Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8478206" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Agreed. And here’s the thing about that: players come to the table with experience having played with other DMs, who might have different styles. So if someone comes to my table having played with another DM who sprinkles traps around randomly with no telegraphing or indication of their presence, they tend to get very jumpy when asked for more detail about an action. They’ve grown accustomed to needing to be as vague as possible to avoid committing to something that might spring a random trap they had no way of knowing to expect. They don’t want to say they open the drawer, especially if you ask them if they’re doing it, because they’ve been traumatized by some jerk DM using that as an excuse to spring a totally un-telegraphed trap on them. So they resist saying anything that could indicate their character is doing anything at all, and the game becomes a nebulous void of abstract dice rolls with as little description as anyone can get away with and I’m bored to tears just playing rollies all night with no meaningful narration going on. So instead, I set the expectation in advance that players be clear about what their characters are doing and to what end, and before long they learn that I don’t just spring traps on them at random, and the worst thing that can happen when they describe an action is that they might have to make a check.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8478206, member: 6779196"] Agreed. And here’s the thing about that: players come to the table with experience having played with other DMs, who might have different styles. So if someone comes to my table having played with another DM who sprinkles traps around randomly with no telegraphing or indication of their presence, they tend to get very jumpy when asked for more detail about an action. They’ve grown accustomed to needing to be as vague as possible to avoid committing to something that might spring a random trap they had no way of knowing to expect. They don’t want to say they open the drawer, [B]especially[/B] if you ask them if they’re doing it, because they’ve been traumatized by some jerk DM using that as an excuse to spring a totally un-telegraphed trap on them. So they resist saying anything that could indicate their character is doing anything at all, and the game becomes a nebulous void of abstract dice rolls with as little description as anyone can get away with and I’m bored to tears just playing rollies all night with no meaningful narration going on. So instead, I set the expectation in advance that players be clear about what their characters are doing and to what end, and before long they learn that I don’t just spring traps on them at random, and the worst thing that can happen when they describe an action is that they might have to make a check. [/QUOTE]

Verification