Many systems have these or similar rules. I'm sure folks with a broad library of games will find this old hat. But porting them into a rather traditional game has made it so much more fun for the table.

When you make a check for something, and the dice say No, the players have options.

Dramatic Failure: Something goes wrong that makes the situation Worse, but you get XP or similar for it. Set off an alarm. The would be pickpocket mark is more than just a little old lady. Whatever you all can come up with, so long as it makes the situation worse and more complicated. You don't get what you actually wanted, and the hazards are real, but at least you get something.

Succeed at a cost: You get what you want, but something undesirable happens. Set off an alarm when opening the door. Jump the chasm but drop your backpack. Whatever you all can think of, so long as it makes things worse. You get what you were after, but...

Just Fail: You can't retry. This solution is blocked off. No dithering on "what if I...". You can't pick the lock. You can force the door or find another entrance, but you can't just keep fussing with it. Let's keep moving.

This has been working great. When the players fail, we usually get something exciting instead of a dead end. It has really sped up the pace of the game, even if sometimes it sends us down wild tangents that rose out of failures.

I think some players would hate this. Probably in part because it's all pretty zoomed out. These are player choices, not character choices. But that's where I like to sit in RPGs - a writer building a story more than an actor living a role.

I don't think I would be happy going back to a vanilla dnd-like where the dice just dropped us off at dead ends.

Anyone else playing with the new fractal incursion bonus event stuff? I did a bunch of quickplay fractals this afternoon, and it was pretty okay. The rewards look nice, though. Bought the omnipotion right away.

The wiki as of this writing is still pretty sparse, though: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Incursion

Hopefully someone will put up timers for the open world incursion events.

Do you remember your first character death? Was it memorable?

I usually GM, and NPC deaths don't hit as hard. I don't even remember my first. I lost a warlock in a D&D 5e game, but we were high level so raise dead was just right there. Not very impactful.

Last night, I had a player's first character death ever in a game I've been running. It's sort of Shadowrun + World of Darkness, using Fate for the rules. The player had learned a kind of magic I stole from Unknown Armies: If you take big risks now, you can do more powerful magic later. Blindly crossing a busy street might be a mild charge, but russian roulette would be a major charge.

The players were trying to investigate a warehouse for plot reasons. This player ends up by himself in the basement while the ground level is on fire (for player reasons). He finds an armed goon, a guy dressed like a doctor, and several unconscious people wired up to a machine.

The player goes, "I'm going to russian roulette for a charge."

I go, "Are you sure? It's all or nothing. No take backs. You get a major charge, or you die. You'd roll 1d6, and on a 6 you lose."

They go, "Hmm okay." The player tries to threaten the goon, but the dice don't favor them. Now they're in a slightly worse position, mechanically.

The player goes, "I'm going to roulette" and just rolls the die. No more discussion. It came up 6.

The rest of us are like, "Wait, what? You just..? Right then? That's so... anti-climactic."

I wasn't sure what to do. I hadn't expected them to so casually go for the big score! I thought it'd come up in a big climax scene, not a fully escapable conflict with an unarmed goon!

We talked a little about ways forward that keep the character but don't cheapen the mechanic, but the player was like, "No, I rolled the dice on it and lost. His brains are all over the floor now."

The player had to go sit on their own for a little while. They're thinking of rejoining as an NPC they'd worked with, but said they absolutely do not want to use magic again.

This is one I'm going to remember for a while.

A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn't getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.

Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it's popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.

Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I've done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I'd use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.

I tried it a bit with my reaper in pve and it seemed okay, but I wasn't doing anything challenging that really put it to the test. I haven't tried the others classes yet.

I'm looking for players for a weekly game of Fate. I'm thinking something like a mix of Shadowrun and World of Darkness, where the players are vigilantes looking to make the world better. It would start (and maybe stay) at the street level, rather than global or cosmic.

I've been playing and running games for 20+ years.

LGBT friendly. New players okay. Unreliable players less so.

Message me if you're interested. Include a blurb about yourself, your experience with games, with fate specifically, and a joke of your choosing.

Like I saw one that was titled "I wonder why rule" and had a picture about overpaid CEOs or something.

Why "rule"? What's the origin of this format?