Quote from: Voros;992213Yeah I remember some montonous and overlong fights that suffered from this.

No fair referencing arguments on therpgsite.

Quote from: Skarg;992270Mhmm. Is there a politically correct way to say I think that's an approach so far from representing actual combat that I consider it a different type of game, and one I don't want to play, without being accused of "one-true-way-ism" or badwrongfunning?

Go ahead and say it. You'll be accused of it anyway.

The ability to succeed or fail is best left in the hands of the players. This is one reason why I prefer the sandbox approach to play, which allows players to choose their conflicts and decide on courses of action knowing that there is a risk/reward balance.

Players are more motivated and put forth their best efforts engaging scenarios that they like. Courses of action that the players come up with themselves are usually at the top of that list. If the players are the ones deciding on the course of action that they take then they will generally deal with failure a lot better than if they had failed during a scenario that they had been railroaded into.

Quote from: flyingmice;992321Depends. Fairly often on a task level. Less often on a conflict level. Seldom on a mission level. Almost never on a campaign level.

I appreciate the way you have distinguished different levels of failure and that sounds like the right degree of success and failure at each level.

Quote from: Dumarest;992322No fair referencing arguments on therpgsite.

The best way to avoid "stand and grind" combats is not to stand and grind.  It's just like a wargame; you can simply slam the troops together and start rolling dice, but the first time somebody uses actual tactics, you're going to get handed your ass in a bucket.

Of course, I can go through a round of OD&D combat with six or seven PCs and an appropriate number of monsters in a minute to two minutes.  One individual die roll becomes a lot less important if you keep things MOVING.

Quote from: jhkim;992199This can be done like in Tunnels & Trolls or Dungeon World, where every turn somebody wins and does damage.

I played DW with 3 different GM's, enough to realize I did not like it (for other reasons) but combat did not follow this model. Instead, it was a traditional 2-step attack roll/damage roll. Were the GM's running it incorrectly, or is what you mention an option in DW?

By "every turn someone wins and does damage," do you mean something like an opposed roll, where the winner does damage and the loser does not? That would certainly speed up combat.

Quote from: Aglondir;992422I played DW with 3 different GM's, enough to realize I did not like it (for other reasons) but combat did not follow this model. Instead, it was a traditional 2-step attack roll/damage roll. Were the GM's running it incorrectly, or is what you mention an option in DW?

By "every turn someone wins and does damage," do you mean something like an opposed roll, where the winner does damage and the loser does not? That would certainly speed up combat.

The GMs were running it incorrectly. In standard Dungeon World, there are three possible results from "Hack and Slash":

* 10+ : You do damage and either the opponent doesn't, or you do +1d6 damage
* 7-9 : Both you and the opponent damage each other
* 6- : The opponent damages you

You can see this in the example:

QuoteGM: Jarl, you're up to your not-inconsiderable belly in slavering goblins. They have you surrounded, knives bared. What do you do?

Jarl: I've had enough of this! I wallop the closest goblin with my hammer.

GM: Okay, then. This is definitely combat, you're using hack and slash. Roll+Str.

Jarl: I got an 11. It says here that I have a choice. Fear is for the weak, let those goblins come!

GM: You smash your hammer into the nearest goblin and are rewarded by the satisfying sound of the crunching of his bones. That and a knife wound as the goblin counterattacks. He deals 4 damage to you.

ref. http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/moves/#Hack_and_Slash

Note that the player rolls the attack and succeeds, doing extra damage - and then is hit by the goblins. They roll their damage. The GM never rolls dice in Dungeon World.

Again, I'm not particularly advocating for this. But this is intentional in that there is no 'nothing happens' result. It's one design that's intended not to whiff, and that doesn't mean no failure.

Have as much as I would like and half as much as they deserve.

My players fail quite frequently but by "fail" I mean they have to try something different. I don't run linear games like the PF AP train players. It's a sandbox. If one door closes there is usually another door open.

Quote from: Ulairi;992457Have as much as I would like and half as much as they deserve.

My players fail quite frequently but by "fail" I mean they have to try something different. I don't run linear games like the PF AP train players. It's a sandbox. If one door closes there is usually another door open.

Often a trapdoor.

Quote from: Spinachcat;991390Failure in my games is pretty common. And failure isn't always death.

But that's part of CoC and Warhammer. The Big Bads don't go down easy and sometimes "victory" is just escaping to survive.

No, that's a shitty system that doesn't know what it wants to be and tries to be both epic combats and harrowing death march at the same time. We're talking about WH40KRP here, of course.

This is the kind of shit I had to do to make that system godamm playable yet still the kind of "lethal" people come to play (and not char crea for an hour, alive for less than five minutes bullshit is built to support):

(Taken from my setup document for the last Only War game I did)

WOUNDS:
------------------------

Player Character Wounds are not rolled for. See below for how Wounds are dealt with.

