PIE: Player Interpretation of Expectation

[Altaem]

Theoretical Play Example, Swordsman vs Orcs;

GM:

Unspoken implications:<Swordsman: <

PIE Rules:<GM:<Swordsman:<<

GM:<PIE Rules:<Swordsman:<GM:  That means turning your back on 2 orcs.  This is a risky action, a bad roll here could kill your character.  Are you sure you wish to go ahead?

Swordsman:<

GM:<Swordsman:<GM:<Swordsman:  <<

GM: "The knife orc climbs rapidly over the wagon, inspired by your cry of pain and intending on finishing you off."

Swordsman:<   

GM:<Swordsman:<

[Altaem]

Tried "Descriptors" in play for the first time tonight, and I'm pleased to say they worked really well. 

I had only one player, as that's all could make it.  With party disharmony and secret actions being declared by email, that was hardly a problem.
Deathglider is a rather two-dimensional RPG player, he loves treasure hunting and continually upgrading his character.  Although the Descriptors follow in this theme they still make a huge difference in rounding out the character.
I allowed 6 Descriptors to be chosen, but only 5 are allocated at this time.

Johnson: A clever and intuitive fellow with alarming high talents at stealth and theft.  Possesses a dark brutal streak and a lightning strike.  Has a love of knives, lots of knives.

Descriptors: Lucky, Focussed, Restless, Apathy, Colloquial.

During the session "Lucky" was used at every opportunity, and "Apathy" saw surprising high use as well.  Neither "Restless" nor "Colloquial" came into play, but being an action packed treasure hunt that's hardly unexpected.  It was a tense, high adrenaline session which saw Johnson injured for the first time, as well as no one, but three actions with the possibility of instant death.

Of particular note is the expanded local critical range, this caused a dramatic increase in the forced narration of both good and bad actions.

[seanhess]

Awesome... That reveals a lot about the system you're using and clears up several questions.

I'll have more questions shortly, but first, I'm not sure what effect the descriptors had. Did you just require them to pick one any time they focused on one of the dice, and then narrate it accordingly?

Complex Actions: Does he get to reroll two dice here? What negative consequences does this have, just making it harder?

[seanhess]

Also, what does "local critical" mean? The player used it when he rolled a 5, which I thought had no mechanical significance (by default anyway).

[Shadow_80]

Complex Actions: Does he get to reroll two dice here? What negative consequences does this have, just making it harder?

...the player used 2 focusses, so that allowed the double re-roll

Also, what does "local critical" mean? The player used it when he rolled a 5, which I thought had no mechanical significance (by default anyway).

the revised rule for descriptors, because of the limitations as to when/how they need to be used, was that as well as allowing a reroll, the critical success is 5-6 (instead of 6) and fail is 1-2 instead of 1.

[Altaem]

quote author=Altaem]First PIE campaign, scene one:

The party is a group of 3 perfectly ordinary people.  They're walking home at night and hear a scream.  A woman is being raped in a narrow side ally. Naturally as players they rush to her assistance and find themselves in a fight with 3 tough gang members.
The purpose of the scene is to teach the players how frail the characters are.  The Expectation is that they'll be beaten to a pulp, and despite their noble efforts the crime will continue.
In resolution however the players rolled almost every action at "Above Average" or better, with a truly staggering number of "Exceptional Actions".
Result: they beat up the gang members, save the woman, are barely injured themselves, and feel like heroes.

It happens... as GM I just roll with the punches.

[deathglider]

Hey look...it's me!!!

I enjoy 2D characters as much as the next guy and this last adventure was quite fun. I almost failed some life or death actions and ended up being wounded for it, luckily I rolled well on opposition when that happened and didnt get shot, something else 'bad' happened to me.

The descriptors were good fun. I don't remember using 'Lucky' as often as Altaem said I did. He was probably just thinking of all the times I COULD have used it. However I based this descriptor on my characters luck...which surprisingly mirrors my own. I'm sure I roll more than one triple 6 in every 216 rolls.

The descriptors also had another purpose. They allowed me to analyze what my character was like, then form a goal and mission which gives reason to WHY he is like that, which at the end of the day, gives much more to the story line.

[soundmasterj]

quote]GM rolls but hides the result: this is used in situations where the characters face a threat of approximately equal skill to themselves.  The GM may apply a modifier up to 3 in either direction to the hidden roll.  Whichever side scores the highest magnitude is free to narrate the result however they like.

[David Berg]

Altaem,

Your example confuses me.

"6 on Environment = I roll under a wagon" was fantastic.  And "Rampant Womanizer = prone defense" is creative and hilarious.  But this:

Swordsman: <

leaves me scratching my head looking for correlations.  I look at those dice, in terms of the color they suggest, and I think, Self 1 = I screwed up, Opposition 6 = they screwed up, Environment 6 = outside factors go my way.  Given the descriptor I chose, I refine "they screwed up" to "the way they screwed up has something to do with my 'Defender of the Weak'-ness."

