Tell me more ×
Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 12 down vote favorite

In last weeks Dresden Files game, the players followed the bad guy using a tracking spell, and found him in the projects at an apartment that they knew little about. Seeing his car, they decided to set it aflame to get him out of the apartment (and to identify it).

The wizard's spell was a bit too ambitious, and ended up turning it into a roman candle (how I love compels), but the actual plan was successful, as the bad guy came running out to see about his car, and the wizard was barely able to get out of sight before he exited the apartment. As the bad guy was dealing with his vehicle, the group snuck into the vacated apartment. They found that there was still someone there, lounging on the sofa, obviously having partaken of some 'herbal entertainment'. As they entered, I had them make an alertness roll, ostensibly to see something in the apartment- but it was actually an empathy roll, to determine if they saw through the person's deceit. He was high, but was still quite lucid, and was the actual threat.

My question is, how valid is deceiving the players about what they are rolling for in order to maintain a layer of the unknown in the game?

(Just for completeness, I'll state that the players are still unaware that the person that they fought was just a messenger/dealer/mercenary and that the doped up stoner was playing them...)

UPDATE: Though the question could apply to multiple circumstances, the accepted answer brings up a FATE specific point, so I changed the tags and update the question appropriately.

share|improve this question
Are you asking about this specific technique, or the practice in general (including pre-rolling, GM rolling dice for players, and so on)? – AceCalhoon Oct 11 '11 at 14:11
I was asking about this specific technique, but it could be expanded to the practice in general if that was helpful, since what I was concerned with wasn't the rules, but the implied social contracts of gaming with friends/people you know. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 15:05

8 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

I would say this is bad practice. You've just had the players roll alertness when they should be rolling empathy. Say one of your characters has Empathy as a Superb skill. They get a huge bonus on the roll. Say they also have only an Average Alertness. You've just denied them a +4 on that roll and they don't even know it! (If they find out they will be rightly angry.)

If you want to test a skill without the players knowing you can always roll for them in secret. That way they have no idea what you are checking against merely that you are checking for something.

However in a system like FATE where players can spend FATE points to modify rolls, etc I wouldn't even do that. I'd have them roll empathy, you don't necessarily have to explain the roll but that lets them leverage their stunts, powers, and aspects as per regular play. If the players figure out what's going on but fail the rolls then their characters are still in the dark. If the players have their characters act on player knowledge you can gently remind them that their character is blissfully unaware of the problem. It can make some interesting tension in the game the same way you don't want a person to open that door in a horror movie! Roleplaying is partly about being able to separate player knowledge and character knowledge.

share|improve this answer
I didn't use their alertness on the roll, I just told them that was what they were rolling. I used their empathy for the check behind the scenes. I just didn't want my rolls to be their rolls, which was the reason that I did it. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 18:04
3  
So they rolled and you just looked at their sheets and added the appropriate modifier? I'd still argue that cheats them from using their aspects. What if one of them had the aspect "I know a liar when I see one"? How would they know to apply that if they thought they were just looking around the room? – mirv120 Oct 11 '11 at 18:12
10  
This. FATE rolls aren't about succeeding or failing, they're about setting the baseline and then asking how much the player wants to pay for success in points and narrating their aspects into the story. Better would be making them roll in the open, all the relevant facts on the table. If they fail, put the "Blissfully Unaware" aspect on them and compell it liberally if they want to act on player knowledge. Then it's still their choice, but it will cost dearly in FATE points to do even mundane things with the knowledge. – SevenSidedDie Oct 11 '11 at 18:23
I see your point. I did look at their sheets and added the appropriate modifier- and I did look at the aspects to see if there was something that I could compel- but it does disallow creative uses of non-obvious aspects. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 18:25
thank you for articulating what i was going to say A LOT better than i could think up of how to write it – DForck42 Oct 12 '11 at 13:59
up vote 1 down vote

As long as it serves the narrative and it doesn't get in the way of everybody enjoying the game then I would say it's completely valid.

