The concept of a “passive Perception score,” although somewhat derived from the Take 10 mechanics of 3^rd Edition, was introduced in the 4^th Edition of D&D. The basic concept is that, instead of having the PCs make Perception checks to see whether or not they spotted something, you pre-calculate a static value (10 + their Perception modifier) and simply compare that score to the DC of the Perception task.

Frankly speaking, it’s a bad mechanic that got even worse in 5^th Edition.

First, there’s no variation in result: PC A will always have a higher score than PC B, so PC B will never spot something PC A doesn’t see. This not only eliminates novelty (which can be valuable in its own right), the lack of variety is also inherently stultifying, making it more difficult for different players to take the lead in reacting to different situations.

Second, it combines poorly with bounded accuracy. The basic concept of bounded accuracy is that you push all the DCs into a small range with the expectation that the d20 roll will be relevant and then remove the d20 roll. The Dungeon Master’s Guide, for example, says “if the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, and 20, your game will run just fine.” But any 1^st-level group, of course, will almost certainly have multiple PCs with a passive Perception score higher than 15.

Which brings us to the biggest problem, in my opinion, which is that in actual practice the whole thing is a charade. You, as the DM, will very quickly learn what the highest passive Perception score in your group is, which means that whenever you’re deciding what the Perception DC is, you’re really just deciding whether or not the DC is going to be higher or lower than the party’s score.

There’s nothing wrong with GM fiat, per se, but the passive Perception score ends up being this weird fake mechanic with a bunch of extra bookkeeping trying to mask what’s really happening. “No, no,” says the DM. “I didn’t arbitrarily decide you didn’t spot the trap! I decided that the DC to spot the trap was higher than your passive Perception score! Totally different!”

So, personally, I recommend that you don’t use D&D’s passive Perception scores. For a better way of handling perception-type checks — which can be used in a wide variety of RPGs, not just D&D — I recommend checking out Rulings in Practice: Perception-Type Tests.

With that being said, if you nevertheless want or for some reason need to use D&D’s passive Perception score, there are some best practices you can follow to do so to best effect.

MAKE A LIST

Ask your players for their passive Perception scores, write them down on a Post-It note, and attach that Post-It note to your GM screen.

This may seem obvious, but I’ve played in any number of games where the DM was constantly asking us what our passive Perception scores were, and there’s absolutely no reason for it. Collect them once, then use them instantly every time. Both the pace and the focus of play will be immensely improved.

Random Tip: While you’re doing this, go ahead and grab the PCs’ armor class, too.

Watch out for changing Perception scores. Some spells, abilities, and magic items may modify a character’s Perception score, grant them advantage on Perception checks, or the like. You’ll need to make sure to track this. (And, of course, you’ll also want to make sure you update your list when the PCs level up.)

In some groups, you may also discover that your players challenge surprise. When players see the mechanics being invoked, even if that’s just the DM asking for their passive Perception score, they’ll accept the outcome; but if it’s all being done invisibly behind your DM screen, some players will worry that they’re getting screwed over. “Did you remember that I have advantage on Perception checks in forests?”

The best way to handle this is to (a) make sure you’re getting it right, (b) reassure them, and (c) if it continues, have a transparent discussion about why you’re handling the passive Perception checks this way and how you’re doing it. You might find it effective to make a point of confirming their passive Perception scores at the beginning of each session, and you can also ask them to notify you whenever their passive Perception scores shift during a session.

(The next technique can also help with this, since they’ll at least hear the mechanics being invoked.)

REMEMBER DISADVANTAGE

One of the most overlooked rules in D&D 5^th Edition is that characters who are “distracted” are supposed to be at disadvantage on their passive Perception checks, which means that they should suffer a -5 penalty on their passive Perception score.

I recommend applying this aggressively in any situation where the PCs are not explicitly keeping watch and/or paranoid. Creeping down a dungeon passageway in hostile territory? On watch at night? You specifically said you were going to keep a lookout on the door while Arathorn ransacks the room? Great, you get your normal passive Perception score.

Arathorn, though? Apply the penalty. Also apply the penalty if the PCs are just walking down the street in a friendly city without any expectation of trouble or hanging out at a tavern with their friends.

