A GM's Question of Style

[Gilesth]

As I'm reading through the rules, I notice that the creators recommend that the GM actually tell his players what the difficulty of their proposed action should be.  Example: Jason's wants his character to climb a fence and the GM tells him, "If you roll fair or better, you'll make it."  Not a smooth example, I know, but my point is, does this help or hinder your sessions?

For me, when I'm playing in a game, I enjoy it the most when mechanics aren't quoted.  If I'm going to try to climb a fence, I don't want to know what my difficulty is until after I succeed.  In fact, as a GM it bothers me when players want to know information in mechanical terms rather than in-game terms because it turns the game into a complicated math exercise.

Does anyone else agree?  Does anyone disagree?  Obviously, as the GM, I don't have to run the game the way the book "says" I should, at least as far as announcing difficulties to my group, I was just wondering if anyone has dealt with a GM who took those rules to the extreme in a way that limited enjoyment for the group.

[luminos]

If its a problem, you can always use the adjective ladder to find some middle ground.  Instead of saying "You need to roll a +2 to make it" you can say "You can tell that this task will take a fair effort to complete.  For those that want to know the difficulty, they just have to interpret the adjective as the difficulty, and for those that don't want to step out of character, they just see the description as applying to what their character knows.

[blues.soldier]

I think that because of the Fate Point economy, it's important for the players to know the total difficulty necessary for a roll to succeed, so they know whether or not to spend a FP. Because bad things have to happen to your character in order to get FP, making a player spend one in a situation it's not important to do so in seems excessively cruel to me.

[toturi]

Does anyone else agree?  Does anyone disagree?  Obviously, as the GM, I don't have to run the game the way the book "says" I should, at least as far as announcing difficulties to my group, I was just wondering if anyone has dealt with a GM who took those rules to the extreme in a way that limited enjoyment for the group.

Why would announcing difficulties to the group limit enjoyment for the group?

Jason wants to climb a fence. It is a simple low fence, nothing like the security fences that line secured areas. It should be "Fair"ly easy to climb it. If the GM does not announce the difficulty, then for all Jason knows that fence is a 3m high fence with no visible handholds. Which Jason would not try at all or perhaps he would put pedal to the metal and use a Fate point. Or although Jason's player thinks that such a low fence should be Fair or thereabouts, the GM could think that it should be Great or better.

Keeping the players in the dark about the difficulties seems more likely to breed dissatisfaction with the game than knowing the difficulties would limit enjoyment, IMO.

[Tahotai]

In many cases, wanting things in game terms isn't breaking character.  To work within the stated example, a character wants to know how difficult a fence is to climb.  Well, fence can mean a lot of things, from a knee high string of white posts, a chain link fence of normal size or a concrete barrier with barbed wire on top.  

In every scene the GM has to supply all the information for the characters senses, but you can't do that because describing everything in full detail would totally overwhelm the players.  So it's a delicate balance of trying to give all the relevant details but not any unnecessary ones.

In addition you've got possible differing ideas between players and GM.  If the player thinks scaling a chain link fence should be an easy task and the GM thinks it's a hard one then since the GM's interpretation is the one that's going to win, the player has to ask.

And there's also cases where a character is good at a skill but the player has no clue, and so a description doesn't tell him how his character could evaluate the challenge.  

And that's not to say there aren't also situations where there character shouldn't ask, "How tough is the skin of that enemy I haven't attacked and so have no way of knowing?" for example.  

[Wordmaker]

Given that Dresden Files is a heavily narrative-based game, rather than challenge-based like more traditional games, I think it makes sense that players should know how difficult something should be. That said, when your group is used to knowing the odds of success, it can be a great tension-builder once in a while to not tell them, if something is truly outside their realm of experience.

For example, knowing the difficulty to leap from one moving vehicle to another is fine, since it serves a fairly straightforward narrative goal, "get closer to the bad guys, keep the action flowing."

Hijacking a Darkhallow ritual from a distance and redirecting the power to kill the spellcaster behind it? That's a little more out there.

All said, I've never experienced an issue with my players knowing how difficult a task is, and my Dresden Files game is still the most character-development-focused game I run.

[Mal_Luck]

I think that because of the Fate Point economy, it's important for the players to know the total difficulty necessary for a roll to succeed, so they know whether or not to spend a FP. Because bad things have to happen to your character in order to get FP, making a player spend one in a situation it's not important to do so in seems excessively cruel to me.

This.

A couple of my RPG group ran some tests and took turns as GMing scenarios, one of us didn't like sharing difficulties too much. From that lone experience I can say it made the game worse. Sharing some sort of difficulty information is very important.

[Gilesth]

I think that because of the Fate Point economy, it's important for the players to know the total difficulty necessary for a roll to succeed, so they know whether or not to spend a FP. Because bad things have to happen to your character in order to get FP, making a player spend one in a situation it's not important to do so in seems excessively cruel to me.

