Failure means conflict

[Der_Renegat]

The idea for this thread comes from Mike Holmes statement here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19740.0

The key is creative failure conditions. In most games, failing to leap the chasm means the player loses the character as he falls to his death. In HQ, if the goal is to "Get across the chasm" failing to do so means that the character doesn't get across the chasm. Maybe he chickens out. Or maybe as he's backing up to get running room, he runs into the persuing bad guys. Or he hits the other cliff, and is now hanging from a branch.

The general rule is that "failure means conflict." That is, failure doesn't mean just that some door is closed, but that another has opened and there's a monster behind it. Don't ever make failure mean that the character simply is at a dead end and can't do anything. Did the character fail to jump the chasm? Then perhaps there's a demon in the crevice that'll carry him across for a price...

This is the other way that most games punish failure, and there's nothing in HQ to prevent you from making the same mistakes, actually. The HQ system simply doesn't require that failure means that the fun stops: it allows you to take failure and make it into escalating action.

I create this new thread because of some examples i stated here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19610.0


While i understand Mikes theory of failure means conflict, i find it hard to apply in actual/hypothetical gameplay.
How can we apply complete defeat in other ways than death ?
We dont want our heroes to die, we want them to fail in a way that gives them even more interesting situations.
Does that mean we must apply contest consequences in relation to the bigger picture of the adventure, instead of the particular contest ?
So to pick up the example that is the reason i created this thread:
the heroes are fleeing from a crumbling temple they have desecrated and are chased by their mad inhabitants.
The goal of the contest is to get out of the temple in time without being killed by the temple people or being crushed to death.
The goal of the adventure was to steal something from the temple.

So on a complete defeat the heroes will be buried in the temple but instantly saved by somebody. They are alive but what they stole is lost for ever in the reamins of the temple.
Would that be a meaningful outcome of my example ?

best

Christian

[Barna]

I really think this thread was needed given the interesting ideas which stem from Mike Holmes' notion of failure as conflict. I beleive your last example is a good idea of "failure as conflict". Another exampel would be that the characters are caught and their boss/ruler/friends are forced to exchange them for some dangerous criminal they had put behind bars (like in that Bond movie..."World is not enough" perhaps?).

When Mike presented this idea on the prior thread, I confessed that I have only just realized how "binary" my conflict resolution outcomes are sometimes. While I try to avoid the "complete failure vs complete success" tendency, I truly do not have an habit of considering failure as a major incentive for further the story and a source of new conflicts & ideas for my characters. So even if I think I get the general notion, I too could use some more examples by those who have been working with this notion for a longer time. Enlighten us! ;)

[Bankuei]

Hi Christian,

Success in games is easy to figure out, but coming up with interesting failure is something a lot of people don't get practice at.  "Escape the temple or be crushed" isn't really a good fail option- but there are alternatives... for example, often times in movies and stories the heroes escape the big mystery place as it crumbles, but lose the (Holy Grail/Redeemed Bad Guy/Book of Infinite Wisdom/Etc.) along the way.  So instead, the stakes become, "Can I escape the crumbling temple with X?"

Or, given more magical settings, such as HQ- "Can I escape the Temple without being haunted by angry gods/spirits/mystic guardians for wrecking the temple?", in which case, you just set up a good adventure for next time.

You don't have to frame the questions this way- because it is a form of Stake setting, but it's a good exercise to at least get the creative juices flowing beyond either "You die" or "And you're stuck" which are boring failure options.  And, you can also get the players to help make suggestions for possible failure options after the dice roll.

"Complete Defeat" can also be emotional- you escape the temple, but the massive penalties are applied to a  character's sense of self worth- "I've just destroyed the wisdom of the ancients...  Eons of truth gone, because I was (greedy/hasty/blind/whatever)..."  (Penalty to Religion Keyword, or maybe gains Guilty trait, etc.) This sets up the character for trying to redeem/atone, or at least a meaningful emotional scar that informs play.

Chris

[Der_Renegat]

Another example might be the final battle in StarWars: A new hope.

