My main problem comes from people with charisma: 8 on their sheet trying to "just talk it out" and succeeding on the strength of their real life personality. I know you're personable in real life Alex but you dumped charisma now sit down and let someone else have a go.

When playing a face I usually sound like "I flash my most disarming smile and, fully sincerely, tell him if he surrenders no harm will come to him." Third person narration. I don't usually want to go line by line.

I struggle with this, I make a minor effort but what am I meant to do when my high Cha, high Diplomacy character is more charismatic and diplomatic than me? :( I either skimp on the RP or do some very unrealistic RP as my awful unconvincing wording magically convinces the NPC anyway.

The barbarian isn't going to just say "I roll athletics" without explaining what they are trying to achieve. Same for persuasion. "I try to convince the mayor we are experienced enough adventurers to assist" is enough to let the GM know what the intention is and give context for the NPC's possible reponse.

I had a game in Middle School that involved describing how I was supposed to arrange a ladder to climb up the side of a wall. We went back and forth for over an hour, because my DM kept insisting I couldn't turn the ladder sideways.

Now, if my players want to deliver a particularly clever bit of prose or describe a novel engineering technique, I just give them a +2 on the roll and that's that.

If Brayden says his character tries to lift a heavy rock and he proceeds to deadlift 150kg to demonstrate, heck, I'll give him inspiration.

Sentences like "Can I roll for persuasion?" or worse "I perception the room" are one of my biggest pet peeves coming from players. Tell me what you want to accomplish, I will tell you whether and what you need to roll. I've mostly managed to train that behavior out of my players, thankfully. As a newbie DM I used to use die rolls as a crutch -- "this is a dice rolling game, so the more dice we roll the more fun we're having, right?" I thought. I also hated saying no to my players, so stupidly high DCs were a way to shift the blame onto the dice for my players' failures. As I've gained experience, I run a much less dice-heavy game. I very often just let my PCs succeed with no roll required.

The one case where I don't mind the players asking to roll is when they ask to "INSIGHT CHECK" à la critical role; it's always fun to see the players so passionately engaging with NPCs.

In my opinion if the player doesn't tell me their Intent, what they are trying to achieve, how can I assess difficulty? Assess danger? Imagine consequences? I also want the tools for the task they set themselves upon. For the barbarian weapons used, positioning etc. For the talker their arguments. Acting out is not necessary.

Or just use an apocalyptic principle: "to do it, do it". If the character doesn't do anything that triggers a move no move is triggered.

I dunno, i appreciate being able to gloss over certain mundane actions with the shared understandings of common actions. Shopping, for instance, takes loads more time when everyone's in storyteller mode, and you never really know how many more sessions you've got before a scheduling error comes up. Best to keep the routine parts brief.

Schmoozing a merchant for a better deal is best handled with a persuasion check, assuming getting a good deal isnt an important part of the campaign.

Now I want to play a one shot of extreme DND where every skill check has a real life equivalent. Making a DC 25 knowledge check? The answer is in one of these books, you have 15 seconds to look through them.