TheRPGSite

I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

I feel there should be room for both failure, success with potentially bad consequences ("sting in the tail") and success.

Maybe "success with consequences" as a result of using action/fate/drama/hero/etc. points to avoid failure? A "deal with the devil" thing to trade immediate success for a different brand of misery down the road?

I like this idea, but I wonder in what sort of game would this be appropriate.

Quote from: The Butcher;511467I feel there should be room for both failure, success with potentially bad consequences ("sting in the tail") and success.

Maybe "success with consequences" as a result of using action/fate/drama/hero/etc. points to avoid failure? A "deal with the devil" thing to trade immediate success for a different brand of misery down the road?

I like this idea, but I wonder in what sort of game would this be appropriate.

How about making the action resolution step "fail / conditional success", and then giving the player a pool of "this is important!" points, that they can use to turn "conditional success" into "unconditional success!". If you implement some sort of "critical!" mechanic, it could reward a "this is important!" point that could be spent then, or saved for the future.

I could see it working for a setting like Warhammer, where things tend to get worse over time, and victories tend to be minor.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

Generally i like for failure to be a potential outcome. My guess is this will vary a lot from person to person. There is probably a small crowd that will really like this sort of mechanic,  but an even bigger one that will have some issues with it.

Quote from: The Butcher;511467I like this idea, but I wonder in what sort of game would this be appropriate.

Any game to be honest. Noone wants the narrative to stall because someone rolled the wrong result, but at the same time we are playing a game so there needs to be a mechanical answer rather than 'fudge the dice'. Even if you compensated failure by giving the player some bennies the failure is still there, that's the problem. If a test of character skill fails then there's a roadblock right there. The only time this wouldn't necessarily be appropriate is combat.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511470Generally i like for failure to be a potential outcome. My guess is this will vary a lot from person to person. There is probably a small crowd that will really like this sort of mechanic,  but an even bigger one that will have some issues with it.

Of course some won't like it. That's a given. But i suspect the reaction is mostly psychological; it sounds like I'm suggesting characters can't ever fail. That's not quite the point. If the roll fails, the character still gets the basic goal achieved, but with a dramatic consequence. That has the advantage of moving the game forward in new and exciting directions, bringing new elements into the environment of play and without stalling the game. In a way rolls become an exercise in seeing how well a character does and presenting a wrinkle in their efforts if their attempt falls short. Otherwise you get into situations where the player has to devise another way of trying again, but with not much of a reason to do so.

Such a rule could be optional, but then that doesn't really address the point it's trying to resolve.

If success is the only option, it certainly makes your characters seem great. I've always hate how in dnd sometimes my character jumps 20' and sometimes he fails to clear 5.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511473Any game to be honest. Noone wants the narrative to stall because someone rolled the wrong result, but at the same time we are playing a game so there needs to be a mechanical answer rather than 'fudge the dice'. Even if you compensated failure by giving the player some bennies the failure is still there, that's the problem. If a test of character skill fails then there's a roadblock right there. The only time this wouldn't necessarily be appropriate is combat.

I have a hard time grasping "failure = stalled narrative" -- good stories are full of people failing at stuff, and having to deal with the consequences.

Quote from: The Butcher;511482I have a hard time grasping "failure = stalled narrative" -- good stories are full of people failing at stuff, and having to deal with the consequences.

Well, LotR for one would be a pretty bad book is Sauron didn't fail his Intelligence check.

"Hm, maybe I shouldn't wear the most important item in battle".

Quote from: The Butcher;511482I have a hard time grasping "failure = stalled narrative" -- good stories are full of people failing at stuff, and having to deal with the consequences.

The GM has to plan for that failure in the adventure which is a bit harder than what he'd have to do here I think. That's hard work!

Some actions just become a chore when they fail, others can lead to consequences that are also tedious and difficult to manage.

At least this keeps things moving.

And good stories are indeed full of people failing, but the are also stories - written by an author that can plan out what's going to happen and doesn't rely on dice rolls to determine if his characters succeed or fail. Luke failing at the dark side cave sets up the end of the ESB, but only because that's how it was planned. What if Luke rolled well and succeeded at the cave? Same difference.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511499The GM has to plan for that failure in the adventure which is a bit harder than what he'd have to do here I think. That's hard work!

Dude. What have you been playing? :eek:

Like I've said, I'm not out to persuade you or anyone else, but I do honestly think that being prepared for whatever curveball the PCs throw you (or just thinking quick on your feet, which is how I do it most of the time) is the GM's job.

PCs succeeding all the time, because a GM can't be arsed to "meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat these impostors the same" would be boring. as. fuck.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

That would suck to me. I wouldn't play that game.

Failure on a skill roll that stalls the game is the result of bad play and/or bad GMing.

