While working up a first adventure for Starfinder, I'm considering failure states. For myself, both as a player and a GM, failure tends to be extremely rare in our games.
While RPGs are not wargames, I fail all the time in wargaming. I'm now at the point where I'm a pretty good X-Wing Miniatures player, if I do say so myself (3-1 win-loss at my last store championship) and I paid for that with lots of practice. And it doesn't make the game any less fun. On the contrary, working out how to improve my game over the past year has been very fun and interesting.
I'm writing up this adventure with an eye towards making is lose-able, and not just by wiping out the party in combat (that's dirt easy) but failing the scenario objectives. What's your take on the subject?
As often as they deserve to. Usually due to poor planning and bad decisions. Often due to reliance on luck. I don't really understand the question, though, as the rate of failure isn't in the hands of the GM. Or shouldn't be.
Quote from: Dumarest;991288As often as they deserve to. Usually due to poor planning and bad decisions. Often due to reliance on luck. I don't really understand the question, though, as the rate of failure isn't in the hands of the GM. Or shouldn't be.
I can invent or put in place opponents who are much weaker than the PCs (e.g. all stormtroopers only have 2D stats and the minimum skill levels) and play those opponents as more foolish than might otherwise seem reasonable (e.g. opponents always use poor tactics, never use combined actions, and they always pause for a round standing flat-footed in the open when moving from cover to cover and they always fall for every trick the PCs use).
But I guess that's part of what you mean by it "shouldn't be."
Quote from: Dumarest;991288As often as they deserve to. Usually due to poor planning and bad decisions. Often due to reliance on luck. I don't really understand the question, though, as the rate of failure isn't in the hands of the GM. Or shouldn't be.
As a GM I can design a very straightforward scenario that is very difficult to fail, or a scenario that is very easy to fail, if the players (characters) aren't on the ball.
For example, my introductory Dark Sun adventure that I wanted to be very difficult, I set it up, keeping in mind water availability. The players were competent enough to take survival proficiencies that allowed them to make it through even though I had intentionally made water very scarce. I could have made the adventure even tougher by taking out some of the opportunities to get more water, and putting in more encounters that have the concequence of them losing water. (I am gong to do that if I ever run the adventure in the future, I think the adventure could be more difficult.)
So yeah, the rate of failure is in the hands of the players,
but that's in reaction to the scenario as set up by the GM.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;991270While working up a first adventure for Starfinder, I'm considering failure states. For myself, both as a player and a GM, failure tends to be extremely rare in our games.
While RPGs are not wargames, I fail all the time in wargaming. I'm now at the point where I'm a pretty good X-Wing Miniatures player, if I do say so myself (3-1 win-loss at my last store championship) and I paid for that with lots of practice. And it doesn't make the game any less fun. On the contrary, working out how to improve my game over the past year has been very fun and interesting.
I'm writing up this adventure with an eye towards making is lose-able, and not just by wiping out the party in combat (that's dirt easy) but failing the scenario objectives. What's your take on the subject?
The first two modules in the Dragonlance set were set up such that the party could through action or inaction actually crash and burn the setting.
There are so many ways players can fail, and fail badly. Negotiation. Rescue. Being tricked. Being too suspicious. Not being suspicious enough, and so many more. Insulting an important NPC. Attacking an important NPC. Failing to secure some item. and many many more.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;991270I'm writing up this adventure with an eye towards making is lose-able, and not just by wiping out the party in combat (that's dirt easy) but failing the scenario objectives. What's your take on the subject?
Anything can happen in a sandbox.
Quote from: Ratman_tf;991270While working up a first adventure for Starfinder, I'm considering failure states. For myself, both as a player and a GM, failure tends to be extremely rare in our games.
While RPGs are not wargames, I fail all the time in wargaming. I'm now at the point where I'm a pretty good X-Wing Miniatures player, if I do say so myself (3-1 win-loss at my last store championship) and I paid for that with lots of practice. And it doesn't make the game any less fun. On the contrary, working out how to improve my game over the past year has been very fun and interesting.
I'm writing up this adventure with an eye towards making is lose-able, and not just by wiping out the party in combat (that's dirt easy) but failing the scenario objectives. What's your take on the subject?
