The truly and absolutely amazing experience of courting the hateful and spitful woman known as luck in writing.

[esThr]

So get this. While draf- ahem backlogging my current work I suddenly had an ingenious idea that would truly solve my need for fight sequences.
Have this entire ready made arc with an antagonist that is basically just a D20 die incarnate.
"Why not have the entire fight direction be directed by a D20 die then? Its absolutely genius. Truly.." (courtesy of Rhaps)

So yeah... guess who rolled a couple of Nat 1s.. and had to scrap the whole idea while rewrite the whole scene because the word count was slowly going above 10k due to the amount of bad action sequences that needed to be compensated..
Gambling is bad kids...

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Gambling is bad kids...

Unless you gamble at this great witch's casino! Do some good gambling at this great witch's casino and you will be happy!

 

[Syringe]

Why not have arbitrary things be dictated by the dice roll, but key moments directed by you?

 

[esThr]

Why not have arbitrary things be dictated by the dice roll, but key moments directed by you?

That's... exactly what I did...
Yeah my luck is extremely bad

 

[Jerynboe]

It’s a prompt, not a straight jacket. If you roll and the result doesn’t inspire a scene that works within your greater framework, then that’s an unfortunate roll that you’ll need to scrap. Give it a few minutes of thought before you reroll of course, but using the dice is a tool to help move your planning process along.

A fight scene where the MC gets rekt is interesting to read if you can pull it off, but if you need a DBZ length fight scene just to explain why he/she isn’t dead, you prune it back and only focus on the most interesting fuckup.

 

[Corty]

I usually change dice when that happens. I have around a... metric fuckton of different dice in a cup, and when it gives me bad RNG, I always swap it out for a different one.

It works.

Don't question it; it is like how Todd Godhard always tells it. It just works.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

When I write a story, I always have one thing go terribly wrong. At some point I ask, what is the worst possible thing that could logically happen? No meteorites. No Sudden heart attacks. Just, what if the guard detected the MC and sounded the alarm. What if instead of the orphan's parents dying in a tragic house fire, the husband was cheating and the mother set him and the house on fire, intent on burning the house down and killing everyone, including the children? The children just happened to escape. That would make speaking with the dead awfully awkward.

But I only do ONE thing that goes horribly wrong per act. It's always good to screw your MC at least once, so he can show how he deals with impossible situations.

 

[Sandycat135]

When I write a story, I always have one thing go terribly wrong. At some point I ask, what is the worst possible thing that could logically happen? No meteorites. No Sudden heart attacks. Just, what if the guard detected the MC and sounded the alarm. What if instead of the orphan's parents dying in a tragic house fire, the husband was cheating and the mother set him and the house on fire, intent on burning the house down and killing everyone, including the children? The children just happened to escape. That would make speaking with the dead awfully awkward.

But I only do ONE thing that goes horribly wrong per act. It's always good to screw your MC at least once, so he can show how he deals with impossible situations.

It's like that saying, "What's the worst that could happen?" Except, in your case, you're actually answering it. Whether it's guards sounding alarms or mothers setting houses on fire (yikes!), you're definitely throwing some curveballs at your characters

 

[Rhaps]

Why do you think my novel is mostly dialogue? And as an advice, make character sheets like an actual dnd game.
And don't use google's d20, it is weighted.