Party getting stuck, failing

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Yeti Spaghetti

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I know that players probably hate this, but how open should a GM or others be to PCs getting stuck on clues in an adventure, and/or generally being unable to successfully complete a mission?

I don't have a problem with this kind of gaming, since it brings a sense of realism to an adventure (not everything has a good or satisfying ending). And I tend to write adventures with the expectation that PCs may not make it all the way through. It's a tough sell, though, especially in a horror adventure. Ambiguity seems to be particularly disliked in that setting.

Any other insights on this? Should you always give the PCs "the clue" to move things along and make players happy, or is it ok for them to survive, but essentially fail?
 
This has always been a tough one. On one hand, if you don't do something, you run the risk of killing the entire game/campaign. I've experienced this as a player, and if happens more than once, I got a lot of negative feelings about the game. The opposite, makes the game seem like you went into the Settings and set the Difficulty to "Easy" :-)

What I've done in the past is a combo of avoiding stuff that can completely stop the game if they don't figure it out, and also keep in mind/remind the players that they *are not* their characters, and that a high intelligence character may know more than they do. I especially like having consequences for not figuring things out; specifically something like: if they don't figure it out in this amount of time, these other bad things happen that they'll have to deal with.

But one thing I'll never do is allow something like that to kill the game. If a nudge or hint isn't enough, and I can see the players are frustrated, I'll just call Time Out, discuss it quickly, find a solution, and move on...
 
I like the idea of remembering the distinction between players and characters in these situations. I think NPCs can also be used semi-effectively to "move things along." I did this last night when players just kept failing Persuasion/Personality rolls to calm down two NPCs in order to get them to share some vital information. Eventually I just called for a Luck roll (another mechanic that can help as a crutch in stuck scenarios) and had one of the NPCs blurt out the needed information before the PCs got dragged away.

I feel guilty doing these sorts of things to bail out a party. But I guess in the end, I'd rather not have the players be overly-frustrated.
 
I typically make sure that all required info for success is present mutiple times in different places, at different levels of detail, all accessible in different ways. This includes knowlegeable experts, access to on-topic books/literature, explicit in-setting general information & learning organizations, new and used copies of Captain Wemblies Monster Atlas* laying around, and being very generous with what the average level of "common knowledge" and "put effort into learning" mean in a game.

Notable: I tend to run sci-fi with often more varied information systems and communivations stuff than most faux-medieval games/settings.

Often the issues I run across is players being used to low info settings and games that promote or present PCs as ignorant or incompetent. They assume that because they've recently played a game where the super-humanly smart, maximum educated, archmage character still fails 1/6 basic "know average thing" checks, then an average intelligence character with access to literally better-than-modern infoweb searches & libraries is not capable of finding basic info like "what's the government/laws of planet X like" and thus they don't even bother to ask any questions. That's actually the thing I see in my games that bites people in the ass is just them making an assumption of PC ignorance & inability to discover info as the normal state of things so they make assumptions and don't ask any questions.

Now, when I'm playing a standard faux-medieval rpg I look at system math to determine if it's worth my bother to make a character capable of knowing or discovering stuff. Quite often it isn't (ref: max intelligence & knowledge skill fails normal basic knowledge checks 25%-50%) and so I just write up an explicit "doesn't know stuff" character and say "lets go find an expert to ask" a lot. Also, easy access to lots of "interrogate dead body" or unlimited binary question tree magic is super useful.

* edit: found the source:4d7960d45988_pogo_30 march1953.png
 
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I'd have something else happen - depending on the adventure. Someone else gets murdered, someone attacks the PCs, the demon gets released, someone else finds the clue (but won't tell the PCs), there's a second clue that's not as useful and leads them into trouble...
 
I'm lean towards openess. I figure roleplaying is an imperfect medium. The players are asked to portray characters with very different skills and life experiences from their own and what I GM can describe in a scene is really no substitute for actually being there. So maybe a little help and sharing of what might technically be OOC information helps bridge that gap.
 
I think this matters less in an on-going campaign than in a one-off, such as a a game at a convention, because the PCs get a chance to make up for their failure in one case with a success in the next. In a one-off failure is final.

