Hi!  I'm new 'round these parts so please forgive me if I've missed some forum rules, and for starting off with a hefty post.

Recently I finished a long running series of games using the Savage Worlds rules to run a fairly generic AD&D style fantasy setting.  The games were pretty successful in terms of keeping the players happy, and the last game especially seemed a culmination of a style of GMing that I've been perfecting for a number of years.  The success of the last game got me thinking about the way I GM in a more theoretical way, and led to some new thinking (on my part), about a style of play that I always took for granted as the "natural" or "best" way to play.

First, I'll give a brief account of the way I run games, and the final game of the series, and then I'll talk about the issues it raised for me and the possible wider implications.

I try not to influence players' decisions about their own characters.  That is, in the context of the game I was playing, I introduced a plot hook, an evil dragon menacing the characters' homeland.  The players, by virtue of my explicit instructions to this effect, felt free to either pursue or leave this plot hook, or at least, I hope they did.  I explained that this was the way this game would work, and that they should base these kinds of decisions entirely on their own prefereances, and on their character's probable actions. 

The players, responding to their own interest in the plot hook, and their characters' motivation to save their homeland, chose to investigate.

I introduced various complications to their defeat of the dragon.  Key was the fact that the dragon was immortal by virtue of a magic spear, which conveyed immortality to all who touched it, without granting them the ability to heal damage.  Consequently, the dragon, having survived decades of war, looked quite a mess.  The spear was the only way to kill the Dragon.

In the ensuing quest to find this spear, one of the characters was mortally wounded.

My practice with combat, and in fact with most "roll dice to see if you succeed" situations, is to set the stakes (the consequences for failure, the rewards of success) and the odds (what needs to be rolled to succeed) ahead of time, either informing the players of these before hand, or not, depending on what seems more exciting/appropriate.  So the players/characters entered the fight knowing that if the dice went against them, the result would probably be death for their characters.  In the event, one character was mortally wounded, but they managed to escape from the fight.

Then there was a quandary.  Would they be able to reach the Spear of Immortality before the character died?  There was no "map" for this situation, no one to appeal to except the GM.  I decided that to have any chance at all, it would have to be one lightly armoured person, running the whole way, and that it would require a dice roll (Vigor in SW) to succeed.  Failure would mean not making it in time, success would mean reaching the spear in time to make it back and save the dying hero.  The players at this stage were digging this completely, and all eyes were on the dice roll, which was a success.  (One of the things I like about SW is that you can introduce this kind of critical roll with a reasonable expectation that the player will use metagame re-rolls to succeed if they really want to). 

So the solo character had an epic running scene, fought off the guardians of the spear, escaped a collapsing cave, and made it back in time to get the wounded fella back on his feet, albeit with an unhealable chest wound.

So, in the final showdown with the Dragon, we had a situation in which one of the characters could not be killed, but the help of the other characters would significantly increase his chances of success.  What followed was a tense situation, in which the players discussed what they would do, how they'd spend what would probably be their last day alive.  The immortal character had realised that the death of the dragon would end the power of the spear (something that had been determined from the outset, but never realised).  His character spent the day with his son, who he had only just acknowledged.  Another character was drawn to a meeting with an evil NPC, and offered a choice: Stay with the heroes and die uselessly, or leave with her, and fight another day.  Unexpectedly, he chose to leave. This provoked outbursts of surprise from the other players, and me.  They felt betrayed, let down.  But everyone agreed it was "awesome".

Finally, they fought the dragon.  It's minions had caused a few wounds, and in the end they were drawn to fighting on a cliff edge, the dragon clinging to the edge of the cliff, and leaning over to breathe fire on them.  The character with the spear had made several futile attempts ot hit it in its exposed head, but with no success.  He decided that his best chance was to make a strike at the body - by leaping off the cliff!

The stakes were enormous.  On the one hand, the character died, taking the one hope of killing the dragon with it.  The homeland would be ravaged, their deaths in vain.  The betraying character would have been right.  The dying man should have stayed with his son.  On the other hand, they would have taken out the dragon against incredible odds, saved their homeland, proved the betrayer wrong, and those who died would have died saving their loved ones.

The dice rolled...

...and the blow struck home!  The dragon was felled, and the two fell together to their deaths.

Everyone agreed that this was the most awesome thing that'd ever happened, in the whole world.

So I was thinking about what made this so awesome, and I guess what I'm thinking about is this:  Tension between successful outcomes (however you define that) and unsuccessful ones, where there is a real chance of the unsuccessful outcome occurring, is generally fun, and gets more fun the higher the stakes are. 

This seems pretty basic to my understanding of what makes a fun game for me, but I haven't seen much discussion of this kind of thing here.  I guess my questions are:

Is this an illusion? Does the existance of a GM with power over game events preclude (or diminish) the possibility of an unsuccessful outcome to the point where any tension is only percieved?  For example, in the above game, it seems like the final blow against the dragon could have gone either way, but you could also argue that I had engeneered the situation to be an almost certain win for the players, especially given the way SW works often allowing critical rolls to succeed.  More significantly, in the case of racing to reach the spear, I pretty obviouly engeneered that situation so that  there was a good chance of success.  There was no "guide", so I basically made up the odds.  Do the seemingly small choices I make as a GM, like "they'll run away now", or "he won't make the death blow, he'll fight your buddy". Make a large impact to the chances of failure?  Am I always just "making up the odds", or can the player genuinely feel they had a chance of failure and chance of success that was influenced by their decisions?

