So, one of the multiple things I do for income is plow snow. which I have been doing for the last three days.
Whilst doing this rather unpleasurable task, I run into all these people "you haven't plowed all week" , "there is two feet of snow here", I called you hours ago!
None of which are true, or even close to reasonable.... which made me think, really bad or non existent perception skill?
How could this interpret into roleplaying?
Often at tables I see everyone roll perception checks, and everyone (metagame) knows who has the highest score (it's even conversation/tactics, who has the best score?) and then they automatically 'believe' the highest roll.
"Tom got a 20, so we go that way"
Clearly meta-gaming based on Out of game dice results.
Perception is one of those things that doesn't give an in game result you can easily describe.
I often handle it like:
John gets a 22, Tim an 18, charley 10, and steve a 3
The target number was a 20.
"Grimbold thinks he see's a fine crack in the stonework in the left corner, Wizbasher found several discarded silver pieces under an old piece of parchment, Chuck of Norris noticed the wax on the extinguished candle is soft and the candle must have been on and running not that long ago. Hambone the horrible has notice a new scuff on his boot that wasn't there when you all entered the dungeon."
Since everyone knows John got the higher score, they all go over to check out what john has seen, a crack in the wall.
Now that could be several things, a secret door, a trap, or a crack in the wall.
However, if the same four players rolled to see how many inches of snow had fallen you would get:
Grimbold says there is 8 inches of snow, Wizbasher says there is at least a foot, Chuck of Norris swears an oath to the gods there is no more than 6 inches and Hambone the horrible is concerned you all think it has snowed.
Now the party ALL automatically believes that Grimbold is right, because his player had the highest score.
What's the best way to deal with this kind of thing, because clearly, IRL you can't tell the 90 year old guy who thinks he called you 4 hours before snow even began to fall, that there is only 8 inches of snow and not a foot and half, because he is CONVINCED he's right, and we should go with his word because he's so old and wise!
This doesn't happen in gaming, but perception isn't pass/fail....its more ambiguous,,,,
So, one of the multiple things I do for income is plow snow. which I have been doing for the last three days.
Whilst doing this rather unpleasurable task, I run into all these people "you haven't plowed all week" , "there is two feet of snow here", I called you hours ago!
None of which are true, or even close to reasonable.... which made me think, really bad or non existent perception skill?
How could this interpret into roleplaying?
Often at tables I see everyone roll perception checks, and everyone (metagame) knows who has the highest score (it's even conversation/tactics, who has the best score?) and then they automatically 'believe' the highest roll.
"Tom got a 20, so we go that way"
Clearly meta-gaming based on Out of game dice results.
Perception is one of those things that doesn't give an in game result you can easily describe.
I often handle it like:
John gets a 22, Tim an 18, charley 10, and steve a 3
The target number was a 20."Grimbold thinks he see's a fine crack in the stonework in the left corner, Wizbasher found several discarded silver pieces under an old piece of parchment, Chuck of Norris noticed the wax on the extinguished candle is soft and the candle must have been on and running not that long ago. Hambone the horrible has notice a new scuff on his boot that wasn't there when you all entered the dungeon."
Since everyone knows John got the higher score, they all go over to check out what john has seen, a crack in the wall.
Now that could be several things, a secret door, a trap, or a crack in the wall.
However, if the same four players rolled to see how many inches of snow had fallen you would get:
Grimbold says there is 8 inches of snow, Wizbasher says there is at least a foot, Chuck of Norris swears an oath to the gods there is no more than 6 inches and Hambone the horrible is concerned you all think it has snowed.
Now the party ALL automatically believes that Grimbold is right, because his player had the highest score.
What's the best way...
So you're that damned snow plow guy! Will you please stop plowing snow back into my driveway after I've cleared it? And come some time before they turn my road into a snowmobile racetrack? And try not to hit my mailbox this time? Sorry, just a little rage from a transplanted Yankee sick of snow removal in a Virginia suburb completely unprepared for significant snow.
