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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 4809157" data-attributes="member: 386">I will number the questions so I don't have to split up the quote.1. I like requiring it because it means that one must always consider the in-game perspective.  That, I find, leads to more dynamic and changing situations in the game.2. I'm not sure what you mean by a "desirable result".  The result that I desire is one where the fiction - the in-game situation - is engaging and grabs the players.  I think it's harder for any player to engage with the fiction when there isn't as much attention put on it.3. I have played in games where you didn't have to describe your action in order to proceed.  Sometimes this would result in things like "I roll my Intimidate to scare the girl away from my rival".  There is a danger of back-sliding away from the fiction to just focusing on the mechanics.It's not that I find it "unacceptable" in the sense that "you are playing wrong".  I think that it is easier to get that kind of engaging fiction when you put the focus of the mechanics on the "fluff".4. The reason why I'd personally want it to be impossible to proceed in this hypothetical game is so that there's no chance to backslide, to play on through a game without considering the in-game situation.For example, Skill Challenges in 4E seem to work really well for me when I the players describe their actions and we roll the dice to resolve those actions.  When it becomes a situation of just dice rolling, ie. "I roll my Intimidate", "That's a success", "I roll my Diplomacy", "That's a failure", etc., I personally find it less satisfying.I ran a skill challenge a while back where the PCs were trying to build a rope of climbing.  The end result was that they created a cursed magic item.  In the beginning of the skill challenge I never would have imagined that was where we would end up; we only got there because I (the DM) was playing off the descriptions of their actions and rolling with it.If the player had simply said, "I want to infuse the rope with magic; I roll my Arcana" instead of "I gather some snakes then sacrifice them, taking their spirit energy and putting it into the rope; I'll roll my Arcana to see if it works", we wouldn't have ended up in the same place.</blockquote>

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