This is all really basic, obviously. It's just to say: your mechanics should reinforce the feeling and the story you want to create.

Cozy woodland game = cozy woodland mechanics.

There's something even deeper, which is about the type of mechanic.

Rolling dice gives a feeling of randomness. Do we want that feeling in our cozy woodland game? If not, maybe we want a question-asking or point-spend or token-exchange mechanic instead. Or no conflict mechanic at all.

(Dungeons & Dragons has a lot to answer for, of course, but so does Apocalypse World. The solutions that Apocalypse World uses are not always the ones that work for another narrative.)

I feel we're so stuck on this. We're stuck on failures and consequences and hard moves and conditions.

Is this a game about failures and consequences and hard moves and conditions? Are those things part of your story? If not, find something else instead.

Or maybe this. When you investigate, roll dice. If you get 7 or more, you find what you expected. If you roll 6 or less, you find something unexpected.

And, if you roll 10 or more, you also discover something about the story of the wood.

This would be a better investigation mechanic: when you investigate, you roll dice. If you get 10+, you discover something happy; 7-9, it's bittersweet; 6 minus, it's sad.

Those are all things that fit in a cozy woodland story.

How about using the Apocalypse World mechanics instead? Roll to investigate, then you either succeed, succeed-with-a-cost or the GM makes a hard move.

Well, no. It's a cozy woodland game. It's not about succeeding with a cost or making a hard move.

(Yes, I know, I'm labouring the point.)

It's deeper than that.

What are the investigation mechanics of our cozy woodland game like? Do you roll to investigate, then succeed or fail?

Well, probably not. This isn't a story about failing to investigate. We'll mostly want our cozy investigations to succeed.

I was hoping there was some way of pushing the roll.

Do you actually roll percentile dice?

I did write Dark Meat, my Christmas Dark...um, hack.

It's not cute it's just distant

I think that's Cthulhu Hack by @paulbaldowski.bsky.social !

It was more "Gosh, he's got this really deep knowledge of things I don't even remember"

It was actually the war between the Soviet Union and China. "Maybe there was a small conflict...no wait"

I'm amazed I haven't been booked for the Dictionary Corner in Countdown honestly.