Personally, if spending a FATE point would help, I ALWAYS mention that to the group.  But in the case that they mentioned in the book about breaking into a warehouse: a success means they break in, and a failure means they trip the silent alarm.  If my group rolls a failure after I've told them the threshold they need to hit, then they're only going to assume that they don't get in through the door.  Or, they'll simply avoid the risk of going into the building that they've unlocked...and in both cases, they'll question my planning as the GM.

[luminos]

Right, thats still a problematic way to run things.  By restricting the information about when fate points are useful to the times that you alert the players to such, you've essentially made a player resource into a GM resource.  That's drift right there. 

For the warehouse example, if they trip a silent alarm, what plausible reason are they giving for their character not entering the building?  This reaction just seems odd to me.  Regardless of how they react to the failure of a roll, something interesting is going to happen as a result.  That is what a failed roll means in this game.  The player does not have the option of choosing "I failed, so I'll let nothing happen".  Even if the option of walking away is still on the table after tripping the silent alarm, the failure should have real consequences that either twist what happens, or restricts the players options.  This is why letting the players know the difficulty is not a bad thing.  They cannot avoid failure by framing things so that failure is meaningless, because that option is off the table from the beginning.

[babel2uk]

For the warehouse example, if they trip a silent alarm, what plausible reason are they giving for their character not entering the building?  This reaction just seems odd to me.

I have to say I'd come down extremely hard on a player who refused to go into a building they'd broken into because they failed the roll. That's using player knowledge rather than character knowledge. As far as the character's concerned they've succeeded in picking the lock, the door just swung open, there's no rational excuse for not going inside if getting inside was the purpose of the roll in the first place.

[TheMouse]

The system assumes a certain degree of transparency to function as written. You don't know if you need to spend fate points unless you know whether you succeeded or not, and they're too precious to throw onto rolls when you don't know whether you need to.

You could work out some system whereby you say something like, "You're not quite making it up the fence..." and let them spend the fate point. But then you're just putting success and failure into code, and you have to rely on them interpreting the code correctly to make their decisions. This is just a layer of obfuscation on top of the system information. And it's not a layer that particularly reduces the game-ness of the game.

There's already the system of adjectives. Fudge was originally designed so that you don't need to speak in terms of the numbers. You can say, "It's fairly difficult to climb that fence," or, "It would require someone with a good degree of skill to pick that lock." Because characters would have a general perception of how hard something seems to be while they're doing it, and that can translate directly to mechanical information without interrupting narrative flow.

But ultimately your group needs to work out what everyone is comfortable with. FATE does make some assumptions about what range you fall into on certain topics, so you might need to nudge it a bit if you find the assumptions don't fit in the comfort range of your group.

[WillH]

I have to say I'd come down extremely hard on a player who refused to go into a building they'd broken into because they failed the roll. That's using player knowledge rather than character knowledge. As far as the character's concerned they've succeeded in picking the lock, the door just swung open, there's no rational excuse for not going inside if getting inside was the purpose of the roll in the first place.

I think there is some misunderstanding here. In this example the characters have already broken in to the building. They can't decide to enter or not after the roll, because they have already entered. The roll is to see if when they entered they tripped the alarm. You may event want to hold off on calling for the roll until they reach a good spot for guards/cops to show up if they fail.

ETA In the fence example, you may not want to call for a roll at all. It's probably not that interesting for someone to be stuck on the other side of a fence. But, it can be. You could call for a roll here if there is a guard making rounds and failure means the character gets spotted.

[babel2uk]

I think there is some misunderstanding here.

No misunderstanding at all, I was replying specifically to Gilesth's example (and quoting luminos for emphasis) about players potentially refusing to go into a building because they know that they've failed a roll.

[WillH]

No misunderstanding at all, I was replying specifically to Gilesth's example (and quoting luminos for emphasis) about players potentially refusing to go into a building because they know that they've failed a roll.

The point is there is no decision to be made by the players based on the outcome of that roll. Sure, you may understand that, but the fact there is discussion about it means some people have a misunderstanding about it.

[babel2uk]

The point is there is no decision to be made by the players based on the outcome of that roll.

I get what you're saying, but others may run such situations differently, and players always expect their rolls to have meaning for them and be relevant to an action they are performing right now. While I have no problem with the idea that once they've made the roll they are going inside (and we rejoin them once they're all through the door) I feel that calling for the actual roll at the point where I think it would be cool for the cops to turn up, is a little like closing the door after the horse has bolted - my players would feel somewhat irritated if I called for a roll half an hour (for example) after the action that it relates to - hell, as a player I would too.

For many groups - players and GMs alike, it's a completely new style of playing - most games treat skill rolls as a direct pass/fail, and many of the people who are coming to this game from other systems will find it difficult to adapt quickly to that change of emphasis from pass/fail to pass/pass with complication, especially in light of how different the system as a whole is to others.