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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8059131" data-attributes="member: 97077">The players in your example did not describe what they were doing other than the order in which they were marching. Without additional information, the DM has to assume and establish what the characters are doing while traveling, which (1) is not the DM's role and (2) makes it harder or impossible to adjudicate. So ideally the players each say what they are doing while traveling in their marching order.If they all say they are staying alert to danger, then the DM has to decide who in the marching order has a chance at noticing it based on the danger's positions relative to the party. For those characters, the DM may call for an ability check if the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence for failure. If they are staying alert to danger repeatedly over time, then it may be a passive check.There's a common thing I notice many DMs doing which is that the PCs enter an area, having otherwise said nothing about what they were doing while moving about, and the DM goes, "Okay, everyone give me an uhhhhhh Perception check." At that point, the DM decides what various PCs can see as a way of describing the environment. This gets the play loop out of order in my view which tells the DM first to describe the environment, presenting the basic scope of actions the PCs can take. At that point, the players can start describing what they want to do which may call for ability checks to resolve.</blockquote>

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