Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8263404" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Other way round. Momentum is capped for the players*. GM threat isn't.If a roll early on gets a bunch of potential complications, the GM can wind up with a lot of threat to use, and the players need to generate more to survive/succeed at the scene goal... if the characters are weak, this can wind up with characters literally unable to do anything due to needing 3 extra successes over the difficulty (standard diff is 2) unless they get extra dice. Which, due to failure, means an empty momentum pool*, and the extra dice to even have a chance requires generating even more threat, likely fails, and more dice also means a much higher chance of complication (5d20 is 22%, vs just shy of 10% on 2d20). The punish failure element: If you don't succeed early, you cannot generate a momentum pool. Which leads to the GM getting more threat and/or the players having more complications, making it harder still to pull out of.If you succeed early with really good rolls, you can wind up with a "must spend" momentum making the next few tasks also easier... but due to the cap, and the scene end drain, early success isn't as beneficial as early failure is punishing.If the GM is careless, inexperienced, or otherwise not paying attention, the threat pool can wind up so large that it's clear that the only reason the players are having success is that the GM isn't spending the threat.So, the snowball is when early failures leads to massive complications and large threat piles, making success clearly a matter of the GM "letting" the players succeed by not playing the threat.The worst complication possible is a threat range extension. 2d20 TR=20 is 9.75% of one or more complications.3d20 TR=20 is 14.2725%4d20 TR=20 is 18.549375%2d20 TR=19 is 19%3d20 TR=19 is 27.1%4d20 TR=19 is 34.39%Threat range can be dropped all the way down to 16+. Certain adventures have a clear "increase the threat range" situation, and that is, in itself, a potential long term complication that is VERY much going to cause the threatpile to grow, possibly past the point of using it without killing the PCs.The risk is much reduced in Dune vs in Star Trek Adventures, since the spends by the GM are actually much more limited, so the threat-pile growing isn't a sure sign the GM's going easy on you.Neither is a fatal flaw. It is, however, a situation to keep an eye out for, and to not give in to it as a GM.Also, expanding the threat range is something to not do carelessly, as it and steep difficulties early is when the snowball has happened.Note that many traditional games also do the punish failure  mode... Fumbles... but few do lasting impairments on fumbles. The storygame side generally pays you for accepting complications, but not 2d20. I did have one session snowball in Dune during playtest. It resulted in Baron Harkonnen becoming a personal enemy of the players... because there really wasn't any softer complication, I already had 20 threat on the table, and the freakishly bad 5 complications was pretty close to "Abelard declares Kanly" level of bad. (Especially since they were on Geidi Prime.)Don't get me wrong; I love the setting, and having bought the PDF, it's adding to my love of it. Just be aware that the snowball effect can happen, and spend threat in ways that allow players to dig out of the hole.-=-=-=-=-=-*some 2d20 games have individual pools; others have a single group pool.</blockquote>

Verification