More interestingly: Are there any specific techniques that can be used to highlight, increase, or otherwise improve these moments of tension?  Either by increasing the stakes, or by making the outcome less subject to being occluded by the intervention of the GM.  I think for example that the "fortune in the middle" technique discussed in this forum is an excellent way of doing this.  Are there more?

My last point is more of an intangible.  My best moments of roleplaying, have for me, been times when the dice seemed to take choices out of my hands, to throw up situations I wouldn't have thought of, to turn simple things into complex encounters, or to make opportunities where no hope existed.  The above situation of the mortally wounded character within reach of the immortality spear is an example of this.  I had not planned on one of the characters using the power of the spear, it just happened because that was the players reaction to what the dice threw up.  It ended up having a major impact on the game, and left a bittersweet note at the end that was fitting to a game that had largely been about an attempt to be heroic in a complex world.  A note that was entirely fitting, but entirely unplanned.

My question is:  What are other people's experience of this? Are there game designs which take advantage of this aspect of using fortune mechanics?  Are there ways of using this in a non-traditional context?  What crazy new directions can this take/has this taken?

Cheers,  and thanks for a charitable reading of my first post.

Hi Simon,

I'd agree with you that what you narrated was successful (and impressive) illusionism, and that you were lucky with dice. Feelings in your players might have been different if the PCs lost the contest and got killed. Yet you've got the right mindset; I suggest you check out John Kirk III's free book RPG Design Theory for ideas (try google), it's a jewel.

1. The Last Chronicles of Erdor as example
It also happens that your quandary is, oddly, the core premise of the role-playing game I'm in the process of finishing as of 2006, "a tragic RPG in an alien land of beauty and horror". This might give you some ideas. It's about tragedy, the weight of rulership and moral responsibility, the "price of power". In essence, I have the two parties of any challenge negotiate two stakes, then bid dice as in blackjack. The highest score wins. The trick is, a single PC (let alone 2+) has more than enough dice to win for certain against ANY opponent. The corollary is, the total of both pools measures the insuing Tragedy by steps. As such, winning the stake is not the core problem: it's deciding when to stop bidding before "bursting" and having the price paid overcome the stake.

2. Using the "tragic approach" in your games
With this approach, killing the dragon would be the stake, the collateral damage and fate of the PCs would be the price paid. So it's a bit like "Playing chicken": in your example, to kill your dragon the PCs might have accepted to killed themselves, to let a town and its innocents be destroyed, to let the virgin sacrifice be devoured, but finally to have the beast vanquished. This would have insurred that your PCs destroyed the dragon, with probably a bitter victory. Something like this could reach your goal: devise a table then add "success points" for each relevant action. Take note, however, that such a design will likely arouse guilt feelings among players, which is on purpose: the actual mechanics are based on Aristotle's theory for Greek tragedy (hubris (tragic flaw) -> peripeteia (plot twists) -> anagnorisis (realization of the dreadful truth) -> catharsis (drama and sympathy for the tragic outcome)), so it might not please your players' expectations

Regards,

Erick

Hi, Simon, let me begin by welcoming you to the Forge!

Simon, I'm going to begin by using some jargon here. If you can't follow, don't worry; I'm writing this for the benefit of other readers here. You can skip directly to Part 2 if you'd like.

Part 1 - No Illusionism
Based on what Simon has described here, I do not see Illusionism in any way. Illusionism is defined according to the provisional glossary as "A family of Techniques in which a GM, usually in the interests of story creation, exerts Force over player-character decisions, in which he or she has authority over resolution-outcomes, and in which the players do not necessarily recognize these features." (Emphasis mine.) I do not see any Force in Simon's description, only GM input, which is a very different (and safer) animal, because it does not deny player input. For more details on the distinction between input and Force, see Bangs&Illusionism - in which Ron beats down Confusion

However, this raises a crucial point: just because Simon has not described any Force does not mean there is none there. This leads to Part 2.

Part 2 - Getting More Info From Simon
Simon, I would like you to answer the following questions.

1) When the guy ran to find the Spear before the other character died, how do you think the other players would have reacted if the roll had failed?
2) When the guy ran to find the Spear before the other character died, what would you have done if the roll had failed?
3) When the guy jumped off the cliff to attack the dragon, how do you think the other players would have reacted if the roll had failed?
4) When the guy jumped off the cliff to attack the dragon, what would you have done if the roll had failed?

Part 3 - Simon's Questions
Simon, I will now restate your questions. You tell me if I've misunderstood them.

1a) Does a GM's input into the game render game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?
1b) Is your input as GM rendering game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?
2) What can you do to increase tension, or make tense moments more common?
3) You would like more information about the creation of suprising or unexpected events in the game fiction and how to make them more common.

Before I answer those questions, I would like your response to Part 2, and I would like confirmation from you that I have restated your questions correctly. Take your time in replying; there is no need to rush this.

Thanks for a quick and insightful reply.

First:　I think that I understand the concept of illusionism, and in my play I've attempted to avoid this.  My group tends to frown pretty heavily on covert GM force, but is much more comfortable with overt GM input.  I try to prepare for any likely player choice, but we often discuss before the start of the game, or at the start of a series of games the sorts of things that will be assumed, such as that the characters will generally act "heroic" or not, the degree to which I expect them to follow plot hooks (in this case not at all, but in other cases completely), and so on.  I think the concept of Illusionism is relevant to this discussion, but not in the sense of the GM using hidden force of the players' choices.  Rather, I'm interested in the degree to which the GM can exert hidden force on seemingly random outcomes.

Now, to your questions:
1) When the guy ran to find the Spear before the other character died, how do you think the other players would have reacted if the roll had failed?