This issue is one of the reasons that I seldom run straight-up whodunnits. My mysteries often present as police procedurals and sometimes as cozies, and other adventures may present as heists (find and rescue the hostage, for instance), but even if they do they are structurally thrillers. That is, the NPC adversary has something going on which the PCs are urged to frustrate, and the crime they are investigating was a means to, or incidental to, something bigger. The adversary needs to complete a series of three to five increasingly dreadful crimes before his awful plan is complete, and if the PCs fail to solve the mystery of the Demeter, and then they fail to save Lucy Westenra, they still get another couple of bites at the cherry before Dracula seduces Queen Victoria and takes over the British Empire. And if they fail to destroy him in a climactic encounter in London then they still get a chance to hunt him down and destroy him in an ambush as he flees back to Romania. And if they fail at that Drac gets to come back in a later adventure and they get another set of opportunities to destroy the vampire count forever. A whodunnit fails catastrophically because the crime is already done; a thriller fails gracefully.

Further, this is part of the reason that I avoid setting the stakes too high in comparison to the scope of the campaign. If the consequences of failure are moderate — one country is taken over by an Organicist cabal, condemning twelve million people to a miserable tyranny for a generation or so, that is all the stakes I could possibly need to make characters desperate, and if the PCs fail to stop it the campaign need not end. They can go on to another operation in another country next week. But if the consequences of failure are that an insane Swedish trillionaire wipes out the entire population of Earth with tropical orchid juice (except for the racial-supremist breeding stock in his orbital ark) then there will be no MI6 for the PCs to work for in subsequent missions.
 
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One thing I've tried to do, but I'm not always skillful enough to pull it off, is to always have a side-quest or two for the party. So long as the main quest puzzle they're stuck on isn't time-critical they can always come back to it. Having the party decide to go do something else for a while gives them a chance to reset and eventually return to the puzzle with fresh eyes, and gives me an opportunity to drop another clue in front of them without making it too obvious.
 
I suppose it depends on the game, but over the years and for a number of reasons I've gravitated towards an open, transparent GM style that means my players don't need to worry about missing obscure clues or not being able to succeed with the right skill at the right time or all is lost. I'd much rather have my players making and following their own plans, with an open discussion of probabilities, possible problems, probable consequences for success and/or failure.

It's much more satisfying for me as a GM to watch my players deliberate, cogitate, juggle their options, weigh up opportunity costs, come up with a plan and try to shoot for goal. The dice might get in the way of their plans, and they might not walk away with a complete victory, but if they completely failed then I'd consider that something of a failure on my part.
 
One thing I've tried to do, but I'm not always skillful enough to pull it off, is to always have a side-quest or two for the party. So long as the main quest puzzle they're stuck on isn't time-critical they can always come back to it. Having the party decide to go do something else for a while gives them a chance to reset and eventually return to the puzzle with fresh eyes, and gives me an opportunity to drop another clue in front of them without making it too obvious.

Yes! This is exactly what I did last night. PCs decided to take a side quest after essentially failing at turning up an important clue, it gave the party something else to do (even though this is a time-sensitive adventure), and then they were able to return at night to find the clues they needed (again, with some additional help from me). In that way, time is still ticking away, so they aren't totally off the hook, but the players were able to experience another element of the adventure without getting overly frustrated.
 
Not having a single/linear problem/mystery to solve helps.. and not having it be a 'save the world' scenario either (but go ahead and let a medium sized town get destroyed/eaten/cursed).
I'm generally fine with ambiguous horror in books/movies, so why not games? I've got happy memories of Call of Cthulhu adventures where we never did quite figure out what was going on and, at the end, just ran away... or burned stuff down in an ignorant blaze of glory.
Also, I favor the Raymond Chandler approach to mystery solving (fists and interrogation), rather than the Agatha Christie style (complicated chains of physical 'clues').
 
The player's can't be stuck if there isn't a place they are required to get to. I think you manage this issue by the way you set expectations as a DM. Personally, I have no expectations whatsoever: the players can try to accomplish things or not - all that is their business. My business is creating an exciting world around them and adjudicating the rules as the players try to do whatever it is they are trying to do. If they want to accomplish something and it fails, it's no sweat off my back - they will bounce back or change directions in whatever way suits them.
 
