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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8007666" data-attributes="member: 42582">Huh?In the OP: the player declares an action aimed at the tyrant (the insult), the action fails to achieve some sort of success (eg cowing the tyrant - we don't know whether the GM decided that by fiat or called for a check that failed), and then the guards turn up. The guards are part of the narration of failure.In Manbearcat's example: the player declares an action aimed at the tyran (the insult), the action achives success (ie changes the mind of the tyrant, by cowing him) and the GM uses the guards as part of the narration of that change of mind - the success manifests via the trusted lieutenant whose words induce shame. As he puts it, "You need an emergent consequence which honors the players success while simultaneously honoring the nature of the situation and the component parts of the fiction."This is no different, its basic structure, from narrating a successful attack as invovling the enemy stumbling on a stone and loosing his/her footing. Or as per my Prince Valiant post not far upthread, narrating the lance splintering and a shard of wood going through the visor split and into the brain of the NPC knight, killing him.Manbearcat calls it deft GMing, and is correct. The GM takes control of that stuff which is his/hers - the NPCs - and uses those to change the ficiton in a way that honours the player's success. It's pretty much the opposite of what I see in the OP and much of the ensuing discussion, which involves the GM focusing intently on only one aspect of his/her stuff - the tyrant - and using that to ensure that the player can't get what s/he wants out of the situation.My reference much earlier to the possibility of the guards being drunk, or disloyal in the fact of yet another manifestation of madness, are in the same ballpark as what Manbearcat has suggested. I think it's not a coincidence that we've both fastened on the guards: because these are crucial for the tyrant to actually act in the scene, but within the context of the fiction they are human beings with their own motivations which need not conform at all to those of their ostensible master. (Qv Emoer and Faramir disobeying direct instructions from their lords and kinsmen to detain strangers.)EDIT: some of this was already said by [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] upthread.Also saw this:You seem to be ignoring the difference between successful and failed checks. [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] was describing a possible narration of a successful check.</blockquote>

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