Read the article that I've linked to in the OP (am I using the OP term right? kinda new... sorry). The author outlines several reasons why self-assigned skill rolls are not good for the experience of everyone at the table. If you disagree with some of the points he makes, I'd be interested in hearing why.
Meanwhile, combat is pretty straight forward in comparison to skill checks. "I try to hit this orc with my axe/spear/fist/shocking grasp". Player rolls to hit (and ideally damage at the same time) and I let them know if it succeeded. Done. I don't need to tell them to roll. It is obvious.
Yes, combat can be more complex, too, if the player wants it to be. They can be colorful with how they describe the attack. If they want to try some crazy back-flip before hitting something, then the skills come into play and I can let it happen or if I see some potential consequences to failing, I'll tell them to roll.
Really you want me to review blog blah blah??
Ok sure...
Starts with three examples chosen to illuminate the case, great cuz they are slam dunks.
Arcana vs knowledge of named group shown in a painting: If in his campaign he has allowed arcana rolls for "knowledge about groups who do magic" then there is nothing wrong with this depiction of a player using a skill in a way it has been used before. The answer may be nothing or something or a lot... depending on the related difficulty. if however, in his campaign he has established "history" as the sole means of checks for knowledge about groups, then the answer would be whatever kind of info arcana skill can provide like maybe... " the ones shown have dramatic sigils on their robes and visible auras shown which match up mostly with evocation effects, so from the images your knowledge of the arcane runes and spell effects seems to tell you the ones shown focus a lot on those kinds of talents, or did here in this picture." this assumes in that campaign arcana would be the skill used to identify runes and signs of types of magic, of course. history results give you ABC. Perception results show you DEF. investigate shows you GHJ. To me the point about investigate is iffy at best - you could say hey maybe investigate is used to find small patterns of other things worked into the painting but perception is for just seeing whats there. (KEY POINT SKILL DETERMINES RESULT - ROLL DETERMINES SUCCESS FAILURE - SUCCESS MAY BE 1-20 and FAILURE MAY BE 1-20.)
perception vs traps/secret doors in a room just described - again, depends on past play... most likely the answer from me would be "none you see from the doorway" and move on. That took no more time than answering "do i see any traps" Alternatively, i might well say "you do see smoke from your torches moving blah blah" which might give a clue to an unusual airflow, if it was intended to be an easy passageway behind a tapestry thing. (IF THE RESULT IS FOREDAINED, LET A SKILL OR SUCCESS DETERMINE IT EVEN IF NOT THE PRECISE WAY YOU HAD IN MIND. REWARD ACTION AND INITIATIVE OVER "THE WAY I IMAGINED IT UNFOLDING. THE PLAYERS AT YOUR TABLE AND THEIR CHARACTERS ARE THE STARS, NOT YOUR SCRIPT.")
insight vs "is he intending to betray us" - actually close to the right skill etc and my response would likely be "Not that you can tell so far..." because there is no where near enough interaction for that specific a question to be determined (for my games.) At that point, i might well say "But, he does seem nervous and a little worried and you see him eyeing a big heavy set fellow down at the end of the bar. keeps looking and quickly looking away." Now, is this because that guy at the bar was asking about underhill? No idea? or is it because that guy has told the bartender "pay me by closing or i break your legs?" In my games, insight is not mind reading but social search. (SKILL USED DETERMINES RESULT - NOT THE QUESTION - SKILL MAY REQUIRE MORE THAN JUST ONE ROLL OR MORE THAN A BRIEF EXPOSURE.)
those scanes are not problems to me unless the GM decides he wants them to be.
Now lets look at his number by number -
1 BIAS there is zero problem in my book or my games with characters focusing on "what i am good at" when trying to solve problems. not one thing. its expected. the barbarian brute does not look at a locked dor and thing "pick the lock", right? he thinks "bust the door". So, i expect players as their characters to approach problems as nails and focus on their own hammer. That again does not mean that hammer works. the SKILL DETERMINES RESULT BUT NOT WHETHER THAT RESULT MATTERS.
The emphasis on GM CALLS FOR THE ROLL as if that alone is a good thing is a bit tired in my mind and seems like more fear and lack of trust.
