Hussar said:
I'm not sure what the right solution to the problem is, but, I think it needs to be recognized that many players want to narrate non-combat stuff first and then roll the dice to determine degree of success, rather than roll the dice first and then narrate it after.
Usually when I see something like this, I wonder, "Why is Combat any different?"
I mean, there's a lot of RPG players out there who know the finer points of medieval combat and fencing and kendo and historically accurate armor and how armies swayed wars...
...but we don't usually care too much about that when we're making combat rules. We don't let their knowledgeable narrative trump the dice. We usually say something along the lines of "D&D is a fantasy game! Real world combat restrictions don't apply! I don't care if you said you aimed for his femoral artery, you did 4 damage and he has 600 hp."
The reason we let the dice dictate this is because of all those advantages using the rules gives us (fairness, variety, constrained choice, etc.). Sometimes we add +2 for a good description, but we don't often want to hear purple prose all night, and anyway we don't let someone chop off an orc's head just because they said they were going to try to chop off an orc's head.
So why do we let someone act out a dramatic speech, or describe in detail their method of stealth, and expect them to just be able to do it just like they did there at the table? They're
playing Kyle the SwordGuy, they're
aren't him, so why do we let them dictate what Kyle does or says with that much leeway, when we wouldn't let them dictate how Kyle kills goblins like that? They aren't standing in front of King Whatzhisname, they aren't cold and hungry and tired and tromping through the Black Swamp, why do we assume that it's OK for Kyle's player to explicitly dictate what he does outside of combat, but not in combat?
I'm guessing it has something to do with why those rules are historically more key in combat (ie: fairness because of TPKs) than they are elsewhere.
If you're looking to apply rules to areas outside of combat (and, it needs to be repeated, not everyone is -- and that's perfectly understandable), it's useful to think about the dice as direction, not as reaction. You (or the DM) narrate Kyle's attack after you roll the dice, you (or the DM) can narrate Kyle's speech after you roll the dice, too.
One way to think about it is this: in order to change the world, you need to interact with the rules somehow. If you want to try and convince the king of something, or if you want to try and cross through the swamp, or if you want to kill a goblin, you're going to have to roll some dice to see if you can do that.
I imagine that a lot of those people who have trouble swapping that order might just not be that interested in the rules, and that's valid and awesome and should even probably be the default. It's not the only way to play, though.