Quote from: Benoist;511143When something fails on a roll and the status quo is maintained, as a player you then have an infinity of courses of actions to choose from, including attempting some other action that would either allow you to reach the same goal, or participate to a strategy that enables you to try again, or you could decide to move on to the next problem, the next obstacle, the next room, or just leave and work on something else while you think about ways to come back to this problem later on...

My point is that failure is only boring when you, as a player, do not use it as a stimulation to take your characters, your plans, your adventure in a different direction on your own. And if you cannot, or the GM doesn't let you or hasn't planned for such eventualities, or is incapable to improvise based on your choices from there, then it is railroading, failing on prep, failing at running the game.

The notion that a single die roll would result in a status quo that either could not or would not be changed by any decision on the players' parts from the moment of failure really is the problem, here. So either the players fail at initiative and imagination, or the GM does. In either case, game mechanics don't fix people. People fix themselves. Or not.

Quote from: Benoist;511214[D]ull play results either from players failing to take the initiative and attempt something else, plan for alternate courses of action, address the status quo in some other fashion, AND/OR the DM fails at providing an environment that invites such responses.

Let's take a concrete example.

The PCs explore a dungeon. They come by a room that was some kind of workshop at some point. There is a corridor stretching beyond the workshop in front of them, with a curtain rotting by the archway leading to it that once provided some kind of separation between the workshop and whatever lies beyond. In the workshop, on the PCs left, there is an iron door covered in rust. On their right, a wooden door showing signs of falling apart. Huge mess/clutter of furniture, bags, tools and stuff gathered in the middle of the room. The walls seem wet, made of ancient stones now partially covered with moss.

PC Thief goes to the iron door. Tries to pick the lock. Explains he uses his locking picks to work on it after asking if there was a lock in the first place. Thief rolls.

Failure.

DM describes the faint noises of metal scrapping metal which, though extremely faint, carry through the silent room and maybe beyond. Rolls a die. Explains that apparently, all remains quiet as drops of dark water fall from the ceiling in the workshop's penumbra...

Status quo maintained.

From there, the PC Thief and his companions have multiple choices: he can try picking the lock again, even though that's a noisy business. Who knows what's on the other side of that door? He can try looking through the wooden door falling apart. Or inspect the clutter. Or check out the curtain. Walk down the corridor as a scout. Try to dislodge the iron door from its hinges resting on the wet mossy stones. And so on.

So. Failure, status quo maintained. Provided the environment offers choices to the PCs, they have no reason to just go "that's boooring" unless they just give up because they can't move on. That's a mark of a sucky player to me. Likewise. If that door was the only existing exit to the dungeon, that there was no other thing to do at all because the room is white with no other door and so on, that's just plain bad DMing.

It's not that the rules fail. It's that the people around the game table fail at playing an entertaining game. They need to try a little harder.

Ok, bad idea overall. Is cool. That's why I made the thread.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511578Ok, bad idea overall. Is cool. That's why I made the thread.

It's not. You already know you don't share any tastes with the people arguing with you. I run Palladium and High Level PF as no fail on skill rolls for anything that isn't being actively opposed by an equal frequently. It is FUN to know that what matters is your choices and RP, rather than if you going to random drown, crash your ship, fall off you horse or whatever else. When you have a very strong character, like in the game you are writing, I think it kills immersion to fail on anything less than epic contested rolls.

You should try this.

Hunt down the early 1990s issues of Space Gamer magazine via eBay or Noble Knight. Each mag had a stand alone RPG using their Free-Style system. I am a huge fan of their games Battleborn and Rogue Fantasy.

Their system is all about taking actions that have varying degrees of success and failure and how that affects the situation.  You can often succeed, but with consequences.

Here's their old website
http://www.spacegamer.com/spacegamer/default.asp

Quote from: Cranewings;511592It is FUN to know that what matters is your choices and RP, rather than if you going to random drown, crash your ship, fall off you horse or whatever else. When you have a very strong character, like in the game you are writing, I think it kills immersion to fail on anything less than epic contested rolls.

You should try this.

I'm tired of this constant whining bullshit.

Nobody's talking about drowning, crashing your ship or fallling off your horse if you fail a roll here. The possibility of failure actually increases your choices by prompting you to adjust to new situations, with proper GMing and a proper attitude as a player of the game, as demonstrated in the example above.

Not to mention, you don't like very strong characters yourself, do you? You cut off the upper half of the Pathfinder rules because you can't deal with high level characters, can't bother to learn how to deal with them. You refuse to learn how to GM properly to keep yourself from fixing the rules instead, and in the meantime, you can't shut the fuck up about Wizards "breaking the game" for reasons having everything to do with you and your GMing style, and nothing whatsoever to do with the full game you've never actually understood.

