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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8274811" data-attributes="member: 93670">Your questions are a bit um... "off" from my reasoning & it feels like trying to explain with the questions as written would just make a hash of things & obfuscate meaning.  As others have already mentioned, there is always some truth to be discovered.  That truth can be anything from "the player had no reason to think they should ask if this very specific thing was a factor" to "character bob is not a moron & things just don't play out in neat 6 second chunks  one after the other so would have seen where things were heading & taken steps to change tracks before crashing into that wall" .  In both cases those are an issue because players are imperfect observers of their PC's view of the world but a good gm can use these kind of tools to create a more interesting narrative that leaves players feeling more like participants than spectators even when I the GM effectively take control over their PC for an instant.I picked it up from running fate & regularly got people asking us what we seemed to be so animated playing & continued using it to some degree even while running AL with even the most ardent "but AL rules say!!!" types seeming to favor it over "yea you fail and blah" since I've not gotten any complaints.   The first game I really used it in was an early fate game (dfrpg), but thinking about it I guess we used it in  3.5 too since players doing things to <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/giving-an-ad-d-feel-to-5e.679228/post-8241363" target="_blank">setup +2/-2 type stuff proactively</a> would often destroy/consume  the things creating those bonuses in the process of using themMy uses of it are far from every instance (even in games that support this kind of thing by default).  The important question to consider is what will be more interesting & potentially lead to a more interesting narrative or session.  It's also important to make sure the players don't feel like mere spectators that occasionally get to hit things, doing this kind of stuff can make them more likely to engage with the world since they don't wind up feeling like attempting to is ultimately going to be pointless due to that being out of scope from GM plans or a trap waiting for a bad roll to spring.  It's also not always in PC favor but NPCs & the worl makin use of it tends to make the players aware of things they might nt otherwise knownIt's hard to give an example of how I use it without going into wayy too much detail for it to be meaningful but I can describe it with an analogy.   If you look at my fate play example from elsewhere[spoiler="the example"]Players break into an office building after hours to steal a macguffin, we don't care how or why for this but assume there is reason to the players & campaign. During the breakin players find out that the bbeg is there tonight gm tosses fate chip in the pot gm:"well obviously he would have the same idea as you guys given that tonight is the big company anniversary party & everyone is across town at the event"... This is reasonable & everyone agrees but players really have very little way of stopping a GM declaration but can try to negotiate some changes if it seems to clash with established aspects & things in play. After encountering the BBEG a fire starts & players are frantically trying to put it out so they can get the macguffin instead of having it burn to cinders. Things are not going well with the fire right off the bat for whatever reason so Bob tosses a fate chip in the pot to declare there was one of those mop buckets filled with water in the hall back there. Fire is handled & the bbeg uses n action to tag bob's mop bucket off camera so comes back with the janitor bob effectively wove into plausibly existing when the players think they are good with the macguffin. GM slides a fate point at Alice & says "doesn't that janitor look a lot like that one homeless guy your mother teresa character has been helping as part of [whatever character aspect]". Alice can spend one of her remaining fate points to accept the compel & put herself/the team behind the 8ball in the hostage situation to gain herself a fate point that can make a huge difference. Alternately alice can spend one of her remaining fate points to refuse it & give up possibly using it later to make a bigger difference when it matters most.[/spoiler]It's a common scenario used to show how aspects work in fate but maps not so well to d&d once you start exploring it.  Players don't have any way to create them & it might be problematic introducing fate style aspects into d&d but I as the GM can do things like declare that bucket of water is something that could reasonably exist because the building burning down over a bad roll would be bad for the narrative/session because the blaze would leave the players feeling & actually kinda getting railroaded in a pointless fail state they nor I can easily work around.  Obviously different complications & solutions would be in play during d&d but the example works well enough as  an example to compare to.I forgot where the gm's best friend stuff(I linked it above) was in the 3.x books & never went digging for it till someone pointed out the location recently so I might try leaning more on that the next campaign I run so the player can do things to proactively set themselves up for success more often.  Ideally it & bonus/penalty types  should be the flip side of a SWC/FF type mechanic as the two really go hand in hand or its justsome flavor of  fiat plot armor & roll fudging the players are helpless to draw on.</blockquote>

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