In practice, this blunts the problems with how bounded accuracy interacts with passive Perception scores. It also encourages the players to be more specific with how they interact with and observe the world, instead of just coasting through the game on auto-pilot. (This is particularly important in making traps work right, for example.)

ROLL THE DC

You can sidestep the system being a camouflage of busywork for DM fiat by assigning a modifier and then rolling the DC of the check instead of assigning a static DC.

Basically take the DC you would have assigned (10 = Easy, 15 = Moderate, 20 = Hard, etc.), subtract 10, and use the remainder as the modifier for a d20 roll. (You can do the same thing with prewritten adventures that list a static DC.)

This is what you already do with Stealth checks, of course, but it may feel weird doing it for something like noticing the rune faintly inscribed on the ceiling.

The point, of course, is to reintroduce variability to the check so that you can make non-fiat rulings. (For example, I can decide the run is moderately difficulty to notice with a +5 check; but I don’t know whether or not the rogue with a passive Perception score of 18 will spot the rune or not.) But you nevertheless retain most of the advantages of using passive Perception scores, because you’re not making a roll for every individual PC (which would be time-consuming and also have a drastic impact on the probability of the check.)

RANDOM SPOTTING PRIORITY

Once the Wisdom (Perception) DC is set, you’ll know which PCs, if any, successfully noticed whatever the target of the check was.

If there are multiple PCs who succeeded on the check, randomly determine which of them noticed the target first.

This is a simple way of systemically spreading the “spotting something” spotlight around, giving different players an opportunity to call attention to a cool tapestry, sneak a gem into their pocket, or determine what the group’s reaction to approaching goblins might be.

Is this “fair” to the PC with the highest passive Perception score? Frankly, yes. Note that they’ll still get spotting priority more often than anyone else in the group, because (a) they’ll participate in more spotting priority checks than other PCs and (b) there will be some checks where they’re the only PC to succeed.

Alternative: If it’s a combat situation — or a potential combat situation — you might use Initiative checks to determine first spotter.

VARIANT: LET PERCEPTION RIDE

An alternative method for passive Perception scores would be to have the group roll Perception checks at the beginning of a delve, raid, or session and then let the result ride as their passive score for the run.

This means that for some sequences the rogue will have the highest passive Perception score and in other sequences it will be the barbarian or the wizard. It will move around the table, creating variable outcomes over time.

VARIANT: TAKE 0

To lessen the importance of passive Perception without completely eliminating it, base passive Perception scores on Take 0 instead of Take 10. In other words, a character’s passive Perception score is simply equal to their Wisdom (Perception) modifier.

Particularly at Tier 1, this will mean that passive Perception may not even succeed at Easy tasks. That’s okay, because in surprise situations you’ll be calling for a rolled Wisdom (Perception) check in these cases. It will also encourage the players to make active Perception checks, engaging with the environment to find stuff instead of just relying on their passive scores to take care of it.

In practice, when using this variant, you’re really just keeping a list of the lowest possible Wisdom (Perception) check possible, so you know the threshold at which it becomes pointless to roll the dice and you should just tell the PCs what they see.

Remember, of course, that this also applies to the NPCs.

Alternative: Base passive Perception on Take 5, so the score is 5 + the character’s modifier. Combined with consistently applying disadvantage for distraction, this will often create a baseline similar to Take 0, but with passive Perception still having a bit more of a meaningful role in the system.

There are many different types of RPG players. There have been many different attempts to categorize them, often reflecting the culture of gaming at the time. One category of gamer which has been around since at least the 1980’s and proven remarkably durable is the concept of the power gamer.

The power gamer seeks to make their character as powerful as possible. They analyze the rules and seek optimization: Character builds, mechanical tactics, party synergies — whatever it takes. Or, to flip that around, whatever will make them more powerful, they’ll take it.

Why does the power gamer exist?

Roleplaying games are fundamentally about exploring player choices. By creating characters who are powerful within the game system — i.e., who are more likely to succeed more frequently and/or at a larger range of tasks — the power gamer:

1. Maximizes the odds that their choice will be meaningful instead of being negated by failure.
2. Diversifies the number of game situations in which they can participate, thus increasing the number of meaningful choices they’re making.
3. Reduces the chances of their character being killed, which would result in a complete loss of agency for the character and often results in wiping out the significance of past choices.

