Hi all

I had an interesting roll come up in Sunday's session that I struggled to adjudicate - thought I'd put it up here to see what peoples' thoughts were.

The PC in question was trying inspire some minions into acts of heroics. There was a camdroid floating above a civilian settlement, known to have been wired with a significant amount of explosives. The PC was on his way but had been held up by terrible piloting rolls, but had called ahead to have local law enforcement arrive on location. He decided to try to inspire them into an act of heroics, suggesting that they try to shepherd the droid away from the civilians by flying across its path in airspeeders and attempting to use their thrusters to push it off-course. Since that seemed a very dangerous idea, I determined that he would need to make a Leadership check to convince them it was a good idea...with a healthy number of Setbacks.

The result: Failure, but with 1 Triumph and 3 Threat. And I really didn't know what to do with it. Where possible, I like to keep the dice rolls relevant to the check that was being made, but I really struggled on this one. In the end it didn't ruin the game, or anything, but I just wondered whether anyone has any brilliant suggestions for what I could have done - and what I could do next time!

Thanks in advance.

Failure: The local law enforcement do not act in the way he intended, deciding against using speeder thrusters to push the droid.

Threat: The local captain calls him a reckless fool for coming up with such a dangerous plan. PC takes strain from the insult, or Setback on the next Social check involving the citizenship.

Triumph: The spirit of his message still gets across and the locals decide they have to try something, coming up with a different plan.

Possibility:

Triumph after the NPCs hadn't bought the pitch of the PC, theire leader had the "brilliant" Idea to use the before not mentioned Hook and Cable on his vehicle to get the droid on a leash and drag it out of the city. All thanks on the inspireration of the PC.

3 threads: While doing so the droid explodes at the cityborders due to a timetrigger. While only buildungs get damaged by this, the speeder of the captain goes down and crashes into the wilderlands:

new Plot Hook find the captain to rebuild your reputation with the civilians.

Failure: The authorities do not agree to help.

Triumph: Some rookie pilot among the authorities accidentally collides with the explosive laden droid, at least "stopping" the threat. Not because of being motivated, but because they were distracted by the message.

Threat: The authorities are a somewhat pissed with the PCs for advising a course of action that did get one of their own killed.

Basically, I would allow a Triumph to "alter" the problem at hand, from explosive droid to angry authorities. Or rather, give the players the win they wanted, and then throw a more pointed problem at them.

Failure: The authorities agree to help, but respond differently than expected.

Triumph: The authorities evacuate civilians saving their lives.

3 Threat: Resulting explosion damages/destroys something the PC's need. Their ship, the police station, hospital, radio tower. Whatever they wanted to save. Or alternately, the police cordon catches the shrapnel instead of the crowd.

1 hour ago, Kommissar said:

Failure: The authorities do not agree to help.

Triumph: Some rookie pilot among the authorities accidentally collides with the explosive laden droid, at least "stopping" the threat. Not because of being motivated, but because they were distracted by the message.

Threat: The authorities are a somewhat pissed with the PCs for advising a course of action that did get one of their own killed.

Basically, I would allow a Triumph to "alter" the problem at hand, from explosive droid to angry authorities. Or rather, give the players the win they wanted, and then throw a more pointed problem at them.

6 hours ago, GM Stark said:

Failure: The local law enforcement do not act in the way he intended, deciding against using speeder thrusters to push the droid.

Threat: The local captain calls him a reckless fool for coming up with such a dangerous plan. PC takes strain from the insult, or Setback on the next Social check involving the citizenship.

Triumph: The spirit of his message still gets across and the locals decide they have to try something, coming up with a different plan.

Love these - great ways of having the actual failure of the PC's Leadership affect the situation, and honouring the spirit of all 3 results. Thanks!