I've been watching and listening to a lot of RPG podcasts and recently came across something by John Wick on youtube about his new game houses of the blooded and how he wanted to give some power to the players. Now personally, I'm all about player empowerment, as I like to GM like a complete bastard, and in return, I give my players plenty of options to try to best me in wits. Those fools. It makes for interesting games of oneupmanship, which I think is essentially what the collaborative storytelling part of RPGs is all about. "Oh, you think you're cool, well watch this!" I like that. So now, thanks to John Wick's far spanning wisdom, I found a cool way to give my players some power, and also some temptation. Here's how it works.
The system is still almost exactly the same. You roll, and add complications and bonuses. Then, you see how far over or under the target number you are. So, for example, Dorian the ghost is trying to remember something about an obscure plague that is killing people in a town. This isn't a well known disease, so the Judge sets the difficulty at Hard. Now Dorian has his knowledge of diseases at expert, which brings that eight down to five. Now he rolls two dice and gets a seven which is two over the target number. He now has two facts that he can state about his success. Dorian says that first, the disease is called lizard rot, since the skin hardens and peels like it's molted (the DM had already described symptoms). Also, he says the disease is not airborne, as the disease is spread through fluid exchange.
If it's under, the DM gets to choose what to do. So let's say another time Dorian and his friends have been chased by a mob of villagers with torches into a windmill. While our heroes haven't seen the classics, their players have and they pretty well know how this is going to end. Dorian decides he'll faze through the wall and provide a distraction from behind, giving his friends time to get out. The windmill wall isn't particularly thick, but fazing always is slightly hard. So, he sets it at medium. Dorian is decent at fazing which brings the number down to a 6. He rolls three, which gives the GM three facts. The first one is that Dorian gets stuck in the wall. The second is the farmers start throwing torches where his face is poking through the windmill. Then, and both players and the Judge can do this, he keeps the last fact for later. These saved facts can be used to actually change one fact that either a player or DM has stated.
Changing a fact can only done in "yes but" or "yes and" style, you can't dispute a fact. So, as an example, Girthinix decides he's going to blow a storm cloud their way to douse the flame. He rolls his Weather Magic skill and gets two facts, which he uses to state that the cloud's rain douses the fire and it makes the ground so muddy that the mob is starting to slip around outside and can't come and can't come any closer. The Judge takes that fact he saved from Dorian's botched fazing and says "yes and the storm cloud lets loose a lightning bolt that takes out a chunk of the roof. Roll to dodge the falling beams, guys." That bastard.