Here is a tip, if you tell someone to go google something, you are being rude. =)

No other comments need to be said as you guys ignored 100% of the point of my original comment.

I think we understood your point that the GM can say no. No one thinks that the "Yes, and.." philosophy is absolute (and Obi Wan taught us about absolutes). We just could not understand your reasoning for the veto call you made in the given example. That's why the response to your example was as overwhelming as it was.

Fed the trolls too much.

A couple people saying they had different experiences that were contrary to your assumptions isn't "beating a dead horse". You're vastly overstating the situation.

...and now I see you keep deleting your previous posts. You're not fooling anyone by hiding.

I will no longer feed the trollish commenting by this thread.

Well, that escalated quickly.

It's definitely reasonable for a player to give an Assist to another player who's slicing a terminal. People responding saying that it can be done aren't "trolling", they're just giving their opinion on this simple rules question.

I'll spare you all my thoughts on the author's routine, but I did get something out of this article. I think "Yes, and..." doesn't necessarily just apply to extending scenarios (or adding on more details to an improv scene), but can be applied to almost anything the characters want to do.

My most recent session was trying to solve a murder mystery. I thought I had one angle covered when I told the players that security footage of anybody entering or exiting the building where the murder happened was erased. A player asked if he could do a Computers check to see if he could recover the deleted footage. My first inclination was to just say, "No, it's gone, no chance," because if they did recover it and simply saw the murderer on the film, well, mystery solved, adventure over, done. But I caught myself, and said, "Yes, and it will be a Daunting check because they did a thorough job erasing it, and I'm flipping a Destiny point." Well, they still passed the roll. But that didn't mean they found the killer. The footage was still fuzzy and showed a ton of traffic going in and out of the building. They couldn't make out any faces, but could see height and build. This allowed them to do a bit of cross referencing against possible suspects later.

Anyways, I try never to say "No" to anything the PCs propose these days. It's just a matter of what the difficulty is and managing what a success really means so it totally doesn't break the game.

I'll spare you all my thoughts on the author's routine, but I did get something out of this article. I think "Yes, and..." doesn't necessarily just apply to extending scenarios (or adding on more details to an improv scene), but can be applied to almost anything the characters want to do.

My most recent session was trying to solve a murder mystery. I thought I had one angle covered when I told the players that security footage of anybody entering or exiting the building where the murder happened was erased. A player asked if he could do a Computers check to see if he could recover the deleted footage. My first inclination was to just say, "No, it's gone, no chance," because if they did recover it and simply saw the murderer on the film, well, mystery solved, adventure over, done. But I caught myself, and said, "Yes, and it will be a Daunting check because they did a thorough job erasing it, and I'm flipping a Destiny point." Well, they still passed the roll. But that didn't mean they found the killer. The footage was still fuzzy and showed a ton of traffic going in and out of the building. They couldn't make out any faces, but could see height and build. This allowed them to do a bit of cross referencing against possible suspects later.

Anyways, I try never to say "No" to anything the PCs propose these days. It's just a matter of what the difficulty is and managing what a success really means so it totally doesn't break the game.

I think that is another key here. The players will suggest something and their hopeful/intended result. The problem is, their suggestion and result breaks the game so you are inclined to say no. However, if their idea is given an appropriate difficulty, and the results/consequences are mitigated so as to not ruin things, it could be a great addition to the game.

Like above. I don't know that the players were hoping to 100% ID the suspect on camera, but the GM knew that if they did the adventure would pretty much be over. So he let them attempt it, and even on success they didn't get all the details, they likely got the same information some questioning would have given them.

I had a similar situation in my game. My players are caught in a feud between two crime lords. One of the crime lords is lying to them and using them, the other is being straight with them, however since the players don't have all the information they don't know who to trust. Anyway, the honest one tells them the lying one has hired a bounty hunter to come after them, but doesn't have time to explain and ends the transmission. The players knew a little about this Bounty Hunter and had leads on where to get more info. I expected them to go after the Bounty Hunter (which they did), however I didn't expect them to try and call the dishonest crime lord and ask him about it. I was originally going to shoot the idea down, but I let it happen. So they reach their contact for the crime lord (they can't reach him directly) and are told they will get a call back after they mention the bounty hunter's name. A bit later, I have the bounty hunter make a pre-planned hit and run attack on the players. They TOTALLY got super suspicious of the dishonest crime lord, thinking their call triggered the attack.

It led to a really fun moment where one player was 100% in conspiracy mode and the other was 100% coincidence mode. That hit and run would have happened either way, but by allowing them to try and contact the one crime lord, it gave the event some interesting framing.

My most recent session was trying to solve a murder mystery. I thought I had one angle covered when I told the players that security footage of anybody entering or exiting the building where the murder happened was erased. A player asked if he could do a Computers check to see if he could recover the deleted footage. My first inclination was to just say, "No, it's gone, no chance," because if they did recover it and simply saw the murderer on the film, well, mystery solved, adventure over, done. But I caught myself, and said, "Yes, and it will be a Daunting check because they did a thorough job erasing it, and I'm flipping a Destiny point." Well, they still passed the roll. But that didn't mean they found the killer. The footage was still fuzzy and showed a ton of traffic going in and out of the building. They couldn't make out any faces, but could see height and build. This allowed them to do a bit of cross referencing against possible suspects later.

Oh man, I'm imagining players rolling Success, Advantage, Triumph, and Despair on that computers check: They recover the footage and it even has a clear shot of a person entering the building at the time of the murder... But following up on the clue, the PCs find that the person is innocent—a red herring. But the person does remember seeing someone awfully suspicious leaving the scene.

You could build an entire encounter around that one dice roll result. Maybe that innocent person is on the run but for a different reason and that leads to a chase and perhaps that opens up another job for the PCs later.

Ah, good to see I'm not the only one who is "rude" on these boards. We should start a "rude boys" club. I heard my British wife use that term, but always felt I didn't fully understand it til now. Rude boys unite!

As to the OP, it was noted already by Quicksilver that "yes, and..." was a tool for dice interpretations. I like that way of thinking.

I know that also, GM Chris from the O66 podcast championed this concept in the early days of the game, contrasting this system with the d20 iterations, stating that "this is a system of 'yes, and,' not 'no, but.'" The reason for this, to my understanding and recollection, was that when players in this system asked to do things that in Saga Edition were just Too Darn Hard, the GM was now free with the dice & Destiny Point mechanics to say...

"Yes, and...here is your difficulty," or

"Yes, and...you will need to take 10 Obligation," or

"Yes, and...you will need to spend a Destiny Point." Et cetera.