How Exacting do you want your players/DM to be?

[Celtavian]

re

I require a fair bit of detail. I like to know exactly what the characters are doing and what tactics or precautions they are using. I do work with them to give them an idea of what kind situation they are in as far as surroundings go. I also reward smart use of the surroundings to gain an advantage against the enemy. I like players who think on their feet and ask alot of questions so they get a good feel for what is going on around their character.

 

[EricNoah]

Just as the DM is the eyes and ears for the PCs, the same is true in reverse. DM needs some help visualizing what's going on from time to time. Detailed descriptions of PC actions help with that.

 

[Rystil Arden]

In FtF, this usually isn't a problem at all, as back-and-forth exchanges prevent a deadlock from taking more than a few seconds.

In PbP, we see this kind of thing come up a lot. As a PbP GM and Player, I feel that it is the player's job to provide information on their actions to keep the game moving. If I only have time to update for one game, I will update the game in which I am a player. This is because the GM is volunteering her time to run a game for everyone, and she can choose to move the game at her own pace and after getting the information she needs from the players. She makes the rules, and if she can't post some days, the players can't complain. On the other hand, when players stall the entire game by not providing combat round information or creating impetus to move forward, it can thwart the other players and the GM as well. Thus, the player needs to keep the ball rolling, and the GM will adjudicate results when the actions are clear. Anything else often leads to false starts, like a thread that appeared a few months back about the player who 'looked in the window' and had his head cut off by a trap on the window--never mind that he hadn't meant to stick his head in.

 

[Gremory]

I usually find myself asking for more specifics on their actions than my players initially give me. This only really comes into play when there's something bigger than just a locked door going on. By this I mean, if the lock has a poison needle inside of it, yeah, I want to know whether they look to see if there is a lock, whether they try the doorknob, or whether they fiddle with the lock. I try to be pretty accomodating without giving away potential consequences, and I'm never (well, rarely...) out to screw up my PCs for no reason.

I've never played ina PbP game, but I've been thinking of trying to run one. I guess I'd ask up front for specific and concise descriptions of player actions.

 

[der_kluge]

One of my players in my last campaign and I sort of got into a debate about a particular instance of a book being trapped.

He was searching for traps amongst the books, since the last set of books they found were fire trapped, and had explosive runes on them.

So, he was searching the books for the trap, and I read through the book descriptions from the module, and one of the books has an extremely nasty contact poison placed upon it. Anyone touching it, had to make fort saves or take Con damage. I made him roll the Fort Save.

He argued that searching for traps meant that he would have been looking for something like a contact poison, but I reasoned that searching for traps meant that he had probably picked up the book to examine it, and thus was subject to its effects.

Perhaps I was in the wrong, but I think having a good idea of exactly what a PC's intention is can't hurt.

The trouble is that when you try to get very explicit, player's meta-game alarms go off and they assume something is immediately wrong.

That's why I like to make the rogue player make random d20 checks just for the hell of it.