Put It on My Tab

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:54:00 -0400

Just had what I thought was an interesting insight in the difference between skill checks and saves:

With skill checks, you pay cash to get the information or narrative advancement. No success, no info/advancement
With saves, you pay credit for it. You get the information, but need to determine whether you were seen, heard, left evidence of your own, dropped or broke a piece of equipment, &c

Just Use Luck

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 08:40:00 -0400

Every game provides a mechanism to determine the success or failure of a character’s actions. Whether testing abilities, skills, saves, attacks, dodges, or senses, all these boil down to:

“Do I have better, worse, or indifferent odds of accomplishing what I’m trying to do here?”

And so, every roll in a game is a Luck roll. All that changes from situation to situation is the fictional positioning of the character (Luck favors the prepared, after all). If no roll is being made, Luck isn’t being courted. The action is either impossible or it’s a fait accompli.

I wanted this to be the heart of the way Journeyman works. The aspects of a character neither offer an inherent benefit, nor impose an inherent penalty. They merely describe the character and offer affordances for the referee in the moment to determine whether or not they affect the situation. Fezzik’s gigantism provides ample advantage when it comes to intimidating a portcullis guard, gives him even odds when wrestling a white ape of Barsoom, but would work against him if he were attempting to squeeze through a narrow cave fissure deep in the Great Underground Empire.

None of this removes the suspense of not knowing the outcome of an action, and none of it removes player or referee agency. So the next time you’re in a position to adjudicate a situation, see if you can’t reframe the action to answer a simple question: Who has Luck’s favor?

Referee on Neverending Pretending

Put It on My Tab

Just Use Luck