This is why I make my party roll int/wis checks to “get a feeling” when they are missing very obvious hints. E.g. roll to beat 10, and on success “you have a strong feeling that this dragon will easily kill your entire party and you should probably find a diplomatic solution”

My own approach in the almost year long campaign I ran was just to let my players do whatever the fuck they want.

I’m good at improvising and my sessions were never really meticulously planned so I’d just let things unfold as I thought they should.

But I kept notes. Always. And every single stupid decision they made had disastrous consequences, either directly or weeks or months down the road.

I once tempted my players with god-like evil power and only one of them took the bait. The rest of the party couldn’t abide so they just murdered that player in cold blood. Which I REALLY didn’t expect but was kind of awesome.

One of the things I realized I don’t like about DND (and close relatives) is it’s kind of hard to reason about the rules and risks. The narrative and numbers are too disjointed.

You might say the knight is hulking and looming ominously, but does that mean 20 AC, 50 HP, one attack at +6 for 1d8+4… Or does that mean 24 AC, 500 HP, three attacks at 1d8+8 (slashing) +1d4 (negative energy)? Could be either! The range of possibilities is largely unbound and arbitrary.

Compare with another system that like, constrains the numbers. Strength is rated 1-5. Melee is rated 1-5. This guy is pretty buff looking so he’s probably got a total of six. That guy’s a demigod and probably throws ten. Cool I can reason from that who I can take in a fight.

You might say the knight is hulking and looming ominously, but does that mean 20 AC, 50 HP, one attack at +6 for 1d8+4… Or does that mean 24 AC, 500 HP, three attacks at 1d8+8 (slashing) +1d4 (negative energy)? Could be either! The range of possibilities is largely unbound and arbitrary.

That’s more of a DM/GM description issue than a gaming issue. Like nothing about what you said is specific to DnD, it’s just how the person is going to describe the person. But even then I prefer it that way. I don’t know what the situation is going to be like until I try to fuck with that. Also, you could just ask to size him up. Insight checks exist, perception checks exist, etc. But I’m kinda pro-having the enemies vague. I loathe video games where I see a number above an enemies head and know whether or not I can defeat them. I’m here to roleplay, not be told immediately whether or not I can take the dude.

I don’t need to know their exact stats, but I like (for example) having a system where you know a human’s health ranges from 6 to 10, and a gun does at least 3 damage, so you can be pretty sure if you shoot him four times he’s down. None of this, “Well, he’s a 12th level accountant so he has 78 hp”.

Maybe I mostly just dislike how vague HP is in D&D.

But it was probably mostly a GM issue.

I’m here to roleplay, not be told immediately whether or not I can take the dude.

I find it hard to roleplay when I don’t know what is in the world. Things that are very different (high level stuff, low level stuff) getting basically the same description is distracting. In real life, you get a lot of information looking at someone.

Maybe I’m still just annoyed at that game where we were all 10th level and so were the basic ass soldiers.