Hi,

One problem I've noticed in many games is that GMs try to create conflict within the game largely through the game mechanics. For example, character A has to scale a wall. The GM gives the wall a high difficulty number to make it challenging (rather than, lets say, have the guards come around the corner when he's halfway up).

I have a longer discussion of Scenes and Conflict at http://overstuffed-dicebag.blogspot.com/2006/05/scenes.html, if you want a better idea of where I'm coming from.

Anyway, I'm toying with the following mechanic as a possible solution to encourage GMs to reach for non-mechanical complications.

Basics: Players roll multiple dice. There is a fixed target number. Each die over the fixed target number is a success. All difficulty modifiers (bonuses or penalties) are handled by adding or subtracting dice. If the result is less than 1 die, you cannot attempt the action (automatic failure).

1) Use fortune in the middle, the GM decides when to call for a roll.
2) Any players (except the GM) can raise the stakes. They state a reason why the task is more difficult, then assign a difficulty modifier.
3) The player rolls against this new difficulty.
     A) If the player succeeds, then the player can narrate the results.
     B) If the player fails, then both the player and the character who raised the stakes get a brownie point. If the player increased her own difficulty, she gets two brownie points. Brownie points can be spent for bonus dice, special effects, etc. The player must actually have some chance of success to gain any points.

There are a few other rule complications. For example, normally if a player fails a roll, the GM gets to narrate the result. However, the player can opt to take a temporary disadvantage instead (an injury, a complication, equipment failure, whatever) that causes the conflict to evolve. So failing the climbing roll is not necessarily fatal--won't even necessarily injure the character. But it will put him in a worse situation.

In my mind, one of the GM's job is to create conflicts that push the game forward. Here, the GM has no control over how difficult the roll is. Instead, he must cause the conflict to evolve, by adding new complications.

(infamous wall-climbing examples)

Bob: <looks at his character sheet, picks up 4 dice> "Wow, that's a long way up. I hope my arms don't get too tired before I get to the top" <he removes one dice from his pool>.

John: "Whoever built the wall cut and placed the rocks with incredible precision: a nice flat surface with only hair-fine cracks between the stones. Take another 2 dice penalty."

Bob: "Gee, thanks." <rolls last die> "Five, that's a success, barely. I manage to pick my way up the wall and pull myself over the battlement. From here I have a good view of the inside courtyard." <No one gets any points>

Tom (GM): "Fine, you make it up to the top, but as you peak over, you see two guards. They're sitting up here, tossing dice against the battlements. One mutters to the other 'Better get back to our posts soon. Sergeant should make his rounds soon.' They start to stand up."

Note: if Bob had failed, he would get three brownie points, while John would get one.

Does anyone else thing that overly-mechanical conflicts are a problem?

Do you think this will help?

Should I limit the penalties each player can assign? Or limit it to one player per conflict?

As it is, each player can raise the stakes once. Then the rolling-player may spend brownie points. It's somewhat self limiting. If the rolling player doesn't have any dice, no one gets any brownie points.

-Rich-

Is there ever a reason for a player not to complicate the other player's life?

Indeed. This system reminds me of Paranoia in some ways. Hopefully, rikiwarren, you plan to make the system revolve around backstabbing and such, just like Paranoia does, if you want to continue on your current line of thought.

This is going to make the players hate eachother, and just try and find any excuse whatsoever to make eachothers lives as difficult as possible in order to score points. In a heavily narritivist structure like this, where anyone can chime in and say 'The wall is made of perfectly sooth, razor-sharp obsidian' thats probably not so great. If one assumes that they are working towards a common goal, i suppose it would be a detriment to the groups objective to do this, but with a system like this you will probably find that they wont be a group with a common goal for very long.

Especially if the brownie points are actually useful (Or even pivotal) though. You might even find that they deliberately undertake unimportant tasks and make them really hard on themselves, just to earn brownie points. 'I try to convince the street preacher to renounce his religion. He has a lot of faith and convinction, so i take -2 dice. He is very experianced in theological debate, so i take -1.' etc. He looses obviously, gets some brownie points, but whats the worst thats going to happen? He will look silly talking to the street preacher?

Obviously with good players they will play nice and only contribute to the story to make it more fun. But thats something the players do, not something the system does (or even encourages).

It might work in a paranoia PvP style game. But you'd have to be very careful balancing and playtesting that so that the players dont end up just coming to blows.

Oh, I don't know that it's going to make the players hate each other.  After all, if I increase your character's difficulty I am also helping you to (potentially) earn brownie points, right?

ssfsx17 wrote:
Indeed. This system reminds me of Paranoia in some ways. Hopefully, rikiwarren, you plan to make the system revolve around backstabbing and such, just like Paranoia does, if you want to continue on your current line of thought.

