Episode 3 - Perception and Percolators

In this episode of Dungeons & Darkrose, the hosts discuss perception in the game and its difference from investigation. They explain that perception is a role that players make when entering a room to gather information about their surroundings. They also discuss the concept of passive perception, which varies for each player based on their character's stats. The hosts highlight the importance of perception for survival and provide examples of how it can be used in different situations. They also share personal stories about perception checks and the consequences of not paying attention. Overall, the episode emphasizes the role of perception in gameplay and encourages players to use it wisely. Welcome to Episode 3 of Dungeons & Darkrose. Stay tuned while we talk about Perception and Percolators. Hello, and welcome to Dungeons & Darkrose. I'm Alex. And I'm Axis. We're two Dungeon Masters for D&D 5e, here to talk about the chaos of our adventures and the coffee that gets us through it. Like and follow us on Instagram and Facebook for all of our updates and recipes. Listen every Wednesday on Spotify and Amazon Music for the latest episodes. Hey, Alex. I hear you have a great story to share about a perception check in your own personal life this week. I do. Before we get to that story, towards the end of the podcast, maybe even near our homebrew. Ooh, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, because that definitely fails. But I do want to talk about perception and what perception is in 5e, and the difference between perception in a passive and perception in the active. Perception is a role that nobody does whenever they walk into a room, right? Well, yes or no. Perception is a role that everybody's supposed to make whenever they walk into a room, and they're not really sure what's inside it, right? It can be. You could have two different things. You could walk into a room, and if you're doing a pre-made module as the DM, you're going to have a block of text. And you can do one of two things. You can either ask them to roll perception for that block of text that you're going to read them and tell them what's in the room, or you can use that as the passive perception. So it's kind of like when you first walk into a temple that you're investigating, right? When you walk into this temple, and if it's a passive perception, you're going to notice there's an altar at the end, maybe a couple of pews, and there's hardwood floors. You're actually going to see that there are specifically 12 rows of pews, hardwood floors, red velvet banners. The altar is not only an altar, but to which deity it actually worships. So it's the difference between if you walk into a room and you don't really see anything of any interest, versus you walk into a room and something the DM describes seems kind of suspicious to you and you want more information. That passive perception of that initial walk into the room and not asking what's in the room can be different for every single player. If you've ever looked at a character sheet, for those of you who have played, you'll already know what these are. But for new players or DMs, you'll see that there is passive perception on the bottom left of the sheet. Then there's active perception under the skills list, and you can be proficient in that. But that passive perception can be different for every single player because those numbers come from your stat block. So you might have a super high intelligent wisdom-based wizard whose passive perception is an 18. They walk through the door and they always see everything. I like to call them my Sherlock Holmes characters. But then you might have a bard who is very flighty and following butterflies all the time. And they've got a 10 passive perception, which 10 is what is considered to be average humanoid intelligence or perception. 10 is your average for everything. Oh, yeah. All of my characters are absolutely average, apparently. Oh, wait, no. I have a cleric with a passive perception of 13. Well, that's too bad. That's a little better. Okay. So, oh, wow. I also have another cleric with a passive perception of 22. He's staring at the cracks in the walls. He doesn't even have to stare. He just knows they're there. There is a crack there. There is a crack there. Those drapes are hideous. You should have gone somewhere else to buy them. Yes. Okay. Oh, yeah. And so perception can be used in so many different ways. And I hate when it gets confused with investigation because perception is more on a grand scale, I feel, personally as a DM. I feel like perception is on a grand scale. Oh, I do. You're looking at an entire room. You're looking at an entire situation. Whereas investigation is you're going through papers on a desk. You're looking through a book. You're actively looking at a bookcase for one specific thing. Yeah. You're looking for one specific thing, and it's investigation. You're looking at the whole room where the environment is perception. Correct. And that's why on a bigger scale, your players, if they're not asking for a perception check, sometimes as a DM, you can use it as a tool to try and clue them in to situations that are going on around them or things that might happen. For instance, you've got a party that's walking through the woods. You ask for their marching order. You know, what order are they standing in? And the first two people in the party, or maybe the last two people in the party, are going to roll a random perception check. And that's going to be, are you paying enough attention to see those bandits up the ray? Or are you going to be paying enough attention to hear the horses behind you? Yeah, I will generally have to push my players to do a perception check beyond what they're seeing, because I think that unlike some of the more exciting skill checks, like acrobatics, where you have to avoid something, or athletics, whenever you have to outrun something or climb something, it doesn't seem all that