Fria Ligans forum

For any rolls, for Journeys or otherwise, I follow 2 principles: (1) the principle outlined in the book, "You are allowed to push rolls even after a successful roll, but only if rolling additional SUCCESSES will increase the effect of the roll in some way." [p.44 Player's Handbook] and (2) unless there are risks associated with failure and rewards associated with success, I don't ask for a roll (with rare exceptions). Pushing to LEAD THE WAY isn't going to help if they already have 1 or more successes, for example, but it will help if they have none; further, they need to get where they're going and want to do so without risking potentially damaging complications from mishaps.

I've found both as a player and now GM in this system that any attempts at farming (most commonly attempted with Journeys rolls) can rapidly come back to bite them during Random Encounters and other dangers without the GM needing to actively try to discourage them.

As an example: Recently the party stayed around camp for an entire day, HUNTING, FORAGING, etc., gaining some WP and damage from pushed rolls. As they weren't HIKING, I only rolled once for an encounter and even rolled randomly to see when it occurred, a nearly deadly random encounter with the Blood Mist cascaded into a series of events that, within 3 Quarter Days killed 3 of 4 of them, all of which had plenty of food, water, and WP remaining, mainly because they were all damaged from pushing rolls when well-stocked, were many hexes away from the nearest friendly village, and had made enemies of local wolfkin.

If pushing rolls too often is grinding things to a halt and interfering with the GM and party's enjoyment, more power to disallowing pushing for certain rolls or skipping them entirely, but I think that as-written any attempts at farming are themselves potentially dangerous, WP caps out at 10 anyway (if I'm not mistaken), and uses of WP can save lives and achieve goals but rarely on their own.

TLDR, in my experience the danger of WP-farming is easy to underestimate (players) or underplay (GMs), and WP itself is valuable but easily overvalued.

I think I had only two rolls in my last game session in Pelagia:
1) crafting roll to repair a bow, pushed
2) insight roll to observe hunting lynx behavior when picking up Maha tablets near the gift of the sea

In both cases there are negative consequences or something at stake - damage to the bow or not gaining useful information about their choice of tablets (they try to see which table is incorrect). In both cases despite having banes, there was no indecision about pushing the roll - the players saw it merely as a free opportunity to gain more willpower points for later and increase the likelihood of succeeding. It seems that outside of dangerous adventure sites (dungeon/castle), pushing the rolls and taking damage is actually considered advantageous to my players. Two of them are druids, so they love loading up on willpower, but others (goblin, rogue, hunter) all like having a lot of willpower to load their powers.

I think my players push 95% of rolls, except for when they are deep in a fight and don't want to risk being broken. Outside, they always take a push deal, because it's significant increase in the likelihood of success and free willpower points. If the intent was to make pushing risky, I don't think this materialized in our games.

Certainly the weakest part of Forbidden Lands is how risk/reward can break down with pushing.The incentives push players toward pushing at nearly every opportunity and it comes down to the GM to try and control this a little. This is often because restoring attributes is seen as "free" so attribute damage outside of very dangerous moments is generally not something a player is going to be super concerned about. MYZ which is the closest game mechanically handles this differently by forcing resource usage to recover attribute damage - and this puts a cost on pushing a roll. Coriolis makes players give Darkness to the GM which will almost certainly come back and bite the players later. Vaesen and TFTL have an immediate cost to pushing a roll.

My approach is to not allow pushing on journey rolls or tasks that would take a quarter day or longer. This, among other things, helps restrict pushing rolls to more dramatic moments where that attribute damage is more likely to have repercussions. Basically, nudging pushing back into the realm of potentially risky. Even with this change last night one of my players hit 10 WP - but it's the first time for the campaign.

I'd also suggest requiring an additional resource roll when players have to rest and they've suffered attribute damage. The PHB says that the players must roll for food and water a minimum of once per day, not a maximum.

Dont play-style have an huge importance to do with this aswell. I mean if you like to role play an epic narrative maybe you as an player should not push at every given chance to get something fun out of the game. WP aint that important that you have to push-break yourself at every given time. Not even for spellcasters. FBL gives players a freedom most games dont, so hunting wp might kust break the storyline the group is trying to achive, aswell as helping it grow.

I like when the GM puts a limit to pushing, might be as easy as asking the player to rollplay how the RP is actually pushing his roll.

Dont play-style have an huge importance to do with this aswell. I mean if you like to role play an epic narrative maybe you as an player should not push at every given chance to get something fun out of the game. WP aint that important that you have to push-break yourself at every given time. Not even for spellcasters. FBL gives players a freedom most games dont, so hunting wp might kust break the storyline the group is trying to achive, aswell as helping it grow.

I like when the GM puts a limit to pushing, might be as easy as asking the player to rollplay how the RP is actually pushing his roll.

You cannot blame players for doing what the mechanics and game encourage them to do. Players, as a general rule, will not hold back from a mechanical advantage especially when those mechanical advantages are the things that fuel their abilities. FBL doesn't give players any more freedom then any other TTRPG.

Sure, there will always be power-gamers that wanna do those things.. Prolly thats why some seamse to have a problem with WP farming.

Its not power gamers. Have you ever played dnd and placed an artifact in the room with the players? They all immediately want to know what it is and what its capable of. Its not a negative player type. It inherent human nature. How often do the players not search for loot?

The mechanics themselves encourage that behaviour because more power is better and keeps you alive to do more stuff. Its not the rare power gamer that pursues it. Its the rare roleplayer that doesn't.

My concern with not allowing journey rolls to be pushed is that failure will be a lot more common, and for some characters that could make any kind of travel a nightmare of failed survival rolls, mishaps, miserable rain-sodden campsites, more failed survival rolls, and eventually death from exposure before even reaching an adventure site.

I think if you're out in the mountains it can quickly become life or death, so that's just as justified for a push as when you're fighting a monster.

I definitely see the problem, because we're experiencing it in our games where players have full willpower tracks. But when you're out in the wilderness and you fail that survival roll, it doesn't feel like 'farming' to push a roll to make sure you survive the night...

There are 2 parts to that.

1) Non-combat skills and talents are valuable. The players will learn all about how valuable they are.

2) Journey rolls don't actually fail when you don't pass them. The players STILL Journey almost every time. They just ALSO get inconveniences. It's part of the reason people don't allow pushing Journey rolls. You can't actually fail them so what are you pushing for?

There are 2 parts to that.

1) Non-combat skills and talents are valuable. The players will learn all about how valuable they are.

2) Journey rolls don't actually fail when you don't pass them. The players STILL Journey almost every time. They just ALSO get inconveniences. It's part of the reason people don't allow pushing Journey rolls. You can't actually fail them so what are you pushing for?

Yes and yes.

Lowering the average rate of success for these rolls by taking away the push option is less deadly than you may be thinking AND increases the value of survival gear, skill, and talents. one of my players last week was getting really excited about Pathfinder 2. Players that have ~80% + chance of most journey rolls with pushing aren’t really going to look at that talent over say Murder-Hobo 2 talent.