All these extremely bad and boooring things you see happening in case anybody fails at anything are in your head, mate. You should wake up and smell the coffee. You might actually pick up something of interest, instead of sticking to your guns like a stubborn imbecile not hearing what he wants to hear.

Benoist, you know I don't read your posts that start off like that? Jesus fucking Christ.

GMs doing hard work as they GM?

Prefuckingposterous! World is coming to an end!!!1

Quote from: Benoist;511532That would suck to me. I wouldn't play that game.

Failure on a skill roll that stalls the game is the result of bad play and/or bad GMing.

I'd distinct between stalling the game, and stalling the action. Sometimes the consequences of failure are, that action becomes temporary stalled - but having to deal with it, is cool in itself. Stalling the game, imo, is equal to game becoming tedious and boring - and that's indeed bad.

If you have a strong & epic character - just don't roll for tedious stuff, and only roll for epics. Whoah, I know.

As for crashing the ship - Yeah, I burned your fucking barge. Deal with it.

Quote from: Cranewings;511607Benoist, you know I don't read your posts that start off like that? Jesus fucking Christ.

That's one part of your problem right there.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but a similar discussion occurred over on this thread, starting at post #64.

What does "old school" mean to you? (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21852&page=7)

EDIT: My general feeling on the question is what I summed up here (revised from post #112):

There's always the option of trying something else, but I think play at the table is more interesting if dice rolls generally mean the player is making a gamble, i.e. putting something at risk. If you succeed, you will get what you want but if you fail, things will be worse or more complicated. Despite what Ben says, I think his lockpick example does use this principle. Not only is the lock not picked, but now monsters might be aware of your presence. So, in the case of persuading a king, failure that means you've actually offended the king, or tipped off an enemy to your plans, or whatever in addition to the simple fact of failure. A failure that results in a twist or complication is more interesting than a simple failure that says, "No, that doesn't work."

Quote from: Benoist;511620That's one part of your problem right there.

I love coming to a forum where I'm getting trolled by a mod. Why don't you block me so I don't have to read your posts.

Quote from: Cranewings;511628I love coming to a forum where I'm getting trolled by a mod. Why don't you block me so I don't have to read your posts.

I love coming to a forum and have to read the same guy bitching about Wizards over and over and over and over again.
I swear. That's why I don't block you...

Wait a minute.

Are you fucking kidding me? Grow a fucking spine.

Benoist is certainly acting like an asshole (sorry Beno, I know it's tough love, but I prefer more love, less tough), but he has a point, Cranewings. Open your mind to alternatives, rather then continue committing the same mistakes.

Quote from: Benoist;511631I love coming to a forum and have to read the same guy bitching about Wizards over and over and over and over again.
I swear. That's why I don't block you...

Wait a minute.

Are you fucking kidding me? Grow a fucking spine.

Suck a fucking dick.

I know I'm being harsh. I just can't stand the moronic rambling over and over and over again. For fuck's sakes. Enough! Cranewings doesn't even want to admit to anything at this point. He's so stuck on his position it's mindboggling. So I don't answer. Most of the time. I just bite my virtual tongue and move on. But then, on this thread, misrepresenting what I just said by pulling a total strawman about how failure is about taking people off their horses and crashing their spaceships?

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.

You don't want me to answer? Don't you fucking misrepresent what I say.

Quote from: Rincewind1;511632Benoist is certainly acting like an asshole (sorry Beno, I know it's tough love, but I prefer more love, less tough), but he has a point, Cranewings. Open your mind to alternatives, rather then continue committing the same mistakes.

Benoist said I don't like powerful characters because I have a level limit. In my level limit games, 6th level characters alter the course of battle because each one can kill 12 to 20 armed and trained men, sometimes in a few seconds. That's plenty powerful. Benoist is a cunt because Benoist believes his tastes have intrinsic value beyond being his tastes and he apparently thinks he isn't a broken record on every topic himself.

Quote from: Benoist;511634I know I'm being harsh. I just can't stand the moronic rambling over and over and over again. For fuck's sakes. Enough! Cranewings doesn't even want to admit to anything at this point. He's so stuck on his position it's mindboggling. So I don't answer. Most of the time. I just bite my virtual tongue and move on. But then, on this thread, misrepresenting what I just said by pulling a total strawman about how failure is about taking people off their horses and crashing their spaceships?

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.

You don't want me to answer? Don't you fucking misrepresent what I say.

I wasn't talking to you or really even about you, because I usually skim your post at best. I was encouraging Ghost to try his idea instead of listening to naysayers.

I said you don't like powerful characters because you don't admit them. Why? Because you don't want to deal with them. I said you are not understanding the game. Why? Because you keep bitching at wizards because they blast through your encounters, I tell you that you should use variety in your encounters and set up the game in such a way as to provide an actual challenge to your wizards, and then you whine that you shouldn't have to do that. And then, you keep on bitching about wizards over and over and over again.