Luke tries to fire that torpedo with his force ability, augmented by his relationship to Obi Wan.
While Darth Vader augmented by two of his pilots tries to kill Luke. The sith lord suffers a complete defeat when Luke uses his relationship to Han Solo.

Instead of dying in his tie-fighter, Vader looses control of his vessel (and his deathstar) and will need some time to engage in a new fight with a new enemy who is his very own son.

[Bankuei]

Hi Christian,

Actually, if you're using that example, Vader's Complete Defeat is the destruction of the Death Star...

The question to ask is "What is it that everyone is fighting to protect/gain/achieve?"  That's where Success/Defeat kicks in.

Chris

[Web_Weaver]

Hi all, as this thread was partly spawned by the what makes extended contests interesting thread i am going to follow the dabate here too.

you can also get the players to help make suggestions for possible failure options after the dice roll

I think you make the vital point Chris, the nature of HQ is that the roll is not the decisive point of the conflict. Rather, the narration is the key, and that is best performed by sharing out some of the narration duties.

As heroQuest has a "fortune in the middle" style, the outcome does not have to be constrained by the initial stakes. This means you can keep the initial stakes and intent by the players vague, await the dice outcome, and then discuss the resultant narrative.

For example, in Runequest we had the classic example of a player going off alone in a dangerous place, (Humakti in what emerged as a  Krasht complex complete with Thanatar Temple!).

In RQ the only way to deal was GM fiat or an outclassed fight resulting in probable death. It actually resulted in the character being stripped of his possessions and magic before being dumped in the local town as an example to other adventurers. This was a narrative outcome and at the time felt odd in a highly simulationist game. (It was cool though, for all concerned.)

HQ gives you the option to say "OK, you have a total defeat with your loner augmented with heroically bold , given in mind that you have just walked into fully armed chaotics, what do you think they should do?", you can then discuss the narrative outcome without any player resentment.

Indeed, the player may choose to die if the story is cool and has repercussions in the remainder of the campaign. A cool potential option, "they take your head and hang it from the main villains belt, who uses your magic against the party, consider rolling up a new character that would be affected by this outcome".

So the key here is not to prepare lots of possibilities but instead to let the situations and the player choices dictate the story.

[Mike Holmes]

I think we've already got it here, but I'll put in my perspective. Firstly, the "interesting failure" idea isn't mine, it's something that I've learned from others like Ron Edwards, who in turn got it from general dramatic principles. I mean it'd be a dull film if Indiana Jones got out of the snake pit and didn't find that the ark was just then being moved, but instead had gone a while back with no trace as to where it had gone. Writers use this principle constantly.


What Chris is saying without saying explicitly, is that there are no "standard" contests. That is, when you say, Christian:

The goal of the contest is to get out of the temple in time without being killed by the temple people or being crushed to death.

I ask you, how did that come to be the goal? Look at the process in the book for contests. It says that the narrator determines that it's time for a contest, and the player states his character's goal. Basically these two people work out between them what the goal is.

Yeah, in D&D, because of how the mechanics work, the sensible contest would be to see if the character makes his save vs Petrification (or whatnot), and escapes the collapse. We're trained to see that as the conflict on which the contest is centered - did he live? All you have to do is to get out of the mindset that all goals are about survival.

In point of fact, actually, all goals do include a number of unstated clauses including survival. If my character has a goal:

Look up some info on Sir Alec in the library.

There are many, many unstated clauses that are implied:

- Without pissing off the librarian.
- Without getting lost.
- Without accidentally setting fire to the library with my candle.
- And then avoiding subsequently dying in said fire.

This is an outlandish example, but intentionally so. The point is that in any contest, there are a myriad of things you can have go wrong on a failure. The negative consequences of failure are dual in HQ.

1. The character doesn't get his goal.
2. Something else bad happens to him.

Now, I could go on and on about this subject, but let's assume that it'll suffice to say that sometimes #2 is based on some goal of an opponent. Like, it could theoretically occur that the opponent actually has a goal of trying to kill the character. In that case, the #2 result, on a complete victory, might legitimately be death.

