Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMMichael" data-source="post: 9197141" data-attributes="member: 6685730">Some of you are rolling great on your Perceive Argument contests, and the toaster is due for maintenance.Let's throw out some food for thought...Steve (player name: Steve) has some giant frog flesh that he wants to smoke while camping in the wild, equipped for treasure-hunting, not feast-preparation.  But he has some helpful tools . . . okay, just a skinning knife.  It's better than nothing.  The GM wants a Mental contest to see if Steve can figure out how to put together a decent smoker in this situation.  Steve, obviously the cook of the group (which is out hunting in order to simplify my example) has a skill point in Cook (craftsman), so he adds that to his contest.  The goal of the contest (Steve's result versus the GM's) is to see if the smoking effort has a favorable result - versus is/is not successful.Welp, Steve rolls a result of 12, which is not bad, but the GM decides that making a smoker in the wild with only a skinning knife would be a Difficult task, which results in 18 after the GM takes half.  (Further, Steve neglected to inject a role-playing effort for the bonus of the same name.)  Steve's outcome is a Con - an unfavorable result - and the GM says, "you rolled a Con.  What went wrong?"Steve, who has only the rosiest picture of his cooking (smoker construction?) skills, says, "some bandits showed up and destroyed my smoker."The GM, ostensibly in charge of ruling the world, decides to roll with it or alter it, with input from the players.  Bandit visits are decidedly unfavorable outcomes, but they're not likely related to Steve's cooking skill.  In preparing the smoker, Steve could have sought the wrong materials, leading him close to a bandit camp.  Or he could have been flinging frog bits in all directions, not realizing that it would attract the bandits' dogs.  Or the bandits could be completely unrelated, and the Con is the simple smashing of the smoker by bandits before the frog meat becomes... delicious?  But the way we get there is with a brief give-and-take by the active PC, the GM, and even the other players.  The result is that everyone has a more vivid memory of the time Steve tried smoking giant frog.  If that's not necessary, the GM could have cut it off at, "roll Mental.  Con.  The frog meat is horrible.  Let's talk about your quest goals."</blockquote>

Verification