Not having a single/linear problem/mystery to solve helps.. and not having it be a 'save the world' scenario either (but go ahead and let a medium sized town get destroyed/eaten/cursed).
It occurs to me that there are two ways for an adventure to be linear, or perhaps they are two extremes of a spectrum. Either the PCs have to succeed every time or their adversary triumphs, or else the PCs have to fail every time or the villain is frustrated.

The second has a bit of a problem in the case of commercial adventures, because the GM doesn't want to drop $20 on an arc of five encounters, of which the reward of the PCs prevailing in the first is that 80% of the product doesn't get used. But if you are rolling your own it can be fine. So long as you don't reveal Dracula's ultimate plan before the final decision points, maybe Dracula is fine as a shorter arc in which the PCs destroy a vampire in Whitby, or ambush Dracula in Lucy's bedchamber and discomfit him so sorely that he flees back to Romania (to return another day). And you get to put you un-revealed plot element "supernatural seducer schemes to take over the British Empire" aside to use later (with an unseelie elvish king, perhaps), in another season arc or even another campaign.
 
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Not having a single/linear problem/mystery to solve helps.. and not having it be a 'save the world' scenario either (but go ahead and let a medium sized town get destroyed/eaten/cursed).
I'm generally fine with ambiguous horror in books/movies, so why not games? I've got happy memories of Call of Cthulhu adventures where we never did quite figure out what was going on and, at the end, just ran away... or burned stuff down in an ignorant blaze of glory.
Also, I favor the Raymond Chandler approach to mystery solving (fists and interrogation), rather than the Agatha Christie style (complicated chains of physical 'clues').

I'm fine with ambiguity too, but in a supernatural detective/monster hunting scenario, it's hard to pull off that kind of CoC vibe. Or at least it's hard to have it happen in a way where the players feel that they have at least accomplished something and can move on. The kinds of adventures I'm running/writing are by definition linear problems/mysteries that have to be solved, although as I suggested in my last post, I am working on inserting a tiny bit of an open world/campaign element, where players can just leave the city behind and go off on other adventures if they decide they can't save it from being destroyed.
 
I never gate a necessary clue behind a roll. We may make rolls that reveal other details but largely it's a matter of "use the skill get the clue" if the clue isn't immediately obvious (i.e., trail of bloody footprints). Depending on the game.
 
The player's can't be stuck if there isn't a place they are required to get to. I think you manage this issue by the way you set expectations as a DM. Personally, I have no expectations whatsoever: the players can try to accomplish things or not - all that is their business. My business is creating an exciting world around them and adjudicating the rules as the players try to do whatever it is they are trying to do. If they want to accomplish something and it fails, it's no sweat off my back - they will bounce back or change directions in whatever way suits them.
This isn't a sandox/linear adventure thing.

If the players decide, on their own accord, to take their revenge on General Bob Salazar, they will need to find this person first. For this to happen, the GM will have had to determine where in the world the general is hiding, as well as who else might know about this hidden location and what other traces he may have left behind. These are clues.

Part of making the world around the player characters "exciting" is ensuring that, in most instances, these clues are solvable. The GM when creating these clues has to balance considerations based on what is plausible within the setting's conceits and what may be solvable by a bunch a guys, meeting once a week. after a long day at work, to play a game.

If the players really wanted to get Salazar but can't work out how to find him no matter what they try, they are stuck. Sure, in a sandbox, the players can abandon their plans do something else instead. That does not change the fact that the players were stuck at some stage. The reason why the players got stuck may be because they simply were not smart, strong or lucky enough to do so, but it can also be because the GM misjudged or miscommunicated the clues.

All of which is to say that while getting stuck is a bigger problem a game that is centred around a specific scenario, as often happens with Call of Cthulhu or a superhero game, it can still be a factor in sandbox, and that even a sandbox the GM is still responsible for what information is available and how it is communicated to the players, which is the subject being discussed in this thread.
 
