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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8938393" data-attributes="member: 29398">Perhaps, but I've been trying to get at something a step earlier here: where a prior failure is assumed by the scene where there wasn't any roll or opportunity to avoid that failure.To elaborate:&nbsp; Player states &quot;I'll spend the day discreetly watching the warehouse looking for entrances, guard patterns, shift changes, that sort of thing; all the while trying not to get caught or shot.&quot;&nbsp; No dice are rolled.Thinking it a soft move, the GM says something like: &quot;OK.&nbsp; After a few hours a guard approaches you... &lt;then speaks in character as the guard, asking what I'm doing here&gt; ...&quot;What the GM just did there was arbitrarily decide my attempt at being discreet has failed (a big part of being discreet is not being noticed or attracting attention, and clearly I've done both)...or, perhaps less charitably, has railroaded me into a situation I-as-character (and thus as player) didn't want as an outcome.Now if I'd been given, say, a roll to maintain my discreet-ness and come up with partial success (on outright failure I assume guards-plural would be coming at me with handcuffs! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) - and-or a roll (which I then fail) to notice the guard's approach in time that I could innocently turn my face away, wander off, and avoid any conversation - all would be cool; and now I gotta talk my way out of this in character and-or make what I can of it.&nbsp; Absent those chances (or similar) to avoid the undesired scene, however, I posit the scene as presented is invalid.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8938393, member: 29398"] Perhaps, but I've been trying to get at something a step earlier here: where a prior failure is assumed by the scene where there wasn't any roll or opportunity to avoid that failure. To elaborate: Player states "I'll spend the day discreetly watching the warehouse looking for entrances, guard patterns, shift changes, that sort of thing; all the while trying not to get caught or shot." No dice are rolled. Thinking it a soft move, the GM says something like: "OK. After a few hours a guard approaches you... <then speaks in character as the guard, asking what I'm doing here> ..." What the GM just did there was arbitrarily decide my attempt at being discreet has failed (a big part of being discreet is not being noticed or attracting attention, and clearly I've done both)...or, perhaps less charitably, has railroaded me into a situation I-as-character (and thus as player) didn't want as an outcome. Now if I'd been given, say, a roll to maintain my discreet-ness and come up with partial success (on outright failure I assume guards-plural would be coming at me with handcuffs! :) ) - and-or a roll (which I then fail) to notice the guard's approach in time that I could innocently turn my face away, wander off, and avoid any conversation - all would be cool; and now I gotta talk my way out of this in character and-or make what I can of it. Absent those chances (or similar) to avoid the undesired scene, however, I posit the scene as presented is invalid. [/QUOTE]

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