When to be random

I waited a bit too long to roll my post for Prismatic Wasteland's Randomness Blogwagon, so when the d20 came up 6, it put me in a bit of a bind! Thankfully I rolled 7 on 2d6, allowing me to make this post as short or as long as I want, but I was a bit stumped when I drew the 7 of Hearts and I now have to work tenfootpole into this thing. Talking about randomness on blogs is pretty firmly tied to theoryposting in my brain, so working out how to do this with a review will be interesting! Let's take it as read that it's a bad idea to turn to the dice if some of the potential outcomes aren't acceptable for the table. One of the things I like to do, which I picked up from Burning Wheel, is to state what will happen on success or failure before the dice hit the table. That way if there's a disconnect or miscommunication between players and GM, it can be hashed out prior to the situation escalating and hurt feelings because someone is trying to weasel out of a bad result. On the other hand,…