That's what I have enough of. That's this total stuck-up stubborn bullshit that makes you systematically discard why it is that these things happen in your games to then keep on blaming the game for your GMing failings. That pisses me off, because it's representative of a fucked up mindset that's been cancerous in 3rd edition and beyond. Blame the rules for your own failings. Fail to understand the game. "But I shouldn't need to", "it's boring", "I am entitled." Fuck that noise, man.

Quote from: Benoist;511634I know I'm being harsh. I just can't stand the moronic rambling over and over and over again. For fuck's sakes. Enough! Cranewings doesn't even want to admit to anything at this point. He's so stuck on his position it's mindboggling. So I don't answer. Most of the time. I just bite my virtual tongue and move on. But then, on this thread, misrepresenting what I just said by pulling a total strawman about how failure is about taking people off their horses and crashing their spaceships?

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.

You don't want me to answer? Don't you fucking misrepresent what I say.

Quote from: Benoist;511637I said you don't like powerful characters because you don't admit them. Why? Because you don't want to deal with them. I said you are not understanding the game. Why? Because you keep bitching at wizards because they blast through your encounters, I tell you that you should use variety in your encounters and set up the game in such a way as to provide an actual challenge to your wizards, and then you whine that you shouldn't have to do that. And then, you keep on bitching about wizards over and over and over again.

That's what I have enough of. That's this total stuck-up stubborn bullshit that makes you systematically discard why it is that these things happen in your games to then keep on blaming the game for your GMing failings. That pisses me off, because it's representative of a fucked up mindset that's been cancerous in 3rd edition and beyond. Blame the rules for your own failings. Fail to understand the game. "But I shouldn't need to", "it's boring", "I am entitled." Fuck that noise, man.

Benoist, you ignorant cunt, either block me so I can't read your posts or I'm deleating my account.

For the love of dynamite

Cranewings: Stop the emotional blackmail.

Benoist: Stop being so aggressive.

Kiss & make up, or STFU both of you, as I'd rather criticize Ghost's concept rather see this screaming match.




What you described, Ghost, is basically another "story/narration - based resolution", focused around an idea that Failure is Bad. While failure, in fact, is good. It helps remind the players that their characters aren't omnipotent forces of the universe. It's humiliating, but also humanising.

(http://pic.epicfail.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/dafuq.jpg)

Quote from: Cranewings;511638Benoist, you ignorant cunt, either block me so I can't read your posts or I'm deleating my account.

Me blocking you wouldn't have the effect you think it would have. *I* wouldn't see your posts. You would still be able to see mine.

Quote from: Benoist;511642Me blocking you wouldn't have the effect you think it would have. *I* wouldn't see your posts. You would still be able to see mine.

You can't ignore admins/mods until admin/mod ignores you, mesa thinks.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Assuming this is a traditional RPG, the core problem with hard-coding "yes, but..." into the system is that it pushes a lot of responsibility back onto the GM to say (and possibly say frequently), "No. That is completely impossible. You aren't allowed to make the check."

Or, if the GM allows the check, you end up with stuff like, "I wanna jump to the moon!" And then the mechanics say, "Okay, you jump to the moon, but..." But what? You've put even more pressure on the GM to now come up with some sort of negative consequence to jumping to the moon that manages to explain (or at least mitigate) this suspension-of-disbelief-busting outcome.

First, this calls into question the entire point of the mechanic. The goal seems to be mandate player success. But it doesn't really do that. Instead, it pushes character failure outside of the system and leaves it up to GM fiat.

Second, the argument can be made that the GM should just stone up and be willing to say "no". But, honestly, I don't really want that responsibility most of the time. I'd much rather say, "It requires a check of X to achieve this task." Because (a) that prevents me from accidentally stonewalling Superman from being able to jump to the moon and (b) it gives characters who come up short a clear structure for achieving the task nonetheless (by obtaining proper equipment or whatever) in a way that a flat "no" doesn't.

(The moon thing is mostly hyperbole, of course.)

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511499The GM has to plan for that failure in the adventure which is a bit harder than what he'd have to do here I think.

Ah. Your assumption is that a roleplaying game is all about a GM railroading his players through pre-planned events. That makes your mechanic make a lot more sense: You basically want the mechanics to help enforce your railroad by making sure the players don't fail on checks they aren't "supposed" to fail.

Hint: Stop doing that. (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots)

The problem you're trying to solve mechanically will disappear and your scenarios will be better.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;511644Ah. Your assumption is that a roleplaying game is all about a GM railroading his players through pre-planned events. That makes your mechanic make a lot more sense: You basically want the mechanics to help enforce your railroad by making sure the players don't fail on checks they aren't "supposed" to fail.

