Thanks a lot, Yamo.  

I did a followup post in the "What Game Designers Do Wrong" thread, IMO it's inferior (I got to rambling,) but there's a coherent essay in this idea, somewhere.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadOn the other hand, in much of cinema, there's the classic "hold up" scene, where someone has a gun at you, and they get to sit there, monolog, take you captive, blah de blah.

I've been meaning to blog about the subject of what I am calling "go or no-go" situations.  Jonathan Tweet talks about them in his little article There Is No Try, S. John Ross covers similar ground in the Risus Companion, and Ron Edwards talks about the topic a bit somewhere, calling it the "Whiff Factor".  The fact that all three of these guys point to similar solutions makes me suspect that they are on to something.  I recommend the Tweet article, it's short and to the point.  In short, in some situations instead of a roll gauging success or failure, sometimes a skill check will decide go or no-go.  If your roll suceeds, you have saved the hostage or whatever.  If you fail the roll the GM simply says "All your instincts say that won't work, you'll need to figure out something else."  Edwards offers as an alternative success or success plus complication, yes you saved the hostage but because you blew the roll the DM now has the authority to pimp you in another way.  I'm not sure I like Edwards' idea.  It keeps PCs looking badass, but the GM inventing new shit to fling on the fly runs counter to the way I normally GM.