I could write shorter examples, I guess, but my methods cannot be devorced from specific example cases because the specifics are part of the method I use. “The player checks for secret doors and fills in the narrative” is not enough information for me to make a call as to the results. That’s only a goal, I need both a goal and an approach. “The player checks for secret doors by feeling the walls” is sufficient. “The player checks for secret doors by looking for a seam” is sufficient. “The player looks for secret doors by feeling for a draft” is sufficient. “The player looks for secret doors, narrative, narrative” isn’t. A big part of the reason I prefer this way of doing this is specifically because I don’t like actions to be naked goals divorced of methods.
If your axe hit him, you know you scored damage. If the force of the impact was high, you know you rolled a lot of damage. If your knife sunk into a seam, you know you found a secret door. If your knife didn’t hit a seam you know you didn’t find a secret door. The reason the “narrative requirement” as you put it is higher is not the uncertainty of the outcome, it’s the nature of the method. The method of hitting an orc with an axe to try and kill it, by nature, gives very immediate and detailed feedback about how successful the method was. The method of feeling for seams with a knife, by its nature, gives only partial feedback about the existence of a secret door. This is all true whether or not dice are involved in either action. That’s exactly why a lot of DMs who allow contextless “search for secret doors” checks make the roll behind the DM screen - because not finding a secret door doesn’t necessarily mean you know there isn’t a secret door to be found, and you don’t always know how successful your unspecified methods were in achieving your goal.
You don’t need to be any of those things to pose an action in terms of your goal and your method. “I try to repair the cracked armor by working it at my forge.” “I try to slow the poison by applying an herbal poltice.” “I try to stem the bleeding by applying sutures and bandages.” Whatever. It doesn’t really matter if you know every little detail or not, just give your goal and method in broad strokes.
Good thing the spells are already written for you then?
The things you describe are those people’s jobs. The DM’s job is not to tell you if the fact that you didn’t find a secret door means there is no secret door to be found.
Good thing I don’t do that.
They’re not. I do need to know your specific approach in order to evaluate your chances to success. I am also invested in insuring that you have all the information you need to make meaningful decisions and have meaningful interactions with the world. I will take into account the fact that you’re not an expert in masonry and make sure my secret doors are detectable by common-sense methods. I will give you that Investigation check safety net in case what I think of as common sense doesn’t occur to you. I will look for opportunities to reward your attempts, whether or not they are perfectly accurate reflections of how such a thing would be done in reality (hell, I wouldn’t even know if it was). But if you don’t give me both a goal and a method of trying to achieve it, then I don’t have enough information to adjudicate how the world responds to your action. Just try something. I promise, my goal is not to thwart you, it’s to give your choices narrative impact.
