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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gban007" data-source="post: 9331909" data-attributes="member: 56488">I don't know - I'm very much a trad player, and more and more on AP rather than sandbox these days due to time constraints, though dabbling in the likes of FFG Star Wars and Modiphius' 2d20 systems that I think support a bit of narrative sort of structure, but it does feel like the mechanics are there to support intent, and if the intent isn't there, the mechanics won't force it.For D&D by 'default' as such, skills are typically success or failure - do I hit this person, do I find something, do I disarm the trap - and outside of perhaps taking advantage of critical successes / critical failures to bring something else into it, you either do it or you don't.FFG Star Wars on the other hand has the triumph / despair that allows for adding a bit more into it, (I recall one good one that we enjoyed where my ultra perceptive character rolled abysmally in trying to be a lookout for another character scaling a water tower - so end result was my character for some reason was keeping a close eye on a completely different water tower and missed the bad guys coming up).  But how you use these can then frame what happens - they are there to potentially facilitate quite big shifts happening - maybe you succeed at a cost, and the cost is more bad guys turning up, or you fail with some benefit, and so didn't stop bomb going off, but maybe partially deflected it, or you saved someone who may not have otherwise been saved.  Or a success is compounded to be even better some how, or a failure even worse.  But that relies on you using those do achieve it - my example above is probably quite soft, in as much as looking at a different watch tower didn't really make a difference to what was going on - certain events were still happening, but could have used it for me to be ambushed maybe, or for additional bad guys to turn up, for my scope to be broken and give future penalties etc. My understanding of these PBTA games is they push the above even further - but you need to be willing to use them, if you just use a special failure to not be much more than a fumble from D&D, or a spectacular success to not be much more than a critical, or immunity to future saving throws in this combat or the like, then you're not really achieving anything more than playing D&D as such, just possibly a different means of resolution that you prefer( maybe you prefer rolling low than high for example, or rolling more or less dice, or more or less checks) - but outcomes end up similar.But if intent is to instead really go wild as such, and so fighting a dragon and spectacular success means somehow you learn the dragon is attacking because it is defending an egg or something, bringing something new but consistent with prior fiction into the fiction, it could allow for quite different paths forward, rather than just a big hit on the dragon.  Similarly a spectacular fail may lead to a character / NPC / macguffin being in a potentially catastrophic position where needs more than a simple heal to get going, and forces more decisions  on to characters than otherwise would have been the case.On flip side, if playing D&D and really want to use criticals as ones that allow for above sort of swings, then can also drive D&D more towards that PBTA style as well, just the odds of swings will be lower, unless you maybe tweak to say within 5 of a success is moderate, more than 5 away is critical, more than 10 is spectacular or the like - but then having to bend the mechanics rather than maybe using mechanics better suited to facilitate this.</blockquote>

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