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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9316051" data-attributes="member: 86653">Yes, of course. I like being surprised, too. The other part of the equation is the fiction. The fiction generally makes it obvious how things should go. So most of the time you don't have to decide and you don't have to fall back on mechanics. But, importantly, the mechanics you fall back on don't need to be complex. They can be astoundingly simple.Why not? The player could simply declare they were hiding and based on the fiction you could simply declare they were successful. People run games like this all the time.Why? There's almost zero need for mechanics. If you want them, sure. Knock yourself out. But calling it a need is wrong. The fiction can decide the vast majority of situations without mechanics. You as the referee can decide the vast majority of situations not obvious from the fiction. It's only when you want to be surprised by the outcome or when you don't know what the outcome should be that you need some way to decide. And that can be anything, really. Checking a game mechanic is one option among many. You could poll the players, draw a playing card or a tarot card, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random" target="_blank">pull up a random wiki page</a>, pick from a chart or table, roll some dice...legit anything. You could also, I suppose, default to checking the massive tome of overly complicated rules for some mechanic.Those are still target numbers and in almost all cases I can think of the referee has the ability to apply modifiers. The PbtA success ladder is still target numbers. BitD uses number of successes. If you have a specific game in mind that drastically limits the referee's ability to effect the outcomes of rolls, I'm all ears.Sure, why not? <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NLD_KhZwrKRz3sIquZDSW_Wx__7My6Kdg1Jbk6hF7Mw/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">John Harper made a game called 50/50 all about fictional positioning where a coin flip was the only resolution mechanic</a>. Works a treat.</blockquote>

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