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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9050414" data-attributes="member: 6779196">How am I to know if the difference is meaningful before the player has described what they’re trying to accomplish and how?“I walk across the room” is a complete action declaration, communicating both goal (get across the room) and approach (walk there).Yes, and this is where reasonable specificity comes into play. A DM could, theoretically, ask that the player be specific about how quickly they walk or how high they lift their feet, but that would not be a reasonable degree of specificity to expect. Asking the player to be specific about the route that they take when walking across the room is a bit more of a gray area - I wouldn’t ask for that level of specificity personally, but in a game like @Lanefan’s where stepping on a specific part of the floor might trigger a trap and stepping just to the left of that spot wouldn’t, I don’t think it would be an unreasonable degree of specificity to expect.I don’t think it’s as hard as you think it is for always to be literally true. I think a lot of people are just not used to thinking of things in terms of teasing apart goal and approach, and accordingly don’t realize that “walk across the room” does in fact convey both, or that “smash the vase” does not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 9050414, member: 6779196"] How am I to know if the difference is meaningful before the player has described what they’re trying to accomplish and how? “I walk across the room” is a complete action declaration, communicating both goal (get across the room) and approach (walk there). Yes, and this is where reasonable specificity comes into play. A DM could, theoretically, ask that the player be specific about how quickly they walk or how high they lift their feet, but that would not be a reasonable degree of specificity to expect. Asking the player to be specific about the route that they take when walking across the room is a bit more of a gray area - I wouldn’t ask for that level of specificity personally, but in a game like @Lanefan’s where stepping on a specific part of the floor might trigger a trap and stepping just to the left of that spot wouldn’t, I don’t think it would be an unreasonable degree of specificity to expect. I don’t think it’s as hard as you think it is for always to be literally true. I think a lot of people are just not used to thinking of things in terms of teasing apart goal and approach, and accordingly don’t realize that “walk across the room” does in fact convey both, or that “smash the vase” does not. [/QUOTE]

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