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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8159576" data-attributes="member: 42582">Turtling or "safe" play is something I'm not really interested in. It makes play drag, particularly in systems that have a reasonable rate of failures.In our Traveller session today the key PC and offsider PC were trying to steal the NPC rivals' air/raft to enter the alien pyramid complex. The world they're on is very cold, and so vacc suits are required. Neither character has vacc suit skill, and both players failed the roll required to manoeuvre safely in vacc suits. I narrated this that they had arrived at the rivals' pinnace (where their air/raft was parked), were having trouble regulating the oxygen and temperature aspects of their vacc suits, and basically had to run back to their own base or open the pinnace airlock.The player of the offsider opted for the second option. Which precipitated further mayhem as the NPCs came to find out who was infiltrating their vessel.There is no XP or advancement system in Traveller to encourage action over safety, so this outcome was more the result of the personality of the player feeding into the established dispositions of the PC in question. But there are aspects of the system that help here. For instance, there are subsystems (eg social resolution), elements of character build (especially Social Standing including some characters being nobles), and aspects of the setting that flow from this, which make "fail forward" narration feasible. So taking a risk, and failing, doesn't mean "game over".I think this "freedom to fail" which is different from "freedom to lose" is an important component of player agency in non-gamist RPGing.</blockquote>

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