "why" for the level-up area is great for reducing meta thinking. "Why does your barbarian want a level of monk?" Or "why does your orc barbarian want the finess feat?" these questions can be a way of curbing that meta thinking or at least channeling it. I am definitely one of those GMs who does not like to say "no" but "why" is a softer no that says "your meta gaming again."
If you have a gaming mat (with squares or hexes) or use something like one you might try tossing it out.
A potential problem with tossing out the map is that a number of combat options available to the players become entirely subjective. Flanking, charging, cover and some kinds of concealment, patches of rough terrain... All these are things that are things that are enhanced by the use of the map.
And five foot squares aren't all that exact. It's more akin to laying down grid sections for, say, a search, or an archeological dig. It lets folks know where you are with enough detail to accomodate area attacks, while giving plenty of room for a character to maneuver with some believability.
Overall, I think a grid encourages players to utilize tactics, enables the DM to sketch out details to provide a clearer view of the area, and drastically reduces the risk of someone miraculously forgetting there's a giant hole for them to fall to their deaths.
Also the word "why" for the level-up area is great for reducing meta thinking. "Why does your barbarian want a level of monk?" Or "why does your orc barbarian want the finess feat?" these questions can be a way of curbing that meta thinking or at least channeling it. I am definitely one of those GMs who does not like to say "no" but "why" is a softer no that says "your meta gaming again."
Good suggestion. Just be careful about 'grading' their answers. Asking why should be a tool to get the player exploring the depth of their character, not push them into any preconceived mold you might have for them.
There's also a point where it can be too much. I once joined a text based online game (a MUX, for you folks who know what I'm talking about). The theme and setting were great, there was a lot I liked about it. But not only did you have to write a background for the character (fairly standard on such games), but each time you were ready to level, you had to write a mini-app to justify the class level you took, the skills you increased, and the feats you selected. That turned out to be the deal breaker for me.
This was a very interesting thread to read. I ran a 'campaign' with a friend of mine that ran for several years. I was the DM and he was the player. We didn't use any dice and the abilities of his characters were barely ever referenced. It was great fun, and one of the situations (involving the father of all kraken's and a talking medusa head) caused him to buy a crayfish as a pet that he kept for a few years until it died (the kraken looked like a giant crayfish or lobster rather than a squid in my game world).
It seems that a lot of people have had to deal with absolutely terrible DMs. The one with the DM and his d6s caused me to shudder. Thankfully, the caliber of people who write on these message boards is way higher (I hope!)
Hiding a player's hit points is an interesting thing to do, but since my players have no idea what I'm going to throw at them I never have to worry about the fighter stepping forward to set off a trap unless they are desperate (the last time somebody did that in my campaign they died most horribly). I hide XP from my players and also ask them to validate their feat and class choices (if they can't they usually can't take the feat or class in question).