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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8441978" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Sure. In the animated movie All Dogs Go to Heaven there’s a scene with a singing alligator that comes out of nowhere, has no bearing on the plot, teaches us nothing about the characters, and is never brought up again. You may like the scene, but the film would unquestionably be better without it.Or, to relate this back to D&amp;D, when playing Dragon Heist with a friend of mine who was trying his hand at DMing for the first time, we were in candle lane, looking for a door with a snake symbol on it, which we knew to be a Zhentarim hideout. It was dark, so the DM asked us to make perception checks to see if we could spot the symbol. Everyone failed, and the DM realized the game couldn’t actually go anywhere from there if we didn’t find it, so he said “Uhh… Well I guess you’d eventually find it… But it’s really hard and it takes a long time,” and then proceeded to move on with the adventure, exactly as he would have done if we had succeeded on the perception check. That was completely unnecessary and added nothing of value to the game. In fact, it revealed the artifice behind the adventure, taking us all out of the moment.As I’ve told you multiple times, this is a problem I see all the time especially with new DMs, and one of the reasons I advise people not to call for checks if the outcome of the check isn’t consequential.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8441978, member: 6779196"] Sure. In the animated movie [I]All Dogs Go to Heaven[/I] there’s a scene with a singing alligator that comes out of nowhere, has no bearing on the plot, teaches us nothing about the characters, and is never brought up again. You may like the scene, but the film would unquestionably be better without it. Or, to relate this back to D&D, when playing Dragon Heist with a friend of mine who was trying his hand at DMing for the first time, we were in candle lane, looking for a door with a snake symbol on it, which we knew to be a Zhentarim hideout. It was dark, so the DM asked us to make perception checks to see if we could spot the symbol. Everyone failed, and the DM realized the game couldn’t actually go anywhere from there if we didn’t find it, so he said “Uhh… Well I guess you’d eventually find it… But it’s really hard and it takes a long time,” and then proceeded to move on with the adventure, exactly as he would have done if we had succeeded on the perception check. That was completely unnecessary and added nothing of value to the game. In fact, it revealed the artifice behind the adventure, taking us all out of the moment. As I’ve told you multiple times, this is a problem I see all the time especially with new DMs, and one of the reasons I advise people not to call for checks if the outcome of the check isn’t consequential. [/QUOTE]

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