Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5722943" data-attributes="member: 42582">In these situations, the way I avoid those "hiccups" is to introduce external elements - like the unexpected street fair, or the bird crapping on someone's cloak during negotiations - which then explain the outcome that has been mechanically determined without needing to posit that anyone (PC or NPC) suddenly became incompetent.The "cost" of doing it this way is being prepared to sever the link between making a check where a PC's skill number is used, and interpreting that check as reflecting nothing but the PC's effort within the fiction. You have to be prepared to narrate the outcome of the check using director's stance.I think Burning Wheel is an interesting example of this. Like RQ, RM or classic Traveller it has very simulationist-seeming character building mechanics, with detailed skill lists, intricate interaction between skill bonuses and stat bonuses, rules for improving by doing and by training, etc, etc. And even it's action resolution mechanics begin in a simulationist way - the GM is urged, for example, to set difficulties based on the objective difficulty of the situation in the gameworld, and not in any sort of relative way (so very different from 4e, HeroQuest, Maelstrom etc).But then its action resolution mechanics take a very non-simulationist turn. In particular, when a skill check fails in BW, the GM is urged to focus not on failure or success at the task, but failure or success at the intent. Thus, failure on an influence check might represent not an objective failure of your guy to be convincing, but rather that it turns out that the NPC knew and hated your father, so turns out to be more hostile to your offer than you expected. The GM is actively encouraged to use this sort of external, meta-gaming approach to describing the outcomes of checks - and especially failed checks - as part of the techniques for keeping the game moving.A very ingenious blending of traditional simulationist, and indie, sensibilities.(Another ingenious thing about Burning Wheel is this: to advance by doing (rather than by practice) requires a certain mix of checks at a certain range of difficulties. So players have inbuilt incentives to sometimes take on hard checks, and sometimes easier checks, without the GM having to manipulate the ingame situation or the mechanics. In my view, a very clever way of resolving the problem of only ever having the best-suited PC tackle a given challenge.)</blockquote>

Verification