Hint: Stop doing that. (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots)

The problem you're trying to solve mechanically will disappear and your scenarios will be better.

Not quite. I don't railroad anyone. I don't think i've ever railroaded anyone. Whether or not the adventures have been fun? well that's another question entirely.

Railroading doesn't enter into it at all. It's about not letting the game stall, that was the idea behind it. If a player then wants to jump to the moon then that's a fault with the player wanting to do something utterly at odds with the setting, no different than a player suddendly pulling out a gun and shooting his fellow pc's or generally being a twat.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511791It's about not letting the game stall, that was the idea behind it.

Describe what a 'stall' looks like at your table.

Well there's the reason why GUMSHOE was created: the stalling of investigations.

Recently in Dark Heresy I had the players roll to intimidate a heretic they found when investigating the pub he was sleeping in. Now I would have been better off just saying 'you intimidate him', but they failed the roll and...nothing. I wasn't comfortable just letting them intimidate without some effort (ie a roll), but there you are.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511796Well there's the reason why GUMSHOE was created: the stalling of investigations.

Recently in Dark Heresy I had the players roll to intimidate a heretic they found when investigating the pub he was sleeping in. Now I would have been better off just saying 'you intimidate him', but they failed the roll and...nothing. I wasn't comfortable just letting them intimidate without some effort (ie a roll), but there you are.

I GM a lot of GUMSHOE, and there's no stalling - the party goes around solving a mystery. Once they think they are ready for confrontation, they are ready.

If you made a roll and they failed - tough luck. Still, if the guy was ambushed in his sleep and totally helpless as they started to crack his bones - it's one of the moments when rolling isn't necessary imo.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511796The stalling of investigations.

I think this is best addressed by good GMing. Investigations stall because the scenario wasn't well thought-out, included a "bottle neck" (something that SHOULD happen, some outcome that SHOULD occur in a certain way on the PCs' part for the investigation to go on), a roll was done when there shouldn't have been one by just laying the piece of evidence in front of the PCs, and so on. I'll talk about this some time down the road when I create my thread about creating CoC mysteries.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511796Recently in Dark Heresy I had the players roll to intimidate a heretic they found when investigating the pub he was sleeping in. Now I would have been better off just saying 'you intimidate him', but they failed the roll and...nothing. I wasn't comfortable just letting them intimidate without some effort (ie a roll), but there you are.

Yes, see, you instinctively know that it was your fault here. And it's a good thing you're able to do that. That's the mark of good GMing, actually, because you are able to look at what you did and say "OK, I fucked up here". From there, what you should do is think about ways in which you do not recreate this conundrum while running the game, instead of thinking of "fixing" a game system that fundamentally wasn't at fault.

You see what I mean?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511791Not quite. I don't railroad anyone. I don't think i've ever railroaded anyone.

Um... Nevertheless, the style of game you're describing -- in which GM's predetermine outcomes and Luke's success or failure doesn't matter because he's going to end up at the same place either way -- is, in fact, a railroad.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511796Well there's the reason why GUMSHOE was created: the stalling of investigations.

You mean the game created to support Robin D. Laws' desire to design railroaded mystery scenarios? And which still completely fail to eliminate "can't follow that clue" stalls?

Man. That was a bad example to choose to fend off the railroad discussion.

(GUMSHOE games have gotten better in the advice they give and never mechanically required you to railroad your players. But the entire "you have to auto-find the clues because otherwise the scenario will stall" thing is entirely predicated on the scenario being designed as a fragile railroad.)

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511796Recently in Dark Heresy I had the players roll to intimidate a heretic they found when investigating the pub he was sleeping in. Now I would have been better off just saying 'you intimidate him', but they failed the roll and...nothing. I wasn't comfortable just letting them intimidate without some effort (ie a roll), but there you are.

As GUMSHOE demonstrates, a mechanic which produces auto-successes won't necessarily fix your problem: If the heretic doesn't actually have anything useful to tell them (or they don't ask the right questions after coercing his cooperation) and they don't have another avenue of investigation, the adventure will still stall.

OTOH, just because they failed to intimidate this guy doesn't mean the scenario has to stall out: Can they find a different way to apply pressure to him? Can they hire a private detective to do a background check on him? Can they hack the local surveillance system to backtrack his movements over the past few days? Can they investigate his known associates? Can they plant a bug on him? Can they break into his office and ransack his files? Can they... Yada, yada, yada.

And that's just crap they can do with the heretic. If the scenario isn't designed as a bottle-necked railroad that must pass through the heretic, then there should be plenty of other leads for them to follow up.

So, much like GUMSHOE, the mechanical "solution" doesn't actually solve the problem (at best it provides a minor mitigation) and if you implement the actual solution then the mechanical "solution" becomes irrelevant. (And, in the case of the more universal mechanic you're suggesting, there are a lot of negative knock-on effects that come from the irrelevant "solution".)

