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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6550793" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Sounds like a good idea.Try rolling most of the non-combat skill checks yourself in secret. It can improve the experience for the players when they don't know how well they did on certain rolls. It also can help keep immersion for them, because they can just describe what they're doing, while at the same time knowing that their skills are coming into play. You might even want to throw in some references to that so they don't have to just take your word for it."Amiira spent a bit of time while you were in Neverwinter researching those odd creatures that keep appearing. She knows they are known as "modrons," planar creatures of pure law..." (In this case, I had rolled previously when the party's sorcerer first got a modron summoning wild surge, and I just filled in a tiny bit more detail later on when she got the second or third modron appearance (she gets a lot of wild surges)).Then let me dissent from the consensus.As a player, I much prefer a simulationist approach where I don't know whether anything going on has any particular relevance beyond what I make of it. If the barmaid winks and smiles and seems interested in my character, I don't want that to always mean that there is a plot hiding there. If I pursue it, I'd like it to feel realistic. Maybe she's just a big flirt with half of her customers and nothing comes of it. Maybe I catch up to her in time to help her out in a run-in with a ruffian. Maybe we hit it off and she becomes a recurring NPC. Or maybe she's an agent of a vampire attempting to manipulate my character. I shouldn't know which of these it is, and honestly, I never want the DM to make a decision that makes more out of the character than makes sense in-world. If there is a chance that she might be the agent of the vampire, and the DM hadn't decided but was just throwing in her flirtation as background, then I'd prefer he makes a roll in secret to determine if there is any such significance. If there isn't, there isn't.I don't like playing in a world where it feels like all of the events are somehow customized to my character, or have adventurous significance. Some things ought to "just" be window dressing. That doesn't mean I don't like formal adventures, plot arcs, and hidden adventurous situations that sometimes come about when you open that window dressing and have a look-see, just that the latter should be of a believable type and frequency, and for the sake of my fun, the DM should either have decided ahead of time that the adventurous content was there, or make an appropriate random roll. I hate playing a world where every choice you make just determines what sort of adventure the DM turns it into. Flirt with the barmaid? She is under vampire control. Cue initiation of vampire manipulation quest. Ignore barmaid? She is a normal barmaid. A weasel runs in the door. Cue initiation of the terrible trouble with weasels quest line. PCs pursue weasel quests? In end up they are part of some evil plans by followers of Vecna. Ignore weasels? They were simply an animal issue that someone else clears up. Yuck. Please don't ever subject me to such a scenario. I want the world to have independent integrity, to be "solid", not an amorphous Schrodinger's Plot Box, where the adventurous elements only lock in their existence or non-existence when you choose to open it. In that case, I'm not playing in a fantasy "world," I'm playing in the DM's head.I'd much rather feel like I'm playing an Elder Scrolls game--but better. And that's exactly what D&D can give me.This is definitely a style question, so I wanted to let you know what style preferences are out there. You don't have to compromise your style if there is no need. Find out what your players like. Figure out what it is that you like. Come up with something you all enjoy, or (if it really comes to it and no one is too attached), go your separate ways to groups that mesh better with your preferences.</blockquote>

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