Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Lanefan]

This seems to assume that "the plot", if it is to exist at all, must be authored by the GM

Well, unless one's intent is to run a complete sandbox with no ongoing backstory whatsoever, the plot or backstory has to come from somewhere...and in a homebrew setting that source has to be the DM, at least to start with.

But that assumption is simply false. And not just false in an abstract or theoretical "it might be otherwise" fashion, but in the very concrete "I am currently GMing 5 campaigns - two 4e, one MHRP, one Cortex Fantasy hack and one Burning Wheel - in which there is no such thing as "the plot" in your sense.

Then how do the characters/players know what's going on and-or what to do and-or what impact their actions* may have beyond the immediate? If there's no plot or backstory at all they're operating in a vacuum. And if there is a plot or backstory then it's come from you, the DM, even if only to get things started. What happens to it after that is randomly dependent on many things not least of which are dice.

* - before these actions are done.

Yes. But if there response is to say that, for a campaign to have a story there must be a plot that is created by the GM, then I'm going to explain why I disagree. Because I play in campaigns with stories, and they do not have a plot that was created by me as GM.

Then where did the plot come from, if one is present at all?

I would also guess that you tend to think of "story" as something comes out after the game has been played, as a retrospective reflection on the events of play.

It's a bit of both. The DM probably has a story or plot in mind going in, and some of it even might see play, but the actual story of the played game isn't complete (and thus can't be fully told) until the campaign is over.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

In a sandbox, more or less by definition, the GM does not author the main events, nor contrive them into an interrelated sequence. To the extent that such a thing occurs at all - and it may not - it is done by the players.

In which case I'd suggest the DM is doing her own game a disservice.

Here's why:

In a true sandbox the PCs are liable to explore around until they find something worth doing (i.e. an adventure of some sort) then do it, move on, explore around, repeat. Any DM can run this. But a good DM will dig through the many various bread-crumb elements of what happens and find connections, and thus build a story out of it...assuming the players do not; and sometimes the DM will see different connections between the bread crumbs than the players do. In any case, to me there's never anything wrong with a DM - once she's realized a trail of bread crumbs has formed during her game - seeding a few more bread crumbs into the mix and seeing what becomes of them.

It only becomes railroading if the characters can't choose to ignore them.

Similarly, on the face of it a "flexible plot" is not a plot at all. Unless the "flexibility" is confined to minor variations and colour (which is the case eg in at least some APs), in which case it remains GM authored and the flexibiity is merely superficial.

For the purposes of this discussion I'd suggest ignoring AP's entirely. They're a different breed of animal, and much more familiar with boxcars than the type(s) of game we're talking about here.

Correct. That is why, as I posted somewhere upthread, I GM according to "say 'yes' or roll the dice". If nothing is at stake, say 'yes'. But if something - what, in the OP, I called an outcome - is at stake, then a check is framed and the dice are rolled.

If the request has nothing to do with anything at stake then saying "no" is no big deal. Also, some of those may contradict established backstory. But not the large diamond - so that would call for framing a check and a roll.

A small battalion of my greedier PCs just pricked up their ears at the thought of a world where they can make large diamonds appear just by looking for them.

Lan-"diamonds are forever"-efan

 

[pemerton]

The OP makes a pretty bold statement, declaring that saying "no" to a player initiated idea is railroading. That's going to rub people the wrong way.

Sure. In the OP I expressly stated that I imagine others will see things differently.

But in replying to your posts I haven't taken any particular issue with your differing view from mine over what is a railroad. I've objected to your claims about what always must be the case (around plot, GM authorship, etc).

 

[pemerton]

How can they [ie GM judgements] not [sometimes determine player success or failure]?

I guess it turns (in part at least) on how strongly determine is being used.

I took it to be fairly strong, as in make it the case that the players succeed (or fail, as the case may be). If you mean influence or condition, then I agree. Eg as I said in the OP, in setting a difficulty for a check to notice a container in the room, I have an influence on the prospects of player success or failure.

But if you really do mean make it the case that the players succeed or fail, then I'm still curious as to why. For my part, and to answer "How could they not?", it seems to me that if the GM sets a DC in accordance with established principles for the game, and those principles are in themselves coherent (eg they prescribe DCs that are amenable to success on the part of the players), then the GM is making judgement calls that don't determine (in the strong sense) player success or failure.