Their failure rate depends on what they are trying to do, how challenging/dangerous that is, how appropriate their plans and execution are, their capabilities, and what someone considers failure, so there's no one measure.
My players rarely get wiped out. They also tend to do something other than fight to the death when confronted with something that's more dangerous than they are. But sometimes they fail to accomplish things, get killed, maimed, defeated, run away, give up, decide to do something else, etc.
Most situation can end in failure or disaster, unless they're really easy or safe, and the risk level is almost always determined by what the players choose to take on, and how smart or foolish they are about how they go about it.
When I think about and prepare for the situation around the players, I try to be ready to support a wide range of possibilities including players changing what they're doing, what they're trying to do, where they're going, etc. I try to make it
their responsibility to choose what to do, to approach the problem in effective ways, so they are responsible for what they get. If I catch myself thinking of the situation as an expected "adventure" or series of predictable events, and me trying to manage how survivable or fail-able that is, alarms go off and I re-think of it instead as a situation which can go various ways, and what info and details I should prepare about it so players can explore the situation and make informed decisions about risks and rewards. For example, if they have signed on for some dangerous adventure, I will set up the situation so it has moving parts and ways to detect and mitigate the risks and/or bail out along the way. And/or what/who else is going on nearby in time and space, that they might get involved in. I'm not preparing one main path and how I expect it to go and tailoring the risk, but if they are heading a certain way towards danger, I will be thinking about what chances there are for them to get info and make choices.
I think for me it varies a lot by campaign. Some campaigns are harder than others, some players are more competent, some rules systems are easier by default. Failure is usually more likely in a status quo sandbox than in a tailored linear campaign - with a sandbox PCs can run away and go try something else whereas in a linear game they often have to overcome specific obstacles or campaign ends.
Failure 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.
I 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.
Failure 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).
Quote from: Ratman_tf;991270
I'm writing up this adventure with an eye towards making is lose-able, and not just by wiping out the party in combat (that's dirt easy) but failing the scenario objectives. What's your take on the subject?
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.
I tend to write my adventures such that:
A. There are multiple levels of success/failure possible. Such as, it's relatively easy to stop the bad guy, but he or some of his allies get away, unless the players are really on the ball.
B. There are almost mutually exclusive objectives. Individually, many of the objectives are easy if the players care to attempt them, but they can't do everything. Things that aren't attempted become temporary failures, and the situation gets worse, but can still be addressed if not put off indefinitely.
The consequence is that there is nearly always some failure and some success in just about everything the players do. Every now and then they totally blow it, for complete failure, or they get inspired and dedicated and manage to succeed at everything.
A lot if it is just dependent upon attitude and perspective.
I've mentioned a few times, I tend to take the Adventurer-as-Entrepreneur view. They operate in a realm of uncertainty.
It's entirely possible for there to be some adventures that just aren't winnable at all in any way. This extreme seems beyond the pale for most of the gaming community. I raise this worst case to point out that the only failure there is in assessment of the risk/reward and the decision to take up the adventure in the first place. Once your on the adventure, though, making the best of what you got can certainly feel like a win. That's one end of the spectrum.
Something I'd expect to be more the norm for entrepreneur-adventurers is that they develop a risk management strategy that limits their losses to something they can stomach while positioning themselves for limitless gains. Generally to get this sort of profile, the odds are going to likely be against you.
To try to illustrate this with numbers, suppose there's a huge treasure at the end of a dangerous dungeon. Suppose the conditions are such that a typical expedition is 25% likely to end up in a TPK, 25% likely to end up taking a minor loss (-20%), 25% likely to break even, and 25% likely to score big and become 3 times richer. (Note that even these conditions are probably more "cruel" than a typical adventure, but this is what I'm using to represent somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.) I expect entrepreneur-adventurers to have some sort of stop-loss in place so they'll bail and cut their losses sooner to all but eliminate the worst case scenario (TPK) but it also makes them less likely to get the big score. So when they carry out the same adventure, their TPK is 1% likely, if that, 60% likely of taking a minor loss (say, stop loss at 10%), 25% likely to break even, and 14% likely to 2.92x their wealth (the .08 is a deduction of additional precaution taken in this adventure.)
