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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7591655" data-attributes="member: 16814">Exactly!  Your play is different.  You have a different set of assumptions as to what an action entails, and a different way of adjudicating them.  This is perfectly fine, but it's not the same way that a goal and approach method uses.  You really need to accept that this is so and stop trying to judge the method from how you play and instead try to understand how it's actually used.I promote a sense of paranoia, but I don't use the mechanics as the means to do so, I use the fiction in play.  I don't need to be vague about a success, with and answer of 'they seem to be telling the truth' because that's not needed -- I have plenty of other tools to inflict paranoia on my players.  This is my point, the difference in our play is that I do not see the mechanics, either in success of failure, as a place to make the player uncertain of outcomes.  Those are where outcomes become certain.  I get to play with the before and after.So, again, our play is different -- we're prioritizing different things, and this means that you cannot judge my play by situations that occur in your method because they're not the same situations as in my method. In my game, this player would be doing themselves a disservice because asking for a check is asking for a chance to fail, and failure has consequences that are not the status quo.  That's my point -- if you do not add consequence to every check, and, indeed, only ask for checks when there is a consequence (and a chance for success/failure), then asking for a check makes perfect sense -- it's the only way to get the GM to divulge their hidden story to you.  I do not play this way.  My method does not work in your method of play.  This should be obvious, but I keep having to say it.This is because your point of conflict is "is this NPC lying to me."  That's, frankly, utterly boring to me.  If I present a lying NPC, figuring out the NPC is lying will not resolve whatever the actual issue is.  It will just lead to a new point of contention.  Why did the NPC lie?  What do we do know that we know the NPC lied?To go back to the shopkeep example you proposed, determining that the shopkeep lied would never be a check in my game. I'd never need to prevaricate to preserve uncertainty so that my plot continues.  Instead, discovering the lie is just one more means to advance the plot and do something different.  You'd need evidence, and could then brace the shopkeep with it to expose the lie and get the truth (which leads to more adventure), or maybe you engage in discussion, discover something about the shopkeep, like that he loves his little girls, and use that to get him to confess to the lie.  Or, maybe, you do not, and have to come at the problem a completely different way.  To me, discovering a lie is just like opening a door -- something you have to do to move the game along.  As such, if it's uncertain, there will be a consequence to failure that will  change how the fiction sits -- the status quo will not hold.  On the other hand, a success is a success -- the character reaps the reward and I don't try to diminish the success.  Why would I?  The character just took a risk I'd hammer home on a failure, so a success deserves nothing less than actual success at the intended goal.  Or, for complex goals, a solid step forward.That's fine, but it's also why you need to have the "shortcut" of letting players ask for rolls and why you don't seek approaches -- there's no change if they fail and they can only benefit (maybe vaguely) on a success.  You've built your game around the idea that asking for checks is what's what, so that behavior is prioritized.  This is not a shortcut, or even a good idea in my game, because rolls will change the fiction -- for the better on a success and for the worse on a failure -- so it's better to seek to not to roll.  This is accomplished by providing an approach and goal so the GM has the best information possible to determine you might automatically succeed or, if it's going to be a roll, that you get the best possible chance by leveraging your character's abilities to the maximum extent possible.  And, a good approach might net you advantage!This difference -- rolls change fiction -- is absolutely a huge difference in our game.  If you ever say, "nope, you don't find any traps," and nothing else on a check looking for traps, then this is a huge difference in our games, and, indeed, why our methods differ.  This is not something that is ever said in my games.  Instead, it's, "<sharp intake of breath> ooh, that's not going to be good."</blockquote>

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