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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9809546" data-attributes="member: 7031982">How do tells that "characters with good perception scores may spot, even if not actively looking" work at the table?  I'm imagining something like (please do correct me if I have this wrong): "In the room you see blah blah blah blah.  And, Derek, your character notices X."At that point, the whole table knows that the thing Derek has noticed is important (because otherwise it would have been in the general description), at which point you may as well have simply let Derek spot the trap itself.  Not only has nobody has experienced the pleasure of actually figuring something out, but the players are being trained to not even try to figure out tells, because they know that if there is a tell it and if a character has high enough Perception, it will be handed to the player for free.  At most they will learn to say "I search..." in every conceivable place, hoping that they will be rewarded with a tell.In my opinion, one of the "blahs" used to describe the area to everybody should be the tell, if the players are paying close enough attention to realize it.  You can't possibly simulate the experience of paying close sensory attention to notice clues, so the closest approximation is to put the clues into the narration.</blockquote>