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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9663707" data-attributes="member: 42582">There are lot of different contexts for Steel tests, and so it can depend quite a bit.For instance, in Fight!, if you fail a Steel test triggered by the pain of injury, and you choose to "stand and drool", then you lose actions. And that's its own punishment: if you're still standing when your hesitation ends, you can throw yourself back into the fray. (In RM terms, its analogous to a "stun no parry" crit result; in 4e D&D it's analogous to being stunned until the end of someone-or-other's turn.)There are also ways of making someone take a Steel test in a Duel of Wits, and again if they fail they lose their next volley in the exchange. This permits driving home the argument unopposed, but again if that doesn't end the Duel, the hesitating character can come back in.In Aedhros's case, the hesitation permitted another PC to intervene - Alicia, via her Persuasion. And it really makes no sense to ask what would have happened had she not been there, because in that case the innkeeper wouldn't have been unconscious and at the mercy of the PCs. But I'm confident that my GM would have come up with something interesting to happen while Aedhros paused. Or conversely, if he really had nothing interesting in mind, then he wouldn't have asked for the Steel test. Or would have asked for it in response to the knife going in and the blood flowing out, perhaps having something in mind for that.I feel that this post of yours is relevant here:Right. Trying to analyse the play of BW or (at least as you play it) DW through the lens of counterfactual "what ifs" doesn't make much sense to me. Those what-ifs generally assume that there is some default or background trajectory of play (driven by the GM based on scenario design, or general notes, or whatever), which is unfolding via GM decision-making and narration and which the actions of the PCs are a type of (bigger or smaller) perturbation of.Speaking with a degree of generality but also (I believe) accuracy, the what-ifs assume that play is about solving a problem/puzzle - overcoming pre-established obstacle to achieve a goal that "exists" on the GM's hidden gameboard. So Aedhros losing 4 heartbeats of action is seen as a player loss because it sets back the attempt to get to the finish line.But there is no finish line. There is no default/background trajectory which the PCs' actions are perturbing. My previous reply to you, just upthread, explained how I arrived at this realisation through play (and as you already know my understanding of what it was that I'd realised benefitted enormously from reading stuff outside of the "mainstream" accounts of good GMing).Aedhros hesitating for 4 heartbeats of course set him back. And it meant that my action declaration was thwarted - I wanted Aedhros to murder, and he didn't. But my play wasn't set back. I wasn't losing, as a player. Feeling Aedhros's hesitation; and then his callous looting and carrying off of the unconscious Alicia; is the game.</blockquote>

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