Most of the subway smells fine.

I am going to get a lot of use out of that URL.

I've been telling people they need to put a dollar in the jar when they do that, but I haven't actually been enforcing it.

I understood that reference

I mean yeah if every CEO or VP or whatever who doesn't agree to immediately addressing climate change gets dead, then you'll probably be left with a leadership that is willing to address climate change. In the comics, too.

For your example, I'd probably still ask if the players wanted me to let the dice decide or not before rolling. My players once had a clever idea of setting some poison traps and using earthbind to deal with a wyvern. The thing made all of its saves and nothing worked. I could've lied, but we'd already agreed to openly roll and abide by it. Would lying have made it better? Maybe. The game carried on and that arc had a thrilling climax later.

Alternatively, if we'd been playing a game that has a "succeed with a cost" / "fail forward" mechanic it could have been satisfying. D&D and close relatives are especially prone to disappointment because of how random and binary they tend to be.

Anyway. All of this I think it reveals a difference in how RPGs are enjoyed by different people.

On one hand, there's going for immersion. The player wants to be in the world, be in the character, and feel everything there. It's very zoomed in.

On the other, where I hang out, it's more like a writer's room. I'm interested in telling a cool story, but I'm not really pretending to "be" my character. My character doesn't want a rival wizard to show up, but I as a player think that's interesting (and maybe want the fate point, too) so I can suggest that my "Rivals in the Academy" trouble kicks in now. I enjoy when I can invoke an aspect and shift the result in my favor, or when I can propose a clever way I can get what I want at a cost.

Neither's better or worse than the other, so long as everyone's on the same page. It can be bad if half the table wants to go full immersion and just talk in character for two hours and the other half doesn't.

I got down voted for saying this elsewhere, but to my mind there's a huge difference between the GM unilaterally changing the rules, and the group deciding.

Scenario: the goblin rolls a crit that'll kill the wizard. This is the first scene of the night.

Option A: GM decides in secret that's no good and says it's a regular hit.

Option B: GM says "I think it wouldn't be fun for the wizard to just die now. How about he's knocked out instead?". The players can then decide if they want that or would prefer the death.

Some people might legitimately prefer A, but I don't really want the GM to just decide stuff like that. I also make decisions based on the rules, and if they just change based on the GM's whims that's really frustrating and disorienting.

There's also option C where this kind of thing is baked into the rules. And/or deciding in session 0 what rules you're going to change.

Inspiration in raw DND is extremely under baked. Bg3 expanded it a little by letting you hold more than one, and actually using it. Most tables I've played at don't use it, or it's pretty rare.

Fate by default starts you with 3 fate points per session. It expects you to use them and has clear ways of getting more.

I really tried to get my old DND group to use then more, but it didn't really click. I wasn't a good fit for that group really.

Some games have this built in and you don't have to fudge it.

Fate, my go to example, has important but simple rules around losing a conflict.

At any point before someone tries to take you out, you can concede. That's a player action and not a character action. If you concede, you get a say in what happens to your character. That's where you as a group say "maybe they stab me but leave me for dead in the confusion" or "maybe the orcs take me prisoner so you all can rescue me next week". Whatever the group decides is cool goes, but you get a say. You make this call before the dice are rolled. You also get one or more fate points, which is nice.

If you instead push your luck and let them roll, and their attack is more than you can take, you're done. The rest of the table decides what happens but you don't get a say beyond what was agreed to in session 0.

This would also be pretty easy to import into DND or most other systems.

They should probably limit how many swipes you get instead of having your swipes go into the void.

the problem with flubbing is the dishonesty and unilateralness. You can play a different system that doesn't create the situation your players don't like so easily.

Or honestly just import Fate points and "succeed at a cost" into dnd. The dice system still sucks but that would help tremendously.

Play a system that accounts for this.

Fate gives you fate points to spend when you do t like a roll. It also gives you "succeed at a cost" if your fate points are exhausted or not enough.

You can still just roll with it (pun intended) and die to a random goblin if that's fun. But you also have agreed upon procedure for not doing that. "It looks like the goblin is going to gut me, but (slides fate point across the table) as it says on my sheet I'm a Battle Tested Bodyguard, so I twist at the last second and he misses (because the fate point bumps my defense roll high enough)"

This is pretty easy to import into DND, too, if you like the other parts of it

Opportunity cost is a pretty well understood concept.

Like, inagine you have 100 gallons of water. You could use all of them to water a single water intensive plant that will feed one person, or you could use them to water a whole farm that will feed a community, and also let people drink and bathe and stuff.

The resource is limited.

Sure, we could try to get more of the resource and make it less expensive, but we should also not squander what we have.