Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8649917" data-attributes="member: 16814">Yup.&nbsp; If we take the declared action as attempting to pick the lock on the safe (a very cromulent 5e declaration), then what can we expect we get on a success?&nbsp; We pick the lock, open the safe, and discover the contents (as imagined by and provided by the GM).&nbsp; If we fail?&nbsp; Now the GM feels as if they need to make that failure count in some way, and will be narrating a failure not at all related to the action of picking the lock, but instead some larger issue that is cared about.&nbsp; It's amping the failure state with no corresponding increase in the success.&nbsp; The player cannot make what's in the safe be what they want on a success, because that's still the GM's purview!This is why I characterize it as a thin cover for &quot;rock fall&quot; injections.&nbsp; It's always going to be worse for the PCs, it's always going to be arbitrary and not related to the understood stakes of the action, and not really changing anything, because the GM already has the say on what's in the safe (for example) so do they really need this to say that the safe is empty at all?When the game is already nearly entirely GM Says, especially for setting/adventure material, conjecturing a way to make things more painful for the players by dint of justifying a larger set of consequences seems like it's just looking for more excuses to punish players.All that said, the idea of consequences on failure is 100% fine -- but they need to be either very clear what's at stake by explicit statement or clearly indicated by the fiction.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8649917, member: 16814"] Yup. If we take the declared action as attempting to pick the lock on the safe (a very cromulent 5e declaration), then what can we expect we get on a success? We pick the lock, open the safe, and discover the contents (as imagined by and provided by the GM). If we fail? Now the GM feels as if they need to make that failure count in some way, and will be narrating a failure not at all related to the action of picking the lock, but instead some larger issue that is cared about. It's amping the failure state with no corresponding increase in the success. The player cannot make what's in the safe be what they want on a success, because that's still the GM's purview! This is why I characterize it as a thin cover for "rock fall" injections. It's always going to be worse for the PCs, it's always going to be arbitrary and not related to the understood stakes of the action, and not really changing anything, because the GM already has the say on what's in the safe (for example) so do they really need this to say that the safe is empty at all? When the game is already nearly entirely GM Says, especially for setting/adventure material, conjecturing a way to make things more painful for the players by dint of justifying a larger set of consequences seems like it's just looking for more excuses to punish players. All that said, the idea of consequences on failure is 100% fine -- but they need to be either very clear what's at stake by explicit statement or clearly indicated by the fiction. [/QUOTE]

Verification