 

[pemerton]

Well, unless one's intent is to run a complete sandbox with no ongoing backstory whatsoever, the plot or backstory has to come from somewhere...and in a homebrew setting that source has to be the DM, at least to start with.

The two most recent campaigns I have started are a 4e Dark Sun game, and (last weekend) a Cortex Fantasy Hack game. Here are links to session writeups for Dark Sun and Cortex fantasy.

In the Dark Sun campaign, here is how we worked out the temporal and geographic starting point for the campaign:

As the final part of PC building, and trying to channel a bit of indie spirit, I asked the players to come up with "kickers" for their PCs.

From The Forge, here is one person's definition of a kicker:

A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."

For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"

It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character to reflect changes.​

In my case, I was mostly focused on the first of those things: an event or realisation that the character has experienced just before play begins, which thereby propels the character into the game. The main constraint I imposed was: your kicker somehow has to locate you within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I want to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.

The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:

I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​

So that answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened.

In other words, a part of the process of a player writing his PC's backstory settled that the game started in the arena at the moment of the sorcerer-king's assassination.

In the Cortex game, the starting point was worked out in this way:

Last week I bought the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide and, knowing that one of our players would be in the US for a couple of weeks, I wrote up some PCs to run a Heroic Fantasy session.

<snip>

The PCs were deliberately conceived so as to be suitable either for a Japanese or a Viking setting; when we played yesterday the players all voted for vikings, and so that's the way it went.

<snip>

After people chose their characters, and we voted on vikings over Japan, the next step was to work out some background. The PCs already had Distinctions and Milestones (that I'd written up, picking, choosing and revising from the Guide and various MHRP datafiles) but we needed some overall logic: and the swordthane needed a quest (one of his milestones) and the troll a puzzle (one of his milestones).

So it turned out like this: the Berserker (who has Religious Expert d8) had noticed an omen of trouble among the gods - strange patterns in the Northern Lights; and similar bad portents from the spirit world had led the normally solitary scout (Solitary Traveller distinction, and also Animal Spirit) to travel to the village to find companions; and the troll, a Dweller in the Mountain Roots, had also come to the surface to seek counsel and assistance in relation to the matter of the Dragon's Curse; and, realising a need for a mission, the village chieftain chose the noblest and most honourable swordthane of the village - the PC, naturally - to lead it.

And so the unlikely party of companions set out.

So the basic logic of the game - what it is that the PCs are trying to achieve - was established by the players, again as part of the process (in effect) of establishing PC backstory.

This is why I simply don't agree that the heavy listing of setting has to be done by the GM.

I play in campaigns with stories, and they do not have a plot that was created by me as GM.

Then where did the plot come from, if one is present at all?

The plot is created in play, by the play of the game.

Eg the PC arrives in the bedroom just as the mage he is hoping to take back to his dark naga master for sacrificial purposes is decapitated by an assassin. Knowing that his master wants to spill the blood of this mage, the PC thinks "I need a vessel to catch the blood". The player declares, as an action, "I look around for a suitable vessel to catch the blood, like a chamber pot or a jug." A check is framed and resolved, and it succeeds. So now that player has a chamber pot, and is collecting blood.

That's plot, and it doesn't depend upon GM authorship.

After some action dominated by the other PC, the two PCs escape the tower, the first one carrying the vessels of blood (the chamber pot having been established via a check, it's mere embellishment to also allow that there a jug as well and hence two vessels' worth of blood) and the other carrying two bodies - the decapitated mage, and the unconscious assassin (whom the body-carrying PC is hoping will help summon the spirit of the decapitated mage for interrogation purposes).

The PCs are now moving through the town. As just described, one of them is carrying two bodies. I call for a check - there is definitely something at stake here, so I'm not just going to "say 'yes'". The check fails, and so I narrate an encounter with the watch. The PCs try to persuade the watch to help them carry the bodies; it fails. The watch suspect they are murderers.

That's more plot, not authored by the GM. My contributions are (i) to call for the check - which is not an act of authorship, but an act of pacing management - and (ii) to narrate the consequence of failure. (Had the initial check succeeded, the PCs would have got their bodies and blood across town without trouble; had the persuasion attempt succeeded, the watch would have helped them with their body-snatching.)

