A Question Of Agency?

[prabe]

I find it quote odd that posters who are asserting the freedom of the GM to impose consequences by deciding how the world reacts (eg @prabe, @Lanefan) are also expressing hostility to a system that mechanically dictates when consequences are to be imposed and (roughly, at least) what those parameters are.

To me it suggests that the true hostility is not to consequences, but to the removal of GM freedom to impose them willy-nilly and independent of the action resolution process.

So, a couple of things.

I am not saying the GM should impose consequences willy-nilly. I'm saying the GM should have the world react to the successes and failures of the PCs in ways that are consistent with the established fiction--which perforce includes those successes and failures.

I am not being hostile toward games such as BitD or anything PbtA, or to the idea of a game where the mechanics dictate the timing and nature of consequences. I have not seen any lately I'd want to play or run, but I see that as mostly a matter of "I don't like the stories these games want to generate" and "I feel more comfortable as a GM if I'm responsible for establishing most of the world as part of framing the fiction."

 

[hawkeyefan]

Some things are pretty clearly binary: Jumping, climbing, finding the secret door.

Some things are less clearly binary: Performing, researching, many social interactions.

I don’t know if any of those things are binary in that way. I think in each case, the intended goal is what’s in question. It’s not a question of whether you jump or not, it’s how far or high, how effectively, how safely, and so on. Plenty of track and field events display this very clearly.

Nope. You hit or you miss. I roll for damage, because static damage is boring (which is probably a legacy of 40+ years of rolling for damage).

So you don’t see a damage roll as a degree of success? If my Fighter hits the ogre for 8 points of damage, and then your Barbarian hits it for 20 points, we’ve both succeeded equally?

I was going to ask this: It seems (IIRC) as though Blades (at least--this might apply to PbtA games as well) really wants "success with complication" to be the most-common result. Is that right?

That’s a good question, and I’m not certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised. When I mentioned how the 4-5 result really drives the game, I was recalling how the designer John Harper said as much during a discussion on game design. I don’t know if the math supports it, especially once additional dice start getting added and so on, but it would make sense.

I think it’s the most important.

Again: I see "complicated success" as "partial failure" so as I see it on one die you have a 5-in-6 chance of failure. That's not even baseball chances of success. And I've played enough boardgames that involve piles of d6s to know how many dice I need to ensure a 6 (usually about twenty, with my dice luck).

Okay, I can get you don't like it, but your math is very clearly wrong. It’s not failure 5 out of 6 times. I know it “feels that way to you” but it’s inaccurate.

People use that comparison (to D&D combat) often, I think, and I don't think it's entirely accurate. The fact that the orc you attack (and any friends he has) gets a chance to retaliate if you don't do enough damage to kill him doesn't mean you didn't succeed at hitting him.

Yes this is precisely my point.

My Fighter succeeds at hitting the orc. That doesn’t render him free from complications. He very likely succeeds....with complications.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I agree. I also think "partial failure" or "success with complications" can go further than this. (I suspect you agree.)

For instance, the guard goes down with one punch, and his mask falls off. It's your brother-in-law! Or, the guard goes down with one punch, dropping his truncheon. It clatters down the stairs - all twenty of them - and the sound echoes through the alleyway. Anyone within a block or two has probably heard it!

And of course, in any particular context, there's stuff of more ambitious scope that might suggest itself.

Oh absolutely. I mean, one of the principles that guides play is “Fiction First” so you’re always looking to the established fiction to help shape unfolding events. But yes, what kind of consequences a GM puts forth is crucial to the play experience being dynamic.

I find it quote odd that posters who are asserting the freedom of the GM to impose consequences by deciding how the world reacts (eg @prabe, @Lanefan) are also expressing hostility to a system that mechanically dictates when consequences are to be imposed and (roughly, at least) what those parameters are.

To me it suggests that the true hostility is not to consequences, but to the removal of GM freedom to impose them willy-nilly and independent of the action resolution process.

I don’t know if it’s hostility, but I do think it’s related to the shift in narrative authority. It’s a change in the classic or standard approach to play. I get that one might have concerns about how that would impact the play experience.

I don’t know how founded those concerns are in this case, given the significant lack of experience with the kind of approach that’s being discussed.

And there’s always going to be preference involved. Some games or styles will just appeal more to some folks than others.

 

[Lanefan]

I don’t know if I’d say all consequences need to be disclosed ahead of time. I think that in most cases, a sense of the risk inherent in an action that’s to be attempted and some sense of the odds, too.

For example, in my 5E game, I almost always share the DCs for any kind of action roll. Keeping those unknown just leaves the door open for fudging and illusionism or even just the possibility of those things. And for what? To obscure the chance of success?

