The players were holed up in the Elven enclave of Hiri Handia. They wanted to sneak into the undercity/lower quarter without being spotted by House Feketes guards. I prompted them for Stealth Checks but the elven sword singer instead said, maybe there is a secrete passage to the Undercity from within the elven enclave. I was like sure…roll for it.
So he rolled Elven HIstory with Forks from Elven Protector Wise. He tells us a story of a fort from the First Age, that this enclave was built over that was sealed after a great war and that there are spectral guardians that still haunt it. He got like 6 successes - so it was a reality!
Now, when they descended down this fey portal into the ancient fort, they were confronted by a company of elven ghosts, spectral guardians, that wanted Intimidated them to state what their purpose was or be slain. My bladesinger pc then roles Paen of Deeds and forks his reputations and his affiliation to the sword of the white towers. Neither of these are RAW, but it toally makes sense, so I allowed it.
Ofcourse, I was distracted by work (gawd), so had to cut my post short. But, this is so cool.
He exploded 3 6s, and didnt roll any traitors! He impressed the sword wraith so much that it told him to find the Horn of Elladan who died fighting the Great Spider Uruloki at the Shieldwall (I made this stuff up on the spot). The spectral warriors would answer to the call of the Horn of Elladan if he blew it. Kind of like a Horn of Valhalla. I don’t care if I was too generous, he ended up with alot of success, and I love magic items.
Every time we have a session, I am so fucking blown away by the cool shit these guys do. its nuts. I had no plan other than a simple Stealthy versus Guards thing to get to the Undercity.
Since Jay is so damn cool, his ideas area always better than mine.
I think BW is the kind of game that DMs should play with each other. Normal players, your average d&d player, just wants to be led along most of the time. Follow the breadcrumbs sprinkled by the GM. But it takes alot of passion to be a good BW player. Luckily my players are both GMs and have agency.
Incidentally, the problem I had with the player running Sir Ladislav the Knight being kinda passive ended the other night. He was aggressively pushing his beliefs which was great.
How generous it is depends on how powerful the spirits are outside their “natural” environment of these tunnels, whether answer means “obey a command” or “appear so assistance can be negotiated”, how summoning ghosts is viewed in the setting, who else wants the horn, and a bunch of other fun things.
On the actual topic of the thread:
You could give advantage dice for the reputation, or you could FoRK, and I think the FoRKing mental model helps better.
Also, I loooooooove when players use their skills to change the content of the world. I love it when players use their skills to make you catch up too!