As a side point, Remember that some games don't have simple contests at all, for instance Vincent's Dogs in the Vineyard would be a slow game if you ran a full contest for every-thing, and obviously that is not intended.
Actually I do exactly this kind of thing with HQ also, but my point is that some contests are not worth detailed exploration but do require a result on the Complete-Major-Minor-Marginal scale.
I'm the kind of Narrator that doesn't pretend to have all the details nailed down before hand, and will just consult the dice on things that I haven't considered.
If a player said "can I tell anything about this guy by his clothes?" I would tell them the obvious extrapolated facts on a "say Yes" basis, but if they wanted to dig deeper I might say "lets find out" and roll dice. Unless the player wants to make a feature of their Holmsian deductions these kinds of situations don't really need augments, just a quick consultation with the mechanics tells us how much or how little he can glean.
The player, knowing that I am winging this part will happily not bother with augments because he knows that its not a big issue, but if he gets a cool result that could make it interesting, and I would be open to suggestions on how that would be interpreted. Its better IMO than just saying no or just telling them the basics.
So yes to "Say Yes or Roll the Dice", but the Rolling of dice can also throw up interesting results, especially in games where the results are not a bland pass/fail.
Powered by hypermail