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

i really like what they're doing in Dungeon World (http://www.dungeon-world.com/). (it's the Apocalypse World rules re-imagined as fantasy.
the review on TBP sums up the core "Moves" mechanic pretty well.  check it out. (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15435.phtml)

roll 2d6, 10+ you do it, no problems. 7-9 is 'success with complications'. (you get hit, drop something, creak a floorboard, etc. etc.) Less that 7 and you flat fail.

then "The GM does not actually roll dice in the game—rather they respond to the character’s actions and the corresponding rolls." which is kinda cool.


everyone else:
(http://communityfears.com/images/B-calm-down.jpg)

From  that review...

QuoteWhat could capture the gaming zeitgeist better than an independent storygame inspired RPG with oldschool feel and fun as its design goal

I think that's good game no rematch for me.

Urgh, Apocalypse World. The only moves I want to see in an RPG are dance moves.
 
The first paragraph of that review, alongside with a serious use of term "zeitgeist" when writing about RPGs, pretty much made me ran away as fast as I could, before my brain'd melt.

Quote from: kregmosier;511938roll 2d6, 10+ you do it, no problems. 7-9 is 'success with complications'. (you get hit, drop something, creak a floorboard, etc. etc.) Less that 7 and you flat fail.

Absolutely. I think adding an explicit range of "yes, but" to the mechanic can be valuable. Adding a similar range of "no, but" to the mechanic can be a little more problematic, but also valuable.

It's just eliminating failure entirely that doesn't work in practice.

Quote from: Rincewind1;511941Urgh, Apocalypse World. The only moves I want to see in an RPG are dance moves.

You're so utterly absurd. It's hilarious.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

I don't think it would be a great idea to implement something like this as a universal rule. However, I think that it could work well as a situational rule.


When Scion describes botches it suggests that a botch doesn't necessarily have to mean failure, it could mean a particularly poor or unfortunate success. One example it gives is a character trying to jump from one rooftop to another, rather than falling when he botches his roll, he makes the jump, but lands in a group of mafia thugs conducting "business". (Not the best example in my opinion, since it kind of implies retcon-ing the mobsters into existence, but it gets the point across I think.)

The specific wording was:

QuoteWhile a botch generally results in a situation that can harm or seriously endanger a character, it is not always the worst possible result. A botch should make the game more interesting.

Or you could do like someone else suggested and have them spend a benny to convert a failure to success with complications. Alternatively, they could spend it in advance to guarantee success, at the cost of complications if they would have failed.

If you took that route (or possibly even if you didn't) you could then have the effect apply automatically to certain rolls. The ones that will stall the adventure if they're failed. Although, as others have pointed out, it's usually preferable to avoid those rolls in the first place.

You could even attach it to certain effects, like say a magic sword that always hits, except that sometimes (aka, when you roll a miss), bad things happen to the wielder.


Or you could have varying success levels, with the first one involving complications. Like in Apocalypse World.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;511908OTOH, just because they failed to intimidate this guy doesn't mean the scenario has to stall out: Can they find a different way to apply pressure to him? Can they hire a private detective to do a background check on him? Can they hack the local surveillance system to backtrack his movements over the past few days? Can they investigate his known associates? Can they plant a bug on him? Can they break into his office and ransack his files? Can they... Yada, yada, yada.

And that's just crap they can do with the heretic. If the scenario isn't designed as a bottle-necked railroad that must pass through the heretic, then there should be plenty of other leads for them to follow up.

Worth repeating.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;511950You're so utterly absurd. It's hilarious.

For disliking a game you like, because it's one of the main banners for suggesting that GMs can be replaced by mechanics? Yeah, bizarre.

Quote from: kregmosier;511938i really like what they're doing in Dungeon World (http://www.dungeon-world.com/). (it's the Apocalypse World rules re-imagined as fantasy.
the review on TBP sums up the core "Moves" mechanic pretty well.  check it out. (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15435.phtml)

roll 2d6, 10+ you do it, no problems. 7-9 is 'success with complications'. (you get hit, drop something, creak a floorboard, etc. etc.) Less that 7 and you flat fail.

then "The GM does not actually roll dice in the game—rather they respond to the character's actions and the corresponding rolls." which is kinda cool.

I'm not sure what to take from this kind of game. There may be something in the resolution mechanism as above, with an entry for 'success, but'. Though that may well be more hassle than it's worth. I don't know. Apocalypse World, afaict, works in a very specific way.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511463I am wondering if my system should work thus:

If a player fails at a roll for an action the player still succeeds, but less effectively and with some element of misfortune. A sting in the tail.

As opposed to the player fails the roll and things...stall.

Or is that too easy?

