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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 7079823" data-attributes="member: 6802765">[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION],When you "ask questions and use the answers", how do you decide which player(s) get(s) to provide the answer? Is it first-come-first-serve? Round robin? Collaborative? Also, what critetia do you expect the players to use when coming up with their answer? What they would find fun individually? What the other players would find fun? Free association with the current storyline? Logicial inference? Whimsy? I'm having hard time figuring out how I would begin to answer such a question as a player. This is in part because I don't understand which OOC GM responsibilities (if any) implictly attach to such on-the-spot delegation of content creation from the GM to the players.I describe the direct consequences of failing the task that the check was modeling. I stick as closely as possible to consequences that would be expected in the real world, so that players can rely on their real-world experience to accurately judge the stakes of their actions in advance. When the game world predictably responds to actions analagously to the real world, this contributes to verisimilitude.The players aren't going to get what they want as a result of a failed check, but the failed check usually doesn't preclude them getting what they want via other means or more effort. For some checks, that won't always be possible. Failure on a check to catch a falling vase, for example, is likely to frustrate the players' intent in catching it, but only as a direct consequence of that failure when the vase, forseeably, shatters.The point of the check was to determine, in a case where there was doubt about the outcome, whether the action in question succeeded or failed.Much of the content of my games is generated on the fly. If the players decide to follow a plotline I hadn't added deliberately (and this happens all the time when the party finds something unexpectedly interesting and decides to pursue it) this does indeed require me to make up a mystery or plot as I go along. Often, I can do this seemlessly, staying one step ahead of the players, without letting on that I've switched to wholesale improv. If it's a situation where I think I need a little planning time first, or I think I'm too tired to pull off full-improv well, I'll simply admit that this is an area of the game I've only got a vague sketch of, and call for a 10-minute break while I fill in the details.I do a small amount of prep work for each session (I do more at the start of a new campaign), based on my best guess(es) of what the party will choose to do. If I'm wrong and my work isn't used that session, I'll keep it around in case the party follows up later. If they don't, I can file off the serial numbers and use generic parts of it (e.g. a dungeon layout) to supplement future on-the-fly content.</blockquote>

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