The vessel-carrying PC tries to summon a spirit of the sky to push the watch members away, so that the two PCs can flee. Again, something is at stake so I'm not just gong to "say 'yes'". I call for a roll; it fails; the angry sky spirits hurl a bolt of lightning at the PC. Another check (analogous to a saving throw) establishes that although the lightning hurts him slightly, he doesn't spill his vessels of blood (again, something is at stake and so no "saying 'yes'").

That's more plot, once again emerging from the interaction between (i) PC action declarations, (ii) GM judgement about whether or not a check is needed, and (iii) narration of the consequences of failure of the framed check.

Notice also what is not happening. There is no GM decision that no vessel can be found. There is no GM decision that the bodies are too heavy to carry. There is no GM decision that persuading the watch to help with body-snatching is too implausible. There is no GM decision that the sky spirits won't hear the PC's call for help because (say) to carry blood in an open vessel is an act of desecration. At each point, the players choose what response their PCs make to the situation that confronts them; a check is framed; and the check is then resolved, with the players getting what they wanted on success and the GM getting to narrate the consequences of failure.

That's one example of how a game can have a plot without the GM writing one (either in advance or on the spot).

A small battalion of my greedier PCs just pricked up their ears at the thought of a world where they can make large diamonds appear just by looking for them.

Your PCs seem to be making a category error! If the PC looks for a diamond they might find it - after all, there are diamonds in the world and there's no apriori reason why one of them may not be right here! - but it is not looking for it that makes it appear. It is looking for it that results in it being found. (Which is a pretty typical causal process.)

At the game table, there is a question of how the group decides whether or not the shared fiction includes a large diamond here and now. A dice roll against a DC is as good a method as any, and better than some.

(This is all assuming that the presence or not of the diamond is an outcome - something of significance - and hence merits a rolling of the dice.)

Then how do the characters/players know what's going on and-or what to do and-or what impact their actions* may have beyond the immediate? If there's no plot or backstory at all they're operating in a vacuum. And if there is a plot or backstory then it's come from you, the DM, even if only to get things started.

Again, simply not true in my experience. 15-odd years ago, in my OA Rolemaster campaign, a major plot point was the constables of heaven seeking to arrest one of the PCs - a fox spirit - for breaking the rules surrounding his banishment from heaven to earth. The whole idea that the character had been a heavenly spirit banished to earth was made up by the player - up until the player made up that bit of backstory, I assumed that the PC was a fox who was trying to turn into a human (like the movie Green Snake).

I've posted examples in this thread of players providing the core material and focus for the framing of the game: through authorship of PC backstory and goals; through action declarations in pursuit of those goals.

How do the players know what is going on and what is possible? From the logic of the agreed setting; of core tropes; of what the mechanics permit; of what is written into their backstories. For instance, in the Cortex session the player of the party leader, during negotiations with a giant chieftain, spent a plot point (roughly = a fate point in the Cortex engine) to establish, as a resource, a giant shaman in the chieftain's hall who agreed with the PCs about the need for the giant chieftain to help the PCs with their mission. He knew this was possible, because (i) the rules allows him to spend a point to create a resource, (ii) he has the Social Expert speciality and so is adept in making friends (ie Social resources), and (iii) we already knew that shamanic types are part of the setting because (a) vikings and (b) a seer was one of the pre-gens that I had written up (although no player had chosen to play it).

I'm not saying that what I've described in this post is the only way, or the best way to run a RPG. But I know, from experience, that it is one way. (And is my favourite way.) And it doesn't depend upon the GM being sole or primary author of backstory, and it doesn't depend upon the GM to "lead" the players to adventure, and it doesn't depend upon the GM having authority over the plot. It does depend upon the players having a solid handle on the genre/trope/theme parameters of the game, and the GM having a solid handle on what the PC goals/drives/motivations/etc are. (For a fuller elaboration of these requirements, see my quote of Eero Tuovinen in post 88 upthread.)

EDITED TO ADD:

Then why do you need a DM?

Seriously.