What was your question again? Oh, perception and metagaming. Only way around it I can think of is rolling for them in secret, which I tend to do for passive detection, but not usually for active searching.
Well you could not give out the DC. This way they don't know who made it or not they just have information. Now they might know that a 20 has a better chance of beating the DC compaired to a 1 but sucess is not part of the information you give them. They now must act on the information you have given them.
Get the players' perception mods and roll them yourself if you're that concerned.
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if you are not rolling for surprise (or any situation where roll differentiation truly matters), and in order to minimize DM secret rolling, you could perhaps secret roll once and add the party's highest Perception bonus and address them as a group "you all clearly see 8 inches of snow"...
...also, if you don't mind taking the time, DM can meta too! you can fight meta with meta: roll some "Perception" dice from time to time and occasionally take a player aside and feed him a false suspicion "you think the door is booby-trapped" (it isn't). let them reason who they think 'won' the check.
I ran under a DM that had a nifty chart - 2 sets of numbers from 1-20 on opposite order (1st list started at 1 and went to 20, 2nd list started at 20 and went to 1).
Rolls were in the open (mostly) - but he would roll a d6 in secret that would say what list to use - so a 20 could be really good or really bad (and you never knew which until it was too late). Never have I wished for 9's, 10's and 11's more!
I dont plow the roads, I plow driveways and parking lots. Private contractor... not public servant.
This makes me think of one time I was playing a Goliath Warden in 4E.
We were trekking through some woods and made survival checks to make sure we were going the right way. I got fairly high, another character got fairly low, and everyone else was more or less in the middle.
So my character wants to go one way, but the other character says he thinks we should be going a different direction.
However... he was a halfling.
My character picked him up and started walking.
That's how we resolved that.
Edit: Actually, maybe it wasn't 4E. I might be thinking of a PF game where I was a werewolf barbarian (monstrous campaign, we were all pretty much evil somethings). Either way, the other player was small, so it worked out the same way.
This raises the question I had about to what extent GMs should make rolls for players in secret. Certainly more checks = more fun for players (as long as things don't get to complicated), but if you roll in secret, you can have players that roll a 1 confidently assert the WRONG conclusion, which can lead to character dissent in game that makes party dynamics more interesting.
It's all about finding the right balance.
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Plus, making secret rolls behind the screen while the party is walking around can be an effective way to put them on edge, even if you're rolling for no real reason.
I dont plow the roads, I plow driveways and parking lots. Private contractor... not public servant.
Actually, where we live, the county regularly hires private contractors to help clear the roads as well, since whenever there is a major storm the government doesn't have enough plows to do everything. So the big government trucks pretty much stick to the main roads, and the private contractors work the side streets. Kind of ridiculous a couple of years ago when we got a couple of storms in the 20+ inch range. The poor guy trying to clear our 30 foot wide street with his pick-up truck with a plow on it wasn't making much headway, and eventually broke something in his truck and had to give up.
Funny, we actually roleplay our bad results. For example, if we are in a desert and I roll a one, I will announce to the group that I see a group of butterflies.......right next to the pink blimp........ We've always had fun with spot checks or perception checks. But I do admit we do compare who has the biggest....well you know what I mean. Sometimes the DM will hand out a piece of paper if he wants what is seen or heard to be a secret.
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Funny, we actually roleplay our bad results. For example, if we are in a desert and I roll a one, I will announce to the group that I see a group of butterflies.......right next to the pink blimp........ We've always had fun with spot checks or perception checks. But I do admit we do compare who has the biggest....well you know what I mean. Sometimes the DM will hand out a piece of paper if he wants what is seen or heard to be a secret.
We don't invent things that aren't there for that sort of stuff, but we do comment on how silly our PC is when we fail to notice stuff. For instance, if we're searching a brick wall for secret doors, and I roll a 1 perception, I might comment "I notice that the wall is made of brick."
Btw, am I the only one who's reminded of The Order of the Stick?