This is not intended to be a backstabbing mechanic. It is intended to shift the responsibility for determining mechanic-based difficulties from the GM (forcing the GM to focus on more-interesting story-based complications), to the community of players as a whole. In the dark recesses of my mind, the system is self-balancing. I obviously haven't tried it in play yet. But here are my thoughts.

1) You benefit more by making your own difficulties harder, than by making someone elses. If you're just interested in brownie points, then you'll bump up your own difficulties.

2) Presumably the group is working towards a common goal (rather than a bouquet of loosely related goals). If your partner falls on his face, it's going to put the whole group at a disadvantage. Take the wall climbing incident. If your friend is climbing the wall with the intention of opening the side door. If he doesn't make it, you don't get in.

3) I have a previously unmentioned assumption that the GM will monitor this system. Specifically, the GM only gives out brownie points if the failed action makes the story more interesting. If the GM feels your just fishing for points, he can veto the points.

4) I can't see the people I play with devolve into constant backstabbing. Maybe they're just unusual, or maybe my impression of them is wrong.

I had thought of a few alternatives. One is to only give a brownie point to the rolling player. However, that means other players have no motivation (other than a sense of dramatics) to make things more difficult for their partners. Presumably they would have a strong motivation to keep things easy.

Another alternative is to increase the bonus to the rolling player. She gets two points while the raising player gets only one (if you raise the difficulty of your own roll, you get all three). Or give the rolling player a number of brownie points equal to the difficulty modifier (raising player still just gets one). But I'm already a bit worried about brownie point inflation.

One last possibility: if the player succeeds, the raising player gets a brownie point. If the player fails, the rolling player gets a brownie point. Obviously, if you make things more difficult for yourself, you're guaranteed a point--which might be a problem if players start adding slight difficulties to easy tasks just to get points. Maybe you can only increase the difficulty of other player's rolls?

More importantly, does anyone else see a problem with GMs being overly-relyant on roll/difficulty based conflicts to the exclusion of other, more interesting complications?

-Rich-

TonyLB wrote:
Oh, I don't know that it's going to make the players hate each other. After all, if I increase your character's difficulty I am also helping you to (potentially) earn brownie points, right?

Madheretic wrote:
There's no reason the PC's would have to be bickering and backstabbing just because that's what the players are doing.

rikiwarren wrote:
1) You benefit more by making your own difficulties harder, than by making someone elses. If you're just interested in brownie points, then you'll bump up your own difficulties.

rikiwarren wrote:
2) Presumably the group is working towards a common goal (rather than a bouquet of loosely related goals). If your partner falls on his face, it's going to put the whole group at a disadvantage. Take the wall climbing incident. If your friend is climbing the wall with the intention of opening the side door. If he doesn't make it, you don't get in.

rikiwarren wrote:
Another alternative is to increase the bonus to the rolling player. She gets two points while the raising player gets only one (if you raise the difficulty of your own roll, you get all three). Or give the rolling player a number of brownie points equal to the difficulty modifier (raising player still just gets one). But I'm already a bit worried about brownie point inflation.

rikiwarren wrote:
One last possibility: if the player succeeds, the raising player gets a brownie point. If the player fails, the rolling player gets a brownie point. Obviously, if you make things more difficult for yourself, you're guaranteed a point--which might be a problem if players start adding slight difficulties to easy tasks just to get points. Maybe you can only increase the difficulty of other player's rolls?

rikiwarren wrote:
More importantly, does anyone else see a problem with GMs being overly-relyant on roll/difficulty based conflicts to the exclusion of other, more interesting complications?

Oscar wrote:
No. You are helping YOURSELF earn them. Only if the player increased their own difficulty do they earn more points.

TonyLB wrote:

Oscar wrote:
No. You are helping YOURSELF earn them. Only if the player increased their own difficulty do they earn more points.

I'm pretty sure that if Adam raises the difficulty for Bob's character, and Bob's character fails, then both Adam and Bob receive 1 Brownie point apiece.

I'm breaking my comments into two posts, to hopefully get feedback on both.

Mechanics:

I think I like the following mechanics:

• GM calls for a roll
• Other players (not the GM or the rolling character) can chime in.
• Characters can increase the difficulty by an arbitrary amount (removing dice from the rolling-player's pool), with the following restrictions...

• Each player can only chime in once.
• Players cannot take the rolling-player's last dice.

• Rolling player can spend brownie points to modify the roll (1 point = +1 die).
• Player rolls the final number of dice against a fixed difficulty (GM cannot modify the difficulty).
• Rolling player can spend brownie poits to re-roll hey increased the difficulty.
• Results are determined...

• If the rolling player succeeded...

• Any player who chimed in gets a number of brownie points equal to the amount they increased the difficulty.
• The GM can cause the conflict to evolve by either...

