Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I come at it from the other direction. What happens if you fail?The fourth doesn’t tell me what the character is actually doing. Picking a lock with thieves’ tools is a very specific action. I know exactly what that looks like. Attacking someone with a sword, again, pretty clear-cut. The fireball spell involves specific gestures and incantations. But “trying to read someone” is vague and unclear. I don’t know what’s being done by the character in the attempt to read the other person. Are they watching for micro-expressions? Are they listening for changes in speech pattern or cadence? Are they observing body language? There’s a lot of things “try to read” might mean. To me, it’s like saying “I try to unlock the door” instead of “I try to pick the lock with thieves tools,” or “I try to kill the orc” instead of “I Attack the orc with my longsword,” or “I use magic” instead of “I cast fireball.”
I understand what can happen if you fail to pick a lock with lockpicks.
I understand what can happen if you fail to hit the orc with your longsword.
I understand what can happen if you fail to cast fireball at that area.
I don't understand what can happen if you fail to read him to see if
Again, I don't see what you're positing. It makes no sense to me that a player can suddenly force a situation with an NPC where the DM is both determining that the NPC is lying/concealing knowledge AND can't do anything about it because it's a surprise. This makes me think you have a wrong conception of what my play looks like. If a player swings into a new line of interaction with an NPC, I will know if this NPC is lying, what their lying about, why their lying about it, and be able to react accordingly because I am the DM and already know all of these things. There's no surprise. I'm also struggling to imagine a situation where this NPC's lies are both important to the character interacting with them and where I've generated a scene where I've utterly failed to anticipate where said important lie couldn't come up and be left reaching for dice to figure out what to do.Thanks for letting me know I wasn't clear! I'll try to answer your question and explain my point differently.
In an open-ended game like D&D, I don't see how it would be possible for a DM to always be able to predict what the PCs will find important to be able to include it in an upfront scene description. Sometimes a PC will have an idea the DM didn't consider (and therefore didn't include all the relevant information for evaluating that plan), or it could be the PCs take the entire scene in a completely unexpected direction (rendering moot the DM's analysis of what information is important). I wouldn't classify either situation as a "failure to properly present the scene" on the part of the DM.
As a trivial example, a PC could deliberately change the topic of conversation in a non-confrontatinal social scene and watch for whether the new topic appears to make the NPC uncomfortable. Since the scene had been framed as non-confrontational, the DM hasn't yet had a reason (or opportunity) to telegraph that the NPC is/isn't concealing their emotional state, so the PC doesn't have anything to unique to this situation to structure their action declaration around. Accordingly, they'll probably go with something generic when describing their approach, like "... by watching their body language for signs of discomfort".
On the one hand, the PC declaring a goal (find out if NPC has knowledge of topic x) and an approach (by changing the topic of the conversation to x and watching their body language for signs of discomfort) seems to be exactly the sort of thing the PC should be able to do in Goal and Approach. On the other hand, the described approach isn't specific to some unique detail telegraphed by the DM (because the DM didn't know that such would be relevant or have an opportunity to include it before the player altered the scene) and would apply to just about any similar situation.
My question is, do you consider permitting an action declaration with a generic Approach to be in keeping with Goal and Approach as you see it? If yes, how is permitting a generic Approach functionally different than "pushing the Insight button"? If no, does that mean that under G&A certain types of actions (e.g. reading the emotional state of an NPC) are only available to the PCs when the DM accurately predicted that such actions would be important to them and included appropriate telegraphs permitting situation-specific Approach declarations?
So, No and No.