Lately I've been having issues getting my players involved with interpreting the dice. Partly it's my fault for not being descriptive enough. The problem is they play a lot of pathfinder and so are stuck on d20's pass/fail binary. Any suggestions?

#1 thing is show them all the cool stuff they can do if they interpret results, and maybe give some examples.

Or if that doesn't work, start doing it more on the GM side with their Threats and Despairs, and encourage them to do the same with their Advantages and Triumphs.

Just encourage them to @#$% talk and that's pretty close to dice interpretation.......

One way I do this is to have my NPCs do cool things with their results. But I struggle a lot of the time too on how to spend results. Despite being a GM, I have a problem with creativity.

Ask players, by name, to say what an outcome for rolls could be. For bad results, ask them what could happen that would suck. For good results, ask them what could happen that is good. If the players are spending successes and advantage only for mechanical effects, ask them HOW those effects happen. Feel free to sit and wait them out a bit. If they're staring at you dumbstruck, spend that pause to think of a couple choices and offer them one for how it happens. Ask them what would happen in the movies to accomplish this. Ask ask ask! Always be delegating work to the players, and not just for what their own character does. Ask them to describe details about your NPCs or settings. Have them fill in some blanks and you fill in the others. This is what will get them used to offering in their own stuff to the game.

Ask players, by name, to say what an outcome for rolls could be. For bad results, ask them what could happen that would suck. For good results, ask them what could happen that is good. If the players are spending successes and advantage only for mechanical effects, ask them HOW those effects happen. Feel free to sit and wait them out a bit. If they're staring at you dumbstruck, spend that pause to think of a couple choices and offer them one for how it happens. Ask them what would happen in the movies to accomplish this. Ask ask ask! Always be delegating work to the players, and not just for what their own character does. Ask them to describe details about your NPCs or settings. Have them fill in some blanks and you fill in the others. This is what will get them used to offering in their own stuff to the game.

ie. @#$% talkin......

I said in a similar thread on this sort of topic, forget the rules and just go with the basic premise that a success is kinda cool and a triumph is about three times as cool in one go. If you take out some of the mechanical "measure" of things and just try and wing it with what makes sense and is fun and cinamatic you can get your players more involved.

I think if, as the GM, you can get away from the "I'll use that advantage to recover a strain" to "you miss your target, but the shot hits a hydraulic condiut and hot fluid sprays out, your target tries to avoid the spray and does so, but has now moved out of cover."

Then as the players start informing you of what their actions could be all you have to do is adjuticate. I find my players typically need proding to go all out on what they have rolled. "OK that and that cost the 2 advantages, but mate, you have a Triumph that should be awesome, what do you think it should do?"

I also advise to just look at the dice a while, as the players start getting into the game they'll even start throwing out ideas from the bad guys dice rolls.

My players were all new to roleplaying when we started our campaign and the beginner box. When we started, I made all of the decisions about spending advantages at first (not that there were a LOT of options out of the beginner box). By the third session, I would instead toss out a few options and ask what they wanted.

We're up to the ninth session now, and that's worked pretty well. Sometimes I have to prod them, but as a whole the players are now asking things like 'can I spend a triumph to do X?' and 'how many advantages to do Y?'

So, my answer is 'show them what is possible', then 'allow them to pick possibilities', and finally 'encourage them to ask you what is possible'.