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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7079643" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's one instance, drawn from the game referred to in the OP (and these events happen not long before the events of the OP):Two PCs drug the assassin/wizard, so that they can get to the tower and abscond with the (unconscious) mage who is resting there recovering from extreme injury. They decide (for reasons I didn't understand at the time, and still don't) to go there via the catacombs, even though they don't know the way, or even know for sure that there is a way into the tower from the catacombs. The players fail a Catacombs-wise check. So I tell them that, after some hours of wandering through the catacombs, they are well and truly lost. But then, as they come to a place near the surface, with an opening about head-height onto the street, they hear a taunting voice: the wizard/assassin has regained consciousness, and is heading to the tower, and - having seen them in the catacombs as she passes through the street to the tower - is mocking them! (The third-person plural pronouns in the preceding two sentences straddle players and PCs - I was addressing the players, but addressing them as their characters. I mention this mostly because it is something that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] might be interested in, connected to the "advocacy" relationship between player and PC.)That was a surprise: the players knew that, with the failed check, something adverse to their PCs' aims would occur. But they weren't expecting it to be the sleeping potion wearing off!Another example, also one that I've mentioned upthread, and from the same game: when the players fail a check in navigating through the Bright Desert to the Abor-Alz, the failure narration was that, when the PCs arrive at the first waterhole on the edge of the hills (where water falls down and pools in a rock, before spilling over its edge and draining away into the desert sand) they find it fouled.It turned out that this had been done by a renegade elf. The elf was introduced into the fiction by me, to give effect to the failed check, and to connect that to the elven ronin's Belief that I will always keep the elven ways. An elf who fouls waterholes clearly is not keeping the elven ways - but how does one deal with such a filthy personage while keeping the elven ways? Later on, when the PCs failed to find the mace they were looking for in the ruined tower, the player of the mage PC (who was the one who instigated the search, having the mace as an element of backstory) speculated, "Of course the mace is going to be with the renegade elf." Which it was - a twist arising from the failed check, and the interweaving (by me as GM) of various story elements.In my 4e game, failure is less common (4e is far more generous in it success rate than Burning Wheel) and so twists mostly arise in other ways. One way is out of the various strands of fiction that are generated during skill challenge resolution: on <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?312367-Actual-play-another-combat-free-session-with-intra-party-dyanmics" target="_blank">this occasion</a>, for instance, the way that a skill challenge unfolded meant that the PC "paladin" (a fighter/cleric of Moradin) was obliged, out of his sense of honour, to seek a mitigation of punishment for a murderer, even though this contradicted his sense of justice. (Other, less honourable, PCs made a promise in his name that they intended not to keep; but before they could summarily dispatch the beneficiary of the promise the "paladin" PC turned up on the scene and so the murderer NPC was able to hold him to the promise made in his name.)Another way is simply framing. When the PCs <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?299440-Exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-Sunday" target="_blank">travelled back in time</a>, they helped a young apprentice mage. A hundred years later, in the "present", <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?309950-Actual-play-my-first-quot-social-only-quot-session" target="_blank">the PCs learned that</a> (i) the baron of the city they were in had a niece who was the spitting image of the apprentice, (ii) that said niece was engaged to the baron's adviser, whom they knew to secretly be an evil necromancer, and (ii) that the niece hadn't been seen for a few days. They (naturally) formed the conjecture that the necromancer had done something horrible to the niece, and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?313724-Actual-play-the-PCs-successfully-negotiated-with-Kas" target="_blank">set out to rescue her</a>. The players were genuinely shocked when, at the end of their search for her, they found out that she was a necromancer, performing some ritual over a sarcophagus.The shock was further compounded when they learned that the apprentice, too (who was the great-grandmother of the niece), had become a necromantic servant of Vecna: Jenna Osterneth, with whom they have since had a relationship that fluctuates between alliance and enmity (a bit like Magneto and the X-Men).In my BW game I will also use framing to establish surprises, although probably a bit less liberally than in 4e (it's a different game, with different expectations). The first time, in the actual course of play, that the mage PC saw his (NPC) brother was about five or so sessions ago. That was a dramatic moment, and unexpected: the PC had gone to the docks because he had heard that a ship was arriving with a holy man on it, and he was cursed with mummy rot and wanted to be cured. As the Abbot Bernard stepped off the ship, the PC was struck by how much Bernard seemed to resemble his brother; and then he looked across the crowd and saw, on a rise on the other side of the docks, his brother looking down on Bernard with a mix of longing and contempt. The player wasn't expecting to see his brother; nor to learn that his brother was a bastard son of the holy man.That moment led to a new Belief for the PC: Now that I have seen Joachim [the brother], I do pity him.Can you elaborate? From what you say, it's not clear. Eg what is the connection of the players to the lizardfolk, the beholder, etc.If I were to run something like this - the closest I've come is the time-travel scenario mentioned earlier in this post - my main concern would be (i) linking the resource expenditure choices made in the "dream" to the post-dream situation, and (ii) relating the outcomes in the dream sequence to the beholder situation. (So I probably wouldn't just roll randomly for charm, fear etc.)</blockquote>

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