Where’s the betting pool for ep 300 hitting before ep 200?

300… 200… Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey… (Overdone, I know, but I had scrambled eggs & toast for supper last night, and steak & potatoes for breakfast, so it was on my mind.)

Regarding player rolls saving me, this happened this past week. I have to admit, I’d GMed myself into a corner and a critical success by a player saved me (and the players) from going down a rabbit hole. I know the players were slightly miffed, but it saved the game, partially satisfied the players and maintained the mystery behind the hostile faction that’s been sort of the bogie man in the campaign so far.

I guess sometimes the dice do want the campaign to continue.

I had my vasectomy several years ago. The doctor was in a hurry (wtf?), and that “pulling” that Chris mentioned was a bit more intense. It hurt through the anesthetic, bruised me from navel to knee, and my recovery time was 2 weeks instead of 2 days.

Tell the doc to TAKE HIS FREAKING TIME!!!

I definitely agree about knowledge rolls for pushing the story as a last ditch effort. I’ve actually blogged about this before:

http://mrhalbert.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-to-call-for-roll-further-thoughts.html

In principle, I like knowledge skills. They have the potential to bring interesting things into the game, or at the very least let your character be awesome in a less conventional way. You can be the guy who kills monsters because he knows exactly where to put the sword, not because he can cleave a mountain in two with his biceps.

Where I have a problem with them is execution, in particular in having players roll them.

Let’s say you have information that you want to give the players, so you have somebody roll for it. If they fail the roll and you hide the information, your game world now seems flatter and less interesting because of it. If they fail and you give them the information anyhow, it’s clear that you fudged in their favor and it kills immersion in the moment. (Plus, perceptive players will stop taking knowledge skills in favor of “useful” attributes if it’s clear knowledge will come to them either way.) It’s even worse if you put progression of the plot behind a skill roll; again, if they fail, what do you do?

My preference is to simply forgo the rolls. “Because of your knowledge of ancient basket weaving techniques, you can see that blah blah blah” etc. The rolls are then saved for situations where failure doesn’t hurt progression or immersion.

Also, for cool accidents moments: I had an NPC that went from being a mild diversion to a significant opponent during a session. We were playing Dresden Files, and my players were to encounter a backwoods, hillbilly wizard who used mind-affecting magic (which is bad, bad juju in that world). Originally, it was just supposed to be a situation where the guy was a bit of a jerk, but he wasn’t going to cause any real trouble and the players would move on to their more pressing matters. As I played him at the table, though, his accent and demeanor gave him an arrogant swagger that just really sparked the ire of the other players. A few other improvised short-comings later (a dead brother, neglected nephews, a gathering of similarly evil acolytes) and the party was chomping at the bit to show this guy the inside of a shallow grave. I ended up setting them up to really duke it out with him, but it was just amazing to me how quickly he got under their skin. I was similarly excited about how I was able to turn him from a jerk into a true slimeball so quickly as well, once I noticed their antipathy towards him. It was excellent.