If there was in-fiction evidence the PCs could use (e.g. quickly examining the wall they're about to climb) then I'd have no problem with telling them the DC at least in somewhat specific terms, but non-numeric as the PCs wouldn't be thinking in terms of numbers and I generally try my best to narrate things as seen/known by the PCs.

If there's no in-fiction evidence to go by (e.g. they're trying to sneak across ground they've had no way of pre-scouting and thus they've no idea what the ground is like or what might be met there) then they ain't gettin' no DC nohow.

And in situations where even the premise of what they're trying is open to question, i.e they might be trying something they don't realize is impossible, not only do they not get a DC but I do the rolling behind the screen for them. The most common of these is trying to disbelieve an illusion. If they end up still believing it I don't want them knowing whether it's due to a bad roll or to there being no illusion present at all.

I think you have to honor the dice results. If a player achieves a success, a GM adjusting things so that the success does not stand is undermining player agency.

There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for it than a GM deciding “no, that’s not how I wanted things to go...I’ll just go ahead and change that.”

I think @prabe has hinted downthread at a corollary question here: while success should clearly be honoured in the moment, for how long does that success remain valid?

Using my example of the Baroness from upthread a bit: the PCs talk to her in order to determine if she knows anything about some missing jewels, and on a few successes conclude that she legitimately and truthfully does not. The PCs take this success and turn their investigations elsewhere.

However, the PCs in asking her about said jewels have, as a probably-unintentional side effect, just informed her that the jewels are in fact (according to them, anyway) missing. In your view does it invalidate the PCs' successes in that conversation if the Baroness then acts on this new-to-her information behind the scenes in a manner that may or may not affect the PCs down the road, depending how things go?

I don’t personally follow that mentality. I have no problem allowing PCs to fail. However, the mindset for the fail forward approach you’re critiquing here is that there are times when failure will bring the game to a halt, and so therefore, fail forward is about finding alternative ways to apply consequences than simply declaring a failure and then watch as everyone stares at each other for a half hour.

The intention is to keep the game moving in instances where it may otherwise slow or stop. And I know that you personally don’t mind when a game slows to a crawl, but there are plenty of us who do.

To me, if plan A has stalled out it's on the players/PCs to come up with a plan B and try that; and if no plan B suggests itself then abandoning whatever it was they were trying is also always an option.

I'm reminded of a PC in one of my games who, when first brought in to the party in a recently-abandoned Dwarven city, was a rescued prisoner and badly hurt. They didn't have the resources to patch him (and all the other rescuees) up, and he was in no fit shape for adventuring, so they plopped him in front of an old vault door with the other rescuees while they went out to rescue some more.

This PC was a thief. A greedy one. And, as I soon found out, a stubborn one.

And they'd put him in front of the vault door of a Dwarven bank.

So instead of sitting there recovering, he tried moving heaven and earth to get into that damn vault! Neither the PC nor the player knew (though both kinda suspected) his chance of successfully stealing anything was less than zero; but it was: not only was the PC the wrong race (the door would only open to a Dwarf; the PC was Human) but if he had managed to open it he'd have been dead - or worse - the moment he tried to enter as he didn't know any of the passwords to disarm the various lethal glyphs and curses.

This is a classic case where 'just give it up!' comes into play...but some players (and some PCs) just can't wrap around this concept.

And this is not even addressing that a success with complication isn’t really a failure. You succeed at what you attempt, it just doesn't go perfectly.

I agree with this statement as long as it's applied when 'success' is rolled and not when 'failure' is rolled.

I don’t know if this will help, but maybe don’t think of the game as trying to simulate criminals committing crimes and instead think of the game as trying to simulate a crime story. Because if you read some crime fiction or watch crime movies, things begin in media res all the time. Relevant details and plans are revealed in flashback....all the time. The criminals have the items they wind up needing....all the time.

All that stuff is baked into crime fiction.

Which is fine for someone who's reading a book; but for someone trying to play a character in a game setting, having things happen non-sequentially kinda butchers any idea of one thing or action or decision leading to the next.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Oh snap! I just realized something reading the last, well, lots of posts on the granularity of resolution.

I am a fan of Pass/Fail systems! I am okay with adding Fumble and Super Duper Awesome Pass to either end of the scale, but I prefer Pass/Fail over more granular systems. I think it has alot to do with how and when I call for rolls and how I result stuff. I don't know all the proper language so if this makes no sense I apologize.

