It Never Fails

[greyorm]

So, I've been a movie-watching buff lately.  I've sucked down more special-effects-ridden media than I have in years.
Other than coming to the realization that all of John Carpenter's movies have the same exact plot and plot-elements, I started doing something while drowing my brain in Hollywood produce.

I started dissecting the movies from a die-mechanic POV; and from the POV of a specific mechanic at that: whiff-factors and the results of conflict resolutions.
Watching Jurassic Park III and noting how the scenes were built up, I had an epiphany as the scientist and the boy escaped the frilled man-eater by the fence.

See, before this I didn't get it, I just couldn't figure out how to handle a situation that had been talked about -- allowing the character to always succeed at their task, using a failed roll to introduce complications.

I thought, "Well, sure, that would be nice, it's really cool...er, how would I DO that?"

I think I was thinking in terms of a simulation, where things are set and exactly measured.  Frex, there are 20 kobolds in this room, none are spellcasters...but what if one WAS?  That's a complication!

So I get it now.  Let the players describe their actions and the results and they succeed at the stated attempt.

If they fail the die-roll, however, you add more complexity to the situation, that is, ANOTHER situation that HAS to be dealt with IN ADDITION TO the current situation.

In JP3, I see it having worked like this:
"We need to find a way through the fence."
[rolls 'Find holes in fence' and fails]
"You notice a hole down the fence a little ways...but that's when you hear the roar of the gaint, toothy predator as it crashes through the brush RIGHT BEHIND YOU!"

There was a scene in our 3E game where this would have worked great: the warrior-woman was fighting a horde of kobolds, instead of missing with sweeps and rushes, I could easily have had her cut them down...failed rolls?  More kobolds rush forward from the dark!

This is how movies are made!!  The characters always (or almost always) make it; but when things get tense, they often get more complex...it's "Oh no, what NOW?"  That's where the suspense comes from...not the "will they/won't they?" but the "what's going to happen NOW?"

"Ok, you blow away the storm troopers, but then Darth Vader shows up..."

I have to give credit to "Universalis", too, which started taking me in the direction of adding complications to situtions.
I played it this past GenCon, and I have to say that was one of the funnest times I've had in gaming in YEARS.  Total blast.  And I at least feel the result of the evening had a very cinematic flavor to it in terms of scene-based tension and over-the-top Hollywood-style action.

I do have a feeling that always letting the stated action succeed is too much power for the players, and takes away a little bit of what I like about gaming...but I have to ask, am I being anal?
Is there a way to handle this situation that leaves some question without swinging the pendulum too far towards "semi-random success" (aka: anti-climatic resolution) OR "always succeeds" for use in a game?

I fully suspect there is, including having a few ideas to the effect...unfortunately, I have to run, so more on that later.  Hopefully that's enough to chew on for now, and hopefully I haven't just wasted everyone's time.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Raven,

I understand your question perfectly. The "never fails" interpretation of die rolls is indeed too extreme.

Now check out both Sorcerer and Hero Wars. Each one has a "degree of" mechanic, which provides excellent guidelines for judging how well the success or failure comes off.

Sorcerer: degrees of victory, in units of 1, 2, 3, etc.
Hero Wars: categories of outcomes, ranging from Complete, Major, Minor, and Marginal.

Now if we were using the traditional approach to these results, these terms would be all about ranging from bullseye (best) to hits-friend-in-eye (worst). But instead, when you apply degrees of outcome to a Fortune-in-the-Middle situation, you find the solution to your proposed problem.

Let's take that JP3 situation and scrummaging for the holes in the fence, in Hero Wars terms. Marginal or Minor Defeat would lead to your solution, in my opinion - you've got holes, but the situation is more complicated (and dangerous), and you can't blithely waltz through the hole. Major or Complete Defeat might include, instead, being overtaken before making it to the fence, or not finding holes, or the holes needing to be widened.

Since Hero Wars is specifically designed for this kind of thinking (more so than Sorcerer), the metagame component of the situation is even more handy. Players may spend "Hero Points" to modify their die outcomes, such that the roll that yielded a Failure in that situation, leading to (say) the Major Defeat, could be bumped to a Success. Okay, the outcome has now changed to a Minor Defeat. That's the kind of thing you can do "in the middle" in Hero Wars, and it's not the only way.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Raven,

I have to give credit to "Universalis", too....I played it this past GenCon, and I have to say that was one of the funnest times I've had in gaming in YEARS. Total blast...the result of the evening had a very cinematic flavor to it in terms of scene-based tension and over-the-top Hollywood-style action.

