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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7323096" data-attributes="member: 29398">Yet to the players it should sound the same.  Rarely if ever does a DM read directly from prepared notes - about the only times I ever see it happen are when a canned module tells the DM to read some exposition.Boxed descriptions in a canned module are different: the DM should use those where provided to ensure all the relevant info comes across...and then describe areas that don't have boxed descriptions (e.g. from a homebrew module) using much the same terminology and presentation.Focusing on the NPC's stuff is easier if I don't also have to worry about what the dimensions are of the rooms adjacent that haven't been explored yet and whether they'll fit together properly; I have a map for that.Fine and excellent advice for the players in any RPG - but not for the GM.  The GM shouldn't be playing to find out (if that's her goal she should become a player and let someone else GM), the GM should be providing the stage and scene and background and world in which the players can play to find out.RPGing can take place, but on a blank stage with no established history or anything else.No, it's also literal.  The maps, the history write-ups, the culture write-ups, the pantheons - provided you accept something that's online as being real then they're all every bit as real as that swimming pool.  Failing that, all I'd need to do is print 'em all out on to real paper to make 'em real.Acceptable DM practice, though more a result of worldbuilding than an integral part of it.Because I've already neutrally determined in advance that the map is somewhere else.  I know where it is, and I know that in this case there's ultimately only two possible outcomes: they'll sooner or later find it, or they won't.  If they find it, great: they can take it back to their sponsor and get paid for it, or they can try following it on their own, or whatever.  If they don't find it, great: they can return to their sponsor empty-handed, or they can blow him off and go elsewhere, or they can try making a fake map, or whatever.Somebody declaring they're searching for a given thing and banging off a natural 20 on a search check doesn't mean squat if that given thing isn't there to find.  Example: a party's exploring an old castle looking for the Crown of Axenos, which was last rumoured - correctly, as it turns out - to be here somewhere.  I-as-DM have mapped out and populated the castle with a variety of monsters and hazards, and I've put the Crown behind a heavily-trapped secret door off an otherwise innocuous chamber in the first level below ground (it was hidden there by the last occupants of this place, now dead these several decades).  When the party's upstairs in the great hall, however, they can search for the Crown all they like - it ain't there, and so they're not going to find it no matter what they try or how well they roll.This is simple realism - you can't find what's not there.  This idea of "say yes or roll the dice" kicks this to the curb, as now all they need to do in a game-mechanics sense is keep rolling (there's obviously doubt involved, so roll the dice) until they hit a 20 and the Crown will appear regardless of where they are as long as they're somewhere in or near the castle.  I find this ridiculous.Lan-"what I'm not sure of with 'say yes or roll the dice' is whether it means the DM is afraid of just saying flat 'no' or the players are unprepared or unwilling to hear it"-efan</blockquote>

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