I do know that some people say you should never hide dice rolls and/or never fudge them, if you play with people like this then it's not going to be valid.

share|improve this answer
FATE rules in other settings explicitly call for the GM to not obfuscate the rules being tweaked, and note when NPC's don't function like PC's (and it's always making them pretty much more fragile than a comparable PC, and usually weaker to begin with.) And with the way aspects work, if you don't know your oponent's aspects, you're robbed of the chance to spend fate to use their aspects against them. – aramis Oct 12 '11 at 9:06
up vote 7 down vote

Lying to them about what they're rolling is silly. It robs the players of their agency. If they're not interested in assessing the situation, they shouldn't be rolling for an assess. If they don't care if they're being lied to, then they shouldn't roll empathy.

share|improve this answer
But an alertness roll doesn't let them assess whether the person is being deceitful. If they were trying to assess that, they would use empathy- but calling for an empathy roll would let them know that there was something hinky. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 15:03
2  
How is sitting on a couch being deceitful? Lying to them about what they're rolling is silly. It robs the players of their agency. If they're not interested in assessing the situation, they shouldn't be rolling for an assess. If they don't care if they're being lied to, then they shouldn't roll Empathy. – okeefe Oct 11 '11 at 16:46
Not just the sitting on the couch, but the way that he was acting, since he was acting to deliberately deceive them since he couldn't oppose them directly. No matter how good you are at player knowledge vs. non-player knowledge, the fact that an empathy roll was called for when he saw you and began to speak would affect the view of things and how they are played- there was something to find, but I didn't find it, etc. And rolling empathy isn't a matter of caring if you're being lied to, but a function of the interaction. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 18:03
Make the players investigate. "What's with the stoned guy on the couch?" Are they talking to him? Ignoring him? (I don't know Dresden Files RPG, but in another game such a prompt from the players would involve rolling the NPC's Inconspicuous versus whatever skill the PCs are using to investigate.) – okeefe Oct 11 '11 at 18:11
Even without investigation (they basically disregarded him because of how I was playing him, and the image I used was of the dealer from Pulp Fiction), sometimes something about the situation sets the character's senses off (to differentiate from the player). That was my intent with the roll. – wraith808 Oct 11 '11 at 18:23
up vote -1 down vote

I have not seen any single game that doesn't explicitly state that no matter what the rules say, the GM can do whatever he/she wants. This immense power is vested in you to ensure that you are able to keep the game fun and interesting when the rules either do not cover the situation at hand, or if doing it all by the book makes it less interesting.

This situation is a typical example of the latter. No doubt would letting the players know the true kind of check made there affect the way you could tell the story (and, it seems, for the worse).

I see two alternative ways of dealing with this situation: Either the way you did, or keeping a record of the player's stats and simply tell them to make a roll each, without divulging the kind. This, however, you would need to do each time any passive perception-ish roll would be made since the players would otherwise know you're up to no good when you suddenly tell them to make some kind of special roll.

I'd say that if you feel it works for you as a GM, and that it adds to your players' enjoyment of the game; keep on deceiving.

share|improve this answer
2  
There are many games that put strict definition on the GMs role. "GM tells the story" is a popular assumption, but not an guarantee. – Sean McMillan Oct 11 '11 at 20:45
+10 Thank you, finally an answer I agree with. – Sardathrion Oct 12 '11 at 7:28
4  
-1 Your experience is quite dated if you have only encountered "The GM is Always Right" games. FATE is explicitly NOT one of those. In fact, most FATE implementations put the group, not the GM, as the final authority. While I haven't read DFRPG, I've played SOTC, and read several other FATE system games; none of them I've seen include Gygax's Rule-0, and Both SOTC and Diaspora explicitly are at odds with it. – aramis Oct 12 '11 at 9:03
up vote 1 down vote

I'd say that's at the least highly unusual, if not unethical. Usually when a DM wants to maintain some secrecy about what he wants me to roll, he just says "Roll me some dice". If you get into the habit of doing that periodically, you can even hide the importance of the roll.

share|improve this answer
2  
In Dresden that simply doesn't work well. The Fate point economy pretty demands that rolls have story purposes. – Tynam Sep 4 '12 at 17:15
up vote 8 down vote

Most answers here fail to address the player vs. character duality and the power vested in the player in FATE. FATE is quite a different system, and age old RPG tradition simply doesn't work with it. The GM is not the ultimate authority(He's even called a referee, not a master), all he does is play the rest of the world, sharing the responsibility of authority with everyone at the table.

