D&D General "I make a perception check."

[Reynard]

since all I know about her is that she is actually not egyptian and she may or may not have killed her self with poison and/or a snake I have no clue... but this is a GREAT example...cause I have two friends I can ask...

Joe was a theology major (duel major but still) and Matt was a History major with a specialty in Egypt and Africa (I don't know why those get listed separate). Odds of Joe knowing is VERY low even though I would say he would have prof in Religion. Odds of Matt knowing are pretty high even though he almost assuredly would be prof in history not religion.

Multiple people and multiple skills involved.

 

[tetrasodium]

I had the same opinion as the OP for a LONG time. But at some point I got tired of swimming against the tide. When my players say "Insight check" or ""I make a perception check", they are just using a short hand for "I want to look for X" and stuff like that. I decided that us enjoing the game and playing together was more important than a minutia of the game or avoiding breaking immersion...

I agree & largely do the same but it quickly breaks down to the gm roleplaying five characters plus the world with a good number of players expecting an almost quantum interpretation where problem solving of even blatant things like "gm:so you want to look around? Player:Yes... Gm:In the dense fog?.player'yes.... Gm:How? Remember the fog is really dense and that makes it hard to see like I said just a minute ago? Plsyer:I dunno what can I do?'" the gm pretty much nuuds to problem solve for certain players who only exist to roll skill checks from hammer space on occasion.
Sure the gm could just describe the player touching the bad thing they might need to touch but they you get into questions of if the gm is being fair by declaring Bob does the stupid and Bob suffers from doing the stupid.
Since the gm is effectively playing the pc for that player, the player can" well I wouldn't have done *that"*or force "so you touch stuff?..." type question la they can use to metaphorically test for thin ice without going on or near the frozen pond. That's a pretty serious benefit for performing quantum actions left for the gm to interpret and there isn't much room to reward doing otherwise.

 

[Reynard]

You didn't answer the question - Do you make it obvious that it matters? Do you give advantage or disadvantage on the roll, or the like?

At the moment it sounds like the description is a simple gate - "You must give a description to get a response". But if the description does not clearly influence the response in a way the players can perceive, they have no reason to be interested in the description. Putting thought or effort into it does not seem to have a payoff. And that the players perceive the difference is terribly important. If it is secret or opaque, again, there's not a lot of point, to them.

The games, as the kids like to say, is a conversation, so it isn't as acrimonious as your description suggests. There's lots of back and forth, with my aim always to find out what the character is doing in the world to determine how best to adjudicate it.

You mention upthread about traps and such - fine, let us discuss that. How often do those things happen?

It varies. In general, unless a trap is specifically built to be imperceptible, I have moved to the view that you just tell them they see the trap -- or at least the trigger. Otherwise, one benefit of requesting some degree of specificity all the time is to not unintentionally signpost the trap by suddenly asking for excessive detail. Not only is that sort of immersion breaking (not that immersion is necessarily my top goal) it leads to player behaviors I don't like, specifically pixel seeking.

 

[aco175]

This seems to tie in with some threads from a couple years ago when we were talking about time and how long things take based on a roll. Some was picking a lock and some was on searching. There was some on walking into a room and saying that you search it. I generally let the players just search the whole room and not break it down to a dozen rolls and hope the one they succeed on is the one where something is. Maybe some falls into the fail forward threads.

I generally let the PCs make a Perception or an Investigation check when they say "I search the room." Maybe there is a loose flagstone hiding a pouch of gold. Giving enough time, a few PCs searching should find it. I have a low limit of 5 saying you still do not find it and 6-10 takes longer than 10 minutes and you have a choice to search and get a random monster check. Rolls 10-14 finds it within 10 minutes and 15+ finds it normally. Sometimes if there is different DC depending on what skill the PCs are using.

Was it a comic strip or another poster cutting down tediousness with the saying, "Standard door procedure 2." when the DM said they come to a door in a dungeon. The party had developed methods to combat the DM's gotcha moments.

 

[Reynard]

I generally let the PCs make a Perception or an Investigation check when they say "I search the room."

To be clear, I am okay with this. I might ask for more detail, but "I search" is an action in the world the PCs are taking.

Was it a comic strip or another poster cutting down tediousness with the saying, "Standard door procedure 2." when the DM said they come to a door in a dungeon. The party had developed methods to combat the DM's gotcha moments.

I am also totally okay with "door procedures" for the same exact reason.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Anyway - that's an individual player problem - who knows what goes on in the mind of individual players sometimes.

maybe a fork maybe not even relevant to this thread but over the years more then once... my bet would be more then 5 times I have found myself (out loud or to myself) asking "I don't just want to know why you think this is a good idea right now... but what on gods green earth would make any sane person ever in any situation think that was a even passable idea..."

 

[Umbran]

2) But players generally do think they're being helpful in shortcutting to the mechanics

I mean, if you ask them, that's probably what they say, but at the time, I don't expect the explicit thought process is, "Hey, I'll be helpful and shortcut this..." It is more automatic than that. The extra step is not valuable to them, in and of itself, so they skip it.

Have any of you ever grumbled at what appears to you to be busywork? Been annoyed when Page 2 of a form asks you to repeat information you already gave on Page 1? Couldn't understand why a customer service person asks for your phone number a second time? That's the moral equivalent.

It likely won't be enough to just patiently and repeatedly explain to them that you want it - patient explanation is not an impactful training technique. If you want them to jump through a hoop, there needs to be a treat on the other side of that hoop - the value to the player ought to be clear.

 

[Reynard]

maybe a fork maybe not even relevant to this thread but over the years more then once... my bet would be more then 5 times I have found myself (out loud or to myself) asking "I don't just want to know why you think this is a good idea right now... but what on gods green earth would make any sane person ever in any situation think that was a even passable idea..."

Those moments always almost presage something hilariously catastrophic, though!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I guess this is just a difference in play style. All the tables I play/GM at consider investigating, learning lore and gathering information to be a core part of gameplay, rather than something that might take 'too much time'. We also like that the scholarly Bard will gain different information with History than the esoteric Warlock will with Arcana, or the pious Cleric will with Religion.

I think there is a time and place for such. I think during what we use our down time for and researching in a library that multi checks like that (kinda like a skill challenge) is great... sometimes we have whole 'research' sessions. in my last campaign when they found the 'great library' it went 3 sessions of reserch like that... but most times mid town or mid dungeon I don't want that to bog down the play

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There are valuable things going on with both of these rants, as it were.
1) Having your players say what their PCs are doing is a bit more immersive and gives the DM a chance to determine what stuff is freely observable, not observable, and uncertain - which is when the perception check is of use. I think these are worthy goals.
2) But players generally do think they're being helpful in shortcutting to the mechanics rather than drawing things out and that's not just a 3e-ism, or even a 4e-ism. That's been around as long as RPGs have been around and had checks for things that players knew about.

If you want things to be more immersive and players describing what their PCs do without the shortcuts, keep emphasizing it patiently because you all know damn well that players are as stubborn in their ways as DMs are in complaining about them.

yeah your point 2 may just be more in my experence becuse 99% of my gaming in the last few years has been with a group of people that all DM on there own... we all know the rules. We all know each other... we can short hand super easy.

your point 1 is something that I may get back to now that I am going to Cons again... but my FLGS shut down so I wont be store gaming as much since I have to drive 25+ mins to get to the closest place I could