I was thinking about non combat skills and how often they come into play. When you want to have the player make an Observation check, how can you enhance the importance of these moments to make it as eventful as combat or taking a wound? If the character fails to pick a lock, and asks to try again until he gets it, how do you enhance the feeling of failure and successes? The character may only have one situation where he encounters a lock in a single game, or maybe even go several sessions without picking a lock, so when it happens, how can you make it more special?

An Idea I am kicking around to enhance these moments is to create a fail or success token system. Here are some examples:

POSITIVE ONLY

The players have entered the Three Hogs Inn and are asked to make Observation rolls. I place a 'good' token on the table, letting the players know that this is important. Any player that succeeds will get the information, but the player with the best roll gets the good token.

POSITIVE VS NEGATIVE

There is a lock that needs picking, I place 3 good and 3 bad tokens on the table to let him know this is an important moment. If he fails the first roll, a good token is returned to the general supply, and the player is given a bad token. If he succeeds on the 2nd try he gets the 2 remaining good tokens, but the single bad token he earned the first time cancels one of those out, so he only has one remaining, if he had failed 3 times he would end up with 3 bad tokens and no good tokens. If a player has too many bad tokens, he could have a negative effect happen. If he had succeeded on the first try, he would have 3 good tokens.

NEGATIVE ONLY

A player is starving, he is asked to make a Resilience check. I place 3 bad tokens on the table, if he fails, he gets 3 bad tokens. If he succeeds by 1 hammer, he gets 2 bad tokens, if he succeeds by 3 hammers, he gets no bad tokens.

WHAT TO DO WITH TOKENS?

Really this is up to you, but here are some ideas:

A good token can be added to the Party Fortune Pool, spent to reduce party tension by 1, spent for a free manoeuvre, spent to use an action card they do not own for one action (within reason), spent to add a white die to Perform A Stunt (a fortune die for Perform a Stunt only).

Built up bad tokens will negate getting any good tokens. If they have a lot built up, you could give them a negative Condition Card, place some or all of the bad tokens on it as tracking tokens, and have them removed as normal tracking tokens go.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Great idea. I really like your approach to this.

You could also:

Failed check: The player(s) gain stress/fatigue (that lasts until a good nights rest) or condition like demoralized

Successful check: The player(s) gain a personal fortune point. The player can also get the inspired condition for the rest of the day.

I think this is already included in the ideas behind the system of wfrp 3, but sometimes the problem as a GM is to remember these things. Nice with a post that reminds us of different ways to reward players.

Cheers

G

I think you're on to something.

I think another way to do this when you want to make it a bit more "digging" is to draw two critical cards, look at the severity of each and assign one to each section; Required Successes before X failures. (e.g. a 3 severity and 2 severity).

You wouldn't probably want to do that on a routine passive check, but if you don't want to play out the "digging through the library before nightfall" scene, you could have it done this way. Then assign "fortune points" that way.

jh

I don't like it mainly because you indicating to your player before hand what is important and what is not. Go into your example as soon as the player enter the inn you by dropping that token down your telling them this inn is special something is going to happen here.

System is clever though, and I can see some hybrid of it being used to replace the current track system you use for most of the social interaction.

LoveSkylark said:

It may very well indicate that to the players. But is that really always a bad thing. In fact, letting the players know that there is important information here and granting tangible indicators of said information could be considered a good thing. Might even help speed play.

I like the idea.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Gallows, that would work too.

Emirikol, good idea with the Wound Cards to get some randomness in there.

LoveSkylark, that was my point, I want the player to know when certain situations are as important as combat. It would be the difference between a player playing a light game of cards, vs a situation where the player is in the gambling match of his life, perhaps the outcome of the game will gain them a vital artifact or convince the guard to release their friend. On routine checks it would not come into play. Yes you could do this with a tracker, but I think the tokens kinda sink it in better, and affects their character similarly to wounds, stress, fatigue.

