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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6815813" data-attributes="member: 42582">To answer that last question: it may not be any different.Part of the skill of GMing in a scene-framing/"fail forward" game is judging the boundary between resolution of one scene and opening of another. This is a matter of declared intents and stakes, implicit intents and stakes, and reading the table's  mood.For instance: if the door is known to be the last barrier between the PC and freedom; and the player declares the lock pick attempt as a dramatic final attempt at escape; so that the stakes (implicit if not explicit) are "Successfully pick the lock and you'll be free; fail and you'll be caught before you get out"; then it would be a GMing error to have the door open only to find a hostile monster on the other side.Conversely, in my BW game last Sunday the sorcerer-assassin snuck into the wagon from Urnst and picked the lock of the chest in there, so as to steal the wedding gifts. It would have been unfair to tell the player, once the check succeeded, that there is no treasure in there. But it would have been fair game, I think, to have a monster as well (the classic snake or scorpion, perhaps), because that would not have contradicted the stakes (either implicit or explicit). Though as it happened I didn't do anything of that sort, because (in my view) it wouldn't have added anything to the game in terms of challenge, drama, pacing etc.Well, if the intent of the check (implicit or explicit) was we make it safely across the desert, then finding the waterhole fouled does contradict that intent, as the PCs haven't made it safely across the desert. They have to do extra stuff to get the water they need.In my game, as best I recall the shortage of water meant that another Fortitude check was required - which has implications for spell casters (BW limits casting by requiring a roll with each spell to see if Fort is lost), plus (I think) resulted in at least one PC falling unconscious due to exhaustion. Plus, by looking for the elf who had fouled the waterhole, they got exposed to more risks (a knife thrown in the dark). And then another check (Tracking, I think) which also failed, resulting in the well at the ruined tower having been filled with rubble by the dark elf.The technique that scene-framing, "fail forward"-style games use to generate the unkown, the dynamic of dangers and successes, etc, is the back-and-forth between success and failure. (Part of what gives 4e fiction a more "glossy" veneer than BW is that it has a higher ratio of successes to failures.)In HeroQuest revised, this is built right into the DC-setting mechanics, which raise the DC based on the number of prior consecutive successful checks.BW uses "objective" DCs, but has other devices to ensure regular failures, namely, making reliable success dependent on expending limited meta-resources.There is no need to introduce or narrate in new complications or unknown things as part of successful checks; failures are where this happens. Plus the framing of new scenes - as I said earlier in this thread, achieving an effective balance between resolving a declared action and framing a new scene is part of a GM's skill in this sort of game.</blockquote>

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