2 FRAMING: Ok just a point of order GM101 is not Every role must have failure stakes...that is just a preference. a GM is no derelict in his duty if a PC tries something, gets nowhere and does not suffer some penalty for it. besides, at the most basic level, the failure stake for an act that gets "nothing" is time. i frequently use PER rolls or passive per checks to determine how much info the descriptive includes. I dont have a pre-written narrative blog about whats in a room, i use notes, not reading the type.
3 INEVITABLE SHUFFLE this one makes me laugh. first, it is not by any means inevitable that the players gang roll (joint rolling) every time. In many cases, each is doing something and... hey look back at his first point... there he talks about how they always try and roll their good stats but now its everybody rolling whatever they can? Which is it? But moving on. Every rules system worth its salt has guidelines for what to do with multiple people trying to accomplish the same task. The GM is usually left some leeway even in RAW on this subject. there is to my knowledge no RAW in the book which says "four people trying to see if a bartender is lying get to make four separate insight rolls" but there are rules which say when multiple people try a thing its handled by "advantage". I made it clear to my players that the working together advantage would be the most common result of "we all try to" early on. So his whole dice math silly stuff is just an example of what would happen if a GM **chooseS* to use "all four roll" as his answer to "everybody tries".
TOO MANY ROLLS: This is fairly non-sequitur in my book. What he is describing here are passive checks, for the most part. his description really makes me recall the days of "you didn't say you look up" Gm styles back in like the 70s. players will get into this kind of mode when their Gm *shows* them in practice they need to be this pro-active with the way the use language and such. i start my campaigns with a default "statement of competence" which basically says "i dont think your character are wlking blindly around stupidly - i imagine you are competent until you tell me otherwise." Also, about the stealth thing, wtf. i the Gm do not get to tell my players when they choose to move stealthy, using their hide action in DND5e terms. they wont need a roll until a possibility exists but rolls otherwise - no biggie. there is not any sort of " i made a stealth check and hour ago and it still applies" default right?
5 PERVERSE INCENTIVE: Huh? That just seems like describing what may well be bad GMing. If PER 24 was sufficient to spot the trap and the right skill, what was wrong with the first part at all? For the second part, if the assumption in the campaign is passive checks to spot stuff... and the results were "not spotted" then again, no problem. But if the passive spot would have been enough but the Gm runs it with a "you didn't ask" attitude, thats a breach of trust. and... that has not one thing to do with "player rolling too quickly."
FIX 1 TRAP TIRADE Mostly just preference disguised as axiom and then inconsistently. It has nothing to do with players calling for rolls, just how he recommends presenting traps. thats great!!! But nothing to do with who calls for a check.
FIX 2: TRUST and then its betrayal. Good point about assuming competence and building trust then kicked in the nuts with "but if you call for a skill and roll bad i slam you." Every active attempt to do things by PCs should not have a negative result if they roll bad. Checking for a trap and failing does not have to mean "bad stuff happens." it can just mean "you dont know." If you simply tell the player, you don't know, nothing you can identify but you are not sure its safe... THAT IS detriment enough. First, they wasted time. Second, its entirely likely they may choose another path or choose to do even more time wasting stuff (in game). Which means more time for other stuff to happen. typically in the kind of cases described, the threats behind the scenes is wandering encounter.
Fix 3 insight. First example could just as easily been given with the player providing a die roll that he rolled when describing his intent. Or it could have been done with passive checks. Again, roll being made does not mean the situation needs to change. Second part is utter BS and wrong.GM just chose to screw a PC cuz you know GM wanted to... why?
POP QUIZ: What skill check would you normally assign for "i try and hide my intent"? Would it be "insight"? No? but its not like their is a social skill that is specifically focused on deception that a character might have... ohhh wait... there is. Wow what was this mystery skills called? Deception? Well that seems pretty clear. it even references "dulling someone's suspicions." Does insight have one word about using it to hide your intent or be subtle, one word? Hmm... but of course, seems like they are likely used to skills meaning whatever that Gm wants on the fly...after all failing looking for traps created a lot of noise... which usually not making noise would a something that includes some part of stealth. The whole riff on being suspicious vs knowing whats up difference is good but again - not a thing to do with players calling for checks.