• Adding a new element that complicates the conflict
• Having an NPC take a complication

• If the conflict resolves, the rolling player gets to narrate the result.
• If the conflict evolves, the rolling player gets their successes as a bonus on the followup roll.

• if the rolling player fails...

• Rolling player gets a number of brownie points equal to the total difficulty increase.
• Rolling player can take a complication and cause the conflict to evolve.
• If the conflict resolves, the GM gets to narrate the results.
• If the conflict evolves, and it's a non-opposed conflict, the player gets a negative modifier on the followup roll. (in opposed actions, the opponent gets bonus dice as per success above).

The Real Problem:

I think the issue I'm trying to get at is part of a larger problem. Again, I'd recommend looking at my essay at http://overstuffed-dicebag.blogspot.com/2006/05/scenes.html, I probably do a better job of explaining everything there.

But here are the basics:

One of the GM's main jobs is to maintain the conflict (or drama).

Too often, I feel that GMs try to create drama by simply assigning high difficulty numbers to tasks. This often leads to broken conflicts for one of several reasons:

The GM doesn't want to let the character's succeed, so he keeps calling for additional rolls until they fail.

The player is doing something dangerous, and the GM doesn't want to kill them off outright, so he calls for a series of rolls until the character succeeds.

The action is a live-or-die roll. Either result has no dramatic impact on the story. If the character succeeds, there's no conflict. He made it to the top of the wall, or he survived the poison with no (or limited) effect. If the character fails, he is dead--again no conflict, from that character's perspective, the story has simply ended.

In my mind, conflicts should increase steadily over time until the climax. Even if the characters succeed at an action, they should find their general situation degrading. I also feel that real conflicts should be tough decisions the players (or characters) have to make, rather than something they can roll their way out of.

My hope is, by removing the role of setting difficulty numbers from the GM, I can encourage the GM to develop other, more interesting sources of conflict. Again, look at the wall climbing. If the player succeeds on one roll, the GM cannot simply call for additional rolls ("OK, you made it up the first ten feet, roll again."). Instead, they must introduce a new element external to the character that causes the conflict to evolve. This could be the guards gambling atop the wall (in my first example), or perhaps a rock starts to come loose in the climber's hand. He can either choose to just save himself (letting the rock fall and possibly cause noise), or he can try to force it back in place (requiring another roll to see if he stays on the wall). The important thing is, the player gets to decide how to react. (I'm not sure how to explain this well, but in my mind, having the guards automatically spot the character or having the rock automatically fall is not cool--introduce the situation and let the character decide how to react to it).

Likewise, if the character fails, they can either take the results (possibly falling to their death), or they can create a complication. For example, if the character fails the climbing roll, they could state that the rock comes loose in their hand and clatters down the side of the wall (possibly alerting the guards). Then the GM and Player continue the conflict from this new point. Note the difference here. In the player's case, the rock actually falls. In the GM's case, the player is presented with a decision.

Does this make any sense?

Anyway, I would love more feedback on the general issue of GMs and mechanically-based conflict.

Oscar wrote:

rikiwarren wrote:
More importantly, does anyone else see a problem with GMs being overly-relyant on roll/difficulty based conflicts to the exclusion of other, more interesting complications?

Yes, if a GM uses flat sucess/failure. But really, its easy enough to have interesting consequences built into the roll (this is how i always do it).
For example, George rolls a d20 difficulty 10 to see if he can hack into a computer and open a security door.
1-2- He not only fails, but its defensive software destroys his computer and calls the cops.
3-4- His computer is disabled for a few turns (worse the number, the longer).
5-8- He just fails. Lower the roll, the more time he wasted.
9- He makes it to the final firewall, and just before he breaches it the computer calls the cops. He can either block the transmission and fail the hack, or he can suceed if he takes the negative side-effect of letting it call the cops.
10 He suceeds, barely. This may make any future hacks into the same system more dangerous.
11-15 He suceeds. The higher the role, the less time he wasted.
16-18 He succeeds, and manages to gather a useful piece of information.
19-20 He compromises the system perfectly, making future hacks on this system a breeze.

Of course, its up to the GM to interpret the dice roll. Maybe a 20 means he suceeded so well, that it opened every single security door in the compound, turned off the lights, and totally destroyed the security system (Which is good, but on the other hand- someone is going to investigate that!). Maybe he suceeded but fried his computer? But interesting consequences are easily incorporated into a roll. In fact, i find its often easier to think of an interesting consequence as the result of a die roll than otherwise.

I think the problem here is the GM letting the dice rule him, rather than using them as a tool to add suspense. No suprise if he gets frustrated and finds himself increasing the difficulty and adding more dice roles. Especially if you are using a system with set difficulties, set results, hp, stats etc to determine every action based on the dice. I can see where you are coming from, as its very very easy for the GM to fall into the habit of relying too much on the dice especially if the system is encouraging it. Removing them from his hands would force him to come up with other challenges.

