During my last game session, i thought about an alternative way to use checks for knowledges skillls.

Say you see or live something your character can learn from.
In my case it was a clever diplomatic choice made by a npc.
Perhaps your player will learned from it => check for intrigue.
But players with high value still know this way to do.
So players with low value in intrigue must have biggest probability to learn from this than players with high value.

So instead of giving check for players who succeed in intrigue roll, i choose to give the check to players who FAILED to their intrigue role.

What do you think about it ?

During my last game session, i thought about an alternative way to use checks for knowledges skillls.

Say you see or live something your character can learn from.
In my case it was a clever diplomatic choice made by a pnj.
Perhaps your player will learned from it => check for intrigue.
But players with high value still know this way to do.
So players with low value in intrigue must have biggest probability to learn from this than players with high value.

So instead of giving check for players who succeed in intrigue roll, i choose to give the check to players who FAILED to their intrigue role.

What do you think about it ?


I have occasionally toyed with this idea as well.

Currently in our campaign, if the GM (c'est moi) asks you to roll a skill, if you roll a critical OR a fumble, you get a check mark. Regular success or failure doesn't cut it (but acts as a justification later on in winter phase, where I usually give a couple more checkmarks to skills that the charaters used or tried to use).

The problem with giving out experience check points on failed skill rolls is that it 'encourages' checkmark hunting. Folk Ken 1? No problem, just try to understand what that smelly peasant wants and fail, and you get a check mark for it, and soon your skill will rise! Granted, it is easy for the GM to stomp on such blatant abuse, nor would it be such a huge deal if the character has Folk Ken 1 or 2, but still...

I like our Critical/Fumble system. That gives approximately a 10% chance per roll to get a check, and the explanation there is that you learned, possibly, a better way to do something, or realized that something seriously didn't work, and become better that way.