This is actually a two part question.

1) Failure in identification.
Suppose the PCs have found a green vial. They have medicine skill and what to guess what it is. As a GM I want to make it risky. For instance the vial might be Poison, but if they fail they medicine skill, they might think it's a healing draught. How do I do this?

I mean if they fail their medicine skill, and I tell them 'It's healing draught' they wouldn't drink it anyway. I could make it a hidden check, but again, it would make them suspicious.

2) Haggling.
A PC wants to buy armor. He finds a piece he is interested and knows that it costs 40 silver. He haggles and fails. Now he has to buy it for a 25% and he decides not too.

How could I have handled it, since they final choice is up to the PC. I could force him to take it, since his character would not know the initial value, but then I would receive icy glares.

for those type of checks, ask the player to give you his dice pool and roll it yourself, hidden from the players. They won't know if the roll succeed or not and what you tell them becomes the only information they have. If you roll a 2 Challenge die, you could have funky result with 1 chaos star, and very bad one with 2, some uncool side effects with 2 banes that don't impact success of failure in the ID, that kind of things. (slight mis-identification on 1 CS, on 2 CS he is sure it's a healing draught when it really is a venom extract that totally paralyse it's victim in a couple rounds, banes effects could be droping the vial and destroying the potion, etc.)

For haggling, i'd usually start with the "stranger" malus to price (+25%) as my players are just that. If only the Woodelf is present, he will have the disliked tag and the nasty +50%. I recently droped it because of what they did and the status they acquired from it. They city folks don't look at them as stranger anymore. I use the book prices as guide lines, not hard facts. Some places, it's impossible or very expensive to find certain goods, other places, it's common. If the player fails (or thinks so) and decide to walk away, he won't find another place for it unless it's is something very common, but in which case i won't have had a check in the 1st place. I don't let haggle checks happen for basic stuff (food, cloth, etc)

plutonick said:

Well considering that none of your players has any skill that could identify potions (magical sight, tradecraft(herbalism)) I wouldn't worry much about that, just remember, blue potions are good ,green potions are poison, just tell them what color the potion is d:

plutonick said:

Well what would seem reasonable is that if you fail haggling and get a penalty or bonus for it then you will always find it in that town at that price no matter what

the only reason why there would be a reroll to the above is

a) a certain time has passed like two months or so, in which case situation may have changed (traders got new supplies, stupid stuff the players did got forgotten)

b) the modifiers to the roll have changed (if they kill a big bad enemy they get a bonus as town saviors and thus could reroll, if they kill the whimpering mayor they get a penalty maybe making the price higher)

1 - Checks where failure "tells them something".

There are different ways of doing this. One way is to let them make the "innocent check" (e.g., to simply identify a heal potion) having secretly prerolled extra challenge dice (or just determining there's an extra failure) and then mentally noting "really they have 2 failures already in pool, if they don't score enough successes to overcome those, I tell them it's a healing potion, af they score enough to overcome those I tell them it's a poison disguised as a healing potion).

I other situations, e.g., the check to see if you can tell if someone is lying, I simply explain, "The fact I'm letting you roll to see if you see through any guile doesn't mean he's lying, the fact there are all these purple and black dice in pool may just reflect how jolly and innocent a person he is and how likely you are to suffer stress or other ill outcomes from questioning his honesty." Similarly, here too I might have a "secret failure" and on "success by 1" say "seems honest" but "success by 2" say "you know, he's holding something back".

2- Haggling

I'm clear with players that "once you commit to buying, your character will buy even if haggled badly - high pressure sales don't you know" (I deal in consumer protection and sales psychology, people are talked into stuff they immediately regret all the time). I've had no arguments. Be clear "the roll is not to see what price you could buy at, the roll is to see what price you do buy at". If you can't buy at higher price because you don't have funds you get a bad rep with merchants (black die in local market).

Edit: Though the "that's the price in this town in this period" approach above also works fine.

valvorik said:

Ooh, I like that. I'm amazed I've never seen it used before.

You can have the player roll all the "positive" dice (Stance, Characteristic, Fortune, Expertise) and the GM roll the "negative" dice (Challenge & Misfortune). The player may still have the sense that they did really well or really poorly based on the gross successes/boons generated, but will still have to rely on the GM to tell them the outcome based on net successes/boons.

mac40k said:

Yeah, we do something like this. The GM just rolls the purple dice and the player rolls all the rest. As mac40k says it works well coz the player has an excellent idea of how well he did, even if he doesn't know exactly how difficult the task is.

The GM also has scope to reveal how many purple dice he's using, or not, depending on whether the PC would have an ic idea of what he's up against.

Yep, likewise I do this with my group as well and it seems to work well.

Also in a situation like this I play the dice results as being fluid - that is it's not just a simple yes/no answer.

I'd figure it'd be a pretty poor medically trained person that would confuse a potion of poison to a healing draught. So, they would have to roll really badly in order to get the confusion. It might be easier for someone who has no training at all to mistake them... I guess what I'm trying to say is that the background of the character plays a part in the results of the roll.

Also rather than say its a healing draught when its not I might say something along the lines of - "The draught has a scent, it reminds you of the plant 'Sigmar's Finger' that the herbalist used to dry outside his shack back home. A curative of some kind you think, but then it is only a scent your getting from the more general cloying odour of the liquid.'

Or the GM could reveal the result of some of the challenge dice rolled in situations where the character might have an inkling of how well he's doing.

perhaps that was also what you ment, Monkey.

Anyway, you could reward the player for good roleplay or for rolling a sigmar's comet by revealing one or several of the penalty dice so he would know if was doing ok at, say, sneaking for instance.

