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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8275183" data-attributes="member: 53980">I enjoy skilled play, but I find it can easily become tiresome and tedious when taken too far.A good implemention of skilled play is forgoing skill checks if certainty is not in question, such as in the aforementioned example of the player who checks behind a drawer and automatically finds the key hidden there.A bad implemention, IMO, is withholding information from the players that would be readily obvious to the characters, such as the earlier example of the DM who neglected to mention that the hedge maze the PCs were in was only 3 feet high. I see that as equivalent to declaring that the PCs asphyxiate ~ 2 minutes after the game starts because the players never said they were breathing. Many such DMs, IME, think themselves quite clever, but I consider it to be simply pedantic.Personally, I prefer to assume some base competence on the part of the PCs. This also eliminates the need for many procedures since many common sense procedures can just be presumed.I think that if the DM is aware of something relevant, they should either volunteer that information, prompt the player with a question if their actions might impact their awareness, or simply ask for a check if there's uncertainty regarding whether they would notice it.I also think that if you expect skilled play, that the DM should give careful thought to their design. I recall one time when my character was walking down a hallway and fell into a pit trap. He climbed up the other side and promptly fell into another pit trap. He climbed up yet again and fell into - you guessed it - another pit trap. Three pit traps in a row in the main thoroughfare through the dungeon. There were indications it was regularly traveled. There was no mechanism to disable them, or hidden routes around them. The dungeon was inhabited with living creatures. When I asked the DM how the heck these creatures went in and out of the dungeon he got annoyed at me for poking a hole in the logic of his "clever" trap. I thought it was certainly annoying, but a far cry from clever.My point being that traps should have a logical placement that can be reasoned out. This largely negates the need to tap every square with 10' poles, except when in doubt. For that to be the case, the DM's design ought to be well considered. If it isn't, then something like a Perception check offers a mechanical opportunity to avoid the trap, because the DM failed to provide a logical opportunity for the trap to be avoided.Personally, I don't find a procedure like tapping squares with a 10' pole to be indicative of skilled play. At the point where it becomes a procedure, I think it stops being skilled play. There's nothing particularly skilled about writing on a sheet of paper that you will tap with a 10' pole, though the initial idea of doing so may have been indicative of skilled play. (Personally, I've never agreed with the idea of 10' poles. A 10' pole is going to be an awkward hazard in a cramped space. I'm extremely dubious that it would produce sufficient force to set off most pressure traps. You might detect a hollow if the lid is thin enough, but the noise of constant tapping would probably alert the entire dungeon to your presence in no time. It literally makes no sense to me, and doesn't seem like something any rational dungeon delver would do with regularity.)I realize that this sounds quite critical, however I'm not accusing anyone of badwrongfun. These are simply my own opinions on the good and the bad regarding this approach to DMing. If you and your group enjoy something that I dislike, then by all means play as you like.</blockquote>

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