Investigation on a stormy night

I'll roll but you're not sure since the phone's dead. Now it's nighttime.

Lets go with a survival check at -1 to figure out how to night land navigate through the forest. It was going to be -2 but map will reduce to -1 we'll say.

Techincally I don't think you have Survival as a skill so it's at -3 but that's still and 8 on the wild die so we're good.

You know it'll be a bit of hoofing up and down possibly some climbing involved, when though is up in the air depending on how fast you can traverse the environment.

I don't have Survival as a skill, but since this is supposed to be a dramatic task, do you want me to go ahead and roll another 4 times to see if I can make it back?

I was using the Survival check to see if you'd figure out the 'path'. I figure you could write up an RP for the travel back montage and we can figure the rolls or you can suggest what you think would work for your approach on rolls and go that way.

Since we're both in the Writing Workshop I'll try the RP.

Junk my post didn't take and I didn't notice till now, lets get a series of notice rolls trying to find the landmarks in the dark to make sure you're on the right path. 5x rolls and the results I'll pull card for I think for the traversing montage.

Untrained is at a 1d4-2 not defaulted to the stat linked to it btw plus a wild die would have the penalty.
I'll go with you used Notice (which isn't just sight btw) so roll results look like:
1/4
7/4
9/5
2/2
7/1

Seven successes when 5 needed.

Quite dirty, tired possibly in need of coffee, and physically drained you are now by your card with kid in tow.

For the sake of the rules, I'm not bickering just clarifying, I hadn't realized that the wild die also gets the penalty, but I thought the penalty was -1 because Sal had his map. Also, when untrained, do I roll the attribute with the penalty, or is jusr 1d4-2 as the default? With Survival I was following your lead because that's what you'd been putting. My bad. Notice then can substitute for something like Survival, but at a penalty if the PC doesn't has no training in Survival?

Notice to make sure I'm not about to be ambushed?

Forgot to reply, wild die is another roll for the check so all bonuses or penalties apply. 1d4-2 would be 1d4-1 since there's a plus 2, the wild die was at 1d6-1 along with it.

All untrained rolls are 1d4-2, the wild die for wild cards is usually a 1d6 so it would also be at the -2 since d4 would be (I know about it), d6 (average competence), if the penalty didn't apply people would likely not put points in skills as much since you could get past the -2 by just rolling a wild die at no penalty, that said there's an edge that lets you roll untrained at d4 vs d4-2. I figure you'd go with something you're good at to get back to the card and notice fit for the dramatic task.

In this case it was Notice to find things you saw on the map route back you figured out.

That confusing enough?

Also sure roll Notice also since you didn't write down what Investigator does it slipped my mind, does it give you a +2 to a roll? If so roll your Notice at +2 and a wild die at +2

Investigation is mostly correlating data so a 'roll for clues' when things aren't that obvious or to put out a new trail for more scenes/ideas out there

Ihave to ask because it feels like a natural spot for an ending. Are we wrapped up? It seems like the perfect spot, but I don't know if you wanted to stretch this out further.

Yep it is, long weekend. Ending with a twist.

Well, that's a fun ending. I've appreciated the time you put into walking me through the rules. Running a game can be a lot of work, and you've been pretty selfless about teaching me the system. It'll be interesting to see how the game has been modified to work with Rifts. Otherwise, thank you very much for the experience. I'm looking forward to applying it.

No worries, having a tie in for the characters so the story focuses on them and they path they take is the story versus they're a character in it I think pulls from Dungeon World or Narrative dice game mechanics to me. In Rifts you have most players playing what could be considered a super weapon (Glitter Boy, Dragon, etc) so it's interesting to see how they do in certain situations in a world where things are also just as strong. From an AP I've learned even Glitter Boys that can level towns have issues (ghosts/spirits) or being caught in close range combat where the boomstick just down't have time to fire. Also having two factions in the world as major background flavor (neither is really a good group) worked well also. Happy Jack's RPG Podcast had an AP in the RIFTs setting I think. Just remember untrained is 1d4-2. We really didn't go into a lot on additional modifiers that may come up so I'd check that out, like trying to attack someone invisible is at -6 which is great as a player, unless they're attacked by a GM NPC/creature that's invisible, throwing out paint and seeing large feet step on it so you don't see how big the feet are or seeing several dozen feet might be fun as well if there's a horror tone to your game. Any questions? Like how to deal with a full combat monkey team of PCs that are really good in combat? Or anything?