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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9542981" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is such a hugely complex topic and broadening it out into search check adjudication - how we handle abstract interaction with the game universe - may make the confusion less or worse.  I can, but that's not really the problem.  The problem is that unlike complex physical combat rules they don't leave a transcript of play.  We could resolve combat down to high attack meets a particular parry disengagement beat thrust sort of thing and produce a transcript of a fencing match.   We can't do that to produce a transcript of conversation without rules as complex as a large language model that would require centuries of hand calculation to produce the words. And unless we were equally careful in handling things, they wouldn't produce logical results congruent with expectations about how conversations resolve.Yes, exactly.  That's the real problem.  We can produce a transcript of conversation by having a conversation without relying on some massively complex set of rules that would bog down play.  That isn't to say that we necessarily resolve a social scene without recourse to some sort of fortune test, but we don't produce the social scene through a fortune test in the way that we produce a combat through combat rules.Searching is handled differently.  Searching is a clue or information finding mechanism, similar to a knowledge check.  But a character who knows something doesn't need to make a check to know it.  Once something is known from play, it's known.  You don't need to make a search check to look behind a painting.  You just have to interact with the painting.  A search check might imply looking behind the painting, depending on the parameters a searcher gives me.  For example, a player will often make a "visual search only" check.  That might learn that the painting has been moved, but wouldn't learn what is behind it.</blockquote>

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