If a player rolls and succeeds, I always frame the result as a complete success. The reason I do so is that I feel that anything other than a complete success is me as GM being mean and robbing the player of their victory. Why I feel I need to do this is because I only call for rolls when a complete failure would also be an interesting result. If neither, or both, complete success or complete failure is not an interesting result, then I simply tell the player they automatically succeed or fail. Thus far I haven't had too many fits of rage from players as I am very prone to auto-pass, and almost never auto-fail. I'm probably a super pushover GM I guess, I just like to see the PCs be awesome and make the players happy. Anyway, I'm prepared to get flamed to death now...let it begin!!!

 

[Lanefan]

Again, my D&D game includes many more failed attempts by an order of magnitude. Honestly, it seems like you prefer straight up failure to success with complication, which seems odd.

Success with complication is fine if the roll indicates success (particularly if it indicates marginal success e.g. the DC is 10 and you roll 11). It's not OK if the roll indicates failure, because it's turning that failure into a success.

My group played a BitD variant last night. One of the players declared his PC was going to take out a guard. He rolled a 4. He took the guard out with one action, but in doing so, his weapon jammed. I would think that someone who looked at that as a failure is either aggressively pessimistic, or maybe your reading of what Success with Complication means is giving you a very narrow idea of what it may actually be.

Without knowing the context, e.g. was this PC likely to need that weapon again anytime soon, this doesn't tell us much.

Right, but again, D&D doesn’t stick in your craw even though (generally speaking) success/failure is the binary state.

Truth be told, oftentimes the binary state does stick in my craw when more than two simple outcomes are possible, but it's easy enough to mitigate in many cases. PF2 has a good idea in having there be four possible outcomes to a lot of rolls; I'm not suggesting it should always be four - sometimes it could be three or five or who knows, but the principle is sound.

Also, while I know it's not for everyone I also see the status quo as being a possible result a lot of the time; either because of a fail state changing nothing (e.g. failing to pick a lock) or in very rare instances where success and failure are so finely balanced that the net effect is a wash.

On broader terms, maybe more GMs need to go all drill sergeant during session 0:

"In this game, as a character you will fail! You will fail often! Sometimes, you will fail hard! Others will laugh at you, and sometimes you'll have no choice but to laugh at yourself; and if you are incapable of laughing at yourself this is no place for you!

"But! If those failures don't kill you - and believe me, there'll be times when they will - you gotta pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again or better yet try something else! Nothing's handed to you in here, and from your perspective much of the game world has only one reason for existing, and that's to kill you dead. Success is fleeting, and to be valued. Failure is constant, and thus must be accepted.

"Now get out there and make me proud!"


(is it too easy to tell that I just watched Patton the other night? )

 

[Lanefan]

First, you’re making a distinction on the kind of actions that might be suited for degrees of success, you mention skill/ability checks in particular. Is there a reason for this distinction? And what types of rolls would you say are not suited for degrees of success?

Would you put combat rolls into that category? If so, do you use static damage?

Though you asked this of @prabe, I'll give it a shot if I may:

Some rolls are pretty binary, in that what they're trying to resolve in the fiction is binary; being one of 'either A happens or it doesn't' or 'either A happens or B happens'. The guard sees you or she doesn't. You lift the boulder or you don't. You push the door closed first or the Orc pushes it open first. You hit the opponent for damage or you don't (so yes, combat to-hit rolls go here).

Degree-of-success can be applied to many things...including, oddly enough, combat rolls: if your binary to-hit roll succeeds then your degree of success is shown by the damage roll (no, I do not use static damage). If damage was built in to the to-hit roll e.g. on a hit you do 1 point damage per point your roll exceeded the foe's AC by, then it's be a degree-of-success roll. Climbing is always degree-of-success: if you succeed is somethingwaiting for you at the top, and if you fail at what point during the climb does this occur (and are you stuck in place or do you fall). Just about any social roll would be degree of success and that degree would inform me-as-GM as to the basic reaction of the NPC(s) - if the DC is 10 to gain a favour from someone you're going to get a far more enthusiastic "Yes" on a roll of 20 than you are on a roll of 11; and an "I really dunno 'bout this" decline on a 9 vs a "Get the f--- out of my office!" that a 1 would produce.

 

[Lanefan]

Of course these are all matters of judgement. As a GM you can generally tell you've been unfair if the players start muttering and giving you dirty looks! The point is that the GM is not just free to change the fiction in a way that negates the players' successes.

I earnestly hope you'll also agree with this equal and opposite variant: the GM is not just free to change the fiction in a way that negates the players' failures. If yes, then alert the media! We've found common ground: the GM can't arbitrarily change stuff to negate what the players/PCs did, for good or bad.

Yet the whole idea of 'fail-forward' seems to be based on exactly this concept: changing or massaging the fiction such that failures aren't really failures. How do you square that?

