Skills in no-pressure situations (DRAFT)
Current DCs:
Easy: 8
Moderate: 12
Hard: 19
As alluded to above, I prefer to reserve skill rolling for when it really "matters," when there's something significant to be gained from success and something significant to be lost by failure. "Looking around" doesn't, to me, require a check, but "looking around while running through room as you're chased by guards" would.
But, I realize that there's more to skills than that. People like to roll them to see what their character is "like," to inject a little randomness into the game, and for other reasons. But it's tricky for me to adjudicate all of that, to convey that I've seen your roll, and that it made some kind of a difference.
So, here's what I propose:
Outside of combat or any kind of risk-based situation, feel free to roll skills when you take actions, if that makes sense to you. Reference the DCs at the top of this thread, to determine the quality of the roll. You get to decide whether its Easy, Moderate or Hard. Generally it's going to be Easy.
Basically, assume you succeed at whatever you're doing, but if you roll below the DC, it didn't go as smoothly as you hoped. A stutter, a stumble, a faux pas. You describe that as works for you. I'm sure we'd all be happy to chip in, if needed.
I'll handle the reaction or response from NPCs or the environment, if any and I'll base that on the description of your roll. So, if you choose to roll Diplomacy when talking to an NPC and you fail and describe your failure as getting tongue-tied, I might have the NPC respond more patronizingly than normal.
If you're trying to gain information, you can probably get it in these kinds of low-stakes situations, it helps me to know why you want it, what you're planning to accomplish by knowing it. Raw info dumps rarely sink into long-term memory.
The key caveat is that with nothing at stake there's nothing to be gained. There's not meant to be XP or treasure benefit from these kinds of rolls. Those kinds of rewards are meant to come from risk. What I'm talking about here is getting to use your skills to help you decide how to roleplay the actions you're taking.
This is a draft concept, so I'm open to thoughts privately or in the out-of-character thread.