Forum

I have slight problem with this Talent:

PREMONITION
In some mysterious way, you can sense impending danger.
The GM will have you test Mystic Powers – if you pass, you
get a feeling of a looming threat, but no details about what
it might be.

OK, I've only been playing RPGs for (yoinks!) 38 years, but I still can't shake the meta-text that, when the GM asks me to make a perception check (or sense trouble, or whatever) I, as a player "get a feeling of a looming threat", which is obviously then passed to my player character. Now, I'm obviously a very bad role-player, because I shouldn't let my character have player knowledge. But in a roleplaying game, where half the output is emotional, once you have given me that feeling, I ain't going to shake it.

So, in this case, the mystic power worked whether or not my roll is successful. Do others here agree?

Similarly, in the QuickStart scenario, the rules say that the avatar, Two, can only be spotted with an observation roll at minus/negative 2. The mecheanic means that the player says

"I'm looking around the space" and picks up her dice.

GM says "lose two dice before your roll" and immeadiately the player knows there IS something to spot, but it's difficult. So even if she fails her roll, she has learned there is something in the room.

An I being too concerned?

That's fairly simple to handle: the GM should do these rolls himself and only give the results to the player if there is something to see, feel, etc.

From my many years of GMing Cthulhu games, I'd just ask all players to roll the dice without telling them what it's for. If there was a relevant success, share the information, if not, just let the players ruminate about what they might—or might not—have just attempted.

An equally nice and easy way to handle this is have the player make 3 or 4 rolls in advance .
As the GM just refer to them as you need to ticking them of as they are used .
When you run out get him to make a few more rolls.
This way it does not ruin the suspense or give anything away

You could also borrow Mutant Year 0's difficulty system and ask the player to roll his/her full observation,and then roll two dice against that behind your screen - counting your successes as cancelling out each one of the player's.