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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 8248959" data-attributes="member: 11">Sorry for the lengthy post - this is just me thinking through my own assumptions about playing D&D and working through my surprise for how other people do it - not a judgement of those other ways, though I would probably feel less satisfied with some of those other ways.So, I was reading the <a href="https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old%20School%20Primer.pdf" target="_blank">"Old School Primer"</a> linked in that article about "The Six Cultures of Play" article <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-six-cultures-of-gaming.679512/" target="_blank">I posted in the TTRPG forum</a> and there was a lot about it I liked and seemed really familiar. Something that stood out to me was the inclusion of examples of play (something I have recently mentioned in a couple of other threads as really loving and wish 5E had more of) in an attempt to compare "old school" vs. "modern" play and what stood out to me was that the way I and my friends play made use of both styles in combination.For example, when discussing searching rooms the PDF gives these two examples:Even in running 3E or 5E which have skills for seemingly everything, I and the other DMs in my circle, ask players for descriptions of what they are attempting and how. A roll may provide a sense of ultimate success or failure, but the description of action contextualizes it and places the PCs in various positions for adjudicating the results.In the 5E game I run, an encounter like the above might go like this:As you can see from above, the descriptions of actions help to determine not only what kind of success or failure the character meets with but where everyone is and how they can potentially react if there is surprise or a call to roll initiative, etc. . I guess it is my old school roots are showing, but it never struck me that describing character action in some detail would not be the a default part of the game.If a player says to me as GM, "I search the room," I ask "how?" or "where do you start?" I might ask, "Are you just looking with your eyes or feeling with your hands?"  I am not sure how I would adjudicate if a trap goes off and who gets effected (for example) without that. Maybe the moose antlers are electrified but if said, "I grab it by the snout" I would know it does not go off.  Similarly, I would not know how to decide about the possibility for surprise if bugbears pop out through a secret door while the PCs have their back to it searching the opposite wall, etc. . . This also helps me keep track of (approximately) how much time is passing, who has a chance of hearing or seeing what etc. . .So I guess, I am asking if the approach I am describing is that unusual in other people's experience. Are the examples from that primer just being hyperbolic  as a way to dismiss modern skill system games as opposed to "player skill" games?  For me, while I like a sense of separating player and character knowledge to some degree, I also know that is it not only impossible to do completely, it is not really advantageous to the flow of the game to stick to the "no out of character knowledge" or "I am just gonna rely on what my character would know, even if I don't" approach too strongly. I did like the primer's description of player knowledge as the spirit of good fortune helping the heroes. And honestly, I'd rather play with people using a modicum of player knowledge over the games I've played in where one or two players would rather pretend to be totally stupid than to allow their character to make an intuitive leap because no matter how immersed you are in the game, you aren't really there and some things just need to be assumed.I guess there are certain base strategies of play in my D&D campaigns that not all players necessarily have (esp. when first starting) but that are developed through play itself.For example, recently a player in my newbie group who plays a ranger said she was searching for tracks outside a rural village inn from which a companion had been abducted, but when I asked her "what do you do to begin the search and where do you begin?" at first she was a little at a loss. So, I explained, you might check for muddy prints on the porch by the front door, you might go round back and search for scrapes on the door jamb, you might take a good look at the earth and plant life around the inn  and look for dirt or scrub that does not fit. . ." Suddenly it clicked for her, and soon she was making lots of rolls, leading the party around, and figuring out the best direction to start their inquiries. Now she felt both narratively and mechanically contributing to the action.</blockquote>

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