Comment on “The Find”

Tim, a quote from your post:

"but their character failed their wisdom roll and is dancing around with the thing."

I assume you meant this facetiously, but I think one of the reasons people are so often distrusting of ability checks, knowledge systems - or the game as a whole, really - is because childish DMs say "oh you failed your roll? Well now you're doing (some absurd thing)."

I sadly can't think of a single game I've played in where this wasn't considered acceptable practice*. This fucks everything up, because simple player input ("I touch the statue") is translated into bizarre output ("You got a 1 on your Wisdom to know that you shouldn't; you are now dancing with the statue.")

Often the same thing applies to rolls of 20 but w/ good effects ("You got natural 20 on your Dancing roll and now this guy is your follower" and so on).

Such shit. I can't abide man-children and this is one of their most annoying conventions. 5% chance of bizarre shit happening is only interesting if you aren't trying to build something larger i.e. a coherent world. But they aren't, are they? 1 is literally "bad luck," not "transform into blithering incompetent."

*save the games I've run - but I am guilty of not having run for a while, airtight excuses be damned, so I suppose I'm a shit-lord by default for not providing an alternative to the manchildren's games.