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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9667479" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I see what you’re saying, in that groups often run 1s and 20s as causing outcomes beyond mere success and failure, which often involve affecting the narrative in ways beyond the direct control of the character performing the action. It’s often not just “you performed this action exceptionally well/poorly,” but something more along the lines of “this crazy thing incidentally happens to result in a better/worse outcome.”I think the reason this is more tolerated within D&D circles than other so-called narrative mechanics is because it usually doesn’t involve a decision by the player. It happens randomly, so D&D players are more comfortable with it than they would be if the player got to consciously decide to turn a success into a critical success or failure into a critical failure, perhaps by spending some limited resource, or by giving the DM an opportunity to introduce some complication later or something along those lines. As [USER=18]@Ruin Explorer[/USER] observed, some DMs are uncomfortable with players being able to affect the narrative beyond the direct actions of their characters. I also think some players don’t like to make decisions about things outside their character’s direct actions. Some players prefer to immerse themselves in their character by trying to make their thought process align as close to 1:1 with their characters’ as reasonably possible, and being asked to make a decision about the narrative that their character would have no way to directly cause breaks them out of that synchronicity. But something extra-special or extra-awful randomly happening 5% of the time doesn’t cause the same feeling, because they didn’t have to consciously choose for it to happen.</blockquote>

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