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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6398045" data-attributes="member: 42582">Of course I can't comment on the maturity of your player - I've never met him and wasn't there.But I think we have to be careful about generalisation. I don't think it is necessarily a sign of immaturity to think that a certain approach is a poor one. I have GMed players who weren't immature, but wouldn't have liked your scenario. And I don't think I would, either.I think it both game expectations and rules. How action declaration should be handled is undoubtedly a rules issue, but it is not a rules issue very often discussed in D&D rulebooks, and expectations vary very widely across the player base.For instance, you can see KarinsDad here arguing that the GM has the authority to "say no" to an action declaration without explaining why (in terms of backstory) or even making it clear that the PC has failed (the player in this scenario certainly didn't know that there was a bomb his PC had failed to discover). My inclinations lean strongly towards [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] suggestion of say "yes" or roll the dice. I think this is consistent with Moldvay, who says "There is always a chance".But applying this maxim doesn't settle the issue. There's still the need for a setting of DCs (I favour 4e's methodology over Moldvay's, and obviously - given they're both D&D methods - D&D has room for either approach). And, even more importantly for KarinsDad's example, there's the methodology for framing action declarations.For instance, it seems that the player in question believed he was framing an action "I make sure the spaceship is safe", and KarinsDad believed that, relative to the threats facing the ship, the player didn't have adequate resources to frame such a declaration (eg no X-Ray vision), but instead of expressly making this metagame issue clear he finessed it via ingame fiction ("You look around and don't find anything dangerous") and then went on with his narration.I think a really good DMG would make clear all these different options and approaches, their pros and cons, what sort of dynamic they create for play (eg metagaming vs "immersion), etc.My preferred approach to the scenario you describe would be to use more aggressive framing: "As you take off in your spaceship, it explodes!" Make it clearer to the players where there is scope for action declaration and where there isn't.Another thing a really good DMG would talk about are the pros and cons of secret backstory, and what the range of options is (eg never use it; use it at will and run the sorts of risks that KarinsDad faced; use it, but always allow a chance that action declaration can reveal it, even if the players don't quite know to frame an action declaration around discovery of the secret backstory).I think this another issue where rules methodologies and table expectations interact. For instance, the GM's approach to narrating failure - which is a rules issue - can make a big difference to players' expectations here.</blockquote>

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