Friday, March 5, 2021

Random Roll: DMG, p. 40

Listening at doors is, for me, one of the quintessential Dungeons & Dragons activities, right up there with fighting orcs or turning undead – a signpost that you're playing a very particular type of fantasy. Apparently, Gary Gygax agreed, because he devotes a number of sections of the Dungeon Masters Guide to the subject, such as the one I flipped to this morning, page 40. He begins his discussion of the subject by stating: "In addition to the simple exercise of observation, many times characters will desire to listen, ear pressed to a portal, prior to opening and entering."

I've often wondered about the real world practicability of this. I'm not ashamed to see I have in the past attempted to listen at doors in an attempt to hear what was going on beyond, but these were flimsy, hollow, slab doors rather than the heavy wooden ones I mentally associate with dungeons. Never having tried to listen at such a door, I can't say how plausible it is to attempt to such a thing, let alone succeed. Gygax goes on:

This requires a special check, in secret, by you to determine if any sound is heard. Because of this, continual listening becomes a great bother to the DM. While ear seekers will tend to discourage some, most players insist on having their characters listen at doors at every pretense. First, make certain that you explain to players that all headgear must be removed in order to listen. Those wearing helmets will probably have to remove a mail coif and padded cap as well, don't forget. The party must also be absolutely silent, and listening will take at least one round.

There's lots to digest in this single paragraph. First, Gygax reiterates that it's the referee, not the player, who makes the roll to determine is a listening attempt is successful. I regularly forget this myself, even after forty years of playing D&D, in part because I get lazy. Second, it's fascinating to me that Gygax treats listening as a nuisance. I had always assumed, as a younger person, that the existence of ear seekers in the Monster Manual was evidence of Gygax's cruelty, whereas, in reality, it seems more likely that these tiny monsters were created simply to free the DM from the bother of adjudicating listening checks, as he more or less says above. Finally, I find it odd that Gygax emphasizes the need to remove all headgear in order to listen at a door, because AD&D (and D&D more generally) has always been somewhat vague on the matter of the benefits conferred by helmets. (Yes, I know there are rules for headgear somewhere in the DMG, but they've never been a prominent feature of the game)

Unlike OD&D, where listening is adjudicated using a simple D6 roll, AD&D opts for a D20 roll, with the odds based on the character's race. A dwarf, a half-elf, or a human has a mere 2 in 20 (10%) chance of hearing anything, while gnomes have double that. These are notable decreases from the odds in OD&D, where even a human has a 1 in 6 or 17% chance to listen successfully at a door, while dwarves, elves, and halflings have twice that. Seen through the lens of the paragraph above, I can't help but wonder whether Gygax lowered the chances as a way to discourage attempts rather than out of any sense of "realism." 

In any case, he acknowledges that some individuals, whom he dubs "keen-eared" are more adept at listening. Such individuals gained a bonus of +1 or +2 on listening attempts. Whether a given character is keen-eared depends on whether he succeeds at his first listening check. There's no clear indication in the text on how to determine if the keen-eared character gains a +1 or +2 bonus, though I suppose it's possible the DM could use the result of the initial roll to make that determination, a roll of 1 granting +1 and a roll of 2 granting +2. I don't believe I've ever noticed this rules wrinkle before and cannot recall anyone ever using it. He adds that "great noise might cause hearing loss" and counsels the referee to "handle this as you see fit."

The section makes a few final comments on the subject, all of which are worth noting. First, Gygax suggests that any information gained from listening ought to be "imprecise and give only vague hints." Again, I can't help but wonder if this is more a function of his feeling that listening at doors is a nuisance behavior than out of any concerns about secrecy or surprise. Second, he says that any given character can make no more than three listening attempts before "the strain becomes too great" and he must cease for at least five rounds. Lastly, he limits the number of listeners at a single door to three at one time, noting that "a typical dungeon door" can only accommodate that many, since each listener "will take up about 2½' of space." I leave it to others better skilled at math to determine what this suggests about the size of a Gygaxian door.

Since listening at doors is a subject that occurs in several other (non-adjacent) places in the text of the Dungeon Masters Guide, it's a subject I might well return to in the future, should my page flips bring them before me.

21 comments:

  1. It is interesting that Gygax finds listening at doors to be a nuisance. I seem to recall him inveighing against overly cautious adventurers at other places in the DMG as well, though I couldn't say where. As for only getting vague hints from listening, I suspect that's a double plus for Gygax: it cuts down on the nuisance and it reflects how difficult it would be to hear anything through a thick wood dungeon door.

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    1. it's funny tho, because HE MADE THE GAME! he set the pattern that everything can kill you. Everything. He set it to the players that if they wanted to live, they had to take everything seriously.

      Explain most traps in a dungeon: why would someone trap that? a main hallway, a throne, a walkway, a dinner table, all these things have been trapped by official TSR modules, for NO REASON other than to screw with the players. they are exploring a "real" place, why would someone do that?

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  2. In the spirit of speculation, it occurs to me that this listening at doors table play and its inclusion in the rules, or not, is signaling how much the game and its players have changed over the decades. Whether this change is due to attempts at dissuading such or to our now coming at the game via electronic RPGs or a current de-emphasis on "reality" as a basis for determining PC actions, listening at doors has become an anachronism. Hardly anyone bothers with it anymore. Gone also are many another "cautious" behavior such as tapping at the floor and pushing objects about using a ten foot pole. I suppose such PC/player caution seems less than "heroic".

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    1. Your comments ring true in my recent experiences. My current B/X online game has two 5e players that have never played early versions of the game, and the style of play that uses things like a ten-foot pole and emphasizes a more cautious kind of dungeoneering are new for them and slow to be embraced (despite discussions, primers, etc.). Also, what I often considering engaging (methodical exploration of setting, paying attention to resources in a dungeon, etc.) sometimes seems to be viewed as not only less "heroic," but perhaps boring.