I'd say, players should be aware that their characters are deceived. In FATE, deceit can be modeled as a maneuver by the deceiver to place an aspect on the deceived. Once a character has the aspect Unaware of the real threat on them, the player should play the character as such. The aspect can be tagged to gain a bonus against the character, or compelled to force the character into a course of action/inaction. Heck, the player can even invoke the aspect for a bonus when acting towards the false belief.

share|improve this answer
No matter what you call it, the GM is the GM. There is more providence in the hands of the player, but the GM is the ultimate authority and an impartial participant. I think that the issue is the removal of the choice more than the relationship of the GM; after all, if nothing was hidden, then what would be the point of the game. – wraith808 Oct 12 '11 at 0:16
2  
@wraith That is actually untrue of enough FATE games (and others) that it shouldn't be taken for granted. Diaspora's ultimate authority is explicitly not the referee, giving that responsibility to "the table" instead. DFRPG doesn't share that approach, but it's an approach that works well in FATE and I'd probably import to DFRPG if I was running it. As for what the point would be… that's a good question that has a long answer. ;) – SevenSidedDie Oct 12 '11 at 2:55
@SevenSidedDie - I understand it in concept, i.e. it's a shared collaborative game, and I've played enough storytelling games to have that concept in hand. But in the end, even in Diaspora, there is a plot/story and parts of it are hidden. That's the nature of the game portion, no matter what game is played - even in semi-rpgs like descent that level of secrecy is preserved, and that level of separation between runner and player. Only in the case where there are no runners is there not that level of impartiality. – wraith808 Oct 12 '11 at 3:10
1  
@wraith Yes, but in the context of "pieces" already "in play", Diaspora strongly urges the referee to lay all aspects on the table, even (especially) if that gives things away. The fun then becomes what story everyone creates with that, rather than in attempting discovery. The ref certainly has the job of creating surprise, but Diaspora moves the moment of reveal ahead of character knowledge in order to harness more people's creativity. Anyway, point is: usually, yes, but it's not a fixed law of RPGs and taking it for granted is some degree of perilous. – SevenSidedDie Oct 12 '11 at 3:36
1  
Diaspora and SOTC both deny the Gygaxian Rule Zero ("The GM is always right"). If you are clinging to GRZ in games using FATE, you've really missed the point of the FATE engine. It's not about resolving character actions, it's about fostering good dramatic story via player agency. Mystery is done best in such story not by discovery, but by evolution of the answer in play as players provide various clues and define the truth by die-roll, rather than a fixed narrative to be discovered. – aramis Oct 12 '11 at 9:01
show 1 more comment
up vote -5 down vote

Generally when I'd need a roll like this, rather than telling them the roll is for something it isnt, I'd just tell them what dice to roll, and if need be, ask for the character sheet to look for modifiers. So instead of saying 'roll alertness' when what I really need is 'roll empathy', I'd instead say 'roll percentiles' and leave them guessing.

share|improve this answer
1  
-1 considering FATE doesn't work this. But also because a lot of system in general a random roll doesn't tell you much because you don't know how many dice to roll/what modifiers to apply. – mirv120 Oct 11 '11 at 20:51
The original question wasnt tied to the game system - hadnt noticed it had been edited. But I did specifically say you may have to look at their character sheet to see what modifiers apply. Or in this case, perhaps how many dice to roll. – GrandmasterB Oct 11 '11 at 21:01
4  
True but that still doesn't take into account how FATE works. – mirv120 Oct 11 '11 at 21:02
3  
Could you edit your answer so that it is more Fate specific? If so, I would upvote it since it is a good answer but lacks specifics to answer this question. – Sardathrion Oct 12 '11 at 7:32
Ditto to what @Sardathrion said. – mirv120 Oct 12 '11 at 16:13
show 1 more comment
up vote 2 down vote

How I would have done it:

Alertness roll to notice anything out of the ordinary. If they meet a certain difficulty then they notice something odd about the guy. THEN, and only then, if they ASK to inspect him further would they get to roll to see through his disguise

share|improve this answer
Nice medium solution between the one I chose and outright giving it away. – wraith808 Oct 12 '11 at 15:35

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.