Spectacular Success/Failures

[shootingwomprats]

On Nov-20 in the "Star Wars D6" G+ community I posted mechanics for Critical Success:

"Critical Success: If a skill roll is made by 10+ a critical success has been achieved. The player describes the success with the GM being the final arbiter."

Imagine my surprise this evening when I was reading SW2R&E p.79, Interpreting Rolls, "If a roll beats the difficulty by 15 or more points, the character may have made a spectacular success. When a roll fails by 15 or more points, the character has failed spectacularly, possibly triggering a few other problems along the way! (This kind of failure can be similar to a complication.)" So the rule was already there, just a little harder than I suggested.

The wording suggests that if its appropriate to the scene that a Spectacular Success/Failure can occur. It states a Spectacular Failure is similar to a Complication. We can infer that a Spectacular Success would give an advantage of similar impact as a Complication.

In these types of situations I like to offer the players the chance to narrate what happens. A lot of times they will come up with ideas I would not have.

Example from the other night: a character escaped from a jail cell and upon exiting the cell block he comes face to face with the guard office. A single guard is inside, the door operated by an electronic mechanism.

The character runs and does the Elvis slide towards the door and bashes it with his stun baton, disabling the lock and thus jamming the door shut. He rolls extremely well and I award a Spectacular Success and ask him what happens.

He narrates that a shower of sparks explodes from the control panel followed by sparks from inside the guard office. The lights and control panels wink out. The guard is effectively locked inside the office with no way to communicate other than his commlink.

Totally awesome!

So here is the rule, plucked from the obscurity of bad editing, for your game pleasure.

Spectacular Success/Failure: If a skill roll is made by +/-15 a Spectacular Success/Failure may have been achieved.
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Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[garhkal]

Nice.. usually i use spectacular failures on more tech/mech based stuff, such as cracking a computer, a SF would trigger an alert.
Rarely has a Spec success hit, but when it does i often give a boon.. Such as a repair roll taking half time, or the like.
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[DougRed4]

That's really good to know, and fits well with the damage bonus I've occassionally given (though, like you, SWR, I was awarding a bonus for 10 over).

In our games, players are more likely to get a spectacular success than they are a spectacular failure. On the rare times they fail, they're often fairly close to the number they were shooting for.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[cheshire]

I've kind of been doing this, even if I haven't had a hard and fast rule in term of how high the success has to be for a "critical success." That is to say, when someone succeeds by a ludicrous amount I can't just say, "Yeah, when you parried that, you REALLY parried it." Instead I've awarded some positive consequence. Such as if a newbie Jedi using only his base lightsaber skill rolls a 31 on account of exploding sixes to parry a viboaxe, I may say that the axe head gets severed and hits the attacker.

However, I like the idea of giving some narrative control over to the player. Helping make actions a result of their decisions sounds like a great way of giving them ownership of the circumstance, insofar as it is tempered by good reason and they don't try to turn it into disproportionate gains.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[shootingwomprats]

[Cheshire] Thanks. Getting the players involved in the narrative and therby the story was the purpose of letting them take "ownership" of the Spectacular Success/Failure. I also have a clause at the end the GM has the final decision.

In game I will typical ask the player to narrate it and make it good or I was going to do it =) This is especially motivating for a Spectacular Failure and fuels motivation to come up with an idea I may not have.

I look at it as a storytelling tool, involving the players in the narrative, as well as a way to spread my responsibilities as a GM.
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Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[Esoomian]

In my group we tend to describe spectacular successes as something out of the ordinary happening.

http://www.rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=98613#98613

http://www.rancorpit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=489
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