You can do the math and find that the "expected outcome" in each case averages out to a 20% gain, all things considered. So over the course of 10 adventures, the "expected outcome" is about a 6x gain. The difference is, the first party is only 5-6% likely to survive long enough to see 10 adventures, while the 2nd group is 90% likely to do so. Same stats. Same challenges. Same difficulty checks. Same resources. Same tactics. The difference only difference is in how each group views wins and losses. The second group makes peace with a 10% loss. Taking a minor loss, then, is likely to be seen as a win, or at least a draw. "Hey, it was a lot harder than we thought, we got our asses whooped, but we STILL managed to stay within our mission specs." They only lose 1% of the time. The first group, having a different attitude, are 50% likely to take at least some loss.
So when you get to the easy end of the spectrum--where "losing" is defined only as failure to meet an objective; not to suffer any actual loss--the adventurers-as-entrepreneurs who have their minds right just don't lose. Period. If the risk/reward profile looks like: 33% no success, 33% partial success, and 33% total success, a typical group may still only enjoy a 33% success rate, even though they will actually out-perform the adventurer-as-entrepreneur mindset as the latter are investing resources in hedging against catastrophes that the GM will never allow to happen.
Well, the type and degrees of failure my player characters experience varies from one campaign to another. Letting PCs fail is an important part of Old-School play, and that's most of what I run, so in general yes, players fail frequently. And with consequences.
PCs fail all the time in my campaign, and when I play I've screwed the pooch quite a few times too. Nothing gets my competitive impulses going quite like being on the receiving end an ass-kicking.
It's a very hard question to answer, since more than a few people have said on various forums, including this one, that "whiffing" -- missing with ANY attack -- is an unacceptable failure.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;992120It's a very hard question to answer, since more than a few people have said on various forums, including this one, that "whiffing" -- missing with ANY attack -- is an unacceptable failure.
Please tell me you're being ironical and making that up.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1582[/ATTACH]
I wish.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;992135I wish.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1587[/ATTACH]
One 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).
Quote from: True 20Heroes start out with 3 points of Conviction at 1st level and gain a point of Conviction every two levels thereafter... One Conviction point allows you to re-roll any die roll you make and take the better of the two rolls. On a result of 1 through 10 on the second roll, add 10 to the result; an 11 or higher remains as-is (so the second roll is always a result of 11-20).
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):
QuoteThis (i.e, failure) means he can't perform the chosen action or receives no benefit from the Skill until the situation changes in his favor...
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.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;992120It's a very hard question to answer, since more than a few people have said on various forums, including this one, that "whiffing" -- missing with ANY attack -- is an unacceptable failure.
I 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").
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?"
(...)
I think that's Old School-- at least it's how we used to play.
For me, a big part of my old school experience was from the excellent James Bond 007 RPG (1983). JB007 had Hero Points, and gave them out far more frequently than in True20. But that didn't mean that players never failed - because in JB007, they were constantly being called upon to do the impossible, and had to fight off two vans full of thugs with assault rifles while chasing through the city and trying to defuse the bomb in their car.
My experience was roughly the same with Blue Rose (which uses True20). If the players have conviction points, it just means that they could face tougher oppositions. I actually found that in True20, players almost always accepted failure and saved their conviction points for when they were badly hit, because rerolling a poor damage save was one of the best things to be done with conviction. I felt like that was a minor flaw in the system.
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").
Yeah I remember some montonous and overlong fights that suffered from this.
Quote from: jhkim;992199The point is that some people want to fail and always have consequences, not just fail and have nothing happen (i.e. a "whiff").
This 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".
The feeling of meaningful consequence for missing an attack depends on the game, for me. In HERO, attacks have a noteworthy chance to stun, entangle, or drain them of their strongest power. Using a slow but powerful haymaker, or switching to area effects to deal with that speedster who zips by all your blows, the chance to miss can force some interesting decision making.
