I was once running a Savage Worlds pirate game (50 Fathoms) where one of my more dramatic players found a beached shipwreck and started poking through it. He rolls Notice and gets “snake eyes”, which is a critical failure.
He looks up at me excitedly. “Ohhh no, WHAT HAPPENS TO ME? This is gonna be BAD! :D” so clearly “Uh you don’t notice anything?” isn’t going to be satisfactory here.
So I tell him he fails to notice so hard he takes bumps and bruises from banging his head on some supports because of the ship’s awkward angle or something. He wants to try again and fails the roll again. “Okay uh…roll Spirit?”
Cackling like mad, he rolls and fails again. “What happens? What happens?”
“Well, you swear you saw SOMETHING in the dark depths of the ship where the sunlight can’t shine through. You’re so unnerved you need to roll on the fear table.”
The table was captivated at this point, and quite frankly I was caught by surprise that this was generating such a fuss lol.
He ended up gaining a “superstitious” hinderance and a white streak in his hair from sheer fright. He played it up like crazy too. “G-G-G-G-GHOOOST!!!” It was hilariously unexpected character development and I loved how he welcomed letting things happen to his character.
…I was just using random tables for the shipwreck, there wasn’t anything special even planned in there. There’s no way I could’ve seen that coming LOL.
I was once running a Savage Worlds pirate game (50 Fathoms) where one of my more dramatic players found a beached shipwreck and started poking through it. He rolls Notice and gets “snake eyes”, which is a critical failure.
He looks up at me excitedly. “Ohhh no, WHAT HAPPENS TO ME? This is gonna be BAD! :D” so clearly “Uh you don’t notice anything?” isn’t going to be satisfactory here.
So I tell him he fails to notice so hard he takes bumps and bruises from banging his head on some supports because of the ship’s awkward angle or something. He wants to try again and fails the roll again. “Okay uh…roll Spirit?”
Cackling like mad, he rolls and fails again. “What happens? What happens?”
“Well, you swear you saw SOMETHING in the dark depths of the ship where the sunlight can’t shine through. You’re so unnerved you need to roll on the fear table.”
The table was captivated at this point, and quite frankly I was caught by surprise that this was generating such a fuss lol.
He ended up gaining a “superstitious” hinderance and a white streak in his hair from sheer fright. He played it up like crazy too. “G-G-G-G-GHOOOST!!!” It was hilariously unexpected character development and I loved how he welcomed letting things happen to his character.
…I was just using random tables for the shipwreck, there wasn’t anything special even planned in there. There’s no way I could’ve seen that coming LOL.
I’d say the spontaneity of this medium is definitely one of it’s strong suits.