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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8151122" data-attributes="member: 82106">I would answer this by saying that a basic use of 5e, with skills, simply gives the player a couple of chances to roll dice, at most. That is, maybe a perception check, and then maybe an Investigate check to understand what he's looking at, and perhaps a Thieves Tools check to actually disarm. While the GM could certainly give more detail and accept 'ad hoc' solutions additionally, this is the most limited in the sense of the player having license (or at least need) to describe specific courses of action vs fairly generic "I use my skill." If the whole process is ENTIRELY gated by fiction and description, at least up to the point where the PC's deftness or highly detailed experience with specific things (small clockwork devices for example) then the player has more freedom to describe what he's doing in detail, react to descriptions of what happens/is found, etc. HOWEVER, this again does bear back on the 'level of detail' discussion from earlier. The 'density of agenda' deployed in respect to the trap is obviously greater. This is good in terms of a narrative where we desire 'cool traps' and thus want to focus on that. Should the desire be to go focus on something else, then we would expect equal amounts of agency to accrue to that end instead. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I see your point. Agency has to do with the type of process, not the specific content of a given fiction. Still, it isn't wrong to say that a detailed narrative trap sequence is more empowering to the player WRT that sequence.</blockquote>

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