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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9457947" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I take serious objection to framing my preferred style as focused on the quality of description. It is a framing frequently used to attack my style, and it is highly inaccurate. I'm happy to accept that you did not intend it this way, but to me and many folks with a similar style preference, it is a significant and meaningful distinction.No, not at all. Emergent story generation may be the goal of both techniques, which go about trying to achieve that goal in different ways. I mean, the fact that there can be infinitely many different approaches to the same goal is kind of a key factor in my preferred technique.I do agree with your proposal that players will often try to lean on the dice in lieu of coming up with a specific argument, but a specific argument is neither required or expected in my preferred technique. Simply telling me what they are trying to persuade the NPC to do (the goal), and how they are doing so (politely? via fast-talk? with threats? veiled or direct?) is sufficient. Once players understand this, this reason for trying to simply ask for a dice roll without an accompanying declaration of goal and approach goes away.Indeed, sometimes the DM will be imperfect in communicating the available information, and sometimes even when the available information is clearly communicated the players won't be able to think of anything to do with that information, and in these cases, it is absolutely acceptable to probe the DM for more information. Indeed, I encourage such probing. But doing so by asking to make an Arcana check (or whatever) is not helpful to me, because it doesn't tell me what the player wants to know. I would much prefer they simply ask for more information. "My character is trained in Arcana, would they know anything else about this?" is infinitely preferable to me over "can I make an Arcana check?" Even better would be to phrase the attempt to gain more information actively - e.g. "I try to recall anything I may have read about this when I was studying at Candlekeep" or whatever. Though I understand that kind of active phrasing of questions is often tricky for players who aren't used to the style, so I tend to give players a lot of leeway in these situations, especially if they're new to my table.I agree, and I'll reiterate that it's not the quality of description I care about but the specifics of the player's goal and the character's approach to achieving it. "Insighting someone" doesn't mean anything to me. What are you trying to learn? How?This is a classic case of confusing goal and approach, and it happens a lot with people who aren't used to the style. Picking a lock isn't a goal, it's an approach to achieving the goal of getting a locked door open. What I will tell players who make this mistake is to think about what they would want to happen if they succeeded on whatever check they're asking to make. That's their goal. What is their character doing in the fiction that they imagine needs a check to be made to do successfully? That's their approach. So, sleight of hand to pick a lock? The goal there is for the thing to be unlocked, and the approach is by picking it. Specific descriptions of how you put the probe in the keyhole and test the tension of the tumblers or whatever are irrelevant, "I try to open the lock by picking it" or "I use my thieves' tools to try to pick the lock" or suchlike is, itself, a complete action declaration including both goal and approach.Yes, I've noticed this pattern as well. It is, in my opinion, a bad habit, and one that my preferred approach can help break people out of. I prefer players stop thinking about the dice rolling as a necessary step to accomplishing their goals and instead get into the habit of simply telling me what their goals are and how they go about trying to achieve them. I'll worry about when and if dice rolls are necessary, and players are often pleasently surprised that they are necessary much less often than they would have assumed.Again, I fully expect such miscommunications, and fully encourage players to ask clarifying questions if they need to. Declarations of action with intent to learn whatever information they would be asking for are preferable over questions, but questions are prefereable to trying to invoke the dice without making clear what you want to know.I need to know the goal, and I also need to know how the character is going about trying to accomplish it, as both are relevant factors in determining the outcome (or in determining that a die roll will be needed to determine the outcome impartially). Detailed description is unnecessary, but a general idea of what the character is doing is important, for me. I know plenty of DMs are perfectly comfortable assuming one, the other, or both from the context in which the player asked to make a roll, and I'm happy that works for those DMs and their players. But it doesn't for me.</blockquote>

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