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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8280798" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I get you, but I think there's still simply a quantitative difference. In a 1 minute AD&D melee round we are told by Gary that, to paraphrase, many attacks and counter-attacks are launched, and the attack and damage rolls are described as simply a sort of summary of the whole minute of sword fighting, or perhaps the one significant instant within that minute if you wish. We elide fiction here because, basically we are out of our depth in any attempt to describe it. This also accounts for the argument about "shy people can be diplomats if you have a skill for that." You could equally say "people with no sword-fighting experience can be fighters if you have a skill for that." So, there ARE two types of actions, something like BB/LG to lift the portcullis, there's no elision there, we get the whole story. Anyone is qualified to imagine exactly how you lift a gate, and understand the challenge at the most elemental level. Nobody at a game table is a sword fighter, or a diplomat. Even if you are a diplomatic and articulate person you lack the social and cultural referents, customs, habits, and access to subtle cues, which would be vital to realistically playing out something like that. You can, at best, explain to the GM what your character is trying to do, the basic strategy and tactics, and maybe play act a bit of it (more or less depending on just how granular the resolution is at that point).Very few actions fall into the former 'no elision' category. A lot of those may not even warrant checks, they are ordinary or nearly ordinary actions, and/or things where there's no clear point to adjudicating them as failures, maybe because they are part of some larger task that either succeeds or fails of its own accord (IE I'm pounding in a spike to act as an anchor for climbing down the cliff, we can adjudicate this with the climb check, it doesn't require a separate 'pound in the stake' check.). Obviously MANY actions fall into a category of "we are eliding something that doesn't involve any consequential or interesting fiction" (IE picking a lock, nobody cares about tumblers and pins in a D&D game unless they're an actual locksmith). And honestly, I don't feel like the 'big elisions' really need to be judged as throwing away Snarfian 'Skilled Play' either. Yeah, they elide things we just can't really fictionally describe very well. Maybe sometimes some players might have meaningful input there? Maybe? We can't really say though. I mean, even Gygax has a reaction roll system to use for how people get along when they try to talk/negotiate. I think the argument is often oversold. Yeah, there's a few cases like how we adjudicate searching a room where I can see the point. OTOH I assure you that almost any LEO will tell you that there IS DEFINITELY a skill to searching and finding hidden things! They will also assure you that you, civilian, DO NOT know this skill all that well, and while you could describe the actions taken when using it, you can't easily describe the experience factor. Thus you cannot really effectively RP the job of an experienced searcher, not completely.</blockquote>

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