Success, or “better success” or failure is different and interesting? Do you normally often roll checks where the outcome of success or failure is not interesting?
Binary Success vs Multiple Levels of Success
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Success, or “better success” or failure is different and interesting? Do you normally often roll checks where the outcome of success or failure is not interesting?
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Have you seen the FFG Star Wars system? There are a lot of dice combinations, and figuring out what this specific combination in this specific context means a couple dozen times a session or more is not a trivial task.
While I don't personally see it as such, I can understand how it can look like that or play like that for sure! Out of curiosity, was it the degrees of success as per thread topic; or the Resistance mechanic in particular that gave it that feeling for you? Did whoever was GMing still adjudicate action failure on a 1-3, with forward momentum from consequences?
Got it! That does sound a bit difficult or exhausting; I only do PBTA/FITD really - which I find far less exhausting to facilitate then D&D ever was.
Star Wars/Genesys provides a two-dimensional... I guess you could call it "success matrix". There are successes and failures, which determine if you succeed at the actual task you were attempting and if so, how well (a single uncancelled success is a full baseline success, but more successes can make things faster better harder stronger). For example, if you're attacking someone, additional successes inflict more damage. If you're slicing into a system, more successes lets you do it faster or get more of the information you're looking for. But you also have advantages and threats, which provide positive or negative side effects. If you're shooting at someone who's in cover, maybe advantages can force them out of that cover or destroy the cover, regardless of whether you hit them or not. If you're slicing a system, maybe a few threats can set off an alarm, and advantages might provide useful information you weren't looking for. If you're trying to get a blast door to close, maybe some threats mean you shoot the console which also controls the bridge across the chasm you need to cross.
That gives you some really cool opportunities for storytelling, but at the same time it can feel like there's pressure to do something cool with those threats and advantages. As a fallback, you can use them to cost or regain strain, but that's kinda boring.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Personally I'd rather inject some variance to the binary into D&D than play a Narrativist game, but it sounds like those games really work for you
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I was GMing. When it was a full success or a failure, it was fine. I just ran it like any other RPG for the most part. But when partial successes invited multiple player input, it got messy.
Now, I want to say two things. First, I have not run a FitD campaign, just a couple one shots. I am sure that you find your footing over time. And two, a couple players in each were very traditional, old school players and had a hard time grokking FitD, so I imagine that made it harder. I am NOT trying to say FitD or PbtA are bad, just that they can lead to the "writer's room" problem in a way D&D or Savage Worlds generally doesn't.
Interesting! I'm not sure I see how partials lead to player inputs (ideally you've established hte stakes and dangers up front and the GM simply has to roll them down a notch), but I would've totally understood how the Resistance Roll mechanic would give you that vibe.
Again, we weren't experts, and we may have too broadly applied player input/determination.
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