You are not wrong that you character is your character sheet. You are wrong that we can treat mental and social skills exactly the same as physical skills. That's impossible. Whether we think that's unfortunate or fortunate is a different matter.
no ... just no
trying to say you have some handed down on high truth that proves a diffrent way of playing wrong is not helping at all
That is exactly the same as my process of play. You are describing exactly what happens at my table as well. So we can't be in as much disagreement as you think.
the funny part is that if we really did sit down at gencon and play at the same table I doubt we would notice...
So let's get back to what you left out of your process of play.
and here we go
Suppose the players come to a walled garden which you describe. One wall is smooth stone. Another wall has carved decorations on it. Another wall has ivy growing up it. A third wall has a tree that is growing near it which has a branch that overhangs the top of the wall.
Four players enter the garden. You ask them what they want to do? And it turns out that they all want to climb over the wall to see what is on the other side.
great. I don't care what amount of detail the player gives I care how well they can climb (and if it matters)
Does it matter which side they use?
yes but if someone asked to climb the sheer blank surface it would trigger (what I say all the time) "wait what, why?"
That is to say in your game are all four of those walls equally easy to climb?
no but I would only set the DC for the easiest unless a player gave me a good reason to try a harder one.
Or to put it another way, do some choices that the players make earn them advantage and disadvantage?
yes... some choices cann grant advantage. off the top of my head 'aid another' and in some games I play in (but not ever ones I run) flanking.
Because if choices the player can make, whether climbing the ivy or using a grappling hook can change the difficulty of a task, they you haven't taken the player from the equation.
again... in the situation were there is an easy way and a hard way and someone says they want to take the hard way I will ask out of game why and if they are sure, then let them take the harder route... I will defualt to the easy route if not.
Because of choices a player can make do give advantage and disadvantage, sooner or later you are going to get into a situation where the character with weak climbing ability is succeeding more often than the character with good climbing ability.
yes but the less it happens the better I find games...
I am not looking for prefect 100% character... I just want to maximize the amount of character and minimize the amount of player.
there are plenty of examples I myself will give if you like where I fell short... times that player skill DID even in the last year (2 decades into do this) i can name at least once.
How far do you really take this fortune at the beginning concept? You hinted that you railroad players in your prior posts using the "your character would know better" method. Do you make the player roll the climb check and then decide based on how well they did which wall and method they climbed up? Or is every wall the same difficulty and only the character skill matters such that the character skill describes the world?
no nothing like that...
and it isn't railroading (but it is sometimes helping players remember lore or facts or mechanics)
lets take both MY and my friend Matts games (we alternate 2 weeks my game 2 weeks his)
Matt has a house rule about lava... it is death no matter what. no "but I am immune to fire" no "but I hold my breath" touching lava even just your finger tip is a save or die effect that you get no save for.
I don't use that rule. Lava deals MASSIVE fire damage and you will sink slowly in it and be 'grabbed' if you fall into it in my game.
so if next week a player in Matts game says "I jump down onto the lava and hope for the best" matt would remind him he knows better that will be death... just or die no save.
if 2 weeks later the party was standing near lava and a player says "Hey if he throw the red dragon in the lava that auto kills him" I will remind them that yes we are very different games... the dragon can bathe in lava for all i care... it's like a hot bath.
neither of us will stop the player from trying if they want... but we will warn "this is what you would know"
now that is a crazy example (how often do you run into lava) but earlier someone (I don't think it was you) had an example of a player slapping a queen like she was a hysterical woman in an old movie. I would tell them "Before you do that, you do have a good persuasion, and you know that is most likely not going to work"
in fact I would rather they 'diplomancy' the queen then fall into a trap trying to pull off an old movie cliche and fail...
So, you are really upset by the idea that players might metagame the GM, but you are actually bragging about how you the GM might megagame against potential players?
how am I metagaming?
You are more and more convincing me that your obsession with making sure player skill doesn't matter is actively adversarial GMing. Is that why players throw things at you? I hope that hasn't happened in the last 20 years or so.
not once.... wait no the tarasque planet... okay 1 time I was accused of adversarial DMing... in general I hear the oppisit complaint I am too lenient