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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6202601" data-attributes="member: 17106">However, in D&D play, there is no mechanism that provides for this, and only general recommendations that it happen regularly but not always.Well, that's why I keep emphasizing the DM and am posting this in a thread tagged 3e/3.5 talking about 3e/3.5 play. In that context, my definition is straight out of the book, regardless of what motivations you attribute to the authors.Yes, which is why these games are built completely differently. Players have resources that they don't have in D&D. They also have considerations that they don't in D&D. Typically, there's some mechanism to encourage them to act in a non-psychopathic way that rewards them with metagame resources if the player does something that moves the game forward or acts in accordance with genre expectations. That's why there's a distinction between D&D and those games, and why D&D works poorly to that end unless you really change it a lot.True, which can be a good or bad thing.Which, in a D&D context, is basically what's happening all the time. The rules are a model of reality, and the DM does not sit down and play through every action that happens offscreen in the history of the world by rolling every conceivable check that could be justified. Nor does he generally use the rules for on screen action; it's de rigeur, for instance, to simply say that the players travel from one location to another one without rolling for anything along the way. In fact, it's normal to play out simple interactions without rolling Charisma checks, or for the DM to disseminate common or plot-advancing knowledge without Knowledge checks. It's not even uncommon for a DM to look at the final straggler in a battle and say "eh, you mop 'em up" and move on, without rolling the requisite attacks and damage.Almost all actions occur without engagement of the applicable action resolution rules. It's an exception when they are engaged. And it's something that is completely the DM's choice.As the DMG explains, the action resolution rules are there for the DM to engage when he chooses; he's advised to call for a roll only when the results are in doubt, the results are meaningful, and the situation is dramatically interesting. If the rules are the lens through which we see the game world, the DM is the cameraman. And that's largely what DMing is about: picking the interesting moments and using the rules to zoom in on them.</blockquote>

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