Do you think that a player should be able to automatically trick an npc into doing something disadvantageous or deadly, simply by waiting for the GM to take the bait, and then declaring a retroactive preparation or trap? Assume that no rolls, special abilities, or special mechanics were used as part of the setup; Blades in the Dark, this is not.
A typical case of this is declaring, "Oh, so the NPC is partaking in the food/drink I just offered? Too bad. I poisoned it." This was exactly what happened in the "cupcake scene" over in Critical Role. But it can also take other forms, like "The NPC just walked towards the spot I pointed out? I set a trap there," or even just "I had a weapon stowed away all along."
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No, and you know why.
Fippy bippy
>This was exactly what happened in the "cupcake scene" over in Critical Role
Except it isn't, Laura said that she sprinkles the dust before handing it over. Matt just forgot what the dust did.
No, the player declared that it was laced only after the cupcake was eaten.
https://www.kryogenix.org/crsearch/html/cr2-93.html
>MATT
>She reaches out and grabs the other half of the cupcake.
>It's so small in her long, curly fingers.
>(groaning) Kind of (sniffs).
>(wet chewing)
>LAURA
>That was sprinkled with the Dust of Deliciousness.
I feel like that's less that she tricked him and more that Matt just didn't make her check for it or ask any questions aside from a reminder of what it even does. Not even when she prepped that. Because either he forgot to, or it just really didn't matter all that much to him so he skipped asking.
There are occasionally some things you can do that let you fool people in-game, but it generally shouldn't be by deceiving your DM. Occasionally there's even been some good mechanics that let you retroactively declare that you did something, as long as it was narratively possible and fits the description for the ability you're using. But in that case you're not fooling the GM, you're just adding to the existing scene and they have to interact with that.
No, she tricked him.
That's an honestly childish way to view what happened. Matt had all rights to scrutinize her choice of action, and he chose not to. Either because he liked the outcome or he thought it just wasn't worth scrutinizing. Critical Role is a show put on by a bunch of professionals who all have good chemistry with each other, not a standard game experience. It's not strange to consider that he let it slide after he knew what the dust would do entirely just because he thought it would make for a good bit.
At a game table, communication and shared expectations are actually the key to success in the long term. You should not attempt to "trick" your fellow players, including the GM.
Have you tried not watching other people 'play' 'tabletop RPGs'? Shitical Hole is indicative of everything currently wrong with the hobby, the new players, and their mentality.
No, Critical Role was the single greatest thing to happen to tabletop gaming.
Bait
You just can't retroactively declare what your character has done when somebody does something. People who set up traps think they are smartasses and often end up being that guys and the way you want to retroactively declare actions is prime for abuse.
You just made this thread just to post anime, didn't you.
No. If you didn't declare something, it didn't happen.
"Tricking" shouldn't happen, but a GM would be right to be lenient with actions that have clear intent.
If the players, for example, were talking about all session lacing meat to drug a monster, but forget to explicitly say "we pour the sedatives over the meat" when they say, "we leave the meat out for the monster" it would be a real dick move to frick with them for it.
Critical Role is irrelevant to this discussion as it is planned and/or scripted; discussions of post-facto detail or actions don't apply when things are arranged beforehand.
>a player should be able
>no rolls, special abilities, or special mechanics
no
What? No. Unless you have some kind of time control power, you can't do that; or some other way of altering reality.
>tricking the GM
Everything you said is wrong, but why are you treating the GM as an adversary? The GM is just there to move things along and handle the rules. There's no need to "trick" the GM because he's not your enemy and he could and should just say, " no, you didn't. Say in advance if you want to do something." All play is done at the table and everything ought to go through the GM if it involves interacting with the world. There's no fun in going "gotcha!" when you act like a buffoon and try to subvert the person handling the rules and literally everything else that isn't your character. It just makes you come across as insufferable and disruptive.
Yes. The GM is the natural enemy of the party. The GM exists to challenge the players and frick them over at every turn. If you are not actively trying to trick the GM then you are not playing correctly.
If your idea depends on tricking the GM at any point then you're That Guy and c**ts like you shouldn't be in the hobby.
Have you tried not playing DnD?
Have you tried not spamming this every thread?
There are dozens of games that have this as an explicit mechanic. So the answer is clearly, no, you haven't tried.
There are certain games, like Exalted, where you can actually do this and it's part of the rules that you can declare things like that retroactively.
i actually like it when my players come up with a great plan and outsmart me and i like outsmarting them but it has to be earned, just retroactively declaring an action is not earned.
one thing i like to do when a player wants to do something but does not want to tell me what it is so they cant get one over on me is to tell them to write their action down and fold it and give me the paper.
if the action becomes relevant they can ask me to reveal it but before i do they'll still have to roll to see if they managed to actually do the action well enough to have it happen.
Thats a pretty good way of rewarding prep without letting it colour your own setup as GM. Its so easy as GM to take your player's abilities and decisions into account when designing things, so I can definitely see this being a good way to let players do things secretly.
No.
Although the idea of playing a character who's a super genius planner, represented by declaring that you've done something and it retroactively becoming true would be neat.
But it's something you have to work with the GM on, not against.
