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What, if anything, was Aedhros trying to achieve in any greater sense here? Or was he just being a pill, making the harbour official miserable for no good reason? I mean, this is the sort of shenanigans I sometimes have my characters get up to as well; but they're never "the real point"...

And if the roll represents your best attempt even after trying again for as long as you're willing or able to give it?

Sure. The first three on that list are entirely 100% related to the task being resolved - all good. The fourth is a more open question and almost certainly quite situation-dependent. In the specific instance of there being a sleeping cook in the kitchen, the two discrete resolutions (pick the...

My issue with that is that whenever heck in a handbasket isn't on the table the players always auto-succeed and get what they want. I want the far-more-realistic situation to be in play that there's no added complication, but they still can't get what they want; which is the very point of a...

What about Option C, which is to have them roll because if they fail they don't get what they want (in this case, that'd be entry to the house). This is what I just don't get: this incredible degree of objection to having the characters get stuck in place for even just a moment. Things don't...

If I write an adventure out fully, it's done well in advance of anyone playing it and I read it over and over again in hopes of catching those contradictions and omissions. I find that to be more an issue when running a published module; as if I wrote it I've in theory got the advantage of...

It was. Frustration can, however, sometimes also be and-or lead to good fun.

Sure, this is fine (though personally I'd include a small % chance the Ogre is at neither location but is in transit between the two or is somewhere else entirely). It's the pre-establishment of those 75-25 odds that matters; you've given the Ogre a couple of logical places to be and assigned...

Somewhat dependent on situation and-or intent. If the players are specifically trying to avoid the Ogre it's flat-out bad DMing to put it in front of the PCs no matter where they go. If the players don't know about the Ogre but go a different direction from where it's been placed, it's bad...

The best way I can put this is that having some player-side visible prep - setting maps, history, cosmology, maybe brief notes about a few key NPCs e.g. who the current King and Queen are, etc. - gives the whole thing a bit more sense of permanence and solidity, if that makes any sense. If it's...

Huh. I never tell them how long they have unless there's an in-fiction way of their knowing it, and wouldn't consider this nearly important enough on its own to bring up in a session 0. What they do get told right up front is that as far as possible player knowledge and character knowledge...

Depends. If the PCs are the only ones who know about a particular threat to the setting, maybe there is a risk if they fail. Or maybe not. But it's a nice discouragement to running yet more "save the world" adventures, I'll give it that. :)

If in-character prep doesn't and can't improve your root chance of there being no complications, then why bother? All your prep can do, it seems, is deny the GM access to some specific complications; meaning she has to dream up something else if "complication" comes up on the roll. What effect...

Of those, I'm always fine with 11. 12 can be cool too: they expect an Ogre but only find its looted corpse, clearly slain by swords - instant adventure hook if you want it to be. The rest of those aren't really how I roll; though if I was using any of them there'd be an option in each case...

I think we're in broad agreement here, though the devil is in the details. :) Where I prefer the granular approach, within reason, as it helps keep things that should be unrelated (e.g. the pick-locks attempt vs whether the cook is awake or asleep) separate. If the GM doesn't roll for the NPCs...

1e had some rules and guidelines (in the DMG, I think) around recruiting and treatment of henches, but I think pay was intended to be negotiated each time between the hiring PC and the hench.

It's a problem the moment you need even one replacement, for any reason: --- an existing PC gets captured long-term and its player needs a temporary or permanent replacement --- a player for whatever reason decides to retire a PC and bring in something new --- real-life-driven player turnover...

Following on from my previous post: Yet another very related question is whether rules and game mechanics apply equally to PCs and NPCs within the setting. If yes, then the PCs are by definition more akin to their NPC peers; if no, then the PCs are by definition exceptional because they've got...

Exceptional in this case would seem to imply "stands out like a sore thumb" among its people. Another thing to consider is whether the PCs are assumed to be the only adventuring types in the whole setting* or whether adventurers and-or other PC-comparable individuals are more common than that...

Which is fine, but then there'd be light in the kitchen both for the cook to see by and from any cook-fires she had going. Odds are very-to-extremely high the thief would notice this as light coming through the keyhole and-or cracks around the door before even starting to pick the locks (the...