Freeing the next generation from the HUD

Today's post is a bit of a deep topic, but I think it's important to understand moving forward, particularly as we bring the next generation into D&D or TTRPG's in general. 

What separates the tabletop from the machine?

Our kiddos are coming into this game from a completely different context form whence we started 20 or 30 years ago... Good lord, it hurts to say that. 1992, when I opened the black box for the first time feels like yesterday. Anyway, when we (assuming you are nearly as old as I am) got those polyhedral dice in our hands for the first time, we had never heard of hit points or armor class. We may have read a fantasy book or two, but the class archetypes were nothing that we had codified. We had to learn from the rules that mages were squishy but had the potential to deal out massive damage or status effects on our enemies. Our kids know this. They have experience playing a character role, gaining experience, and watching their hit points in a multitude of video games on tablets, phones, consoles and computers. So, what do tabletop games offer them? Why are so many new players suddenly interested in D&D when they have so many new and better video games coming out every day?

Tabletop games offer a lot that video games, for the most part cannot. From what Mike Shea refers to as the "unlimited special effects budget" of the imagination to real meaningful social interaction. For many, though, the biggest one; the one I want to focus on today, is limitless choice and player agency. No matter how deep and rich a video game, there's always limits on the choices available to your character. There's only so many things you can do to affect the plot, and often you can only really impact subplots. In a tabletop role playing game, your players can conceivably come up with something that no one has ever thought of or tried the all the other times groups have been presented with that same scenario. The problem is, our kiddos are socially programmed that this choice does not exist. You may have seen this. When presented with a challenging situation, the players, rather than looking at you or each other, freeze and stare down at their character sheet.   

Proficiency, Skills, and Verisimilitude 

The battle rages. Tarnish, the Barbarian, caves in the heads of two Kobolds with her axe. Still smoldering from your Flamestrike ealrlier, an angry Kobold pops up right in front of you as you prepare to cast your next spell. He bares his teeth and reaches for his dagger. What do you do?  

The door is old and rotted. You try to turn the rusted knob, but it's locked and it partially crumbles in your hands. You peer through a crack in the door and see a long empty hall way on the other side, lit at intervals by some kind of luminescent moss. What do you do?

Photo by Clint Bustrillos on Unsplash

These are just a couple of the types of scenarios players will find themselves in. Were these circumstances to happen in a video game, you would quickly trigger a character skill from your "hotbar" in your Head Up Display (HUD). The HUD in video games inspired by D&D outline the only actions available to you in a situation. After all, programmers cannot plan for everything you might come up with.  

If your players are staring at their character sheets, they're looking for the hotbar. They're looking for a skill to trigger at that moment to help them overcome the obstacle. They think they must choose something from their HUD! The first scenario above is based on a comment from Professor Dungeonmaster when he was a guest in this episode of Questing Beast. The obvious answer in this situation would most likely be, "I punch the Kobold in the face!" I mean if this happened to you in the heat of battle, IRL, what would you do? The problem is, in the scenario, the character is a magic user, so the player is furiously searching for something magic-y to do when throat-punching the Kobold would be effective, cinematic, and a perfectly legitimate realistic choice. The door scenario above has trapped my players before. I have a party in one game that includes no rogues. They're constantly bemoaning the fact that they can't effectively search rooms or open doors. This is a rotted door with no bad guys on the other side. Just bash it down. Heck, it seems like one could accidentally destroy it by leaning on it. Do you really need to make skill check here?

Ways to break the HUD mentality.

The Internet is an awesome thing. Not only can I quickly explain obscure pop culture references from my childhood to my children with a quick YouTube search on my phone, but we also have access to a wealth of talented people and their takes on this great hobby. The following is my house rules for resolving things on the fly. I've developed these ideas from listening to Maude Garrett, of Fungeons and Flagons fame, and Professor Dungeon Master, from Dungeoncraft. Yay for the interwebs!

To really make the following method work well, it helps to create a simplified character sheet, like those championed by Professor Dungeon Master. I like the idea of one where the stuff players need for basic stats and combat are on the main page and a second page contains their proficiencies / skills and spells (I get that page). Currently, I just collect the one they make using DnDBeyond and either copy or have them copy info to this Clean Easy Sheet. If anyone has the attribution for the Clean Easy Sheet, please comment below. Then, they just have to tell me what they want to do. I then take Professor DM's approach of assigning a "target number" rather than making the player apply a bunch of bonuses and penalties, staring at their sheet and doing math while we all wait.

Step 1: Describe in detail what it is you want to do. Don't worry about naming skills or feats; just say what you want to do. 

Photo by Erica Li on Unsplash

Step 2: I will select a target number for your check, quickly considering the degree of difficulty of the feat and your:

• Proficiencies
• Flaws
• Class features
• Background
• etc.
  

Basically, I will consider whether or not this is in or out of character for you, and where it lands on the spectrum from difficult to impossible to pull off.

Step 3: Using a d20, roll for the target number!
Rolls will be:

• Nat 1: Critical FAIL. The worst outcome will happen (often with hilarious results).
• 2-5: Bad Fail. You will not succeed in your attempt, and a negative outcome will arise.
• Below the target number: Fail. You will not succeed in your attempt, but nothing else bad will occur. Nat 20: Critical Success. You have the perfect outcome!
  

NOTE: Natural rolls of 1 and 20 determine critical fail and success respectively. If you roll a natural 1 or 20 any bonus or penalty is ignored completely, thus reflecting the possibility of getting lucky or extremely unlucky as the case may be. 

Critical success or failure, however do not bend the multiverse in unexpected and unnatural ways. In other words, everything should fall within the realms of possibility. A palace guard isn't going to just let you go into the presence of a monarch because you got a Natural 20 on your persuasion check.

Meta-Gaming, Show don’t tell, and keeping things dark

A popular term I often hear brought up is "Meta-Gaming", which usually focuses on players using "player knowledge" of the game and it's mechanics to improve their character's performance in game. My issue is that it breaks the immersion. If I have a table of folks who want to treat this as a tactical exercise, like a strategy board game, then meta-gaming and the HUD mentality is not a big deal at all. If on the other hand, we want to do collective storytelling in a shared world of our creation, then talking in game mechanics is going to rip us out of that and bring us back up to surface-level interactions. 

A phrase I frequently use with my players is, "show don't tell". Instead of declaring, “I’m going to make a stealth check”, describe what you want to do. For instance, you would say, “I’m going to slip into the shadows behind that barrel in the corner over there”. Then, I might say, “Make a stealth check”. This is just one more thing that helps with immersion and prevents them from getting sucked into the HUD trap.  

If you don't want your players to think / talk in game-ese, then you shouldn't either.

Finally, when dealing with the HUD, and Meta-Gaming, a good solution is keeping things behind the screen dark. You may or may not use a DM screen. I do, but more as a lay flat reference chart. I keep my stuff on a separate surface from my players so that I won't sit during session, but that's an off topic tangent... sorry. The point is, if you don't want your players to think / talk in game-ese, then you shouldn't either. Don't call your monsters by name. Describe them, using as much figurative language as possible. Once you name them, players will think in terms of mechanics, and what they have on their sheet related to said mechanics. "In the Monster Manual, it says this creature is weak to electricity, but uses pack tactics to flank for disadvantage. We're going to need to..." Once players shift in thinking to tactics, you've lost any elements of horror, awe, dramatic tension, etc. This is no longer a fight for our lives against a horde of strange, frightening, and gross creatures. It is a tactical exercise against a challenge rating appropriate group of humanoids.