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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9516504" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes, that's why I mentioned "say 'yes' or roll the dice".The 4e DMG2 sets out a version of that principle on p 83, in the context of a discussion of skill challenge adjudication/resolution:Each skill check in a challenge should accomplish one of the following goals: *Introduce a new option that the PCs can puruse, a path to success that they didn't know existed. *Change the situation, such as by sending the PCs to a new location, introducing a new NPC, or adding a complication. *Grant the players a tangible consequence for the check's success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.This is something that I and (of other participants in this thread) [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] posted about a lot 10+ years ago. The failure to apply this principle seems to be why some people weren't able to run satisfactory skill challenges.The same sort of principle can be applied in games that don't use "say 'yes' or roll the dice" - Apocalypse World is a fairly well-known example. The basic principle in AW (and Dungeon World follows AW in this respect) is that if the result of a player's roll for a move is 6 or less, the GM can make as hard and direct a move as they like, operating in combination with the fact that "nothing happens" is not a GM-side move in AW (or DW).There have been discussions on these boards in which a parallel concern to that with unsatisfactory skill challenges has come up in the context of DW play: posters who are GMing DW have been failing to make moves other than "nothing happens" when players in their game fail rolls to Discern Realities or Spout Law; and they have been puzzled by the fact that this has been making their game suck a bit.Even going back to Gygaxian D&D, you can see an application of the idea that players making moves has to have consequences: listening at doors, trying to open them, etc, takes time and/or creates noise, and these are both triggers for wandering monster checks.We can then talk about what counts as an advantage?In D&D, it's probably uncontroversial that gaining a level of experience is an advantage.In D&D, I would say it's mostly uncontroversial that finding a big bag of gold is an advantage - though at mid-to-high level it sometimes may not be (hence why I say it's only mostly uncontroversial).But to go back to the Odin example, why is learning the location of the McGuffin an advantage? How does this improve the player's position? The questions aren't rhetorical - I'm not disputing that it might be an advantage. But it would be interesting to have that explained.Likewise changing the situation significantly. Why do we want to make that hard? Or set limits on it?I rely on it. And I don't really see why a game can't either. A Penny for My Thoughts is a RPG-adjacent storytelling game that has rules and guidelines to help handle this.</blockquote>

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