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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 9060634" data-attributes="member: 6801845">The thing that bugs me about this conversation is the repeated fallacious statements that "You can only interact meaningfully with the world if you do it this way."  It's BS. My players interact with the environment plenty, we have a ton of role play.  We are not sitting around grunting numbers at each other.  Because that seems to always be the fallback for the why.  The thing is you don't need that, you can just say "It's a preference thing".I don't need a formal speech structure in order to have people engage with the world around them.  I encourage people to be descriptive, I'm descriptive when I DM.  I don't require people to state action instead of asking a question or just declaring their action by giving me the game term and a number.  In cases where it matters, where the details are interesting, then we'll get into details.  It's about working with the player and letting them engage the way the works best for them.A good example of a descriptive DM is Matt from Critical Role.  Sometimes Matt can get a bit long winded in his descriptions for me even though he's obviously an amazing DM.  Yet I don't see any formal structure to how he asks his players to declare their actions, as long as it's clear.There's a whole spectrum of how descriptive DMs and players are in my experience.  For me, it just depends. I find personal interactions more interesting than interactions with the environment.  I'll spend a lot more time and effort on characterizations and voices of NPCs and monsters than on the actual environmental details outside of atmosphere.  Having to be detailed about exactly where I search I find tedious and not particularly fun.  All of this is preference and it doesn't matter how I ask people to declare their actions.  The hyperbole and extremist examples?  Doesn't help much on either side. No formalized style is going to fix all the issues people call out.  If someone is going to argue that declaring an "I pick the lock and get a 15" means they didn't actually use thieve's tools they're just going to find something else to argue about.</blockquote>

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