p26, GM Best Practices
Make the scoundrels awesome even in failure. Blame the circumstances—not the characters—when creating consequences or complications. Even a PC with zero rating in an action isn’t a bumbling fool. Here’s a trick for this: start your description of the failure with a cool move by the PC, followed by “but,” and the troublesome circumstance. You aim a fierce right hook at his chin, but he’s quicker than he looked! He ducks under the blow and wrestles you up against the wall.
I think the trick is spot on, but the example could be better. The fierceness of the punch is meant to convey how good the action is, but it still kind of looks like they borked it; they look slow or a poor shot. Arguably, the circumstances are the character is facing a faster opponent, which is legit, but also borderline close to the character isn’t competent at Skirmish.
When circumstances are to blame, the failure is because of something the character couldn’t have prevented on their current course of action. Perhaps the fighters are hit by bottles from the rowdy crowd making them slip or slow down, the map is stained or damaged making it difficult to read, there’s a hidden mechanism revealing the lock is more complicated to unlock.
This also gives a different way forward from the failure. Command to disperse the crowd, Tinker to restore the map, etc.
