2 hours ago, whafrog said:

But they aren't "all-knowing", they only know there aren't traps.

Whafrog you're not being fair. I of course was speaking just about the traps. The PCs shouldn't know if they failed to detect the traps or not (that's what I meant by all-knowing; knowing something they couldn't realistically know....for sure). They should only know that they didn't see anything when they looked. I've been tested using a knife for clearing a dummy mine field, but never knew 100% sure if I had found all of the mines before I said I was done. I still worried I hadn't found every mine until the instructor told me how I did.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

Really? They would do that just because "there aren't traps"? What about lookouts or scouts or droid spies? The point is they still have to make smart decisions, or you get to bonk them with the dunce hammer some other way.

But they are making, "smart decisions", based upon knowledge they shouldn't have. They 100% know there are traps there. Their decisions should have some doubt, as with reality. "I don't see any traps" shouldn't automatically equate with, "There aren't any traps there". There should still be some doubt.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

Not really. They don't know if you rolled a single setback die, or a mitt-full of reds. Their half means nothing, so there's no point.

No it does mean something. They don't know 100% that they failed or succeeded, as it should be in these cases. But, they may have a better guess that they probably failed or probably succeeded even if they have no idea what the base difficulty is (you can share it which I actually do which I should have mentioned). Even if you don't share, veteran players in your group can probably guess a ballpark number of dice. If they rolled a net of 4 successes, they are probably going to be a little more confident that they succeeded. Especially if I shared the base difficulty with them for comparison. If they rolled a net of only 1 success, they know they probably failed unless I told them I'm only rolling a purple. But, they can't be sure either way which is the intention. They still have to make their next decision based upon probabilities, not definitive answers they shouldn't know. Which is more similar to reality in my opinion.

In the "realworld" I look down the path with my binoculars and don't see any traps. Of course I can't be 100% sure but I've seen various traps before and I'm pretty sure there is nothing there. I tell my friends this. But, of course, I could have missed something. That's what I'm trying to emulate, as opposed to the definitive you know there isn't anything there or you know for sure there is. That's not very realistic.

To each his own. I was offering another method which seems to be welcomed and fun at my table when it has come up (rarely and most typically with perception rolls).

When I have the PC's looking for hidden things, I generally prompt them with the request, "Give me a Perception roll, Two Purple, 5 black and two of those black are for darkness . . . " Or some similar difficulty.

I take a look at the individual results and usually report from the worst failure to the best success. I make a point of having the player understand what their character knows and understands from that perspective and my group is pretty good about having their characters react appropriately.

If I recall correctly the group all failed their perception rolls so they weren't aware of the impending doom. Until the doom pended. (And where is my demon smiley emoticon)?!?

2 hours ago, Sturn said:

The PCs shouldn't know if they failed to detect the traps or not

If they shouldn't know, they don't need to roll. There's no reason you have to reveal anything you don't want to.

You say I'm not being fair. Perhaps I'm not explaining it well. I used to do things the way you do...I'm sure most tables do. What I'm trying to get at is there really isn't a good reason to continue to do it that way *provided* you take steps in your GMing that make hidden rolls unnecessary. What is means is dispensing with all that antagonistic "I have secrets" style of play, and changing what the priorities are when asking for skill checks. Change what's important to check for in the name of tension, and what can be bypassed in the name of cinematics.

2 hours ago, Sturn said:

In the "realworld" I look down the path with my binoculars and don't see any traps. Of course I can't be 100% sure but I've seen various traps before and I'm pretty sure there is nothing there. I tell my friends this. But, of course, I could have missed something. That's what I'm trying to emulate, as opposed to the definitive you know there isn't anything there or you know for sure there is. That's not very realistic.

Are you playing a game or a simulation? Is it a fast-paced cinematic story, or a dungeon-crawl? I'm coming at this from both of the former. Your example feels like both of the latter.

I think it all comes down to how well the players are able to understand what the charakter knows and what the player knows and act accordingly.

In my group if my scout is checking for traps we roll the dice in the open and if I fail my throw, I know that it is very likely that he missed something and that we are walking into an ambush. But my char would tell the others that everything seems fine because he can´t detect anything threatining. The beauty of it, perhaps there aren´t any traps at all...

I despise the 'secrets' style of Playing or GMing. Yes, the GM has to keep things from being known ahead of time or there is no tension, but that's different from being the wheezing riddler sitting behind your screen watching people throw darts at a grape from 30 feet.

Hiding your dice is also a tool of the fudging Player/GM and leads to moved goalposts and fake danger.

Players keeping secrets until the big reveal never goes better as a surprise than it does when everyone is prepared to deal with that information. Either people attack, or don't care. Never seems to be a middle ground on that one.

I really hate this forum software!

No, I really, really I hate this forum software.

I think it thinks the same of you too.

GMs continually fight the dice in this game and try and shoehorn everything into a binary pass/fail result. There's just no need to hide results when the outcome of a roll can be so broad. Once you get in the habit of results being more broad than pass/fail PCs will become accustomed to realizing unless their dice result is absolutely stellar they shouldn't assume anything.

I have always let my players roll for everything except for me attacking. This let them feel like they have more control of the scenario and it also gives them the opportunity to spend the narrative dice results 1st. I think this depends alot on your group if they play meta or play RP.

In my last game the group was making fake badges and I had them roll, and they say that they failed. Then they asked me if I should be rolling this so they don't know the results. Which surprised me, I let them know that I would trust them to keep playing as if they didn't know they failed and we had no issues with it.

I cases like this you don't let them roll before they use the item they tried to fake. Because it's only at that time they can know if they failed or succeeded at faking it.