Various factors can vary the importance of these motivations — for example, #3 is a lot more significant in lethal old school games — but a lot of this is fairly fundamental to virtually all RPGs, which is why the behavior so reliably crops up across different games and different GMs.

Another factor here is that the power gamer effectively turns an RPG system into a puzzle, which they solve by maximizing power. Solving a puzzle, of course, is an incredibly satisfying experience, and is a fundamental part of what makes games fun. In a game like Chess, the puzzle is usually, “How do I win?” RPGs, of course, usually don’t have winners or losers, and so the power gamer creates their own challenge.

DEGENERATE POWER GAMERS

There’s nothing wrong with power gamers. After all, a lot of RPGs — including the vast majority of the most popular ones — are built around the acquisition of power, which would be really weird if there was something fundamentally wrong with players seeking power in the game.

In some cases, however, a power game can degenerate into behaviors that are disruptive or debilitating to the group and the game.

For example, there are leeches. These are gamers who try to make their character the most powerful at the table by preventing the other players from having any power of their own. This might mean hogging the spotlight, stealing magic items, or even killing other PCs.

There are also munchkins. These are power gamers who want the power, but don’t want to work for it. What they want is for the DM to hand their 1^st-level character a +5 holy avenger. Or they’ll want to play a clearly broken homebrew sub-class. Munchkins are mostly harmless and can often have a ton of fun in a campaign with other munchkins, but they can be problematic in other campaigns if they feel entitled and become toxic when their wish-fulfillment isn’t granted.

(Munchkin campaigns also tend to have a lot of ire directed at them from gamers who are affronted that they didn’t “earn” their power or who believe that there’s a “right” or “balanced” way to play the game and that the munchkins are somehow “cheating” because they’re more powerful than they’re “supposed to be.” This tension, of course, can cause other interpersonal issues.)

Some power gamers will also become rules lawyers. There are a lot of different types of rules lawyers and a bunch of different reasons that people become rules lawyers, and I’m not going to dive into that here. A rules lawyer, though, is different than a rules expert. A rules expert is great: They have a mastery of the system, and that mastery can enhance both their play and the quality of play at the whole table.

A rules lawyer, on the other hand, is constantly trying to interpret the rules in whatever way gives them an advantage. (This will often include interpreting the same rule in different ways at different times, depending on which interpretation would be best for them in each situation.) Mild rules lawyering isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it can quickly degenerate into a situation where the game becomes overwhelmed without constant squabbles over the legalese of the rules, creating a bad experience for the entire table.

Finally, there are monomaniacal theorycrafters. Theorycrafting is when you’re building characters, experimenting with rules, or otherwise analyzing the mechanics of a game in the abstract (rather than in relation to actual play). There’s nothing wrong with theorycrafting — it’s a great way to explore and appreciate a game — but the monomaniacal theorycrafter becomes fixated on the idea that there’s a single “right” way to play the game, to the detriment of the actual game.

The root of the problem is that, in order to have the most powerful character in theory, you first have to nail down the key question of: Powerful at doing what? Because a character who’s optimized for solving mysteries is going to look very different from a character who’s optimized for running a Thieves’ Guild.

The most common answer monomaniacal theorycrafters tend to land on is combat, and it’s pretty typical for this to degenerate even further into a very specific type of combat encounter. I talk about this more in On the Slaying of Spherical Cows.

These degenerate forms of power gaming, unfortunately, can give all power gamers a bad rep. In my experience, though, having a good power gamer in your group is far more likely to improve your game than hurt it.

Alice is Missing is a stunningly beautiful storytelling game that delivers an utterly unique and unforgettable experience. I’ve played it twice, with different groups, and each game was profound. Every player was deeply affected, and several texted the group the next morning to say that they’d dreamed about the events of the game.

The premise of Alice is Missing is in the title: A high school student named Alice has gone missing, and the players will take on the roles of her friends as they try to figure out what happened while dealing with the emotional trauma of her disappearance.

The central conceit of the game is this: You don’t talk. Instead, all of your interactions — all of your roleplaying — takes place via text messaging.

HOW IT WORKS

You can play with three to five players and you’ll start by each selecting one of the five broad, archetypal characters provided. These are quickly fleshed out with Drives, which provide Motives (a key personality trait) and two Relationships, which you’ll assign to two different player characters. It’s a fairly quick process that creates a remarkably broad dynamic of play while keeping the structure of play focused.

