Quote Originally Posted by Vorr View Post
Example:The group enters a cavern and sees:Starting in midair in the center of the cavern dark black oil-like liquid falls ten feet or so down into a pool of the same liquid. Though several gallons of the liquid fall each second, the pool oddly does not seem to change the amount that is in it. The air around all this liquid is noticeably colder then the rest of the cavern. A nice strange and mysterious thing for the players to find...

The group with the causal player: Player:Oh I rolled a 30 on my know everything roll. DM:Oh, it's a physical manifestation of a portal to the plane of shadow, if you touch it it will zap you to the plane of shadow. Group:Oh, ok, we avoid that and look around for anything to kill or loot. So the nice encounter the DM had planed only takes like ten seconds, as everyone has 'fun' not doing anything

The involved group game:Slowly, the entire group approaches the strange pool of liquid, careful not to get close. Player 1:Adom carefully looks to see if any of the liquid is splashing out of the pool. DM:No, all the liquid stays within the pool area. Player 2:Reno takes out a copper coin and tosses it into the pool. DM:As soon as the coin touches the liquid if fades from sight, but you can't tell if it just sank or was teleported away. Player 3:Woah, ok, wait, I'll try to touch it with my ten foot pole. Player 4:Wait, don't hold onto the pole, I'll use mage hand to hold it. So the whole group is now involved in figuring out this encounter. It's no longer just ''one player causally rolling a dice''

Now I'm not saying it's wrong if a player just wants to ''roll to know it all'' and skip past all the fun discovery of a role playing game. My question is more: Why would you want too?
Why could it not be both? Just add 'think.'

Quote Originally Posted by Example
Oh, you think it's a physical manifestation of a portal to the plane of shadow, if you touch it it will zap you to the plane of shadow.
The word 'think' would be used to create suspicion, so that the "casual players" would experiment and do things similar to the "involved players."