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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6210029" data-attributes="member: 9789">This made me laugh.  <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  It still makes me laugh every time I read it!That's definitely the sort of thing I dislike, although obviously it can be much more subtle.  But as a GM I don't even want to be put in that position.  I don't want to have to tell the character that you suddenly had some weird bad luck for a reason that I believe makes the story more interesting, but the player might think, "this GM is a jerk."  I mean, I have my own sense of what is interesting and what makes for good pacing and interesting interactions, but it still feels like I'm taking some of the players' voices out of the mix when I simply dictate:  THIS HAPPENS.  Oh, and here's your booby prize.Emerikol mentioning the trap door thing is interesting because in the book, it specifically mentions that example along with two ways to deal with it which I think are radically different but the book is like, "eh, either way."  One is to allow the character suddenly standing on the trap door to roll to avoid it (like a normal trap) and the other is to tell the character they fell through the door.  One still puts the agency in the hand of the player; the other is basically mild railroading (in my opinion).Perhaps another way to think about GM intrusions - and one that allows the "devil's bargain" to be much more clearly in the hands of the players - would be to combine them with the "fail forward" idea.  For example, using the mustache disguise idea:  maybe the character needed to roll a 12 to fool people with the disguise, and they got an 11.  I could ask them:  well, do you want to go ahead and run with it, knowing that your disguise is a little shoddy and might fall off at some point?  I could even hand them the XP up front to sweeten the deal and let them know if they succeed on the encounter fast enough it might not even come up.  It'd have to be a pretty big bribe, because most players I run with probably wouldn't take a sure chance of failure.  But a reasonable chance at success AND some XP?  Done.  (You can't really rely on this as a consistent XP source, though.)Overall, I like the idea of disguising GM intrusions as discoveries.  Like the trap door:  you discovered a trap door!  That's worth XP.  Ok, yeah, you had a chance to fall through, but in the end the XP for discovery helps hide the sting of the randomness, and it doesn't seem like I'm just being capricious quite as badly.  Same thing might happen in battle sometimes:  you discover this creature can do this extra thing when it's enraged!  That's worth XP.  And now the party will know they should focus-fire the thing down once it starts to get hurt if they fight one again.Also, it's a good way to cover for bad writing (which I think is pretty rampant in the "first adventure" in the back of the book), where if the characters don't find X (a trap door, a way to pick a lock, etc.), the action grinds to a halt.  (Seriously, there are no less than 3 different places where a roll of 15 or 18 is required to advance the story, although special training and help can reduce that.  But still...)  In the best case, you wouldn't write the story that way, but everyone can write themselves into a corner every now and again, and it gives you an "out."  But like the "fail forward" idea, you can't rely on this as a consistent source of XP - thus, focusing more on discoveries.</blockquote>

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