Consequences

We’ll be going over this briefly and giving examples in later sections of this chapter to give you an idea, while detailed discussions of consequences can be found in the SMA.

• Developer’s Note (7/14/20): Or rather, will be. The Session Master’s Assistant is always undergoing reconstruction. Such is the life of a playtest.

Consequences are something that impedes you or sets you back in some way, or is directly failure; the check or gambit was unsuccessful. This can include harm, resource, price, and surprise.

• Harm is straightforward, it is bodily harm, injury to body or mind, hit point damage. If you jump and fail to stick the landing, you’re going to be hurt.
• Resource involves what you have used. Something you spent took more than you expected. You spent time looking for your wedding ring, but it took you far longer than you would’ve liked.
• Price asks you to spend something you did not already use, or suffer a worse consequence. If you fail to appease the spirits, you’ll have to spend a lesser slot to banish them, or a revenant will cross over and hurt you.
• Surprise represents results that you did not anticipate. You infiltrated a private party despite failing the check, but you were quickly trapped in boring conversation with a foul-odored consort.
• Failure is what it sounds like, you don’t succeed at the task for which you made the skill check.
  • Partial failure is also what it sounds like. You tried to persuade a merchant to give you the quest macguffin for free, but they will only give you a discount.

But let’s go deeper. What happens because they fail?

• You lose control of the situation, and it becomes more difficult to proceed. You failed to pick the lock, now it’s jammed into the wrong position and unlocking it will be harder to do.
• Roadblock bars the way between you and your goal, a new obstacle to be resolved before you can continue. You failed to sneak out of the house, you must deal with your parents before you can try again.
• You lose the opportunity, and the situation evolves such that you cannot try it again. You must find a new approach. You only got a sneer, a rude gesture, and a lifetime ban from the jewelry shop with the quest macguffin you need, now you may need to use the five finger discount.

Failing Forward

Shutting a player out without an alternative option is a surefire way to kill any momentum they had. Players will inevitably fail their checks if RNG has anything to say about it, they will suffer the consequences of their failures eventually. The narrative should not depend on the player passing their checks in order to progress.

Consequences are presented in RPGStuck in such a way that there can always be another way forward, despite their bad luck. Failing a check can be more interesting than passing it, depending on the SM’s creativity.

The SM should be a fan of the players. This isn’t to say that everything should be handed to them on a silver platter, but there should be a way forward that the players can easily grasp, in their threads and in the session as a whole.