Editing My GM Style (section)

== Resolving Dice Rolls vs Roleplay ==
Aside from adjudicating rolls based on the game mechanics, there is a whole ''other'' discourse in balancing what you can accomplish by pure conversational roleplay versus rolling a skill check to achieve something. This is particularly salient in scenes of political intrigue, information gathering, or other times where you need to resolve something difficult to pin down with NPCs in an unstructured environment.

How far do you take the roleplay? How soon do you jump in with a dice roll? What external factors are at play that are currently, or might potentially, affect the success of the outcome?

Generally, my strategy is to roleplay until you get a sense of what your aims are and the pieces of information you are dealing with, then we roll to advance the scene. I'll try to employ "Roll first, then role play" as my general approach. What this means is you, as a player, know will know which way the interaction will likely go before you act your character through it. You can be confident and bold following a successful roll, or navigate the failure while still in command of your character's conduct. We'll work together to advance the scene consistent with both the dice result and your character's characterisms.

One important note with my GM style: a failed dice roll simply means the narrative has become more complicated or otherwise changed. There will be times where you'll hit a dead end on a course of action as a result of the failed roll, sure. But I try to take a page from the Fate system and will assure you the plot and your character's story will still advance, it just means it advances differently. Different can be big or small, it depends on what was going on in the scene.