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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8648409" data-attributes="member: 70468">I was trying to avoid picking nits at the specific example. You listed various other possible success consequences other than just opening the safe. I didn’t want the focus of discussion to be on the one I picked for example but rather on what the technique did and how it was set up to work.In conflict resolution, you can’t generally retry. It doesn’t really make sense, and games usually explicitly tell you that it’s not possible. I believe it’s something [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] has mentioned a few times with regards to BW and TB. Since you said this is not conflict resolution, I’m trying to understand the bounds on consequences resolution versus just plain task resolution or conflict resolution.I mean, if you can just keep trying to open the safe, and the only consequence is time, is that really a consequence? My understanding of the advice in the DMG is that wouldn’t be considered a meaningful consequence of failure, and you would be best off to have the PCs succeed without rolling and just narrate some time has passed. For example, one might have you roll a DC 0 check to climb a ladder in 3e. I’ve done it (in combat to amusing effect). In 5e, I believe the intent is such trivial checks just aren’t made.What I’m trying to determine is who puts the safe there for consequence resolution. It doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily a fact of the world. Do the players postulate it into existence by saying they are looking for a safe full of cash, or does the GM put a safe there because it is a thematically appropriate way of providing a situation where there can be consequences (the PCs acquire the cash they need to raise their companion, or something suitably bad happens when they fail their roll to do so)? That’s what I mean. I think the rest of your response might provide something of an answer.This sounds somewhere in the middle. The safe doesn’t exist per se, but it follows from the setting already established and makes logical context within that sense. In a fantasy setting, this safe might be a dragon’s hoard that had been established. The PCs knew there was a scary cave, and it would make sense for a dragon and her hoard to be there.Right, this is why I asked. I know you had already disclaimed that you were doing Story Now, but it wasn’t clear to me how a safe was coming into play without its existence being established already. Your answer sounds like something in the direction of Story Now (reconciling its existence from existing play state at the time it is needed), but I assume that your asymmetric distribution of roles would put more responsibility on the GM to proffer the existence of the safe rather than on the PCs to request it.Like if the PCs said, “We need some cash to raise our friend,” and the GM responded with, “There’s a dragon’s hoard in the scary cave to the north.” The hoard wasn’t established previously, but it follows from other things the GM has prepped and said so far.</blockquote>

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