The rest goes on and on with preferences and expectations - again with the "inevitable minesweeper" example and assumptions. maybe the description si right for some, that allowing player calls for checks leads inevitably to players rolling every 5' they move and rolling to unlock every door... but its not anything like any game i have seen played or played in or seen described - except it does bear some semblance to the old "tap the floor with 10' pole" back in the days when that was a common sort of trap thing for bad Gms and no-trust campaigns. ye olde "you didn't say you looked up".
But really, in my experience, he is kinda blaming the symptom not the disease. player who migrate to "inevitable minesweeping constant" learned that behavior from games where it was needed. i have never seen a new-to-rpg player describe such behavior. it makes no sense, it fits no story, it emulates no character... it is a GAMER learned behavior caused by IMo bad Gm practicies and not a consequence of a Gm allowing player called rolls.
As for the defense to player agency, again i see BS.
A player gets suspicious and calls for a per check *is* player agency. A GM who decides every roll made by a player has to have negative consequences, even if it is outside the scope of the skill being tested against and ignores skills related to that penalty is anti player agency.
Giving hints is great and, guess what, totally different subject from "do players get to make rolls without my blessing".
Allowing players to "i walk up to the door and try to pick the lock - 24" has nothing to do with whether or not you give hints to things.
Door lock... "dont you want to know stakes"... unless this is the first time or two i have picked locks in your game, dont i know the stakes?
The key thing i take from that whole blog, other than quite a bit of flat out disagreement is *if* you choose to run a game where "rolls" and "skills" are some amporhic shifting set of "something happens" where "insight" can be used instead of your deception for "how subtle you are during a conversation about your intent" and where failure at trying to pick a lock is some mysterious new thing every time its tried - then yeah, players declaring skill checks is a really not well fitted play-style to that.
However, i would also argue that that kind of amorphic game should be using the rules for getting rid of skills in... the DMG i think - where you just use broadly defined ability checks and you get proficiency in attributes - i believe its called "Ability Check proficiency and its in the GM tool box section. that cuts it all back to very broadly flexible checks... though again, not too happy with insight/wis to conceal my intentions.
Also, i think that at some level, the idea of "every roll failure stakes" is not at all a core part of the DND rulesset. it can certainly be a Gms preference or a player preference but its certainly not an axiomatic thing, as a quick look in the DMG "role of dice" would show you. There, they focus for DND on basically how much you use dice and how much you use narration as important parts of the puzzle. The mandatory failure check also ignores the default "failure results" of loss of time and uncertainty. i can guarantee you, nobody ever failed an insight check or a trap find roll in my game and thought "well status quo" because they came away more worried than before - one way to do that is - tell them the truth. "nah, does not seem like he is going to betray you but not totally sure" or "no trap you can find but, still looks hinky" or even "yes, one of those floor plates looks more worn than the other."
Wow, longer than i thought.
definitely describing a conflict between "if you play this way like i do" and "players calling checks" and a lot of over-estimation and symptom vs disease conflation.
TLDR - Dont let every blogger pet peeves get you worried. Even if they have identified a symptom, they may not know what the cause is.
if a Gm and player group are all on the same boat as to what a given skill is about, players calling for rolls is not some breakdown boogeyman. if you want evidence to that, look in this very thread at folks who differentiate it from combat rolls because "the combat rolls are Ok cuz they are obvious and we know what they mean" (paraphrasing)
And all of this is... just IMO... just from my ecxperience and experience of those i have known and talked to. So it may work for you or may not.
The best single thing a group of players (that includes GM BTW) can have and hone is trust and a sense of a shared play. I really think following that blogger advice will harm that - telling the players "you cant do mechanics until i say so" or "each roll is defined by me on the spot" and i guarantee you as soon as a Gm told me my bad insight roll meant i gave up the ghost even though i have deception out the whazzoo... trust would be seriously diminished.
BAd fit of style and system to have defined skills and flop them around like that on the fly... IMO.