Now the Facilitator will start a group text message with all participants by sending a text with their character name in it. All the other players reply by sending their character name, at which point everyone should create a contact for that number (if they don’t have one already) and change its name to the character’s name.

At this point play begins: The Facilitator will open an Alice is Missing video which provides both a soundtrack and a 90-minute timer. From this point forward, no one speaks: The Facilitator will send a message initiating the game, and then everyone will spend the next hour and a half texting.

The core mechanic of the game revolves around Clue cards. These are synced to the timer — so, for example, there’s an 80 minute clue card, a 70 minute clue card, and so forth. There are three different cards for each time interval, and these can be freely intermixed, resulting in thousands of potential game states.

Each Clue card contains a prompt for the player who draws it:

• Reveal a Suspect card. This person shows up at your door acting suspicious. What weird question about Alice do they keep asking you?
• Reveal a Location card. You dig up some weird or unexpected history about this location. What do you learn about this place that would make it the perfect spot to hide?

The player creates the answer to this question and introduces it into the group chat, pushing the narrative of the game forward.

As you can see from these examples, the game also includes Suspect cards and Location cards. These help shape the mystery of Alice’s disappearance, and a number of clever mechanics are used to make sure that the narrative in the back half of the game evolves logically and naturally from the foundation laid down in the first half of the game, even as it’s ultimately being guided by the player’s creativity.

Finally, the game provides a deck of Searching cards which are more flexible: Whenever a PC decides to go somewhere without being prompted by a Clue card, they should draw a card from the Searching deck to reveal what they discover there. (Examples include “a drop of blood in the fresh snow” and “a loaded firearm.”)

SOME GRIT IN THE GEARS

Overall, Alice is Missing does an excellent job of walking a new player through the rules. The rulebook is actually split into two parts: The first is an in-depth explanation of the rules, and the second is a Facilitator’s Guide which walks the Facilitator (most likely the game’s owner) through the exact steps they should take to explain the rules to the other players (including short scripts they should read at every step).

This is crucial to the game’s success, because if everyone at the table isn’t completely onboard with the rules, the central conceit of silent gameplay won’t work and the game will fall apart. Spenser Starke, the designer, deserves major kudos not just for a great game, but for making sure the presentation of the game was everything it needed to be.

With that being said, there are a few places where grit gets into the gears, and I’m going to point them out so that when you play Alice is Missing you can hopefully benefit from my experience and avoid them.

First, the game comes in a lovely box that suggests completeness. Unfortunately, the box is missing components. There are no character sheets, for example, and there’s also supposed to be a stack of missing person posters that isn’t in the box. These are all easily downloadable from the publisher’s website (at least for now), but these aren’t just optional supplements: The rulebook will tell you to, for example, select a missing person poster, and you won’t be able to. (So make sure you track these down ahead of time and print them out.)

Speaking of the character sheets, they’re too small. For example:

In the half-inch by three-inch space between “Charlie Barnes” and “Dakota Travis,”you’re supposed to write down their physical description, favorite class, home life, etc. plus the answer to their Background question plus more… You can’t do it. The character sheet should have been designed as a full-page sheet and probably also double-sided to work properly.

After everyone picks their characters, they’re encouraged to specify their character’s pronouns. This is great in principle, but Alice is Missing completely flubs the execution by constantly referring to the characters by predetermined pronouns (and even baking this into the mechanics). Points for trying, but beaucoup negative points for failing. (A close edit of the rulebook to remove predetermined pronouns and, most especially, removing gendered identities from the character roles would be the minimum required to fix this. Ideally, I’d also want all the character names to be gender neutral.)

On a similar note, every character has a Secret. These are listed on the character cards, and so when the Facilitator is instructed to lay the character cards out in front of the players and have them select which characters they want to play, all of the players are going to read every single character’s Secret. The Facilitator’s script then almost immediately says, “Do not share your Secret — it should come out in play.”

This is not actually a problem: The players are not their characters, and what the rulebook means is that the answer to your Secret prompt question should not be included in your character introduction, but instead revealed during play. But every single group I’ve played this with has immediately gone, “Wait. Did we screw up? I read the Secrets!” It’s a very minor thing, but it’s a consistent irritation and it’s probably worth thinking about how you want to tweak that particular point of presentation to sidestep it.