enjoyable, but it's no less important if you want to survive. Yeah, it's very, very important to survival, for instance. And it could mean the survival for you or your party members. I had an incident with a druid in one of my parties. Again, I like to refer to this party that was in Barovia a lot. So for any of you playing, you know, Curse of Strahd, here are your, you know, spoiler alerts, of course. This is a pretty big spoiler alert, so be careful. Skip ahead a minute or so. Give us a good ten minutes. But my druid was on her way to get the Bones of St. Andrew. They had been stolen, and they were in the coffin shop. The party found this out, they went to the coffin shop, and the barbarian and the warlock had gone upstairs. And the druid and, I believe, the dwarf fighter were downstairs, and they were talking to the coffin shop maker, or the coffin maker, the owner of the shop. And they ended up putting the owner in a coffin and sealing it. And the tiefling in the party sat on the coffin and kept him in there. And they sent the druid to go get the Bones that they had found out were upstairs. Oh, and I just had a group in that room. My group actually hid in the coffins while one person went upstairs, so it's something about sending one person upstairs. Well, yes, and then again, no. Like I said, my warlock and my barbarian were already upstairs. They had chosen to sneak upstairs while the shop owner was distracted, and they wanted to check out what was going on. They were a little more sneaky and stealthy, and they actually passed their stealth checks. However, when the druid went upstairs, she chose not to use any perception of any kind. She didn't look around. She didn't want to do anything. Because if she had actually used any kind of perception and just looked to the left, instead of just going in the room that she was using to get the Bones of St. Andrew, she would have seen that the barbarian and the warlock were in a room full of vampires trying to kill them while the room was on fire. Yep, yep, I remember that room. Yeah, my group was smart enough to go during the day and avoided the vampires, so yeah. No, they went during the day. They woke up the vampires, yes, and the room was on fire. But again, she chose not to do anything with her perception. She just was on her dedicated mission. She didn't look around at all and blew right past them and basically left them to die, which, God love her, that druid ended up losing a lot of people to die. She was all about her mission, and that was it. There was a funny story that came out of that room that I'm sure I will tell you about my half-orc barbarian at some point, because he eventually became Holy Zed. But that's a story for another time. Yes, yes, you have God Gru, I had Holy Zed. Yeah, I, oh God, okay. We're not doing another Gru episode. No, no, we've talked about him already. He's so funny, I love it. It's going to get so big. It is, and then I'm going to have to deal with him in my campaign, not even your campaign. You're gassing him up and then I have to deal with him cramming bunk beds through doors and making friends with woodland animals and then the trash bag of holding. But anyways, please continue with your story. I feel like I missed something with a bunk bed going through a door. We're not going to do another Gru episode. I'll tell you about that later. Fair enough. How about, instead of him, we talk about the magnificence of a character known as Ginger Andrea and how our group, the Swayers, took them almost an entire adventure to realize that she was a shapeshifter. And they, it actually took her turning into a fully grown adult gull, bronze gull? She was a metallic dragon. And they did it in their face. And if I remember correctly, you were fighting Spark. We were fighting Spark Render. And to be completely fair to the party, when I turned into said dragon, I wasn't in dragon form. I was in her humanoid form. However, I turned into a whole different humanoid in front of my party. And no one batted an eye. And you said it very clearly that you changed into Runaar. I did. Nobody said anything. We went through like four turns before I pointed out to the party and I said, it seems to be lost on all of you that one of your party members has vanished and been replaced by another person. And then everybody had to think for a moment. Everybody give me a perception check. Right. And it was another guided perception check. And in this case, it was going to be an auto success regardless. I just wanted to get them into the habit of trying to ask or, you know, do a perception check on their own and get them familiar with how they function. If something gets said in the heat of battle and all you hear is Ginger transformed into Runaar, hey, DM, can I get a perception check on Runaar just appearing in our party and Ginger shape shifting into her? I mean, that's perfectly acceptable. It could also potentially change your combat strategy. You know, if your fairy shape shifts into something else or you see that one of your allies has completely moved across the room and you need to get an idea of what they're doing over there, hey, perception check that. If you want to get an idea of how the boss is looking, you know, say you've done 70 points of damage to the boss and he still is not going down. Can we get a perception check on that? Hey, how is that guy looking? And you've dealt some significant damage. Why is this thing not going down? He's bloody, but he's not. Right, exactly. You know, they've got four hit points, but they don't know that. He's breathing heavy. He looks like he's stepping gingerly across the room. Any number of things can be revealed with a perception check. And it also empowers the player to ask for more information. Right. There can be, as a DM, there is so much information that you can either provide or withhold with that perception check. And you can, because you, I mean, you essentially set the entire world, even if you're doing a pre-made campaign where