Clearly, they wouldn't have been as happy as if he had succeeded, but it wouldn't have been game destroying.  We don't have any "gentlemen's agreement" about character death.  If the dice come up that way, it's just your time, and no one tries to weasle out of it.  I think the players would have been dissapointed, but at the same time we all realise that it's the real possibility of failure that makes success worthwhile.  So, it's not desirable for it to happen, but it's desirable that it be possible.

2) When the guy ran to find the Spear before the other character died, what would you have done if the roll had failed?

That's an interesting question.  I guess in situations like this I try to salvage whatever meaning I can from the events, without altering the outcome.  So, I would have described some anxious scenes of waiting with the dying man clinging to life, cutting to the guy with the spear, clearly exhausted, struggling.  I like to describe things to my players in terms of what it would look like "in the movie", so I would have described washed out colour and sound, as the guy ran into the cave mouth where they were hiding out, only to realise he was too late, then I'd cut to the player for his character's reaction.  So, it wouldn't be the triumphant scene of success they were hoping for, but it would still be an awesome scene.

3) When the guy jumped off the cliff to attack the dragon, how do you think the other players would have reacted if the roll had failed?

Them's the breaks.  You roll with the dice and you accept the result.  Clearly, as with the example above, they wouldn't have been thrilled, but it's the price of having meaningful success.

4) When the guy jumped off the cliff to attack the dragon, what would you have done if the roll had failed?

Well, this one would be harder to salvage than the previous example, and harder to turn into a meaningful story, rather than a rather pointless tragedy.  I guess I would have tried to give some glimmer of hope to the players, that they might save at least some people.  At least the players would always remember the time they almost saved the world.

Part 3 - Simon's Questions
Simon, I will now restate your questions. You tell me if I've misunderstood them.

1a) Does a GM's input into the game render game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?
1b) Is your input as GM rendering game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?

Mmm, sort of, see below.

2) What can you do to increase tension, or make tense moments more common?

Yes.

3) You would like more information about the creation of suprising or unexpected events in the game fiction and how to make them more common.

Yes, but I don't think I was clear enough in my initial explanation.  My greatest moments in roleplaying have been when the dice have taken things out of my hands, when I have acted as an interpreter of their results.  In a sense, what I mean is that my most successful games have involved surrendering some authorship of the game to the dice, allowing them to decide not just the outcome of events, but also dictating the path the game will follow, as with the wounded character and the spear.  I mean that sometimes, it seems like there are situations where no one, not even me, knows what will happen next, and we're all participating in the game to find out where it's going.  This seems like a fundamentally different way of GMing a game to how I used to play, and I'm interested in exploring this.  Is it an illusion that no one knows what will happen next?  Or can I genuinely just interpret the results of the dice (I suspect the answer lies between these two).  What specific techniques or game designs take advantage of this idea?

Thanks for the clarification. Now that I understand your question better, I need a bit more information from you. You said (with emphasis added by me):

Yes, but I don't think I was clear enough in my initial explanation.  My greatest moments in roleplaying have been when the dice have taken things out of my hands, when I have acted as an interpreter of their results.  In a sense, what I mean is that my most successful games have involved surrendering some authorship of the game to the dice, allowing them to decide not just the outcome of events, but also dictating the path the game will follow, as with the wounded character and the spear.  I mean that sometimes, it seems like there are situations where no one, not even me, knows what will happen next, and we're all participating in the game to find out where it's going.  This seems like a fundamentally different way of GMing a game to how I used to play, and I'm interested in exploring this.  Is it an illusion that no one knows what will happen next?  Or can I genuinely just interpret the results of the dice (I suspect the answer lies between these two).  What specific techniques or game designs take advantage of this idea?

There are two thing you are talking about here:
1) Creating a situation the character should engage in (An evil dragon menacing the characters' homeland).
2) Having the characters find their way through the situation.

Lets look at "creating the situation" first. it seems like you are trying to avoid railroading by making the plot hook optional: "You do not have to go there if you don't want to". This is something I see time to time when a GM try to be more open to player input. I do not think this approach work very well.

In most traditional rpgs it is expected that it is the GM job to create the adventures for the character. So to have an interesting game the players have to put there characters into an GM created situation to get something interesting out of the game, and then it is a problem if the GM shy away from this duty.

It may be a good idea to tell the player up front: In this game I (the GM) will throw your character into interesting and challenging situations that your characters can engage in. And be warned: I have no problem in pushing your characters to the extreme to get some intense role-play.

You may call this force, but I see it as necessary to get something interesting out of these kind of games.

The next part is how the characters can navigate their out of the situation, and here the GM have to be careful. There should be no predetermined 'one and only one' way out of the situation.

You describe things like: "The spear was the only way to kill the Dragon" and "I decided that to have any chance at all, it would have to be one lightly armoured person, running the whole way".

What would you have done if the players come up with an alternative way to handle the dragon, like: "I have high social skill, so I will confront the dragon and try to convince it to stop all the killing". Would you say "No that's impossible." Or "ok, but it will be hard."?

If you say "no", you close all other possibilities apart from the one that you have predetermined, and this is railroading. If you say "ok" you will give the control to the players to find there own way out of the situation.

So the point is: Do not be afraid to put the character into interesting and challenging situations, and don't have any predetermined way for how to solve the situation - let the players find their own way through it.

- Anders

Anders: I　don't think you're really adressing the issues I raised in my post.  You make good points, but I think I already understand these issues fairly well.  For example, my players understand that if they don't follow the "Evil Dragon" plot hook, there'll be something else out there for them to do, but the Dragon won't go away.  Yes, the Spear was the only way to "Kill" the dragon.  It doesn't mean it was the only solution to the problem.  To recap, this post is not about issues of Illusionism and Railroading, it's about whether the dice can act as a creative force in themselves.

