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.

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.

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. (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.

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:

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. (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.

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.