But, again, it's the narrator who sets this side of the stakes equation, too. Oh, sure, it may seem like a NPC is trying to kill your hero, but that doesn't mean that the narrator has to assume that this is the downside stake. I mean, this is the most powerful example you can give of where the "standard" contest says that death should be the outcome of loss. But even then it's not neccessarily true. For several reasons:

1. There are fates worse than death. What does Westly say in response to Humperdinck saying, "To the death?" He says, "To the pain!" And then explains what awaits Humperdinck should he fight - which does a better job of intimidating him than threatening death ever could. When in a situation where characters seem to be trying to kill each other, consider that the enemy may consider maiming as a better result than death.
2. Or incarceration. There are so many reasons you can come up with for characters to incarcerate each other. Including torture and deathtraps? Are deathtraps unrealistic? Well, no, they relate to...
3. Humans don't like to kill other humans. It's arguable that it's genetic. But at the very least it's certainly trained into us by every culture in the world. If the opponent isn't a sociopath, then he'll only kill in a moment of passion. And that's rare.
4. So, even in combat, humans go out of their way not to kill each other if they don't have to do so. Taking prisoners is horribly debilitating in terms of your ability to fight, but most societies do it anyhow as part of the "rules of war." Why? Because killing is the most ugly business, and they hope that the other side will feel the same if they're captured.
5. Even when one does want to kill, one wants this for some specific reason other than just the death of the opponent. That is, there's always something else on the line. Perhaps pride, or love, or justice. In any case, whatever this reason is, can be the actual goal of the contest.

Now, all this said, am I saying that death should never be on the line? No. There's always the sociopathic villain who doesn't have time for a deathtrap, and who we all feel has gotten so fed up with the protagonist that he wants to kill him. The point, however, is that you'll know these moments when they happen, and the player will probably agree with your decision to put death on the line.

Essentially death should only be a stake if and when it might just be a good time for the character to die. Which is simply a specific example of the more general rule: the player should always be interested in the potential failure result of a contest, or you should change the either the goal or the contest.


Now, that said, you can put death on the line more often than you might think in HQ, especially using simple contests, because the odds of a complete victory between somewhat equal opponents is only 1:400 on either side. And, as always, there's the "immediate rescue" escape clause in these cases. The fact that this is 1:400 means that if you do decide to use the escape clause, it won't get hackneyed.

To whit, I haven't had to use it once to date in actual play of a couple hundred sessions. I put death on the line rarely enough, and the rolls just haven't come up. In fact, there have been character deaths, but most of those have been player engineered.

Now, if you use extended contests, it's more likely for opponent's to die - especially with parting shots. But it's even less likely for player heroes to die, because that requires the narator or player bidding so that it can happen, in addition to the wild die roll. In fact, if you want a good chance of character death, then go with an extended contest, or it's actually too slim. Because just as you can control "accidents" with ECs, so, too, can you force extreme outcomes more often.


Now, for a more technically difficult topic: what to do when a complete defeat comes up in a contest where the goal is not death? This sorta had me stumped too, for a while, until I realized what the associated penalty was with regards to Complete Victory. I mean, there's this escallating scale of penalties and then...death? Or vague notions of something similarly permenant?

Here's what I've found; Complete Victory means you alter the opponent permenantly in a way that makes the opponent unable to compete at all in that arena of conflict. Death, in fact, means that the character can't compete in any arena. But, let's say that the goal is to get the grail out of the temple intact. What does this mean to a character who gets a -10% penalty? Well, he's injured, but he can take another stab at digging the grail out, right? Probably with the penalty applying unless he takes time to heal up.

What does failing to kill a character mean? Well, that he's probably wounded, but that he lives to be a source of potential conflict in the future. Only by Complete Victory do we eliminate him as a source of conflict.

So what does Complete Defeat mean in the case of the grail? It's destroyed, of course. No chance at recovering it, the temple collapse has crushed it flat, and the magic is gone. There can no longer be any contests regarding recovering the grail, that avenue is now closed completely.