Ricky: If it sounds like I don't fully understand what I'm talking about, it's because I don't, hence me posting here.  You've asked some very good questions, and it might take me a little while to respond, while I think about it.  It sounds like you're addressing the second idea in my post, about a different attitude towards interpreting dice rolls, putting more creative onus on the dice.  This is a pretty intangible thing, and something I've only grasped at in my play. 

While I'm thinking more about this, I'd like to talk about the other issue I raised, about a way of thinking about dice rolls as "stakes + odds", with greater stakes and worse odds making for more fun, crucially, when there is a real chance of failure.  I see this as a distinct issue.  My questions regarding this are:

Is this a useful way of thinking about dice rolls?

What specific techniques make use of this?

Cheers for your help, it's been immensely useful in advancing my thinking.

Simon

Anders: I　don't think you're really adressing the issues I raised in my post.

No probs Anders.

Escalation is an interesting idea.  I've heard it described before, but in the context of stakes and odds it makes more sense to me.  Could you say that the player of the character with the Spear chose to escalate when he opted to jump off the cliff to try to hit the dragon - improving his chance to hit while dramatically increasing the stakes?

If this is the case, it seems that for more traditional format games (such as Savage Worlds), escalation is more about providing opportunities in the plot for escalation of this type.  That's an interesting line of thought.  This could be tied to a dice mechanic, but it doesn't have to be.  For example, Savage Worlds has "bennies", meta game re-rolls that can be spent at almost any time.  You could rule that use of bennies "escalates" a situation, the player (or the GM) must renegotiate the consequences of sucess or failure to incorporate these higher stakes.  So, for example, after a failed hit roll, the player could opt to re-roll, negotiating a reduced "parry" score for the following round on a failed hit, or something more dramatic, like precariously balancing on the scenery, or whatever.  Or, to use a more "fortune in the middle" approach, the description is left until after all the dice are rolled.

It seems like escalation is more useful in a game that uses "conflict resolution" over "task resolution", because they have a less one dimensional range of outcomes, and it's more feasable to "bid" stakes from outside the conflict in a believable way.  The more I think about it, the more it seems DitV is genius.

Thanks for your comment,

Simon

Could you say that the player of the character with the Spear chose to escalate when he opted to jump off the cliff to try to hit the dragon - improving his chance to hit while dramatically increasing the stakes?

It seems like escalation is more useful in a game that uses "conflict resolution" over "task resolution", because they have a less one dimensional range of outcomes, and it's more feasable to "bid" stakes from outside the conflict in a believable way.  The more I think about it, the more it seems DitV is genius.

Hi, Simon,

I can answer some of your questions now. I will agree with and expand on what Anders says. Tension is achieved through appropriate use of stakes. Let me carefully define what I mean by that.

Setup
There is a conflict that at least one player cares about. I include you the GM in that statement. Note that I did not say character; there are things that characters might care about that players do not, and vice-versa. We are interested only in the players' feelings because they are the important people; the characters are merely fictional constructs. The player who cares about this conflict (I'll call him Joe) has a goal to achieve in that conflict, such as "dig up some dirt on the bad guy". The actions that Joe's character (I'll call him Tom) takes are meant to achieve that goal, such as "crack the bad guy's safe".

So now there are two questions that need to be answered:
A) "Does Tom crack the bad guy's safe?"
B) "Does Tom find dirt on the bad guy?"

Note that A & B are completely independent questions. Tom could find dirt, or fail to find dirt, regardless of whether he cracks the safe or not. For example, he could fail to crack the safe, but still find dirt in the wastebasket; or he could open the safe, only to find it empty. Further note that the answer to question A is not relevant to Joe at all. Joe only cares about B.

Answering your questions
Your question of "Does a GM's input into the game render game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?" is directly related to these questions. Many rules texts provide rules for answering A but leave B completely unstated, so each group has to figure out on its own how to do that. As a result, many GMs are empowered to answer B entirely at their own discretion, which means that Joe gets what he cares about exactly when the GM decides to give it to him. Therefore Joe's enjoyment of the game is based solely on the skill of the GM; it is completely out of Joe's control.

For Joe to be interested, play must focus on B. (Note I said play, not rules text.) Ways to do this include:
1) Explicitly stating that the outcome of the roll decides the answer to B.
Joe: Tom tries to open the safe.
GM: Make an Open Locks check. If you succeed, then Tom opens the safe and finds dirt inside. Otherwise, Tom opens the safe and find nothing.

2) Ensuring that a failed roll not only ensures that Joe does not get what he cares about, but also causes problems for Joe.
Joe: Tom tries to open the safe.
GM: Make an Open Locks check. If you succeed, then Tom opens the safe and finds dirt inside. Otherwise, Tom doesn't open the safe and sets off an alarm.

3) As an addendum to #2, the more that Joe really cares about something, the tougher the consequences should be if Tom fails.
Joe: The bad guy has taken Tom's girlfriend hostage! That BASTARD! Tom shoots the bad guy.
GM: Make a Firearms check. If you succeed, then Tom shoots and kills the bad guy. Otherwise, Tom shoots and kills his girlfriend instead.

I hope that was both helpful and not too verbose. For further reading, check out Vincent Baker's blog "anyway", specifically his post on Conflict resolution.

This is a long post, so I'll leave escalation for later, if Anders hasn't already answered your questions about it.

I'm gonna steer a bit towards mechanics.