The players can determine the odds of success just as well as you. The table can agree on the probability and roll. If you're not making any decisions and just randomly determining events in the game, you're redundant. Your players can replace you with random encounter tables and agreed upon probability.
Dump your DM screen, roll up a player character, and move to their side of the table.

I actually find this very hard to take seriously. It seems to completely disregard most of what I've posted in this thread.

(1) How can the players determine the odds of success as well as me? They have an obvious and deep conflict of interest.

(2) What would make you say that "I'm not making any decisions"? Narrating consequences of failure, and framing the situation, are key decisions. But they're not decisions that establish the plot.

(3) What makes you refer to "randomly determining events in the game"? No where in any post have I referred to random determination of events. In fact, it's all deliberate. Hence a thread about GM judgement calls. (The players roll dice, which determines whether they succeed or fail. But the consequences of success aren't random - they've been chosen by the player. And the consequences of failure aren't random - they've been chosen by the GM.)

(4) What GM screen? The only time I ever used a screen is for an hour or two of a 4e game after I got one in a GM pack. I thought I'd see what it was like: it was a pain and seemed to add nothing useful to [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]'s handy cheat sheets.

(5) This particular post makes me wonder whether you have any experience of playing the sort of game I'm describing, or even have any exposure to it as a phenomenon. It makes me wonder what you think games like Marvel Heroic, Burning Wheel, Dungeon World and the rest of the PtbA stable, etc, are actually about.

 

[pemerton]

A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game.

Yes.

Nothing in that denotes an absence of a plot.

I didn't say otherwise. I said that a sandbox game may not have a plot. That is to say, it may not have main events, as in a film or novel, forming an interrelated sequence. It may be a series of largely unconnected events with little narrative cohesion. I suspect that quite a bit of classic dungeon crawling was like this. And some contemporary OSR gaming is like this also: there are events (in the sense that play occurs), but not an interrelated sequence of main events as in a novel or film.

Just not a linear plot. But, when the campaign was done, the players will be able to describe and summarise the plot of the sandbox.

All plots are, by definition, linear - they are sequences of main events. (I'm putting to one side extreme avant garde novels and films. No one in this thread seems to be articulating that sort of approach to RPGing.) When the players summarise the events of the sandbox, they will fit into a linear (probably temporal) order.

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Even a sandbox campaign may have various sequences of events planned by the GM that PCs may or may not interact with or that may affect them. Is there some reason those aren't plots? They just may not be the only plot or main plot.

Well, they might be "plots" in the sense of "plans made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful" (the other main sense of the word offered by Google) - in this sense, a plot is near enough to the same thing as a conspiracy.

But from the point of view of the story elements of a RPG game, what you describe sounds like backstory. But it's only a plot - in the literary sense - if it is "the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence." If the PCs never interact with said backstory, it can hardly be said to constitute the main events of the RPG considered as a work similar to a novel or film. If no one at the table but the GM knows or cares about them, they're manifestly not the main events. The stuff the PCs do is what makes up the main events of a RPG campaign.

In a true sandbox the PCs are liable to explore around until they find something worth doing (i.e. an adventure of some sort) then do it, move on, explore around, repeat. Any DM can run this. But a good DM will dig through the many various bread-crumb elements of what happens and find connections, and thus build a story out of it...assuming the players do not; and sometimes the DM will see different connections between the bread crumbs than the players do. In any case, to me there's never anything wrong with a DM - once she's realized a trail of bread crumbs has formed during her game - seeding a few more bread crumbs into the mix and seeing what becomes of them.

It only becomes railroading if the characters can't choose to ignore them.

But the same point I just made to billd91 applies: if the players, and hence their PCs, ignore these "breadcrumbs" then, ipso facto, they are not elements of the plot of the game, because they are not main events. The GM may be amazed by the beauty of the backstory s/he can see, but that doesn't make it the plot of the game. Hence my remark that "In a sandbox, more or less by definition, the GM does not author the main events, nor contrive them into an interrelated sequence. To the extent that such a thing occurs at all - and it may not - it is done by the players." If the players are free to ignore the GM's backstory, then only they can bring it about that that backstory is some component of the main events of the game.

