“There is nothing there.” -> “You don’t see/perceive anything.”
Even if there isn’t something there, keep the players on the edge and guessing how good their skill worked. And it makes it just a little bit less gamey if the character doesn’t have some divine insight that there really is nothing there instead of deciding that their skills just show that there is nothing there and be happy with that - or not.
Of course, extend that to everything. Pull away from the facts of the game and put more ambiguous language in.
Something I got from Spoony which I really liked:
“There is nothing there.” -> “You don’t see/perceive anything.”
Even if there isn’t something there, keep the players on the edge and guessing how good their skill worked. And it makes it just a little bit less gamey if the character doesn’t have some divine insight that there really is nothing there instead of deciding that their skills just show that there is nothing there and be happy with that - or not.
Of course, extend that to everything. Pull away from the facts of the game and put more ambiguous language in.
I also like misdirection that doesn’t result in anything.
“And where are you standing right now?” - “Ok, just checking.”
After insight check on an honest npc: “As far as you can tell, he’s telling the truth”