Savage Worlds has Bennies, which allow for a reroll.

However, I allow Bennies to do a bit more.

I allow:

1)  To add a +1 AFTER the roll is made, sometimes a Player just needs to succeed juuuust a little bit more.  that little bit of empowerment can be really nice.

2)  Narrative control.  I allow a Benny to be spent by a Player to "edit" the scene.  Of course the door, as it slams, locks.  Which will slow the orc pursuit immensely.  Of course, PC X is taking the shortcut through the ally just as PC Y gets in trouble and really could use the back up.

3)  Use Magic in unsual ways, but keeping in the spirit of the caster's persona and magical affinity.  So the Firemage could spend a benny and stop the fire in the tavern from spreading out of control.  While he has no "spell" that can do that kind of thing, the player rightly argues that it summoning a fireball, but in reverse. 

While these things seem small and tangental to the original post, I don't believe so.  If we wish to avoid railroading...by giving Players more control over the story... we open the doors to more solutions to problems, more avenues of exploration.  Limited Narrative Control also gently reminds the GM that there are more solutions than just the ones He has thought of.  But by being Limited (Bennies are a limited resource), we avoid too much chaos in the evening with the plot lines veering completely out of control.

Sorry.  One more thing about Limited Narrative Resource pts...

... they are a "Tell".  I've seen players do this, i've done it myself.  Spent Bennies/Fate pts/Hero pts etc on conflicts that were little "c" conflicts.  Sometimes almost frivolous skill checks, like see if my PC can sneak into the ball without an invite... not for any huge, angsty plot reason, but for a silly bet with a NPC.  Just flavor stuff.

but that flavor stuff can really be tied very closely to how a Player percieves the character.  When it is important to succeed at something just for the sake of keeping the character's perception at the table in line with what the creator thinks it should be. 

I mean, if I'm playing James Bond, not knowing which wine to order for dinner to impress the chauntreusse ain't gonna happen if I've got chits to throw.  Even if it means not having those chits later in more critical scenes.

Granted, some might say there are NO little "c" conflicts.  But that really would be thread drift.

Your question of "Does a GM's input into the game render game decisions meaningless, and therefore any tension is illusionary, not real?" is directly related to these questions. Many rules texts provide rules for answering A but leave B completely unstated, so each group has to figure out on its own how to do that. As a result, many GMs are empowered to answer B entirely at their own discretion, which means that Joe gets what he cares about exactly when the GM decides to give it to him. Therefore Joe's enjoyment of the game is based solely on the skill of the GM; it is completely out of Joe's control.

For Joe to be interested, play must focus on B. (Note I said play, not rules text.) Ways to do this include:
1) Explicitly stating that the outcome of the roll decides the answer to B.
Joe: Tom tries to open the safe.
GM: Make an Open Locks check. If you succeed, then Tom opens the safe and finds dirt inside. Otherwise, Tom opens the safe and find nothing.

2) Ensuring that a failed roll not only ensures that Joe does not get what he cares about, but also causes problems for Joe.
Joe: Tom tries to open the safe.
GM: Make an Open Locks check. If you succeed, then Tom opens the safe and finds dirt inside. Otherwise, Tom doesn't open the safe and sets off an alarm.

So now there are two questions that need to be answered:
A) "Does Tom crack the bad guy's safe?"
B) "Does Tom find dirt on the bad guy?"

The 'warping reality' you mention made my head hurt when I first read about the concept too, but it's a crucial part of many of the games discussed here.

Previous posts have touched on the matter that, succeed or failure, outcomes should be interesting.  The difference between a good and a bad conflict is often not in the statement but in the outcomes.

Conflict to get spear
Succeed: PCs get the spear and can move on the dragon.
Failure: PCs don't get the spear.
This is a bad conflict.

Conflict to get spear
Succeed: PCs get the spear and can move on the dragon.
Failure: PCs get the spear, but some are mortally wounded.
This is a good conflict.

In the example of opening a safe, there are many ways to have a good failure; what's important is that failure does just mean that the safe remains locked and nothing happens.

Hi, Simon, I'm glad to know that I was able to help.

First, I'm going to quote myself, because I will need these points to answer some of your follow-up questions.

So now there are two questions that need to be answered:
A) "Does Tom crack the bad guy's safe?"
B) "Does Tom find dirt on the bad guy?"

Note that A & B are completely independent questions. Tom could find dirt, or fail to find dirt, regardless of whether he cracks the safe or not. For example, he could fail to crack the safe, but still find dirt in the wastebasket; or he could open the safe, only to find it empty. Further note that the answer to question A is not relevant to Joe at all. Joe only cares about B.

Simon wrote:

For Joe to be interested, play must focus on B. (Note I said play, not rules text.) Ways to do this include:
1) Explicitly stating that the outcome of the roll decides the answer to B.
Joe: Tom tries to open the safe.
GM: Make an Open Locks check. If you succeed, then Tom opens the safe and finds dirt inside. Otherwise, Tom opens the safe and find nothing.

I find these answers a little unsatisfying though.  On paper, this style of play looks good, and it may work for you, but my players, I think, would balk at their characters "warping reality" with a good skill roll.  In example 1, it seems like Tom's skill is not "open lock", but "make dirt appear in safes".

Simon wrote:
I think it'll take a while for me to think about how the points you've raised can best be implimented in my games, but thanks for expressing this point so clearly to me.  In the meantime, I'd like to talk about another possibility.  In your example, you provide:

So now there are two questions that need to be answered:
A) "Does Tom crack the bad guy's safe?"
B) "Does Tom find dirt on the bad guy?"