Other examples, using Star Wars, something we all know:

Luke Skywalker is stuck upside down, his feet in ice. The creature is coming. His lightsaber is his only chance of freeing himself. He has to succeed at a force check to call the saber to him. The GM places 3 good and 3 bad tokens, this is life or death. Luke fails his first check and gains a bad token. The creature comes closer. On the 3rd fail it will be too late. Luke tries again and gets a success! He gets the 2 remaining good tokens but has to discard one due to the first bad token. Sure the success or fail in this scene has drama without the tokens , but the tokens add weight to it and gives him a reward (besides saving his own skin).

Luke is missing out there in the freezing Hoth landscape. Han has to find him before he freezes to death. The GM places 3 bad tokens on the table and asks for 3d difficulty Observation rolls. Han fails and gets a bad token, things are getting worse. He fails a 2nd check, and then the 3rd. The GM informs him he can turn back now, or make one more check but the 3 bad tokens means his Tauntaun dies. Han makes a check and he succeeds and finds Luke, but his Tauntaun dies. There is no making it back to base, so Han has to come up with some other way to survive.

Lando wants to make an impression on Princess Liea, the GM places 1 good token on the table. Lando fails and doesn't get the token. In this situation I don't think I would punish the player for trying, but maybe a chaos star would change things.

In the scene where Luke enters Jabba's palace, you would not use this system when he gets past the guards, or gets past bib fortuna, the important scene would be when he finally confronts Jabba. He fails obviously and gets knocked into the Rancor pit. It is best to save the tokens for key moments, or rare skill checks that will make a difference in the outcome of the story.

Ok if that what you want I can't argue with it, but to me it one of the big "No No's", never ever the break the illusion (of freedom), never show the players solving a crime withc NPC is in the book and withc you created on the spot.

For example: I recently played (not GMed) where we had one of those indicated moments, a palyer noticed a guy hurrying out of an inn wearing green pants, that fact was really not important (was jut a henchman warning the Boss we where here). Fom that moment the player kept asking what color pants everyone had. He had no logical reason to think that info was important and it had no real bearing on the plot line but the GM indicated that the info he was getting had some thing to do with the plotline and the player felt oblagated to follow through.

I love it when player go off the plot line, I just go with it and create a mini subplot. If may players jump on fact info that is unrelated and start following a suspicous character etc. They may stumble into an illegal opium den, spy from another country doing a drop of etc, it may tie it back into the main plot in some way. As long as you keep it sort and don't make spend to much time on a wild goose chase your just enhancing the experience. Heck many of the adventures alredy have one or two of those build in.

In the example with Lando above, the thing that makes that moment special is that it is his first meeting with Leia, a major player in the story. Further attempts at impressing her can be made,but without the tokens.

LoveSkylark said:

If you want to keep something secret, or don't want them to know they failed at a random check that was important, then you would not use it. But to me, you are signalling something is up anyway if you ask for observation checks. They already know that there is something that needs to be spotted. If you really want to cover up those moments, then I would ask for several observation rolls before the game and use them secretly.

Gallows said:

I wanted to follow up on this.

The part that bugs me with randomly determining Success and fail 'rewards' is I think players prefer a solid rule over a fluid one. The player will think, "I was expecting a fortune point after that skill check, but for some reason the GM didn't think of it or didn't want to give me one. He gave player X a fortune point for that thing that wasn't even as important." Or "Why am I getting stress for this, there is nothing in the rules about me having to stay stressed till a full nights rest." .... they start questioning your choices and the rules, etc. They are much more willing to accept a solid chaos result description on a card, than the GM deciding the Chaos star made their sword break ... not that I am agaist that at all, it should be in the GM's power to do this, but the player almost always thinks, WTF, that is a harsh random call from the GM -- instead of breaking my well crafted sword, he could have given me more fatigue, etc. They like solid rules and solid effects like hit point loss, etc.

That is also the reason I was attempting to make a more solid game mechanic that enhanced non-combat skill checks in a way that damage and hit points solidify combat.