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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9457339" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Then you choice of wording, “if the player had just described their action well enough, that the DM would have just given them the success” was maybe not the best way to express your point, as it implies the quality of the description, rather than the specifics of the action described, are the relevant factor in determining success.I mean, I am one of the people who often espouse the idea that asking for a roll is detrimental to your character’s success, which it absolutely is in the play style under discussion. The reason we talk about it in terms of being detrimental to success rather than being detrimental to the ability to tell a good story is that the former is true and the latter is not, at least not directly. However, the play style we are espousing is designed to enable the emergent generation of story, via the players striving to achieve their characters goals, and the DM presenting obstacles to those goals.I frequently reference a clip where Brendan Lee Mulligan talks about how Frodo wants the journey to Mordor to be as fast, efficient, and conflict free as possible, but in a D&D game, Frodo’s player would want that journey to be full of twists and conflicts and setbacks, and that he thinks about “railroading” in terms of the DM shaping the path as the players go in order to allow the player to align their goals with the character’s goals from moment to moment, despite having opposite desires for the overarching story. In the play style I advocate for, this same goal of Brendan’s is achieved through gameplay processes rather than through the DM’s hand guiding the narrative.I think there must be a disconnect here, because in the play style I’m advocating for here, players are not required to refer to everything in character. If a declaration of action includes what the player wants to accomplish, what the character does to try to accomplish it, it doesn’t matter if it’s stated in-character or not. In fact, I would argue that it’s actually much easier to phrase such an action declaration in what the 2024 PHB calls “descriptive roleplaying” as opposed to what it calls “active roleplaying”.Anyway, the matter of allowing out-of-character action declarations aside, I can not speak as eloquently on the benefits of allowing players to simply declare ability checks rather than describing an action in terms of goal and approach and the DM calling for ability checks as necessary. It is not my preferred way of playing, so I don’t have as much experience speaking positively of it. The best I could probably say for it is the inverse of what I described as a drawback of requiring declarations of goal and approach: it doesn’t require the DM to be as thorough in their description of the environment and telegraphing of important information. Although, for me personally that’s a double-edged sword at best. One of the many reasons I prefer goal and approach is that the level of specificity it requires helps me clearly visualize the fiction, which I often struggle to do in games where the DM does allow players to simply ask for checks.</blockquote>

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