I add that to the outcomes (13 = overall good for me, bad for them; 6 on Opp. = lethal amount of damage; 1 on Self = some significant bad thing for me) and come up with:

I let out a mighty yell, charge forward, and take a wild, off-balance swing that should miss by a mile.  However, the orcs have heard that I am at my mightiest when defending civilians in battle -- when they see the look in my eyes, those stories flash through their minds, and they clumsily fall back in terror.  One Orc gets his foot caught in the reins from a wagon and lurches right into my back-swing, disemboweling himself.  I'm surprised at first, but try to act like it was intentional as I stare down the next two.  Alas, my blade is momentarily stuck.

Instead, however, your narration included some fairly typical (in my experience) "here's how I'm badass!" ninja-jedi-swordsman moves.  The fact that I rolled a 1 seems to have been incorporated fairly, but somewhat arbitrarily ("there's a guy behind me with a knife now").

It's not so much that I like my specific example more than yours (although I do), it's that in your example I see the player interacting first and foremost with the outcomes and only secondarily with the color guidelines, and I would think this might produce boring color over time.  How many variations on "I deftly kick some ass" are really interesting?

Do you think my take is too demanding for speedy play?

My other problem with your example is that I dislike your Descriptors:

Master Swordsman, Knights Code of Honor, Defender of the Weak, Mercenary Opportunist, Entertaining when Drunk, Rampant Womanizer

"Defender of the Weak" and "Entertaining when Drunk" are too specific to be optimal on-hand color options.  I mean, you only have 6, any one you often can't use is a waste.  "Womanizer" is also specific and hard to tie in to a variety of actions.

Even if you spend tons of game time getting drunk and flirting, I don't know if adding the words "entertaining" and "rampant" will inspire better portrayals.

"Defender of the Weak" is also redundant with "Knight's Code of Honor".  I don't think honorable knights miss many opportunities to defend the weak.

"Master Swordsman" doesn't add much color beyond simple effectiveness.

Fortunately, I think you've already generated an excellent counter-example:

. . . he loves treasure hunting and continually upgrading his character.  Although the Descriptors follow in this theme . . .

I read this and was all prepared for 6 nuanced synonyms for "badass".  But then you gave us:

Descriptors: Lucky, Focussed, Restless, Apathy, Colloquial.

Those are fantastic!  All except Lucky could be either good or bad.  All are broad, and would demand creative application in new situations.  I want to play right now to find an excuse for how Apathy helps me in combat!  It's just the right level of challenge and stretch, without being ridiculous or forced.

They're also diverse!  They paint a multi-faceted picture, and give me options of distinctly different flavors to choose from.

My favorite characters are often defined by their near-contradictions, and there's a nice tension among Focussed, Restless, and Apathy.  It makes me want to see what those all look like rolled together.

I might tweak some details ("Lucky" to "Coincidence Magnet", "Colloquial" to "Folksy", "Restless" to "Twitchy"), but overall I think this is exactly what you should be aiming for.

Finally, I'm interested in your response to SMJ about stakes.  Your example gave me a sort of "anything could happen based on momentary inspiration" feeling, where the actual outcome could change based on a whim; but I get the impression that your communication re: expectations effectively makes everyone at the table okay with that.  I don't think PIE pretends to be geared toward tacticians, and I like that about it.

I imagine the agreement at the table goes something like: "A PC will never lose, fail, or die without it first being made quite clear to the player that they may be about to lose, fail or die."  Plus maybe a similar agreement about total, outright victory.  Am I close?

Ps,
-David

[themaloryman]

In response to SMJ, I think that the difference in expectation between your two scenarios (which are pretty extreme, and tolerably unlikely, but we'll go with them) would allow for reasonable expectation-shift. For instancce, a 1 (Critical Failure) on Self when fighting the Grandma would perhaps result in stubbing your toe as your deliver the killing blow, while even a 6 on Self fighting the 500 Orcs is only going to delay the inevitable - you're not dead yet, would be the best you could hope for.

I can't respond to your criticism of the part you quoted because I can't quite remember the context of the original statement, and I'm not sure from the quote and your response to it why this means there is no faith in the system... I'll leave that for Altaem to look to.


@ David

I like your interpretation better too, but that's because it suits my style of play - that is, narrative, strongly character oriented etc. I suspect that there would be some players around our table who would feel constricted if they were required to come up with such colourful examples all the time. I imagine that the 'colour' element (for us, at least) will be more an option than a rule, designed to entertain players like me, without restricting less character-oriented players like Deathglider. That said, there's no reason not to change how concrete the rule is to suit other groups. To start flinging acronyms around, D.I.Y. - P.I.E.!

@ Altaem

Love the look of this, though I want to work out more clearly exactly how it will work. Looking forward to playing this on Friday!