Now, that sounds like it could be a rotten result. But it's just like selecting death as the negative stake - we assume we wouldn't have set up this contest unless it was the end of the movie, and it would be dramatically appropriate for it to be forever lost. So, again, we only choose this stake if/when the outcome would be cool.

Now, this all sounds like before every contest I go through some procedure where I examine the goals, and look at what the resolution result will be if a complete victory comes up, then I ask the player if he likes that idea, and then we roll. Nope, doesn't happen. The narrator in HQ is given some important responsibilities. First, unlike a lot of newer games, the narrator is enabled to make up results without any debate about them. I really like this, actually, because what it means is that the players don't know what's coming as a result. But, as the narrator has the responsibility to make the game fun, he strives to ensure that the result he picks is one that the player will enjoy. To that extent he has a responsibility to know what the player likes about his character, and what sort of failures he'll find interesting.

That said, there are a lot of easy techniques that you can use that almost all players enjoy. First, and foremost, is to make their character look good failing. When the dice go against the character, they're fate (as opposed to being character ability when they go with the character). Meaning that the character's level of ability doesn't change with a bad die roll, you should assume that they failed despite being cool. So:

Don't:
Your character stumbles around like a foolish ass, and finally ends up impaling himself on the opponent's sword.

Do:
Your character fights fiercely, doing great credit to his name. But at the critical moment, a gust of wind blows dust into his eyes, and the villain takes the opportunity to thrust his blade into your character's ribs.

The quickest way to get somebody to dislike a failure is to make his character look bad in getting it.

Select failures that open up new sources of conflict. Actually I like wounds for this, because they tend to deliver that "Do I press on, wounded, or retire to heal knowing that the quarry may escape" tension. To say nothing of being visceral. For a complete defeat on something like climbing, have the character get half way up, suddenly realize that he has a fear of heights, and stall. Now he has to figure out how to get down, and he can never, ever have a contest to climb anything high again.

Until, of course, he can. Note that "permenant" for a complete defeat doesn't mean that the situation can't be remedied. Climbers with acrophobia can be cured of it (just ask Jimmy Stewart). Holy Grails can be rebuilt from the crushed remains. In fact, the dead can be returned to life. There's nothing like being completely incapacitated in some way to create conflict about fixing that situation.

Lastly, here's the big secret, you don't have to set up the negative goal to start the contest. This is what weaver is saying above with the whole "Fortune in the Middle" comment. People figure, hey, in most games, the opposition gets an equal shot. In HQ, both sides of a contest could be PCs, and they'd both have goals, right? So an NPC or a cliff, they should get a goal, too. But the rules don't say they do. Just that there are negative outcomes to failure. Meaning that you usually don't have to decide before hand just what the goal of the opposition is, or, rather, what the negative outcome is.

Again, I like this because player knowledge matches player knowledge here, which increases the suspense. A complete defeat in a fight? Maybe the narrator will say that it means character death. Until he narrates, we don't know just what the intent of the other warrior is, or if he intends to kill. Or whether, in fact, the narrator will have us fall to our deaths when we fail to leap the chasm.

He could. It's his call.

On the other hand, he'll probably do something more dramatic. But as long as that chance that he'll kill off the character is there, if we don't know the exact stakes, the "anything could happen" suspense is maintained.

Now, all that said, I will, on occasion, ask a player if he likes my idea for a failure, or even if he has a better one. I mean, this is the ultimate in quality control. But on other occasions where I'm pretty sure I have a good failure I'll just state it. Again, that way the player never knows before that point if he's even going to have any input, or will just be surprised.


What's bad play, for any style, is letting the player off the hook for a failure. If you set an expectation that characters will be killed as the negative result of a Complete Defeat in any physical contest where it seems potentially possible, then, yeah, if you don't do that when the result comes up, it doesn't just feel like you're breaking the rules, in a real sense you are. You're voiding the mechanical result if you choose a negative outcome after the fact that doesn't match the expectation. So, quite simply, don't set up that expectation.

If you have players who have that expectation...well all I can say is that you may have some work to do to get them past it.

