How valid is lying to players about the rolls they are making in The Dresden Files?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

I'd suggest an alternate method of dealing with this situation:

Have the characters enter the zone, describe what you need to about the zone and leave it at that. Let the Characters push the action. This will get the PC's in the habit of being proactive in the game instead of reactive. Ideally, one of the PC's enters the room and looks at the guy on the couch and asks to make an assessment on the NPC, at which point you can be honest and ask for an Empathy roll.

The more I GM for DFRPG the more I realize how different it is from running the D&D games I DM'd for the 20 years before it. Old Habits die hard, but I encourage you to try and encourage your players (which are likely used to different game play paradigms as well) to take a more active role in the story telling of the game.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

It is nice to see that this question is alive and kicking 10 years on. Having read it again, I thought about how I would answer it now. Here's another answer with some insight from other games I read, run and played in the meantime.

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Think about the outcomes of the situation at hand. There's this dangerous person disguised as a stoner. What happens if they can't see through the threat? What happens if they do?

I'd say, don't roll until the moment of reckoning comes. Maybe the fake stoner will spring on them when they turn their back. Then the roll doesn't come until that moment.

Then of course, it is an ambush/surprise attack of a sort. I'd frame it as an attack action, using deceit versus empathy, hitting the physical stress track. If the fake stoner succeeds, then somebody gets hurt right away.

There are two caveats: One: anybody in the party could possibly see through the disguise. Two: possibly only one PC gets hurt (unless the attack involves something that could hurt everyone)

My solution to both of those is just having the highest-empathy PC in the party defend. As per the Fate toolkit, other PC's with the same level of empathy may add +1 to the roll as some sort of passive assistance. This happens independent of who gets hurt on a successful ambush. The defender defends the whole party. This also may mean that any relevant aspects on any PC (not just the ones on the rolling PC) can be invoked/compelled

As a bonus, this is more streamlined than having everyone roll for the same thing. It also avoids skewing the odds due to multiple rolls. And it launches the action right away.

An even more streamlined approach would be having this single roll work both ways, like a counterattack. If the PC's see through the disguise, then they get the drop on the fake stoner, who gets hit on the physical stress track right away. Then the rest could be your usual conflict.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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.