The DM can present the plot. The villain, the situation, the overarching story. What the campaign is about. Say, finding the Rod of Seven Parts. Or destroying the One Ming in the fires of Mount Dread. Really, every single event occurring in the world that is happening without direct input from the players.
A railroad would be if the players have no real choice but to follow the DM's plan. The can't reject the quest or find an alternate path. There's no choices, and a best only the illusion of choice (no matter if they turn left or right they have the same encounter).
However, the plot can be flexible. Going left or right leads to very different results. The players might surprise the DM by doing very different things than expected and having cunning plans. They're still going to the same destination (from A to B) but they're taking a very different route than planned. It's not a railroad so much as a flowchart with a set Start and Stop, but a infinite number of branching paths.

If the "plot" is flexible in the way you describe, then it seems that ipso facto it's not a plot. It is one of several candidate plots. Until the actual sequence of main events is established, the plot isn't established.

But what you describe is still, in my view, a railroad. If the end point is already known to the GM, then however colourful and exciting the detours along the way, they are ultimately being driven by the GM, with a pre-given outcome in mind.

The idea that a game in which the GM chooses the villain, the overarching story, what the campaign is about, might not be a railroad is extremely foreign to me. I take it for granted that the players will choose the villains (ie their PCs' enemies), that what the campaign is about will be some sort of collaborative thing, and that the overarching story will be established via play. That's how I've been GMing since about 1986.

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Player agency is a vital part of sandboxes. There's choice. Opposed to railroads where there is none

<snip>

What you seem to be describing is a player-driven campaign. Which is something entirely different. It's unrelated.
Sandbox and railroad occupy an X-Y axis on a chart. The amount of player agency in the story would be a Z axis.

<snip>

Games have a range. Something can be mostly a sandbox. Or be 75% sandbox. Or start on the rails and become a sandbox.

If player agency is a vital part of a sandbox, then I don't see how it can be on a Z-axis that is independent of the X-Y axis from sandbox to railroad.

I simply don't see the rationale (other than unfamiliarity with other RPG styles) for asserting that sandbox and railroad form a spectrum. The modern indie-RPG scene is a reaction against White Wolf-era railroading and metaplot. These games are designed to deliberately differ from those railroads, precisely in being player driven. Gygaxian dungeoneering and Traveller-style sandboxes are also alternatives to railroading. But there is no spectrum, any more than hot dogs and pizza are on a spectrum while hamburgers are on an independent axis. In the latter case, they are all contrasting forms of bread-based fast food. Two involve buns (hot dogs, hamburgers). Two involve sausage (hot dogs, pizza). In other words, there are overlapping points of resemblance and difference. But no spectrum.

Likewise in the RPG case. The indie style has something in common with sandboxing (namely, being player driven rather than railroaded). But they are very far from the same (eg the indie style aims to yield plot as an essential outcome of play; the sandboxing style treats plot as an optional extra, and doesn't try to guarantee that play will yield meaningful plot). Railroading, like the indie style, wants to yield plot as an essential outcome of play - but by very different means. And like the sandboxing style, the railroad style is likely to emphasise GM-led worldbuilding. Just as with bread-based fast foods, there are overlapping points of resemblance and difference. But no spectrum.

And the indie-style RPGs are certainly nothing like X% railroad, 100-X % sandbox. Even if that's coherent - and I'm not persuaded that it is, unless as a description of the proportion of episodes of play over time exemplifying each approach - it is nothing like an accurate description of the modes of play that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] described.

If in your game 3/4 of the table were mostly passive and one player made all the decisions and drove all the action that would very much be a player-driven railroad.

No it wouldn't. If one player drove all the action it might be a poor game, but it wouldn't be a player-driven railroad, because that player wouldn't know what was going to happen. That can't be known until the actions are declared, the dice rolled and the consequences thereby established.

In theory, you could have a player-driven sandbox, but you could also have a player-driven railroad where one or all players have a campaign planned in their head and the DM is just working towards their goal.

Can you explain how the "player-driven railroad" you describe would work?

How would the players communicate to the GM what is in their head? Who would control worldbuilding? What would the point of action resolution be? Why would the players even declare actions for their PCs, if they know in advance what the answer from the GM is going to be?

I'm having some trouble envisaging what you have in mind here.

 

[Imaculata]

I think by definition, a railroad is when the players want to do something, and the DM obstructs this by forcing something to happen that he had planned all along.

