Margin of Victory

The amount by which the winner
beat the loser is often important – suc-
cess by 5 vs. failure by 5 generally
means more than success by 2 vs. suc-
cess by 1! The winner’s “margin of vic-
tory” is the difference between his
margin of success and the loser’s
margin of success if both succeeded,
the sum of his margin of success and
the loser’s margin of failure if he
know whether you succeeded or failed
until it’s too late to try again (translate
an old treasure map, order in a French
restaurant, build a ship). Finally, there
are times when you are injured by fail-
ure but can afford to fail a few times
(climb a wall, impress a savage
tribesman).
The GM must use common sense
to distinguish between these cases,
according to the exact situation in
which the players find themselves. As
a rule:
• If the first failure kills them or
destroys the object of the attempt,
that’s that.
• If a failure causes damage of
some kind, assess the damage and let
them try again after a “reasonable”
time passes. (Skill descriptions fre-
quently state the time required.)
• If a failure causes no damage, let
them try again after a reasonable time,
but at -1 per repeated attempt – that is,
-1 on the second attempt, -2 on the
third, and so on – until they succeed or
give up.
• If repeated attempts are the norm
for the task (e.g., when attacking in
combat), or if it’s long task, tell them
that their attempt failed but let them
try again at no special penalty, in the
usual amount of time.
succeeded and the loser failed, or the
difference between the loser’s margin
of failure and his margin of failure if
both failed.