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This has always been a tough one. On one hand, if you don't do something, you run the risk of killing the entire game/campaign. I've experienced this as a player, and if happens more than once, I got a lot of negative feelings about the game. The opposite, makes the game seem like you went into the Settings and set the Difficulty to "Easy" :-)

What I've done in the past is a combo of avoiding stuff that can completely stop the game if they don't figure it out, and also keep in mind/remind the players that they *are not* their characters, and that a high intelligence character may know more than they do. I especially like having consequences for not figuring things out; specifically something like: if they don't figure it out in this amount of time, these other bad things happen that they'll have to deal with.

But one thing I'll never do is allow something like that to kill the game. If a nudge or hint isn't enough, and I can see the players are frustrated, I'll just call Time Out, discuss it quickly, find a solution, and move on...

I'd say the biggest issue isn't failing but anticlimax. Failing and being stuck can be frustrating and boring which is the death of any game. And a GM can't really hide behind "but it is realistic."

However if you show the consequences of the failure, if the story continues at pace and things move along then yes that's a great feeling for players and heightens the stakes at play.

A key point here is as a GM have clear red lines behind the screen as to when the PCs have failed or the bad guys will advance their plans. Once this happens rip the band aid and move on with the fail state. Don't give the players one more chance.

This also helps focus the mind with scenario design. If the stakes are the end of the world then what are your plans as a GM if the PCs do screw up? It might just mean the end of the campaign and rolling new characters or maybe you have the basis of a post apocalyptic setting prepped.

For lower stakes games like a murder mystery it is helpful to have a clear line as to why the PCs have to stop. Perhaps reassignment or maybe the murderer emigrates.

I'd also point out that some genres of game lend themselves to player failure more than others. End of The World and Call of Cthulhu have player failure built in, while superhero games are more likely to assume players will ultimately succeed. Obviously all of this can be defied and subverted but it is worth considering when thinking about scenario design and why your players are playing in your game.
 
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With caveats to excellent points made by Agemegos and Moonglum, of course I'm fine with letting the players fail. For the several people who state that failure can be frustrating and boring, my retort is that automatic and perpetual success kills a campaign just as surely. If I jigger things and come up with contrivances to have the PCs win no matter what, I've taken away their agency just as surely as if I don't let them succeed unless they make the choices I've decided in advance they need to make. Smart enough players will figure this out sooner or later.

Of course, I run a sandbox, so if the players (say) get tired of trying to hunt General Salazar down, the characters can decide to go and do something else.
 
I'd have something else happen - depending on the adventure. Someone else gets murdered, someone attacks the PCs, the demon gets released, someone else finds the clue (but won't tell the PCs), there's a second clue that's not as useful and leads them into trouble...
Yeah, probably this - and since I set timed events in advance, they're basically what is going to happen anyway, I just have to suggest a time skip:shade:!

Also, I find the notion that "inconclusive resolution is not acceptable in horror" to be mind-blowing. I mean, if I was asked whether it fits in any genres, I'd have listed horror basically on top of the pile*, or pretty much on top.

*It's right under "wuxia", because bittersweat endings:thumbsup:!
 
I'd have something else happen - depending on the adventure. Someone else gets murdered, someone attacks the PCs, the demon gets released, someone else finds the clue (but won't tell the PCs), there's a second clue that's not as useful and leads them into trouble...
Like Raymond Chandler said, "When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." :grin:
 
... pointed at himself!

Dare to be different.
That works, too.

Though in my current genre it's more like "the characters feel a powerful killing intent, but can't see anyone"!
 
know that players probably hate this, but how open should a GM or others be to PCs getting stuck on clues in an adventure, and/or generally being unable to successfully complete a mission?

I drop hints, let them stew a bit, then drop more hints, then huge hints, then, as a friend describes it, throw in big fluorescent arrows, then advise them what to do.

I don't have a problem with this kind of gaming, since it brings a sense of realism to an adventure (not everything has a good or satisfying ending). And I tend to write adventures with the expectation that PCs may not make it all the way through. It's a tough sell, though, especially in a horror adventure. Ambiguity seems to be particularly disliked in that setting.

Sometimes clues are really clear to the GM but really unclear to Players.

It is no fun wandering around and missing all the clues, so I don't let the Players do that.