I alter this for D&D by including Degrees of Success as a cost. This way I have two demarcating lines to determine pass/fail. I'll give an example of what I do, it's a roll under system and DoS are counted as each 2 points (10%) above or below the pass/fail lines.

i.e. Roll under system. The character has a value of 17 in a particular check. I modify the challenge in that I need 2 Successes. This means that I require 20% more than expected effort for a clear success (or 4 under 17). So rolling over 17 is Failure, rolling over 13 is Incomplete Success, and rolling 13 and under is a Success -- and each 2 point difference under adds another success.

Now one should really be sparing with this technique, however. I find it works best with an easier task, something you'll succeed 75% of the time or more, but want to make it a bit more challenging. Usually I only add the challenge if the player wants to add more detailed success --  basically like taking raises in L5R -- or if I have extra detailed information that could help but is not crucial for the game to progress.

I just find it hard to justify letting the dice stall out game progression, so required knowledge is rarely rolled for. And if it is necessary, the Failure pass/fail line is generally within very easy reach. The Incomplete Success pass/fail line is there to dole out bonus detail more piecemeal.

Quote from: Rincewind1;511984For disliking a game you like, because it's one of the main banners for suggesting that GMs can be replaced by mechanics? Yeah, bizarre.

yep, that's exactly what those rules suggest.
don't worry though, not you; you're a people person.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;511908GUMSHOE games have gotten better in the advice they give and never mechanically required you to railroad your players. But the entire "you have to auto-find the clues because otherwise the scenario will stall" thing is entirely predicated on the scenario being designed as a fragile railroad.

Agreed. I like some aspects of GUMSHOE actually, just not the "fixing stalling investigations" premise, which I find just as ludicrous as you do.

What I do like for instance is the idea of spends. The idea that you find clues that are necessary for the resolution of the investigation is fine (and can be done just as well in a game of Call of Cthulhu, really). The idea that you can spend points to get some more insights or some other clues that inform the big picture or allow you to make connections that you didn't see before is interesting. The resource management that posits is intriguing to me.

My only problem with this mechanic is one of (here we go again) immersion. The management of spends in entirely up to the players, and I'm not seeing any way in which I could actually "role play" spends from the point of view of my characters. You can have dramatic/narrative OOC explanations for it (my character tries to search harder, it's just what the character would do in a movie), but the caps on spends is arbitrary in the same fashion that dailies for fighters in 4e are. There's no justification for it in-game. So me deciding whether I spend this point now, or later, because I have six of them at my disposition on my character sheet doesn't translate in the game world at all.

Now, with all that said, I would still try to run/play GUMSHOE. I might just be able to ignore that metagame aspect of spends.

Quote from: Rincewind1;511984For disliking a game you like

No. For claiming that either:

(a) You don't like RPGs in which players can do things. It's hilarious.

(b) You don't like RPGs to use terminology that OD&D uses. (Not extensively, but it does. Gygax talks about characters "using their move" to do things.)

(c) Both.

Quotebecause it's one of the main banners for suggesting that GMs can be replaced by mechanics

But, okay, yeah. Your illiteracy is pretty hilarious, too.

Quote from: Benoist;512078My only problem with this mechanic is one of (here we go again) immersion.

Ditto. Completely dissociated.

The system also seems to be problematic in actual play. From a longer discussion that you can find here (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/5813/roleplaying-games/hard-system-limits-in-scenario-design):

For example, in designing the investigative portions of a scenario you have two ways of dealing with the GUMSHOE hard limit:

(1) You can budget the number of "bonus clues" available in the scenario to make sure that the PCs will always have the points required to buy them. This avoids the problem of running out of points early in the game and then being forced to only engage the scenario at the most passive level available, but it raises the question of why the pools exist at all: It's like sending you to a typical garage sale and then enforing a strict budget of spending no more than $1,000,000. Theoretically that's meaningful, but in practice you've got all the money you need to buy everything on sale so it's not a limitation at all.

(2) On the other hand, you can include more "bonus clues" over the course of the scenario than the PCs can afford. This means that the PCs will have to budget their points and only spend them selectively.

But here's the problem: The players don't know which of these scenarios is true in any given scenario. (Particularly since most GMs aren't going to read this essay and, therefore, aren't going to make a deliberate decision in either direction. In practice, it'll be a crapshoot from one scenario to the next which of these true. And which is true for which pool of points.)

And, furthermore, the design of the system is such that you often don't know what you're buying.

So either I'm giving you a million bucks and saying "buy everything at the garage sale"; or I'm giving you $5 and telling you to buy a random grab bag of stuff. It's a feast or a famine and you don't know which it is until it's too late.

The problem becomes more severe for non-investigative tasks. Here the players need to spend the pool points in an effort to boost a random die roll above a target number that they don't know. And they have to make that decision without any real knowledge of how many more die rolls of the same type they might be called upon to make.