Add the composite of your character's SB, AB, TB and WPB halved (rnd.down) to the base amount provided by their Specialty to calculate their starting Wounds.

Any increases to the SB, AB, TB or WPB, whether through Characteristic Advances or other means, continue to factor into the Wounds of a character (i.e. as Characteristic Bonuses increase so do Wounds).
-----------------------------------------------------------

CRITICAL EFFECTS:
------------------------

Any Critical Effects for characters resulting in immediate or near-immediate death have that particular aspect nullified (with exceptions detailed below).

If a character receives Critical Damage, roll 1d10 and refer to the table covering the Hit Location where the damaged character was hit, find the row with the rolled number and apply the effects described. If the rolled number would result in immediate or near-immediate death, the character immediately enters the Dying state, except in a result of 10 in which case the character dies immediately.

If a vehicle receives Critical Damage, roll 1d10 and refer to the table covering the Hit Location where the damaged vehicle was hit, find the row with the rolled number and apply the effects described, except in a result of 10 in which case the vehicle is destroyed immediately.

If a particular Critical Effect has already been received by a character or vehicle when rolling on a given Critical Effect table, if ever the rolled number results in the same Critical Effect then nothing happens and the game simply continues.
-----------------------------------------------------------

RIGHTEOUS FURY:
------------------------

Replace roll of 1d5 with 1d10 instead. Critical Effects sub-system still works as above, even rolled results of 10.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Quote from: Tod13;991441

Quote from: Itachi;991422I find that in gaming overall, failure is interesting when it gives you something or forces some interesting choice that opens new possibilities, instead of being a pure end-of-line. In other words, Fail Forward.

The problem with RPGs is that most adventures are created only with success in mind. Maybe a heirloom of storytelling where the protagonist usually wins in the end? Certainly in my experience that was the norm - the vast majority of adventures were "won" by our group, even if we had some failures in the process. I think other kinds of games like warfames and videogames deal better with failure, historically.

Quote from: The Exploited.;991423Failure is a critical part of my games... I don't like killing off characters but failure is easy depending on how it's played.

It also motivates them to try again! But sometimes they manage just escape with their lives. Failure is fun too, and often changes the entire game (which I like as a GM).

The simplest way to make any adventure "lose-able" without TPK, is to make the problem be something that can't necessarily be solved by force. My players are working through B1. Theoretically, their only goal is to find a book on the second level. But I populated the top level with feuding orcs and goblins. My players are trying to resolve the feud by hooking up the son and daughter of the leaders and by getting proof someone else is the one actually attacking each group.

They are doing this because I made it obvious that help from one or both tribes would help them in their quest. (Also, my players love dealing with sapient NPCs and monsters. One of the two tribes had the remote control to lower the magic force shield around the third area. (There was also a secret passage that they missed.)

Now, I guess violence could "solve" the problem--you could kill all of one or both tribes, or take over and rule both tribes. In the former case, if you've missed the secret passage, you might not be able to find the remote control to get into the third area. In the latter case, you end up with other problems related to ruling the tribes and still might not find the remote control.

Simple and effective non-linear gameplay. Good on you sir!

Quote from: Aglondir;992153One of the problems I'm having with newer games is that failure can simply be negated with Hero Points. I started noticing this with True 20 (published 2005).



At first I thought it was a cool idea, but then I noticed that the PC's never failed. The games started feeling unexciting. Then I read this, from Hero System (1984, probably earlier):



I think this encourages creative thinking. Instead of "I failed, big deal, I spend a CP to roll again" it becomes "I failed... what other approaches can I think of to solve the problem?"

• Can I get a better tool?
• Can my friends assist?
• Is there something in the environment that might help?
• Can I take more time and get it right? (if I have the time to spend...)
• Can I use another complimentary skill to help out?

I think that's Old School-- at least it's how we used to play. If a character failed a roll, there was a tension, and everyone started thinking on how to improve the situation. If it worked, it felt like we accomplished something.  

Now we're just lazy.

It's invaded Aughties RPG's like the plague. It works ok-ish in EOTE, works really well in Shadowrun (Edge is properly built into the game and is an actual godamm stat, not just a "save me" sub-feature), it's a cop-out in WH40KRP and just plain terrible most everywhere else.

Quote from: jhkim;992199I call bullshit. I have seen arguments against whiffing, but as I've seen it, it is that people would prefer for fights to always progress. i.e. They find it tedious to have a long progression of miss - miss - miss - hit - miss - hit - miss - miss. By this argument, what they prefer isn't always succeeding - it's always (or almost always) having a progressive change. This can be done like in Tunnels & Trolls or Dungeon World, where every turn somebody wins and does damage.

It's not a huge deal for me, but I can see the point. I personally dislike repetitive rolls, and find that combat in a number of systems can become a drag by a bunch of misses.

The point is that some people want to fail and always have consequences, not just fail and have nothing happen (i.e. a "whiff").

