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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8729413" data-attributes="member: 7025508">I’ve finally read the entire thread. I’m kinda on the middle ground on this.  Sure I want the players to describe what their characters are doing but I certainly don’t need the sort of specificity some people here seem to be demanding. To me it seems such requirement would lead the players wasting time meticulously poking everything in various different methods. This doesn’t seem fun to me YMMV. I would generally have them roll if they poke roughly in the correct direction. For example in the earlier example where the character searched secret lever in the bookshelf but the actual significant thing was that the books were arranged so that their backs spell a message I would just have them roll investigation and on decent result let them notice the message. This makes sense to me. The character’s experience of their surroundings is far more complete than my words can convey in reasonable amount of time and this is the sort of thing a skilled investigator could certainly notice whilst pulling the books to see if they are secret lever. Similarly I let knowledge skills to trigger by merely observing the target. This is how memory works. If you know about the subject, merely observing a thing related to it will bring up the memories. You don’t need to play twenty questions with your brain and you most certainly don’t need to know where and when you learned the information! (Seriously that was silly. I have pretty good general knowledge but I most definitely couldn’t tell you how all this useless trivia ended up in my brain.)However I also don’t think we should try to eliminate player skill completely. It is always present and should be. Even in combat the tactics you choose matter a great deal. Similarly it is perfectly normal that out of combat different approaches might not be equally effective. I’m rather careful with auto success and auto fail though. They of course sometimes are needed but often I rather adjust the DC and have the player roll so that the character’s stats can still have an impact.</blockquote>

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