Dear Folks –

Timothy wrote:

> Yes, I'm rather wary of inserting a task which had to succeed or there's no way forward

Yes, or a skill that, if the party doesn’t have it, prevents you from succeeding (which is why I’m averse to the plethora of skills in games such as GURPS).

Unless, of course, it leads the PCs to a patron/Casual Encounter of the referee’s choosing, that will (of course!) lead to more events/repercussions/entanglements/lots of running away later on…

And:

> … I might use language such as "that looks difficult" or "really hard”

Absolutely agree – it’s OK (and less jarring/metagamey) to use plain English when saying how hard something looks to a player. When you know the PCs strengths, you can even add nuances, such as for a person with Engineering-4, “To you it looks like a piece of cake. But I wouldn’t let your apprentice anywhere near it!”

Carlos wrote:

>In my experience, players are usually happy to be a bit uncertain about interpersonal stuff, as long >as they feel in control regarding combat, repairs, and the like.

I’ll echo everyone else’s “Ooh, that’s a good distinction, I’ll try to remember that”.  ;-)  BTW, if the player actually roleplays an interpersonal reaction (rather than just roll-plays), and does a reasonably good job, I’ll move the Reaction Roll in a favourable direction for the player. Good roleplaying should trump the dice, IMNSHO; the dice are there to foment ideas and spur the face-to-face interaction, not replace it. Otherwise you may as well be playing a computer game.  ;-)

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David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                    xxxxxx@pcug.org.au
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"