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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8506294" data-attributes="member: 29398">Say yes or roll the dice - where's the 'no' option in there?If the player is left to decide then the robe will be free.  Every time.Unless, of course, one has players who are actively willing to work against their own interests, which is (literally!) self-defeating.It's the DM's job to use the setting as a proxy in order to challenge the PCs, and thus the players.  It's the players' job, via their PCs, to overcome these challenges among or around whatever else they might be doing in the setting.Because neither the PCs nor the players know in this case how low the stakes have become; that there's nobody home and they're going to succeed unless they Keystone Kops it.  If the PCs somehow learn this in the fiction through their actions and-or deductions, all well and good, but I'm not just going to tell them up front and nor should I.No matter how high the stakes I'll stick with free role-play for social interactions.  For physical things that require abstraction, then I largely agree with you here.Whenever the DM (by proxy as noted above) challenges the players and the players try to overcome that challenge, the players and DM are in oppositon to each other as represented by the PCs being in opposition to whatever setting element is posing the challenge.And on a broader scale I posit that in general the DM and the players do in fact have different sets of interests, or at least priorities.  The DM has to look out for the game/campaign as a whole and prioritize that, while any player only really has to look out for the well-being of their PC(s) and can freely prioritize that.My stance is that just because a roll is meaningless isn't reason enough not to do it.I have my players roll "null" rolls fairly often, largely so that when I call for rolls that matter it's not a metagame trigger that something's afoot.Because player knowledge and character knowledge are or should be the same.  If I-as-player know that you-as-DM are going to say yes every time then it's safe to assume my character is also going to know that in the setting.  And if you don't want my character to know that then don't give me that info as a player; make me roll and keep that doubt lingering.That's a hard no from me.  In this example, if it becomes apparent at some point that the PCs are going to need that 'key' then we're going to play out their getting of said key in time-order as it happens in the fiction (i.e. if they go get the key before starting the job we play the key bit out first; if they only realize halfway through the job that they need they key we play out their abandoning the job and going after the key instead).  Detail matters.  Sequentiality is vital.And the risk with playing out scenes as flashbacks is that the players can (and IME will, guaranteed!) meta the hell out of it; if the currently-being-played action is happening tonight and the flashback scene was yesterday morning the players can go absolutely gonzo-nuts crazy with their PCs' actions in that flashback as they already know they're all going to be alive free and functional tonight!  And that, let me tell you, can and does get degenerate in a real hurry.How to prevent this?  No flashbacks.</blockquote>

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