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. I rather thought you were probably carrying a chip on your shoulder from me contesting your "steam punk" genre bid.

I liked the ending quite a bit myself. My favorite player moment from late in the game was when JohnB sourly said, "I think I've seen this movie already." Hahahahaha!

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for the kind words gentlemen.

I can only agree that FitM is the best tool I've seen for generating Cinematic drama. And it doesn't always mean not failing, either. Occasionally failure is fun as well. FitM means choosing when its failure, and when its further complication.

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

But instead, when you apply degrees of outcome to a Fortune-in-the-Middle situation, you find the solution to your proposed problem.

I absolutely prefer this to systems that require a GM to assign difficulty levels up front. And to me, the two are redundant within the same game system. Is there any reason for a game to have a variable, GM determined target number up front, and degrees of outcome on the back end?

Paul

[contracycle]

Hey, I had a thought while reading the Hollywood analogy.  Perhaps characters ALWAYS DO succeed at their action, but if they failed the roll, the level of tension = risk goes up.

Like, a pseudo-Rune mechanic.  Or maybe a bit like Drama dice in 7th Sea.  The GM can impose a set of abstract dangers to the PC's; this is the GM's die pool.  If the PC's fumble a roll, you still narrate a success but with complications as above, and add a die to the GM's pool.  Or somefink.  Could perhaps be a basis for distributed executive styles too.

[Mike Holmes]

Gareth,
I had a similar idea to what you state above last might. Then I realized that I had already created such a game. It's called Final Fight, and it was my entry into Sean "Unodiablo" Wipfli's portion of the Iron Game Chef contest from GO last year. The category was Action Movie RPG, and what I came up with was called Final Fight (stolen from the video game). Essentially, characters could always choose to succeed, but needed to intersperse some failures in between (chosen by the player), and generate a pool of points. When this pool got to a certain level, the characters could engage the Big Bad Boss in the final fight.

Completely designed to drive the concept of rising action that you always find in action movies. But if we were to take your described framework, and put it over any Sim game, the effect would be the same I think.

Interestingly, I described recently how I do this via Illusionism. I usually have the players succeed, especially where their characters specialities shine. If the character rolls high, I describe how the task was more difficult than they expected, but due to their skill and luck, resulted in the desired outcome. If they roll low I describe how their skill overcame the bad roll and made them achieve the desired outcome. Essentially this is the same thing that Paul advocated with not selecting a difficulty before hand, except I imply to the player that I did. Interspersed with rolls that I just let fall as they may (usually in less dramatic or appropriate moments), the player rarely really knows if I am fudging or not.

With Narrativists, everyone knows, but, given the goal, nobody cares.

Mike

[ This Message was edited by: Mike Holmes on 2001-12-18 09:21 ]

[gentrification]

I absolutely prefer this to systems that require a GM to assign difficulty levels up front. And to me, the two are redundant within the same game system. Is there any reason for a game to have a variable, GM determined target number up front, and degrees of outcome on the back end?

Is there any reason for a game to have a variable, GM determined target number up front, and degrees of outcome on the back end?

So that the GM can control how likely it is that the player will achieve a given degree of outcome. (Assuming you want the GM controlling that sort of thing, obviously.)

Even if all you have is a GM-selected target number up front, you still have two degrees of outcome at the other end - success and failure. Sliding the target number up and down makes those outcomes more or less likely. Adding degrees on either side of that target number is a different operation. I'm not sure why you would call that "redundant."

_________________
Michael Gentry
http://edromia.com">Enantiodromia

[ This Message was edited by: gentrification on 2001-12-18 09:37 ]

[greyorm]

Gareth (and Mike),

That was my thought on how to run such a system, too; but on writing the post I ran smack into a conceptual wall -- namely, "Where's the real tension?  Where's the sweaty worry?"

If you "always succeed," well, what's the point?
Failure, of some kind, needs to be a possible result of the system or it's just "no fun."
This is what makes the game fun for me, and (I'm sure) for most: that element of not knowing with absolute certainty what the outcome will be.

Tension is caused by the possibility of failure, by the uncertainty.  If you can't fail, there's no tension, just complexity; so how to increase the tension as the situation gets more complex?

Mike's idea is interesting: you can choose to automatically succeed, but if your roll fails when you do so, something bad happens...a complication arises...perhaps you can only auto-succeed so many times, then you're due for a spectacular failure.

