System for Adding Narrative Twists to TTRPG Rolls in Systems That Have a Binary Pass/Fail State.
I have long been of the opinion that binary success in TTRPGs is not ideal for generating interesting situations when playing. So, I drafted up a rough attempt at coming up with a procedure for what it would look like if a difficulty check were to generate a narrative twist in addition to determining whether you succeeded or failed at your task.
The natural roll is compared to a chart assembled when you start using the system.
In order of descending importance:
The outer two results become major reinforcement of success state. This means that if the roll was a success, the character receives a major fictional boon, and if it was a failure, the character receives a major bane.
If there are more possible die roll results, continue on.
Median results become major reversal of success state (that’s the middle one if your dice roll has an odd number of possible results, and the middle two if the roll has an even number of possible results). This means that if the roll was a success, the character receives a major fictional bane, and if it was a failure, the character receives a major boon.
If there are more possible die roll results, continue on.
The outer third of the remaining unused roll results (rounded to the nearest whole number, minimum of 1 result) become minor reinforcement. This means that if the roll was a success, the character receives a minor fictional boon, and if it was a failure, the character receives a minor bane.
If there are more possible die roll results, continue on.
The inner half of the unused roll results (rounded to the nearest whole number, minimum of 1 result) become minor reversal. This means that if the roll was a success, the character receives a minor fictional bane, and if it was a failure, the character receives a minor boon.
If there are more possible die roll results, continue on.
The remaining results do not provide a twist.