I agree with the misses statement. That's why I like NWOD's rules for combat. It's over usually in 2-3turns, regardless of EXP. Sometimes, 4-5 with smart play on both sides. Note, I'm saying COMBAT is over, not saying everyone's dead (the system discourages that, which is nice and realistic-feeling).

Quote from: CRKrueger;992218This argument has always failed because missing does have a consequence, you've failed to end the fight or defeat that opponent...the consequence is, that opponent now gets to try and end you.  Rather large consequence.  The fight that you wanted to be over in one or two rounds has taken 5 or 6?  There goes your plan, here comes reinforcements, etc...consequences galore.

Unfortunately, the failure to realize this has it's own dire consequence, ideas like "Fail Forward".

Move fast and break things, motherfucker.

PV said this about "hero points" and other mechanisms to allow characters to overcome odds and do things they normally couldn't.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;992525
It's invaded Aughties RPG's like the plague. It works ok-ish in EOTE, works really well in Shadowrun (Edge is properly built into the game and is an actual godamm stat, not just a "save me" sub-feature), it's a cop-out in WH40KRP and just plain terrible most everywhere else.

We playtested a game that had a version of hero points.

As some background, my players really dislike anything related to out-of-character/meta-gaming. They really don't want to "modify reality" or be called on to "describe the world". They want to play their characters, within somewhat realistic boundaries.

It took a lot of explaining to even get them to understand the concept of hero points.

And after all that, they never ended up using them at all. None of us even remembered it was an option.

I sometimes use a system where I reduce minor NPC vs minor NPC combat results to a single die-roll, so I can resolve, say, a 6 vs 6 NPC combat to 6-12 d12 or d20 rolls, or so. I base the results on having played out a bunch of combats using the full GURPS rules and having taken statistics on what happened. However since I like combat and want the players to have meaningful choices about what their characters do in combat, I don't use it for them or more interesting NPCs. It just lets me quickly resolve combat between a bunch of other nearby minor NPCs, letting me have larger combats without spending a bunch of time resolving outcomes for minor NPCs.

Quote from: Skarg;992596I sometimes use a system where I reduce minor NPC vs minor NPC combat results to a single die-roll, so I can resolve, say, a 6 vs 6 NPC combat to 6-12 d12 or d20 rolls, or so. I base the results on having played out a bunch of combats using the full GURPS rules and having taken statistics on what happened. However since I like combat and want the players to have meaningful choices about what their characters do in combat, I don't use it for them or more interesting NPCs. It just lets me quickly resolve combat between a bunch of other nearby minor NPCs, letting me have larger combats without spending a bunch of time resolving outcomes for minor NPCs.

That's not the same and you know it.

In fact, how is this even relevant to the thread? That's exactly what you should be doing in the first place and credit to you. The worst thing you can do is play off each single, individual, particular unit in battle (or any like situation, such as a debate). I have learned this lesson more than once.

I have actually observed a game in GM at the time (a friend of friend of mine) actually used the fate point to remove units from play. Just straight killed them off or had them retreat.

(Yes, I know, I know, I know. I will wait until your jaw returns from the floor back to where it's supposed to be... god knows it took forever for mine)

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;992601That's not the same and you know it.

Not the same as what? Did I say it was the same as something?

QuoteIn fact, how is this even relevant to the thread?

I meant it to be relevant to the part where people were talking about not liking "miss" outcomes or several rolls per combat interaction. Also to the part where (gronan? estar?) was suggesting that combat can be fast, so a miss isn't really a problem as long as it's not a long time before a player gets to do something. He was talking D&D I think so I thought I'd mention one way to pull this off in GURPS tactical combat, which many people seem to think has to be hard/slow.

QuoteThat's exactly what you should be doing in the first place and credit to you. The worst thing you can do is play off each single, individual, particular unit in battle (or any like situation, such as a debate). I have learned this lesson more than once.

From the generic werewolf thread, it's clear your interests in RPGs are very different from mine. Playing out tons of battles with tons of NPCs using the full rules is something I tend to enjoy, and how I learned to do it very quickly (even with every NPC being different, and using all the rules), and how I could come up with a one-die system that would come out close to what actually happens when combats are played out using the full rules.

QuoteI have actually observed a game in GM at the time (a friend of friend of mine) actually used the fate point to remove units from play. Just straight killed them off or had them retreat.

(Yes, I know, I know, I know. I will wait until your jaw returns from the floor back to where it's supposed to be... god knows it took forever for mine)

Not really. I've seen far more extreme GM shortcuts, even including wiping out PCs (even multiple PCs) with a fiat, which were more surprising, but didn't so much drop my jaw as make me think he's not that great a GM, though it was certainly different.

Quote from: Skarg;992608I [came up with] a one-die system that would come out close to what actually happens when combats are played out using the full rules.

Out of curiosity, would you happen to be able to share the guidelines for how your system works? I read your summary, but if you had shorthand notes for determining odds those would be really cool to see/steal...