Do enough physical contests where you other things than life are lost due to failure, and players will understand that death is not the only thing that they're always risking, and that failures can mean a wide variety of things. Once they get to see that the failures are moving the story forward, instead of halting it, they'll understand that failure isn't something that they should try to avoid in play, but a fun part of the dramatic cycle.

Mike

[soviet]

Well, Mike once again displays his innumerable masteries in this topic, but there is one area I wanted to pick up on:

Lastly, here's the big secret, you don't have to set up the negative goal to start the contest. This is what weaver is saying above with the whole "Fortune in the Middle" comment. People figure, hey, in most games, the opposition gets an equal shot. In HQ, both sides of a contest could be PCs, and they'd both have goals, right? So an NPC or a cliff, they should get a goal, too. But the rules don't say they do. Just that there are negative outcomes to failure. Meaning that you usually don't have to decide before hand just what the goal of the opposition is, or, rather, what the negative outcome is.

Again, I like this because player knowledge matches player knowledge here, which increases the suspense. A complete defeat in a fight? Maybe the narrator will say that it means character death. Until he narrates, we don't know just what the intent of the other warrior is, or if he intends to kill. Or whether, in fact, the narrator will have us fall to our deaths when we fail to leap the chasm.

He could. It's his call.

On the other hand, he'll probably do something more dramatic. But as long as that chance that he'll kill off the character is there, if we don't know the exact stakes, the "anything could happen" suspense is maintained.

Now, all that said, I will, on occasion, ask a player if he likes my idea for a failure, or even if he has a better one. I mean, this is the ultimate in quality control. But on other occasions where I'm pretty sure I have a good failure I'll just state it. Again, that way the player never knows before that point if he's even going to have any input, or will just be surprised.

I found that it was talking through the potential consequences of failure beforehand with my players that really made HQ click for me. I don't mean a huge discussion, necessarily, more a five second brainstorm, but it really helped to make sure we were all on the same page with regards to stakes. I found it also put a lot of drama into the dice roll rather than on everyone waiting to hear my interpretation.

Quite often my players will come up with much better ideas than I have, so we go with them, but I still have final veto and will (very rarely) step in and spring surprises on them if I feel it's warranted. I think on the whole surprises like this are not a good thing, though, and in my early HQ days I had a couple of contests fall really flat because of different expectations between myself and a particular player.

YHQ/QWMV, of course.

Mark

[Web_Weaver]

Hi Mark,

I found that it was talking through the potential consequences of failure beforehand with my players that really made HQ click for me.

This is good, and probably essential when introducing the game, but just because you talk out details of the contest before you roll the die, there is nothing in HQ to force you to be rigid with the results afterwards. Indeed, the Bumping mechanics force a certain amount of negotiation after the die has been cast.

So, by all means discuss before the roll if it helps clarify things, but sometimes only a roll / bump can really focus the mind, and sometimes vagaries are more intriguing for the plot. As an example, you wouldn't detail secret doors before rolling to find them in any game. In HQ the player may have a surprising and intriguing reason for there to be a secret door that wasn't there in your plot and suddenly say "If i spend a Hero Point to bump to a complete success can we have a door as I would like to hide in it and snoop on the queens conversation".

Again HQ is not easily forced into one mold, you can play fortune at the end or fortune in the middle, depending on circumstance, its full potential is realised by being flexible. I like to use fortune at the end rolls when there is clear and present danger. Its better than saying "don't do that, you will die", and you can hack out the consequences first.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, just because the rules indicate that the outcome is the realm of the narrator doesn't mean he isn't allowed to discuss them at any point in the process.

I use expicit up-front stakes negotiation from time to time, mostly in other games, but even in HQ occasionally. Here's the thing. I think you get to a point where you're comfortable as a narrator with a particular group taking on the responsibility of this role. Does that mean that you can't talk about this stuff? No, just that after a while you may not have to. At least not as often.

Or maybe you prefer to play this way, that's fine. I think it works either way. The point remains that either way you can ensure that players will enjoy failure outcomes.

