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Understanding 5e's Core Interaction

by Mike on 22 July 2024

The DM describes the environment.
The players describe what they want to do.
The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.

The above list is taken from page 6 of the 2014 D&D Player's Handbook. It's the core interaction of D&D 5e.

It seems simple – almost too simple to be worth paying attention to – but it's critical to the game and things can go sideways when we forget about it.

5e, and probably most RPGs, might be described as a large network of nodes, each node containing those three steps within them. An adventure or session is built from dozens of those three-step nodes. Each node leads to new nodes based on the results of the previous node.

And here's a key point to internalize:

*We don't know which path of nodes we'll follow until they happen.

It's folly for us to hang on to the idea that we know exactly what's coming — what the players are going to do and how the world reacts to their actions. We rarely do.

Adjudicating the Results of the Players' Actions

For GMs, the biggest step of the core mechanic is step three – narrating the results. We describe the situation, the character describes their intention, and we figure out whether they can do what they want, what other options we might present as alternatives, and what happens afterwards.

If their action is easy, they just do it. You don't need to roll to put your pants on. Not all GMs get this. A lot of player intentions and character actions fall into this category. The GM describes the situation, the player describes what they want to do, the GM determines if there's difficulty or risk, and the character does it if not. The situation resolves and we're on to a new node.

Sometimes players want their characters to do something risky or difficult. This situation is where ability checks come in. If something is risky or hard, the DM determines the difficulty and applicable ability or skill, and the player rolls a d20. Based on the roll, the GM adjudicates the result, leading to a new node.

Lots of other things can happen based on what the player wants to do. They could cast a spell or punch someone or do anything else. We adjudicate those actions too and the story moves on.

Studying the Basics

It's important to review the core mechanic from time to time. It's easy to get caught up in sub-systems or big world plots or detailed combat encounter building and forget what makes the game move forward. It also gives us a great reminder that the thing we should spend the most time doing is understanding what's going on in the world so we can describe it accurately to the players. When the game feels complicated, remember it's all about those three steps and the unforeseen network of actions and results that propels the story forward and makes our worlds unique.

Describe the situation.
Let the player describe what they want to do.
Adjudicate the results.

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Shake up adventure types across your campaign: dungeon crawls, infiltrations, investigations, intrigue, overland exploration, and so on.
Include upward beats in your dungeon crawls.
Plant future adventure seeds in your existing session. Outline three possible adventure options revealed and decided upon before the end of your next session.
Clarify where rests can take place and where they can’t.
Show pictures of NPCs.
Give characters a home base or common hangout. Don’t constantly threaten it.
Ask players how much leeway you have to integrate their backgrounds into the campaign. Don’t change a player’s character away from their intent.

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