Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7142549" data-attributes="member: 22779">I see your point.  And it's a good one.For me though, the failure wasn't at the point where they forced their way into the meeting.  Since I actually wanted them to get into that meeting, then well, the how of how they got in isn't all that important.  They got in and that's what I wanted them to do.  Granted, their success makes the next part more difficult since the NPC is now hostile instead of indifferent, but, again, they're succeeding or failing based on their own choices.  No, where I made the mistake, in my view, is that I chose setting fidelity over table fun.  Had I backed off a bit on the whole "kick them out" and let them actually talk to the cult leader, then I could have proceeded the story along.  They challenge the cult leader, presumably (since it didn't actually happen, I'm guessing here) mentioning the fact that the cult had been slaughtering innocent people along the way, then I could have stepped in with the chieftain and demanded more information about the dangers the cult represent.  In other words, instead of just automatically ruling failure (which is what I did), I could have used their success to guide the game back towards something that would be a lot more fun than, "You get kicked out by the chieftain so now no one will talk to you.  You can't warn the townspeople and everyone gets slaughtered as you slink away in the night".See, I don't really make a huge distinction between skills and combat.  I would never rule autofail in combat, and I'm pretty sure no one else would either.  "You didn't describe your attack well enough, so, you miss the monster" is something that no one says.  So, I don't really make a big distinction here.  The notion that a player will simply try to game the system and force skill rolls into every situation just doesn't come up.  That's a somewhat separate issue.  And, one of the nice things about the 5e system is that skills are often not terribly high, so, autosuccess is off the table in most situations.  Unless the player laser beam focuses on a particular skill, to the detriment of everything else, it's very unlikely that you can get your bonus high enough (at least until very high level) that it overrides the die roll.Like I said, I have no problem whatsoever with a player calling for a skill check.  Doesn't bother me in the slightest.  If you want to do X, and you tell me, "I try to do X with Y skill, here's my check", it's pretty rare that I would have any issue whatsoever.  Then again, as a I said, I try to be more referee than story teller.  I WANT the dice to inject story.  Where I failed here was ignoring that and over riding the dice in favor of what I felt was plausible in the story.  So, for me, the bottom line here is, don't prioritize setting fidelity over table fun.  Just because I don't think this is a good idea doesn't mean that it's not a good idea in the game.  Intimidating your way past the guards is a different story than what I had in mind, but, that doesn't make it a bad story.  Being rude to the chieftain is a different story than what I had in mind, but, that doesn't automatically make it a bad story.  The only bad story, AFAIC, is when a scenario goes pear shaped and no one enjoys it.</blockquote>

Verification