you can decide ahead of time if they ask for this information and ask for a perception check, if they ask what's going on in a room. And, of course, your players aren't going to say, give me a, you know, can I have a perception check? They're going to say, what does this room look like? They're going to say, what's on the desk? What's this? And you can decide, if they choose not to ask you those things, they don't get that bit of information. They don't see that key glinting under the paperwork that they need to get through the locked door that's got the chest in it. Hey, if they don't get a perception check, they also don't see all of the loot that they're walking past. They don't see the spell books on the bookshelf that is going to give them. With a giant flashing sign that says spells, you know. Right. Yeah. Bright purple blinking lights like a runway pointing at saying, hey, brand new spell book here. Finding spells is not easy. You know, you got six right here in this book. Well, if they don't do a perception check, they don't get the loot. Some of my veteran groups that have been playing with us for many, many months, they still don't do perception checks. And that's okay. I was like, guys, come on. And I've seen some DMs that have the style where they treat everything as passive perception, and they just spoon feed adventure notes to the players so that they can move on. And that's okay, too. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I would caution any DM that if you're going to do that, be careful that you're not making decisions for your players by providing that information. Right. Essentially don't railroad them. However, like sometimes, and we all know this, and I'm sure we'll do an episode on it, but sometimes it's necessary. You know, you have to guide your players occasionally. Yeah. That's the drawback to being a DM is sometimes if they're not asking the right perception checks, if they're not paying attention to the right things, sometimes you do railroad it, and I hate that. You failed that, or, you know, you expected them to do one thing, and they went to a different town. Well, there's also, and I just thought about this, a lot of new DMs don't really think about what important information, what information might be important to the players. You know, chances are a new DM is reading out of a pre-made module or a starter kit or something that has been very well defined, there's a lot of description, and because they haven't had time to internalize the entire module, they don't really know, okay, they need to see this information. They need to see this. They need to see this. But in terms of a DM who is not super gifted with painting a word picture, sometimes the perception check can also help them get better as a DM by being able to describe the world better. The more perception checks that the players ask for, the more a DM is required to describe the situation. This is not like that new Baldur's Gate game that just came out that everything is bright and flashy and some of the spells don't work the way they do in D&D. It's like Thaumaturgy. Well, I mean... I'm not going to go down that road. I like the point you're making. Yeah. I agree. And the nice thing is that in those pre-made texts, and don't get me wrong, I started on pre-made texts. I think that's where everybody does and everybody should if they have the ability or they don't know anything about the game. Literally, it's one of the only games out there that has a textbook that you have to have to do the pre-made. Right. Or many textbooks. I go to college for D&D. But it's one of my favorite things about, and we'll come back to perception here in a minute because I feel like we've derailed a little bit, but I want to get into this out there. Yeah. No, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. We kind of get off the rails every once in a while anyway. It's more fun. You need to go back to English class. Anyway. I do. I caught myself. Speaking of school, what I'm saying here is it creates the ability for creativity, creative writing, for public speaking, all of these things. So you can take a DM that doesn't know a whole lot. They've read the manual, even if it's a short one-shot, and they have their box text, and then the players ask them for more information. This is something that I used specifically when my son was in middle school, and I actually started a club at his school to teach Dungeons & Dragons after school to some of these kids. I did it, and I sold it to the school in this way. It teaches them math, on-the-fly math skills. It teaches these kids, who are usually very quiet, very reserved, to think on the fly, to be creative in their own way without having to worry about somebody thinking they're weird or somebody thinking that they are, you know, silly. And then also on this point, this is the creative thinking in regard to literature and public speaking. And so if you've got one of these kids who's coming out of their shell, they're asking what's in the room, and another one of them is the practice DM for that session, they've got to come up with something on the fly, you know? And honestly, it was one of my favorite volunteer projects that I ever did. And coming back to perception. Yeah, I was about to say, it teaches you real-world skills like paying attention to what's going on around you, doesn't it? And I'm an adult, and I still haven't figured all of those things out. It sounds like you want to hear about my failed perception check. Hey, I am too poor to pay attention, so I live vicariously through your failure of paying attention. So, yes, I absolutely will call you out. Well, and this one, like I said, it will lead into our home brew of the week, because it does involve coffee, and it involves D&D, and it involves my darling, darling husband. And this perception check, I did fail it, and if I had completely, totally, 100% failed it, whole natural one, I could have been a costly mistake for me in my life. Yeah, no, this