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    2. one thing I keep running into is the rote-ness: "I check for traps" always tossed out. I have been simply failing the players that do that. those that ask what they see or ask about specifics like "what size chest?" or "what is the door made of?" get more info

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    3. Yep! My players -- two newbies and three 5e folks -- are also in the process of learning that "I check for traps" gets them nothing, and they need to tell me what they're checking and how. "Passive perception" indeed.

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  3. My suspicion is that DMs like Gygax and Kuntz trained their players to listen at every door. But I look at modules that I think are primarily written by Gygax and none of them prominently figure exploration with a ton of doors.

    Then I am reminded of the picture that someone took of Gygax at a convention that had what looked like two levels of one of his dungeons (maybe Greyhawk). And what do we find, nothing but small rooms and doors. Did Gygax et. all write/edit a rule set for the games they played at home or the tournament-inspired modules they published?

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  4. Here is one of the maps that I mentioned in my previous comment.

    https://odd74.proboards.com/thread/13166/notes-greyhawk-dungeon-level-design

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  5. JasperAK, I think that the modules don't feature lots of doors, etc. because they are mostly based on tournament scenarios where you want to encourage forward movement. Listening at doors, probing for pits, and so on aren't entertaining or skillful ways to spend the limited time of a tourney session.

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    1. John, I agree with you one-hundred percent. That line of thinking is what led me to ask the more important question of whether the rules set Gygax et. all were writing was for the games they played at home, or was it to support the more tournament-style modules.

      James mentioned he might revisit these specific rules if he comes across them again. Well, as we all study these rules and try to place them in context, I think it helps inform our opinion of them when we look to see why they were written in the first place.

      James shows that the chances of hearing through the door decrease as the rules are edited. Why did they do that? Were they rewriting the rules to take the game away from the explore-the-dungeon-and-bash-in-every-door game and move it to something more tournament friendly?

      It makes me wonder how all of these original games may have differed in style.

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  6. "I leave it to others better skilled at math to determine what this suggests about the size of a Gygaxian door."

    From the DMG, page 97, doors are huge:
    "Most doors are about 8' wide, and this allows up to three characters to attempt opening."

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    1. Seems legit. How else could that dragon get itself and its horde into the 20' x 20' room it's using as a lair?

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  7. I think this is one of the cases where Gygax gives poor advice, at least for the type of games I prefer. I think it is far more interesting gameplay to listen at a door, obtain information, and then come up with a plan or approach based on that information, rather than blunder into a room and fight some orcs without ever finding out why they were there.

    As a general rule, I would say that any game mechanic that provides the players with more information about the game world is usually a mechanic to be embraced.

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  8. "Finally, I find it odd that Gygax emphasizes the need to remove all headgear in order to listen at a door, because AD&D (and D&D more generally) has always been somewhat vague on the matter of the benefits conferred by helmets. "

    What this suggests is that listening at the door takes time. Taking time translates into wandering monster checks, which could lead to wasteful combat. In our circles, this is one of many reasons that it was usually a thief or magic-user doing the listening, while the armor foot got ready to rush the inhabitants of the rooms.

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  9. Listening to doors is a nuisance. it stops the game and when you mention the PC hears a scuttling and a drip, the players actually doesn't know anything about what they will find when they finally enter the room. They might think a crawling creature is there, like a centipede, and water drips from the ceiling, and then he remembers he has antivenom in his rucksack, then he opens the door and yes, there's water driping, and no, no venemous creature, just some rats that run away on sight.

    Now, what should I describe if instead of rats, or centipedes, or water, in the room there was a wide carnivorous sky or a god that crawls or a perpetual stasis machine? Yeah, I can say, "you hear some strange noises, you don't know what it is", but then nothing was achieved, and a failed listen roll is the same as a succesful one.

    Damn! I hate ir when a player listens at a door.

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  10. Character abilities, and actions such as listening, are best for the game when they're applied selectively - not by rote. It's very easy to me to tell when a new player's former DM never applied any cost for these activities, because they do it at every door. That becomes boring and slows down the progress a group of players make over the course of a night.

    So I don't see it as "I'm tired of all you yahoos listening at doors"; I see it as "I'm tired of all you yahoos listening at *every* door because you're all so risk-averse that you'll spend 15 minutes in front of every door instead of just playing the freaking game".

    YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT. Random encounters in a dungeon are checked every 3 turns. Hearing noise takes time; checking for traps takes quite a bit of time (DMG pg 19). keep a running tally of these as you do a monster's wounds and make players roll that random enounter check every three turns.

    Yes, I said "make the players roll it". They hate this. And as soon as they connect their choice to fart around at every single door with having to roll that die more often, they will start doing it when they think it might matter instead of at every door they've never been through before.

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    1. Time to start putting dangerous things behind doors THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH. Gotta remember they magically close behind you every time you pass unless you spike it.

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  11. Huh, I've never read this text but I also limit listeners to 3 people in my b/x games, less out of a real sense of dungeon spatial relations and more out of a handwavy notion I've dubbed the "three stooges rule" in play.

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    1. "The Three Stooges Rule." I like that a lot.

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    2. That's pretty good. One assumes the same rule would apply to attempts to force a door open, with an added roll to see how many of the people doing the shoving stagger comedically across the threshold when the door gives way. Also a small chance of rushing the door only to see it opened from within just before impact, leading to a resounding impact with the far wall of the room, intervening furniture, or the occasional three-stooge pileup as they all trip over the same object.

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