What about:
C) "Does Tom find something else entirely in the safe, and what is it?"

Or in the example of my game, in the fight on the way to retrieve the spear, there were two questions:

A) "Do the PCs survive the fight?"
B) "Do they get to the Spear?"

but the answer was:

C) "One of the PCs is mortally wounded and now there's a race to get to the Spear in time, and one of the PCs might become a kind of zombie thing".

So I guess what I'm talking about is the possibility for dice mechanics to raise questions, rather than just answer them.  Is this interesting?  Where can this go?

Why not 'Find Dirt' versus 'Hide Dirt'? Then, the quality of the roll determines what is found and where.

Tom rolls High, Joe rolls Low: Joe didn't hide it very well (Perhaps stuck it in the bottom of a desk drawer) and Tom finds what he wants, plus some other usefull stuff.
Tom rolls High, Joe rolls High: Depending on how you handle ties, perhaps Tom finds a clue on the dirt, Tom finds nothing, Tom finds something small to use against Joe.
Tom rolls Low, Joe rolls High: Not only does Tom not find dirt, everything Tom finds says that Joe is an honest and upstanding guy.
Tom rolls Low, Joe rolls Low: Some variant on High/High.

Then, if Tom needs to open a safe, just use his roll as a base. If it's a straight roll-and-add, add Toms' 'Open Safe' skill to the base dice roll - Because that determines how well Tom is doing at Finding Dirt. If it's a roll-over 5, just remove or add one success for every two dice difference.

Not sure how well this would work in practice, though.

Ricky is doing a great job, but I want to try to get more directly at Simon's query.

Can the dice produce creativity?

Well, I'll try not to get into semantics. But in the example in question I see less the dice creating things as you as the player using them as inspiration. To be clear, this is how everything in RPG narration works. You have previously established facts, and from them you make up new ones. A leads to B.

Lots of people believe that dice are, in fact, a great form of inspiration. Ron has referred to randomization of resolution as a "dramatic springboard." Meaning that, yes, they're in the game to give uncertainty, and to force us to mix things up, instead of relying on any pre-concieved notion of what's going to happen. I mean, if you don't have the randomizers, and you plan out the outcomes...where's the spontenaity of play? If you know that you can't plan out the outcome, you likely won't. And this is usually a good thing.

Illusionism involves planning things out, and then rolling dice and having players make decisions, but the results of that activity don't affect the pre-planned outcome. In this case the "illusion" being created is that the plot being created are a product of the players being creative, and the plot developing organically. When, in fact, it's following a plan. Some people say they prefer this way to play, and certainly some people do have fun with it. But there's a point at which the players become aware to some extent of what's going on, and at that point problems often occur.

Anyhow, that all said, there are, in fact, some techniques that I think you might be interested in. First, as Ricky says, it's possible to create outcomes for events that include fun negative outcomes. Character death is tense, yes, but that's because the player is risking something, not just the character. The player is risking the character not being available for play any longer.

Now, if in fact the story ending right at that point would be fun for the player, that's another issue. With the case of the leap off the cliff, the player was saying that he thought that this was a great way to end the character's story (in fact he understood that either way his character's story would end). I think that's magnificent. But what if the story isn't at that point? Do you still make death the negative outcome? Why? Because it "should" be the negative outcome? Or because it's especially tense?

I propose you can get nearly as much tension with other negative outcomes. Death is only an appropriate "stake" if it's really not just OK, but especially cool if the character dies here and now.

Now, about stakes. This has come up several times recently. Pre-setting stakes has upsides, but it also has downsides. What's more the upsides can be had without the downsides using other techniques. Let me explain:

The upside of stakes is that the players can agree to them. Some people go so far as to allow players to negotiate stakes with the GM. But even where that's not true, usually the player can decide to back out if he doesn't like the gamble, right? So in that way we ensure that the player is OK with the conflict. Hopefully. Further, if the stakes are stated up front, there's no chance that the GM is manipulating things behind the scene, so there's a lot of trust in the players and system that's generated by doing this. These are both good things, but pre-setting stakes is not the only way to get them.

The downside is that when you pre-set stakes, you actually take some of the tension out of the contest in question because we already know before the roll what the possible outcomes are. Further, you lose some of the ability to tailor the result of the outcome to the specific outcome of the conflict. Think of it this way, if you're fighting a dragon, obviously death is a potential outcome, right? If you don't state what the stakes are, does that mean that death can't be a result? No, death is still a stake. But so are a great many other things.

Yes, if the players believe that the GM will not kill their characters, then that tension may not be there. But they'll only feel that way if, in fact, the GM is using illusion to get a pre-planned outcome. If, in fact, the GM is improvising as you do off the results of the roll, aiming only to create a satisfying conclusion to the conflict from which to act extemporaneously (and if he's consistent in this), then he has the best of both worlds. He gets both the tension of death, and the option not to employ it.

See, stakes are meant to overcome player indoctrination that says that the GM is always futzing with things behind the scene. If that's not happening, and demonstrably not happening, then explicit stake setting is really just not needed in most cases.

There's another benefit to setting stakes, which is that players get used to "Conflict Resolution" quickly when you do this. So, actually, there's a training value to using this technique for, again, players used to illusionism GMs. But, that being the case, once you've gotten the player's trust that you're creating extemporaneously, then there's no longer any reason to have these training wheels on. (Note that I'm not saying that there aren't times when using Stake setting isn't for other reasons, and good technique in those cases. Merely that if it's only being used to get to conflict resolution that you can grow out of it).

