Simply put, that’s not a twist, in my opinion. It’s just the result. What’s the new obstacle or situation to be overcome? Sloan tries to repair the windows and breaks it (or ruins the frames, as you had). That’s the result. The twist springing from that result could be the baker demanding he pay for it (negotiation or argument conflict).
Well… that, again, is a result. There’s nothing to overcome. It isn’t really a twist. It’s a Resources condition, almost (which could be damn cool). A twist would be Lester showing up and berating Sloan publically, forcing some sort of check or conflict to resolve. Failing THAT, the townspeople now have a lesser opinion of the Mouse Guard and something needs to be done. Simply being in debt to Lester is missing the lower-c conflict of the situation. You’re just resolving it without the players doing anything or reacting. It’s an interesting condition but not a twist (as I understand a “twist” to be).
That’s how I read it. Remember, though, that if the guardmice fail Obj 1 and then fail Twist 1… they may keep spiralling away from what they originally wanted and not accomplish it. Or they may accomplish it (finally) but have a acquired a few conditions they now must deal with.
That’s not how I read it. If you succeed against the twist that spins off from the original failed roll, you succeed in some fashion, having overcome an issue related to it. Of course, if you don’t succeed on the twist, more twists can be interjected, which (as Luke said) could lead the team out of reach for accomplishing the original goal. Or, you could simply apply a condition to the mice failing the twist situation and then they return to the initial goal.
Mice are perseverant. The GM’s job is to beat the crap out of them via obstacles and challenges but, if they overcome them, he can’t deny them their mission being accomplished.
In your broken window example, a failure there could spiral off into actions that the player may wish to address in the Player Turn. This is a good thing!
Thanks for taking the time to help me understand this, Luke.
It was the other people in the thread(s) who brought it up! I just gave in to peer pressure!
Regardless, knowing that intent doesn’t enter into it helps a lot. I guess I’m porting over my knowledge of BWR’s Intent -> Task -> Resolve. And I should not be doing that. Cool!
Okay. Lemme try again, using another example (albeit tweaked) from my last Grasslake game.
The players want to ram the turtle with a flaming hay cart in the hopes it will drive the thing away and back into the water. They roll a versus test against the turtle’s Nature 8 and they lose. I think a possible Twist is that they’ve now managed to set Harold’s brewery on fire! It’s the middle of summer, so the town is pretty dry; they need to fight the fire right now or Grasslake will go up in flames…
…but this has no effect on the turtle. They still need to deal with it after (or even while) they fight the fire.
Is that right?
Or is it also possible to have the plan work (the turtle recoils from the flaming hay cart and swims away), but the fire Twist remains, and that’s the new obstacle they need to deal with?
Basically, is the original task/goal/plan that was the basis of the obstacle pretty much irrelevant? The roll isn’t so much determining the success of a given plan, but rather whether or not the GM can throw in a Twist or Condition?
Better yet… to go back to the grain peddler examples from the book: what would have happened if the players had made all of their rolls? Find the peddler walking down the path with his cart?
Buzz,
Both twists outcomes are acceptable. They both present a new challenge for the players to overcome. You make matters worse with the turtle. You can even say, “The turtle goes on a rampage through town, knocking the hay cart into the brewery, setting it on fire. Now the turtle has moved inland to the town hall and is eating mice.”
That twist sets up a complex obstacle – the turtle’s in a new position, the fire must be put out.
The deal with the turtle though, is that you can’t recycle the same obstacle. You can’t force the players to retest Science vs Nature or whatever. You must move on to a new set of abilities (for the players, obviously the turtle tests Nature).
And yeah, MG is all about twists.
And if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk in theoreticals about the Grain Peddler mission. Your examples from your game are just fine.
Awesomeness. No sweat on the grain peddler re-hash.
So, really it’s about the GM using failed rolls to drive play in interesting directions. The key is that, no matter what happens, the subsequent obstacles can’t test the same skills that were unsuccessfully tested earlier. No Fight vs. Nature being followed up with another Fight vs. Nature. The players tried Fight once, now it’s time to try some other angle, like Scientist or Militarist or whatever.
So, failure+Twists are about messing with plot (as it were), while failure+Condition is about let the plot go where the players were going anyway, just now with some penalties in place.
Right, and what Aramis is saying (and the text supports) is that after all is said and done and all hell has broken loose and been put back again, it’s perfectly acceptable to simply describe the resolution of the mission because it’s not important any more after all of those twists.
The GM’s job is to beat the crap out of them via obstacles and challenges but, if they overcome them, he can’t deny them their mission being accomplished.