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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7591640" data-attributes="member: 42582">I personally think this issue of vagueness vs adequate precision is a matter of taste - not arbitrary taste, but still a wide range of table variation based on local expectations, context, experience with adventure design and adjudication, etc.Which to some extent relates to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s "pixel bitching" complaint: one table's sufficiently precise action declaration is another's overly detailed pedantry. This is also why some posters keep coming back to notions of "sufficiently detailed" decriptions, despite being told it's not about quantity of detail, nor its luridnesss, but about precision.Think about other contexts, too. Is "I attack the orc with my sword!" enough? That's about as vague as "I listen at the door." Or does the player have to declare a more detailed combat move? Does it make a difference if the player wants to feed in a Battlemaster manouevre - eg does the player have to describe how s/he is wrongfooting the orc, or whatever?Is it enough for the player of a bard to declare "I flirt with him to see what information he might drop"? Or does the player have to perform the actual words, mention the placing of the hand on the arm, etc?The last time this sort of thing - ie flirting with a NPC to learn information - came up in a game I was refereeing (<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?586642-Classic-Traveller-session-report-with-reflections-on-the-system-long" target="_blank">it was Classic Traveller</a>), the player of the diplomat/spy, in character as his PC, issued an invitation to come back to his room. We used the Reaction mechanics (which is the closest Classic Traveller has to a CHA (Persuade) check) to determine if the NPC accepted the invitation, and when she did I then called for an Interrogation check (the closes thing in Traveller to a WIS (Insight) check) to see what the PC (and player) learnrd. The result of that check was that he had to share some info in order to get some info - ie some back-and-forth of conversation - but we certainly didn't play out the detail of the events in the hotel room or the real time of the pillow talk.My own view, as referee, was that I had enough information - in the player's stated intent for his PC, in the issuing of the invitation, and in the (not only obvious but also expressly stated) invocation of James Bond tropes - to adjudicate the action and extrapolate the fiction in a way that generated fair consequences.In a system or fictional context laden with earseekers, trapped doors, issues of doffing and donning head armour, etc, then "I listen at the door" may not be precise enough. But in most games that I run it certainly would be.As far as this is concerned . . .In 35-odd years of GMing I don't recall ever having a Perception-type check declared in this degree of detail. (Maybe there's something I'm not remembering, but the fact that I can't remember it is enough to show that it's not common.) I would perhaps expect that sort of detail in a very Sherlock Holmes-y game, but I've never run such a thing.The most recent high-stakes Perception check I can recall was about two years ago now: a PC shaman was dominated by a dark naga, with instructions to bring the mage Joachim to the naga so that his blood could be spilled as a sacrifice to the spirits. Joachim had been badly hurt and was recuperating in a room in another mage's tower; the PC was rushing to that place to try and get there before an assassin who was determined to kill Joachim. The assassin got there first, and as the PC rushed in he saw Joachim being decapitated. At about this point in play, we switched adjudication from a somewhat abstracted time scale (which had finished with the PC failing the opposed Speed check to beat the assassin to Joachim's room) to the melee combat resolution framework. The player of the PC's first action declaration was "I look around the room for something to catch the blood in, lilke a chamber pot." The player spent the appropriate resources within the action economy, succeeded on the check (which was set at a fairly low difficulty given the likelihood of there being some sort of vessel in a bedroom in the tower of a well-to-do mage) and was able to grab the chamber pot and start catching blood.I look around the room for a vessel to catch the blood was enough to establish adjudicable fiction.For my approach to adjudication, much more important than the details of how the PC is trying to notice things, is a clear grasp of what the player is hoping that his/her PC will achieve. So the player having a goal, which normally needs to be stated (occasinally it's implicit but quite evident), is crucial.If the relevant fiction is not yet established then success on the check establishes the fiction in a way that conforms to the player's goal. The chamber pot example is one illustration. Here's another which, in the past, some posters on these boards have thought was unfair "gotcha" GMing, but which was fun at the time, and was done in a system (4e) which is very robust for acommodating this sort of thing:On the other hand, if relevant fiction is already established, then I will have it express or implicit in the framing, so that the players can incorporate it into their goals. So no completely acontextual ambushes. (I think this would be an instance of what [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] means by "telegraphing", although the mode of telegraphing may be different - see further below on this difference.)As far as noticing a party in lieu of an ambush, that would either be narration of a failure (because the player wanted to get the drop on the waiting assassins on the other side of the door, but instead there's a crowd of revellers who are now an obstacle to finding the assassins and getting the drop on them) or in some contexts just a bit of colour.The vibe I'm getting from the "goal and approach" posts is very much one of classic, Gygaxian "skilled play" - a high degree of engagement with the fiction, where the fiction is understood primarily in terms of "engineering" or "mechanical" details (mechanical in the physics sense) - to do with locations of things, placement of things, numbers of things, amount of sweat on a NPC relative to room temperature, etc.I would be surprised, though, if the 5e non-combat resolution system couldn't handle a game in which the engagement with the fiction is less about those sorts of details, and more about it's dramatic potential and significance. Which would mean running it more like Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, 4e, etc. In which case, to elaborate on what I said above, "telegraphing" takes the form not of "engineering"-type clues (like mismatched tiles to indicate a trap) but dramatic/thematic-type cues (like the PCs have defeated the sentries and broken into the enemy outpost, and are now moving through it, so one would expect an ambush around any corner!)I don't run 5e, and have no intention to do so. And I've already posted in this thread about how I would run it, which would be roughly the same as 4e, which is neither like you and iserith not like [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION], but rather is closer to Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, Dying Earth and other systems that use dice rolls to determine outcomes when the fiction arrives at a moment of decision.Nor have I run more than a handful of sessions of 3E which, at the time, I ran roughly in the same manner as Rolemaster.But the problem raised in this thread is equally one that could be asked about 3E (only it would be Sense Motive rather than Insight); and if your answer is a good answer for 5e, I don't see any fundamental difference between 3E and 5e in this particular respect that would make your answer not a good one for 3E. The structure of both games, in this respect, is largely the same: the GM has almost total authority over framing and adjudication; but the player has a high degree of authority over action declaration within the context of the GM's framing; and when dice rolls are involved, the method of resolution (single d20 roll modified by a bonus derived primarily from the PC sheet but also factoring in possible circimstantial modifiers) is the same.I think it's more useful to explain the merits of an approach within this context, rather than to point to rules. Others may have read the rules and believe themselves to be conforming to them; may treat them as broad advice rather than a strict statement of play procedure (there's certainly a long history of doing this in D&D, actively encouraged by canonical game texts); or may be RPG anarchists who don't care about rules but do care about play experience!</blockquote>

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