>retroactively fricking shit up
Go play some FitD games, sounds like your kind of gay-ass homosexualry
That's not how flashbacks work anyway. You don't just retroactively frick everything up, you spend your action resource to have retroactively prepared for the situation. This works really well in Blades, a heisting game, because it's like an Ocean's Eleven moment.
Go suck half-fae catboy wiener, Edna
What are you talking about?
No, attempts to fool the GM (rather than the NPC) is the other side of the GM having all the enemies know all the players' abilities by heart.
I got a player that constantly tries to pull shit like this and is an arrogant little shit about it.
Im considering just killing the character to get the player to stop beeing such an arrogant prick.
>I got a player that constantly tries to pull shit like this
No, you don't. You don't even have players.
Is nogames /tg/s Ganker obsession with marketers? You absolute shizo.
Anybody should be able to write notes and put them on the table face down to declare hidden information. Then they can flip them over to reveal it when it's relevant.
Nobody likes your idea or your OP, just let it die.
To be clear, I am not actually in support of the concept. Personally, I have always been staunchly against it unless the character specifically has an ability related to retroactive preparations, or if the game has built-in mechanics for retroactive preparations. I have never watched a single episode of Critical Role; I brought up the "cupcake scene" because I heard of it years ago, because it is a somewhat well-known example, and because the proceedings have a convenient transcript:
https://www.kryogenix.org/crsearch/html/cr2-93.html
I made this thread was because I was reflecting on some previous experiences with players who tried to pull a similar stunt (and in most cases, got away with it because of a lenient GM). That is all there is to it.
No, absolutely not. That's incredibly moronic.
Might as well take lessons from my 6 year old nephew and announce ''nu-uh, I've took a special antidote beforehand when you weren't looking".
>The cupcake scene
I actually watched this recently, and once again /tg/ is leaping to conclusions from a bad interpretation.
Laura Baily retroactively declaring that Jester sprinkled the cupcake is acceptable, because feeding the hag the Dust of Deliciousness was the entire point of giving the hag the cupcake in the first place. Maybe she waited to declare it for dramatic effect, or maybe she waited because she didn't want meta-knowledge of the situation to affect Matt's decision to not scrutinize the cupcake. Either way, it's acceptable because it was very obviously Laura's plan before declared anything and was not a retroactive "frick-you", there was no argument Matt could have against it
>But you have to declare your actions ahead of time and can't retroactively do anything
>So you admit you would have had the character act differently, even though literally nothing has changed for them in-character?
It feels weird an slimy to actually defend Critical Role, but ultimately satisfying to do so since this is a classic example of /tg/ ignorance. CR is FILLED with examples of the players trying to retroactively weasel out of bad situations that they made for themselves because they're moronic, and yet you dingdongs picked one of the rare examples of the CR cast actually being clever for once.
Laura still didn't declare it.
Yes. It's a good example of when not to declare it, too. Getting tricked and surprised by your players can be fun, when it's not bullshit.
The only thing that ever happened to me thats similar was a case of me being inexperienced and not tracking the player's expenses.
Players were doing a heist job for payment "+reasonable expenses" for a wealthy client. Of course they spent quite a lot, but this was fairly early and they didn't have access to a lot of really interesting tech, so I was a bit lenient and not tracking exactly what they spent too well. The players then lied to the client IC about how much they spent, nearly doubling their actual expenses. Me, severely underestimating my players, didn't think they'd lie, and just gave them what they asked for with no bluff rolls or anything. They OOC fooled me and IC fooled the client. This has gone on to be a core thing to bring up all the time, but I've never let them get away with anything of the type ever again.
I would never allow players to retroactively determine something like that. But I am quite lenient towards plans the PCs are proud of and work to pull off. I could have been salty and made them roll after I realized and clawed back what I gave them, but I didn't.
If your GM isn't shit you could just run the idea across him and he would probably go for it. Contrary to popular belief (good) GMs are supposed to reward your ideas and lean in to them rather than play a weird adversarial role and oppose everything you do.
Huh, i thought you were talking about gaslighting your dm by saying "I have a plan for next session don't you worry"
I once made my gm literally go schizo and take away my weapons only to throw an engineering book at the big bad or just do nothing.
Retroactively telling the dm you did something so influencial is gay as frick, literally giving the dm no chance to react. If i were the gm i'd just tell you to say beforehand and frick off.
Just use plot points if your players are so moronic that they want heist movie twist payoffs without the patience to plan ahead or the understanding of why films and games are different. Retroactively deciding to have poisoned a cupcake is great for your advertiser-friendly reality TV show, and you can do it in your roleplaying games too if the player burns their plot point to make it happen. ideally you shouldn't WANT to do that, but rules for doing it exist in 5e.
No. A player (nor a GM) should not be allowed to retcon anything.
Traditionally, what you're suggesting is done by handing the GM a folded note, telling him not to open it. On the note are actions taken in secret, allowing the player to act in advance, later revealing something like "I placed a trap by the tree" or "I poisoned the wine".
I feel like a better way of trapping a DM would be playing mind games by doing a bunch of things that seem innocuous, but in the end add up to a grand scheme that you can pull off. Something of that sort would be practically required in my game since my DM loves political intrigue and conspiracies and bullshit, but also loves to make sure the players get fricked over with every choice, and I'm not smart enough to pull off the mind games required to circumvent that.