Let's talk about Perception and Investigation checks in RPGs and how to redesign them to give players agency in the world. #TabletopChopshop

Perception isn't just a way of avoiding danger or finding secrets! It can be used to push a story forward and worldbuild collaboratively.

In popular RPGs, players often ask if they can roll Perception when they enter a new area, when they think danger is near, or when they're stuck. GMs can be tempted to just let them roll without describing HOW they're perceiving and what they're looking for. Let's move past that.

A major problem with how both Perception/Investigation and skill checks are used is that most games don't use "fail forward" design. In games that DO, it's up to the GM to do it well. This means info becomes binary: pass a check, get info; fail a check, learn nothing. That's bad!

An ironic pitfall of popular investigative RPGs/scenarios is that you can often miss out on vital information to solving a game's case. If you fail a roll, you'll never learn what you need to complete an objective. It's like a Dark Souls quest that you can't replay to do "right."

Imagine if instead of constantly calling for Perception checks to find things you might reasonably get with enough time (what we called Taking 10 or Taking 20 in 3e D&D), Perception/Investigation checks were relegated to finding specific info and didn't mean losing out on plot.

Several games are already changing the way we think about Perception and Investigation already! The most obvious is the Gumshoe system which includes a suite of Investigative skills. If you have points in any of those, you can declare you're using them and just get information!

This is good for a few reasons: first, it puts agency directly in player hands - the info is less important than what you do with it. Second, it means a game doesn't fall apart or come to a halt if players don't discover crucial information. Third, you can seed info anywhere!

Perception can be used for collaborative worldbuilding! In Apocalypse World and PBTA games, MCs are told to ask questions and use the answers. I love this! If players walk into a bar I can ask "Who do you owe that you've been avoiding?"; now I've got an NPC the players wrote.

In this scenario, players didn't have to roll to see if there was "anyone suspicious." If I describe this new NPC and they say, "Does it look like he's angry?", I can say "For sure; it sounds like you're Reading a Tense Situation!" and we roll/play to find out what happens next.

My favorite example of collaborative Perception is a move in Bluebeard's Bride, a game in which everyone plays aspects of the same character (the bride). Each player takes turns holding a wedding ring to signal who's in narrative control. This move only affects the ringbearer.

If you have the ring and you OUT OF GAME Shiver from Fear re: what's happening in game, you tell the GM what you're afraid will happen; the GM tells you how it's worse than you feared. You can stay in narrative control OR take a lower cost and pass the ring to another player.

There's so many good things about this move but re: Perception, all a GM has to do is hint at something dangerous; the PLAYER decides their own fate. If I say a tub is filled with ink-black water, and you shiver and tell me you're afraid a monster will rise from, I build on that.

I wrote a thread a while ago about GMs who hoard secrets, worried that if they reveal a plot or secret too soon, they'll have nothing left. Fine! Write new plots! If you don't reveal anything or hide info behind pass/fail skill checks, your story and game will stall out rapidly.

Here's another Big Brain #TabletopChopshop thing about Perception for designers: if a player is going to do something all the time in your game, make it something everyone can do OR don't punish them for not investing in that as a skill.

If you look at old games (and some new ones), you'll see a lot of what I call "skill bloat" - ever look at an RPG skill list and zone out? Big skill lists often overlap each other, have too-specific niches, or otherwise have a handful of Must-Have skills and a lot of dead weight.

If you think of TRPG skills like verbs or buttons on a video game controller, you start to write more focused games IMO. Consider Blades in the Dark: each of these actions is something you're probably going to do within the limited scope of the game. Fewer skills = less bloat.

I think a fair critique of Blades comes from some data I saw (no citation unfortunately) that shows the most often-used action is Consort or Sway. So even if you design a game one way, there may be a disconnect from how you expect people to interact with it and how it's played.

To keep using Blades as an example, it has "Perception" skills (Study, Survey) BUT also lets players Gather Information, using themed questions. At the GM's option, this requires a roll. This is a nice hybrid; ex: a Cutter shouldn't fail at knowing how to do violence to others.

I'm currently playing City of Mist, a game entirely about mysteries, and the move for that is pretty good too. You gain Clues to spend/bank for info, which causes problems or leads to more questions. I like that you can have many batches of Clues from different sources at a time!

If you're a player, try to go beyond just saying "I'm rolling Perception" when you look for something. If you're a GM, ask questions, use the answers, and always give out breadcrumbs to follow. If you're a designer, think about how your game helps move games and stories forward.

If this thread was useful, interesting, or entertaining, toss a few bucks my way - http://paypal.me/colorspraygames  - or pick up one of my TRPGs at http://colorspraygames.itch.io . Your support helps me make games that address issues like this, and keeps marginalized voices active in gaming.

(Here's that thread about why you shouldn't hoard secrets as a GM: https://twitter.com/LuchaLibris/status/1260265797550837760?s=20)