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Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7293915" data-attributes="member: 6919838">i have had gms who did that... like i said had to roll to use phone book in TRAVELLER once... only once. Did not return for next session.But games like that of sorts were described in the role of the dice portion. some games use mechanics very heavily. personally not so much my cup of tea  but i have played them,But i have also played in many games where narrative and mechanics go hand-in-hand -in-glove. In my game, i typically have things "scoped out" in a sort of "gold-silver-bronze" breakdown. DEFAULT stuff are there for just showing up... this is where the ESSENTIAL info will be, the clues needed to just have the story move. There will be ample clues from at least three directions for each of these. These will be basically automatic.BRONZE will be there for basic expected efforts, following the suggestion to go talk to troll-killer bob, chatting with the lawman, etc. these will usually be usually pivotal in helping the party frame their direction, but not strictly necessary. So, DEFAULT and BRONZE need no dice rolls, just players engaging the story.SILVER is where the players make additional effort and utilize their strengths to get more info, more details, more help or whatever and gain a moderate degree of success on what amount to rather mundane roll difficulties. "Convince Troll-Killer" to loan us his maps of the warrens to the south by getting on his good side." now, sometimes that might be done by deed "we do him a favor" or sometimes it can be done with engaging conversation that shows him how it would be a good thing. The former would involve a scene or two, maybe even an action one, or maybe just repairs (and likely as not mechanics on some level.) The latter would again be a "scene" of them drinking etc but with a check to see how it turned out. this is not going to be a case where weplay out the whole night's chat over drinks of course.GOLD is where you get to much more difficult efforts and challenges to gain even more result. maybe you are breaking into the temple or maybe you are pushing troll-killer to join you etc or maybe you spend more time there and do bob several favors.In this case, the skill checks at the appropriate points align with the characters efforts and the combo can yield additional gains. But the key aspect is these are, for my games, intended to be extra gains, not MANDATORY elements. As you can see, the "stakes of failure" are not loss of something you have or a new setback (which some seem to think necessary for a roll) but the loss of time and lack of gain. one of the reasons i use this approach and insist on having mechanics and narrative and choices go hand in hand in my games is that i have seen a lot of times, in various games mine and others, where a player will narrate a great scene and great doings for his character that, frankly, are out of line with the character's stats. The most egregious case is the case where the player is a well spoken fellow but his character has minimal social skills (say average or sometimes even negative.)  in many cases, i have seen GMs reward that average character with better social results than a correspondingly well skills character played by a rather quiet player. I bet some of you can imagine giving a player advantage on rolls if he describes a good social scene, right? Well i consider that advantage on a straight D20 check is a pretty strong modifier against say a what a skilled character with less skilled player might get on the character (51% chance of success for DC15 is right at the same as +4 from skills and attributes total.) meanwhile, a little later in combat, that "average social player. they reap the mechanical reward directly from their +2 in something else and the socially skilled character sees some drawbacks.thats why i never want to see mechanics "pushed to the side" any more than i want to see them "the only thing that matters."it encourages and rewards the skew between player capability and character capability when your performance takes stage and your character sits backstage.There is good and bad back and forth safeties and pitfalls with any approach.</blockquote>

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