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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 5610773" data-attributes="member: 30936">Beats me, you're the one saying that. I'd have the guard call someone to escort you to the meeting room or whatever.You're the one calling "and then..." screwing over the players. In the first, there's likely no reason to consider the guard's reactions, because the Impress or Intimidate check will be incrediby damn hard. If they make the check with a sufficient margin, then he'll let them in. There may be some hemming and hawing and perhaps some more checks if they don't generate enough of a success to shift the guard's Disposition enough. Which is fair because they beat the guard's resistance check, but he still likes or fears them less then he fears the baron. It's also how my rules say those skill checks work.Trust me, it is. They never tell stories about the easy victories the next month. It's when it all goes in the crapper and they get out by the skin of their teeth with fast, effective, entertaining improvisation that they talk about it years later.Like I said, look at Leverage or The Sting or any caper movie.Nothing goes to plan and the team has to improvise. If it went perfectly, the story would be boring. While games are different and have different narrative needs and structures then film, television, or literature a lot of the techniques and principles are usable. Hamlet's Hitpoints explained that nicely. It's like John Wick's Die Hard effect. The players want to be beaten, battered, bruised, and bloody at the end. They also want to win. Part of my job as a GM is to push them as hard and far as I can with plot twists, conflicts, reveals, etc while still positioning them for a triumphant victory.Are you sure you're not just seeing those bad experiences in anyone who doesn't just let the PCs succeed at everything they want and to dictate the world to the GM? You're the only one saying all plans fail, all attempts fail so we can go on a power trip. Bad plans fail because they're bad plans or improperly prepared plans. Nothing more or less. I can understand you being leery of anything that implies the GM actually has power at the table if you've been constantly screwed over by bad ones, but nothing anyone's said here is bad GMing, despite your claims.Frankly, it's insulting how you keep implying that me, JC, etc are somehow jerks and horrible, evil abusive GMs just because we don't agree with you on how far player agency extends after making a successful skill check.Now, some GMs are jerks, but in my case, and I'm willing to bet the other GMs responding to you aren't either based on what they've said. If I was the jerk, abusive GM you seem to think I am, I wouldn't have full tables.By all means though, if you like never having your plans go wrong, the GM rewarding any idea rather then good ones, and the players controlling the NPCs and world instead of the GM, no one's forcing you to play at my or anyone else's table.</blockquote>

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