I had a mechanic like this built into my Wyrd deck (not the viking Wyrd game -- something different: a card-based system), whenever you pulled the 'Null' card, you couldn't refresh your hand of cards until you used that card -- and using it caused a spectacular failure (well, not so "spectacular" for the character).

And Ron, thanks for the overview; I keep thinking I'll have to get myself a copy of Hero Wars (and a group that has more than two hours a week to spend on gaming).

However, do you have any ideas on how to use such a mechanic in a non-FitM system?  That is, for a group that just doesn't get (maybe doesn't even like) FitM?

As to  degrees of success, I'll admit I've never been much of a fan of the whole method.  I'm highly partial to flat-out, "you succeed" or "you fail."  Too many bad experiences, I suppose.

Story time: a number of years ago, I played in my first Werewolf game.  I created a complete combat-monster as a character -- because I usually created intellectuals -- and despite this and having at least ten-dice to roll for all combat and physical actions, he failed EVERY TIME.

I never ONCE rolled well enough to do anything I attempted.  And that includes the one time I actually got a success.  Yes, one success.  But that "wasn't enough," so I failed overall anyways.

Screw that.

As you can see, I'm bitterly damaged by systems that are too random, and don't even allow success when you succeed; it's why I'm such a metagame nut, in regards to mechanics that allow you to improve or even guarantee your chances of success.  That my own players complain and frustrate about the same issue only adds to my fervorous hatred of this.

I don't honestly see "Sorcerer" as being a "degrees of success" system.  AFAICS, there are no hard-and-fast rules for success of 1, 2, 3 or more dice; if you succeed, even with one die, you succeed at the task.  If you get more dice, you just do even better...it is like rolling high (and from my playtest of the system, it seems like one success is the most common kind).  I don't see the same system-based elegance in other systems.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike,

I'm not sure why you would call that "redundant."

You're right. In The Pool, and Jared's current incarnation of InSpectres, the target number is fixed and the number of dice rolled is what varies. That's essentially the same, in that it works to scale the likelihood of success, as having a variable target number and a fixed amount of dice. What's redundant is the White Wolf system of having a variable target number and a variable amount of dice.

Paul

[Bankuei]

  I was really aiming for the complication/plot twist factor in my Persona game system.  Since you can have many "mini-failures" before finally succeeding, you can introduce a lot of ways for things to go wrong, become more difficult, or new problems in spite of your success, or vice versa, some successes despite failure.

For example, trouble in spite of success, "My blade shattered against his, and I was dealt a vicious blow...desperation, luck, I know not, but half a sword was enough to finish him..."  Success in spite of failure,"He left me for dead, but it was worth it, I found his weakness."


I'll see if I can get a better, less sleep deprived, and more brief version up later this week.

[gentrification]

What's redundant is the White Wolf system of having a variable target number and a variable amount of dice.

Ah, now I get what you're saying. And I agree.

{later}

Hmm, that response was almost Gleichmanesque, wasn't it? Here's some additional input:

I've been wondering lately how something similar to Dying Earth's mechanic would work if you weighted it slightly more in favor of success. I haven't gotten a chance to run Dying Earth yet (I'll get to it as soon as we finish our Cthulhu campaign), but word on the street is that the constant 50/50 split between success and failure makes it prone to wild vagaries of chance -- which is appropriate for games like Dying Earth or http://edromia.com/games/paranoia.html">Paranoia, but maybe not for more "serious"-themed games.

However, it also seems to incorporate all that interesting back-and-forth FitM that lets you describe the hows and whys of an action or event while you're determining whether and how well it succeeded.

Any thoughts on how one could use the Dying Earth method for its FitM-ness while lessening the significance of those "wild vagaries of chance"?

_________________
Michael Gentry
http://edromia.com">Enantiodromia

[ This Message was edited by: gentrification on 2001-12-18 15:26 ]

[hardcoremoose]

Hey Guys,

The Dying Earth system is what inspired my Avant Guard mechanics.  I'm not saying they're better than Dying Earth's; just another example of the Never Fails topic as addresed within a game.  For those not interested in reading through my minimalist game design, Avant Gaurd basically allows a player to re-roll his dice as often as he needs to build to a success, whith each roll beyond the first leading to extra Complication.  The players always have the option of bailing before the task is resolved, leaving them with whatever trouble they've generated, but otherwise worry free.

Ironically, I've been working on another game mechanic that uses a similar idea.  Okay, it's pretty much the same idea, just with playing cards.  It's up in the Game Design forum right now.

And if anyone wants to see Avant Gaurd, it's right here:

http://hardcoreroleplaying.homestead.com/avantgard.html

Take care,
Moose