How to you reinforce Conflict Resolution? Instead of setting stakes, have players set goals for their character. It is infinitely more maleable to manipulate an outcome based on looking at character goals than it is to deal with stakes which are pretty much set in stone.

I have more on this, but I'll let this sink in for a bit first.

Mike

All interesting, but just want to make one note: Death only at dramatic points seems to be definite Narrativism. Death when the character would logically die (Health is zero, poisoned and failed three saves, plagued for a week without a cure) seems to be definite Gamism.

For a Gamist, the tension comes from 'Do I Win'? Therefore, the Gamist wants win and loose conditions, otherwise the game isn't fun. This is what might be called 'Game Dramatics'.

For a narrativist, the tension comes from the story. Therefore the Narrativist wants winning and loosing to be dramatic. Story Dramatics, in other words.

At least, that's what my inner Gamist and Narrativist seem to be saying. Don't ask me about Simulationism, I seem to havee fumbled that stat roll.

I don't really want to get bogged down in a semantic argument about GNS, an argument I'm surely not equipped for, but I see the "constant possibility of death" as more of a simulation thing than a gamist thing.  In a game about brave heroes risking death, the Simulationist in me wants death to be a constant and real risk, reflected in the rules.  Correct me if that's not a correct interpretation. However I think that GNS is kind of a side issue to this discussion.

I agree with Ricky that many of these things I've being doing in my games for years without really thinking about it.  I guess this post is an attempt by me to more consciously recognize the techniques I'm using, and the effects they have.  I think I'm moving a lot closer to that goal.  Mike, I think you've expressed very well the benefits and drawbacks of two different techniques, and I need to think more about how these things work in my game. 

I think at this point I'm pretty satisfied with this exploration of my game.  I don't think these issues are entirely resolved for me, but I need to do a lot more thinking, and in any case I think further discussion is likely to boil down to "what works for me..."

Thanks everyone for your help with this.  I'd love to hear any further comments, but at this stage I feel my questions have been answered.

Simon

My final piece of advice is that, after trying some techniques (new or old), that you post about it here so we can discuss with you what you did and the benefits and problems with them.

This was a great thread. I'm glad I could help.

Simon wrote: Is this an illusion? Does the existance of a GM with power over game events preclude (or diminish) the possibility of an unsuccessful outcome to the point where any tension is only percieved?  For example, in the above game, it seems like the final blow against the dragon could have gone either way, but you could also argue that I had engeneered the situation to be an almost certain win for the players, especially given the way SW works often allowing critical rolls to succeed.  More significantly, in the case of racing to reach the spear, I pretty obviouly engeneered that situation so that  there was a good chance of success.  There was no "guide", so I basically made up the odds.  Do the seemingly small choices I make as a GM, like "they'll run away now", or "he won't make the death blow, he'll fight your buddy". Make a large impact to the chances of failure?  Am I always just "making up the odds", or can the player genuinely feel they had a chance of failure and chance of success that was influenced by their decisions?

More interestingly: Are there any specific techniques that can be used to highlight, increase, or otherwise improve these moments of tension?  Either by increasing the stakes, or by making the outcome less subject to being occluded by the intervention of the GM.  I think for example that the "fortune in the middle" technique discussed in this forum is an excellent way of doing this.  Are there more

I'm glad you've had your questions answered. I'm going to address one point, however, that may be somewhat tangential, but yet might be informative.

So far, Simon, you seem to be on a rather classic trajectory in your understanding of how RPG play works in terms of the GM-player power split - who is responsible for what? And in trying to solve certain problems, you've resorted to the typical solutions. For instance, like many GM's you started out with more "linear" play...meaning using either overt or covert force to cause the plots that occur in play to follow a particular line.

Then you discovered that what you really wanted was the players to be creating plot with their character decisions. And in order to do this you've tried to attempt what I've at times called "Open Play." Meaning that you present the world as it is, and let player drive lead to plot decisions.

The next step, however, is to realize that all play is collaborative. It's actually inescapable, to some extent all RPG play is collaborative, or intended to be so. The only difference between these splits is where the participants try to hold the boundaries on who has what power. But in practice these boundaries are always eroding toward the center - where players and GMs share power over a wide range of elements of play.

Basically the idea that there's some split where the players only control their characters, and where the GM only controls everything else, is fallacious. In practice, in a very real way, that never happens in a pure sense.

For instance, players will constantly be defining small things about the universe. "I pick up a rock" creates a rock nearby the character to pick up - and probably one that's large enough to hurt somebody too (we all know why he picked up that rock). If the GM says, "While eating, somebody comes into the tavern," he's controlling the characters in that he's saying that they're actually in the act of eating when the event occurs. Even if they say that their character is eating, how do we know that one isn't finished before the others?

These are minor cases, but they're indicative of a more important phenomenon. When you a GM say, "Well, there's this dragon you could deal with...or you could do something else," there's a subtext there that reads, "But I only have the dragon stuff worked up, so if you do something else, I'll have to work that up, and, oh, by the way, I am interested in this dragon storyline, seeing as I've bothered to write it up."

The fact is that we avoid talking overtly about sharing the power in play, because certain traditions aimed at combating extremely dysfunctional play are in place that say we should not. That is, a lot of RPG tradition exists because we want players to face challenges in play as players, and yet we also want the players to play the characters in an interesting and plausible way. When, for example, a player kills all of the baby kobolds because, "they weren't worth any EXP alive" then we decry the act as not paying attention to plausibility, and we move to ensure that this sort of decision-making process doesn't happen again. The player is only allowed to consider what his character knows when making decisions.