Quite often, if the Players solve the clues in a different way to what is expected, and their ideas are better than mine, I just adjust the scenario so their truth happens. Sometimes they love it, sometimes they are suspicious and ask me afterwards if that was what I intended, and I just smile endearingly at them.
 
Quite often, if the Players solve the clues in a different way to what is expected, and their ideas are better than mine, I just adjust the scenario so their truth happens. Sometimes they love it, sometimes they are suspicious and ask me afterwards if that was what I intended, and I just smile endearingly at them.
I learnt long ago that in my case I’m better off not defining the solution when I write an adventure. Give the characters the problem, and when the players come up with a good solution then that works. stops me from getting too attached to my solution and disallowing anything else, even if it’s way more awesome than the one I came up with. Or worse, from keeping on nudging the players towards my solution.

not saying it would work for everyone, but it worked for me.
 
The Three Clue Rule is also a popular. "Provide at least three clues that point to a conclusion the players need to make."

Providing at least three options works well for any kind of choke-point in an adventure.
 
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The Three Clue Rule is also a popular. "Provide at least three clues that point to a conclusion the players need to make."

Providing at least three options works well for any kind of choke-point in an adventure.

I learned something like this recently from Chris Halliday, who wrote our Elizabeth Bathory adventure. He provided multiple pathways for the PCs to get the necessary information as to Bathory's identity. I'm trying to follow the same path with my "horror in ancient Greece" adventure. But again, I was thrown because players just kept failing to make the necessary rolls in each of two scenario pathways to the clue.

I guess I need a third!
 
I learned something like this recently from Chris Halliday, who wrote our Elizabeth Bathory adventure. He provided multiple pathways for the PCs to get the necessary information as to Bathory's identity. I'm trying to follow the same path with my "horror in ancient Greece" adventure. But again, I was thrown because players just kept failing to make the necessary rolls in each of two scenario pathways to the clue.

I guess I need a third!
Those sound very interesting! I just cracked open a new translation of the Odyssey so I have a touch of ancient Greece fever. Give a shout when the rest of us can get our hands on a copy.:grin:
 
Those sound very interesting! I just cracked open a new translation of the Odyssey so I have a touch of ancient Greece fever. Give a shout when the rest of us can get our hands on a copy.:grin:

Will do, but don't expect it to be dripping with classical Greece. It is inspired by an episode of Kolchak: The Nightstalker featuring Helen of Troy. :smile:
 
Part of making the world around the player characters "exciting" is ensuring that, in most instances, these clues are solvable. The GM when creating these clues has to balance considerations based on what is plausible within the setting's conceits and what may be solvable by a bunch a guys, meeting once a week. after a long day at work, to play a game.

This kind of thinking has lead me to be a lot more lenient on my players. I think younger me would be quite happy to sit there and think "Oh ho! So none of you remember the significance of that name! You'll never solve this mystery!" Whereas nowadays I don't expect my players to work hard at their game night and will just say "You recognise that name; she was the one who signed that mysterious letter you found on the corpse."
 
I expect a touch more work, or perhaps attention, from mine. If all they can give me in reference to their self appointed genocide of a random grenskin tribe is "now lets turn in that quest to that guy in that one town!" where they can't even point to the town on the map or tell me what the "quest" was about...
 
Let them fail and the bad guy plot they were presumably trying to stop proceed, with attendant consequences. The possibility of this happening is a good reason to keep the stakes of such plots relatively modest - a town or kingdom might fall to evil or get wiped out, a war might break out, etc. but hopefully not something that will literally destroy the world or multiverse.

And if you keep the negative consequences of their past failure present in the background, it will hopefully nag at them and eventually they’ll be inspired to take another crack at trying to fix what they broke. Back in the 80s my AD&D group cratered and washed out in module A2 so from that point on I would throw out reminders that the Slave Lords were still active and becoming more powerful and threatening because they failed to stop them. The idea was that eventually the PCs would go back and take another shot at them, but the campaign fizzled out before they ever happened.

