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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7596145" data-attributes="member: 6801228">You know, I'm not going to disagree with you but something jumped out at me. I bolded it... okay, I bolded a lot, but it was all to the same point. Why are checks bad? Not trying to get into the philosophy that asking for checks is asking for failure, or saying that you think checks are bad, but look at some of your word choice. Particularly, "don't get fair warning before [a] check" Why does a player need "fair warning" before a check? Maybe it is personal vernacular, but I tend to hear that phrase in contexts like "Fair warning, Josh has been eating beans all night". It is a warning about something potentially bad... and since when are checks bad? Bad enough we have to warn players "Hey, just so you know, that might require you to roll a check" I don't want this to come across as an accusation, but it is a strange concept to me and I felt it was worth pointing out.Both?I can tell you it isn't based on peer-reviewed research, but I'm not sure why this is the second time I've been asked about my direct experiences. Have all the times I've talked about my games at my tables and how things have gone for us not demonstrated that I have direct experience as a DM? I'd say you are missing the point with both of these, because neither one of your responses hits upon what I was trying to get at. I'm not taking about a flimsy chandelier, I'm talking about a sturdy one, but maybe the wood has loosened around the nails due to age. The reason why it is going to collapse isn't the point, the point was it wasn't obvious at a glance. If it was obvious, then of course it would be mentioned. I would also say that "dangerous magical disturbance" is parlance for "magic explosion", maybe even "wild magic going out of control" so you are telling them. And none of that addresses the point. Some times, it is more fun not to know. Just like you see the "are you sure you want to do the dumb thing" in the chandelier, that's what I'm seeing you say with the magic circle. They are messing with something of power and you raised a flag "warning, this might be dangerous" causing them to slow down and reevaluate. Which is fine, caution play is perfectly fine, but you've also taken the tension out of the moment. After that ten minutes of studying those runes they will know exactly what might happen, and for some players always knowing exactly what could happen would be boring. That is the point I was trying to make. Sometimes, people want to jump into the unknown and take a risk. Sometimes that is the excitement, and having the DM wave a flag that says "okay, just remember these are the consequences" takes away from that excitement. It is a different style. Okay, you just don't get what I was trying to say. That's fine. [MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION] had an objection to a style where there was a "correct" approach. The person they were objecting to responded with a preference for saying there were "good" and "bad" approaches. My point was that using that language is even worse. If you insist on telling me that you only call for checks when someone is using a "bad" approach, then I don't care if you are also saying you are "an impartial yet involved referee who acts a mediator between the rules and the players." Because one of those two statements has to be false due to your word choice. That is because only calling for checks when there is a "bad" approach would mean you are not impartial, there is a preference and you are acting upon it, which means that the language of "good" and "bad" approaches would lead to accusations of gaming the DM, because that is what labeling those approaches with that language would mean. In using "correct" like Mort did, in the context of their post, there was a clear sarcasm in the word choice, there is no "correct" approach, and even calling an approach "correct" makes little sense in the context of a game with free-form approaches. So it was less objectionable as it helped make the point Mort was attempting to make.</blockquote>

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