If the PCs speak to the Baroness or flawlessly execute the theft and then the campaign comes to its end, the issue of subsequent consequences is moot. What happened to De Niro's character after the events of the film Ronin? Any fan is free to make up answers in his/her imagination; but the canonical answer must be there is no answer. That story hasn't been written or told yet.

This is a complete red herring. Everything I posted assumed an ongoing campaign, which I thought would go wihtout saying.

Conversely, if the campaign keeps going then there will be subsequent action declarations. And some of these will fail, or will succeed with complications mandated. And the GM is then able to introduce "unforeseen consequences" or "knock-on effects". There are also moments when there is no obvious answer, at the table, to what happens next, and so everyone will look at the GM (who, in a conventional TTRPG, has a special responsibility in this regard) and the GM can then signal a possible unforeseen consequence or knock-on effect.

Consider a downstream Discern Realities - what here is not what it appears to be? The player succeeds. The GM narrates, The servant cowering in the corner steps forward. She flashes a small medallion hidden in the cloth wrapped about her waist - you recognise it as the mark of the <insert sinister guild or organisation here>. "Do not think you can prevail here," she says. "For you are marked by my masters."

Unless the players/PCs have reason to suspect an illusion or deception, asking "What here is not what it appears to be?" sounds like someone fishing for adventure hooks.

I agree. I also think "partial failure" or "success with complications" can go further than this. (I suspect you agree.)

For instance, the guard goes down with one punch, and his mask falls off. It's your brother-in-law! Or, the guard goes down with one punch, dropping his truncheon. It clatters down the stairs - all twenty of them - and the sound echoes through the alleyway. Anyone within a block or two has probably heard it!

And of course, in any particular context, there's stuff of more ambitious scope that might suggest itself.

I probably just use a different series of not-necessarily-hardcoded mechanics to get to a similar type of result here.

I'd likely never use the brother-in-law one as I'm not too fond of dragging PCs' families into things unless the player puts them there first.

The truncheon example: I might arrive at the same result where, after the PC one-shots the guard, I think to myself - and often ask myself out loud so the players know what I'm up to - "Did anything go wrong with that?"*, particularly if stealth is intended. Either I or the player roll some dice and on a poor roll then maybe the truncheon does clatter down some stairs or the guard makes some noise as he crumples or someone nearby saw/heard something and raises a shout or whatever. But more often we'll be covering this sort of thing in the moment: roll to hit, roll damage, and roll to see how quiet you kept things.

* - and if I can't quickly think of anything that could have gone wrong, I skip this step.

 

[Lanefan]

I find it quote odd that posters who are asserting the freedom of the GM to impose consequences by deciding how the world reacts (eg @prabe, @Lanefan) are also expressing hostility to a system that mechanically dictates when consequences are to be imposed and (roughly, at least) what those parameters are.

To me it suggests that the true hostility is not to consequences, but to the removal of GM freedom to impose them willy-nilly and independent of the action resolution process.

My 'hostility' (nice inflammatory choice of term there, by the way - duly noted) is to the idea that the GM can't have any ongoing mysteries or overarching secrets that the players may or may not one day find out about. That she can't have her world/setting do anything in a cause-effect way absent the PCs' direct involvement; i.e. can't have something happen that isn't a consequence of anything involving the PCs but is instead either pre-scheduled or by sheer random chance (e.g. a volcano erupts, a pirate ship sails into harbour and opens fire on the town, etc.). That there's too much constraint on when and how consequences may be imposed and what form those consequences may take. That consequences cannot be imposed on an outright success even when logic would say they likely would occur.

Who gets to determine the weather conditions when the PCs wake up each morning? Or does 'the sun always shine on TV'?

 

[Lanefan]

It's not that I don't understand the way the game says it works (I haven't played it, so that's what I'm working from). It's that the way I see things, it seems as though on a 4-5 you get some of what you want--presumably what you want is not to limp after jumping over a gap, for instance--and something else goes wrong because you tried to do something. That 4-5 range looks more like a partial failure to me than a partial success, to me. I have a really hard time imaging why a character would try to do anything, given those kinds of odds.

Because a) the odds of success are still not zero and b) not doing anything is liable to lead to a rather dull game.

It's a matter of making failure the standard and success the exception, rather than the other way around. Successes then become much more valued and memorable because they're less common and thus liable to have greater impact when they do occur.

Someone upthread mentioned baseball hitters. Each time they go up to bat even the very best of 'em only get a hit about 1/3 of the time; they get on base some other way maybe 1/6 of the time, which means that half the time they accomplish nothing.

In hockey the odds are even worse: a non-goalie player is doing really well if he consistently scores on 15% - or 3/20 - of his shots on goal (and this ignores any shots that go wide, or are blocked before reaching the goalie). By what you're saying, that player shoud just give up trying to score at all.