Missing attacks in something like D&D 4e on the other hand, just feels like playing a slot machine. Pull the lever until someone's HP has been grinded down to zero. The house has already calculated how often they want you to miss to keep you at your seat, and there's not much you can do about it but to keep feeding the machine quarters.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;992120It's a very hard question to answer, since more than a few people have said on various forums, including this one, that "whiffing" -- missing with ANY attack -- is an unacceptable failure.
Mhmm. 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?
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".
Eh. I think it's a matter of taste, and I'm not particularly interested in pushing the argument.
My point is, though, that people who make this argument against whiffing aren't saying that PCs should always succeed, as Gronan implies. They still want failure, just failures with more impact for a given roll.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;992120It's a very hard question to answer, since more than a few people have said on various forums, including this one, that "whiffing" -- missing with ANY attack -- is an unacceptable failure.
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 too, am going to call BS, but only on the 'more than a few' bit. The idea that there are large swaths of people out there who really don't want to be challenged at all and only want the illusion that the outcome of their eventual victory is any way in question is a boogeyman that only serves self-congratulatory wank for not being in that category.
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".
The argument might fail, but he's likely right that they are complaining about the pacing and sense of progress, not that they actually might fail at something.
To the OP, it really depends on what you consider failure. If you have a group of bright, cagy, genre-savvy players, it's entirely possible that they will eventually prevail almost all the time, particularly in the case where they get to scope out the relative likelihood of victory with a relative degree of accuracy and choose their endeavors. In other words, cautious, intelligent players rarely choose adventures they can't win. The structures of the game will have some influence. Some games (or playing of games in a given way) have more of a "you did everything right, but the dice didn't fall your way" factor than others.
Still, again, what is failure? If something that results in the GM saying, "that did not work, you'll have to try something else" is failure, then it should happen pretty much every game session. Players should have to make meaningful decisions, sometimes without all the knowledge available to know ahead of time which one will work (or even if there is an option that will work).
Depends. Fairly often on a task level. Less often on a conflict level. Seldom on a mission level. Almost never on a campaign level.
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.
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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;991441Quote 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...
Quote from: Antiquation!;992610Out 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...
I'd also be interested in seeing that.
Skarg, if you decide to post something, I suggest making it a separate thread so people don't have to wade through this thread to find it.
Quote from: Bren;992328I appreciate the way you have distinguished different levels of failure and that sounds like the right degree of success and failure at each level.
Thanks for noticing, Bren! :D
Quote from: jhkim;992433The 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
Wow... they really got it wrong. They ran it like traditional D20.
Edit: Edit 2: Nevermind, I figured it out!
Quote from: Antiquation!;992610Out 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...
Quote from: Bren;992698I'd also be interested in seeing that.
Skarg, if you decide to post something, I suggest making it a separate thread so people don't have to wade through this thread to find it.
Yep, I'll post something to the design forum here this weekend.
Quote from: Skarg;992793Yep, I'll post something to the design forum here this weekend.
Cool. :cool: And if it isn't too much trouble, you might put a post in here with a link to the other forum. That should make it easier for folks who have been following this thread to find one in a different forum.
Here is a link to the thread I started about Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?37692-Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls&p=993012#post993012)
Quote from: Skarg;993013Here is a link to the thread I started about Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?37692-Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls&p=993012#post993012)
Skarg thanks for sharing this. It's a good idea. While I've done comparative combats before, it hadn't occurred to me to use the empirical data to calculate estimation for a single die roll result. Nice!
Quote from: Skarg;993013Here is a link to the thread I started about Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?37692-Reducing-Complex-NPC-Combats-to-Single-Die-Rolls&p=993012#post993012)
Fantastic stuff, thanks! Very solid procedural method, easily replicated and implemented, as well as transparent. Really good stuff, I'll definitely be using this.
Campaign failures have been rare and memorable. Twice, I've had characters ignore all of the rumors, hard information and, finally, my frantic finger-pointing and decided that something needed to be done about x, when x was not bothering them yet and wasn't harming _anyone_ yet and could have been ignored while they dealt with other matters in the sandbox and, incidentally, became strong enough and _informed_ enough to deal with x. Otherwise, mostly successes, although individual characters didn't always get what they wanted.
Too many minor failures to count. After all, every Player-Character is a setting sun.