RPGMemes

You shouldn't be rolling for perception first. Players don't get to roll until they actually do a thing, until then you use passive perception. And even if you are rolling a perception check on their behalf, you do it behind the screen. So they won't know if they rolled well or not.

Yea, that was kind my whole point. The way you described earlier.

Traps are puzzles. Even if they didn't roll high enough, you should still describe enough about their environment that they could reasonably deduce that a trap was there.

literally states to roll first then narratively describe after so they can deduce that a trap was there if the roll was low, which is what I was arguing against. That explanation has the order of events all wrong. Also, this goes back to the original point that players dislike when you roll for them behind the screen. Before the rules officially allowed it, many players would throw a fit about not being able to see the rolls.

Plus, I never mentioned passives. Disliked the concept so I don't use them to begin with. I have only ever been talking about directly making rolls.

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It seems to me the confusion lies in, what I would say is, an over-reliance on the grid in that you aren't understanding my method, fundamentally, as you're assuming the grid is being used when it isn't. Your rebuttal is focused on having players be allowed to basically play Minesweeper with the grid, tediously wasting everyone's time, when that would never be allowed as an option for them with how I do things.

For me, the grid only gets used for combat and nothing else. This way I never have to deal with players wasting time trying to cheese the game by asking to check every square because it's all theater-of-the-mind, there is no grid. I might use visual help to display a room layout, but it's only there for general reference. Players still get to try and predict where traps are and stuff based on my descriptions; they just tell me what part of my description they are interacting with, or if it's just a general search of the room itself. Based on their input and how detailed they are, I then determine who needs to roll what, add bonuses and negatives if applicable, then the scene will play out.

Plus, this also allows me to keep track of time by treating each scene as 1 time block. I just jot down how long the entire scene took, then how long it took to travel to the next scene.