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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7599411" data-attributes="member: 42582">Does this mean that you don't agree that the player can establish the backstory for Gord the Barbarian that was flagged upthread?Or - and I'm not trying to impute views to you, just trying to map out some of the relevant space of possibilities - would you see that as a suggestion to the GM which the latter is free to accept or reject?That's what I'm getting at in the paragraph just above this one.After making my post yesterday and before reading replies, I was thinking about the following:What happens if a player who suspects a trap (eg they've just had     [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s description of the room with the broken pit surface, the alcoves and slots and the like) declares, Last week when I was hanging out at the thieve's guild I had a discussion with so-and-so about such-and-such and they were talking about this spear gauntlet trap they once encountered and told me such-and-such thing about it?I can see several different ways of dealing with this:(1) It's not a permitted action declaration because it's about matters in the past relative to the GM's most recent bit of narration. (2) It's permitted as a bit of flavour, similar to the story about Gord the Barbarian's elders, but that's all it is and it has no bearing on the resolution of the current situation. (3) It's permitted as a genuine action declaration - to be resolved, say, as a test on CHA (for being sociable with the guild members) or INT (because it's really about the lore the player is familiar with) - which, if it is successful, obliges the GM to tell the player something about the current situation. (4) as (3), but a successful resolution has some indeterminate consequence in the fiction ("The player recalls something useful from the conversation") which then grants advantage on one (at least) subsequent check made to successful disarm/bypass the trap.Maybe there are other possibilities too that I'm missing at the moment.I don't know what the "official" 5e answer is. It's something where I would expect very significant table variation. My own approach would be either (3) or (4) - which one would depend on further issues of how the game is being played, what the role of pre-authored GM notes are, etc. If adjudicating via (4), then a failure would impose a penalty/disadvantage on the subsequent check. If adjudicating via (3) then a failure also needs to give a penalty, but that might have to be more concrete than an abstract mechanical thing and what that might be would depend very much on context.And to finish with a slightly different matter . . . I could be misunderstanding     [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], but I don't see that the concern is with "personal persuasiveness" in the used car salesman sense, but rather with being able to cleverly pitch solutions which will impress the GM.Example roll-circumventing action declaration which are rather obvious, like using ladders to climb walls or using keys to open locks, clearly don't fall within the scope of Hussar's concern. But I can't imagine those are the examples that "goal and approach" advocates have in mind when they advocate their position, either, as those would be very banal examples of a clever approach obviating the need for a check.</blockquote>

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