Random meme aside, I was playing in a Legend of the Five Rings game recently, focusing on ninjas pulling a series of assassinations. L5R is a system with binary success and failure, that is, there is no granularity to good or bad results. It's strictly pass or fail. We players struggled greatly with the stealth aspects of the game, partly due to the question that each stealth roll was to answer: "Do I get seen or not?"

Now this seems like a very valid question to ask. If the hero is trying to sneak across a courtyard patrolled by guards, this is probably the first question to come to mind. But is it the right question to ask? My thoughts are that it is a very poor question to ask, especially with a binary success and failure system. Any lucky roll by a guard (and results in L5R vary wildly) against your stealth check, and bam, we have an answer to the question: "Yes, you were seen - roll initiative."

With a ninja game being very heavy on the stealth, a lot of our scenes were strings of stealth checks, little more than us pushing our luck until we got seen, and then carving a bloody trail to our target. One bad roll and the game was up. Out of three assassinations, we were seen on each and every one, and were using very high level characters... It got me thinking about how the question ("Do I get seen or not?") frames the results in an unsavory way. My group doesn't set a lot of stakes before rolls. We don't establish things like, "If you fail this athletics test, you'll take damage equal to 2+net failures on the roll." We just ask a question and use that to interpret the result. Our question was a bad question.

So in this scenario, with the hero trying to sneak across a guarded courtyard, what is the right (or at least, better) question to ask? The best I have is, "Do I make it across the courtyard?" ...Now a failure doesn't instantly offer up a horrible result. Maybe you just couldn't find a gap in the patrols, or two guards stopped for a conversation right outside your hiding place, keeping you stuck for a while. Edge of the Empire is a far better system for interpreting an answer.

-Success means you made it across, and life is good. Quantity of successes tell you how fast you did it.

-Failure, however, doesn't mean you're obviously spotted: it means that you didn't make it across the courtyard. More failures extend the length of time that has passed before you get to roll again.

-Advantage is about passing Boosts to other stealthy people following you, finding a better path for escape, or getting some good files off a computer in passing.

-Threat is the thing you need to worry about. 1 Threat means you take a Strain during a tense moment. 2 Threat means you made some noise, and while the guards didn't necessarily see you, you get a Setback on future tests due to slight suspicion. 3 Threat means someone is coming to investigate your position. Better think fast.

-Triumph is obviously cool. If it was Deus Ex , I'd say you found a conveniently hero-sized air duct that gives you total access to the building around keycard doors. This isn't Deus Ex , so maybe you managed to bait the guards away to another part of the building.

-Despair is the only result that means you were caught in the open with your pants down and need to roll Initiative. Failure + Despair means the guards in the courtyard spotted you and have no doubt that you don't belong. Success + Despair means you crossed the courtyard, but when you stepped through the door on the other side, you walked right into a guard you couldn't see before.

Now this is a far more interesting stealth roll. It's more than just a necessary check to get on with the game, it's a chance to narrate a cool and tense moment that you'd see in Mission Impossible . Why? Because we asked the right question. This is something to think about every time you roll, especially if you don't set the stakes explicitly.

This is pretty much just food for thought, and applicable to more than just stealth. Have you ever found that the question that sets up the roll also frames the result?

Yes.

It also gives the GM wiggle room in interpreting the results if you @$$ up the roll when you ask for the skill check a little more broadly. For example, you decide you want to make a Stealth check and ask "I'd like to use my skill and see if it's possible to sneak across the courtyard and if so try to accomplish it", as opposed to I go for it, make no assessment and hope for the best.

That meme is perfect! I agree that asking the right questions is/should be key to dice rolls. While my group still asks the yes or no questions, as GM I try to creatively narrate the results dictated by the dice roll beyond a yes or no answer. I've also encountered a post on the forums somewhere about allowing the PCs narrate their dice rolls and have been thinking of experimenting with that a bit. Obviously the Threats and Despairs are still the GM's bailiwick in terms of narrative and skill check interpretation but letting the PCs do some narrating of their own could be fun for them and take off some creative pressure of me/GM trying to narratively interpret the successes and advantages.

My players get full narrative rights at certain points. After I've approved their use of Advantage or Triumph, they get to narrate. Also, any time an enemy that isn't protected by my plot gets taken out of combat, the players get to narrate the specifics. It does take a lot of pressure to think up interesting descriptions off of me, the GM, and lets them have their moments of awesomeness. Basically, we know the end result of the check, and the players get to narrate how that result is achieved.

Really, my only objection to players getting to narrate their own results all the time is that some have wildly varying ideas of what one Advantage can get you, vs three Advantage. Especially out of combat.

Really, my only objection to players getting to narrate their own results all the time is that some have wildly varying ideas of what one Advantage can get you, vs three Advantage. Especially out of combat.

When it comes to spending Advantage and Triumph in combat, I usually set the limit at what Tables 6.2 and 6.3 in Aor/EotE offer. So the player's narrative has to fit what they choose to spend those Advantage and Triumph and likewise with me spending Threat and Despair.

Out-of-Combat expenditure of Triumph, Advantage, Threat and Despair (TATD) is fairly easy to limit too. In the description of each Skill, the Corebooks give examples what those could be spent on. If you haven't given those much reading time, I highly recommend you do so. Each Skill highlights different uses and different amounts of TATD. Those have been a guiding light for me when determining the effects and narrative of the roll. As with spending TATD in combat, spending TATD out combat can easily be limited and keep the players from being too over the top when narrating their dice.

And like I said, I plan to experiment with this myself now that we've done a few sessions learning how to interpret the dice and use TATD. So far the group and I have been working well together pretty well, especially on the mechanics.

This is pretty much just food for thought, and applicable to more than just stealth. Have you ever found that the question that sets up the roll also frames the result?

Perfect meme Yes, this came up for us during a session in a fantasy game based on the Basic Roleplaying system (BRP). This game uses percentages and is also binary. Our party was at the top of a tower and had to rappel down to avoid being eaten...of course my character failed the Climb roll (skill: 50%, he's only a weak-limbed wizard after all), and the GM rules I fall to my death. Then of course the party ranger (skill: 85%) also falls to his death. In BRP, any skill above 80% is "amazing", so it really made no sense. And all the while the GM was wringing his hands because he's not out to kill the party but he wants to respect the dice rolls.

So we had a big discussion about what "80%" means. In real life I'm a very good swimmer...not Olympic by any means, but very comfortable in the water in a variety of conditions. I know what to do when things get difficult, and generally how not to drown unless sucked under by the Kraken. Compared to the average person, I'm probably at 75-80%. But in a binary system, that means on average, for every 4 or 5 times I go swimming, I'll drown. Makes no sense at all.

What would make more sense in a critical situation is that failure means "fatigue". If swimming I lose HP or Strain. If rappelling down a tower, I get rope burn and land with a thump at the bottom, maybe sprain my ankle to make movement more difficult for a while. If in a game or session that relies heavily on Stealth, there needs to be some way to not let a failure derail the situation entirely, perhaps it puts the guards on alert. Perhaps they see a trickle of dirt and think it's an animal and move forward to investigate...maybe this lets one of the PCs try to quietly take out the guard, or even capitalize on their failure by luring the guard out of sight of his buddies.

There's also the question of rolling at all, which isn't on the player, but on the GM. Every roll is a chance of failure, the more you roll the more likely at some point the plot will be derailed. Maybe all those rolls aren't necessary...the PC's native skill suffices until the moment is more critical. There should be enough rolls to allow the players to inject their narrative, but not so many they become detrimental to the chances of success.