Conversely GMs are prevented from playing around with the set-up after the fact, because it voids a sense of fair play, and that the game world has any permanency to it. Basically because of percieved abuses by players or GMs (which really come down to different priorities showing), we strive to try to set up a division where these problems cannot occur.

The problem is that it inevitably fails.

The players may even sense that you're trying to cede control of their characters' destinies in presenting them with the option of going after the dragon, and saying it's OK if they don't. But the problem is that they know that you want to do it, and that it'll probably be fun, and don't have any reason to go for anything else.

What you have to do is to simply succumb to the notion that you can share power with your players. That it's not all "GM drives plot" or "players drive plot" but that "we all drive plot."

Put another way, it's fine to "railroad" if you define that term as controlling only certain parts of play. Put even better, the key is simply to understand that, as GM, you have to provide the players with some place to make creative input into play. And that any control you take in order to provide the players with occasion to be creative is, in fact, a good thing.

That is, "Open Play" only works if your players are actually all really GMs. Somebody has to provide the framework for the plot to develop. Yeah, the players can do it themselves if they're all extraordinary players. Or even if one of the players really pushes forward, and creates the conflicts for all of the characters.

But why not the GM? It's only problematic for the GM to provide such input if he controls the output. If he's using illusion or some other set of techniques to control the outcome, then, yes, the players may not be having fun (though some argue that there are players who want this). And they certainly won't if/when they see the illusion at work.

The fact is that through skill and/or negotiation with players, you can always ensure that the input you're putting into play is making play fun for the players instead of taking away their fun.

So, with the example at hand, instead of saying, "I have this dragon thing, but you can do something else, if you want," instead say, "I have this dragon thing worked up that should be fun." And then proceed to make it fun for them by ensuring that it's not a linear plot.

This is largely accomplished by one overall technique, which is simply to set up situations for conflicts for which you cannot predict the outcome. And then, in play, when playing through the situation, simply following the players' decisions in creating your next plot input.

Very simply, when prepping for play, think less in terms of what will happen, and more in terms of what might happen, and what you can do to respond to it if/when it does. In play, largely it means "winging it" where that's not as scary as it sounds because your prep is there to support winging it (as opposed to having prep that requires you to either force outcomes or abandon the prep).

The other main technique that supports this is to simply talk about it between the players. If you say things like, "I was thinking that a scene between your character and NPC A would allow for you to work out some of their issues, because I think it'll be interesting to see what will come of it - should we do it?" then the player understands that you don't have a pre-planned outcome, and that you setting up such a scene is done in order to present him with the opportunity to create reactions and such.

This runs in direct contradiction to the "tradition to prevent dysfunction" sort of rule like, "You're not there, you can't talk to him!" Players should not only speak about their own desires as a player, but they should do things in play that are acting on player knowledge. No, of course not in an implausible way.

But, for instance (to use a now classic example), if Player A knows that Player B has a character in a fight in a park near to where his character is having a drink player A can do one of the following:

1. "My character goes home." (reasoning that, since the character doesn't know about the fight, that he can't show up)
2. "My character goes to the fight!" (reasoning that he wants to help player B's character).
3. "My character goes home, and on the way happens to pass by the park and see the fight happening." (reasoning that he as player wants his character to help that of player B, and using a plausible explanation for why the character might go there).

Option 3 is maximally fun. The player gets what he wants, and plausibility is not broken.

In practice, everyone is always doing this to some extent. But often times players will put aside choices for fear of being accused of "cheating." So they usually hide this decision-making process, arguing for the plausibility of an action when challenged. "My guy woulda done that."

The problem with this is that it hides the player behind the character, and relieves the player of the responsibility to play the character in an entertaining way. Same with the GM, actually. By bringing this dialog into the open, and, most importantly, by saying that this sort or reasoning is explicitly allowed in all cases, we ensure that players are acting only to entertain themselves and each other.

In this way you can share power openly and in a way that everyone is pretty much garunteed to enjoy. All the problems of trying to push the boundaries to a certain specific area go away as they are clearly set by early negotiations in play (augmented by more later as neccessary).

Forcing players down a pre-selected path (all GM plot control) is liked by few players. Using illusion only delays problems, or diffuses them. Making players create the plot entirely by themselves is also a problem, as players rightly expect the GM to help. Consider that your best option may be to share the power to shape plot with your players, the GM putting in his part, and the players putting in theirs.

This seems obvious on the face of it, but so much traditional technique makes actual substantive player participation in creating plot impossible. When, in fact, this is what most players really want in play. Even in Gamism play, players want to be able to influence the outcome of things by their skill - that's the opportunity you give them in that sort of play. Give them the same sorts of ability to alter the path of play in other forms of play, too.

Mike

Hmm, I think I see your point.  This thread seems to be pretty clogged up with issues, and is spiralling away from discussion of a specific "actual play", but I'm still interested in these issues.  I'm planning a one-on-one game with my wife in the near future, and I'll try to post that in actual play for further discussion.  Some techniques I'm hoping to try are:

- More explicit stating of stakes before rolling
- Bennies (meta-game points) able to be spent on substantive narrative control
- "Kickers"
- More explicit scene framing, including scenes asked for by the players.  I think that this last adresses the issues you've raised in a way that is useful to me, allowing for "between scene" discussions of what direction the plot will take.  I like your description of more "collaborative" play, and I hope that scene framing will help me do this.

I have high hopes for this game, but I think it'll present some difficulties as well.  My wife has an amazing imagination, and I love playing with her, but she's relatively new to gaming, and has been burned by some bad experiences, so she's a little shy of taking narrative control. I'll discuss this more in the new thread.