[Altaem]

Hey, this looks nice. I love having dice tell me in what direction narration should be going. However, this looks strange: if you are going against 500 orcs (expected performance: die quickly) or 1 crippled orc grandma (expected performance: maybe laugh after chopping head off), the chances of getting wounded are exactly the same, right?

Not remotely!  The chance of something going wrong are the same but the severity of that something are not remotely similar.
500 orcs is just silly, you don't need a system or dice to tell you you're dead.  Let's try 20 orcs instead.  If no more than 3-4 can reach you at a time a highly skilled hero may just win.

Use this table as a guideline

Roll Magnitude       Outcome     
16 or more           better than expected, 2-4 orcs slain
13-15                  holding ground, 1 orc slain
11-12                  hero wounded, 1 orc slain
9-10                    hero wounded
6-8                      hero severely wounded
5 or less              hero dead!

local critical successes will result in additional orcs being killed, or the hero not being wounded that round.
local critical failures indicate additional wounds to the hero, or less orcs killed.

There's no need for a table for the orc grandma, a magnitude of 6+ is plenty to kill her without penalty.  Other than for narration interpretation, local criticals have no real use.

Quote

GM rolls but hides the result: this is used in situations where the characters face a threat of approximately equal skill to themselves.  The GM may apply a modifier up to 3 in either direction to the hidden roll.  Whichever side scores the highest magnitude is free to narrate the result however they like.

No no no no no.
No.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This reads like you have no trust in your system. I say, you absolutely NEED to design the system in a way that whatever you roll, it is a good result.

[Altaem]

My other problem with your example is that I dislike your Descriptors:
...
"Defender of the Weak" and "Entertaining when Drunk" are too specific to be optimal on-hand color options.  I mean, you only have 6, any one you often can't use is a waste.  "Womanizer" is also specific and hard to tie in to a variety of actions.

I suspect that your only problem is that you dislike my descriptors.  Your other issues I think stem from this.  I will confess I gave that list of Descriptor no more than 20 seconds thought, though I fail to see how they're as bad a you say.
Take the rather boring "Master Swordsman", I imagine that the Swordsman is the kind of person who gets up at 6am every morning to practice sword drills while his companions are still asleep.  This kind of dedication could easily have side benefits and is not so different from Deathglider's "Focussed".

Your example confuses me.

Just the first action, or all of them?

Quote from: David Berg

It's not so much that I like my specific example more than yours (although I do)...
Do you think my take is too demanding for speedy play?

Your example is excellent.  I like yours better too, though not nearly as much as you do.  I'd like to stress that they are both equally valid.  Yours is slightly easier on the GM as there's no rules for "attack from behind" to resolve on the fly.

Alas, my blade is momentarily stuck.

That's going to reduce the amount of damage you can dish out next round, I'd impose a -3 damage penalty.  Could be the difference between life and death for a single orc.

I want to play right now to find an excuse for how Apathy helps me in combat!

An orc holds a captive child like a shield, knife at the kids throat.  Ignoring the chance of failure you raise your crossbow and take the killing shot.

I imagine the agreement at the table goes something like: "A PC will never lose, fail, or die without it first being made quite clear to the player that they may be about to lose, fail or die."  Plus maybe a similar agreement about total, outright victory.  Am I close?

It's never been stated that way, but I guess you're about right.

We did have one scene where the players ambushed some guards killing one and severely wounding another.  As they talked the survivors into surrendering it became clear that there were more opposition and the players were standing plainly in their gun sights.  Fortunately Gabriel talked them out of the situation alive, bargaining their lives for those of the hostage guards.  Had any player taken any offensive action there would doubtlessly have been a bloodbath, with the probable death of every player character.

[soundmasterj]

[soundmasterj]

[Altaem]

The other thing, fudging dice: firstly, may I present you with the "slipperly slope" fallacy? It goes like this: if you fudge once, why not fudge all of the time!

PIE doesn't fudge dice ever.

This misunderstanding is based on a poor explanation on my part.  If a modifier is to be applied to the GM's roll, the GM must always select the modifier before the dice are rolled.  They're certainly not intended as a tool for the GM to manipulate the outcome to meet their own needs.  Although the players aren't told the modifier, they should be able to guess pretty accurately based on the Expectation. 

The opposition modifier is used in place of creatures needing stats.
While regular orcs and goblins don't warrant an opposed roll, it can add colour to battle their champions in greater detail.
Goblin champion -2, Goblin Boss -1, Orc Lord +1, Troll +3
I'd never generate these numbers ahead of time, preferring a clear mental idea for the relative strengths of creatures.

(Also, you might want to reconsider character death as requested solemly by dice. Character death should only happen if meaningfull and with player consent, I think, and there is place in your rules for that.)

Let's not go there.  There's many discussions on character death, I see no reason to repeat them here.  Besides no PIE character has died yet.

I think your descriptors were just fine, by the way.

Thank you.  I've been using the swordsman for all my examples for consistency and to hopefully simplify understanding.  He's not typical of a character I'd choose to play.  Not that I've had much experience, I'm almost always the GM.