Hey all, I wasn’t really a contributor over at r/dndmemes, but I was there at the end. Yikes. Anyway, here’s a small contribution to help this place grow.
Context (possible spoilers for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist):
Our party was trying to get information out of a locksmith about the installation locations of some extremely elaborate locks and generally not getting anywhere. Locksmith says something to the effect of making locks that “his type” (gestures to my Rogue) can’t get past.
I’m an introvert at a table with multiple extroverts that normally dominate the role play. I’m generally okay with it, but this is my moment and I’m taking it!
“Wanna bet?” I ask.
Locksmith looks at me.
“Bring me your best lock. If I can pick it, you tell us what we want to know. If I can’t, I’ll give you 10 gold”.
Challenge accepted! My Rogue has 20 DEX and proficiency in Thieves’ Tools, so I’m sitting at a comfy +8 to lockpicking challenges.
Natural. 1. FML.
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Failure should lead to something interesting or fun when possible instead of just “you can not do it”. Like you fumble the picking so bad the lock jams. And it is expensive, so now you not only owe the locksmith the bet, but he is also angry and you need to do something to deal with the situation.
Failure shouldn’t be a stop in the story, only a twist.
The consequence was I broke my lock picks. So not only did I not get the info and had to pay the wager, I had to buy new lock picks.
Fortunately, this lock was in a test-bench type setup, and the locksmith was able to eject the broken pieces of my
pridelock picks.It doesn’t sound like an introvert extrovert problem. It sounds like a you’re being a bad player problem. Things going your way shouldn’t be the prerequisite for you to engage in the game.
Since when does “not being comfortable role-playing” make you a bad player?
Don’t listen to the other commenter; role playing and theatre in general can be really hard to get the hang of if you’re not naturally confident. Good on you for giving it a go, and next time you’ll be more prepared to roll with the punches and use it in the storytelling (maybe your rogue then thinks the smith used subterfuge or magic to snap the picks, or maybe it leads your character to have a small crisis of confidence). Happy playing!
Role playing and creative problem solving IS the game. It’s not about being an introvert or extrovert. And your description of what happened screams red flag personally. You tried something. The dice weren’t in your favor. Your DM gave you the (imo totally reasonable and engaging) consequences. And you run to make a meme complaining that… what, the dice gods prevented you from role playing because you’re an introvert? What does being an introvert have to do with not being able to deal with your character rolling a 1?
No need to be a dick; improv can have a steep learning curve, because to get experience you have to, especially as an introvert, come out of your comfort zone. If they’re the planning type, they’ll have had an idea of how the interaction would go and have prepared for it, so to have the rug pulled out from under you is a hard thing to learn to roll with.
We should be encouraging people who struggle with role playing, not telling them they’re a bad player.
In essence I agree with you, but I think it gets complicated when playing an actual game. On the one hand, it can kind of suck to be told “You gave it your best shot but no. Now let’s move on.”
On the other hand, you’re putting your GM on the spot by allowing the roll in the first place. They’re responsible for improv now, but even if they’re good at that it can still not be worth coming up with some new challenge to resolve the failure. It takes some imagination, but a lot of effort and even more time. Even as a player, I often want to just move along the story and would rather just fail a roll and try something else. The roleplay will take time, performing a new favor takes time, etc., only to end up back where we started.I think it’s fine to just have a player fail and that be it so long as they still have access to options to progress the story. If the player is not a very confident roleplayer and I recognize that they tried, maybe I’d give them inspiration after the attempt to use on a later roll, but I’m hesitant to tie up a session with a lot of extra flavor or improv.
Honestly? This take feels buck wild. He rolled a 1. Failure has to be part of the game. The DM allowed the group and the player to fail forward. If as DMs we need to pull even more punches than are already mechanically built into 5th edition (which are already ridiculous imo) why even roll dice? Let’s just all play story time.
Some of my favorite roleplaying experience at the table was due to a nat 1. Failure can be hilarious and a good DM will reward solid roleplay with a way out of a negative situation.
That die 100% ended up in dice jail
These are actually my table’s favourite type interactions. Comically appropriate flubs. The funniest one from recent memory is playing arkham horror (card game with a bag if random tokens). I was attempting a dex check against falling down some stairs and was fine for every token in the bag except for the “you fail” chaos token. So confident was I that I declared “watch this”, a maneuver where I bet money and double my bet on a success.
Well I pull the crit fail token, lose all my money, tumble down the stairs taking damage, and land in a room with a fellow wanting a fight.
Edit: I remember the instance that began our fascination with fumbles. Playing the Witcher RPG, I was a dwarf merchant, another player a witcher. Coming up against a locked door, I declared that I was dramatically diving through the window. My Reflexes (REF) are abysmal but I play my characters suicidal anyway. Rolled a 10 on a d10 (dice explode), rolled another 10, etc. rolled a 36 with 3 REF, which means my unadjusted roll was 33.
The witcher, not wanting to be upstaged and having super high REF, dives through another window. Only he rolls a 1 (which explodes, except the total die roll is subtracted from your REF score). Naturally he fails and gashes his leg on a shard of glass. And thus an obsession with fumbling rolls was born
