How I'm Bringing "What's at stake" to my game

Two postings recently got me thinking more about stakes.


Avoiding Trivial Stakes

and

Fucking Meaning…

So my current thinking is that anytime it’s even possible for a player to grab some dice and start rolling (even combat) I’ll want to ask them “what’s at stake here” or “what do you want to have happen and what could failure mean here”. If the answer is dull or mundane, we don’t roll the dice it just happens unless I can raise the stakes somehow. If a player jumps a NPC in a dark alley with the intent of delivering a dire warning to the slavers the NPC is a member of then I should ask the player in question “what happens if you fail”. The player can then honestly answer “I just want this to be a warning, if this NPC is any real threat to my character I want to wait until somebody weaker comes along”. That’s totally fair and together we’ve co-storied who this NPC is and advanced the story. Now of course I could counter with “No, this NPC is a total bad-ass who will put your life on the line and therefore jumping them raises the stakes considerably. Is this still what you want?” It’s all out in the open and we know what is at stake one way or another. The point is to make sure that the story in my head matches the story in the player’s head and that everybody knows what is at stake before a single toss of the dice is made.