-L

The idea of the gm rolling the difficulty dice is quite good, but here's a tiny problem

let's say the player rolls 2 boons, and the gm (through the difficulty dice) rolls 4 banes

what happens then?

if the gm reveals that he rolled the 4 banes the player will know that at least 2 of the purple dice were not failures (and if he can figure out the difficulty he would know almost certainly if he succeeded/failed)

if the gm does not reveal the 4 banes then the player could use the boons for something beneficial (let's say removing stress when he shouldn't be)

any idea how that can be handled?

Haggling is an interesting topic. So, we know that REALLY well made stuff is 10x the cost of an item, but there's obviously some leeway. 10x is the die mechanic difference, but there's obviously a range of work. A dress can be a simple woolen smock, or it can be a designer dress with gorgeous embroidery. You can buy $20 shoes at Payless, or $200 ecco shoes, or even $1500 designer snakeskin shoes.

While the roll may indicate the player failed to haggle, remember that it also is what the merchant is selling them. You may be shopping for a common sword, but if the merchant sells you on the quality of the metal, its balance and the nice scabard he's throwing in - you would pay extra (maybe you just like it). If your player fails the roll and it costs more, he could have gotten ripped off - but also convince him its a nice piece. Don't tell him 'you're and idiot, and the sword is poorly crafted but you paid too much', tell him that its a **** nice sword made in the Osterlander style. Has a great blood groove, and probably won't get stuck in greenskins like other blades, and there's a sweet raven pattern worked in black metal along the blade.

All of a sudden a sword with no mechanical benefit, comes out looking pretty **** good to the player. Throw in a white die on some checks for people that recognize fine blades, and while it may not be a superior blade (crafter by master dwarf craftsman Masamugni ^_~) its a fine sword, they can be proud of. Of course chaos stars and some banes might mean its got problems, which could lead to some good RP returning it. Its all part of the story, and hopefully you can make your players appreciate that.

Also I dig the hidden purples/blacks rule. To Cruces: There is no real problem. The dice provide a narrative solution. If the players are gaging a vial, you don't have to say 'you get 2 banes cumulative' or 'your boons are canceled' just tell them what they see. If they ask to use their boons to alleviate stress you can choose to cancel them with banes, or you can let them use the boons and use the banes to indicate something is wrong with the item.

Ultimately - you have to trust your players somewhat. If you can't trust them at all not to metagame (or rather to metagame poorly or mechanically) you can just roll their good and bad dice and narrate the result. Otherwise, the split dice scenario works pretty well.

In the case of the 2 boons vs 4 banes, you'd simply tell them that their boons have been cancelled. You don't have to tell them they were cancelled by 4 banes. So all they would know is that out of the dice you rolled at least 2 banes were rolled with no idea what the other dice are showing.

Of course, if all you were rolling was two purples, and they know this, then they would also know that they didn't make the roll. However, in this case they also wouldn't have failed the roll, and I would make it obvious in my description that they had no idea about the potion (or whatever it was they were looking at) one way or the other.

One other thing I sometimes do is grab more dice than I need. Then they have no idea what dice are in my pool... The iphone app is great for this as no one knows except you the make up of the dice pool you are using.

I think in the end though it all comes down to interpretation of the result and the description that you give.

For Haggling I think valvoriks idea is spot on, if the player enters into a serious haggling situation (i.e. makes a roll) he has already committed to buy the item and have to buy it (unless he can't afford it).

About hidden tests. A completely different approach is play it completely open and trust the players to roleplay rather than metagame the situation. I.e., they might roll really badly, it's then up to them (or the GM) to say what happens that fits the rolled die. E.g. a failed roll might indicate that they just don't know what it is (and they have to roleplay that, disregarding what meta-knowledge they have through looking at the dice result), a failed roll with boons might indicate that they don't know what it is, but have a bad feeling about it, a failed roll with banes means that they accidentally pour the it out, a failed roll with chaos star that they think it's the wrong kind of potion (and again that they have to roleplay it like that). When the players then actually roleplay this, to the detriment of their character, hilarity ensues... (and the GM should give out some party fortune in my opinion).

This kind of gaming can be a bit hard to pull off, but it's really fun when it works. This type of mechanism (the players roleplaying something that might not be to their benefit), can create really memorable stories.

But sure, this might not be appropriate at all times, mac40k or valvoriks ideas are also great.

Gruntl has put it well when addressing the metagame issue. In my opinion good players try not to let the dice results affect the way that they roleplay their characters, it's not always easy to do but it pays off in terms of fun and memorable experiences. I personally just penalize my players with mis-fortune for playing out of character and allowing meta game to affect character decisions. However; we discussed this before we started playing so my players understand these consequences, and are constantly trying to play in character. However I have to say that the split dice pool Idea is great, something I never thought about before and may implement in the event that my players find knowing the outcome too tempting and therefore begin to play out of character.

In my opinion Valvorik's idea is good, but has its pit falls. The process of Haggling involves both sides trying to influence the other, while one tries to make a sale for the best profit possible and the other tries to get a deal BEFORE he/she purchases the item. I have a player who is all over realism and just would not let the "you MUST buy it" bit fly. But its cool to see how this game flows for other Narrators, and I wish that worked in my group because it would make the shopping less of a focus, although thats what my players like so I try and provide excellent shopping encounters. ( I even worked in retail for several years so I could roleplay this better for my RPG groups).

In the end if you Narrate with a more open rolling style I suggest using the fantastic Misfortune dice to penalize Meta Game play, but on the alternate side of that if you're players describe/roleplay in a very creative way, giving extra discription for the task being performed then give them some Fortune!