Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

So I'm running a solo RPG for a friend. It's in a fantasy setting. He is a lead investigator looking for magical spies from a hostile foreign nation.

Anyway this game system has five degrees of success for any action

Marginal, Moderate, Complete, Exceptional, and Phenomenal.

Two types of failure. Regular failure and a botched roll. Botched rolls are usually catastrophic failures.

I gave him a lead on a magical spy, and he botched his very first mahrlect roll! On an investigation roll, a botch means you not only didn't find any clues, you accidentally destroyed what clues existed.

I had to override that dice roll of course. Because if he botched his only lead that would have derailed a carefully crafted four-hour gaming session.


There is a joke in D&D games that there is no point in putting extra ranks in your tracking skill. If the story requires that the PCs track the target, the character cannot fail regardless of what the roll is. If the story requires the bad guys get away at this juncture, you cannot succeeded regardless of what the roll is.


Tangent!

That's the nice thing about movies and books, you don't have to rely on random chance. I always thought in the prequel Star Wars trilogy (and the Harry Potter series) Palpatine/Dumbledore had really crappy master plans that relied on a lot of moving parts coming together in exactly the right way.

Note, in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine had a crappy master plan that relied on a lot of moving parts coming together, but the plan blew up his face. Luke's plan to rescue Han from Jabba was pretty similar. It was really foolish to let his friends be voluntarily captured one at a time. Horrific things could have easily happened to Leia, Chewie, and the droids.

Jabba's Palace is not exactly Fort Knox. Luke was able to walk in, overcome two guards and catch most of Jabba's people literally asleep.