If you’re worried about wrecking your campaign world you can also declare that some group of NPC adventurers came along and did what the PCs couldn’t and reaped all the rewards that should have been theirs (play this up - the NPCs become heroes of the realm and her noble titles and fabulous wealth and marry the king’s daughters and so forth). Don’t go to this well too often, though, or the impact will be lost - the players will “know” that it doesn’t matter if they fuck up becsuse someone else will come along to fix things either way.

What I advise against is either handwaving the consequences of failure and letting the PCs win anyway (that reinforces bad habits and leads to lazy, passive play) or give in to whining that your adventure is too hard and reworking the adventure to make things easier for them. Even if they’re right and you did accidentally make an adventure that was too tough, only acknowledge that to yourself and correct course with the next adventure. Don’t tell the players you screwed up. If they learn that complaining is a successful strategy and they can get you to make adventures easier by doing so they will fall back on that rather than making an effort to up their game and Git Gud. Which will result in a boring, milquetoasty, low-stakes game.
 
I expect a touch more work, or perhaps attention, from mine. If all they can give me in reference to their self appointed genocide of a random grenskin tribe is "now lets turn in that quest to that guy in that one town!" where they can't even point to the town on the map or tell me what the "quest" was about...
I get your attitude, but we all have busy lives. The characters may have spent hours discussing plans and dining with Baron Feldspar just a couple of days ago; but the players spent half an hour talking to me doing one of my inconsistent voices six weeks ago. "That guy in the castle" is good enough.

I don't solve mysteries for them, and I'm happy to let them fail to figure out what's going on. But I think it makes sense to remind them of the things the characters should remember. I forgot the names of NPCs made up on the fly if I neglect to write them down; hardly fair to expect the players to memorise each character.
 
Professor Dungeon Master of Dungeon Craft(YouTube) also suggests using the principle of Chekhov's gun when designing mysteries. Solid advice.

 
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I get your attitude, but we all have busy lives. The characters may have spent hours discussing plans and dining with Baron Feldspar just a couple of days ago; but the players spent half an hour talking to me doing one of my inconsistent voices six weeks ago. "That guy in the castle" is good enough.

I don't solve mysteries for them, and I'm happy to let them fail to figure out what's going on. But I think it makes sense to remind them of the things the characters should remember. I forgot the names of NPCs made up on the fly if I neglect to write them down; hardly fair to expect the players to memorise each character.

Quite. One of my staples, in fact, is something I call the "viewpoint NPC." Almost always a grunt fighter, almost always strongly associated with one of the party members as a sidekick or a bodyguard. Aside from that extra muscle never goes astray, the purpose of this NPC is to drop in hints about things I consider so painfully obvious that the party members couldn't possibly all overlook them were they actually immersed in the world. "Hey, Lily, you DO have a Balm of Sadasia; you picked it up a half hour ago -" (actually, the last game session two weeks ago) " - and whomped it in your satchel, remember?" That sort of thing. It's never the viewpoint NPC's job to solve the problem; he speaks when spoken to, and seldom does more mentally than toss in the occasional reminder.
 
I get your attitude, but we all have busy lives. The characters may have spent hours discussing plans and dining with Baron Feldspar just a couple of days ago; but the players spent half an hour talking to me doing one of my inconsistent voices six weeks ago. "That guy in the castle" is good enough.
Oh I'm totally good with that.

It's when they take hold of some side comment about gnolls harassing caravans while the grand high purple cheese mayor of city #3 of 6 on the whole continent was trying to hire them to find a cure for his daughter's magic illness as some "go kill all gnolls" quest and don't even tell the mayor, just reject to actual offered mission. Then they go the wrong way (didn't ask directions), slaughter a completely different tribe nowhere near a trade route, and can't even remember anything but "we can haz quest what turn in to som dude!". Not the city, not the guy, not even why someone wanted something. Then I let them hard fail.

I've taken to color coding & going over the top on job descriptions with npcs. It works a bit better than names. "Screamy purple guy" is fine. "Mayor of <points at map>" is fine. "Guy with sick kid we didn't want to help" is fine. "The cheese trade route being raided by gnolls quest" is even something I can work with. "That guy, you know that one, with the kill quest, somewhere..." isn't fine, especially when nobody asked them to kill anything.
 
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