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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7743834">I agree with that.  It *is* more functional, but that doesn't mean it's a good solution.  I don't have a better solution to offer (not for lack of trying).  Detection is just a really hard problem in RPGs because it's hard to model false positives and false negatives on a useful probability spectrum.Let me give you an example of something I came up with for a different but related problem: underground exploration.  I wanted an abstract system that models navigating twists and turns and forks and such (this was for The One Ring) without having to draw maps ahead of time.  I wanted character skill to factor in, not blind luck.  So here's what I came up with:1. As a result of a random table of obstacles you come to an N-way intersection (typically 2, 3, or 4 choices).  Your odds of guessing correctly are 1/N.3. Players can use various skills to look for clues (Riddle, Survival, Search, Explore, etc.)4. For each success you get +1 on the final roll, but the odds never become 100%.  Optionally, the DM can also pick from a list of canned clues to add flavor: "You notice a foul odor wafting from the left path."  "It looks like there are recent tracks going right, etc."  But doing so doesn't change the mechanics.5. On (the equivalent of) a critical success, you conclusively eliminate a path, adjusting the odds appropriately.  (So the only time you know the right way with certainty is if you can eliminate all options but one.)6. After the players have used their skills, the players choose which path they think is best.  Then the DM secretly rolls, using the adjusted odds plus the bonus to see if they were right.  (Notice that he doesn't roll first and then say, "You think it's Option C.")  But he doesn't tell them the result.  However, based on their successes they will have a good chance of at least estimating how likely they are to be right.  7. As they continue exploring, if they chose the wrong path the table the DM rolls against to determine future obstacles becomes more challenging.  So a chain of difficult obstacles, or possibly an outright dead-end, might be a hint for the players that they are off-route and should backtrack.  But even this, as complicated as it is, doesn't fully succeed.  For example, there's no worsening of odds based on a critical failure.  It would only work if the players mistakenly thought they were getting successes, which means the DM would have to secretly roll for the players, and I've already got one too many secret rolls in this system.  (I really don't like secret rolls.)I also failed to design it in such a way that some characters would conclude one thing, and others would conclude something else.  I would have loved to have come up with a system that would lead to players bickering about who is right, because that's probably what their characters would be doing as their supply of torches dwindled.  Immersion!But what I do like about this system is that it doesn't require the DM telling the players what they think, or the players matching their own wits against the DM's ability to deceive them.  It's the characters against the dungeon, and the DM is just the neutral arbiter.  (As an aside, while I don't think you actually would be a proponent of this, your previous arguments taken to an extreme would suggest that if the players began to suspect that they had taken the wrong route they would have to make ability checks to determine if their characters also suspected the same thing.)Again, I'm not advocating actually flipping a coin and telling the player what he thinks.  I'm saying the approach of rolling dice to determine if a player can detect a lie is so terrible to start with that you may as well streamline it by making it straight 50/50.</blockquote>

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