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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8275181" data-attributes="member: 82106">Lets not get too focused on just one type of scenario and basically one skill. I think it is safe to say that there are different sorts of scenarios and different skills which are more or less vulnerable to this. Physical type "test of skill" type skills clearly fall into the category of 'vulnerable to failure generating a complete mission fail'. Those kind of failures are most often and most naturally seen as things like falling, dropping something, making noise, being spotted, etc. Some may, in some situations, color as "you tried, you failed, zero progress" which could be blocking, or not only if some provision was made to go some alternate way (magic often being the alternate, though letting the next best bonus PC try is a solid option). When you get into knowledge skills then you have a bit different set of scenarios. They're much more naturally going to lead to something akin to FF. You make the Investigation check, you might just not find any clue and be blocked, and I'd say this is ONE common scenario, but the other is you simply have to proceed with less information. You don't know if there's a back entrance to the dragon's lair, oh well... Then there are the ones that typically gain you advantages of some sort, like maybe you want to build a trap, you might fail, OK you just gotta live with that. Now, any of these could turn out to be catastrophic if your scenario depends 100% on it, or at least blocking. It sure would be much nicer if the system would contextualize these checks in such a way that the narrative naturally progressed in a you're in some more trouble than before kind of way. That is ALWAYS going to be the technique that gets you the best results, overall, except in a very very small set of cases. I don't buy that people are getting 'freedom' by not having a system that produces successful games. IMHO if you go back to all really successful groups and campaigns, you will find these techniques, in some fashion, made the table process work.</blockquote>

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