GM Method: Create a Turning Point!
First, I love this video.
Second, I noticed that there’s nothing in it about the Perception skill. It got me to thinking about when or if Perception is necessary.
Sensory clues to an imminent event are fun. If you say “You hear shuffling feet and the jangle of cheap armor. Someone shouts in Orcish. They are coming your way,” someone is going to say “Orcs!” This is a better situation than a binary Perception roll, IMO. You’ve created tension, and tension is the name of the game.
Perception tends to hide secrets behind binary curtains. Some things lend themselves to Perception:
-Secret doors
-Ambushes
-Traps
-Social Cues
-Attempt at stealth or secrecy
-Comings and goings
But I’m taking a cue from the Gumshoe system here and saying 99% of the time imminence is more interesting than surprise, for you as a GM and for the players.
Even with secret doors or traps or passages, I can see it being more fun to have the players under pressure (the lava or the orcs or the host or the sunlight appearing in x rounds) trying to find a trap trigger or find a secret lever than simply saying “I take 20 and look for traps.”
Ambushes can be fun. Ambushing enemies that show up in the middle of a combat (burrowers, I’m looking at you) can be fun. But I think I’m going to start designing combats with an eye to cutting way down on Perception and simply giving the players sensory information as the timer counts down. Depending on the time, I think it would go:
-smell
-sound
-sight
-feel
Smell is a weird one, and could become important at any range, giving different cues. Regardless, the idea of giving sensory information to build tension with the timer is more interesting to me than the binary curtain of Perception.
What’s the most fun thing about Perception in your game? What make it worth considering? When is it essential? When is it over-used? Do timers take its place?