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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6398063" data-attributes="member: 2011">If there is a trap mechanism at the outside of the door, but the PCs are already in the room when they start searching for traps, do you have them all exit the room, search outside, and then go back inside? No. You have them start searching inside the room without knowing that the trap mechanism is outside the room.No difference here. They did not think to investigate before they got into the spaceship.Actually, I did not say no to an action declaration. I allowed him to search, but I told him that he did not find anything without having him roll. There's a difference. I might have said something like "You look around quickly, but you do not find anything unusual.". There was nothing to find.As for Moldvay's "there's always a chance", no, that's nonsense. If a PC falls into a pit trap and the player wants to "at the last second get a saving throw to grab the edge of the pit while going in", the DM might say yes, the DM might say no. Either decision is totally fine and I do not think that following one specific game designer should indicate that one way is right and the other is wrong. Both ways are right. The player might be annoyed if the DM says no, but that doesn't make it a bad DM decision. After all, DMs should not be expected to add in last second house rules due to player whim, nor should they have to save PCs or bow down to player pressure.I think that you are drilling down too much into this. The easy solution was to just give him a roll and regardless of roll, he found nothing. Even if he rolled a 3 or 4 on the dice, I would not tell him that there was a bomb. But I might instead (3 being the best roll) change the scenario a bit to say that a first aid kit or some other object was not in its proper place, or something to imply that someone had been on board. As a DM, I am not comfortable changing the scenario that way, but the odds of him rolling that well are small enough that I can make an exception when it does happen.Action declaration was fine, it's just that I did not give him a roll. And to tell the truth, I still do that to this day. If a player says to me "I want to roll Persuasion to get the merchant to lower his prices a bit" I'll reply with "Ok, roleplay it". I won't say roll the dice. I have a pet peeve about people reaching for their dice (with the exception of combat rounds) instead of roleplaying.If a player wants to follow tracks on a cobblestone road, I'll tell him right upfront that shy of something special (mud on the boots of the guy they are following, or the guy bleeding), there's no way to track on cobblestones. I get the whole "there's always a chance" idea, but I do not like the concept of creating fake changes to a scenario, just because of a dice roll. I get it that it's a game and super weird stuff can happen in a game, I just like the game to be plausible, not illogical.I think that the game does not even work without a secret backstory, at least for many groups. Who wants to play an FRPG where stuff does not happen in the background that the players do not know about, but might one day find out about? Whether the PCs find out about things in the backstory also determines how much they can control events.</blockquote>

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