was a – you didn't get a nat one. You got a nat one minus one, so you got a zero. It's a number that's not even on the die. That's how bad you are. I did. I did. So my darling husband, we met, and he was one of my D&D players. And I'm sure we will talk about him and his character at some point. Oh, I'm sure. I am absolutely sure. And we were starting a fairly new campaign, but some of my seasoned players were playing, and actually my teenager and his teenager were both at the table playing, and I was setting up my DM station. And I'm at the end of the table like every DM. I've got my screen. I've got my books. I've got my dice. I've got my minis. I'm setting everything up, and I am one of those DMs that does not like people behind me because it's a secret little world, right? Yeah, you can't see this. You're not allowed. At a particular point, though, the kitchen was open to my back, and he was being so sweet and kind, and he was making me a cup of coffee. And at the time, we were still dating. And I'm not paying attention, zero perception to what is going on, anywhere but my DM station. And I turn around, or he tries to get my attention, and I turn around and I said, Because he's in my space, and so it was bothering me. And he is on one knee with a gorgeous, gorgeous ring, one and a quarter carats, because I love him so much for doing that for me, and going over and above, in this gorgeous redwood box. And I am so flabbergasted because I don't know what to say, and I am just completely at a loss. So finally he looks at me, and he goes, Did you want cream in your coffee? Oh, that's so sweet. I could just throw up. Of course he did do a whole speech and asked me to marry him, and all of the players at the table are going, Say yes, say yes, say yes. I was not hearing any of this. What snapped me out of it was him saying, Do you want cream in your coffee? And so that's what I really remember. That's what snapped you out of it. That's what got you. I am telling you, this ring is super sparkly. Or the coffee was really good. It was really good. And I actually have replicated one of our favorite coffees as a couple for this week's homebrew. And just for you, I have named it a girl's best friend because we all know diamonds are a girl's best friend. And because I know how much you love a black coffee, this one is extra sugary. Okay. All right. What do you got? When we were dating, he used to be a barista at that famous mermaid coffee shop. And we both went in on one of our first dates to get a coffee, and I ordered a white chocolate with additional flavors in it. Or, excuse me, a white chocolate mocha with additional flavors in it. And he looked at me, and he goes, I'm sorry, what? And I said, I repeated my order. This is not the barista. This is the boyfriend. I see where this is going. And he says, how do you know that? And I said, well, you know, I mean, it was a seasonal item that they offered, you know, five or six years ago. It's off menu now, but it's my favorite item. And he goes, yeah, it's my favorite item too. And so I have replicated it. I can't with you. I really can't. It's like you live in some kind of weird B-movie fairy tale. I do. Please continue. I'm sorry. I do. Go ahead. Please continue. And he is that wonderful all the time. And so this coffee, the recipe is, you're going to take one packet of white chocolate cocoa mix. It's usually called Arctic White when I find it. If you can't find the white cocoa mix, there are brands of white cocoa syrup that you can buy. And then you brew espresso. So you put your cocoa mix in the bottom. You brew your espresso and mix it in together. And then I heated some oat milk and put that in with it, give it kind of a little bit of a nuttiness, and I added some caramel to it. And then, of course, just for you, I added whipped cream and a little bit of cinnamon and some more caramel on top. Oh, no, I saw the picture. I saw that. When I saw that, I was like, oh, no, I couldn't do whipped cream because I had it all over in my mouth and it began to be empty. I'd get nothing done. I'd go into a sugar coma. I might have given a pup cup to my pups and my kitty when I was making the coffee. So that is a girl's best friend. And if you're going to do it like he did for my proposal, because at the time I drank booze in every – well, I still do it – booze in every coffee when I DM because, honestly, you know, when your DM is a little loosey-goosey, sometimes your game is a lot more fun. And so he put in a full shot, and it was a big mug, so it was probably a double coffee, but it was a full shot of white chocolate liqueur and a full shot of caramel liqueur. That's just too much sugar. I mean, it sounds like it would taste good, but it's so sweet. Oh, it's like you're married. Yes, exactly. It's a girl's best friend. Gross. Moving on. So I, of course, will always, like I always do, I will be posting the recipe for this on our social media. I hope that you try it. If you do, please tell me what you think. It's near and dear to my heart. You're not going to break my heart if you don't love it, but I do love it, and it is sugary. It's like a dessert in a coffee mug. You know, sometimes you just disgust me with these sweet stories. I do. But add comments to do something dark and bitter for you, too. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I need something strong and dark and bitter. Like your men? Like, no, just no. No, I prefer my men just bitter and well-aged. Yeah, I do. So anyways. Anyways. Thank you, guys, for joining us this week. We're so grateful every week that we have you here. And, of course, like, follow, and subscribe so that you can check every episode out when it comes out on Wednesdays. Yes, thank you so much, guys. We both appreciate it immensely that you are all part of something that we are both passionate about, and this has really made our lives more enjoyable both as DMs and being able to bring these stories to you. Next week, stay tuned for singing and sweeteners.