I love the implication that the GM conciously decided that there was a chance of failure.
There’s gotta be a point where stuff can’t be failed. It just feels bad as a player if you tell me that I can’t figure out where the Sahara desert is when I’m standing right next to it.
In DnD, you only roll if there is a chance of failure. If the DM is having you roll for stuff that is blatantly obvious then they are doing it wrong.
Some say that trooper cracked the shits with Dark Helmet then and there and vowed to leave the first chance he could get. Shortle after, he got a commission in Starfleet before finding his way to the Delta Quadrant.
Some people have no luck at all.
I was once running a Savage Worlds pirate game (50 Fathoms) where one of my more dramatic players found a beached shipwreck and started poking through it. He rolls Notice and gets “snake eyes”, which is a critical failure.
He looks up at me excitedly. “Ohhh no, WHAT HAPPENS TO ME? This is gonna be BAD! :D” so clearly “Uh you don’t notice anything?” isn’t going to be satisfactory here.
So I tell him he fails to notice so hard he takes bumps and bruises from banging his head on some supports because of the ship’s awkward angle or something. He wants to try again and fails the roll again. “Okay uh…roll Spirit?”
Cackling like mad, he rolls and fails again. “What happens? What happens?”
“Well, you swear you saw SOMETHING in the dark depths of the ship where the sunlight can’t shine through. You’re so unnerved you need to roll on the fear table.”
The table was captivated at this point, and quite frankly I was caught by surprise that this was generating such a fuss lol.
He ended up gaining a “superstitious” hinderance and a white streak in his hair from sheer fright. He played it up like crazy too. “G-G-G-G-GHOOOST!!!” It was hilariously unexpected character development and I loved how he welcomed letting things happen to his character.
…I was just using random tables for the shipwreck, there wasn’t anything special even planned in there. There’s no way I could’ve seen that coming LOL.
I’d say the spontaneity of this medium is definitely one of it’s strong suits.
Had some players that were doing a see who can sleep with NPCs tally check. I had some NPCs do it right back. I gave them both insight checks to realize they were now the game instead of playing the game and both failed. This feels like that lol.
One of my favorites of these kinds of situations was to find out where a glow was coming from and we all came to the conclusion that it must be the dark, black wall at the other end of the cave…
