"I look for anything unusual"

[Stormcrow]

My current batch of players has a very bad habit: wherever they are, whatever they're doing, they think the answer is, "I look around for anything unusual." When one of them was playing the Seventh Doctor with his scanning fob-watch, he would say, "I'll scan for anything unusual." Now one of them is playing the Tenth Doctor, and he doesn't scan for anything at all, he just kind of looks around.

Does anyone else have players as vague as this? I've been telling them that I'll announce when they happen to notice something unusual, but if they want to investigate in greater detail they have to tell me what they're looking for. This doesn't stop them from still saying they want to look for something unusual EVERY SINGLE TIME. Essentially, they're fishing for free hints.

Thank goodness for my wife, who plays an excellent Donna Noble, and who prods the others with ideas. (Though she often misses the obvious: she was frustrated that she couldn't give ideas to the Doctor's player, because she wasn't in the TARDIS with the Doctor, until I reminded her that she had a superphone and he was in a phone booth.) She also has a knack for looking in the right places for the wrong reasons. (Looking for a trap door to escape Daleks surrounding the church they were hiding in, she just happened to open the coffin of St. Cuthbert, which held the key to the whole Dalek plan. She spent no story points to make this magically happen.)

Another sin of theirs is when they say things like, "I'll modify the doohickey to stop the Daleks." Modify it HOW?! (When pressed, they finally rigged the doohickey to send out a wave of energy that depressed the Daleks' brains. Questioning the Daleks afterward, they heard that "DALEKS DO NOT HAVE FEELINGS," but all the fight had gone out of them.)

I wish they'd just skip over the part where I have to whittle down their vague ideas into something concrete.

[Marnal]

In general each Dr Who story starts off with the Doctor dropped into a whole new alien situation. So EVERYTHING is going to be unusual.

[jeffrywith1e]

"I look for anything unusual"

"You find a TARDIS."

[misterharry]

If they're looking for something as general as "anything unusual", you should apply some hefty penalties as they're not focusing on anything in particular, just gazing around at everything around them. And of course, they'll only find something if there's actually anything to be found. Even if there's a Dalek invasion going on behind the scenes, it doesn't mean that there is any evidence of this in the area their TARDIS lands, even if they get a Fantastic result.

[Stormcrow]

I just heard a really good idea on the GURPS forum: "I have players roll perception at the beginning of each scene and I use that score for every check during that scene. It prevents meta, reduces interruption, and doesn't require much bookkeeping.
"

You can do the same thing for Doctor Who. At the beginning of every scene, have all players roll Awareness and Ingenuity. This is their score to passively notice anything unusual that wouldn't be immediately obvious to anyone. All the game master then has to do is decide the difficulty of noticing a thing and he automatically knows who notices it.

Naturally, this only applies to passively noticing subtle details. If a player wants to actively inspect something, he makes a separate roll as appropriate.

[mthomason]

"I look for anything unusual"

"The most unusual thing in this location is... well, you, to be honest."

[Catsmate]

How do you know what's unusual if you don't know what's *usual* for the location? Do you know what people *should* be wearing/eating/reading/carrying/talking about?

[Doctor X]

Yeah, in Call of Cthulhu, before the game sessions, I'll have the players give me ten D100 rolls each. (It's a percentile-based system.) I then use them for hidden rolls of the Spot Hidden and Listen skills. Even when they KNOW a critical fumble is coming, they don't know WHEN.

But to directly answer the question, "I look for anything unusual" is a copout. I wouldn't let it go. I'd either give them fluff items (You notice that the temperature seems to be a couple degrees higher than the same time last year.) or something incredibly smartass. (You find the most unusual thing ever! Wow, it's SO unusual! This could change EVERYTHING!!! Then you realize that, unusual as it is, it has nothing to do with the game, so you set it aside and give me specifics.)

But yes, if my group did this, which I think better of them than that, I'd reply with "You see a mirror, and in that mirror, you see a Scion of Gallifrey, a woman from the 23rd century, a 17th century samurai, and a hacker from the 80s. That's pretty unusual."

[Stormcrow]

Jun 9, 2014 3:03:35 GMT Doctor X said:

But to directly answer the question, "I look for anything unusual" is a copout. I wouldn't let it go. I'd either give them fluff items (You notice that the temperature seems to be a couple degrees higher than the same time last year.) or something incredibly smartass. (You find the most unusual thing ever! Wow, it's SO unusual! This could change EVERYTHING!!! Then you realize that, unusual as it is, it has nothing to do with the game, so you set it aside and give me specifics.)

Unfortunately, I'd have to do that OVER AND OVER AGAIN. My players don't learn. Ever.

(Note: the following is not an actual transcript, but many exchanges have occurred along these lines.)

THEM: "I look for anything unusual."

ME: "Be more specific. What sorts of things are you looking for? How are you looking?"

THEM: "Um... I look for anything that looks like it doesn't belong in a place like this."

ME: "I'd have already told you if there were anything here that stood out."

THEM: "Well, can I detect anything I think might have something strange about it?"

ME: "Detect how?" (Thinking, "Take out your scanner, you dolt!")

THEM: "Do I have anything I could use to detect something unusual?"

ME: (Sarcastically) "You're carrying an Unusality Detector."

THEM: "Really?" (Looks at me sidelong, trying to figure out if I'm serious.)

ME: "No, you idiot! You have a scanner!"

THEM: "Oh yeah!" (Pause.) "So did I detect anything unusual?"

ME: "AAAAARRGH!"

[Catsmate]

You could try a few useless or irrelevant red herrings. Check what skills or knowledge the PCs (and the players) have and aim at that.

Here's one from a game of ours (not Who but it did have time travellers in 1877 London).
"Though the foggy night you see a mysterious red glow close by a human-ish figure".
"Is it a flame or lantern?"
"No it appears too steady for either"
"Well it's too early for electric light so it must be something alien or anachronistic!".

Unfortunately it *wasn't* too early for portable electric lights (someone didn't know as much as they thought they did) and they ended up being arrested when the gentleman with the 'cab stick' objected to being assaulted...

[sirkalon]

If your group used to play D&D then it's probably left over from I check for traps and doors, the making ingenuity/awareness tests isn't bad idea, but I'd probably make them describe how they are detecting anything unusual tell them to describe it otherwise no way, but then I've always been a harsh GM