-A good example is my wizard trying to surrender to the bandits and not fight them, and the DM forcing a battle anyway.
-Another good example is the DM declaring that the villain got away, despite him having no logical way to do so, and blocking the players from catching him.

I've seen the term railroad-campaign being thrown around a lot in this discussion. I would assume this means a campaign in which the DM is constantly obstructing the players, and making sure that nothing goes off script. I want to be sure that we all agree that this is different from just playing a linear campaign. If the DM decides to run a linear adventure module, and the players are all along for the ride, then its not a railroad campaign, because no one is being obstructed in their actions.

 

[Maxperson]

True for the latter, but I disagree on the former. See, the Marquis died in an instant, due to a violent explosion that would kill any normal mortal. Now, technically I could have decided that he was wounded, and allow them to roll heal checks. But I decided that it killed him instantly, and also buried him underneath a lot of rubble. So, I don't feel I was taking options away from them. The guy simply died before they could act, which is kind of how an assasination often goes.

I'm not talking about after the explosion. I'm talking about the players/PCs doing something unexpected and finding the explosives in advance. There have been many times when I've set something up that I thought would result in a death or some other effect, only to have a player announce that they are concerned about something and will be searching the area before the event happens. Would you allow them to prevent the death in such a circumstance? If no, then you are railroading them.

 

[Maxperson]

It's completely in a DM's purview to provide paths and encouragement on where they want the story to go. If the players don't groove with that direction then the DM can change what they're doing to better accommodate the players wishes.

I'm not saying that railroading doesn't exist. I've been down that road a few times. But the idea that the DM is an impartial arbitrator there only to serve the whims of the players in their game is too far the other way. DMs typically put hours into creating their game so they can tell a story they thought of. They have a right to promote that story in play.

There is a difference between providing a path and encouragement, and forcing the players down a path. Setting up the Marquis to die is providing a path and encouragement. Telling the player that a search of the area including the Marquis chair automatically fails to turn up the explosives so that he can die like you plan is forcing the players down that path. Forcing the players down a path is railroading.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes. In the post to which you replied, I said that "sole-authored fiction, the author deliberately introduces failures and successes as part of the modulation of the pacing of the story". But a RPG, at least as I prefer to play it, is not sole-authored fiction. There are multiple participants (GM, players) performing different roles, and the emergence of drama is a function of the interaction of those roles.

I brought up sole authored drama to show you that drama can occur without the need for a die roll. In my game, my saying yes the bedpan was there would not be sole authored drama. Since I'm setting myself into your example, I as the DM had not considered a bed pan when creating that event. The player brought the bed pan up and I said yes. That's the two of us jointly creating that drama without a die roll.

I'm not sure what you mean by "thing", here.

Whether or not an object is present, or whether an action will be successful or not.

In the scenario I described in the OP, it's not uncertain, once the PC has the blood in the vessel, whether or not the blood stays there. That is to say, success is binding as far as the fiction is concerned, until the player declares some other action, itself of significance, that puts that success at stake.

Thus, carrying the blood downstairs in the chamberpot does not require a roll. Nothing new is at stake - having the blood be downstairs rather than upstairs does not have any dramatic significance - and the player has already established the PC's success in obtaining the blood.

I thought the roll was to see if the chamber pot/bed pan was there.

But when a player declares an action that does put something of significance at stake, then I don't see that rolling causes a lack of drama. Eg, as happened in my session, carrying the vessels of blood through the town while one's companion is lugging two bodies, one decapitated, can put the original success at stake. The player has declared some new action of dramatic significance - getting the blood from A (the tower) to B (somewhere where the character can take the next step in respect of it) - and so the dice come out again. (There are complexities here arising from party play. Eg who rolls the dice when two PCs are moving through town, only one is lugging bodies, but the two PCs are resolved to stick together. I'm eliding that complexity for the moment.)

See, if I can get a vessel with water from point A to point B without a roll, then I can get a vessel of blood from point A to point B without a roll. Adding a roll because the blood is important to my PC is irritating, not dramatic. The drama comes from the gathering of the blood and the later interaction with my mentor. Will he approve of wizard blood? Will he be angry? Will the chamber pot be a sufficient vessel? Those things are dramatic.