[RPG Theory] Failure and Consequences

[stevekenson]

Tinkering with some RPG ideas, I’ve particularly been thinking about how various game designs approach the issue of failure. Quite often, it’s a matter of “succeed... or else” in an RPG: make this saving throw or your character dies, succeed on this skill check or you miss a vital clue completely throw off the adventure, make this shot; it’s your one chance to defeat the bad-guy, and so forth. On the one hand, this creates some dramatic tension, when things really hinge in the next die roll. The problem is, if the dice aren’t with you, you have to suffer the consequences of failing: your character dies, the quest fails, etc. Not a very satisfying ending, all things considered.

I’d like to play around more with the idea that, instead of being an end-point, failure is just the beginning of the story. After all, how many adventure stories involve heroes being dealt setback after setback, only to come back and win in the end? Rather than being driven solely by GM fiat, many of those setbacks can be the result of failure in terms of the game system. What if, rather than bringing things to an abrubt and grinding halt failure instead raised the stakes of the encounter or adventure? Thus, a failed saving throw leaves a hero with a disadvantage to overcome: hanging from a precipice, shaking off pain or injury, needing to recover a dropped weapon, and so forth. We can still get dramatic tension (How will failure complicate this task? How will the hero overcome this?) without necessarily having the same “succeed or die” outcome.

An additional benefit, is this approach plays into the storytelling nature of tabletop RPGs: the “succeed or die” outcome is common in video-games, so common that things like “save points” have become standard so players can try the same tasks over and over again. Changing the approach to this in tabletop RPGs helps to differentiate them from the experience of video games, where the story can change and adapt to failure as well as success in new and interesting ways, creating plot twists and turns. In this way, failure becomes more of a storytelling tool than a punative means of punishing the player(s) for not being good with the dice.

Comments

[joannahurley.livejournal.com]

I'd be very curious to see what you come up with. The "succeed or die" aspect drives me nuts, especially when save vs death really is the option. It's just not FUN, and really, in the end, "fun" is what matters for a game.

[grey-twolf.livejournal.com]

One of the best GM's I ever played with had this "table" in his head for rating how bad something failed. Say you only missed your dodge roll against that oncoming fireball by one or two points, then you avoided taking a direct hit, but you weren't fast enough to get completely of of the way, so you were just hurt really, really badly. Now, if you rolled a one, well then, yeah, you were toast.

Or on a listen check, if you missed your roll by a few points you "thought you heard something" then it was on the player to ask another PC if they thought they heard something, openning the door for a hopefully successful check.

Some things are of course going to still be flat out success or failure. For example, the bad guys putting arsenic in a human PC's drink. Either they put enough in there to kill you or they didn't.

[kosmic.livejournal.com]

Genre wise first thing that popped in my head was some sort of pulp setting, particularly the "cliffhanger" aspect. In a setting of classic adventure (post Victorian age to in and around WWII) the character would have enough leeway for failure while still feeling part of an adventure. Character misses a clue? He has to chase the villain half way across the world to find it again. Miss a change to kill a major villain might leave the hero having to infiltrate said villains organization, working up through the ranks for the right opportunity. Failing to be stealthy could lead to a white knuckled car chase with the hero struggling to get away.

In such a situation you would have to have a combat resolution system, or die roll system which, as you said, is not punitive to the player. In True20, you could remove the lethal damage track completely or somehow make it harder to kill or be killed. Death could represent some debilitating injury or setback, possibly even generate a "plot hook". (ie. Your character falls off the cliff, breaking every bone in his body. Your friends are mortified when the retreived you, and now the villain has six months to carry out his plan before you can even think of doing anything about it) In such a case, death could even be left as a plot device and removed from the realm of being a game mechanic, where certain "lynchpins" would prevent it from being certain.

Interesting thoughts...

[chadu.livejournal.com]

This sort of thing that you're talking about is actually a feature of the game I'm playtesting right now... S7S.

Great minds, mang.

CU

[xomec.livejournal.com]

Cool, I look forward to hearing more about it! (Super-cool logo, by the way...)

[nightofdragons.livejournal.com]

I've actually been working with this philosophy, though not intentionally. I'm running an Exalted game and there have been several times when otherwise lethal events resulted in the characters having to figure something else out. I haven't actually written out any game session yet, playing as the situation develops. Even when one of my characters jumped off a 300 yard high waterfall onto bedrock, he didn't die, though he was out of commission for a year. It's been a lot of fun. Admittedly, Exalted lends itself well to the characters not dying, but the principle remains.

The other thing I've heard is what a friend's group did in college. Their rule was that the dice alone would never kill a player, since they were, after all, heroes. Chance alone would not result in death. If a player did something stupid or knowingly life threatening (tweaking the sleeping dragon's tail, for example) then they could die and the dice could determine that if death was not a foregone result. But a character would not die just because they set off a trap and happened to roll max damage.

It's a tricky subject. As a GM, I want my players to feel danger and the risk of death is present, but I don't want them to die from nothing more than a bad roll. A character's death should be while attempting something heroic and, ideally, should result in some greater success their next character can build on.

[jim-hague.livejournal.com]

All else aside, and this is something I've adopted for my own "Incredible Years" MnM game and am trying to incorporate in the setting the idea that failure should always be entertaining. I mean, it seems like common sense...but as the saying goes, common sense ain't always common.

Think about it - in the original Star Wars, we see that again and again, where the heroes blow their attempts at bluffing the Death Star guards ("We're all fine here...how are you?"), or escaping ("What a wonderful new smell you've discovered!")...it goes on and on. And that's ok, because failure is entertaining. Rarely in good fiction or something like the pulps does the failure of the protagonist lead to death or the plot crashing into a lava pit and dying; more often, it's a chance to escalate the stakes.

I know, I know - you guys've already thought of all this. but I figured I'd throw my .02 in with the stellar company regardless. :)