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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 7857992" data-attributes="member: 93670">Thank for clearing that up, it makes things easier to comment on knowing it's not too confusing. I think the example is a bad application of using a skill.  Partly because getting to the dawnmote seems to be the main goal& too nebulous, but also because it's boring "Lets go this way" might as well be a coinflip & doesn't need or really benefit from a knowledge check without wayy too much information to make the example useful.  So lets turn it around & add some spicy action <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Situation: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players found the dawnmote(mcguffin), but the nazi* fey who were the former owners are not happy about it being stolen last session.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Last session ended with the party successfully escaping from the fortress where the dawnmote was  with Alice** using her survival skill to lead the group on a mad dash into the dark forest of unsettling trees... Three days have since passed in the blink of an eye for reasons of making this interesting <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">During those three days, the party is informed that the bad guys have been hunting them & the well armed large patrols seem to be closing in.  Clearly this is not a situation that can be handled by simply rolling stealth or something because there are an insane number of Nazi fey  at the fortress's defense & the queen thinks nothing about throwing away the lives of a few hundred if it means recapturing the dawnmote.  This so far is literally all the party knows.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Alice has an idea to use survival to find an herb or plant they can use to make a scent masking paste or similar that will throw off the displacer beast*** trackers being used by the fey thinking that this will help loosen the knots in that net closing in on them.... So she brings up the idea, the gm asks why on a few things & agrees the twist is cool so after a successful nature/survival/whatever check, the gm declares that Alice is able to find a small clearing in the dark forest of creepy trees with a good amount of orcish catnip... and a pack of Horrid Wolves.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> that the party deals with the horrid wolves & grinds up the orcish catnip using Bob's herbalist tools</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Having been smeared in Orcish catnip.the Nazi-fey tracking units are having more difficulty closing in, but things are still going poorly because there are still two hours left in the session even after dealing with the Horrid Wolves.Chuck has been wondering why he got woodworkers tool proficiency in a d&d game, but is getting into things & likes this new gm style hes seeing because now he's getting ideas... Having watched <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80183187" target="_blank">Klaus</a> the other night, he remembers a scene where the characters make a speedy sled. Chuck brings up using his woodworking tools to make a sled, the forest is too thick to sled through, but maybe that ice field will work if Bob wildshape's into a reindeer or something to pull it+.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">So the Party starts cutting down one  of those unsettling trees & finds out that it's some irrelevant monster or infested by them.  After killing the monster, Chuck fails miserably at making the sled by rolling a 2.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">No Chuck doesn't just fail, that's boring. & like everyone else in the party... Chuck is capable person leading a dramatic life.  The sled is built, Bob is harnessed up, everyone hops on & they start moving as fast as bob can dash, things seem good...  Unfortunately they find bob's mistake when they get to the ice field because the rails sound like <a href="https://youtu.be/FYRFQk2PjO8?t=106" target="_blank">this</a> screaming across the ice & now there are hundreds of nazi-fey streaming out of the forest making it clear that stopping to fix it would be quite a horrible idea.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lets say the session ends there.  Next week picks up & there are some mounted shifters  gaining on the party's screaming sled... Unfortunately, these are the shifters that Dave got in a bar fight with a couple weeks back & they are still upset because he killed one of their magebred direwolves++ causing the <a href="https://youtu.be/59b6mQmkBTA?t=6" target="_blank">chase scene</a> things are unfolding into.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The exciting combat between the party on a poorly made sled & the shifter totallynotjustamotorcyclegang is irrelevant, but lots of exciting & cool stuff happens. Eddie comes up with a plan to work with Frank the artificer in order to hack+++ the casting of his prepared expeditious retreat spell from self to Bob the reindeer.  The GM agrees this is cool but that it's not going to be an all the time thing & it might not always be possible to do that kinda thing because magic in d&d is just too powerful to be making pretzels out of all the time.  The pair work together & between Eddie's charisma(arcana) explaining the bits of the spell & Frank's Intelligence(artificer's toolkit) things were no quite good enough Bob the reindeer winds up with a backpack that's got jets & istead of Eddie's spellslot fully powering the spell, so is Dave's very body, He's going to wind up with 3 or 4 points of exhaustion when they get away to safety but that's a problem for next session & the players should tune in next week to see how it gets resolved ;D</li> </ul>* Nazi's are a great generic bad guy for examples, their motivation is always irrelevant & they are always bad <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />** Alice Bob Cindy Dave, Eddie, Frank are great names because they are the alphabet & can later just be A B C D etc <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />*** Why  displacer beasts instead of hounds or something?  Alice has an ability to see through illusions & thinks they are cool.  For purposes of example, the GM never mentioned displacer beasts & they were not present in the fortress <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />+ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5At3bTi04M" target="_blank">Reciprocity</a> is absolutely critical for these kinds of plans to be interesting. it should always lower the DCs or give better results because now you have two or more players being awesome from one action rather than just one player fixing the problem again.  IME running open fate games, that one player is almost always the one who really gets how to think outside the box instead of just using a skill creatively.  Without reciprocity pushed in by either that player or the gm you wind up with the sidekick cheerleader squad bored.  Unfortunately, the difficult part is getting enough of the group to realize the awesome powers they have with proactive ideas collaborated with the gm & table to keep the game from becoming boring.++ In many games,, Dave might say "Uhh.. I don't remember that... when did that happen?"  but Dave & the GM know that this is fitting with Dave's character & more importantly we now have  a chase scene!+++ Success at cost is great and all, but it really doesn't work with standard heroic fantasy as the d&d mechanics are structured.  It's important to have the ability to make rules exceptions & come up with interesting unplanned applications of skills & abilities that might color outside the lines or you wind up with skill challenges like <a href="https://youtu.be/cpmUxfS4LF8?t=867" target="_blank">this</a>.  Unfortunately that sort of thing is so far outside the realm of what d&d  or traditional top down ttrpgs lay out that a lot of players have extreme difficulty even considering it & by extension their PCs wind up being puppets who do whatever people tell them to & their character goes from being a capable individual leading a dramatic life to being a bland boring solution drawn from <a href="https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/Hammerspace" target="_blank">hammerspace</a>  as a olution& immediately rreturned there because unlike dave the reindeer who was doing awesome stuff while the party was dealing with the direwolf rider gang, these players are a distraacting wet blanket covering a bazooka with zero ability to cause any dramatic action like the direwolf gang Dave's hot headed nature created.</blockquote>

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