So you're bidding in a (frequently life-or-death) silent auction in what may (or may not) be a long series of silent auctions, the exact number of which you have no way of guessing.

Quote from: Rincewind1;511984For disliking a game you like, because it's one of the main banners for suggesting that GMs can be replaced by mechanics? Yeah, bizarre.

I'd really like to see this version of Apocalypse World, that only exists in your head.

Whether or not this idea works, I do not like seeing in rpg:

Rule Zero - yes I can make changes, why do I need to be told this? I own the book, I can do what I like with it. I didn't sign a contract saying otherwise after all! I find it incredibly patronising.

More importantly, nad perhaps the issue is simply one of poor GM advice within rulebooks, but I don't like having to fudge dice rolls to keep things moving - regardless of PC success or failure. To me that is an absolute failure of game design. To say 'you must be a shit gm/have shit players/play shit games/write shit adventures' or whatever is missing the point. Why not, after several decades of the hobby now, is there not a language for explaining to GM's reading their new game (whether they are experienced or otherwise) how to design adventures and, specifically, how to deal with 'problematic' dice results.

Quote from: Ladybird;512153I'd really like to see this version of Apocalypse World, that only exists in your head.

Read AW then? :P

Quote from: Justin Alexander;512126No. For claiming that either:

(a) You don't like RPGs in which players can do things. It's hilarious.

(b) You don't like RPGs to use terminology that OD&D uses. (Not extensively, but it does. Gygax talks about characters "using their move" to do things.)

(c) Both.



But, okay, yeah. Your illiteracy is pretty hilarious, too.

LoL. Classic Justin "Ur a Pleb" argument. I love that players can do things. But as a GM, I also love to do things, and invent my own, not to be mechanic's bitch. You fine with that - your problem, not mine.

Quote from: Ladybird;512153I'd really like to see this version of Apocalypse World, that only exists in your head.

Read AW again, then? :P

Ah yes, classic Justin argument. "Ur a dirty pleb & don't understand TEH GENIUS, also I am teh rightorz". Whatever. I don't care enough shit about AW to bother arguing about it again.

I love it how people who always defend AW go with the "Did you even read the game" argument.

I did, and it's a shitty game that tries to "fix" GMs. But whatever. Keep on blaming all failures of GMs on bad mechanics and old GMing advice. So far, GW, you show classic traits of another "indie" RPG author - blaming your faults on mechanics & "bad" advice given in the book, rather then taking a look at your own game. Btw Justin - still waiting for those mysterious GM powers. I see you still roll with the "ur a pleb" argument, glad to see you back in form.

GUMSHOE mechanic is convoluted as fuck. I still do not think I played even 1 game by the book, even the games I tried playing by the book. Oh well - I still like it. The spends are definitely weird, and probably in most cases can break immersion, but - if you limit the ability of "Spend as introducing something new to the "scene"", it stops being a problem. My players usually do that to introduce new NPC contacts - stuff that they could/should've written in the character backstory anyway. And after a few contacts introduced this way, they use a spend to just visit them and get their help on the subject, rather then introduce new guys.

And hey, Benoist - you can always manage all spends as a GM. I end up doing that, if I am playing with less narrative players, so to speak. I usually say "Also, you had blah blah blah blah blah. Mark a spend of X on your sheet, please". I think of spends more like character resources and resolution, then screentime potential - there are only so many times that your criminal contacts will help you this week, after all. Try phoning them another time, and they may just tell you to go screw yourself.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;511473Any game to be honest. Noone wants the narrative to stall because someone rolled the wrong result, but at the same time we are playing a game so there needs to be a mechanical answer rather than 'fudge the dice'.

This statement contains a couple of assumptions that I do not think are universally true because they are not true for me.  If you don't expect or count on there being a particular result, then there is no "wrong result".

Quote from: John Morrow;512360This statement contains a couple of assumptions that I do not think are universally true because they are not true for me.  If you don't expect or count on there being a particular result, then there is no "wrong result".

Again, there's a vast difference between "narration" and "action" in a book/film/RPG whatever.

Some people consider the Ent Council in LotR superb, others find it a terrible bore. I for one liked the Ent Council, because I generally like to talk, and see how others talk - that is why I also liked Feast For The Crows more then A Dance With The Dragons. In fact, my favourite moments in RPG are when we, the players, just sit around the table, drink and talk, rather then chase around shit, risking that we'll be killed.

Also- I have at least one player, who's really a quiet person. And I mean by that that he is not "closed" so to speak, but he prefers to think a lot before he says anything. I, on the other hand, am terribly fearful of silence as a GM, as I think it means that player are bored - so you can imagine my relief when I talked with him about that later. You need to take such stuff also in the account - don't try to force people to talk at the table with mechanics, so to speak.