You might want to try playing diceless for a change. What you are already proposing is certainly redefinining the role of dice. The players decide what the difficulty of the dice roll is- the GM never touches the dice. The dice are therefore something for the players to squabble over and have little to do with anything the GM is doing. This removes the dice entirely from the interaction between the players and GM- which is to say the interaction between the Characters and the Enviroment.

I can certainly see how this might work- if competition between the players is fostered to the point that they add interesting colour to the game for one another but not the point they want to kill eachother then you could have the players writing the colour and enviroment, while the GM focusing on the plot and events.

Do it wrong though, and the players will just do absolutely everything they can to work together as ruthlessly and effectively as they can, fudging the unimportant actions so they can breeze through the important ones with their stash of brownie points. In such a situation, you might find it even more frustrating as a GM, as you thorw more and more obstacles against them and they always manage to roll their way out of them. Are they really adding tension and complications, if the players just get out of them easily?

Taking the dice out of the hands of the GM can easily give the dice more power over the choices the GM has.

The GM doesn't want to let the character's succeed, so he keeps calling for additional rolls until they fail.

The player is doing something dangerous, and the GM doesn't want to kill them off outright, so he calls for a series of rolls until the character succeeds.

Likewise, if the character fails, they can either take the results (possibly falling to their death), or they can create a complication. For example, if the character fails the climbing roll, they could state that the rock comes loose in their hand and clatters down the side of the wall (possibly alerting the guards). Then the GM and Player continue the conflict from this new point. Note the difference here. In the player's case, the rock actually falls. In the GM's case, the player is presented with a decision.

rikiwarren's wrote:
Take our wall-climbing character. Imagine an experienced climber. The wall does not present a serious challenge. Instead, just after he reaches the halfway point, a teenage love-struck scullery maid appears at the top of the wall. She doesn't notice the climber, rather she stares dreamily off at the horizon, humming under her breath.

Oscar wrote:

rikiwarren's wrote:
Take our wall-climbing character. Imagine an experienced climber. The wall does not present a serious challenge. Instead, just after he reaches the halfway point, a teenage love-struck scullery maid appears at the top of the wall. She doesn't notice the climber, rather she stares dreamily off at the horizon, humming under her breath.

Now this is a good example. I like this. Its just the sort of thing the GM should do, i agree totally. But how does your system encourage this? I can see how it demphasizes the dice in the GM's descisions, but how does it encourage adding such complications other than to remove the GM's other options? Even then, what happens next? Do you roll to determine if the scullery maid sees the player, with the other players determining the difficulty? Because thats the conflict resolution system you currently have and it makes sense to resolve the conflict using that system. This doesnt encourage the trade-off sort of descisions you are implying at all. I dont think your system supports your design objectives.

Most importantly, the player needs to decide whether he's going to kill the girl, try to sneak past her, try to wait her out, or whatever. Each option has potentially negative consequences, and opportunities for further complications to be added. Once the player decides on an action, then the GM will undoubtedly call for an additional roll.

Which, I hope, would produce a steady downward spiral for the players, until the climax--when their luck would finally turn. Which is exactly the plot arc I'm trying to model.

But why do so many GMs get it wrong?

I think I do a pretty good job of it (partially because I lay awake at night worrying about these things). But, even so. There are those moments in a game where a player fails a roll, and I feel my stomach clench. I know what should happen--usually a horribly sticky death, or at least a maiming. I know things have gone horribly wrong. I flinch and  scramble to try and avoid that fate. In some ways the ability to take control of failures (by creating complications that cause the conflict to evolve) is more important than the player-controlled difficulties.

I know there's a trend on Forge inspired games to discuss the consequences before rolling. That doesn't fit well with my style of gaming. It's an unwanted intrusion of extra mechanics into the flow of the story. The more I can remove the discussions of mechanics, the better. And 90% of the time it's not necessary. Unfortunately, I sometimes don't realize it is necessary until it's too late.

Oscar wrote:

Maybe you DONT need to discuss the consequences with the players before a roll. Besides, in most cases they are pretty obvious, as long as the player understands how deep the chasm is, how dangerous those snakes look, how spikey those spikes are or how big the orc is. Maybe you just need to discuss the consequences with yourself, and decide on appropriate outcomes.

Still. Im not trying to convince you to abandon your system. I was skeptical at first but i think you're refinining it nicely. It sounds like fun and if it suits your playstyle thats the important thing. All im trying to do is give you ideas on how to resolve your major gripe about GM-controlled fortune-based outcome resolution systems.

Oh well. Hope ive had something to say that helped. Its been a really interesting discussion.