My final critique of Alice is Missing is more significant: The rulebook sets things up so that the Facilitator is always playing the character of Charlie Barnes.

I can understand why they’ve done this. (It allows them to script specific examples into the scripts in the Facilitator’s Guide.) But it makes for a really bad experience if you’re the one who owns the game and is, therefore, always the Facilitator introducing new players to it. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix this and let the Facilitator play any of the characters. (But it will require some edits to the guide and its procedures.)

WHAT MAKES IT BRILLIANT

I took the time to highlight all these little minor bits of grit in the gears of Alice is Missing because you’ll want to know about them when you play the game.

And you will want to play this game.

Because it’s brilliant.

The mechanics are elegant, easily grasped, and expertly tuned by Starke to effortlessly guide almost any group to a powerful story which is nevertheless unique every time. It’s a true exemplar of storytelling game design.

The novelty of the experience certainly helps to make it memorable, but the true brilliance of Alice is Missing is more than that. It’s a game that effortlessly immerses you in your character: The experience of play — focused through your text messaging app — is seamlessly identical to the character’s own experience.

You know how the world can sometimes sort of drop away when you get focused on your phone? Starke leverages that fugue state — everything else drops away, and the only thing you’re truly experiencing is the world of the text messages. A world where you’re not talking to your friends; you’re talking to Charlie and Dakota and Julia. (This is why it’s so important to change your contact names before playing.)

In addition, the text-based medium automatically leads the player to create the game world through a creative closure which is nigh-indistinguishable from the closure you perform every day in the real world. When Julia, for example, texts you to say, “There’s someone outside my window!” you immediately imagine that scene in exactly the same way you would if one of your actual friends texted that to you.

The power of that in a roleplaying experience really can’t be underestimated.

Either of these two things — the near-flawless mechanical design or the novel genius of the text-based roleplaying — would make the game worth checking out.

The two together?

Alice is Missing is one of the best storytelling games ever made.

Grade: A+

Designer: Spenser Starke

Publisher: Hunters Entertainment / Renegade Game Studios
Cost: $21.99
Page Count: 48
Card Count: 72

Astonishingly dense arcane runes cover every side of incredibly complex origami structures. In some places, translucent onion-skin has been layered over the paper, creating sections in which the runes are overlaid with each other, forming inscrutable and ever-shifting patterns.

A proper understanding of the origami folds — and the multiple orientations in which they are designed to be read — allows one to begin unraveling a truly innovative method by which glyphs of warding can be interwoven.

INTERWOVEN GLYPHS

Interweaving glyphs of warding requires an Intelligence (Arcana) check (DC 10 + the total level of the interwoven glyphs). Interwoven glyphs of warding are:

• Simultaneously triggered.
• More difficult to find and disable, increasing the DC of the checks to do so by +2 per additional glyph.
• More difficult to identify, requiring an Intelligence (Arcana) check of DC 10 + the total level of the interwoven glyphs of warding.

Each glyph of warding must be cast in sequence and without interruption. If the sequence is interrupted or the Spellcraft check fails, the glyph of warding spells are all lost to no effect.

The total level of glyphs is based on the level of the casting of glyphs of warding for explosive runes, or the level of the stored spell for spell glyphs.

ADVANCED SYMBOLOGY

Among the origami notes describing the interweaving of glyphs of warding, there is also an incomplete treatise analyzing how symbol spells could also be interwoven (both with each other and with glyphs of warding).

If completed, this advanced methodology would also raise the saving throw DC of all interwoven glyphs or symbols to the highest DC among all of the interwoven glyphs and symbols.

However, because the research has never been completed, a PC interested in these techniques would need to finish perfecting them as a downtime research project. (See p. 338 of So You Want To Be a Game Master.)

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

Tonight at 6pm ET, I’ll be appearing on The DM Lair with Luke Hart! If you don’t see this until later, that’s okay! The interview will be archived on Youtube and you can watch any time!

Justin Alexander of the Alexandrian joins us in this live stream to offer our top new GM advice and answer your questions. Check out Justin’s latest book, So You Want to Be a Game Master, here!

Watch now!