Mike

[Jane]

I try to think in terms of "what's the worst thing that could happen to this character, from their point of view?" It probably isn't death - they're a Hero, whatever they're doing, they've probably already decided they're willing to risk death to achieve it. Failure at what they're really trying to achieve is what you need to look for. Or failure at something that you know is immensely important to them  - a relationship, a personality trait?

They escape from the collapsing temple, but the item they went in to steal doesn't, and in fact they've drawn attention to its importance and its now in the hands of their worst enemy? They escape, but the means of doing so gives them a reputation for cowardice and dishonour? They escape, just, but injured to the point of being "permanently" crippled, or scarred?

But mere death? Boring! I did just inflict death on a player, in fact - he's going for initiation into a Humakti sub-cult.  And dying, being killed by Humakt when you get to meet him, was rather the point! Death as a reward for success...

[Web_Weaver]

Hi Jane,

You raise an interesting dilemma with your examples, it really depends on your players whether you can get away with all of your "worst case" resolutions. If, in your social contract (explicit or not), everyone is happy that the narrator will be pushing these relationships and personality traits to the hilt then fine, they are excellent methods of creating conflict.

However, this can be very close to GM Force; the player can feel that their character is being manipulated from behind a GM screen.

In some games, Polaris and Burning Wheel come to mind (because i have just bought them), it is explicit in the rules that anything on the character sheet is based on player priorities. But, in HeroQuest there are any number of relationships and potential levers that the player may not consider a priority in play. In your style of game, either everyone buys into the community background of Glorantha (not a given in my experience) or they should be encouraged to tailor their Goals, Relationships, and Personality to reflect what they feel should be brought into the spotlight.

So my response to your post is yes, I agree, as long as everyone round the table also thinks this is fun. Members of my group would not find this fun and so anyone taking your advice should double check this first.

[Web_Weaver]

Just a note on this thread in general, I agree with Barna. This thread is vital for an understanding of why HQ is even discussed at the Forge.

I first strayed here from my normal haunts at the Gloranthan forums and I didn't get it. people would talk about common problems with such things as augments and conflict, Mike Holmes would claim it wasn't a problem in his game and I just did not understand why.

I assumed that either Mike was an overbearing personality that forced his players to see it his way or he was just lucky. But, because the issues discussed effected my games heavily I did the background reading and joined in, until I finally got it. My group, me included, have been playing Heroquest as if we were still playing Runequest (and to some extent still are).

Sure we had grasped the rule set, and begun to adjust our style, but HeroQuest is TOTALLY different, and the learning curve is far greater than I had realised.

The failure means conflict issue was a vital part of this learning curve for me. I just hope that my players can embrace the style change when I next run our group, because if I can't get past the Social Contract stage of the change required I will not push it on them. I have learnt here that this way would lead to real problems. If they want to continue with the RQ style we will have a dilemma, do we continue with a drifted game, or do we go back to a game that I find less fun? Or do I just find another group?

Either way, my eyes are open and I prefer it that way.

Oh, and I now realise that Mike is probably not overbearing or lucky. Thanks Mike, your contribution here is appreciated.

[Jane]

Web-weaver, I'd agree that you only do things to the PCs that the players would regard as fun - sorry, I take that so for granted I just didn't think to mention it. If it involves a major change to the character's future goals, I'd discuss it with them in advance in so far as I could, too. But I tend to make a note anytime a player says they'd be interested in exploring something, or have a  possible long-term goal, and then bring that out later, later enough that it comes as a surprise. Say six months earlier real time, the player has mentioned that he'd be interested to see what happened if his PC met some elves - fine, what went wrong with the escape from the temple was an unexpected meeting with some elves. And, if I'm in luck, the player goes "wow! I'd forgotten I said that! Cool!"

FWIW, I have the good fortune to have Mike as a GM in a PBeM. He's not overbearing (well, unless you find multi-page posts intimidating). He may be lucky, perhaps, but that would be as well as putting a lot of thought and effort into how to make a game run well.

[Larry L.]

Failure mean conflict.

Oh my gosh.

(Big, jaw-dropping realization. Blink. Blink. Blink.)


Also, Mike is way too modest.