Last night, my sister's husband let me borrow his pickup truck. It broke down with myself and a friend of mine. That's a bad GE roll, right?
Is it? If it hadn't broken down tonight because of my using it, it very likely would have broken down with my infant nephew on board. Personally, I'd prefer that not happening, and gladly sacrifice my inconvenience to keep him safe. I consider it a very good GE roll, all factors weighed.
What is a good roll? What is a bad roll? I just felt like waxing philosophical for a moment.
(Doing Therapy)
I'd say it depends on what the roll was for.
If it was for "when does the truck break down?" (because the ref knows for some reason that it'll break down sooner or later), then yeah, it's a good roll.
If it was for "what condition is the truck in?" (because maybe it'll break down soon or maybe it'll run fine until eventually sold), then it was a bad roll - but not the worst, which would be that it didn't even start.
That's a useful example of how the interpretation of the dice depends very much on why they were rolled.
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More generally, every roll starts with a circumstance, a question to be decided, and the player's expectations. What a good or bad roll means always flows from that.
Like I said, I just felt like waxing philosophical.
Ya know what though? This was my rant. A year ago, it would have been 25 posts long. Therapy's Working!!!
(Morning After)
Scott's nailed it pretty well. Since, though, this was an effort to touch on the philosophical, I'll give a bit of game philosophy.
One thing to keep in mind is that GE rolls work off a center point; that center point, the 16/17 roll, is really "what would be the most likely outcome here if no luck were involved at all."
So we have a truck. What do we know about the truck. If we know nothing at all but that the truck is being used by someone else, then the normal roll would be that the truck works fine at the present. Slightly negative rolls will give you little problems--you have to hold the blinker, or one of the headlights goes out, or the engine strains when you push it above forty-five. Even Bad Enough isn't going to mean you break down, and when we hit As Bad As Anticipated, well the breakdown is more likely to be a flat or a dead battery or something like that. Worst Fears would be transmission failure, blown water pumps, engine seizure, stuff like that--and Beyond Worse Fears or Nightmares has the vehicle dying in the middle lane of the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, or something similarly horrendous.
The good rolls might start with minor problems that you can easily address--the gas gauge is stuck, but you spot it and fill the tank; the brakes are a bit soft, but not dangerously so and you can adjust to them. On the good side, you get great gas mileage and everything works well, and gee, this truck has a fabulous sound system, and the owner left your favorite snack in the glove box for you. It's difficult to image a best scenario, but managing to get "there and back again" on one tank of gas which the owner says he'll cover is pretty good. So is, "forget it--just keep the truck, you'll probably need it again anyway." Or maybe, "Well, I can't lend you my truck right now, but I can rent/buy one for you if you've got the time."
Obviously, though, the more we know about the truck, and about the person lending it, the more questions we have about that baseline. If we know the truck is on its last legs, suddenly it becomes significantly more likely that you'll have trouble, and that the trouble will be serious. If we know the truck is brand new and in great condition, it becomes less likely that you will have any trouble at all.
Also, your concern that the truck might have quit when your nephew was in it makes perfect sense in the real world, but not in the game world It is unlikely in the extreme that the referee is going to pay any attention to what happens to the truck once it is off stage and back in the hands of its owner--unless you got a GE roll that was, say "not thwarting but generally unfavorable" and he took it to mean you made it but the truck took a beating in the process and is now going to fail for the owner (making him less likely to help you next time). The only other reasons the truck might fail in the future would be if the owner was also an active character who rolled a bad GE or skill check related to his truck, or you asked to borrow it again and got a bad roll on that. But there is no causal link between whatever you roll now and whatever might be rolled in the future, save only that your good or bad roll now might influence the base conditions later (that is, "we know this truck is not in very good shape because John rolled a bad GE on it last time, so the neutral result should be that there's at least some trouble"). But if I want to know whether the car breaks down for you, and I want to know if it breaks down tomorrow for someone else, those are separate rolls.
Footnote: failure of the truck is more likely to be due to botch on the operating skill than a GE roll. I'd need a reason to make a GE roll in that situation, and I probably don't have one on your fact set. I might have one if you were buying a pig in a poke, that is, if you were blindly asking a bunch of people if anyone could lend you a truck. Then the GE roll would determine whether anyone could lend you a truck, and what sort of truck it was and in what condition. But given that you borrowed a working vehicle from someone known to have a working vehicle, it's the skill check, not a GE roll, that determines whether it works.
--M. J. Young
But given that you borrowed a working vehicle from someone known to have a working vehicle, it's the skill check, not a GE roll, that determines whether it works.
Which doesn't mean the car broke down because he drove it badly - it's just that the failure of the car has to be tied to the skill roll so that bias can influence the odds, right?
Absolutely. In fact, for ordinary driving in high bias, a "failed" roll might not even mean that he didn't get where he was going--only that he didn't get there on time, or had trouble getting there, or something like that. Even in low bias, a near failure could easily be read as can't get up to speed, or gets the vehicle stuck in the mud, or something like that, with a high failure saying that the car just won't start, and a botch that it breaks down.
--M. J. Young
I guess I should clarify. There seems to be a difference between breaking down and not starting. It wouldn't start. We stopped at a convenience store, and when we came back out, it wouldn't start back up. While not nearly as dangerous as stalling out on the freeway, it could still be quite problematic for them, and I'm still glad that it was me and not my 4 month old nephew in the truck.
(Doing Therapy)